As this debate enters its fourth day and while a lot has been said, I think it can fairly be said that the United Party has shown, first, that our strong economy is threatened and, secondly, that inflation and the general rise in prices are due to the Government’s policies in general and to its labour policy in particular. My aim today is to bring further proofs of the blame which rests on the Government in this regard, and to show that not only our economy but also the Government itself are at the crossroads today. Furthermore I should like to urge hon. gentlemen opposite, and give them reasons for it, to take a new road and to show them why it would be safe to take a new road and to take it now.

In regard to the first point, are further proofs really needed to show that our strong economy is being threatened and that inflation as well as the general rise in prices are largely the result of the Government’s labour policy, never forgetting that the Government’s labour policy is fundamental to its racial policy? Although I do not believe it is needed, I should like nevertheless to bring one further witness on this point. This witness is Dr. A. S. Jacobs, a former member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council and presently the Economic Adviser to Volkskas. Dr. Jacobs addressed the Afrikaanse Sakekamer on 27th January this year and said—

Die tekort van R700 miljoen verlede jaar op die land se betalingbalans was die grootste in Suid-Afrika se geskiedenis en die verbruikersprysstyging van 4.8 persent in dieselfde tydperk was die grootste sedert 1952. Gelukkig is inflasie in ons land nie die gevolg van druk van die vakbonde om hoër lone nie, maar die gevolg van die tekort aan arbeidskragte.

An authority like Dr. Jacobs relates this directly to the labour policy of the Government. [Interjections.] Hon. members may ask why we blame the Government and its policies as we have had the same government all these years. My answer to that is that conditions today are different. Ten years ago there were idle labour and idle capital and, furthermore, the Government’s policy in regard to labour matters has changed. Let me quote from Syfret’s Economic Review for 1971 to support the first point. It says—

Sound economic sense, Mr. Speaker. The strong economic growth in the past decade drew into our economy many non-Whites, particularly Bantu. Had it not been for them, we would not have had the growth we in fact experienced. This fact furthermore was reflected in our population figures, in the ratio between White and Bantu in our economy, in statistics of people in our cities. In fact, we saw their presence in great numbers in our cities. The most interesting result of this was that Nationalists became perturbed at this trend. It was the very opposite of apartheid and the “Verligtes” particularly were the most vocal during about the mid-1960s. There are countless examples, but let me give only one. In the important Calvinist organ “Woord en Daad” of about that time, what was happening was described as “’n vervalsing van apartheid”. In Die Burger there were great big banner-headlines: “Bely apartheid, prakseer integrasie.” There were many other voices, voices which could not be ignored in those middle sixties. They had to be appeased to purchase and to maintain the unity of the Nationalist Party. And so, Sir, just at a time when that slack in the economy was being taken up, particularly the slack in the labour market, in approximately 1967, the Nationalist Government saw that it would have to turn on the screw or abandon its policy for ever. What do we find. Sir? Among the measures which the Government then started taking were the following: In August, 1967 the Government announced the measure to reduce Bantu labour by 5 per cent a year in the Western Cape. In 1967 we had the Physical Planning Act put upon the Statute Book and it started taking effect in the years soon after 1967. In 1970 we had that amendment to the Bantu Labour Act, an amendment which enabled the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration to come last year with those five categories of employment which were to be closed to the Bantu people. We had extra strictness in the enforcement of the pass laws; we had the persistent and persisting refusal to allow Bantu to be trained outside the reserves, and we had a persistent refusal to allow them to be trained for skilled employment. These last two were not, of course, new measures for the Government.

Sir, what was the result? In economic language, the result was that in those years, 1964 to 1970, salary and wage rises far exceeded the increase in productivity. In terms of the ordinary citizen there was a crying shortage of labour, whether for the farmer, the housewife or the industrialist. Skilled and unskilled labour became short. There was a lower rise in the standard of living of people even though their salaries may have gone up. For the Bantu there was unemployment, under-employment, poverty in many cases, under-nourishment in many cases, especially in the reserves. Sir, I say that the economy today stands at the crossroads. But I am not an economist and I quote the restrained words of Syfret’s Review again where they say—

Those are the only alternatives.

Mr. Speaker, I want to stress this. As you can see from those words and as is the position in fact, not only is the economy at the crossroads; but the very Government, the Nationalist Party and their supporters are at the crossroads.

I believe sincerely that there is a deep division in the Cabinet today as to the answer that should be given to that question which I posed, whether we should have a buoyant economy or a strangled economy; whether the Government should release its grip on the throat of our economy or whether it should not. Sir, I mention some signs of this division just in case people contest my statement that there is in my opinion a division in the Cabinet. There is this 5 per cent reduction a year of Bantu labour in the Western Cape. The hon. the Minister of Transport pays no attention to it, and in fact the figures which the hon. the Minister of Labour quoted yesterday do not bear out that we have had a 5 per cent reduction in the working force here since 1967.

Special permits have been issued.

This takes no account of all the people who are working here illegally. Secondly, I instance the fact that in 1968 the Physical Planning Act started to be felt. On the one hand we had the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development boasting in this House that so much land had been denied to industries as a result thereof that a quarter million natives could no longer find employment in the White areas. On the other hand, the hon. the Prime Minister himself suggested last year that, on the contrary, this Act had had a minimal effect on our economy and on the restriction of employment.

Take the case of the hon. the Deputy Minister’s proclamation of these five categories. It is a sort of stop-start affair. He came with it and he bungled it. They were going to close these categories, and we now have an amended notice watering it down and the thing is dragging on. There is no decision, there is no certainty in this matter. Mr. Speaker, if you want evidence of division in the Cabinet—and we know how loyal members of the Cabinet quite rightly are in keeping the affairs of the Cabinet secret and confidential—you have only to look at the pronouncements and counter pronouncements across the floor of this House last year both before, during and after the Budget debate. With such loyal people we still have these pronouncements and counter-pronouncements. I sincerely sympathize with hon. Cabinet Ministers in their predicament. I concede that to have a division among colleagues who stood shoulder to shoulder for so long is a most heart-breaking thing.

Sir, this question of whether or not to ease labour restrictions is not an ordinary matter. As I have indicated in this case it is absolutely fundamental to their policy, and consequently it has the most far-reaching personal as well as political implications. I say it involves the abandoning of a cherished policy; it involves the abandoning of separate development as they have known it.

You are talking nonsense.

I urge hon. members opposite and their followers outside not to delay in any way in releasing their hands from the throat of the South African economy and in making this change. I urge them not to stick stubbornly to the wreck and the ruin of a policy. Sir, in saying this I want to offer them the sound advice of Lord Salisbury on the whole question of errors in politics. Lord Salisbury III, a great statesman, said this about errors in politics: “The commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcasses of dead policies.” I say with the utmost conviction that the policy of separate development as we have known it is as dead as a dodo. This policy was stillborn; it was born dead, because long, long ago South Africa, rightly or wrongly, decided to base its entire economy on the labour of the Black man. Since then South Africa has persisted in this policy, and if a dead policy can be more dead then I would say that the Nationalists made it so when they decided to restrict immigration to skilled people only. Not only that, Mr. Speaker, but they did not allow enough skilled people into the country to satisfy the requirements of our economy. As a result of this attitude, there is a completely insufficient physical separation between Black and non-Black in South Africa. (I may say that in regard to the Coloured people it is now admitted by the Government that there is insufficient separation between the peoples. There is too much interdependence.)

Why did you not fight Colesberg?

I believe that there are a lot of Government supporters, a lot of sage gentlemen sitting in this House, who are immensely relieved to have had to come to this conclusion that this policy is as dead as the dodo because: this policy involves South Africa, of its own free will and choice, cutting out of this very country sovereign independent states.

What an experience have we not had about sovereign independent states since the party opposite first embraced this policy in 1959! At that time there were very few sovereign independent states in Africa, but since then there have been 30 or more, and in not one of these sovereign independent states have we had a constitutional change of government. It has always been by coups or power take-overs of one kind or another. Consequently I am quite certain that had the hon. members opposite had the foresight of hon. members on this side and realized that this is what would happen, they would never have embraced this policy for a moment.

I see no cause whatsoever, however, for hon. members opposite to despair, and even less for South Africa to despair, since there are such good alternatives. I want to say that many of the good ideas in their thinking will be found in the policies of this side of the House. If they look without bias at our policies, many of them will find them sensible and acceptable. I want to give one example. Our policy in regard to the greater use of Native labour is often represented on the other side as if we are going to throw open the sluice-gates and just let everybody in.

Of course.

But hon. members are wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth. Apart from the fact that they should know that we retain influx control in order to relate the demand for labour to the supply of labour, in addition they know that many non-Whites, Bantu, will only be taken into a category where they are not now taken in where there is agreement on the part of the trade union involved. This whole aspect has been elaborated upon by leaders on this side of the House in great detail. And there is of course the extra safeguard that any such man taken in gets taken in at the rate fixed for the job by the trade union and the employer by agreement. [Interjection.] I say, and indeed the past of South Africa shows, that the number of extra Bantu taken in under United Party policy is insignificant in relation to the ratio of Black to White in this country, and I say it will be insignificant in the future. The latest figures show that the ratio is two Blacks to one White, and this would be affected only in the most insignificant manner by any change.

But there is a second reason why hon. members opposite and people in the country can embrace our policies without the slightest hesitation or fear. It was always believed on the other side that if you abandoned their apartheid you were immediately doomed to “gelykstelling”. This was the thing which was said time and again by Nationalist speakers up and down the country. Put another way, they used to say that there was only one choice, between integration and separation. Now the Government, of course, has given the lie to this whole absurd theory of theirs. We have been told in the recent announcement about the Coloured policy of the Government that this is no longer so. We have been told that their Coloured policy is neither integration nor homelands. Sir, I never expected to experience the day when I should see a headline in Die Burger to that effect. I read from Die Burger of 5th December, 1970—

Kleurlinge: Integrasie en tuisland verwerp. Regering klaar verwarring op.

At last I can give credit to the men who have come round to admit the truth. They have had the sense to state what we have been stating down the years, and, if this can apply to the Coloured people of South Africa, it can apply quite as strongly to the Bantu people of South Africa.

There is a third reason why no one need despair. That reason is that a similar federal idea and policy to that of the United Party has enjoyed great support on the Nationalist side. Federation has by some of their most significant figures even been described as separate development. They will be interested to know that this was done by no less a man than the new Chairman of the Board of Governors of the newspaper Rapport. Mr. Willem van Heerden, writing an article in Optima in December, 1960, which is 10 years ago, had this very interesting thing to say, which should give heart to many members on the opposite side:

Mr. Speaker, I stress that he is here contrasting sovereign independent Black states with states which are not. This is an attitude which has resemblance to our own.

Lastly there is a further point, which I believe should move hon. members opposite to change their attitude in this important regard to take a new look and a new view. All people, but Nationalist Afrikaners perhaps in particular, have always been concerned with their sense of mission here in Africa. Not long ago a leading Afrikaans cultural figure had something important to say about this sense of mission. I refer here to Prof. Viljoen, Rector of the Rand Afrikaanse Universiteit. In addressing the annual congress of the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge recently at Bloemfontein he said and I quote from Jewish Affairs:

I wish to ask whether anybody here maintains that this duty can be fulfilled by withdrawing entirely the influence of the White man from great areas of South Africa. For the reasons I have given, and many others, we of the United Party believe interest and duty urge that we must make a change in these matters. It is essential that we should lead all these peoples to a great destiny in South Africa. The United Party is ready to do this.

Mr. Speaker, all I can say about the speech made by the hon. member who has just resumed his seat is that he was unable to do any better. That is the best he is capable of, and the United Party is satisfied with it. The hon. member mentioned quite a number of matters. To tell the truth, too many to try to reply to in one speech. But I want to give him and the United Party a piece of advice. They must make up their minds now, one way or the other. They must either decide that South Africa is a poor country and that nobody has any work. Or they must decide that South Africa is a country with a thriving economy and that there is a great demand for labour. Then they must try to make a point of that. They must not try to say both things, particularly not in one speech.

The hon. member who has just resumed his seat began by referring to South Africa’s strong economy. Of course it is strong. He ought to be as grateful as the rest of South Africa that our economy is so strong, because this Government made it strong. It is a fact that our economy is strong in spite of the United Party’s opposition over the years. The economy is strong in spite of continued pressure on it to cause it to give way at all the cardinal points. It is strong in spite of continued attempts by the outside world to curb South Africa’s forward momentum. It is strong in spite of the cold war which has been waged against it, and continued for many years. The hon. member ought to be grateful that the economy is still so strong.

I do not want to digress too far on what the hon. member said, but I do nevertheless want to refer to one statement he made. One of the reasons put forward by the hon. member for South Africa’s future not having to be too gloomy is the fact that the United Party has an alternative policy. He sees this as a great hope for South Africa. I hope to return to this subsequently. In an attempt to lend support to his tenuous argument, he had to go back as far as ten years ago and quote from a leading article written by a newspaper editor and deduce from that that we are in fact engaged in a different policy to the one we purport to be engaged in. In this connection I should like to make a comment. I found it striking that the hon. member should have used the following words—I wrote them down: “The Government labour policy is fundamental to the Government relations policy”. I now want to state that the United Party came to this session this year with the plan of conducting this debate with one obsession and with one purpose only. It is to try in this debate to make as much trouble as possible for the apartheid policy in all its facets, to try to make as much trouble from situations which arise and to try to make as much political capital out of incidents which have occurred and may occur in South Africa, because the United Party is going to try to break apartheid with an attack on our economic and labour policy. That is their motive.

Yesterday the hon. member for Bezuidenhout also mentioned a few important matters. Hon. members heard his speech. It dealt with a subject which is also the topic of much discussion today among the people of this country. In addition, the hon. member for Bezuidenhout said something important yesterday with which I agree. It is the only point in his speech with which I agree, and that is that we are living in very difficult times in South Africa, and that they are becoming more and more difficult. I agree with him on that score. I agree with him that South Africa, and in fact the whole world, is going through a difficult period and that there are many problems in many different spheres. I agree with him that a great deal of pressure is being exerted to try to undermine authority and order, as well as, and this is intended for the ears of the hon. member, to allow permissiveness to succeed and also to be applied in South Africa. The National Party has been governing for the past number of years in the knowledge that it is part of this difficult world with all its problems. We are indeed part of it. We are living in this world and we are doing business with it. We are exchanging ideas in all spheres, from the scientific sphere to virtually every imaginable sphere. We are trying to maintain ourselves in this world, and it is in this world that we must wage a struggle against all kinds of attacks. That is what we are doing.

At the beginning of this debate, the hon. members on the opposite side referred to the fact that we in South Africa are also part of the greater world and tried to belittle us as regards the economic problems arising out of that and alleged that the Government was solely responsible for all the problems and that it was quite out of touch with the outside world. As far as the economic aspect is concerned, they tried to link it up as I have just explained. Although we in South Africa admit, and say this, that the problems we are experiencing here are not only the result of what is happening in the outside world, they are nevertheless tied in with what is happening there. In the attacks made here, quite a number of examples were mentioned. We have ties with the world in which we are living, and I want to point out to hon. members how these affect us. When South Africa seeks money in a capital market with which to expand its great economic development and the interest rates are very high, it affects us. When South Africa must pay an expensive price for insurance services and freight services, it affects the price of agricultural products which have to be exported. It also affects the price of ores which have to be exported. If a situation should develop as a result of which we will have to pay more for oil in South Africa, it does indeed affect us. If we have to sell maize abroad at a world price which is declining, it means that we are getting less for it. We are therefore part of the world. This has its influence, and in this way it has its influence in every other sphere. During the past few years the Government has tried to take preventive measures against all influences which may harm South Africa. Many of these influences were directly and deliberately brought to bear against it, while others were wafted here from abroad. One of the most important influences which is being wafted here from overseas, and with which I want to associate the hon. member for Bezuidenhout, is this influence which the world and we are concerned about, i.e. the permissive spirit which has been set loose in the world today. The hon. member rose to his feet and launched an attack here. He rose to his feet and asked what earthly hope there was of our expecting any normal human relations to be possible between our people and the people of other nations coming here as guests if we have taught our people to be continually sticking their noses into other people’s private affairs. So he went on. By implication he then said that whatever we do here did not depend on what South Africa’s standpoint is; it did not depend on what was important for the peoples of South Africa, and it did not depend on what was important for our way of life, it depended on what tourists would say about it if they came out here to see for themselves. Then the hon. member went further and said that it was time and that it was the duty of the Government, in the interests of South Africa, to take a look at problems of this nature which were arising on a practical level. He said that the situation should be reconsidered. By saying that the situation should be reconsidered, the hon. member meant that we should reconsider and reject the legislation introduced here to maintain law and order. I now want to make a statement in regard to the United Party. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition launched an attack on the basis of a “persistence in a non-European policy that has already failed”. In the light of what the hon. member, who has just resumed his seat, said, I have the right to make this statement. I want to say that hon. members on the opposite side are, in everything they are saying, trying to break apartheid with all its consequences, to exploit all situations arising in that regard and to retain nothing of the basic apartheid policy. Over a long period of time they have been trying to imply that there are two points of view. They presented two prospects to the people, i.e. the one which tried to create the impression that they wanted to retain something of it, and the other which was supposed to give the impression that they wanted to destroy everything. The intention of the United Party in doing so is to maintain the point of view that they want to break everything. These attacks which they are launching on the labour situation, is intended to embarrass the Government and in these times and to try to break the National Party on this point. They do not mind doing so either.

Let us take a closer look at the situation now. One member on the other side of the House and also a number of my colleagues, confronted the United Party with specific aspects of this policy. The hon. the Minister of Planning indicated what the consequences of a high growth rate would be. The hon. member for Hillbrow, however, indicated that we could just as well grow at a rate of 10 per cent. The hon. the Minister indicated what it would mean if we have a growth rate at certain levels. In spite of what the hon. the Minister said, hon. members on the opposite side are continuing to exert pressure. What are the implications of this? If it were to happen and we did develop at that high rate, it would mean that in the process South Africa would be broken economically. What is more, it would also mean that if we maintained this growth rate and our metropolitan areas were developed to a certain point, we would then reach a point where we would no longer be able to disentangle what had been tangled up together. Hon. members on the opposite side said that we must have a high growth rate, and they attacked us because the necessary labour to accomplish that is not available. The hon. the Minister of Planning indicated that there is no more labour available to enable us to maintain such a high growth rate. If additional labour should be made available, it would mean a further depletion of the reserves. It would mean that the labour which is available as migratory labour would also have to be brought in. This would mean an over-concentration which would in turn have other consequences. It would mean that this would have to take place at a rate and cost per unit which the country would not be able to afford. For such a development the Witwatersrand would have to accommodate millions of additional people, and this would in turn result in a more expensive infrastructure per capita. Hon. members know what the development in the outside world comprises. Hon. members also know that if an urban complex exceeds a certain point of growth any further growth then takes place at a relatively higher cost. That is why the rate of development in Europe is in a different direction. They are trying to avoid great concentrations, because it is becoming more and more expensive to find land. It is also becoming increasingly expensive to introduce transport services and to install the necessary infrastructure. In the case of South Africa it is expensive to supply the necessary transport, and to lay on water. It is therefore cheaper to have decentralization. What hon. members on the opposite side have in mind, however, is that a great labour force should be brought from outside to the cities and that the Government and the taxpayers should pay for that. They do not mind what the accompanying costs are. Now I want to state that the hon. members are doing this because they want to send South Africa inevitably in a direction which would mean that South Africa will have irrevocably lost a battle. They want to try to win that battle now by casting suspicion on everything we propose. Suspicion has been cast on the policy.

What policy?

I shall tell hon. members now. The policy of the development of peoples in South Africa has, for us, a certain important implication. It has the implication that we must assist in that development. We bear that responsibility. Not only does it have an economic implication in this sense that it costs a country a great deal of money, but it also has a long term implication in respect of the people of such a country. The persons living in such a country have one important privilege which they may at least demand. They may demand to know from any Government what their rights are. Now I told you at the beginning that the United Party has rejected the idea of co-existing in this country as we, and the Blacks as well, see it. What the United Party has in mind is to demolish what has been built up. But if South Africa were to arrive at the point where an offer has to be made—ourselves on the one hand and the United Party on the other —then this side would make the offer that we will recognize certain fundamental rights. The fundamental rights which we recognize in regard to a Black person in his area if we offer him citizenship in his area—those hon. members are offering those rights here—is that he can live and work at a certain place and move about freely, and that everything associated with that will be allocated to him. Our standpoint is that the Bantu areas must develop, and that they can demand and obtain all those rights in that development. But the United Party offers little and want to withhold a great deal. Now it is one thing to tell the Blacks of this country that they must be one large community in which we must all work together; but giving them their fundamental rights when they claim it, is a different matter. Now I am putting it to hon. members on the opposite side: if they reject apartheid and its basic principles, are they prepared to grant the fundamental rights associated with citizenship to that sector of the Bantu who, according to them, are here permanently, must remain here and must form part of our community?

May I ask the hon. the Minister a question?

Let me just complete my point. Now I want to put another question. The Opposition says to the Blacks of South Africa that it must not have any faith in the development of their own homelands. They tell them that what they are offering them here is their own nationhood. They are saying that they, who have been living here for years, can remain living here permanently. They are saying to the men living here that they will grant them every opportunity in South Africa. Now I am asking them, are they prepared to carry this through and tell the Blacks that when they give them citizenship, they will give them full citizenship here? Are they prepared to tell the Blacks that if they have full citizenship here—for they refuse to give it to them elsewhere —they will grant full language rights alongside English and Afrikaans to a Bantu language here?

May I ask the hon. the Minister a question?

I am asking the hon. member, if he is prepared to tell them this?

He need only reply “yes” or “no”. I am asking the hon. member—since he is now saying that the Blacks who have been living here and will over the years are part of the community, will remain in this community and will remain part of it—whether they will give them everything here as far as their future is concerned and will realize their ideals? Will they urge them not to long for a homeland of their own? If those Blacks said to them now, “Sir, I will not ask for this in one year’s time, nor in five or ten, but I think that in 15 years the time will be ripe for Afrikaans, English and a Bantu Language to have equal rights here”, what will their reply be?

But you know what our policy is. [Interjections.]

I am now asking the hon. member who has just resumed his seat to tell me whether he is prepared to say to those Bantu who he is prepared to make citizens of South Africa … Will the hon. member please listen to me when I am speaking to him? I promise that when he speaks to me, I shall listen very courteously to him. I am asking him specifically whether he, when a request to this effect is made by the Blacks to whom he wants to offer citizenship—full citizenship to those Blacks who are born here and whom the hon. member maintains have nowhere else to live, to have their language recognized here as well as citizens—will the hon. member say “yes” or “no”? [Interjections.] No, answer me. Are you going to say “yes”? The people listening to this debate, want to know. [Interjections.] The hon. member can only indicate what his answer is by nodding his head. There are many people sitting here who are interested. Are you going to afford that citizen his elementary rights to the use of his own language alongside the use of English and Afrikaans? What answer is the hon. member giving—“yes” or “no”? [Interjections.] Mr. Speaker, we shall not get any reply. Yesterday my colleague, the Minister of Labour, also put a question to hon. members opposite. It also concerned that sector of the Bantu population who according to hon. members opposite have become part of South Africa as a result of the fact that they have already been living here for such a long time and can consequently claim South Africa as their home, and not a homeland. It is to them that hon. members opposite want to grant citizenship. Are you prepared to say to that Bantu citizen that in the world of labour relations he will be able to give orders to Whites? I am asking the hon. member a question; he need not be ashamed of replying “yes” or “no”. [Interjections.] If the United Party were to come into power and they held the referendum they talk about and they go to the people, what will the hon. member’s reply be if he is asked as M.P. for his constituency whether he will recommend to his people to vote in the affirmative for the acquisition by the Blacks of greater rights? Will his reply be “yes” or “no”? [Interjections.] These are questions which have been asked over the years and we are asking them again to show those who are listening to us here how immoral you are in regard to the Blacks, and not only the Blacks, but in regard to the Whites.

I now want to return my attention to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, because he said that the youth of South Africa was no longer on our side, but on his.

May I ask you a question?

I only have two minutes left. [Interjections.] You will still have many other opportunities to put a question. I am addressing myself to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition in regard to those young people whom he wants to inspire. Those young people want to know what the future holds for them. What is your reply to those young people going to be if they were to put these questions to you? What are you going to tell the young people at the universities … Will the hon. member please look at me when I am speaking to him? He must not look away. [Interjections.] If those thousands of young people tell him that they want to enter the future on a moral basis and want to establish whether there is in fact such a moral basis and they ask you these questions, what is your reply going to be? If they want to know from you what your reaction is going to be if there should be a request or a demand from the Blacks to the effect that those fundamental civic rights should be granted to them, that their language should be recognized alongside English and Afrikaans, what is your reply going to be? Are you going to accord them a third language alongside English and Afrikaans? [Interjections.] The hon. member need only say “yes or “no”.

Hon. members opposite have tried to embarrass us in every sphere by exploiting our policy. And on my part I want to state that they are doing something immoral in these times, which, as the hon. member for Bezuidenhout quite rightly said, are difficult times, times in which we cannot afford to decline to state where we stand, in these times when thousands of young people want to know what the moral basis of the parties is, and in times in which tens of thousands of Bantu want replies to questions …

And what about the Coloureds?

If the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has a message for the young people of our country in future, and he is not prepared to grant basic civic rights to those Bantu with whom he wants to share this fatherland of ours, then he dare not rise to his feet here and attack our policy while they are too lacking in courage to reply to the fundamental questions before the House, fundamental to the Whites as well as the non-Whites.

The hon. the Minister knows that I have great respect for his debating powers; in fact, I have already said so to him. But his performance here today was not worthy of him. He tried to create an impression by starting off from a basis which he cannot employ. It is very easy to stand up here, put wild questions and then demand that hon. members should reply when it is not their turn to speak. In spite of that, while the hon. the Minister was speaking, he refused to allow the hon. member for Durban Point to put a question. He was too scared to reply to a question from our side. Let us examine the quality of the questions he put, and let us see whether he can reply to my questions; then I shall reply to his.

But surely you are talking now; surely you can reply.

Yes, Sir, I just want him to realize what tactics he tried to employ. In South Africa we have almost two million people, mainly Afrikaans speaking, mainly Christians of our churches, who are the Coloured people of the Cape Province. Their future is ours. Recently the Cabinet issued a statement that there would be no separate homeland for them and that there would be no separate development for them. If they were to come and demand the right from the Minister to sell their labour where they wanted to, which is a fundamental human right, what would his answer be—yes or no? Where is the morality now? Where is the reply now? He spoke about languages …

Reply to the question.

The Minister laughed when we told him that he would receive his reply. He wants us to reply immediately. In South Africa we have a fairly large community, a worthy community, of Indians from the East. Where is their homeland? If they were to come to the Minister tomorrow and ask that Tamil should become an official language of South Africa, would he say “yes”? Where is his morality? Sir, if we say that the Government wants to take the Bantu labour market away from our industrialists in the White areas of South Africa, there is a storm of protest. The hon. the Minister of Planning asked us in this debate what right we had to say that they do not want to use them. In other words, the Bantu labour in Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth or Pretoria must remain there. They may have a homeland, but they do not live in it. Will he grant the people who are permanently here for our benefit the rights which he asks us whether we are willing to grant?

They have their rights of citizenship in their areas.

No, that is no reply; it is merely a statement of the false basis of the apartheid policy; that is all. They are not offering them rights of citizenship here. Where must they exercise their rights of citizenship? [Interjections.] Wait a minute; we cannot talk at the same time. If the hon. the Minister wants to reply to questions, I shall give him an opportunity, but he must not just sit there making a noise. Sir, I say, the false basis of the apartheid policy is to create the theory that people will enjoy their rights in an area situated a thousand miles from where they are born, grow up and die. Where is the morality in this? Where is the morality of a policy which does not allow people to live with their wives and children in one family? Where is the morality of that? What right has any member of that hon. Cabinet to put questions to any person in South Africa on morality, because the whole basis of their policy is immoral? The whole basis of their policy is a fallacy, a sophism. They want the world to believe that they want to separate the peoples, and all the time they are integrating them more, as I shall prove in a moment.

The hon. the Minister asked what the United Party’s policy was. Here is the reply to the question with which the Minister conjured for 20 minutes. The reply is a simple one. In terms of the United Party’s policy, the country will be organized on a federal basis among the races, among the peoples, and in all matters affecting those people not only one Bantu language but every Bantu language will be an official language for the purposes of their own administration of their own interests. That is the reply. Nothing can be fairer. But what is his reply? I have now given him our reply. What is his reply? What is his reply to one of the questions I have put to him? Sir, this finally disposes of that bit of play-acting by the hon. the Minister, and I now want to come back to the merits of the case.

The main point in this debate on the well-deserved motion of no confidence in the Government is that by its policy this Government is creating a situation in which South Africa cannot make the fullest and best use of its resources, especially its human resources. As a result the ordinary man—especially the father and mother with children—is paying a price in the form of higher cost of living and inflation which he cannot be expected to pay. We have received no real reply in this regard. We got something very distasteful from the Minister of Economic Affairs. I do not wish to elaborate on his reply, but I want to show how quickly a man who says that he grew up in poverty, can forget the condition of the people from whose ranks he came and how cold-blooded and disinterested he can be towards them and not care what becomes of them. He proved this by the hard-hearted line he took in this debate.

Then there was the hon. the Minister of Justice, who came forward to deal with a specific matter. We had all hoped that he would tell us that the Immorality Act case in Excelsior in the Free State had been dropped by the authorities in order to save the public of South Africa from humiliation, insults and disparagement. We know that the world Press and the television cameras of the world were there, and we had hoped that the Government realized that our Afrikaner people in particular do not deserve these insults because there are individuals who misbehave themselves. But the Minister came here and told us that it was a matter of legal, technical points; that the case had been withdrawn because people would not give evidence. This, Mr. Speaker, from a forceful Government which does not hesitate to send people to goal if they refuse to give evidence! Suddenly their hands are chopped off; suddenly they are paralysed; instead of being forceful they are lacking in courage. What is happening is that the people of South Africa are today receiving tangible proof of the wisdom, the insight and the statesmanship of a Jan Smuts and a Colin Steyn when they warned in this House—I was present—that if the Act were applied strictly, precisely the things that are happening now, would happen. I do not want to elaborate on that. I merely mention it as another example of how the Government is following a policy which it cannot apply and which it often dare not apply. [Interjections.]

I want to give my good friend the hon. the Minister of Labour credit for trying to reply to the merits of the unanswered case which my hon. Leader made out against the Government. I want to thank him for that. The hon. the Minister’s main argument was that our attack was unjustified because we and the Press which is favourably disposed towards us are always hammering on the fact that the labour force of South Africa consists of increasing numbers of non-Whites, and he quoted the Sunday Times and other newspapers to support that. What was the hon. the Minister’s reply to this? His reply was that the Government was keeping the position stable; that the percentage of Whites, especially the percentage of skilled Whites, was consistently remaining the same over the years.

One rabbit; one horse.

Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend is on the way to giving the answer. Why did the Minister make use of percentages and not of the actual figures? It is easy to juggle with percent ages. If I say that there are 1,000 workers in a certain factory and 10 per cent of them are Whites, it means that there are 100 White workers and 900 non-White workers. But if 10,000 people work in that factory and I say that 10 per cent are White workers and 90 per cent non-White, it sounds fine. If one speaks quickly, as the Minister does, one can believe that the position is virtually stable, but what is the actual position? It means that the number of White workers in that factory has increased by 900, from 100 to 1,000.

But the number of non-Whites has increased by 8,100, from 900 to 9,000. The number of non-Whites has increased nine times as much as the Whites. And this is what happens. This is why percentages are used in an attempt to conceal the true position. The incontrovertible fact which the Government must realize is that the prosperity which the Whites in particular are enjoying in South Africa, is due to the fact that we in South Africa are making use of both White and non-White labour in order to create the wealth of South Africa and to exploit our resources. Any person who tries to base his political thought on a different premise will land in the ridiculous predicament in which the Government finds itself today.

What are you proving now?

There is only one figure of real significance. There are many figures, but the one which puts the matter most clearly to us is the one used by my hon. Leader when he said that in the past 10 years only the increase in the number of non-Whites was greater than the total number of White workers in our industries.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, is there any possibility of Hansard functioning in the darkness? With the electric power off, I do not suppose the recording machines can function, and the Hansard reporters cannot see how to write in the darkness.

Business suspended at 3.35 p.m. and resumed at 3.50 p.m.

Mr. Speaker, when the proceedings were interrupted, I was enquiring from the hon. the Minister of Labour why he had not given us absolute figures rather than percentages, because percentages are misleading. One can show a constant percentage of employees in South African industry, but disguise the fact that with the growing population the number of non-Whites in these industries is multiplying many times faster than the number of Whites. That is what is happening in South Africa. But the hon. the Minister was in difficulties and I admire his ingenuity in resorting to this device in order to cloud the real issues and to hide the facts from the people.

The Ministers who have spoken in this debate all had to admit that we have a shortage of labour in South Africa and that we lack hands to do the work. The hon. the Minister of Labour said, and I am sorry that he is not here, that they were finding the answer by making fuller use of Coloured and Indian labour. That is most commendable, but the trouble is that the hon. the Minister of Planning told us earlier on during the debate that we are running out of Coloured labour and that Indian labour is becoming scarce as well. So what is the answer now? We have labour available, and nobody knows it better than the hon. the Minister of Transport. While they are reducing the number of Black people working in the Peninsula he sets about building new barracks in Table Bay docks to house more Black labour in contradiction to the policy of his Government. He knows we have the labour, provided we use it. But now it is their policy not to use it. The hon. the Minister of Labour told us that the Government will use Coloured and Indian labour in spheres which were closed to them before, provided that three conditions were satisfied. In the first place there should not be Whites available. Secondly, the Department of Labour and the trade unions should be recognized and, thirdly, non-Whites should not be in a position of authority over Whites. He then wanted to know what our attitude was. These things are common policy and I want to say at once—and I give it as a gift to the Government—that there will have to be exceptions to the rule, especially in respect of the third condition. The second one is the most important, namely that the Department of Labour, the trade unions and the workers must be recognized in the changes in our labour pattern. That is the condition we emphasized long ago, when the Government was still refusing to carry out this policy. When the Government was still in conflict with its apartheid policy we were stating this condition as the prerequisite of United Party policy. As far as having non-Whites in positions of authority over Whites, I admit that there may have to be exceptions, as there are exceptions today. There are very important exceptions today. In many of our hospitals non-White doctors operate and give instructions to White nurses while they are doing so. Even this Government will not be foolish enough to say that they are going to prohibit that entirely and take the chance that lives may be lost when medical attention cannot be given speedily enough. I personally know of schools in the Cape Peninsula where White teachers are today teaching under a Coloured principal. It is so, and I want to know if the Government is going to stop education because of the shortage of teachers. We must be sensible about these things. We have what we think is the ideal situation, but if one wants to be wise and if practical requirements demand that exceptions are made, these exceptions must be made. The United Party will, where necessary, make exceptions. The Government also make exceptions but they pretend that they do not exist and deny them.

I was very interested in the statement made by the hon. the Minister of Labour that it is still the policy of the Government to diminish the number of Black workers, especially in our White urban areas. With great delight he gave us figures, but only for the Cape Inspectorate area. He said that in four years out of a total Black labour force of 36,000 the Government had reduced the number by about 1,700, or less than 5 per cent. The target set by my friend the hon. the Minister of Community Development when he was responsible for this department, was 5 per cent per year. That was four years ago and the Government has not even reached the first 5 per cent yet. But I am interested that the hon. the Minister of Labour in giving these figures first of all chose the Western Cape, for there is a reservoir of other labour available, to a large extent, and that he did not give us Johannesburg or any other such city, for example Pretoria. I was also interested that the Minister did not take into regard the vast numbers of illegally employed Black workers in every city of South Africa, including Cape Town. I want to suggest that it would be interesting if the Department of Bantu Administration would go and look at the new waterworks at Voëlvlei near Cape Town, for which the loquacious Minister of Water Affairs is responsible, and come back and tell us how many Black people are employed by the Department of Water Affairs in the Western Cape. Let them make sure to come and report to us that they are satisfied that every Black man employed by the Department of Water Affairs is legally employed and has the right to be here. Let them make a similar check on the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. It is very easy to quote selective and incomplete figures and to prove nothing. Anybody can do that, but it does not advance the dialogue. Why should we South Africans continue with this game of self-deception? Why should we pretend that we could do without our Black workers? The hon. the Minister of Labour knows that, according to a report in the Argus on Wednesday evening, they are short of 2,000 workers in the garment industry in Johannesburg.

And the building industry?

The building industry is in a crisis. In Natal the Minister had to relax his own rules and allow Black people to be employed in building jobs that they otherwise would not have been allowed to do. But there is a crisis also in the Transvaal garment industry. There they want to bring in Coloured labour. They cannot find it. When they can find it, they have problems with housing, because this Government keeps on cutting the capital expenditure of our major municipalities. The municipalities cannot construct the infrastructure of South Africa fast enough to keep pace with our growth, because the Government prevents them. I find that in Cape Town the same industry, with all the Coloureds available in the Cape Peninsula, are 2,000 short of their requirements. Why deceive ourselves? Why bluff ourselves? Why pretend that we do not live in South Africa, when the reality of South Africa is with us every hour of the day?

I refer to the fact that my good friend the hon. the Minister of Planning went to the annual dinner of the Federated Chamber of Industries, and there he said exactly that for which they criticized my Leader for in this House a month before. He assured industry that he would see that they have sufficient labour to produce the wealth which would be needed to develop the Bantu areas. That is true, is it not?

Do you not want my speech?

But I heard it. I looked at him and said, “Good heavens, De Villiers Graaff redivivus”.

I did not say that.

The Minister suggested that. He made it perfectly clear that for the implementation of policy and for the maintenance of standards in South Africa you could not deprive existing industries of labour.

[Inaudible.]

But of course you did! Why should the Minister protest? For once he spoke the truth. For once he spoke sense. For once he spoke good United Party policy. He was applauded. He was loved by the audience. I want us to stop this act of self-deception, which is Nationalist Party policy in South Africa. I want to ask my hon. friends something. This is not a question on which I will demand a “yes” or “no” answer. They will not be able to do so. I want to ask them in the course of this debate or of this session or of next year to give us an answer to this question. If they are going to diminish the number of Black workers in White areas and at the same time maintain growth and stimulate industrial development, where are they going to do it? I will give the answer that they will give. In the growth points, on the borders of the reserves, chiefly. I think that is a fair answer. I want the Government to tell us how it comes about—and I want the public to realize what is happening—that every border industrial area where there is development is an extension of a White city? It may not be Johannesburg; it may not be Port Elizabeth; but it certainly is East London, Pinetown, Pretoria and Pietermaritzburg. Here we have the Transkei, the largest future Bantustan we have and the one which is politically most developed, which is approaching independence in many senses of the word—why on the borders of the Transkei has not a single industry been established under this much vaunted policy? When I asked this question across the floor of the House to the hon. member for Brakpan, his answer was “Dit sal nog kom”. By that he admitted that there were none at the moment. Let us take Rosslyn, the suburb of Pretoria which is now a border area. Part of which homeland is it? Let us stop deceiving ourselves—part of which homeland is Rosslyn? Is it part of Tswanaland? Yes. How did it come about then that industrial development at Rosslyn has been such that the Tswanas are now in the minority in that area, which is supposed to be part of the Tswana homeland? What is the future of those people now? On the 1st October, 1970, a few months ago, when the Prime Minister was speaking about the consolidation of the Bantu Reserves, was telling us about the great progress that was going to be made and was demanding the co-operation of the Opposition to speed up the process, I with my usual innocence—because I want to learn—asked him: “What will then become of the Black area, the portion of the homeland at Rosslyn?” The Prime Minister said it would remain there —a profound truth! When I pointed out to him that in that case we could not have consolidation the Prime Minister said that consolidation could not be absolute. And so can apartheid not be absolute, it can never become part of the truth of life in South Africa—because fundamentally it is based on an untruth. Unless the Nationalist Party Government has the courage to admit that they have departed from wrong premises, that they have been building a whole philosophy on false premises, South Africa is going to suffer as the people are suffering today. When the hon. the Minister of Water Affairs commenced his speech today he accused the United Party of seizing its opportunity in the debate in order to embarrass the Government with its apartheid policy. But, Sir, we do not want to embarrass the Government—we want to alleviate the real embarrassment of the people of South Africa—and the people are embarrassed. They are suffering under inflation and inflation is not pleasant for the ordinary man because he has no remedy in his own hands. All the while he is told to save more although things cost more. And on top of it the Minister of Finance comes along and by taxing him deprives him of the money that he earns. The Government grants increases in salaries and then reproaches the people because they spend the increases. The Minister of Labour now comes with a pious appeal to the people—he would not have done so before the election!—to stop asking for higher wages, to restrain themselves—shades of Harold Wilson before he was defeated in the United Kingdom! Now he says that this competition for labour between the private and the public sector must stop. Let us now look at the logic of this Government. Did the hon. the Minister give that advice to my honourable friend the Deputy Minister for Bantu Administration when he published that stupid statement a year ago announcing that he was going to stop the employment of Bantu typists and Bantu telephonists in Johannesburg? Did the Minister of Labour go to the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration to ask him: “What in Heaven’s name are you up to? If we take these Black workers out of the private sector, private employers must come to the public sector and take our typists and our telephonists at higher wages!” It is so simple; it is so elementary. But the Minister of Labour comes here to preach to us and to the people, to the salary-earners and the wage-earners, while he allows the stupidity of the Government’s policies to go unchecked with much worse effects than the things he wants private enterprise not to do. What must one do with a Government like this?

Kick them out!

We are busy doing that.

Fight the by-elections.

Honestly, Mr. Speaker, when I get interjections from that intellectual colossus from the other side, I am in trouble. What is the significance of not fighting a by-election?

It has a big significance.

Yet over the years the Nationalist Party never fought in Parktown, Houghton, Yeoville, Orange Grove, or Sea Point! Is that because the Nationalist Party has no support in South Africa, never had growing support in South Africa? Mr. Speaker, I do not begrudge my hon. friend the opportunity of revealing the level at which he thinks, but he should not waste my time in doing so. What are the results of this lack on the part of the Government to see the facts and to accept the truth of the South African situation? Look at what is happening. The hon. the Minister of Transport can no longer transport the goods which South Africa wants to transport in order to overcome the deficit in our balance of payments. He is falling behind; he is lagging behind; he is following the same route as Mr. Paul Sauer when he was Minister of Transport —he is landing us in a mess. Look at the present Minister of Posts and Telegraphs. He had to tell my hon. friend the member for Orange Grove yesterday that the shortage of telephones in South Africa was expected by the end of last year to have reached 150,000, and that after his predecessor had taken Draconian steps to limit the demand for telephones, had almost made it prohibitive for the ordinary man to own a telephone by making it so expensive to have one. But in spite of that the demand cannot be met. Why not? He has a live wire as a Postmaster-General who has announced that they are going to use private enterprise to assist with the building of exchanges and other structural necessities. This is good United Party policy although they cannot carry it out; they do not have the hands; they are afraid to use the resources available to us. And yet we get the question so often from the other side: Will you succeed in getting the com sent of the trade unions, will you succeed in this, will you succeed in that when you are in power? [Time expired.]

The hon. member for Yeoville, who has just sat down, asked why we did not contest Parktown or Houghton. There are good reasons for that, but I should now like to extend an invitation to my hon. friend. Why does he not personally contest Vereeniging again. I want to give him the assurance this time that he will have his tail further between his legs when he leaves. He asked when we would realize that we were living in South Africa? Sir, we realize we are living in South Africa and for that reason we realize the dangers for a White nation in South Africa, and we realize the problems and face up to them squarely. And the National Party does not supply easy solutions to these; it does not supply instant solutions. It looks ahead towards the next fifty years and tries to find a solution to South Africa’s problems within that time. But I want to say this to the hon. member for Yeoville. When is he going to realize what effect his policy will have on South Africa? Today it has become more evident than ever before that his policy can have only one effect on South Africa, and that is a Black majority government in South Africa and the downfall of the White people in South Africa. [Interjections.] I will test him against one thing. I will test him against the question he put to the hon. the Minister of Water Affairs. The question he put to the hon. the Minister of Water Affairs, was this: Are you willing to allow the Bantu here on a family basis; why are you breaking up Bantu families? Now I want to ask the hon. member for Yeoville whether it is his party’s policy that every Black man who works in the urban areas of South Africa, may take his family to these areas? [Interjections.] I am not referring to speeches of the last session or the speeches of the last century. This is a cardinal question to which the United Party refuses to reply. They and the Anglican Church, they and ffrench-Beytagh, are for ever saying that we are breaking up Black families; that we are refusing the husband to live with his wife and the family to live with the man. Do they want to deny this? Do they want to deny that this is their daily propaganda against South Africa in the outside world? Now I want to ask the hon. member for Durban (Point), who is supposed to have some courage, whether he would be prepared to say that under his Party’s policy every Bantu worker would have the right to bring his family to the urban areas?

I clearly said “no”.

Why did he then remonstrate with the hon. member for Soutpansberg and say to him that we are breaking up Black families; that we did not want the families to come and live with their people? Where is their morality? What morality is to be found in that? No, it is with this type of morality that attempts are made to curry favour with ffrench-Beytagh, Huddleston and people of that type. Then they say it is the cruel Nats, the cruel Afrikaners, who are separating the Black fathers and mothers, and who are tearing the Black mother and children away from the father. I want to know whether they are not ashamed of themselves.

Is it not the policy of the hon. member and the Government to place all Bantu labour on a migratory basis?

Yes, it is our policy and we are not ashamed to say it. We are not ashamed to say that our policy is one of migratory labour, and this means that the families cannot come here. We shall try to make the best arrangements for the husband and the wife and the family to be together as often as possible. But in what way does it differ from your policy? I want to ask the hon. member for Pinelands whether it is his policy that every Bantu worker in the urban areas should bring the members of his family here?

With all his wives.

Does he want to do this, or does he not want to do it? Does he want to bring the families here or not? Does he agree with the hon. member for Durban (Point), who says that they cannot bring their families here?

There is a qualification.

What has the hon. member for Yeoville said? In other words, he now wants to bring everyone in. One thing has become clear in this debate: That side’s solution to every problem in South Africa is one thing and one thing alone, and that is: Unlimited Black labour in White South Africa, and not only unlimited Black labour, but unlimited Black labour on the basis that they can come to our White cities on a family basis. [Interjections.] It is true and I shall say it wherever I go. Sir, the hon. member made a great show here yesterday and made it clear that they expected to come into power before long. He even said that I should ensure that my house was in good order. But on the other hand they complain because I renovate these houses; they say that I am spending too much. I shall tell him why I have to spend so much on the houses in Bryntirion and Groote Schuur. It is because of the bad houses built there by the United Party; I must now try to renovate them. But, Sir, I grant hon. members on that side this wishful thinking; I grant them the comfort of hoping that they are on the way to assuming the reins of government. When one has been sitting in the darkness, in the dark of night for 22 years, one is inclined to see a candlelight as the rising sun, and this is what they are doing. They obtained a few more votes; they gained the odd seat and now they think it is the rising sun. When the hon. member for Hillbrow spoke here yesterday or the day before—it does not matter when he spoke because nowadays he always talks nonsense—he asked why we did not call an election. But we did hold an election last year; surely we cannot have one every year. We shall have another election in four years’ time. But I want to say this to the hon. member: there will be several by-elections, and up to now they have not shown any enthusiasm for any by-election. Sir, I grant the Opposition all the pleasure they can derive from this; I just want to tell them one thing: This National Party Government of South Africa will govern South Africa for another twenty to twenty-five years. There is not a single man on that side, not even the baby from Florida, who will ever reach the Cabinet of the Republic of South Africa. For that reason I am perfectly satisfied to grant them their false optimism. But there is one thing I am not willing to grant them, and this is something the Leader of the Opposition was guilty of and about which he himself will feel ashamed in his sober moments, and that is that they are seeking their future support in elections in South Africa by making an appeal to everything which is weak in our national life. I go further. I say they are not only making an appeal to everything which is weak in our national life; they positively encourage everything that is weak in our national life. When we tell the White people of South Africa to work harder, what is their reply? Their reply is: “Do not work harder; import a lot of Bantu to do the work for you”. When we say, “Produce more, increase your production capacity”, they say “No, you are working hard enough”. It has been said several times in this debate that the people work hard enough and that if we want to increase our production, we must make use of more Bantu labour in skilled and unskilled sections of our industries, etc. Sir, when we say, “Save more”, they say, “Do not save; spend all the money you have because the Government only wastes your money”. And then the hon. the Leader of the Opposition came along —and I shall not easily forgive him for this—with his extravagances about the cost of living in South Africa. He said one had to pay R100 in South Africa today for a suit of clothes.

He did not say so.

He did say so.

He said R40.

Sir, I say he said R100. He did not say R40; I said R40. But let us leave the suit of clothes. This suit of mine cost R44 and it looks much better than that old jute-sack which that hon. member is wearing. Now I challenge the hon. member to tell me he denies that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition said that one had to pay R250 per month for a four-roomed flat in South Africa. What nonsense was he talking? Here is The Argus of last Saturday evening.

The hon. the Minister was not listening. I said that it was applicable in Johannesburg.

In Johannesburg it is the same nonsense. In Johannesburg the position is much better than what it is in Cape Town. He wants to bring the people under the impression that the normal rent for a four-roomed flat is R250 per month. I can mention tens or hundreds of cases which were advertised in The Argus on Saturday evening: a three-roomed flat in Camps Bay for R125; a four-roomed flat in Camps Bay for R127; a four-roomed flat eight minutes from the central area of Camps Bay for R125; I can continue in this vein, but he said a four-roomed flat cost R250 per month. I have now referred him to a building in the most sought after part of Cape Town namely Sea Point, in which 20 flats are vacant. It is a large block of flats. This is supposedly the country where there is a tremendous shortage of housing, where nobody can obtain housing and where young married couples cannot obtain housing. Twenty flats with a rent of R157 and higher are vacant there. The flats are vacant and cannot be let.

How many rooms does one get for R157?

One gets four rooms. This is exactly the same number as that for which he said one had to pay R250. It is obtainable at half the price and he knows it. If he does not know it, he does not study these matters. Let us go further.

What about the situation in Durban?

I shall tell the hon. member. I know that the position in Durban is slightly more difficult. I admit this at once, but it is not at all so difficult as he wants to suggest. My daughter lives in a three-roomed flat in Sea Point. It is decent, faces the sea and costs R84 per month. And yet he would say that a four-roomed flat costs R250.

He proceeded to allege that today one could not buy a decent three-roomed house in South Africa for under R20,000. Here I have The Argus of Saturday evening.

Could I ask a question please?

Order! Does the hon. the Minister want to reply to a question?

No, I am afraid my time is too limited. I shall reply to him later. I shall fix him later. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition said one could not obtain a reasonable house under R20,000. Here is last Saturday evening’s Argus. Do the hon. members know how many houses are offered for sale? Fifty-one columns of houses are offered for sale. Do hon. members know how many houses appear in the “We want to buy” section? They fill only a three-quarter column. Therefore, we have a three-quarter column as against 51 columns. This is the country where there is ostensibly a housing crisis. Let us look whether a house is not obtainable for under R20,000. Here is a house in Bellville with four bedrooms. There is a photograph and it is a beautiful house for R17,600. Here is one in Ferness Estate. I do not know where it is. It has three bedrooms and costs R12,200. Here is one in Plumstead, which is a select suburb, with three rooms, a separate toilet, garage, etc., and with a tennis court, for R13,000. Here is a four-bedroomed house in Bellville with a tennis court and swimming bath for R16,600. Here is one in Kraaifontein. Members can come and have a look at it. It is a beautiful house. It is a house which is described as—

Thatched roof, charming seven-roomed home, offers spacious accommodation, swimming bath, five bedrooms, near schools, shops, station, etc., R13,000.

I just want to tell hon. members that they may go ahead with ridiculous propaganda. This Government will continue strengthening the economy of this country like never before. We shall continue improving race relations in this country so that they will he better than they have ever been in our history. We shall improve our position in Africa and we shall improve our position in the world. This afternoon I want to make an appeal to the youth of South Africa. They must not take notice of the extravagant stories of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and his Party, who want to force them into an unknown luxury. We have problems in this country. There are economic problems which we must solve by means of hard work and saving, as the hon. the Minister of Planning said. We must not think that we can buy our way out simply by bringing more Bantu into the country. This is the only solution they have. More Bantu must stream into the country all the time. I want to make an appeal to the young people of South Africa not to listen to these extravagances, but to live within their means. It is no disgrace for any young married couple to go and live in a scheme house in Bothasig or elsewhere which costs R6,000. The houses are just as decent as those in which most of them are living. Not every one can live in a De Grendel.

What must their income be?

People with a maximum income of R300 can live in these houses. I address this appeal to the youth of South Africa: Live in those houses and in cheap flats and work yourselves up from there as we have done. Reject this theory of the United Party that the child should start where his father and mother left off. It is the greatest absurdity in the world. Let them continue their preaching about these luxurious things. In this way they will not gain the support of the decent young men in the future, but that of the longhaired hippies who are so fond of them.

In regard to housing, we in South Africa are housing the White, Bantu, Coloured and Indian better—I am more specifically concerned with the White, Coloured and Indian—not only better than they have ever been housed in the history of South Africa, but we are housing them better than similar people are being housed in any place in the world. The Whites have never been better housed. The Coloureds have never been better housed and the Indians have never been better housed. I can say to the hon. member for Houghton that the Indians and the Coloureds in South Africa are generally better housed than the Whites in England.

What has that to do with it?

It has everything to do with it.

I now come to the hon. member for Green Point who spoke about the crisis in the building industry. There are difficulties in the building industry. I admit that, but what is the hon. member’s solution to the so-called crisis in the building industry? He has only one solution—more Blacks, more Black skilled labour, more Black carpenters, more Black plasterers, etc. This is his only solution. It is indeed the line of least resistance. He does not bother what the result of that will be. We say there are many other methods of solving the housing problem, the crisis and difficulties in the building industry. We say there should be more mechanization in the brick industry. Industrial building methods should be employed. Prefabrication construction methods are being applied to an increasing extent and with greater success. By advancing the money we are going to erect 5,000 houses for Coloureds ins the Western Cape in co-operation with the Cape Town City Council within the next 6 months by using prefabrication construction methods. This is the solution. But their sole solution is more Bantu labour.

By means of building control, we channel the building industry in the direction of the building of houses. I want to make a statement here this afternoon and there must be no uncertainty about this. I admit that building control is very strict today. I do not grant permission for more than between 25 to 30 per cent of the office blocks which are applied for. I want to say that even if it were to mean the even more strict application of building control, I shall not allow luxury buildings to be erected in South Africa at the cost of the housing of the population.

No, I repeat, their only solution is a larger influx of Bantu workers into South Africa and, according to the hon. member for Yeoville, on a family basis.

All their wives.

Yes, all the wives.

That is untrue.

Mr. Speaker, I have great respect for the hon. member for Pinelands. But he must really not continue to say “untrue” when that hon. member attacked the hon. the Minister of Water Affairs because he would not allow what I have just accused him of. Where is the logic in his argument?

Unfortunately, time does not allow me to furnish figures, but I now want to give an indication of the extent of the housing crisis in South Africa, this housing crisis about which hon. members on that side of this House had so much to say. According to them it is such a terrible crisis. In last year’s session, the hon. the member for Maitland complained about the tremendous shortage of housing in his constituency. I then told him to bring to me every person with whose housing he was dissatisfied. This was nearly a year ago. Do hon. members know how many he brought to me? Only four, and the problems of each one of them have been solved.

Here is something interesting. I have here an article which appeared in the Sunday Times. The Sunday Times is the newspaper which boasts that it has a circulation of more than 2 million in South Africa. Here they said: “Do you need a house?— Just tell Blaar” They went on by giving a misquotation of what I had allegedly said, namely that there was a dwelling unit, either a house or a flat, for every unmarried couple.

Young married couples.

Did I say unmarried couples? Mr. Speaker, it seems to me I have a guilty conscience!

The hon. member for Green Point then maintained that I had said that there was a house for every young married couple. On that basis, namely that I had said that there was a house for every young married couple, a long article was written in the Sunday Times and the following appeared in the report concerned:

Blaar promised every young married couple a house in South Africa.

Then they said:

There you have it. Mr. Coetzee will guarantee every young married couple a house. All it needs is a letter to him to Pretoria or Cape Town when Parliament is in session.

This appeared in the Sunday Times on 4th October, 1970. The Sunday Times has a circulation of 2 million. In other words, one can accept that at least 1 million people read that report. Now hon. members may try to guess how many letters I received from young people who did not have houses and who wanted to have one. Six! I had all six cases investigated. One woman in Naboomspruit complained and I had further investigations made into that case, but she was perfectly comfortably housed where she was. [Interjection.]

[Inaudible.]

You bring anybody with housing problems in your constituency to me. But you are the laziest politician I have ever come across. You just talk and talk. I will go into the matter and when my Vote comes under discussion I will tell this House with how many people you came to my office in Durban for whom you wanted better accommodation. Do not think that you can bluff me in that way.

Order! The hon. the Minister must address the Chair.

Mr. Speaker, he cannot bluff me in that way.

*I must hurry because my time is running out. Another major task of our Department is the resettlement of Coloureds and Indians in South Africa. Because of all the moaning from hon. members on the other side about petty apartheid and major apartheid. I want to level the accusation at them that they regard separate residential areas as petty apartheid as well. They do not want separate residential areas and they do not mind the races living together in the same area. For that reason, I receive no help from them. Will you help me in District Six, Ossie? That is the position wherever we go, and I simply do not receive help from them. What have we accomplished as regards resettlement? Of the 53,000 Coloured families to be resettled in the Cape Province, 30,000 have been resettled. In other words almost 60 per cent of the Coloured families in the Cape Province have been resettled. Of the 10,600 Coloured families in the Transvaal to be resettled, 7,000 have been resettled. Of the 10,800 Indian families to be resettled, 6,900 have been resettled. Unfortunately, the hon. member for Durban (Point) is not here at the moment to listen to the figures for Durban, but for the edification of the other hon. members representing Durban constituencies, I can say that of the 25,000 Indian families to be resettled in Natal 17,000 have been resettled.

Where?

In Chatsworth and in each of those neighbourhoods. Let me tell the hon. members that each of those resettled Coloured families as well as each of those resettled Indian families has a better house than it ever had before. We shall continue with this and I can tell the hon. members that within the next 5 to 6 years, we shall be the best organized country in the world as regards housing. As far as this matter is concerned, we shall have a record of which we may be proud, and we shall tell the world about it. However, put those hon. members in power and within 5 years we will have the mess we had in 1948. There was a mixing of the races in residential areas, a shanty town business, a mixing of the races as regards businesses, housing and everything else. It was no easy task we tackled; in fact we tackled one of the most difficult tasks in the world, and I want to say that the National Party has performed wonders in South Africa during the past 22 years. Whether the Opposition likes it or not, we shall continue with the unrelenting implementation of this policy.

Mr. Speaker, the Nationalist Whips had to fall back on their old tactics again. Whenever they are in trouble they bring in the blustering ex-member of the United Party. Like an old rogue elephant bull he roams around blindly hitting at everyone, bumping his head, insulting and gathering cheap laughs from his side of the House. This keeps him going. He asks silly questions from this side of the House, the answers to which he knows. He knows that he was a member of the United Party and he knows what our policy was at that time. He knows it, and the policy is still the same. Here he stands making insulting remarks at hon. members on this side of the House about the need for houses.

Did the hon. member use the words “insulting remarks”?

Yes, Mr. Speaker.

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

Mr. Speaker, I shall withdraw the word “insulting”.

The hon. member may proceed.

Mr. Speaker, may I use the word “rude”?

Yes.

Then that hon. Minister used very rude words and he made very rude remarks. He himself admitted one day in the House that he was restricted by the rules of this House from using the language he would have liked to use. Therefore he endeavoured to use gentlemanly language in this House. Mr. Speaker, may I say the hon. Minister insulted people outside this House?

The hon. member must abide by my ruling.

He referred to the hippies and the “lang hare” and said we can have them. What does his colleague, Carel de Wet, say about “lang hare”? He wants them. This indicates another split in the Cabinet about what they want and what they do not want! This Minister will again have to right the harm which the last speaker has done. He talks about the housing he has to supply and he says that there is no shortage of housing. It is no good getting up here quoting figures. Everybody knows there is a shortage of housing. What happened at his congress in East London? Did they not say that the “tekort aan huise” is bringing this Government to its knees? Was there not a resolution to that effect? Did they not say at that congress that they did not accept his assurances?

You have it all wrong. They said the City Council of Port Elizabeth, which is a United Party council.

I am sorry but even the hon. the Minister is blushing that the Cape Leader has to come to his assistance with a story like that. They blamed him.

I attended that meeting.

They blamed the hon. the Minister of Community Development and the shortage is there. He said that the Nationalist Party has no snap policy but that it looks 50 years ahead. I remember that when he was a Deputy Minister he was looking to the year 1976.

1978.

1978 then. Mr. de Wet Nel thought it would be shorter and cut the time by two years. This hon. Minister was prepared to stake his political future on that, but he saw to it that he got out of that department as soon as he could. I want to ask him now if he still believes in the year 1978.

Yes.

He attacked the United Party for its attitude towards migratory labour. He wanted to know if we want every Bantu working in the urban areas to have his wife and family staying with him. He knows that is nonsense. He knows that we accept that there should be a certain amount of migratory labour. This will always be the case in respect of the mines, for instance. He knows that our policy applies to those who are permanently urbanized and who have rights under section 10. He knows that there are many Bantu workers in urban areas who do not want to break all their connections with the reserves, who have their kraals in the reserves and who want to keep these connections. He knows all that, but he is becoming as ridiculous as the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Education who tried to prove here the session before last, that if the United Party got into power and allowed Bantu workers and their families to go in to urban areas, more Natives will enter the urban areas than there are in the reserves at the moment.

You are talking nonsense.

The Minister then attacked the United Party and the Anglican Church for their attitude towards migratory labour. I want to ask him what the attitude of the Dutch Reformed Church is towards migratory labour? I want to ask the hon. the Minister what other body, besides the Nationalist Party, accepts the policy of migratory labour as an ideal? He has just admitted that the policy of the Nationalist Party is to have all the Bantu working in the urban areas on a migratory basis. I want to ask the hon. the Minister who else accepts that except the Nationalist Party. What other body of thinking people accepts a policy of this nature?

Earlier on in this debate several speakers on this side of the House made reference to the fact that when the Nationalist Party first came into power in 1948, the Cabinet were referred to as the Cabinet of all the talents. That is so. The hon. the Minister referred to the wilderness. Well, the Nationalist Party had just come out of the wilderness where they had been for 15 years. The first Nationalist Party Cabinet after 1948 were on their toes. They tried to please. They were courteous and reacted to correspondence immediately. They went out of their way to please the people and to show that they were able to govern. We did not of course accept that they had all the talents, but we appreciated that they were trying. Even though their policies were regarded as being wrong by many people, they were prepared to give them a chance to see if they could govern. But the old order has changed and those old Ministers are no longer in this Cabinet, except for one. The others are all newcomers and I think that even the hon. the Minister of Community Development will admit that he and his Cabinet can never be said to have all the talents. In fact, I want to ask him if he knows of any Cabinet at any time which has come in for more criticism than the present one. The administration of this Government has become more and more inefficient. It has become noted for its inefficiency and for its negative approach to the problems of this country.

There is no Department or Minister worse in this respect than the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development and his deputy. Here we have not only an example of inefficiency and a negative approach to problems, but also arrogance and insolence from the Ministers. An example of inefficiency, which does not only apply to this Department, but in fact applies to all Departments, is their inability or reluctance to reply to correspondence timeously. It is a common complaint from the public generally that, to get a reply from Government offices, one has to wait months and months. Now the Minister of Community Development shakes his head. I remember when I raised the matter in the House when he was Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Education, and said that I had had to wait for over two months for a reply from him—that was why I raised a certain matter in the House—he replied ‘what is wrong with waiting for two months? That is quite normal’. It was a simple matter that he had to enquire into.

What was the simple matter?

It was not a matter of policy. It was a question of whether a Minister of religion could have his wife stay with him.

But I had to find out whether you were speaking the truth.

Well, that is the type of reply you get. That is the type of rude remark. I cannot talk to him. It is a silly answer to give.

We have differences of opinion in the Cabinet. We have the negative approach of the Departments. We have contradictions between the Department of Bantu Administration and other Departments. We still all remember what happened here when the Minister of Finance offered to hold a dialogue with industry last session to see if he could not supply them with labour. The Minister of Bantu Administration and Development at once jumped up and said it would not be Bantu. He would not allow Bantu to be given more work in the cities.

The Minister of Labour told us yesterday that he had been to Europe and he came back, convinced that this was the best country to live in and people here were happier than anywhere else. I quite agree with him. I have been overseas too, and I agree that this is the best country to live in. We all do. But when he talks about the happiness of the people and how they are housed, who is he talking about? Only the White people. He did not say that he went to Africa. He is comparing us with Europe, and he talks about the high standard of living. I ask him, what is the position in Soweto? Talking about housing, I should like to know the total shortage of housing in the Bantu townships. It must be many thousands on the Rand alone, leaving out the other towns.

Twelve thousand.

I thought it was about 13 to 15,000. What has been done for those people? Where is the happiness of those people who want homes to live in? What is their condition? What about schools? I see in a report in the papers that there is a shortage of 700 classrooms in Soweto alone. The Chairman of the Educational Sub-committee of the Municipal Joint African Advisory Board has put up the contribution to the school levy fund from 20 cents a month to 38 cents a month in order to try and collect money to build schools. They are the only section of the community who have to build their own schools. Although the members of their community have the lowest income, they have to impose a monthly levy, which has now been increased, in order to get classrooms, of which there is a shortage of several hundred. Is that efficient administration?

Sir, let me give another example of inefficiency. I would like to know what the backlog is in moneys due to African teachers. I asked a question the other day and the Minister said that he was going to get the information and was still making enquiries. The fact remains that in Mdantsane and in the East London area great publicity was recently given to the fact that salaries of African teachers were owing for six months or more. We know that when this Department was first established there was difficulty in paying the teachers. The teachers continually complained that they were not being paid. Well, they were having teething troubles in the Department, but they are now over those troubles or they should be, and if they have not got over their teething troubles then they have no right to administer the Department. You cannot keep teachers waiting for months and months for their pay. I wonder what would happen if White teachers had to go for months without their pay.

Sir, let me give another example of inefficiency, and this applies particularly to the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Education. Last year he passed a law giving him the power to prohibit the Bantu from doing certain categories of work. After the law was passed, he published a notice, as he has to do in terms of the law, on 3rd April, 1970, giving notice of his intention to prohibit the Bantu from doing certain types of work. He said that he was proud of this and that he was going to bring about an end to integration. We waited for the final notice but nothing happened. Of course, there was an uproar, and then on 7th August, 1970, four months later, he published another notice of his intention to prohibit the Bantu from doing certain categories of work. Sir, these notices were not lightly published. As I say, he gave great publicity to the matter at the time. In his speech in this House on 18th June, 1969, 18 months ago, he said that this law had become necessary because there had been an increase in the number of Bantu typists, receptionists and counter assistants in White areas serving the White public. He said that the Government could not tolerate this state of affairs and therefore had to arrest this tendency in good time in order to prevent integration. He said that this particular provision contained in clause 11 had been discussed by the Cabinet or by the Nationalists since 1963 and that the Bill was essential. He concluded by saying—

As a result of this legislation our people will be able to cry out: “How brightly the future of my nation is unfolding!”

He did not have the faintest idea of what he was doing.

Sir, I can think of no worse example of this Government’s inefficiency.

You are talking nonsense.

I was quoting what the hon. the Deputy Minister said.

When you say that this is inefficiency, I say you are talking nonsense.

Sir, I will tell you why it shows inefficiency. I say it because he should have known what was going to happen. He has not done anything further. He is probably negotiating.

Of course we are.

He should have negotiated before he passed this law, before he published any notice. Sir, he must realize what harm this legislation has done to the country. It is not only the South Africans who know about the passing of this legislation; great publicity was given to it overseas.

Why have you not asked your people about the negotiations that are still taking place?

What I am getting at is this: If the Government has been thinking about this since 1963, for seven years, why did they not do some negotiating then; why did they not negotiate before they passed this law? Why do they incur the displeasure and disgust of the whole world by passing a law like this which they have not been able to implement yet?

Another example is the passing of the famous Church clause.

Ten years ago.

Yes. We warned then that it was a mistake. That Church clause did us more harm, I think, than anything else that this Government has done. In spite of our warnings they went ahead and passed that Church clause, but they have never applied it. Why then was it necessary to pass it?

Sir, this Government has shown marked inability to face up to the problems of separate development. It always seeks the easiest way out by proposing to separate the different races without considering all the practical difficulties. They pass laws and then what happens? When they come up against practical difficulties they either do not apply the law, as in the case to which I have just referred, or they give exemptions under the law, as for instance in job reservation, or they just ignore their law, as they do when they have to entertain non-White visitors from our northern neighbouring territories or from outside Africa. They preach no contact and they legislate for no contact between the races but, as I say, when they are confronted with difficulties, they ignore the legislation they have passed.

Sir, what is happening to the Government’s policy? Why is it at the moment in such disfavour? It is because people realize that its policy is breaking down. They see that nothing has come of the promises made to them by the Government. People are bewildered; they do not know what the Government’s policy is any more; they remember what they were told by Dr. Verwoerd. They were told by Dr. Verwoerd, for example, that Whites would not be allowed to enter the reserves to help to develop the reserves. It was his policy to stop it. He did not agree with the recommendations of the Tomlinson Commission that White initiative should be allowed to go into the reserves. Dr. Verwoerd said that the Tomlinson Commission had overestimated the amount of money that would have to be spent on the development of the reserves. What do they do now, Sir? When we attack them for lack of development in the reserves they get up and brag about the fact that they are spending more than the Tomlinson Commission recommended. Dr. Verwoerd said that what the Tomlinson Commission proposed to do was extravagant. As far as the reserves are concerned, Dr. Verwoerd would not allow White capital to go in. I remember so well his warning in this House that if White industrialists and capitalists invested money in the reserves or in the protectorates and these countries received their independence, they were not to come to him to look for help. He frightened people off, and now this Government is trying to get White people to go into the reserves, admittedly on an agency basis. I remember that when the municipality of Umtata wanted to lay out a separate industrial township, Dr. Verwoerd said: “No; if I allow you to lay out these sites for an industrial township and to build a railway spur, it will be said that I am encouraging White entrepreneurs in the reserves.” What is happening now? Now they are going to lay out this township: now they are going to lay out an industrial area, and they are going to set aside more sites for White residential purposes for the people who have to work there. The White people were supposed to move out. Dr. Verwoerd warned that Umtata would also go black eventually, although it would be a slower process than in the case of the other townships. Now they are building official houses for 20 Post Office officials. I quite agree with it, but this just shows to what extent the White population of officials is increasing in Umtata. It shows how everything that Dr. Verwoerd preached has gone. They are now planning a new residential area for White officials. The Minister of Planning nods his head.

They must live somewhere.

I agree; they must live somewhere. But why did Dr. Verwoerd say he would not allow White capital to go in? He would not allow White capital to go in because if White capital went in, it would mean White management, and if White management went in to the reserves, the White people would have to take their wives and children with them; they would have to have schools and churches and you would have a White community growing there. That is just what is happening. The hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration did suggest last year that he would fly his men back to the White cities over the weekend; in other words, that we would have a sort of migratory system in the reserves. It is a noticeable fact, Sir, that although the policy is to have only migratory Bantu in the White urban areas, they are not suggesting that they should have a migratory system amongst the Whites in the native areas. There was no suggestion of that. In fact they are going out of their way to build houses for them so that they can have their families with them, because otherwise they know they will not get the men to go there.

I can go on giving more and more examples of inefficiency by this Government and the Cabinet must realize that the pendulum is swinging against them and they must ask themselves why it is. It is no good saying that people must work harder. It is no good just telling them to work harder; you have to make it attractive enough for them to do so. Furthermore, there are lots of people who are prepared to work harder but are not allowed to do so. You merely have to go through the Reserves to see the Bantu standing in queues, wanting to find work and trying to bribe officials to allow them to go out to work, because they want to work and they need the work. This shows the impracticability of this Government’s policy.

Let us take the Transkei again. I want to ask the hon. the Minister of Planning this. What has the Transkei got to sell? It only has its labour and its scenery and it has the best coastline in South Africa. But what is the policy in regard to that, in regard to tourism? What encouragement is given to tourism? No White hotels are allowed to be developed on the coastline. They are not allowed to get a liquor licence. They are not allowed any permanency or even a long lease; they can only have rooms for a certain number of people, instead of opening up that coastline. Look at the development on the South Coast of Natal. The beaches in the Transkei are much better than those of the South Coast for a holiday. There could be better holiday resorts. I appeal to the Minister of Planning, being a reasonable man, to try to use his influence with the Transkeian Government and to encourage them to open up the coastline by allowing White entrepreneurs on the agency basis. Build decent hotels on the agency basis. Get White hoteliers to come in there to open up that coastline. [Interjections.] Yes, that is typical. He says “They do not want to give it to the Black people.” If Whites can go in on the agency basis to establish other industries, why can they not go in to establish the tourist industry? What is the difference?

*But it is not only in the Department of Bantu Administration that things are going so badly. As hon. members on this side of the House have explained so well, things are going just as badly in all the other departments. Where can we get a better example of confusion than the Prime Minister’s action in respect of the M.C.C. tour the year before last when he announced that D’Oliveira would not be acceptable in this country because he had been selected for political reasons only? Sir, since that time D’Oliveira has been chosen for every test by the M.C.C. and has scored centuries as well as taking wickets. It is unfortunate for the country that the Prime Minister is not as able in his politics as D’Oliveira is in his cricket. The Prime Minister’s action did tremendous harm to our image among the friends we still have overseas.

Mention has been made of the shortage of trucks. Unfortunately the Minister is not here at present, but mention has been made of the shortage of trucks we need for our mineral exports.

What have trucks to do with D’Oliveira?

I am going on to speak about another department now. We recall how the National Party Government cancelled the order for trucks that had been placed by the United Party Government. We recall how the then Minister of Railways, Mr. Sauer, mocked Mr. Sturrock’s smart schemes for the Railways and we recall the cancellation of his plan for building tourist hotels. Now we are building one, but at enormously increased cost. We recall the cancellation of the Orange River scheme, which is now being implemented, also at enormously increased cost.

There was no money.

There was so much money that we were able to lend Britain £80 million at the time. [Interjections.] It would also be a good thing for us to remind the public of Mr. Bowker’s annual attempts to encourage the Government to take up the matter again. I want to say just in passing how disappointed we were at the Government’s pettiness in not naming one dam after him. Then we also recall the cancellation of our immigration scheme, the consequences of which have largely contributed to our shortage of skilled labour. And so I could go on, but what help would it be to the country? The years are lost and now at long last the public is beginning to realize that the Government is leaving the country in the lurch. Some people say it is only the English-speaking people who have switched their allegiance; they have been disillusioned. Others, again, say, as I have heard in the lobby, that it is not the English-speaking people, but the Afrikaans-speaking people. [Time expired.]

Sir, after four days of the dish presented here to us by the United Party, by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and all his lieutenants, you will forgive me, as one of the quiet ones in this House, for having to confess that such a political appetite has been aroused in me that I shall have to help myself here and there to an unusual sweetmeat from the political plate. We have had a very strange phenomenon in this debate. Through the mouths of all the speakers on that side we were told that we were dealing here with an apartheid policy which is no more than a carcass, with a border development policy which has failed, with a ridiculous colour bar in our industrial life. But what I found strange, was that all these failures caused such anxiety in speakers on that side that they devoted no fewer than four days to these themes and the attacks they launched. Why are you attacking carcasses? The previous speaker reminded me of the scavenging tactics of the vulture. Here he touched upon D’Oliveira’s cricket and there upon the correspondence with the Minister of Community Development, and then again upon the coastline of the Transkei; and so he went on picking here and there at the dead carcass. That is what I find strange. The time has arrived for us to tell the electorate of South Africa that it is one thing to criticize an effective, strong Government, but quite another to become the prey of wily tactics employed by the enemy of this nation. In this whole set-up of reasoning and argumentation we have had to deal with these wily tactics. I am going to motivate this. We have had to deal here with the enticing U.P. snake in the tall grass, the snake which had the sign of prosperity on its forehead. Our growth rate is to be raised to 10 or 11 per cent. There is no reason, according to the convictions of the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. member for Hillbrow, why we cannot overtake even Japan with a growth rate of 10 to 12 per cent. I challenge any member on that side to bring me any economist of repute, either from our country or from abroad, who can agree with such a ridiculous argument. It is the absolute height of folly, but this is the snake of prosperity. I want to warn the electorate of South Africa that Paradise was followed by hardships, sweat and ruination. This is the course suggested by the U.P. members, and this is the forecast of the sign of prosperity. However, what has the Opposition done? Time and again it tried to divert attention. There was an inability to take action. Under this theme the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. member for Hillbrow and others levelled accusations about unprecedented price increases. They have shown unprecedented sympathy with the middle man, who is supposedly suffering so many hardships; they accuse this Government of controlling our economic life with a system of brakes; they want to know why we do not have a higher growth rate. The hon. member for Hillbrow concluded by saying that we had a wonderful economic future, but that there was one thing we had to do, i.e. that we had to get rid of this Government.

Just what is meant by all these words and what is the Opposition telling the country by implication, under these various heads and arguments? That is the matter to be settled in this debate. We must thrash it out completely. What is the Opposition saying under these arguments? What is their message to the country and what are the tactics they are employing? To my mind their major strategy is being reflected in an article I found in the Financial Mail of 11th October, 1963—

These sentiments are echoed by their mouthpieces. The tactics and the intention are very evident from this. The article goes on to say—

That is the serpent. It is the tactics of the enemy to force, in the name of prosperity, labour integration and miscegenation. Blatantly and openly these sentiments are being stated here. I shall read on—

It is no longer the argument or the facts, but the proverbial carrot of prosperity, economic prosperity and love of ease are to force this Government to its knees. These are the things which are to determine the fate of the Whites in South Africa; not an effective Opposition in a debate—they have given that up. Now prosperity and the economic strength are the things which are to destroy this country and its Government. That is the bid, the final and the highest bid. The apparent successes they achieved at the recent elections, has dazed them to such an extent that they are prepared to make the highest bid in order to force this Government to its knees. That highest bid is the abandonment of the future of the Whites, the prosperity which has been built up by this Government up to now, the stability it has given to that prosperity and the fact that it has helped the non-Whites to reach their present stage of development and has placed them on the road to self-salvation, self-respect and development towards independence. All these things are to be abandoned simply for the purpose of toppling the Government. These are the tactics, and the mouthpiece of those demoniacal tactics is sitting here in this House. This is a sinister attempt, and these means are employed as bait in order to sow confusion and lead the uninformed public astray. Here we have the reason why there has been such insistence on a high growth rate in this debate, and last year, too, this story about a higher growth rate was repeated here ad nauseam.

We should criticize our people less and pay more attention to what our enemies are doing and planning. Most of us would be amazed to know what the actual position is, in the private sector as well, as regards the trend of this course. In the above statements we are indeed dealing with the most reckless and anti-national conduct which one can imagine in the particular circumstances of our times. I lay this accusation at the door of a party which calls itself the Opposition Party of the Republic of South Africa. Through these tactics and these methods it is indulging in the most anti-national drive imaginable.

Mention was made here of the cost of living, which is the result of price increases which, according to United Party speakers, are the twin brother of inflation. This is supposedly the result of our labour structure and labour policy. But what are the true facts? The true facts are that in actual fact inflation is no longer directly connected with the cost structure and with supply and demand alone. This is an economic analysis of the situation, and not a slogan which I have read in some article or other, wrested from its context and now want to dish up here. That is the position in contrast to the “substantiation talk” which we have had over the past four days. To a large extent cost of living and salary increases are also connected with bargaining by trade unions, and this is much more evident abroad than is the case in our country today. This is inflation which is indirectly being blown over from beyond our borders to South Africa.

Nonsense!

Let that hon. member say “Nonsense!”, for he has no understanding of this matter. I shall forgive him. If the hon. member believes all the rubbish that has been dished up here over the past four days, I do not blame him, for then it is clear that he has no understanding of this matter.

However, comparatively speaking there are in fact no major salary differences, as was suggested here, between us and other countries of the world. We know from experience, whenever we have to import technical labour, that the difference between the salary structure of South Africa and those of other countries of the world is not as big as some of us are trying to suggest. To that I should also like to add an impression that was left here in the arguments we heard, i.e. that labour costs alone are supposedly so important where price increases are concerned. This is something about which I, personally, have my doubts. Labour costs alone cannot be responsible for the price increases as we know them, because labour costs as a cost item amount to only 15 per cent of the normal industrial costs. It depends on how labour-intensive it is, but the average is 15 per cent, and for raw materials it is up to 50 per cent. Therefore, how can salary increases alone be held responsible for the price increases in this country?

Reference was made here to the “spending spree” of the Government and the reckless manner in which it carried on in regard to salary increases. However, we must, in the fourth instance, also remember that in a growing economy such as that of South Africa there is, in addition, a great deal of costs involved in importing machinery and spares. In actual fact these things have nothing to do with the price index. Furthermore, we are, in the fifth instance, still importing large quantities of raw materials and ready-made articles under permits and sole agencies. It is here that I did at least expect the United Party—if they want to be positive, if they want to level constructive criticism, if they want to help the Government to meet the situation—to come forward with recommendations in this regard. I think that those people who are importing manufactured articles under sole agencies and selling them at a profit margin of a 100 per cent and more, have a responsibility and a duty towards this country in the circumstances in which it finds itself. Why have we not heard anything in this regard from that side of the House? Why have we heard nothing from that side of the House about the practice followed in certain industries, where, owing to poor service—and I mention the motor-car industry as an example—the public has had to pay for repetition services, where the public has had to pay twice for work botched the first time? Does this not have a bearing on the cost of living? Is it not the duty of commerce, the public and the responsible Opposition Party to make their influence felt in this regard and to come out against it? They find it convenient to remain silent. And then this question enters my mind: To whom is this situation actually the more advantageous, the Opposition or this Government? This Government has from time to time introduced and envisaged suitable measures. The Government applied price control and stricter import control. It announced these measures and said that it knew what it was doing, that it had the situation in hand. Or does the U.P. know more about this situation, the United Party which, with incoherent, misplaced and negative criticism, has not built up anything in the sense of making recommendations and offering to lend us their co-operation? That is why I say that we are dealing here with the most unprecedented anti-national drive that I have experienced in this House in 12 years’ time. The highest bid is made. They are prepared to pay with everything, with our fatherland, with our prosperity, with our race and with our nation, if only they can force this Government to its knees. They are dazed as a result of the apparent success they achieved at the last election.

Speaking of the last election and referring to Randburg, I just want to say in passing that we in Randburg do not know this form of political immorality. As for me, I would rather lose Randburg before stooping so low. To speak in one and the same breath of “hordes of idle Bantu lying on the pavements”, for the benefit of some, and of “if you want a servant, vote U.P.”, for the benefit of others—can one conceive of a person having such a political conscience! Nor did we in Randburg make use of double registration and university students. Over there we are not running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. We have a consistent policy and we have a standpoint. The hon. members on that side, however, cannot afford to talk about “morality”. I am being very sincere in saying this. The hon. members on that side cannot afford that. This is the answer as far as Randburg is concerned, and I want to add that Randburg will remain Nationalist for a long time to come. Randburg will remain Nationalist for a long time to come, because these inconsistencies, these illogical representations and these misrepresentations will make the “honeymoon” of this brief revival a very short one. The “honeymoon” of this little party has passed already, and we are looking forward to the next election with great expectations.

I shall now deal with the growth rate; that popular story about the growth rate. They have been talking about 10 per cent and 12 per cent. This sounds so attractive to those who are ease-loving and those who have already fallen for the temptation of materialism. Those people have been thinking to themselves, “Good Heavens, but this Government is a weak one; those people are saying that we can do it, and if we are doing well now, surely we shall be doing much better then.” How misleading this is! How politically dishonest they are towards the electorate of South Africa! Why do the hon. members not tell those people that if one goes to the hard currency countries such as Switzerland, West Germany and, to a certain extent, Australia, one will find that the growth rate varies between 3.8 and 4.8 per cent, as compared to South Africa’s 7.2 per cent. Growth rate is also connected with liquidity and the stability of a country. Why do the hon. members not tell those voters, whom they are trying to mislead with flattery, that we can even overtake Japan, with which we have been compared here? Japan’s population increase and their domestic market constitute a tremendous guarantee for their growth rate, and these are things which we do not have at all. Of the modern nations we are perhaps one of the nations with the smallest domestic market. We are dependent upon foreign markets, and this is borne out by our balance of payments. We have to cope with price pegging on the world market, particularly in respect of gold prices, agricultural produce prices, etc. These export articles have no price adjustment benefits. All of these things should be taken into account by us. I want to repeat that no economist of repute and that no economist worthy of his name could ever agree with as ridiculous, misleading and anti-national statement of policy as we have had from the U.P.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask a question?

I have less than ten minutes left. I am sorry, but I should like to finish my speech.

When these people talk about our country and about our future, we should take it with a pinch of salt. People who are sincere in referring to the concept of “ours” in regard to this beloved father-land of ours, do not indulge in such anachronistic comments and actions as we have been witnessing from that side of the House over the past four days. Hence these slogans of “job reservation is a monstrous thing”, “border industries are ridiculous” and “the policy of separate development has failed”. They are saying these things whilst the Government has only had one single aim, and it has proved this over the past 22 years. This Government has brought stability, it has brought prospects to the Black man and it has entrenched and established the interests of the White man in this country. Where is the policy of the United Party going to lead us to? What will labour integration result in? An influx into the cities and a depopulation of the rural areas. Housing problems will be created in the cities. In addition, industrial unrest will prevail. This growth rate idea will absolutely ruin our produce markets, such as gold and agriculture, will lead to bankruptcy and will eventually torpedo and ruin the economy of our whole fatherland. This is the bid which is being made in this debate in order to force this Government to its knees. This is the bid made by people who have become dazed because of their apparent successes at the last election. The electorate would be well advised to take note of how valuable and how precious the U.P. supporters consider this Government to be. They are even prepared to give it what is not theirs to give and what does not belong to them. They are prepared to give these things to this Government as a bid on this auction of voters, just as long as they can get their hands on it. This electorate will not allow itself to be misled like that. I repeat: the “honeymoon” is over. If the United Party does not adopt a realistic attitude and a more pronounced patriotic and loyal approach, there is a very unpleasant experience in store for it, i.e. its destruction and the irrevocable judgment of the electorate of the Republic of South Africa in 1975.

Mr. Speaker, I was surprised to hear, at this stage in the history of South Africa, a speech of the kind made in this House a moment ago by the hon. member for Randburg. I believe that if that speech had been made a year or so ago, he would not have been in that party today. I just want to ask the hon. member briefly whether he is one of the candidates to whom the Burger referred. We believe the majority in the constituency of Randburg was in the region of 3,000 and that this majority dwindled to 123 in favour of the Nationalist Party. In the Provincial election we secured a majority of 1741 in our favour.

I shall return to this hon. member later. He referred to the high costs in the motor industry. I may just tell the hon. member that members on this side of the House referred to this matter and pointed out that the high costs in the motor industry were caused by a shortage of labour. Perhaps the hon. member for Randburg did not listen because the whole of this debate dealt with a shortage of labour and high costs in South Africa. That point made by the hon. member does not hold water, therefore. One thing which has been proved in this debate, is the inability of this Government, including Cabinet members, to provide answers to the various points made by the Opposition in this debate.

Mr. Speaker, there is another member who made an interesting speech yesterday. He is the hon. member for Odendaalsrus. I do not think there is any rest (“rus”) in Odendaal any more. The speech of the hon. member puts me very much in mind of the speeches made by the former member for Innesdal. I believe that if there had been any verligte sprites flitting around in this House they have now been expelled by the speeches made by that hon. member and the hon. member who has just resumed his seat.

I want to warn the hon. the Prime Minister about the hon. member for Odendaalsrus who quoted Lenin so glibly and, what is more, without any notes. Perhaps he is a person to watch.

Let us go back to the economic situation of South Africa. Let us go back to 1965. Even at that time my Leader sounded warnings when he spoke about the Bantu Laws Amending Act and about labour bureaux. He said the following—

That was what he said in 1965, before the Physical Planning Act was placed on the Statute Book. He continued—

That was what he said six years ago. However, let us come closer to the present time. According to a report in Die Beeld of 31st May, 1970, Dr. Penzhorn said the following—

He said “as high as possible”.

Yes, but is it as high as possible? Is it not being hindered by the Physical Planning Act today?

†Sir, what is in fact the reason for the spiralling costs and the slowing down of our industrial development today? I believe that it is caused through inconsistencies and uncertainties about the future, the high costs of the economically unsound deployment of labour and money, and particularly the uncertainty regarding the borders of the future Bantustans. If an industrialist is going to establish an industry on a border, surely he must know in advance what the ultimate border of that potentially foreign country is going to be. Otherwise he must of necessity be uncertain and unable to invest his money. This uncertainty exists even in provincial departments about the borders of Bantustans. I had to interview representatives of the Cape Nature Conservation Department not so long ago about the establishment of a kudu reserve on the Fish River. The very first question they asked the committee which met them was: “What are the borders of the Bantu area going to be; are they going to be the Fish River, or are they going to cut across the Fish River?” This goes much deeper therefore than just the common man and to the industrialists and the entrepreneur in general; it even goes into Government departments. I believe it also causes uncertainty among the workers because of the wage policy in the border areas where one finds enclaves of non-White workers doing the same work as Whites at a lower rate of pay and in fact thereby being in competition with the White workers. This causes growing uncertainty among the White workers, whether they be blue or white collar workers.

While decentralization is a sound principle—I will come back to this later—the unsoundness of developing industries on the borders of potentially foreign states with potentially foreign labour needs no discussion. One does not have to discuss it to realize how utterly dangerous and how unsafe such a policy can be. It has been repeatedly said in this House that when this policy of separate development if taken to its ultimate and logical end, that of separate freedoms and separate independence, the labour problems of this country will be totally insoluble with the policy of border industries and the policy of separate development tied together. Examples have been mentioned by the Government of migratory labour in Europe. But the migratory labour of Europe is a totally different thing from the migratory labour of a newly established Black state, and this Government is well aware of it. The migratory labour of Europe basically belong to the same ethnic groups although they speak different languages. This will be labour of a totally different ethnic type of people and a totally different type of Government because although the idea of the Government is to establish a type of democratic system, one has only to look at Africa and at Uganda very recently to know that the democratic system does not continue to work in these states. I believe that this is creating uncertainty among industrialists, among farmers and among the people of the cities.

Sir, there is a lack of planning and co-ordination among the departments. If we are to carry out decentralization—and I use the term “decentralization” in an entirely different context to the policy of separate development—if we are going to carry out decentralization, which I believe is also the policy of this Government which has appointed a committee under Dr. Rickert to go into the decentralization of industries, then there must be co-ordination. But what do you have even today? When the Minister of Railways is asked to establish a new railway line to bring about the necessary infra structure, he asks for that line to be guaranteed first. I believe, Sir, and this Party believes, that the post of Planning should be the most powerful post in the Cabinet; that the Minister of Planning should be able to direct all departments of the Government; that he should be the Prime Minister’s right-hand man. Otherwise how can he plan to create the infra structure for decentralization; how can he plan for the future development of the country? He has to tie the ecology in with the infrastructure. Sir, what do we have? We have each department going its own sweet way, creating its own little kingdom, creating more red tape, causing more chaos, and nobody knows in which direction we are going. I believe, Sir, that this is one of the cardinal and most important reasons why this country is losing interest in the Nationalist Party as a Government. We all know, every single member of this House, that as members we have these problems to deal with from day to day. The Ministers themselves know that they have these problems to deal with from day to day. Why have they not done something to overcome the snarling-up, this multiplication of red tape?

Mr. Speaker, I believe that this red tape has been caused mainly through ideological legislation, formulated and directed and controlled by the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration who I believe to be the arch apostle of separate development. Surely the economic development of the country is important; surely this is something on which all of us must agree; surely this is something about which there should be no political fight; surely the Government should take heed of the warnings from this side of the House. They have been warned so many times about so many things by this side of the House.

Take immigration, for instance. In 1948 when they stopped immigration they were warned and warned and warned that it was the wrong policy and only 12 years later did they realize, “O, nou het ons al die immigrante gemis; nou moet ons begin”. If they had followed the advice of the Opposition, then we would have had no problem in South Africa today. We have warned them about the need for White capital and White initiative inside the Bantustans, and for years they have taken no need of our warnings; now they come with the concession system. They are beginning to see the light but they see the light so slowly, Sir—slower than the oxwagon—that South Africa in this modern age of moonshots can no longer put up with a Government of this nature. It boils down to the fact that this Government through some psychological or mental block is totally bound to the sterile policy of separate development and has been infected with the world obsession of granting civil rights. Sir, they want in one fell swoop to give all the civil rights without giving the human and economic rights which are so essential to people and which are so essential to the establishment of a stable middle class.

My Leader has spoken in this House and other places about a compassionate society. Sir, what does this amount to? This amounts to putting first things first. It amounts first of all to putting the economic horse before the political cart—not vice versa, as this Government is doing— by establishing the economic and human rights of the individual before granting civil rights, or universal franchise as it is interpreted today, as this Government is doing. We believe that by coupling the policy of separate development through the Physical Planning and Utilization of Resources Act to border industries, this Government is creating a feeling of uncertainty and insecurity not only among our industrialists but also among the electorate of South Africa. And not only just among the electorate; I believe that it must be causing grave concern to some of our military experts in this country. Who can conceive a Balkan state in South Africa? The instability of the Balkans in Europe is well known. How are we possibly going to find a Defence Force to defend the extended boundaries, which will be thousands upon thousands of miles longer than those we have today? I am convinced that this is a matter of grave concern. I believe that by coupling these policies with this Act, they are leading all the people of South Africa, to the brink of a precipice.

Sir, the spiralling costs have not been stopped and they will not be stopped by all the measures that will be introduced, because people have got used to a certain standard of living. There will probably be more bankruptcies and more liquidations but people will continue to live at the standards to which they are accustomed, which will mean that there will be a demand for more wages and that costs will go up. This has been going on for years and financial and fiscal controls have been used time and again. But they have not controlled it yet, and they will not control it, until such time as we realize that labour has to be used to its fullest extent. Sir, let us take the motor industry for example. We are well aware that in the motor industry they are not getting white apprentices to enter the trade. We are well aware that thousands upon thousands more motor cars are being sold every day. What is the result? The workers know that there is a shortage; they come and go as they please and they demand whatever wages they please. There is no basic stabilizing force, and many of the workers would like to see the door opened to the non-Whites. I believe that an experiment could be made, perhaps even in the Peninsula area with the Coloured people. It is already being done, strangely enough, by the permit system in the motor industry in Port Elizabeth. I have been over numbers of factories there and one can see the jobs which are supposed to be reserved for Whites being done by non-Whites, under supervision, at lower rates of pay. Sir, I believe that it is dishonest to propagate job reservation, to be against the rate for the job, and at the same time by concession and by permit to put non-Whites in competition with the Whites at a lower rate of pay. I believe this is totally unfair to the white worker, as well as to the non-White. That is what we believe. Labour on the farms is becoming a problem because of the extra controls introduced by this Government. In some areas the labour has disappeared into the Reserves and there is no labour. In other areas, for instance the Eastern Cape grass areas and in certain parts of Natal where the labourer is registered as a Bantu labourer when he becomes 16, he remains a farm labourer for the rest of his life. With the mechanization of our farms, the farms are requiring in many cases less and less labour, but they are being forced under the policies of this Government to keep that labour on the farms, and the result is that we are having to employ the mass at the minimum for the minimum amount of work instead of the minimum at the maximum for the maximum amount of work. In the past these people under control went to the industries developing on the edges of the cities and they worked there for a number of years, and when they had collected enough money to buy themselves some stock and a wife and they became stable people, they came back to the farms, but we did not have this total over-population of the platteland which is happening today. The Whites are leaving the platteland, which possibly economically may be a sound thing, but what is happening is that the platteland is becoming over-populated with Blacks and under-populated with Whites.

I come back to this question of planning. Unless adequate planning is done and adequate studies are made of the ecology and adequate planning in regard to creating infrastructures in the smaller towns of the platteland to hold some white people there, we are going to create a complete vacuum in the interior of South Africa. I want to point out that the South African farmer is the Government. The South African farmer is the law because we do not have the Police Force or the officials to cover every farm in every area of this country, and therefore the farmer himself carries out those duties of the Bantu Commissioner and the policeman. And if you are going to continue the trend without creating some sponge to absorb the excess of the Bantu labour in the platteland, or create some method by which they can move to an area where they are needed for work, then you are going to have chaos within a very short time and particularly in the Eastern Cape and the border. I believe that the hon. the Minister of Planning must realize this as well as I do, and I sincerely hope that he will take note and do something about it and that he will receive those powers which he requires from the Cabinet, but I very much doubt it because the policy of this Government is to give, as I said before, all the power to the Minister of Bantu Administration in the hope that he will by some magical trick pull the rabbit out of the hat and find the answer to every single problem in our country. I do not think an answer can be found just like that. I believe that in our policy for a compassionate society, our policy where we believe that the labourer is worthy of his hire, and that under control the labourer ought to sell his labour on the best market, under our policy where we believe that a human being shall be treated as such, where he will be able to have a stake in the land, where the non-White will be assured of a future for himself and for his child—I believe the future of South Africa lies in this direction. I believe the future of South Africa can develop to great heights in this direction. I believe that in this manner we can establish a stable and a solid non-White middle class in South Africa, and this is the first step in any solution to our problem. But we cannot have ghettos; we cannot have these transit camps. We cannot continue with the Limehills and the Sadas. We have to get stuck in with a crash programme. This idea of a crash programme has been laughed at, a crash programme of feeding and training. But your first place to lay a seed of communism is in the belly of a hungry person. Your first place for that to grow is when you put a thousand hungry people together in one place to talk among themselves. And this is what is happening all over the place. I believe that this thing must be cured. It must be stopped, and I believe that possibly the best way to do it is to have an early election and to return Sir De Villiers Graaff as Prime Minister.

You had the opportunity yesterday.

It is said in great seriousness, but the hon. the Minister may have heard that many a true word is spoken in jest, and I think he is joking. [Interjection.]

There are other reasons, too, why one begins to wonder whether one can have any confidence in this Government. One of the main reasons seems to be the great competition for the Prime Minister’s stakes. I thought everybody was very happy on that side of the House with the leadership as it is, but it would appear, when one reads journals in the country, not only the English-language Press, but also when one reads between the lines of the Afrikaans Press, that there is quite a lot of jockeying for position. Whether the real position that is being jockeyed for is the leadership, or whether it is who should become the Minister of Bantu Administration, makes one wonder, but this is a strange phenomenon. I feel that this is something we should take note of because we have found none of this over the many years that we have had Sir De Villiers Graaff as leader of the United Party. I think the electorate are becoming tired. I myself had experience of it for the first time when, trying to obtain a dwelling place in Cape Town and going around to buy odds and ends of furniture that I needed, I found that when you are quoted a price, it is always so much plus 25 per cent purchase tax or sales tax. I got such a shock when I heard that I had to pay 25 per cent extra on just about every piece of furniture or electrical fitting that I had to get, that being a poor backbencher, a poor M.P., I bought all my requirements second-hand. At least it saved me the 25 per cent. I believe that particularly this tax is causing a grave hurt to young people. I can understand it if luxury furniture were taxed, such as perhaps stinkwood and mahogany furniture, but I cannot understand it when one gets down to the cheaper lines of furniture and cheaper lines of electrical appliances. Electrical appliances are no longer luxuries. They have become an essential in every modern home today. One buys so much frozen food that one can hardly buy fresh food any more and one must have a fridge to out it in. These articles should be categorized, so that the young married couples, who are starting in life, can buy them free of tax and so that the old-age pensioners and poor people can buy the necessities of life free of tax. Put the tax on luxury lines. This Government has forgotten about the poor people. We had the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs telling us what a poor boy he was. Well, so was I. I got married on £5 a month and that was after the war, not during the period of depression. There are many young people starting on low salaries today. Everybody has to start life at some time and we do not all start at the top. I believe that the sales tax or purchase tax should be entirely reviewed and that only those goods which are in the luxury line should be taxed. I believe that our young people and our old-age pensioners should get a chance to at least breathe a little fresh air in South Africa without having to worry about debt and the wolf at the door.

I furthermore believe that a concession should be made on the savings levy. I do not believe that one should ask a person over the age of 65 to pay a savings levy. I do not believe that that is necessary. What benefits will they derive from it? Their life expectancy is short. I know of a woman of 91 who is still paying savings levy. What good will it be to her? Sir, I think there should be a line drawn there as well. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, I was following the hon. member for Albany and I understood above all that he is a man who began with only £5 a month. If I were in his shoes I would also be very satisfied with that, because I think he was overpaid by at least £4.10.0 a month.

The hon. member has once more given us an assurance here of how they were backing up their Leader. Yesterday, or the day before, the hon. member for Durban (Point) told us how solidly the United Party was backing up its Leader. I find it very strange that they are giving us this assurance, because we have not yet asked them for it. To tell the truth, it puts one in mind of the man who walked around with a certificate in his pocket, a certificate in which a doctor certified that he was not off his head. This indicates that there is a crack in those ranks, and that there are already turbulences and struggles over the leadership, because why do they give us the assurance that there are no problems? We notice this particularly when we listen to the hon. member for Durban (Point), the hon. member for Hillbrow and the hon. member for Yeoville. The one tries to praise the Leader more highly than the next. It looks to me as if there is a large crack in the United Party. Now they want to try to talk it down.

The hon. member had a lot to say here about the question of the loan levy on people who are older than 65. But this is surely a form of saving, and only people with a taxable income pay the loan levy. If we must abolish that loan levy we must also throw the whole principle of saving overboard. That is indeed what it boils down to. This would mean that after 65 years of age one should no longer save because one would not be able to use the money during one’s lifetime. That is surely a ridiculous argument.

The hon. member for Albany made a few allegations about the future of Bantu homelands. The hon. member made one big mistake. He assumes that as soon as we have an independent Bantu state next to us we shall be enemies. That is the supposition he makes. The hon. member foresees only difficulties and problems. What about Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland, which we have in any case. But the hon. member proceeds from the standpoint that as soon as the Bantu states are independent we are going to make war. The hon. member said that labour unrest would develop in the border industries. The hon. member said that strikes would occur. I now want to ask the hon. member why the Bantu in King William’s Town, who stayed just over the border, wanted nothing to do with the agitators when there was a lot of trouble in our country in 1960—and I was there in those years. Why were they the people who came to work in King William’s Town factories every day? Those Bantu, who lived over the borders in the homeland, were the people who threw the agitators out of that location. According to the member’s argument and logic—if one can call it logic—they should specifically have been the people causing the trouble.

The hon. member made the allegation that this Government’s labour policy and policy of job reservation are “immoral”, because we pay the Bantu less when White labour is supplanted by Bantu labour. Did you say so or not? We shall read the hon. member’s Hansard. I now want to tell him that he is not acquainted with the industrial legislation. In that Act a minimum wage is laid down, even though reservation is abolished and a Bantu appointed to a particular position. A minimum wage is therefore laid down by law. How can the member now say that this is immoral. You are asking all day long that we should admit the Bantu freely. Now you say it is immoral to let a White man “compete” with cheaper Bantu labour. But that is what your party has been advocating in this House since Monday. How can the member now allege here that it is immoral competition when a minimum wage is laid down in the Act.

I did not use that word.

The hon. member alleged that and he said it.

The hon. member made the same allegation by saying that the National Party’s policy is unchristian because when there is a labour surplus on the farms, which the farmers cannot employ, those labourers have to sit there and die of hunger. Did he say so? By alleging that he illustrates to me his absolute ignorance of this matter. If the hon. member had done his work as a member of the House of Assembly he would have known that, if there is a surplus of Bantu farm labour, permission can be obtained for them to work elsewhere, provided the owner, the Farmers’ Union and the guardian of that Bantu agree to it. That “elsewhere” is defined as any place in the Republic of South Africa, provided he gets a permit there.

On a farm.

That hon. member must go and do his homework and talk less nonsense in this House. He said that our policy is unchristian and immoral. It is a serious allegation. The hon. member said that and he cannot dispute it. He better do his homework in future before coming along and talking nonsense in this House again.

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I never used the word “unchristian”.

Order! No, that is not a point of order.

Mr. Speaker, that hon. member’s point is blunt.

The hon. member made the allegation that our migratory labour system is immoral because we are disrupting the Bantu’s family ties. As a result of his irresponsible utterances here, and those of certain of his kindred spirits, that hon. member is responsible for our bad image abroad. But now what about the thousands and tens of thousands of Portuguese, Spaniards and Italians who, with work permits, go and work in Belgium, France, Britain and everywhere? If any of those labourers were to try to take their families with them, those people in Britain and elsewhere would refuse to allow them. I now challenge the hon. member to tell me why it is right in those countries and immoral here. [Interjections.] No, the hon. member must stick to his facts. He says we are immoral and unchristian. Although the facts indicate that it is done in Europe, there it is not immoral and unchristian. The hon. member must now tell me in what connection our actions are unchristian.

If the hon. member had listened, he would have heard.

No, the hon. member should rather speak better and think what he is saying.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Transkei spoke about the question of dwellings. He also made a great fuss about the question of the morality and Christianity of our policy. The hon. member said that the prosperity of this country is apparently only for Whites and not for the non-Whites. As an example he referred to their dwellings. He also mentioned Sophiatown.

I never mentioned Sophiatown.

No, wait a minute. The hon. member mentioned Sophiatown. He must not deny it now. He must accept the responsibility for what he said here. The hon. member comes along here with fine-sounding words in the name of morality and accuses us of being unchristian in the housing of our non-Whites. Now the hon. member must tell me why his Party, which is in power in the Johannesburg City Council, opposed the transfer and resettlement of those people with tooth and nail.

It is a question of proprietary rights.

Oh no, those people were compensated for their property. They were not deprived of anything. My property is expropriated in just the same way, for example, for the construction of roads and dams. But then morality made no difference. Then the hon. member wanted to indoctrinate and convince the Bantu that they should not fall in with this policy of separate development.

What hon. members on that side of the House cannot realize, and what they get altogether mixed up about, is the meaning of apartheid. They simply do not understand it. For them apartheid means that on a certain day a line must be drawn and that Whites should stand on this side and Blacks on that, and that we must then, of necessity, be enemies. That is what that side of the House understands by apartheid. That is also what they tell the people outside. But I am not going to the trouble of trying to explain it to them, because cleverer people than myself have not been able to succeed as yet.

I should like to come to the discussions of the past four days. Throughout accusations were levelled at us that the Government as a result of its economic policy and, in particular, our labour policy, was damping South Africa’s economic growth, and there were attempts to create the impression that this was just being done out of sheer wilfulness, and that our economy could grow at 8 to 10 per cent per year if it were not for the fact that the Government was making the economic growth a servant to its ideological principles which, according to that side of the House, are worthless. It is further alleged that as a result of our labour policy there is a manpower shortage, and that is why living costs and production costs are increasing in this country. The reason they advance is job reservation, and the so-called artificial shortage the Government is creating by not wanting to allow the free flow of Bantu labour to the traditionally White occupations. All rising prices, the growth rate, etcetera, are flung in our teeth. The longer one listens to the Opposition’s arguments, the more one comes to the conclusion that they regard this problem altogether superficially and that they are really displaying a lack of insight into what exactly this is all about. They take one isolated aspect and then blow it up as if it is now the entire problem we are faced with. The entire propaganda campaign, which is being waged here, is not concerned with the merits of the case, but with the political capital they are trying to make out of it. They are trying to do it by telling the voters: “You are paying a lot, you are struggling, things arc difficult for you, and this is only the National Party’s wilfullness. If it would just leave the Black man, there is sufficient Black labour; then inflation, growth rate and all those problems would be solved.” This is so because fundamentally they do not see the matter correctly.

The entire question of growth rates, of inflation and of the cost of living is basically concerned with four important points. The first of the four is land. Then there is labour, capital and certain residual factors such as intrepreneurs and the efficiency of the labour. At the moment, however, I do not want to dwell on this point. If one analyses the factors determining economic growth, one sees that even though one has all the capital in the world, if there is no labour, capital forms the ceiling of the growth. If, for example, one has capital and labour, but there are no raw materials, growth cannot continue unrestricted either, because then the ceiling is formed by the limitation of raw materials. One can only let the economic growth rate go as far as the weakest link in that chain will allow it to go. There is a definite relationship between those four factors when it comes to economic growth.

One now asks oneself what growth is, and why it is necessary. One can define growth as an increase in production over and above a proportional increase in capital and labour. We have certain limiting factors in South Africa which allow us only a certain growth rate. It is easy to speak of a very high growth rate, and this sounds very attractive, but if it gets out of hand there could be a violation of the natural resources and they could be disrupted. By doing that one would do endless damage to one’s economy. Apparently there are certain people in the Opposition benches who do not know and realize this. Others perhaps know and realize it but they do not want to accept it and are trying to make a little cheap political capital out of this situation.

Japan is always being held up to us as an example. It is said that Japan is supposedly growing so fast, and that all is right with it. It is asked why we do not leave the Black labour, because then we would ostensibly become a second Japan. According to them we would, in this way, have the most rapid growth in the world. There are certain matters in connection with Japan, however, which the Opposition purposely conceal, because they do not dare mention them here. Were they to do so, their whole picture, which they are presenting, would collapse. In the first place one cannot directly compare Japan and South Africa. And in the second place— and this is what the hon. members neglected to mention in this House—the inflation rate in Japan is 7 per cent per year. For Japan a rate of inflation of 7 per cent per year is possibly all very well. They can perhaps accept it and so can the economy, but South Africa’s economy cannot accept such a rate of inflation. We cannot accept such a rate of inflation because our gold industry, which is one of our most important factors in the maintenance of our balance of payments, is so vulnerable to inflation that if we increase our production costs we cannot mine gold. That is why we must keep inflation in check in South Africa; otherwise our gold becomes altogether unproductive and unexploitable on the world market. It is fine to speak of Japan, but then the hon. members must just also tell the public, and the House, of the 7 per cent per annum inflation rate in Japan, which South Africa cannot afford. Let us look at a further aspect of the Japanese economy which the hon. members very conveniently keep silent about here in the House. This is that Japan has the highest percentage of economically active women of all the peoples of the world. In Japan 39 per cent of all the women of the country are in economically active employment. In South Africa that figure for the present is a little over 20 percent. In order to maintain that tremendously high growth rate, it would, of necessity, also mean that we must increase our percentage of economically active women to 39 or perhaps 40 per cent. I do not think this would be suitable and feasible in our case. However, let us just look for a moment at what has already happened in respect of female labour in South Africa.

According to the 1960 census figures we see that 19 per cent of the women in South Africa were economically active at that stage. If the percentage had remained 19 per cent, 45,000 White women would have entered the labour market during the period 1963 to 1969. However, what did happen? During the above mentioned period 70,000 White women entered the labour market. This means that more than 20 per cent of the number of White women were economically active. This means that South Africa is drawing very heavily on a potential labour source. In the years 1963 to 1969 70,000 women entered the labour market and only 60,000 White men. In other words, during that period ten thousand more White women than men entered the labour market. We cannot, in a situation of unrestricted growth, allow ourselves to draw further on our female labour force. In this debate we on this side of the House were accused of doing nothing about this situation. We have a serious manpower shortage in South Africa, and no one will deny this. It is said, however, that the Government is sitting with its arms folded and watching the situation get out of hand. Let us, however, look at a few facts. The increase in the White South African population is 1.6 per cent per year, but if we look again at the 1963 to 1969 period, we see that during this period 200,000 men entered the White labour market. I have already mentioned that of those 200,000 there were 70,000 White women and 60,000 White men, which brings the total to 130,000. In addition to them a further 70,000 economically active Whites were added to the labour market. This increase in our labour force was 2.7 per cent as against the population growth of 1.6 per cent. In other words, the growth of our labour force was greater than the population increase. The reason for this is that during this period we gained an additional 73,000 economically active immigrants in South Africa. During that period, therefore, the Government supplemented the labour market in South Africa by 36 per cent. The labour force increased by 2.8 per cent. In other words, it increased 70 per cent more rapidly than the growth of our population. If hon. members opposite now say that this was not a positive and purposeful step to increase the trained labour force in South Africa, they do not know what they are talking about. This is purposeful planning to fit in with a 5.5 per cent growth rate in our country today.

I should like to say a few words about the following factor that influences growth. We have already said something about the manpower shortage and labour, and now we come to capital. Our average growth rate during the sixties was 6 per cent; during the years 1963 to 1969 it was actually higher, i.e. 6.2 per cent. In order to grow at this rate South Africa had to borrow R1,529 million from abroad. In other words, our own capital sources had to be supplemented by foreign loan capital and investment capital to the tune of R1,529 million in order to maintain a growth rate of 6 per cent. Now the Opposition speaks of a growth rate of 8 and 10 per cent. The hon. the Minister of Planning indicated just the other day what a tremendous number of workers one would need in order to be able to maintain that growth rate. I shall now tell hon. members what the capital needs would be, and now I do not even want to speak of 8 and 10 per cent. If we were to have let the economy over the last five years increase at a rate of 6.8 per cent, only .8 per cent more than its actual increase, we would have had to borrow from abroad an additional amount of R1,128 million. During that period we already borrowed R1,500 million. If we wanted only a .8 per cent increase in growth, we would have had to borrow a further R1,128 million. We know the capital market of the past year. Where do hon. members think we would have got that money in the first place? In the second place, at what interest rate do they think we would have had to borrow it? Hon. members know themselves that it was between 11 and 14 percent.

But let us now accept the growth rate of 8.4 per cent, which the Opposition is now so harmoniously and enticingly presenting to the public and voters of our country. That is what they would now bring about. Take good note, the Opposition does not speak of the capital and manpower needs that must increase in order to maintain a higher growth rate. No, they keep silent about that because it is not politically popular. One cannot gain a few votes with that. They keep quiet about it. They say, “Look, it is only the Government that will not allow the Black labour into the market That is why South Africa cannot grow. Look how inane the Government is.” But what I want to tell the voters from this House today is that it is difficult to be more inane than the Opposition in wanting to make such a flagrant, irresponsible, unmotivated allegation by saying “let us grow at 8.4 per cent”, as if it is a toadstool that is growing. I said that if we want to grow at a rate of 6.8 per cent we will need an additional capital of R1,128 million. But if we now want to grow at the rate of 8.4 per cent, as prophesied by that visionary Jacobs, who waxed so lirical and saw visions, looking as if he were doing physical exercises while he spoke, what would the position then be? I regret that the member for Hillbrow is not here at the moment. He is seldom in the House. I think he is still suffering from shock as a result of his New Year’s Party with his hippies in Hillbrow. If we now accept visionary Jacobs’ theory and want South Africa to grow at a rate of 8.4 per cent, what would the result be? As the hon. the Leader of the Opposition said last year, “The sky is the limit”, and then he has such a misty expression in his eyes as he sees just how South Africa is growing. Then he tells the voters that it is only this stupid Government that will not allow it. But, Sir, they are trying to bluff the voters. The voters will yet find out that these political dreams of theirs, these “pipe dreams” —they used that word so frequently last year—are impractical and impracticable. Do they know how much money would be necessary to grow at a rate of 8.4 per cent? I do not believe that they have even worked it out yet. Could one of them perhaps tell me? Sir, there you have it now! They want us to grow at a rate of 8.4 per cent, and it is only the Government’s fault because it does not want to allow the Bantu into the labour market. Where is the hon. member for Albany? Where is the visionary Jacobs? These people want growth at a rate of 8.4 per cent. What are the capital needs? What can their shadow minister of Finance perhaps tell me in that connection? Mr. Speaker, in this House you yourself now hear hon. members saying “Grow at a rate of 10 per cent”, but they have not even worked out what our capital needs are going to be at 8.4 per cent, not one of them sitting here. What does that hon. member for King Williams Town say? What did his father teach him in this connection? The hon. member’s political philosophy has gone so far that National unity now means that one must relinquish one’s Afrikanership and co-operate, is that it? Let him now tell us about the growth rate.

You have.

Is there anyone on the Opposition side who can tell the people—perhaps their newspapers can help them—how much capital they need in order to grow at a rate of 8.4 per cent. Mr. Speaker, they are speechless. As an alternative Government that says we must grow at a rate of 10 per cent, they must at least have the basic logic and knowledge of the economy to be able to say how much labour one needs and how much capital; and here today I have to find out that the Opposition is guilty of the biggest political fraud I have ever heard of. It is political fraud and absolute irresponsibility to present the people with a growth rate of 8.4 per cent, long black motorcars for everyone, cheap houses and numerous servants, without calculating what it is going to cost.

And less taxation.

Yes, and then less taxation as well, as they say in their yellow booklet. Sir, when I came to this House I thought that here one was dealing with an alternative Government, with people who would be able to substantiate their allegations in this House, with responsible people such as the Leader of the Opposition and his shadow Minister of Finance, the member for Hillbrow, and that member with the “lid”. Can he perhaps tell us? Let us make it easier for them. Can the Opposition perhaps tell me how much loan capital we need if we want to grow at a rate of 10 per cent? It is a simple piece of arithmetic. Mr. Speaker, I do not even get an offer. I shall tell them then. The answer is R3,384 million that you must borrow in addition to the R1,529 million that we borrowed during that period.

Are we then bankrupt already?

How can one make such an allegation in public? Where are we going to borrow R3 384 million in addition to the R1,529 million we have already borrowed? And then we still have to reduce taxation and also abolish the purchase tax! Just think of how the interest that must be paid on that loan capital, and must leave the country, is going to affect our balance of payments. Sir, the Opposition made another good old stupid allegation here. They said: Look, our exports have decreased; we are having difficulties with our balance of payments. This allegation was made here. I just cannot remember which hon. member made the allegation about our exports having decreased because the Government’s restricting legislation is not making sufficient labour available; that we cannot produce enough, and that we therefore cannot export. [Time expired.]

The hon. member for Lydenburg has just asked where the United Party will get the money for a higher growth rate in South Africa. He mentioned astronomical figures and said that we would need a little more than R3,000 million in order to obtain a growth rate of 10 per cent. But the hon. member forgets that in 1960 there was a period when South Africa would not grow, and then this Government took certain steps to stimulate the growth rate artificially, and it succeeded in doing so. It applied several methods in order to stimulate the growth rate in South Africa. Is it now impossible for the United Party, when we come into power, with renewed confidence on the part of the foreign investor in South Africa because we shall create the possibilities for growth for them, to increase South African growth rate above what it now is under this Government? The hon. member for Lydenburg said how this Government has helped to supplement the labour market and that the Government had brought 36,000 new immigrants to South Africa, a new labour market, as he put it, of I think 200,000. The only example that hon. member had to show how this Government helped to supplement the labour market in South Africa, they took over from the United Party; they did not even have the originality to keep the growth rate and the labour market in South Africa on the go.

The hon. member says that the United Party does not understand apartheid. This is specifically South Africa’s problem as well. That is why this Government is losing its support, because the people do not understand the Government. It preaches one thing, but does the opposite. Before I move the adjournment of the debate, I just want to point to one example.

The hon. the Minister of Labour stands up in this House and tells us that it is this Government’s policy to make our White areas increasingly whiter. They are not in favour of allowing Black labour to increase on a larger scale in the White areas. Remember now, Sir, this is the same gentleman who said it in January 1971, but according to Dagbreek, he made a speech in front of his Cape Nationalist Party Congress, and there he was attacked by his Nationalist Party chief for having allowed too many black people to come to our White cities and be absorbed into our economy. Now disten to the hon. gentleman’s explanation (translation)—

After his assurance about the safety of the White worker under National rule, Minister Marais Viljoen had, however, to make it clear that the use of non-White labour had become indispensable where White labour forces are unobtainable.

Then he says—

Additional concessions will have to be made in the future.

But here in the House of Assembly he stands up and says that it is the Government’s policy to make South Africa’s areas increasingly whiter. Now the hon. member for Lydenburg says that the United Party does not understand apartheid. Sir, can he not comprehend that we cannot understand apartheid when one Minister says this, and just a few months later he says something else again!

You do not even understand the Land Bank.

The hon. gentlemen on that side were not only told by the United Party what they should do in connection with labour; they were also told by Dr. Jan S. Marais and also by Dr. A. S. Jacobs, and those are not people who continually support the United Party. The hon. the Prime Minister is the man who should really give South Africa the answers, and he will have to tell us, and also the people outside, during this Session, and even before we adjourn tomorrow afternoon, because here Dr. Jacobs says the following (translation)—

That is what we want from the Prime Minister. He is the head of the Government, and in this Session everything is going to revolve around this, even the future, in spite of what hon. members on that side say. What are these “calculated adjustments” and when will they be made?

But because we would like to take this matter further tomorrow, I want to move at this stage—

That the debate be now adjourned.

Agreed to.