I move—

1. (i) conditions of malnutrition among Whites and other sections of the population as a result of ignorance of the best and most economical use of available foodstuffs; and
2. (ii) malnutrition and even serious deficiency diseases amongst certain Bantu who cling to old tribal customs, wrong eating habits and in many cases moral decline and undesirable living habits,

and that this House most strongly condemns any misrepresentations made to exploit these conditions.

In this motion, as you will see, Mr. Speaker, we have in the first place the recognition of a very important national problem. The motion also tells us how we can combat this great national problem more effectively. We do not for one moment want to deny the existence of this serious state of affairs or try to avoid it. It is openly admitted that we have to deal with a very comprehensive and a very serious problem, and further that this problem affects not only the non-White section of our people but affects the White sections just as much. All sections of the population are affected by this particular problem. The seriousness of this problem and its scope is continually being brought to our attention from various quarters. We find for example the Health Department which continually draws the attention of the public to this problem and in a very clear and comprehensive memorandum on health guidance drawn up by Dr. F. S. du Toit of the Department of Health, it is pointed out that there are many ways by means of which information can be disseminated among the public and by means of which this problem is continually being emphasized and brought to the attention of the public. We must note the large variety of remedies which can be utilized in this regard.

For example, there are personal interviews and lectures which are organized on a very large scale. There are very clear and effective demonstrations and models for educative purposes. Pictures and film slides are used because these have more of an effect on many people and draw their attention more than statistical information does. Films are used as well as pamphlets and placards and exhibitions. We see these in so many public places. And so we can say that the public are aware of the seriousness and the extent of the problem which is under discussion here. But besides that there are of course the medical reports. If one reads the medical reports, for example, of the health officials in our cities, Durban, Pretoria and other large centres, one finds that they never tire of making much of this particular problem in order to emphasize it, to indicate how serious it is and to show that it is the task of the country as a whole to overcome this problem. If we read the newspapers we find that there are a large number of Press reports which also emphasize this matter from time to time and bring it to the attention of the public. I want to refer here to a series of articles which appeared in the Rand Daily Mail of 3 September, 1 October and 4,5, 8, and 9 October. I want particularly to bring these articles to the attention of the House and I will come back to them later. We say that this problem is regularly emphasized through the medium of the Press and brought to the notice of the reading public so that all of us are aware of the problem, know the scope of the problem and what serious results it has. As the result of all these sources of information we can say therefore that the public is very much aware of the extent of this problem. But it is also very important that this problem should be seen in its correct perspective and that we should not allow ourselves to be impressed by certain statements and allegations which are made and by incorrect interpretations which are placed before us; we must see this matter in its correct perspective and three points must be emphasized in order to put this matter in its correct perspective. In the first place we must appreciate the fact that there is a great difference between malnutrition and underfeeding. Where we have to deal with the problem of malnutrition we must not make the world understand that it is a case of underfeeding, of starvation and nameless misery which has arisen in our country as a result of that need. Of all the statistics which we have in our possession there are none which can tell us what percentage of all the diseases which result from malnutrition is due to malnutrition and what percentage is due to underfeeding. Of course there will be cases of underfeeding but no one can tell us that 10 per cent of these cases is due to underfeeding and that 90 per cent is due to malnutrition. No one can tell us that in 90 per cent of the cases people are starving and suffering from underfeeding as a result. But another important matter which we must remember if we want to see the matter in its correct perspective is that this problem is not restricted to South Africa alone but is a world occurrence; that many countries have to deal with this problem on a much larger scale than is the case in South Africa. Indeed, on the basis of statistical data we may even make bold to say that South Africa is the one country in Africa where, in proportion, this problem exists to a far lesser extent than in other parts of Africa.

Another matter which we must remember is that this problem has been receiving serious attention in this country for many years now and that we must thank our various Departments such as Public Health, Social Welfare and Agricultural Economics and Marketing and admire them for the energetic manner in which they are acting to combat and eliminate the problem. More than ever before is being done to-day to combat this position and to overcome the ailments and diseases which flow from it. Take for example the case of tuberculosis which is to a large extent connected with malnutrition. In this connection we are told by the Rand Daily Mail, for example, in their issue of 5 October last year—

Energetic action is therefore being taken on the part of the State to overcome and combat this problem of malnutrition and everything which flows from it. But before we go any further in analysing this matter we must issue a further warning; we must issue a warning against the irresponsible use of statistics. Many allegations which we hear to-day are based on guesswork because no adequate statistics exist to justify clear conclusions being arrived at. In the Rand Daily Mail of 8 October last year Professor Ford admitted this when he said—

But further, in connection with statistics which are held up to us to create the impression that the position in South Africa is serious, we must remember that those statistics do not reflect the purely South African position because those statistics also include a very large percentage of the immigrant Bantu who come to this country, and that those statistics should actually be used to prove how serious and how tragic is the position in our neighbouring states. This information should not always be used to say that this is the position in South Africa. Even the statistics in urban hospitals cannot be used to obtain the true picture. Let us imagine, for example, that it is found that 40 per cent of the children in the Durban hospital are suffering from underfeeding or malnutrition; that figure cannot be used to say that this is the position throughout the country as a whole. The health report of the Durban medical officer emphasizes the fact that a very large percentage of the cases which they treat there are cases of children from other parts of the country, particularly from neighbouring territories. Where one has a number of children from other parts of the country in one hospital one can certainly not generalize because of certain information which one has as a result of a survey which has been made, and say that this is the position throughout the country. That is a distorted and incorrect interpretation of statistics and does not justify the conclusions which are often arrived at in this regard. To sum up, we say therefore that we have to deal with a problem which is sufficiently serious and comprehensive to justify more attention being given to it. But when we approach this problem and try to discover the reason for it, in the first place we cannot close our eyes to the fact that surely a certain percentage will be due to underfeeding, which is the case throughout the world. We must ask ourselves to what extent we have underfeeding in our country and we can write underfeeding off as an important factor in this case. A Press statement by Mr. S. J. E. de Swardt, Secretary for Agricultural Economics and Marketing and chairman of the Central Committee for the combating of malnutrition, reads as follows—

For those who can buy them.

The hon. member for Houghton usually speaks before she thinks. We cannot attach too much value to the conclusions which she arrives at here. Let us look at the reports of the district medical officers. I have a large number of these reports. These are confidential reports which cannot be made public in the House but if we read these reports I challenge any member in this House to tell me that the reports of the district medical officers state that this position is due to underfeeding. Yes, malnutrition is emphasized in these reports but not underfeeding. If we look at the statistical information which we have, if we look, for example, at international statistics, what do we find? Here is a statement by Mr. S. J. E. de Swardt in which he says—

He refers to the statistics in the Year Book of 1954-6 and states further—

If we compare this same picture with the latest information from the Production Year Book of the F.A.O. for 1961, we find more or less the same proportion: France, 2,940; Italy, 2,740; Portugal, 2,420; Greece, 2,900; India, 1,860 and South Africa 2,560. But what is more, if we take this same Year Book and we compare the daily intake of calories by any ordinary person in those various countries, we find that our figure is the highest in the whole of Africa; that our figure is the highest if we include the Far East and that our figure is higher than that of any part of South Africa, excluding the Argentine.

Where starvation arises, the Government takes action immediately. We can say therefore that we certainly do not have to deal with large-scale starvation here. Starvation does sometimes occur but then it is due to natural occurrences such as when we have a sudden drought or when the crops fail, and in those cases we can say to the credit of the Government that it always acts timeously and correctly. I have here a Press statement by the Ministry of Information in pursuance of the drought conditions which arose in the Transvaal last year, in which it is stated—

We can say therefore that where starvation arises as a result of those conditions, the Government has always proved that it will act positively and try to alleviate that need and to combat all incidence of starvation. We can therefore eliminate starvation as the fundamental cause of the problem. And so we come to the next point, namely malnutrition. We must remember that we can find malnutrition in the best of homes. Even though people may live in the greatest luxury, even though they may be capitalists, if their eating habits are incorrect we are going to find malnutrition there just as we will find it in any Bantu area. If we look at the causes of malnutrition we must say immediately that one of its indirect causes is ignorance. The fundamental cause is of course incorrect eating habits but another cause is ignorance. People do not always know how much harm they do themselves by following an unbalanced diet. If the Bantu sitting in the street at lunch-time with a piece of white bread and a bottle of mineral water that he has bought, used that money correctly and bought fruit and other food of that nature, he would be a far more lively and healthy person on that same amount of money. But because he is ignorant he buys wrongly and eats wrongly. There is proof that people who have made inquiries have found that even the better class Coloured family eats mainly white bread because they like it. To a large extent the Bantu concentrates on the use of refined mealie meal, while if he used mealie meal in its unrefined state it would be far more nutritious for him and would keep him healthy. There is another factor besides ignorance which plays a very important part in regard to malnutrition amongst the Bantu and that is superstition. Let me quote for you what was written by Dr. Latsky in connection with superstition and the pernicious lobola system and its effect. He says—

All these things point to ignorance and superstition on the part of the Bantu and the role that this plays in their lives. In that same report there is reference to the report of Dr. English in which he says—

This proves that we have to deal here with a problem which has its roots in ignorance and superstition as far as the Bantu are concerned. But we also find this ignorance to some extent amongst our White families. That is why in our White schools as in the Bantu schools we find guidance in regard to correct eating habits being given on a large scale so that those families can be fed correctly and properly.

But an additional cause of this condition is the traditional and wrong eating habits of the Bantu. The whiter the mealie meal the more acceptable it is to them. The most important part of their diet is therefore only starch. Furthermore, they have a specific order of eating. This is one of their eating habits. The father first has to finish eating; then the mother eats and what remains must be divided amongst the children. Of course, each one does not then receive his rightful share. These traditional and wrong eating habits must be broken down and removed. But I think that one of the fundamental causes of this problem is the increasing lack of morality amongst the Bantu. There is an increasing number of illegitimate children amongst the Bantu. It is disturbing to see what the actual position is. The Annual Report of the City Medical Officer of Health for Durban for the year ending 31 December 1961 gives the number of births in that city. The medical officer states that amongst the Whites there were 1,609 male births and 1,500 female births, a total of 3.108 births. Of these there were only 69 illegitimate births. Amongst the Coloureds, out of a total of 748 births there were 242 illegitimate births. Amongst the Asiatics, out of a total of 5,959, there were 59 illegitimate births, but amongst the Bantu, out of a total of 5.864, there were 3,665 illegitimate children! In other words, nearly 60 per cent of the children were born illegitimately. If we look at this number and we look at the reports of all the various district medical officers we find that it is emphasized over and over again that the largest number of children who are treated for kwashiorkor because of underfeeding and other diseases are children born illegitimately. If one reads what the attitude of the Bantu is towards that illegitimate child, one can see that that child begins life in an extremely unsympathetic environment. He is treated by the Bantu themselves as a waif, as one who has to live on the crumbs that fall from the table. If we want to combat malnutrition in all its implications and complications, this is one of the sores in the life of the Bantu which must be healed, namely, this increasing moral degeneration on the part of the Bantu. Moreover, we find an almost unlimited increase in Bantu families. It was interesting to my mind to see that the word kwashiorkor, which is actually a word which has its origin in Ghana, is composed, according to authorities, of two words, “kwashi” meaning “first”, and “orkor”, meaning “second ”. The idea behind it is that when the second child arrives and it arrives very soon after the first one, then the first one is pushed aside. That child suffers because the second one receives all the attention. If we make a study of the increase in the Bantu population we see that this swift increase has resulted in their having their own word for it, “kwashiorkor”, one of the most serious diseases which springs from malnutrition. This overswift increase in the number of Bantu is one of the causes of this condition. In connection with this question of moral degeneration of the Bantu I want to quote again from the report of the Medical Officer of Durban, who states—

Not only is the seriousness of this position appreciated by a person who knows what he is talking about, but he connects this with that moral degeneration which we find amongst the Bantu. If we are asked what is being done to combat the problem, I say that a great deal is being done. An interdepartmental committee appointed by the Cabinet in 1960, which in terms of a request from F.O.A. worked out proposals for South Africa’s campaign against malnutrition, started off the campaign by intensifying all the existing projects. For example, a seed campaign was set in motion and here in our Parliament legislation was adopted to improve foundation seed so that we will have the best seed for the product to be cultivated. Weed eradication has been tackled on a very large scale by this Government—weeds, which are the enemies of the cultivation of good food. There is the prevention of grain losses; there is the continued campaign for combating insects and zoological pests, pests which have a destructive effect upon our grain; there is the preparation of compost from municipal offal to assist in the promotion of the cultivation of good food; dieticians have been appointed to give guidance on a large scale to educate the people in regard to the value and the importance of various kinds of food—cheap sources of nutrition, skimmed milk, dried beans, fish and other foods—but one of the most important to my mind is the great work which is being tackled in schools. Various sources of information have been made available; social workers and women’s associations have all assisted and to-day a great deal is being done through the medium of the schools to disseminate knowledge in regard to correct feeding. For example, guidance is given in 7,700 Bantu schools throughout the entire country to 1,600,000 children of all age groups in regard to a balanced diet and the judicious purchasing of food. It is pleasing to see that this guidance has resulted in the children at school being taught how to budget when they have their own homes some day; the proportion of their income which must be spent on certain types of food. Correct eating habits and correct budgeting principles are propagated in the schools, and a very large contribution is being made in this way. If we are asked what we still ought to do, we come back to what is asked in this motion, namely that the process of education must never slacken off but must be intensified and that we must continually be on the lookout for more effective media. When one has to deal with the Bantu one must ask oneself what the best means are to reach the Bantu—placards or film slides. What is the best way of getting them to understand the position; in what way should it be illustrated? More effective media have to be found and we must concentrate on discovering the best methods. But further, this education must not only combat the direct cause, wrong feeding, but it must be extended in order to combat the indirect causes more effectively. Efforts must be made by all possible bodies, religious and other bodies, to raise the morals of the Bantu, to reduce the large number of illegitimate children and to cultivate a sense of responsibility on the part of the Bantu so that they can reach the stage where they will realize that if they are the parents of a child they must carry out their responsibilities towards that child so that that child receives what he ought to receive. For example, we had a commission in connection with family allowances. That commission emphasized the same point in regard to the Whites, that we must have sound family planning. That sound family planning is of the most vital importance to the Bantu. The Bantu must be taught that they cannot have large families unless they as parents are able to look after each of those children properly. It is of the most vital importance for these methods of education to be applied to this particular field. It is a duty, a task which rests with us and no one can accuse us when we try to make the Bantu more conscious of these things. This goes together with his sense of responsibility—that he as a parent must ensure when he plans his family that he is able to care for and support his family properly. If we are asked why we consider this problem in such a serious light, we say that it is a matter of the most vital importance because in the first place malnutrition causes human suffering, both physical and mental. It is our task to alleviate that human suffering and to combat it. Furthermore, in our political set-up, from a purely economic point of view, it is of the most vital importance for us to combat malnutrition because malnutrition results in reduced productivity. There is too little energy and a desire for work on the part of a person suffering from malnutrition; there is little resistance to disease and therefore a greater expenditure to the State. There is also more absenteeism and industry is affected in all its stages when a nation is not properly fed. That is also why we had a statement by no less a person than the hon. the Prime Minister in pursuance of the first meeting of the Economic Advisory Council on 26 and 27 July 1960 in which he stated as follows—

I have tried to illustrate, Mr. Speaker, that this matter is a matter which is of very great importance to us as a Government and to our country as such. I have tried to describe to the House the efforts which are being made from various quarters to combat this problem, the sacrifices which are being made in times of need and how everything is being done to combat and eliminate that evil. One would expect everyone in this country to say: “But this Government is doing as much as anyone can expect of it”, as people who come here from overseas tell us when they investigate the position here. One deprecates the fact, therefore, that one finds a section of our own Press exploiting this position and making out that the position here is critical. One deprecates it when they try to give the world the impression that this position is due to the poor administration of the Government. I want to refer to various issues of the Rand Daily Mail. They published a series of articles, articles which they sent out into the world under the heading: “Starvation—A National Scandal.” They went on to say—

In another article they said—

These things are held up to the world—these are the conditions in South Africa—

Then we have pictures of children who have been emaciated by those various diseases so that the world can see what the position is because of the weakness of the Government in South Africa—

Another article carried the heading—

I want to refer now to one of those articles which appeared under the heading: “Starvation—A National Scandal—Hunger is their companion.” This article appeared in the Rand Daily Mail on 1 October 1962 and in it we find the following—

This is the position which is held up to us, and in this way the world is told: These are the conditions in South Africa. After all the positive action that has been taken we find a section of the Press, a newspaper like the Rand Daily Mail, telling these things to the world. Most people to-day only read the headlines and they draw their own conclusions in regard to what appears in the articles from those headlines. The impression created by these suggestive headings is that starvation and misery is to be encountered on a tremendous scale in South Africa. A position is painted to suggest that the Bantu are dying of hunger. But the world is not told that over the past 10 years the number of Bantu has increased by 26 per cent. The world is not told that the position here is of such a nature that the Bantu population has trebled itself since 1904. No, the impression is created that as the result of the cruel attitude of the Whites the Bantu now find themselves in this pitiful position. All this is due to a distortion of facts, facts which are incorrectly interpreted, facts which are not true. The name of Dr. Paillard was mentioned in one of these articles. Here is a letter which Dr. Paillard wrote to the Rand Daily Mail in pursuance of that article. This is his letter—

I want to add, Mr. Speaker, that Dr. Paillard could have added that as a result of those articles the Rand Daily Mail had also placed South Africa in a most unfavourable position because it was exactly at that stage that South Africa had to defend her case at UN. The spotlight was on us at that stage. The world was looking for stones to throw at us. This was a stage when one would have expected one’s newspapers to have had at least the elementary decency to check their facts before drawing their conclusions. Here we have a newspaper taking pleasure in writing one article after the other. It ignores everything given to it from informative sources; it ignores all the information supplied to it by well meaning people; it draws its own conclusions and publishes them to the world: This is what South Africa looks like!

Mr. Speaker, I think that we have the right to ask this House to express not only its deep disapproval of but its disappointment at the fact that a newspaper with a wide circulation went so far as to reveal such extremely shameful conduct towards South Africa when man, woman and child and all the various bodies are assisting to-day to try to combat this great danger and where we are making sacrifices in order to do so. That is why I take the liberty to move this motion.

Sir, I have great pleasure in seconding the motion of my friend, the hon. member for Kimberley (South) (Dr. W. L. D. M. Venter). We have all had experience of planting a tree or a rose bush, preparing a vegetable patch. We take great care to prepare the soil properly. We fertilize it, we water the plant, we look after it so as to make it grow into a healthy tree which we expect to bear fruit to the best advantage.

If we want the same from the human being we should also tend it with that very same care. to-day we are discussing the nutritional part of the rearing of a young human being. I feel that the nutritional state of all sections of a nation has a very important bearing on the health, well-being, productivity and the national economy of a country. If a labour force is underfed or wrongly fed there is a deterioration in the health and well-being with a definite decline in the productivity which in turn retards the national economy. In addition to that we have to spend vast sums of money to nurse these people back to health. When we consider the defects in nutrition we have to consider two aspects. The one is underfeeding, or undernourishment, and wrong feeding which is commonly known as malnutrition. Underfeeding is not a problem of great magnitude in South Africa. We are a country with a booming agriculture, with surpluses in many farm products, such as maize for example, in various fruits, milk, butter, cheese. These are readily available, to the population; there is more than sufficient food for the needs of our people. There may be some maldistribution which could be put right. I do not believe, however, that the peoples of South Africa have not got the wherewithal to acquire the necessary food. In my opinion, it is mainly due to the buying of the wrong food that causes the malnutrition which we do find in this country. I do not think there is any country in the world that is free to some extent from undernourishment or some extent from malnutrition. In South Africa we have a minimum of that. If we deal with undernourishment first, Sir, I think I can say that there is not very much of that amongst the European section. There is some malnutrition amongst the poorer sections. It stems from ignorance as to what is the correct food to buy. We are gradually guiding them as to what the correct foods are to buy by means of radio talks, articles in the Press, pamphlets, personal contact and by means of social welfare organizations and members of the Public Health Department, district nursing services and various other organizations. I feel it is just a matter of assimilating that knowledge on the part of the Europeans and undernutrition will be eradicated completely.

When we come to malnutrition we find that there are quite a number of deficiency diseases which are contracted as a result of malnutrition. Such diseases are kwashiorkor, marasmus, pellagra, rickets, scurvy. Then we have certain non-specific signs and symptoms which occur as a result of malnutrition such as angular stermotitis, diolosis, bleeding gums, tender tongue and hypercaritosis. We have diseases in which nutrition may be a contributing factor such as gastro-enteritis, pneumonia and tuberculosis. That is quite true, but with the correct feeding none of these need be present in the community in South Africa. These diseases occur when there is insufficient intake of proteins or of various vitamins or some of the minerals. These diseases can readily be cured or prevented if we add to the diet the necessary proteins or vitamins.

We find that malnutrition is most prevalent amongst the Coloured races in South Africa. In the rural and Bantu areas this is not so predominant because there we find that the Native in his natural state provides himself with milk from his cows and goats; he tills his land and he produces maize or corn. At present the Government, through the Department of Agricultural Technical Services, is endeavouring to teach these Natives proper animal husbandry and how to till their land to better advantage. They are encouraged to grow more of the legumes which are rich in proteins and which are very valuable as food. In the rural areas, therefore, the incidence of undernourishment and malnutrition is not as prominent as it is in the towns and cities, except, of course in times of severe droughts or floods or when some other catastrophe befalls those areas; then, of course, in such a case of emergency anything can happen anywhere. Normally speaking, however, the Bantu areas are reasonably well off as far as nutrition is concerned.

We find the biggest problem, Sir, in the big cities and towns. As the previous speaker has already pointed out according to statistics kwashiokor is one of the main diseases in the big cities and towns. About 60 per cent to 65 per cent of the patients suffering from kwashiorkor are illegitimate children. The treatment of all these children is a vast problem. We know that if a child suffering from kwashiorkor is fed with two ounces of milk powder per day, that is 14 ounces per week, at a cost of approximately 25c, that is R1 per month, will usually recover from the disease. The Government and some of the local authorities have so far subsidized the sale of this milk powder to the extent of 15c which leaves 10c to the parents to pay for powder milk sufficient to feed his child for one week. That means 40c per month. I cannot believe that there is anybody who earns so little that he cannot afford 40c per month to feed his child and to keep him healthy in spite of what the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) said earlier on when the previous speaker was addressing the House.

We find the majority of malnutrition cases in the cities because of the socio-economic position that has developed amongst the Bantu in this country. The young women leave their Bantu areas and come to work in the towns. Here they are usually housed in the backyard of their European employers. Within a couple of days a Native befriends such a girl and the love affair is on the go. Shortly after that the woman finds herself pregnant and the lover either disappears then or shortly after the child is born. The woman either returns to the area where she came from or stays in the town after the baby is born. She takes the child to her parents in the rural area or she leaves it with friends or relatives in the town. She has to return to work to earn a living and because she has to leave the child she weans the child at an early age. The same pattern develops as the previous speaker has indicated when dealing with the derivation of the term kwashiorkor. The belief in Ghana is that if a woman is suckling a young baby and she falls pregnant again, the second baby poisons the milk and therefore the first child must be taken off the breast. That child then goes without milk. He loses the protein value of the milk and he develops kwashiorkor. Here the same thing happens but it happens because the mother has to return to work She takes her baby off her breast and the child does not get the proteins that it should and develops kwashiorkor. The mother may try to support the child by sending some money to the relatives, friends or parents who look after the child but very often that money is misused. The male in the household considers that it is his due and that he can use that money for whatever purpose he thinks best. The child is the sufferer. The father, even though it is known who he is, very often refuses to contribute towards the upkeep of the child. There is no law whereby we can compel him and there is no Native law whereby he is compelled to look after that child. The whole procedure is then repeated, Sir. The man goes off to another woman and has an illegitimate child with her. The first woman may find a new friend but he is not prepared to look after the child of another man and because she does not want to lose him she also starts to neglect the child. The result is that the child is very often left until it is in such a state of malnutrition that it is at death’s door before it is brought to a hospital. Most of the other cases which we find turning up at clinics or hospitals suffering from these nutritional diseases are members of very large families. When the father has one or two or three children he can still maintain them in good health because his income is sufficient to buy the necessary protective foods for them. But when the family grows to eight, ten or 12 and even more, his meagre income is not sufficient to provide the wherewithal for all of them.

Therefore, Mr. Speaker, apart from anything else there are two problems that we must do something about. The one is to curb the number of illegitimate children that are born in the Native townships round our big cities and towns. How we are to tackle that is a very difficult proposition. Personally I think that if we could stop young domestic servants living in the backyards of their European employers and let them sleep with their relatives in the Native townships, the opportunity for these relationships will be less. We could possibly curb it to some extent in that way. I feel that some moral uplifting will have to be done by the welfare societies and the churches and other agencies that are more capable of doing that sort of thing than the Department of Health. We should also teach the poorer people something about birth control, family control. If a man has a limited income he must be taught that he should keep the number of his family at such a number as he can fully feed and clothe. We know that in India where they have their teeming millions and where they have a lot of starvation, it is now Government policy to teach the people to apply birth control. I think we should do so in South Africa amongst the poorer people, Europeans, Coloureds and Bantu.

Sir, the Health Department with its district surgeons, its health personnel, district nursing services, etc., are doing everything in their power to disseminate knowledge about nutrition amongst the people. I feel that it is perhaps essential that more clinical posts should be established in the Bantu areas, because these people are not people who regularly listen to talks over the radio or read the papers, and there the personal contact is very essential. I am very pleased to know that the Department is already doing a vast amount of work in nutritional guidance in the Ciskei, where they have four teams of Bantu sisters, Bantu staff nurses and health assistants who undertake health and nutrition education in conjunction with their anti-tuberculosis work. At Botha’s Hill Health Centre the staff assists in the dissemination of health and nutrition education with emphasis on nutrition. At Polela Health Centre, the staff undertake health and nutrition education. In the King George Hospital, patients are regularly lectured on health and proper feeding. So wherever possible attempts are made to disseminate knowledge about proper feeding amongst the people. I believe that a commission has been set up to draw up a curriculum for the training of Bantu health assistants, and when these assistants are trained, more personnel will be available to do the rounds and guide the people as to the correct way of feeding.

The hon. member for Kimberley (South) has already dealt with a large number of Press cuttings. I believe that propaganda through the Press can be something wonderful, but then it must be truthful and correct and educative. There are Bantu newspapers read by the Bantu, and instead of trying to create unrest and dissatisfaction amongst the people, they could just as well in these articles enlighten their people. Here I have an issue of Post which says “Shock—this baby died of poverty”, and all emphasis is laid on the fact that it is because of poverty that this child has died of kwashiorkor. It is not stated here that this child died because of malnutrition and lack of the correct food. They are trying to stir up the people by telling them that they are not getting enough food. Here it says—

Sir, how much more effective, how much more truthful, how much more worth while would it have been if they had said that they are going to war against ignorance and if then they had given the true facts about correct feeding. If they had done that, I feel that they would have achieved far more than by issuing articles like this, trying to tell the people that it is because of starvation that these children died.

As I have said earlier on, for 1s. a week they can get the milk powder which will eliminate this, and that is what I feel the Press of this country should do. It is essential that we should get the co-operation of the Press. Instead of them trying to stir up trouble, let them give the correct facts about the position, and we will have much better results than with these articles, this type of article. I have another one here: “Our babies are dying.” There they show a baby with marasmus, and they say babies are dying of gastro-enteritis, of kwashiorkor, of marasmus, of tuberculosis, of rickets. Sir, we know that gastro-enteritis, tuberculosis, marasmus and all that is caused to some extent by bad housing, bad clothing, bad eating, bad feeding, with superimposed infection. I dare any man to say that this Government has not done wonders in the field of housing the entire population of this country. Even the Opposition has stated at times that we are doing too much for the Natives and the Coloureds. The Government has made available to all local authorities, funds for housing, the housing of Coloureds and Bantu. Therefore the Government cannot be blamed in that respect. There is enough work for everybody, for those who want to work, and with what they earn, they can buy the necessary food to keep them healthy. I feel that an appeal should be made to the Press to assist us in putting across correct and informative news about proper feeding, If that is done we will find that the malnutrition that we do have in this country will disappear to a very large extent.

One last word. I know that there are some posts vacant in the Department of Health, that there are not enough district surgeons, health inspectors, nursing sisters, etc. I have already pleaded with the Government to appoint more district surgeons and to establish more clinics in the outlying districts. Perhaps the salaries are too low to attract these people to these posts. If at all possible, I would like to see that these salaries attached to these posts should be increased so as to attract the people to these posts. It may be that to attract people to go to the outlying districts, one must attach to those particular posts a certain residential allowance to compensate them for the inconvenience of living in certain areas. I am very pleased that the Government is already subsidizing the sale of this powdered milk to the needy, but if one considers that for one patient suffering from kwashiorkor, treatment in the hospital costs the authorities £45, that is R90, then I think it is worth while to spend more money to try and prevent the occurrence of this dreaded disease.

I would like to put forward one other suggestion and that is that local authorities should be allowed to subsidize the sale of milk to these people out of beerhall profits. I feel that profits which are made on a beerhall can be put back into the food of the children by way of milk if it is subsidized. In Springs we have for many years been fortunate to have had milk subsidized by beerhall profits and made available to the people of the Native township at about 1s. per gallon, and they used this milk in very large quantities, and we never have had any trouble with cases of kwashiorkor or any of these deficiency diseases. So if at all possible, I would like to see the Department going into this matter and that milk should be made freely available to the poorer people in the locations on a subsidized basis, out of money spent on Bantu beer. I feel that a good case can be made out that these profits should be put back into proper foodstuffs that will keep them free of disease.

May I start by congratulating the hon. member for Geduld (Dr. Jurgens) on first of all perhaps spending most of his time on a political speech, but at least at the latter end coming with two suggestions, namely to increase the salaries of district surgeons, particularly in the outlying areas, to give them perhaps a residential allowance, and secondly, subsidizing milk to the Native areas in the townships. I wish to associate myself most heartily with those suggestions.

Both he and the hon. member for Kimberley (South) (Dr. W. L. D. M. Venter) proved most conclusively something which we know, that this country is a land of sunshine and flowing with milk and honey. What they did not prove was that the milk and the honey gets to the people who ought to have it. They spent a long time showing that there is an enormous quantity of foodstuffs in the country, but they did not show that it is the correct kind of foodstuffs, nor that it reaches the people who need it. In fact they conclusively proved that there is a good deal of malnutrition in the country. Admittedly there is little starvation, but there is starvation for certain foodstuffs and certain articles of diet.

They also both surprised me with their suggestion—not that I disagree with them—that the Government should undertake birth control among the Bantu. Neither of them went into particulars. Both of them, certainly the hon. member for Kimberley, seemed rather to concentrate their attention on the Northern Transvaal. He said: These people cannot be very hungry if they doubled their population within some ten years or so. The hon. member for Geduld drew attention to the fact that while a Bantu can afford to feed say three children, when they get to six or seven, he finds that he cannot do so. Well, Sir, if he is going to teach them birth control, perhaps he might tell us on some future occasion how the Government should do this. I know of only three methods of contraception. One is abstention. Will they be able to persuade the Bantu to abstain? How will they do it? By supplying him with some other amusement? By giving them free cinemas? By teaching him to read at night and supplying him with electric lights? The second is by finding the so-called safe period of the woman. Now, Sir, I want to explain in a few words that this can only be done with a chart and a thermometer. Women must take their temperature regularly. Will the Government supply clinical thermometers? They cost about 3s. 6d. to 4s. each, and they break very easily. And are all these women able to understand the temperature chart? Lastly, the only simple way is for the Government to supply contraceptives. There are now pills being issued in Great Britain which have that action. Perhaps the Government could look into that aspect. Mr. Speaker, I will not spend any longer dealing with the details of the hon. members’ speeches; that will be done more adequately by the hon. member for Rosettenville (Dr. Fisher).

I would draw the attention of the House to the grave importance of nutrition. Nutrition concerns us all. All must or should make a study of it. Most of us do, most people consider carefully what they will take off the menu. But not everybody, Sir, has a menu. Nevertheless the Government can do a great deal more than it has done. I would draw attention to two very important experiments, practical experiments which most of us have observed. Sir, in the First World War there can be no question that as time passed, the Germans began to suffer more and more from malnutrition. It is a well-known fact that there was no really very great shortage of food. Properly distributed they could probably have carried through. But their food lacked certain very important vitamins, and the spirit of the German people was broken by the Allied blockade which prevented the ingress of these important items, and the Germans had not at that time appreciated their importance. That was the malnutrition of the Germans at the latter end of the First World War, and it is one of the items to which the Government must give great attention, more perhaps than it is doing to-day. We move to another picture, the picture of Great Britain in the last war, where the children, particularly the children, emerged from a war which was longer than the First World War. The blockade of Britain was more effective and more intense, and owing to the air-bombing large areas of the country were placed out of action and became difficult of access. Yet, by conserving her food, and particularly by distributing the smaller trace elements and seeing that the children in particular received the proper food, the proper type of food, the people of Britain emerged from the Second World War better in health than they had even been. That is what could be done by this country. Nutrition is not a problem for the Department of Agriculture. It is a problem for the Department of Science and Education, together with the Department of Health, but it is even more the Department of Science and Education that is concerned with this, and I would ask the hon. Minister of Education to tell us how much of the meagre allowance which is given to the C.S.I.R. is diverted to the National Nutritional Institute. How much money is devoted to the nutritional research?

We know, we have good scientific evidence that nutritional improvement of life can begin before birth, or at any time after birth, that in early life it can mean improvement of mental (I emphasize “mental ”) as well as physical growth and development, and if we want to raise the standards of our poorer and less-privileged people, we must raise their mental development. You cannot raise their well-being, you cannot expect them to understand all the problems of life, and to be more efficient at work, unless you do that. They are not donkeys, they are not oxen. They are human beings who think, and it is by appealing to their brain and by improving their brain, which you can do from birth or before birth, that you will get better work and better life for the people of this country. There is no doubt whatever on scientific evidence which has been carefully checked in more than one country that if you feed the pregnant mother well, if you feed the growing child well, you will produce a good healthy intelligent race. A great deal of the backwardness of our people in this country arises from the fact that their food is deficient in certain important constituents. In passing I would say that even those who get those constituents have difficulty in many instances in absorbing it, in absorbing it because of the tremendous load of intestinal parasites with which the lower income groups are afflicted. Speaking from my own personal experience, I know that the Bantu child carries in his inside masses of intestinal parasites, that in a hospital, as has already been mentioned—the King Edward VIII Hospital in Durban—they start if the ill patient is in any way well enough by trying to get rid of the worms, that in the hon. Minister of Health’s own hospital, King George V, before they try to start to treat the patient suffering from tuberculosis, the Bantu and the Indian, particularly the Bantu, they start by ridding them of these parasites. A national campaign by the Department of Health throughout the country to rid the people of intestinal parasites would yield a crop that if they were earthworms would turn the desert into a garden of Eden.

What these hon. gentlemen have done most successfully is to prove that there is no shortage and to prove that there are people who suffer from shortages. Therefore in that gap is a link, perhaps more than one, which should receive attention, and this Government has failed to close that gap, and it should try to close it. In giving attention to foodstuffs and feeding, unfortunately in my opinion the Government is constantly harassed by economic considerations. I do not think that they can conjure manna from heaven. I do not think that the food does not cost something to produce. But I do say that it should be at a price within the reach of everybody. Moreover it is no good having food which is not available to the people. It must be in the right place. It is no good having good food in Eloff Street in Johannesburg in large quantities when it is needed mostly in the distant Native townships, and it would cost the buyer more to come to get this food and to take it back than they can afford. It is availability as much as anything which is a problem. It is all very well for those of us who can afford to choose his food. If we choose wrongly, we have only ourselves to blame. But when the only choice is limited, when there is not much of it and people cannot buy it, then the question is whether the Government should not step in and make things easier for the people. I am not pleading for subsidies. I am asking that brains should be employed in the Government service to try and make the right food available. We know that the most important food, at any rate the only absolutely necessary food, is protein. For the others, the fats, there are substitutes, but not for protein. You can substitute sugars for fats and fats for sugars, but proteins are absolutely necessary for growth and for the replacement of what is lost in daily life. That is malnutrition, Sir. Malnutrition is in principle, not always but chiefly, a disease of lack of proteins. That is what these people suffer from. We know, too, that the best protein is animal protein and of course included in that are fish and eggs. We know that large quantities of animal protein are exported. Think of the harvest of the sea on our western seaboard and how the great bulk of it is processed and exported. But why must we export proteins? We have other products that we export. Our soil fortunately even gives us gold and diamonds, which no other country has to the same extent, but we must export the harvest of the sea. We know, it is true, that some of the products of this fish even remains in the country in the form of fishmeal, and I think it is used to some extent in food products, but mostly in animal feed. I stand open to correction as to the amounts because it is not easy to find figures on the subject.

What else can the hon. the Minister and the Government do to find proteins? They can turn to the vegetable proteins such as soya beans and ordinary beans, but unfortunately many of these vegetable proteins are not palatable and nice to eat. In passing, I remember the hon. member for Kimberley blaming the unfortunate Bantu this morning for drinking a glass of Coca-Cola instead of milk. I agree that it would be better if he drank milk, but he is like a child. We all know that particularly children prefer the sweet flavour of Coca-Cola to milk. To blame these unfortunate people because they drink it—I say it is better that they should drink Coca-Cola than that they should drink alcohol. You cannot expect people to eat a bare minimum of food without flavour. It is no good providing a powder to be mixed with a little water and eaten. The people of this country, even of the lowest income groups, have not yet arrived at the point where you can feed them on tablets. The day may come when there is so little room in the world that all food will have to be processed and put into tablet form to be taken three times a day, but we have not reached that point yet. We are still human beings with palates who feel that we would like to eat attractive food, and that applies from the top to the bottom. There are few people who could go through life completely indifferent to the flavour of the food they eat. If you want to provide these vegetable proteins, put the Department of Nutrition and the Institute of Nutritional Research on to the job and tell them to find a way to getting a type of food which the people will be glad to eat. Palatability is an important item in the nutrition of people, even in babies.

Then I come to the point of what is happening in the preservation of food. There is not always a harvest; it is not always harvest time. Even the primitive savages recognize that fact. The great Chaka made it a crime punishable by death if green mealies were eaten before February. He forced his people to provide for the winter. We do not have severe winters in Zululand, but he knew that they had to have a way of providing for the winter, for the time when the harvest was over, and he made it a crime punishable by death if his people ate their green mealies. We have much better methods. The food is pre-cooked and tinned and frozen, and lastly, we have the additives which preserve the food.

The brings me to a point which I think requires great consideration on the part of the Minister, these additives. Modern research and experience is beginning to show that our knowledge of the additives in the preservation of food is not complete and that these additives are not entirely free from danger. Some of the additives which have been used for years have become suspect, even to the extent that they may come into the category where perhaps they are the cause of cancer in some cases. I would ask the hon. the Minister to devote his attention to this matter and to see to what extent it may be possible to use more frozen food if his Department of Research feels that there is less loss of quality in the frozen food and less danger because of the absence of additives. The alternative is to cook the food and can it. But that is not altogether desirable. It leads to waste. In Durban, in one year, we have in this report three columns of condemned foodstuff. That was in 1961. Unfortunately I did not add them up, but there were something like 203 dressed fowls, 401 pockets of potatoes and 70 sugarbags of carrots that were condemned. 22,000 tins of beans were condemned because they were found to contain pathogenic organism. I have not given the whole list, but I have selected the most serious ones. It shows that in one town alone all this food was lost. The processing of food is a problem which should be seriously investigated. It is one of the things which leads to malnutrition. To what extent is the vitamin content destroyed in canning? That is one of the problems the Minister should seriously consider, and to what extent freezing is better. When I interviewed the Director of Prisons some time ago I was satisfied that the diet of the prisoners was adequate, but what struck me as most interesting was that he said: We lay down one condition for these awaiting-trial prisoners. We allow them to have food sent in from outside at their own expense, but we lay down one condition, that when a tin is opened it must be finished; we will not allow food to be kept in tins overnight. And he was right, but how much waste does that lead to? How much good food, mostly protein, is wasted because the fear of tinned foods remains if they are not consumed immediately. Is it advisable to allow the various canning factories to put proteins in large tins, with all the dangerous organisms which may enter that food? Is it right that milk should be supplied in bulk, milk which is the best culture medium for organisms, probably second only to blood? Should not the Department of Nutrition do research to find a suitable container which is unbreakable and non-returnable and which can be hermetically sealed, so that milk can be supplied to the poorer groups in smaller quantities, so that they can buy a half-pint or a quarter-pint if they need it, and once opened they do not have to keep it? Those are the problems that face the Department of Health chiefly. If they are to combat the infections which arise from food contamination, they must educate the public and industry and make laws for industry to force them to provide articles of diet in such a form that there is the minimum danger of contamination. Admittedly there is no great shortage of food in this country, but how much of it is wasted, or badly preserved? How much of it, having once got into the gastro-intestinal tract of the human being, is fully absorbed because of the defects in manufacture, and how much of it is rejected because it is unpalatable? All these are problems for the Government. It is not enough to provide food.

The hon. member for Kimberley quoted what we were doing for tuberculosis. He said, with pride, that from R500,000 some years back we now spend R13,000,000 a year on tuberculosis. He can be forgiven, although he has trespassed on to territory he does not know too much about, for not knowing that above all things tuberculosis is admittedly due to a germ, but other countries have this germ and they do not have our sunlight. Other countries have winters of darkness with very little, if any, sunlight, and they have people who keep to their houses in order to stay warm. Other countries have these problems and they have overcome them. Take tuberculosis in a country like Sweden. Take Britain. There they do not know what to do with the tuberculosis sanetoria built in the old days. What a happy day it will be for us when we can close our tuberculosis hospitals and we no longer see the appeals of S.A.N.T.A. to help them with funds, because they are helping the country, in addition to the R1 3,000,000 referred to by the hon. member. How much happier we would be then! Admittedly tuberculosis is coming under control for the Whites, largely because of better feeding and the better knowledge of feeding. Speaking as one who works in one of the Minister’s hospitals and who has worked there since 1939, I want to say that there is no difference in the medical treatment of the Black, the Coloured or the Indian or the White man. They are all given the same medical treatment in the hospitals, and in his largest hospital, where I am still on the staff, I can assure him that that is so. But there is a second factor as to why we have difficulty in controlling tuberculosis. I think it is due to malnutrition, and that comes largely from ignorance.

I have very little time left. In passing, I would just say that the complaints about Press publicity are not, to my mind, really justified. Most, if not all, of the reports on malnutrition are contained in the medical journals, and nothing pleases the medical journals better, and those who write in them, that the ordinary daily Press will leave them alone and not quote from them, because a medical man who writes in the Press runs grave risks of being brought before the Medical Council. Of course he is not punished for anything that is beyond his control, but one of the things he cannot control is the quotations, and very often the misquotations, in the Press. I agree that there is room for much more education than is being given, and that is what should be done, but there is also need for greater research. Not a single Government Department can sit back and say that it has solved the problem of malnutrition. Therefore I wish to move the following amendment—

I second the amendment. I should like to start by saying a few things in reply to the hon. mover of this motion. I, like most people in this House, condemn sensationalism most strongly when it affects the health of the people, but on the other hand I feel that it is not only the privilege but also the duty of newspapers whenever possible to bring to the notice of the public any unfortunate circumstance that happens in the country. The way they do it is their own business, and if criticism is justified, this is the place to criticize. However, we must be careful to distinguish when we criticize whether we criticize them because they bring the truth to the notice of the public, and if they bring the truth to the notice of the public I feel that we must be careful in the way we criticize them.

The question that arose towards the end of last year, whether or not there was underfeeding in South Africa or whether that set of circumstances arose because of malnutrition, is at the moment beside the point. We do know that the circumstances were there and caused grave concern to the people in the area affected, so much so that our own South African Digest, as I pointed out to the Minister of Information during the Part Appropriation debate, dealt with this matter of famine.

Now, famine is a most serious aspect of our lives, and if we can do anything to combat it either by preventing it or helping the people, it is the duty of the newspapers and of all of us to rally around and to help these unfortunate people. The Government did it. We had the battle against famine which might have killed or seriously affected the health of thousands of Bantu children. It was not a small number, but thousands of Bantu children were affected in the Northern Transvaal, and this fight was won by the Department of Bantu Administration. They provided tons of special protective foods for the children and relief work for the parents, and thank God now the rains have come and the crops and the grazing can grow and an end has come to that threatened disaster. So we must not blame the newspapers if they bring these things to the notice of the public. But the way they do it is a different matter. But I do say that we require every form of publicity and help, whether it be from newspapers or whether it be in the form of films, brochures, posters, visits by people to homes —we need all that help to combat malnutrition and poor nutrition and starvation, and we must be careful not to antagonize the newspapers but ask them to rally around us and to help in a way which will not be sensational.

The story in South Africa to-day is perhaps a little better than in most other countries of the world when it comes to the question of the health of the people, which depends to a large extent on the food available to the people. We have the food here. There is no doubt about that. It comes in gushes and rushes and there are periods when through drought or through the forces of nature there may be shortages, but I feel that in a land of surpluses such as ours there should never be any excuse for any part of our population to be short of food. The hon. member for Durban (Central) (Dr. Radford) touched on a point which we discussed a little while ago, the preservation of food, and here I want to plead with the Minister again to go into the question of the preservation and the storing of food, and keeping it in containers which are easily handled and disposed of. The hon. member for Durban (Central) made a most important point when he spoke about small containers for food. When I spoke about the difficulties the pensioners were having in purchasing sufficient food out of their small allowances, one of the things that struck me was that in every case I investigated there was a pint container of milk in that room or house. That was the least amount of milk that was purchasable, and it was either in a bottle or in a carton, and almost invariably some of that milk had gone bad and could not be used because not a single one of those people had a refrigerator of any kind. Many of the old ladies I saw had put the milk bottle in a basin of water and covered it with a piece of muslin, in the hope that it would keep for 48 hours, because that is how long a pint of milk has to last those people. They were unable to purchase anywhere less than one pint of milk at a time. Luxuries can be bought in smaller quantities. You can buy a quarter pint of cream, or a quarter ounce of caviare, if you have the money for it, but you can only buy a pint of milk. That being the basis of our food in this country, I ask that something should be done immediately to alleviate this position. It simply means that the same amount of milk will be sold, but it will be sold in smaller quantities which can be bought by a person who has only a limited amount of money to buy it.

To deal with another aspect of health arising from malnutrition or starvation that was touched on by the mover of the motion, I want to say a few words about tuberculosis as it is affected by this problem. It is a pity that our costs in dealing with tuberculosis had to go up to R13,000,000. A lot of it has been due to the higher cost of treatment, but the greater part of that cost has been due to the terrific increase in the number of people who have tuberculosis. The Government cannot keep pace with this terrible scourge that is in our country at the moment. The figures are quite frightening. I want to tell the House— we find that 160 new cases are notified per day. This is a disease which is spreading at an alarming rate in our country, a country of sunshine, a country of surpluses, a country with many avenues of employment. Why then should we find so much tuberculosis. What is the cause of it? The answer is firstly, that we have to deal with a mixed population, a population which on the one hand is not getting sufficient food and if it is getting sufficient food, it is not getting the right type of food and on the other hand we have a population which has the money to buy food but which is not utilizing that money to buy correct food. What are we going to do about it? I think that seeing that this disease attacks all types of people and knows no barriers of colour or race or creed, we must find out immediately what the cause is amongst the non-Whites. Almost invariably we come back to the questions of food and of housing —crowded slum conditions, far too many people sleeping in one room, far too many people eating from one pot of food that is not nutritious while it may be filling; far too many people eating mealie meal which is not fortified with the proper vitamins and proper health-giving properties; far too many people depending on a slice of bread and, as the hon. member for Kimberley (South) said, a bottle of cool drink. I, like most members, know full well that one of the greatest difficulties in feeding people out of cans, in feeding people in bulk, is the monotony of the diet. You cannot eat mealie meal three times a day even if you have milk with it. How many of us would grumble at our own table if we were presented with the same dish of meat on two days running? And yet we expect millions of people to live on a diet consisting of the same type of food, prepared in the same way, day after day, week after week, year after year, perhaps supplemented once or twice a month by a little bit of fat, a little bit of meat or a little bit of brown sugar. Those are our problems. I speak to-day not in criticism of what has been happening in the past; I bring these things to the notice of the House so that we can start trying to improve the conditions, because unless we do so our statistics of tuberculosis especially, are going to go up and up, and the Government is going to spend more and more on this disease. Instead of spending it on disease in the future, as I think they will have to do, I ask them now to spend more money on research and on subsidizing those foods which will give the people the necessary additions to their diet so that their diet will become more palatable to them and more nutritious. What will be the result of that? We will have a healthier nation and we will do what is not being done now. If we can get their tummies full of good food we will not have absenteeism; we will have a better day’s work done and we will have better families amongst all the people of our country, whether they be Black, Coloured or White. What we are doing to-day is to point a finger at the Bantu and to say to him: “have fewer children; do not eat so much; that is your trouble there are too many people eating too much out of the pot with the result that it cannot go round.” What are we going to do about reducing poverty. How can we increase their wages; how can we teach them to buy better food with their increased wages. Those are our problems. If kwashiorkor is caused by a lack of proteins, let us give them proteins. Let us find ways and means of using the surpluses that the farmers have and that they cannot get rid of. Let us find ways and means of converting one product into another so that we will have the necessary protein foods. Let us take the good from the sea, from fish, from plankton or whatever there is good and let us add it to the food of the people. Then we will have to try to find ways and means of distributing that food. We have a country with these facilities, a country with the necessary brains and a country with a population waiting to eat what is going to be given to them. I say let us do it; it is an investment which we can readily afford, because these people represent our manpower, our labour force. How many workers have you got to-day on the mines and on the railways, hard-working people who need every ounce of energy, who go to work in the mornings without breakfast? Ninety per cent of them go to work without sufficient food in their tummies. Many of them have the money to buy the food but do not. do so because of ignorance, because of the rush and bustle of our lives, because of the inability to settle down and to have a family around you that looks after these things properly. Instead of an enlightened wife insisting on her husband having breakfast in the morning, he is allowed to go off to work in the morning without breakfast. We have been told by the hon. member for Durban (Central) how difficult it is to control the production of little Black babies. We have been told by the hon. member for Geduld (Dr. Jurgens) how these things happen; that the Bantu girl working in the backyard is visited by a Black gentleman and then he goes to another one and another one and another one. But the cause of that is no mystery. The cause of that is the migrant labour system where the family life has been broken up, where the worker has not got his wife around him but goes from place to place. What are we going to do?

The mines.

The mine labourer is not responsible for that type of thing going on because the mine labourer is housed properly in houses belonging to the mines. They do not roam the streets.

And they are well fed.

They are well fed; they get a balanced diet; they have sporting facilities and they have exercise. They get everything they want. They live very well indeed. They do not roam the streets. It is the fellow who is brought into town to work in industry and commerce who has not got his family with him; that is where the trouble comes from, not from the men working on the mines. The Bantu working on the mines are healthy and strong. They get proper medical attention and if anything is found wrong with them, they are sent home after treatment.

But it is not only tuberculosis that we have to deal with in coping with malnutrition or underfeeding. Ten thousand non-Whites die of gastro-enteritis every year. To some extent these deaths take place through a poor knowledge of feeding. The mothers are not told how to feed babies, and many of them even when told how to feed their babies, do not carry out the instructions. It happens very often that a pregnant mother does not get sufficient food during the term of pregnancy. The milk supply that she has available for this child from her breasts is of such poor quality that it is not sufficient to keep that baby alive, so in her own way she tries to supplement that feeding with some artificial feeding. I think it is there that the trouble lies. I think it is for that reason that we find that so many new-born babies get enteritis. It is a disease which kills rapidly, and that is why we have such a high infant mortality rate. What are we going to do about looking after the mother who is carrying a child? It has been suggested by the hon. member for Geduld that we should have more district surgeons and more clinics and more nurses; that we should pay these people better so that they will be attracted to these jobs. I told the hon. the Minister previously and I tell him again that unless he does something immediately to get a greater number of students entering our medical schools there is going to be chaos in this country, and I ask him again to see that more medical students enter our universities. He must take it upon himself to see that more Bantu enter the universities to become doctors. The hon. the Minister is not doing anything about it. I got figures the other day in reply to a question and I was shocked to see how few people were becoming doctors in this country. The number of doctors coming from the Bantu is absolutely negligible. How can we expect them to look after their own affairs in future if this is what we are doing. Bear in mind, Sir, that the position will become worse and worse in the future. Even if the Minister starts now, there will still be a time lag of a seven years. What is the use of saying “give the doctors more money to do these jobs” if there are no doctors to do the job? It is ridiculous. Unless the Minister lays a sound foundation immediately to make sure that we have sufficient doctors, then we on this side of the House—because I do not think he would be here then—will find that we have to deal with that matter.

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

Afternoon Sitting

When business was suspended I was telling the House what a dreadful fate this country was facing because of the failure of the present Minister to make good the shortages that we find in the various medical schools and in the whole of health structure of our country. I put a question in this connection to the Minister of Education, Arts and Science on 19 February. I asked him firstly how many White, Coloured, Indian and Bantu students were registered for the first-year course in medicine at each university and secondly whether he had taken any steps to increase the enrolment of each of these race groups; if so, what steps, and, if not, why not. The answer to the second question was most interesting. He said that no steps had been taken and the reason was that this was not his duty. Well, it is somebody’s duty and if it is not the duty of the Minister of Education, Arts and Science to see to the enrolment of first-year students who contemplate taking medicine, then it is the duty of the Minister of Health, and it is for him to see that something better appears soon than what is reflected in these figures given to us by the Minister of Education, Arts and Science. An enrolment of only ten Bantu students throughout South Africa for the first-year course in medicine means that the whole of the health services to the Bantu in the reserves are going to break down. Sir, I do not want to go into further difficulties that will arise because of this failure to enrol students, but I want to say to the Minister that he has a university that is willing to teach Bantu to become doctors; he has the largest Bantu hospital in South Africa at Baragwanath. He also has all the necessary facilities at Baragwanath; adjacent to the Baragwanath Hospital, he has a population of probably over a 1,000,000 people from whom he can get students for this university. But nothing is done about it because the University of the Witwatersrand is not allowed to enrol Bantu students. All these facilities are going to waste and I plead with the Minister once again to open the doors of that University so that those Bantu in Johannesburg who want to take up medicine can be enrolled. It is no good our discussing salaries for district surgeons. It is no good telling us that we have a shortage of medical personnel to look after the health of the people in the rural areas unless something is done about enrolling students. So much for the point that was made by the hon. member for Geduld. Sir, we were told that it is not all over South Africa that we find diseases associated with malnutrition or underfeeding. On going into the question I find that at the Livingstone Hospital, Port Elizabeth, 600 died in one year from malnutrition or underfeeding.

You will find that all over the world.

The hon. member for Mossel Bay (Dr. van Nierop) says that we find that all over the world. I agree with him that we find people dying all over the world …

From malnutrition.

Even he realizes that. But we do not show up so favourably when we compare the infantile mortality figures in South Africa with the figures in Nigeria and Ghana which we still regard as backward in comparison with the progress South Africa has made. In Nigeria there are 70 deaths per 1,000 and Ghana 90 deaths per 1,000, whereas in South Africa we have 400 deaths per 1,000. These figures show at once that we do not compare very favourably with other countries in the world.

Now I want to discuss some of the causes of malnutrition and underfeeding. It is true that ignorance about feeding and food values has a great deal to do with it. The backward state of the reserves, the poor service that we have in the reserves, the distribution of available foods and other factors all have a lot to do with it, but the root cause of these evils is the poverty of a certain section of our population. That factor and the system of migrant labour, which disrupts family life, are probably the two main causes of these conditions. These two causes have been confirmed by both the hon. member for Kimberley (South) and the hon. member for Geduld. They both emphasized the fact that the family unit has to be maintained and that the education of the family unit has to be improved. They have also pointed out that poverty plays a big part. Of course it plays a big part. Indeed it plays the main part, because it is not only people who have never earned large sums of money who suffer from malnutrition or underfeeding. I want to deal for a moment with the unemployed and the sick who are unemployed because they are sick, two groups of people who have now lost all hope of getting sick pay and unemployment benefits because of their illness. What is worse, you also have the elderly person who is still able to work but cannot find work because of his age and he cannot live on his old-age pension. It is in those cases that we must concern ourselves with underfeeding and malnutrition. I do not want to go further into this matter. We have not very much more time for this debate and there are still several speakers who want to take part in it. But I want to say this to the hon. member for Kimberley (South) and to the members of this House that there must be no more unused surpluses in this country. Every mealie, every peach, every pilchard that we have and which is not being used now must be processed and preserved for the future. It must be preserved by means of dehydration, by freezing or by any of the other methods that we know of. That preserved food must be used not only in an emergency, not only to feed the starving as was done in the Northern Transvaal just recently, but that food must be given to the needy, to the pensioner and to those who are really starving and to those who stand helplessly by as food is allowed to rot, go to waste or even destroyed for the simple reason of trying to maintain price levels. Those things must not happen in our country.

I say finally, Sir, that in such a country as ours, a country which is so rich, which has so much to give, if we manage this problem carefully we will be able to overcome it. If we have a good team of people to look after the food of our country, if we have a good team of people who can see to the good distribution of our food, nobody in this country will go hungry.

I have tried as far as possible to listen attentively to the two previous speakers, the hon. member for Durban (Central) (Dr. Radford) and the hon. member for Rosettenville (Dr. Fisher). I want to make a few remarks in connection with the ideas expressed by these two hon. members here. The hon. member for Durban (Central) wrongly interpreted what was intended by the hon. introducer of this motion when he spoke about illegitimate births and of births in general. The hon. member for Durban (Central) got hold of something in connection with birth control but that was not at all the idea which was elaborated on by the hon. member for Kimberley (South) (Dr. W. L. D. M. Venter). The hon. member for Kimberley (South) tried to make the point that the responsibility of parenthood must be developed on the part of the Bantu. The hon. member for Durban (Central) made the old accusation against the Government that not enough was being done in connection with this whole matter which is being discussed here to-day. Amongst other things he said—

and—

This, Mr. Speaker, is said, notwithstanding everything that has been done over the past few years by way of subsidies and other measures to improve conditions. The hon. member also said—and I agree with him—

I want to ask the hon. member whether he does not know that a large amount of time and money is being spent in this connection? Many subsidies are being given. There is a special research committee of the C.S.l.R. which is working along these lines. If so much is being done by “brains” which the Government makes available, then surely the Government can do no more than to leave the matter to these persons? The Government cannot compete with private enterprise by placing some protein food or other on the market.

I have here the South African Digest of 22 November 1962. In this issue it is stated—

I want to read just one paragraph. This is in connection with the factory which has been erected in the city in which the hon. member lives, in Durban. This paragraph reads—

Listen to these words, Sir—

That is the city in which the hon. member lives. The hon. member also criticized the fact that only powdered-milk was being made available. One knows that it is difficult to make fresh milk available and that is why the effort which is being made to make this milk available in powder form is a very good one.

I want to come now to the hon. member for Rosettenville. In pursuance of what the hon. member for Kimberley (South) remarked about the newspaper report which exaggerated the position, the hon. member for Rosettenville said: “The way they do it is their business ”. That is precisely what we object to, Mr. Speaker. We have no objection to this being brought to the attention of the Government in a fair way, but we do object to the sensational manner in which these reports are presented to the public. The hon. member also spoke about the system of migratory labour and the accommodation of the Bantu in the urban areas and stated that this system was exclusively responsible for illegitimate births. I want to quote to the hon. member from the Transvaler of 27 October 1962. This extract reads as follows. [Translation.]—

The report then continues—

We now hear that all these things are happening as a result of the migratory labour system of this Government. If time permits, I shall give the House some statistics just now in regard to Pretoria, a city which offers many facilities for the accommodation of Bantu families.

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I support the motion moved by the hon. member for Kimberley (South). There is a Latin expression which reads: Mens sana in corpore sano. Freely translated, this means in English: “A sound mind in a sound body”. That expression has held good over the years, it held good centuries ago and it still holds good to-day. I believe that a sound and balanced diet is necessary to strengthen a person who does manual labour and that this is also necessary for the person who does office work; in addition to that such a person must also have regular physical exercise.

Nutrition and health are matters to which high priority is given by our Government. They were also regarded as very important by the previous Government. In the past the various departments, each in its own sphere, tried to do something about these two aspects, nutrition and health. A Nutrition Board has been in existence over the past 20 years. The activities of this Board have been widespread and in order to make more of an impression and to overcome possible overlapping it was decided to co-ordinate this work. In 1960 the central committee on the campaign against malnutrition came into being. That central committee consists of the representatives of five departments, namely, the Departments of Agricultural Economics and Marketing, Agricultural Technical Services, Health, Bantu Administration and Development, Social Welfare and Pensions and members of the National Nutrition Research Institute of the C.S.I.R., and I mention this last body because it is a particularly important aspect. Those six bodies, each in its own sphere, are still doing very good work. The task of the central committee is merely to co-ordinate that work. It has a co-ordinating function; it does not have an executive function. After the Parliamentary session of 1961 the activities really got under way. Sub-committees were appointed to investigate specific subjects. The purpose of the central committee in the first place is to review the whole field of food supplies in South Africa; secondly; to consider methods to extend existing activities; thirdly, to concentrate on new schemes and projects which will be able to show tangible results in the shortest possible time. Fourthly, to obtain the co-operation of private interests, of welfare organizations and private individuals, and lastly to give attention to the food problems of the country as such with particular emphasis on ways and means of improving the quality of food from a health point of view.

In the report which was framed in 1962, this body stated that food production in South Africa was favourable and that most families in the various population groups did have sufficient food to eat. The report stated, however—

Because the Republic has already done so much to feed the public effectively it has been decided to intensify the existing projects which are designed to eliminate and prevent malnutrition. The following aspects will also be given particular attention: Amongst others, the research and information services connected with health and the production of food. Emphasis will also be placed upon price determination and controlled marketing in terms of the Marketing Act and, in the third place, upon the subsidization of bread, maize and butter. Besides this a more intensive campaign to teach the people the value of correct feeding is also envisaged. The media recommended in this regard are pamphlets, the distribution of brochures, film shows to both Whites and non-Whites, lectures and recipes.

In order to show how important this matter is, the hon. the Prime Minister, Dr. Verwoerd, said the following in pursuance on the first meeting of the Economic Advisory Council—

The Prime Minister went on to say—

Shortly after this the Department of Health started two projects connected with the campaign against malnutrition. The one project was to combat kwashiorkor and, secondly, to draw up a national programme in order to warn the people against the incidence of tuberculosis and malnutrition. The hon. the Minister of Health then declared kwashiorkor to be a notifiable disease, a step which must certainly be regarded as an essential step in the campaign to combat this disease effectively.

In addition to the work which has already been done, a very important conference was convened on the initiative of the Department of Health. That conference was convened in Pretoria on 10 May 1962. Amongst others, 12 departments were represented. The four Provincial Administrations were also represented there and I want to mention the names of the various public and other bodies which were also present on that occasion. I give these names to show how widespread the interest was and to indicate that the invitation to attend that conference covered a wide field. Amongst others there were present at that conference representatives of the South African National Tuberculosis Association, the National Cancer Association of South Africa, the South African National Council for the Blind, the South African National Council for Mental Health, the South African National Council for Child Welfare, the Suid-Afrikaanse Noodhulpliga, the South African Red Cross Association, the St. John’s Ambulance Association, the C.S.I.R., the National Council of Women, the S.A. Vrouefederasie and the S.A. Agricultural Union. You will note from this list how wide the representation was at that conference. The purpose of the conference was best summed up in a message, which the hon. the Minister of Health sent to the conference on that occasion because he could not be there personally. I would like to quote it briefly—

The hon. the Minister went on to say—

Amongst other things, he said in conclusion—

This is the important point, Mr. Speaker—

There was a very fruitful discussion on this occasion the following unanimous resolution was adopted—

This conference further decided—

This is a very important point, health guidance. The conclusion to be drawn from this is that health guidance should be given to all sections of the population at all levels. It should reach every member of the public through the medium of special health guidance, through the medium of doctors, through the medium of nurses and I want to say through the medium even of teachers, White and non-White. In this case I think it will be a good thing if, for example, health guidance can be included as a special subject in the non-White curriculum at the training colleges so as to enable them in this way to convey health guidance to their own people.

Mention has already been made of the ignorance of the Bantu regarding the value of food and the economic use of the wages which they receive. The high mortality rate amongst the Bantu is often attributed to low wages. If we investigate the matter further we find a completely different picture. It is generally known that the standard of living of the non-White in South Africa is higher than that of any other non-White group on the continent of Africa. The average annual income of the Bantu in South Africa is R270. The best developed country on the continent of Africa, Ghana, has an average income of R91, that is to say, one third of the income of our Bantu here. After Ghana comes Nigeria with R72 per annum per person. This fact was also emphasized recently by an American financier, Mr. Clarence Randall, who visited this country. It cannot be contended then that the Bantu in general do not have sufficient money to buy the necessary foods, particularly as food in South Africa is relatively cheap, cheaper than in most other countries. I want to emphasize again the extent to which many Bantu spend their wages injudiciously and that to a large extent they are ignorant regarding food values and correct eating habits. Reference has been made here to the purchase of cool drinks and white bread when we have wholewheat bread which the Bantu can buy, bread which is cheaper and which is far more nutritious. I contend that the drastic wage increases advocated the other day by the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) in her motion, is not a sine qua non for an improvement in conditions. But I say that guidance is very, very important.

There are various bodies which have realized that it is better for the non-White not to receive a high wage but rather that he be given part of the wage which he would have received in the form of services. This is what the South African Railways found. I do not want to deal with this in detail. The hon. member for Bloemfontein (East) (Mr. van Rensburg) explained the whole position very well to us the other day. He pointed out that the Natives who received their food in this way do far better work. Because of the balanced diet which they have they are absent less and they are able to work harder. Because my time is very limited, I want to refer briefly to another body which is experiencing the same thing— the Putco Service. The Putco Service employs many Bantu in Johannesburg, Pretoria and in Durban. The dependants of those employees number about 10,000. The person who is in charge there gave me this interesting information in connection with the Putco Service after a balanced ration had been given to those employees. He put it this way—

I must conclude now and I want to say generally that notwithstanding all the efforts which have been made by the Government to improve these conditions, one continually gets criticism from the other side of the House. Reference has already been made to what the Government has done to improve the conditions in the Northern Transvaal and the Bantu reserves there. There is ample evidence that the position was being watched long before the Rand Daily Mail ran that tirade in connection with conditions there. The conditions there were known. Everyone knew that the position would deteriorate because of the drought. Hon. members of the Opposition continually criticize the Government and they can see absolutely nothing positive in the very fine efforts which are being made by the hon. the Minister of Health and the Government as such to combat this position.

I am not going to follow the hon. member who has just sat down for two reasons. First of all, he tried to justify the fact that the position did not need any attention which is directly contrary to the motion introduced by the hon. member for Kimberley (South) (Dr. W. L. D. M. Venter) and secondly because he tried to make a political speech. So I am terribly sorry but I am not going to take the slightest notice of what the hon. member has said. Thirdly, I am cutting short my part in this debate in order to allow the hon. the Minister to come in. I think this subject is a question of such supreme moment that where the hon. the Minister has indicated that he will come into the debate at 20 or 25 past three, we on this side of the House are willing to accommodate him, because we think it is of such great moment, of such supreme importance.

Sir, his problem is not a new one. It is a problem which has been facing South Africa since 1939. I actually find reports from the Division of Economics and Marketing assessing the food position in 1935-9 and coming to the conclusion that the average total per capita calory allowance was insufficient to satisfy the average needs of all on the basis of approved dietary standards in South Africa. That was as early as 1939. Over the years I find the same reports. In 1947 I find that different dietary standards were laid down for the different people in South Africa. They were trying to work out an adequate diet for the Europeans at moderate costs, they were not particularly perturbed about the rural Bantu, although it was not entirely satisfactory. They were trying to work out for the Coloureds, the Bantu in the cities and the Asiatics an adequate diet at the minimum cost. Over the years, a change in our population has taken place, a change which has enhanced this position of malnutrition. There has been a movement from the European farms of Europeans to the cities, and also a great movement of non-Whites to the cities. In the meantime there has taken place an over-population of the reserves. I find that in 1937 already some of the reserves were over-populated, but not all. In a report issued as early as 1937, I find references to the malnutrition amongst the people of the Transkei. Later on in 1954, I find that the position still existed, and especially in the report of last year medical officers report that in cities like Durban and Johannesburg the incidence of malnutrition and kwashiorkor that is coming to the notice of these medical people in the big cities is increasing, but that these patients do not all come from the city areas, but that many of them come from the rural reserves. I want this honourable House to note the fact of the change in the position of the rural Bantu. Because when we speak of malnutrition, we find a certain incidence among the White population, but we find the greater incidence amongst the Coloureds, the Asiatics and the Bantu, and especially the Bantu. And, Mr. Speaker, the eating habits of the Bantu on the farms have remained more or less the same over the years, as also in certain rural reserves. Their main diet has been that of rough mealiemeal which they make with as little water as possible, cooking it in an iron-pot and really cooking it with sufficient heat so that it is cooked but not over-cooked. With that you will find that the rural Bantu—and here I allude to the rural Bantus on the farms—in most instances, and especially in Natal where I come from, are allowed to keep a number of cows on the farms and they are allowed a certain number of fields to till from which they can derive what I call a staple diet, and a sufficient diet, so that amongst the ordinary rural Natives—and here I must differ from the hon. member for Kimberley (South)—the natural eating habits were not wrong. They were balancing their diet in that they were finding natural wild spinach. In cultivating their fields, they allowed certain weeds to grow to a certain height and those they use as a spinach. They were also using the tops of pumpkin plants and making a spinach of that after cultivating their fields. We find that they were planting a bean, not a soya bean but very much in the nature of a soya bean, but very much more palatable. They called it Hlubus which tasted more like meat than anything else and which was a fundamental part of their special diet. Therefore we find that under the ordinary Natives on the farms there was very little malnutrition. On the other hand I find, as I have said that as early as 1937 in the Transkei and other places, like for instance the Tugela Native Reserve, there was malnutrition. As a matter of fact, the earliest report that I could find that was based on malnutrition in South Africa, was based on the malnutrition in the Transkei. Last year I passed through the Tugela Native Reserve and I was not amazed at all that there was malnutrition there. As a matter of fact I found a little poem written in 1949, which I think illustrates too well the position in those areas—

Who wrote that?

H. A. Fagan in 1949.

But that is the position in some of these reserves as a result of over-population. But I want to repeat again that in respect of the rural Native on the farms as such the question is not really a vital one. It is this movement to the cities, it is this over-population of the reserves that has brought this position about. And in these over-populated reserves, I am speaking now of the Transkei—according to a report for 1917-8 and a report for 1945-6, and 1954, that 76 per cent of the protein that these people were eating came from economic plants, from grains such as maize, kaffir-corn, millet, wheat, barley, and I find that legumes were not eaten to a very great extent, and that as a matter of fact the protein that they have got came from these grains that I mentioned. But the result was that the protein was of a very low quality and the protein they were getting was very deficient in animal fat because the proteins were so inferior in quality. And here I must again differ from the hon. member for Pretoria (East) (Dr. Otto) who seems to think that the final word has been said in regard to this question on malnutrition.

Various conferences had been held, and I want to quote to this House from the conference that was held of the Nutrition Society of Southern Africa, in 1960. This is what they say—

They go on to say—

The hon. member seemed to think that the last word had been reached in all this. They end up by saying—

That is the position as I see it. Therefore I find that the first thing that is needed in South Africa is more research. I was very interested to note that here in Cape Town there was research in regard to fish-flour, the results of which they found very encouraging indeed. They found that fish-flour prepared for human consumption were very good indeed to help to combat malnutrition. But I must say again that this was undertaken by private firms. And, Mr. Speaker, as our motion says, we are grateful to those people and to those companies who have drawn attention to these various things and to the people who have gone in for this research. I want to quote what the hon. member for Pretoria (East) just touched on. when he referred to this wonderful food which is called Pro Nutro which is being made by a company in Durban, which not only was found when given to babies, to give wonderful results. Because as was said by the hon. member for Durban (Central) and the hon. member for Rosettenville, the greatest incidence of death from malnutrition, either because the mother was not well fed before birth or the baby was not well fed after birth, is amongst the children of this country. The article I have here speaking about Pro Nutro says that Pro Nutro was used on 1.200 babies and in nine months’ time not a single death occurred, amongst the 1.200 babies. I also find that not only South Africans have taken note of this wonderful food, but I find that the World Health Organization has taken note of it, and that the United Nations Food Conservation Division has sent a man here who spent a full day here looking into this particular food, and saying that soon it will be used right over the world.

Then I also want to quote about the other fortified mealiemeal “Pronto”, which was used when there was a famine threat in Northern Transvaal. That was a concentrated protein food, and the article says that it was found necessary for the babies and the old and sickly to have extra things such as powdered milk and butter and peanut butter, and all that was needed was to add Pronto to whole-grain mealiemeal to have a decent meal, and it helped through the people who were just about starving.

Therefore as far as I am concerned, there is still a lot to be done. But I have to hasten myself, and I want to ask: What are we to do? First of all I want to point out what I found in the State Information newspaper Digest of South African Affairs of January this year, where they say the following—

Then they go on to say that in 1961 the Government spent R40,000,000 on health services in the Republic of South Africa. If it is worth spending R40,000,000 on health services for the Bantu people, it is worth spending a good deal of money on preventing those illnesses amongst the Bantu people. Now, I want to say that I am not speaking only of the Bantu people. I am also thinking of the many White people in South Africa who also are in need of such preventive services. I am thinking of the fact that because of better medicines we have a higher number of old people to-day living on old-age pensions, living on very little indeed. Indeed I find a report saying “Half the survey group had an income which could at the most provide only for the bare necessities of life, leaving little or nothing for other expenditure, especially medical expenses ”. It goes on to say that 50 per cent of all the old people need medical attention in any one year of their life. So it is not only in regard to the Bantu that we need to do something, but also in regard to our old people.

Therefore I am indeed terribly sorry to find to-day, that whilst the hon. member for Kimberley (South) was moving his motion, there were only 12 members of the Government Party in the House.

And on your side?

There were 18. This is a matter of such vital importance, and here the hon. member for Pretoria (East) has borne me out, when he said that these various Departments had been co-ordinated under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.

I did not say that. I spoke of a central committee.

I want to say that at a debate of this nature the hon. Minister of Agricultural Technical Services should have been present. Mr. Speaker, every week I get this pamphlet, containing recipes of various good things to eat. How many people in South Africa does this reach? And of what good is it to the people who get it? I just quote one recipe: 1½ 1b. minced meat, 1 cup finely chopped onions, salt, pepper, one cup crushed wheat, one egg, beaten, one cup of milk, then butter or fat. And then it says “place in a greased baking dish; dot with butter or fat and bake in a moderate oven: baste occasionally with fat". Mr. Speaker, it sounds very much like a Cabinet Minister’s snack. The Minister of Agriculture should have been here to listen and to tell us what better method of distribution he has found, and new use for surplus maize. Then they go on and say they have now discovered something that they call a fruit-flake which can be made from bananas and pineapples and guavas and which will have as its base mealiemeal “which may be taken as a breakfast food or with custard as a dessert. Again I ask for whom is this meant? For a Cabinet Minister’s breakfast or a Cabinet Minister’s snack? Is it meant for the rich and wealthy? The hon. Minister of Agricultural Technical Services should have been here to hear his own party telling him that there is very much wrong with the distribution of foodstuffs in this country. The hon. Minister of Agricultural Economics and Marketing should have been here, the Minister of Labour should have been here to hear how the people under the Labour Department were being fed, the Minister of Social Welfare and Pensions should have been here, the Minister of Education should have been here. They were not here.

They are not here and this burden now rests fairly and squarely on the Minister of Health who is here to-day. I hope that he will take such serious note of what the members of his own party have brought to him supported by this side of the House that he will discuss this at the first Cabinet meeting and that he will keep on discussing it and keep on putting pressure on the Cabinet until the situation is improved in this wonderful land of ours of sunshine and of plenty, where everyone should be healthy and nobody should be suffering from malnutrition.

Before the hon. member for Drakensberg (Mrs. S. M. van Niekerk) spoke, it was my intention to congratulate all the hon. members who participated in this debate to-day on the high quality of their speeches, but I am afraid I cannot pay that compliment now.

This motion really consists of two interlinked parts. The first part of the motion deals with the necessity for educating the people of South Africa to eat correctly. The second part really consists of criticism of a Press which has made use of falsehoods in connection with malnutrition in order to create the basis for an attack on the Government and on the White man of South Africa. Now it surprised me that the hon. member for Durban (Central) (Dr. Radford) and the hon. member for Rosettenville (Dr. Fisher) moved an amendment the object of which was to approve the attacks made by that Press, and the hon. member for Rosettenville actually said that the Press should be allowed to bring matters to the notice of the public of South Africa in its own way. But that was not all. Their motion went further and said, “Thanks to those agencies ". In other words, if we have ever had a case where the hon. members of the United Party associated themselves with the false and insulting actions of the Rand Daily Mail, it is this. In other words, they condoned the actions of that newspaper.

On a point of explanation, I think the Minister is misinterpreting me. I clearly said that almost all of these articles appeared in the Medical Journal.

The amendment of the hon. member, seconded by the hon. member for Rosettenville, was this: “And furthermore, thanks all those agencies which have brought these problems to the notice of the Government and the public.”

Now I should like to draw the attention of hon. members to two points, the first being that I have very little time at my disposal to-day so that I cannot reply to all the points which have been raised, but I also want to point out that most of the points raised by certain hon. members opposite are totally irrelevant and have nothing to do with this motion, and I want to ask them to be so good as to raise these points again when my Vote comes up for discussion under the Estimates.

We are all agreed on one thing, namely that generally speaking, with the exception of minor instances, there is no famine in South Africa and there really is no underfeeding, but what one does find in South Africa is malnutrition. In other words, we are all agreed in this House that there is enough food available in South Africa and that it is within the reach of everyone, but that the thing to which we have to devote attention is the wrong use of that food. Malnutrition is the result of various factors. It is the result of wrong habits prevalent particularly amongst the Bantu and the Coloured populations of South Africa. But it is also due to the wrong use of their money, the wrong types of food they buy. And when we say that there is malnutrition, there is not malnutrition in South Africa alone; there is malnutrition right throughout the world, in America, in Europe, in Asia and in the whole of Africa. But there is one fact that stands out as far as all the African countries and perhaps all countries of the world are concerned, and that is that there are few Governments which have done as much to combat malnutrition as the Government of South Africa, taking into consideration its financial means and its population.

But what I found deplorable about the whole matter is the behaviour of certain newspapers, those newspapers which are lauded by the hon. members opposite as the “agencies” which bring matters to the notice of the public. Let me give one example of this deplorable behaviour, namely the Rand Daily Mail, which tried to make use of a temporary drought in the Northern Transvaal to create hysteria amongst the population. For that they chose the worst time they could possibly find, viz. the beginning of the session of UNO so that with the falsehoods they published they could provide UNO with arguments against the White man and against South Africa. These falsehoods were so obvious that a Scottish medical man, who at that very time had travelled through the affected area in South Africa, made a statement, of his own accord, to the Press in which he said that nowhere where he had come into contact with the same people about whom they were writing had he seen anything of the kind. He said that the attack of the Rand Daily Mail was completely unjustified.

Let us have a clear picture of the position. There is malnutrition in South Africa, but it is not so much the result of economic factors. Nor is it as the result of socio-economic factors. It is mainly the result only of sociological factors. There are many families in South Africa suffering from malnutrition even though they belong to the highest income groups. There are thousands and tens of thousands of Bantu families who have the financial means to feed themselves and their families properly, but amongst whom malnutrition exists. A little while ago an investigation was made in Pretoria in which use was made of data in regard to Bantu with an income of between R20 and R30 a month, and where the men used that money in the first place for their own food. It was found that 80 per cent of those Bantu, who have quite a reasonable income, suffered from malnutrition. In Natal at the same time, towards the end of last year, a survey was made and a poll was taken of 240 Bantu and not a single one of them did not suffer from malnutrition. It was not that they did not have the money. It is a phenomenon one finds amongst many Bantu to-day. Many large employers of labour in South Africa to-day know that if they give their workers additional food their production immediately increases. One of the large employers stated recently that when he applied this system the production of his workers immediately increased by 40 per cent. It is not that they were underfed but they were badly fed.

Now there are reasons for this, and we cannot solve the problem unless we investigate the causes. One of the main reasons is the ignorance and the arrogance on the part of sections of the Bantu population in refusing to follow the advice given to them by the White man. They refuse to eat the correct food. There are large numbers of them who simply refuse to eat food even though it is given to them gratis. A short while ago another investigation was made in Pretoria and 692 workers were investigated, and 270 of them refused to eat food given to them gratis. They said: No, give us money, we do not want your food.

But let us not lose sight of another factor, and it is very important, because without taking it into account we will never be able to combat malnutrition amongst the Bantu. It is that there is a sociological custom amongst the Bantu that the father eats first, and only when he has finished can the wife and the children eat. The wife prepares the food and offers it to the husband, and he eats as much as he likes, and unless he is a responsible man he eats all the best food, and little meat or other nutritious food remains over for the wife and children. And then one has the position that those children have to fight for the small amount of proteins or milk left by the father. That is the reason why kwashiorkor exists not only amongst babies but also amongst Bantu children up to the age of five or six years, when, according to the doctors, they are able to fend for themselves, and when they are able to wrestle with their little brothers for their share of the food. Now I know that if one quotes something and it does not emanate from that side of the House, hon. members opposite do not believe it and contend that everything one says is untrue. But let me now quote to them one of the spokesmen on their own side and from their own newspaper. This is a scientific article written by one of their own followers—

In that same article this expert tells the following. He gives a few examples of the effects of this custom and he says that on a certain large farm where the farmer has many workers he sees to it that a large basin of soup is made every day to be distributed to the families and to every child on the farm so that they may all get enough proteins and not suffer from malnutrition, and then he tells the following story—

He tells of another case to illustrate this. He says—

Oh, men!

Unless one bears in mind, that Bantu custom, nothing one does will be of any use. But I want to get back and make another point. We know that one of the most complete foods is milk. Professor van Rensburg of Onderstepoort says that it appears from his investigations that malnutrition is not caused by lack of food, but amongst the Bantu it is caused in the first place by the fact that they do not realize the nutritional value of milk. In order to investigate this matter more closely, another experiment was made in Pretoria. They questioned 730 Natives and 246 of them were convinced that porridge was better than milk, that one has to eat porridge but did not have to drink milk; 32 per cent of them, or one-third, admitted that they never drank milk, and probably they never give their children any milk either, whilst 20 per cent of them never eat vegetables. What the hon. member for Kimberley (South) (Dr. W. L. D. M. Venter) said is quite true, namely that if one goes into a Native cafe to-day one is immediately struck by the fact that the Bantu buy a piece of white bread or a roll together with a mineral, but nowhere will one see them buying brown bread and milk. But what makes the position worse is that this bad habit—I say it is bad because there surely cannot be food poorer than white bread and minerals—is also becoming prevalent in the reserves. When one goes into the reserves one sees that the women do not buy milk or brown bread either, but buy white bread or a roll and minerals. In other words, these bad habits have already penetrated to the reserves. The hon. member for Kimberley (South) has pointed out that many of the Bantu tribes to-day are prejudiced against milk. He mentioned the Swazis, whose women are not allowed to drink milk, and the children who are not allowed to drink milk until their umbilical cords have dried up, i.e. after about five days. But now one should note the effect of that. A woman’s first milk is the most valuable because it contains protective elements which keep the child healthy and protects it from disease. But the child may not drink that milk. The result is that for five days the child is denied the best milk his mother has, and during that period the child is compelled to drink ordinary milk which does not have those protective qualities. But amongst the Swazis he is not even allowed to drink milk; he must drink thin gruel, which is almost valueless. How can one expect those children not to be the victims of kwashiorkor and other diseases right from the beginning? But there are many other factors also. The hon. member pointed out how prejudiced they are against goat’s milk. The Bantu have many goats, but many Bantu believe that the women and children should not drink goat’s milk.

But one finds another problem amongst the Bantu, namely that the cattle they have are not kept for their milk. Because they do not understand the value of milk they keep cattle only for purposes of lobola, and for lobola they are only concerned with the number of head of cattle and not with the milk the animal can give or its meat. Therefore the Bantu mostly have scrub cattle which cannot really produce milk and have very little meat. It is not worthwhile slaughtering those cattle, and it is seldom that they ever slaughter an animal. They only slaughter an animal for ceremonial purposes, or eat it if it dies. Now one can understand that as a result of these customs the Bantu are very susceptible to kwashiorkor and other diseases which result from a lack of proteins.

The hon. member for Kimberley (South) and the hon. member for Geduld (Dr. Jurgens) also touched upon another important matter which gives rise to malnutrition amongst the Bantu, namely their large families. Hon. members opposite continually say, as the hon. member for Rosettenville has again done to-day, that the Bantu live on “poverty wage levels ”. They are so poor because they do not earn enough money. But if a man has from 12 to 16 children he must earn infinitely more than the man with two or three children. Now one can understand that if the White man can afford to have only two or three children in order to give them a decent chance in life, it can hardly be justified that the Bantu should have 12 to 14 children. One can understand that with these great families the Bantu do not always have enough food for all their children. It is true, as those two hon. members suggested, that it is time for us to start thinking about teaching the Bantu to limit their families.

Another point made by the hon. member for Kimberley (South) is the fact that malnutrition amongst children is increased because there are so many illegitimate children. In Durban the figures show that 64 per cent of the Bantu children born there are illegitimate. Now we should not forget what the Bantu’s outlook on life is. He believes that he can only marry a woman when he has paid lobola for her, when he has paid for her in cattle, and as long as he has not done so the child of that woman belongs to her father and not to him, and that fact immediately results in a lack of a sense of responsibility on the part of the Bantu. But the medical officer of health of the Durban City Council says that this position arises because these people live together in that city. The Native lives with a woman—and it is not the case, as the hon. member for Rosettenville stated, that he goes from one woman to another; he lives with her.

I did not say that.

Well, somebody said so. The fact is that the man lives with the woman without paying lobola, but as soon as they have three or four children and the woman insists on his helping to pay for those children, he leaves her and looks for a woman who has no children, and then one has the position that this poor woman, deserted by her man, has to care for the children out of her meagre earnings. Now one can understand that the reason for this malnutrition is not due to the White man; he is not responsible for it, but it is due to the moral degeneration of the Bantu. A little while ago they produced figures in the Eden-vale Hospital showing that 85 per cent of the Bantu children suffering from kwashiorkor are illegitimate. These conditions are not created by the White man, but the Government, and even worse, the White man, is held responsible for them. You will remember, Sir, that every attempt ever made by this side of the House to combat that state of affairs by making the Bantu retain his tribal connections and his traditions has always been opposed tooth and nail by the Opposition. Whenever we wanted to give powers to the Chiefs and the Bantu authorities, the Opposition opposed it. They want to have a denationalization of the Bantu. When we want to establish universities for them in which they can be taught to preserve their own traditions, it is that side of the House which opposes it. If Bantu children are beaten for being naughty, it is that side which objects. When we want to control the influx of Bantu into the cities, because we know that they will be unemployed there and degenerate, it is that side of the House which opposes it. That side of the House bears a tremendous responsibility for the degeneration of the Bantu.

But I wish to go further and to deal with the hon. member for Rosettenville. He again attacked this side of the House and said that there was a lot of surplus food in South Africa and an end should be put to it; this surplus food should be given to the section of the population which suffers from malnutrition. But let us give a few examples. Last year the Citrus Board made available 150,000 pockets of oranges in various parts of the country and circularized welfare organizations to the effect that they were welcome to fetch those oranges and give them to their people gratis. But do hon. members know that only 10,000 of those pockets of oranges were collected? The welfare organizations and people like the hon. member for Rosettenville who are so keen on giving that surplus food to the so-called underfed section of the population found that it was too expensive to distribute it to the Bantu. The cost of a product is not only its production cost. The greatest cost of any product is its distribution cost. It is no good saying that there is a surplus of mealies or of oranges. The distribution costs are high.

But I said so.

Let me give a second example. The Banana Control Board had a surplus last year, all the small bananas, and they did not withhold it but made it available in the various large centres in the country such as Cape Town, Durban, and other places, and they offered it to the welfare organizations and said: Come and fetch it and give it to your people. But only a minimum quantity of bananas was fetched. Even the cost of fetching it at the depots of the Control Board was too great.