As this Bill is a hybrid measure, it will now in terms of the provisions of Rule 29 of the Rules relating to Hybrid Bills be referred to the Examiners of Hybrid Bills for report.

Yesterday we dealt at some length in this House with the lot of the Black man in a highly inflationary situation. Today I want to broaden the picture and to tell the Government that all the people of South Africa, whether they be White, whether they be Coloured, whether they be Indian, or whether they be Black, whether they be rich or whether they be middle-class, or whether they be poor, are all wilting under the impact of this cruel inflation. The public in ever-increasing numbers have lost confidence in the ability of the Government to better this position, and for very good reasons. They have lost confidence because the objectives of the Government are not being met, because the forecasts and the projections of the Government seldom materialize and because a long suffering public can no longer endure the ever-increasing rise in the cost of living, the erosion of hard-earned savings and an economy which blows first hot and then cold, with most of the blowing coming from the Government. In his Budget Speech last year the hon. the Minister of Finance clearly set out three objectives: An improvement in the balance of payments, the achievement of a more rapid rate of growth and the curbing of inflation. Nearly a year has passed since the Minister stated these objectives. Let us have a look and see what in fact has been achieved.

Consequent upon two devaluations and the revaluation of practically every European currency plus the yen, 1972 saw a dramatic improvement in the balance of payments position of the Republic. Exports were up; imports were down. A satisfactory flow of capital was maintained throughout the year. Aided by bountiful crops and high export prices, plus the free market price of gold at some 65 dollars a fine ounce, our gold and foreign exchange reserves at the end of 1972 stood at some R1 100 million, compared with R650 million at end of 1971. Now, we are gratified at this state of affairs, Sir, and I congratulate the hon. the Minister on his good fortune. I think it is fair to say that, at this point of time anyway, the hon. the Minister fully achieved his objectives. But at what cost, and at what cost particularly to the man in the street? Reserves may be buoyant, but what of the economy and what of inflation? This brings me to the hon. the Minister’s second objective, the achievement of a more rapid rate of growth. The rate of real growth for 1971 for the domestic product was low, 3,6%. During last session I asked the hon. the Minister of Finance what growth rate he anticipated in 1972 but I could not get a reply from him. The hon. the Prime Minister, however, was a little bolder. He visualized the growth rate approximating 5% or even exceeding 5%, Then the hon. the Prime Minister, no doubt having listened to the persuasive voice of the hon. the Minister of Finance, said this in Hansard, Vol. 38, col. 5275—

He was talking about the growth rate—

It is correct that the agricultural performance for 1972 was far better than for 1971. It is also true that our export performance of minerals in 1972 was better than the performance in 1971. When the hon. the Prime Minister talked about there being a greater upsurge in the offing in the industrial sector, that one saw all the signs in this regard, then the hon. gentleman, I am afraid, has proved to be far off base. Although the hon. the Prime Minister forecast a 5% increase in the GNP for 1972—this is ½% lower than the EDP target of 5,5%—even this figure of 5% has not been met and in the final result that figure was far too high, because from all the reports that one is able to get at the moment, it would seem that the real gross national product increase for 1972 will be of the order of 4%, perhaps 4,1%. This is 1% lower than the hon. the Prime Minister’s forecast. A difference of 1% may seem very little, but if one looks at the new economic development programme which has just been produced, this shows that a difference of ½% in growth can after five years, for example, be a difference of R540 million in the GDP and a difference in private consumption expenditure of R210 million. If one doubles these figures, to bring it to 1%, one sees what a difference 1% growth can mean to the economy. Perhaps the hon. the Minister of Finance will tell us, as he has done so often in the past, that we must not take a single year in our arguments; we must take, say, five years—the cycle of the EDP. If the hon. the Minister will look at the figures for the last five years, from 1968 to 1972, he will find that the real average annual growth over the past five years was 4,64%; nearly 1% less than the EDP target. Clearly, the objects of the Government of achieving a more rapid rate of growth have not been met. The forecasts and the projections have certainly not materialized. The increase in the rate of growth from 3,6% in 1971 to 4,1% in 1972 shows no progress on the economic front. But what is worse, it shows the complete inability on the part of the Government to guide the economy in any predetermined direction. The Government sets the targets, but they are incapable of achieving them. What confidence can the public have in a Government which is 20% out in its forecasts?

Mr. Speaker, you will recollect that the hon. the Prime Minister told us that we must be careful that the GNP does not rise too much because we had to watch inflation as well. We have no trouble with the GNP rising too much; the problem has been that it has risen too little. However, the question that the public is asking is: Has anybody been watching inflation? Because what we had in 1972 was insufficient growth and excessive inflation.

This brings me to the third objective of the hon. the Minister of Finance: To curb inflation. Here there is a sorry story to tell. From December, 1970, to December, 1971, the consumer price index rose by 7 per cent. Last year our rate of inflation expressed as a percentage change in the consumer price index from December, 1971, to December, 1972, was something of the order of 8 per cent. What has happened to the Government’s object of curbing inflation? South Africa cannot tolerate an inflation rate of 7 or 8 per cent. It places too great a burden on our people, particularly upon the middle and the lower income groups. It falls most harshly upon our non-European peoples who in the main are living far below the breadline. The cost of living index does not tell the whole story; it only tells half the story. Because it is quite clear that the price of everything we buy and the cost of every service we use has either gone up or is about to go up. The real increase in the cost of living is far higher than statistics show us. You only have to talk to anybody who pays bills and you will very soon find this out. The hon. the Minister of Finance has been on record a dozen times, and quite rightly so, as the constant opponent of inflation. What has he got to say about the rate of inflation of 7 to 8 per cent for 1972? Obviously the hon. the Minister, and practically he alone, did not foresee this happening, because he was talking about the rate of increase in inflation being likely to slow down after March, 1972. What has the public reaction been to this increase in the rate of inflation of 7 to 8 per cent? For the person with a fixed income and for the pensioner there is a feeling of utter helplessness. There is a feeling of no longer being able to cone and this is fast turning into fear for the future. What about the salaried man and the wage-earner? He is determined to get more money even if he does not give increased productivity in exchange. Once again we found ourselves in what the hon. the Prime Minister last year called the “spiral”. Higher costs, higher wages; higher costs, higher wages, and so on. The railwaymen have already received their 15 per cent. We should note that according to the Hiemstra Commission, and I quote—

One can obviously expect similar increases to be granted in the Civil Service and the Post Office. We can expect this to be followed by demands in the private sector, and clearly we are entering into an era of sharp rises in Black wages. That at least is a good thing, but the overall effect of the increases in wages and of the present spate of price rises right across the board, from one end to the other, can only be one thing, and that is another heavy bout of inflation in 1973. The question, of course, is at what level it will be. At the moment you can take your choice. Opinions vary from a moderate 7% to a high 11%. Perhaps the hon. the Minister will tell us this year what he thinks it might be. I am inclined to believe that it will be something of the order of 8%. What concerns us most is: What are the Government’s objectives at the moment? Here we had an excessive rate of inflation of 7 or 8% in 1972; we have insufficient growth, something in the order of 4%. Is the hon. the Minister of Finance now accepting an inflation rate of 7% upwards? Does he believe that he has to have this rate of increase to advance the growth rate to the new EDP figure of 5,75%? What is his strategy to ensure a sustained 5,75% growth rate for at least the five years of the EDP? Growth in 1973, or even growth in 1974, is going to mean little to us if again in 1974, late 1974 or early 1975, we are going to have the stop policy again. Has the hon. the Minister joined the school that believes that we can grow out of inflation? Does he believe that we can do so without a basic change in our policy? That we would like to know from the hon. the Minister. There are mutterings coming from Pretoria that the rate of inflation is going to drop this year. We would like to know from the hon. the Minister, if this is the case, why he believes it is going to drop. The problem is that there is a superficial air of optimism around South Africa today. This is the result of the high liquidity and of a vastly improved Stock Exchange, but down at the grass roots there is hardly a stir. Last year the real growth in the non-agricultural sector was something of the order of 2½ per cent. Consumer demand is accepted as being too low. Fixed investment in manufacturing industry is also regarded as being sluggish. These fundamental factors have to be corrected if we are going to make any progress on the economic front. What is the Government’s game plan? This is the problem: The optimism that is about at the moment is based not on what the Government has done, but on what the public believes the Government may do. That is why there is talk of lower company tax, with doing away with or reducing the sales tax and reducing the marginal rate of tax. These are the pegs the country is pinning its hopes on. There is urgent need for the public to know where we are going. They want to know what road the Solomon of 1970 is going to put the country on for increased growth and for reduced inflation. You see, Mr. Speaker, the public has felt the impact of rising inflation daily, as they dig their hands deeper and deeper into their pockets. They are tired of paying in hard cash for the economic policy failures of this Government. They now want to know what the Government is going to do to alleviate their plight, and I hope we are going to get some answers.

I now want to turn to what has become known as the “Chweidan Affair”. Hon. members are fully aware of the facts, and there is no need for me to repeat them. Suffice it to say that an old established firm of brokers went insolvent and that thousands of clients of the firm might suffer heavy losses. As a result of the Chweidan case another firm of stock brokers went insolvent last week. Then, last month, less than two months after the Chweidan case, we had the case of Victor Poplak and the insolvency of the firm for which he worked. Here again it is possible that the public will suffer fairly heavy losses. When the Chweidan case broke, I called upon the Government to review the Stock Exchanges Control Act and to accept the unanimous recommendations of the Malan Commission that the entire Stock Exchange be responsible for any default by a member. The South African Financial Gazette, which we all know is an ardent supporter of the Government—it does not have much else to commend it—immediately accused me of trying to catch some cheap pre-election publicity. The hon. the Minister of Finance read me his usual homily through the medium of Die Vaderland on the 29th November and accused me of being naïve. Why naïve? I believe—I said so in 1971 and I say so again today—that where you have a law that forces a buyer of shares to pay for such shares within 14 days of purchase, even though the broker at the time of payment for the shares cannot deliver the shares bought, you have to give the public complete and full protection. The only way in which the public can be given full protection is by making the members of the Stock Exchange responsible for the stockbroking debts of any member of the Stock Exchange that goes insolvent. There is nothing new in this thinking. It is exactly the same line we took in the debate in 1971 on the Control of Stock Exchanges Amendment Act. It is completely in line with the unanimous recommendations of the Malan Commission. We have the support of Die Oggendblad:

This is the question being asked. You see, Mr. Speaker, the Government rejected the recommendations of the Malan Commission. The hon. the Minister has said—

The hon. the Minister then went on to speak of the guarantee fund which could, he said, “be strengthened gradually to achieve together with the safeguards initiated by the Exchange the objects of the Malan Commission’s recommendations”. Then the hon. the Minister accuses me of being naïve! How naïve can that be, and it has been proved! We saw the dangers inherent in this Bill 18 months ago. We warned the hon. the Minister of the dangers. We told him he was passing all the risks on to the public. But the Government was blithely content to let the future look after itself. The main criticism that has been levelled at me is that I am trying to make all members of the Stock Exchange liable directly for the liabilities of other members. This is not the case. Memories are a little too short. What we want is for the Stock Exchange to be fully involved in the protection of the public. I said so during the Committee Stage of the Bill in 1971.

I suggested, for example, that all moneys paid for shares which could not be delivered, should go into a trust fund. I suggested that insurance guarantees should be obtained by the brokers. We were told it was not possible. I do not agree with that. But no alternative suggestions were made. All that happened was, as we said at the time, that the public was going to be left to carry the baby—as we know now with disastrous results. Now that the horse has run from the stable, of course, the Stock Exchange, the financial Press, financial editors, and no doubt the Government behind the scenes are feverishly trying to close the stable door. All kinds of suggestions are being made: Better administrative controls; more effective internal checks, more frequent and tighter audits; the increase of the Stock Exchange guarantee fund from R500 000 to R5 million; that Government loans should be given to this fund amounting to R10 million to R15 million to be paid back over a period of time; people are also being told not to leave their scrip with their brokers, but to put it in a bank and to pay the extra amount involved; that legislation should be introduced to compel brokers to deliver the scrip to a person who bought such scrip within a maximum period of time; and a host of other suggestions. We agree that all these suggestions must be carefully looked at.

Clearly, the underlying thinking now is that some method has to be evolved whereby the public will be fully protected by involving the entire Stock Exchange. If this House had listened to us 18 months ago, they would have found that what we said at the time was 100 per cent right and that what is now being suggested would by now have been a fait accompli, and that any buyer of shares who is forced to pay for those shares, but cannot get delivery, would have been completely protected. And this is what is interesting too, that if you protect that type of buyer of shares you will find that the rules and the regulations would automatically protect other buyers of shares. Other buyers of shares have also suffered a lot. The Government has shown far too little concern for the interest of the investing public. What is worse is that they have shown that they have no understanding whatsoever of the workings of a market place. This is not surprising when you get this kind of statement from the hon. the Minister of Finance. He says that although there are laws against theft and murder people still steal and people still commit murder and, therefore, no matter what laws you pass, you will never be able to fully protect the public on the Stock Exchange. What the hon. the Minister of Finance forgets is this: There is no law that says you must steal, there is no law that says you must murder, but there is a law that says you must pay for your shares within 14 days whether you get delivery or not. And this is the basic difference. The Government is clearly at fault in this issue and what the public is saying is the following. They are saying that some years ago as well as latterly the hon. the Minister of Finance said to the public that they should invest in the Stock Exchange and buy shares so that they could play a part in the economic development of the country.

I go along with what the hon. the Minister said, because it is quite right. We have to get the public involved through the Stock Exchange in our great manufacturing and business enterprises. But the public are saying: “Now we have done what the hon. the Minister told us to do and what has happened to us? We have lost our money.” This issue was treated lightly when we dealt with this matter in 1971. Experience has shown that you cannot treat it like that and that the moral obligation to a shareholder when the law imposes an obligation on him to do certain things, to hand over his hard-earned money while he is not protected, has to be put right. The public want it to be put right. They want protection and they want it fast. This is a matter that cannot be delayed and I hope we are going to hear from the hon. Minister that urgent steps are going to be taken, so that we will not have a repetition of a situation where the public are suffering through complying with a law passed by this House.

Mr. Speaker, this Government has been in power now for 25 years. For 25 years we have had to listen year after year to a motion of no confidence from that side of the House. The hon. the Minister of Labour gave us an idea of the lack of interest among the public in the present motion of no confidence. Sir, I think you would agree with me that in all the years we have been listening to motions of no confidence, coming from the Leader of the Opposition, we have never heard one which was less convincing or more monotonous than this one was. Sir, I am sitting here in a strategic spot, and you should have seen the faces of hon. members on that side. If one of them paid the Leader of the Opposition a compliment, the others laughed about it.

Look at the expression old “Harry” Steyn still has on his face!

Obviously the heart of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition was not in this motion of no confidence. But I have another remedy for him. We on this side have reason to celebrate after 25 years in office, and I think that that side of the House has reason to join us in this celebration, because these 25 years were glorious years in the history of South Africa and because we have, as a result of the policy of the Government, had peace and orderliness in our country over these 25 years such as there has been in few other countries of the world. In spite of the multi-national and other circumstances, relations under these circumstances are as good as one can expect in any part of the world. During this period we have made tremendous economic progress, which none of the members on that side can deny. There is confidence in South Africa in the world, so much confidence that the capital inflow to this country is still strong and people select South Africa as a place to stay because they find it to be a safer and better place than many other countries of the world. On the afternoon of Christmas day an important visitor from abroad came to see me, a very well-off person he was, and he announced that he was coming to settle in South Africa.

Father Christmas? [Laughter.]

Speaking of Christmas presents, there is only one baby in this House who deserves one. Mr. Speaker, the person I am referring to decided to come to South Africa because he feels that as far as his person and his possessions are concerned, South Africa is a better place than any other place he can find in Europe. That is the situation in South Africa today. As regards the standard of living in South Africa, they grant us that; the hon. member for Hillbrow said: “We grant you that.” The standard of living of the Whites in South Africa is the highest in the world. With the only possible exception of America it is the highest in the world. The hon. member for Hillbrow said: “We grant you that.” when we said that the standard of living of the non-Whites in South Africa was higher than in any comparable country in the whole of Africa. They grant us that, Sir, but then they move a motion of no confidence and think they will accomplish something with it. Now I ask you, Sir: If the hon. the Leader of the Opposition moves that this House has no confidence in the Government, in whom should the House then have confidence?

In us. [Interjections.]

Should the House now have confidence in Sir de Villiers Graaff? [Interjections.] Should the House now have confidence in the hon. member for Houghton? Those are, after all, the only alternatives we have in the House. What is the position, Sir? The position is that among the rank and file of the Leader of the Opposition there is no confidence in him. He will still recall certain events which took place in Johannesburg in August of last year. In the Sunday Times it was stated with great acclaim: “New U.P. born in the Transvaal.” You will recall, Mr. Speaker, that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition involved himself in the dispute which occurred at the time, for he sided with Mr. Marais Steyn against Mr. Harry Schwarz, who stood against Mr. Steyn as the new leader in the Transvaal. But this dispute in the party goes much further than that. It is not only Harry Schwarz and Marais Steyn who were involved in a dispute; the Leader of the Opposition also had to stand by and see how the “Schwarz-Basson team have master plan for election”. In other words, the hon. member for Bezuidenhout joined forces with the arch enemy of the hon. member for Yeoville. The hon. member for Yeoville must not tell me that he does not hate Harry Schwarz like the plague. [Interjections.] This is, after all, true, Sir. The same Sunday Times proceeded to make … [Interjections.]

Sir, if the hon. members want to run away from a bit of a political debate, then it is merely proof of their bankruptcy. I should like to quote what the Sunday Times said, and believe me, Mr. Speaker, I am not fond of quoting from the Sunday Times because I think that I am doing the Sunday Times an honour if I quote from it, and that I would not really like to do because I have no respect for it. But I am quoting from the Sunday Times because it states that it is the newspaper which holds a brief for the United Party. It stated in this leading article on 27th August—

I am quoting from this newspaper because it professes to be the newspaper which holds a brief for the United Party. It stated inter alia in its leading article—

This is what I want to emphasize—

Is that the answer to inflation?

The very next week the Financial Mail, a horse from the stable of the Sunday Times, made the following statement—

[Interjection.] The hon. the Leader of the Opposition should listen to this, because I am not opposed to him. A photograph of him appears here, below which they say: “Time to step down.” I do not want him out of this House, and I shall tell you why, Sir. I am afraid that they will then get a better leader. What I am quoting here is not what I said; it is his own people who wrote this—

And then they used these harsh words—

Mr. Speaker, it is not I who said this; it was a newspaper which states that it is a supporter of the United Party. Last week, on 2nd February, an article on the coming no confidence debate appeared in the Financial Mail, and I quote what they wrote about the hon. the Leader of the Opposition—

This is the Leader of the Opposition, who comes to this House and asks us to say that the House has no confidence in the Government. Sir, that is why I put the question to him: If the House does not have confidence in the Government, in whom must it then have confidence? Can it have confidence in such a person as that, in such a leader as that, in whom his own people have no confidence? If I may give him another piece of advice, we know that a motion of no confidence creates an opportunity for discussing the affairs of the country. That opportunity we now have, and I am availing myself of it.

When are you going to begin?

But if I may give him a piece of sound advice. I would ask him preferably not to call for a division, for the result is after all a foregone conclusion. The few on that side will vote for the motion, the rest will all vote against it.

Mr. Speaker, in this House quite a lot has been said about inflation. [Interjections.]

Order!

Sir, I can see they are pleased that I prefer to discuss inflation. It suits them far better. During the past few years, from 1970 to 1972, the main reason for our rate of inflation—which incidentally is not only our problem, but is a worldwide problem—was excessive consumer spending. The Government took steps to deal with excessive consumer spending and we achieved very substantial results, so much so that the reasons for the present inflation are no longer excessive consumer spending, but may be ascribed to other factors. I think that when the hon. member for Parktown mentioned inflation here and, as he alleged, what hardships some people were experiencing as a result of it, I think he over-exaggerated that statement in regard to hardships.

Is it not true?

He over-exaggerated it. We have proved repeatedly that the standard of living in South Africa has been rising consistently as a result of the fact that salaries and wages have consistently increased more rapidly than the rate of inflation.

Does that include the Black population? *

The hon. member will not differ with me on this. The hon. member spoke of an 8% rate of inflation. I think the hon. member is making a mistake there. I want to make sure we are clear on this point. According to the best information I have at my disposal, the rate of inflation is in the region of 7%, and if it is more than 7% it is only 7,2% or 7,3%. However, it remains in the region of 7%. I think that when we analyse this inflation position we should try to establish in the first place what the causes are of the inflation we have at the moment, and to what extent this Government or any Government in South Africa could have done anything to prevent the causes. In the first place, when we devalued the year before last we knew that devaluation would have an effect on the rate of inflation. In fact, we knew the same thing would happen when we introduced import control in November, 1971. We knew that it would have such an effect, and that it would cause prices in South Africa to rise, particularly the prices of imported goods. But at the same time, apart from the devaluation on which South Africa decided, there was a levelling-off in our spending, and as a result of that turnovers decreased and the unit costs of our goods increased. I have now mentioned three factors: Import control, devaluation and the levelling-off of spending. The fourth factor which played a part here is the constant and increasing wage and salary increases. Surely all of us know that machinery exists in South Africa which enables people to negotiate with their employers for salary increases, and which enables decisions to be taken in regard to increases in salaries by way of negotiations or by way of subsequent tribunal sessions. In other words, this is something which is to a large extent beyond the control of the Government.

In June. 1972, there was a further devaluation, which subsequently became a measure of revaluation when we re-established the parity of the rand. In any case, there was a real devaluation of approximately 4 per cent. Another factor which plays a part in inflation is undoubtedly the high rates of inflation in other countries. The hon. member for Parktown will agree with me that our imports from other countries where there is a substantial rate of inflation have to be influenced by the inflation in those countries. Those goods become more expensive. Our import goods are in value approximately 23 per cent—he is probably aware of this as well—of our gross domestic product. As a result of the increase in salaries of Railway staff, another factor has recently entered the picture which is going to have an influence on our price increases, namely the increased railway tariffs. These are then in the main the reasons which gave rise to this rate of inflation we have recently been experiencing and which we shall from now on be experiencing for a while—I do not know how long; it is difficult to say.

The hon. member for Parktown could now tell me whether I am correct or whether there are other factors which are of fundamental importance. When I consider these factors which I have mentioned, I ask this question: What could the Government or any other Government have done to prevent these factors? After all, there is an English saying that “prevention is better than cure”. What could we have done to prevent it?

Make way for a better government.

The only one of these factors I mentioned in regard to which he could to a certain extent level accusations at the Government, and only to a certain extent at that, for to a large extent this was also forced upon us, is devaluation. He may perhaps say that we should not have devalued or that we should have devalued less. Over the other factors which I mentioned, however, the Government has as it were no control whatsoever. All we can do now is to confine to a minimum the harmful effect of these factors which further inflation. That is all the Government is required to do. In this connection the Government has in fact achieved tremendous success in the past. That is really all we can do, namely to confine the damage to a minimum.

We have already made it our aim to increase the growth rate. On that score as well I do not entirely concur with the hon. member for Parktown, but I do not have the time now to deal with all these matters. If he were to glance at the prospects on the basis of the Opinion Survey made by the Bureau for Economic Research in Stellenbosch, he would see that the Bureau also says what I say and think, which is that the steps we took to stimulate the growth rate are gradually making their effect felt. However, these are already there, and at the moment there is a far greater measure of optimism in regard to growth and expansion than there was in the past. The position is not as bad as the hon. member presented it. We have already, as I have said, stimulated our growth rate. In the meantime we are continuing to restrict inflation in all its forms. Certain factors to combat inflation have already had their effect. I think it is correct to say that the influence of the import control which we introduced in November, 1971, has worked its way through the economy, and that that is no longer a factor. I also think I am correct in saying that the influence of the first devaluation in December, 1971, the devaluation of 12,28 per cent, has also worked its way through our economy and that it is no longer there today. In the meantime we have had a relaxation in import control, and I think that this is also a measure which helps in the combating of inflation. I think the effect of the second devaluation of June last year has not yet worked its way through our economy, but to a large extent we have already had the results of that as well. Throughout last year there were wage increases. Railway tariffs were increased from the beginning of this year. I think we must expect that there are going to be even further wage increases this year as a result of pressure for higher wages which exists under these circumstances. If I had to make a prediction now, I think we could expect the rate of inflation to decrease gradually this year. We can expect it as these factors which I have just mentioned work their way through our economy. I said a moment ago that the Government can only try to restrict the effect of these factors to a minimum. What more did the Government do about this? It is said so easily outside this House, and by irresponsible members on that side of the House, that the Government is doing nothing; that inflationary tendencies exist, that the prices are rising all the time, and that nothing is being done about it. It is said so easily that the Government should peg prices and that steps ought to be taken. This is not as easy as it is claimed to be. In the first instance, the Government has introduced a great variety of fiscal and monetary measures to combat inflation. I think, for example, of credit control, taxation of a direct and indirect nature, and the relaxation of hire purchase conditions in order to promote sales and combat devaluation. These measures are aimed at curbing spending and encouraging saving. The second series of measures which we adopted, was when we tried to stimulate industries, but I must admit that the reaction of the industries was not everything we would have wished. We tried to stimulate this in order to increase our turnovers and improve our unit costs in this way. The third and important and popular system which is adopted is to introduce price control. I want to state very clearly and unequivocally that price control does not mean the pegging of prices. That is impossible, and the hon. member for Parktown will agree with me on that score. Price control cannot mean the pegging of prices. It is not intended as a means of pegging prices either. If we were to peg prices, with the increased costs of production, wages and so on, it would mean that industries and business concerns would eventually be unable to make a profit. If they are no longer able to make a profit, they will close down. If that happens, our economy, our expansion and our growth rate will be slowed down, and for that reason one can only control prices in such a way that one continues to give one’s manufacturers, one’s businessmen and one’s enterprises a reasonable return on their capital investment. But it is not as simple as all that to control the popular commodities used by people. Consider for a moment meat, fresh fruit and vegetables. It is simply impossible to place those commodities under control, for there, to a large extent, supply and demand plays a part. Particularly when it comes to perishable goods such as apples, pears, vegetables, cabbage and so on, it is impossible to control prices, even if one wanted to, for there is such a great variety in the different qualities of the goods. We think, for example, of furniture and clothing. It is not possible to control the prices of those articles. Do the hon. members want to suggest that we should do so? Surely it is absurd. Nor is it possible to do so in regard to housing and transport. It is perhaps to a limited extent possible with regard to medical requisites, it is after all not possible to do so. Therefore, although the Government is doing what it can in regard to the control of certain basic commodities, where it is possible to apply control, it is not possible to apply it throughout. The idea which may perhaps exist that there is complete control over all goods, is a simply impossible one. When applications for price increases are made to the Government, they are investigated on merit. The additional expenditure incurred by such an enterprise or manufacturer in respect of increased wages, greater expenditure and so on, are taken into consideration. If he is able to cover that expenditure from his own earnings, we make provision for him to cover this from his own earnings if he is, in addition, still able to earn a reasonable return. In so far as he is unable to do so, we are compelled to grant the increase in prices. Our major problem in this country remains the great difference between salary increases and production per man-hour. This is a subject in itself, something which I should like to discuss in greater detail. I should like to urge hon. members to glance at page 5 of last year’s annual report of the Industrial Development Corporation. This will be laid upon the Table. Then hon. members will be able to see what a tremendous gulf and difference has developed between the wages per man-hour and the production per man-hour. Because those two factors have not kept abreast of one another we have had an advanced rate of inflation in South Africa, which we would not otherwise have had. From this side, however, the Government has done everything possible to keep prices within reasonable limits. But, as I explained at the outset—and there was a great deal more I could still have said—it is simply not possible to keep all price increases under control because the Government has no control over most of them and because many of them—according to calculation approximately three out of the seven per cent to which the hon. member referred—are due to imported inflation as a result of devaluation and inflation in other countries. The result is that we are left with 4 per cent, which compares very well with other comparable Western countries. If the hon. member were to look at the figures of countries with which he can compare us, such as England, France and other countries in Europe—they are fond of comparing us with those countries—then our rate of inflation is a favourable one. Taking into consideration devaluation and imported inflation, it compares very favourably with other comparable countries.

Mr. Speaker, for some 15 minutes of the valuable time of the House we have had to listen to the buffoonery and witticisms of the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs playing to the gallery at a time when the mood outside the confines of this House is one of brooding disquiet in the face of events on our borders, where we have terrorist threats, and in the face of the delicate situation we have in Natal with the strikes, and the hunger and want that is felt by so many of our people. It is no wonder that the Press of this country have had to inquire last year whether events outside Parliament are not overtaking events within this honorouble House in the face of attitudes such as the hon. the Minister has just shown. The Opposition is entitled to criticize the acts of omission and the acts of commission on the part of this Government, acts which are prejudicial to good government of the people, by the people and for the people.

I intend today to deal with the handling of the devaluation of the rand and the events subsequent to December, 1971, the failure of the Government to either reduce, contain or restrain inflation and also the failure of the Government to create a climate in which the motor industry can profitably operate on a long-term basis, in which the motoring public can obtain passenger cars at prices commensurate with their pockets and in which the public can obtain maintenance and servicing of their cars at prices which they can afford. Finally I intend to deal with the failure of this Government either to recognize or to control the population explosion in South Africa for what it is, namely, the most important and most significant political, economic and sociological event of our age.

The rand was devalued against gold by some 12,28%, more than the dollar which was devalued by 7,89% in December, 1971. Subsequently the rand was allowed to float with sterling and we had a further devaluation. The American motivation for devaluation and our South African motivation, given by the hon. the Ministers of Finance, were different. We in this country have been heavily dependent on foreign trade for our economic development. Exports and imports amounted to some 51,6% of our gross domestic product, during the period 1958 to 1968. The comparable figure in America is only 9,4%. Therefore, the effects of devaluation on our economy must be expected to be far worse and more severe than in the case of America. Fortuitously our imports and exports are fairly evenly divided on the basis of 25% exports and 23,6% imports of our GDP.

Devaluation in our country is therefore a double-edged sword and will cut deep, is cutting deep and will hurt. In retrospect we may inquire why the Government devalued at that stage rather than resorting to more formal conventional monetary measures such as the use of our bank rate. I make this point because our economy has certain unique attributes. Being the largest gold producer in the world we can generate our own foreign exchange. Despite the Nationalist Government our economy is an inherently sound one. We have the raw materials, climatic conditions, capital and labour. We offer therefore a fruitful field for oversea investment. Unlike Western European countries we have inherently no problem of unskilled labour and therefore we can plan for a high growth rate over a long period, provided our labour is given the opportunity to improve and eventually to fill vacancies, semiskilled, skilled and in the managerial class. There was no real need to devalue but the Government’s mismanagement of the economy in previous years leading up to 1969 resulted in the emergence of surplus capacities in certain industries, in a decrease in the inflow of private capital from abroad and a slowing down of the economy under a Government in power for almost 25 years. The hon. the Minister of Finance thought that devaluation would promote economic growth and stimulate the gold mining industry while creating additional jobs and employment. The Government knew and warned the country that there would be an upward tendency in prices. Just how drastic that upward tendency in prices would be and how it would bear down upon the ordinary citizen, the Government had miscalculated entirely. In fact, today the present inflation is nullifying any beneficial effect the gold mines could have hoped to enjoy. In fact, job opportunities are not occurring as was anticipated. The fact is that the gross domestic product in South Africa has been dropping alarmingly since 1969. What is worse, Sir, is that manufacturing production is increasing too slowly, according to a Reserve Bank survey, and our productive output per man-hour—and this is the important thing—is decreasingly excessively. It should be realized that the major malady of our South African economy is our low labour productivity. This low productivity will result in higher unit costs, which will militate against our export markets. One of the answers we look for is that the Government raise productivity, particularly that of the Africans, together with higher wages. To do this it should abandon its Physical Planning Act and other restrictive labour measures. It should adopt the practice of on the job training and realize that basically our economy was unsound in 1969. In effect, the hon. the Minister of Finance saw devaluation as a short-term panacea, when in effect we had other methods open to us and devaluation being a long-term panacea.

This brings me to the cost of living and inflation. There are some hard facts which the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs skated around as if they were thin ice. The fact is that this spendthrift Government uses inflation to obtain money from its people without sweat and tears. In the old days, under the United Party régime, money, like Caesar’s wife, was beyond reproach; contracts in money were inviolable. Money retained its value. One undertook to repay the same amount one borrowed. Under the United Party regime we regarded money as a mechanism for serving the community. Today the Nationalists regard money as a mechanism for serving the Government. The Nationalists have forgotten that money does not create wealth—it is produced wealth which creates money. This Government today has created a large army of bureaucrats whose task is ever more to issue stringent orders governing the daily lives and the details of all our lives. To pay these bureaucrats the Government demands sweat and tears and more money from the individual and from the company. This Government is robbing widows, orphans, the aged and all other people who are reduced to living on fixed incomes without any hope of increasing their incomes. They have reduced these classes to living on charity, on poor relief, either public or private. This Government is forcing our lowest wage earners into the present costly strikes which are now crippling labour in Natal as a result of the falling purchasing power of the rand and the dire starvation and poverty levels under which they are suffering. What the Nationalist Government fails to realize, is that there is only so much cake. The larger the army of bureaucrats that will have to be paid and reimbursed from this cake, the less is left over to the private sector. The cake is produced only by the productive section of the community. This Government is creating more bureaucracy to cure the evils caused by too much bureaucracy. Their philosophy, in a few short lines, is:

Under this Government true value of money no longer applies. Money is no longer a store or a measure of value, no more than elastic is a measure of distance or a sieve is a measure of water. This Government is today depriving every individual citizen, however rich or poor, of the right to hold real money. Today the man in the street only holds claims to money in the form of irredeemable promises to pay. I quote Dr. Holloway, past-governor of the Reserve Bank, where he says:

If this Government were to use the technical and technological resources available to it, we in this country should be enjoying a better and better standard of living with lower costs, due to the economics of large scale and mass production. Increased productivity should result in better living standards and not in lower living standards. But what do we find? Runaway inflation and continuously falling values in the money in which we are paid. Again I quote Dr. Holloway where he says:

This Government is fuelling the flames of inflation with its bureaucratic army of civil servants taking an ever bigger slice of the cake and giving in return to the people bits of worthless insanitary paper.

I make no apology for returning and again raising the Government’s ineptitude in the handling of the affairs of the motor industry and the Government’s share of responsibility for the fact that the public are being penalized in this country by the excessively high prices of motor vehicles, high costs of repair, exorbitant maintenance costs and the high cost of fuels and oils, licencing and insurance. The man in the street who cannot afford a motor car is suffering through higher living costs because of the Government’s whole policy pertaining to the motor industry. It has been clear throughout the past year that the motor industry is in trouble. Representations have been made to the Government by the Automobile Association, with 600 000 members, calling for an investigation into the whole situation in the industry. Manufacturers themselves have called upon the Government, as well as Die Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut. The Chambers of Commerce on behalf of the motoring public have highlighted public resentment at the ever escalating costs of car ownership. The Minister of Finance is on record as having assured the industry that the Government would not leave it in the lurch. That was 18 months ago. The Government is killing the goose which lays the golden eggs. The Chairman of the Automobile Association is on record as having said: “To my mind we have already reached the stage where it has become uneconomic for the average South African to have his motor car repaired and checked because of shortage of skilled workers and the exorbitant wages which have to be paid to artisans and the high costs of replacement parts.”

Mr. Speaker, both my leader and the hon. member for Yeoville and I personally have pleaded since 1971 for the Government to implement the recommendation of the Franzsen Commission and hold an inquiry into the affairs of the motor industry and related matters. These appeals have fallen on deaf ears. Only last year the hon. Senator Horwood in the Other Place passed the buck to the motor manufacturers when he called on the industry to do a thorough inquiry into its workings. He blamed the motor industry for the unsatisfactory state of affairs. He warned the manufacturers that they must be prepared to face growing customer resistance in the face of increasing vehicle prices. He complained that there were no fewer than five price increases in one year. But, Sir, only recently in December what did we find? The Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut in desperation decided to go it alone.

*According to a report in Rapport of 5th November, 1972, the Handelsinstituut announced that it was going to institute a thorough investigation. Mr. Jan de Necker, the president of the Institute, said in a statement that the Institute had decided at an executive meeting to undertake a thorough, impartial study of the motor industry in all its facets.

†He ignores the Government now, Sir. He gets no better results from them than did the Chambers of Commerce.

*His statement goes on to say:

Mr. De Necker declared that this request arose from anxiety that had been expressed by members of the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut concerning the further development of the local content programme after completion of Phase III, seen in the light of the planned growth of the market and the demands which this can make on the available manpower and capital needs in future. Mr. Speaker, you know, too, that Dr. Hurter, the chairman of Volkskas, has pleaded for a break of several years between the end of Phase III and the possible transition to the fourth phase.

†Mr. Speaker, clearly the Government is running away from its decision to force Phase III on the motor industry. Only in November did they hold a congress for the motor manufacturers and after days of talk, what do we find? Nothing happens. It is important that the public should be informed of the facts. The Phase III decision which was forced on the motor industry in 1970 was a blunder. It came at a time when the economy was overheated and the progressive implementation of ever-increasing local components could only lead to higher costs and calls for higher capital involvement. With the downturn in the economy, increased sales taxes and excise duties understandably led to reduced sales and brought the motor industry to its knees. But, Sir, the four big manufacturers initially went along with the Government in Phase III because they made the erroneous deduction that by pressing Phase III they would eliminate all other competitors. Today, halfway through the Phase III programme, every manufacturer is so committed that there is no sense in changing horses in midstream and Phase III, three years after its inception, is accepted as the lesser evil, the alternate being the Franzsen Commission’s recommendation to limit manufacturers to a popular vehicle only, and this is anathema not only to the public but also to the manufacturers.

I want to deal briefly with the popular fallacy that a reduction in model numbers would lead to a restoration of profits and prices. This is the biggest ballyhoo that you have ever heard, Sir. According to Professor Leslie Szeplaki, writing in the Journal of Economics, 1972, the three largest motor manufacturers in America, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, together with American Motors, a small tagger-on, account for 99% of all passenger vehicles, and the total output is over 7 million vehicles a year. In this vast country with its tremendous population and a sophisticated car components industry, it is projected that an estimated 300 000 vehicles must be produced by one manufacturer to break even. In 1970 American Motors sold 276 000 motors, and what did they lose? They lost 56 million dollars. Our sales in South Africa for the entire year for all manufacturers did not total 200 000 units.

So much for this nonsense that we hear about rationalization and decreasing the number of models in order to improve profitability at our production level of 200 000 vehicles a year approximately. I have challenged the Government in its sincerity, and I challenge the motor manufacturers in their sincerity. If their plea is that greater through-put will increase profits, why is there an inexplicable reluctance on the part of the Government to restrict the importation of fully assembled passenger vehicles, and on the part of manufacturers voluntarily to restrict the importation of assembled passenger vehicles, and so increase the sale of locally manufactured vehicles? Of the 182 961 vehicles manufactured last year, 17 765 were assembled not under the local content programme, but brought into this country like meccano sets, and another 246 luxury cars were brought in.

Mr. Speaker, my query is supported by facts and figures, and one is forced to the conclusion that this Government is either in collusion with the four big manufacturers in this country, or it is being hoodwinked by them. Mr. Brian Moorehead, managing director of Fiat South Africa, has hit the nail on the head in his claim that meccano set cars are harming the motor industry. These are the facts: If we take the four biggest manufacturers in South Africa—General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Leyland—we find that in each case their assembled vehicles form a disproportionate percentage of their total sales. For example, in November last year Leyland sold 258 imported cars which formed 23% of their total sales and 43% in value of their total sales; Ford sold 422 imported cars which formed 19% of their total sales and 32% in value of their total sales; Chrysler sold 418 imported cars which formed 21% of their total sales and 15% in value of their total sales; and the position of General Motors is even worse. These are big figures, Mr. Speaker. In November vehicles to the value of R7 million were imported.

What about the Cadillacs?

Are the large manufacturers who are most vocal in supporting Phase III and in demanding a reduction in model numbers not guilty of neglecting this elementary recourse open to them? Is the reason for their not doing so possibly the fact that they are deriving greater profits from the importation of assembled models, and are they not subsidizing their losses on cars assembled locally under Phase III by this device? I put this question bluntly to the hon. the Minister.

Then, too, the Government should explain its reason for not pressing for the local content programme for light commercial vehicles if it is their contention that Phase III operation requires additional through-put to give the benefit of economy of scale. If 180 000 fight commercial vehicles could be added to the 200 000, you would have additional through-put. Sir, once again the Government is illogical. They say on the one hand that Phase III is not driving up the cost of local components and the price of vehicles, but when it comes to including fight commercial vehicles in the local content programme, they claim that the cost of the local content for these vehicles would push up the price. Put bluntly, Mr. Speaker, if local components were more economical than their imported counterparts there would be no need to impose Phase III on the country. The profit motive and simple economics would be the carrot and there would be no need for the big stick. I therefore challenge the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs to make public his reasons for not pressing the local content programme for fight commercial vehicles if it is his contention that Phase III operation requires additional throughput to give the benefit of economics of scale. I challenge the hon. the Minister also to say whether he is happy that South Africa should spend R7,8 million buying imported cars during November, 1972, or approximately R80 million a year. These cars are assembled overseas, from which the local content programme derives little or no benefit, except perhaps for tyres and batteries. This continued importation of large numbers of foreign cars is completely contrary to the Government’s policy of increasing the local content of our South African vehicles and makes a farce of the whole Phase III programme. Is the Government hiding behind the fact that the profits on imported vehicles are being used by the largest manufacturers to subsidize locally manufactured vehicles and thus hide the true cost to the buying public resulting from Phase III? The fact is that the Government has landed up with worst of both worlds. If it had allowed the completely unrestricted importation of motor vehicles the price-list to the motoring public would be inordinately lower. If it had banned all imports the local engineering industry would have been very much higher. Mr. Brian Moorehead has made these comments and they are worthy of examination. They are embarrassing to the motor industry and they are embarrassing to the Government, but the fact is that the public is paying. Sir, the Government is therefore wrong in highlighting the proliferation of models as the main evil. The real evils facing the industry are the cost of the devaluation of currencies and high taxes by the Government, the proliferation of models being by far the least evil. The Government must bear the responsibility for the high cost of motoring to the public.

Then too, Sir, I would like to ask the hon. the Minister whether at the present stage he is negotiating with the manufacturers to bring out exhaust systems which will be pollution-free, or is this one of the benefits that we are going to be denied under this Government’s programme, because in fact we do not get the skills that overseas manufacturers build into their cars while we are forced to accept the cars manufactured in this country at this particular level. I suggest too that at this stage it is still not too late to slow down the Phase III operation if the Government is considering the man in the street, the motorist, and not the four big manufacturers. In the next three years that lie ahead Phase III will become most, expensive and exorbitant. The prices of our cars will rise still higher, only in order to satisfy the ego of the Government in having built up an empire which has now become a tiger, riding on its back.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Gardens spoke, inter alia, about inflation. The hon. member for Parktown also did so, and if I remember rightly said that “all people in South Africa are wilting under this cruel inflation”. Yesterday the hon. the Leader of the Opposition also referred to that in strong terms when he spoke here of the “dismal failure of this Government to check inflation”. Yesterday afternoon the hon. the Leader of the Opposition said he was not going to quote figures. He said it was not necessary for him to do so. I nevertheless recalled my thoughts to the past few years when he did quote rows of figures every year. I first want to deal with this matter before I pass on to other matters.

I want to say that the Opposition blames the Government for that, and the “hear, hears” we have just had are confirmation of this. It is all the Government’s fault! There is its apartheid policy, its labour policy, its obsession with ideologies and its “mismanagement of the economy”, and now, we have also heard, there is devaluation. We also heard this from the hon. member for Parktown. I shall come back to that again. Sir, let me state immediately with the utmost emphasis that the Government is not indifferent to price increases. The Government has never been indifferent to price increases and never will be. A great deal of time and attention, study and consideration are given to this problem, and in as far as the Government has any control over prices, as the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs said this afternoon, it tries to keep them as low as possible. We realize only too well—and we realize this as well as, and better than, the Opposition does—how heavily price increases hit people in the lower income groups, including pensioners and people who have saved and now have an interest income. I think the Government has helped these groups in the past, from time to time, and as, and when, it was possible for the Government to do so, and the Government will continue to do so in the future. We also know how these continual price increases have influenced the saving and spending patterns in our country. I therefore say that the Government is in earnest about this matter.

Now the Opposition states, however, that inflation is the Government’s fault. If that is so we would probably not have any inflation, or at least less inflation, in those countries where the National Party is not in power, where there is no apartheid policy, where there is not this labour policy, where there is not the obsession with ideology and where there is not this “mismanagement of the economy”.

I have here the November issue of the International Financial Statistics, a publication of the International Monetary Fund. Page 35 deals with “changes in consumer prices”. It covers virtually all the countries of the world, but those countries of importance as far as we are concerned are the following two groups, i.e. the “industrial countries” and the “other high-income countries”; altogether, 26 countries. South Africa is listed as one of the “high-income countries”. The basic index figure is 100, and this refers to consumer prices that pertained in December, 1963. The index figures, as they appeared in December of each of the succeeding years, are then supplied, concluding with the index figure for December, 1971. The index figures are therefore furnished for eight full years. We can now see how the increases in consumer prices in South Africa compare with those of other countries. Remember, they all start off in December, 1963 with the figure of 100. In December, 1971, the index figure of South Africa stood at 135,7. There were a few countries that did better than us, for example there was Belgium, 134,6; Italy, 133,7; The U.S.A., 133,1; Canada, 131,1; and West Germany, 127,4. There are consequently five countries who did better than us. They also had price increases or let us then call it inflation—a little less than we did, but not very much so. The majority of countries, however, were worse off. Remember that South Africa’s figure increased in the course of the eight-year period from 100 to 135.7. Compared with this there were the following figures: Austria, 136,1; Australia, 136,4; Switzerland, 136,6; France, 138.7; Sweden, 146; the United Kingdom, 151,7; Norway, 151,7; New Zealand, 153; the Netherlands, 153,9; Japan, 155,9; Denmark 161,6; Portugal, 169,1 and Spain, 172,2. Please note, these are the figures of the International Monetary Fund. I am not quoting these figures to tell the public that everything is all right, or to imply that the Government is shrugging its shoulders and that this is all consolation the Government has for them. I know that when they go to buy their daily and monthly requirements and find that the prices have risen again, it is hard on those people. But the Opposition accuses us of causing inflation. Here I have the proof. This is proof and not assertion, and I challenge any of those hon. members to refute it in this debate. I know they cannot. Here I have the proof that all countries have inflation, and the majority of countries have a higher rate of inflation than we do. This journal’s latest figures are those for August, 1972. The figures furnished are for the period from August, 1971 to August, 1972. In South Africa the increase was 6,4%. What was the rate in Germany, the country we heard about today? Devaluation gets the blame, for example from the hon. member for Parktown, an hon. member I did not expect this from.

Who said so?

Devaluation gets all the blame for price increases. The hon. member for Cape Town Gardens repeated this, and the hon. member for Parktown clearly said that devaluation is the cause of the inflation we are experiencing.

Of course it is.

If the hon. member for Parktown did not say it, I withdraw the statement, but the hon. member for Cape Town Gardens has just said it again. If devaluation has caused inflation, the revaluation in Germany should surely have caused a decrease, and a large decrease at that. The inflation rate for the year August, 1971 to August, 1972, the price increase rate, for Germany, which revalued, was 5,7%. Italy’s rate was 6%, Canada’s was 4,7%, Austria’s was 6,3%, Switzerland’s was 6,7%, Australia’s was 6,1%, France’s was 6,1%, the United Kingdom’s was 6,5%, Norway’s was 8%, New Zealand’s was 7,4%, the Netherlands’ was 7,4%, Denmark’s was 6,4%, and so I could go on. Hon. members see, therefore, that inflation today is a world-wide characteristic of the economic system, and the Opposition, least of all, will be able to do anything about that. We have been listening to them for years, and we have listened to them this week, but what suggestions have they ever given us? I call this House to witness, to tell me what they have ever suggested we should do to combat inflation. They have always seen the only solution to the problem in this sphere of labour. That is the only solution they have ever mentioned here in all the years I have been sitting in this House. Other than that they are powerless, because the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs said that the large price increases in all the countries we trade with have also been carried into South Africa by way of imports. By the importation of manufactured consumer goods, by the raw materials and intermediate goods we import for our industries, by the more expensive machinery and equipment we buy abroad for domestic production purposes, by the higher freight charges and international costs such as insurance, by the more expensive oil we buy to provide for our fuel requirements, etc., higher prices are carried into the country. The Opposition will not be able to keep clear of this foreign inflation, which is entering our country, either. Likewise no one can do anything about the higher prices of agricultural products, because this is being caused by a greater demand on the one hand and by droughts, damage and crop failures on the other hand. There is, however, one possible difference between ourselves and the Opposition when it comes to the combating of inflation, i.e. that there are people in this country, who are strongly supported by certain newspapers, who want to train the Bantu and use them for any work anywhere in this country. They would pay them more if they were trained and used in this way; this much I concede; but they would use them in place of the Whites, and their wages would be lower than those of the Whites. In that way an undertaking will be more productive in terms of its wage account and be able to produce at lower costs.

What is the Minister of Transport doing?

We can come to that. In this way the White worker will also be forced to work for a lower wage and to work harder, if it is possible, because this supplementary and alternative source of labour is present. There is a section in this country which thinks along those lines, and no-one can deny this—the hon. member for Houghton is at least honest in advocating this openly, it is a purely economic argument as far as she is concerned—and it is advocated by the major portion of the opposition-minded Press, if not the entire Press. In essence this is also what the Opposition advocates. What then does the hon. member for Parktown mean when he asks: “Was the Government going to admit that the wasteful use of African labour is a big cause of inflation and opt for a more intensive use of Black labour?” What then does he mean by that? Simply that the upper sluices must be opened.

Black peril again.

The upper sluices must be opened. That then is the “more intensive use”. Then there is no longer the “wasteful use”, because otherwise Bantu are used anyway. The Bantu can be employed in industry, or wherever the case may be. That is the only place where there is “wasteful use”, and there the Opposition links up with the other trend of thought I have just mentioned. Mr. Speaker, that is also what the hon. member for Yeoville said the other evening on the radio when he spoke of the “artifical barriers”. That is what he said the other evening, on Sunday evening. But let him stand up and list “artificial barriers” for us one by one. I say that is exactly what he also means. He simply does not have the courage to say so openly.

I promise you I shall do so.

I have proved it, and the Opposition cannot deny—in fact, no one can deny—that inflation is an international problem and that the Government has done very well, comparatively speaking. I repeat, comparatively speaking the Government has done exceedingly well. Likewise, I say, no one can deny that our salaries have increased more than our prices.

Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to speak about White salaries and wages, but yesterday we heard so much about Bantu wages and salaries that I feel that I could perhaps also say something about that. In this connection I shall come to light with actual examples. In connection with the entire matter discussed yesterday, I want the country and the House to remember something. Do hon. members know when in this country we had full employment of Whites for the first time? In 1963. Do hon. members know that we had full employment of Coloureds and Indians for the first time only in 1967? Bantu unemployment is also decreasing. In the years 1963 to 1969, for example, an additional 840 000 Bantu were employed in our economy, 250 000 of which were above the normal supply due to increase. In other words, the unemployment decreased over that period by 250 000. Our aim is to have it disappear gradually. There has been talk here of a “disgrace”. One of the members of the Opposition used the word “disgrace” yesterday. I now ask myself: Is it not honourable and just to have Bantu employment distribute itself horizontally as much as possible to see whether we cannot rather employ all the Bantu than to say now: “No, employment must rise vertically here in the centre”? Is it not just as praiseworthy? Is it not just as good and just as honourable, I ask myself. I am just mentioning this point. I am not, at the moment, arguing one side of the matter or the other; I am only asking whether it is not also right to strive for that. Must we not at this stage rather try to give bread to everyone than meat to only some. This matter is not as simple as it is made out to be here, and this goes for the Press as well. It is a question of the supply of a certain type of labour and the demand for that same type of labour. In other words, it is also a question of numbers. It is also a question of productivity. It is not merely a question of opening up a few posts for Bantu in the higher brackets, hower praiseworthy that may be. That is not going to solve the problem. It is a question of the productivity of one’s whole Bantu labour force, because one can do so much damage to one’s economy that not only do they suffer, but everyone eventually does.

I now come to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition’s plan. As I understand him, he is saying: “Let us now give a 20 per cent increase to all Bantu workers for a five year period …”

That is not what I said. You were not listening.

The Leader of the Opposition says I was not listening. He said: “Give them an increase”. What kind of an increase? Just say how much? Did he not mention a percentage?

No.

He did not mention a percentage. I do not want the Leader of the Opposition to be in trouble, but he is free to mention a percentage. It must surely be a percentage. It cannot be anything else, whether it be 5, 10 or 20 per cent. He must have had a percentage in mind because he said it would entail an increase of 1 per cent in the price of a manufactured product. I just want to say that this is not the first time something like this has been suggested. It is an idea, but it is not the first time that this is being suggested. How does one now do this? One could do it freely, and where are we then? We are then exactly where we are now, i.e. with some of us trying to pay our non-White workers more in order to retain the good ones, the best amongst them, and to use them as productively as possible. Or one could do it by means of one’s wage determination machinery so that minimum wages are then raised by the percentage the Leader of the Opposition has in mind, but which he did not mention here. One could then make it compulsory throughout the country and increase this by these means. Then, of course, we must go and work out the costs involved. If I misunderstood the Leader of the Opposition I am sorry, but I understood him as saying that if an industry does this, the price of the products then furnished would increase by 1 per cent.

That was Kessel’s opinion in an article.

Kessel said the increase would be 1,4 per cent. However, leave it at that. There must be an increase every year. This cannot only happen in industry, surely. Industry is one of the spheres of work where the White relationship is the most favourable. But go now to the construction industry, where three times more Bantu work than in industry. One would not be able to do this in industry and not in the construction industry or in the commerce and service sectors. The matter is not as simple as the hon. the Leader of the Opposition wants to have the country believe. It is something one can look at very thoroughly, investigating precisely what the price increase effect and the inflation factor in the economy will be. I just want to mention the following. We are criticized about price increases, but here the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is advocating inflation. He says: “We must take that risk.” As far as I am concerned, this is a good example of how difficult the choice is when it comes to these things. Quite simply there is a good reason for every price increase—it does not matter what it is; it can be something like petrol, because more has to be paid for oil in the Persian Gulf, or because shipping charges have been increased, or whatever the case may be; there is simply no such thing as an unjust price increase. Here the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is also advocating a price increase, justified according to him. I am just mentioning this as an example of how difficult these matters are.

What is now the actual wage figure of the non-Whites? I should just like to give it to the House. From 1963 to 1971 our cost of living in South Africa increased by 33%. If someone should now say that the 33% differs from the 35,7% I mentioned a moment ago, I may just add that those figures were from December to December, while these are average figures for the year, compared with the average figures for the following year, because one’s wages are also average figures for the years one has to compare with each other.

From when to when?

From 1963 to 1971 the Bantu wages in South Africa—I have all the particulars here, but not sufficient time to read them—increased by 67,1 % in comparison with the cost of living that increased by 33%, except in the mines and in agriculture. I may just say that the percentage increases were the highest in respect of the provincial administrations, the Central Government and the construction industry. But the fact of the matter is—and someone said this here—that the standard of living of the Bantu still rose and was increased consistently, considerably more than the actual cost of living increased. This cannot be denied either. But now we come to those people the Opposition calls upon, claiming that the voters must vote us out on those grounds. The hon. member for Parktown said this afternoon: “Everybody, rich and poor, middle-class …", the whole lot of them must vote us out. What is the position now? Let us now just look at a few of these figures. Remember now that I have said that from 1963 to 1971 the cost of living increased by 33%. In 1963 the Whites in the mining industry earned an average of R2 532, and in 1971, R4 528. That is an increase of 78,8% or a real increase—if that will satisfy hon. members—of 34,4%. As far as the manufacturing industry is concerned, the figures for 1963 and 1971 were R2 190 and R4 012 respectively, which represents an increase of 83,2% in actual figures and 37,8% in real figures. In the construction industry, for the years 1963 and 1971, the figures were R1 982 and R4 223, which represents an increase of 113,1% in actual figures and 60,2% in real figures. Thus I could continue. As far as wholesale and retail avenues are concerned, the figures were respectively R1 144, R2 556, 77% and 33,1%. As far as the South African Railways and Harbours is concerned, the figures were R1 899, R3 821, 101,2%, and 51,3%. The figures for the public authorities—i.e. the Central Government, the provinces and the local authorities—are R1 909, R3 530, 84,9% and 39%. The average White earnings for everyone were R1 949 in 1963. In 1971 this was R3 612. This is a percentage increase in actual earnings of 85,3%. If one has discounted the price increases, the 33% inflation, there was a real increase of 39,3%. If one then divides that by eight, one finds there was a standard of living increase amongst the Whites of 4,9% per year. I shall now quote figures to show you, in my opinion, that this is the highest in the world. It therefore cannot be denied that in spite of what members might say, the White wages and salaries have increased considerably more than the cost of living. As I have shown, the Bantu’s wages and salaries also increased more. On those grounds I think the Leader of the Opposition has no hope of formulating a motion of no confidence in us.

Then there is another argument they come to light with. Sir, you have already heard it, and members may refer to it again. The Leader of the Opposition came to light with it last year, and this year he just mentioned it and then got out of the way. If they cannot get any further with the figures, they say that our standard of living is not increasing per capita of the population to the same extent as in the other countries. It goes without saying that if there are two countries, both are growing at 4%, and one’s population has increased by 1 % and the other’s population by 3%, the former’s standard of living will increase by 3%, while the latter’s increase in its average standard of living will merely be 1 %. That is exactly what is happening in our case. One can look at any country in the world. In the time at my disposal I shall furnish as many figures as I can. As far as the E.E.C. countries are concerned, I want to give the figures in three tables: The first column’s figure is the average real increase per year from 1960 to 1969. The figure comes from this book The Year Book of National Account Statistics of the United Nations. It appears in Table I and Table IV, if the Opposition would like to look at it. The second column gives the population growth, and then one gets the per capita growth in the third column. For France, the figures are 5,6%, 1,1%, and 4,5%. Let me just first give those for South Africa, then hon. members can bear this in mind. South Africa’s is 6,1%, the biggest growth in the period between 1960 and 1969, except for Japan and Spain, as is apparent from the said tables. On the other hand, our population growth over that period was an average of 2,7% per year. This leaves South Africa with a standard of living growth of 3,4%. Compared with this the figures for France are 5,6%, 1,1% and 4,5%; for Italy, 5,2%, 0,8% and 4,4%; for Germany, 4,4%, 1% and 3,4%; for the Netherlands, 5,2%, 1,3% and 3,9%; for Belgium, 4,5%, 0,6% and 3,9%; for the United Kingdom—the growth in England was low—2,9%, 0,7% and 2,2%; and for Denmark 4,5%, 0,8% and 3,7%. The average real growth from 1960 to 1969, in respect of the E.E.C. countries—Ireland is included—was 4,5%, the population growth 0.85% per year, with a consequent average annual per capita growth, i.e. the increase in the standard of living, of 3,65%. In contrast to this South Africa had an increase of 3,4% over this period. The reason for this is that we are not a homogeneous but a heterogeneous population. We cannot be compared with countries like England, Germany, France and Japan. We have a dualistic economy. We have people in a portion of our country who still have a subsistence economy. If the Leader of the Opposition again quotes countries with a low growth, as he did last year, I want to ask him then please also to give us the income per capita of the population of those countries. Last year he quoted countries with a per capita income of only 190 dollars and less.

Time has marched on. The case I am trying to put to you is that South Africa is involved in the phenomenon of inflation, just as the rest of the world is. There are reasons for that. Devaluation has brought us wonderful privileges. Would anyone doubt that this was the right step at the right time? It put a stop to the decrease in our balance of payments and restored our reserves. It was so spectacular that the newspapers said: “It is an economic miracle”. It created for us the basis for future growth. We are now taking steps According to an Argus cutting I have, and the journal of the Bureau for Economic Research, the first fine fruits of this growth are already visible. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened to the hon. the Minister of Planning with very much interest this afternoon and I agree with a good deal of what he has said. As far as inflation is concerned, I think there is no doubt that other countries in the world are suffering from inflationary tendencies, and South Africa is no exception in that regard. Whether or not, however, the Government has done all it can to combat inflation is another matter, and here, Sir, I take issue with him on one major statement that he made, and that is in connection with the whole question of labour utilization. He has the rather old-fashioned idea that the economic cake is limited in size and he seems to imagine that if more jobs, skilled and otherwise, are done by Black workers, this must mean that White workers are going to be displaced. I would say that our experience over the last 15 to 20 years has shown this to be quite incorrect and that, in fact on the Minister’s own admission, there is full employment for White workers. And yet, willy-nilly, despite the artificial barriers which do exist, such as job reservation, to a very small extent, and apprenticeship training, trade union restrictions and so on, White workers, who are now beginning to realize that their own economic prosperity is in fact bound up with the better utilization of Black labour, have released certain jobs to Black workers and their own position has not been jeopardized at all.

It has been improved.

Yes, in fact it has been improved, because there is usually a quid pro quo and the quid pro quo is generally higher wages for those fragments of the jobs which the White workers retain. I was interested to hear the hon. the Minister say that wages have gone up considerably in all sectors for White workers and for Black workers in industry, and he quoted percentages. He told us that there were two areas of work where wages had not gone up for Black workers. One was on the mines and …

No, I said that was not one of the areas.

In fact, they have not gone up very much on the mines. The mines are, however, beginning to improve wages, and I think it was Mr. Wilson of Anglo-American who has stated quite categorically that they have to. Now the Minister has excluded agriculture and I would be very interested to know whether in fact cash wages have gone up very much for Black workers in agriculture over the last 10 or 15 years. I doubt it, and I think it is time we had a thorough survey of this subject, because every other kind of worker is discussed in this House, the mine-worker, the industrial worker, the commercial worker, and so on. They are all discussed. Conditions in the homelands are thrashed out, but we seldom hear anything about the conditions of farm labourers. There are something like three million Black people on White farms, not all of whom, of course, are gainfully employed. I think it would be very interesting indeed to know what has happened to the wage pattern of those workers who are, after all, the most helpless of all, They are bound to the land by mediaeval Masters and Servants Acts. They are unable to come into the urban areas by virtue of influx control. They have no organization whatever, and of course there are no minimum wages laid down. It would therefore be very interesting indeed to hear something about the farm labourers.

I am glad the hon. the Minister of Labour is here, because I have many things to say to him about the existing crisis, the labour crisis, in Natal.

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

No, not at the moment; just let me develop my argument. Sir, perhaps the most pathetic aspect of the whole of the labour crisis, concerning which a great deal was said yesterday, is the paralysis that seems to have overcome the Government. As far as the Minister of Labour is concerned, he sits here fiddling away discordantly while, metaphorically speaking anyway, Durban burns. I do not know whether the hon. the Minister has heard the recent news, but the situation is escalating in Durban. I am told that the Bantu Administration Department has closed down. I am told that the whole of Hammarsdale is at a standstill, that the workers of numerous factories there are on strike and that the Corporation in Durban is having the greatest difficulty in keeping things going, and I would suggest to the hon. the Minister that he gets out of his front bench as soon as he possibly can, now if he likes, and gets himself to Durban, because that is where he ought to be. That is where the hon. the Minister of Labour ought to be, not here, answering arguments from this side of the House, because outside the real situation is developing very dangerously.

Up till now, I want to say at once, I understand that the actions of the police down in Natal have been most commendable. They have been extremely careful in their handling of strikers, although I have just had a telex to say that 200 Black workers have been arrested. I do not know if this is correct, but I have had a telex to this effect. They have been arrested, I understand, for trying to prevent other men from going to work. But up till now, anyway, the Government and the police in this regard have played it cool, and in this regard I wish to commend them. I think it is a very sensible attitude, because to rush in using force in a dangerous situation like this would, I think, simply escalate the matter into an almost uncontrollable situation.

What did the hon. the Minister tell us yesterday which gives us any hope that in the midst of a major crisis he has a positive plan of action? He told us that he was going to introduce legislation which was going to encourage employers to form work committees and that he was going to give some sort of power to the non-statutory work committees which already exist. Of course, this is the very machinery which so far has failed lamentably over the last 20 years and in which the workers clearly have no confidence at all. He also told us, of course, about all the benefits which this Government has brought to Black workers over the years; he told us about the higher wages, about education and about housing, and he told us, in a sort of double negative language, that the Government was not against further increases in wages. Last week he told the Press in a statement that there are about 100 industrial conciliation agreements and about 76 wage determinations prescribing minimum wages for something like 800 000 Black workers. What he did not tell us, of course, was what those minimum wages are, and that, of course, is what these strikes are all about. They are all about the fact that the minimum wages are in fact too low. He did not tell us that in wage determinations last year only for about 100 unskilled occupations for local authority employees, the rate laid down was R8-30 a week for male adults, nor did he tell us, for example, that Africans working in the cement industry recently got their first pay rise in 5½ years, and that pay rise was a miserable 3 cents an hour, bringing the wages up to R9-66 a week for those over the age of 18 for a 46-hour week.

He did not mention, either, the statistically significant sample of the national survey done by the Wages and Productivity Association during 1971-’72, which showed that over 80% of the Africans in the sample, which was very significant statistically, in the private sector earned less than R70 per month; that one third of this 80% earned less than R10 a week, and that only 1% earned more than R30 per week. It is certainly not from the hon. the Minister, of course, that we hear of the existing poverty datum line and minimum effective level which, almost as soon as they have been calculated, are out of date because of the soaring cost of living. One thing which I am glad to say he has omitted to do is to repeat his oft-repeated statement that South Africa is enjoying industrial peace that many other industrial countries would envy. We have heard that from the hon. the Minister over and over again. Sir, I have always maintained that this industrial peace has been spurious because striking is illegal—we have had that argument before—but apart from that there are many more strikes and stoppages than most people imagine.

Hon. members may be interested to hear that between 1961 and 1971, according to the figures of the Department of Labour, something like 697 work stoppages and strikes took place which affected over 52 000 workers. Last year we had the huge Owambo strike affecting 13 000 workers; then we had the canning strike; then there was the coal industry strike, the Putco drivers’ strike. Last year in October 2 000 stevedores here in Cape Town refused to work overtime, and in the same month 1 200 stevedores in Durban also went on strike. In the last few months of 1972 there were a number of small strikes, and this year, within five weeks, we have witnessed the alarming spread of strikes in Durban, almost like a veld fire, involving, at the last count, some 26 factories and 30 000 African workers, and I may say, too, that today the figure is probably much higher.

Last year in the no-confidence debate I pointed out the similarities between the strike of the migrant workers of the Owambos and our own migrant workers in the Republic, and I suggested then that we might learn a lesson or two from what happened in South-West Africa. In my private member’s motion I tried to point out that the conditions under which migrant workers lived, the herding together of thousands of men in hostels and compounds, were not conducive to a contented labour force. The interesting aspect of many of these recent strikes is that they involve migrant workers and contract workers living in hostels, and they involve workers coming into the border industry areas from the homelands and living under the most wretched conditions. Last year the conditions of these workers were exposed in a series of articles in a Natal newspaper. I asked a few questions about this and the then Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration was at pains to tell us what had been done. These are the workers now involved in strikes. They are the workers who are the worst paid of all. They are the workers who can never hope to graduate to that privileged class of section 10(1) Africans who at least can hope to have their families with them at some stage of their lives provided of course there is enough housing and providing they can satisfy certain other legal requirements. But for these people, the migrant workers, there is no hope of improvement in their working conditions and I believe this is an important factor in these strikes. It starts with people like this and it spreads to other people. I think we are very stupid indeed not to learn a lesson from last year’s strikes in South-West and the existing strikes in Natal.

The hon. the Minister obviously finds it hard to admit that there are genuine grievances and he finds it hard to admit, I am sure, that the classic example of famous last words is the statement he made in this House last May when he said that “the existing machinery for the settlement of disputes has led to our having a very satisfactory situation in our entire labour corps in South Africa”. Instead of admitting that he was dead wrong, what the hon. the Minister has done, of course, is to seek sinister agents in the situation, to look for scapegoats. Of course, the first body on which he has descended is that popular scapegoat in South Africa, Nusas. You name it, Nusas has done it. Now I would like to know what proof the hon. the Minister has for the statement he made yesterday that Nusas had anything whatever to do with the handing out of the pamphlets which were handed out by the Workers’ Association, or whatever it is called. The Minister also said that the Africans do not want to negotiate, etc., and that it was very difficult to find anyone to negotiate with. Especially, they would not negotiate through the works committees. But in the first place they have no confidence in the works committees, which have done very little for them over 20 years, and secondly they are not so foolish as to produce leaders who they believe will probably be arrested as soon as they start negotiating. These are the reasons I put to the hon. the Minister; that is why it has been so difficult up to now to find Africans with whom to negotiate, apart from the fact to which I will return in a moment, that, of course, Africans have no registered trade union organizations.

The hon. the Minister made another statement which is in fact perfectly true. He has made it before, and he was right then and he is right now. That is that there is no law in South Africa to stop employers from raising wages. But as I have reminded the hon. the Minister time without number, we live in a highly competitive society and since the very beginnings of the free enterprise system it has been found necessary to protect the workers. This is what the whole labour and reform movement of the 19th century and the early 20th century—up to the middle of it, you might say—have certainly been all about. Governments throughout the Western world have recognized this by laying down national minimum wages for many occupations. I want to say categorically that I do not believe a national minimum wage even on a realistic basis to be the real answer—and ours, of course, are not realistic; our minimum wages are not realistic. The Wage Board is always years behind in its determinations, which are always well below the poverty datum line. I do not believe this to be the real answer. I do not believe that any trade unionist really believes that a minimum wage per se is the answer to the problem. I think, and I think most trade unionists will agree, that minimum wages are a pro tem protective device until the workers are able to organize themselves and negotiate proper agreements with employers directly and engage in the collective bargaining machinery.

Yesterday the hon. the Minister repeated another old and absurd statement and that is that Black workers are not yet ready for trade unions. [Interjection.] He said that trade unions are a strange concept to the Blacks. Now I consider that a piece of cool cheek coming from a spokesman of the Government which quite deliberately 20 years ago killed the embryonic trade unions which Blacks were already developing here. They deliberately passed the Bantu Settlement of Disputes Act with a view to killing Black trade unionism, and to come 20 years later and tell us that the Blacks have no experience of and are not ready for trade unionism is, as I say, a piece of cool cheek. I think the Minister made another quite extraordinary remark when he stated that it had been necessary originally to persuade Afrikaner workers to join trade unions which they considered a foreign importation. I think I heard him correctly.

That is quite correct.

It was in fact correct that Afrikaner workers had to be persuaded to join these foreign institutions, trade unions. Well, in the event, will the Minister not perhaps admit that trade unionism and collective bargaining have proved very rewarding indeed to those White workers who eventually joined the strange foreign organization of the trade union? Otherwise, why did he not just provide them with this statutory works committee which the hon. the Minister is now offering Black workers? He must surely admit that White workers have derived tremendous benefits as a result of trade union organizations and collective bargaining machinery. Even those unions which are not allowed by law to strike, about which the hon. the Minister has often reminded us, are properly organized and they go through all the negotiating machinery and the Government is dead scared of them. They have derived enormous benefits from collective bargaining machinery. I think it very likely that Black workers would also benefit if they were to learn to use this strange foreign weapon or organization or institution or whatever you would like to call it, of collective bargaining—the trade union. I want to add that I believe that orderly trade unionism is a lot less dangerous than the wildcat strikes which we are experiencing now with workers who have no trade union machinery and no negotiating machinery.

I think it is high time that this House had a full-scale debate on the question of trade union rights for Africans, by which I mean full trade union rights, by which I mean an amendment to the Industrial Conciliation Act, amending the definitions clause so as to admit Blacks as employees in terms of that Act. I propose to move a private member’s motion this year to that effect. I think it will be of great benefit. The hon. the Minister will perhaps then be able to tell me why he does not think Blacks could learn to use trade union machinery just as White Afrikaner workers had to learn to use trade union machinery. I shall also be very interested indeed to get a real clarification from the official Opposition on their view on this subject.

Oh, come off it!

Well, yesterday I listened to a very enlightened—I would almost say, if it was not a swear word—progressive speech from the hon. the Leader of the Opposition on labour. It was a very progressive speech indeed. [Interjections.] He enunciated many sentiments with which I wholeheartedly agree and I was very glad to hear him say these things. I much preferred hearing him talk the way he did about Black workers and their rights and everything else than I did listening to him a few years ago when he announced that the United Party would uphold the customary conventional colour bar, practically to the last man. I much preferred the speech he made yesterday to the speech he made a couple of years ago when he said that under no circumstances would the United Party allow a Black worker to giver an order to a White worker. I think the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has come a long way. What the cause of it is I really do not care, because as far as I am concerned, the more people in South Africa that speak that sort of language, the more hope is there for the future of South Africa. I should like clarification of the United Party point of view on trade unions, because the hon. the Leader of the Opposition was a little cautious yesterday when he talked about using the works committees as a beginning, as a starting point, allowing them to discuss with the registered trade unions the workers’ problems, or words to that effect. It is rather different from the hon. member for Yeoville who last year stated that he would have Black unions affiliated to existing White unions. However, he did not tell us whether this would allow the right to strike and he also did not tell us whether he meant, in fact, an amendment to the Industrial Conciliation Act’s definition of “employee”.

How did you like the speech of the hon. member for Hillbrow?.

Very much indeed. I thought it was a very good speech. If that is the kiss of death to the hon. member for Hillbrow, I am very sorry about it, but I thought that it was a very good speech.

I think, as I say, that it would be of great advantage to all of us to clarify this issue, because this is going to be the burning issue of the next decade. Whether we like it or not, African workers, not only these migrant workers, but also other African workers who are coming more and more into the semi-skilled and the skilled fields willy-nilly, whatever the Government may want, whatever even the White trade unions may want—and they are changing their thinking on this matter—are going to start organizing. It is up to us to do something about it and to organize them into orderly channels of collective bargaining machinery for proper negotiations or to leave it to this sort of wild cat strike which I believe can undermine our entire economy. Whatever the situation is, I must say that all of us are to a more or a lesser extent culpable in respect of the present situation in regard to poverty wages in South Africa. We are all culpable, everyone of us. I saw an article in Die Vaderland to which I replied to in the Cape Times this morning. I will not say anything further on that matter. I shall investigate the question of the hotel of which I am a director and if the wages are too low I shall see to it that it is put right …

Only now? Are you not ashamed of yourself? [Interjections.]

… because I had nothing to do with the wages that they are paid. But the whole story was a vast misrepresentation: I want to say that as well. But I would like every director of a company in this House to give the same undertaking. [Interjections.] I want to say that everyone of us is culpable in one way or another. This situation is part of what we call so enthusiastically “the South African way of life”. It is part of the age-long tradition of “low wages for Blacks, since they can live on less.” They do not choose to live on less, they have to live on less. On the other hand, we believe in high wages for Whites. This system has been entrenched in our law for years and it has been bolstered up by custom for years. For that one cannot blame the Government, for this existed even before the present Government came into power. However, this Government, over the last 25 years has buttressed and underpinned that system to an enormous extent. That is why the labour situation is now reaching crisis proportions in South Africa. The Government over 25 years have created conditions for the exploitation of the workers by neglecting to educate and to train them for more productive work, by restricting their mobility, by promoting the migrant labour system which depersonalizes the Black worker, which makes him a faceless labour unit which is readily interchangeable for any other Black face in the labour field and, most of all, by denying the Black worker what is an elementary right in the modern industrial society, the right of collective bargaining. In the meantime, before this dangerous swell of industrial unrest gets our of hand and turns into a tidal wave that would have the most disastrous effect on our economy and our race relations, I suggest the hon. Minister should take immediate steps and to get himself to Durban in order to call together what Mr. Eglin called a “summit conference” of commerce, industry, labour, Black labour, and to invite the White trade unions in whom the Black workers have confidence in order that these trade unions can assist in negotiating the present labour crisis. Otherwise I believe we are in for a most dangerous period of labour unrest in South Africa. For us to sit here arguing about inflation, about whether the inflation in France is higher than the inflation in South Africa, about whether our workers are paid more or less than the workers in the rest of Africa, is utterly irrelevant in the present situation. I plead with this hon. Minister to get himself out of his front bench and get himself down to the scene where things are happening, and that is the scene of the labour unrest in Natal.

Mr. Speaker, I am sure you will allow me to say at once that it is a great privilege to me, as someone coming from the Other Place, to be able to take my seat in this historic House of Assembly and to be able to take part in this debate. The debate, of course, is about a motion of no confidence introduced by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. One readily listens to the arguments used to substantiate this motion. As we have heard, it really concerns the strikes in Durban, certain alleged shortcomings in our labour policy, and inflation. It also concerns the so-called federal policy, of course—this umbrella parliament we have heard about. When I was asked about this policy at Klip River during the by-election I said that if it had not been such a serious matter I would have said it was the greatest political joke we had ever heard. But to add to that that as Minister of Tourism I would have to be the first minister to go there, that was too bad altogether. [Interjections.]

†Mr. Speaker, may I just make a few references to the hon. member who has just spoken, the hon. member for Houghton. I think we shall agree that her speech was absolutely true to form. It is exactly what we would expect under the current circumstances: Gross exaggeration, hyperbole. We hear there is a crisis; there is an “alarming situation” in Natal.

Do you not agree with that?

Really, Mr. Speaker, I suggest it is the very sort of situation that the hon. member prays for. [Interjections.] Mr. Speaker, I hope you will pay close attention to the reactions of our hon. friends here. They are aligning themselves very vocally with the hon. member who has just spoken. I want to say at once that, despite anything that has been said here today and yesterday, one can in fact travel the world but one will not find a greater record of industrial peace and harmony than one has seen in South Africa for 25 years on end. [Interjections.] May I just correct the hon. member, if I may. She said that 200 strikers had just been arrested in Natal. I suggest it is not 200 “strikers”, but 200 mischiefmakers, 200 inciters. Those are the people who have been arrested. [Interjections.]

How do you know?

The hon. member for Durban Point will get his chance to speak. He had a great deal to say at Kliprivier, but it did not help him at all. Perhaps if he were to listen, he would learn something. However, the hon. member for Houghton said, too, that there was paralysis in this Government.

Creeping paralysis.

You see how far one can be off the mark, Sir. We will handle this situation and I can assure hon. members that this Government and the hon. Minister of Labour will handle the situation with every circumspection, and at the same time, with every sense of responsibility. If these people think they are going to use this to hold this Government and this country to ransom, then I can assure them this Government will act in a way that will be an example to everybody and particularly to the hon. the Opposition. The hon. member for Houghton singled out agricultural wages. She did not say, of course, that practically all the workers on the farms get free housing. Rents are a big item today. She did not say that many of them get substantial food allowances. Food, too, is a very big item in the cost of living today. I can mention medical costs. How many of these people pay medical costs? These costs are paid by the farmers. I grew up on a farm myself. The hon. member gave exactly half the story of African wages. She wants an inquiry but should she not start the inquiry and make a full investigation before she comes here? I want to go a little bit further into this question of employment, of wages and strikes. In this country—you would not think so having listened to the debate—today with its incredibly heterogeneous population, including 16 million Blacks alone, not counting the four million Whites, we have nearly nine million people who are economically employed. I suggest that this is a very substantial achievement. However, it is not referred to. The other point is this: As my colleague, the hon. the Minister of Planning very clearly and excellently said today, the cost of living is rising, and we know that. It is a world phenomenon, and I will come back very briefly to that. As my hon. colleague pointed out, it is un-gainsayable that the living standards are rising all the time for every section of the population. I stand to be challenged on this and will give details. The standard of living in this country, despite the inflation, is rising all the time. Our gross national income in real terms is rising at about 4% per annum, as the hon. member for Park-town has said, but our population is rising at about 2½%. So each year our population, on the average—and this goes for the different racial groups as one can establish if one takes the analysis further industry by industry—has, in fact a rise in its real income and wages. The hon. member for Houghton did not mention that when she delivered this indictment of our policy. Nor did the hon. Opposition. [Interjections.] No, it is not; it is a very substantial rise … [Interjections.]

May I ask the hon. the Minister a question?

Sit down!

Order!

The hon. member for Port Natal must sit down; I may talk about bilingualism in a moment! He is the very last person who must talk to me today. I may talk to him in terms of Afrikaans. I want to say this—and the statistics bear this out, whether we like it or not; I like it but some people apparently do not—that there is no unemployment today in this country worth talking about.

Nonsense; absolute nonsense!

I do not know where you get your statistics from. I repeat that there is no unemployment in this country worth talking about. In Great Britain it is nearly one million and in the United States it is more than 5 per cent of their vast labour force, and I say that in this country it is not worth talking about. Those are the facts.

I want to come to another issue which the hon. the Opposition has become obsessed with, namely the so-called pay or wage gap. It is on record that it is the policy of this Government to work towards the narrowing of the pay gap. There is no question about it. The hon. the Prime Minister, the hon. the Minister of Labour and other Government spokesmen have said this many times. But I want to say this: It is not our policy to say that you can close the wage gap. The sooner we understand that, the better; because I say, in our conditions, in our time, it is an economic fallacy, an impossibility to say that the wage gap can be closed. When you talk about determining wages, you have to take the general condition of the labour market into account, the conditions of supply and demand, obviously. But when you judge it industry by industry, you have to look at many other matters. You have to look at the productivity of the worker and his skill, which are not the same thing. A man can be very skilled, but he may have no will to work. Then he is not productive. Then you have to look at the capacity of the employer to pay. Most important of all, you have to look at the historical background, the framework within which these things take place, which is completely and conveniently forgotten by our friends in the Opposition.

What is the position here? Our modern industrial society in South Africa started with the discovery of diamonds and gold in the ’70s and ’80s of the last century. At that time we were an agricultural and pastoral country. Then there were these huge, epoch making discoveries, which led to our rapid industrialization. At that time, to exploit the mining industry on a big scale, it immediately had to be a big industry. We had plenty of unskilled labour, but we did not have the skilled labour. So we had to import from Europe the skilled labour, and we had to pay European wage rates, rates prevailing in Europe, and higher to attract the people here. But, as any sensible businessman would do if he could find the unskilled labour here and get them at a lower rate, which is exactly what the position was, then he pays a different rate to the unskilled people. Sometimes it is a very big differential. It is so in all countries of the world. That is what happened. That set the pattern. It is a pattern which continues to this day although we have made many improvements on it. But to tell me that you can now suddenly close this wage gap, is to lose all sense of perspective. [Interjections.] Mr. Speaker, this shows how absurd the argument is. Take two medical doctors who have exactly the same qualifications. They may be of the same age. We may say they are identical. The one may earn five times or ten times as much as the other. Now what do you do in a competitive society—if you want a private enterprise society? Do you say you have to earn exactly the same? The trouble is, because of the world in which we live, the majority of these unskilled workers happen to be Black. Of course, our friends opposite are completely colour-blind. Black is black, and white should be black, and as long as something is black, it must immediately be right.

The hon. member for Parktown said this afternoon our cost of living is very high, far too high. I concede our cost of living is certainly higher than we would have liked it to be. But he then went on, as I understood him, to in fact imply criticism against the Government for granting increases to railwaymen. He said there would be further increases coming to the civil servants.

I never said I was against the increases for railwaymen.

Well, if I have misunderstood him, I accept that, but he went on to say that there will have to be big increases for the Blacks. He said that must be. Now what about productivity? I want to ask these industrialists in Natal: Is the first responsibility not theirs to look into this question of what they are paying these people? I believe there are cases where these wages should be higher, but why come running to the Government and say it is for the Government to lead the way? These are the people who say they want a private enterprise economy. Which do they want? Do they want a competitive society, in which these matters are determined by market conditions, or do they want a nationalized country? The Opposition do not tell us. You cannot have it both ways. The hon. Leader of the Opposition said quite clearly that there is an increasing tendency towards bureaucracy. But on the other hand he said—this question has now arisen because a few people are striking in Durban—this is a matter which the Government must immediately take powers to handle. It is an emergency, and the Opposition will immediately support the Government in any steps it takes. This is the position. Can any employer afford to pay an employee more than he is worth and still remain in business and continue to give that man employment? If it is a question of these people not being sufficiently productive, then I want to ask my friends in Natal, the body of industrialists, what particular steps they have taken over the last so many years to ensure increased productivity and efficiency on the part of their labour. That is my question. Perhaps the hon. member for Pinetown can help us.

What about your Labour Department? What have they done?

The point I want to make is that you will always have these differentials in the labour market; you will always have these differentials in pay. You cannot get away from it, Sir. If you say that you are going to root them out, then you are undoubtedly talking in terms of a communistic society. That is the only system that I know that can enforce equality irrespective of merit, and that is the implication of the argument put forward by hon. members on the other side.

Tell us something about tourism.

I just want to say that if one listens to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and his followers in this debate, one would never think that this country, which has 6% of the population of the huge African Continent and 4% of its land area, at this moment accounts for more than one-fifth of the total production of the whole African Continent and that it accounts for well over one-third of its industrial output. Sir, if you doubt my figures, then I would refer you to a most remarkable article in Fortune magazine by one of the most prominent economic commentators in the United States, where all this is set out. It is an article which has made an enormous impact abroad. You would not imagine, Sir, that we were responsible for 75 per cent of the gold production of the West or that we were the world’s biggest producer of chrome, manganese and diamonds.

[Inaudible.]

The hon. member for Hillbrow gave a dramatic performance here yesterday. I tried to write down, to distil what he was saying and when he had finished my page remained blank. I want to give the hon. member for Hillbrow a friendly tip, if I may do so. He really should become a Shakespearian actor and he should start with Hamlet.

As you know, Sir, a great deal has been said about growth. We are told that a real growth of 4% per annum is inadequate, that it is a slow rate of growth, and it is criticized. Do you know, Sir, that in terms of the current rand, by which you measure these things, our growth rate in the last 12 months has been 12%.

And inflation in terms of that rand?

I am coming to that. The growth rate was 12% in terms of the rand. Sir, we have inflation in all countries, so we have to make adjustments. I want to ask hon. members opposite to look at the figures of one country after another. Let them look at Germany in terms of the current mark. Let them look at France in terms of the current franc, Britain in terms of the current pound, and let them tell me which of these countries comes anywhere near a growth rate of 12%. If we adjust this figure for the fall in the value of the currency unit, then we come to about 4 per cent, and I say that you can count on the fingers of your one hand the countries of the world that can compare with us as far as real growth rate is concerned. Then I also want to say something else. This idea of economic growth is a long-term process, as the hon. the Minister of Finance very correctly said in a debate not so long ago. It is an accumulative process. You should really look at this thing over a number of years, over a period of at least 10 years or longer, in order to get the trend, because there are up-and down-swings. Sir, let us look at this over a period of 10 years. I know that this is not comfortable for hon. members opposite, but let us look at it over a period of 10 or 12 years. As the hon. the Minister of Planning has said, if you look at it over that period you will find that the average rate of growth in real terms is all but 6 per cent. I ask again, what countries in the world can compare with that, apart from Japan? Who could mention one? But these things are ignored and all that happens is that we are attacked on the slow rate of growth. I say again, our living standards as measured in real terms per capita are rising every year, as they are rising at this moment for the whole population. That is the position. I now want to come to one other point if I have the time.

Tell us about the strikes in Durban.

Order! The hon. member for Port Natal must contain himself.

I want to come to our trading position and our balance of payments which figured very largely in the debates in this Chamber and in the Other Place last year and the year before. In the short time I have been here this has been in the forefront of our debates. It has not been touched on by the Opposition, i.e. our trading position and our balance of payments in relation to our position compared with the rest of the world. [Interjections.] Well, let me say that the hon. member for Parktown did say that there has been a drop in imports and increased exports, and I think he commended the hon. the Minister of Finance on that. I grant him that, but it was just an aside; he said nothing further about it. What are the facts? Our merchandise exports have year by year been called sluggish; it had been said that our exports are in the doldrums. The Government has borne the brunt of the criticism—you can read Hansard, Sir; it is there. But our exports last year, within 12 months, increased by R500 million.

Gold?

Perhaps I should say slightly less, but if you take the import drop the improvement is slightly more than R500 million; so I will put it at R460 million, if you like. I say that is a very substantial increase in exports for a country like South Africa. Why was this not mentioned, and at this time of rising costs when we have to import? We have a versatile and a vigorous economy and we are expanding. Why, when we have to import machinery and electrical equipment and all those other things which are rising in price substantially, why did we still manage to reduce the total of our imports last year? Surely the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs and the hon. the Minister of Finance deserve some credit for that.

But I just want to come to this matter of devaluation. The hon. member for Von Brandis will remember that just after devaluation in December, 1971, he made a big splash in the Sunday Times and said that devaluation could never work, could never succeed.

Not exactly that.

Yes, it was there. The hon. member for Constantia went further and said this devaluation was an act of insolvency. He went still further and said it was a deliberate attempt to reduce living standards. Sir, I do not want to go into the gross irresponsibility of such statements; let us look at the economics. I want to suggest that that devaluation of 12% in December. 1971, after America had devalued the dollar by about 8%, was one of the most successful devaluations in modern times. Then I want to say this. After that the pound was allowed to float. That was last year, and the hon. the Minister of Finance then allowed the rand to float with it, and he was attacked in the Press and by Opposition spokesmen. But what happened? In due time, when the circumstances were adjudged correct, the hon. the Minister of Finance pulled back the rand by 4% so that the total of the devaluation was 16%, and we have seen the effects at every point. We have been able to contain imports. We have been able to control them and we have been able to give this great stimulus to our exports. [Interjection.] The Opposition takes no account of the fact that we are a great trading nation. We are not afraid to test the world markets with our goods and to buy there, and we benefit by that all the time. But because of that we have to watch particularly what the terms of trade are doing with all these other countries, with their commodities in relation to ours. And when our biggest market, which is Great Britain, does something, surely we have to watch what happens to the currency there and take what steps are needed here to bolster our trading position; and that is exactly what we did. But when in 1967 Britain and France devalued and it was not adjudged necessary for us to do so—and I believe this was absolutely correct, with the hindsight we have now—we were attacked. We were criticized by the Opposition and we were asked why we did not devalue. They can look it up, Sir. I say we must give credit where credit is due. If ever the hon. the Minister of Finance took a correct decision it was with that devaluation and again with the floating of the rand together with the pound, and the subsequent adjustment.

I want to come to gold. There is a great move these days in some quarters, which are not particularly well disposed to us, to suggest that gold ought not to hold the same place in the world’s monetary arrangements as it used to. Some go so far as to say that you can demonetize gold. It is a rather dreadful word, but it is used. Throughout this long debate, and many others that have been conducted on the gold issue. I suggest that if there is one thing that has stood out like a blazing star, it has been the policy and the attitude of the Minister of Finance and this Government. It has never budged from its original position and its confidence in gold. I have here a most remarkable account, a most remarkable report. It comes from Professor Samuelson, possibly the best-known American economist today, a Nobel prize winner, the first economist to be awarded the Nobel prize. What does Samuelson say who, as the Minister of Finance knows, has been opposing the French and our own view and argument that gold should increase in price? Samuelson has just come out with a most remarkable statement. He says—

He says—

For that to come from Samuelson—it is wrung from the heart. It does nothing but underline once again the absolute correctness of this Government’s policy on gold. [Interjections.] I had the temerity to say a year ago in the censure debate in the Other Place that all the signs pointed, for me, to an increase in the price of gold and I thought it was possible that the official price might even be doubled by, say, 1980. I was severely criticized, also in the Opposition Press.

That was not when you ate your hat, was it?

Most of them did not quote the reasons I gave, but they simply tried to ridicule it. There are a number of very responsible experts in this field today who until recently have been saying that the price of gold must not be increased, but who are now saying that it might, in fact, be a 100 to 135 dollars a fine ounce by 1980. I can mention five of them in a row. What is the significance of this at the moment? In our balance of payments alone gold now stands at R1 150 million as against R900 million one year ago. It simply means that if you take into account the great improvement in exports, the curtailment in imports, the tremendous improvement in the gold position and the inflow of private capital, we have, in fact, reached a most powerful position in our overseas trading relationships, and our reserves are safe. The result is that the rand, which has been so decried since devaluation, even in this country, is today stronger than it was in December, 1971. That is an absolute fact. That is the extent of the effectiveness of this Government’s financial policy. I think those things should be understood and I do say that those things should be taken into account when you talk about having no confidence in this Government. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with a great deal of interest to the speech, the first in this Place, by the hon. the Minister of Indian Affairs. I listened to him with a great deal of interest because although I am no economist I know sufficient about the subject to appreciate the variance between the views that he expressed today and those he expressed some years ago when his allegiances were elsewhere. I also listened with interest because like myself, he is the chairman of a political party in Natal. The hon. gentleman spoke with assurance …

He is a leader.

The hon. gentleman spoke with the assurance not of a chairman, I am told, but of a leader, a leader of a team, Sir—all three of them. And, but for the placing of their votes by 100 voters in the recent by-election in Natal, one could have said he was undoubtedly a leader of both of them. The hon. gentleman is a man of considerable courage. I will give that to him. The reason I say that stems from the history which has attached to the leaders of the Nationalist Party in Natal. When one looks at that history, for the hon. gentleman to accept that office, shows that he is a man of considerable courage. Let us look at the hon. gentleman’s three predecessors. His immediate predecessor, Mr. Gerdener, left the Cabinet either because he found it intolerable to continue with his colleagues in that Cabinet or because the Cabinet found it intolerable to continue with Mr. Gerdener. But either way, he was thrown out. The gentleman, the incumbent of that office, prior to Mr. Gerdener, Mr. Torlage, ended his career, banished to Nongoma in Northern Zululand. The previous incumbent, Mr. Maree …

Worked overtime.

He had to leave the Cabinet because of ill-health, the nature of which and the manner in which it was contracted being a little obscure. With that history behind the three previous leaders of the Nationalist Party in Natal, even those who were handpicked by the Prime Minister, one can appreciate the sentiments that I express, that he is a man of considerable courage.

He is a man of destiny, you fool, but you cannot see it.

Having said that, I must say that I have never risen in this House to speak in any debate with a sense of greater disquiet, greater concern and greater disgust than I do at this moment. We have had three gentlemen from the Cabinet address us in the last two days. Firstly there was the hon. the Minister of Labour, then the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs and Police and now the hon. the Minister of Indian Affairs and the leader of the Nationalist Party in Natal …

Who made a brilliant speech! [Interjections.]

Order!

One must look at the circumstances in which we are debating today. We have had in Natal for over a week a gradually escalating state of industrial strife. It began with a few companies and a mere 100 workers. It has escalated every day for seven days to the extent that we now sit here in this House at the southern tip of Africa with a situation in Durban, if not in the whole of Natal and in the Eastern Cape, where tens of thousands of Bantu workers are on strike and the position is escalating hourly. If one reads tonight’s paper one sees that at the present moment the state has been reached in Durban, the major port of this country and one of the largest industrial centres in this country, where—

Refuse removal, with all that that entails in an industrial city, has almost come to an end. The distribution of essential foodstuffs is threatened. The latest news this afternoon, which came through at about one o’clock, is worse than was presented by the hon. member for Houghton, on my information; it is that certain of the strikers—some 200 of them who are dismissed by the hon. the Minister of Indian Affairs with a wave of the hand—are not mere mischief-makers, but that they have turned to looting the shops in Umgeni Road and that there have necessarily been baton charges by the police in order to bring that to an end.

They are proud of that!

This is the hon. the Minister of Indian Affairs, Sir. He is a man from Natal. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of that province will know that a great many of the shops in Umgeni Road are Indian-owned shops and that the very beginning of any industrial strife in that province, which escalates into something far worse, is the looting of Indian shops by Zulus in that town. I cannot imagine there being in Natal, and in Durban in particular, a more serious state of affairs than exists there at the present time. Then the hon. leader of the Nationalist Party in Natal has the temerity to get up and upbraid persons in this House who say that the state of affairs there is “alarming”, which it is in every sense of the word, and who use the word “crisis”, which it is in every sense of the word. He has the temerity to refer to this side of the House as consisting of “people of gross irresponsibility”. So much for the hon. the Minister of Indian Affairs and the concern that he expresses and feels, apparently, for a situation which may well be engulfing that section of the community, the Indian community, for which he is responsible in this Parliament.

Disgraceful!

I want to make it quite clear, Sir, that I do not have specific information that it is Indian shops that are involved, but the hon. gentleman knows as well as I do that Umgeni Road is thickly populated with Indian shops and the likelihood is that, if there is looting of shops, their shops will be involved. Anybody who knows the situation in Natal will know what that can mean unless something is done about it.

We had the hon. the Minister of Police and of Economic Affairs speaking this afternoon at about 3 o’clock, by which time he must have had the information that the strikes had escalated into violence—that is to say looting and baton charges by the police. Either he had that information as Minister of Police, the man who is directly concerned, or he had it by virtue of his other portfolio of Economic Affairs, a man who is equally directly concerned. Yet he stands up here when we are in a state of crisis and spends a quarter of an hour clowning with newspaper cuttings referring to the Leader of the Opposition and others on this side of the House.

That is responsibility for you!

I am the first to accept that there are times in the history of this House when there can be a little clowning, but if the hon. the Minister of Police can find the time to stand up here and clown when there is industrial unrest on an unprecedented scale escalating to a situation of violence—presumably he knows of this—that is an absolute disgrace. It is no good the hon. gentleman standing up on another occasion and saying that he did not know, because if he did not know, the position is equally serious. The day before we had the spectacle of the hon. the Minister of Labour, weaker, I may say, than I have ever seen him before. Normally he is not a weak debater. He had virtually nothing to say in regard to the situation. This is at a time when his counterpart in the Zulu Government in Natal, a creation of this Government, Mr. Barnie Dhladla, in reply and in reaction to the hon. the Minister’s statement, this man who is there in the midst of it all, accuses the hon. the Minister of being irresponsible. Can you believe it, Sir? The Minister concerned in the Kwazulu Government calls this gentleman irresponsible.

He is quite right.

Of course he is quite right, judging by what the hon. gentleman had to say yesterday when he made a wishy-washy statement, making reference to agitators and crowned it all with a vague reference to the old-fashioned type of “swart gevaar” of “Do you want your daughter to marry a Black man?”. If ever there was a time when that sort of sentiment ought not to be expressed, it is at this very moment. Can we not engender in this Government a sense of the urgency of the occasion?

They are busy enjoying their Cadillacs.

The hon. the Minister of Police spent a lot of time, as I have said, clowning with reports in a journal, the Financial Mail, which has never supported the United Party incidentally, and picking up from it criticisms of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and of this side of the House. It is natural to expect criticism from papers that don’t support you. That is to be expected. But in May of this year—and we have been told this ad nauseam—the hon. gentlemen opposite will be celebrating having been in power for 25 years …

Hear, hear!

… a period during which, if one listens to spokesmen of that party, the country has enjoyed unparalleled prosperity and growth …

Hear, hear!

It is a period, too, when the country has not been involved in any war. There has been, according to the hon. gentlemen, peace and prosperity at home, unprecedented industrial peace …

Hear, hear!

I am delighted to hear this “Hoor, hoor!”. They will tell us that the Nationalist Party has gone from strength to strength at the polls and that the people … [Interjections.] We have also had, if you listen to these gentlemen, a party in power dedicated to the rightness of their policy and their cause. Have you noticed there is no more “Hoor, hoor”? It is a party absolutely convinced that unless their policies are fulfilled there is no future for the White man in South Africa. This is what we have had, namely a party with that inner conviction which alone can make this country safe and right for the White man in the future. It will be seen then that for the 25 years this Government has been in office you have had every possible thing that was necessary for the successful implementation of Government policy. There has been nothing whatever to hinder it. I do not believe that there was ever a country anywhere where there was a Government which for so long a period of time had all the relevant factors, on their own say-so, favourable to the successful implementation of their policy. But what do we find? We find an ever-growing chorus from Nationalist intellectuals, from their newspaper editors in the employ of the party, from thinkers of every variety supporting the Nationalist Party, complaining that not only is the policy not being implemented, but that it is incapable of being implemented. One thinks back to Die Burger of July, 1970, where that very thought was expressed. There is Dirk Richard in Die Vaderland of January of this year, writing under a heading “The Concern of an Honest Nationalist”, that nothing was being done to implement the policy which the party stood for. There was Schalk Pienaar in Rapport of 10th December, under the heading “Kan ons aanhou met dié gekheid?” He went on with the same theme, namely, when are we going to deal with the burning issues of the day? Then there was Dr. Kobus Kruger of the University of South Africa, deploring the fact that Government policy, as it is being implemented, is contrary to Christian ethics. Then there is the editor of Rapport who said on 31st December of last year in his New Year message to the Nationalist Party:

Then he says “good luck to the Nationalist Party for 1973”. Sir, one could point to a host of others—I have them here before me—who express precisely the same sentiments. These utterances are of the greatest significance, because they say that unless the Government is able to bring up a solution to the question of the Coloured people, the urban Bantu, the development of the homelands and the question of race relations in White areas, the future of South Africa is in peril. That is the gravamen of all these criticisms of the Nationalist Party: They speak of the Coloured people, the urban Bantu, the development of the homelands and the question of race relations in the White areas. But these are the very questions upon which the United Party was defeated in 1948. The issues upon which this Government came into power 25 years ago are the very issues to which every thinking Nationalist today says we must give the utmost urgent consideration so that a solution can be found. And then these gentlemen believe that they have something to celebrate after 25 years. I do not believe that there ever has been a political party that had more to deplore.

Now this elaborate structure of Black states, Black self-government, Coloured councils, Indian councils and a vast network of supporting apartheid legislation already exists. It functions at the present time, for the most part. Nearly all of the constitutional apparatus of separate development is complete and in operation. We are no longer dealing merely with a theory, we are observing the policy actually in action. It is that functioning of the policy which is drawing this criticism from every thinking Nationalist in the country. Now, why should it be that there should be this chorus of concern about the position of the Nationalist Party today? This is because after 25 years of Nationalist Party rule, all that has been achieved, is the creation of a machine which seeks to syphon off the votes, the political influence of the Bantu, into an area where they can be neutralized. That is all that has been achieved after 25 years. Every other problem relating to race relations in South Africa exists today unsolved and unattended to as it did in 1948 when this Government came into office. Perhaps one could put it another way: The fact of the matter is that Government policy has not so much failed; it has succeeded in the sense that it is operating as I have just indicated. But for the most part it is totally irrelevant to the principal problems of the country. The vast structure of Black states and the apartheid legislation is totally irrelevant to the problems of the urban Bantu, the Coloured man, the Indian man and race relations in the White areas. It is totally irrelevant. The elevation of the Reserves into self-governing states is no more relevant to the solution of these problems in South Africa—for example, the problem of the urban Bantu—than would be the grant of self-government to Angola, for the simple reason that our urban Bantu do not live in Angola, and the granting of self-government to the Reserves is of no relevance because they never live there. The majority of the South African non-Whites, both the Bantu and the rest, live out their lives today in the White areas of South Africa, either on the White farms or in the White urban areas, and it is in respect of that majority of the non-Whites and the majority of the Bantu that Government policy after 25 years has nothing to contribute whatsoever except strife, as I shall indicate a little later on. This means, of course, that the doctrine of separate development, neither in its application, in its almost completed form, nor as a philosophy, contributes one iota to the major problems with which we are faced in respect of the majority of the non-Whites. Sir, looked at in that light, what on earth is there to celebrate after 25 years of fiddling about in power? Sir, what better illustration could there be than the industrial unrest which exists in Natal and the Eastern Cape at the present time for what I have just been saying? The position of the Bantu workers and the White employees in Durban is not one iota better after 25 years of rule by this Government and after separate development than it would have been if these people today were classed as permanent residents of the White areas—not one iota. Indeed, Sir, the situation is only aggravated. The problem is twofold and it is generally accepted as being twofold by everybody, except the hon. the Minister of Labour. Firstly, it is a lack of communication between employer and worker and, secondly, it is the inability for the workers, or some of them, to come out on the wages paid to them. I would like to deal initially with the lack of communication. It has been popular in this House, Sir, to point a finger at the employers of Natal and the Eastern Cape and to say smugly that they are for the most part supporters of the Opposition and consequently they are of no concern to the Government. Sir, no attitude is more dangerous than that at the present time, and it so happens, without naming any names, that one of the principal employers involved in this is a supporter of the Nationalist Party. However, Sir, let us leave that aside. Whether you are a Nationalist or a Prog., or a United Party employer, you are in as difficult a position as ever, and it is up to the Government to give their attention to this matter. Throughout the 25 years that hon. gentlemen opposite have been in office, every legislative action of theirs, every thought in their philosophy, has been to break the link between Bantu worker and White employer. The old settled relationships which existed in many firms in Durban between a particular firm and a particular set of kraals in a Native Reserve have been deliberately broken. We have had legislation after legislation deliberately cutting that link and breaking the communication which has always existed between Bantu workers in Area A and employers in Area B, and not only is there often a total prohibition now on the employment of the traditional workers of a particular factory in that factory, because they are no longer allowed to be employed in that particular area, but an official bureau has been deliberately interposed by this Government’s legislation between the work-seeker and the employer, and time and time again one can point to the traditional means of communication, which are basic to the strike today, having been broken deliberately by the philosophy and the legislation of this Government. There is the first point. The whole apparatus of endorsing Bantu out of the White areas, contracts whereby Bantu must return to the homelands after they have worked a certain period of time, legislation which prohibits a Bantu coming back to the same job that he had before, and a multitude of other rules and regulations have gone out deliberately to break down the communication between employer and employee, and I believe that we are seeing the fruits of that in this industrial unrest today.

Let us take the second point, the inability to come out on the wage paid. Whether or not the wages are adequate is relative to the situation in which you find yourself. It is relative to the cost of buying those necessary for himself and his family. In this field again the Government has a direct responsibility. For example, in Umlazi, perhaps the biggest Native township outside Durban, the National Transport Commission, an agency of the Government, withdrew all the motor carrier certificates for the buses running to that township, so that the Bantu were compelled to use the railways. That was the first step, and what was the second step? For the Government to withdraw a subsidy which had existed, subsidizing the rail fares for all those urban workers, so that immediately, over night I might tell you, the rail fares went up 20 per cent to 30 per cent. But the Government sits here and washes its hands off the whole thing and says it has nothing to do with them. Transport is one of the major items in the budget of the urban Bantu worker and here the Government is directly responsible for that being escalated to an extent which becomes unbearable.

Sir, one could go on giving example after example of matters of this kind in which the cost of living of these people is directly affected by Government policy, which in itself is in shreds and tatters. Now one agrees that ideally an increase in wages should go with an increase in productivity, but here again there is legislative action and there is administrative action directly stemming from Government policy which prevents the Bantu becoming more productive. Sir, there are virtually no secondary schools available in the urban areas. They have to go to the Reserves to get secondary education. All the emphasis at the present time—and we spend millions on it—is on university education. There is virtually no technical education available, certainly not in the urban areas, and that is where it ought to be as a matter of urgency to enable the Bantu who is demanding a higher wage to be more productive. There is legislative prohibition of his advancement within his particular job. Sir, one could go on and on with examples of conditions which prevent the urban Bantu acquiring those skills which alone will make him more productive and warrant the extra wage which is required to get him above the bread-line. Sir, I employ over 100 Bantu myself. One is acutely conscious of the need to make these people more productive but everything this Government has done as Jong as I have been in this House has militated against his being permanent, his being productive, his being skilled, and has militated in favour of his having no permanence, of his being a movable labour unit, whose basis is impermanence in the White areas and who can only achieve what we hear so often—everything that the White man has in his area, the Black man can have in his area—if he takes up permanent abode in the Native areas, in the homelands, where there is no work for him and where there is virtually no industry. I believe all these things hang together and they can be laid at the door of this Government.

I believe there is one other matter which is of the gravest importance in this situation. There is a complete distortion of our industrial society. We give votes to almost everybody, somewhere. We have a highly sophisticated industrial society but the people who have the votes and who work in this highly industrialized society cannot own a square inch of land for the most part in the place where they work and live and die. It was mentioned that what we are concerned with is the protection of person and property but how on earth can we engender in the minds of the Bantu the desire to protect the person and the property of the White man if he can never own a square inch of property himself? I believe that this is the height of absurdity, to follow a policy of this kind. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened attentively to the hon. member for Zululand or the chairman of the Natal United Party.

Your promotion was very rapid!

The hon. member’s retrogression has been just as rapid.

Apparently the hon. member for Zululand, in his haughty superiority, believes in the principle of “the holier-than-thou attitude, but not holier than me”. He reproaches the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs for having, as he expresses it, acted like a harlequin towards the Leader of the Opposition and his supporters. I would, however, like to ask the hon. member for Zululand how he acted towards the hon. the Minister of Indian Affairs.

He was just stating facts.

Oh, I really do not wish to talk to that teacher who failed there and is repeating his failure here.

He assumes to himself the right to attack the hon. the Minister of Indian Affairs in very insulting terms. He assumes to himself the right to speak in the same idiom in respect of his predecessor, and then he launches into an attack on the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs. I wonder whether the hon. member does not think that we know that the reason why he attacks the hon. Senator is really that he does not want to accept that an English-speaking person can also be intelligent and support the National Party. [Interjections.] The hon. members opposite have gone from platform to platform and laid the story of political division on the basis of language at the door of this side of the House.

Do you feel guilty?

No, I do not feel guilty; if I had felt guilty, I would have been where the hon. member is sitting now, because all the guilty people are sitting there.

Guilty of what?

It is a fact that the hon. members opposite are in fact projecting their own sins onto this side and that they are imputing to this side of the House those things of which they are guilty.

But you are the Government!

Thank goodness, we are the Government; even the hon. member over there is getting the benefit of that!

The hon. member for Zululand went further. He spoke on the problems in connection with Bantu labour in Zululand. I concede immediately that this is a serious matter. However, he attacked the hon. the Minister of Police for discussing in this particular debate the political division in the ranks of the Opposition. The hon. member for Houghton did better, because she was at least prepared to say that the Police, for whom the hon. the Minister of Police is responsible, were handling the situation with circumspection.

I quite agree.

However, the hon. member did not say that. All he could do, was to attack the hon. the Minister. Without minimizing the gravity of the situation in Natal, I would go further and say that the Opposition, in their handling of what I consider to be a delicate situation, are not worried about the circumstances which prevail there, but see in it an opportunity to get at the National Party. It is not only an opportunity to get at the National Party; it is also an opportunity to hide their own embarrassment. Because, you see, it is manifestly clear that within the ranks of the United Party the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has an impossible task. After all, he has to reconcile the irreconcilable. He has to reconcile the Philippus Myburghs of Swellendam with the Winchesters of Natal. He has to reconcile Japie Basson of Bezuidenhout with Myburgh Streicher, and he has to reconcile the hon. member for Yeoville with the hon. member for Wynberg.

I hope he succeeds in that!

He even has to reconcile the hon. member for Yeoville with Harry Schwarz. I want to say at once that I think he has an unenviable task. Not only does he have to do that; he even has to reconcile his new policy, in respect of which he says in a circular that it is not a new policy, with the views of the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. I think it is essential that we know this, because even the Sunday Times, which on its own admission supports the United Party, not as an end, but as a means to an eventual end—and it is the hon. member for Houghton who sits at the tail-end of the story—even this paper cannot explain away the inconsistency and dividedness in approach. For that reason it is undeniably important that if one wishes to evaluate the discussion up to now, one must bear in mind that the United Party, in their inherent dividedness and their inability to arrive at a reconcilable standpoint amongst themselves and in their inability to penetrate to the real South African situation, will quite rightly concentrate on those things which cannot be exploited by others. In considering the debate on financial and economic matters up to now, one will see that the hon. members are divided not only on the political problems of this country, but also on the financial and economic problems of the country. The hon. member for Parktown must give me an answer to what I am going to ask him. I want to ask him whether the hon. Opposition is or was in favour of, or against, devaluation. If the hon. member does not answer me I shall take it that what he said is correct. He said he was in favour of devaluation although he thought that the percentage was not right. That is what he said. What does the hon. member for Cape Town Gardens do now? He says that it was an unnecessary devaluation.

You had to revalue.

The hon. member says that we had to revalue. That is what the hon. member said. I want to tell hon. members that whatever standpoint is adopted, support can be found in the Opposition for any two standpoints. I have a very high regard for the hon. member for Parktown as a person; I wish that I could have had the same regard for his standpoint and his pronouncements.

Let us now, in all fairness, take the general objectives to which the hon. member referred, the objectives envisaged by the hon. the Minister of Finance for the year that is ending now. He said that those objectives were threefold, and he also evaluated their success. I think he will be the first person to concede that he dealt rather cursorily with the benefits of the devaluation to our balance of payments position and that he did not emphasize them as he did in exposing the supposed negative results in regard to the other two objectives. Surely, it is not fair. At least, this is not fair for a person who professes to give us an unbiased evaluation of economic circumstances in financial, fiscal and economic policy. After all, it is true that in 1972 the cardinal problem with which we were faced and which deserved and was in fact given top priority, was our deteriorating balance of payments. This was, to be specific, a reduction on our current account and the rebuilding of our foreign reserves to a higher level. If we look at this objective—and without repeating myself I wish to say to the hon. member that in this regard he cannot contradict me—we see that no other country can match South Africa’s achievement. But it does not suit hon. members that South Africa is doing well. And, in particular, it does not suit them that South Africa is doing well under the National Party Government. I want to repeat this. Hon. members opposite, in their criticisms of the National Party—I wanted to use a stronger word, but often the rules of the House do not allow me to speak the truth—do not mind whether they are doing their country harm. I had the privilege last year of accompanying the hon. the Minister of Finance on an overseas trip.

You were lucky.

I was. I wish the hon. member could have accompanied us so that he could have learned a lesson in patriotism. I would like to speak about my personal experiences. I want to tell hon. members that there is overseas the highest appreciation for the exceptional ability, the exceptional insight and financial knowledge and planning of the Minister of Finance. Over there he is regarded as an authority. I wish to say to hon. members that through him our country is playing a most important role in the world. This country, which the hon. members opposite are in fact belittling, is the country about which people are saying overseas that they have isolated and identified it as a field of investment where security, order and stability prevail. Do we ever hear hon. members opposite speaking of the good things?

You are not South Africa.

I have never suggested that I am.

You and your Government are not South Africa.

What the hon. member does not realize, is that I and my Government govern South Africa, something which he will never be able to do. We have succeeded in the first objective.

The second objective was that we had to boost the growth rate and our domestic product in our country to the highest possible level; not in isolation but in a manner reconcilable with our available resources and our production capacity, as well as with the preceding objective with regard to equilibrium in our balance of payments. Now the hon. member asks what success we have achieved here. He says that last year we had a growth of 3,6%. He does not expect the predictions for this year to come true. His estimate is 4%. But the hon. member is forgetting certain basic things. All economic growth and prosperity are the result of human effort. As is the position in our country, these things are also the result of increased productivity. Now I want to ask hon. members opposite whether they joined us, for the sake of our country, in a plea for increased productivity or whether they preferred to go and say to the workers: “The Government does not want to pay you any more and is allowing the value of your money to erode, but it wants you to work harder.” Did they not go and say to the people outside that the Government was saying: “You must save!”, while the Government was the biggest spender in the country? I ask the Opposition whether they did that or not. If they did, have they made a contribution to the economic progress which we will need in this country?

The third objective is that we in this country will attempt to curb inflation—I want to emphasize this, to curb inflation. In this respect the hon. member comes to the conclusion that here, too, no success was achieved. But is it correct to come to that conclusion? I think I shall be allowed to point out just briefly what was done to achieve these objectives. The first thing that is self-evident in respect of the first objective, is the well-known devaluation which we requested. This is the objective which the hon. member for Parktown endorses, the one which the hon. member for Cape Town Gardens condemns, and which the hon. member for Constantia regards as an act of insolvency. That is the first objective. But what was the benefit which eventually flowed from it? It is a fact that we actually staged a remarkable recovery in regard to our balance of payments and our reserves. But there have been other benefits which are consistent with the other two objectives, particularly with the second, namely the fact that the devaluation of the rand improved the inflow of capital, short and long term, and thereby improved the financial climate in South Africa; it improved the supply of money and the general liquidity and it caused interest rates to drop. Not only did it on the one hand serve the first objective effectively, but also, as a by-product, and a calculated one, gave us additional capital, long and short term, as well as liquidity. But it also raised our exporters’ revenue in rands and, by the same token, their buying power, while at the same time they were enabled to compete on their foreign markets in a very competitive field. From this connection, therefore, benefits flowed. It is important to make a second statement. It is not correct to ask the question, as the hon. member for Parktown has done, whether the Government believes that we must grow out of inflation. I think a statement to the effect that a government has simplistic choices of either growing or damping is a naïve one, and I think that the hon. member will agree with me. After all, the hon. member knows that one has various choices depending on the circumstances in which the choices are to be made. Surely the hon. member knows that any government is growth-orientated and that this Government is also growth-orientated, and that in the nature of things growth is essential for ensuring a high standard of living for all our people, for guaranteeing the standard of living. The hon. member also knows just as well, or he should know, that if the growth potential is exceeded in terms of labour, capital, raw materials, and so on, one will create imbalances and disequilibrium. Therefore the Government does not only have a choice between growing and damping, and the hon. member knows that.

Let us now take a further look at the second objective. The Government is not a private enterprise, except as regards urban undertakings and where the private sector does not undertake projects itself. The Government can only create the climate in which this growth can take place. The Government has not only taken these measures, but also further measures which were part of a series to stimulate the pursuit of increased growth reconcilable with the country’s potential regarding production factors. Monetary measures were taken, of which the hon. member ought to be aware, but which he does not mention. This was done with regard to bank credit and because the old ceilings had been abolished and replaced. At first they were increased on two occasions and then they were replaced. Surely the hon. member knows that these factors cannot be effective overnight.

Where is the growth?

It goes without saying that the hon. member ought to know—everybody pointed it out—that the economy does, after all, not react immediately. The fact of the matter is that, if the hon. member has studied the latest analyses and research, he will agree, surely, that the overall indication is that the various factors which make growth possible, are present in our economy. If there is additional production capacity—and there is—it also means that there is additional labour, or otherwise production capacity is being defined into dimensions which I do not understand. But the hon. member knows something else, namely that a period in which wages and salaries have remained relatively static, is followed by a period of increases, and that the additional income—also individual income—must obviously have a stimulating effect and must stimulate the demand moderately, which must increase turnovers and reduce unit costs. My complaint is that hon. members are only prepared to bring to the fore the aspects which they consider to be negative and to over-emphasize them in the hope that the others will not notice the good things.

The third objective was price stability in order to check inflation. Just see what kind of standpoint we get now. The hon. member says quite rightly, in terms of his point of view, that he is not only concerned about the Bantu who are striking in Natal; he is concerned about every man and every woman who sees that his or her money is gradually depreciating in value and that prices are rising. Sir, but is that a correct view of the matter, is that a correct statement? Without boring hon. members with percentages and figures, I wish to say that up to 1971 salaries and wages rose much more rapidly than did prices. Does the hon. member agree with that?

What about incremental rates?

I am coming to that, but I want to give him the figures. The fact of the matter is that during 1969 the average consumer index rose by 3,3%, and from December to December by 3,5%. The White wages and remuneration for labour rose by 10.2% and for non-Whites by 7,4%. That gives one an over-all average of 8.3%, as against an increase in prices of 3,5%. In 1970 the position was that the average consumer index rose by 4,1%. For December to December the percentage was the same. Let us look at salaries: For the Whites the increase in wages was 8,7%, and for the non-Whites 8,2%, and average of 9,1%. The increase in the consumer index for the year 1971 was 5,7%. For the period December to December it was 6,9%. The increase in the wages of Whites during the same year was 11,1%, and for the non-Whites, 13,3%—an average of 11,7%. Sir, what do the facts prove? The figures prove, in spite of the accusations made by hon. members opposite, that salaries and wages rose by a greater percentage than did the price index. But, more than that, Mr. Speaker. The hon. member says we have not succeeded in curbing inflation. I differ with him. He only looks at the percentage in isolation, and he is not prepared to analyse what percentage of this increase is due to domestic causes. The hon. member is not prepared to admit that we are exceedingly sensitive to influences from abroad; once again he seeks to minimize and play this down. Our imports alone amount to 22% of our gross domestic product. The countries from which we import, the United Kingdom and other countries, are experiencing a relatively high price increase in their own countries, and when we import goods—chiefly capital goods—then it must have an effect on local prices. I want to ask the hon. member whether we should import goods? Should we not raise the production capacity of our industries? If we were to quantify this percentage of imported inflation, we would find that it represented at least 3% and that we would then be left with a percentage of inflation of 4,4%, if we took the December figure. But let us take it even further. We know that the weight of food prices represent 25% and that food prices have of course risen as a result of circumstances for which no-one is responsible. Then we find that the increase in food prices is responsible for 2% of the 7,4%, and then the rate of inflation, about which we can at least do something domestically, is not 7,4%, as the hon. member wants to suggest, but 4% or 3½%. Therefore I say that in the circumstances in which we find ourselves we are exceedingly fortunate, with an exceptional achievement and fulfilment of objectives, as initially stated by the hon. the Minister of Finance.

Sir, in closing I just want to refer to the hon. member’s comments on the Stock Exchange, which in my opinion were somewhat unfair. The hon. member is aware of two facts, namely that immediately after the collapse of the two firms of stockbrokers in question, inquiries took place on two levels: in the first place, by the committee of the Stock Exchange, and, in the second place, the Government initiated an independent inquiry of its own through the office of the Registrar of Financial Institutions. The reports by both of these bodies have been received. The hon. member will appreciate that in respect of control over the Stock Exchange and also over the members of the Stock Exchange, there are various bodies which are responsible for the orderly conduct of affairs on the Stock Exchange. I think that the hon. member will at once concede that the body which is primarily responsible, is the Stock Exchange Committee itself. The hon. member sat on the commission of inquiry into the Stock Exchange, and therefore he cannot plead ignorance of this particular facet. It is the practice, an accepted practice in the profession of stockbroking, that the administration and control of the stockbroking firms are in the first instance the primary responsibility of the partners in the firm. But it is also, secondly, and the hon. member should know this, the finding of the commission of inquiry that these people did not exercise the necessary control in respect of their employees. In both instances it was the employees of the partners who were responsible for these falsifications. This means that the Exchange Committee has a special function to fulfil in respect of this responsibility, to which no statutory provision can effect any improvement. He reproaches the hon. the Minister of Finance for saying that one can legislate against theft, but one cannot stop people from stealing; but, surely, that is the truth. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, one question has been answered this afternoon. A year ago we on the Opposition benches showed up the inefficiency and the maladministration of members of the Cabinet. During the recess which followed, the hon. the Prime Minister made changes equal to one-third of that Cabinet. One third were spread around the world, but what worried me, and what I could not understand, was why the hon. the Prime Minister was so half-hearted about it. That question has been answered this afternoon, after we have heard the speeches by the new hon. Minister of Tourism and the new Deputy Minister of Finance. It seems to me that there was not a shortage of candidates for change, but that there were no replacements to make more changes possible. I am very pleased for the sake of the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs and of Police. He was looking much more relieved this afternoon after the hon. leader of the Nationalist Party in Natal had spoken.

The hon. leader of the Nationalist Party in Natal represents a province where even since the Minister has spoken there have been further escalations and problems. I want to ask the hon. the Minister of Tourism—and it is no wonder the hon. the Prime Minister only gave him two-thirds of the portfolios of his predecessor—who speaks in this House as the leader of the Government party in the province of Natal, whether he knows nothing of the history of Natal, whether he knows nothing of the history of 1949 and the history of 1959? What does he believe is his duty as a member of the Cabinet at this time of crisis? To get up here and brush aside, as though it does not matter, an issue which is disturbing every person in Natal? I had a message from my own office today to say: “We are closing down so that the workers can get home early.” That is what is happening now, this afternoon even as we are debating in this House, firms are having to take emergency action to protect their own employees who want to work. But we are told: “Do not worry about it, forget about it.” And we have the clowning, as was pointed out by my colleague and chairman from Natal, of the hon. the Minister of Police who is responsible for this, while I understand that the Police Force of Durban is at this moment, on stand-by duty, that they have all been put on stand-by because they do not know what can happen now, at 6.30 p.m. or at 7 p.m., or at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning.

Sir, there is the Government responsible; there is the Cabinet Minister responsible for Natal, and what do we have from the Government to indicate that it is even aware of what is going on? The hon. the Minister stands here and says “everything is fine; we have industrial peace.” His colleague, the hon. the Minister of Labour, listed this afternoon in this House the illegal strikes which took place last year. In one case 1 350 mine Bantu were concerned. There were 25 illegal strikes, illegal strikes about which the Government is powerless to do anything, and whilst they create the impression that they do not care, I charge this Government with encouraging the striking in Natal by indicating that they are unconcerned, that they are not interested in taking any steps to stop it.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

The Deputy Minister says I should be ashamed of myself when people are striking and the Government says they are not taking any notice of it; it is a few agitators and a few employers who under-pay their people, they say. What sort of encouragement is that to the maintenance of law and order? What sort of encouragement is it to those strikers to say: “The Government says we are being underpaid by our employers; the Government says it is not concerned with the strikes, it is not worried about them. So, let us get on with it and do it a bit more.” The Government are the people who are encouraging this by their lack of interest, by their lack of awareness of what is going on. Because this matter is so serious and because even between now and tomorrow morning there can be changes in the scene, I move—so that we can discuss this matter again tomorrow—