Mr. Speaker, in my time the lights have gone out twice in this House. The first occasion was one or two years ago and the second was last night. But there was a big difference between the two occasions. And I believe that difference is symbolic of the failure of the Government and of its policies. One or two years ago when the lights went out, they were on again within three minutes or so and we continued. The Government were put down for a count then. Last night they were put down and they were carried out. [Interjections.]

I am glad that my hon. friends opposite are so happy. I believe that merely one quotation by me from a leading Nationalist will remove all smiles from their faces, or should. My authority, the person I call in evidence, is none other than a respected member of the Executive of the Broederbond, and the last, fine rector of the Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit. The lateness of the hour is shown by the fact that, according to him, we should now even be thinking in terms of a “wit tuisland”. So late is the hour, Mr. Speaker, that we should now be thinking not of a greater trek on to a great South Africa, but a second Great Trek back to a “wit tuisland”.

However, Sir, we should get back to where this debate belongs, which is in Durban and the places elsewhere where there are legitimate grievances by the African people, arising out of Government policy.

Come back to the federation plan.

I say that the Durban strikes are further proof of the failure of Government policies. I say they are the main cause of the unrest in Durban. I concede the employers and perhaps some agitators may have a share, but the main blame attaches to the Government and its policies. Their policies are the main reason why these wages are poverty wages. Let us look at the responsibility of the Government in this respect. In the first place they have given a bad lead as an employer in regard to wages; not an enlightened lead. I am going to mention three heads here. The first is that the Government is a bad payer itself; it is a bad employer. In the Department of Statistics News Release for December, 1972, it appears that the wage gap in Government public service between White and Black is 560 per cent. This deals with central, provincial and local government. The average monthly pay for a Black in this sector is a mere R50 a month. On that body and soul must be kept together, a roof over heads must be provided and clothes found. Obviously with the average at that figure, there are many cases well below that figure, and well below the poverty datum line.

Secondly, Sir, the Government has failed to use its agencies to improve the wages of workers sufficiently. This has been dealt with, and there is no need to dwell further on wage determinations and Industrial Council agreements. Thirdly, Government policy in regard to border industries is a big factor in the troubles in Durban. The town employer must compete with the wages that are paid in the border industries.

Why does he not go there?

He does not go there because he would be even less efficient and he would be even more likely to go out of business as mentioned by the hon. Minister of Labour, who said it was not possible to pay substantially higher wages. Let us look at just one example in that regard. I give the example of a textile factory at Harrismith. It has been there for 40 years. It is still getting border privileges. It has not given an increase in pay to its workers since 1963. Members of Parliament might well reflect on the strong arguments that they advanced before the last increase in the salaries of Members of Parliament, due to the rising cost of living. Mr. Speaker, that factory has now applied for a further reduction of 30% in the wages of its workers. The effect of this, if granted, will be that those workers will be getting 12½ %less than they were getting in 1963. I have not time to give many details, but in the case of a grade 3 female employee in that factory, if this 30% reduction is granted, her wage can be as little as R5-28 per week. I say, Sir, that that is a starvation wage.

A slave wage.

But, Sir, there is a second area of Government responsibility in this Durban unrest, in that they have obstructed or slowed down increased productivity amongst these very workers. The hon. the Minister of Labour made that perfectly clear in his statement when he said. “If you grant much higher wages, the factories may close.” Surely, Sir, South Africa can pay its workers more than this. Other countries of the world can pay their workers far, far more than this and they are quite competitive with us. In fact, their currencies have been stronger over the last few years. Why cannot we pay more? I say that we cannot because of the hidden costs of apartheid, the hidden cost of this Government’s policy, and I shall just have time to name a few very briefly: The cost of administering the whole system, the empire, of the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration; the cost of the labour turnover in loss of skills and other things; the cost of travelling for these workers. It was estimated that in 1960 migratory workers travelled 370 million miles as migratory labourers. Think of the cost of that, for which we and the factories pay in the long run. These are the long-term costs involved in preventing the acquisition of skills. Lastly, Sir, think of the social costs in perpetuating this poverty under this Government.

Go and talk to Oppenheimer.

I sum up on this particular point by saying that the Government’s policy is the prime culprit for what is happening in Durban. As long as this Government remains here, this danger will continue. And I say therefore that this Government must go.

Sir, while we are looking at Durban, do not let us overlook the other legitimate grievances of the Bantu people, not only in Durban—not especially in Durban perhaps—but in many other parts of the country, and let us remember what has started in Durban, and what could start if these legitimate grievances are not removed. Even on the S.A.B.C. I heard that the police apparently agreed that the Bantu there had legitimate grievances over their low wages. There was such a report. But there are many other legitimate grievances throughout South Africa, and the longer this Government with its policies remains, the more dangerous the position will become and the more goodwill will be lost.

Mr. Speaker, it is not necessary for me to call in witness the illustrious names of people who have pointed to this loss of goodwill. I say it is growing daily and it is growing faster by the day.

Sir, time will only allow me to touch upon certain of these other legitimate grievances. One thinks, first of all, of the question of education. At the start of school terms there are children, particularly in the cities, who cannot get education. In all the cities that I know of double shifts are being employed to cope with the numbers. There is a shortage of teachers; there is a shortage of desks and a shortage of classrooms. There is one thing that is felt as a grave injustice by the Bantu people, and that is that, whereas the children of other people in South Africa get their books free, the Bantu have to pay for their children’s books. Sir, when your domestic servant, or mine, has to pay R40 for books for a child in matriculation, then I think it gives one cause for reflection as to what is happening under this Government. This is a burning grievance. The United Party keeps informed on these matters and has been in contact with leading urban African opinion, and I speak from personal contact in this regard. But, Sir, there are other areas where there are burning and legitimate grievances.

I come now to the question of housing. There was a time when this Government claimed a proud record; there was a time when it had cleared many of the slums of this country and it was entitled to take some credit for that. Whereas that position should have gone from strength to strength, it has not done so, and the situation in regard to housing today is a blot on this Government and on South Africa. I have only to give you one example, Sir, to prove this. In the city of Johannesburg alone, according to the figures in August, 1972, there was a shortage of family housing to the tune of 13 000. Whereas formerly perhaps most people in the African areas in Johannesburg had housing, the position now is that nearly 80 000 people have not got housing but are living somewhere in Johannesburg; they are doubling up with other people, and we have no reason to sit back when this is happening. We all know those small houses in the townships in Johannesburg in which the African people live. There was a time, at the beginning, when that was fair accommodation, but for one family only. Today very many of these houses have to accommodate two families. This applies not only to Johannesburg, but to Mdantsane, Langa and wherever you have urban Africans. I say, Sir, that this is a serious blot not only on the Government but on South Africa. It is a burning grievance—make no mistake about it—just as these low wages are a burning grievance.

Sir, there are also other matters. There is the question of the denial of security where you live and work. There is the question of widows who upon the death of their husbands have to leave their accommodation and go back to who knows where. These are burning grievances. This Government, very rightly, is sensitive to feelings and the mood of the White electorate. What section of the White electorate would put up with inadequacies of this sort for one moment? They would not do so for one moment, and I say that in the interests of ourselves and of all the peoples here we should not put up with these things for one moment longer.

Mr. Speaker, this is not the whole truth. I will tell you the whole appalling truth in this regard. These legitimate grievances, these injustices, are not mere matters of thoughtlessness or complacency; these injustices are part and parcel of apartheid. They are deliberately practised in the name of and for the benefit of separate development. They are done to reduce and check the numbers of Bantu in the White areas.

Are you not going to do that?

They know that unless they put up these barriers and practise these injustices, their policy will fail all the quicker. I say that it is their policy to deprive of rights those Africans who come and settle in the urban areas. The hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration had that shocking, not classic, phrase: “Hulle is van burgerlike regte verstoke”. That was the way he described these people.

In the White areas.

In other words, the hon. the Minister of Information and others know perfectly well that this is deliberate Government policy, to act in this way and to discourage these people from being there. I say it is therefore part and parcel of separate development. It is deliberate and it is intentional.

Are you going to encourage them to come here?

Mr. Speaker, I want to move to a close. I want to give one example of the stated intentional aspects in this regard. I refer to the question of migratory labour. This is not just some historical thing that has outlasted its time, and it is not a case that we are moving away from this. Listen to what is the policy of the Government. It is deliberately a weapon of policy. The Minister of Bantu Administration in 1969 said (Hansard, Vol. 27, Col. 6555)

Mr. Speaker, I want to sum up and close. All these injustices, these legitimate grievances, are part and parcel of separate development. These injustices will only go if separate development as a practice goes. If this policy does not go, these injustices will remain. If these injustices remain, there is no future for us and there is no peace for South Africa neither, neither, I want to remind you, for the Whites and nor for the non-Whites. I want to remind hon. members opposite of the words of the Psalm: “Geregtigheid en vrede kus mekaar”. In English you would say, translated liberally, “Justice and peace go hand in hand”. But peace does not come from injustice, Sir. The trouble with this Government is that it does not know which way to turn. The result is the terrible situation of stagnation in which we and the country find ourselves today. On the one hand, its supporters offer one piece of advice. On the other hand, its own supporters offer other advice. Some say, like Prof. Viljoen, give them much more land for the homelands. The hon. the Prime Minister says they will not have an inch more than the amount set aside in the 1936. Settlement. Some say, like Rapport and others in that direction, you must give rights to the urban African. The hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration told us the other day they are temporary sojourners here. Sir, I say the hour is late when a respected Afrikaner like Prof. Viljoen says it is time to think of trekking back to a “wit tuisland” if things go on like this much longer. So, my appeal is this. I say the hour is late, but let our thinking no longer be clouded by the battles of long ago, whether those battles were between political parties or nations at that time. I say let us think only of the future and what we can do in South Africa. There are fine Nationalists who have pleaded for federalism.

Where?

In 1960 Mr. Willem van Heerden, a most respected Nationalist and still one today, indicated that he and many other Nationalists pleaded for a federal solution. He said our future lies there. I believe that the policy of the future is a federal policy and I believe, Mr. Speaker, that our federal policy offers South Africa a great future.

Mr. Speaker, after what we experienced yesterday evening and what we have just been listening to, I really feel the need to call out from this side of the House: Let there be light! For all that comes from that side is darkness. For years we have had the slogan: Het dag’t overall! I really think this is applicable to our party. I looked up the definition of “Stygian darkness”. I read there: “Gloomy darkness …” It seems to me there is a terribly “gloomy darkness” on that side. Then they continue with their definition and say: “The Styx in mythology was the river of darkness, it flows seven times round Hades”.

†For myself I have no doubt who the Styx of modern times in South African politics really is. I am sorry that the hon. member for Pinelands was put in this very difficult position in which he was put last night in that darkness dawned on us while he was speaking! In other words, it was as if he acted as the spokesman of darkness in South Africa last night. I want to tell him in a very serious tone now that they must cast off the works of darkness and they must put on the armour of light. I think that is what is needed.

Let there be light.

Let there be light—that is quite true. Perhaps it was not entirely by chance. I think there is something more symbolic in it, for when the United Party’s obscure federation policy, when the United Party’s dark future and the United Party’s unenlightened leadership, all three as black as the night, were under discussion, the darkness descended upon us all here yesterday afternoon. I wonder whether it was merely by chance that all this should have happened when it was in fact such a young man, such a sensitive young man, such a superstitious young man as the hon. member for Pinelands who was speaking. Perhaps it is also symbolic, however, that it should in fact have happened to him, so that he may be led by this sign, this true sign, to lead his party out of the darkness in which it finds itself, and if he is perhaps quite unable, in all conscience, to do this, then he will simply have to cross to this side of the House, where there is light. I hope that these things which we have experienced will serve as a lesson to the United Party, I hope it will serve as edification to the United Party and I hope—this is probably a vain hope—that it will be a light to the United Party.

The hon. member for Pinelands alleged—I wish I had the time to reply to all his allegations—that “the Government is a bad payer”. In passing I want to say to the hon. member for Pinelands, and also, while I am about it, to all the hon. members on the opposite side, that there is one thing they should really guard against and that is that they should not stir up these things which are happening in Durban or exploit them in a disgraceful way here for the entire country and for South Africa to see. I say that they should be careful. I think the hon. member for Pinelands came most dangerously close to doing that, and I could mention other hon. members as well who should be rather careful. But now he makes a false statement such as the following: “The Government is a bad payer”. Let there be no doubt at all about one matter. I just want to mention one example—I have other matters to discuss. The position is that the salaries of South African Railways staff were increased by 15% in December, 1972. The position is, however, that in respect of the Bantu workers in the employ of the Railways, and therefore in Durban as well, the salaries were increased not by 15%, but by 22%. This is an honest attempt made by this side of the House to improve the gap between the wages, of which this is a practical demonstration. Now the hon. member, however, says that we are “bad payers”.

What about the public servants?

It is clear to all of us on this side of the House that the United Party is in a stranglehold. In rugby we have the expression “Pull them back into the scrum”. We will certainly pull them back into the scrum; they will not get out. I think it is an interesting picture which is unfolding before the eyes of the people: The United Party is in a vice here and it is thrashing about, and as I shall indicate in a moment, the tighter one turns the screw, the more noise they begin to make and the more they begin to shout. It is the duty of us on this side of the House to consider the federation plan of the United Party honestly and sincerely. Now I would have thought that if one comes forward with a new plan as the hon. the Leader of the Opposition did—I think he could at least show me the courtesy of listening to me a little when he has finished—one would do so with a little enthusiasm. What struck me was how unenthusiastically he presented it here in this House. I really felt very sorry for him. One would expect that the first people to whom one would want to sell such a policy would be the young people of one’s own party. Truly, if you cannot sell it to the young people of your own party, you are in the darkness, and not only for now, but for the future and perhaps for all time. I have with me here a newspaper clipping which does not come from any mere gossip rag. This clipping comes from The Star of last year. Now this newspaper is what it is, but at least it is not a newspaper of which the United Party can say that it does not support them. The caption to the report reads: “Young U.P.s shred their party’s policy.” I should like to quote from this verbatim to show what opinion the United Party’s own young people have of that which the hon. Leader came forward with so unimpressively and so unenthusiastically here. I quote—

[Interjections.] Yes, those hon. members have to kick up a fuss now.

Who is he then?

There is no need for me to know, but the hon. members ought to know—

This was another person—

Hon. members must know that it is a family failing of the United Party—they howl when they are hit hard. [Interjections.]

Order!

If you hit a cat on its back, you should see how it howls. [Interjections.]

May I ask you a question?

No, I am busy now … [Interjections.]

What is the date?

He can ascertain the date of the newspaper himself. It was during last year, more or less in the middle of 1972; here I have it in front of me, in black and white … [Interjections.] As soon as one points out to them what it is they are doing, the hon. members make a noise like this. That this is no isolated case is proved by the fact that it was stated in a leading article in Die Volksblad of 11th December, 1929 (translation)—

This was written in 1929, long before anyone ever thought that darkness would descend upon the United Party yesterday evening. Even then it was being said that the leaders were at that time already in the dark concerning the United Party’s policy of yore. The newspaper report continued—

If we approach closer—and this is the last quotation I want to use in this connection—and we come to the United Party’s so-called federation policy which has just been announced, I want to refer to an article in a newspaper which, so I believe, is also an honest English-language newspaper. Towards the end of last year the Pretoria News wrote: “The important thing is that the United Party has ‘quite unanimously now abandoned the indefensible principle of White control over all of South Africa for all time’. There is a welcome acceptance of the concept that, beyond the devolution of meaningful authority to units of a federation, there should be a genuine sharing of power at a truly multiracial centre.” Now hon. members should listen to this: “Sir de Villiers Graaff has boldly admitted that the existing White Parliament could one day cede its authority to the proposed Federal Assembly”. At the same time I want to indicate quite a few points. The article continues—

Then lastly—

Against that background there are certain aspects in regard to which this House must have clarity. The first is that the so-called “phasing out of this Parliament” is surely of cardinal importance to the Whites and non-Whites in this country. This is a very important question! Now that we have the United Party’s policy on this matter “the phasing out of the White Parliament”—this Parliament where we are sitting at the moment—what is beyond any doubt going to happen under U.P. policy? If the United Party’s policy were to be implemented in the process, namely either the Whites or the non-Whites. The important question in regard to this “phasing out” is therefore: Who is going to be duped? There are various speakers, inter alia Senator Horak, who clearly spoke of “phasing out”. Various newspapers have also spoken of “phasing out”.

He denied it.

Oh, I have the proof here; I can quote it to the hon. member. During the by-election for example, Mr. Uys, the candidate in Klip River, also spoke of “phasing out”.

Bring the proof.

I now want to put a question very courteously to the United Party leader, for we must have clarity in regard to this question. Here I have in my hand a public newspaper, a well-known newspaper, namely Die Vaderland of 3rd October, 1972. Here it is for everyone to see—a photostatic copy of point No. 16 of a report under the heading “White Parliament must disappear”. The caption below it is clear (translation)—

Now I shall read to you—my time is short—No. 16 from the photostatic copy which was published here—

Then they continue—

Below this it is stated—

That is not correct.

This is a photostatic copy. Someone is deceiving the country here!

Yes … [Interjections.]

I could have used a stronger word. On the one hand it could be Die Vaderland which is publishing an alleged photostatic copy which is not a photostatic copy. If that is true, it is a disgrace. If that is true, Die Vaderland is guilty of a serious blunder; then it is the right of the Leader of the Opposition to issue summons on Die Vaderland and institute court proceedings against it, not so? For it would be a reprehensible and base thing to do. But—and we must have no doubt about this and you will certainly not laugh this away and you will not get out of this stranglehold—if this is not true …

Of course it is not true!

If it is not true, I now ask the hon. the Leader of the Opposition to clarify this burning issue and to produce proof that this is not a photostatic copy of a report of the United Party. Surely that is simple.

I have the original report.

I am not asking what the Leader did. I am challenging him in a friendly, decent and courteous manner before the people and before this House, in regard to the most important matter on which this people can decide, namely the sovereignty which is vested in this House, in this House where the weal and woe not only of the Whites and their children, but also of the Bantu and their children, the Coloureds and their children, and the Indians and their children, are decided. I am asking the Leader a simple question. Here is a photostatic copy. Prove to this House that this photostatic copy is not true and that it does not exist. That is all.

Of course it is not true.

Now I want to refer hon. members to another very important point. This is a tremendous breach of faith—and I am using these two words now with all the necessary reservations—which the United Party has flagrantly committed against the non-Whites in this country during the past few months, for everyone to see. What is this breach of faith? For years the Opposition gave a solemn promise to the non-Whites of this country that if they came to power they would give the non-Whites 16 representatives in this House and nine in the Senate. This House is a sovereign body with power. What has happened now after Oudtshoorn, when they were brought up so short and were in such a fix that they could do nothing? Without turning a hair they rejected this solemn promise made before the people and before the non-Whites, paid no further heed to it and came forward here with a vague council, which is called the federal council, which, if we are to infer from certain things which are being asserted, will have very few powers and which will therefore in its nature be of little significance as far as real power is concerned. A promise of real power is being taken away and a mirage is being put in its place, in a country with our multi-national set-up.

What will the position be if the non-Whites come to that mirage and, true to the nature of a mirage, then find that there is nothing? Sir, surely this is a deadly recipe for revolution, for trouble, in the Republic of South Africa. Surely no one can escape that. If they therefore want to dupe the non-Whites in this position and it really is a mirage for the non-Whites and pressure should then be exerted on them as a result of increased power and the majority in numbers, what will happen then? They will then come face to face with the reality that they will then have to dupe the Whites. And where are they going to dupe the Whites? Here in this House of Assembly in which the sovereignty and power of the Whites in this country is vested. It is precisely in this phasing out of this Parliament that the duping comes in and which is why it is therefore so important. That is why we are right in saying that this plan is in truth ambivalent. It is conservative for the conservatives, it is left-wing for the left-wingers, and for all who are in the know and who think, it is a colossal swindle. That is why I say that what the United Party has given birth to is a monster, and I think only they are capable of anything like this. As a State plan, a plan of Government, this plan of the United Party is a colossal monstrosity which is astounding, a mockery for any government in any country and which is truly unworthy of the Opposition. That is why young South Africa, whose future is in the first instance at stake here, will reject it. They will reject it with the contempt which it deserves. For what is this plan in essence and in reality? Surely anyone can see that. It is a feeble attempt to satisfy the hon. member for Bezuidenhout who is sitting there with his mouth zipped—we shall see whether he speaks in this House during this debate—and his colleague and friend, Mr. Harry Schwarz, parliamentary-speaking of no fixed abode, as well as on the other hand the hon. member for Yeoville and a small group of conservatives in the United Party. That is what they are doing. They are toying with the future of the Whites and the non-Whites. They are toying with the future of the Whites in this country in an attempt to cope with the terrible situation of division which arose in their ranks. This gave rise to a division as great as the greatest gulf imaginable. In order to keep them together, this plan was born, and not to serve South Africa.

Sir, there are a few more questions I should like to ask in regard to the federation plan. According to this federation plan, for example, who will deal with State finances? They should explain that to us clearly. Who will deal with Defence? The federal council or this House of Assembly? What will the Defence Force look like if it had to fall under this federal council of theirs, with the phasing out of Parliament? Who are the generals going to be? Who are the admirals going to be? Who are the commandants going to be? Who is going to deal with all this? Harry Schwarz, the Black hand? [Interjections.]

I would be pleased if there were no need for me to do anything in that mess. But, Sir, who will deal with Foreign Affairs under this plan? Who will deal with transport? Who will control the supply of power in the Republic of South Africa? The federal body or the Parliament of South Africa? Sir, then there is another very important question: Why cede certain cardinal matters, which are the responsibility of this House of Assembly, to the federal council if the federal council is not going to be vested with real powers in any case? They must furnish us with replies to these questions.

I come now to the last point in regard to this matter. I read that the 18 legislative assemblies which the United Party wants to establish under this federation plan of theirs—I must say that there will be a tremendous number of national councils if this plan were to be implemented—will be able to amalgamate with one another if they choose. I should just like to know from the hon. the Leader of the Opposition: Will they be able to do so? For if that is the case, there will be hell to pay in the Republic of South Africa. I am asking the hon. the Leader of the Opposition in a friendly and courteous manner to ensure that his speakers reply to these cardinal questions, which are of the utmost importance to us all.

In contrast to this recipe of the United Party, which is a recipe for trouble, racial conflict and revolution, we have the policy of multi-national development of the National Party which is designed ultimately to lead these different peoples in South Africa, that have had their countries for more than a century now, to full independence, and they will have their own parliaments and ministers, and all the things which are dear to a people. In addition to that the urban non-White people in White South Africa will also have the rights which they deserve and must receive. Together with this policy of multinational development the wonderful aspect of our policy is the fact that, whereas 1949 to 1959 was the period in South Africa when the emphasis was on separation, and the next period, from 1959 to 1971, was the period in which the emphasis fell to an increasing extent on development, which will continue to be the case in future, a period was ushered in from 1972 onwards in which, under the leadership of our competent Prime Minister, the emphasis is on the relations level in regard to which only the policy of multinational development in South Africa can give guarantees and certainty to all our people, and will make it possible to maintain sound relations to recognize the human dignity of the Black man, the Coloureds and the Indians and to eliminate areas of friction.

In the second 25-year period which is being ushered in this year by the National Party Government, we can cry out with conviction to our young people: “We are enabling you to help build a new South Africa on the well-proved principles of the policy of multi-national development where all our wishes and the ideal may be realized that the relations among the different ethnic groups in our country will be as sound as can be conceived. What does this relationship between groups and people comprise, Sir? Is it not simply the sum total of relations between individuals? Good relations between peoples and groups begin with good relations between individuals. A government, or the policy of a government, cannot enforce, or in many cases even establish, good relations, mutual tolerance and good neighbourliness among individuals and groups. It can lead, a government can create an atmosphere in which the desirable circumstances can flourish, as the National Party Government is doing. Should I be asked to produce proof that the National Party Government accepts this as its policy and has achieved success with it and has established the breeding grounds for this, where the desire of the individual to live in good will and good neighbourliness with his fellowmen in the various ethnic groups is satisfied, then I mention the following briefly: Who created the circumstances in this country in which political leaders of all ethnic groups are continually negotiating with the Government on the details of their political and social institutions? Who, Sir, created the machinery which makes it possible for sports leaders and organizers of all ethnic groups to consult and assist one another so that each may organize the best possible sporting organizations for their own ethnic groups?

Who, Sir, made it possible for the first time in the history of our country for sportsmen of every ethnic group to compete overseas and locally against any other sportsmen in the world? Surely it was the National Party Government? Who, Sir, created and with care maintained the conditions in which policemen were able, in Durban this past week, to move about for days among thousands of striking persons of another ethnic group in an emotion-laden atmosphere, maintain order and enforce respect with no or minimal use of force? That is why I say that this Government is dealing wisely with this difficult situation as well. That is why I want to pay tribute this afternoon to our young men, our fine young men, our good young men of the Police force who in these days, when that side tried to make capital out of this situation of strikes in Durban, dealt with that situation together with the Government and our Prime Minister, for all the people to see, in the magnificent way and in the wise way in which they did deal with it. That is why I say to the Opposition this afternoon: They must realize that the National Party Government is creating a laudable future for our young people. The National Party Government is vital; the National Party Government wants to give our people in this country the best; not only a future for the Whites and their children, but a future for the Bantu and their children, a future for the Coloureds and their children, a future for the Indians and their children.

Where?

Sir, these non-White people know me to be an honest man. These people know me to be a dedicated man, and I tell you that when I say this this afternoon, I mean every word I am saying. All this, I say, Sir, only a National Party Government can bring us, as we have been bringing it to this country over the past 25 years.

I conclude by saying what the poet, N. P. van Wyk Louw, once wrote: “ … that we as a nation will not be broken as the violence of our enemies would wish it, but that we will live noble lives, loyal only to our God, and to our nation, loyal only to the noblest we have knowledge of, more loyal to that than to brother or friend, that we …”—and this is our humble privilege—here on this side of the House will in all humility, together with those who wish to co-operate with us, and together with the others outside this House as well, “bear what is precious and noble to our nation safely through the multitude”, and not only the multitude of South Africa and the multitude of Southern Africa, but that we will create a new South Africa for our young people on the basis of well-tried principles, a new South Africa which will glitter like a star in the firmament of the peoples of the world.

The hon. the Minister who has just resumed his seat, told us at the beginning of his speech that where there had been darkness, there now had to be light. We expected the hon. the Minister to bring this light to this House, but all the hon. the Minister has brought, is heat, and he himself generated most of it. The hon. gentleman tried to intimate that the United Party was having trouble with its youth, who do not want to accept its policy and still have doubts. Then we asked the hon. gentleman: But give us the date of that cutting of yours. Unfortunately the hon. gentleman did not have the date. Now I must say this to the hon. the Minister: He is now no longer a junior Minister; he is now a full-fledged Minister; he must remember his dates now. If he wishes to state a case, then surely he must furnish proof. The hon. gentleman says that because we previously, in terms of our policy, promised the Blacks and the Coloureds representation in this Parliament, we have now most shockingly broken faith with these people. He levelled the accusation that the United Party had broken faith, while his party had promised the Coloureds that their representation in this House would not be abolished. That hon. gentleman accuses us of breaking faith while he knows that the weight of evidence given by the Coloured at the time, when the Nationalist Party Government wanted to remove their representatives here, was that they wished to retain their representation here. But the hon. the Minister accuses us of breaking faith. If there were no provision in our federal plan for the various races groups of South Africa, the hon. the Minister might have had an argument; then he could talk about breaking faith, but he knows that under the United Party’s federal plan the maximum of self-government will in the first instance be granted to these various race groups. He should know that they will all have a basic representation in the federal assembly. If it were not so, he could have argued that faith had been broken with these non-White race groups. But, Sir, the hon. gentleman went further. What did he say? He said we were replacing the old United Party policy with a mirage and that the federal plan of the United Party was a deadly recipe for revolution in South Africa. In that case it is really strange, Sir, if this is supposedly such a deadly recipe, that the hon. gentleman’s Executive Committee in South-West Africa should have suggested that the same system could perhaps be applied in that territory. He said that the United Party had in its federal plan a deadly recipe for revolution, but when his Executive Committee in South-West Africa says there is a possibility of its being applied there, then it is with a view to good government. I wish to refer the hon. gentleman to what was said last year by Die Burger, which defended the possibility of a federal system of government in South-West Africa. What did they say at the time? They said it would be a good thing for South-West Africa in particular because those small groups there could not govern themselves anyway. I want to ask the hon. the Minister in what way the position in South-West Africa differs from our position here in the Republic? How does the position there differ from that of our Coloureds here in the Republic, who have no territory of their own? What is the difference between the position in South-West Africa and the position here with regard to our urban Bantu? Sir, the hon. member spoke about the youth not understanding their party’s policy. I wish to refer him to something that appeared in Die Burger of 2nd October last year, when a youth conference was held in Port Elizabeth. What did his own youth say to him? They said (translation)—

But that hon. gentleman rises here and dreams again, and he levels the accusation at the United Party that our young people do not understand our policy. I wish to refer the hon. the Minister to what Mr. Schalk Pienaar said, according to the Rapport of 3rd September last year, about the federal plan of the United Party (translation)—

But that hon. member says that our policy is so ridiculous. This is what Mr. Willem van Heerden said on 17th March of last year (translation)—

But then he goes on.

Wait. Now I wish to say to the hon. member that they have been in power for 25 years and they have no answers. That has been evident throughout this debate up to now. The Government is not prepared to accept responsibility for anything. Mr. Speaker, this is the nicest government South Africa has ever had. It must be very nice for them to govern because they do not accept responsibility for anything. But when the United Party sees that problems are lying ahead of South Africa, such as our race problems, and when it investigates them and in all honesty comes forward with a plan in which the practical situation in South Africa is accepted, what do those hon. members do? All they can say is this: That would mean the end of the White man—they repeat the old story. But this Parliament will in the first instance, under our policy, be sovereign and White—surely hon. members know this? Under their policy separate bodies have already been created for the various race groups. These will be developed by the United Party, and they will be greatly improved. But those hon. members will not be able to differ with me when I say that there are spheres in South Africa in which all race groups must co-operate. The only concept which is important for us to discuss here, is that after we have granted the maximum autonomy to each race group, there will be spheres of our national life which we must plan together with the various race groups of this country. If there is a White man in this country who thinks that he can go on planning the future of South Africa in a one-sided manner, without the co-operation, the goodwill, the assistance and the co-planning of the Black man and the other non-Whites, he is living in a fool’s paradise. And that is all the United Party wants to do for South Africa. Let us just consider the recent strikes in Durban; are these not an example to us of how it is necessary for this Government, if it is to display real statesmanship, to be prepared to have talks with the leaders of the non-Whites, not to give up their own leadership as Whites—no-one wants that—but to use their position as Whites to exert even greater influence on the various non-White race groups in this country. That is all the United Party is asking. Would such a situation ever have arisen? But the Government says this was caused by merely a few agitators. They do not take responsibility. They do not attempt to prevent the situation. Surely it is the task of any government worth its salt to prevent that kind of situation; not only in the matter of race, but also in a matter of the economy the Government is doing precisely the same thing. Now it is inflation coming from outside. They say this is because the people of South Africa do not work hard enough. That is their reason. But this Government has been told repeatedly that the cost of living is getting out of hand. I want to refer the hon. gentlemen to just a few examples. Last year, during the Oudtshoorn by-election, the hon. the Minister of Planning made a speech there. What happened on that occasion? When he was questioned on the high cost of living, what did that hon. gentleman say? He told us they would make a plan. This is a strange kind of Government: it makes a plan, but no-one sees the plan. Either they do not have a plan yet, or their plan is not worth submitting to the voters and the people of South Africa. As long ago as 1967 Nationalist Party congresses, one after the other, aired their problems concerning the cost of living. However, these hon. gentlemen, such as the Minister of Labour, come here once again and say that we are really very lucky to live in South Africa; only Moscow and Belgrade are cheaper than Johannesburg. Is that an answer to give to adults in this country? The test is not whether it is cheaper to live in Belgrade or Moscow or Johannesburg. He could just as well have added Siberia, because one can, after all, live cheaper there too.

Even Ireland—there it is cheapest of all.

The test is, however, whether it is cheaper to live in Johannesburg today than it was about 20 years ago. That is the test. If the cost of living rises, it is the responsibility of the Government to do all in its power to see that it is kept stable. We cannot just say, as the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs does, that inflation is gradually diminishing. How long have we not been listening to that story!

Fifteen years.

Yes, for 15 years I have been sitting here, and for nearly the past seven years I have been hearing this every time. Then again one hears that the Governments’ measures are now taking effect and that the position will now improve. But, says the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs, the big problem is productivity; our working capacity per man-hour is not keeping pace with the salary increases. If that is in his view the big problem, what is he going to do about it?

Nothing!

He will make a plan!

After all, that is what the people want to know. He should not merely tell us what the problems are! Then, however, the hon. the Minister of Planning comes along, as he has just done in this House once again, and he says the Government promises to help. “Let us rather give bread to everyone than meat to a few.” And then one hears this great wisdom: “The United Party only wants to use cheap Bantu labour and kick out the Whites.” These are the old scare tactics which we have had in South Africa for 25 years and more. I want to say to the hon. gentlemen opposite that these things are their responsibility. If the United Party had been sitting there, we would have accepted that responsibility; we would not have tried to evade it. I want to mention to hon. members another example of the evasion of responsibility which we have seen in recent times. I would like to talk about how the hon. the Minister of Labour and his colleague have handled the drought.

When the country is held in the strangehold of drought again, as has occurred so frequently in the past, our hearts immediately go out to the agriculturist, his family and his workers. Actually, one wishes it were not necessary to speak about a matter such as this. One would rather in these circumstances boast of and be thankful for ideal climatic conditions, green pastures, very fat live-stock and record crops.

And skinny United Party supporters.

Unfortunately large parts of South Africa are not at this stage blessed with such conditions and therefore we must face the cold, hard facts. For us and, I believe, also for the Government opposite, the loss caused by this drought runs into huge amounts. It is almost impossible to calculate what it is costing South Africa. It will also be difficult for our country even to wipe out its after-effects in a short time, even if the drought should soon be broken throughout the country. This Parliament has through the years spent many hours discussing possible measures and preparatory work for mitigating the effect of droughts. This matter formed the subject of the interim report of the commission of inquiry into agriculture which appeared four years ago. This report contains valuable suggestions. This Government has in the course of 25 years experienced many and serious droughts, but it is most astonishing and upsetting that by this time the Government should still not have been able to drawn up an emergency programme which could be applied timeously and effectively with the minimum delay and without lavish administrative delays. The Government makes the same mistake every time. They wait until it is too late, and then the assistance is usually insufficient, unsystematic and, what is more, half-hearted.

Give a few details.

I shall tell the hon. the Minister what I mean by that. Because our agriculture group know this Government and its ineffectiveness so well, we, as long ago as at our congress in Bloemfontein on 20th November last year, considered it to be in the national interest to sound a warning in this regard. This appeared in the Press, and I quote:

The following point is an important one:

Long before the hon. gentlemen opposite had thought about the matter, they were given the warning that the situation was becoming difficult.

How many districts had applied at that stage?

The hon. member will get his reply from other members on this side of the House today.

How many districts had applied by November?

As far back as 1968 the agricultural policy of the United Party stipulated that a central drought-relief body be set up. The moment drought conditions crop up this body would have to go into action with a specific plan for implementing emergency measures. This body would also have to provide for the rehabilitation of the farmers, those who have been afflicted.

†If I may just dwell for a minute or two on this particular agency which the United Party envisages, I want to say that this body must first of all be able to consolidate debts. It must be able to take over at low rates of interest and high rates of amortization.

Everything that you have mentioned, exists already.

It must be able to declare a moratorium on debts to the Government. However, the following things do not exist. There must be a write off of debts in deserving cases and cash loans to rehabilitate farmers and to reclaim the soil and also to help farmers to re-establish our breeding herds.

*This must have been clear to the Government for some time now. If they had listened to climatologists, namely that the climatic conditions in South Africa—not only here, but also elsewhere in Africa and particularly in the Southern Hemisphere—appeared to be abnormal, and with the exchange and co-ordination of various data, the Department of Agriculture should have had early warning in this respect that this was no seasonal drought which the country was experiencing. It strikes one as being, strange and tragic, after local soil conservation committees had conducted thorough investigations and recommended that certain areas be declared to be drought-stricken, that there representations were addressed to the authorities in Pretoria and the reply came back that emergency measures were unnecessary since only seasonal droughts were being experienced. This is an instance where the Government did not listen to its own advisers who were sent out into the field for the very purpose of investigating the position. We may ask: What precious time was not lost in this respect? What makes the whole position even more unforgivable, is the fact that South Africa has for some time now been experiencing a shortage of red meat, so much so that the hon. gentleman was obliged to approve the importation of meat by the Meat Board.

Are you in favour of that or not?

That is not relevant now; we can debate that matter.

Last year you said we should not import; what do you say now?

Whereas he found himself under these circumstances and the price for the housewife had shot up so tremendously as a result of the lack of supplies and the enormous increase in demand, dramatic action on the part of the hon. Minister to prevent the situation from deteriorating is precisely what we would have expected.

Such as?

I have just explained to the hon. the Minister that …

Oh no, please, I cannot make rain! That reason …

The hon. the Minister says he cannot make rain. I am aware that the hon. gentleman has many powers, but I really do not go so far as to think that. Surely, then the hon. the Minister must tell me that if he can do nothing and cannot act fast enough, there is nothing he can do about the drought. Then that must surely be your argument.

But you know that.

But we have just been telling the hon. the Minister that it is precisely under these difficult circumstances that we would have expected that hon. gentleman and his departments to have acted faster so that the situation could not deteriorate. Farmers are experiencing long delays in the execution of orders for fodder supplies. Bottlenecks are being experienced in transporting these supplies. If the transport system of the country is gradually adjusted to deal with this kind of emergency, these bottlenecks should not occur. How many times in this House have we not said and suggested that the Army be used for transporting supplies such as mealies and hay if the Railways were not in a position to handle them quickly? Increased rail tariffs have been effective from the beginning of the year. Increases on top of the drought! According to my information the increases on fodder vary between 50% and 120%. This Government has therefore made a considerable contribution towards forcing up the cost of fighting the drought. What is more, it is useless for the Government to state that rebates of 75% have been introduced on the transport of drought fodder, when that rebate is only introduced in respect of a limited number of fodder varieties.

Which one would you like to be added?

I shall tell the hon. the Minister. Our recommendation from this side of the House is that the hon. the Minister must consider introducing this rebate in respect of the transport of fodder varieties such as molasses, kaffir corn and low-grade corn which is available as cattle fodder. On previous occasions, when we helped the farmers in times of drought, we were prepared to grant them fodder loans of R400 per month per 1 000 head of breeding stock, of which half formed a subsidy. In other words, it cost the farmer about R200 a month for 1 000 head of livestock. I want to ask the hon. the Minister why this concession has not been made?

The subsidy?

Yes, the subsidy.

Read your drought report.

Now, that is strange. That hon. gentleman will know that in that same report it is said that if there is a serious drought in the country, the Government should still be prepared to apply these measures.

At the present wool and meat prices?

Have I not explained to the hon. the Minister that the financial position of the farmer has not changed much—does he not know that wool prices have only improved since last season? What wool farmer has at this stage already had the full benefit of an increased meat price or an increased wool price? Is the hon. gentleman not aware that …

Are you pleading for a subsidy on fodder?

I am pleading for the same subsidy we had before. Why not? It was granted previously, and why can it not be done again? What is more, I wish to tell the hon. gentleman that when this subsidy was fixed at R400 per month, the cost connected with lucerne, hay and other fodder varieties was much less than it is now. I wonder whether even that R200 subsidy would be effective under the circumstances. But due account must also be taken of the failure of the mealie crop which will be harvested shortly. The hon. the Minister has made it known that production loans of R4 000 per farmer will be increased to R6 000. Now I wish to ask the hon. gentleman whether he does not think that under these circumstances this will meet the needs of only a small number of farmers. For the medium and large-scale mealie farmer this has little value, and, what is more, they have been hit by it as hard as anyone else. The previous mealie crop was one of the biggest in our history, and we support those farmers in their plea to the hon. the Minister for a deferred payment agterskot. One must ask oneself with what these people are to face a whole year—with practically no income, with nothing but expenditure and accumulated debts? It has also been brought to my attention that especially the mealie farmers, who have mortgages with private institutions, are having trouble keeping up their capital repayments. They are also experiencing problems in connection with their interest repayments. I wish to make a strong plea to the Minister that he grant this matter his attention, because we do not want a situation to arise where those people, as a result of circumstances beyond their control, are forced out of business under these circumstances. Crops which have failed accentuate once again the glaring shortcomings we have in our approach to the agricultural industry. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, it was not necessary for me to listen to the hon. member who has just resumed his seat. What he said there, what he asked, had already been done in good time at the meeting we all attended at Wolmaranstad.

In that case, why did you hold a meeting?

We held a meeting for the very purpose of discussing these drought conditions in good time. The hon. member’s action is therefore slightly delayed, and now the hon. the Minister suddenly has to act all at once, he has to act quickly, he has to act with speed! Why? Normally the people in agricultural areas which are now subject to droughts would only have received the money for their crops at the end of May or June or July. There is still time. The Minister announced that he would take certain steps. The hon. member referred to certain aids, but let me say this this afternoon: There is virtually no conceivable channel which can be exploited and devised and by way of which farmers may be assisted on merit, each according to his own circumstances, i.e. not as a result of a blow such as the one they are being dealt by this drought. The hon. member is talking about problems for which the machinery has been in existence for a long time. The hon. member is wasting the time of the House. A short-lived gleam came into the hon. member’s eye when I said that these channels already existed. He said there was one which did not yet exist, and this was that his institution, the one he envisages, would apply itself to writing off debts. I want to say this here today in all earnest: If there is one thing to which our farming population is very sensitive, it is this idea, current amongst people, that farmers’ debts are being written off, or that farmers are getting money for nothing. I can state here today with great pride that since the early thirties, when the old subsidy loans were first introduced, the percentage of farmers’ debts written off over a period of three to four decades has not amounted to 0,01%.

May I ask you a question?

Yes, the hon. member may as well go. He does not amount to much.

May I ask the hon. member …

No, no questions whatsoever. They do not amount to anything either. The hon. member spoke about a deferred payment (agterskot). He is suffering from a delayed action again. The farmers discussed a deferred payment at Wolmaranstad already. The Minister understood this immediately and discussed all the problems openly, as good Nationalists should. It was not concealed. We were not afraid that there would be discord if we discussed problems openly. The Minister said the matter was being investigated. I want to ask the hon. member to keep quiet from now on and simply to see what will happen.

Mr. Speaker, the present debate has laid bare two things. The first is the deeply eroded and unbridgable gulf that exists between the National Party and the United Party, between a Nationalist and a non-Nationalist. Now for the second fact: Up to now the present debate has confirmed the unchanged, historically rooted alienation between the National and the un-National elements in South Africa.

The recent elections proved the total inability of the United Party, the Opposition, to disengage itself from or cure itself of inherited, inherent weaknesses, unrealities and falsehoods. I shall prove this in a moment.

The second fact brought to light by the recent by-elections is the total triumph scored within the United Party by the United Party tendency to adhere to old, obsolete obsessions of old, obsolete colonial structures. They emphasized this in their propaganda campaign during the past elections, as I shall prove. Sir, these past elections, and this debate which is now being conducted here, justifies a historical charge against the United Party, namely that that Party has never in its long existence as a political party had any point of departure, and, in the second instance, that it has no historic, fixed element from which it can cause reorientation to take place. Mr. Speaker, in order to explain these statements of mine further, I want to say that the history of South Africa is interwoven between the Rennaisance, the beginning of Western colonialism, and the Second World War, the end of Western colonialism, between those two great eras. This period I mentioned was marked by voyages of discovery, large numbers of people leaving the European Continent for the various colonies, and an era of Western supremacy. I want to talk about this era of Western supremacy. A study of this Western supremacy will, for the purposes of this debate, enable us to indicate where the United Party and the National Party are standing at the present moment. In this period of Western supremacy there were five major phases. I want to mention them briefly.

The first phase was the phase of Christian ordering, Christian world ordering—Spain, Portugal were world monopolies. They acted under certain impulses. In the first place, there was the religious impulse, the Catholic Mission. They said: We must colonialize; we must rule the world; we must divide it between us, for we have a religious mission. Secondly: We must help ourselves to colonies; we must strengthen our hold, for we must serve the mother country. Mr. Speaker, this inherited phenomenon of missions runs right through the history of the anti-national elements and parties and the rulers here in our father-land. How we struggled to get the United Party, the old Unionist Party, weaned from the mission and the idea of a mission favouring the mother country—the colonies, the Republic of South Africa, for the sake of the mother country’s commercial power? In that period of Christian world ordering, however paradoxical it may sound, the native inhabitants were given no status. Everybody who was outside the Christian community was seen as doomed. They had to join it or they had to be wiped out.

The second phase was the phase of economic world ordering, the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. During this period the Protestantism of the Germanic North broke into the Portuguese-Spanish world monopoly; it was during that period that the Cape was discovered, and, within that world monopoly, Protestantism was planted here in 1652. But they too, the Portuguese and later Van Riebeeck, regarded the Cape and South Africa as being an economic asset only. That was the period of mercantilism. Merchants, seamen, colonists, all of 5—A.H. them were feverishly busy serving the mother country. In the same way this golden thread runs through the history of that party and its predecessors—service to the mother country. Hence their resistance to the attempts of the old National Party at bringing about our own economic emancipation, such as, inter alia, the establishment of Iscor. Hence their adherence to imperial preferential treatment, a result of the old Ottawa Agreement—the mother country had to be served. Yes, Sir, in those days their predecessors literally applied the Old Testament idea of wiping out the Canaanites to the native inhabitants! Heathens and Christians were divided according to social status and financial means. We remember the founding of the settlements of the old Pilgrim Fathers. We remember the extent to which discrimination was made here in South Africa by the Dutch who founded the settlement here. First it was colour, then it was social status and then it was descent. The norms varied as time went by. Mr. Speaker, the characteristics of this economic ordering was temporariness, service to the mother country and the subordination of any aspiration after independence. Sir, no historian can record the history of the United Party or the old Unionist Party, or the activities of all the anti-National groups in South Africa, without mentioning these characteristics: Temporary sojourn; South Africa not considered to be a place of permanent residence; no emotional feeling for great events, but the feeling, the approach and the views of a mercantilist, a merchant. We struggled for a long time to wean that party of these things. Sir, today that party still teems with mercantilists, and their federal policy is one which makes provision for accommodating a lot of mercantilists, a lot of merchants, who could not care less about South Africa and its interests.

Now we come to the third phase. The third phase is the phase of liberal-humanist world ordering. This phase started in the nineteenth century. In that period we found the creation of permanent White homelands—Americans and Afrikaners. In that period the leaders of these White homelands turned their backs on the mother countries: The American War of Independence, 1776-1783; the shedding of the yoke of the Dutch East India Company in 1795—a process of liberation that took place. In this period, strangely enough, as a reaction against the rejection of the mother country’s authority by way of the American War of Independence, there was a counter-action, just as one finds it today. Just as there was a reaction after our becoming a Republic and our rejection of and emancipation from foreign rule, there was a reaction in the beginning of the eighteenth century against the so-called subjection of the Blacks, the humanist idea of the Aufklärung in the second half of the eighteenth century. All at once mankind was seen as a coherent whole, and being tired with his own over-civilization, Jean Jacques Rousseau started with the development of his concept of the bon sauvage, the innocent, the child of nature. Do we not overhear this today in the reaction against the Whites who have emancipated themselves here in South Africa? Is this not a case of history repeating itself? And then an exchange of status took place. The White colonist, just as is the position with the Whites today, was denigrated and placed in the dock and the Black man was extolled; he was the innocent, and, Sir, that party—I say this in all earnest—teems with Dr. John Phillipses. Dr. John Phillips’s writings, Researches in South Africa, are not a patch on what one can read in Hansard on what that party has delivered itself of over the past 10 to 15 years in respect of the White man.

Mr. Speaker, this wave and flood of humanism led to the emancipation of the slaves in 1834, preceded by attempts in 1828 at placing the Hottentots and Whites here in the Cape on a footing of equality. The image of the White pioneer and the White colonist was disparaged, just as is done today. And that party will never be able to escape that historic charge against it. This false liberalism, nourished by selfish economic motives, misplaced humanist idealism, denigration, image tarnishing, led, as was recorded in Piet Retief’s manifesto, to one of the contributory causes of the Great Trek. I repeat, the United Party still has its John Phillipses today. It still has liberal humanists in its ranks. It still has mercantilists in its ranks, and, above all, its plutocrats, those who want to govern through the power of money, are still in the ranks of that party, and its federal plan also makes provision for accommodating the plutocrats in order that, as has been proved by history, it may retain its privileged position as a party consisting of Whites in that federal state—the privileged position of the Whites which was built on superior knowledge and superior technical experience. They are clever, Mr. Speaker. One should not regard them as stupid. They are shrewd, cunning and, if I may say it, politically extremely mean.

Order! The hon. member may not say that.

Then I withdraw it. This brings me to Phase 4, and this was actually the jolly Phase, the imperialistic civilizing ordering, from the second half of the nineteenth century to the Second World War. It was at this stage that the new imperialism developed and the “Scramble for Africa” took place. This was a period of technical civilization, a striving after and a call for world unity and world politics; imperialism, raw and cruel, was implemented. This was the period of the Pax Brittanica; world domination and world division under White leadership. This was also the idea of the French civilizing mission. Colonial empires were built with the object of obtaining raw materials and a market for manufactured raw materials. An internal struggle for power developed, and shortly before the Second World War, at the end of this period, the West and Russia virtually ruled the whole world—world domination under White leadership, a central idea which they always elaborated in their federal policy. White leadership would be retained.

Is that wrong?

It cannot resist the demands of history.

I want to know whether it is wrong.

That is my answer. It was during this period that all opposition was ruthlessly broken. During this period the two Boer Republics were destroyed, and, what is most important, it was during this period that the civilizing missions and the blessings of material, technical civilizations served as a justification for exploitation, poverty, ignorance, diseases, as left behind by these colonial powers when they left Africa in the sixties. I want to repeat what I said on another occasion. If I were a Black man north of South Africa’s borders, in Black Africa, I would have had a bitter hatred for the White man because of his hypocritical exploitation and the norms applied by him under the cloak of the civilization he had brought, the “blessings” of civilization, which had to serve as the cover, the cloak, under which he concealed his atrocities against that native population.

Why do you hate the White man so?

It was in this time, in their time, that the first signs of Black nationalism became evident after the First World War, and it was in this time that the Anglo-Boer War took place and the first seeds of Afrikaner nationalism were planted in South Africa, which was at the same time one of the first forms of nationalism that was planted in Africa. And this brings me to the last period. This is the period after the Second World War, the period in which we are living now, and this is the era of the universal, planetary partnership amongst world nations. [Interjections.]

On a point of order, Sir, may an hon. member tell me I am a “bloody rubbish” (bleddie vuilgoed)?

Order! The hon. member who said that, must withdraw it.

Sir, the member did not use the first word. It is an addition which that hon. member has made himself. I heard it.

Would the hon. member withdraw the charge against the hon. member?

Sir, may I explain? I am going to withdraw those words. The hon. member provoked this. May the hon. member tell the hon. member for Carletonville that his father was a “joiner”?

I asked that; I did not say it.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw those words.

I withdraw them.

That brings us to the last period, the period of the universal, humanitarian partnership amongst nations. It was during this period that the anticolonial uprisings took place. Colonial empires were liquidated. The retreat of the Whites took place. The role of the mercantilists in Black Africa was terminated. The plutocrats, who wanted to govern through the power of money, hoped in vain that their money would open doors to them there—they were rejected. The divide-and-rule politics in Black Africa by Whites were rejected. Here we stand, squarely caught up in this period. This question arises: Where do we stand, where do the Whites stand, where does the National Party stand and where does the Opposition stand? Now I say this, and with this I want to conclude: We find ourselves in a period in which the privileged position of the Whites can no longer be justified on the basis of a religious mission, can no longer be justified on the basis of the blessings and techniques of civilization which they give the Bantu. We cannot even give a single thought to the policy of subjection or annihilation. We must accept a second fact. No selfish economic motives will take us a single step forward on the road to harmonious co-operation between the Whites and the Blacks. We must realize that the Blacks are not merely an economic asset, as was assumed in our history. We must realize that the Blacks can no longer be a convenient appendix and football of Western or White plutocrats. In the third place: The distinction heathen/ Christian on the basis of colour, or financial means, or knowledge, is no longer possible or acceptable. Bantu homelands may and will by no means be replicas of the settlements of the Pilgrim Fathers. No misplaced humanism or negrophilism or philanthropy will satisfy the Black man. No Helen Suzman, no matter how she may vie with Jean Jacques Rousseau or with Dr. John Philips, will make any impression on the Whites or on the Blacks with her perpetual bickering or charges concerning the so-called violation or denial of rights.

The time for using the benefits of civilization as dummies for sucking the Bantu into a federal policy, is past. The United Party, in the words of its leader, cannot do this, for it will have to give the Bantu a firm assurance that, because of their numbers or other aids, they will be able to score a complete political triumph over the Whites within that federal constellation. The lead which the Whites have as far as knowledge and money are concerned, will not be a decisive factor in this struggle for power. And this platform which is being provided by the federal policy of the United Party, will be an ideal platform on which a struggle for power may develop. If there is one thing for which I can give the Nationalist Party credit in this period of dominant militant emotions in Black Africa, then it is implied in the comments made by the hon. the Prime Minister on the closure of the border between Rhodesia and Zambia; it is its sustained endeavour to put a damper on the spate of militant action which is current in Africa at the moment. The United Party, with its federal constitution and its federalism, will create a platform from where these militants within our borders—immature as many of them are, and incited by militants from overseas and from Black Africa—can operate. This will be extremely dangerous for us. We are faced with the fact that we have to accept that five phases have passed and that we are living in the sixth phase in the history of our development. In this phase we shall have to accept, and we shall have to do so fully, the full consequences of separate development.

What are they?

I shall tell the hon. member. It is the fearless acceptance of independent Bantu states where fresh currents of Nationalism will provide a greater joy of living, a greater stimulus to growth and greater and more intense emotional pleasure than will the stagnant, cold, unfeeling inflexibility which will be the characteristic of this federalism. We shall have to accept the full consequences of the fact that there may be no division of power within the separate area of each member, that we shall have to do everything in our power to avoid friction levels and levels of government which may cause friction. We shall have to accept the right of the Bantu, in his state, to free labour negotiation with the White man, in his state. We shall have to accept the recognition of the right of the non-Whites to build their own power structures in their own area as they please; we shall also have to accept full recognition of the right of the Whites and the non-Whites to the development of their own spiritual and material sources of power at their own discretion. Then there will have to be recognition of the falling away of discrimination on the basis of colour when the Whites and the Bantu, as citizens of separate states, conduct dialogues or make contact with one another. The last thing that will follow, will be a new evaluation of the Whites and a new evaluation of the Blacks on opposite sides of international borders and not in terms of being citizens of one integrated state: an integrated state where political militants and labour agitators can stir up emotions and where any change which the Government of that federal state may undertake will have to be considered very carefully—careful consideration whether this will favour or prejudice one colour group or the other. There are fixed points of departure in the history of the Nationalist Party. Show me one point of departure in the other party. There is not a single one; it is an aimless party, a dangerous party to our country, a reckless party. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, I find some difficulty in fitting the speech that has just come from my hon. friend, the member for Carletonville, into this debate. He made a few interesting statements that are relevant to our discussion, as, for example, the one that, as the homelands become independent, discrimination will have to disappear. I hope I shall live to see the day when this happens. I should like to see the day when the Transkei becomes an independent State and the Xhosas of Cape Town are freely allowed into the Nico Malan theatre. I want to believe that suddenly all the objections to multiracialism in the theatres of Cape Town will disappear because in Umtata an independent State arises. I find it difficult to believe, but this is the sort of claptrap that comes to us as an explanation of the Nationalist Party’s policy. However, I want to say to my friend that his was an interesting dissertation. It took me back to my school-days; there we had a man standing up and trying to find a political philosophy for the Nationalist Party. He tried hard; he tried sincerely; he tried ably; and what did he give us in the end? A synthesis of Marx and Metternich, the policy of the Nationalist Party. That is perhaps the great problem we have in South Africa, namely the continuing, never-ending contradictions in the Nationalist Party. On one day they like to pose before the world as the great liberals. They want to give to our Black people everything the White man has. They like to tell this to the United Nations. Then they come to the hustings in South Africa. Then they become the great people who will see that the Black man in our cities will not enjoy family rights, not own his own house and that the Black people will continue to go to gaol at the rate of 3 000 per day for committing technical offences. They are the vigorous ones—a contradiction, Sir! It is one of the amazing facts of history that a party so full of contradictions, a party without any roots for its policy, could have survived in power for 25 years. I think many of us are beginning to realize that it is not the party’s race policies as far as the non-Whites are concerned that keep them in power. It is the party’s exploitation of the sentiments of my group of the people, the Afrikaner people. I have said before, and I want to repeat it today—if I may also philosophize like my hon. friend for Carletonville for a minute—that the most tragic thing that is happening in South Africa is the polarization of our peoples. There is polarization on the one hand between Whites and non-Whites. This is dangerous and something we all have to watch and try to stop. Then there is another polarization taking place, namely between White and White, between the Afrikaans-speaking and the English-speaking people. There is estrangement, alienation and a growing lack of understanding and sympathy. I referred to that the other night at the University of Cape Town and I want to repeat it. The hon. member for Boksburg accused me the other day of saying that we have a Nazi Government.

Of course you said that.

My friend there says: “Of course you said that”. I shall make him an offer: If he can prove from any honest Press report that I said at the University that we had a Nazi Government, I will give R1 000 to the Nationalist Party on the condition that, if he cannot prove it, he gives R1 000 to the Red Cross Society. [Interjections.]

We will not take it. [Interjections.]

He said it a minute ago and confirmed what the hon. member for Boksburg said, namely that I had said we had a Nazi Government.

You compared ours to a Nazi government.

Now, I am challenging him to prove it, but he won’t accept it. That is the value of his contribution to the argument! I have said—and I want to repeat it today—that I think it tragic that so many of our Afrikaans children have no opportunity to hear both sides of the question. They have the Afrikaans Press, which is Nationalist. Many of their preachers in the Church preach Nationalist philosophies. Many of their schools indoctrinate them; their cultural life is one-sided. I say that that is a tragedy. I said that, in this one respect, they are like the children were in Nazi Germany—they do not hear the alternative.

The opposite is true.

I went further—and this was not reported in Die Burger—and said that it was tragic, too, that English-speaking people do not get an opportunity to hear the point of view of my Nationalist Party friends through their own newspapers. That was not reported. It was a balanced statement. Repeating what I am saying now I consider it sad that there should be this polarization of, this alienation among the people of South Africa. It is also more tragic that the polarization between Black and White in South Africa should be the official attitude and policy of the Government in power in South Africa. Their whole policy is directed towards separation. They will not deny that. Their whole policy is a denial of opportunities for people of different communities or races in this country to share privileges, and worse, to share responsibilities. They do not only want separate development, but also separate responsibilities. They have in that the seed of conflict, a conflict which they will not be able to avoid in the long run.

This debate has been dominated by two features. The one is the breakdown of the Government’s race policy, to make polarization of the people of South Africa its official attitude, the only permissible attitude of the people of South Africa. The other one is the failure of the Government’s economic policy as far as the welfare of the ordinary people in this country is concerned. It is interesting to note that these two are inter-related. It is because the failure of the Government’s policy has led to explosions in Durban and in the Eastern Cape, and Hammarsdale, that we have suddenly become acutely aware once more, as we have been becoming aware in growing measure over the last two or three years, of the failure of the Government’s race policy. The economic truth is suddenly slammed in our faces as a result of what is happening in Natal. We are more aware than ever before of the inadequacy and the futility of the Government’s race policy. I think it has happened in this debate, and I think we should do it again and again until we find understanding; we should seek to understand what is happening with these strikes that we see in Durban and in other parts of our country.

May I ask the hon. member a question? Did the hon. member in consequence of the demonstrations and the strikes in Natal refer to them as another Sharpeville?

No, I did not. But I said what I am willing to say here in the face of the Nationalist Party, namely that if the lackadaisical attitude of the Minister of Labour, the indifference, the callous indifference to events there of the new Minister for Indian Affairs is typical of the Government’s concern for what is happening in South Africa as it was at the time of the pass law disturbances we had, then we may well be heading for another Sharpeville if we are not careful. I stand by what I said because it is true and I hope the Government will listen. What should be learned and understood in the light of those disturbances is first of all that the poverty of some of the people in South Africa has become intolerable. That is what it is. We are dealing with people who are by nature law-abiding. We are very fortunate that in the Black people of South Africa we have people who tend by nature to be law-abiding. But they have come to a point where they have reached breaking point. I am not a sentimentalist, but when I read that some of those people are being paid R7, R8, R10 per week …

By whom?

When I read this I wonder how any person with any appreciation of human needs—let us forget about colour, for Heaven’s sake—can expect that those people could be happy and contented subjects of South Africa. The other thing we have learned is that where people have been experiencing distress, they have, either as a result of Government policy, or as a result of the neglect of the Government to carry out its own policy, lacked the means of communication with their employers. There has been no proper contact between these people and their employers with a view to the one understanding the problems of the other, and that cuts both ways: for the workers understanding the problems of the employer, and for the employers understanding the problems of the workers.

I want to say something more about poverty. We have had a rather mixed bag of speeches from our hon. friends opposite, but we have had one outstanding speech. I want to pay tribute to the hon. gentleman on the other side who, I think, made by far the best speech in defence of the Government, namely the new Minister of Indian Affairs. I thought it was an excellent example of polemic ability. It was perfect in almost every respect. It lacked only one thing. He spoke as if South Africa consisted only of those White people who are more privileged than the general run of the population of South Africa. Listening to him, you would not think that there were in South Africa White people in Government employ with families who still take home less than R200 per month.

Less than R100.

Less than R100 on the Railways. One would not have thought that there were old people in this country who receive a pension from the Government of R43 per month; while it is very difficult in Johannesburg or Cape Town to get a single little room with no facilities for less than R20 or R25 per month. One would not have thought, while listening to the hon. the Minister of Indian Affairs, that recently 18 policemen were found guilty of theft in Pretoria and in their defence plea their counsel pointed out what their salaries were. Other newspapers, for example, Hoofstad and Die Vaderland reported this. I want to give members an idea of the people the hon. the Minister of Indian Affairs forgot when he painted this beautiful, rosy picture of a South Africa in which all was well and nobody suffered under the effect of low wages. This is what Die Vaderland wrote—

Not an ordinary policeman—

*Sir, is this something to be proud of? Then we have an hon. Minister getting up and saying that the Government is paying well. Here I have last year’s Hansard of 26th May in which the Deputy Minister of Transport had to admit that on the Railways one still had Whites, 9 245 of them, who earned less than R100 per month, and 48 900 Whites who earned less than R200 per month. Then we had the most brilliant speech I have heard from a Cabinet Minister in years, from the Minister of Indian Affairs, who said that everything was flourishing in South Africa, that everybody was happy and that nobody lacked anything.

† I was very much interested in the attitude of the hon. the Minister, which was also typical of that of the Financial Gazette, which is not a United Party paper. On the 19th of last month there appeared an article on the cost of living. The heading reads: “Food has been hit hardest”. The writer made suggestions on how people can combat inflation as it affects their own lives through the rising cost of living. I want you to listen to the suggestions, Sir. While I quote the suggestions, think of the workers in Durban with their R8 and R9 per week; think of the policemen with R140 after 14 years’ service. The suggestions are, amongst others, that they should buy less expensive cuts of meat—not fillet steak, but a little more mince. Many of these people cannot have mincemeat, except sometimes on Sundays, that another suggestion is that they can cut back on entertainment. I quote—

The worker in Durban must make his third-hand pair of pants with 25 patches on its backside last a little longer! That, Sir, is the attitude of the Government organs in this situation. I quote again:

I ask any impartial witness to this debate how many of the 22 million-odd people of South Africa can save money on steak, entertainment in chic restaurants, radios, refrigerators, and other household machines. This is the Government we are dealing with. This is the Government which is calling upon the people to celebrate with it 25 years of misrule which they owe only to an exploitation of the sentiments of a section of the people.

The other item I said was leading to trouble in South Africa is the lack of communication, properly organized, orderly communication, between employers and employees. In this connection I think we should have a little bit of history, if the hon. member for Carletonville will forgive me for entering upon his preserve. In 1953 the present Minister of Transport introduced the Bantu Settlement of Disputes Bill, which is now an Act of Parliament. I was then a young member, but I was already very interested in labour affairs and the labour debates in Parliament. I think it was one of the most interesting and one of the most rewarding debates in which I have ever had the privilege of participating in Parliament. Much of the credit is due to the hon. the Minister. He came originally with a Bill to eliminate the necessity for Black trade unions in South Africa. He wanted them to bleed to death. You will remember, Sir, those were his words. He wanted to put in their place a central Native wages board to negotiate on behalf of the Black people with their employers and with the Government, and the Department of Labour was to be the umpire. During the debate we pointed out that this would not be satisfactory and that unless you could bring this negotiating function down to the workers at the level of their working places, it could not succeed. My good friend, Senator Norman Eaton, the former member for Umhlatuzana in this House, who was then a member of the Labour Party, came with an amendment suggesting workers’ committees in the establishments. I give the hon. the Minister full marks here. It was a bit of a revolutionary suggestion. It could even have been argued that it was contrary to the very principle of the Bill, but the Minister said that that was a good suggestion. He had it redrafted by his legal experts to make it conform to the requirements of good draftsmanship, and then accepted it. All three parties, the Nationalist Party, the United Party and the Labour Party, which was then still in the House, agreed to accept this Bill, and passed it at Second Reading to give it a try. I think the Minister agrees that that history is more or less correct? In 1953 we agreed that we would put that Bill on probation. It is now 1973, virtually 20 years later, and what has happened? We had a report from the present Minister of Labour, who was not enthusiastic then about this Bill, that in 20 years they achieved a peak of 50 workers’ committees. But they did not last. Many of them perished, and now there are only 17 under the Act. There are 17 workers’ committees in all the industrial establishments and commercial establishments in South Africa, and about 118 voluntary committees that have nothing to do with the Act itself. What a tragedy. How many establishments in South Africa qualify by having a minimum of 20 Black workers? I do not know, but there are 26 000 establishments, according to statistics, in South Africa. Conservatively, one could say that half of them would have at least 20 Black labourers, so there are probably 13 000 establishments in South Africa that could have workers’ committees, and workers’ committees exist in 17 of them. What an achievement over 20 years! How serious can the Government be about its own policy? How determined can the Government be to achieve something and to establish communication between Black and White?

Then, Sir, another piece of history: The hon. the Minister of Labour in his speech said that in the past year alone a large number of industrial agreements had been reached; increases of wages were given to 400 000 Black workers under industrial council agreements. In 1960 we had a debate in which we of the United Party suggested that this should be done. The present Minister of Labour rejected it with scorn. The chief reason for objection was that if the White trade unions were to negotiate on behalf of the Black workers, it would not be long before the White trade unions would ask the Black workers for subscriptions, and then we would be back to mixed trade unions, which is against the policy of the Government. I want to pay a tribute to the present Senator De Klerk, who was then Minister of Labour, because fortunately he came into the debate later and repudiated the present Minister. I want to quote what he said, because it shows you how close we can come in this House if we adopt a responsible attitude to the problems of this country. And if ever there was a need for us to take up, jointly, a responsible attitude to the problems of the country, it is now at this moment, because heaven knows where this is going to end. My time, I see, is short. Senator De Klerk ended his repudiation of the present Minister by saying:

That is on this very point, Sir, and now the hon. the Minister of Labour can boast. Let him boast; we are pleased to hear him, because in one year, as a result of our United Party suggestions, which he repudiated, and which led to his repudiation by Senator De Klerk as Minister of Labour, we could obtain increases in wages for 400 000 Black workers, averaging more than R80 a year each. That is an achievement. But, Sir, what about the thousands upon thousands of Black people who are workers who do not fall within the purview of trade unions or industrial councils? What about the thousands upon thousands of Black workers who have not had a wage determination by the Wage Board for years, at a time when the cost of living and inflation in South Africa go up at a rate of 7,3 points a year?

That is something the hon. the Minister of Indian Affairs forgot, too, Sir. He saw nothing but virtue in devaluation. There is a time when currencies have to be devalued. He saw nothing but virtue in devaluation, and the great virtue in devaluation, he told us, was that our balance of payments had improved. We could sell cheaper, we had to buy more dearly. We could sell more cheaply to the people of other countries, and the people in our own country would pay more! I have said this before, and I was criticized, but I want to repeat that devaluation on the part of a government is an act of insolvency. There are many acts of insolvency in our law. One is when a man offers a compromise to his creditors. When you devalue your currency you say to your people: I can no longer sustain the value of the money which I as a State, under the signature of the Governor of the Reserve Bank, issue from Pretoria. I can no longer sustain it at 100 cents a rand. I can now sustain it only at 86 cents a rand, after a devaluation of 14%. It is an act of insolvency at the expense of your own people. And inevitably prices rise. The price of food rises. When people are earning R43 a month and people are earning R8 or R9 a week and the price of food goes up, they cannot buy fewer refrigerators. They can only buy less food. Their children go hungry. I say that that is the point the Government is missing in this debate. It is the point the Government is missing about the strikes in Durban. It is the point the Government is missing about all the people in South Africa with fixed incomes.

I do not know why I should be praising the Minister of Transport today; I do not usually do it, but I must praise him again. He immediately saw what was happening. While the rest of the Cabinet were still deliberating whether they had committed an act of insolvency or not, he put up the wages of his railwaymen by 15%, admitting that it was necessary. But then it is necessary for the poor, too—all the poor—and what is the Government doing? What did the Minister of Labour tell us when he made his speech in the House the other day? He was replying immediately to a speech by the Leader of the Opposition, my hon. leader, who had made no fewer than eight suggestions as to what should be done immediately and in the near future to combat the serious situation that is arising for South Africa as a result of the fact that the very poor in our midst have no slack that they can take up, no spare income that they can use, in order to meet the rising cost of living. What did he tell us, Sir? Not a thing—absolutely nothing. He did not react to the suggestion of my leader that there should be an immediate general increase of wages for the low income groups; he did not react to the suggestion that that should be followed by regular adjustments to the income, as we had during the war and thereafter in order to make allowance for inflation. He did not react to the suggestion that we should immediately build up these workers’ committees again, link them with the existing trade unions, and thus give these people a voice at least to discuss their problems with their employers and, if the employers have difficulties, at least to learn what the difficulties of the employers are. He made the suggestion, amongst others, that we should set about giving to the workers of this country, irrespective of their colour, a sense of belonging, a sense of participation in the production of the wealth of South Africa, a feeling that they matter, that they are somebody, that they are individuals, not faceless interchangeable labour units, as under the policy of the Government, but human beings with a personality and an identity, people with, like every other human being, an inborn desire to be recognized and to be known and to be accepted. But, Sir, we had no reaction. I call this House to witness, I call the country to witness; we have had no response, no reaction, to any one of those suggestions. The Government is not interested; the Government is not concerned. The hon. the Minister of Indian Affairs tells us that everybody in South Africa is happy, that this is the most wonderful country in the world, and he, or somebody else, told us that in Moscow and Belgrade they are even poorer than we are. I will tell him something too, Sir: In Moscow and Belgrade they are paid less than we are. In Moscow and Belgrade they have less freedom than we have; in Moscow and Belgrade they are slaves of the worst system, a system worse than apartheid—much worse than apartheid—so obviously we should be much better off in Cape Town and in Johannesburg than the people in Moscow or Belgrade.

Sir, some hon. member on the other side—I cannot remember who it was—asked me a question about Sharpeville. I have had the privilege of having to talk in this House for many, many years about the workers of South Africa, and I think it would be remiss if I did not on this occasion say that all of us, irrespective of our political convictions—this is not a reproach; it is a plea in the interests of South Africa—should stop and consider where South Africa is going, with the real value of the incomes of the peoples in this country diminishing, with some of the workers getting speedy redress through their organizations or through their political influence, while others have no redress. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, if there were any doubt as to why Mr. Harry Schwarz unseated the hon. member who resumed his seat a moment ago, this was eliminated by himself this afternoon. I want to say to him at once that his attempt to defend the comparisons he has drawn between South Africa and Nazi Germany was unsuccessful. I want to tell him to his face that he said something far worse this afternoon. What right does he have to say here that an Afrikaans-speaking child in this country is not as well informed as a Nazi child was in Germany? On what grounds does he say that? In which country in the world are the children better informed than our Afrikaner children? Our Afrikaner children are normally bilingual; they are far better informed than most children in most countries in the world. I cannot think of a cruder insult than that statement. I just want to tell the hon. member that he has not improved his situation and image at all. He raises a hue and cry, and has tried to make a serious issue of the salary increases the hon. the Minister of Transport granted to the railway workers as though the other sectors would not be getting anything. But he should know that the answer is simply that wage increases are a continuing process, and we are at the beginning of a new phase or cycle. Surely, this is clear to everyone. All he wants to do is to conjure up spectres and to scare the public and people with these issues and with his utterances about a possible Sharpeville. Sir, could one imagine anything more irresponsible than such warnings and predictions and scaremongering coming from a senior member? But we have not finished with him yet, Sir, and I shall come back to him in due course.

† Mr. Speaker, it is quite obvious that the Opposition this afternoon is trying not to crawl away from their federal policy, but to run away from it. They are now running away from it. That is what is happening here. So far in the debate on this side of the House, we have effectively demonstrated the monstrous incongruity inherent in the main elements of that party’s federal policy. That is quite clear. I should like to deal with a few supplementary issues in this respect. There will be a certain amount of duplication, but that is inevitable.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition has addressed us about the composition of their federal assembly. He has stated that the number of members each legislative assembly will elect will depend upon a formula which takes into consideration the contribution made to the country generally and to the well-being of the State by the people represented by those legislative assemblies. Hon. Ministers on this side have, as I have said, dealt with this. I want to point this out and ask: Who is going to determine what is a “contribution made to the country generally”? What is it? Is it not reasonable to expect the hon. members opposite to reply to that straightforward question? What is a “contribution to a country generally”? What is a contribution to “the well-being of the State”? Let us hear! Is it a contribution in sport or a contribution by studying? By writing poetry? What is the norm we are trying to use here? Certainly the public of South Africa is entitled to know the answer to this very important question. They are entitled to know what is intended here. Who is going to determine it, the federal assembly or the White assembly? Who is going to determine what the value of a man’s contribution to the country is or to evaluate it? If a Bantu in his own area—because they now recognize areas and races, they have told us; I will come to that—if he considers his contribution towards his people in his specific area as a major contribution, and a number of them do so, do they then get more votes? Sir, we have received an indication as to what is actually meant by this “contribution”. It is wealth, material wealth. Quite clearly they have changed a little bit from this gross national product norm which was laid down recently, but that is still at the back of their minds. In other words, if a given people in a given area by chance possess sufficient mineral wealth, which is exploited, then I take it, according to their policy, that particular people will now be allotted a large number of votes or representatives in the federal assembly. But after exploitation and depletion of those resources. I take it there will be a reduction again. This is the type of ridiculous consequence to which their policy leads. I do not think they have thought this out. They could not have. The same applies in other fields, like agriculture. If drought hits a certain area or a given region and if it hits it hard for two years and the agricultural produce’s value declines, is there going to be a corresponding decrease in the number of representatives in the federal assembly for that group, yes or no? This is the sort of ridiculous nonsense which they are trying to put seriously to this House and to the peoples of South Africa. The hon. Leader at one moment, by way of an interjection, told the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration that he could not, or did not understand the Swiss constitution, but does he, the hon. Leader of the Opposition, understand it? Perhaps the only thing he did in Switzerland was to go skiing in the snow. How can he compare Switzerland with Southern Africa? How? There are three component groups of people living in Switzerland who, for centuries, have been relatively homogeneous—sharing the same values, the same background, though speaking different languages.

How many migrant labourers are there?

Many migrant labourers who have no rights, who do not bring their wives, etc. He is comparing Switzerland with the Southern African situation. How does one react to such ignorance?

Let us look at their legislative assemblies. We are informed that the legislative assemblies will be elected by identifiable groups within the South African population. I am very glad to hear that suddenly there are identifiable groups within our population. Where is their multi-racialism now? Up to recently we have been told there is no such thing any more in South Africa. That is what we have been told. That is why our policy was doomed to failure. There were no identifiable groups; we were told we were the racists, we were the oppressors. The hon. member for Hillbrow flowered as the new advocate of the oppressed in this country. We were the racists; now suddenly we hear that legislative assemblies will be elected by identifiable groups within the South African population. What is the norm for identification? They tell us that the functions of these legislative assemblies will be to administer and control those affairs which are of peculiar and intimate concern to the community concerned. When is an affair of intimate concern to a community? When? [Interjections.] We are further told that as far as the Bantu legislative assemblies are concerned there will probably be one for each homeland or a group of homelands and probably one for the permanently settled urban Bantu. Furthermore, each legislative assembly will function only in respect of the racial group for which it is established. Again, I did not know that according to the Opposition there were races or race groups in this country. Now suddenly they are going to establish legislative assemblies for each race group. They say that they want them to be able to exercise significant control over the intimate affairs and the destinies—I repeat “destinies”—of their own people. Their own individual groups—wonderful flowery words; rosy-dozy! Everything with it! Hollow, nothing in it! If a people qualifies to be given legislative powers, to administer and control its own affairs …

Surely you can educate them.

Oh, just keep quiet for a moment, please. If a legislative assembly is to be given to people and if it is stated that they can control their own destiny, on what basis do they have the right to say that such a people does not have the right to full freedom and sovereignty? Is this not incongruous? It is unbelievable that a party in 1973 can come to this House with such a policy. But it does not end there. I understand that the four White provinces, as we now call them in order to identify them, will each have a legislative assembly. On what basis can they reject possible demands from, say, an independent, a semi-independent or an autonomous Transkei to have the same subdivision? If the Transkei says: Look, we want to be divided into five provinces and each of these five provinces must then also in turn have its legislative assembly entitled to elect a certain number of representatives to the federal assembly, on what basis can you reject our request because the Whites have four assemblies for each of four provinces, whilst there is only one White group in the four provinces? What if they say: “Why cannot we in the Transkei, being a proper State, be divided into two, three, four or five provinces and each of those provinces be given the right to send representatives to the federal assembly?” On what basis are they going to defend that? These are not questions which we alone are thinking out: these are the questions which every man, White, Black, Yellow or Red, everywhere in the world, will immediately ask himself when he reads the speech of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition said that his policy was going to accommodate differences—just imagine, accommodate differences! A policy designed to accentuate racial differences, a policy designed to accentuate the difference between the poor and the wealthy, a policy so reprehensible in its concept that it wants to allocate rights, status and duties to human beings on the basis of what they earn and possess, is termed a policy which accommodates differences.

Your basis is colour.

What a gruesome way of putting it. We can continue indefinitely asking these and similar questions as the speakers before me have asked; so far we have received no answers. I want to tell the Opposition that we will continue asking those questions. We will continue doing so until they are brought to their senses and until they are forced once more to design another policy. This is what we will do. As far as the position internally in South Africa is concerned, and as far as the effect of their policy in South Africa is concerned, I think one can unequivocally state the following: If anyone knowing our conditions, our history, our background and our circumstances is given the task of working out a policy calculated to bring certain and sudden disaster to South Africa, he will find it difficult to improve on the method inherent in this policy.

I thought you did not understand it.

My advice to the hon. member for Durban Point is to lick his wounds and keep quiet. Let us look at their policy in a wider context, in the context of the continent in which we are living and in the context of contemporary history elsewhere in the world. Where, may I ask, has this or something similar succeeded under comparable circumstances? There is the Utopian illusionary comparison with Switzerland, but not under comparable circumstances. Immediately north of us was a federation. It was not only a federation between White and Black, but a federation between Black and Black: I am referring to the federation of Malawi and Zambia which existed in the past. Why did that part of the federation not last? Where is the Syrian /Egyptian federation of which the only remnant is the United Arab Republic which is only Egypt? Why did it not work? There was the one in West Africa. Why did it break up? Everywhere where we look in the world …

You tell us why.

I shall tell him why, because he does not know. I am glad the hon. member is really interested in what I am saying. I shall give him the information. Wherever you find people who substantially differ from one another, wherever you find people who like us want to be themselves, who want to retain their identity, their rights, their language rights, their spiritual and cultural values and their land rights, you will find the same position. They will assert those rights, and that is why. Everywhere in the world where you look at attempts of governmental authorities to force people into one unitary system, when substantial differences exist amongst them—be it religious differences, ethnical differences or other differences—you will find the same pattern. In Northern Ireland you can go to Belfast; it is a beleaguered city. Sadness reigns over that city. Look at it! Look at the position of the Tamil in Ceylon! In Biafra—two million people killed! Take for example the Sudan! Look at Cyprus! Where can they point to a single example in contemporary history where people were successfully forced together the way they are trying to force them together? Now they are going to tell us they are not going to force them. How else are they going to apply their policy to the majority of Bantu peoples in this country? How are they going to sell it to the White voters in this country? As a former speaker pointed out, they must either be blatantly dishonest with the Bantu or dishonest with the Whites. They cannot have it both ways.

Let us look further at our position. To the north of us there are 350 million African people, organized constitutionally and living in 42 states, having 42 ambassadors, 42 voices at all conferences and congresses throughout the world, whether they like it or not. I am not dealing with the pros and the cons, the merits as to whether they should have been granted independence earlier or not at all. We are looking at realistic facts, facts as they exist today. The African peoples and states are there; they are independent. How does this federal concept fit in with the whole trend in Africa?

How does it fit in in South-West?

Mr. Speaker, if I were in the position of that hon. gentleman, who made very severe accusations against an hon. Minister last year on which a report was before this House … Well, I ask members to consider what the value of that hon. gentleman’s remarks in this House is. They can go and read the report; it was unanimously approved by his colleagues. He can go and read what they themselves think of him.

Order! The hon. member must proceed with his speech.

In the early ‘sixties, there was the declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples, which has become in the world at large—whether we like it or not—one can almost say the guide-light. In that declaration it was stated categorically that economic non-viability is no excuse for not granting people full independence. In the Charter of the United Nations—and their leader, Gen. Smuts, was a co-author of that Charter—the concept of self-determination has an honorary place in the first article of the Charter: self-determination of the peoples of the world. It was considered one of the main objectives that states had to strive for in the post-war period in order to save the world from the scourge of war. This is the position, but that is not all. Since 1900 90 states have come into being. Since 1960 45 states have come into being, the majority of which are African states. We have heard a lot of the hon. members—usually they are at the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration about fragmentation, smallness of areas and numbers of peoples, etc. Most recently three states were admitted to the United Nations with a total population, for all three, of about one million people. These were Bahrain, population 207 000 and area 213 square miles; Bhutan, population 770 000 and area 18 000 square miles, and Qatar, population 130 000 with an area of 4 000 square miles. We can put all three into one of our Bantustans.

Like a Basterstan.

The important thing is that the proliferation in independent states in Africa and elsewhere has at its root Nationalism. In this whole world with its modern trends and concepts, which are inevitable, and with 350 million people north of us organized into 42 states—the Opposition cannot run away; they cannot go to the moon where we would like them to—do the hon. members opposite believe for one moment that the Nationalism all over this Continent on which we live, will not keep on feeding the Nationalism of our Bantu peoples? How will they accommodate that, to use the hon. Leader’s phrase? How will they accommodate the national aspirations of peoples who want to be free, or do they still dwell in the former century when imperialist governments in dark corners of the world drew up and wrote constitutions for peoples and trampled on them? That time has passed. When we look at their policy, from the point of its consequences internally, which must inevitably be disastrous for South Africa, and when we come to the other side of it and, as I have said, and look at it in the wider context in relation to the rest of the world, can there be any doubt as to how this policy will be viewed in the rest of the world? To say that it will be rejected is to put it mildly. It will be regarded as an act of political bankruptcy. It will subject South Africa not only to ridicule, but will encourage our enemies to wage their vendetta against us with new and fresh vigour, because basically that policy is weak. It is indicative of fear, it is indicative of a realization on the part of the White man that he cannot survive on the African continent, and so he surrenders and capitulates.

*Mr. Speaker, it is against this background that I should like to come back to the hon. member for Yeoville. Before doing so, I just want to deal briefly with the hon. member for Johannesburg North. He said that as far as the safety of South Africa in the international sphere was concerned, he wanted to pose this question in all seriousness: “Which government has ever done more to jeopardize this safety than this very National Party Government”? Then he goes further: “At a time when even the most powerful countries in the world are looking for friends and allies, we find that South Africa finds itself in the most dangerous position of not having one single military ally and also very few friends”. How tragic and what a pity it is …, he laments “… that South Africa, at one time one of the most popular small nations in the world, finds itself without any military allies and with so few friends today”. He then proceeds with his tragic story. But is he so ignorant? Where does it come from? Where does the information come from that the world has about South Africa? Mostly from our own circles, and who belongs to those circles? A recent report of the Special Committee on Apartheid of the U.N., for example, quoted the following sources: Cape Times, 83 times, the Star, 17 times; the Rand Daily Mail, 12 times; Sunday Times, five times; Sunday Express, five times; Port Elizabeth Evening Post, three times; Pro Veritate, once; Natal Mercury, once; and the Hansard of this House 23 times; these are usually questions asked in this House by hon. members opposite and then an hon. Minister, having no option, furnished the raw statistics. He has no option and does not furnish the background. These people then get hold of these statistics and the U.N. use them and add the idiom and the background themselves. In this way the Minister of Prisons, for example, furnishes statistics of the number of people in prison. What does one find in the U.N. reports and in the publications of our enemies, on television programmes, and so forth? Something like: “The South African Minister of Justice … (or words to that effect) “yesterday, or the day before yesterday, etc., indicated in Parliament …” and then the figure is quoted, “were in prison”. Then they immediately proceed to furnish a description of the most deplorable prison conditions imaginable prevailing here to achieve the emotional effect. This is what happens. A large percentage of their information about South Africa leaves the country in this way. I do not want to launch an attack against the newspapers today, but I want to make one thing quite clear. Where in Africa would the hon. member for Houghton or any other hon. member on that side of the House be in opposition and say the things—and say them so freely—and still get away with it? Where in Africa—and this includes the Cape Times, the Rand Daily Mail, and all the others as well—would a newspaper be able to write these things about this Government and still have at its disposal channels created by the Government to send those things out of the country to the outside world to be published against us? Can you see, Sir, that their own actions are a contradiction of the lies they tell. That is the position. Furthermore, we are continually dealing with the same old group of outcasts. Here are a few names! Segal, Brian and Sonya Bunting, Dadoo, Slovo, Leballo, Makiwane, Mahomo, Reeves, Scott, Crowther, Benson, Sachs, Resha, Tambo, Brutus, Minty, Hodgson, Pillay, Collins. Does one ever hear the Opposition repudiate them? Never! These are the heroes of that party. The same old group of people attend antiapartheid committees in various countries. They do the organizing. They participate in the television films. Then the hon. member for Johannesburg North laments here the fact that South Africa supposedly has no friends. This is the situation. [Interjections.] If he does not want to believe me, is the word of the hon. member for Wynberg good enough for him? She visited the African Studies Centre at the North-Western University in Chicago. This is what she said, after she had not even been allowed to make a speech in which she intended putting the United Party policy. The report reads:

If this is not good enough for the hon. member, the hon. member for Yeoville also returned from a visit to America. He said in this House on 7th May, 1969 (Hansard, col. 5461)—

In other words, in 1969 he said in this House in advance that the outside world was already seeing through that ruse of merit which would be relevant in compiling the voters’ rolls. Of course, at that stage they did not have this policy. At that stage he did not think they would get this policy. Then he goes further and says—

He states further that the world believes today—

This was said by the hon. member for Yeoville. He was being serious on that occasion. After telling us that this came as a revelation to him as a result of the experiences he had at U.N. and of the charges levelled against us and the difficult and steep road that was lying ahead of us, he went on to say that he was being very serious about this matter. He said we should be careful about the way in which we present our policy and the way we White political parties behave towards one another in our political dealings, and so forth. Then he goes further and says (Hansard, col. 5462)—

The problem is namely that our enemies are trying to drive in a wedge between us and our friends in the West. Then he says (Hansard, col. 5462)—

He says here they were impressed by our policy.

This he said in 1969. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, it is with some difficulty that I recall the maiden speech made by the hon. gentleman who has just sat down. As I recall it, he was the one who made a plea that South Africa should subscribe to the Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations. The Declaration, if my memory serves me correctly, provides that you may marry whom you please. You will recall how the hon. the Minister of Labour paled when he thought about our policy, because he thought that it would mean that your daughter would have to marry a “Kaffir”. The Declaration also says, as far as my memory serves me, that you may have the right as of right, to form a trade union. This hon. gentleman says that we are trying to provide a constitution for our country comparable with that of Switzerland. That hon. gentleman would like us to carry on and emulate the constitution of England which we have had since 1909 and which even in England they appreciate does not work administrative-wise because they are also getting over-governed in this modern society. Of course, the fact of the matter is that you cannot compare our situation with the situation anywhere else in the world. We have to provide a solution which is a South African solution, a solution which is tailored to our facts and our difficulties, and that is what we have done, and that is the plan outlined by my hon. leader. But, Sir, the hon. gentleman talks, in his wonderful theory, as is his wont, about nationalism being the sire of all the development that there is, of self-determination and the wish for it. What he forgets is that there is a greater, broader interest, a common interest, which is entirely ignored by this Government and by his philosophy; and when he says that this policy will be rejected by the world, one wonders how much more rejection is possible than the rejection of this Government’s policy by the world. Far from our policy being based on fear, it is based upon the faith that we have as South Africans that we, as an integral country comprised of all our peoples, not only can survive together, but that we can build something which will be a showpiece, of which we will be proud, and which will make us one of the great nations of this world, economically and in every other way. That is the object of the operation. Sir, in this debate my hon. leader levelled the most serious charge that could be levelled against any government, and we have had no answer from that side. We have had an attitude of mind almost like that of an alcoholic. You cannot help an alcoholic until he begins to learn that there is something wrong with him, that he has a problem. Sir, these people sit around as if they have no problem, as if there is nothing wrong at all, and this is what has terrified me about this debate so far. They refuse to believe that there is anything wrong. Not one of them has admitted that there is anything wrong; according to them everything is fine, and we have had not one answer from them. Sir, I am not surprised. When the hon. the Prime Minister assumed office as Prime Minister, he made a speech on the steps of the Senate, a speech that I remember very well. He said that he was going to follow in the footsteps of the late Dr. Verwoerd. I do not think that he knew, or that anybody on that side knew, where those footsteps were to lead. I do believe that they have looked for them but that they have not found them, because there has certainly not been one suggestion as to where these footsteps are leading. They come here, Sir, and have the impertinence to ask all the questions that they do about our policy and where we are going and what is going to happen in the future. They have been governing this country for 25 years, Sir, and we have not heard from anybody in what direction they are going. The hon. the Prime Minister asks us all sorts of questions, but he does not even know what his own policy is with regard to the Coloureds. He has to appoint a commission to tell him what his policy should be about the Coloureds.

That is nonsense and you know it.

What is more, Sir, it is a multi-racial commission that is going to be appointed. I do not know what it is for. If he wants to know anything, we have done our research in this matter. He can come along and ask, and I am sure that my hon. leader would give him the information that he wants; he can have it now and then he can get on with it.

But surely you are the father of the baby. Tell us about it.

Sir, I shall tell the hon. the Prime Minister all about what he calls “the baby”. It is a baby that he is going to hear an awful lot about for an awfully long time throughout the rest of this session. What does the hon. gentleman think he is going to do in respect of the Coloured people? Does he have any idea as to what place they will have? Certainly they are not going to have a Coloured homeland, unlike the hon. the Minister of the Interior, who feels that they should. And in so far as the urban Bantu are concerned, there is no policy whatsoever. They do not even recognize that they are here. Is it any wonder that things happen such as have happened in Durban? We have the hon. the Minister of Labour for the first time looking into the future and talking about a “gemenebes”, a Commonwealth of Nations. But his great objection is that we should never sit around with Coloured people, with non-Whites in the same House. What is going to happen in this “gemenebes”, and does the hon. the Prime Minister subscribe to that? Is there going to be a “gemenebes” and what will it consist of? Are the Coloureds to be represented, and if so, on what basis? Will the Indians be represented, and if so, on what basis? And are the homelands all going to be represented and, if so, on what basis? And will the urban Bantu be given representation on it, and on what basis? Surely we are entitled to answers to these questions, or at least to one or two of them.

Our children will tell us.

What has been fascinating about this debate is this. There have been a lot of pickings by various people in regard to details they wish to try to sort out like a lot of chickens scratching in a kraal, looking for this and looking for that little detail, but significantly there has not come one criticism from that side of the House about the policy, the principle, of federation for South Africa.

We reject it outright.

Let me say this. The hon. the Prime Minister will be forced, except that he will not have the reins of Government to do it, but if he did he would be forced, his Government will be forced to accept a federation on the basis we have suggested, and I will tell you why, Sir. The one great feature which distinguishes this side of the House from that side of the House is this. There are two kernel points. The one is that we believe it is the duty and the responsibility of the White man to retain control and to develop this country and its constitutional pattern for the benefit of all the people. That is number one, and the other thing is that we believe obviously also, because it goes with that, that we are one country and will remain one country and that all the peoples in it will remain forever part of that country.

And if they want to secede you will not allow them to do so?

We will deal with that in a moment. The hon. the Prime Minister is in much more difficulty. What happened in South-West Africa? The hon. member for Wonderboom ignored this. He started hurling abuse at the hon. member for Simonstown because he had raised the matter of South-West Africa, on which he apparently is an expert or should be. What happened there? Once the hon. the Prime Minister was obliged to concede that South-West Africa had an integrity and could be treated as an integral whole, once he had to negotiate on that basis there was no choice left open to him but to deal with the question of South-West Africa on a federal basis.

You do not understand it.

There is no other way in which it could be done. You know, Sir, the Executive Committee in South-West Africa, consisting of Nationalists of course, talked about this and said it wanted a federal system.

That is nonsense.

What do you mean it is nonsense? Let me read to you from the report in the Rand Daily Mail of 26th October, 1972. This is a statement by the Executive Committee of South-West Africa. It says that freedom in a unity state can only lead to the domination of one or more groups by another, suppression and bloodshed. Did they not say that? “It will be a tragedy if people living within the boundaries of South-West Africa are forced into such a sad state simply because people in other parts of the world had decided that they knew better.”

What are you trying to prove?

I am just proving that so long as you cannot deal with the question of South-West Africa on the basis that all these nations will become independent nations and you feel that South-West Africa as a whole has an integrity on its own, then you can only deal with it on the basis of being within a federation. I want to ask the hon. the Prime Minister another question. The hon. the Prime Minister is on record as saying that the Bantu homelands will be developed and when the time is ripe they will be allowed to become independent if they want to.

Yes.

That is so. Well, I am very glad the hon. the Prime Minister concedes that. What the hon. the Prime Minister is saying is that they have a choice on whether they want to become independent or not.

Yes.

Self-determination.

You certainly cannot force them to become independent. The hon. the Prime Minister concedes, that. What I want to ask the hon. the Prime Minister is this: Say they say they do not want to be independent; then, on what basis do you deal with them? On what other basis can you deal with them except on a federal basis, such as my hon. Leader has suggested? [Interjections]. There may be another basis; perhaps the hon. the Prime Minister will tell us. However, once you concede that they are developed …

Do we have a federal basis at the moment? [Interjections.]

This is precisely what we propose. On what other basis are they going to remain? Is he going to tell us that they are going to remain a part of the country, that they are going to have no say, they are never going to be consulted about matters which concern the whole country of which they are part?

The choice is theirs. [Interjections.]

What is the choice? On what sort of basis are they going to be dealt with? These are now parts of the country and the morality of this Government’s policy, as I have understood it, the morality which they have kept up to the rest of the world and to people here who wanted moral justification for it, is that under this policy you give them everything. You actually give them sovereign independence; that is the morality of it.

Yes, of course.

Right. Now say they do not want it; then where is the morality and how do you deal with them?

They will remain the self-governing units as they are now.

Just as they are now?

Yes.

There will be no change. And what about the citizens of those places who have lived permanently in the urban areas? What about them?

The position will remain exactly the same.

As it is? [Interjections.]

Surely it will not remain the same.

It certainly will not remain like that. If this situation goes on and if the hon. the Prime Minister is, as he is doing now, promising us that this is a situation which we shall have forever, then he should tell me where the White people are going to live, because in those circumstances I shall rather live in KwaZulu where the people are happy, contented, than live in Durban where the majority of the people are malcontents, discontents, and always will be, because this Government’s policy is always going to be the same. How can the hon. the Prime Minister say this? He concedes that they need not be independent. I want to say that there is no homeland that I can imagine, of any size, that is going to opt for independence. Must they cut themselves off from the land of milk and honey on which they subsist, which gives them their future, which gives them their economy, cut themselves off and go into a demarcated area which is over-populated and in which they have every prospect of starving unless they can make some pact with some foreign country with an interest in exploiting that country for other reasons than the interests of those people? That is the question. This is a bluff. The policy of this Government is absolute bluff, once you concede that they do not have to be independent, and, as I say, they will not opt for it in any case. [Interjections].

There is no choice.

The most important aspect of this whole scheme is the federal unit. The most important aspect is to develop all of those units. It is the only basis upon which you can give recognition to the reality of Africa. My goodness me, is there anything more real in South Africa than the fact that the population group which is in the majority in every one of our cities, in every one of our magisterial districts, is the Bantu? This plan gives recognition to the reality, to what is. I do not think that hon. gentlemen who have sat there so long with their eyes closed and who believe that everything can be resolved by that brigade of short back and sides this Executive, who sits somewhere in Pretoria or in Cape Town sometimes … What has happened here? The State the hon. member for Wonderboom was pleading for, the constitution of England, arose in England in the old days when the King was all-powerful. He ruled everything and every part of everyone. It was gradually democratized; other opinions came in. The process of the modern world even in Great Britain has tended to grow in upon itself. There are so many agencies which have to deal with so many aspects of modern life that it started to creep back again. We now find that you are returning to the de facto position where in fact the Executive, the King, is still the King. You are back to square one. This is not good enough. We do not have the people to run the country as a unitary state the way we are going at the moment. There is nothing that gives more offence …

Is this the father of all this nonsense?

… and these gentlemen will not realize it, the short back and sides brigade, because they have been handing out the orders from their places in Pretoria. There is nothing that gives more offence than to be told by someone whose business it is not and who is not part of your community, how you and your community should behave in respect of the matters that concern you and your community. That is a lesson this Government has to learn. The one thing the hon. gentleman has failed to talk about, is the cardinal aspect of this policy, that is Parliament. What we have said is that this Parliament shall be sovereign and that this Parliament which is sovereign shall remain as it is. This will be so because, as I say, we believe that it is our duty and responsibility as White people to develop this scheme. This Parliament devolves powers, as my hon. leader has said, as much as possible to those units; it will regulate the whole machine. There are people who wonder why we want to do these things; they wonder why we should devolve these things. Obviously you must, if you can, create more and more Government units. This is the only way we are going to give any sort of opportunity to dissentient minorities to make their views known to others. You are almost going to be forced to consult all the time under a system like this. It multiplies the opportunities for citizens to partake in governing their own affairs.

May I ask the hon. member a question? If this Parliament is going to remain sovereign, does it follow that the other groups in South Africa, the non-Whites, will never have real power?

Real power is the power to determine those matters which are of your own interests; those matters which concern you personally, the things in which you are interested. Then we believe there are matters of common interest. That is why the hon. gentlemen do not understand what we are talking about. We believe that all of these people are part of one country; they have a common interest in this country. All of them have the desire to see their whole prosper because it is in the interest of all of them to see that it does.

But this Parliament, in terms of your federation policy, is going to remain sovereign and White. That means the other groups will never have power. [Interjections.]

What the hon. the Minister forgets is that there is provision made also for the federal assembly, and the federal assembly will be the place in which all those federal units, all the racial groups of this country, will be represented. This will be the greatest place for consultation South Africa has ever seen in its history. It will be a sort of national convention in permanent sitting. What is wrong with the country at the moment that you do not get together? The hon. the Prime Minister has asked this question. There is a federal assembly; there is a place where you get together!

A debating society.

That is the place where we have a common interest. One thing we cannot run away from, one thing we do not run away from and one thing we will not run away from, one thing that distinguishes us from the gentlemen over there is that there is a large body of interests, which are not the concern only of one or other group. They are the concern of the whole of the country. That federal assembly is the place where these matters will be discussed, where everyone will be heard …

Finance? Defence?

… where consultation will take place. It is no good asking “what powers are the federal assembly now going to have?” It is no good asking, for example, the question, what happens to Parliament? Obviously one does not say that Parliament will remain there for ever and ever.

Do you know what I think? I think it is a swindle.

By the same token, one does not say that it is not possible. Parliament might find itself to be unnecessary, but that is not a decision that our children will make as they will with the Coloureds. It is not even a decision, I think, that our grandchildren will make. I do not know, but it is a decision that will be made by the White people in their sovereign, White Parliament.

As the father of those children, may I ask the hon. member a question? Why did you change your policy? What was the reason for doing so?

Mr. Speaker, I want to say that there has been no change of policy. [Interjections.] I am sorry, does the hon. the Prime Minister mean the federal plan as expounded?

You changed your old policy for a new one. Why?

The hon. the Prime Minister must understand one thing: Our policy is that there are four pillars and all our thoughts are based upon those four. They are that we believe in consultation at all times at all levels between all the peoples in this country; we believe that, in the interests of all those people, there should be control by the White group for the foreseeable future; we believe …

Forget about what you believe. Tell us why you changed your policy.

Wait a moment. We believe we should share the fruits of this civilization with anyone who has the capacity for it and we believe in the freedom and the dignity of the individual. Those are our principles.

Yes, we know you believe, but why did you change it?

We have not changed anything. [Interjections.] I do not have one here but I shall let the hon. the Prime Minister have a copy of our principles. He will see that the United Party pledges itself to setting up a federation of the peoples of South Africa. It is in the constitution and has been there for years. There is nothing changed.

You know, I do not think you were the father of it at all. You know too little about it.

Well, the only one who called me a father is the hon. the Prime Minister. If he must have his little game, he must; it does not matter.

If you were the father, the baby is stillborn.

What we suggest is a framework within which we can build in the future, a framework about which we will consult with all the peoples as to their future.

May I ask you then, why did you change the representation in this House?

Well, let us put it this way—why did we change it? It is now what it is … [Interjections.] The hon. the Prime Minister asks questions but now he does not want to hear the answers.

I am listening.

Oh, I see; I thought he was laughing. I am so sorry. The hon. the Prime Minister asked us a question. We believe that there should be a body in which all the people of South Africa should be represented.

Yes, we know what you believe, but why did you change your policy? [Interjections.]

We feel that this federal assembly would be a better body, it will be more representative, it will be more in keeping with the scheme, and it will be more acceptable, especially to people who have the attitude of mind like that hon. gentleman and the Minister of Labour, who says that in no circumstances will he sit in the same “raad” as a non-White. That is his attitude, an attitude of mind that cannot survive in this country.

Mike, you were only the stork.

A lot of things have been forgotten. I can go on for hours talking about this … [Interjections.] The hon. gentlemen talk about federalism, but what they forget is that one of the most fascinating countries in Europe, with one of the most modern federations, is Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany, where they are learning all the time. Their experience is that you can do all the things, connected by a common interest, by means of new and different techniques. And the thing is growing. It does not matter whether this Government steals this policy, or whether it has its own policy. What policy this Government has does not matter, it will not govern this country, they will not keep it together and there will be no future for this country, unless you have, whatever your policy is, an attitude of mind which is modern, which is real, which is charitable and able to cope. They do not have this attitude. If this Government really believes, and it does not really believe, that this is going to be a country comprised only of White people, they are living in a fool’s paradise. The hon. the Prime Minister has already conceded now that the Bantu are not necessarily going to be out in an independent homeland and that they are going to be here permanently. You have to have a future based upon something that is real and is able to be developed. I am reminded, because my time is now up … [Interjections.] If the hon. gentlemen who laugh are prepared to arrange that I can have another half-an-hour, I will be overjoyed. I am reminded of just one quotation from Morte d’Arthur of Alfred Lord Tennysson, that “the old order changeth, yielding place to new, and God fulfils himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world”. The path that my hon. Leader has set out is the path South Africa will follow, that this Government will follow, will be forced to follow, and we go forward not in fear, but in faith that all our people have the capacity to live together and in fact want to make their contribution to our common fatherland.

Mr. Speaker, it has been a long time since I have seen a person in greater political travail than the hon. member for Durban North, the hon. member who has just resumed his seat. He is, after all, the father of the federation plan they are presenting to us. The past few days penetrating questions have been put to the Opposition, from this side of the House, about a matter which could dramatically change the political future of South Africa if it is even remotely implemented. When these members were running away from these questions, as they were one after the other, we all thought that when the hon. member for Durban North took the floor he would indeed give us answers to all those questions. All we saw in his case was how his face began to perspire as a result of his political travail.

As far back as Monday the hon. the Leader of the Opposition began trying to give us an indication, in a very disjointed and clearly nervous way, of this new federation plan. When, nervously and so unsure of himself, he tried to explain the policy, he attempted to give this House, quite unasked for, the assurance that there is no disunity in his party. But that is surely not true. The United Party, which is here moving a motion of no confidence in the Government, and trying to present itself as an alternative Government, is an absolutely pathetically divided party. It is so divided that the Sunday Times of 27th August, 1972, to which the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs has already referred, announced with great banner headlines that a new United Party had been established in the Transvaal—you could say, Sir, a “Herstigte Verenigde Party” (Reformed United Party). Now we have two “herstigte” parties—the one super-verkramp, the “Herstigte National Party” and the other hyper-enlightened, the “Herstigte Verenigde Party”. Is it not strange and remarkable that the hon. gentleman, Harry Schwarz, is the leader of the “Herstigte Verenigde Party”? Or is the United Party perhaps the “Jew-Knighted” party? The hon. member for Rondebosch is surely only the leader of the Mafia gang of the old United Party, as the Sunday Times has referred to it on more than one occasion. Two months later, on 16th October, the Sunday Times found it necessary, as a result of a boisterousness on that side of the House, to remind the Mafia gang, the old United Party veterans, the leadership group, of the birth of a “Herstigte Verenigde Party” in the Transvaal, which it did in the following words:

Mr. Speaker, I am quoting with respect to the only lady in the House at the moment—

Then one asks oneself: Why was the birth of a “Herstigte Verenigde Party” so essential? It was because it had become a pathetic party with pathetic records. The hon. member for Durban North, who has resumed his seat, has referred obliquely to what this party supposedly had not done in the past 25 years. But let us see what that party looks like after 25 years in the Opposition benches. Today, on behalf of Mr. Harry Schwarz, who unfortunately cannot be present in this House as a result of his own party’s arrangements—and therefore cannot himself apply for recognition of certain of these records, which I think are world records—I want to apply for recognition, before the old United Party vanishes. If one listens to the speeches of members, speeches such as those of the biggest comic actor in the House, the hon. member for Hillbrow, it is clear that the Progressive policies of Mr. Harry Schwarz are strong currents in the new policy of that party.

What, now, are these records? The first is that there is not another political party in the world which has tried to present itself as an alternative government with so much misplaced rashness over so long a period, i.e. 25 years. This United Party record is acknowledged by the English Press, and in the following words. In the Sunday Times of 2nd July, 1972, the following is stated about this United Party record—

There is the express acknowledgment of our claims on this side of the House that it is misplaced rashness with which the Opposition has tried to present itself as an alternative government for a marathon period of 25 years. The United Party must, in the words of their own newspaper, disappear because, according to that newspaper, they can never become the alternative government. That is the reason, Mr. Speaker. The United Party must “submerge”, and with it must drag into the depths its name and its personality; in other words, it must drown itself, and that is exactly what it has done. Hence the joyful tone in the Sunday Times’ exclamation of two months later, as in its leading article: “A new United Party born in the Transvaal”—a “Herstigte Verenigde Party.”

I now come, Sir, to the second record. There is no other political party in the world that has for so long a period, for 25 years, been afflicted with so great a lack of policy as the United Party. For 25 years that side of the House has never been able to succeed in drawing to its side the necessary inspired and dedicated brainpower to formulate for it a policy acceptable in any sense of the word; it could never succeed in doing so. Sir, this United Party record is acknowledged by a variety of newspapers—too many, actually, to be mentioned, because virtually every English newspaper came for a taste of this delicious political dish at the end of last year. But I firstly want to quote the Pretoria News. It acknowledges this record as follows—

This is surely a clear acknowledgement, by the English press itself, that the United Party has no policy and that they have to “steal” from the National Party to at least have something. Sir, it is not only the Pretoria News that levelled this terrible allegation at its party, i.e. that they are so without policy that they have to steal something from our side to at least be able to have something: the Sunday Times also acknowledges this world record of their being without a policy. Because the United Party, as a result of their lack of policy, as the Sunday Times puts it, can never come into power, the newspaper gives them the following advice—

Sir, in passing I want point out that the Sunday Times is calling the United Party up—the whole United Party—to exchange the hold of a kind of verkrampte Mafia for a much worse hold, that of a political brood. There is no policy to speak of, Mr. Speaker; that newspaper is not calling upon them to change their policy; the newspaper merely states that they should become the home for political refugees, so that they can topple the National Party. That is the advice being given to them, not that there has to be any change in policy, because those newspapers know that even if they were to do this they would still not be in a position to come into power. The United Party then reacted to this request to the Sunday Times by electing Mr. Schwarz in the Transvaal to the leadership of the United Party.

Sir, the fact that for almost 25 years the United Party has had no policy, is further confirmed in the following words of the Sunday Times—

This is after 25 years—

That newspaper is referring here to the Opposition’s new federation plan, and since this plan will affect the non-Whites most dramatically, and members of the United Party do not want to tell us whether they have consulted the non-Whites, one would have expected this newspaper to give an indication as to whether the policy would also be acceptable to the Black people whom they are supposedly so concerned about. But, Sir, I leave the matter there. Let me come to the third record. I want to state that never in the political history of our country has there been a party that has so violated the term “opposition” as specifically the United Party. For 25 years the United Party could not succeed in becoming worthy of the term “opposition” and this world record of being the most unworthy Opposition in the world is also acknowledged by the English Press. On 2nd July, 1972, the Sunday Times stated the following—

Mr. Speaker, listen to this cry of distress—

What a devastating accusation, Sir, by their own Press. The 25 year-long record of being the most unworthy Opposition cannot be expressed in any clearer language. And then they, of all people, are the ones who come along and move a motion of no confidence in the Government.

Sir, I come to the fourth record. Without contradicting myself in respect of the Opposition’s lack of policy, I want to state that there is not another political party in the world that has maintained so rapid a rate of policy change as the United Party in respect of the so-called policies they do have. Their policy changes so rapidly that one simply cannot keep up if one does not read the newspapers every day. How must the poor United Party members keep up? The people are so confused and mixed-up that they do not know whether they are coming or going. I am referring here to the umpteenth—I do not know the exact number—new policy of these people in respect of non-White homelands, in respect of non-White representation in the White Parliament, in respect of White supremacy, in respect of their federation plan, etc., matters for which the National Party has only one term and solution, and that is separate development. Now I must, unfortunately, disappoint the United Party and Mr. Schwarz. This record of the United Party cannot be recognized yet because the United Party will, in the future, again and again have to change the so-called policy it does have as long as the National Party is still going to rule, because there is no alternative, practical policy that can be set against that of the National Party. And the mere fact that these people have been looking for one for 25 years and have not yet found it, is proof of that.

But I now come to the fifth United Party record awaiting recognition. There has never been a political party in the history of the world that has so ruthlessly been ruled from the editorial offices of the English Press, the Sunday Times. The Sunday Times is the smear dictator of the English Press, and then it is the one that speaks of “the threat of dictatorship rule”. It was the draftsmen of the political Mafia concept, character assassination par excellence. It even politically murdered the hon. member for Yeoville and it took less than a year for it to manage this. It hates the National Party. It despises the Afrikaner, his language, culture, morals and customs. It is the dictator of everything and everyone that throws up contempt at the Afrikaner. All the people who range themselves round this character assassin are today virtually the big bosses of the “Herstigte Verenigde Party”. Therefore the United Party, in whatever form it presents itself, whether as the reform party or the old party, can no longer be the home for attaches to his Afrikanerhood, even though he knows nothing of national pride any longer, and even if he has no concept of national feeling and national ties.

Sir, all these valuable concepts in the life of any people are denigrated by the United Party, as far as the Afrikaner is concerned, in the words of the hon. member for King William’s Town, who is unfortunately not in the House at the moment. In this House he insisted that we relinquish our Afrikanerhood to form, with the Black people of this country, one nation that will consist of 20 million people.

That is a gross untruth.

It is true. He says that is what his father taught him.

It is the truth. The English Press, and with it the United Party, detest our national pride, our national ties and our endeavour to be Afrikaners. Diametrically opposed to that they elevate Black nationalism, Black identity and Black national pride to the utmost, yes, to a gift of God, which gives the Black people the right of opposition to everything and everyone that is White, even to the authoritative institutions of the State, just because they are White. That they regard as right. I want to prove this to them. The year before last, as far back as 16th January, 1971, the Sunday Times egged on Chief Buthelezi of the Zulu—I call it nothing but egging on—not to take the oath of allegiance to the South African Parliament. I quote the following from the Sunday Times—

In its blind hatred against the National Government and in its passionate desire to burden this Government with anarchy and chaos, this newspaper does not even mind violating the most elementary principle of statesmanship, and that is that any parliament is an institution of authority and that this authority is everlasting, regardless of the changes or fluctuations of individuals and political parties, except—and it seems to me this is the course the United Party wants to take with us—if the authoritative institution is destroyed, to be replaced by another form of authority. But authority there will always be. Allegiance is therefore sworn to the authoritative institution and not to individuals or to political parties, as the Sunday Times advised Chief Buthelezi, because he apparently has the right to opposition to everything and everyone that is White merely because he is Black. That is a right we apparently do not have, just because we are White. One consequently wonders who is now playing which role in the Chief’s latest opposition to negotiating with this Government about the consolidation of the homeland.

One consequently also wonders who is playing what role in the latest strikes that have just been taking place in Natal.

What are you insinuating?

These people who now sit and kick up so much dust, make so much noise and want to know what the Government is doing about that—here sit members of the House of Assembly who are directly concerned, and I did not hear about any of them going to see what is happening there. Not one. So much for their interest, and then they are the people who ask the Government: What are you doing about that? Do they not also have any responsibility? Is it not also their responsibility to go and see and find out what the problem is? They are surely the representatives of those people in Durban, but here they sit. Those are their constituencies. [Interjections.]

However, I shall leave the matter there. I now come back to this fifth record of the United Party, which I have already mentioned, and that is their being so successfully ruled from the editorial office of an English newspaper by only one man. His name is Stanley Uys. He rules them. In the Sunday Times of 13th August he boasts openly, on behalf of his newspaper, that he dictates to these people and lets them dance to his tune. He also gives proof of this. He says they have complied with all the Sunday Times’s demands by changing their policy in respect of Bantu homelands, in respect of non-White representation in the White Parliament, in respect of White supremacy, in respect of their federation plan. He then also insists for the umpteenth time on a change in the leadership of the United Party, the Mafia Gang, as he boldly refers to the party leadership and the parliamentary caucus of the United Party. This claim by Mr. Uys was, subsequently, partly complied with by the United Party when the hon. member for Yeoville was politically murdered and Mr. Harry Schwarz chosen as leader of the United Party in the Transvaal—the first time that such an honour has fallen to a Jew in the United Party. This fifth record of the United Party, of being so successfully ruled by only one man, was then denied by the Sunday Times of 27th August, 1972, and this was done after the same newspaper, 14 days previously, on 13th August, verbosely gave an explanation of how it dictates to these people and how it has them dance to its tune. The issue of 27th August states that this is not so, and it does so in the following words—

This is surely a ridiculous denial and a complete contradiction of this newspaper’s own bravado of 14 days previously when it furnished proof of how it dictated to these people and how it let them dance to its tune. It did so in the following words—

“You would have thought it had exploded a landmine in the party” puts me in mind of political terrorism. That is what is going on between the Sunday Times and the old United Party, the Mafia group I continue—

Then they say they do not dictate to the United Party, and the United Party denies that they are dictated to. But the newspaper goes even further—

Then they say they are not dedicated to by just one man from the editorial office of the Sunday Times! The newspaper goes further—

And then hon. members say they are not being dictated to! The newspaper then concludes with—

In other words, according to them there must be a basic change in the leadership. The hon. member for Rondebosch, who is the leader of the Mafia gang, must be replaced and transferred, according to them, and time will prove them right.

Mr. Speaker, is it parliamentary to refer to any member on this side or on the other side as a member of a Mafia gang?

Order! I think the hon. member for Orange Grove has raised a valid point here. A member of the Mafia, in the true sense of the word, means a drug-peddler who achieves his aims by any means, by murder, violence, etc. I would rather not have the hon. member referring to other hon. members as a “Mafia gang”. The hon. member must withdraw the words.

Mr. Speaker, I accept your ruling. I was chiefly quoting from newspaper reports.

Withdraw the remark!

Order!

That is now the party that wants to move a motion of no confidence in the Government; such a pathetic party with such a pathetic record, that makes an absolute farce of the United Party, a farce in the political history of South Africa and nothing more. Those are now the people who present themselves as an alternative Government and strive, in some way or other, to convince the people that we should place our future in their hands. In the words with which the Sunday Times, their own newspaper, dealt with these people, I want to reject the motion of no confidence in the Government, which came from the other side, with the following words—“This is nonsense”.

Mr. Speaker, having listened to the hon. member, with as much patience as one can summon, for the last half hour, I was compelled to wonder where the Sunday Times gets its wide circulation. It would have seemed from the way the Sunday Times angles its news stories that it was seeking to increase its circulation particularly in such places as Naboomspruit. But we were wrong! The most eager and devoted readers of the Sunday Times are nowhere else than in Odendaalsrus.

I read it often. It is fun.

On Sunday?

The Sunday Times, I think, would be delighted and flattered to know with what attention on every Sunday in Odendaalsrus their words are scrutinized and read by the hon. member. Having said that, I can find very little else in the speech of the hon. member to discuss.

Of course not.

I would like to go on, therefore, and to remind this House, if I may, that we are discussing a motion of no confidence in this Government. This Government has been in power for 25 years. We have had to live under the rule of this Government for 25 years. We are told now the Government looks forward to another 25 years. Let us do the exercise of examining what the next 25 years may look like and then consider in the light of the record of this Government what it is likely to do with those next 25 years. This will be the main theme of my speech.

But, Sir, we have also been asked to deal with federal policy. We have been asked a number of questions, every one of which I have written down. In analysing them, I find that every one but two, or maybe, charitably, three, deals with the federal assembly, which is not the most important part of the federal policy in so far as the security of the various communities goes. In other words, there has been no one, on that side of the House, if indeed anyone, who has considered the federal policy, the federal theme or the federal system in the light of the true security of the communities, which it embraces and which it guarantees. However, let me give members on the other side this assurance: Whether these questions are garbled, whether they are distorted, whether they are chosen from newspaper cuttings, whether they come from an interim proposal made by a commission or whether they are the actual policy as accepted by this party, they choose them at random, mix them up, pull them out of their wastepaper basket and say “Answer me now”. Well, we will answer every reasonable question. I would like to assure hon. members on that side of the House that they will hear the answers to and the explanation of the federal policy until they cannot bear it any longer. We will give them federal policy until they scream for mercy.

Did you see Mike suffer this afternoon?

Every question they asked will be answered and given back to them with compound interest.

It will be a big joy.

Therefore they need have no fear that we will dodge any question or that we will evade any matter affecting our federal policy. They will get it with interest!

However, I want to return to the main theme, which is an important one from the point of view of the federal policy, because we are asking ourselves: How is South Africa going to be governed in the next 25 years? This is the problem. I would like to examine this briefly in the light of four propositions: political, economic, social and then constitutional. Let all men of goodwill on either side of this House consider what we must achieve in the next 25 years. Politically, surely, we must have a just society in this country. We must establish a fair society or face chaos. Does anybody doubt this? We must make real progress in this country in every field, or face conflict and disorder. This is the choice before us. Can anyone on either side of the House doubt that this choice must be made? Sir, we have to achieve peace and prosperity in this country. We have to achieve it very soon or join the Third World. The Third World is that grey part of the world which is already existing in poverty and which looks as though it may never recover. Unless we can feed, house and clothe the people of this country and unless we make provision now for the 50 million people who will inhabit this country within 25 years, and raise their standards, South Africa will drop back. Unless we achieve this growth rate, and as a target, the doubling of our productivity, the doubling of our output in less than 25 years, South Africa will slip back into the Third World. This is a fact and this is what the economic development programme is about. It is proposing the means whereby we may avoid this fate. This is what the proposal for a 5,75% growth rate is about. Lastly, we must avoid the escalation of hostility throughout the world. We have somehow got to evolve relations with the rest of the world which will avert what will otherwise certainly become an outbreak of violence against Southern Africa.

Economically we are going to have to provide for 50 million people by the end of this century. These are not my figures, but come from the hon. the Minister of Planning, from his Department of Statistics. The predictions are of that order. Now if we are going to have 50 million people in this country by the end of this century, a little more than a quarter of a century hence, within the lifetimes of many of us, this means that we will have to have in South Africa at least 20 million economically active people. Twenty million people in South Africa will have to be economically active, proficiently, efficiently active in South Africa in order to house, feed and clothe the people of this country. They have to do more than that. They may have to double the amount required to feed and house and clothe ourselves, because they will also have to export a great deal in order to buy necessities in order to maintain their rising standards at a time when such aids as gold are no longer available. There will have to be a rapid rise in efficiency and productivity if we are going to achieve this. People will have to be trained. You cannot use inefficient cheap labour to achieve this effect. The social and educational status of people will have to be raised rapidly. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that within 25 years or so the average level reached by the Black people then should be not lower than the average status reached by the White people now. In other words, we have so to contrive matters, so to develop matters, that the economic well-being of the non-White people in this country then, that is within 25 years, will equal the level which the average White man has reached now. This is the kind of target we will have to reach and it is going to take some doing.

Constitutionally we must evolve a new method of participation, a new method of co-operation. We must contrive somehow, and it must be within the wits, the minds of South Africans, to arrange for people in South Africa to enjoy equal opportunities while yet safeguarding each of them, each community, against being dominated by a monopoly of power, or as the alternative, by sheer weight of numbers. We cannot go on having the position where each in his turn fears being dominated either by a monopoly of power or by sheer weight of numbers. There must be another way of seeing things; this way is federation. We shall come to it. I would have thought that most of these propositions would be common cause in this country. Is there anybody who denies that these kind of targets must be achieved within the short period of 25 years?

Well, Sir, let us look at the Governments record. Politically, we have in South Africa a society which consists at present of about, I would say, 23 to 24 million people. The Department of Statistics’ report in 1970 showed 22 million people. It was not a total enumeration. There have also been additions since then. I would say there are 23 to 24 million people in this country now. We are governed in this country, under the present unitary system, in a manner which enables the representatives of less than two million people to tell the other 20 or 21 million people how their lives should be lived. I do not blame the Government for using this system. They inherited it and they are using it. The question is: How do they use it?

Sir, let us look at the Coloured people. Are the Coloured people going to be absorbed into our society, or is it true that there is a strong and growing movement within the Nationalist Party to create a homeland for them? One hears curious rumours; one talks to people who should know, and one knows that inside that party there is a deep division current now. There is the philosophy of including Coloured people in a homeland, and strong resistance on the part of people in the Cape to such a philosophy as applied to Coloured people. The Coloured people whom they do not know; for they appoint a commission to investigate their social and other evils. One would have thought that after 25 years of Nationalist rule, which they are about to celebrate, they would know by now what it is the Coloured people need. Do we need a commission at this stage; do we really need to find out what ails the Coloured people? Are they going to use a commission to justify them in building some new industrial area, so that the Coloured people can be put out on some new sand-flats? What is their purpose, their aim? Does anybody not yet know what needs to be done for the Coloured people?

Let us look at the urban Bantu. We all know that more than half the Black people in this country live in urban areas. We all know that the number is growing. Let us look at the Transkei, for example. The Transkei, after all, is the area of South Africa where for a longer period than probably in any other homeland the people have enjoyed contact with White civilization, where they have worked in surrounding White areas, where they have had their own university for a very long time, where they have had experience of self-government. These people at this point of time, after 25 years of Nationalist government and nearly 20 years after the Tomlinson report, after all these years of Nationalist policy and homeland apartheid development, are in the situation that, whereas in 1960 190 000 of their economically active people were working outside the homeland, in 1970 that number has risen to 251 000. It is predictable that by the year 1980 that number will be over 300 000. Now, I have read very carefully the reports of the Xhosa Development Corporation, etc., and I can see no logical argument which refutes the assumption that this number will continue to grow and that by 1980 the number of Transkei people working outside their homeland will have risen to 300 000. This is one example—one can quote many others. The urban Bantu are eight million out of 15 million people. When this Government came into power 25 years ago, there were about two million Black people working in urban areas. The number now is more than half of the total. Only 46% of the total Bantu population are living in a homeland. More than half of them are living in the urban areas. This, Sir, was the policy which was designed to reverse the flow, to put them back into their homelands.

Only three years to go to 1976.

We have watched with sympathy, Sir, because there was a good deal of good intent in Government policy. We have watched them trying to work this thing out, but we have been convinced beyond any doubt that this thing is working in a direction which is precisely opposite to what was intended. Let me come to the position of White South African under this oligarchic system. I will choose my words with care because I do not wish to use the kind of hurtful words which were used by the previous speaker. It is right, Sir, to say that a great many White South Africans do not agree with the policies of this Government. Never mind what language they speak at home, never mind what racial origins they have the fact remains that, a lot of White South Africans do not agree with the policies of this Government. Is it right, Sir, that there should be constant reflections on their loyalty? Is it right that their motives should always be impugned? Is it right that the motives of anybody who disagrees with the philosophy of the minority of two million people who are ruling 22 million people should be impugned; that he should be subjected to a blatant assault on his sensibilities by the organs of State propaganda, including the Broadcasting Corporation? It is not right, and I protest here on behalf of the Coloured people, the rural Bantu, the urban Bantu and the White South Africans who do not agree with this Government. Let us take the case even of the rural Bantu, the homeland Bantu. Why is it that they reject this scheme? All those who are involved say that they do not want it. We have reached the stage now where even the greatest potential beneficiaries, the tribal chiefs, are saying that they reject it, that they no longer trust the motives of this Government. That is the stage that we have reached. Where are we going? Quite clearly we are not achieving the desired growth rate; we are not achieving the desired employment capacity; we are not achieving any of the things needed for the successful implementation of this policy. Sir, socially what are we doing for these people? Has their status improved? Are they in a happy situation when they come to our urban society? Is there any sign or indication that they will leave their urban society? If the argument is that once we have solved the rural problem, the homeland problem, everything else will be in order too, then I want to ask how long it will take. All the signs are running against a quick solution of this problem. Must these people wait—I would like the hon. the Prime Minister to answer these questions—for one generation or for two generations or for three generations? Must these urban people wait forever for the problem of the rural Bantu to be solved in order that their problems may also be resolved?

*Mr. Speaker, I should like to tell the House a short story. Actually it is a parable, and I hope that no-one will regard this as a reflection upon himself, because it is simply meant allegorically. I refer to the parable of the baboons in the vineyard. There was a high, rocky ridge. Baboons lived on top of this ridge. The baboons were reasonably contented; there were enough scorpions and there were spiders and there were berries and roots. But down in the valley was a new vineyard. This new vineyard lay squarely and bright in the sunlight, but it was a very young vineyard. Either from ill will or from wantonness, but definitely not because they were hungry, the baboons decided to destroy that vineyard, and one night they did so. They walked down into the new vineyard and they broke the shoots; they trampled the grapes underfoot and then left. You may ask what happened to the vineyard. In the end the vineyard flourished—and this is the real lesson, the moral of the parable—the baboons tasted the grapes, and it was delicious and sweet, grapes of the best quality. They became so fond of grapes that they forgot about the scorpions. One fine day they walked up to the owner, the farmer, and said: “Please, Sir, we are looking for work.” He gave them work, and up to this very day one can see baboons walking through the vineyard with baskets on their shoulders. This proves that once one has tasted sweet grapes, one can forget about scorpions and one can co-operate, whether one is a baboon or a farmer. As I have said, Sir, this story is simply allegorical. Anyone may regard it as he likes and he can deduct from it what he likes. But I should like to mention one thing here, in case there is any misunderstanding. The name of the vineyard was Federation.

And of the baboons?

Hon. members on that side of the House are very anxious to attack and to ridicule the federal concept. One has an obligation, in reply, to ask them a question based on the assumption they do not accept the concept of White people and Black people in fact being able to work together in this country peacefully, without endangering each other, that White and Black people can find a basis of co-operation in this country without endangering each other’s interests. Unless one accepts this, where do you go? What is their answer if, for example, the non-White says that he does not want to be forced out of South Africa, that he believes in the integrity of South Africa just as the hon. the Prime Minister now believes in the integrity of South-West Africa? If the Black people of this country say—and they certainly say it to us and they have said it to me—“We believe in the integrity of South Africa; the gold fields of South Africa are our heritage as much as your heritage, and the vineyards of the Cape are our heritage as much as they are your heritage because we have helped to build these things,” what will they do? They do not accept the historical argument that they have come from somewhere else, and that we have a prior claim to certain areas. Let us suppose that they advance, as we say they must advance. Let us suppose that they seek to raise their status as their status must be raised. Let us suppose that in 25 years from now, by the end of this century, the average Black man reaches the status then which the average White man enjoys now. Let us assume that they then may say: “The whole of South Africa belongs to us as much as to you. Thank you for offering us independence. We do not want it. We are South Africans.” And (for the benefit of the hon. member for Wonderboom) supposing they say: “We Black people believe in nationality as much as you do and now our nationality is South African,” what then happens in the exercise of self-determination? If they should say that, as they will say it, what do we say to that? Do we say: “You are the outcasts; you are a Xhosa or a Zulu or a Sotho, and we will not have you in South Africa?” Or do we—and I am sorry the hon. member for Wonderboom is not here now—deny them the right to call themselves South Africans? Do we deny them the right to become members, citizens, nationals of South Africa? What happens then to the exercise of nationality which the hon. member for Wonderboom says is the most precious thing a man can enjoy? Do we deny them that? There are certain assumptions being made on that side of the House, that they will accept independent nationhood, so-called, and that they will live in their small areas and will be happy. I want to predict that they will not, and that they will say: “We are South Africans and we wish to share the broad heritage of South Africa.” This is what will happen and it will happen in 25 years’ time.

Now I want to conclude by quoting something which was written quite recently by one of our Bantu poets. He said, in this very simple verse—

Now, Sir, Black people slowly are learning to talk and to state their demands and their requirements.

They are not talking to you.

If they speak only to you I shall be satisfied, if you listen. Buthelezi is speaking. Matanzima is speaking. The workers are speaking in Durban. Mangope is speaking. In their various ways, crudely and still finding their way, they are learning to speak. Are the White people willing to listen? That is my question. Is the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration listening or is he just talking? [Interjections.] If the Government is deaf to everything but the urgent whispers of its own advisers and of its own secret societies which tender advice even when not wanted, if that is all they hear, then they are deaf. If there is one thing that is a fatal political disease, it is political deafness. I think that this Government is growing politically deaf. I do not think they are hearing the voices of this country. Representing, as they do, two million people out of 23 or 24 million and being attentive to the wishes and the desires of the two million whom they represent, they are forgetting about the other 22 million. I think they must start listening or they will not be fit to govern this country. The other 22 million, represented or not, politically organized or not, must be taken care of. If you accept and exercise that great responsibility as a representative of two million people to govern 24 million people, then you must be very attentive to the sensitivities, to the sensibilities, to the normal desires and possibly the different desires which are not identical with your own desires, identical with your own customs, identical with your own habits; you must be sensitive to the desires of other people as well—all 22 million of them. If the Government remains deaf to these people, then I predict the rapid demise of this Government. It cannot come too soon. This debate is a vote of no confidence in this Government and I am happy to support it.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Von Brandis asked quite a few questions that have already been answered to a very large extent. I want to deal with two of his questions again. He asked whether the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development listens when the Bantu peoples speak to him. In reply to that I can only say this: I do not think that throughout history those people have ever been listened to more closely, or been spoken to more, than specifically during the past 25 years that this Government has been in power. The evidence is there. A second question he asked is whether this Government, if we look at his record, would be able to handle this country with its problems over the next 25 years. He flung an accusation across the floor and said: “We have not achieved anything”. I am now going to bring him a few proofs that his accusation is incorrect. Before doing so, I do want to say, though, that if he wants to be honest and looks back over the past 25 years, noting the achievements of this Government in the economic sphere, noting the political achievements, he must always remember what we took over in 1948.

A mess!

I say that if we look back on the achievements of this Government over the past 25 years, I have no concern, in the depths of my soul, that the next 25 years will not again be handled by this National Government in the interests of the whole of South Africa, in the interests of the White people, the Black people and the Brown people.

I want to tell the hon. member for Von Brandis that although it is said that he is reasonably expert in the field of economics, I am not. However, I want to give him a few names of people I think he knows well, who gave South Africa a testimonial of this Government’s achievements over the past decade or more. Recently a publication of a Johannesburg City Council appeared in which they gave review of the development of South Africa over the past 12 years and more. I want to quote only two brief paragraphs from this for the hon. member for Von Brandis, and possibly also for the hon. member for Park-town. It must be remembered that the Johannesburg City Council is a United Party City Council. However, they state the following—

The Johannesburg City Council states further—

The Johannesburg City Council, a United Party City Council, speaks of an “economic miracle”. I want to give the hon. member for Von Brandis another name. I want to deal with that quickly, because I should like to get to this federation story of theirs. I want to give him the name of Mr. Harry Oppenheimer. I have here a cutting of a speech he made in which he said the following words [translation]:

That is a testimonial from a man who is no friend of ours, in fact I think he is a supporter of the hon. member for Houghton. I want to mention a third testimonial. I shall just quote a few words from a leading banker from Switzerland who was here. This financial expert, Dr. R. H. Lutz, said the following, according to The Argus:

Now the hon. members sit still and pretend they do not hear. I think it hurts if one hears such words of praise from people who are not well disposed to this Government’s policy. It is not nice of me to draw comparisons with other countries, but hon. members know that there is a certain lady who, in a certain newspaper, bitterly hits out at South Africa. She lives, I believe, in Durban. I can give hon. members her name if they want it. She was in England recently. I say again that I do not really want to draw comparisons, but that side of the House is constantly telling us how badly this Government looks after its people. This lady, whose name I should perhaps mention anyway, Molly Reinhardt, said the following upon her return from England:

She paid R24 for a small room. But there is more. She walked into a café. Firstly I must mention that in our country one can get the finest cup of tea and a small biscuit for 10 or 15c. She went to the café and, she writes—

She stated further:

The hon. member for Orange Grove, the so-called expert in the television field, is constantly telling us that we are too strict in our censorship control. What does this lady say? Now the hon. member for Orange Grove must listen. She states—

I could continue in this vein.

You must not listen to everything the English say.

No, she is venomous as far as we are concerned, and when we quote her to tell you that things look worse in other parts of the world than they do here, you feel ashamed.

The hon. member for Odendaalsrus mentioned a few characteristics of the Opposition. I should like to add one or two. I should like to give a few quotations of what was said, after the by-election in Oudtshoorn, by the Chief Secretary of the United Party in South Africa, i.e. Senator Horak. He spoke disparagingly about our platteland votes as “the deep platteland”. We know what he means by that. According to newspaper reports the new leader of the Transvaal told a certain Mr. Dormehl that he did not need the Afrikaans vote in the United Party.

Disgrace!

I was not in that toilet where the small war took place. I merely read what the newspapers say. But if a leader of the United Party says that, and the Chief Secretary says that we on the platteland come from “the deep platteland”, in other words we are those people whom the hon. member for Wynberg called shanty town dwellers (blikkiesdorpers) in earlier years …

Oh, for heaven’s sake!

No, we remember that, and it hurt. Although they say those things, they speak of the fact that we are causing friction between the people in the country. I want to tell you that I think that the dyed-in-the-wool U.P. men in the Transvaal are going to crucify Harry Schwarz. I do not think little Graaff will ever make a move in Caledon again if the dyed-in-the-wool United Party men of Caledon get to hear that the United Party wants to get along without the Afrikaner’s vote.

During the speech of the hon. member for Durban North, our hon. Prime Minister put quite a simple question to the hon. member. That question was: Why did you change your previous policy? It was interesting to see that egg-dance. It was interesting to take note of the hon. member for Yeoville, because he feared the hon. member for Durban North could say something at any moment that he should not be saying. A second question was put to the United Party, to its leader in fact, as follows: What are you going to do with this White Parliament? We had dozens of answers to that. Harry Schwarz, of course, came into the Cape like a great gentleman and said: “Parliament will phase out”. I have it in writing in a cutting. Shortly afterwards the hon. the Leader of the Opposition said: No, the White minority in Parliament will continue to rule.

Rather tell us about your Coloured policy.

We are coming to that. I am therefore making the accusation that they have a specific federation story for the platteland. I do not think the hon. member for King William’s Town will quote Harry Schwarz in his constituency, i.e. to the effect that the White Parliament will disappear and that it will have to hand over its power to a federal Parliament. They may call it a federal assembly if they like. “Assembly” in Afrikaans means a Parliament, in any case, a body with autonomous authority. But in the city Harry Schwarz says: No, we are really planning a partnership in an integrated power structure for the non-White peoples. Now I wonder whether the hon. member for King William’s Town agrees with this. Can the hon. member tell me whether the federation plan of the United Party means a specific partnership in the integrated power structure for the non-White peoples. I am putting the question to the hon. member for King William’s Town. Or is he also one of the people who tells the story on the platteland that they will retain the White Parliament and not relinquish that authority.

I should like to quote a few passages from what other people say of the United Party. These people are not our supporters. Let me speak of Kaizer Matanzima. I have here what he said of the United Party. He said: “They are the most backward, stupid, and inhuman racialists among their people”. The Sunday Tribune wrote: The United Party’s federation plan is a meaningless riddle of words and a piece of political sophism. The Sunday Times wrote …

What are you saying, man? We want to know what you say.

I am coming to that. This newspaper states: “The United Party cannot guarantee that their federal plan will work; we are not even sure that all their M.P.s even understand the plan or want it to work”. But double talking! How can the United Party do anything but double-talk. Their ex-Transvaal leader is then the great master when it comes to double-talking. One day he says: “We shall stop the dangerous policy of independent Bantustans”, and the next day he says: “We accept the reality of ethnic Bantu homelands and would recognize them”. We therefore cannot blame the United Party for such terrible chopping and changing.

† It seems to me, and I am quite sure that what I am going to say is a fact, that the United Party is not telling South Africa exactly what they have in mind as regards this latest federal policy. If the Leader of the Opposition has his way the White Parliament will remain supreme and only certain minor powers will be delegated to the so-called community councils. But if Mr. Harry Schwarz and his young Turks should have their way the United Party policy will lead to an integrated multiracial society where the White Parliament will eventually disappear. They have already said that.

Who said that?

Mr. Harry Schwarz. He was quoted as follows: “Power must be shared”, said Mr. Harry Schwarz in an article with the heading “Cape gives new Transvaal Leader Reception”.

He never said that Parliament would phase out.

I have the article here and will quote the relevant passage shortly.

But you said that he had said so.

I will give the quotation just now. When these people talk about a federal policy, I want to tell them that a federal policy can only succeed when it is a compact between equals, equals who act jointly to adopt joint policies and to make joint decisions. These are not my own ideas or words, but these are the words written by many historians, people who have made a study of the history of the world. They say that a federal policy can only succeed when it is a compact between equals, who act jointly to adopt joint policies and to make joint decisions. To succeed, therefore, the United Party must first of all establish separate communities who coexist and interact as autonomous entities, united in a common order, each with an autonomy of its own.

*Sir, that is the important thing. This afternoon one of our hon. members quoted many instances—and last year I also quoted many instances in a speech—of attempts which had been made in Africa at federation schemes and which had failed because of minority groups that wanted to abuse the federal policy and deny the majority full political authority permanently. It is important to say—

The experts in the field of constitutional, political history tell us another important thing.

†I want to quote it now in English. That bilingual hon. member for Port Natal is not here, but I want to do it for the sake of the hon. member for Durban North. I repeat that this is not my personal opinion, but the opinion of many historians throughout the world—

I want to put this question then: Do they intend creating greater diversity in this country? I think their answer will be “No”; because if the answer is “Yes”, then I have to advise them that the sooner they accept our policy, the better.

The hon. Leader of the Opposition asks me to give the source of my quotation. The Mitchell committee itself also said:

Who said that?

Your own Mitchell committee.

No, it did not.

I have it written here in the Mitchell report.

Harry said so.

Where did he say it?

Harry was a member of the committee. Here I have a report which was published in the Cape Times of 1st October, 1972, on Mr. Schwarz’s speech here in Cape Town in which Mr. John Scott gave quotations from the report of the Mitchell committee. Here we also have written in inverted commas: “Parliament will phase itself out”.

It is not in the report.

Is this another report? Sir, this was where he gave the quotations from the report. Here we have written in inverted commas:

Sir, here we have it in writing. Sir, now I do not know. Now I am confused. Truly, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition says it does not appear in his report, so where did the newspaper get these words from? After all, it did not suck them out of its thumb. The hon. member may ask the reporter where he got it from. I give you his name: Mr. John Scott of the Cape Times. Here it stands between inverted commas, and now the hon. the Leader of the Opposition denies words from his own report. Sir, I think the hon. the Leader of the Opposition must give us clarity in this regard tomorrow, because this is an important matter. He must tell us whether these words appear in the report or not. Then he must repudiate the Cape Times and say that they have not spoken the truth. Alternatively he must say that the report has been altered since it was published in the newspaper.