Mr. Speaker, I have to draw attention to a report, a copy of which I handed over to you, and which appeared in Sondagblad in its issue of 29 April 1962, the headlines of which read as follows—

The report places all hon. members under suspicion and further contains the insinuation that I was allegedly aware of the identity of hon. members who make themselves guilty of such criminal and scandalous behaviour.

The report is not only irresponsible but is devoid of all truth. Neither the chairman of the National Liquor Board, Mr. le Roux, whose name is also mentioned in the report, nor I have any knowledge of the false allegations contained in the report, and we know of no member who is guilty of such behaviour.

It is my intention to have the matter thoroughly investigated.

I wish to move as an unopposed motion—

1. (1) That on Tuesdays, on and after Tuesday, 8 May, the proceedings of the House shall be suspended at 6.30 p.m. and resumed at 8 p.m.; and
2. (2) that the House at its rising on Wednesday, 30 May, adjourn until Friday, 1 June, at 10 a.m.

I may also add that I hope to be able to announce to-morrow what legislation we still intend introducing this Session.

I second.

Agreed to.

I move—

By means of this Bill we are again bringing into operation the appropriate legislation that was used previously to grant moratorium protection to soldiers on active service. I refer to the Defence Special Pensions and Moratorium Act, 1940, and the Public Welfare Act, 1914-1919, or portions of those Acts. Nobody likes the idea of disturbing the ordinary course of business by means of moratorium legislation, but since South Africa has always been dependent to a very large extent for her defence on her citizen forces, we must see to it that we do not do an injustice to those whom we compel to serve in our citizen forces, and particularly now that we are compelling our young men to serve for long periods, it is necessary that they be given protection of this nature. During the two previous world wars we had similar moratorium legislation to boost the morale of the men in our defence force and to protect their financial position. Provision was also made during the disturbances of 1960 for moratorium protection for the people who were called up during the disturbances. But there is a difference between what was done then and what we are doing now. The previous moratoria were introduced during periods of war or unrest. This is a departure therefore. We are now asking for the first time for moratorium protection during a period of peace, but that is due to the fact that we are taking men of the citizen forces out of their civilian occupations for nine months and compelling them to undergo military training. We feel therefore that it is only right that they should also be given moratorium protection. It is perfectly clear that we intend to give this moratorium protection only to those who undergo compulsory training. In the first place we do not want anybody who undergoes voluntary military training to volunteer for military training in order to seek protection against his lawful creditors. It will therefore be applicable only to people who undergo compulsory training.

Clause 1 of the Bill brings into operation certain provisions of the Defence Special Pensions and Moratorium Act, No 29 of 1940, in so far as they are applicable in the circumstances. Clause 2 also applies this Bill to the territory of South West Africa.

The hon. the Minister has given a brief outline for the reason of the presentation of this Moratorium Bill. He has made it clear that it is linked up with the extended period of training of nine months, which the young men of the country are being called upon to undergo. The hon. the Minister has also made it clear that the Bill will only apply to ballotees, in other words those who have no option but to attend military training. If I heard him correctly, I think he implied that if we extended it to people who volunteered for service, some people may volunteer for military service in order to avoid other responsibilities incurred by them. That may be so. As the Bill reads now, it is confined to ballotees, and we propose to support the Bill, but I think the hon. the Minister may find at a later stage that he will have to give further consideration to the volunteer element, because as the number of trainees increases, which we understand is the Government’s policy—the Minister has stated before that each year it is proposed to increase the number of ballotees called up—he will find that it is essential to have a bigger proportion of trained men to mix with the new trainees in order to preserve a balance between experienced men and the balloted trainees called up by him. Therefore volunteers, although they come of their own free will, may well prove eventually to be necessary and an essential feature of the new expanded training system, as the resouces of the Permanent Forces in the supply of the instructors and suchlike are over-taxed.

The hon. the Minister has explained also that the Bill now before us, a very short Bill it is, in effect renews certain portions of the Moratorium Acts which it was found necessary to introduce both during the two world wars, and at a later period when circumstances necessitated such a step. As a general rule, Sir, a moratorium such as provided by this Bill, or any Moratorium Bill when it comes to that, can only be justified by very abnormal conditions, something by which the economy of the country in one particular phase or the other, is moved well out of its normal conditions. A period when a certain amount of emergency is attached to that particular sphere of the country’s economy and therefore one has to take precautions, or to take some action which normally one would not take, if it could be avoided.

The Bill provides in its very brief clauses a temporary remedy for hardships which result from the expansion which at present is being carried out in our defences. There will be a much larger call-up of trainees and with it the financial problems which automatically go with such an expansion will be increasingly felt. The effect in a year or two’s time when the number of trainees has greatly increased may well be considerably more serious even than it is to-day. When we consider that aspect, we have to take into account the hon. Minister’s ultimate vision of something like 38 or 33 battalions, some of whom it is true will have moved out of the training sphere back to civil life, but at the same time it gives us some idea of the numbers of people likely to be affected. As I said, a moratorium usually visualized some very unusual conditions affecting the people it affects, and is something that is not lightly entered into. Although we on this side of the House under the conditions under which this Bill is introduced are supporting it, we feel that it has to be exercised with considerable caution because it cuts right across the accepted principles of the normal economic life of the country; in other words, the individuals affected by the moratorium are relieved of certain financial obligations which they might have incurred prior to joining, or may have to incur subsequently due to family reasons. Therefore it cuts right across, to a very considerable extent, both the financial and the commercial business methods in the country. Although the Bill itself now protects the individual ballotee who is called up, under many conditions the commitments which they have entered into affect both the commercial houses, or the financial bodies with which those commitments have been incurred. They, in turn, themselves have to meet the cost of a large number of financial transactions with people who now may be protected and for the time being no longer have to meet their financial commitments. The firms concerned, however, most probably will still have to meet their commitments to the financial bodies or the banks, or whatever it may be which finances them. Therefore it is not a measure which is confined simply to the protection of the individual. It has ramifications which go far beyond that.

The difficulty which the Bill is now meeting is not one to cause surprise because it is a difficulty which one expects to meet with the type of call-up that we are having. In fact it was mentioned in the debate on the amending Bill which gave authority for this call-up, when the financial difficulty likely to arise in respect of people who have already incurred commitments, or young people who are being called up for the first time, but who in the normal course of events would have gone into employment and assisted in the upkeep and maintenance of their homes. It was mentioned and at that time the hon. the Minister and the Government were asked to give consideration to meeting that particular disability which they would suffer under, once they were called up.

The Bill itself now to some extent suspends their liabilities. It provides a temporary remedy, but it does not provide the ultimate cure for this type of difficulty. Because when these lads go back into civil life, after the period during which they are protected by the moratorium, they will then have to face up to whatever liabilities they may have incurred and which were suspended for the time being. Therefore it does not provide the full answer to the problem which the Minister has to deal with, and that, it appears on close examination, can only be met if in the cases which have to be examined and found to warrant consideration, some subsidiary allowance is made to the earnings to those individuals while they are in service. It would apply particularly to the trainee ballotees who are being called up from business houses where the business itself is not prepared or unable to make up the difference between their civil pay and the military pay. It does not apply so much to state officials whose cases are being met by the state, and one can only express the hope that firms where possible—there are some cases where it is impossible—will follow the lead of the Government and endeavour to make up the difference between the individual’s normal pay and the reduced amount he will receive when he is called up for training. In suggesting that, one knows that it is very, very difficult to find any hard and fast rule to govern all cases because there are so many variations in it, but we do hope that the country as a whole will realize that it is a responsibility which must be met and that as far as possible they will follow the lead of the Government in that respect.

Section 9 of the Act of 1940 (Act No. 29) sets a date for the suspension, or rather for the ceasing of the protection of the moratorium in respect of the people to be protected. Section 4 of this particular Act protected the volunteers of those days for a period of three months after they were returned to civil life. In the case of the Bill before us, and owing to the completely different set-up of the country as a whole, the three months’ period will not apply, but instead a period will be fixed as from 15 June 1961 (the original date of the Act for the call-up) and a date to be fixed by the State President by proclamation in the Gazette.

The three months’ period will apply.

It probably will be three months, but the Bill here lays down clearly that whereas in the original Act it applied in a certain manner, under this Bill it says—

It does not actually state here that it will be three months, although one assumes that it will naturally follow the lead of the old Act.

There is provision for the three months.

Perhaps the hon. the Minister can explain that when he replies, because what I want to ask here is: Having to face the position that for some years ahead at any rate, this state of affairs will continue, because it looks as if this period of extended training will be necessary for some time, and, as the number of young people being called up to the services is likely to increase rather than to decrease, the hon. the Minister should take into account in fixing the date for the suspension of the moratorium for each group of trainees as they move out of the training period back into civilian life, that he should take into account not only the fact that there is suspended action in respect of any liability for these three months, but also take appropriate steps to see that as they are discharged back to civil life, some orderly form of aid to assist them back into employment in civil life will be afforded. You see, Sir, many of these trainees that will now be protected by this moratorium have never been in employment. They will come straight from their educational institutions into the forces; they have never had a job. The normal range of job-seekers in the country, due to the school-leaving age, has generally been accepted as being round about the beginning of the year. But under your quarterly call-up system now in force, the position will be different. You will have 2,500 people moving back into employment at the end of each quarter, and it will be necessary in some shape or form to have, what one might describe for the lack of a better term, as a demobilization scheme, to see that these young people go back to good jobs and that where they have not been employed before, some form of assistance will be given to place them in sound employment, and that until such time as they find satisfactory employment, they should continue to be protected by the moratorium if necessary, because such protection will be even more necessary at that stage. So I am asking the hon. the Minister in considering the longterm aspects of this legislation, to give consideration to that. It is something the importance of which will grow as the number of these trainees grows.

I said that paragraph (f) of sub-section (2) of Clause 1 says that the date when the moratorium will cease to apply will be fixed by the State President. It appears to lay down that the State President himself will have a certain amount of latitude in fixing that date; and if that is so, that might afford the appropriate opportunity to provide the protection I have asked for. It would mean very close collaboration between the Department of Labour and other Departments to see that they are assisted back into work.

I want also to state that there will be a much wider need for examination of the problems which will arise from what is in effect a mobilization of the young people of the country. Such examination should also include the reasons which give rise to the necessity for this moratorium. Those reasons are that, as is to be expected when one is called to the armed forces, your level of earnings is not sufficient to maintain you at the standard of living you would be able to maintain if you had not been called up, the standard of civilian homelife. Where your deficiency in pay is met, that disability is overcome, but the hon. the Minister will find that there will be many cases where people are called up from employment they will suffer a very serious drop in their earnings. Although for the time being whilst they are called up, the moratorium will protect them, it does not do away with their liabilities. Those liabilities will automatically come into force again at the end of the term of their call-up, and here I would express the most earnest hope that many of the big firms, and some of them are not blameless, which are benefiting as a result of this mobilization, as a result of this expansion in our defence commitments, by being concerned in very large Government contracts, that they at any rate will give a lead, that as they are benefiting from this defence expansion, they will see that their employees do not suffer as a result of being called up to serve in the Defence Force.

Finally in saying that we on this side support the Bill and will vote for it, I want to say also that we feel that whilst it is something that is inherent to-day under the conditions under which we are living, the world conditions as well as our own country’s conditions, we feel that it is a form of economic control which should not be perpetuated one day longer than is absolutely essential. It seems that period can be shortened by a more realistic approach to the earnings necessary for the people whilst they serve. We would ask the Minister to consider that, and to remove the control of the moratorium as fast as is possible, without hardship to the trainees or to the firms and the other interests concerned in the matter. That removal should take place as soon as possible after their completion of training.

I am pleased that the official Opposition is prepared to support this legislation. I want to express my gratification that the Minister has brought this legislation before the House. The extension of the period of training of our young citizens to nine months will entail hardships for some of them. Fortunately we can say that in this case they are all young citizens, whereas in war-time one has to deal with people who have already reached an advanced age and who may have many obligations. It is also anticipated that particularly as from next year, when the new provision that our young citizens have to register in their seventeeth year and be called up from their eighteenth year comes into force, this legislation will become even less necessary. Once that provision comes into operation, very few of them will have started working and earning a salary or wage by the time they have to go to military camps. The time will come when protection will have to be given under the provisions of this Bill only to those who have left school at an early age and to those who have obtained a deferment of military training.

We must bear in mind that a fairly large number of the slightly more than 10,000 boys who are called up will suffer hardship, particularly this year. Some of these young men have bought a motor-car, a radiogram or something of that kind at an early age; they have accepted certain obligations and in many cases the compensation that they receive, namely 50 cents a day or, if they have dependants, an additional R1.70 a day for their dependants, will not make up the difference in pay. Public servants, as the hon. member for Simonstown has said, are covered because the Government pays their full salaries, but the ballotees who are taken out of the private sector of our economy will not in all cases receive their salary. Not all employers would be prepared to pay them their full salary. Certain constituents of mine have made representations to me in this connection. I think it is wrong for our young citizens to take heavy obligations upon themselves by buying a motor-car, for example, but because of our high standard of living that sort of thing does happen, and that is why it is necessary to make provision for it to some extent. I want to associate myself with the remarks of the hon. member for Simonstown, that one is grateful for the fact that the provisions that were in force in World War I and also in World War II, will come into operation again. I hope, however, that with the experience we gain we will also be prepared in due course to introduce slightly more favourable conditions for our young men. It must be remembered that we are not living in war-time; it is not as though we do not know for what period provision has to be made. Here provision has to be made for a specific period of nine months’ training, and since we are calling up these young men, I hope that our experience in implementing the Act will show that we can perhaps create even more favourable conditions for them, although we welcome the concessions which are being made here. It is necessary perhaps to point out that this Bill suspends all civil proceedings in respect of ballotees; no civil action of any nature can be instituted against such a ballotee, except in those cases where provision is made for it by the Acts which are now being applied again. I want to point out that it will still be possible to recover certain debts, as in the case of a partnership, for example. In that case the debt can be recovered if one of the partners remains in the business. This will not happen often perhaps in the case of our young men who are called up, but where one partner remains in the business, a civil action can be instituted to recover debts in respect of such a partnership. There are also other debts in respect of which civil actions may be instituted, and that is where people who are in military camps contract debts, either in respect of rental, in respect of necessaries or in respect of boarding and lodging, etc., after their admission to the military camp. Debts in respect of these essential items, can be recovered. It is clear therefore that the legislation provides that once the young men are in the camp, they cannot simply contract all sorts of obligations. If traders give credit to young men for all sorts of purchases, they must realize that it will not be possible to collect their debt from them in all cases, and the young men must realize that they are not protected in every respect. This legislation, as the hon. member and the Minister have said, is not applicable to young citizens who voluntarily apply to undergo this training of nine months. It may be said that in war-time many people join the army in order to evade their debts, but fortunately in this case that will not be possible because the Act provides that people will not be able to do so.

I want to refer briefly also to the hire-purchase provisions in the measures which are now being brought into operation again. In this case particularly I think that in the course of time it may be possible for us to introduce better conditions so as to give even greater assistance to these people. According to the Acts which are now being brought into operation again, hire-purchase contracts are excluded from this legislation. In other words, civil actions may be instituted under hire-purchase contracts either for payment or for the return of the goods. The legislation provides for certain procedures that a debtor may follow to try and protect himself. The legislation now provides that he Department of Commerce and Industries may appoint an official, who was called an assessor in the old provisions of the Act, and the trainee can go to the assessor and ask for protection. He can do one of three things. In the first place he may return the goods that he bought under hire-purchase if the assessor gives his approval, and then he is not called upon to make any further payments; he simply returns the goods that he purchased. I realize that is a very drastic provision. If, for example, a young man has bought a motor-car it is far-reaching to say that he can simply return the motor-car. I hope therefore that it will be possible later on perhaps to make other concessions. But he can also follow a different course, and that is that he may, for example, return a portion of the goods, if the assessor agrees, and the assessor must then determine whether the goods returned by him cover the remaining portion of the debt, whether he has to make further payments or whether the value of the goods returned by him is in excess of the amount that he still owes. In the latter case he can claim that the amount in question be refunded to him by the creditor. That is what the citizen who is called up can do to protect himself, but we feel that there may still be a certain amount of hardship in this connection and that there may be a certain amount of dissatisfaction. But at the moment I can put forward no suggestion to improve the position. I only hope that in the light of practical experience it may still be possible for us to lay down more favourable conditions in respect of hire-purchase contracts. But generally speaking we are grateful for the introduction of this legislation and we are grateful that some method has been found to give a certain amount of protection to these young ballotees who will have to suffer deprivation and that they will not be dragged into the courts unnecessarily. I am pleased therefore that the Opposition supports this legislation.

I should like to put two points to the hon. the Minister in regard to this Bill. The hon. member for Pretoria (West) (Mr. van der Walt) quite rightly pointed out that as a result of the amendments in the Defence Act last year, the ballotees that are now being called up will be called up in their first year of registration, and that therefore the average age of the ballotee who will be serving this nine months’ period, will be that of a young fellow who has just left school.

There are others too.

Yes, but I am talking about the bulk of the 10,000 ballotees that will be put under training in the course of the year; the bulk of them will be young fellows of an average of 17 to 19 years, who largely have not entered any business commitments. I think the hon. the Minister recognizes that one of the effects of this Moratorium Bill will be that business and commerce as a whole will think twice before extending any credit facilities to any citizen whose name had been drawn in the ballot, even if there is a delay of six to nine months before he is actually called up for his period of service. That being so, the point I want to make to the hon. the Minister is this: As I read paragraph (d) of this clause, the Minister has gone out of his way to exclude a further period of training for which a ballotee will be liable, or even periods of training. Now in terms of Section 20 of the original Act, any ballotee is called up for a period of four years, and apart from the nine months’ period of service that he has to immediately undergo, continuous training, he still remains liable in terms of the Act for two further periods of three weeks’ cintinuous training in subsequent years, may be immediately the next year, or there may be a lapse of period. But he is liable for two further periods of training. The point I want to make is that if the Minister accepts that, where this moratorium will apply, a large number of ballotees will not be affected at all because they have not had an opportunity of entering into any business commitments where it is necessary to apply a moratorium, he will also admit that after having entered civil life again a ballotee may be called upon two years later, after having accepted commitments, to go and fulfil these periods of continuous training. The hon. the Minister has an option in this regard. The hon. the Minister or an official can lay down a shorter period, but the Minister may see fit in the national interest to call upon that trainee, who is no longer a ballotee but a trainee to come and fulfil these extra periods of continuous training. At that time he may need the moratorium. He may be in his third year or fourth year as an apprenticed mechanic, for example: he has accepted certain responsibilities; the moment he is called up to complete his further period of continuous training, he is immediately placed in the position as a weekly or an hourly paid man, that his income is reduced, and that he cannot meet the commitments he has entered into. I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether he will give particular consideration to this point, particularly in view of the fact that the moratorium is not going to apply to the broad mass of 10,000 men. They will not need it; there will be a percentage who will need it. The Minister must however consider the time when these men will need this moratorium, the time when they have entered civil life and accepted responsibility and are called upon by the Minister to do these further periods of training when their whole level of income will be upset. I hope the hon. the Minister will give some consideration to that aspect when we come to the Committee Stage and accept a small amendment which will adjust that position.

I also wish to support the hon. member for Simonstown (Mr. Gay) in regard to what he had to say about volunteers. As the Minister knows the Act makes full provision for the acceptance by him of volunteers for these periods of full-time training. If a man has not been drawn in a ballot and it is his wish to do military training he can volunteer. There are many families in this country with a military tradition who would like to see their sons follow in their footsteps. In terms of this Bill those men are being prejudiced. Surely their position in the Active Citizen Force is no different from that of a man whose name has been drawn in a ballot. I am sure the Minister does not wish to create the position where the volunteer will say: Well, this is going to be to my disadvantage. The man whose name has been drawn in the ballot will enjoy these privileges whereas I, as a volunteer, will not enjoy them. The effect will be that there will be a decline in the number of volunteers. The Minister will agree with me that the volunteer will probably make a better soldier than the ballotee. He is keen, he wants to do the job but he says to himself: “I am now going to be prejudiced: why should I be required to meet both ends of the financial stick because I am a volunteer and am keen to follow a military career in the service of my country?” I would ask the hon. the Minister to give serious consideration to that aspect. The Minister will recall that he even has the power to fix the number of volunteers that may be taken into the A.C.F. On occasions the number has risen to as high as 1,500 to 2,000. It can become as high as 20 per cent of the men coming forward for training. I therefore ask the Minister when we come to the Committee Stage to consider some means of giving the same measure of protection to the volunteer as the ballotee will get in terms of this measure.

The hon. member for Simonstown (Mr. Gay) mentioned the fact that the Bill did not afford protection for the three months. Well, it does. According to sub-section (v) of Section 5 of the Public Welfare Act of 1919 it gives the three months’ protection after the nine months’ training. Clause 1 (2) (f) says—

That is the date when the last Bill came into force—

That means that when we find that we no longer need that additional protection the Act can be repealed by the State President. The hon. member also pleaded for the volunteers, so did the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Durrant). But. Sir, we must remember that this is not a time of war. That is the big difference. During a time of war you must give protection to volunteers. But this is peace time. We cannot allow people to come into the Army just for the sake of escaping from their creditors. We must protect the businessman as such. The hon. member for Turffontein said this number of volunteers may be quite a big number. We must protect the businessmen; this is peace time. We force the ballotees to come into camp and because we force them to do so by law, we are prepared to protect them but not volunteers. This is not a time of war; this is peace time.

What is the difference between a young ballotee of 17 who is drawn and the young volunteer of 17 who joins the A.C.F.?

That is the difference: The ballotee comes in because we force him to come in and the other one comes in voluntarily. That makes all the difference in time of peace. For that reason I will not be able to accept any amendment in that respect. We must protect the businessmen, too.

*The hon. member for Pretoria (West) (Mr. van der Walt) has said that he hopes that in the future it will be possible to make better provision in connection with hire purchase. I must say that on the three previous occasions when this legislation was applied in practice, no plan could be devised to make better provision for hire purchase, nor can we suggest a better plan to-day. The hon. member for Pretoria (West) has said himself that he too has no better plan to put forward. If he or we can think of a better plan to make provision for it, we shall certainly consider whether it can be introduced in the future.

The hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Durrant) has raised the question of a moratorium in respect of volunteers, a matter which I have dealt with already.

The hon. member also referred to ballotees who will be brought back for two periods of three weeks’ training during the subsequent three years. He wanted to know what protection we would give them during those periods. I agree that it will be most difficult to protect them for such short periods. If any hon. member can suggest something practical I will consider it.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Mr. Speaker, on Friday last, just before the adjournment of the debate and in the last stages of my speech, I had dealt briefly with two matters. The one was the qualifications, if any, of the inspectors to be sent out in terms of Clause 4 of this Bill in order to investigate and report on any matter in respect of which particulars were required for the register. Without repeating what I have said before, I want to say that in order to be able to provide the authorities with an accurate, reasoned and objective report, the inspector will have to be something of a judge. He will have a very heavy onus to discharge. He will have to possess a great deal of experience and wisdom. In my view, the person best able to undertake a task like that, in normal circumstances, will be a Judge. I can hardly visualize the appointment of an itinerant Judge. We know about circuit Judges, Sir, but it is very unlikely that there will be itinerant Judges knocking on all doors to which they have been sent, in order to inquire and investigate, and then to submit a reasoned and objective report. That opens the door to the abuses with which I dealt under the second point which I raised, and that was the question of corruption. If people were appointed on an ad hoc basis, people who have previously been unemployed, people with no experience in these matters and people who regarded this merely as a channel of employment, then clearly the opportunity for bribery and corruption would present itself on quite a wide scale. Let me give an example, Sir. We remember the years when price control inspectors were very active in this country. You need only think of the number of cases which came before the courts to realize how easy it was then for a so-called inspector, who was supposed to go back with the facts and nothing else, to try to abuse his position by placing a person who had something to conceal—and in many cases a person who had nothing to conceal, but who only did not know what his rights were—in a position where he found it to be the easiest way out for him, to pay-off. I trust, therefore, that the Minister will consider these matters before he presses on, regardless of the consequences, with the enactment of this Bill. There is a further possibility, Sir, of a neighbour, for reasons of his own, deciding to place certain information before the authorities with regard to the antecedents of the person whom he wishes to have removed from the environment, or whose land he wishes to acquire, or whose house he covets. All those possibilities exist. I merely wish to leave this thought with the hon. the Minister as far as this clause is concerned—that I believe it opens up a very wide and very unpleasant field for misdeeds, misdeeds which will certainly not do anything to cure the evil which the Minister sees in the present position, in regard to the existence of loopholes. On the contrary, I think it will do much greater harm than good.

I was very much struck by the observations of the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman). In dealing with this question of appearance, he was heard to say that Spaniards or Italians, though swarthy in complexion, would not be classified as Coloured in South Africa. I want to ask him whether he is sure that they would not be classified as Coloureds? We heard the Minister telling us that every man in South Africa was virtually his own mobile race classification board. He said that when you walked down the street, or when you sat in a train or when you were at any public place or driving in a motor-car, you involuntarily classified the people whom you saw. I can only think of that as the activity of a mobile one-man classification board. I cannot understand how the hon. member for Heilbron can say that a Spaniard or an Italian with a dark complexion will be allowed to pass unnoticed by those people who are apparently making it their business to look very closely at others, and to determine their racial origin. I want to tell the hon. the Minister that he may perhaps not have had the privilege of seeing, say, Sophia Loren in the flesh—I should not say “in the flesh”, I should say, not on the screen—but if he were to see this lady, who is very famous throughout the world as a film actress, in terms of his own contention that he automatically puts people into their racial pigeon-holes, he would say she was a Coloured; because I have seen many hundreds of Coloured women in this city who are much lighter in complexion than Sophia Loren. Mr. Speaker, it is irrelevant to pursue this argument any further. I do not proposed to do so. I just wish to say that you cannot convince any thinking person that it is possible to classify everybody who lives in South Africa or who is likely to live in South Africa in the future or anybody who visits South Africa, by appearance. It is impossible. You only have to move about, particularly in the southern part of Europe, to realize how impossible it is. And if you go to the Western capitals of Europe to-day or to London for that matter, you will realize even more how impossible it is.

The hon. member for Heilbron also said that the United Party was responsible for the unfavourable world opinion of South Africa. He said that what we were trying to do—presumably for the Coloured people—had never been published in any newspaper. It may be that the newspapers have neglected their duty. We hear those charges every day. But the Department of Information and the Department of Coloured Affairs have certainly not been neglecting their duty, Sir, as is evidenced by this publication “The Coloured People of South Africa”, which I have here. In this publication, a great deal of information is made available about the subject of this debate. I maintain, Sir, that as long as we talk about the rights and the wrongs of the definition, it is important that we understand the nature of the people we are discussing and whom this legislation is designed to affect. These two Departments have combined to produce this very glossy publication, in colour; in fact, so much colour is involved in it that instead of having been titled “The Coloured People of South Africa” it should have been titled “The Technicoloured People of South Africa”. This has cost a small fortune to produce. By coincidence, it only became available last week when this debate was started. I must say that anyone who reads this will be struck by one or two statements contained in this particular brochure. It is obviously intended for overseas consumption, where our position has been misunderstood. I would suggest that it would have been as well for the hon. the Minister to have read this before he introduced this Bill. For example, Sir, the Secretary for Coloured Affairs, Dr. du Plessis, in one of the two forewords on the front page, says in regard to the development of the Coloured people—

We are telling the outside world that when we give the Coloured people the “scope”, they are capable and have in fact been proved capable of great achievements. I leave that without further comment. Under the heading “Cultural Development” we have this statement—

I am not saying that. Sir. My opinions are irrelevant here. This is the official brochure of the two Departments in combination: “The culture of the Coloured people is largely Western.”

It goes on to say—

This is about the Malays, who are apparently also Western, though less Western than the Coloureds.

What is your argument?

I think the argument is perfectly clear, Sir, if the hon. member is prepared to see it, and it is that we are trying to legislate about people who, on our own admission, belong to the Western group in this country. We are continually told that we will stand by the Western nations; during the debate on the Defence Vote we were told that the West would immediately rush to our aid. Surely the West sees us all as one people—White and Coloured; we are telling the world that the Coloureds are Western. I am sorry, Sir, that I had to enlarge on this argument for the benefit of that hon. member opposite. I thought that the proverbial nod to a blind horse would also apply in his case.

There is also a brief reference in this brochure to the Eoan Group which I think is also relevent—

Overleaf is a picture of Mr. Paul Sauer, the Minister of Public Works, being presented to some of the performers of a certain opera, back-stage. We in South Africa are supposed to know who the Coloured people are. We are spending a great deal of money and time on trying to convince the outside world that they belong to the Western group, like we do. I am amazed at that, Sir, because we take such a very different line when it comes to internal consumption. With respect of the two Departments and Ministries concerned, this is clearly for overseas consumption. Let us come back to the local position; let us assume that these statements have never been made, and are not intended to convince the outside world, those countries where friends do exist and where more friends would exist if we took the trouble to tell them the truth. On more than one occasion we have been taken on a conducted tour of the world of David Song—some people will prefer “The World of Susie Wong”; and I do not blame them. But time and time again we heard about the difficulties which arose from the actions of David Song. Why is it that one mischance, as it were, under a set of rules, can spark off this Bill, the debate which has followed and the controversy which is inevitably bound up with this sort of legislation? It was just one person who happened to get by, as it were, and into the White group of people. The fact is that despite all the talk that we had last week about “herkoms” and “afkoms”—I got the impression from the hon. the Minister that in his view the two meant one and the same thing—we were told later in the debate that “herkoms” and “afkoms” meant two different things. We were told not to confuse ancestry with origin. That was what we were told, and if the Minister thinks I am wrong he will see, if he reads the Hansard reports of all those who have spoken, that I am speaking the truth. When we come to the question of the origin of the Coloured people—not of one individual who succeeded in getting into the White group—then I think we see the position in its proper perspective. I remember clearly that the hon. member for Karas (Mr. von Moltke) said that the two members who had spoken before him knew nothing at all about the history of South Africa. He then referred to the fact that Simon van der Stel had passed an ordinance prohibiting the association between White soldiers and Native women. He spoke in Afrikaans, but I think this is more or less a literal translation of what he said—I took it down. Having said that, he took a long leap in history. He skipped the entire period after the passing of that ordinance by van der Stel, and started to deal with the present-day position. He ignored that period and said there was a report in 1937 which took the view that all racial groups were against mixed marriages. This gap, in my humble opinion, has to be bridged. We, quite reasonably, expected the Government side to do so, but no one has referred to the history of the people about whom we are talking. During the time which is left to me, I want to refer to what I believe is considered by all persons interested in the Cape Coloured people, whatever their political outlook may be, as the authority on the subject. This book is called “The Cape Coloured People, 1652 to 1937” by Prof. J. S. Marais, then Professor of History at the University of Cape Town. I think the reading of this book would be rewarding to anyone who was really interested to see where the rights and the wrongs in this matter lay. I can do no more than summarize it, obviously. This book was written in 1938 and it starts with a preface in which the author says that the book is” essentially a study of race relations—

This was written 25 years ago. And I may say that it is extraordinary that this man had the gift of prophecy which he displayed in this particular book. He goes on to say—

He says—

He says that his aim has been to establish facts and to draw valid conclusions from them. He says—

There is a great deal of material in this book about “origin” which I think should at least have been referred to by the hon. the Minister, or some of the hon. members who support him. It is perfectly clear, Sir, that the origin of the Cape Coloured is to be found in the Bushmen, Hottentots, slaves and Europeans. Marais says it is there you will find the ancestry of the Coloured people. I am well aware of the fact that recently publicity was given to the appearance of a text-book in the Transvaal, for school-children, a text-book in which it was averred that the Coloured people were not the product of miscegenation between White and non-White. That was for the children. I would say that is “for the birds”. But this book was placed in the schools without any regard to the history of the matter. One then asks oneself, where do these Cape Coloured people come from? If one does not know, one need only turn up the records, Sir. The hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) seems a little incredulous. One of the aspects which is very interesting about this matter, Mr. Speaker, is that miscegenation…

Order! The hon. member must please come back to the Bill.

With respect, Sir, the Bill deals, as the Minister has indicated, with the origin of these people and it refers to the descent of people. With respect, Sir, I believe that I am entitled to refer to that, from the historical point of view. That is all I am trying to do. I am dealing with Clause 1 (b) which reads—

I submit that in order to be able to deal with this matter at all, you must be prepared to consider who these Coloured people are. If you rule that out of order, I will not pursue the argument—but I appeal to you to give your ruling on the basis that I am trying to deal with the people who are affected by this Bill, who are citizens of this country and who are thus affected.

The position according to this historical and very accurate protrayal of this so-called problem which is in our midst to-day is aptly summed up by Prof. Marais in his conclusion. He says—

The logical conclusion which the Coloured man draws from our actions in the past is, that having created him in the sense that we are at least partly responsible for the existence of this 1,500,000 Coloured people, having ostensibly endeavoured to educate and instruct them in the ways of Western civilization, having held out to the whole world that this was our main objective in regard to the Coloured people, that it is a complete negation of that attitude to come forward with a Bill like this, which can only create, not the advancement of the Coloured people or their enlightenment or their betterment, but the embitterment of the Coloured people. In their opinion, the White man has failed to be reasonable and just. To say that a White person means a person who in appearance is obviously a White person and who is not generally accepted as a Coloured person, means in effect that the rights of anyone who has up to a certain stage been generally accepted as a White person, cannot be tampered with; he cannot be told, after the event, that another investigation must be commenced to see whether in fact during the period that he was accepted as a White person, he was entitled to be so accepted. How can you reconcile it with your conscience, Sir, to say that we are now adopting a new standpoint, purely as a matter of domestic policy? Furthermore, I believe that those hon. members who represent constituencies in the Cape, and particularly in the Western Province, are failing in their duty if they support this Bill, because we have been told for many years—I grew up with this idea—that the “Cape liberal tradition” was something which would always ensure the rightful place of the Coloured people. Therefore for me, now regarded as a Transvaler—we are the people who come from the north, the hard-hearted people who have no liberality—to come here and to find that this sort of legislation is devised and is supported by the very people who should be supporting the so-called Cape liberal tradition, is one of the more amazing things in my short parliamentary career. Something has happened along the line, Mr. Speaker, which requires a great deal of explanation. [Interjections.] I can only appeal to the Minister to think again, before this Bill is forced through the House. It is clear from any considered opinion of the legislation and of the history of the matter or the history of the people affected, that this legislation is unnecessary and objectionable, and can only do the good name of South Africa further harm. After all the effort we are now making to convince those who up to now have had doubts about our Western way of life, we are doing untold damage by introducing legislation like this, because we are deliberately opening the wound again, as far as the people of this country are concerned, but as far as the people overseas are concerned, the Minister has surely travelled, and knows how quickly opinions are formed as the result of one particular incident. In this brochure you show them a beautiful picture of the Coloured people of South Africa, and then the Minister comes along and removes the picture—and the whole world can see the large, dirty blot on the wall. I appeal to the Minister, because I believe him to be, basically, a reasonable man, to think again before he presses on with this legislation, because if he withdraws it, I am convinced he will be rendering a greater service to South Africa than by pursuing this unnecessary and ill-conceived Bill.

I have seldom if ever listened to arguments from the Opposition which are based on as many misconceptions and false premises as the arguments which have been advanced in this debate, and I can give no better example of that than the speech of the hon. member who has just sat down. The hon. member is apparently under the impression that where reference is made here to Coloureds, it is purely a reference to the Cape Coloureds, but that is not the position. This reference to Coloureds is a reference to Coloureds as defined in the 1950 Act, that is to say, a person who is neither a Native nor a White person. That is what a “Coloured” means. It may be an Asiatic or a Cape Coloured; it may an Indian or a Japanese or a Chinese. [Interjections.] I have become sick and tired of this parrot-cry of “Japanese”. According to the existing Act a Japanese is a Coloured. In terms of the proposed legislation a Japanese is also a Coloured, but he is exempt from the provisions of the Group Areas Act. But for the purposes of the Population Registration Act a Japanese remains a Coloured. For the purposes of the Immorality Act he remains a Coloured, and for the purposes of the Mixed Marriages Act he remains a Coloured.

That is news.

Hon. members opposite do not know what they are talking about. They argue on false premises, and then they come along with heartrending stories about suffering and injustices. I do not want to follow hon. members along those lines. At the moment this House is dealing with a legal matter, and I should like to approach it purely from the legal aspect. In order to be able to do so, it is necessary first of all to determine what the position is that we are seeking to cope with.

The position is very simple. In 1950, after a lengthy discussion, this House decided upon a system of race classification and population registration. After that discussion, the Bill went also through the Other Place and it became the law of the land. Three definitions were laid down for the purposes of that Act. The first is the definition that was laid down for a Native, and it reads that “‘Native’ means a person who is a member of any aboriginal race or tribe of Africa, or who is generally accepted as such The second definition is that of a White person, namely” a person who in appearance obviously is, or who is generally accepted as a White person”, but does not include a person who, although in appearance obviously a White person, is generally accepted as a Coloured person. Then there is the third definition, the definition of a “Coloured”, “a person who is not a White person or a Native”. It is very simple. There is no reference here to Cape Coloureds. A Coloured person is a person who is neither a Native nor a White person, and if hon. members will only realize that, we will have less false reasoning from them.

This system of population classification and registration has been applied under the Act over the past 12 years: it has progressed very far already, and during those 12 years it has never been necessary to change one of these three definitions. The definitions were very carefully framed in the 1950 Act and, as I say, it has never been necessary to alter them, but what happened recently was that in spite of this Act and in spite of the definition of a White person, a Chinese, who himself admits that he is a full-blooded Chinese, who says that he was born in Canton and admits that he looks like a Chinese, succeeded—and lawfully succeeded—in getting himself declared a White person, purely on the strength of the fact that he had proved that he was generally accepted as a White person. And what is the Minister of the Interior doing now? He is doing what every responsible Government ought to do, and that is to put the matter right immediately where a farce is made of legislation of this House. That is the position that we have to-day. How does he propose to put it right? He is not interfering with the definition of a “Native” or of a “Coloured person”, because that is not necessary. But a loophole was discovered in the definition of a “White person” and that is why he proposes to substitute for the old definition of “White person” the following definition: “‘White person’ means a person who in appearance obviously is a White person and who is not generally accepted as a Coloured person or is generally accepted as a White person and is not in appearance obviously not a White person, but does not include any person who admits that he is by descent a Native or a Coloured person”. And the Minister says that in the Committee Stage he will move the addition of the words”unless it is proved that his admission is not based on facts”. The Opposition is strenuously opposed to this new definition, so strenuously that the Leader of the Opposition did not even make an attempt to propose an improvement to the definition so as to meet the position in that way. No, he proposes that the Bill be rejected from A to Z and that is why he moves that it be read this day six months. In other words, his attitude and that of his party is that even though a person is a full-blooded Chinaman and admits it, or is a full-blooded Japanese and admits it, or is a full-blooded Indian and admits it, as long as he can prove to the Board or satisfy the court that he is accepted as a White person, he and his party have no objection at all to that person being declared a White person and being absorbed into the White community and associating socially with White persons and inter-marrying with Whites. That is his attitude. I do not want to make political capital out of this debate, but I want to say to the Opposition that this is something that we will rub in on political platforms. [Interjections.] Yes, hon. members opposite will again come forward with the cry, “What do you propose to do about the Japanese?” Absolutely nothing as far as the Japanese are concerned. The Japanese are in precisely the same position as the Chinese, Song, as far as this Act is concerned. The only difference is that for good reasons the Japanese are exempt from the provisions of certain legislation. [Interjections.] Those good reasons are that is in the best interests of the country. There is a very small number of Japanese here. They visit this country for the purposes of trade (which is to our advantage) and these people are exempt from the Group Areas Act because we do not want to cause them unnecessary trouble and because we want to make things easy for them. But that does not mean that they are exempt from the provisions of this Act. If hon. members do not even realize that, then they have no right to discuss this legislation.

What are the objections of the Opposition? They have a whole series of objections. The first, of course, is the basic objection to race classification and to a system of population registration. That appeared very clearly from the sneering reference of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition to a “human studbook”. That shows the basic objection that the Leader of the Opposition has to race classification. But let me say this to him. When he used the term “human studbook” my mind went back to 1953 when he and other speakers of the United Party went from platform to platform throughout the country and tried to ridicule this “human studbook”. But there sits the hon. member for Von Brandis (Mr. Higgerty); he will still remember the defeat that his party suffered in that eleciton. But there is a second thing that I want to say to him. At that time when he went from platform to platform he was just an ordinary member of the United Party. To-day he is the Leader of the official Opposition and I want to say to him in all honesty that the words “human studbook” do not behove the Leader of the official Opposition. I do not think it behoves him to use that expression.

The second objection that they have is the one which the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Gorshel) also tried to raise but never did raise, and that is the objection that the test of acceptance is being subordinated to the test of appearance. Let us see what the difference is. Portion (a) of the present definition is precisely the same as the old definition, that is to say, “a person who in appearance is obviously a White person and is not generally accepted as a Coloured person Then the 1950 defininition goes on to say, “or a person who is generally accepted as a White person,” without any qualification. In the new definition there is a qualification, namely “a person who is generally accepted as a White person and is not in appearance obviously not a White person It is now argued that because there is this qualification, appearance is the main test and that the test of acceptance becomes a subordinate one. But let us analyse that paragraph for a moment—”a person who is generally accepted as a White person The definition does not go on to say” and who is possibly not a White person It does not say a person who is accepted as a White person “and is apparently not a White person”, nor does it say a person who is accepted as a White person “and who is apparently not a White person”. It is stated in the most specific terms, “a person who is generally accepted as a White person and is not in appearance obviously not a White person”. My contention is this: If a person is obviously not a White person, how on earth can he be accepted as a White person? He would simply not be accepted. In a genuine case that could not happen. It may very well happen that a person is accepted by a small group as a White person, but if he is removed from his immediate environment, or if he is taken away from his liberal friends and thrown into the ordinary community, then I say that such a person who is obviously not a White person will not be accepted as a White person. As far as that is concerned, therefore, acceptance remains the test, but it must be remembered that acceptance is based on appearance, and if his appearance is such that the man is obviously not a White person, he will simply not be accepted by the public as a whole.

What is the next objection? It is this: Who is to decide that a person is obviously not a White person? Sir, who decides that at the moment? In the first place, the official, secondly the Secretary, and if the man is not satisfied, then in the third place the Board has to decide, and if he is still not satisfied with the Board’s decision, the Supreme Court has to decide, and if he is still not satisfied the Appeal Court has to decide, and what difficulty is there in deciding that a person is obviously not a White person? The courts have to decide much more difficult cases than that. And let me say this here. In view of the fact that his is a difficult matter, the courts will always be inclined in these cases to give the benefit of the doubt to the man. Furthermore, it must be remembered that all that the man has to allege is that he is generally accepted as a White person, and then it is for the Secretary to prove the opposite. The onus of proof does not rest on the individual but on the Secretary; it is a very difficult onus to discharge, and that is why the individual concerned will be given the benefit of the doubt in all genuine cases. But if it is an obvious case of a Chinese who admits that he comes from Canton and that he has no White blood in his veins, he will not be classified as a White person in the future, and that is the intention here.

The next objection is to the word “admission”. The Leader of the Opposition wanted to know how the person concerned is to make the admission. The hon. member for Boland (Mr. Barnett) says that if a person casually remarks in the street that he has non-White blood in his veins, that will be regarded as an admission. The admission is naturally made in the usual way. You fill in a form and where you are dissatisfied with your classification, you sign an affidavit in which you say that you are accepted as a White person, but that you have been classified as a Coloured, and you then submit that you are a White person, because you have been accepted in the White community. That is the admission that will be made and it will be made voluntarily. And if a person appeals, he may perhaps make an admission under cross-examination, but surely if a person voluntarily admits, in reply to a question, that he is a Coloured person by descent within the definition of the Act, there is nothing wrong with it.

Then he is finished!

What about it? If by descent he is a Coloured person within the definition, how in heaven’s name can he be a White person then? But when a person admits that he is a Coloured person—if he is an Indian or a Chinese, to take a specific case—and I leave out the Cape Coloured—I cannot see how he can be declared a White person. It cannot happen and it ought not to happen.

At this stage I just want to make the point again that hon. members must distinguish very clearly between the loose use of the word “Coloured” and its legal use in terms of the definition. They mean two totally different things. [Interjections.] There are groups of Coloured persons but that is not a matter that is under discussion in this Bill.

The next objection, the next fear, is that there will be a witch-hunt if the Secretary is given the right to make investigations himself or to appoint somebody to do so. When we deal with legislation and the position is that a person can make an allegation on the strength of which he can be classified as belonging to a certain race, I think it is an elementary proposition that the official who has to see that the classification is right should be able to institute investigations to see whether all the facts deposed to are correct. What is the position under the existing Act? The position is that at most the Secretary can say to a person who makes certain allegations, “Produce evidence in support of your allegations”. The person concerned then produces the evidence that he wishes to produce, as Song did, but the Secretary’s hands are tied. He is unable to adduce evidence to the contrary. Surely that is a ridiculous and stupid position. The Secretary, as the competent officer, should be in a position to obtain al the facts and be able to say to the Board in the event of an appeal, “This man alleges so and so, but I must also bring these facts to your notice”. And I contend that in this case of Song the Board would not have given this decision if the Secretary had been in a position to obtain those facts, to approach other people who also knew Song and obtain statements from them as to whether Song was generally accepted as a White person. I think the proper course, which is in the best interests of race classification, is that all the facts should be submitted to the Board and to the Appeal Board and to the court. And then the hon. members for Hillbrow and Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) come along and say, “Not because of a single Chinese!” Sir, there is only one Progressive Party member in this House, but look at the strenuous fight hon. members opposite are putting up to prevent more Progressives from entering this House! That is no argument. It is stupid to argue that if a single one slips through, one should close one’s eyes and do nothing about it. Who says that it will remain at one? Who says that the other Chinese of Port Elizabeth will be satisfied?

They must be accepted.

There we have it again—“they must be accepted”! The position is simply this that you will find no Chinese who is a full-blooded Chinese and who admits it, who will be generally accepted in South Africa.

Yes.

He may be accepted in a small little circle but not generally. And the next thing that will happen is that the hon. member for Houghton and her assistants will come along with more Chinese and Albert Luthuli and they will tell us that these people are accepted as White persons. That is why it is absolutely essential, when a loophole is discovered in a measure such as this, to close it at the very first opportunity, and that is what is being done very effectively here.

We have listened here to all the stories about human suffering and how an injustice will be done to people who are close to the colour borderline. Mr. Speaker, I say that when one looks at this definition and studies it it is perfectly clear that this definition is designed to ensure that all genuine cases are dealt with in a humane way but at the same time to ensure effectively that all cases which are not genuine are prevented from slipping through. Reference has been made to the suffering that has already been caused but do hon. members not realize that there are nearly 10,000,000 people who have already been classified; that of those 10,000,000 only 3,953 lodged objections, and that all the objections were satisfactorily disposed of? There were only 277 appeals, and practically all of them were decided in favour of the appellants. Only 44 appeals were thrown out. Where is this human suffering? There is no such thing. This measure, far from causing human suffering, has removed human suffering in many cases. Before the passing of the 1950 Act it was a common thing to find whispering campaigns amongst women and even amongst men in connection with certain families and about people who were under suspicion and who practically had to hide because of certain things that may have happened. When the Population Registration Act was passed and those people were properly classified, a stop was immediately put to that sort of thing because they were accepted as Whites and they could always produce their identity card. People no longer dared to say those things therefore. I contend that race classification under the Population Registration Act has removed much more suffering than it has caused, and for that reason I support this measure.

I want to conclude by saying this to the hon. the Minister: I want to congratulate him and his Department and the legal draftsmen most heartily on this definition. I have studied this definition very carefully and I repeat that it is watertight. I repeat that under this definition no genuine case will suffer, but I also repeat that the cases which are not genuine, the fabricated cases, will no longer slip through in the future under this legislation.

I should like to make a small wager with the hon. member for Klerksdorp (Mr. Pelser) on the penultimate sentence of his speech this afternoon in which he said that this definition was a watertight one. I should like to hear him repeat that in about a year’s time.

Sir, there is one mystery that is growing every time hon. members on the other side speak and that is the mystery of the inscrutable Oriental and his position under this particular Act. The hon. member for Klerksdorp has now confirmed that Japanese will be regarded as Coloured, except that they will be excluded from certain provisions of the Group Areas Act. Am I right in assuming that a Japanese businessman, coming to do business here in South Africa, can go to the office of his South African colleague, probably a person who is a director of a steel company; that they can consult on business matters; that in that particular area they can even have lunch together, but that should they decide to go out to the factory in Vereeniging by taxi, not having ordinary transport, then the South African businessman must travel in a European taxi while the Japanese businessman will have to travel in a non-European taxi since he still falls under the provisions of the Separate Amenities Act? Would that be the position? I wonder what the hon. member for Klerksdorp will do, for instance, if he were faced with the problem of receiving in Klerksdorp itself, in a hotel, members of the Chinese community, or even if he had to be with them in a bioscope in Klerksdorp? Somebody tells me that has happened; how did that happen? How watertight was the law in that respect?

I believe that this is a vicious Bill. It is another Bill of blood and of race, of which we have had so many in recent years. It is creating new hardships, new misery and new fears. Indeed, if I may paraphrase a famous saying, what the hon. the Minister is offering us here is nothing but blood, threats and fears. This Bill is bad in law, it is bad in practice and it is bad in logic. It is aimed against individuals instead of being a Bill for the benefit of individuals. Let us look at the three provisions contained in the Bill itself. The hon. the Minister told us in his introductory speech that certain changes were being made in regard to the principles of admission, of acceptance and appearance; that certain changes were being made in regard to those three basic principles in so far as they apply to the classification of Whites and non-Whites. Let us take each of these in turn and see how they do apply and whether they are more fair than they were in the past.

First of all, in regard to admission, the hon. the Minister said, “Someone who admits that he is non-White by descent will not be classified as White.” That is a change in the principle, the rule, the criterion of admission. I again ask the hon. the Minister, as he has been asked before, at what stage does a person admit that he is non-White? It is very easy if one is Coloured and accepted as Coloured in one’s community, if one lives in a Coloured area or if one is Coloured in appearance. But there are the borderline and difficult cases where it is possible for a person to make a mistake in admitting that he is White or non-White. One finds the instance where a person might be presented with his birth certificate, and on that birth certificate it may be stated that his father was Coloured. Does that person admit that he is a Coloured? Possibly the hon. the Minister will say that in this instance he will have to admit that he is one, once he accepts that birth certificate as his. But suppose he is presented with a birth certificate or a baptismal certificate, before the time when birth certificates were introduced, saying that one of his grandparents or great-grandparents was a Coloured person? Does he in that case admit that he is Coloured or does he not admit that he is Coloured? Again the Minister will have difficulty in laying down a real criterion in this matter of admission itself. After all, we have to admit the fact that Coloured blood is widespread amongst the European population of South Africa. It has been estimated by writers like Fielding, Sheila Patterson and others that between 30 and 60 per cent of Europeans in this country have some degree of non-White blood in them. In fact a person might, in admitting that he is not a Coloured, unless he knows what the criterion is, have to be dishonest.

The second respect in which the hon. the Minister is seeking to change the present definition is in regard to acceptance. He says that “someone who is generally accepted as a Coloured will not be classified as White even if he looks White”. One can think of many instances where people look White, where they are blond-haired, blue-eyed, and yet the hon. the Minister says that they will not be classified as White persons.

He lived all along with the Coloured people.

The hon. member says it depends on whether that person lived amongst Coloureds. That is a particularly interesting point. The hon. member should know that there are many people who are accepted as Coloured here in the Cape by people who know the Coloured people here and who pass for White when they go to the Transvaal. It can happen that a person can be accepted as a Coloured person in the Western Province while his brother is accepted as a White person in Johannesburg. What happens to those two brothers under this particular clause which says that someone who is generally accepted as a Coloured will not be classified as a White? He is accepted as a White in Johannesburg.

Are you referring to his brother in the Transvaal, or are you referring to the one living in Cape Town?

It may be either of them.

No, what happens to the one in the Transvaal?

He is a Coloured in the Western Province; he is accepted as a Coloured here, and when he goes to the Transvaal he is accepted as a White. I have here a copy of an article written by a columnist in a paper called the Banier which, as the hon. the Minister knows, is partly subsidized by the Government. Many copies of these are bought for distribution among the Coloured people. I should like to quote from an article written by a columnist in the Banier. It is written in the typical Coloured language so you will forgive me, Sir, if I switch from one language to the other. This is what he wrote—

The third criterion which the hon. the Minister is changing in this particular Bill is in regard to appearance. He has stated that “someone who is non-White in appearance cannot be classified as White even if he is generally accepted as such Sir, here we find the hard-luck cases and they are more than hard-luck cases; they are tragedies. We know that in many families there are throw-backs, cases where people are the children of accepted European families but show certain very well-defined characteristics usually associated with Coloured people. Again, if you accept this definition, you will find one brother classified as White and the other as non-White. These are more than hard-luck cases, they are tragedies.

When it comes to the question of appearance, there are other factors, too, which affect the appearance of a person. Here I am thinking of a medical factor such as Addison’s disease, for instance. A person suffering from Addison’s disease has a skin colour often much darker than that of an ordinary Coloured person. In the normal case, I take it that the Classification Board will take cognizance of the fact that this particular person may be suffering from Addison’s disease and say, “No, you are a White person in any case,” but if you find a borderline case, not knowing that he is suffering from Addison’s disease, what happens then? Without the disease he might have been classified as White on the borderline; with the disease he will be classified as Coloured. These are cases that we may very well find under this new definition.

I have said that I believe this Bill to be bad in law. It is bad in law. We know that the Government is more and more applying the Population Registration definition and making use of identity cards to determine whether a person is White, Coloured or Native. In other words, this new definition will be progressively applied to all or most of the other racial legislation where the Government has to classify people. Identification cards are being used at the present moment in regard to race classification under Acts such as the Pensions Act and the Disability Act. People who may have drawn European pensions in the past may now, if they are re-classified, have to draw the pensions for Coloureds. Under the Natives (Urban) Areas Act and under the Separate Representation of Voters Act it may well be that this particular definition will now be progressively applied so that people who to-day are accepted as voters on, say, the White Voters’ Roll will in future be excluded because under this new definition they will now be Coloured. These things can happen. What the Minister is doing in this Bill is by no means logical.

There is one point which I believe has not been raised and stressed sufficiently during this debate and that is that this particular definition as it stands here, will do our country’s good name irreparable harm in future. It is quite clear that before we had this change in the definition there was always a way out. Distinguished visitors from certain countries who appeared to be not 100 per cent White could be regarded as White during the period of their stay in this country; you could make use of that sophistry. It was done in the case of Mr. Song, and it has been done in many other cases in the past too. With this new definition, however, I cannot see how that can possibly happen. You see, Sir, under this particular Bill you are not only denying Mr. Song certain rights and placing him technically in an inferior position, but you are placing the same stigma on 600,000,000 Chinese in the rest of the world. You are placing the same stigma on people from the East—from Indonesia, from Japan, from the Philippines and Formosa. A stigma is now being placed on them under this Bill, and the harm this may do to our country may be almost irreparable. After all. I do not think that there was any harm in regarding Mr. Song as a White person for the purpose of this particular Act. The Chinese are a great people; they were civilized long before our forefathers were. They have achieved great things in culture, in the arts and in the history of the world. They invented gun-powder; they knew about writing, about parchment, about literature, long, long before our forefathers did. But, Sir, let us come closer. We will often find instances of distinguished visitors coming from Spain, Portugal and Italy. In appearance many of them are non-White. In fact many of them actually have Moorish blod in them. What will happen to people of that kind when they come to this country? Then I think of two other instances. Supposing a citizen of Holland who has Indonesian blood in his veins, or a citizen of Israel who has Yemenite blood in him, wishes to come to this country and after having looked around and seen the economic development in this country, decides that he wishes to settle here. Is he going to be classified as a Coloured? Is this another slap in the face for Dutch citizens, for Israeli citizens and Portugese citizens?

Take our Portuguese neighbours. We know that many of them have non-White blood in them, yet normally they are accepted in our country as Whites. Is this Bill going to change that position? Is it going to harm those good neighbours of ours whose goodwill we are seeking?

And what about Egyptians? I know, of course, that the hon. the Minister will immediately say, “Egyptians as we all know, are Africans and we cannot do anything about that.” But now I want to place the Minister before a certain test, and the test is this: Let him indicate to me now whether he is going to be the politically stupid one, or whether his Bill is going to be the stupid one. At the moment we are reading in the newspapers of a certain film called “Cleopatra” being made in Rome. Cleopatra, as we all know, was an Egyptian non-White Queen. Cleopatra had a torrid love affair with Antony and Caesar. This picture depicts the love affair with Antony. It will be coming to South Africa. It depicts with approval relations between what is basically a non-White Egyptian Queen and a White Roman General, Mark Antony. Is the hon. the Minister going to be so stupid as to refuse to allow that picture to be exhibited in this country? I do not think he will. I do not think he can be so stupid, but I know what he will do.

Order! The hon. member cannot suggest that the Minister is “stupid”.

Let me say “politically unwise” then.

The hon. member must withdraw the word “stupid”.

I withdraw the word “stupid” and I substitute “politically unwise”. Sir, I do not think he will be so politically unwise as to bann this picture “Cleopatra”. What he will do, of course, is to admit that his Bill is stupid, and he will allow that picture to come into the country, even if it goes against the provisions of his own Bill. Let us hear what he will do in this particular case.

Sir, this Bill will be harmful to the leading role that we seek to play in Africa. After all, we cannot be isolated here at the southern tip of Africa; we must have contacts with the other nations in Africa, and if non-White delegates come to this country from other countries, think of the insults to which they will be subjected under this measure. How can we advance the cause of our country when a Bill such as this is applied to those delegates? You cannot even say that they can be treated as Whites while they are here as visitors because this Bill says that once they admit—and they will admit—that they are non-White, they will be treated as non-White.

Thirdly, this Bill is bad in logic. We hear a lot about how logical the Nationalist Party is and how illogical we of the United Party are. We are told that this is, after all, a logical Bill and that we must be logical. I am going to give the hon. the Minister a small lesson in logic, if he will permit me to do so. I understand that he is the Rector of the Potchefstroom University, and I heard a rumour some time ago that logic would no longer be taught as a subject at that University. I mention it in passing. I heard that rumour and I hope he will deny it. Sir, we are trying to do something in this Bill which is called division; we are trying to create a distinction between two different categories of the same thing—between the White person and the non-White person. In every textbook on logic there is a chapter dealing with division, with classification. Classification and division can only be done on certain basic principles. Unless you are true to those principles you are being illogical. One of the basic principles of logical division, is this—and here I quote from the textbook on Logic by Mellone—

In other words, each act of classification—

Sir, this is my point: This particular Bill has not got one basis of classification as logic demands; it has four, namely, appearance, general acceptance, admission and descent. It has even more than that.

It is making logic stand on its head.

It has more than that Appearance alone cannot be a criterion in this Bill; acceptance alone is not to be the criterion; admission alone is not to be a criterion, and descent is not to be the criterion. In other words, we increase the bases of your logical division. Your basis now, instead of being only four, will have to be—appearance plus general acceptance, or appearance plus admission, or appearance plus descent, or general acceptance plus admission, or general acceptance plus descent, or admission plus descent—seven or eight different bases. No wonder that this Bill is a mess when it comes to applying the rules and the laws of logic. There are several instances in which this Bill vitiates the laws of logic. I am tired of hon. members opposite using the word “logic” and saying that we are illogical. They do not know logic.

Sir, logic also recognizes the fact that you can have two different categories of the same thing but that it may be impossible to draw a dividing line between them. In other words, you can have Whites and you can have non-Whites but it may be impossible to draw a dividing line between them. Logic recognizes this. I believe Aristotle, the father of logic, used it in the following example and it has become famous as “the argument of the beard”. In logic, when they use this example, they say that you can clearly distinguish between a bearded man and a man without a beard; that is easy. But now you get the following problem: Take a beardless man and let him have one or two or three or ten short hairs on his face. Is he bearded? No. Make it 100 hairs. Is he bearded? Now it is difficult to decide. Make it 101 or 102. Is he bearded or not? At some stage you get to the position where by adding a single hair you might be challenged to say whether a man is bearded or not bearded, and obviously it would be impossible to distinguish with the ordinary eye between those two categories. What I am trying to prove here is that you do find categories of the same thing which are very different but in logic you cannot draw a dividing line between them. And that is what the Minister is trying to do in this Bill. He is being illogical; he is violating the laws of logic.

I have not spoken in this debate at all.

Well, it was someone on the cross-benches. I think it was the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman). I apologize to the hon. member for Boksburg. I do not think he would have used such language in this House. Sir, when you use that type of argument, when you say that there will be “smart en ellende”, that there will be tears and sorrow but that those tears and sorrows must be accepted, you are using an argument which reminds one of the evil argument which was used by that madman Hitler who tried to justify his racial murders by saying, “If you want to remove a malignancy you must also remove some healthy tissue.”That is not the argument of humanity; it is an evil argument; it is the argument of the racialist.

I wish to conclude, and I say that we on this side reject this evil, this vicious Bill. It is bad in law, it is wrong in morality, it is obnoxious to the freedom of the individual, it is harmful to our country’s reputation, it is pernicious in its application, it is mischievous as a weapon for the gossiper, it is venomous as a knife for the blackmailer; it is destructive of home and family in its violent effects on the condemned; it is shabby in its treatment of the innocent. Accordingly we reject and oppose this accursed, diabolical and depraved Bill, a Bill which destroys and corrupts human dignity—the human dignity not only of those who suffer under it but also the human dignity of those who have to apply it and administer it.

Certain things have been said in the course of this debate which we certainly cannot allow to go unchallenged. The basic objection of the Opposition to this measure is that there will be great uncertainty as to who is White and who is not White, and in an attempt to prove that, they exaggerate in two directions. In the first instance they exaggerate in the direction in which the hon. member for Durban (North) (Mr. M. L. Mitchell) exaggerated. The hon. member for Durban (North) said, “I sometimes wonder whether half of the Europeans in this country would not in terms of this definition become non-Europeans overnight—perhaps more than half.” He did not say that once only; he said it twice. The next time he said—

In the second case he says “half the population” but in the first case he stated very clearly that half or more than half of the Whites in South Africa were of non-White descent. Mr. Speaker, I do not want to use strong language, but I think that is one of the most scandalous statements ever made in this House. The hon. member for Durban (Central) (Dr. Radford), who likes to be known in the newspapers as a person who speaks with great authority when he talks about anything, said more or less the same thing here in a previous debate, that a very large section of the Whites in South Africa are of non-White descent.

But that is true.

He referred in the course of his speech to a scientific survey which has allegedly been made and which supposedly proved that statement. I asked him subsequently what scientific proof there was and what survey had been made, and he then said to me that Dr. Oswald Shearer had told him of a booklet in which that statement appeared. Later on when we inquired on which booklet the hon. member had come to this conclusion, it appeared that it was a booklet entitled “Miscegenation” written 25 or more years ago by Stuart Findlay, who had written this booklet in an attempt to prove that there were not as many light-skinned Coloureds as darkskinned Coloureds. It was not a scientific inquiry, and it was not written by an authority on this subject. It was purely a propaganda document and it was written about 25 years ago, but the hon. member for Durban (Central) refers to it as a scientific survey to prove that half the Whites in South Africa are non-Whites, and that was repeated in the language that I have mentioned by his colleague, the hon. member for Durban (North). I want to ask these hon. members again what scientific evidence there is for this scandalous smearing of the White man in South Africa. I would not have risen to take part in this debate, but I feel that I must protest against this sort of calumniation of the White man by a party which holds itself out as the alternative government in this country. I think it is our dduty to draw the attention of every White man and every White woman in South Africa to the fact that is the language and that is the opinion of this party which hopes to get the majority of votes amongst the White voters of South Africa. I want to say with all the emphasis at my command that during all the years that I devoted to a historical examination of this question, I did not come across one tittle of evidence that substantiates the allegation of these hon. members. I do not want to deny for a single moment that non-White blood was introduced into certain White families, generations ago in some cases and in other cases not so many generations ago. That is an acknowledged fact. But to say here that half the White population is of non-White descent is not only false scientifically but it is one of the most scandalous things that a White man can say in this Parliament.

And then they exaggerate again in the other direction. In the first place they set out to prove that under this definition a large proportion of the White population would be classified as non-White. They know that is not true, or they ought to know that is not true. I challenge any one of them or any one of their supporters outside this House to produce even a semblance of evidence to prove that statement. It is a fact which is well known to honest research workers throughout the world that there is no country in the world where the different races have preserved their identity with as much purity as we have in South Africa.

Why then do you want these laws?

Hon. members opposite must not run away now from what they said previously. They must first produce proof of what they said, and they must do so before the end of this debate. Because this statement by the so-called alternative government in South Africa that more than half the Whites are of non-White descent will re-echo throughout the length and breadth of South Africa. I can tell them that they will still have to run away from many meetings; they must not start running away already. After the scandalous exaggeration, they now want to try to make us believe that a very large percentage of the Coloureds are of White descent. They did the same thing in a previous debate. Last year when I stated here that the admixture of White blood in the veins of the Coloured population was no more than 10 per cent or 15 per cent, the hon. members for Orange Grove and Yeoville referred with a great flourish to a few cases such as those of Coenraad Buys and a few others to show that there was a very great degree of admixture. The hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Gorshel), who has now come along with the same story, quoted from the book written by Prof. Marais. If he had read the book properly he would have known that even J. S. Marais, who is not and never has been favourably disposed to the National Party, lays down the proposition that basically the Coloured population is descended from the Hottentots and the slaves. In the third place he mentions the Bushmen, and in the fourth place only does he mention the Whites. He could also have mentioned the fact that since the appearance of that book, Indian and Bantu blood has also found its way into the veins of the Coloured population.

I had conversations afterwards with various people who had made a study of this matter together with me, and without a single exception they told me that the only mistake I had made was that I had probably put the percentage too high. The consensus of opinion is that the admixture of White blood in the veins of the Coloured group can be no more than 6 to 8 per cent. I want to prove that statement, and in order to prove it I want to draw attention to the fact that on 1 December 1834 the slaves in the Cape Colony were emancipated. At that stage there were 39,021 slaves. They did not disappear; they did not all die of the plague. They were not absorbed into the White population; they became part of the present Coloured population. It was estimated, according to the census of 1856, that there were about 28,835 Hottentots roaming about in the Cape. And when we look at the evidence of a man like Campbell, one of the English missionaries, who was certainly not favourably disposed to these Border farmers either, we find that he made a survey of the forebears of the Griqua population. He put the number at approximately 4,600, and he said that more or less than half of them would be “basters” (bastards) and the others Hottentots and Coranna. I just want to point out that a person who in those days was referred to as a “baster” was not necessarily the product of miscegenation between White and non-White persons. We have the writings of the “heemrade” of Stellenbosch and we have the writings and petitions of the “heemrade” of Swellendam who protested to the governor before the end of the eighteenth century. Swellendam pointed out that “basters” were being born on their farms as the result of relations between emancipated slaves, or slaves still in service, and Hottentot women. They referred to these children as “basters”. The “heemrade” of Stellenbosch complained that many slaves were deserting their masters and then holding themselves out as “basters” because they were then free to enter the service of any person and thus evade their obligations to their master. These people make up a large portion of the 4,600 whom Campbell calls “basters”. There was no admixture of White blood in their veins. In the case of a small percentage it is true that there was. I would remind hon. members that so far I have mentioned the emancipated slaves, the Griquas, with their Hottentot and “baster” population, and the Hottentots themselves, who numbered about 85,000 in roundabout 1834, or, to be precise, 82,621. It must also be remembered that when one goes through the requests put forward to the Government, one finds that most of the requests were for the setting free of some slave or other. In the century before the actual emancipation of slaves in the Cape Province, slaves were being set free from time to time. If all this is taken into account, it is safe to assume that in 1834, when the emancipation of slaves took place, there were between 90,000 and 100,000 people in these groups that I have mentioned, of whom a very small percentage had an admixture of White blood.

What are you trying to prove?

I am proving that in making the allegation that the White man is the father of the Coloured population, the Opposition is guilty of a gross and scandalous exaggeration, to the shame of the White man. I say that they are making use of a scandalous exaggeration to oppose this Bill. Let us take it on a conservative basis that there were 95,000 of these people in 1834, and let us assume that their numbers did not increase at the rate at which we know the Coloured population has been increasing; let us assume that their numbers simply doubled every generation. The position then is that in 1864 there were 190,000, in 1901 there were 380,000; in 1934 the number was 760,000 and in 1954, 1,520,000. And that is more or less precisely what the number is today. I say that if these figures prove anything, they prove that the Coloureds by descent have a very small admixture of White blood in their veins and that they descend mainly from the emancipated slaves, the “basters” and Hottentots and the nomadic Hottentot tribes in the Cape. I just want to repeat that everybody who has tried to make a proper scientific study of this matter has come to the conclusion that there is not a single nation in the world, where White, Coloured and Black people have lived together, where there has been so little miscegenation as in this country. And it is precisely because that is the case that it is not difficult at all, but comparatively easy, to classify the vast majority as either Whites or non-Whites. This Bill deals with the small number in between, and nobody with a sense of responsibility would dare to say that we must not tackle this matter at this stage, that we must not come to a decision now, so that we can lay down the traditional colour line that we have maintained of our own volition throughout the centuries and settle once and for all who the members of the non-White groups are.

Why?

I can answer that question very easily. Because unfortunately we in South Africa are saddled with a party which is trying to prove that half the Whites are Blacks.

Nonsense!

Yes, that is the nonsense that was uttered by the hon. member for Durban (North), who is not here at the moment. It was scandalous nonsense that he propagated. That is the sort of language that the enemies of South Africa would like to hear abroad, namely, “I sometimes wonder whether half of the Europeans in this country would not in terms of this definition become non-Europeans overnight, perhaps more than half”. The reason why we must have this legislation is because we are saddled with a party which seeks the votes of the Whites and which, according to their Leader, is on the threshold of getting the votes of the Whites but who first says to the Whites, “Half of you are non-White”. The hon. member for Turffontein is making a noise here; he believes what the hon. member for Durban (North) said, and I can expect that from him, but he will never stand up here and say it aloud. He talked here about “courage” recently. The hon. member must not talk about courage. Where was his courage when he ran away when we had to vote against Mr. Strauss, after he had agreed with us five minutes earlier?

This attempt on the part of the United Party to wreck this Bill has brought them to the stage where they not only advance arguments which besmirch the White nation in South Africa and redound to their own discredit but it has brought them to the point where their ranks will become even more depleted in the future.

I must begin by dealing with the simulated and typical indignation of the hon. member for Fort Beaufort (Dr. Jonker). He said at least ten times what a scandal it was, as he alleged, that the hon. member for Durban (North) should have suggested that some 50 per cent of the Whites in this country might have Coloured blood in their veins. It comes surprisingly from that hon. member if one bears in mind that he was the first person to point out in this House that an honoured and historical figure in our history, Simon van der Stel, was in fact a Coloured man. Sir, bearing that in mind, it is particularly surprising that this sort of attack should have come from the hon. member for Fort Beaufort. But I think to begin with, one should get the record straight. What the hon. member for Durban (North) said was that he wondered how many of the Whites had some Coloured blood in their veins, and he was dealing with the latter part of Clause 1 of this Bill which deals with the question of descent. It was in that context that he made those remarks and he did not say what the hon. member for Fort Beaufort alleges.

I have got the Hansard report of his speech here.

The hon. member did not quote the Hansard report. The hon. member said that what had been said was that the majority of the Whites in this country were descended from non-Europeans, and that is what the hon. member for Durban (North) did not say.

Read his speech in Hansard.

But why should the hon. member take up this attitude, even if it was said, when one bears in mind that not only the hon. the Minister, but also the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) said two or three times that if one was a Coloured man one should be proud of it, and who said that even if one was classified as a Coloured man, what was wrong with it? Now we have from this hon. member what I believe to be purely simulated indignation that it was a scandalous thing if somebody said that somewhere in the background there might be a drop of Coloured blood in many Europeans. Sir, that remark was made purely so that the hon. member can go round the platteland to smear this party. One expects that from that hon. member.

Now I should like to deal with the point that he made, the attempt that he made to show that the Coloured people after all are not an offshoot of the Whites, but they are the results of unions between Hottentots and Bushmen and slaves and one or two others. May one say to him that everybody in this House knows that is utter nonsense. Even his own party members were not impressed when the hon. member tried to pass that off.

Why don’t you try to dispute it?

Surely the answer is quite simple: Why is it that every Coloured man in this country has an English name or an Afrikaans name?

Before coming to the main point of this Bill, I should like to reply to some of the remarks made by the hon. member for Klerksdorp (Mr. Pelser). I am sorry that he is not in the House, but he raised, unwisely perhaps, the interesting topic of the reason for this Bill being the question of the Chinese. One gathered from him that was really the sole reason for the bringing in of this measure, and he described how under this legislation a Japanese would be classified as an Asiatic, that is under the Population Registration Act, whereas under the Group Areas Act, a Japanese would be exempted for the purposes of that Act, and he would be classified as White. Now to take the analogy of the hon. member for Orange Grove, a Japanese businessman, on that hypothesis, having got into his Asiatic taxi at Vereeniging, would then be unable to proceed to Johannesburg for a meal at a Chinese restaurant, because that would be classified as Asiatic under the Group Areas Act, while a Japanese businessman is White under the Group Areas Act. And the nonsense and absurdity does not end there. Because if that Japanese were to marry a Coloured then in terms of the Group Areas Act, he would become a Coloured, and if he were to marry a Chinese, he would become Asiatic in terms of the Group Areas Act. Sir, how can anybody approaching this sort of thing dispassionately, possibly say that there is any merit at all in this sort of legislation when one has results which are as absurd as that? Finally, I would like to deal with the remaining point made by the hon. member for Klerksdorp, viz. that it was necessary to have the powers of investigation in terms of Clause 4 of this Bill because as things stood at present, the Secretary concerned could merely ask a man like Wong to produce the evidence required to substantiate any facts required under the Act and that he could produce merely the evidence which was favourable to his case, and that it was accordingly necessary to give to some official the power of investigation to bring forward that evidence which would counter that brought forward by a Chinese person. But, Sir, the information which the Department has is principally obtained from the census, and in terms of the present Census Act, the enumerators have power to correct on the census return any errors which may there appear, and what is more, it is a criminal offence for anyone to put into his census return information which is incorrect. Sir, those enumerators under the Census Act, act under oath and there are penalties provided to make sure that there is no fiddling or hanky-panky business with those returns. What benefit can there be, Sir, to give to an official powers of investigation, not under oath and in respect of which there are no penalties to ensure that the investigations are proper? How can that be an advance over the existing system where in terms of the Census Act as it stands, there are these powers to correct errors, which powers are exercised under oath and are subject to the penalties to ensure that there are no mala fides? No, Sir, that cannot be the reason. There must be other reasons. We have not been told what they are, and hon. members on this side of the House have given vent to the suspicions as to how this sort of power of investigation can be misused, and those suspicions have not been refuted.

This Bill has been described by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition as a vicious Bill. It is a Bill whose propensities the hon. the Minister has tried to obscure in a speech which can only be described as sanctimoniously unconvincing. That was specially noticeable, Sir, because we had piloting this Bill a gentleman who is blessed with undoubted debating powers, a man whom we know has great skill in that regard. But despite that, he has not been able to make this Bill appear even apparently acceptable. Sir, this is a bad thing for the Government when a major measure such as this is put forward and one is left with that impression. It is a bad thing for any government, and my only objection to it is that I am embarrassed that I have to live under a Government who cannot make this thing seem any better than we believe it is. But, Sir, it is not only a bad thing for the Government, but it is a great tragedy for the country, if we bear in mind that the hon. the Minister who has got to present this abroad, is the hon. Minister of Information, a man without the undoubted talents of the hon. the Minister of the Interior. If this Minister cannot paint the thing white, how much less so can the hon. Minister of Information.

What are you pleading for?

I will tell you in a moment. The hon. the Minister of Information is not only under that disadvantage, but he is under a further disadvantage, because we are dealing here with legislation which he has described on a previous occasion as absolutely against the spirit of South Africa, a Bill he would oppose in principle, a Bill he would oppose as far as he could and with all the constitutional means at his disposal. That is how the hon. the Minister of Information described the Bill which originally came before this House in 1950. With that as a background, this wretched hon. Minister has to sell abroad

Order! The hon. member must withdraw the word “wretched”.

On a point of order, the hon. member used the word in the sense of “sorrowful”, “dismal”, not in an offensive sense. Sir, the word has two meanings.

I withdraw the word “wretched” and will use the word “unhappy”. This unhappy hon. Minister has to try and present this legislation abroad to a suspicious audience.

I have described the hon. Minister’s speech as sanctimonious and I have used that word designedly, because listening to him when he spoke earlier in this debate, bearing in mind that he was describing a Bill, which we accept is going to cause untold hardship, he put it forward in a tone as though what he was doing was for the benefit of the Coloured people. I expected him at any moment to say that he had a sheaf of letters from the Coloured people asking him specifically to put through this legislation. That is why I have described his speech as sanctimonious because it was. I have said that it was unconvincing. Sir, you only have to look very briefly at the reasons which have emerged for the bringing in of this legislation to realize that there is some truth in the allegation that was a thoroughly unconvincing performance, by a most able Minister, and if it is unconvincing under those circumstances, one can fairly say that it is completely without merit. The reasons put forward were twofold. I shall not dwell on them at length because they have to a certain extent been dealt with already. I should like to say this. The reasons were twofold. Firstly, 15 Coloured people who had been classified as White requested that they be re-classified as Coloured and secondly the case of one Chinese who had been classified as White. If ever a major measure is brought before the House on a ground as slender as that you need no further proof of the undesirability of that piece of legislation. It is within the Minister’s power under the existing Act to re-classify those 15 people as Coloured if they wish it. If that is so, why is the whole complex machinery of Parliament set in motion, taking up time and energy, simply to put right something which can be put right administratively without all that clamour? Why do the same in respect of one Chinese, even bearing in mind what the hon. member for Klerksdorp (Mr. Pelser) said that there may be others following? Because, Sir, 15 Coloured people and one Chinese are not going to endanger the purity of 3,000,000 Whites. We ask again what is the need for this? So far it has been demonstrated to be wholly unacceptable. I do not believe that there is any necessity at all for amending the definition under the Act. The definition, as it stands, is that—

Great play has been made of the case of Mr. Song, who, the hon. the Minister quite rightly says is a full-blooded Chinese; he admits that he is a full-blooded Chinese. Now, Sir, no matter how many affidavits are submitted, a full-blooded Chinese can never be accepted as a White person. He is not a White person. He cannot be accepted as a White person under the existing definition, nor can he be accepted as a Negro, because he is obviously Chinese. He can be accepted as a person, or he can be a Chinese acceptable to the White community, but he cannot be accepted as a White person, because clearly he is not. Looked at in that light, the decision of the Board is wrong, clearly wrong, if they brought in the finding that he was accepted as a White person. Quite clearly he was not, and could not have been any more than a coal black Negro can be accepted as a White person, no matter what his attributes may be. He may be acceptable as a person in a certain society or a certain community, but he is accepted as a Negro, not as a White man, because he is obviously a full-blooded Negro. Surely on that simple basis there is no reason at all to amend the definition as it stands at the moment if the real reason for this legislation is merely to cover the case of Mr. Song. It can be put right if the Minister wishes to do so by representations or an application to court. He has his remedy in that regard.

I should like to refer for a moment to the question raised by the hon. member for Parow (Mr. S. F. Kotzé). The hon. member made a speech which can at best, regrettably, be described as words, words and more words. He did refer to the administrators’ support of the idea of a national register in 1948. Perfectly true, Sir, there was support by the administrators of the various provinces for a type of register in either 1948 or 1949—it makes no difference what year it was. But what they did not ask for—and that is the point which the hon. member for Parow did not make clear—was a population register of this kind. We have always had a register of some sort or other. We have always had a register of births, deaths, marriages; there is nothing new in the concept of a register. In the report they refer to a type of national register. A national register in itself can be a most desirable thing, but that depends on what sort of register you have and for what purpose you want a register. If you have a register which is reasonably framed and which is not the standard by which you measure the status of every single individual, it is desirable to have it. But when the object of your register is that every facet of a man’s life thereafter shall be gauged by where his name appears in that register, then of course it is objectionable. And that is why we oppose this measure.

There is another factor which, I believe, renders this Bill undesirable. Of all spheres this is one in which you require certainty and permanence so far as standards are concerned. You require certainty and permanence in definition, in administration and in the effect of the measure concerned. That is elementary. Because once a man is classified and you are given the power to reclassify him, you are opening the door to hardship and unnecessary hardship. There is at the present time, as a result of numerous decisions by the court, a great deal of certainty and permanence as far as the 1950 legislation is concerned. We know what the definition means. We know what the dissatisfied applicant has to prove in order to be properly classified. We know where the onus lies in any litigation over classification. We know what the powers and the functions of the secretary are. We know what records the secretary can look at in order to decide on the classification of an individual. We know what investigations can be made into a person’s circumstances by the officials concerned. All those things have been decided by the courts in cases where ordinary working people have spent their life’s savings in going to court to have these things made certain. People have been able to say: “Well, I do not like any of this, but at least I know where I stand”, which means that there was not that dreadful uncertainty, that dreadful uncertainty of not knowing whether he was going to be classified on this or that side of the colour line. When this amending Bill is brought in the whole of that field is to be re-opened. I need quote only one instance so far as the definition is concerned. There is a presumption in favour of the man who is obviously White. The Minister will know of that presumption. But what is to happen to that presumption when, in the definition of a White man, you delete the little word “or” and substitute the word “and”? In that case, of what use is the presumption as contained in Section 19 of the principal Act? You will now have to prove two things instead of only one, as was formerly the case. There is again this question of reclassification. I hope the hon. the Minister will be a little clearer as to what the position is in regard to reclassification, as far as his Department is concerned. All the assurances in the world, given with the best intentions in the world, given by the Minister, do not deal with the damage that can be done by reclassification. Because, in terms of Section 5 of the existing Act and also in terms of Section 11, there is a duty on the secretary to make investigations and to reclassify, not only if an objection is raised by the Department, but when an objection is raised by any member of the public. Any member of the public can object to a classification and any member of the public can come along, when this Bill becomes law, and say to an individual: “You were all right under the old definition; but you are now incorrectly classified under the amended definition.” That old case can then be re-opened. It is not a question of what the Minister would like to see done in that regard. It is a question of there being a public duty on the secretary if an objection is lodged by any member of the public. That is the damaging aspect of this question of amending the definition.

I should like to show for a moment that my objections in this regard, to the question of any member of the public asking for a reclassification, are not fanciful; they are not figments of my imagination. I should like to refer this House, and you, Sir, to the facts of an actual case which is reported in the 1958 Law Reports. It concerns a certain cabinet maker by the name of Nicholas. This gentleman bought a house and he wanted to take transfer of that house. He approached the officials concerned and, as a result of a personal inspection, the production of his birth certificate and so forth, he was held by the Department concerned to be White and he took transfer of his house. He paid for it. I may say that this case rose under the Group Arease Act but it is directly applicable to the sort of things which can happen under the amendment which we are to-day contemplating to the Population Registration Act. This gentleman was seen by the officials concerned, he was passed as White and he was able to buy that house. The opening words of the Judge concerned, Mr. Justice Hiemstra, set the tone to the whole case. He said this—

It is of interest to see how that came about when I say that there is a danger of re-classification here because anybody can object to a classification. It happened in this way, Sir: The neighbour of Mr. Nicholas, who himself was a Coloured man, but who was able to go on living in that declared White area because he had been living there presumably for some time previously—although the Judge says “How he manages to stay there undisturbed is not explained”—said to Mr. Nicholas who had been told that he was a White man by the Board and that he could live in that area: “This is what I am going to do. I am going to the factory where your wife works as a European with all the information I have and witnesses and expose her to the Europeans with whom she works. If the race of you and your wife is not the same on the other certificates I will report the matter to the Registrar of Births and police investigations will follow.” The Judge says this—

That is exactly the sort of thing that is going to happen under the amendment which is at present before this House. A vicious and vindictive neighbour can lodge a complaint and there will be necessarily, as a duty, a re-classification because the definition of a White man has been changed. All the goodwill in the world on the part of the hon. the Minister cannot stop that from taking place. Here, Sir, is a concrete example of what can take place and has taken place. We do not know the reasons why Mr. Fillis lodged the complaint in this particular case but the motive was a vindictive one and it can happen again.

As the hon. member for Peninsula (Mr. Bloomberg) has said the emphasis is being placed on appearance rather than on association. It is difficult to understand how the hon. the Minister could have devoted the first half of his speech to applauding the ability of the ordinary man to judge between races in society, applauding society as being the best judge of those who waver between Black and White. Yet, Sir, he comes forward with a Bill whose main object is to do away with that and to substitute in its place, in effect, appearance as the dominating criterion. Many examples have been given as to how that does not work and as to how that creates hardships. As I have said the objections can mainly be levelled not only at the effects of this legislation but at the stated reasons given for its introduction. They are inadequate. They are unconvincing and I believe they show this to be a piece of legislation completely devoid of merit.

Mr. Chairman, the United Party has one characteristic which I have come to admire and that is their ability to talk nonsense for such a long time in a relaxed and self-confident manner. And, Mr. Chairman, that is obviously not where it ends, but the hon. member who has just sat down took it upon himself to describe the way in which the hon. the Minister introduced this Bill as sanctimonious (skynheilig). He probably used the word “sanctimonious” because I think the Chair has already ruled its synonym out of order. I wish to tell the hon. member that if he describes the Minister’s presentation as “sanctimonious” we describe his argument as downright boorish. In the first place, in defending the hon. member for Durban (North) (Mr. M. L. Mitchell) he tried to refute the Hansard report of the speech by the hon. member for Durban (North) which was quoted. Not only is it boorish but it is also childish to try to argue away a literal piece of evidence which has been submitted.

The hon. member then continued and launched his attack on this legislation. What was his first charge? It concerns Section 4 and he says that Section 4 is entirely unnecessary because all the information which the director requires can be obtained from the census forms in respect of which the enumerators can in any case ask for further information. The proposal which the hon. member now wishes to make to this hon. House is that according to him, before a dispute arises as to the classification of anybody, it will be sufficient if a census enumerator conducts an investigation in respect of the person whose details he is enumerating, and possibly improve upon those details. I maintain that it would be madness to administer the law in that way. You can only imagine it happening under the United Party that census enumerators are instructed generally to obtain additional information left, right and centre about persons whose census details they are enumerating with a view to a possible dispute as to the race in some case or other. This section makes the necessary provision, that when data have to be obtained in respect of a specific case, a person can be appointed to investigate the case concerned and submit evidence. Mr. Chairman, in this respect I wish to refer to what the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Gorshel) said when he suggested that there would be corruption on the part of the inspectors, that they would be itinerant Judges or classification boards. No, Mr. Chairman, they will be itinerant channels of information, channels which will convey that information to a responsible official who will use that information in order to make a human decision and not to make a hateful or malicious decision. That is the great difficulty, Mr. Chairman. Hon. members opposite do not want to see any good in this legislation. That was why the hon. member for Orange Grove (Mr. E. G. Malan) tried to condemn this legislation as the grossest symbol of injustice towards the Coloured people, in such flowery language that the rhetorician Bilderdyk would have envied him his ability to produce doggerels so rich in alliteration. It is in the spirit in which they view this Bill that the difficulty lies. Because what is the law itself? In the first place the most important provision is Section 4 which amends Section 12 of the principal Act and which provides for new methods of investigating a case. Let us at least say this that when such an important question has to be decided, it is always important for the sake of justice and in the interests of justice, also to obtain information in respect of it. I have never heard the principle criticized that you should try to obtain as much information as possible before you come to a decision. Hon. members opposite are attacking the establishment of a mechanism to obtain more facts. Is that the logic of the United Party as represented by the hon. member for Orange Grove, or is prejudice at the root of this criticism? I say, Mr. Chairman, that there is no real ground on which Section 4 which amends Section 12 of the principal Act can be attacked.

We have the important matter, namely, the amendment of the definition. In that respect, too, the learned gentleman from Zululand (Mr. Cadman) argued that this amendment was absolutely unnecessary, because no person, on account of general acceptance in the White community alone, can be classified as White. I am impressed by the gentleman’s erudition and that is why I do not wish to state my opinion against his but I wish to give him the opinion of Justice Snyman in connection with this matter, and perhaps he will then realize that even he in his wisdom has made a mistake. Justice Snyman said the following in connection with the application of the old definition—

The hon. Justice Snyman says that if you depend on the first part of the decision, the obvious appearance, a second question still arises namely whether, in spite of your obvious appearance, you are generally accepted as a Coloured person. The learned Judge goes on—

In other words, the second test which should be applied under the old definition is that in the case of a person like Mr. Song, who is not obviously White, the B-test should be applied and evidence called for as to whether or not he is generally accepted as a White person. And if in that case the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) willingly organizes a mass of evidence that such a person is accepted in the White community, and the new Section 4 does not provide for an inspector to make some report on the circumstances, the hon. Classification Board and the court have to accept their word that the person is White. The hon. gentleman opposite shakes his head. I suggest that he reads the judgment in the case of M. and Others v. the Race Classification Board which appears in Vol. 1 of the March 1962 Law Reports.

Mr. Chairman, I have allowed myself to be somewhat diverted. I merely wish to say what the position is in respect of the definition. The position remains unaltered under the new definition as far as those people who are obviously White in appearance are concerned. It is only qualified in the negative sense. They are White unless they are usually accepted as Coloureds. No new yardstick is being introduced. But as far as the second basis of classification is concerned, a new yardstick has very definitely been introduced. That is the question as to when is a person generally accepted as a White? I readily admit that this definition makes the position worse than it was before. Previously the position was that if there was evidence that a person was generally accepted as White, although he was a coal-black Native or an unmistakable Chinaman, he was White in terms of the definition and had to be recognized as such. We have now qualified this definition. We have added the qualification that he will nevertheless not be recognized as White if his appearance is obviously not that of a White person. In other words, if in appearance he is obviously a Coloured person. I admit, Mr. Chairman, that we have narrowed this loophole but we have not narrowed it unreasonably, because the doubtful case must still be classified as White. He is only excluded when his appearance is obviously not that of a White person. If his appearance can possibly be that of a White man, he is not excluded, not even under this definition. He is only excluded from being classified as White, in spite of the evidence that the person is generally accepted as a White person, if any lay person can see he is not a White person—on this basis: my eyes tell me that. Is that unreasonable? The hon. member for Klerksdorp (Mr. Pelser) has already made the point in the debate that, when a person is as obviously a non-White as that, even a legal classification will not assist him, because he will not be accepted as such by the people of the whole country.

Finally, a provision is added to the definition that if a person admits himself that he is not White, he is not a White person either. A little tail has also been added to this—what is an admission? The hon. member for Orange Grove, who is particularly blessed—I think I should say stricken—with logic to-day, advanced this “logical argument” that a person would be admitting that he is a non-White, if he received a birth certificate which indicated that a forefather of his was possibly a non-White. I think that logic of his is even beyond his United Party colleagues, and I do not think one of them will support him in that. In the first place, surely an admission, in the ordinary grammatical sense of the meaning of the word, is a statement by yourself, on behalf of yourself, in which you admit something.

On a point of difference.

Yes, on a point of difference. An admission under the law always has something to do with a point of difference. How any evil meaning can be attached to that is not clear to me. What is of importance, however, is that it is surely illogical to classify a person in conflict with his own admission. Surely a person cannot come to you and say in one breath: “I am a Bantu” or “I am a Chinese” or “I am a Coloured” and continue to say in the same breath: “But I demand to be registered as a White person.” Or you cannot be heard to say: “I am White but I demand that I be registered as a Coloured.” That is in conflict with the logic with which we are all acquainted, except the hon. member for Orange Grove.

That is why I say, Mr. Chairman, that this legislation is essentially reasonable. That brings me to the real attack which has been launched by hon. members of the Opposition who have asked whether this legislation is really necessary. They say that this is an unnecessary and evil piece of legislation. I merely wish to ask the hon. member one thing, and the hon. member for Zululand has admitted that his side also regarded it desirable at one stage to compile a population register. Quite apart from the legislation which this Government has passed as a result of the Population Registration Act, do you not admit, Sir, that it is necessary in South Africa to have certainty as to whether a person is White or Coloured or Bantu? What has been the requirements as far as land ownership in the Transvaal and the Free State is concerned during all these years? Apart from the regime of this Government, was it not necessary to determine whether a person was White or Coloured? Only Whites and Malays could own land in the Transvaal. You had to be able to determine the race. What about this problem of the conditions governing the establishment of hundreds of towns, from Milnerton to Bryanston, where certain rights are granted to certain racial groups and where certain rights are withheld from other racial groups? What about the question of admission to schools? I think that has already been mentioned. What about the provisions of the Defence Act which places certain obligations on the Whites, obligations which do not rest upon other racial groups? What about the old electoral laws in the northern provinces, where you have to have race classification and what about the liquor laws? How can any party seriously argue that it is unnecessary in South Africa to determine accurately to which racial group a person belongs? Must every borderline case first of all determine what his rights are by means of individual litigation and ruin himself in order to prove that he is White, rather than obtain that proof by means of these administrative processes? It is false to argue that this legislation is unnecessary.

Apart from the legislative structure which this Government has erected as far as apartheid is concerned, the entire administrative and legislative structure of South Africa and the whole of South African society are based on the question of which racial group a person belongs to. I ask myself this question: Why do we have this campaign against this legislation? I think that is the interesting question and I think the reply is to be found in an article which Prof. Edgar Brookes wrote two years ago when he advised the liberal-minded sections in South Africa that a frontal attack should not be launched against this party’s conception of separate development but that the attack should be launched on the flanks, on the sides, to break down in every possible way the conception of the separateness of the races indirectly. It was then suggested that as far as possible opportunities should be made available to the various races to have mixed discussions, mixed conferences, even mixed parties, stage performances where the colour barrier is crossed, and ultimately sport as well, yes sport was also mentioned at that time. I say that an organized campaign has been launched in South Africa in an attempt to prevent the idea of the various races living separately from becoming a reality, amongst others, the weaknesses in the old definition were also deliberately abused by people of that disposition to try to undermine the separate co-existence of the races in South Africa and to replace it by a mixed co-existence. I want to ask the Opposition this: Do they wish to uphold the mechanism for the maintenance of the colour bar or do they wish to break it down? Are you in favour of it that this traditional co-existence which is based on colour bars, which runs like a thread through the conditions governing town planning, and through the Defence Act and the hundred and one other laws, should cease; do you wish to abolish the mechanism which upholds that colour bar, or do you support it? To judge by the behaviour of the United Party they wish to break down that mechanism for the maintainance of all other colour bars.

Before you were born those colour bars were not written into the moral laws. Was your father in favour of doing away with it?

No, my father was probably not at that time in favour of it, but I have to accept co-responsibility, amongst others, for the hon. member for Sea Point (Mr. J. A. L. Basson). I wish to sketch the contrast between this party’s approach to life and that of that party.

Will the hon. member tell us in what respects the laws which he has mentioned worked unsatisfactorily, before the introduction of this law?

The hon. member wants me to give him the long history of lawsuits in connection with land ownership in the Transvaal, lawsuits to remove children from certain schools. This is not the time to give him the history of that unfortunate period when there was an ineffective definition. This is a simple definition and we are smartening up a reasonable definition. The United Party are trying to get away from the principle, however, that they wish to break down the mechanism for maintaining colour bars. Our party wishes to recognize the differences in South Africa and that is why we find it necessary to have a proper definition and we wish to maintain these differences, not in a spirit of malice but as something which is a social and historical reality, a reality with which we have to live here in South Africa. But in addition to that—let me say this, because it seems to me that it is regarded as bad manners in the entire Western world to say this—our party wishes to maintain our White identity in South Africa. We are set on it that the people of this Republic, that section who has the political say, the leading element of the population, should be White and we are proud of the fact that we are trying to keep it White. Consequently we are against it that a person should be classified as White against his own admission or in conflict with the evidence of your own eyes. That does not mean, however, that we do not wish to give the person who is not classified as White, in his capacity as a Coloured or as a member of another race, sufficient room to live. We welcome this definition because it does not plunge anybody into darkness but it brings many people from the twilight of uncertainty into the light of complete certainty, as far as their status is concerned. Our object is not to do away with the differences, nor to make them painful. If it is insinuated that the person who is not classified as White is of necessity condemned to an unacceptable fate, I wish to doubt that. It will be a bitterly hard blow to hundreds of thousands of Coloureds if you offered them the obligations which accompany the White man’s existence. In his own way of life, the Coloured gets as much satisfaction as the White man gets in his. If hon. members opposite want to argue on the basis that the Coloured person has not sufficient living room and facilities in his own way of life, I am always willing to discuss that and do the best I can for all inhabitants of this country. But if you think that the Coloured person is subjected to certain limitations in his own way of life, that is still no reason why we should try to classify him artificially as a White and in conflict with the evidence. After all, the questions as to whether the Coloured person has sufficient living room in his own life to meet his own requirements, is a totally different question but that is a subject which must be discussed on another occasion.

I want to conclude by asking this: Why this misrepresentation that our party is introducing this amendment because of an obsession about colour, a misrepresentation couched in the strongest possible language? Hon. members have spoken about “arguments like those of the madman Hitler” in order to identify us internationally with most revolting memories. Hon. members have spoken about “pool of blood and race, blood, threats and fears”, an inflated and exaggerated attempt to make this country and the world believe that this Government is burdened down with a colour obsession. What is the objective of this proposal? Is it in the interests of the Coloured? Of what benefit is it to the Coloured to suggest that this piece of legislation harbours evil intentions towards the Coloureds? The Coloured person is not affected [Interjections.] The hon. member for Boland was one of those who tried to use this law in an attempt to represent the Government as a Government imbued with racialism and blood. To suggest that, is not in the interests of the Coloureds and certainly not in the interests of the Whites. Just as little is it in the interests of the Western nations. It can only raise doubts in their minds as to the basic policy of South Africa. It can only create the impression that this party also supports the idea that the White should always be the master because he is White or that he should be afraid to maintain his White state. That cannot be in the interests of the Western nations. The trend of the debate which we have had from the side opposite can only be in the interests of one thing and that is in the interests of international communism because over the past 15 years the outspoken object of international communism has been that they should avail themselves of the so-called struggle of the under-developed non-White races for freedom. The object of the criticism can only be to suggest to the non-White of the world that he is being oppressed and that the Government is not giving him his full rights. It is a service rendered directly to communism. That is why we find that this type of debate evokes unrest locally and that it has repercussions overseas. That is what that party has done. They have not rendered a service to either the Coloured or the White man. They have served those whom they would have us believe are their enemies. When will the United Party reach the stage where they regard necessary legislation soberly and on its merits and not try to draw poison from it and to spray that poison all over the world, poison which they unjustifiably draw from a normal administrative measure. No, they are satisfied to sit their as outcasts, and that is why the electorate have discarded them time and time again.

I do not know whether I should try to reply to the speech made by the hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. F. S. Steyn). He destroyed his entire speech, particularly towards the end, with the wonderful adjectives which he used and with the sort of statement that this side of the House wanted to do away with the colour bar. The hon. member knows that is not the case. He knows very well what the feelings of this side of the House are as far as the White man in South Africa is concerned, and it is not necessary for me to repeat them. But I do believe, nevertheless, that when you consider this legislation, you should remember that during all the years prior to 1950 there was a natural division of the races in South Africa. It was a division which came about naturally, and the test which was applied, was the test of which the Minister is so proud, the test of public opinion. That was a good test but the Nationalist Party Government was not satisfied with that; 1950 arrived and they passed an Act and entrenched the same test in it. We have a very peculiar phenomenon to-day, however. While public opinion was the test, there were many difficulties but we never heard about those.

Why not?

For the simple reason that when public opinion applies a yardstick, it is the human being, the elastic human being, who applies it, and not the inflexible law. It is only since this Act has been placed on the Statute Book that we have heard about all these sufferings and tragedies. I had hoped that in view of all this tragedy the Minister would not have gone further but to-day we have a Bill before us in which the Minister says clearly that he is no longer satisfied that public opinion should be the test. For the first time descent is being introduced into the law. We have this peculiar situation that if a person admits that he is Coloured he is classified as a Coloured; or let me rather put it this way: If a person is classified as White, if public opinion makes him a White person, even though he has coloured blood in his veins, he has only been sufficiently clever not to admit it, he is a White person. He must not admit it voluntarily or under coercion or in error. I have so often seen people signing documents without knowing what they are signing, and it is for anybody to make such an admission. You may ask me, Sir, whether I wish to have a person classified as White knowing that he has coloured blood in his veins? I need not reply to that, because the law is very clear on that point and hon. members opposite are very clear on that point. A person can have coloured blood in his veins and he can be classified as White as long as he does not admit it. [Interjections.] Let us deal with the effects of this measure. You find the position particularly in Cape Town where somebody’s father or mother had coloured blood and with the passage of time, without his being able to do anything about it, he finds himself in the position where he starts to associate with Whites. His skin is reasonably White and he is accepted as a White person, and the powerful yardstick of which the Minister is so proud classifies that person with the Whites. That person’s own father has coloured blood, but he was sufficiently clever not to admit it. However, you find the poor soul whose great grandmother came from Mauritius. In the meantime he too has been declared White and he is in all probability married to a White woman and has children in White schools, and one day, in error or due to pressure of circumstances, he admits that there is coloured blood in his veins, and the moment he does that he is declared to be a Coloured, even though only one eighth of his blood is coloured; and the person who may perhaps have 50 per cent coloured blood remains White simply because he has not admitted it. This to me is a very tragic matter. This is the first time that the test of descent has been applied. I know the Minister has dealt very mildly with the question of admission but nowhere in the Bill do I find that mildness. It says that if you admit—the circumstances in which you admit are not mentioned—that you have coloured blood, you are a Coloured person. The point I wish to make, however, is this. The Minister has told us that is not a test. He has said that it is a voluntary admission, but I nevertheless think this Bill has a deeper significance. The hon. member for Kempton Park said that we were looking for all sorts of motives behind the Bill, but you cannot forget the past completely, Sir. I should like to read something to the Minister from col. 2521 of Hansard of 8 March 1950 when the original Act was before this House. The then Minister of the Interior said this—

I feel inclined to accept the word of the Minister, but when I look at the existing Act I find so many anomalies as far as this admission is concerned that I think we should read it not as indicated by the Minister but as it ought to be read, and in that case I see in this provision regarding descent the test which will in future be applied to classify people. We are dealing here with a brand new test which has never before been applied in South Africa, a yardstick which will be applied to classify the borderline cases, to classify those people who find themselves in a no-man’s land, the land which everybody is exceedingly anxious to leave, the majority undoubtedly for the White side. It is no use arguing that a person should be proud of his race. It is no use arguing that person is a weaker person because he would rather be White than Coloured. Reality refutes all those arguments, because reality shows that 99 out of 100 borderline cases want to go over to the White side, the side where they, rightly or wrongly, think they will share in the rights and privileges of the Whites. It is no use our saying that is wrong. They want to do that and to the extent to which they will be thwarted by this measure, to that extent will they suffer. Hon members may say we talk too much about sufferings; like the hon. member for Heilbron who said that all laws caused suffering. But the interesting point is that under other laws it is the guilty person who suffers directly and if the innocent person suffers under the law, it is merely indirectly. This law, however, punishes the innocent directly and the guilty person gets away, and the punishment under this law is no light punishment.

Why do you say they are punished?

Because if you desire to be with the Whites and you have to remain with the Coloureds, it is a punishment which is inflicted upon you your whole life through. You cannot simply say that person has no pride of race. No, it goes much deeper than that. I was pleased to hear the hon. member for Parow (Mr. S. F. Kotzé) say that this is a delicate matter. I find that peculiar because when we deal with the deepest emotions of the human being, hon. members opposite hurl emotions of a political nature across the floor of the House. An hon. member opposite gets up and says we want to do away with the colour bar. Have we no case? Do these people not suffer, and if we can prevent it surely it is our duty to do so? I think we have a good case. One hon. member said that the newspapers exaggerated this issue. Sir, for every story which appears in the newspapers there are 50 cases of suffering and sorrow which never appear. Those are the cases we are pleading for and if I can succeed in bringing one person from that No Man’s Land to my side, I will do it because I regard this matter in the spirit enunciated by Dr. D. F. du Toit Malherbe in his book “Drie-honderd Jaar van Nasiebou”. This is what he said—

I want to make this very clear that when we discuss this matter, we are not playing at politics. I personally am sincere in what I am saying because I know what suffering this legislation is causing.

The hon. member for Maitland (Mr. Hickman) started off by creating the impression that we are really establishing a blood register. We are not establishing a blood register. We are trying to evolve a legal mechanism to be used effectively in the application of our various Acts, in which we take notice of the race to which people belong. We have, as the hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. S. F. Steyn) has said, various provisions which refer only to certain races, certain groups. We find now that the defintion which we had is defective and therefore we must improve it. If hon. members opposite want to say that this new definition will be ineffectual and that the old one was in fact effectual, then they must explain to us how it was possible under the old Act for a Chinese to be classified as White. We object to that obvious ineffectualness, and that is what we want to remedy by means of this definition. The question now is whether this remedy is a good one. If it is not good, hon. members opposite must tell us so. Now I want to put this question: If we are to accept this definition, which persons who should be classified as Whites will not be classified as Whites; or which persons who are not classified as Whites ought to have been classified as Whites? I have not yet heard the reply to that question.

A lot of stories have been told here, without mentioning names, to show that there is terrible suffering and injustice taking place in this country. I can only say that the Opposition actually has a basic objection to the population register. They object basically to the fact that we classify people. But they are not as honest as the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman), who says: I want to know nothing about the population register; I think it is unnecessary and gives us bad publicity. But hon. members of the United Party would very much like to enjoy the benefits of the population register, but they do not want the population register itself. Actually they are opposed to the 1950 Act, but do not have the courage to propose that it be repealed. How many times have we not asked them to propose that Act be repealed? They have never done so. But when they get an opportunity, as at present, they tell us about all their objections to the Population Registration Act of 1950.

[Inaudible.]

Is the hon. member against the Population Registration Act as a whole? I ask whether the United Party is against it? Let them give us their reply. The hon. member need only say, “Yes, I am against the Act”, and I will know that he is in the same camp as the hon. member for Houghton. I think he belongs there. If he has the courage of his convictions he should now get up and say, “I am against the Population Registration Act of 1950.” [Interjection.] Does the hon. member for Transkeian Territories (Mr. Hughes) want to intimate that he is in favour of this Act?

We have always been opposed to it.

Is this one of the Acts the Opposition will repeal if they come into power, the 1950 Act?

Yes.

They all say yes.

Very well, then the whole United Party is in favour of repealing this Act. I can expect that from the hon. member for Constantia (Mr. Waterson). Does the hon. the Leader of the Opposition want to repeal it? Now I want to put this question to them? How are they going to implement the various Acts which differentiate between the various racial groups in terms of those Acts which they do not want to repeal?

As we have always done it in the past.

Those hon. members should now clearly understand that we are living in the year 1962 and that we are now passing an Act for the future. We are not living in the past. The tests and the legal mechanisms which existed in the past no longer exist. That is why Song, who is a Chinese, could manage to be classified as a White. That was never possible in the past.

It would never have happened under the United Party.

Why not? It could just as well have happened under the United Party, but it would not have been spoken about. No, the hon. members of the United Party do not want a legal mechanism by means of which the various racial groups can continue to live alongside each other.

The question arises whether this legal mechanism will be effective. Let us accept the fact—and the people of South Africa as a whole accept it—that we have four communities in this country who have existed and lived within the same political entity. We have the White community, we have the Brown community, or the Coloureds, as I learnt to know them; we have the Asiatic community, or the Yellow people, and we have the Black people. We have these four communities, each with its own set of values and its own opinions and prejudices, and we only give expression to that when we passed the Population Registration Act, because there are certain Acts which apply only to those belonging to one of these groups. If we bear that in mind when reading this definition, then a White person is one who by appearance obviously belongs to the White group and is not ordinarily at home in any of the other groups. That is the definition we had and it is an an intelligible definition and one which can be applied. Then we have the second: Someone who ordinarily passes for a White, i.e. who is generally considered as belonging to the White community, but who in appearance does not really belong there. What is wrong with that? Cannot we apply it as a legal mechanism? The hon. member for Orange Grove (Mr. E. G. Malan) says that this is a Bill which is bad in law and that it will be ineffective. That is just so much nonsense.

Let us analyse the arguments of the Opposition further. The hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman) makes the statement that nobody has the right to be placed on the register. To that extent I agree with him. That is one of the defects in the Act, and therefore we now amend Section 12, because in terms of Section 12 any person, in respect of certain information received for the purpose of being registered, can be told to submit proof of the accuracy of such details. I will read the section, omitting all the unnecessary words—

That is all. But there is a big defect, because details may be submitted to the Director which are obviously inaccurate. And what do we do now? In order to make that Act more effective, we now give that section two legs, namely (a) which I have just read out, and then (b) as contained in Clause 4, which will be the new Section 12—

What is wrong with that? What is wrong with gathering more facts in respect of details already recorded or about to be recorded? That makes the Act so much more effective. Who can object if we say that additional information is to be collected for the consideration of the Director which the applicant himself may consider (perhaps it is in his favour); which the Board which makes the classification can use, and which the Court may use later? Hon. members should not think that when the Minister appoints somebody to collect information, that provision also provides that this official can weigh that information, accept it and make a classification accordingly. I simply cannot understand hon. members of the Opposition making use of every opportunity, when the racial difficulties of this country come to the fore as they do now, immediately to group themselves on the side of the enemies of South Africa, of the enemies of this classification.

But I want to expand further on this. The hon. member for Kempton Park said that this matter started with the article by Prof. Brookes in which he said that a frontal attack should not be made on the racial policy of this Government. But it goes much deeper, and what I am now going to say will reflect the Opposition in a light even worse than that in which they are already seen by the electorate. The hon. member for Fort Beaufort (Dr. Jonker) has already pointed out that it has clearly emerged from this debate that the Opposition wants to eliminate all dividing lines based on colour, and what is more, every time they are faced with a difficult situation they get a fright. When we want to remedy a difficult situation, they sneer. They try to run away when they should take a stand and tell us what to do in regard to this difficult position. By doing that they are only the minions of the enemies of South Africa. They will deny it, but that is so. As someone who faithfully and very carefully reads the foreign periodicals and brochures, I know there is the Anti-Slavery and Aborigine Society of London, which was established in 1815 and which tried to set free the slaves right throughout the British Empire. But in recent times they have not really done anything more, because they are afraid of going to those countries where slavery actually still exists. There are certain dangers involved. But they can come to South Africa, a state which is reasonably civilized, and quite safely point to certain things and even take snapshots, and say that this is slavery. That, according to the English Cyprés doctrine, enables the Society to comply with the terms of its objects and provides the authority for spending the Society’s money. They have accumulated a lot of money over more than a century, which they are now using for making attacks on the racial policy of South Africa. One aspect of that policy is the Population Registration Act.

I want to mention another society. There is the International League for the Rights of Man. Its object is to uphold the so-called elementary human rights in all countries where those rights are violated or are alleged to be violated. Then there is the Union of Democratic Control. These three organizations in 1948, just after the National Party came into power, sent a woman called Monica Winkley to South Africa. She wrote a report in which she said two things. The report appeared about 1952. She said that all the legislation dealing with racial matters should be combated, but in the way suggested later by Prof. Brookes. She was the authoress of the passive resistance movement we had in 1953. She was sent here by those three bodies.

Then there is the Congress of Peoples against Imperialism. They are the people who at the moment are waging the so-called anti-colonialism campaign. I do not know who the officebearers are. Then there is a fifth one, the National Council for Civil Liberties. The members of this body interest themselves particularly in sport for the non-White, and discrimination in sport. They started at the time with table tennis, in regard to which they succeeded in debarring us from the international sports association. Then there is a newfangled association, Racial Unity. That is the association of Canon Collins of St. Paul’s fame, of whom we have all heard.

Why do not all of them say, “Hear, hear!” now?

All these associations attacked the Population Registration Act after 1950. I continue. There is the Africa Bureau, an association which receives money from all kinds of sources. It was established by Michael Scott, and it is this association which sends him to UNO. If we read the publications of those associations, in which they refer to South Africa, we find that they say that their strategic point of attack is on the Population Registration Act. Then there is the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Just see what a nice name it has! That body, which is supposed to preach the gospel, preaches a campaign against South Africa in various publications, and every time they come back to the Population Registration Act.

Then there is the Citizens’ Council for Human Rights. They concentrate particularly on sport, but it is an association which specially holds a protective hand over Ambrose Reeves. This association gave the advice that when they want to attack the population register they must try to get one individual after the other across the colour line. I do not know who discovered that they should make sworn statements, for example, to the effect that Mr. Song was a White man in order to get him classified on the population register. The advice was given that they should try to get one individual after another across the colour line, so that eventually it will become ridiculous.

The Opposition is talking the language of those people. They make the sneering remarks to which the others give publicity overseas. I want to mention another one. There is the Overseas League. I have seen only one pamphlet of theirs, and that was directed against the population register. Then there is another association of Canon Collins, Christian Action. In their latest publication, I am told, they did not attack the population register but the pass laws. I must tell hon. members of the Opposition that they will not be able to apply the pass laws either unless they have the Population Registration Act.

I refer, further, to the International Society for the Scientific Study of Race Relations. Mr. Speaker, these people are very clever. They know the Greek adage to the effect that one is as strong as the length of the arms of one’s friends. They try to discuss the racial problem of South Africa in all kinds of ways, preferably inside South Africa. They try at all costs to hold a mixed meeting. That was the case with the World Council of Churches a few years ago, at which I was present. That was specially done so that South Africans could listen and become ashamed of themselves. And this invitation which I received in the post just to-day Conference on Human Relations and Communication To-day, is an affair arranged by the University of the Witwatersrand and by the S.A. Institute of Race Relations. I should like to know how many of these 12 associations are behind this movement. I am sure that not one of the people mentioned here know that they are being used as the tools of these various associations, and there are honoured names amongst them. They do not know what is behind this thing; they do not know that all these high-sounding words are meaningless and that their object is that we should become ashamed of ourselves.

What role is the United Party playing in this whole set-up?

They are behind it.

No. If they were behind it I would have been very glad, because then it would at least have shown that they at least want something. They are, however, the willing, unwitting tools of these international influences, the enemies of South Africa. They are the willing helpers without realizing it. That is why I once told them that they were fifth columnists. I had to withdraw it.

This is the parliamentary front.

They are the parliamentary front, but they do not even realize that they are the parliamentary front. Because they are so ignorant in regard to their own real position, that is why they put South Africa into a predicament every time. Then they think that they are thereby playing a great and a humane role. They bow to this humanism. It is no humanism; it is an idol they are bowing down before, a Baal. Therefore I can do only one thing, and that is to accuse them every time of being the greatest organized unpatriotic group in South Africa. [Laughter.] They may laugh, but they ought to ask themselves whether they are not prehaps just that. In April 1960 when the hon. member for Constantia made a speech here in which he said that he wanted to tell the world that his party dissociated itself from all the racial measures passed by this Government, I read it in the London Times and in the News Chronicle. It is in this regard that the Opposition simply does not keep in touch with the realities of to-day. If the hon. members for Zululand (Mr. Cadman) and Pinetown (Mr. Hopewell) and Durban (North) wish to sell their country for a headline in the Sunday Times, to which I will not refer, or a headline in a London newspaper, they should just continue in the way they are doing now. They will sell their country. They will sell themselves, but they will be doing nothing for South Africa. Neither will they influence public opinion in South Africa. It will continue to remain as it is at present.

The hon. member who has just sat down rather piously expressed surprise that this side of the House was opposed to this legislation. As far as I know the United Party Opposition has made its standpoint in regard to the Population Registration Act perfectly clear, and it was quite pious for that hon. member therefore to express the views that he did. We are opposed to the legislation and we are criticising it because we are also opposed to the hardship and the human misery that the original Act has brought about in the past 12 years. The hon. member, of course, failed entirely to explain what good purpose has been achieved thus far, nor has he shown us at all to what extent this legislation has assisted the administration of other Acts of Parliament. The many instances of human misery which have been referred to from this side of the House certainly have not assisted the position; they have done the opposite, and the hon. member has not attempted to refute one single instance that was quoted. I need not refer to all the instances that have been quoted; I will only refer to the instance referred to by the hon. member for Peninsula (Mr. Bloomberg). Nothing has been said to refute the allegations of hardships and difficulties and tragedies that were caused in those cases. Instead of that the hon. member chose to fling around abuse rather freely. If he was not abusing this side of the House he was abusing organizations established in other parts of the world…

Against South Africa.

… for purposes of their own. I hold no brief for them; there is no need for me to hold any brief for them.

But you are the catspaw.

I am just indicating that the hon. member flung about abuse rather freely, if not against this side of the House then against the Press…

I did not say anything against the Press.

The hon. member mentioned the Chronicle amongst others.

And the Sunday Times.

Is the Press unspeakable.

I will come back to the subject of debate and try to deal with the situation which has arisen as a result of the introduction of this amending Bill. Sir, the textbooks tell us that good government is the art of promoting human well-being. But here we are concerned with a measure in which the promotion of human well-being is to have no part. Indeed the direct opposite is likely to take place because Parliament is now being asked to introduce into the machinery of State a new race definition which must inevitably lead to human suffering and to distress amongst an untold number of individuals. I stress the word “individuals” because for more than a decade now this Government has been preoccupied—perhaps I should use an even stronger word and say that it has been obsessed—with legislating for racial groups. The concept being that the group comes first and that the individual takes a very poor second place. It is rigidity of race discrimination which has now become the rule. If anyone has any doubts about it, I think the speech of the hon. member for Kempton Park is a very clear indication of that. It becomes all too obvious that this rigidity has now become the essence of the Government’s planning and it is also an indispensable political virtue in their eyes. That is why ad hoc legislation of this sort is now being introduced. As the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman) has correctly pointed out, we are now concerned with passing legislation possibly arising from one single incident, and that is the incident of a certain Mr. Song. It is because of this rigidity which has now become the rule in race differentiation that the individual is once again being overlooked here. The hardships and any suffering that may be brought about to him must be ignored in the interests of the group.

Other speakers have referred to the fact that our Statute Book abounds with a bewildering variety of statutory race definitions. I do not want to pursue that line of argument, but I do want to point out that our law reports also abound with evidence of anomalies, complexities, and difficulties which confront the individual in practically every sphere of human activity to-day.

Mr. Speaker, when the business of the House was interrupted I was explaining that in addition to the bewildering variety of statutory race definitions which have come onto the Statute Book, the law reports also abound with evidence of the anomalies and complexities and difficulties which confront the individual in practically every sphere of human activity. We certainly have reached the stage when individual life in South Africa has become circumscribed in one way or another from the cradle to the grave by racial definitions.

Order! That point has repeatedly been made.

Sir, I accept your ruling. I think you will permit me to point out that an eminent legal man recently prescribed the position in these words: “In South Africa the political, economic and social status of every individual is conditioned, if not predetermined, by his race”. Sir, it is not only the political field that is affected; every field of human activity is affected; and now Parliament is being asked not to ameliorate the lot of the individual, but rather to make confusion worse confounded for him by the addition of this new elaborate definition of a “White person”. Paradoxically, the law with which we have lived longest and which is the very basis of our legal system, that is the Roman-Dutch Law, is completely colour blind. In that regard it is very much our common law to-day, because our modern statutory law is becoming more and more based on so-called race differentiations.

Order! I must ask the hon. member to come back to the Bill.

Sir, I am trying to indicate why the amendment is being introduced. The reason is that we have now reached the stage when definitions must be more complex and more elaborate than previously, and therefore I say it is no wonder that we find on our Statute Book race definitions, and amended race definitions, and race definitions to amend amending race definitions. When the Population Registration Amendment Bill 71 of 1956 was introduced, the then Minister of the Interior (now the Minister of Finance) claimed that the race definition in the original Act would be the basis for all future Acts. I quote the exact words which he used (Hansard 1956, Vol. 92, Col. 7836)—

Of course he was wrong, because the most essential of his basic definition is now being altered to tighten up race classification. It is likely not to be the last amendment, because the Government is quite intent on bringing shades of colour even into “White” and it is attempting therefore to define the indefineable.

Order! The House is not dealing now with that legislation. The hon. member must deal with the Bill.

Sir, the original Act, which this Bill is now amending, has also been described as the corner-stone of the Government’s apartheid policy. But suddenly a loophole in the law, or a crack in the cornerstone, has become noticeable to the hon. the Minister, and he has now set out to replace his predecessor’s corner-stone by abandoning the definition which had been applied for 12 years.

Do you agree with the old definition?

I believe that the Minister is making too much of a song of this new crack in the corner-stone. Sir, bigger cracks have been discernable from this side of the House in the legislation all along. Now I will not make the point, Sir, which has been made by other members that the Bill does not contain provisions for the protection of persons who have already been classified. That point has been made. I merely want to indicate that those who have already battled their way through the entanglements of the law as it now stands, are now faced with a possible repetition of such attempts. What is now being revived is this 12 year old feeling of personal insecurity which the individual has had. No wonder therefore that a learned Judge some time ago said this—

I come then to the point which I have often made in this House, namely, that in the interests of good government, it is better to have a law, even a bad law, which is certain than one which is subject to change. You see, Sir, perfection is not for man-made laws and even a casual glance through the Statute Book over the last 12 years would indicate the justification for saying that. But to reach certainty about the meaning and effect of a statute usually takes time. In this case we have had only 12 years. But more often than not it takes more than time, it also takes the wits of the lawyers, the ingenuity of the Judges and last, but not least, the cost of litigation to bring about the necessary certainty and to settle the meaning and effect of a statute. And as this Population Registration Act is such a law, many of the persons who have been affected by it, and who have paid dearly to get personal security and economic safety in terms of their race classification, as defined in the Act, will simply now be faced with the fact that all their costs and all their efforts and all their time was futile.

That point has also been made repeatedly. I must ask the hon. member now to advance new points.

Under the law as it now stands—I am referring to the hon. member for Kempton Park’s (Mr. F. S. Steyn) argument—membership of the White group is determined by two alternative criteria or tests. The one is “obvious appearance as White”, the other is “general acceptance as White”. The first criterion could only be overruled, as the law now stands, by evidence of general acceptance. The second criterion was irrefutable. The hon. member for Kempton Park is therefore wrong.

But that is exactly what I said.

He is wrong when he says that although the door is being narrowed there is only one alteration being made in the definition. That is not so. The effect of this change in future is that both these criteria “obvious appearance as White” and “general acceptance as White” can be overruled by evidence of an admission by the person concerned of Coloured descent. And the second effect of course is that in future the second criterion, that is “general acceptance as White”, will no longer be irrefutable, but can now be ruled out by evidence that the person concerned “is not in appearance obviously not a White person”. Sir, that phrase is certainly a masterpiece of legal drafting in the negative, and the clause as a whole has enough “nots” in it to-day to tie up even the most astute lawyer into knots—this time you spell it with a “k”. But the general effect of the new definition is that the legal obstacles to anyone claiming membership of the White group will now be set higher. This surely will rank in history as the setting up of the golden image of “baasskap” to appease the cult of the race.

I come then to the question what is probative significance of this word “admits”? In the last portion of the new definition we find the following—

I ask the hon. the Minister whether a wink or a nod is to be regarded as evidence of “admits”. I ask that quite seriously because of the danger of this provision being there to eliminate the mass of borderline cases which exist. Because it is quite obvious that the whole force of this legislation is directed at the borderline case and it is in the borderline case that the hardships and the human distresses in the application of the law are to be found. Sir, I admit that the criterion of descent, the so-called blood test, has been tried in other statutory definitions. But the sufficiency of proof of the descent by evidence of an alleged admission is something entirely new. It is something I think very dangerously new and is easily subject to abuse. It is here where the door will be opened to the efforts of the vicious and vindictive person who wishes to revenge himself on the individual.

Order! That point has been made in almost every speech.

Sir, I want to emphasize it by saying that this is the type of case that the hon. member for Zululand quoted. It is not an imaginary sort of state of affairs that might arise. He quoted a specific case…

Emphasized without repeating.

The newly born child is doubtless the most important person present at its birth, but that child is nonetheless the only person present at that event who cannot give firsthand information on parentage or on descent.

It is not asked for.

It is.

What about the husband?

The husband does not make the admission. The person to be classified makes the admission and that is where the danger of this provision lies, because an admission by the person as to descent is hearsay evidence and there are no degrees of hearsay evidence. If you therefore look at the practical effect of this…

Merely hear-say?

And therefore it should not be admissible. But it will be admissible in terms of the Act and the evidence will be dealt with by an administrative body, because that is precisely what the position is going to be. It is true that evidence of an admission by a litigant against his own interests is admissible in a case of civil litigation, but to have probative value the fact must be within the knowledge of the person concerned. The courts therefore will not lightly accept evidence of any such admission by a person against his own interests. They examine the position very carefully and evidence of that kind is not easily accepted. Also the rules of evidence provide the necessary safeguards to prevent any miscarriage of justice by a so-called admission. But here the safeguards which are applicable in a court are to have no place at all, and therefore I say that such a provision is dangerous and can be subject to abuse, unless adequate safeguards are introduced into the Population Registration Act itself.

I say therefore that it is important to prescribe in this Act to whom such an alleged admission is to be made, and what form that admission is to take. I say that it is equally important to know at what stage of the proceedings of race classification such an alleged admission is to become evidence, and how evidence of that nature is to be recorded in the official documents of the Department. These are practical aspects. I have got away from the so-called emotional side. These are the practical aspects of this new rule in the long history of race discrimination which we have to examine. I hope the hon. the Minister will state quite categorically how this new rule is to be applied. Therefore I want to ask quite categorically these four questions: (a) To whom such admission is to be made; (b) what form the admission is to take; (c) at what stage of the proceedings it is to become accepted as proof of the fact; and (d) how is the admission to be recorded in the official records?

This change in the definition of “White person” makes the need for having safeguards in this legislation greater than ever before, because without safeguards there can be no security for anyone. The hon. the Minister is opening the door for possible abuse and leaving the individual practically unprotected against the unscrupulous informer. Once an alleged admission of descent from a Native or a Coloured person is recorded, it obviously will stand. How, I ask the hon. the Minister, once it is recorded, how can it be undone, if in fact it is completely unfounded and untrue?

How does one set about disproving an alleged admission? You cannot prove the negative. This does raise a very serious and practical problem connected with that portion of the definition which is governed by the “admits”. It is quite obvious therefore that an added complication is now to be found in this new provision that a “White person”, “does not include a person who admits that he is by descent a Native or a Coloured person”. How is the test going to be applied in practice? And how is the individual to know what the legal definition of “descent” is before he makes an admission of this nature?

I said that our law reports abound with examples of hardships and difficulties that confront the individual in matters of this kind. Let me just refer to two such examples. The expressions of “White by descent” or “Native by descent” have been settled by the courts as meaning that both parents must be White and both parents must be Native. But the court has left unanswered the vexed question as to what degree of colour admixture would render the person otherwise White as non-White, or a person otherwise Native as non-Native. The juridical complications and difficulties presented by race admixture in South Africa are well expressed in a passage from the judgment in the case of Rex V. Radeb delivered in 1945 in the Appellate Division, which I shall quote. In that case the court, in trying to apply the test of descent in respect of the son of an Indian father and an African mother, said this—

This is complicated enough in all conscience; complicated certainly for the litigant who will usually be reluctant to take action in the matter and complicated enough for the court which has to decide and interpret and determine the meaning of these racial definitions. The position of course is now being made more complicated, because by legislation the effect is now this: the natural race grouping, which this court was dealing with, is now being replaced by statutory race grouping, and the courts in determining the position in future will have to have regard to the statutory arranged groupings that is now taking place, because a Coloured person is now also defined. It is true that it is an entirely negative definition by saying “a Coloured person is one who is neither a White nor a Native”. But the fact is that a Coloured racial group is now being established by law and therefore it behoves the hon. the Minister to be quite specific as to what is to be the meaning of “descent” when it does not affect what the courts have already settled “White by descent” or a “Native by descent Persons in the new statutory group are the individuals who are going to be affected by this legislation and it behoves the hon. the Minister, I think, to be quite clear and specific about this position and to be quite clear as to how the term itself is going to be defined. Because unless the word “descent” is defined and unless the person who is alleged to have made an admission of colour descent knows what “descent” is, I say that any admission of that nature should be ruled out as being entirely valueless.

Sir, this bit of legislation I can only describe, as I have already done, as the golden image of “baasskap” to appease the cult of the race, and it is likely that very soon it will have to be recast in some way by a further definition, certainly a definition of “descent”. Meanwhile, by the time this hon. the Minister has piloted this Bill through Parliament, he will be able to exclaim along with Macbeth “Confusion now has made his masterpiece”.

Order! The hon. member must come back to the Bill.

My final remark on the Bill is that “Confusion has now made his masterpiece”.

Order! Before calling on the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (North) (Mr. J. A. F. Nel), I want to draw the attention of hon. members to the fact that a very wide and protracted discussion has taken place and hon. members should now confine themselves strictly to matters relevant to the Bill under discussion.

The hon. member for Port Elizabeth (South) (Mr. Plewman) has put four questions to the hon. the Minister. The first was in connection with the admission in regard to descent. He asked, “To whom must that admission be made?” But it is surely obvious that it must be made to the body investigating the matter. He asked what form it should take. I do not know what the hon. member means by that. It can be in writing or it can be made verbally, so long as it is an admission. Then the hon. member asks at what stage it should be made. Surely at the beginning of the investigation, if possible. I do not know at what stage the hon. member would like to have it. And then he asks how it is to be recorded? I do not know what he means there either. It must just be written down, or typed. I do not know of any other way in which it can be recorded. Surely that is the only way in which it can be done. The hon. member referred here to the Appellate Division case of Ghabebe in 1945. I also know that case, but he did not actually say why he quoted that case, because he proved nothing by it. I will come to the point later. That was a judgment by Judge Schreiner, and we know what Judge Schreiner’s attitude is in regard to questions of colour.

Order! The hon. member may not make a remark like that.

I then come to what was said by the hon. member for Orange Grove (Mr. E. G. Malan). He mentioned some very pathetic cases this afternoon. The one case was that of a person who can be regarded as a Coloured in the Cape, whereas his brother in the Transvaal can be regarded as a White man.

No, that was not the case as I put it.

If the hon. member has such a pathetic case, I shall be glad if he will mention that specific case, so that the hon. the Minister can investigate it. The hon. member’s whole speech consisted of “It may happen”, “It can happen”, “It could happen”. He just gave hypothetical cases of what might possibly happen, but did not mention a single specific case which could be investigated by the Department or the Minister. But he said that this legislation casts a stigma on 600,000,000 Chinese. Here I must agree with the hon. member for Kempton Park, because the hon. member says that through the case of this one Chinese we are casting a stigma on 600,000,000 Chinese. Who are these 600,000,000 Chinese? The Chinese in Red China? In other words, does the hon. member by means of this Bill want to satisfy the communist Chinese in Red China? But why should we not satisfy the Natives of Africa? Then we must surely also introduce legislation to satisfy the 200,000,000 Natives in Africa. Then all the discriminatory legislation must be repealed in order to satisfy the 200,000,000 Natives in Africa, according to the argument of the hon. member for Orange Grove.

I now come to the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman). He argued here that most of the Coloureds in South Africa bear Afrikaans or English names, and therefore the Afrikaners or the English must be responsible for their existence. The hon. member does not know South Africa. Many of the Coloureds, the majority of them, who grew up and lived with the White farmers took over the names of those people, without any stigma being attached to it.

There are many by the name of Cadman.

He also said that the Minister of Information would now have to explain this legislation to the world, and he asked how he would be able to do so, in view of the fact that he himself in 1950 spoke against this legislation. In 1950, yes. Will the hon. member tell me whether they will repeal this legislation if they come into power? Will they repeal it? I am prepared to give the assurance to-night to this House that this legislation will never be repealed by the United Party if they should come into power, because if when they have to fight an election they say that they are going to repeal it, they will not come into power in any case.

hon. member further said: What does one Chinese matter; what does it matter if one Chinese is taken up into the White group? But that is the beginning. This was a test to see how far they could get past the law, and they thoroughly succeeded in doing so, and therefore the Minister had to introduce this Bill. I will pause to deal with what the hon. member for Maitland (Mr. Hickman) said. He said that public opinion had always determined it. But we have definitions of “Native” in our Statute Book. Does he want us to remove those definitions, too? Surely that did not come about through public opinion? It was legislation passed by the United Party and by the National Party which embodied those definitions. He also admits that there were cases of hardship, but in this case he does not want to accept it. He goes further and says that a penalty is now being introduced by this Bill. What penalty? Is it a punishment to be a Coloured or to belong to one’s own group? It is no punishment. Is it a punishment to be a White? It is no punishment. Or is it a punishment to be an Indian? It is no punishment. I just want to make a comparison and I say that the legislation which will be adopted now and the 1950 Act are really pieces of legislation which are less drastic than any previous legislation. You will remember, Sir, that in the begnining our legistion was based on “descent”. Then the courts, because it was so drastic, introduced “preponderance of blood”, and it was this Government which in 1950 framed this definition under the Immorality Act and the Mixed Marriages Act, and provided a different definition which was less strict.

I just want to show how strict the old definition of “descent” was. What is the provision in regard to the admission of children in Natal? I think that definition still exists to-day. Hon. members asked to-day in regard to this Bill what would happen to the children. They alleged that they would not be admitted to the schools. But now I want to show how drastic the requirements were in Natal. The requirement there was, and I think still is—

In other words, before a child is admitted to a White school there, the school must be satisfied that child has been of White ancestry for three generations on both sides. Sir, note that this is the position in Natal. In this regard I wish to refer to the case of Seneque v. Natal Provincial Council (1939, N.P.D. 271). The judgment in that case has never been upset, and consequently that requirement still stands to-day. For the purposes of my argument it does not matter, in any case, whether it still stands. The point is that is did exist, namely that the child should be of pure European ancestry for three generations on both sides. It reads, further—

The Judge who gave this judgment was Feetham, J. We know him—he was one of Lord Milner’s kindergarten.

Order! The hon. member must now come back to the Bill.

Sir, I am only trying to show that the definition in this Bill is less drastic than the definition contained in other statutes and ordinances passed by the United Party.

I now want to come to the emphasis laid on the so-called hardships. Just listen to what Judge Feetham said about hardships—

He says it is unavoidable. It simply does not upset him in any way. He said further—

That is what he said, and that is what hon. members opposite accepted without any protest.

Does the hon. member suggest that when that judgment was given there was a population register?

No, there was no register, but the hon. member obviously does not understand my argument. My argument is that the amendment now proposed by the Minister is much less drastic than any definition which already existed in statutes or ordinances. Hon. members therefore cannot squeal about this definition. This is child’s play compared with other definitions.

What about the present definition?

The amendment now proposed by the Minister is less drastic even than the present definition. In that regard I will have no qualms of conscience. Hon. members now talk about descent. What is descent really? There is no reference here to descent having to be proved. All the Bill provides is that a person must admit that by descent he is not a Native or a Coloured. It is therefore not necessary for the Minister, or for anyone else, to prove descent. All that is required is that the person concerned must admit it, and only then does it become relevant.

How must he admit it?

Surely that is simple. He must simply get up and say whether he is a Coloured or a White man. I cannot see what difficulty the hon. member has in this regard. The person must get up before the Board and say that he cannot be classified as a Coloured because he is a White man, or vice versa. It is true that the Minister is now proposing an amendment to investigate whether he is telling a lie or not, but nevertheless that is the only way in which a person can admit what he is. That is the only interpretation that can be attached to it, and if the hon. member wants to put a different interpretation on it it will be an impracticable one. I admit that these are matters which can be very important to certain persons. The hon. member for Port Elizabeth (South) (Mr. Plewman) quoted decided cases here and I also want to refer to one, viz. the case of Moller v. the Keimoes School Board. In this case there was reference to “European extraction”, and the hon. members who are lawyers will remember it. The children involved in the case were not allowed in the White school because they had 15 per cent Coloured blood. But still I consider that under the proposed definition it is quite possible that those children will be allowed into the White school, in spite of the fact that they have 15 per cent Coloured blood. I therefore want to repeat what I said before, that this definition is much less drastic than any other one in the Statute Book. And still the United Party is opposed to it. Why? Simply because they do not understand it, and because they are against race classification. That is the whole reason for their opposition to this Bill. Lawyers on the side of the United Party know as well as I do that this is a much less drastic definition, but just because they are opposed to population registration they are now opposed to this Bill also.

But you have just said that if we come into power we will not repeal this Act.

I think the hon. member who made the interjection is one of the less liberal members of the United Party, and I predict that the day the United Party decides to repeal this legislation he will leave the caucus. As things are, he is just sitting on the edge of the caucus!

Mr. Speaker, for the reasons I have mentioned I can vote for this Bill with a clear conscience, and if it is compared with the definitions used in the past the United Party has no leg to stand on.

Mr. Speaker, if the Government is intent on introducing a definition of a White man which will stand the test for all time and at the same time interpret the definition of the population register, then it is inevitable that the hon. the Minister will be called upon to amend the original definition. That I think can be accepted as inevitable. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive”! Whom did we practise to deceive, Mr. Speaker? Simply ourselves. We deceived ourselves into believing that it was possible to define a White man by means of a definition of this kind. We imagine that we are the direct descendants of the Caucasian race, a race which is acknowledged by all ethnologists as being the White race of history. But we do not belong to those people since we are, all of us, the products of a fusion of races. It is, consequently, exceedingly difficult for anyone to give a definition of a White man to-day in the general sense of the term. Our particular definition will be in accordance with the South African interpretation of what is meant by a White man, and even that varies from man to man, from province to province, and from city to city.

I should now like to say something about what the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (North) had to say about the Coloured people. He referred to the Natal test for a White child, while the hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. F. S. Steyn) made a similar reference to the admission of children in the Transvaal schools. I should like to quote an example in this respect which falls within my own personal experience—the example of a typical three-teacher school in the Transvaal when I was an inspector of schools. In this particular school there were three children who were darker than the others. During the interval I asked the principal who these children were and where they came from. He thereupon told me their story. From that it appeared that of their four grandparents, one was Black—a Native and not a Coloured—while three were White. These children were, therefore, three White quadroons. I asked the principal what the school committee had done about the matter, to which he replied that nothing had been done as the school committee accepted these children as being part of the community. When I asked him whether he had told them what the interpretation of the law was, he said he had. They, however, said that these children were accepted because their history was known. These children, in other words, will satisfy the definition of “White” in the present law because they will be accepted as such by the community. I asked the principal what the reaction of the other children was to them. He replied that these three children were amongst the most popular children in his school. Finally I asked him what they were like in so far as intellectual capabilities were concerned and he replied that they were standing very high in their classes. Now, Sir, this is an humane approach. Under the definition in the present Bill they will, of course, be disqualified on the grounds of descent because everybody knows what their descent is.

But they are also Whites by descent?

Is a White quadroon White by descent? A White octoroon can be White by descent and can escape quite easily in South Africa.

If these children were asked what they were, would they not have said that they were Whites?

But children will never be asked! They are minors. When a child goes to school, he is never asked what his descent is! Are hon. members on the other side suggesting that a child of five years of age should be asked to say what his descent is? [Interjections.] In regard to the position in Natal to which the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (North) referred, I understand the ordinance provides that if the child’s father served in a White regiment, or if his father’s brother served in a White regiment, it will be a guarantee that child is White. If the hon. the Minister of Defence had been here, I am sure he would have supported me in this. The hon. member also ridiculed the suggestion that it was a “straf” to be a Coloured. In this connection, the hon. member for Vereeniging (Mr. B. Coetzee) stated the other day during this debate that there was such a thing as pride of race. That is so, Mr. Speaker. If, however, the present position were reversed and the law made provision only for Coloured men to sit in this Parliament; that only Coloured men could go to the Universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch; that only Coloured children could be privileged in schools; and that job reservation would operate only in favour of Coloureds, then we would all be trying not for White, but for Coloured!

Order! I think the hon. member should now try to return to the Bill! The hon. member is drifting too far away from it.

We were told that it was the case of a Chinese which brought about this legislation. I do not know whether hon. members have already been to Northern China. The Chinese are not one race and do not all look alike. On the contrary, the Chinese from Northern China, on the border of Manchukuo, are, one can almost say, tall White men. They will pass for White men. When we speak of the Chinese, we should not be deceived into thinking that the Southern Chinese are typical of all Chinese and we cannot, therefore, generalize as hon. members have been generalizing in this debate.

I should now like to say something about the remarks made by the hon. member for Standerton (Dr. Coertze). I want to say, first of all, that I regret very much the remarks he made about the circular we received in connection with the proposed conference on human relations. Whatever the differences of outlook between us in South Africa and whatever differences there might be between us in regard to the desirability of this conference…

Has Elizabeth Taylor been invited to attend this conference?

The patrons of this conference are people of importance in South Africa, and I do not think it does credit to this House if they are referred to in the manber in which it was done by the hon. member. I should like now to come to the Bill as I see it and as I should like to interpret it. The proposed definition stipulates that a White person is a person who, inter alia, is in appearance obviously a White person. Obviously to whom? To the official who is visiting him under Clause 4? Or to a Select Committee of this House? Or to the Minister? When I walk through the streets of Cape Town I can see quite a number of people who are not obviously White, or who are not obviously Coloured. “Obviously” should, therefore, be defined more closely. The requirement “in appearance obviously a White person” is exceedingly difficult to define. I do not think you can take 100 people from the streets of Cape Town and say that they are obviously White or obviously Coloured. A further stipulation in Clause 1 (a) of the Bill is that a White person is a person who “is not generally accepted as a Coloured person”. Again I want to ask “generally accepted by whom”? By South Africans? And if so, do we mean South Africans in Cape Town, in Johannesburg or in Durban? I say this because the code in Cape Town is quite different from the code applicable in Johannesburg and a man who will be classified as being Coloured in Cape Town, might escape that classification in Johannesburg. Quite apart from general acceptance, the Capetonians would know the man’s family. That is a factor which does not operate to the same extent in the Transvaal. In Clause 1 (b) it is stated that a White person is a person who “is generally accepted as a White person”. Generally accepted by whom? Do we mean generally accepted by his immediate community? What is his community and where is he accepted? The same criticism applies to the second portion of Clause 1 (b). That brings me to the question of descent. How far does this go back? How many members of this House, for instance, know the maiden names of their maternal grandmothers? Many cannot tell us their names and if you go even further back, even fewer can tell. In other words, unless we have a genealogical tree so that we can trace our ancestors, it will be quite impossible to comply with this provision. The hon. member for Standerton also referred to the effect of what we say here on world opinion. But, Sir, the effect of this Bill on world opinion is impossible to calculate!

They quote you all the time and everywhere.

We are the laughing stock of the Southern European nations, of the whole of America, of Asia—as a matter of fact, I do not know of any country in the world where we will not be looked upon as completely ridiculous in our approach to the whole question of race. I will, therefore, tell the hon. Minister what world opinion will say. When they read an account of what is being said here, they will pray “Lord, spare them, spare them yet a little longer because there are still some who are sane!”

We who have listened to this debate must come to the conclusion that the Opposition has not succeeded in doing what they are supposed to do, viz. to prove that this amending Bill is not necessary in order to implement an already existing Act. On the contrary, the Opposition has all the time been attacking a different Act. As far as this side of the House is concerned, we accept it as our duty to convince the House of the necessity for this amending Bill. We need not go far to do so—many examples are at hand. I want to mention only one of them, which comes from the constituency I have the honour to represent. There we have a number of families who throughout the years have been known as non-Whites; they have never mixed with the Whites, and never put their children into White schools. For all the years they have been classified as non-Whites. On the basis of their membership of the N.G. Kerk they, however, claimed to be Whites, and as the result of that association they were in fact later classified as Whites. That created a problem for us.

On whose recommendation were these people classified as Whites?

I do not know on whose recommendation it was; I suppose it was at their own request. In any case, I did not make such a recommendation.

Is it not necessary for persons belonging to the White group to submit statements before someone can be classified as White?

There was no appeal and therefore I infer from that no such statements were made. I think it was quite a normal case which went through without people being aware of it. When we opened our eyes we were landed with a problem. Reference has been made here to hardships and problems as a result of this legislation. Now we are landed with the problem in my constituency that the children of the group of people to whom I referred have in the meantime reached school-going age, and now the question arises as to which schools they should attend. Because we are being accused left and right of over-sensitiveness and awareness of colour, I want to appeal to the hon. member for Kensington, who is a person with much experience of education, to try to get these children accepted in Bishops, St. Cyprian’s or St. George’s Grammar School! It must be remembered that this problem was created there because the existing legislation contained loopholes, and these people made use of them and forced themselves on to another group. It creates an unfortunate problem not only for us as a White community there, but also for the children of these people. These children are going to have a very hard time at school. In view of these difficulties, it is a good thing that the hon. the Minister has now introduced an amending Bill to close the loopholes in the Act. This Act embodies our traditional policy and has the approval of the voters. It is therefore the duty of the Government to give expression to it. Therefore if there are loopholes in the Act they must be closed, and that is what we are doing. When we are now reproached because this Act causes hardship, I will not deny that sometimes hardship may be experienced to some extent. That is, however, the natural consequence in a multi-racial country where there has to be demarcation. We have already made this demarcation to a large extent. Now people like this, however, come and create a new form of apartheid—a new demarcation, because people are transferred in an artificial manner to another group. I wonder whether the Opposition thinks that they are rendering these people a service by adopting this attitude. In fact, they are only rendering those people a disservice, and if we approve of it we are not only rendering a disservice to ourselves, but also to the generations to come. Therefore I make bold to say that this amending Bill has become very necessary, in my opinion, and that is why this side of the House fully supports the hon. the Minister in this regard.

I want to deal briefly with the official snooping into a person’s descent that may take place in terms of this amending Bill and, secondly, with the amendment moved by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, and in connection with the latter I want to mention a few reasons why I believe that this is not the appropriate time for the passing of this Bill. The hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. F. S. Steyn) asked the Opposition in whose interests they were opposing this Bill. My reply to that is simply that it is in the interests of ordinary humanity. And if the hon. member cannot understand that humanity also enters into politics, he should go and make a study of the things that underlie Western Christian civilization. He went on to say that in opposing this measure the Opposition were serving the cause of international Communism. Sir, I would not have replied to such an allegation but for the fact that it comes from such a strange quarter. The fact of the matter, however, is that it is this very Government that causes the West the greatest embarrassment in the latter’s struggle against Communism. In point of fact it is the deeds committed by this Government in the name of the White man which are making the position of the White man so difficult every where in Africa, and indeed it is in the interests of the struggle against Communism that a halt should be called to legislation of this kind which is passed in the name of the White man. Ever since South Africa has existed, we have always had a traditional form of race classification. In our private lives and in the administration of State affairs we have used different ways to distinguish between the races without a Population Registration Act and without a system of general compulsory classification. I want to mention just one example. There was a time when the Coloureds and the Natives voted together with the Whites, but their names were printed in a separate section on the voters’ rolls, where a clear distinction was drawn between Coloured and Native voters and White voters. But that was done without a Population Registration Act, without snooping into a man’s descent and without a general system of caste classification. [Interjections.]

Order! The hon. member must not discuss the Population Registration Act now.

I mention it only by way of introduction. This distinction was drawn in a perfectly natural way, whenever that distinction was necessary, but no more than that was ever done, this system worked as satisfactorily as it is possible for any system to work in a multi-racial country, the reason being that the element of legal compulsion, of inflexibility and of unreasonableness, which always goes hand in hand with legal compulsion in matters of this nature, was absent. Race and descent were important factors and will perhaps remain important in South Africa, but they were never the subject of political idolatry. [Interjection.] The relationship between White and non-White found its natural level in a peaceful way and the life of this country was based on a natural sorting-out process which in turn was based on a sensitive and observant White public opinion which, in the words of the hon. the Minister himself, has always been the best determining factor in dealing with race relations. The difficulties which face the Minister to-day and which will face us year after year in the future, all derive from the fact that the Government departed, and is again departing now, from our traditional policy and from the traditional way of handling race relations. [Interjections.]

Order! The traditional policy is not relevant; the hon. member must come back to the Bill.

May I speak to the amendment and indicate why I think that this Bill should not go through?

The Act is being amended here; the policy cannot be discussed again.

I can quite understand that once a Government has elevated a view point to a principle and has incorporated that principle in compulsory legislation, as it has done in the case of race classification, it is difficult to depart from it. That is why none of us expected the Government to come along with legislation to abolish race classification.

Order! That is not relevant.

On a point of order, I want to ask you, Sir, whether this Bill does not provide for the classification of people in a way which is directly opposed to the traditional way in which we have always done it, and whether it is not in order therefore to discuss this departure from the traditional policy.

Order! The principle of race classification has already been accepted. All that is being done now is that a new definition is being inserted. [Interjection.] The hon. member must abide by my ruling.

I am asking whether this Bill amends the traditional definition of races and whether in the circumstances it is permissible to discuss the method of classification.

Mr. Speaker, I submit that I am not discussing the principle but the form of race classification, in regard to which an amendment is being proposed here.

The hon. member may proceed.

I say that nobody expected the Government to come forward with an amendment of the main principle, because it is difficult for a Government, once it has accepted a principle and entrenched in legislation, to withdraw it again. But what absolutely amazes one is to find that in these particularly difficult times that South Africa is going through, the Government amends the existing position, however unfortunate it may be, in a way which again lays bare to the world this whole repugnant conception of compulsory caste classification, and whenever it looks as though we are achieving some measure of peace and quiet in South Africa, the Government comes along with legislation which stirs up the whole country again.

Order! The hon. member is generalizing again. He must confine himself to this amendment.

The amendment reads that this measure should not be allowed to go through. May I explain why it should not be allowed to go through? My whole argument is that the time is inopportune. [Interjections.] An amendment has been moved which amounts to the rejection of this Bill. I support the amendment and I say at this time when we are being attacked from outside this is the wrong time for the Government to come along with a Bill of this kind. [Interjections.] In the face of everything that South Africa is experiencing to-day, the Government comes along and again provides world news against South Africa and breaks down whatever goodwill has been built up for us in recent times by certain circles. I want to ask the Minister whether he realizes what harm this measure is doing to South Africa? Does he realize the great harm that is being done to our name by the speeches of his colleagues and by the whole spirit of contempt that these speeches radiate in respect of people who through no fault of their own are not of White descent? [Interjection.] I ask the Minister how many cases on a par with those of Singh and Song are likely to occur; and even if there were a few hundred, does he really think that will affect the position of the White man and the course of history in South Africa so drastically that it is necessary to come along with this type of legislation at this stage? The Minister has given the assurance that the new rules introduced by him will be applied in a humane way, but every time the Minister says that, he admits by implication that the amendment itself is inhumane. [Interjections.] How can human principles be applied if the process which the Bill introduces in fact creates cruel (“onmenslike”) situations? I have repeatedly had evidence of the unnecessary mental cruelty that this sort of legislation inflicts. I had a practical case recently where a women, completely broken down, asked me to visit her house, a neat house in a White suburb. Their I found a family in a state of feverish anxiety because their classification had been questioned. The wife is unquestionably White in colour and by descent; the husband is unquestionably White in appearance. He is employed as a White person, is married to a White woman, lives in a White residential area and is accepted by everybody as a White person, and he has two young daughters who are White in every respect. This family is an ordinary attractive White family like tens of thousands of other White families in South Africa. But at some time or another one of the forefathers of this man indicated in an official document that he was of mixed descent. The family admitted this to me. The fear, the anxiety of that family, their concern about their children, is something which I should not like to witness again. This happened not so long ago. It is quite possible even that this case may still be under consideration. These people have everything at stake—their house, their employment, their social status and, most important of all, their children. There are thousands of similar cases throughout the country which have been left entirely to the mercy of a State machine which has made an idol of its colour policy.

Is this not a measure for which you yourself voted?

Order! That is not relevant.

I am making a point which clearly arises out of this amendment to the Act.

Order! If the hon. member is not going to abide by my ruling, he must resume his seat.

If that is how you feel, I shall naturally obey you. According to the amendment before us, in terms of which descent must be taken into consideration, the person whom I have mentioned, if he is pressed to admit… [Interjections.] But he will be asked. What else does it mean? When will a person admit his descent? When he is asked by an official. Strictly speaking, this individual is a White person in appearance and by acceptance and his children are Whites. But under the new provision, if he is asked about his descent, he will be in trouble immediately, and strictly speaking he is not a White person in spite of the fact that he is obviously White and in spite of the fact that the circumstances under which he lives are those of a White person. And this is not the only case that I have had. I cannot help saying that I feel that there is something mean, to put it mildly, in legislation of this kind. My attitude is that 300 years of experience in this country has taught us that it is unnecessary to introduce this sort of provision into our legislation, because inevitably it must lead to an inquisition, to an inquiry into the man’s descent. There are speakers on that side who made promises on election platforms to the voters in my presence that the Government would never introduce the question of a person’s descent in determining his classification. [Interjections.] The hon. member for Karas (Mr. von Moltke) is one of them. Once one starts this process of snooping into a person’s descent, one finds oneself on an extremely slippery road.

On a point of order, is the hon. member in order in casting a reflection on an hon. member who is not present?

I am very sorry to think that the hon. member over there regards the actions of the hon. member for Karas as a reflection on that hon. member himself. The Minister himself, in the course of his speeches, gave the best reason why this amendment should not be introduced. He has emphasized over and over again that the best judge of people’s colour and place in the community has always been the community itself.

May I put a question? The hon. member has falsely accused me…

On a point of order…

I want to ask the hon. member where and when I said that?

On a point of order, is the hon. member entitled to accuse the hon. member for Bezuidenhout of having accused him falsely?

I want to know where and when I said that.

I cannot discuss the original Act, but at the time of its introduction very great concern was expressed in South West Africa that people’s descent would be gone into, and the hon. member over there repeatedly told people at meetings in my presence that descent would play no role in this matter, and he knows that is true. [Interjections.] I say that in my opinion the hon. the Minister gave the best answer as to what we ought to do instead of this amendment that he wants to introduce. He said that there was no better yardstick then the verdict of White public opinion. He said that White public opinion was still the best judge, and he concluded by saying that with few exceptions, this approach had always produced the best results. That is absolutely true, but now the Minister talks against himself and his words quarrel with his deeds. He himself gave the best answer as to the way in which this sort of thing ought to be regulated, instead of making the existing legislation more far-reaching and more disruptive. I believe that the best thing that we can do, if the Minister cannot do away with the original Act, is not to depart any further from what has always been the traditional policy in South Africa.

And you voted for the original Act.

I was not yet in Parliament at that time and the hon. member knows that, and what is overlooked is that I was always a member representing South West Africa where the principal Act is not applicable and where we did not want race classification. I want to put this question to the Minister: Is he going to apply this Bill to South West Africa too later on? The hon. member for Karas can tell us.

I hope so.

I say that public opinion is the White man’s best protection, not laws. I say that the best factor to determine a man’s place in the community is public opinion.

I want to conclude by saying that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition brilliantly stated the attitude of the Opposition as a whole to this Bill. I subscribe to his arguments and support his amendment. Finally, I just want to repeat one question to the Minister, and I put it for this reason that the first person who replied to the speech of the Leader of the Opposition was a member from South West Africa. That hon. member defended this measure, he and his South West colleagues want it, but I cannot think that hon. members would be so politically immoral as to help to force upon the Republic something which they do not want for themselves in South West Africa. [Interjection.] Let me put this direct question: Is this official inquisition into a person’s descent also going to be introduced in South West Africa? If not, why not? I hope that the Minister of the Interior will reply to that, because if a thing is not good enough for one part of the country, then it cannot be good enough either for another part.

Mr. Speaker, when you are dealing with a measure such as this which touches the very dignity of every citizen of the country, perhaps it is as well in this closing stage of the debate to examine some of the arguments in support of this measure that we have had from hon. members opposite.

Order! I think every argument from the Government side has been thoroughly canvassed.

If you will permit me to take my point a little further, there are certain aspects of the arguments with which I wish to deal, which in my submission have not yet been dealt with adequately. There were roughly four main arguments presented by hon. members opposite and I am not going to deal with all four of them, but I wish to deal with some hon. members in particular.

The first argument in support of this measure amounted to pleas of sweet reasonableness in the application of this measure, should it become law, to the Minister. There was the request for consideration and leniency in its application. That in itself is an admission that the measure, to a large number of our citizens, will be unacceptable. Then we had the second category or arguments of hon. members of the legal fraternity, who dismissed the legislation purely as a juridical mechanical set-up to outline the racial barriers that exist in our country, such arguments as those of the hon. members for Standerton (Dr. Coertze) and Klerksdorp (Mr. Pelser). Then we have those hon. members who look upon this legislation as nothing more than an amendment to the consitution of the Cattle-bredders’ Association, such as the arguments presented by the hon. member for Prinshof (Mr. Visse). Then we come to those hon. members who were placed in the very difficult position in defending this measure in that they had to quieten their own political consciences, such as the arguments of the vociferous member for Vereeniging (Mr. B. Coetzee).

Order! That is not replying to any arguments.

I am coming to the arguments.

Order! The hon. member must come back to the provisions of the Bill.

The hon. member for Fort Beaufort (Dr. Jonker), who had some personal observations to make against me during the debate—I hope he will permit me to reply to them—was particularly vociferous in his support of this measure, but the hon. member forgets that when the original Act was passed he was one of the most vociferous members against the original legislation. He spoke no less than 20 times and moved no fewer than seven amendments to the race classification in the Act which this Bill seeks to amend.

So what?

The point is this, that this hon. member now has the audacity to accuse me and other hon. members on this side because we oppose this measure on fundamental grounds, that we are busy wishing to develop a bastard nation in South Africa, and that our opposition to this measure is nothing more or less than “beswaddering van die blanke nasie”. I think that was a shocking observation. But his memory is very short. Let me read to the House what he himself had to say about race classification in 1950.

Order! I cannot allow that. The hon. member must come back to the Bill.

We take the attitude that the amendments proposed by the Minister are not matters which can be lightly dismissed, and the effect they will have on the people is precisely the argument used by the hon. member for Fort Beaufort at the time the Act was introduced.

The hon. the Minister stated that it was no disgrace to be a Coloured or a Native, and it was not a disgrace to any White man to recognize his group responsibility within this multi-racial society. I hope the Minister will permit me to add this, that nor is it a disgrace to admit that you are a human being, and when you get measures of this nature, which affects the people to whom the Minister made reference in his speech, then the measure itself becomes obnoxious and justifies the amendment moved by this side of the House that the Bill he read this day six months. It is a disgrace to belong to a Coloured group, and as for acceptance, having worked with this Act for the past 12 years, a man is not only admitted to the White group by virtue of his appearance, but in our multi-racial society it has become the acceptance of a man in a higher civilized society and his ability to enjoy greater privileges, and without a doubt the amendment proposed here will shut out that class of person to whom the White group in South Africa has been able to grant a privilege. May I put this to the hon. the Minister. There has been a great deal said about the Chinese community in the course of this debate and the Minister gave as one of the main reasons for the introduction of this legislation the case of David Song, who was accepted by the White group as a White person in terms of the original classification. The Minister has argued that because he is of Chinese origin, he cannot be accepted in the White group. I want to tell the House and the Minister that the acceptance of David Song as a member of the White group was done on the Minister’s own personal assurance. It was a personal assurance given by this Minister to the Chinese community of South Africa that if any member of the Chinese community was accepted by the White people he could be accepted as a White person.

Where do you get that from?

Deny it!

Does the Minister deny it? You see, Sir. I was approached as a Member of Parliament by the Chinese community on the Rand and they represented to me the difficulties they were experiencing in respect of their race classification, and asked me whether it was not possible to obtain from the Government and the Minister some clarification of their position in our community, and I undertook to raise the matter in this House on the appropriate occasion, and I did so in 1960. The Minister may recall it. I raised the issue with the Minister and asked him to give a clear statement of Governmental policy as to what would be the position of the Chinese community in our country, of South Africans of Chinese origin, if they were accepted by the White community as their equals. Now let me tell the House and the country what the Minister has to say on that occasion. I quote from Hansard, Vol. 108—

And now?

The Minister continued—

And then come the crucial words—

Well, well, well!

Order!

In those words lies the whole issue of this Bill. This is the whole essence of the Bill. What difference will it make? [Interjection.] The Minister says he is glad I have raised it, but does he remember that in the speech when he introduced this Bill he gave certain personal assurances, that the descent of no man would be investigated? What is that assurance worth in the light of the assurances given to the Chinese community? But more than that, the Minister seeks to introduce a measure now where the White man should be proud of his group and of his position, but here was one White man, myself, approached by the non-White group, who raised the matter in the highest Legislative body of the country, and when the Chinese community of Johannesburg came to me at the end of the session and asked what the Minister had said, I said: You need have no fears at all; the White community of South Africa is a civilized community and you can accept the word of the Minister. You can accept the word of a Minister, if one Chinaman is accepted in this community of Turffontein by the White community as a White person, I will sign an affidavit for him. And I do it on the word of a Minister of a White Government of South Africa.

Was that how you came to be appointed as director?

Order!

If a Minister of a Government which seeks to maintain the White superiority in our country, what is that White superiority worth if a minority group cannot even accept the word of that Minister? This Nationalist Party Government has created such an inferiority complex amongst the Whites that we have to resort to measures of this nature to ensure that we will remain White, which, as the hon. the Minister has stated, is the main objective of this measure. What difference does it make, in the words of the Minister, if we did recognize the entire Chinese community of South Africa? Will they sabotage our position? Are they not as civilized as we are? If they are accepted in a White community and enjoy all the privileges which that community enjoy, what difference will it make? Will it undermine our position as Whites? Will it make us any weaker? You see, Mr. Speaker, I am sorry to have to say this—I have never before said this to a Minister of this Government—but I do not accept one single assurance which the hon. the Minister has given us in respect of this measure. Because the Minister was not prepared to stand by his own assurances to a few Chinese people of South Africa. On what basis can any other minority group accept the word of this hon. Minister in regard to this measure? [Interjections.] I can only say that we have reached a position where, because of the inferiority complex which hon. members opposite have created amongst the Whites of this country, we have to come forward with a measure of this nature in order to maintain our position as White men in this country. Relate this position to any other group of people on the African Continent and to any other group within our own community. In what respect can it be expected that the White racial group of our country will be carried away as far as the other minority groups are concerned? If a South African citizen of Chinese origin wishes to cross the colour line because of the additional privileges he will enjoy as a member of the White group—because we as a White group enjoy greater privileges—is he to be blamed?

What has that to do with this Bill?

It has everything to do with it.

Do you believe in the colour barrier?

Of course I believe in the colour barrier. I have greater faith in my own group, I have greater pride in my own group than the hon. member for Vereeniging (Mr. B. Coetzee) because if the hon. member makes interjections of that nature, he must be fearing for the morals of the White people of this country. If he makes that admission then at the same time he is admitting that the White group of South Africa has not got the ability or the superiority or the pride of race to maintain their position as a White group without legislation of this nature. [Interjections.]

Order! I do not want any more interjections. They only divert the speaker from the subject under discussion.

When you weigh this measure against any argument that has been advanced during the course of this debate by hon. members opposite, you cannot escape the fact that if this measure had to affect but one applicant in respect of the Population Register, if it had to upset the dignity of one South African citizen in respect of his position, his future, his life, his association with his fellow human beings, if the dignity of one South African is dragged through the mire of scandal and the rest of it, then, Mr. Speaker, the Bill is objectionable. There is only one attitude which this side of the House can adopt and that is to say: This day six months Let me add this, Sir. I think if we have to resort to it, as a White group, in the course of a debate of this nature, that members on the Government benches accuse members of the Opposition of being saboteurs, when members of the Opposition state their principles and their sincere belief in the way in which they wish to maintain the White race in South Africa, when they accuse the Opposition of wishing to create a bastard race in South Africa, then I hope the public of South Africa notice that. Those hon. members will need legislation of this nature to maintain human dignity; they will not be able to maintain it any other way.

One wonders why at this stage the hon. the Minister comes forward with a Bill of this sort, Sir. It is an admission that the Government have been unable to prevent people from crossing the colour bar, that their previous legislation has failed and that there have been appreciable numbers of escapes. This is an effort on the part of the hon. the Minister to rebuild the colour bar, but he cannot find the place at which to construct that colour bar. He is trying to find some way of distinguishing the people who have blood of Coloured people in their veins from those who have not. And there is no scientific method by which he can do it. There is no scientific method by which blood can be tested which will show whether a man has part of the Coloured races in his system. The hon. the Minister must therefore search for some other method of distinction. Firstly in this Bill he turns to inheritance, inheritance by the germ cell. Formerly the decision depended on the inheritance of the environment. Provided a child inherited a civilized White environment, was brought up in a White environment, grew up in a White environment and was generally accepted by the community as White, then, Sir, he was White. But the Minister is not satisfied. It appears that somehow or other people are escaping the bar and he must try to stop them and so he turns to these two new methods, the method of descent and the method of investigation. Let us consider first the question of inheritance of the germ cell, that is inheritance as it were, through the blood. How far, Sir, is the hon. the Minister going to go back? There can be no doubt that history in this country shows that miscegenation commenced in the early stages of the White settlement. I think there can be no doubt about that in spite of to-day’s speech by the hon. member for Fort Beaufort (Dr. Jonker). As was said by the hon. member for Fort Beaufort history reveals that one of the early governors was Coloured. We know of a lady called Eva who associated with the early settlers. How far back is the hon. the Minister going to go? Because with counting a generation as 30 years there have roughly been nine generations since van Riebeeck settled here. If amongst van Riebeeck’s companions there was miscegenation—and there does seem to have been—then there will be 1/512th part which is not White in the present descendants. How is he going to investigate this inheritance of the blood cell? It is quite simple. He should engage the services of the archivists. Get the archives to give him the history of the early settlers. The names will still be here. The genealogical trees of the old families are all there. Is the hon. the Minister going to have the courage or is he going to use his courage on the unfortunate person whose one great grandmother, three generations ago, had Coloured blood? Is he going to have the courage to declare once and for all the colour out of our group of people? It is no use pretending that there are no escapes. There are escapes. People continue to escape through. Let me quote as near an authentic history as I can. For the period 1911 to 1921, according to the census, the Bantu population increased 16.89 per cent, the Europeans by over 19 per cent. In the meantime the Coloured people increased by 3.7 per cent. This is really a most astonishing phenomenon. We know that if anybody practises birth control it is the White group. We know that the Coloured people are a fertile group and they look after their children rather better than the Bantu do so that a high proportion of their children survive.

What are you quoting from?

Had they maintained the average birth rate for the period—and they seem in all respects to have done so—they should have added nearly 107,000 to their number. Instead of that they added a paltry 20,000.

Order! What has that to do with the Bill?

It has this to do with the Bill, Sir. I want to ask the hon. the Minister where have the other 87,000 disappeared to? They are missing. They have escaped into the White group. They have certainly not escaped into the Black group. That is why this hon. Minister is bringing this Bill forward.

What are you quoting from?

I want to explain to that hon. member…

On a point of order, Sir, is an hon. member allowed to quote and refuse to say what he is quoting from?

Yes. The hon. member for Durban (Central) (Dr. Radford) may continue.

He is going to tell us now what he is quoting from. He is quoting from the Chiropractor’s Handbook.

The hon. member for Durban (Central) may proceed.

It is said in Pretoria…

By whom?

It is said in Pretoria that when the Coloured people see their near-White friends looking into the windows rather than greeting them, they refer to them as “venstertjies”. They would rather look in the window than embarrass themselves and the White that they are trying to mix with, than greet their old Coloured friends and relations. That is what is said in Pretoria.

Order! What has that to do with the Bill. The hon. member must come back to the Bill.

Very well, Sir, I will come back to the Bill. I want to ask the Minister how is going to investigate. He has to investigate firstly the ancestry. As I have suggested he can use the archives. It would be as well to start there. If that does not suit him he can ask the various families for their genealogical trees. There are many old families in this country who are proud of their genealogical tree and they do not mind very much if there is a strain of Coloured blood in it. We do know that miscegenation between the early settlers and the slaves was moderately common and that the offspring was frequently accepted into the household. That still happens in parts of the world although not here. How is the hon. Minister going to inquire and advise his new—I hesitate to call it a Gestapo but it might be something of that nature—investigators to snoop into the antecedents of people? How is he going to examine physical features?

Order! That point has been made.

I want to explain how I have done this when faced with this problem. Because the Minister is reduced to external appearance; he is reduced to whether the hair is crinkly, he is reduced to the fact that there is colour somewhere. He is reduced to whether or not a person has a bridge to his nose. Is he going to teach his investigators to look for thick lips? Because those are the characteristics of the Bantu group and the Hottentot group.

What does the Red Book say?

How is he going to arrive at that? What is he going to instruct them to look for? I, as a member of this House, am sometimes requested by people to give certificates whose origin and race are doubted by the population registrar. The last time I spoke to him I asked him on what he based his decisions. He told me that I should base it on whether I would accept such a person in my home, whether I would have him to my table. I think that was presumption, Sir, on the part of the population register officer. I do not know his name. I thought to myself that there were Indian doctors with whom I would not mind sitting down at table with. I would not mind sitting down to eat with people of my profession. I have sat down at association dinners with people of my own profession who are Bantu. I have even sat down with Nationalists! When I ask myself as a man trying to be honourable and as a man trying by scientific objective observation to arrive in each particular instance: How can I say whether this man or this woman is Coloured or White? I say to myself: Where do I find a specimen, where do I find specimens of White people who have been completely vetted by the highest judgment of the land? And I say to myself; in those benches opposite. I say to myself: There is no man on the Nationalist Party benches who has not been vetted and who is not undoubtedly 100 per cent White. So I looked at the woman and I said: I know a man in the House with hair like yours. Or I say to the next person: I know a man in the House with your colour. Or I say to the next: I know a man in the House whose nose is like yours. So I gave him a certificate. Not on my judgment. Mr. Speaker, I took an objective view and I gave judgment in my mind and I am satisfied that I did it honestly. I judged purely and simply on the basis of members of the Nationalist Party sitting in this House.

Finally, before I sit down—I am sorry there is a lot more I would have liked to say—I want to ask the hon. the Minister and point out something to him which he has not thought of. He said 15 people came to him and asked to be re-classified as Coloureds. He takes great virtue unto himself for that. I can assure him that within the next year or two he will have many coming with that request because they want to escape military service. According to his own law, if they admit that they are Coloured, he must classify them as Coloured. I want to ask the Minister this: Why is he afraid to say whether he is going to apply this Act to South West Africa?

Before I deal with the points which I want to deal with, I do want to take up a challenge issued this afternoon by the hon. member for Fort Beaufort (Dr. Jonker) in the fairy tale speech of his in which he told us about the origin of the Coloureds. During the course of that speech he challenged us to produce any evidence that any of the Coloureds in this country came from a White-Bantu mixture.

I never said that.

You did not understand him.

Let me answer that. I am sure that was the line he was on. I am not that much mistaken. If the hon. member for Fort Beaufort will go into the Ladysmith area in Natal, he will find places where, at the time I enquired, there were 58 known cases of Bantu-European matches…

Order! I do not think that is relevant. The hon. member for Fort Beaufort denied that he ever said anything like that.

I will accept that. But let me say this about his argument. I do not need to bring proof forward at all, I can scrap it, because his own colleague, the hon. member for Karas (Mr. von Moltke) knocked his argument for a loop.

Order! That is not under discussion. The hon. member must come back to the Bill.

Very well, Sir, I accept your ruling. I was simply replying to a point made by the hon. member for Fort Beaufort. I think it has been proved during the course of this debate, which has been quite lively, that the amendment which the hon. the Minister has introduced seeks really to do two things.

Order! That has been proved. Does the hon. member wish to do so again?

I do not want to prove it again, Sir, I just want to state the two points that I want to work from. I am not going to re-discuss these points. It has been agreed that the two objectives in Clauses 1 and 4 are first of all to tighten up the definition and in Clause 4, to provide a means of investigating. That is as far as I want to go, Sir. I think we can also accept from the arguments which have come from this side of the House, that this is going to cause more hardship. And I believe it is.

Order! That point has been made by practically every speaker.

I want to make a totally different point, Mr. Speaker. Ever since this hon. Minister took over this portfolio he has gone in a direction which is completely contrary to the direction which was given to us by his predecessor.

Order! That has nothing to do with the Bill.

On behalf of the hon. member, Sir, I do not think you are giving him an opportunity to put his arguments.

Order!

I am sorry, Sir…

Sit down!

You go to hell!

On a point or order, Sir, is the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) entitled to tell my friend to go to hell?

Order! The hon. member must withdraw that.

Very well, Sir, he need not go.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw it.

I withdraw it, Sir.

Order! The hon. member for Fort Beaufort must leave it to the Chair to maintain order. The hon. member may continue.

When introducing this Bill, Sir, the hon. the Minister quoted us some figures. He said that up to 27 March of this year 3,593 formal complaints had been dealt with either by the courts or by the boards, of which 269 were dealt with by the Supreme Court and the board; 233 were granted and 36 were turned down. I do not think those figures give us the correct idea as to the number of people who will be affected by this amendment in Clause 1. Because on 14 April this year the hon. the Minister gave some other figures in the Other Place, figures which I think will put the picture in a better perspective. During the course of that debate the Minister said that up to 31 December 1960 there has been 3,269 objections by people objecting to their classification. He also said that the total of those whose classification was doubtful was 128,586. So you see, Sir, that when you take that figure and you consider what the effect of these two clauses is going to be, you will realize that it will not apply to a mere 3,593. The provisions of this Bill are going to apply to some 130,000 odd people, because the proportion remains the same. That is why, in the first place, I want to make my particular point. If you look at it in that light, the powers of investigation which the hon. the Minister is taking under Clause 4, are not going to apply to only 3,000 odd people. They are going to apply to something in excess of 100,000 people. That puts it in a very different light. I think that takes us to the next point. The hon. the Minister will not give us an assurance that he is going to write into this Bill that those people who have been classified before will not be re-classified. He gave us a lead on that in his opening address on this very Bill. Because he said that many of these people had certain forms to fill in. This is another indication of the tightening which has taken place since this Minister took over. When this Minister took this portfolio over people had to go through a comparatively simple procedure to get certificates to the effect that they were accepted as White or Coloured or whatever the case may be. But since this hon. Minister has taken over he has introduced this new form which I have here. This is where his difficulty lies; this is why he wants to investigate. This form provides that three of the following persons must give affidavits, not just certificates: the officer in charge of a police station, a school principal a minister of religion, an employer, a senator, a Member of Parliament (of their particular constituency), a Provincial Councillor (of their particular constituency). In addition to that at least two family friends must declare that they regard and accept the person concerned as a White person in their own family circles and in the other White social circles to which they belong. The friends must not be related to the applicant and they must furnish their full names and identity numbers. All these people have to submit affidavits, not just certificates. In spite of that, Sir, in spite of the fact that five people have to submit affidavits, there are so many people in this country who think that this legislation is so revolting that the Minister has run into difficulties. Of course he has. I will quote him a case, the case of a girl who came to me. She had been accepted as White. She had been accepted into church circles and social clubs and the like as White. She came to me with affidavits from ministers of religion. I did not know her very well, but I did go and see the hon. the Minister’s local representative who was of the opinion that she was Coloured. Perhaps rightly so, I do not know. But that is an instance where people have found this legislation so revolting that they were prepared to give affidavits, from a humanity point of view. And that is the problem with which the Minister is confronted. He admitted it in his speech when he introduced this Bill. What is he doing now under Clause 4? In addition to these five affidavits, he is now going to investigate not 3,000 odd people but 100,000 odd people as I have just pointed out. That is what he is going to do. But he has been doing this for a long time. This is merely legalizing what they are doing now. That is what this Bill is doing. Since this Minister’s Department has been put on a regional basis, with these local people, what has happened? What is the purpose here? The purpose is very simple, Sir. The officials, in whatever region they are, are the people who decide whether people are White, Coloured, Indian, Bantu or any other particular group that have to be classified under this register. They have already been conducting investigations, Sir. More than a year ago when I handled a case for the previous hon. member for Durban (North), a case of two brothers who both had these forms sent to them, what was the position? The one brother was supposed to be living and associating with a Coloured woman. I went to see the hon. the Minister’s local representative. And what did he tell me, Sir? He told me that he had had a man watching that person’s house and that he spent more time with the Coloured woman in her house than he spent in his own home. For that reason he was going to classify him as Coloured.