Mr. Speaker, I move—

In moving the Second Reading of this Bill, I feel that on behalf of the companies concerned I should express thanks to the Leader of the House for allowing public time for this Private Member’s Bill. It is a simple Bill containing one principle—it changes the name of the “Eastern Province Guardian Loan and Investment Company” to “Syfrets Trust and Executor Company (Grahamstown)”. May I say that this change of name is the wish of the directors and the majority of the shareholders, but because the E.P. Guardian was incorporated by Act of Parliament No. 20 of 1863, this change could only come about by an amending Act of this Parliament. Sir, it also brings about a closer business association between the families of Syfrets and of Godlontons, between whom there has been a friendly association since 1848, when Edward Syfret and Robert Godlonton began a friendship which has lasted to this day, Mr. Brian Godlonton, the greatgrandson of Robert, being the managing director of E.P. Guardian at the present time. Sir, I believe that this is necessary, and that it will be to the good of both firms concerned who have a magnificent reputation throughout the country and, in the case of the E.P. Guardian, particularly in the Eastern Cape.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a Second Time.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

Mr. Speaker, we have now reached the stage where we are applying the final touches to this Bill, but I do not believe that a final word will ever be said on the matter of road safety. The question of making roads safer and making drivers more competent should never be out of our minds. We may have passed a Road Safety Bill, Sir, but it will have no effect whatsoever if, having passed it, it goes out of our minds completely. This is a matter which should be continually before us. Just as accidents will never be totally eliminated from our roads, so we should also never totally eliminate from our minds the necessity of road safety and of traffic control generally. Sir, I do not suppose that there have been many Bills which have carried the good wishes of this House as much as this Bill does. Many families will depend on the effectiveness of this new Road Safety Council established by this Bill, but its efforts and the powers that we are now giving this council, powers which the old council did not have, will all be ineffective without the co-operation of the road users themselves. When I say “road users” I mean not only the drivers of motor vehicles, but also the pedestrians, the pedal cyclists—all who use our roads, whether they are roads in the country or roads in the city. Without their co-operation no measure that we pass in regard to road safety can have any effect whatsoever. Therefore I believe that in this measure we must appeal and continually appeal to the users of our roads for their co-operation in this matter of road safety. We must drive home to the drivers of vehicles and impress upon them so that they appreciate that what they have in their hands is a lethal weapon and they must use it with consideration for all other people who use the roads as well. Too often in the past our drivers have used the roads as though the roads belong to them alone. We must try to instil through this new road safety council an appreciation of the fact that everybody has a right to use our roads in safety, without the anxiety that exists today. We must teach our drivers to appreciate that the legislation that the council might seek and the powers it asks for are not powers to cripple or to handicap drivers in any way but powers entirely for their own benefit. These powers are not being imposed upon them because the authorities wish to be difficult. We seek powers to instil in our drivers the realization that the driver’s licence has never been and must never be a licence to kill. We must ensure that our road users in South Africa appreciate that our traffic police, traffic control and the enforcement officers are there for their benefit. To do that, I believe one of the first things we must do is to raise the status of our traffic officers. I think it is unrealistic to expect that the people who control our traffic and who enforce our road safety regulations should be paid as little as they are. We should raise them to a semi-professional status so that we attract the right sort of people with the right qualifications in traffic. Therefore I appeal to the hon. the Minister and to the new council to make this one of the first priorities, the immediate upliftment of our traffic police, so that the right people with the right qualifications are attracted, and to do so obviously, we must remunerate them correctly. As I said in the Second Reading debate, in considering a matter like this, where the difference in the ratio of the population groups is so varied, the Minister must bear in mind that traffic control is not only the responsibility of the White race but also the responsibility of the non-White races as well. Therefore, much greater use must be made of non-White traffic police. I believe that those who have already been employed do a very good job. The various cities of our country which have made use of non-White traffic officers have found them entirely satisfactory. To my mind it has always been a little strange that while 80 per cent of our heavy vehicles in South Africa are driven by non-Whites, the number of non-Whites in our traffic police is very limited. Therefore I say to the hon. the Minister and the new council that this must be priority No. 1, the upliftment of our traffic force of all races, so that not only will we attract the right people, but so that they also will receive the right pay.

We must also ensure that the penalties imposed on offenders under our traffic code are such that the offenders are penalized according to the offences they commit. What they are doing is to endanger human lives and to take human lives and they must be prepared to pay the penalty for doing so. They cannot go on as they are doing now, escaping with minor penalties for very serious offences.

We must also ensure that our youth are properly trained to understand our traffic by-laws. I mentioned in my Second Reading speech the laxity we had in the past in regard to the youth using buzz-bikes. The speed of these buzz-bikes has increased tremendously over recent years with no new regulations being applied to these buzz-bikes. I hope the Minister will give this matter serious attention. [Interjections.] My colleagues remind me of the noise of the buzz-bikes. I am more concerned with the accidents they cause than with the noise. I am prepared to put up with a lot more noise if there are less injuries. But what happens when a youngster wants to buy a buzz-bike? He obtains a driver’s licence. It is illegal for him to have a passenger on that buzz-bike to teach him how to use it. So he simply obtains a learner’s licence and then he is thrown to the wolves and he is put out on to our roads. I believe that this sort of thing must stop. These buzz-bikes can do over 60 miles an hour and a youngster driving a buzz-bike at over 60 miles an hour on our roads is not only endangering his own life, but also the lives of other road users as well. I believe we must ensure that these youngsters are properly trained and that there are training grounds for them before they are allowed on the public roads while they are still so inexperienced.

This lack of training for youngsters on buzz-bikes has another effect. They are able to buy these bikes cheaply and they are able to pep them up. They all have experience of the way this can be done. It has the other effect that they learn bad habits on a buzz-bike which then persist into their more mature years when they start driving motor cars as well. It has this effect too that in a township like Soweto, with the number of young Black youths we have there, who are increasing in number, they obviously too will go in for the use of buzz-bikes more and more because they will find it within their financial means. If we do not train these youngsters in our African townships so that they know how to use buzz-bikes and drive them properly in wet weather and on greasy roads, etc., they too will learn bad habits. The time is not far distant when most of the licenced drivers on our roads will be non-Whites. We must therefore ensure that they are equally competent on the road, as anybody else. I am not saying that they are any better or worse than the Whites are, but we must realize that the young people growing up in our country today and who learn their bad driving habits on buzz-bikes can have a serious effect later on when they start driving heavier vehicles. So I appeal to the Minister to give this aspect particular attention.

There is also the alarming fact that nearly 50 per cent of the deaths on our roads today are caused by drunken drivers. These figures have been proved over the years. It is not a new phenomenon, but has existed for a long time. But it seems that too little has been done to penalize these drunken drivers in a proper manner. I have always felt in my own mind, although we all have different ideas as to how people should be punished, that a man who drives a motor vehicle under the influence of liquor deserves to lose that vehicle. That vehicle should be taken away from him in much the same way that we would take a fire-arm away from a person who does not use it correctly, and the way drug sellers are treated. We have treated the drunken driver far too lightly. If a person waves a fire-arm around he can be severly dealt with and may even have his fire-arm confiscated. I would suggest that the man who drives a vehicle under the influence of liquor is no less dangerous to the public than the man who waves a fire-arm around. So I would suggest that any driver convicted of driving under the influence of liquor should have his motor vehicle confiscated and his driver’s licence cancelled, not for three months or six months but for a long time indeed.

There is another aspect. Driver’s licences are peculiar in that one can obtain a driver’s licence at a very young age and one is allowed to hold that driver’s licence right through one’s life. In this respect I would suggest to the hon. the Minister that in thinking of drivers’ licences he should insist that anybody involved in a serious motor accident should be compelled to undergo a medical examination before he is given back his driver’s licence, regardless of whether he was perhaps the responsible party to that accident. Serious accidents so often occur not because of the defective state of the road or of the vehicle but because of the physical defect of the driver. There are probably many people on our roads today who physically have no right to be on the road at all and we would be doing them a favour if we brought in legislation and made the issuing of drivers’ licences far more strict. A person to whom we refuse to issue a driver’s licence should not consider that we are being unfair to him but rather that we are doing him and his family a service by getting him off the road. I think too that in the investigation of accidents far greater attention should be paid to the physical abilities of the man behind the wheel. It has been suggested by many authorities that many of the drivers on the road suffer from night blindness. I am not a medical man but I am quite sure that if a medical certificate is required before a man obtains a driver’s licence we will see a remarkable change in our driving pattern in South Africa.

There are so many different aspects of this matter. I can remember a few years ago the then member for Durban Central, Dr. Radford, while talking in this House on road safety, suggested, not altogether with his tongue in his cheek, that our traffic policemen should be dressed in red uniforms. I think you might remember this.

Fluorescent uniforms.

Yes, fluorescent uniforms. It brought a snigger from the House, but the doctor was not altogether being humorous, he was pointing out that the presence of traffic policemen on roads all over the world had brought down the number of accidents on those roads. I think it was the doctor too who in that speech drew attention to the fact that in Japan they even had dummy traffic officers, plastic dummy traffic officers, so that the driver of a motor vehicle would not know whether the traffic officer was real or not. The effect of these dummies on the roads was that the number of accidents decreased.

I have always believed that stricter penalties may be one of the answers, or part of the answer, to our traffic problem and I believe that better traffic control is probably the prime answer. You must discipline the drivers so that they will realize that they cannot break the law with impunity as they do today. During the Second Reading debate I mentioned that in South Africa it is estimated that a driver could commit 4 000 offences before he would be caught the first time and anyone drivins on our roads today can see for himself the sort of driving that takes place and one does not wonder why we have the number of accidents which we do have, but one wonders why we do not have more accidents than we do have.

I think it is essential that our traffic control should improve a great deal. In many of our cities today, although the count of traffic vehicles has increased three or four times over what it was ten or fifteen years ago, the number of traffic policemen has in fact decreased. In my own city, Durban, it happens that traffic police recruits actually train recruits. It must be the only walk of life where this actually happens—recruits to the traffic department are actually training recruits because the turnover is so rapid. This obviously means that there is something radically wrong with the whole traffic control system which we have. This is why I said earlier that we must raise the status of traffic policemen. The ordinary traffic policeman on the beat is to be considered a completely different person in our society than he is considered today, and to bring that about he must obviously be paid more. If that is done, we shall not get this turn-over.

Where cities are crippled through a lack of traffic officers, an intelligent deployment of the available force does help to bring down the number of road accidents. In certain countries overseas they employ their minute traffic force on the major roads so that by the time a driver reaches the city he is disciplined and he knows full well that if he breaks the law on an arterial road into the city, the chances of his being picked up are not 4 000 to one, but probably four to one. By this means even when there is no traffic in sight, the driver does comply with the law.

Too many of the drivers in South Africa —I want it to be perfectly clear that I am not saying that I am one of the good drivers; we are all the same—only comply with the law if they think they might get caught. They only comply with the speed limit if they think there is a speed trap, but if there is no speed trap, the speed limit does not mean anything to them at all.

As I said in the Second Reading debate, I believe that our speed limits are far too high. I know that those who have powerful motor cars will disagree with me; but I am not concerned with the power of the motor-car. I am simply concerened that people should be able to go from A to B in safety. Therefore I say that our speed limits are too high, particularly on our country roads. A driver who is used to breaking the speed limit and travelling at 80 miles per hour, between Durban and Pietermaritzburg for instance, finds it very difficult to drop to 35 miles per hour, which is the speed limit for the city, by the time he gets to Durban. This is where we are not disciplining our drivers, and I think a great deal more can be done. As I said to the Deputy Minister earlier on, I think we must have a different speed limit for night driving. If we accept that 70 miles per hour—I am using miles per hour, because to some it is more common —is the normal speed limit in the day time, I suggest that that speed limit should be reduced by at least 15 miles per hour at night. It must be written into our statutes so that it becomes the accepted law. The experts have worked out—I have the figures here—that with driving at night you cannot drive beyond the limit of your headlights. This is a fact that is so often overlooked. The speed limit is 70 miles per hour and people say “Although it is night time, I am entitled to drive at 70 miles per hour” overlooking the fact that they are not entitled to drive any faster than their vision allows them to do. Therefore I say that the speed of vehicles is an aspect which must be considered.

I know that, with the member for Salt River, in front of me, the next suggestion might not be as popular as perhaps it should be. When motor repairers put defective parts on a motor vehicle, they should be subject to very servere restrictions. Very many motor repairers put defective parts on a vehicle, and the ordinary layman like myself would not know whether they were defective or not. I would like to see strong action taken against people who commit such faults, because they are endangering the lives of everybody.

Your colleague is becoming a worried man.

I know it is not an easy matter, but it is certainly something that does happen. Motor vehicle repairers must also play their part in the promotion of road safety.

I asked the hon. the Deputy Minister in the Second Reading debate to ensure that advertisers do not use advertisements of speed in trying to sell their particular product. In this respect I am not only thinking of manufacturers of motor vehicles, but also of petrol sellers, tyre sellers, and so on. They all are boasting that if you stop at a stop street or robot, using one particular petrol or another, will give you more power to get away from the other cars. I believe this is totally wrong, considering the question of road safety. I believe it is wrong to advertise: “Put a tiger in your tank”. We should have safety behind the wheel not tigers in the tank. What we need is reliability.

You’ve got the tiger by the tail.

Then, of course, there is also the question of language. I know it is not as popular as perhaps some of the other aspects; but in this new Bill we mention languages again. I would plead with the hon. the Deputy Minister that the time has come that when we deal with a matter like road safety or anything else in this House, we should for heaven’s sake forget about the fact that the man must be proficient in both official languages. Let us rather talk about the man’s proficiency in the duty he is going to perform. Surely it is far more important than the language question.

Without wishing to repeat any of the points I made in my Second Reading speech, might I conclude with an extract from a letter sent to me by a medical man about the question of road safety just the other day. He said this—

I want to say that I hope this new Road Safety Council plays its part, as I am sure it will try to do. I also hope that the public of South Africa of all races and of all creeds and callings play their part. I am quite sure that if we have to come to this House again for new legislation to give more teeth to or alter this measure in any way nobody will complain, because I am quite sure it is the intention of all of us to ensure that it is safer, that people feel happier and more content driving on the roads of South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, the tragedy on our roads has brought us to the consideration of this legislation before the House today. It has therefore become necessary for us to look once more at the means at our disposal for combating the slaughter on our roads. I say “necessary” because we have now had more than a decade in which the previous Road Safety Council did everything in its power to lodge with our people the concept of safety on our roads. Since 1960, when that Council was established, we have had advertising, instruction and guidance in various spheres. We have also had road safety campaigns, and the establishment of local associations. These bodies and projects each made a valuable contribution towards impressing on the general public a consciousness of road safety. But after all these years we feel that an additional step must now be taken, and I now call it a courageous step forward. I shall say in a moment why I call it courageous. I also feel, however, like joining the previous speaker in saying that the last word on road safety legislation is far from having been uttered, and that gradually, as a result of the research that will be done and the experience that will be gained by this body, we shall place additional measures and other regulations before this House to examine more closely the aspect of road safety. The need to look anew at the road safety laws in our country is very clearly evidenced by the figures that have already been mentioned here across the floor of the House. To just refer back to some of them: in 1968 there were 168 000 accidents as against the almost 218 00 in 1971. The number of fatal accidents in the same two years were 5 800 as against 8 566. Those figures alone had to speak forcefully to our community to persuade us to try to find other means for combating this evil. In this courageous step forward we now find that for the first time an endeavour is being made to give powers and potency to this body that will be responsible for supervising this question of road safety. I say it is a courageous endeavour, because we have vested interests here in as much as road safety and traffic control rest with bodies such as the provincial administrations and local authorities, and the Government is now going to create a central body here that will, to a greater extent, be able to intervene in the regulation of traffic, road safety campaigns and the creation of means of bringing the idea of road safety home to our people. As I have said, I believe that this is again a step forward, a step in the right direction, and we are grateful it has come this far. As a result of the potency now being given to the central body by means of this legislation, we shall probably find more funds channeled, funds that are extremely necessary for the needed research and advertising.

We shall probably also find that there will be greater co-ordination between the various bodies involved in the regulation of traffic in our country. In that connection one involuntarily reflects that the province has a traffic force, that the various municipalities have traffic forces, that each of these bodies is responsible for the training of its own staff, that there are probably various standards that apply in these various traffic forces, that there is probably no uniformity as far as salary scales or the attractiveness of conditions of service are concerned, etc. One also reflects that as a result of the fact that a specific traffic force is active in a specific area, other traffic forces blandly overlook offences within that specific area. Thus it would happen, and I am convinced that it frequently happens, that a traffic officer from a particular municipality, who happens to be in another municipal area, will not take action if he sees an offence committed in that area. One would like to see this body find a greater measure of co-ordination and a basis for co-operation between the various traffic forces, so that it will be possible to use a person, once he appears in a traffic officer’s uniform, throughout the country wherever he may be. In this way we shall eliminate an overlapping of staff and obtain greater rationality. In addition, one finds—one could not help noticing this—that in the past the South African Police to a very large extent adopted the attitude that the responsibility for the regulation of traffic rests with the traffic police. They consequently do not play as active a role as we should like to see them play, in spite of the fact that they are on our roads all day and probably observe many of these traffic offences. One should also like to see this authority, which is now being created, able to exercise that authority to a greater extent. I am aware of the fact that in the Peninsula recently a great deal of assistance was given to the Cape Town traffic force by the Police. As a result of that a very successful campaign was launched. If this idea of the integration of the various traffic forces can to a greater extent make an impression under the inspiration of this new body, this would universally be welcomed. Ultimately, as the hon. member for Port Natal said, the only way to ensure safety on the roads is through administration, supervision, control and people keeping watch. We must therefore use the people who are keeping watch as efficiently as possible and extend their activities as much as possible.

Connected with that is the fact that much closer attention must be given to the training of this staff, and that centres must be created where they can be trained efficiently. In that connection one also thinks involuntarily of the training of non-White staff. There are large areas in our country that could profitably be handled by Coloured traffic personnel. I am convinced that the success that has already been achieved in this connection in a municipality such as Bellville can also be communicable to other municipalities. As far as the training of staff is concerned, I just want to make this additional remark, i.e. that there must be greater concentration, not on the stationary traffic and the offences with regard to stationary traffic, but on offences in connection with vehicles in motion. I know it is difficult to pursue, stop and take to court a person who is speeding away at 80 or 90 miles per hour. Means will nevertheless have to be found for catching offenders in moving traffic. One reflects that there are several modern means such as television cameras, radar apparatus, etc. I do not say that there must merely be prosecution. I am convinced that if an offender who is caught is stopped and warned, and if his attention is drawn to the fact that there is control on the roads, this would have a favourable effect.

For this reason I feel that the new body we are going to create will furnish a significant contribution. This body will probably find out that there are still extensive short-comings that will have to be corrected by way of additional legislation by the provincial administrations or by the regulations that can be made by this new body. One is grateful for this step forward.

In conclusion I just want to make the remark that we are satisfied with the way in which the legislation before us is presented and with the means that are going to be found for financing this step. We believe that this will only be the first of further steps, and that further along the road we shall have to find other means, additional funds and methods for traffic control, co-ordination and training. Therefore we believe that we must regard this legislation as a further, courageous step forward.

Mr. Speaker, at this Third Reading stage of the Bill I do not intend elaborating on some of the gruesome pictures that have been quite rightly verbally painted in this House regarding road accidents. I believe that we have dealt sufficiently with the need for some action with regard to road safety without going over those figures again and elaborating on that aspect of the matter. I believe we all accept that undoubtedly some action is necessary. I think back to my days as a member of the Executive Committee and of ploughing through the large mass of personnel which comprised the old Road Safety Council in an attempt to get some uniform thinking. It is interesting, when looking at the composition of the old council, to find how many of the members were secretaries of State departments, who did not have the time to devote to the specialized work that was done by this council. One feels therefore, with the new concept of a council which the hon. the Minister has placed before us, there can perhaps be more continuous, active and effective attention given to questions of road safety and the causes of road accidents. I hope and am sure that the hon. the Minister will keep an open mind as to the content or composition of that council and that, if he feels it can be widened to some extent, he will not hesitate to come to this House and ask for the necessary powers to broaden that council.

I know that under the old disposition the action committee, for instance, was formed of persons who were not necessarily involved in other departments. For instance, Mr. Trew, the director-general of the Automobile Association at that stage, was a member of the action committee. Although the House has not yet at this stage accepted the enlargement of the council, I hope the Minister will still include representatives of Rondalla, the Automobile Association and the Road Federation on the council. I hope the hon. Minister will retain an open mind in that matter and that, if he feels at some stage that he wants to enlarge the council, he will come back to the House and ask to have this council enlarged.

I just want to raise one or two matters which I believe are urgent matters and which this council will have to attend to. These are matters in regard to which I certainly do not have an answer and I do not propose to suggest an answer, but which need investigation. I have certain statistics before me of what one might call the racial composition of road accident victims. A report was published in September, 1971, giving certain statistics for a certain period and it indicated that 739 persons were killed in road accidents. Of those victims, 156 were White, 88 were Coloured, 24 were Asian and 471 were Bantu victims. In other words, more than 50 per cent of road deaths for that particular period were of Bantu persons. It seems to me that this is a matter which needs investigation. The council should investigate as to why this should be. It may be, for instance, the condition of vehicles which the Bantu drive on the roads or because of economic reasons or other reasons.

They travel in buses.

We cannot properly say that all these deaths have been caused by bus accidents. The hon. member for Etosha suggested that they might have been travelling in buses when these accidents occurred. Are we then allowing these buses to be driven by persons who are not fully competent to drive or do the roads upon which they are travelling contribute towards the likelihood of these accidents? There is also the question of overloading which takes place. This also contributes to the dangers of driving or to the inability to control the vehicle. When three or four people sit on the front seat, it certainly impedes the driver in dealing with an emergency with that particular vehicle. A further possibility is the question of insufficient training before licences are granted to certain classes or certain types of person. I think these are matters which would appear to need an investigation because they concern one. They concern one because it is a pattern which continues and which would have to be looked into by this council.

Then I want to look at the other matter which I believe is an important aspect, i.e. the relationship between urban and rural accidents and deaths. I have a report here which was issued some while ago by the Automobile Association. It deals with the problem of traffic in towns and is a very comprehensive memorandum. If I may, I want to quote some extracts which deal with the urbanization of our population and its effect on transport. I quote from paragraph 3 of this report—

That urbanization makes demands on our local authorities, and I am sure that this council itself will contribute towards the designing of urban renewal schemes. I want to remind the House that the traffic hazard was taken into account in the planning of Welkom in the Free State. That is a city of considerable size, and I believe it does not have one stop street or robot at all. Its street system has been planned according to circles and the principle of yielding to the right, and to show its effectiveness, Welkom has won the municipal trophy for road safety …

Three times in succession.

Yes, the mayor, who accepted the trophy on behalf of the city, is a relation of mine. This does show that, for accidents to be prevented, it is not always necessary to have traffic police and stop streets, if there has been proper designing. I feel that this is a matter which needs attention, and in this connection I quote further from this report—

I believe, Sir, that we have seen the results of the planning of freeways. I think I can speak without fear of contradiction when I say that since we have had the freeway system introduced into the Cape Peninsula, for instance, through the forward-looking approach of our City Engineer, Dr. Morris, there has been a reduction in accidents on these highways. I hope that the question of urban renewal planning will also receive the attention of this council, and I hope that they will have the co-operation of the major municipalities.

In these hard times for hon. members opposite, I want to say to the hon. the Deputy Minister that I believe they have taken a very wise step in the Cape Peninsula by providing more parking areas at suburban railway stations. I believe that that will contribute towards cutting down the flow of traffic on our roads into the city at peak times. One only has to drive in that slow-moving, crawling queue in any of our large cities, trying to get home or to work, to realize what frustration it causes the driver. This is why so many drivers are at times tempted to “take a chance” to get there a little more quickly. I see the hon. member for Carletonville looking at me. I am sure he agrees with me that that sort of thing does happen when you are frustrated by a slow-moving line of traffic.

That is why we are also providing them at the national road clovers.

Yes, but I am speaking particularly of urban planning. I feel that parking areas should be provided at the suburban railway stations to make it convenient for motorists to drive to the nearest railway station and travel to the city by train. I want to thank the Minister and the Department of Transport for what they are doing in that regard in Cape Town. I am sure it is going to be a tremendous help.

We also envisage that in the future buses will take passengers into the cities from the national road clovers, where drivers will be able to leave their cars.

I am very glad to hear that from the Deputy Minister, because I am sure that that will have to come. One only needs to look at a city like Cape Town to see that this is the case. At the moment there is parking available on the foreshore in Cape Town because of the fact that there are still vacant sites, but before long those are going to be built upon and each building is going to bring so many thousands more people into that part of the city. The failure to provide some means of transporting people to and from those built-up areas can be a contributory factor to accidents.

Then, Sir, I want to say a word, if I may, on the question of speed limits. I hesitate to disagree with the hon. member for Port Natal; I believe he has the distinction of having appeared in court as an expert on road safety. To a certain extent, I agree with him on the question of different speed limits for day and night. Hon. members are aware of the dangers of excessive speed at night, but there are other factors which do not make driving at night so dangerous. For instance, the country driver will know of the warning given some distance away by the bright headlights of an approaching car; this warning is not, of course, given during the day. The Automobile Association had some hesitation about supporting the initial introduction of a 70 m.p.h. limit. They felt that a maximum speed limit was not necessary.

Do you believe in different speed limits for different types of cars?

I believe that one has to strike a balance as to what is a reasonable figure. I personally feel that the figure of 70 m.p.h., which is in fact now slightly lower as the result of metrication—I think it is in the region of 63 or 64 m.p.h.—is a reasonable speed to fix for the highways and ordinary open roads. This, too, is a matter which I believe should be looked at.

I want to make six suggestions in regard to matters which I feel could well receive urgent attention. In my humble opinion I feel that these may help in the combating of road accidents. The first one is in regard to the question of completing the necessary complement of traffic constables. I do not want this to be a political issue, although it can be linked with job reservation and such things. I do believe that it is essential that the municipalities should be able to fill up their complement of traffic policemen. I hope that ways and means can be found whereby any possibility of friction or trouble can be avoided. We in the Cape have found that the Coloured traffic police here have been first class. I do not know of any friction, and they have been able to do their job efficiently. I hope that some way will be found whereby the municipalities can be helped in this connection.

Secondly, I want to refer to the question of alcohol content in the blood. According to cases which have been before the courts and the experience we have had, I feel that the permissible percentage of alcohol could well be reduced below the figure which is now stipulated. In certain quarters it is suggested that the permissible content should be reduced to 0,05 per cent.

That is the case overseas, for instance in Scandinavia.

Here, too, I do not want to be too dogmatic, but I feel that there is reason to investigate whether the permissible alcohol content should not be reduced. This will mean that a person will not say: “I will take a chance; I do not think the level has reached 0,1 per cent yet.” He will know that if he has been to a social occasion, a sociable occasion, he will not be able to take the chance of driving, because it could lead to a conviction. I feel that this is a matter which needs attention. Then I want to refer to the question of the actual procedure in the traffic courts. The problem which the magistrates have to face is a very heavy one and I think this is a case where they need the assistance of the Department of Justice. Sir, these cases come to court long after the accident has occurred; frequently it is as long as three months after the accident, and the traffic officer or the police officer who took the statements or witnessed the accident, or saw something of the accident, is expected, having done 100 other cases or hundreds of other cases in between, to have his memory absolutely clear when he gets into the witness-box three months after the accident took place. I wonder, Sir, whether the Department of Justice should not consider the question of traffic courts sitting in the evening. People who have to be brought before the courts can then be brought there promptly; they could be brought before a traffic court where, if necessary, assessors could sit with a magistrate to deal with these traffic accidents while the evidence is fresh and while the persons who saw the accidents are available and can then immediately put the facts before the court if there is any dispute.

Why not transfer the court to their homes?

Traffic courts do sit in the evening in other countries. I think this is a matter that could be considered. Then I want to suggest to the hon. the Deputy Minister that I think the time has come for what is termed the hazard rating scale which was recommended by the Joubert Commission of 1957, whereby a motorist convicted of a traffic offence does not necessarily have his licence suspended on the first occasion but where he is given so many black marks for a particular offence. When the motorist has accumulated a certain number of points against him in connection with his driving history, he then reaches the stage where his licence will be suspended. This means that the licence of the motorist is not necessarily suspended for a first offence, which may or may not justify suspension. The driver will now have a certain number of black marks against his record and he will know that unless he is particularly cautious he will build up so many points against him that it may well necessitate some drastic action.

You are talking to a convinced man.

I am very glad to hear that. I hope the hon. the Deputy Minister will use his influence with the council in this connection.

Finally, I want to suggest the use of what one might call traffic wardens. There are vast numbers of motorists who are themselves concerned with this question of road safety. My hon. and worthy predecessor in my constituency, Maj. Piet van der Byl, as the hon. the Deputy Minister will know, has been a great advocate over the years of a system of traffic wardens who, when they see a negligent act on the part of a motorist while they are driving along the road, can report it to Traffic Control …

Something similar to the game wardens?

I do not mean that the warden should necessarily institute an action, but if Traffic Control receives a letter from Mr. X, who they happen to know is an experienced man, informing them that on De Waal Drive at 6.30 p.m. car No. so-and-so recklessly overtook another car, then Traffic Control can write to the man concerned and say: “You have been reported for overtaking negligently; this has been noted against your record.”

I agree.

This will merely be a noting by the Traffic Department, but it will ensure that the motorist concerned takes more and more care and takes fewer chances.

Sir, we on this side of the House—and I think the whole House and the public —wish this council well in the task which it will be undertaking, and we look forward with interest to its reports and interim reports to see what progress it makes in discharging the duties which are being entrusted to it.

Mr. Speaker, this Bill makes an end, or can make an end, to a very great need that we felt. It is a good Act. It is a timely measure, and I foresee this measure having beneficial results for us all. I see that the Bill makes provision for research, investigation, guidance, consultation, etc. Mr. Speaker, I sincerely hope that this Act will result in the elimination of many aspects irritating the public. Let me just say at once that in the exercising of authority with a view to promoting traffic safety, and in the choice of traffic inspectors, as far as their training and their remuneration is concerned, a great responsibility rests with the authorities. I want to say immediately that I think that the entire system of traffic inspectors, with respect to the effort we make, through them, to promote traffic safety, which is also the eventual object of this Act, has altogether failed.

I want to express the hope that this Act, with everything it envisages, will contribute towards terminating the present-day system whereby traffic inspectors exercise authority, because it will at least be the beginning of a process. I think there is general public antipathy to the method and ways in which traffic inspectors discharge their duties today. Sir, it is strange that the increase in the number of accidents keeps pace proportionately with the increase in the number of licences issued to Bantu drivers. This is what the statistics prove. I do not know whether any of the hon. members on that side have already studied those statistics, but this is a proven fact. When I say this, hon. members opposite must not look at me and say that I am again hitting out at the Bantu. This has nothing to do with the Bantu; it is a matter of the power of judgment, the training, the appreciation faculty of drivers.

Sir, the most important factor here is the appreciation a driver has for authority and this again is closely related to the prestige the person has who must exercise the authority. When I say that the general public has an aversion to the present system of traffic inspectors as the exercisers of authority, I do not mean that the public has an aversion to authority. Far from it. I say the public has an aversion to the type of trained man—I do not want to go so far as to say “the type of intellectually gifted man”—who exercises this authority. The public has an aversion not to authority, but to the method and the way in which this authority is exercised.

Sir, you can imagine what happens: A man is driving along; he exceeds the speed limit by five or ten miles per hour; his vehicle’s red light is not in order; the lorry is perhaps emitting too much smoke, and here the motorist and the traffic inspector meet up at this intensely emotional moment. The motorist and the traffic inspector come together at that specific emotional moment, and what happens? Let us be practical. The traffic inspector puts his head through the window and says: “What is your name; what is your address; what is your age?” and he sentences one on the spot. He acts as a Judge, as an exerciser of authority. What must I as a motorist do? I must initiate an entire process, an entire action to prove my innocence in respect of a charge levelled at me. There are many ways one could act at that moment, but I do not want to elaborate on that!

But what happens now? When I speak of public aversion, I mean this: Our people are all people who want to stay out of court. We do not want to go to court, whatever the reasons may be. Instead of that process of proving one’s innocence in court, something else must happen. It takes time, one must travel quite a distance, it costs money, and I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that most of us do not know how to handle a case, and the second most merciless person on earth is an attorney, and it also costs one money. This bringing together of an exerciser of authority and the motorist at a certain emotional moment has a tremendous aftermath. This Bill holds out the prospect of there being research, training and guidance, and I hope that as a result of that, the council will come to certain conclusions and that this will exercise a salutary effect, or possibly lead to our being able to institute a different order or method of authority between the traffic inspector and the motorist. In this I see the most important function of the Bill, because as it exists today the situation is untenable. Those hon. members exalt so about Brakpan. It is not because of their policy that they possibly made progress in Brakpan, according to their judgment. No, the traffic inspectors cost us quite a few hundred votes in Brakpan. So their hopes will fall away as soon as this Act comes into operation, and the more this Act concentrates on research and training, and we gain greater experience and maturity through this Act, the more will their hopes, as vested in the Brakpan result, fade.

What has that to do with the Bill?

Yes, Brakpan overshadows everything in their thoughts. Sir, I therefore welcome this Act, I see in this Act the beginning of a well-intentioned effort to achieve a better footing in connection with safety on our roads and thereby to reduce accidents. I do not believe, and this is a conviction, that the increase in the number of accidents taking place on our roads is attributable to a desire on the part of the public to reject authority. I do not believe this for one moment. I believe it is the result of a reaction on the part of the public to the way in which the law is implemented today. This Act may contribute towards establishing a different basis for us.

I want to conclude with the following. I want to say that we are all human, and the South African public are all people who are obedient to authority—I must say this to the credit of the South African public. But just as much as this is a fact, it is also a fact that if one continues to hit a donkey he will eventually no longer regard those blows. That is what is happening here today. We are all concerned about this large number of accidents, and I want to express the hope that this Act will contribute to their reduction. I want to congratulate the Minister on his virtually watertight initial effort, as clearly embodied in this Act. I want to congratulate him on a second aspect, i.e. that his point of departure in this Act was a correct one. His approach was correct in that the Minister emphasized training and research in this Act, because this forms the foundation of any scientific effort we may make to combat this problem. Sir, I hope this Bill will satisfy us all in future and that it will contribute to the creation of a better basis for the motorist, the public, to travel more safely on the roads of South Africa.

Firstly I want to thank the entire House, both sides of the House, sincerely for the positive way in which they participated in this debate, and also for the intense interest evinced by them. I do not want to spend much time discussing the cat which my friend the hon. member for Carletonville has just let loose among the pigeons. But, I do want to say, because I think this needs to be said, that our traffic inspectors, the traffic constables of South Africa, have the most difficult task imaginable.

No, an M.P.’s task is the most difficult.

I want to make an appeal to two sectors. In the first place, the public of South Africa must not see the traffic inspectors as a persecutor, but as the person who is trying to save lives. We must understand that well. Not one of us is guiltless. Often, if one has perhaps broken the law, no matter how minor the offence, one feels resentful because one regards the matter subjectively. But if we did not have traffic inspectors to help us in the right manner, it would be a bad day for South Africa. Secondly, if we see the traffic inspectors only as persecutors and if that approach is evinced by the public on the one hand and the traffic inspectors on the other, and a growing resentment is built up, it could only be harmful to South Africa. We have already started, under the guidance of the previous Road Safety Council, to use a uniform training manual for our traffic inspectors, so that they may receive uniform training. This was done in collaboration with, and with the co-operation of the South African Police. I believe that the result of this training will be that the traffic inspectors will be information and educational officers, and not bullies, and that the people will receive a proper education. But we must remember that politeness breeds politeness. If one is polite to them, they in turn will be polite to you.

†To me it is more than gratifying that the hon. member for Port Natal as well as the hon. member for Green Point took this personal interest in road safety, as also the other hon. members. I want to assure them that the suggestions made by them in all the discussions here will be submitted to the board. We will do that because I think amongst those suggestions there are many valuable ones of which cognizance should be taken, and I want to thank them for those suggestions.

*Mr. Speaker, in conclusion I just want to say a few things in this connection. I also went to institute a few inquiries into road safety measures in Belgium and Germany, and to my mind there are these few important facts which should be taken into consideration: In the first place, this is an educational task. The finer the character of a people, the safer the conduct of such a people on the roads is going to be. The more considerate our public is, considerate towards one another, the more patience we display, the safer we are going to make our roads. In other words, the application of road safety is, as far as I am concerned, a norm against which I am able to measure the level of civilization of the public. The more civilized a person, the more you have this opportunity or, to put it differently, road safety can be associated with brotherly love—do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That is important. Keep your eyes open on our roads and see who the people are who make way for someone who wants to get into a queue. It is not only the slow driver, it is that person who is considerate. It is that person who takes care to ensure that other people do not become frustrated.

I can think of another example. Take note of what happens on the roads which are not yet wide enough and where you encounter these long caravans and heavy pantechnicons crawling up a hill. Behind this vehicle a long queue of motor cars has built up. The driver in the vehicle behind this trailer becomes frustrated, and in his frustration he eventually risks passing on a blind rise or in the face of oncoming traffic. The man who takes that chance is definitely guilty, but he was actually forced into this as a result of the frustrations which built up in him because the driver in front of him was travelling so slowly.

I think it is necessary for us to wish this intended Council every success. It has an arduous task, a protracted task, for we in South Africa are not yet road conscious. I want to mention an example of this road consciousness. If you stop at a robot in any city in Europe you will note that the vehicles that want to turn left pull over as close as possible to the left-hand side of the road, while those that want to turn right pull over as close as possible to the right-hand side, so as to allow other vehicles access. Here in South Africa, however, we stop at robots in such a way that one cannot turn to the left or to the right. In other words, you have a long, narrow line of vehicles, while, if there could have been two or three vehicles next to each other, the line of vehicles would have been only half as long. We are not road conscious, and we do not know how to utilize the available space; our road education still has a long way to go. Many of our people think they are still driving a donkey cart—if they want to turn right, they first swing left. I have just mentioned these as a few examples.

There will be general agreement when I say that I think there was one main impression which emerged in the course of this debate. I want to thank the entire House for not having turned this debate into a political debate; for having dealt exclusively in this debate with road safety, for having indicated clearly to South Africa that beyond the so-called provincialism, beyond the so-called local interests, beyond even the political interests, this entire House is concerned about the terrible slaughter on our roads, and that this House unanimously views this problem as a national problem which must be tackled on a national level. When South Africa takes rote of this, I hope and trust that the provinces, the city councils and the municipalities will all co-operate harmoniously with the Central Government and with this House, each on its own level, but on a coordinated basis, to try to bring about uniformity throughout South Africa in which each sector will play its part—the city councils, the provinces and the Central Government. If we could do this, it will have the necessary results. There are members who discussed the matter of language and efficiency. The clause does not provide that the language is the most important factor. But one of the aims of the Public Service Act is efficiency, and if one can render service in both languages, so much the better.

I want to go much further than that. To my way of thinking it would be an extremely strong recommendation if not only a traffic inspector, but any official to whom this work has been entrusted, who may possibly have dealings with Bantu, could speak that Bantu language. That would only make him so much the better person to render so much better service. I think hon. gentlemen should rather view it as an encouraging than as a restrictive factor. In this way the hon. member for Bellville and all the other members, made very useful suggestions. I shall bring all these suggestions to the attention of the intended Council. I think that with its blessings which this House has extended to this new body, we will be able to accomplish something.

In conclusion I just want to say something to the hon. member for Green Point. The hon. member again discussed the composition of the Council. I have a very open mind. If this Council should in future recommend to the Minister that it should have a different composition, and that other bodies should possibly serve on it, the Minister may in fact, in terms of clause 24, decide thus, and this may be done. The point of departure of the Minister and of the Government as a whole, and not only mine, is merely to ensure road safety in South Africa.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a Third Time.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

Mr. Speaker, we come now to the last stage of this Bill. When it was introduced I jocularly mentioned that there were some forms of hijacking to which we were not opposed, but that we would support this Bill. I was of course correct. We had 2 333 reasons why we were correct, and we will still support the Bill at this stage.

However, in supporting the Bill, I think I must refer firstly to the fact that as long ago as the 10th February, 1970, it was this side of the House which had to prod the hon. the Deputy Minister into participating in international agreements. He may remember that in 1970 the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg District questioned him on why South Africa was not yet a signatory or participating in international hijacking agreements. It was only as a result of the prodding from this side of the House that subsequently, only on the 16th December that year, South Africa herself became a signatory.

The other thing which is a matter for regret, is that this hon. Deputy Minister did not do his homework in introducing this Bill. I gave him ample notice, during the Second Reading stage, of various queries and points which I would wish to raise and which, if he did not know the answers—which I knew he would not—he could look up overnight and answer during the Committee Stage. He did not know the answers, of course, but he was given the information by an efficient staff who, I am sure, knew the correct answers and gave them to him. But even at the Committee Stage the hon. the Deputy Minister still did not understand the Bill and he did not even give the answers which he had been given by his officials. Little by little we dragged out of him answers to certain of the issues and on those points we are satisfied. But throughout his replies the hon. the Deputy Minister sheltered behind the convention, the convention which he kept quoting as the reason why he could not alter anything and could not accept any amendments. There are two issues on which we are still not happy. The one the hon. the Deputy Minister has promised to take up, is the question of the hoaxer and I want to remind him of his undertaking to take up that issue. I hope he will not forget or that his officials will remind him of it and that something will be done about it. The other matter is more serious, namely the onus placed on the captain of an aircraft to report, immediately on landing with a hijacker, to the diplomatic or consular representative of the country of origin or the state to which the hijacker belongs. Again the hon. the Deputy Minister hid behind the convention. I have the convention to which South Africa is a signatory here. It deals specifically with this question. In article 6, paragraph 4, it is stated:

The person in custody must therefore have access to a representative of his own country. Paragraph 4 states further:

In other words, the convention to which we are a signatory places the onus for notification on the State taking the person into custody. But this Bill places the onus of notification on the captain of the aircraft.

And it will remain so.

The hon. the Deputy Minister says it will remain so.

I will tell you why shortly.

Then he must not come to the House and use the convention as an excuse. He must not use the convention as an excuse if there is another reason. Perhaps he is starting to understand the notes that he gets passed to him to tell him what this Bill is all about, overnight; perhaps he can give us another answer now. His answer has, however, been that it is because of the convention. It is obviously not the convention, but another reason. Parliament is not a rubber stamp, but is there to legislate. The hon. the Deputy Minister has a piece of legislation put before him and he dutifully wants to put his rubber stamp and that of Parliament on it. If there is something that can be improved on in the Bill, I believe, the duty of Parliament is to improve it. We are not happy, and I know that others are also not happy, about the onus being placed upon the captain. We are also not happy that the part of the Bill which deals with hoaxing is adequate. We also feel that, in some cases, the wording of the Bill is inadequate. I accept the Deputy Minister’s explanation on the other matters which were raised by us, even those in regard to the open door. As I have said, we have 2 333 who got through the open door.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member will not gain anything by trying to make some cheap political capital out of this matter. I want to tell him that straight out. I told him yesterday that the people he was referring to, people they have supposedly hijacked, are not people whom they have hijacked on the grounds of policy. They told the people: “For heaven’s sake, do not look at our policy. Just vote because you have to pay a tickey more for bread”. [Interjections.]

Order!

Mr. Speaker, in the first place the hon. member tried to make some political capital out of the fact that we were asked in 1970 why we were not yet a member of the convention and why we did not have an Act yet. When that question was put in 1970, there was no international agreement as yet.

You know that is not true.

Did the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg District say the hon. the Deputy Minister “knows that is not true”?

Yes, Sir.

The hon. member must withdraw it.

I withdraw it.

The hon. the Deputy Minister may proceed.

When this question was put in this House in 1970, there was no general international agreement as yet.

What about the Amsterdam Conference?

No, not a general agreement.

Very well. I repeat that in 1970 there was no general agreement as yet. It would have been presumptuous and premature, knowing that there would be another convention, to pass legislation before an attempt had been made to reach agreement in the convention. This has been done only now.

In regard to the hon. member’s next question in respect of the clause about which he is not happy, and which I said would remain as it is, I want to point out to him in the first place that it is not incorporated as such in the convention, but that it is an additional safety measure. I explained this yesterday already. Secondly, it is essential to do this in order to promote good diplomatic relations. In terms of this the country concerned is warned in advance in regard to its citizen who is on board and who is going to be detained.

Why can it not be done on arrival?

Let me proceed. Moreover, we made inquiries and found that Britain and Australia had these exact words and the same clause in their legislation. In this regard, therefore, we have merely taken over the British and Australian Acts and have included precisely the same provisions in our legislation. In respect of the ridiculous statement made by the hon. member that the commander of the aircraft would be delayed, I want to ask him whether he would prefer that hijacking should continue or that there should be half a day’s delay? This is the first aspect of the matter. In the Committee Stage yesterday I said very clearly in this House that the law advisers’ interpretation of this is very clear, namely that no onus is placed on the commanding officer of the aircraft to prove that he could not do it. If there are no consular offices or diplomatic staff, he can simply report accordingly. With the modern systems of communication it is not even necessary for such a person to land. If he is still in flight on his way to an airport where he must hand over a person he is detaining, he can notify the radio tower at that airport by radio that he has a person on board whom he must hand over and that they must request the diplomatic representative of the country concerned to be present at the airport. It is a method of establishing co-operation and expanding diplomatic service in this regard. For this reason I have stated it like this. As I promised the hon. member. I shall deal with the other aspect in the Other Place.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a Third Time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move—

I suppose that the most remarkable feature of this motion is that it should be necessary for me to move it at all in this House in this day and age. So much has been written and said about the evils of the migrant labour system, and so little has ever been said in its defence, that one should have been able to assume that any Government which has the welfare of the majority of its citizens at heart would have tried its utmost to reduce the use of this system to a minimum. We know that the migrant system is not unique to South Africa. We know that it has been used and is being used in many other parts of the continent of Africa. It is in fact endemic to the continent of Africa. We know, too, that it is used in India. In Europe many thousands of workers migrate from Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey to more affluent countries such as Germany, Holland, Switzerland and France in order to seek work. The difference is that those workers, if they wish to, may take their families with them. If they stay in the other country for a certain number of years, they may become citizens of that country. They enjoy all the social benefits that are enjoyed by the other workers who were born in the country. I may add that they do not have to spend their entire working life as migrants.

What makes the South African system different is that in South Africa thousands upon thousands of our own citizens, born within our own borders, are denied mobility, i.e. the right to move freely from one area to another in order to sell their labour in the market which pays them the best price. What is also unique is that official policy is so designed as to extend and perpetuate this system.

I could use the entire half-hour at my disposal quoting authoritative opinions about the evils of the migrant labour system. The churches, economists, sociologists, anthropologists, official commissions of inquiry and African leaders have all commented on the evils of this system. I am going to give only a few examples. The Cape Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in 1965 issued its now famous report on migratory labour. Paragraph 22 of this report states:

Bishop Auala of Owambo pointed out to the Prime Minister last year that the contract system would be the cause of a great deal of disruption. How right he was proved to be when 13 000 Owambos went out on strike at the end of last year. Prof. Hobart Houghton called the migrant labour system “an evil canker at the heart of our whole society; wasteful of labour, distractive of ambition, a wrecker of homes and a symptom of our failure to create a coherent and progressive economic society”. Prof. Houghton also referred to “two million men in South Africa perpetually on the move”. He called them “men of two worlds, lacking the feeling of belonging anywhere”. Both the Economic and Social Planning Council’s report and the Fagan Report, both of which reported over 25 years ago, were outspoken in their condemnation of the migrant labour system, calling it morally, socially and economically wrong. Many sociologists have stressed the dire effect this system has on the women in the homelands who are minus their men, and the rising illegitimacy rate both in the homelands and in the urban townships as a result of the imbalance between male and female population. Sociologists have also stressed the insecurity, crime, alcoholism and delinquency caused by this system, all of which result from the break up of family lives. Anthropologists have pointed out that the migrant labour system in fact destroys tribal customs which the Government professes to revere, customs such as the extended family system and the marriage code under the Natal code whereby the bridegroom, the bride’s father and the bridegroom’s father must all be together before the marriage can be properly solemnized. It is difficult for the Bantu to maintain this custom when the men are working as migrants in the urban areas for most of their working lives. We have had African leaders like Chief Matanzima who told the Press conference in February this year that the migrant labour system had never been satisfactory. We have Chief Buthelezi of Zululand who said in January this year—

With all this huge weight of evidence against this system, surely one would have expected that the Government would do its utmost to reduce this system to the minimum or at least to formulate policies so as to phase it out. I want to say at once that not even the harshest critic, including me, expects overnight abolition of this system. One must also admit that in certain circumstances it is at least tolerable and in other respects it cannot easily be dispensed with economically. It is tolerable when it entails only the employment of young unmarried men who come from the rural areas to the urban areas to work there for a short period. They use the migrant labour system as a bridge between tribal life and modern industrial society, but as the Fagan Commission so succinctly remarked, “a bridge is meant to be crossed, a bridge is not meant to be a permanent abode”. I also concede that the migratory labour system cannot easily be dispensed with in the case of hundreds and thousands of foreign Africans who come to work in the gold mines; they supply something like 72 per cent of the labour on the gold mines. The system is nevertheless intrinsically bad, on the mines as elsewhere, because it is always a sign of economic imbalance. It is a sign of imbalance between what is a developed society providing employment and a stagnant and poverty-stricken society where unemployment is rife. This invariably means low wages for the migrant worker and it means limited opportunities for improving his position. It has been estimated that the average wage that is earned by migrant workers who do not work on the mines— that is to say that they are not provided with accommodation and food—is between R10 and R12 per week in the urban areas. From this the worker has to pay for his bachelor quarters, he has to buy his own food and clothing, he has to pay for transport and he has to send money home to support his family in the rural areas. Small wonder that there is a high incidence of malnutrition among children in the homelands. The migrant or contract worker is tied to his employer. He is given no copy of his contract. One of the changes introduced in the Owambo system is that the worker now at least sees his contract. Our contract workers who come from the home lands are not shown a copy of their contract.

He has always been issued with a copy of his contract.

No, that is not true. It is rubbish.

You are misleading the House.

I am not going to be diverted by interjections or by questions. I have very little time and I want to say a great deal. The hon. member can make a speech if he wants to. The worker here is given no copy of his contract and he is therefore very often at the mercy of an unscrupulous employer. The employer on the other hand, has no choice of employee. It is hardly worth his while to train a man who is going to be with him for only a short time. The result is that he suffers economically from the very high labour turnover.

What steps has the Government taken over the years to reduce the dependence of the South African economy on the migrant labour system? I submit that the Government has in fact taken no steps; on the contrary, despite all criticism, it has put one measure after the other on the Statute Book which entrenches and reinforces the system. Its policy is based on the appalling concept that was put forward 50 years ago by the Stallard Commission. That concept is that the African is only in the White area to provide labour and he must depart there from when his labour is no longer required. That is still the same basic concept used by the Government and it has been the basis of a great deal of legislation. The African therefore has the status of a temporary sojourner only, despite the fact that 50 years have passed since the Stallard Commission reported, despite the fact that we now have second and, indeed, third generation urban-born Africans who have never set eyes on a homeland, despite the fact that South Africa has undergone an industrial revolution and despite the fact that Africans now supply not only unskilled, but semi-skilled and skilled labour as well. This means that you have to have stability in your labour force and you cannot entirely rely on the unskilled labour force. Sir, it would take me far longer than half-an-hour to catalogue all the laws which have been put on the Statute Book and which have entrenched this system. There have been laws which have amended the Urban Areas Act and the Bantu Labour Act, that have promoted the migratory labour system, that have tightened influx control and immensely strengthened efflux enforcement. They have made it unbelievably difficult for a man to live with his wife and family in a White urban area. Section 10 (1) of the Urban Areas Act, which is the famous “Magna Charta” for Africans, in fact prevents the vast bulk of the Africans from qualifying to live with their families, more particularly after the far-reaching amendments which were introduced in 1964 when, to the existing words “where the wife must be ‘ordinarily’ resident with her husband”, were added the words “after lawful entry”. The woman thereafter had to prove that she had been in the area lawfully and that she had entered before 1959. This was very difficult indeed to prove many years later.

Are you against influx control?

You know perfectly well that I am against influx control. I believe in the mobility of citizens within their own country. I believe nothing can be abolished overnight, but in principle I am dead against influx control and I am all for its abolition. I want to make that quite clear. As from 1964 no African not already in the urban area could qualify under section 10 (1) (b). In other words, it was frozen; only those people already in the urban area and those about to be born in the urban area, and those in the process of qualifying, could in fact qualify. No new African entrant to the urban area after 1964 could in fact qualify under the section which lays down that 10 years with one employer, or 15 years’ continuous residence in the urban area, qualifies a man to have his wife and family staying with him. At the same time, of course, in the same Act, all sorts of additional powers were given to the Bantu Commissioners to remove the rights of people who had already qualified. I may say that, in addition to this morass of laws, one has to remember all the laws that apply specifically to women already in the urban areas, whereby they may lose their rights. In other words, if they are widowed, deserted or divorced, they lose their right to be the tenant of a house. Thereafter they may be endorsed out, and with them their children, who, in turn, lose their right to be in the urban area. When they grow up and wish to take up employment, they can only return to the urban area as migrant workers. They have lost the rights they had as urban-born people.

Over and above all the laws and all the regulations, one still has to add a very important final factor, and that is of course the question of housing and accommodation. Every local authority throughout the country, I believe, is short of family housing for urban Africans. One can start with Johannesburg, which has an estimated shortfall of 13 500 houses, plus an additional 2 000 every single year, as qualified couples marry in the area. One can apply this figure, pro rata, to the smallest urban area. One has to remember that it is up to the Government to ratify housing estimates and loans from the National Housing Commission. What has been the Government’s attitude over all these years? I say that it has deliberately discouraged the urban authorities from building family houses. The hon. the Deputy Minister has told us that he himself has never vetoed any request for African housing, for instance, from the Johannesburg City Council. I am quite prepared to accept that. In fact, he said that he had recently given his approval for 3 000 houses. That leaves them with a shortfall of 10 500 houses, plus the 2 000 which, as I have said, have to be added every year. But what about the Deputy Minister’s predecessor, who in fact discouraged the urban authorities from building houses and from putting up what he called luxuries, or any amenities which would encourage the Africans in the urban areas to believe that they were there on a permanent basis?

Who was responsible for the tremendous number of houses built in Johannesburg and all over the country …

The Government did very well, Sir, but I am afraid that over the last 10 years or so the policy has been reversed. Where the Government did a very excellent job indeed in slum clearance—and I give them all credit for that —it is now promoting the very same slum conditions which in fact it had so much trouble in clearing up after World War II. Sir, can the hon. the Deputy Minister deny that the prohibition of sub-economic housing schemes for urban Africans, which has come about since 1958, has contributed to the shortage of housing for family accommodation? Surely he will not deny this.

Sub-economic housing was a complete failure.

Well, it might have failed, but we continue it for the Whites; we continue it for Coloured people, and we continue it for Indians. Why is it a failure for Africans? Only because the Government is not prepared to advance the money; that is the only reason. Sir, I am sure the hon. the Deputy Minister must realize that accommodation is a very big factor here. Of course, he himself once said—and I wonder if he will remember these words—

Very good words, Sir, but unfortunately the hon. the Deputy Minister, as he grew older, did not grow wiser; in fact, quite the contrary. He said this many years ago when he was writing his doctorate at Oxford. Can the hon. the Deputy Minister deny that the present housing policy of the Government, the policy of encouraging the building of houses in the homelands for the families of workers and hostel accommodation in the towns for the workers— a sort of country house on the one side and a bed in the town on the other side— has also contributed enormously to an increase in migratory labour? Sir, this policy was spelled out in 1969 in a policy directive issued by the Bantu Administration Department to local authorities, and two propositions were put to them—

1. (1) Where a town is situated in the vicinity of a homeland, the Africans employed in such a town should be accommodated on a family basis in a Bantu township inside the homeland concerned.

I want to say at once that I have nothing against this proposition at all, providing that the commuting distance is reasonable and that the worker is not expected to spend too much time and money travelling between his home, which he can then own in the homeland, and his work. There are many examples, in fact, where this proposition is working, such as Umlazi in Durban, Mdantsane in East London, and even Ga Rankuwa in Pretoria. It is working, but as far as I am concerned these people are not migratory workers. By an accident of history—a lucky accident—they happened to be in a homeland abutting on an existing industrial area, and therefore it is feasible to put those people and their homes in the homeland and allow them to commute.

Not at Mdantsane.

Well, the hon. the Deputy Minister added that afterwards and I understand that he is going to add Kwa Mashu in Natal as well. I wish he would add Soweto. I would be delighted if the hon. the Minister would add Soweto to the existing homelands and solve all our problems. Why not? It is the largest single urban area for Africans in the whole of South Africa.

Johannesburg could then become a border area.

The whole of the Witwatersrand could become a border area. With the new Board system of magisterial areas, the whole of the Witwatersrand could become a border area. I have suggested this before, Sir. It was first greeted with laughter; then it was greeted with horror, and now it is greeted with scorn, as far as I can read the expression on the hon. the Deputy Minister’s face. It would be a very good thing, Sir. There may be other areas as well. I do not know all of them, but in fact those are the main ones that I am talking about. The only trouble about this reasonable commuting distance, Sir, is that the hon. the Minister’s definition of “reasonable”, and mine, do not happen to coincide, because he once said that he thinks 70 miles each way per day is a reasonable commuting distance. Well, I do not think it is a reasonable commuting distance. He also said that he thought about 300 to 400 miles each way was a reasonable commuting distance for a sort of week-end visit. Well, Sir, I do not agree with that. It is far too expensive. I think the fares would be enormously expensive for these workers, even if transport was subsidized.

The second proposition was this—

That means more than 70 miles—

They would then be able to visit their families periodically, and the local authorities were asked to devote their resources to the provision of family housing and facilities for Africans in conveniently situated homeland townships. Sir, many of the urban authorities have quite happily concurred in this plan, as a recent survey, which was conducted by Miss Muriel Horrell, of that dangerous organization, the Institute of Race Relations, shows very clearly. She did a survey of 100 local authorities, and many of the local authorities are eagerly concurring. Some of them like Nelspruit, let me say at once, are making special arrangements to see that the workers are properly accommodated and the employers have already agreed to assist with the cost of transport. Others, of course, could not care less. They have just uprooted their urban African population and they have shifted them anything from 70 to 200 miles away to the nearest homeland—conveniently situated, socalled.

Now I would like to know—and I am putting a question on the Order Paper, unless the Minister would like to answer me today—exactly how much of the Trust revenue has been spent on these schemes for houses and for transport subsidization. I want to know how much of the 80 per cent of profits made by local authorities on the sale of hard liquor, plus the profits which have been handed over by the local authorities from surpluses and from beer have been spent on all these tremendous schemes. I find the second proposition absolutely unacceptable, and as ill-luck would have it the two greatest industrial complexes in South Africa, the Cape Peninsula and the Witwatersrand do not happen to be situated near any homeland really. In so far as the Witwatersrand is concerned, there is an area to the north of Pretoria, but that has been reserved for the Tswana, and there may be some areas to the south where the Sotho’s can go, but the two other major ethnic groups, the Zulus and the Xhosas, have to go 200 or 300 or 400 miles away to the nearest homeland. This is a very unfortunate thing in view of the new housing proposition which the hon. the Minister has proposed. The same applies to Cape Town. The nearest homeland I can find is in the Ciskei, which is about 600 miles away. Already there is an enormous amount of hostel accommodation in Cape Town. Something like 30 000 men, so-called “single men”—most of them are married I might add—are living in hostels in the Cape Peninsula area and in Johannesburg there are 21 500 men and women in hostels and another 22 500 are on a waiting list, excluding the Resettlement Board. Now, rising up in Alexandra Township, which is controlled by the Peri-urban Areas Board in an area to the north-west of Johannesburg, are two vast monuments to what I can only call the Orwellian future envisaged by the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration. There are two hostels for single men and women which will shortly be ready for occupation. They are the first of 24 blocks and they have to be seen to be believed. Now I have no doubt that the architects have done the best they can with the money at their disposal, R1 million for each hostel. [Interjections.] I have no doubt that the unfortunate officials who are going to administer this will also do the best they can. But I want to say quite clearly that I think this is a grotesque scheme. The original intention was that Alexandra would accommodate 30 000 so-called single men and women in twelve blocks. This was the euphoric description in Bantu in May, 1966: “12 modern blocks of flats, 10 for men and two for women.” “Darkness,” said Bantu, “has made way for the dawn of a new day”. Well, when dawn breaks and the plan is complete, there will in fact be 24 blocks with 60 000 inhabitants from Sandton, Randburg, Kew, from north of the Houghton Ridge right to the Jukskei River, living in these single quarters, people who are mostly married, and for many of whom accommodation is already provided by their employers. I may add that no ethnic grouping is contemplated for these 60 000 persons. There is one hostel which will accommodate 2 800 women and one hostel will accommodate 2 600 men.

They are five-storeyed barrack-like buildings with wings running off, with endless doors to endless rooms, mostly four-bedded for the women and mostly four-bedded, six-bedded and eight-bedded for the men.

How far are they apart?

They are at least one mile apart, but one can walk a mile quite easily. The rent for a bed in a four-bedded room is R5,70 per month and for a man in a six-bedded room, a bed costs R5,70 and R5,40 in an eight-bedded room. I think the Peri-urban Areas Board ought to be examined by the Department of Community Development for all the profits it is going to make. It is going to get R32,20 per room in the case of a six-bedded room and R43,20 per room for an eight-bedded room, and I think that is a disgraceful rent to be charging these people. I do not have the time to go into the details about the communal showers, the toilets—one for twenty—and all that. There will be one gas ring, free gas and free hot water. Let me say at once that that is better than at Diepkloof. Of course, there is no heating provided, none at all, throughout the entire structure. There is a liquor licence which is going to be run by the Peri-urban Areas Board and there is a sort of common-room for entertaining outside of the dormitory block.

There are a couple of real home-from-home comforts. The one in the men’s hostel, anyway, is the built-in charge office and cell—that is real home-from-home comfort—and the other home-from-home comfort which I thought was really a very far-sighted amenity is the electronically controlled steel door that can be slid down to seal off any one section of the building in case of riot or trouble. That was pretty far-sighted, I must say.

Or fire.

Or fire? No, I do not really think it was meant for fire.

Do you want to keep them inside in the fire? [Interjections.]

This was installed on the instruction of a former Commissioner of Police of the Witwatersrand, so it really has nothing to do with fire, as far as I am concerned. And as somebody here said, you do not lock people inside when there is a fire.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. member a question?

I am sorry, but I have no time for answering questions. I think it really was far-sighted, because no one can anticipate anything but trouble in a set-up like this. I remember a debate eight years ago when the question of locations in the sky was under discussion and the hon. the Minister then—not this Deputy Minister—chastised me because I did not want Africans to enjoy recreational facilities among their own people. One would have thought that this was not going to be a hostel system, but that it was going to provide homes, family homes for Africans accommodated on the premises of their employers. Instead we have a cheerless barracks as a miserable substitute, I believe, for the privacy at least which was supplied in the backyard quarters of other peoples’ homes. Imagine a township with not a child in sight, except the illegitimate infants, of course, who will quickly have to be sent away. I must say there is a clinic at the women’s block where the Pill will be provided, and believe me, the women will need it. One can just imagine the drunkenness, the prostitution, the homosexuality that is going to be carried on under these conditions which are thoroughly abnormal. Surely, the hon. the Deputy Minister realizes that to keep 60 000 single men and single women in these quarters cannot but lead to the worst possible social conditions. The example of Langa where there are small hostels, not these enormous ones with 2 800 people in them, should have given him, I should think, sufficient warning. Can he not imagine the quarrelling that is going to go on about the use of the lavatories, of the bathrooms, of the gas rings, of the laundry tubs, whether the one light which is in the dormitory should be on or off, the noise— the whole thing is quite impossible.

What about the quarrelling in Alexandra Township?

I know that Alexandra Township was a pretty swarming, filthy slum, but it could have been cleared up and houses built in situ instead of putting up these awful hostels. They are to be the permanent abode of these people; they are not just for people in transit from one form of accommodation to another. Most of these people are not going to be able to acquire houses for the whole of their working lives and that, of course, is the worst feature of this. I believe special arrangements should be made in these huge metropolitan areas like Johannesburg and Cape Town, where there are no adjacent homelands. Something must be done to offset the insecurity from which the present population is suffering and something must be done to provide for the future generations that are going to qualify for houses. As for those who come in as contract workers, I think it is inconceivable that anybody can contemplate a life of eternal mobility for these people and no real place to enjoy family life, except for one month a year. I believe finally that a basic reappraisal of policy is necessary in the light of the ineluctable fact that Africans are in the urban areas and they are here to stay, that the concept of temporary sojourners must be abandoned and that proper housing, proper planned home-ownership housing and schools, hospitals and all the necessary amenities of urban life must be planned for these people. I believe there should be a reversal too of the measures which are designed to force the Africans out of the urban areas by ever-tightening influx control and the enforcement of efflux.

The hon. the Deputy Minister did tell us that he was going to allow newly-married young Africans to bring in their brides from the rural areas, but I could get no clarity from him as to exactly what class of Africans were going to qualify for this and I cannot understand why they, and not the married men who have been living here for years and who have not been allowed to enjoy living a family life, should have been chosen over and above the ones who have been here for so many years, and why this applies only to teachers and not to other professional men. I should like some explanation.

Sir, I believe that the whole policy has to be reshaped because it is being tackled at the wrong end. The fullest possible development of the homelands, of which I am in favour, and the fullest possible development of border industries—I am in favour of that too as long as it is on an economic basis—will still leave the Bantustans with far more economically active people than they can possibly provide jobs for. The problem is the problem of rural unemployment and poverty. The solution is to move people off the land, as was proposed 30 years ago by the Van Eck Commission, not put them back. I must tell the United Parry that no amount of exemptions from pass laws for “deserving” Africans, whatever that may mean, no humane administration of influx control, will solve the problem, either for the present generation of migrant workers or for succeeding generations in the Bantustans. No sympathetic handling at the aid-centres is going to help either. We have to change the law relating to mobility, otherwise we are still going to have the same position of thousands of men flooding illegally into the towns, with no employment provided. We have to provide the jobs and the housing as part of the overall plan. We have a poor Black problem to be solved. Just as we solved the Poor White problem by industrialization and urbanization, so, I believe, will the Poor Black problem be solved. It is the only way.

I want to say in conclusion that the migrant labour system is immensely wasteful in economic and social terms. It is immensely wasteful to provide two sets of accommodation; it is immensely wasteful for labour to travel these long distances. It is detrimental to productivity for inefficiency and high labour turnover go together. I believe that the political and social costs, which have never ever been calculated, must be staggering. When one considers what the break-up of family life has done to thousands of Africans, I believe, as an expert once said—

Does the Deputy Minister recall those words? He ought to—they are his own!

Mr. Speaker, the motion introduced by the hon. member for Houghton is aimed at damning, condemning and disparaging the migrant labour system because, according to her, it is apparently the only reason for certain depressed conditions, as she sees them, prevailing among the Bantu. I do not wish to speak about those conditions to which she referred; in a moment I shall refer to a few points.

I want to confine myself to the phenomenon of migrant labour as such; for that is what I think the whole struggle is actually concerned with. As the hon. member rightly pointed out, this phenomenon is by no means a strange one. It is found all over the world. It is found in the African countries, and has been known in our country for a very long time. But what is basic to this system, is the fact that it revolves around one particular factor, i.e. labour needs in accordance with the economic principle of demand and supply. Somewhere there is a need for labour, as is the case here in the Republic in particular, and in other countries there is an excessive supply of labour. Very well, says the hon. member, this is a disproportionate distribution of the economy. But it is a world phenomenon. If one looks at the various terms one finds throughout the world in regard to migrant labour, it points at one principle, namely that people are moving from one place to another for the sake of their labour, and for no other reason. They leave their own homes and countries and eventually return to them after having sold their labour somewhere. After all, this is an economic principle, i.e. that of demand and supply. But what is so lamentable to us in the Republic, is that this phenomenon, which is a world phenomenon, is being presented here as if it is an evil that only exists in South Africa. Stigmas are attached to this system, and I just want to mention two examples of such stigmas. The first is the tendency, found among the opponents of migrant labour both here and outside this House, to think that the Bantu are here for the sole purpose of working for the Whites. From the nature of the case they do work for the Whites, because the Whites are the employers in this country. But, surely, that is not all. The Bantu are here to work for themselves as well. They offer their labour and sell it so as to strengthen their own economy by those means. Now, is anything the matter with that? After all, they are remunerated by the Whites for the labour they supply, and to a very large extent that money goes back to their homeland or to their place of origin. Why then this stigma that was once again emphasized here over and again by the hon. member the other day? In a moment I shall deal with the church, but first I want to mention the second stigma. The impression is being created that if migrant labour were abolished, we would immediately solve all our problems.

Now I come to the hon. member for Houghton. At first I did not think I was going to speak about this, because I did not think she would put forward this argument again. In 1967 she quoted the Dutch Reformed Church in this House. The hon. the Minister and I pointed out that it was incorrect. Giving chapter and verse, we proved to her that those words of “cancer” and others which she had mentioned at the time, did not occur in the synodal resolutions. If they occur in a preliminary committee report, then they stand recorded, but they have not become a resolution of this church. What right does the hon. member have to make again this morning what I call an inaccurate quotation?

Does the church approve then?

The standpoint of the church is very clear. These documents are so lengthy that I cannot read them in full in the few minutes at my disposal, and I wish I could table them. However, the attitude adopted by the church is stated very clearly in them. They contain the following statement (translation)—

I have here a number of books, including one by Henry Junod, from which I thought I would quote. The hon. member for Houghton has probably read, this book, for she knows it well. In it one is told about all the misery prevailing among the Bantu in their tribal areas and affecting the family life of those Bantu. I also have here the resolutions passed by the church, and their standpoint is throughout that, just as is being admitted by this side of the House, migrant labour is not the best thing in the world and that it presents problems which we must take into account. Later on other hon. members on this side of the House will point out the numerous measures that have been taken to eliminate evils resulting from this system. However to blame migrant labour, and migrant labour alone, for such evils, and then to attribute to the D.R. Church words which that body never used, I describe as a downright lie which is being spread somewhere, even if it is supposedly the Christian Minister which published it and from which the hon. member supposedly quoted.

However, why is this matter wider in scope for us? The Government adopts the attitude that the Bantu is a human being. The Bantu is a human being…

That’s a discovery!

No, wait a minute. My difficulty is that hon. members opposite are trying to create the impression that he is merely a commodity, and that is not true. It has been said here repeatedly, but I should like to quote the Minister who said it, that “the Bantu should not merely be seen as a potential worker, but as a human being belonging to a people of his own, with his own national and political aspirations”. That is where we clash with that side of the house on the whole principle of migrant labour. The other day the hon. member for Pinelands poked fun here in this House by saying to the Chair: “Sir, the Government is undoubtedly still placing its hopes on the national ties of the Bantu.” That is true; we are placing our hopes on those ties, and they are scoffing at them. But what did they go on to do? I should have liked to have read out the quotations I have here with me, but I do not have the time. The other day the hon. member for Johannesburg North pleaded for the relaxation, not the abolition, of influx control, that control measure which was introduced by this side of the House in order to handle those people in the process, to be honest and honourable so that, whilst there is efflux control on the one side, as there should be, there would be influx control on this side. A moment ago that hon. member said by way of interjection that she rejected this. But what does one of the senior members of her party say? He says influx control is indefensible in theory, but, so he says, this should, however, be seen against the correct background. What did the hon. member for Houghton herself say in 1967? When she was confronted with this very same question, namely whether she wanted it to be abolished altogether and to have no migrant labour at all, she said she realized that 52 per cent of the labour force of the mines could not be brought here on a family basis. The hon. member says of migrant labour that it is a rotten system, but that in respect of the mines we should permit it to a large extent. After all, that is what it amounts to. This person who said that migrant labour was indefensible in theory, but that we could apply it if we only saw it in the correct perspective, is Mr. W. J. P. Carr, a former general manager of Non-White Affairs. I do not know whether he has crossed over to the party of the hon. member for Houghton. The United Party will be able to say. He said that if influx control to certain areas had been uncontrolled, he did not think the ordinary operation of economic laws would iron out difficulties. That was said by one of the leaders of that hon. member’s party. But when it suits the hon. member, she tries to create the impression with the outside world that we have a “cancer” here, that a terrible thing is happening here— words that were not used by the church— and that this Government is propagating it, notwithstanding all the measures taken by it to counteract it. Then one of her supporters outside says, however, that we simply have to do it because we shall not be able to control it through economic laws—he does not say South African legislation. However, there is a connection between this matter and the real political motive which they have in regard to this whole matter. The party of the hon. member for Houghton says that eventually it will only grant the vote to 17 per cent of the Black people in this country. The United Party says that it will grant them eight representatives, but it does not say whether these will be eight representatives of the homelands or whether they will be eight representatives of those settled in this country. That is why I believe that this side of the House has come forward with a solution to these problems, because we see these people as human beings and not as commodities who, as those hon. members want, should only be used for the sake of their labour.

Business suspended at 12.45 p.m. and resumed at 2.20 p.m.

Mr. Speaker, it is surprising that anyone today can advocate migratory labour as a definite policy. It can be said to be excusable and permissible in certain circumstances and on a temporary basis. However, no party or thinking and sane person can propagate it as a permanent policy in preference to permanent labour. The United Party’s policy is quite clear, viz. to establish a settled, permanent, well-trained labour force enjoying family life with home ownership and a stake in the country in which the labourer finds his living and to which he should show his loyalties. We do admit that in certain circumstances there is a need for migrant labour; for instance to do seasonal work on farms and in certain industries. At times there is a special call for additional temporary workers and that is where migrant labour plays its part. The migrant labourer usually specializes as, for instance, in the shearing of sheep, the picking of fruit or working in some particular industry at certain times of the year.

We also have foreign mine-workers who are forced to leave their country and come to this country to work …

Forced?

He is not forced by us, but by his economic circumstances. You are not suggesting that we should force them to come and work on our mines! Economic reasons compel him to come and work in this country. Also, there are mine-workers of our own, and other workers, who do not wish to break their contact with the Reserves. They have their kraal sites which they wish to retain, but they prefer to work elsewhere for, say, 9 months of the year in order to make a little money, after which they return to their homes and families. They then remain at home for a year or perhaps longer depending on the economic conditions there and on whether they had a successful crop or not. Some of them like working on the mines even as a sailor likes going to sea. If they do want to be miners, they are of necessity, compelled to be migrant workers because there is no provision for them to live with their families on the mines. The reason for this is not the fact that the mine owners themselves are not prepared to supply homes, but because this Government has in fact stopped them from doing so as it has stopped Mr. Oppenheimer from supplying homes for them at Welkom. Then, too, there are young men who leave the Reserves to go to the mines to earn their spurs. Their working on the mines is regarded as part of their initiation into manhood. They return to the Reserves with concertinas, gaily coloured trunks thrown over their shoulders and with gaily patched trousers and shirts which would have been the envy of Joseph. These young men come back arrayed in this way—it is part of their initiation into manhood.

We therefore recognize that there is a place for the migrant worker in our economy and in our society. But except for the points I have mentioned, we condemn it as a wasteful use of manpower in our economy and an evil force in our society. Nobody in his proper senses can approve of this system. Even the hon. member for Westdene, who spoke before me, said that it is not ideal. He nevertheless defended it and I will get to him just now. All the churches condemn this system for its social evils and for its perverse influence on human relations and on society. In effect, this system assembles young men —though not only young men—and in some cases women together in homes where they are separated from the opposite sex. They are left there to live unnatural lives; not lives of celibacy, but lives of sexual perversions since it denies them normal family life. Some years ago I saw a report from the manager of Bantu Affairs addressed to the Cape Town municipality. He reported on the conditions at Langa and said that the municipality had to decide whether it wanted there to be prostitution or homosexuality. If the municipality stopped prostitutes from visiting the location, this would bring about homosexuality. What a choice for a council to have to make! The council has no other choice because of the Government’s declared policy of relying on migrant labour to supply labour needs here.

A further evil of this system is that it encourages loose associations between the migrant labourers and loose Bantu women where these are present or, in the Cape regrettably with loose Coloured women. In the Cape we find we are breeding a new race group, viz. a Black Coloured who is the offspring of an African male and a Coloured woman. This child is a bastard in every sense of the word. He grows up without a father and usually without a home life. He becomes an undisciplined child with no family attachments or a father. The facts I have stated are not news. Everything I have said is, in fact, well known As has been pointed out so often, the Government despite the fact that it is aware of what is happening, perpetuates this system by its policy of trying to eliminate all types of permanent employment and by instituting its labour contract system. The Government has obstinately and resolutely persevered with a policy it knows to have evil consequences. The evils which I have mentioned, have not been hidden. As I have said, they are well known. The churches and other bodies dedicated to the care of those suffering in adversity, have not hesitated to tell us of the evil consequences of this system. Despite this knowledge, the Government is perpetuating this system. The Government has denied houses in the urban areas and denied family life, not by chance or through avarice, but purposefully in furtherance of its futile ideology which daily becomes more apparently a farce. In the face of manifest criticism and condemnation, the Government has lately changed its policy slightly although the Deputy Minister says it is a revolutionary change. The Deputy Minister, namely, stated that he would allow semi-permanent males to have their wives living with them in the urban areas. This noble gesture of his can of course be nullified by deliberately neglecting to give them houses in which they can live. Before women were compelled to carry passes, they used to enter the urban areas—I think that, in fact, they were allowed to do so. But then the law was altered to ensure that they would not be allowed in the urban area and restrictive laws now apply to women. It is hard to believe that in this age we deliberately legislate to keep a man away from his wife and family and that we deliberately in our economic planning rely on the use of migrant labour. As I have said before, this is wasteful. I am not going to discuss why it is so wasteful, except to remind members of two factors: This labour supply can never become properly trained; and the employer must build up a surplus of labour to have labour on hand in case of absenteeism.

What is the effect of this policy on the Reserves? It has brought about a breakdown of family life and tribal discipline. The whole tribal structure is based on the kraal head. The discipline of the tribe and its tribal life can be compared to a triangle, where the head of the kraal is at the bottom whence it works up to the apex of the chief. Everything is based on the head of the kraal at the base of the triangle. From him it goes up to the sibonda to the headman, to the sub-chiefs, to the chiefs and finally to the paramount chief. This discipline is breaking down completely because of the absence from home of the head of the kraal. This system is also bringing about a looseness in living standards in the Reserves. With the men away for such long periods, the wives are not faithful to them and a breakdown of family life occurs there too. The evils of this labour system have been stressed by the Bantu leaders themselves. The hon. member for Houghton referred to a speech made recently by Chief Kaiser Matanzima. This matter is discussed yearly in the Transkei Legislative Assembly. I want to refer to a speech made by their Leader of the Opposition as far back as 1967. He said:

That means the Government of the Transkei—

We know too that it has become more frequent that these men do not return at all. They become what is known as tshipa and they stay away for good. The Chief Minister of the Transkei, Chief Kaiser Matanzima, spoke after Mr. Guzana and he said:

He went on to say:

Therefore, in the Reserves themselves this system is deprecated. It is not that there has not been investigation into the system of labour. The hon. member for Houghton referred to the Stallard Commission of 1922 which in fact found that the Bantu in the urban areas were only there for the services of the White man and when they had done their duty they were to return to the Reserves. The two commissions which were appointed afterwards, the Holloway Commission which was appointed by Gen. Hertzog, found definitely that this was unsound, and the Fagan Commission found the same. Unfortunately I do not have time to go into all that. The hon. member for Westdene has not defended the system. He pointed out that the system had its evils, but he said: “Dit draai om een bepaalde faktor en dit is die behoefte aan arbeid”. He said that throughout the world people go out to look for work and where the demand exists the people will go. He said that the same thing happens here. Furthermore he said: “Die Bantoe is hier om vir homself te werk en nie om te werk vir die witman nie. Hy is hier om vir homself te werk om sy ekonomie te versterk.” I would like to point out to the hon. member for Westdene that these “trekarbeiders” who go out from the Transkei go out because they have to live and because they have to feed themselves. They have to feed their families and that is why they are compelled to go out to work.

And who denies that?

Then, he attacked the hon. member for Houghton for misleading the House as to what the Dutch Reformed Synod had found in this respect. In fact, I think he said that it is “ ’n in fame leuen” that they had ever referred to it as a “kanker”. I would like to remind that hon. member that the Dutch Reformed Church of the Cape appointed a commission to go into this question. I want to read what Die Burger had to say at the time. I quote Die Burger of the 26th of October, 1965:

What was the report of the commission? What did they recommend? They said—

Then they went on to say that it was not the task of the church to find a solution, but—

That was not the resolution of the Synod.

Those were the recommendations made by the commission and the Cape Synod accepted them. Die Burger said so.

Unfortunately my time has run out and I can do no better than to end by referring again to what Die Burger has said:

Because of the evils attached to it. I say it is a tragedy that this Government, because of its crazy ideology, is compelled to carry out a labour policy which every right thinking person condemns as evil and it cannot be defended.

Mr. Speaker, both the hon. member for Transkei and the hon. member for Houghton tried to suggest that the standpoint which has just been read out by the hon. member for Transkei and was also read out before by the hon. member for Houghton, was the standpoint of the D.R. Church. The fact of the matter is actually that what he read out, stands recorded in a report of a commission of the Cape Synod. That report was not accepted by the Cape Synod. It was sent through by the Cape Synod to the General Synod, and the resolution passed by the General Synod, and not the findings of a commission of inquiry, is the standpoint of the church. The resolution passed by the General Synod was quite different from the resolution read out by the hon. members.

What was it?

The hon. member for Transkei and the hon. member for Houghton do not differ at all as far as their standpoint in respect of migrant labour is concerned. Both the hon. member for Houghton and that hon. member said that they had no objections to labourers from beyond South Africa’s borders coming here on that basis. Nor did they have any objections to young labourers leaving the Bantu homeland to look for work here. Both the hon. member for Houghton and the hon. member for Transkei said that the 72 per cent of the mine labourers coming to the mines from other places …

It was always a bad system.

Very well, then. The hon. member stated her standpoint, but the hon. member for Transkei said that there was a place for migrant labourers in the South Africa economy, and he mentioned the categories. Now I want to put a question to these hon. members. If one of these homelands in South Africa were to become independent, as may happen in terms of the Government’s policy, would their objections which they now have to migrant labour, then fall away as they did in the case of the foreign Bantu coming from the rest of Africa? I now want to ask these hon. members directly whether their objections would fall away in that case, because they have no objections to the foreign labourers coming here at the moment from Malawi or from Rhodesia. If such a labourers comes from an independent state, from the Transkei or from Tswanaland, surely it is logical that their objections should also fall away in that case. My conclusion is, therefore, that to these hon. members the point at issue is not the moral aspect of this matter, but the political aspect of this matter, for these hon. members have an alternative to this system. They say migrant labour should be abolished and something else should be put in its place. The hon. member for Houghton said that she was absolutely opposed to influx control; in other words, it should be possible for these people to pour into the White areas freely. We know that the United Party’s standpoint is that influx control should be relaxed. However, we also know how relaxed it was in their time. Practically speaking there was nothing. In other words, what these hon. members are advocating is that the labourer with his family should come here, and that this should be done in an uncontrolled manner. That is their alternative to this system. Now I want to tell the hon. members that that alternative of theirs has no scientific foundation on which it is based. That alternative is a much weaker alternative than is the policy of the National Party to house the labourer in his homeland on a family basis on the grandest scale possible. I should like to quote a number of scientists from South Africa as well as the United States to illustrate this point to the hon. member. Prof. Steyn says (translation)—

Then I want to read out to you, Sir, what Eloff had to say in a M.A. paper. He said (translation)—

This is what another scientist, i.e. Retief, has to say (translation)—

In other words, the family life of the Bantu is affected most—

It may justly be stated that as a result of the dissociation of the family from its social context and the individuation of the human being within his family context, the urban Bantu family is not nearly the unit of authority and educational institution which the family in tribal context is.

Sir, this is what scientists in South Africa are saying, namely that the housing of Bantu families in the cities has a disintegrating effect on the family context, and therefore it is obvious that the steps taken by the National Party to house as many Bantu as possible on a family basis in the homelands, constitute the very soundest policy that can be pursued in South Africa. The Government has made a great deal of progress and has achieved great success in that respect, but it did so in the face of opposition by hon. members on that side of the House. Both parties on that side claimed this afternoon that the Government had done nothing. But, Sir, before pointing out what the Government has done, I want to quote to you what a number of American scientists are saying in respect of the contact situation between Whites and non-Whites, and what the effect is when different cultures come into contact with each other. I should like to read to you what was said in this regard by several American researchers, including Herskovits and his co-workers, Cavan and Barnes and Teeters, as quoted by Retief in his publication. They say that conflict results when two cultures come into contact with each other, and from the research results published by them, it appears that, in America, the smaller the Negro population is in number, the greater is the conflict and the greater is the number of social evils and crimes resulting from it; but that the more solid the Negro population is and the stronger it becomes, as a separate entity, the less contact there is and the smaller the number is of social evils and crimes resulting from it. Therefore, also from the point of view of culture, it is sound to pursue the policy which the National Party is implementing in housing the largest possible number of people on a family basis in the homelands and also in causing the minimum of conflict on the cultural level. Sir, the Government’s policy of border industries is in fact geared for making employment available there in order that the Bantu may live with his family and be at his place of employment in the daytime. But hon. members opposite have up to now done absolutely nothing to try to bring about that scientifically sound situation where one may create the socially most favourable environment for the Bantu family and then provide them with employment where they are living.

Sir, the Government has made a great deal of progress as regards industries situated in the homelands. Influx control is aimed at bringing about a concentration of families in the homelands. As far as transport is concerned, tremendous progress has been made. In South Africa no fewer than 350 000 labourers are conveyed daily from the homelands to the White area to do their work there whilst being able to live with their families. Sir, these are tremendous steps, and today the hon. member for Houghton agreed with us that these were not things that could happen overnight; that these changes could not be effected overnight; that they required time, but where the hon. member is making a mistake, is in saying that the Government has done absolutely nothing. That is not the case, Sir. The Government has made fantastic strides in that at this stage already it is conveying 350 000 people a day from their homeland to their places of employment. But instead of helping us, hon. members of the Opposition did not even want to admit that those successes had been achieved.

Sir, the hon. member said that the Government was doing nothing in regard to housing for the Bantu in the White area. But what are the real facts? In the year 1968-’69 the Government made available R12 million for housing in the White areas, but of that amount only R9 million was taken up. That shows you, Sir, that we are reaching a saturation point and that the accent is shifting, that it is becoming homeland-orientated and that the workers are coming from the homelands. In the next year, in 1969-’70, the Government voted R9 million for housing in the White part of South Africa. That R9 million was not taken up; it was available, but only R6 million of that amount was taken up. In this time during which the National Party has been in power, as many as 66 towns have been laid out in the homelands and 295 000 houses have been built. That shows you why, after the National Party had cleared up all the slums, the same need that existed in the past, no longer exists today; it is because the people have been settled in the homelands. Sir, hon. members of the Opposition do not want to acknowledge the successes that have been achieved. History will also hold against them the fact that they refused their participation as regards this matter, and there is only one reason for that. We have seen that it is correct, scientifically and in all other respects, to house the people in the homelands. But hon. members of the Opposition have failed to appreciate this; they want us to create the conditions that obtained under the U.P. régime. They want us to allow masses of people to congregate here in the White area. Sir, there can only be one explanation for that, and that is that the two parties opposite have exactly the same objective, namely to make the urban Bantu the wedge by means of which they want to destroy the policy of multi-nationalism of the National Party, and by means of which they want to implement in South Africa the policy of integration of those two parties.

I do not want to deal with the points raised by the hon. member for Lichtenburg in any detail, except to say this: He tried to indicate that this side of the House stands for an uncontrolled inflow of Bantu to the urban areas. This, of course, is not so. And he ought to know that this is not so.

That was the case.

Secondly, he held out the border area scheme as a wonderful example of the economic insight of the Government. Sir, anybody who knows anything about economic issues will realize that the border area scheme is an economic absurdity. In the third instance he tried to indicate that the Government was making fantastic progress with the economic development of the Bantu homelands. I just want to ask him one question. Let that hon. gentleman or anybody else on the opposite side tell us how many new factories have been established in the Transkei during the last ten years. Every time we raise this question the hon. the Deputy Minister tells us how many thousands of miles of barbed wire fences they have erected in the Transkei.

This is an important motion and I am surprised that the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration is not here to respond to it and that he should leave this important matter to his over-enthusiastic side-kick, the Deputy Minister.

Order! The hon. member should not refer to a Deputy Minister in that way.

All right, Sir, his over-enthusiastic Deputy, then. I am surprised also, seeing that this motion deals with labour, that the hon. the Minister of Labour is not here. He is conspicuous by his absence, and this shows the callous disregard this Government has for important problems of this nature. They obviously have bigger problems right at the present time.

Hon. members opposite have tried to indicate that the migratory labour system is an old one. Of course it is. The Romans had it and the Greeks had it and even in China you had precisely this form of labour, but it was regarded as a form of slave labour, which is obviously not condoned by anybody on that side. In South Africa the position is different, because here it is deliberate policy by the Government. If the migratory system is so sound as they try to indicate to us, why do we not apply it to the Whites in this country? Why must it only be applied to the non-Whites? You see, Sir, they must see this in relation to the historical aspect. Ever since the beginning of the Cape, all Cape governments tried to perpetuate this system by trying to contain the White settlements and trying to keep the races apart; so in South Africa there has always been a racial foundation for it. But what they have not understood and what has obviously happened over the years too, is that this migratory system and this idea of keeping the races apart frustrates two things. It frustrates in the first instance the White man’s need for more labour and secondly the Black man’s need for work opportunities. We are concerned here, Sir, fundamentally with an economic imbalance because in South Africa we find that in the so-called White areas we have the land and the capital and the economic resources and an abundance of entrepreneurs, but what we have not got is labour, while in the so-called Black areas we have the labour but none of the other economic factors necessary for development. So that notwithstanding our natural desire for separation, there has over the years been this inflow of Black people into the urban areas and there is nothing that you can really do to stop it. It is like water flowing to the lowest-lying areas. You can build dams and retard it, but inevitably the flow will be towards the areas of economic activity.

What is furthermore important is that notwithstanding all the talk on the other side about stopping this, and the Deputy Minister saying that they will stop the flow of non-White labour and reverse it, this shows more enthusiasm than understanding of what is really at stake, because they can only influence it in a marginal sense. In a major sense this is happening all the time. It started off in farming, and after that it went to the mining industry and on to the manufacturing industry and at present it is also in commerce and the services sector. But what we must not overlook, is that it is in fact the Whites who gave impetus to this movement. When we could not get sufficient labour we even imported Chinese to work in the mines and we imported Indians to work in our cane fields, and when we could not get sufficient Black labour we imposed money taxes on the Bantu in order to force them to come into the White economy to earn cash wages to pay the taxes. This is the history against which we must see this particular development. Now I think we must relate it to the present situation and to what is happening in South Africa at present. We must look at the composition of our labour force.

To begin with there is the farming sector, which probably takes up about 30 per cent of the people who are economically active. Then we have the blue-collar group of workers, which constitutes about 25 per cent. The growing sector is of course the services and the commercial sector, which takes up more than 45 per cent of our total labour force. Whilst in farming and in mining a case could be made out for a migratory system, as we come to manufacturing and as we come to commerce and to the services sector there is an urgent need for a greater degree of permanence, and the migratory system just does not work.

May I put a question to you?

No, sit down. Sir, let me put it this way. In farming at the present time, we find that 90 per cent of the workers are non-White. Farming being essentially a menial kind of task, it is still possible to work with migratory labour, although even here we use modern tractors, which need people with a considerable degree of skill to drive them. This is the interesting thing, and I would ask this hon. gentleman a question, and he can make a speech later. Why do we never talk, as far as the farming industry is concerned, about economic integration? Because if you look at farming you find that on an average for every two White people you have on the farms you have 20 non-Whites. But this is not held out by them as a form of economic integration. They never howl about this; they never agitate about this, but this is still the clearest example of economic integration. But it is permissible on the farms, although apparently not anywhere else.

Much has been said here about the mining industry. I think one must look at the mining industry too. Whenever the mining industry is mentioned hon. members opposite tend to talk about Oppenheimer. That situation has of course changed too today, where we have General Mining as one of the biggest mining groups in the country, controlled not by Oppenheimer capital but by Afrikaner capital. So whenever we talk about mining, let us not overlook organizations such as the General Mining Group. There is no doubt about it: the migratory system has helped to sustain the mining industry because it is a unique situation for many reasons. Nowhere else in South Africa will you get workers who will work at those rates of pay and under those conditions of employment that obtain there. In fact, had it not been for relatively cheap migratory labour, much of our gold would have remained exactly where it was, 10 000 ft. under the ground. But it is also because in the mining industry there is not a high degree of mechanization and the work is not of a particularly sophisticated kind and hence it can be carried out by migratory workers. I think there is another point that hon. members overlook. Purely from the health point of view in the mining industry, the migratory system has advantages, because when you have poor ventilation and there are risks of silicosis and pneumoconiosis, considerable breaks from the work are in fact advantageous. What they do not tell us either is that in the mining industry you sell your product at a fixed price, and you cannot pass on increases in working costs to the consumer. So when we talk about the mining industry, this is the situation we face. Either we continue with the migratory system or we close the mines. Sir, it is an evil even in the mining industry, but this is the basic choice we must face. Do we want those mines to continue to work or do we not? If you stop the migratory system you will have to close the mines. It is true, of course that when mining groups have asked permission to house considerable percentages of their workers on a permanent basis, they were refused permission by the Government.

In the manufacturing industry the situation is even worse. Eighty per cent of the workers today are non-Whites. The situation is that these workers must have a degree of permanence, because more and more skills are involved in the work they have to do. And of course in the commercial and services sector it becomes even worse. Here, even though the Government is against it, I see from the latest statistics, in regard to the total number of people employed by the public authorities in this country, that almost two-thirds of them are non-White. When you come to these situations the migratory system does not work. It has all sorts of evils incorporated in it.

There are the social ones to which the hon. member here has referred. The men live under unnatural conditions which give rise to crime, drunkenness, homosexuality and all sorts of other social aberrations. The women must live for long periods alone; the fathers are away and their children are deprived of full parental control. Instead of accepting this necessary evil, the Government, in order to manifest its “kragdadigheid”, not only applies the spirit of the law but also the letter of the law. Hence we have all these cases of broken families; a couple who have lived together for 20 years is now being separated. One must now be sent to the reserves. This is happening every day. The newspaper reports that we see give us only just a tip of the iceberg. This is a vicious system; it is a wicked system and will recoil upon us with a vengeance. And Government members on that side of the House are trying to defend it

Its economic implications are vast. I do not know how many migratory workers there are in this country. The mining industry employs 517 000; registered factories in the country employ 613 000. This excludes your Iscors, your works and all sorts of other things. I believe that there are more than a million migratory workers in South Africa. The cost to our country is immense. Recent studies suggest that only the transportation cost to get them here and back is R50 per person. That equals R50 million per year. A recent study done in the mining industry suggests that migratory labour on a high-grade mine, allowing for training costs and un-productivity during training in the early stages, costs R1 million per year.

But there is something more important than this. The average economic life of a migratory worker is only ten years. For the Whites, in contrast, it is 30 years. We are thus losing 20 years’ of productive life. Multiply this by a million migratory workers in South Africa and it means that we are losing 20 million man years of productive output. Those are only the visible costs. What about the invisible costs? A migratory system is one that makes the worker an itinerant worker, it makes him a bird of passage and provides him with no incentive to acquire skills or to excel. He becomes a wanderer. There is no opportunity of advancement. Those things are all costing South Africa a massive amount. I am therefore surprised that hon. members on that side are trying to defend a system that is socially wicked and economically wasteful and which will ultimately, from a political point of view, prove to be disastrous.

Mr. Speaker, is it permissible to say that the hon. sidekick of Hillbrow …

He has withdrawn it.

Is the hon. member referring to the Minister?

I am asking whether it is permissible for me to say that the hon. side-kick of Hillbrow …

Order! I think the hon. member should rather not refer to that.

Is it permissible for the hon. backlash and backwash of Hillbrow … [Interjections.]

Order! I want to point out to hon. members that they should not be so personal.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Hillbrow has proved once again this afternoon that one cannot force in a pin between him and the hon. member for Houghton. He demonstrated this very positively, not only by his enthusiastic conduct, but also by his arguments. The hon. member touched on a few points to which one should reply. He said inter alia that it was a “deliberate policy” of this side of this House, namely the creation of this so-called migrant labour system. But does he not know that it is a legacy which we took over from those people? Do they not know that they are responsible for it? Do those hon. members not know that they neglected to implement their own Act of 1945? We place the blame for any consequences of this system on that side of this House. We maintain that we had to take certain steps to control it.

Furthermore, in outlining his history of this system, the hon. member went back as far as the Romans, and said that it was slave labour. In this regard he drew a very clear parellel with us. Therefore we reject it with the contempt it deserves. That hon. member, who is supposed to be an economist, should know that it is an acceptable and recognized system in Europe, where at this stage there are approximately 7 million people working on a contract-labour basis all over Europe. Furthermore, there is a whole series of legislation controlling this system. We cannot accept his statements.

I want to make a few statements with reference to what the hon. member for Houghton said. We do not have the time to argue with her. If the hon. member does not agree with my statements, she may say so. In the first place, we think that what the hon. member actually wanted to say, she did not say here today. The inference is, however, that she wants to grant the contract labourers permanency in the White area by allowing their families to come here. Is that correct?

[Inaudible.]

I accept that this is true. I accept that the hon. member does not draw a distinction for the concept of “family”. Therefore it can be any unlimited number. I accept therefore that she would be prepared to evacuate any number of people from the homelands. I have the problem now that the Progressive Party has accepted the de facto and de jure situation of our homelands. They have gone so far as to say that they would eventually incorporate those homelands as provinces in a federation. Is that correct?

Yes.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Houghton, supported by that side of the House, therefore accepts this system of migrant labour which will come, in their idiom, from the provinces of the federation of the Progressive Party. Its implication is that that hon. member is prepared to drain the manpower of that province, and that she is prepared to allow the families to come here. Therefore she is prepared to drain to this country the earnings of those people in the homelands who should help to build up the capital of those countries. That is the implication.

Let us look at its implication and impact on the economy of the homelands if it were to happen that that hon. member’s idea should be implemented so that permanency be granted to these people. It would mean that the earnings of the Bantu in this country which are sent to those homelands, would be cut off. In the first place, in regard to the territory of Lesotho, it means 5 per cent of the gross national product of that country. The hon. member finds no fault with that. In regard to the Transkei, approximately R1 280 000 was paid, over in 1970 in terms of an official arrangement by way of a contract with labour institutions. The total amount that went to the homelands in a certain year, was R7 800 000. But now we do not even know, Mr. Speaker, how much the Bantu themselves saved and took to the homelands. We have no figures at our disposal. According to the argument of the hon. member, this would be cut off summarily. The sinister tenor of her proposal is that the buying power of the Bantu would be channelled completely to White South Africa. According to an estimate, by 1975 the buying power of the Bantu will already be close on R1 500 million. That is the implication of that hon. member’s proposal.

Is the migrant labour system desirable?

The further effect will be that no line will be drawn. When the concept of “family” is carried through to its logical conclusion, an unlimited number of people will come to this country. We do not understand at all what the United Party means when it says that it will introduce influx control. It has no meaning to us. Hon. members on that side of this House have sorely failed this afternoon to provide clarity about that aspect of the policy. We must take into account that the hon. member for Houghton is supported by those members. They have had ample opportunity to disassociate themselves in regard to at least one or two points. They have not done so at all.

On the White economy it has the effect inter alia that by 1980 11 000 morgen will be required for housing alone in the Vereeniging-Pretoria-Johannesburg complex. Simply to provide housing for the increase of the people living there at present, without any further influx, 178 000 houses will be needed.

What are you going to do about that?

We are asking those hon. members whether they accept the implication that this figure may increase by a third, and whether they are prepared to go and tell this to their voters on the Rand.

What must we go and tell?

Order! The hon. member should pay more attention.

The spatial needs of the Bantu will increase by a third if the number of contract labourers are accepted as a permanent part at this stage.

Pardon me, may I ask the hon. member something? I cannot hear what needs?

Sir, we may resume this debate on another occasion. We should take into account now that in 1960 8 000 houses were occupied by economically unproductive Bantu in Soweto alone. In 1970 there were 800 000 nonworking Bantu in this area. Now they will ask us what the solution is. We have told them time and again what the ideal model is on which we should build.

In the first place, we have told them that we are decentralizing to border industry areas. We have told them we are developing the Bantu homelands. We have told them that we are creating transport facilities between the places of employment and the Bantu homeland. That side of this House, which is supposed to be pleading for an improvement in the standard of living for 50 per cent of the Bantu, has never risen in this House in order to plead for the other 50 per cent or more in the Bantu homelands. They do not have one industry on their slate which they can offer us and of which they can say, “Very well, we have tried to obviate this migrant labour situation by taking employment to the Bantu instead of taking the Bantu to the employment.” It is the policy of this side of this House that we take the employment to the Bantu. We maintain this is our primary solution and task. We take that employment either to the border area or to the Bantu homeland. But there is not one single industry to the credit of that side of the House which has been established for this reason. Instead of that they are prepared to criticize and break down our economy, in order that they may succeed in granting permanence to these migrant labourers in our country. In regard to the solutions of this side of the House to these issues, we should point out its advantages. An advantage of this would be that we would be able to channel a large part of the income of the Bantu labour in White areas to the homelands. That income can be utilized for building up the homelands. That side of the House also accepts the necessity of this. They also did so in their so-called “yellow booklet”. It is interesting to note that Dr. T. van Waasdijk of the University of the Witwatersrand found that 3,2 per cent of the income of the average South African family was spent on servants, while 1,5 per cent was the average in other countries. To me the implication of this finding is that since we are channelling these huge amounts to the homelands by means of the mines and other major employers, we should see whether it is not perhaps possible for other employees also to participate in a system according to which the amounts they earn in this manner may be channelled to the hon. the Deputy Minister.

In conclusion I want to refer the hon. member for Houghton to Prof. S. P. Cillie’s answer to these problems. According to the hon. member, he is a spiritual associate of hers. The Progressive Party has said this, and we do not know whether it is true. Prof. Cillie said the following—

[Interjections.] That is what this person said, and its implications are that there should be dynamic border area and homeland development.

Mr. Speaker, I think this is a most interesting discussion and I want to thank the hon. member for Houghton, because I think she has done us all a service by bringing this question pertinently to the attention of this House. I think it is necessary that we should, from time to time, as the Parliament of this country, pause to consider some of the problems of the economic situation and the historical situation in South Africa. I can think of other important matters which I can commend to members to consider and which I think are not considered enough. For example, I can think of the tendency under our present economic system of prolonging the infancy of the human male far beyond the normal stage, and expecting men in the most vigorous period of their lives, namely in their twenties, still to be students preparing themselves for life and unable to lead the normal life that one expects of an adult. I say this in passing.

This problem of migratory labour is certainly, as far as numbers are concerned, one of the major social problems that we have in South Africa. It is not easy to find out exactly how many migratory labourers we have in South Africa. My hon. friend for Hillbrow, who is an expert, has indicated that there are 516 000 employees on the mines in South Africa, of whom the vast majority are migratory labourers, although 72 per cent of them of course come from outside South Africa, which complicates the problem even more. It seems that the total number of migrants we have from outside South Africa is about 562 000. But to find the number of migrants from the homelands is difficult indeed. The last authoritative estimate I could lay my hands on was in the Tomlinson Report, where it was estimated on the basis of the 1951 census that there were 569 000 migrants from inside South Africa working in South Africa’s industries and business undertakings. Prof. Watts of the Institute of Social Research of the University of Natal projected this figure to 1970, and found that there should be about 1 million migrant labourers from the reserves working in South Africa.

That means that today we have a total of probably more than 1 600 000 men working in the economy of South Africa without the normal amenities of family life, consorting with their womenfolk, the privilege of home ownership and a normal social and psychological existence. I do not think that we can be indifferent to that. It is true that it is part of our historical heritage. It is part of the heritage that we have in South Africa which derives from 19th century liberalism, which, like the Government party, believed in apartheid in the Cape Province. They tried to separate Black and White for all time. They even created no-man’s lands between Kaffraria, as the Transkei was then known, and the Cape of Good Hope. The leader of the Cape of Good Hope, Cecil John Rhodes, instituted the poll tax and said in the Cape Parliament that he was doing it as a gentle stimulus for the Black people in Kaffraria to come out of their territory and to earn money and to accept the monetary system so that they could pay the poll tax. It is heritage, it is historical. But we cannot be satisfied merely to accept a thing to be right because it exists. We have from time to time to stop and examine the situation. We on this side of the House are convinced that, with minor exceptions, which have been dealt with by other speakers and which I will mention again, the migratory system is an evil, an unmitigated evil. The only exceptions are exceptions on which I look not from the point of view of the employer, but from the point of view of the Black people concerned.

I heard my friend the hon. member for Transkei emphasizing that in the reserves today there are still tens of thousands of Black people who do not want to become permanently settled in other areas outside the reserves. They want to retain their tribal affiliation because they derive certain pecuniary benefits from their tribal association like the right to occupy land and to produce on that land for their families. There is also a tradition: In the old days a Black tribal man was not accepted in manhood until he had borne arms for his tribe. That today is almost impossible. By a form of transition, a period on the gold mines, a period of work in the city of gold, is equivalent, in his acceptance as an adult male in the tribe, to what military activities were in the old days. I say that as long as there are Black people like that who, for reasons that are valid in their own lives, want to work as migratory labourers in the White man’s area, we should consider their position and make allowance for it. The fact that their wishes, their desires and their customs coincide with the interests of one of the greatest industries we have in South Africa, the mining industry, is a fortunate coincidence for South Africa that we should gladly accept and encourage.

But apart from that, I do not want to gild the lily after the speeches we have heard from the hon. members for Houghton, Transkei and Hillbrow. They have made it perfectly clear that no one can as a model human being accept the migratory system as a system and as the predominant system of labour in the community. I say that all the custodians of South African morality are agreed upon this. I am surprised that there are members opposite who vilify the Dutch Reformed Church, our church, by suggesting that it is in favour of this system or that it is not against the system. We know what the history is. The Dutch Reformed Church of the Cape Province appointed a commission to investigate it. The commission issued a report, from which the hon. member for Transkei quoted to great effect, in which the commission condemns the migratory system and motivates its condemnation in most striking terms. It condemned the moral evils, the wicked consequences of the system, the destruction of family life, the encouragement of immorality, prostitution, sodomy and all the horrible things that one can think of. A point that I want to bring home to my hon. friends opposite, is that it destroys the very national fibre of the tribal man. One cannot be a good, constructive member of one’s community if the smaller units of social life do not exist for one.

What is your alternative system?

I will give you my alternative. I have never tried to avoid that question. But what is the use of putting an alternative if one cannot persuade the temporary majority in this House that the system has to be replaced because it is evil? I say it is evil from their point of view.

They will not agree with me about family life; they do not seem to care very much. They will not agree with me about prostitution and other evils, because these have existed all these years. They still resist any impact which those considerations might have on their minds. I now want to try another consideration on them: You cannot be a good member of your tribe or of your nation unless you have the privileges of social life in the smaller units. The most important of these smaller units is family life. If one does not have a healthy family life one cannot be a healthy citizen. The National Party bases its entire policy on the concept of separate nations for South Africa. I do not agree with them, but from their point of view that is the basis of their philosophy. That is their moral justification for all the bad things they do to the peoples of South Africa.

May I ask the hon. member a question?

No, Blaar, I have just two minutes. Next time.

Next time never.

All right, I have not much time, but ask your question.

Has not this position existed all these years in the mining industry? Has the mining system not been built on migratory labour?

This is very unfair. One has a very limited amount of time in this debate. The hon. the Minister takes minutes of my time after I have dealt specifically with that question at the start of my speech. I have said that that is the position there, but we cannot say things are good because they are there. One must re-examine the position from time to time. I made all these points and I wish the hon. the Minister would open his ears.

He was not here.

I accept it if he was not here. I like that hon. Minister, but he must play the game.

I am playing the game. Come to the alternative.

All the custodians of our morals disagree with this system. The Dutch Reformed Church of the Cape appointed a commission, which issued a motivated report condemning this system. The Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in the Cape Province expressed great concern about the situation and sent their report through to the “Algemene Sinode”, the General Synod of the four churches. This General Synod did not accent the whole report with all its motivations and republish it as its own document. It did however, indicate that it was deeply concerned about the situation and it appointed a “Kommissie op Rasse-aange-Jeenthede”, a Commission on Racial Affairs which is still in session and considering the situation today. So the worst I can say for my church is that the matter is sub judice, but they reacted to the extent that their concern caused them to appoint a special commission, one of whose task is to examine the migratory labour system, I, as a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, will not accept that it can condone permanently a system which destroys the moral fibre of the majority of the human beings in South Africa.

What is the solution?

Come with your alternative now.

The alternative is that we should accept the responsibility for our own attitude to life. We want a prosperous community. We, as White people, want the highest standard of living outside the United States of America and possibly Western Germany. In order to achieve that high standard of living we need the labour of Black men and we cannot do without it. If we must build our prosperity and our well being on a wicked system, we should pay whatever it costs to get rid of that wicked system or do without that labour. It is as simple as that. One cannot, as a moral human being, say: “I will have migratory labour; I will destroy the moral life and fibre of these people because it enriches me.” Therefore one must have the courage to do what Dr. Verwoerd hoped to do but what this Government is now denying, namely that one should separate the people; one should give them their own homes; and one should dispense with Black labour.

However, if one wants Black labour, one should give them the right to live as human beings. That is the point, the final point. One cannot get past that. One can argue and be specious about it and one can rationalize, but I want to know whether any human being has the right, for his own enrichment, to destroy a family life and character of another human being. That is the crux. It is time we South Africans faced up to this. That is why my party, for example, is in favour of influx control—because my party will not destroy the fibre of a people. I differ with the hon. member for Houghton with regard to her attitude on this matter, and she knows it. The United Party was forced in 1946 to introduce influx control because the same degradation of human beings was taking place without it. At the time I was in a responsible political position in Johannesburg. I saw the report of the overcrowding in some of the urban areas in Johannesburg and of the female children of 12 to 13 years of age making their living by selling their bodies. There were no homes and there was no family life because of the fact that there were no homes. The people lived in depressed circumstances. There were droughts in the Reserves from time to time and they flooded into the cities. They completely swamped the amenities and the social facilities that were available before we introduced influx control. I want to say, in agreement with Mr. Carr, who is now in another capacity, that we needed influx control to prevent misery and tremendous housing shortage and eventually unemployment. I want to put this in agreement with expert advice which we have.

I want to put the following to the House because my time has run out and I have to finish. If we do not have influx control under the present circumstances obtaining in South Africa, with the tremendous divergence in the standard of living between communities, the consequence will be that unscrupulous employers will employ tribal law and tribal labour. We have had this before we introduced influx control. As soon as that labour becomes sophisticated with increased needs and when they become entitled to more pay, the unscrupulous employer would dismiss them and bring in fresh, raw tribal labourers who demand work in the cities, to work for them at a lower wage than they have paid before. This is not a supposition; it actually happened. It was one of the reasons why we introduced influx control. My hon. friend to the left and those belonging to the Progressive Party must make up their minds whether they are willing to face such a consequence. It is so easy to talk in terms of general moral principles when you have no responsibility. It is so easy, but to abolish influx control under the present circumstances in South Africa and still for a long time to come, will be utterly irresponsible.

Let us close the gap in the standard of living between our peoples; let us give all our peoples in South Africa a permanent home and let us encourage the evolution of a responsible middle-class amongst our workers of all colours. Then we can start thinking of abolishing influx control. We can only start thinking about that when the pressures are removed. However, to divide people at the moment and to raise false hopes in the minds of our Black people by irresponsible propaganda, which does not always indicate, as was indicated this afternoon, that it is something that will have to be in the far distant future, is, I say, irresponsible towards happy race relations in South Africa. They cannot carry that policy out in our lifetime and it is wrong to raise false expectations in the minds of our workers.

Mr. Speaker, it is a very good thing that we have, for a change, had this thorough discussion of this subject in this House, as happened this afternoon. The only pity is that it was the hon. member for Houghton who introduced the motion. This is a complicated subject, a subject which has many snares and pitfalls. It is not a subject which, as the hon. member for Houghton and the hon. member for Yeoville tried to imply—both of them very eloquently, but with this difference that the one being a woman, her “turnover of vocabulary” was greater than that of the other, but it is nevertheless difficult to choose between the two …

You do not have much time; get a move on.

Despite what those hon. members said, there is no instant solution to the problems which emerge from this problem of so-called migrant labour or contract labour. If that hon. member wants to create the impression this afternoon that this is the case, I say to her that she has been weighed and found wanting, as the average woman would like to be. The same applies to that hon. member who has just resumed his seat. There is no instant solution for this matter. That is why we must try to view migrant labour in its correct perspective. Let me now inform hon. members that all authorities on the subject of migrant labour or so-called “migratory labour” and the movements of people throughout the world arrive at one important conclusion which is that the movement of people takes place basically as a result of economic factors.

Other factors also enter the picture, factors such as “wanderlust”, and among the Bantu specifically there are certain other factors as well. Basically, however, this is an economic matter. Social scientists seeking to formulate social laws have come closest to the formulation of a social law with their formulation of the causes of migrant labour, because migrant labour originates either as a result of an impetus factor, or a migratory factor, or a combination of those two factors.

I maintain that we must view this matter in its correct perspective. We must realize that it is not a phenomenon which is confined to the Republic of South Africa. In Europe there are more than eight million migratory labourers. If hon. members want to know what is happening in Africa, they can take a look at Kimble’s book; I can show hon. members his map which indicates how these people, throughout Africa, move back and forth between the different African countries. There are a few million Black people in Africa who migrate from the one country to the other. It is a general phenomenon. Nor is it a contemporary phenomenon. It is a phenomenon which was in full swing in the previous century. I am reminding hon. members of this because I want to bring home a certain point with this. We must view this matter in its correct perspective. Believe you me, if there is any matter which South Africa and specifically this National Party Government has reason to be proud of during the past 20 years, although there were problems attached to it, then it is this matter. Why? In the previous century we had the industrial revolutions in France, England and America. What happened there? In France this led to a bloody revolution. In America it led to a bloody revolution. British historians term it a miracle that the industrial revolution there in the previous century did not result in a bloody revolution, because it was a so-called welfare state.

Sir, I am trying to bring what I regard as historically important events which are taking place at this time in the world and in South Africa to the attention of hon. members and to present this matter in its correct perspective. What happened in England, and what was the problem? As a result of large-scale industrial development, one found that people came from far and near to those “jam” pots where the industrial development was taking place. Sir, any government in power, in any country whatsoever, depending on the magnitude of the phenomenon, has the practical problem of administration in such developing conditions. That Government must see to it that the necessary funds are available to supply housing, to install sewerage, and all those kinds of things. In France they could not succeed in doing this, and it led to bloody rebellion. In America they could not succeed in doing this, and it led to a bloody rebellion. In England they had the parish laws, which were far worse than anything hon. members on that side can cook up in regard to this matter in the Republic of South Africa—ten times worse—which were forced upon these people.

Sir, when I assert that the Black man in South Africa is not a commodity, that he is not a suitcase you can merely put down, but is an ethnic being, then this is not something which I though out; I found it in the old reports describing the difficulties and problems in Great Britain in respect of their industrial upheaval. And what happened there? In spite of the welfare state in England, the great authority on that matter, Engels, wrote: “Riots were endemic in England.” Why? Because they were not able to meet the demands of economic circumstances. What has happened under National Party régime over a period of 20 years? Dr. H. J. van Eck, in a Hoernlé Memorial Lecture given before the Institute of Race Relations, where he was drawing a comparison between the industrial upheaval which South Africa had up to that stage been going through, and the one in Great Britain, concluded, on scientific not political grounds, that South Africa was going through a far more rapid industrial development process than even Great Britain had gone through with her industrial revolution. There, riots were endemic, according to their great authority. South Africa, on the contrary, under National Party régime, has been entirely free of riots for 20 years. What a phenomenal achievement!

Sir, I am not a prophet, but I say that historians of the future will be compelled to describe this period in South Africa’s history as an exceptional era, seen from this point of view—and Toynbee is already giving an indication of this. Why? Owing to this fact. That is why I put this question to the hon. members a moment ago: Who provided the Black people with housing here in the White area in the years between 1950 and 1960? Who cleared up places like Cook’s Bush and Sophiatown? It was Dr. Verwoerd, it was the National Party Government. [Interjections.] I maintain that if we want to erect a monument to Dr. Verwoerd, we can do it for many things, such as the fact that he brought us a Republic, but the greatest monument to what he did, will have to be erected for the Bantu housing he provided. I am simply stating these matters in their correct perspective. I said the other day that I had not rejected one scheme which had been submitted by the Johannesburg City Council. [Interjections.] That is the first point I want to make. We really have, if one wants to view these matters in their correct perspective, something exceptional, striking and fine to offer the world, which has been happening in South Africa during these years.

Next I want to ask to what is it attributable that although other countries had those circumstances which led to those calamities, it did not happen in South Africa with its heterogeneous population. You can read about it in Disraeli’s book entitled The Two Nations—they were Britons, but they were so divided as a result of economic circumstances, that he wrote a book entitled The Two Nations, and he was the Prime Minister of Great Britain at the time. We in South Africa have a heterogeneous population, with Coloureds, Indians, Bantu and others and with the preponderance of numbers on the side of the Bantu, and we can boast over a period of 20 years with this almost incredible record in the annals of the history of the world, and then those hon. members decry this, as they did this afternoon. I asked that hon. member this afternoon whether she was in favour of influx control, and she said that in principle she is in favour of its being abolished. I have respect for one thing, and that is that she does at least have the courage to say that, and I shall tell you in a moment what the result of that must be and will be. But those hon. members (the U.P. members), as is typical of them, try to perform an egg dance. They held forth sanctimoniously here against all these evils of migratory labour, but then towards the end the hon. member for Yeoville came along and again tried to add the codicil by saying that they are not in favour of the total abolition of influx control.

But the two things do not go together.

If we analyse the position now, why is it that we in South Africa have this really fine record in regard to this matter, and those hon. members are also part of it. I just want to complete my argument in regard to this matter quickly. Toynbee wrote the other day, and I found this very significant, “that what is being decided in Southern Africa today is not the fate of so many empires but could be the fate of entire mankind”. I, who revere and respect Toynbee as a great historian, now want to tell you that when I consider my case carefully, and we consider South Africa’s circumstances, and we view this matter in its correct perspective, and if what Toynbee says is only partly true, then I feel very optimistic about the future and that that “fate of mankind” is being decided favourably, and then I am proud of playing a small part in this, and doubly proud that I can play a part in this as member of this side of the House, as member of the National Party Government, and those hon. members can be proud that they, even as an Opposition, can form part of this mighty, this fine thing which is taking place here in the Republic; and now the hon. member for Hillbrow can say again, if he likes, that I am enthusiastic about this. Sir, I have never apologized for being enthusiastic about my National Party or National Party Government cause, and even less for being enthusiastic about one of the most complicated relations problems in the world, with which we are dealing. I am enthusiastic about it, and I am proud to be able to be enthusiastic about it.

Are you enthusiastic about the migrant labour system as well?

Oh please, do not try to be funny now. If one analyses this matter carefully, there are reasons why the picture is such a favourable one, in spite of the evils attached to it. I shall come to the evils—that I promise the members. Why is the picture such a favourable one? I believe that the reasons in the first place are contained, in spite of any shortcomings there may be, in good government, in good National Party Government. In the second place, they are contained in the policy, and the successful implementation of the policy of multi-national development, which is being given to the Bantu people. I am saying this in spite of the evils which are in fact attached to migrant labour. The policy offers the most important things life can offer a person, something which a person must have and which the Bantu in South Africa do have, i.e. chances and opportunities. Neither that hon. member’s policy nor the policy of those hon. members can in South Africa give the Whites limitless chances and opportunities where, as the Englishman says, the sky is the limit, and at the same time give the Bantu as well those chances and rights where the expression, “the sky is the limit” is literally true. That is the vertical policy of multi-national development.

Only yesterday evening I read what the late Dr. Verwoerd had to say about these matters. He was not merely uttering hollow-sounding phrases. He knew what he was talking about. He had a vision, just as my Minister has a vision. Today, in the absence of Minister M. P. Botha, I want to tell you that you do not know what a great man he is, he who is sitting here before me. That I can tell you frankly. I work very closely with him. Hon. members may laugh. Hon. members will discover this on that day when they are no longer in a position to laugh about this. I know what I am talking about. I say that it is attributable to this policy of multi-national development and to the implementation and unfolding thereof. But it is also directly attributable to influx control measures adopted by this National Party Government. Consequently I also want to tell hon. members boldly and frankly that the policy of the National Party Government is very clear as far as this matter is concerned. We are not trying to perform an egg dance, like hon. members on that side of the House.

We say that realistic influx control measures are one of the foundation stones of our policy and of sound administration. If the Government had to abandon this, it would have to abandon its entire policy. When we speak of women who are allowed to come to the White area under certain circumstances, and when we speak of aid centres and other matters, these must be seen in the light of the unfolding of the policy of multi-national development included in which is the declared policy of realistic influx control measures. This is something we do not see our way clear to abolishing. I shall furnish you with the reasons for that presently.

Hear how the eggs are cracking.

The abolition of these control measures would have serious consequences. Now you must choose between the immoral aspects of both sides. That is why I am putting this specific question to the hon. member for Houghton: What is more immoral? Is it more immoral to allow people, for basically economic reasons, to come here in order to find work, or is it more immoral to keep them out and allow their families to starve? Those have been the circumstances over the past 100 years. If we want to put a stop to migrant labour on moral grounds, what would the position in Lesotho be from an economic point of view? We shall leave aside other considerations for the present. What would the position in regard to Swaziland, Malawi and Botswana be? Where is the morality in that? I can, for the life of me, not understand this. These matters must be viewed in their correct perspective. It is not something which should be blown up unilaterally for political gain. Now I want to ask the second question. Hon. members must remember that we are in the first place governing for White people in this country. We must therefore ensure that order is maintained here. We must see to it that riots are not endemic here as in England, and that, as in France and the United States, there are no bloody revolutions. If that is what those hon. gentlemen advocate, let them get up and say so. The hon. member for Houghton quoted cheerfully from my thesis. I liked hearing that. I appreciate that she at least went and read it, for very few people went and read it.

It is very interesting.

Yes, I suppose it is very interesting. I think so myself. But, Sir, if she does a thing like that, she must not simply talk straight from the shoulder; then she should also talk from a little higher than shoulders and not only emotionally. Then we could understand one another a little better.

The second question I want to ask her is this: What is more immoral—to maintain order here by allowing Black people to enter in an orderly manner to come and work here for a reasonable period of three, six or 12 months—it does not make any difference how long the period is—or simply to throw the gates open to all who want to enter here? That is what she advocates. [Interjection.] I am speaking to her now. I am leaving you (the U.P.) out of it now. You are hiding behind her.

Why are there 2 000 convictions a day under the Pass Laws?

We are not talking about the aid centres and those circumstances now. The hon. member must not distract me from my argument. She based her argument on an entirely moral case. Very well, now I am also basing it on a very moral case. I have now asked her what is more moral, to allow people from Lesotho and elsewhere to enter here in an orderly manner to work here for a few months—for that is what I must decide about—or to throw the doors open by abolishing influx control. That is what she is advocating; that is her standpoint. In all fairness I now want to tell you what she added, “You cannot do it overnight”. Now I am talking to those hon. members the U.P. Opposition. If this were to be done, do they know what the implications are, which they have to consider? In the first place, let us now proceed from the assumption that at present there are one million so-called migrant labourers in South Africa. I am now quoting that hon. member who so kindly quoted Prof. Wyatt here. Prof. Wyatt, who, on the basis of the Tomlinson Commission Report, said that there were at least one million migrant labourers present here at the moment, plus a further 600 000 from foreign states. Now I want to ask them whether they, on moral grounds, realize what the implications would be if one wanted to establish one million Bantu here on a family basis. You would have to build one million houses.

Why?

After all, they are at present staying in compounds, because they are single.

What about the houses in Soweto, for example?

They are all full. I wanted to take a lower figure, but if one proceeds from the hon. member’s assumption, that there are a million migrant labourers living here in compounds now, for they are here on the basis of single individuals as migrant labourers, one cannot place women with their children in the compounds. One would then have to build houses. If one builds houses, it would cost a minimum of R600 million. Then one would have to lay on the services, which would, at a minimum, cost R500 million, a total therefore of R1 100 million. One would have to find the engineers and technicians. One would have to find the land. Go and ask the United Party City Council of Johannesburg where they are going to find land in Johannesburg. May Heaven preserve them! A hundred thousand morgen of land will be needed. That costs a great deal of money. You do not pick it up for nothing. One would have to build a further 60 000 classrooms for schools. Roads would have to be laid out. Hon. members know how overcrowded the roads and the train routes between Soweto and Johannesburg are at the moment. Do hon. members know what, calculated just as conservatively as possible, it would cost the country if one wants to implement what was so lightly spoken of by the opposite side in regard to this subject, for which I say there is no instant solution? It would cost R2 000 million.

You are misleading the House.

No, I am not misleading the House. It would cost a phenomenal amount. Hon. members can work it out. That is why I say it is, after all, only fair to present this matter in its correct perspective. That is all I am trying to do. We are not trying to present the matter one-sidedly, we are not trying to make political gain as both the hon. Opposition members on that side did. That is why we have influx control measures. Honestly, I can assure this House, if there is one person—I am saying this in all humility—who is trying to deal with these matters in the interests of the Whites and the Bantu and of the maintenance of good relationships on a more humane and humanitarian basis than I am doing, I should like to meet that person. This is how I view my task in this connection, because I believe it to be in the interests of the country that it should be done in this way. I am not apologizing because this is so. I am prepared to apply it night and day. But then I just wanted to ask those members on the opposite side, and the hon. member for Houghton, not to decry these matters in the way they did.

They are playing politics; that is all.

Yes, cheap politics. The only merit of the matter is that they, in spite of what they do, they also form part of the set-up and that they can also coddle themselves in it (koester daarin), as a result of the powerful, dynamic National Party Government on this side. [Laughter.] Hon. members may laugh about this now, but if one were to lift influx control measures or were even to demolish them slightly here in the Peninsula, as hon. members on both sides opposite advocated, do they know what would happen? The following consequences will arise out of that. There will be a revival of the chaotic, disgraceful, inhuman shantytown conditions of Cook’s Bush, Windermere, Alexandra, Sophiatown, Martindale and those places of twenty years ago. The hon. member for Houghton, who referred to Alexandra where conditions are supposedly so poor, must for that reason subside a little.

May I ask a question?

My time is extremely limited.

[Inaudible.]

Just let me complete my argument. If I have the time, I shall gladly give the hon. member a chance to put his question. The second result will be a paradise for the unscrupulous employer, who will want to acquire labour at starvation wages. South Africa cannot afford that. There are many of those members on the opposite side who are advocating these things merely as a result of the fact that they want cheap labour. We must take preventive measures against that as well. This will of course give rise to the draining of the homelands, followed by a complete demolition of the homeland authorities. Fourthly, it will place an additional economic burden on the White taxpayer, as I have indicated here to hon. members. I can assure hon. members that I discuss these matters frequently with the Bantu leaders. The Bantu leaders understand very well that the abolition of influx control would of course lead to the wages for them becoming less. This would of course create problems and lead to chaotic conditions. Even if hon. members want to do away with it, the Bantu themselves do not want this, because they know they will get the short end of the stick. I am asking you to realize that there is a particularly humane and humanitarian aspect attached to influx control, and South Africa must know this. It is true, and the Bantu know it.

But I want to make haste to say that there are of course evils attached to this situation. [Interjections.] I have tried to present the matter in its correct perspective. We are trying to limit those evils to the absolute minimum. We are trying to eliminate them as far as possible. Our deeds are there as evidence. The significance of the speech made by the hon. member for Houghton lies not in what she said; it lies in what she did not say. What is more important to ensure a family basis for the Bantu than border industrial development and development on the agency basis of the Bantu homelands themselves? You were a witness in this House when the hon. member for South Coast told me that there were no factories in the homelands. I then told him: “Within three years I shall show you 50”. Sir, less than three years have now elapsed. Sir, I can tell you now, there are at the moment 65 factories in the homelands, which are in production or in the final stages of planning, and in regard to which final agreement with industrialists at the growth points has been reached. Those labourers are all living there on a family basis. There are at the moment … [Interjections.] At the moment there are 4 700 workers involved in this. As a result of border area development no fewer than 73 750 additional avenues of employment have been created for Bantu since 1960, while in 1960, there were 55 000 in border industries. There are therefore, all things considered, more than one million Bantu involved in border area development and homeland development, who are living there on a family basis, thanks to this National Party’s ability to solve these problems in a dynamic and humane manner.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move the following motion, as printed in my name on the Order Paper—

That this House—

1. (1) expresses its appreciation for the positive administrative, financial and statutory steps which the Government has taken and is taking to consolidate uneconomic units of agricultural land; and
2. (2) requests the Government—
   1. (a) as a matter of urgency to institute additional ways and means to implement the process of consolidation more rapidly; and
   2. (b) to ascertain whether it would not serve a good purpose for the legislation and methods of certain Western countries in this regard, to be intensively investigated and applied in South Africa.

I may just mention that I amended the motion by omitting in paragraph (1) the words “the subdivision” of agricultural land. I did this so that the motion would not clash with the legislation which is at present under consideration in this House. My motion envisages that uneconomic units of agricultural land should be consolidated at a more rapid and efficient rate. However. I am moving this motion in a spirit of appreciation for what has already been done and is being done in this regard by our Minister, our Deputy Minister, and their officials. In particular I want to mention the names here of Dr. P. W. Vorster, the former secretary of the Department of Agricultural Technical Services, who for many years was a driving force behind the idea of consolidation. Then, too, I want to mention the name of Mr. S. J. J. de Swardt, who published a very valuable report during February, 1966 on the basis of investigations in loco. Then, of course, one cannot broach this subject without mentioning the name of Dr. S. J. du Plessis, the agricultural policy adviser. He is today in various capacities performing a Herculean task in this sphere. As I understand, he submitted a thorough and confidential departmental report on this matter in 1970. I also want to make specific mention of our present parliamentary officer, to whom legislation has been entrusted, Mr. H. F. van Zyl, for his contagious enthusiasm for this matter, which he is displaying at the moment.

At the outset I want to state quite unequivocally that I do not envisage the removal, left, right and centre, of small and middle class farmers, among whom are the cream of our farming population, from their farms. I also want to make it clear that an economic unit of agricultural land should always be interpreted in the light of scientific progress, which may improve dramatically the yield and carrying capacity of our land. My motion in fact envisages keeping the maximum number of farmers on the land, but under circumstances which are able to ensure them a reasonable subsistence and make them of greater benefit to their family and their area. What I have said here I could perhaps elucidate best by mentioning an example. A farmer dies and leaves 500 morgen of grain land in the maize-growing region of the maize triangle to his six sons. These six sons would all like to farm, but the subdivision of the 500 morgen into six units is impossible because that would create uneconomic units. Consequently they are obliged, in a short time,—the Master will force them to do this—to sell the farm. Usually this sale is to a rich neighbour. All six of these sons must then migrate to the city. What I want is that we should have highly efficient machinery which would enable at least two of those sons to farm on 250 morgen each of that land, if 250 morgen comprise an economic unit. In addition I want to keep the remaining four sons in a country milieu and if their knowledge, character and experience justifies this, to give them a high priority in the allocation of other land which may fall under State control. I shall say more about this later.

Dr. Du Plessis, agricultural policy adviser and chairman of the Committee of Enquiry into Rural Reform, summarized the matter very succinctly when he wrote inter alia as follows in Landbounuus of 17th December, 1971 (translation)—

The question is now whether there is a need in the Republic for large-scale and rapid rural reform, consolidation and regrouping of agricultural land. The Commission of Enquiry into White Occupation of the Rural Areas produced perturbing evidence as long ago as 1960 that urgent action was required. For example an interdepartmental study committee, appointed by the hon. the Minister of Agriculture, gave the following concise report in 1968 (translation)—

Prof. Tomlinson, director of the Transvaal region, had the following to say, according to a report in Landbounuus of 7th May, 1971 (translation)—

The problem is so serious that the Commission of Inquiry into Agriculture already said the following in its interim report (translation)—

This is not a problem unique to South Africa; this is a problem affecting the entire Western world, and specifically the richest countries. So, for example, R. G. Lewis stated in 1965 that there were 1 600 000 farming families in America that were living in poverty. In 1966 an authoritative report in respect of Canada stated that 175 000 farmers out of a grand total of 470 000 farmers in Canada were living in poverty with net produce sales of less than 2 500 dollars per annum.

It goes without saying that hereditary succession and subdivision over the centuries have made this problem a very serious and cardinal one in the old countries of the world, i.e. the European countries. For example, several years ago there were approximately 1 700 000 farming units in France, but of these, 700 000 units were regarded as being far too small to make possible the full-time subsistence of a family of two. In 1960 this problem was tackled in France by the introduction of the so-called orientation law. How spectacular their progress was, appears from a recent official report. During 1967 523 000 amalgamations took place, and 484 600 during 1968. Approximately 8,3 million ha of land, or one-quarter of the total agricultural land of France, has in this way been amalgamated and regrouped since 1945. It is therefore not a problem over which we need to theorize. If it is positively tackled, it can be solved. For the purposes of determining what an economic unit is, France established the concept of a reference area. The reference area, or RA., represents the farm area which, with the system of farming regarded as normal for the region, requires the full-time labour of two adult persons over a period of a year, and can provide those two persons with an independent subsistence from the yield of that unit. For this purpose France was divided into 700 homogeneous agricultural areas, and for every area the RA factor was determined in hectares. The average size is approximately 25 ha, but it may be as small as 5 ha, average sizes which are of course totally unacceptable in this country. But the essence of France’s success lies in the establishment of an agency with a very long name, which is usually abbreviated to Safer, which was established in terms of the orientation law of 1960. This agency operates on a regional basis and has very wide and drastic, powers, Inter alia it has the following powers: It can purchase, plan, lay out and consolidate land, but it must re-sell that land within five years to a deserving farmer without profit. It has the right to sell all agricultural land, in other words, it does not in fact have powers of expropriation, but if a farmer wants to sell his land, he is obliged to offer the land for sale to Safer in the first place. If the farmer’s price for the land is too high, Safer may appeal to a special court, which then determines the price of the land. This provision has of course had a tremendously dampening influence on the speculative element in land purchases and sales in France. Lastly, when such an improved and consolidated unit is sold, the purchaser is allowed a repayment term of 30 years at a low rate of interest which is at present only 4 per cent.

In addition, in support of the Safer programme, legislation has also been promulgated to make minimum and maximum sizes of land subject to the approval of an ad hoc commission in the specific region. Furthermore—and this is also a very important matter to which I want to return —the French law provides that subdivision of economic units is prohibited for a period of five years in the case of the death of a land-owner. Then transfer to an heir or heiress may take place on a preferential basis subject to compensation of the co-heirs over a ten-year period, if necessary. In other words, sufficient time is allowed the executor for the proper winding up of that estate on a fair basis.

What has been particularly spectacular is France’s efforts to keep young people in the rural areas. Young people who have to leave small farms are settled in country towns in related agricultural industries, and their salaries and so on are paid for the period during which they are being trained for the new industry in which they have been settled. Young farmers are also being taken off uneconomic units and established on economic units with Government aid. For livestock, implements and farm improvements they obtain loans at 4½ per cent per annum for 15 years and for the purchase of land they are given 30 year loans at 4 per cent interest. In addition most European countries—unfortunately I do not have the time to go into this—have some or other form of beneficial pension scheme for older farmers who want to make way for younger farmers. Some countries, including France, also pay retirement compensation to older farmers. In this way France, in 1971, paid out R123 million in retirement compensation to farmers.

I went into the position in France in detail, because France is a country with a tremendous agricultural potential and their legislation is among the most modern in the world. I can refer to other countries as well, such as the Netherlands which has, since 1924, had their system of re-distribution (herverkaveling), but I do not have time to go into that. I just want to mention that success is being achieved in numerous countries. So, for example, I can mention the case of Canada. In the period 1941 to 1961 the number of farms there decreased to 100 000 as a result of consolidation. Even the superficial knowledge I have of this subject convinces me that there is much to learn from these overseas systems. The question in my mind is whether we have studied the matter fully and intensively enough with a view to immediate action and legislation. I, personally, am aware only of the work done by Dr. Du Plessis and Mr. De Swardt. Apart from that, I think we derive our knowledge only from publications and the material forwarded to us by our ambassadors. I want to make a serious plea, now that the matter is becoming urgent, now that we are reaching the stage where we must really examine, evaluate and confirm all this information, with a view to our own circumstances, which we can lay down in legislation, that capable officials should now be sent to make a penetrating study in loco in Europe with a view to urgent action and legislation. I realize that we cannot merely take over the systems of these countries lock, stock and barrel. Many of these countries are welfare states and many of them are extremely socialistic. Therefore we cannot take over a system from them lock, stock and barrel, and we must for the sake of our own circumstances, make provision in our legislation for certain differences. Since rural reform is in its infancy here, we can definitely learn a great deal from them by means of further intensive studies of their measures.

I am of course aware of the committee under the chairmanship of Dr. Du Plessis, the terms of reference of which are to investigate rural reform in the broadest sense of the word. I welcome this action on their part. I am also aware that the committee is composed of representatives of eight Government departments, in addition to other experts, which makes it a broad, general committee. The terms of reference of this committee are very wide, and Dr. Du Plessis himself thinks that this committee will only obtain a general picture of the problem by the end of 1973, or even later. I want to make a polite request that the investigation in respect of this matter, which I have been stating here today and which is only a part of the matter as a whole, should be tackled on a much more urgent basis. I want to inquire politely whether a smaller sub-committee or action committee, consisting of Dr. Du Plessis, a sociologist and an economist could not be appointed on a full-time basis to give attention to this matter which I have stated here.

We are dealing here with a very complicated matter. After the problem has been evaluated in its entirety it may take many years before solutions are converted into legislation. That is why I am asking that we should make haste with this matter.

I think that, at the outset, I made out a case to the effect that there is a serious need for rapid action in this connection. I just want to mention a further urgent reason why we should act very rapidly. I want to refer to sections 4 and 5 of the Subdivision of Agricultural Land Act of 1970. In terms of these two sections land has to be sold if the Minister does not grant his consent to the subdivision of land in terms of a testamentary or intestate disposal. In such a case there is not much time. The person has died and the Master wants to close the estate. This could lead to a precipitated sale which could be very disadvantageous to the heirs. These statutory measures—which are necessary measures—could lead to deprivation as the position stands at present. I am pleading, on the analogy of the French system, for more elastic machinery and a scheme of financial assistance to be established. I advocate that a body with authority should be able to arrange that the sale may be delayed for a certain period, so that arrangements can be made for one or more heirs to receive the land, and so that the remainder may be paid out with reasonable financing which is available to them.

I welcome the recommendation on page 43 of the Second Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Agriculture. Here the commission advocates a body which has to promote rural development in a socioeconomic sphere over a broad field. What I should have liked to have seen, however, is that they should be more specific in respect of the most pressing problems, i.e. the subject of my speech here today.

I am convinced that if we do not establish something which is similar to the French system we will not, in my opinion, make any progress with this problem. At present we have no efficient instrument with which to effect the regrouping of farm properties, or to do this more rapidly. I am saying this with full appreciation of what the Land Bank and the Department of Agricultural Credit is doing at present in the sphere of financing. To my mind the only answer is an agency with extraordinary powers and means, and I want to advocate that such a body should not be a State body, but a semi-State body which should make use of the best minds among our officials and the private sector. Before I resume my seat I want to express the hope that the inter-departmental committee under Dr. Du Plessis will also find that such a body, along the lines I have set out, is necessary, and that it should be established.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Kroonstad’s motion, as amended, deals in truth only with the consolidation of uneconomic units. I want to tell the hon. member at once that we are not going to move any amendment to his motion, because no fault can really be found with the sentiments expressed by the hon. member in this motion and the ideas expressed by him in his speech in respect of the consolidation of uneconomic units. It is, however, necessary that we dwell on a few aspects of the question of so-called uneconomic units. I think the hon. member is correct when he says that South Africa could perhaps profitably investigate what is being done in this connection in other countries. He also said that we should specifically investigate the efforts being made in other countries by means of consolidation, to keep people in rural areas who would otherwise be driven out. In that respect we disagree in no way with the hon. member for Kroonstad. He is at liberty to request the Government to send a group of officials overseas to study this type of phenomenon, quite possibly to give South Africa good advice in the future. We have no objection to that.

In his motion the hon. member also says that he wants to express appreciation for what has already been done in this respect. I must immediately ask the hon. member what proof he has that large-scale consolidation of economic units is taking place as a result of Government intervention, except for that consolidation that has quite naturally taken place throughout the years. I think the hon. member is, in this case, confusing what took place quite naturally with so-called State action. I am going to refer the hon. member to Agricultural News of 28th January, 1972. The following informative paragraph is found there—

The hon. member mentioned examples of instances where this also happened in other countries, but then as a result of definite State action and State assistance. In this country it took place quite naturally. The report continues as follows—

I think this reflects exactly what has happened over the years. I can even refer to a speech the hon. the Minister of Agriculture himself made when he inaugurated the Riversdale Agricultural Corporation (translation)—

The hon. the Minister said, in addition, that a tendency towards larger units in agriculture was already discernible. Sir, I think it is the experience of the majority of members on this side of the House that the modern farmer—I know that we cannot speak about subdivision now—is no longer inclined to subdivide his land to such an extent that none of his heirs can make a decent living, for the simple reason that the modern farmer knows that there is continually a decrease in the value of his money and at the same time a continual rise in the standard of living. In other words, if the farmer divides land, up amongst his children, he must take into account the fact that their standard of living will continue to rise in the future, that there will continue to be an increase in the cost of living and that he must consequently leave them enough land so that in future they will have a chance to make a decent living. That is one of the foremost reasons why the farmer has developed over the years, not specifically to have an increasingly larger investment in agriculture, but because he had to maintain a higher standard of living. That is why the farmer had to increase his area of production, even though it be done on a horizontal level, in order to be able to comply with the new demands of the times. I therefore believe it to have been a quite natural process that took place over the years. But the most important question in that connection is this: In the first instance, what is an uneconomic unit or rather, to put it positively, what is a so-called economic unit? The hon. the Deputy Minister told us the other day that the Department regards an economic unit as a unit on which a farmer and his wife with four children can earn a net amount of R4 000 annually. Sir, that is an extremely interesting figure the hon. gentleman gave us. But is that R4 000 the norm at all times, or will that R4 000 per year increase from time to time as the cost of living increases and the farmer’s standard of living rises?

Of course it will have to increase.

Exactly; it must increase from time to time. I now want to ask the Deputy Minister on what investment that farmer and his wife and four children must earn R4 000 annually? I read somewhere that some or other agricultural economist expressed the opinion that this would have to be an investment of more or less R70 000. Sir, if one earns a net income of R4 000, one does not even obtain 6 per cent annually on one’s investment.

It is presumed that one also earns interest on one’s money; in that case it is not a net amount.

Then the situation is even more interesting, Sir. Does that R4 000 remuneration include the farmer’s own labour? If that figure does not include the farmer’s remuneration for his labour, it simply means that we expect the South African farmer, without being compensated for his labour, to earn not even 6 per cent per annum, while anyone today, under modern circumstances, can earn 8 per cent to 10 per cent annually without lifting a finger. That is, in my opinion, the most important point when we want to judge whether a unit is an uneconomic or an economic unit. If we are not going to allow that figure of R4 000 to be increased annually, as the standard of living rises and the cost of living increases, very few farmers will be interested in farming if an income of R4 000 per year is laid down as a norm by the hon. the Minister.

Do you want it increased?

Of course it ought to be increased as the cost of living increases and the standard of living rises. The Minister will achieve no success with his policy if be thinks the farmer should be satisfied with a return of 6 per cent on his investment, while in any other sphere he could obtain much more than 6 per cent on his investment. Sir, this brings me then to the important point I believe should be made in this debate, i.e. that whether a unit is an economic or uneconomic one does not necessarily depend on the size of the land; it does not necessarily depend on the topography of the farm, but depends in the first place on the profitability of the farming.

Things are now becoming clear to you.

Sir, hon. members on this side of the House have been trying for the past 10 to 12 years to explain this point to hon. members on that side. Everything depends on the profitability of the farming, and if attention is not given to the question of profitability, all the rummaging and all the talk about economic or uneconomic units will be of very little value to us. In my time I have so frequently had the experience, as hon. members on that side also have, that a farmer is not able to make a living on a piece of land because of the fact that he does not have the necessary credit facilities, or is not sufficiently solvent; then the next man comes along and buys that piece of land …

And he makes a success of his farming.

Yes, he makes a success of the farming because he is solvent and because he has credit facilities at his disposal.

And because he knows farming.

I immediately concede as much to the hon. member; if he is not a good farmer he would not make a success of his farming. I am not arguing with hon. members on that point. Then one has other instances where a farmer almost finds it impossible to make a living even on a large piece of land until a considerable improvement occurs in the price of his product. That was, for example, the case with the wool farmers. Before 1949 there were many wool farmers on small pieces of land who found it difficult to make a decent living, but as a result of the improvement in prices that took place up to 1957, many of them were able to make a decent living on that land, because the price of the product increased. That is why it is so difficult to lay down a norm about what an uneconomic unit is and what it is not, because the whole situation can change overnight as a result of a change of price policy or as a result of an improvement on the world market, or whatever. I therefore want to say that one must not be too quick to judge whether there is now something wrong with the size of the land a man has. I am afraid that the size of the land is frequently the symptom of what we are engaged in. We do not get down to the real reason why that unit specifically became an uneconomic unit.

In addition I want to refer to the second report of the Commission of Inquiry into Agriculture. From the report it is very clear that they think there are two groups of farmers who find themselves in financial difficulties today. There is, firstly, the farmer they believe to have too small a unit, and at the same time the farmer who has developed on a horizontal basis. If it must then be our policy in this country—and I think this is a good thing—that any person must get a chance to increase his unit if he wants to do so, then there must at least be the financing the farmer can obtain at a low interest rate so that he can develop on a horizontal basis. Because if not he is also in financial difficulties, and the farmer who wants to develop in this way in the future will also get into financial difficulties, as is very clear from the report of the commission on agriculture. Therefore, to develop and increase the size of one’s unit also has its drawbacks in this respect, unless it is possible for the farmer to develop at an interest rate and according to a financing policy that will be within his means and within the production potential of that farm.

And the price of the land.

Yes, of course, also the price of the land. I do not disagree with the hon. the Minister about the inclusion of the price of the land, but I do at least want to point this out. He has just spoken of the price of land. The S.A. Agricultural Union submitted a memorandum to this commission of inquiry, and what did they say in that memorandum? I have a summary of this from the Landbouweekblad, and it dealt with the question of land prices (translation)—

That is my point. If we want people to consolidate their units, we can already tell the hon. the Minister that today he cannot consolidate a unit at the present interest rate of 9½ per cent. It is impossible. And then we must have a financing institution such as the Land Bank or Agricultural Credit that can make that money available to us.

May I ask a question? On what basis must agricultural credit finance those matters? Must there be a basis for this or must it be done without limits? Must the basis be an economic unit, or must it be without limits?

I am very glad the hon. the Minister asked me that question. I fear that we shall increasingly reach a stage where the State, through the Land Bank and Agricultural Credit, will have to play a greater role in such financing, for the simple reason that the ordinary financial institutions today are no longer interested in agriculture.

That is not my question. I do not want to catch you out. If the State must assist consolidation, must it have a principle on which to do so or must any request be granted?

Every farmer’s situation will have to be regarded on its merits. The only point I am making is that these bodies’ roles will have to be greater than the limited role they are playing today.

Excuse me for interrupting you, but my question is: If the State gets such a role, must there be any stipulation? For example, if a person applies to increase the size of his unit, must this be done on any basis whatever, or must there be a restriction, and how does one determine those restrictions?

That is an equally interesting point that the hon. the Minister raises and I should like to reply to him. I want to tell him that one also has a maximum, an optimum size to which a person can develop his farm, because it has already been proved scientifically that if one becomes too big a farmer one’s production costs per unit do not necessarily decrease.

But that is not my question. I do not want to speak politics. If the State is called upon to bring about the consolidation of units, the hon. member says the State must not do this on an unlimited scale, but what is the norm regarding the size to which that unit is going to be increased? Is it the norm of an economic unit or what?

It would depend on the merits of the case and the potential of the farmer himself. [Interjections.] What other norm can one use?

What merits? The person’s competence or his farming potential, or what?

Every application will have to be regarded on its merits and this would surely depend on the farmer’s competence, the size of the land and the size of the additional land he wants to buy, and it will depend on his production potential, his administration ability and many other factors besides. But the point I made here and the point I want to bring home to the Minister is that we cannot speak so easily about the consolidation of units while we do not have the financial institutions available. That is why I advocated that if we want to do so we cannot do so at the present interest rate or by means of the present financial institutions because they are not interested in the matter. It will simply become the function of the Land Bank or the Agricultural Credit Board to help the farmers in that respect.

I want to say that the number of uneconomic units can only decrease by way of improving the profitability of agriculture, the less difficulty we shall have in this respect with the question of too small units in this country. The more a farmer is capable of, as a result of his own capital that he has built up, the easier will it be for him to consolidate, and correspondingly less will it be necessary for the State to help. Of course, if those facilities are not available it would, as I have said, become the function of the State to help in this process. The true uneconomic unit is one which firstly has no, or very slight, agricultural potential according to topography, and in the second place is so small that it has no reserve power and that its agricultural potential can only be exploited to disadvantage in the long run. Those two cases I regard as uneconomic units. I shall now say what, in the first place, the most important considerations on consolidation are. What becomes of the units that are sold? By whom is this done and who must advance that money? In addition, at what value will they be bought up?

Why do you not answer those questions.

In addition, where are those, who must vacate the land, to be given a livelihood? That hon. member asks me why I do not answer the questions. It is unfortunately not my motion that has been laid before the House. If it were our motion, and we were faced with a problem here, we would most certainly also have replied. The answer we are in fact prepared to give is that agriculture in South Africa needs, in the first place, an agricultural planning board. It must not only be a board that will properly plan future questions of marketing and production in South Africa …

Long-term price policy.

Yes, long-term price policy. That is correct. At the same time we must have an agricultural financing division with a Land Bank that will stretch its arms much wider than is the case at present. Then there must be an agricultural credit board which will join with the land bank under that agricultural financing division to help those farmers who cannot be helped under normal circumstances. It is calculated that 69 per cent of the farmers are responsible for 96 per cent of the agricultural production by volume, while 31 per cent are responsible for 4 per cent of this production. This 31 per cent are usually regarded as being the small farmers. They are regarded as the people whose units will, in the course of time, be bought up by others. The moment they are bought up there will again be a percentage of smaller farmers compared with the rest of the country. Then it is again a question of 10, 15 to 20 years before the same argument is repeated, i.e. that our agricultural industry is in difficulties because there are farmers whose units are too small by comparison with the others. We want to ask the Government whether it foresees our reaching a stage where the profitability of agriculture will be of greater importance than increasing the size of units in this country. I want to tell the hon. the Minister that I think we over-emphasize the physical size of farms and do not give sufficient attention to the production potential of the present land in the country. In the increase in production I also see the solution for that man who possesses a small unit today. We are too inclined to say that development must be on a horizontal basis. Too little attention is given to the vertical increasing of production. If this is not done we shall again, within 30 or 40 years, be faced with the same problem that many people now think we are faced with, i.e. the problem of our units being too small. Before the answers to these questions are given to us we cannot accept that the solution for agriculture lies merely in consolidating and increasing the size of units in South Africa.

I want to refer hon. members to the editorial in Agrikon of October, 1971. It is a very interesting article. On page 1 there is mention of “the economic benefits of large-scale production and the size of units in agriculture”. I do not want to quote this whole article. Its message, however, is very clear, i.e. that the bigger farmer does not necessarily hold the answer for increasing the production per unit in South Africa and thereby establishing greater profitability. This article states very clearly that the smaller one’s unit is the more effective the administration ability of the farmer can be, and that much easier it is to implement decisions from top to bottom. The big farmer’s capital investment in mechanization is frequently such that such high demands are made on his administrative ability that it cannot prove successful either. The answer therefore does not lie here. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very attentively to the hon. member for Newton Park. After the positive motion introduced by the hon. member for Kroonstad, I really thought we would have had the opportunity this afternoon for having a very fruitful discussion on this most pertinent problem of our agricultural industry. In typical fashion the hon. member mentioned a number of problems in agriculture, made certain statements and advanced certain arguments giving us to understand that consolidation was not the solution to the problem. He revealed himself as a person who had absolutely no hope for and confidence in the agricultural industry.

Definitely not under you.

The hon. member admits it. The hon. member has just admitted it. The hon. member said at Riversdale he took exception to a newspaper report. He said he and Sir De Villiers Graaff had said on another occasion that they—

This hon. member has no confidence. He sees nothing but a spectre of small farmers with small pieces of land being swept from their farms in order to give other people economic units, etc. What are the facts? In respect of this matter I should like to express myself very clearly. The following appears under paragraph 2.1 of the terms of reference of the Commission for Rural Reform (translation)—

Furthermore, in his broadcast speech on 1st March, Dr. Du Plessis said the following (translation)—

The hon. member advanced a whole number of arguments here. I tried to write them down. To the best of my ability I shall try to deal with as many of them as I can. In addition I shall try to indicate that all the arguments mentioned by the hon. member were in fact arguments in favour of the consolidation of land.

Before proceeding with the hon. member, I should just like to express my appreciation to the hon. member for Kroonstad for this very positive motion he moved in this House. The hon. member is a practical farmer and a man who has knowledge of the circumstances prevailing in the agricultural industry in South Africa. This afternoon he introduced a motion here and he motivated his case very well on the basis of reports and findings of experts in the field of agriculture in South Africa as well as on the basis of investigations instituted abroad and measures taken abroad. The hon. member illustrated his problem to us by way of an example. He mentioned the case of a farmer who left 500 morgen to a number of sons and he indicated that if these sons were to subdivide the farm they would be saddled with uneconomic units, which is something which may not take place. In that case the farm would have to be sold and these people would have to seek a livelihood in the city. He went on to plead for effective machinery which would enable at least two of these sons to stay on the farm, and pleaded for the others to be given high priority in the allocation of land over which the State has authority or which it finances, on the basis of merit in view of the fact that those sons had a rural background and were able to make a contribution to the agricultural industry because of their knowledge and ability. I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. member. This is the task awaiting us in this country in respect of this type of young man with this background, knowledge and ability, because he has the will to make a contribution to the agricultural industry in which he is able to establish himself on an economic unit so that he may not be lost to the agricultural industry and so that he may be an asset not only to himself and his family and those close to him, but also to his area and so that he may be a driving force for the agricultural industry as a whole. To me as a farmer the indisputable fact that if a country wants to become strong in the industrial sphere as well, its agricultural industry must be developed strongly, is as plain as a pikestaff. For that reason the words of ex-Minister S. P. le Roux, i.e. “a people who sees to its agricultural industry is seeing to its future”, still hold very true and mean a great deal to me.

In the rural areas and on the farms of our fatherland there is a task to be performed, a calling to be fulfilled and a contribution to be made for the man who believes in his vocation as a farmer not only to perform his task towards those who are close to him but also to make this contribution I have just outlined, and to do these things with energy and faith. However, we need people with faith on our farms, not people of the ilk of the hon. member who has just spoken, people who are disheartened and afraid of the future and who talk our people off the farms. Today on the farms we need people who have a message for the people close to them and for their area and who have faith in a grand future in South Africa. For these reasons I should like to give very strong support to the motion of the hon. member for Kroonstad. This motion envisages the retention of the maximum number of farmers on the land and their settlement on units which are able to ensure for each one of them an income from that unit which will enable them to make a decent living and in addition enable them to contribute their share to the areas in which they are living. The hon. member advocated the establishment of machinery in the form of a body with wide powers for initiating and financing this matter of consolidation, more or less on the same lines as S.A.F.E.R. in France. That will enable us to make more rapid progress with the consolidation of land as it is an urgent matter. It is urgent, because it is the basic problem of agriculture in South Africa. Dr. S. J. du Plessis and his interdepartmental committee may possibly establish something useful for us for bringing about this consolidation of land. The average age of farmers in my area exceeds 47 years, and in my opinion this age is too high in comparison to what the average in the agricultural industry ought to be. The committee may be able to find a way of keeping also young men on the farms and of settling them there. I am pleased that the Commission of Enquiry into Agriculture stated the following in its Third Report on page 187, in paragraph 10.2.2.2 (translation)—

This is the task awaiting us. This is the problem as we see it in South Africa in respect of agriculture. There is something I take very amiss of this hon. member who is posing as the shadow Minister of Labour. Where this Government as the farmers’ partner has rendered assistance over the years in various ways, administratively, financially and by way of legislation, in developing agriculture in South Africa in a way which has given us horizontal occupation, and where we have had a group of officials of the calibre of Dr. Du Plessis, Dr. Vorster, Dr. Verbeek and other senior men such as Dr. Steyn, who is still in service today, the hon. member for Newton Park was not fair in his remarks. These men I have mentioned have offered their everything to the farmers of South Africa and they are people who have gained a profound knowledge of the problems of agriculture in South Africa through the work they have done. Apart from the fact that we differ politically, the hon. member for Netown Park could have had the decency this afternoon just to thank these people for the hard work which has been done throughout the years to correctly identify the problems of our agricultural industry. I as a farmer and at the same time as a representative of a farming constituency want to say here this afternoon that I am grateful not only to my Government and my party—I do not want to make politics of this matter—but also to the officials of our Departments of Agriculture for that major task they have done amongst our farmers in taking knowledge to them and bringing such knowledge home to them, often under difficult circumstances. We have now reached the stage where we have correctly identified this problem and where we can start correcting the most serious bottleneck in South Africa, i.e. the physico-biological instability in agriculture in respect of a large number of uneconomic units we have. Now I shall attempt to prove to the hon. member that all his arguments are in fact arguments in favour of the consolidation of agricultural land in South Africa. At the outset he referred to the popular idea often propagated in the newspapers, i.e. that the farmers in South Africa were allegedly working for such a meagre interest on their money. Let us examine the net income on each R100 of capital invested in agriculture in certain regions. Let us examine the average of the figures revealed by certain investigations carried out from 1961 to 1965. Let us take the Bethal/Standerton area. The figures of the group of farmers who cooperated there in obtaining the figures relating to all their farming operations were analysed and the best third’s was taken. Their figure is R 14,68 per R100 invested. The figure of the poorest third is R3,30.

They are mostly United Party people.

That will be the day! I shall challenge you on that.

In my area, Frankfort/Villiers, the return of the farmers in the best third was R19,23 per R100 of capital invested, whereas the figure for the poorest third was R6,96. The figure for the best third in the area Bethlehem/Reitz was R19,39 and for the poorest third R5,32. In the North-Western Free State it was R 17,50 for the best third and R4,68 for the poorest third. In the Western Transvaal it was R13,93 for the best third and R3,30 for the poorest third. This situation which presents itself in agriculture in South Africa where one has the position that there is such a lack of balance in the same area that the one man is able to make a large sum of money on his capital whereas the other man is barely making an existence, is not a matter which one can simply dispose of by means of prices or by means of statements such as that of that hon. member. Let us take the position in respect of maize. Take, for example the production in the Bethlehem/Reitz area. Let us examine the best third’s gross revenue per morgen in the test carried out in 1962-’63. It was R86,40 per morgen, whereas the figure for the poorest third was R34.56. The yield per morgen for the best third was 30 bags per morgen and for the poorest third 12 bags per morgen. There are other costs as well. Also in respect of these costs I have the average figures. The hon. member said this situation in South Africa had to be solved by paying a higher price which would enable these people to carry out consolidation themselves. In the past the hon. member expressed himself very strongly in this House on the maize price. I expect of the hon. member that he should at least know how the maize price is determined. The maize price is determined by calculating costs as well as the yield per morgen on a five year sliding average basis. If one calculates this yield per morgen at the price determined for that year and one also calculates the costs on the basis of a five-year sliding average, one sees that there is a reasonable difference, one which I cannot say this afternoon is big enough. I would have liked to have a much bigger difference between the costs figure and the income figure for the maize farmer, as I myself am one. The point I want to make is that if one is dealing with average figures, it means that the one farmer has a much bigger yield than the average, whereas the other farmer has much less.

Why?

In order to obtain an average. If we have an average figure of, say, 15 bags per morgen and we have an average cost of, say, R25 or R30 per morgen, we can calculate our profit or entrepreneur’s wage on those average figures per morgen. If that farmer has a yield of 20, 25 or 30 bags per morgen, it is a very big difference and such a farmer is making a bigger profit than the farmer who may have a yield of seven or eight bags per morgen, because the production costs are the same. Again there is the lack of balance. For that reason I say that the problem, as it has arisen in agriculture, cannot be solved by means of a price adjustment. Throughout the years the Government has taken measures in an attempt to eliminate this lack of balance in our agriculture. The Government has tried to eliminate this lack of balance through its policy, administrative steps, legislation and its financial policy, but it simply cannot be done. I can mention large subsidies which have been given to agriculture. That is not the solution. The solution is that the problem must be identified, which our people have done now. This physico-biological instability there is in agriculture, is the problem facing us. That is another reason for the motion we have before this House this afternoon.

Another question asked by the hon. member was what was going to become of those farmers whose land was going to be bought up. I want to tell the hon. member that this Government has walked with the farmers for more than 20 years without a break. It knows the problems of the farmer and it is looking around the corner. The Government is developing this country. I have in mind the Verwoerd Dam and our policy in respect of consolidation at irrigation schemes. This dam has four 80 kw. hydro-electric power plants which can be engaged by means of an automatic switch when the consumption of electric power is high. This power will be fed into South Africa’s Escom reticulation system as the need for such power arises in South Africa. The water which will be released for that purpose will be correlated with the consumption of farmers below the dam. Further downstream we shall make further provision as well and lay out new sites for those people who will necessarily have to be resettled because of the fact that there may perhaps be no more space at Heilbron or Villiers as a result of the lack of expansion potential. These people who are going to be sold out according to the hon. member, will be given a small place by this Government where they will be able to settle themselves on a basis which is stable and sound physico-bioligically.

It gives me pleasure to think of what this Government has done in various fields. Let us just take the question of estate duty. For many years this matter was a bottleneck. Our Government followed the policy of assisting a man to buy an economic piece of land. The Department of Agricultural Credit or the Land Bank rendered assistance to such a man. At his death his land was taken away in the form of estate duty. As a result of the arrangements we made last year, tax relief is granted on an estate up to and including R400 000. The Act says that if a farmer has an estate consisting of agricultural land, he may request a valuation from the Land Bank Board. In other words, this has the effect that an estate consisting solely of land up to and including a value of R800 000, which is usually valued at half the market price, can also enjoy tax relief according to the new scales. Are these not arrangements of this Government which are assisting, over and above the policy followed by the Land Bank and all other measures which have been taken, to effect consolidation of land for us in this country?

Over the past five years the State has made 215 allocations of land at a joint allocation value of R3 058 805. Most of these allocations have been made in order to consolidate uneconomic farms and to expand them as economic units. In this way I can mention various examples. In the same period the Agricultural Credit Board rendered assistance to an amount of approximately R48 million to 1998 farmers for the purchase of agricultural land. The largest percentage of this amount also served to make uneconomic farming units economic ones. I can occupy the time of this House for many hours by pointing out what this Government has done not only to identify the problems but also to weave into its policy over the years this matter of making land economic. Therefore we have reason this afternoon to say thank you. Because we realize the urgency of this problem, however, we also want to ask for the establishment of machinery which can work more quickly, as it was also put by the hon. member for Kroonstad. This will be the solution when we obtain the physico-biological stability in agriculture which we should like to have.

The hon. member who has just resumed his seat, reminds me very much of a guinea-fowl. What he did was to peck here and peck there at the farmers’ life from the cradle to the grave. He quoted many figures, for example maize prices, and so on. I was watching very carefully, and when the hon. member began to display his sensitivity towards the hon. member for Newton Park and quoted newspaper cuttings, the hon. Senator, the hon. the Minister of Agriculture, left the Chamber to go and smoke a cigarette outside. That is all I want to say about the hon. member’s speech.

I think that we are dealing with an important matter here. I would say it is one of the most important matters we have to deal with in South Africa, i.e. the future of our agriculture. When speaking about the future of our agriculture, I do not only speak about the farmer on his farm, but also about the production of the farmer on the farm, i.e. the economic production the farmer is able to provide for the people in the cities. The farmer must be able to make a living, and he must be able to supply his foodstuffs, his produce, at a price cheap and economic enough for the people in the cities. To be able to do that we will in future need a well-off farmer I should almost say aristocracy— in the rural areas. What we are dealing with today, is not only land or farms, because the time of moving onto new farms is past. There is no more virgin land in South Africa to which we can move. We must keep what we have. When we consider that position, there are many factors involved.

The first of these is that we are going to have a large population explosion during the next 25 years. The statisticians have furnished us with terrible figures, almost appalling figures, and we have to make provision for that. What we need for the present, is planned utilization of our land for the next 25 years. Tn the first place, we will have to determine what land can be used for production. By that I mean the land which is going to be used for intensive, productive and economic farming. In the second place, we have to determine what land is going to be used for urban development. It does not mean that we will have to confine ourselves to land adjoining the cities at present, but it will also mean that we will have to determine what land can be used for the cities which are going to be developed in future. The cities will be developed in order to expand our industries and agricultural produce will then be used by the consumer in these cities. In the third place, we are concerned with land which is being planned for other purposes. This is the land we need for the non-White population of South Africa. This is something which affects me directly, since my constituency extends over parts of the Ciskei.

A survey has to be carried out and it has to be carried out quickly. It is imperative to lay down those three conditions and to draw up a plan for the future of South Africa. We will have to determine where our agricultural land is going to be, where our urban and factory developments are going to take place and where we are in future going to find land for the non-Whites. This I consider as the principle requirement for the future not only as far as agriculture is concerned, but also for the whole of South Africa.

†But, Sir, when I speak Afrikaans, my Afrikaans blood comes to the surface and I tend to get carried away by emotion. Therefore I believe it is better to speak in the English language …

Then the Scotch blood comes out.

Never mind that, think about the Irish blood. Hon. members on the other side must not take it amiss when I say that we on this side of the House are sometimes the opposite to the well known three graces. You know the three graces hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil but perhaps one day when the hon. members opposite are on the Opposition side of the House they will find that when you are in the Opposition, you hear all evil, you see all evil and you speak all evil. Therefore we shall not entirely agree with the motion as it goes but we shall agree on many points as far as the future planning of South Africa is concerned. I believe it is absolutely necessary for future planning. I want to take the first paragraph of the motion which is before the House today. It reads— >That this House expresses its appreciation for the positive administrative, financial and statutory steps which the Government has taken and is taking to consolidate uneconomic units of agricultural land.

I believe that although steps have been taken we could have taken much more positive steps. When one sees today that no loans beyond R50 000 can be granted by the Land Bank and when you look at the price of agricultural land in our productive areas, you will see that there is not much land that you can buy for R50 000 today. I believe that there should be an extension and that we should combine, as the hon. member for Newton Park, has said all our agricultural finance under one control.

In other words, the Department of Agricultural Credit and the Land Bank should be combined under one control and financing should be far more extensive than what it is today. Farmers are having a great deal of trouble today with increased interest rates as the hon. Minister and the Deputy Minister will know. Some of them took bonds not so very long ago from private individuals and from public companies at low rates of interest which they could afford because of the high wool and mohair prices at that stage. Particularly the present wool and mohair prices are affecting the farmers today. There are some districts in the country, and I doubt whether an accurate figure will ever be arrived at, where land owners owe R½ million and because of the increased interest rates on the bonds that they have taken in order to consolidate they are in trouble. Now we have the position where they have consolidated their land, but because of the increased interest rates which have been forced upon them and the fact that they cannot get a Land Bank loan, both their properties are forced out of production.

I know people who are absolutely on their knees today. They do not know what to do and where they can turn to. This is a factor which is not unique to one area but is unique throughout the whole midlands area that was struck by drought, that was struck by the drop in land prices and that was struck by the sudden and unexpected increase in interest rates. I cannot blame either the hon. the Minister of Agriculture or his Deputy Minister for the increase in interest rates, but I can blame the hon. the Minister of Finance for it. I believe that something very drastic should be done to save the agriculture in South Africa and to save it in the interim period —this word “interim” is a very popular word today. I believe you have to save agriculture in the interim period because you are going to have a complete collapse if nothing is done about it.

Uh, huh!

The hon. the Minister says “uh, huh”. He has told me in private conversation how hard it was with the sons on the farm, but I shall not spring that on him. Droughts, the increased interest rates and the lowering of land prices are knocking the farmers very heavily at the moment. We have to save agriculture for the interim period till we have balanced out the economics. I come back to the idea that we have to have this overall planning to reserve certain ground in South Africa at this moment for permanent economic agricultural production. This ground must be set aside almost as a nature reserve is set aside.

And prevent subdivision of that property, or what would you do with it?

You have the power already.

You have the power already. The hon. Minister is trying to get me to speak outside the purview of this motion.

But you opposed the subdivision.

Do not lead him into temptation.

The hon. Minister should know that this motion has to do with the consolidation of agricultural land and has nothing whatsoever to do with subdivision.

It is no use consolidating it in the one case and subdividing it in another.

I want to ask the hon. Minister a question. Does he agree that a survey should be done in the Republic of South Africa whereby the land that should be reserved for agricultural purposes for the future should be set aside?

The point is that there is no sense in consolidating properties in certain cases and subdividing it in other cases.

I am not talking about subdivision, I am asking the Minister whether he agrees that a survey should be made of all potential, useful agricultural land and that it should be reserved for future use.

You know what it is.

Order! I cannot allow this to carry on. The hon. member must proceed with his speech.

Perhaps the hon. Deputy Minister knows what I am talking about and perhaps he agrees with me. I believe that this is absolutely necessary.

[Inaudible.]

In the summary of the Press release of the Second Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Agricultural Land, the matter of uneconomic agriculture was dealt with. I may quote from page 5 of the Press release—

Here is the answer; it is given in this report. I would like to be able to talk about subdivision, but I cannot. If the hon. Minister is here when we resume the debate on the subdivision of Agricultural Land Bill I shall raise this matter which I have not begun as yet. I shall tell the hon. Minister what, I shall think about it.

That is a challenge.

In the second report which has just been published the commission deals more comprehensively with the question of describing units that are too small. I quote—

The hon. the Minister knows that you can make a good or a reasonable or a decent living on a farm today and then you gradually go into a drought period, and the price of your product goes down, and you may be a poor White within 18 months. He knows that from experience. He has had to deal with these things from day to day for many years, and the hon. the Minister himself cannot define what an economic unit is.

But how can you?

I cannot. That is why I say that he should have a survey made in order to reserve permanently for agricultural use all ground in South Africa that is suitable for agriculture.

What would happen then?

Order! I cannot allow this cross-questioning.

Sir, may I come to another point. One of the legs of the motion is that we should ascertain whether it would not serve a good purpose for the legislation and the methods of certain Western countries in this regard to be investigated and applied in South Africa. Sir, I wonder if that is necessary. I believe that we in South Africa know what is good agricultural ground. I believe that we can preserve that agricultural ground. As the hon. member for Newton Park has said, the tendency today is towards consolidation. The farmers in the better parts of the country are consolidating their farms; they are farming more economically, but it is the farmers in the more arid parts of the country whom we have to help now through an interim period in which they are receiving absolute shock treatment such as they have never experienced before as a result of the lowering of the income and living standards. Sir, may I just quote again from this summary of the second report—

Sir, we have our agricultural attachés at the embassies and they can tell us what is going on in other countries, but if this is the commission’s finding—and they must have gone into it very deeply—is it going to serve any purpose for us to send people overseas when they can go around South Africa itself and find out what the problem is here? Sir, the problem here is more important than it is for us to know what is going on in other countries. We want economic farming; we want consolidated farming. Let us have a look at the problem here in South Africa; let us spend a few million on investigating the problem in South Africa. I believe that this is absolutely essential to South Africa. We could perhaps go to places like Australia and Israel to investigate the new subterranean drip irrigation systems which they are using to turn deserts green there; we might be able to do the same thing in this country. Sir, I come back to the population explosion which we have to face and which the world has to face. We are going to have a lot of people to feed in South Africa; we are going to have many millions of people to feed, and whether we give independence to the Transkei or to Owambo or not, we will still have to feed those countries. This is the problem that faces us because if we do not feed them, Sir, then we will be faced with a bigger problem than the non-consolidation of agricultural land. I feel that this is an important factor and I hope that the hon. the Minister will reply fully to this.

In the short time at my disposal, before the hon. the Deputy Minister must take the floor, it is unfortunately not possible for me to speak about both the points in this motion. I therefore chiefly want to confine myself to the second point of the motion, particularly as a result of the questions asked by the hon. member for Newton Park about the care of farmers who retire from agriculture, and then also the subsequent reformation of the land. [Interjection.] Sir, the frivolity of that hon. member, who has just made a remark about Communism, goes so far that I can pay not even him the slightest attention.

Sir, I am saying that I also want to give attention to rural reformation after the consolidation process—or the recreation of the agricultural structure, as it is called in Europe. Since the hon. member for Newton Park asked questions about what becomes of the retiring farmers—I shall come back to that at a later stage in my speech —I just want to say at this stage that even highly developed countries, some of the richest countries in the world, countries with a long tradition and history behind them, are today still seeking the answers to these problems. It cannot therefore be expected that those answers should be readily available in South Africa. But I do nevertheless think—and I think the hon. member for Newton Park will agree with me—that since this motion requests an inquiry into the methods and the legislation of other Western countries, this will and must also have a bearing on the consequences of consolidation, i.e. it will also have a bearing on the subsequent care of retiring farmers and the recreation of the agricultural structure.

Sir, the consolidation and subsequent recreation of the agricultural structure, the recreation of uneconomic agricultural units into economic ones, will be a lengthy, difficult and expensive process; we must have no doubts about that, and specifically because of that, the second part of this motion requests that additional means be created to expedite the process of consolidation and requests, in addition, an inquiry into the methods and the legislation of other Western countries relative to this entire aspect.

I do not believe that there is or ought to be any difference of opinion between the two sides of the House about the purely economic, agricultural, social and socioeconomic problems resulting from the decrease in size of our farms. There could be a difference of opinion about what an uneconomic unit actually is, and the hon. member for Newton Park—he will not reproach me for saying this—is rather inclined to make a little politics out of this complicated question, but that, Sir, is his privilege.

Like you do with the communists?

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Florida, who has nothing else to do in this House except be frivolous —I scarcely have words to describe this— is doing great damage to the dignity of the House; he does not realize this; but I do not blame him because I do not expect that a person with his integrity ought to realize it.

Do not get angry.

Sir, there may also be a difference of opinion about how far the Government must go with its price policy in respect of certain agricultural products as far as the large number of border-line cases are concerned, when it is a question of keeping economic units economically sound or raising uneconomic units to the level of economic units. We shall have to keep in mind this aspect, that we shall probably also have to consolidate these border-line cases in the future if it is proved that they are uneconomic units, which will be an expensive, lengthy and again difficult process. The fact is, however, that a large number of indisputably uneconomic units exist in our country, and it is on these indisputably uneconomic units—and I should like to say this for the hon. member for Newton Park’s information—that this motion focuses attention, and not on those we have any doubts about.

The problem of uneconomic units is not restricted to South Africa. It is a problem we also encounter in the highly developed countries of the world, countries that have the means at their disposal, countries that have reached a high level of development in commerce, industry, science and technology. They are also faced with that problem today. Countries such as France, England, the United States, Canada and Belgium are faced with this problem, and effective steps are being taken to prevent the further emergence of uneconomic units and to consolidate the existing ones. The fact is, however, that these developed countries are laying down guide-lines to combat the problem. We thus find, for example, that in the member countries of the European Economic Community, retirement compensation is paid to the farmers who vacate their farms at a certain age and relinquish it for consolidation or agricultural reformation. We also find that even where the financing of this method is the most important aspect in these member countries, they hold divergent opinions about it. We find, for example, that in countries such as France, Belgium and Holland this retirement compensation is totally financed by State funds, without the farming community making any direct contribution. But this retirement compensation is available to all farmers who qualify and meet with certain requirements. My time does not allow me to elaborate on these requirements now. We also find that in Germany, for example, this retirement compensation is regarded as a social measure and linked to old-age pensions. Thus, for example, a farmer who reaches the age of 60 and relinquishes his farm for consolidation or agricultural reformation, can receive an increased pension above and beyond his normal old-age pension. We also find that in addition to this retirement compensation that is paid, provision is also made for quite a few kinds of insurance which have the specific purpose—for the hon. member for Newton Park’s information— of facilitating the care of people retiring from agriculture and also to make it easier for them under specific circumstances to decide upon retirement and withdrawal from farming. We thus find, for example, that there is insurance in respect of illness and maternity, which is compulsory for all farmers in countries such as Belgium, Italy, France and Luxemburg. We find that there is invalid insurance which is compulsory in France, Italy and Luxemburg. There is an old-age insurance which is compulsory in all the countries of the E.E.C. There is insurance in respect of the care of next of kin, which is also compulsory for all the member countries of the E.E.C. There is, for example, compulsory insurance in respect of child care, this being compulsory in countries such as Germany, France, Luxemburg and Holland. There is also workmen’s compensation insurance, which is compulsory in Germany, France, Italy and Luxemburg. We therefore see that this motion as it stands, particularly the second paragraph, also embodies very expressly an inquiry into the care of people who must, as a result of their uneconomic units, vacate those units so that they can become available for consolidation and for rural reformation. All these aspects must be investigated. I therefore agree with the hon. member for Kroonstad and the motion he moved. I feel that a thorough investigation into the methods and legislation existing in countries overseas can be of great value and significance to us in South Africa, because we are still on the verge of a tremendous rural reformation process that still has to take place in the interests of South Africa, in the interests of agriculture and the farming community.

The motion is in three parts, the first expressing appreciation for the steps taken by the Government; secondly, requesting it as a matter of urgency to institute ways and means to implement the process of consolidation and, thirdly, to ascertain what legislation there is overseas. The only member who has dealt at all with the legislation from overseas is the hon. member who has just sat down. He seemed to confine himself very largely to steps which have been taken overseas to make it possible to move people out of agriculture. I find this very significant indeed, because we have been told in various speeches by members opposite that it is the object and the desire of the Nationalist Party Government that another 30 000 farmers must leave the land. I am wondering whether this is the sort of legislation which is being looked for overseas to make it possible for those 30 000 farmers to be moved out of agriculture. Because my information is that the process of consolidation which takes place overseas has run into the sort of difficulties that you would expect. Where you have a Government which is spending large sums of money in consolidating units you reach a certain point beyond which consolidation becomes no longer effective or remunerative. I believe this is going to be the sort of thing which we are going to face. This hon. Deputy Minister and his department will face this problem here in South Africa. I want to pose a couple of practical problems. I heard as a matter of interest that it was a matter of urgency to investigate and institute additional ways and means of implementing the process but we have heard nothing further about that at all. Perhaps the hon. the Minister can give us some thoughts on that. The hon. members opposite have had nothing to say about it. I have heard nothing which will implement the process quicker. The only way of course in which it can be implemented quicker is to spend more money.

Then you did not listen to my speech.

I am coming to what the hon. member for Kroonstad said. He suggested that there should be a semi-Government body which will deal with the question of what virtually amounts to the allocation of land in South Africa.

An “agentskap”.

Yes, we have heard this word “agentskap” before but the hon. member suggests a semi-Government body which will be virtually in total control of the allocation of ground in South Africa.

No, I did not suggest that.

No, he did not suggest it, but he suggested an agency. Now let us examine how the agency is going to work. If you are going to sell ground it has to be established in some way or another that it is an economic unit. Who is going to establish that? Obviously the agency or the Minister’s department or somebody will have to establish in future that if I sell my farm it is going to be an economic unit.

It is being done in France.

I accept that it is done in France. I do not know about France but the problem has arisen and is causing national concern to the farmers in Great Britain, this process of consolidation.

If it can be done in France, we can do it too. [Interjections.]

I am trying to point out to the hon. member that what he is suggesting is that there shall be an agency which will be the allocating agency for agricultural land in South Africa and will have to have access to money. Nobody has suggested where the money will come from; obviously it will come from the Minister of Finance.

Not of necessity.

Where else can it come from? I am sure the hon. the Deputy Minister is not going to pay for this sort of thing.

What about a levy on the farmers?

That is something else we might suggest, that there might be a levy on the farmers. I am just wondering from where the money is going to come. If there is a levy on motorists to protect them against accidents, perhaps we can make the farmers subject to a levy to protect them against subdivision. I do not know.

Say something sensible!

I want to know from the hon. the Deputy Minister the scope and the scale on which he envisages this process of consolidation is going to take place. The figures were mentioned by the hon. member for Heilbron, that an amount of some R3 million had been spent on 218 consolidations. I could not quite catch it, but I think that was the figure. We still have, I do not know how many thousands of uneconomic units which will have to be consolidated. The financial implications are so overwhelming that I really should like to hear from the hon. the Deputy Minister, because I do not know how the department and the Deputy Minister envisage this process taking place, over what course of time and how it is going to unfold itself. However, I think that you will come to a stage where the profitability of your investment in ground is going to reach a threshold—it just has to do it. If you are going to invest millions and millions of rands in consolidating units of ground, you are going to come back to the same problem which you have today and that is that it is the price structure of agriculture in South Africa which determines whether a unit is economic— within limits.

Of course.

There are all sorts of different factors. The ability of the farmer himself, the availability of labour, the rain, everything leads to the fact whether a unit is economic or not.

The one thing which is basic and primary to the agricultural industry in South Africa is profitability and this is more and more determined in South Africa today by the Government. A cheaper way of getting consolidation to take place is by using the money of the private sector. The private sector will use its money for consolidation if it is going to be profitable and it must be clearly demonstrated to the private sector that it will be profitable. If I may mention my own constituency, this is an area of good farms, lovely farms.

United Party supporters!

United Party supporters, yes. These are families, wealthy families, but during the past 10 years or so the wealth of those families has been eaten into by the fact that farming is becoming uneconomic in many of those areas. The result is that you are finding the farms becoming smaller; you are finding concentration. Where in the old days 3 000 or 4 000 acres was the average sized farm, you are finding today that farms of 500 morgen —that is 1 000 acres—are becoming more the pattern.

That is possible.

It is not possible: it is happening. What is also happening is that you have people investing large sums of money which range up to R70 000 or R80 000 per year in buildings and cattle and cold tanks and all sorts of things to make the industry economic. Basically the industry these people are following is fresh milk. On a 500 morgen farm it is possible today to produce 500 gallons per day at an economic price. We know, however, that every single year the price rises against the farmer. One of these days we will reach a stage where the limit of 500 gallons, which is today’s limit for economic farming, will be too low. We found in the old days that if we could produce 100 or 120 or 150 gallons per day we could make a living but today you cannot do it any longer.

If you are going to go out now with the object of consolidating into larger units farms which have investments of R70 000 or R80 000, if you are going to have to press your production beyond that limit of 500 gallons to 1 000 gallons which you will have to do if prices go on rising against the farmer, unless the Government takes steps to correct the price received by the farmer, what sort of demand are you going to make on a farmer who, from time to time, has to produce that much more and that much more? You reach the stage where the ordinary individual farmer cannot carry the burden. You reach a certain threshold beyond which it is no longer economic at the prevailing price structure to press a farmer to expand his operations, because then he needs managers, specialized services, and all sorts of things which do not increase the return he gets. He may be more efficient, but the return he is getting is not increased because of the fixed price which farmers get for their products.

I believe it is essential that we establish here in this debate today that the question of the economic viability of a farming unit is basically one of the price received by the farmer. I want to say that this has been recognized in the United States of America many years ago where the Government went out of its way to pay subsidies to farmers in order to keep their operation at a reasonably profitable level. They paid the subsidies to the farmers and they subsidized the food to the housewives. I think that we must look very closely at some sort of system like this in South Africa, because we must face one thing: If the platteland is prosperous, then the whole of South Africa is prosperous, because the basic, primary demand in the economy comes from the farming community. It comes from the small businesses spread throughout the length and breadth of South Africa. It is so vitally important that the farming community should be given some sort of guarantee that they can make this reasonable income which will allow them to live on a decent standard and which will guarantee prosperity for the business communities of all the small platteland villages.

In America the Government there has gone so far that it is now considering guaranteeing a personal income of 3 000 dollars a year to every single family in the country. People ask how they can afford it. They can afford it because the people spending that money generate a volume of business which pays tax which comes back again in the sort of subsidies which they give. They believe that they can generate growth, they can generate new jobs, they can generate the sort of economic prosperity which will allow that sort of process to be undertaken. What we can do in our country I make no pretence of knowing. I make absolutely no pretence at all. What the implications of this would be to our economy, which is a little more frail than that of the United States, I do not know, but I certainly think that one has to look at the question of the consolidation of these units, and that one must realize that this can only go so far. You cannot go beyond a certain threshold limit to which a farmer can produce sufficiently and effectively.

I really and honestly believe that whereas the motion expresses appreciation and this kind of thing, nobody in this House is against the consolidation of farms into bigger units which are going to be efficient. But the point is and the problem is to establish the level of efficiency and that is going to vary as the hon. member said. Some will be 18 per cent above and some will be 18 per cent below. That is human nature and we cannot do anything about that. I do not believe that the emphasis is rightly placed. I think the hon. member has brought a motion here which seeks to place the emphasis on the fact that the difficulties of the farming community are based on and derive from the fact that they are farming on uneconomic units of land, but I do not think that is the problem. I think the emphasis is being placed on the wrong place altogether in this particular motion.

I come back again to the question of the capital investment. If the State is going to invest the capital of the public in land, on what basis is it going to do it? Is it going to be on the basis of a purchase and that you will lend money to consolidate? We know the difficulties which the farmers have. I believe that unless you can see an immediate return, to borrow money today to buy land is something which is a very, very dicey thing indeed.

The hon. member for Heilbron took us to task because we do not go out to the farmers with tears in our eyes and give them the emotional uplift which they need. The most dangerous thing which you can do to a young man today is to go to talk to him about emotion. If you get emotional about farming in this country, you are going to go one way.

Like Brakpan.

What we have to do is to go out to them and say: Look, this is a business and what you have to do is to get down to the cold, hard facts and the figures; do not come here with all the jazz about the moon and the stars and all the business that you think you are saving your country. We believe that the hand of the White man on the countryside is the guarantee of White security. But when you put a young man on the farm he has to get down to it with his notebook, pencil and paper and work out what he is going to make. If he does not, he is going to be burdened for the rest of his life with a mountain of debt from which he will never escape. This simply leads to more and more problems for everybody, the whole of the community, the farming community, the Departments of Agriculture, the Treasury and everybody else. If I may say so, I think this motion is wrongly phrased. I think it comes down on the wrong emphasis. As I have said, the emphasis should be on the economics of farming as related to the Government’s price-fixing policies, and not the economic subdivision of ground.

The hon. member for Kroonstad raised the matter of the testamentary disposition of land. This is a tremendously difficult subject. There are people who already own ground which is uneconomic and many people who have smallholdings leave them in their wills. The hon. the Minister has the power to forbid transfer of those pieces of ground to the heirs. I believe I am right in saying that. Now what is going to be done? If you have smallholdings which are valued at something between R15 000 and R20 000 or more, how are you going to consolidate those smallholdings back into farming units? If you have an agency which has access to Government money, how do you go about consolidating units of ground into a farm where the original farm may have been broken up into five or ten different units, or more, if they are 50-acre units, and each of them may have an average value of R12 000? Now you have to consolidate 12 units of R12 000 back into one farm. Can hon. members see the financial implications of a process of this nature? You are investing public funds and you have to show a return on it. By and large, most of these smaller subdivided areas are round about the peripheries of our urban areas. If a person leaves a piece of ground to his two daughters equally, without a division, what are we going to do about it? Can we say to them they may not subdivide it and have a half share each? Will they have to sell it when they have been born and raised there? Are we going to say that it is going to be consolidated back into a farm? I think we are coming back to another question which we have already debated—I think the hon. member for Albany referred to it—namely the zoning, allocation or setting aside of certain areas which are going to be agricultural ground, where a different policy is being applied to other ground which today is counted as agricultural, but which should have another designation.

Mr. Speaker, with this motion the hon. member for Kroonstad has strengthened our hand to a very large extent. I do not think anybody disagrees as far as this matter is concerned. The hon. members for Heilbron and Odendaalsrus spoke of this matter like farmers, and they gave it their support. Something else I am grateful for is that hon. members on our side referred to the magnificent work which had been done by some of our retired officials, and by some who still are in the Service, so as to try to achieve this fine ideal. I am pleased these people are thanked from our side. Some of them started working in these departments the year I was born.

But now I come to the hon. member for Newton Park. He asked what proof we had that consolidation had been applied on a large scale. In the first place I should like to tell the hon. member that this matter of consolidation is a perfectly voluntary one at present. The hon. member for Mooi River asked what we were going to do with the small farms measuring 500 morgen— the farms used to be 2 000 morgen in extent—in his constituency on which people were making an economic living at the current prices for fresh milk. I am so pleased the hon. member said that. Therefore he accepts that the current price for fresh milk is an economic one. Those were his words.

At 500 gallons, yes.

But if such a plot farmer does not want to consolidate, we do not touch him. That is an item of planning for the future. I shall come back to the hon. member for Mooi River in a moment. The hon. member for Newton Park spoke of R4 000 per annum as an economic unit …

I was referring to what you had mentioned.

Yes, he was referring to my R4 000. He has never told us what his idea is of an economic unit. However, the hon. member said a farmer with R70 000 today only just constituted an economic unit and that he had to borrow that money at a very high rate of interest. But remember, his burden of debt is not 100 per cent. We proceed on the assumption that he owes 50 per cent. After all, he has paid half of the land. Surely he is not going to calculate 9½ per cent interest on that. But I ask the hon. member whether it is wrong to proceed on the assumption that in my opinion a farmer should have a net income of R4 000 per annum? Then everything has been paid and he has his house and water free of charge. He still drinks the milk of the cows he has on the farm. The hon. Minister asked the member by way of interjection whether everyone should be given assistance. He replied, “No, surely we cannot give financial assistance to a millionnaire to consolidate”. The hon. member agrees with that. Therefore he himself must have some norm at the back of his mind in terms of which he wants to determine when a farmer has an economic unit. I have told him mine is R4 000 per annum at the moment. If a man wants to subdivide a piece of land, we must have a norm in terms of which we can determine whether or not the man will be able to make a living. However, the hon. member said that in the course of time and with the depreciation of money he would eventually no longer have an economic unit, and I concede that.

What are you going to do then?

There will be adjustments all along the line. The hon. member for Mooi River spoke of the man who produced 500 gallons of milk per day. South Africa’s production per milk cow is 2 gallons as against Holland’s production of 5/6 gallons per cow. It is the same cow, the same four teats, one is milking, the same mouth one is feeding, but our production is as low as this. But now I say that we are improving our production too by means of artificial insemination and new techniques. Therefore the hon. member should not take into account the size of the land alone; he should take into account the efficiency of the farmer.

The hon. member for Albany asked how we were going to feed the masses. Our problem today is that we have found over the past ten years that production in the agricultural industry has increased by an average of 4,3 per cent per annum as against the population increase of 2,4 per cent. We are saddled with surpluses today. In this regard the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg District gave me everything I needed on the question of the surplus butter. Why is there a surplus? Because our farmers are producing more than we can consume. Nobody can say in advance that R4 000 per annum will still represent an economic unit in 30 years’ time, but the hon. member said there was a time when R4 000 did represent an economic unit. That is correct; that was in the days of the United Party. There was a time when 60 per cent of our farmers could not obtain a telephone, let alone afford one. This side of the House, however, has developed the country economically. Today we find a telephone virtually on every farm.

At present the farm telephones are better than the city telephones.

Is the hon. member satisfied that a farmer should have a motor car and a van? I do not begrudge him those. We have developed the country economically and today the man is able to buy a van and a motor car. However, he has to pay for them from this R4 000. In the days of the hon. member this was no problem. They simply could not obtain or afford any of these things. Today we have placed the farmer on a standard which makes it unnecessary for him to pull his hat over his eyes in the face of city dwellers. I am not saying things are going well in the agricultural industry. The hon. member spoke of our price policy. Previously we could allegedly make an economic living because of a better price policy. Those were the words of the hon. member. The hon. member for Mooi River also spoke of our price policy in consequence of this Government’s interference in prices. Do you know which farmers approach the Minister of Agriculture today to tell him with which industries things are going well? Those which are under his control. In this way we have maize and wheat, the prices of which are controlled. The other day the hon. member for King William’s Town referred to potatoes going bad on the market. However, one can take every commodity which is free from control by this Government and which, therefore, is produced on the basis of supply and demand …

What about the Potato Board?

The Potato Board is a surplus removing scheme in so far as it is able to obtain markets overseas. The Potato Board is not a storage board as the other boards of control are. Hon. members opposite very readily refer to the Government’s price policy, but I want to tell them that if they go somewhat deeper into these matters and have contact with the farmers, they will know that the farmers want the Government to interfere even more as regards other products going bad on the markets.

Another question the hon. member asked was where the farmers were to go after consolidation had taken place. The hon. member for Heilbron referred to the Orange River scheme and the Makatini Flats and the millions of rand being spent there.

What are they doing on the Makatini Flats?

What are they going to grow there?

At the moment we have a surplus of everything, but if in five or six years’ time we find that we may produce additional sugar and wheat, it may be done there. At the moment we are experimenting with rice. There are various products which can be produced there. However, hon. members want to make something political out of the Makatini Flats, and for that reason we shall leave the matter at that. Then there is the Orange River scheme. 80 per cent of the irrigation water of this scheme is utilized for agriculture. Now hon. members opposite should not proceed on the assumption that anyone who cannot make a success of farming is going to get a plot at one of the irrigation schemes. There will be a process of sifting and it will be ascertained who the people are who will be able to make a living on this expensive irrigation land. The hon. member asked for assistance to these farmers from the Land Bank and the Agricultural Credit Board. Now I want to ask him whether everybody should be assisted? He will not answer me, because the position necessarily is that a percentage of people cannot qualify for Government assistance at a subsidized rate of interest. Surely we cannot render financial assistance to a man who has been farming on an economic unit for 15 years and who has gradually gone downhill and who is not, in our opinion, the right man for the profession. The hon. member asked what was to become of such a person, but in this very same House hon. members opposite repeatedly refer to the shortage of manpower in our industries. As yet I have not come across one of these farmers who is unemployed because of circumstances beyond his control. In the no-confidence debate the hon. member for Witbank referred to his son who became a lorry driver for R160 per month after he had passed Std. 10. He is just a young lad of 18 years. For those who want to work, there are ample employment opportunities in South Africa. Therefore, as far as this is concerned, there is not such a major problem.

I now come to the 30 000 farmers to whom the hon. member for Mooi River referred. It is so easy to turn this matter into a political football. Every little bit of assistance rendered by the Government all along the line is not for the millionaire, but for this very man who is making a moderate living and whom we want to help to earn an income of R4 000 or more. The hon. member himself said that consolidation was a good thing and that he supported the hon. member for Kroonstad in that there were cases in respect of which consolidation had to take place. However, the hon. member should not huckster with the idea that we are going to have 30 000 farmers fewer as a result of such a policy of consolidation. The hon. member for Mooi River asked sneeringly what “jazz” this was of referring to the emotional. A man who does not speak the language of the hon. member for Heilbron will run away from his farm like a rotten So-and-so at the very first minor drought. One must have in one’s heart not only the will to look after the economic aspect of the agricultural industry, but also a fundamental love for the land. Business does play a major role, but one must not forget the emotion and then sneeringly refer to that as “jazz” when someone speaks of the soul of our people.

Yes, but love or no love, surely there must be …

Surely Uncle Jan will agree with me that if one does not have the aptitude to farm one may be the best economist in the world and still not be able to make a success of farming. I know many economists who subsequently became farmers and who left the land because they could not make a success of farming. They simply do not have the farming instinct. The hon. member also made the statement that if the rural areas were prosperous, the country was prosperous. I do not disagree for a moment with that statement of the hon. member. The aspiration and ideal of all of us is to have a happy farming population and a prosperous one. That, in fact, is the justification for this motion of the hon. member for Kroonstad. We want to give the farmers economic units. The hon. member for Newton Park asked why there were people who were expanding. He said they had been able to make an economic living before but were farming on an even larger scale at present. The hon. member must remember that many of our farmers who had one economic unit have three or four economic units today. We have a free economy.

Your report says they, too, are in difficulty.

There is the odd one who is in difficulty, but what really worries me is that young men tell me today that when they open their newspapers they see about this matter of Government assistance to farmers. The hon. member for Graaff-Reinet told me the other day that he has a son who is a farmer through and through and who asked him whether farming was a paying proposition. He asked his son, “Why do you ask me that?” His son replied, “Look in the newspapers, one just reads about adversity, disasters and set-backs”. Because of these stories of hon. members we are making of this industry we are all proud of, one which is being approached pessimistically; we are not encouraging people to take a share in the agricultural industry along with us. The hon. member for Mooi River also said we must reach the stage when we pay the farmer a good price for his product and then subsidize food, as was being done in other countries. Is the hon. member satisfied that the subsidy on wheat exceeds R30 million today? Is he satisfied that the subsidy on maize is R28 million to the consumer this year?

Is that enough to keep the rural areas prosperous?

The hon. member must remember that this money comes from the pocket of the taxpayer. Is he satisfied that the price of butter is subsidised by R5,6 million?

Is that enough to keep the dairy farmers going?

But the hon. member said a short while ago that he was satisfied with the price he was obtaining today for his 500 gallons of milk. Did he not say that?

I am not speaking of the man who produces 500 gallons but of the man who produces only 200 or 100 gallons.

That is why we want to consolidate. They have had it. To come back to the motion of the hon. member for Kroonstad, if we want to see where the real bottleneck is, we have to consult the reports to which hon. members opposite referred. When we do so, we see that since 1923 seven commissions of enquiry have been appointed to investigate what was wrong in our agricultural industry. I have here the names of the members of those commissions—all of them men who have made their mark well and truly in our agricultural industry. All of them came back to the one cardinal point, i.e. that we must ensure that we have economic units. Here I have in mind, for example, the sweet bushveld of the Transvaal which covers millions of morgen. 77,6 per cent of the land of that area is subdivided into uneconomic units. These are cattle farms, all of which are under 2 000 morgen in extent. 22,4 per cent of these units is in fact economic units. Hon. members must not think that we proceed on the assumption that people have to be taken by the scruff of the neck and be told that they must consolidate. Hon. members asked what assistance we rendered. Last year the Department of Agricultural Credit made R30 million available for the consolidation of debts and for the consolidation and purchase of land. This, however, does not apply to the rich man; he does not have a snowball’s chance of obtaining assistance from this department. We only provide assistance in cases involving land we should like to convert into economic units.

I want to conclude by mentioning that the hon. member for Kroonstad referred to what was being done overseas. I appreciate that and admit that it is something to which we must give attention. In the report released by the Minister of Agriculture last week, the Du Plessis Commission said they had come to the conviction that the incidence of uneconomic farming units, due to under-sized farms, inefficient managerial practices or unjustified systems of production were assuming such proportions in the Republic and were having such adverse effects that they had to be regarded as one of the most serious problems at present gripping the country and the agricultural industry. This is one of the reports to which you always refer. It is a résumé of the findings of that commission and deals with the question of uneconomic units and all the other bottlenecks. In 1968 the Department of Agriculture sent its policy adviser, Dr. Du Plessis, to do research in the Americas, Brazil and Argentine on this question of uneconomic units. In 1970 he, accompanied by an official of the Department of Planning, visited Western and Southern Europe, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Greece and West Germany. The rural reform committee is formulating the information. The hon. member asked me whether we could not expedite this matter. I can tell him that we shall do our utmost to give more attention to these matters to see whether we cannot expedite the consolidation of units. Today we may not discuss the Subdivision Act, but the hon. the Minister asked by way of interjection whether that side of this House agreed that we must consolidate and all of them spoke from one mouth and said the farmer should be given an opportunity of making a living on a sound unit. If a government was consolidating on the one hand, it would be very stupid of it to allow on the other hand that the land be fragmented into small uneconomic units.

Mr. Speaker, we have had a very interesting debate on this motion this afternoon. I think everybody will agree on this point. Consolidation of farm land of course depends largely on agricultural economics and marketing. I think everybody will agree too that the problem with which we are faced today is basically caused by inflation in this country. Economists and financiers invariably tell us that inflation means that there is too much money chasing too few goods. I submit that this is accepted. However, as far as agriculture is concerned, we find that too much produce is being chased by too little money. This is the opposite to inflation. Where we find inflation in most walks of life in South Africa, for instance in commerce and industry, the position in agriculture as far as the producer is concerned, is that the problem is just the reverse. I repeat, too much produce is being chased by too little money. If this is correct, then surely—I do not want to say that we are in a state of depression—we are in a depressed state. This is our problem in agriculture. I know and it has been proved again in this debate, that an uneconomic unit is difficult to define. I believe there is really only one way to define whether a man is farming uneconomically or otherwise; if he goes to town and meets his bank manager and he is prepared to meet him with a smile, then you may be sure that he farms on an economic unit. But if he slips round the first corner to avoid meeting his bank manager one may well know that he is farming on an uneconomic unit. This is the answer. In the past, farmers who farmed on uneconomic units, especially those in the Northeastern Free State and the Eastern Transvaal, were able to move with their stock during certain seasons. Those farmers were what we term the “trekboer”. We found them in large Karoo areas too where they were able to move their stock to the Eastern Cape, to areas such as Ugie and Maclear to avoid difficult periods of the year, particularly in times of drought. Those times have passed, never to return, when uneconomic units were not as familiar or as numerous as they are today.

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