Mr. Chairman, I ask for the privilege of the half hour I, too, on behalf of this side of the House should like to extend my good wishes to the hon. the Minister in his new position. It is always a matter of great interest and of deep gratification to us to find hon. members who move from this side to that side of the House being taken up in the Cabinet so soon afterwards. That fact speaks volumes of the calibre of members we have on this side of the House. May I say that it will not escape the notice of the public that their own interests would be so much better served if all the members of the Cabinet could be drawn from this side of the House. But after having welcomed the hon. the Minister to this portfolio I want to say that it is a matter for regret that it is an established Government practice to appoint the most junior Minister to this important portfolio of Planning. We understand it is Government practice and we must, therefore, assume that it is also Government policy; the one derives from the other. Seeing that the Prime Minister is present here he could perhaps indicate to us whether in fact it is the Government’s policy and practice to appoint the most junior member to the Cabinet in charge of this important portfolio. The Minister of Mines said this was the case when he said that the Department of Planning had never been administered by anyone but the most junior member to the Cabinet. We can only express our regret that that is so. We would deal with the matter quite differently.

In any event, the present hon. Minister has not got off to a very auspicious start. It was left to him to explode another bomb, a bomb which, like so many others we had during the Session, also turned out to be a damp squib and failed to explode. On Friday he came here with a great show of flag waving and announced certain census figures which, so he told us, illustrated that separate freedoms actually worked. But, Sir, we see it totally differently. We see those figures as a mask for absolute failure, for dismal failure on the part of the Government, failure to give effect to its stated plans. I think the Minister announced those figures on Friday in an attempt to give heart to his flagging supporters. But in that object he had also failed. Quite obviously we cannot discuss this issue at this stage in any sort of detail because all the essential features, notably the economic facts—such as where these people work and from where they derive their livelihood—are quite fortuitously not available at the present time. However, the Minister sought to derive a lot of mileage out of the figures he gave us and therefore it is appropriate that we on this side of the House should make some reference to them.

When you deal with statistics you can prove practically anything. I am reminded here of a writer of children’s books in Scandinavia many years ago. He attempted to prove that babies were being brought by storks. He made a statistical analysis of the situation and, sure enough, he found a positive correlation to exist, a direct statistical relationship, between the number of babies born in Scandinavia and the number of storks in the area. Quite clearly there is no relationship between the two. The only common factor would be climatic conditions which happen to influence the behaviour of both of these groups. Here the Government is in exactly the same position, in our opinion. It is trying to prove that babies are brought in by storks. No wonder then that even its own Press was very lukewarm on this point. I was interested over the week-end to notice that Die Beeld had certain things to say, and I might just mention that Die Beeld from time to time shows a greater degree of insight than some of its stable-mates. Die Beeld could obviously muster no enthusiasm whatsoever. Indeed, its headline read “Kenners wil meer weet”. And that is the crux of the whole matter. It is only the uniniated who could be taken in by this form of statistical chicanery. Even Prof. Sadie, probably the foremost demographer in our country, has gone on record this morning as saying that these figures do not prove anything. To begin with, we all believe there was massive under-enumeration of Bantu in the 1960 Census, but until the Minister can tell us where these people permanently live and where they obtain their livelihood from, these facts are meaningless and make no interpretation that is at all worth while possible.

Even so, what are the facts and the figures the hon. the Minister has put before us? As far as the Whites in this country are concerned, we all understood that in 1960 the ratio of White to non-White was one to four. In this census which has just been completed this has now disadvantageously moved, as far as the Whites are concerned, to a ratio of less than one in five, and all projections indicate that by the turn of the century it will be about one in eight. But secondly the hon. the Minister tells us that in the so-called white areas of South Africa the proportion of Whites percentagewise has increased from 25.8 per cent to 26.2 per cent. This is an increase of .4 per cent over a period of 10 years, and this is notwithstanding a massive immigration programme. What does this mean? It means that if all factors have held static—and this of course is not the case, because the increase is bigger among the non-Whites—it will take 500 years before there will be parity between the Whites and the non-Whites in the so-called white South Africa. Thirdly, the Whites are no longer the biggest community: they are no longer the most numerous nation in South Africa. They are now exceeded by the Zulus and by the Xhosas. No wonder that Dagbreek over the week-end, in reviewing this, said somewhat laconically—

This is another myth that has been exploded. But in the fourth instance, what these statistics indicate is that the Coloureds and the Asians now number about half of the total white population and we know that by virtue of their rate of increase, by the turn of this century they will exceed the white figures. The Minister hails these figures as a triumph for separate development. Now we ask, and quite legitimately so, where is the separate freedom for the Coloureds and for the Asians? We must leave it now to the hon. the Prime Minister, who said earlier that we should leave this problem for our children to solve. In the fifth instance, what these statistics show quite clearly is that there are still 8 million Bantu living in so-called white South Africa, and over the last 10 years the Bantu have increased by 1.2 million, and the Whites by .7 million. But it will not remain at this. We know that the natural increase of the Bantu was 36 per cent over this period, and for the Whites it was only 22 per cent, so that the disparity which is already there is going to be greatly magnified as we continue. But we come to the sixth point, which is probably the most important one. We want some confirmation from the hon. the Minister that the boundaries which were used in this census coincide exactly with those that were used in 1960. Can he confirm that every single area which was included in this survey as a Bantu homeland or reserve was in fact also so included in 1960?

We do not get that from him. The Minister told us that they were enumerated as being in the Bantu areas. Does that mean that they live there de jacto or is it again one of these de jure stratagems that we have had so often before? But, Sir, far more important than this, what are these boundaries that were used as Bantu areas? We cannot get the Government to indicate what they are for political purposes, but when it comes to census figures, then all of a sudden they are very clearly established. But the most important consideration is still this: If there are 6.9 million Bantu in the so-called reserves, where do they derive their livelihood from? Twenty years ago Tomlinson said that the Bantu reserves were hopelessly over-populated. Let us take the example of the Transkei. We are told that there are now 4 million people who speak Xhosa and who are therefore Transkeians, yet what are the economic resources of the Transkei? According to the Government’s own evidence, they have 40,000 jobs for Bantu in positions other than agriculture, but according to the Government’s own evidence too, more than half of those work for the Government and are in Government services. Does this mean then that only 20,000 workers out of a population of 4 million—and percentagewise this would be .5 per cent—is a base on which to establish a nation?

I think the hon. the Minister, instead of crowing about these statistics, should, like Mao Tse-tung and his followers, go into seclusion for a while to cogitate this important problem, and then I am quite sure that he will come to the conclusion that the Government is on the wrong track. But, Sir, if you can manipulate statistics in this way, then you might as well include Soweto as a Bantu reserve. Think of the impact on the South African statistical pattern. It will immediately make Johannesburg a border area. It might even salvage the reputation of the hon. the Minister of Community Development. What the Government has given us here is a form of optical illusion. They have tried to create a political mirage. They are trying to suggest to us that what we see with our very eyes is in fact not so; these Bantu are just not here. This is a massive piece of statistical deception, in order to perpetuate and reinforce a political hoax; that is all that we have here.

Sir, I am not going to be distracted by this because I believe that there are far more important issues at stake such as the sins of omission and commission of the Department of Planning, and it is to this that I would like to return. The Department of Planning has fundamentally three functions—scientific and economic and physical planning. Although I obviously cannot devote time to all of these, some brief reference to them, I think, is indicated. There can be no doubt that South Africa’s future as an industrial nation is completely tied up with the progress that we can make in the field of science and research. There is every indication that to-day we are not getting the scientific information that was previously made available to us. This means that South Africa will be forced to work towards a greater degree of scientific independence than has been the case before, and this to my mind signifies two things immediately: To begin with we must devote more money to science and research. We think that the Government is niggardly in this regard. If you look at the budget of the C.S.I.R., which is one of the biggest research institutes administered by this Minister and if you allow for the erosion in money value, you find that the additional grants that they have received permit expansion only in a very marginal sense. We on this side of the House would certainly devote far more money to scientific research.

But I think in the second instance there is also a need for greater co-ordination. At the moment efforts in this field are fragmentary. Let me indicate how it works: The scientific adviser is responsible to the Prime Minister; the C.S.I.R. is administered by and is under the control of the Minister of Planning; the Human Sciences Research Council is with the Ministry of Education; Atomich research, for some inexplicable reason, is with the Ministry of Mines. Then you have a whole host of research institutes like Onderstepoort, medical research and others, which report directly to their own ministry. A case could certainly be made out for a greater degree of co-ordination in standardizing the conditions of service of scientists, in making departmental transfers possible, in allowing and permitting the degree of scientific cross-fertilization which is essential. All this could only really be effectively done if there is a greater degree of coordination. But, Sir, more important than this, the amount of money which is now received by these research institutes depends largely upon the plausibility of the particular Minister concerned and on the extent to which he can persuade the Minister of Finance to allocate funds to a particular organization. We believe, in view of the importance of science and research, that scientific research should be better co-ordinated. Although clearly there must remain a functional relationship between many of these institutes and the departments they serve, we believe the best man to coordinate this is the Prime Minister himself. If he is not in a position to do so, then there should be created a separate Ministry of Science and Research. I am authorized to say that we, on this side of the House would work in this direction.

Secondly, I would like to come to economic research. This division has probably had a greater degree of success than any other. Its five-year forecasts of development, its economic development programme serve a very useful purpose. The development atlas which is compiled by this department serves as a guide both to Government and to industry to ensure that industries are sited in areas where they would be most profitable. But I want to voice a note of caution in this regard. This department is primarily responsible for long-term research, for macro economic development. If it comes to concern itself as it does from time to time, with short-term issues, then we believe this is in direct conflict with its own charter. We believe that probably one of the most important aspects in economic planning is that of manpower planning because this is our most precious economic resource. We would like to suggest that this department should devote more time and effort to the long-term planning on our human resources. We know a measure of it is done by certain institutes.

If we come to physical planning, the third leg, then the situation becomes more interesting because here we are dealing with a more contentious issue. The way in which the Physical Planning Act is being administered at the moment points to the fact that there is already extensive disruption of our economy. It is now in retrospect quite clear that this was an ill considered measure, precipitately introduced against the advice of people like the Economic Advisory Council, all in an attempt to prove that the myth of apartheid is in fact a workable plan. What the Government is doing and the way in which this Act is being administered at the moment, is that they are forcing industry to site itself in areas where it does not enjoy maximum locational advantages. This is beginning to add to the cost structure of industry. It is having a profound impact upon our export pattern. It might well be one of the reasons why we face this massive deficit on Foreign Trade Account. But it is increasingly becoming a massive burden on our whole economic system.

The Government has sought to justify its Draconian actions by saying that decentralization of industry is necessary. I think this bears further analysis. Decentralization as such obviously serves a purpose. But we must see it in perspective. South Africa already has probably as great a degree of industrial decentralization as is the case in other countries, which are at a comparable stage of development. Decentralization is often justified on different grounds. In South Africa it certainly would be true to say that there are important social and political reasons why we should have a measure of decentralization. In the past much has also been made of the fact that decentralization is necessary on strategic grounds. I think this is a situation that might change. Already there are many people who are prepared to indicate that with the advent of the guided missile you are in a better position to defend your industries if in fact there is a considerable degree of centralization. But, Sir, this whole decentralization issue will stand or will fall on economic grounds as was indicated a while back by no other than Dr. Rautenbach. Dr. Rautenbach in reviewing this matter said—

We must therefore look at the economic factors. If we can be sure that there is sub-optimal geographical distribution of industry and that this consistently favours the sitting of industries in metropolitan areas, then I think there is a case for Government intervention. We have no evidence for this, however, Dr. McCrystal who did a study in this regard recently found that only 10 per cent of the industries might be wrongly sited and that only one out of a sample of 76 was described by him as a large employer of labour. What we are getting here is decentralization not on economic grounds but in order to obtain certain racial ratios. What South Africa is heading for is a system of economic development on the triplicate form basis, industrialization on the permit system. Now the Government has sought to justify this by referring to a study which was done in Italy quite some time ago, where it was suggested that the cost of public services, the social fixed overheads, increased with each additional worker that is brought into a metropolitan area. Even this has hardly any relevance to the South African situation. To begin with it must be determined what the composition of this expenditure is and who pays for it, if it is the Central Government or the private individual. Studies done in Norway by Johansen and others indicate that the cost will rise, but they also show that the standard of administrative services increased dramatically. In any case, big cities serve as nuclei for areas around them. Johannesburg does not only serve its own population, but also a whole set of satellite cities. Nobody tells us about the invisible costs involved when industry is forced away from its essential services. If you have this kind of decentralization somebody somewhere will have to pay the price for it, and the price in this case will be found in a lower real national output. No wonder then that at this stage the Government appoints Prof. Reynders. Ten years after the Permanent Committee was established, an investigation is ordered which was obviously a prerequisite for arriving at a rational decision in the first instance. Nearly five years after the Physical Planning Act was introduced the Government now comes with the Rieckert Commission. Quite clearly this puts the cart before the horse, because if the system works so well why should we have a Rieckert Commission.

What is happening here and what the Physical Planning Act is doing to the South African economy is also quite clear. To begin with it is leading to excessive capitalization. Industry must spend more money in importing sophisticated equipment to take the place of the labour they cannot get. Our exports are beginning to suffer. Exports require long term planning and when investors are subjugated to administrative fiat how can one possibly do so. It is leading to wage increases. Because workers become scarce as a result of this policy non-Whites demand higher wages. Because Whites are kept in positions which could be profitably done by non-Whites they are also asking for wage increases. Consequently there is a wage escalation and this in turn is going to affect our propensity to save. This will in the long run have a dramatic impact on our growth rate. Already it is clear what is happening as far as our investment pattern is concerned. In 1968 investment in secondary industry declined by some 16 per cent. In 1969 it declined by 11 per cent. In the gross sense this is probably a decline of 50 per cent over two years. It is certainly true to say at the moment that this investment figure is at least 20 per cent lower than was forecast by our economic planners. We are setting our sights on a growth rate of 5½ per cent and this presupposes a growth rate in manufacturing of at least 8 per cent. We also know that once the investment has been made it takes at least two years before it is reflected in the growth rate. So here we have a situation where our economic growth rate has been deliberately retarded and it will have a profound impact on South Africa. To begin with it means less lucrative posts for the Whites. Secondly it raises the spectre of unemployment in regard to non-Whites. Thirdly it means lower company profits and fourthly it means higher personal taxation for all of us. But probably more important than any of these affects, it means that our South African economy is being weakened at a stage when we can least afford it. That is why there is considerable resentment against this legislation. Not at any time has a legislative instrument been subjected to such universal condemnation as is the case with regard to this legislation. Organized industry and organized commerce is against it. The Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut is probably more vociferous in its criticism than anybody else. Even the Afrikaans Press, to which Mr. Dirk Richards refers from time to time as the “slavish Press” talks about it. Dagbreek a while ago wrote:

It talked furthermore about these “ingrypende en onwortelende bepalings”. Volkshandel recently put it this way:

I want to say right away that we on this side of the House are not opposed to decentralization, nor to border area. This hon. Minister whenever he has time, goes to his own constituency. He is always very anxious to spread the story that we are against border areas and decentralization. This is not so, Sir. But we must see it as part of a bigger pattern. If an area is economically depressed and if he tells the people in Queenstown that that is an economically depressed area, every effort should be made to uplift it in the economic sense. But if that applies to Queenstown, it also applies to Oudtshoorn, Kimberley, Ermelo and a host of other areas.

Much has also been said about the manner of achieving decentralization. In this House we talked about the selective employment tax. I do not want to enter into the merits of this measure, except to say that it would at least have had the advantage of putting decisionmaking where it belongs namely with the businessman, rather than with the bureaucrat. My guess is that this matter went to the Cabinet; because quite obviously, the hon. the Prime Minister would not have pronounced on it. My feeling also is that this Minister of Planning should have have supported it, as well as the ministries of Finance and Economic Affairs. But my guess is that they were outvoted by the raoists in the Cabinet; because if a tax of this kind, is accepted then it is the deathblow of apartheid. It means then that one does not only accept non-Whites as a permanent feature of one’s economy, but more than this, one uses it as a source of revenue. I would like the hon. the Minister to deny that this matter in fact did go to the Cabinet and that it worked out in precisely the way I tried to sketch it to him.

But what we still want to know is after all this, what does the Government in fact achieve? This Act centres essentially around Africans who work in industry. Industry takes in only about 20 per cent of those who are economically active. What about primary industries? What about tertiary economic activity? But here we are concerned with services, and the Government does not attempt to cut back the labour allowed in these fields, because they know it will affect the man in the street and it will be registered through the ballot box. But what the Minister does not say to us in any case, is that even after all this has been done, we still find that 80 per cent of the people employed in secondary industry and the manufacturing industry in this country are non-white. Probably 90 per cent of those in mining are non-white and also in agriculture. So we do not know what he is trying to achieve. All that he has succeeded in doing, is to retard our growth rate. This is something that we will suffer for greatly.

We do not want to be too harsh with this hon. Minister, because he is new and has only just taken over. Certainly if he does not change the position, next year we will be much harsher with him. But we feel so strongly about Government neglect in this regard that, had there been a suitable Parliamentary device, we would have recommended and formally proposed not only a diminution in salary of the Minister himself, but of all his colleagues in the whole Cabinet.

Mr. Chairman, at the beginning of his speech the hon. member for Hillbrow scornfully pointed out that ex-members of the United Party who joined the National Party did not remain there for long before being appointed to the Cabinet. I think that it is specifically to their credit that such people come over to the National Party after their eyes have opened and they have seen what is taking place and has taken place to the eternal jeopardy of the continued existence of the Whites in South Africa. We are proud to see people of this calibre sitting in the National Party to-day and occupying such high positions. I want to congratulate the Minister on his appointment. We want to tell him that as far as the National Party is concerned we shall do everything in our power to support him in this very important portfolio that he has now gained. The hon. member also referred scornfully to a remark that was made by the hon. the Minister of Health. He said that the newest Cabinet appointment was always given the portfolio of Planning. Sir, this is merely a coincidence, but I nevertheless want to say that it in no way prejudices the fact that this portfolio has passed into the hands of an extremely competent and capable person. By these means the hon. member tried to place the Minister under suspicion, by referring scornfully to his competence and ability to hold this portfolio. This will not hold water in this House or outside. We know this Minister. He will fill this post with great distinction.

We also want to convey a word of thanks to the previous Minister of Planning. He held this portfolio with a great deal of competence during the years in which he was Minister of Planning. We know that with all the other responsibilities he carried, he had a big task on his hands in carrying this responsibility as well. However, he acquitted himself with great distinction and brilliance. Never for a moment was it necessary for us to say that he did not do so with great dignity. He carried out a noble task and made a great contribution to the extension of this portfolio.

In passing I just want to express a word of appreciation to Mr. Van Niekerk, who has retired as Secretary of the Department. He is now being followed up by Dr. Rautenbach. Mr. Van Niekerk entered this post as an administrative official, and he did great work. We are grateful for what he did. To-day, in the person of the new Secretary, Dr. Rautenbach, we have someone who has already reached great heights of achievement in this country’s administration. He is a person with the necessary background for this kind of work. For many years he was the Prime Minister’s adviser on Planning. We foresee that, under his guidance, this department will still be expanded to reach great heights.

The hon. member for Hillbrow also referred to the decentralization of industries. He spoke scornfully about that. Sir, the decentralization of industries must particularly take place in a country such as South Africa. We have here a heterogenous combination of many peoples on the southern point of Africa. It is therefore necessary for us to decentralize. South Africa is not the only country that is doing so. This is being done throughout the world. Just look at the large decentralization effort taking place in Great Britain to-day. There they are engaged in unravelling their metropolitan areas and establishing their industries in other areas. This is being done to entice people away from those metropolitan areas. It is happening in Paris. The hon. member must have knowledge of that. It is also taking place in a country such as Israel. There I saw with my own eyes how decentralization is taking place. Industries are being established there in areas in Israel where Arabs are living, so that they cannot come into contact with the Israelis in their areas. That is precisely the same development one has here, i.e. border industry development. They are just doing it in a different way there. We thus have this movement throughout the world. In West Germany it is also being done on a large scale, but when South Africa does it, in order to provide for the development needs of our many peoples, it is anathema, and hon. members then see something evil in it.

We did not say so.

It was said. The hon. member spoke of the statistics. I am quite prepared to accept the statement the hon. the Minister made here as the correct one. The hon. member said that we were trying to set up a smokescreen here. That is what they are doing. They see that the development in South Africa is going against integration, and that basically it is going in a direction in which the peoples of South Africa want to be on their own and want to go and live in their own homelands. The hon. member is free to ask me: What about the Asiatics and the Coloureds? That is a problem we are still going to solve. We are not afraid of it. The National Party believes in and accepts the fact that South Africa is a multinational country. The only solution to the question of South Africa’s multinationality, is not integration, as advocated by the United Party or by the hon. member for Houghton and her Progressive Party. The solution lies in the pattern that we had in Europe, and which we shall also have in South Africa, i.e. that the ethnic peoples will be settled in their own ethnic context and in their own homelands. We have made great strides along that road, and we are making a success of it.

I now want to advocate that here in the seventies we must take the additional dynamic step along that road. We know that the Government is already thinking along those lines, but I want to advocate that we should, as soon as possible, plan a national physical development programme for the whole Republic of South Africa with all its peoples. I want to advocate the emergence of such a plan. We believe that this is the only solution, and that we must have a finely wrought plan, whereby indications must be made in the finest detail, on a large map of the Republic of South Africa, of where these various peoples are settled and in which way that development must take place. On that map there must be broad guiding lines indicating the development that must take place. It must be a flexible plan. When looking at that map of the Republic of South Africa, we must at a single glance see where the various peoples are settled here on the southern point of Africa. We must see what the development possibilities and trends are. I do not have the time now to elaborate further on that. I leave that to the technicians. At one glance the map must give a full picture of the way in which this concrete development must take place in South Africa. This would give the people, the industrialist, the land-owner, the foreigner, the provincial authorities, the local authorities and all other planning institutions, a visual image of the broader objectives of the national physical plan.

I also want to advocate that the policy of three-tier planning, which we have always had in South Africa, should be retained. Firstly, we must have the Prime Minister’s Planning Advisory Council, then the provincial and then the local administrative authorities, each with planning at its own individual level, because it has become vitally necessary for local authorities to play a role as well. [Time expired.]

The hon. member for Langlaagte—the R60 million member— pleaded for a plan—at least that was the little sense I could make out of his speech. But it seems to me to be a little bit late now to plead with the hon. the Minister for a plan when this Government must have been acting on something during the past 22 years. The hon. member made a comparison between our country and Israel, a comparison which is ridiculous because where in Israel are they placing industries on their borders with the Arab states? Is it an example of the logical thinking on the other side that where you have countries embroiled in a war you move your industries to the borders of the countries with whom you are at war? Well, if that is the best planning that hon. member can do, I can only hope that he never succeeds the present Minister as Minister of Planning.

I should like to pursue a question I touched on on Friday, one of the errors of commission of this Government. The hon. member for Hillbrow referred to other errors of omission and commission. As I said on Friday, I think it is another department that had to do with the original planning of the Coloured area in Pietermaritzburg, when a decision was taken to allocate Woodlands to the Coloureds, a decision which to my mind was a major mistake. It was a mistake because it failed to take into account an important aspect of planning, i.e. the possibility of radial development. In other words, it should not be an area that is boxed in by other group areas. But this is exactly what has happened in regard to the Coloured area in Pietermaritzburg. The department then took a decision which was based on the then existing Coloured population in Pietermaritzburg. Accordingly they allocated an area which they believed would be sufficient for the population then existing and for its future increase. But since it has been decided to centralize in Pietermaritzburg the entire Coloured community from the Natal Midlands as well as a large proportion of the Coloured population of the Transkei. Already the city council of Pietermaritzburg is engaged on the construction of the last possible living unit for Coloureds in Pietermaritzburg. Two years ago I was present when the then Minister of Planning, Dr. De Wet, toured the area so as to acquaint himself with the problems there. But up to the present no decision has been taken. Two areas have been projected as being possible Coloured areas. Meanwhile feelings between the two communities there are getting bitter because it is obvious that when an area is projected to be a Coloured area some time in future, property values there will fall, development will be stultified—as a matter of fact, it amounts to a complete ban on the sale of properties because who is going to buy properties there? The area next to the Woodlands community to-day is land which is extremely expensive and in addition difficult to develop on account of its broken nature. On the other side of Pietermaritzburg the corporation owns land itself which it can develop. But the only hinterland there is from a white area into a Bantu reserve. The Minister’s Department has lately advertised for the opinions of the two communities concerned—the old game to ask for the opinions of the people concerned while you have already made up your mind long before that. Sir, what I should like to know from the Minister is when are we going to get a decision? Is it the hon. the Minister’s intention to centralize in Pietermaritzburg the Coloured population of the Midlands of Natal—the people at Ixopo, at Marianhill and all the smaller areas in Natal? Where is the new area going to be in Pietermaritzburg? People are waiting on a decision: as a matter of fact, it has been hanging over their heads for two years now. On Friday I asked the hon. the Minister to give personal attention to the Grey Street area. Similarly I ask him now to give his personal attention also to this area in Pietermaritzburg. Some sort of a decision ought to be taken. The people themselves are unhappy. The Coloured community have already voiced their objection against being split. We know what happens when we have one community and we create another one. In Pietermaritzburg you have the Woodland area, then the Indian area, then the Main Road and the railway line and then another new area. The initiative is almost always taken over by the new area because the young people move there. This is the problem—you will find the old area decaying whilst any new inflow of population goes to the new area which still has a chance to expand. It is urgently necessary that the Minister and his Department now look at this matter in an attempt to find some early solution.

The hon. member for Langlaagte completely ignored the challenge thrown out by the hon. member for Hillbrow who used the words of Dr. Rautenbach himself when he said that decentralization of industries should have some immediate economic advantage. Let the next speaker on the Government side tell us what immediate economic advantage is flowing to this country from the decentralization of industry taking place to-day? Hon. members may say there are political advantages attached to it. That may be part of their political policy, part of the way they see South Africa. But I should like to see the economic advantages thereof and here I want to come back to the point which we on this side of the House have been making again and again, i.e. that only the strength of the metropolitan areas can carry the future of South Africa. Is the hon. the Minister also responsible for planning in the Bantu areas? Is his Department responsible for the economic planning of the Bantu areas? Is he responsible for the siting of the growth points in the Bantu areas? Let him give us some measure of insight into how he sees the future of these areas. The hon. member for Pietersburg on a previous occasion said in these homelands there was going to be an economy with its own growth rate and with its whole future planned out by the Department. Let the hon. member for Pietersburg then tell us at what rate growth is to take place in the Bantu areas? Where is capital being generated in the Bantu areas? There was some attempt at an answer by an hon. member opposite who said that the Bantu were selling stock, about a million rands worth of stock in the whole of Zululand. This is supposed to generate capital. But can that hon. member tell me how much of that money is invested in means of production? Is it not true that the whole lot is swallowed up by the provision of the day to day needs of the Bantu? If the hon. the Minister is going to decentralize industry and if he has a plan in that connection, I should like to know from him how he sees this country, how we are going to develop and in what areas. We have four of five growth points established inside the Bantu areas. How does he see these being developed? How does he see the expansion going out from there? The question of the mobility of labour is something which fits into this and it is something which the hon. the Minister will have to take into account. Surely one of the factors in development is the fact that unskilled labour is a mobile element. Capital can be moved from place to place. It can be invested to create the infrastructure on which industry is based, but skilled labour is one of the things which is immobile because people are not prepared to be shunted around and moved about to areas where living conditions are not conducive to their moving there and establishing their families there. [Time expired.]

I have listened very attentively to the progress of the debate up to this point, I could not help thinking that here we are up against an Opposition that has been very unsympathetic or negatively disposed towards a fine machine created by this Government. If they were not negatively disposed, they were at least very aloof. Everything we have done up to now in terms of planning, whether physical or economical, has been treated by that side to questions and lamentations such as we have been listening to even to-day. That is why I say that it actually makes one a little tired to listen to them and to give attention to what they are saying. They must, therefore, excuse me if I do not go into their arguments in very great detail. The hon. member for Mooi River spoke firstly about a local matter, and when he had finished it was difficult to know precisely what he wanted, whether he was for or against. He did not make his inclinations clear, which is characteristic of the United Party members. Then he came along with their old story and criticized the Physical Planning Act and its implementation. After all the mandates this Government has received from the people to continue with the separation of the various peoples, have they not yet learned that they will have to agree to it? Do they, time and again, want additional Klip Rivers to tell them that the people want what we are doing? I think I have now said enough about the United Party members. They do not justify the valuable time of this Parliament. I firstly want to associate myself with the hon. member for Langlaagte who thanked the Minister and the Secretary very warmly.

Thank the Minister.

Yes, we say thank you because we at least have the decency. We know that it accords with the rules of decency to thank someone for having done something good. We now say thank you very much to them for what they did during that period to establish for us a fine machine in working condition, having put that machine into operation under fire from the Opposition, and having implemented an essential principle in the division and grouping of the various peoples in South Africa. I want to extend my very warm congratulations to the Minister and to the Secretary, who recently retired from the Department, on a fine piece of work they did over the past few years. I want to go further. To-day I want to speak about a specific subject, and I also want to thank them very much for the sympathetic way they treated those aspects and for the great job they did. I also want to congratulate the hon. new Minister, who incidentally had the earlier honour of being my bench fellow, very warmly on his promotion to a full Minister. We know that in him we have a particularly capable man, and we want to give him the assurance that we look with great confidence to the future and to the work he will do in that Department. We also want to give the new Secretary for Planning the assurance that we are glad about his appointment, and since he has now come to take the place of a man for whom we had the greatest respect, we want to give him the assurance that we have the same respect for him and that he may also count on the cooperation of the parliamentary group at all times.

This brings me immediately to the subject about which I should like to say a few words. I said that we have built up a fine machine here, a machine that is engaged in certain very important tasks, because first things must come first; no one can find fault with that. But, Sir, we have here a large area of our country that is urgently requesting attention. I am referring to that large area, the North West, that is asking for economic planning. In the few minutes at my disposal I want to dwell on that for a moment. Sir, we have here a large area, covering almost half the Cape; it includes the constituencies Kuruman, Prieska, Gordonia, Namaqualand and even a portion of the constituencies Ceres and Beaufort West. Since we are involved, in this large area, with a region that is suffering from a total absence of an infrastructure, one is a little concerned about the fact that that area’s minerals and other riches or resources were, to a very large extent, withdrawn in the past and processed in other parts of the country. Sir, the United Party will, of course, not understand this at all; they believe in centralization; they believe in importing Bantu to come along and do work for us in the cities. That is why I am not addressing myself to them now; I am addressing myself to a Government that is aware of these conditions and believes in the things I am now going to speak about.

Sir, we want that area, with its great potential, to obtain the necessary infrastructure to process its mineral riches there. For as long as one transfers those riches and does not establish the necessary infrastructure, that area will never be able to contribute its rightful share in the interests of the South African economy. Sir, we are dealing here with a chain reaction that we are very concerned about. In the first place there is uncertainty about the future of this area. We know of certain developments that are coming; we are aware that certain things are being planned; that general planning for the whole of South Africa is taking place. I am referring, for example, to one thing the Natural Resources Development Council held out to us for the future, i.e. that there would eventually be a large circular power line around South Africa that will be charged with atomic power in Cape Town, perhaps with gas along the east coast, in the north with ordinary coal power and along the Orange River with hydro-electric power. The whole area will then be linked up to that power unit. Sir, to us in the North West it has become very important to know precisely what the configuration of those power lines will be. In a part of that area we are at present faced with the problem that our power supplies have become hopelessly inadequate. Electricity prices have increased to five cents a unit. We must now decide where to erect temporary power units so that we can fall into step with the general planning, because we do not want to build power lines in the opposite direction, i.e. one wants one’s heavier power lines at the source of the power, making them lighter as one moves further away, and not vice versa. It is a matter of serious concern to the people in that area; they want to know what the eventual configuration of those power lines will be in terms of our power, water supply and other factors. I think that it is of the utmost importance for us to know these things so that we may concentrate on purposeful development in a certain direction.

But, Sir, as far as I am concerned, this fact entails a very serious problem: There is at present a serious form of wasteful exploitation in respect of certain of our very important resources in the North West, because we do not have the necessary infrastructure there. Let me just mention a single example. In the vicinity of O’Kiep, Nababeep and Karoolsberg we still have the biggest reserves of copper in the whole Southern Hemisphere, and then there are still the new discoveries. With the present infrastructure we simply cannot develop there at a percentage lower than 1.75. We know the rate at which copper is developed in an area such as Phalaborwa, for example, with its cheaper power. This means that we are forced into wasteful exploitation, and I doubt whether one would eventually be able to develop only the 1.75 per cent when the necessary infrastructure is established. That is why it is, therefore, so necessary for these tasks to be tackled speedily and for this Department to place its valuable machinery in operation in our area for a few months in order to carry out planning and to orientate us in this connection. The argument was raised about it being a good thing to reserve certain sources for the future. That would be a very good thing. But unfortunately this does not happen. The present tendency is, unfortunately, to take out the yes, as the saying goes in the North West, to extract the high grade ore, leaving the low-grade ore unprocessed. That is why I want to advocate to the hon the Minister and his Department that this matter be regarded in a very serious light and that the highest priority be given to the establishment of a commission of economic inquiry which can investigate what is taking place in the North West. Such a commission could orientate, guide and assist us in obtaining the absolutely essential infrastructure, and will be able to ensure that it is planned properly. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I believe that very few people would disagree with the promotion of coordinated physical planning for the future development of South Africa. We all agree that the most efficient utilization of all our available natural resources should be carefully planned to meet the complex demands of the future. To do this, we should regularly survey scientifically and economically our known resources on which can be based the assessment of the future potential and the most efficient utilization and development of those resources. Economic considerations should be the most important criteria on which recommendations should be based and not socio-political ideologies. The zoning of the country into areas and regions for the different types of utilization will probably be necessary. Areas will have to be zoned into farming areas, residential areas and also mining and industrial areas, all of which could again be subdivided for the various specialized activities.

On. this side of the House we feel that it is most important that enough land should also be set aside for recreational use. We believe that the most suitable areas should be planned for future nature reserves and national parks. They should be situated in the more beautiful and unspoiled natural surroundings. The United Party believes in the decentralization of industries in a constructive and positive way to relieve the over-congestion of the big cities and to spread the benefits of economic and financial growth and prosperity to all four provinces, South-West Africa and all their peoples. The Government’s policy is restrictive. Its application of the desire to decentralize is also restrictive. First of all the Nationalist Party Government limits the development of industry by private white enterprise to the so-called white areas although they have made concessions to United Party policy by allowing agencies to operate in the Bantu areas. Secondly, artificial restrictions by the Department of Planning restrict industrialists from going to the most economical places inside the white areas by frog-marching them to the border areas. Industrialists in the textile and plastic industries have informed me that the Department of Planning tried to frog-march them to places like Rustenburg, Pietersburg, Phalaborwa and Kimberley. Both the textile weaving and plastic industries regard themselves as being capital and machine intensive industries. The plastic factory obtained permission to establish itself on the Witwatersrand only after undertaking and promising that not more than five Bantu would be employed.

Most of the town councils and municipalities on the Witwatersrand complain that they have had to accept the position where they can forget about applying for additional industrial land to be zoned as such unless the most unrealistic undertaking is given, namely that no Bantu will be employed. No municipality is prepared to give the undertaking that no Bantu would be employed in the new industrial areas. The Benoni Town Council will be selling the last three industrial sites available at the end of November this year; two of them for light industries and one for heavy industry. It has little hope of attaining any additional industrial land for future development in that area. There is a proclaimed Indian industrial area outside Benoni where only Indians can be employed to the exclusion of all other groups. Needless to say, no industrial development has taken place in that area. Next to the Indian residential area in Actonville, a few sites are available to Indians for light industries, but only one has developed over the years, namely a welding firm making burglar proofing for the houses going up in the area. The reason is that all employment is restricted to Indians in that area only and that these Indians are not readily available at competitive salaries with Bantu labour in unskilled jobs.

Individual plans for the expansion of factories, either in terms of enlarged output or extensions to factories, were held back because of the uncertainty created by the Department of Planning as to the possibility of obtaining additional Bantu labour concessions to put these plans into operation. Small industries like sheet metal workers and engineering firms often have a fluctuating labour force, depending on the size of the contracts for the number of Bantu they can employ. They find it extremely difficult to get the necessary concessions in time. They are often compelled to employ illegally more Bantu labour than their quota allows. The illegal employment of Bantu can be as high as 23 per cent of the Bantu labour force and this makes dishonest men of basically honest people. It lends itself to all kinds of abuse like the submitting of incorrect returns of the number of Bantu employed and also to excessive applications for additional quotas. All this must certainly stifle the natural growth of industries in areas on the Witwatersrand in particular where they are so dependent on the development of secondary industries to replace the income from the dying mines.

The crowding of population groups into single confined group areas is probably the most nefarious activity of the Department of Planning. For example, I would like to mention the ruling whereby all the Indians of the East Rand will have to move to the confines of one single group area for Indians at Actonville. Already it is obvious that there will be insufficient room for the natural increase of Indians living in that area, not to mention the requirements of all the Indians of the whole East Rand. All they will be doing will be to create another slum area as a result of overcrowding if the Government follows its stated plans. It would be ridiculous to move a well settled Indian community from a place like Bakerton near Springs to Benoni. At Bakerton there is ample room for expansion well away from Springs. Now it is planned to send them to the overcrowded Actonville, hemmed in by industries on the one side and a Bantu area on the other and an undermined neighbouring municipal area. I would recommend that the Department of Planning read the socio-economic report published by the University of Natal in regard to the problems of Indians on the East Rand. The report regards it as essential that there should be more than one. Indian community on the East Rand at places like Bakerton and also at Nigel. If that is not possible, another area should be proclaimed.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Benoni confined himself chiefly to local matters in his vicinity, and he spoke of Indian group areas. He also asked what other hon. members on that side have already asked this afternoon, i.e. what economic benefits the Government sees in the decentralization programme that is now being tackled. I should like to ask hon. members on that side of the House how they really distinguish between economic decentralization and any other form of decentralization. I think the final test is most certainly to what extent peace and quiet can be created in the various communities in our fatherland. In this respect I also think that the country can only express its thanks for what the National Government has brought about. It was the United Party that allowed us to have miscegenation here in our residential areas in Cape Town and throughout the country. It was the National Party that had to create order and look to the establishment of separate residential areas for the Whites and also for the various non-white groups. Only by means of this single planning measure was peace and order created in virtually every community throughout the Republic of South Africa.

I should like to come back to a very general statement that was made here earlier this Session by the Leader of the Opposition and those who echoed him on that side, among whom the hon. member for Hillbrow was probably the chief exponent. For example, it is being impressed on South Africa that we can accept as our target a growth rate of 10 or 11 per cent. I expected that hon. member to use the discussion of this Vote as an opportunity to clarify for us how it is possible to bring about a 10 or 11 per cent growth rate in South Africa. I expected him to use the example of Japan again and to prove to us, with chapter and verse, what mistake was made when this fourth economic development programme and the preceding programmes were drawn up. But I think that he specifically did not make use of this opportunity because he realized how hollow that claim is. To-day I just want to point out that this programme was drawn up as scientifically as possible. Only facts have been taken into consideration. I wonder if the Opposition wants to allege that agriculture can develop at a more rapid rate than 3.5 per cent per annum. I wonder whether the Opposition wants to allege that mining in South Africa can maintain a more rapid growth rate than about 2.7 per cent, which is used as a basis here. If comparisons are so easily made between a country such as Japan and the Republic of South Africa, and if we are presented with the abnormally high growth rate maintained in that country, why do hon. members not present us with the entire picture? In the post-war years countries such as Germany and Japan, in particular, specifically did not spend proportionally the same amounts on defence. Why do they not tell us that America even had to make special appeals to Japan this year to make a larger contribution to the defence of its own surroundings and to the defence of the Pacific Ocean? Why do they not tell us that Japan has almost exclusively concentrated on economic development in the past decade, and that it can apply its total manpower and all its sources to bring about a large-scale expansion of its economy. And it could do this only because, unlike other Western countries, it did not proportionally have to put aside a large part of its total income and manpower for defence purposes. Why do they not point out that Japan is a relatively small country and that it cannot be compared to South Africa in size? South Africa must distribute its infrastructure over a tremendously large area, while Japan has to do it over a very small area. Why do they not point out that Japan is not actually a producer of primary products in the first place? Virtually 10 per cent of South Africa’s gross domestic product comes from agriculture, and about the same percentage from mining, specifically the sectors where one cannot expect the same measure of growth. Why do they not point out to us that Japan already had a very large per capita income? In 1968 it already had a per capita income of R815, while South Africa merely had a per capita income of about R513. It is therefore much easier to use industrial development as a basis, thereby obtaining a much larger growth rate than is possible in the case of South Africa. And why do they not point out to us that during the years 1962 to 1968 Japan had an increase in its consumer prices of 5.6 per cent at an average, as against a mere 2.7 per cent approximately in the case of South Africa? That is the price being paid by Japan for that high growth rate. Why did they not come back to this programme that has been drawn up, and indicate to us that although three possible growth rates for South Africa were analysed, it was found that even at a growth rate of 6 per cent per annum, and even if we were to have a net immigration figure of 30,000 people a year, there would by 1973 already be a shortage of 40,000 workers in the white manpower structure alone? We will have a greater demand for non-white labour, in excess of the supply of approximately 100,000 by 1973, if we were to accept a growth rate of 6 per cent. Why do they not acknowledge the fact that this entire target for South Africa is based on cold, hard facts. I think that the Opposition itself, and particularly that hon. aspiring leader, the hon. member for Hillbrow, realizes that this programme that has been drawn up for South Africa cannot really be attacked in this House in a scientific manner.

In the last few minutes at my disposal I should like to associate myself with the plea made by the hon. member for Langlaagte this afternoon. He pointed out that a tremendous number of studies have already been conducted by this Department, resulting in the collection, over a long period, of basic data for the entire country, and that this Department should perhaps now take a fresh look at South Africa as a whole, including the Bantu homelands. With such data the Department will then be able to draw up a development plan for our country as a whole. In our efforts to decentralize, the fact remains that every small town sees itself as a potential growth point. In the Cape Province along 20 regional studies have already been completed since 1960, and about 10 such studies will shortly be completed. I therefore think that we already have all the basic data according to which we can draw up a guide plan for the country as a whole. To-day I should like to leave the Department with this one thought: With a view to the fact that South Africa has always brought about growth in the past by concentrating industries in certain areas, should we not see to it that development in the Bantu homelands and in the developed white areas is also concentrated? I want to advocate that as a basic point of departure we should accept that in an area such as the Transkei perhaps only one large growth point ought to be created. In certain regions in the Cape, for example, whether it be the South-Western districts or the Northern Cape, only one single large growth point ought to be created. When such a growth point has been determined, a simultaneous indication must be given of the extent to which such a place is expected to grow. Once we accept such a pattern, our industrialists will look with new eyes at such places that are indicated as future growth points. Such a pattern will also make it possible for the Government Departments concerned to concentrate in that area educational facilities such as universities, technical colleges and technical high schools. It will also make it possible for industrialists to determine what the local markets in that vicinity will be. If the Government, and particularly this Department, accepts this as its basic point of departure, it will be possible to establish aid committees for such regions. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I should like to take the hon. member for Vasco back to 1945 when the United Party established the principle of separate residential areas by introducing the first legislation in that regard. The Nationalists of course only built on the foundation laid by us. Secondly I should like to tell the hon. member that I think the Nationalist Party protests too much about the growth rate. If only they would do what the hon. member for Hillbrow suggested, namely to appoint all the Cabinet Ministers from the United Party, you will see that we have this growth rate which we are talking about.

It is essential to plan the economic development of South Africa so as to maintain an overall and balanced growth. Our planners should view South Africa as a whole and remove or change measures inhibiting growth in specific areas or stimulate new growth points. They should always ensure that the available manpower and capital be utilized with one object, namely the goal of maximum productivity. The hon. the Prime Minister speaking on his Vote said that he was afraid of two factors, 1. the uncontrolled development of the metropolitan areas and 2. unemployment. I should like to point out that Johannesburg, our largest metropolitan area, is only one-tenth the size of Tokyo. The Port Elizabeth-Uitenhage complex, which is the fourth biggest industrial producing area in South Africa is relatively speaking a small and developing region. I therefore think that this first fear of the hon. the Prime Minister is very far from realization.

Where do they get their water from?

The Orange River. The Government is committed to establish and develop new growth points such as Richard’s Bay, Saldanha Bay and border areas. But in view of the critical white manpower shortage and the dearth of investment capital in our country, I think our planners should think very seriously about the question of whether existing developing areas should be sacrificed for new growth points. To me it makes eminent economic sense that existing developing regions which may for various reasons be lagging behind the national growth rate, receive priority in our planning, and thus I should like to come to the P.E.-Uitenhage complex.

I want to tell the hon. the Minister that that area to-day can be called the sick man of South Africa’s economy. A very good case could be made out for this region to be granted the status of an Economic Development Area. It has an infrastructure of great width and depth, but the industrial development is in imbalance, being too dependent on the economically sensitive motor industry. It is rather significant that since 1968 this area has attracted only one major industry. The hon. the Minister will recall that previously Government planning designated the area west of the Humansdorp-Colesberg line as a Coloured labour area, while that east of the Fish-Kat River was a Bantu labour area. The region in-between was a dual labour area. But then the Government by a stroke of the pen changed this planning, designating this in between area, namely the area which encompasses the P.E.-Uitenhage complex, a Coloured preference area. This has caused uncertainty. Uncertainty is the one factor which is guaranteed to cause a slump in economic development. This region which is a Coloured preference region has a preponderance of Bantu to the extent of four to one. These Bantu were not imported into this area as the Bantu of the Western Cape were, but are indigenous to that area. There is practically no Coloured unemployment in the Port Elizabeth-Uitenhage area. This places the Coloured in a too powerful bargaining position because when unemployables are employed they cause up to 100 per cent absenteeism per week. Amongst the Bantu there are at the moment about 6,000 unemployed.

Professor J. F. Potgieter, the director of the University of Port Elizabeth Institute for Planning and Research, has just completed an indepth study of the labour. potential of this area. At a recent conference held in Port Elizabeth he said that 1. the future industrial and general economic development in the Cape Midlands, particularly in the Port Elizabeth-Uitenhage complex, would be severely hampered if the Government were to persist with its restrictive labour policy for the area and were strictly to apply the provisions of the Physical Planning Act. He said 2. that if the Government were to persevere with these policies and acute shortage of white and Coloured manpower could develop in 1980. He said 3. that if job opportunities were not provided for the Bantu still in that area by then, unemployment would grown alarmingly among them during the next decade.

The director of Bantu Affairs of the City Council of Port Elizabeth, Mr. Koch, said that according to his calculations there could be 1 million Bantu in this area by the year 2000. Even if the Government were to succeed in the well nigh impossible task of repatriating 50 per cent of the Bantu, it would still leave us with 500,000. The spectre of vast Bantu unemployment will stalk this area with all its concomitant dangers for our country unless the planning is altered and this area is designed once more as a dual labour area. On behalf of this complex I would therefore like to appeal to the Minister to change his planning and to designate the Port Elizabeth-Uitenhage area as a dual labour area and not to apply section 3 of the Physical Planning Act to it. If the Minister were to do this, I am sure that this sick man of South Africa’s economy would gain robust health within a very short time and become an asset not only to the Cape but to the whole Republic.

If the chief aim of the Department of Planning is to ensure a balanced growth and development of the country as a while, and if at the same time, through the application of the Physical Planning Act, we want to ensure that we do not create metropolitan areas that will become uncontrollable at a later stage, as far as the provision of services and the composition of the population are concerned, we shall, of course, at the same time have to look at those areas that have a large backlog, areas that are still in their periods of winter sleep, although they do contain the possibilities for development, provided they receive the necessary stimulus. In the light of this I want to focus attention to-day on the entire Southern Cape region, and Mossel Bay in particular, the natural and closely situated harbour gateway to that entire area. Strategically Mossel Bay is situated halfway between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, between the large industrial areas. On an approximately 500-mile-long coastline, Mossel Bay presents itself, as it were, as an area for the establishment of light industries. I could now be asked on what basis we are wanting to build this area up further.

Let us first look at Mossel Bay’s historical background. It is the place where, more than 500 years ago, Whites for the first time landed on the shores of what is now South Africa. That is where our first church building was erected, where passing ships took on fresh water and meat—just think, in this context, of the name Vleesbaai—and the place where our first post office stood, and still stands today—the well-known milkwood tree. Land and labour are two important prerequisites for development in any area. Land is easily obtainable and is cheap in the vicinity of Mossel Bay. This is so because there has not yet been over-population. But let me call upon a very well-known authority, the Minister of Transport. Fourteen days ago he opened the harbour works at Mossel Bay, and on that occasion he expressed himself as follows (translation)—

You will agree with me that when the hon. the Minister of Transport speaks it is worth listening. He states here that if labour does not find a livelihood there, “the exodus to other centres will continue”. Can we not implement the Physical Planning Act in its essence by preferably keeping this migratory labour where there is still sufficient space available, labour that is being drawn away by industries in other areas?

Let us look at the infra-structure at our disposal. In the first place there are the harbour extensions in progress at present. The second development phase of these extensions was opened by the Minister of Transport 14 days ago. When that has been completed, coasting vessels will be able to discharge cargo there and load up manufactured articles for transport to other centres. The fishing potential of the South Coast can then be properly exploited for the first time. And in Mossel Bay we also have the only oil discharge point at sea in the whole of South Africa. This is a very important factor in the development of any industries. In addition, a national airport is now being built there, and the necessary rail link exists, while Escom power would be available from 1972.

As far as water is concerned, a very important item in the infra-structure, we find that Mossel Bay is situated at the foot of the Langeberg mountains, and the rivers and mountain streams can therefore be utilized to good advantage. Since we are planning for a concentration of people, it is essential that we make provision for the necessary recreational facilities, and this Mossel Bay is particularly well suited to offer. We look at the extensive beach areas that are ample and uncluttered, where people have not yet flocked to such an extent that they trample one another underfoot, where we have separation between Whites and non-Whites, and where people can go for a rest after a day’s work; if they want to fish, they may do so, and if they prefer deep-sea fishing they can also have it. Many areas in South Africa to-day would envy these lovely beach resorts that we can offer there, and that can be developed further.

The bay also offers an excellent opportunity for the sport of sailing. It is also an open spot at the foot of the Langeberg mountains, and those who do not choose to relax on the beach, may seek out the beauty of the flowers and everything the mountains offer, and there they may seek their relaxation. Our agricultural production there is such that with a larger population we could at any time push up the production of vegetables and fruit to a very high level. We are at present engaged in a search for oil at sea, and we have good expectations of significant results there, which would, of course, be of very great importance, not only to the Southern Cape, but also to the country as a whole.

If one looks at all these aspects, we have here a background that really offers us, if we regard it impartially, an opportunity to create a new growth point in South Africa, a growth point far removed from any other existing growth point. I should now like to ask the hon. the Minister and his Department this favour: That they draw up a plan of the area for us, and that they indicate to us what industries can be established there in the course of time, so that we, the local inhabitants, can meanwhile prepare ourselves to receive those industries at the appropriate time.

The hon. member for Mossel Bay made an excellent speech in which he pleaded for greater development, particularly with reference to the Southern Cape, and we on this side have no objections to the hon. member’s plea. On the contrary, specifically with a view to the proper decentralization of industries, the hon. member for Mossel Bay will receive all the support he needs from this side of the House. But the hon. member for Vasco brought forward this point in particular. He asked us how we distinguished between economic decentralization and ordinary decentralization. I think that only a man who is not in his right mind can say that if an area is an under-developed region it will not receive special encouragement. Hence, if the hon. member for Mossel Bay makes such a plea we shall support him, particularly with respect to the Southern Cape, where industrial development is still in its infancy, and as the hon. member rightly pointed out, the water and the infra-structure are there. There must consequently, in the course of time, be the necessary encouragement in order to obtain industries there. But the United Party’s big objection is this. When we speak of healthy, balanced economic development, of decentralized industrial development, we would like to see the development taking place throughout the Cape, but we are crossing swords with the hon. members on the other side when steps are taken on the part of the State to restrict the present industrial complexes. That is the difference between ourselves and those hon. members.

For them to point out that decentralization is taking place on a large scale in Europe and England is not really quite correct, because we do not yet have such large industrial complexes in South Africa. We do not want to say that things cannot develop along those lines. Things are most probably moving that way, but what is wrong with a policy of letting the present industrial areas develop, and then artificially stimulating other underdeveloped areas? That is the whole attitude of this side of the House. We do not want to cut the throats of the Port Elizabeth-Uitenhage or the Witwatersrand complexes, just for the sake of stimulating something else somewhere else again. That is why we think that the industrial development of the under-developed areas can go hand in hand, without it being necessary to jeopardize the existing industrial complexes.

I want to make two pleas to the hon. the Minister to-day. My first plea relates to our existing industrial complexes in the Cape. We know that the Cape does not draw as much industrial development as, for example, Natal and the Transvaal. It is therefore necessary for us to stimulate industrial development artificially in the Cape. I once more want to make a friendly request to the hon. the Minister, since we asked him three years ago, when the Physical Planning Act was under discussion here, not to apply that Act to an area such as Port Elizabeth. The hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central) did an excellent job of showing the hon. the Minister why he should not make the Act applicable there. We previously supposed that all industrial development based on Bantu labour would be able to continue there undisturbed, except for the application of the necessary influx control, which is something that differs altogether from placing restrictions on the economic development of the area. But now it appears to us as if, in the course of time, there will not be sufficient Coloured labour in this triangle, formed more or less by the Humansdorp-Colesberg-Fish-Kat lines. It is calculated that there are approximately 168,000 Coloureds in that area, with approximately 23,000 of them in Port Elizabeth. There is just a small handful that are not in Port Elizabeth. There is no unemployment at all among the Coloureds, but the Bantu in the area, who are increasing at a normal rate and cannot be sent back to the Bantu areas, are going to create a serious problem for us there in the course of time, as a result of unemployment.

Sir, why must such a situation develop? According to my information, industrialists in that area, who apply for a permit under section 3 of the Physical Planning Act, do not receive one covering the permanent employment of those people. The permit is issued on a temporary basis. The industrial heads of Port Elizabeth are grateful to the hon. the Minister for granting them this concession, but what it amounts to is that they cannot plan for the future, because what industrialist is going to expand his factory, what entrepreneur is going to create a new industry, if they can only make use of temporary Bantu labour? These people have no security as far as their labour is concerned, and they consequently cannot plan for the future. In the course of time this uncertainty will also engender a lack of confidence in this area.

This afternoon I should like to repeat the plea I made to the hon. the Minister three years ago. I want to assure him that we in Port Elizabeth are not employing non-white labour on such a scale that the entire numerical ratio among the races will be disrupted by it. My plea is therefore that the hon. the Minister should not make the Physical Planning Act applicable to that area, because the application of this Act to that area is restricting industrial development and discouraging future industrial heads, whom we would like to entice to that area, from establishing their industries there. Our plea to the hon. the Minister concerns the fact that, while he may give all the encouragement he likes to the border industries, he must please not restrict our present industrial areas. Under a United Party policy the border industry areas would also develop, because many of them are underdeveloped areas and because the one important factor of labour is present.

Then I want to come to the hon. the Minister with my second plea. This is not a new idea either, and I have mentioned it previously. I want to associate myself with hon. members such as the hon. member for Mossel Bay and the hon. member for Namaqualand. They ask for planning and for possible expansion in their areas. The one matter that worries me greatly is that here in the middle of the Cape horseshoe, over and above an ailing agricultural industry, we have absolutely nothing of note in the form of industrial activity. I immediately want to concede to the hon. the Minister that a person surely cannot start something where there are no raw materials and potentials available. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I just want to devote a moment or two to what the hon. member for Newton Park said, and I want to tell him that the National Party’s policy of the decentralization of industries represents no obstacles to the development of existing industrial complexes. The policy of this side of the House is a threefold one. We saw this in the report of the Water Commission, and then the Minister of Water Affairs also stated this: No unrealistic restrictions will be placed on the growth of existing industrial areas. Attention is definitely being given to the so-called under-developed areas, but it is also necessary to develop the border areas at probably a more rapid rate in the future. In the fourth place, too, the development of industries in the Bantu homelands will be stimulated. If we think of the development of the metropolitan areas and what danger uncontrolled development in those areas could constitute for our country’s economy, then there is only one figure we need look at to realize what the problem attached to that is. To establish an infra-structure in an area with more than 200,000 inhabitants, it costs R400 per worker to absorb that worker. In an area where there are 30,000 people and where the infra-structure is being adapted, it costs approximately R130 to cope with one worker. It is logical therefore that we will spend this capital where it will be the most favourable for us to apply. With that I want to leave what the hon. member for Newton Park said and go on to another topic.

I want to add my voice to those of the hon. members who conveyed good wishes to the Minister and the Secretary. I also want to thank the former Minister and Secretary. I should also like to convey my gratitude to the Department of Planning for the co-operation which exists between that Department and the regional development associations. Now I should like to spend a few moments this afternoon on the Western Transvaal region, and the problems of that area. Perhaps it is necessary for us to tell the hon. the Minister what area we are talking about. The area includes the magisterial districts of Lichtenburg, Delareyville, Schweizer-Reneke, Christiana, Bloemhof, Oberholzer, Wolmaransstad, Marico, Potchefstroom, Klerksdorp and Ventersdorp. This is an area which has certain interests in common. This area covers approximately 24,000 square miles. It includes the Bantu homelands of that area. Approximately 200,000 Whites are living in that area, and are also economically active in that area. But what is extremely important is the fact that in that area approximately 800,000 Bantu of the Tswana ethnic group have established themselves. Then, too, there are 15,000 inhabitants of other race groups such as Coloureds, Indians, and so on, in that area. While we want to convey our gratitude to the Minister for the fact that R55,000 has been appropriated in the present Budget of the Department of Planning for these areas in order to get the infra-structure up to date for the establishment of border industries which are in the interests of that area and particularly, too, in the interests of those 800,000 Tswana who must be provided with work, we also want to point out that the latest figure indicates that the Tswana ethnic group totals 1,700,000 and that for the rest who are not living in this area, R3 million is being appropriated for the establishment of border industries. We want to admit, straightaway, and accept that attention must first be given to certain priorities. Our problem becomes more serious when it is remembered that this area is initially dependent on its agriculture. This area is one of the most important agricultural areas in South Africa. It produces 30 per cent of the total agricultural production of the Transvaal. I shall subsequently say a few words as far as agricultural activities are concerned. In that area we also have the Klerksdorp-Orkney-Stilfontein mining complex, and together with the Carletonville complex, this area is producing 28 per cent of the total gold production of South Africa, or 19 per cent of the total gold production of the entire free Western world.

We in that area have not remained inactive, but have also instituted our own investigations. Thanks to a grant of R18,000 from the National Council for Social Research we have already instituted investigations in that area, and the first report in this connection was made available last year. According to that report the Klerksdorp-Orkney-Stilfontein mining complex, subject to two conditions, i.e. that the increase in the cost of gold exploitation, as well as its price remains the same, has a future of only approximately 15 years. Now one can ask how this affects the border industry areas and agriculture in this part of the world. It is essential that the investment made in this area should not quite simply fade away. In fact, the Department of Planning itself realizes this. It must be borne in mind, however, that approximately R9 million worth of agricultural products which is being produced in the Western Transvaal, is being absorbed by these mining complexes. If a decrease in population takes place, tremendous problems will be experienced. We should like to see, and it could happen, that further possible mineral wealth in this area should be investigated. The iron ore found from Wolmaransstad almost as far as Potchefstroom, which links up with that of Sishen, fluorspar, salt, as well as other minerals of this area, could also be exploited. It may become a necessity. We should also like to see co-operation between this complex and the border industry areas in those Western parts of the Transvaal. This can only be done if our infra-structure is adjusted at one single point, i.e. by providing a railway network from north to south as well in that area and not only by having one which runs from east to west. We have the problem that the railway network is either Johannesburg orientated, or Kimberley orientated.

I want to postulate very briefly that there is only one problem in this whole infra-structure, i.e. our water problem. I believe however that this area will have sufficient water available by making an adjustment in the White Paper in regard to the Bloemhof Dam, as well as the development of our dolomitic waters. Now the Department of Planning could probably with justification ask us what kind of industries can now be decentralized to that area. I have already mentioned what mineral resources there are which could be investigated, but it is also essential that we take note of the fact that 15 per cent of all tractor implements in South Africa are being used in this area. In this area as well 20 per cent of the total value of agricultural implements in South Africa is found. We think that, if decentralization has to take place, the type of industries dealing with agriculture and the manufacture of agricultural equipment would serve a far more practical purpose if they were transferred to the area in question. Other industries which could be transferred to that area are those which process foodstuffs. I do not have sufficient time at my disposal to mention all the possibilities in that connection, but it will also be necessary to take a look at this. As far as border areas and their proclamation in the Western Transvaal is concerned, we are not dealing with a consolidated Tswana homeland, but with a fragmented Tswana homeland. It will not be advisable for us to develop a border industry area at one place. We shall have to find more border industry areas. That is why I also want to make a specific plea for the proclamation of border industry areas on the southern side of the Tswana homelands, so that we can really utilize that Tswana labour economically; for border industry areas in the north cannot absorb the labour from the southern part of the Tswana homelands. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I agree that the hon. member for Christiana has put up a very reasoned argument, indeed, for decentralization of industries. Like everybody else who sees the dangers of having a large concentration of African people who are unemployed, near the area where he happens to live, the hon. member has put up a good plea for the development of industry in the area that he represents. I do not think there is anyone in this House that would argue with him on that score. All of us are in favour of decentralization, provided it is done on an economic basis.

I stand up as a representative from the Witwatersrand. I ask that the Witwatersrand be not singled out for unfavourable treatment in this regard. The Witwatersrand has for years been the hub of industry in this country. For it now to suffer all the uncertainties of the Physical Planning Act for ideological reasons when the area has not yet developed beyond the ‘uncontrolled metropolitan proportions’, mentioned by the hon. member for Christiana, is ridiculous. We, too, are going to have to cope with a very serious unemployment problem as regards the existing African population and its natural increase, unless the hon. the Minister is reasonable in the demands to industrialists both to extend existing industries in that area and to develop new industries.

As has already been said, this is a new Minister in the Department. I join with other members in wishing him well in his new portfolio. I also wish very strongly that we are going to have a more reasonable attitude from this hon. Minister in regard to the administration of the Physical Planning Act. If I may at this stage, I also wish to take the opportunity of asking for a very reasonable attitude to be adopted as far as the deproclamation of existing group areas is concerned. This matter causes an enormous amount of difficulty for people who have been uprooted once, like the Coloured people. I give Ceres as an example. I know that has been satisfactorily resolved, but it took nearly a year so to do. Another example is the Indian people of Ladysmith who, having been uprooted once and having attempted to re-establish a proper community in the new area, suddenly found themselves faced with the prospect of deproclamation. I sincerely hope that this sort of thing is going to take place as little as possible in the future. It has a terrible effect on the non-White population, who have become very insecure. Therefore, I plead with the hon. the Minister to administer the Physical Planning Act very generously, because this, too, leads to enormous insecurity among industrialists and entrepreneurs who wish to develop existing industrial areas.

I want to return to the interesting question of the census. The figures were published over the week-end and given to this House during Friday’s debate. I want to say at once, as someone who has done a little statistics in the past, that I have no doubt that the probable error in these census returns is pretty high. I should not like to have been one of the statisticians attempting to achieve some form of accurate results from the statistics. I have various reasons for saying this. I shall give one example only. We do not, of course, have the figure for the number of Africans in the urban areas. We only have the overall figure of the number of Africans in the white areas. That includes white rural areas as well as white urban areas.

“So-called” white areas.

Of course, it is always “so-called”. The hon. member the other day mentioned a point I have often made, namely that there is no such thing as a magisterial area in which the Whites are not outnumbered by non-Whites in some or other proportion. Any way, we do not know how many Africans there are in the so-called white urban areas. Sir, I must put it to you that it is highly unlikely that the thousands upon thousands of Africans who are illegally in the towns are going to stand up to be counted on census night. Whatever figure finally emerges in regard to the number of Africans in the “White” towns, it is highly unlikely that it will be anything near the actual figure.

There are some other interesting factors which emerge from the figures that we have. The first is that South Africa is growing steadily less white. Indeed, according to the statistics, it has in 1970 reached an all-time low. If one examines the figures for 1951, one finds that the white population constituted 20.9 per cent of the total population. In 1961 it was 19.3 per cent and in 1970 it was 17.7 per cent, according to the latest figures. The African population, on the other hand, has reached an all-time high, as far as percentage of population is concerned. In 1951 it was 67.6 per cent. In 1960 it was 68.3 per cent and in 1970 it was 70 per cent of the total population. There is not very much of a change in Coloured population. It ranges from 8.7 per cent in 1951, to 9.4 per cent in 1960, to 9.3 per cent in 1970. The Asians are almost consistent. They numbered 2.9 per cent in 1951, 3 per cent in 1960 and 3 per cent in 1970. I think it is very interesting to find that the Whites have reached an all-time low, percentage wise, whereas the Africans have reached an all-time high. I should like to put it to the hon. the Minister that one of the reasons why the African population is now increasing at something like 3.63 per cent per annum, which is a higher rate than ever before, is very probably due to the Government’s own policy. The interesting thing is that the migatory labour system practically guarantees a baby a year in the homelands. It is absolutely natural that when a man goes home for a couple of weeks a year to see his wife, a baby will result. I think hon. members will admit that fact.

He would not know.

I know the facts of life. The hon. the Minister ought to know them too. The fact that the men are in the urban areas without their wives, also guarantees that a high percentage of illegitimate children will be borne in those urban areas. Instead of having properly planned families in a stable rural peasantry and stable urban families, with even higher standards of living, which will bring about a rational population increase, we are experiencing what is known as a population explosion among the African people. This is due entirely to the Government’s own policy.

Now, Sir, let us have a look at the number of Africans in the white areas. Here the Minister has taken some pleasure out of the fact that the total percentage increase in the homelands is 68.7 per cent. I want to know how that figure was arrived at. Does this include Africans outside the homelands living as contract and migratory workers in the urban areas?

No.

It does not? It is not one of the famous Koornhof equations, de jure and de facto? These are, in their own way I think, going to become as famous as Einstein’s theory. The hon. the Minister says “No”. He says that this does not include contract or migratory workers presently in the urban areas of White South Africa. Is that correct?

Yes.

This relates entirely to the de facto population in the Transkei, the Ciskei, Tswanaland and so on, where they were at the time?

Yes.

That is very interesting, Sir.

It is where they were enumerated.

Yes, so it is a de facto population. I am very interested to hear that.

I want to look up the total white population increase. There was an increase of something 700,000. Sir, I put it to you that half of this increase was probably due to immigration over the ten year period. I can only work the exact figures out for six years, but about half the increase during that period is probably due to immigration. I am talking now from the Government’s point of view, because I do not care about these overall ratio, but if this is so and if I am correct, it seems to me that it is going to be impossible to adjust the adverse balance by means of white immigration. We are going to need something like 95,000 immigrants per year, even to carry out what I call a holding operation, in order to maintain the existing percentage of Whites in the total population at 17.7 per cent.

Finally I want to say that we are probably all asking the wrong questions as a result of the census. The question that all of us are asking is: Where are the people living? I say that the question all of us should be asking is: How are the people living? That is really going to be the important thing that emanates from this census. It is not where people are living, be it in homelands or in “White” areas, such as white rural areas or white towns. What we should be asking ourselves is: How are the people of South Africa living? What is the state of the nation? What is their standard of living? How have they improved, if at all, their standard of living by changing their residence in the one case from rural to urban areas and in the other by being forced—or, if you like, by being persuaded—to return to the homelands?[Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I should like to leave the hon. member for Houghton in the competent hands of the hon. the Minister. I want to express my sincere appreciation to the hon. the Minister and the Department of Planning for the wonderful progress which has been made in the short period of time of approximately five to six years. If one considers what has been established in a field where there was little or nothing before, and the variety of planning instruments which have been created for the proper handling of development, and for the control over the utilization of our scarce resources and in regard to the implementation of Government policy, it not only inspired confidence, but also fine and great expectations for the future. Still it is ironic that it is in fact expectations, misplaced expectations, which are often aroused by the United Party in order to place the good work of this Department in a poor light and to try to belittle it. Since the origin of this Department it has always been found that certain people who do not fully understand the function of this Department, or rather do not want to understand it, are very fond of presenting it as a kind of wonder Department, with which nothing less than immediate utopia must be established. Surely that is not the case, and it is also understandable that it cannot be the case. It is understandable if we bear in mind that this Department does not have a development task, but is there to measure off the foundations on which development can take place and flourish. It is also understandable if we bear in mind that planning takes place for the sake of mankind with its fickle needs and preferences. Even if all aspects, including the human or social aspects, are taken into account in the planning process, and even if all disciplines are involved in this, one will nevertheless find that one is dealing with human beings and their preferences and the circumstances which they create for themselves, which are continually changing, the more so in this technological age which contributes to make human beings round and shapeless. It is no wonder therefore that this Department is often accorded no credit for the good work it is doing. Seen against this background, it is clear that the value of the work of the Department must not be measured only against concrete results, but quite often and far rather against the alternative. What will the result be, what will this country look like in ten, twenty years time without the direction-giving and co-ordinating work of a national planning body? The Government is deserving of every praise for having taken the first step along this road, for the way in which it has tackled this task, and for the way in Which it is carrying it out. The Opposition can say what it likes—the Department is and remains an instrument in the hands of the Government to implement its policy. In fact, there are few things which give a better indication of the advanced state of a nation than the way in which it is developing its natural resources, controlling the utilization thereof, and the way in which it is planning its activities.

I want to touch upon another aspect, however, namely regional planning. There is a tendency, not only among us, but in many countries of the world that people of the various regions of a country would like to be associated and identified with the development and increased prosperity of the country. They should like to share to a greater extent in the prosperity of the country, arising out of the development of its national assets. This desire —and it is a quite natural desire—results in pressure being exercised on Governments to effect, by means of Governmental measures, a more equal geographic distribution of the economic development of the country. What they usually have in mind here is the establishment of industries because it is this sector which has the greatest growth potential, and because industries need not necessarily be bound to one place. There is probably no one in this Council Chamber who would not like to see a growth point in every town. But from the nature of the case this is not possible. What regions desire cannot always be accomplished. It is for example impracticable to think at this stage already of the possibility of offering the economic development programme on a regional basis. Such a programme, drawn on a national basis, can be projected with reasonably accuracy, but in a country like South Africa the economic development of specific regions cannot at this stage be anticipated with sufficient certainty. Should this be done, we would be running the risk of an infra-structure, which has been made available at great expense, perhaps remaining unutilized.

Nevertheless the interests which exists to-day in the development of the country is to be welcomed—it is very necessary and must be retained. Of course we cannot remain cold and indifferent to any development consciousness which may reveal itself. There are a number of regional development associations in the country, many of which are however, functioning on an unorganized basis and in an atmosphere of uncertainty. Nevertheless they are doing excellent work, particularly in so far as they are making our people think and are making them development-conscious. Unfortunately they are finding it difficult to remain in existence and to make positive contributions owing to a lack of leadership. We find nevertheless that these associations do good work as soon as they are supported by outside bodies—for example by the research institutes of universities. We are committed to giving the various regions of the country the necessary guidance, and stimulating them to suitable development in accordance with their innate potential. I say “suitable development” because one must not lose sight of the fact that development does not necessarily comprise economic development only. There are many other spheres in which development can to good effect be stimulated.

I am grateful for the large number of regional studies which have already been launched with the aid of outside bodies, but I still wonder whether it is not time regional planning was incorporated on a sound scientific basis in the framework of our planning strategy, and greater clarity in regard to the nature and extent thereof were obtained.

I too should like to deal with the economic and physical aspects of planning, very much on the same lines, therefore, as the hon. member who just resumed his seat. With physical planning, I believe, we should also produce evidence of planning for co-ordination and not for chaos and confusion. Let me illustrate what I mean by referring to a small village situated between East London and King William’s Town, i.e. Berlin. The inhabitants are served by a village management board. Only recently Dr. Raubenheimer came there to open the Berlin industrial complex, and what a very pleasant and happy occasion it was. It so happens that Berlin now falls within the municipality of East London. This is well and good but, on the other hand, Berlin still falls within the magisterial district of King William’s Town. Thus, in so far as municipal rates and matters like these are concerned, Berlin has to work with East London whilst in so far as divisional council rates, road rates, etcetera, are concerned, it has to work with King William’s Town. I feel that this is eventually going to cause confusion not only with the local inhabitants but also with the local authorities concerned. I mention this just to highlight the fact that we have this type of problem in our planning where we develop depressed areas into large industrial complexes.

There is another point I am worried about. It is being rumoured that that Iscor, in order to achieve the large ore traffic over the proposed Sishen/Saldanha Bay line has put forward a proposal that a fourth Iscor be erected not in the Eastern Cape, as we have all been anticipating, but in the Saldanha Bay area.

We know that the policy of this Government is based on the separation of the Bantu from the white areas, a policy which, so the recent census has proved, is not succeeding. Nevertheless it remains the policy of the Government. To achieve this, border industries and industries within the reserves must be developed. With this in view I cannot believe that Saldanha could be worse situated for a large industry such as a fourth Iscor. Therefore the obvious place to build the fourth Iscor is in the Eastern Cape. We have the largest natural concentration of Bantu in South Africa in that particular area. I know of no area where we have a larger concentration of Bantu and, what is more, the Bantu to-day have already proved to us their remarkable adaptability to industry, that they are adaptable to border industries and the development there of. Not only have we a large concentration of Bantu labour in the Eastern Cape, but we have also unlimited water supplies. We have coal resources there, too, and, what is more, we can produce all the power necessary.

Another important factor, too, in the Eastern Cape, particularly Port Elizabeth—and East London is not lagging far behind—is that we are producing more motor vehicles there than anywhere else in South Africa. This alone is a very important industry and in time we will export motor vehicles as well. This is going to be a very important industry when we export motor vehicles to the outside world. Our motor vehicle industry is not situated in the hinterland where high transport costs are involved, but it is very conveniently situated at the coast. We can therefore compete on the world market and we will compete on the world market in the very near future, particularly in regard to motor vehicle production. Therefore I believe that while we are planning for the future, we should bear this in mind. I know that the fourth Iscor is something we can possibly look forward to in five or ten years’ time, but because rumours are rife in the Eastern Cape that Iscor wants to establish the fourth Iscor in the Saldanha Bay area, I want to say that it is imperative that it should be established in the Eastern Cape and possibly in the Border area. I appreciate that the hon. the Minister, knowing that area well and representing a constituency of the Eastern Cape, will give this matter his serious and sympathetic consideration, but I want to ask him to go a little further and to give it his support as well. Let us think on these lines. It is something which is very important and very urgent and something which, if we can establish it in the right area, will save us a lot of unnecessary moving of labour around the country. The water, the labour and the power are there in the Eastern Cape and, as I say, we have a large motor industry too, which could benefit from the establishment of the fourth Iscor in that particular area.

I was really very pleased to hear from the hon. member for East London (North) that we must stop moving labour around in this country. He said the labour is there; why do we not move the factories to the labour? I want to congratulate him on that statement. It seems to me the hon. member supports this policy of ours and I hope the Minister will therefore help him to get what he wants there in his area.

In the first place I also want to convey my congratulations to the hon. the Minister on his appointment to this portfolio, as well as the new Secretary of the Department. While doing so, I want to address a major request to him in regard to a matter with which we have been struggling for a long time in Pietersburg, which is a border industry area. I know that what I am going to request is a difficult thing and he will perhaps have to call in the assistance of the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs, and between the two of them they will have to storm or surround the Minister of Transport in order to solve this problem for us. The Department and the Permanent Committee is very aware of this matter, and I want to mention it again here. The position is that the local Road Transport Council grants exemption to industrialists to transport their own products within a radius of 30 miles. If the same concession were granted to a manufacturer in a place like Pretoria or Johannesburg with a high density of population, then there is within a radius of 30 miles many points where he can sell his wares. But take an area like Pietersburg, which is a border industry area. You have the town itself and then you have the tremendous expanse of the Northern Transvaal. The concession to sell their products within a radius of 30 miles means virtually nothing to these people. They can only sell their products in the towns, and that is about all. They are bound to this regulation; they are restricted to 30 miles, and if they apply to the Road Transport Council for wider exemption, they are informed that the first people who will be up in arms about this is the Railways because they will then be competing with the Railways. Sir, I am requesting that this matter be taken up by the Department of Planning, and that the Department of Economic Affairs be drawn into this matter as well, because our problem there is that the manufacturer, if he is limited to a radius of 30 miles, can sell virtually nothing. We are therefore asking that industrialists in that area be given a permit to transport their own products within a radius of at least 120 miles as the crow flies. This will enable them to transport their products to places like Phalaborwa, Louis Trichardt and Messina. They can also enter the Bantu areas where all the shops are situated to sell their wares there. Sir, there are certain other people who have exemption to bring their goods over the borders and to sell them. I have nothing against this, but I do think that this is absolutely unequal competition against us.

Sir, I just want to return to something which the hon. member for Mooi River said here. He referred to a speech which I made during the Budget debate, and at this stage I want to associate myself with the hon. member for Langlaagte who advocated economic development programmes for the Bantu homeland areas. With reference to that the hon. member for Mooi River then discussed development programmes for Bantustans, as he calls the homelands. In the first instance I want to say that I do not know why we should refer to the Bantu homelands as “Bantustans”. I do not know why the Pakistand connotation should be dragged in here; I regard it in a measure as an insult and a humiliation to the Bantu nations in those homelands. We ought to speak of Bantu homelands when we refer to Zululand, Xhosaland, Vendaland, etc. In the first instance I want to say to the hon. member for Mooi River that he got the wrong impression about what I said. All I said was that where one had a demarcated area, a people within that area, then the next best logical step, after that area has obtained political content, was to give it economic content. Owing to the political content the area has, one already has a budget which has been drawn up. Within that demarcated area there are a certain number of people with earnings. All that should be done is to make a survey of the area’s primary product and of its earnings, wherever they may come from, and then the gross national product can be determined. After one has determined this, and after a full survey of its population has been made, then a growth rate can be worked out for it taking into account its population growth as well as its natural resources and potential. It is very clear that the growth rate will differ from one Bantu homeland to another, owing to circumstances. But this is a beginning. In this way the Bantu homeland is then set on the road to economic realization which it can only obtain after it has obtained political content. This ties in with what the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development said, i.e. that economic viability is not a pre-requisite for future political development. Economic development and realization content only come after that. That is all I said and I hope the hon. member will understand it.

Now I want to return to what the hon. member for Hillbrow said. He made a very strange speech this afternoon. He tried to explain his case with a great outpouring of words. In fact, he kiked up a dust cloud of words. I really could not discover what his criticism was aimed at. In the end it appeared as if he was in actual fact criticizing only the Physical Planning Act. Then he made the statement that industries were being established which are not economic. He made general statements, but did not mention one specific factory which had been established on an uneconomic basis. But I want to say that I am of the opinion that he is quite wrong. Can that hon. member show us where these uneconomic industrial development areas are? It is, after all, an accepted fact that what has already been done, is that the factory has been moved to where the labour is. Ach. that hon. member who is shaking his head understands nothing about this. If the labour from the Lebowa homeland had to be moved to Benoni, it would after all cost a great deal of money to establish the labour there, but it costs the same to move the factory thence. Only labour intensive factories are being moved. This is all it comprises. It is cheaper to establish a factory in a place like Pietersburg for example. Land is cheaper. Many other things are cheaper, but the ultimate economic costs for the country are the same. Hon. members on that side of the House must show us precisely where factories have been established on an uneconomic basis in the border areas. After all. an industrialist will not establish himself in an area where he cannot sell his products.

The hon. member for Hillbrow really did not say anything this afternoon, although he tried to state his case with a great outpouring of words. What happened to him is what happened to the United Party in this session. They came here with a great clamour. They came, to use his own words, with a massive optical illusion of progress. But what has happened now? Everything has exploded in their face. They came forward here with a great attack on the manpower shortage. They said that we were going to experience a recession. They said that there had been a decrease in investment in the manufacturing industry. But what happened then? When the quarterly report appeared, it became clear that there had been an upsurge in the economy and that there was no recession. [Interjections.] Of course it is true. The figures indicate it. The decrease in investment in the manufacturing industry was not attributable to the Physical Planning Act. They also quoted the opinion poll of the Bureau for Economic Affairs, which was not representative, as they themselves have admitted. The decrease in investments in the manufacturing industry is attributable to the shortage of capital and the high rates of interest. That is the only reason. This story also blew up in their faces. They then came forward with the manpower shortage and their labour policy attack, but this also exploded. The Financial Mail is a newspaper which is sympathetic to them, and not to us, and even in the Financial Mail of last week it was written: “We want the answers”. They are still asking that side of the House to say how the labour shortage will be solved according to their policy. The only party which has an alternative policy and which will be able to do this is the party of the hon. member for Houghton. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I do not intend to follow the hon. member for Pietersburg to a very great extent except to say that I noticed that some of the arguments he advanced were dealt with by a friend of his from Pietersburg in the Sunday newspapers.

Do you believe that?

I have as much right to believe that as I have to believe the hon. member’s arguments.

I want to deal with something different, the planning of group areas on a more general basis than I did when I first spoke. The planning of group areas is the task of a Solomon and I wonder whether we in this House are able to carry it out. The world is growing smaller and populations are growing bigger and bigger. Cities are thrusting skywards and the population explosion is a problem we all have to face. Figures reveal that in the 17th century there were 500 million people on earth. In 1900 there were 906 million people on earth and in 1960 there were 3 billion more. Pressures are being brought to bear on us as never before. Housing will have to be undertaken and renewal schemes are necessary and in doing this it is inevitable that we will have to uproot certain communities. We are going to have to uproot communities and resettle them elsewhere and few of us are going to escape. Many can in fact benefit if we plan the future correctly.

We on this side of the House are not opposed to group areas, but what we are opposed to is the methods followed in carrying out this policy. This is a highly complicated human problem and we suggest that the methods used so far with the planning of group areas and the implementation thereof are not justified. I had the experience when a Coloured man told me that he lived in a very select area of Cape Town and that he is still living there. When I asked him whether he was really settled he said that he cannot really feel settled in that area because it is so nice that he is quite sure that the Department will take him away from there. The hon. members on my left may mutter, but because of the planning of our group areas this is the feeling these people have, namely that we are inclined to take the best for ourselves. If this is so, I suggest that we are not planning as we should. We are not taking the people affected along with us. If we plan properly we could earn the goodwill of the people that we are forced to move in many instances.

I would like to ask the hon. the Minister how much investigation goes into the planning of group areas. How much investigation does the Group Areas Board do? For instance, does it plan the replacement of businesses in a new group area properly? We had the experience in certain towns in Natal that no fewer than 209 notices to vacatie existing businesses have been given, but that, at the same time, provision for only 174 alternative places of business had been made. I would suggest that this is bad planning. It is not only bad planning, but it is also unjust and inhuman. Another thing that causes concern is the delays by the Department of Planning in declaring group areas. The resultant delays with the freezing of certain areas bring about slum conditions in those areas, because the people affected cannot spend money on improving their properties. They dare not spend any money. As a result the value of the areas depreciates. Too often when a new area is planned people are moved into this area and nothing more is done than transplant existing slum conditions. The new areas planned in the last few years will show on examination that they are rapidly deteriorating into slums. This is happening because of the housing shortage. When an area is planned how much provision is made for housing in the new area? The Minister may say that this is the function of another Department. I would suggest that it is, in fact the function of the Group Areas Board, when they are planning and drawing lines and circles round different areas for different population groups. In 1969 in Durban alone, the number of people on the waiting list for Indian and Coloured housing was estimated at 123,000. There is a shortage of housing which has existed almost since the middle thirties. There are all sorts of factors and people may be blamed for the shortage of housing. It is gradually getting worse, because the Department seems anxious to move people before it has even caught up on the existing backlog. I would say to the Government that, before people are moved under the Group Areas Act, at least let us catch up. Let the local authorities catch up on the existing backlog. Unless they slow down in this tempo they have created, we will always have a shortage of housing. It is increasing by steadily mounting figures. While the shortage of housing becomes a steadily mounting figure, slum conditions are becoming aggravated.

Crime in these new resettlement areas is becoming a problem, because we have destroyed the community centres and community life that have existed for many generations. We have uprooted people and put them in new areas. As I have said before, this is bound to happen with the population explosion. In not all instances can we claim to have moved people who should have been moved. I would suggest that we must consider the method by which we are moving them and the overcrowding that is taking place. One could say that there is overcrowding in District 6 or in certain parts of Durban. That is perfectly true. But the very areas to which they have been moved, are overcrowded within weeks after they have moved in. As a result, crime is on the rise in these communities to an extent which it has not reached before. Drug addiction is something that is increasing in these communities, as well as prostitution. These are problems which we are creating, I suggest, by the improper planning in these new areas.

What, for instance, happens with regard to the distances that people will have to travel to work from the new areas to which they have been sent? In some instances, the distances are quite considerable. This, in turn, has an effect of increasing the amount of fares that people have to pay to go to work. It means that their budget is affected and that there is less food in that community. In fact, if one was to look at the figures for some of these areas, one would find that more people are living below the poverty datum line today in the new areas than they were in the previous area, in perhaps a worse house or in worse conditions. This is what we are doing by sending people a long way from their work points. We are not only doing this and taxing their capability, but we are sapping their energies just when we need them most in this country where we have a shortage of labour. We are sapping their energies, because they I have such long distances to travel to and from work.

What are these distances?

In many instances the distances are 20 miles. To the hon. member in his Cadillac or Mercedes 20 miles may mean nothing, but it means a lot to a person who has to catch a bus at 4 o’clock in the morning and pay 20 cents in each direction. This is not uncommon; it does happen. If the man is only earning something like a maximum of R50 or R60 per month, 40 cents a day is quite an amount. I am not making a political issue of this matter. I want to say to the hon. the Minister that proper planning can avoid this situation. Proper planning can create goodwill. But if the hon. member would like to make a political issue of it, I will certainly do so as well. I want to suggest to the hon. the Minister that this lack of proper planning has created and increased poverty among the lower classes. How much planning, for instance, is done by the Group Areas Board in providing schools and churches? Community life, instead of being resettled in these new areas, is becoming unsettled. This social disorganization is something that we are going to rue. As the crime rate increases, we are going to need more police to keep it under control. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I shall not follow up on what the hon. member, who has just resumed his seat, said in his speech. The hon. the Minister will probably reply to his arguments. Our Government has always thought big, but we could never have imagined that South Africa would develop to such an extent as it did. Great developments have taken place during the past decade in particular. In addition, the fact that we are a multi-national country is never kept in mind or noted. We have always regarded ourselves as a small country with a small population, and that we are subservient to other countries. It was never thought that South Africa would develop as it did in fact develop. However, this Government made provision for that development. For that reason a special Department for this purpose was established. This was necessary owing to the rapidly growing development of our country. An even more imperative reason for this was in fact the growth of our various population groups. According to Government policy there must be a Department to settle the various population groups and to undertake planning in that respect. As a result of the important work of this Department it is now possible to live in this country with confidence and satisfaction. Sir, if we take into account the particulars of the census survey which the Minister furnished this House with last week, we realize that he, with all his comprehensive activities, has performed a task of great magnitude for the future. Short-term planning costs this country dearly. It is not necessary to reproach any previous government, but if we were to neglect our duty, we would have to take the blame. For that reason we must thank the Prime Minister for this great step in the right direction which he has taken to ensure South Africa’s progress. The Department of Planning has already made good progress under the Ministership of the hon. Dr. De Wet. We are grateful for the important work which he has already performed. I also want to express our gratitude towards the former Secretary, Mr. Van Niekerk, who retired recently. We know that he made a major contribution in this connection. I also want to convey our congratulations to Dr. Rautenbach, who succeeded him. There is a major task awaiting him, but we who know him, are convinced that he is equal to it. As a person who has known the hon. the Minister of Planning for many years, I am convinced that he will make a great success of this portfolio. As a result of his importance, many eyes are turning to this Department. It will be necessary for the hon. the Minister to replan what was incorrectly planned in the past. It is possible that such replanning can take place at the expense of some other person. This has already happened in one of the towns in my constituency. I believe that the hon. the Minister will allow any replanning to take place with the greatest circumspection so that already settled people will not be prejudiced by this and people will be resettled with the least inconvenience.

Great development is taking place in my constituency. The surface area which is being developed there is perhaps the largest in the Republic. There is, inter alia, the development of the Orange River project at the confluence of the Vaal and Orange Rivers, above Prieska. According to surveys a surface area of approximately 30,000 morgen is being developed there, and in the Lower Orange River, an even larger area. The entire Northern Cape, with its iron ore, manganese, asbestos, copper and diamond mines, and at least eight different related minerals, such as tiger’s eye for example. are being mined. There are 16 varieties of tiger’s eye stones. These minerals are being mined and exported, but next year raw material will no longer be exported. The processing of these variations must also take place in the vicinity. Then, I should like to see thorough attention in this direction being given to places such as Kuruman, Sishen, Postmasburg, Upington, Griekwastad, Nie-kerkhoop, Groblershoop, Marydale, Prieska, Carnarvon, Kenhardt and Namaqualand. These areas have a wonderful capacity and potential which has to be developed. Real attention is necessary here. Now is the time to do so, not later. At Postmasburg and Prieska a large number of industrial areas are being established. A new town which is situated in my area is under construction near the mines. There are also expansions at Prieska. Provision has to be made for water, power, railway communications and roads. Since this region will probably have to carry through traffic from Cape town to Johannesburg as well, which will bring great alleviation for the already overloaded and heavy traffic on the old existing Beaufort-West-Kimberley route, a major and specific task in this respect will have to be performed by the hon. the Minister of Planning. With the great development of that area a new era has dawned for the northern and western Cape areas. The Government, the State, must utilize these opportunities to the full, and the Department of Planning must do its very best to develop this area to the benefit of the community in those parts which I mentioned.

Mr. Chairman, I am not going to follow up on what the hon. member for Prieska said in regard to his pleas for his particular area. The only remark I want to make in regard to the hon. member’s pleas, is that I noticed that nine speakers have already, during the course of the afternoon, used the first four or five minutes of their turns to speak to thank the former Minister of Planning and his Secretary for what they have done and to congratulate this Minister on his appointment as such. If a calculation were to be made of what the debates in this House costs the country per hour, then a stupendous amount of money is being spent just on the time taken up in thanking and congratulating the Minister. I do not want to allege with this that a person should not congratulate a new Minister. What I am in fact alleging is that it is not necessary for every member to spend so much time on it. In passing I also to express our gratitude towards the former Secretary; and welcome and express our appreciation of the present Secretary. [Interjections.]

We have been hearing repeatedly this afternoon about our multi-national country and the decentralization of industries, to which the United Party is allegedly so opposed. I want to put a direct question to any of the members on the opposite side of the House. When has any person on this side of the House made a plea against the decentralization of industries? In fact, what Government began with the decentralization of industries? A start was made with the decentralization of industries before this Government came into office. It was done because it is a sound system to prevent industries from becoming too concentrated.

True!

It is not only being done in the Transkei. Good Hope Textiles is there as a monument to the development under the previous Government, and not this Government. This is true for the simple reason, which has been repeatedly mentioned this afternoon, i.e. that where the labour, power and land is, is also the best place for the industry.

Hear, hear!

Does the hon. member want to bring the Bantu labour to the cities, or would be rather bring the industries to the bantu labour?

I was dealing with that. We have heard pleas to the effect that industries must be taken to where the labour is. But what is the Government’s policy? They move labour to the Bantu areas, and then follow up with the industries. This is the policy of this Government. They do not leave the labour where it is and establish the industries there. They move the labour away to the Bantu area and then follow up with the industries, and then they keep on talking about a multi-national country. They say that there are Bantu peoples, and that this is a multi-national country. There is a large Coloured population of 2 million, and if somebody wants to tell me that they are a nation on the basis of the fact they are all of the same origin and are orientated it would be a joke. A multi-national country without territory for the people, is nothing. A multi-national country with a white population and a Coloured population living together, while areas are being allocated to the Bantu, with the industries then having to be taken to one or the other, is nonsense. Nobody on this side of the House has ever objected to an industry being established in an area where decentralization is economic, and it is no use telling me, Sir, that we of the Eastern Cape are pleading for decentralization of industries as border area development. There is nowhere a more naturally geographic area where industries ought to be established than an area which lies like a strip, a corridor, between two Bantu reserves, which have always been there in our history, and where labour water and power is in abundant supply. Surely it speaks for itself that this is the best method of decentralization and we have never spoken against this. What we are talking about is to establish an industry in an area uneconomically because you move the labour thence and then you have to move the industries thence as well and you must take the Whites and move them to the borders of the Bantu area. That is what we are opposed to.

I should like to deal with another aspect and I hope I shall have the attention of the Minister in this regard. It relates to the establishment of more growth points for this great hinterland of ours, away from the cities and away from the areas where the industries are at present, a hinterland which is deteriorating owing to the fact that the towns are small, where the schools are declining because the childen are leaving, and the business firms are declining because the people are no longer buying there. Then I should like to make a plea to the Minister that he should with the greatest expedition give us an indication—not a master plan because it is not possible in terms of what the hon. member for Langlaagte advocated here to have a blue print or master plan for the entire country if one does not even know where some of the borders of the areas which you are talking about are. But it behoves us in this country at this stage, since there is tremendous industrial development and large concentrations, to get a maximum of growth points there where there is an abundant supply of labour, regardless of what kind it is—whether it is Coloured or Bantu labour—in those areas which are isolated from the present growth rates and the present concentrations, so that a tremendous effort can be made to give those areas growth points so that the population can remain there and so that they can be supplied with work for the large non-white population in that area. The aim should be to divide the country into areas and then to provide each area with a growth point. It will not be possible for us to make each little town a growth point, but if we did this in terms of areas which include a few towns or districts, then the efforts to develop such a growthpoint will be rewarded and people will have confidence in such a growth point. We must make certain that what has been happening to so many of our small towns for several years now does not happen; and the same applies to every province, so much so that the smaller towns are remaining stagnant or are deteriorating because it does not seem as if there is going to be a growth point there and it does not seem to be worthwhile anymore, the business undertakings cannot make a living there, and the entire social structure is deteriorating. I want to make a special appeal to the Minister and to the Department of Planning, which in fact is the only Department in this country at this stage which is able to undertake this planning to give attention to this matter and then to work out a regional plan for the entire country, and announce this as soon as possible. The hon. member for East London (City) made a plea here as far as the next Iscor or the next state undertaking is concerned, which in terms of the properties which have already been purchased and the large area which has already been purchased in East London, could give an indication of what the State and the Department intends doing with that, so that this continual speculation in this connection can come to an end, and so that the developers will know precisely where, when and how. I realize it is not always easy to say when, but if a person knows that there is future planning over a period for a certain area or for certain industries or for a group of industries, and that there is planning to the effect that they will go to certain areas, it would eliminate a great deal of unnecessary speculation, and it would give purpose to the planning. I want to make a special appeal in this connection, and I hope that the hon. the Minister will give this matter his serious attention.

If I understood the hon. member for East London (City) correctly, he is doing now what the United Party always does.

Nobody understood him.

He said that he was not opposed to the decentralization of industries; on the contrary, he wanted to intimate that it was they who started with this. I see it this way: He is preparing the way for himself—as with everything the Government began and achieved a success with, and which they initially opposed—so that they can come along afterwards and say it was their idea, and that they also, in respect of this matter foresee the same thing, which is that they will in future have to accept the policy of this Government as they have accepted many other things, and then say that it was in fact their idea.

May I ask a question? If this is the case, would the hon. member tell us who established the large industry at King William’s Town, Good Hope Textiles?

If the hon. member wants me to give him a lecture on the things the United Party has accepted. I shall do so after I have finished speaking. In the short while I have been here in this House, I saw that the United Party has experienced quite a number of shocks, but the two most important I experienced, was Klip River and secondly the statistics which the hon. the Minister disclosed. Sir, these were two lethal blows. Since then hon. members opposite have risen to their feet here and put forward irrelevant arguments to try to indicate that these statistics do not prove that the Government’s policy is succeeding. But they did not succeed in that. We must go into these statistics which the hon. the Minister submitted a little further, and then we will as this stage already be able to make a few important conclusions with great certainty.

In any specific area any increase in the population there is attributable to two things only. The one is the natural increase of the population and the second is migration. The total Bantu population of South Africa increased from 10.9 million to 14.9 million, or 36 per cent. This is the natural increase in the Bantu population in South Africa. If we now look at the natural increase in the Bantu population in the homelands, it should also be 36 per cent, because scientists in South Africa accept that the increase of Bantu in the homelands and in the white areas is the same. If the natural increase in the number of Bantu in the homelands was 36 per cent, then the increase in the number of Bantu in the homelands between 1960 and 1970, of 4.1 million to 5.6 million, was as a result of natural increase, but the actual number of Bantu in the homelands in 1970 was 1.3 million more than the increase for which the natural increase was responsible. If we look at the white areas and apply the same principle there, if we look at what the natural increase there was, we see that in 1960 the Bantu population totalled 6.8 million. If the natural increase had also been 36 per cent, then the Bantu population in the white area in 1970 should have totalled 9.3 million, but it is not that figure; it is 8 million. In other words, it is 1.3 million less than the actual figure. That 1.3 million can only be attributed to one factor, and that is the removal which took place.

Sir, this was not always the case; prior to 1960 the picture was just the opposite. Then Bantu in the white areas were growing more rapidly than the Bantu in the homelands. Sir, I want to read out to you what was said by Dr. Smit, the chief research worker of the Africa institute in the magazine Aardrykskunde. He said (translation)—

This was between 1951 and 1960—

This is what took place before 1960, but after 1960, we had this phenomenon that the populations of the homelands increased by an additional 1.3 million more than what the natural increase was, and this was as a result of the removal of Bantu from the white areas to the homelands.

Sir, I want to draw two conclusions from that. The first is that it is irrefutable proof that the Government’s policy of planning, of decentralizations and of separate development is succeeding. The second conclusion, for which these figures are irrefutable proof, is the following: At the beginning of this Session still, the United Party asked us: “What about the date, 1978” when the influx from the homelands is going to be less than the outflow from the white areas? Sir, these figures indicate that we have already reached that stage. In the year 1970 we have already advanced beyond 1978; what was envisaged to have taken place in 1978 is taking place now already.

Where?

It is true. But I want to make another point which is that these statistics which the Minister gave us of Bantu in the homelands, refer to Bantu who are permanently settled in the homelands. But we all know that from time to time there are Bantu who are temporarily absent from the homelands to come and work in the white areas. In this same study from which I have quoted, Dr. Smit estimated that 6 per cent of the total Bantu population was temporarily absent from the homelands and working in the white areas. If this is the case, and we add this to the 46 per cent who are at present permanently in the homelands, then more than half of the Bantu population are already in the homelands. Sir, the United Party have always tried to imply that the Government’s policy is a dream policy and that it would never succeed. I maintain that the statistics disclosed by this census indicate that the Government’s policy, even though we are still in the initial stage, is a tremendous success.

The hon. member for Bezuidenhout also admitted this. [Interjections.]

Order! I cannot allow two speeches at the same time. The hon. member may proceed.

Sir, these statistics which the hon. the Miniter submitted here indicate that the United Party were wrong when they told us that the policy of the Government was contrary to economic laws and that it would not succeed. The particulars indicate that the opposite is taking place, i.e. that the policy of the Government is succeeding.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Hillbrow asked where these people were working and where they were living. But we must take a look at what is happening in the homelands. That hon. member does not know that 112 towns have already been laid out or are in the process of being laid out in the homelands. He does not know that 66 of those towns are occupied, and that in 1968 already, 550,000 people had been accommodated in those towns. This was not previously the case. If the Government had not carried out its policy, those people would not have been established in the homelands; those people would still have been in the white areas. The hon. member does not know that some of these Bantu returned to their chiefs with whom they have ties and that they established their families in the area of the chief. Then they come out alone and work in the white area. That is where those people were established. That is where those people are working. Hon. members on that side of the House are not aware of the development which is taking place in the homelands. The sale of cattle in the homelands increased in a matter of 14 years from R66,000 to more than R3 million. The land which is being cultivated, which is under irrigation, fibre crops and forestry, not only doubled, but trebled and quadrupled. This created avenues of employment. This is where these people have been absorbed. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, as I now have to reply to this debate, I want to thank hon. members on both sides of this House most sincerely for the discussion we had here this afternoon. At times it was quite interesting to listen to what was being said. I believe that everyone who had something to say, whether or not I agree with what was said, raised that in this House because he had that on his heart and really believed in it. I accepted that in this spirit, and consequently I now want to thank everyone who participated in this debate. Furthermore, I should like to express my gratitude to everyone, on both sides of this House, who congratulated me on my appointment. To some extent I have to express my appreciation to the Opposition as well, because no particularly strong action was taken against me and because, so it would seem to me, they more or less tacitly adopted the attitude that in my first year they would not seek my blood so vehemently. I do not want to be unpleasant after the event, but even if they had done so, it would not really have made much difference to me.

Hon. members of this House will realize full well that I have been concerned with this Department only from July this year. For this reason there will be many questions and matters which can be raised and of which I shall have a vague idea but in which field I am not yet really an expert. Now I shall just say to hon. members as Mrs. Sannie van Niekerk said to me one evening at a meeting in Carnarvon. At that time she was the M.P. for Drakensberg and she was addressing a meeting at Carnarvon that evening. The people of Carnarvon had telephone me to invite me over to put questions to her. I want to add that at that time I had put questions to Messrs. Marais Steyn, Jack Connan, Dr. Louis Steenkamp and others, and that I had discovered at that time that if one had made a study with one’s pen in one’s hand of this Blue Book at home and knew it from back to front, one actually knew a little more than the average Member of Parliament who was addressing the meeting. I say this with respect to all hon. members. That evening I did not have much difficulty in putting questions to Mrs. Van Niekerk to which she could give no reply. When circumstances were at their most difficult for her, she asked me from the platform for my address. I replied that I could give her my address, but asked her why she wanted to have it. She said she would rather send me the replies to all the questions I had put to her. I should like to tell hon. members that if I do not reply fully to them this afternoon. I shall forward to them the replies to the questions they put to me.

Do you want my address?

I think I would prefer the hon. member’s telephone number! Before attempting to reply to the questions of hon. members, I should like to address, for reasons about which I have perfect clarity in my own mind, a few words of thanks and gratitude to my predecessor, the present Minister of Mines. I want to tell him to-day, if it means anything to him, that just as he rendered outstanding services to South Africa as ambassador in Great Britain, so, as far as my experience of a few months in this Department goes, he also served and managed this Department extremely well. Since he has to experience a great deal of criticism, I want to tell him that I am not ashamed, nor afraid of anyone whosoever, to give him this fine testimonial here to-day and to thank him.

On this occasion I also want to refer to Mr. Van Niekerk who retired as Secretary for Planning at the end of August and whom we are privileged to have with us to-day. Mr. Van Niekerk joined the Public Service on 10th February, 1930, in the Department of Justice. Early in his career he was promoted to magistrate and in this capacity he served at various places throughout the Republic. He received various promotions and reached the position of senior magistrate, departmental inspector and assistant-secretary for Justice. On 1st October, 1958, he was promoted to Secretary for the Roads Division of the Provincial Administration of the Cape and was subsequently appointed Secretary for the Education Department of the Cape Province.

On 11th September, 1963, he was promoted to Deputy Provincial Secretary, and in this capacity he served on a whole number of committees and advisory councils of the province. With the establishment of the Department of Planning on 14th August, 1964, Mr. Van Niekerk was appointed Secretary for the new Department, and for something more than six years up to the time of his retirement on 1st September, 1970, he occupied this post, which gives him a total period of 40 years and eight months in the service of the State.

During his career Mr. Van Niekerk distinguished himself through his efficiency, his dedication and his reliability, his loyalty towards the authorities, towards the Departments he served and towards his colleagues. He redered outstanding service to his country and in the advancement of the vehicle of State he contributed his full share for more than 40 years. I thank him, as the man who laid the foundations of the Department of Planning, for his exceptional work in giving this Department content and direction. I also want to thank him for what he meant to me personally during our short period of cooperation. On behalf of this House and on behalf of the Government I want to thank Mr. Van Niekerk and tell him that we wish him and Mrs. Van Niekerk only the best in the new era in their lives which they have just entered. I want to trust that they will still enjoy many years of happiness and rest together and that he will still render useful service to his country and his area as well. I thank you, Mr. Van Niekerk.

Mr. Chairman, I prefer to deal with the minor points first. The hon. member for Hillbrow said we should spend more on scientific research. I think we are doing our best to spend as much as possible. The amount appearing on the Estimates can probably be larger. When is one ever spending enough? This, however, is not the only amount South Africa is spending on scientific research. I just want to mention that in passing. We are spending this amount from the side of the Government, and this spending is being co-ordinated in a very effective way by the C.S.I.R. The C.S.I.R. will not allow of more than one subsidized project being in progress on the same subject at the same time.

Then there is the question of co-ordination. I do think sufficient co-ordination exists amongst the C.S.I.R., the Medical Research Council and the Atomic Energy Board. I might have misunderstood the hon. member, but I imagine the hon. member asked what the reason was for the separate bodies and whether this was not a division of power.

No.

The hon. member says he did not say that. However, the position is that the Opposition voted for the establishment of the Medical Research Council and the Atomic Energy Board as separate organizations for research. We all accept—this probably is something we shall have to see to— also in the Department of Planning as a whole, that one should always try to bring about the necessary co-ordination, not only amongst scientific research organizations, but also amongst the Government, the provinces and the local authorities, i.e. everyone concerned in research. In this regard I may say that I believe one should bring all interested bodies and organizations into this in order to achieve optimum planning. One should obtain their co-operation to such an extent that one shall be able, when overall planning has been completed, to entrust each planning organization that has a task within that broad plan with the execution of its specific function within that broad programme.

Other hon. members raised a few general matters. I think the member for Vasco was the one who dealt with economic matters. This hon. member made what was to me a very interesting contribution. It may be a pity that we cannot decide this question of what South Africa is capable of with its economic growth, to a larger extent and more clearly this afternoon. I shall perhaps come back to that at a later stage. I feel there is a great deal of loose talk in this regard. It is said that South Africa is capable of the same growth as Japan, that South Africa can grow much more rapidly and that we are deliberately retarding the rate of growth. In reality the Government has only one aspiration. It asks, “What is South Africa’s growth potential in terms of its manpower and its capital? What should we strive after? What is the course on which we should direct our endeavours?” On that course we shall experience the least problems. We shall have employment opportunities for all the people who enter the market. We shall have a constant and regular improvement in living standards. By following that course we shall avoid the disadvantages of a too high growth rate, such as, inflation balance of payments problems, shortages of capital, difficulties relating to the infra-structure, etc. The whole aim of defining the object of a growth rate is to grow within the limits of what one is capable of.

The hon. member for Langlaagte made a contribution which probably links up with those of other hon. members—I have in mind, for example, the hon. member for Musgrave —with regard to national planning. I want to tell the hon. member that we are giving proper and very serious attention to that. We are looking at South Africa as a whole. During the next few months in particular we are going to look at South Africa on a regional basis so as to see who the people are who are living in those regions and who ought to live there in the year 2000. We are also going to determine the natural resources of such a region, where they are lacking, where we have to supplement and in what way we are to plan and develop so that that region will be able to carry its share of the population of South Afrca on the road ahead. I should like to give this House the assurance that we are giving very serious attention to this matter.

Other hon. members dealt with the problems of their areas. The hon. member for Namaqualand, for example, spoke specifically of the needs of Namaqualand. The hon. member for Christiana also dealt with his region. The hon. member for Prieska mentioned the region in his constituency which is being developed energetically at the moment. The hon. members for Mossel Bay and Winburg and other hon. members also dealt with aspects in their own constituencies. We shall peruse their Hansard reports with great care and give the necessary attention to planning in those growth points and points of development. The hon. member for Mossel Bay mentioned a matter to which I should like to refer in passing. It affects our entire idea of decentralization. In the South-Western Districts we have already designated special decentralization points in which we want to encourage certain development and particularly industrial development. For example, such a point of development has been designated at George. An industrialist can obtain border area benefits in George, provided he concentrates on Coloured labour there. At one stage such concessions were granted there also in respect of unemployed Whites.

I now want to come to specific aspects raised by hon. members. The hon. member for Pietersburg spoke of exemption in respect of the 30-mile region. I think this matter is already receiving attention. The hon. members for East London (North) and for East London (City) mentioned the question of a fourth Iscor. Hon. members will understand that it is a fact when I say that the Government has not yet given any attention at all to something like this. It is in fact true that land has been purchased at East London, but this has been done so as to ensure that we shall have land available if and when development is proceeded to in that area. Hon. members told me, and I accept that this is so, that there were rumours that such development would possibly take place at Saldanha Bay, because of the fact that an export harbour was going to be constructed there. I cannot inform them in this regard. I can just tell them that the Government has not yet given its attention to this at all. I want to hope and trust that any speculation in this connection will not be taken any further. The country cannot expect of the Government now to say what it is going to plan further ahead in 15 years’ time, or at whatever time.

†The hon. member for Mooi River spoke about the Coloured group area, Woodlands, near Pietermaritzburg. The position is that the Group Areas Board has been conducting an investigation in regard to another area adjoining Woodlands. As far as I am aware, this new area is situated away from Woodlands. The fact of the matter is that the Group Areas Board has not yet reached any decision regarding this matter, nor has it made any recommendation to me. I may just point out to the hon. member that the Woodlands group area for Coloured people is already full. The need for additional group area facilities in that area, and for additional housing, is not at this stage so much for Coloured people from the rest of that area, as for the people of Woodlands themselves. These people are becoming congested and they must have a place where they can expand, with regard to housing. Another question the hon. member asked, was whether we consider Pietermaritzburg as a central town for the purposes of bringing together the Coloured people of that area. This is a matter which is under consideration and it will be handled in the same way as it was handled in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. A departmental committee has gone into the matter and I can tell the hon. member that I have received the report. It is just possible that this committee may recommend that in Natal we should select a few towns which can be regional towns for the Coloured people. I do not know what the position is. I have read through the report very qucikly, but I have not studied it. However, I have the same situation in my constituency and I think we can all appreciate that in a town where there are 10, 12 or 15 Coloured families, they may be essential there, as is the case in a town in my constituency, Indwe, where they are all tradesmen or artisans, but they can never form a community. Therefore we can never accommodate them there on a permanent basis, but perhaps only on a temporary basis, with regard to which I am sympathetic. To establish a real community and to provide all the facilities which the community requires, one must select a few regional towns, where one can provide these community complexes. That may be a decision with regard to Pietermaritzburg. I do not know. I do hope to consider this report and to take the matter to the Cabinet, perhaps during the recess. I sincerely hope so.

What about the three Chinese families in Kimberley? [Interjections.]

The hon. member must not raise such important matters by interjection.

I still owe the hon. member for Port Natal an answer with regard to who the other European was. I have investigated the matter, but Mr. Stahlhut only made representations on behalf of himself. The part of my reply, where I stated that it was on behalf of himself and another white person, was in a certain sense a false reading of the telex which we received from Pretoria. Another white person did appear before the Group Areas Board, but there were quite a number of other people who were not mentioned in my reply. For instance, there were 31 Indian owners who made representations and also about five Indian institutions. My reply did not cover everybody. But the person to whom I referred, was a certain Mr. Pienaar, who is the chairman of the Valuation Committee of Ladysmith. Actually, he appeared before the board as a witness.

He appeared as his own witness?

No, he was summoned by the advocate, Mr. Pretorius. My reply referred to this Mr. Pienaar, who only appeared as a witness.

Then, the hon. member referred to the investigation by my two hon. colleagues with regard to the Forbes Street area in Ladysmith. The position is that, after an area has been proclaimed a group area, the Minister of Planning disappears from the scene and the Minister of Community Development takes over. That was what happened at Ladysmith. After it had been proclaimed, it became a matter for the Minister of Community Development. When a deproclamation was considered, surely the Minister of Community Development, who was then the Minister handling the case, had quite a big say in the matter. There is nothing extraordinary about this. It is certainly very usual and it is standing practice that in these matters, where a change takes place, the two Ministers of Planning and of Community Development, who both have a very keen interest in that matter, together conduct any investigations which the Cabinet may decide.

In the Minister’s reply he said that both the Ministers of Planning and of Community Development visited the area; the Minister of Community Development said he had nothing to do with deproclamation.

No, when the deproclamation is actually made and gazetted, it is done by the Minister of Planning. When an area is proclaimed and deproclaimed, then surely it is not a matter which one can go over lightly. The two Ministers are directly concerned with the matter. Of all the Ministers they are most concerned with the matter, and it is only natural that they should go there together to investigate and perhaps to make a report.

In this connection I might just as well refer to what the hon. member for Houghton asked me. She asked me whether I would consider trying to make these deproclamations as few as possible. Personally, I am prepared to tell her that I will do my best and only for very good reasons will I be prepared to do it. Of course the hon. member must realize that such cases will arise. It will be just too wonderful, if you have planned and your plans have gone through the machinery of the Group Areas Board, that there will nver be any situation where you will have to change them. But I will say that I will not readily do so. I have already told the Chairman of the Group Areas Board that if he wants to deproclaim and wants to put new proposals before me, it must be for very good reasons. That is the only way of giving people security. I want to say, however, that I do not want to be blamed if I have to do it in future because circumstances change and it might be necessary in some cases.

*I shall have to make haste. I just want to tell the hon. member for East London (City) this. He said the decentralization of industries should just not take place on an uneconomic basis but immediately afterwards he spoke of the decline of the rural areas. I cannot agree with him more about the rural areas. I myself come from a small town, and the rural areas are declining because the economic basis in those areas has changed and whatever we want to do, there is not much we can do about it. But I have sympathy with the rural areas. If one wants to decentralize, one cannot do so to all the towns. Suppose, however, one wanted to decentralize to Middelburg, the hometown of the hon. member, would that be for economic reasons? Who could decentralize to Middelburg for economic reasons? I am putting this question to the enire Opposition. Apart from other matters to which I shall come back, they, too, say that they are in favour of decentralization as long as it is not decentralization on ideological grounds. Now please! We are not that bad. We are in favour of decentralization on economic grounds.

What is the argument?

I am not arguing; I am simply asking what decentralization there can be to Middelburg? What decentralization to De Aar is economic to-day? We have designated De Aar as a growth point in the rural areas.

Then why did you designate it as a growth point?

To keep the Coloureds in the rural areas, because they were flocking to the Western Cape like ants.

May I ask a question? I did not mention Middelburg but seeing that the Minister mentioned it is as an example, is it not economic as that is an area with good rail and road links, one which has the potential water and one in which a large Coloured population is living for whom a refuge has not yet been found?

That entire infra-structure and that labour will not make the industrialist go to that area before we have created the right climate there. We must work hard to create that climate. At the moment we are being criticized about Rosslyn, which is situated near Pretoria, but do you know, Sir, how difficult it was to get people to go to Rosslyn? We have to fight and make propaganda, and if hon. members on the opposite side want to be honest they will admit how they have been opposing the idea since 1961, and in the end we achieved success. Hon. members opposite point out that Rosslyn is situated near Preoria. It is in fact situated near Pretoria, but those people are at least not sitting in the large Bantu townships of Johannesburg; they are in a new Bantu area. Hammanskraal is also a Bantu homeland and hon. members cannot belittle that. After we had achieved success with Rosslyn, we went further.

To Brits.

At the moment we are at Brits; we are also going to Rustenburg and from Rustenburg we are going to Delareyville and to those parts, and in that way we shall create sufficient growth points for the Tswana homeland.

What is going on in Brits?

A brilliant success.

Sir, one must take incentive measures; one must encourage the industrialists to go to the border areas; one almost has to say to him: “I shall pay you to go there.” One must give him benefits, and if that does not help one must use the whip a little. Or, let me rather put it in this way: If that does not help, one must impose restrictions.

Sir, I want to continue. As far as the rural areas are concerned, I want to give the assurance that we are very sympathetic in our attitude. Although this cannot be done at every town in the country we shall, where possible, create places in the rural areas, and I should liike to give this assurance here: Decentralization is not to the Bantu areas only. Decentralization is a policy which this Government has accepted for our country as a whole, for the white heartland, for the whole of South Africa, but also for the Bantu homelands and the border areas of the Bantu homelands. I just want to say to hon. members what the hon. the Minister of Finance once said here four years ago: “A rose by any other name smells just as sweet.”

Who is the rose?

I want to tell hon. members opposite that they should think this matter over once again. They are wrong in their basic approach to this matter.

Sir, I shall address written replies to hon. members who raised minor points here to which I have not yet replied. Hon. members should now please grant me the opportunity to say a few words about the census.

What about the whip?

I shall come to that, but the hon. member should forget the word “whip”; I withdraw it. I substituted the word “restrictions” for it.

He will not withdraw it; he will exploit it.

I do not want to create any misunderstanding. But I do want to say that this is a term which is used over the whole world. My hon. friend over there knows that when we were in London we heard a lot about the carrot and the whip, and one hears a lot about it in South Africa too. However, I will come back to that.

*Sir, during the past months people throughout South Africa have often asked when we would receive the population figures. South Africa was anxious to have these figures. Some people awaited the figures in bad faith because they said the figures would prove that the policy of this Government was irrevocably heading for failure. They eagerly awaited those figures. Others again awaited those figures with heavy hearts and people started writing and speculating about those figures. After we had been looking forward to those figures for such a long time I had the privilege last Friday afternoon to make the first announcement in this regard. Hon. members on my side of this House were very pleased to hear those figures, and I had thought that the United Party would at least also be pleased to hear the figures. I have been sitting here to-day listening to hon. members on the opposite side and not one of them said they were grateful to hear the figures and that the position could have been worse. They belittled our attempts.

[Inaudible.]

That hon. member and I will probably often cross swords here in future, and I hope he is looking forward to that as much as I am. But what did he say of the census? He said, “It is a damp squib; it is a political hoax; statistics can prove anything.” Sir, he belittled all the finer aspects of my statement, and he took pleasure in all the less favourable aspects and reproached the Government. Sir, the Opposition must make no mistake; we are all in the same boat. If something were to happen to the boat of South Africa they must not think that only the Nats would suffer as a result. Sir, for the sake of the record I should like to ask the hon. member for East London (City) whether I heard him correctly; I should like him to tell me that he had not said it, but this is what we on this side heard. Did the hon. member for East London (City), while the hon. member was speaking of the figures, say, “Do you believe that tripe?”

Yes, he said. [Interjections.]

That is a further sign of the attitude of the Opposition to these figures.

It is a disgrace.

Sir, the hon. member for Houghton has also cast suspicion on these figures. From her point of view one can understand that. In this connection she tried to make a point which is not worthy of her; she talked about Bantu who were illegally in the towns, who hid during the night and who were not counted.

Thousands.

Even if there were 200 or 300 or 500, what difference would that make percentagewise when we are dealing here with 14 million people?

It could be half a million.

The hon. member must concede that there she had a very bad point. It is not a point that is really worth very much.

Is the hon. the Minister not aware of the fact that there are half a million arrests a year under the pass laws?

That has nothing to do with it.

That is just a lot of propaganda.

I just want to say, Sir, that the people were counted wherever they were. The hon. member for Hillbrow wanted to cast a shadow on the counting, and he made a major point out of the word “enumerate”, but I want to tell him that the people were counted wherever they were. The contract workers who are here in the Western Cape, were all counted here in the Western Cape. All the foreign Bantu who are in the mines, in the compounds, in South Africa, were counted, and the total number of foreign Bantu who are here in South Africa, must be subtracted from this number of 14.8 million, or whatever the number may be.

How many?

No, we cannot say how many there are. At a later stage a very good calculation will be made which will be published, but it will merely remain a calculation. They may number 600,000; they may number 500,000; I do not think that there are more than 800,000, but they were also counted and included in this number.

Now I come to the areas. In this regard hon. members said that we were comparing areas which could not be compared with one another, i.e. the Bantu homelands of 1970 and the Bantu areas of 1960. Sir, the reason why the hon. the Prime Minister could not make this announcement himself, was that we wanted to make quite sure that the areas which we were comparing with one another, were comparable. We now have Bantu homelands for the first time, and hon. members are welcome to ask where the borders of these homelands are, but it is childish to do so. We had the clear boundary-lines of the present Bantu homelands as they are to-day, and we had the borders of the old Bantu areas, the Trust lands, the scheduled land, the church lands, etc. There are five different groups. We changed the borders of those areas in such a way that if it were possible to place them one on top of the other, they would fit exactly on top of one another. They have now been subdivided into electoral districts. In 1960 they were also subdivided into electoral districts in this way. The 1970 area was loaded with the electoral districts which were enumerated in 1960. Then we had two absolutely similar areas, with the figures of 1960 in the one and the figures of 1970 in the other. These are the figures which were furnished in this statement. Therefore, these are absolutely comparable figures. I cannot stress the quality of this census sufficiently. It is a wonderful census. It is a census of high quality. In its planning South Africa may as well take the fullest notice of this census and everything that is published subsequent to this census. Then I told the Secretary that we had to keep the areas as they were: the new homelands of 1970 with their borders and the old Bantu areas of 1960 with their borders. Then we took the 1970 figures and put them into the 1970 areas. In the same way we also put the 1970 figures into the 1960 areas. What was the difference between the two?—19,000. I want to repeat that these figures were comparable. Hon. members are now saying that Mdantsane and another township near another city accounted for the difference. I want to state most positively to-day that this is not the case. Whenever the chairman of the United Party’s planning group, or any other member of the United Party, visits Johannesburg, he is free to arrange an appointment with the Secretary for Statistics in order to make sure of the absolute reliability of the comparison of these figures.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask the hon. the Minister a question? Is it not true that people were moved from Duncanville, in the so-called white area, to Mdantsane, which is now considered to be a reserve area?

Mdantsane is a homeland now. In 1960 there was …

Nothing.

Well, I do not know how many there were, but there was an electoral district. That electorial district was enumerated. But the argument advanced by those hon. members does not hold any water, because we loaded the two different areas with 1970 data and then obtained the same result.

But what difference does it make to the real facts if it is moved that way?

No, that is a different matter. It is a matter of policy. We are discussing the census here to-day.

You are conjuring with figures.

Now the hon. member says that we are conjuring with figures. We are not trying to conjure with figures. We are furnishing the facts as we have them in South Africa. All that hon. members are now trying to tell me, is that they do not accept that Bantu homelands are being established close to major cities. I want to repeat that we cannot get away from the fact that these are wonderful figures. A certain percentage may be allowed for errors. Hon. members on that side of the House may allow a certain percentage for all sorts of factors. But they cannot get away from the fact that these figures indicate that there was a movement of Bantu from the white areas to the Bantu homelands. If this process is continued, we shall reach a stage where there will be more Bantu in the Bantu homelands than there are in the white areas. This will already be an achievement. It will be something about which we will be very pleased, and I hope that the Opposition will be pleased along with us when that day arrives. Then we shall have reached 1978. It has been said that the curve reflecting the increase will rise, then level out, after which it will show a downward trend. I do not want to dwell on this matter, but we see to-day that these things are becoming practicable.

But Die Burger said that we might as well bury that date.

When we deal with a matter according to its merits and corner the Opposition, it is of no avail to the Opposition to try to run away from it and to refer to something else. We are dealing with this point now, and the hon. member cannot get away with something which Die Burger said. He should argue this point with me now so that we may settle the matter.

Now I should very much like to deal with our policy of decentralization. Hon. members opposite made a few statements which, to my mind, are not correct. The hon. member for Newton Park said that we wanted to cut the throat of that area near East London. Perhaps he did not quite mean it that way. The hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central) said that we wanted to kill the areas in his neighbourhood. The hon. member for Hillbrow said that at present there was no justification in South Africa for industrial decentralization.

Oh no …!

The hon. member did say so. He said that we were referring to major complexes and congestion, but that we were not nearly comparable with overseas complexes. The hon. member also said that at present we had not yet reached the stage where we could justify industrial decentralization. The impression was created here that we were indifferent to the economy of South Africa. I want to be brief, for the Leader of the House told me to be brief, but just for the sake of the record I want to say that the National Government has been looking after the economy of South Africa. In 1948 and in 1961 and at every other critical point we looked after the economy of South Africa and developed it. We, more so than any other group of people, knew how we were all alone in the world. We knew that we had to look after our defence. We knew that we had to make provision for money for our domestic problems. This is not a matter of our discovering it now, and it does not mean that we are still going to do it. We provided for our defence and we saw to it that there was money in the Treasury for carrying into effect South Africa’s infra-structure and decentralization, and for solving the many other problems facing South Africa. We have a good record, and as the National Government looked after the economic growth and development of South Africa in the past, so we shall also look after these things in the future. Hon. members are so apt to create the impression in this House that this Government is indifferent to industrial development in South Africa, but, surely, this is not the case. Who is the father of the industrial concept in South Africa? It is the National Party. [Interjections.]

Other people may also have made their contributions, but the concept springs from the golden principle of “South Africa first”. This is the basis of our industrial concept. Where does the protection of our industries come from? It comes from the National Government which said that we should protect our industries. I do not wish to be unfriendly now, but when other people said “Buy British” it was the National Government which said that we should protect our own industries. That was a phase in our development. Who established Iscor and Sasol? I mention these matters in passing in order to say that the National Government can or will never be indifferent to the industrial growth and development of South Africa. To-day I repeat the assurance that we shall not do this.

What about the whip?

I am coming to that. Furthermore, the impression is also being created that we want to strangle to death and strip the existing develped parts of South Africa. I want to repeat to-night that nothing is further removed from the truth. After all, it is South Africa as a whole, and especially its developed parts, which provided us with the tempo and the momentum for the growth and development which we have. These areas will have to go on making their contributions for a long time to come. If, for the sake of argument, we only want to attain a growth rate of 5½ per cent, or whatever it may be, these developing areas will for a long time to come still be unable to contribute their full share on a pro rata basis, and we shall still be dependent on our existing developing areas for making that contribution. Surely, it would be foolish to cause these parts to come to a standstill. I shall not be agreeable to that. Any impression to this effect—i.e. that this is our objective—which is being created for the benefit of the country, is quite wrong. We shall not do it.

But what do we want to do then? We say that South Africa has to grow. I am not going to talk about our growth achievements now; we can do so in a financial debate. But they are brilliant and good enough. Growth constitutes one of the legs of our policy and of our objectives. But now we say that we should have balanced growth. We are not the only people to say so. Before we adjourn, I just want to read something to hon. members. I want to refer to Mr. Steven Mulholland, who wrote in the Business Times of the Sunday Times. He said—

He was writing from New York. He went on to say—

And so I could continue. The last paragraph reads as follows—

That is what this man has to say. The South African Agricultural Union wrote a letter to us in which they said, “Please, people, the policy of decentralization is now being attacked everywhere. We want to ask you as the Government not to give way. Proceed with the policy of decentralization.” I said that one of the legs of our policy was that South Africa had to grow. Our metropolitan areas should also continue to grow; and so they will, for they have it in them to do so. There is no need for one to encourage them. But we want decentralized growth. Now, what is the basis on which we want to have decentralized growth? It is in the industrial sphere. Now we come to the encouragement. This is how we selected these growth points throughout South Africa. We have achieved a great deal of success by these means. In our border areas alone —I am not referring now to other points in the white areas—we have, as hon. members know, created 100,000 new opportunities for employment since 1961.

Ten years.

Yes, Sir, in ten years’ time. In casting one’s mind back, one finds that during the first year not even half a yard of branchline was constructed. During that year nothing happened. During the second year, too, very little happened, and the same applies to the third year. But the development only gained momentum at a later stage. It was only towards the end that we started achieving success. It is a wonderful achievement. Do hon. members know that in the last year we approved 35,000 posts? If this should continue, I do not know how astonished the hon. members opposite will eventually be at the success of our policy.

Integration at another place.

No, hon. members should discuss that on other Votes. Now the hon. member says “integration at another place”. If the Bantu are living in their own homelands with their own people, and have to travel 10 or 20 miles to the places where they work, is it not better and preferable to have a black township there than to have one close to the metropolitan area?

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

Evening Sitting

Mr. Chairman, when we adjourned, I was discussing the encouragement aspect of our decentralization policy. I do not want to discuss this at any great length, and it is a pity that the hon. member for East London (City) is not here, but I just want to say that to me East London has always been a fine example of what we have achieved in this field. This is probably because I know the city. I often visit that area, and I can tell hon. members that there was a time when East London was dead. Sir, I can mention the names of the factories in question, and I can tell you that the two or three factories which were there, also wanted to move to Johannesburg. They wanted to go where the money, the people and the markets were. At that stage we started with this policy of ours. We were criticized, but we even built a township. I could tell hon. members the whole story of Cyril Lord, etc. It is without any fear of contradiction whatsoever that I can say that there is progress in East London to-day. The old West Bank part of the city has already been built up. The new industrial sites have already been taken up. Expansion is taking place in the direction of Berlin. By means of this aspect of our decentralization policy, namely the encouragement aspect, we have found that industrialists have been going to East London. We have succeeded in making them interested in East London, and to-day we see the economic activity which is taking place there. Let this be a white city. What does it matter? The argument which hon. members are so fond of using, is that we have merely transferred the industrialists from one place to another. However, they should bear in mind that we have succeeded in distributing the industries all over the country in a balanced manner. From-their own homelands the labourers now come to work in the white cities and towns on a scattered basis. We select the growth points. We develop them. We lend money to the local authorities for dams, etc. We are, at least, doing something. After that, when it comes to the financial aspects, we implement our encouragement measures, and we are doing our best. So much for the encouragement aspect of the policy.

Now we come to the restrictive part of the policy. It is this very part of the policy to which the greatest objections are being raised. It is embodied in section 3 of the Physical Planning Act. It is true that this is a restrictive measure. It is the policy of this Government to implement it. Week before last we once again said, through the mouth of the Prime Minister, that we would stand by that policy. However, it is not quite the bogey and the bugbear which it is made out to be. I have the figures here which prove that we do not have such a strangle-hold on the people. There are certain guiding lines, with which I cannot deal now. We have regard to the strategic nature of industries, whether they are location-oriented, and whether there are extremely large investments. We even have regard to normal expansion. Regard is also being had to cases where industrialists have established factories on a planned long-term basis. Regard is also being had to the labour ratio, so as to see whether an industry is labour-intensive. Many other aspects are considered, such as the amount of water which is consumed. Here in the Cape, even in Port Elizabeth, regard is had to the availability of Coloured labour. I really want to say that this restrictive measure is very valuable. To be more specific, we are afforded the opportunity to speak to the industrialists. Hon. members cannot minimize this. To-night I want to give this testimonial in respect of the industrialists and say that they are much more amenable to the idea of industrial decentralization than the country is led to believe. It is in fact the Opposition which is trying to create that impression. The industrialists are much more amenable to this idea than the Opposition is. I want to tell the Opposition to-night—and I am saying this with good intentions—that they are even out of touch with the industrialists. I want to thank the industrialists to-night for the measure of co-operation which we have obtained from them so far. I want to tell the industrialists that, if this portfolio remains my responsibility, I am looking forward to achieving much greater co-operation and success with them along this course.

Those matters are dealt with by the Rieckert Commission.

Quite correct. I am defending them all the way. I am pleased that the hon. member reminded me of them. It is true that industrial investment has shown a downward trend. This is not a matter to which we who are at the helm, can adopt an attitude of indifference. It showed a downward trend in 1968. It also showed a downward trend in 1969. I can give the hon. member more than adequate reasons for that. The hon. member knows or ought to know that in the three years prior to 1967 we had a 100 per cent increase in respect of industrial investment in South Africa. When one has such a massive industrial investment as we had in 1964, 1965 and 1966—a 120 per cent increase in three years’ time—then, surely, one must have surplus capacity. It is, therefore, the most natural thing in the world that there was a decrease of 16 per cent in 1968 and a further decrease of 11 per cent in 1969. In spite of that the physical production increased by more than 10 per cent. Let us take the opinion poll which the hon. member has with him and from which he is so fond of quoting. In that publication the people who took the opinion poll, said that they were astonished at there still being so much surplus capacity in industry in South Africa. Therefore, this does not astonish me. The fact of the matter is that it is true and that it is something to which we cannot adopt an attitude of indifference.

There are other reasons as well. All the blame is now being laid on the Physical Planning Act. This is not fair either. There is the other reason, namely skilled labour. In the opinion poll it was said that 97 per cent had said that skilled labour was a bottleneck. Ninety-seven per cent did not say that the Physical Planning Act was a bottleneck. Only 60 per cent said that the Physical Planning Act was a bottleneck. Almost 100 per cent said that skilled labour was a bottleneck. Now, however, all the blame is being laid on the Physical Planning Act. Surely, this is neither right, fair nor logical. Then there are, in addition, the bottlenecks of capital, high interest rates, financial climate, etc. I shall not go into those matters. I do not wish to detain the Committee much longer. The fact of the matter is that we do have this downward trend in industrial investment. However, the Government is not indifferent to it, and least of all the Minister of Finance. At the instance of the Minister of Finance the Rieckert Commission, amongst others, was appointed to see what bottlenecks there were amongst the industrialists in respect of our decentralization policy and also in respect of section 3. Please, do not make the mistake of stating in the newspapers that there is uncertainty in this regard. We said that we were going to use section 3 as an instrument for counteracting the process whereby our white cities are being swamped by Blacks. In doing this we have no intention of tripping up our economy. However, it is our unshakeable intention to achieve our objectives, which I set out to the Committee tonight before the supper adjournment.

Before proceeding, I just want to know where the United Party really stands at the moment. This is something which the United Party should tell us. I have here the booklet which was published by the United Party and in which it is stated that it will not tell the industrialist where he is to establish his factory. The industrialist must establish his factory where the business prospects are brightest. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition said this year “that the industrialists can have all the labour they want, where they want it and when they want it”. Here we have the hon. member for Hillbrow who said that we were driving along with the brakes applied half-way; in other words, release the brakes. I could now, if I had the time, mention the brakes, one after the other, which he said we should release. Is that what the United Party stands for? Should there be no brakes? All they ask for, is that the developed parts should develop further, and they will see to it that they obtain the labour. We say no, this is not a policy which we can accept. At the moment I do not have the time to elaborate on this matter, but this is not a policy which South Africa can accept. It will possibly be a policy, as the hon. the Leader of the Opposition said, which may ensure us the highest growth rate in the world, if we released all the brakes and removed all the restrictions, and I may as well mention them. There are the Bantu Building Workers Act and all the job reservation laws and all the traditional job reservation in South Africa. If one released all these brakes and if one, as I think the hon. the Leader of the Opposition said, got an additional 100,000 immigrants a year, this would be possible. But the dilemma of the Opposition is that economically they want to do certain things, but politically they dare not do them. That is why they are blowing hot and cold; that is why they are talking through the mouth of the hon. member for Hillbrow on the one hand, and, on the other hand, through the mouth of the hon. member for Newton Park, the economic mouth and the political mouth. This is their dilemma, which was so beautifully illustrated by the hon. member for South Coast. I am not politicizing now, but this is true. For that reason it is my conclusion that as far as the Department of Planning is concerned, we are also making mistakes and will make more mistakes in future. But our objectives are clear, i.e. to develop South Africa and to allow it to grow in the economic sphere, but also to allow South Africa to have balanced development and growth for the benefit of the whole country and of all its people.

Votes put and agreed to.

Revenue Vote No. 49.—“Coloured Relations and Rehoboth Affairs”, R72,990,000. Loan Vote G.—“Coloured Relations and Rhoboth Affairs”, R1,600,000, and S.W.A. Vote No. 27. —“Coloured Relations and Rehoboth Affairs”, R5,223,000:

Mr. Chairman, may I have the privilege of the half-hour? I want to say immediately that I do not intend using the full half-hour. The hon. the Minister, as I said on a previous occasion, has now accepted this portfolio and we are all prepared to accept that he has an extremly difficult task which will be resting on his shoulders in the next year or two. We told him on a previous occasion that this difficult matter would be put to the test in the course of time to see whether he has the necessary insight to deal with it. Therefore, Sir, you will find that we on this side of the House will not be expecting too much of the hon. the Minister this evening, because he rightly said on the previous Vote that this was the first time he was dealing with it, and this applies to Coloured Relations as well. Therefore the hon. the Minister will understand if we do not, as would normally have been the case, call the Minister to account fully on this occasion.

However, I nevertheless want to tell the hon. the Minister that we expect of him to handle this extremely delicate position which we have in South Africa of dealing with 2 million Coloureds, and to deal with those Coloured relations within the framework of certain principles. One of the first principles which we shall expect the hon. the Minister to implement is to place the relations between the Whites and the Coloured community on the firmest possible basis. I think it is also correct if one says that it is a cause of concern, not only to us on this side of the House, but I think to all right-minded South Africans, that there are so many Coloureds who are not at all prepared to accept the good intentions of the Whites in South Africa. I do not want to go into the history of this. The hon. the Minister knows the history as well as I do, i.e. why this situation has developed and why everything which is done in the name of the Whites to-day is held against the Whites by the Coloureds, and is held against them by so many Coloureds. Only recently I again read in the Press that when an important test match was played in Port Elizabeth a mirror was directed onto Ian McCallum from the nonwhite section of the crowd while he was taking a most important kick at the posts. It is not known whether this was done by a Coloured person or not, but this is not the only example. One can go to any important match between South Africa and any international team today and What will one find? One will find an attitude among the Coloured people as well as many other non-Whites, which I think ought to cause great anxiety to any white person in South Africa.

I do not want to suggest that the Whites alone are responsible for this situation. I believe that the Coloured people too should to a large extent reappraise their attitude to this type of thing. But the fact remains that this type of thing happens, and therefore I am telling the hon. the Minister that one of the principles according to which he will have to act is to ensure sound relations between us and the Coloured people, and that it is a source of anxiety to us that there are so many Coloureds who have no realization of the good intentions of the Whites in this country.

Secondly, we want to tell the hon. the Minister that he will have to try to restrict to a minimum certain pinpricks which exist between the Whites and the Coloureds. I want to refer the Minister not to what is being said by the Coloureds who are against the Government, but to what is being said by the leaders of the Federal Coloured People’s Party. I want to refer him to a speech made by Mr. Tom Swartz, in which he said the following, accordin to Die Burger of 27th July this year. The heading reads as follows: “Apartheid: Coloureds hate this word, says Swartz”. Then he said the following (translation)—

He went on to say—

He was referring to his own party. Sir, in the light of the historical background to this and in the light of what is still being done to-day. I say that the pinpricks between us and the Coloureds have to be removed if we expect to have sound race relations. In addition, I want to refer the hon. the Minister to a congress of the Federal Coloured People’s Party which was held recently, as reported in Die Burger of Monday, 29th June. Here one reads the following (translation)—

In the same report we read—

Sir, I mention these as examples of pinpricks between the Whites and the coloured groups in South Africa. I think the other principle in terms of which the hon. the Minister will have to act is that discrimination between Whites and Coloureds must not be over-emphasized all the time. I also want to refer to a speech which the hon. member for Moorreesburg recently made at Dwarskersbos, as reported in Die Burger of 12th September this year. There the hon. member made it very clear that one of the motives of this Government was to get away from colour discrimination in South Africa. As far as the Coloured group in South Africa is concerned, Sir, I do not think this question should be emphasized too much. I think tht next principle which the hon. the Minister will have to bear in mind is that we must grant the Coloureds a place in the South African sun so that they may feel that they form part of the whole and, above all, that the role played by them is appreciated and that the necessary recognition will be given to it. Sir, we are inclined to have a sentimental approach towards the 2 million Coloured people in the country. We are so fond of saying that they speak our language and that they form part of Western society, and then we do extremely little to make them real friends of the Whites in this country.

You only used them for their votes.

I honestly believe that the Government to a large extent, and the hon. the Minister in particular, will make an unselfish attempt to get away from colour discrimination; therefore separate councils had to be established for all the various race groups in South Africa. Sir, this brings me to the next principle according to which the hon. the Minister will have to act. I think he will have to make it very clear to the people of South Africa as well as to the Coloureds whether it is his policy to establish a separate state for the Coloured people in this country. We know there was the infamous speech of the former member for Umhlatuzana. A year or so ago there was also the speech of the present Minister of Information at Empangeni in Natal, when he envisaged that it was the object of this Government to establish a separate state for the Coloureds.

That is not so.

All right, if that is not so, then we want to know this from the hon. the Minister who will deal with this matter. I think we are entitled to this. If we want to do away with colour discrimination, as hon. members on that side are saying, then we must realize that they cannot offer the Coloureds the same that they are offering, for example, the Bantu in South Africa. The Coloureds expect them to go a little further than their policy is today. The Coloureds expect that things should not stop at the statement that we shall leave it to our children to solve this problem, particularly as far as liaison between this Parliament and the Coloureds themselves is concerned. I want to refer hon. members to the Hansard of the Coloured Persons Representative Council. On this occasion Mr. Tom Swartz moved an amendment, as follows—

I repeat—

We on this side think that we are entitled to ask the hon. the Minister what they are envisaging.

What do you envisage?

Our policy is not under discussion now. Hon. members have it there in the booklet. They quote it all day. We are dealing with the Government’s policy here. The hon. the Minister must make very clear to us what they are envisaging, as those Coloureds who themselves accept the policy of separate development and of the right of self-determination, accept it. As the Coloureds said—

I want to tell the hon. members that there are certain basic standpoints which we on this side of the House have accepted. In the first instance, we accept that we cannot create a state within a state for the Coloured people. This is impossible. We accept that there are certain Coloured areas, which have throughout history been known as Coloured rural areas, which comprise more than 2 million morgen, mainly in the Cape, for these people. One cannot go further than the development of those areas. One can never speak in terms of a state, as can perhaps be done in the case of the Transkei. The farthest which hon. members on that side of the House can go, is a policy of parallelism in the local sphere, in other words, that these people can be offered residential segregation, which I think the vast majority of people in South Africa accept as the normal way of life. [Interjections.] But to think in terms of creating a state within a state is simply impossible. With these few words I want to tell the hon. the Minister that he must make it very clear to the people how he is going to do this.

Mr. Chairman,

may I ask a question?

No, I do not have the time for it. [Interjections.]

Order! The hon. member is not prepared to reply to a question.

I do not want to be unkind to the hon. member for Boksburg. I should now like to conclude, because there are many members on this side who still want to speak. I want the hon. the Minister to reply very clearly to these few questions which I put to him and to tell us what the policy is. Then we can have a fruitful discussion on Coloured Affairs in this Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I should like to congratulate the hon. the Minister on this the first time that he is in charge of this portfolio. We on this side of the House know, and we have no doubt, that he will also make a great success of this new task and this Department.

The hon. member for Newton Park, who has just sat down, asked for the half-hour, but he said nothing worth replying to. He put forward a lot of generalities which he could just as well have put forward at any other place. For the sake of the younger members who are attending this debate for the first time this evening, I want to recall that the United Party are the people who have always been guilty of making use of delaying tactics.

State your own policy.

I shall do so. I shall come to it later; I am not afraid of stating it. When the National Party came into power in 1948 the Coloured population was the most neglected and the most frustrated group of people in South Africa. There was literally hatred existing between Whites and Coloureds. The United Party was the cause of that. After the polling booths closed they never gave the Coloureds a thought again until five years later, when people had to vote again. The Coloureds were the political football of the United Party. There were many children at school, but apart from something in the educational field, no door was open to the Coloureds. The education which they received made them still more antagonistic, because all doors were closed to them. The United Party precipitated a constitutional struggle about the Coloured franchise. They were responsible for conducting a constitutional struggle for ten years. They say that the National Party has already been in power for 22 years, but the fact of the matter is that as a result of that struggle nothing could be done for the Coloureds during those first ten years of National Party Government.

You had a High Court of Parliament.

It was a fruitless struggle. The United Party made a solemn promise that they would restore the Coloureds to the common voters’ roll if they were to come into power, but where are they to-day? The United Party wasted ten years of the Coloureds’ time and then they still want to speak of breaking one’s word! The United Party over there are the people who have broken their word. The United Party was the cause that the Nationalist Government could not obtain the co-operation of the Coloured population for separate development for more than ten years. It has only been since 1965 that the Government has been able to obtain the assistance of the Coloured population, because only since then have they realized that their salvation lies with the Nationalist Government and definitely not with the United Party. The Coloured population is accepting separate development. The recent election of Coloured representatives proved this. The apartheid parties received 158,218 votes as against the 136,896 of all the other parties. Then there are still three constituencies of the apartheid parties which were uncontested and whose votes were not added to this figure. The United Party regards the Coloured Persons Representative Council and the powers which it has as inferior. Usually they also have a great deal to say about the one-third of the membership of the Council which is appointed. The hon. member for Green Point remarked in a debate here the other day that we were running away from the fact that members were appointed and that we were trying to hide them. This is not true. The constitutional development of the Whites in South Africa was far slower than that of the Coloureds. Only in 1854 were persons appointed in a representative government by the British Government. That development extended over 18 years up to 1872 before responsible government was granted. The position to-day is that the Coloureds have received general franchise, even if one-third of that Coloured Council is appointed. The Whites in South Africa did not even have that under British rule in 1872. There was a limitation on the white vote in that only males could vote up to 1929, when the Nationalist Government under the late General Hertzog removed this limitation. Let me say this evening, that the Coloureds have very little political experience. Over all the years only a small group had the vote and did vote. It is only now that the masses are getting the vote. In the economic field the Coloureds are lagging far behind. That party sitting over there is the cause of this. The economic backlog of the Coloured population is something we inherited from the United Party. Socially the Coloured population has more problems than any other population group in South Africa. They are also the group which is increasing the most rapidly. They are in fact experiencing a population explosion. Now I say that the National Party has offered the entire Coloured population an important socio-economic programme. They have more than a million morgen of rural areas which are still underdeveloped. The United Party are also to blame for the fact that that million morgen of land was never developed. It was left to the National Party to develop it. Under National Party rule the Coloureds have received more schools and colleges. They have their own university. Facilities are being provided, and I want to express the hope this evening that the Coloured population will make proper use of these facilities.

There is enough work for the Coloureds. There is a programme which will keep them busy for a long time. We are not afraid of the future as far as the Coloured population is concerned. We are afraid as regards the liaison which exists. This liaison still has to be discussed by the Prime Minister and the Coloured Council, but it is there. It is at a high level at Cabinet level. I hope it will remain on that level. We cannot bring it down to another level, because then we would be dragging it into the mud among the United Party.

Admittedly the Coloureds have no say in defence matters or foreign affairs. There are other departments as well in regard to which they have no say. Gradually they will obtain a big say. It will come gradually. But I hope that the Coloured Council and the Coloured population will see it in this way, i.e. that the liaison must remain at Cabinet level, with the Prime Minister and other Ministers, because those people are all sitting here and it is a liaison with Parliament. We admit that there are still many problems. But there is one thing we are not prepared to do. We are not prepared to integrate. We shall not integrate in our day and in our time. We shall make it possible for posterity to keep it this way if they want it.

May I ask the hon. member a question?

Please, my time is limited. I am sorry. If posterity see their way clear to integrating and the Coloured people see their way open to do so, it is their affair in the distant future. We are not going to do this and we are going to make it possible to retain the present position. Reference was made here to a homeland. It is not the policy of the National Party to create a separate homeland. This definitely is not the case. The Coloureds have a home. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, it has been my fate to oppose the hon. member for Malmesbury ever since the days when both of us were in the Provincial Council. As a result I hope he will forgive me if I do not pay much attention to what he said in his speech just now.

Less has been said about the Coloured people in this session so far than about any other section of our population. [Interjection.] Be quiet, for goodness’ sake! I wonder whether we realize that we are bluffing ourselves if we imagine that by creating all these trappings of a Coloured Representative Council, the affairs of this group of people can really be kept away from the spotlight of public opinion or from the serious attention of this House. Parliament met this session without voice of any kind for the Coloured people since the days of the National Convention.

Who wrote your speech?

I wrote it myself. Do not be so impertinent. Mr. Chairman, these are people without a homeland; a large section of them are people with intelligence, with culture, with dignity, and with great restraint. Moreover, they speak our languages, they worship our Gods and they observe the same cultural and social patterns as we do. These are people whose dignity and restraint have been quite remarkable, let me say, in the face of continual insults meted out to them by this Government. One thing is becoming clearer by the day—that the Coloured people, who are potentially our greatest and most reliable ally in the maintenance of Western civilization in Southern Africa, hold in their hands the balance of power here in the Republic. Ironically, the very isolation which has been forced upon them by this thoughtless, uncaring and unperceptive Government has brought many of their leaders to-day to a realization that, within a community such as ours, where all political activities are centred around the need to establish a balance of power between black and white, the answer to stability lies very largely with them. Most of them have accepted the limited legislative powers which have been granted to them by this Government within the limited machinery available to them. I predict that they will use that power, and use it legitimately, to convert their apparent political impotence into a position of very great strength indeed. They are the one group of people to whom we in this country will have to turn as a last resort, not only to help to restore the balance between white and black in terms of numbers in this country, but for outright loyalty and support. These are the people to whom we shall have to turn. These things cannot easily be obtained to-day, nor will they be easily obtained in the future except perhaps on terms acceptable to the Coloured people themselves.

Separate rolls!

Oh, forget your claptrap! There will be some of them who will want to hold us up to ransom—of course there will be. There will be others for whom their sense of balance is greater than our own. I say this advisedly, having talked to a great many of their leaders. The tragedy is that this dichotomy, this potential conflict, need never have arisen in the first place. I want to say something now which may not sound very pleasant to the ears of the hon. the Minister. I want to say that there are already very obvious and discernible traces of bitterness and anger amongst the leaders of the Coloured people in South Africa to-day, signs which were not there before. I first came across it in the educational field, and it has now become most apparent also in the political field. The chairman of the Coloured Representative Council, Mr. Tom Swartz, in addressing the Council after Minister Marais Viljoen, the then Minister of Coloured Affairs, took leave of the Council and at the same ceremony introduced the present Minister and Deputy Minister, made a very significant statement. I quote from Alpha, which is the official journal of the Department—

The important point there is to be aware of the danger of frustration. I think the Government should take this warning by the chairman of the Coloured Representative Council very seriously. There are a number of ways in which this balance could be redressed before it is too late. Education is one of them, and the elimination of job reservation for the Coloured people is another. It has become an obsession with this Government that the leaders, the élite, amongst our Coloured community should not be separated from or refuse to identify themselves with the general mass of their own people, the majority of whom, for reasons upon which I cannot enlarge this evening, are poor, backward and uncouth, with no apparent meaning or definitive background to their lives.

The one group of enlightened Coloured people most closely dedicated to the upliftment of their own people are the teachers. But they and many others are sick and tired of being treated as second-class citizens in their own country. [Interjections.] Oh, yes, they are fed up with group areas also; they are being treated as second-class citizens every day.

Prof. Cilliers who is head of the Sociology Department at the Stellenbosch University said recently …

[Inaudible.]

Oh, shut up, Cas! Prof. Cilliers said—

That was said by one of the lecturers at the Stellenbosch University, Prof. S. P. Cilliers.

When the history of the past 23 years comes to be written, no one will know, nor be able within any certainty, to assess the extent of the cumulative sociological problems, particularly amongst our Coloured people, to which the Government’s ideologies have given rise. The insistence, first of all, upon African labour in this area being migratory and housed in male hostels—whether these men have wives and families in the reserves or not— has led to a bastardization of the Coloured community here in the Cape on an appalling scale. More than 33 per cent of all Coloured children born within the municipal area of Cape Town as far back as 1967 was illegitimate. The fate of these children is going to be a nightmare for us in the future. The majority of them do not know their fathers and, with their mothers obliged to work, they have the minimum of care, security, training or discipline in their lives. No one advises them to go to school; they collect in gangs in the townships, where they pick up violent habits. They take to crime, alcohol and laziness before they are even adolescent. There are generations of these children in the Coloured townships to-day where real community life hardly exists. The houses they live in are impersonal and drab. I want to know how much the Government really cares about these things. In the meantime the Government is obsessed with the principle of establishing group areas irrespective of the living conditions or any sense of community amongst the people they uproot.

What about the schools that are being supplied for them?

The schools are not adequate because half the time the schools that are built in the new townships are filled by people who have been displaced in terms of the Group Areas Act … [Interjection.] [Time expired].

It is quite clear from the speech of the hon. member for Wynberg that she and her party do not recognize the Coloured community as a community with its own identity.

Oh no!

She still regards the Coloured community as an inferior section of or an appendix to the white community. Looking into the future, she foresaw that the white population would eventually have to turn towards the Coloureds to be able to maintain themselves; in other words, that we are actually dependent upon the Coloured population for our survival, and not only for our existence as a people but also for our cultural survival. This is typical of the viewpoint of the hon. member for Wynberg and her party. They have had vacillating approaches to the political rights of the Coloureds. In the past they fought in season and out of season to retain the Coloureds on the common Voters’ Roll. Under the pressure of public opinion they subsequently accepted that the Coloureds should remain on a separate Voters’ Roll. In their latest election pamphlets they now declare that the Coloureds should elect their own six representatives— who can be either Whites or Coloureds—in this House, and that the Coloureds will have to be satisfied with that. The hon. member also mentioned—as did Mr. Tom Swartz, the chairman of the Coloured Council—the frustration among these people. But does she think for one moment that that sense of frustrations will disappear once they have those six representatives, who can be either Whites or non-Whites? [Interjection.] On the contrary, the old dispensation was one of frustration and this figment of the imagination of the United Party will, if it is implemented, lead to a sense of frustration among the Coloured people once more. We are quite aware of the fact that the Coloured people in South Africa have reached a very difficult stage of development. They have for centuries been subservient to the white population group.

When did you realize that?

Sir, I have at least realized it, but that hon. member has not realized it yet. The results were—and this was the former British and subsequently the United Party’s dispensation—that the Coloured people, because of their position of subordination and dependence, had never developed a leadership of their own and had never learned to do anything for themselves or to undertake anything. Therefore, whereas this Government has put them on the road towards self-development and self-realization, we have to admit that the Coloureds are only in the initial stages in almost every sphere, and also as regards the managing of their own Coloured Representative Council. To those of us who attended the establishment and the inauguration of that Council it was interesting to observe in which way these people accepted this new institution with a sense of appreciation and keenness, but we also observed the lack of skill and unfamiliarity they displayed in the whole of that situation; and we can understand that there should be some measure of frustration, particularly in view of the fact that this Council has only very limited powers at this stage. I want to concede that to the hon. member for Wynberg and to Mr. Tom Swartz, who she quoted. But frustration is the order of the day. There are few among us who do not experience a sense of frustration at some time or other.

Just look at the United Party!

Yes, those hon. members opposite are completely demoralized by frustration, but they still have some courage left. The important point is really the fact that the Coloured population and the Coloured leaders in the Coloured Representative Council in this case, are only now being afforded the opportunity to obtain the necessary practice and experience of the Council they now have and in which they function and exercise their limited powers. But there is no doubt about it—they have been told this, and we can say this without any fear of being contradicted—that as they master those powers and properly exercise those functions, they will in due course be given more powers.

When?

Sir, I do not have the time; the hon. the Minister will reply to that. But the hon. member would be well advised to go and read what the late Dr. Verwoerd and the present Prime Minister said in this regard. There is no need for me to go into this matter now. I just want to tell hon. members that as the Coloured leaders come to know their own capabilities, that frustration will diminish; they will realize themselves; their leadership will become stronger, it will develop and grow and they will realize that it is no longer a question of talking about political rights; that this is no longer a myth, but that it is their responsibility now to shoulder part of the task of governing the Coloured population and to put this into practice. It is very easy to clamour for political rights, but it is not so easy to practice those rights and to participate in the governing of a people. Those people have to accept responsibility now; they now appreciate the problems of governing and of administration. However, with the assistance of the officials of the Departments concerned these people are learning quickly and they are getting to know their capabilities. One is surprised how quickly they have come to know their capabilities even in this sphere. What experience would they have gained had they been subjected to the dispensation of hon. members on that side of the House, that is if six Whites or Coloureds would be sitting in this House to present them? I can ask hon. members opposite a few very simple questions they will not be able to answer. Let me put only one question to them: In what way would those six representatives, if they were Coloureds, realize themselves and behave in this House, in this community? [Interjections.]

Sir, I want to go further and mention a few other points. I want to refer to the work that is being done by the Coloured Development Corporation. I want to point out that we have found it interesting to take cognisance of the work that has been done by this corporation and the progress that has been made as regards stimulating and developing Coloured business undertakings which are controlled and managed by Coloured persons under the guidance of the Coloured Development Corporation. At the end of last year, when the latest report was published, this Corporation had more than R4 million at its disposal.

When visiting a Coloured area, one is impressed by the progress that has been made by the Coloured population, and that not all the Coloured business undertakings have been financed by the Coloured Development Corporation. One is impressed by the progress these people have made in regard to the development of their own business undertakings. The Coloured Development Corporation has approved 154 applications. A bank has been established for the Coloured population and these people are gaining experience in a sphere in which they have never been afforded the opportunity to gain experience before. We have Coloured directors of business firms to-day, directors of banks and managers of various other firms.

Sir, hon. members of the Opposition should take cognisance of the fact that the Coloured people are now being afforded the opportunity for the first time to come into own, to discover themselves and to prove that they are able to do their share and play their part in modern society. I want to say to hon. members that they should not be surprised if the Coloured people were to make an important contribution towards their own economic progress by virtue of the skill they possess to-day and which they are acquiring at the moment. [Time expired.]

The debate which we have had from the other side, is the same as that which we have had for the past 10 to 15 years—the same statements and the same accusations—and I honestly want to say that I do not feel like participating in it. The hon. member for Malmesbury spoke and again made the old accusation about integration. I want to ask hon. members on the other side to give this Committee a definition once and for all of what the Government regards as integration. What is integration in the eyes of the Government? As soon as we receive a definition of integration from that side, we on this side will say candidly whether we are in favour of it or not. It is very easy to make accusations. I can very easily stand here and accuse the Government of integration and I can mention one example after another, but what will this achieve? [Interjection.] I ask the hon. the Deputy Minister, who has just made that interjection, to give us a definition of what the Government regards as integration; then we will know where we stand.

Give us your definition.

I draw a very clear distinction between integration and cooperation. The hon. member for Piketberg told us that we do not acknowledge the identity of the Coloured people. They have their own identity, whether you want to admit it or not; no one denies it; but co-operation with another population group in the interests of the country as a whole and in everybody’s interest does not mean integration or loss of identity. Surely it would then mean that if the Afrikaans-speaking person co-operated with the English-speaking person, the Afrikaans-speaking person would lose his identity? This is where we are talking at cross purposes. Hon. members use terms, and when one tests them, one finds that the words have no meaning. We on this side make no secret of the fact that we regard it to be in the interest of the future and security of the white people, just as much as in the interests of the Coloured people, that there should be co-operation between Whites and Coloureds in South Africa, which means recognition of identity.

Sir, I should like to come to the hon. the Minister. An amount of R67,000 is provided on the Estimates this year for the Coloured Persons Representative Council. The hon. the Minister knows what the attitude of this side is in connection with the Coloured Persons Representative Council. In the same way as there are provincial councils and other councils with specific functions under the Parliament of South Africa, we admit that there is room for the Coloured Persons Representative Council in the period of adjustment and change which South Africa is experiencing in the field of human relations. At this stage there is room for a mouthpiece which can express the wishes of the Coloured community effectively. Obviously we prefer an elected body to one which is partly appointed. We are also keen that an effective link should be established between Parliament and the existing Coloured Persons Representative Council without delay.

I should very much like to know from the hon. the Minister whether the machinery for that has already been put in operation; what the Government is going to submit in this connection to the Coloured Persons Representative Council and Parliament for consideration, and when we can expect this link to be established. I really hope the Government will not delay. It was the Government which served the direct link which existed between the Coloured community and Parliament, limited and inadequate as it may have been. Now we have the situation where, for the first time, no direct voice can be heard in this House from anyone who represent the Coloured people. This Parliament, which must govern the whole of South Africa, must now rely on newspaper reports and external opinions on the Coloured community. This is not satisfactory. A few months ago, for example, a very ugly incident occurred at Ceres, where a large group of Coloured people resisted the Police for five hours. Subsequently there was a court case and the evidence which was produced in that case, and the bitter feelings of which evidence was given, are something which cannot leave the white community of South Africa cold, something of which cognizance should have been taken, and of which we would probably have taken cognizance if the Coloured people had had representatives in this House.

The hon. member for Newton Park and other speakers quoted from speeches made by leaders of the Coloured community who are responsible, who are very close to the Government and who are prepared to co-operate with the Government, in which the most bitter feelings were expressed about the conditions to which they are submitted. This does not apply only to the Republic. A month or two ago there was a congress of the Coloured Organization of South-West Africa. This also falls under this hon. Minister. The Coloured Council there consists of members who were appointed as long ago as eight years, but to this day it is not yet an elected body. They also spoke with very great bitterness against the Government, the Administration and the Whites. For this reason we feel that it is of the utmost importance for this Government to establish a link between the Coloured community and Parliament as soon as possible. I hope the Government will take notice of the fact—my hon. friend there referred to an “apartheid party” among the Coloured people —I hope they will take notice of the fact that both Coloured parties in the Coloured Persons Representative Council unequivocally adopt the attitude that there can be only one effective link with Parliament, and this is direct representation of the Coloured people in this Parliament. If that agrees with what an apartheid party constitutes according to the hon. member for Malmesbury, the meaning of the term must be revised.

The Government is trying to hold up the Coloured Persons Representative Council as a sort of parliament which will in due course be able to fulfil almost all the functions in respect of the Coloured people which this Parliament fulfils in respect of them. We reject that argument. We also reject the argument that it is possible for the Coloured Persons Representative Council to develop into the position of a Parliament. If the Government can prove the contrary—very well, then we shall obviously examine the matter. But it is mentioned with great satisfaction that the council now has “control” over more than R67 million. I should like to put a question to the hon. the Minister in this regard. I have compared the figures on the Estimates with those of the previous year. I found that certain provisions were made last year which are not being made this year. This applies, for example, to old-age pensions for Coloured persons, disability allowances, war veterans’ pensions, child care, grants-in-aid, school services, teachers’ salaries and primary, secondary and high schools. The provision made in the past in respect of these things almost amounts to the sum over which the Coloured Persons Representative Council now has “control”. I think the hon. the Minister will concede that pensions and teachers’ salaries are all fixed amounts which the Coloured Persons Representative Council surely cannot increase or decrease and over which, indeed, it therefore has no control.

In other words, in respect of the larger part of that amount of R67 million, the Coloured Persons Representative Council is, in my opinion, actually in the position of a payment office, and nothing more, which must pay out as the Government dictates. If this is not the case, I would be glad if the hon. the Minister could inform us. I would also be glad if the hon. the Minister could ell us how that amount of R67 million was estimated and over how much of that amount he can frankly say the Coloured Persons Representative Council really has full control as a Parliament would have? I am therefore asking him exactly how that amount was estimated, and what portion of it the Coloured Persons Representative Council will be able to apply as it likes in the interests of the Coloured community? [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I want to make a few constructive remarks in regard to the debate, but before doing so, I feel that I cannot leave the remarks made by hon. members on that side of the House unanswered, because they came here with generalizations and made statements which simply did not mean anything. Therefore I want to ask them some pertinent questions and I want those three hon. members on that side of the House who have participated in this debate so far, to answer those questions for me. The first question I want to ask the hon. member for Newton Park, but any other hon. member may answer it. Do hon. members opposite admit that there is a white people in South Africa? [Interjections.] Very well, if there is a white people in South Africa, I want to ask them whether they look upon the Coloureds as a separate people? That is our policy. Does the United Party look upon the Coloureds as part of the white population? Hon. members opposite should not do as the hon. member for Newton Park did the other day, and that is to say that the Coloureds are a separate race but not part of the people. That hon. the Leader of the Opposition referred to the English-speaking and the Afrikaans-speaking people this morning as different white races. Is the Coloured part of the white people of South Africa or is he not?

He is part of the Western civilization.

I simply want the answer to be “eyes” or “no”, please. We are not talking about a civilization now, but about a people and the hon. member for Wyn-berg knows it. If I were allowed to do so, I would have repeated it in English for the hon. member. I shall translate my question if she does not understand it. I am asking the hon. member for Wynberg a pertinent question: Is the Coloured part of the white people of South Africa?

He is part of the population of South Africa.

I am not asking the hon. member whether the Coloureds form part of the population, because every fool knows that. Even that hon. member should know it. Even that hon. member knows that the Coloureds are part of the South African population. However, I am asking hon. members opposite whether the Coloureds are part of the white people of South Africa, or do hon. members opposite not admit that there is a white people in South Africa? No, Sir, now they are sitting there trying to evade this simple question by making foolish remarks. They do not have the courage to say so. The hon. member for Houghton will tell us; she at least has the courage to put her point of view. All the other hon. members on that side of the House are trying to mislead the Coloureds with whom we have to live and whom we respect as being part of the population and as a separate people, but they do not even get as far as the first basic answer. Let the hon. member for Bezuidenhout reply “yes” or “no” to that question.

I said so frankly in my speech …

The hon. member did not say anything; he tried to evade the issue but he did not have the courage to reply “yes” or “no” to this simple question. Hon. members opposite want to know what integration is. I shall tell them. Integration means to allow the Coloureds to become part of the white people of South Africa. That is what integration means and that is something the Whites do not want. Strangely enough, as a people self-respecting the Coloureds do not want to have it either, and that is why I take off my hat to the Coloured people. I attended meetings at which Coloured leaders said so quite frankly to me and to the hon. the Minister. They told us: “Gentlemen, we do not want to be Whites”. I want to ask once more whether we will have to become one people and whether we should cease to be a white people? Or should they become part of the white people? What do hon. members opposite want? Hon. members opposite know quite well that they are beating the air and, like Don Quixote, are toting at windmills and that they do not have the courage to reply to a simple question such as this.

The hon. member for Bezuidenhout said there was nobody in this House who spoke on behalf of the Coloureds. If he is right, then I want to ask him something. This hon. the Minister and the Deputy Minister maintain close links with the Coloureds for the present—and we know that we are going to have even further liaison. Surely, there is close liaison between the Department of Coloured Affairs and the Coloured people. These are people who are at least respected by the Coloured people because they are honest and because they tell these people where they stand as far as we are concerned. They are telling these people in all honesty where we are going and what it is that we want.

Where to?

I am in the process of telling hon. members. Hon. members should not be so dumb. We are taking them along on the road of separate peoples in South Africa.

Speak up!

Yes, I am prepared to talk even louder, but that poor stupid member does not know what I am talking about. That is my problem. I can shout loud enough for him to hear, but I cannot give him the sense to understand. Our standpoint in this regard is that, because the Coloured people are a heterogeneous group, they are finding themselves on the difficult road of becoming a people. For that reason their leaders in the Coloured Representative Council have a difficult task to lead their people along the road of becoming a nation. I call this an offence and it is nothing else but scandalous every time to destroy and to ridicule the self-respect those people have in their own people and to promise them something they know they do not have the courage to give them. They hold out something for the Coloureds but every time I ask them a pertinent question, those wonderful bigwigs sit back in their chairs and do not even feel ashamed of themselves! If we on this side of the House should ever be reduced to that level … I would rather not say anything more. You will call me to order, Sir. I just want to say that if this is political honesty, I should very much like to see what political dishonesty is. We told the Coloured people that we wanted to help them along the road to becoming a people, because we in South Africa believe that here are various peoples. I want to tell hon. members that the Coloureds have accepted that concept. One of their leaders said to the former Minister of Coloured Affairs in my presence one day: “Sir, we do not want to be Whites.” He used the term “people” (volk) and said: “All we ask for our people, is that we should be protected against the intrusion of the Bantu.” That concept has been brought home to them.

Why then do you not protect them?

We shall do it and they will do it themselves in future, because we delegate powers to them which are going to be increased in due course. They will then be able to make their own legislation concerning their own people in order to protect them from undesirable intrusion from outside. That concept has already been brought home to the Coloured people. The Opposition has already lost the fight to antagonize the Coloureds against this concept of a separate people. I am now asking the hon. member for Wynberg: Does she look upon them as being part of the white people of South Africa or what are they?

[Inaudible.]

The hon. member must answer my question. With all due respect to a lady, I want to ask her in all kindness now: Will the hon. member for Wynberg please tell me of which people they are members, of the white people of South Africa or of which people? We say they are the Coloured people of South Africa, and we want to help them to be proud of that. I now want to ask this second question to these hon. members Who want to bring them back to this Parliament.

May I ask the hon. member a question?

No, I am sorry. The hon. member can have a turn to speak after I have finished my speech I want to ask them some questions now. It is nice asking them questions. We are going to answer our own questions. The Minister will not leave one of those questions unanswered. I know I can rely on my Ministers. Are these Coloureds those hon. members want to bring to Parliament as members of the House of Assembly if the Opposition were afforded the opportunity to do so going to, be entitled to become members of the caucus of the Opposition? They are keeping quiet now. The hon. member for Bezuidenhout who makes statements on behalf of his party, the hon. member who comes here will gossip, the hon. member for Wynberg, must answer this question. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I am not even going to try to enter into this war between the hon. member for Namaqualand and the United Party. It is a private war and I am not keen to enter into it at all, apart from which there are many questions I want to put to the hon. the Minister. Before I do so, I want to make a few comments on one or two speeches other members have made. I want to say right away that I do not take up the same attitude as the United Party in this regard, namely to have the Coloureds as allies of the white people, presumably against that black people. I am not for this gangingup idea at all. I do not look upon the Coloureds as allies for future contests between the white people and the black people of South Africa. I look upon the two million Coloured people as simply another racial group in our multi-racial country of 21 million people, entitled to rights according to their individual merits. I shall not enlarge upon that, because it is the general policy of my party and is very well-known. I think it is all very well for white people to come along to this House and talk about how happy the Coloured people are with their lot. The hon. member for Malmesbury gave us the benefit of his opinion of how happy the Coloured people are. Things might be very different if we were listening to the Coloured people in this House telling us how satisfied or otherwise they were with their lot. I want to say exactly how happy I think the Coloured people are with their lot. The hon. members take no cognizance whatever of the significant attitude adopted by the Coloured people during the recent All Black international matches? Do they not think that there is any significance whatsoever in the fact that the Coloured people, when they go to these rugby matches, cheer the team which is not the South African team?

That is not something new.

It is something fairly new. Many years ago the Coloured people used to go to international rugby matches and support South African teams. Over the years the bitterness has grown.

I heard that when I was playing for the under 19 team at Stellenbosch.

That might well be because the hon. the Minister was playing. The point is that there is to-day marked antagonism. This is simply one of the manifestations. White people in South Africa are deluding themselves if they do not think that there is any significance in this fact. It is very significant indeed.

The hon. member for Malmesbury told us that the Coloured people are accepting apartheid to-day. He mentioned that there were a considerable proportion of votes for apartheid in the elections for the Coloured council. What he did not tell us about was the number of abstentions in that election. He did not tell us that there was a percentage poll of less than 50 per cent and that very many Coloured people abstained altogether from voting. Had it not been for the fact that the Government packed the council with defeated candidates who had not been elected at the ordinary election, we would have had a very different Coloured council to-day. It would not have had a majority of members who are not clearly as anti-apartheid as for instance the Labour Party is.

The hon. member for Piketberg stated that a great deal had been done to assist the Coloured people to invest in their own businesses and to develop their own businesses in the Coloured areas. It is true that the Coloured Development Corporation has given assistance to the tune of something like R2½ million by way of loans to about 118 undertakings, according to their report, but what upsets me is that by far the largest amounts have been given to liquor businesses in the Coloured areas. One of the real scourges of the Coloured population of South Africa is the degree of alcoholism. For the Coloured Development Corporation to give by far the largest amount, namely more than R700,000, to the development of liquor businesses, is, I think, showing very bad judgment in this regard.

Now I want to come to some of the questions I want to put to the hon. the Minister. What has happened to the liaison committee which was proposed by Mr. Tom Swartz? Is it the intention of the hon. the Minister to set up such a committee? What is he going to do about this committee if, for instance, the Opposition Labour Party refuses to co-operate? What is the hon. the Minister going to do about the very strong resolution passed at the last meeting of the Coloured Representative Council, about equal pay for equal work? Has anything come of this? I know that he will tell us that salaries have been increased, but the resolution did not ask for an increase in salaries. It asked for equal pay for equal work in the Civil Service. It was a very strongly worded resolution indeed. Then, what is the hon. the Minister going to do about the question of compulsory education for the Coloured people? This is a most pressing point. The Coloured people badly require compulsory education. I know that there is a desperate shortage of teachers, but let us at least set the aim and get moving. I cannot remember when last I heard of a new area for compulsory education for Coloured children being created. Is it not time that we started extending the areas for compulsory education for children? Does the hon. the Minister know that there are to-day an additional number of 14,000 Coloured children in schools which are having double sessions? What sort of education do children get by attending schools with double sessions? I understand that the Coloured people who have been moved from District 6 to Hanover Park are going to an area where there is not going to be a school until 1972. I do not know whether this is absolutely correct but I should like to have the hon. the Minister’s answer. To move people from an area where there are schools to an area where there is not going to be a school for another two years seems to me to be quite mad.

What about housing? During the discussion of the Community Development Vote I raised the issue of the desperate shortage of houses for Coloured people. I pointed out that in the greater Cape Town area alone there was an estimated shortage of, at the very least, 34,000 houses for Coloured people. What is the hon. the Minister going to do about this very serious position? There has been a lot of talk about making industrialists responsible for providing houses for their workers. We had a good deal of this during discussions under the Community Development Vote. I want so say that I think this is a very bad idea indeed.

What idea?

The idea of making industrialists responsible for providing houses for their workers. I will tell the hon. the Minister why I think it is a bad idea. This is tied employment. It is as simple as that. It means the workers are tied to their employment. It means that they are completely under the control of their employers. It means that if they want to change their jobs they have to take into consideration all sorts of things other than improvement in employment opportunities. They know that they are going to lose their houses.

Do you know that Iscor is housing 90 per cent of their white workers?

It does not necessarily make it a good idea. Besides, the Whites are far freer to take up employment wherever they want to. There is a shortage of skilled workers in the country.

What about the civil servants?

But the hon. the Minister is comparing two incomparable factors.

Why?

Because the white workers are skilled workers. The white workers know that there is a shortage of skilled workers. They have a far greater choice of jobs. They can command what salaries they want. Such is not the case with Coloured workers. The Coloured worker becomes tied to his employer if he has to rely on his employer to provide him with housing. It means that the employer very often can take advantage of the worker. He could charge him 15 per cent of his basic salary in rent and as the salary goes up so the rent goes up. If the worker does not like it, he loses his job and his house. Very often when the worker dies, his widow and family are put out of the house. The whole thing makes the worker a parasite as far as his employment is concerned. It is an idea which is discouraged in most modern industrial countries. I believe it is the State’s responsibilty to supply housing.

What about farm labour?

The farm labourer unfortunately has no option. Your farm labour is tied to you.

And your domestic labour?

The African domestic worker certainly is tied. He probably cannot get another job in an urban area and will be endorsed out. That is the whole position with non-White labour in this country. It does not have the choices and the options which white labour has. I think it is absolutely wrong for us to start a system with Coloured workers where they are going to be tied to their employers by this system of making them provide their houses.

Now, what about the management committee? When is the management committee going to be elected? I understand it is an appointed committee. Are we going to have elections? Why is Mr. Tom Swartz not given the opportunity to open schools and to take part in all the public functions of the Coloured people? Will the hon. the Minister tell me this? Mr. Tom Swartz is supposed to be the head of the Coloured Representative Council. Why is he not given more authority to take part in the official opening of schools and buildings, etc.? It seems to me that in every case it is the Secretary who performs the functions that I would say the chairman of the Coloured Representative Council should perform. [Time expired.]

I shall first of all just leave the hon. member for Houghton at that, because I have a more specific matter that I should like to deal with. In the Second Reading speech I expressed by concern about what I called the creation of an unbalanced Coloured metropolis here on the Cape Flats, and now, in the few minutes at my disposal, I want to take my argument further by once more emphasizing that here in the Western Cape where, as I see it, white and brown are destined to live alongside one another in our lifetime and in the lifetime of our children and their children, we shall have to look with newly-calculated haste at the process of the spatial organization of our Coloureds in the Western Cape. The question of white-brown relationships is, in the first place, a problem pertaining to our inhabitants of the Western Cape. In the long run it will have to be our disposition and our attitudes that will decide the course and the direction that we shall take. Against this background I now want to advocate that we should immediately give new growth momentum to our five old traditional Coloured townships here in the Boland. They are: Saron, Mamre, Pniel, Wittewater and Goedverwacht. We must take calculated action in respect of the creation of a new future pattern for these five old traditional Coloured townships, so that we may bring about a growth momentum that will fit in with the general development pattern of the Boland and will make these towns absolutely Bantu-free areas. I want to repeat: New calucated future patterns in respect of these old traditional Coloured townships that can develop them into absolutely Bantu-free areas.

For a period of 300 years the Coloured population of South Africa developed chiefly along the lines of social and economic dependence on the Whites in the Western Cape. You may go to-day to all our old Boland towns. There are, as we termed it in earlier years, a location, a Coloured township or a Coloured residential spot that have developed alongside the old Boland towns. How did this pattern develop through the years? At present about 9.9 per cent of our country’s white population lives in the Cape metropolitan area, as against 27.7 per cent of our country’s brown population. Five per cent of our total white population lives in the rest of the Western Province, as against 20.2 per cent of the Republic’s Coloured population. Let me state this figure in somewhat broader terms: 32.4 per cent of our white population lives in the Cape to-day, as against 88.1 per cent of our country’s total Coloured population. If we now ignore the possibility of large numerical shifts among the Coloureds from the Western Cape to other economic growth points, it means that we shall have to give drastic attention to the process of the spatial organization of our brown people. Here in the Western Cape we shall have to create adequate economic development in order to meet this situation in the near future. I could now come along with complicated formulae as possible suggestions, but I think that there is one important starting point for us, and that is for us immediately to give colourful, I almost want to say dramatic, attention to ensure a new content and to bring new growth momentum to these five old traditional Coloured townships in the Boland.

The first is Mamre. In the Second Reading debate I delivered a plea for us to come forward here with what I called a prestige Coloured township. In the Boland’s growth pattern to-day this area lends itself to such a process. Here is cheap agricultural land. Here is an area where we can obtain for the Coloureds a neat link-up with proper sea facilities. If we could create border area benefits in this area, or a sliding scale of taxation, I think that in our Boland pattern we could create a new area here for the Coloureds that we shall all be pround of. The same applies to the old traditional Coloured township Saron. This old township lies in the vicinity of our poorest Boland agricultural land. It lies in the vicinity of the Voëlvlei Dam, where most of the water to-day is concentrated in the Boland pattern, and it lies on the main transport route to the north. I cannot imagine a geographic area within the Boland complex to-day where we could create more calculated new growth momentum on an economic basis that can bring about a growth point here that will bring more content to the spatial organization process for the brown people in the Boland.

There are the two other townships, Witte-water and Goedverwacht, two townships lying in the vicinity of our West coast. Annually we bring in literally thousands of Bantu from outside as migratory labourers in the various facets of the marine industry. It is an accepted fact that our brown people are more keenly attuned to the marine industry in all its various facets than the Bantu, but it is true that in recent years we have not trained the Coloured to make him serviceable for the great marine industry in all its various facets in the Western Cape. I want to make a plea here. Let us take these two Coloured townships, that fit into our Boland growth pattern, and let us create a new momentum here, new training in respect of the Coloured in all the various facets of our marine industry, in an area that fits into the growth pattern in the Boland, an area where we can work at a new Bantu-free complex. It is true that to-day all these coastal towns where we do training or preparation for the marine industry—everywhere there are six or seven months of the year in which those Coloured townships and their environs are overrun by literally thousands of single Bantu men that are blackening this Coloured population for six or seven months of the year. I think the time has come for us to take a fresh look at this situation in our process of spatial organization. I want to advocate to the hon. the Minister that we obtain a new system of orientation and planning from the Department.

Lastly there is the very old, picturesque township Pniel, that one finds when one drives over the mountains at Stellenbosch. Where in the Boland to-day is there a Coloured township lying in a lovelier and more picturesque area than this old traditional township? It fits into the Boland pattern in this respect that it is the area where we must carry out training for our Boland agricultural pattern on a very much larger scale than at any other point. The area lends itself to that. I am aware that at present we are doing important spade work, and we have been doing it for many years already, in respect of agricultural training for the Coloureds in the Boland, but it is actually only sporadic work that we have done. I ask myself whether, in this specific area, we should not create, on a much larger scale, a process of greater preparation, with much greater numbers, than we have done up to now in respect of preparing the Coloureds for agriculture. [Time expired.]

The hon. member for Newton Park started here on a note of approach, but also with a clear request that the hon. the Minister should now ensure sound race relations, because there was great concern among them as a party about the growing antagonism the Coloured people felt towards the Whites. Now I want to ask a few questions with reference to what I had to listen to here this evening from various hon. members on the other side. [Interjections.] Since the hon. member has spoken about pin-pricks which must be removed, is it intended to remove pinpricks when the members of the Opposition in a responsible Parliament—where everything is observed and subsequently read by these people for whom we must accept responsibility and who must be led by us, towards whom we must develop a good disposition and of whom we expect a good disposition— speak here in this vein, point out the pinpricks and reproach this side of the House with a pinprick every time? This side of the House has done much more for this population group than any previous Government, because it adopts the point of view that first things must come first, and these are the economic needs of the Coloured people as a group. For this reason the Government gave attention to the socio-economic aspect first, as far back as 10 years ago, and already at this stage we can produce splendid proof of the progress made in giving these people a place in the sun, something which certain hon. members on the other side try to suggest these people have not yet been given. Is it right to speak of and make reproaches about the inequality of salaries and not take into account the fact that with the recent increases, a ratio of approximately 60 per cent, Coloureds as against Whites, was improved to 75 per cent? And this is not the end of the road, but what does equal pay for equal work mean? Have you ever pondered on this, Sir? What happened in the past when there was equal pay for equal work, and what would happen if job reservation were to be abolished as is so readily envisaged? The Coloureds were pushed out and discriminated against, because in terms of this so-called equal pay for equal work, the white person is favoured. The Coloured person is also being protected in this process. Is it the object to try to avoid pinpricks or to eliminate pinpricks when hon. members talk about discrimination which allegedly is being over-emphasized by this side of the House? The fundamental principle of our policy of multi-national and parallel development, which was clearly outlined by Dr. Verwoerd almost 10 years ago, is that we want to avoid discrimination between people, and we are eliminating it step by step and gradually. But do not think that I agree with the nonsense which is spoken about “petty apartheid”. No, do not begrudge the Coloured person a place in the sun and we acknowledge his contribution, but one first has to crawl before one can walk and one first has to walk before one can run. The reproach has been made that we do very little to make the Coloured person a friend of the white person. How can the Coloured person become a friend of the white person if he is continually being told, in the words of the hon. member for Houghton, what great injustices he is suffering? Therefore, they are a people with a feeling of inferiority, which has developed over many years. If one continually feeds his grievances in this way in this type of debate in a responsible Parliament, where we are supposed to be responsible, what do you think the Coloured person’s feeling will be eventually?

Do you think he does not know himself?

If he knows everything himself, we should at least show him the respect of believing that he will think for himself and that he will discuss matters with us through the channels which are available to him at this stage. We should not continually prescribe to him in the white Parliament, because one of the reasons for the struggle we had here—this was very clearly emphasized here by one of the hon. members —was that the Coloured people eventually held the political balance in this country. They determined which of the two white parties would govern and eventually they themselves would have governed. Sir, is it advisable to refer to the executive of the Coloured Persons Representative Council as a “rubber stamp”? Is it a good thing to harp on the question of compulsory education among people like the Coloureds to-day when the hon. member sitting over there hears year after year that we do not have the necessary teachers? What point would it have to introduce compulsory education; what point would it have to build classrooms if one did not have teachers? Where must they come from? Has the hon. member noticed from the figures how, especially in the past two years, as a result of the attempts of this Government, and in recent times as a result of the efforts of their own Coloured Persons Representative Counoil, has the Coloured person to an increasing extent offered his services in the field of education? The day will come when they will have compulsory education, but then one must be realistic. What point is there in building classrooms at a cost of millions of rand, which must be paid for from the pocket of the taxpayer at this stage, if there are not enough teachers to instruct those children? There is no point in making promises all the time which you know full well you cannot keep and which merely go to create a feeling of frustration. Is it surprising, therefore, that these people remain full of grievances; is it surprising if they are continually being referred to as “second-class citizens”?

Sir, I did not really intend referring to the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. The hon. member is probably not stupid, but one thing is certain: In his own eyes he is clever as regards all these matters. He wants a definition of integration. I just want to tell him that the one kind of integration which is of importance in this Parliament, is integration of authority, and he wants to grant that integration of authority, to the Coloured person here, and after he has granted him that integration of authority, he wants to put a permanent damper on the future development of the Coloured people. He must not come forward with the ridiculous statement that the Whites will decide whether the Coloureds should receive more authority.

Are you always going to sit on his head? What you are advocating is supremacy (baasskap).

No, he must not come forward with that story. What he said, merely amounts to this: He wants to grant integration of authority to the Coloured person, and then the Coloured person must be satisfied with six representatives for 700,000 voters. Sir, this is a policy of supremacy in, I almost want to say, its most despicable form. I think I have now dealt with that hon. member; I do not want to say anything more to him. In regard to the question of liaison, the hon. the Minister himself will reply to him later; we have progressed far also in that respect.

Sir, I just want to say to the hon. member for Houghton that it will be of no avail for us to reason with her about principles or about what we are envisaging for the Coloured people: I think we would just be wasting our time. But she put a few questions and I think we should reply to them to the best of our ability. She referred to the liaison committee in respect of which the Coloured Persons Representative Council took a decision last year. I can assure her—in the meanwhile there have been minor misunderstandings, especially in the Labour Party about their leadership, with consequent delays—that this matter is receiving attention. We hold out the prospect of finality being reached this year on the question of liaison. This is not a matter which one can precipitate; it is a matter which is in fact the subject of discussions between the Coloured Persons Representative Council and our highest authority, i.e. the Prime Minister and the hon. the Minister.

In regard to the question of equal pay for equal work, I think we may leave the matter at that. We are moving in the direction of giving every person his due, but there are other aspects which must also be considered, such as the question of training, the question of the availability of funds, etc. We are at least moving forward, not backwards. [Time expired.]

The hon. the Deputy Minister confined himself exclusively to the hon. member for Houghton and to replying to questions. But I just want to mention one matter which he mentioned in his speech a moment ago and which seems rather strange to me. He said that the Government wanted to bring about economic development among the Coloured people before political development. But when it comes to the Bantu, one finds precisely the opposite position, namely first political development and then economic development.

Sir, when the hon. member for Moorreesburg talks about Coloured Affairs, I listen to him with respect, because I have found in this House that he knows what he is talking about when he talks about the Coloured people. But during this session conflicting arguments have been advanced in this House in connections with the Coloured people. Firstly, I should like to come to the hon. member for Moorreesburg and to say to him that I think he is the most realistic member on his side of the House and that he adopts the most realistic approach in regard to the Coloured population of South Africa. I want to quote what he said in the Budget debate this year (Hansard, column 2120)—

Furthermore, he said—

Sir, this statement made by the hon. member for Moorreesburg is very significant to me, especially where he spoke about a “fuller and more effective partnership” between the Whites and the Coloured community. I think hon. members opposite should re-read what the hon. member for Moorreesburg said. Perhaps words from their own ranks will bring them back to reality and realism. Sir, the point of departure of the hon. member is very clear to me, namely that he regards the Coloured community as part of Western civilization here on the southern tip of Africa and as a fuller and more effective partner of the Whites. Sir, in spite of this, only last week, in the debate on the Information Vote, we heard from the hon. the Minister of Information that total segregation of the Coloured people was the ideal, but he added that it was not practicable. The hon. the Minister does not talk of a more effective and fuller partnership with the Whites. No, on the one hand he clings tightly to the ideal of total segregation, but he does come back to earth when he says he accepts that it is not practicable. I should like to know from the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs whether he accepts the Coloured community as a community which must have a fuller and more effective partnership with white South Africa. But Sir, then there is still the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration. I am sorry that he is not present, because he referred to me as a “little hon. member”. I want to say to him at once that I realize I am a young member in this House, but I nevertheless want to make use of my right as an elected member in this House to ask him what his standpoint is in regard to the Coloured people. Sir, he said the following in the debate on the Bantu Administration and Development Vote. I want to quote what he said, because I do not want to put words into his mouth.

Order! What has that to do with the Vote?

Sir, it applies to the Coloured people. He said (Hansard, column 3510)—

By way of interjection I then asked him—

In reply to this, the hon. the Minister said—

Sir, to me this is completely in conflict with the standpoint adopted by the hon. member for Moorreesburg. A reasonable deduction which one can make from the Minister’s statement is this: If we do not want to share our independence with the Coloured community, surely the Coloured people should share their own independence with themselves? I should now like to know from the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs whether this is in the direction of a separate Colouredstan in South Africa? Sir, here the hon. the Minister therefore aligns himself with the hon. the Minister of Information: “Total segregation, also of the Coloureds”, and this while the hon. member for Moorreesburg speaks about a “new realization among our people” and a “fuller and more effective partnership” with our Coloured people.

Sir, I now want to come to what the hon. member for Bezuidenhout said. Hon. members on the other side must tell us what they mean by integration. I want to ask the hon. the Minister: Is there integration between Whites and Coloureds if they live together with us here in one country? We are abused if we say that we accept also the Bantu as part of one great South Africa; then we are abused as being integrationists.

There is a basic difference; the Bantu has his own territory.

I also want to know from the hon. member for Moorreesburg whether he agrees with the hon. the Minister that there is going to be a separate area for the Coloured people in future where they will be fully independent of South Africa?

Who said that?

The Minister said it; I can quote it to the hon. member again. Sir, the people of South Africa, and especially the youth of South Africa, want to know what our policy is in regard to the Coloured people, and the Coloured community also want to know what our policy is in regard to them. Sir, I want to quote from an article which appeared in Dagbreek on 30th August this year (translation)—

Sir, this was written by a Coloured person under the pseudonym of Gus Adams. Sir, we have seen that the Coloured Persons Representative Council has been established, but the question is this: On the way to where?

Where do you want to go with your six Coloured representatives?

Is the Coloured Persons Representative Council going to lead along the road of separate development towards independence of this white Parliament, in view of the statement made by the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration that we do not want to share our independence with the Coloured people? Are we going to have two sovereign Parliaments in South Africa, one for the white people and one for the Coloured people, and later probably one for the Indians as well—a lot of Parliaments here within one South Africa? We cannot expect young South Africa to await a political heritage on such a loose basis. Surely there must be direction, Sir, and as far as I am concerned, there are two directly opposite points of view on that side of the House now.

What about your pattern of discrimination?

Surely the answer is obvious; if we only adopt a realistic attitude and do not philosophize away from reality, let us then make this Coloured Persons Representative Council a federal unit of the Republic of South Africa and let us restore to the Coloureds their rightful representation in this House, as the position always was.

Representation by their own people?

By their own people if they want it that way.

How many should there be?

If we talk in this vein, the hon. member for Moorreesburg and we think along the same lines where he spoke of a “fuller and more effective partnership” with the Coloured population. We want to know, the people want to know, and especially the young people in the country want to know, what is going to become of the Coloured community under this Nationalist Government.

Why do you want to give them only six representatives?

We want to know: What course is to be followed as far as the Coloured people are concerned? But the hon. the Prime Minister tells us that we have to leave it to our children; our children must decide about it. If we do not indicate the direction now, then surely, we cannot determine the end of the road.

I was replying to a few questions which hon. members had raised here. I was replying to a question by the hon. member for Houghton. [Interjections.] Sir, we are dealing with serious matters. I know that the hon. member does not regard the question of the Coloured people as a serious matter. He plays political football with the Coloured people. The hon. member for Houghton raised a question here which in my opinion is an important one. She said that housing projects are established and that there were subsequently no schools for the children. This is a matter which puts us in a dilemma in more than one respect. When housing projects are established, as she herself knows, it sometimes happens very soon that there is a demand for schools. After the housing project has been completed as planned by the architect, it takes a considerable time before a school can be erected. As regards this problem of Hanover Park, I can tell her that it was immediately realized that we had to take more rapid action here, and that a process was initiated there. As hon. members know, unavoidable delays do occur sometimes. But at this stage the Treasury is investigating the matter so that a considerable number of classrooms may be erected in Hanover Park according to the new pre-construction system. In this way attempts will be made to have the classrooms ready so that school accommodation will be available to most of these children early next year. I can give the hon. member the assurance that this matter is really receiving attention.

She also referred to housing. It is, after all, the Department of Community Development and the local authorities which are concerned here. The Department of Coloured Affairs can submit pleas in this connection. We can plead with them, but we ourselves do not have the executive authority to get this task done. I do not want to argue any further with the hon. member about the question of employees who are tied to employers and who are placed under an obligation, as it were, the moment they accept housing. But I think in this respect she has mounted a horse which will not take her very far. Nowadays it is the position all over the whole world that housing forms part of services to employees.

Yes?

Oh yes, even the hon. member’s boss, Oppenheimer, does this for his people at Oranjemund.

He is not my boss. I am my own boss.

The hon. member should not get upset so quickly. She should rather listen to what is being said; then she will receive wisdom.

The hon. member for Houghton also wanted to know why Mr. Tom Swartz never officiated at the opening of a school, etc. I think she actually intended to ask why the five leaders of the Coloured Persons Representative Council, the executive committee, did not officiate on such occasions. If the hon. member read the little publication entitled Alpha, she would see that some of these members often officiate on such occasions. It is simply not being given so much publicity. As the leader, Mr. Swartz does, of course, travel around more and officiate more often at political meetings. Admittedly, this is not so often the case on occasions of this nature, but I can give the hon. member the assurance that the services of these people are in fact being used, because we want to develop them among their own people, for they deserve to be developed.

I feel I should just say a few words about a request which the hon. member for Moorreesburg made to me. Incidentally, the hon. member for Moorreesburg received fine compliments from the hon. member for Turffontein. Now, I may as well tell the hon. member for Turffontein that if he is as sincere as he sounded, I think he should go on struggling with his ideas. At this stage he is still in a whirlpool of very troubled waters. If he lies awake many nights, he will also receive clarity, in the same way as many of us had to lie awake, too. [Interjections.] If hon. members have quite finished amusing themselves, I shall continue.

Mr. Chairman, there are certain persons who say that we should solve the Coloured problem now. The United Party wants the National Party to solve this problem now, in spite of the fact that they could not solve it after many years. There are others who say that our descendants must find the solution. I want to tell them that there is one thread which runs right through, even in the academic approach and among people who sometimes differ with us in regard to the matter. This thread is that the future pattern should already be determined by this generation and this Government. We are concerning ourselves with this and it is being implemented gradually. The finishing touches will be added by future generations. This is exactly what the hon. the Prime Minister said. If hon. members want to refer to what he said, they will see that this is what he said. Even the hon. member for Houghton agrees with this, because sometimes she thinks very clearly. Any person would be arrogant to think that he could outline as easily as this the final road of a growing and developing people with a pencil. We have paved the way and the parallel roads next to one another, and we shall continue along this course. However, it is for a future generation to add the finishing touches.

I want to start replying to the hon. member for Moorreesburg now, otherwise I shall not have enough time. This hon. member raised a very interesting matter here, namely that we should think of decentralizing the geographic planning in respect of the Coloured people to areas which have traditionally been inhabited by the Coloured people and in which there are old townships where the Coloured person feels at home. We know that the numbers of the Coloureds have increased very much in recent times, and that it may possibly create a dilemma for us here in the Western Cape and in the Peninsula. I want to tell him briefly that the matter in regard to Mamre was investigated several years ago. Arising from the report of an inter-departmental committee, which investigated the question of Mamre and its development almost three years ago, the Minister decided as long ago as 31st July, 1968, that in the light of circumstances and the obvious need for a second point of development for the Coloured people which would have to extend right down to the coast in order to meet all the needs of an independent urban complex as well as beach facilities for Coloureds from elsewhere, the Department of Planning had to pay immediate attention to defining the area of the proposed urban complex on the West Coast. I am talking about Mamre and its environs. The hon. member knows that area. It ought to be a continuous area from the sea on the west coast up to and including Mamre. The existing obvious beach area is located opposite this development area. While land in the vicinity could still be obtained reasonably easily and cheaply, the State should at least buy Cruywagenskraal and a few other farms between Mamre and the west coast. The land which was not required for immediate development, could be used for the farming community of Mamre. The said decision was then submitted to the Department of Planning. Areas were defined in accordance with what the hon. member advocated here in respect of Mamre. The standpoint is that the Mamre township will develop normally. I want clarity in regard to this matter, and I also want to make this clear: The Mamre township will develop normally, as largescale development there would change the character of the area as a result of an influx from elsewhere which will not only be foreign to the management board and the community, but which may also be regarded by them as a breach of promise, since land allocated as a rural area, would then be used for other purposes.

In view of the need for beach facilities along the west coast, it is therefore advisable that the farm opposite Silwerboom Strand should be acquired and developed as a township, also for the settlement of Coloureds from the Milnerton industrial area. The idea is that they would then leave from Milnerton, because they would be coming from two directions, namely from the Cape Flats and from Milnerton. The whole area between Mamre and the sea should therefore be reserved for Coloured development. For this reason the Department of Planning coloured in the advertisement for the proclamation of the group areas for Coloured persons at Mamre in such a way that the whole area would be included. This is indicated on a sketch. As I explained to the hon. member, this is the area which he had in mind.

To-day we need a considerable amount of land for existing institutions such as the Porter Reformatory and the Klaasjagersberg Children’s Home. We need land for an old age home for Coloured persons run by the State. We already have a State old age home elsewhere, as well as a rehabilitation centre, etc. However, more and more land is needed. We are trying to move those complexes to the rural areas, because we believe it will serve to attract people to those areas. Therefore, if group areas are approved as advertised, the development of a township along Silwerboom Strand will not only be a home for the surplus of Coloured persons from the Cape Flats, but will also provide us with a growth point which will provide beach facilities for all the Coloured persons north of Cape Town and in the Boland. The other places which he mentioned, still have problems with their development. Pniel is the de facto property of the community. There is talk of expansion, but no expansion has taken place as yet. Saron has already been transferred to the management board of the community. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. the Deputy Minister has been answering questions which have arisen during the course of the debate. I propose to put further questions to him or to the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs. I am mainly concerned, in the first instance, with the lack of adequate facilities for the Coloured people in the Wentworth area in Durban. The Wentworth area in Durban comprises the largest concentration of Coloured people. In the first place, I should like to deal with sporting and recreational facilities. At the beginning of this Session a problem arose which was reported in the newspapers, namely that action had been taken in respect of sporting functions which had taken place between Coloured and Indian people. I made attempts through the normal channels to seek an interview with the hon. the Minister, because I felt that this was a subject which we could discuss on other than a political plain. Unfortunately my efforts were not successful and for that reason I raise this matter under the hon. the Minister’s Vote. One has to consider what the position is in so far as the Coloured people of Natal are concerned. They represent a small minority group of the population. They do not have the numbers to develop a complete sport set-up of their own. We have, however, a large concentration of Indians. It is my belief that in the past there have been friendly competitions and mixed sport between Coloured and Indians in Natal. When we come to the Cape I think we will find that the exact opposite applies. Here we have a large concentration of Coloured people, but the numbers of Indians are insufficient for them really to stand alone when it comes to competitive sport. My suggestion to the hon. the Minister therefore is that he could play his part in seeing that in these cases there is no obstacle raised in so far as participation in sport between these two groups is concerned. I am aware that recent edicts have announced that the question of permits has been eased. I believe, however, the problem is mainly one of delay. I know of a recent case in Port Shepstone on the South Coast in Natal, where both race groups are in small numbers. Before they could participate in a mixed sporting fixture it was necessary for them to make application for a permit. I do not believe that the average individual in South Africa realizes what is best to do, namely, whether application should be made to the Department of Coloured Affairs or the Department of Community Development.

My appeal to the hon. the Minister is whether it is not possible to make some arrangement whereby, when applications are made on a local level, they are dealt with on a local level and that they do not have to go first to the Department of Coloured Affairs, then to the Department of Community Development and then possibly either to Cape Town or Pretoria. If the hon. the Minister is prepared to give sympathetic consideration to this suggestion and to use his influence with his colleague the Minister of Community Development, many of these difficulties could be done away with and many of the cliff-hanging decisions which crop up, at the last minute and which mean frustration, disappointment and delay to the people who are awaiting a decision, would be altogether overcome.

Then, Sir, I want to deal specifically with the question of sport facilities in the Wentworth complex. I speak as a member of the Council for Culture and Recreation for the past three years. I am fully aware of the valuable spade-work and ground-work that has been done by this body. But, Sir, there are many delays which are cuasing a great deal of frustration amongst the Coloured people themselves. The Coloured people claim that in the past five years there has been no evidence of progress being made in the provision of sports facilities in the area of Wentworth. They have reached the stage where they say quite openly that they are very dubious of seeing any tangible development there in the near future. I realize why the progress is slow. It is a matter which embraces the activities of many Government Departments. It concerns the Department of Coloured Administration. It concerns the Department of Community Development and in this instance it also concerns the Department of Police. I believe too that in the final stages the Department of Public Works will be involved. Then there is a further problem in that local authority is also involved.

Finally, overriding all these difficulties, comes a very trite question, the question of finance. Finance may become available as a result of the generosity of the Minister of Finance, or it may not, as a result of problems which affect the finances of local authorities. I believe that in this instance, if the hon. the Deputy Minister were able to cut down some of the departmental red tape, he would be doing the people he represents in this House a very great service.

There is another matter which is causing disappointment and further frustration to the Coloured people. That is in regard to the provision of halls and community centres, primarily in areas for the Coloured people. I know that there have been applications by well-meaning bodies, who would assist the Coloured people in the provision of such community halls. I know that there have been discussions, but unfortunately there has been no finality to date. I know that there again other departments are involved. I am satisfied in my own mind, from my brief background knowledge of the situation, that the modification and use of school halls will not be an answer to the problem. There will have to be rethinking on this particular aspect. I know too that other departments have given this matter a great deal of thought, but I believe that up to the present there has been no satisfactory conclusion to this matter. The frustration is growing. I believe it is not a good sign that people should be so frustrated for so long.

I want to come to another vexed question in this particular community of Wentworth. That is the question of housing. I am glad the hon. the Minister of Defence is here, because he will probably remember that five years ago, when he was the Minister of this portfolio, we discussed this very question. I want to say to this Committee that the progress has been disappointing in the extreme. I realize that there are problems, but the fact is that the houses are not being provided at a rate commensurate with the demand. I believe that the Coloureds in the Durban area are worse off than any other racial group in that area. I know that the demand exceeds the supply. I know too that the provision of houses is in the main the concern of the Department of Community Development, but I feel that the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs should know that the reaction from the Coloured people, when his hon. colleague said that he had not received applications for houses, was that this statement was not only misleading, but virtually untrue. I say to the hon. the Minister that the position in the Durban area is serious. Whatever influence he can use in this regard will be appreciated by people whose patience is running out.

Then, Sir, I want to deal with the question of schools. When one studies the Loan Vote, one sees that the proportionate expenditure on the Loan Vote as far as Natal schools are concerned, is low, in relation to the number of students. What one has to bear in mind is that in the Wentworth area there are students who are attending schools outside the Wentworth area because they are unable to find accommodation in the area itself. I am aware that two new schools have been planned, but I believe that the situation requires attention, because we in Natal have compulsory education, in terms of the regulations, for the Coloured people, up to Std. 8 or the age of 16. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. Acting Leader of the House will forgive me if I start my speech to-night by referring to him. As I sat looking at him, I noticed in what a relaxed and calm manner he, as the Minister who previously handled this portfolio, was listening to-night to the Opposition’s ideas and argumentation. He is a person who, for a long time, struggled with this problem and devoted his attention to it, and I think that it must have made him a very happy person to-night to see that the criticism expressed on the Opposition side, is actually devoid of any substance. I am not saying this in order to detract in any way from quite a number of fine speeches that came from the United Party. I am thinking in particular of the hon. member for Turffontein. He tried to-night to play-off the hon. member for Moorreesburg against other hon. members. I want to tell the hon. member that this reminds me of a certain occasion, approximately 10 years ago, when I attended a meeting one night. On that occasion there was, amongst others, a youngish student who was putting questions to the present Minister of Defence. I think I can refer to the hon. member as being “youngish”. I do not know whether he is a student. That young man advanced arguments of the same type, and I still remember the neat way in which, as long ago as that, the National Party disposed of the arguments which the hon. member mentioned here tonight. I may just add that to-night the hon. member for Moorreesburg once again, as he also did on the previous occasion, presented us with a very calm and positive contribution in respect of the development of the Coloured population, or the “brown people”, as he calls them.

Even if you do not agree with him in your heart?

Of course I agree with him in everything he said. I do not think that it is fair of the hon. member to say that I am not honest in saying that I agree with the hon. member for Moorreesburg. His views on the development and growth points which are to be created at the traditional places inhabited by the Coloured population, are a splendid idea. I want to tell the hon. member for Moorreesburg that if I get the opportunity, I should very much like to discuss those matters with him.

However, I want to come to the hon. Opposition. They suggested that the National Party actually had no solution to this so-called problem in respect of the Coloured population. Then they profess to be the people who have the final solution. They are trying to suggest that their solution complies with all the requirements as far as the critics of South Africa are concerned. I want to refer the hon. members for Turffontein, Bezuidenhout and Newton Park to a book written by K. L. Roskam. The title of the book is Apartheid and Discrimination. This book was written by a young university graduate who came out to South Africa a few years ago in order to make a specific study of the so-called population and race problems in South Africa. He laid down certain very definite conditions with which a country had to comply so as not to be guilty of discrimination.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 23.

House Resumed:

Progress reported.