Mr. Speaker, I move without notice:

Agreed to.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

The Publications Bill which is now before the House, is the result of the inquiry by the Commission of Inquiry into the Publications and Entertainments Amendment Bill, which submitted its report and recommendations to the State President at the end of last year.

The recommendations of the Commission, which were accepted by the Government, were embodied in the Publications and Entertainments Bill which was introduced in the House of Assembly during the parliamentary session earlier this year. Owing to the prorogation of Parliament on 27 February this year, however, the Bill did not progress beyond the First Reading. Mr. Speaker, before I elucidate the provisions of the Bill, I want to avail myself of this opportunity of thanking the Chairman and the members of the Commission sincerely for their good services.

In less than five months the Commission heard evidence by the representatives of more than 30 bodies, considered more than 100 memoranda, and made inspections in loco at the Publications Control Board and the Cape Town customs warehouse. That it was able to complete its inquiry within this short period of time is indicative of the capable guidance of the chairman and the cordial co-operation of the members of the Commission. The chairman, who was then the Deputy Minister of the Interior, and who is at present the Minister of Justice, asked me to convey his personal thanks to the members of the Commission for their cordial co-operation in regard to this task. The Commission was unable to reach unanimity on its recommendations and a minority report was submitted. The report of the Commission, as well as the report of the minority group, were carefully considered by the Government. I shall deal with the minority report at a later stage in my speech.

Mr. Speaker in chapter 1 of its report the Commission sketches the circumstances which gave rise to the passing of the Publications and Entertainments Act in 1963, and the pernicious conditions of permissiveness and degeneration which have emerged in South Africa as well since the passing of this Act. The Government therefore deemed it necessary to amend the Act in 1969 and again in 1971, and to order inquiries, by an interdepartmental committee in 1972 and the Commission in 1973.

In chapter 3 of its report the Commission deals with the question whether control over publications or objects, films and public entertainment is necessary in view of changing circumstances.

I want to emphasize here that the Government identifies itself with the standpoint of the Commission that control by the State of publications or objects, films and public entertainments is in fact necessary to counteract, and exclude from them anything undesirable.

Anyone who is aware of the pornography and blue films which are available in the world and which are being distributed for commercial purposes on a world-wide basis, will realize that control is necessary. The Government could be accused of dereliction of duty if we did not protect South Africa against such a stream of pollution.

The Government continues to subscribe to the confirmation in the Constitution Act of the Republic that Almighty God controls the destinies of South Africa and its people, and to our responsibility before God. While this is what we affirm in the Constitution Act, that spirit and attitude should also be evinced in dealing with vital questions.

It is therefore the earnest intention of the Government, with the means at its disposal, to preserve the characteristic devout and conservative character of South African society, and to protect it against the spirit of permissiveness and moral decay which has become prevalent throughout the world, and is also permeating the communications media in South Africa. The Government sets a high premium on the freedom of communication and the presentation of entertainment, but when undesirable elements occur in publications, films and public entertainments which could harm the spiritual welfare of South Africa, weakens our spiritual powers of resistance and break down the intrinsic values of our people, at a time when we need ever more strength of spirit and purpose, then it has to act and through statutory amendments improve and make the existing protective measures more effective.

It is in this spirit, Mr. Speaker, that I submit this Bill to the House this afternoon.

Instead of amending the existing Act, the Publications and Entertainments Act, 1962, a new Bill has been drawn up. Provision is being made in clause 52 of the Bill for the repeal of the existing Act, and amendments to this Act in 1969 and 1971, and by sections 26, 27 and 28 of the General Law Amendments Act in 1973. Before I explain the principles embodied in the Bill individually, I should like to draw attention to a very important feature of the Bill, viz. that various controls and balances have been built into the various provisions of the Bill in order, on the one hand, to protect and preserve the good morals and customs of South African society by means of an expectitious and effective control structure without, on the other hand, prejudicing the justified interest of the publishers of publications, the distributors of films and the presenters of public entertainments.

Mr. Speaker, the key to the Bill is contained in one sentence, i.e. that the people themselves control their publications and entertainments within the framework of a Christian view of life. This is not only embodied in the Constitution Act and in this legislation as well, but is also being recognized and applied.

The Commission saw fit to recommend that specific provision be made in the Bill for the recognition in the application of the Act of the constant endeavour of the population of South Africa to uphold a Christian view of life. Such a provision has been included in clause 1 of the Bill.

It is not common practice to include such provisions in legislation, but since this legislation is specifically aimed at protecting and preserving the Christian and conservative character of the South African population, it is fitting that the Bill should contain such a provision in its opening clause. This provision is the foundation stone of the Bill. All the other clauses should be interpreted in the spirit of this provision. This gives rise to the question of what is regarded as “undesirable” for the spiritual welfare of South African society.

The definition of the concept “undesirable” is found in clause 47(2) of the Bill. In the existing Act the concept “undesirable” is defined in three separate sections, in respect of publications or objects, films and public entertainments, respectively. Although the definition of the concept occurs in three separate sections, it is fundamentally the same.

The definition of the concept “undesirable” in the Bill is almost word for word the same as the definition of this term in section 5(2) of the Act, in respect of publications or objects. In the Bill the definition will also apply in respect of films and public entertainments.

Section 6(1) of the existing Act contained further definitions, for the guidance of the courts, of the concept “indecent or obscene”, “offensive to public morals” and “harmful to public morals”. These concepts occur in section 5(2) of the Bill and form part of the concept of “undesirable”.

The Commission did not deem it necessary to re-include these further definitions in the new legislation which it proposed, chiefly because the Commission recommended that the decision whether or not a publication or object, film or public entertainment was undesirable shall be vested in a committee, with an appeal to an appeal board. Under the proposed new legislation the courts will not decide this issue. I shall return to this aspect later.

Mr. Speaker, it appears from the recommendations of the Commission that it regards the problems being experienced in counteracting undesirable elements as being attributable not so much to the existing prescriptive measures, but to the existing control structure. Consequently it is in this respect that the Commission proposed drastic changes.

In terms of the existing Act the Minister of the Interior appoints a Publications Control Board consisting of not less than nine members. In terms of section 4 of the Act the Minister designates a panel of persons from which committees of the board, with one of the members of the board as chairman, may be constituted. The present control structure is then a two-tiered one. It comprises—

1. (a) the Publications Control Board which, over and above its decision-taking functions, has to do administrative work as well; and
2. (b) committees of the board whose function it is to examine and advise the board on publications or objects, films and public entertainments.

The advantage of this control system is that the board is able to co-ordinate the business of the committees, and that it is conducive to uniformity of decisions. On the other hand, its great disadvantage is that the full-time members of the board have to take decisions every day on publications which in most cases they have not read themselves, and on films which, with the exception of the board member who served as chairman of the committees in question, they did not view themselves. The full-time members of the board are required to spend so much time on administrative work that there is not sufficient time left to them for the proper performance of their primary function, the decision-taking function.

It is in view of these disadvantages that the Commission has recommended that the present two-tiered control structure be replaced by a three-tiered control structure, and that the three functions—the decision-taking, administrative and appeal-hearing function—ought to be performed by three separate bodies functioning independently of one another. The advantages of the existing control structure of co-ordination of functions and uniformity of standards of assessment will not be lost under the proposed new control structure, as I shall indicate later.

The Government agrees with the Commission that for any control system to function effectively, it has to enjoy the confidence of the public. Therefore, the Government shares the opinion of the Commission that to inspire and retain this confidence, the proposed control structure should be simple, practical and easily understood, that it should be possible for it to function independently of all influences and pressure groups, and that decisions should be taken expeditiously, with reasons stated, by competent, firm-principled and unprejudiced persons who will compel respect and inspire confidence.

The Government believes that the proposed new control structure will meet these requirements, as will appear from the composition and functions of the envisaged control bodies which I shall now explain briefly.

The proposed control structure will consist of three bodies, viz. committees, a directorate and an appeal board. In substance the functions of these bodies will be as follows—

1. (a) The committees shall decide whether or not publications or objects and films submitted to them by the directorate, or public entertainments brought to their attention by the directorate, are undesirable. This is therefore the decision-taking function.
2. (b) The directorate will take over the administrative functions of the existing board, such as the composition of the committees, the allocation of work to them and the co-ordination of the activities of the committees. The directorate will also consider and decide on applications for permits and exemption from certain provisions of the Act. This is therefore the administrative function.
3. (c) The appeal board will consider and decide on appeals against the decisions taken by the committees, and decisions taken by the directorate in regard to applications for permits and exemptions. It will also be a function of the appeal board to establish uniformity in judging standards. This it will do by giving full reasons for its decisions which will be open to inspection by the public and which will be submitted to the chairmen of committees for their guidance. This is therefore the appeal function.

The three bodies comprising the control structure also have other less important functions, which I shall indicate when I elucidate the provisions of the Bill in respect of publications, films and public entertainments separately.

Mr. Speaker, before leaving this aspect of the Bill, I should like to make a few comments on the requirements to which the persons serving on these bodies will have to comply.

The existing Act provides that not less than six of the members of the Publications Control Board shall have special knowledge of art, language and literature or the administration of justice.

The Commission found that the assessment of publications or objects, films and public entertainments is based on something more than mere professional or academic qualifications. It is based rather on values and the gauging of values. Members of the control bodies should be appointed on their qualities of personality rather than on mere specialized academic qualifications, provided it is possible to consult experts if necessary.

The Government can agree with the approach of the Commission, and consequently it is being provided in the Bill that persons will be appointed to the committees, the directorate and the appeal board by reason of their educational qualifications and knowledge. Furthermore, it is being provided that the person who shall serve as chairman of the appeal board, and the person who will act as chairman, shall be appointed by virtue of their tenure of a judicial office or through experience as advocates or attorneys or as lecturers in law at any university for a period of not less than ten years. It will be possible for the committees as well as the appeal board to consult experts. The committees are appointed by the directorate from a list of persons compiled annually by the Minister of the Interior. The chairmen of the committees shall be designated by the Minister. There will be a number of full-time committees in Cape Town to examine films and the mass publications of little or no literary value, and part-time committees in Cape Town and also in various other centres to examine the more complicated publications and public entertainments.

The members of the directorate will be appointed by the Minister of the Interior and their term of office will be prescribed by regulation. It shall consist of a director who will be known as the Director of Publications, a deputy director and not more than three assistant directors. The seat of the director will be in Cape Town. The appeal board which will be known as the Publications Appeal Board, shall consist of three members. The chairman is designated by the State President for a period of five years. The members of the appeal board are appointed by the chairman, when necessary, out of a list of five persons designated every five years by the State President. Pretoria shall be the seat of the appeal board.

The staff to perform the administrative work of the directorate and the appeal board shall be officers and/or employees of the Public Service.

An important recommendation of the Commission which has also been incorporated in the Bill is that the Executive Committees of the Coloured Persons Representative Council and the South African Indian Council, respectively, shall appoint annually an advisory committee to advise committees in respect of the exhibition of films to Coloured Persons and Indians respectively. It is also being provided that a committee which has requested the advice of an advisory committee shall give effect to such advice.

As regards the Bantu peoples, the commission felt—and I am quoting from its report—“that their own distinctive orthogenous development is different from that of the Coloureds and Indians and for this reason no specific role in the proposed system of control can be assigned to them.” The Government agrees with this approach of the Commission. This is a matter which has to be considered when the constitutional development of the Bantu peoples is ripe for such a step.

†Mr. Speaker, I shall now explain those provisions of the Bill which specifically deal with publications or objects.

Like the present Act, the Bill now before the House provides that no person shall produce or distribute an undesirable publication or object, or import a publication or object, except on the authority of a permit, which is published by a specifically named publisher or deals with a specified subject, particulars whereof have been made known in the Government Gazette.

A new provision in the Bill is the one in clause 8(1), which provides that no person shall possess any publication or object, if the possession of that publication or object has been prohibited by a committee and that prohibition has been made known by notice in the Government Gazette.

The police has long been finding difficulty in bringing to court persons who distribute publications that can be described as “written” pornography, or who distribute publications which advocate anarchy and even rebellion. The police pointed out that persons possessing publications containing photographic pornography can be prosecuted under the Indecent or Obscene Photographic Matter Act, 1967. Again, persons found in possession of publications promoting Communism can be prosecuted under the Suppression of Communism Act, 1950.

The police explains that in many cases it is difficult and sometimes impossible to prove that a person in possession of so-called written pornography or publications propagating anarchy, is distributing such publications so that he can be brought to book under the provisions of the present Act. It is in view of these very considerations that this House passed the Indecent or Obscene Photographic Matter Act in 1967 unanimously.

Written pornography is at times more obscene than photographic pornography and publications dealing with anarchy and rebellion and with methods of bomb-making, etc. can be as dangerous to the safety of the State as publications promoting Communism.

In view of the great harm that written pornography can cause and the fact that certain publications can be extremely dangerous to the safety of the State, I trust that this House will again see its way clear to support the proposed provision in the Bill. It is not foreseen that many publications will be judged so grossly undesirable that it will be necessary to prohibit possession thereof.

Unlike photographic pornography i.e. photo’s depicting sexual intercourse, etc., written pornography is difficult to define. When can a book dealing with, for instance, rebellion be regarded as a danger to the safety of the State?

It is in the light of these difficulties of finding suitable definitions that it is provided in clause 9(3) of the Bill that a committee shall decide whether a publication is so grossly undesirable that the mere possession thereof should be made an offence.

Because the Government fully realizes that this provision can be regarded as a serious intrusion into the privacy of individuals, it is further provided in clause 9(5) that the decisions by committees in this regard will be subject to automatic review by the appeal board.

Before dealing with periodicals I wish to mention a provision in the present Act which has not been retained in the Bill. This provision provides that no person shall, except under authority of a permit, import a soft cover publication of which the net selling price to an importer in the Republic does not exceed 50c. This provision has been dropped because it is no longer realistic. Many books of literary and scientific value are now being issued as soft cover editions and to put a blanket ban on the importation of these publications would not be in the best interest of educational institutions, students and the public.

There are two provisions in the Bill dealing specifically with periodicals. The first is clause 9(1) which provides that no person may continue issuing a publication which is published periodically if that publication has been found to be undesirable and all future issues thereof have been prohibited. This provision appears in the present Act.

The commission appreciated that the retention of this provision is necessary, but felt that because of its harsh effects, if applied, there may be a reluctance to apply the provision. The commission has therefore proposed that it be also provided that no person shall, except under authority of a permit, continue to issue a periodic publication which has been found to be undesirable and in respect of which it has been determined that future issues thereof shall only be published under a permit, that is, after they have been examined and approved by a committee.

The commission’s recommendation has been accepted by the Government and the proposed provision included in clause 9(2) of the Bill. It is also provided in the same clause that such a prohibition may be withdrawn.

The provision that members of the public, publishers, customs officers and the Police may submit publications or objects which may possibly be undesirable, for examination, has been retained in clause 10(1) of the Bill.

The present Act contains a provision that the board may on such conditions as it may deem fit exempt any person or institution from the provisions of the Act by which the dissemination of undesirable publications are prohibited. This provision is now included in clause 8(3) of the Bill. Such exemptions will now be granted by the directorate. It is in terms of this provision that the directorate will be able to allow universities on application to use undesirable publications for educational and research purposes.

Complaints have been received that there is no official alphabetical list of publications that have been declared undesirable in the past. Lists of publications that have been found to be undesirable are published in the weekly editions of the Government Gazette. There is, however, a consolidated list of undesirable publications which has been compiled by a private firm and which is periodically updated.

The commission has therefore recommended that it be provided that the director shall annually publish an alphabetical list of publications which have been found to be undesirable during the previous year and that such lists be consolidated every five years. This recommendation by the commission is being given effect to in clause 16 of the Bill.

Section 13A of the present Act provides that any person duly authorized thereto by the Minister of the Interior, may enter any premises in or upon which it is upon reasonable grounds suspected that undesirable publications are either produced or kept for sale, examine such suspected publications and if they appear to afford evidence of a contravention of the Act, seize them and submit them to the board for examination.

This provision is retained in clause 17 of the Bill. On the recommendation of the commission it is enlarged to provide that instead of the seizure of suspected publications, the person concerned may merely take down particulars of the publications and forward such particulars to the directorate who would then be able to obtain copies of the publications and submit them to a committee for examination and a decision as to whether they are undesirable or not.

A new provision inserted in the Bill on the recommendation of the commission is that contained in clause 18. It provides that a publisher shall ensure that his name and business address are printed upon the front, penultimate or back page of every copy of every publication published by him. This provision is necessary to facilitate the task in tracing the publishers of undesirable publications. Publications registered in terms of the Newspaper and Imprint Registration Act, 1971, and newspapers issued by members of the Newspaper Press Union of South Africa, are specifically exempted from this provision.

Mr. Speaker, I now turn to clause 49 of the Bill. Hon. members will on studying this clause observe that the relevant provisions of the Customs and Excise Act are to be amended to bring the expressions used therein in line with the expressions used in the Bill. I refer to the expressions “indecent”, etc., used in section 113(l)(f) and (3) of the Customs and Excise Act, which are replaced by the expression “undesirable” defined in clause 47(2) of the Bill.

Similarly, the expression “goods” used in the said provisions of the Customs and Excise Act is replaced by the expression “publications or objects” as defined in clause 47(1) of the Bill. This synchronization of expressions used in the said Act and the Bill is necessary to avoid confusion.

Mr. Speaker, I especially wish to bring it to the attention of hon. members that as in 1963 when the present Act was passed, newspapers published by members of the South African Press Union are again specifically excluded from the provisions of the Bill. However, I want to make use of this opportunity to again suggest to newspaper reporters and editors to take the definition of “undesirable” in clause 47(2) of the Bill as a guide line in their newspaper reporting and commenting, and to refrain from publishing material which is undesirable.

May I at this stage, Mr. Speaker, refer to the Press Code, as compiled by the South African Press Council. I shall read only two short extracts—

1. 2. In so far as news is concerned it is specifically accepted that:
   1. (g) Excess in the reporting and representation of sexual matter should be avoided, whether reporting court cases or otherwise.
   2. (h) The use of obscene and salacious material should be avoided.
2. 3. In so far as comment is concerned, it is accepted that:
   1. (d) While the Press retains its traditional right of criticism, comment should take cognizance of the complex racial problems of South Africa, the general good and the safety of the country and its peoples.

I should like to draw the attention of the Press to these statements in their own Code, and ask them please to adhere to some.

*Mr. Speaker, I shall now proceed to elucidate the provisions of the Bill dealing with control over films. It is particularly in the case of films that drastic changes are being proposed.

Before elucidating the provisions in question, it is necessary for me to draw attention to the fact that in consequence of court decisions in the Cape and Transvaal Divisions of the Supreme Court, a distinction is drawn in some provisions of the Bill between films intended for exhibition in public, i.e. films made for exhibition in cinemas, etc., and films intended for private exhibition, i.e. films made by visitors to the Kruger National Park, for example, as a memento of their visit to the game reserve. According to the aforesaid court decisions, the purpose of a film for public or private exhibition is determined when it is made.

In recent years in particular unvetted and rejected films, and films of which portions have been rejected and not removed, have been brought into circulation in ever increasing numbers. The distribution of these films has increased to such an extent that it has become a serious threat to the spiritual welfare of South African society, and particularly our youth. The way in which the relevant provisions of the existing Act are being circumvented and the harmful consequences of this are described by the Commission in chapter VII of its report. These malpractices are made possible by a serious deficiency in the existing control system, viz. that the importers of films gain physical control over films before these are vetted by the board. In terms of the present provisions the importers themselves have to submit the films which they import to the board for vetting.

It is in view of these circumstances that it is being provided in clause 28 of the Bill that the Secretary for Customs and Excise shall not release any films intended for exhibition in public to the importers, but shall transmit them to the Director of Publications. The idea is that the director shall submit a film sent to him in this way by the Secretary for Customs and Excise to a committee for examination, shall cause the cuts ordered by the committee to be made by his officers or by some other person or body on an agency basis, or by the importer concerned under the supervision of an officer of the directorate, shall place the cuts in safe-keeping and subsequently release the film to the importer. When the film has completed its circuit in the Republic, the director shall, in consultation with the importer concerned, dispose of the film and the cuts by sending these either to the original exporter or to a person or body in another country, or shall destroy the film and cuts in cases where films have become so worn through repeated exhibition for a number of years that they can no longer be exhibited. The provisions of clause 28 are also applicable to films which are manufactured locally.

Because not all importers of films are guilty of malpractices, and the proposed provisions may cause delay and even disruption in the film industry, it is being provided in clause 28(5) that the directorate may, upon application and on such conditions as it may deem fit, exempt from the provisions of clause 28 any person conducting the business of exhibitor, distributor or maker of films. By means of the control system envisaged in clause 28, it will be possible to impose restraints on those importers, primarily some home movie dealers who are at present, to an increasing extent, importing and distributing unvetted and rejected films, and films of which the rejected portions have not been removed, by hiring them out to members of the public. This will have the additional advantage of preventing these home movie dealers from conducting a business in films, as they do in most cases, in which they have no copyright and consequently no right of disposition.

In a further attempt to increase the effectiveness of measures adopted to counteract the exhibition and distribution of undesirable films, it is being provided in clause 19 of the Bill that no person shall exhibit any film intended to be exhibited in public, unless such film has been approved by a committee—that is, unvetted or rejected films or films containing rejected portions shall not be exhibited in private dwellings either.

There is evidence which indicates that the flourishing market enjoyed by home movie dealers is in fact the result of a great demand for unvetted and rejected films, and films containing rejected portions, for exhibition in private dwellings, where these films are also exhibited to children. Amounts of up to R300 per evening are being charged for the rental of such an unvetted blue film. It is also known that even children hire these films and then view them without the knowledge of their parents. This unhealthy state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue. For that reason several other provisions are being included in the Bill, inter alia to curb this evil.

It is also being provided in clause 19 that no person may exhibit any film in public, whether it is a film intended to be exhibited in public or a film intended for private exhibition, or may distribute, sell, hire out or offer or keep for sale or rental any such film, unless such film has been approved by a committee.

Furthermore, it is being provided in clause 27 that if a film has been approved subject to a condition that such film shall not be exhibited to persons in a specified age group, that film shall not be made available for exhibition to any person in the age group concerned. As a further means of strengthening the control over films, a person who imports an undesirable film intended for private exhibition, in the same way as a person who imports an undesirable publication, shall be guilty of an offence under the Customs Act. Because cases occur where, for example, churches wish to exhibit films upon short notice at church functions, it is being provided in clause 19(3) that the directorate may grant exemption from the prohibitory provisions in respect of films which I have just dealt with. The power to reject films or approve them unconditionally or conditionally is being retained. However, this power is now being extended so that it will also be possible for a committee to determine the places where films may be exhibited. This has become necessary because children have been viewing films the exhibition of which was prohibited to them, from outside drive-in cinemas. There is no restriction on the power of the board to determine the age groups to which specific films may not be exhibited. The Commission found that the board applies seven such age groups, that these are too many, and recommended that age groups should be limited statutorily. The Government gave effect to this recommendation by restricting the age groups in clause 21 of the Bill to (i) children in the age group of 4 to 12 years, unless they are accompanied by persons who are 18 years of age or older; (ii) children in the age group 4 to 18 years; and (iii) persons in any other age group which a committee deems necessary in exceptional cases. It is being provided in clause 29 of the Bill, principally to assist the Police in their attempts to counteract the distribution of unvetted and rejected films and films of which the rejected portions have not been removed, and to apprehend guilty parties, that the manufacturers and distributors of films shall be registered, and that their names and business addresses shall appear on the containers of films and the copies which they distribute.

Only minor changes have been effected in respect of the control of public entertainments. It is being provided in clause 30 of the Bill that the directorate shall refer any public entertainment which has been brought to its notice to a committee for examination. It is also being provided that the Minister of the Interior may direct the directorate to refer any intended public entertainment to a committee for examination. This is necessary because the Minister of the Interior is, after all, the sounding board of the public feeling in these matters, and must consequently have the power to be able to act when the community demands it. It is, furthermore, being provided in clause 30 that a committee may prohibit a public entertainment or an intended public entertainment or parts thereof which the committee finds undesirable. It will also be possible for the committee to impose conditions in respect of a specific category of persons that may not attend the public entertainment, or that a public entertainment may not be given at a specified place or places.

Before I proceed to elucidate the object and operation of the proposed Publications Appeal Board, there are a few provisions which apply in respect of all three communications media which I should like to mention here. The first of these is the power with which the directorate is being vested to refer, of its own accord, any publication or object or any public entertainment to a committee for examination and its decision as to whether it is undesirable or not. There have been complaints that by the time a publication or a public entertainment is brought to the attention of the board by a member of the public, the harm has already been done. Such a delay in the examination of a publication or public entertainment may also entail uncertainty, embarrassment and even financial loss for the publisher of the publication and presenter of the public entertainment. The Commission, in its report, describes the directorate as the “guardian of the good morals of South African society”. Consequently it is necessary that the directorate shall have the power to direct an examination by a committee of its own accord in the case of a suspected publication or object, and a suspected public entertainment. This power is not necessary in the case of films because all films have to be approved by a committee before such films may be exhibited in public.

Another very important new provision which is being included in the Bill is that a publication or object, film or public entertainment which is found to be undesirable or which, in the case of a film or public entertainment is approved conditionally may, after the lapse of a period of two years from the date on which a decision on it was given, be submitted to a committee for review. This also applies to decisions taken by the existing board. There is not much left for me to say about these provisions. They will meet with general approval.

A third provision which will apply in the case of all three communications media, is that committees will now have to motivate their decisions and, together with each decision, will have to submit the reasons for it to the director, which reasons shall be furnished to interested parties upon request. These provisions, too, will meet with general approval.

The provision of the Bill which will certainly provoke the most discussion is the abolition of the appeal to the courts in the case of decisions on publications or objects or public entertainments, and the establishment of a Publications Appeal Board. The considerations which induced the Commission to recommend that the existing appeals to the courts against the decisions of the board be abolished, are set out very clearly by the Commission in chapter IX of its report. For that reason I do not want to go into this aspect and it will suffice for me to say that the Government also feels that the time has arrived to relieve the courts of this purely administrative function, as it has been described by honourable judges themselves. Mr. Justice Rumpff, our present Chief Justice, stated as follows—

He made other comments, too.

Yes, I know.

*The Publications Appeal Board, which is to be established by clause 35 of the Bill, will also hear appeals against decisions on films. At present appeals against decisions of the board on films are considered by the Minister of the Interior. Provision is also being made for appeals to the appeal board against the decisions of the directorate in respect of application for permits and exemptions from the provisions of the legislation. The persons who may initiate appeals against the decisions of the committees are as follows—

1. (a) If a publication or object, film or public entertainment is found undesirable, the person who submitted it to the directorate or brought it to the attention of the directorate, or persons who have a pecuniary interest in it, may appeal to the Appeal Board against the decision in question.
2. (b) If a publication or object, film or public entertainment is found desirable by a committee, the Minister of the Interior may direct the appeal board to reconsider the decision in question. The Minister will not issue such a directive lightly and will only do so if the public objects vehemently to the decision in question. In this case, however, persons with a pecuniary interest will be afforded the opportunity of addressing written representations before the appeal board reconsiders the decision in question. The justification for conferring this power upon the Minister is, as has already been explained, that if the community asks for a decision to be reconsidered, the hands of the Minister should not be tied. Once again this is being done in the spirit of the provisions which I mentioned at the outset, viz. that the people themselves will control their own publications and entertainments.
3. (c) An appeal against a decision by a committee may, in the third place, be initiated by the directorate. This the directorate will be able to do whether the publication or object, film or public entertainment is found desirable or undesirable. Cases where it will be necessary for the directorate to avail itself of this power are, for example, when a committee did not have all the facts at its disposal when it reached a decision on a specific case, or was unable to realize the full implications of its decision. In such cases it must be possible for the directorate to submit the decision in question to a higher body, the appeal board, for reconsideration immediately. This provision serves not only as a protection of the good morals of the community, but also serves as a protection of the interests of publishers, film distributors and the presenters of public entertainments.

In this connection it may perhaps be a good thing to mention the case which received a great deal of publicity last year, viz. the case of the publication “Naked Yoga”. The matter was originally submitted to the Publications Board and the board, in good faith, deemed it to be a scientific presentation of the yoga cult. They accepted that it would be distributed only for scientific purposes among persons to serve as an illustration of the cult to its adherents. In that spirit they acted in good faith, and approved the publication. However, the publisher immediately took advantage of the situation by printing an edition of several thousand copies and distributing them to every Greek café in South Africa. The result was a stream of objections ...

What is a Greek café?

Every café in South Africa. The hon. member need not be petty. The result was that there was just and justifiable criticism, to such an extent that members of the public wrote hundreds of letters to me as the responsible Minister to say that they regarded what was now being offered across the counter of a café as totally pornographic. Under the specific Act the Publications Board was powerless to do anything about it, because it was not possible to refer the matter back for reconsideration. It is to avoid anything like this happening in future that this provision is now being introduced, i.e. that either the Minister or the directorate may in such a case refer the matter to the appeal board for reconsideration under changed circumstances. This is to prevent anything like that happening again.

Mr. Speaker, because it happens in the case of publications or objects in particular that an “erroneous” decision by a committee, whether the publication or objects are found to be desirable or undesirable, can have deleterious consequences not only for the community but also for the publisher, it is being provided in clauses 13 and 14 that the chairman of the appeal board will be empowered, upon receipt of a notice of appeal or a direction by the Minister of the Interior, to suspend the relevant decision of the committee in respect of the publication or object pending the consideration of the appeal or direction by the appeal board.

Furthermore it is also being provided that an appeal by the directorate will not be considered until the period in which persons who are entitled to lodge an appeal against the relevant decision has expired. However, if their appeal is received before the expiry of the appeal period of an interested person, the appeal board shall consider the appeal immediately, together with the appeal of the directorate, and reach a decision on it.

Mr. Speaker, because the appeal board is regarded as being a body which will function in basically the same way as a court, it is being proposed in clause 37 of the Bill that members of the appeal board be protected against contempt, belittlement and the anticipation of its decisions.

Mr. Speaker, there is not much more to say about the appeal board except to mention to the House that in clause 36 of the Bill it is being provided—

1. (a) that the chairman of the appeal board shall determine the procedure of the appeal board;
2. (b) that an appellant shall have the right to appear personally before the appeal board or be represented by his legal adviser, and to question persons giving evidence before the appeal board, but not the right to give evidence himself: Provided that the appeal board may in fact allow such giving of evidence;
3. (c) that the appeal board may summon the chairman of the committee, the appellant concerned or any other person to give evidence under oath or affirmation before the appeal board or produce relevant documents;
4. (d) that the meetings of the appeal board shall not be open to the public but that members of the public may be allowed to attend the meetings of an appeal board in the discretion of the appeal board;
5. (e) that the appeal board shall furnish full reasons for its decisions, and
6. (f) that the record of the appeal board shall be open to scrutiny by the public and that the decisions of the appeal board shall be brought to the attention of the chairman of committees to serve as precedents.

Mr. Speaker, before I leave this important stage of the Bill and proceed to the next, I should like to draw attention to clause 39 of the Bill. This clause provides that applications for the review of the decisions of the appeal board shall be heard by three judges of the supreme court, and that if a decision is set aside, the matter in question will be referred back to the appeal board for reconsideration, except that if the decision is set aside on the grounds of mala fides the supreme court shall give the decision which the appeal board in its opinion should have given.

I should like to emphasize here that what is being given to the supreme court under clause 39 is a power of review, and that it does not imply that the courts shall decide on the merits of cases which are taken under review, except in the case of mala fide decisions by the appeal board.

†Mr. Speaker, I now wish to deal with the proposals put forward by the minority group of the commission in their report. The minority group proposed an alternative system of control over undesirable publications or objects, cinematograph films and public entertainments. The proposed control is to be exercised by the public, the legislature and the courts.

As part of the public’s role the minority group envisaged the creation of controlling bodies for the various trades of publisher, distributor of films and producer of public entertainments. These controlling bodies are to be modelled on the professional bodies of control that exist for the medical and the legal professions. The commission dealt at length with this proposal of the minority group in chapter X of its report and in the same chapter set out the reasons why they could not support the proposal. I do not intend repeating their arguments here. Suffice it for me to say that the Government considers the proposal impracticable for the reason that it could not see the various trades setting up bodies of control, being motivated to do so by the purely altruistic consideration to protect the good morals of the South African society.

The role assigned to the legislature in the minority report, is to prescribe norms and to create legislation providing, inter alia, for the constitution of a publications Advisory Council representing the various controlling bodies and the main cultural organizations, churches, universities, etc., the appointment of a Registrar of Publications to advise the controlling bodies, and the eventual disappearance of the present Publications Control Board. This proposal, too, cannot be accepted by the Government. The Government fails to see how the Publications Advisory Council and the Registrar of Publications who would have no function of control but whose functions would merely be of an advisory nature, could co-ordinate the functioning of the various controlling bodies and create uniform standards in their judgment.

The role of the courts as seen by the minority group would be to punish those who contravene the law and in the process to give judgment as to whether a publication or object, cinematograph film or public entertainment is undesirable or not. Mr. Speaker, I have already indicated that the Government concurs with the recommendation by the commission that the courts should be relieved of the administrative duty to examine publications and to judge whether they are undesirable or not.

There remains one more proposal by the minority group to be dealt with, namely its proposal that publications for use by universities should be adjudged by the Committee of University Principals, and that it should therefore not be necessary for universities to obtain a permit from the directorate for the use of publications which have been adjudged by a committee to be undesirable. The Government is satisfied that the directorate will be able to meet the requirements of universities for the use of publications which have been found to be undesirable for general dissemination in the country.

In concluding my remarks about the minority report, Mr. Speaker, I wish to state that the Government believes it to be more effective to combat the evil of undesirable publications or objects, cinematograph films and public entertainments in South Africa by the action of a statutory body or bodies, with powers of control, directed at the prevention of the evil, rather than by a structure based on the voluntary co-operation of the various trades and groups concerned with vested interests, to be assisted by a statutory body and person with mere advisory powers. It is in the light of these considerations, Mr. Speaker, that the Government has rejected the proposals put forward by the minority group.

*I should like to associate myself with the minority report in one respect, Mr. Speaker. This was also a point made by the Commission in its report that the task of counteracting the evils arising out of the distribution of undesirable publications or objects and films and the presentation of undesirable public entertainments cannot be entrusted only to the authorities. It must constantly be borne in mind that the measures envisaged in the Bill are principally a negative means of combating the evils in question, and that the impact of such measures is not general. The sphere of positive counteracting of the evils lies outside the legislation. It lies in the family, the school, the church, in associational life, in society as a whole. That is where the educational work has to be done, where resistance to what is unhealthy and destructive has to be inculcated.

Mr. Speaker, I therefore want to avail myself of this opportunity to make an appeal to our schools, churches, cultural organizations and other bodies concerned with the spiritual welfare of our society to persist steadfastly in their efforts to protect and to preserve the good morals of South African society, and in particular to inculcate those powers of resistance in our youth so that they will not offer a receptive market for undesirable publications or objects, films or public entertainments.

I also want to make a special appeal to our parents throughout the country, to uphold those norms and bring home those concepts to young people in the family context, and in this way make them spiritually immune to these onslaughts from without.

I think it is necessary to add in conclusion that hundreds of letters and telegrams have arrived from all corners of our country expressing support of the Government for this legislation. This support comes from both language groups and from various political parties. It illustrates how deep-rooted the feelings of our people in regard to this matter are.

I want to express my sincere gratitude to these people for their support and good wishes.

Mr. Speaker, it is appreciated that there are widely divergent points of view on this difficult subject, of excluding what is undesirable from our communications media. Nevertheless, I want to ask, Mr. Speaker, that we conduct the debate on the Bill on a high level, and that we make an earnest attempt in our discussions to serve the best interests of South African society in respect of its spiritual welfare.

Mr. Speaker, I would at the outset like to associate us on this side with the hon. the Minister’s remarks of appreciation of the work which was done by the commission, the report of which is before us today and has been before us for some time. Although there is no agreement between the conflicting views in that commission’s report, we have the advantage of a very clear-cut statement and elaboration of the different points of view with regard to what the hon. the Minister has correctly referred to as a very vexed and difficult problem.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Minister, at the commencement of his speech, said that the whole crux, the whole concept, of this Bill before us, was that “die volk homself beheer”. But, Sir, when we approach a concept of that sort, I would suggest that we must also take into account the institutions and organizations which the people themselves have created over the years to accept certain responsibilities in certain directions and in certain fields for the control of those matters which are of interest to the public as a whole. Sir, control by citizens at large in matters such as public morals is a very difficult one; it is very difficult to exercise that control in a way which can be generally accepted. I believe that we should have more regard to the institutions which have been established—and here I include the courts—which over the years have interpreted the will of Parliament and have been able to apply the will of Parliament to the circumstances as they have obtained from time to time. When that control is also in the hands of the courts, it is limited to this extent that it does not impinge unnecessarily upon the individual basic freedom of citizens of this country. Sir, I will return to that later when I deal with certain provisions of the Bill.

I would like also to refer to the interdepartmental committee of enquiry, the report of which, drawn up as it was by members of that committee who were administrators of the law, I found most instructive and most helpful, particularly when it is read in conjunction with the report and the recommendations of the majority of this commission. I think we should remind ourselves that that inter-departmental committee, the report of which is at variance with the majority report of this commission in many significant aspects, consisted of representatives and senior representatives of the Departments of the Interior—the chairman was Mr. Du Toit—Customs and Excise, Posts and Telegraphs, Indian Affairs, Coloured Affairs, Bantu Education, and a senior officer of the Police Force. I think one must give more credence and more weight to the recommendations of that committee, coming as they do from those charged with the administration of the law.

Sir, just in passing I want to refer to one further matter to which the hon. the Minister referred, and that is his comments on the minority report. I do not propose to go into any detail at this stage but, Sir, I was rather amazed that the Minister should condemn the whole of the corps of publishers, the impresarios or producers of stage productions and the film industry as unlikely to put the interests of South Africa above their financial interests in the control of films. If I remember correctly, he said that he could not expect them to act altruistically in the interests of South Africa. I want to say that I dissociate myself entirely with an approach of condemnation of this sort because, Sir, the problem in South Africa is not the established publisher; it is not the man in the established film industry, it is the man who sets out to import films who is not a member of the trade who is not recognized as a producer—the man who sets about making films in the most amateurish way because they are purely pornographic. I hope the hon. the Minister will have an opportunity to put right what he has done and that he will withdraw the insinuation which he has cast against those persons in South Africa who, after all, form part of the “volk wat himself moet beheer”, which is the principle of the Bill which is now before us.

Sir, in its presentation of the Bill to us it appears to be, if one had listened to the hon. the Minister, that scientifically concerned its easy to establish the norms to be applied in determining what is desirable or not and there will be complete uniformity in mind of the people sitting in Pretoria or Johannesburg or Cape Town or Windhoek on these committees, that they would not have anything like conflicting views, and that this is going to be the end of doubts and disputes and of delays and inconvenience in the matter of censorship or publications control in South Africa. Sir, I do not share those views with him but I cannot possibly this afternoon, in the time available to me, cover the whole field of the Minister’s motivation of the Bill or examine all the provisions of the Bill. But I will in the course of my speech reply to certain comments he made in introducing this Bill. However I do want to deal with certain aspects of this matter which I think is necessary in the Second Reading.

That is first again to put before this House the approach to this matter of control of publications by this side, of the House, the official Opposition. I then wish to deal with the differences between our approach and the Government approach, and then with the machinery to be established by the Bill. I will also have some words to say in regard to what we desire to control under the Publications Control Bill. I will also have something to say on non-White participation in the administration of this Bill and particularly the attitude that has been adopted in so far as the Bantu people are concerned; on the powers of entry and seizure which are widened in this particular Bill; and on the abolition of appeals to the courts. The hon. the Minister will be aware that there are many other aspects of this Bill which will have to be dealt with, but these will be dealt with by other hon. colleagues of mine in this side of the House.

I want to say right at the outset that this Bill have so many objectionable provisions that the present Act is preferable to what is envisaged in this Bill. The present Act is preferable to what is in this Bill now, and with all its deficiencies it is preferable therefore that we should keep it. For that reason I wish to move as an amendment—

Now, what is our approach from this side of the House to this Bill? There must be no doubt in the mind of hon. members of this House and of the public outside that the United Party is as strong as any other person in this country in its opposition to the publication of blasphemy, sedition, subversive matter and the publication of pornography. When we oppose legislation of this sort it is not in the spirit that we approve of permissiveness with no control whatsoever and leaving everything to the taste of every individual, no matter of what walk of life; in other words, that everybody should be able to do exactly what they please with regard to matters of publication.

I want to deal with the question of blasphemy, which is dealt with in this Bill before us today. Blasphemy is concerned with the acceptance of the sovereignty of God, which is basic to all of us and is basic to this Bill, and it is accepted that it should be a punishable crime in this country, as it is at the present moment. But if one looks at “undesirable” in this Bill, as it appears in clause 47, one finds in the definition of “undesirable” that the Government intends now, in so far as blasphemy is concerned—and that is in clause 47(2)(b)—to couple earthly and human convictions and feelings with the whole concept of blasphemy, i.e. the acceptance of the sovereignty of God. These are two vastly different matters. They are diverse and they are open to question as to their validity. There is a diversity in the very essence of the religious convictions and feelings of persons. What is required is respect for the religious opinions of others, whether they are Christian, Jewish or Mohammedan. In any event, I believe that that wording can be improved. We shall attempt to do so at a later stage because, as I have said, it is confusing. We have here purely an attitude towards persons, whereas it should be an attitude relating to God and to the recognition of the sovereignty of God.

I come to the second point, namely the question of what is seditious and subversive. What does the Bill say, Sir? The Bill defines this as being “prejudicial to the safety of the State, the general welfare and peace and good order”. I believe that that definition also can well be improved. We are agreed as regards the basic concept. But it must be clear that a definition of this sort must not lay itself open to being interpreted as this can be. As it stands now, it will enable action to be taken when there is criticism of Government policy and not only when the interests of the State, as distinct from the Government, are threatened. As regards the concepts “seditious” and “subversive”, the United Party’s policy has frequently been stated. I should like, Mr. Speaker, to remind you of what we have said in the past. I want to go back to 1963 when the first Bill was introduced. A then member of Parliament, Mr. Plewman, had this to say—

That has been our attitude and it has been consistently expressed over the last 11 years. A statement was also made in this connection by Mr. Etienne Malan at a later stage. In 1966 he said—

Those attitudes have been stated quite clearly and we abide by them today, but we do not believe that this legislation before us is legislation which can assist in dealing with those particular aspects.

As regards pornography, I want to quote briefly from a speech which was made by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout in this House as far back as 1963. He had this to say—

That is quite clear, and that remains our attitude today in regard to these matters. There can be no question that we on this side of the House, in opposing this Bill, are suggesting to the public that we are in support of permissiveness.

The next point I want to deal with relates to the differences between the Government and ourselves as to the method of coping with those evils to which I have referred. I refer to the most effective procedures to combat the publication of matter which falls within those three categories of blasphemy, pornography and sedition and subversion.

In the minority report the commissioners refer to some 12 statutes which exist at the present time, all dealing with control. I do not need to go through them because they are set out in the report. The hon. the Minister will be aware of them, because the commissioners supporting the majority report also refer to them. Added to that is a further point, namely the common law approach to certain aspects relating to criminal libel, sedition and anarchy. When one looks at that, and goes through those Acts and views them again as to their effectiveness, I do agree with one criticism which has been levied by the commission, i.e. that the provisions in connection with indecent and improper photographic material, could well be extended also to printed matter. But I believe that the fundamental difference between the Government and the Official Opposition is that we in the United Party believe that the exclusive use of criminal sanctions authorized by Parliament applied in clearly defined circumstances and enforceable by the court is what should be the cardinal and basic approach to control of this sort. We believe that undesirable permissiveness, not only related to sex, but also to violence, anarchy, communism and so on, can be contained as effectively as any other crime is contained, or restricted, by statutes and provisions to enable the court to impose penalties. We combat any other crime in this country in that way, any other crime which is an evil, as evil as the publication of a pornographic article.

In this approach which the Government has there must be the establishment of some bureaucratic system that continually extends prohibitions in fields that are un-demarcated by Parliament, rather than the encouragement of acceptable ways of life. I have said it before and I must say it again that the attitude of the Government is that they can create a body whose one and only approach to life will be, in so far as the field of its concern is, “thou shalt not—thou shalt not do this, thou shalt not read that or see that. That is the approach instead of using the normal system by means of which we combat other crime and undesirable practices, namely by statute enforceable in a court of law. As far as my friends to my left are concerned, the Progressive Party, I am looking forward to hearing them spell out their policy in regard to controls in unambiguous terms in this House so that we can know exactly what their policy is in regard to this type of legislation.

I now come to the question of the machinery which is provided for in this Bill. I believe that this machinery is impracticable and that it will lead to chaos. It will lead to chaos in so far as publishers and the cinema industry are concerned. It will inhibit literary endeavour and it will certainly frustrate the arts in general in South Africa. We have today a centralized board, with assistants to assist the members of the board, to make decisions. That decision-making, although centralized, has nevertheless resulted in conflicting and irreconcilable decisions by that board. How much more is that going to happen now, with committees sitting throughout the country, influenced by various circumstances, making decisions in regard to these matters? I cannot believe that we are going to get closer to uniformity in approach under the system which is now envisaged any more than what we failed to get under the old board.

What was the position before? Any aggrieved person had the right of free access to the courts. When one reads some of the judgments one finds that, even with the existing attempt at a centralized setting of standards and norms, when those reasons were submitted to the courts, one judge referred to those reasons in respect of certain decisions as being muddled and rather confused. But at least a pattern was being developed by these court cases. It was being developed with the aid of the courts. Precedents were created on which case law was being developed, which continuously and to an increasing degree, were defining and clarifying the application of the law.

But, Sir, what does the Bill now provide for? It provides for a directorate to administer the Act. They are not going to do any testing or judging of documents or other matters. Then there will be this unlimited number of committees to be appointed. But what is the factual extent of this requirement? On the evidence before this commission, to deal with films alone, apparently they will require 24 viewing sessions per week.

They are doing it now.

If the committee members could possibly survive the ordeal, it must be realized that there will not be one or two people looking at the films. They are sitting five days a week. How anybody can sit and look at films five days a week, I do not know. But apparently there are some people who do that. It might account for the strange decisions that are taken—the result of sheer exhaustion. But if they are sitting five days a week, then we will have five committees, first of all, just to deal with films. If they are going on holiday some time—there must be three people each—there will have to be a sixth committee to act as a relief.

The next point is, what does the Bill itself do? The Bill itself now is suddenly saying: Well, we do not think we will be able to manage this; we are now going to grant exemptions for certain importers who can take their films away and bring them to us when they feel like doing it. They will not have to come directly to us.

You do not understand.

The hon. the Minister of Justice is coming up with his usual attitude of “you do not understand”. The trouble is, the hon. the Minister of Justice does not understand it. That is the position. The question of the number of books is an important matter for the hon. the Minister of Justice to understand. At the present moment, the board only examines books if they are referred to them by somebody or other for examination Now, Sir, the new directorate through its committees will be empowered to judge any book, mero motu. Now, how is it going to do its job? Unless it looks at every book, it is not performing the task which has been given to it. Is it still only going to look at books that are referred to it? In terms of the Bill, there is no question now of the directorate being restricted to books that are referred.

It is no good the hon. the Minister shaking his head. The responsibility and free right of this directorate now is to inspect any book; and if a book comes on to the market in this country and has not been checked before being distributed the fault is of the committee and the directorate who did not see that it was checked before it went onto the market. They do not have to wait now for reference to them. They can deal with any matter immediately. But let me go further. Magazines, periodicals, entertainments, theatre halls and night clubs throughout the Republic are now going to be the responsibility of these committees. They have the power to do so mero motu, not on complaint. If this job is going to be done, I can see a rash of committees springing up in South Africa from Durban to Windhoek and from Cape Point to the Limpopo, all having their own ideas of what is decent, what is undesirable and what should not be permitted.

But let me go further. That is not the end of the proceedings. These committees having made their hundreds and thousands of decisions what is the next stage? The five-man directorate must acquaint itself with every decision if it is going to do its job. The power is there for the directorate to appeal to this Appeal Board; not only against rejections, but against approvals as well. He can say the committee was wrong in approving. How does he carry out his job unless he makes himself aware of every one of these decisions by all these committees? To make himself aware so as to be able to judge what is in the particular publication that is being examined, is his impossible task. Sir, this is not stretched; this is what the Bill provides for. This is the type of machinery that is provided for in this Bill. Can the House in all sincerity, with any sense of responsibility, approve of legislation which is so blatantly unworkable?

Sir, this attitude on our part does not mean that we want no control. The control presently existing, although it is far from appropriate, is better than what is now envisaged in this particular Bill. So far as the minority report is concerned, the Minister has dealt in passing almost, with its recommendations. But I believe that the minority commissioners have suggested a practical way of dealing with the questions of control and other members on this side of the House will in due course spell out to the House the views which they have and which have been expressed in the minority report.

The next point is the question of approach. One can always generalize, Sir, on the question of approach and the settling of norms for what is undesirable. But whether it is a committee or a court that has to decide whether a particular publication falls within the ambit of the prohibitions of the law, the law must be clear on what can be prohibited and what not. Is the approach to accept the Christian norm, as has been suggested, or are we to look at it as an ethical code which is accepted by contemporary responsible society. The approach in the Bill has merely been to use the concept “undesirable”, whether or not a publication is undesirable. I believe the minority commissioners are correct when they say that the test must be more determinable than mere undesirability. They suggest that the test should rather be whether it is offensive to contemporary customs and acceptances.

I believe that this is the correct approach, i.e. that the approach should not be whether something is undesirable but whether what is published gives offence. The commission very wisely did not wish to lay down a definition of the concept of Christian norms, because it could lead to legal controversy. Similarly, an attempt at defining any other kind of norm could also lead to legal controversy. Why do we not let the courts decide on this matter? We are all aware of the controversy on Christian norms now prevalent amongst churches in South Africa in regard to human relations. The churches differ in their approach to racial relations. Each one has a norm of a Christian church, what they believe to be right or wrong. There is another aspect to an attempt to go too far with the application of what a Christian approach would be.

Let me remind you, Mr. Speaker, that to Christian marriage in the Anglican Church in the words of the marriage service is that marriage is an honourable state instituted by God himself, signifying the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church. This week-end one of the local papers published a review entitled “Is Marriage Necessary” on a thought-provoking book dealing with contemporary practices. To a Christian who believes that marriage is a state created by God, the mere questioning of that, the posing of the question in the article “Is Marriage Necessary?”, could be contrary to his view of a Christian norm. In a country as fast moving as South Africa, with the divorce rate as it is in South Africa, would you say that this Christian norm of the man who really believes in the sanctity of marriage should be imposed upon the whole public in accordance with the generally accepted approaches in South Africa? Parliament is about to consider the Abortion Bill. We are about to legislate on the subject of abortion. I do not want to go in upon the merits of it, Sir, but it is a concept which is contrary to certain accepted religious and Christian beliefs.

To other people it is too restrictive, it is not free enough to deal with modern life. That is a subject which will be debated in this House. Where is one to establish the norm that is to be applied when one is defining desirability? The commission itself, dealing with the present definition, said that the definition was juridically inelegant, to put it euphemistically. Whether or not that is so, it has resulted in the board’s reasons for its decisions, as given to the Supreme Court, being described as being rather confused, not to say muddled, as I have just said. That again indicates to us the problem of trying to define something so vague as “undesirable”, instead of applying the more direct and more easily applicable test of whether the publication is offensive to the public at large. The wide spectrum of life in the 1970s reflects an acceptance of changed approaches to so many of its aspects, such as conduct, literature and entertainment. At such a time, what does the hon. the Minister say, as he did when he assumed office? It was suggested that he was going to be a little “lighter”, that he was going to apply himself to modern times more appropriately and that he would deal with censorship in a more enlightened way. However, the statement he immediately issued was:

No one expects a light hand in punishing those who publish blasphemous, pornographic, seditious or subversive matter, but what is required is a realistic approach to the freedoms of the individual in the 1970s, namely his freedom of speech, his freedom to judge for himself the worth of contemporary literature or contemporary art. The trading in these matters can easily be controlled by the courts through legislation, but when one comes to what an individual himself should or should not be permitted to read, and to his ability to appraise and to assess for himself, one is impinging on freedom. The Bill itself recognizes that public opinion can change. Even the Bill itself provides that after two years the committee can review a matter. Why is it that this committee, consisting of a group of three people, can be right today that a certain publication must be restricted and then, after two years, say that norms have changed? Who determines this? Is it to be the public of South Africa or is it to be in the hands of these persons who are appointed by the hon. the Minister? He is not beholden to any organization or any section of the public in the compilation of that panel. He himself has a free hand to constitute the panel, and the directorate then has a free hand to constitute the committee. Those provisions are in the Bill.

The majority report of the commission has quoted some judgments of Chief Justice. Rumpff. I would also like to do so, but I would like to quote what I consider a more appropriate statement from a judgment of his, which I introduce here with regard to the question of curtailment of freedoms. Chief Justice Rumpff, as a Judge of Appeal, said—and I quote from one of his judgments:

The freedom of speech, which includes the freedom to print, is a facet of civilization which always presents two well known inherent traits. The one consists of the constant desire by some to abuse it; the other is the inclination of those who want to protect it to repress more than is necessary. The latter is also fraught with danger. It is based on intolerance and is a symptom of the primitive urge of mankind to prohibit that which one does not agree with. When a court of law is called upon to decide whether liberty should be repressed, in this case the freedom to publish a story, it should be anxious to steer a course as close to the preservation of liberty as possible. It should do so because freedom of speech is a hard won and precious asset, yet easily lost and in its approach to the law, including any statute by which the court may be bound, it should assume that Parliament itself, a product of political liberty, in every case intends liberty to be repressed only to such extent as it is in clear terms declared and if it gives a discretion to the court of law, only to such extent as is absolutely necessary.

This is a vastly different approach to that of the commission which stated that the court regards this as an administrative job, which it should not do. This is very basic to us—the preservation of these liberties—and it is spelt out for us here by the present Chief Justice. This serves to highlight once again the point I am trying to make at this stage and that is the need for a clear definition by Parliament, an objective and judicial application of definitions in relation to publications.

There is another approach to this question which was concisely stated by Mr. Justice Snyman in another matter. Mr. Justice Snyman said that this was how he viewed the matter as a judge:

That is the approach that the courts have adopted. What is the justification for saying that these matters should no longer be in the hands of the courts? We do not believe that this Bill contains clarity of definition nor machinery for effective administration, and we will obviously certainly elaborate on this fact during the course of the Committee Stage.

Let me conclude this aspect of the matter I am dealing with. I think that when one comes to controls of any sort dealing with matters such as literature, science, art and entertainment, one must realize that what a man thinks or believes in or accepts in his judgment as an ethical, social or political norm can never be controlled by legislation. The opinions of a man can never be controlled by legislation. What Parliament can do, is to define the areas of action over acts performed by an individual and which are deemed undesirable in the interests of the whole country. I agree with the hon. the Minister that the mind and the thought processes are the responsibility of the school, the university, the home, and the church. That is where those approaches are created. However, when it comes to the question of definition, I say again that one has to consider finding a norm which can be applied by the courts, and can be applied in the sense that it takes into consideration the control of the divergent views of the population of a country as widely as possible so as not to impinge on the freedoms of the individual to be able to read what he wishes to read, to see what he wants to see and to do what he wants to do to the widest possible extent consonant with law and order and good public morals.

This Bill does contain one provision that pleases me, although it is a very timid provision, and that is the tentative attempt to allow the non-White population in South Africa to have some say in regard to the control of publications. The Bill accepts the fact that the Indian Council and the Coloured Representative Council will now appoint committees which will be available to advise the film committees on film matters if asked to do so. However, I cannot go along with the hon. the Minister that there is no role for the Bantu people to play in this regard. I believe that the Bantu in the homelands, those who have not had any experience of city life, of the westernized way of life, are people of high moral standards and I believe that they are entitled to be consulted in the matter of publications when those publications may be placed before them. I believe that there are men of letters and women of letters in all communities in South Africa. We know that there are writers and authors and playwrights in the different communities of South Africa, and the freedom which they will now have to express an opinion is, I believe, wholly inadequate. I believe that this is a case of discrimination, not one of differentiation; I believe that we should also make provision for the Bantu to have a say in these matters. I hope that the hon. the Minister will find it possible to inform the House in the course of this debate that he will extend the scope of consultation with the non-White communities.

Sir, there is one vicious provision in this Bill and that is the power of entry and examination and seizure. The accepted principle in South Africa is that a search should only be carried out when there is a search warrant relating to specific premises and issued for a specific purpose. Sir, there was a departure introduced in 1971 in section 13(a) of the present Act, in terms of which any person authorized by the Minister, either generally or specially, can enter upon any premises and search and seize. I said at the time that I believed that this could lead to the establishment of a corps of super-snoopers, but, Sir, at least there was a restriction placed on those people, and the restriction was that they had reasonable grounds for suspecting the possession of an undesirable object. But, Sir, what is in the present Bill? There is no need for the person entering upon the premises to have any suspicion. The Minister may authorize whom he pleases when he pleases to enter my home or your home, Mr. Speaker, and his right to do so is not restricted in any way. He does not even have to have a suspicion, Sir, that either you or I may be in possession of something undesirable before he uses this power of entry, and if we were to dare to resist we would make ourselves liable to penalties, and the penalties provided for in this Bill are not inconsiderable. Sir, I am sure that the hon. the Minister has not realized the significance of this. The persons authorized do not even have to be members of the board or the committee; they can choose whose home or place of business they will visit, and they can choose any time of night or day; there is no qualification in that regard whatever. These powers are wider than the powers which the police have today to search for evidence of suspected crimes. Sir, to whom is this power going to be given? I have read of an organization which has been formed and from whose ranks the hon. the Minister will no doubt have many recruits, an organization called the Association for the Preservation of Moral Norms. All their members will be applying to the hon. the Minister for this right to inspect premises and to seize property. Sir, the relevant section of the Act was bad enough, but this one goes too far. It should be noted that the inter-departmental committee says that not all members of the board should have this power, that it should only be selected members of the present board, and that search should only take place upon receipt of a complaint and on the authority of the law. Sir, that is obviously a wise approach by those who administer the law, the departmental representatives on the inter-departmental committee; but they are not “kragdadig” enough for them the hon. the Minister.

Are you referring to clause 17?

Yes. Sir, I would ask the hon. the Minister again to look at the report of the inter-departmental committee in this regard. Safeguards must be there. In the Bill as it is there is absolutely no safeguard as to how and when and in what manner any of these authorized, persons should exercise their power of entry and seizure.

Now I wish to deal with the question of the abolition of appeals to the courts. The argument for this step is that a board of experts is just as competent as a court to give judgment on ethical norms, according to the report of the commission. Sir, laws must be explicit and the court’s inherent job is to interpret laws. It is for Parliament to determine the norms, not a board of experts. It is for Parliament to determine and define the norms, and then for the courts to interpret that definition and the practical application of the law. Then it is also suggested that their function is purely administrative. I have already dealt with Chief Justice Rumpff and his view that it is far from that. The court is there to see that there is no unnecessary interference with the freedom of the ordinary citizen of South Africa. Then there is the suggestion that no reasons are given by the board so that the Appeal Court sits de novo without knowing what has gone on before. That is wrong. Mr. Justice Diemont of the Cape court, in handling one of these matters, made it quite clear. He said—

He then goes on to order that it should give those reasons. But in any event, Sir, the problem is one of vague definitions. I think the point was well taken in Rapport of this week-end in dealing with this matter. Surely it is possible for Parliament, with the advice of qualified persons, to define what we want to control in such a manner that the courts can apply it and know what we have in mind? But why the change? Why the change of doing away with appeals? I want to remind the hon. the Minister that his party, that side of the House, this Government, stands committed to their approach in this matter which was stated in 1963 by the then Minister of the Interior, Mr. De Klerk, who is now Senator De Klerk. Senator De Klerk made it quite clear that as far as the Government was concerned—and that approach even then was resisted by the public at large—it considered that the control of undesirable literature must of necessity be effected through legislation, whereas inferior reading matter must be combated especially by advancing good and passable literature. Harm which could be done to the community by undesirable literature was very great, he said, but the manner in which inferior reading could adversely effect the community must not be under-estimated. Then he went on to say—

Sir, what the hon. the Minister is doing, in the words of Senator De Klerk, is now imposing censorship, cold, blatant censorship, by the removal of this right of going to the courts, and he must not tell me that the clause dealing with reviews is giving access to the courts. It is meaningless and worthless in this Bill.

But one can go further. The hon. the Minister of Health—and I am glad to see he is sitting here—delivered a speech to the Rapportryers on 18 November 1971 and according to this speech, too, he made a great point of this. He said this—

Sir, is the Minister of Health now going to say that that is absolutely worthless? He started his speech to the Rapportryers by trying to show that they were not doing anything objectionable in their application of censorship. The interdepartmental committee, composed of practical administrators of the law, said that the right of appeal to the courts should be retained. A difficulty which does arise in terms of the present Act is the inability of the Appeal Court to hear additional evidence. That is a problem which the majority of the commissioners referred to, that the Appeal Court could not receive affidavits. It is a simple matter to put the necessary provision in the Act to allow the Supreme Court to have access to further affidavits or representations, other than those submitted to the board. It is quite simple to make provision for such a procedure.

With this background, it is clear that the Government’s whole approach to the control of publications, etc., which involves the abolition of appeals to the courts, can only be the result of irritation on the part of the Government; the Government does not like to feel that it is being thwarted. The Government considers itself as having been thwarted when the courts decide that they cannot apply a piece of legislation because the definitions are insufficient.

Mr. Speaker, we find something very strange in the creation of this pseudo appeal court, for which provision has been made in this Bill. Why is it that when judges are said to be unable to determine norms by way of appeal, the chairman of that very appeal board must be a judge or a man conversant with the law? Why must the chairman be a judge if judges are not the people to determine norms? [Interjection.] I think the hon. member for Water-berg also knows that in terms of the definition, the chairman can be an advocate of the Supreme Court who has had the necessary years of training. He may well be a member of the organization of which the hon. member for Waterberg is the chairman. Perhaps he will come to this House and sit on the Government benches for a while before being appointed chairman of this appeal board.

No.

Mr. L. G. MURRAY. He can be; if he is an advocate of so many years’ training, provided he leaves this House again, the hon. the Minister is entitled to appoint him as chairman of that board. Sir, I believe that this is a principle which is abhorrent to us all in South Africa. It is certainly a principle which we on this side of the House cannot support.

There are other objectionable aspects of this Bill. My time has almost expired, so I shall refer to them briefly. They will be dealt with by other members on this side. I do not want it thought that what I have said is all that we find wrong with this Bill; there is a great deal more. I want to mention, for instance, that there is the question of pre-censorship. This is ostensibly rejected, but it is in this Bill. There are presumptions which are raised in relation to certain proceedings. There are crimes involved, and heavy penalties which can be imposed for the innocent possession of certain undesirable matter. The hon. the Minister spoke about matter being “grossly undesirable”. There is nothing in the Bill to say that an item must be “grossly” undesirable. There is not a word in the Bill which mentions this. An item merely has to be listed by the directorate, by notice in the Press. Where is the concept of “grossly undesirable” there? One would hope that it would have to be grossly undesirable, but no limitation has been mentioned. There is the prescription of minimum penalties. There is a most unsatisfactory position in regard to university libraries which results from the position as it is now and the restrictions on the reporting of court cases which is now put into the law, a matter which the hon. the Minister himself has said is covered by their code. All these restrictions are now being put into the law as to what cannot or should not be published in regard to certain court proceedings. What is the hon. the Minister doing? He has provisions in this Bill to deal with the prevention of the reporting of court proceedings. That affects publication.

These are just a few of the additional objections we have to this Bill. These will be dealt with by hon. members on this side of the House in the course of the debate.

*Mr. P. L. S. AUCAMP. Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Green Point dealt with a number of aspects of the Bill we have before us this afternoon. Unfortunately, it is not possible for me to reply to all his arguments. However, in the course of my speech I shall deal with some of the arguments he raised here, while other arguments raised by him will be dealt with by certain of my colleagues.

As the first member of the commission to take part in this debate, I should like, on behalf of the commission, to express our appreciation of the friendly words addressed to the commission by the Minister. On behalf of the commission, too, I want to join the hon. the Minister in conveying our thanks to the chairman of the commission—the present Minister of Justice. It was truly a privilege to serve along with him, and under his leadership, on such an important commission. Unfortunately, not all the members of the commission are present here this afternoon. I am told that one of the members, Mr. George Oliver, unfortunately lost his way between Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. However, Mr. Oliver proved to be a very valuable member of that commission. He took part in the activities of that commission in a spirit of dedication, and he was very loyal towards his colleagues serving on that commission. That is why I say it is a pity he is unable to be here this afternoon. He would probably have liked to attend the debate.

The hon. member for Green Point tried to indicate why there were points of difference between that side of the House and this side. That there are differences is quite certain, and that is why a minority report was submitted. Even at the time when the discussions in the commission were taking place, I too, tried to find the real reason for the existence of differences. After I had listened to the speech by the hon. member for Green Point, it became very clear to me why there was a dispute between that side of the House and this side concerning a problem of this nature. That difference is to be found in the difference in the attitude to and view of life between the two sides of the House. Since that is where the difference lies, it will not be possible for the two sides of the House to see eye to eye concerning legislation of this nature. It is a great pity that we are unable to see eye to eye, particularly in times such as these, times in which the most violent of onslaughts are being made on the spirit of man throughout the Western world.

I should like to quote an argument here which appears in the minority report. I quote it because I partly agree with the statement. On page 51, paragraph 2.1.1, the following is said—

I say that I agree in part with this statement. There are many views on this matter. There is a diversity of views being held on a problem of this nature. After all, we have our verkramptes in this country with their views; then we have our less verkrampte people; we have the verligtes and the more verligte people, and we have the libertines and the extreme leftists who want to destroy everything. Consequently it is true that there is a diversity of views. I concede that this is so, but I also want to read another statement made in paragraph 2.1.2—

I say that the second statement is related to this diversity of ideas which exists. As it is, the dilemma of that side of the House is implied in the fact that a diversity of ideas exists. That was the dilemma facing the members of that side of the House serving on the commission, and that is the dilemma of that side of the House. After all, the United Party is a centre party, and a centre party is always glancing over its shoulder to the left and to the right, fearful of who might trap it, and then it searches to the left and to the right to see what it can create. That is the dilemma in which they find themselves. They want to take up a standpoint concerning a question such as this, but because there are a number of schools of thought on this matter, they will never take up a standpoint on it. We had experience of this on the commission and we had experience of it when we listened to the hon. member’s speech. Because this is the dilemma, the problem for that side of the House is how to escape from this dilemma without giving offence to the various schools of thought that exist there. That is why I quoted this second statement, which relates to this matter. This is that that side of the House wants to escape this dilemma by attempting to cover all these schools of thought with one blanket. Let me tell them that they have as much hope of achieving this as the rabbits have of catching all the dogs on the moon. The major difference between this side of the House and that side of the House is thus that we are unable to approach this matter from the same point of view. Common ground on which we can create a point of view from which we may approach this problem does not exist. Therefore it is very clear that the approach of that side of the House does not rest on a basis of principle. The approach of that side of the House rests on opportunism to a large extent—an attempt to satisfy other people or all the people as much as possible.

You would like a lot of identical puppets, all dancing to the same strings.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who has just interrupted me is one of the finest exponents of opportunism to be found on that side of the House. Because this is the case, because this measure ...

Discuss the Bill.

Why are the hon. members afraid of discussing their attitude?

I shall answer you.

I shall give the hon. member the opportunity. I am coming to him shortly because I want to put a question to him in a moment. Because the hon. members are unable to approach this problem from an angle of principles, they come up with the idea of casting the problem back into the laps not of the people, but of those people who publish, who write, who distribute and of all the others who make money out of the various industries. I say they are trying to cast it back there. If one analyses the proposal made by hon. members, the proposal concerning the self-regulating bodies, one will see that their proposal amounts to a desire to create the machinery for exempting the State from its obligations in respect of control. They say this too. They say they foresee that the powers exercised by the State will eventually have to disappear. That is why they propose self-regulating bodies which would have to draw up their own codes. With this argument and with this standpoint, which are not based on principles, this side of the House can never agree.

Then we find, too, that the accusation is levelled at this side of the House that the proposals as contained in this draft legislation constitute interference in the freedom of the individual. I want to state at once that there is over-emphasis of the freedom of the individual on that side of the House. It is not only the freedom of the individual which forms a pillar of democracy; various elements are built into a democracy. If there is no balanced relationship between these diverse elements on which democracy rests, democracy collapses. This is in fact what we are experiencing today, namely over-emphasis of the freedom of the individual and a resultant disproportion between the freedom of the individual and the welfare of the community. We would also be well-advised to take note of the fact that this is this very pillar which is continually emphasized and exploited by the enemies of democracy in an attempt to destroy it. By this I do not mean that that is the motive of that side of the House. What I am saying is that this is something which we in our South African society have to guard against with the greatest of care.

The hon. member for Green Point referred here to the appeal board. In the minority report the appeal board was also enlarged upon at great length. It is very clear to me that that side of the House has no confidence in the proposed appeal board.

It is a political body.

They are already saying that they have no confidence in that appeal board. They state in their report that the chairman is the key figure in this appeal board; they then state that it will be a political body, and so on. As it is, in the minority report a lack of confidence is, as I have said, expressed in the chairman, whoever he may be. The hon. member for Green Point, too, has already expressed a lack of confidence in the chairman. In clause 35 the Bill provides that the chairman may be someone holding judicial office.

“May” be.

Yes, may be. Clause 35 also provides that he may be a member of the legal profession or that he may be a member of a faculty of law at a university, with certain qualifications added. That side of the House is always expressing its great respect for the judges on the Bench, and we are in agreement on that score. Our judges in South Africa are very greatly respected. They are greatly respected as a result of their impartiality.

You are doing away with that.

What is happening now? A person may still be sitting on the Bench today and there may still be the greatest respect for his impartiality in that capacity, but tomorrow he may be chairman of the appeal board and then the great respect for his impartiality disappears! Overnight he becomes a stooge, a lackey of the Minister. I want to ask: Are there judges on the Bench whom you expect will become stooges once they take the chair of the appeal board?

Are they going to be appointed?

That is an accusation which those hon. members are making in anticipation. In consequence I am not so sure whether the great respect they are always talking about is not sometimes a hollow cry. This person may also be a member of the Bar. It may be a person who is a senior member of the Bar. If it is a senior member of the Bar, then he is already a person who has won very great respect from his colleagues in the legal profession. Hon. members opposite say that if such a person were to be appointed as chairman, he would be a lackey of the Minister, that he would lose all his impartiality, and so on. Do you know of such senior colleagues in your profession at whom you are able to hurl this accusation in anticipation, at this early stage?

There are a few sitting here in the House.

It could also be someone from the Side Bar. I now want to ask the hon. member for Jeppe whether he is at this early stage prepared to make the accusation, in anticipation, that if a person were to be appointed from the Side Bar as chairman of this board, he would act as the lackey of the Minister?

I do not think so, but it depends on what kind of man he is.

That is not the answer that was given by the hon. member for Green Point.

But it is the answer I want.

It is not the answer to the question.

That is not what they say. They are already, in anticipation, finding him guilty of partiality. Why are hon. members doing this? Why are they doing the judges of our Bench this injustice? Why are they doing the advocates of our country this injustice? Why are they doing this in respect of the members of the legal profession in the Side Bar? They are already starting to arouse feeling against this appeal board to-day. They are already starting to compromise this appeal board as far as the public are concerned.

Do you promise us a judge?

I say they are already starting to do this today. The attitude which hon. members opposite have adopted and the points of view they have chosen and from which they are judging this problem have, I think, made it quite clear that real control is not a serious matter with them. Here again they create the impression that they are here to champion the interests of certain people. They are here to champion the interests of those who want a looser form of control. They are here to champion the interests of those people who would like to follow their policy of laissez faire. On the other hand, they want to excuse themselves by saying: We support the principle of control, but control without teeth and control which cannot really be implemented.

Ineffective control.

Yes, ineffective control. I fear that because that is the difference between this side of the House and that side of the House, that section of the people who would like to have control and want protection for the South African community will only be able to turn to this side of the House.

This Bill is the result of incisive consultation and deliberation, and the principles recognized here are the principles of the broad strata of the population. I am convinced that difficulties will arise in the future. Legislation of this kind cannot function smoothly all at once, but because this Bill rests on a basis of principles, I believe that we are heading in the right direction. I believe, too, that when difficulties arise, those difficulties will be overcome so that in the future this Bill will in fact serve the purpose we should like it to serve.

Mr.

Speaker, we welcome the proposals by the hon. the Minister of the Interior at the outset of his speech that this debate should be conducted on a high plane. I believe that it is a subject of such importance and that it concerns so many significant factors of our national life that when we come together in a place like this to discuss a matter of this kind, we should treat it as one of considerable seriousness. It was, therefore, disappointing to me to hear the speech of the hon. member for Bloemfontein East. Sir, for something like a quarter of an hour of a half-hour speech he addressed the House on the subject of the Opposition. He spent several minutes on the subject of Mr. George Oliver, who is no longer a member of the House, presumably in an attempt to embarrass this side of the House. He dwelt on the reasons for the minority report, which he ascribed to a certain difference in philosophy arising from the diversity in the ranks of the Opposition, and so forth. I will not weary the House with a detailed recount of what took place, but if this is the standard on which this debate is to be conducted, we may as well abandon all hope of achieving a serious and constructive debate.

Sir, I think when we look at this Bill we must remind ourselves of certain principles which apply to the whole question of censorship and to certain facts of history which I think illuminate the subject. Censorship has been attempted by various societies over a period of some 3 000 or more years. That, indeed, is as far as history goes. It might have been tried before in the Egyptian and even possibly in the Chinese civilization. But the fact is that, by general admission, censorship in the form of a state controlled system has never yet worked. There has never yet been a system devised which will make completely waterproof, completely foolproof, a system of censorship run by the State; which will make it into an effective mechanism; and if hon. members on that side of the House believe that in this extraordinary piece of legislation, which is before the House today, they have found a foolproof mechanism, then they are in for very grave disillusionment. It is, Sir, for all its formal mechanistic construction, a piece of legislation which is going to prove virtually unworkable. We predict, and it will be proved within not too many years, that this legislation has created a kind of monster, a bureaucratic monster, which will employ more and more people doing more and more things to the growing inconvenience of people and encroach more and more on the freedoms of people in this country. Sir, I confidently predict that this will be the outcome of this law. We will move through this law, in the field of culture, into a kind of Kafka society. Hon. members of this House may have read the work of the great Kafka, in which he described the bureaucratic labyrinth: a nightmare, an enormous labyrinth in which nobody can find the exit any more, with more and more tunnels, more and more dead-ends, more and more red tape, in which poor human beings become entirely lost and bewildered and cannot ever find their way out again. This is the kind of law which this is, and I believe it will not be too many years before this measure, if it is passed, will be brought back to this House for very substantial amendment.

Sir, it is a fact in South Africa that until the year 1963 there was no State censorship. Apart from the control of films, there was until the year 1963 no State censorship. My authority for this is none other than the majority report itself, which points out at the outset that in all the years of South Africa’s history, some 300 years, there was in fact no State censorship. Only in 1931 was control introduced over films. But, apart from that, until 1963 there was in fact no other bureaucratic control. What happened to South Africa, Sir, in this permissive situation? Sex was not invented after 1963, Sir. Pornography was not invented after 1963. Obscenity was not unknown before 1963. But somehow South Africa survived. Somehow our culture survived. Somehow our moral standards survived; religion survived; high endeavour survived, and our schools and universities survived, all without censorship. What kind of control was actually applied? How did this miracle happen? Well, what happened was that there were certain laws and certain standards, and there were the courts, and when people offended each other by obscenity, when they offended each other by pornography, there were remedies in the courts. And, Sir, with this very slight defence, what the hon. member for Bloemfontein East has described as virtually no control at all, the very epitome of a permissive society, South Africa somehow survived. Now, since 1963 it has come to be accepted that a bureaucratic form of control is nevertheless necessary. I would be the first to agree that there probably was justification, because as the fashions come and go there has in recent years been a growth in pornography, in obscenity and especially in the means of communication for making these things more easily available to the public than was the case in past years. It was decided in this House to introduce a Publications Bill which provided certain controls. Now, I believe that those controls, up to a point, were perhaps necessary and were sometimes effective in doing the things they were supposed to do, but the system broke down for a number of reasons. The reasons are indicated in the report of the commission and I do not propose to go into them in any detail. There were reasons relating to inefficiency, to certain misconceptions, and to conflict with the courts. There were a number of reasons and I think it is important merely to say that the bureaucratic system which was instituted, the State control which was instituted, was found to have certain basic faults. The reaction of the majority on the commission was not to look at these faults and to look critically at the question as to whether they were not the fault of the system itself, the presence of a bureaucratic system. They did not consider whether the remedy was not to abolish that system which was causing these hardships, these conflicts, these dissatisfactions, the loss of confidence and all these things which happened under the previous Act. They did not look at this. What they did was to try to see whether they could make a tougher Act, a more complex Act, a more foolproof Act to introduce more bureaucracy and more control. I believe that in doing this they committed a fundamental fault. There was a basic fallacy, because the more you do this the more you come into conflict with the human spirit in a field where people are in fact very independent-minded. The difference between those who seek such controls and those who reject them is not a matter, as the hon. member for Bloemfontein East said, of whether you are Afrikaans- or English-speaking, whether you vote Nat or you vote U.P. That is not the difference. It is very largely a difference of intellect, of mind, of attitude and of spirit which crosses party lines, language lines and cultural lines in this country. Sir, there are people on both sides of the party lines in this country who stand for tighter control. There are people on both sides who stand for a greater liberality in the interpretation of certain laws, and it will be found, when this law becomes more public, when public attention is more fully focussed upon it, that many of the antogonists of this legislation will be found in the Afrikaans universities, and in the circles of Afrikaans writers, Afrikaans artists, Afrikaans thinkers. These, Sir, are the people whom we heard as witnesses and there is no question that some of the Afrikaner minds who are most highly regarded and respected in this country will be found in support of those who reject this Bill, and not on the side of those who seek tighter and tighter controls.

This is a heterogeneous country. It is commonplace to say that South Africa is a heterogeneous country. We have the Coloureds, the Bantu and the Indians and we have a certain kind of lip service paid to the fact that the Coloureds and the Indians have some right to be consulted about the nature of the controls which will apply to them as much as to anybody else in this country. What right do they have? They have the right to constitute themselves into an advisory committee. That advisory committee will not judge on the censorship of books. It will not sit there as a court of first instances. It will not sit there as a body to represent the Coloured or Indian people amongst the body of people who decide what we may read and what we may not read. No, they will be there to be consulted. If one of these committees decides that it wishes to ban a book, a play or an object, it will then, if it thinks fit, be able to call on such an advisory committee from the Coloureds to ask them whether they think the same sort of prohibition should apply to the Coloured people. It is a very limited right of consultation to be used entirely at the discretion of a White committee. This for a heterogeneous country after a debate such as we had last week in which the position of the Coloured people was very fully canvassed!

What about the Black people, the majority of people in this country? We know that a great many of them are, in fact, being educated, are reaching professional standards and are interested in the literature of this country. They have produced some literature of their own. There are poets, writers and certainly many readers. These people are not to be consulted at all; not even to the limited extent that the Coloureds and the Indians are to be. Why not? Because it is stated that the separate nature, the autogenous nature of the Black people and their future development will take them on a path which is different and therefore they cannot be consulted.

What happens in the meantime? In the meantime something like 10 000 books are being published in South Africa, something like 3 000 films are being shown in South Africa every year. The Black people are in South Africa, they are reading these books and they are looking at these films. What is to happen between now when they are, in fact, either being allowed or not allowed to read these books or see these films and the time when their autogenous development, to use the official term, takes them full-route to their eventual destination which may, shall we say, be independent homelands? Even if this happens, how long will it take? Twenty-five years? What is to happen in the meantime? This Bill, if it becomes law, will not stand the test of time. It will have to be amended within two or three years.

Next year.

Yes, perhaps next year. Long before the Black people ever become independent in their own homelands and their autogenous destiny is achieved, this Bill is going to hit them very hard. It is perfectly clear that there will be something like 15 million Black people living in White South Africa. If this is not achieved, we are not going to survive economically. Many of these people will have to occupy the higher posts in this country. They will have to occupy managerial positions or we shall not be able to feed our country. These people, who occupy these posts, will they not read; will they not go to cinemas; will they not also expect to share in the cultural life of the country if they work and live here, even on a temporary migratory basis, and if they occupy the more highly skilled posts? Of course; but there is no place for them in this Bill. In terms of the United Party’s proposal the self-regulatory bodies would in fact quite normally absorb into the trade bodies representatives of these other countries. It would happen quite naturally, without special permission. It can be done as the system advances and as their needs increase. So, quite gradually, they can be involved without special machinery.

We have heard from that side of the House that it is necessary that “die volk self beheer”. This means, in the context that it was used, that that side of the House does not believe that it is possible for South Africans living in South Africa to run a system of restraint in their moral and cultural fields without the intervention of the Government. “Die volk moet beheer” means “die Regering sal beheer, die Staat sal beheer”. This is the content of the whole Bill. This Bill, by a series of draconian negative measures, is in fact saying to South Africa, “You do not know what is good for you; we are going to appoint a bunch of bureaucrats in charge of this matter and they will control it every inch of the way. You will be told what is good for you...”

That is nonsense!

It is not, it is entirely correct. “If you do not accept this meticulous control, you do not know what is good for you. We will tell you, and if you disobey what we tell you to do, you will go to gaol or be fined.” This is what it adds up to. This is how our cultural control is going to work, and how it is going to be made to work. We are going to have a set of committees throughout the country. These committees are going to look at everything they possibly can and they will not be able to escape the obligation to have to do so, because if they let things through there is going to be a complaint at a congress of the Nationalist Party, or a complaint from some similar authoratative and persuasive person or influential body. They will say that this system, this machinery the Government has set up, is not doing its work, and that it is inefficient just like the last one. They will say, “Look at this book which I have just found; this is what I picked up at the cafe on the corner; this is what you can buy at a bookshop.” This directorate and its committees will be under constant pressure from the public, from the verkrampte public, from the ultraconservatives, from the churches, from the self-appointed controllers of morals. There are the people who will be putting constant pressure on the directorate. This new mechanism or organization, this new machinery, will have to answer for it unless they take the trouble to read every book which can possibly be suspect.

Now let us look at the volume of what is involved. Last year, in the case of films, the Publications Board looked at 3 000 films. The number has been rising by something like 10 to 20% each years. The films are increasing in number all the time. It takes a long time to look at a film. We saw some of the films with the board. You have to sit through the entire film. You have to look at the trailer, the title, the supporting films, Mickey Mouse, etc. They have to look at the lot, because the Act enjoins them to do so. They found out that they needed 24 sessions per week to look at these things. They were unable to fulfil the quota by more than a little over a half, so that films were piling up. To these 3 000 films will be added in future all the additional films which come in for home-movies and for projection through television sets, video tapes, magnetic tapes, and so on. All these things come into the country. They can be carried in one’s pocket and can be smuggled in with the greatest of ease. But the law will now be that every single one, before it is publicly shown—and “publicly” has a special definition in the Bill—must be sent to a large factory which will be erected outside Pretoria where it must be seen in full and cut under State supervision and then given back to the owner. The congestion that will result from this staggers the imagination. So, far from seeing 3 000 films, when we have television and these new devices which are freely advertised in American, German British magazines already and will come into the country freely, devices which can be played through television sets, they will have something like 10 000 to 12 000, or maybe more, films to look at. There are not enough hours in a year to enable a normal quantity of skilled people to look at films at that rate. There will be utter and complete congestion.

Now let me come to books. It is calculated that in Britain alone something like 30 000 books a year are published. Every one of these books is publishable, if not actually published, in South Africa. There is a large import of books from America, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and other countries. In addition, Sir, there is a large and growing publication of books in South Africa—Afrikaans, English and in the African languages. At a very conservative estimate, those of us on the commission last year calculated that there must be approximately 10 000 books published in South Africa each year. Under the old system, where the Publications Board looked only at such books as were actually brought to its attention as the result of complaints, they were looking at approximately 1 600 books a year. Of these they were turning down approximately 900 books and passing approximately 600 books. Under the new system where they have a new obligation, a heavy obligation, to go and look for material and not merely to wait passively for complaints to come to them, I would say, putting it mildly, that they will have to deal with 5 000 or 6 000 books a year. This takes reading time. We asked Prof. Murray, who looks at the political literature, how long it took him to read a political book of any substance. He said that it took him a full week to read such a book. Having spent a full week on this one book he then had to send it to one or two assessors to get their judgment on it as well. This is the kind of time which is involved, the time of people who are academics, who are skilled, who have special knowledge of politics or of the arts.

The entire scheme staggers the imagination. It is not possible to find sufficient time for qualified people to do this job properly. The first reason why this will break down is precisely because one cannot find enough qualified people to do so much work successfully and if you are force, in an attempt to cover the requirements of the Bill, to appoint people who are less than qualified, there will be a breakdown because of necessity you will have committees that include unqualified people. Decisions will be reached in one town which will be clearly and blatantly opposed as to their content and meaning in another town. The co-ordination involved ...

You do not understand it.

I can assure the Minister that I have been involved with this Bill for a long time.

I know, but you do not understand what we intend to do.

I know what your intention is, but I want to tell you what is going to happen. What the hon. the Minister intends and what is actually going to happen are two entirely different things.

They are worlds apart.

If something is agreed to by one committee, it is not going to be referred to another. Do you not understand?

No, not the same thing, but the same kind of thing can go to another committee, and the same kind of thing can be very akin to that which was turned down. People are going to talk and are going to say: “Why is this book allowed and that book not allowed? Why can you do this in Potchefstroom, but you can not do this in Pietermaritzburg?” This is the kind of thing which is going to happen.

It is the other way around, especially in Potchefstroom.

We come to the question of possession. This has been made a new crime. It is in affect provided in this Bill that if a committee decides—and this is subject to appeal—that an object or publication is undesirable and it is published as such in the Government Gazette, it will become a crime to possess it.

It has to be agreed to by the appeal board.

I said it is subject to appeal.

You are not listening.

If this object or publication then becomes such an object of which the possession is illegal subject to the safeguards and it is published as such in the Gazette, then it becomes a crime to possess such an object. Let us assume the hon. the Minister bought a book entirely in good faith ten years ago. The book comes before a committee and then it goes on appeal. It is then published as such in the Gazette and the person who is found to be in possession of such an object, becomes a criminal. The effect of this is retrospective because there is nothing to say that the person is guilty only if he comes into possession of such an object after the publication in the Gazette. It refers to any such object which you may have in your possession, whether you have it innocently or with good intent. If it is found in your possession you have committed a crime. If one looks at the books in the private libraries of ordinary civilized people in this country you will find that they may have some of these publications in their possession either by accident, by design or by curiosity or for all the other reasons that cause people to build up libraries. It is an impossible task for people to go through every shelf of their libraries and to check every book against the publications in the Gazette.

I can understand that if a publication or an object is pernicious and it is the desire of the State to prevent people from coming into possession of such a thing, they could prohibit it; but to turn it into a crime, into a punishable offence where the intent was in fact innocent, where the acquisition was innocent, where there is no question of using or abusing this object for any evil purpose, then it is like saying to a man: “You have a stone in your pocket. I have no proof as to what you intend using it for, but the mere fact that you have a dangerous object in your possession is in itself an offence.” You do not have to show any intend of using it in a harmful way. This is a concept which we totally reject.

I regret that my time is running out as there are many other things that I should like to mention. However, I do want to make the point very clear that we are setting up in this country a labyrinth of bureaucracy to remedy something which is not the gravest matter we face in South Africa. There are far graver dangers and far graver difficulties which we are entirely content to see dealt with by the ordinary courts of the land, and where we have been prepared to allow people to enjoy their liberties to the extent that these can be guaranteed with the minimum of encroachment of their freedom. All these matters are allowed in respect of such things as murder, burglary and all kinds of dangers, where we operate the law in a manner which does not impinge on the liberties of people such as to drive their motor cars, to conduct ordinary social intercourse or to go about. When people commit crimes against society these crimes can be defined and people can be arrested, tried and punished for it. Why has pornography become such a very special and dangerous feature of our society that it needs not the ordinary system of the court, not the ordinary law, not the ordinary restraints which could be operated through society by the means we have suggested, but a bureaucracy, the imposition on South Africa of a whole society of civil servants?

In the past 30 years or so the number of civil servants in South Africa has grown by about 250% while the population itself has grown by only 80%. An 80% growth in the population accompanied by a 250% growth of civil servants means that the civil service is growing three times as fast as the population is growing and that at a time when South Africa needs its skills for an increasingly broad range of activities. The hon. Minister with this Bill has added greatly to that growth because I predict now that it will not be possible to make this Bill work with all these myriad of laws, licences, checks and counter-checks which have to go on continuously in respect of 3 000 books and 10 000 films with the obligation to look at all or most of them. This cannot be done without the growth of a vast bureaucracy and no success will come from it. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, I should very much like to express my appreciation to the hon. the Minister for the opportunity I have had to be a member of this commission. It is a special privilege when I think that for the first time in my life it has given me the opportunity for the closest possible co-operation with a member of the United Party. It is a very great privilege to get to know one another in such a way.

As far as the content of the hon. member for Von Brandis’s speech is concerned, it struck me that he spoke of the water-tightness or otherwise of this Bill. I should like to ask the hon. member, and hon. members on the other side, what legislation is indeed watertight in their opinion. There must inevitably be new adaptions to legislation in the course of time. Therefore this legislation does not claim to be watertight either. It is normative in character. Throughout this legislation must be judged and evaluated as being normative in character.

The hon. member also mentioned conditions prior to 1963. He stated here that prior to 1963, i.e. before legislation had been passed in that connection, the morale of our people was good. I do want to ask the hon. member whether he is out of touch with reality. We surely do live in a changing world. For example, where is the pre-1963 United Party.

A change has indeed taken place amongst the people, and the result has been that the number of United Party members has greatly decreased. Those who take cognizance of reality, therefore, must also take into account the fact of change amongst our people. I therefore want to state here that this Bill is not superfluous; it is in reality a timely necessity. We as members of the commission were very strongly under the impression that we were dealing with timely legislation. The necessity of the legislation spoke volumes as far as we were concerned, particularly in the light of evidence presented to us. From that evidence it was also apparent that it is vital to have control over publications and entertainments in the Republic of South Africa. It is true that we can disagree about how this should be done, but that it was apparent from the evidence we heard that there is a sincere desire for control, was very clear to us. That was profoundly impressed upon us because every witness mentioned the fact. How we should implement that control is the question about which there is disagreement, and this applies to this House too. The minority report also mentions that very clearly.

The fact is that we were struck by that evidence, particularly because authoritative people were speaking, prominent people, people of integrity, with an honest approach to this problem. They were people who gave vent to their feelings so as to provide this commission with a guideline. Thus we were very impressed by the evidence furnished to us on occasion by a senior jurist. He stated there that no decent person in South Africa could have any doubts about inhibitory measures, control measures, being necessary for things that are patently undesirable. Another witness, an authority in the field of publications, informed the commission of his consternation. The consternation amongst them as authorities in this field was in respect of the permissiveness which had already partially affected the thinking of our people. That authority in the field of publication mentioned the breaking down of the spirit of our people, more specifically our young people.

What was ironic to us in that connection was that this particular witness mentioned not only the breakdown that is taking place, but also the tremendous profits certain companies, organizations and individuals are amassing for themselves by this process. He said there was a lot of money to be made from this subversion of our people. What grieved us was the fact that it is specifically the soul of the youth, the soul of our young people, which is suffering as a consequence. Whoever is indifferent to this is an extremely irresponsible person. In this connection reference can also be made to the practice that has developed in connection with the distribution of blue films and, as the previous speaker has also put it, the enormous revenue obtained from this illegally by certain companies. That made an enormous impact on the members of the commission. What is more, it is also accepted that every person, every community, every people has its own specific norms, its own way of appreciating and evaluating things.

We had another witness who greatly impressed us as members of the commission. He put it to us that these norms, these particular norms, our people’s method of evaluation, are being affected by certain publications and entertainments. I want to quote him verbatim in this connection. He said that this is (translation) “the murdering of norms and moral values by a purposeful conditioning process”. When one listens to this evidence given to us by honest witnesses before this commission, there is a disturbing fact that strikes us, i.e. that it is not only in the rest of the world where this spirit prevails, but that it has also very subtly affected our people, the inhabitants of the Republic of South Africa.

What is significant to us here—this has also been mentioned by a previous speaker—and what we must never lose sight of, is the fact that our population consists of White people, Brown people and Black people. This fact is unique in the world, a fact which all of us probably do not always take seriously into account. I am very glad that members opposite who served on this commission now acknowledge this fact—that our population consists of various population groups, that our population has various population facets. It is specifically this fact that has wide implications, as has been emphasized too by those witnesses.

On occasion, in this respect, the hon. the Prime Minister has said that the greatest disservice an inhabitant of this country could do the Republic of South Africa is to encourage confrontation between White people, Black people and Brown people, encourage confrontation with a view to creating dissension between the population groups. In this connection I must of necessity refer to the so-called literature of revolt which, in our day, is being received not from other sources but, as the hon. member for Von Brandis has just indicated, frequently from Afrikaner circles, literature of revolt which is not concerned with promoting or serving Afrikaans literature, but in which the writer is proclaiming political, social and religious revolution. Sir, we must take serious note of that literature of revolt which we also find today in Afrikaans circles amongst the writers of the ’sixties and ’seventies, because some of that literature aims at stirring up revolution in this country.

In the light of this, Mr. Speaker, I also want to refer to the present circumstances of our country, and here I am referring to what the hon. the Minister of Defence said on occasion, i.e. that the onslaughts being made upon the Republic of South Africa are not conventional warfare, but a total onslaught.

I think, Sir, that we do not always take sufficient note of this fact which the hon. the Minister of Defence has emphasized on occasion. Part of that total onslaught is the onslaught being made on the morals, the customs and the soul of the inhabitants of the Republic of South Africa. It is that onslaught which seeks its victims not only amongst the White population groups of our country but also amongst Black people and Brown people. In other words, we are dealing here with an onslaught affecting everyone in this country, in which the morals and customs of every sector of the population are being affected, because we must take into account that we are dealing here with a process of breaking down specifically that which makes a people strong, i.e. its morals; specifically that which makes a people tower up, i.e. the nobility of its soul; that we are dealing here with a breaking down process affecting the very being of the people’s survival, and in this publications and entertainments can be instrumental to a large extent; that we are dealing here with the written word, the depiction of scenes, as a mighty weapon in this breakdown process.

Enough, Sir, to indicate to you and hon. members of this House that we are dealing here with a Bill that has come at a time when it has become extremely necessary.

Sir, in asking myself what the content of this Bill is, I find that hon. members of the Opposition who were members of this commission object to the Christian elements contained in the preamble of this Bill, although they value these.

That is untrue.

That is right; you value them but you do not approve them; this merely shows the anomalies in your findings. You value them but you do not approve them. In other words you object to them. I cannot understand how hon. members can value something they do not approve.

We have never made such a statement.

The hon. member must examine the report again. Sir, surely the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa makes provision for the religious freedom of all inhabitants of the Republic. But that still does not obviate the fact that the aspirations of our people are Christian ones; that these are also the aspirations of the Government of the country. These are the aspirations of the legislator, and surely this does not imply that we want to keep dissenters out of the Republic specifically for that reason. On the contrary, it is specifically the Christian characteristic of a government that wishes to give peace, stability and permanence to inhabitants of the country. There is proof of this, particularly if we take a look at the Government which has already been in power in the Republic for 26 years. In this respect the Bill is purposeful, i.e. drawn up with that object in mind; and this is very important, to judge from what ex-Chief Justice L. C. Steyn has to say in his book, Die Uitleg van Wette (translation)—

Sir, we are dealing here with the purposefulness of the Bill, an objective of this legislator, i.e. to give everyone in the Republic of South Africa this protection too.

And then I want to come back to the previous speaker on the other side of the House, who stated that because this Bill embodies the Christian approach, it could possibly exclude those who hold other opinions. But then I again want to emphasize that this Bill is extremely normative. It is specifically here that we find the difference in viewpoints between the majority and minority members of the commission. That difference is an indication to us that we may have a point here which has indeed revealed a division between the respective members of that commission. But it may also be alleged that this Bill, the Publications and Entertainments Bill, infringes upon the freedom of the individual. Sir, in all humility I want to ask this question: Does freedom not specifically lie in restraint? What I am saying is that freedom of the individual specifically lies in restraint. The endeavour of this legislation, as a normative aspect, does not restrict the rights, the freedoms and the elbow-room of the individual, and this also applies to the moral sphere. As a normative criterion it gives direction to the people of the country for the enjoyment of the utmost freedom within that normative aspect. Sir, are our eyes closed to the victims scattered by the wayside, the victims of this so-called freedom which has become a cry throughout the world and which is frequently pushed to extremes here too, as if it were the key to all happiness? I say the victims at the wayside, moral or otherwise, are proof of a desire in the ranks of our people to get a normative criterion from the legislator with which to approach life on the basis of those principles. One can ask, as the hon. the Minister has indicated too, whether we are not dealing here with a task that should actually begin with the family, the school, the church or the community. The members on this side of the House who served on the commission acknowledge the vital significance of the family, the school and the church in our society. It is specifically that importance we must emphasize here, because this legislation wants to assist those bodies in their task, since in considering the true meaning of the family, the school, the church, etc., I want to say in all humility that the legislator also has a responsibility to them. Specifically to define that responsibility of the said bodies so much more extensively, to facilitate their task to much greater an extent, the legislator now comes along with this Bill not to take away the task of the said bodies, but specifically to emphasize it, since by virtue of the Bill a norm, a course is being set for those bodies to emphasize the best aspects of being a parent, a member of the church, a member of an association and a member of a community.

The fact that we are dealing with a complex population grouping, the fact that our existence is being threatened in so many ways, the fact of the evils of the times we are living in, the changing world we find ourselves in, demand that we emphasize the necessity of this Bill. Those who do not take the situation of deterioration amongst our people seriously, is an irresponsible person. There could be ways in which we disagree in our interpretation of the legislation—our democratic system makes provision for that—but we dare not deny this evil that is spreading like a cancer amongst our people. On the contrary. We must strengthen the hands of those people and bodies who are struggling with this every day and towards which you and I have great responsibility. That is why this legislation asks us for a positive approach, particularly when we have the conditions in mind which are taking place out there, and in the light of the onslaughts being made upon our people, above all on the morals of our people.

Mr. Speaker, it would probably not be expected of me as a newcomer to comment upon the speech of the hon. member for Somerset East, except to say that I found his speech extremely informative, and that it became clear to me that he must indeed have been a zealous member of this commission, and that he made a positive contribution towards the findings of the commission.

† It is a great honour to have been elected as a member of this House for the constituency of Wynberg. I should like to say in this, my maiden speech, that I hope that I shall be able to uphold the dignity and the traditions of this House at all times. I make my maiden speech in this debate with some trepidation as the question before the House is contentious and tradition demands a non-contentious speech as a maiden speech. My main reason for entering the debate, however, is to attempt to dispel a popular misconception, viz., that the review of a decision and an appeal against a decision are one and the same. In my speech, therefore, I shall confine myself to a discussion of the actual difference between these two legal remedies, because both are referred to in this Bill.

It is quite possible that the misconception that review and appeal are one and the same arises primarily because of the Afrikaans terminology in this regard.

*In Afrikaans we speak of the “herslening” of a decision. In common terms this possibly creates the impression that reviewing a decision is the same as giving a hearing to or listening to an appeal against a decision. There is, however, a great difference between the two, and since both are referred to in this Bill, in clauses 38 and 39 respectively, it may perhaps be desirable to pause for a moment on the differences between the two.

The review of a decision relates solely to the review of the proceedings of the body that gave the decision. The reviewing court must determine whether the body which gave the decision did so without any irregularities, and that it acted in strict accordance with the law. There are those who believe that the review of a decision grants a person who has been affected by such a decision, the right to put his case in its entirety to the reviewing court once more, and to make representations once more on the merits of his case. This belief is, however, erroneous. Review grants no such opportunity.

†The only grounds for review are irregularity or illegality of the proceedings on the part of the body taking the decision. If the court of review can find no irregularities and no illegalities in such proceedings there will be no grounds for review. The court of review is limited in the action it may take. If it finds irregularities or illegalities in the proceedings its only power is to refer the matter in question back to the body which took the decision for that body’s reconsideration and the giving of a decision. The court of review has no power to substitute its own decision for that of the body that took the decision in the first instance. In other words, the court of review may correct and set aside irregular or illegal proceedings, but may do no more. The court of review, may, however, be given specific additional powers by statute such as is the case in the proviso to clause 39(2) of the Bill which provides that if the decision was taken in bad faith the court of review shall give the decision which the court considers should have been given by the body in the first instance.

I would now like to sum up the differences between review and appeal. In the first place, review is directed at procedural irregularities and illegalities. On the other hand, appeal is directed at the substantive correctness of decisions of law and fact. I would also like to add that a court of review has no power to express an opinion on the merits of a case, whereas a court of appeal has such power.

Finally, I think it might be interesting to record that historically in the Cape the power to review the proceedings of inferior courts was granted to the Supreme Court by the Charter of Justice in 1832. This power is still preserved in the present Supreme Court Act. The Supreme Court, therefore, has what is known as inherent jurisdiction, i.e. the power in its own right, to hear reviews and appeals of the decisions of other bodies. Parliament can, however, limit that power.

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege for me to congratulate the hon. member for Wynberg on his first effort in this House. We have been accustomed to listening to a soft voice when the hon. member for Wynberg stood up. We shall now have to get used to listening to a louder voice again. I want to congratulate the hon. member on his calm and tranquil first appearance in this House. I want to wish him luck and express the hope that his stay here will be a long one. As far as his legal argument is concerned, I very confidently want to leave that in the hands of our legal colleagues, who will most certainly still have a great deal to say about it.

It is my privilege to support this Bill. Permit me at the very outset to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to our chairman for his competent and dynamic guidance. It is definitely a pity that we had to lose our general before the final battle, but we are grateful that the commander-in-chief decided to take over himself. We are proud of our leader-in-chief, the commandant-general, and we accept and acknowledge his leadership in this connection. Permit me also to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to Mr. Pretorius and Mr. Van Wyngaardt, the secretary and his assistant, and also to our legal adviser. It would be difficult to describe in words the help and assistance they have granted. To Mr. Pretorius, in particular, I want to say that we appreciate his exceptional zeal and diligence, the long hours he spent being of assistance to our commission. My sincere thanks go also to the fellow-members of the commission for the team spirit and comradeship. I also want to extend this thanks to the members of the minority group. It is my conviction that some members of the minority group made a sincere attempt to seek a solution, displaying a sincere desire to serve South Africa and its people in this way. But unfortunately their good intentions were thwarted by their own lieutenant, the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. Not only were they thwarted—I think the hon. member went out of his way to make co-operation impossible. By these means I think the hon. member wanted to demonstrate to his colleagues in the erstwhile Schlebusch Commission how a member of the Opposition should actually conduct himself. It has already been mentioned that Mr. Oliver, one of the members, is no longer present. I want to give you the assurance that he died on the field of battle, but that the Commission had no part in that. He died at the hands of his own lieutenant, faithfully assisted by their regimental sergeant-major, the hon. member for Yeoville. I think that on Mr. Oliver’s political gravestone only one symbol will stand out: A Black Hand. That reminds me that the hon. members for Hillbrow and Simonstown are not here today either. I do not know where they are, but I think they both have sore throats. Perhaps a diagnosis would show the marks of fingers on their throats.

When we are dealing with legislation such as this, the question arises as to whether control is indeed necessary. I think this question was also the fundamental one before the Commission. While the Commission sat there was no doubt about that; control is necessary. Overwhelming evidence was also placed before the Commission to the effect that control measures in some or other form were vital. Overwhelming evidence was also placed before the Commission to the effect that the present measures do not function adequately. Let me say at once that the Publications Board has a superhuman and thankless task to perform, a task which they conscientiously carry out within the scope of the powers granted them. That board deserves South Africa’s thanks, and not unfair criticism born of ignorance. It is unfortunately a fact—and repeated reference has been made to this—that a spirit of permissiveness has become prevalent in the world. I think that the ’seventies of this century will go down in the history of the Western world as the decade of permissiveness, the decade in which more and more concessions were made in respect of the way of life and customs of man. These will be known as the years in which the idea of freedom was taken to its very extremes without a word being said about the responsibility and restraint that freedom specifically presupposes. We undoubtedly live in a period in which permissiveness revels in the way in which pornographic reading matter and sexual spectacle are rampant and are destroying the youth of the world. Because this is so and because the preservation, the maintenance and the protection of the good morals and customs of the South African people continues to be the concern of the State, the State thought fit to amend this 1963 legislation, to which reference has already been made, in 1969 and again in 1971. It deserves to be noted that the departmental committee, appointed by the Minister to review this legislation because shortcomings existed, has done very good work. There have already been references to that. I want to remind hon. members that the first commission in that connection was appointed as far back as 1954. In addition I want to point out to hon. members that I share the hon. member for Green Point’s respect for the chairman of that departmental committee. However, I want to focus the hon. member’s attention on the fact that it was specifically that chairman who acted as secretary of the commission and who had an enormous share in the creation of this new Bill. His argument consequently collapses because that is actually the person to whom he gave the praise.

Because the matter was contentious, and because representations were made to the hon. the Minister from every quarter, he thought fit to refer that Bill initially to a Select Committee. That Committee was converted into the Kruger Commission. I can think of virtually no measure on which as much time was spent, because since 1954, i.e. for about 20 years, time has been devoted to that. All the facets of this matter have been viewed with such thoroughness over a period of many years. Every sector of the population, seen against the background of our Christian way of life, was properly taken into account in the consideration and study of that measure. It is true that more sweeping measures are being proposed, and it is true that stronger control is being advocated, but as a whole the Bill is, in my humble opinion, an improvement on the existing Act. Upon critical analysis of this Bill no more than two points of objection can be raised. Firstly there is the abolition of the right to appeal and the institution of an Appeal Board. Secondly there is the fact that the mere possession of undesirable, provocative publications now becomes an offence after notice in the Gazette. For both these objections there are well-founded arguments that have already been advanced and which will indeed be substantially cited in the days ahead.

Everyone who loves this country and who serves this country’s interests, also knows that action has become vital, that these waves of permissiveness are swamping us and that we in South Africa have no special immunity. If this present trend persists, if this onslaught on order and authority is not checked, Spengler’s predictions in the ’thirties, in his book Die Ondergang van die Aandlande will come true. Decay will lead to decline, and then it will be too late to appeal against the course of history. Nothing will be able to restore matters. All our good intentions, even all our heroism and all the means we can employ will be of no avail. Nothing will be able to turn back the march of time or nullify events that have already occurred. When the leaf has fallen from the tree, no one will be able to restore it to the branch. Then there will be complainants, prosecutors and witnesses. Although some of us will be less guilty than others, all of us will surely bear a measure of guilt. Therefore the main prosecutor will be the youth, and strangely enough the United Party also realizes that full well. Therefore the United Party envisages legislation to protect the youth—only the youth, as if that would offer us the solution. If we were to look at who will stand accused and what they would stand accused of, we would see those organizations and individuals involved in drawing up, and even distributing at schools, seditious and destructive documents for the purpose of establishing resistance to authority, to bring about the rejection of moral standards. They will accuse those media responsible for the distribution of the degenerative, the permissive, the banal, the anarchistic the immoral and the disorderly. They will accuse those writers and thinkers who integrate dirty words and indecent scenes into literature in such a way that they become objectionable and untenable. They will accuse and reproach those planners and producers of films, stage presentations and art which aspire to the banal and the ugly. They will accuse the sex symbols, the promoters of immorality and those who are contemptuous of the human body. They will accuse those who preach lies in the name of religion and the church, those who allow blood to be spilt, predict that God is dead and do things of that nature. They will reproach and accuse all of us who have neglected to educate them in the principles of responsibility, integrity, true freedom and a steadfast faith. They will accuse us, the silent majority, because we did not raise a voice or lift a finger in opposition. That is why the standpoint of the United Party must be rejected if it can be called a standpoint. It should far rather be called a lack of standpoint.

The American method is being presented to us here by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. The hon. member for Von Brandis sings the praises of the American method That is supposedly the solution for South Africa. It is ironic, Mr. Speaker, and I just happened to think of the fact that in this protest note, which has been appended to the minority report, reference is also made to a letter by certain members of the minority group in which information is requested. I just happened to be thinking that that letter was sent by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout from a far-off place, i.e. the Watergate Hotel in America. The United Party advocates voluntary, self-governing bodies, bodies which must decide, according to their own norms, about what is good or bad for the South African community which must decide for itself when the limits of decency are being exceeded, and if so, to what degree. The hon. member for Von Brandis and the hon. member for Green Point referred to these films which supposedly mount up and supposedly involve so much work by virtue of having to be cut or checked, as if this were a superhuman task, as if it were impossible to carry out this task. It is a tremendous problem for these members of the Opposition. I can understand the hon. member for Green Point not noticing that when he read the report, but the other hon. member, who was a member of the commission, knows that on page 20, in paragraph 19 of the report, provision is clearly made for exemption. If there is truly a desire on the part of the film companies, film distributors, etc., to display co-operation, the opportunity is there, and they can surely regulate matters themselves. Then surely effect has been given to the plea for self-regulating bodies. All these films do not have to be seen. If they prove they are honest, that they will uphold the norms, they are free to go ahead. Since these American methods are so assiduously being presented to us, I should like to present to hon. members what a leading American historian himself said in respect of this matter. I am referring to Dr. A. Kubek, himself a Rotarian, who was addressing the Rotarians in Perth, Australia. Possibly the hon. members will pay more attention to what a fellow Rotarian has to say. Dr. Kubek reproached himself for having been silent and passive while the whole socio-economic and moral structure of America was systematically undermind. He asked his audience how long they were going to remain silent, passive spectators while the powers of darkness undermined their own country. He informed them of how he had stood to one side and watched the greatest and freest people in the world being reduced to jungle inhabitants. He had stood to one side and watched crafty rascals and blackguards lowering the morality of millions of people in America to the level of animality by the use of various media. He had stood to one side and watched how the three finest human loyalties, i.e. loyalty to the family, loyalty to the State and loyalty to the Creator were systematically destroyed by evils which, according to him, have already penetrated every sector of American society. I am asking hon. members whether this is what they are advocating for South Africa. Is that the course they want to steer for South Africa? Let us have no illusions about this; the publishers and the manufacturers and distributors of cinematograph films are not charity or welfare organizations by any means. They are people who only have the profit motive in view; that is business after all; that is surely realistic. Surely we cannot expect them not to pursue profit and to advocate norms of morality. At least not all of them. It is surely naïve to believe that self regulation would work like that. Today there is much too much vaccination and indecision, far too many protracted arguments before we decide which of these dirty and smutty manifestations we shall permit. Therefore I can, with a clear conscience, make a serious appeal to the hon. the Minister to place this Bill on the Statute Book. Then he can one day be a witness when these accused appear in the dock. He can be a witness in the knowledge that he will be in the company of many other witnesses such as the church, thousands of parents and educational institutions able to attest to the fact that they did their best to ward off these things, but also able to give damning evidence against these non-conservative groups. There will also be the schools and the educational institutions that will be able to give evidence of the fact that they established the youth preparedness programme to assist our young people in this onslaught against them, an educational system modelled on a Christian basis, a Christian basis which does not imply only readings of the Scriptures and prayer, but which creates a positive Christian climate in which education takes place. Because it remains the endeavour of the South African people to maintain a Christian view of life, this is also acknowledged in this Bill. Sir, I find it so tragic that the minority report also objects to that; that they object even to that. Sir, I should like to quote to you the first line of the aims of the United Party (translation)—

Lip service, Sir. Is that not scandalous?

Now you are talking nonsense.

I am quoting to you from your own principles. You know that you take exception to this Christian approach in your report; you are therefore rejecting your own objectives. Sir, if we grant recognition to the tremendous training and educational tasks of our schools and other institutions throughout South Africa, this question must be put unequivocally: Is there any sense in the authorities spending millions on the education of its people to make them intellectually and physically mature, to promote their economic welfare, subsequently to allow their bodies and souls to be destroyed spiritually in this way? The authorities are called upon to protect the spiritual welfare of the community. Therefore the balance between the freedom of the individual and the interests of the community will always have to be maintained. Only in that manner will the authorities, the family, the school, the church, the community as a whole, form a perfect unit and join in building a finer community and also shaping the truth, so that truth can also have market value in the world again, a market value it does not have at present.

Mr. Speaker, permit me to make just one remark in connection with another item in the report—this was also mentioned by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout while the commission sat—i.e. the objection to the fact that this Act is also being made applicable to South-West Africa. Sir, I want to advocate that those hon. members should stop seeing us in South-West Africa as the inhabitants of an island. The representatives of South-West Africa have already been sharing in the sovereignty of this Parliament since 1950, and the hon. member for Bezuidenhout was one of the first members to enjoy this great privilege. I want to allege that it is thanks to South-West Africa that he is still sitting in this House today, for otherwise he would never have been here. I also want to tell you, Sir, that that hon. member has incorrectly read the signs of the times. As far back as 1960 he fled South-West Africa; we are still there. I therefore say that he does not have the moral right to turn his attentions to South-West Africa. The representatives of South-West Africa are here as full-fledged members of the National Party, and the members of South-West Africa will, within the ranks of the National Party, look after the interests of South-West Africa and its people.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who has just resumed his seat, started his speech with a petty political attack on the hon. member for Bezuidenhout and ended it on a note of petty political attack. He spoke in favour of the implementation of censorship, but nowhere did he say anything to us in regard to why this specific Bill before us should in any way be more effective in combating the problem we have to contend with, namely, undesirable publications in South Africa, than is being done under the present dispensation. Sir, surely this is the basic question we are dealing with, viz. whether or not this legislation will be equal to the task of combating various social evils. We do not have to be convinced by hon. members here that dangers await us in the future. We know this, but what we also want to know, is whether this Bill complies with the requirements. Then the hon. member quoted from the minority report and said that the statement that “On the basis of universal Christian ethics, the (United) Party dedicates itself to the promotion of the peace, welfare and happiness of all who live in the Republic of South Africa ...” amounted to nothing but lip-service. But, Sir, I am going to prove to you what lip-service is. Let us look at clause 1 of this legislation. Here it is stated very clearly that the endeavour of the people of the Republic of South Africa to uphold a Christian view of life is recognized in the application of this Bill. This is lip-service that is being paid here, that this Bill recognizes the Christian view of life. Now I want to ask the hon. the Minister: Is it consistent with the Christian view of life that one can be found guilty and punished without access to a proper court of law in South Africa?

Proper?

Let me just say, to an appeal board which will enjoy the confidence of the people.

According to your choice.

If this is supposedly the philosophy of hon. members opposite, then surely it must be a philosophy in terms of which salvation is sought in arbitrary action, in the granting of autocratic powers. No, Sir, this makes me think that when the hon. member referred to lip-service he should have referred, not to the programme of principles of the United Party, but to Clause 1 of this legislation. It was also clear to me right at the outset that the hon. member for Bloemfontein East would have liked to have made political capital out of this debate by creating the impression that we on this side of the House are in fact advocates of permissiveness in South Africa. I want to tell you, Sir, that that is an attitude which is rejected with contempt, particularly since we are aware that every hon. member opposite has had the opportunity of reading the philosophy of the United Party in the minority report, in which it is clearly stated that we are not in favour of permissiveness. It is clear to us too that hon. members opposite do not wish to face up to the real problem as it occurs; that the members who submitted the minority report were in fact better informed as regards a sensitive matter such as the application of effective control to what is undesirable in South Africa. I do, however, want to concede to the hon. member for Bloemfontein East that there is in fact a difference in approach in this respect. There is a difference between hon. members opposite and hon. members on this side of the House as far as their world view and view of life is concerned. As I have already indicated, this difference is based on the differing philosophies embraced by each side. In this Bill expression is given to a philosophy seeking salvation in autocratic action and the seizing of arbitrary powers. In the philosophy of the United Party there is no place for anything of this nature, and consequently we are unable to support this Bill in principle.

Any reasonable person would surely have expected the hon. the Minister and members opposite, having the experience gained from eleven years of implementing the existing Publications and Entertainments Act, to have been capable of submitting a Bill which would at least have a chance of success.

Why is the existing Act inadequate? From the outset it was obvious that it was inadequate, in the first place because it was awkward to administer and in the second place because it was not geared for gaining the co-operation and the confidence of the public. It was surely reasonable to expect that this Bill would remove those shortcomings. I find it inexcusable that in spite of the experience acquired over 11 years, in spite of the recommendations of inter-departmental committees and in spite of the benefit of a commission of enquiry, the hon. the Minister has introduced a Bill which will most probably be more awkward to administer than the existing Act. The Bill envisages a structure which will necessarily create an administrative bottle-neck in the directorate. If the directorate is to perform its duties properly, that bottle-neck will lead to delays in the performance of its duties. Why? The answer is contained in clause 17, because that is where we find the authorization enabling the hon. the Minister to appoint his supersnoopers, as they are known. If the hon. the Minister is in earnest about his snoopers ...

Who are they?

The people who are duly authorized to bring certain matters to the attention of the Minister. There will not be only one or two of them; there will be thousands of them. The hon. the Minister referred to what is happening at present, but he did at least apologize when he referred to the Greek cafés. Can he tell me how many cafés there are in the country? Will there be only or two of these snoopers? If that is to be the case, the hon. the Minister will not gain the confidence of those who desire stricter control.

Please, say something I can make a note of; I have not yet made a note of anything you have said.

Surely, these thousands of snoopers and the dozens of committees which will be established, must eventually result in delays. Every operation by either the committees or the supersnoopers will, it is obvious, have to be channelled through the directorate. From the directorate it will have to go to the committees and from the committees back to the directorate, and then, perhaps, to the appeal board. To and fro it will go, but nowhere and never will this matter reach a body in which the people have full confidence, in other words it will not reach a proper court of law in South Africa.

Does the existing Act not provide for appeal to a proper court of law?

The present Act provides that an appeal against a decision may be made to the Supreme Court. There is access to the courts under the old Act.

Did I misunderstand the hon. member a moment ago when he objected on the grounds that through this legislation the Supreme Court was in fact being eliminated?

I referred to the accessibility of the courts, and that is why I said that I find it very difficult to reconcile clause 1 with the statement that this view of life will be upheld. One finds that these cases will never reach that body which enjoys the confidence of the people, namely a court of law.

A further problem is that of norms, that of determining valid norms. Obviously, norms will vary and obviously there will be subjective motives from snooper to snooper, from committee to committee. What is the effect of this going to be? A large percentage of the matters which will be handled by the directorate will be unnecessary. As soon as the people at large, if I may put it like that, realizes that this directorate is dealing with unnecessary matters, the accusation will be made and the impression will be created that they are occupying themselves with trivialities. As soon as that impression is created, the public will lose confidence in the system. It will then lose confidence in the administration of this system. The co-operation and the confidence of the public is something to which the Minister, in my opinion, has not paid adequate attention. He did say that there would have to be co-operation, and we must admit that when any social evil is to be combated, particularly when one does it through the authorities, the co-operation of the public is of cardinal importance. Thus it is of cardinal importance that the hon. the Minister should mobilize all forces to assist him in combating a problem of this nature. I believe that in this respect this measure does not have a chance of succeeding in gaining the proper co-operation of the public. In the first place we find that the authors, artists, producers and publishers are denied the opportunity of having an active share in the control.

That is not true.

But surely the Minister does not accept the recommendations by the members who submitted the minority report?

I can appoint them to these committees.

He does not trust them.

I now come to the matter of self-discipline. Is there any hon. member on the other side of the House who does not attach importance to self-discipline? In the process of educating a child, at school or at home, one finds that, ultimately, the best kind of discipline is self-discipline. A child who is only disciplined in the presence of his teacher or parents never develops self-discipline. From what does self-discipline develop? Even in a child it develops when he feels that the authorities, his parents or his teachers, trust him. That is when self-discipline develops in such a person. It is very clear that here not even an impression is being created or an attempt being made to win the confidence of our artists, authors, etc. I just want to mention that self-discipline should not be confused with self-censorship. Self-censorship in any form is unacceptable because it hinders creative ability and will only lead to cultural stagnation. When we inspect this legislation closely, particularly in the light of the recommendations of the minority group, we can come to only one conclusion, namely that the hon. the Minister has no confidence in our artists and authors, neither as individuals nor as groups of individuals who are able to exercise self-discipline by means of organizations which may be created for them on a voluntary basis. The hon. the Minister is consequently forfeiting a wonderful opportunity here to mobilize all possible forces in combating this problem. By doing that he will not enjoy the benefits which must flow from the exercising of self-discipline among the artists, publishers and directors.

Now I come to the question of public opinion, which also plays a major role; it plays a major role, particularly where the determining of valid norms is concerned. When I talk about valid norms, I do not mean norms which were valid ten years ago or which will be valid in ten years’ time. That is not our challenge. The challenge is always to determine norms which are valid for the present moment, the juncture at which we find ourselves. In this respect we find that the public is in fact eliminated in the determining of norms, particularly when we have to do with precensorship. When they are applied, those who are engaged in determining norms are denied the benefit of being able to interpret public opinion. In terms of clause 30 we find that plays may be prohibited in advance, either in whole or in part. Surely that means one thing, namely that in point of fact it is pre-censorship that is being applied.

Control.

Control which is exercised before public opinion can be gauged in any way or before the people involved are in a position to determine what is acceptable.

I can only refer the hon. the Minister to the conduct of a previous Minister of the Interior. The old Publications Board imposed an age limit of four to 16 years on a certain film. A complaint having been made, the hon. the Minister saw the film himself and was so shocked that he imposed an age limit of 21 years on it. Immediately there was a public outcry and representations were made to the Minister. I just want to read to you what happened then. It occurred in 1963. The Minister then lifted the restriction. At that stage he said—

In this instance public opinion aided the Minister in deciding what constituted acceptable norms. That was under a different dispensation. In this legislation we now find an attempt to isolate, as far as possible, those who are engaged in the determining of norms. The provisions of clause 42 put it very clearly that representations may in fact be made by a person. That is a condition which we on this side of the House proposed. But if one reads it together with the provisions in regard to contempt of the appeal board, one finds that anyone who puts anything in black and white and, while the case is before either a committee or the appeal board, tries to do anything in public which, according to the Minister, may be regarded as influencing the decision in that case, will be guilty of a punishable offence. I believe that this will lead to failure to take public opinion into account and that those who draw up the norms, those who try to determine norms, will have to do so in isolation.

In conclusion, I want to refer to the question of appeal. As I said at the outset, the abolition of appeal to the courts is an inexcusable blunder. Even though one were to concede that the courts found it difficult to apply the Act under the present system, one would still not be able to accept that what is being proposed here is in any way a fit substitute. When I say “a fit substitute” I mean a subsitute which is capable of gaining the confidence of the public. Anyone who thinks that the appeal board is going to enjoy the confidence of the public is living in a fool’s paradise. If such a board wants to win the admiration or the confidence of the public, I believe that the hon. the Minister should have done what is very clearly stated in the majority report. I refer to page 26 of the report in which it is said that there was a great deal of evidence against the abolition of appeal, but that there was just about as much in favour of appeals being handled by an administrative body of appeal. The conclusion one may draw from this is that very little of the evidence was in favour of or recommended the type of appeal board proposed here, because those who were in favour of an administrative board of appeal, favoured an appeal board which would actually be a special court over which a judge would, in fact, preside. Under the provisions of clause 35 it is very clear that the chairman may be a person who occupies a legal position. However, the appeal board does not consist of a chairman only, but of other members too. The other members of the appeal board are not appointed by the State President or by the Minister, but, under the provisions of clause 35(3)(a), the director—

This, surely, means only one thing, and that is that if one is to have confidence in the appeal board, one will in the first place have to have confidence in the person who compiles the list, the director. What will be the first question to be put at this stage? The first question will concern the identity of the director. Without the director one cannot compile the list. If I read the provisions of clause 35 correctly, I can accept that it is the director who has to win the confidence of the public in the first place. If it is not the director who compiles the list in the first place, I cannot see such a person ever being at all able to enjoy the confidence of the people.

In conclusion I just want to refer to the unenviable position in which one may be placed by the provisions which would apply if one were to be found to be in possession of anything regarded as undesirable.

Not everyone.

No, not everyone, but without any intention on the part of the person to do anything with it, it will nevertheless create problems. Even under the present Act when cases have come before the court, problems have arisen in connection with possession. If these cases are now to be handled by a committee, in the first place, or by an appeal board, and it is possible simply to impose a certain penalty, this will create further problems and this is something with which we are unable to agree. I have not the slightest hesitation in saying that it would be a mistake if we were to support this legislation. It would be a mistake because this legislation will not achieve the purpose for which it is being introduced, namely to bring about an effective system of control to curb that which is undesirable in South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, one came to this House this afternoon with great expectations; one came to this House to listen to a debate in which unanimity among the political parties in South Africa might have been proved. When a discussion in this House concerns the morals and the norms of our people, one does not expect politics to play any role.

You are at liberty to agree with us.

If I heard correctly, the hon. member for Bezuidenhout made that remark. This afternoon I want to bring it pointedly to his attention that this minority report was his idea. I want to say that he, in his frustration about the participation of the United Party in the Schlebusch Commission, felt that he wanted to show the United Party in a vigorous manner how one should act when one serves on a commission. I should like to say that, although he has been accused of many things and although very few of the accusations may have been untrue, this is one of the things he can remember when he goes home tonight and prepares himself for his reply to this debate. The hon. member for Durban Central spoke here about a philosophy. Sir, the hon. member for Bezuidenhout’s philosophy was to illustrate to his party, which had to extricate itself from a débâcle, how one should act vigorously when one serves on a commission. I am saying this here this afternoon with all the responsibility at my command, after having thoroughly perused the minority report.

This afternoon we had an opportunity of keeping this matter out of politics; the hon. member for Durban Central also touched on this point here this afternoon. Is it necessary for us to differ on the future of our people as far as their morals are concerned? Is it necessary for us to differ on the ordinary norms which we set up here, the norms which are acceptable to everyone in South Africa? In the very first clause, a very simple clause, we read—

This afternoon we heard stories of how one could adapt and how one could reject Christian norms, but surely there are norms which we are familiar with. There are, for example, norms relating to our morals. Today one sees scenes of violence in virtually every cinema; one sees sex exaggerated in virtually every newspaper as well as in the cinema to such an extent that one actually feels ashamed these days to take one’s children along to the cinema.

It is your board which is in office.

The United Party had an opportunity here of co-operating in order to create something fine. The hon. member for Green Point says that they are not satisfied with the existing Act. That is also mentioned in the minority report. He nevertheless said that they would sooner retain the existing Act than accept this proposed Act. This commission provided the greatest scope for forgetting politics and co-operating, and those hon. members could surely have convinced the other members who served on the commission that their standpoint might be justified here and there. I should like to say at once that the hon. member for Durban Central mentioned a few interesting things. Towards the end of his speech it seemed to me as though he had gone into a speed wobble by the time he came to the Appeal Board. I am not a lawyer, but I do think that when he said that the people should have confidence in the person who was appointed, he was quite wrong. I think this matter should be left to the lawyers who would be better able to explain the position to him. He is a person from the teaching profession, and he will also find that part of the debate very informative, if he pays attention to it.

I have said that had we been able to keep this matter out of politics, there would have been a very fine opportunity for doing something exceptional in this regard. I must say at once that the hon. member for Durban Central missed the mark completely when he said that an Act such as this one should come from the people, that the recommendation should come from the people. I want to state here today that there is no other matter about which more unanimity exists, than about the fact that there must be a much stronger Act than the present one as far as morals and publications in South Africa are concerned. If that is not the position, I am out of touch with my voters and I want to tell hon. members opposite that if they doubt this assertion, they are making a mistake. The hon. member for Bezuidenhout also held a meeting there and he met his match. He will know that I am not blundering in making this assertion.

I should like to come to a few points which are dealt with in the minority report. The hon. member for Durban Central spoke about a “philosophy” in this regard. We are dealing here with realities, we cannot simply sit back and philosophize about the shape of things to come. Let us examine this. I do not believe that we can find much fault with it. I shall indicate on what points I differ from them. I quote from paragraph 4.4 on page 61 of the commission’s report, from the minority report—

This afternoon the hon. member for Bloemfontein East made a very interesting speech about freedom. I think one of the most important things we should remember here, is that there is no point in our killing ourselves running after freedom and losing our people in the pursuit. Freedom does not imply that one can do as one likes. In any democratic system one must subject oneself to the feelings of one’s people and to that which they ask for. I quote further from the minority report—

This is an example of lip service. The hon. member for Durban Central referred to lip service a few times. They found that the position was deteriorating and they said that it must be combated and they then suggested this solution—

I have no argument with that. Their first point reads as follows—

1. (a) instructions is the function of the home, the school and the church;

We know that instruction is the function of the home, the school and the church. That is also accepted in the majority report. Let us come to the second point in the minority report-

1. (b) restraint is the responsibility of those who enjoy the freedom to publish;

Here we have a few paragraphs in which hon. members opposite said that the authors, the publishers and the film producers must all keep themselves under control. They should have their own bodies. They went on to speak of a Publication Advisory Board which should be constituted in order to do certain things, inter alia, to advise the Registrar of Publications. According to paragraph 4.6.5.2 on page 62 of the minority report, they say—

1. (i) assist and advise the self-regulatory councils ...

Now this is an absolutely sterile body; it is a regulatory body which will advise the people who will have to keep themselves under control, and if they did not do so, where would one find oneself? Then one would be left with exactly nothing. I believe, Sir, that this self-control is one of the sterile things proposed in this minority report.

I think there is another important point which should be mentioned here. It appears to me that that side of the House does not accept that the Government’s function is to protect its people. Sir, I should just like to mention an example, without going into details. Numerous African states have very definite legislation concerning morals, dress and even hairstyle, in which heavy penalties are laid down. It is realized throughout the world that we are living in a time which differs totally from 1963 when the original Act was introduced and passed here. There are certain things that have changed since that time. Hon. members on that side of the House who have gone overseas and have seen places such as Amsterdam, know that if we allow morals of that kind, those philosophies, as they are termed on that side of the House, to find their way to South Africa, the Government will be failing in its duty of looking after the people; it will be failing in its duty if it cannot check these things.

Mr. Speaker, complaints were heard here about the term “Christian norms”. The hon. member for Green Point asked how this could be tested in court; he spoke of problems which would be encountered. The hon. the Minister, in his Second Reading speech, quoted from a judgment by the Chief Justice from which it is quite clear that the courts do not want this function. They do not want to be concerned in the administrative function of dealing with morals and the like and of laying down restrictions were necessary. Sir, we are not trying to suggest that this Bill is perfect. Apparently the philosophy of the hon. member for Von Brandis is that because this Bill is not perfect and will never meet all requirements, it would be better for us to have no Act at all. If this measure does not meet all the requirements which we hope it will meet, it can be amended, and we will have to amend it again and again until we have a measure which meets the requirements of the people while at the same time meeting the requirements of the Government as far as the White people in this country are concerned.

In that case, accept our proposals.

The proposal which came from that side of the House, was that we should read this Bill in six months’ time. That is a proposal which is almost as sterile as the proposal of a council that must advise people who must exercise self-control.

Sir, we have heard a great deal here about personal freedom. Is it personal freedom when a person may make use of a publication in order to present an immoral lecture to our children? Is it personal freedom when films depicting nothing but violence and sex are allowed to appear? Is that the personal freedom which the Opposition advocates? I think the United Party still have a chance to make a constructive contribution to this debate as the official Opposition in this House. They wait to hear what the Progressive Party has to say instead of acting positively and coming closer to the actual principles with which we are concerned here.

Sir, the hon. member for Green Point described the board as the “Thou shalt not” board. If it is effective, as we hope it will be, there is nothing wrong with its being a “Thou shalt not” board. The prohibition, “Thou shalt not”, is after all clearly defined in the Bible in ten different places.

Mr. Speaker, I think we should come back to the object of this Bill and leave aside the machinery for a moment. We may differ about the machinery, but why did hon. members opposite not come along and propose amendments to the machinery? Why did they come along with the parliamentary procedure of shelving this Bill altogether? Why did they not come along with proposals arising out of their minority report? They could have made those proposals one after another or they could have said, during the Second Reading debate, what they intended doing later on, so that the Minister might have been given the opportunity of listening to their positive feelings. But is it positive action when they say that they think nothing of the existing Act, and when they say, in the same breath, that they think even less of the new legislation, and that for that reason they would rather retain the existing Act on the Stature Book? Are these people who are so out of touch with the public, actually people who represent constituencies and voters? I want to state once again that all the people of South Africa are crying out for this Bill. Although they might not be familiar with all the implications and with each clause, they are asking for action against things from which they want to protect their children for the future in South Africa. Does that side of the House not share in this feeling? A whole number of young men have been added to their ranks. Are they not concerned about the future of South Africa as far as this matter is concerned? Do they feel we can make do with the existing Act, since they object to the new legislation? But it appears to me from the minority report as though the hon. member for Bezuidenhout would have preferred to have no legislation at all and would have had each person and each board applying its own norms, and by means of that fine co-operation, by means of the voluntary restraint which authors and film producers would exercise, we would live in an Utopia in South Africa.

But tell us why that is wrong.

The hon. member who spoke earlier on, actually only by means of interjections, and who came off worst in the questions put by the hon. member for Bloemfontein East, when he asked him about the Side Bar, is very talkative now. He got into difficulties there and now he asks me to tell him why I think that it cannot work, but then I am even more convinced than ever that that side of the House is living in a fool’s paradise.

† That side of the House feels that on that basis you can have this type of law. They would rather get rid of the law altogether and just have voluntary censorship, if you want to call it that, where those concerned censor themselves. Sir, I think that type of Utopia is impossible in South Africa. I have never heard of it and I do not think it is likely to come here.

May I put a question? I should like the hon. member to tell us, in view of what he has just said, why he prefers the appeal board of the Bill to an appeal to the courts of the land?

I shall reply to the question and I shall do so not from my own mouth, but from the quotation which was given by the hon. the Minister. He quoted the words of the Chief Justice, and who am I to diffier with the Chief Justice? The hon. member who put the question, may perhaps be more qualified to do so. The Chief Justice said that he did not feel that it was the function of the courts to give this type of judgment; he felt that it was an administrative function. Sir, I want to tell that hon. member that I agree that it is an administrative function; it is the duty of the Government, and not the duty of the courts, to preserve the morals of the people. I want to say again that I think there is an opportunity for that side of the House to co-operate in making a good Act out of this Bill. Let them differ here and there, and even as regards access to the courts, but let them state it clearly and not throw out the baby with the bath water when they differ on legal points which may be dealt with more adequately by other hon. members.

Mr. Speaker, I am but a dim shadow of the political giant who was my predecessor in this House. Nevertheless it is great privilege to me to replace him as the representative for South Coast. I only hope that I may perform my duties as faithfully and be as sincere and loyal to my country, my constituency and my party. At the same time I want to convey the sincere thanks of the voters and the inhabitants of South Coast to the hon. the Prime Minister and the members of his Cabinet for the great honour shown by them to Mr. Mitchell on the occasion of his retirement from politics. We in South Coast are very proud of the medal and the illuminated address presented to Mr. Mitchell and a certain measure of the credit and glory is our due, since we showed the wisdom of returning Mr. Mitchell to this House after every election. I should rather not discuss the choice of the voters in the country during the recent election.

† I could say a great deal more about Mr. Douglas Mitchell, but I do not think I should because Mr. Mitchell is still too new in the memories of all here who served with him for 25 years or less in this House, and to the newcomers he is probably very well known by reputation. Suffice to say that I am sure that the longest memories of Mr. Mitchell will persist in Natal where he did so much for us with the wise legislation which he put on the Statute Book while he was a member of the Executive Committee and Administrator of Natal. I may add that that legislation has stood the test of 30 years or more and has been very little changed. He will also be remembered for his magnificent work in the field of nature conservation. There is the Natal Parks Board of which he was the father.

I wish to trace briefly the history of censorship through the ages to show how men coped with the censoring of works which they felt were corrupting or which were obscene. I do not wish to draw any conclusions as to whether they succeeded or not and I do not wish to make comparisons with existing legislation in South Africa or with what is proposed. Censorship goes back a long time. It was first recorded in the Bible in the Book of Genesis when Adam and Eve had to cover their nakedness with a fig leaf. Coming from Natal I often wonder why they did not use a banana leaf. [Interjections.]

Further on we read that King Saul had a lot of problems with the Hebrew prophets and he tried to repress their works, but he did not succeed very well. We also read that in ancient China the emperor Chi Haung Ti tried to have all the works of Confucius destroyed as he felt that those works undermined the powers of the emperor. Fortunately he did not succeed. We read that in ancient Rome Ovid was banished from Rome because of his book “The art of love”. In Greece, which was supposed to be the home of freedom of thought and philosophy, we read about the trial and the death of Socrates because of his writings.

After the Renaissance in Europe, which was a very enlightened period during which the arts flourished and there was very little censorship, we suddenly find censorship cropping up. Some very visible remains of it which I think most hon. members have already seen are to be found in the Sistine Chapel. I am referring to the famous paintings of Michelangelo on the roof, of the frescos. Pope Paul ordered loin-cloths to be painted on all those beautiful figures and they are still there. I was only thinking that it is fortunate that the Pope believed in women’s lib otherwise he would probably have defaced them all!

Mr. Speaker, we also see examples of the defacing of sculptures throughout Europe. One can see little metal fig leaves placed in very strategic places or one can see where statues have been “defaced”, for want of a better word, with a hammer and chisel. The first censorship of writings was at this time. The reason for this was that certain writings were considered to be dangerous to the authority of the State or the Church such as preaching heresy or criticizing the clergy. In those days the clergy still partook in politics!

Some of them still do today.

Writers and authors in those days could get their works published only through the protection of kings. We are fortunate in that the first English Bible, the Bible of Wycliffe, was published under the protection of King John who would not censor the writings even after the Pope had published an edict prohibiting it. The first recorded censorship is called “The Index of Prohibited Books”, and it is still to be seen in the Vatican Library. It was compiled by the same Pope Paul who had also had the paintings of Michelangelo defaced. He initiated this Index which listed books that the layman was prohibited from reading or possessing, except when special permission was granted under special circumstances by the Pope himself.

This Index is still in operation and it is said that in 1948 it had over 4 000 books listed on it. Some of the books are famous classics today but were at one time considered worthy of censure. Amongst these are books of Voltaire, Gibbons, Balzac, Zola and many more great writers. It is reported that the last Pope, Pope John, had this list revised. In England and in the countries where the Roman Church was not all-powerful, there were also censorship problems. We read that Queen Elizabeth I introduced a form of censorship in England by Royal Decree, in which she bestowed upon the Stationer’s Company the sole right to publish books in England but only after they had been licensed by herself or by the Archbishop of Canterbury or of York. This was the first method of pre-censorship and worked very well. It was mainly directed at religious and political works, for which we can be very grateful because that time saw the birth of English literature and the works of Shakespeare and many others were spared censorship.

This pre-licensed censorship lasted for quite a while but eventually lapsed into disuse and was replaced by the Law of Libel which applied to books that would be censored only after printing. Of this Mansfield said: “The liberty of the Press consists in printing without previous licence, subject only to the consequences of law.” This system of post-censorship has operated in England for over 400 years with very few changes. If anyone disapproved of a book after publication it could be taken to law and be adjudged obscene or not. In 1857 the system was amended by passing the Obscene Publications Act whereby a search of premises by the police was allowed when it was believed that there were obscene books for sale or for distribution. The Post Office Act and the Customs Act were also passed whereby obscene literature could be taken out of the post and destroyed. Unfortunately; there was such a flood of horror comics, films and cheap books at the end of the last war in England that it became necessary to take further steps.

The Obscene Publications Act of 1959 then amended the Act of 1857 which had lasted over 100 years. This new Act removed the necessity to prove obscenity after publication, but made it an offence to publish, whether for gain or not, an obscene article. It is interesting to read the definition of “article”. It is defined as follows—

“To publish” is defined as follows—

“Obscene” is defined as follows—

This is fine, Sir, except that the interpretation of those terms has been very difficult and has led to a lot of problems. It reminds me of the little story which is told about Lady Chatterley’s Lover. When the court case was on, a very distinguished gentleman, a member of the House of Lords, was giving evidence. It was known that this lord had a young daughter and the judge said to him: “Milord, would you let your daughter read this book?” He said: “Yes, I would, but I certainly would not let my game-keeper read it!” [Interjections.]

Sir, in winding up, I would like to summarize the impression one gets when reading the history of censorship. Three points become very obvious. The first is that obscene and corruptive literature for one generation is certainly considered as such by the following generation. We can see that the books of D. H. Lawrence, like Lady Chatterley’s Lover, of James Joyce, like Ulysses, and of Radclyffe Hall, who wrote The Well of Loneliness, were banned less than 50 years ago and are now read freely. The second point is that banning or censoring a book always makes it a best-seller. It makes the author and the publisher rich. The third point is that repression and censorship set up an underground movement where obscenity and vice flourish. A very good example of that, of course, was prohibition in the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the hon. member for South Coast on his maiden speech in this House. It was very interesting to listen to him. He certainly has a keen interest in history, and managed to bring forward many interesting facts and to broaden our knowledge of that particular part of history.

You should not have known what he was talking about!

I sincerely hope that he will be very happy in this House and that his contribution will be as successful as that of his great predecessor.

*Hon. members on the opposite side of the House handled the concept “norm” very loosely. The word “norm” was used on all sides without any of the members on that side of the House ever having given us a clear definition of what exactly they mean by “norm”. As far as we on this side of the House are concerned, a norm is linked to a specific world-view and a view of life which we regard as the source and basis from which we draw our norms and our codes for living. When the control of publications and entertainments is concerned, the problem of freedom occupies a central position in the debate. Freedom is defined and determined by the norms that are obtained from a particular world-view and a view of life.