laid upon the Table:

To be referred to the appropriate Standing Committee, unless the House decides otherwise within three sitting days.

Mr Chairman, I should like to begin by expressing the sincere congratulations of this side of the House to the hon the Minister on his first handling of the Co-operation and Development Vote. We are grateful for and impressed by his dynamic leadership as political head of the Department. This is why he is today sporting the biggest and most beautiful flower we could lay our hands on. This side of the House very greatly appreciates the hon the Minister’s many talents and, in particular his idealism.

We have, too, in our midst the Deputy Minister of Co-operation, who is also making his debut in dealing with this Vote. We want to congratulate him, too, and thank him for his zeal and insight. None of the problems he has encountered since he accepted responsibility for this Vote could get the better of him, and we know that none will get the better of him in the future either.

It is also fitting for us on this side of the House to express our great appreciation to the Director-General and all the officials of his Department. These are people who serve in the largest government department in the country, and we are all impressed by the dedication and expertise with which they fulfil their task. I also want to thank the Director-General for the very informative annual report that was tabled. We are finding it very useful.

Sir, the hon member for Lichtenburg spoke yesterday afternoon. I do not think that proper debating procedure requires me to provide him with a reply. [Interjections.] He delivered a typical hit-and-run speech. Yesterday he tried to hit, but this morning he is trying to run. He said he had not changed and still pursued the genuine brand of nationalism, but he certainly did not learn the sort of mock idealism that he and his party are presenting to the country from the hon the Minister, because I have known the hon the Minister much longer than the hon member has. The hon the Minister’s idealism does not entail disparaging and insulting the leaders of the country; it does not entail disregarding the rights of other people in the country; nor defending unjust methods, nor misleading the electorate with distortions of the truth.

I should like to come to the subject of my speech and talk about the consolidation process. Consolidation of the national states is a basic aspect of the Government’s ethnic policy. [Interjections.]

Order! Hon members are conversing too much amongst themselves in this Committee.

The political objective of the NP’s ethnic policy, in so far as the Black peoples are concerned, has in the past been, and still is, the creation of a separate state for each Black people, the ideal being eventual independence for each one. The Commission for Co-operation and Development, of which I have the privilege of being chairman, is an important instrument in the consolidation process. As some people are labouring under certain misapprehensions regarding the activities of the Commission, I think it is necessary briefly to sketch the guidelines in terms of which the Commission executes its task, the modus operandi it follows and, if any time remains, the progress the Commission has made in the process to date.

On coming to the guidelines, I cannot do better than to refer the Committee to the guidelines sketched by the then Prime Minister, our present State President, on 7 February 1979 here in this House. Briefly summarized, they are the following: The basis the Commission should use as a guideline is the 1975 consolidation proposals agreed to by Parliament. Secondly, our recommendations must promote and not adversely effect the economic development of the Black states and the RSA. Thirdly, they must consolidate political stability and State security on both sides of the border. Fourthly, we must not consolidate only from a geographical viewpoint, our consolidation specifically being ethnic and economic consolidation. Fifthly, meaningful consolidation demands an exchange of land by various states. Sixthly, the interests of people and areas that may be involved must receive the highest priority.

The 1975 proposals are, therefore, the point of departure, in addition to the proposals of the Central Consolidation Committee with its subcommittees and regional committees of experts, as constituted in 1980. Using the then Prime Minister’s guidelines as a yardstick, the Commission has been trying to carry out its complicated task over the past few years.

I should like to elucidate further on one of the guidelines and demonstrate that as a result of practical experience new ideas on, and an emphasis of, some of these guidelines have come about over the years because, after all, the South Africa of today is different from the South Africa of six years ago. In this connection I should like to refer to the aspect of economic development as an example. In 1936, when the Trust Act was placed on the Statute Book, South Africa was largely an agricultural country, and land was then the major and most important economic and productive asset. We realize today that adding additional land to the Black states does not, as such, promote economic development, because many other inputs are necessary today to make a national state economically viable. If a national state’s development needs prescribe, for example, that a dam of R30 million is worth more to it than additional land of the same value, it is senseless to purchase and transfer the land and thus leave the state without the dam.

When land does have to be transferred, two aspects must be emphasized: Firstly, the interests of the Republic of South Africa itself, particularly with regard to its agricultural production potential; and, secondly, the need to ensure that the transferred land will be utilized productively by the national state.

In connection with the transfer of agricultural land to national states, some of their leaders have often intimated in the past that they would like to retain the expertise and entrepreneurship of the White farmers whose land had to be bought out in the consolidation process. The Department also has an arrangement enabling the farmers of such land to lease back the land until it is transferred to a national state, in this way ensuring that an agricultural unit is kept in production.

Another possibility is that White landowners would be able to retain their land if they chose to do so, subject to certain conditions and supported by certain guarantees.

To come to the modus operandi of the Commission, one can say that we deal with our work in various phases. I should like to call the first phase the investigation phase. The Commission has at its disposal a wealth of research material concerning each of the national states. I am again referring to the Central Consolidation Committee reports of the late seventies and early eighties by committees of experts, the relevant regional committees concerned with their recommendations and many others.

In addition the Commission receives letters and written memoranda from organizations, interest groups and individuals almost on a daily basis.

Order! I am sorry, but the hon member’s time has expired.

Mr Chairman, I rise to allow the hon member the opportunity to complete his speech.

Mr Chairman, I should like to express my appreciation to the hon the Chief Whip of the Official Opposition for his friendly gesture.

I said that the Commission had at its disposal a wealth of background material concerning each state. Later in the investigation phase, bearing this material in mind, it will carry out an in loco investigation to determine the physical state of the country and its potential.

This leads to phase two. After the fieldwork has been done, all the information involved is studied and evaluated back at the office, and the Commission prepares a draft report in which it sets out its provisional recommendations. This draft report is submitted to the Cabinet and, after the Cabinet has approved, amended or rejected it, it is made public.

After this comes phase three, namely the formal hearing of evidence. Each interested party then has an opportunity to make oral or written representations to the Commission on the proposals before it. This evidence is then reconsidered.

Phase four then comprises the final proposals made to the Cabinet. Subsequently the action shifts to the hon the Deputy Minister of Land Affairs who has to deal with the purchasing and transfer aspects.

In conclusion, perhaps it would interest the Committee to hear how far the Commission has progressed with its work on the consolidation process. Apart from occasional minor adjustments that were referred back to the Commission—I emphasize “commission”—it made its final recommendations regarding all four of the TBVC-countries, including Qwaqwa and kwaNdebele. The Commission has also made its final recommendations regarding Lebowa and Gazankulu. These recommendations will soon be discussed by the Cabinet Committee. As far as kwaZulu is concerned, the Commission has formulated its provisional proposals—that is phase two—and its report on there is already with the Cabinet Committee.

The only remaining state is kaNgwane. Last week the Commission dealt with the first phase—the investigation phase—regarding kaNgwane. We are expecting, and hoping, that by the end of June we shall have a draft report ready. The Commission is therefore satisfied that it has made good progress in completing this part of the task. I should like to add, however, that this would not have been possible had we not had at our disposal dedicated and knowledgeable officials who were assigned to the Commission. I should like to pay tribute to them.

We also have other functionaries and advisers who are of great assistance to us.

In conclusion, my personal thanks and very great appreciation to my fellow commissioners. They are all colleagues of mine and we work very well as a team. It is a great privilege for me to be associated with such top colleagues on the Commission.

Mr Chairman, I wish to claim the privilege of the half-hour.

I am not going to follow the hon member for Ermelo directly although I will refer to certain aspects of consolidation later during this speech, and possibly also later in the day.

This is the first time that we are discussing this Vote since the hon the Minister took over responsibility for it, and I should like formally to welcome him to his new post in the Cabinet. We recognize that the portfolio which he now administers is a highly intricate and a highly sensitive one, particularly at the present time in South Africa, and the hon the Minister is going to have to produce a combination of a variety of considerable talents in order to succeed in the responsibilities which he has assumed.

He will need ability. He will need energy. He will need patience in great abundance. He will need to be skilful both as an administrator and as a diplomat. He will need to establish an unblemished credibility with the masses who are the responsibility of his department, and therefore he is going to need, I believe, to be very clear indeed in his own mind as to the direction in which he is moving, and he is also going to need to be sure that the Black people of South Africa are aware of what lies at the end of the tunnel for them, the tunnel through which the hon the Minister is leading them. This means that, among other things, his channels of communication with his department must be direct and clear. From the Director-General down to the most junior official there must be absolute understanding as to what direction is being followed, and there can be no room for the tortoises about which his predecessor so often complained.

Above all these talents which the hon the Minister is going to have to combine I believe that he will need to show a flexibility in approach; he will have to be innovative in himself and I hope that he will also be perceptive of the views and ideas of others in regard to the task he is performing.

As far as we in these benches are concerned, there is no doubt that there will be times when we will be critical of the hon the Minister, particularly in matters of general political philosophy, I think. I do hope, however, that when we express criticism it will be seen to be constructive criticism, and I hope also that we will be able to establish a basis for a working understanding with the hon the Minister in regard to his responsibilities in the interests of all concerned.

Having said that, Sir, I want to point out that there are so many matters covered by this department that one can frankly say that there is something wrong with the Rules of this House in terms of which the time for a debate in connection with a department as important as this one is restricted. In the time at my disposal, however, there are two specific issues which I want to raise, namely the whole issue of third-tier government for Blacks—in the first instance—and secondly, Sir, the future of Natal and kwaZulu.

In regard to the first matter, the question of third-tier government for Blacks must be of major national concern for all of us at the present time. The operation of community councils, of Black local authorities and their respective links with the development boards are issues which need urgently to be dealt with by the hon the Minister. I hope he will do so during the course of this debate.

If the Government intends to use these structures of third-tier government as the base upon which to build the extension of political and constitutional development for the Black people of South Africa, then they have a crisis of major proportions on their hands, because however good their intentions may have been there is no doubt that there is a danger of that base of third-tier government crumbling before our eyes at the present time in this country.

The community councils have always had a legitimacy problem. There has been suspicion, there has been doubt and there has been dissatisfaction about their viability and method of operation. They have been hamstrung by lack of funds and proper financing, and a lack of any real authority. Moreover, they have in many cases been seen as merely the arm of the administration or development boards which sit over them rather than as representatives of the communities they purport to serve. The sad fact is that the system has been defective and inadequate and the councils have not found acceptance with the majority of the people. I believe that what we are seeing now is that situation being tragically exploited all over South Africa.

We know that elections have been characterized by pathetically low polls, and that too has of course underscored the lack of interest and confidence among the people within the system itself.

In the present climate of unrest in South Africa, I think we see a further and frightening manifestation of the rejection of the community councils in the attacks on the persons, properties and families of those serving on them. This has understandably been followed by the resignation of many community councillors and a breakdown of the system in many parts of South Africa.

The same sort of situation is likely to prevail in respect of the Black local authorities established or to be established in terms of the Black Local Authorities Act, unless the Government takes urgent steps to give greater legitimacy to the people serving within the infrastructures that have been set up. I believe there is a desperate need for the Government to review the whole system and also the background against which it operates. We know that here too the Black local authorities have suffered under a number of defects within the system since the Act was passed.

It is known that we in these benches—both on the select committee and when the Bill came before Parliament—supported the Black Local Authorities Bill because we saw it as placing local authorities in the Black areas on the same basis as far as third-tier Government is concerned as the Whites in South Africa. It was a good piece of legislation and we were satisfied that it represented a distinct improvement on the previous situation. However, we were at pains throughout to point out that unless the financial aspect of the operation—that is the Black local authorities operation—was clarified, unless their revenue sources were both defined and provided in order to enable them to carry out their responsibilities, problems would arise. I think we already see these problems in the operation of the Black local authorities.

There is thus a need to ensure that additional revenue sources are made available to Black local authorities. For example, there is a need to expedite the issue of 99-year leases and to expedite the granting of freehold title in the townships—that is a vital matter—so that revenue obtained from those sources in the normal way, that is by way of rates and taxes, can be made available to the Black local authorities.

There is also a need to ensure that when a development board transfers its powers to local authorities, the land and the properties owned by the board pass to the local authorities, which is not always the case at the present time.

Then there is also a general need to look at other revenue sources and to remove the obstacles which prevent the Black municipalities having access to these revenue sources.

If, however, lack of financing power or authority has been one of the reasons for the problems the local authorities have experienced in trying to achieve legitimacy, the other and perhaps the greatest factor has been the belief among the Black people that the Government regards rights granted to Blacks at the third-tier level as a substitute for rights in the overall political structure at first-tier level in this country. That fact alone has weakened the credibility of the people serving on the community councils because they are seen to be participating in a system which is held out by the Government as a substitute for rights in the greater political area of South Africa.

For that situation, the Government has itself to blame. One remembers that this is precisely what the Government implied in the pre-referendum run-up when they used this example to try to indicate that Blacks were not being excluded from the new constitutional dispensation in South Africa. We know—it is a matter of history—that this brought about an immediate reaction from substantial Black organizations which said: “If you are going to offer us these rights at local Government level and say to us that this is a substitute for greater political rights, we will have nothing to do with it.” That led to the refusal by substantial Black organizations to participate in elections for Black local authorities.

So the hon the Minister has a major problem in regard to third-tier government for Blacks. The problem now is how to somehow secure and/or resurrect the base of third-tier government from the ashes of inadequate planning and sometimes disastrous presentation to the people, and the Government, I believe, will have to go back to the drawing-board in order to establish this base if indeed this is to be the basis for further rights for Blacks.

I believe that as a general guideline the Government will have, inter alia, to do four things. Firstly, they will have to embark on largescale consultation with Blacks in the urban areas in order to evolve and build up confidence in a system which will be functional and acceptable. Secondly, they will have to look again at the financial viability of any infrastructure of local government which is set up. Thirdly, in consultation with Blacks, they will have to examine the entire operation of development boards which at the present time are seen by the Black people to be more representative of White interests than of Black interests. Fourthly, they will urgently have to produce a declaration of intent insofar as Black rights beyond third-tier government level are concerned. This is of vital importance. These are matters which need the urgent attention of the hon the Minister, his department and the Government and I hope the hon the Minister will take the opportunity during the course of this debate to deal with these issues.

The second item that I want to refer to is the situation of Natal/kwaZulu on which I want to focus attention. When one looks at the Natal/kwaZulu region it is clear that there is absolute interdependence between Black and White in that region. This is so economically, culturally and socially. The region cannot be administered on the basis of totally separate White and Black administrations, and I believe that even Government members must realize at this stage that it is idle to speculate that what is considered to be kwaZulu can operate on a basis independent of Natal and of the rest of South Africa. Therefore, I believe it is high time that the Government gave us an indication as to what it intends to do in this region.

For years now there has been talk about consolidation around the country—we have had it again this morning from the hon member for Ermelo. They have indicated that their consolidation proposals in the other three provinces have been largely completed. We have now been told once again that the committee dealing with it has handed in its proposals in regard to consolidation for the province of Natal.

However, there is a certain silence. In previous years when we questioned the Government we were put off on a number of grounds. Last year we were told by the hon the Minister’s predecessor that the consolidation plans could not be proceeded with because of the activities of the Rumpff Commission in respect of the Ingwavuma dispute. After the Rumpff Commission was disbanded we were then told that the committee was giving consideration to its proposals but that those would be presented, I think, by the end of November last year. Later on we were told that we would receive some information in February of this year, and we are still waiting to hear what the Government is going to do about the consolidation of kwaZulu.

I want the hon the Minister to indicate—and I hope he will use this opportunity—what the Cabinet is going to recommend in this regard. He must realize that there is considerable uncertainty arising out of this issue which is totally unsettling for both Whites and Blacks in the province, and that there is a growing feeling among a wide spectrum of opinion that it is impossible to embark on any realistic plan of consolidation of kwaZulu because of the total interdependence of White Natal and Black Natal to which I have referred. If the Government has come to that conclusion, I believe they must tell us what their alternative plan for the Natal/kwaZulu region is. I ask the hon the Minister to tell us, for example, whether he has given any consideration whatsoever to the recommendations of the Buthelezi Commission report which addressed itself extensively to this problem and in respect of which the Government has thus far been totally negative. I want to ask the hon the Minister whether he has read the report. Has he read it? He nods his head. [Interjections.] He says he has read large parts of the report. Sir, is this report being considered seriously by the hon the Minister of his deputy? I ask this because it is of vital interest to the people of kwaZulu and Natal as a basis of discussion for the future of the region concerned.

I want to ask the hon the Minister to tell us when he replies whether there will be any flexibility in dealing with the Natal/kwaZulu situation and whether provision will be made for consideration of a dispensation for Natal which may differ from that which applies in the rest of South Africa. Is there going to be that sort of flexibility? There is a wide cross-section of opinion in Natal which believes that the interdependence of White Natal and kwaZulu must be given formal recognition and that joint infrastructures should be created in order to provide for that interdependence. Therefore, I ask the hon the Minister to indicate whether he or the Government will be flexible in giving consideration to those opinions which come from Black and White in Natal. They represent a wide spectrum of opinion from commerce, industry and agriculture and of academics from the various race groups in Natal. The hon the Minister ought to know that that feeling exists in the province of Natal.

I believe, therefore, that it is of vital importance that the Government should at the earliest opportunity give an indication as to what its attitude is in respect of the very special circumstances obtaining in Natal. I hope the hon the Minister will deal with this situation in specific terms during the course of today.

Mr Chairman, I have no intention of responding to the hon member for Berea’s speech. I should very much like on a more opportune occasion to conduct a more significant conversation with him on the matters he raised.

I should like to speak on the aspect of industrial development on the borders within the national states. I wish in particular to express my appreciation towards the Government for the specific incentive measures which are being arranged to make border industrial development possible. One aspect consequential upon this is that the opportunity arises for the creation of job opportunities as near as possible or within the national states; that is, as close as possible to the traditional living conditions of a large number of Black people. At present I am referring especially to Natal. A further aspect arising from this is the reduction in undesirable migrant labour. On previous occasions I adopted a clear stand that migrant labour was undesirable, that it created social problems, resulted in political instability and was economically expensive. I do not wish to enlarge any further on that aspect at present.

I accept that consolidation proposals for Natal/kwaZulu have not yet been announced but that the general approach is that resettlement is to be limited to a minimum. I wish to refer specifically to the Drakensberg and Tugela areas, not only because they fall in my electoral division but because they are regions demanding serious attention.

In my opinion agricultural development and practices among Blacks require urgent attention. Attention should be given to agricultural development programmes in co-operation with local tribal headmen of kwaZulu and the kwaZulu government. Sources of financial aid to those involved should form part of that plan; attention should be given to reduction in stock, improvement in quality and methods of soil conservation. Urbanization should also receive urgent attention and, where it is in any way practicable, job opportunities should be created within the national states.

Our dualistic economy in South Africa—I am referring to the economy of the First World and the Third World—makes it essential for attention to be paid to agricultural development. We have other conditions in South Africa, however. Where a national territory has the capability, it should be the prime endeavour of that country to be able to feed its own people from own resources. Nevertheless we already have a sophisticated industrial economy in South Africa and the agricultural economy has already been developed maximally to a great degree in general in this country although this may not specifically be the case in Black areas. I feel that we in South Africa should pay attention to the creation of job opportunities in the total economic context of industrial development in the interdependent, sophisticated economy of the entire Southern Africa.

I should like to refer more specifically to conditions in the Tugela catchment area and especially to conditions in the Upper Tugela location and the two Drakensberg locations. It is known that more than 70% of the economically active people in these areas are migrant labourers who are economically involved in the PWV area, the Durban/Pine-town area and the Pietermaritzburg/Edendale area.

As migrant labourers they are involved there economically to support their families which remain at home. They do not find it pleasant to leave their families behind and work hundreds of kilometres away. I also wish to contend that more than 80% of those Black people who are migrant labourers in the metropolitan areas are not interested in settling their families permanently in the PWV area or in the Pietermaritzburg/Pine-town/Durban area. Although they are migrant labourers, they are not interested in settling their families in those areas. I do not wish to enter into details now, but that is a fact.

In the condition of the Tugela catchment area is evidence of overpopulation, over-grazing and injudicious agricultural utilization. Agriculturally the area is rapidly becoming a burden to the community instead of an asset. Agriculturally the area has deteriorated to such an extent that it is a serious question whether it may still be restored agriculturally. Economically and from the view of future development the area is strategic and very important; the Government knows this and public opinion in Natal in particular supports this.

Large-scale resettlement is not a practical option politically and for other reasons. The community is distinctive and would be unwilling to be resettled elsewhere in Northern Natal or the Natal Midlands; they do not wish to be linked to other tribes incompatible with them.

As a permanent option, migrant labour is undesirable from a social point of view. The only remaining option is that border industrial development should take place as rapidly as possible within the borders of kwaZulu outside Estcourt and in the immediate vicinity of the two Drakensberg locations. The basic infrastructure is already in existence; there is access to the Durban/Witwatersrand railway line—I have a branch line in mind which runs through the area. It is within 10 km of the N3 motorway, there is Escom power, there is an abundance of water—the Wagendrift Dam outside Estcourt is a 100% full at present and even in the worst drought it has never been below 60% capacity—there is an abundance of labour and much of the labour is already partially skilled from experience of work gained in the PWV area and that of Durban/Pinetown.

Estcourt is a White town situated in the immediate vicinity. Here White core personnel can slot in within the context of their own community and at their social convenience. Estcourt is situated in the verdant valley of the Bushman’s River and within half an hour’s drive of world-famous holiday resorts in the Drakensberg. Industrial development with the creation of job opportunities is an urgent necessity in this area because if resettlement does not provide us with an option to pay attention to the conservation of the Tugela catchment area, the only practical alternative is that industrial development be created there. Agricultural development is limited—the area is over-populated already. Even if Whites were to live in that area in such numbers, agricultural development would not be a practical option. Attention should be paid to agricultural development but this should be done within the limits of actual possibilities. Under the circumstances it is imperative for the Government to pay attention to the creation of a new industrial decentralization area within kwaZulu outside the vicinity of Estcourt.

Order! Before calling upon the hon member for Mooi River to speak, I have to draw the committee’s attention to Standing Order No 107 which reads inter alia:

I request hon members to comply strictly with this rule, as I intend ensuring that this important rule is strictly complied with.

Mr Chairman, at the outset, may I on behalf of the members on these benches, express our congratulations and best wishes to the hon the Minister on his assumption of the post as Minister of this department. We wish him well in his very difficult task. While I am expressing thanks, may I also express my appreciation to the chairman of the commission, the hon member for Ermelo, as well as the vice chairman, the hon member for Vryheid, who have always adopted an open-door policy and have been prepared to listen to any points that one wished to make in regard to problems in one’s particular constituency. I express to them my thanks.

I would very much like to comment on some points made by the hon member for Berea. He did indicate one matter which I would like to touch on very briefly, and that is the importance of reaching finality in regard to the consolidation proposals for Natal and kwaZulu. I would impress upon the hon the Minister how important it is that the element of uncertainty that exists at present throughout the province be removed as soon as possible.

In the short time at my disposal I wish to deal with a matter that has been passing back and forth between the hon the Minister and myself through the Press, and which needs to be clarified in the course of this debate. I trust that the hon the Minister will take this opportunity to remove certain ambiguities that exist at the present time, in regard to the Natalia Development Board and its two predecessors, the Port Natal and the Drakensberg Administration Boards.

Let me state from the start that I have a certain sympathy for the hon the Minister in that he has inherited a legacy few people would relish. However, it has fallen to his lot to explain and to defend the actions of the boards concerned. Reports that have come to hand during recent months clearly indicate that the functions of the now defunct Port Natal Administration Board and the Drakensberg Administration Board fell far short of the role they should have played in improving the lot of the communities they served. It is obvious that the boards themselves were allowed to function in such a manner that they could do more or less as they liked without sufficient accountability to the Minister concerned.

Let us look at some of the areas of contention. Firstly, it is patently obvious that the administration boards were required to act as agents for the Government in the execution of its ideological policies. Secondly, the boards failed to utilize funds at their disposal to improve materially—I stress the word “materially”—the conditions in the Black areas, with the result that they had very little credibility among the people they served. Too much emphasis was placed on the control of people, with too little regard for the high administrative costs involved. Vast funds were accumulated over the years, but what is there to show, in real terms, for the enormous expenditure of these funds beyond perhaps the numerous administration blocks and offices that have been built?

Let me make it quite clear that I accept the fact that certain funds of the boards have been utilized beneficially for the Black communities they serve. However, the point at issue now, is that there is also evidence that other funds have been used extravagantly, irresponsibly and inefficiently. The question that really needs to be answered is: Why has it not been possible to provide housing, even on a limited scale, in Black townships? Where has all the money gone?

Perhaps the answer can be found in a statement made in 1982 by the then Deputy-Minister of Co-operation—I am very interested to see that he is in the House at the present time—when he advised the Natal Agricultural Union Congress that the Port Natal Administration Board had spent an amount of R225 000 in collecting levies from farmers, while the levies themselves totalled only R216 000. Perhaps the answer can be found too in the fact that provision was made in the 1981-82 financial year for the transfer of an amount in excess of R2 million to a gratuity reserve fund, as well as a further amount of more than R2 million to a leave reserve fund. The gratuity reserve fund was apparently set up to provide golden handshakes for staff in the event of the Port Natal Board being disbanded. I would be obliged if the hon the Minister would clarify the position in regard to these two funds. Furthermore, I would like to know a little more about the amount of R5 million that was allocated during that year for capital development.

There is a sense of resentment that these funds, which could have provided improvements to existing townships, have been used in the manner that I have just described. It is worth noting too that the Port Natal Development Board employed 917 Whites and 3 500 Blacks in the year 1982-83, while the Drakensberg Board employed 371 Whites and 1 300 Blacks during the same year. This is a combined total of 1 288 Whites and 4 800 Blacks. Figures obtained from the Natalia Development Board this morning—and this is a matter I would like to bring to the attention of the hon the Minister—reflect that the following posts were filled as at 1 March 1985: 1 300 posts were filled by Whites and a staggering number of 7 234 posts were filled by Blacks. It is little wonder therefore that the Chief Director of the Natalia Development Board—which has taken over both the Port Natal and the Drakensberg Development Boards—is concerned about the finances of the board for the current year.

It is essential that steps be taken to improve the image of development boards in general if they are to continue to function effectively. I would also suggest that the time has arrived for consideration to be given to the appointment of Blacks on development boards. The boards must be seen to be playing an important role in the improvement of living conditions for the people they serve. It is for that reason that I welcome the fact that, as a first step, the Natalia Development Board is considering handing over the functions of its security force to the SA Police or the community councils. There is no way that the board will gain the confidence of the people while it wears the mantle of a law enforcement organization.

It is regrettable that the financial statements of the Natalia Development Board for the year 1983-84 are not yet available for scrutiny. This in itself precludes me from being able to comment on certain features of revenue and expenditure. For this reason I wish to request the hon the Minister to clarify in greater detail the payment of subsidies amounting to some R8 million by the Natalia Development Board to community councils of Black townships in the 1983-84 financial year, as referred to in my Question No 727.

In the very short time left to me I wish to turn my attention very briefly to statements that the liquor outlets and the manufacture, distribution and sale of sorghum beer will be gradually privatized over the next three years. It is extremely doubtful whether such a step will be in the best interests of the Black communities concerned in that a valuable source of revenue will be lost if this is to happen. At the same time I accept that the management of such enterprises requires the utmost efficiency, but if the gloomy financial predictions of the Chief Director of the Natalia Development Board come to pass, every source of revenue must be guarded jealously. I regard this as a vital one. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, I wish to thank the hon member for Mooi River for the friendly words expressed towards the Chairman of the Commission for Co-operation and Development. It is certainly a great privilege for me to serve as a member of the commission under the competent leadership of the hon member for Ermelo.

On this occasion I have various comments on agriculture in the national and self-governing states. During the past financial year the Department of Co-operation and Development once more made an enormous amount available for the development of the self-governing and national states and the land of the SA Development Trust. The self-governing and national states were assisted in nearly all spheres related to the agricultural industry and on this occasion we wish to pay tribute to our officials for the mammoth task they accomplish in this sphere. The SA Development Trust has already purchased thousands of hectares of agricultural land of which the agricultural production as well as other assets have to be maintained. It is a well-known fact that State administration is not directed at providing a supporting function for farming activities; consequently it is almost impossible to be able to farm economically within the context of the State.

As a result of reasons mentioned before as well as others it was essential for the Department of Co-operation and Development to create an organization to serve as its development arm at least as regards agriculture and the development of the SADT farms in its possession. Consequently the SA Development Trust Corporation Limited was instituted to carry out the needs of the department of Co-operation and Development. In recent times the STC has done an enormous amount in my area to further the concept of working owners. At present the STC is involved in establishing individual Black farmers on the Makatini Flats. In 1984 17 farmers had already been established there and it is planned to establish about 160 on 1 600 ha in that area over a period of five years. These farmers are currently receiving formal practically orientated training. In addition to market-directed production and growth development which is being effected, the Black farmers are being developed as trained and motivated people. The STC does not operate in traditional tribal areas where communal land ownership applies and can therefore use economic standards in the development of farming systems for these Black farmers. Subsistence farming can be accommodated within the present traditional system of land-ownership but greater freedom of action is required to bring about an independent, productive group of working owners. Here it is necessary to apply modern production techniques made possible by training and furnishing of advice. Thorough research, planning, development and training such as the STC is involved in will ultimately lead to the farmers concerned enjoying the rewards of good results. It is hoped this will lead to the acceptance of the establishment of individual farmers as the ultimate objective of land utilization and agricultural production in the rest of the national states as well. This will encourage the formation of a stable farming class forming the foundation of total rural development.

The Pongolapoort Dam in my electoral division holds great development possibilities for the future of both kwaZulu and the RSA. The net constant supply of the dam is estimated at 920 million m³ per annum of which 490 million m³ is being reserved pro tern for the use of kwaZulu. The remaining 430 million m³ per annum is being reserved for the White part of the RSA. This water will be applied only to projects putting it to economic use even outside the catchment area if it is justified economically and providing all reasonable needs within the Pongola catchment area can be satisfied. A start has already been made inter alia with cotton growing by the kwaZulu Department of Agriculture and the STC on the Makatini Flats and a yield of 1,76 million kg on 800 hectares was realized during the past season. This represent 6,5% of the cotton production of the Republic and is just the beginning.

Our national and self-governing states have the natural resources and the manpower potential; what they lack are adequate funds and consequently enough knowledgeable people to provide the necessary training. Resistance against desirable scientifically accepted agricultural practices is also often found as a result of traditional customs—a facet for which we have great understanding. We should examine the nature of the economies of the Black states within South Africa and those bordering on the country. With the exception of a few which are richly endowed with minerals, basically they have agricultural economies; a large part of the population makes a living from agriculture. It is a fact that White farmers have increased their production enormously over the past few years but this has not happened in all the Black areas. We are grateful to the officials who are doing their best to further agriculture and for the progress already made in the Black states—great demands are made of these officials. Nevertheless agriculture should receive a far higher priority than is the case at present; a totally different approach should be pursued. Some developing countries of the Third World have in the recent past begun giving preference to industrial development; others are still taking the minimal initiative and merely selling their labour but the endeavour should be to have balanced economic development. Food shortages in Africa and the high increase in population should force our national and self-governing states to realize that more attention will in future have to be given to agriculture for own use as well as for export. The total Black population will probably be in excess of 30 million by the end of the century.

Apart from the operation of large commercial projects by tribes, the various departments of agriculture and the STC, more attention should be given to commercial farmers in the Black homelands. The method of land utilization and specifically the form of land ownership require urgent attention and demand a new approach. The establishment of towns in the homelands is already taking place; this is a good development which should be accelerated. Subsequently private ownership of land should be encouraged as well as the training of farmers to acquire management expertise and effective farming methods. Communal ownership of land and keeping huge numbers of livestock instead of good quality livestock often lead to overgrazing and ultimately to soil erosion with disastrous results. We experienced the results of this last year as a result of the cyclone Domoina. After the storm we flew over the territory of kwaZulu and viewed the disastrous results of erosion. We are very grateful the government of kwaZulu realizes this and has requested the Institute for Natural Resources of the University of Natal to pay in-depth attention to the problem and put forward suggestions which can lead to increasing attention being paid to the problem. It is therefore vital that the agricultural potential in all parts of the country be promoted and utilized optimally.

Mr Chairman, the hon member for Umfolozi raised certain matters of importance to him in kwaZulu, and I should like to do the same for the Eastern Cape.

During the past six months we in the Eastern Cape have witnessed a rising tide of Black unrest which is unparalleled in our history. There is every indication that this unrest has become endemic in many Black townships and shows no signs of abating. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that in some of these towns a state of anarchy exists with an almost total breakdown of local administration, of law and order and with few, if any, essential services operating. Numbers of people, particularly youths, appear to be engaged both in a war of attrition with the Police and in a civil war against some of their own people, particularly with those who can in any way be identified with authority.

This unrest has had horrifying consequences not only for the communities involved but also for the region and the country in general. Scores of people have been killed, many hundreds maimed and injured, and damage to buildings and other property can be calculated in millions of rand. What cannot be calculated is the harm which has been done to commercial and industrial confidence in the region and to race relations. Race relations have suffered considerably and White and Black communities in that region have been polarized as never before.

The symptoms of this unrest are not difficult to detect. Indeed, many of these symptoms have enjoyed maximum exposure in the media. Television, in particular, has exploited the situation to the full, exhibiting what can only be called a ghoulish obsession with burning bodies and other atrocities. I cannot think what this strategy will achieve other than to frighten Whites back into the laager.

There are many other symptoms obvious to residents both in the Black and White communities in the Eastern Cape. The sight of troop-laden military-type vehicles patrolling the streets has become as common as in any war situation. Of late a strategy of giving massive displays of force has been resorted to in an attempt to frighten Blacks into quiescence. This has been done in both Uitenhage and Grahamstown, but I believe that it will do nothing to reduce the tension in these townships. Rather will it increase tension.

All of this must be enormously disturbing to the hon the Minister who is intelligent and experienced enough to know that addressing the symptoms will never eliminate causes. He, together with all concerned South Africans, should be addressing the obvious question of what is causing the unrest and what can be done about it.

To date we have had the predictable kneejerk reaction from the hon the Minister of Law and Order and others who should know better. These people lay the blame at the feet of the old familiar bogeymen, the communists, the ANC, the UDF, Azapo, Cosas, Azaso, agitators, intimidators etc, and the list grows by the day.

No sensible person will deny that there is a great deal of agitation and intimidation going on in the townships. No one will deny that mob rule in some townships has been responsible for murder, mayhem and acts of unspeakable brutality. It is not enough to throw our arms in the air in horror at the atrocities or to engage in futile witch-hunts; we are simply wasting precious time.

In order to make my point, I want to refer to two recent events. These are the two mass funerals of victims of the unrest in Uitenhage and Port Elizabeth. An estimated 110 000 people attended those two funerals. Are we to accept that communists, agitators and intimidators were responsible for planning these funerals? Are revolutionaries responsible for motivating this awesome display of solidarity with the deceased and for the cause for which they were perceived to have died? If this is true, Mr Chairman, the situation is indeed far more grave than the hon the Minister of Law and Order would have us believe. I would be interested in this hon Minister’s comments on this point.

What are the real causes of the unrest in the Eastern Cape? In attempting to answer this question I will rely on the Government’s own sources. One source refers to socioeconomic causes; the other to political causes.

Let us first have a look at some of the socio-economic causes. Some five years ago, Mr Chairman, the Government was given an intelligence report concerning the 75 Black townships under its control in the Eastern Cape. The then Deputy Minister, Dr George Morrison, had the following to say in response to that report, and I quote:

He then went on to say:

As a result of this report the Government appointed an interdepartmental committee which came to the conclusion that a staggering amount of R500 million would need to be spent on the townships if the situation was to be normalized. It was at that time that the Government enlisted the aid of Dr Louis Rive to draw up a plan to improve conditions in the Eastern Cape, and I shall return to that report in a moment.

The second important cause of the unrest was identified and confirmed by this hon Minister himself. In an interview with Rapport he had the following to say, and I quote from a free translation:

The hon the Minister then goes on to place the role of militant elements well down on his list of factors contributing towards the unrest. I believe that this is an objective and responsible assessment and that it holds out the promise that, with this hon Minister at least, we will be able to conduct a serious and constructive debate.

In the very short time still left to me, Mr Chairman, I would like to engage the hon the Minister in debate on a specific topic, and I refer back now to the Rive Report mentioned earlier.

The strategy in respect of the rural areas of the Eastern Cape, as stated in a report of the Eastern Cape Planning Committee is as follows, and I quote:

Now, Mr Chairman, I regard this as an extraordinary statement. If it means what it appears to mean, then all infrastructural development in the Port Elizabeth-Uitenhage area is to be frozen for the next five years. Is this so, Mr Chairman? I hope that the hon the Minister will deal fully with this matter because if it is true I would submit that welcome as the additional aid to the rural areas is, it at the same time holds out serious consequences for the Port Elizabeth-Uitenhage metropole.

Mr Chairman, the hon member for Albany raised certain aspects in his speech on which we agree with him to a great extent. It is true that riots have created endless damage in the Eastern Cape; it is a matter of grave concern to us. As the hon the Deputy Minister said yesterday and as the hon the Minister has said on occasion, they have caused damage to people’s possessions, their lives and local government there. The damage caused there runs into thousands, even millions of rand, as has already been said. Human relationships in the area have been bedevilled; the region is dangerous to Black and White people.

In getting to the reason for this, we have to differ a little with the hon member. He implied with the reasons he put forward for the riots that we were the cause of them. There are various political and economical reasons for them—this we acknowledge. The hon member should tell me, however, what part Mrs Blackburn played in the riots. [Interjections.] Her actions and those of the hon member for Durban Central caused them to lose the by-election in that electoral division—which is a good thing. We are dealing with serious problems here—we admit this! Everyone involved in the matter is responsible for attempting to solve these problems.

Let us examine the causes of these riots, however. I wish to speak only of the role of intimidation in the riots in Black areas; we know that intimidation is rampant in these riot-torn areas. There is intimidation at a personal level and intimidation of the masses. As many people as possible are involved in these riots—uninvolved, passive and also apolitical people. They are forced against their will by a small group of activists with political objectives. As I said at the beginning, there are members of the PFP very closely involved in this and who did not play a minor role in the riot situation.

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: Is it permissible for the hon member to say that members of the PFP, with reference to hon members on this side of the House …

Order! No, the hon member was not referring to hon members of this House. The hon member for Vryheid may proceed.

No, Mr Chairman, I am too careful after I had to apologize the other day. I did not say “hon members”. [Interjections.]

Order!

If he says members of the PFP were involved, he is lying.

Order! The hon member for Bryanston must withdraw that word.

I withdraw it, Mr Chairman.

The hon member for Bryanston should not adopt such a disrespectful attitude toward the Chair. [Interjections.] The hon member for Vryheid may proceed.

Mr Chairman, I wish to point out what part fear plays in this situation. I wish to indicate how many people are forced by intimidation because they fear for the lives of their families, their own lives and their possessions. They have adequate cause for fear. I want to say Black scholars, students and workers are the targets of these people. Various methods are used, for example anonymous threats by telephone, anonymous threats by letter, the distribution of pamphlets, spreading of rumours by word of mouth, mass intimidation during meetings, protests and demonstrations with placards, threats of bodily harm and also damage to property. Reprisals or active application of violence, that is to say throwing of stones, damage to property, petrol bombs, arson, assault and murder are the methods employed by these people who intimidate other Blacks.

Intimidation may also be indirect such as reports in the media of reprisals which have taken place. When such reports are given prominence in the media, they inspire more terror in other Black people if they do not participate. [Interjections.] There are school boycotts, as we have already said, but there is also violence by school pupils. Activists teach pupils not only to boycott but to perpetrate violence.

The campaign of intimidation takes place chiefly against scholars, students, workers, community leaders, clerks in council offices, the Police Force, the Defence Force—practically against anyone identifying himself with State institutions and all forms of Government structures. During organized stay-away actions they concentrate on the worker, school principals and teachers—these people are the target of the intimidator.

Violent intimidation is the order of the day. I can mention only the following examples: The murder of and assault on community councillors and Black members of the SA Police, attacks on the houses of community councillors and arson and damage to their property and the hurling of hand grenades at the houses of target victims. The gravest case of intimidation was that of Councillor Kinikini and the two members of his family where the rioters danced on their corpses and belaboured them with sticks and stones.

This is the type of act taking place and it is not normal; it arises in consequence of the incitement of people and forcing Black people to participate. Their intimidation of people has succeeded to such a degree that within six months 75 councillors resigned and 98 within the past month so that altogether 173 councillors have been forced to resign against their will. We cannot treat the intimidators gently as the hon member suggests. We must protect the lives of Black people because this is naked, violent intimidation which is being promoted by the criminal element in the groups.

The problem is that increasing numbers of young people in Black communities simply have no more respect for any form of authority—not that of their parents, not that of the schools, not that of teachers and not that of councillors. Among these Black people there is ever-diminishing respect for law and order and for figures of authority. This cannot be permitted. I should hold it against the hon member for Albany if he were to advocate this—I hope I have misunderstood him. [Interjections.] Absolute anarchy is the future consequence of this. Some youthful Black intimidators have carried it to the extent that it has become a badge of honour if they have clashed with the law, especially with the Police Force.

You should make far fewer concessions.

The hon member should go and have a look at what happened in Harrismith.

Some errors have been cured but I wish to request that we encourage councillors to enable them to stand firm. Large numbers of councillors are holding their own; they are democratically elected members who do not believe in confrontation and violence but in negotiation. I say to you the masses of Black people in South Africa believe in negotiation and they want us to support them in attempting to find solutions to these problems.

Mr Chairman, the hon member for Vryheid concerned himself chiefly with the current situation of unrest, especially in Black residential areas. I waited the whole time, however, for him to reach the cause of it. The cause at its deepest level lies in the expectation which this Government created among the Black people ulitimately also to be involved in the new constitutional dispensation. [Interjections.] As the hon member for Kuruman justifiably said, each concessions is fuel to the flame which is going to aggravate this condition increasingly. [Interjections.] I do not wish to comment further on this, however.

In the first place I wish to refer to one of the many statements made by the hon the Minister of Co-operation and Development in recent times and comment on that. This statement was issued on 12 April and in it the hon the Minister indicated that certain possible irregularities in the administration of the Lebowa Development Corporation would be investigated. I merely wish to remind the hon the Minister that his predecessor announced exactly a year ago in the same committee stage that such an investigation would be instituted. At the time a Commission for Co-operation and Development was appointed but it was later declared not to be a suitable body and therefore the hon the Minister has now appointed a one-man commission.

Because this matter has been pending so long, I really do not wish to repeat this morning what I said on a previous occasion in the budget committee on all the loans granted and which I think fall outside the framework of the Lebowa Development Corporation or the extreme squandering of money by the purchase for instance of two water-condensation machines with an estimated production cost of 37,5c per litre. Since then we have heard absolutely nothing about this matter but I wish to quote from a report appearing on 12 April 1984 in The Citizen:

That was said more than a year ago, Sir. I also wish to say to the hon the Minister that the actual origin of these irregularities dates even further back—as far back as December 1983 when the following accounts appeared in The Star. I shall quote a few of them:

In the same month the following report appeared in The Star under the caption: “Top Nats push for Lebowa inquiry”:

In this beautiful glossy edition, the eighth annual report of the Lebowa Development Corporation Limited, I read that this budget has now risen to the grandiose amount of R73 million. [Interjections.] If this report in The Star is therefore correct, concern was already prevalent at the time among the ranks of high Northern Transvaal NP officials and the Minister was sounded out to order a commission of inquiry.

I now wish to ask the hon the Minister to give us some indication in his reply when this matter will be concluded and whether that report is to be tabled here because this matter has really become one of urgency.

Secondly I wish to enquire of the Minister how much progress has been made with consolidation. The hon member for Ermelo gave an indication that consolidation plans especially of Lebowa had reached a final stage. I wish to associate myself with the hon member for Mooi River in the sense that we also wish to say to the commission we appreciate the open minds with which its members came to the various places and that interested parties could address representations to the commission. I wish to remind the hon the Minister that in the case of Pietersburg and its immediate environs there was very great unanimity among those who made representations; these even overrode political boundaries. I hope the hon the Minister will take this thoroughly into account in the announcement of his final plan.

Thirdly, I wish to get to the new NP policy as regards the urbanized Black person in South Africa. The new policy represents a radical deviation from the earlier NP policy of linking the Black people with their own national states on a political level above that of municipal government. The unravelling of people and their own freedom and rights within their own area of jurisdiction was the watchword of our national and political leaders in this country throughout the years. What we therefore demanded for ourselves, each nation in Southern Africa was welcome to enjoy to the same degree.

It is simply stupefying to see now how hon members of that party who have joined the coalition government ridicule for instance the idealism of the “Oranje” workers in whose basic point of departure is the endeavour to own freedom and self-determination in their own fatherland. I wish to ask them this morning whether they disapprove of it or whether it revolts them when they listen to the following for example and I quote:

The article closes with the following words:

Do those hon members still retaining some idealism object to this? Do they object to this idea and such idealism? [Interjections.] Surely this falls kindly on the ear of a conservative thinker. [Interjections.] Who wrote this article from which I quoted? That hon Minister sitting over there. Those were the thoughts he expressed in September 1972 in Durban. [Interjections.]

Now I wish to indicate what we can read today, a little more than a decade later, coming from that hon Minister. The glossy magazine Leadership conducted an interview with the Minister and I wish to quote a few extracts from it to indicate how radically the thoughts of that hon Minister have changed. The interviewer asks: “What about the Cabinet Committee which has been looking at political rights for urban Blacks? How far down the road are you with your work?” Then the hon the Minister replies inter alia:

Now I wish to ask the hon the Minister: What is this but the national convention of the PFP? [Interjections.]

Then the interviewer asks: “Do you foresee that perhaps the forum could develop into something which has a constitutional basis in terms of the revised constitution?” The hon the Minister then replies:

[Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, every time I listen to hon members of the CP bringing up my past, it saddens me to think that some of one’s own compatriots … [Interjections.]

Order! The hon member for Rissik must restrain himself. The hon the Minister may proceed.

… are so mentally hidebound that they simply stand rigidly by everything they have ever thought, and are astonished if anyone who is seriously struggling with the problems of this country, in his quest for ideal solutions and practical implementation of those solutions within the realities of our country, should acquire new insights from time to time and also have to adapt to the changed circumstances of the country. Like the NP I am not ashamed of the fact that in the course of history new choices have had to be made afresh in the light of new circumstances. The rigid, immovable, frozen attitude and mentality of the hon members on the other side of this House are indeed disturbing. [Interjections.] At the beginning of the debate the hon member for Lichtenburg drew a distinction between the old Gerrit Viljoen and the new Gerrit Viljoen. If my ideas and approach were to have remained unchanged for ten to twenty years then surely I would have undergone no development. I would have learned nothing. I would have been like the Bourbons of France! [Interjections.]

Before going into the details of the debate I should like to convey my thanks, on the occasion of the acceptance of this Vote, to various hon members who have extended their good wishes to myself and my two colleagues on this responsible task that the State President has entrusted to us. It is an overwhelming task, a task which is so multifarious and which moves at such a tempo that it is sometimes difficult to satisfy one of the great needs that anyone in a position of a political policymaker has, viz the need to stand back a little sometimes and take a critical look at what one is doing and what one’s predecessors have done and to ask these specific questions: Are we still right? Are we still realistic? Must we not re-evaluate this matter and adapt our strategy? A general who enters a battle with a blueprint that he has worked out in advance, and who then refuses to adapt and refuses to change, is in danger of losing. It is like the man who once—if I remember correctly—mentioned the example of Piet Retief in a debate and said that Retief had mapped out a road from the laagers along the Drakensberg to the Zulu capital, and never deviated from any plan. A general who works out a strategy must be flexible enough to adapt his strategy to circumstances in the course of that battle. [Interjections.] This is particularly necessary in administering this portfolio.

I should like to express my cordial thanks and at the same time pay tribute to my predecessor, the present chairman of the President’s Council. He is a man whom I have known for many years, a man who has left his mark in the handling of this portfolio. Due to his exceptional personal qualities, his capacity for flexible negotiation and his profound human insight he has succeeded in achieving a maximum of peace and co-operation in a situation which has a potential for considerable tension and conflict in South Africa. I want to say to Dr Piet Koornhof that I regard it as a privilege to continue with his work.

I should like to refer to the fact that the Deputy Director General of the Department of Co-operation and Development, Dr Carstens, has just retired and is no longer with us today. To him, too, I wish to convey my sincere thanks for a long career of competent and dedicated service and loyalty in the execution of this important task. I wish him a prosperous period of rest after his retirement. At the same time I should like to welcome Mr Leon van Gass as the new Deputy Director General and wish him everything of the best. I also wish to refer to the fact that two Commissioners General have reached the end of their period of service. The first is Commissioner General Cobus Jordaan who retired at the end of last month as Commissioner General for the Shangaan-Tshonga ethnic unit. In the past few months he has been kind enough to consent to assist me as adviser in the Ministry. Since he has now reached the end of his term I should like to thank him cordially for the work he has done and wish him everything of the best. He is a young man with an active career ahead of him and I am sure that he will go from strength to strength. In his place I take pleasure in welcoming Dr Hermann Mönnig, an old friend and colleague of mine who has been so kind as to consent to place at our disposal the knowledge he has gained since the start of his career in the department and later as an academic and ethnologist—the field in which he made his name—by acting as a link between our Government and the Government of the national state of Gazankulu.

In the past week I was also informed by Commissioner General Johan Mills, Commissioner General for the South Ndebele ethnic unit, that he has decided to ask me to accept his resignation at the end of June because he has reached his 65th year and also due to his wife’s state of health. I should also like to take this opportunity to thank and pay tribute to Mr Mills. Over a long period he has rendered outstanding service in various departments in the Public Service, inter alia as the head of various departments. The beacons he has planted and his permanent achievement as an adviser—including adviser to the Chief Minister and Government of kwaNdebele—is something that will always be remembered with gratitude.

With reference to the activities of this department I should like to convey my most sincere thanks to my two colleagues, the hon the Deputy Minister of Development and of Land Affairs and the hon the Deputy Minister of Education and of Development, for the selfless, skilful and dedicated way in which they have assisted and advised me. Nor could I neglect to join various hon members in expressing my appreciation to the hon member for Ermelo, as chairman of the Commission for Co-operation and Development, and all the commissioners. The amount and intensity of work done in recent months to expedite or finalize consolidation proposals in regard to various national states is truly to the credit of this commission and I should like to extend my cordial thanks to them. In general, too, I want to convey my sincere thanks to the chief ministers of the various national states and their governments with whom I have had the privilege, in the short time that I have occupied this portfolio, to co-operate very closely and conduct many discussions. In the same breath I should also like to refer in general to the important role played by the Commissioners General and convey my thanks to them as well. It is with sorrow that we recall that one of the men in this group who was particularly appreciated, Mr Vlooi van Rooyen, who was Commissioner General to the South Sotho ethnic unit, died a few weeks ago. I should also like to pay tribute here to the work he did.

It is also a genuine pleasure to convey my most sincere thanks to the Director-General, his top staff and all his officials for the dedication with which they perform a difficult task, particularly in recent months, during which it was necessary to work under tremendous pressure and often in dangerous circumstances. They have done their share throughout and have made an important contribution. I should also like to refer to the chief commissioners who are in fact the eyes and ears of the department and keep a finger on the pulse of various parts of the country. Several of them are also attending this debate and to them and their staff I should also like to convey my sincere thanks for the work they are doing. I include here the chairmen, members and staff of the various development boards and I want to thank them for the important role they play. I shall come back to this in due course.

In the debate in recent times the wrong and false statement has been made on occasion—it is not yet been raised in this debate—the Government is in fact wasting money by appropriating funds for national states because in this way it is spending large amounts of money on a so-called “apartheid bureaucracy”, as if this expenditure merely goes towards providing office jobs for several White and Black officials in the various national states. This is a false statement and today I should like to sketch in broad terms how the amounts budgeted annually for the national states are spent.

We calculate that in the last financial year the national states had a total joint budget of R1 572 7 million. To begin with these amounts are spent on education. Twenty four per cent of this total amount, viz R37,1 million, goes on education. In the second place, 29% of this total amount, viz R457 million, goes on health services and welfare services, including social pensions. An amount of R70 million, rounded off, or 23,5%, goes on “works”, which subsumes a wide variety of activities, eg the construction of buildings and, in certain instances, schools, the development of roads, the provision of infrastructure and township development. Here, then, we have a joint expenditure of 81% of the total budget of these national states on education, health, welfare and works. 1,5% was spent on the police services which, in certain national states like kwaNdebele and Kangwane, had not yet been taken over last year; the Department of Internal Affairs, 2,2%; Justice, 1%; and the Departments of the Chief Minister, the Departments of Finance and in particular the important Departments of Economic Affairs which are concerned with the economic development of the country, 11,8%. The one figure that causes me concern—I mention it last and say it very frankly—is that only 7% of the total budget of the national states is spent on agriculture and forestry, viz an amount of R111 million. I have consulted with my hon colleague, the Deputy Minister responsible for this aspect, and with the Director-General, and we feel that the availability of more extensive financial resources for agriculture and forestry within the national states is something that must be given attention and that we should like to discuss with the national states.

Where do these funds come from? I have said that the total budgets amounted to R1 572,7 million. Those funds include inter alia all the statutory amounts mentioned in the Vote. The amounts made available to the national states last year and this year are set out on page 14-27. Therefore the total amount includes so-called statutory amounts under the Vote, an additional amount, an amount for seconded officials and an amount under Vote 12 for additional salary allocations. However, one extremely important aspect is that of this total amount R385 million, or 25%, is derived from the additional sources of revenue of those same national states. This includes general tax in terms of the Taxation of Blacks Act, income tax within the State, GST within the State, general levies which the State itself may impose and various other sources such as trading licences, car licences, leasing of properties and revenue from hospital activities, agricultural activities, forestry activities etc. I therefore wish to emphasize, in the first place, that the national states spend the funds in an extremely responsible way; secondly, that the top priority is given to development expenditure; and thirdly, that it is false to speak about money being wasted on “apartheid bureaucracies being duplicated in these instances”. Moreover, the national states also supplement with their own revenue in a responsible way the funds made available by the central Government.

I should also like to refer to an article in the February 1985 issue of the periodical Development South Africa. This article, written by Mr W G Engelbrecht of the Development Bank of Southern Africa, is about “Government expenditure in independent and self-governing states of South Africa”. I should like to quote what he has written because it is very important:

Mr Engelbrecht is one of the watchdogs who keeps an eye on the expenditure of national states because he is an official of the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the body that looks critically at the provision of financial assistance to national states and other developing areas.

In his contribution to the debate, the hon member for Lichtenburg made the statement that the Government’s introduction of collective structures for the national states could only mean a federal system of government. I find it astonishing that such a man, who used to occupy a post in the department and who is probably well-informed, can entertain this misconception with regard to the introduction of collective structures. The Government announced last year, and this year as well—it was spelt out further on two occasions during the opening of the legislative assemblies of national states—that these collective structures are co-operative structures that create a body for joint deliberation on specific functional spheres between the responsible Ministers of the RSA Government and the various Ministers of the self-governing national states in order to deliberate jointly on, for example, Education, Justice or Agriculture and Land Tenure and to combine their skills and experience for the sake of co-ordination and planning. In the announcements it has been stated clearly time and again that these collective structures do not in any way encroach upon the autonomy of the participating states or their power to take decisions for themselves. What is decided there will only apply in a specific national state if the national state itself agrees and takes the necessary decisions to implement it. The areas of co-operation with reference to which the collective structures function are, pre-eminently, spheres concerning which the national states have autonomy and in regard to which they are therefore able to administer their own affairs. Therefore these collective structures are usually the means for sensible co-operation employed by various states with common interests in regard to specific functional spheres. I hope that this spectre, which is now being conjured up in additional to all the others by these professional conjurers, will now be duly laid to rest and that the hon member for Lichtenburg and his fellow workers will in future refrain from presenting this false, incorrect and distorted image of a system of collective co-operation supposedly leading to a federal structure. Quite simply, that is ridiculous.

Various hon members have referred to the gravity of the situation in the country as far as the system of Black local government is concerned, and particularly the effect that urban unrest has had on the effective functioning of Black local authorities and on the general welfare of Black urban communities. Here I should like to emphasize once again that it is not without reason that it is the point of departure of the Government that effective local government is in an essential foundation for the development of the political and constitutional involvement and activity of any community. Experience shows that a democracy in the true sense of the word can only be based on a substructure of local government, because in local government, government is brought close to the citizen. Local government deals with matters that concern the daily weal and woe of the citizen, and through local government one can have a true participatory democracy, in the sense that the members of the community are actively involved in the administration and government of the matters dealt with at the local government level in the interests of the community.

Local government is also a schooling process in which several of the national or top level politicians in every community acquire their initial experience in public life and in politics. Therefore it is of the utmost importance that with regard to the Black communities as well there should be effective local government, not only for the sake of their own welfare, but also, and in particular, in order to form a basis for the development of further constitutional reform that is negotiated with those Black communities.

Because this is so, one can also understand that the enemies of peaceful development and the enemies of orderly evolutionary reform simply cannot afford to allow success to be achieved in the system of Black local government. It is understandable that the militant radical elements that do not strive for orderly reform in this country but seek revolution and, as has been stated on occasion by their spokesmen, strive to make the country ungovernable, fear that success will be achieved with this local government.

Therefore we must continue inexorably to expose the forces which aim to oppose the local government that is being developed as an orderly, active and viable instrument for each community and therefore for the Black communities as well. Those forces must be exposed and eliminated.

At the same time I want to say that we must also understand that whereas new autonomous local authorities were established in the Black communities in terms of the Act of 1982, it was only towards the end of 1983 and the beginning of 1984 that they reached the stage of practical implementation, and that those new Black local authorities have only had a first year, a transitional year, a year of adjustment, a year in which to become acquainted with the responsibilities and tasks of a Black local government. One should understand that.

Since in addition, during this transitional year, the hostile elements which sought at all costs to prevent success being achieved with regard to local government, committed violence and stirred up unrest to the extent that they did, it is all the more understandable that the new local authorities had a very difficult year of adjustment.

I should like to repeat what I said before, and this is something which various hon members have already referred to. It is that it is essential for the development of effective Black local governments and healthy Black communities that political reform should enjoy a high priority across the broad front in which Black communities will gain a political say in all decision-making affecting their welfare.

The success of local government cannot be dealt with in isolation from the broad process of reform, and this has always been the standpoint of the Government. When it accepted the new Constitution with regard to the Coloureds, the Asians and the Whites, the Government announced even at that stage that it was simultaneously appointing a Cabinet Committee to consider the broadening of the process of political reform in order to do justice to Black communities as well. That is what we are engaged in doing at present.

I also wish to stress that the department and the relevant local authorities, as well as the development boards that are furnishing assistance in this connection, realize how important it is that the council members of the new local authorities should undergo training and orientation. I should also like to express my appreciation for the large number of courses for members of local governments that have been offered in recent years by the department and the various development board. I also wish to refer to the initiative of the new Black local authorities that offer their own training and orientation courses.

†I would like to refer here particularly to role played by the Urban Councils’ Association of South Africa—Ucasa—an organization which is playing a very important role in promoting the whole programme of the training and orientation of councillors of local authorities. Then there are also the regional organizations of Ucasa, with which I have had frequent and fruitful contact. They are also making an important contribution towards the training of councillors.

The importance of training does not only affect the councillors. It also affects the broader public. It has become clear that there is an urgent need for public information and for public instruction among the broader masses of the Black urban communities in order to bring about a better understanding and a better appreciation among them of what local authorities can be expected to do, what their real duties are, and especially what the financial implications are of the various services which these authorities render to the residents of those communities. The expansion and the execution of this public instruction and public information campaign is also a matter of high priority in the work of the department.

*Then, too, I should like to point out that the Government further recognizes the importance of these Black local authorities in that they have been given representation in the National Council for the Co-ordination of Local Government Affairs, together with representatives of the systems of local government of the other population groups. Moreover the Government intends also to make provision, in terms of legislation to be submitted to Parliament shortly, for Black local authorities to obtain representation in the new regional services councils that will provide regional services jointly to the various relevant local authorities.

With regard to the whole issue of the viability of local authorities I should also like to acknowledge the importance of providing additional sources of revenue for those local authorities, because the revenue they obtain from their service fees and from levies from the inhabitants are at present inadequate to enable them to render service of the quality that the voters are entitled to expect from them. For that reason the Government has also announced that it intends requesting Parliament, in the course of this session, to introduce a new dual regional levy—a regional services levy and a regional establishment levy—that will be imposed by the regional services councils themselves. The revenue obtained in this way, which will also be allocated by them, is aimed in particular at significantly supplementing the sources of revenue of those local authorities and communities that lack adequate sources of revenue.

Then, too, I should like to give the assurance—since reference has been made to the privatization of liquor interests and of the activities relating to the production of sorghum beer by either local authorities or the development boards—that the department is aware that it is essential that the gradual phasing-out of these commercial activities, which in essence are inappropriate for a local authority, should be done in such a way as to coincide with the availability of additional sources of revenue. Then, too, local authorities have been afforded greater flexibility with regard to the calculation of the timing of the privatization of liquor distribution points, and a period of three years has been granted by the Government for preparation for the privatization of the sorghum beer industry. I believe that in this way the privatization of the liquor interests of local authorities with regard to Black communities may be effected in such a way as not to cause financial embarrassment or difficulty, because we think that we shall be able to make available in good time the additional sources of revenue to which I have just referred.

I should also like to refer to the important aspect that the Government accepts that these new Black local authorities must also have their own law enforcement officers so that they can be put in a position to maintain the necessary law and order in the Black communities in co-operation with and by way of supplementation of the activities of the SA Police. Good progress has already been made with the training of these law enforcement officers. Several of them have already been employed and I think that this is an important instrument to enable the relevant community to make a contribution with the assistance of its own people, viz people from the community itself, in regard to the maintenance of law and order in those areas. I also wish to say—and the hon member for Berea emphasized this—that the economic recession, the difficult economic times we are experiencing at the moment, has also been an important factor contributing towards unrest and problems in Black communities. I also wish to say that unemployment is recognized by the Government to be a serious problem. Accordingly I wish to point out, merely as an example with reference to the Eastern Province, that it is specifically in the Eastern Province that the Government has just recently agreed to additional decentralization benefits for the Port Elizabeth region with a view to the promotion of industrialization there. It is specifically with reference to the Eastern Province that the State President recently announced a new and urgent irrigation and agricultural expansion scheme which will provide additional job opportunities in the short term and will also result in further economic development in those regions. Then, too, I have just been informed that of the R100 million provided by the hon the Minister of Finance for the short-term provision of job opportunities, R25 million has been allocated to the Department of Co-operation and Development to be utilized to encourage self-building activities by Black people, particularly people who may be unemployed in these times, and to provide them with loans and financial support so that they do not merely do relief work which may be of importance to the community, but are also put in a position to provide their own housing—by self-building and by their own toil and their own “sweat equity”. Therefore I wish to state very clearly here that the Government is indeed aware of and concerned about the unemployment situation, but that it is also taking steps in various spheres and in different ways to afford relief and to bring about improvement in this regard.

I should also like to admit—and this has been emphasized here by various hon members—that the quality of the infrastructure in Black urban areas in certain parts of our country is unsatisfactory. The Government accepts that it is basically the Government’s responsibility, in the development of Black residential areas and of Black housing, to provide land at a reasonable price, in the first place, and in the second place to help provide an infrastructure on a subsidized basis.

These are the important responsibilities which the State, in terms of its housing policy, wishes to take upon itself, whereas it wants to transfer the responsibility for the provision of houses as such to the home owner to an increasing extent. The future home owner will then build his own house with the aid of the financial support of his employer or the private sector, or with the aid of loans provided by the State and the Department. In this way people below a certain income level, that is to say the lower income groups, will be granted loans of R3 500 to enable them to provide themselves with a dwelling by way of self-building. Those are the kinds of funds that can be supplemented by the R25 million to which I have just referred, from which funds for the short-term provision of jobs for this year will be provided.

Then, too, I should like to refer—hon members have mentioned this—to the fact that we have a former official in the person of Dr Louis Rive who is doing really outstanding work as planner of the upgrading of infrastructure in Black residential areas. It is well-known that he planned the project in respect of the upgrading of the infrastructure in Soweto, that he also made an indirect contribution in regard to the financing of the electrification project there and that he presented, in addition, two important reports on the Eastern Cape, one on the upgrading of the infrastructure in the Port Elizabeth/ Uitenhage metropolitan area, and a second report on seven or eight rural Black residential areas which he put forward as a high priority for upgrading. At present Dr Rive and Bishop Zulu of kwaZulu are the two leaders of the kwaZulu/Natal Planning Board which is attending to the upgrading of the quality of life of Black inhabitants of Natal and kwaZulu, particularly in the urban areas. We also expect further recommendations from Dr Rive in the near future.

†In this connection I should like to inform the hon member for Albany—I think it was he who raised the question—that there is no question that the upgrading of the infrastructure in the metropolitan area of Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage is being frozen in order to promote the upgrading in other areas. The Government decided to find special financing through a consortium consisting of external and internal financiers to raise R203 million as the basic requirement for upgrading the infrastructure in the metropolitan area of Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage. Bridging finance to the tune of R30 million has already been provided and, in fact, the work is already in progress for some months. Now the money which would normally have been made available from National Housing Commission funds for the metropolitan area can be released from there and made available for speeding up the implementation of the upgrading process in the rural areas where the basic total project would involve a cost of R53 million, in terms of the rand value of 1983, spread over five years. So there is no question of freezing the upgrading of the metropolitan area. In fact, I hope that we will soon be able also to make noticeable progress at some of the most important and most critical points in the rural townships of the Eastern Cape as well.

*Finally, I have one further remark to make about the whole matter relating to urban unrest and Black local authorities. It is that the non-payment or delayed payment of municipal levies and tariffs by inhabitants in certain regions is a matter giving rise to concern. I wish to state very clearly that it is the policy of the State—and this applies to all population groups—that a community in an urban area can only receive and claim those services that it can reasonably afford for itself. Although the Government provides considerable subsidies in respect of the infrastructure in the Black urban communities, services such as water, electricity, rubbish removal etc must be provided economically. The various Black communities will have to understand quite clearly that the authorities, and their own authorities too, can only continue to provide those services if they pay the reasonable levies and tariffs for those services. This is an important matter which I should like to emphasize. Without responsible compliance with their financial obligations by the inhabitants of the Black towns and cities it will not be possible for any local authority to provide services there.

I also give the assurance that both I and the department have given very careful attention to the level at which the various tariffs have been fixed. With particular reference to Sebokeng and the Lekoa city council area we appointed, on the recommendation of Prof Tjaart van der Walt, a special a two-man committee that investigated this matter. The members of the committee were a Mr Hitge of the department and Mr Mathee of the Johannesburg City Council. Their task was to ascertain whether the tariffs levied in the Lekoa city council area were reasonable. That committee, on the basis of figures and data, found that they were reasonable not only in comparison with other Black city council areas, but even in comparison with certain White lower income areas.

By way of these remarks, therefore, I should like to give this House the assurance that the Government fully appreciates the importance of Black local government, but that the Government is also in earnest as regards dealing with the fundamental causes of the Black urban unrest, as I think is evident from the matters I have been able to touch on here.

Mr Chairman, the hon the Minister has covered a very broad field indeed and I have only ten minutes. I know he will understand if I do not reply to some of the statements which he has made. I just want to say that I am rather perturbed about this whole assessment of what is reasonable and what is not as far as service charges are concerned in urban townships such as those in the Vaal triangle and in the Lekoa area. I wait with keen interest the report of the Van der Walt Commission which the hon the Deputy Minister has said will be made available, because I just wonder how many hon members in this House realize the extent of unemployment in the urban townships today. Where, say, two or three members of a family were earning an income and were contributing to the household, there is perhaps now only one member or even none in the present recession who is earning any income, and in the meantime prices have gone skyhigh. I wonder how many hon members go shopping these days and see what has happened to the prices of household commodities. I really believe that not enough consideration is given to the impact of the rise in the cost of living and to the fall-off in employment before an assessment is made of what is reasonable, and what is not, for people to pay in rent and, particularly, in service charges.

I believe unless this is properly assessed, the unrest is going to continue because it is all very well to talk about schoolchildren boycotting schools and so on, but schoolchildren—as an hon member on this side pointed out yesterday; I think it was the hon member for Cape Town Gardens—are part of the community. They feel all the implications of economic hardship. We are in a country which does not have what the Americans call the “safety net” of social security which carries people over these periods of economic hardship. I hope hon members will remember that.

I must warn the hon the Minister that he is in danger—indeed the danger evidenced itself yesterday in the very tough amendment moved by the CP—of being considered a dangerous radical. He is joining the club and I welcome him to that club!

You welcome him, but you can never trust him!

No, I trust him all right. He has admitted that he has changed. [Interjections.] The people who have not changed are the dinosaurs of the CP. They have not changed at all. [Interjections.]

I want to assure the hon the Minister that we are not going to vote for the amendment; we are going to retain his salary as far as it is in our power to do so.

I have recently read two interviews given by the hon the Minister and have found them very heartening indeed. Although neither my party nor I by any means agree with all the views expressed by the hon the Minister in those interviews, his views are lightyears ahead of the views which were expressed by his predecessors under whom I suffered for many years. [Interjections.] I refer here to deadbeats like De Wet Nel, M C Botha and Piet Promises and, I am afraid, that ideologue Dr Verwoerd, who set this country on a disastrous course for all these years. [Interjections.] I am glad to see the hon the Minister is taking a new view, which became clear in the interview he gave to Anne-Marie Mischke in Rapport and more particularly in the interview that he gave in the latest issue of Leadership to the editor, Hugh Murray. Now, Sir, there is a very imposing photograph of the hon the Minister in this issue; he is looking very pensive but I must say that the views which he expressed—some of them in any case—are views which we are pleased to see expressed by this hon Minister who has a very important portfolio to administer.

The one idea which the hon the Minister mentioned in this article in Leadership and which I want to discuss in some detail, is the whole question of urbanization and influx control which I am very interested in and have been for many years, as hon members will know. The hon the Minister has admitted that urbanization is inevitable. Hurrah!—after we have had decades and decades of urbanization.

[Inaudible.]

Yes, of course. He accepts urbanization not only in the existing metropolitan areas, but says that urbanization must also take place in decentralized areas and in the national states and the Black states as well. However, he went further by actually saying that urbanization is desirable. To my mind that is the important thing—it is desirable. It is one thing to admit a fact; it is another to say one approves of what is happening, and that is what the hon the Minister has done.

This is, of course, an echo of the sentiments of two brilliant commissions which sat in this country in the forties, namely the Van Eck Commission on Agricultural and Industrial Requirements and somewhat later, the Fagan Commission of Inquiry into the laws affecting urban blacks. Fagan said—as the hon the Minister says—that urbanization could not be stopped. Fagan said that it could be controlled and the hon the Minister agrees that it can be controlled. We say differently. We say control must not mean influx control but it must mean a strategy of urbanization. That, too, is rather a different matter.

The hon the Minister asked for revised influx control in this article—he also said it elsewhere—on the basis of the recommendations of the Riekert Commission which reported in 1979. That is, that a job and approved accommodation must be the basis for legal urbanization. In other words, the emphasis has changed; influx control is now to be based on how to let them in, rather than on how to keep them out—that is how I interpret this change. It is inevitable, it is desirable and all one has to work out is how to let them in. According to the hon the Minister and Riekert it is to be on the basis of a job and accommodation.

That is very different from the views of the Ministers who have been administering all these years the awful migratory labour system which was based on keeping Black people out of White areas except on a contract basis. That has of course had disastrous economic and sociological effects in South Africa. It has impeded the development of skills among Black men. They are men of two worlds, moving between town and country all the time.

That system has had a disastrous effect on family life in this country. It is one of the causes of the population explosion in this country—men taking up with women in the urban areas as they leave their wives behind and then going home and producing more children there. Economically and sociologically the system had a disastrous effect in every possible way.

Among the bad effects has been an acute shortage of housing in the urban areas which has developed as a result of the basis of the policy being migratory—hostels being built and not houses on a family basis, and we see the results at Crossroads and Winterveld. This of course has not stopped the people from coming to the metropolitan areas and they have simply flooded the homeland nearest to the metropolitan areas which provide work. Thus we have this disastrous township—it is not even a township but rather an area—of Winterveld near Pretoria.

Today as we know there is a shortage of 180 000 houses in Black urban townships throughout the country. Worst of all, we have had the creation of millions of statutory criminals under influx control. That is what the migratory system is: It is designed to keep people operating in the towns only on a migratory basis. Over the past 10 years we have had well over 600 000 people arrested for pass-law offences while over the past two years more than half a million Blacks were arrested by police and officials of development boards for offences relating to reference books and influx control. These pass-laws are the most significant cause of racial friction in this country—there is no doubt about that. They are discriminatory because they apply only to Blacks; they bedevil the relationship between the police and the Black population; they jam our jails, they further impoverish the poverty-stricken homelands; they ignore the importance of informal sector activity such as takes place in squatter camps like Crossroads. They must go.

The hon the Minister says he wants influx control revised—he admits it is a bad system—on the basis of Riekert. Why, however, does the hon the Minister think that a new sort of influx control based on job and accommodation will be any better than the existing system? [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, it is always amazing to listen to the hon member for Houghton because her whole argument is always based on the premise that the Black people in this country belong to the First World community. [Interjections.] I would like to say to the hon members of the PFP that if they argue from that premise, they are obviously being just as unrealistic as the CP are with their partition policy. However, I want to say to the hon member for Houghton that basically we cannot argue with what she has said today. All we want to say to her is that it is a question of how to handle the situation. I would like to deal with one issue that the hon member mentioned in her speech, and that is the acute shortage of housing that we find in the cities.

*The idea that Black people in our metropolitan areas were temporary sojourners came and went with 1978. Any politician—and that applies to the hon member for Rissik in particular—who advocates a rigid, geographic partition as the blueprint that will provide us with a final solution, does not recognize the hard realities of the demographic situation in South Africa. The mentality that was again displayed here last night by the hon member for Lichtenburg, viz the idea that Black people are sojourners in White territory and must be accommodated temporarily, since they are merely selling us their labour here, is therefore absolutely taboo. Having listened to the hon member for Lichtenburg last night I can fully understand why the people in Harrismith did not vote for the CP. [Interjections.] They are just as unrealistic with their Morgenzon story as they are in the emotional incitement of people as regards a temporary status for Black people in our metropolitan areas.

Therefore there is considerable appreciation on our side of the House for the three vital guidelines in terms of which the Government is at present considering this issue of Black urbanization. There is inter alia the recognition of the permanence of millions of Black people outside the context of the national states, the positive steps with regard to orderly urbanization and the acceptance of the principle of the property rights. In this way the Government stimulates moderate and responsible Black people to develop into a capitalist Black middle class as a counter to the forces of chaos and violence. Permanence, urbanization and property rights, taking into account the two requirements set by the Riekert Commission, viz the availability of work and approved housing, require urgent attention as far as additional land is concerned.

I want to say to the hon member for Houghton that we shall deal with this matter, but not on the basis of opening the sluicegates so that the Black people can simply stream to the White areas. Certain basic prerequisites must be set to ensure orderly urbanization in this country.

Land for permanent settlement is the problem we are faced with, particularly in an area such as that of the West Rand Development Board. Government responsibility must be confined to providing subeconomic housing. I am being subjective when I say that I am concerned, that it surprises me, that in the guideplan region of the Witwatersrand no provision has been made for additional land for a second Soweto. Available land for the expansion of Soweto and other proclaimed Black residential areas is totally inadequate. I understand that urgent negotiations are at present in progress with regard to an area known as Blaauwbank, west of Randfontein, in connection with more land in that area. Without inviting the ire of my colleague, the hon member for Randfontein, because I do not wish to express myself as being in favour of or against that area, I must point out that area is strategically very well situated as regards transport facilities for the entire Witwatersrand region.

What is the extent of the shortage in the area of the West Rand Development Board? It is estimated that there is a shortage of at least 150 000 Black housing units in that area, which must be enough to accommodate 850 000 people. This includes areas like Soweto, Deep Meadow, Dobsonville, Kagishu, Motlakeng and Bekkersdal. Maximum expansion of the existing proclaimed Black areas offers the possibility of a mere 28 000 or so additional premises that could accommodate approximately 150 000 to 200 000 people. The intensive development of multistorey buildings in the rest of the small section of Soweto that remains could perhaps accommodate an additional quarter of a million Black people. However, the fact is that an estimated 2 600 squatter families are already in Bekkersdal. In Alexandra overpopulation is in the region of 30 000—and that is not to mention the thousands of Black people living in White backyards.

Or in Hillbrow!

The hon member for Rissik can shout if he likes. We are not going to take any more notice of them because Harrismith has finally settled their hash. [Interjections.]

There is a considerable degree of frustration and tension as a result of crowding-out and the use of recreation facilities and open spaces by Black people in White residential areas. There is only one way to deal with this situation in a decent fashion, and that is by way of the decent accommodation of Black people in White urban areas. One need only look at the demographic predictions of Prof Flip Smit to appreciate the gravity of the situation for the next five, ten to fifteen years up to the year 2000. I ask that we regard it as a matter of great urgency to find 4 000 to 6 000 hectares of land somewhere reasonably close to the West Rand that is capable of being easily supplied with road and rail links so that we can create a second Soweto there.

Yes.

Now the hon member for Rissik says “yes”. I want to ask him whether he thinks for a moment that his party, if it were to come to power, would by wishful thinking get rid of any of the Black people who are there at present. The hon member must tell us that. [Interjections.] He has the opportunity to tell us that, but I want to tell the hon member that they must stop making political capital out of these things because the essence of a stable Black community is orderly housing. Land tenure, accommodation and sources of finance with regard to this aspect are important matters of the utmost urgency. I just want to ask the hon the Minister to see to it that this matter is given in-depth attention, because if it is not we shall be saddled with squatter situations that we shall be simply unable to deal with.

Mr Chairman, yesterday in the debate on education and training I had the opportunity to say the right things about the Ministers, but I have not had the opportunity of adding my welcome and congratulations to the new chairman of the Commission for Co-operation and Development. I am never quite certain what exactly the extended commission does with the additional members who are supposed to be looking at the urban situation because I have not seen any report emanating from that extended commission in respect of urban affairs. I have not seen any impact from them at all. It would be interesting to know in fact from one of the members when he does speak what solutions they are putting forward in respect of various urbanization aspects they are supposed to be looking at.

We shall let you know.

Good, I shall be glad.

There are just a couple of points I should like to take up with the Official Opposition. I see the hon member for Albany is not here at present, but I am sure his hon colleagues will pass this on to him. It is quite incredible how much an idealist can go off the track when he is surrounded by extremists. I know that hon member well and he is a good, clean-cut, honest, idealistic country boy, but he stands up in this House and says that the SABC should not have shown the gory parts of the riots in Uitenhage. [Interjections.]

He said they should not have dwelt on them.

Should not have dwelt on them, if the hon member wishes, but it makes little difference. He also said that they should not have dwelt on all the other bad parts of the riots because of overseas dissemination. [Interjections.] That party, when it suits them, want the Press and the media to adhere quite strictly to the public’s right to know. [Interjections.]

Both sides!

Certainly, both sides. However, it suits them on this occasion for one side not to be shown. [Interjections.] The hon member for Vryheid brought it out very well: When it comes to the question of saying anything about intimidation or the revolutionary aspects of what is going on there, they are “tjoepstil.” Their morality is absolutely selective.

That is simply not true. Did you not listen to the member for Albany?

Are you on your way to join Ron Miller?

Sir, in this House one knows when the barb strikes home: Each party has its own noise it makes. That party makes a little squeal. I used to farm with pigs and the noise emanating from that side when one strikes home is a definite sort of piggy squeal. [Interjections.]

My colleague, the hon member for Mooi River, made some telling points about a specific development board. I should like to deal with some further points concerning development boards on a more national basis with a view to assisting in the improving of both their image and their functions—not only their rural functions, but also and mainly their urban functions. We all know the background and history of how initially the development boards were given the agency for the management of Black townships after that function was taken away from the municipalities largely because municipalities refused to toe the line in respect of the uniform application of NP policy. A very poor image flowed from them rather like that of the SA Police who as regards their operations were victims of circumstances which were created by apartheid legislation. Then we had a period in which those boards became very clearly labelled. They were very large and clumsy and did not seem to accomplish much at all apart from the control factor. From last year greater emphasis was placed on the development side. Certainly in the last debate in which Dr Koornhof participated there was a definite shift towards development.

Now these boards consist of only seven members. I just wonder whether those seven members are not still good Nats being rewarded for long and loyal service, whether they are not just rubber stamps, whether they just sit there and once a month take out their stamps and collect whatever is due to them, and whether the real work of those boards is not done by the Chief Director and one or two key people on such boards who are really departmental people. The circumstances that have eventuated over the last year make it imperative that those boards do function well, that their image is changed, and that, as the hon the Minister said, the third-tier government structure does in fact succeed. It is so important that I want to echo the plea of the hon the Minister of Law and Order for far better communication with the townships from all quarters—from members of this House, and from the local authorities bordering the townships—the kind of communication we are going to have when the regional services councils are established. Similarly, I believe that the relevant standing committee of Parliament should also play a far greater role in that respect.

If one looks at the reports emanating from the development boards—I know they consist only of the statutory rendering of their accounts—one sees that they are the most lifeless, undynamic, sterile documents one could come across. A point at issue is that, of the 14 development boards in the country handling all these terribly sensitive urban affairs, only six have rendered their accounts in time for this important debate. I would say that those boards should in fact supply very detailed reports covering the circumstances in the townships concerning their operations, viz demographic figures, the number of townships which fall under them, the development taking place, the housing shortages there and all the problem areas they are experiencing. I further believe that the standing committee should be able to have representatives of those boards before them in order to discuss with them the problem areas within those townships in an effort to assist them and also in an effort to make members of the House far more aware of the reality of matters on the ground.

A last point as far as the standing committee is concerned is that it should get out of this building and into those townships to assist in the communication process by investigating as many of the “knelpunte” as possible and showing our concern and real compassion for the circumstances which pertain there. In so doing, the people who serve on it will be far better informed, both as regards the problems of development boards and as regards the attitudes of the people who live in those townships. They would then not only hear from the community councils or the local authorities concerned what the problems are but also from the ordinary people and those groups which the NP sometimes tend to want to stay away from. It is no good getting all uptight about somebody who, by virtue of his or her compassion or concern, associates himself or herself with people in those townships. One such person is the member of the Provincial Council, Molly Blackburn. To label people simply because they have great concern for a situation by saying that they are revolutionaries is merely just hiding away from the facts of the matter. We are being asked to communicate with people …

Do you applaud all her actions?

No, but the Government should take a leaf out of her book and be more concerned about the things that are going on there and show its concern through the presence of its members. That is what I am asking the standing committee to do, so that it is not left to one isolated person who might well have extremist views and may tend to put a wrong complexion on things. Let us therefore replace that person, through efforts of this Parliament, with the members of the standing committee.

If you do it, you will find she is right.

Perhaps, and that is a good reason for going.

I want to come to the question of the commission because I believe that the commission, under the chairmanship of the hon member for Ermelo … [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, the hon member for King William’s Town joined his colleague the hon member for Mooi River in referring to the role of development boards. I can assure the hon member that there are vast differences among the various development boards. I regularly receive the report of the chairman of the Eastern Transvaal Development Board and can testify that this board really does a sterling job of work. This is borne out by the fact that there has been absolutely no unrest in its area of jurisdiction.

*I should like to thank the hon the Minister for having said that national states and self-governing states are spending only 7% of their budgets on agricultural development. The accusation is frequently levelled that spending by national states is a waste of money for ideological reasons and that it is done inefficiently. As the hon the Minister pointed out, the State has certain obligations to provide social services such as schools, health services, roads and security services. Spending on such services, particularly in less developed areas, is of course high because it includes capital expenditure which had previously been neglected. The State has this obligation, however, and it has to be done.

It is generally accepted that decentralized government can do this better than centralized government. The people who wish to argue that the opposite is true, are denying the right of communities to determine their own priorities. I find it particularly ironic that it is in fact the group who are champions of greater democracy who are in fact denying such a community a broader democracy through having a say over those services.

In our national states in particular the governments of those states have certain problems because there are no well-developed local authorities. The hon the Minister was correct when he said that the State also had to make contributions to the economic services, particularly because free enterprise had failed to fulfil that stabilizing function in underdeveloped areas. This function is necessary to combat unemployment and to promote economic growth. Free enterprise had failed to ensure the necessary capital formation and also the improvement of technology in those cases.

This function can be performed very well and successfully in co-operation or in partnership with the private sector. There is no reason for the duplication of structures in all respects. Needs can be met by structures which can render the service to various regions and to areas which, in a regional context, have the same needs. This can be done without threatening the existence of autonomous government.

This is also the official standpoint on regional development as endorsed by the Government of the Republic of South Africa, the self-governing national states and the TBVC countries. The stabilizing function can be better fulfilled by a specialized organization than by a government itself.

Here I should like to refer to the South African Development Trust Corporation, the SDC, which is such an organization. It owes its establishment to the rationalization policy of the Government of the Republic of South Africa under which the Development Bank for Southern Africa was established as the financing body for the independent and self-governing national states and the Economic Development Corporations of the national states which, together with their governments, fulfil the development function in those states.

The object is to play a role in commercial projects to ensure the most effective application of assets. The assets in this case are the means of production, the funds and the people. This includes profitable projects and the provision of employment opportunities in remote areas. It was active over an area of approximately 142 000 ha, of which 135 200 ha was grazing land, 2 400 ha was land for plantations and 4 800 ha was land for cultivation. It employed 4 860 workers.

The next function is development and the establishment of farmers and also the development of and settlement on Trust land. I want to point out a few examples. In all the SDC has the following projects: 1 495 000 tons of citrus are being exported, and this represents 6,5% of the total exports. They also met 14,5% of the domestic demand from the farms Zebediela and Gillemberg, and at Lisbon a carton equivalent of 10,77 per tree was obtained, something which compares far more than favourably with the achievements in the rest of the industry. The Gillemberg farm produces 10% of the total intake of the Potgietersrus Tobacco Co-operation.

I also want to come to the KaNgwane Agricultural Company. This company has a very good record for the short time it has been in existence. The present position is that it is handling an investment of R8 428 000, has created employment opportunities for 857 workers, is paying out salaries to an amount of R980 395 and has established 114 farmers. The projection for the year 1990 is an investment of R38 million with employment opportunities on an permanent basis for 11 683 workers and it is expected that 982 farmers will have been established.

Mr Chairman, just before the adjournment of business I was dealing with certain projections of the KaNgwane Agricultural Company. If hon members think that those projects are over-optimistic, I just want to point out a few factors in this connection.

In the sugar industry 58 growers have at present been established, and they are quota holders on 406 ha of land at Driekoppies. A start has been made with the cultivation of 202 ha of land at Louisville, where 29 growers will be established. The present yield is 129 tons per hectare, which is better than the average yield for the Eastern Lowveld. In all fairness, however, I must say that White farmers have larger units, and that is why this is to be expected.

The Rörich Commission recommended that a further 6 330 ha of quota land be allocated to KaNgwane if the position were to improve and further quotas could consequently be granted. During the present financial year, three further projects are being initiated. This will include 7 782 ha of land under irrigation, on which 982 individual farmers will be established. It will also ensure a total of 10 862 permanent employment opportunities, as well as employment opportunities on a seasonal basis for 2 026 people. There are two private growers, Tonga-Sisal and the Ngogolo concern which have respectively 350 and 600 workers in their employ.

The related agricultural industries include a cotton mill, grain silos and mills, a dehydration plant and warehouses for subtropical export fruit. I would therefore suggest that financial support to agriculture within the self-governing states is a very good investment.

Mr Chairman, ten minutes does not permit me to reply to what the hon member for Nelspruit said. I wish to discuss a number of points directly with the hon the Minister and the hon the Deputy Minister.

The first of these is the following: We in the PFP will do everything in our power—we will also use our contacts and our influence in Black communities—to assist the Government in bringing about peace and stability. [Interjections.] We will do it, Mr Chairman. I wish to appeal to the hon the Minister and the hon the Deputy Minister, however, to muzzle the reckless and irresponsible hon members in their ranks who day in and day out proclaim that the PFP or some of its members are involved in the riots in some way or other. [Interjections.] Such allegations are detrimental to the parliamentary system and will also merely thwart the efforts we in this party are making to attain peace. [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, in addition I should also like to say something in connection with the violence that occurs and the lack of effective communication between the authorities and Black communities. Since September last year we have experienced violence on a large scale in the Vaal Triangle. The houses of 26 councillors were destroyed, three councillors were murdered, many other people died, 350 small business undertakings were totally or partially destroyed, schoolchildren and workers were intimidated and had to stay away from school or work on account of violence and intimidation.

In an effort to establish the basic causes of this situation I visited the houses of ordinary Black people; residents of that area. I wanted to talk to them about their problems, their grievances, their fears and their aspirations. I really became aware of a number of very interesting facts there which I now wish to convey to the hon the Minister.

In the first place we cannot get away from it that apartheid is and will remain the fundamental cause of the dissatisfaction which exists among the people in those areas. The basic cause is apartheid, whether the Government admits it or not—or whatever remains of apartheid. Injustice and humiliation are linked to the implementation of apartheid among Black people. [Interjections.] Apartheid measures are forced on them. The hon the Minister will not deny that injustice exists nor that it has a humiliating effect on those Black people. That is the fundamental reason and we simply have to accept it.

In consequence of the fact that the Black people do not have the means by which they can impress their grievances effectively on the Government in a constitutional way and also because they do not have the means of fulfilling their justified political aspirations, they turn to violence as the only other means by which they can make themselves heard. Then police action follows, confrontation, shooting and spilling of blood with all the unfortunate results arising from this. [Interjections.] Violence is a manifestation of a lack of effective communication between the authorities and Black communities. Stone-throwing, arson and murder in reality are a form of communication arising from the frustration, the impatience and the anger the Black people experience because they cannot bring their grievances to light and because they cannot fulfil their political aspirations.

One of the statements I read recently was the following:

I wish to offer the hon the Minister a few thoughts—positive recommendations—which I believe may assist in bridging this communication gap existing between Blacks and Whites. In the first place authority must form an idea of the problems experienced by the people with which it wishes to communicate, problems grounded in cultural differences, differences in language, differences in consequence of separate areas in which people have to live and differences arising from the fact that over the years authority has erected barriers between people to prevent their effectively communicating with one another.

That is untrue!

True, the Government wished to prevent that. It is apartheid which erected those barriers between people to prevent effective communication and contact with one another. [Interjections.] The Government should understand that it is the cause of the problems those people experience when they attempt to communicate with the Government or the Government attempts to communicate with them.

In the second place the message of the Government—that is to say the matter it wishes to communicate—should be couched in simple language and the message should be honest and sincere. It is often the case that the message of the Government is worded in bureaucratic and complicated language and is therefore not understood by the people with whom the Government wishes to communicate.

Thirdly, there are modem means and methods of communication in the world today which can be used but which the Government does not apply. It has television at its disposal; television is the most powerful means which can be applied in effective communication—but then that means has to be applied effectively. The Government should turn to professional, knowledgeable people who have the ability to convey the Government’s message in the best way and in the correct form so that people may understand it. Fourthly, training of officialdom in communication should receive high priority. Not everyone can communicate in consequence of the fact that he has a university degree or because he has been trained in the Public Service. Effective communication is a qualification which can be achieved only after thorough training; this is something to which the Government should pay thorough attention. In the fifth place, to be able to communicate effectively, there should be systems to provide feedback so that the means and the message may be adapted continually to meet changed circumstances. I wish to mention only a few aspects as I do not have time to explain each of these concepts.

Effective communication demands that those who wish to communicate should know that the message has to be repeated, that patience should be exhibited and that tolerance, perseverance and compassion are all talents absolutely necessary to any person or any authority which wishes to communicate effectively with anybody.

One of the most important aspects of communication is that it should also be based on negotiation and finding of consensus. It is of no use merely to convince people of the message and it does not help merely to speak to them; it is no use merely wishing to convey these aspects to people. The Government has to be prepared to listen, to enter into discussion, to negotiate—in other words to concede where concessions should be made—and the Government has to be prepared to wish to reach consensus on all aspects with the communities with which it wishes to communicate. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, at the outset I want to tell the hon member for Bryanston that we are taking cognizance of what he says, but that we shall deal with people and act towards them in the spirit in which they identify themselves with certain situations. The hon member must also remember that the words he chose to use in his speech today, were a little more left than those chosen by the hon member for Houghton. What I find most interesting is that he was much more drastic and made stronger pronouncements than the hon member for Houghton. [Interjections.]

Secondly, it is true that if one extends an image to the public in respect of the maintenance of law and order in Uitenhage, that one is letting the law and order in the country come under fire, one can become associated with it. One must take care that one’s actions do not cause this to happen and cause such conclusions to be drawn. That is why I say the image created by these hon members rests with them. They will determine the image the public of South Africa has of them. I want to say nothing further about this matter at this stage.

I want to associate myself with the hon the Minister in expressing thanks towards the officialdom, as well as in respect of the Deputy Minister who is dealing for the first time with the discussion of the Vote. I also want to associate myself with the hon the Deputy Minister, however, and express my thanks towards the hon the Minister for his actions in the short time he has held this office. I believe I speak not only on behalf of those of us in the Ministry, but also on behalf of the officials in the department and the country as a whole.

Secondly, I want to deal with an aspect of this department’s work which in my opinion receives very little attention. That is agriculture and the role played by agriculture as a whole in the national states and in the development of these states. When I speak of agriculture, I think not only we in the Ministry and the department, but the country as a whole, the Blacks too, are indebted to the seconded staff who serve in the national states. In the short period that I have held this office, I have noticed that there are people with agricultural knowledge in the Department of Co-operation and Development and among the seconded officials in the national states who render a purposeful and dedicated service to the people under whom they work. We thank them sincerely for this. Martin Spring said the following:

He concludes by saying:

At the beginning of the year we saw and experienced what the drought conditions had caused in African countries. Despite the assistance from the outside world, in certain respects those countries were not even in a condition to be able to distribute the food supplied to them. South Africa is criticized very sharply about the national states, and bad names are given to the national states because of the poor control and form of government they apply there. Despite all this they could still, however, continue to produce, which prevented the same situation being created in their case as in those African countries.

If we look at what has taken place in South Africa over the years, we find that the agricultural development is based on a certain line of thought, viz that one must develop the land to its optimum, but that this should be accompanied by the development of the people involved. Once the people have developed sufficiently, the land meant for the Blacks can be utilized fully. A few factors are important, however, for the proper utilization of the land. Firstly, the people must have the knowledge to utilize the ground correctly. The infrastructure and the guidance must be there. There are a few problem areas which will have to be removed in the process ahead. One can identify a few of these problem areas. I should say the first problem area is the question of land tenure in the national states. Secondly, capital is a problem aspect, and thirdly there is a shortage of trained people to cultivate the land as a whole that is at their disposal, as farmers. That is why the department has created certain structures to rectify this situation. One important aspect, which has played an important part over the years, is agricultural guidance. To bring about agricultural guidance, agricultural colleges are imperative. Few of these facts are known to hon members in this House, and even fewer to the public at large. There are already three agricultural colleges which provide training in the national states. They are situated in Lebowa and in Gazankulu, and in Ciskei, Transkei and Bophuthatswana respectively there are also training colleges which can train these people. Even people from outside South Africa go there for such training.

A number of people have been trained at Tompi Seleka in Lebowa, so that they themselves can render the necessary services and farm independently. It is interesting that women are also trained, so that they too can take the lead because by nature they play a leading role in agriculture as a whole.

There is another aspect which I should like to highlight, and it deals with the respective national states’ departments of agriculture. They provide the basic supportive service for a sound agricultural industry there.

In looking at agriculture as a whole in the national states, I gratefully took cognizance of the standpoint taken by the hon the Minister in the debate here this morning. Of the total Budget, 6,8% is going to agriculture and there is a readiness to see whether this contribution for agriculture should not be larger in future. I think this will be imperative.

At this stage I want to highlight a few specific points that create problems and where success has been achieved. One of the greatest single problems in agriculture is the communal land tenure within tribal connection. One finds that in this respect over-grazing and soil erosion occur. The department, seconded officials and the national states have made land available within tribal connection where farming practices can be applied for inter alia breeding herds. Within a system of communal land ownership one can have individual cattle ownership. In this way one attains maximal meat production. Good progress has been made in this respect with Afrikaner cattle, in which a great deal of success has been achieved. In addition one can take cognizance of the Nguni cattle, bred in Zululand. There is already a herd of 700 cows and great success is being achieved with this. These are closed herds and the meat production, according to the criterion of mass per area of land, is very successful. In Lebowa a cattle herd was built up with 300 cows, and is also being managed successfully on this basis.

I can mention various projects, but there are a few to which I want to refer specifically. There are the more concentrated farming units such as poultry—these are laying units and broiler units—which are farmed with in various national states. In Qwaqwa a farming unit of 156 sows was built up which can be compared with the best producing White units in the Republic. In the national states they have been divided into 20 sow units, which are controlled by individual Black farmers together with a fattening unit. The fattening unit is managed as a whole and the specific units are calculated separately.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the Deputy Minister, before he turns from the topic he is discussing at present, to tell us something about the soil conservation that is practised in the homelands and the independent states, and how successful it is.

Mr Chairman, in the course of my speech I shall refer to that.

In respect of irrigation units I want to express my thanks towards the hon member for Nelspruit and the hon member for Umfolozi, who achieved specific agricultural successes. In kwaZulu 993 ha were placed under irrigation of which 653 ha is in one specific area. In KaNgwane it is 460 ha, at Driekoppies it is 406 ha and at Figtree it is 400 ha, which has been divided into 20 irrigation units.

I want to refer to one example in particular, and that is Saringwa in Gazankulu, where units of 7 ha are planted to citrus or mangoes in accordance with conditions. Black farmers are settled individually here on their own particular units. Assistance has been given to them on an irrigation basis. While the trees are growing, these farmers plant vegetables or other crops to keep them going until the trees bear. As part of that project there is a processing unit in which the Black women are involved. There the STC in co-operation with Gazankulu processes these products, and creates a market for their sale. What is interesting, is that the settlement of Black farmers takes place on the basis by which the choice of the Black farmer to settle there, is made in co-operation with the tribal captain and the Government of Gazankulu in accordance with the farmer’s training and his dedication to the work he is to do. The selection is done to ensure that successful farmers will manage the units in future.

If one views the whole situation, one finds the department’s point of departure is that we must have human development. The land must be applied to the advantage of the Black farmer, of the Black farmer’s family as a whole, and his whole unit involved in it; everyone must be taken into account.

The next aspect I want to discuss, is co-operatives. Seventy agricultural co-operatives with 15 000 members have been established where they can get certain services. As far as sugar cane is concerned, hon members have raised certain aspects which are illuminating and important.

There is one aspect in respect of which I want to highlight a certain principle because it can create a problem. In the cultivation of coffee we get the situation that 80% of the total production of coffee in South Africa takes place within the homelands. The total consumption of coffee is 19 000 ton of which 3 000 ton is Arabica and 16 000 ton Robusta. Because the total production in South Africa is approximately 800 ton, a large part of the total consumption is imported.

South African coffee is mainly produced by Black farmers in the Black states, whereas a part of the total production comes from White areas. When it comes to co-operation within organized agriculture, a system does not exist in the sense that the Black farmers and the White farmers can conduct discussions and plan to what extent coffee should be planted to supply the total consumption need at this stage. Black farmers are not allowed to become members of the SAAU.

This is the principle involved, but the problem is that there is a lack of co-ordination when it comes to the production of the Black sector as against the White sector, and in the market this can lead to problems concerning the price. As far as this problem is concerned, we shall have to find a solution together with the SAAU in some way or another.

In the case of control boards there can be over-production even within the White agricultural sector as a result of the unco-ordinated planting of certain crops, and this can also cause problems in the price structure. Serious attention will have to be given to co-operation and the creation of mechanisms within the two sectors to the benefit of all.

Mr Chairman, in view of what the hon the Deputy Minister has just said, I should like to know from him whether he is considering the admission of Blacks to that council.

There is no coffee control board as such, and the hon member should know that. The system I support is in the interest of White as well as Black farmers. They will have to meet to conduct discussions in order to co-ordinate production so that marketing does not cause a collapse of the price structure. The problem will have to be resolved in that way in co-operation with the farmers. It is something that can cause problems for the whole industry in future.

An amount of R1 037 million has been placed on the Budget for land purchases in the coming year. We plan to conclude land purchases for Ciskei. In the past year, the Stockenström-East area has been transferred to Transkei. As far as the Stockenström-West area is concerned, offers were made. Most of the offers were accepted, and we hope that we shall be able to give transfer in the course of the year. Offers are being made in the Tarkastad area and we shall also make valuations in the Selunka area with a view to purchases so that we can conclude our Ciskei campaign this financial year.

As far as kwaNdebele is concerned, the outstanding section between Bronkhorstspruit, Verena and Groblersdal will be valuated and purchased this year so that the total kwaNdebele campaign can also be concluded this year.

We had discussions with the farming community about Qwaqwa, and we indicated that we shall buy that land in January of next year and shall make offers in the following financial year. The matter has also been cleared with Qwaqwa.

There is one important aspect that I want to raise here, and that is that in the process of land purchases and in view of the problematic nature of the transfer of land, we are now following the system—the hon member for Bryanston must listen well—according to which we hold discussions on a bilateral level, viz on ministerial-agricultural level, so that we consult with the relevant Black state beforehand in respect of which land will be available at which time and will be transferred to them, say in August. Then we plan agriculturally with them how the ground is to be utilized, whether their agricultural co-operatives or individual farmers will utilize it. If that cannot be done, we in the Department of Co-operation and Development will develop the land together with the STC, whether on an individual basis or on a project basis for transfer at a later stage when the money has been voted within that national state so that they can utilize it optimally.

The principle that emerges here, is that the national states are then aware of the quantity of land they are getting and on which date they are getting it. The planning in respect of the land is also cleared in co-operation with and with the agreement of the relevant national state. We trust and believe that if it is done in this basis, we shall be able to transfer as much land to them as they are capable of handling as soon as possible.

Another point that emerges, is the letting of land. If we let the land to White farmers as in the past, the principle is wrong. If we have bought that land, have paid for it and registered it, it is in the possession of the Trust and that land must be transferred to the Black states for the Black farmers as soon as possible. In the meantime a practical problem in respect of harvests can arise, for we buy land throughout the year, but are then prepared to let the land on an ad hoc basis over a short term until such time as the harvests have been gathered and the land can be taken into possession and transferred.

A few questions were put about consolidation and the progress with consolidation in kwaZulu. KwaZulu’s report was dealt with by the commission. One principle which emerged very clearly in respect of the whole consolidation proposition is that the commission has to investigate a certain state and report to the Government and the Cabinet. In accordance with the State President’s undertaking the Cabinet is opening it to all who are interested so that every interested party can give evidence after the announcement of the first report on how it affects them and suggest amendments or alternatives which the commission will then consider and again submit to the Cabinet to be settled finally.

The same applies to kwaZulu. After the first announcement it will be announced when and where the commission will hear all interested parties. Interested parties will be given sufficient opportunity to put their case. In respect of the areas under discussion at present, the matter of Ciskei has been concluded completely except for small border adjustments. The consolidation of Qwaqwa has been dealt with and proclaimed. In respect of Transkei the report on phase 1 is finished. An proclamation has to be made about the opportunity to give evidence. As far as Lebowa and Gazankulu are concerned, the commission has finished their reports. They are being considered by the Cabinet at present and once they have been proclaimed, will also be ready as a whole for implementation and completion. Matters in regard to Venda has been disposed of. KwaZulu and kaNgwane had specific problems. Matters in regard to Bophuthatswana has been disposed of. The President of Bophuthatswana is not satisfied with the consolidation proposals. President Mangope said he would negotiate with our State President in respect of consolidation as such. The matter of kwaNdebele has also been disposed of.

At this stage I am convinced of the fact that with the discussions and co-operation between us and the national states and with the opportunity we are getting to make our inputs and communicate with one another, we can iron out the problems in respect of the purchasing of land and the rounding off of the borders. There is also a great deal of goodwill on the part of the national states in this regard.

Mr Chairman, may I put a question to the hon the Deputy Minister?

I shall give the hon member an opportunity in a moment. I want to say, therefore, that I am optimistic that the course we are taking at present will hold benefits for the national states but also for the White farmers in those areas. The hon member may put his question now.

Mr Chairman, can the hon the Deputy Minister tell me whether negotiations will also be held with President Mangope concerning the farms which were wrongly incorporated into Bophuthatswana, in order to make them part of the Kuruman district once again?

A few farms were wrongly incorporated into Bophuthatswana and we are in the process of concluding these matters with President Mangope. It is being discussed as part of the consolidation proposals.

Mr Chairman, the hon the Deputy Minister used a very interesting concept this afternoon in the debate when he referred to human development. I should like to discuss the same concept but not against the background of agriculture. I wish to discuss it in the sense that the task of the Directorate: Social Development of the department is of particular importance to us here. I think human development is precisely one of the conditions for the attainment of all the other objectives set at the moment. With a view to constitutional development, the creation of local authority and supporting systems which have to be developed in all communities, in my opinion the hon the Deputy Minister has seized upon a very interesting concept in speaking of human development.

The mistake is often made that social development chiefly deals with the creation of physical facilities. I wish to emphasize here that the crux of the matter is the development of people to enable them actually to institute these supporting systems and to let them function effectively. One of the problems of the Directorate: Social Development is precisely that all this development has to be tackled against the background of social problems.

I wish to illustrate a few of these problems as examples of those with which this directorate is struggling at present and which makes it difficult for it to get to the fundamental function of development. Based on a study by the HSRC it is estimated with the aid of a scientific formula that nearly half a million Black people in South Africa are alcoholics. This can give hon members an indication of the extent of the problem and of the number of professionals required in order to make effective services available to these people. Abandonment of children is being identified as a problem which is increasing in Black communities. Then the matter of urbanization is raised. In traditional circumstances duties are allocated to families in the group context and parents are subjected to the authority or discipline of the group but in the urban context these functions have to be fulfilled by the family on its own. There is therefore a variety of problems arising from urbanization. It has become important in the total development process for parents to be equipped to function as individuals in a new structure.

A further problem which is assuming considerable proportions is the care of the aged. It is estimated that by the year 2000 we will have to care for more than 500 000 Black aged persons in urban areas only. If we have to make provision for only 2% of these aged people, we require an amount of between R50 and R150 million. Nevertheless the provision of the money for these services is not the problem to my mind but the crux of the matter is that we should create effective managing bodies to provide these facilities. They should consist of people who are capable of identifying the needs and ultimately able to develop facilities. In our own community and among our own women I have experienced that once they have been set the task, a way is found to acquire the funds. I believe we could inspire Black women with the same enthusiasm and make them equal to this task. Seen against the background of the extent of the problems and the importance of the task which this directorate has to handle, I wish to request the hon the Deputy Minister to give higher priority to the function and position of this directorate in the department. At present there are 350 social workers in the service of the department. It is estimated that, if we wish to expand this service to be truly effective, we require at least 800 people for it. We need trained people to attain this goal. I therefore wish to ask the hon the Minister whether it is not possible for more bursaries to be made available to train social workers with a view to the development of people in Black areas. Another possibility is making bursaries available for the training of welfare assistants.

The private sector also furnishes certain services. The State currently follows the policy that people should be helped to help themselves—something that should be emphasized strongly. We should move away from a philanthropic approach and should guard against creating the impression of the White community as “do-gooders” among the Black community.

I further wish to request that senior persons in this discipline should be granted a say in the planning of the service in order ultimately to be able to carry out the entire development plan themselves.

I wish to congratulate the department on an exceptional achievement. To be able to establish 9 regional welfare councils is an achievement if one considers the circumstances in which this happened. These councils accept responsibility for the planning of services among their own people and we wish them everything of the best and every success in the very great task ahead.

I wish to close by congratulating the hon the Deputy Minister on a technical journal on social work published by the department. It is an achievement of a special nature because it contains articles by Black social workers and it is clear that a corps of leaders is coming forward among Black welfare people. They are volunteers who are inspired and interested in furnishing service to their own people. The journal introduces these people to the community and I think it is an exceptional achievement worthy of the praise of all of us.

Mr Chairman, the hon member Dr Venter raised a number of questions. I am sure, however, that she will forgive me if I do not comment on them because I have a number of questions of my own which I wish to raise.

I should have liked to examine in depth the Government’s policy of forced removals, but unfortunately I do not have that much time at my disposal. I must, however, record that in answer to a question on 26 February 1985 the hon the Minister said that 67 Black spots remained to be removed and that all 67 were being reconsidered. We are pleased about this development. In particular I must express the appreciation of the residents of Huhudi and Valspan that they are not to be removed.

I must ask the hon the Minister why he persists with Matopestad. It is to that community that I want to devote my time. All the questions that I have asked about Matopestad as to whether they are eventually to be moved to the area which is known as Onderstepoort, whether they like it or not, have been evaded.

Most of us will know that Matopestad is a fertile, well-watered highveld area in the Western Transvaal near Boons in the district of Koster. Its inhabitants have held the title deeds to the land since 1910. The people there have always been successful farmers, selling their surplus produce to the Koster Co-op.

As indicated in reply to a question of mine on 23 April this year, a number of meetings had been held since December 1980 to discuss the proposed move of the community, culminating in a meeting that was held by the tribe on Saturday, 20 April, when an invitation to the commissioner to attend the meeting was declined. Here I must say that I was disappointed that, following a discussion I had with the hon the Minister on Friday, 19 April, about that tribal meeting, he appeared to be sympathetic to the suggestion that although there was a clash of dates and times, the meeting and the planned visit to Onderstepoort should both take place at different times over that weekend.

The hon the Minister advised me that he was leaving for Johannesburg but would instruct his department to ensure that both things happened. After his departure I was contacted and advised that the busses would arrive at Matopestad early on that Saturday morning and that the meeting would still take place at 09h00. Thus both events would take place at the same time. There therefore appears to be an attempt on the part of the department to sabotage the good intentions of the hon the Minister, and I would warn him that his predecessors fell foul of the “tortoises” and that he should watch that they carry out his instructions.

The tribal meeting was held and the young Chief Solomon was shown to the tribe. Also present were the Subchief Mr John Matope and the six headmen and the overwhelming majority of the landowners. In contrast approximately 150 people including a large number of teenagers travelled on the busses to Onderstepoort to view the removal area. Of those who remained behind 291 signed a petition that day which reads:

Further residents have signed the petition and the total of those who do not wish to move are as follows: 80 families who are landowners, 114 families who are tenants and 179 families who are landowners but work in urban areas. I am advised that those who are prepared to move comprise six families who are landowners and 47 tenant families. To sum up let me say that 53 families are prepared to move and 373 families wish to remain.

Will the hon the Minister give an answer to a question which I and others have been asking for some time: Will he allow those who want to stay at Matopestad to remain there? Will he give an unequivocable answer to that question, and, in addition, will he give land in Onderstepoort to those 53 families, mostly tenants, who are prepared to move? He should dispel the uncertainty that exists and allow people to get on with their lives.

A word about facilities, Sir. Because of the degree of uncertainty in Matopestad about the future, facilities have not been provided. In reply to a question of mine on 23 April the hon the Minister said no formal application could be traced in respect of health services, clinics or schools. I do not know what is wrong with the filing sections of the Government departments but at this stage all I have been able to track down is a letter from John Matope to the regional director at Rustenburg, dated 14 April 1973 in which he pleads for a clinic. In the body of the letter reference is made to correspondence including the reference number from the Department of Health. It is a letter which they received from the Department of Health, in Johannesburg, dated 29 February 1972, with the reference number 21/3/85. In that letter they make a passionate plea for clinic facilities at Matopestad.

In the same way I have traced a whole series of copies of correspondence regarding the application for telephones. What can be so difficult about providing telephones to a group of people in the Western Transvaal? All the White farmers on the surrounding farms have telephones, Sir.

Why are those people being harassed in this way? Why can facilities not be provided for that community? Why is there an apparent programme of disinformation? There is a discrepancy in the hon the Deputy Minister’s statements regarding the number of families involved in the community. From time to time radio reports have been broadcast, emanating from the hon the Deputy Minister of Development and of Land Affairs, and there is apparently a conflict in relation to the number of families resident at Matopestad. This is causing a great deal of concern in that community.

There was a television programme last Saturday evening—apparently also involving the commissioner from Rustenburg, I am told—which put forward a large number of half truths about the area to which the people are to be moved. There is great concern amongst the tribal leaders about that television programme, and they will evidently be pursuing the matter further.

Then there is also the role played by a certain Mr Chris Bothma. Who is he, Sir? I hope the hon the Minister will tell us who Mr Chris Bothma is, what his connections are with the department, what his interests are, and what function he fulfils. Why is he going around collecting the names of people who could be moved to Onderstepoort? I am told he is a farmer in the area but I hope we will be told what his role is vis à vis the department.

When is the department to hold talks with the standing committee that was set up at the behest of the department? Matopestad is a stable, settled, thriving community that, in spite of harassment from the department and others, continues to live out a reasonable existence on its land. The people of that community farm at a profit, and in spite of uncertainty continue their activities without facilities or Government assistance. Why does the hon the Minister not leave them alone?

I wish to remind the hon the Minister that Senator Edward Kennedy visited the farm in January this year. The hon the Minister, I am sure, will know that Senator Kennedy is one of the leading lights in the disinvestment campaign in America. I want to warn the hon the Minister that he moves the people of Matopestad at his peril.

He should move them to America!

I wonder whether he should not discuss with the hon the Minister of Transport Affairs the question of whether he would be happy losing landing rights for SA Airways in the USA. He might even like to discuss with the hon the Minister of Finance the question of whether he would like the sale of Kruger Rands banned in America. He must be well aware that the Americans are taking an increasing interest in the people of Matopestad, and that if he pursues this course of action he can expect retaliation from the disinvestment forces in that country. It is not, however, because of the Americans alone that we should leave the people of Matopestad where they are; but for the sake of ordinary human beings who wish to live out their lives without interference.

At the same time I have not been able to develop any arguments about other Black spots. There are still others, however, including kwaNgema and Driefontein. I had hoped that some announcement would be made about those two communities. According to a radio report on Monday last week kwaNgema was to be allowed to remain but nothing further has as yet been said about that. That is another part of the programme of disinformation. I hope the hon the Minister will inform us about Matopestad, kwaNgema and Driefontein and, if he can, also about the other 64 Black spots in the country.

Mr Chairman, I think it is the twenty-sixth debate on this Vote that I have had the wonderful privilege of taking part in. I should like to say that it gives me great joy to take part here today in the discussion of the Vote of this hon Minister, especially in view of the great and widespread plans of action announced by the Government in connection with Black politics.

We have heard a number of varied arguments in this debate. Unlike many other people, I believe that the basic argument of the hon member for Bryanston, viz that we should communicate with one another and talk to one another, is a positive attitude that we in South Africa cannot ignore.

The hon member for Bryanston said our enemies want to destroy apartheid. I should like to tell him to think about this. I am not going to dwell on the point I am making, but there are enemies of South Africa and enemies of the existing system who are actually crazy about apartheid. They are just as keen on destroying apartheid as on destroying the man in the moon, because apartheid is the stand on which they hang all the aggression towards South Africa. Every time something is changed, it is against them. That is why those people do not regard positive actions by the Government to do away with discrimination as progress, because they flourish on apartheid. They write apartheid in capital letters in the UN’s documents and they underline it. They would like to see apartheid exist, because they want to use apartheid as an instrument to destroy the whole existing order in South Africa. [Interjections.]

Many people in South Africa are more worried about who is behind the unrest—they feel those people should be clamped down upon—and about the fundamental causes for the unrest. We on this side of the Committee, under the leadership of our leaders, say we want absolute stability and order in South Africa—within the Black residential areas, outside them and in every other sphere. Therefore, for us on this side of the Committee, the fundamental causes of the unrest are truly vitally important.

One of the greatest tragedies of the unrest is that so many people do not understand it. There are the hon members of the CP. The hon member for Langlaagte told me in explicit Afrikaans that this Government is the cause of unrest. The hon member for Pietersburg suggested today that, because we awaken aspirations in people, we are in a sense instrumental to unrest. I should like to put the point here that that is the most blatant nonsense ever.

Aspirations are part of humanity, and I should like to say that we in South Africa should say every day: “Thank you, Father, for people, Blacks, Whites and Coloureds, thank you for all people who have aspirations.” We can look in all the dictionaries, and we shall find that the meaning of the word “aspiration” is the desire of man to go forward, to move upwards. Aspirations are positive. The aspirations also of Blacks, Black peoples and Black groups in this country are positive to us. That is why we want to assist everyone in South Africa in letting the positive aspirations within them emerge. Aspirations, therefore, are directed at the future. Aspirations are constructive.

We are not speaking of the desperation that exists in the aspirations of people who want to topple the whole structure. Last night I heard a man say on television, and one is amazed that one can hear something like this:

In this country, South Africa, we must take care under all conditions not to speak this kind of language. Our language must be aimed at diminishing the battle and the heat with which it is fought.

There has been unrest throughout our country’s history. There has been rebellion throughout our country’s history. To blame this on us, the Government, and say we are the primary cause, is simply not true. We must shake off the past. We do not say we reject the past as the CP’s people charge us. We say we want to shake off the past, and we say we must fix up the present. We must not play around with it. We also say we must get a move on concerning the future. [Interjections.]

There are intellectual aspirations, and if we speak of people’s aspirations, we are also speaking of intellectual aspirations. I should like to air the most intellectual and most fundamental aspiration that lies at the foundation of human aspirations just for a moment. As politicians we all know it: The fundamental aspiration of an endeavour to freedom in every sphere. We on this side of the Committee see the right of the Blacks, the Black groups and all the other people in South Africa to be able to see that intellectual endeavour towards freedom realized to an ever-increasing extent. We are not contemptuous of those intellectual convictions.

The intellectual convictions of all people in South Africa are fed by what they learn in the schools, what they see on TV and what they discover in discussion with one another. We do not deny that. If we had denied it, we would not have been interested in making education available to the people of South Africa by means of schools and universities.

There are many institutions, such as trade unions and others, which form an intense part of the battle in South Africa. We say those people stand on a platform and express opinions. As long as people do not stand for disorder, we accept that. Aspirations have a tendency towards increasing and we say this frankly to our voters. There are no aspirations of a person or of a people which are not consequent in tending upwards. Aspirations in respect of land, suffrage, influx, housing and human dignity show an increasing tendency. The White man in South Africa who cannot appreciate that and who denies it, is moving inevitably towards the point of confrontation in this country. I ask myself whether the CP is not playing with fire by denying this basic standpoint of increasing human aspirations.

There is an aggressive desperation among many people in South Africa concerning aspirations. We should like to tear the great stereotyping that reigns in our country loose and oust it from our system. The greatest and falsest stereotype in the South African society is that which unfortunately lives in the hearts of many people, namely that White and Black in this country are enemies. This has a long history and there are many reasons for it. I do not want to dwell on it, but only to put the fundamental standpoint that we on this side of the House reject any suggestion, standpoint or statement that White and Black in this country are enemies. A phrase used by the State President on the occasion of his visit to Soweto—unfortunately it was lost along the wayside—was: “We are all South Africans.” I should like to confirm that. [Interjections.] Concerning the constitutional content of the term citizenship I merely want to say that the Government is working at it in a very complex South Africa. Our basic standpoint is, however, that we are not one another’s enemies.

Our Blacks and Whites have terribly stereotyped images of one another. Whites say Blacks are aggressive, underdeveloped, inferior and that one cannot trust them. Blacks on the other hand say we are oppressors and regard ourselves as being superior. I should like to plead that we shall assist the Government in its plan to undo all these negative stereotypes in a positive manner.

I should like to tell the hon the Minister and his two Deputy Ministers and all the people who are co-operating in building South Africa, that we are grateful for, and proud of all the positive action. We should like to ask the hon the Minister and everyone around him—and I have done so previously—that we should work on school level to give our children the right attitude so that every White child who leaves school, will know firstly what the facts are and secondly, will have a positive attitude. Let us work at our Black schools so that people in our Black schools will not learn politics, but rather that Whites are not their enemies. It is not a question of our telling them how they must study and what their endeavours should be, but we believe that South Africa can be free of unrest and of anarchy and that the initiative of every man and every group can be highlighted for a better future in this country.

Mr Chairman, the hon member for Turffontein …

“Vrystaat!”

The hon member is speaking of the Free State and I must say the CP is very proud of the Free State. Later this year we are going to be even prouder. [Interjections.]

The hon member for Turffontein made the appeal to the hon the Minister today, if I understood him correctly, that a new Soweto be created on the West Rand. The hon member is nodding his head and I should like the hon the Minister, either when he replies to this debate or later, to give us a very clear explanation concerning the creation of the large concentrations, growth points or cities in what the CP still regards as White South Africa in accordance with the standpoint we honour. He must tell us where such new Sowetos, especially in the central areas of Transvaal, are going to be created. I should also like the hon the Minister to give us a decisive answer as to the land tenure of Blacks in White areas and in respect of the area of the land that Blacks will possess within South Africa. Will it be larger than normal residential plots or how big will it be?

The further point I want to draw to the hon the Minister’s attention is that the debates we are going to conduct in respect of Blacks from now on, will go back to the debates held since the early years in this House between the liberal parties we had here then, viz the Progressive Party and the United Party, and the conservative party, viz the National Party, which we knew in the old days. The hon the Minister’s change of principle in respect of the politics of the Blacks inevitably brings the old debates to the fore once again in respect of the actual question as to how the Whites can continue to exist in South Africa, and in what way the Whites, who attained control by means of the old imperial regime—over Blacks too—want to deal with those policy aspects.

In his address about the management of his Vote, the State President referred to General Hertzog. He highlighted General Hertzog as being one of the greatest among the great. I do not differ from him on that point, but it is very interesting that the State President, who is the leader on the Government side in respect of politics in South Africa today, is taking General Hertzog as an example from the past, and in such a way as though he approved of our moving in the direction of an integrated system, on the way to power-sharing in the political sphere with Blacks in South Africa.

Can one be that stupid? [Interjections.]

Sir, the hon members here on my lefthand side are always shouting when one talks about these things, and they do not think about them. [Interjections.] This is also why they can no longer achieve anything in practical politics. [Interjections.]

The State President referred to Gen Hertzog, as though he had actually foreseen this dispensation in respect of Blacks in the future—a matter about which the Government will apparently make an announcement to us soon after its enlarged Cabinet Committee.

I merely want to refer the hon the Minister to something Gen Hertzog said in 1936. I want to refer to the work written and compiled by Prof J H Lombard, viz Die Ekonomiese Politiek van Suid-Afrika, in which an article which was written by Dr Eiselen appears. I want to say that the NP is taking the history, the words and principles of the leaders of the Afrikaners in particular totally out of context, and then presenting this to the White voters as support for its integration policy or power-sharing politics. In 1936 Gen Hertzog said:

I quote these things only because the discussion moved in this direction, and the State President quoted what Gen Hertzog had said in the ’twenties. If one reads it within context, however, in my opinion the quote he made is not correct in any case.

The hon the Minister must not think that we moved the amendment that his salary be cut only for the fun of it. During the past few years the hon the Minister was at the forefront of leading the NP on a road of power-sharing, which would eventually end in power-sharing which we had in Africa. The problem is not the fact that the hon the Minister is doing it with the Government—people can change, after all. The great “sin” of the NP, however, is the fact that they are conducting integration politics in the name of and under the flag of the old National Party.

I now want to ask the hon the Minister how he felt while he was listening to the hon member for Houghton, who opposed us when we asked for a cut in his salary—whereas they asked for a cut in the salary of the hon the Minister of Law and Order. The hon member for Houghton supported the hon the Minister. Her words amounted to the fact that she had suffered and that she rejected the late Dr Verwoerd’s principles.

I want to tell the hon the Minister today he will not be able to get away from the point that he has not undergone a change in policy; that the NP does not merely have an adjustment of strategy and a suppleness of policy today. As far as his political views on Blacks are concerned, the NP has changed in principle.

Now I want to ask the hon the Minister whether he still stands by the NP’s programme of principles in respect of Blacks. Can the hon the Minister give me an indication? Does he stand by the NP’s principles? [Interjections.] The hon the Minister is remaining silent; he reminds me of the sphinx. I want to ask the hon the Minister whether he still stands by the programme of 12 points about which we held an election in 1981? Does the hon the Minister still stand by that? [Interjections.]

Order! I merely want to tell the hon member for Rissik that I am not going to allow the hon the Minister to reply to his question in any case.

Mr Chairman, I accept the ruling. I hope, however, the hon the Minister will reply to my questions in his reply. He must put his standpoint concerning these questions.

The situation is that when we have an election—apparently we are going to have quite a few elections this year; and the more elections there are, the more we like it—we find the situation that the Government does not inform its voters on its true principles. [Interjections.] As the hon the Minister does not want to talk about the NP’s principles today, I want to remind him of that. Right up to today—this is 1985—the NP says in its programme of principles:

That appears in the Programme of Principles. [Interjections.]

The NP can very easily say to an opposition party: “What is your policy? You have no policy,” and can do so very categorically. The hon the Minister is a member now, however, of a Commission of which the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition is also a member. I want to tell the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition today that it is a very great problem to take part in any commission on the NP’s conditions; I say it to him as a friend who is also in an opposition party. [Interjections.] If the NP cannot find an answer to a matter, it refers it to a commission. If the NP changes its principle, or has changed it, but still has to condition the public to it and inform them of it, it also appoints a commission. In this way a whole number of commissions have been appointed.

At the moment the NP has the so-called Cabinet Committee, into which it has drawn the official opposition and the other opposition parties. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, if there is one matter about which we need have no doubt at all it is that the hon member for Rissik is the master of quotations in this House. This afternoon, for example, he again quoted General Hertzog in this speech. Why, though, will the CP never get so far as to take over the Government of this country? There is just one reason: They do not take the circumstances of the times into account when they make their plans. [Interjections.] The hon member quotes General Hertzog and wants to make that applicable, without further ado, to the circumstances of today, and that is where he makes his mistake.

I also wish to ask the hon member for Rissik whether he really thinks that any Government in this country can create a situation in which more Sowetos will not have to be built? Does he really think so? [Interjections.] The question is not whether Sowetos will have to be built, but where we shall have to build them. [Interjections.]

Order! The hon member for Rissik has had his turn to speak. The hon member for Rustenburg may proceed.

The hon member for Rissik will have to take cognizance of that.

I am sorry that the hon member for Bryanston is not present because he said that the stone-throwing we are encountering in the Eastern Cape and other places is a form of communication. It is a cruel thing to say, but if that is the perception of the hon member for Bryanston, and if he thinks we must communicate better, we want to begin by asking him whether he does not have ears in his head? Did he not listen to the whole refrain of the speeches of the hon the Deputy Minister and the hon the Minister during the discussion of the vote? The issue was specifically one of communication. Secondly, we ask him whether it is not, then, his duty as an influential figure to tell those people to stop throwing stones, for heaven’s sake, and to make use of the channels of communication in an effort to obtain an answer, however inadequate the channels of communication may, in his opinion, be. [Interjections.]

We must admit that the NP and the NP Government have undoubtedly made mistakes over the years. However, that can only happen with a Government that does something positive; it is only those who do something who can make mistakes. However we are addressing those mistakes and there is no lack of clarity about that. When we listen to the speeches of and the reaction to the debate by the hon the Minister and his deputies it is very clear that we are engaged in doing so. If, in the midst of the mistakes we make, we fare as well as we fared in Harrismith, then I think that all hell will be let loose, politically speaking, among the CP’s when we really begin to address these mistakes and do what we are doing now.

I wish to cite a few of the matters in regard to which I think we have made mistakes. In my opinion, in the past we failed to utilize our methods of negotiation properly as an instrument in our quest for an answer to our problems. At the same time we denied the right of people—including the Black people—to have a say. Among other things, this very often led, as the hon member for Bryanston rightly said, to our either failing totally to identify, or else identifying at a very late stage, the justified grievances and needs of people. In other words, we were not able to address the problems regarding grievances properly, and we sometimes failed to carry out an assessment of needs. One of the biggest mistakes we made, however, was to separate politics from the economy instead of using the link to make a success of separate development in the true sense of the word. Our mistake was that we permitted that process of separation to occur. [Interjections.] In the same breath, though, I want to say that we are identifying these mistakes and giving positive attention to these problems. However the lack of time is one of our problems, since the time factor is a restrictive factor. I wish to quote an extract from an article about the time factor in this rapidly changing world, written by an authority:

He then comes to the important part:

That is a very important thing to bear in mind. We must realize that the solution in this negotiating process, in this quest for an answer, is not something that will be presented to us on a plate. It involves time-consuming and painstaking work. There is still a lack of clarity about many things, but there is no longer a lack of clarity about the fact that the negotiating process, as an instrument in our search for an answer, has to take a certain course. The road to success goes via that negotiating table. We can do things rapidly. We cannot overlook this fact relating to the time factor, but when we come to the negotiating table we would do well to linger awhile. We must incorporate a positive image in this negotiating process in order to make a success of it. Negativism bedevils everything, and we and the man in the street are sick and tired of it.

We are fortunate to be moving into that positive phase. After all, it is depressing to read everywhere about demographic truths and long lists of grievances that are supposed to come from the people at issue. It is depressing, because many of these things are true, but surely there is only one way of transforming the negative into a spirit of positivism and that is to address the problems responsibly and with all the facts at one’s disposal in the interests of one’s country and all its people, and to see to it that what one attempts, works. It can work. We have proof of this. We have proof that we are moving into that positive stage and we have ample evidence of that in the answers of the hon the Minister and his Deputy Ministers when they discuss the success story here and give us the proofs. One of those success stories is that it seems as if we are now succeeding in perceiving the real leaders among the Blacks, the people with whom we are supposed to negotiate. For obvious reasons, however, these people are overcautious to show their true colours, and we on the Government side will have to support them and ensure that they receive the protection they deserve. From the opposition side, too, they must be encouraged to participate in the processes of negotiation. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman it seems as if there is still a great deal of speculation about the place of development boards—even in this House—in the new constitutional dispensation. This occurred again here today when the hon member for Mooi River and the hon member for King Williams’s Town again launched attacks on development boards. In my humble opinion this, too, was totally unjustified. I want to ask them today whether they have conducted negotiations with those development boards at any stage or whether they have gone to state their problems there or that the discussions with those development boards. I am almost sure that they have not, because they come and bewail their lot here instead of going to pay a visit there and speaking to those people. [Interjections.]

However, one things is as plain as a pikestaff and that is that the development boards are an indispensable element in the whole process of constitutional renewal. The development boards are pre-eminently the instrument whereby to achieve the objects embodied in section 16 of the Development of Black Communities Act. The know-how of officials who have been brought together over the years, and from every part of the country, is of the utmost value and may not be lost. Even if these boards were to be incorporated in the Public Service the officials would still have a significant role to play. Black local authorities lean very heavily on the know-how of these development boards because local government is one of the sophisticated branches of public administration and cannot, therefore, be learnt in a day. After all, we have accepted the devolution of authority as policy. It is the task of the officials who have contact with the Black people from day to day to give effect to this.

I should like to ask the hon the Minister to spell out the need for these boards and their officials so that better motivated staff can be attracted to these boards. [Interjections.] In my opinion the aspect of relations with Black plays a very important role. It is for the officials to ensure that only the best relations are maintained. Good relations must be extended even further and maintained.

It is at the level of local government that the true foundation of an orderly central government is laid, and for that reason the foundations of Black local governments must be well and soundly laid. In this regard the training of board members as well as officials should be carried out on an on-going basis. The form of local government based on the Western form of State Administration is alien to our Black people. We must accept that. Well-trained Black local authorities within the RSA would also serve as an effective yeast for the local authorities in the TBVC countries and the national states.

I should like to see the emphasis falling on the training of Blacks. At present it is the Whites who have to do the work, and I should very much like to see Blacks being trained to do this work themselves. More funds must be made available for training. In this regard I should like to appeal to the hon the Minister. Development boards must present youth courses in which the youth are taught what local government is and what its functions are. At the time of the riots we found that where these courses were indeed presented—I think they were in 23 different areas—there was hardly any unrest to speak of. Training for the youth in the schools would in my opinion be welcome too. Moreover, they would then know what it was all about.

Then there is one pressing need that I should just like to bring to the attention of the hon the Minister. It concerns law enforcement officers. I feel that the training of Blacks in this sphere, too, should take place more rapidly so that in that regard as well they themselves will be able to deal with the problems in their Black towns.

Pioneering work has already been done by these boards to have Black people built their own houses. These boards have introduced self-help schemes. Loans for materials and technical aid and advice are furnished to the Black people. Three-roomed dwellings can be constructed within a loan for materials of R1 300. This is one of the methods that could help to eliminate the backlog in housing. More open-air pleasure resorts could contribute towards the Black youth having a better understanding of nature conservation and soil conservation. First World methods are being used to help Third World people develop, and all this can be done using the know-how of development boards.

Unfortunately, tasks are also being entrusted to these development boards which, in my humble opinion, are not appropriate to them. Here I have in mind, for example, the policing functions that they undertake. I wish to ask the hon the Minister today whether consideration could not be given to taken those functions away from them. I also feel that a division of labour between the Department of Co-operation and Development and development boards has now become essential. Therefore I wish to ask the hon the Minister to give attention to that as well.

It is also the task of the development boards to improve the viability, self-sufficiency and property of Black communities. Moreover, they must act as agents in regard to the provision of housing.

I wish to conclude by appealing to everyone in this House, including the hon members for King William’s Town and Mooi River in front of me, to strengthen the hands of these boards and to give them their full support in future.

Mr Chairman, I do not want to disillusion the hon member of the backbencher’s union, but all he really did was to strengthen our own point of view. The hon member for Nelspruit did exactly the same a little earlier. The hon member for Nelspruit drew a comparison between his development board and others and pointed out that it has had no unrest in its area and that shows just what a good development board can do. My hon colleague from Carletonville said that development boards should recruit the highest calibre of personnel in order to achieve their task. We agree with that. What we really had from these hon members was a display of good and honest teamwork for the NP to try to save it from a situation which is a little embarrassing for it.

A lot of the points I wanted to raise in the short time available to me dealing with consolidation were answered by the hon the Deputy Minister of Development and of Land Affairs. For that reason I would just like to comment on some of the points he has made, because they do link up to a degree. Before doing so, I would like to refer to what the hon member for Ermelo said in his speech. He said that the 1975 proposals were coming to the point of fruition, which was also said by the hon the Deputy Minister in his speech. I just want to say to the hon member for Ermelo that the satisfactory completion of the consolidation phase will not be achievable without further constitutional changes with regard to the relationship between national and independent states and the RSA, because an artificial situation has been created. We have artificial barriers between states, which did not exist before, with enormous disruption of the economic situation in the rural areas, the dislocation of land prices, problems with law and order, etc. All these problems need to be smoothed out, but unfortunately the efforts of the relations committees, whilst no doubt being honest efforts, have not achieved the sort of liaison and improvement of conditions and circumstances initially envisaged.

I accept that, but I pointed out that the 1975 proposals were only a point of departure.

Yes, I agree, but we are not saying for a moment that all is bad about consolidation and that all the development that is taking place is wrong. A lot of good has come out of it and there has been development as far as the Black South Africans in those areas are concerned. What I am saying, is that the final procedures to enable everybody to live together is going to have to come from further constitutional change. The hon the Deputy Minister made exactly that point this afternoon when he was talking about agriculture. We cannot plan or effectively channel the common economy as far as agriculture is concerned through ten different departments of agriculture, which will be the situation in this country if one takes the national states, the independent states and the RSA, unless we have a mechanism for liaison, co-ordination and, in fact, for joint decision-making, because we will have to decide jointly what crops to plant, what the markets are like, how to use scarce resources, scarce technical assistance and know-how.

A bit of power-sharing.

Quite a bit of power-sharing. That is exactly my final point. This power-sharing can only be achieved if we establish formal structures for it. It will have come about in some sort of formal confederal secretariat where the various departments of agriculture can gather to bring about the situation we desire. It will not only apply to agriculture, but to all other facets of our mutual existence.

I have already explained about the co-operative structures.

I accept that.

Mr Chairman, the hon member for King William’s Town will excuse me for not reacting to his arguments. Since he concerned himself for the most part with my colleague’s sphere of operations, I shall leave it to him to deal with the hon member accordingly.

I should very much like to associate myself with the good wishes conveyed by the hon the Minister to Dr Carstens, our former Deputy Director-General, on his retirement. We, too, wish Dr Carstens a very pleasant retirement. I also wish to extend my sincere congratulations to our new Deputy Director-General, Mr Leon van Gass, on his appointment. We look forward to sharing a very pleasant period of co-operation with him.

I should also very much like to congratulate Dr Mönich sincerely on his appointment as Commissioner General. I am convinced that our commissioners general will have to perform increasingly important work in future, and they are already doing so. We also want to wish not only Dr Mönich, but our other commissioners general as well, all of the best with their activities.

We are very sorry to hear about the retirement of Mr Johan Mills. We want to thank him for the valuable work he has done. We also want to wish him and Mrs Mills a pleasant retirement. I am convinced that Mr Mills’ golf handicap will benefit during his period of retirement. [Interjections.]

On this occasion I should also like to convey my sincere thanks to our Director-General, Mr Van der Wall, and his staff for the pleasant reception we have had from them in the department and also for the way in which they support us.

In his speech the hon member for Turffontein referred to the need for planning in regard to the establishment of Blacks on the West Rand. I think that the matter he broached is a very important one. However, I think that the problem he addressed extends far further than the West Rand. We have already identified this problem, and that is why the department has already begun drawing up a strategy for the geographical ordering of the establishment of Black people in the whole PWV region including, of course, the East Rand. This report is in the final stage of rounding off and the hon member for Turffontein can expect important announcements after the report has been studied.

The hon member Dr Venter made a very important speech on social development. She is an authority in this sphere, and in the times we are living in, the matter she dealt with is of the utmost importance. I want to give her the assurance that I share her concern about the importance of this area of work.

She referred inter alia to the awarding of bursaries for the training of women doing social work. In the normal course the awarding of bursaries is of course done by the Commission for Administration. Nevertheless I share her concern about this matter and we shall give earnest attention to it.

We are very grateful to be able to have an expert like that hon member in this House. We shall in future lean on her for good counsel and advice. [Interjections.]

Order!

I hope that the hon member Dr Venter has a mind as agile as the other hon members in this Committee. [Interjections.]

†I should like to address myself now to the hon member for Mooi River, who referred in his speech to the Natalia Development Board and expressed his concern about the fact that money was not spent on housing in that area.

The Natalia Development Board is of course not the only agent responsible for the housing of Blacks in Natal. The South African Development Trust also shares the responsibility for the provision of infrastructure and housing in Black townships in kwaZulu and also in townships in South African Development Trust areas adjacent to kwaZulu. For this purpose an amount of R21,573 million is at present provided for in the Budget. An amount of R3,12 million is also being provided for to be spent on schools in those townships.

Furthermore, the hon member for Mooi River must also bear in mind that most inhabitants of those Black townships in White areas were until quite recently earmarked for resettlement in the national states. It was therefore the Government’s policy that development of those townships should be discouraged.

*Mr Chairman, with reference to the matter touched on by the hon member for Mooi River I wish to point out that a considerable amount of attention has been devoted recently to the unfreezing and development of certain Black urban residential areas. Since this matter figures very prominently at the moment, I should like to express a few ideas in this regard.

A large number of Black residential areas in South Africa have over the years been earmarked for removal to national states or to other Black areas, due to policy or other considerations, and as a result certain residential areas have been frozen for development so that no development has taken place. Only normal maintenance work is permitted. Due chiefly to a shortage of money, however, it has not been possible to proceed at the rate one could have wished for with the resettlement of the inhabitants of areas to be removed. It is true that some residential areas have been moved, but a large number have now been in existence for more than 20 years under the sword of removal with the associated freezing of development. In the course of time the increase in population has resulted in overoccupation of dwelling units and services, and the quality of life of the people there has either remained stagnant or has deteriorated drastically.

That is a serious admission!

Mr Chairman, I hear the hon member for Berea saying that that is a serious admission. I believe that we had better admit that to one another now. Perhaps one had better also say this to the hon member for Rissik. We cannot hope ever to find solutions to our country’s problems and difficulties if we do not address the realities in this country.

Well said! Well said!

Correct!

Therefore, Mr Chairman, I can give hon members opposite the assurance—irrespective of the party that they belong to—that we intend addressing the realities of South Africa.

What are the realities of South Africa?

That the CP is a losing party!

Tell me what the realities are!

Mr Chairman, the fact that the hon member for Kuruman asks that question is to me typical of the dilemma in which the Conservative Party finds itself. They do not know what the realities of South Africa are. [Interjections.]

We know what they are; do you?

The reality is that weak Government!

Now you tell us what the realities of South Africa are! [Interjections.]

Order!

Mr Chairman, …

You have no idea what the realities are!

Order! It is clear that the hon the Deputy Minister heard the question of the hon member for Rissik. Indeed, he reacted to it. Therefore there is no sense in persistently repeating it across the floor of the Chamber. The hon the Deputy Minister may proceed.

Mr Chairman, as regards the policy on the removal of people in urban Black residential areas, which was formulated more than 20 years ago, what it amounts to is that all residential areas …

What about the realities now?

I shall deal with the realities in a moment; when I do so, the hon member for Kuruman can tell me whether he thinks I am really addressing the realities.

What the policy amounts to is that the inhabitants of residential areas situated within 50 km from the border of the nearest national state were to be transferred to national states. Since the 50 km policy was introduced these changed circumstances have come into being, as a result of which decisions had necessarily to be taken in order to address those specific realities. Therefore it was necessary to depart from this policy.

The changed circumstances related inter alia to the following considerations: Whereas 20 years ago 50 km was an acceptable distance for commuting, nowadays, from the economic point of view, this is no longer the case. Some residential areas that are affected are still in a reasonably good condition at present. In other words, it would have been necessary to leave usable accommodation and other facilities standing empty and to replace them at a high cost. In view of the present housing backlog that we are experiencing, hon members will understand that this is not justified.

Due to the inflation factor—which has grown in importance in the interim—the replacement costs of existing facilities are necessarily far higher than the cost of constructing the original facilities. This gives rise to higher rentals and service fees; and this, too, is a reality which arouses opposition to removals among the relevant inhabitants. Alternatively, it requires heavy expenditure by the State with regard to subsidization.

Although in the normal course removals entail a perceptible improvement in living conditions, for the most part it has a detrimental effect on the financial position of the Black man. I do not think there is anyone in this House who can dispute the following fact: Removals have a tremendously negative effect on the social structures which have come into being and developed in communities in the course of time. [Interjections.] That, too, is one of the realities. Incidentally, this is a humanitarian consideration that we must take into account when dealing with the lives of people. [Interjections.]

Moreover, removals have recently become extremely politicized, both internally and abroad, entailing obvious problems of threatening disinvestment and boycott campaigns.

Therefore, against this background, it was clear it was simply not on the cards to proceed with the consistent implementation of this general policy with regard to all Black residential areas. Therefore it became necessary to reconsider the planned removal of certain Black towns. Moreover, on investigation, the prevailing circumstances in most of the areas indicated that their retention as urban Black residential areas was desirable and that their development within specific boundaries would also be desirable. It also became clear that to make proper development possible the introduction of 99-year leasehold would be a strong incentive. In most instances the situation of these areas was such that the expansion of their boundaries was not always possible or desirable. In other cases the expansion of the boundaries was indeed possible and even necessary.

Therefore, in the case of Chesterville in Durban, for example, it was deemed necessary to expand the boundaries of that area too.

Against this background it has been decided, for example in Natal after an investigation by Dr Louis Rive, to which the hon the Minister also referred, that there are several areas that have to be unfrozen, and that those areas must be developed. I refer inter alia to areas such as Chesterville in Durban, Bruntville at Mooi River, Colenso, Ladysmith, Dundee, Glencoe and in Vryheid.

Even here in the Cape it has been decided to adopt this approach with regard to Langa, Nyanga and Guguletu. We adopted this approach in regard to Valspan, too, and I had hoped that the hon member for Houghton, who referred to that in her no-confidence speech, would at least thank us for that.

Due to this approach it has been decided recently to retain 52 Black urban areas. [Interjections.] The hon member for Kuruman might as well also listen to this. In this way 76 000 houses have been preserved for occupation by Black families who would otherwise have had to be placed elsewhere.

Another eloquent example of this is inter alia the decision that had to be taken with reference to Wattville near Benoni on the East Rand. After years of uncertainty about the future of this town on the East Rand we were able, after due investigation and negotiation with the town council of Wattville, to reach a decision. Ninety-nine year leasehold has been granted there and it has been decided that there will be limited expansion and renewal planning for the upgrading of the area. In addition, the inhabitants of Wattville are now certain about their future and have been afforded the opportunity to make a contribution themselves to the development of the town.

I want to say today—and the hon member for Kuruman can take it amiss of me if he wishes—that tears flowed when this decision was announced. One was impressed by the relief afforded in people’s lives by a decision of this nature. [Interjections.]

Finally, therefore, I want to say that the unfreezing of these Black residential areas is a positive development which not only represents a realistic approach to the problems of South Africa but may also prevent a great deal of heartache and pain in people’s lives. I believe that this is a development capable of contributing significantly to the contentment and prosperity of our people, something that is so necessary to ensure peace and progress in South Africa.

Mr Chairman, I should like to say how pleased I was to hear the hon the Deputy Minister this afternoon draw attention to the importance of recognizing the realities of this country. When one draws up a list of realities, certain realities will be contentious in the sense that the hon the Deputy Minister may put a reality on his list and I may put another reality on my list and we may have a dispute about whether they are realities, but there will be many that we will have in common. It certainly lays the foundation for intelligent and worthwhile debate if one begins to identify where the differences lie, and I hope we will hear more of that in the future.

I particularly welcome the fact that he recognizes the harm that has been done by forced removals and by the freezing of development in many townships. He made reference to Langa, Nyanga and Guguletu here in the Cape and I would hope that in the case of those three townships and certainly in others in other parts of the country that I am not familiar with, recognition is given to the fact that enormous backlogs have developed and that these areas deserve priority in respect of money and development.

In general, and as reflected by the hon the Deputy Minister’s speech this afternoon, 1985 has brought forward new attitudes on the part of the Government towards the Coloured labour preference policy in the Cape, the Cape Peninsula squatter problem, the permanence of Langa, Nyanga and Guguletu and property rights in the Cape Peninsula. All these moves have been welcomed and have helped to bring greater stability and security to many people in this area. Many problems remain, especially in respect of squatters and Khayelitsha. Unless they are resolved soon, further substantial progress will be difficult to achieve. The hon the Minister must accept that considerable mistrust and suspicion has built up over many years in the squatter communities towards the Government, his department and the Western Cape Development Board. That mistrust and suspicion is not going to disappear quickly.

One must also accept in this context that, while there are large numbers of squatters who want to move to Khayelitsha or Site C, there are also large numbers who do not want to move, and there are some who are prepared to attempt to persuade or intimidate others to move or not to move, as the case may be. The Government would like everybody to move. So, Sir, what can be done about this?

First and foremost there is the question of the granting of rights to, be in Cape Town. The Government has offered people 18-month permits and said that there would be no deportations at any stage. Now I am puzzled by this. Why is there this delay in the granting of full rights if the Government does not have some trick up its sleeve? When the hon the Minister replies, I should like him to tell us what he envisages happening in 18 months’ time. Is he surprised that many of the squatter communities are very nervous and suspicious about this offer? I can hardly believe that he imagines that these people are going to go away. The hon the Deputy Minister drew attention to the importance of recognizing the realities of South Africa. I suggest—and I hope it is not even a controversial suggestion—that it is clear that these people are not going to leave the Western Cape in any great numbers. Why should we not, therefore, give them full rights now?

There is also still the question of old Crossroads residents on either the original 1979 list or on one of the supplementary lists. What is their status compared with that of the other squatters in the Crossroads area? Will they be given only 18-month permits, full section 10(1)(d) rights or something else?

The Nyanga bush community are reluctant to move as they were told to go where they are now and to await the outcome of Dr Koornhof’s urgent investigations. That was in April 1982 and they are still waiting. They have battled long and hard to survive where they are, under very adverse circumstances, and are unwilling to give it up for the sake of an 18-month reprieve.

A further problem is the motivation for moving people to Khayelitsha. There is land at the old Crossroads and KTC sites which the hon the Minister says is to be upgraded and developed. However, there are also large tracts of land around the existing townships—mainly buffer zones of various sorts. I should like the hon the Minister to tell us why that land cannot be made available for development as it would be if it were in a White or Coloured area.

Crossroads residents were promised phase 2 of new Crossroads at KTC and phase 3 at old Crossroads. They should be guaranteed first options on those sites when they have been developed so that they can be assured that moving to Khayelitsha will only be temporary while phases 2 and 3 of the Crossroads scheme are being developed.

Site C at Khayelitsha is itself a bit of a mystery. Is it a prescribed area as defined in the Blacks (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act of 1945? Is it intended to be a temporary or a permanent site-and-service area? Furthermore, why are the sites so small—only 80 square metres? I realize that cost comes into this, but there is no alternative made available of larger sites for people who are prepared to pay a higher rental. By having these very small sites, one reduces the incentive of householders to improve their housing themselves because the space is limited and therefore it cannot be done easily. These questions need to be answered explicitly if squatters are to be encouraged to move there of their own free will.

If the hon the Minister would take the initiative now and make some bold moves, I am confident that dramatic results would be achieved. However, the hon the Minister must guard against doing or saying anything that could lead to further mistrust and suspicion.

On 21 February 1985, the hon the Minister issued a statement in which he said among other things:

On 23 April 1985, in answer to my question as to whether he had met with Crossroads leaders, he replied:

I am very sorry that this has happened. A feature of Crossroads and other squatter crises has been that when the crisis is at its height, when things are at boiling point, the authorities make promises which they quietly forget when things cool down again.

Broken promises have played a major role in building up the mistrust that is a feature of many of the squatter communities—a feature that makes progress very much more difficult than it should or need be.

The hon the Minister should anticipate the deadlock that may occur in respect of some of the squatter communities. Do not wait for it to happen and then try to react to yet another crisis.

Full rights to be in Cape Town is the key. The hon the Minister knows these people are not going to go away. He must also know that it is inevitable that they will be given full rights sooner or later. I say to the hon the Minister: Grant them those rights now and your problems will halve overnight.

Such a gesture would transform the whole Crossroads/Khayelitsha situation. If it drags on, more and more complications will arise. Already there are allegations of leaders and committees being offered large bribes to persuade their communities to move. Already people are claiming that members of groups who refuse to move are being assaulted.

Related to this Khayelitsha development is also the position of other Western Cape townships. No undertakings have been given in respect of freehold or 99 year leasehold. What is causing the delay? When are decisions going to be made?

A start has been made by the hon the Minister towards a more sensible approach towards Black communities in the Cape Peninsula. I appeal to him to retain the initiative by granting full rights to everyone here. I have little doubt that in doing so he would be making a massive contribution towards better race relations in the Western Cape.

Mr Chairman, I want to say to the hon member for Cape Town Gardens that the squatter problem is a worldwide problem and nowhere in the world has so much been done to alleviate the plight of squatters as in this country, and that goes for Cape Town as well. [Interjections.] I want to ask the hon member and his party to keep their hands off this and leave it to the NP Government; we shall solve the problems in regard to the squatters. [Interjections.]

Throughout the world, and in South Africa as well, the urbanization of people has become one of the biggest headaches of modern times. The revolution of urbanization is spreading throughout the world, and South Africa has not escaped it. Everywhere at the gates of our cities there is a rash of problems related to urbanization. It will be pointless to flinch from these things, and to throw up our hands in despair will be even more pointless. One might just as well try and tame the black South Easter as tame the problem of urbanization.

The question now is: What are we to do? We must accept urbanization, and particularly Black urbanization; we cannot escape it. We shall have to work out and implement a positive urbanization policy as soon as is humanly possible.

Disorderly urbanization has caused a great deal of misery throughout the world and particularly in Africa. If we do not take swift and purposeful action in South Africa we can certainly expect major problems ahead. The science committee of the President’s Council states in its report that Black urbanization may become the biggest population issue in the next century. They say that in contrast to a mere 8 million Black urban dwellers in 1980, the number may increase to 57 million in the year 2050, based on a low fertility rate. If the fertility rate is high they may increase to as many as 96 million. Therefore a tremendous problem awaits us. Many learned projections, and many calculations, still do not offer any solution. We shall have to take the bull by the horns.

However, urbanization should not simply be accepted; it should also be used as a process and a factor giving rise to adjustment and change in the social, economic and constitutional living conditions of communities. The public sector, the private sector and the various communities in our country must co-operate to give this urbanization process a development role. We must not merely see it as an evil; we must give it a role in development.

The tremendous burden of Black urbanization must to an extent be transformed by the private sector, and by the Black community itself, so as to play a key role in the urban development process. However, whatever we do at this point to regulate this stream, it must still remain priority number one to have economic development take place within Black states, or as close as possible to those states. The regional development programmes will still have to be geared to developing the national states to the maximum extent and to stimulating strongly development in regions outside our metropolises. The ideal must be to have this development away from our metropolises succeed, to the extent that the centre of gravity of the Black urbanization process should be in and around the Black states and the Black areas. Urban development in the Black states can only succeed if supported by economic growth, industrial growth, agricultural development and the creation of infrastructure. Therefore everything must be done to promote this growth. We shall have to be prepared to invest a great deal more than we have done thus far. We are still doing hopelessly too little about this development. If we are going to permit our Black states to be dragged down into a weak economic pool, as is the case in the majority of states in Africa, the problem of urbanization is going to get the better of us in future. I wish to make the very earnest plea today that the financially powerful White population of our country help us in the development of our Black states. They can do so by launching and encouraging economic activities there. However, I also wish to ask the Black inhabitants of our metropolises to help in the development of the Black national states. For the Twanas, for example, it must be a source of considerable national pride to see how their fatherland is blooming. Ethnic groups can achieve a great deal more by seeking their salvation and self-realization within their own national states than by remaining appendages of the metropolises within the Republic.

A good example of successful Black urbanization is the fast-growing city of Botshabelo near Thaba Nchu. This is by no means a city of death and misery, which is the false image Senator Kennedy wished to present to the world. It is a prestige city in the making, into which more than R50 million has already been invested and in which buildings and facilities are rising like mushrooms. Botshabelo means “place of refuge”, and that, indeed, is what it has become for 240 000 people, previously destitute Black people, who are streaming to that city at a rate of 10 000 per annum.

You say it is a prestige city?

It is a prestige city in the making! [Interjections.] That is how Botshabelo is growing, and that is how other Black cities ought to grow, too, and if this happens we shall have orderly Black urbanization in South Africa.

However, job opportunities for the people of this great city are cause for concern if industries are not established there rapidly enough. We cannot drag our feet in this regard any longer because time is running out. Moreover we shall have to reconsider whether it is advisable to have workers commute so far to work as is the case at many places today. The tremendous escalation of fuel prices means that the creation of work and industrial establishment must occur in and around the city and not at some distance outside the city.

In the half minute I have left I should like to reply to a question asked by the hon member for King William’s Town. He wanted to know whether the Commission for Co-operation and Development concerned itself only with consolidation, and he wanted to know what had become of our instructions with regard to urbanization. I want to say to the hon member, although he is not present at the moment, that this commission has done a great deal of study in this regard and has carried out several investigations which have been useful to the Government in its effort to regulate urbanization in this country.

Mr Chairman, I think that most of us agree with the remarks made here by the hon member for Bloemfontein North in connection with positive urbanization and the need for proper development so that urbanization may occur other than in the metropolises. I think that all of us accept the vital need for this, but I want to add that it is far clearer to us that we shall never, with the best will in the world, create enough job opportunities if we do not do so in the existing metropolitan areas. The time has come to accept that. When we speak about positive urbanization it seems to me as if that must be the point of departure, whether we want to accept it or not.

On this occasion allow me to add my personal best wishes to those that have already been conveyed to the hon the Minister and the hon the Deputy Minister. I also wish to express my apprciation for the spirit in which this discussion has taken place today. It is most certainly in glaring contrast to debates we have had in the past. [Interjections.] I am grateful for that, because in this way we can indeed make a united effort to find a solution to the many problems that we are struggling with, that the Government is struggling with and that every right-thinking Afrikaner must struggle with if he wants to contribute towards finding solutions.

In this regard I want to say to the hon the Minister that he knows that he and I have come a long way together. There was a time when those paths of ours diverged, and I want to say to him that when I stand up here sometimes to express criticism or make a contribution, then it is because I appreciate his integrity, his capacity for work, his intelligence and his humane grasp of the problems of our country, and it is in that spirit that I want to make a contribution here, without any petty criticism or anything of that nature. Therefore I want to say to him and to the hon members opposite that one does and says things in a positive spirit because one wants to make a contribution.

Today and in the course of the week we have often discussed the vital need for communication, and particularly communication with the Black people. In this regard reference has often been made to the problem in the Eastern Cape, and I may say that it is clear that the Eastern Cape is one of our most critical areas at this stage. The need to create proper channels of communication there is indeed a matter of priority. I think that the hon the Minister will agree with me that it is well-known that for historical reasons, the political awareness of the Blacks in the Eastern Cape is probably at a higher level than that of Blacks in many other parts of the country. Therefore it will possibly also be the case that the problems in the Eastern Cape will have to be tackled in a totally different way.

A great deal has been said about personalities. The name of Mrs Blackburn has been mentioned here several times, often in a negative way. However, I want to say to the hon the Minister that in the light of information at my disposal, and my own view, I am convinced that a critical situation did and does exist in the Eastern Cape with regard to communication. I believe that communication between the police and the Black people in the Eastern Cape has reached a critical stage and that it has been critical for some time. I need not speak on Mrs Blackburn’s behalf because she can look after herself, but I want to say to the hon the Minister that I am convinced that if the hon the Minister or any other Government member does indeed wish to speak to Black community leaders in the Eastern Cape, they will not be able to overlook Mrs Blackburn in that process. [Interjections.] I say that in all honesty. When I say that, I have nothing in mind. I merely want to say that we shall have to take steps to deal with that problem in the Eastern Cape. I also want to say by way of repetition that I do not believe that there is any other person in this country who has made or is capable of making a bigger contribution as regards relations between White and Black in the Eastern Cape than Mrs Blackburn. [Interjections.] That is my humble opinion. I may be wrong, but that is my humble opinion on the basis of my own analysis of the situation there. [Interjections.] It is pointless hon members shouting at me, because that is what I truly believe.

With reference to the points that the hon member for Berea, too, raised here and which have come up for discussion several times today, I too wish to discuss Black local authorities. As the hon member indicated, we passed the relevant legislation with the best intentions. We really tried to create a model which would correspond very closely to that which applies to White local authorities. We did so with the best intentions. I agree with the many positive things that the hon the Minister said here, and particularly that local governments form the essential underpinning for constitutional and other political developments. However I wish to reiterate, on the basis of my view of matters, that in many areas—I do not wish to generalize now—it has been evident that in spite of our best intentions those local authorities have not got off the ground, and as far as I can see they cannot to get off the ground. I may be wrong. However, that is my view on the basis of my insight at this stage.

Now, it is pointless our asking at this stage who is guilty, or what factors gave rise to this. There are several factors. Some are our fault but many are not. I am honestly convinced that in many of these areas we should be making a fundamental blunder if we were to think that we could extend the Black local authorities for which provision is made in the legislation. I now gain the impression from what the hon the Minister said and from other discussions that if the Board responsible for the development of regional services could possibly provide, by way of financial allocations, for supplementation of the existing shortcomings that have made it impossible for certain Black local authorities to function properly, then it would indeed be made possible for them in that way. I wish I could believe that we could solve the problem merely by way of that injection. It seems to me as if that would be wishful thinking.

What is your solution?

I do not have a solution. We have never said that we are omniscient. As far as this problem is concerned there is a constant search for the truth. Not one of us sitting here can say that we have a solution to the problem. However, we have the obligation to continue to search for the truth. It seems to me as if we shall have to go back to the drawing board. We shall have to go back to the Blacks and to their community leaders and ask them what form of local government they want, how it is to be financed, what powers it must have, how the members are to be chosen etc. We had the best intentions under the sun and I blame no one for that. However, it seems to me as if the system is not going to work and that we shall have to go back to the drawing board.

There was something else that caused me some concern. I reiterate that I do not wish to suggest that I have a monopoly on wisdom, but I think that the hon the Minister’s reference to the law enforcement officers that the Board is to get may lead to failure of further action in this regard. There are very serious reservations, and I speak with a degree of experience in the Eastern Cape, concerning the use of these people by the Black community leaders. In our White areas municipalities do not have law enforcement officers, except the traffic police and such people. I may be wrong and I hope I am, but I fear that if we are going to link Black law enforcement officers to the founding of these local authorities it will be a further factor that will make such local authorities unacceptable to the Black people.

I should like to dwell for a moment on the issue of development boards. I concede at once that there are development boards that are doing very good work. Here I associate myself with what the hon members for Mooi River, King William’s Town and Berea said. However it is also true that in many areas development boards are regarded by the Black communities with a considerable degree of mistrust and suspicion—and I am choosing my words with care. This is not necessarily due to the people who are the heads of those boards. It is not necessarily due to the people who occupy the positions of Director or Deputy Director of such boards. At the local level, where the officials of the Boards have to carry out the policy and implement legislation, it is often unacceptable to the majority of people. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, I found it interesting to listen to the way in which the hon member Prof Olivier defended the behaviour of Mrs Blackburn in the Eastern Cape. If he listened to the response from this side of the House, it would have been clear to him what we thought of her behaviour. I want to give him the good advice of simply leaving her to her own devices. The more she behaves in that way, the faster she will be digging the PFP’s grave. The election results in Newton Park proved this too.

Before I get down to the topic I should like to discuss, I want to refer to a statement made by the hon the Minister on 19 April on the attaining of independence by kwaNdebele. It is a source of satisfaction to us to hear that that population group is also accepting independence. With regard to this I should like to express my regret at hearing this afternoon that Mr Johan Mills will be retiring as commissioner-general of that population group.

As he is a member of my constituency, and kwaNdebele is an area bordering on my constituency, I should like to testify to the good work that Mr Mills did in his capacity as commissioner-general. I also want to express my regret that he is retiring at a stage when kwaNdebele is on the point of gaining independence. We none the less do not begrudge him his imminent retirement and a period of rest after a long career in public service. We should like to wish Advocate Mills and Mrs Mills a long and peaceful retirement.

When one pages through the annual report of the Department of Manpower one comes across interesting data on manpower training. One finds that in all the available sources, however, very little is said about the training of farm labourers. The training and improved utilization of Black labour is a job winch has priority in the essential campaign and the steps taken to keep inflation in check.

Unfortunately, over the past few years Black workers have received higher renumeration without a corresponding increase in productivity. This has led to increasing input costs and plummeting profits that have a serious detrimental effect in the agricultural sector. What is more, one should not view increasing wages accompanied by low productivity in agriculture in isolation from what is happening in other sectors. The extent to which wages have increased in other sectors is greater than the increase in wages that agriculture can afford, and this promotes increasing urbanization and naturally results in labour depopulation on farms.

In all sectors the annual increase in the remuneration of Black male unskilled workers, for example, increased from 7% in 1972 to 18% in 1973 and 28% in 1974, while labour productivity in 1973 increased by a mere 2,3% and in 1974 by 3,9%. If the productivity of Black workers is not stepped up to correspond with wage increases, greater mechanization will result in Black unemployment.

I want to emphasize that the problem which arises at the outset is one of the productivity and training of labour. Generally it is clear that productivity in the agricultural sector is very low, although this assertion cannot be generalized. Low productivity and unskilled labour can lead to poverty and can therefore also indirectly influence the level of prosperity.

In the last instance it can be demonstrated that during the past decade labour as a resource in agriculture has become a tremendous financial burden, particularly as a result of pressure from abroad concerning the so-called wage gap in South Africa.

In a mixed market system such as that of the Republic of South Africa, having a capitalistic basis, the only justification for a wage increase is better work; in other words, increased productivity.

An incorrect approach that creates problems in agriculture is that of prices being based on production costs, although the only norm really should be higher productivity, and in agriculture it should be left to supply and demand. Labour is scarce and is growing more expensive as greater demands are made, particularly by the Western way of life that Black people are starting to follow. The increase in economic and overall prosperity stems from this.

Various education and training programmes are being offered to Black workers in White areas for the purpose of increasing their skills and productivity. Private industrial training centres are being established to satisfy the need for community training which is being experienced by industrialists. The aim of these centres is to increase the productivity of the Black man and should be a rewarding investment for the future.

Various other programmes, such as training at manual dexterity centres, trade testing and ad hoc industrial schooling for factory operators in the border areas are offered in White areas for the training of Black workers. Agriculture, however, does not benefit at all from this training. There is a training institution for Coloured workers known as Kromme Rhee in the vicinity of Stellenbosch. For Black farm labourers there is the centre, Boschpoort, in the vicinity of Potchefstroom which, in conjunction with agricultural unions and co-operatives, has been established to meet the requirements of agriculture. This, however, is by no means sufficient.

If we want to increase the productivity in farm labour, urgent and speedy attention will have to be given to the establishment of more training facilities. Expenditure on farming implements and machinery runs into vast sums, and those implements and machinery are placed in the hands of largely untrained people. It causes tremendous losses and is also counter-productive. Today I want to advocate an active effort to make more and better training of farm labourers possible. The co-operatives can also be employed to assure the success of such an effort.

Incidentally, I am aware that co-operatives are keen to make a contribution for the benefit of their members. Capital which is invested in agriculture in this way will always be a good and profitable investment.

Mr Chairman, during the recent disinvestment campaign in the USA the abolition of influx control was mentioned as one of the most important conditions we refuse to satisfy. We also regularly hear similar calls from the ranks of the Official Opposition. I do, of course, think that some confusion often surrounds the concept of influx control. We do not always make it clear what we mean by influx control. It is said, on the one hand, that influx control should be abolished because it is an unreasonable system, because it is economically wrong, and so forth. The history of Africa, however, admonishes us to be careful in regard to the total abolition of influx control in this country.

This Government is at present in the process of developing another system in regard to influx control. Arthur Lewis, one of the major Black economists, concluded in his studies on Africa that allowing an uncontrolled influx of Black people would cause suffocating congestion. Today half of Lagos consists of slums.

Köningsberger, another well-known expert in this field, has said that a laissez faire approach to urban development is extremely dangerous. When we so often speak with such ease about the abolition of influx control, particularly as a result of the tremendous amount of criticism we are obliged to listen to, I think we should first take note of the findings of an investigation into this matter by the UN Secretariat. This particular investigation related to East and South East Asia. Altogether 14 countries were involved in the investigation, and in 12 of those countries it was found that without the intervention of the State in the distribution of people, an unavoidable state of chaos would inevitably result.

We realize therefore that there has to be intervention by the State in this matter. Mr Relly of Anglo American wrote in the Financial Mail—he of course adopts the same standpoint as that of quite a number of hon members of the Official Opposition, ie the total abolition of influx control—that we shall have to accept that the unavoidable consequence would be a state of chaos in South Africa. It is also interesting that the Driessen Commission found that between 1970 and 2000, motor transport amongst Black people will increase by 2 000%. We can therefore realize that without planning and without intervention by the authorities, tremendous problems will arise.

On the other hand, however, one cannot instruct a police force to effectively enforce influx control. One cannot attempt to prevent it by a show of power or force. It is impossible to prevent urbanization in Africa and in all other developing areas.

I recall how often it has happened that hon members of the Conservative Party have said here in this house that when they came into power the so-called Section 10 cases, involving the permanent settlement of urban Blacks, would no longer be recognized by them. They argued that they would apply a system of controlled influx. I could just point out to them that throughout history influx control in the face of the process of urbanization has never been effective. Even in ancient Egypt the Pharoahs tried to put a stop to the growth of the large city of Thebes. They spoke of a new garden city which they were going to develop. However, it was a failure.

Queen Elizabeth I of England wanted to limit the population of London to 100 000 people. The modern city of London stands today as living testimony to how that ideal failed. The Russians tried to control the population of Moscow by means of a five-year plan. It did not work.

Dr Verwoerd is so often quoted by the hon members of the Conservative Party; very often completely incorrectly, particularly when it concerns the issue of influx control. Dr Verwoerd’s view of this was that towards the end of the ’seventies the Black people would begin streaming back to the homelands. He believed that by that time influx control would virtually no longer be necessary.

You are the one who left him in the lurch!

Mr Chairman, I can only tell the hon member for Kuruman that he did not work under Dr Verwoerd; However, I did. I therefore know what went on in that department.

Yes, but you left him in the lurch!

Oh, you do not even know what happened there. So how can you say that I left him in the lurch? [Interjections.]

Order!

Mr Chairman, when we therefore speak of influx or of influx control we have to accept that there has to be some kind of control. We should also realize, however, that we cannot do it with the aid of a police force. We therefore have to investigate other possibilities. There are three such possibilities that lie within the reach of this Government.

The first of these three possibilities is that of agricultural development. Secondly there is the decentralization of industries, a system which, of course, is also criticized. The hon members of the Conservative Party regularly contend that we spend too much money on the decentralization of industries or on the development of the homelands on the one hand, while on the other hand the Official Opposition says that…

You are talking nonsense!

When did we say that? [Interjections.]

The third solution lies in a process of deconcentration of industries close to our major cities. Studies which have been conducted, show that in the vicinity of the Witwatersrand alone some of the industries employing 100 000 Black people could easily move to some other location, as long as those industries remained near the major cities where the important advantages of transport and marketing would be available to them. There are also the advantages which the economists refer to as the advantages of agglomeration. It is also the policy of this Government to try to allow the process of deconcentration to be accompanied by the development of independent communities—we could also view them as independent growth-points—close to our urban areas. Rosslyn and Ga-Rankuwa could serve as good examples of this. Such a system is of course in keeping with the whole idea that the Americans have as well—that of the so-called ribbon cities. We can imagine a ribbon city stretching from Rustenburg past Brits, Rosslyn and Hamanskraal up to Bronkhorstspruit.

Therefore, instead of crowding our Blacks into so-called ghettos we could—and it is the policy of the Government—develop towns for them in which the homes and the places of work of the Blacks are situated close to each other. It is only by means of this approach that we could offer these people a future. The government of Nigeria put exactly the same kind of system to the test in the vicinity of Lagos. It has also been done in Singapore and Bogota. There, too, the development of towns of this nature is the latest-method whereby controlled urbanization is brought about. Together with the decentralization of industries and the development of agriculture I think this development holds out the most promise for the future. I also think that hon members of the opposition parties will agree with me on this. The development of these new growth-points outside our metropolitan cities—around the cities of the Witwatersrand, around Durban and also around East London, even as far as Berlin and King William’s Town—is not in conflict with the policy of any opposition party. In this way we can allow people to become urbanized, because we cannot prevent it. We shall be able to make less use of force with this plan, because if one thinks that in 1982 we prosecuted more than 300 000 people in terms of the pass laws and continually had to use policemen to prevent this, one realizes that one cannot prevent urbanization forever. The Government is therefore in the process of developing a new policy in regard to influx control, a dynamic policy with this new regional pattern. I think the entire House of Assembly can support this effort on the part of the Government, because it is the only way in which to bring about orderly urbanization.

Mr Chairman, in the very few minutes at my disposal I want to make a few comments on some of the speeches that have been made in the course of the debate since I spoke this morning. I think it has been an interesting debate and certainly in my experience the most realistic debate on this Vote in many years. I think the reason for this has been that with few exceptions Government speakers have been more realistic in their approach to the very real issue with which we are concerned when we discuss this Vote. They have not tried to deny that attitudes should have changed and are changing. I think this has been most realistic and most refreshing.

One contrasts this to the sterile debates which we have had so often in this House as to whether a point of view was the point of view expressed by Dr Malan or Dr Verwoerd or Mr Vorster or whoever else, but I think in this debate we have tended far more to come to terms with the real issues than we have before. I want to say that credit for this must go to the hon the Minister—and his deputies—but the hon the Minister set the tone in his response to the question which was put to him yesterday evening by the hon member for Lichtenburg in which he contrasted the Gerrit Viljoen of 20 years ago with the Gerrit Viljoen of today. The hon the Minister’s reply today was a totally appropriate reply when he indicated that he could not be the Gerrit Viljoen of 20 years ago because that would deny that development had taken place and that there had been change. This was certainly a totally realistic approach.

Other hon members on the Government benches too showed an appreciation of this fact. We even had the hon member for Klip River who in one of his better speeches said that resettlement must be minimal, and he dealt with the question of resettlement in Natal in a much more sensitive way than we have ever heard him deal with it before.

We even had the hon member for Turffontein who was mild and much more logical than usual and who conceded …

I do not need your compliments. [Interjections.]

Now he is cross with me when I say nice things about him! [Interjections.]

You are a Paternalist.

Order!

He also conceded that it was no longer correct to even suggest that Blacks were temporary sojourners in White areas in South Africa. The hon member for Innesdal also made a thoughtful speech and told us the reality that Blacks and Whites were not enemies in South Africa.

The hon the Deputy Minister of Education and of Co-operation, I think, made a very courageous and frank speech this afternoon. He conceded that large numbers of Black townships had deteriorated because in the past the people had been living under the threat of removal. The people were earmarked for removal and this has led to the deterioration of these townships. When I interjected at that stage that that was a serious admission, the hon the Minister came back very laudably and said that we had to be realistic in South Africa. That was a realistic response to my interjection. I thank him for that because it indicates that he is facing the situation as it exists in South Africa at the present time, and I certainly do not want to score a debating point by talking of the past more than is necessary. I think we have to face the realities of the situation. We have to realize that there is a deterioration of the situation in Black townships and we have to do something about it.

Coming back to the hon the Minister I must remind him that he did not answer many of the points that I made this morning, specifically those about Natal and kwaZulu and the Buthelezi Commission report. I hope he will do so when he replies to this debate in a few minutes. I want to thank him for his reply to the comments which were made in respect of Black townships and Black local authorities which I think, indicates that he is aware of the problems, and I hope that he will address those problems appropriately. I think of particular importance was his admission again that there is a great need to deal with the broader reform process as far as Black people are concerned and that this is vital in respect of the credibility of any local government infrastructure in the Black townships.

He referred to the Cabinet Committee and said that that was an avenue open for discussion which would be used as the means toward looking at further Black aspirations. However, I want to warn him that there must be no preconditions attached to those discussions. In discussions I have had with Black leaders who have been before the Cabinet Committee, while they have conceded that on specific issues they have felt the discussions to be useful, they have been fearful of the fact that on the broader terms, with regard to what their future would be, the discussions would not produce any real results because they felt that the Government was trying to talk to them on the basis of an eventual confederation of South Africa which presupposed that they would take independence. The people I spoke to were people who had come out very strongly against independence. Therefore, I hope that when the hon the Minister and his colleagues talk to Blacks in South Africa, they will do so in an open-ended way and without any set preconditions because in my opinion that will not be fruitful.

Mr Chairman, I should like to preface my remarks by referring briefly to what the hon member for Berea has just said. Sir, although the Government has clearly emphasized its commitment to negotiation, it is not going into a negotiation process without any idea as to where it wants to go, and neither, I believe, would hon members on the other side of this House be prepared to go into such a process with a completely open mind and with no clear ideas as to what their contribution to the process is going to be. One must be quite clear about this. The Government has not spelt out any preconditions or blueprints beforehand but it is going into a process of negotiation with its ideas just as the other people will be coming into the process with their ideas. [Interjections.] In that process we should then have an exchange of ideas and try to persuade each other so as to achieve a mutually acceptable solution.

*In the first place I should like to thank my two hon colleagues, Deputy Minister Wilkens and Deputy Minister De Beer, very sincerely for the way in which they elucidated their part of this task in this debate, for the enthusiasm which they conveyed and for the vision which they displayed. I should also like to convey my sincere thanks to hon members on this side of the House who supported me.

The hon member for Ermelo, the chairman of the Commission for Co-operation and Development, laid down the guidelines for consolidation in a skilful, concise manner, and also set forth the modus operandi of the commission.

The hon member for Klip River dealt with the development problems in his area from the viewpoint of the various disciplines, and in particular argued in favour of an industrial growth point at Estcourt. This is a matter which will certainly be considered sympathetically in the entire process of the Government’s dialogue with the Chief Minister and government of kwaZulu in regard to the development of the Tugela Basin and catchment area, as well as the entire Tugela area.

The hon member for Umfolozi also made an important contribution concerning the development problems in his area. The hon member for Vryheid had enlightening things to tell us about certain aspects of the urban unrest in particular. I also thank the hon member for Turffontein for his contribution in regard to the need on the Witwatersrand for the provision of a further area for Black housing. The hon member for Nelspruit disclosed, in a very knowledgeable and concrete way, the results of agricultural development in the Black area in his part of the world. The mainstay of my hon colleague, Deputy Minister De Beer, the hon member Dr Venter, also deserves sincere thanks for her contribution in throwing light on the human development aspect and particularly the social problems in this connection.

The hon member for Innesdal, with his usual enthusiasm, clearly spelt out the question of aspirations and the unacceptability of stereotypes as a point of departure in any approach to policy. I also want to thank the hon member for Rustenburg for emphasizing the positive attitude with which we should deal with the problems facing us. My hon colleague for Carletonville had a lot to say about the development boards, and I shall return in a moment to some of the questions he put. Important contributions on the urbanization problems and influx control were made by the hon members for Bloemfontein North and Waterkloof, and I wish to convey my special appreciation to them for that. A further matter which I think was otherwise neglected, was brought to the attention of this House very specifically and appositely by the hon member for Middelburg, namely the question of the training of farm labourers.

On the whole they were very skilful, many-faceted contribution for which I want to thank my colleagues very sincerely. I want to assure them that these inputs will be beneficial to me, to my two colleagues in the Ministery and to the department in our future planning.

I should like to return for a moment to the remarks made by the hon member for Lichtenburg at the beginning, when he triumphantly emphasized that this Government’s policy of separate development for the various Black peoples in their own national state areas had been eminently successful. When he was sounding that note of triumph, however, he forgot that it is in fact his colleagues and he who perpetually raise objections when further development potential and capital is made available for the people in those areas. [Interjections.]

A moment ago it was asked: “When did we do that?” When the hon member for Pietersburg referred here to the Lebowa Development Corporation he referred rather derisively to the way in which the budget of that corporation had risen to R73 million. Someone then interjected: “Yes, while the farmers are suffering.” But the people in Lebowa are also farmers, they are also people who are going hungry. They are also people whose agriculture must be developed, and this is being done by that development corporation. If this does not happen, they will be a burden and a problem to the hon member for Pietersburg and the voters in his area. Let us therefore state the positive side of things here, but in addition let us always be generously prepared to give those positive matters the necessary support.

†The hon member for Berea in the first part of his speech, dealt in particular with matters concerning third tier government. I think I have dealt with that matter in a fairly detailed manner. I just want to add a further point with regard to the question of the expedition of 99 year leasehold: The total number of surveys of 99 year leasehold sites that have been completed with plans that have been approved by the Surveyor-General is 221 000. Completed surveys of which the map and plans have been handed to the Surveyor-General number 131 000. In a further 32 000 cases the surveys have been completed and they are being submitted for scrutiny. Considerable progress has been made and it is anticipated that this whole process will be completed by the middle of this year.

The hon member also referred to the problems surrounding the transfer of land from development boards to the new Black local authorities. I realize this matter has met with some criticism from the new Black local authorities and we are in the process of finalizing revision of the arrangement for the transfer of land to the new Black local authorities. As far as financial assets are concerned I have checked that all of these were transferred by the end of last year or early this year to the Black local authorities concerned. That process has been completed.

I would also like to refer briefly to the question of the Natal/kwaZulu region. The Government accepts that whatever the ultimate constitutional future of kwaZulu, the interdependence of kwaZulu and Natal is an incontrovertible fact. This is illustrated by the fact that the Government has set up a joint committee between kwaZulu and the South African Government to plan for new industrial development points in kwaZulu. These are both to the north of Durban where the point still has to be identified and planning has to be done in detail—this is a high priority of the Chief Minister—as well as an industrial growth point in the Richards Bay area and also joint co-operative planning with regard to the development of the Tugela Basin and its catchment area. The activities of Dr Louis Rive and his kwaZulu/Natal planning board where he is joined by Bishop Zulu as his deputy chairman also illustrate how the social and economic interests of these two areas are being planned on a co-operative basis. My colleague the hon Deputy Minister has already referred briefly to the fact that the consolidation proposals of the Commission for Co-operation and Development with regard to kwaZulu have been completed and are at this stage being considered by the Government.

*I want to emphasize that the consolidation proposals in regard to kwaZulu are probably the most difficult and most complicated when it comes to problems of all the national states. The main problem is to give concrete shape to the two important guidelines which the State President stated in 1979 in his previous capacity. The consolidation must lead to the furthering of the political formation of this particular national state, but at the same time it must also lead to the furthering of the economic development of that national state.

†I should like to give the hon member the assurance that as far as the Buthelezi Commission report is concerned, the State President has intimated to the Chief Minister that we are in the process of considering aspects of that report about which we feel that further discussion can be extremely useful. This is not a matter that has been shelved; we shall take up discussion on certain aspects of this report with the Chief Minister and his government.

The hon member for Mooi River dealt with several aspects of the Natalia Development Board. Firstly he referred to the impression that he had that not much had been achieved in terms of concrete results for housing, and my colleague the hon Deputy Minister has dealt with that and has explained the situation. As regards the R5 million allocated for capital development, it has been used as follows: In the 1983-84 financial year an amount of R4,6 million was spent on property development and other capital works, and in the next year, R8,8 million was budgeted for from this Capital Development Fund. These are two illustrations of the kind of uses to which this fund is being put.

The hon member also asked about the subsidization of the community councils. The exact amount is just over R8 million, which was provided according to the certified statements of the 1983-84 financial year. These are payments by the development board to supplement the income of community councils in order to be able to finance the services that they provide to their communities. I do not have the exact details here, but I shall be pleased to provide the hon member with more details if he so wishes.

He also referred to the increase in the number of Black employees, after the amalgamation of the two boards, from 4 800 to 7 234. One of the reasons for this is that my department has been encouraging institutions within the ambit of its responsibility to give a high priority to labour intensive methods when doing their work. We have here a combination of emphasizing labour intensive methods by this development board, and a considerable increase in its capital expenditure—I have just referred to it—from R4,6 million in the 1983-84 financial year to R8,8 million in the 1984-85 financial year. This is one of the reasons why the number of Black workers has increased. I should also like to point out that in 1982 the total number of Black workers was also of the order of 6 100 workers. That was due to an increase that year in the agency budget to the amount of R18 million; that is to say, works which the development board did as an agent either for the kwaZulu government or the Development Trust. This year the agency budget, in addition to the R8,8 million being spent from its own capital fund, will amount to R27 million. Therefore, both because of the agency budget and the increase in its own capital expenditure, it needed more workers, but it is also part of the labour intensive emphasis that we have asked them to introduce. It is important to note that, of the total number of workers, a large majority of the Blacks that have been additional are contract workers; in other words their presence on the payroll is linked to this particular project for which they have been employed and which I hope will make a meaningful contribution towards easing unemployment in these difficult times.

I should like to reply to the hon member by saying that I have no objection to Blacks being appointed to development boards. In fact, I have already stated my intention that, as soon as vacancies occur on these development boards, suitable Blacks will be invited to become members. It is in accordance with the State President’s suggestion and request that public boards and bodies dealing with matters of interest to the Black communities should have Blacks as members. I think that covers most of the points raised by the hon member. I have already dealt with the question of liquor and sorghum beer. I have also dealt with the hon member for Albany’s remarks and concern regarding the finances for the metropolitan area of Port Elizabeth.

*The hon member for Pietersburg referred to the complaints which he had raised previously in connection with the administration of the Lebowa Development Corporation, and made known his dissatisfaction because a commission of inquiry was only recently appointed. If he had really been concerned, however, surely he would have accepted the challenge which my hon predecessor issued to him a long time ago, namely to submit his complaints to the Advocate General so that these things can be brought to light. But he did not do that. [Interjections.] Now he has come forward again in this House—after the commission has been appointed—and instead of taking his complaints to the commission, he has once more dragged his complaints of 1980 and 1983 across the floor of this House. [Interjections.]

†As far as the hon member for Houghton is concerned, I should like to make a general remark about the question of urbanization and influx control. First of all, I should like to emphasize that in its urbanization strategy, the Government accepts that additional space for Black urbanization and Black township development should be provided in the metropolitan areas too. My hon colleague has already referred to the overall plan regarding the PWV-area. However, it would be completely wrong to overemphasize the question of urbanization in the present metropolitan areas or allow it to be overemphasized. Therefore the second point—which I think the hon member for Bloemfontein North made—should be considered, namely that there should be a spread of urbanization so as to encourage factors favourable to urbanization within the national states and also at the various decentralization points.

There is also a third aspect which I should like to emphasize and that is that in our urbanization process we should accept the realities of the Third World. Firstly, in terms of housing, we must provide serviced sites for unconventional squatter-type shack housing as a beginning of urbanization, expecting that as the financial position of these families improves they will gradually upgrade their houses. Secondly, we must also allow great flexibility for the development of informal trade, industries and similar activities which will make an important contribution towards an informal form of employment for the people in these areas. [Interjections.]

*I have already referred briefly to what the hon member for Turffontein said, and perhaps I should just mention a few very interesting figures here to indicate that the question of provision for urbanization opportunities in the PWV area has not gone entirely unheeded. Last year approval was given for the expansion of urban areas such as Katlehong and Vosloosrust so that they could virtually form one geographic unit. This entails an expansion of 1 646 hectares. Furthermore the City Council of Johannesburg is negotiating with the Town Council of Alexandra on the possible transfer of 102 hectares of land to Alexandra, particularly for cultural, recreational and educational purposes. In the Atteridgeville area the available land is being replanned so that that area may be better utilized. It is expected that it will be possible to make 839 additional sites available for dwellings, while the unutilized boundary strips can also be provided with facilities for low density use, for example sport. In Mamelodi too a further 2 500 sites have been made available within the existing boundaries by means of replanning. Work is also in progress on better utilization of unutilized boundary strips.

In the Vanderbijlpark area provision is being made for the expansion of the Evaton/Sebokeng complex by the purchase of 1 607 ha of land. This is an indication that the department is continuously devoting attention to this matter, and also that the relevant development boards are doing the same. There is also an indication that the planning which is now taking shape in the overall report in connection with the provision of sites for further Black urbanization in the PWV area, to which my hon colleague referred, is something which falls within this general context.

†The hon member for King William’s Town dealt with development boards. I agree with him that it is a matter of great urgency, and it is extremely important that the emphasis of the functions of the development boards be charged from what it used to be in the old administration board system. The administration boards were the authorities responsible for local government. They administered and governed those local communities with the assistance and advice of community councils. With the introduction of Black local authorities, however, full local government authority is transferred from the development board to the local government. The development board merely has a supportive and an advisory function, namely to assist the new local authorities in their tasks. While it is to be expected that there may be a measure of friction and even a lack of mutual confidence between these two institutions, that is the old development boards and the new local governments, I sincerely hope that through communication and co-operation the development boards and the new local authorities will find a modus vivendi to supplement each other, to support each other, and to ensure that the experience of the development boards can be fully utilized by the new local authorities.

The hon member also referred to the “lifeless” reports of the boards. These are merely the statutory reports which have to be tabled in Parliament. Virtually all these boards produce annually much more complete and detailed reports on their activities; and some of them actually also publish journals to illustrate what they are doing. I think the hon member for King William’s Town would be well advised to approach the department so that his name could be placed on the mailing list of these development boards and he will then be sent their other publications.

*Initially the hon member for Bryanston made a few wild statements here. It seems to me he then came under fire from his caucus. First he said that violence was the only alternative if there were no political channels. [Interjections.] He subsequently said that we had erected barbed-wire barriers between human groups in this country. This is a case of “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”. He should restrain himself a little and say the good things that he does say—as he did in the second part of his speech—freely, without first apologizing to his caucus, as it were, by means of this genuflexion towards the extremists among his colleagues. [Interjections.]

On the other hand I want to convey appreciation for the very constructive and illuminating contribution by the hon member for Bryanston on techniques in regard to communication. It was a valuable contribution, and I want to assure him that my colleagues my department and I will take it to heart. In particular we realize that Government departments simply are not, on their own, effective communicators, and that professional experts from outside must be utilized to carry out this task of communication. The problem is simply that when one does this, one has so many questions being asked from the opposite side of this House about who has been appointed as communicator or as Press officer or as liaison officer for this ministry or that, that it almost seems as if one has committed a sin. That is why I am pleased that the hon member has praised this professionalization of liaison with the public in this way.

†My time is running out, but I should like to reply very briefly to the questions of the hon member for Johannesburg North regarding Matopestad. The present decision with regard to Matopestad is that Matopestad should be resettled at Onderstepoort which will be incorporated into Bophuthatswana.

The implementation of this decision, as I announced earlier this year, has however been suspended until the Government has had time to revise all its decisions with regard to the resettlement of Black communities as a part of consolidation processes. I have given the assurance, and I can repeat it here, that no removals will take place unless the community concerned is in agreement—and in this case we know that there is dissension among them—and unless the Government eventually decides, after its revision, that the case should go through. My colleague, the hon the Deputy Minister, assures me that the negotiations with the community still have to take place.

*Unfortunately I cannot go any further otherwise this House is not going to have the time to vote my salary. I just want to conclude by saying that the quotations made by the hon member for Rissik astonished me, owing to that hon member’s lack of historical perspective, and he is a person who calls himself an academic or a former academic. He quoted what Genl Hertzog had said in 1936 about the position of the Blacks in South Africa, but forgets that Black urbanization only occurred to any appreciable extent during and after the Second World War. He also asked questions concerning principles in connection with Black policy. The NP has very clearly stated a new policy in respect of the Blacks, namely that it accepts the permanence of Black communities outside the national states, as well as the consequences of that permanence in respect of personal as well as political rights. It is a fact which has become clearer since 1970, that in spite of whatever attempts had been made to move them, the permanence of Blacks outside the national states had to be accepted.

Unfortunately I have to let that suffice. I apologize to hon members to whom I have not replied. I shall do so in writing.

Amendment put,

Upon which the Committee divided:

Amendment declared negatived.

Vote agreed to.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No 19.