In the Sunday Times of Sunday, 11th April, we read: “Nats face fierce attack”. Sir, nothing has come of this “fierce attack”. All we have had so far I can, in the light of the description by the hon. shadow Minister of Finance on the opposite side of this Budget as being “an old men’s Budget”, only describe as the pitiful lament of a senile group of old men. In any case, there has not yet been any “fierceness” in their attack up to now. Yesterday mention was made here of the double-talk of the United Party. As far as the hon. member for Hillbrow is concerned, I take it that he will, when he participates in this debate, express his gratitude and appreciation towards the Minister for the large amount which has been appropriated for the establishment of an infrastructure. After all, it is he who in one of his Press statements, this one in December 1970, said that “organized business and labour to combine in a powerful pressure group to force the Government radically to improve the infrastructure mainly in communications and transport which is in serious danger of breaking down”.

There was a great deal of criticism here in regard to increased Government expenditure. It was pointed out from our side that this increased expenditure was principally due to increased salaries on the one hand and the establishment of the necessary infrastructure on the other. In this connection it is interesting to recall that last year hon. members opposite were the precentors here of the choir that asked for increased salaries. They accused the Government of not paying its employees enough. The question I want to ask is, who began increasing wages in this country—the Government or the private sector? When it was fashionable to give hand-outs, the United Party were precentors in the choir which asked for greater hand-outs. But now the time has arrived for increased payments to be made, and today again hon. members opposite are the precentors in the choir complaining about increased Government expenditure. I want them now to tell us which groups’ salaries we must reduce. Must we reduce the salaries of teachers, for example? The Government must supply certain services. For that purpose it must have the services of professional officers at its disposal, and in order to obtain the services of these people, competitive salaries must be offered. But I want the United Party to be specific and tell us what items in this Budget must be reduced, and they would be able to do so if they were honest and sincere in their criticism. I therefore expect the next speaker on that side to give us an indication of precisely which items in the Budget they want reduced.

Now I want to deal with an allegation made by the hon. member for Pinetown. It deals with the labour question. According to his Hansard he said here yesterday—

He went on to say—

Here I again want to quote from a source which I find to be rather handy—the Sunday Times. In the Sunday Times’ edition of last Sunday there is a report on a survey made in the heavy engineering industry. And what do the industrialists say? This—

I hope the hon. member for Hillbrow will listen now—

I should like to see the hon. member for Hillbrow react to this.

If there is one thing which has clearly emerged from the debate up to now it is the bitter disappointment of the United Party at the fact that this is really a masterly Budget, and that they are unable to level any substantial criticism at it. As far as I am concerned, I want to convey my sincere congratulations to the hon. the Minister on having succeeded, in a very difficult situation and in the midst of the world-wide problem of inflation, in introducing a Budget which stimulates economic growth and at the same time does not hit the man in the street too hard.

Speaking as a farmer, I cannot omit to mention the particularly sympathetic attitude on the part of the hon. the Minister and the Government towards the farmer. We think for example of the R25 000 000 loan to the Land Bank, of which R10 000 000 was allocated at only 2 per cent interest, which is going to enable the Land Bank in turn to lend a very large amount to the farmers at the normal interest rate of 6 per cent. We think of the R7 000 000 for the wool farmers, and I want to tell you that we as farmers have every confidence in this Government, as is also reflected in the representation of the rural areas in this House. Sir, we find that someone else has donned the mantle of an agronomist in this House yesterday evening. I am referring to the hon. member for Gardens. Let us see what he had to say. He said—

This is an absolute revelation of his childish ignorance in regard to this matter. Then he goes on to say—

Quite right.

I want to tell the hon. member for Gardens he should rather not discuss matters he does not know much about. He talks about “high interest rates”. Does he know that the Agricultural Credit Council lends money to farmers at 5 per cent? Does he know that the Land Bank lends money to the farmers at 6½ per cent? Has he ever heard of the interest subsidy on farm mortgage bonds which this Government is giving farmers? He comes along here and makes a far-fetched, irresponsible statement merely to reveal his ignorance and to try and sow unrest among the farmers, while he knows very well that they will not win one rural constituency.

There is not the remotest chance of their doing so.

Sir, let us see what the actual position in agriculture has been over the past ten years, before we make such an absolutely unfounded allegation here. Let us see what happened in the ten-year period from 1959-’60 to 1969-’70. If we look at the index of producer prices, we see that there was an increase of 22,15 per cent; that is the farmers’ price. At the same time we see that the price of requisites, materials and implements, increased by only 13,28 per cent. How can the allegation then be made in this House that the farmers’ position has deteriorated over the past ten years? On what grounds does the hon. member make this allegation? How can he substantiate this allegation?

Has it improved?

Sir, since the hon. member is now discussing the deterioration of the position of the farmers, I want to point out that the price of ground nuts was increased by R10 the week before last.

And sunflower seed as well.

The price of sunflower seed was also increased by more than R6 per ton. If one works it out, then it amounts to a 10 per cent increase in prices, but the hon. member says that the farmers are worse off.

Sir, when we come to the Budget now, we see that it was not only the task of the Minister here to cause the State accounts to balance, but also to give a certain direction to economic development and activities. In this connection there are certain indicators one should take note of. We see that gross domestic spending increased by 14,1 per cent during 1970. As against this the gross national product increased by only 9,4 per cent. In other words, proportionately the spending increased to a greater extent than did production in the country. What is also very interesting, is this: If we look at private consumer spending, we see that personal income increased by 11 per cent, but that that entire increase was absorbed by spending, because private consumer spending also increased by 11 per cent. In other words, any increase which was given, was simply spent again. What we can deduce from this, is that production did not increase as it should have. At the same time we see that personal savings, as a percentage of the total current income, also decreased considerably. In 1967 12,2 per cent of the total current income was saved, while in 1970 it had decreased to 8 per cent. We see therefore that spending increased more rapidly than did production, and on the other hand we see that saving decreased.

Sir, the general allegation is being made here that our people are having a hard time of it. That is not a correct statement of the facts either. Let us see what happened to personal available income, that is personal income after direct taxation has been deducted. We see that in the five years from 1965 to 1970 the personal available income of the population increased by 55,4 per cent, and over against that we see that the consumer prices only increased by 17,5 per cent over the same period. In other words, one cannot but deduce that our people have more money to spend and that their standard of living is consequently much higher. Sir, these figures show us one thing and that is that the entire problem we have today is due to overspending, and also to the fact that the available income is not being saved, but spent. This overspending we see reflected in the deficit on our current account.

The State’s overspending.

The deduction one must make here is that the demand for goods has now become so heavy that it has overflowed to countries abroad. The criticism was expressed here against the Government in regard to the damping measures which are being taken by the Government, that the curtailment of domestic spending will influence and prejudice our local industries. But, Sir, the demand for goods has already overflowed to countries abroad. If we curb the demand for goods at home, how can we then prejudice local industrialists? Throughout this entire inflation debate which has been conducted over the past few years in this House, we have had on the one hand the damping school and on the other the growth school. Hon. members on the opposite side are trying to create the impression that this Government believes only in damping measures. That is not the truth. What that side of the House wants, is everlasting growth. All they want is further growth all the time, and when one has that, one reaches a condition which resembles that of the hon. member for Turffontein. The Opposition wants uncontrolled growth and if there is uncontrolled growth, then bottlenecks will arise and growth to certain points will be over-emphasized. Then one reaches a state of affairs looking like the hon. member for Durban Point.

In drawing up this Budget the Government and the Minister of Finance were faced by the difficult task of having on the one hand to combat this excessive spending, but of having to establish at the same time possibilities for long-term economic growth, and what did the hon. the Minister do then? He redistributed revenue. He taxed these people who are spending money on luxury goods in order to combat this excessive consumer spending. He gave part of that money to the elderly persons; he gave part of it to the lesser privileged and he used another portion of it to establish the basic infrastructure to obtain continued stable economic growth and prosperity in South Africa. Sir, we are now being accused of wanting only to impose damping measures and of not wanting to allow growth. I have now indicated here how the Minister wants in fact to stimulate growth in the years which lie ahead.

But let us accept the argument of the United Party in this debate. The hon. member for Hillbrow and various other members on that side of the House, together with a few businessmen outside this House, say that the only solution to the inflation problem lies therein that one must increase the supply of goods; in other words you must prevent inflation by means of growth. Let us now discuss this matter in absolute and specific terms: Hon. members on the opposite side are making the general statement and creating the psychosis that this Government only wants to impose damping measures and does not want to allow growth. But the Government did one thing and did not omit to do the other in this Budget. That was to try to restore equilibrium between money and goods in the country. But if we were now to accept the argument of the hon. members on the opposite side and say that we must outgrow inflation, would the hon. member for Park-town or the hon. member for Hillbrow tell me to what point we must grow in order to eliminate inflation. I am not asking what the growth rate should be. Hon. members must tell me to what point we must grow in order to achieve equilibrium in the ratio of money to goods in this country so that inflation may be eliminated. Because, after all, you keep on stating outside that we must outgrow this problem, but can you tell me to what point we should grow? Last year the hon. member was unable to furnish me with a reply to the same question. He has now had a year in which to find the answer, but today the hon. member for Hillbrow is again unable to give me the answer to that question. But it is not specifically the same question I am asking. I am not asking a question in regard to capital. I am not asking a question in regard to the growth rate. I am asking to what point growth must be stimulated at home in order to combat inflation, because you say, after all, that we must outgrow inflation. You are saying this to the people outside. Now you must tell us specifically and in absolute terms at what rate South Africa must grow. But, Sir, let us accept their growth argument now. This means that the production of goods on the one hand must be reconciled with the demand for goods in the country, on the other, so that we can obtain a situation of equilibrium. [Interjections.] Yes, it seems to me I shall have to ask Matanzima, because the Opposition is incapable of replying. In other words, what we have to do here if we were to follow the advice of the United Party that we should outgrow inflation, is that we should reconcile the gross domestic spending with the gross national product. In short, what this whole argument amounts to is that we have a deficit of R849 million on our gross national product. If we now want to even out this situation, if we want to achieve equilibrium between supply and demand, it means that we will have to increase our gross domestic product, which amounts to R12 404 million, by R849 million; this is the additional amount we will have to produce in the country in order to achieve a total gross domestic product of R13 253 million. If we then deduct from that the net payments to foreign countries, we see that our gross national product is R12 786 million; the gross interior spending is also on that level. In other words, we will then have that equilibrium and will not have inflation. That is the argument of the United Party, but let us take that argument just a little further now. If we had increased the gross domestic product in 1970 to that level where supply and demand met, so that there was equilibrium, it would have meant that we would have had to grow, in financial terms, at 17 per cent. In real terms this would have meant that we would have had to grow by 14 per cent in order to obtain a situation of equilibrium, so that we could eliminate inflation. [Time expired.]

The hon. member who has just resumed his seat has posed certain questions which I will reply to rather briefly because there are other matters which I wish to discuss with the hon. the Minister of Finance. He has, first of all, raised the question of the increased salaries which have been requested by this side of the House year after year for various State departments and he suggests now that the Government’s over-spending might be due to the requests which we made from this side of the House. It is significant that in dealing with this matter the hon. member did not touch on the one factor which has been the cause of these necessary increases. That is the erosion in the value of the rand, of the purchasing power of the rand, under the mismanagement of our economic affairs by this Government. When the hon. member asks where we suggest there can be savings, I might suggest to him that the Department of Community Development should not be loaded by the Department of Planning as the result of the declaration of group areas, with the rehousing of persons who are already housed. The thousands upon thousands of South African people of all races who have to be rehoused because of the ideological enforcement of the Group Areas Act costs money. There could be considerable savings in the application of physical planning and all the machinery and all the hordes of public servants required to carry it out. There could be considerable saving in shelving some of the luxurious State buildings which are now on the Estimates, including for instance the vast expansion of the prison system to house what one might call technical first offenders who have been convicted under the ideological laws of this Government. Might I suggest that there is also a vast area in which there can be savings in regard to the huge expenditure in the development of border areas and the development of institutions such as those we have within the Bantu areas, which have led only yesterday to the extravagant demands which have been made by the Chief Minister of the Transkei. I wonder whether hon. members will today take heed of the warnings from this side of the House as to what those demands mean financially to this country and what the implications are in regard not only to South Africa today, but the South Africa of tomorrow? Will they take heed of the financial and security implications in so far as this country is concerned? It is a blind member of this House who, when looking at this Budget, cannot find place for the reduction in expenditure. And might I pointedly say to the hon. and silent Minister of the Interior that if he only would heed his own Public Servants’ Association and do what they have asked this Government to do, and that is to review the whole structure of the Public Service to ensure that there is adequate and proper use of manpower, then he would be doing a service to this country. But what answer do I get when I raise this matter? The present Minister of Economic Affairs said in 1969 that a Cabinet Committee would see to it, and the hon. the Minister himself this Session told me that it was not necessary to have such a commission. Commissions have sat before, and let us hope that the new broom sweeps clean and gets busy with what the public servants themselves have asked for, namely a thorough inquiry into the Public Service.

But what I want to get on to is what is perhaps to the ordinary person in South Africa the greatest disappointment in this Budget, and that is the omission to provide any stimulus whatsoever for home ownership amongst the people of South Africa. It is true that the hon. the Minister has granted concessions in so far as the income levels for sub-economic and economic housing are concerned, but what he has in fact done is to shift onto the shoulders of the Minister of Community Development the responsibility for housing another 23 000 families when he cannot house those who need housing at the present moment under the present regulations and the present assistance limits. It is an idle boast to say that now another 23 000 families can have the benefit of the housing facilities under the provisions of the Housing Act. The Minister of Community Development may have broad shoulders, but he has not got rid of the load he is carrying now and this is pure sham to suggest that this will mean housing for another 23 000 families. It is just a pure sham. One sometimes wonders whether this Government really is concerned with family life at all for whatever race in South Africa, whether it really regards family life as a desirable element of our national life. We see indications of this neglect of family life, which is condemned by every church in South Africa, in the migratory labour policy followed by this Government.

What is your policy?

Let the Minister just be patient. This Government’s approach to housing is restricted to what appears to be a mere desire to put a roof over the heads of a family, and that is the end of its responsibility when it has provided that roof.

What did you do during the time of the United Party?

The hon. member must be quiet and listen. I shall tell him what I think should be done and should have been done years ago. The hon. the Minister has been asked over a number of years to consider certain tax concessions, which would be limited in the aggregate amount in so far as this country is concerned, but would do very much to assist home ownership. I want to ask him to look at various possible ways, which from the Exchequer’s point of view will be inexpensive, in which he can assist in the acquisition of homes. I want to refer specifically to what one may call the indirect taxation of transfer duty and stamp duty in the acquisition of properties. Transfer duty was last reviewed in 1964, when the basis of transfer duty was assessed at 3 per cent on properties with a maximum purchase price of R10 000 and at 4 per cent above that figure. Certain deductions were allowed, percentage-wise, where the property was to be occupied by the purchaser personally. If one looks at the present position and one allows the maximum rebate of 50 per cent—the hon. the Minister knows the rebate—on properties up to R10 000, where the purchaser is personally going to occupy that property, one finds that on a purchase price of a property of R10 000, which is a cottage, with a bond of R7 500, which is the normal, a 75 per cent bond, the costs involved are R370 to the purchaser, Of that amount, R220 is taxation by this Government. That is R220 on a R10 000 purchase.

If one goes higher to a R15 001 purchase price and a bond of 75 per cent, the costs involved are R630, of which R450 is tax paid to this Government by the purchaser. We have asked before and I want to ask the hon. the Minister again to take into consideration these facts, since there is still time, even as regards the legislation to give effect to this Budget. A young couple, buying a house, if they are not State servants who are assisted by the State in any way, are faced not only with finding the deposit, but also finding these amounts which I have mentioned, and these figures are considerable. I believe that a review of the incidence of the transfer duty is long overdue and that the stamp duty should also have been revised. It is interesting to note that what we on this side of the House have been pleading for over the years, is a matter which, according to a report in the London Times of 31st March, has been taken into account by the British Chancellor in his budget this year. The hon. the Minister is always talking about saving. People save for two reasons. They save, primarily, in order that they might have some security for themselves and their families. They save, secondly, in order that they may acquire a home in which to live. In so far as the second of the incentives to saving is concerned, a revision of this taxation, as I call it, would do a lot to stimulate that saving. In the Budget in the United Kingdom this year stamp duty has been abolished on all mortgages in so far as private residential dwellings are concerned, as well as the duty on their equivalent of our deeds of transfer, namely the deeds of covenant so far as property is concerned. I believe that that is something which this hon. Minister can do and that it is overdue as far as South Africa is concerned.

Another matter we have asked the hon. the Minister to give his attention to concerns an abatement or a rebate to be given to a taxpayer who is purchasing his own home and is redeeming mortgage facilities. Let me point out to the hon. the Minister that so far as State employees are concerned, if they have the necessary pension fund credits, they are given considerable benefits. They are, for example, allowed a 100 per cent loan up to R15 000. The State subsidy for an employee receiving a salary of up to R3 600 per annum brings his rate of interest down to 4 per cent. Between R3 600 and R9 000 per annum the rate of interest is brought down to 5 per cent. Over R9 000 per annum the rate of interest is brought down to 6 per cent. But what does the man in the street get? He only gets one-half per cent or 1 per cent above the interest rate of 8½ per cent. What does this subsidy mean? It means that a public servant paying a purchase price of R9 000 with a 100 per cent bond is receiving a subsidy of R20-70 per month. We do not say it is wrong. It is right and a policy which we have accepted. It means that for 30 years the public servant pays only R48 per month in redemption of such a 100 per cent bond. But the private individual if purchasing the same property can only get a 75 per cent bond which he must redeem over 25 years. On the 75 per cent bond he pays R52-35 per month in interest and redemption which is some R4 above that which the civil servant pays on his 100 per cent bond. Apart from that, the private individual has to find his own deposit. I am sure it is not beyond the powers of the hon. the Minister and his advisers to institute some system whereby the ordinary individual who does not have these facilities available to public servants when acquiring a home, could be given some consideration as regards the taxes he has to pay.

I want to go further and now come to the employer who is prepared to assist an employee in regard to acquiring a home. In this regard I plead for some sort of encouragement which would also help the hon. the Minister of Community Development considerably with the insuperable problems with which he is faced in providing adequate housing in South Africa.

Having said this, I want to refer briefly to one aspect of the Schumann Commission Report. The Schumann Commission Report raises fundamental questions in regard to the status to be maintained by provincial councils. What is to be the future status of provincial councils in terms of this Government’s policy? We hear much of the three tiers of government, namely the Central, Provincial and Local Authority Government. But we in this country are moving rapidly to the assumption of authoritarian status by this Government and the reduction of provincial and municipal government to the status of mere administrative bodies. These bodies are to be without a mind of their own, without an opinion of their own, and are merely to be the factotums to carry out Government policy. There is one paragraph in the White Paper which bears evidence of the Government’s intolerance and it is most alarming. It appears in the White Paper and indicates the intolerance of this Government to any differences of opinion with lower levels of government. Paragraph 23 deals with the establishment of a central road-building organization. Sub-paragraph (7) reads as follows:

In other words, the opinions and views of the provinces will now count for nought. They will be heard, but they will be overruled and directions will be given. [Interjections.] If he did his job in Natal, the hon. the Minister of the Interior would know that we in the provinces fought hard against the National Roads Commission. In many cases we succeeded even if it was a matter of bearing down and wearing down the authoritarianism which that commission assumed unto itself. But now that authoritarianism is going to be given to it by statute. All the pleadings of the hon. the Minister’s successor as Administrator of Natal will be as of nought. He will be wasting his time.

You did not read the whole paragraph.

I hope the hon. the Minister will tell me where I have not read sub-paragraph (7) in full, because that is what it says.

After sub-paragraph (7) they tell you that the provinces will handle some of this.

Yes, the provinces will in future do the following: They will maintain the roads and will also undertake the construction of national roads which will form part of the new network. They will however build these roads according to instructions from the central body. They will also carry on the function of exercising traffic control on the national roads.

We will have an opportunity to discuss that when the Bill dealing with this matter comes before the House.

Yes, I will discuss it more fully with the hon. the Minister in due course. I have merely indicated what the attitude of this Government is in regard to roads as indicated in the White Paper tabled by the hon. the Minister of Finance.

The provinces have agreed to this Bill.

Yes, we will have a lot of time to talk about that in more detail.

Let me go on to my next point in discussing the autonomy of the provinces. That is in regard to education. We have seen what is recommended by the Schumann Commission. We have seen what the White Paper says. But what is very interesting is that while this Government had in its possession the report of the Schumann Commission, which was handed to the Government in 1964, the hon. the Minister of National Education introduced legislation in this House contrary to the recommendations of the Schumann Commission without mentioning one word of the fact that it was contrary to the advice of the Schumann Commission.

This is not correct.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Minister newly acquired by us in this House, was not here in 1967. Nor was he here in 1969. If he will read the Hansard where the national education legislation was introduced, he will find that not one word was said by the hon. the Minister to us in this House, as to what the recommendations of the Schumann Commission were. If the hon. the Minister looks at section 3 of the 1967 Act, as amended in 1969, he will also find that were he back in the seat of Administrator of Natal, he would not be able to introduce an ordinance into the Natal Provincial Administration without first obtaining the approval of the hon. the Minister of National Education. If, in the wisdom of one of his councillors, it was necessary to amend that ordinance he would have to postpone the debate in the council and come back to the Minister and ask him if the amendment could be considered.

Let me go on to the health position. The hon. the Minister with the Schumann Commission report in his pocket since 1964, has been building up his little empire to take over health in all aspects. We will discuss with the hon. the Minister under his Vote the posts that he has created in anticipation of getting authority to take over what he wishes to take over according to this White Paper. If one looks at the White Paper one finds the extraordinary position again that the Government will dictate and the provinces will heed and carry out instructions. In paragraph 590 of the report it is suggested that, as far as the Health Department is concerned, there should be a national health advisory council. That council was recommended by this commission for very good reasons. The principal function of “the council shall be to formulate a national health policy and to co-ordinate the services of various authorities entrusted with health services.” But what does the hon. the Minister and the Government recommend in the White Paper? No, in the White Paper it is envisaged that this national health advisory council will not only deal with those matters as suggested, but will now apparently take over from the Minister of Education the “co-ordination of facilities for the training of physicians, dentists, nurses and persons in the para-medical profession.” Perhaps the hon. the Minister will tell me and the House at some stage as to how his Department of Health fits in and what say it is going to have in the medical schools of South Africa, which at present fall under his colleague’s department. He could also tell us what facilities they would have in the teaching hospitals and what cooperation his department is going to get in this interference in the present set-up. The present set-up has existed in South Africa for a long time and it is efficient. When one comes to the proposal for regional health authorities, one comes to a vast chasm between the approach of the commission and the approach of this Government. It exposes again the Government’s attitude which I have termed as authoritarian, that its will must prevail down to the last individual. The regional health authorities recommended and envisaged by the Schumann Commission are based on the involvement of the local population in health services. The recommendation of the Schumann Commission was that these regional health authorities should have a provincial official in charge and then should have the local authority representatives, together with representatives from welfare organizations and members of the public in that particular region. What does the White Paper say? The White Paper says that the regional authorities will be a department of the hon. the Minister and that the members of these authorities will be appointed by him. I want to say to the hon. the Minister that it will be a sad day for South Africa and for our health institutions if public involvement and the interest of the public is not maintained in every medical, both curative and preventative, institution in South Africa. It is not going to be obtained by the dictatorship of the upper thinking of a central Government department imposed down to the local levels, as indicated in this report.

When one comes to finance, I think one finds the final end of the autonomy of provinces. With the limitation of taxation which the hon. the Minister has indicated he will accept, comes the end-result, through all the tables and all the tabulations which we have in these reports, that provincial finance will be based on three bases. There will be determination of the needs of a province, a determination of the province’s capacity to pay and the third will be the deficit. I remember and recall with sorrow the words of the former Administrator of the Cape Province, when he once said to us in the provincial council, “I am so tired of going cap in hand to the Minister of Finance asking for funds.” This formula will have the result that exactly the same procedure will continue in future years. The hon. the Minister can tell me—and I hope he will be able to correct me and to tell me that I am on the wrong track, and if I am on the wrong track I hope he will put me on the right track—where in this proposal there is any alleviation of the arguments which will continue between the provinces and the Central Government in regard to what money they should receive every year. This is so because the three points I have already mentioned, namely the need, the capacity and the deficit, are all arguable points which can be debated between the Central Government and the provinces.

Finally it has been mentioned by the hon. member for Pinetown, and I want to recall it again, that the important factor which is missing from this new deal for the provinces, is the question of capital requirements. As I understand, the position in the Cape Province at the moment is that the province is already committed to some 700 capital expenditure projects. This total of some 700 should take, if dealt with in terms of the normal capital expenditure, some eight years to complete. There is complete silence in the Budget and complete silence in the White Paper as to from where those capital funds will come. In so far as education is concerned, one thing has become evident from what is before us in the White Paper. It is evident that in so far as education is concerned the opinions of the provinces are subject to this Government. This is the case in so far as it concerns traffic laws. The hon. the Minister of the Interior will be aware of this. When a uniform ordinance regarding traffic came it was debated as merely a formality in the provincial council because it could not be amended, no matter what the councils’ opinion was. In so far as health is concerned we have the situation that the big stick will be wielded by the Central Government. We have, in so far as finance is concerned, such manoeuvrability as there was within the provinces completely removed by this new concept.

I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether in his reply he will be frank with the country. What is this Government’s intention as regards the future of the provincial councils? I ask this, because the provincial councils now are losing the function of debating the merits or demerits of a matter within the confines and the interests of their own province. They are now being put in the position, as I said earlier, of being an administrative body to merely carry out the directions of the Central Government. If that is so, let us stop calling it an elected council. Let us stop pretending that we are continuing with our Constitution today on the basis of the Union and Republican Constitutions, and let us realize that what this Government is aiming at, is a unitary system of government which will dictate through all three tiers of government and that those second and third tiers will disappear under the philosophy of this Government.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Green Point propagated a number of strange standpoints here. He actually became serious when he did so. He said that for the sake of ideological considerations we were now building separate residential areas and separating colour groups from one another. Is that what I have to hear from that hon. member now, in the year 1971? I want to ask him. Does the hon. member want District Six to remain as it is? Does the hon. member want the mixed residential conditions, with all the social problems, implications and costs they involve, to be continued?

The hon. member registered objections against the system of migratory labour. Does he want all the Bantu labourers who come to work here in South Africa in the White area and in our cities and mines, to be accompanied by their families? As the position is at present, we shall within a few decades have to make provision for 40 000 new labourers every year, just from the Bantu living within our White areas. We shall have to make provision for 90 000 Bantu labourers, if we add the Bantu areas to the White areas. Does the hon. member want to house those labourers here on a family basis, without any checks and without any control or planning?

Nonsense!

That is what the hon. member said. I do not want to invent an argument if there is none. Did the hon. member not say that? Did he not raise objections to the system of migratory labour? ¡[Interjections.] Sir, I have been here too long to want to start an argument here about nonsense. I want to know the truth from the hon. member. Did he raise objections to the system of migratory labour?

I did, yes.

Well, then it is true after all. In that case, this is my question: Does the hon. member want to place 90 000 Bantu workers on a family basis within the White area? The hon. member cannot escape. He cannot propagate a policy which will allow him to escape to the border areas or the Bantu areas, for they are totally opposed to the border area policy. Where does he want to go to now? Sir, they want to bring them here. That is obvious. Where does the hon. member want to take them? They are to come here. I repeat the number—90 000. The hon. member does not appreciate the implications of his policy.

Then the hon. member spoke about provincial relations with the central authority. I think the Minister of the Interior can reply to that. But today it has once again become very clear to me that the party on that side has no ideology. We have one. I admit frankly that we have an ideology, a philosophy of life. I am obliged to say that we base all our activities on our ideology, which is our philosophy of life. As regards our entire labour policy, the pattern of labour which we are engraving, is based on a definite philosophy of life. Our government expenditure, as we see it in this Budget, is linked with and built into a specific, purposeful philosophy of life, an ideology of life. Our entire national relations policy has a philosophy of life built into it. But what is the ideology of life of the Opposition as a party? To me it seems as though the philosophy of the United Party is based on acting in an ad hoc manner from day to day, an ad hoc policy founded on no definite concept or structure. They have no structure on which they can found their policy—it is merely an ad hoc, confused, temporary and meaningless conglomeration of a lot of words. I am sick and tired of having to hear all the time that the National Party finds itself in a sorry plight as regards labour and spending because of the fact that these things are linked with an ideology. My party, and I take pride in saying this, has a definite philosophy of life. Without an ideology of life and without a philosophy of life—two things which I actually regard as being synonymous—no government can govern responsibly. [Interjections.] There they are sitting spread-eagled, Mr. Speaker …

Order! Is the hon. member for Florida or the hon. member for Carletonville making the speech?

Consequently their attempt “to launch a devastating attack against the Government” miscarried within five minutes yesterday. In fact, I have never witnessed a “slashing attack” like the one I experienced yesterday. It was like a storm that was delivered of a mouse. After the hon. the main speaker opposite had spoken for five minutes yesterday, the whole bottom had already fallen out of their attack—“the devastating attack”! “the slashing onslaught”!

Let us accept it as a fact that we are living in a world obsessed with growth. The inflation psychosis has, in the midst of a series of salary increases, created with the public the impression that we have in real terms become richer at a faster rate than is in fact the case. The result is that consumer spending is in disproportion to real income and labour productivity. The consumer extravagance which we see with our own eyes every day, is something which brings forth many monsters. It brings forth ugly children, the ugliest of which is wastefulness, a wastefulness mania. Come, let us be honest with one another. A wastefulness mania is rampant in South Africa and it is forcing us to speak up. The strips along our roads have become refuse dumps for empty beer cans and empty brandy bottles. Visit our sportsfields and rest camps along the roads and see how the evidence of consumer extravagance and a tendency towards wastefulness lies scattered about! This is something about which we may no longer keep quiet. Now, if the Minister tries to change this pattern, to set limits to this consumer extravagance, this is what the hon. the main speaker opposite has to say: “There sits the Laughing Party.” What the Minister is concerned with here in all earnestness, is to see what he can do towards changing this consumer pattern and curbing it. After all, that is what has been written into the Budget. Hon. members may differ with the Minister as regards the question of whether he should impose a savings levy or whether he should increase direct income tax. Hon. members may differ on that score, but not on the intention; they may not laugh about that; they may not differ on that. On the motive of the hon. the Minister they may not differ, although they may in fact do so on the method. Let us look at more evidence of wastefulness. In every town there are premises crammed with serviceable second-hand motor vehicles and tractors. But our people are so obsessed with a desire to buy that those vehicles cannot be sold. New ones must be bought! It is calculated that between R250 and R300 million’s worth of serviceable implements and vehicles which can still earn capital, are standing idle there! This is unmistakeable evidence of a consumer extravagance. That is a direct cause of the disproportionateness to labour productivity and labour achievement.

It is wrong to compare our position in South Africa with that of countries in the outside world. Our position is quite different. The outside world may have an inflationary growth rate of up to 6 per cent. That I admit. However, do hon. members realize that we have to implement here the strictest measures for combating inflation as our gold-mining industry cannot tolerate a rate of inflation of more than 3 per cent, in view of the particular problems of that industry? At present our gold is still a mainstay when it comes to the earning of capital for our growing economy. But there is vet another reason for our taking stricter action against inflation, a reason which is peculiar to South Africa. In South Africa we have two main groups of labour: the labourers from the traditional sector, i.e. the unskilled labour, mainly Bantu, and from the modern sector, if. I may call it such, i.e. the Whites. When the Minister prepares a budget in South Africa, he has to take these two groups of labour sectors into account. He may not allow the traditional sector to become overstaffed; he may not allow a possibility of disguised unemployment to develop in that sector. In order to get that right, our Budgets and the methods applied by us must bear the stamp of stability.

What is the Minister doing in this Budget? He is diverting part of the government spending. Where to? To the Bantu homelands. Hon. members opposite may differ with us on the amount, but it is an obvious fact that in diverting that amount of money from government spending to the Bantu areas, the Minister has one end in view, namely to bring about built-in stability for that traditional labour sector. Sir, irrespective of whether one wanted to channel, in terms of U.P. policy, those traditional 90 000 Bantu here and in the Bantu areas to the built-up White area, the metropolitan areas, the authorities will always be charged with the function and the task of providing the infrastructure.

Now I just want to ask this simple question: Where would it be most economic to establish this infrastructure—in the already over-crowded, expensive, built-up areas, i.e. the metropolitan areas, or would it be wiser for us to swing away and to establish the infrastructure inside the Bantu areas, or as closely as possible to the traditional source of labour? This is the simple question that has to be asked. The State cannot escape its responsibility in this regard. It will have to take the responsibility for establishing that infrastructure. It requires capital-intensive activities to build infrastructures today. This is where the major, radical, difference between this side and that side comes in as far as this Budget is concerned. They are criticizing the authorities for its government spending; they are criticizing the authorities because government spending has increased by 18 per cent. We could easily have brought it down to 8 per cent or 6 per cent. That would have been dead easy. But then hon. members opposite should tell me in what respects they want government spending to have been curtailed.

Sir, we are engaged here in a tremendous emancipation programme, in terms of which we want to emancipate the Whites from the Bantu, and this emancipation programme is going to cost us a great deal of money. It is not only an emancipation programme in the political sphere; it is actually a reconstruction programme in the economic sphere for the purpose of propping up the political emancipation in later years. What was the cost of a reconstruction programme in Africa, after political emancipation, in terms of lease-lend and gifts and presents which they doled out? It came to thousands and thousands of billions of dollars. What was the cost of the Marshall Plan, the reconstruction programme of Europe? After all, with this major emancipation programme which we have to prop up with economic stability, we must funnel and channel money into those areas; that is our ideology. Is it not splendid to have such a philosophy which is intelligible and can be reasoned out logically, instead of the confusion and floundering which make up the policy of that side?

Sir, there are other factors which are actually compelling us to convert and build in our entire financial structure in accordance with our philosophy of life, our ideology. It is our ideology which makes it essential for us to convert and reconstruct and build our entire financial structure into certain projects which are absolutely essential for our continued existence and for our stability. Sir, we are engaged in a major reconstruction programme in respect of our Coloureds. Have the U.P. members who always have such a great deal to say about the Coloureds, ever thought how the fact that by 1990 the Coloureds will overtake the Whites in number, will affect the whole political and economic structure into which the Coloureds have to be incorporated? To those people who have so much advice to offer on the Coloureds today, I just want to make one small request: Rather expend all your energies on bemoaning the lot of the Coloureds, on conditioning the Coloured population and on providing them with guidance in respect of family planning and the prevention of a canker which is affecting the entire Coloured community as an organism, namely the total absence of planning in respect of family building and population increase which will in the long run—in the not too distant future too— upset all the well-intentioned projections and deeds in regard to spatial organization, social upliftment and economic and political emancipation, and which will cause the social and political structures which these well-meaning people and benefactors want to establish for these purposes, to be reduced to crumbling ruins. I want to make an appeal here. There is one party which is governing, and there is one party which has proclaimed its policy in regard to the Coloureds. Please, let us stop referring to all these contradictory statements made by every speculator on problems affecting the Coloureds and let us view the problem in its proper perspective.

Which Minister are we to believe?

Sir, we are experiencing a great deal of pressure in the sphere of education. The authorities have made provision for that, and today I want to testify to that in a most grateful manner. But whereas the authorities have allocated funds for that purpose and appreciate the necessity for education to be improved, I want to conclude with a question I want to ask: I want to put one question to the 6 220 professors, lecturers and instructors who operated at the end of 1969, to the 2 480 teachers of special subjects, to the 41 400 teachers, to the 453 inspectors, to the 4 870 ministers of religion, priests and missionaries, to the 2 252 editors, authors, journalists and reporters, i.e. a total of 57 800 at the end of 1969: You, who have to work daily, directly and indirectly, with the development of the mind, with the intellectual preparation and the mental preparedness of these labourers, with whom we are dealing in South Africa, be it professionally, technically, operationally or in the manufacturing industry, are you satisfied with the products you are producing? This is a question which I want to ask in all earnestness. Have you reinforced adequately the mental and intellectual development, the development of technical skills, the professional finish of your scholars and students, and have you armed them with mental preparedness and with an indestructible assessment of value in respect of labour and a sense of duty? Is one of the basic causes of this inflation which the Minister is trying to combat here, not to be found in labour unproductivity? Sir, is the powerful hold which the trade unions abroad are developing now, not the result of a wrong approach on the part of the products of the training institutions in Britain, on all levels, to labour, labour achievement and labour responsibility? Is this wrong approach to labour not one of the basic causes of the per capita labour unproductivity? I put it. The authorities will do their duty. We shall approve increased government spending. We shall always insist on increased expenditure on education by the authorities, but the public, who are providing those funds, also expect something in return for these funds from our people who are dealing on various levels with the intellectual and mental preparation of our people who must eventually perform their labour on the various levels in the country. At the end of 1969 there were in this country 79 547 managing directors, executive and administrative officers who were directly concerned with labour productivity. Here, where the Minister has been making honest attempts at curbing inflation, where we are saying in this House every day, from platform to platform, that labour productivity must be enhanced as the basic remedy for inflation, I want to put this question to those almost 80 000 managing directors and executive officers who are dealing with the operation of labourers: What are you doing to get the maximum labour productivity out of your workers? This is a serious question to put to them, namely whether they have put their own house in order. We as the authorities, the Minister and the nation is entitled to a quid pro quo from those who are concerned with the moulding and work of the eventual worker on the professional or technical level or on any other level whatever.

I am making haste. I am going to resume my seat in a moment. I just want to say this. In this Budget the Minister has done everything that is expected from a responsible Government which undertakes long-term projections. For that reason this increase in government spending provides to my mind the grounds for justification, for defending it, because this is not a Government which sits and wails here at the proverbial Wailing Wall of Jerusalem. This is not a Government which has created the impression abroad that it is a Government which is afraid of the future. This government spending incorporates not only a boundless confidence, but also a concealed incentive to the manufacturer and to the labourer in South Africa by saying to them: This is your Government; trust it. It is building the infrastructures in order to realize the rapidly developing growth which is expected and which has to follow this stability that has been built into this Budget. What would you think of a Government which ignored the R1 700 million spent in South Africa over the past six years, plus the domestic capital formation, plus thousands of Bantu plus the thousands upon thousands of Whites entering the labour market, and which is saddled with an infrastructure incapable of accommodating that development? Then you would have had the right to say that there was a lack of planning. That is why it gives me pleasure to lend my full support to this Budget, because it is based on an ideology, on a philosophy of life, because responsibility forms an integral part of this party’s philosophy of life and because that philosophy of life is aimed at maintaining stability in all spheres. That philosophy compels me to support the authorities wherever they come forward, as I see it, with such planning as has been built into this Budget. And there they are sitting, Mr. Speaker. Just permit me to say this. There they are sitting.

You are speaking with your tongue in your cheek.

Order! Which hon. member said that?

I said it.

The hon. member must withdraw it.

I withdraw it.

May I continue speaking for another moment, Sir? That party is sitting over there. This phenomenon which is at work in South Africa today, is a temporary one prevailing all over the world. In the course of the election campaign that party exploited it to a certain extent, but it is a world phenomenon. To a certain extent the whole world has revolted against authority. (Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, next year when the hon. the Minister of Finance presents his Budget in this House, he will not need to travel to far-off China to look for a philosopher. Right here in Carletonville in South Africa we have a philosopher. The hon. the Minister can repair to him for some noteworthy quotations for next year’s Budget. The hon. member has been giving us the benefit of the ideological philosophy to which he and his party subscribe. I do not propose to follow him very far in that direction. However, I want to mention three matters in reply to some points he has made. He talked about the gold-mining industry not being able to stand more than a 3 per cent inflation, because of its difficulties caught between the rising cost structure and the fixed price of gold. The hon. member is in a very favourable position to discuss it, since he represents a mining constituency. I understand that he has a fair amount of influence in the mineworkers Union. I would suggest to him that he use that influence to try and persuade the miners to allow some rationalization in the labour set-up in the gold mining industry, which would certainly enable the industry

That is one of the most productive sectors.

It might be productive, but the way in which the labour is organized at the present stage in the mining industry itself is no benefit to South Africa. It is not going to be able to keep the marginal mines going, nor is it going to enable our industry generally to go on earning us foreign exchange, unless considerable changes are made inside the labour structure of the mining industry. Secondly, I want to tell the hon. member that the way in which to increase the productivity of the White workers in this country is not to give them complete protection against competition from non-White workers. One of the main reasons why productivity has not in fact kept pace with the rising wages which the White workers have gained over the past years, is because of this built-in protection against non-White competition. Thirdly, I want to say to the hon. member that his Government has had over 20 years in which to put its ideology into practice and to erect this infrastructure inside the reserves and on the borders of the reserves, which is going to provide such stability as far as African workers are concerned. I want to know just what it has achieved over the 20 years. How many jobs have been provided inside the homelands for Africans other than in subsistence agriculture? I want to know where are all the belching chimneys of the industries which are going to stabilize Black workers in the homelands. I want to know if the hon. member can honestly say that the development of border industries has in any way stemmed the flow of African workers to the White industrial areas. He knows that that is not so. He knows that, with all the effort in the world, the Government is unable to build up industries in the reserves and on the borders of the reserves, which can in any way compete with the employment opportunities offered to African workers in the White industrial areas of South Africa.

This is not an instant recipe. It is a process.

I wish the hon. member would keep quiet. He has had a good half hour with no interruptions. I would say that the Government has had more than 20 years of trying to implement this wonderful ideology about which the hon. member for Carletonville has been telling us. I say that it is an abysmal failure. It has failed and it will go on failing simply because it runs counter to every economic fact in South Africa. I do agree with the hon. member in one respect, namely that when we discuss the Budget we should be discussing the economy of the country, the well-being of the economy and the role the State plays in the wellbeing of the economy. When I look at what this Government is busy doing to a country which is as well endowed as South Africa, I have the impression that it is being handled by a lot of unskilled workers who have got hold of a delicate piece of machinery and are systematically taking it to pieces and leaving it in ruins. This is the impression I have after watching this Government handling the prosperous country that South Africa certainly should be. It should not be facing the problems it is facing today. These days one does not hear much about the efficient Nationalist Cabinet. It used to be quite fashionable at one stage to say that one does not agree with the Nationalists’ policy but that one had to admit that they have a very efficient Cabinet. It has certainly been a very long time since I have heard that comment in any of the drawing rooms that I frequent in South Africa. In fact, I cannot think of a time when I have encountered such a general feeling of malaise, discontent and despondency amongst the ordinary citizens of South Africa, more particularly amongst the business community whose main job is to keep the economy of this country ticking over and who provide the lion’s share of revenue to the coffers of the Government. These people have their official organizations to speak up for them, like the Chambers of Industry and the Chambers of Commerce, the Handelsinstituut and the different Sakekamers. They can talk up for the employers of labour and so can the Chamber of Mines. As far as employees who belong to registered trade unions are concerned, they also have associations that can speak up for them. I propose this afternoon to say a few words on behalf of those people who are not represented by trade unions and who, in fact, have nobody who will speak up for them as far as their present considerable economic difficulties are concerned.

But first let me say that I believe that if the Government had paid any attention to the representations of the people whom I have already mentioned, we would not be facing the problems that we are facing today, namely that of inflation, high taxes, an increasingly unfavourable balance of payments and a shortage of investment funds due to high interest rates. Then there is also the shortage of labour, of course. We have had members on the other side talking about Zambia and its high cost of living, Zambia of course has a high cost of living and is facing considerable difficulties in getting manufactured commodities into the country because of its political problems. No one denies that. Last night somebody talked about Rhodesia having a shortage of labour although the labour laws applied in South Africa do not apply in Rhodesia. But it is a question of training. Does it occur to the hon. member that simply not having laws that prevent the utilization of labour is not the whole answer to the question? Labour has to be trained and given technical education.

I now want to say something about those people who do not have any representative bodies to speak up for them. We know about the inflationary nature of the Budget and we know what high railway tariffs and increased fares and increased sales taxes have done to the general standards and cost of living in South Africa, more particularly how the indirect taxes have affected those members of the community who are the least able to cope. By this I of course mean the bulk of non-White workers in South Africa, more particularly the Africans. The hon. the Prime Minister is on record as saying that the thing he fears most is widespread unemployment amongst non-Whites, particularly Africans. But there is already widespread unemployment amongst Africans, particularly in the rural areas but this fact seems to have escaped his notice. What has certainly escaped the notice of the entire Cabinet is the fact that the steady reduction in the effective spending power of the small pay-packets of the African workers is leading to considerable dissatisfaction and very real hardship and is manifesting itself in the accentuation of poverty, malnutrition and allied diseases. Even before the steep rise in the cost of living, before this eroded the paypackets of the non-White workers, their wages and, especially, that of the African workers, were appallingly low. How they are going to cope now is quite beyond me. The cost of living has increased by nine per cent on bare necessities between June, 1969 and November, 1970 and on food alone, by 13 per cent. Since then there has, of course, been a further increase. To the best of my knowledge, there has been no corresponding rise in wages which, in any case, as I say, even if the percentage increase was added, were far too low to cope with the situation. I want to give the House a few examples of existing wage rates. Recently I saw that the Transvaal Provincial Administration had laid down a starting wage for male cleaners in their schools of R34 per month in the cities going up to a maximum of R48 per month. In the rural areas the starting wage is R21 per month going up to R41 per month. I want to remind the House that the latest poverty datum line is over R70 per month for a family of six in an urban township. This is not my estimate, but the latest estimate of Assocom. The average monthly starting wage in Johannesburg was recently estimated at R43-85 per month. Less than five per cent of workers earned over R58 per month. In the construction industry Africans earn on an average R48 per month and in manufacturing industry they earn R52 per month. Surveys show that there has been an increase of less than three per cent per annum in real wages between 1962 and 1969. Quite recently in Natal, there was a go-slow strike by the garment industry workers. At that stage the starting wage was R5 Der week. After two years it went up to R9-25 per week rising to R15 per week. It has recently been increased by 15 per cent. A recent investigation, in fact, which was published only yesterday, about Coloured workers in Port Elizabeth, shows that half the Coloured male workers in Port Elizabeth earn less than R67 per month. This investigation was done by the municipality following the disturbances over the rise in busfares.

There are recent Transvaal wage determinations for unskilled workers. I think these are a positive disgrace. They were gazetted on the 31st March, 1971 and, I think, the House ought to know what this Gazette contains. This is for the Witwatersrand area. It excludes Johannesburg. I notice that Pretoria is also excluded. But all the other Witwatersrand municipal areas are included. It is for unskilled wages of employees of local authorities. The minimum wage rate is R6-40 per week for a female, R8 for a male over the age of 18 and R6 for a male under the age of 18. Knowing what we do about the rising cost of living, knowing what we do about the poverty datum line in urban areas, will somebody please tell me how the Wage Board can possibly lay down determinations on the 31st March, 1971, which hardly supply a male worker with enough to buy food alone for himself and his family. In fact, this is not enough to buy food for himself and his family, because four times R8 is R32 and the amount needed for food alone, according to the Chamber of Commerce estimates, for a family of six in an urban area is R36-26 per month. How do we expect these people to live? Where is there any flexibility? Of course, flexibility is only in food, because rent is fixed, transport is fixed and a minimum amount of clothing has to be bought. Therefore, in the end, we come down to the African people saving on food. That has led to dire results as far as the health of these people is concerned and as far as malnutrition, T.B., gastro-enteritis and all the allied diseases are concerned.

The Africans have no collective bargaining power. They are not allowed to be members of registered trade unions. They are therefore ignored generally when it comes to negotiating wage rates. I might say that their precarious position in the towns where, if they lose a job, it may well mean that they are endorsed out of the urban area into a rural homeland where there are no opportunities for employment at all, makes them even more susceptible to exploitation. I believe that it is the role of the State therefore, to try and regress the imbalance in this regard. As I have said, I am shocked to see that on the 31st March. 1971. we have this gazetting of wages of unskilled jobs in the industrial areas of the Witwatersrand. Ninety-seven of these unskilled jobs are listed, many of them entailing the most hard physical labour, where the unskilled minimum rate is R8 per week for an African who is over the age of 18 years. I think it is shocking and I think that it is something which the hon. the Minister should take up with his colleague the Minister of Labour. If we talk about the productivity of labour, let me tell the hon. the Minister that a man who is not well fed does not work decently and cannot put his best into the job. If we want to increase the productivity of our labour, we simply have to see to it that the huge mass of unskilled workers, the African workers in South Africa, are paid proper wages.

I might say that the disparity between the wages of skilled workers and unskilled workers, which is being decreased in every modern industrial country of the world, is on the increase in South Africa. The disparity is increasing all the time. According to Dr. Sheila van der Horst, in 1945 the average African earnings in manufacturing and construction were 25 per cent of those of the Whites, while in 1970 they were 17 per cent of those of the Whites. Coloured earnings were 42 per cent of White earnings, and Indian earnings 40 per cent of White earnings in 1945. In 1970, however, both were 26 per cent of the Whites. On the mines the disparity is even greater. The wages of White workers used to be 10 times that of African workers, but today the wages of White workers are 17 times those of the African workers. Here is a field in which the State ought to play a far more important part. They should play a far more important part in this, because South Africa’s wealth lies in its huge labour force. An underpaid and an unproductive labour force is not going to yield the harvest which South Africa is entitled to have. I now want to refer to the physical effect which it has on these people.

I have not mentioned the conditions in rural areas, but on the basis of the latest agricultural census I want to mention a few points. The latest agricultural census was way back in 1964. Just imagine we have had no more recent figures about agricultural earnings than 1964! I think it is high time that we should have a new survey of the rural areas so that we can find out exactly what the earnings are in the rural areas, especially on White farms. This would be interesting, more particularly now that the labour tenant system is supposed to be disappearing. Then we can see whether the farmers are paying cash wages equivalent to the amount at which they valued the wages in kind when the labour tenant system was in existence in Natal and elsewhere. It will be very interesting to see if the farmers do now pay their labourers a cash wage to make up for what they were paying in kind when the labour tenant system existed. As far as one could ascertain from that latest survey. R83 per annum was the average amount paid to regular farm workers, varying from R57-50 per annum in the Orange Free State to R94 in Natal.

As I say, the problem which we have to face and which the Government should be facing is not only that of unemployment, but it is one of people who are underpaid. In other words, it is a poverty problem. In one word, the great problem in South Africa is poverty among the vast masses of our non-European workers, and more particularly among the African workers. Poverty has also lead to malnutrition. I am glad that the hon. the Minister of Health is here, because I have a few words to say to him about malnutrition.

We have all heard about the rural malnutrition. Recently a T.V. film was shown in Britain and it showed a considerable amount of malnutrition in the rural areas of South Africa. It created a furore. I might say I have read the typescript and it is largely accurate, apart from possibly one or two exaggerations. This film was shot on the premises of hospitals and you cannot bluff the camera. There they were.

Nonsense.

The hon. member can say “Nonsense”, but this is fact. I will quote to him mission hospital reports; then I would like him to tell me that it is nonsense. Does he think that the doctors at mission hospitals are deliberately fabricating in order to put South Africa in a poor light, or does he think that they are simply doing their duty? The hon. member shakes his head sadly. He ought to do that. Apart from shaking his head in that sad way, he also ought to see that the Government does something about these conditions. We know a lot about rural malnutrition. [Interjection.] I do not have to look; it is before one’s eyes if one only bothers to look. One does not have to seek it out. What I want is that something should be done about it. That is the object of my raising these matters in the House. I want something to be done about it, because it is a disgrace to South Africa. A country as rich as South Africa should not tolerate such conditions amongst its people. There is a good deal of malnutrition …

Which of these hospitals did you visit?

I have not visited them; I have read their annual reports, and I believe them.

I invite you to visit them.

Yes, I know the hon. the Minister has visited 17 out of the 131 mission hospitals.

More than that.

Well, I am only quoting his own words. He told me he visited 17. I have his reply on my question here.

Those figures are out of date.

Oh, he has visited them since January, has he? But I have seen him here in the House. He could not have been running around visiting mission hospitals since January. I doubt very much if the hon. the Minister has visited any hospitals since January.

I am not saying that nothing has been done. I am coming to that. I give credit where credit is due. I must say that now that the Department of Health is taking a hand in this matter, matters have improved considerably. A greater amount of money has been made available. A new rural health scheme is coming into operation. I do not know why the administration has been put under the Department of Bantu Administration in the homelands. Perhaps the hon. the Minister of Health will tell me this. But I do want to give credit to the Department of Health for instituting a new rural health scheme. I would say that the Secretary for Health has gathered about him some very efficient people, like Drs. Erasmus, Wittman and others, who are nutritional experts and who are doing their best now to get the scheme going. It is interesting to see that the reports of all of the mission hospitals, even St. Michaels in Kuruman, where the very worst conditions applied, give credit to the department for the help which they are now receiving, for example the distribution of skimmed milk, the increased amounts which have been granted for hospital facilities and the building of wards. But there is no doubt that there is still an enormous amount of malnutrition in the rural areas. I have reports of about eight hospitals, and they show that there is wide-spread malnutrition in South Africa. This situation is caused by poverty. I will grant the Minister immediately that ignorance does play a part; but it is no good educating people as to the value of protein food when they do not have the money to buy it. There is no point in it. Protein food is the most expensive food to buy. There is dire poverty in many of the homelands. Let us take the area around Kuruman near St. Michaels Hospital, which the hon. the Minister visited in January, and where he said he could find only three cases of kwashiorkor. The figures were very different last year and the year before, when there were several hundred cases of kwashiorkor being treated.

It is not several hundred.

Yes. I have the report here. I will read it to the hon. the Minister, if he likes.

The mines in that area cannot find people to come and work, because they will not.

No, because the conditions are quite bad. So they have to get migrant workers to employ there.

No, those people will not work.

No, they do not want to work on the mines, because the conditions and the pay are bad. Indeed, one of the factors mentioned in this mission hospital report is the fact that the people who come off the asbestos mines are in a very bad condition and in very poor health. So they do not go and work on the asbestos mines. Those people go away to work in the urban areas in South Africa. The families are left behind, dependent on what the migratory workers send them. They are very often deserted, because by the very nature of things, the male migratory workers take up with women in the towns and they forget about the families left behind in the homelands. What is accentuating the problem particularly in the area of the Kuruman hospital, which covers about 100 000 people generally, is that into this area are being shoved more and more of the so-called superfluous appendages. People from Black spots elsewhere are also moved into the area. From Schmidtsdrift, for instance, 7 000 people were moved from where they were living perfectly happily in a so-called Black spot near Kimberley, where they could visit their families once a week. They worked on the mines, mostly, and they were moved into the Kuruman area, which is miles away from Kimberley. Now they have become proper migratory labourers. All these factors are accentuating the poverty in the homelands. I think the hon. the Minister of Health must keep one thing in mind if he wants his new rural health scheme to work properly. It is not just necessary to cure those people who suffer from malnutrition. I am not only talking about Kuruman. One can look at the conditions at Nqutu, in the Herschel district, in the Ciskei, in Keiskammahoek. All these areas reveal the most pathetic conditions of poverty and malnutrition. If the hon. the Minister wants his new rural health scheme to work, he will have to do two things. Firstly, he should call on the Ministry of Bantu Administration to stop pushing more people into these poverty-stricken homelands where there are no employment opportunities whatsoever for them. Those of them who are lucky enough to get a job, clearing jobs and so on, earn R16-80 a month if they are male, and R5 or R6 a month if they are women for doing some weeding and things like that. For the rest they rely on the old age pension of R10 every two months or on the paltry earnings that are sent to them from the urban areas. This scheme, Sir, is doomed to failure unless the Department of Bantu Administration co-operates with the Department of Health and stops packing people into these poverty-stricken homelands.

That is a very minor reason …

But, surely, poverty cannot be a minor reason. I think about R150 000 is allocated for the distribution of dried milk powder. This is helpful but is only a drop in the ocean if one takes into account that 2 lb. a week are needed to keep a child healthy and that there are at least ½ million children who need help. The cost of this powdered milk is about 15c a packet of which 5c is paid by the local authority and 5c by means of a subsidy.

And yet they do not want that but instead buy the more expensive article.

And, of course, they also spend money on drink, as the hon. the Deputy Minister informed us the other day. According to him, about R15 per month per family is being spent in Soweto on liquor. Well, the hon. the Deputy Minister ought to check his arithmetic again. He should not worry about families but must remember what the total population is. He must remember that there are about 100 000 migrant single workers who by the very nature of things all drink heavily. Furthermore, he ought not to ascribe the amount spent on alcohol to affluence because in reality it is a sign of despair. [Interjections.] Any sociologist can tell us that. What does the hon. the Deputy Minister think the tremendous rate of alcohol consumption amongst the Coloured population of the Cape is due to? Is it a sign of affluence or is it a sign that the Coloured population has become socially desperate, a sick society? They do not spend money on alcohol because they are happy and affluent … [Interjections.] The hon. the Minister should not therefore tell me that they prefer the 40c packet of soup to the less expensive milk powder. People have got to be educated.

We are doing it.

Yes, you are doing it and you are doing it to the best of your ability, but your ability is not going to get you very far as long as the efforts of the Department of Health are being countered by the efforts of the Department of Bantu Administration.

How do you explain the fact that we have so many illegal Black immigrants in South Africa?

I shall give the hon. the Minister the answer. It is because South Africa as a whole is more affluent than the bordering territories. In Lesotho, for instance, there are no employment opportunities; similarly with Malawi. In Rhodesia, moreover, there is a huge unemployment rate. So they come to South Africa in the hope of earning some money—it is as simple as that.

According to you they come here to get kwashiorkor.

Well, a lot of them do, pellagra at least, since they are adults. Kwashiorkor is prevalent amongst babies. As I was saying, unless the Department of Health gets some co-operation from the Department of Bantu Administration, the scheme the Minister of Health has initiated, and with which I agree wholeheartedly, is not going to succeed. I could quote to the House from reports on every single mission hospital. In every case the difficulty is that tribal life is breaking down. In addition, the morality of tribal life is being completely undermined by the migratory labour system, with the men away there is a very high rate of illegitimacy and it is still increasing. [Time expired.]

I did not want to react to what the hon. member for Houghton said. However, she had a few things to say that I shall have to put right. For example, she claimed that there is unemployment in the rural areas. The opposite is true. On the platteland there is work for every Bantu. In fact, when we need seasonal labour we are compelled to obtain it elsewhere.

What do you pay them?

Let me just say that I know of no more satisfied community than that comprising the Bantu labourers on the Free State platteland and in other rural areas. We had a Bantu in our service for 72 years—a record. He remained in our service from when he was a small boy until he was a very old man. We had families with us that remained loyal to us throughout the Anglo-Boer War, the First World War and the Second World War. And some of them are still with us today. One of them is living on charity and one woman died last year. I would very much like to show the hon. member for Houghton that woman’s estate. In my area I can list more than one White family with whom Bantu labourers have lived for generations. I can, for example, refer to the former hon. member for Jeppe, a neighbour of mine. I submit that there are no people better clothed, fed and paid than the Bantu labourers on the platteland.

Mr. Speaker, today in South Africa we still find that we are spending too much. Against this background we must see the problems we are faced with today. The chief factor, as far as I am concerned, is our high rate of imports. In addition, in the year that has just passed, we spent almost R800 million more than we earned—an alarming increase of R262 million as against the previous year. I therefore state that it is definitely in the country’s interest that private spending be curbed. Even in the past two years there have been clear signs of overspending—yes, even of wasteful spending. The rapid increase in our gross local spending has therefore largely been responsible for the short-term problem of overspending with all its concomitant problems, such as a poor balance of payments, inflation, capital and labour shortages. A direct result of this overspending is, of course, that there will be a lack of saving, which we also found to be the case. Private savings in South Africa decreased alarmingly from 11 per cent in 1964 to a mere 6 per cent in 1970. The result of this overspending is, of course, that there is a lack in the creation of capital, in capital for investment. If one has a lack of capital, that little capital is chased on all sides, and that is why we have these increasing interest rates. If that is fundamentally the position, we can surely expect the Minister of Finance to have to take certain steps. Those steps are being taken, and here we must declare that there is no painless method for combating this kind of problem. No, Sir, if we are taking steps against inflation we shall find such measures to be painful. We now come to this House and to the people and say that such measures must not be judged in terms of the interests of one or other section, but that we should see this whole matter against the background of national interests and see that these steps must be taken. I state that this is of vital importance.

Sir, we have experienced so many problems as a result of this overspending and the lack of capital that notwithstanding the fact that the rates for long-term Government securities were increased from 64 per cent to 7¾ per cent in 1970, the Government could not gain much support for its loans; and if that is the position, we must surely believe that the time has come for steps to be taken. The hon. member for Carletonville and others pointed to the fact that we are overspending on luxury articles. on status symbols, as the hon. the Minister also said, and that there is a lack of thrift and industry among our people. This kind of problem is as old as the hills; these conditions will crop up again from time to time. I do not know whether in 1971 we can still take the same steps that Father Tulbagh took here at the Cape so many years ago. But we have no doubt that something must be done in this connection.

Sir, in the Rand Daily Mail of 1st April there was a very interesting statement. I believe that this statement was initiated by the hon. member for Parktown. The one paragraph of the statement in the Rand Daily Mail reads as follows—

In other words, here we have a responsible group of the United Party making this statement, and in view of this statement we should just like to pass over a few thoughts. In view of this statement we just want to see whether the people of South Africa can really believe these people who so readily speak of a “credibility gap”. In one portion of the statement they say—

They say it is a negative Budget and it is hurting the whole of South Africa. I do not have much time and therefore I shall make haste, but I ask the finance group of the United Party whether the extra benefits for the universities of South Africa, as proposed here by the hon. the Minister, constitute a negative step? Is the stimulation of our existing institutions for higher education, as we have now done, a negative step, or do they just want to keep to their leader’s “crash programme” for edu-< cation? Are present concessions to social pensioners negative steps on our part? Does it hurt those people if the Minister gives them benefits? Must we not all agree that positive steps are being taken in regard to civil pensions? But this group says it is a negative Budget. Sir, I ask you, are all these benefits emanating from this Budget in respect of the housing of our people, negative or positive in character? Sir. surely these people are talking absolute nonsense. Let us go further. Here are benefits for families with large numbers of children. Is that not a positive step? But these United Party people tell us that this Budget is negative in character. [Interjection.] The hon. member for Point will have his turn in a moment. I do not know whether he is a member of the finance group, but I want to ask him directly whether the concessions to aged taxpayers are negative or positive in character?

Now that we have done with those people, let us go to the other extreme of the scale. Is it a negative step for these concessions to be made in respect of estate duty? No, these people do not know what they are about. There is all the help to farmers. We begin with the interest subsidies announced in this Budget. Is that a negative approach to a budget? The aid to farmers in the recent droughts are reflected in this Budget. Must these amounts that were spent now be decreased? Do they want the amounts to be decreased? Is it a negative measure if R10 million—and now I am not even considering the money spent for other purposes such as the bulk handling of grain, etc.—is again made available to the farmers at 2 per cent? No, they must not tell us that this is a negative Budget.

There is so much here that I could still mention, but we do not have the time. We must go a little further. This statement of the United Party’s finance group goes on to declare—

We can also have a look at this. The hon. member for Hillbrow made such good use of this point and then spoke so fluently about the “credibility gap”, but those are surely the chaps suffering from that disease on that side of the House. If one reads that statement of theirs one would fully believe that these taxes have got out of hand, but do you know, Sir, in 1971 a man earning R4 000 would have paid R201 in taxes and R12 as a savings levy. Now he pays R226, including a savings levy of R23. A man earning R4 000 now pays exactly R25 a year more. If we go on in that vein we find that this part of the statement is absolute nonsense. But I have to finish off.

I now come to a third portion of this statement. Hon. members must now listen carefully to what is being said here:

Every pre-Budget fear on the part of the public has been realized.

†Mr. Speaker, this is utter nonsense. While the hon. the Minister delivered his speech, I watched those members. They were so disappointed that it is unbelievable! They never expected anything like this. That is why I believe that this statement was given to the Press before the actual Budget speech was delivered. I want to say that this is not only an untruth, but this part of the statement is a deliberate lie. I withdraw that, Mr. Speaker. It is an untruth, because I do not believe that what they said was truthful. I want to prove that to hon. members, not because I have said so. I am now going to call on the hon. member for Houghton. I differ on so many points with the hon. member for Houghton, but in this instance I agree with her, because she speaks the truth. On the same page of the Rand Daily Mail on the 1st April it is reported that she said:

Was the hon. member for Parktown really truthful when he made this statement? No, he was not. I will go further. I am not quoting people who belong to my own party. I read further:

That is what he said, but under the big heading “A sigh of relief” the article says:

There we have Tucsa and the hon. member for Houghton saying that there was a sigh of relief when the hon. the Minister delivered his speech.

Mr. Speaker, candidly, this reminds me of a woman who asked for a divorce from her husband. She pleaded that he was deformed. She was asked why she wanted a divorce and what the matter was. She then said that he suffered from flat feet. As far as I remember, they asked her how that could be. I mention this, because these gentlemen are being divorced from the electorate of South Africa. The answer was that he suffered from flat feet, because his feet were so often in the flat of the widow next door and not in his own flat. I see that the very same is going to happen here to the United Party if they keep on issuing statements of this sort.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Smithfield has previously done me the honour of indicating that both of us derive from the same part of the Orange Free State. What he did not indicate to the House is the tacit agreement between us Free Staters, namely that we fight within our own province, but that when we move outside we tone it down a bit. I therefore do not propose to treat the hon. member too harshly today. I am very pleased that he did not once again model his whole speech on this question of ideology, which is thrown in at every conceivable opportunity by members on the other side. In fact, every time I mention ideology the hon. member for Witbank always pops up to indicate that I had criticized the Government for not having any idealism. He has never understood that there is a difference between ideology and idealism. The hon. member for Witbank is however working so hard in Witbank at the present time that I will be spared this kind of reproach from him.

The hon. member for Smithfield criticized the statement which was issued and particularly the fact that we have indicated that this was not as harsh a Budget as had been thought. But this is the old tactic of the Government. They build a situation up into something massive and then when everybody expects the worst, the Minister comes with a Budget which is still very bad such as this, but there is such a feeling of relief amongst the electorate that he almost emerges as a hero. The hon. member for Smithfield talked about the gentleman who was calling at the flat next door, but I want to say to the hon. member that there is a wave of indignation, resentment and anger sweeping through the country, all aimed at this Government and this particular Minister as a result of this particular Budget.

We have now been discussing this Budget for a day and a half and I think the opportunity has now arrived for us to try to get back to the main challenges that we have put to the hon. the Minister. For us it is of great interest to notice how hon. members on that side shy away from the challenges that we have put before the Government. We have indicated that this Budget is, in the first instance, one that need never have been put before this House. Practically every item and every measure in this Budget is one that is intended to rectify some economic folly of the past. Practically every problem that this Budget contends with is one of the Government’s own making. This is a Budget which, but for maladministration of South Africa’s economy, need never have been introduced in this House. This Budget is, secondly, a Budget on the instalment system. The punitive measures which the Government decided on were begun six months ago. What is quite clear to us is that the strategy is to hit the public of South Africa so often that they become punch-drunk so that when this final reeling blow came they were almost insensitive to it. In the third instance this Budget can be seen as a “laager” Budget which does not in any way solve any of our basic economic ills. There is no long-term planning in this Budget. There is nothing in it that suggests that there is a cohesive, co-ordinated, economic strategy for South Africa. This is a patchwork Budget, thrown together at the last moment. I think what is the worst feature of this Budget is that it indicates the abject surrender of the Government to the rudimentary requirement of its own ideology. Here we have the dismal failure on the part of the Government to meet the challenges that face South Africa. This Budget is uninspiring, lacks lustre and leaves every single one of us worse off than we were before. This Budget also signifies the complete lack of leadership on the Government side. There is no fundamental message or theme any more. There is a lack of drive and impetus. This Budget gives us irrefutable proof that the Government has outlived any usefulness it might have had and that its disintegration is only a matter of time.

I will indicate to this House, because I believe it is of interest. the situation that led up to the presentation of this Budget. I will be very interested to get the reaction of the hon. the Minister to this. One remembers a year ago, before the last general election, the amazing amount of window dressing that we had here. At the time it was quite clear that sooner or later somebody would have to pull the economic chestnuts from the fire and would bum his fingers in the process. That has been the lot of this hon. Minister of Finance. Let me say rightaway to him that his image has taken a buffeting from which it will never recover. Aided and abetted by his colleagues in the Cabinet, he put everything he had into the shop window. We remember the scene that he indicated to us: We were told that South Africa was one of the richest countries in the world, we were told that we were one of the most fortunate peoples in the world because we had the best Government in the world. What a transformation since then! We are no longer the richest Government in the world. We are now offered coarse rice and tepid water. We are no longer a fortunate people. The people realize that they have been taken for a ride. This is no longer seen as the best Government in the world, it is now generally regarded as one of the worst. We remember when he introduced his last Budget, the hon. the Minister told us that the economies around the world were in disarray. There was only this one bastion of stability which was South Africa. And he, the hon. the Minister, stood there as Horatio Diederichs with a doubled-edged sword to defend the drawbridge. But when he came to the presentation of his Budget, he became so enthusiastic about it that he was not happy just to be Horatio; he also became Solomon and Father Christmas, all three rolled into one.

Seldom before have we had a Horatio that has succumbed so soon. Seldom before have we had a Solomon who has been caught up in the wisdom of his own words to the extent he has been caught up in his own words. Seldom before has South Africa had a Father Christmas who scampered around so soon afterwards to try and retrieve the bountiful gifts that he had given out. We remember the gifts that there were. The civil servants received R180 million. The other workers received another. R120 million. By his own admission salaries and wages last year went up by no less than 12 per cent. But the moment the elections were over, South Africa was faced with the account. And what an account! Then we had to pay for these indiscretions. But even after these instalments the hon. the Minister, in preparing his Budget, realized that the situation was much worse than even he had anticipated. Therefore, he drew up a Budget that was a real stinker. He drew up a Budget that was stringent in the extreme. It was probably going to be his swan-song, too. I realize that the Budget in toto is not discussed by the Cabinet in toto. But obviously this hon. Minister had to put some of his proposals before his colleagues. What was the reaction? Instant pandemonium. Consternation. They saw immediately the implications of what he was going to do. I suggest to the hon. the Minister that he was then told to revise it. The hon. the Minister as an economist, a great doctor, is beginning to lose the confidence of his own colleagues. As a diagnostician he has been proved wrong so often. His prognostics do not seem to work out. He keeps on giving this patient more and more medicine, but the patient is getting sicker and sicker all the time.

You are talking utter nonsense.

Does the hon. the Minister deny that this Budget of his had to be materially revised? That is the only excuse there can be for the shocking type of Budget he has presented. If he had not done this, then I think there is no excuse for it whatsoever. This is technically one of the worst presented Budgets we have ever had. The workmanship in this Budget is outstandingly bad. It seems to be in different parts which are unrelated. Even some of the figures do not add up.

But let me indicate in a little more precise terms to the hon. the Minister what I have in mind. We all know that metrication in respect of both beer and liquor was completed quite some time ago. But when the hon. the Minister introduced his excise duties in this House, he did not express them in metric terms, he did so in imperial standards. When one converts these into metric terms, one finds that in some cases one runs into two or three decimal points. Think of the time that is wasted by a lot of people and the lot of confusion that has been caused because the hon. the Minister did not do his homework properly.

But take this issue of the additional loan levy on individuals. Because we are going to pay a composite tax, I gather from the experts that this will net the hon. the Minister an additional R17 million. Why did he not say anything about this in his Budget? Why did he keep quiet about it? Had he overlooked the fact that he was now going to put this surcharge and this loan levy upon the combined figure? Had he overlooked this hidden charge? If that is so, it justifies every single word I have said. If he had not overlooked it, the motives become even more sinister. Then it suggests that this might have been an attempt to hoodwink the taxpayers.

Let us look at another example. It is this loan levy on company dividends. Confucius in his wisdom could not have created more confusion than this modern-day admirer of his. No company knows how this works. If you go and ask Federale Volksbeleggings, which is a conglomerative pyramid company, how much they will have left when all these loan levies have been paid by the time it reaches them, they will not know. This is technically one of the worst prepared budgets we have had. It bristles with anomalies and that is why I suggest to the hon. the Minister that he has had to make some last-minute adjustments and that that has created the situation we are faced with today.

A budget must be assessed in terms of the extent to which it meets the criteria that the compiler has set for himself. It is quite clear that this Budget will, to begin with, dampen expansion. The Minister has quite obviously rejected the need for economic growth. He has quite obviously decided to pay no attention to the cri de coeur from industry for more labour. This tax surcharge and this additional loan levy that he imposes on companies, is a most destructive tax. If he thinks that he is thereby going to reduce spending in order to increase savings, I say it is the most futile attempt one could possibly imagine. All that this loan levy will do is that it will take more money out of circulation. It will dampen further investment in the private sector, and it will not give us expansion. Look what we have done here. With this loan levy the effective company tax in South Africa is now 43 per cent. This is higher than it is in Britain and Britain is a socialist state. One would expect the Government there to tax businesses. Here we are told that we have a private enterprise system, but our effective company tax is higher than that of Britain. We do not get any of the compensatory social services which they are getting. To tax a young country to this extent is to my mind economic madness.

What will the effect of this Budget be on the foreign investor? Give us one item in this Budget which will encourage the foreign investor to come to South Africa to invest his money. The hon. the Minister has admitted, and he is very pleased about it, that foreign money to the extent of R500 million came into South Africa last year. Just as well it did so, because had that money not come into South Africa, our reserves today would have looked rather silly. Foreign money was necessary to help us to keep up our reserves, but what is there in this Budget that would act as an inducement to the foreign investor? All that he knows is that effective company taxation has gone up by 7,5 per cent during the past two years. He looks and he can see dwindling profit margins. He looks at the South African business scene and he sees increasing bureaucratic controls. He sees more and more Government red tape. Under those conditions, South Africa will lose its attractiveness as a market to the foreign investor.

I do not see anything in this Budget that will increase productivity. The U.A.L., a body to which the hon. member for Paarl referred yesterday with such approval, has indicated that productivity in South African industry has increased by only 3,2 per cent over the last two years. This is dangerously low. But you get a better indication of the situation if you express the increase in salaries and wages as a percentage of our real output. In 1964 salaries and wages constituted 45 per cent of our net output. In 1969 it had jumped to 51 per cent. This figure would be vastly increased as a result of the R12 million that went out in additional wages last year. This Budget does nothing to increase productivity. On the contrary, it creates a situation where there will be renewed demands for salary increases and further wage escalations. We will be right back to where we were.

This Budget does nothing to help exports. If I were a manufacturer, what does this Budget do for me? In which way does it induce me to export more? On the contrary, all that this Budget does is that it perpetuates high imports, to which the hon. member for Smithfield has referred. But what he overlooked to tell us is that our imports are high because through the Government’s misguided labour policy industrialists are forced to invest vast amounts in plant and machinery to take the place of the labour which they cannot obtain. Look at the statistics for last year, and you will find that the imports do not consist of luxury goods, but that they consist of plant and machinery required for the purpose that I have indicated. So our exports will not go up, and our imports will not go down.

Yesterday the hon. member for False Bay held all sorts of unusual views on our growth pattern. I think it is a great pity he is not here with us today, because I certainly saw yesterday a most unusual performance by that gentleman. I was greatly intrigued by the fact that he could so skilfully camouflage his lack of economic insight by an absolute wave of panegyric garrulity. This hon. gentleman yesterday tried to suggest to us that our growth rate was more than adequate at the present time, because he said that the economic planners had agreed on this growth rate. But if the economic planners are always right, why does this Government not always take their advice? They advised against the Physical Planning Act, and yet the Government did not accept their advice. But, you see, Sir, this hon. gentleman does not know what is involved. The 5½ per cent which is recommended is based on the existing labour structure. Obviously, if you change that, you could grow at a completely different rate. But we can in any case attain the 5½ per cent rate only if we can limit the inflationary rate in South Africa. This inflationary rate last year was some 5 per cent. There is every indication at the moment that it might be 6 per cent, or even higher this year. Certainly, when you have inflation at that level, it will wreak havoc with any kind of growth rate. But there is a far more important issue that this. The 5½ per cent growth rate was accepted by the planners, and it was based on the 1960 census figures. Now it is common knowledge that we have under-rated the African population by at least 2 million people. If you interpolate it with the present position. I say to those loquacious gentlemen on the other side that 5½ per cent cannot be an optimum growth rate. It could at best be seen as an absolute minimum. In fact, it will be necessary to have a 7 per cent growth rate in order to achieve the benefits which we previously thought 51 per cent would give us. Let hon. members go and look at the latest Economic Development Programme, at Table C, where they are supposed to give us the labour figures for South Africa. What do you see there? An absolute blank, because they do not know what the latest figures are.

This is however a theoretical discussion, because there is certainly nobody in this House who is suggesting that our growth rate in real terms during this coming year is going to be 51 per cent. In fact, there is every indication that it is going to be nearer 4 per cent. Let us look at the implications of this position. If it is in the region of 4 per cent, our per capita growth rate will be only slightly more than I per cent. This will make South Africa, the country with the richest resources in the world, one of the most slow-going economies in the world. If we grow at 4 per cent, or anything in that region, I can guarantee hon. members now that within a year we will have more than 500 000 non-Whites in South Africa unemployed. That is the sort of situation the hon. the Prime Minister has been warning against. He says that the spectre of unemployment among the non-Whites is one that causes him great concern. This is the sort of situation we are creating. Just to show how this Budget works in practice, I should like to claim the attention of the hon. the Minister in connection with something which affords a clear illustration of the immediate direct effects of his Budget. Let us take beer, something we are all interested in. The Minister decided that he wanted R12 200 000 out of excise on beer. In order to achieve that, he slapped on a new excise of 22c per gallon. My information from experts in this field, experts whose job it is to make predictions and determine future trends, is that there would have been a normal growth rate and that had he put on 6c a gallon he would still have got his R12 200 000. The normal growth rate in consumption would have given him the extra money. But the hon. the Minister came along and slapped on 22c. What are the effects of this? I know that one of the largest breweries in South Africa was going to invest R50 million in new expansion over the next five years. In fact, it was going to start this year with a new brewery of R25 million in Rosslyn employing about 2 000 Bantu. Is this not what the hon. Minister wants? Does he not want people to go there? But the fact is that this new excise of 22c has knocked this whole proposition on the head because they know that the 22c he has slapped on will reduce demand to such an extent that it will not be worth their while to proceed with the project. Sir, this is the type of economic myopia with which we have to contend in South Africa. It is tragic that South Africa at this stage of its history has to contend with a Government who tries to run a modern economy with a 19th century mentality.

The Minister says this Budget must stimulate savings. But where are these savings to come from? From 1965 to 1969 personal taxes have increased by 64 per cent while incomes have increased by only 38 per cent. Two years ago we were told with a fanfare that the bulge in our income tax structure was going to be eliminated. But that bulge is now back with a vengeance. In the higher earning categories we find that there is a marginal rate of 70 per cent or more. What does this mean in practice? It means that if a man wants to invest money-—it can only be the big earners and those with capital—and gets 9 per cent interest, the Government immediately takes 6 per cent and he is left with only 3 per cent, which does not even compensate him for the erosion of the value of money. In fact, it is only a fool that will invest under such circumstances. For years this Government has been trying to tell us that South Africa is one of the lowest taxed countries in the world. Today, however, the opposite is true—we are today one of the highest taxed countries, not only as far as the marginal rate is concerned but also as far as indirect taxes are concerned. The public of South Africa ought to know that for every cigarette they buy, the Government takes about half of what it costs them and that for every beer a person drinks, the Government takes half of what it costs; similarly for every gallon of petrol. It is figures like these which we ought to put before the country.

But in the meantime Government expenditure is going up all the time. Have we any idea of what is happening here? During the period 1965 to 1969 spending in the private sector on current account went up by 9 per cent in comparison with 12 per cent in the public sector. As far as fixed investment is concerned, in the private sector it went up by 7 per cent during 1965-’69 and 14 per cent in the public sector. As far as public corporations are concerned, it went up by 30 per cent. What do their own economic development planners tell them? They say increases in Government expenditure ought not to exceed 5.5 per cent a year whereas in the coming year, according to the Financial Mail, it is going to be in the region of 20 per cent. This is why this Budget is inflationary. It is not we only who say so. Rapport also says so and we know how staunch Rapport has been in supporting the hon. the Minister. They even imported a gentleman from overseas to come and edit the Financial Gazette. This gentleman too says this Budget is inflationary. Thus they are being deserted even by the very people they have put there to support them.

As far as labour is concerned, the hon. the Minister does not even make an attempt to resolve the problem. He refers to the Riekert Commission. Let me just give him one word of warning. In the ’30’s we had a Nationalist Government who obstinately clung to an outmoded gold standard. What happened to them? We had to take over to rectify the situation. [Interjections.] With equal obstinacy this Government is today clinging to an outmoded labour standard. This too is going to bring them to a fall. The position is that for years the wealth of South Africa has had to mask the incompetence of the Government. Today, however, its ineptitude stands fully revealed, for everybody to see. The parallel between this Government and that of Great Britain cannot escape the notice of the public of South Africa. There they had a Wilson Government who did much the same as this hon. Minister and his Government. And what happened to the Wilson Government? The people of Britain kicked them out and within 4 months of the new Government taking over they could introduce concessions to the tune of more than £1 000 million. That is the magnitude of the change that can be brought about. Now we have a Government who is lacking in leadership; it has lost its impetus and its drive; it no longer has any message for South Africa. All it does is to go through the old motions, to voice all the old platitudes while it is like a motor car with its battery completely flat.

If we were sitting on the other side we would not have introduced a Budget of this nature. We would have budgeted for growth instead of for stagnation. We would have budgeted to make South Africa rich and secure instead of keeping her poor and vulnerable. We would have contained Government expenditure to within the limits within which it ought to be. One does not tax the present generation to the extent this Government is now doing for an infrastructure which generations of the future only can enjoy. This hon. Minister tried to float a loan in South Africa for, I think, R174 million. Well, it was a flop, and now he is forcing the taxpayer to be the underwriter for his loan flops in South Africa. And what are we going to get on our money?—5 per cent? He has not even announced it yet. But above all else we shall leave business to the businessmen. I think the difficulty is that the hon. the Minister does not understand his own Budget. Does he deny that he recently tried to get a loan and that it was an absolute flop?

You only want to be dramatic.

But I am putting certain arguments before the hon. the Minister. It is for him to tell me where I am wrong. Does he deny that he tried to float, a loan and that it was a flop and that he is now using the loan levy as a method of underwriting his Government? Because that is what it really amounts to. The nationalized industries of South Africa, like the Railways, will also be brought within the broader economic orbit. Their cost-push financing and untimely tariff increases are something we shall not tolerate. As far as the labour position is concerned, we shall create a climate where industry and the trade unions will be able to get together to make adjustments to the existing labour pattern. (Time expired.]

Today the hon. member for Hillbrow again came along with the same argument with which he has come to this House for the past five years. That hon. member has set one record, i.e. is the man who has issued more Press statements than any other member of the House of Assembly I know of. The hon. member senses that he ought to be the leader of that party. I am convinced of that, Sir, and you will see in the years ahead that the hon. member for Hillbrow will make overtures to the hon. member for Houghton, because the companies he represents here in the House of Assembly are companies which the hon. member for Houghton supports and assists. Today again he spoke here of a botch-up. We are aware, not only of his political intrigues, but also of his economic intrigues. His whole train of thought is basically the utilization of non-White labour in a reckless manner throughout our economy.

Sir, what is the position as far as this Budget is concerned? Basically the Opposition tried to exploit the conditions of inflation that we are faced with in South Africa. They tried to use the conditions of inflation to embarrass the Government and the National Party. We see this in the Sunday Times of 4th April, 1971—

Hear, hear!

The hon. member for Yeoville says “hear, hear”. What is the meaning of “salvage”? Is it an endeavour to remove cargo from a ship that has sunk. Sir, the economy of South Africa is basically sound. The report continues—

Hear, hear!

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition says “hear, hear”. In other words, he confirms the statement that at this stage he believes that South Africa finds itself subject to an economic crisis. Must I accept that from the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, the hon. member for Yeoville and the hon. member for Hillbrow? In other words, in their opinion South Africa is subject to an economic crisis.

It is serious enough.

That is what he said according to the Sunday Times, and now he says “hear, hear”. Sir, I completely repudiate that statement and I say, on the other hand, that South Africa’s economic position is not only fundamentally a sound one, but also that we have a flourishing economy that is made possible by the ideologies and the policy maintained over the past two decades by the National Party. One does not make such a statement unless one can confirm it, but I shall confirm every word I say here. What norms, what criteria are used to determine whether a country’s economy is sound or not? There are numerous criteria which are used to determine the economic strength of a country. The five basic, elementary factors to which attention must be given are: firstly, the standard of living of the population of the country; secondly, the international confidence in the economic framework of such a country; thirdly, the growth potential of the country—its inherent potential, its mineral wealth—fourthly, the stability of the Government ruling the country and fifthly it is important to look at one’s gold and foreign exchange reserves. Those are the five basic criteria that must be applied before one can make the kind of statement which the hon. the Leader of the Opposition made and confirmed here today when he said: “There is a crisis upon us.” With the advent of the Republic that same hon. Leader of the Opposition also spoke of a crisis, but what happened?

Sir, I should now like to analyse these five aspects. Let us first take the standard of living of the population. When we look at the statistics we find, as far as the standard of living is concerned, that the per capita real growth from 1960 to 1967 was 4,1 per cent per annum in South Africa, in Canada and France it was 3,8 per cent, in the United States of America it was 3,6 per cent, in Western Germany, 3,1 per cent, in the United Kingdom, 2,4 per cent and in New Zealand, 2,6 per cent. In other words, the standard of living of our people in South Africa was increased by 4,1 per cent per annum. No other Western country as maintained nearly the same growth rate. Is that not absolute proof that the standard of living in South Africa is comparable with that of the rest of the world? Let us look at the real gross domestic product per capita of the population. In 1960 the real product was R320; in 1970 it was R450, an increase of almost 40 per cent. One’s real product is that furnished, with due regard to the increasing cost of living and other increasing costs; that is the real production, not only of the Whites, but also of the non-Whites, of the aged and of the young people—and your U.P. supporters.

Then I come to the inflation story. What is the increase in the consumer price index? Today the hon. member for Hillbrow had a · lot to say about inflation, and we acknowledge that our inflation is at a high level. But what was the increase in the consumer price index in 1970? In South Africa it was 4,2 per cent, in the United States of America 5,5 per cent, in Britain 7,8 per cent, in Japan—the beloved country of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition —8,3 per cent, in Israel 10 per cent, in France 5,8 per cent and in Italy 5 per cent. In other words, our rate of inflation is less than that in any of these countries. So much for our standard of living.

Then we come to the second aspect, and that is the international confidence in South Africa. In the past six years no less than R1 700 million was invested in South Africa. In the past year R501 million was invested in this country on a long-term basis by financiers from other countries. It indicates a tremendous confidence in South Africa when people abroad are prepared to invest here on such a scale. 64 per cent of this money was invested on a long-term basis, and 80 per cent was loaned to the private sector. I am convinced that this confidence in South Africa, evidenced by this investment in South Africa of R501 million in one year, has a lot to do with the hon. the Minister of Finance who is being discredited here today by a man who, in my opinion, is a small political good-for-nothing with a big mouth. Today the hon. member for Hillbrow endeavoured here to discredit the hon. the Minister of Finance.

This confidence in South Africa is directly attributable to the hon. the Minister of Finance’s actions overseas, and I shall prove this by just referring to the agreement concluded with the International Monetary Fund in connection with the sale of our gold. Through the actions of the hon. the Minister, confidence was again instilled in the gold market after the 1968 fiasco. Our sound balance of payments made it possible for the hon. the Minister to handle the gold position. Today we are in the sound position of knowing that it is possible for our full gold production, to the value of R800 million, to be sold at 35 dollars per ounce. We expect a premium of at least 12 per cent payable on it. Sir, this was made possible by this hon. Minister. There were disparaging remarks by the hon. member for Hillbrow about corporations in South Africa. When there was a recession in our economy it was this hon. Minister, when he was Minister of Economic Affairs, who spent R2 000 million in order to activate the corporations such as Iscor and Sasol. That is what was done, and then it is said that this Government has never done anything for the development of this country.

Then there is the third aspect. What is the position in respect of our gold and foreign exchange reserves? Notwithstanding our unfavourable balance of payments last year, with our reserves decreasing by R287 million, we still had a R806 million surplus at the end of 1970 in the payment reserves, and you can measure this up against the criterion that is usually applied, i.e. that a country’s reserves ought to be able to pay for three months’ imports; in other words, R600 million. But we still have an exchange and gold reserve in South Africa of more than R800 million. With the advent of the Republic in 1961 the gold reserves totalled R167 million. Does this not indicate growth, and does it not evidence confidence and development? But the same party which today wants to burst out of its seams [Interjections]—and the hon. member for Durban Point is literally doing so—said in 1961 that there was no future for this country.

I am now busy with Witbank.

Yes, you are busy with Witbank, but all you are doing is sowing suspicion and misrepresenting issues, but that is of a temporary nature. You will find that in politics you are doomed if you cannot display integrity. [Interjections.] That is what this Official Opposition is engaged upon. It does not care what damage it does to South Africa. It does not matter if the Leader of the Opposition, who is supposed to be a responsible person, speaks of crises. One does not speak of a crisis, Sir, because an economic crisis injures the entire population, and besides it is a ridiculous statement.

Then we come to the fourth aspect, and that is the inherent potential of South Africa and its growth rate. South Africa can be proud of its growth rate. For the past 10 years the average real growth was 6 per cent, and again this is comparable with other countries, but it does not impress the hon. member for Durban Point; he does not want to hear about this. It is comparable with the position in any other country. In West Germany it was 4,3. [Interjections.] I live in South Africa, and I try to live here like a South African, unlike the hon. member for Durban Point. In France it was 5,2 per cent. In Italy it was 4,6 per cent, in Holland, 6,9 per cent, in England, 2,9 per cent, in Canada, 6 per cent, in the U.S.A., 5,2 per cent, in Australia 5,2 per cent and in South Africa 5,9 per cent, therefore placing South Africa third on the list. But then the hon. member for Hillbrow gets up and says that South Africa’s growth is too meagre; South Africa has no growth potential under this Government, but here we have the third highest growth rate in the whole world.

What is it this year?

This year it is a little more than 5 per cent, but if your party were in power there would have been no growth. There would have been only economic chaos. Let us look at production. From 1963 to 1969 there was an annual increase of 3 per cent. This is extremely favourable by any international standards. But then we come to the challenge issued by the hon. the Minister of Planning, and I have waited in this debate to see if there would be any reaction to the figures indicating what the numbers would be with a growth rate of 8,4 per cent and a growth rate of 10 per cent. Last year in the no-confidence debate the hon. the Leader of the Opposition made a great fuss of Japan’s growth rate and said that Japan is a country we ought to use as an example because we have the inherent potential for the same real growth and for the development of our country. But what has now happened to Japan? In the Sunday Times of 11th April there is the following report from Tokyo—

Sir, as you can now see, that happens when a country grows too rapidly. South Africa has an inherent potential for growth, with its natural resources and mineral wealth. I know that there are hon. members on that side of the House who have said that gold has had its day. In 1975 there will, it is true, be a decrease in gold production, but we have other mineral wealth in South Africa that will give us the same coverage in the years ahead. There is 50 per cent more platinum today than what our gold reserves are worth, and there is still chromium, manganese and asbestos. We have the potential for development on an ordered, balanced basis, and we are not prepared to do it—I state here that if it were hypothetically possible, if we were to follow the United Party’s policy by saying that there must be more growth at the growth points that already exist; in other words, the 3 per cent surface area in South Africa, with the 90 per cent of industries in those areas—because economic progress is not the alpha and the omega as far as we are concerned. Making money is not all that counts. [Interjections.] I know that it is the hobby-horse of the hon. member for East London City, but money does not mean that to me. [Interjections.] We are a party that is committed to principles, and when material considerations are placed first, only the financial and transitory considerations, and the balanced, ordered future of a country is jettisoned, we can never associate ourselves with that. There is talk of planning for the future, and it is said that there is no far-sighted planning for the future, but what is being done? Here we are dealing with the Riekert Commission. In the Budget debate it was stated very clearly by the hon. the Minister that he would be prepared to favourably review all the recommendations of the Riekert Commission and to see whether we could not, in fact, make use of them; in other words, the hon. the Minister has already committed himself to implementing the Riekert Commission’s recommendations where possible. Decentralization, border industry development, are the biggest fears of the hon. Opposition. They live in absolute fear that success will be achieved there. [Laughter.] Yes, the hon. member for North Rand may laugh, but it is an absolute fear they have because homeland development and border industry development go hand in glove, and if it is successful it means the end of the slogan you use from every platform about the total impractically of this homeland development.

What does Kaiser Matanzima say?

It is typical of the hon. member for Yeoville to try to side-track me. What he said has nothing to do with my present statement. I have the fullest confidence in homeland development, whatever Matanzima might say. The hon. member for Yeoville may accept that I have the fullest confidence in homeland development. But border industry development is already a success. I am convinced that this development is in its teens and that large-scale development will take place in our homelands and in our border areas, and this is what upsets the United Party so much, because they are committed to a policy of economic integration, because they are lackeys to certain monetary forces in this country, because they are not prepared to look at the ethnological aspects of this responsible post, being a member of this House of Assembly. That is why they are prepared to bring about economic chaos, economic integration that must inevitably lead to economic chaos. I want to state that it has been said in this House on many occasions that we ought to grow more rapidly. Unfortunately there are economists who support the hon. Opposition. Let me state very clearly that there are other economists who are opposed to too rapid development. I am convinced that our economic development programme is a basically sound one, that our economy in South Africa is basically sound, that we shall continue to develop South Africa on an ordered basis, notwithstanding all manner of accusations levelled by the Opposition. I want to conclude by saying that South Africa’s economic future is not only basically sound, but also an example for the rest of the world.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Rustenburg has been a typical case of whistling in the dark. I think that I have heard no other speaker seeking harder for justification to praise a budget which is an inherently bad budget than the hon. member for Rustenburg. My time is limited and I must be forgiven if I leave that hon. member there.

I want to move on to a subject about which I have already made two speeches during this session. In my two previous speeches I referred to the parlous state of the fishing industry in South-West Africa and South Africa. The industry was described as being in a parlous state by the Fishing Commission and it was described by me in this House as being an industry which had been subjected to seven years of unbridled assault by the Government’s policies. At the beginning of this year the hon. the Deputy Minister, who had been less than a year in his post, said:

Then he says:

Those are his words. This is absolutely incorrect. Let him read my maiden speech in 1966 on this very matter. Let him read the private member’s motion which I introduced in this House on the 7th February, 1967, asking the Government to consider the advisability of—

And further:

Those were the terms of my private member’s motion. I also asked the Government to consider the advisability of extending our territorial waters and creating fisheries conservation zones off our coasts. Later that year, in August, 1967, the Government did indeed appoint a commission, but licences and quotas were not part of the specific terms of reference of that commission. Furthermore. South-West Africa was not included in the terms of reference of that commission, until the middle of 1969. South-West Africa was not even visited by the commission until February, 1970. By that time the collapse of the fishing industry off the South-West African coast had already taken place. Every year since the appointment of this commission I have asked when the report would be ready. We have had experience with the reports of other commissions in this House. Let him read my file of cuttings from 1966 to date containing the public warnings I have given this Government. Let him read the file of questions which have been asked by members on this side of the House since that date. Let him then not say that we have neglected our duty in warning the Government of the catastrophy that is taking place. The present Minister even resents my asking questions in this House and says that the more questions I ask in this House the more the work of his department is disrupted. The hon. the Deputy Minister himself has refused me the right, after asking for this commission, to read the records of this commission.

*What is the hon. the Deputy Minister’s attitude to my accusations? In his first speech he said that I had commented on things which had happened here in the Republic before he had become involved with the Department. In his second speech this year he said it was not his responsibility to ferret out what had been done in the past. The Deputy Minister’s attitude is unacceptable. He is a member of the Government, and the Government must be held responsible for what is now taking place in the fishing industry of South Africa. His attitude is nevertheless understandable, because he has inherited a mess from his predecessors and does not want to be blamed for it personally.

†To quote the interim report of the Fishing Commission the fishing industry is in “a parlous state of affairs”. Who is responsible for it? I have no hesitation whatsoever in saying that the first major culprit is the present Minister of Finance, who was Minister of Economic Affairs from 1958 to 1967, when all the ground work for the unbridled assault on the fishing resources off our coasts was laid either under his leadership or with his acquiescence. The second culprit is unquestionably his chief assistant. Mr. Jan Haak, who is no longer in this House.

*Mr. Jan Haak was Deputy Minister for three years, namely from 1961 to 1964, that is to say, in the time of the crayfish concessions. Subsequently Mr. Haak was Minister of Economic Affairs from 1967 until last year, when he resigned. I now want to put a simple and straightforward question to the hon. the Deputy Minister. He is the man who went to see Dr. Verwoerd about the granting of the first factory ship licence by the present Minister of Finance. He is also the man who went to see Dr. Verwoerd about the island concessions off the South-West African coast which Mr. Haak gave to the A. P. du Preez group, the Mid-West companies. He also went to see the present Prime Minister in connection with the two additional factory-ship allocations. My straightforward question to the hon. the Deputy Minister is the following: Did he also go to see the present Prime Minister to demand Mr. Jan Haak’s resignation as a result of what happened off the coast of South-West Africa? South Africa is entitled to a reply to this simple and straightforward question. Mr. Haak is not present here to furnish the necessary explanations, and all the hon. the Minister of Finance did when he last spoke was to read out a long list of beneficiaries and to allege without any evidence whatsoever that, judging from the names of the companies, they must have been Opposition supporters. He went further and said that personally he did not know a single one of them. However, he did not refer to any scientific data at all upon which the decision to grant allocations had been based. He gave no replies to the accusations I had made, namely that 21 crayfish concessions had been granted on 1st January, 1963, in spite of warnings by experts in 1959 and in spite of voluntary cuts by the existing industry for the subsequent three years. Neither did he respond to my further accusation that three fishmeal concessions had been granted to the Paternoster, Southern Orange and Orange River fishing companies when danger signs had already appeared, as well as the fact that Paternoster and Orange River Fisheries have to this day not even erected a factory for their activities. I searched his speech in vain for any explanation of the fact that the registered address of Paternoster is the same as the registered address of the Nationalist Party in the Cane Province. I want to ask him frankly tonight: Was it a concession allocated to the Nationalist Party, or is it mere coincidence that the addresses were the same and that the directors, except for Mr. A. J. Marais, Mr. Haak’s attorney partner, and Mr. Eigelaar, a fisherman, were all either Nationalist Members of Parliament or Nationalist Provincial Councillors? The Minister of Finance even deliberately said that the Paternoster Company, which had obtained the crayfish concession, was a Walvis Bay Company, which is untrue. This is not so.

†Then he says that he went to Dr. Verwoerd, and that Dr. Verwoerd gave him fatherly advice and leadership when he consulted him about whether a factory-ship licence should be granted to the Willem Barendsz or not. Then, after saying that factory ships were things of the future and that South Africa must not be left behind, Dr. Verwoerd sent him to Windhoek to convince the Exco that it was right to grant a licence to the Willem Barendsz.

*Then the Minister of Finance said: “After everything seemed fine in this field (i.e. the factory-ship field), the Government considered the matter and decided that another two such ships’ licences could be granted”. Sir, did everything seem fine? Just listen to what the Deputy Minister, at that time M.E.C. in South-West Africa, had to say about it. In May, 1967, he said in the Legislative Assembly of South-West Africa (translation)—

Sir, what was the outcome? The outcome was that the Administration in South-West Africa went and appointed a commission of inquiry of their own. In the same speech in the Legislative Assembly the Deputy Minister then said—

Then he went to the Prime Minister with a deputation. I want to quote a further portion of what the Deputy Minister said in the Legislative Assembly—

*Nowhere does Dr. Diederichs, the Minister of Finance, in his speech explain why he ignored the warnings of Fishcor in each of their reports since 1965. Nowhere does he explain why it was that he ignored the warnings in the South-West African Commission’s report, which came out in 1967. Nowhere does he explain why he ignored the warnings given by the Deputy Minister in the Legislative Assembly of South-West Africa. Nowhere did he deal with the South-West African Island crayfish concessions given to the A. P. du Preez Company by Mr. Haak, or the Dr. Verwoerd compromise whereby this island concession off South-West Africa of 80 000 cases was withdrawn, while another A. P. du Preez group company, namely Angra Pequena, at Luderitz, had its crayfish quota increased from 25 000 cases to 94 000 cases. The Mid-West shareholders, that is the company which had this island concession, received ½ million preference shares in Angra Pequena as a compensation for what they had lost. I want to ask the hon. the Minister of Finance, because he did not refer to this matter, whether he is trying to pass the buck to his predecessor or his successor-in-office, Mr. Jan Haak. Is this Mr. Jan Haak’s particular baby? The Deputy Minister says further:

Therefore I want to refer, to the concessions which I raised last time. They are the Trust Bank concession—the Angra Pequena concession—and the Federale Volksbelegging concession, namely the Suid-Kunene concession. Both of them were fishing licences. In connection with that the hon. the Deputy Minister said the following:

However, the hon. the Deputy Minister has a very short memory, because on 21st August, 1963, the Secretary for South-West Africa, Mr. ChaR1 Marais, said in the Suid-wester, his own paper—

As a result of that nine names were put before the Executive Committee and out of those nine the Ex-Co made its choice. The hon. the Deputy Minister has also forgotten what he himself said on the 27th May, 1964, in the Legislative Council. He said:

Only two of the applicants were clever enough to satisfy all the requirements “volgens die eerlike oordeel van die Ad-junk-minister”. Who were the officials? The Secretary for South-West Africa committed suicide on the 21st April, 1966. An inventory filed in his estate in the Supreme Court shows that he was the holder of 5 000 Angra Pequeña shares, valued at R5 per share, and 8 000 Suid-Kunene shares, valued at R3-80 per share. That means, according to the inventory, that he had an estate consisting of shares to the value of R55 500 out of a gross estate of R65 000. The other chief assets were also shares in a South-West African company, that is to say, the Diamond Mining and Utility Company. Then, according to the Sunday Tribune of Natal, a long list of other Administration staff were included in this bonanza. There was an inspector of lands who had 1 000 Angra Pequeña shares and 1 200 Suid-Kunene shares. The Director of Agriculture had 1 200 Suid-Kunene shares. The legal adviser for South-West Africa hafl 2 400 Suid-Kunene shares and the Director of Veterinary Services 1 000 Suid-Kunene. Furthermore, the Director of Lands had 1 000 Suid-Kunene and the manager of the Meat Control Board 800 Suid-Kunene. Then eleven out of the twelve members of the Legislative Assembly of South-West Africa received either Angra Pequeña or Suid-Kunene shares or both. The Nationalist Party leader in South-West Africa, the then Deputy Minister in this House and his family received, respectively, 6 000 Suid-Kunene and 5 000 Angra Pequeña. All of these people received their shares at the issue price.

Will you repeat that please?

I will, just now. In addition to that, it appears that approximately seven Nationalist Party members of the Parliament, approximately four Nationalist Senators, about three Nationalist organizers and many others, listed in the Tribune, were allotted shares at the issue price. What is more, 30 000 Suid-Kunene shares were allotted to people whose address was Post Box 30 in Windhoek. That is the box number of P. J. Malherbe and Company. A large block of shares went to Box 2135 in Windhoek, and that is the box number of Mr. A. P. du Preez’s Nuwe Westelike Beleggings. What is interesting, according to the Tribune, is that a typist in Professor Malherbe’s office received, to her great surprise, no fewer than 2100 Suid-Kunene shares. I wonder how many other typists received shares to their surprise as a “front” for prominent people. I wonder who those prominent people were, and whether any of them were officials.

*The Deputy Minister made the following further statement—

Now I come to the Fishing Commission of South Africa. This commission was appointed by Mr. Jan Haak. I do not want to say that the commission was “loaded”, but it is very strange that of the four members of the commission who signed the majority report and who were not prepared to accept Dr. Lochner’s theory, one is the general manager of Fishcor, another member of the board of directors and a third Mr. Botma, the M.P. for Omaruru. His constituency includes Walvis Bay and its fishing interests. The fourth is Prof. Du Toit. He is a director of one of A. P. du Preez’s controlling companies, the Suider-land. That is not all. Prof. Du Toit is the chairman of the sub-committee which had to evaluate Dr. Lochner’s theory. In actual fact this same Prof. Du Toit wanted to resign at the end of 1969, but someone persuaded him to stay on as a member of the commission.

Now I come to Dr. Lochner’s theory. The theory was submitted to the Fishing Commission late in 1968. Dr. Lochner is a prominent electronic engineer. He forecast the South-West African catches since 1968 correctly to within I per cent. He also recommended certain safe catch figures for 1969. In spite of his warnings the figures were exceeded by 645 000 tons. The safe catch figure for 1970, according to Dr. Lochner, was exceeded by 167 000 tons. He submitted his theory to Mr. Haak as well as to the Secretary for Industries. The theory has not yet been tested. The Deputy Minister says he cannot say whether the theory is correct or not, because it has not been tested. Why has the theory not been tested? Why was it not tested back in 1969? To this day Prof. Du Toit’s sub-committee has not officially accepted or rejected the theory. Why all these delays? Dr. Lochner has made forecasts for up to 1974. Would any important or well-known scientist dare make unfounded forecasts so far into the future? The Deputy Minister says no agreement has been reached with Dr. Lochner about who is to test his theory. My reply is, why has the Government itself not taken the initiative and had the theory tested by impartial experts? I believe that even at this late stage the Government does not realize the dangers facing the fishing industry of South-West Africa. If Dr. Lochner is correct, this year is the last chance to save the fishing industry in South-West Africa. The Government has not yet had his theory tested.

†I should like to turn to the hon. the Prime Minister, who unfortunately is not here. I want to make a request to him. I want to say to him that the South African and the South-West African fishing industries face a potential collapse. Substantial quota cuts have been drastically imposed by the Government. Each report so far issued by the Fishing Commission, and also the report of the South-West African Fishing Commission, of which the hon. the Deputy Minister was chairman, has referred to utterly inadequate research and over-exploitation. It is remarkable how members of Parliament, Senators, members of the Provincial Council, members of the Legislative Assembly of South-West Africa, party organizers, senior Administration officials, leading businessmen and big business concerns, many of which, according to the hon. the Minister of Finance’s own definition and own deduction from what I said in a previous speech, are not unfriendly, judging by the names of their companies, to the Government or the Nationalist Party, have shared in the Angra Pequeña and the Suid-Kunene bonanzas and the South-West African Rock Lobster island concessions, as well as Paternoster, Suid-Oranjerivier fish meal licences and the issue of the 21 rock lobster licences in 1963, in the face of warnings by fishery scientists and clear evidence of over-exploitation. Sir, we have read of typists who were surprised to find that they had been allotted shares in fishing companies. They, in my opinion, are only the tip of the iceberg. Nine-tenths of the iceberg has not yet been uncovered. How many others were there, Sir, about which we do not know? I believe that the Prime Minister, when he said in this House last year that only the highest standards should obtain in South African public life, was absolutely sincere and that he meant what he said. I believe that he has shown himself to be a man unafraid to appoint a judicial commission when his political opponents were involved. He appointed the Kolver Commission and he appointed the Boss Commission. The Deputy Minister has said that he is not prepared to assume the responsibility for what was done before he assumed office but that he is a very worried man. Sir, the former Minister and Deputy Minister, Mr. Haak, is not here to tell us the whole story. The Minister of Finance has given us no adequate explanation as to why rock lobster concessions, fish meal concessions and factory-ship concessions were issued against the warnings of fishery scientists and other authorities. The industry is admittedly in a parlous state. The country is filled with rumours about fishing concessions. A valuable economic asset is potentially in danger as a result of over-exploitation. Sir, I want to challenge the Prime Minister tonight to appoint a judicial commission to examine the administration of the fishing industries of South Africa and South-West Africa over the last decade and more particularly to go into the issue of licences and quotas and to ascertain why it is that Dr. Lochner’s warnings were not heeded in time.

Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member for Simonstown and the Opposition are now getting where they wanted to be with this search for a smelly little fish of five or six years ago. In regard to the note on which the hon. member for Simonstown concluded in suggesting that I had said that I was not prepared to accept responsibility for the actions of my predecessors and, by implication, that I suspected something fishy there, I want to say at once that this is not correct. If he read my speech in Hansard he would see very clearly why I said that it was impossible for me to go back and look up files in order to form a picture of what had happened six or eight years ago and then to try to pronounce judgment on the basis of that. Since the Opposition are apparently looking for someone behind the door, I should like to remind them that one does not look for someone else behind the door except in specific circumstances. But if one starts looking back—I am not a politician who likes to live 20 years in the past—I would say the Opposition’s big grievance in respect of this industry is that what they did while they were in power was not continued by this Government, They are making accusations here of jobs for political pals. When the hon. member for Simonstown did intensive research and burnt his candles till late at night, did he examine the state of the fishing industry in South-West Africa before 1950? Did he find out what interests institutions which were not favourably disposed towards the United Party had in that fishing industry?

Oppenheimer and Co.

Did he find out that institutions apparently favourably disposed towards the National Party probably had a mere 10 per cent interest in that industry—Luderitz and Walvis Bay together?

Were they politicians?

I shall come to the politicians. If time permits, I shall reply to each of the points made here by the hon. member for Simonstown. Sir, I have certain newspaper cuttings here. Is this what the Opposition aimed at? Is this what the hon. member for Simonstown had in mind when he started huckstering with this delicate industry in this House? Here is a report which reads as follows—

What newspaper is that?

Is this what he was aiming at?

Is it untrue?

This report reads as follows—

How an office typist picked up R3 675 in a fishing share deal.

I shall come to the allocations of shares …

But is it untrue?

These newspaper reports insinuate that ugly things are happening here. Is this what the hon. member for Simonstown was aiming at when he came forward here on the pretext that he wanted to save a delicate industry?

He is always in the mud.

Sir, I was correct in saying that when the Opposition should have spoken, they did not. What did they say at that time in comparison with the song and dance now being made six or eight years after these things, which may possibly have been mistakes, took place? Let hon. members of the Opposition tell me who might not possibly make a mistake in judging a matter such as this where one cannot measure and calculate? For example, did they not make a mistake in South-West Africa before 1950 when, as far as sardines were concerned, they left a valuable industry virtually unexploited, so that in 1950 the National Party had to say to their concessionaries, who were favourably disposed towards their party: “You must develop your concessions now, otherwise we are going to take them away from you”?

What about diamond concessions?

Everybody knows very well what is implied by this report: “Minister’s son amongst others.” The object was to involve the Minister, while the Minister made it very clear, when he got the opportunity, that he had had absolutely nothing to do with this concession his son had bought. But this implication, this insinuation, was sent into the world. Is this what the hon. member for Simonstown is aiming at when he speaks about the fishing industry? [Interjections.]

Order!

Sir, I patiently sat here listening to allegations in regard to this industry, and on a previous occasion I told the Opposition that when their kindred spirits in South-West Africa had the opportunity of proving in court everything which must now apparently be proven by a judicial commission of inquiry, they preferred to pay out to prominent Nationalists. Mr. Speaker, what happened in the case of these concessions? A concession is given to a company and as soon as the authority—in this case the Executive Committee of South-West Africa—has granted the concession, the Companies Act comes into operation in respect of that company as far as its share allocations are concerned and then the Executive Committee has nothing to do with the matter. The Executive Committee does not take a seat on that company’s board of directors and does not tell it how to allocate the shares. What happens is that lists are produced here of almost 100 prominent Nationalists who obtained fishing shares in South-West Africa, but did they tell us how many shareholders apart from those 100 or thereabouts obtained shares? According to my information there were 2 800 people altogether, and from that number they selected prominent Nationalists whom I, who know South-West Africa, did not even really know were Nationalists. Nevertheless, they are now called prominent Nationalists. [Interjections.] The injustice the hon. member is committing is that, as a result of these tactics being followed by the Opposition, persons who are completely innocent in respect of this matter are being implicated here. The present candidate for the National Party in Windhoek did not apply for shares and never received any, but he is one of the prominent Nationalists on the list who received 2 000 shares or thereabouts. In this way the honour of people is impugned when the type of thing is committed which the Opposition is committing here today, eight years and more after the event. The names of people’s children who receive no shares at all are confused, and their names are dragged in here as being those of persons who benefited by virtue of the position of their fathers, etc. This is done. If a person becomes a candidate of the National Party today—and here I am referring to institutions in the Republic, according to the newspapers—or if he becomes an M.P. or a provincial councillor, this is linked to his having obtained interests in a fishing industry on the West Coast six or eight years ago. This is what the Opposition is doing on the pretext of wanting to protect a delicate industry. If this is what the hon. member for Simonstown wanted to achieve, I think he has succeeded in creating a real scandal, but it is a scandal about which he himself should feel very upset.

After all, we know that the Opposition cannot talk about favouritism because of political considerations. We know what they did in every sphere. Those of us on this side of this House know that when they were in power it was a disqualification not only to be a Nationalist, but also to have an Afrikaans surname. [Interjections.] Many of us can testify to that. When the National Party came into power, the unbalanced state of affairs existed that Nationalists had virtually no interests whatsoever in the fishing industry. If the Opposition finds it wrong that the National Party gave an interest in the fishing industry to Nationalists as well because they had been excluded from it by the Opposition, as I have specifically indicated in respect of South-West Africa, and did not continue that process of discrimination against Nationalists, they may continue moaning and complaining about it until the cows come home. Those things were committed by the Opposition, and not only in this sphere, but in many spheres. There are numerous hon. members in this House who, like me, can testify to that. [Interjections.] Those things were committed, and must that injustice never be rectified? Must the injustice that in South-West Africa, for example, a Nationalist was told straight out that he could not qualify for a farm on a State settlement because he was a Nationalist, not be rectified? Must matters continue in the way in which they were done by the Opposition?

The hon. member speaks of unbridled exploitation and an unbridled assault on the industry for seven years. On what good authority does he say that?

Just look at the industry at present.

It is easy to say, “Look at the industry,” but I want to say this to the hon. member. While he wants to come and pose as the champion of the man who is dependent on this industry, one of my problems in Walvis Bay is that the fishing industry does not accept that the position seems as dangerous as I think it does. They do not accept this. We must take it into account that on the West Coast it is not accepted in all respects that the position seems as dangerous as I think it does. I am casting no reflection on researchers or scientists. I have so often said that the world is lagging behind in this sphere—not South Africa; I believe South Africa is one o£ the leaders. But the world is lagging behind in this field.

When did you receive Dr. Lochner’s theory?

Does the hon. member want us to accept and apply Dr. Lochner’s theory as it is? Does he want me to apply Dr. Lochner’s theory to the fishing industry tomorrow?

Test it.

I have explained to the hon. member what the problem is in connection with Dr. Lochner’s theory and why it cannot be tested. I do not want to go into that again. The hon. member told me that the Opposition had not remained silent. In regard to those speeches and questions to which he referred, why did he not, if he was really concerned, come forward as he did today? But since then it has become the Opposition’s policy to commit character assassination. At that time it was not their policy to commit character assassination, but now they are trying to do so and to attack people in this way, which I cannot call anything but a scandalous way. They did speak at that time and were possibly concerned, and many other people were concerned, but it is also foolish to leave an industry lying there and not to exploit it to the full. That is also foolish, and to achieve that balanced point of exploitation, the point where things break even and where one has optimum exploitation, is very difficult. It is not easy. I personally played a part in South-West Africa in the sense that we experimented to see where we would reach the optimum point. It is easy for the hon. member to talk now, because today there are clear danger signs, but when he talks of over-exploitation and of the unbridled assault on this industry, I say to him in all modesty that he does not really know what he is talking about, because I, as one who was in and concerned with this industry for many years, know today that these phenomena may have other causes as well. Science also knows that there may be other causes which have nothing to do with exploitation. For example, let me mention a phenomenon which has never before been noticed at Walvis Bay but which has come to my notice now, namely that large schools of masbanker have made their appearance. This is altogether a freak phenomenon in that fishing industry. This is why, if one knows something about this industry, one does not rush in to speak with authority as the hon. member for Simonstown did here.

As I have said, he finds it wrong of me that I refuse to ferret. I explained to him on very good grounds why I was not going to ferret and why it would be unwise, and the reason is not that, as he suggested, I am afraid of discovering a smelly fish, such as he is assiduously searching for.

In regard to the shares which Nationalists in South-West Africa received and about which he is complaining, the South-West Africa Administration required a certain percentage of those shares to be given to people from South-West Africa. The company stated in its prospectus that those shares would be allocated by discretion, because the company had to ensure that a certain percentage of those shares went to residents of South-West Africa.

And there are no more United Party supporters there.

What happened then? When the shares were offered, and a certain percentage of them had to go to residents of South-West Africa—this was a condition laid down by the Administration—people from the Republic came along. People from the Republic—and in saying this I am not casting a reflection on the hon. member for Simonstown—then came from South Africa with bags of money and bribed people throughout the territory to apply. The company had to take that into account. Obviously it took this into account in such a way that as far as was humanly possible it would ensure that the shares went to residents of South-West Africa.

Typists?

Typists in South Africa should take note of the fact that the hon. member for Yeoville thinks they are not competent to possess shares. The hon. member mentioned that I had gone to see Dr. Verwoerd about the allocations. I do not know where he got that information from. I never went to see Dr. Verwoerd about allocations. I have gone to see the present Prime Minister since and I spoke about that in this House on the first occasion. The hon. member asked me whether I had gone to demand Mr. Jan Haak’s resignation from the Prime Minister. Is this the level to which the Opposition is prepared to descend in a delicate matter such as this fishing industry? Is this really how much the fish on the opposite side are stinking? This type of reflection is cast upon me, apart from that on the Prime Minister, whom I do not even want to bring into this matter. Is this the smelly fish that is involved here when a man is placed under suspicion in the way in which the hon. member for Simonstown did? I want to give a direct reply. My reply is “No”. I think it is very ugly of the hon. member to insinuate this.

In regard to Paternoster, I said on a previous occasion that I did not know much about Paternoster. What I have in fact heard about Paternoster is that the interests which M.P.s had in it were bought out from people who had rights. According to my information, these rights were not allocated to the M.P.s. I accept that information.

The first crayfish allocations were made to the original company, but the second crayfish allocations were made to the present company.

My information is that those rights were bought by the M.P.s.

The hon. member again raised the question of the crayfish at Luderitz. I told him on a previous occasion that a compromise had been reached with the full approval and in fact at the inspiration of the Executive Committee of South-West Africa. In that compromise, an exchange of shares took place. What is wrong with that? We had a concession there which we wanted to consolidate with another, for two very good reasons. One reason was that we could reduce the total quota of the two in that way.

By how many tons?

I cannot remember.

I know. It was 10 000 boxes out of the 100 000 boxes.

Ten thousand is a very important quantity. The second reason was that we could retain a protected area in that way.

The original allocation was in the conservation area.

I already told the hon. member that on a previous occasion. I am not hiding it. In spite of this, the hon. member comes forward here as if he has dragged out a smelly fish again. I told him that on a previous occasion. As I have said, the second reason was that we could retain a conservation area there. I want to tell the hon. member and the Opposition that we are dealing with a very difficult industry here, one which is difficult to gauge and difficult to assess. I have the wholehearted co-operation of the department in every respect. I also have the wholehearted co-operation and guidance of the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs in every respect. It is possible that this industry is busy collapsing. I do not have the knowledge which the hon. member for Simonstown has to say that the industry is collapsing. We shall do everything in our power to rehabilitate this industry if it should collapse.

You have examples in other parts of the world.

We take note of those examples and it is for this very reason that we accept that there are danger signs. However, the measures we apply have to be applied against the will of the people, who suffer financially as a result of them. Fishermen in South-West Africa have the prospect that their income this year will be cut by 50 per cent compared with that of last year, perhaps even by more than 50 per cent. It is not easy just to do these things, simply to intervene and to interfere with the people’s livelihood in that way. I just want to say to the Opposition that, as far as I am concerned, the hon. member for Simonstown should leave this smelly little fish story of his. All he will achieve is that the smell of that little fish will cling to him. I am sure it will not cling to me. We need the co-operation of the hon. the Opposition in order to do justice to those people who are hard hit. Let us persevere and gain more clarity in regard to our position, and if it is possible to restore this industry to what it was 10 years ago, let us do so. The way in which the Opposition is setting to work in order to make a scandal of the matter, as far as I am concerned, while, there is no scandal, is not the solution for this multi-million industry of South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, I was pleasantly surprised when the hon. the Minister of Finance, in introducing his Budget, chose Confucius as his guide. I am quite sorry that I never realized that the hon. the Minister of Finance is or was a student of Confucius. Had I known that, I would perhaps have been in a position to have pointed out to the hon. the Minister a few other aphorisms of Confucius. Lin Yutang said of this philosopher: “He was almost an anarchist, believing as his highest political ideal in a society of people living in moral harmony which should make government itself unnecessary.” One of the principal objectives in the political viewpoint of Confucius was that the further a state was developed and had progressed the less government there was in that state. The hon. the Minister of Finance will agree with me that if there is one thing his Government cannot deny, it is the fact that there are few countries where there is so much over-government as we have in this country today. Year after year the hon. the Minister must come to this hon. House, and year after year he must increase the burden to be shouldered by the public so as to make the accounts of the country balance. Then we have the same scene in this House every year, i.e. that members, the hon. member for False Bay for example, come along and demand that we say whether less should be spent on education, social welfare, etc., and on what one should cut down. [Interjections.] No, we are most certainly not prepared to cut down on those essentials. But that is not the basic difficulty we have in South Africa today. One of the basic difficulties in which our country finds itself, is that there is over-government, that the State is intervening too drastically in the private lives of its citizens, and that this entails unnecessary costs.

In this connection I want to mention a minor practical example. Last weekend there was a report in all the Sunday newspapers of a 14-yearold Chinese girl who wanted to participate in a school tennis competition with other children at Aliwal North. After a long struggle she had to obtain a permit from the Department of Community Development in order to take part in an inter-school tennis tournament. This is only one practical example of thousands which are taking place in the country day after day. This is only one minor little case, but it forms part of a vast pattern. How much time must officials spend on an absolute triviality, how many letters are not written? For all that we know, this triviality went as far as the hon. the Minister. I am saying I do not know whether this was the case or not. I am not making any statement. But quite probably the matter was taken as far as the Minister, to decide whether a young child could participate in a tennis tournament at Aliwal North. As I have said, this is only one example of the kind of cases we get.

We already have the position in this country that approximately 36 per cent of the economically active people in this country are in one way or another connected with the general public service which, in a certain sense, is an unproductive service. This percentage is growing year after year. Among their number there are a great host of officials who are occupying their time with rubbish. This is not the officials’ fault. It is the Government’s fault. They are forced to occupy their time with rubbish. I call it rubbish. That it should be necessary to decide on such matters at such a high level, and that officials should occupy their time with such trivialities, which are quite unnecessary, is rubbish.

It is an Act which you helped to make.

I have never been in favour of it. I have expressed my opposition to it I do not know how many times. I challenge the hon. the Prime Minister to show me where I have ever in this House been in favour of the Government having to decide whether a person should be given a permit to play tennis. But I can give him ten quotations showing where I have opposed this in this House over the years. But this is again an example of over-government. And Confucius has some advice for the hon. the Minister in this regard as well. He says:

That is our difficulty with the hon. the Minister. He knows that one of the basic expenses in the country is that we have a host of people who have to spend time, energy and the money of the taxpayer on trivialities in the State machinery. The burden on the taxpayer will not be lightened until such time as the Government is prepared to give consideration to this matter in order to determine where it can once again give members of the public a measure of autonomy, can give them the right to make their own decisions concerning themselves. If the hon. the Minister has the interests of the country at heart, and really wants to economize, I hope that he will see how far he can go in changing the direction to such an extent that the Government will, on a central level, have to intervene less in the private lives of the citizens, which sends State costs soaring, as is the case today.

But I want to discuss another matter. After the no-confidence debate the Government’s newspapers predicted that we would, during the Little Budget, have a sensational debate on the question of petty (klein) apartheid. In Rapport it was even stated that the Nationalists were going to—and I am quoting—“come to grips” with the position. The Little Budget came and went. By now we are already halfway through the Main Budget and we have as yet seen no signs of any serious coming to grips with the position of petty apartheid on the part of the Government. I can understand the dilemma of hon. members on that side of the House. They cannot come to grips with anything if the Prime Minister and the leader of that party insist that they do not know what it is all about. On the other hand I can also understand the aims of the Government press, particularly that of the Sunday press. For years they have been acting as a tremendous pressure group within the Government party. They are, as it were, a party within a party, and one of the directions in which they have for a long time now been exerting pressure and straining towards is that the National Party should abandon petty apartheid. Consequently I was greatly astonished when the hon. the Minister of Labour stood up here and said that I was the man who had created the term “petty apartheid”. He implied that this, in other words, had not originated from within the National Party, but that it was the United Party that had been so reprehensible as to create the impression of an apparent division in the Government Party. At the time we had the same attitude from them in regard to the term “outward movement”. The Leader of the House once, in the presence of the Prime Minister at a congress, accused the English-language press of having coined the term “outward movement” to create the impression that the National Party had changed its policy. However, it was Die Burger that pointed out to them that the Prime Minister had himself been the first person to use that expression. I would be completely satisfied if I had been the person who coined the term “petty apartheid”, but I think it is high time we looked at a few facts for a while, and placed a few things on record. The first thing I want to say is that the term “klein apartheid” (petty apartheid) was used for the first time by Die Burger. This was in fact done on 12th December, 1959. This was therefore done as long ago as 12 years, and the hon. the Minister was at that stage already, after his political “wanderlust” of the forties, back in the National Party, and he must have known it.

You are the last one to speak about things like that. [Interjections.]

That is why I find it so astounding that after hundreds of articles dealing with petty apartheid, have appeared in the Government press over the years, and after hundreds of statements have been made concerning it by Nationalists, and the term has become as firmly established in our political vocabulary as the word “apartheid” itself, the Leader of the Party can come along and tell us that he does not know what it is all about. The best explanation …

I am still waiting to hear from you and your Leader.

Yes, I am discussing it now. We shall come to the Leader of the Opposition. The best explanation I can find for the attitude of the hon. Prime Minister is that he simply does not see his way clear to adopting any standpoint, or that he simply does not want to adopt a standpoint in regard to an important discussion which is in progress from top to bottom in his own party. I should like to refer the hon. the Prime Minister and the hon. the Minister of Labour to the book Dawie. The book was compiled by Louis Louw and was published in 1965. It contains the entire history of Dawie-ism in South African politics, and an entire chapter in that book is devoted to “Groot Manne en Klein Apartheid”. I hope that the hon. the Minister and the hon. the Prime Minister will find an opportunity to read it. According to this book Dawie wrote as follows in Die Burger on 9th January, 1960 (translation)—

However, the Prime Minister does not know what it is. Dawie tells how it had come about that he decided to write about petty apartheid. He said—

Dawie had previously said that it was foolish to try to put a stop to something like that through a Government directive—

Here we clearly have a definition of petty apartheid. I hope the hon. the Prime Minister will have no further difficulty or lack of clarity in regard to this matter. The term petty apartheid was born of the dissatisfaction of an important Nationalist who felt that things were being done by the Government which were wrong. At the time he received a tremendous amount of support from the readers of his newspaper and from other newspaper editors.

What I also find interesting, is that the circumstances in which this concept of petty apartheid was born, are similar to the circumstances which are now prevailing in regard to the question of the admission of Coloureds to the new Opera House in the Cape. One is pleased to see that Die Burger has remained quite consistent by intimating throughout its dissatisfaction with the Government’s attitude. As I have said, the very first definition of petty apartheid was given by Die Burger. It emanated from National Party circles. What it amounted to was that all segregational measures which irritate, should be regarded as petty apartheid. I think this is a good definition, and I hope the hon. the Prime Minister will consider it. If he looks carefully, he will see that there is no much difference between that definition and mine. I know of few segregational measures based on colour which are not irritating to the non-Whites and a source of annoyance to them. But now I must add an explanation to this. In 1959, when Die Burger gave its definition of petty apartheid, the idea of separate freedoms, of ethnic partition, was by no means a fixed policy yet. It was only as the idea of separate multi-national development on the basis of territorial division began to crystallize as a policy that the term “petty apartheid” gained greater currency in National Party circles to explain the contrast between personal separation which was based on colour discrimination and the division of political control on the basis of ethnic homelands. The hon. the Prime Minister ought to know that that development took place in the meaning of the term “petty apartheid”. But for his information I should like to mention something. I have here a clipping from Die Burger of quite recent origin. This is what is stated here (translation)—

It places petty apartheid and White domination on the one side—

In this way I could mention numerous examples, for example Dirk Richard and Nie Rhoodie. It is interesting, because the hon. the Leader of the Opposition gave Nie Roodie’s definition, which reads as follows—

Here we again have that contrast. This is the definition which the Leader of the Opposition submitted here.

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

Evening Sitting

Mr. Speaker, when we adjourned for supper I was explaining how a deep-seated conflict had developed within the Government Party in regard to the question of apartheid. On the one hand you have those who still speak the language of 1948 and who want enforced separation on the basis of colour to be applied by the State in every conceivable walk of life. Whether that separation is good or bad, necessary or unnecessary, humane or inhumane, does not matter. It is separation for the sake of separation on the basis of colour. I can just say in passing that this view differs radically from the explanation which the Government today gives to overseas visitors and to U.N.O. of the significance and aims of separate development. In contrast to the view of 1948 …

That is not true.

If the hon. member does not want to believe it, it simply means that he cannot read. If a man cannot read, I cannot help him. In contrast to the 1948 views, there is today a growing group of opinion-formulators, Afrikaans educationists, spiritual leaders, newspaper writers, business leaders and others, who are beginning to realize that major political separation, in other words, multi-national separation, is the main issue. As major political separation between the various national groups progresses, so personal relationships should to an increasing extent be left to the people themselves, without Government interference. In this way petty apartheid ought then to disappear. This is the conflict within that party which I dealt with in the no-confidence debate. There could have been no lack of clarity in this regard. What did the Prime Minister do then? In reply to that he came forward with an excuse. He said that people talked about petty apartheid, but that nobody had ever defined it. For that reason he was unable to reply. The hon. member for Yeoville immediately told the hon. the Prime Minister then that Die Burger had given a definition of petty apartheid. And Die Burger did, as I read out earlier this evening. Various other bodies have also furnished explanations of what was meant by petty apartheid. The hon. the Prime Minister must have known this. But in order to test the hon. the Prime Minister I then sent him a definition. As I have already indicated, my definition did not differ very greatly from either the definition given by Die Burger or the definition given by Prof. Rhoodie.

Does the hon. member concede that his own leader does not agree with that definition?

I shall come to that. No, not at all. It is no different. I challenge the hon. the Prime Minister and the hon. member. Just take a look at Prof. Rhoodie’s definition as I read it out here this evening.

Your own Leader …

He quoted Prof. Rhoodie. I have now again read out Prof. Rhoodie’s definition. Hon. members simply did not take the trouble, otherwise they would have seen that there is little if any difference between my definition and that which Prof. Rhoodie gave or that which Die Burger gave. But I am coming to that. Mr. Speaker, my definition simply stated that petty apartheid was separation which was based in the first place on colour. Surely that is self-evident, because apartheid deals with colour. It is something which is enforced unilaterally. That is also self-evident, because apartheid is enforced separation which causes humiliation …

May I ask a question? You say that it is on an enforced basis of colour. Is there any way other than an enforced basis of colour on which we can have separate residential areas in South Africa?

We have had them for years. How did the Coloured residential area of Athlone, for example, become established under the United Party?

On the enforced basis of colour.

It was not enforced.

This was a long time before the Group Areas Act. It was not enforced. Sir, I shall return to that again. Unfortunately there is not time to reply to everything, but the hon. the Minister ought to know that if he builds institutions such as schools, churches, community centres and housing at a certain place for people, they will move to that place.

On the basis of colour.

This has nothing to do with enforced separation. But, in any case …

May I ask the hon. member a question?

No, Sir,… [Interjections.] I want to inform the hon. the Chief Whip that I promised the Prime Minister that I would reply to a few questions. If I do not do so now, I will not have time to do so. My definition simply stated: petty apartheid is separation which is based on colour, which is enforced unilaterally, which is humiliating, in other words which is irritating, and which involves no development. In other words, it is to be distinguished from autonomous multi-national development. The controversy which is at present being waged in the Government press shows that my definition is a reasonably reliable one and that it corresponds very well to the views of the Nationalists I have quoted. But the important point is that the Prime Minister has by now produced a whole series of excuses as to why he cannot adopt a standpoint on the question of petty apartheid. First he said he did not know what it was; then he told a foreign newspaperman that he had never yet seen it; then he complained that he was waiting for the definition, but when the definition was given to him he looked for another escape route. In any case, he took my definition and began to read it in the middle. I have never seen anybody mutilating a definition as he did by beginning to read it in the middle. The latest excuse, which he mentioned at the Press Conference, is that the Leader of the Opposition and I are not in agreement. That is not the case, but let us suppose it were. I analysed the definition. Now set it alongside that of Prof. Rhoodie.

Japie, what happened in the caucus? [Interjections.]

Order!

The point is that the Government’s latest excuse was put forward at the time of the Press Conference. We now want to know from the hon. the Prime Minister; Where does he stand with reference to the various standpoints which his Party have adopted on this matter? I now want to furnish him with a few replies. In the first place I want to say that when we on this side reject a specific form of enforced apartheid, whatever it may be, it does not mean that we advocate enforced intergration in regard to the same matter. In principle enforced separation and enforced integration is the same. If I am wrong … [Interjections.]

Order!

Sir, they do not have the courage to listen. I want to inform the House that if it is wrong for the State to force people away from one another, then it is just as wrong to force people together. That is why, when we attack any form of enforced apartheid, we are not accepting enforced intergration. Separation and integration in their enforced form are not opposites. They are birds of a feather. The opposite of enforcement is autonomy—personal autonomy, group autonomy—and this is fundamental to democracy. Just as I as an individual have certain freedoms, so we believe that a group of people, whether a group of Afrikaans-speaking people, or a group of Protestants, or a group of Catholics, or a group of English-speaking persons, or a group of non-Whites, should have the right and the freedom to organize themselves for the purposes of schools …

May I ask you a question?

No, I do not have the time. Sir, I told the hon. the Prime Minister that I would reply to certain questions of his, but hon. members are not giving me a chance to do so.

They are afraid of the replies.

A second reply I want to give is this: The Government always confuses contact with intergration. Sir, normal, civilized contact between people does not mean integration and loss of identity, because if contact with other people means loss of identity, there would not have been a nation left in Europe today; there would not today have been an Afrikaner nation, because there is continual contact. But listen now to their logic: If contact means integration, then there could not today have been an Afrikaans people in South Africa.

Mention one case where we are severing contact.

The entire apartheid policy, based on enforced separation. is aimed at severing contact, and that hon. member ought to know it. Our argument is that contact has nothing to do with integration. I have already, on quite a number of occasions in this House, said that there are situations under the apartheid regulations which one cannot eliminate overnight with the stroke of a pen because every piece of legislation creates new situations and new rights. To erase it just like that results in a new injustice. That is why I also said that there are certain situations which cannot immediately be changed, but that does not prevent us from making a start and looking to see what petty apartheid measures there are which we can eliminate, because if one begins to think in the right direction, one finds meaningful answers. [Time expired.]

With reference to the hon. member for Bezuidenhout’s long dissertation on integration, enforced integration and petty apartheid, and with reference to the question asked this afternoon by the hon. member for Carletonville, i.e. what the ideology of the Opposition is, I want to call to mind that earlier this session the hon. the Minister of Planning levelled the accusation at the Opposition that economic growth had become an ideology to them—a golden calf. I want to go further; I want to level the accusation at the Opposition that economic growth has become to them the cloak for integration and that integration has become an ideology to them. Sir, in column 208 of this session’s Hansard the hon. member for Bezuidenhout, who has just sat down, did not want to separate the non-Whites from the Whites when he said—

Just as if they have it, Mr. Speaker! —

Sir, this is a beautiful piece of work by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout; this is good stuff for non-White extremists and carefully planned propaganda against South Africa. [Interjections.]

It would be inhumane if it were true, but the truth is—and the Opposition knows this—that the non-Whites do not have citizenship rights in White South Africa and that we are giving them those rights in their own homelands.

I could quote examples from speeches in Hansard by every speaker on that side. It is conspicuous that they covered the entire field; the injustice of apartheid; the injustice of living in separate homelands; the injustice of having smaller, but better, areas than the Whites; the injustice of not being represented in this House; the injustice of migratory labour; the injustice of work reservation; the injustice of unequal remuneration; the injustice of not getting citizenship of White South Africa, etc.

Mr. Speaker, I have told them before that they were talking this idea of injustice into the hearts of the masses. In seeking the alliance of the non-Whites for the ideology of integration under the cloak of economic growth, every speaker on that side has transgressed in this respect.

Scandalous!

Sir, the Opposition say they are prepared to take over the government, but they are not even capable of realizing the mere fact that their ideology of integration would create so many sociological, social and political problems that every possible economic advantage which might arise from it would be totally destroyed. [Interjections.] The Opposition must not suggest by their faint drone of interjections that integration is not their aim. Let us see what their Hansard says. In column 357 the hon. member for Newton Park said, and I quote—

What is this but a plea for integration? [Interjections.] The hon. member for Durban Central says that apartheid is a form of oppression. The hon. member for Hill-brow says that his party is not handicapped by an inappropriate ideology. In saying that, he is referring to apartheid, because the ideology that he finds appropriate is integration. The hon. member for Port Natal says it is tragic to talk in the year 1971 about saving the Whites. His line of thought is supported by the hon. member for Gardens, who says that for the Government to say that we must be White and poor will no longer be good enough. What are these gentlemen advocating, Sir? Are they advocating separate development? Of course not!

Of course, yes. [Laughter.]

The lid!

Sir, that hon. member confirms it. Their concept of one nation consisting of 20 million people with a common fatherland and with citizenship rights for all can be achieved in one way only, i.e. by integration. Then the hon. the Leader of the Opposition comes along and tells us he believes in separate residential areas, separate houses, separate swimming baths and separate schools for the non-Whites. But in the same breath he says he has good advice in connection with the policy of separate development and that he wants to give this advice to the hon. the Prime Minister as a gift. It is that even if this policy would not have a disrupting effect on our national economy it should nevertheless be abandoned. Sir, this is strange advice from a party which does not have integration as its aim. They do not come to offer assistance so that what they believe in may be implemented. On the contrary, they fight every measure which the Government wants to maintain in respect of separate development. Therefore their free advice is that the policy should be abandoned; therefore they say it is a handicap which is unappropriate; that it is tragic to talk in the year 1971 about saving the White race, and that it is not sufficient to be White if you are poor. Mr. Speaker, the White workers of South Africa who are not as rich as they must now become a coloured race. [Interjections.] As if that would make them rich! I am asking them today, Sir, whether this is the only reply they have for the White workers in South Africa.

Jaap Marais is back with us.

I come to another aspect, i.e. the Opposition’s double-talk. I shall begin with the matter of official languages for Bantu homelands. The Opposition do not want to grant the Black people of South Africa their nationhood, as the hon. the Prime Minister pointed out to them. Therefore the unfortunate suspicion of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition that the Government would grant official recognition to Bantu languages in order to promote nationhood among them, was so real that they opposed the legislation concerned. But in doing so, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition was guilty of the biggest and the worst imaginable double-talk, because they had supported this Bill before the hon. the Prime Minister had introduced it in the House of Assembly. In fact, they anticipated it. In column 296 the hon. member for Yeoville said the following—

Where can one find a clearer statement of what used to be the policy of the Opposition in this regard, but is no longer its policy since the Joint Sitting? However, I want to dwell on this important statement made by the hon. member for Yeoville. After all, he is the person who wildly berated the Government about morality. I now ask him, where is the morality of the United Party if, within the space of a few Hansard columns, from the said column 297 to column 18 of the Joint Sitting, they could become so immoral towards the non-Whites? They are immoral not only towards the non-Whites, but also towards the Whites outside who are following them blindly. Mr. Speaker, if one hears of the immorality, the farce and the falsity of the United Party’s policy and follows them nevertheless, one must really be blind with one’s eyes open.

What their Hansard reveals is that they are a “yes/no” party. First they say yes, and soon afterwards they say no.

But I come to another example of double-talk, and this is in connection with migratory labour, which has been vehemently rejected by the Opposition. If one looks at column 655 of the hon. member for King William’s Town’s speech, and at other speeches as well, it is clear that migratory labour is rejected out of a feeling of pity for the Bantu in relation to their sexual urges. [Interjections.] Sir, they laugh at this, but have you heard them being concerned to the same extent about our Antarctic teams who cannot take their families with them? Have you heard them being concerned about our men on the borders who cannot live with their families? Why must the Bantu be prompted to regard this as something in regard to which an injustice is being done to them? Why must they be prompted to regard this as the reason why they have to loiter in the streets? [Interjections.]

Order!

They will get another turn to speak after I have finished, but now they must listen to what I am saying. Why must they be prompted to regard this as a reason why they have to loiter in the streets and smoke dagga and steal and get drunk and rape White women? This is what they put forward as the reason, and is it not a fact that lawlessness and rebellion are instilled in the hearts of the non-Whites as a result of these stories they are spreading?

But in this calculated rejection of migratory labour there is double-talk, because the hon. member for Transkei says he accepts there must be a measure of migratory labour. The one rejects it and the other accepts it to an extent. A little of this and a little of that, more of this and less of that, and the policy of the Opposition is a perfect concoction, as I shall indicate presently.

In column 88 the hon. member for Hill-brow also spoke about this policy of little bits, in that he said: “We shall regard as permanent the Bantu who have been absorbed into our industrial effort”. But then he hastened to add: “The vast majority of them”. Some small part of them must not be permanent. But in the same column he once again reduced the grand total of permanent Bantu in saying—

We accept at the same time the necessity …

Incidentally, he accepted Government policy here—

… of attracting as many of them as possible back to the homelands.

But some small number of them must not be attracted back.

Dissemblers, double-talk.

What kind of policy is this? How does one implement this policy of little bits? A few must not do this and a few must not do that. But this is not the end of this policy of little bits. I come to the next example of their double-talk, and this is the establishment of the Bantu migrant labourers on a family basis in order to make them permanent, which is the declared policy of the United Party. [Interjections.] I do not have the time to refer to everyone’s Hansard, but for the record I should like to refer to what was said in column 296 by the hon. member for Yeoville and in column 655 by the hon. member for King William’s Town. Hon. members can go and read it themselves later. But the wild tirades of these two members are once again rejected by the hon. member for Transkei, who always has to come to the rescue, and he says it is nonsense that all non-White workers in urban areas must have their families with them. A few of them have to do without this little comfort, Sir. [Interjections.]

Order! The hon. member for Sea Point must contain himself.

May I ask a question?

Yes, but then the hon. member must stand up.

I have no time for questions. I come to another example of double-talk, and this concerns equal remuneration for equal services. In column 170 the hon. member for Green Point made it clear that it is United Party policy that there should be equal remuneration for equal services between White and non-White, but in column 1066 the hon. member for Rosettenville comes along and recommends that the salary gap should only be reduced. But a third hon. member comes along and suggests that the present position is a safeguard for the White worker. Here we have three divergent points of view. One says equal remuneration for equal services is United Party policy. Another recommends that the salary gap be reduced, and a third says the present position is a safeguard for the White worker. In other words, it must be retained. And then they tell me their policy is not absolute chaos!

I come to another example of double-talk in regard to the labour shortage. Hansard is full of it. They talk about the detrimental effect which it has on our national economy, and say that the taps must be turned open in respect of non-White labourers. [Interjections.] But here an hon. member on the opposite side comes along and asserts … [Interjections.] Sir, I say an hon. member of that side asserts that the labour shortage is in fact insignificant because, he says, under United Party policy non-White employment will affect the present ratio of two non-White workers to one White worker in the most insignificant way. What does this mean? But he goes further and says history has proved that it is United Party policy and that the extra Bantu employed will affect the ratio of Black to White in the most insignificant way.

But he goes even further and says that in the future it will also be United Party policy that non-White employment will affect the ratio of Black to White in the most insignificant way. What does this mean? It means one of two things. Either the labour shortage is indeed insignificant or they will not employ non-Whites on the scale on which they want to force us with their speeches to employ them. In other words, they are only wooing the vote of the industrialist by making a song and dance about the labour shortage, and then they place this nonsense on record, so that they may be free in both directions.

Now you are really talking nonsense!

The hon. member says I am talking nonsense. I am quoting from their Hansard. I am quoting them. In other words, they only talked nonsense. These are their own statements in Hansard.

I come to another aspect of double-talk, i.e. the charge against the Government in regard to pressure from abroad. In column 655 the hon. member for King William’s Town accuses the Government of having established Bantu homelands as a result of pressure from abroad.

I see my time is running out, Mr. Speaker.

I now come to a charge made by that side, a charge which I should like to relate to their own fear of the pressure of world opinion. Their fear of world opinion has become a disease. The publicity they give to their own disease is more harmful to South Africa than the policy of separate development. If we have to yield to world opinion we have to reject the policy of separate development, as the Opposition has already done. But, in spite of the pressure of world opinion, the Government is purposefully continuing to implement its policy of separate development and Bantu homelands. As long as the people of South Africa stand by the Government, the Government will continue to develop its policy of separate development in the best interests of this country.

Mr. Speaker, we have just witnessed a spectacle which is a demonstration of the confusion prevailing in the ranks of the Opposition, namely that a man on the Opposition side, a person who has been a member of this House for approximately 20 years, still does not know tonight that whenever an hon. member has risen here and is making a speech, he may not walk right across the floor of this House. I say that the hon. member is serious and honest in saying that he cannot understand it. He does not comprehend it at all. I want to add that this is a characteristic of the Opposition’s conduct as a whole. While we were specifically discussing the Budget and financial matters, a number of hon. members on the Opposition side rose and spoke as softly as possible. I was under the impression that my hon. friends were not keen for us to hear what they had to say. When they started speaking distinctly, they came forward with the story of petty apartheid and a fishing anecdote by the hon. member for Simonstown. [Interjections.] The hon. member for Sea Point may as well remain calm, for I shall tell him about it. His memory is so short that this is not the only thing he cannot remember, for he cannot remember the story about the fish either.

I am sorry that the hon. member for Bezuidenhout is not here at the moment. In spite of his pretence to great wisdom, he displayed the same ignorance and lack of insight which we continually find amongst members of the Opposition. A leader of the National Party has never said that our policy of separate development, which is fundamentally a policy of gradual disentanglement, of the development of various population groups, does not bring about some discrimination and does not give some offence. I want to state emphatically here tonight that former leaders and the present Leader of the National Party have repeatedly said that we are following a course leading to less and less discrimination. As a nation’s own national existence is being created and granted to it and as that nation is being helped to develop, it is granted its own right and a territory and an opportunity through which it can realize itself. Then it can realize its own nationhood, its own tradition and its own principles. As this is done, it is granted its own amenities, and the notices saying “Whites here” and “Non-Whites there” become more and more redundant. As we develop for the Coloured community their own residential areas, where they can lead a full communal existence and where they will have their own public services, it stands to reason that the discriminating notices of “Non-Whites here” and “Whites there” will fall away. In those areas they are served by their own people, they are free to move as they please and they need not struggle for seats in a White theatre; there they can in due course take their seats in their own theatre, without any restrictions.

Hon. members opposite are continually trying to disparage and minimize what is being done in regard to the non-White peoples in South Africa. While they are engaged in doing that, we are continuing to create the positive things which will ensure every population group in South Africa a national existence of its own. For the benefit of the hon. member for Bezuidenhout I want to repeat the following with reference to his “petty apartheid”: As South Africa grows and develops and as the National Party’s policy of separate development, the evolution and development of separate nationhoods, is developed, so discrimination will also become less and less. Then justice will also be done to the national self-realization of the various peoples of South Africa. We are not a one-nation country, as hon. members opposite once again claimed tonight. South Africa is multi-national and this multinationality will be developed so as to ensure every people a national existence of its own. Having made this point, I want to leave the matter at that.

I am sorry that the hon. member for Simonstown, who made such a reprehensible and such a questionable speech here this afternoon, once again saw fit to rake up here particulars and malicious gossip which had been replied to previously. He raised several matters to which he had previously received a very sympathetic and explicit reply. In spite of that he raised these matters once again. He did so, not because he did not know, but because he was deliberately trying to stir up and cast suspicion and to monger scandal in a reprehensible manner. That is all the hon. member wanted to achieve. I want to tell the hon. member for Simonstown in his absence that he felt ashamed this afternoon when the hon. the Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs replied to him. He is ashamed to take his seat here tonight. I have always regarded the hon. member as a fairly sensible and decent person, but this afternoon I came to the conclusion that he was not interested in the truth and in considering facts in a reasonable manner, but that his sole concern was to cast suspicion on decent people in a reprehensible manner, and to implicate their good names. He even suggested here this afternoon that the Leader of the National Party in South West was one of the people who allegedly received shares on a certain occasion. I think he could probably have referred to the former leader of the National Party in South West, but he did not say that. This afternoon he referred, without qualification, to the Leader of the National Party in South West. I want to tell him that what I expect from him, is that, for the sake of decency, he will clear up at least this point and give account of it.

Let me just refer to one point. Hon. members will at least expect me to say something about Paternoster Fisheries, to which reference was made here. Now, I want to tell hon. members that Paternoster Fisheries is one of the oldest fisheries along the West Coast of South Africa.

Who is the chairman?

I, in my capacity as a shareholder, am chairman of the board of directors of Paternoster Fisheries. Surely hon. members are interested in the facts, and I shall now furnish them with the facts. A few years ago the company, Paternoster Fisheries, found itself in financial difficulties, and was acquired by certain people, amongst others a few M.P.s, to whom reference was made here. Now, hon. members can appreciate that when a company finds itself in financial difficulties, it is not so easy to find people who will try to save it or take it over.

On a previous occasion in this House I furnished the hon. member for Simons-town with information in this regard. This afternoon he suggested that after these people, who included a number of M.P.s, had taken over that company, a crayfish concession was granted to the company. Now I want to say emphatically that when that company was taken over, it had already been granted that crayfish concession. Would hon. members on that side of the House please take in that fact; otherwise I shall be compelled to say that, if they should spread stories of this nature again, they do not mind telling blatant lies. When one furnishes people with the facts but they persist in engaging in the same suspicion-mongering, one feels inclined to say this.

But let me now furnish additional facts in regard to this small company. It is a relatively small company. Because members of the board of directors of the Paternoster Fisheries are the Parliamentary representatives of this part of the West Coast of the Republic of South Africa, this part which extends from just beyond Cape Town to the mouth of the Olifants River, the board of directors of this company decided that it wanted to create an opportunity for the fishing community on the West Coast. [Interjections.] The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg District is laughing now; but he never understands what one is saying. That is precisely why he is laughing now. Whenever he does not understand, he laughs. But let me now tell the hon. members the truth. The truth is that these people, as voters of myself and of the hon. member for Moorreesburg, approached us and asked us this question: How is it possible that Mr. Sacks and Mr. Lees and Mr. So-and-So in Cape Town have the major fish concessions along the West Coast and that we, whose parents and whose ancestors were engaged in the fishing industry, have never received any concessions? I want to tell hon. members here tonight what the position is: As long as the United Party governed in South Africa, a Mr. Eygelaar or a Mr. Visser or a Mr. Brink or a Mr. So-and-So from the West Coast, people who themselves and whose parents were engaged in the fishing industry all their lives, never came into consideration. That was U.P. policy; that was their premise. For that reason we, as the representatives of these people, went to the present Minister of Finance, the then Minister of Economic Affairs, and told him that we knew that the position was a difficult one and that it was difficult to make more allocations, and we asked him to consider granting an allocation to this company, which at that time had become a public company and had made its shares available to these people in the fishing industry, i.e. the fishermen, the boat owners and the skippers. The then Minister of Economic Affairs considered the whole matter. He decided that this case was a good one. He then allocated to this company a 10-ton licence out of a total of 50 tons allocated at the time. By those means a small share in the fishing industry was granted to these people. Mr. Eygelaar and Mr. Boonzaaier and others were taken up in the board of directors, and two people who were active fishermen and who were working on the boats, were taken up in the board of directors of the company. Three hundred other people—skippers, fishermen and other people in the industry—became shareholders of that company. I must honestly say that in allocating these shares at price of issue, we did not ask what a person’s political convictions were. I am convinced that there were many people who are members and supporters of the United Party and who received shares. We do not do what the U.P. does when it gets the chance. I want to tell hon. members here very explicitly that we were not interested in still leaving people of, for instance, their disposition, in control of this company. We are not prepared to do that, the reason being that they will not look after the interests of the ordinary fish-erfolk along the West Coast. We were anxious to prevent that from happening. I want the hon. members to remember that the hon. the Minister, who made small allocations, and the board of directors of Paternoster merely tried to remedy the injustice which the United Party committed in its time. All that was done, was an attempt to straighten out to a certain extent the lop-sided allocation of fish and crayfish concessions so that the person who drags the net and the person who goes out to sea today, may also have a niche in the fishing industry. I want to add that no shareholder and no director, irrespective of whether he is an M.P., received any shares at any price other than the price paid for them by every shareholder, namely 50 cents. No gifts or allocations were made for services rendered, as was so often done in the past.

Now I want to come back to the Budget, and I want to ask the hon. members why they are not discussing the Budget intelligently. After all, that is what we are concerned with here. Why are the hon. members not interested in discussing the Budget, which is the most important item which will be before this Parliament this year? Why are the hon. members interested in going back ten and fifteen years into the past in order that they may catch a small fish somewhere? I want to pay the hon. the Minister of Finance a compliment, and I want to do this especially when I look at the Opposition, for he presented a splendid Budget. It was such a splendid Budget that these hon. friends opposite were rendered speechless and paralyzed. I want to ask them to discuss the Budget for a while. The hon. members have been blowing hot and cold, and whenever it suits them, they simply accuse the Government of a “spending spree”. Now I want to admit to my hon. friends that there are in fact certain points in the Budget which are moderately inflationary. [Interjections.] Yes, hon. members may listen, too, and I include the hon. member for Constantia. I could not hear what the hon. member said, for apparently he was afraid that we would hear it. Now I want to mention to hon. members the items which, to my mind, are moderately inflationary. Let me mention one item. The hon. the Minister increased the pensions of our aged, and that is a moderately inflationary measure. However, is the Opposition opposed to it?

No.

Yes, now it suits the hon. member to say “no”, but whenever he can refer to a “spending spree” on the part of the Government, he does not think of that. I also want to mention another item. Our Defence budget rose from R257 million to R316 million; in other words, this means a considerable increase of almost R60 million. In considering such an item, one is not primarily concerned with inflation, but also with the security and the continued existence of the Republic of South Africa. Now I want to ask the hon. Opposition this question: Are they opposed to the fact that this increase took place in the Budget, that an additional amount of R60 million is being voted for Defence so that South Africa may buy the essential arms which it can obtain, as long as it can obtain such arms in the interests of the country? Are they for it or against it? [Interjections.] It seems to me as though hon. members want to concede this as well.

I want to mention to hon. members another point on which they can conduct an enjoyable discussion. On more than one occasion they have levelled the charge against the Government, inter alia, against the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development, that it is not doing enough to develop the Bantu homelands. There is allegedly no means of subsistence or future for these people. The hon. member for Hillbrow always makes great play of this matter. As regards Bantu Administration and Development, I see in the Budget an increase of R19 733 000. The amount voted for Bantu Education represents an increase of R10 535 000. As regards the Capital Account, the figure increased from R67 million to R87 million. Is this not proof that in this respect the Government is actively engaged in developing Bantu homelands and in making available the necessary funds in order to do, in a vigorous manner, what is necessary in respect of the schooling and training of the Bantu and the development of their country, which at other times is what hon. members would like to see done.

Tell us about Matanzima.

I shall not allow myself to be side-tracked by that hon. member. He can take the opportunity himself to say something intelligent. Now I just want to know, if hon. members regard this as a “spending spree”, why on other occasions they are talking about these things which are allegedly not being done, whilst the Government has now furnished proof that it is engaged in doing them? This criticism of a “spending spree” reveals a lack of arguments and a sense of responsibility in regard to the task at hand.

Let us look at a few other items. I want to refer to National Education— R80 680 000 has become R95 million, i.e. an increase of R15 million as regards National Education. In other words, this is a long-term non-inflationary investment in the training of the highly skilled manpower of South Africa, which we need so much. Our universities and all the institutions for advanced training bear testimony against the Opposition, for whenever it suited them in the past, they also spoke about insufficient funds being made available for this purpose.

I am sorry that I have no more time left, but I want to conclude by extending an invitation to hon. members. I want to make a request to them; I almost want to beg them. If they can criticize the Budget, discuss it for a change so that we may hear where the points of criticism are.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Piketberg is wasting his talents here. We did not realize what hidden qualities and abilities he has. He was able to take over a company going broke despite having crayfish concessions. Because a number of members of Parliament of the Nationalist Party joined the board, it suddenly profitable. But nobody has answered the fundamental issue which we have ra’sed, which is that members of that political party, of the Government, have received, through a company, concessions as the gift of the Government. That is the point, not that a person belongs to the United Party or to the Nationalist Party. We do not care what a person’s politics are; it is the principle of a member of Parliament of the governing party receiving a concession from his own government. The hon. member admitted that after Nationalist members of Parliament had taken over a bankrupt or a failing company, suddenly it blossomed, and then they received a concession. Mr. Speaker, I am no expert on concessions. I have never had a concession from this or any other Government and we on this side of the House do not believe that members of Parliament, public representatives, should have Government concessions. There is, however, another question which that hon. member did not answer and that is why the head office of the company Paternoster is registered in the same office as the Nationalist Party of the Cape. [Interjections.] A political party is a political organization. This is an innocent company, an innocent normal financial company. But its head office is the head office of the Nationalist Party.

That is not true.

I am sorry; apart from having to accept the explanation of the brilliant management of the managing director of the company. I am afraid I accept none of the other explanations on the points raised.

*I want to deal with another point that was raised by the hon. member. The hon. member spoke of the road leading towards the reduction of discrimination. Earlier this evening we heard a lot of noise, specifically from the hon. the Minister of Community Development, about compulsory segregation. We were attacked for allegedly being dishonest in objecting to certain petty apartheid measures and compulsory segregation. But this hon. member of the Government says that they are on their way towards removing discrimination. Now I want to ask that hon. member a question: The hon. member spoke about a Coloured community (Kleurlinggemeenskap). He did not use the words “Coloured nation”. The hon. the Minister of Information is also sitting over there. I now want to ask the hon. member for Piketberg clearly and unequivocally whether he believes in a Colouredstan, in a separate state with a separate nationhood in a separate area for the Coloureds? [Interjections.]

I may tell the hon. member that I do not believe in a Colouredstan.

I now want to ask the hon. the Minister of Information whether he will rise in this debate and explain his belief in the possibility of a Colouredstan for the Coloured people, a Colouredstan with its own nationhood, its own area and its own separate state. I shall return to this later.

I first want to point out the difference between the two speeches to which I have to reply. These are the speech made by the hon. member for Piketberg and the speech made by the hon. member for Odendaalsrus. [Interjections.]

Order! I do not think the hon. member for Durban Point needs any assistance in making his speech.

While the hon. member for Odendaalsrus was speaking, I saw before me the spirit of an Albert Hertzog. Here in this House the spirit of the Herstigte party revived, and here was the body in which that spirit is housed.

†Here was the voice of a Jaap Marais and the spirit of an Albert Hertzog. Never have we heard such a long definition of petty apartheid as that hon. member gave to this House. For 20 minutes he described petty apartheid. This was the hon. member, obsessed with the fear of colour, who spoke of economic growth leading to the ideology of integration. He was the hon. member who spoke with fear and trembling of the danger of any growth which could lead to integration. He is the hon. member whose life is apparently enclosed by a black cloud, through which he is not prepared to penetrate. He, with all his fears, and the hon. member for Piketberg, who speaks of removing discrimination, sit there in one Government. And then they say that they are a united political party! Sir, I now have a greater respect for Sam-pi—the organization Sampi, not the exmember, Sampie—now that I have heard this hon. member speak. Now I can understand why they kicked him out. I think his talents could have been better used there than in the real live politics of a country striving for solutions to deep problems, and often apparently almost insoluble problems.

Both members, although in different spirits, spoke of the development of the Bantu Reserves, but these are just words, words and more words. Why do they not quote the facts? Here is the latest report of the Xhosa Development Corporation. This is the financial institution designed to provide the economic infrastructure for the independent state whose Prime Minister yesterday demanded the complete takeover of government, greater financial assistance and the territorial acquisition of White land. There sits the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration. He was shocked and he has now come back to tell his Deputy how one of his protegés has proved the United Party right. We warned that this would happen. We warned that this was the end of the road and that neither the Prime Minister nor the Great Induna of Bantu Administration, the empire builder who is building up the Department of Bantu Administration, nor their party, would control the time-table of independence. In this report which I mentioned we can see the economic development of the Transkei effected through the Xhosa Development Corporation. We find, for instance, that two blocks of flats for Whites have been built in Butterworth. These were built for Whites, not for Xhosas. Are these temporary buildings? Are they prefabricated? Then we come to the industrial infrastructure. We find that in the whole of the Transkei, as a result of this programme, there are now six industries, five garages and 22 beer-halls. We find that five garages have been placed under Bantu management during the year. Under the next heading, dealing with industry, we find that 150 000 gallons of Bantu beer were consumed in February. We are told that “the beer was accepted with enthusiasm”. [Interjections.] This is the biggest industry, Sir. Then follow six industries, to cope with a population of million people. This is the development of which hon. members talk, as though they have found a solution to all the problems of separate development.

I want to come back to the Budget from which most of the Government speakers have kept clear for some time until the hon. member for Piketberg spoke. I want to say, Sir, that there are 820 968 reasons why we have this Budget which we are debating here in this House. There are 820 968 people who voted for this Budget last year and who now realize why the election was held a year earlier. Because had history taken its normal course South Africa would next week have voted in the general election for the new Parliament now sitting. If South Africa had voted next week instead of a year ago, I wonder what the electorate’s answer would have been to the Budget which is now before this House. I want to ask hon. members opposite whether their supporters, their 820 000 voters who voted for them also voted for an increase of R58 million in railway tariffs and for an increase of R48 million in Post Office charges. Did their supporters vote for that? Is that why they sent them back to Parliament? Did they tell their voters when they stood at the hustings a year ago, “Vote for me and I will see that there is an increase of R47 million in sales tax next year”? Did they stand up and say, “Vote for me and send me to Parliament and I will guarantee you an increase of R13 million in petrol tax”? Did they say: “If you vote for me I will make sure that your taxation is increased by R170 million next year”? If they had told them that or if the election had been held next week there would have been a very different story and a very different pattern in this House.

Are you going to take Wit-bank?

Sir, if the hon. the Minister of Sport wants a sporting bet with me that we will reduce their majority at Witbank by 1 000 votes I will take him on right here and now. If he wants to have a bet, he can talk to be about it. Sir, I have said that this R400 million odd is only what the Government is receiving out of these increases. That is what the Government is receiving; it is not what the people are being asked to pay. It is not what the people of South Africa have to pay. Rail tariffs were increased by 10 per cent. I have a letter here from one of my voters who describes a journey of two kilometres and says—

By 10 per cent, Sir, from five cents to nine cents! When this man who is 78 and who has been travelling for years on that line once a week to buy his vegetables, tried to explain that 10 per cent of five cents is half a cent, the conductor said: “No, there is a 10 per cent increase; the new fare is nine cents”. Sir, this is the case on dozens and dozens of suburban lines. The Government says that it is getting 10 per cent but the people are paying 40 per cent, 50 per cent, 100 per cent and in some cases over 100 per cent. Sir, air fares were increased by 10 per cent but under the lap, behind the door, they abolished return fare discounts so that in point of fact air fares have gone up by 30 per cent and 40 per cent. The hon. the Minister increased the tax on cigarettes by one cent per ten cigarettes, but go and buy a packet of cigarettes, Sir. The increase is five cents on a packet of 30, not three cents on 30. He put up the tax on whisky by 50 cents, but you pay 81 cents more for it. My charge is that the hon. the Minister knew this. When he announced these increases in tax, he knew that this would be the effect because his own Government’s Price Controller placed his seal of approval on the additional increases. It was the Price Controller, the Minister of Economic Affairs, who said in the name of the Government that the increase would not be 50 cents but 60 cents and 81 cents. The Minister knew it but he did not say so. He knew what the effect would be. He knew that the cigarette wholesalers had been given permission to increase the price over and above the increased taxation. But, Sir, for the consumption of the people we were told that there was to be an increase of one cent on ten cigarettes.

Sir, my economics is of a fairly simple type but I think it is the sort of economics of most of the people in South Africa, [Interjections …] and thank God, it is not the sort of economics of the economists on that side of the House. My economics work this way: I have so much to spend; my essential costs come to so much, and then I have to work out how much month there is left at the end of my money-no—not how much money is left at the end of the month because I never get there, and most people do not either. The hon. member for Sunnyside gave the figures of debts. You can work out from that how much month there is left for most people. In terms of my economics, when you put up the cost of the things I have to buy, then either my income has to go up or I have to stop buying something. I want to say that the stage has been reached when many tens of thousands of people —it is no exaggeration to say millions of people—will no longer be able to give up luxuries, but will have to give up essentials to meet the increase in the cost of living which this Government has allowed to rise. Sir, take the pensioner of whom the hon. member for Piketberg spoke and who has been given the magnificent increase of R3 per month in his pension. Sir, R3 per month is 10 cents a day. Automatically, with the increase in interest rates, rentals have gone up throughout South Africa, in most cases by more than R3 per month already. Then on top of it, Sir, the price of bread has gone up; the price of milk has gone up; bus fares have gone up and train fares have gone up. A pensioner who wants to write to his or to her family now has to pay almost double the previous·, postage to send a letter by air—five cents instead of three—and four cents instead of two and a half cents for surface mail. Sir., some hon. members opposite must have children who went back to school last week. They had to give them stamps. Did they not realize that it was costing them nearly twice as much? No, they did not because nobody wants to write to those members, but in the case of those of us who do get letters and whose children do want to write to us, those letters are going to cost us twice as much as before the Budget. The old man or the old woman— the pensioner—living alone, crippled and bedridden, to whom his or her telephone is the only contact with the outside world, now has to pay more for every phone call that he or she makes. Sir, the hon. the Minister chose Confucius as his guide. I think Omar Khayyam would have been more appropriate because we heard of all the consultation that had taken place and all the advice that he had sought from commissions. I think Omar put it clearly when he said—

Myself, when young, did eagerly frequent

Doctor and saint, and heard great argument

About it and about: but ever more

Came out by the same door as in I went.

Sir, you can advise this Government as much as you like; they can see the truth in front of them but ever they come out by the same door as in they went. Sir, to those who voted for the Government, Omar has another saying and I say to them that now it is too late—

Their tears will not erase a word of it.

That Budget is there because the people, who voted Nationalist voted for this Budget. They voted for it and everyone of these members here must go back to their people and say: “I stood up in Parliament and I said, ‘This is a brilliant Budget’ ”. What they really had in mind is one of Confucius’s sayings that “when it is inevitable, relax and enjoy it”. Sir, that is the tragedy. It is not inevitable. We are

being asked to pay in this Budget for

what? For what goal, for what objective? If there was something at the end of the road that the Government was aiming for, some ideal, something to believe in, then I believe that the people of South Africa would pay happily. But instead we are being asked to pay all this additional money in order to dismember our country, to carve it up into mini-states. We are being asked to pay this so that we can have debates, now in the year 1971, on whether there should be Colouredstans or not. And here I have pointed out the differences within the Government itself. We are being asked to pass this Budget to pay for the most incompetent Government South Africa has ever had, railways that cannot transport the goods, a Post Office that cannot enable the people of the country to communicate.

Relax and enjoy it.

We have a Minister of Crisis instead of a Minister of Labour. In name we have a Minister of Labour, but in fact he is a Minister of Crisis, unwilling or unable or afraid to deal with the issues of labour in South Africa. We have a Minister of Sport, the chief liquidator of South Africa’s position in world sport, the man appointed as the first Minister of Sport in South Africa, and his greatest achievement has been to ensure that South Africa is isolated from the world of sport. I say that if he stays there any longer, then the few tenuous links we still have will also be cut off and destroyed by the liquidator of our international sport; the same Minister is Minister of Indian Affairs, a Minister with a portfolio but with no policy and no ideas or concepts. There is no Hindustan; there is no homeland; there is no separate nation; there is no separate language; there is no separate flag. There is nothing, but it fits in with the policy of separate development, the policy of “aparte nasieskap”. Ask that hon. Minister what he knows about it. All he knows is that he gets a garland round his neck sometimes when he goes to open a school. We have a Minister of Economic Affairs, for whom we are being asked to pay, a Minister who was the chairman of a committee whose prime object in life seems to be to push up the cost of living beyond the reach and the ability of the ordinary citizen to pay. We have the hon. the Minister of the Interior, the great verligte, and I hate to tell this to the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and the Minister of Information, but here is a new runner in the premier stakes because Scope, the magazine that his own Deputy Minister keeps banning, now calls him “the exjournalist who one day might be Prime Minister, the man behind the dark glasses”. I am sorry, Connie, but you have competition and I am afraid that after the demand made yesterday, the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration is now out of the running. [Interjections.] This, Sir, is what we are being asked to pay for, the blunders which we all know about, and if that hon. Minister does not keep quiet I shall tell something about his blunders. But let us wait until his Vote comes on and let us leave these diesel techniques alone. The time will come for that. We pay for the blunders of that Minister. One day you can have a Chinese crèche in a White area, but the next day you cannot have it, and the day after you can have it again. One year a Chinese kid at school may not play tennis and she is taken away by the police because it would be the end of White civilization, but a year later she plays tennis and White civilization has survived. Where is the hon. member for Odendaalsrus? He should be rushing up to the Border with his dark glasses and his “voorlaaier”, looking for the danger to White civilization, this integration of a Chinese child into the White sport of the Border. And you cannot have a Jap jockey riding on a White man’s horse, but just now you can have them.

These are the blunders we are being asked to pay for; we are asked to pay for them in the name of prejudice, in the name of vacillation and uncertainty, in a Cabinet with no guidance and no leadership, a Cabinet that does not know where it is going. All it has got is a joker and a number of people who spend their time contradicting each other’s policy statements. [Interjections.] I am making sure they do hear, Sir. This one has to do, because when you are talking the truth and you mention facts, they “tjank” so loudly that unless you shout you cannot get your message across. This is the Budget, the “brilliant Budget”, which will now give businessmen the opportunity to make midnight trunk telephone calls so that when you want to phone your branch manager you wait until midnight and then telephone him. This is the interesting world in which we live, where 70 per cent of the people will have 50 per cent of the service. This is what we are being asked to pay for.

All this because the Government is afraid, because of its rooted fear, its fear to face the thrilling challenge of the economic potential of South Africa, its fear to face the challenge of our labour potential, its fear to face the growth potential of South Africa, but above all, its fear to face the potential for racial harmony which this country of ours really has. They know that there is a potential for race harmony here. It is a potential which can be built into a modus vivendi for living together, which can give us security and peace in this country. But they dare not follow that road, because when they do that, when they are no longer able to hold up the bogy of Black danger, of “swart gevaar”, their party then loses its grip on the voters who follow them. And so, in order to service as a party, in order to maintain their power, they have to maintain this fear amongst the people.

In conclusion, I want to say that in the United Party its fundamental policy and its fundamental approach is the preservation of the traditional pattern of our life, but with a willingness to face challenges, a willingness to look at a problem and to say that we are prepared to face the fact that this may be different or that may be different; unlike the parrot-cry from the back, the parrot-cry from the Herstigtes, the voice that Dr. Albert Hertzog left here. There are two of them sitting there, but there is one in particular. There is the hon. member for Rissik, who said that no MaoR1 would enter South Africa. We do not have this fear. We have confidence in the future of this country, and therefore we will be able to give to the new generations a real goal, a real ideal, something to strive for.

The hon. member for Durban Point concluded on a grandiloquent note of peace and security. He closed on the high note that the National Party Government would continue to rule because of continued intimidation of the electorate. But the hon. member succeeded, after a series of negative speeches from this Opposition in this House today, in coming forward with the most negative and most politically permissive speech of the entire afternoon and evening in this House. When the hon. member for Odendaalsrus said earlier this evening that the United Party was adopting double-talk tactics in this House, he was derided and scornfully addressed by that side of the House. Does the hon. member for Durban Point, who made a fuss here about 9 cents and about bread and butter, not remember the 1st of February, just the other day, when the hon. member for Hillbrow, who sits just behind him and who made a great fuss this afternoon about the Budget, reproached this Government about the increase in the salaries of Government officials? It is stated in column 79 of Hansard. “Before the election there were unheard of salary increases.” We asked the hon. member for Hillbrow to tell us to whom those unheard of salary increases were being given. Were they being granted to Government officials? Were they being granted to Railway officials? Up to now that side of the House has not yet replied, and this evening the hon. member for Durban Point wants to make a big fuss here about 9 cents.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member says that on this day of this month we would not go to the polls. Next week we are going to do so in Witbank.

Do you want to take a small bet?

Unlike that hon. member, I am not so frivolous as to make bets about such affairs of state. My people are not so frivolous as to have themselves bought off for an election. My people are going to the polls to uphold the principles of White man’s land, as exercised and practised in this country for three centuries.

Who established it there?

The hon. member is joking about a remark of my colleague from Odendaalsrus. He asked why my colleague did not grab his muzzle-loader and run to the border. This evening our Afrikaner boys are standing with F.N.s on the banks of the Zambesi, while the hon. the Opposition jokes about that.

Alone?

We take the strongest exception to the jokes of that hon. member in respect of the sacrifices our boys are making in their national service for the protection of our country at our borders. We take the strongest exception to that.

Are there only Afrikaners there?

Yes.

Yes? Are there only Afrikaners there?

Let him ask the hon. member for King William’s Town what an Afrikaner is. Let him ask that hon. member who says in this House that he is prepared to relinquish his Afrikaner identity. Go and ask him that question. My sons are on those borders with F.N.s defending this fatherland.

Your son is not there. What son of yours is there?

It does not befit that hon. member to ask another hon. member what son of his is there.

He is not there.

My son is at present doing national service. He is not like the son of another hon. member of that side who tries to escape his Commando service with all kinds of questions that are put to the Minister.

I want to come back to the hon. member for Durban Point’s friend who came to light with so much glib talk this afternoon and who is not in this House at the moment. The hon. member for Hillbrow made such a holy fuss here about this Budget, as if it would be damaging to the poor man. What does the Financial Mail of that hon. member’s party say about this Budget? I want the hon. member for Durban Point to listen.

The Financial Mail of whose party?

It is the newspaper of the hon. member for East London City’s party. It is the same party as the Progressive Party. They are one and the same. There is as little to choose between them as there is between an army worm and a Karoo caterpillar. What does the Financial Mail say? Hon. members must now listen very carefully. That hon. member says that the ordinary man is being exploited. What does this newspaper say? It states:

Those are my people—

Here that hon. member’s financial newspaper acknowledges that the ordinary worker, the ordinary man in the street, gets off lightest in this Budget.

Our newspaper?

Yes, because the United Party speaks the same language as the Progressive Party. They are blood-brothers. The hon. member for Hillbrow makes such a fuss about the Budget, but let us look at the reason. In this magazine the following is also stated:

That is not the income level of the voters of Witbank. It is not the income level of my people. Those are the people about whom that hon. member’s bench-mate is shedding tears. It is also stated:

The hon. the Minister of Finance has struck in the right place. The people who are the most sensitive are the ones who cry the most. Tomorrow I can go to Witbank with a light heart and a clear conscience and tell my voters that this is a model Budget.

Oh?

Yes, I can say that. The other day, at the Progressive Party conference in Sea Point, which was also attended by the hon. member for Houghton, Mr. Harry Oppenheimer said that his business undertakings had never done so well and that he had never made greater profits. The Burger reported that the income of Mr. Oppenheimer’s group was R1½ million more than in the previous quarter of 1970. They are the people who want to come crying about this Budget. In thanking the hon. the Minister of Finance for this Budget, I also want to say a very special thank you for what he did for the aged as a result of representations from the National Party Executive in Pretoria District. Those old citizens of our Republic made representations to him. and the hon. the Minister virtually granted them without exception. In the presence of the Opposition I thank the hon. the Minister warmly for that.

I shall be following you on Monday and I shall tell them the truth there.

Yes, we shall both be in Witbank. This evening I want to thank the hon. the Minister of Agriculture very warmly on behalf of the agricultural and farming community for the nice report we heard over the radio this evening about an increase in the maize price. The increase in the maize price had been fixed a long time before the date for the Witbank election had been set. This increase was given on merit, and I now want to challenge the hon. member for Durban Point to say that the increase of the maize price is also opportunistic, as he also said of the salary increases. On behalf of the farming community I want to thank the hon. the Minister of Agriculture in his absence very warmly, and I also want to tell him that we believe that this increased price will stabilize, if not put them on their feet financially, in this very important industry, many members of our farming community who have experienced great difficulties over a period of many years. The United Party ridicules this Budget and the hon. member for Durban Point is free to leave …

Yes, he is afraid to listen.

The United Party ridicules the Budget, but let us look at what it holds in store for agriculture. On the Revenue Account more than R139 million is being budgeted. This is R10 500 000 more Sian in the previous year. The increase alone is greater than the expenditure in other important departments, for example Information and Foreign Affairs. And then that side of the House still ridicules this Budget. In his first speech this year in this House the hon. the Prime Minister gave notice of the aid to the wool farmers, and the hon. the Minister of Finance implemented that. In his Budget speech the hon. the Minister said that an amount of R7 million is being budgeted as State aid for the Wool Commission, in order to help the commission with its stabilization scheme to buttress this wool market. Is this something we must be ungrateful for. or something we must ridicule, as hon. members on that side of the House want to do with this Budget? According to authorities the amount of R7 million will enable the Wool Commission to maintain the present floor price of wool in the 1971-’72 season. We also say thank you for that. I see the hon. member for Newton Park agrees with this. It seems to me that he is the only sensible United Party member in this House this evening.

I now want to refer to interest subsidies. In order not to penalize agriculture and the export trade, the hon. the Minister of Finance warned commercial banks in his Budget speech that the increase in the Reserve Bank’s official discount rate must not give rise to an increase in the banks’ loan rates. I want to ask which banks rode roughshod over the farmers when they were down on their knees in this country? In the Financial Mail of 8th April an exposition is given of commercial banks operating in this country, with the majority of their shareholders not resident here. The farmers who complained to me when they were down on their knees as a result of the disasters and droughts, were caught by the throat by those commercial banks. Once again the hon. the Minister of Finance took the correct steps by dealing sternly with them and saying …

Which commercial banks?

Would the hon. member for King William’s Town please keep quiet now.

The hon. the Minister of Finance adopted the correct measures in taking those banks by the throat and telling them that they should not exceed their ceiling. There are consequently a series of aspects in this Budget, in respect of agriculture, about which we can but convey a word of very great appreciation in all sincerity to the hon. the Minister of Finance.

Mr. Speaker, it was a pathetic experience to listen to the efforts of the United Party in this debate. It was very clear to me that the United Party repeatedly tried to side-step this Budget and its merits.

For my part, as a back bencher in this House, it was really disappointing to see a front bencher, in the person of the hon. member for Durban Point, making a big fuss, with requisite flourishes, in order to sow doubt and suspicion about what this Budget holds in store, while one would have expected a front bencher of the United Party to discuss the merits of the Budget. It is disappointing that when we, as the National Government, are dealing with big questions in this country, when solutions to problems must be sought, when a Budget such as this is tabled, the United Party is prepared to discuss trivialities and matters which have nothing to do with this Budget. It is disappointing that they were guilty of gossip, but that they consistently avoid the merits of this Budget. I think it is fitting for everyone of us who regards himself as a good South African to give credit and respect to the hon. the Minister of Finance, his Department and the Government for this Budget that has been introduced here. If we look at the overall scope of this Budget, the highly responsible manner in which it was drawn up, its depth and content, it is very clear that this Government has tried to make a very sound study in depth, in a consistent and responsible manner, of the problems of South Africa with respect of this Budget and with respect to the fiscal and monetary policy it wants to adopt, for the benefit of South Africa. If we take the overall aspect of the Budget and see that it is actually the result and culmination of work done by several commissions of inquiry, appointed in this connection in the past few years, we must also take into account that the Department of Finance is actually the smallest Government Department. We must bear in mind that there we have only a small handful of people, and that the brain power of that Department must study and interpret all the reports. If we take that into account, I consider it an achievement that we were able to implement such a Budget, specifically at this stage when South Africa is in need of just such a Budget. This Budget is actually based on the reports of various commissions that investigated the fiscal and monetary policy and possible taxation measures now implemented by this Government.

If there is one outstanding characteristic of this Budget it is the depth and scope by which the entire Government policy and every individual is affected by what is being implemented in this Budget. It is very clear to me, because we have learnt to know the Opposition through the years, that we can expect them to double-talk in the face of big issues affecting our country and our politics, and that they will not be prepared to adopt a standpoint. We have witnessed this here, and we see that they avoid these big issues and that they engage in trifles and trivialities. However, they are not prepared to argue matters with us on merit.

The Opposition has argued that the Budget is inflationary. I cannot see this, because if we look at the taxation and at the loan levy imposed, it is very clear to me that the object, in respect of the recommendations of the Franzsen Commission as well, of this Budget is anti-inflationary. It is anti-inflationary because a certain amount of our liquid money is being taken out of circulation and now being channelled in such a way that the infrastructure of our country can be improved. By doing this we can ensure sustained growth for the future. This United Party argument that the Budget can be inflationary, is unfounded. When a Government such as the National Government must combat inflation in a country like South Africa, where we also have the policy of separate development that must succeed at all costs, it is not such an easy task. It is then particularly necessary that confidence in the value of our money should be restored. For the implementation of separate development in this country, it is necessary for the country to be in an economically strong position.

This is the first and basic principle the National Party set itself in the implementation of its policy of separate development. For that reason it is foolishness on the part of the United Party to claim that we believe in a damping school and that we want to damp the South African economy to such an extent as to endanger it. It is necessary, in these circumstances in which South Africa finds itself, for us to restore confidence in the value of our money. The basic and underlying problem of inflation is that people are beginning to believe, to an ever greater extent, that money is losing its value. That is also the reason why inflation virtually feeds on itself. Inflation feeds on itself because this erosion of money continues. Therefore it is also necessary for confidence to be restored in the value of our money abroad. The recommendation in the report of the Riekert Commission, in respect of decentralization of industries, in my opinion actually touches upon this problem which the United Party has been obsessed by in recent times.

The United Party has repeatedly used the argument of the labour question. The doors must now be flung open and the Black man must now be trained in terms of a “crash programme” to be able to provide for the labour needs of our country. The United Party could have made a positive contribution here in respect of these recommendations of the Riekert Commission with respect to decentralization of industries. One of our problems in this country is actually that a handful of Whites must supply the brain-power. This commission supported the extension of our apartheid policy with these recommendations about the decentralization of industries. But the United Party did not take this opportunity of discussing the recommendation. No, wild statements are simply made and left hanging in the air, for example that this decentralization policy of the National Party is an absurdity. Everything considered, I cannot but say that as far as the depth and content of this Budget is concerned, the United Party was unable to make a contribution as far as proper and founded criticism is concerned.

But there is also another matter that is very dear to my heart, i.e. that this Budget also, in point of fact, essentially and in its overall aspect, aims at giving a push to our balance of payments. This is important, because if we in South Africa want sustained growth, it is also necessary for us to keep our balance of payments in order and to make the creation of capital and savings possible, thus eventually enabling us to expand further in lieu of our own capital that is created. This point also escaped the United Party.

In addition, on looking at the Budget I am convinced that the burden placed on the South African population by its proposals has been diversified so well over the entire population, particularly with respect to the wealthy individuals in South Africa, those who have actually had the benefit of inflationary conditions in the country, that it is much more tolerable. I now ask the United Party—when South Africa must be served, when we, in a world such as that in which we now find ourselves, much achieve sustained growth but must also be true to our traditional policy of separate development, what people do they then want to tax? Are they not satisfied with the fact that we levy the taxes on these wealthy people? The diversification of these taxes is such that the individual who actually bore the heaviest burden under the inflationary conditions, i.e. the civil and social pensioners, whose pensions have perhaps remained static for a few years even, could be relieved of the burden as this Budget is doing. Everything considered, one cannot but say that this Budget must have a salutary influence on the South African economy, that it must engender confidence, that it is also a guarantee for sustained growth of our economy in the future and, in addition, that it must also support and assist the policy of separate development by strengthening the South African economy. But there is another very important matter, one that I regard as one of the biggest issues which the Opposition has thus far avoided, not only in the no-confidence debate, but also in this Budget debate, and that is the matter relating to our farmers. Sir, I am convinced that in the past the United Party, as I know them, has frequently traded on the farmer’s vote, but only on certain occasions; this was only done when there was an election in sight, when a little political capital could be made out of the farmer’s vote by trying to flatter him and by making certain promises and suggestions to him. But recently the United Party has kept silent about this very important part of our national economy, of which I am also a member, i.e. the South African farming community.

In now specifically referring to the maize industry, particularly on, an evening such as this when the new maize price was announced, a price which the hon. member for Pretoria West mentioned here a moment ago, a price of 370 cents per bag less 5 cents contribution to the stabilization fund for the farmer, I cannot but express my utmost thanks and appreciation, as a member of the farming community and as a maize farmer making my living out of this product, to the Government for the most obliging way in which this increase in the maize price was granted to us this year on merit. Sir, this increased price granted to the maize farmer this year is a price that will enable us to rehabilitate ourselves, because we have a well-distributed crop. The maize industry is an extensive one, incorporating about 30 000 farmers producing maize for commercial purposes. According to the 1960 agricultural survey, when 4 400 000 morgen of maize had been planted, this represented about 38.3 per cent of the total cultivable land in South Africa. This year 6,2 million morgen have been planted with maize. 1d the five year period from 1965-’66 to 1970-’71. the average annual gross value of the maize crop was R235 million. This represents 18.5 per cent of the total value of agricultural and livestock products, or about 49 per cent of the average annual crop farming production. If this calculation is made with respect to the large 1967 crop, it amounts to 26,4 per cent and 58,1 per cent respectively. Sir, I have not calculated the figure for the present crop, but at this price it will yield about the same percentage. Under normal circumstances a large portion of our crop is exported annually and considerable amounts are earned in foreign capital. In the past five years this amounted to an average of about R54 800 000; in 1967, with the big crop, R113 million* and this year we hope that we, as maize farmers, will be able to pay R100 million in foreign exchange into the Treasury. We are proud that under the rule of a National Government, which has helped over the years to strengthen this industry of ours, we can contribute this amount to settle our balance of payments. I calculate that at some time this year we shall be able to contribute about R100 million to the Treasury, Sir, unfortunately I do not have at my disposal figures in respect of the role which the maize industry plays as a provider of employment in this country, but based on information supplied by Agricultural Economics and Marketing, one can, however, calculate the manhours necessary in this industry. It amounts to about 80 million men days, equal to 255 000 labourers if we want to have a full complement in this industry. That is why I hold it against the United Party for keeping silent, when the price of maize is announced, about what is being done for this industry by this Government. But when this industry is experiencing difficulties, when there are droughts, then one very soon heard from the United Party. The use in this industry of products from other industries also plays a big role. On White farms 46,5 per cent of the total annual diesel oil and power paraffin production is used. 53 per cent of the fertilizers, 53 per cent of all tractors and 40 per cent of all repair and maintenance costs are held by the maize farmers of South Africa. They are also responsible for 50 per cent of the total capital expenditure during the year for new equipment. We also play an important role in feeding our people. If we now think back over the years to how agriculture has flourished in this country under the National Party, it is no more than my duty, in this debate this evening, to refer to the six weeks just preceding the United Party’s departure from these Government benches. I shall now quote from Hansard of 2nd March, 1948. At the time a motion was forthcoming from the then Opposition side for assistance to be given to the bywoners, as they were then called, the sharecroppers and lessees. That motion read as follows (Hansard, volume 63, column 2488)—

Sir, those were difficult days in the history of the farming population of South Africa, but do you know what answer we received from the United Party Government? The then Minister of Lands, Senator Conroy, said (Hansard, volume 63, column 2514)—

That is the attitude displayed on the part of the United Party towards the farming people of South Africa. The then Minister of Lands continued as follows—

That was the attitude displayed by the United Party Government towards us. Our then member of the House of Assembly, ex-Minister S. P. le Roux, made the following remarks in the same debate in connection with dams and closer settlement (Hansard, volume 63, column 2527)—

That was the United Party’s standpoint at the time. Sir, I could continue in similar vein. I could quote to you what the actions of the United Party were in respect of agriculture. In the following year, when the National Party was not in power, the amount spent on this decreased to £69 000 as against R4 700 000 in the previous year. In every sphere the United Party left its mark on agriculture. These were marks deeply embedded in the hearts of our farmers and marks which we shall therefore not easily forget.

Like the Soil Conservation Act.

The Soil Conservation Act is now also being derogated by the United Party. I should like to mention a few figures in respect of the maize industry. I base these figures on the five year sliding average taken over the previous five years. I should like to sketch the position from the time before the National Party came into power up to the present day. Since the years 1928-’29, 20 years before the National Party came into power, the average number of morgen under maize totalled 2 200 000. In 20 years time this increased to 3 300 000. Under National Party rule it has now increased from 3 300 000 to 5 800 000 morgen, taken on a five year sliding average. This means 75 per cent since 1948. As against this the production increased in 200 pound units from 18 200 000 to 70 000 000. This is an increase of 326 per cent. In the previous 20 years, before the National Party came into power—and this is important—the production per morgen decreased from 5,6 bags to 5,5 bags. In the first ten years of National Party rule this yield per morgen increased to 9.5 bags. In the second ten years the yield increased to 11,5 and in the last three years to 12 bags per morgen. All these achievements were made possible by a National Government which gave us assistance in the form of aid, because all these extensions and developments were actually based on technological development. That is why we cannot but feel grateful and appreciative to this Government for what it did for the farmer of South Africa. Hence, if we as farmers can make a contribution, we should like to do so, because in our view the National Party is the future. That is why I want to agree with the last line in the hon. member for Durban Point’s speech—it is the only occasion where such agreement is possible— i.e. that we “also believe in the future of South Africa”, because there is a National Party in power.

The hon. member for Heilbron used up most of the time of his speech discussing farming matters. I do not intend reacting to this. He did in the course of his speech mention the fact that this Budget was very necessary in order to propagate the Government’s policy of separate development. He also spoke of border industries and the labour situation. Here he put his finger right on the pulse because it is exactly these two factors which have caused all the problems with which South Africa is faced today. It is the Government’s stubborn insistence on pressing on with their policy of separate development that put the hon. the Minister of Finance in the position where he has to try to run the economy of this country within the very narrow confines of an ideological straitjacket I want to say that, during the course of the recess after the hon. the Minister had read his Budget speech, I took the opportunity of discussing the Budget with many people. I made a point of not discussing the Budget with economists but with the ordinary man in the street. Never have so many people been so bitter about a Budget as they are in regard to this particular Budget. This Budget affects every single person in South Africa. It affects the mass of non-Whites, many of whom are today living below the poverty datum line. It affects the lower income groups, the middle income group and most certainly the business sector of our country. I want to say now that we will see as a result of this Budget a spate of insolvencies during the next few months. The signs are there; some of them have manifested themselves already. I believe that we are going to see a lot more. During my discussions with the ordinary man in the street, I found that they have bitter complaints in regard to the cost of living. One of the major issues raised with me by many people was the whole question of the price of land and the high cost of buying a house. As we know, the hon. the Minister of Community Development, and I am sorry that he is not in the House, very often mints a very glowing picture as regards South Africa’s housing situation. We know of course that he follows a pattern here, because when he was the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration he made many predictions which turned out to be quite laughable. To show how confused the whole issue of housing is in the minds of the Government one only has to pick up a newspaper to see headlines such as the following: “No housing crisis, but … says Coetzee”. In this particular article the hon. the Minister also says the following:

The hon. the Minister said this at the Nationalist Party Congress. He says there is no crisis, but there is such a thin dividing line that if we are lax for one month there will be a crisis. When one picks up the newspaper almost on the same day one finds the following headlines: “Shortage of housing a national crisis”. The following is then reported:

I prefer to believe Mr. Kroft. His suggestion of a crisis has certainly been backed up by the people to whom I have spoken. I wonder if, when one mentions these facts, the hon. the Minister will still deny that there is a crisis. Today to get a bond of R12 000, which actually goes nowhere in regard to housebuilding, a person must have a minimum salary of R4 800 per annum to qualify. The last census figures I read showed that 70 per cent of the White population in South Africa earn less than R4 000. How can these people then possibly buy a house? Yet we are told by the hon. the Minister that everything in the garden is rosy and that there really is not a housing crisis. We also know that the hon. the Minister on a few occasions actually invited young couples who were short of a home or a house to merely phone him and that he would correct it. Now we find that when somebody takes him up on this really crazy promise, he says that he was misreported by the Sunday Times. I want to tell the hon. the Minister that there is a housing crisis in South Africa and that it has been caused by the neglect and the lack of planning by this particular Government.

I challenge you to bring me one couple in your constituency without a house, you with your big mouth!

I bow to the hon. the Minister when it comes to a big mouth! I looked at this Budget. I read it very carefully. Because of the housing situation in South Africa, I expected to see something in the Budget designed to help the person who wants to own a home. Can there be any better way of saving for a person than to buy a house and pay it off? The hon. the Minister is asking everybody to save. Here was an opportunity of helping people to save in a constructive way, and he did nothing at all for these people. Except for the fact that an additional 23 000 families will now qualify for sub-economic housing, providing of course those houses are built, and a further 30 000 families for a reduction in the interest rate levy, there is nothing at all in this Budget that will assist a person who wants to buy or build a house. The hon. the Minister has not provided anything at all, not even in the long term to assist these people. The whole question of housing in South Africa is giving concern. Not enough is being done by the Government. It should approach this whole question with a far greater sense of urgency than it has done in the past. The prices of residential land have risen to such an extent in South Africa that today only about 20 per cent of our total White population can afford to buy a piece of land. This is quite true. When you reach the position where more than 75 per cent of the residents in a particular city cannot afford to buy a piece of ground on which to build a house, quite obviously something has gone wrong with this system. We are then indeed heading for a crisis. I want to go further and say that the Government has shown that it has absolutely no answer to the housing problem in South Africa.

The Niemand Commission, a commission appointed by the Government to go into the whole question of the high price of land, will have us believe that these high prices and the shortage of land are due almost entirely to the so-called “greedy speculator” and the township developer. However, the commission in its report points out that almost all the developed land around our big cities has been swallowed up by the developer with the large portfolio. Unfortunately, by making this statement, the commission has created the impression in the minds of the people that all developers conspire together to force up the price of land beyond the reach of the ordinary man in the street. This I believe is a complete over-statement, because we know that property developers depend for their livelihood and the success of their business on being able to sell land to the public. We know, too, that they are in fierce competition with each other and that they also compete in projects of the hon. the Minister of Community Development’s department and of local authorities. So, there can be no doubt in my minds that the causes of the high price of land and the scarcity go far beyond the speculator and the property developer. The fact is that not only has the price of land reached a ridiculous level, but developers are no longer interested in building flats to alleviate the position, because it just does not pay them. I believe that the considerable rises in prices over the past 10 years are primarily due to the following factors. Firstly, there is the almost complete exhaustion of vacant sites in conveniently situated pre-war and immediate post-war townships, and there is the increasing financial obligation placed by the authorities on township developers. After all, the buyer must in any case pay for these increased obligations. Then there is the fear of inflation in the minds of the people, which quite naturally stimulates a demand for land not only for housing purposes, but certainly as a hedge against inflation. Then there is the availability of money and credit on an unprecedented scale for the middle income group. Finally, there is the release of the pent up demand for land which had built up after the 1961 Sharpeville incident. These factors,, plus the steadily mounting cost of construction and the high cost of borrowing: money, have brought South Africa’s housing situation to a crisis point. There can be no doubt that the Government will have to treat the whole question of housing in South Africa with a far greater sense of urgency than it has done in the past. Official figures indicate that there is an annual increase in the growth of the urban White population of 2,62 per cent. At this rate of growth, private enterprise will have to build one new house and one new flat for every 200 persons. This is besides the housing which can be provided by the Department of Community Development and the local authorities. Now, to stress the enormity of the problem which faces South Africa, and which the hon. the Minister tries to play down, one need only mention that in order to meet this demand the Witwatersrand alone will need more than 4 000 special residential sites per year and a few hundred flat sites. One appreciates, of course—I want to be perfectly fair—that there is no simple and quick solution to a problem of this magnitude, a problem which I might say has been allowed to develop by the bad planning of this Nationalist Party Government. I believe, though, that if the following guide-lines are adopted, the position could at least be brought under control. I believe that wherever possible, control which causes delays and frustration and extra costs far exceeding the benefits that will flow from this control, should be completely eliminated. I believe we should reduce to the utmost degree possible the time that elapses between the commencement of the planning of a township and the first transfers of sites in the township, when approved. This would reduce interest charges on township developers’ capital and, at the same time, enable private enterprise to meet any demand in that particular township. Wherever possible—this is very important—services and amenities should be paid for out of assessment rates and service tariffs, rather than out of levies on township development. I say this because the buyer of a site must pay the cost in any case and the latter arrangement makes him liable, too, for interest and a price mark-up on the developer’s outlay. Then the Government should intensify its efforts to curb the erosion of money values, to reduce interest rates and to restore the confidence of the public in gilt-edged investment.

I believe that the steadily rising prices of residential land and the relative scarcity of building land is largely artificial. I say this advisedly because we know that the supply of proclaimed sites is often delayed unduly by authorities because of the lengthy hold-up involving townships. In many cases new townships are being held up simply because of the fact that local authorities are unable to finance the essential services such as water, power and sewerage. Then we find that developed land convenient to our cities is today practically all built upon and firmly held. The result is that land capable of being developed is only obtainable further and further away from the cities. This immediately brings the associated problem of financing essential services such as electricity, water and sewerage, roads, the cost of commuting daily between cities and the necessity of having two motor-cars, in many cases, because of the lack of public transport. When all these factors are taken into account, the cost of this type of land becomes relatively as expensive as developed land near the cities. The cost of building on such land is even more expensive.

My point is that if local authorities are less circumscribed by the Government than is the trend at the present time, if they are giving facilities to raise money in order to establish essential services, better roads and more speedy communication, it will help to provide more land easily accessible to the cities. If the Government, at the same time, really streamlined its organization so that new townships can be proclaimed more quickly, then through the immutable economic law of supply and demand, the cost of vacant land will again become realistic and housing will again be within the reach of the majority of people in South Africa.

It is common knowledge that most large developers who may have been capable of helping to solve our housing problem, have been forced to concentrate their building activities on commercial propositions such as shops and offices. They have had to do this because of the threat of rent control hanging over flats. The result is that a very large portion of the very scarce labour force in the building industry has been channelled into this type of building. Most of this building is prestige building and should never have been allowed to take precedence over housing.

Are you in favour of rent control being abolished?

Mr. Speaker, that is a stupid question. I am merely pointing out the fact that the hon. the Minister’s idea of rent control is causing developers to shy away from flat building. What we need in South Africa today to overcome the housing shortage is flats. We must have flats. Developers will just not touch this because of what I have mentioned earlier.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 23 and debate adjourned.