Mr. Chairman, I think it is a good idea that members such as I should also participate in the discussion when the Health Vote is being discussed. I want to make a few comments on a matter which nobody has mentioned in this debate up to now, and that is family planning, for which provision is made in this Budget to an amount which is five times more than the amount voted last year. We are very glad about this. It makes one think that the Government has at last come to realize that we are concerned here with one of our greatest problems in South Africa, i.e. the enormous population increase taking place among people where it ought not to be taking place. I want to say at once that my remarks are not directed at any group or race. My comments are directed at all who bring children into the world and cannot care for them properly. I do not want to tell the Government either what should be done about this matter. This is a matter of tremendous magnitude which affects so many bodies and persons that it seems to me that the time has possibly arrived for a conference of experts in all the various spheres to be called to discuss this matter properly.

We know there are certain countries that take this matter so seriously that they have taken drastic steps in this regard, and one wonders whether the time has not arrived for us in South Africa also to think of taking drastic steps in this regard.

Of course, there are people who will say that one should not encourage birth control while one is also encouraging immigration, which we are in fact doing, at the same time. I think the reply to that is this; the immigrants we bring into our country are all people who are capable of making a more or less immediate contribution to our society. But these unfortunate people who are brought into the world under these unfortunate circumstances, can perhaps make their contributions here only in 20 years’ time.

Our great problem is the backlog which already exists in various fields in South Africa. We should try to uplift our people and the best way of uplifting them is to create opportunities for them to improve their lot. The greatest enemy we have in the world today against the upliftment of mankind, is poverty. Poverty is the cause of all the other evils with which we have to contend, such as malnutrition, over occupation, etc. One is able to do less for these unfortunate children who have to grow up under these circumstances because they cannot be cared for or be fed properly. Unfortunately the irony of the matter is that the poorer the people are, the more children they bring into the world. There are many people in our country today who cannot look after themselves, let alone after children. One immediately asks oneself whether those people should simply be allowed to bring as many children into the world as they like. The more children brought into the world under these circumstances, the worse the position becomes, not only of those children, but also of their parents, and the State is loaded with an ever-increasing burden. We can no longer allow the position to continue like that. I think we should at least check this rapid population increase so as to enable us to make up the big backlog which already exists in our country.

When I refer to a backlog, I have in mind housing and employment opportunities for people who have not had training. I also have in mind the difficulties which exist in regard to the training of the large numbers of people who are off-loaded onto us; I have in mind the difficulties which exist in providing them with an education, and, lastly, I have in mind the health services which have to be provided for them.

I am very pleased that it would seem as though the Government was at last beginning to realize the seriousness of this matter. I am not asking the hon. the Minister to rise today and to tell us what should be done in this regard. I think it is a very delicate matter. I think we should deal with it with as much circumspection as possible, and I hope that this matter will never be dragged into politics; it is too serious a matter for our country for it to be dragged into politics. With the best will in the world, the Government cannot solve this problem alone. I think we should encourage the public to make its contribution, too, in the matter of trying to provide information to these unfortunate people who do not have the necessary information.

Sir, if we cannot solve this problem, we may rest assured that all the other attempts we may make to uplift our people, will fail. The first thing we must do is to solve this problem. I have already said that poverty is probably the biggest danger which exists in any country. If we have poverty among a very large section of our population we may rest assured that at some time or other it will create social problems and eventual chaos in our society. We must remember that poor people, people who do not have an interest, people who do not have enough to eat, people who have no possession in the State, have nothing to lose either. If we do not halt this unfortunate rapid population increase —and we need only look around us to see what is happening—then, as I have already said, all our attempts in other spheres would be in vain.

The hon. member, who has just resumed his seat, must excuse me if I do not react to the speech he has just made. I think the Minister will give him a conclusive reply.

Firstly. I should briefly like to put forward a few ideas for the hon. the Minister to consider with respect to the Oranje Hospital in my constituency. It is the only hospital of that kind in the Orange Free State. In 1884 a start was made in erecting a building complex for White and nonWhite psychiatric patients. This hospital was erected on a building site of about 96 morgen, situated at the time on the outskirts of the city, but at present surrounded by residential areas, the boundaries of the back plots bordering on this particular area. At present there are about 1740 patients in this hospital, 1 200 being nonWhites. At the moment there is also still a need for accommodation for mentally deficient White children, but I am aware that this matter is already receiving the attention of the hon. the Minister and his department. At present the hon. the Minister’s department is also giving attention to the erection of additional accommodation for Whites and for non-White patients, and is also giving attention to the modernization of existing buildings. Before they continue with that, I want to submit for the hon. the Minister’s consideration that attention be given to closing down the nonWhite section, which is situated within the heart of the White residential area, and that a new hospital be erected within the non-White residential area or within a nonWhite area suitable for that purpose. Should this step be taken, I also think it necessary to take a look at the present White section. If the 1 200 non-Whites are removed from this site, it is my conviction that the 96 morgen will be too big for a White section alone. I would appreciate it if the hon. the Minister would consider finding another suitable site, perhaps nearer to the university and nearer to the present new academic hospital, which will be suitable for the purposes of training medical students. A modern complex can be erected there, which would be in the interests of patients as well as being in the interests of the services supplied there. I am convinced that if the hon. the Minister takes this step he will obtain the full co-operation of the Bloemfontein municipality, and the full co-operation of the university.

In yesterday’s debate hon. members of the Opposition lodged pleas for free hospitalization and for State contributions to medical aid funds. This leaves the impression that the White South African electorate must carry a very unfair burden in respect of hospitalization. Secondly, it also creates the impression that the State is doing nothing to assist medical aid funds. At this stage, and for the purpose of my argument, I want to make use of certain statistics. These statistics have a bearing on the White hospitals in the Free State. I am aware that in the other provinces there may be deviations here and there, although these would not be appreciable. At present about 60 per cent of the total number of hospitalized patients are members of medical aid funds. The 40 per cent of patients who are not covered by medical aid funds are therefore patients who must make their own provision for hospitalization. Of this 40 per cent about 21 per cent qualify for free hospital services in accordance with the existing means test. This means that about 19 per cent of patients in the provincial hospitals are responsible for their own hospital fees. It is now necessary for us to note what it costs the State and the provinces to establish accommodation for those patients. In academic hospitals the cost per patient per day is R24. In specialist hospitals it is R12-50 and in smaller hospitals, where no specialist services are furnished, it is R7-40. As against this the hospital fees for a private room in academic as well as in specialist hospitals is R6 and in a general ward R4 per day. This means that the State subsidizes this 19 per cent group of paying patients by 75 per cent to 84 per cent in the case of academic hospitals, while the subsidy amounts to 50 per cent to 66 per cent in specialist hospitals. As against this, paying patients in smaller hospitals are subsidized to the tune of 40 per cent to 60 per cent. This means that the State makes a big contribution towards bringing hospitalization within the reach of the more well-to-do group of people who land up as patients in hospitals. The question that now arises is how this affects medical aid schemes. I can state at once that hospital fees applicable to paying patients are also applicable to patients belonging to medical aid schemes. In other words, medical aid schemes are State-subsidized by this same percentage. This is a contribution which runs into millions of rand a year. Therefore it is an unjust accusation that a big burden is being placed on the members of medical aid schemes. If the cost per patient per day were to be recovered from medical aid schemes it would mean that the members of medical aid schemes would have to make much greater contributions to the schemes.

I do not think this plea for free hospital services is well thought out. The authorities can only furnish a service in accordance with the funds available. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Bloemfontein East dealt with the question of medical aid, and I think that it is important that the Committee should take note of what the hon. member has said. This is obviously an important factor when dealing with the high costs of medicine prevalent in the Republic of South Africa today. We on this side of the House believe that the medical aids perform a very vital role in providing people with security in time of illness, in a time of ill-health. We on this side of the House wish to see medical aid schemes extended and supported to ensure that they play a full role in this regard.

I would like to deal with two aspects which have been dealt with during the course of this debate. I would like to deal with the high cost of medicines and the shortage of doctors. In passing, however, I would Like to give my support to the views which have been expressed by the hon. member for North Rand when he dealt with the difficult problem of the family planning services which are being provided for in the Estimates before us. I believe that this is a vitally important problem. We can see from the Estimates that there has been a considerable increase in the amount of expenditure under Subhead K. Subhead K deals with medical poor relief and the amount to be expended in the coming year is R6,3 million in comparison with R3,7 million for the past year. When one considers the lack of education in many fields as far as family planning is concerned, I think it is certainly a matter which requires considerable attention by the Government and one in which the extension of these services, from an educational point of view, is vitally important. If we look at figures which were tabled in this House in reply to a question I put to the hon. the Minister of Statistics, we shall see that it also shows an alarming increase in the rate of illegitimacy in South Africa. Indeed, over the period of the past five years the number of illegitimate children amongst Whites, Coloureds and Indians amounted to nearly 200 000. Of course there are no statistics at all as far as the Bantu people are concerned, because it is too difficult for the Government to maintain any form of statistics as far as the Bantu community is concerned. The family planning service is of vital importance to the community.

As far as the high costs of medicine are concerned, one can see from the Estimates that there has also been a considerable increase under Subhead K, “Medical Poor Relief,” as far as medicines are concerned. On page 189 of the Estimates of Expenditure it shows, under the item entitled “Medicines and Dressings,” that the Estimates for the year 1971-’72 have increased from R2,3 million to R3,3 million for the current book year. That indicates an increase of over R1 million under that particular heading. The position as far as providing adequate medical service in South Africa is concerned, is one which this hon. Minister is responsible for, and that is why I would like to refer to the position as far as the shortage of doctors is concerned.

The hon. member for Fauresmith gave certain figures in the House yesterday indicating the present shortage. He mentioned that in South Africa we have only one doctor for every 2 000 patients, and only one non-White doctor for every 18 000 non-Whites. In Europe they have one doctor for every 800 or 900 patients. I would be grateful if the hon. the Minister could give an indication to the Committee as to the estimate of the shortage of doctors in South Africa at the present time. I know it is a difficult figure to assess, but when you look at the number of doctors of all races, it appears that we have a shortage of doctors in this country. What is more surprising, is the fact that there is a lack of training facilities for students to study medicine. I realize that this is an aspect which falls under the responsibility of the Minister of National Education as far as medical schools are concerned. It does seem ironic that while we are talking about the shortage of doctors in South Africa, we have a position that many prospective doctors and many potential doctors are unable to gain admission to a medical school. The hon. the Minister of National Education indicated in a reply to a question earlier this session that of the 3 196 applications by students for admission in 1972 to the various medical schools, only 820 were successful. I believe that this is a most unsatisfactory position, and I hope that the hon. the Minister will be able to use his influence with his colleague, the hon. the Minister of National Education, in an endeavour to provide greater facilities for the training of doctors.

This shortage of doctors affects various spheres in so far as our medical services are concerned. I should like to indicate the shortage of district surgeons in the hon. the Minister’s department. The hon. the Minister indicated in reply to a question by the hon. member for Berea that there was at that stage a shortage of 71 full-time district surgeons and 70 part-time district surgeons. This shortage of district surgeons has meant that there are too few having to attend to too many in many instances. I hope that the hon. the Minister wild be able to give some indication as to whether any improvement can be foreseen as far as this shortage is concerned.

But is there no indication in the reply?

Not to my knowledge. I have the reply here. The hon. the Minister merely quoted the shortage and dealt with the other aspects which concerned the number of patients whom were attended and the memorandum. I refer to the reply to Question No. 351 which was replied to in March this year. The question dealt with the shortage of full-time and part-time district surgeons in the various racial groups.

This shortage also has an effect in providing a service to the indigent aged persons who are residents of old-age homes. In collaboration with the Department of Social Welfare and Pensions, the hon. the Minister’s department assumed responsibility for these people from the 1st April, 1969. I should like to indicate to the hon. the Minister that this particular group of the inmates of old-age homes, the indigent people who fall in the sub-economic income group, are reaching a stage where they often require urgent medical attention or more frequent medical attention. The Department of Health is endeavouring to provide that service, but it has been brought to my notice by these welfare organizations which administer such homes that there are many instances where the present arrangement has been found unsatisfactory. A certain organization mentioned a case where a resident suffered a scalding of the hand on a Monday, but it took until the Wednesday before a doctor was able to attend to her. The organization also raised other points which show that the service is inadequate as far as provision for the old-age homes is concerned.

I should like to suggest that the hon. the Minister give consideration to permitting private practitioners to attend to these people in certain cases and that these private practitioners are then remunerated on a per capita basis on a medical aid tariff so that where urgent attention is required, it will be possible to render such service expeditiously.

Another aspect which concerns the shortage of doctors and the health services of our country affects the position of Bantu hospitals. In this regard we see on the Estimates a table showing the various Bantu hospitals in the Bantu homelands whose expenditure is provided for from the South African Bantu Trust Fund under the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development. The hon. the Minister of Health acts as an agency to ensure that standards are maintained and that these hospitals are administered in an efficient and professional manner. Consequently we have in the Estimates the staff of these hospitals listed and tabulated. In this regard I should like to say that the question of the staff of these hospitals in the Bantu homelands has a direct affect on those hospitals which are administered by the provincial administrations. I should like to say that many of these hospitals and particularly those which are situate in White areas and are still under the provincial administrations are experiencing severe difficulties because they are completely over-burdened as a result of the position in the Bantu homelands where the hospitals are being run by the staff provided by the Department of Health. The position is now reaching such a stage that some of these hospitals are almost at breaking point. I refer to the fact that it has been said on a number of occasions that a new hospital is to be built in the Umlazi area providing for 1 500 beds. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, there is a small matter I should like to bring to the hon. the Minister’s attention. It concerns the training of retarded children. Here I am thinking preeminently of the Lettie Fouch Institution in Bloemfontein and of the Lake Farm Institution of my friend, the hon. member for Algoa. I am quite aware that there was a commission of inquiry into these institutions. I am also aware that the Government apparently reached a decision about these institutions. I am also aware that an announcement was made to the effect that these institutions are going to be taken over by the Department of Education. However, at this stage they have not yet been taken over by the Department of Education. Neither can they be taken over by the Department of Education without legislation being introduced. This legislation was proposed last year, and apparently legislation in this connection will not be introduced during this session either. In the meantime these institutions find themselves in the greatest of financial difficulties. The simple reason for this is that they are all dependent on contributions from the public. After the announcement in connection with the complete takeover of these institutions, financial contributions from the public have simply stopped. The result is that an alarming situation has developed at these institutions and these people are actually in a financial fix. These institutions are extremely important, not only because they are out-and-out educational institutions, but also because these people still have to be held in safekeeping even after they have reached school-leaving age. It therefore still remains an open question to me whether these people really belong under the Department of Education or whether they do not perhaps belong under the Department of Health or the Department of Social Welfare. A short while ago the hon. member for North Rand lodged a lengthy plea for family planning. An alarming situation can develop if these people, who cannot think fully for themselves, are let loose when they have to leave school. We know that these people are sexually overstimulated and that if they are let loose they can create great problems for us. I therefore think that they should be kept under supervision for the rest of their lives. I think it is absolutely essential for the hon. the Minister to state here today specifically when that take-over will occur, and if it cannot take place this year, I think it is essential for him to say this to the Press and public, because at the moment these people are experiencing many problems with their funds.

Mr. Chairman, I want to say a few words about the provision of new clinics in the Bantu homelands, a matter about which the hon. the Minister told the House something in February last year and the progress of which I have been following with some considerable interest.

First of all, I was interested to see on the Estimates of the Bantu Administration Vote that an additional R1 million have been made available for health services and hospitals in the Bantu homelands. I think this hon. Minister is responsible for the administration of that part of the department. It would appear from a reply to a question which I put to the hon. the Minister earlier this year, that there are now something like 462 clinic centres operating in the Bantu homelands. If these were all established in the course of the last year, since the hon. the Minister announced the scheme, I must say that it is remarkable progress. I must also say that his department, more particularly the Department of Preventive Medicine, and the team headed by Dr. Wittman and Dr. Erasmus and others, should be congratulated on getting going at such a pace with this very essential service.

I also see that R50 000 extra has been voted for the provision of protective food. I want to come back to that later, because I think this provision is hopelessly inadequate in view of the problem which is confronting this country in the field of malnutrition.

I want to say to the hon. the Minister that, while I congratulate him on establishing 462 clinic centres in the homelands, it does seem to me a tragedy that we have lost something like 25 years in the postwar period when these clinics could and should have been operating in the homelands. The hon. the Minister will remember that the National War Memorial Health Fund was actually initially designed to establish clinics throughout South Africa in the African reserves, and that a pilot scheme had actually been established at Polela in Natal, which was providing exactly the same sort of services, as far as I can see, that the clinic centres are now providing in the homelands. It does seem a pity that the Government abandoned the recommendations of the Gluchman Report and did not go ahead in providing the local clinics in the Bantu homelands, which could have been providing educational services as far as nutrition is concerned, as well as all sorts of out-patient services. It could have been providing the distribution of protective food, and so have obviated an enormous amount of malnutrition in South Africa. They could also have gone ahead and done a good deal of family planning, about which a lot has already been said in this Vote and with which I concur. On that issue, I would say that a slightly more intelligent psychological approach is necessary if one wants to get the co-operation of the Black population in this regard. There is no point in our exhorting the White population to produce many children—as did the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development on one famous occasion—paying family allowances to one section of the population and then hoping that you are going to get the cooperation of the Black, Coloured and Indian population when you tell them to limit their families. Family planning should be spread over all the groups in this country.

[In audible.]

Yes, I certainly do think so. There are many very poor White families in this country who should not be encouraged to produce large families. There are many families—with Whites among them—where the general genetic picture is such that family planning is very essential. I hope we are going to go ahead with that.

Now I come back to the point I was talking about. I have mentioned the R200 000 now provided for the financial year 1972-’73 for the supply of protective food. I am very glad, indeed, that this is an increase on last year; but I must say that I still believe it to be hopelessly inadequate for what is undoubtedly a very serious problem in South Africa. I quote Dr. Wittman here, taking part in a discussion of food supplementation in Durban in September last year, in which he said, talking about the subsidized milk powder scheme, which the Government is going in for: “There is no doubt at all about the high incidence of protein calorie deficiencies, kwashiorkor and malnutrition in South Africa.” I think that is borne out by the various studies which have been done throughout South Africa on the incidence of kwashiorkor. I want to say again that I am sorry that it is no longer a notifiable disease, because I do not see how we can study and follow the improvements in this field, and in preventive medicine generally, if we do not have basic statistics on which to base these surveys. So, again, I ask the hon. the Minister why it is that he does not reintroduce the idea of making kwashiorkor a notifiable disease. I believe we need a little more imaginative help for his department. He needs imaginative help from the Department of Bantu Administration, and I am going to mention one or two examples of what I mean by this. First of all I see from the hon. the Minister’s reply that out of the 800-odd local authorities in South Africa, only 171 are availing themselves of the skimmed milk distribution scheme. I think that is a tragedy, and I feel that something should be done to persuade these local authorities that it is, in the first place, economically wise to partake of this scheme, because it is obviously much cheaper to prevent the incidence of kwashiorkor than to cure it, and also, that it is to the benefit of South Africa generally that we do not allow this high incidence of kwashiorkor to continue, because this is a disease which apparently has permanent results. If a child has suffered from kwashiorkor, it is difficult to reverse the damage caused by this disease in later life. I think that the hon. the Minister’s department must liaise more closely with the Department of Bantu Administration, and both these departments must bring their very considerable authority to bear on local authorities to try to persuade them to take advantage of this excellent scheme, which has been initiated by the Department of Preventive Medicine, and which involves the distribution of cheap skimmed milk powder. This is the easiest and cheapest way of preventing and also of curing kwashiorkor. That is one example I want to give.

The other also concerns the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration, and I am glad he is here. The hon. the Minister of Health has told me that he has had to abandon the investigation into the fortification of maize scheme because of difficulties experienced in certain areas, where the pilot scheme research survey …

Not “abandon”.

Well, not abandon, but postpone; it has been postponed for a year, until confidence has been re-established in the Department of Health. I have his answer here, Sir, This was as a result, you will remember, Sir, of an immunization campaign. There were some very wild rumours going around the townships in Pretoria, Soweto and elsewhere, about the so-called “death jabs”, and many Of the Africans refused therefore to continue with the immunization programme. In turn, this engendered a fair amount of suspicion of the Department of Health. I believe that all this could have been prevented with a little imaginative planning by the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration in co-operation with the Department of Information, or whoever would be responsible. They could, for example, have had a programme put out days and weeks before the beginning of this immunization campaign, over Radio Bantu.

That is exactly what we did.

Well, you did not do it in this case, or it was not sufficiently done. What was done, was that after the damage had been done, Radio Bantu tried to get some soothing messages over the air, to dispell the suspicion and to counter these wild rumours which were flying around the townships. I believe that if the population of the Bantu areas had been prepared for the campaign of immunization—I do not know whether it was for polio or for chicken-pox, or whatever it was—it would have been difficult for anybody doing this out of ignorance or mala fides, or for any other reason, to get these rumours going. I should like to sugggest to the hon. the Minister that closer co-operation in future be aimed at between the different departments before any campaigns of this type are undertaken. I do want to say that I hope very much indeed that the maize enrichment research project will be started again, perhaps earlier than intended; the date is apparently July, 1972. This is a very important research project which could do an enormous amount of good, not only in preventing and curing kwashiorkor among children, but also in preventing the other nutritional diseases such as pellagra among grownups. I am referring here to the protein enrichment of maize. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I should like to start by expressing my special thanks to the members on both sides of this House for the excellent contributions made by them and for the dignified tone maintained throughout this debate. A debate of such a high standard is always a fertile one, and I can honestly say that in the 19 years I have been here, I cannot remember our having a debate of a higher standard than the one we have had here yesterday and today. On behalf of my officials I also want to express thanks for the appreciation shown for the work done by them. I am referring in particular to the hon. member for Newcastle. We appreciate it. But let me also add at once that we are aware of the shortcomings that exist. For instance, there are staff shortages. Furthermore, I want to say at once that everybody in South Africa is at least being cared for as far as medical services are concerned. One should remember that there are 27 notifiable diseases in our country, and, as far as we know, there have been no severe epidemics for years. As far as our medical science is concerned, hon. members will agree with me that we are taking our place amongst the nations of the world. Even in respect of the services we provide, with the shortcomings that exist, I think we should say in all humility that South Africa is a diamond in comparison with comparable countries in this field. South Africa is a sparkling diamond in regard to the services we provide, with due regard to the shortcomings that exist.

I should like to start by replying to the hon. member who spoke last, i.e. the hon. member for Houghton.

The hon. member referred to a reply I gave to a question in this House some time ago in regard to a certain number of clinics in the Bantu homelands. We do not quite deserve all the praise that has fallen from her lips. Those clinics were not all established in the past year. They have been there for yaars, and there has been an increase in their numbers. We have problems, of course, and one of the big problems is housing for the nursing staff in those clinics. We are making progress; it is a matter of money. Another problem is that in certain of the Bantu homelands the nurses are not prepared to stay out at night, for fear of different things. I say “in certain Bantu homelands”; this is not the position in all of them. We are, however, making progress in this regard, as part of a comprehensive hospital centric service.

As far as protective foods are concerned, let me say that last year we made R90 000 available in the Budget, and only R72 000 was taken up by local authorities. On the Bantu Administration Vote R200 000 was made available and only R43 000, in round figures, was taken up. We are doing our utmost to encourage these local authorities to partake in this scheme. I even spoke to the Coloured Council the other day. Only as recently as 14th February this year, we sent round a letter to every local authority, bringing this scheme to their attention and encouraging them to make use of the facilities available, so I can assure the hon. member that what can be done from our side is being done at the moment. Of a total of R290 000 on the Budget last year, only R159 000 was taken up. I do hope that the position will improve in the year that lies ahead.

*The hon. member for Bloemfontein East raised the question of the Oranje Hospital. The position is, as he rightly said, that when the hospital was built, it was situated quite some way from the city centre; it was situated on the outskirts of the city. Let me say now that whenever references are made to the Oranje Hospital, I have pleasant memories, for the National Hospital, where I completed my housemanship many years ago, is just next to it. As far as the moving of the nonWhite patients is concerned, it is the policy of the Government, and this also has the full support of my department, to move those non-White patients, the Bantu, to another home. Negotiations are in progress between the Department of Bantu Administration and the Mission Society—I think it is the Methodist Church at Thaba’Nchu —with a view to making arrangements to the effect that the General Hospital which is being built there, may also make additional provision for these patients. Of course, this is a question of money and of arrangements which have to be made by that department. As far as the Whites are concerned, I may give the hon. member the assurance that the site available there —I think we have another 60 ha there— is situated in such a manner that it will be possible for the medical school, which is in the process of being established, to be served properly. Its situation is good enough for that purpose.

Then the hon. member for Fauresmith referred to the day-work centres. I may say that there are 19 of them in South Africa. I think there are roughly 159 children in these centres. It is true that it has been indicated that this is going to become the responsibility of the Minister of National Education, since these children are educable. It is quite correct that legislation must be introduced. My colleague indicated that, for several reasons mentioned by him, this could not be done this year, and he made an urgent appeal to the public to make contributions in order to help these institutions to carry on with the splendid, good work they were doing. I may just tell the hon. member that according to my colleague it is the intention to introduce this legislation next year. Furthermore, I just want to call attention to the fact that in the past the State contributed 25 cents per school-going child. In these Estimates this amount has been increased from 25 cents to R1 in respect of every school day, which will be a tremendous help to these institutions. In other words, whereas they used to get 25 cents per child per day, they are now getting R1 per day, four times as much.

Then I want to come to a matter raised earlier on in this debate, namely the question of the incidence of malaria. I should like to confirm that what I said in previous statements, is now coming true, namely that there is a downward trend in the incidence of malaria. In fact, the latest bulletin, which we are releasing today, once again shows a downward trend im the incidence of this disease. But I want to sound the warning that it is quite possible that the statistics may show an upward trend next week or the week after that, in view of the fact that the great publicity which this matter has received, also in this debate, may persuade medical practitioners and hospital authorities to report cases which may not have been reported before —in other words, outstanding cases. I just want to call attention to the fact that this is possible, and that it should not necessarily be assumed that there is no increase in the incidence of malaria at this moment. The increased incidence of malaria this year is chiefly attributable to the plentiful rains that have fallen in the Lowveld. The rainfall in the Lowveld is approximately 20 to 22 inches per annum. This year it has had between 50 and 70 inches of rain. The hon. Senator Ferreira told me that the average rainfall on his farms in Kaapmuiden is 20 inches per annum, and that in January alone they had 23 inches of rain. This is the principal cause of this increase. I want to tell hon. members that long before this increase was evident, my department had anticipated that there would be an increase and had taken certain steps. For instance, in comparison with the previous season, our field staff numbered 190 instead of 131; we used a far greater amount of sprays than we did before; we warned the public in season and out on the radio and in bulletins—I myself and my department—and we also introduced this weekly bulletin, which is not the normal practice of the department.

My regional director for medical services, as well as head-office officials, paid visits to those areas on several occasions, and I also paid a personal visit to the Lowveld. Furthermore, I want to say that I have been in constant touch with the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration, whose constituency is chiefly being hit by this outbreak, and that we have continually kept each other informed of what has been happening there. I may also say that only last Friday talks were held in Pietersburg with a view to steps which may be taken in the future. Now, in regard to the figures, it has quite rightly been said here that certain persons from those areas made the statement that our figures were not correct. Let me tell hon. members that this statement is totally devoid of all truth. In its bulletins the department only includes figures in respect of reported cases. In fact, this has been the policy since 1956, when malaria became a notifiable disease, and this is also the policy in regard to all of the other 26 notifiable diseases. In other words, only notifiable cases are included, and I want to give the assurance that all reported cases were included in the bulletins. But let me repeat now that it will remain the policy to include only notifiable cases in our bulletins. We are aware that more cases do occur, but it would be totally unscientific and ridiculous to include officially in one’s bulletin cases which were not reported by a medical practitioner or by a hospital authority. In fact, that would be quite irresponsible. For that reason it must be accepted as a fact that figures compiled by laymen will not be included in these bulletins. I want to say, furthermore, that the department has no control over persons who have to report such cases, but what we are in fact doing, is to point out to them regularly that they should report such cases to our department. Now, unfortunately the Press also entered this matter, and reports were published which were absolutely inaccurate. For instance, it was reported in the Press that in the Bantu area Bantu children were dying of malaria at the rate of six a day. That appeared on the front page.

I had the matter investigated in full by two head-office officials, and no evidence was found to the effect that this was in fact true. There was a second report stating that a medical practitioner had died of malaria, whereas it has been confirmed that a heart attack was the real cause of his death. This medical practitioner was a very good old friend of mine, a university friend, and, as a matter of fact, if I may say this, he was the brother-in-law of the hon. member for Witbank. But the newspaper report stated that he had died of malaria. There was yet another case that was front-page news, i.e. that about 136 cases occurred at a certain time, whereas this was not malaria, but was presumably attributable to food poisoning. I am merely mentioning this to hon. members to show how quite out of context this matter was reported.

They were U.P. stories.

I am dealing fully with this matter because it is important. Cases of malaria continually occur in South Africa on a permanent basis in this endemic area. It is absolutely wrong to assume that malaria has ever been stamped out in South Africa. This is simply not true. In fact, it is the type of thing that cam never be stamped out completely. Since 1956, when it became a notifiable disease, cases have been reported every year. Last year there were 365 cases, and in 1967 there were 761 cases. Every year, from 1956 up to this year, there have been deaths, varying from one to 13 a year. Therefore, this is still a danger to health, and this danger increases in years when we have good rains, irrespective of the combative measures we take. I want to give those areas and the country the assurance that officially we shall do everything possible to combat this disease. It is my intention to pay a personal visit to that entire area during the recess, and also to the world famous Anecke Institute at Tzaneen, and, in conjunction with our scientists, also to place every aspect of malaria, including our method and technique of combating it, under the magnifying-glass once again, and possibly to effect improvements or apply the method of combating it on a larger scale. Furthermore, I gave my colleague the Deputy Minister of Bantu Development the undertaking that I would have an interview with his branch committee of the National Party and even hold a public meeting, if necessary, in order to inform the public properly. Moreover, steps are being taken through the proper diplomatic channels for holding talks with our neighbours, Mozambique and Rhodesia, in an attempt to improve the position on our borders, which creates a real problem. I may also say that I shall also have talks with my colleagues the Minister of Transport, the Minister of Police and the Minister of the Interior in regard to this matter, which may also affect their departments. But now, in conclusion, I should like to make an appeal, a very serious appeal. This is, in the first place, that the Press and the inhabitants of endemic areas should not unnecessarily be involved emotionally in this matter, since experience has shown in recent times that this gives rise to reports nourishing disobligingness, definitely complicated the task of my department and does that area incalculable harm. In the second place, all inhabitants and visitors must take the necessary preventive tablets, which are available at any chemist without a prescription. In the third place, use must be made of the spraying of houses and huts with prolonged-action insecticides. This service is available free of charge and is provided by my department. I want to make a special appeal to Whites on farms who do not have their houses sprayed. In the fourth place, I should also like to make an appeal to my colleagues in medicine and in the hospitals to be scrupulous in future about reporting all cases of malaria.

Then there is a last point with which I want to deal. During the first week of May, as a result of talks between South Africa’s representatives in Geneva and the DirectorGeneral of the World Health Organization, Dr. Candau, two world famous scientists came to South Africa and we allowed them to visit those areas, not only as guests, but also to show them everything which we could show and which they were keen to see. Fortunately they escaped the attention of the Press. They also paid me a courtesy visit, which, naturally, led to a discussion of the whole situation. I want to tell hon. members what these people said. What I am going to say now, I am saying with the permission of the Director-General of the World Health Organization. I quote—

Then I may just add that it has become apparent from the talks which were held last Friday, that the intensification of our methods will possibly require an additional amount of R250 000 during this year. Those talks will be held with the Treasury. This statement goes on to say—

This is a reference to the larva control. It is not recommended, and consequently we do not do this, except in densely populated areas, where it is done by the local authorities. As hon. members know, we are not a member of the World Health Organization. However, we have nevertheless made contact in this scientific field, and it was agreed that—

I think that what we have done here is good work.

Then I want to say a few words about the Health Bill, which is receiving the attention of a Select Committee at the moment. I am doing this because there was dissatisfaction in many quarters, dissatisfaction about this Bill having been introduced and referred to a Select Committee without certain organizations having been consulted. Such a claim is based on ignorance, for this Bill was referred to a Select Committee before Second Reading. I would be pleased if the Chairman of the Committee and the officials concerned would take this opportunity to point out to all these organizations that the reference of this Bill to a Select Committee before Second Reading means that this is the method of consultation that would take place. After that my procedure will be as follows: When I receive the Bill back from the Select Committee, I shall, in accordance with an undertaking I have already given, consult with the Administrators of the four provinces as well as the Medical Council, which is always a pleasant task to me, and with other organizations, before I approach the Cabinet with this legislation and finally present it to this House. Furthermore, I understood from the chairman of the Committee that a tremendous number of memorandums, something like 56, had been received, and that it was virtually impossible to complete the work during this session. I want to say today that the Government has decided that if the Select Committee were to feel that it could not complete its business— it seems to me as though this is going to be the case—and were to request that this Select Committee be converted into a commission during the recess, the Government would consider it favourably. If that is done, it will be possible for us to introduce a Bill at the next session, be that an amended Bill or a totally new Bill.

Then hon. members, and particularly the hon. member for Fauresmith, mentioned the question of the training of medical practitioners. Let me say that the question of the training of medical practitioners is, of course, the responsibility of the Medical and Dental Council. I know that the Medical Council is at this moment giving positive attention to the question of whether doctors should perhaps be trained to a greater extent for the conditions of South Africa. I may also say that the question of assistance to doctors, that of persons who have not qualified as doctors but have in fact had a certain amount of training, was also discussed at the congress of the Medical Association held in the course of last year. I am very glad that the hon. member for Fauresmith said he was not agreeable to a second-class type of medical practitioner being created. I think this would be a retrograde step. The attitude we adopt in the department is that all medical practitioners must undergo ordinary basic training. If that training is changed, it is a task of the Medical Council in which we should not like to interfere. However, it is a good thing that this matter has been raised here so that they, too, may know that the public takes an interest and has certain ideas in this regard. Furthermore, the department is of the opinion that trained nurses at the clinics mentioned here by the hon. member for Houghton, and at other clinics, may relieve the medical practitioners and the hospitals, where they are constantly under the supervision of the medical practitioner, of a major burden of work. In this regard the hon. member for Umbilo said, “We only have one in 2 000 doctors in South Africa for the European population and only one in 18 000 for the non-European people.”

Are you repeating the figures?

Yes, I am repeating the figures. Now let me say to the hon. member that I do not think it is quite right to put it that way. I am not disputing the figures; they are more or less correct. However, I do not think we should use the word “only”, because I think South Africa has for its whole population a number of doctors available which is comparable to the best of any country which can be compared with South Africa. It is not “only” one in 2 000 and “only” one in 18 000. We are grateful that we are so progressive—if I may use the word—in the medical field that we have this number of doctors. He wanted to know from me whether I can make an estimate as to the shortage of doctors. I am afraid I cannot, because it would be a pure speculation and it will depend on the standards which one applies. In other words, we have no estimate at all; all we know is that this shortage which he indicated exists in our department, does in fact exist. I may also say that although there is a shortage, the services are being rendered on a session basis, in all these instances. In so far as indigence is concerned, where the district surgeon cannot do the work, private doctors are allowed and are remunerated on a session basis in these institutions.

* Reference was also made to the availability of doctors, especially by the hon. member for Cradock. He also expressed his concern about the fact that the rural areas had so few doctors. That is very true. I have here the February edition of the South African Medical Journal, which carries an advertisement which was placed by my department and in which no fewer than 70 posts for district surgeons in the rural areas are advertised. The over-concentration in the cities definitely creates a problem as well, for the reasons furnished by the hon. member. He said we had to have talks with the Medical Association. I want to tell the hon. member that this has already been done. We had a departmental committee under the chairmanship of Dr. Gilliland, the Director of Medical Services, who, in conjunction with the Medical Association, investigated the matter very thoroughly. They came forward with certain proposals. These proposals include improvements in regard to the circumstances of district surgeons. I have the particulars here, but I am not keen on furnishing them now as the matter still has to be discussed with the Treasury and one does not want to anticipate matters. However, I may say that the Remuneration Commission, which has just sat, has also made its contribution in the sense that the fees which doctors in the rural areas may levy for medical scheme cases, have now been put on a par with those in the cities. They have therefore helped in that regard. Then, as far as bursaries are concerned, I want to point out to the hon. member that bursaries are available to both White and non-White students. The Public Service provides bursaries worth R800 per annum for White students. This year 35 such bursaries were awarded to medical students. Therefore, the opportunity does exist, if people would only avail themselves of it. Opportunities also exist for Bantu and Coloureds, but I do not want to tire the House now with figures in this regard. As far as availability is concerned, I just want to point out to the House that it is tremendously expensive to train a doctor. The running costs involved amount to approximately R8 000 per annum. And this does not even include the capital expenditure. Therefore, the five medical schools which we have, together with the non-White school, really constitute a very big contribution on the part of the State towards the training of doctors. This is a tremendous expense to the State. I may just add that the position in our country is, of course, infinitely better than that in our neighbouring states. In fact, we are granting them assistance. Although we have a shortage, we are nevertheless helping them, because I think our neighbours ought to be helped.

The hon. member for Berea referred to the Snyman Report. The hon. member for Witbank quite rightly pointed out that one should see this Snyman Report in its totality, that one should not just extract certain of its recommendations. I should just briefly like to remind the hon. member—I know that he knows about this—that although this report is ten years old, a number of things have been done. The inception of the Drug Control Council and its activities, the Act on Medical Schemes, the Remuneration Commission and now also the rewriting of the Health Act are all matters which have come out of the Snyman Commission’s report, recommendations which are now being implemented and are having the effect which we are seeing in our daily lives today.

*The question of sick funds was raised by several hon. members. Let me say that on 31st December, 1971, 247 sick funds were registered plus 5 Government funds, such as that of the Police and that of the Bureau of State Security, as well as 30 industrial funds. In round figures this means that approximately 80 per cent of our population are covered by medical insurance of some kind or another. This is a splendid situation. By whom is the remaining 20 per cent made up? It is made up of the very wealthy people of Houghton and other places, people who can look after themselves. It is also made up of pensioners and the indigent, whom we shall always have with us. I foresee that this 20 per cent will shrink in the future since the Medical Schemes Act specifically provides that when a person retires, or when his working days are terminated as a result of advanced age, poor health or other forms of disability, the sick fund has to retain him as a member if he wants to remain one. I am also pleased to be able to say that there are many employers who are contributing part of the membership fees to the sick fund, even in respect of pensioners. I want to recommend this. In 1971 there were 18 228 pensioners who were covered by medical schemes. In the past all those people would have been dependent upon the State. It is calculated —this is a rough calculation—that on an average 12 per cent of the members of schemes will be pensioners in the future, although at the mines this figure is already 20 per cent at the moment. I am merely mentioning these figures to show that we should not speak so lightly of subsidies for sick funds. The hon. member for Bloemfontein East rightly, and very knowledgeably—for he worked with these matters as the M.E.C. charged with hospital services —indicated here that the State was already making a tremendous contribution to the hospitalization of sick fund patients as well. It may appear in future, with regard to those members of a sick fund who are pensioners, that the State will perhaps have to see, as its commitment diminishes, because they are members of sick funds at the moment, whether it can strengthen sick funds in their financial position by those means. However, this is something for the future, because we are here at the start of a development and do not know exactly what it is going to result in.

Then the question of hospital costs was also raised, especially in respect of private hospitals. I just want to emphasize what was said by the hon. member for Bloemfontein, namely that sick fund patients are not excluded from provincial hospitals. They are in fact admitted to them. I can speak from experience, for one of my relatives recently spent months in a provincial hospital. It is correct that the cost is R6 per day. The question of private hospitals was also mentioned. Private hospitals have received my attention for many years. In the first place, they are licensed by the provincial administrations, and not by the Department of Health. In the second place, last year already I had talks with all four of the Administrators on this matter. Furthermore, only recently I had a meeting with the various sick fund associations, and I told them that they should please come forward with recommendations and ideas in regard to hospital fees and the control over private institutions and private hospitals. I also had the Private Hospitals Association with me last year, and I very clearly brought to their notice the fact that, in the first place, there had been complaints and, in the second place, that one was worried about the fact that one new institution after the other was being established whilst beds were empty in the provincial hospitals and the private institutions made no contribution towards the training of nurses. I also said I thought they were competing unfairly with us and the provincial administrations. In this regard I do want to put matters into perspective as well. The hon. member for Rosettenville, who apologized for his absence, read out here two cases of exhorbitantly high hospital costs. I am not calling these cases into question; in fact, I have one that is worse than those two, but one should at least retain one’s perspective and state the average or general. We made a random test in regard to medical schemes and found the following: Of the moneys paid out by them during the course of a specific year, 45,7 per cent went to medical practitioners, i.e. private doctors, specialists and super specialists, 14,5 per cent went towards dental services; 17,7 per cent went towards medicine, and strangely enough, only 13,3 per cent went towards hospitalization. In other words, this is a fair-sized factor but not a tremendous one in the expenditure of our sick funds. I want to give hon. members the assurance, as I also indicated, that this matter is under consideration.

The hon. member for Green Point is looking at me because he raised this question too. It is not only a question of perhaps pegging the fees of private institutions and private hospitals, but also the classification. I do not have the classification of hospitals in mind as we have in mind with hotels at all. There will have to be some classification, however, perhaps an A or B class or classes I or II. This matter is rather involved. Perhaps, when I have the views of the medical schemes, of the Administrators and of the private hospital associations, the correct step would be to appoint a commission to look into this matter; because it has very many facets.

The hon. member also mentioned the question of the rendering of accounts, and the problems encountered in that way. I will certainly bring this to the attention of the Central Council for Medical Schemes, because I have an idea that they might by regulation be able to regulate this, if not by regulation, then certainly by other means.

*Then, Sir, the question of the high cost of medicine was mentioned. I do not want to say that medicine is not expensive today, but I think we should be a little careful not to over-emphasize it. The cost is high and it is still rising.

What is the reason for the price increase?

I shall come to that in a moment. This applies not only to medicine, but also to other services. Now let me tell you at once that this is because much of the work is not done by part-time or full-time people, but by private doctors on the basis of the tariff. In the main that is the reason for that increase to which you referred. But at the same time I do want to say that medicine is infinitely more effective today than before. After all, today the position is that disease can be controlled by a patient taking one or two capsules, whereupon that person can return to everyday life. We are grateful for that, but then we must also realize that it costs money.

In the second place, I want to draw the attention of hon. members to the fact that all the less well-off people in our country, of whatever colour, are entitled to free medicine, either from the district surgeon, or from our provincial hospitals, or from our clinics. In other words, there ought not to be a single less well-off person who need pay for medicines out of his own pocket, unless the choice is his. It is true that they have to go and wait in a queue or that they may perhaps not receive immediate attention, but that happens in the case of all things. In fact, yesterday the hon. member for Walmer quite rightly said here that as a private patient he had to wait three months before he could get an appointment at the dentist. So I want to say that it is not only the less well-off people who have to wait at times—it is also those who pay who have to wait because we have a manpower shortage. As far as control over prices is concerned, I may add that the Department of Health has no powers whatsoever. That is in the hands of the Department of Commerce. There is also a sub-committee of the Cabinet which gives specific attention to the prices of various articles. Medicine is included in those articles.

Let me just give a few reasons why the cost of medicine is fairly high. The chemists are not the cause of it, because the fees of the chemists are laid down, i.e. 40 cents per item dispensed by them. So that is not the big problem. But from statistics it appears that approximately 5 000 new remedies have to be tested and retested over a period of years before one finds two to five that are really useful. In other words, the research work in this regard is enormous. Moreover, the average period for which such medicines remain on the market before they are replaced, is only eight to ten years. There is no sales duty whatsoever on medicine. As regards import duty, the practice has always been for some duty to be levied, especially as far as raw materials are concerned, because it is so difficult to determine whether all the raw material is going to be used up for medicine. Take olive oil, which is used in many medicines. It is quite impossible to determine how much of the olive oil is used solely for medicinal purposes. But now I also want to say that the Treasury extended an invitation in the Other Place for proposals to be submitted with a view to seeing whether some relief in the sphere of import duty could not be given.

As far as raw material is concerned, I should like to give hon. members a few interesting details. They will realize that we have no control. The hon. member for Witbank spoke about local production and also mentioned the factory at Witbank. Of course, it is our policy that as much local production as possible should take place. However, we have no control over raw materials. Now I just want to give a few examples. The price of ascorbic acid (vitamin C), which we all know, increased by 23 per cent from 1969 to 1970. From last year to this year, the price increased by 111 per cent, and we have no control over that. I shall give hon. members another example, i.e. that of Jamaica ginger, which we all know. The price of Jamaica ginger increased by 100,14 per cent from 1969 to 1970. This year, on the other hand, the price decreased by 30 per cent. In the case of penicillin, there was an increase of 27 per cent last year and of 4 per cent this year. In the case of sulfadiazine the price increased by 40 per cent last year and it has just increased by another 18 per cent. I think hon. members will grant me that no Government has any control whatsoever over the prices of those raw materials in countries abroad. We are completely at their mercy. Now I may also add that the whole position fluctuates. I have here a full table of 55 materials, and there are also decreases among them. Here, for example, is a decrease of 42 per cent. I also see the figure of minus 29 per cent. In other words, prices fluctuate. The highest increase in one year was 156 per cent in respect of some raw material or other.

I now come to a final point in connection with medicine. It was said here that in the case of one type of medicine we sometimes had 10 different brands. This is a matter which one has to handle with great circumspection, because everything should be available to the patient. It is at the discretion of the doctor. If we were to impose restrictions, the question would arise as to who was to do so. Secondly, a monopoly might be created. In other words, this is a very delicate matter. But what I do want to say, is that the sick funds may not withhold anything from a patient which he has to have. However, the sick funds may, in consultation with their doctors, indicate, as the Railways are doing, with no disadvantage to the patient, that certain preparations are available, and that others are not, because they are the same. I want to encourage and recommend this practice.

The hon. member for Newcastle made a very practical suggestion. I think if one takes note of that suggestion, it will make an enormous contribution. This suggestion is simply that our doctors should make it their objective to prescribe smaller quantities of medicine. The patient may not be denied anything; I want to emphasize this once again. But I do think a smaller quantity should be prescribed so that these medicines will not be left on our shelves, as the hon. member rightly indicated they were. I think this is a very sound and practical suggestion.

Then, as far as pharmacy is concerned, just the following: There was a request from the pharmaceutical profession, a request circulated to every member, that the profession should be a closed one for pharmacists and druggists. I had an interview with them; they felt very strongly about the matter. The Prime Minister also had an interview with them. But before the Prime Minister had an interview with them, the Cabinet had considered the matter. The Cabinet decided, after everything had been taken into account, that this was not the right time to do so, particularly in view of the high cost of medicine. The Prime Minister, in the interview he had with them, indicated to them that if both sides of this House supported this matter, he would be prepared to have the matter reconsidered by the Cabinet. There is a very simple reason, actually a political reason, why he said that. The reason is that there is always some huckstering with the high cost of medicine, and if our friends on the opposite side get any kind of chance, they say it is the Government’s fault. If they were to support this measure and if they were to refrain from saying that it was the Government’s fault that the prices of medicine were even higher on account of this measure, then our pharmaceutical profession would have an opportunity of possibly having this position rectified. Personally I agree with their request, because they are a professional group.

As far as dental services are concerned, the hon. member for Walmer mentioned the problems of his constitency. Let me tell him at once that I am not satisfied with the situation as regards dental services in South Africa. We have an enormous shortage of dentists. The problem is that they have to study for 5 years, whereas that period is 6 years in medicine, and for that reason medicine is more popular than dentistry, although dentistry is a fine profession which also holds out good financial prospects. Since 1919 not a single dentist has, as far as I know, been on the staff of the Department of Health. It has never been laid down precisely where the responsibility belongs. Then came the report of the De Villiers Commission, and with one or two exceptions the Government accepted its recommendations as a whole. What were those recommendations? The first one was that the responsibility should rest in the hands of the Department of Health, in the hands of the State.

The second recommendation was the creation of oral hygienists, who will be another pair of hands for the dentist. A start has been made with the training of these people, and they will be registered by the South African Medical and Dental Council. Then there was a third recommendation, and that is that there should be dental assistants, especially in our Bantu homelands. This matter is still under consideration by the Medical and Dental Council because, after all, they will be the people to compile the curricula, conduct the examinations and register these people. We feel in the department that if we could have these dental assistants and if they could operate under the supervision of either a dentist or a doctor, they could be of great help, especially in our Bantu homelands, and I hope that the Medical Council will be able to give us some answer in the near future.

The other matter, of course, is the training of dentists, and I can assure the hon. member that as far as the Bantu are concerned, we have grave doubts whether the students are available at the moment. We think the students may be available as far as the Coloureds are concerned. As far as his own constituency is concerned, the facts that he gave are more or less correct. I am perturbed about the situation in Port Elizabeth. I was unaware of it until he raised the matter here. Prof. Dodds, who is the first person ever to have been appointed in the Department of Health as a dentist—he was previously professor at the University of the Witwatersrand—has already been in Port Elizabeth and has made certain recommendations. I have also asked my Director of Medical Services to give his personal attention to this matter in Port Elizabeth. I would like to say to the hon. member that he must not have too high hopes, because at most we can provide a service for acute cases, for the extraction of teeth; a prophylactic service is just not possible at this stage. We are doing a certain amount of prophylactic work as far as Coloured schoolchildren are concerned in Port Elizabeth, but that is as far as we can go because of the staff position.

If the municipality is prepared to take certain steps on their own, would there be any financial assistance forthcoming from the Department of Health?

Unfortunately, not only the local authority, but apparently the provincial administration also is giving no service there at all, and in effect it should be a joint venture or a tripartite venture between ourselves, the local authority and the provincial administration. However, my department will look into this matter as far as Port Elizabeth is concerned.

What about the fluoridation of water?

Not at this stage, because there are too many ladies’ associations all over the country who are against it.

You should forget about them.

Sir, I am inclined to take notice when ladies speak to me.

*The hon. member for North Rand delivered a fine and neat speech here on a matter which is of the utmost importance, i.e. family planning. His view is correct; his approach is perfectly correct. The hon. member referred to the enormous increase in the amount which is being voted here, i.e. from R290 000 last year to R1 650 000 this year. Let me just tell him that this is in respect of all races. To a certain extent this increase is linked up with the injection which has become available now and which is fairly expensive. I think it costs approximately R1 or 85 cents. This injection is being used to an increasing extent. This is a voluntary service. But we in the department have accepted full responsibility. A director of Demographic Planning, Dr. Roux, who is directly responsible to the Secretary and to myself, is in charge. He has already been in contact with all the provinces, the local authorities and agricultural unions, etc., and matters are now beginning to go reasonably well. I just want to say that the provinces are co-operating nicely. They will also be able to appoint a doctor, who will be in charge of family planning, to their establishment under their director of medical services, and we are, with the approval of the Treasury, prepared to pay his salary. We are also using films, etc., for bringing the matter to the attention of the public. Sir, one of the words the hon. member used was the wrong one; we should do nothing drastic as far as family planning is concerned. When one is dealing with family planning, one does not do drastic things, because it is a question of persuasion. I think it may possibly have been a slip of the tongue on the part of the hon. member. He also suggested that a conference should be called. I do not think that is necessary. We are fully conversant with what is going on in the world. As a matter of fact, last year we attended a conference and at the end of last year we also had a symposium in Pretoria which had been arranged by the Medical Association. But I am grateful to the hon. member for having raised the matter in such a responsible manner here, and I may give him the assurance that as far as all races are concerned, we are giving attention to this matter in a very responsible manner.

Mr. Chairman, I think that with these answers I have replied to all the questions. Once again I want to mention the fact that to my mind this debate has truly been one of the most outstanding debates conducted on the Health Vote since I have been in this House.

Votes put and agreed to.

Revenue Vote No. 31.—“Community Development”, R25 150 000, Loan Vote K.— “Community Development”, R71 200 000, and S.W.A. Vote No. 16.—“Community Development”, R2 160 000:

Mr. Chairman, I have risen immediately in order to eliminate a misconception which the hon. member for Green Point created in the Appropriation debate. The hon. member for Green Point laid it at my door that I had said that from 1969 to 1972 the housing position in South Africa had worsened tremendously.

According to the figures you gave.

He said I had said that as far as Whites are concerned, there was a shortage of 4 860 houses in 1969; it should be 4 680, but I shall leave it at that. The hon. member said I had said that in 1969 there was a shortage of 4 860 houses for Whites, and went on to say that I had said in 1972 that there was a shortage of 12 165 houses; in other words, as far as the Whites are concerned, the position had deteriorated by more than 8 000 houses from 1969 to 1972.

How do you get that?

I shall come to it in a moment. As far as Coloureds are concerned, the position deteriorated from a shortage of 21 000 houses to a shortage of 43 000 houses, and as far as Indians are concerned, it deteriorated from a shortage of 11 000 houses to almost 23 000 houses, which the hon. member blamed me for; he said I had furnished those figures. I quote what he said—

What are the facts?

Are these not the figures given in Hansard?

Sir, they are not only not the figures given in Hansard but they are wrong. I will read out exactly what stands in Hansard and then the hon. member can judge for himself. He either completely misread it, he did not understand the reply, or there was some mischievousness on his part. It is either one of the two because I dealt with two completely different sets of facts. In the one case I dealt with what we thought was the actual shortage and in the other case I dealt with the waiting list. Now let us see what I said in 1969. The question was asked by Mr. Wood (Hansard, Vol. 25, Col. 343):

My reply was as follows:

And then I gave the figures and it amounted, as far as Whites were concerned, to 4 680. But what did I say in 1972?

*It has absolutely nothing to do with the extent of the housing shortage. It concerns something completely different. It concerns the waiting-lists. Then Mr. Hourquebie put the question to me:

1. (a) How many persons in each race group are on the waiting-lists for economic and sub-economic housing respectively in (i) each of the main centres and (ii) in the rest of the Republic, and (b) when is it anticipated that housing will be made available to the persons in each of these categories?

Then I divulged the waiting-lists, but added:

This is the figure of 12 000 he obtained only for Whites, in respect of whom there was a shortage:

Why did the hon. member not add that when he said that I had said there was a need for 23 000 houses in 1972? Why did he not add that I did not say there was a need for 23 000 houses but that there was a waiting list of 23 000? And, I especially went out of my way to say that you cannot rely on the waiting lists:

And then I mentioned this example, and the hon. member for Green Point says that I said this was the shortage of housing. Then I mentioned this example:

How dare he say that I said there was a shortage of 23 000 houses for Whites in 1972, when I said specifically that it was a waiting list and. that you cannot rely on a waiting list? And I mentioned the case of Kimberley where there was a waiting list of 600 and where we know that the shortage is only 100. But no, Sir, he comes along and says that I said the position deteriorated from 1969 to 1972 from 4 800 to 12 100 houses.

*Sir, I think either the hon. member did not mean what he said or he misread the two replies completely. But the fact of the matter is that he charged me here with something which is totally and utterly incorrect.

He will reply.

He may reply with the greatest of pleasure. But I think he at least owes me an apology, because in the one case I spoke of what our people had estimated the shortage of housing to be and in the other case I spoke of something completely different, namely the waitinglists. In my reply to that question I indicated that the waiting-lists were unreliable.

No, I think the hon. member did me and this House an injustice. I have a high regard for him and expect that he will rectify this matter, that he will rectify it completely and that he will do what is expected of a man in his position.

Mr. Chairman, may I have the privilege of the half-hour? The hon. the Minister has raised an issue on certain figures which I quoted from answers given in this House to questions in regard to the housing shortage. In the course of the time which is available, we shall give chapter and verse to the hon. the Minister to show that, although he now wants to say with a wave of the hand the waiting lists mean nothing and that they must be regarded as presenting purely fictitious figures, there is a serious shortage of housing in South Africa and we shall also indicate how serious that shortage is. I do not propose to give them at this moment, but this side will give the hon. the Minister the figures on which we base our accusation. I want to say at the outset that it is with regret that we again meet to discuss Community Development with an out-ofdate report. The report which we have before us is the report for the period ending on 31st December, 1970. We must therefore deal with the facts as we have them on the 31st December, 1970, and supplemented by answers to questions. I want to say at the outset of this debate that we on this side of the House wish to reiterate what we have said before during this session and what we said during previous sessions, namely that we are not satisfied that the hon. the Minister is in fact discharging satisfactorily the responsibility of providing housing in South Africa. Despite the hon. the Minister’s bland assurances from time to time that there are no housing difficulties, those housing difficulties exist and they exist, it is true, in various degrees of urgency between different classes of people. In the course of this debate we shall place those facts before the Committee and we trust that the hon. the Minister will give his attention to those facts when they are place before him.

One of the problems with which we are faced at the moment is the long delay on the part of the hon. the Minister in acceding to a request for an inquiry into the Rents Act. Thank goodness that inquiry is at present being conducted. I believe that the commission of inquiry is working expeditiously. I want to say how much the country appreciates the manner in which the inquiry is being conducted and I am sure that the hon. the Minister will receive a report very shortly. I want to appeal to him right at the outset to make the report of that commission known to the public as soon as possible, coupled with the Government’s decisions as to which, if any, of the recommendations of the commission it is going to adopt. I ask the hon. the Minister not to wait until the next session of Parliament because a revival of the tempo of the construction of dwellings, be they flats or houses, takes time and every month that can be used to revive confidence in the public sector to build letting units and selling units will be to the benefit of the country. In the interest of the country I hope that the hon. the Minister will make that report known as soon as possible and that he will also make known which recommendations the Government proposes to implement.

Then there is the second urgent matter which still remains. That is the question of the resettlement of disqualified persons under the Group Areas Act. Other speakers will refer to the numbers, but I wish to say that there are large numbers, many thousands. With this backlog in the resettlement of these people, each of those families is condemned to a life of uncertainty, whatever race they may belong to. When are they going to be moved; what must they do in their present abodes; must money be spent on repairing and maintaining; to what community and into what community will they ultimately be transplanted? The numbers of those who are waiting will once again be made known during the course of this debate. What is concerning us are the conflicting statements which the hon. the Minister and the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs make in regard to the compulsory removal of disqualified persons who own the properties in which they are now living. I have asked the hon. the Minister of Community Development twice during this session to say whether he agrees with the statement which has been made by the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs, and to say that he will adopt that statement of policy in regard to the removal of disqualified persons in so far as his department is concerned. One of the major concerns of the Niemand Commission still remains unsolved.

That is the difficulty of the price of land. I think the hon. the Minister owes it to the country to say what he intends doing in this connection. Group areas legislation as applied by this Government has done nothing to bring down the price of land. In fact, it has had the contrary effect. Property in areas which have been vacated by disqualified persons, has become the harvesting ground for amateur property developers. The prices have gone up as far as those properties are concerned. Many of them were exempted from the provisions of the Rents Act by this hon. Minister because they say that these are restored to their old pristine glory, whatever it might have been. Displaced persons wishing to purchase property in areas where they are qualified to purchase, and persons who are able to buy property—like our non-White people—are being held up to ransom because of the prices in those areas. I want to tell the hon. the Minister of a case which I came across only this week. In the Cape Peninsula there is the Rylands area set aside for Indians. Many Indians would like to buy their own property and build their own houses. Many of them want to settle there in the area which has been set aside for them. Does the hon. Minister know that property, vacant land, in the Rylands Estate is changing hands at the price of R1 per square foot? That price is in excess of the best land which can be purchased in Constantia. The Indians have nowhere else to buy. This particular person concerned is in a position that he wants a home and that he wants his family with him. The only place where he can buy is Rylands, and that is the price he has to pay on the open market. I believe the department is contributing not in Rylands only, but in general, to the increase in the price of land. I believe this department must look to shedding itself of its vast property ownings, many of which they have held for a long time.

At the end of the last session, or rather after the end of the session, I had drawn to my attention certain purchases of property in the vicinity of Cape Town by the hon. the Minister’s department. The hon. the Minister took me to task for not raising it during the debate. I referred to the property purchased at Blaauwberg for an amount of approximately R750 000. The hon. the Minister and the Press took me to task for not raising it during the debate. I did not raise it because I was unaware of it at the time the debate took place. Be that as it may, the department purchased a strand area at Blaauwberg for a sum of R731 000. It is an area of ground which the Minister said was a reasonable purchase at a reasonable price. When he was asked about this purchase, he said that the price was reasonable, and that he had bought this property in order that it could be sub-divided. He in fact made the following statement and I quote—

I want to ask the hon. the Minister when this 1 000 odd morgen was acquired by his department from the seller, Mr. Visser. How many of those plots have been made available to individual purchasers? While that 1 000 morgen is being kept by the department, demand for ground in that vicinity goes on and the prices of the private developers are going up and up. I should say that the number of plots from this area of land should certainly run into several thousands. If the hon. the Minister will make these plots available on the basis he said, he will immediately be doing a great service towards bringing down the land prices in the Cape Peninsula area. This is not the only place where the Community Development Board owns property of this sort. Is the board finding that it is itself in the stranglehold in which property developers find themselves, namely that they cannot get on and get townships approved and completed within a reasonable length of time? Or is it that the department has become too much of a property owning department without the ability of being able to quickly transfer areas of this sort into saleable building plots to individual purchasers? I hope that the hon. the Minister will be able to tell us to what extent there has been progress with this investment of three-quarters of a million rand in property. The non-availability of this ground for development is, as I have said, one of the greatest contributing factors to high land prices in the vicinity.

I should like to deal with one other matter, namely the repetitive manner in which we find difficulties arising between the hon. the Minister’s department, or boards which fall under him, and local authorities. The hon. the Minister will recall the differences that existed with Stellenbosch Municipality over a period of time, which led to some acrimony between the hon. the Minister and members of the Stellenbosch local authority. Similar differences have arisen and have been ironed out over a time, I will concede, by tactful handling, between the department and other local authorities. I will not discuss the contretemps between the Minister and members of the Pretoria local authority. I want to say that as long as there is a feeling of strain between local authorities and the hon. the Minister, neither will succeed in getting anywhere in solving housing problems in South Africa.

Let me refer to a matter which occurred in Mossel Bay. This is a most extraordinary state of affairs. Towards the end of 1969 the Mossel Bay Municipality with the assistance of the National Housing Commission decided to build 89 dwellings for Whites. They obtained a tender price in 1969 to build these houses. In September, 1971, the council decided that it had a need for a further 100 dwellings for White people in Mossel Bay. It approached the tenderer who was building at the 1969 prices and he said that he would do an extra 100 houses at that same tender price. When the council found itself in this position, it immediately contacted the hon. the Minister’s regional representatives and others and said that it was very lucky to receive such an offer and asked whether it could proceed to provide those extra houses. On the 29th November, 1971, the municipality received a telegram informing them that they could continue with this particular project. Eventually, on the 3rd December, the municipality received a letter from the regional representative in Port Elizabeth addressed to the Town Clerk in which reference is made to the economic housing letting-sale scheme for Whites. He referred to the letter of 20th September and said the following: “Die Nasionale Behuisingskommissie het besluit …” The details about the advances and payments, etc., were set out in that letter in order to get on with the job. On 29th November this was confirmed in a telegram. On 19th February the Department of Community Development in Pretoria, writing in regard to the housing schemes for 1972-’73, sent a letter to the Town Clerk of Mossel Bay including the amount for the additional houses and asking what draws will be required in June, September, December and March of the following year in regard to this particular work. Immediately after that telegraphic instruction comes cancelling the approval. When he was approached, the hon. the Minister informed the Press that “die kennisgewing van die toewysing van die R300 000 is per abuis deur ’n junior beampte op 15 Februarie 1972 aan die stadsklerk gepos”. What in fact happened was that the chairman of the Nationalist Party in Mossel Bay went to visit the Minister, or his department. He went up there and said that he thought that was wrong and that they should call for new tenders. Somebody in the department thought that this was a very good idea seeing it came from the chairman of the Nationalist Party at Mossel Bay. A letter cancelling the arrangements was therefore sent out saying that a junior clerk approved of it. How can this happen? Does the hon. the Minister really wish the country to believe that a junior clerk will deal with correspondence of this nature and write on behalf of the National Housing Commission from two different offices, viz., from the regional office in Port Elizabeth and from his own office in Pretoria? No, this nonsense does not wash with the public. This nonsense does not wash, and when one finds that this is the type of thing going on one is not surprised when one finds all the Police investigations that have to be made into various activities in the Minister’s department resulting from officials acting irregularly. Where is the control and the direction at the top of affairs? I believe that when one has a municipality such as that of Mossel Bay doing its utmost in trying to solve a housing problem, it is unjust and unfair to the people in that area that they should be meted out with this treatment from the Minister. I might say that the Minister used his usual strong but polite language in telling the Press what he thought about those who were agitating about this particular action of his department.

I want to leave that and go on to another matter. We had an interesting discussion earlier this session when the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Education indicated a change in policy in so far as Bantu bringing their wives into the cities are concerned. They could bring them if housing was available. There resorts under the Minister for Community Development a body called the Bantu Housing Board. The names of its members appear annually in the report and provision is made in the Revenue Estimates for an amount to cover allowances payable to those members who are not public servants. The report is completely silent as to what has been done by this Housing Board. From the schedules for the last few years I have compared, it appears that funds are being made available to the Bantu Housing Board at an economic rate of interest over the years. For the years 1965 to 1970 a total of some R37 million was made available, bringing the total up to R182 million in all. For sub-economic housing, that is the f and 3 per cent, the amounts have in fact been reduced between 1965 and 1970. There have been repayments and there is a lesser figure owing now, or invested in this subeconomic category than in 1965. When one comes to the grants for sub-economic housing to utility companies—that is at a 1/20th per cent to enable the provision of real sub-economic housing—I can find nothing having been advanced in the last seven or eight years to the Bantu Housing Board. What work in fact is this board doing? Or are all local authorities now being left to find other means to finance the housing of the increasing numbers of Bantu who are now within White local authority areas? I want to know what is the responsibility of this hon. Minister to provide housing for Bantu so that the policy of the hon. the Deputy Minister can be put into force and housing can be provided for these Bantu now to bring their wives with them when they take up jobs in the White areas. This is the responsibility of this Minister and I hope he will deal with it and tell us what supervision he does have over the Bantu Housing Board.

Coming to the question of Coloured housing, I want to be very brief with the hon. the Minister in asking him, when he replies, to tell us what he is doing in regard to the resolution passed by the Coloured Representative Council which has been referred to him. For his information and reference, I now refer to the statement issued by the Department of Information, dated 18th April, 1972, in which certain resolutions of the Coloured Representative Council were referred to this department. I want to deal with these items and read them quickly for the record. I hope the hon. the Minister will be good enough to deal with them. They read as follows—

1. 4.
   1. (a) Coloured housing throughout the Republic of South Africa and the possibility that tenants of sub-economic houses be allowed to purchase such houses at erection cost plus a nominal rate of interest;
   2. (b) the provision of suitable housing for Coloured public servants, teachers, members of the Police Force and prison services and the postal services where such need exists;
   3. (c) involvement of disqualified persons in business interests in Coloured areas; and
   4. (d) the protection of all places of worship in as far as such places may be affected by the Group Areas Act.

These are matters which concern the Coloured people and which I think the hon. the Minister can make a statement about in this House as to what he believes should and can be done in that regard.

In the few moments left to me, I want to turn to the question of White housing. The hon. the Minister knows and can accept it that we on this side of the House will support any steps which we believe and conceive will alleviate the housing needs in this country. The hon. the Minister has himself stressed the enormity of the task which is before him when he said on many public occasions that between now and the end of this century we will have to build as many houses as were built in South Africa from the time of Van Riebeeck landing up to 1972. That is the enormity of the task. We do not believe that the progress is sufficient to meet that challenge and that we are getting to grips with the problem of housing. There has been alleviation in some directions. I will concede that to the hon. the Minister. There has been some alleviation. There is less of a pressure in some directions than there is in others. But the efforts are too timid and too halting. I believe that more money must be made available from building societies and attracted to building societies. This nonsense of pegging the maximum number of loans at R15 000 must stop. It is not dealing with the problem. It should be more realistic, for example, at a figure of R25 000. The home savings plan which has now been introduced, a plan which was originally mooted by the hon. member for Parktown in this House, has its limitations. What happens? With the present higher rental costs faced by young couples, how are they going to find the money to save to really get this nest-egg which will eventually enable them to buy? Unless, of course, a man is wise enough to start saving before he marries. One wonders how many of us thought of that when we were young, and how many of the modern youth will do it. This plan is going to be of limited help. A man is paying for a modest flat R90 per month, and he must be earning less than R5 000. He is going to have very little money to put aside if he is married with a child, to benefit by this saving scheme. But this Government can help by reducing the direct cost of acquiring homes. I have pleaded, and I will go on pleading to every Minister that I can speak to in this House, with your permission, Sir, under their Votes, to see to it that the cost of transfer, the stamp duty and the transfer duty are reduced, and that there is a tax rebate on persons who are paying for their homes. I believe that this Minister can do a tremendous job if he were to authorize building societies to lend money on interest and minimum capital redemption over the first five or ten years while a young man is settling down in his business, with increasing repayments rates as he gets on in the world. The money he still pays back in 15 years; but you are enabling him to settle down; you are helping families to settle in homes. I believe also that this Minister can well look at the policies which have been adopted. I believe that the Conservative Government in Britain has been able to break the problem created by the Labour Government by allowing people to hire properties and then to buy later, and to buy them at the price at which they were built or when they went in as tenants. Those schemes can be put into operation. These are approaches which I believe are necessary now in South Africa in the interests of the young people of South Africa, and which are not even beyond the capabilities of the hon. the Minister of Community Development. They can be brought into operation. He has taken advice in other matters, and he can be assured that we on this side of the House are just as concerned as any person on that side of the House—although some of them appear sometimes to be indifferent— to see to it that adequate housing is made available for the young people in South Africa, particularly the young people who are to produce the know-how, the knowledge and the drive to the development of South Africa. Those are our young men who are in business and in the various trades and industries. I want to appeal to the Minister to look realistically at these problems and to accept some of these recommendations which we make. We will give him the support from this side of the House to see to it that this problem is really solved, or that we can see the light of day beyond to what is now an insurmountable problem in South Africa.

Mr. Chairman, in the short time at one’s disposal, one cannot even remotely try to reply to all the matters which the hon. member for Green Point raised in his speech. I jotted down only a few of them, and he touched upon approximately eight major subjects.

I just want to refer to one or two of them. The first is the question of the waiting lists. Waiting lists are an aid for determining certain needs. One cannot rely on the information on the waiting list, but neither can one, as the hon. member said a moment ago, simply discard the waiting list. It is an aid for helping one to determine needs.

I want to refer to what the hon. member asked in regard to the investigation into the Rents Act. All of us are probably eager for that commission to publish its report. But I wonder whether the hon. member really believes that once we have eliminated the problems in regard to the Rents Act, there will in fact be so much new accommodation available for renting.

I said it would give it impetus.

That may be so, but I think we place too much emphasis on the Rents Act laying down too many restrictions in the provision of new accommodation; that it does give rise to problems, is true.

Then the hon. member referred to the struggle between the department and certain local authorities. I think the hon. member mentioned three, namely Stellenbosch, Pretoria, and a more extensive case, Mossel Bay. Those cases probably occur. Unfortunately I have been unable to find it in this report, but somewhere in the report there is a reference to the good co-operation between the department and most local authorities. In the same way as the hon. member mentioned those three cases where there possibly was tension and friction, one can probably multiply the cases where there has been excellent and sincere co-operation between the department and the various local authorities and where good work has been done.

Next I should like to refer what the hon. member said in regard to the provision of White housing. We on this side of the House are probably as concerned as those hon. gentlemen about the provision of housing, especially for our young married couples, but I believe hon. members could help us more in this respect. Attention may be paid to certain of the aspects mentioned by the hon. member for Green Point. They cannot complain that this Minister does not pay attention to certain of their suggestions. He referred a few moments ago to one suggestion put forward by them which the Minister in fact accepted; we give them their due. We always listen to suggestions. The Minister and the department are prepared to investigate certain suggestions from that side. But then the hon. members also make a mistake, which I want to refer to now. The hon. member for Green Point said he wondered whether young people were going to save even before getting married, and said he did not think so. Why does the hon. member for Green Point not in fact encourage these people to start saving at that stage? Surely this is something good and positive which we may request of our young people. We should not say to them: “Oh no, this plan of the Minister is not going to work. Do not save before you are married”. Instead of that, we should encourage our young people much more positively.

I should just like to bring a few ideas to the attention of hon. members. I want to refer briefly to the provision of housing. Over the years, projections have been made of anticipated needs. For example, a projection was made that in 1980 the anticipated need would be approximately-—I am simply quoting round figures now—26 000 to 29 000 dwelling units, which would have to be provided by the department, and by private initiative and others. Now, if we examine in what way that need is being met, we find that, in 1970, for example, approximately 26 thousand dwelling units were in fact provided. Therefore, they are keeping abreast of the needs. If one examines the housing provided by the Commission and by the Community Development Board in 1971, one sees that their building programmes also kept abreast of this need. If we add to this the housing provided by private initiative, we see that they are keeping abreast of these needs reasonably well. But we must remember that this is not the only activity of the department. There are associated activities. For example, there is group areas resettlement, slum clearance and urban renewal, savings schemes such as the new one which has been announced, the subsidizing of interest, etc. All those matters enjoy the attention of the department. If we refer to these matters as well, and if we take into account the entire sphere of the department’s activities, then we see that impressive progress has been made.

I want to refer to something else now. Apart from the fact that we must concern ourselves with meeting the immediate needs, we should also look at a few other important matters, a few spheres of development which are going to present themselves in the future. One of the matters I want to mention, is the tendency which has been revealing itself over many years, and which is in fact increasing in tempo, and that is the problem of urbanization. This is a process which is in fact increasing in tempo as a result of industrialization and several other factors. A calculation has been made that the White urban population was 3,3 million in 1970, but that by the year 2000 it would have increased to 6,6 million. If one wants to express this as a percentage, one must say that in 1970 87 per cent of the White population was concentrated in our cities and the expectation is that by the year 2000 approximately 92 per cent of our White population would be concentrated in the cities. Experience has taught us not to attempt preventing this growth of metropolitan areas. Experience in other parts of the world has taught that it is not really of any avail to do so. But, Sir, the crucial problem is not the growth of these large areas; ultimately, the crucial problem lies in the management of such large areas, and in the growth of management techniques which must be related to the physical growth of these areas. Sir, my time is actually too short to discuss this very important matter in detail, but the people concerned with the control and management of large urban complexes, must not have fixed development and planning patterns: they must continually reveal a measure of flexibility. Alternative programmes must always be evaluated, tested and selected, otherwise we may come to a dead end eventually in the development of the large cities. Someone once said—

This is what is important, Sir, The residents of the large city, the department and all of us-—the whole country—would not be saddled with the burdens which arise from the problems of the metropolis if we could also keep abreast of the management techniques of the metropolis. Unfortunately the metropolis is going to create one problem for us, and that concerns the price of land. As urbanization and the need for more land in urban areas increase, the price of land in the metropolitan areas will rise and we may eventually have a price crisis in the metropolis. Ways of combating this problem is something to which we should pay attention continually, because our one important aim and task is that we must try to provide cheaper housing for the middle income group, because they are the people who flock to the metropolis in large numbers. We must give our urgent attention to this problem. But I shall not venture today to try to tell you exactly where the solution lies.

The hon. member who has just sat down, at the beginning of his speech, expressed his concern about housing, quite rightly, and I shall attempt to deal with that in the course of my speech.

Sir, the hon. the Minister challenged my colleague, the hon. member for Green Point, about the correctness of certain figures. He mentioned that his list of figures, about which he says there is some confusion, dealt with waiting lists. Sir, I am not going to deal with actual waiting lists; I am going to deal with the official figures given by the Minister himself. I want to say at the outset, from my own experience, that the actual position is always a great deal worse than that reflected in the official waiting lists in the hands of the department, but that is not the department’s fault. These waiting lists merely reflect the names of people who put their names on the list; they wait seven, eight, nine or 10 years for a house, and when it is not forthcoming they no longer bother to put their names on the list and they tell their friends that there is no point in doing so. Let us ignore waiting lists for the moment. Before I start, I would like to say that my criticism of the department—and I want the Minister to understand this very clearly—is not criticism of the staff of the department. I have criticized the staff in the past. My experience now, particularly in my own area, is that the Regional Director of the department is doing a wonderful job and the whole atmosphere in that area has changed as the result of the work he is doing. I would like in this House to record my appreciation to Mr. Immelman, who is in charge of the department in Durban. Having said that, I now want to get down to some more important matters. The first is this: I want to repeat what I have said every year since I have been in Parliament. That is that I call for an enquiry by a commission into the activities of the Department of Community Development. I have called for it each year and I intend to go on calling for it every year until my request is granted. I do not wish to go into individual cases in this debate. I have done so in the past. The Minister simply brushes them aside. All I would like to say in passing on this particular matter in regard to staff, is that there is no Government department which has had more of its staff investigated by the Police than the Department of Community Development.

You are talking nonsense.

Sir, that is the Minister’s standard reply to remarks in this House. All I ask him to do is to get up and tell me the number of members of his staff who have been prosecuted in the last ten years. I have the figures from Hansard, supplied by the Minister himself. But be that as it may, I want to say this to the Minister: I have run out of adjectives to describe the operations of his department. By that I mean the operations of the Government and of the Minister who happens to run this particular department, and whether it is this Minister or any other Minister the adjectives would remain the same. This is a matter about which I wish to warn the country. If the hon. Minister or any member on the Government side would care to get out of their Cadillacs and Buicks and pay visits to some of the ghettos he has established for Coloureds and Indians, they would soon see that the attitude of the people living in these ghettos towards the White race, has undergone a change in the last few years which is shocking in the extreme. I want to say this to the hon. the Minister, and I hope he takes notice of it, although I must admit it is a very remote hope. I want to tell South Africa that the threats of terrorism on our border will be as nothing compared to the frustration, the bitterness and the absolute dislike that the occupants of these particular townships now hold for the White race in South Africa. If the security of the White race is ever endangered in the next ten years, that danger will come from these particular townships under that Minister’s control. That is why I believe that the country should know that what is happening in these townships must be seen to be believed. This is the Achilles’ heel of South Africa; all the laws and all the Police forces in the world will not stop it, but this Minister has the power in his hands to do so.

I shall deal with townships a little later on, but dealing directly with the housing shortage, I want to deal with it by using the Minister’s own figures which appear in Hansard. First of all, on 9th February this year he gave the official shortage of housing, and I do not intend to quote the figures. The Minister knows them himself. A little later I asked what was necessary to provide for the population increase of each race group in South Africa, and the minister gave me certain figures. I then asked, in a series of questions, how many houses had been built over given periods, and some very interesting information came out of these figures. In the first instance, in the last five years in South Africa, we have built for the White race 140 000—odd houses. This sounds like quite a lot of houses. This is what we built in the last five years, but in fact we are not even keeping pace with the number of houses required for the population increase. Turning then to Coloured houses, we need 16 346 houses to cater for the population increase each year. These are the Minister’s figures. In the best year for building Coloured housing—and this is when the department is running at full steam and there has been money available —we built something like 14 000 houses against a population increase requirement of 16 000, so we are already 2 000 houses short just on the population increase. But it is worse than that. At present 20 000 Coloureds still have to be re-settled in terms of the Group Areas Act; 21 840 is the Minister’s official figure for the housing shortage for Coloureds. I have done a calculation, and on this basis I want to tell the Minister—and if he chooses to ignore it, I want to tell South Africa—that by the end of the next five years, we will be short in South Africa of 114 000 houses for the three race groups. This ignores the fact, for instance, that we still have to remove 30 000-odd from District Six, if my memory serves me correctly, and 12 000 from Grey Street in Durban—I will deal with those figures in a moment. To bring it down to actual figures, in 1971 the department, local authorities and private enterprise built 48 339 houses, according to the Minister’s figures, but to cater for the population increase in 1971 we should have built 51 296 houses. So there already we were 3 000 houses short, just to cater for the population increase, let alone group area removals and the backlog which, on the Minister’s official figures for Coloureds, for instance is 21 000. Some authorities in Cape Town have estimated that almost one-third of the Coloured population in Cape Town is not housed adequately anywhere. But looking at the Cape Town Coloureds alone, for the population increase over a period of five years, we should build 37 000 houses. In the last five years—and this is with the department working at its peak and there has been money available—we built 29 000 houses. So here we have a shortfall of 8 000. And there have been cut-backs by the department in view of the economic climate. In addition to that, of course, we have 30 000-odd, as I said, to remove in District Six. If one looks at the position in Durban itself, we built 29 000 houses in the last five years. But we should have built 47 000. In fact, in almost every single instance we are building fewer houses than are required on the Minister’s own official figures, to cater for the population increase. Can the hon. the Minister get up, as he has done in the past, and say there is no housing shortage? But from these figures—and the list is far too long for me to read here—we must deduct a sum total of 8 218 dwelling units demolished with the authority of the department in the last five years. So whatever figure we have built, we have to take off 8 218 for the demolitions authorized by the department. Now I want to say this to the hon. the Minister, and I want to warn him once again, that at the end of the next five years, and certainly at the end of the next ten years, there are going to be teeming thousands of non-Whites, Coloureds and Indians—because Bantu housing comes under another Minister and people better qualified … [Time expired.]

Like most hon. members on this side of the House, I do not take much notice of the hon. member for Port Natal, because when he rises and speaks about matters of this nature, he always does so in a most exaggerated way and in the superlative, as he in fact admitted today. He says he lacks adjectives when he rises here. We are perfectly aware of that; he exaggerates everything he says and one cannot rely on the contribution he makes in this debate. He is one of the biggest sour-mouths on the opposite side of this House when it comes to this type of thing which he can exploit. Of all the members on that side of this House, he is the one who comes and speaks here about ghettos. Sir, who were the biggest creators of slums in the history of South Africa? It was the United Party.

Nonsense!

It is a recognized fact today, and as far as that is concerned, we are living in a different world. That hon. member sitting against the wall over there, was still a greenhorn when the United Party were in power last and he does not know what the conditions were. There was not a single urban area in South Africa which was not surrounded by messy, stinking slums. Who were the people who were responsible for that? Not this side of the House! There they are sitting! In 1934 they passed a Slums Act and they remained in power until 1948. Let an hon. member on that side rise to indicate one case to me in which they ever implemented the Slums Act in order to clear a single slum. [Interjections.] It is easy to say there were no slums, but what did it look like around Johannesburg? One did not dare go there! There were Sophiatown, Windermere, Louw se Bos, the Goodwood Acres, Mossienes—all those places.

What does it look like now?

Today it looks like Constantia. Goodwood Acres and Mossienes look like Constantia today.

And what about Elsies River?

Elsies River and a few other places are still the remains of a rgime we inherited from that side. [Interjections.] I say that the biggest slum creators of this century are sitting over there. I want to leave them at that.

I should like to know from the hon. the Minister what has happened to the scheme that was announced here last year according to which employers of large numbers of Coloureds were to be enabled to provide housing for their Coloured employees in their own group areas at the cost of the employers and on land made available to them on a long-term leasing basis by the local authorities. I am under the impression that not much has happened as far as this scheme is concerned. I want to ask today who the people are who are employing these Coloureds on a large scale. Are they Nationalists?

Yes!

Are they not the friends of those hon. members, the great industrialists? [Interjections.]

Order!

I want to level the accusation today that the employers of these large numbers of Coloureds pay far too little attention to the housing needs of these people.

To which employers is the hon. member referring?

Large numbers of Coloureds are still leaving the rural areas in order to come and live in the cities. They are attracted by high wages. If they are on the farms, the farmers are held responsible for providing them with decent housing. However, as soon as they have come to the cities, housing then becomes a burden of the State and of the local authority. The employer pays little attention to it. I think it is high time that we reprimanded these people and told them that unless they did something for their employees in this regard, we would have to introduce legislation to compel them to fulfil their responsibility towards these people.

To which employers is the hon. member referring?

I cannot imagine that a breadwinner who has to crawl in under two corrugated iron sheets with his family at night, can be a productive employee or a person who does his work properly the next day. That is why I say that employers have a responsibility towards the large numbers of Coloureds they employ.

Mr. Chairman. may I ask the hon. member a question?

No, I have too little time. The hon. member may make his speech in a moment, and I shall reply to it afterwards. I therefore want to say to the hon. the Minister that if employers do not want to make use of the facilities on a voluntary basis in order to accept their responsibility towards their employees in this way as well, the State will have to force them to do so.

I am not making this appeal only in respect of people who employ large numbers of Coloureds; I want to make an appeal today to employers of Whites as well to help their employees with housing, particularly newly married people in their service. If they helped these employees with housing, I am sure they would have people who would stay with them and be loyal to them. Then they could expect that employees would give their best.

The State spends tremendous amounts on housing in this country. It is a tremendous task; in the decade from 1961 to 1971 it cost the State R745 million to provide housing. State departments set the example today in that they provide their employees with housing. The Railways, which is the biggest employer in South Africa, provides housing for almost 50 per cent of its White employees. I think private initiative should also do its share in this regard. Over the past five years we have built 22 600 houses for Whites, 50 854 for Coloureds and 15 276 for Indians. It is a tremendous task and in addition we must bear in mind that the same department is responsible for the clearing up of slums in order to prevent old residential areas from becoming depressed. Furthermore, it has to resettle the thousands of families who have become disqualified as a result of the policy of separate group areas—the hon. members opposite say they too support this policy. The resettlement task means that, because of the proclamation of group areas, no fewer than 118 000 families had to be resettled. Of these 118 000 families, 1600 were White families. It is a colossal task. If we want group areas, separate residential areas, in this country, we must do this. If the United Party says we must not resettle people, they are destroying separate residential areas in South Africa. If this is the case, they do not mean what they say. One can only have separate residential areas in South Africa if one sets about it in the way this Government does. This Government has shown by deeds that it wants to place people in their separate areas. That is why, in recent years, it has placed 69 000 families who became disqualified in terms of the Group Areas Act. in areas which were declared for them. It is the position that of the 17 571 houses and dwelling units which the department and local authorities built and made available last year, no fewer than 5 000 were used for resettling people. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I do not wish to spend too much time on the hon. member who has just sat down, except to say that he and any other hon. member on that side may call me what they wish, but I see a duty to South Africa and everybody in South Africa. Therefore I will continue to pass the remarks that I do in this House and outside this House, and as far as I am concerned, the devil with them! One can reach the limits of this sort of thing. The hon. member talks about the slums of 1948. We have had a Government boasting about 25 years of booming economy and yet we still have slums in 1972. We are in fact doing a worse thing in 1972; we are, namely, building slums. They are slums from the day that the last brick is laid. I will tell hon. members …

Where?

At Chatsworth.

You are talking absolute nonsense.

There are townships in this country which are built by the hon. the Minister and his department which are slums from the day the first person moves in.

They are model townships.

Shall I tell the hon. the Minister that not a single house has been built in Chatsworth during the last ten years to cater for a member of the Indian community who wishes to get married there. Every single …

One!

Yes, one. In Chatsworth you find 13 or 14 people living in a two-bedroomed house. And the hon. the Minister says it is a model township. The medical officer of health at Durban turned round the other day and said that Chatsworth is overcrowded and that there is nothing he can do about it. How can you call it a model township? I should like the people of South Africa not to judge my words and certainly not to judge the hon. the Minister’s words, but to get in their cars this week-end and go for a drive into the Cape Flats, into Chatsworth and other places in South Africa and see for themselves what is happening, see for themselves how this Government is housing these people. Let them gp to Mere-went in Durban and see the 600 families living in the tin shacks of Durban. They have been living there for ten years under conditions which many of us would not allow our dogs to live in. I have come to the end of my tether in dealing with a Minister like this, not for his sake, not for the Government’s sake, but for the sake of South Africa and for the sake of the problems that will arise in South Africa because of his attitude. All I can do is to ask the South Africans to go into these townships, have a look around and then pray that we will get a decent government that will know what the odds are, who will know what the problems are.

Under this Minister this department’s property holdings have jumped by R16 million in the last year alone. In the last 12 months the property holdings in this department have jumped from R84 million to R100 million at cost. Anybody can tell this House that that means that this department probably holds property to the value in excess of R300 million. I have called this Government the biggest estate agent in the world. I would now answer that it is also the most ruthless, the most heartless Government and that it is a monstrous organization. Over the last ten years this Government has spent 50 cents on building buildings like we have opposite this House for every rand that it spent on housing. I object strongly to the type of building that is being done in Government quarters. It does not fall under this particular Minister’s Vote, but I would say that if the hon. the Minister would put his priorities right and build houses for people that need them, we would find that our security would be a great deal safer than it is. The department’s holdings have increased, but the department does not pay the rates and taxes to the tune of millions of rand throughout our cities. Our ratepayers have to pay these rates because the department holds so much of this property and does not pay the rates on it. It owns one-third of the township of Queensborough, it owns half the township of Cato Manor. Five years ago, Cato Manor was going to be released, but not one site has been released yet. Then we come down to things like Block AK in Durban, frozen for something like ten years. The hon. the Minister would have planned Block AK. But in the meantime he has stymied Durban and it is estimated that that alone is costing the Durban City Council R30 000 a year in rates. There sits the hon. the Minister who can do nothing but blushter and “Blah”. But, I think, the cherry is put on the cake when we discover that if a religious organization wishes to build a church in an Indian area, it has to obtain permission from the hon. the Minister to buy that church site. Has this House ever heard anything so ridiculous, that a Minister of State can decide whether a church may buy a site in an Indian township? I should like this hon. Minister to give the reply across the floor of this House that it is his right, that he can decide and that he is the one that does decide. I should like to know when he started to play a game like this.

That has been the case all the time.

You have been doing it all the time?

It has been the case for 20 years.

Is it something to be proud of? The Pietermaritzburg Mental Health Society decided that they should like to use the Pietermaritzburg City Hall for a charity concert. They put in an application to the hon. the Minister’s department together with a deposit of R20. Last year, surprisingly enough, when the Lions wanted to hold the Republic celebrations in the Pietermaritzburg City Hall, it was in order. But when they wanted to hold a variety concert to raise funds for the Mental Health Organization, a registered charitable organization, the Minister not only refused the application, but he also refused to return their R20. And this is a department that has property to the value of R300 million. And the Minister sits there and smiles. These are the reasons why I am asking for an investigation. They sell a property and within 18 months or so the value of that property increases by 100 per cent. It is even stranger in Pietermaritzburg. They buy a property from an Indian—and I have often wondered what right the department has to buy property from Indians in an Indian area—and then sells it back to an Indian at a profit of something like R200 000. I believe in all sincerity that, if we are a democratic society and if we are a just society, we must for heavens’ sake have a commission of inquiry into the operations of this department and what it is doing to this country. I am sincere when I say that I do not believe that there is a nation on earth, anywhere on earth, even behind the Iron Curtain or behind the Bamboo Curtain, or anywhere else, that would operate in the manner that this department operates and get away with it. One can cite individual cases to this Minister. I have cited them to him in the past and he had threatened to resign if I brought him evidence of these things. I brought him evidence, but he is still there; consequently one can not pay much attention to what the Minister says. The value of the department’s properties simply increases; the department interferes in everything one can think of; it builds where it does not allow anybody else to build; and it does not build in conformity with local authority by-laws so that if buildings happen to fall down, and I do not wish to mention the name of the place, the Minister simply bluffs and “blahs” and makes a lot of noise. The Minister and the Government benches can make all the noise they like, because it does not worry me one little bit. In conclusion I would like to say something to the hon. the Minister of Health, who is looking at me in a peculiar way. If one cannot get through to any other member of the Cabinet, perhaps h might persuade his colleagues in the Cabinet that what is happening in the townships is far more important than either he or the Minister of Community Development making speeches about Afrikaner-hate like they did a little while ago. In dealing with the serious conditions in our townships and in regard to housing, all the hon. the Minister of Community Development can do is to make a speech on Afrikaner-hate.

I did not make a speech on Afrikaner-hate. I said you were Boer-haters.

The people in the townships took note of what the hon. the Minister for Community Development said. The country also took note of what the hon. the Minister and other hon. Ministers said. There are issues of far greater importance in South Africa than that, but they choose to take that line for election purposes. I want to appeal not to these hon. Ministers, because I do not think it worth while, but to the country to have a look at these Ministers to see how they do their jobs.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Port Natal has said here that the people outside and the electorate are praying for a change of Government. The hon. member has probably forgotten that Oudtshoorn rejected the United Party the other day.

What do you know about …

What do you know? You are a sheep, man! The voters of Oudtshoorn clearly expressed their lack of confidence in the United Party. I shall lay a wager with that hon. member that the voters of Brakpan will again reject the United Party in no uncertain terms. The hon. member for Port Natal now tells us that the people are praying for a change of Government. Who are those people? I shall tell him who those people are. They are the sour-mouthed people in South Africa, the racialists, the Progressives. They are the liberalists of whom he is one. He competes with the hon. member for Houghton to see who is the greatest Progressive. The enemies of Afrikanerdom are the ones who are praying for the Government to fall. They want those conditions again which we had in 1948. In 1948 there were slum conditions in every city in the Republic. There were thousands and thousands of slums. There we found White, Coloured, Bantu and Indian, every kind and colour, living together. Those people who are praying for a change of Government want those conditions again. They were the hotbed of communism. Not only were those slum conditions the hotbed of communism, but the United Party even harboured them in their Cabinet. Those were the conditions which prevailed under the United Party in 1948. The hon. member for Port Natal is not listening now. He is now engaged in a diversionary manoeuvre with two liberalists who are sitting with him. All three of them are competing to see whether they cannot outwit the hon. member for Houghton. All three of them would like to be the leader of the Progressive Party. He says that the people are praying for a change of Government. The liberalist elements, the Communists and the enemies of the Afrikaner people are the ones who are praying for this, and not the true voters of South Africa. They know that the day they reject the National Party and the United Party comes into power, it will be only a question of time before those slum conditions exist again and Communism runs riot in South Africa. Then it will also be the end of the White Civilization in Southern Africa. When that party was in power we had conditions where the Sam Kahns ran riot and preference was given to the Ballingers. Communist agitators flourished under those housing conditions. This Government knows that the housing problem is one of the burning problems in South Africa. We know that when a family has its own home, that family is not so susceptible to Communism and other dangerous influences which surround us today. That is why this Government is spending millions of rands on housing. The hon. member says he is also in favour of separate residential areas, but he knows, after all, that his party does not advocate separate residential areas. After all, it is the policy of the United Party that it should take place on a voluntary basis. Now I want to ask the hon. member what Coloured person, Bantu or Indian will voluntarily accept a separate residential area. The United Party knows, after all, what the conditions were when they were in power.

I want to confine myself, however, to what is important in my own constituency. I want to tell the Minister and his department that I appreciate what they have done in my constituency. In the vicinity of the Korsten lake they have largely cleared up the slum conditions. I also want to thank the department very much for taking away from the Coloured people one by one those slums in the White residential area of Ferguson, adjoining Uta Street, and for resettling the people in the Coloured area. A few Coloured people still remain, however, and I want to ask the hon. the Minister to encourage and perhaps to force the city council also to resettle those Coloured people who are still living there at the moment. Those remaining few Coloured people are holding out, because some of them have right of ownership, while others are renting houses which belong to Whites. I should like the department to intervene there. I want to bring to the hon. the Minister’s notice another matter which is vitally important to my constituency. I want to thank the Minister and his department for those 310 flats which are being built in Gould Street. Those fats are now nearing completion, and the first ones will be available within a month or six weeks. However, I want to draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that the rents which are being charged for those flats are not within the means of the people for whom they are meant. The rent will be approximately R70 a month, and this for people with an income of between R160 and R400 a month. I want to ask the Minister that where we have the sub-economic group with 1 per cent and the lower economic group with 3¾ per cent and the economic group with 8 per cent, we should also have an intermediate group of between 4 per cent and 5 per cent. It will then be possible to house the people with a low income as well, particularly those with families. I am worried about the people who have an income of just over R160 a month, who fall in the 8 per cent interest rate group. Those are the ones we cannot house, particularly those with children. There is housing for the lower and higher income groups, but people in this group cannot afford it. This is where I want to ask the Minister something. The principle of house subsidizing has already been accepted. We are in fact subsidizing the sub-economic houses. Food subsidizing has also been accepted. I think we are subsidizing food to the amount of approximately R68 million a year, to keep food prices under control. That food is subsidized for rich and poor. Now I want to ask the Minister, since we have already accepted the principle of subsidizing, the 1 per cent and 3 per cent concessions, that we should try to reduce that tremendous jump from 3 per cent to 8 percent. We must narrow the gap so that the middle income groups, particularly those with families, may also be given the opportunity to be housed.

Mr. Chairman, notwithstanding the bitter attack which the hon. member for Port Natal made upon the hon. the Minister, an attack which was indicative of a sour disposition and of bitterness and irascibility —which one is accustomed to on the part of that hon. member—I want unashamedly here today to pay tribute to this Department of Community Development and to the hon. the Minister for the tremendous job that they have done, particularly in the Port Elizabeth area, in respect of housing for Whites. If this Department had not taken the initiative in the early sixties and provided housing for Whites in Port Elizabeth, we would have experienced a housing crisis there that would have been difficult to believe. The 800-plus two- and three-roomed flats that were built at Algoa Park in the late sixties, eased a position that had become critical, and made provision for people for whom there was no other accommodation. Unfortunately, these buildings had to be erected in great haste and there was not adequate time for planning. In fact, it was also an experiment in prefabricated construction methods. For this reason, if one had the time today one would be able to improve considerably upon the planning aspect of those flats.

One very annoying problem of the occupants of those flats is that no provision has been made for hanging space for washing. This might seem a very trivial point to raise but the fact remains that the only place where these people can hang up their washing is on the small balconies next to their living rooms, and this looks very ugly and untidy from the outside. There is no space to hang the washing outside and, in any event, the wind blows it away. I wonder whether the hon. the Minister and the Department cannot consider meeting this requirement by perhaps having a centralized washing plant, a modern laundry, installed there where the washing can be washed and steam-dried. This is already being done at the flats we visited the other day. The occupants of Disa Park have no problem in regard to washing blowing away, being stolen or having to be hung up somewhere. If this can also be done at the particular flats I have mentioned, it might provide the solution to their problem. As I have said, because those flats at Algoa Park were actually built by way of an experiment and can perhaps be greatly improved as far as their planning is concerned, I want to ask most courteously that there should be no further increases in rentals in respect of those flats. A further increase in rental took place just recently. Although one realizes that the rental is still reasonable for a three-roomed flat, there must please be no further increases. In fact, I should like to ask that the rentals be reduced to their previous level. I should also like to ask whether consideration cannot be given to classifying a few of those blocks of flats—perhaps the two-bedroomed blocks—as sub-economic housing, even if only temporarily. There is a great need at the moment for sub-economic housing and housing for the lower income groups. The City Council’s scheme in the Perseverance area has not yet been built and there is a great shortage in respect of this income group. I wonder whether we cannot perhaps consider earmarking one or two of those blocks for this purpose.

Secondly, Sir, I want to thank the hon. the Minister for the vision he displayed when we asked him earlier this year for money for the Despatch Municipality which had an opportunity to purchase 900 morgen of land between Despatch and Port Elizabeth at a very reasonable price. I am grateful that the hon. the Minister was prepared to make that money available. In the next 10 or 12 years homes for between 5 000 and 6 000 Whites can be built at very reasonable prices on those 900 morgen, which were bought for about R1 200 per morgen because the money was made available by this Department, simply because the land could be obtained so cheaply. I want to draw hon. members’ attention to the fact that private developers have paid up to R4 000 per morgen in that vicinity. If homes are built there by private developers, they will therefore be far more expensive. Sir, I cannot but compliment the municipality of Despatch on their acumen in providing cheap and yet attractive housing for our Whites with the assistance of the Department of Community Development. I think that these people have in fact set an example to many other local authorities.

It must be because they are Nationalists.

There are no United Party supporters among them at all. They have set a very fine record there in regard to housing. I think that people throughout the country should go along to see the types of homes that are being built there for between R7 000 and R8 000 each.

Thirdly and lastly, I should like to raise a matter which I have discussed with the hon. the Minister on various occasions, and this deals with the question of increased housing loans to individuals. In a Press statement last year the hon. the Minister announced that the loans which were made available to local authorities for housing schemes had been increased from R6 000 per house to a maximum of R7 200 in respect of the larger type of home. Unfortunately, no provision was made at the time whereby the individual borrower’s loan could be increased accordingly. I feel that the same concession ought also to be made in respect of loans to private individuals. I think that we agree that it is necessary that the private individual who wants to build his own little home according to his own plan and on a plot that he himself has selected, ought to be encouraged to do so. It is simply a physical impossibility to build a house for the small sum of R6 000 today. I know that it is said that there has been a levelling-off in building costs and that it is possible that building costs will fall but, Sir, that is just not so. What happens now is this: If a man has his own plot and he finds a builder who will build him a house for R6 000, the builder tells him: “Very well, I shall build you a shell; I shall build you four walls and a roof, but you will have to find the additional money for your floors and your verandah and your fencing and so forth.” This man has now to go from pillar to post; he may perhaps eventually obtain money from a banking institution or whatever the case may be at an interest rate of 10 per cent or 12 per cent in order to make his house liveable. I think it is only fair that people with a low income should be protected against these high rates of interest. Although we are grateful for the concession whereby private individuals can also obtain housing loans from the Department —we are grateful for it and it is happening frequently in my constituency— we nevertheless ask that some thought should be given to these people too. The levelling-off that has taken place in the building industry, and is perhaps still taking place, has made no contribution whatsoever towards lowering building costs; on the contrary, building costs continue to rise. I was informed recently that the price of paint has been increased by 15 per cent and that this is going to cost the building industry about R10 million per annum. We have these continual increases in this way and I think that care will have to be taken to prevent stagnation in the building activities of private individuals building with Community Development loans. I know that this is actually a matter for the National Housing Commission, but I want to ask the hon. the Minister to discuss the matter with the National Housing Commission in order to see whether these people cannot be given some measure of relief.

The last two speakers on the Government side have certainly supported the criticism that has emanated from this side both of the Minister’s department and of the extremely serious situation that exists in the housing field. There is no question, Sir, that there is complete dissatisfaction on all sides with what the hon. the Minister is doing. I do not think that the hon. member for Port Elizabeth North, who in the past attacked the hon. the Minister in regard to housing at one of his party congresses and was described as an irresponsible person, has given much evidence of any improvement in his attitude in this particular matter, nor has the hon. member for Algoa, who thanks the hon. the Minister in one breath and in the next breath criticizes him in regard to high rentals and other disturbing features that one finds in the housing field today. I would like, Sir, to draw the hon. the Minister’s attention to something which he said in the course of a statement which he made on the occasion of the investment seminar of the Property Mail in Johannesburg in October last year, when he said—

Sir, we have long contended that it is time the hon. the Minister paid attention to the lower-income groups. Although he himself has stated that his department has the right to build for any income group, and that the department must maintain a balance, we on this side contend that he has no right to indulge in this form of luxury whilst there is such a severe shortage of housing for people who really cannot afford it. In a scheme which the department started in Jeppes, and which it has not finished allthough it was supposed to have been finished in, I think, September last year, we find that he has taken possession of some portion of this scheme and that one completed dwelling unit has already been provisionally let at a rental of R122-80 per month. Sir, this is in a working class area where you find mostly people who are tradesmen and operators in factories and for whom housing is urgently needed and who now have to pay a rental that only a person with an income of approximately R7 200 a year can afford. If you work on the basis of 20 per cent of the income this is the category for which the hon. the Minister put up a housing scheme costing well over R1 million, and I believe, as I have said on an occasion before, that he has gone in for far too expensive housing in that area. It is not the type of housing his department should put up. He should put up housing that is reasonably priced and has a reasonable rental. If one compares it with the scheme which his agents, the Johannesburg City Council, has put up—in fact all local authorities are the agents for the hon. the Minister—we find very good housing at an average of about R60 to R80 a month something which is within the scope and the reach of people who are wage earners and are not entrepreneurs, and who are running their own businesses and can command their own earning possibilities. I think the Minister will find that this is a scheme which he should not repeat in a hurry. Then I should like to draw the attention of the hon. the Minister to another very serious inroad which I think is taking place in the administration of his department. I find that whilst an ordinary landlord is limited by the decisions of the Rent Board, and by the Act, in regard to the amount of rental he can get, based on 6 per cent of the value of the land and 8 per cent of the value of the building, together with rates and maintenance expenses, which often average out at a return of 9 per cent to 9½ per cent, the Minister maintains very glibly that as far as he is concerned, he is entitled to get a return of 12¾ per cent or between 12¼ per cent and 12¾ per cent for his investment. He says only the Community Development Board is concerned with the acquisition of flats and houses and the rentals in these cases are determined according to the accepted policy—I do not know by whom —of 12¼ per cent of the acquisition cost. I have a case here in Jeppes, where a person, who is earning approximately R47 a week net, after paying his UIF and PAYE, lives in a house which has been acquired by the Minister’s department, where the rental has been determined by the Rent Board at R43 a month. But the moment the department took it over the rental was immediately increased to R53 a month, and the tenant was told that if the change in rental was unacceptable to him, he must in terms of clause 3 of the agreement of lease, tender one month’s notice of his intention to terminate the lease before the end of the then current month. In other words, if he cannot pay that extra money every month, which they arbitrarily decided shall be imposed upon him, here is a month’s notice and get out! This is a place where working people cannot afford to find homes today because of the shortage of houses, and the Minister did not get up to make an opening statement telling us what he will do about alleviating this type of case. This is the sort of thing which goes on, and which I believe indicates that the Minister has completely lost touch with what is going on in the country. He has an enormous department and a huge budget and he just glibly goes on with the huge acquisitions and does not pay the normal attention which one expects to be paid in the interests of the citizens of a country. He boasts about the tremendous amount of housing that he provides and he takes credit for all the housing that is put up with the help of the National Housing Fund, which is after all a State-established institution with money voted by the taxpayer. He takes credit for all the houses being built with those funds by the local authorities, but when a local authority builds it is limited particularly with regard with the scope of its spending. It is limited in regard to the type of housing it can put up, so that it can cater for people earning up to R400 a month, as well as for the sub-economic strata of the community. But when the Minister wants to say something good for his department, he quotes these figures, which I believe are astronomical. There is another thing which I think is very unsatisfactory, and in keeping with what has been said this afternoon. I have raised the whole matter by way of question and answer with the Minister in regard to Triomf. That is the case of a township which the hon. the Minister well remembers was put up as a triumphant achievement in order to house people who needed homes there, particularly immigrants as well as others, and we find that after complaining for nearly four years, the department has at last decided to do something about repairing houses, which have become a danger to the community. In fact we have letters from an owner who says that according to the Community Development building inspectors the houses are in a serious condition and a few of the owners were warned to keep their children away from the walls; the first complaint was made in 1966 by him and other tenants. Now, it was only by way of question and answer, and a tremendous of Press publicity initiated not through politicians, but initiated by the individual himself, who went to the Press apparently because he could get no answer from the department, that something was at last done and efforts are now being made to put that scheme in order. [Time expired.]

I am amazed. The hon. member for Jeppes mentioned a few individual matters, but he said nothing about the overall shortage of houses. Several times today we heard about the shortage of housing. The hon. member for Jeppes will probably agree with me that a major cause of this shortage—and I admit that there are places where there may be some shortage of housing—is that in past years the Johannesburg City Council did not make use of the funds made available by Community Development.

That is untrue.

They did not make use of those funds in proportion to the dwelling units built, and I challenge the hon. member to prove that I am wrong. The Minister had to warn them that if they did not avail themselves of the advantages and utilize the money for the provision of housing for the lower income groups, they would not have it for any other purpose either. For example, the hon. member knows that as far as housing for the Indians is concerned, the City Council of Johannesburg refused all those years to provide services there. He knows that at first they refused to participate in the renewal schemes at Jeppes and Vrededorp, and the hon. member knows that the United Party, for example in Johannesburg and other local bodies, is partly responsible for that shortage of houses. Then I should still like to make the statement that there is in actual fact not such a shortage of housing as is always said. Take my constituency in Johannesburg. In the past four years between the two elections 40 per cent of the people moved. Where did they move to? These are the people in the lower income groups, who had reasonably decent houses, but it suited them to move in that period of four years; 40 percent of the constituency’s people moved to other places in that time. If they had been unable to obtain another house, they would not have moved away. Many times on visiting my constituents I ask an old gentleman, “Where is Susan?” To which he replies, “Susan lives in a flat in Braamfontein.” When I ask where John is, his reply is that John lives in a flat in Hillbrow, and he adds that if I want the telephone numbers, he can give them to me. The result is that there is a housing shortage and a telephone shortage at the same time. But I want to make haste. I should like to confine myself to my constituency as well as to the Jan van Blerk episode, the episode of Jan van Blerk who went over to the United Party. The reasons he gave and the United Party gave, included housing, the Chinese and the Indians.

That was the old story.

I may just say in passing that this is the first time in history I know of that a representative of the National Party went over to the United Party. You yourself know that he could stand it there for a very short while only. It reminds me of the old story about the skunk that took refuge in a hole, only to flee from the hole a short while later because he could not stand the smell. I want to go into a few of these small matters in order to prove that the statements which Mr. Jan van Blerk made, and which the United Party confirmed, are complete nonsense. In the first place, I just want to mention that in past years we had Vrededorp. Mr. Jan van Blerk said he was part of Vrededorp, and he spoke about the housing in Vrededorp. I want to make the statement that I think Vrededorp is one of the suburbs in South Africa in which more was spent on housing and facilities for the various groups in recent years, and will still be spent, than was ever spent before.

And who did that?

It was this Government that did that. If only the hon. member would listen for a moment, he might learn something, and then Jan van Blerk, to whom I shall come back later, would possibly go about things in a different way. I just want to mention that Vredepark was recently built at a cost of R1 800 000 in Vrededorp. At the moment a tender to the value of R140 000 has been accepted for that area. Included in the programme which has been approved, is a block of flats of 16 storeys, which is estimated to cost R500 000. This is housing for Whites which will be provided in Vrededorp. Vrededorp is only a very small suburb of Johannesburg. As far as urban renewal is concerned, the Johannsebrg City Council agreed more than seven or eight years ago to carry out the instructions virtually in concerted planning with the Department of Community Development and the Government. But nothing much has come of that urban renewal, apart from the new schemes which have been carried into effect. Under all these circumstances overhead planning has already been finalized. The detailed planning of the first phase will take place one of these days. I may tell hon. members that several thousand rand will be spent on these renewal schemes.

Then I want to dwell on another matter. I want to refer to the shopping-centre for Indians which is being built in Fordsburg. The first project costing R700 000, has almost been completed. I should just mention that there were many problems involved in getting that project off the ground. Negotiations had to be conducted about the site and arbitration had to be resorted to bring the matter to a head. As far as the second phase is concerned, the site will be handed over to the demolition contractors on 1st June. Then the real project will commence. I may just mention that according to the estimate that project will cost a further R8 million to R9 million. I do not think that in India itself there is any shopping-centre like the one for Indians in Vrededorp. The shopping-centre is in Pageview, but it is in actual fact in the area of Vrededorp. There will be no problems in settling the businessmen at Pageview.

What about the Chinese?

I shall come to the Chinese. Of the 842 families in Page-view. 427 have already been settled in Lenasia. Of the 415 who remain, 126 have bought their own stands. I think there are fewer than 300 who still have to be resettled. The problem is that there are 250 of them with whom negotiations about the prices of the land are in progress. In addition there still are 60 cases of arbitration. The people cannot be resettled before these things have been finalized. I also want to mention that resettlement would already have taken place if the City Council of Johannesburg had initially been prepared to provide services to Lenasia. It was only during the past few years, when they saw that the Department of Community Development itself would provide the services, that they agreed to provide them.

Now I want to refer to the Chinese. We know what the problems in Johannesburg are. We also have the problem of satisfying everyone. The people of Houghton do not want the Chinese to live there; other people do not want them to live close to them. There was a suggestion that they should take Chinatown and develop it themselves. However, the Chinese are not prepared to do so, because they do not want to be on one side. I do not want to go into the matter. The hon. the Minister can go into the matter if he likes. My information is that in the near future the Government and the Department of Community Development will find a solution which will satisfy all parties.

Tell us about Jan van Blerk!

I shall tell hon. members about Jan van Blerk now. A great fuss was made about Jan van Blerk. Jan van Blerk employed the same means as the United Party employs, and that is to blow one’s own trumpet. He got hold of something, as the Unittd Party tries to do with housing, and tried to make something of it. Jan van Blerk is still in the running. They may try him again, because we as the National Party, his constituency and his regional executive have decided that we do not want Jan van Blerk anymore. Perhaps the story of coalition is possible now. There is a new party, and so there is a chance of a coalition. There is a chief leader and a chief whip in that party, and such a coalition may possibly be effected. I just want to say that the stories of the newspapers as to how many Nationalists in Vrededorp resigned as a result of the volte face of Jan van Blerk, are largely exaggerated. I have information in my bag, and I invite the United Party to come and have a look at it, information which points to the fact that nine persons resigned from the party. I may also tell hon. members that these persons are relatives and friends of those relatives. I may just mention that after that episode his wife and daughter did not resign from the National Party. Jan van Blerk, however thought fit to pack his bag and leave after that episode. He will probably still approach the U.P. and I shall be glad if they take him. That Jan van Blerk episode was an injection, a tonic, for my constituency; it made those people who had drifted away to some extent, stauncher Nationalists. If Jan van Blerk were to join the U.P. again, I would be glad if they would persuade him to resign. Then hon. members would see an election that would be far better than Oudtshoorn. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Mayfair will probably be very relieved if I do not dwell at any great length on the embarrassment which Jan van Blerk caused to him, his party and his constituency. This evening I want to deal in a non-political spirit with the subject of Distric Six and the restoration of certain historical building complexes. I do so at the request of the civic authorities in Cape Town, and it is for that reason that I should like to keep this as a non-political appeal to the hon. the Minister.

The hon. the Minister will realize that for thousands of men and women who visited this country betweeen the two world wars, the thousands of seamen and the thousands of tourists, the mention of the name Districat Six holds a certain sense of excitement, a certain sense of danger. The fact that the area is now due for urban removal is not disputed. But there are areas of architectural interest in District Six which we understand from discussions between the civic authorities and the hon. the Minister’s department, it is intended to retain and, if possible, to restore. I mention particularly three areas, namely the Tyne Street complex, the Moravian Hill complex and the Vernon Terrace complex. These are areas which can be likened to our Malay Quarter on the other side of the town on the slopes of Signal Hill, or the Loader Street complex, which has just recently been restored and is now regarded as a first-class urban dwelling. These three complexes have had a great deal of interest shown in them by a group of architects who have studied their architecture, which represents periods in Cape architecture of the old Dutch homes of the honest Cape Burgers. This period goes back to the 1800s, then to the 1860s, with the first arrival of the corrugated iron roofs which became available, the period when the balconies had their particular faades in wrought iron and then, finally, the later era of 1900. It is the intention, we understand, of the hon. the Minister’s department to retain these entire complexes. We appreciate that 90 per cent of District Six can only be demolished. The sooner the bulldozers do their job the better. These three areas which, I believe, have been settled upon are now being vacated by their inhabitants. The experience is that the moment a family is moved out, vandals move in. We have photographs showing Europeans with furniture wagons standing at street corners and young non-Europeans are going in and stripping the ceilings, the fagades, the Adams fireplaces, the floors, the shutters, the windows, etc. A part in one of these areas in particular, one could almost liken to the Spanish steps in Rome. The outside of the area has steps going down to an alley-way. There is a tremendous amount of cast iron. The walls have very attractive urns on them. The moment the families move out, the vandals move in, and what we regard as irreplaceable articles of hardware are being removed unnecessarily. In reply to a question put by me recently in this House, the hon. the Minister’s department indicated that they did not feel that much of this material was of any real economic worth. May I say that to replace genuinely and authentically the type of material that is now being removed wantonly and destroyed wilfully, will cost not only the hon the Minister’s department, but also the State, many thousands of rands needlessly, when the ultimate task of restoring these areas takes place. I mention these areas particularly because in their vicinity are Moslem Mosques, Christian churches and chapels. I believe that there is a plan of the whole area which was produced by a Mr. Franzsen—not of the Franzsen commission—and that in the model sketch these particular areas have been phased into the new urban redevelopment of that particular part of the city. There are indications that, when a family has been moved out of these houses, their virtual demolition through plundering takes place almost within weeks. However, where non-Europeans are still living alongside these homes, there is evidence that the houses are in spick and span condition. The architects have photographed these properties before the removal of the families from them and shortly afterwards. They also photographed the houses that are still standing. It is not a question of these houses being so decrepit that they are falling down. Some of them are of Table Mountain granite and most of them are as good as the houses in the Malay Quarter which has been standing for 100 to 150 years and could well stand for another 100 to 150 years. They need very little restoration and one could almost immediately move in families. They could become most attractive town houses earning the State an economic rental. They would then, too result in Cape Town’s retaining in this portion of the city which is vanishing so quickly, something that is true, genuine and authentic, someting that casts our minds back to the old history of this city. It has been said that there is so little of old Cape Town likely to be left, that even Capetonians within one generation will hardly recognize their city with the modern progress that it taking place in the heart of the urban area. I know that the hon. the Minister has a reputation for having regard to human and historical values. I know that he is interested in the preservation of such areas; Tulbagh complexes, for instance, were restored magnificently after the earthquake. One complex, a whole street of terraces which is due for retention, and the other two as well, are most attractive. These are very beautiful complexes. I merely want to put it to the hon. the Minister that if, upon moving families out of particular houses in this area, those houses could be either barricaded up or if families could be left in them on a caretaker-basis until such time as the Minister’s department is ready to undertake the whole urban redevelopment of the area, this would be welcomed. Not only the Capetonians who are sentimental about this area, but also the rest of South Africa who know of its tourist merits, will be able, when they see the redevelopment that takes place on a more futuristic basis, to Visit these areas and have some reminders of what old Cape Town looked like in the days, let us say, before the Nats came in.

Mr. Chairman, it is a good thing that the hon. member for Gardens has advocated the reservation of certain historic buildings and maintained that every care possible should be taken to ensure that those structures are renovated appropriately. Let me tell him that if it were not for this Department and for the National Party which came into power in 1948, the hon. member would not even have had the opportunity of making the plea which he did make today. This same District Six deteriorated rapidly and gained notoriety. Now that that same District has started to become famous the hon. member can come along and advocate the restoration and preservation of certain historical buildings. Nobody objects to that. Indeed, it is part of the policy of this Department to do everything in its power to assist in cases where buildings can be preserved, where the preservation melds in with the planning and where antiques can be protected for the future. What is more, it will do so in any city or town in the Republic, not only in District Six. I can give the hon. member that assurance myself, but I think that the hon. the Minister will elaborate more fully in this regard. I began by saying that the country has been very grateful to the National Party since it came into power in 1948. Were it not for the application of the group areas policy, I believe that there would have been chaos in this country of ours today. The United Party opposed these laws—the Group Areas Act and the Group Areas Development Act—tooth and nail. The Department had sometimes to go over the heads of those who did not want to co-operate—there were many city councils among them—in order itself to implement the policy. As a result of the opposition on the part of city councils, the Department had in fact to go so far as to have a Group Areas Development Act— later, the Community Development Act— passed by this House so that the necessary machinery could be put into operation in order to effect this development. We have the privilege today of being able to appreciate the work done by the National Housing Commission. They are known universally for their work. We also have the privilege of seeing the work done by the Community Development Board, and District Six and many other areas are examples in this respect. The planning of South End in Port Elizabeth and that of other areas is also an example of what is being done by that Board as a limb of the Department of Community Development. Their achievements are becoming more widely known, as are the houses they build. In Durban—the place about which the hon. member for Port Natal has such a great deal to say— there are hundreds of grateful Whites who have been able to buy the houses which the Department of Community Development and its Development Board have been able to build in the various townships. It is so easily forgotten that an enormous amount of work had first of all to be done where slum conditions and squalor prevailed before the Department of Community Development could start building. Chatsworth is criticized today as being such a poor neighbourhood but I agree with the hon. the Minister that to its thousands of inhabitants it is a good, large town. If one would only consider what the circumstances of those people were before they moved into those houses, one would be ashamed to decry what is being done in Chatsworth. Group areas had to be planned there. Local authorities had to be consulted. Interviews had to be conducted in order to obtain suggestions from local authorities and other local bodies. Public opinion had also to be considered. Advertisements had to be placed and investigations had to be made in regard to group areas. Evidence had also to be obtained and recommendations made. The hon. the Minister concerned had also to be given the opportunity to sift all those recommendations very carefully before he could arrive at a decision. A start could only be made on the provision of housing and services after all these things had been done— which in respect of some areas took a few years. Only then could the requisite planning be completed. We have no cause to rail against this hon. Minister and his Department. I think that there is every reason to complain about those people who are always making excuses and about those people who do everything in their power to hamper the work of the Department and to decry it, as has happened here today, by calling it a “monstrous organization”. I think that the words used in respect of that Department in this House today are hateful words. The person who used them should, in fact, be ashamed of himself, even though he tries to utter them with so much arrogant daring and conviction. As early as 1917, no less a person than Dr. Malan made a plea for a little house, a small plot with a tiny garden for people who moved from the rural areas to the cities. How much stronger a plea cannot be made for them today! How much more strongly must action be taken and continuous pleas be made that every member of the community be in the position to own his own property, his own small farm, his little plot or home, and that from his youth he should concentrate on obtaining these things. No matter what the sacrifice, this House must vote and activate the necessary funds, and encourage thrift, as has been done in this Budget, so that people in all spheres and activities of life can remain independent and find their niche in this country. We must all help to ensure that the task that has been undertaken, in which this Department is persevering, is accomplished, and that we stay ahead. This task can only be accomplished if we have a consistently sound organization, as is the case at the moment, and if there is the necessary inspiration forthcoming from all quarters to ensure that those items which are sacred to a man and his family are within his reach. In short, I can say: “East, West, home is best”; a home for everyone, if possible! It is his shelter; it is his repository; it is his place of rest; it is his place of beauty; it is his place of peace; it is the matrix of his family and friends. The hon. the Minister and his Department are working towards that goal.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Innesdal, who has just sat down, had quite a lot to say about the pressure that had to be brought to bear on certain cities before they were prepared to react to the demands of the Government or this particular Minister. I would like to remind him, and also the hon. member for Algoa, who was very high in his praise of the department, and implied that everything that has happened in Port Elizabeth, has happened as a result of this department’s intervention, of the words of the hon. the Minister when he recently visited Port Elizabeth. He said—

That does not sound as though any pressure or coercion had to be brought to bear. These things happened in the cities where you have a well-conducted city council.

I want to address a few remarks to the hon. member for Port Elizabeth North. He made another one of his appalling speeches in this House. I hope that when he reads his Hansard, he will be thoroughly ashamed of what he said in this hon. House this afternoon. I want to warn this hon. member, the use of the words that he chose, “Afrikanerhater,” “Boerehater,” “liberalis” and “kommunis” …

That is right.

… all these words are not going to help this hon. member on iota in his political career. I suggest he cuts them out. If I can give him some advice—I am older than he—I would suggest that he take another trend. If he does not do it, I can assure him, the voters in Port Elizabeth North will vote him out of office. I want to say that it is unfortunate that these words, “Boerehaat” and “Afrikanerhaat,” were ever introduced into this House.

I never used the word “Boerehaat.”

We were not responsible on this side of the House—they came from that side of the House.

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, I did not.

Order! The hon. member must resume his seat.

You are a liar.

Mr. Chairman, those words were used …

On a point of order. Sir, the hon. member for Port Elizabeth North said, “You are a liar.”

I say he is a liar.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw that.

I used the word…

Order! The hon. member must withdraw it unconditionally.

I withdraw it.

Sir, we on this side of the House look upon it as a most unfortunate episode that these words were ever used in this House, and I say that in the future every member must try to forget that episode. It was a blot on this hon. House and I hope that these junior members …

On a point of order, Sir, is the hon. member entitled to say that it was a blot on this House?

It was a tragedy.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw that.

On your instructions, Mr. Chairman, I withdraw it, but I say it is unfortunate that it ever happened, and I hope that in future members will not be as misguided as this hon. member to repeat those words in this House.

I did not use the word “Boer-hater.” You sucked it out of your thumb. You are a Boer-hater.

Mr. Chairman, I wish to raise one or two matters with the hon. the Minister that deal more closely with his portfolio. I refer in the first place to the area which has been developed by his department in the South End of Port Elizabeth. This has been going on for a considerable period of time. The demolition of the older buildings appears to have been half-way completed. My question to the hon. the Minister is whether he can give some indication as to when the rebuilding of this area will commence. I would also like to ask him to whom the ground which was taken over by the department will belong. Does it belong to the Department of Community Development? How will it be sold? Will it be sold by tender or auction, or how will ownership be transferred from the department into the hands of private developers? Will private developers be entirely responsible for developing the whole of the are? Another problem that I wish to raise with the hon. the Minister is this. Is he aware of the tremendous amount of pollution of the atmosphere in that particular area caused by the ore dumps at the ore terminal at the harbour in Port Elizabeth? I do not know whether the hon. the Minister is aware that this is a very serious problem. If there is not adequate consultation between the hon. the Minister and the hon. the Minister of Transport to see that something effective is done to stop this pollution of the atmosphere, any buildings that he erects in the South End area are going to be thoroughly despoiled. I ask the hon. the Minister to give this matter his serious attention.

Then there is another matter. The hon. the Minister will know that in recent months two flats have been converted from ordinary dwelling flats to so-called “holiday” flats. I think the hon. the Minister will agree that the conversion of these flats to holiday flats caused considerable disruption to the people who lived in these particular flats. He will know that I wrote to him and asked him to give me adequate warning if this was going to happen, so that this kind of thing would not happen again without proper preparations being made.

There was a condition laid down.

Yes, I understand that the Minister laid down a condition. In the case of the one block of flats —Langerry by name—which was fully occupied, the hon. the Minister gave permission for it to be converted into holiday flats, and now I see that the present owners of this block are advertising accommodation, so obviously this block of flats is now not fully occupied. The hon. the Minister knows that there is a shortage of flat accommodation in Port Elizabeth. He allowed this block of flats to be converted into holiday flats; it was fully occupied; the inmates had to leave, and now you have the situation that some of this accommodation is not fully occupied. I ask the hon. the Minister to see to it that the matter is thoroughly investigated, when ordinary residential flats are proposed to be converted to holiday flats, before this is allowed to happen.

Then there is a third matter. The hon. the Minister will know that in the North End area of Port Elizabeth his department erected a building complex, which was known as a free trading area, which saw sublet to displaced Indian traders from the South End area. I would say, Sir, that this building was most adequate; in fact, I would say that it was a prestige building. The Indians who rented these premises were thoroughly satisfied with what they had been given. But now I understand that this building has been sold. I want to ask the hon. the Minister on what basis it was sold; what was the profit that the department make? In other words, I would like to know what the erection of that building in fact cost him, at what price he sold it, to whom it was sold, and whether the purchaser was a resident of Port Elizabeth or whether he was an Indian from some other area. Is this Indian to whom it was sold qualified to live in Port Elizabeth? There was considerable dissatisfaction over the fact that this building was not in fact sold to a local purchaser. A further question that I would like to ask the hon. the Minister is this: Have the Indian shopkeepers occupying these premises a guarantee that the new owner will not charge them a higher rental than they were charged when the building belonged to the Minister’s department? [Time expired.]

The hon. member for Walmer, who has just resumed his seat, adopted here the strange attitude of again referring to the old story of “Boerhaters”.

Order! The hon. hon. member must confine himself to the Vote now.

I should just like to reply to what he said; I shall be very brief.

There have already been so many replies from both sides that I know everything about that. The hon. member must confine himself to the Vote.

I just want to point out that the hon. member, his party and their Press are the cause of this. But I shall leave the matter at that. In addition the hon. member touched upon matters affecting his constituency, and the hon. the Minister will reply to them.

Sir, I did some paging through the old Hansards and came upon an interesting question put by the late Mr. Eric Louw to the then Minister of Health, a certain Dr. Gluckman, on 22nd January, 1946. It is very interesting, because it teaches one a great deal about the party sitting on the opposite side of the House. The question reads as follows—

To this the then Minister of Health gave this impressive—unbelievably impressive—reply—

Those are the same aged poor about whom hon. members on that side are now so concerned—

Mr. Louw was not satisfied with this.

Did Mr. Eric Louw ask whether houses were being built for non-Whites?

Yes, it was stated in the Kruithoring.

Mr. Louw then asked—

I hope the hon. member for Orange Grove is now listening. To that question the then Minister of Health replied—

Sir, if figures mean anything I hope that answer illustrates very well to that hon. member what the United Party Government did in connection with housing. Mr. Louw then asked: “My question is, how many houses have been completed”, and then he asked further: “How many are ready for occupation?” The then Minister, like some Red Indian chief or other, replied curtly: “I have given the answer.” In other words, the “chief” had spoken. Sir, this extract sketches the United Party men just as they were, and the 1946 and 1972 models are in no way different from each other. A great fuss is being made about the 44 000 houses and what is ludicrous is that only 1 234 being ready or nearly ready. That is the same United Party which, in 1946, at the tail-end of the war, on which it spent hundreds of millions of pounds to march up Africa to get Haile Selassie back on his throne, which subsequently marched further to save a lot of communist Russians and which had so much time for their friends in Abyssinia and Russia, which did not have the time or money to build, or almost build more than 1 234 houses. In contrast with this, Sir, I want to give you a strong and forceful image which South Africa has had for the past 24 years and is going to have for much longer under the National Party and the Government. What did they do? [Interjections.] I do not want to present you with castles in the air. I want to ask hon. members of the Opposition to read this Community Development report. We have now heard the very good figures that Minister Gluckman gave, but now I also want to give you figures and then ask you whether these figures do not have greater punch than the figures Minister Gluckman gave. Firstly we have the National Housing Fund. On 31st March, 1970, the capital of that Fund was R553 700 000, almost enough money to put another Haile Selassie on the throne, and further amounts were also added.

Or perhaps on another throne.

They are so royalistic that they like putting people on thrones. Then there is still the Community Development Fund. On the same date the Fund’s assets totalled R107 million. I call this one of the big achievements of the Minister together with his officials, his department and the National Government, and I want to convey to them my heartiest congratulations. Here we see a dynamic department which has a tremendous programme with respect to the building of houses, the granting of loans, urban renewal, resettlement, etc. Then there are a few other matters affecting my constituency and in connection with which I want to link up with a few other hon. members. I just want to mention this to the Minister. For various reasons schemes are drawn up by local authorities and sometimes delayed. This is very frustrating for people who have applied, whose names are on the waitinglist, and who then have to wait for one, two or three years because the list is so long. Unfortunately there are sometimes small things that delay big schemes. I do want to ask the hon. the Minister, if small things occur to delay certain schemes, to ensure that they are cleared up as quickly as possible. I should also like to link up with what the hon. member for Algoa said. He asked that people in the top bracket of a specific group should preferably obtain higher loans so that they can build or purchase bigger houses. I do think one can make out a strong case for this, because shortly after the people have bought those houses with a loan, or have bought them directly from the builders, they are still going to be carrying out alterations to the houses. This entails a great deal of extra and unnecessary expense. The people who fall into the higher income groups can afford the house, after all, even though they had to pay a higher rate. There were on occasion interesting discussions about a matter referred to the Congress by the Pretoria West constituency. It involved municipal schemes. The request was that a small percentage of those schemes should include houses that are a little bigger so that these houses could be sold at higher prices.

Another matter I should like to touch upon relates to the group area Laudium, where the Indians live in Pretoria West. In that area, which has been proclaimed an Indian group area, enough space has been allowed for development over the next 25 to 30 years. Now it appears that it is a section that is unfit for use owing to sinkholes. That is the case in respect of the portion handed over for the Indian college, and what is more a rapid influx of Indians from areas outside Pretoria is taking place to this group area. That group area is going to become too small quicker than was originally foreseen. I should like to ask the hon. the Minister if timely thought cannot be given to what can possibly be done. Can there not be a second group area, for example, or can more blocks of flats not perhaps be built? The flats would allow for vertical construction as the population increases instead of horizontal development. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, it was very difficult to follow the hon. member for Pretoria West. He jumped from subject to subject, and backwards and forwards. However, there is one question I must ask him. He had a complaint, or at least a couple of complaints. But why does he complain so softly? Does he believe that the Minister could hear what he was saying? If he has a complaint, let him have the courage of his convictions and put his complaint just as we do on this side of the House. This hon. Minister knows all about it. He likes a man to be positive in putting forward his arguments. The Minister and I speak the same sort of language, and this is the sort of language we should like to hear from the hon. member from Pretoria West as well. I am dealing with complaints against the hon. the Minister.

Order! The hon. the member must come back to the Vote and must not be so personal. [Interjections.]

I beg your pardon, Sir, I did not hear that.

Order! The hon. member may continue.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are two …

Do we speak the same sort of language?

Yes, we speak the same kind of language. There are two subjects I want to discuss with the hon. the Minister today. When I have finished he will know what I mean when I say that we speak the same sort of language.

Don’t be insulting.

The first one I want to deal with is the celebrated case of Nel & Roode vs. Minister B. Coetzee. I want to raise this pertinently this afternoon, because this is the only opportunity we have had of putting certain questions to the hon. the Minister and eliciting from him replies to those questions. I must admit that the question has been raised before, but always when some other Minister has had to answer. I think we can now get straight answers to straight questions from this hon. Minister. The first point we must make about this case is that the State is not joined in it. It was a straight case involving the hon. the Minister himself and not the State as well. We now find that the State is actually paying the Minister’s costs totalling somewhere in the region of R40 000. We still have not got the final figure. I want to repeat that it was a personal action against the Minister in bis personal capacity. The Minister of Justice, in reply to a question asking why these costs were being paid, said that the litigation costs in the court a quo in the case of Nel & Roode vs. Minister B. Coetzee will be paid from the State funds in accordance with fixed policy”. This is in terms of policy, you will note, Sir, not in terms of any regulation or any law which required the Government to pay the costs of the hon. the Minister. The Minister says it was fixed policy. Let us accept that. That was the policy of the Minister of Justice. But what was the attitude of this particular Minister, and how can this hon. the Minister bring himself to accept that the State should pay his costs? I raise this question pertinently because of the article which gave rise to that whole action; it was an article which was published in Die Beeld. I want to quote a translation of the Minister’s own words which appeared in that article in Die Beeld. The translation reads—

In the light of that statement how can this hon. Minister bring himself to accept that the Government should pay these costs? He said quite expressly that he was not prepared to hide behind the Government; that was not prepared to take advantage of his position in the Government, that he personally took full responsibility for everything that he was saying and took full responsibility for the consequences thereof. This is the question which I think this hon. Minister should answer today: How he can bring himself as a Minister and as a gentleman to accept that his debts, his delicts, should be paid for by the public of South Africa?

The second question that I want to raise with the hon. the Minister is the question of Oribi Government Village, a village which is situated in my constituency, where there are many people in the lower income group, most of them in the sub-economic group, who are housed in accommodation provided by this Government. You will notice, Sir, that I did not say that they were in houses. They are housed in accommodation and it is the condition of that accommodation which I want to discuss with the hon. the Minister. He will recollect that I wrote to him earlier during this session in connection with that village. I received a reply from him dated the 13th March. I submitted this reply to the complainants in Pietermaritzburg. They had to accept that this was the final word, because it came from the private secretary of the Minister here in Cape Town. I want to ask the hon. the Minister why he has adopted this attitude and whether he will not assist us further in improving the lot and the condition of these people.

I raised this question of certain roads and lanes that were blocked and the conditions under which these people were accommodated. The Minister’s reply reads—

How long will it be temporary? This has been occupied by many of these people, and it has certainly been occupied as a village administered by this Minister’s department, for 26 years. How long is “temporary”? I know that his department is working in Pietermaritzburg; I know that they have gone on with schemes such as The Grange and various others in my constituency as well as in other parts of Maritzburg. We accept what they have done, but is the hon. the Minister satisfied that he is doing enough? He is always telling us that he is catching up with the backlog in housing, but when will he provide alternative accommodation for these people who in his own words, are being housed here as a temporary measure? This has been “temporary” already for 26 years. How much longer will they have to live there under these conditions?

I also raised the question of stormwater drains that are inadequate and frequently blocked and the answer of the hon. the Minister in his letter is—

What satisfaction does this give the people in that village? Sir, I raise these as additional points. I know that conditions have improved in that village since I had this correspondence with the hon. the Minister and his department, but I believe that they can be improved further as long as we do not have this sort of attitude that we must just accept that this is a normal occurrence. The letter reads further—

I want to say to the hon. the Minister again that I do not know how they are being enforced, but they are not being applied. Conditions in the village have improved, but not in this respect and particularly not in respect of those sections of the village which fall under the control of the officials of his department. They are not doing their duty in cleaning up and keeping the public spaces of the village, clean and tidy.

Finally, I would like to ask him if he can just tell me what his department and his representative in Natal have done in regard to establishing a representative committee whose task it would be to promote the interests of the tenants. I congratulate him on this, too, because I believe it is a good suggestion. It is virtually in the nature of a vigilante committee consisting of residents of the village who will look after the village themselves and assist the department. I do not believe that anything has been done towards the establishment of the committee, and I do submit that the first move should come from this hon. Minister’s department. It is up to them to make the first move towards the establishment of this committee. The people of Oribi want Oribi cleaned up. They want to make it decent. Many of these people are down on their luck. Many of them are there only temporarily, through circumstances which are very often beyond their control. I do not believe that they deserve to live in the conditions in which they are being asked to live today. I believe that this hon. Minister and his department could make their conditions far more amenable and make the occupation of Oribi a far happier one.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg-District kicked up a great fuss here about the lawsuit in connection with the Pretoria case the Minister was involved in. The hon. member knows as well as I do that when a Minister of the State becomes involved in a lawsuit in the ordinary execution of his duties, it is the custom, and has been all the years—and the hon. member cannot show me a case where it was not the custom—for the Minister’s costs to be carried by the State, if there are any costs that have to be paid.

He gave up that right.

That is nonsense. The hon. member is talking through his hat if he wants to allege that the Minister gave up that right. And the Minister does not have the right to give up that right either. What the Minister did, is customary. I want the hon. member to use his intelligence. What did the hon. the Minister do? He said he was going to appeal and that in the case of an appeal he was prepared to pay his own costs. And he did so, like an honest man. Why does the hon. member not say that here? Why does the hon. member try to paint a crooked picture to try and besmirch the Minister in the eyes of the general public, alleging that he becomes involved in lawsuits and the State has to pay the costs? Why does the hon. member not say, in all reasonableness, that it is the custom that when a Minister becomes involved in a lawsuit in the execution of his duties, the costs are paid by the State. Every day there are cases against Ministers and Government departments for which the State pays the costs. But here the hon. member comes along and tries to discredit the hon. the Minister personally and to implicate him in something. However, Oudtshoorn and other places teach him that the United Party’s discrediting of leaders in this scandalous way no longer makes any impression as far as our people are concerned. Our people have also developed an antipathy towards it. That is when they say that this emanates from hate towards Afrikaners in certain positions. [Interjections.] It is purely out of hate for Afrikaners in high positions that one finds this conduct. [Interjections.] The hon. member was looking for it and now he has got it.

In now coming back to the debate I should like to have a shot at presenting a picture of what the housing situation looks like in South Africa today. Members on the other side of the House are trying to paint a very dark picture. From the hon. member for Pretoria West we heard what the situation was like when we came into power. They built 44 000 castles in the air, but in reality they held that 1 400 of them would eventually become houses. There was a backlog of thousands upon thousands. At the time the hon. member for Orange Grove outlined the situation with photographs in the Kruithoring. He wrote pages and pages about the dire straits South Africa was in under the United Party men in respect of housing. The other day I had photostat copies made of the material, and I will give them to the hon. member. No other hon. member in the House could have done it better. We therefore began with that backlog and the National Party realized that it was a stigma on South Africa’s name that had to be eradicated. I now want to tell hon. members, and they cannot gainsay me, that by the end of the fifties there was a housing surplus in South Africa, so much so that flat owners went from one person to another trying to persuade them to come and live in their flats. For years there was a housing surplus under this National Government. Then the industrial explosion took place. South Africa then began to reap the benefits of this National Government’s work. This Government converted South Africa into an industrial country. People then began to move to the cities and a new problem developed. The National Party did its duty. It built houses, but over the years a backlog has developed. In the past few years we have, however, as far as White housing is concerned, been engaged in completely eliminating that backlog. I should like to prove this to hon. members. According to the figures which all the hon. members opposite obtained from the department, it was estimated last year that on 31st December there was a shortage of about 4 500 houses for Whites. In the best United Party times there was not merely a shortage of 4 500 houses for Whites. For Coloureds there was a shortage of approximately 22 000 houses, and for Indians there was a shortage of 11 000 houses. That is an estimate the department made. The annual need was also determined by surveys and projections of the department, in consultation with other bodies, inter alia the Department of Statistics and the Department of Planning. As far as it is humanly possible to determine these aspects, they determined—and I am not saying they arrived at the exact number of houses, but that is how it was determined, and any other government would have done the same—that for the proper housing of our population, about 28 000 houses would be needed for Whites, 16 500 for Coloureds, and 7 000 for Indians every year. The figures I am now giving are liberal estimates, in excess, actually, of the figures the department furnished. My figures are a little higher than those of the department. In respect of the housing for Whites the picture looks very promising. Last year, without State funds, the private sector alone completed 18 256 houses and 10 436 flats. The over-all majority of these houses were built for Whites, of course, because the private sector does not build many houses for non-Whites, although quite a few are built for Indians. These 28 690 dwelling units went chiefly to Whites. This is 500 dwellings more than the annual need for White people. Therefore, the private sector alone created 500 more dwelling units in one year than the projected needs for Whites. On the other hand the department and local authorities made 5 400 dwelling units available for Whites, which is 1 000 more than the backlog that exists. The picture is therefore not as gloomy as the one hon. members opposite are trying to paint. The fact is that as far as our White housing is concerned, things are not nearly so bad. However, one does gain the impression that there are people who feel the pinch because they are in houses and other dwelling units too expensive for them on the salaries they earn. We shall therefore have to accommodate these people. People who are in too expensive flats, look for a cheaper class of house. However, they are not without accommodation; they have places to stay. Sir, that is why I am saying that we will have to take a look at this middle income group. Our people have good housing; in fact, our people in South Africa are living too luxuriously; we must bring them back to more normal standards. Therefore I say that I hope our young people will make use of this housing plan, this savings plan which is linked to the building societies, and that employers will encourage them to save some of their money there so that they can build up a nest-egg for themselves to provide for their own needs. One also finds the tendency amongst our young people today to first get married and start a family and then look to the State for housing. We must not encourage the socialistic approach in our country either. The state must do its best. Private initiative must do its best. But the responsibility lies with every man to obtain a house for his family. He must do it by hard work, by saving while he is single and through the channels created for him. The possibility is there for him and his family to be able to live modestly, but nicely and effectively. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, in the few minutes left of this evening, I just want to follow on what the hon. member for Parow has said in regard to the new house-building scheme which was introduced in the Budget. It is interesting to hear that the hon. member for Parow and other members on the Government side have such confidence in this scheme, I would like to refer them to a statement made by two persons who are involved in producing housing for the lower to middle income groups, two representatives of the home builders’ section of the Master Builders’ Association and representatives of two of the larger companies, Gough Cooper and Omega Construction, who described this houseowner saving scheme as “inadequate, unrealistic and likely to prove a monumental failure from the outset”. These are strong words, Sir, but I do think that the Government must do a lot of re-thinking if they are indeed serious in their attempts to provide more housing for young couples; because there are undoubtedly serious defects and shortcomings in this scheme, which I would like to deal with a little more fully tomorrow when there is a little more time. In the minute or so left to me, I would like to ask the hon. the Minister to make a further statement in regard to the progress that has been made with the implementation of the Niemand Commission report on the high price of residential land. The hon. the Minister made a statement in the first week of February, setting out the progress that has been made up to that stage. I know that since then the Secretary has had further discussions with a view to the further implementation of this report, and I would be interested to know whether any further progress has been made since the beginning of February. I would also like to ask the hon. the Minister to make some statement in regard to the proposed symposium on high density housing which is due to take place in September this year.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 23.

House resumed:

Progress reported.