Mr. Speaker, I move—

Mr. Speaker, since we started this Part Appropriation debate, it has become quite clear that the policy of the Government to curb inflation, is to curb demand by the use of fiscal and monetary measures. But it has also become clear that last year the Government was prepared to jeopardize the economy of South Africa for party political gain. You see, Sir, at the time of the Budget in August last year inflation was running at the rate of 4.0 per cent per annum, and it was rising. For the period December, 1969 to October, 1970 it rose to 4.6 per cent, but there was no additional sales tax in August, September or October. For the year ended December, 1970, the hon. the Minister tells us that the inflationary rate was 4.1 per cent, so there was a drop in the inflationary rate of considerable dimensions over November and December last year. Yet despite this drop, the hon. the Minister finds it necessary this month to increase sales taxes by R47 million. I think the hon. the Minister will concede that on his own figures and in terms of his own financial philosophy, there was a greater need in August of last year to impose a sales tax than there is in February of this year. But, of course, conditions were somewhat different in August of last year. In August of last year the Government was somewhat concerned about the coming provincial elections, more particularly as a result of the reverses they had suffered in April.

That is a dead horse.

In February, 1971, however, the next election is four years away, and the Government hopes that the voters will forget and forgive. But with the empty pockets of the voters I doubt whether they are going to forget and forgive so easily. I think perhaps the hon. the Minister will think again before he comes to the House and tells us that we in debate are only concerned with political gain. Now the hon. the Minister told us that everybody without exception—“sonder uitsondering” was the phrase he used—with whom he had come into contact since the previous Wednesday had thanked him for increasing the sales tax, because this was in the interest of the people. The hon. the Minister keeps strange company, company that has been strangely silent, publicly anyway, about these assurances to the Minister. The hon. the Minister has obviously not come into contract with such organizations as Die Vaderland, which on 11th February said: “Koopbelasting nie oplossing vir in-flasie”, or Tucsa, which on 12th February said: “The country’s workers are rapidly losing patience with the costly rise in prices and tax spirals due to the ineptitude of the Government”. He has not seen Prof. Samuels, who said: “Stiffer taxes in the situation of full employment may not reduce spending but may simply provoke further demands for higher wages”. He has been avoiding Dr. Jan Marais, obviously, because this is what he said—

And he has not seen Dr. M. D. Marais, who said—

It is quite clear that South African economists who are in touch from day to day with problems and local conditions are virtually unanimous in their opposition to the policies of the present Government.

Then the hon. the Minister came to the question of inflation. He accused me of speaking with two voices, of blaming the Government for inflation while at the same time saying that the problem was worldwide. He accused me of being arrogant in saying that we had the solution to the problem of the new strain of inflation, while the rest of the world had failed to find a solution. I think for the record and for the hon. the Minister’s benefit I had better repeat what I actually said. Firstly, there is a new strain of inflation that is not proving amenable to classic remedies; secondly, the world has not found the mechanism to deal with this type of inflation; thirdly, our problems are not the same as those of overseas countries; fourthly, a United Party solution to the problem would be a better one than that of the Government because we would be prepared to use all the tools at our disposal; fifthly, that we in South Africa would not be successful in our fight against inflation if we believed that fiscal and monetary measures alone would give us stability and growth; sixthly, if we failed to develop our labour and use it adequately we would never achieve stable growth; and seventhly, to bring spending into line with production our objective would be increased production.

Sir, what was the hon. the Minister’s reply to these seven points? That what we say is purely negative. Sir, the hon. the Minister must not quote us out of context. I said in the no-confidence debate it may well be that in the short term, but in the short term only, it is necessary to damp down monetary demand, but monetary phenomena are usually symptoms of underlying structural problems and the ills cannot be cured by attacking symptoms in the short term only. To answer our charge that the Government was the only one out of step, the hon. the Minister quoted from an O.E.C.D. study, which said—

This statement supports our thinking. What did we say? We said curtail monetary demand in the short term only while we prepare a base from which to develop long term plans. That is exactly the same as the O.E.C.D. says.

That is what we say too. We also say in the short term.

But your short term becomes long term. The immediate problem of ten years ago becomes the immediate problem of today. Nothing changes. Time and time again we have said that the problem is that there is no long-term planning by the Government. There are only short-term permanent measures that become more rigorous each year.

Then the hon. the Minister also quoted from the publication of the U.S.A. Committee of Economic Development, as follows—

But the hon. the Minister told us that he is not very concerned with structural matters. We are, and I quoted what we said in the no-confidence debate a few minutes ago.

Perhaps the hon. the Minister would also have liked to have quoted from a leader in Die Burger of last Friday dealing with the trade deficit in January, because this is what Die Burger which, although it is moving in that direction, does not support us, said—

That is from Die Burger. There are other opinions and other quotations that the hon. the Minister used in his speech, to which I want to refer. The first was from a memorandum from the Trades and Labour Council which he said had been sent to Gen. Smuts by the council in 1948, complaining about the rise in the cost of living from 1945 to 1948 and a quotation from the Sunday Times, presumably also in 1948, saying that the cost of living had risen by 69 per cent. I have here the Union statistics for the 50 years from 1910 to 1960 and they make very interesting reading. If one looks at the index of the retail prices of all items one finds that the picture given by the hon. the Minister is not quite correct. Let us first look at the years 1945 to 1948, these being the last years of United Party Government. The price index rose from 132.2 in 1945 to 147.8 in 1948, which is 15.6 points or 12 per cent. Now let us look at the years 1948 to 1951, the first years of the present Government. The price index rose from 147.8 in 1948 to 171 in 1951, which is 23.2 points or 15 per cent. That is 3 per cent more than in the earlier period.

Do you not know that there was devaluation?

What has that got to do with it? [Interjections.] Now let us look at the eight-year period. If the hon. the Minister does not like the three-year period, we will look at the eight-year period. In the eight years from 1939 to 1947, the last years of the United Party’s Government, the price index rose from 99.9 to 139.7, which is 39.8 points and 39.8 per cent.

That was during the war.

Yes, that is including a war. But what happened in the first eight years of the Government’s régime? The price index rose from 139.7 in January, 1948, to 202.1 in 1955, which is 62.4 points or 44.6 per cent.

Take the next eight years.

These are very interesting figures, Mr. Speaker. It is obvious that somebody did not do his homework. Then we have the piece de résistance which he pulled out of the hat with great dramatic effect like a conjurer, namely an extract from a speech made by Mr. Mabin, the executive director of Assocom which was made in November last year. I am glad the hon. the Minister has such a high opinion of Mr. Mabin. It is important. It is a pity that he did not quote some of the other points that Mr. Mabin made in his speech dealing with manpower, productivity and fixed investment in productive assets. He pinpointed the shortage of manpower as the major discouraging factor in the economy. This the hon. the Minister did not tell us. It is a pity also that the hon. the Minister did not quote Mr. Mabin from the Star of 17th February. That was only last Wednesday. Under the heading “Inflation: Assocom lays the blame on the State” the following article appears—

I presume the hon. the Minister still remains an ardent admirer of Mr. Mabin.

I want to move away from the hon. the Minister’s quotations and deal with some of his own thinking. Firstly, he repeated the line taken by Government speakers and particularly by the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs, that over the past five to six years, while the cost-of-living index has risen by some 3.5 per cent, wages and salaries had increased by some 5.5 per cent. Therefore, says the hon. the Minister, the average man has been some 2 per cent better off. The question is: Better off in relation to what? Better off in relation to actual salary, or better off in relation to what a worker is entitled to expect? Where the Government has fallen short is that when a man takes a job he accepts a starting salary on the basis that there will be annual increases or annual increments. The purpose of these increments is to ensure that an employee will better his position as time goes on and as he becomes more useful to his employer. Therefore, every employee even without promotion, expects his wage or salary to increase steadily through the passing of time alone. Consequently he expects a rise in his standard of living. I want to illustrate this by what the Government does.

I want to refer to these Estimates. They happen to be for the year 1971, but one can look at any of them. What happens? I just picked a page at random. Surveyors-general are engaged on a basic salary of R6,000 per year, increasing by R300 per year to R7,200. The salary of a director increases by R300 per year. Right throughout the Public Service you have the situation that a man joins the Public Service on the basis of a starting salary and annual increments. That annual increment averages at least 5 per cent of his basic salary. This is what a man expects when he takes a job, namely a 5 per cent increase in his normal increments. What has been happening? These average increments have not even been met, because the difference between the increase in wages and the increase in the cost of living has only been 2 per cent. The hon. the Minister knows that he has to adjust it. That is why we give straight increases right across the board. That is what the hon. the Minister has been doing in the Civil Service. Why? Because there have been increases in the cost of living and he had to meet those increases. But even taking those increases into account, the difference is only 2 per cent. This is the real increase. The increase is 3 per cent less than one would normally expect. The Government benches must stop talking this nonsense that the man in the street is better off because there has been this difference between the cost of living and wages.

Secondly the hon. the Minister took the point that labour did not mean less inflation and he quoted the United Kingdom, Spain, the United States and the African countries to support his point of view. I do not want to deal with this in any detail. I merely want to repeat what I said in the past, and that is that our labour problem in South Africa differs from that in other countries. We have reached the stage in our economic development where we have over-employment of permissible labour. Even in terms of our existing capital formation and the infrastructure available, we could gainfully employ more people. However, we are being prohibited from doing so by law. There is no other country in the world that I know of which imposes upon itself this man-made problem. In other countries employment is in terms of know-how, capital and infrastructure availability. In other words, labour usage is in terms of the economic development of that country and not in terms of pairs of hands available, which was what the hon. the Minister tried to convince us happened in the United States, England and, at the reverse end of the picture, in Africa. Thirdly, the hon. the Minister devoted a great deal of his speech to the question of capital formation and the infrastructure in relation to growth. We believe that there are large capital funds available in South Africa, but the public is plagued with an uncertainty of how to invest. This is the problem we are facing today. That funds are available at a price is evidenced by the success of the Anglo-American property debenture which was issued at 10 per cent.

What about the interest rates?

Hon. members know what the Governor of the Bank of England has said. He said: “Ten per cent may be a norm today”. Rand Mines has had a successful issue and now Sorec is going to have a successful one. The fact is that on the grey market demands apparently are being met, provided the interest rate and raising fee are pitched at the right level. You can get as much money as you want. There is no shortage of money, but there is a distortion of money. People do not know what to do. They are afraid to invest at fixed interest rates on long-term, because they are afraid of devaluation. They are afraid of investing in the market, because it goes down and down. As a matter of fact, they are afraid of everything. We will be getting back to the day where you take your money and stick it under your bed and pray. My hon. Leader quoted Mr. A. D. Dickman, the consulting economist to Anglo-American on this subject, and I do not want to repeat what was said, except for one thing. What I want to say is that this is a picture of a distorted money and capital market. How distorted it is is evidenced by what is now happening with the commercial banks. The Reserve Bank is now cracking down hard on the commercial banks to see that they meet the ceilings which have been imposed. In turn the banks are cracking down on the individual customer to see that their overdrafts are paid up. The farmers are the people who have been particularly badly hit, because they have just suffered years of drought and now they are suffering falling prices. But the business sector is also feeling the pinch. They are also being hit and if we are not careful we are unfortunately going to see quite a few insolvencies in the not too distant future and we are going to see a further reduction of investment capital.

What is one of the reasons for this situation? It is the grey market. If my friend the hon. member for South Coast has R100,000 he wants to invest, he does not give it to the bank any more where he can only get 7 or 8 per cent. He will lend it to Mr. X. He will not put it in the bank, because if he puts it in the bank he can only get 7 per cent and the bank in turn can only lend 45 per cent. The result is that only 55 per cent finds it way to the market. If he lends directly, which the banks today will guarantee for ½ per cent in many cases, as the hon. the Minister knows, then the R100,000 goes in to the grey market, the bank has not got deposits, it runs into trouble with its ceiling, the Reserve Bank squeezes it, it squeezes us and the snowball starts to grow. This is what is happening. These are the distortions we are faced with. I do not have to tell the hon. the Minister, because he knows more about them than I do. [Interjections.] No, he knows, but he has trouble with other members on his side.

Now we come to the question of the infrastructure. I am amazed that the hon. the Minister raised the question of the infrastructure. Of course our infrastructure leaves much to be desired. But who do we have to thank for that situation? Surely the Government! He must not raise the question of the infrastructure with us, because we have been complaining about it for the last 22 years. If the Government would get on with the job, or if it had gone on with the job and had prepared the correct infrastructure, we would not have had an infrastructure problem today. It all boils down to only one thing. The economic policy of the hon. the Minister typified by his R47 million additional taxation will do nothing to help those very factors of production, namely capital formation and infrastructure that the hon. the Minister is so rightly concerned about. What it will do in effect is just the reverse. It will do a great deal of harm.

One can go round and round the board as often as one likes but each time one will end up on our now famous square 1. And what does square 1 say? Labour. I do not want to deal with the question of labour at length, because I hope that other hon. members on this side will do so. There is, however, one thing I would like to make clear in regard to labour. What does labour mean to us and to our economy? Firstly it means a weapon to fight inflation. Secondly it is a means of increased production to help satisfy local demand, to help exports and so to help bring about a balance in our balance of payments position. It is an instrument to increase productivity and profitability. If there is increased productivity and increased profitability the tax burden can be eased on those people who can least afford to pay tax. It is labour that will enable us to have the higher standard of living that we require in this country. It is labour which will enable us to do the things that have to be done in this country, namely to create the capital structure and the infrastructure so that we will have not only industrial peace, but also peace amongst all the people in this country. This is what labour can do in the context of South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, in his reply to the Second Reading debate the hon. the Minister of Finance made it very clear that the opposite side of the House has a duty to help find a solution to the problems besetting the country. However, it was quite noticeable this afternoon that the Opposition did not come forward, or try to come forward, with any solution. They made no suggestions. The hon. member who has just resumed his seat, for example, spoke of increased production, but all they have talked about so far in regard to increased production is labour. Labour is only one of a number of production factors. It is significant how the Opposition has had nothing to say about capital, probably one of the most important production factors influencing increased production.

This solution suggested by the Reserve Bank can, in our opinion, work. This solution will in due course be examined again, and credit restrictions may be relaxed. One also thinks of the criticism with which the hon. Opposition came forward over the past few days during the Second-Reading debate. One can only think back then to what has happened since 1948. In 1948 and shortly afterwards it was interesting to see how the United Party and the Opposition newspapers were forever coming forward with the cry that South Africa had been isolated from the world. As far as our viability is concerned, we would not then have had any friends left, and as far as the economy is concerned, everyone would then have taken their money out of South Africa. We would not have been able to find money anywhere. Now one just wonders where all this prosperity during the past 23 years, and the confidence the outside world had in us to invest capital here, came from.

The hon. the Minister of Finance took the trouble in his Second-Reading speech to mention our gold production and sales. I still remember how, two or three years ago, the Opposition criticized us in regard to our gold negotiations with the International Monetary Fund. They said that we were going to come off second best and that it would bring discredit upon South Africa. But if one looks at recent newspaper reports, and particularly those of last year, one would see that there were constant reports about how South Africa had again sold R50 million or R20 million worth of gold. It was very friendly of the hon. the Minister of Finance to give us this reassurance that the gold position in South Africa, including the sales of our gold, is fundamentally sound. Inter alia he stated it as follows—

After all, this is all we wanted as far as our gold sales are concerned. Once again the National Party Government has shown the country that it is keeping abreast of the highest financial developments in the world, that it is keeping abreast of these matters and that it negotiates only what is best for the Republic of South Africa.

In discussing the Part Appropriation last week the Opposition actually discussed it as if it was the Main Budget. I found it significant that they were continually referring to things which were still to happen, to things which are still to be or ought to be announced, in the Budget. They anticipated, as it were, the Budget. We think for example of pensions. I do not know whether it was their aim to make political capital out of this matter and to be able to tell the people afterwards that they had advocated higher pensions, but the matter of pensions is something, and they know this too, which makes its appearance every year in the Main Budget. We can only expect that the hon. the Minister of Finance will once again have something for our aged when he announces his Main Budget.

But if we consider this entire Part Appropriation and have to analyse its affect, there are to my mind two cardinal points we must recognize. The first point is the question of saving, and the second point is that of labour. When I talk about saving, it is of course with much regret that we hear of the low level recently attained by the country in respect of savings. We would have liked this to be higher. The reason for it is obvious of course; the spending is too high, and that is why people are not saving enough.

The prices are too high.

When I think of saving, I always think of this aspect of the matter. One can talk about saving in top financial circles, by the State and by the top financial institutions, but should one not, when one is dealing with a Budget, try to convey a message to the people of South Africa? When one does that, surely one must begin with the family. I always think of the expression which one often hears, “the situation in every home or family, is the beginning or end of any state”. That is why I found it significant, and I made a few inquiries at our schools, to see how much is being saved. I am sorry to say that I came across various schools where no attempt was being made to save. One would really like to encourage the attempt to save at our schools. However, at our schools today there are tuck-shops and all kinds of other ways in which the children can spend. But we had a way of saving when we were still at school. Every day each week every child had to bring a few pennies which were to be put away as savings. At the end of the year he received a few savings certificates from the Post Office. That manner of saving seems to be a thing of the past. It seems to me we do not have it anymore. I sat and pondered this matter. The year before last we had the festival of the soil, a wonderful festival. Last year we had the water year, and also a Bible year. I wonder now whether we should not have a savings year, a year in which we can bring it to everyone’s attention how necessary it is that we save, even if it is only one cent at a time. It must be brought home to our children that to save is a virtue. I think that if we begin with the child, with the family and the school, and the ripples spread out from there, we will have accomplished a great task on behalf of South Africa.

Then there is labour. Nobody denies that we have a shortage of skilled labour. Nevertheless, I think we ought to have a labour year as well. Our people on the farms work seven days a week, and work from early in the morning until late at night. In the cities and the towns, on the other hand, our people are growing accustomed to a five-day working week, and perhaps work only from 8.30 in the morning to 4.30 in the afternoon. On Fridays by about one o’clock they are already beginning to keep an eye on the clock, perhaps because they want to go away for the weekend. This again gives rise to higher spending. I live on the main road to the north and every Friday afternoon and evening I can see a row of motor cars coming from the direction of Pretoria past Warmbaths and heading north. At night you just see one row of lights—all the people want to do is go on holiday; all they want to do is spend. Things are far too easy and too nice in South Africa; a spirit of boastfulness has taken root among our people, almost as it was in the time of Ryk Tulbagh when all the people wanted to do was show off in pomp and splendour. Today everyone wants a swimming bath in his back yard; everyone wants a second and a third motor car; everyone wants wall-to-wall carpeting. We should rather go to work judiciously and not spend our salaries in advance. In this respect I think the Government must take steps to cultivate an advance sense of responsibility among our people. We must encourage production as one of the means of combating inflation. Our people must invest in industries and not in the prestige buildings which we see rising everywhere today. We must invest more in our industries so that we can produce more and by producing more, we will be able to remedy our balance of payments problem. Of course present production is not static; our economy is at present showing a growth of about 6 per cent, but we must produce even more, because we will then have to import less. We must try to export more and import less. In that way we will get our balance of payment, as well as inflation, under control. The hon. Opposition protested vehemently against the damping measures which the Minister took in the form of sales duty. But surely he made it clear that—

In other words, we are doing the one thing without omitting to do the other; we are continually encouraging economic growth and production as much as we can.

The hon. member for Potgietersrus revealed a nostalgic longing for the days when he was taught as a child to save. That advice was most certainly not wrong advice. But the man in the street today is in trouble when it comes to saving, and this is due to inflation. Hence we do not find the tendency today among people to save, as there was twenty years ago. Then the value of our monetary unit was still stable. Today, however, with the decrease in the value of our money, we find that people are saving in the old conventional manner to a far lesser extent. Today there are other ways of saving, precisely as a result of inflation. One of these is to increase the value of their property. The hon. member is opposed to people who build swimming baths; according to him it is wrong.

He is not opposed to it.

According to the hon. member it is wrong for anyone today to have wall-to-wall carpeting in his home. [Interjections.] I listened very carefully to the hon. member. He said we want to show off today, almost like the people in the time of Ryk Tulbagh with their pomp and circumstance. However, the hon. member cannot expect our people to return to the time when there were no such things as wall-to-wall carpeting, for example. On the contrary, it must be the objective of any Government today to ensure its people of a higher standard of living. People are also saving today by buying paintings or antiques—things which increase in value. The hon. member does not want our people to spend too much on themselves, and wants steps to be taken to encourage our people not to show off.

The hon. member went on to say that we must produce more—a very good point. The hon. member is quite correct on that score. I shall have more to say about this later.

There is another matter which I want to bring to the attention of the Minister today, and that is the extremely serious state of affairs in our agricultural industry today. I want to refer him to the steps which he took through the Reserve Bank to oblige our commercial banks not to exceed a certain credit ceiling. I remember well that when the hon. the Minister introduced his measure a few years ago, he said that when it came to the agricultural industry, commercial banks would be allowed a great deal of discretion, so that the productivity of the farmers would not be restricted. The hon. the Minister knows the background of many of our farmers as well as I know it. The hon. Minister knows that during the past five to six years most farmers have experienced a tremendous drought. I am thinking in particular of the South Western Districts; I am thinking of large areas of the Karoo and all our grazing areas in the North Western Cape. Not only did they experience a tremendous drought, but there was even a drop in the prices those people received for their products. In other words, they had tremendous expenditure without any corresponding improvement in their incomes.

But apart from this, these people were also affected by the attitude of this Government which, in order to combat inflation, allowed interest rates in South Africa to be increased. Hon. members on that side will tell me now that they have done a great deal; they will mention their lump sums to prove to us to what extent the Government has rendered assistance. I want to tell the hon. the Minister of Finance that the farmers of South Africa owe approximately R13,000 million today, of which only 30 per cent has been advanced to them by the State in some way or another. But the other 70 per cent is the farmers’ debt at ordinary commercial institutions in South Africa, and to individuals. The interest subsidy which certain categories of farmers, which are determined by the Minister, may receive—many of them may not—only refers to approximately R250 million of the capital liabilities of farmers at recognized institutions. The farmers’ situation is becoming worse by the day, and now we find that the commercial banks are asking these people to settle their overdrawn accounts as quickly as possible. Mr. Speaker, I want to make it very clear that we do not blame the commercial banks. On the contrary …

You must specify which commercial banks.

All commercial banks.

This does not apply to all commercial banks.

My information is that it does. The situation is that these commercial banks were sympathetically disposed towards the farmers, and helped them in very difficult times, but now when the farmers do in fact need help as a result of Government policy, the commercial banks must go back to the farmers and tell them that they cannot obtain any further money, or that they must within a certain time settle their overdrawn accounts. I want to ask the hon. the Minister of Finance whether he thinks it is possible for a wool farmer today to settle his overdrawn accounts? I want to ask him whether there are any prospects in the foreseeable future that these people will be able to meet their obligations. I want to ask the hon. the Minister of Finance to look again at the speech he made here a few years ago when he assured us a few times that the commercial banks would be requested not to take drastic steps in regard to the farming community. My request to the hon. the Minister is that he should not only read that long speech of his again, but that when he replies to this Third Reading debate, he should once again make an appeal to the commercial banks not to take drastic steps against the farming community, because if the hon. the Minister of Finance does not adopt this attitude, then I want to give early warning now that it will be on his head if more farmers in South Africa go bankrupt. I want to warn him right now that we will not forgive him, because we know what the situation outside is.

Sir, it is not only the agricultural industry which is concerned about the situation; it is not only they who are being affected; trade and industry are also being affected. Because, Sir, if there is no money in circulation, if the farmer is compelled to pay the commercial banks, what about his debts at the co-operative or his local dealer, or his local garage owner? Then they will also have to be paid, and the farmers are simply in no position to be able to do so. We want to tell the hon. the Minister that he must ask these commercial banks to act in such a manner that our agricultural industry in South Africa will not be further handicapped. Because there are serious signs. For example, it does not seem to us that there is any revival in the wool market. Even in spite of the stock reduction scheme, there are bottlenecks which are preventing the farmer from getting rid of his stock. There have been no considerable improvements in their prices. There will quite possibly be an improvement one of these days, owing to a much larger mealie crop. This is in fact the case, but even those people have a tremendous backlog they will have to make up. I want to make a very urgent request to the hon. the Minister of Finance to give this matter which I am now raising the most earnest attention he can muster; for his own people will already have told him this, and the hon. the Minister is not unaware of what is going on outside. There are already scores of farmers who have had to find some other way of making a living, and if their economic position deteriorates even further, it simply means that a person will have to cut back on his labour, and will be unable to maintain his normal level of production. It is impossible to do this, and when a man has to get rid of his labour and those people have to move to the towns, what is to become of them? Then one simply has unemployment among those non-Whites, and once they have left the farm, for however brief a spell, I am afraid that one is never able to get them to return. In other words, to keep the economy going in the rural areas, it is not only necessary to help the farmers, but there are also various other people involved in this situation. The Minister cannot argue it away, because there are many hon. members on this side of the House, such as myself, and the hon. member for South Coast, Walmer, East London City, East London North, Albany and King William’s Town, who either have farmers in their constituencies, or who are themselves farmers. [Interjections.] This matter which we are now bringing to the attention of the Minister—we are being told this emphatically every day—is a serious one; the situation is serious, and I hope that the hon. the Minister is going to help us in this respect.

Then I want to return to general matters in regard to inflation, which was mentioned by the hon. member for Potgietersrus and others as well. The hon. members maintain that the United Party is only concerned about the labour position, and the hon. the Minister repeated it in his speech to which I listened very carefully. On that occasion the hon. the Minister quoted Dr. Krogh, Director of the Chamber of Industries, according to whom he had supposedly said that the country cannot grow faster than its potential will let it. But here I have an interview granted by Dr. Krogh to the Financial Mail in August of last year, after the hon. the Minister had announced certain concessions for industries and people who wanted to develop, concessions in regard to buildings and machinery. What did Dr. Krogh say then?

Then he mentions the following interesting points:

That is what most industrialists and people who have to maintain our growth are advocating today. We maintain that production must be increased, so that the supply can become greater. That, in my opinion, is definitely a good economic principle. The hon. the Minister of Finance must explain to me how much more can we produce in a factory, which has already reached its maximum production, without additional labour being available and without capital being available for expansion of necessary buildings and machinery. The hon. the Minister said that capital is scarce. We know why it is scarce. The hon. member for Parktown furnished us with the reasons for that. The reason is the grey market. One cannot allow production to increase in South Africa today unless one has the labour and the capital to invest in new machinery and buildings. The high costs involved in this are in fact discouraging the ambitious factory owner. After all, it has now become the fashion to say that we must produce more and that we must spend less. After we have produced more and the market is full of new products, or larger quantities of existing products, then we tell the people that they must buy less and spend less. If the hon. the Minister gives that simultaneous advice to people, namely produce more, but spend less, who is going to buy the industrialist’s added production?

At the same time we say that our people must be encouraged to buy more South African products. This is an excellent sentiment, i.e. that we should buy South African. But surely the Government does not only want to discourage the consumption of foreign goods in South Africa. The Government’s policy is also to discourage the sale of domestic goods. So, “Buy South African” only means anything if it is applied in a growing economy. Then it has value, but it has no value when one wants to curb the economy in South Africa. For that reason we on this side of the House believe that the principle way in which we can solve our problems is to give the entrepreneur, industrialist and the businessman all those factors which bring about better growth in South Africa. If any of those factors are absent, then we will simply not have production. The House need not listen to me; they can listen to the South African Federated Chambers of Industry. They can listen to the latest reports of a speech made by the President. He said—

The Government wants to encourage production in South Africa, but they do not want to make all the production factors available so that people will be in a position to be able to do so. Here we are hearing, even from the Chamber of Industries, that they cannot meet the needs today, to say nothing of the need to increase exports from South Africa. What does the Chamber of Industries suggest as the principle reason for their problem? This is what Mr. Beck says—

But the hon. the Minister of Finance and his colleagues on that side of the House are not prepared to see the matter this way. No, they believe the only way in which inflation in South Africa can be stopped, is by preventing people from spending more.

But if the Minister wants to prevent people from spending more, the hon. gentleman must be selective. Is he going to say the same thing to the consumer of perfectly ordinary commodities, i.e. that he must spend less, as he is for example going to say to the entrepreneur? No, the hon. the Minister has never done this. The hon. the Minister has never encouraged the entreprenuer in South Africa, except last year when he made certain tax concessions. All this Government ever did was to place obstacles in his way or make less and less labour available by means of measures such as work reservation, or the measure such as the Physical Planning Act. This is how they have restricted them in South Africa. And then they expect that man to produce more. This past weekend I had an opportunity of speaking to a factory owner. What did he tell me? He said that his factory was now on maximum production, but that if he wanted to increase his production he needed essential machinery which was expensive. He also needed labourers for him to be able to increase his production. For those two essentials he received no help from the authorities. On the contrary. Obstacles were merely placed in his way to prevent him from increasing his production. What is more, he also made the following statement, which I think is quite justified, i.e. that if the State wants him to produce more and at the same time tell the people that they must not buy, surely it will be ridiculous of him to increase his production to such an extent that he is subsequently saddled with a lot of products which he cannot sell. He will only be able to sell them if he is prepared to allow his price to drop. How can he afford to sell his products at lower prices if that product is manufactured at a certain production unit price?

No, it will avail this Government nothing to come forward with slogans and to tell people that they must produce more and then at the same time say to the consumer that they must spend less. It will simply not work. On the contrary. The United Party says: Give these people the production factors and see to it that production is increased, because that is the only way in which we will solve our inflation problems. There is no other way.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Newton Park made a few statements, and before I expound the theme I prepared for this Third Reading debate, I would like to reply to his statements. In the first place the hon. member said that the commercial banks were cancelling the credit of the farmers, and he termed this a very unsympathetic attitude on the part of the banks. But let me tell him that when the hon. Opposition decides to state a matter in this House and debate it, the National Party has already taken steps in this regard. The same applies in this case to the particular credit which is needed by our farmers from our commercial banks. This matter has already been discussed with the hon. the Minister of Finance. The Minister will discuss this matter further with the President of the Reserve Bank, so that it will be possible to make credit opportunities available to farmers to such an extent that it will suit them under the circumstances. When the Opposition begins to discuss a matter in this House and advances pleas in regard to it, the National Party has already taken active steps in regard to the same matter. Therefore the representations the hon. gentlemen advance here are merely for political gain. They have no value any more. The fact that that party has been rejected completely by the voters, at the latest election as well and in particular in the rural areas, is adequate proof that the farmers have confidence in the National Party, its Cabinet and its Government. For that reason the hon. Opposition can safely leave this question of credit for our farmers in the hands of our hon. Minister of Finance and the Government. Since the hon. member mentioned the matter of the wool farmers, I want to ask the hon. member if his memory is really so short. Only recently the hon. the Prime Minister made it very clear in reply to the accusations by the Opposition that he was giving the wool farmers a guarantee that the National Party Government would not leave them in the lurch in this time of crisis. It says a lot that the hon. the Prime Minister is conveying this at this early stage to the wool farmers on behalf of his Cabinet and his Government, since the reserve price basis, according to the Wool Board and the Wool Commission, is itself to a large extent assisting the wool farmers in their difficulties. That is the statement hon. members of the Opposition make, and in particular the Jeremiah of Agriculture, the hon. member for Newton Park. With him it is always a case of the stable door being bolted after the horse has fled. The Government has its finger on the pulse of all trends in the economy and the financial conditions of agriculture in South Africa, and it acts accordingly. The past speaks for itself. The hon. member drew a comparison here between commercial bank credit and co-operatives. This does not fall into the same category because co-operatives supply seasonal credit, and they wait until the crops have been harvested before recovering the credit. There are numerous cases we could mention. Hon. members need only approach the boards of management of large co-operatives to find that there are numerous cases where the credit periods are extended even further. Immediate and drastic steps are not taken against our farmers, and the co-operatives are generously supplied with the necessary capital to accommodate those farmers themselves. Therefore, these arguments of the hon. member fall away completely if one faces facts.

The hon. member referred to the ceiling set by the Reserve Bank. But surely it must be the case that any business institution, and in particular a financial institution, has to place a ceiling on credit and on the credit standing of any person. It cannot and it is not in the interests of the creditor to receive unlimited credit. Not all people are responsible enough. Even there the Reserve Bank adopted special arrangements for agriculture, for production purposes. I want to know what is troubling the hon. member now. Here we are mentioning to the hon. members the fact which they cannot and may not refute. These are the facts, generally seen. In regard to the Land Bank as well, the Agricultural Credit Board and so on, this Government has a clean conscience and an excellent record, and this has been stated by agricultural organizations throughout South Africa. The hon. members of the Opposition can forget about trying to make political capital out of a situation which sometimes develops, as it did during the drought. Nobody can help it, and precisely for that reason farmers are assisted to a greater degree than their credit standing justifies in some cases.

You do not have contact with your people.

I devoted enough of my time to that hon. member, and I think I proved irrefutably that this Government is sympathetically disposed towards agriculture. Before mentioning another matter here, I also want to refer to a problem with which we are faced in agriculture. You must admit that conditions sometimes develop in agriculture which we would not like to see develop, but which are beyond our control. What we are very pleased about, when discussing this Part Appropriation Bill in the Third Reading, is that as before the items on which sales duty has been increased will not really affect agriculture as such. Here and there there may sometimes be luxury items which the farmers require, and which are affected, but this is, as the hon. the Minister said, non-recurrent and voluntary. Nobody is obliged to buy certain articles on which a sales duty of 20, 25 or 30 per cent has been imposed. It is quite voluntary, and that is why the taxpayer still has the right to choose whether or not he will buy that article. I admit that over the last few years the contribution of agriculture to the gross domestic product has gradually declined, but this was not as a result of tax structures or pressure from that side of the House. It was as a result of climatic conditions and factors beyond our control. Consequently it is gratifying to see that in this Part Appropriation Bill, agriculture is in no way being prejudiced by this R47 million extra which is to be obtained from sales duty.

Notwithstanding this fact I want to refer to an article which appeared in the report of the General Council for submission to the annual congress of the South African Agricultural Union. Time does not allow me to quote from it, but I want to state that the idea expressed here was that agriculture had had no share in the growth which caused inflation. Agriculture did in fact grow, but because its contribution to the gross population product decreased over the past few years it was irrefutably proved that agriculture did not make a large contribution to this condition of inflation. Because we all admit that the cost of living is rising, I want with emphasis and with absolute conviction to permit myself on this occasion to make a serious appeal to the control boards. These control boards are responsible for price determinations and suggestions to the hon. the Minister. I am thinking now, for example, of the Marketing Council and other commodity councils which play a part in the expansion of price structures for agriculture, and which makes recommendations in this connection for approval or amendment. I am referring in particular to the Wheat Control Board, the Maize Control Board, the Meat Board and the Dairy Control Board. It is time those control boards took the cost of living into account. I am not only thinking now of the production costs which are reconsidered every year in determining prices, but that they should also take this increasing cost of living into account when they make recommendations for price structures which have to be considered. Agriculture really needs it. Since there are parts of our country which suffered under droughts and since there are large areas of the Free State and the Transvaal which have for a year or two harvested, and still expect, record maize and wheat crops, I consequently want to advocate to the control boards to consider the position of the farmer sympathetically. It is not the task of a political party or a government to investigate this matter in its initial stages and consistently and after that to come forward with statistics and facts. It is the task of control boards. I therefore want to make this serious appeal to them to consider this position. Enough said, then, about agriculture.

A great deal was said here about the inflationary conditions in which we find ourselves. Nobody denies that. The hon. the Minister pointed this out and that is why he took steps, such as the introduction of an increased sales duty, which will yield an additional R47 million, in order to cope with current expenditure and so on. In addition it also has the object of curbing these inflationary conditions to a large extent. What was the part played by the Opposition in regard to this matter when we discussed it in the Second Reading debate? They made not the least effort to suggest anything constructive. All they did was refer here with a great deal of satisfaction to the bottlenecks and problems which exist in South Africa. We know that this inflationary situation can be extremely prejudicial if it continues unchecked. In my humble opinion, and not as an economist, I feel that the sales duty is a very fair system of taxation. Notwithstanding the introduction of this kind of taxation a year or two ago, the public gave little or no co-operation towards making it a success and achieving the purpose for which it was introduced. This sales duty was absolutely necessary. But now I want to make an appeal to the private sector. If the private sector is going to co-operate by not going on a spending spree, not buying left, right and centre, both what is necessary and unnecessary, the task of the Government would surely be made a much easier one.

Reference was also made to the manpower shortage, and I want to make another suggestion. If we can, with the manpower we have at our disposal, increase the efficiency per manhour, so that production can increase, we will not have any problem in regard to this inflationary situation and a too rapid growth. Surely this will be the damping measure with which to curb growth to some extent, so that it will not get out of hand. The Opposition did not avail themselves of one opportunity here of asking the public to save. They did not even mention that the public can play a major role in solving this problem. Why not, Sir? They deliberately used one statement after the other to try to make political capital out of the situation. I understand the Opposition quite thoroughly. I understand why they adopt such a negative attitude towards our problems and do not want to contribute anything constructive. After all, this hon. Opposition was opposed to the Republic of South Africa, and still is today. That is why it begrudges the Republic anything good. That is why it is pleased when bottlenecks arise, because they know well enough that the National Party is closer to the Republic of South Africa than they are. If they can harm the National Party Government—I am saying this here today because I am convinced of this—then they do not mind if they also harm South Africa in the process. Their great campaign in regard to our manpower shortage has only one purpose, which has nothing to do with combating inflation. The ideas expressed here to the effect that we should make more use of our Bantu labour potential, skilled and unskilled, is solely intended to eliminate work reservation. That is what they are intent on doing.

Are you not ashamed of yourself?

The Opposition is pleading against work reservation, and now the hon. member is telling me that I should be ashamed of myself. He and his party should be ashamed of themselves because of the attitude they adopt year after year in this House. The object of bringing in this Bantu labour, according to the pleas of the Opposition, is to effect integration. It is the brother of petty apartheid which they want to eliminate. They have not yet solved that problem for us. As far as our Bantu and White labour is concerned, I can inform this House that the greater the production of every individual in South Africa, the greater the benefits will be, not only for the individual, not only for commerce and related sectors, but for South Africa as a whole. I conclude by saying that this Part Appropriation Bill, which we are now discussing in its third stage, testifies to the fact that the National Party Government means well with South Africa.

I shall come back later to what the hon. member said in regard to labour, but he must pardon me for not reacting to his other points, because I want to come back to certain extraordinary statements which the hon. the Minister made the other day. In regard to the farmers of our country, I want to ask the hon. member who has just sat down, why it is that when the Nationalist Party came into power in 1948, the ratio of White to non-White in the rural areas was 1:9, as compared with 1:16 today, with an indication that it will rise to 1:22 within the next 10 years. If things are going so well with our farming community, why are they all leaving their farms? [Interjections.] The hon. member spoke about the Government’s policy. This is of course that we should rather be poor and White. But now we are not even remaining White. While Dr. Verwoerd could still talk about Black spots in the White areas, we are left with a few White spots in Black areas today.

In regard to the hon. the Minister of Finance, I must say that if he has ever aroused suspicion that he is in difficulty, he did so by his performance in this House the other day, when he confirmed that he was in difficulty in regard to the handling of our economy. We regard this hon. Minister as one of the most stable and phlegmatic personalities in the Cabinet. When he finds it necessary to beat theatrically on his bench, as he had to do the other day, and has to resort to histrionics, we know that he is in difficulty. The hon. the Minister accused us of playing politics in this matter. But then he came to light with a piece of political opportunism such as we have seldom experienced; he made a political football of our entire economic problem. We take it amiss of him. He did not inspire the members on his side in any way. Let me ask him in modern English: “Why is he losing his cool”? After all, we do not expect this from him. In my opinion the problem is that he is saddled with a matter which he cannot handle; he has a poor case. If this is not the position, there is only one other explanation—that he is starting to prepare himself for his swan song.

On our side, he said, only the backbenchers made a contribution, while the frontbenchers were negative. I chance to think of the hon. member for Yeoville, who spoke about the third phase of the assembling of motor cars. We would have expected the Minister to react to that, but he did not utter a single word. Then there was the proposal by the hon. member for Durban Point that every article should have a label to indicate the extent of the sales tax on that article. The hon. member for Brakpan supported him; he said it was a first-class idea.

But the Minister explained why he cannot do it.

Why did the hon. the Minister not react to these concrete proposals from our front benches? The fact of the matter is that there is no enthusiasm on the other side for this debate. It is becoming increasingly clear that hon. members opposite have lost confidence in the doctor and in the medicine he prescribes.

He spoke about our growth rate and as he usually does—and those who echo him, usually do the same—he tried to draw the kudos for that side of the House. But we have said before—is it necessary for us to repeat it?—that this kind of comparison which that side of the House puts forward, i.e. by comparing our growth rate with those of Britain and America, is surely not a significant comparison. We have indicated previously that there is a definite curve in the growth rate of a country, a curve which can be represented by means of an S. It is usually after the economic take-off stage that a country develops rapidly, and as it develops economic maturity, the growth rate decreases. Sir, this applies to all organisms. As I said before, if the human organism were to grow at the same rate as in the first year of its life, most of us would weigh more than 50 tons before we were 30 years old. What purpose does that kind of comparison therefore serve? Why does the hon. the Minister not rather compare our growth rate with those of countries which correspond more closely with South Africa in regard to their level of development? Why does he not compare our growth rate with that of Japan or with that of Israel? Why does he not do that? Because those comparisons are not so favourable to us.

But a second point we notice when the hon. the Minister and those who echo him talk about the growth rate, is that they never talk about a per capita growth rate, and this is, after all, the important statistic, because the first figure is a dead kind of figure. The per capita growth rate indicates to what extent my own standard of living is rising. Our population increase in this country is almost twice as high as in European countries and almost three times as high as in Britain. When we therefore start expressing our growth rate in per capita terms, it is not at all impressive. For this reason it does not surprise us that the hon. the Minister does not make that kind of comparison.

Sir, the hon. the Minister spoke about unemployment, and once again we had the tendency which we always come across, namely that hon. members on the other side want to pretend that we have no unemployment in South Africa, but that the unemployment figure in America and other countries is so high. Surely this is a piece of blatant political psychology; the idea is to create the impression that our Government is so good that we have no unemployment here and that the Americans have such a bad Government that the unemployment figure is high there. Sir, figures of that kind are not at all comparable. The Americans establish their unemployment figures by a method quite different from ours. The figure is artificially inflated, because people make themselves technically unemployed in America, as the payment one receives if one is unemployed is very high; it is in fact higher than the wages some people earn even while working here in South Africa.

You are talking like a child now.

I happened to be in Los Angeles recently, where a large group of people were working …

You are talking absolutely like a child now.

In that case the hon. the Minister is talking like someone in his second childhood, if I may put it that way. Sir, does the hon. the Minister want to deny that this unemployment index is arrived at in quite a different way?

No, I do not deny that, but you said that unemployed people are paid more than employed people.

In many cases the people on the “dole” in America receive much more than employed people in this country, and anyone knowing anything about this will support that statement. If one draws that type of comparison, one is therefore either ignorant or must have some other motive for doing so.

The hon. the Minister of Finance quoted here from authoritative sources. As the hon. member for Parktown said, he read out what Mr. Mabin had allegedly said in October and November. But last week Mr. Mabin put the blame for this situation exactly where it belongs, and that is at the door of this Government. The hon. the Minister read out to us what Dr. Krogh had allegedly said. But, Sir, here we have a strange situation. The hon. the Minister was guilty here of the kind of blunder which only a novice in politics makes, because he read to us the first paragraph of what Dr. Krogh had said, while the second paragraph reads like this—and it starts with the words “at the same time”, a conjunctive type of phrase, which indicates that the second paragraph is linked with the first (translation)—

This is exactly what we have always said, and the hon. the Minister read the first paragraph, but omitted the second one, which places the matter in perspective. In this case we cannot say that it was ignorance, and consequently the motive becomes a more sinister one. As I have said, the hon. the Minister is like a doctor, and now we find that the patient is becoming sicker and sicker. Either his diagnosis is wrong or he prescribes the wrong medicine, but the more medicine he gives this economic patient, South Africa, the sicker it becomes. Subsequently, as one so often finds under these circumstances, the hon. the Minister decided to adopt the role of teacher. He would give us a lecture on basic economics, and this is what he tried to do. But he based his lecture on the time before Keynes and his colleagues, and it was rather like a medical doctor making a diagnosis without using X-rays.

Is Keynes your teacher now?

Yes, I think we can all learn a great deal from him. But then the Minister told us it is not labour that is so important; labour is only one of the factors in production. An important factor is, of course, capital, and he then tried to adopt the point of view that we cannot grow quickly enough because there is not enough capital. Indeed, he attached the hon. member for Parktown on this point. But let us put the matter differently. No country can grow quickly today unless it can obtain foreign risk capital, and what country has the best atmosphere for attracting foreign risk capital, one which is growing or one which is stagnant? When South Africa was growing in the past, and growing fast, did we experience any difficulty with capital? We always succeeded in getting enough capital into the country. Thus that argument falls away completely.

Then the hon. the Minister said, in the second place, that if you grow quickly, you have difficulties with your balance of payments. But surely this is not true either. The countries which are growing slowly today, such as Britain and the U.S.A., are precisely the countries which have balance of payments difficulties. History shows that the countries which grew the most quickly after the war, such as Japan and West Germany, have no balance of payments difficulties. Does our own history not show this too? We have grown slowly in two stages, after Sharpeville and today, and in both these cases we have had balance of payments difficulties. That argument thus falls away as well.

But then the hon. the Minister told us a country must have an infrastructure to be able to develop. As the hon. member for Parktown indicated, whose task is it to provide that? Is it not the task of the Government? Have we not in fact indicated that essential services are totally lacking, that we can earn millions of rands for South Africa annually, but that the Railways are not able to export our coal, iron ore, manganese and anthrasite? But the difficulty here is that the Government is saddled with an ideology, and this ideology dictates that the development must not take place here; it must take place in the so-called border areas and this is where it should now be moved. That is why we find Prof. Reynders indicating that South Africa will have to spend R72 million over the next three years in order to create employment opportunities for 20,000 Bantu in the border areas.

But Dr. A. S. Jacobs goes even further and says that before the end of the century we will have to create additional employment opportunities for 5.8 million Bantu in the border areas. If I link these two figures, it means that before the end of this century we will have to spend more than R20,000 million in order to create an infrastructure for the so-called border areas. It is not surprising that services are starting to collapse, because the Government is led by the nose by an ideology. But after the hon. the Minister had confused the matter completely, he said we could not blame him for being a protagonist of the damping theory, because in fact he was a man who is in favour of growth.

†Every single contribution and every single utterance the hon. the Minister has made in this House has indicated that he is the prime protagonist of the “demp” approach. Every single step he has taken, both fiscal and monetary, in the form of credit restrictions and in the form of this particular piece of legislation, in terms of which he is syphoning R47 million out of the economy, shows the approach of a man who belongs to the “demp” school and who wants to damp our growth. Sir, do we not remember when the hon. the Minister introduced this measure the other day? Having scouted around, he came across an academic who supported his point of view. There was a glow on his face. The hon. gentleman stood there and read out the statement twice, where Dr. Terreblanche used the expression “verwronge beheptheid met groei”. Actually, what he should have said is “verwronge beheptheid met ’n onuitvoerbare ideologie”, but be that as it may. The hon. the Minister was tremendously pleased with himself because he had found somebody who supported this approach.

Sir, we now find the following alignment: On the one hand we have those who support the “demp” theory. I assume that the majority of the members of the Cabinet belong to that group. Then you have one or two academics. You also have a small group of trade unionists, probably led by Mr. Gert Beetge. These are the economic verkramptes. On the other hand, arrayed against them, you have everybody who sits on this side of the House. You have practically every industrialist of consequence in South Africa. You have every economist of note who has had practical business experience. You have the vast majority of the trade unions in South Africa, with the exception of Mr. Beetge. Our approach is fundamentally that South Africa has all the ingredients for rapid non-inflationary growth, provided we remove some of the restrictions that that hon. Minister has imposed upon our economy.

Every development overseas has indicated that where a government follows an anti-inflationary policy which inhibits private investment, then sooner or later you have the situation where your capacity to produce is seriously restricted. That is our argument. That is precisely what is going to happen here. The hon. the Prime Minister has already told us that the spectre of unemployment among our non-White people causes him grave concern. Does the hon. the Minister realize what he is doing at the moment? If he begins to inhibit our growth to this extent, it can have far-reaching repercussions, because an analysis of the E.D.P. figures show that if South Africa grows at a rate of 5 per cent, at the end of this year we may find that we have a quarter million Africans who are unemployed. Is that a situation he can face with equanimity? Sir, we are playing with a dangerous situation here.

Our charge against this Government is that it is denying South Africa an opportunity of achieving optimum growth, that is inducing uncertainty into the business situation, that it is frightening off not only the foreign investor but also the local investor, and that it places nearly all the emphasis on control instead of on incentives. If South Africa could grow, it would give us immense strength because our salvation lies in our economic strength. If we were strong, we could have better social services, we could have better education, we could have better remuneration for our workers, we could have lower taxes, we could meet our defence commitments, and we could meet all these other international obligations that South Africa is beginning to acquire.

South Africa has all the ingredients for rapid economic growth. We have an abundance of natural resources. We have a vast reservoir of untapped labour. We have management talent. We have a trade union movement that is, on the whole, quite responsible. South Africa could out-perform Japan in the economic field any time. The only difference is that the Japanese have a sensible government which follows a realistic economic policy. The question that arises is, why should a government be so stupid? Why should a government deliberately try and inhibit South Africa’s growth rate? There is of course only one answer, namely the faster South Africa grows, the more we discredit apartheid. Therefore our whole future security and prosperity must now be sacrificed on the altar of an unattainable political myth.

What was of interest to us, too, in this debate was that the hon. the Minister of Finance emerged as the main spokesman on the Government side on labour issues. The hon. the Minister of Labour has of course been doing such an egg dance recently on this issue that we imagine that he was deliberately kept out of the situation. The hon. the Minister told us too that we are trying to take the line that labour is the only issue and that one merely has to reduce the restrictions that exist at the moment for the whole problem to resolve itself. We have never taken that line. We have said that the strength of a chain is found in its weakest link and that the weakest link in this whole economic situation in South Africa at the moment is an inadequacy of skilled labour. It is not only we that say this, Sir. Everybody says so. I was looking through some material that is available at the moment. It all hinges on increasing the supply of labour and we can only do this if we admit greater numbers of non-Whites to the skilled ranks of South Africans.

The Volkshandel I have here says: “Gee swart mense meer wit werk”. Mr. Liebenberg of the Artisans’ Staff and Trade Council says: “We are sitting on a time bomb unless we do something about it”. Dr. Francois Jacobsz says: “What is required in the ‘seventies is a new expertise in working towards common economic objectives with a multi-racial labour force.” Dr. A. S. Jacobs says that the situation has now been reached where the Government must seriously consider making calculated adaptations in the field of labour. Every single South African of consequence who has any insight into these matters comes forward and says what must be done, but the hon. the Minister in his economic verkramptheid has turned his mind right against this. He now blames us and says that all we want to do is to blacken our labour force.

No Government can have a worse record than that Government has on precisely this issue. I was interested to see the figures in the building industry over the last 10 years. One must remember that this is in terms of their White but poor dogma and in terms of their policy of job reservation. Over the last 10 years the number of Whites employed in the building industry declined by 17 per cent, from 72,000 to 60,000. The number of non-Whites increased from 200,000 to 300,000, which is an increase of 50 per cent. If any man puts his mind to this, he will see that it is vitally essential. It is understood that in any new, modern economic system at least 10 per cent of the population are required to take up the higher skilled tasks. South Africa’s population today is over 20 million people and on that criterion more than 2 million people are required to fill our higher skilled tasks. The Whites in South Africa number just a little over 3 million, and only 35 per cent of them are economically active. If anybody were to do this little calculation, he would see that we are left with a vast hiatus, an immense gap. How is this gap to be filled? The economically active White portion of South Africa at the moment is increasing by 2 per cent every year but, if we grow at a 6 per cent rate, then the demand for labour in the manufacturing industries is 5 per cent. The demand in the so-called service industries is 3 per cent. The Whites cannot even fill those jobs.

All this Government is going to give us is a form of apartheid. By the turn of the century all the people who work in our factories will be non-White and all the people who sit in offices in Pretoria will be White. Another reason why we have an immense labour shortage is that the Government is taking all the White labour. We have a Government here that is obsessed and wants to take up everything in some law or other. Today one-third of the Whites in South Africa who are economically active are in the service of the Government and its ancillary services. One can prove that at this present rate of growth, by the turn of this century, nearly all the Whites will be sitting in offices in Pretoria. Then we will have true apartheid. There are fewer and fewer people in South Africa who produce today. There are more and more of them sitting in an office somewhere telling us how not to produce. The fundamental problem is that this Government philosophy was evolved by psychologists who had no understanding of economics. That is why the whole philosophy is collapsing like a pack of cards. By the same token I should like to say that the Progressive Party policy was evolved by economists who had no understanding of psychology. That is why they cannot get anybody to vote for them.

Our approach to this situation is totally different. We say that South Africa’s strength lies in her economic strength. We will give our businessmen the tools so that they can do the job. We will not deny them the labour they want, because if non-White people come into the industrial situation everybody stands to gain. The non-Whites will gain because they can earn more. Our domestic purchasing power is increased and this has immense repercussions on our whole economic structure.

What about the conventional colour bar?

No, it would be irresponsible to say that one must throw everything overboard. That is precisely the sort of situation that we want to guard against. We have indicated that adaptations should be made, but this must be on the basis of discussion between the trade unions and the workers. The difficulty is that the Government has for years exploited the worst fears and the prejudices of our White workers. They are the people who said these people want a Black man to step into your job. Today, when they have to make these adjustments, they sit hoist by their own petard. Now they are reaping what they have sown so actively throughout all these years.

Our approach has always been different. We have not made the workers false promises. We have said to them all along that it is inevitable that non-White people will move into industry and take up these positions, but we have said that we will protect them. We have indicated half a dozen different procedures by which we can protect them. The best form of protection, and this is a universal development throughout the world, is through the rate for the job. The hon. the Minister of Transport has indicated that this is included in our legislation at the moment. It is part of our Industrial Conciliation Act, but what does the hon. the Minister of Transport also say? He said it is not necessary; this rate for the job is a provision which is introduced and is applied to see that unscrupulous businessmen do not exploit our workers. But the Government does not require this. So when he moves 16,000 non-Whites into 16,000 jobs done by Whites on the Railways, does he give those Whites the protection of the rate for the job? No, he does not. That is what we object against.

The fundamental difficulty with that Government is that it is caught up in the vice-like grip of its own ideological folly. For years it has put forward this dogma of “we can be poor as long as we are White”. What is the situation today? We are not White, as every single statistic can indicate, but in the meantime we are becoming poor. Mr. Speaker, the architect of South Africa’s poverty is sitting right there in that bench in front of you.

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon. member for Houghton on having put the hon. member for Hillbrow completely off his stroke by means of one single interjection. The hon. member for Hillbrow tried to prove that our policy had led to our industries becoming blacker and blacker. In the same breath he said that the United Party would give our industrialists the tools for developing and creating wealth at a much faster rate. Of course, by that he implied that they would make available to industry unlimited non-White labour. But when the hon. member for Houghton asked him whether they would abolish the colour bar in industry, he immediately backed down and he was quite uncomfortable, for then he thought of what the electorate outside would say if they simply abolished the colour bar. Then he came forward with Nationalist policy, i.e. that in negotiations with the trade unions they would make available more non-White labour. That is precisely what this Government is doing.

The other day the hon. member for Hillbrow made me the dubious compliment that I had said nothing that was worth replying to, but that what I had said, had at least been said in a decent manner. This afternoon I thought a great deal of those words while I was listening to the hon. member for Hillbrow. Really, he also said precious little that was worth listening to. He did at least say it in a decent manner, and I must make him that compliment, although to my mind he did not treat the hon. the Minister of Finance quite fairly.

I want to pay attention to a few points to which the hon. member referred. Amongst other things he said that we had always obtained sufficient foreign risk capital. Strangely enough, if a product is plentiful, its price is low, and the hon. member, who is an economist, will know that. Now that hon. member says that we have always obtained sufficient foreign risk capital, but considere how terribly high the price is at the moment? Consider where the interest rates are going to. Is that indicative of plentiful risk capital? The fact of the matter is that capital is expensive because it is scarce, and it is scarce because the greed of the world and also the greed of our people have caused us to save less and less. This is the basic fact from which nobody can get away.

I should also like to refer to something else that was said by the hon. member. He said that the hon. the Minister of Finance had made the mistake which is made by a beginner in politics and which he ought not to make. That mistake was that he read out what Dr. Krogh had said, but only quoted the first paragraph and not the next one as well. There is an old proverb which says that people who live in glass houses, should not throw stones. If the hon. member and his party are living in glass houses, they should not throw stones either. The hon. member for Parktown made exactly the same mistake this afternoon. I would be pleased if the hon. member for Park-town would give me his attention.

The hon. member for Parktown made exactly the same elementary blunder as the one which the hon. member for Hillbrow laid at the door of the hon. the Minister of Finance. He also read the first paragraph only, and not the rest. The hon. member for Parktown read out to us a passage from the book Union Statistics and tried to prove that during this Government’s term of office the cost-of-living index had risen by just as much as it did during the régime of the United Party. He started by taking the three-year period before 1948 and then he took a three-year period after 1948. Then he proceeded to compare the eight years from 1939 to 1947 with the first eight years under this Government, i.e. from 1948 to 1956. However, there he stopped. Now I want to go a little beyond that. I do not only want to take the first term of eight years and compare it with the United Party’s term of office. To make it easier, I am going to take periods of 10 years. During the last 10 years of United Party régime …

I did not take eight years. The hon. the Minister took a period of eight years.

… i.e., from 1938 to 1948, the cost-of-living index rose by 48 per cent. During the first 10 years of National Party régime the cost of living also rose by exactly 48 per cent. However, let us look at the second term of this Government, the term from 1958 to 1968. Of course, this information is not to be found in the book from which the hon. member for Parktown quoted, for that book only goes up to 1960. I suppose the hon. member has at least seen this green book before? In this book one can, of course, obtain any figure up to the present time. However, we find that during the second 10-year term of this Government, from 1958 to 1968, the cost of living did not rise by 48 per cent as it did during the last 10 years of United Party régime and during the first 10 years of National Party régime, but only by 23.3 per cent.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. member a question? Can the hon. member tell us whether the basis on which he is calculating these percentages, is consistently that of 1938, or does he change it every 10 years?

Apparently the hon. member does not understand what I said. I referred to percentages …

But on what basis?

But that does not matter. It is, of course, a rise in the cost of living of 23.3 per cent on the basis of 1958. In the same way I referred to a 48 per cent rise in the cost of living on the basis of 1938, and then again a 48 per cent rise on the basis of 1948. In that way one can go on by taking as the basis every time the initial year of a period. In that way one arrives at percentages. If one wants to refer to the rise in the cost-of-living figure, the index figure, one does of course have quite a different picture. However, when one takes the initial year as a basis every time, one arrives at percentage increases.

A very convenient calculation.

I should like to hear from the hon. member what other possible basis there is. I wonder whether I should take the hon. member back again to the figures which the hon. member for Parktown used here this afternoon. In 1938 the index figure was exactly 100. In 1948 it was 147.8, in round figures an increase of 48 per cent. From 1948 to 1958 the percentage increase was once again 48 per cent, i.e. an increase to 219.4.

It rose more rapidly in your 10 years than it did in ours. The hon. member has now mentioned the figures himself. Percentages have no significance.

I really find it hard to teach such a poor pupil. The fact of the matter is merely that during the first 10 years under this Government the rise in the cost of living was exactly as high as it was during the last 10 years of the previous Government. In respect of the second term it was 50 per cent less. That speaks volumes for the wonderful administration of this country by this Government over the past 20 years.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 30 (2) and debate adjourned.

The House proceeded to the consideration of private members’ business.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

That this House records its deep appreciation for—

1. (a) the sustained and successful efforts of the Government to entrench the position of White workers in South Africa; and
2. (b) the patriotism displayed by South African White workers;

We have a variety of political parties in South Africa, but basically there are only two policies in the sphere of labour. On the one hand there is the policy of the National Party with its traditional labour separation between Whites and non-Whites, and on the other hand there is the United Party with its satellites, the parties supporting it, with their policy of labour integration. That is why there can be no doubt whatsoever that it is only under National Party régime that there is any justification for moving a motion such as this. Therefore I am merely stating a fact when I assert that the National Party, in contradistinction to the United Party, is and, will continue to be, in future, the only true political friend of the White worker in South Africa. And do I not have good reason for making this assertion!

When we look at the record of the National Party Government we find that after it had come into power in 1948, it appointed a commission of inquiry to revise the industrial laws and to effect the necessary improvements, for example, paid sick leave for factory workers and shop and office workers, additional paid holidays, such as Republic Day and Ascension Day, and legislation for the protection of the health and the safety of the workers. Merit wages and pension benefits through collective bargaining were encouraged. Mixing— and this fact is of importance—of Whites and non-Whites in the same trade union was curtailed. The management of mixed trade unions was placed in the hands of Whites. A prohibition was imposed on the appointment of Bantu to conciliation boards and industrial councils. The training of apprentices was improved. Training for adults was introduced and improved. Work reservation was put into operation. This is just to mention a few things. My colleague, the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark, will go into this matter in more detail.

But how does things look on the opposite side of the political scale? Under United Party régime there would have been no opportunity or reason for gratitude. On the contrary, the White workers of South Africa would have had good reason for concern if the United Party had been in power. To start with, the United Party has always neglected to bring the consequences of their policy of labour integration truly to the attention of the White workers in South Africa. The United Party has never been prepared to make statutory provision for the protection of the White workers of South Africa. In order to illustrate their policy of labour integration, apart from what I have already said, there are certain statements which corroborate how strongly they feel about this. Let me just quote a few of these statements in passing. It was no less a person than the Leader of the Opposition who said in this House in February, 1970, that it was their intention to abolish work reservation. Was it not the very same Leader of the Opposition who said on 20th July last year (Hansard, col. 38) that they accepted economic integration and all it entailed as an accomplished fact? But what is more, the best gem certainly came from the hon. member for Johannesburg North when he said in this House on 21st July last year (Hansard, col. 172)—

This is the attitude of the United Party towards the White workers of this country. There are many more statements we can quote, but no more of that.

May I put a question to the hon. member?

I am sorry, my time is very limited. I can go on in this way to indicate that the traditional labour demarcations which have existed in this country up to now, would have been completely wiped out under United Party régime. How would it ever have been possible for the White workers in such circumstances to have expressed their gratitude to a government such as the one they would have been? After we have indicated the difference between the National Party and the party on the opposite side, you will agree with me, Sir, that there is more than good reason why a motion such as this, by means of which we can express our gratitude to the Government on behalf of the White workers, is justified. When we say we are grateful to the Government for its protective attitude towards the White workers, the full story has not yet been told. We must also pay tribute to the Minister in whom the White workers of South Africa have always had a good friend. It was not by chance that he devoted his maiden speech in this House in 1953 to the infiltration of non-Whites into the spheres of employment of the Whites. It is, therefore, a privilege to me to pay tribute to him as well, and not only to him, but also to the unseen workers, those working behind the scenes. I am referring to the Secretary for Labour and his officials, the people who are responsible for the implementation and the application of labour legislation passed by this House. We must also thank them for their sympathetic and dedicated manner of acting. The White workers remain indebted to them for this.

But on the basis of this motion it is also my privilege to pay tribute to the White workers for their indisputable loyalty. After two decades of National Party régime, we may look back with pride today to a period in which there has been unprecedented economic development. Over the past 10 years alone the national product increased by more than 64 per cent. This has been made possible preeminently by the quality of the limited available White manpower that, under the guidance of this Government, applied its skills and knowledge in the best interests of our economy. This is not only due to the efficient training which they have been able to enjoy under this Government, but also because of the right attitude which has been cultivated as a result of the Government’s action. In order to gain a fuller appreciation of the part of the White workers, it may be necessary for us to furnish a few comparative details here. Of the 328 million people in Africa, only some 6 million are Whites, and 3.7 million of them are living in South Africa. Notwithstanding this fact, South Africa produces a quarter of the industrial production of Africa. This does not just happen to be so. I think all of us acknowledge Dr. M. D. Marais as an authority in his field, and he says that an analysis of the African continent shows that the extent of economic development which has taken place in various territories up to now, correlates with the number of Whites in the respective territories. In the light of this, there can be no dispute about the fact that the White workers of South Africa are one of the greatest assets we in South Africa have at our disposal. In this respect I am including our responsible trade union leaders, too, who have always acted responsibly. We have in mind particularly the Co-ordinating Council of South African Trade Unions, under the leadership of Mr. Van den Berg, and various Railway trade unions and others which have shown over the years that they always put South Africa and its interests first. We therefore also pay tribute to these men today. But now the question may rightly be posed, “Who are the workers of South Africa?” The economically active White labour force consists of close on 1½ million people who can be subdivided into various categories of workers, something which I do not have the time to go into now. It is enlightening, however, as an illustration of the loyalty of these White workers, that in contrast to a country such as Britain where 8.6 million working days were lost as a result of strikes during the year 1969-’70, only 197 shifts were lost as a result of work cessation in South Africa last year. This is truly a compliment to the positive sense of vocation of the White workers of South Africa. This is the situation we have today. But now the future lies ahead. All of us would probably like to maintain this very favourable situation, and if we want to do so, every responsible person, members on this side and on that side, must remember that there are three basic requirements which must be laid down if we want to ensure the continued existence of this very favourable labour situation. Actually I want to go further than that and say that we must remember that this is not only the task or assignment of the Government, but that it is the task and assignment of everyone involved. These three requirements—or let us call them three assurances or three undertakings—are political, economic and social. The three of them are in fact indissoluble. In the political sphere this Government will have to continue taking steps which will keep the position of the White workers in South Africa entrenched in law—and in saying this, I believe I am speaking on behalf of every White worker in South Africa. This is an essential assignment which we want to give to the National Party Government on behalf of the White workers of South Africa today as reconfirmation of its task. As in the past, I am glad to be able to say that in the future the National Party Government will always continue to give priority to the interests of the White workers of our country to the same extent as it will give priority to the interests of any other person or group. I do not think there can be any doubt about this. In the economic sphere we shall have to realize, and everyone in this country will have to realize, that if we want to safeguard the future of the White workers, it is necessary, first and foremost, for the economy of the Whites to be weaned slowly but surely from the non-White labour influence which exists. For this reason it will, on the one hand, be necessary for the Physical Planning Act to be applied and implemented more and more strictly, where it is necessary to do so; on the other hand, the development of the Bantu homelands will have to be undertaken at an accelerated rate, agriculturally as well as industrially. If this is done, there need be no doubt about the future of the White workers in this country. In the social sphere, Mr. Speaker, the people of South Africa will have to learn, where necessary, that they are and will remain one with the people who have to earn their living by means of manual labour.

Poor but White.

Every one of us has a task to see to it that class distinctions will never be introduced into this particular sphere. I say it is essential for us to remember at all times that the workers continue to regard themselves as part of the people at large outside. But on the other hand employers will also have to bear in mind that their attitude determines the productivity of the workers, and for this reason it is necessary that some employers should practise some introspection in order to make sure that their attitude in respect of their employees still is positive and, when it comes to training, that that training programme will continue to be directed in such a way as to develop the whole human being and not only to concentrate on the teaching of those skills which are necessary for the workers. But in addition to all these things the employers and all of those concerned with training, will always have to remember that our country is a traditionally Christian one and that we are Nationalists as well, and this will also have to be borne in mind in the training of our workers. The employees themselves will have to remember that their daily task serves as labour for the Kingdom of God and is to the advantage of our fatherland, and not only as a means of providing themselves with their daily needs. I say this work our Whites are doing must be regarded as a serious vocation to which they have been called, and seen in that light there need not be any doubt about the White labour force in this country and there need not ever be doubt about the continued existence of the Whites in South Africa.

There can be no doubt that the question of the employment of labour is a crucial matter in South Africa. There can also be no doubt that the misuse or the abuse of labour is one of the key factors in the present economic predicament in which we find ourselves. We therefore think that it is proper and opportune to have a motion of this kind, that this House should have an opportunity to discuss an important issue such as labour and that we should try to reach a consensus. I must admit that we rather hoped that the hon. member who introduced the motion would deal with this whole matter on a purely objective basis, and we were quite happy to meet him on this score, but he has seen fit to make this just another sort of political debate and quite obviously we will have to react in that way, too.

For an hon. member to come to this Chamber and to make the kind of contribution that he has made, and to propose the type of motion he has put before us here, really suggests to us that the hon. member is not in earnest. Surely, when he introduced this motion he must have had his tongue in his political cheek. Surely, he is joking and is not in earnest in putting forward this sort of motion.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw that.

I withdraw with pleasure, Sir, if it is not an acceptable expression. But it certainly surprises us that this hon. member should come forward and should have drawn up a motion phrased in these terms. If I cannot talk about his political cheek, may I then say that he is like a political Alice in Wonderland? Instead of treating the motion objectively, the hon. member used it as just another extension of what we have come to accept as the “thank the Government” syndrome. This motion was drawn up in order to create an opportunity to thank the Minister. Quite clearly, we regard this motion, as the hon. member has drawn it up, as irrelevant and sanctimonious drivel, and we can have no part of it. For that purpose, and in order to create an air of reality, we have drawn up the following amendment to the motion, and I now move it—

1. (i) its continual interference in labour affairs; and
2. (ii) its impracticable labour policy and the resultant undermining of the security of the White workers of South Africa”.

The hon. member in his motion makes the point that our workers are patriotic. He thanks them for their patriotism. I was very pleased that, in his speech, he actually substituted that word and used the word “loyalty”. I think it is a much better expression to use under these circumstances. Normally the totalitarian states make great play of the “patriotism” of workers. We certainly agree with the hon. member that the bulk of our White workers—they are the workers to whom he refers in his motion —are loyal. There is no doubt about the fact that they have made a major contribution to the prosperity of our country. We think it is a pity that the Government should so often abuse their patriotism and that the Government should take them for a ride as they so often do. We have, now also, the recent development regarding Mr. Beetge. I do not know how the Minister can support this particular motion. Does he regard Mr. Beetge as patriotic in his endeavours to stop the Minister’s attempts to make additional work opportunities available to non-Whites? Does he regard this as patriotic behaviour? Certainly, if he does not regard it as patriotic behaviour, I do not see how he can support this particular motion.

The hon. the Minister has indicated to the press that he has disowned Mr. Beetge. We thought at one time that they were really buddies. We thought that they were birds of a feather, they seemed to speak the same language. Now he tells us that he has disowned Mr. Beetge and that he will have nothing to do with him. Sir, we have a measure of sympathy for Mr. Beetge because we believe that it is not Mr. Beetge who has changed, but that it is the Minister who has changed. The workers were made certain promises. We can still see the Minister standing there and saying in a figurative sense: “Over my dead body”. Job reservation was their policy. They were going to protect all the White workers. They were going to keep the non-Whites out of certain positions. Now, all of a sudden, the Minister shows that it was all a bluff. He now sounds the retreat. I think the Financial Mail depicts him very clearly. Here he stands with a bugle, blowing the retreat. Sir, this certainly is a somersault such as we have seldom seen before. It is not surprising that poor Mr. Beetge is flabbergasted. As I have said before, for years the Government has played upon the worst fears and the prejudices of the White workers. For years they have said: “All the Opposition want is to have your jobs for the non-Whites”. Now, all of a sudden, it is the Government that must do precisely this. Now it is the Government that finds itself in this difficult position. They are now finding that some of the White workers are not unnaturally reacting to this situation.

What surprises us about the Government’s approach to this whole matter is that for years they denied that any problem existed in the labour field. I remember so well that when we said that a crisis situation was developing, the hon. the Minister stood up there and said: “There is no crisis situation. It is just the United Party and the leftist trade unions that are trying to create a crisis situation; there is nothing of the kind”. I find it interesting …

Are you serious?

Yes, I am serious. I find it interesting that a few weeks ago, when the hon. the Minister dealt with the new developments in the labour field, he issued a statement on the 8th February under his own name and there was a whole page of all the steps he and his department had taken to rectify these labour shortages. On page 2 he said that “despite all these efforts, the position still remains critical”. If words have any meaning, what is the difference between a crisis situation and a situation that is critical? Now all of a sudden the Minister himself admits to this fact. He must now eat humble pie and admit that he Marais Viljoen was wrong and that we were right all along. In the meantime, in view of his obstinacy, the country has suffered because he failed to recognize that a crisis situation was developing. No steps were taken by the Government to rectify this. We have the unusual situation that the hon. the Minister for Transport, who must run an important Government department, has never had any truck with these ideological subtleties. He has never worried about job reservation. Where it was necessary to use non-White people for certain jobs, he just did so. He told us that he did it without any reference to the trade unions. That is strong-arm stuff.

That is the Minister of Transport.

Yes, that is the Minister of Transport, who is one of the biggest employers of labour in the country. In the meantime the ideologues are sitting here. I remember so well a session or two ago how the hon. the Minister for Labour got up and threw a whole set of rhetorical questions at us. He asked “If there were 500 vacancies in this particular field, what would you do about it?” “If there were 2,000 vacancies in that particular field, what would you do about it?” We said that if there were danger of essential services collapsing, we would use non-Whites. He was trying to lead us into a trap, because those were all trick questions. Since then, he has been given another assignment, in that he has been made the Minister of the Post Office. In the latest statistics I see that, over the last five months, the number of non-Whites in the Post Office who are now occupying positions—temporarily they say—which were previously reserved for Whites, has increased by 10 per cent. Whilst he was Minister of Labour and could sit in his high chair and ask all those rhetorical questions, it was all very well. But now that he has a big department to keep going and an essential service to provide, what does he do? He now does precisely the same as the hon. the Minister of Transport did, namely putting non-Whites into these positions. At the same time he goes all over the country bleating Government policy of job reservation.

He is carrying out United Party policy.

Yes, that is so. But, Mr. Speaker, this situation leads me to ask: If these two hon. Ministers, who are responsible for running big Government departments, can circumvent Government policy with the ease with which they are in fact doing it, why cannot everybody else do it too? Why must industry and commerce be penalized? Why must all these job reservation provisions be imposed upon them? Why must article 3 of the Physical Planning Act be applied in an even more severe manner, as this hon. member suggested? The Government does not keep to its own policy. We challenge the hon. the Minister and his colleague the Minister of Transport to introduce and maintain job reservation in the Railways and in the Post Office. We are certain that by this double talk, by promising something and not living up to it, the hon. the Minister has let the White workers of South Africa down and has forfeited the right to claim their support.

What surprises us too is that when an hon. member gets up in this House to talk about labour and about the contribution being made to our economic effort, not a word is said about the non-White worker. In the manufacturing industry they constitute 80 per cent and in mining 90 per cent of the total labour force. As far as that hon. gentleman is concerned, they just do not exist. When we pay tribute to the White workers, then I think it is important that mention should also be made of the major contribution that has been made by the millions of non-White workers in South Africa often working for lower wages, often with practically no bargaining machinery, often without their wives and their children, often harried around from pillar to post. They have also displayed an immense sense of responsibility and loyalty. Without their contribution what would our economic situation have been like today?

Our concern also is that we have here a Government that continually interferes in the labour field. I know of no other country, except the totalitarian states, where a government will attempt to regulate every particular little item in the industrial scene. Surely, the grouping of jobs, certainly the adaptation of jobs, is a matter that should be done by responsible trade unions and by the organized employers. But this Government will never leave the situation in the hands of the people who ought to be dealing with it. That is why we have all these provisions, a hundred and one or them, to which my hon. friends will be referring, because we have a Cabinet and a Minister and a Government who continually want to interfere in these affairs.

It is because of this that we get into this amazing sort of situation. For example, I read that in the abattoirs in Pretoria an arrangement was made that the washing-down of the slaughtering places was a job that was reserved for Whites. But apparently there were not sufficient Whites to do it. So the Whites did it only during the day and it was agreed that the non-Whites could do it during the night. Let us look at the building industry and in particular to the painting of buildings. Apparently the first coat of paint which, by all accounts, is the most important one, can be done by a non-White, but the top coat cannot be done by a non-White; it must be done by a White. Really, we are making ourselves the laughing stock of the world. Everybody thinks that this is a society which has gone mad. All stems from the situation where you have a Government that continually tries to interfere. By doing this, it is rendering South Africa an immense disservice. This is reflected in our growth rate which is going down and in other fields as well.

Mr. Speaker, it was interesting to listen here to the hon. member for Hillbrow this afternoon. While one listened to him it became clear that the first dove had flown from the United Party cage to the new Progressive Party image we have heard about during the past week. What the hon. member said here is what Mr. Oppenheimer said a few years ago. The heading of the article is “Oppenheimer talks of S.A. Suicide” and its subheading reads: “Progs told that Africans could help country have ‘boundless’ economic future”. In this article Mr. Oppenheimer states—

That is precisely what the hon. member said here this afternoon. Here we had to listen again to the words of the Progressive Party. The hon. member now so eagerly latches onto Mr. Beetge. He was, after all, his ally who fought the 1970 elections with him. Even during the recent provincial election they were allies, because when that party to which Mr. Beetge belongs nominated two candidates in the Free State the United Party conveniently did not nominate candidates there. The hon. member now refers to their allies. It goes without saying that these hon. members cannot share in this motion, because these members have, after all, never wanted to do anything for the White workers. They have always just wanted to abuse the White worker and trample him underfoot. How can they support such a motion? We therefore do not find it strange at all that they should come along with a counter-motion.

After all, these people have not shared in the development of this country of ours. They were the restrictive factor. It is my pleasure and privilege to support the hon. member for Springs wholeheartedly in the motion he has tabled here. I want to endorse the tribute he paid to the White worker for the patriotism he has displayed throughout the years. One cannot but pay tribute to those people. However, I want to confine myself to the motion. Apparently the hon. member who has just resumed his seat did not read the motion, or perhaps he does not understand the difference between Whites and non-Whites. For his information the motion is about the Whites. I should like to express my appreciation to the National Party for what they have done for the White worker throughout the years. For the sake of being just, however, I want to include a few persons. I have one particular person in mind, and that is the hon. Senator Jan de Klerk, who placed the Industrial Conciliation Act on the statute book in 1956. This was done in spite of the opposition we encountered from the hon. members on the other side of the House. This is the key act in our labour pattern.

It is an old Smuts Act.

Why did the hon. members then oppose it on that occasion? If it is an old Smuts Act and the hon. members opposed it at the time, it means that they left their leader in the lurch. This is the key act in our labour legislation. We also think of the important work that Minister Ben Schoeman and Mr. Alf Trollip did as Ministers of Labour. We are also reminded of the extremely competent work that our present Minister, Mr. Marais-Viljoen, is doing. Each of us is well aware of the tremendous demands made upon a Minister of labour, especially where we are dealing with such a rapid development programme in this country. We know that great labour demands are made upon the Government; here we are dealing with a situation that we do not encounter in any other country of the world. We are dealing with a multi-national set-up and it is our duty to maintain the traditional way of life and not to disrupt it. We must maintain the colour bar in our industries, and not in the way hon. members on the other side wanted to maintain it with guns and bullets in 1922. We do it according to a pattern whereby we can obtain labour and industrial peace. That is why I want to express my thanks all the more to our present Minister, his Secretary and their officials, for the work they have done in recent years and are still doing as well. It is a giant task.

Throughout the years the National Party has indicated that it is the worker’s friend. It is the worker’s friend because this party has always looked after his prosperity. In order to serve the worker’s interests the National Party, under Gen. Hertzog, established the Department of Labour as far back as 1924. Under the present National Government the Department was extended further in order to provide for a large series of specialized services to the worker. All the industrial legislation placed on the Statute Book up to and including 1948 was reviewed by this National Party Government. New Acts were also placed on the Statute Book, and today we have a labour code second to no other country in the world. In the short time at my disposal I should like to dwell on a few of those Acts. In order to have a successful labour pattern, continual attention must also be given to the social welfare of the worker. In the first place I have the Unemployment Insurance Fund in mind. Now hon. members opposite will say that this relates to an Act that was drawn up at the time by the United Party Government. That is so, but in the forties the United Party made such a mess of that Act that its implementation had to be temporarily suspended. A commission of inquiry then had to be appointed to investigate the Act before it could be implemented again. However, what did the National Party do when it came into power? It investigated this Act, introduced certain amendments and reduced the contributions of employers and employees by almost half. Much greater additional benefits were obtained by the workers. I am thinking, for example, of the medical benefits, the maternity benefits the women received and the death benefits. These are all benefits which this National Party introduced for the welfare of the worker. I can also go further and mention the Workmen’s Compensation Act. Since the National Government came into power the Act has been reviewed on five occasions and the benefits tremendously increased. Today there are many thousands more beneficiaries than there were earlier. In this connection I am thinking of the position of injured workers, the rehabilitation centres that were created, and so on. The National Party Government also took care of the retarded worker. Today there are eleven sheltered labour factories where those unfortunate persons can work. On similar lines I can mention the subsidized workshops for the blind, where about 180 blind White workers are employed. By means of these examples I have tried to indicate what this National Party Government has done for the White workers.

I can also go further. It was not only a matter of the welfare of the worker, but also his training and education. In this connection I call to mind the legislation for the training of adults which was placed on the Statute Book at the time by the present Minister of Transport. This Act offers the adult the opportunity of also obtaining his rightful share by qualifying himself as an artisan. I have in mind the adult who can qualify himself by taking a trade test and thereby being able to obtain an industrial diploma. The Apprenticeship Act was also improved. During the time the United Party Government was in power, from 1922 to 1944. when they should also have made a contribution, only one amendment to this Act was introduced by them, and it was not even an amendment worth mentioning. On similar lines, for example, the Wage Act was also placed on the Statute Book by this Government, creating the machinery for those workers who were not organized, and also for those who were organized but for whom no employees’ organizations existed and no industrial councils had been formed. And so there are still many similar Acts. These are Acts that most intimately affect the White worker, because they affect his conditions of service, his wages, his pension benefits, his overtime, leave and many other similar things.

Then there is also the Shops and Offices Act. That Act was also amended in the face of the United Party’s opposition. They only held up matters when it came to the White worker. For the first time it was entrenched in legislation that employees should obtain paid sick leave. However, I now want to come back to the key to this labour legislation. It is that legislation which gave the White workers certain guarantees, but which was opposed tooth and nail by the United Party. I am speaking of the Industrial Conciliation Act. I now want to bring a few of the most important provisions of this Act to the attention of hon. members. One of the provisions of this Act is that no new mixed trade unions may be registered, that the existing mixed trade unions must be organized into separate branches and that the executive should consist of White members. In other words, this National Government gave the White worker the right to arrange his own affairs within his own trade unions. What is the United Party’s attitude to this? They opposed this measure. They published this old pamphlet in the 1953 election. Here we still have Strauss’s name. They undercut him at the time and later kicked him out. I shall mention one of the guarantees they furnished. I quote (translation)—

In other words, a non-White can serve in their trade union management bodies and bargain on behalf of the White worker. That is what they want to do with him. What did the United Party do? They opposed these Acts tooth and nail. They were the people who accused the National Party at the time by saying that they will destroy the trade unions. But what did they want to do to those trade unions? They wanted to blacken them. When Communism ran riot in our trade unions, they were too cowardly to take action and the National Party had to get rid of people like Solly Sachs and others. Now they want to accept responsibility for the White worker in South Africa. They did not have the courage to put a stop to the fraternization of Whites and non-Whites in the trade unions. They continually wanted to create a source of unrest. The National Party had to make the White worker boss in his own trade union again. This once more enabled him to protect his own sphere of employment. Now the White worker can once more, as his own boss, bargain about his own benefits. These are important benefits, and if we were to allow what that Party wanted and give non-Whites a seat on the management bodies of the White industrial councils, the White worker would be much worse off because the standard of living of those people is not the same as that of the Whites. Therefore they cannot put forward the same demands, because they cannot speak on behalf of the Whites. The National Party had to place a ban on the appointment of Bantu as members of industrial and conciliation councils. In terms of this Act trade unions and employers’ organizations can form industrial councils with equal representation. There is collective bargaining and this forms the basis of “self-government” in the industrial sphere.

The National Party went further towards protecting the White worker in his work sphere by providing in this Act that job reservation could be applied, thereby counteracting rivalry between the races. This is the section they are opposing and which they want removed, that guarantee that is being given to the White worker in respect of job reservation. As a solution they have suggested “the rate for the job”. They wanted to depend on the fact that with the rate for the job one would protect the White worker. But history has proved that this cannot be done. At a later stage the United Party came forward with this guarantee which they have given in their latest election manifesto, i.e. a guarantee of a minimum wage for ten years, a guarantee that is not worth the paper it is written on. If their “crash training programme” were to be implemented, those Whites would be scattered like pips from their jobs. Now they expect the people to depend on them.

Subsequently the Leader of the Opposition made the announcement to which the hon. member for Springs referred, i.e. that they would delete section 77 from the Industrial Conciliation Act. I now ask: Do they want to do this contrary to the wishes of the hundreds of thousands of White workers in South Africa who demand that it should remain on the Statute Book? And I am not the only one who says they demand this. It is what Mr. Lucas Van den Berg says. He is the leader of the Co-ordinating Council of South African Trade Unions. He represents approximately 200,000 White workers. This is what he says on their behalf (translation)—

Here they are expressing their gratitude to the Government. But, Sir, the Opposition, which does not speak on behalf of the 300,000 White workers, now wants to remove this section. The only guarantee our White workers have in the Industrial Conciliation Act that party wants to remove from the Act. How can the White workers trust a party which advocates that non-Whites must sit in this House and that the same non-Whites must be able to make laws here that also apply to the White workers of South Africa? How can the Whites trust that party if they are prepared to let non-Whites sit here in order to pass labour legislation?

Sir, that is the basis upon which this National Party Government rules. In conclusion I cannot do otherwise than pay tribute to the National Party Government once more, and to the Minister and his Department, for what they have done for the White worker. The White workers will always owe this National Party Government their thanks.

Sir, I imagine that the last thing that any sane and intelligent South African would do these days is to thank the Government for its policy with regard to White workers and to introduce a motion such as this motion introduced by the hon. member for Springs. If anything. I regard this motion as a slur upon the dignity of the White worker in South Africa. To say that the White worker has not achieved his present position and that he has not made the progress which he has made on his own merit but that he has only achieved this through the assistance of the Government, is to level the greatest insult against people whom the Government party regards as its main supporters.

Sir, this country has been built up through the initiative, the know-how and the ability of the White pioneers who came to this country and built up a nation. We have built up South Africa into the workshop of Africa. We have made South Africa one of the great industrial countries of the world, but we have not done it through the entrenchment of the position of White worker in South Africa, as the Government suggests. If anything, the White workers of South Africa have a great deal of criticism to level against this Government.

Sir, I would like to take up the hon. member on this question of the job reservation clause. As the House will remember, the first industry to which this particular job reservation clause was applied was the Transvaal clothing industry, and we all remember what a fiasco that was. There we have one of the more than 101 examples that one could give of this Government’s interference in labour matters in this country. It destroyed one of the proudest and finest industries in this country, and the hon. the Minister’s predecessor had to chase to Germiston to give an assurance to the workers there that he would make use of the Unemployment Insurance Fund to help them. The Act was amended in due course to ensure that when they worked short hours the Unemployment Insurance Fund would make additional funds available through the employers so that they could pay their workers full-time weekly rates. Sir, we know what trouble we had at that time and we know how this industry was virtually destroyed thereafter. The result is that today we do not find many White people in that industry.

In fact, that industry today is staffed by Coloureds and Blacks. The hon. the Minister knows that perfectly well. In fact, the number of Blacks in the clothing industry has increased by 300 per cent; the number of Asians has increased by 400 per cent and the number of Coloureds by 212 per cent, while the number of White workers has increased by 30 per cent. But if you look at the figures you find that the number of Whites in the industry has increased from 7,240 in 1960 to 10,500 in 1970; the number of Coloureds increased from 20,600 to 52,300; the number of Blacks from 9,300 to 29,600. and the number of Asians from 6,600 to 22,355. Sir. this whole industry was destroyed. We know what happened in the border industries which then sprang up to replace the once-proud Transvaal clothing industry. The hon. the Minister was not prepared to apply the Industrial Conciliation Act in a wider field in Natal, for instance. The result was that the border industries were able to pay their workers wages which were well below the minimum wages, and the result was that the competition that they provided against the industry in the Transvaal, virtually ruined and destroyed that industry. It is all very well to come here and talk about job reservation when we know what disastrous consequences the introduction of job reservation had to begin with.

Sir, I say that the hon. the Minister’s policy and the Government’s policy is based on a sense of fear. It is part of the pattern that they employ to try to strike fear into the hearts of the workers of the country, just as they have been trying to strike fear into the hearts of the population of South Africa. They try to make the workers believe that their policy is designed to protect them, and that is why we get motions of this character here. Sir, any policy which is based on fear must be a bad policy. The Government’s policy with regard to the future of labour is a bad policy. The hon. the Minister has already been told and knows very well that his integration of Coloureds into the building industry will not be the last step. I want to say to him that he is not doing a bad thing at all, because when one studies the report of the Bureau for Economic Research of the University of Stellenbosch, one finds that they say this—

Here, Sir, you have a report from a very responsible body which, together with the expressions of opinion of the numerous authorities to which the hon. member for Hillbrow referred, should illustrate to this House and to the country that the Government is completely and utterly out of step with conditions in South Africa in this year 1971. If you look at the clothing industry in the Cape, where job reservation was not immediately applied, you find that they are still crying out for workers. In fact, the chairman of the industrial council for the clothing industry in the Cape said recently that the clothing industry was heading for a crisis because it had 2,000 vacancies and no applicants to fill them.

Sir, this story goes on day after day. If you look not only at the so-called English-language Press, but at leaders in Die Burger, which is the Government’s mouthpiece, you find the same story, and then members on the Government benches come here with fatuous statements about the preservation of civilization by maintaining the job reservation clause which in any event is more honoured in the breach than in the observance. The whole of the Department’s work in connection with that particular clause consists of providing blanket or specific exemptions on a very large and wide scale. Surely the time has come to stop bluffing the public. Surely the public realizes—I have no doubt that they do— that this Government is completely out of step with events that are taking place in this country.

What makes one really horrified, Sir, is the fact that for years now the Government has been preaching a policy of development of the homelands. We have heard a great deal from them about the tremendous efforts which are going to be made to develop the homelands in order to make them viable because they are going to get self-government and to give the Bantu an opportunity of finding work there. We have also been told that the Government’s policy is to return the Bantu to the homelands so that they can look for employment opportunities there. But, Sir, what steps have they taken to prepare these workers for work in the homelands? Have they got a system of training throughout the country; have they established schools to train these people for skilled and semi-skilled work? Sir, they have done nothing at all. This question of training is important not only as far as the homelands are concerned; it is important for the future economic progress of the Republic outside the homelands. This becomes even more important when eventually we reach the stage where the homelands have to begin to develop themselves. The Government is against the introduction of White capital, as we call it, into the homelands. The Government says that with the various corporations that they have established, the inhabitants there must themselves produce wealth through their own labour and effort. But no preparation is made at all. We have heard motions before of the calibre that came before us today, trying once again to paint a camouflaged picture to the country that the White man is grateful to the Government. I say that that is a most undignified statement and a slur on the White workers of South Africa, and I think the Government will find that the chickens will come home to roost shortly.

We live in a country which is young and dynamic and which has been very prosperous despite the Government, a country where our labour legislation over the years has followed the pattern of labour legislation in all other countries. When the industrial revolution in South Africa exploded during and after the Second World War, new and tremendous problems of labour faced us and obviously fresh legislation was required to provide better conditions for labour. More advanced thinking took place in regard to the worker and his requirements, all in keeping with the legislation in any country where you had this tremendous upsurge in the industrial life of the community. I do not know that anyone has said anything to convince this side of the House or to convince anyone that the Government has done anything more than the minimum that was expected of it if it was to keep pace to some extent with the advance of labour in South Africa. I would like to say that a new generation is growing up, a generation that, as the Bible says, knew not Joseph. There is that statement in the Bible that a new Pharoah was installed who knew not Joseph. He did not know the conditions of the past. A new generation has grown up. When they listen to what was said here this afternoon from the Government side they wonder what this all means because it does not sound sense.

There is nothing about it that has any relationship to anything factual or anything real. As has been rightly described by the hon. member for Hillbrow, it is Alice in Wonderland. That is what one finds today, a young generation growing up which wants to help South Africa to advance, which is prepared to seek its own advancement side by side with all labour potential in the country, because the introduction of non-White labour, which is virtually the reservoir from which we can draw this labour, is undertaken not only to advance the non-Whites but to advance the economic position of the country. It advances those who are more skilled and more able to carry out the undertakings for which this country calls. We are short, as has been rightly said, of many thousands of leaders in the field of economics, industry and commerce, and together with that goes hand in hand the various positions that have to be filled in order to make a comprehensive whole in building up new industries and new commercial undertakings.

We are foolish if we think that we must avoid looking at the reserves of labour with which we are blessed. This nonsensical talk we hear from time to time about opening the floodgates is in itself not even worth a reply. Nobody can accept such a nonsensical assertion that a party which expects and will, I am sure, within the next four or five years be the governing party in the country, is going to open the floodgates. You do not do it irrespective of colour. There is no such thing as opening the floodgates to unskilled labour and letting them flow into the cities. If you look at Britain you will see the same thing happening. There is a controlled introduction of labour. After the war they built new towns around industry, and they built them in an orderly manner to enable workers to live close to their places of work. I think of a town like Luton, a new town built after the war, where there was the ordered introduction of labour to meet the industrial expansion and requirements of the country. That is all one can understand from the request of the Opposition to the Government to try to bring a more meaningful sense of reality into the whole labour problem that faces us.

And when I wanted to build a block of flats for that purpose at Jeppes you kicked up a row.

No, Sir. I do not know what my friend exactly means, but I want to tell him something about the use of labour, and perhaps this will assist in reopening the picture. I know that many years ago when the Natives (Building Workers) Act was passed to allow Black workers to take full part in the building industry in order to build Soweto and the Black townships around the various cities, these people were introduced and they were able to reach a total of 10,000 houses per annum. Obviously they were not homes or dwelling units of the same standard and calibre as that required by the better standard of living of the White community of South Africa. Now in order to build up Lenasia, which is an Indian township of which the hon. the Minister who interjected is always very proud, he also makes use of Coloured and Black labour, following the very same system which was instituted 15 years ago, a conveyor belt system which enables him to build homes cheaper, better and quicker.

And what did you people say about it?

We built the 10,000 houses in Soweto in a year. The position is that if the hon. the Minister wishes to introduce the non-Whites into the building industry, he can achieve tremendous things in South Africa. In fact, if the Minister reads this particular report—and I commend it to him; he probably has not had a chance to read it—which is also a survey of expectations for the coming year, he will realize that the quantity of building is on the increase. The number of plans that have been passed is so tremendous that the amount of building is actually on the increase. I could even give him figures if he would be interested. He can read it himself. He probably does not want to listen. If he reads it he will realize that that is so. [Interjections.] There is no question whatsoever that this Government is going to permit that to take place, but is trying to keep up the camouflage.

We would like to hear from the hon. the Minister of Labour what is his approach to his new era in labour in South Africa, because he well knows, and the members of the Cabinet well know, that they cannot continue with their heads in the sand like an ostrich. They know it and the Minister’s own newspapers took him to task for making a categorical statement to the House and then taking off a week or two later to Pretoria in order to meet the situation that arose there. He is not worried now about what Mr. Beetge says to him, because he now regards Mr. Beetge as some sort of reactionary, because Mr. Beetge now officially belongs to a party which the hon. the Minister does not exactly like, although they try to camouflage it further by talking about “bondgenote”. All I can say is that it is obvious that they are not bondgenote of the Minister’s party because the Minister does not care what Mr. Beetge thinks. If he would, I just wonder what his attitude would be. My main concern is to know what attitude he intends to adopt in order to meet the economic, industrial and other requirements of the Republic of South Africa, in the interest of the Republic, to avoid interference with the normal course of industrial development of the country and to avoid interference in the normal growth and demand of labour requirements in South Africa. Is it his intention to encourage training facilities so that eventually when we are faced with this problem on a very much more extensive scale, we will be able to have trained men, even if it is in semi-skilled work, who will be able to carry on the development of industry in our country. I believe that the hon. the Minister has many answers to give us. I think the country deserves an answer and not the sort of political harangue we listened to from the hon. member for Springs. That is the type of speech one would expect to hear in a little “plattelandse dorp” where the hon. member might have had about 30 people around him, whom he wants to frighten into voting for his party.

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour and the privilege to support this motion as moved by the hon. member for Springs. This afternoon, on behalf of this side of the House, I also want to express my thanks and appreciation to the Minister for what he has done in connection with job reservation. I want to say immediately that we are not opposed to the employment of non-Whites, but we say that it must take place on a controlled basis. That is what it means. That is why I particularly want to thank the Department very much as well. In the past my constituents have come to me personally to complain that building contractors are making illegal use of non-Whites in certain trades. When I reported this, the Department immediately investigated the matter and put it right. I therefore want to express my thanks and appreciation to the Government and to the Department. It is the Department that implements this National Government policy of job reservation for the good of the Whites in the Republic of South Africa.

I do not know whether I should interpret it in this light, but the hon. member for Jeppes revealed something in his speech, and now for the first time we have discovered what it means. He spoke of the “disasters of job reservation”. Must we now take it that the United Party is not interested in job reservation? Must we take it that if they come into power they would delete that provision so that job reservation would no longer exist? I am afraid that we do not yet know where we stand with the United Party. The reason for this is that they do not know what these things mean. For example, let us take a look at the Argus of 9th February. In it the following article appears under the heading “Jacobs on easing of job reservation —Nat admission of defeat”—

Sir, I do not know how they can say that the Minister has deviated from the policy of job reservation because he made certain concessions, that are still under control, as a result of certain circumstances and because there were not sufficient people available. If they had taken note of the conditions the Minister laid down, they would have known what it meant.

We know.

The hon. member for Maitland now says they know, but he has no idea. He regards the fact that the Minister has made a concession, in the light of certain circumstances and under certain conditions, as a rejection of or a disregard for the whole policy of job reservation. That is surely not the case.

The United Party makes a fuss about the manpower shortage. They enlarge it out of all proportion. They are doing so because they want to hasten the idea of integration. I know already that they will tell me that we already have economic integration when the Bantu and the Coloureds are working with the Whites. After all, he is the handyman and so on. That is not the Government’s view. Integration only exists when there is no separation in the same work situation. If that takes place without control then it is integration. But when it is controlled and when Whites and non-Whites do not work in the same work situation, then it is something else altogether. There is, for example, the case of the O.K. Bazaars in Sea Point, which obtained permission from the hon. the Minister to have one entire floor manned by Coloureds while no White labour is available. What is wrong with that? All it means is that if there are no Whites available, the hon. the Minister gives permission on condition that the people will not work in the same work situation. As I have said, the United Party does not take the slightest interest in the White worker. The White worker of South Africa must take note of this fact that they are not interested in seeing to the continued protection of the White worker.

The United Party speaks of a “crash programme”. When we speak of a nation of 3½ million, they say the nation consists of 20 million people. Then they speak of a “crash programme”. What is that but the grossest integration one can get? The National Party does the opposite, and they have placed measures on the Statute Book to protect and entrench the position of the Whites. We have never heard precisely how the United Party, in terms of its policy, wants to train and utilize labour in South Africa. We shall be glad of replies to these questions this afternoon. The Government, the business world, the trade unions and the electorate would like to know how they want to do it. We shall be glad if the next speaker would answer these questions. They must tell us unequivocally whether Bantus must be trained for skilled work in areas and in fields where such work is exclusively being done by Whites at present, without any form of control. Must Bantu be registered as apprentices to be trained as artisans by Whites? In the engineering industry it is provided that skilled work shall expressly be reserved for Whites and Coloureds. Must that agreement be annulled? Must it be nullified so that Bantu can be employed in the relevant types of work and in the same work situation? What work, at present being done by Whites, must be handed over to Bantu? They must tell us that. As far as the administrative staff is concerned, they must tell us whether the shortage of clerical staff in the banks, insurance companies, building societies, the Public Service, and so on, should be supplemented by Bantu? Let us take professional technical workers as an example. Must Bantu also be used to supplement the shortage of professional technical workers in White sectors and areas?

Now we come to racial tension and racial friction. How will the Opposition set about dealing with the racial tension and friction that will develop when Whites and Coloureds or Whites and Bantu are engaged in the same trade in the same work situation. It seems to me as if the hon. member for Maitland is going to be the next speaker. I shall therefore be glad if he can furnish me with a reply to this question. If the United Party will give us an answer this afternoon, the Government will certainly appreciate it. But the trade unions would appreciate it even more. The electorate would also appreciate it. I am certain that businessmen would also appreciate it.

Is it not this Government that excluded Communism from the trade unions? That is what the Government also did. Is it not this Government that also made provision for consultation between the employers and the employees? This Government’s legislation in respect of labour is probably the envy of the world, particularly of those countries where there are strikes. Just think of America, France and Great Britain. To what does the United Party ascribe the labour peace and quiet that we have in this country? That is another question I should like to have a reply to.

To Jan Smuts’s Acts.

That hon. member will have the opportunity of telling me about Jan Smuts’s Acts, which are supposedly responsible for this labour peace and quiet. If those other countries of the world had these Acts of ours, and the channels for consultation between workers and employers, they would also have fewer strikes and fewer problems.

This afternoon I want to ask the Government and the hon. the Minister to continue with this idea of job reservation, and with the present consultations. The Government must also continue to preserve the peace and quiet as, inter alia, in the case where the hon. the Minister appointed a mediating committee about three years ago to bring about conciliation between members of the same trade union. Now I should like to ask whether the United Party does not appreciate this. We ask that the Government should continue to entrench and protect the position of the White worker in South Africa against infiltration by Bantu labour.

I also want to ask the hon. the Minister to continue with his system of controlled employment with the conditions he lays down, for example that no White shall be replaced by non-Whites, that there shall be no mixed employment in the same work situation, that no non-Whites shall be placed in supervisory or executive positions over Whites, and that if and when White labour becomes available that White labour shall be employed. We feel satisfied and happy that under the circumstances in which we live today—and this is an international phenomenon—the Government is nevertheless succeeding, with its labour policy, in bringing about peace and quiet in this country.

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry to disappoint the hon. member for Hercules, but the hon. member for Maitland will reply to him. He will probably have a few words to say to him when he makes his speech. We listened here to the hon. member for Hercules whom I have always considered a responsible type of person, but he has shown that he has very verkrampte ideas as far as labour is concerned. Now we have heard another interpretation of integration, but it would be interesting to hear the hon. the Minister giving us his ideas of integration. As a matter of fact I have heard the Minister say in this House that there is no such thing as economic integration. What we see here is a temporary situation where workers come to do a job in the White areas and then at night they go back to their own homes. Now the hon. member for Hercules has given us another idea of integration. He accepts that there is integration, but it is not on a similar level. When a Bantu is working with a White but not doing the same job, it is not integration, according to him. However, if a Bantu is working with a White and doing the same job, then he calls it integration. That is yet another interpretation.

He put some questions to us about the training of Bantu. I do not know whether he has read the report which has been compiled by the Department of Labour and which gives one an idea of what is happening in the labour field. According to the survey the skilled labour force in 1969 consisted of 1,579 Whites, 23,000 Coloureds and then—the hon. members must listen to this—2,670 Asiatics and 1,645 skilled Bantu workers. Admittedly they are mainly in the building industry. Therefore, there are these Bantu workers who do learn the skills. Furthermore, and I do not know whether he is aware of it, it is the policy of the Government in their decentralization programme and their border industry programme to use more and more Bantu in skilled jobs. The Whites must train them for these jobs. In fact, the Bantu under the Government’s policy will be trained to do these jobs. This has nothing to do with us; it exists at the present moment.

We have heard from the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark, who has the habit to disappearing so rapidly when we are talking about labour matters, about the Government’s labour policy. What I would like to say is that this motion, as has been quite rightly said, is no credit to the White workers of this country. I also think that it discredits the Government to an extent, because the Department of Labour and the hon. the Minister, are not only responsible for the White workers in the country, but also for all the other workers in the country, whether they are White, Coloured, Asiatic or Bantu. His whole report covers that field. If one reads the Minister’s report, one will see the wide range that his department has to deal with. It has to deal with the various phases of our labour force in this country. The hon. the Minister should have the interest of all workers at heart and this is pointed out in the Department of Labour’s report. We have heard a lot about job reservation. We have had pleas here for the Government to maintain job reservation. As far as we are concerned, job reservation as practised by the Government, and as put on the Statute Book, is nothing else but a political gimmick, because when you read the latest report of the Department of Labour you will see that the effect of job reservation and the various enactments of job reservation by the department is really laughable. We see here, and I quote:

Even there, in one of the most important industries in the country, work reservation has been scrapped and the fact was accepted that there had to be a change in the determination of job reservation.

This motion of the hon. member for Springs seeks to thank the Government for the protection of the White worker and of labour in this country. We have also been told over the years what this Government has done for labour. I will tell them that it is this Nationalist Party who destroyed the Labour Party. At the time of the Pact Government it was this Nationalist Party who destroyed the Labour Party, the voice of the worker. The worker should know this. The White worker in this country has been very responsible and has been able to negotiate not with the Government but with his employer through his staff association for better conditions. The worker does not require any Government interference or guidance. The worker negotiates with the employer. Admittedly the machinery for doing so has been provided by the Government through the Industrial Conciliation Act. At the present moment there are some 166 agreements in force. I think we should take all these facts into consideration and also the measure brought in by this side of the House.

The hon. member for Springs is asking us in his motion to thank the Government for what it has done for the White worker. But let us have a look at the social security this Government is providing for the White worker. The Government has offered the White worker nothing. The social security measures that are on the Statute Book at the present moment were enacted by this side of the House. The Unemployment insurance Act was enacted by this side of the House, the Workmen’s Compensation Act and any other measure in the way of social security for the worker has come from this side of the House and not from the Government. Why? Because the Government does not want a social welfare state. Notwithstanding that, of the industrial agreements that exist at the present moment, 62 agreements have fringe benefits in the way of pension funds and medical aid funds. What about the other agreements that do not embody these benefits? What about the many wage determination agreements that do not embody any protection for the worker as far as pension fund or medical fund benefits are concerned other than the employer gives them? In spite of all this we have this motion of praise for the Government. Let the White worker know that this Government has not provided any pension funds or assisted with the establishment of medical aid funds. Any assistance that they have has come about by means of direct negotiation between workers and employers and not with the Government. When we on this side came forward with a national contributory pension scheme the suggestion was thrown out. The Government does not want a welfare state; there are thousands of White workers who are not protected by any pension scheme or any other scheme—White workers, never mind Black or Coloured workers. There are hundreds of White workers in South Africa today who have no pension scheme or medical scheme at all. What has the Government done in this regard? Nothing. The Government has no social security scheme for the worker in this country. Don’t let us bluff ourselves. We must not allow the Government to receive the praise for having done nothing, because that is the true position. Browsing through the report of the Department of Labour one sees how little is being done by this Government for the worker. All measures on the Statute Book to benefit the White worker were put there by this side of the House. The one fear the working man has is the gutter. He fears that he may be unemployed one day and that he will then have nothing. He can get unemployment pay, but that will not go on indefinitely and will be reduced as time goes on.

History always repeats itself.

It is a good argument and it is true. The hon. member knows that the Government has made no provision for these people. All they can do is to tell the worker that the Black man will take his job. We all know that is rubbish. Why does the Government not tell those same people that it is creating enormous industries on the borders where Black will do their jobs? Why does the Government not tell them that? The Government dare not. That would not be right. We have this motion in front of us which praises the Government for the work that they have done for the White worker. The White worker does not want that. The White worker wants to be kept out of politics. He wants to have the right to negotiate with the employer for the best conditions that he can get. The White worker wants no political interference. Every time that this Government has amended the Industrial Conciliation Act for political convenience, they have always slipped. One of the big changes that we had, involved our friend, Mr. Beetge. Where has Mr. Beetge gone today? He is not with the Government. He was the architect of one of the major amendments to this Act, to bring in a political implication into the Industrial Conciliation Act. Today Mr. Beetge is not in favour of the Government because he is going round pronouncing true Nationalist Party policy. He does not want any Black workers in any jobs. He is going around saying that today. The Government wants to disown him, the architect of bringing politics into industrial agreements.

The sooner this party realizes that the worker will get on very much further in his relations in this country if he cuts out politics, the better. He wants to have nothing to do with that side of the House. It is the right of the working man through the labour union to negotiate with the Government of the day, and not be affiliated to any government or any party. That is the reason for the difficulties today, because this Government is interfering and trying to control trade unions. They are destroying the Whole influence of the trade union movement and the whole collective bargaining movement in this country today. There is no fear as far as the White unions are concerned, if the Government only leaves them alone.

I would like to thank the White workers for their great loyalty towards this country. We have seen it. We talked about “crash programmes”. We mean that. During the war, when we were short of artisans in this country, it was this side of the House that introduced the C.O.T.T. training scheme which produced artisans in this country overnight. We were able to carry on the war effort here when we were short of artisans. The famous C.O.T.T. training scheme still stands today and the Government has not been able to replace it. We have suggested to the Government that, to get over their difficulties as far as artisans are concerned, they should reconsider using it. Some of our best artisans during the war were boys that came from the platteland. We put them through the schools there and trained them as artisans. Today they are holding responsible positions, even in Government departments. Some of our senior engineers today were trained during the war through the C.O.T.T. training scheme. The whole basis of industry—the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark is still not here—in the area of Vanderbijlpark are C.O.T.T. trainees.

There is the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark.

Oh, he has come back.

No, he has not come back. He has been here the whole time.

Oh, there he is, over there. He disappeared from this side so rapidly.

It is not worth much.

Did the hon. member say the C.O.T.T. training scheme was not worth much?

It served its purpose for the war.

Some of the famous engineers who run big shops today in Vanderbijlpark are C.O.T.T. trainees, I might tell that hon. member. Some of our engineers on the mines were C.O.T.T. trainees. If he, or the Minister, asks the Department of Labour how many C.O.T.T. trainees went through, they would be surprised. It is something to which we should give consideration. This Government talk and talk and talk. Things go on and nothing is done as far as labour is concerned. I want to say to them, leave the the worker alone. Let him negotiate with the employers and he will be quite happy.

Mr. Speaker, in the first place I want to congratulate the hon. member for Springs on introducing this motion, which deals with a very topical matter. At the same time I also want to express my appreciation for the tribute he paid to the patriotism of our White workers, who are certainly one of the greatest assets to us in our labour relations in South Africa. In addition, I should like to express my appreciation to the hon. members for Vanderbijlpark and Hercules for their realistic and honest approach to our labour situation.

Of course, the labour situation, which we are debating today for the umpteenth time, is also being controlled and influenced by our labour legislation. For that reason it is proper for us to record at the outset our appreciation for the outstanding labour legislation which we have in South Africa. I grant that it was built on a foundation laid by that side when they were in power. That credit we can give them, but what makes this labour legislation of ours the best in the world today, is the development which has taken place under this National Party. That is what puts this labour legislation of ours amongst the best in the democratic Western world today. Now I want to be specific by pointing out an example. If Britain had had this industrial conciliation legislation, which was initiated by Minister Schoeman at the time and which we are handling today, it would not have been saddled with a postal strike, which is now in its umpteenth week. At this very moment Mr. Heath is engaged in drafting legislation similar to our Industrial Conciliation Act, which was placed on the Statute Book by this Government. That will certainly be one of the most important contributions towards providing Britain with economic stability.

Was the National Party in power in 1924?

The National Party was in power in 1956. When Minister Schoeman was still Minister of Labour, he caused this Industrial Conciliation Act to be referred to a Select Committee.

That was Jan de Klerk.

No, it was before that. Minister Schoeman took the first steps, and they were followed up by Minister de Klerk. Minister Schoeman introduced here the first legislation of this nature, which was extended subsequently. At present that legislation is such that it makes South Africa the country with the best legislation as regards the regulation of labour relations.

Sir, it is all very well to have sound legislation, as we do. It is all very well to have the best. However, the following question arises: How is it being implemented, and what are the onslaughts that are being made on the principles of that legislation? It is in that regard that a debate such as this one is of importance. In a rapidly developing and multi-national country such as South Africa, I foresee that in the decades that lie ahead, labour is going to become more and more important. In this multi-national and rapidly developing country labour affairs are going to become a more and more topical and important matter. In regard to a matter such as this one we shall inevitably find divergent points of view between the United Party and the Government party. Those divergent points of view will also, to an increasing extent, become manifest in the sphere of labour. It is true that these divergent views on labour affairs will actually emerge very clearly in the decades that lie ahead, since the United Party is of the opinion that it will be able to cause its integration ideas, which it cannot cause to triumph at the polls, to triumph in the sphere of labour. That is the crux of the whole U.P. approach in this regard. All their actions are aimed at the hope that they will be able to cause the foundations of separate development to crumble as a result of labour pressure. That is the blissful hope of the United Party. In order to achieve that, the country is being treated to their double-talk technique. On the one hand the United Party and its obliging English Press are saying, on the basis of non-White employment figures and on the basis of drawings and mannikins, that integration has already become an accomplished fact. We heard this today from the hon. member for Jeppes. That is the hon. member who also considered it necessary to read out to us from that very same mannikin newspaper in order to furnish us with figures in regard to the non-Whites. That is what he did, as though it has ever been the premise of this side that, as a result of the growth of the non-White population, more and more opportunities for employment in this country should not be granted to them as well. This premise of the United Party and its Press is so silly that one is amazed by it. Surely, in view of the increase in population in their ranks it is understandable that more of their people should be employed and that this will be reflected in the statistics, and, actually, to quote this now as evidence of complete integration, merely goes to show what the deep-rooted wish of the United Party is. On the one hand we find this statement of the United Party, which is aimed at showing that we already have complete integration. On the basis of these figures and the mannikins that are drawn, the United Party wants to suggest that we already have complete integration, but in the same breath they are propagating the thought that job reservation is dead already. The exemptions that are being granted, are quoted as evidence to the effect that job reservation is dead. In other words, the very thing which, according to them, is dead, is at the same time being fought as the absurdity which forms an impediment to increased utilization of non-White labour. In one of these numerous Press statements which the hon. member for Hill-brow is issuing so enthusiastically and to which my hon. friend has already referred …

They were not Press statements; they were interviews.

In a report in the Argus on one of these interviews which the hon. member is so readily granting the Press, the United Party’s school of thought is expressed in a very, very striking manner. Strangely enough, this time I am not going to quote that hon. member; I hope he is not going to take that amiss of me, but I want to quote his colleague the hon. member for Green Point. In the same report the hon. member for Green Point said the following with reference to the exemptions in the two wet trades which I intend granting the Rand and Pretoria—

“Of African labour”. Sir, that is the crux of the United Party’s approach in regard to increased utilization of non-White labour. Their concern is not with Coloured labour; they are not concerned about having more Coloureds employed; their concern is simply and solely with employing more Bantu labour in South Africa.

But Coloureds are not available.

How does the United Party propose to bring in more Bantu labour? They usually talk about a vast reservoir of labour, and when they speak about a vast reservoir of labour they, as well as the hon. member for Houghton, have the Bantu in mind. They do not have the Coloured people in mind when they talk about the vast reservoir of labour. It is no use telling us, as the hon. member for Yeoville likes to do, “Yes, but we will have to consult the trade unions”. We had this silly interjection from the hon. member for Maitland this afternoon while my hon. friend was speaking. He said: “Wel, wat sê die vakunies?”

Are you afraid of them?

Sir, such a smokescreen will not be able to cover up what you have to say to those trade unions when you are consulting them. When you go out to consult those unions, as you should do, then first of all you must have something to consult them about, as I had when I saw the representatives of the four building trade unions in Pretoria the other day. I had certain proposals to consult them about, and I asked for their proposals and suggestions in that connection. But I had something to consult them about. Sir, it is the duty of the United Party to tell us what its approach is going to be. They have asked us to tell them what our approach is but the United Party should give us clarity as to what their approach in this respect is going to be. If they stand for consulting the trade unions, what will their approach be? To carry on a campaign for the greater use of Black labour, as the United Party and its press are doing today, without stating clearly exactly how they propose to bring that extra Black labour into our labour market, is nothing but a dishonest and immoral act. Without such a clear statement of intentions, a campaign such as this which the United Party is staging at the moment, all the accusations against us and all their claims about greater prosperity due to the greater use of non-White labour, amount to a senseless and futile exercise.

*Mr. Speaker, actually there are only two ways in which we can utilize this non-White labour more effectively. There are only two ways in which we can utilize Bantu labour and other non-White labour in South Africa. The first is the way in which the Government has set to work, i.e. by bringing about racial harmony and industrial peace and, above all, by protecting the White character of our people, and that is by means of the system of controlled employment. That is the one system. In terms of this system control is exercised by means of measures such as influx control, physical control measures and, above all, job reservation measures. In terms of this system we can cause our Coloureds, Indians and Bantu in the building industry in South Africa to work in an ordered manner—in terms of these control measures which are applied by us. In terms of this system it was, for instance, possible for me to permit Coloured women, as the hon. member for Hercules said, to be employed in that chain store in Sea Point, and, by the way, also in the chain store here in Adderley Street, in the basement. In terms of this system it was possible for me to say that Coloureds could be employed there and that they could man that entire floor but that there was not to be any mixed working conditions and that no White person was to work under a non-White person. [Laughter.] The hon. member is laughing at this; I hope he will in a moment be of assistance in giving us more clarity in regard to this matter. Mr. Speaker, one either follows this course of controlled employment, or does what Mr. Oppenheimer said the other day, one follows the course Mr. Oppenheimer indicated the other day, namely that of the abolition of the industrial colour bar so that the Bantu may freely enter the White spheres of employment. There is no middle course; nor is there any popular alternative as regards this matter. There is, as far as this matter is concerned, only one of these two courses: one either controls non-White employment, as this Government is doing, in order to protect one’s social pattern, or does not control it, and that is precisely what the United Party envisages in South Africa. Sir, on the part of the United Party there is this parrot-like slogan of increased employment of non-Whites. They persist in the parrot-like slogan that, if we utilize more non-White labour, we shall become a second Japan, and then we shall become so “prosperous” that it cannot be expressed in words. Sir, to continue with that parrot-like slogan, without having the courage to tell our workers how one wants to employ those people, is tantamount to hiding behind underhandedness. I am pleased, Sir, that this session is merely in its initial stages. This session of Parliament has only just started; in the course of this session of Parliament there will be many more opportunities for receiving replies to these cardinal questions, for instance, during the various debates that lie ahead, i.e. the Budget debate, the debates on Votes and the debates on other motions. During the debates on the Budget and the Votes as well as the other motions that lie ahead—and you could even take advantage of this afternoon’s debate—we hope that we are going to be afforded the opportunity of getting from the United Party an honest and an unambiguous statement. And it ought not to be difficult to make an honest statement. I shall now refer to the gravity with which the hon. member for Hillbrow approaches this aspect of honesty. Sir, it is necessary for us to hear the views of the United Party on this matter, for as far as their policy is concerned, we can only say that if it is to be applied, the flood-gates would be opened. But when we say that, we get protests from its boisterous members such as the hon. member for Jeppes, who once again protested against it a moment ago. But unfortunately for the United Party the question of labour arrangements in South Africa and the maintenance of our traditional labour pattern form such a visible and palpable part of our society that the U.P. cannot hide it permanently behind a smokescreen. These things which interfere with this traditional pattern of life of ours, cannot be hidden permanently behind a smokescreen. One simply cannot keep them hidden permanently there. One cannot say, on the one hand, what was said on 6th February, 1970, by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition —who is sitting in the House at the moment—i.e. that if the United Party came into power, they would repeal job reservation, section 77. He said it had to be repealed. In other words, the United Party has committed itself to abolishing job reservation. One cannot say, on the one hand, as the Leader of the Opposition did, that one wants to abolish job reservation, and, on the other hand, try to hide from the logical consequences of such a step behind the so-called consultation with the trade unions, as the hon. member for Yeoville in his slipperiness is so keen on doing. One cannot do that, for the maintenance of the industrial colour bar and the maintenance of job reservation do in fact constitute the power which one grants one’s White trade unions to negotiate on the behalf of their own people. Without this job reservation on our Statute Book and without this industrial colour bar in the mines, our White trade unions will have no power. They will be absolutely powerless to negotiate on behalf of their White members. And as far as the abolition of job reservation is concerned, it is very clear that if job reservation is going to be abolished in South Africa, such a move is going to be followed by precisely what hon. members opposite have already told overseas organizations i.e. that if the United Party’s policy is implemented, it will be possible for Whites to work under non-Whites. Members opposite have on certain occasions said this to overseas organizations, which have also had talks with us.

This is happening today.

This is one of the typical smokescreens with which we are dealing all the time. Instead of these people stating their point of view with honesty and courage, such smokescreens are being thrown up time and again. Sir, no smokescreen and no double-talk of this nature will ever be able to conceal the inevitable consequences of the policy of the United Party. In regard to such a cardinal question, i.e. that in terms of United Party policy Whites may work under non-Whites, the United Party certainly owes South Africa an honest and unambiguous answer, and to my mind this ought to be easy for the Opposition, for recently the hon. member for Hillbrow used these words in his other interviews. He said, “The United Party has all along been honest with our workers.”

We do not make promises.

I think the time has already arrived for the United Party to demonstrate this much vaunted “honesty” of theirs towards the workers by stating unambiguously to the workers what their plans are for integrating this Black labour force. If the United Party wants to be as honest as that, it ought to do so, for we on the Government side do not hesitate to state our objectives in regard to non-White labour very clearly. We do not hesitate to say at all times that as long as the National Party is in power, job reservation will be the law of South Africa. For that reason I think that the United Party, which is now taking such a pride in its honesty towards the workers, should also take this opportunity to tell us these things in a similarly honest manner. We are prepared to acknowledge our problems in regard to the implementation of job reservation. I am prepared to acknowledge the problems in regard to the adjustments by way of exemptions, the problems we have in managing at all times to provide our workers with security, but also, true to our original objective, to safeguard our economic development from being totally paralysed and disrupted. I am prepared to acknowledge them, but in doing so I want to say that the United Party is just as obliged also to state, in all honesty, the consequences of its policy of integrating the black labour force. Without this job reservation, which the Leader of the Opposition wants to have abolished, I cannot see how we can keep our labour relations sound and orderly in this multi-national country.

That merely goes to show how incompetent you are.

It is as against this standpoint of the Government that the United Party, which wants to abolish job reservation, should tell us how it now envisages the practical effect of the abolition of job reservation. I really hope that the United Party will display the courage to spell out to us how they see the practical effect of the abolition of job reservation. Such a clear and honest answer ought not to be difficult, especially for the hon. member for Hillbrow, who takes such pride in his “honesty”.

What are you doing on the Railways and in the Post Office?

What Minister Schoeman does on the Railways and what I do in the Post Office are being done in an ordered manner. Yesterday, during the Part Appropriation debate, I furnished replies to the hon. members for Orange Grove and Simonstad on how we are going to train Coloureds, Indians and Bantu to become telephone mechanics in order that they may undertake the installation and connection of telephones in their own area. Am I now being charged with this? And this Government will go on doing so. But what we should not do, is what the policy of that side is inevitably going to result in, i.e. that those Coloured telephone mechanics can eventually be in charge of Whites. That will never happen under this Government. On this cardinal matter the United Party has given us an answer. As far as the National Party is concerned, the maintenance of our industrial colour bar and the maintenance of our job reservation legislation do not only amount to the maintenance of an ordinary law. This is not merely an ordinary labour law. To us it is a measure which has a fundamental effect on our entire multi-national society. This job reservation is a measure which brings about order into the vital sphere of labour, and this side is irrevocably committed to upholding this measure of job reservation, this measure which creates order; and those people who think that they can force us to abandon it through agitation in the Press or whatever, are simply wasting their energy.

What about the Whites who are working under non-Whites today?

Oh, that is an absurdity. Surely, if that occurs, you should mention it in this House? Mention it to us. Where does this happen?

I can furnish examples.

Very well, let us have those examples of where they have to work under non-Whites. This is an absolute misrepresentation which the United Party is giving.

It is true.

No, with this smoke-screen the United Party cannot get away from its real objective in regard to this policy of the abolition of job reservation. It cannot get away from what its own people have told overseas organizations, i.e. that under its policy it will be possible for Whites to work under non-Whites in South Africa. Let me make this very clear to the United Party …

May I ask the hon. the Minister a question? Does the hon. the Minister want to deny that there are cases here in Cape Town where White teachers are teaching under non-White principals, to mention one example?

That is correct. They are still seconded people. That is quite correct, and we still have to do that in the Transkei as well, in order to get that territory going. At the moment we have to do that in order to keep those people going during the transition period, so that they may cope with all their work. But no White person will be kept there by this Government. On the contrary, when I was still in the Department of Coloured Affairs, specific instructions were given that the White ladies attached to those staffs, had to leave. That is what this Government has done.

They are still there.

Be that as it may, that is the policy I formulated at the time. For that reason it is absolutely senseless …

What is the use?

One cannot try to get away in this manner. To my mind it is dishonest. The policy which the United Party wants to implement, will amount to this, i.e. that in the industrial life, in the economic life and in the entire structure in South Africa it will be possible for Whites to work under non-Whites. That is the logical consequence of the policy of the United Party.

That is absolute nonsense!

That is what the hon. member’s own members said to certain organizations, which subsequently repeated it to us. This double-talk of the United Party must come to an end now. We cannot go on with it incessantly. Let me say that as far as the National Party is concerned, we are irrevocably committed to this job reservation legislation, which we shall keep on implementing, in spite of all the problems involved. For without this legislation it is impossible for the White man to safeguard his position in this country permanently. As it is our objective to do this, we shall, notwithstanding all the problems and the calumniation, continue to act as we deem right for the Whites.

I was quite glad that the hon. the Minister of Labour decided to take part in this debate. As I expected, his participation did not have a great deal to do with the motion, because it was a strange motion. Except for the fact that the hon. the Minister thanked those who had thanked him, he left the motion at that. I said that I was glad that the hon. the Minister had decided to take part in the debate because I thought we would hear from the hon. the Minister what we expected from him.

A few months ago, from his own Press and other bodies, calls went out to the hon. the Minister of Labour to make a statement concerning the labour position in South Africa. That call went out because the business community realized that labour is the basis of development and because the business community realized that they need guidance in respect of the labour position in South Africa.

This is now the second session since the call went out, not from the United Party members, but from the Government side. Did we receive guidance from the hon. the Minister this afternoon? He spoke of smokescreens; I have never seen such a cloud of smoke go up in the House as I did this afternoon. Instead of the hon. the Minister dealing with the nature of the labour problem, he asked a thousand and one questions here and tried to prove by telling the truth what he cannot prove if he tells the whole truth. He did not get to the core of the matter. The United Party got to that core of the matter this afternoon. I do not blame the hon. the Minister, as the leading figure on the labour front, for having left South Africa in the lurch today for the second or perhaps the third time in respect of guidance on a very important issue. What did we get from him? It was a political game from beginning to end. The hon. the Minister is just trying to prove two things, i.e. firstly that the United Party advocates integration and with it the extinction of the Whites. That is what he wanted to prove. The second point the hon. the Minister made is that he wanted to prove, even though he pull it from his hat like a magician, that we say that the black man will be boss over the White man in the labour field.

I now want to come back to the hon. the Minister’s points one by one. If time permits I shall reply to a number of them. The first point he made was that the Nationalist Party stood for a policy of controlled employment. What Government in South Africa has ever stood for uncontrolled employment? All the labour legislation and everything it entails is specifically aimed at controlling the labour field. Whether it be non-White labour or White labour, control has always been one of the matters of fundamental importance when it comes to labour legislation. Every Government in South Africa would, of course, advocate control when it comes to employment. But the fact is that one exercises control for certain purposes. The first purpose of control is surely to have order in the labour field. Secondly I think control is exercised to serve the requirements of the economy. As far as that is concerned all governments are on the same road, and that goes for this side of the House. But now there is a third goal that a government can aim at with control and that is to close the tap, to close the sluices, to stop labour, to “wean” labour as far as the South African economy is concerned. That is what the hon. member for Springs said.

Now the hon. the Minister comes along and says: How ridiculous to allege that the Nationalist Government is opposed to employment! Does the hon. the Minister agree with the hon. member for Springs who moved this motion? After all, that hon. member did say that we should wean the South African economy of non-White labour. Does the hon. the Minister agree with that, or was he not listening, or did he not want to hear it?

I think you should rather deliver your own speech.

No, the hon. member for Hercules was just as garrulous about this matter.

I am still waiting for the replies to my questions.

Yes, I shall come to that if time permits. They were very simple questions. Politically speaking the hon. member was just as presumptuous in saying: But who says we must not employ non-Whites? After all, he did sit and listen to how the hon. member for Springs moved the motion and declared with great firmness that the South African economy should be weaned of non-White labour.

Within the White areas.

No, there you have the other aim of controlled employment, i.e. the weaning process. Now the hon. the Minister comes along here this afternoon and says: What a stupid idea! As recently as the previous session he said that the Nationalist Party policy is to reduce non-White labour in the White economy. Hon. members on that side of the House become so long-winded about economic progress. When it comes to the South African economy I ask any hon. member on that side of the House to stand up and tell me who of them is prepared to eliminate non-White labour from the South African economy? Who is the man who is prepared to do it?

Who has ever advocated it? That is nonsense.

Mr. Speaker, I remember the days when the hon. member for Moorreesburg said that the black stream was flowing with increasing strength up there in the Transvaal, and as long as the Whites are dependent upon non-White labour the Whites would be unsafe in South Africa. This is the whole tenor of the Nationalist Party’s philosophy: Eliminate, control, close the tap, let the non-Whites go back and work in their own world.

The hon. the Minister made a further point and said that he was proud of the industrial legislation which the Nationalist Party gave South Africa, i.e. the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1924. In all humility I want to put it to the hon. the Minister that apart from ideological changes which the Nationalist Party introduced for political reasons the acts which Jan Smuts drew up in respect of labour stand organizationally just as they have stood through all the years. Those are the acts which the world and South Africa can be proud of today. Incidentally, before I forget I must just say that a very interesting point came to the fore here when the hon. the Minister started an argument with the hon. member for Yeoville. They argued about the question of White male and female teachers employed in non-White schools and working under a non-White principal. Then the hon. the Minister said an interesting thing. He said that when he was Minister of Coloured Affairs he gave an order to the effect that this should be stopped. Does the hon. the Minister now want to imply, as it were, that his hon. successor, is working contrary to the tendencies in his policy and permitting the things to which he is opposed; is the hon. the Minister of Labour, who controls everything, really saying that he allows a colleague to go against his school of thought? Must we hear again today that we have dissension in the Cabinet of so united a Nationalist Party? That does sound a little strange to me. [Interjections.] I am not arguing with an ordinary Member of Parliament like myself; I am speaking to the hon. the Minister of Labour. I am addressing him with great respect, but what does he say? What does he say? As regards the statement that Coloureds may now do building work in the Transvaal, he said that an hon. member on this side of the House said that we the Opposition are actually backing the employment of Bantu building workers. He said that we on this side of the House are again just interested in the black man.

That was said by your colleague sitting there in front of you. I can quote the hon. member.

I am not arguing and I am not denying it. The hon. the Minister knows better than anyone else that unemployment among Coloureds is almost non-existent in the Transvaal. Whom does the hon. the Minister want to have doing building work there if there are not Coloureds to do so? Does the hon. the Minister want the Coloured labour from the Cape to go to the Transvaal? Does the hon. the Minister want that?

Do you want the Bantu to do it?

The hon. the Minister must wait a moment. He must first give me a chance to finish my speech. If the hon. the Minister foresees the building workers of the Cape now having to go to the Transvaal, I just want to remind him that we in the Cape do not have unemployment among the Coloureds either. Who must do our work then, particularly when I am reminded of what the hon. the Minister of Community development said, i.e. that the Bantu labour must be decreased by 5 per cent? Who must do our work then? This is a cheap political game and nothing more, and we must regard it as such.

There is another interesting question. He asked what case we are going to put to the trade unions when we want to negotiate with them. He says we must at least make out a case so that we can tell the trade unions what we want to do. That is absolutely correct, but the hon. the Minister must not ask me. Why does the hon. the Minister not ask the hon. the Minister of Transport what he says in his negotiations? What does the hon. the Minister do in the Postal Services? Does he also negotiate there? What then does he table? The hon. the Minister of Transport will tell him that the White workers of South Africa are not irresponsible beings that are not aware of the needs. When it comes to the question of negotiations the White workers will show just as much awareness, in whatever circles they move, of what the needs are and what the negotiations will be about, unless the hon. the Minister wants to imply that the White workers are so irresponsible and ignorant that they do not know what is going on in the South African labour field. I want to say with respect that the hon. the Minister must not put questions to us. If he wants to find out from someone he can do so much nearer home by going to the hon. the Minister of Transport. He does so every day.

Let us now look at how the hon. the Minister conducts an argument. The hon. the Minister boasts of what he did in the O.K. Bazaars. I do not blame him. He says that on one entire floor only non-Whites are employed. The Minister says he does this thanks to job reservation. He boasts about it. He says it is a question of racial purity, but what he does not tell us, of course, is what idea we then get when non-White women are serving Whites. The hon. member for Carletonville defines it as “physical presence”. The fact that a White woman buys cheese from a non-White woman behind the counter is quite in order. According to the Government there is no question of integration at all.

And vice versa.

Yes, the obverse does also occur. However, the matter is more serious than that, because I want to tell the hon. the Minister that he was not honest with us. He wants to tell us that this fine deed of his can be ascribed to the ideology of job reservation. The hon. the Minister surely knows better than that. He surely knows that the Shops and Offices Act specifically makes provision for separate facilities, separate conditions of work and many other things besides. The hon. the Minister does not need the 2 per cent job reservation to get it right. It is not true. What are the true facts then?

It is merely administrative job reservation … [Interjections.]

When there is a United Party Act the hon. the Minister tries to steer clear of it by calling it “administrative” job reservation.

May I ask the hon. member a question. I should like to know from the hon. member how they are now going to resolve these matters? [Laughter.]

I regret the fact that my colleagues are laughing. It is not my intention to laugh at the hon. member for Hercules. He is in earnest. I just want to tell him that we on this side have no problems as far as that is concerned. We shall merely go back to an Act which the United Party placed on the Statute Book. In terms of that Act we shall regulate this matter in the same efficient administrative way. We have no difficulties in this connection at all. There are probably a few questions that I have omitted in my replies to the hon. the Minister, but he would surely not want me to reply to all of them.

The hon. member who moved the motion made use of a term that bothers me. This is a serious debate about labour, which is an important matter. The hon. member for Springs spoke of “labour integration”, a new term.

You must just not begin crying about it.

I cry when I think of how dense some hon. members are. What does this term “labour integration” mean? I wanted to ask the hon. member, but he did not want to give me a chance. He continued and based his speech on this question of labour integration that we, the Opposition, supposedly advocate, while that side of the House advocates separation. What do the labour conditions or the labour situation look like—that is another lovely term—on a farm? Does one have labour integration there, or is it labour separation? What would the labour situation look like in the Railway workshops here in Salt River …

Or in the kitchen.

… or even in the kitchen? What does it look like on the trains in which the hon. members do also travel after all? Is that labour integration or is it labour separation? One can leave the matter at that, and I do not blame the hon. member for coming along here with a new term of that kind, but he says labour integration is now our policy and labour separation is theirs. I do not think the hon. member will be able to tell me what he is talking about. Sir, he does not know. I now ask him how one can engage in a debate on a point for which one does not really even have an explanation?

I want to come back briefly to the speech the hon. member made. He said he thanked the Government for the entrenchment of the White worker. I want to tell him. Sir, if I understand the soul of the White worker correctly, that he must remember that the White worker of South Africa is mature enough not to tolerate this “patronising” attitude of hon. members of this House any longer. The White worker of South Africa does not want to be entrenched; the White worker asks no government to build walls around him; the White worker has confidence in himself; he can endure competition. All he asks, in the first place, is that the Government does not make things more difficult for him, and secondly that the Government should not stand in the way of economic progress.

But hon. members must not come along here and tell me that 2 per cent job reservation entrenches the White worker. These artificial methods cannot possibly entrench the White worker of South Africa. It is my modest belief that if you want to entrench him, the greatest possible entrenchment lies in an economically prosperous South Africa. That is where the strength lies. If you want to entrench the worker, allow him to educate his children and himself. If you want to entrench him, let the Government do its duty and give houses to the workers of South Africa, if it wants to do it for him. If you want to entrench the worker, let the hon. the Minister of Labour tell his colleagues, before he tells the workers of South Africa: “You people whom we now want to entrench are doing too little work and spending too much”; before we point a finger at the White worker of South Africa let us as members of the Cabinet at least set the White worker an example by perhaps not living in too much luxury.

Now you are talking the biggest lot of nonsense.

No, Sir. If you want to entrench the White worker you must ensure that his living costs are such that he can shoulder it, and not like the hon. the Minister of Finance who now wants to take R47 million out of his pocket. That is not the way to entrench the White worker of South Africa. Give him education, housing, a proper income and a prosperous South Africa, and the White worker will be satisfied to entrench himself through his economic prosperity and confidence in himself, and not with the artificial methods to which the person moving this motion referred.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 32 and motion and amendment lapsed.