The integrity of two hon. members of this House has been assailed in the course of the debate on the Prime Minister’s Vote—that of the hon. the Minister of Health over the Marendaz affair, and mine over what I may refer to as the Kolver Land Bank inquiry. [Interjections.] Shut un!—if I may use a favourite expression of the hon. Minister of Transport. The hon. the Prime Minister had a chance to put his case; I am putting my case now.

Both the hon. the Minister of Health and I have been challenged to stand up and face our accusers. Well, here I am. I want it recorded that I had the courage at least to stand up and face my accusers and to show how totally unfounded are the allegations made by the hon. the Prime Minister yesterday. I challenge the hon. the Minister of Health to follow me and to do the same as I have done.

The entire case of the Prime Minister, that either the hon. member for Newton Park or I committed perjury in evidence before the judicial commission, was based by him on two suppositions—first: That according to the hon. member for Newton Park I telephones him on Friday, 13th March. The Prime Minister did not seem to place at issue whether I telephoned him once or twice. Well, I can tell him that I telephoned him twice.

When? [Interjections.]

But I shall come back to this. The Prime Minister’s second supposition is that according to my evidence before the commission I telephoned him only on Saturday, March 14th. The Prime Minister has apparently gone to considerable pains to put his case as he wanted to put it. According to his Hansard yesterday he even went to the trouble of checking with the advocate he appointed to lead the evidence before the commission, i.e. Mr. Kruger. The Prime Minister said—

The Prime Minister thereupon quoted from the evidence of the hon. member for Newton Park before the commission, on page 5 of the commission’s report, to prove the one thing and then turned to page 54 of that report to try to prove the other. Now, what do these two parts of the report tell us? On the Friday morning, according to the evidence of the hon. member for Newton Park, I telephoned him and told him what the Sunday Times reporter, a Mr. Bierman, had reported from Bloemfontein. In regard to my evidence, which the hon. the Prime Minister then turned to, I think we should have it quoted in full—

That is me speaking about the hon. member for Newton Park—

The hon. the Prime Minister is using this piece of evidence to try to prove that I did not tell the commission that I telephoned the hon. member for Newton Park on the Friday and from that makes the deduction that no such telephone conversation took place. [Interjections.]

Shut up!

He has, I take it studied the record of the proceedings closely because he has even gone so far as to consult his counsel about this. There is one thing I should now like to know from the hon. the Prime Minister, one thing which will make his entire case collapse like a pack of cards. [Interjections.] That will reveal his rantings and accusations of yesterday as a shallow political manoeuvre, which they were. What I want to know from the hon. the Prime Minister is, why did he deliberately withhold from this House the one vital piece of evidence that gives the lie to everything he said?

He has not got the guts.

I don’t think he realizes, unfortunately for him, that I have a copy of the record.

On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, is the hon. member here entitled to say that the Prime Minister has not got the guts?

Order! The hon. member may proceed.

In withholding this vital piece of evidence the hon. the Prime Minister …

What evidence are you referring to?

I shall deal with you in good time. You had your chance yesterday; I am having mine to-day. In withholding this vital piece of evidence, the hon. the Prime Minister has misled this House in a most shocking manner.

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, is the hon. member entitled to say that the hon. the Prime Minister has misled the House?

Order! The hon. member may proceed.

The Prime Minister has the record of the proceedings of the inquiry and I want him to take a look at page 42 thereof to see for himself how he can justify his contention that nowhere in my evidence did I say that I also telephoned …

On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, is an hon. member allowed to read his speech?

Order! The hon. member may proceed.

I should like the Prime Minister to have a look at page 42 of the record and see for himself how he can justify his contention that nowhere in my evidence did I say that I also telephoned the hon. member for Newton Park on the 13th of March, i.e. the Friday. I was being examined by counsel for the Prime Minister at the inquiry and this counsel asked me—

what was my reply? Perhaps the hon. the Prime Minister, who is looking at it, could tell me. My reply was—

Then if the hon. the Prime Minister would look at what he has so strangely withheld from this House, he will see that I testified that I told the hon. member for Newton Park what Mr. Bierman had reported to us from Bloemfontein about the Kolver loan. [Interjections.] That is why the hon. Judge made his finding on page 3 of the report, which, I might add, the hon. the Prime Minister also did not see fit to place before this House yesterday. I quote again—

That is me—

This is the Judge’s findings. The Judge continues—

Now we have it on record in the Hansard of this debate that the hon. the Prime Minister, ignoring the evidence that I had given, ignoring this passage in my evidence, which was accepted by the hon. judge in the enquiry, is making his own findings that run completely contradictory to the findings of the commission. In other words, he is telling the hon. judge that he was wrong; he is rejecting the judge’s finding and substituting for it a finding of his own. This goes to the crux of the whole matter. The hon. the Prime Minister is clearly dissatisfied with the findings of the hon. judge. [Interjections.] He feels that the commission should have made findings which coincide with his own political viewpoint.

The commission rejected your evidence, as a matter of fact.

I shall illustrate this. The hon. judge found that the Kolver report as published was inaccurate due to a serious blunder by a senior reporter of the Sunday Times, Mr. Bierman. [Time expired.]

I ask that the hon. member be given the opportunity to complete his speech.

I am grateful to the hon. the Leader of the House.

Then, and you will see it on page 4 of the commission’s Report, in the summary of findings, the hon. judge said this—

And this is important, Sir—

This is another thing that the hon. the Prime Minister is challenging. [Interjections.] I take it that that hon. member does not mind my quoting the judge’s findings.

In other words, the hon. judge is completely satisfied that the report had originated with Mr. Bierman and that it had been taken over by me bona fide and that i had passed it on to Mr. Streicher, the hon. member for Newton Park. This finding also, obviously, did not please the hon. the Prime Minister. He wanted it the other way around. So he tried to change it as far as the records of this House are concerned. What did he do? In an interjection in this House on the 27th August, he said to the hon. member for Newton Park, when that hon. member had challenged him about the findings of the hon. judge—

Sir, can anything show greater contempt for a considered finding by an eminent judge of our Supreme Court? Can you imagine anything that is more reckless, more irresponsible, than the hon. the Prime Minister’s use of distorted facts on which to base allegations of perjury? I think he is the man who should be in the dock, not I. I challenge him to give the real reason for what he is trying to do. I challenge him to come out into the open and tell this Committee the truth, the full truth, of the matter, which is that he tried to use a judicial commission for his own petty political ends and, unfortunately for him, he failed. Now that he has failed he is apparently trying to twist the findings and to make his failure less apparent.

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

I withdraw it and say “adapt”. Finally, Sir, I challange the hon. the Prime Minister, before his own people in this House, before the Opposition and before the nation to send all the relevant papers to the Attorney-General, as he has the right to do. Let the Attorney-General decide whether there should be a prosecution. I personally would welcome it.

Under what Act?

Mr. Chairman, apparently the hon. member for Kensington, who sat in this House yesterday, who had all the documents at his disposal and who heard the discussion, was not able yesterday to put up any defence at all. I suppose the hon. member soent most of last night and this morning to work out this defence that he has brought forth this afternoon.

It was written out for him by the hon. member for Durban (North). [Interjections.]

Sir, I did not make a single interjection while that hon. member was speaking, and I certainly expect the same courtesy from hon. gentlemen opposite.

How quiet they were when he was speaking!

[Inaudible.]

On a point of order, Sir, is the hon. the Minister allowed to say that the Leader of the Opposition also lied?

I did not speak to him, because I do not even speak to him at all.

Is the hon. the Minister entitled to use those words in reference to any member on this side?

Order! Did the hon. the Minister use those words?

Against which member did I use the words? The hon. member should not be so stupid.

Order! The hon. the Prime Minister may proceed.

As I have said, the hon. member now comes forward with a defence, but let me tell the hon. gentleman that he has explained nothing away whatsoever. The point is that first of all we had the evidence of the member for Newton Park that there was one conversation; then subsequently in this House he changed it to two, but the two were on the Friday. He said that time and again. Now the hon. member for Kensington comes along and he too comes with the story that he spoke to the hon. member for Newton Park on that Friday.

It is not a story.

It is in the record.

Yes, we will come to that. It is perfectly true that when his evidence was led, they acted on the supposition that there had been only one conversation and that conversation had taken place on the Friday. They put that question to the hon. member for Kensington and he replied “yes”. But the counsel started cross-examining and then the matter became an issue. It was then that the hon. member in fact stated under oath at page 54 that he had had one conversation. He never referred to two conversations in his evidence at all. He came back to this and said that there was one conversation. He received comments from the hon. member for Newton Park on that one conversation and that conversation was on the Saturday. Let the hon. member try to wriggle out of this one. Is his evidence now that he spoke to the hon. member for Newton Park on Friday and that he spoke to him again on Saturday?

You have a copy of the evidence in front of you.

It is exactly because I have a copy of the evidence in front of me that I am asking him this question.

Are you disputing the judge’s findings?

I am disputing the judge’s findings in this matter and in this matter alone. The commissioner accepted that the conversation took place on the 13th, but that is not the evidence of the hon. member for Kensington. The only evidence from the hon. member for Kensington which is on record is that he had a conversation with the hon. member for Newton Park and it happened on the Saturday.

It happened on the 13th. It is in the evidence.

No. I will read it out again. Then the hon. member for Kensington must say I am wrong, but this is the evidence he has given. He was cross-examined on this statement that he spoke to him on the 13th, and as the cross-examination proceeded he found out that he could not stick to that story to which he had originally said “yes”. And then he goes on to say;

This is the evidence from the hon. member for Kensington as it appears on page 54 of the report—

I suppose that is where he stopped. I suppose he wanted to say “either the Friday” but he did not. He went on to say:

However, he did not stop there and he went on to say:

This has nothing to do with his meeting on the 13th.

Why do you not make yourself Commissioner next time?

I am referring to the evidence, and the question which the hon. member for Kensington must answer now is whether he did in fact do so or whether he wants to change the evidence he gave under oath. Does he want to say now that he did not speak to the hon. member for Newton Park on the Saturday? Is that what he wants to say?

What are you trying to prove?

You have nothing to do with that. At the moment I am arguing this case with the hon. member for Kensington. He has given evidence under oath that he spoke to the hon. member for Newton Park on Saturday morning, but what is more …

“And Friday:”, he said under oath.

No, Sir. He made that original statement and he was cross-examined on that. Then he changed it, namely from the 13th to the 14th and this is to be found in this record. He did it because he was cross-examined on it and it did not fit in. Do the hon. members who are so loud on the other side, and especially the hon. member for Pinelands, who is also a lawyer, say that no conversation took place on the Saturday?

Mr. Chairman, may I ask the hon. the Prime Minister a question? The question I want to ask the hon. the Prime Minister is would he state specifically in this House in what respect he is disputing the findings of the Commissioner?

All that the Commissioner has found, is that the conversation took place on the 13th, the Friday. In other words, he accepted the evidence of the hon. member for Newton Park that it was on the Friday. That was not the evidence of the hon. member for Kensington, however. His evidence was that the conversation took place on the Saturday. That is the simple fact of the matter. The hon. member gave that evidence under oath. It is up to him to change his evidence now. What is the position now? If his evidence stands that he spoke to the hon. member for Newton Park on the Saturday, then there were three conversations, because the hon. member for Newton Park says that they had two conversations on the Friday, and he is very positive about it. The hon. member must now say that his evidence was wrong that he spoke to him on the Saturday. I will tell the hon. member why he cannot do so and why he had to change the date of the conversation from the 13th to the 14th when he appeared before the commission. It was because he was confronted with the fact that, according to his report in the newspaper he said he spoke to the hon. member for Newton Park “yesterday”. This report appeared in the Sunday Times on the 15th and therein the hon. member said “yesterday”, that is the 14th.

Do you know when the report was written.

It stands to reason that if a report appears in a Sunday newspaper and it is stated that he spoke to the man yesterday, it means that he spoke to him on the Saturday. The hon. member for Zululand is not a newspaper man, but the hon. member for Kensington at least should know that that is the position. I say that the hon. member must explain to this House why a shadow of perjury does not rest on him. I still say that and he has not discharged the onus that rests on him.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. the Prime Minister is totally wrong when he says that the onus rests on the hon. member for Kensington. There is an onus resting on the hon. the Prime Minister to show that the finding of this commission was wrong, and not only that it was wrong, but that the Commissioner failed in his duty by not drawing it to the attention of the Attorney-General of the Transvaal if perjury was committed before him. The Commissioner has a duty, as every Judge of the Supreme Court has, and if perjury is committed before him, it is his duty to refer the papers to the Attorney-General of the relevant province. The hon. the Prime Minister knows this. Will he tell me why the Commissioner did not do it? It was his duty to do so. I want to go further, and say that this is a cheap attempt by the hon. the Prime Minister to smear these hon. gentlemen. How dare he come before this House to talk about perjury? He knows very well that to commit perjury a man must believe that what he is saying is untrue or be unable to establish that he believed it at the time. Is there any statement or anything in the papers concerned that they did believe it was untrue? Is there anything in his evidence to show that the hon. member did not believe that what he was saying was true?

Unless Saturday is Friday …

That has nothing to do with the issue and the hon. the Prime Minister knows it. He is far too good a lawyer to try to bluff this House in this way. I say this is a most shameful performance, not worthy of Parliament.

I now want to come back to the Prime Minister’s Vote. The Prime Minister was kind enough to offer us more time for this debate. This fact has been published in the newspapers. What the public do not know, is that the Prime Minister in fact gave us nothing, because any time we spend additionally on this Vote has to be taken off other Votes, other Votes on which we want to raise some very important matters with the Ministers concerned. Nevertheless, there are certain matters which I feel are outstanding between the Prime Minister and myself and which I would like to deal with as quickly as possible. Then I want to re-ask the Prime Minister certain questions which he has not yet answered and go further, asking one or two questions which I believe he can answer without their being explained at any length.

The hon. gentleman asked me what the policy of this party is in respect of the Group Areas Act. I suppose he is referring to propaganda in his newspapers concerning attempts made to mislead the public about a statement made by Mrs. Catherine Taylor, the member for Wynberg, in which she named the Group Areas Act amongst those which the United Party would amend, abolish or radically change. The Group Areas Act, for the Prime Minister’s information, is amongst those which will be amended. It will be amended to ensure that separate residential areas are more fairly provided, that alternative accommodation is more readily provided and that compensation is more fairly paid. In dealing with this matter, priority will be given to slum areas and compulsion will only be used as a last resort. I may say that we believe that under our policy compulsion will not be necessary and that, in fact, the various groups will be attracted voluntarily towards newly established residential areas as they were in the case of Athlone and Bokmakierie in our time. From a practical point of view, it must be appreciated that repeal of this Act is impracticable, as even up to June, 1968, there were 1,174 full or future group areas proclaimed which are now enshrined in the deeds registries of our country in the various provinces and have created vested interests.

May I ask the hon. the Leader of the Opposition a question?

No, Sir, I have not time now; I am sorry. The hon. the Minister’s Vote is coming up. He can deal with the question then.

[Inaudible.]

On a point of order, Sir, is the hon. the Minister allowed to refer to the Leader of the Opposition as being too dishonest?

Did the hon. the Minister say that?

Yes.

The hon. the Minister must withdraw that.

I withdraw.

The second matter on which the hon. the Prime Minister wanted a reply, concerns the repeal of the Population Registration Act and how we will be able to manage separate rolls without the Population Registration Act. The Prime Minister knows very well that that is managed at the moment very easily in South-West Africa. It was in fact managed here in the Republic before the Population Registration Act was introduced. In those days Coloureds though not on a separate roll were listed on a separate list on the same roll. Bantu were on a separate roll. Whites and Coloureds went to different schools as fixed by the school boards. There was a distinction between the treatment of races for the purposes of the Liquor Act. Surely, what has been done before can be done again? I see no difficulty in that regard.

The hon. gentleman then wished to discuss the basic philosophical differences between us concerning non-white representation in this House. He raised the question of whether South Africa was or was not a “veelvolkige land”, a multinational country. He knows as well as I do that the English word “nation” is translated into Afrikaans both by the word “nasie” and the word “volk” and that this matter has often given rise to confusion. I see that the word “nation” is capable of many meanings. The two that are most common in the dictionary are twofold. Firstly, a nation is “a body of people marked off by common descent, language, culture or historical tradition”. The second meaning is “the people of a state”. All of us use this word in either or both contexts. The Prime Minister referred me to the use by me of this word in Hansard (8th June, 1961, column 7559). I do not propose to quote the passage. I was using it then in the second connotation, namely the people of a state. Quite obviously, the peoples living in South Africa do not share a common culture, language or tradition. But they are the people of a state and therefore a nation in the second sense in which that word is used. Hon. gentlemen opposite also use the word “nation” in varying senses. As we have always done, they now also use it to describe the English and Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans although these two groups do not share a common language. The late Dr. Dönges on a famous occasion included the Coloureds and Indians in the South African nation when he spoke of 5 million hearts that beat as one. Hon. gentlemen will recall that. On the other hand hon. members opposite have used the term “nation” to exclude the English-speaking people when they speak of the “Afrikanernasie”. Even when they speak of the “Afrikanervolk” they mean a nation excluding the English-speaking people. It seems to me to them “volk” and “nation” are synonymous. If this were not so, the new description of their race policy as of a “veelvolkige Suid-Afrika” would be meaningless. Indeed, they themselves translate it is a policy for a multinational South Africa. I think it is pitiful that the Government and hon. members opposite seek to avoid an intelligent discussion of our race problems by playing about with the meanings of words and indulging in semantic subterfuges. They know very well that our race federation policy provides par excellence for the maintenance of its identity by each group.

Do you mean the same when you use the word “unit”?

I am afraid I cannot recall using the word “unit”.

In June, 1961.

The word “unit”?

Yes, one unit.

One unit. One constitutional state. It is a constitutional concept; it is one constitutional state.

Sir, when talking of basic philosophies as between the hon. the Prime Minister and myself, one must never lose sight of the fact that basically there is an economic inter-dependence between the groups in South Africa. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I am not going to follow the hon. the Leader of the Opposition in detail. However, I think I should mention to him that Mr. Henderson, in his campaign at Klip River, has confirmed to us at a meeting at Bergville, that he sees the South African nation as a nation consisting of black and white. Secondly, I think he should know that that very gentleman rejected on two occasions the findings of Mr. Justice Botha, who is now a member of the Appellate Bench. That is just by the way.

Mr. Chairman, yesterday afternoon we witnessed a display on the part of the hon. member for Orange Grove of brotherly love. Or perhaps it was the old school tie which had caused the hon. member for Orange Grove to come to the rescue of the hon. member for Kensington. I sincerely hope that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition was not motivated by the same school tie in running to the rescue of the hon. member for Kensington. It is interesting to know that the hon. member for Kensington has now confirmed to us that he is one of the old graduates of Skollipot. It is interesting to know what courses one can take at Skollipot. These courses are:

1. (a) How to collaborate with Dr. Hertzog.
2. (b) How to support the United Party regardless of sleepers and sleepers.
3. (c) First steps in share pushing followed by a diploma course in market rigging.
4. (d) How to bamboozle industrialists and cause them to believe that there is a labour crisis.
5. (e) How to assassinate a character.
6. (f) How to support the Progressive Party (via the Rand Daily Mail). (After all, to be a clown, one must be able to ride on two horses at the same time.)
7. (g) How to commit perjury.
8. (h) How to cater for the youth of South Africa.

In spite of the fact that the hon. member for Kensington had won his colours in all these subjects, he still has to wriggle out of some of the accusations made against him yesterday and this afternoon. He still has to explain to us certain findings of the Commissioner. If there had been explicit evidence as to two conversations, then he must still explain the following paragraphs to us. On page 2 of the report of the commission we read the following:

I wish the hon. member for Kensington would pay attention to this, because he has a lot of explaining to do. I do not know who is going to intervene on his behalf now. On page 3 of the report of the Commissioner it says:

Please note that he was apparently given possession of the mortgage bond. This intimates to me that the bond was probably already in their possession at the time. That confirms the argument of my hon. friend for Prinshof. The report continues:

If we look at the terms of reference, we find that the last term of reference was that inquiry must be made into the following—

The question then is whether it was the hon. member for Newton Park or the hon. member for Kensington, jointly with Mr. Bierman. That was the question that was in issue. Therefore, one would expect that, if there had been two telephone calls between the hon. member for Newton Park and the hon. member for Kensington, the Commissioner would have taken great pains to elicit from these two gentlemen what had happened during those two conversations. Why did he not do so? He did not do so because the evidence was not there. Only when the hon. member for Kensington was pushed under cross-examination he realized that he had to get out of this predicament and mentioned a conversation on the 14th March. He said the following—

What purpose did the conversation on the 14th have? Why should Mr. Myburg Streicher have any further interest, because he had had the meeting on the 13th? It does not make sense; in fact it contradicts the evidence. This hon. member must also explain to this Committee why the Commissioner found reason to come to the following conclusion. Referring to the member for Kensington he said:

And again—

Who created that impression?—the hon. member for Kensington and no one else because Mr. Bierman, according to the evidence, was on his way to Cape Town. So, it is that hon. member who was responsible and no one else. The Commissioner says further:

Who could have been that reporter? Not Mr. Bierman, but the hon. member for Kensington. Mr. Bierman sent a telegram from Bloemfontein. Let us examine certain facts which affect Mr. Bierman just as seriously as the hon. member for Kensington. Mr. Bierman arrived in Bloemfontein on the 11th and went to the Deeds Office. According to his evidence he paid 85 cents as a search fee. But what are the facts? The facts are that he paid R3.50, which is equivalent to searching 10 volumes at 35 cents each or, alternatively, a search fee for one hour. In other words, he had a wealth of time and information at his disposal to establish the correct facts. [Time expired.]

Sir, apparently the mud slinging is to continue, but I am afraid it will have no effect at all. I want to get back to the hon. the Prime Minister. He challenged me to state basic philosophy against basic philosophy in respect of non-white policy. I indicated that one of the fundamental facts was that there was a basic economic interdependence between the groups in South Africa and that we believe that with that economic interdependence as a base, it was possible to find means for the different race groups at different standards of civilization to live together within the framework of one state. We also believe that in the interests of all sections, white leadership must be retained over the whole of South Africa with the object of using that leadership to help all our peoples to a better way of life. It is not prejudice but facts of history that made the white man the initiator of progress and the bearer of culture and that made for higher civilization on the African continent. If you look at the state of literacy in the various states of Africa, it is significant that the highest degree of literacy exists in those states where white influence has been the strongest. In this respect one finds Rhodesia leading the field, with South Africa second and Basutoland with the Belgian Congo third. We believe that on this basis there will be far more progress and far more security for the future of all our people than under the pipedream policies of the hon. the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister suggests that in spite of the economic advantages of our proposals, despite the greater economic strength for South Africa and the greater security flowing from it and the higher standards of living for all our peoples, they will be more dissatisfied under our proposals than under his because we do not give the Bantu representation in this Parliament by their own people, despite the fact that under his proposals the vast majority of Bantu will not live in their independent states. Only a minority will live there—the vast majority will find themselves in a position where they have no meaningful rights of any kind whatever in the country in which they live and earn their living. Well, Sir, this is, of course, nonsense. He then asked me to justify the representation of non-Whites by Whites in this Parliament. My answer to that is a perfectly simple one. I believe that the prejudice against the Bantu in this House is such that Whites will be able to do a better job for them than they can do for themselves especially as there will be statutory standing committees under our policy for liaison with the various communal councils. Sir, there may be problems under our policy, but they will never be half as serious as those under the policy of the present Government.

Is that something new?

I would appreciate it if the hon. member would not ask any questions; my time is very limited.

The Prime Minister also put certain questions to me in regard to bilingualism and through me also to the hon. member for South Coast. He wanted to know whether we would see to i-t that any M.E.C. elected by the Natal Provincial Council would be bilingual. In this connection I should like to refer the hon. the Prime Minister to my reply to the censure debate, where I dealt with that matter. I said there that I hoped that in selecting candidates the hon. the Prime Minister would ensure that his people also were bilingual. I said—

I want to give this House and the people of South Africa the assurance that in making appointments of an important nature, where the individual appointees are to deal with the public, we shall bear these principles in mind and shall sincerely strive to see that people holding executive offices are able to serve the public in both languages.

Those are the questions the hon. the Prime Minister put to me. There are, however, a number of questions which I put to the hon. the Prime Minister, questions which are still unanswered. Furthermore, there are one or two additional questions I should like to put to him to-day.

First of all, there are some questions connected with the Minister of Health. Twice in this House I have deal with the attitude taken up by that hon. Minister with regard to Mr. Oppenheimer and his group of companies. But the question was ignored by the hon. the Prime Minister in the censure debate. He has promised me that he would reply to it in this debate. Secondly, there is the question of the hon. gentleman and Die Beeld. Thirdly, the question still remains about the hon. gentle man and his association with Capt. Marendaz and the difficulties that arose therefrom. I have a little difficulty with one or two points made by the hon. the Prime Minister. Perhaps he can clear them up for me in the course of his reply. You see, Sir, the hon. gentleman said that Marendaz changed the name of the company from Marendaz Diesel Engines (Pty.) Ltd., to Bansam after the hon. the Minister had written a letter of resignation as director. When the Police approached the hon. gentleman, he said he had never been a director of Bamsam, that he knew of no such company, had had no dealings with it and had never seen the books of the company. In short, he knew nothing about it. Then on the 16th August of the same year, the Police went back to the hon. gentleman and asked him about Marendaz Diesel. According to the Hansard of the hon. the Prime Minister, which I do not want to quote now, it seems to me that he indicated that the answer was the same.

Yes.

The Prime Minister confirms that his answer was the same. What he said about Marendaz Diesel was not only that he was not a director but also that he had no dealings with and knew nothing about that company.

No. That is not what the Prime Minister said.

You see, Sir, this is where the difficulty arises …

You have my Hansard; why do you not quote it?

In order to save time I did not want to quote it in full. [Interjections.] The hon. the Minister’s reply to the Police, when he was approached about Bamsam, was that he did not know of such a company, that he had no dealings with such a company, that he had never seen the books of the company and that he knew nothing of it.

Yes.

When it came to the other company, Marendaz Diesel, the Prime Minister said that the Minister’s reply when queried by the Police was the same.

Why do you not quote my Hansard?

I am trying to save time, Sir. The Prime Minister knows how limited my time is; he is only trying to be difficult now. The hon. gentleman can quote this; he has unlimited time, but I have not. The hon. gentleman says that his indemnity against deportation was not part of the settlement. I am informed, correctly or incorrectly, that the settlement was signed by Marendaz but was not handed over by his attorneys to the State Attorney until the indemnity against deportation was handed over on the same day as the undertaking not to pursue the criminal prosecution against the hon. the Minister was handed in, the same day that the State Attorney signed the deed of settlement. It seems that there is a definite relationship between those two, which I should like the hon. the Prime Minister to clear up for us.

Then there were certain questions put to the hon. gentleman on the Labour issue which have not been clarified. The first concerns the contradiction between the hon. the Minister of Finance and the hon. the Minister of Labour in respect of the statement made by the hon. the Minister of Finance in this Budget speech concerning non-white labour. And then there is another one on labour, and that is how the hon. the Minister of Transport can still remain a member of the Prime Minister’s Cabinet when the labour policy he is carrying out on the Railways differs so much from the policy of the hon. the Minister of Labour and the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration. Then there is a third point. What is the hon. gentleman’s answer to the problem that the employment of Whites is increasing faster than the population increase? What is the hon. gentleman going to do when there happens, even more markedly than is happening now, that the increase in the white population can no longer meet the demands for the types of work traditionally done by Whites. [Time expired.]

When the hon. the Leader of the Opposition rose yesterday, he said: “It is a cheap attempt to discredit some of the members on my side.” Then he went further and said: “The mud-slinging will continue.” All that he has now done after the conclusive reply by the hon. the Prime Minister on the Marendaz case, is to continue and attempt at character assassination as far as I am concerned which has been going on for months now on the part of the United Party and certain English-language newspapers. Sir, this matter is about a case which is more than 10 years old, but which is now being raked up. Let me say that it has been a very unpleasant five or six months for me and my family. Now the false allegation is made here that no reply has been forthcoming for five or six months.

I spoke here on 23rd July, and then I said directly that I was not going to involve myself in the legal aspects. Neither am I going to do it to-day. Even now I have not properly gone through that file to which the hon. the Prime Minister referred, and I am not going to do so either. But what I do want to do is to associate myself with the hon. the Prime Minister and at the same time thank him for actually having wasted time here for the sake of the National Party and for my sake, while great matters of national importance had to be discussed. I want to associate myself with what the hon. the Prime Minister said here. I shall quote only two passages. The Prime Minister said the following—

The second passage in respect of which I want to associate myself fully with what the hon. the Prime Minister said, is the following—

That is the truth of the matter—not my mess, but the mess of Capt. Marendaz. In connection with this letter of resignation dated the 12th, I want to repeat that I acted on advice. Here my name features on paper as a director of that company. I then wrote the letter to resign, and I wrote it in that tenor because I knew with what kind of people I had to do. I could either have had him prosecuted or have resigned in this way. It was only four or five months and the advice I had received was to do it in this way, and what was wrong with that? As far as the other letter which I wrote is concerned, hon. members wanted to make out here that I used the plural and wrote “we” and “our” throughout the letter. Of course; I was a shareholder in that company. But, Sir, if you take a look at that letter, you will see that I added a footnote, and what did I write in that?—

This was in connection with another person. I used the word “you”, not “we”.

May I ask a question?

No, I have too little time. That hon. member can speak just now. Sir, I content myself with that. As regards the shares, let me say what I have already said on a previous occasion: I applied for those shares, and what was wrong with that? Here was a person who professed that he was going to manufacture Diesel engines for the first time in the history of South Africa; why should I not apply for shares and why should I not accept them? What was wrong with that? Sir, I want to content myself with that as far as this matter is concerned.

Did you pay for the shares?

No, of course not. That has also come out, and I have never denied it. What is wrong with that? I do not steal things as some other people do. Sir, I shall content myself with what I said here on 23rd July. As far as I am concerned, there was no irregularity, no corruption or anything in this whole matter which could affect my position in this House or in this Cabinet, and I content myself with that.

But why did you not just write that you had never been a director?

Sir, I content myself with the statement which I made here, but in this debate not only the Prime Minister or I have come under close scrutiny; the Leader of the Opposition has also come under close scrutiny, and I want to ask him to-day whether his heart is still in politics, because, Sir, we have a giant on this side and a vacuum on that side. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition has failed to meet the requirements of this debate; he is not qualified for this task. He is not in control of the situation on that side. We on this side and the Press have been sitting here and watching them flounder. Sir, do you know what happened again yesterday evening—an unheard-of thing. The Leader of the Opposition rose and spoke for three minutes before the adjournment, and when the House met at 8 o’clock, there was a vacuum; then another member spoke. What a fiasco, Sir! Let us be honest now. I am asking the hon. the Leader of the Opposition whether his heart is still in politics.

Sir, am I going too far if I say that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has undergone a complete change of character over the past year or two? There he is; he is listless; he is dejected and weary. Everyone who knows him, as I have known him for 17 years, knows that he is tense; he is unsure of himself. May we not rightly ask what is going on with the Leader of the Opposition; is his heart still in politics? This debate has illustrated more than ever before that the future of the person of the Leader of the Opposition is at stake. and the people of South Africa want to know what is going on. Surely this is not the same person we have known over the past years? All of us have noticed his inability and the change which he has undergone. Is his heart still in politics or should he take some long leave to give some thought to his own future in politics and this thing which the people of South Africa cannot overlook, i.e. this attempt of the United Party to commit character assassination in the politics of South Africa?

It is a disgrace.

The Hertzog Party was their ally. We have never had such a dirty election as the past one. Sir, this is no laughing matter. Suspicion was cast on the Prime Minister and his son-in-law was dragged into it. If matters are investigated, there are one or two persons who have not spoken the truth, and we still want to know this this afternoon. We want to know this afternoon which of those two persons spoke the truth.

Tell us what you did in Ghana.

I went to Ghana on a private visit. I paid for it with my own money. So what! Then I want to add that those words which Marendaz used in connection with my visit to Ghana, are an infamous lie just as all the other stories which he told. There is nothing wrong in having been to Ghana, but those other stories which he added are lies.

Carel, did you not see a drawing of that member on a rock there?

No, the fact of the matter is that when the hon. the Leader of the Opposition came under close scrutiny in this House, we saw that he was not the same man we have known all these years. Therefore we have the right to ask him whether his heart is still in politics. One cannot overlook that lameness, that tiredness and that uncertainty and nervousness of his. Is it because there are troubles within the party? If this is not the case, we must look for the trouble with the hon. the Leader himself. The fact of the matter, however, is that we have noticed this and that we have to tell it to the people of South Africa. On this side of the House, on the other hand, we have had a giant as opposed to the vacuum on the side of the United Party.

Mr. Chairman, I have seldom seen an exhibition in this House as we have had by the hon. the Minister of Health. He accuses me of having lost interest in politics and of having fallen away and not being the man I was. He is quite right, I am not the man I was, I am twice the man I was! During the past election I have taken nine seats from the Prime Minister and in the coming provincial elections we are going to hold those seats and take some more. Then I Will have the greatest pleasure in telling the public that that hon. Minister of Health is not worth while employing as a doctor because he does not know his job.

To get away from the jokes and nonsense which the hon. gentleman was obviously trying to get away with, let us come back to the point whether the hon. the Minister has denied that he was a director or he has not.

Are you deaf?

Has he denied that he was a director or not?

Have you gone deaf as well?

It is quite clear that the hon. the Minister has made no attempt to deal with the questions which I have put to the hon. the Prime Minister. There are one or two more matters which I want to deal with very briefly. The first one concerns the statement which he made in the course of his speech yesterday concerning the combating of communism. He said, and I quote: “Ons sal kommunisme beveg, nie alleen in ons eie land nie, maar in enige ander land in Afrika waar die Regering ons versoek om dit te doen.”

I meant “terrorism”, not “communism”.

I raise this matter, because I want to have this clarified by the hon. the Prime Minister. Perhaps he can deal with it in his reply, because one of these two statements just deals with terrorism and the other one with communism. It leaves the impression …

You will recall that I referred to a former statement, that I repeated.

I am quite sure that is what the Prime Minister meant. In any case I hope that is what he meant and he could perhaps clarify it, because this difficulty still exists and it is not something which we should even leave for a day.

I have already clarified it and it was so in the newspapers.

It is not so in the unrevised Hansard.

I have not had a chance to look at it, but I will have a look at that. Thank you for telling me.

Then we asked the hon. gentleman what plans he had for liaison between Parliament and the Coloured Representative Council. We asked the hon. gentleman a series of questions concerning non-European affairs, particularly Bantu affairs. The hon. Prime Minister will recall that I set them out for him in detail. One of those was whether South Africa can afford the development of the Bantu states as economically viable units. If not, what is the alternative?

I have replied to you already.

No, I did not have the replies.

This I did by way of interjection when I said “yes”.

That is not satisfactory. I also asked whether he still considers it necessary that an adequate supply of Bantu labour should be retained in order to enable white areas to contribute to the development of the reserves. If so, how far will the Government go to make that supply permanent and to train labour to meet the demands of a highly competitive world in which cost is paramount and to meet the sociological needs of an urbanised community and one or two other issues of that kind.

Lastly I want to raise two new questions with the hon. the Prime Minister. The first concerns unfortunate propaganda which seems to be going around in the country at the moment, namely that the vote in our elections is not secret.

That is nonsense.

Will the hon. the Prime Minister say it is nonsense and that the vote is secret?

Then I want to ask the hon. gentleman to make a statement for us concerning this Agliotti case. I know there is a commission sitting on this matter, but it is an unhappy situation that this matter should have been raised, apparently for the first time by a newspaper, where it was emphasized that vast increases in the value of that property had been accepted by the State, and that, apparently, a big sum of money, namely R7½ million, was paid over. It appears that when this matter was raised the commission was appointed and that this has now resulted in the gentleman to whom the money was paid paying back no less than close on R5 million. While I appreciate the difficulty of the Prime Minister in making a statement now while the commission is sitting, I would nevertheless like to know whether, when an expropriation of this size takes place, it does not come before any Minister to sign for its approval. When a sum of R7½ million is to be paid out. does it not come before the Cabinet and is it not discussed by the Cabinet for its approval? If that is so, how is it possible that the mistake that has quite obviously been made in this matter could have passed unnoticed by the Cabinet and members of this Government? This matter leaves us with a most unhappy feeling. There is a commission sitting on this particular case, but how many others may there not be? How much else may be going on that we do not know about and in respect of which we have not been fortunate enough to have had a newspaper to sniff them out for us and to make inquiries about? That is why I am so anxious to have a statement from the hon. the Prime Minister as to what steps are being taken to avoid any repetition of anything of this kind.

Mr. Chairman, I shall not refer to the stupid and uninformed remarks which the hon. the Leader of the Opposition made about my Department. I shall deal with them under my Vote.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition asked whether we were going to continue with this smear campaign, but at the end of his speech he again started a smear campaign. I want to tell him that he is the architect of the smear campaign in South Africa. I also want to say that this Kolver story is nothing but a conspiracy among him, as Leader of the Opposition, the hon. member for Newton Park, George Oliver, Joel Mervis and Hertzog Bierman to smear the hon. the Prime Minister. They knew that the Prime Minister’s son-in-law had nothing to do with this matter. However, they had to proclaim for a week that the Prime Minister’s son-in-law had received a loan of a quarter of a million or half a million rand, I do not know what the amount was, from the Land Bank. What was the impression they wanted to create? They wanted to create the impression that he got the loan with the wrongful assistance of the Prime Minister, and that the Prime Minister had abused his position in order to obtain a Land Bank loan for his son-in-law at the expense of poorer people in South Africa. That is all they wanted to do.

On 29th March this year, three weeks before the election, the Sunday Times printed the basest and the dirtiest gossip story which I have ever read in my 30 years in politics. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition wholeheartedly associated himself with that. The report was headed “Graaff voices national concern about stories of strange ways of making money”. The next heading was “Nats and money”. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition will hear about this. I shall now tell him that he had a share in this dirty story, knowing full well that it was untrue.

Order! The hon. the Minister is not allowed to say that he knew it was untrue. The Minister must withdraw it.

Well, then he was just too stupid to know that it was untrue. But very well, I withdraw it. But what does it say here?—

I now challenge him. What individuals were making money in strange ways? There are many strange ways in which one can make money.

Are you worried about it?

The hon. member ought to be ashamed of himself. At any rate, my father did not sell cattle to the Tommies, then had them stolen on the way and sold them back to them again! The hon. member must not think that he will get away with his tricks. The hon. member accused National Party politicians here of making money in “strange ways”. I know only two ways of making money—an honest way and a dishonest one. There are strange ways in which people make money, for example by being a clown in a circus, and so forth. But I am now saying that his accusation can amount to nothing but that National Party Ministers and politicians abused their position in order to make money by false means. I shall quote his own words. When last I asked him where he got these gossip stories from, he asked me whether I did not know what Newscheck had said. I quote—

Now I ask, did he believe that? Now the hon. the Leader of Natal, who was caught out on a blatant untruth in this House, sits there helping the Leader of the Opposition. I am asking the Leader of the Opposition, who are the people on the Government side, in the National Party, in the Government or in the provincial councils who have made money in this country in a dishonest way? I then asked him a question. I quote—

Sir De Villiers Graaff replied to this—

If this is so, Sir, why did he have a share in that smear story? The hon. member for Pinelands is an honourable man. I ask him who these Nationalists are who have made money in strange ways. What is his reply? He said that he knew of no one in National Party circles who had made money in this way. Why did he take part in this gossip story? I have been in politics for 30 years. For 27 years I have sat in the provincial council, the executive committee and this Parliament. Never before in my whole political career have I encountered such a base thing, a base thing which the Leader of the Opposition started. [Interjections.] It is not untrue; it is true. I say that he proclaimed here that leaders of the National Party, members of the Cabinet, members of the National Party in Parliament, Administrators and provincial councillors had abused their position in order to make money by dishonest means. That is what he said.

That is completely untrue.

It is not untrue. It says so here. Very well, now I am going to hammer the Leader of the Opposition. He knows that he must kick up a fuss now, because I am going to corner him. I want to ask the Leader of the Opposition, has he seen this report?

You received a reply to that long ago.

Wait a minute. I have your reply. But has the hon. the Leader of the Opposition seen this? Has the hon. the Leader ever denied one single word in this report?

You received my reply to the whole matter a long time ago.

No. he accused National Party members of Parliament and members of the Cabinet, including myself, of making money by false means. Now I am telling him this is untrue. You are lying and you know you are lying.

Order! The hon. the Minister must withdraw that.

Mr. Chairman, I withdraw it.

What you said is a blatant untruth.

Mr. Chairman, is the hon. the Leader of the Opposition allowed to say that what I said is a blatant untruth?

Yes. the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is allowed to say that.

Mr. Chairman, do I understand you correctly? I had to withdraw my words a while ago when I said that what he said was a blatant untruth. What now gives him the right to say that to me?

I ordered the hon. the Minister to withdraw his words because he said that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition was lying. That is unparliamentary.

But the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has now said that what I said was a blatant untruth.

That is parliamentary.

Very well, then he also told a blatant untruth. Mr. Chairman, the fact of the matter is that the Leader of the Opposition falsely accuses National Party politicians, National Party Ministers and National Party members of Parliament of making money in a dishonest way.

That is a blatant untruth.

I am telling you that no other inference can be drawn from this story. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition said that he did not know about it. Nevertheless he takes part in it. Mr. Chairman, he is the most despicable politician ever in the history of South Africa.

Mr. Chairman, we have now come to the end of the discussion of this Vote. Before proceeding to deal with certain matters, I just want to point out to hon. members that they will have noticed that Mr. Koos Visser, the Secretary to the Department of the Prime Minister, did not take his place this year, as he retired at the end of last month after a term of office of 43 years in the Department of the Prime Minister. It is interesting to note that during those 43 years, in which he rendered very distinguished services, he served under all Prime Ministers, excluding Gen. Botha. This is indeed a very long term of office. Since he has retired now, we want to wish him everything of the best and good health. I am doing this not only on behalf of myself and this side of the House, but also on behalf of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and that side of the House, since the Leader of the Opposition will not have another turn to speak.

Thank you very much.

We had in him a very well-equipped official, an official who, in the sphere of constitutional law and in other respects, rendered very fine services in regard to the South-West Africa case, with which he was intimately concerned, an official who devoted his life to that one department. We should like to express our gratitude and pay our homage to such an official. Mr. Botha has taken over his office. Mr. Botha was Deputy Secretary under Mr. Visser for many years, and he is as competent and well-equipped an official. South Africa is very fortunate indeed in still having the services of such officials at its disposal. Since he is, relatively speaking, a young man, we should like to express the hope that it will be possible for him to render outstanding service for many years.

Firstly, I want to refer to the question of terrorism which was brought to my notice by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. It is obviously wrong that the word “communism” should stand there. If the Leader of the Opposition would look at the Hansard, he would see that the preceding sentences read as follows—

With that I concluded that line of thought. Then the speech continued as follows—

Then it should read as follows—

That is the way I wanted to put it, and the way it should in fact be. I gladly make that correction.

Does the Prime Minister mean only terrorism which is aimed at South Africa?

Yes. I very clearly put it that way at the time. Now I must tell the hon. member for Bezuidenhout at the same time that I know of no terrorism in Southern Africa which, in the final analysis, is not directed at South Africa. They make no secret of it. The hon. member is aware of that. The ultimate object of all this is South Africa.

I just want to ask the hon. the Prime Minister whether by “terrorism” he means terrorism which is aimed against South Africa.

The answer is “yes”. I want to repeat that the ultimate object of all terrorists is to take South Africa away from us. We should have no doubts about that.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition put certain questions to me. However, before dealing with them, I want to draw the attention of the House to the fact that the question of decorations has been under discussion for a long time. We have discussed it here in this House. The Government has paid very thorough attention to this matter. On Friday, 25th September, 1970, particulars of the Decoration for Meritorious Service will be published in the Government Gazette. It will be an award to South African citizens and other permanent residents of the Republic of South Africa who have displayed such merit that this decoration may be conferred on them. Furthermore, I just want to point out that the award of the decoration will not bring with it any designation, title, rank or privilege. However, it will grant the recipient the right to write behind his name, if he chooses to do so, the letters D.V.D. or D.M.S., the abbreviations for the Afrikaans and English designations of the decoration, respectively. The names of those to whom the decoration has been awarded, will be published in the Government Gazette. A register of these decorations will be kept in the Department of the Prime Minister. The register will contain the full names of the persons who received the decorations as well as the reasons why they were in fact awarded. It will be possible for these persons to wear a miniature of the decoration on suitable occasions. As is customary, a lapel badge—consisting of a rosette of orange, white and blue, with a five-pointed star of gold—will go with it. This will be the first time that such a decoration to South Africans will be awarded by South Africa. Naturally, a great deal of circumspection will be exercised in making such awards. They will only be awarded to persons who have pre-eminently rendered outstanding service to South Africa in various spheres.

Now I come to several questions which were put to me by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. In the time at my disposal I also want to raise with him a few other matters to which I received no replies from him. I want to associate myself with the understandably vehement outburst which came from Minister Coetzee. In all earnestness I now want to ask the Leader of the Opposition whether the Opposition intends to go on playing the man instead of the ball, as was done in the past election and is again being done now in the Klip River by-election. What course do we want our politics to take? I am putting this question to the Leader of the Opposition in all earnestness. I am asking this because I myself and virtually every one of my colleagues have been the targets of that sort of game. [Interjections.] The hon. member over there who has interjected may perhaps be able to boast that this has enabled them to win a few seats, that these tactics were successful and enabled them to win a few seats. But does he not realize how this has sullied our public life? Is this the way we want our public life to be sullied? When I want to Durban in order to hold a meeting I was stared in the face on virtually every street corner by posters saying: “Vote for an honest Government”—United Party posters. Surely there is only one meaning one can attach to that. You see, Sir, one displays this type of poster and then one goes around propagating gossip stories of the kind to which Minister Coetzee referred. Is this the way in which we are to conduct elections? Whenever the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is confronted here, he is very pious; then he says he did not mean anything by it. I would have had more respect for him if he had said, “I did it, so what?”. This reminds me of the expression which very aptly describes the conduct of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition—“ever ready to hurt but afraid to strike”. Sir, in that way we are rendering no service to our public life.

As regards the questions put to me by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, there is one matter which we must clear up, a matter that was raised by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. The hon. member for Bezuidenhout referred to the challenge, or invitation —depending on the angle from which one views it—issued or extended to me by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, i.e. to allow the Economic Advisory Council to decide on the policy of whether or not there should be homelands.

There was never any such invitation. Quote my Hansard.

I am now going to quote the Hansard of the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. This is what he said—

These are the words of the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. Have I quoted him correctly?

What was my challenge? My challenge was something totally different.

But this is what the hon. member for Bezuidenhout said; this is what your frontbencher …

You are trying to play politics now. [Interjections.]

No, Sir. I shall now start right from the beginning with what the hon. member for Bezuidenhout said. He started as follows—

In other words, you regarded your Leader’s words as a challenge? Correct?

They certainly were a challenge.

Of course! But the hon. the Leader of the Opposition denies it. [Interjections.] In any case, the hon. member said—

But you cannot prove it.

What I want to know from the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is whether the hon. member for Bezuidenhout was speaking on behalf of the United Party—in other words, with your approval—when he adopted this attitude?

That is my own interpretation of it.

With respect, I did not put a question to you, but to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. I want to know from him whether the hon. member for Bezuidenhout was speaking on behalf of his party and with your approval when he adopted this attitude.

I do not submit my speeches to the Leader of the Opposition …

I think you ought to do so.

I am not trying to drive the Leader of the Opposition into a corner; therefore he need not remain so quiet. I have to react now to what was said by a senior frontbencher of the United Party.

Why did you not do so earlier on in the debate?

Why did you not react to the action of your own Minister of Finance, who declined my challenge?

I am dealing with that now.

Was he not speaking on behalf of the Government?

I am dealing with that now.

He did not accept my challenge; he does not have the courage. [Interjections.]

Order!

What I want to know from the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is simple. The whole matter is hanging in the air; many people are talking about it, and therefore it is necessary that clarity be obtained on it. This is what I want now.

Just accept our challenge; then, surely, it will be easy.

But how can I accept the challenge now when I do not know whether you spoke out of turn? Surely, I must know whether you spoke out of turn or whether what you said meets with the approval of the Leader of the Opposition.

I issued a challenge and it was not accepted. Now you should not play politics with it.

I want to know whether the hon. member, who is a shadow Minister … Is he still one? Shadows come and go, according to the poet. That is Why I should like to know whether or not the hon. member is still a shadow. I cannot get any further now with the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, but I want to come to the hon. member for Bezuidenhout.

It is not fair to deal with this matter now that the time for this debate is expired and I cannot reply to you.

I want to know this from the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. The challenge dealt with politics, pure politics.

Economic politics.

Economic politics, but the point involved was whether or rot the homelands had to become independent. Correct?

No.

But this is the crux of the whole matter. What does it involve then? And what I find astonishing now, is that a senior fronbencher on that side of the House has so little regard for principles as essentially to commit his Leader to throwing his principles overboard in the event of an economic body recommending something else.

It has nothing to do with principles.

But if the hon. member does not want to argue this matter now, there will be another occasion on which we shall be able to discuss it with each other. What I also find interesting in that regard, in regard to this debate which has now lasted for a long time, and I have also taken cognisance of the other debates, is how firmly hon. members opposite are now standing by the Tomlinson Report again. I wondered—perhaps the hon. the Leader will tell us at some stage or another—what had become of the Fagan Report, whether the Fagan Report was still United Party policy and whether they still stood by that report.

But before leaving the hon. member for Bezuidenhout, I want to say that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition still owes me a reply to something which the hon. member for Bezuidenhout has said on two occasions already, and he does not say anything without deliberately doing so for some purpose or another. On two occasions already he said that our method of delimitation with the loading and deloading of constituencies was wrong, and that it ought to be altered. I have on several occasions asked the hon. the Leader of the Opposition to repudiate him and to state what stand he takes in this regard. He carefully avoids saying a single word about it.

I shall deal with it at the Third Reading.

I shall keep you to your word in that regard. But the hon. the Leader of the Opposition also put several other questions to me. The last question he put to me was in regard to the Agliotti affair. The Leader of the Opposition asked me how that land was being purchased. The land is being purchased, as I understand it has always been done, by the Land Tenure Board. This is a board which has been established. I need not explain the machinery. It buys the land. In view of the large amount involved here, this amount should have been brought to the notice of the Minister. That is what one would have expected. It was not brought to the notice of the Minister. It forms part of the task of that commission to ascertain why not and what did happen. Naturally, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition will not expect me to anticipate the finding of the commission. The fact of the matter is that everybody who can and could have shed light on this matter, was summonsed to appear before the commission. They have given their evidence; the evidence has been completed, and after the argument of the advocates appearing before it, the commission will give its decision. Then it goes without saying that action will be taken in the light of the finding of that commission. I should very much like to correct the hon. the Leader of the Opposition in regard to this matter. After it had become known that an amount, to speak in round figures, of R5 million was being paid back by Agliotti, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition granted an interview to the Sunday Times. He started by saying—

And then he went on to say—

That is wrong.

I quote further—

He says that is wrong.

It says so here. I would be very grateful if the hon. the Leader of the Opposition would say that this should not be stated in the report, because it would be totally untrue if this was stated in the report, but unfortunately this is what the report states. Does the hon. the Leader of the Opposition want to change it now? Does he want to say that he was wrong when he said this, because he was wrong?

If I said so, I was wrong, but I am not accepting that I said so.

It says so here; the hon. the Leader of the Opposition may get it from me.

It was raised by somebody else.

I take it that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition said so to the Sunday Times'?

I am not sure.

In all fairness to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition I want to assume that he did not say so, but this is what was printed in the Sunday Times, and they quote Mr. Stanley Uys. No, it is not George Oliver. Here the Sunday Times came along and put these words into the mouth of the Leader of the Opposition, once again to cast suspicion—once again to commit character assassination—that that land had two years before been offered for. R1½ million to the same State that was now buying it for R7½ milliom.

Disgraceful!

It is disgraceful, to say the least.

It is shocking.

Let me now point out another aspect of this matter. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition is also reported to have said—

And then he praises the Sunday Times! Sir, the Sunday Times wrote an editorial in which they sang their own praises: they were allegedly the people who brought about this development. Sir, surely, this is not true either. The Sunday Times published this matter on 15th March, the same day on which the hon. member for Kensington published the interview he had with the hon. member for Newton Park on the Saturday. On the previous Sunday—in other words, the 8th—there was a report on this affair on the front page of Die Beeld. Die Beeld of 8th March carried a whole long article on this matter.

You only appointed the commission after the Sunday Times had mentioned it.

Yes, I shall tell the hon. member why. Die Beeld set out the circumstances and Die Beeld drew attention to the valuations which had been placed on the land. Unlike the hon. member, I am not a person who takes notice of street gossip; I prefer to look up the records. According to the records, two professors of geology assessed the value of the land, since the point at issue was the clay content and the value of the clay, on which an ordinary sworn appraiser cannot make a valuation. They were the experts who made a valuation, and on the strength of their valuation that amount was determined. The one professor was from the University of the Witwatersrand and the other from the University of Pretoria.

I read that.

Well, that appeared in Die Beeld’s edition of the previous Sunday, i.e. the 8th. On Saturday, 14th March, after the hon. member for Kensington had had the interview with the hon. member for Newton Park on the Friday, we had a conference of candidates in Pretoria, which was attended by all the candidates of the National Party. On that occasion the hon. member for Boksburg, Sias Reyneke, rose and told me that, in spite of what was being said about the land, and in spite of the valuations which had been placed on that land, there was something fishy about that matter. At that conference of candidates he mentioned specific reasons for saying so. At the conference I told him and all the candidates that I would appoint a commission of inquiry, for these were the rumours that were circulating on the East Rand and in Boksburg. This matter had as little to do with the Sunday Times as with the man in the moon. When it became clear to me that it was necessary to call in real authorities in this regard, I gave instructions that two advocates with special knowledge of valuation and expropriation appear before the commission, which was already sitting at the time. I want to tell hon. members to-day that, if I had not appointed those advocates, the original valuation would have gone through, because the basis on which the valuation had been made, was totally wrong. Those advocates were able to point that out, the result being that a settlement was reached in this regard. This is the whole truth of the matter. If the Sunday Times wants to claim for itself any credit in this regard, it has no right to it at all, for it did not play any role in this regard. I think the only credit it can claim for itself, is that in one Sunday Times a few Sundays ago, no fewer than three letters of apology were published. The one apology was to a judge. Another was an admission that one of its senior reporters had blackmailed a witness at the Supreme Court in that he had threatened to write a certain derogatory report if the witness refused to do what he wanted him to do. The other apology was about the reference to Hertzog Bierman who should have stood for Parliament in Kensington. If they want to claim any credit for themselves, this is the type of credit they should rather claim for themselves. I honestly think the hon. the Leader of the Opposition owes this to himself, because at present he is bearing the blame for it. I had the matter investigated and made inquiries at all the departments. I also instructed the advocates to move inquiries, and the hon. the Leader of the Opposition will appreciate that I said in my instructions that he had said that this land had already been offered to the State for R1½million two years before. The Sunday Times quoted the hon. the Leader of the Opposition like that, and these words were also printed between quotation marks. All of them reported back to me that this was a lie, and that this land had never been offered to the State. I think the hon. the Leader now owes it to himself to take the Sunday Times to task and to demand that they make a correction in this regard; otherwise he will have the name of being the person who broadcast this lie, whereas, in actual fact, it was they who did so.

What lie?

The lie that the land was offered to the State for R1½ million.

May I ask the hon. the Prime Minister a question? Does he realize that you can only tell a lie if it is attributed to somebody speaking something which he knows to be untrue? What the hon. the Prime Minister should say is that it was an untrue statement.

I do not want to put it euphemistically. The State must be harmed, and therefore the Sunday Times broadcast this lie. They alleged that the State could have bought this land for R1½ million two years before, and that two years later they bought it for R7½ million. “A rose by any other name.” The hon. the Leader can call it what he pleases, but the fact remains that his name is being associated with this untrue report, not only with the public outside, but also with the Government Departments in particular, and he cannot blame anybody but himself and the Sunday Times for it. It is therefore in his interest to rectify the matter with them.

I am also obliged to refer to the deliberate campaign which has been conducted in the Sunday Tribute of Natal for the past few Sundays, and in which detailed reports were written and allegations and accusations were made against the Broederbond.

What about Die Nataller?

The hon. member is a young member and I think it ought to be such a great privilege to him merely to be able to sit in this House that he should not make an interjection. That is a deliberate attempt at setting the Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking sections at loggerheads. I read those articles, and I cannot blame anybody who is impressed by them and whose hair stand on end at reading them. As hon. members know, I handled the legislation here, on the instructions of the late Dr. Verwoerd, for instituting a commission of inquiry into the Broederbond. Hon. members will recall that this came about as a result of the agitation by the hon. member for Orange Grove. Hon. members will recall, furthermore, that I pleaded with the hon. member for Orange Grove to give evidence before that commission, and that he did not want to testify under oath what he had so effusively said about the Broederbond. Nor did he do so.

You will recall that I protested against the terms of reference.

The Leader of the Opposition could have protested against them just as much as he liked. The fact remains that there was a commission, and that a judge of appeal was appointed to it. The point I want to make is that after these totally false reports had appeared in the Sunday Tribune, I telephoned the Commissioner in question, Mr. Justice Botha, and told him that he had published a commission report on this matter. I told him that it was necessary at the time in the interests of good relations between Afrikaans and English speaking people that the Broederbond, the Freemasons and the Sons of England had to be investigated. I then told him that he had to acquaint himself with the contents of those articles and that I would speak to him again later on. I spoke to him on Saturday morning. He had acquainted himself with the articles. This judge of appeal gave me leave to tell this House that all the allegations and accusations which had appeared in those articles of the Sunday Tribune over the past number of Sundays, were the same allegations and accusations as had been submitted to him as the Commissioner at the time, that he had investigated all of them and that he had found them to be totally untrue.

What does Die Nataller have to say about it?

If the hon. member wants to ask me a question about Die Nataller, he may do so, but at the moment I am dealing with the Sunday Tribune.

May I ask the hon. gentleman a question? Did he also send the relevant extracts from Dagbreek and Die Nataller on this subject to Judge Botha?

That has no bearing on this matter at all. I am dealing with accusations which appear in that particular newspaper.

The same appears in the other papers.

No, Sir, what has appeared in the other newspapers is by no means the same. But the fact of the matter is simply that a newspaper is again publishing the fasle statements, which have already been proved to be false, in order to benefit the United Parity at Klip River and in the coming provincial elections. These statements were published for no other reason, for they believe that, if they can create a gulf between Afrikaners and English-speaking people, if they can make the English-speaking people afraid of the Afrikaners, they may perhaps retain certain seats. I want to tell hon. members opposite that they will not succeed with those tactics.

Before replying further to the questions put by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, I want to say that he tried to reply to the pointed questions I had put to him on the fact that Whites were to represent Bantu here. I asked him whether they would not be allowed to take their seats here because they were Black or because they were Indians. The hon. the Leader did not give a direct reply to that; he tried to circumvent it. I asked him directly whether they would not be allowed to take their seats here because they were undeveloped. The hon. the Leader did not reply to that. I asked him whether they would not be allowed to take their seats here because they were too irresponsible. The hon. the Leader did not reply to that. What does the hon. the Leader say? The reply he gave me, as I wrote it down here, is to my mind a significant one. He said— The prejudice is such that it would be better for Whites to represent them.

The Whites will do a better job.

Yes, “the Whites will do a better job for them”. In other words, Sir, do you see what it leads to now? Now he is basing it purely on prejudice. In other words, now I am entitled, surely, to argue that, if one could break down that prejudice, they would be able to take their seats here.

Of course, yes.

One merely has to soften up the people so that they no longer have that prejudice, and the moment one has softened them up so that the prejudice has fallen away, they can take their seats here. Am I correct in making that deduction?

No.

But then I shall be grateful, if my deduction is not correct, if the hon. the Leader of the Opposition will tell me what other deduction one can make in this regard. I shall be very grateful if he will tell me this.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition referred to the labour question once again. I welcome this, because it has come to my notice that the financial editors of certain newspapers are going out of their way to create the impression, in spite of what I very clearly said in this House in respect of the labour question, that this Government is deliberately aiming at damaging the economy of the country, and that under no circumstances this Government wants to take cognisance of the problems and the complaints of the industrialists and the businessmen. Of course, nothing is further from the truth. My other colleagues and I have made this very clear here. I want to make it very clear here to-day that the Government and every Minister are aware of the problems and the difficulties experienced by industrialists and businessmen. As the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has come forward with this childishness once again, it appears to be necessary for me to tell him again, as far as this matter is concerned, that there is not a Schoeman policy, a Viljoen policy and a Botha policy. There is only one policy, and what Mr. Schoeman does on the Railways, is a policy for which the entire Government holds itself responsible, and this holdsgood for every one of us, including those Ministers. The United Party appreciates this, because I have just made the general principles very clear to them. I am not going to repeat them; they have been recorded in Hansard. If they cannot read them in Hansard, they should find somebody else to do so for them. This is not only a question of a Government standpoint which is being taken here, but I want to repeat here to-day that in regard to this matter the Government welcomes open discussion with myself and with Ministers at all times, just as we welcomed the fact that industrialists and businessmen conducted negotiations with Dr. Diederichs and with Minister Lourens Miller in this regard. Not only did we take cognisance of their problems, but several commissions were appointed by us for the purpose of investigating these problems. In this connection I want to mention the Reynders and Lombard reports. These are illuminating reports which deal with these problems, because we are in earnest about causing the right development to take place at the right place in South Africa. I want to say that not only those reports, but also the other information which we have on problems, will be referred to a committee consisting of the Economic Adviser to the Prime Minister, Dr. Rieckert, the Departments of Finance, Industries and Planning as well as those of Bantu Administration, Labour and Coloured Affairs. They will look into all those problems, for we have only one end in view, and that is, as I have said, firstly, that industrial development should take place and, secondly, that it should take place at the right place in South Africa. Not for a moment should it be thought that our industrialists are not mindful of the fact that decentralization has to take place. Nor should it be thought that our people are not mindful of the fact that our cities cannot simply become blacker and blacker and that we cannot have an uncontrolled influx to those cities. All these matters will receive attention on the highest level. It is our policy not only to attract industries to the border areas, but also to attract them to establish themselves within the homelands on the agency basis, wherever it is practicable and feasible.

It repels them. It does not attract them.

No. You have heard how many industrialists already intend going there, in spite of your propaganda against it. But I am aware of the fact that you are going to conjure up spectres. You and I have been facing each other across the floor of this House for a long time. After all, we know that you will use all these things to conjure up spectres, and I know what you are going to tell the industrialists now. You are going to tell them not to invest in the homelands because it is too risky. You will tell them that those people may become independent tomorrow or the day after and that the industrialists may then lose everything they have invested in that country.

They know it themselves. It is not necessary to tell them.

I think the Opposition has already said so. On behalf of the Government, I want to make the following policy announcement to-day. If any industrialist establishes himself on the agency basis in a black homeland and suffers any loss as a result of that black homeland becoming independent and any political action on the part of the government of that black homeland, prior to the expiry of his contract, this Government will indemnify him against any such loss.

You are obviously afraid it might happen.

No. I am in the first instance not at all afraid of that. I do not think it will happen, for the simple reason that it would be foolish of those people to want to do that. Now I must have regard to the fact, however, that there are people who do foolish things. I said yesterday that in the process of negotiation all matters relating to the question of gaining independence would be discussed thoroughly. If something like this were to arise in homelands in which industries have been established, that matter would form part of the discussions. In other words, we shall not throw them to the wolves. Due regard will be had to their interests. If, in spite of all the measures we are taking and the fact that we do not expect that this will happen, something goes wrong nevertheless, the Government will honour its indemnification and see to it that those people do not suffer any loss.

This is an improvement on the policy of Dr. Verwoerd.

It is common sense, so much so that I think even the hon. member for Pinelands ought to understand it. If he were an industrialist, he would have gone. I want there to be no misunderstanding in respect of this matter.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition charged the Minister of Bantu Administration with allegedly having placed a “ban” on Opposition members, and particularly on the hon. member for South Coast, not to liaise with or talk to the governments or authorities in the Bantu homelands. But this is not true. I have taken the trouble, busy as I have been, of perusing the hon. the Minister’s Hansard. I did not find a single word in it of his having imposed such a “ban”. What I did find is that he addressed a very friendly request to hon. members to be so kind as not to interfere in the administration there. It is not their functions to do so. This is all the Minister did.

A friendly request!

No, Sir. I can read it to you. What the Minister said was the following—

[Interjections.] Was the hon. the Leader of the Opposition being serious when he said the Minister had pronounced a “ban” …

“Ban” is the wrong word. It was a serious warning.

Now the hon. the Leader of the Opposition says it was the wrong word. But that wrong word has now gone into the world. Again it is a case of “ever ready to hurt but afraid to strike”. The world has been told that the Minister imposed a “ban” on them in this regard. The world must now think the Minister is a dictator and that he has now closed the homelands to the Opposition so that they may not discover what is going on there. And now that I am confronting the hon. the Leader of the Opposition with that, he says, just as in the case of the Sunday Times, that it is the wrong word. It amazes me, Sir.

I now come to the case which the Leader of the Opposition says he has against the Leader of the House, and I want to say I trust that we have now heard the last of that kind of action on the part of the Leader of the Opposition. I trust he has learned a very sound lesson from this; I think he has taken it to heart. What the Burger said this morning is correct—he had not raised a white flag, but a white apron. There was a time when I, as the leader of this side of the House, also had to use the word “unfortunate” with regard to a person who was sitting on my side of the House. I used the word “unfortunate” in respect of Dr. Hertzog. But I spelt out why it was “unfortunate”. But see how the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is acting. He says the hon. member for South Coast, his member, used “unfortunate words”. I want to ask him, because we are all interested in this, what the unfortunate words are. But he will not tell me that on any account.

I still have my member with me; your member is gone. [Interjections.]

There the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is giving me a reply now—he wants to keep the hon. member with him; if he were now to give the reason why it was “unfortunate”, the hon. member would no longer be with him.

It is usually misinterpreted in any case.

Surely the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has now given us the answer himself—if he did it, the hon. member would no longer be with him. That one can be so stupid!

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition also referred to bilingualism. I want to say that his reply was not good enough. I honestly think, Sir, and I am not trying to play politics with this … [Interjections.] Why should I?

A by-election is in progress.

Is the hon. member afraid to speak the truth on the eve of a by-election?

In what respect are we saying anything untrue?

Let me put it this way to the hon. member for Yeoville: Does he unreservedly share my view that no person should be able to hold a public office, such as that of a Minister or of an M.E.C.—I am not speaking of an ordinary member now, but of a Minister, a Deputy Minister, an Administrator or an M.E.C.—unless he is completely bilingual?

Complete bilingualism, as a final ideal, should be strived after as fast as possible.

Let me put it this way to the hon. member, and I know he is not afraid to argue this with me …

Unfortunately I cannot get up now and make a speech.

I am quite prepared to have you argue with me while you are sitting down. The question I am putting to the hon. member is this: Is it right towards our people, both Afrikaans and English speaking, that persons who are not bilingual should be appointed to such offices?

Fully?

No. I want to water this down so as to accommodate the hon. member.

You have members in your Cabinet who are not fully bilingual.

I am watering this down for the very purpose of helping the hon. member. Is it right to appoint to those offices persons who are not bilingual, who cannot conduct an interview in Afrikaans or English, as the case may be, and who cannot understand what people are saying at such an interview?

The principle is that they should be bilingual, but there may be exceptions. [Interjections.]

I am deeply disappointed with the reply of the hon. member, because I really believed that we have now progressed so far that he, who comes from the same part of the world as I do and who has grown up with this aspect, would have taken up a different standpoint in this regard. I realize that his Leader will not take up a different standpoint, but I had hoped and believed that the hon. member himself would have taken up a different standpoint so that we might have been able to promote better relations in South Africa along that line.

You are looking for dissension that does not exist.

Let me put the question in a different form to the hon. member for Yeoville: If I were to appoint a person to any of those offices and he could understand only Afrikaans, and an English-speaking deputation from Natal were to come and see him, would the hon. member hold it against me if he told that deputation that he could not understand them?

It is very easy to reply to that. Arrangements can always be made to have somebody present who can help … [Interjections.] It is all a question of disposition—pro-Afrikaans or pro-Broederbond.

There is no question of different dispositions in this regard, only of a disposition in the interests of good relations in South Africa, i.e. that a person holding those executive offices will be able to serve Afrikaans-speaking people and English-speaking people in their own language.

That is an ideal which should be realized as soon as possible.

But an ideal to which those hon. members do not want to commit themselves in practice. After all, they have the opportunity in Natal now. Why does the hon. member not say now that they are going to realize this ideal of theirs in Natal after the forthcoming provincial elections? Surely it is a fine and splendid thing to say prior to a provincial election—our ideal was burning like a light at the end of the road, and now, after the provincial elections, we are going to translate it into practice. Why do you not do so? [Interjections.] Now we know what the standpoint of hon. members on the opposite side is in this regard.

With reference to the role of our Coloured people in politics, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition said—

Surely this is not true. After all, the Coloureds now have a much bigger say than they ever had before.

That is not true.

Previously they had four white representatives here. That was the sum total of the say they had, and what is more, this applied only to a small number of them, only in the Cape Province. A handful of privileged ones in the Cape Province could send four Whites to this House. Now they all have the franchise and they have a Budget exceeding R60 million, and certain responsibilities have been transferred to them. [Interjections.] The hon. member may belittle this if he likes, but why make the blatant statement that “they are to have no say”. Surely that is not true. [Interjection.] What you say goes to the outside world, and sometimes people in the outside world do take some notice of the hon. the Leader. The hon. the Leader went on to say—

But I told the hon. member that as soon as that council had been elected and had found its feet—as recently as this Session I again referred to it; does one have to say things over and over again?—the Minister concerned, that Coloured Council and I would have discussions to create that machinery.

Have there been any discussions?

Sir, the Minister has held tentative discussions. It has not yet been possible for me to participate in those discussion. I ask the hon. member, when would I have had the time, or the opportunity, to do so? But during the debate on the motion of censure I told him that the matter would receive attention later in the year, after the prorogation of Parliament.

I want to continue dealing with the questions put to me by the hon. member. The Leader of the Opposition once again said—

This refers to the development of the homelands. He repeated that here to-day. Do the figures mean nothing to the hon. the Leader, figures furnished to him in the course of years —I am not, for the life of me, going to repeat them now—of the numbers of Bantu one has kept in their homelands as a result of the establishment of border industries? And I now want to warn the hon. the Leader in all fairness. He is pinning his hopes on certain figures which may come later. His hopes may be dashed.

I continue dealing with his speech, the one in which he put the questions to me. The hon. the Leader tried to raise a scare, and see how he went about it—

In this regard it is interesting that it was in fact in respect of Malawi that The Friend had found it necessary to call Senator Louw to order and that the hon. member for South Coast wanted to go through the roof because I had mentioned his name here and said I had made an allegation which I had not proved. I gave him the name of the senator and I gave him the date of the editorial in The Friend, and the hon. the Leader of the Opposition said he had sent a telex to Bloemfontein.

Yes, I have now received it. He is innocent.

But it is true that he was reprimanded by the editor of The Friend.

It was completely unfair.

In other words, I now have to take it from the hon. the Leader of the Opposition that when The Friend reprimanded Senator Louw, they did so quite wrongly?

It was a misunderstanding.

Sir, everything is a misunderstanding. I proceed and I just want to place on record the words of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition in this connection. This is what he charged the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration with—

Will the hon. the Leader of the Opposition rectify his Hansard now in respect of this accusation he made against the Minister?

He does not understand it.

That is what I said.

But will the hon. the Leader of the Opposition admit now that he wrongly charged the hon. the Minister with that?

Whether it was right or wrong, it is recorded in Hansard; I do not change my Hansard.

Who changes his Hansard?

You may say you did not mean it like that.

He only changes the policy of his party from time to time.

Sir, I have now gone through the whole speech of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and I have replied to all the questions put to me by him in that regard. In case there are other questions which he wants to raise at a later stage, there will be another parliamentary occasion for doing so.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition and his side of the House tried their best on this Vote to bring certain of the Ministers under suspicion. Now I again want to tell the hon. the Leader of the Opposition across the floor of this House what I told him at the beginning: Every Minister on this side of the House has my full confidence for the way in which he is fulfilling his function and discharging the duties attached to his portfolio and his position. If he did not have that, he would no longer have been a member of the Cabinet, and the hon. the Leader of the Opposition knows me well enough to know this. But I find it reprehensible that suspicion is cast in the way it has been done. I want to tell the hon. the Leader of the Opposition: If there is a Minister sitting on these benches who is not competent to do his work, come to me like a man and tell me: “This Minister is not competent to attend to his portfolio; he is making this mistake and he is making that mistake.” Come and tell me this candidly, but do not try to attack the integrity of people in a roundabout and devious way in order to place their positions in the Cabinet under suspicion.

*Dr. P. BODENSTEIN; Disgraceful!

It serves no purpose: it is not beneficial to our public life, and I really want to trust that when we meet here again next year, there will be a different spirit prevailing and that after the forthcoming provincial elections it will not be necessary for us to level the charge that was levelled here not only by us, but also by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition’s own member, the hon. member for Sea Point, and that character assassination will not again be the order of the day as it has been. I address this appeal in all earnestness to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Chairman, when this Vote was last debated, it was suggested quite justifiably that the hon. the Minister was somewhat confused apart from other difficulties which he had with regard to the administration of his Department. I want to refer to certain aspects which I find are important. I want to say immediately that in my view, he has let down the people of the Jeppes constituency with regard to the urban renewal scheme on which his Department has embarked. I want to draw the attention of the hon. the Minister to the fact that he has stated, and I quote him: “I say it with absolute conviction that the housing position in South Africa as far as the Whites are concerned, is better than ever before in our history.” I would like to say that I do not know how much better it is than ever before, in our history, but it is certainly not good enough. If anything at all, the position with regard to housing is generally very difficult indeed and he has not satisfied the requirements and the demands of the community in an efficient and satisfactory manner. Furthermore, the hon. the Minister challenged me to say whether I do not want flats for people with an income exceeding R300 per month. I answered him they do not want it in the renewal scheme in Jeppes. He then continued to say that I for political reasons, do not wish Jeppes to have a new appearance and that it should remain a poor area. Will the hon. the Minister please take into account the fact that he has said, and I will refer him to Hansard if he so wishes, that it is the duty of the Government to take care of the middle and the lower income groups. He said, and I quote—

He goes on to say—

He says further—

What is the hon. Minister actually doing in this first urban renewal scheme which his Department has undertaken in the constituency of Jeppes? He is building an economic scheme with an interest of 7¼ per cent per annum and houses are being built at the cost ranging from R9,866 to R12,304. The rentals for houses are between R116 and R101 per month; duplex flats, R108 and R110 and ordinary flats at R112 and R90 per month. He goes on further to say—

I would like him to reconcile his statements. Who is he and his Department, as a State Department, building for? Are they building for the lower and middle income groups, the people whom he says need it at a low building cost which he has maintained includes the cost of the land, or are they trying to build up some grand new scheme which is not intended for the very people whose homes are demolished in order to make place for an urban renewal scheme. Does he not know the normal principle of urban renewal, which is to replace or to refurbish homes for the very people who live in the area so that they can remain in their same environment?

Tell us about the block which is being built by the local authority.

That is the very case his Department is considering. The municipality wrote back to the Department with regard to this scheme on a unanimous resolution of the Johannesburg City Council, asking that it seeks some other means of subsidizing. One of the suggestions is a longer term of repayment and subsidizing of the land. I have told the hon. the Minister that this takes place in all other countries of the world. The Housing Act itself, for instance, allows him to go as far as 50 years for the repayment of a loan. There is nothing new in this idea of subsidizing land if he is to meet what he says the State is to do. I have not challenged the Minister to build houses for all and sundry. I am accepting what the hon. the Minister says, that he is not building houses for people who can themselves afford to obtain loans.

This is also a problem, but in another sphere, and was dealt with by the hon. member for Green Point. The Minister says that his job is to build houses for people in a particular income group, the lower and middle income groups. When the hon. the Minister talks about all the work they have done in a big city like Johannesburg, and I refer to another question he has answered, one finds that the building is confined to the western areas of Johannesburg, particularly in rebuilding a scheme known as the Triomf scheme, which was a scheme which replaced an area originally occupied by non-Whites. Under the Group Areas Act there was a complete removal of the entire non-white population of this area. That was not an urban renewal scheme in the proper sense of the term, because it did not provide for people who lived there before.

Let me put to the hon. the Minister another point. When a local authority applies for a loan in order to provide housing, the question of interest is assessed according to the income group in which the tenant or the purchaser falls. If a tenant, for instance, earns between R100 and R130 per month, the interest on this scheme is 3 per cent. If he earns between R130 and R160 per month, the interest is 5 per cent. From R160 to R300 per month, the interest is 6 per cent. Correctly, there is a certain amount of loss which the Department meets in order to assist the lower and middle income groups. I would like to know what the policy of the hon. the Minister is. Is he going to build urban renewal schemes and what he calls “expensive forms of development” in order to build new areas, or is he going to follow the proper principle which is being adopted right throughout the world? If he does not do this, he will find thousands of people displaced because of urban renewal schemes. We go further and say that urban renewal is an important element in city life to-day. If the hon. the Minister wants to build in the categories which he boasted of the other day, of between 4½ to 5½ per cent and R6,000, he must go further out of the city. Has he made provision, for instance, for transport and freeways and has he acquired land where he can put up homes within the capacity of the lower and middle income groups?

I asked you what about the city council schemes?

I have told the hon. the Minister that with the city council schemes the rentals are very much less than under this scheme. I can give him the actual details. The point is that that scheme has been sent back to the Department with a recommendation unanimously accepted by both sides of a political council, namely the governing side being the United Party and the Opposition being the Nationalist Party. They are both conscious of this fact, namely that it is impossible to cater for the lower and middle income groups within a city unless some modern steps are taken to meet this critical situation of cost of land and of cost of building. The question of the period of the repayment of a loan is one means of meeting it and the method of subsidizing the cost of land by the State say to an extent of two-thirds, is another method of meeting that situation, to bring the rentals within he scope of those very people whom the hon. the Minister says categorically in his Hansard of February, 1970, it is the duty of the State to build for namely the lower and middle income groups and no one else. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Jeppes mentioned a specific scheme that I have no knowledge of, and about which the Minister can give him a much better reply than I can. All that I, and perhaps the hon. member as well, can bear in mind, is that during this Session legislation was passed in this House to provide alternative accommodation for occupants of old structures, after slum clearance under an urban renewal scheme, where old inhabited buildings in the middle of a city had to be removed. Large new complexes must be erected there. One can surely foresee that in those urban renewal plans for specific areas, it will probably not be possible to make housing available at the same rental that the people are paying at present for the slums they are living in. The amending act we passed here creates the opportunity for finding alternative housing of the same kind and class elsewhere for those people from lower income groups who must be removed from those houses. That is probably what could also happen here.

Where are you doing this?

The hon. member will find out that this Department is engaged in long-term planning for the purchasing of land, while it is still cheap, Where they can lay out schemes in the course of time.

However, I also want to say something about this matter of urban renewal. But before doing so, I want to refer to two matters. In previous debates things were said by two hon. members on the other side of the House, things which we are only now, for the first time, getting an opportunity to speak about. The one matter I want to refer to is the matter raised by the hon. member for Port Natal. In a previous debate, and also in the Press on a previous occasion, the hon. member made certain statements.

I have not spoken yet.

Not in this debate, in a previous debate. In a previous debate, and also in the Press, the hon. member made statements in which he made the same remarks as those about which hon. members were hauled over the coals during the discussion of the Prime Minister’s Vote. For example, they attacked members of the House of Assembly and Ministers in an unfair way. However, the hon. member for Port Natal did something else. He attacked people who cannot defend themselves in this House. He is not the only one doing it. There are also hon. members doing it in respect of other Departments, but you will not allow me to refer to those cases. In the discussion of this Vote I now want to refer to the hon. member’s transgression. He is a man who in recent times has been announcing at all hours, and spreading it abroad, that there is corruption and deceit in the Department of Community Development, and that there is bribary among the officials. In a previous debate the hon. member was challenged by the Minister to bring him proof. He cannot accuse officials of this Department, and sow suspicion, and then think he can get away with it. I want to tell the hon. member for Port Natal that he has had the opportunity to bring his proof. I hope he has done so.

I am not finished yet.

Very well, if the hon. member does not do so, we shall know what to think of him. Let him do it; we expect it of him, and he now has the opportunity. He must not make accusations of that kind in the newspapers or in other debates, but in this debate, during the discussion of the hon. Minister’s Vote. We expect it of him.

I now want to come to the hon. member for Maitland, who is also sitting there so piously. He is also a fellow who talks altogether too much about these matters he knows nothing about. He made a great fuss here about housing. He had been the member for Maitland for five years. Let him stand up and mention a single thing he has done in respect of housing in his constituency during those five years. Let him say what he has done, during those five years he has been the member for Maitland, to get either the town council or the department to the point of doing something about housing. He predecessor, Mr. Carr, moved the earth in an endeavour to persuade the town council to accept a scheme for about 2,600 houses in the Sorgvliet area. That hon. member now speaks of such a tremendous housing shortage in the country, but I want to ask him to bring along his proofs in this connection as well. The hon. the Minister has already asked him to bring along proof of the people who are, according to him, out on the streets. I hope he will do so. During the time that he was the member for Maitland, that hon. member did not move a finger in respect of housing. The situation was desperate by the time Mr. Carr took over from him. When he now, in turn, took over from Mr. Carr, he obtained a constituency in which he housing conditions were reasonably good. His predecessor, Mr. Carr, did a great deal to clear up the mess he made there.

But I want to go further and refer to what the hon. the Leader of the Opposition said here to-day. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition said, as blandly as you please, that they are now amending their policy. At this stage he repudiates the hon. member for Wynberg and other members of the United Party, whose names I shall mention at a later stage, who have said consistently in the past that when the United Party comes to power the group areas Act will be repealed, and there will consequently no longer by any enforced group areas.

You are altogether wrong now. The hon. member for Wynberg said the same as the hon. the Leader of the Opposition said to-day.

But he repudiated the hon. member for Wynberg. It is very easy for the Leader of the Opposition to do this summersault after all these years. It is very easy to say, as the hon. the Leader of the Opposition said again to-day, that these separate residential areas should not be enforced. The policy of the United Party is that force should only be used in extreme cases. But it must be done as it was done at Bokmakierie and Athlone during the period of United Party rule. After sitting down for weeks he thought up these two residential areas. I wonder whether the hon. the Leader of the Opposition can tell me where Bokmakierie is. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition comes along here to-day and boasts that when the United Party were in power two group areas were established for Coloureds on a voluntary basis. They were not nearly true group areas. At Athlone and Bokmakierie there was fraternization. Let us accept it as such. But why does the Leader of the Opposition not tell us how Windermere looked under this scheme of separate group areas? To-day Windermere is the gateway to Cape Town. Its condition now is such that the National Party members and the hon. member for Maitland can be proud of it. Three thousand Bantu families, 450 Coloured families, 150 white families and a group of Indians lived there in the filthiest of circumstances on the voluntary basis of the United Parity’s policy. Why does he not tell us of the Acres of Good-wood, of Mossienes in Parow, of Oakdale and of Sophiatown? These are all residential areas that were established under the United Party’s policy of voluntary separate residential areas. I say they were the biggest slum creaters South Africa has ever known. If South Africa must expect the United Party to establish separate residential areas in this country, I can tell you that throughout the country we would have appalling slum areas. Now that we have, with a great deal of effort, solved 80 per cent and more of this problem, having been forced, in many respects, to take unpopular steps, such as removing people, for example, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition comes along, now that it suites him, and says that they also accept separate group areas. But when it was politically expedient for the hon. member for Wynberg, he did not open his mouth. When the hon. members for Wynberg, Salt River and Green Point went from person to person in the affected areas, exploiting this difficult situation in order to canvas votes, he did not repudiate them. When they told those people that they would repeal the Group Areas Act, he did rot say a word. But to-day they accept this policy. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member who has just sat down has launched a general attack on everyone within sight. I cannot deal with all the parochial problems that he has raised. I want to make an appeal to the hon. the Minister. I am not attacking the Minister just for the sake of attacking him. I want to appeal to him to try and see whether he can do something of value to the community with regard to the housing position. For quite some years now we have had the boast thrown at us, namely: “I am the best Minister on this job. There is no housing crisis. Within a couple of years the whole problem will be resolved,” and so forth. But we have to tie the hon. the Minister down and we must pin him down to the statements of policy that he has made with regard to the question for whom the State is to build and provide houses. I have given the Minister some examples and I want to refer particularly to the one in regard to the urban renewal scheme. The hon. the Minister knows that according to the socio-economic formula 20 per cent of a man’s earnings is to be provided for rent. If accommodation is being built at a rental of R100 or R120 per month, one must regard that as being in the category of people earning well over R5,000 or R6,000 per annum, or even more. If a person is earning R6,000 per annum 20 per cent of that would be R1,200 per year, in other words R100 per month. That already covers a person earning R6,000 per annum. The hon. the Minister talks about R5,000 per annum and less. But the actual schemes for the lower and middle income groups only contemplate the bread winner having a gross income of R3,600 per annum. This question of R5,000 per annum has only appeared for the first time recently when the hon. the Minister replied to a question.

That has been in existence for quite a number of years.

Not according to the schemes that local authorities are building with National Housing funds. We have the figures with regard to the economic rates of interest of 3 per cent, 5 per cent and 6 per cent at which they are receiving funds. This is also a subsidized form of interest. But if the State is to build, as has been maintained by the hon. the Minister, for the lower and middle income groups, he must stick to it and not build the more expensive schemes. The hon. the Minister asks what he should do about the cities.

You are now talking about the scheme of the Johannesburg City Council.

Yes.

You say it has been referred back. It has not been referred back. R871,000 has been agreed to.

That is correct. But the point is that the tender is for a greater amount. The first amount was agreed to and then the City Council applied for additional moneys. The tender which was for R900,000 odd has now been withdrawn. When the City Council applied to the department recently for additional funds of approximately R270,000 its request was accompanied by a resolution. The resolution asked specifically for this form of assistance and help. The resolution was to the effect that the Management Committee be requested to approach the Department of Community Development to consider urban renewals subsidies on some other basis to that used for normal housing scheme subsidies by the department and that the period for the repayment of loans for housing be extended beyond 30 years. In the course of the discussion, the whole question of the cost of the acquisition of land was dealt with as one of the direct causes for increasing the cost of building.

The Housing Commission will consider that request.

Well, I do not know. Nothing has happened so far. What about the urban renewal scheme of the department itself?

[Inaudible.]

It does not matter. I do not think the hon. the Minister should try and divert me from something which I am putting to him very clearly. His Department is building an urban renewal scheme at an interest rate of 7¼ per cent with rentals ranging from R90 to R116 per month. That is what he must take into account. The costs are between R9,000 and R12,000 per dwelling unit. On this question of urban renewal, he can find a considerable amount of authority, particularly in the big American cities. There the problem arises to which the hon. member for Parow referred. Do you take these people out of their environment and put them in an entirely different place, or do you leave them there? It is an ever-recurring problem. Therefore you find that in big cities in the U.S.A. and in Holland, I think, and in Britain they try to meet that position halfway. They try to keep people within their own environment, because that is the purpose of urban renewal; it is not to displace them but to meet them by providing a subsidy towards the cost of land. Where they can house them satisfactorily outside the city, giving them the necessary satisfactory transport, they do so. The hon. the Minister at one time, in February, boasted about what he had done at Lenasia where he has built at about R4,500 to R5,000 per dwelling unit. I have had a look at it, but the cost of land in comparison to more accessible areas is almost minimal, and that is the very point I am putting to him. Either the State must seek some means and re-appraise its own attitude in the matter by providing the necessary subsidies for urban renewal per se for the inhabitants of the city, or it must then look for land outside the city and put itself in the position to build cheaper houses or at a cost which will meet the group for which he has to make provision and provide the necessary transport. I think it is important that the hon. the Minister should know that these are the very words he used. He does not seem to believe it somehow. I must refer him once again to Column 82 of Hansard. I have not got the bound copy, but it is the Hansard for 2nd February, 1970, where he says—

Then he goes on further to say—

And then he goes further to say, in Column 83—

Now, the hon. the Minister is under an obligation to reconcile all this information. I say that when he comes to an area like Johannesburg where the Jeppes constituency has been nominated as the first urban renewal scheme and the land has been frozen for that purpose, his job then is to get together with the private entrepreneur—he has had the universities already investigating and submitting schemes—and to have some visionary programme, some modern advanced programme whereby you can encourage the private entrepreneur to assist in this problem and whereby the State can play its part. If the State plays its part the private entrepeneur will be encouraged. The importance here is not whether the Minister has built a lot of houses in the past. The point is not whether the position to-day is better than it was 20 years ago, because these comparisons are usually completely misleading; they do not deal with the true facts.

Our housing schemes are the best in the world.

Yes, but all that is comparative, even assuming you are right. My point is that you are facing a situation to-day where the Minister on his own figures submits that he is building at R12,000 and at rentals of R116. He says that his job is to build for a certain group, but he is not doing so.

What will the rental be for the buildings of the local authority? I gave you those figures.

I am dealing with the State at the moment. I am not comparing. I know the hon. the Minister is very worried about local authorities, but that is a different picture. The Minister told me himself they get money from the Housing Commission at certain rates and I have just explained to him fully that this latest scheme of the Johannesburg City Council will not meet the people for whom it is intended because the rentals are too high. There is only one authority which can help them and that is the State, and we ask the State to help. [Time expired.]

I find it strange that the hon. member is arguing that the State, this Department, must make housing available at a particular interest rate, and now he is saying that that interest rate does not suit a certain income group, but when the hon. the Minister asks him about the position in respect of a scheme being constructed by the City Council, where the interest rates are about equal …

No, they are less.

That is not relevant. Apart from that, however, an urban renewal area in Johannesburg is involved. The hon. member must leastways admit that in respect of urban renewal one may almost say that we are standing on the threshold in South Africa. In overseas countries they have already made great strides in that respect. In the last few years, under this Government, we have tackled urban renewal for the first time, giving attention to certain urban areas that have fallen into disrepair, and we had to learn about this problem from scratch, as it were. We had to find our own way in solving the problems we encountered in respect of urban renewal. That hon. member must leastways admit that we have made great strides as regards urban renewal in areas that the Department obtained, whether by expropriation or whatever the position may be. We are slowly overtaking many of the problems in respect of interest rates and the cost of the accommodation that must be provided for a particular income group. In the future there are also going to be problems, but I think the hon. member is a little hasty in simply laying certain things at the Department’s doorstep. I can also speak from experience. I also have an urban renewal area, and I am proud to say that I think I am father to it. I have never, in respect of a single matter, whether it was an owner’s property that had to be expropriated, or the scheme in its general context, gone to the Minister or to the Department and not been treated with the greatest sympathy.

I did not criticize that.

I am just saying that I think the hon. member is too hasty. He spoke about certain matters about which no finality has yet been reached, negotiations that are still in progress. Give those negotiations a chance to progress a little, and I believe the hon. member will eventually also be satisfied. But I think the hon. member is trying to force things to fruition at too early a stage. But I found it interesting that the hon. member said that we should not make comparisons with other countries, or even with the position here as it was a few years ago. I do not want to do that now, but one must at least have certain criteria, and one criterion of one’s progress, or lack of progress, hinges on comparisons. What is one’s position in respect of other comparable countries, and what is the progress one has made over the years by comparison with the position five or ten years ago? The hon. member cannot expect us not to make any comparisons at all, because then we will have no criteria by which to judge.

While I am speaking of that, we have very distinct criteria by which one can judge whether this hon. Minister and his Department have, in fact, made progress, and whether they are on the right road or not.

The first is the Minister’s policy; that is a criterion. The hon. member himself said that he agrees with the Minister’s policy. The Minister announced his policy very clearly in a speech in this house on 10th May, 1968, in which he dealt at length with the question of who is, in fact, primarily responsible for the provision of housing. In a nutshell it amounts to the fact that the responsibility for housing is primarily the task of the local authority. The Government Department will provide the machinery to assist the local authority in the execution of its duties; Sir, we have that machinery. We have various financing schemes for the various income groups; I am not going to mention them all here. It could perhaps be said that there are not sufficient of these schemes; we could, in fact speak of income limits, and ask for those limits to be increased. Over the years the income limits are not static; they are regularly adjusted to the changing circumstances. There are various schemes under which the individual can borrow money directly from the Department, or otherwise through his local authority. I am not even mentioning schemes for old people, in terms of which money can be borrowed from the Department at ½ per cent or 1/20 per cent.

Sir, a further criterion is the building programme. Look at the building programmes of the Department itself, of the Community Development Board and the National Housing Commission. In that connection certain figures appear in the latest annual report, and these are not even the latest figures. But looking at the building programme of the Department, we must admit that the Department and the Minister are correct in the action they are taking, and that progress is being made.

Sir, in this way we can still take quite a few aspects; take, for example, building control, which was specifically instituted to be able to provide for the housing need. The same applies to rent control. Rent control was instituted to ensure that where the demand exceeded the supply there would not be exploitation. A committee was appointed to determine the physical reason for physical dilapidation in urban areas. As I understand it, that committee has not yet issued its report, but this question of physical dilapidation in our city and town areas, particularly as far as residential accommodation is concerned, is a matter to which we must give particular attention. I wonder whether, in order to counteract physical dilapidation, we should not consider compensating the owner of a dwelling, which he himself occupies, for the costs he incurs in repairing the building. That could perhaps be subtracted from his taxable income. I do not say that this should happen annually, because usually it is only necessary to do repair work, let us say, every third year. I wonder whether the home owner, in the city or in the town, who has to spend heavily every third year on repairs to his building, should not receive compensation for that? I believe that if we were to do this we would prevent certain or our good residential areas or average residential areas from simply falling into disrepair, because we are giving the owner, who is perhaps financially not able to repair his house properly, an incentive to do so; in other words, we are telling him: “If you look after your building and see to it that it remains habitable for many years to come, we shall compensate you for your hard work in that connection.”

Then there are certain additional criteria in terms of which one may test whether one is keeping pace in the provision of housing to one’s people. Sir, investigations are being made into modern building methods and materials. This Department’s officials have, over the last few years, concentrated particularly upon investigating these aspects, so that we do not fall behind. They went out of their way to investigate more rapid building methods and then apply them.

But, Sir, there is another problem that we have come up against, notwithstanding all these fine efforts, and that is the high land prices. But here we have not been sitting still either. The hon. the Minister appointed a commission to go into the matter. We obtained the commission’s report, together with its recommendations, during this Session. I do not want to refer to those recommendations now, but I am just mentioning them to indicate that in respect of policy, in respect of the making schemes available and in respect of the investigation into new methods, this Minister and his Department have kept pace. Hon. members may perhaps tell me that there are not yet sufficient houses. Sir, we may have bottlenecks at certain spots, but then hon. members must come along and tell us precisely how, within the framework of this broad policy that I have stated here, we can provide that housing, or provide it more rapidly to all income groups. The hon. the Minister gave the undertaking that within a few years those who were not properly accommodated would, in fact, obtain accommodation.

Mr. Chairman, the core of the National Party’s housing policy has always been that we build houses for our people, because a house for every family ensures a happy people. The National Party’s healthy policy in this respect has brought so much prosperity over the past 22 years that increasingly more people can afford a good home, and have also obtained one. The young beginner, the hard worker in the lower income groups, and the family man furnishing the community’s essential services, have always needed the State’s assistance, and they get this in several respects. In the first place there are reasonable interest rates on loans, and these are made available to persons so that they can own or rent houses. The State guards against exploitation in respect of rentals, and poor conditions are being improved by slum clearace and by the renewal of urban areas. In addition, separation of residential areas between various population groups is being brought about.

Before I come back to a few arguments raised by hon. members on that side of the House, I should like to make a request to the hon. Minister, and this request has already been made in the past. Knowing the hon. the Minister as I do, I trust that he will consider it favourably. I should like to know whether the time has not come for the subeconomic income limit of R100 a month for Whites to be increased to at least R130 per month. This concession on the Minister’s part would result in more white families qualifying for sub-economic housing, and in pensioners with an additional income also being able to obtain subecoomic housing. Railway pensioners, whose monthly incomes exceed R100, would particularly welcome this concession. Our aged also frequently have incomes of more than R100 per month, but they are denied sub-economic housing, and thereby they are compelled to live with children or relations. At times this goes hand in hand with quite a bit of inconvenience. The family with dependent children very frequently earns more than R100 per month, and is simply not able to afford economic housing.

Then there is a second matter I want to raise. I am doing so at the behest of my voters, and the hon. the Minister’s Department already knows about this. I want to thank the Department for what it has thus far done about that in my constituency, but this afternoon I should like the hon. the Minister’s assurance that the position in respect of the resettlement of the Coloured families who are living in Cradock Street in Uitenhage will be cleared up. I have been instructed to convey to the hon. the Minister that quite a bit of friction exists between Whites and non-Whites in Cradock Street. If one takes into account that the group areas in Uitenhage were proclaimed on 20th October, 1967, I want to make a friendly request to the hon. the Minister to give instructions that this resettlement be tackled immediately. I know that alternative accommodation must be furnished. The municipality of Uitenhage is already supplying the alternative accommodation. Tenders for about 500 economic and 500 subeconomic houses for Coloureds have already been approved, and there are 249 Coloured families in Uitenhage that must be resettled. All I want to ask is that when those houses are available, we shall begin by resettling the people living in Cradock Street, before we tackle the other areas in Uitenhage.

From whom does that instruction come?

I now want to come back to the arguments raised by the hon. members opposite. In this debate we have heard a great deal about a housing shortage. Before I come to that I just want to say that I would appreciate it if the speaker who is to follow me up could tell me what the United Party’s policy is. I have here a pamphlet in which the United Party’s policy is set out in full. It is not the pamphlet that appeared just recently, but one that was published a few years ago. With reference to the hon. member for Wynberg’s letter that appeared in the Argus on 3rd February, 1970, and with reference to the statement the hon. the Leader of the Opposition made here this afternoon, I want to quote from page 5 (translation)—

What is the United Party going to do? I quote again—

Then they refer here specifically to the Group Areas Act. I just want to know now whether that Act is going to be amended or repealed. If it is going to be amended, how is it going to be amended in order to adapt to their policy? Advances to the local authorities, as at 31st December, 1968, in respect of subeconomic housing for Whites, totalled more than R22 million in respect of 9,104 residential units. Is this not a further proof that the National Party Government has always looked after the residential needs of the Whites in the lower income groups? However, what was the position under United Party rule? I want to deal with the position in respect of three cities: Cape Town, East London and Kimberley. Port Elizabeth’s figures are so ghastly that I want to leave them to the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (North). What was the position in Cape Town in 1946, when the United Party was in power? In that year only £622 was spent on housing for Whites in Cape Town. In the years 1943 to 1945 not a single cent was spent on housing for Whites in Cape Town.

That was the year before the rinderpest.

Or the war, one of the two. In East London, in 1941, not a single cent was spent on housing for Whites or non-Whites. In the years 1941 to 1944 nothing was spent on housing for Whites or non-Whites. In 1942 Kimberley obtained only £2800 for housing for Whites. That is the United Party’s record. Let us now come back to their policy. I now want to quote from the yellow booklet “You want it? We have it!” On page 23 they state—

If private builders are going to be their frontline troops when they come into power, I just want to ask them who is building the houses at present? At the present moment houses are being built by the National Housing Commission, the city councils, utility companies, individual heads of families and also by the private sector. In 1966, 21,025 residential units were erected by the private sector; in 1967, 23,037 residential units. What was the position under United Party rule? I now want to quote what the then Minister of Health, Dr. H. A. Gluckman, said. On 17th June, 1946. he made a speech, and I quote from Hansard, volume 58, column 10547:

He added that he could not guarantee the correctness of that figure. How does this compare with the figures I quoted here in respect of the National Party Government?

In what year was that?

In 1946. In spite of the amounts spent on housing during the last few years, the United Party is still always saying that there is a housing shortage, and that not enough is being spent on housing by this Government. I just want to quote to hon. members what the rising costs of housing were in the past five years, and I shall quote the round figures. In 1965 more than R23 million was spent on housing; in 1966, R30 million; in 1967, R34 million; in 1968, R40 million: in 1969, R50 million; and in 1970, R52 million. Hon. members will note that there has always been an increase in the spending. What did the hon. the Minister say in this House? He said that the Building Research Institute had set up an investigation to determine whether the housing needs of Whites, and all *other kinds of housing, were being met. The Building Research Institute found that in the past five years we have built an average of 26,500 units, about 4,000 more than was necessary. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, if the hon. member for Uitenhage thinks that the speech he made this afternoon is going to gain a lot of votes for the Nationalist Party in the coming provincial elections, he is quite wrong, because his constituents expect him to come to this House to deal with the very vexed problem of housing and not to make electioneering speeches. Now what did the hon. member ask? First of all, he asked what our attitude is towards the Group Areas Act. My hon. Leader made it quite clear this afternoon. If the hon. member did not listen to it, he can read it in Hansard.

Then the hon. member went back to 1946, the old Nationalist play of going back to 1946. Do you know what is going to happen, Mr. Chairman, in the year 1990? Someone is going to get up and say “How many television sets were there in the year 1970? We have so many now in 1990”. Conditions to-day are entirely different from what they were in 1946. First of all, there had not been the movement from the platteland to the cities in 1946 there has been since. The whole problem of housing was entirely different. Secondly, the hon. member may not know that we had just come to the end of a war.

[Inaudible.]

But I do not want to deal with this kind of topic. I want to try and make some positive contribution to solving our problems.

Mr. Chairman. on a point of order, may the hon. member for North Rand accuse another hon. member of being a saboteur?

The hon. member must withdraw that.

He was too young to be a saboteur.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw that.

I withdraw.

The hon. member may proceed.

When the hon. member for Green Point spoke at the beginning of this debate, the hon. the Minister said that nobody was being prejudiced on account of the salary limit of R3,600 a year. The hon. member for Paarl, who unfortunately is not here, said we should bring him one single case where somebody had been prejudiced on account of his salary having increased beyond the limit set. I want to refer to an official document of the Johannesburg City Council, which says the following—

It is referring to income limits—

In a speech that councillor Miss Olga Sherwell made in the City Council of Johannesburg in June, she made note of the fact that for the first half of 1970, 140 people had had notices served on them to vacate their houses because they had reached the upper limits. We know the hon. the Minister has had representations to change these limits. If he did so, it would help. But I am not entirely satisfied that it will break the back of the problem. I think what the hon. the Minister has to do, is to encourage people to build. That is why, we some six years ago, started with the Sectional Titles Bill. I am happy to see that this year, six years later, the hon. the Minister feels we should get a move on with that Bill. The Niemand Commission reported it as being an urgent necessity.

I want to make a number of proposals to the hon. the Minister which I hope will help him. The first one I want to mention, is what the Germans call “help for self-help”. It comprises two schemes. One for taxpayers and one for persons whose incomes are so low that they do not pay taxes. The basis of both schemes are exactly the same. A would-be house owner enters into a contract with a building society. In terms of this contract, it is provided that the would-be householder must make regular deposits monthly with the building society for a determined period of years. In Germany it is six years. He has to do it in the same way as one makes a deposit at a building society, but with the difference that these deposits can only be used for the purpose of building a house. Now these payments must be made with a view to obtaining a building loan to erect a new building, to make improvements to a property or to repay a loan.

The hon. the Minister is not even listening.

The saver can either reflect the annual payments he makes to the building society within prescribed limits as deductable expenses for the purpose of determining his tax or, if he is not a taxpayer, he can make a request to the Government to give him a premium on what he has paid in. The assistance varies according to the size of the families. Allowances could be fixed. In Germany, for example, a married man with three children can deposit with the building society R850 per annum which is then deductable for tax purposes. But there is a very interesting proviso introduced into the law, namely that in working out the amount that a person is entitled to deduct for tax purposes, it is linked with the deductions in terms of the Income Tax Act for insurance and for medical benefit payments. A ceiling is put over all three. In other words, a person is allowed to deduct for insurance, for medical benefits and also for a deposit for housing. A person may then make his choice. The three are linked together and a maximum is set. In so far as people who pay no tax at all is concerned, the scheme works somewhat differently, namely that if a man makes deposits with a building society and keeps those deposits there for a minimum period of six years and then uses them for a building, the State will then contribute a premium. In Germany such a person can get from 25 to 30 per cent of the amount paid in. Mr. Chairman, I see the benefit of a scheme of this nature as being that people help themselves. When they are given this, they very often do not help themselves. Here we will be saying to a person: “You save and we will give you encouragement.” I believe, as they have found in Germany, that this will be a great encouragement for people to save. In Germany they found for example, that 62.2 per cent of all the savers were wage and salary earners in the lower income groups who wanted a house. This is what they say:

The Registrar of Financial Institutions, when he spoke at the annual meeting of building societies, said that those who want bonds from building societies, should make their deposits with building societies, as a quid pro quo. I agree with him entirely. But the hon. the Minister knows human nature as well as I do. We do not want a quid pro quo. We want to take and not always to give. But here when a man actually will save and is given some encouragement to save, I think it will go a long way to solve many of the hon. the Minister’s problems.

There is just one other thought I wish to leave with the hon. the Minister. Dividends from shares in companies have a variable scale of taxation, depending upon a person’s income. If a person’s income is low he pays no tax. If it is high, a person pays a maximum of two-thirds. Why should we not have the same system in relation to building society shares? Dividends on building societies shares should be treated in exactly the same way as a person’s income from dividends from ordinary shares. Here again we will encourage people to invest their funds with the building societies. If they are in the lower income groups, they will have the benefit of those dividends being treated in the same way as dividends from normal companies.

Are there cases where they are completely tax free?

Yes, but this is for the rich man. A person has to invest his money for a period of five years. He cannot withdraw it if he wants to use it for a house. I think that by using these two methods, we can do a lot to encourage people to help themselves.

I suggest you and me have a word with Dr. Diederichs.

No. Dr. Diederichs and I discussed other matters. It is the responsibility of the hon. the Minister to sell this to the hon. the Minister of Finance. I believe his departmental officials will find that under this scheme the hon. the Minister will save money. It will, furthermore, not cost the State anything because it will help through selfhelp.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Parktown made quite an interesting speech. It is interesting in the sense that he is the first person on that side of the House who tried to approach the hon. the Minister with positive ideas, and who was not merely bent on making political capital out of a question such as housing. I cannot judge whether his proposal is a practical one. I leave it to the hon. the Minister to speak about its practicability. I want to speak about another matter to-day. Before doing so I want to say publicly that the hon. the Minister is probably one of the most merciless of Ministers when nonsensical stories about housing are brought to him, as hon. members have probably discovered already. But I would only be telling a half truth if I did not add that he is also probably one of the most approachable of Ministers when one has fundamental housing problems. Because that is so, our members on this side of the House feel themselves at liberty, from time to time, to be constructively critical of the department.

In the Cape Peninsula we have a particular problem in the sense that we essentially have very few rental units available for the lower and middle income groups. There are chiefly two subeconomic housing schemes in the Cape Peninsula, both controlled by a utility company. I mention in particular the ones at Epping Gardens township in my own constituency and at Good Hope model township in the hon. member for Maitland’s constituency. In these subeconomic schemes there is an income restriction on admission, i.e. R100 per month, as in all schemes, as the hon. member for Uitenhage indicated earlier this evening. That maximum limit for admission was introduced as far back as 1966. The problem we are now experiencing is that there are numerous people whose incomes do, in fact, exceed R100, but only by a few rand, but who nevertheless apply for admission to these relevant schemes. They must then be turned away. I can give you a few examples, without mentioning names. Here I have, for example, the case of a mother with five children who earns R95 and receives R20 in maintenance, a total of R115. She cannot be considered because her income exceeds R100. Here is also the case of a father and a mother with two children earning R110; a father, a mother and one child earning R105; a father and mother with one child, and they are expecting another, earning R100.74. The problem we are up against is that the obvious alternative for these families is that we should apply to the Department of Community Development for them to purchase a house in Bothasig, for example. The minimum instalment in Bothasig, for the sake of argument, is R33 per month, to which an additional R9 must be added to provide for municipal tax. In other words, the total instalment amounts to about R42 per month. It is the Department’s policy, and a very healthy policy at that, that no purchaser in such a scheme may have his monthly instalments exceeding 25 per cent of his income. Therefore, in order to qualify for that scheme his monthly income must be in the vicinity of R168. It is specifically this that demonstrates to us the dilemma of the family earning more than R100, but less than R170 per month. The fact is that this group of people to-day actually constitutes a very large percentage of the general public. I do not want to allege that the people earning more than R100 and less than R170 per month are out on the streets. I do not want to make the allegation as lightly as the hon. member for Maitland would, not being in possession of the evidence when he must produce if.

When did I do that?

But the fact remains that these people find difficulty in obtaining housing under the circumstances prevailing in the Peninsula, and this entails their having to pay rental that is quite a bit of what the department’s formula regards as advisable. Sir, I have indicated to you that the last determination of this subeconomic limit of R100 was made in 1966. The position has now developed to such an extent, with increased salaries, etc., that even a Railway pensioner’s minimum income to-day is R104, and he is therefore excluded from such a subeconomic scheme. It is also clear that such a person is not a potential buyer, although our whole policy is to encourage buyers, because such people will look after their properties so much better. Therefore, in the light of these circumstances, and the problems that this particular group are up against, I want to ask the Minister urgently whether he cannot discuss this matter again with the hon. the Minister of Finance, so that we may raise the subeconomic restriction slightly, to a more realistic level. I readily want to concede that within the existing formula there are still quite a few people that must be housed, but I can tell you that here in the Peninsula, in particular, those families earning less than R100 per month, are given accommodation reasonably quickly, but the concentration of low-salaried persons in one large community also creates social problems, which the department is very well aware of. I do not want to elaborate on this matter any further. Please just allow me, Sir, to touch superficially upon one other matter concerning the question of housing for Coloureds.

Speakers on our side have already indicated, and will probably still do so in the course of the debate, what phenomenal progress this Government has made in the field of housing for Coloureds. But my plea to the hon. the Minister to-day is that we should try to find a method whereby we can make it possible for industrialists, who are chiefly dependent upon Coloureds for their labour sources, to obtain dwellings in a non-white group area for their Coloured labourers. These people are prepared to make a contribution in this connection. Channels already exist in the Department, and in legislation, along which they can make a contribution to housing, but the eventual outcome is that after many years the property passes into the hands of the local authority—I think the period is about 40 years —but I nevertheless consider it to be a restriction in the sense that industrialists do not make use of this help. They are prepared to give their Coloureds accommodation, because they consequently create a much more stable labour force for themselves, and I believe that there are also trade unions that have built up large funds and would be prepared to do something like this for their members.

I do not know whether I still have any time left, but in the minute I have left I want to come back again to the United Party. I want to come back to the political courage of the United Party, as far as this Department is concerned. Sir, you will remember that in this House, probably three or four years ago, I advocated that the hon. the Minister should introduce a restriction on visitors to servants in white residential areas. On that occasion I invited the hon. member for Sea Point in advance to come and share in the discussion about this matter, because it is also a particular problem in Sea Point, and in the debate I invited the hon. member for Green Point to put forward his view. We had legislation in this connection. These two hon. members remained silent in this House when we discussed it. and even to-day they are still maintaining their silence. [Time expired.]

I was glad to hear the hon. member who has just sat down finally come to the very important question of the housing of Coloured workers living in his constituency. He actually devoted nine of his ten minutes to the question of the white people in his area. This one can understand, Sir, because the longer I stay in this House, the more I become aware of the importance of the Vote. There is no doubt that if one has only white voters in one’s constituency, then clearly one pays little attention to the needs of the other people who may be living there. In the good old days, when there were Coloured voters on the common roll, there was not a single member from the Cape who when speaking at a political meeting or in this House, did not make some reference to the Coloured voters whose votes he was going to have to canvass in the ensuing election. Anyway, the hon. member did finally, as I say, devote one minute of his time to the housing of the Coloured workers in his constituency.

I will return to that at a later stage, but I want first of all to say something about the Ceres episode, if I may put it that way. There has been a long chronogical series of events, which I could mention here, starting with the actual earthquake itself, which I think was on the 29th September of last year, and continuing right throughout the months that followed. There were immediate statements that priority would be given immediately to the rehousing of all the people who had suffered as a result of the earthquake. In one regard, of course, the promise has been carried out, and that is in regard to the rehousing of all the white people who suffered in Ceres and environs as a result of the earthquake. Pretty prompt attention was paid to the rehousing of those people. Unfortunately, not the same happy sequence of events attended the rehousing of the Coloured people who live in that area. In certain respects, some of the Coloured people living in areas outside of Ceres, were fairly promptly rehoused. As for the rest, however, as far as Ceres is concerned, all sorts of difficulties appeared to accompany the rebuilding of houses and the repairing of damaged houses, not the least of which was the long and continuous squabble that seems to have gone on, and which was commented upon in various newspapers throughout these months, with regard to the proclamation of a new group area. Apparently there was a dispute as to whether the existing Coloured area, Rooikamp, was going to be retained or not, or whether area K, which is the new area that has been proclaimed, should be the only Coloured area. As a result of this and. let me say immediately, because of difficulties regarding labour and also the inclemency of the weather, there have been many delays in the provision of housing for the Coloured families. Sir, quite recently some of the Coloured families who were in tents were rehoused in railway trucks. I raised this matter with the hon. the Minister and he took prompt action in this regard. I must admit that he immediately took steps to investigate this matter and he promised to see that something was done about it. There was some misunderstanding later over a newspaper headline but I think the hon. the Minister agreed that the body of the report was correct. I want to say at once that the hon. the Minister certainly seems to have a magic wand because he visited Ceres a couple of days ago, if my spies are correct …

On Monday morning.

On Monday morning, so my spies inform me, the hon. the Minister visited Ceres and waved his magic wand. I must say that he does not look like a fairy godmother. Nobody looking at him would think that he was a fairy godmother but he is, because he waved a magic wand and to-day, I understand, there is not a tent to be seen in Ceres. I want to say ‘well done’ to the hon. the Minister, because those people had been living in tents now for eleven months. They have been living in tents in the most severe winter that we have experienced at the Cape for many, many years. Not only has the hon. the Minister waved his wand and those people have now been rehoused in Rooikamp but, Sir, even the trucks have been transformed into really cosy little residences, I understand. Windows have been cut in the trucks; wooden floors have been placed inside them, and instead of a drop of four feet from the truck to the ground, there are now little wooden stairways which have been constructed. One really must give the hon. the Minister credit; when he really gets going, as the Americans say, things start happening. It is only a pity that he did not get going some months ago, so that the people did not have to experience all these difficulties and hardships …

Do you expect miracles?

No, but what I am interested in is that the minute the beady eye of publicity gets fixed on these areas, it is remarkable how quickly things get done, things which before were bogged down in all sorts of departmental and administrative difficulties. But be that as it may, I want to announce publicly here that I am very glad indeed that the hon. the Minister has been so active and that most of those people have now been rehoused, and those who remain in the trucks, as a temporary measure I presume, will shortly also be moved to more permanent residences. But, Sir, I have to join issue with the hon. the Minister’s Department on one or two matters.

You must criticize me otherwise …

No, not the hon. the Minister; I am criticizing other people. I want to criticize first of all the people in charge of handling the Disaster Fund at Ceres. I do not know how much of this money was spent on Coloured housing. It seems to be a very difficult thing to find out. This fund totals over R10 million. I do not know why it should be difficult to find out what proportion of that money was spent on white housing and what proportion on Coloured housing. Sir, the other thing that worries me is that apparently even now the people who are in Rooikamp are not 100 per cent secure in their occupation there. They are worried because of this talk op deproclamation, and I hope that the hon. the Minister will be able to give an assurance publicly that there is now to be no further talk of deproclaiming Rooikamp and making all the Coloured people from Ceres go and live five miles out of the town in area K. [Interjection.] I am informed that it is five miles. Apparently, too, the hon. the Minister or his Department has arranged for one of the difficulties that was holding up the provision of housing to be removed. Coloured property owners, whose homes were damaged by the earthquake are now to be allowed to get a contractor and to build and the Disaster Fund will pay for this. Prior to this it was the other way around; they had to find the money to build and later they could reclaim. Is this not true?

No.

Well, I am glad to hear that because this obviously made the position impossible for these property owners.

They were given a free choice; they can either rebuild themselves and then claim, or they can make use of the consortium called into being by the Disaster Fund.

Has this always been the case?

Yes, right from the beginning.

Well, I was informed— my information is evidently not correct in this regard—that this represents a change. Of course, this has made it much easier for the property owners to rebuilt. I must say that I am all for helping these people in every possible way when they have suffered this sort of disaster, and I was rather shocked to learn that the mayor, who was handling the disaster fund, when presented with a gift of blankets for these people, by Cape Town church organizations, decided that he would sell these blankets to the people at 50 cents each, because, he said, that they would not appreciate the blankets if they were simply presented to them as gifts. I do not think that it is necessary, when people have suffered a major disaster of this kind, to use this as an occasion to teach people to appreciate the kindness that is handed out to them. I would say that one should get on with the job as fast as possible in order to try to improve the conditions under which these people have been living.

Sir, I want to deal with the general question of the shortage of housing for Coloured people in the greater Cape Town area, in the Peninsula area, if you like to call it that. I hope that the hon. the Minister has some magic left in his wand because it is very badly needed. The hon. the Minister may say that he is doing a lot but I tell him that the situation is getting to a stage where it is going to be uncontrollable. Taking the four municipalities of Bellville, Goodwood, Parow and Cape Town proper, I have estimated that there are already something like 33,400 families on the waiting list for housing. Those are municipalities which have closed their waiting lists; so quite obviously this is an under-estimate by far. The municipalities have simply thrown in the towel; they say, there is no point in adding any more names to these waiting lists because they cannot cope. We are not getting the money, we do not have the labour and whatever the case may be, we cannot cope with it. There is hardly a young married Coloured couple that is able to get a new house in the whole of this area. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, as far as the Ceres question is concerned I do not think the hon. member will expect me to give her a reply. I think the hon. the Minister will be able to do so. In respect of the other matters she mentioned here, i.e. the accommodation of Coloureds in the Cape Peninsula, I just want to say that I do not know whether her figures are correct, but I take it that they are, and that there are still 33,400 Coloureds on the waiting list for housing. That may, in fact, be the case. When we took over the government in South Africa there was a tremendous backlog in housing for this type of person. No one looking objectively at this problem will deny that it can be said in all fairness that chaotic conditions prevailed in 1948, when this government took over. The people lived in hovels, they lived under bags, and the poorest of conditions prevailed. However, I want to praise this Government greatly for what it has done during the past 22 years to clear up these conditions. During these 22 years, in which we had to clear up all these chaotic conditions, matters in South Africa were not all plain sailing. We took over from a United Party that had waged a war, and that had a tremendous backlog in the sphere of housing. We took over at a time when we were being subjected to strong international pressure. Big things had to be done to put South Africa on its feet. Economic development had to take place in South Africa, and we had to make it possible for us to defend ourselves against attacks by the world. All those things had to be done. We had to wage a constitutional struggle. To say that we should immediately have given attention to all these conditions at the start, is expecting too much.

What have we done during these 22 years? There was a backlog of 100,000 houses that had to be built for these people. There were 100,000 Coloured and Indian families that had to be accommodated. What have we done during these 22 years? 57 Per cent of these people have already been given proper accomodation, and I take it that these 33,000, to which the hon. member referred, fall under the 43 per cent that still have to be given accommodation. Those of us who are well informed, know that here in the Peninsula ambitious schemes are in progress, and there is future planning for the resettlement of these people. This evening we must express a word of thanks and appreciation for what has already been done for the people. I want to do so, and I want to thank the hon. the Minister and the Government for the dynamic efforts that are being made to resettle these people. If one travels through this country of ours, without any blinkers on, one must look at what is going on in our country districts. We knew the conditions prevailing there. What is the state of affairs to-day? There are proper housing schemes for the people in the rural towns. I am thinking of rural towns such as Ceres, Beaufort West, Victoria West and other towns that lie along the main road to Johannesburg, towns such as Britstown, Strydenburg, Hopetown, Kimberley, and so one can take them all down the line. I challenge any hon. member here to still show me slum conditions such as we had when the United Party governed. I take my own vicinity as an example. The hon. member for Houghton knows what the conditions there are, and the hon. member for Jeppes, who is unfortunately not here at present, ought to know. The hon. member for Jeppes and I served together on the Johannesburg City Council. The bitterest of struggles raged in that city council to prevail upon and persuade the sub-council to resolve the situation there. There sits the hon. member for Johannesburg (North). What where the conditions in Sophiatown, Martindale, Page View, Fordsburg, and other places? What do we have there to-day? Beautiful white residential areas have been erected in Sophiatown. The Coloured area of Albertsville was vacated by the Coloureds and properly established at another spot. Respectable residential areas have been built for the Sophiatown Bantu in Meadowlands and Diepkloof. They have been resettled there.

How they hate it! How they would much rather be back in Sophiatown!

I crossed swords the other day with the hon. member for Houghton about this same matter. I shall drive there with the hon. member, and she must bring me one Coloured family that has been resettled in Bosmont, and is being resettled in Eldorado Park, that will be prepared to go back to Sophiatown and to an Albertsville. I am in contact with those people, and they will not go back to live in those same slum conditions again. Those people were the prey of exploiters, and of the slum landlords of Johannesburg. The hon. member knows it. She knows what went on in Page View. She also knows what went on in Sophiatown and in all the other places. These people have been properly resettled. Grateful communities have been resettled there. All of this was not done just to satisfy these Coloured groups and make them thankful. It was also done to ensure that the Whites, who lived next to those people, also obtain proper conditions under Which to live. The hon. member for Houghton and the hon. member for Johannesburg (North) know what the conditions in Page View were like, where Whites lived right next door to non-Whites. We had a Fordsburg, a Sophiatown and a Westdene. What is the position to-day? Those Whites who live there are to-day living in peace and quiet, and they are no longer being subjected to any threats. At night when those people got back home they could not put a foot outside, because they were afraid that the non-Whites that lived there would pose a threat. This clearance work was done, and is still being done to-day. We thank this Government for it.

I want to come to another point. None of us will deny that there is a great housing need in our country. There is a great housing need, but no one can say that we are not dynamically engaged in solving the problem. It is a need prevailing throughout the world. South Africa is not the only exception.

Is there a great scarcity?

There is not such a great scarcity. I want to tell the hon. member that to-day there are between 5,000 and 6,000 houses built per year in excess of the demand, according to the survey made by the C.S.I.R.

I also want to touch upon another matter. I want to congratulate the hon. the Minister on the proposal he made about a half per cent levy being made available for building research. The time has come in South Africa for us to make more use of preconstruction methods in order to catch up on this tremendous backlog. We cannot catch up on this backlog by conventional building methods alone. We must apply preconstruction methods, and I am glad that the hon. the Minister also referred to that in his speech. I hope that this matter will receive additional serious attention. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I hope the hon. member who has just sat down will forgive me for not responding to what he had to say. In the few minutes available to me, I want to tell the hon. the Minister that I will deal with the major part of what I have to say about the commission and its evidence afterwards.

You must speak up.

I will shout in the Minister’s ear if he likes. In the few minutes before the adjournment, I would just like to point out to the hon. the Minister that I intended to treat him with all sweet reasonableness this afternoon. I had intended that until I heard him in the debate on the previous Vote. But anyway, let us see if we can keep this debate on a higher level. There is nothing personal between myself and the hon. the Minister, but between myself and the Minister’s Department. That will continue.

There is something very big between you and me personally.

Well, yes, if the Minister likes. If I want to retain my friends, what is personal between the hon. the Minister and myself will have to remain so. Now let me ask the hon. the Minister a few questions and see if we can get some answers for those who are suffering under his Department. It is not entirely because of the Department’s actions, but as a result of the very way in which matters are conducted by the Department. In a question earlier this Session I asked the hon. the Minister what was going to happen to the Coloureds at Wentworth who could not afford to pay the increased rentals that his Department had imposed on them. I am not arguing about why the rentals were increased. That is another matter entirely. But in the time available to me, I want to say to the hon. the Minister that he said in his answer to the question whether there was anybody who could not afford to pay these increased rentals, that they could apply to the Department for accommodation of a lower rental. That is correct Probably the hon. the Minister’s memory is not all that good.

This is how it appeared in the question: “If they could not afford to pay the rentals, they could apply to the Department for accommodation of a lower rental.” Well, I might say to the hon. the Minister that the time expires for these people at the end of this month. They have been told that they will be evicted if they do not pay the increased rental by 1st October. Those who could not pay these increased rentals, in terms of the hon. the Minister’s reply to my question, went along to the Department to apply for cheaper accommodation and, to put it quite bluntly, they were told to get out of sight. There was no cheaper accommodation available for them. I want to ask the hon. the Minister this simple question Will he allow those Coloureds who cannot pay the increased rental to stay where they are until such cheaper accommodation can be supplied? It is a simple question and all it requires, is a simple answer.

Now I would like to deal with another matter, namely the question of traders who have been, as I have used the words, deprived of their livelihood through the actions of the Minister’s Department. We will dispute this particular description if he likes till the cows come home. But I say that hundreds have been deprived of their livelihood. The Minister says none. He said: “Bring me one and then I will resign from the Cabinet.” I brought him one and he made excuses.

Now you are talking nonsense. You did not bring me one.

This is why the Minister and I will always have this personal difference. I hope it exists, because I could not work with it under any other circumstances. I have here a letter put out by the hon. the Minister’s Department to one of these people who is disqualified in terms of the Group Areas Act. This is a firm that has been in business for many years. It was told it had to move shortly. The Department then supplied it with a list with alternative accommodation. Do you know where the alternative accommodation was? The nearest point from that particular business was 50 miles away. Then the Minister turned round and said: “But I offered these people alternative accommodation.”

I want to raise one further point. A business disqualified trader, making trailers, was told that he had to move his premises. He went to the Department and they offered him alternative accommodation 20 miles away. That was fair enough. He could have coped. But they offered him accommodation on the second floor of an office block. This is a man who builds trailers. When he asked: “How do I get my trailers up and down two flights of stairs in an office block,” the Department said: “We have done our job; we have offered you alternative business.” Now that man is out of business and the Minister is responsible.

Business suspended at 6.30 p.m. and resumed at 8.05 p.m.

Evening Sitting

Mr. Chairman, we have now used 2½ hours on this debate. I believe we have another 1½ hours left. I am going to be fairly aggressive in my reply. Therefore I want to start now so that members on that side of the House can reply to me after that. I want to give them all possible opportunity.

As far as my friend … No, you are not my friend. As far as the hon. member for Port Natal is concerned, I just want to assure him that I do not want to rob him of a turn to speak. As a matter of fact, I am looking forward to that more than to anything else. He asked me this afternoon that we must have a peaceful debate. I want to suggest to him that we should have a debate on our own. That is why I am getting into the debate now. The two of us will have a little war on our own. And war it will certainly be. I am not interested in having a peaceful debate with that hon. member. He insinuated that my Department is corrupt. I will prove that he has insinuated that. He insinuated that senior officials of my Department in Durban were corrupt.

One.

Now listen to that! He insinuated that one of the senior members of my staff was corrupt.

I never used the word “corrupt”.

I used the word corrupt and you spoke of one member of my Department. I know exactly whom you are referring to. He has been going on with this process of scandalizing my Department in Durban. Yet he thinks that I will have a peaceful discussion with him. With you? No, Sir.

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, is the hon. the Minister entitled to refer to another member of this House as “you”?

Order! The hon. member for Green Point has raised the question whether a member is allowed to refer to another member as “you”. I have made an appeal the other day to hon. members not to use in Afrikaans “jy”, “jou” or “julle”. I now make an appeal on all members to comply with the rules and refer to other members as hon. members. The hon. Minister may continue.

Mr. Chairman, I will abide by your decision as far as possible. I will abide by that decision.

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, is the hon. the Minister entitled to say he will abide by your decision as far as possible?

Order!

Mr. Chairman, I am not going to stand for this nonsense.

Order! The hon. the Minister may proceed.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to tell the hon. member for Green Point that he must not think that he can catch me out on these silly things.

The hon. member for Port Natal insinuated that my Department was corrupt. Yet he wants a peaceful debate. Peaceful debate! My eye!

My hon. eye.

Mr. Chairman, there is one man in this House for whom I have very high regard and respect. That is the hon. member for South Coast. But I want to tell that hon. member that what has happened during the last few days, has practically destroyed my opinion of him completely. The hon. member for Port Natal is the hon. member who threatens me with a libel action. Then he wants me to have a peaceful talk with him! Let him go on with the libel action. I now just want to give him a foretaste of what is going to come to him.

I am terrified.

You ought to be terrified. The hon. member mentioned two cases this afternoon of Indians who have been pushed out of their businesses. The one was told to go 50 miles away. The other one was told to go 20 miles away to the second storey of a building from where he had to bring down trailers or something of that kind. I am telling the hon. member it is not true.

Oh, please!

If it was true, why did the hon. member not bring it to my attention? If what he said this afternoon is true, then it is one of the two most scandalous things I can think about. Why did he not bring it to my attention? Why did not anybody bring it to my attention?

I only heard about that case this week.

The hon. member heard about it this week and believes every word about it? That hon. member has not brought one single case to my notice of an Indian who has been evicted from his premises without being offered proper alternative accommodation. He brought one case to me which was a complete distortion of the facts.

You will get them.

Yes, I will get them in the Sunday Tribune and in the Daily News. But I will not get them in my office where I can investigate them.

[Inaudible.]

The hon. member for Port Natal will get an opportunity to speak if he rises at a later stage. I do not want any further interjections.

I said that I would deal with that hon. member in our own private little debate which will take place after this one.

During the Censure Debate, or during the Budget debate—I am not quite certain now which—the hon. member for Newton Park made an attack on me which was based on a conversation which he and I had had in the lobby in the presence of my wife. I want to say to the hon. member that what he said here, was untrue. It was not based on facts. It was one of those things which have shocked me the most in all the 17 years I have been sitting in this House.

But what came over Myburgh then?

Not only did that hon. member take advantage of a private conversation, and on top of that a friendly private conversation, but he wrested it out of context to such an extent that it was shocking. By way of interjection I said to him: “The hon. member will apologize to me, or I will never give him a hearing again”. He has not apologized to me. I thereupon wrote him the following letter—

Read it out to the House.

Yes, that I will most certainly do (translation)—

That is also incorrect.

I used stronger words in the letter—

With love, Blaar.

Let me now inform the hon. member that to pay any heed to integrity in this House when you are dealing with such people, is a waste of time, and I am saying this in all seriousness. The hon. member for Newton Park then replied as follows, after I had said this to him—

I never used that word.

Then I said—-

Do you want me to reply to the letter?

You can reply to it whenever you want to—

I did not say that you had said that.

I am quoting further—

That is the point.

Order! I do not want to hear any more interjections from the hon. member for Newton Park; if I do, I shall take action. The hon. the Minister may proceed.

I said—

I now want to tell him that if he does not think we can return to ordinary decency, I shall never greet him again as long as he or I live.

I told him the same thing in the presence of a witness. [Interjections.]

Just before I come to this debate, I should like to read out a statement which I want to make arising out of certain representations which have been made to me by the hon. member for Durban (Point), who is not present here this evening. The statement is as fallows—

I want to state openly that I did this at the request of the hon. member for Durban (Point), because I think there is no one who is more frequently faced with this type of problem than he.

The hon. member is ill in bed to-night.

I am not blaming him for not being here. I am merely saying that I am doing this because he asked me to do so.

Now I want to return to the hon. member for Green Point and this debate. The hon. member for Green Point began by telling me that I was being superficial in regard to housing. I just want to say, it is not I who am being superficial, it is he who knows absolutely nothing about housing in South Africa.

And he is their shadow Minister.

It is not the Department of Community Development as such to which housing has been entrusted. The Slums Act places the obligation to supply housing on the city councils, and the Housing Act on the local authorities. To help them, we have the Development Board which consists of the best town planners in South Africa, equal to the best town planners in the world; another statutory body which has been established to render assistance, is the Housing Commission. This consists of economists and sociologists, and as to their knowledge of housing, they are among the best in South Africa, and I want to add, among the best in the world. I allow myself to be led by these experts, and not by the hon. member for Green Point. If I am being superficial, Sir, then the members of the Housing Commission and the members of the Development Board, who are professional people, are being superficial, and I challenge the hon. member for Green Point to say that. [Interjection.] Of course I am hiding behind them. Sir, what do I know about housing? What does the Minister of Mines know about mining? After all, you have to rely on your experts. I challenge the hon. member for Green Point to criticize any of the decisions taken by the Development Board or by the Housing Commission.

I was talking about you.

Sir, these are two statutory bodies. I may not give them instructions, or does the hon. member not know what a statutory body is? I discuss things with them from time to time, but it is so much nonsense for him to come and tell me that I am being superficial in my approach to housing in South Africa. I shall not be taught by him.

The hon. member says that in the time I have been Minister I have not helped the private sector to build residential units in South Africa. Sir, at the moment we have a crisis in the building industry in South Africa; I make no secret of that.

I am in complete agreement.

We have a crisis, but notwithstanding the crisis we have in the building industry, I now want to inform the hon. the Minister of what progress we made in the years 1968, 1969 and 1970, years during which I was Minister.

May I ask the hon. the Minister whether he has any ideas about solving the crisis in the building industry?

Yes, I have ideas about it, but it is to a large extent—I almost want to say exclusively—the work of the hon. the Minister of Labour, the building trade unions, and the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration. I have no doubt that the position is continually improving. I shall go so far as to say that I think that the position at the moment in the building industry is a very difficult one. The hon. member said that I was not encouraging the private sector to build houses. Sir, in 1968 the private sector built 13,592 houses: in 1969 15,142 and during the first five months of 1970, 10,200, which means that during the whole year approximately 20,000 will be built, 5,000 more than were built last year. But he says that nothing is being done to encourage the private sector to build houses. But what is the position in regard to flats? His standpoint is that my policy and what I am doing, is discouraging people from building flats and houses.

He is being silly.

We come now to flats. In 1968 R56 million was spent by the private sector on the construction of flats. In 1969 this dropped to R38 million as a result of the difficulty in the building industry, but in 1970 it increased during the first five months of the year to R34 million, which will give us R68 million for the whole year—almost R20 million more than in 1968. This is what has been done since I became Minister—and I have not even got into my stride yet! I am therefore saying that we have done the best it was possible to do. We are succeeding, by means of building control, to which I shall return later, in getting the private sector to build more and more housing units in South Africa. In addition the hon. member tried to make a big issue of my having allegedly said that young married couples with children should live in flats and that that is the pattern we shall have to follow in future. I said nothing of the kind. What I said was that I saw no objection whatsoever to a married couple with one or two children staying in flats. I adhere to that. What is wrong with that?

That is also the case throughout the whole of Europe.

Yes, this is also being done in Europe. This is the new tendency. After all, land is not increasing. The hon. member for Jeppes said this afternoon that one was forced to build a house 30 to 40 miles away from the city. Who must pay the transportation costs?

Who must supply the services?

Yes, who must supply the services? The whole problem is that people are increasing in numbers, but the land is not increasing in quantity. The only solution to this, is to go up into the air. We get that for nothing, and that is all we get for nothing to-day. What is wrong with a married couple with one or two children living in a flat? What is wrong as such with what we are now trying to do, i.e. to make the areas with a high density population less densely populated? We are doing this so that we will not have the mess which was allowed to develop in Hillbrow under the United Party government. He was on the City Council of Johannesburg. Why did he not see to it that there were playgrounds in Hillbrow?

He was mayor.

Yes, he was mayor.

Who?

The hon. member for Jeppes. Why did he not see to it that there were playgrounds in Hillbrow? There is one miserable little park, Joubert Park, and apart from that there is nothing. There we have the highest population density, not only in Africa, but according to reports, in the world. That is what they allowed.

May I ask the hon. member a question? Why does the Government not surrender the Fort and build a gaol somewhere else so that Hillbrow can get another park?

That prison was there when my very good friend opposite and I were still good United Party supporters. She must not blame this Government for that now. She must blame our former leader for that. Let me tell her now that I have as little time for my former leaders as she, my hon. friend, has.

There is absolutely no objection to staying in flats; this is a tendency throughout the world. Because there is no more land, and people, particularly the less well-to-do people have to live closer and closer to their work, the only possible way of doing this is to erect flats closer to the central part of the city. Next year legislation in this connection will be introduced. When those flats are erected, care must be taken to ensure that the owner of the flats does not make use of every square inch of land. It is not only he who must derive every possible benefit from it, he must also allow a certain portion for playing areas, swimming baths, and so on. This is the direction in which we are moving. The hon. member for Green Point said that we were not looking after the aged. He said we were not making certain that there were homes for the aged. The major point he made is not so much that we were not making certain that there were enough houses for the aged, that we were not making certain that there was balanced housing for the aged, since there are subeconomic, middle-class and the well-to-do aged. Why did the hon. member say that? Did he investigate the matter? I want to say to the hon. member that he knows absolutely nothing about it. I Challenge him now to tell how many homes for the aged there are in South Africa. I will make it even easier for him.

Tell me where I was wrong.

Very well, I shall tell the hon. member where he was wrong. The hon. member said that we were not making provision for housing on a balanced basis, that is for sub-economic, middle-class and the wealthy aged in the same area. That was his argument. I now maintain that he could only have come to that conclusion if he had made an investigation into how many homes for the aged there are in South Africa.

I am not talking about homes for the aged. I did not refer at all to homes for the aged.

What was the hon. member talking about then?

I was talking about housing for the elderly people who are able to pay rent for it.

The hon. member was talking about homes for the aged where people were able to pay the rent.

†All right, I shall speak English although my English may not be as good as Douglas Mitchell’s Afrikaans!

The hon. member accused us of not building homes for the aged where the sub-economic group, the middle-class group and the wealthy group can live together. To make a statement like that the hon. member must have investigated the matter and he must have acquired some knowledge on the subject. Surely, under these circumstances he must know how many old-age homes, some balanced and some unbalanced, we have in South Africa. Does he know it?

I did not talk about homes for the aged.

Why not? Is it a scandal to grow old? It will be a tragedy for this country if the hon. member grows old.

Read my Hansard. You will then understand what I said.

I fully understood the hon. member in every respect. His accusation against my Department was that we are not making provision for old-age homes where aged in the sub-economic group, in the middle-income group and in the wealthier group can afford the rent. The hon. member does not know what he is talking about. He never went into this matter. I now ask him again, how many homes for the aged in the poor, middle-income and wealthy groups we have in South Africa? That is the shadow member who wants to take over from me. How many homes of this kind do we have in South Africa? We have 172 homes of this kind in South Africa.

That is terrific!

It is terrific. We have 8,500 housing units for the aged in the sub-economic group, and for people in the economic group 1,114. Last Saturday I opened one at Kroonstad. It is for people of the subeconomic group, the middle-class group and for wealthier old-aged who can afford an economic rate for a flat. I opened this seven-storey unit last Saturday. I did not go to the rugby match. I went to open the old-age home. I must say that I enjoyed it more. Next Saturday I am opening one in the Strand, one of exactly the same type. I now want to ask the hon. member for Green Point if he can tell me what the position is in the Cape Peninsula.

How many old-age pensioners are there?

I am asking the hon. member whether he knows the names of, and he can call them by any name, any old-age homes or homes for the aged of all income groups here in the Peninsula. Does he know the name of a single one?

Do not be stupid!

I am not stupid. Name me one.

I know the names of many of them.

All right, let us have their names. The hon. member made a study of it. He accused this Government that we do not make provision for the aged in South Africa. Therefore, he must have investigated the position and I now challenge him to name those in the Peninsula. The hon. member can name me only one.

May I mention only four?

Yes.

Arcadia, Secura, Huis Luckhoff and the SAWAS old-age home in Pinelands. Does the hon. the Minister want me to go on?

No, the old-age homes the hon. member mentioned are the homes he says we must not erect in South Africa. Does the hon. member know about Welverdiend, Riverside, Eppingtuindorp …

Yes.

And of Goeie Hoop Modeldorp, Huis Magnolia? Does he know what is done by the Cape Peninsula Organization for the Aged in South Africa? No, but he comes here with this ridiculous accusation that we are not providing for these people. We as a Department do not provide for them. We are providing the money at a sub-economic interest rate on the basis of one-twentieth of one per cent for sub-economic people, at three-quarter per cent for the middle-income group and I think at the rate of 6½ per cent interest for people in the higher income groups. In spite of this the hon. member says that we are doing nothing for the aged in the Cape Peninsula or elsewhere in South Africa.

I am sorry the hon. member for Durban (Central) is not here. He attacked me because we are now expropriating certain properties in what is known as “Block AK” in Durban. He did that, not only here in the House, but through the newspapers in South Africa as well. They are saying that we are expropriating these properties and that we are not paying the people. We are letting them wait for months on end for their money. Then I accused him. I have not heard one single complaint from any owner in Block AK. I have not had a single complaint from the Chamber of Commerce, nor from the Chamber of Industries, nor from the association dealing with properties there, nor from the Durban City Council. Why should they go and ask him and why did he not bring those matters to my attention? I say that there is no trouble whatsoever in Block AK. But I now want to show hon. members what is going on in certain circles. Yesterday I had a letter, funnily enough, from the Chamber of Commerce, reading as follows:

Dear Mr. Minister,

Block AK, Durban.

I have been asked to place on record with you that this Chamber has received a number of complaints …

This letter is dated the 11th September, a few days ago.

Why did I receive it on the 11th September, after the debate in this House? I wrote back to the Manager of the Durban Chamber of Commerce in the following tone:

Dear Sir,

re: Block AK, Durban.

Will you read out the reply from the Durban Chamber of Commerce?

I have not had a reply and I guarantee my friend I will not have a reply. [Interjection.] Why?

You did not have a letter because they have not had a chance to reply yet.

I will give the hon. member all the facts about that reply. I tell him, if they had any complaints they must have had them a long time ago, because that is a process that has been going on for five years. Will they suddenly receive complaints since the member for Port Natal spoke? [Interjections.] Yes, the hon. member did not complain to me.

No, what is it worth? What is the use of complaining to you? Did anyone complain to your Department in Durban?

That I cannot say. But what is this Government made up of? If my Department does not satisfy the hon. member for Port Natal, what stands in his way to approach me?

Are you cross with him?

No, I am only disgusted. The position is that if my Department does not do its job, you can complain either to the Secretary of the Department, and if he does not satisfy you, then you must complain to the Minister. If there are such serious malpractices going on in Block AK, why have I not heard of it? Surely, the reason why I don’t hear about them is because you do not know about them. I do not hear about them because the statement is untrue. You use it for political purposes, and you know that we can put it right at any moment. The hon. member goes and spreads the story there that we do not pay out compensation and other stupidities.

*I now want to return to the hon. member for Maitland. He kicked up a tremendous fuss here in the Budget debate about the shortage of housing in his constituency. If hon. members recall his words, he said the following: “There are hundreds, no thousands, of people who are not properly accommodated in Maitland”. He asked whether I had ever driven around there to see where white people were living. He said that I would feel absolutely ashamed if I saw where white people were living. Then I asked the hon. member for Maitland Whether he would bring me all the cases of individuals suffering from a housing shortage so that I could do my utmost to remedy them. This was all of three weeks ago. I thought that I would be inundated by the number of cases which the hon. member would bring of people in his constituency who were unsatisfactorily and improperly accommodated. It has been three weeks now. What has the hon. member brought me? I know precisely what the housing conditions in his constituency are. The housing conditions in his constituency are reasonably good. To tell the truth, I think they are very good, and I do not think he knows what he is talking about. I do not mind admitting that there are certain shortages which we will in due course remedy, but where are his thousands of cases or his hundreds?

Again that is wrong. I challenge the hon. the Minister to prove that I said that.

Is there no shortage of houses then?

Where did I say that?

In his speech he said that there was a shortage of hundreds.

Again that is wrong.

Very well, a shortage of scores? Is that better? He complained about a tremendous shortage of houses in his constituency. I then challenged him to bring these cases to me. He met me here in the lobby, and I hope he will not hold this against me, and he said: “Blaar, did you really mean that I should bring those cases to you?” Then I said: “Tony, everything I say, I mean; so bring them to me”. What have I had from the hon. member for Maitland since? This was a month ago; he did not bring 60,000 cases to my attention; he did not bring 600 cases or 60 cases to my attention.

Six!

He brought only six cases to my attention. Let me add that they did not come to him of their own accord, he went to see them. I am “Cassius Coetzee,” but he is “Tony the Tout”. He is a political “hijacker”. Now I am going to illustrate something in this House, because I think these matters should be illustrated. This is the terrible housing shortage in Maitland, which he is going to exploit during the next few months before the provincial election. I gave him a full month, and he brought me six cases. Now I am going to read out each case from the report to my Department. I shall not mention any names. At the end of June, 1970, Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So found themselves out of their previous dwelling owing to their being in arrears with the rent. Apparently this was subsequently repaid in full, according to Mrs. So-and-So, but they were apparently too late to retain the house.

That matter was therefore solved within 24 hours. I shall now deal with the next matter. I quote—

Thanks to my hard work.

No. That hon. member is saying that it was his hard work. I am now going to mention to him a case which he gave me where the woman in question said that the hon. member never even saw her. She does not know him. If my deduction was correct, she does not want to know him either. I am referring to the following case. In his letter to me the hon. member said that this young couple intended getting married. My Department’s reply reads as follows—

In respect of all six cases brought to me by the hon. member, not one was on the waiting list of the City Council, the Divisional Council or the Department of Community Development. Not one of them had come to ask for houses. Then there is one last case I read the report—

Here I have another two cases as well. I quote—

Now this looks like a housing shortage!—

An application form was handed to him for completion. The present rented dwelling of Mr. … adjoins a shop owned by his mother. The latter would like to sell the shop, which will also entail that her son will have to vacate the house. However, the envisaged sale fell through and Mrs. … therefore requested that her son’s application for a residence should provisionally be held back until she is able to find a buyer for the shop. There is therefore no immediate emergency in this case and Mr. … is urged to purchase a building site in Bothasig on which he can immediately obtain a 90 per cent building loan. Then he can be assured of a place to stay if his mother should one day sell the shop.

Then there is a last case here. I quote—

This is the so-called housing emergency in one of the poorest residential areas in Cape Town where he was able to find six cases, not one of which was a valid case. I shall leave it at that.

I want to go further. Not only did I challenge him, and in a month’s time did he only find six cases. But then the Sunday Times thought that here they had something on the basis of which they could grab Blaar Coetzee by the throat. Sir, if they could grab me by the throat they would most certainly do so. And here is an article by a writer, Hogarth De Hoog, alias Joel Mervis, alias Serfontein, alias George Oliver and alias Jaap Marais. They boast of a circulation of a million; this is read by a million people, and to those million people they say the following—

This, Sir, was said to a million people: If you have housing problems, go to Blaar Coetzee; the Post Office will find him. And seeing that the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs is sitting next to me here, they will most certainly find me. And do you know how many replies I received? Not a single one. Even old Bronkie is laughing at their foolishness in regard to the housing shortage. I just want to mention one case.

Your time is unlimited.

What about it? What do you care?

We are enjoying it very much.

You ought to enjoy it very much, but you must not have too much to say. I know far too much about you. [Interjection.] I beg your pardon, Sir, I meant the hon. member. But I want to say just this to the hon. member. I am not politically oversensitive, but you will provoke me only up to a point.

I shall provoke you as much as I like.

Yes, he can provoke me as much as he likes, but I just want to say this …

Order! I think the hon. the Minister had better proceed with his speech and not reply to the interjections of the hon. member for Yeoville.

But I am proceeding with my speech, Sir.

The hon. Minister must not reply to interjections.

I just want to say this to that hon. member: I am sick and tired of all the insinuations he is making.

We are all tired of them.

Insinuations were made against me here to the effect that I had published pornography. I do not know. I was the manager of a large business, but it is quite possible that we published pornography because he was our chief writer.

That is untrue. That is a lie.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw that word.

Mr. Chairman, but it is parliamentary.

The hon. member must withdraw it unconditionally.

I say it is a blatant untruth.

You must withdraw it.

I withdraw it. But it remains an untruth.

Order! The hon. member must resume his seat.

What is more, I paid you and I shall show you the cheques. [Interjection.] I know all the answers to the superficiality of those hon. members. I shall leave this matter at that now, Sir, because I must make haste. What is the actual housing position in South Africa?

You told us the most blatant untruth, Blaar.

Order! If the hon. member for Yeoville utters one more word across the floor of the House from his seat, I shall send him out of the House. I am warning the hon. member now. And the hon. the Minister must not reply to any further interjections from the hon. member.

No, Sir, I will not go any further, but I shall not allow him to shunt me around. My political past is a dark one, but his is even darker!

Order!

What is the actual position in regard to housing? The National Building Research Institute of the C.S.I.R. instituted a scientific investigation into the need for housing in South Africa in one year, and they investigated the population increase, immigration, houses demolished in slum areas, houses expropriated for roads, and what the housing requirements in South Africa were. The National Building Research Institute, Prof. Sadie and other scientists investigated this matter. They came to the conclusion that in South Africa, between the years 1965 and 1970, as far as Whites are concerned, there will be a need for 21,000 houses. During the past five years the Department of Community Development, the local authorities and the private sector have built an average of 26,500 building units, in other words, 5,000 more than the demand which has resulted from the increase in the population, immigration and houses which are being demolished as a result of certain circumstances.

Sir, let us just look at the largest centres in South Africa; let us look at the need for houses in the Witwatersrand/Pretoria/Vaal triangle complex. They calculated that the need for 1969-’70 to 1973 will be 10,848, almost 11,000 units. The known programmes in progress at the moment and plans until 1973, make provision for 16,400, that is 6,000 more than the actual need in that area.

Where are you going to get the labour from?

No, we are building them at present. This was calculated according to the rate at which we are building these houses at present, and we are achieving this by applying building control very strictly. In the Cape Peninsula, as the hon. member for Tygerberg rightly stated, the position is not a very sound one. Here the need from 1970 to 1973 is 3,600, and the known programme for the next three years makes provision for 3,300, but I promised the hon. member that I will give my serious attention to this matter. In Durban the need between 1970 and 1973 is for almost 4,000 units, but the known building programmes are for 10,800, almost 11,000. Durban is OUT greatest difficulty at the moment. but in the next three years we hope to solve the problem there. Sir, in 1964 we spent R23 million on housing, and in 1969-’70, five years later, R52 million. We are therefore making up the backlog rapidly. I have the figures here for all the individual places, and I shall gladly give them to hon. members. Sir, the hon. member for Maitland really scoffed at me he other day for quoting the advertising columns of the Argus. But subsequently many of his members quoted the Argus and other newspapers to prove their standpoints. I then instructed my staff to establish what the position is throughout the entire country, and to see how many houses are being offered for sale, how many flats to let are being offered, and what the demand for houses and flats is. In the 21st August edition of the Argus, “Houses for Sale” covered 414 inches.

Does the hon. Minister know what day the 21st was?

No. I do not know what day it was. but what difference does it make what day it was?

The most advertisements appear in the Saturday edition.

Very well, then next time I shall take Monday! If the largest number of advertisements in which houses are offered for sale appear on Saturdays, why do you not also find the greatest number of advertisements for “Houses Required” on Saturday? Then I come to the Eastern Province Herald: “Houses for Sale”, 132½ inches; “Houses Wanted”, in other words, houses which people want to buy or rent, 1½ inches; Pretoria News: 370 inches and 2 inches; The Star: “Properties for Sale”, 506 inches; “Property Wanted”, 4½ inches. Sir, if you go into the advertisements for flats and all those things, you find more or less the same tendency. I am not asserting that this is adequate proof that we do not have a housing shortage in South Africa, but it is proof that we have the housing position of to-day under complete control.

Sir, I want to make this statement here tonight: If the Opposition states that there is a housing crisis in South Africa, then they do not know what they are talking about. There is no housing crisis as far as Whites are concerned. Here in Cape Town and in the Peninsula there is a housing crisis as far as Coloureds are concerned, which I shall deal with in a moment. As far as the Bantu are concerned, this is the problem of my colleague here, the hon. Minister of Bantu Administration, and at the moment I do not have very much knowledge of that any more. I tell you that as far as the housing position in South Africa is concerned, Sir, it has never been better. What this Government has done over the past 8, 9 or 10 years is among the best efforts made by any Government in the world. I have spoken to overseas experts who came here and they told me that as far as the Whites are concerned, the housing position in South Africa is the best in the world. I shall return at a sub-sequent opportunity to the question of Coloured housing and the resettlement problem.

Before proceeding. I should like to have your ruling, Sir. In the course of his speech the hon. the Minister of Community Development made certain personal allegations against me to the effect that I had supposedly contributed to the pornographic magazines he had published.

How does that concern this Vote?

It does concern the Vote. The Minister made the allegation, and von in your wisdom, ruled—and I immediately accepted it—that I could not react to that by way of interjection. I should now like to have your ruling as to whether I may react to that allegation by way of the opportunity I have been given to speak.

The hon. member may proceed.

The hon. the Minister of Community Development was the owner and publisher of two periodicals in South Africa, i.e. “Fyn Goud” and “Hy en Sy”. I do not want to go into the merits of those periodicals, but they were condemned as dirty periodicals, even by his own church, the Dutch Reformed Church.

That is untrue.

Now the Minister alleges that I was one of the main contributors to those periodicals. I want to come forward now with these simple statements: Firstly, I never contributed to “Hy en Sy” or “Fyn Goud”, nor would I have done so had I had the opportunity, because I do have some self-respect.

What did I pay you for then?

The Minister speaks of payment. He says he has the cheques. I challenge him to produce one cheque or any proof that I ever lowered myself to the stage of contributing to his dirty magazines, and if he cannot do so, then I say he told a blatant untruth. I want to place this on record, and I want the people to note that if the Minister cannot produce those cheques, if he cannot prove that I contributed either to “Hy en Sy”— and thank Goodness, of “Hy en Sy” only “hy” (he) remains—or to “Fyn Goud”, then it is not a blatant untruth, but an infamous lie.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw the allegation that it is an infamous lie.

Sir, I am not saying it is an infamour lie.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw the allegation that it is an infamous lie.

Sir. how did I use the expression “infamous lie”?

Order! The hon. member must withdraw it.

Sir, I did not say it is an infamous lie.

The hon. member said “then it is an infamous lie”.

If he cannot prove it, then it is an infamous lie.

Order! The hon. member can substitute another word for that.

Sir, if he cannot prove it, then it is the kind of statement one can expect from a mam like the Minister of Community Development.

Order! Will the hon. the Minister resume his seat! I am asking the hon. member to withdraw it.

I withdraw it, Mr. Chairman.

No, no, no! he is not going to get away with that! Oh, no, Mr. Chairman, it is no use the member pretending to be so pious. I did not only have those periodicals; I had the largest book scheme in South Africa. I had Tafelberg Publishers and it was bought from me by Nasionale Pers. The Hertzog Prize was awarded to Frans Venter for books published by me.

Order!

No, Mr. Chairman, my salary is at stake here!

Order! The hon. the Minister must resume his seat. I allowed the hon. member to speak on allegations that had been made. Now we leave the matter at that.

No, Mr. Chairman, oh no, he then …

Order!

I rise now on a point of order.

Then the hon. the Minister must say so.

Very well, I rise on a point of order. I made allegations against him and then he came along with a lot of allegations against me. I now say to you. Mr. Chairman; not only did he write a lot of articles for me, he wrote a lot of books for me, he wrote a lot of paperbacks for me and he and Japie Basson begged me to make them directors of the company.

Order!

No, Mr. Chairman, I …

(Standing). Order! I have now allowed the hon. the Minister to reply and with that this matter has now been disposed of, and we shall now confine ourselves to the Vote.

Mr. Chairman, naturally I cannot follow up what was said by the hon. member for Yeoville, and I should like to confine myself to a few other points. I shall come back to the hon. member for Port Natal later. The hon. member for Port Natal is the man who told the Minister this evening that we should conduct the debates here on a high level. To me it seems, after I have just listened to him and the hon. member for Yeoville, that they have grovelled so deeply in the mud that only their ears are showing.

Now I want to confine myself to the hon. the Minister in the first place. I want to refer to my constituency and especially to the resettlement of the Coloureds which has to take place in my constituency in Juta Road. The Coloureds are living there under slum conditions. This is something we inherited from the United Party. Now the United Party Press comes along and makes a tremendous fuss about the Coloureds living there. The hon. the Minister’s predecessor, ex-Minister Maree, promised me in his time that once they had completed the re-settlement of South End, priority would be given to the Coloureds’ residential area in Juta Road. I should like to point out to the Minister that the resettlement of South End has virtually been completed, and now I only hope that promise will be kept.

Then I should like to associate myself with the hon. member for Tygervallei and with the hon. member for Uitenhage who asked for the maximum qualifications for people wanting to obtain sub-economic housing to be raised from R100 to R130. I want to tell the hon. members that I, too, support the plea they made here this evening.

Then I should like to bring another point to the attention of the hon. the Minister. It is a matter which worries me a great deal, and that is that we so often hear of the high rentals which have to be paid. I know the hon. the Minister is not responsible for that, but there are, nevertheless, other factors contributing to those high rentals which have to be paid for available dwellings. One of the causes of the high rentals is, of course, the expensive sites, and I shall come back to this question later this evening. The second cause is the high wages which have to be paid in the building industry to-day. There is a third cause and this is the one which is worrying me in particular. This cause is the excessively high rates and taxes the house owner has to pay. I think to-day this is the greatest canker in the way of the less-privileged man which prevents him to have his own house or to acquire an economic house. The hon. the Minister has appointed a commission of inquiry to ascertain the reasons for the existing shortage of building sites. I think it is also essential for us to have a commission of inquiry to ascertain why rates and taxes are so high in the Cape Province. I should like to mention an example of a house valued at R6,600. I have the assessment here with me. The man has to pay for his lights and his water and in addition has to pay the municipality R118.80. He also has to pay divisional council tax of R10.22. Therefore, he has to pay a total amount of R129 in rates and taxes on a house valued at R6,600. I want to mention another example. It is of a house valued at R12,700. The municipal rates and taxes on this house are R255.60 in Port Elizabeth. The divisional council tax amounts to R22.01 and this means that the owner of that house has to pay R277.61 in rates and taxes per annum. Where a person lets a house like that, that money has to be recovered and it naturally has to be paid by the tenant. This is what is making the situation so difficult for us to acquire houses for the low income groups in our cities.

I should now like to confine myself to the hon. member for Port Natal. This evening the hon. member for Port Natal grovelled so deeply in the mud that after his attack on the hon. the Minister only the Port was sticking out and the entire Natal was in the mud. It is time for the hon. member to reply now. He said the Department of Community Development was the most apathic and most merciless property agent in the world. Imagine that The Department that is occupying itself with one of the most real problems in South Africa, i.e. family housing, is now accused by the hon. member for Port Natal of apathy. The hon. member continued. He is one of the people who went along with the Progressives here in the Cape addressing meetings. From early morning until late at night he objects to separate residential areas. In Hansard, column 2045, the hon. member said the following on 18th August, 1970—

Although the hon. member is sitting in the ranks of the United Party he subscribes to the policy of the Progressives. He says this Government puts Whites and non-Whites together in the same house. He says this is being done by the Department of Community Development. Surely this is not the truth. In column 2042, the hon. member also said the following—

It is very clear that the Department of Community Development does purchase land, but the hon. member wants to suggest that the Department of Community Development is the culprit responsible for there being a shortage of houses to-day. I should now like to ask the hon. member where the Department of Community Development is to build its houses if it does not purchase land? Surely they cannot leave them hanging in the air! Then the hon. member proceeds to talk of those properties of R50,000. Surely that is not land belonging to the Department of Community Development. I just want to show him what the situation in Port Elizabeth is.

May I put a question?

No, I do not have the time now to hear that hon. good-for-nothing. Let us just ascertain what the situation is in Port Elizabeth. The Eastern Province Herald, the United Party newspaper in Port Elizabeth says—

The City Council in Port Elizabeth has 10,000 morgen of land, of which the valuation, based on the Niemand report, is R125,000,000. The City Council of Port Elizabeth, sits with 10,000 morgen of land which it is not developing. Why does the hon. member launch an attack on the Department of Community Development and not on the municipalities freezing that land. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I have no intention of reacting to the speech of the hon. member who has just sal down. He did me the honour of reading most of my previous speech in this House. But I would like to return immediately to the hon. the Minister. I would like to say that if the performance put up by the hon. the Minister in this House to-night is an example of the type of Minister we have in this Government, heaven help South Africa!

Order! I think members must not be so personal in their remarks.

What about him?

The hon. the Minister referred to a letter which he said he wrote to the Durban Chamber of Commerce. I challenge that hon. Minister to send me a copy of that letter.

Why must I send you one?

Because the Minister mentioned my name in that letter. I challenge him here to send me a copy across the floor of this House.

I will.

Send it now. The hon. the Minister also attacked the hon. member for Durban (Central) over Block AK. He asked why the people in Block AK did not complain to his Department or to himself. Mr. Chairman, they complained to his Department times without number, without results. What are they supposed to do? When they made a statement in the newspaper, the hon. the Minister turned around and doubted their sincerity. He in fact doubted whether they were telling the truth as well.

I was dealing with a few matters before the adjournment. If the hon. the Minister will care to listen to me, he may learn something to his benefit. The matters I raised before the adjournment I will place before the Minister by means of a report. I got up in this House a few weeks ago and asked for a commission of inquiry into his Department. I have repeated that request for five solid years and I am doing so again. The hon. the Prime Minister appoints a special commission to investigate one solitary matter, a commission that tabled its report in this House. I ask for a commission of inquiry into that Minister’s Department which affects over a million people in South Africa, and I am entitled to expect one. Now the hon. the Minister will perhaps answer a few questions. The Minister said that I would not bring proof of the allegations that I have made against this Department. I have the proof. I have so much proof that I have a special committee now collating the evidence so that it can be presented to the Minister. That will take the smile off his face. Before we come to this matter, I would like to ask the hon. the Minister just one or two questions right across the floor of this House. I wonder whether he will answer me. Did he receive a deputation of Indians over the reproclamation of Ladysmith?

Yes, right in my room in my house where I was lying ill.

Well, they said that he was very pleasant to them. But now I wonder, did he tell them that the reproclamation had been requested because of pressure brought to bear by the Ladysmith Town Council?

No.

The hon. the Minister did not. It is funny but I have spoken to the members of that delegation separately. They said that the Minister said that pressure was being brought to bear by the Ladysmith Town Council to re-proclaim. [Interjections.] I accept that the hon. the Minister said “no”.

Will the hon. member answer one question? What have I to do with reproclamation?

But why did you then receive a deputation?

Because they came to ask me about housing.

They came to see you about the re-proclamation of Ladysmith? Why did the hon. the Minister see this deputation? Hon. members must not forget that the members of this deputation were hanging on every word the hon. the Minister said because their whole future depended on what he said. I am prepared to admit that the hon. the Minister may have forgotten exactly what he said because it was not quite so important to him. But it was important to every member of that deputation. They recorded every word he said. Mr. Chairman, they said that the hon. the Minister told them that the Ladysmith Town Council had brought pressure to bear for the re-proclamation of Ladysmith. The Minister said he did not say that. I accept that the hon. the Minister does not remember saying it. But then the Minister in their presence, arranged to visit Ladysmith. They all separately and collectively supported this. I have the letter here. He told them that he would visit Ladysmith. He arranged the date of the visit in their presence and in the presence of his secretary. There was a difference about what date it actually should be. He said, “I will see you in Ladysmith and I can assure you that nothing will happen. No reproclamation will take place until I do see you in Ladysmith.”

What do you have to do with Ladysmith?

Oh, belt up! The hon. the Minister in due course arrived in Ladysmith, with the then Minister of Planning. [Interjections.] I am not accusing the hon. the Minister of doing anything improper in this regard. So he can relax. The hon. the Minister and the then Minister of Planning then arrived in Ladysmith. After having given this undertaking to the deputation of Indians, the hon. the Minister never saw a single Indian in Ladysmith. He had told this deputation— this is the information given to me—that he would visit Ladysmith and that they had nothing to worry about because he would not re-proclaim the area until he did. Now he says re-proclamation has nothing to do with it. What did the hon. the Minister go to Ladysmith for if it had not anything to do with it? He arrived in Ladysmith and he did not see a single blessed Indian who was a member of that deputation who went to see him. Then Ladysmith was re-proclaimed. Now I want to ask the hon. the Minister, who asked for the re-proclamation of Ladysmith? I challenge him to tell this Committee who it was that asked for the re-proclamation of Ladysmith.

What have I to do with the re-proclamation of Ladysmith?

That is a good question. Why then did the hon. the Minister receive the deputation and why did he go to Ladysmith in the first place? Furthermore, this Indian deputation saw the then Deputy Minister of Planning. When they asked him about it, the then Deputy Minister of Planning, Mr. Froneman, turned round and said that he had to be careful about this. What was the attitude of the Ladysmith Town Council at that time? I will say to this hon. Minister that my information is that he gave this undertaking to this Indian deputation that he would do nothing about the re-proclamation until he arrived there. He went there and he did not see a single Indian. He saw the Mayor of Ladysmith. Now I ask him again, who asked for the re-proclamation of Ladysmith? I have a letter here signed on behalf of the Town Council of Ladysmith. The Town Council of Ladysmith took a resolution in 1966; the hon. the Minister visited Ladysmith in 1968, if my date is correct. In 1966 the Town Council of Ladysmith took a resolution that Ladysmith stayed the same. Therefore, I ask the hon. the Minister for the third time, who asked for the re-proclamation of Ladysmith. I challenge him to tell me, because if he does not tell me I have every right to tell every soul in South Africa that Ladysmith was re-proclaimed and that there was something wrong with the reproclamation. The Ladysmith Town Council did not ask for it. The people of Ladysmith did not ask for it. Therefore, I am entitled to ask for the fourth time, who asked for that re-proclamation?

Frankly, I do not know.

That is very interesting. In answer to a question asked two or three weeks ago in this House, the hon. the Minister of Planning said that two Ministers have been involved in this investigation at Ladysmith and that a full investigation was conducted. But the hon. the Minister of Community Development does not know who asked for the re-proclamation of Ladysmith. I will tell the hon. the Minister who did. Private people approached the Minister and the then Minister of Planning about the re-proclamation of Ladysmith.

The only people that I saw from Ladysmith were Indians.

Did the hon. the Minister see them in Ladysmith?

I saw them in my house.

Did you promise to see them in Ladysmith?

Yes.

And you did not.

For that I did not have the time up to now.

Did you tell them that Ladysmith would not be re-proclaimed?

How could I say that if it has nothing to do with my Department?

Why did you say it then?

I did not say it.

The hon. member must make a speech and not cross-examine the Minister. The Minister will get his opportunity to reply to the hon. member.

I should like to repeat what I said earlier. The hon. the Prime Minister appoints a special commission to go into a question which we discussed ad lib in this House for the last couple of days. I have asked for a commission to investigate the operations of the Department of Community Development. I have been asking this for five years. It affects over a million people and I cannot get it out of the hon. the Minister. I repeat what I said in the past, namely that the reason why I cannot get it is because he is ashamed of some of the truth that will come out.

Mr. Chairman, I do not want to deal with this hon. member now. I just want to tell him that I have never been asked by anybody from Ladysmith to see me about the deproclamation of certain areas, for the very simple reason that it does not fall under my Department. It falls under the Department of the Minister of Planning. I do not interfere in the Departments of other Ministers. They came to see me about housing in Ladysmith.

What housing?

The housing of Indians. That is what they came to see me about. I promised to see them and I will see them as soon as I possibly can. Nobody can tell me that I am unfriendly towards the Indians of Natal. I see them as often as I can. This hon. member is talking utter nonsense. The hon. member asked me who asked for the deproclamation. I have not the faintest idea. It does not fall under my Department. He may just as well ask me who asked for mining rights there or something of that kind. It has nothing to do with me. I will tell you what is happening here.

The inquiry will show all that.

All right, let us have that inquiry. This is the member who made the most terrible accusations against my Department. He asked for a commission of inquiry and insinuated that there is a lot of corruption going on in my Department.

Read my Hansard.

There is a lot of corruption not only in my Department, but also among members of the National Party, such as Mr. Con Botha, who had dealings with my Department. I then challenged the hon. member to bring his entire indictment and to support it by sworn statements. I told him if he did that I will recommend to the Cabinet the appointment of a commission of inquiry. What happened the next day? The next day the hon. member advertised right throughout South Africa, in the Argus and in other newspapers, asking for evidence to show that there is corruption in the Department. Here I have an article which appeared in the Argus wherein he invites people to give him examples of cases of eviction without people having been offered alternative accommodation and without fair prices for their properties being paid. He asked for examples of forced ejections, excessive profits on sales of properties and the planning of houses below the standards of the community, depredated values, etc. He is the man who asked for a commission of inquiry. On what basis? I say that the hon. member had no reason whatsoever. His accusations about corruption in my Department is without any foundation whatsoever. I accuse the hon. member of having told three untruths in this House. Mr. Chairman, I want to abide by your rulings. May I use the word “untruths”?

The hon. Minister may proceed.

He told three untruths in this House. The one was that I evicted 607 Indians from their premises in Durban. Does the hon. member deny that?

You do not even know the figure.

I know the figure. You said that I evicted 607 Indians in Durban.

Read my Hansard.

I will read your Hansard. And what is more, he said that Mr. Con Botha, the then secretary of the National Party, bought land from the Community Development Board and he then insinuated that he bought the land on tender, but that it was not the highest tender.

Those are your words.

He said he bought land under tender, but he did not say that Mr. Botha was the highest tenderer, and then he went further and said Mr. Con Botha bought that land in the name of his wife, which was a complete untruth. And then he went even further and said that the surveyor who surveyed that ground then bought another piece of property from the Community Development Board, which is also completely untrue. He did not buy one square inch.

What else did I say?

Is not that enough? Are not three lies enough? [Interjection.] Oh yes, and then he said that Mr. Barnard, who was my regional representative, had bought land there under circumstances which he said were very secretive and suspicious. But what happened there? The Community Development Board sold that land to Mr. Barnard and Mr. Barnard did nothing wrong. He bought that land when he applied for that land to the Community Development Board. If anything was done wrong, it was not by Mr. Barnard but by the Community Development Board, but they say he bought it for the best price they could get. The hon. member has this campaign against Mr. Barnard in Durban and Mr. Barnard did nothing wrong. He applied for that land, as any other person could apply, and it was sold to him. If any mistake was made—and this I will admit—it was made by the Community Development Board, which is a statutory body to whom I can give no instructions. But after that I went to the Community Development Board and I said: I do not like this; I cannot give you instructions because you are an autonomous body, but I now request you in future not to sell one single square inch of land without advertising it. And I told them that if they do it again they must not expect any protection from me in this House. But that hon. member went on month in and month out and made poor Mr. Barnard’s life a misery, he being a hardworking and honest official. I say that is not only unreasonable, but I now challenge him to come with his accusations against my Department. Bring your statements. When are you going to do it? I warned him, Sir, that it is now three or four weeks ago that he must come under my Vote.

It is two weeks ago.

For two weeks you didn’t bring the evidence. [Interjection.] Now you have appointed a commission to get evidence. You have no evidence. You are a scandalmonger of the first water. That is what you are.

On a point of order, Sir, is the hon. the Minister entitled to call an hon. member a scandalmonger?

Order! I think the hon. the Minister must withdraw the word “scandalmonger”.

Well, Sir, it has been used before, but in respect to you I will withdraw it. Hon. members can come to their own conclusions. This is the man who wanted to bring individuals into disrepute, who wanted to ruin their characters, who wanted to ruin their jobs, who wanted them out of work and who says I must appoint a commission because he has all the evidence. But here a fortnight has passed and he has not got a single tittle of evidence; he has no evidence whatsoever. Let him tell us here what the evidence is.

You have the time; I do not.

Tell us here what the evidence is. Give it to me in writing or do something about it. And I will tell the hon. member another thing and I want this House to listen very, very carefully now. The hon. member has threatened me with a libel action.

Who?

The hon. member threatened me with a libel action. I now tell this House that on January 29th Parliament will come together again and I challenge him to bring that libel action before that time.

I have more than one.

I do not care whether you have 20. You will not have the courage to come with a single one and I am telling you that now to your face. Sir, I am telling you this, that I will take no more notice of that hon. member. I will not reply to anything he says and I will not reply to a single letter that he ever writes to me again. If he came here to-night with his sworn statements, I would have gone into them very thoroughly, but it is quite clear that his accusations of corruption in my Department, of corruption on the part of my senior officials, of corruption on the part of Mr. Con Botha and on the part of the land surveyor, that he bought land in his wife’s name when he never did so, are unfounded, and I will no longer take any notice of him at any time.

When we meet in this House, every hon. member at least tries to behave with dignity.

Except the Minister.

The hon. member for Port Natal is probably the most vituperative and vicious person I have met in my life. Since the hon. member came to this House in 1966, all he has been doing is to try to sow suspicion, be insulting and be thoroughly objectionable. These are things I think he should try to get under control. I think he can do a great deal to make this hon. House a more dignified place than it was to-night. When I analyse a matter or judge a person’s actions, I always ask myself: In what spirit does a person say or do something? I am afraid that when I have to say something about the spirit displayed by the hon. member for Port Natal, there are not many good words I can say for him.

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

I am coming back to the Vote. I must congratulate the Department of Community Development on the work they have done. Last year we undertook a tour with certain heads of Departments to see what the Department had accomplished since 1962, and I can tell you, Sir, that we were amazed at the enormous amount of work that had been done by the Department despite staff shortages, and a severe staff shortage in the technical division owing to a general shortage of technical staff throughout the country. Let us take the building division for example. There are 19 posts for engineers; 19 for architects; 16 for quantity surveyors; 12 for town planners; two for land surveyors —a total of 68. Of these posts the following number have been filled: Engineers, 5; architects, 6; quantity surveyors, 4; town planners, 2; land surveyors, 1—a total of 18. Of a total of 68 posts therefore only 18 have been filled and this figure was the highest for the past four years. Until recently the total number of posts filled has never exceeded 13. In view of this I say that one can only take cognisance of the work these officials are doing with a sense of appreciation. In passing I just want to mention that provision for housing for a quarter of a million Coloureds during the next three years is being envisaged, and I also want to mention that more than two-thirds of the Indians in Natal have already been resettled. What an achievement!

Apart from having to provide housing and deal with rent control and resettlement, one of the major tasks of the Department of Community Development is to undertake urban renewal. Consequently one finds major renewal projects throughout the country in major urban complexes such as the Witwatersrand, Pretoria, Durban, Port Elizabeth and so forth. From time to time the Minister is compelled to intervene in terms of the powers entrusted to him under the Community Development Act of 1966 and to declare certain urban areas to be urban renewal areas.

Recently there was quite a controversy in regard to a certain area in Pretoria. This area is situated within the constituency of my colleague, the hon. member for Pretoria (Central). This is the area between Schubart Street, Bloed Street, the Steenovenspruit and Visagie Street. Reports were submitted and we found that in that area very serious physical decay and the accompanying social deterioration had set in. If one has to describe this deterioration, one can only say that it is, in fact, shocking. As a citizen of Pretoria, I want to tell the Minister on behalf of the citizens of Pretoria that we will still praise the Minister for having declared this area to be a removal area; we would definitely have reproached him if he had not declared this area to be a renewal area. Underhand methods were, inter alia, being applied on a large scale, and people were being forced to vacate the old houses which were hastily patched up so that they could be used for business purposes, and things like that. This area can now be planned in a practical way and be redeveloped into an area of which all of us could be proud. In this way one project, inter alia, of R8 million is going to be erected in this area.

I want to deal with an area in my constituency, Lady Selborne, the old area where non-Whites have been resettled. We are grateful for the fact that, with a few exceptions, all the non-Whites in this area have been resettled elsewhere. Malicious rumours are now being spread by political opportunists to the effect that this area of 328 morgen in extent is going to be used for industrial development. I want to deny these remours here. I want to say that this area, which is 325 morgen in extent, together with an adjoining area of 60 morgen, is now being planned by the City Council acting as the delegates of the Department of Community Development on instructions issued by the Minister. Furthermore, the Minister provided that the development would be subject to his approval as regards the reservation of plots and the prices that may be charged for those reserved plots. It is with gratitude that we take cognisance of this. The City Council, acting as the delegate of the Department, is carrying out its task by means of loans the Department obtains from the Community Development Board. A total amount of R9 million has already been earmarked for the development of the residential area in Lady Selborne.

Sir. another thing we feel grateful for is the fact that, as the City Council is planning this area as the delegate of the Community Development Board, the Minister will be in charge of the over-all planning of that area. If the City Council therefore wants to establish industries in that area, it will be subject to the approval of the Minister. I am glad to see that for the present no provision has been made for sub-economic housing groups and I shall tell you why. I say this because the Hercules area already has a heavy quota of sub-economic groups. [Time expired.]

The hon. member for Hercules began his speech by referring to the dignity of this Committee. He said that certain words had been used which allegedly detracted from the dignity of the Committee. Sir, I do not want to take this matter any further, but I just want to ask the hon. member where he was this afternoon when the hon. the Minister of Community Development participated in this debate and also when he participated in the debate on the previous Vote. Where was he then? He talks of certain words that have been used!

On a point of order. Sir, is that not a reflection on the Chair?

No, the hon. member may proceed.

Sir, the hon. the Minister made me a very kind offer, a promise, on 19th August. Unfortunately the hon. the Minister will leave for Pretoria in about a fortnight’s time.

No, I am going to stay here until the next session.

I am glad to hear that. I wanted to ask the hon. the Minister to inform his Department of his kind promise when he leaves, but since the hon. the Minister is going to stay here, I am going to leave the matter at that.

I spoke about the six people.

I am coming to that. The hon. the Minister “lost his cool”, to use an American expression. He should not get so annoyed.

I have never had “cool”.

Sir, my grandmother used to say that a person who loses his temper has already lost the argument. I want to read the hon. the Minister an extract from an article dealing with a particular appeal from the heart of the people, an appeal for more houses for the lower income groups, for all races, and for more reasonably priced houses for young couples in the cities. That is what the article deals with and it reads as follows (translation)—

The article was written on 4th July of this year; this is, as it were, an appeal from the heart of the people that we should build, that we should build more houses. Would the hon. the Minister say that this article is a blatant untruth?

Did Dawie write the article?

No, wait a minute.

I agree with him wholeheartedly.

We must build more houses …

We must build and demolish as much as we possibly can.

Sir, this was the very point I made on 19th August. For the hon. the Minister to come to this House and to tell us that there is no housing shortage—and I say this with all due respect—so much “eye-wash”.

I did not say that.

I should like to say to the hon. the Minister this evening that the more he tells me that I am wrong and the more he abuses me …

I have not abused you.

Give me a chance. The more the hon. the Minister says that there is no housing shortage, the more the people will believe me and think that the hon. the Minister is misleading them. Sir, the people believe that there is a shortage, and this is what Die Burger wrote. I stand by it. But I have another article here, which reads as follows (translation)—

This statement is then commented upon as follows—

And the following is really the key to the whole issue—

Sir, this was written by a gentleman by the name of Louis Louw. This is what he thinks of the record number of houses that are being built by the hon. the Minister. What the hon. the Minister should appreciate is this—and this was the case I made out the other day: Whatever figures he may quote and whatever his surveys may show at this stage, I say to the hon. the Minister that there is a shortage, an acute shortage, of housing, not only for the Whites, but even more so among the non-Whites. When Die Burger writes that the conditions as regards the Coloureds of South Africa are the same as those prevailing in the time of Kari Marx, then I say to the Minister that he really should not tell us that there is no serious housing shortage.

What did the United Party do in their time?

That is not true. I beg your pardon, Sir, I withdraw that. Incidentally, I have never said that the shortage in my constituency runs into thousands. I was discussing the position in South Africa, and after I had repeatedly been asked by the Minister, I told him that there was a shortage in my constituency as well. The hon. the Minister thereupon said: “Bring me those cases; bring me those cases”. I then told him I would do so. Sir, I do not want to repeat private conversations here either. I shall submit to the hon. the Minister the particulars in regard to the first six cases. I want to tell him that there is really nothing for me to hide. I did not tout one single person. As a matter of fact, the six names I submitted were already on my records the day I spoke here. I shall tell the hon. the Minister what happened in regard to the lady to whom he referred here. I happened to know what was going on. The lady asked me what had happened. I do not want the hon. the Minister to regard this as a reflection on the officials, I get on well with the Department. The lady told me that two gentlemen came to see her on a certain day. The two gentlemen told her: “We believe you are looking for a house”. She then told me: “Mr. Hickman, I did not know who they were; I thought they were two Nationalist Party organizers. I then asked them, ‘But who told you I was looking for a house?’” Sir, I am giving you the conversation as it was reported to me by the lady. Then they said to her: “No, but you went to see Mr. Hickman”. She then replied: “I did not go to see Mr. Hickman; he happened to come to see me one day”. I do not go touting. [Interjection.] The hon. the Minister should just listen for a moment. With reference to the first case, the lady then told me: “Please, Mr. Hickman, my house is so damp that even my shoes in the bedroom are becoming mouldy”. I promised her to do my best, and now the hon. the Minister tells me to-night that I tout. Sir, I shall continue to keep him to his promise. Whether he tells me I am touting or not makes no difference, but I know that the more he abuses me the more the people will come with their complaints and the more difficult it will be for him to provide them with houses. Because, Sir, what is happening now? The hon. the Minister knows that there is a waiting list for every housing scheme in the Peninsula. Is that correct? Is there a waiting list?

On whose list?

For all housing schemes.

Not one of the six names you submitted to me appears on any waiting list.

Sir, this has nothing to do with the matter. There is a waiting list.

Yes, there is a waiting list.

If I furnish the hon. the Minister with a person’s name, how does he get him a house? By giving him priority and making other people wait longer. I want the hon. the Minister to understand my side of the matter too. I cannot bear to see other people wait while the Minister tries to help me because I have submitted an application to him. Sir, the Minister cannot get away with this. I promise him now that I shall submit more than six cases to him. I already have more than six cases, and I shall tell the hon. the Minister why I have not submitted the other cases. Here I have to refer to a private conversation. The hon. the Minister warned me, I think ten days ago. in a bellowing dramatic voice that he was going to skin me.

You are exaggerating.

Oh no. He used words one is not allowed to use in this House when he said how he was going to skin me. I then thought: Why would the Minister want to do that? I considered the matter and decided to play my cards somewhat differently. But I also want to make a promise to the hon. the Minister to-night. He need not think that there are only six people in my constituency who do not have houses and he need not think that I have stopped submitting cases of this nature to him either. I also want to add that I am no going to tout for houses. I shall take responsibility for every case I submit to the Minister and I shall only submit cases to him where I believe the people require houses. [Time expired.]

If ever there was a member whose stories fall flat in this House, it is the hon. member for Maitland. I doubt whether any member has ever before had the privilege in this House of Assembly which he has had, because what has happened? The Minister told him: Bring people to me who have housing problems. Then what did the hon. member do? He had it published in the newspaper …

Where?

He had it published in a newspaper which boasts of having 1 million readers, i.e. the Sunday Times. He had it published that everyone could now approach the Minister if they had housing problems—and then only six of them came! I want to tell him that I envy him his position. When those six cases were investigated, it became evident in each case that their complaints were all unfounded.

That is untrue.

This to me is further proof that that hon. member does not know what is going on in his own constituency. But we now see what is behind the whole thing. During the past two days we have discovered that they have a professional fabricator of gossip stories and now there are a few of them who want to imitate him and take a hand in those gossip stories. We listened to the hon. member for Port Natal here, and what a pathetic figure he was to observe here this evening! I am sorry that the hon. member is not present and you, Sir, must pardon me for telling this anecdote here: He reminds me of a young net lamb we had that used to look all over for something to get to grips with; he tried to pump all over but the teats were either hanging too high for him to reach, or too thick: he could not get anything out anywhere. Sir. one does mind if hon. members onposite bring concrete cases to the attention of the Minister. Let them tell the Minister here, “Please note that we have a housing shortage there”, or “There we have problems”; but hon. members on the opposite side fumbled about this evening without bringing any proof whatsoever.

I should like to bring a few small matters to the attention of the hon. the Minister. In the first place I should like to make a plea here in respect of the various income groups for economic housing. I know sub-economic housing for the lower income groups has been under discussion here this evening. I realize a line has to be drawn somewhere. At present the position is that a person with three or more children and with an income not exceeding R300 per month, qualifies for economic housing. I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether it is not possible for us to relax this to some extent in cases where there are five, six or more children in a family. If a man has a family of six or more children and he has an income of R310 a month, he no longer qualifies for economic housing. I should like to suggest to the hon. the Minister that we keep that limit of R300 for three children, but let us make a concession of, for example, R10 per month for each child over that number of three.

Then there is another question and that is the question of land. I have seen the report of the commission which investigated the question of high land prices, but what worries me is that the local authorities that have to make provision for subeconomic and economic housing are experiencing land problems themselves. Let us take Boksburg as an example. The Boksburg Municipal Area is a large one, one of the largest in the Republic, but there is no longer any land available which the town council can use for economic and subeconomic housing schemes. This position obtains because large developers of townships have bought up all the land there. Now I should like to ask the hon. the Minister whether we cannot force those large developers of townships, and I am referring to those developers who establish large townships, to make a certain percentage of those cites available to those town councils at cost price for subeconomic and economic housing schemes. I think this is no more than right. The position which obtains there, for example, is that a large mining company owns the land there. They have already extracted all the gold from below the surface, and is it right now that they should also draw off the gold remaining above the surface?

In what position does one find oneself with regard to the Rents Act? At the moment the Act provides that if a person acquires a property by buying it, only the registered owner may give a tenant notice to vacate that property if the owner wants to occupy that property himself. Now we are faced with the problem that most of the transactions concluded to-day are concluded on the hire purchase system, in other words, a person pays a deposit of, for example, R500 on the property and undertakes to take transfer in three to five years’ time. If we now consider this strictly in terms of the law, we find that that person may give the tenant notice and move into the house himself only in three or five years’ time when he has taken transfer and when he is the registered owner of the land. Otherwise, if the man has the necessary deposit, which usually is 20 per cent of the purchase price, and borrows the remaining 80 per cent from a building society, for example, it takes a few months before he can obtain that loan. It takes a further few months before those properties can be registered in has name. Only then may he give the tenant three calendar months’ notice. The worst is, however, when a man buys a property for cash. On account of the large amount of work which the Deeds Office has at the moment, it sometimes takes a few months before transfer can be affected. Now it may sometimes happen that a man can obtain transfer only after two or three months and then, in addition, he still has to give three months’ notice. Now it may happen that it can take him from five to six months before he can take possession and move into the house, and that where he has paid cash for the house. Now I should like to suggest to the hon. the Minister that we should not take the view in this regard that a person should be the registered owner before he may give notice, but that when a person has produced proof that he has paid transfer duty that will be adequate proof that he is the owner of that property and that he may then give the occupants of the house three months’ notice to vacate the house so that he himself may occupy it. Transfer duties are paid, even if a property has been bought on hire purchase. I am speaking under correction, but I think transfer duties have to be paid within six months subsequent to which interest is levied. I do not believe there would be any illegality in a matter like this. A person will not pay transfer duties in order to obtain a false deed of sale so as to enable him to rent a property. I want to suggest this to the hon. the Minister as this creates many problems for us. This especially Creates problems in cases where so many people buy properties on hire purchase and cannot readily occupy the property themselves after three months, as required by the Act.

Should he then for the rest simply be regarded as the owner?

What I want is that we may regard him as the legal owner and not the registered owner, as soon as he has produced proof that he has paid the transfer duties.

The time for this debate has almost expired. The hon. the Minister spent an hour during his first bout in this debate, and then spent another quarter of an hour. I would dearly like to have that much time to reply to the case which he put forward. Unfortunately, I have only 10 minutes. In that limited time I want to bring this debate back to a more constructive basis. I believe that, at this stage, particularly since it is the start of this decade of the 70s, it is important to face the facts relating to housing and the building industry as they are to-day. I do not have the time to argue with the hon. the Minister as to whether there is a housing shortage and whether it is serious, or represents a crisis or any such ramifications. If I had longer, I would argue with him over it. For the purposes of my address to this House this evening, I merely make the statement that there is to-day a huge unsatisfied demand for homes amongst all the race groups in South Africa, in other words, amongst the Whites, Coloureds, Indians and Bantu. Having regard to the fact that there is already this existing backlog, and coupling this with the admitted fact that in the next 30 years we in South Africa will have to build an equivalent number of housing units as have been built throughout the last 300 years, I believe that very serious consideration must be given to the position of housing in this country and to those industries responsible for creating those homes, namely the building industry and the industries responsible for manufacturing the materials required by the building industry. One must have regard to one important fact above all others and that is that over the years building costs have been steadily going up. I believe that inevitably they must continue to rise over the years. One can control to some extent the increase, but one cannot prevent altogether the steady increase throughout the years in building costs through rises in wages, rising costs of materials and so on. This is important because it is increasingly making it more difficult and in fact impossible for a greater number of people to own even quite modest homes. I am now referring to those people who fall outside the subeconomic and economic group of housing. The numbers of people above those two groups who are finding it increasingly difficult to afford housing, is increasing.

With regard to those factors which I have stated, I believe that the first matter which arises is that we in this country must give very careful thought to finding new methods to finance building and the provision of homes. The present methods of financing are proving inadequate, having regard to present-day conditions. We on this side of the House have suggested, first of all, new methods which have relation to tax concessions for home owners. We have suggested various forms of tax concessions which could help the person who wants to build and own his own home. I do not want to repeat those. That is one side of it, namely tax concessions for home owners and builders.

I believe the other side is that we must provide new methods of financing to that group of financial institutions, namely the building societies, who are traditionally responsible for the provision of finance to those persons who want to build homes. New methods have recently been introduced. They have not proved adequate. The building societies are still finding a large backlog of applications which they cannot satisfy. Therefore either new methods or improvements in the existing methods must be found. One of the Departments of Housing which is lagging behind and lagging badly, is the provision of flat complexes. I want to make it clear that I am not in the least at variance with the hon. member for Green Point. I hope this charge will not be laid against us. What the hon. member for Green Point was suggesting is that where possible, more housing should be provided for young couples in preference to flats. Obviously, housing units by way of flat complexes are necessary under present-day conditions and must be developed if we are to provide the housing which will be required in the future. This sphere of building is lagging behind for various reasons which I do not have the time to discuss. I am suggesting this evening that this is one sphere which the hon. the Minister must give very careful consideration. I believe that one way in which this could be encouraged is to provide low-cost finance to those persons who are prepared to develop flat complexes.

We supply that low-cost finance for flats to local authorities.

Yes, I accept that. This is being done. However, it is not proving adequate. The details could be worked out. I am now dealing with the principle. But I believe that some form of lowcost loans should also be provided for private developers to encourage them to construct flat complexes. I believe that if that were to be done, the private sector would respond to this form of encouragement and would build more flat complexes which are vitally required at this stage. There may be other ways in which this can be encouraged. But, Mr. Chairman, my point is that the position is becoming serious and requires new methods of financing.

Serious thought must also be given, as I have suggested, to the industries responsible for creating housing, the builders and the manufacturers of materials. The latest report of the Stellenbosch Bureau of Statistics suggests that there is going to be a falling-off in the building industry in the near future. This I consider to be a serious situation at a time when we are not even meeting the backlog in regard to housing. Attention must be given to this matter. There are various reasons which can be suggested as to why this is taking place. One of the most serious is the labour shortage in the building industry. The hon. the Minister has himself referred to the fact that the building industry is to-day facing a crisis. I hone that when he replies to this debate he will say in what way he and his Government view the matter and tell us what suggestions they have to improve the position in the building industry. The labour position is not the only problem. For example, the brick-making industry is not meeting the demand; one of the reasons being that under price control the industry has not been able to expand sufficiently to meet the demands made upon it. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Port Natal wants the Minister to appoint a commission because there is corruption in the Minister’s Department.

I never used that word.

If the hon. member for Port Natal is serious about his allegations and is not doing this for political purposes only, I take it that he would already at this stage have made use of the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act (Act No. 6 of 1958). Section 2 of that Act reads, inter alia, as follows:

1. (a) being an agent, corruptly accepts from any person … any gift or consideration as an inducement or reward for doing or omitting to do … any act in relation to his principal’s affairs or business, or for showing or refraining from showing favour or disfavour to any person in relation to his principal’s affairs or business; or
2. (b) corruptly gives … any gift or consideration to any agent as an inducement or reward for doing … any act in relation to his principal’s affairs or business …

Sir, if the hon. member had been serious in his allegations, which, as I learnt, cover a period of four years, he would most certainly already have laid a charge with the Police. The fact that he has not done so, brings me to the conclusion that he is not serious in his allegations, and that they are merely oheap politicizing.

I should like to say a few words in connection with a few matters in my constituency. The frozen area of Pretoria falls in the constituency of Pretoria (Central). Unfortunately the situation has arisen there that the cooperation between the Department of Community Development and the city fathers of Pretoria is not good, because the city fathers of Pretoria decided that they did not want to co-operate with the State committee which he Department had appointed. I think that in expressing my disappointment at the fact that we are faced with this deadlock in Pretoria, I am speaking on behalf of everyone in Pretoria. I want to say to the city fathers of Pretoria that they should accept that the State committee is an accomplished fact and that the best course of action on their part to obtain proper co-operation in the interests of Pretoria would be to co-operate with the State, committee and with the Department of Community Development. I sincerely hope that there will be better co-operation on their part in the future.

The Department of Community Development is at present planning the central city area there. I want to tell the hon. the Minister that in our central city areas we in South Africa are lagging very far behind in comparison with certain European cities, in that we have too few parks. I want to ask the hon. the Minister, when it comes to the planning of that area, to see to it that there will be more parks, even if it costs a great deal of money. I also want to point out that an absolute blunder! was committed in the development of Pretoria, in the sense that one of the most beautiful parks in Pretoria, the Princess Park, became inaccessible to the public of Pretoria because—goodness knows why—business development was allowed around that park. This simply should not be the position. Flats ought to be developed around this park so that people can make use of the park. At the moment Princess Park, beautiful as it is, is largely a white elephant.

Another matter which I should like to raise is that the Minister will know that expropriation is at present taking place in the frozen area of Pretoria (Central). I need not tell the Minister that expropriation always goes hand in hand with a feeling of sad parting among the people whose properties are expropriated. I should like to ask the Minister to go slow with that expropriation, and as far as it is in: any way possible, to conduct negotiations with the land-owners in that area before proceeding to the actual expropriation.

We are certainly doing that.

I am aware that it is being done. I want to ask that it should perhaps be done to a greater extent. The Minister knows that we have very poor conditions including social conditions, in that area. I also want to point out, however, that not all the people in that area are living in slum conditions. There are people who have been living in small houses there for a period of many years. They managed to pay off these small houses, and it is with great difficulty that they now have to take leave of their properties.

Sir, there is another matter which I very seriously want to bring to the attention of the Minister. It is in connection with the area of the Asian Bazaar. That area is situated east of Von Wielligh Street. Coloureds, Indians as well as a few Bantu live in that area on a mixed basis. I want to ask the hon. the Minister to clear up that area as soon as possible. I also want to state as a fact that the living conditions there are not good. I am aware of the fact that Department of Community Development is doing everything in its power, but I think that the living conditions have deteriorated to such an extent in recent times that it has now become a matter which ought to receive priority from the Minister’s Department. The voters of Pretoria (Central) in whose area this Asian Bazaar falls, will be particularly grateful if this matter receives attention as soon as possible. I specifically want to make an appeal to the Minister to see to it that no more non-Whites reside within the borders of Pretoria (Central). In other words, the persons living there at present, i.e. the Coloureds, the Indians and the Bantu, must be removed so that everyone will live in his own area and so that the races will no longer live together on a mixed basis in Pretoria (Central). We are convinced that these matters which I have raised will receive the sympathetic attention of the Minister, just as all the other matters relating to this constituency and which are in the interests of the population in general, are already receiving his attention. We thank the Minister for that.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 23.

House Resumed:

Progress reported.