I move—

I second.

I wish to oppose leave to introduce a Bill of this kind. To be quite frank, I am not really opposed to the introduction but I want to take the opportunity of saying that unless the Government make a declaration that the pensions payable to Coloured people will be placed on an equal basis as that of the Europeans I will oppose any leave to amend the Pensions Act. The hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs shakes his head. I think he is quite entitled to say to me that Coloured pensions now fall under his Department. But I do believe, Sir, that there should be that liaison between the hon. the Minister of Social Pensions and the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs to see to it …

Mr. SPEAKER: Order! The hon. member is talking far too wide. What are his objections?

I am opposing the introduction of this Bill because there is no reference …

Order! The hon. Member cannot oppose it because there is no reference

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

I wish to move the amendment standing in my name—

As time is short I shall be very brief. I believe there is need to do away in this clause with the obvious and unfair discrimination against malt liquor, which is admittedly the least potent of all liquor dealt with in this Bill and is also one of the liquors recommended by the Malan Commission for inclusion in this clause. I move my amendment at this stage because I believe the matter can be reviewed in this calm atmosphere far better than in the atmosphere which prevailed at the earlier stage. Moreover, looked at from whatever viewpoint the observer may occupy, legislation of this kind tends unfortunately to give to Parliament the appearance of being “the politicians’ market place”. That is something which the brevity of these proceedings and the calm dignity at this stage may help to dispel, especially if the discrimination to which I have referred is removed. Furthermore at this stage I think we have done with all the fears and all the prophecies of evil for the future if the Bill is passed, just as I believe we have done with concern about all kinds of supposed harmful effects on trading rights if the Bill is passed, whether in fact those trading rights are vested in current monopoly holders or whether they are only thought to be so vested. Moreover, Sir, all sorts of theories about the outcome of this Bill have been fully ventilated by now. I think, therefore, it is time that we come back to being practical. I say therefore let the public have the say but let them also have the choice; let public demand be the real arbiter as to whether this broadening of the channels of supply for the less potent liquors through grocer establishments is needed or not. But I also say let the public at least also have the choice between natural wines and beer. If the public wishes to discriminate between wines and beer that is fair enough, but I do not think discrimination, against the recommendations of the Malan Commission, should be inserted in this clause by this House. I therefore merely repeat: I think there is unfair and unreasonable discrimination in this clause and my appeal is to do away with that discrimination. Anyone who voted on principle against the inclusion of grocery licences in the law still has the opportunity of voting for the principle of no discrimination in the law against what the Malan Commission itself recommended, namely, malt beers, which are admittedly the least potent and certainly the most wholesome of all liquors dealt with in the Bill itself. I say, therefore, Sir, leave it to the public but let them also have the choice.

I second.

I am grateful for the proposal of the hon. member who has just resumed his seat, and I should like to say a few words on it. I support this proposal because I am convinced that this Bill, as it stands before the House to-day, is too cautious and too half-hearted an attempt to tackle the problem of the abuse of liquor in this country. In all the countries which have attempted to alter their pattern of drinking, beer played a special role. I wish to urge with all the power at my disposal that if we wish to change the pattern of drinking in this country in any way, we should treat beer and wine on the same basis. The position is that the beer trade is virtually a monopoly at the present time. If we could release beer in grocers’ shops it will mean that we shall break that monopoly and we shall give the public more opportunities to consume more beer. If we look at countries that have changed their pattern of drinking, such as Denmark and Belgium, it will be seen that they used both these methods. We shall not have another opportunity soon of dealing with this legislation. It has taken 35 years to tackle the Liquor Act as comprehensively as we have done now. So I am afraid that if we do not take this opportunity, it will take another 30 years before we shall touch the Liquor Act again. For that reason I should like to urge with all the force at my disposal that we should support the amendment of the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Mr. Plewman).

This amendment has my wholehearted support. I voted for Clause 3 at the Committee Stage, namely for the sale of light wine in grocers’ shops, because I had hoped that the further amendment providing for wine and beer would be accepted, otherwise I probably would not have done so. The whole principle underlying this Bill is to drink light alcoholic liquor rather than the harder liquors. I think it is a great defect in the Bill if it should be passed in its present state, that only light wines can be sold. It could so easily create an impression outside that we are here seeking a market for the wine farmer’s light wines. I should like to avoid that, if possible. Our pattern of drinking beyond the mountains is better in many respects, in my view, better than that on this side of the mountains, because we consume more beer. There is not the slightest reason why beer should not be used at the table in the same way as wine. We have that pattern in western Europe in countries like Germany and Austria. I am sure that with beer included we shall do more to gain the approval of the rural areas than we shall be able to do at the moment. I heartily support the amendment of the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (South) (Mr. Plewman).

Unfortunately I cannot support this amendment. There are many practical reasons for that. I quite agree with the hon. member who has just resumed his seat that beer is also a liquor with a low alcoholic content, but there are other factors we have to take into consideration. The hon. the Minister at the outset stated it was not our intention to touch vested interests. That is why I was in favour of the grocer’s wine licence only when the 40 per cent, now 30 per cent, was introduced so that we would not be touching vested interests. We are now going to grant licences to grocers’ shops in order to steer the pattern of drinking in a certain direction, and in order to do that we have to make it more attractive to people to drink wine, which is a liquor with a lower alcohol content. However, it is not necessary to do so in respect of beer, because beer already has that pattern. If you look at the figures the hon. the Minister has submitted to us, it will be seen that the total sales of beer in the Republic are 39.8 per cent.

That is by volume.

Yes, it is by volume.

That is to say, about 40 per cent of the volume sold is already beer, whereas in three of our provinces wine constitutes only 4 per cent and 3 per cent and 7 per cent. For that reason, Mr. Chairman, I say it is not necessary for us to encourage the drinking of beer. It is there already; we need not steer it in that direction. There is another practical objection to this amendment. We are providing in Clause 36 that where wine sales constitute 30 per cent, a grocer’s wine licence cannot be granted. What are we going to do in respect of beer now? If we were to apply the 30 per cent in respect of beer also, it would mean that in the Transvaal, in the Free State and in Natal no licences would be granted in any event. The whole position is unpractical and impracticable if you wish to bring it into line with wine. For these reasons I am unable to support this amendment.

When my amendment was defeated in the Committee Stage I decided to abide by the wishes of the majority, but I did not know I had such faithful supporters. Now that they have once again proposed it, I have no other choice but to thank them heartily for their faithfulness and to stress the matter again, because I feel we have a very strong case. I should like to point out to the hon. member for Ceres (Mr. Muller) how he has misrepresented the position to the people when he said that 39 per cent of the consumption of alcohol comprises beer. It is absolutely wrong. It is 39 per cent by volume. But then you are equating a gallon of brandy to a gallon of beer.

[Inaudible.]

Permit me to make my comparisons myself. I am thankful for all the followers I have; sometimes one just has to take all the followers one can get. I say it is 39 per cent by volume. It is completely unrealistic to equate a gallon of brandy to a gallon of beer. In the first place, the alcohol content is quite different, and in the second place the financial turn-over is quite different; the figure of 39 per cent beer by volume is being used but financially the turnover of beer is only 15 per cent of the liquor trade in South Africa. Let us take the alcohol content. This is the most interesting fact of the lot. These are facts the hon. members for Mossel Bay (Dr. van Nierop) and Umbilo (Mr. Oldfield) ought to take into consideration. As regards alcohol content, we find that the alcohol consumption in South Africa in the form of brandy, vodka, gin, etc., constitutes 45 per cent of the total consumption of alcohol. The consumption of alcohol in the form of fortified wines is 20 per cent and the alcohol consumption in the form of light wines is 18 per cent at the present time, and the alcohol consumption in the form of beer is 12 per cent. Thus the alcohol consumption in the form of beer is the least. What is the hon. member for Ceres proving now when he says that beer constitutes 39 per cent of the total consumption of alcohol …

I said by volume, did I not? So why are you quarrelling with me?

What does that prove? It wholly destroys the argument of the hon. member for Ceres that we wish to change the pattern of drinking. Surely we want to change the pattern from 45 per cent hard liquor to wine and beer, otherwise we must not say we wish to alter the pattern of drinking; then we must say that the object of this legislation is to attempt to promote the consumption of light wines. Then it is not the aim to alter the pattern of drinking, but to boost light wine, to which I have no objection at all. If we wish to change the pattern of drinking, if we want to change the consumption of alcohol from hard liquor to light liquor, then I say we have no choice, then we must include beer also.

The hon. the Minister has adopted the point of view, which is a strong point of view, that he does not wish to touch vested interests, and that in areas where virtually no wine is sold by the bottle stores, he does not mind the right being granted to grocers’ shops to sell wine, because it hardly touches vested interests, because beer already constitutes a reasonable percentage in those areas. I cannot find fault with that argument, except for this: I really cannot see what claim the liquor trade has to expect the Government always to protect it. They pay R10,000 for a licence, but there are other businesses also paying very high taxes; there are many businesses which also have to pay a lot of money to the State in order to commence business. If we are to have a new pattern of drinking in the country, the most those businesses can ask for is to be assisted over the transition period, in order to avoid insolvencies and the like. Therefore, although I do appreciate the force of the hon. the Minister’s argument, I should like to say that while beer constitutes only 15 per cent of those people’s turn-over and of the money they are making, I think their vested interests could be protected in another way, and it was not necessary to protect it at the expense of the whole principle of the change of the pattern of drinking. For that reason I shall vote for the amendment of the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (South).

I have once again listened to all the arguments, and although I stated my point of view very clearly in the Committee Stage and at the second reading, I shall do so again. I very clearly stated that in principle there can be no objection to the sale of beer in shops while we are permitting the sale of natural wines there. Nothing has occurred since then to change my views in this regard. But I also made it very clear that we have to make a choice here, necessarily, between two points of view, namely the point of view stated by the hon. member for Vereeniging with which I am unable to find fault, because it is logically correct, and on the other hand the point of view that we cannot touch vested interests without more ado, and in that respect I disagree with the hon. member for Vereeniging. I have no knowledge of any other business, including the people who brew malt, for which a licence is required, or any other article, for which the State compels a man to pay £5,000 for a licence, apart from the ordinary licence fees. I am not aware of a single other similar instance, and while the State compels the man to do so, I have to adopt the attitude that I have to protect him to a certain extent. If he could obtain it on the open market in the normal manner, without having to pay for it, I would have said without more ado, as Mr. Coetzee has said: “I throw in the towel; I have no argument against it.” But while the State has demanded that from the man, the State has a measure of responsibility to him, to protect him.

May I ask whether the argument does not fall away in view of the other provisions of the Bill where, e.g. in the Transvaal at least 300 additional bottle stores will possibly come into existence? The hotels will be able to claim a licence for a bottle store.

Yes, there we are affecting vested interests, but for good reasons, namely because it is a very important principle of this Bill to counteract the decline in the hotel industry.

Is the principle not to change the pattern of drinking?

We must not tackle the pattern of drinking so hurriedly that we do so at the expense of vested rights but, and this is a very important aspect, as beer is freely available and very easily obtainable in the whole Republic, and is not only freely available and obtainable, and whereas it has behind it an advertising power which few commodities in South Africa has (I am not holding this against the people; it is their own affair), but there I have to be mindful, according to the figures I have before me (true, it is content by volume) that as the law stands at present, and as the facts are at the present time, it will mean among other things that if the amendment of the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (South) is accepted, I believe beer will be made available in grocers’ shops in the whole of Natal and in the whole of the Transvaal. That would mean, having regard to the figures, that Natal’s existing trade of 53.76 per cent beer, and that in the Transvaal of 49.71 per cent of beer sales, which produce considerable income for those people, that potentially—I am not saying how much of that will be lost in practice—it will mean that the 53 per cent of the Natal liquor trade and the 49 per cent of the Transvaal trade will be involved. I do not wish to take that risk. I do not want to incur that reproach, that the trade will say to me: You originally argued, and we conceded your argument, that you did not wish to prejudice vested interests, but by releasing beer you should have realized and you must have known that you were in fact going to prejudice our vested interests. For those reasons I regret that I am unable to accept the amendment.

Amendment put and the House divided:

AYES—26: Bronkhorst, H. J.; Cruywagen, W. A.; du Plessis, H. R. H.; Durrant, R. B.; Fouché, J. J. (Sr.); Gay, L. C.; Gorshel, A.; Jurgens, J. C.; Marais, J. A.; Miller, H.; Mostert, D. J. J.; Mulder, C. P.; Plewman, R. P.; Radford, A.; Rall, J. J.; Ross, D. G.; Stander, A. H.; Steenkamp, L. S.; Tucker, H.; van der Wath, J. G. H.; Viljoen, M.; von Moltke, J. von S.; Waring, F. W.; Webster, A.

Tellers: B. Coetzee and B. J. van der Walt.

NOES—74: Barnett, C.; Bekker, G. F. H.; Bekker, H. T. van G.; Bekker, M. J. H.; Bloomberg, A.; Bootha, L. J. C.; Botha, H. J.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, P. W.; Botha, S. P.; Bowker, T. B.; Cloete, J. H.; Coertze, L. I.; Coetzee, P. J.; de Kock, H. C.; de Villiers, J. D.; de Wet, C.; Dönges, T. E.; Field, A. N.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Haak, J. F. W.; Heystek, J.; Hiemstra, E. C. A.; Higgerty, J. W.; Hourquebie, R. G. L.; Kotze, G. P.; Kotze, S. F.; Malan, A. I.; Malan, E. G.; Malan, W. C.; Marais, P. S.; Maree, G. de K.; Meyer, T.; Mitchell, D. E.; Muller, S. L.; Nel, J. A. F.; Nel, M. D. C. de W.; Odell, H. G. O.; Oldfield, G. N.; Otto, J. C.; Pelser, P. C.; Potgieter, D. J.; Potgieter, J. E.; Raw, W. V.; Sadie, N. C. van R.; Sauer, P. O.; Schlebusch, A. L.; Schoeman, B. J.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Schoonbee, J. F.; Serfontein, J. J.; Steyn, J. H.; Steyn, S. J. M.; Taurog, L. B.; Uys, D. C. H.; van den Berg, M. J.; van der Byl, P.; van der Merwe, P. S.; van der Spuy, J. P.; van Eeden, F. J.; van Niekerk, G. L. H.; van Niekerk, M. C.; van Staden, J. W.; van Wyk, G. H.; van Wyk, H. J.; van Zyl, J. J. B.; Venter, M. J. de la R.; Venter, W. L. D. M.; Visse, J. H.; Vorster, B. J.; Vosloo, A. H.; Waterson, S. F.

Tellers: W. H. Faurie and A. Hopewell.

Amendment accordingly negatived.

Amendment in Clause 3, made in Committee of the whole House, and the amendments in Clauses 9 and 15, put and agreed to.

On Clause 36,

I move—

In moving the amendment, I think it is necessary to state the full implications of this subsection (3). Firstly, no application for a grocer’s wine licence in any magisterial district will be granted if the bottle stores in that district can prove that 30 per cent of the total liquor sold by them is light table wine. Secondly, it provides a special vested right of objection to the granting of a grocer’s wine licence to establish liquor interests, for which, as far as I am aware, no parallel exists in any other branch of commerce. Thirdly, it hands the entire responsibility for the broad principle of this Bill—as we know it, and which has been described by the hon. Minister in his second-reading speech as the changing of the drinking pattern in South Africa—it hands the entire responsibility for the alteration of the drinking pattern of this country to the bottle-store keepers. Dealing with the first two implications of sub-section (3), the hon. Minister has under-written the bottle-store interests by stating that he will give them two years to change the drinking pattern before applications for grocers’ wine licences will be considered. To put it in plain, simple language, without the legal aspects, the hon. Minister gives the 890 bottle stores two years in which to put up the sale of their light wines to 30 per cent of the total liquor sales. To what purpose? To protect what the Minister considers are their vested rights, that is to say to maintain their existing volume of business. The Minister claims that the bottle-store keepers have a right to this protection by the fact that they pay a high fee for their licences to the State and therefore deserve special consideration. I cannot accept these reasons as a justifiable argument in favour of this protection for bottle stores. Firstly, Sir, a bottle-store keeper to my mind must surely, like any other businessman, face normal trade risks, and one of the trade risks he has to face is that there is a completely different approach to the distribution and sale and consumption of liquor in South Africa. That was evidenced in the passing of the Bantu Liquor Bill. The second reason why I cannot accept that argument is that I can recall no instance of a bottle-store licensee going bankrupt or being unable to carry on his business. My third reason is that I am not aware of any lack of applicants for bottle-store licences to the extent that the State must offer them special protection in a sub-section such as this. There is a fourth reason, viz. that the need for control of the liquor distribution by the State, which was the basis of past legislation, by limiting the number, has largely now disappeared since the passing of the Bantu Liquor Bill.

Sir, all members of this House have experienced the pressure and the lobbying of liquor interests in respect of this Bill. The horse-trading that has gone on in respect of this sub-section, I want to tell the hon. Minister I found it a little bit disgusting. Firstly it did not exist in the Bill, then a year’s time was given, then it was made 40 per cent, then it was a year with 40 per cent, then it was extended to two years and eventually we had a relief period of two years and the percentage reduced to 30 per cent. The Minister has jumped all over the place in regard to these various periods and conditions for one reason only, and that is that he, like other members of this House, has been subjected to these pressures from these particular liquor interests. I want to say to the hon. Minister that I have admired the manner in which he has dealt with this Bill at the second reading and the Committee Stage, but I am surprised that he has allowed himself to become subject to these particular pressures from liquor interests that have been brought to bear in regard to this Bill.

Mr. Speaker, we talk about protecting the vested interests of bottle stores! I think the question one can ask is whether there is not a vested interest on the part of the public as well, and when one thinks of “public interest”, one has got to say to oneself: Are the hands of the bottle-store keepers clean? Have they got such clean hands that their rights must be protected in regard to these matters? I want to say this to the House: The hon. Minister has referred to the standpoint and public statements made by certain representatives of the bottle-store interests. I want to make a statement here in regard to what was said to me by bottle-store interests in the precincts of this House. I opposed this provision in the Committee Stage and I was asked what I have against bottle-store interests. I said “I have nothing in particular against bottle-store interests”. Then the argument ensued as to why I was not prepared to give them this period to protect their business interests. In the course of my reasons I said that when the Bantu Liquor Bill was passed they got 10,000,000 extra customers and that they had nothing to grouse about. Then I was told by a representative of the Bottle-Store Association that when I voted for the Bantu Liquor Bill in this House I merely voted to make legitimate their existing illegitimate business. Sir, I take strong exception to such an approach from the bottle-store interests in regard to the provisions of this Bill. Sir, we have all to face this issue, as the Minister has to face it, that when we go back to our constituencies we have to account for the vote we have given in regard to this matter. I voted for the second reading, and I voted for Clause 3, and I am perfectly prepared to justify my reasons for doing so, because I believe that it is necessary to change the drinking pattern in this country. But I am not prepared to go to my constituency and to say to my constituents that I voted for this Bill to protect the interests of the bottle-store keepers and I voted for this Bill to pass over to the bottle-store keepers the interest that I have for the interests of the public of South Africa in my constituency. I am not prepared to vote for entrenched rights of bottle-store keepers in order that they have the responsibility to change the drinking pattern of South Africa. Sir, I, like every other hon. member, has to face his constituents in regard to this issue, and that is a clear-cut matter to me in regard to this sub-section. I do not consider that the bottle stores have clean hands in regard to the distribution of liquor in South Africa. One only has to look at the figures: 67,000 arrests for drunkenness in the five-year period 1950-5 as far as Europeans are concerned, 100,000 in respect of the Natives, 180,000 in respect of Coloureds. Who supplied them with the liquor? So I do not accept any of the arguments of the hon. Minister that I must be expected to support this provision in this Bill to protect these vested interests. I do not believe that they have a particular right as embodied in this sub-section. Unless the hon. Minister can give me a clear-cut answer on these issues, I will not be prepared to go back to my constituents and say that I voted for this sub-section to give special protection to the liquor interests of South Africa and in particular to the bottle stores. Therefore I am going to consider if I should vote against the third reading, subject to the hon. Minister’s reply in accepting or rejecting this amendment.

I should like to second the amendment of the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Durrant). The object of Clause 3 is and has been and remains to increase the points of distribution, and I am in favour of that because I am firmly convinced that drunkenness and the abuse of liquor have got nothing to do with the number of points of distribution. The second reason why I am seconding it is that I am in full agreement with the hon. member for Turffontein in that I see no reason why we should trouble ourselves here to protect the interests of a certain section of the trade. The hon. member for Vereeniging said the other night that there are certain industries that disappear as times change, and every person must accept his competition as he finds it. For that reason I should like to second the amendment of the hon. member for Turffontein.

I rise to oppose the amendment of the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Durrant), and I do so for the reason that if you accept this amendment and remove the proviso under which grocers’ wine licences may be granted, you then in fact say that from now on liquor sales are no longer to be a controlled matter. That is the effect of it, because over 50 per cent of the liquor consumed in South Africa is then removed from the normal channels of distribution and placed in the hands of a new channel of distribution, the grocer’s shop. You might then as well do away with your whole machinery which has been created by the State in order to control the distribution of liquor, because you are only then going to have on an average less than half the liquor sold in South Africa, sold through the channels which currently are controlled by law and supervised by the police. Then you may as well do away with our liquor law, because then there will be no control over liquor whatsoever. To claim that the existing drunkenness is due to the channels of distribution is absolute nonsense! The hon. member for Turffontein used the argument that because 67,000 Whites had been arrested for drunkenness, that was a reflection on the existing distribution channels. They did not make those people go and buy the liquor; and if they do not buy it from the bottle store they are going to buy it from the grocer; if they do not buy it from one point, they will buy it from another. So I cannot possibly support the hon. member for Turffontein, unless the House takes the fundamental decision to abolish all control over liquor.

Surely grocers’ wine licences can be refused.

I will deal with that point. Not long ago the hon. member said that there would be hundreds of new off-sales. They can be refused in exactly the same way. I would rather see this amendment go even a little bit further and eliminate the so-called soft liquor from these provisions, as will be dealt with in a subsequent amendment, but to go in the opposite direction and remove all restrictions. I think would be absolutely foolish. I oppose the amendment. It is almost impossible for us to reach the discussion of the other amendments, but I hope that the hon. Minister will consider the aspect of the least alcoholic beverages, but the largest volume, which throws out the whole calculation procedure, being excluded.

We cannot possibly accept the amendment of the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Durrant). If I were to support that amendment, I must vote against Clause 3. The hon. member is seeing it from the point of view of the bottle store. I do not regard it in that light. Those may be the circumstances in the Transvaal where the hotels do not have off-sales privileges. I should like the hon. member to regard the matter from the point of view of the hotels in the western Cape. If the hon. member refers to the figures submitted by the Minister, he will see that the sales of the Coetzenburg Hotel at Stellenbosch consist to the extent of 82 per cent of dry wines, and for the Station Hotel at Paarl it is 77 per cent, and for the Oak Hotel in Huguenot it is 83 per cent, and for the International Hotel it is 77 per cent. I wish to protect the vested interests under this section which the hon. member wants to remove, and without that section I think our hotel industry will be greatly jeopardized.

For reasons mentioned earlier by me, I unfortunately cannot accept the amendment of the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Durrant). The hon. member has given me an ultimatum in a very kindly way that if I do not accept the amendment he will not vote for the third reading.

No, I said unless you have good reasons.

It seems to me it is unfortunately the Monday on which Ministers here and elsewhere are receiving ultimatums, and even at the risk of that I must say that the argument of the hon. member for Ceres (Mr. Muller) is decisive, that the hotels will suffer mainly, and we want to avoid that at all costs. But I am not apologizing for that, even at the risk of being accused of having bargained and having made certain concessions to vested rights. Indeed it is such a cardinal requirement that vested rights should be taken into consideration that we have the Standing Orders relating to Public and Private Bills in this House. So it is not a mistake to consider vested interests; it is a mistake just to ignore them without more ado, and for that reason I am not apologizing for having made this concession to vested interests under the circumstances.

Amendment put and negatived.

On amendment in line 44, page 24, made in Committee of the whole House,

I merely wish to place on record that in view of the amendment which follows and which affects this figure, and since I cannot discuss my amendment until the question of the change from 40 per cent to 30 per cent has been dealt with, I will not object to it at this stage, but I do so conditional upon the discussion which will follow.

Amendment put and agreed to.

I now move the amendment standing in my name—

I do so in regard to the question of calculating which areas may have grocers’ wine licences, and I do so for the reason that one of the objects of this Bill is to change the drinking pattern. If we are sincere in wanting to encourage the consumption of drinks of a lower alcohol content, we should exclude from the prohibiting figure, or the calculation, that beverage which has the lowest alcohol content. I quoted figures in an earlier stage which indicated that if all the spirit consumption in the three provinces other than the Cape, plus the total wine consumption, were taken together as being light wine consumption, you would still not achieve a figure of 30 per cent, because of the volume involved in beer, its high volume in relation to hard spirits. I feel that unless we exclude beer from the basis of calculation, we will force the bottle stores and the off-sales of the hotels to encourage the consumption of wine at the cost of beer, and not at the cost of spirits; because beer has the biggest volume, and for every beer-drinker who switches to wine they change the percentage by about 10 times more than by switching a spirit drinker to wine. If they switch a man who normally drinks a bottle of brandy to wine, they change the percentage by one bottle to three but the man who drinks beer drinks at least a dozen bottles of beer for every bottle of brandy the brandy drinker consumes. It is thereby much easier for the trade to change the ratio—by more than 10 times for every beer drinker they change, in comparison with changing over one spirit drinker. Therefore the inclusion of malt in the calculation means that you are likely to have the trade trying to achieve the percentage which is set for them as the percentage which prohibits grocers’ licences at the cost of the beverage we should encourage. We have had time to think over this matter now and I trust that the matter will now be viewed in a different light by the House. We discussed it hastily when it was first dealt with, but I think that now that we have had an opportunity to consider the matter we will realize that we made a mistake there. I would be quite happy, if that were done, to see the percentage go up.

In Natal where you have such a high percentage of beer consumption, do you think you will ever reach the 30 per cent if you do not include beer?

Yes, I think you can.

If you do not exclude beer, do you think you can reach that percentage?

If beer is included in the percentage? No, I do not think so, but I think that if beer were excluded you will find that the consumption of wine will go up tremendously, and it would go up at the cost of spirits.

You are correct.

As it stands now, there will be no attempt made to encourage wine, because the achievement of 30 per cent is impossible. But if you exclude beer, you could make it a higher percentage and then existing channels would endeavour to reach that by switching people from hard tack to wine, instead of from beer to wine.

May I ask a question? Would the effect of the acceptance of your amendment make it more difficult for grocers’ licences to be obtained?

Yes, it would make it more difficult for grocers’ licences to be obtained if the existing trade channels encouraged the sale of wine at the cost of spirits. It would not make it more difficult where the trade did not do anything about pushing wine. Then the position will be unchanged. But if the trade makes a genuine attempt to encourage wine as opposed to spirits, then it would be more difficult.

I second the proposal of the hon. member for Durban (Point) (Mr. Raw). If we are not going to exclude beer, particularly in the northern provinces, we are going to find that that percentage cannot be attained, and the effect will be that the bottle stores, the hotels and all of them concerned with the sale of natural wine will not receive the requisite encouragement, and it will not be possible to attain that percentage; and they on their part will not promote the consumption of light wines, but they will probably concentrate more upon hard liquor. Apart from the question whether it is going to make the grocers’ licences more difficult to obtain, we shall not get the bottle stores and hotels to try to attain that percentage. On that ground alone I do hope the Minister will be able to accept it.

It seems a very innocent amendment to me, but they want to catch us unawares. It is not so innocent as it seems. The hon. member now wants beer to be excluded in calculating the percentage. I should like to mention an example. Suppose 20 per cent of the sales is wine, and 50 per cent is beer and 30 per cent is hard liquor, and you take out the 50 per cent beer, then you are left with 20 per cent wine and 30 per cent hard liquor. Then the 20 per cent wine is not only 20 per cent, but 40 per cent, and the higher it goes the more impossible it becomes to grant that licence, with the result that if this amendment is accepted we may as well delete Section 3.

Amendment put and negatived.

Amendments in Clauses 37 and 38, the omission of Clause 47, amendments in Clauses 49, 52 and 54, the new clause to follow Clause 54 and the amendments in Clause 56 and Clause 58, up to and including the omission of the old sub-section (4) of the proposed new Section 75, put and agreed to.

New sub-section (4) of the proposed new Section 75 in Clause 58, substituted in Committee of the whole House, put.

I have an amendment to the amendment on the Order Paper, as follows—

I gave my reasons for it on Friday. I will not repeat them now, but I hope the Minister will accept it.

I second.

I have gone into the matter with the law advisers and I am told that there will be so many snags if I accept this amendment that we will run into great difficulties, and for that reason I regret that I cannot accept the amendment.

Like what?

In connection with certain hotels which the hon. member knows of.

Amendment put and negatived.

The substitution of the new sub-section (4) was put and agreed to.

Remaining amendment in Clause 58, the amendment in Clause 59, the new Clause 65 and the amendments in Clause 68, put and agreed to.

On the conclusion of the period of one hour allotted for the Report Stage of the Bill, the business under consideration was interrupted by Mr. Speaker in accordance with the resolution adopted by the House on 5 June.

That the Bill, as amended, be adopted.

Agreed to.

I move—

For the convenience of hon. members and in order to save time, I have tabled a memorandum on this Bill, in which every clause is explained, particularly with due regard to existing provisions, and therefore I hope that the memorandum will not only have made it easy for hon. members to follow the Bill, but also that it will help to save time in this debate. All the clauses in this Bill are also contained in the longer measure we introduced here some time ago. It has been announced in a Press statement, and for the record I should like to repeat here that the Government has decided, with a view to the pressure of work as a result of the impending end of this Session, not to pass this longer measure hastily. For the present, we shall confine ourselves to the abridged measure and therefore mainly to matters which are of an urgent nature for the immediate future and which are required now for policy and administrative requirements.

I should like to point out briefly that our Department has during the past three years been conducting consultations on a nation-wide scale on the contemplated amendments with provincial, municipal, industrial, commercial and many other bodies of a wide diversity. The first public product was when a Bill was published in the Gazette purely for public notification in February this year. The Press reports in certain papers that there was a Bill last year which was subsequently withdrawn is a pure figment of the imagination. Hon. members ought to recall that we did not have a Bill on these matters which was introduced last year, was subsequently withdrawn. After consideration of the representations we came along with this long Bill after February’s Bill, but we are not proceeding with the long Bill now for the reasons mentioned. The abridged measure under discussion now is therefore partly the product of widespread consultation to which I have referred above. Indeed we were able to derive a good deal of benefit from the representations, and I assure the House that we are still quite susceptible to genuine constructive suggestions in regard to Bantu administration, but of course not for the rejection of principles. I should also like to express my appreciation, on behalf of the Department also, to those who with their representations helped us and tried to help, and I thank the numerous bodies and many individuals from whom we received support in connection with the proposed legislation. I shall be able to quote some of them here and there, but in order to save time, not many.

As regards the contents of the Bill, I should like to summarize it into 12 subjects, and I shall first of all briefly mention these subjects and thereafter I shall revert to a fuller discussion of some of these subjects. The first subject I wish to mention is in respect of foreign Bantu. I shall return to this more fully later on, and so I shall proceed to the second subject, and that is namely in respect of Bantu taxation, as it appears in Clauses 2, 3 and 4. As explained in the memorandum, it is proposed to change the year of assessment for the convenience of the employer and then of the Bantu for purposes of the additional Bantu taxation, in order to make it coincide with the latest legislation, the Income Tax Act, and to permit the benefit of the transition period of eight months to accrue to the Bantu taxpayer also. So I really do believe not the whole House will agree to this measure in respect of Bantu taxation, and I shall not dilate upon it now.

The third subject is in respect of the released areas which are dealt with in one clause and in the annexures. The reason why the land is declared to be released areas is set forth very fully in the memorandum and we can furnish more information about it at the Committee Stage if required. At the present time it will suffice to say that certain places are intended for Bantu townships in the homelands. Other places again are intended as compensating land for the clearing up of Black spots and for purposes of the consolidation of Bantu areas. If necessary, we shall furnish more particulars in regard to this in the Committee Stage. Therefore I am now mentioning, in the fourth place, the overhaul of the measures relative to the compulsory residence of Bantu in the Bantu residential areas around our cities. I shall have a good deal more to say about this subject in a moment, and so I hasten to the fifth subject of the Bill, and the regulatory powers with a view to standard regulations which the Minister will be able to draft and publish for Bantu residential areas and for backyard residence. I shall have more to say about this anon, and am now only mentioning it.

The sixth subject of the Bill concerns the co-operation between local authorities as contained in Clause 10. This Clause also is dealt with very fully in the memorandum and therefore I need not say much about it now. It was really asked for by the City Council for Germiston, as the result of the experience they have had, but we can assume that in future these provisions will be made use of to an increasing extent, because it is becoming increasingly evident that various local authorities must develop a joint Bantu residential area, and in that case a provision such as this becomes very necessary to make an agreement in that regard legally possible, so that one local authority may carry out the work in the interests of all in respect of the one Bantu residential area. A new principle introduced in this Clause is the powers being given to a local authority to enter into an agreement with our Department also for purposes of this nature, in terms of which certain work may be performed on behalf of our Department by such local authority. I should like to mention an example. I do not know whether this will happen there, but I merely want to give an illustration. Such a position may arise for instance if a nearby local authority were e.g. to deal with the administrative work of Bantu affairs in a place such as Evaton, which at the present time is performed by our Department. If it is possible to come to an arrangement with a local authority to do it—and there are three or four of them nearby—this Act will authorize it.

The seventh group of subjects is in respect of administration by local authorities. Clause 11 provides that a local authority may be called upon to submit certain resolutions affecting Bantu administration to the Minister for his approval before they may be implemented by the local authority. I shall have a little more to say about this anon, because it seems to me there are a few hon. members who want to know more about it.

The eighth subject is in respect of Bantu authorities. In the two clauses concerned it is provided that the books of regional and territorial authorities in the homelands shall be audited by the Auditor-General. This request emanated from the Select Committee on Public Accounts. The reasons why the tribal authorities are not subject to such audits is the very large number of existing tribal authorities, about 427 of them. Another reason is the inaccessibility of many of these tribal authorities’ offices because of the topography and the small amounts of money involved. Actually a good deal of the auditing now contemplated is already done by the Auditor-General, as it is the existing practice that the Bantu Affairs Commissioner concerned keeps a trust account for every tribal authority in that area. I hope hon. members will accept these two clauses and that therefore it will not be necessary to say much about them.

The ninth subject is the urban Bantu Councils, as dealt with in Clauses 26 to 29. These provisions seek to put certain matters more clearly in regard to the urban Bantu councils, particularly to provide beyond doubt that such councils will not be absolutely independent, autonomous bodies, independent of the city councils concerned. The Bill now makes it very clear that when some of the powers of the local authority are transferred to such an urban Bantu council, those transferred powers must be exercised on behalf of and subject to the local authority concerned, and that the local authority is not thereby divested of its powers in respect of the matters in question. So, in spite of the transfer of powers to the urban Bantu council, the local authority will still itself be able to act and pass resolutions there-anent. Another provision in connection with the urban Bantu council is that such an urban Bantu council in proper cases could be dissolved, and another one could be appointed in its stead, and further that foreign Bantu may not serve on these councils as members thereof, and may not participate in elections for the members of those councils.

The tenth subject is contained in Clause 30, and that is in connection with the transfer of certain farms in the districts of Rustenburg and Brits to certain Whites and certain Bantu. The memorandum sets forth very fully the circumstances and the particulars and the desirability of the legislation on that score, and I assume that hon. members will also be prepared to authorize the transfer of that land to the Bantu and to the Whites concerned, something that will be in the interests of both the groups concerned, and I do not think it is necessary to dilate upon that.

The eleventh subject is in regard to claims for damages by parties to customary unions, and here also it is surely not necessary to say much about this subject. I think it is the unanimous wish of all hon. members that Bantu women married by Native custom should have the rights provided for in the Bill.

The final subject is contained in Clause 32, and that authorizes the interpretation of the word “Native” as “Bantu”, a continuation of provisions already contained in previous legislation, and a provision on which we have already heard much wise and unwise information in this House. So actually nothing new emerges from this, and legal effect is merely being given to the administrative use of the word “Bantu”.

Having now summarized the twelve subjects, I should like to say something more about some of them, and the first one I should like to bring to your attention is the foreign Bantu. Hon. members will recall that earlier in this Session the report of the Committee under the chairmanship of the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) on the matter of foreign Bantu was Tabled. In paragraph 369 of that Report a total restraint upon the entry of foreign Bantu is proposed, except in the case firstly of visitors, secondly of approved male labour, and thirdly, approved seasonal labour in border districts. Clause 1 of the Bill deals mainly with the presence of Bantu for labour on farms. In this regard the Froneman Committee, in paragraph 298 of its report, found that there are about 270,000 foreign labourers employed in agriculture as farm labourers, domestic servants etc. Indeed, the estimated total number of foreign Bantu in the Republic—this is only an estimate—is 836,000, of whom 186,000 are women and dependants. In parenthesis, to assist hon. members, I may say that those statistics are to be found in Tables I, XXII and XXIII of the Froneman Report. Now paragraphs 295 to 314 of the Report deal very fully and efficiently with the extent to which this foreign labour is depriving the South African Bantu of their opportunities for employment, and for that reason it is not necessary for me to deal with that fully. I merely wish to say this in general: South Africa is under no obligation to provide employment for all the people and children of another country. South Africa wants to look after its own children. White and non-White, and give preference to them. and South Africa can do so; for that reason the Bantu of South Africa must have preference to foreign Bantu in respect of all available employment. Employers must try to follow the same slogan in procuring employees that we so frequently use in regard to the procurement of other general commodities, namely “Buy South African”. Also as regards Bantu labour, that is a slogan we should give effect to more often: “Buy South African”. Do hon. members realize it is estimated that the number of foreign Bantu within our borders is greater than the number of unemployed Bantu? The inference to be drawn from this is obvious and very clear, namely that the withdrawal of foreign Bantu will release employment for all our unemployed Bantu. We have much evidence also that our own Bantu in South Africa want the foreign Bantu removed from our country as a labour competitor. I could mention three or four instances of requests I have received from Bantu in this connection, apart from other instances I could bring to the attention of hon. members. However, we must constantly ensure that the employers, and in this connection the farmers particularly, are not prejudiced by not being able to get any or by getting too few labourers; nor is it our intention at all that employers should be placed in such an embarrassing position. Indeed, hon. members will see that the Secretary of the Department is given power in Clause 1 to consider applications and to approve or reject them in respect of foreign Bantu, as in the case of urban control over foreign Bantu. The Secretary may delegate this power to officials, e.g. the local Bantu Affairs Commissioner, so that there will be a minimum of red tape in dealing with these applications. That applies to the foreign Bantu who are in the country already.

A new principle emerges from Clauses 7, which provides for the endorsement of travel documents at border posts. The hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs in a full statement to the House explained how and where these border posts will come into operation as from 1 July this year. No foreign Bantu will be permitted to enter the Republic to seek employment unless he is in possession of a travel document, and a travel document, as hon. members will realize, is not the ordinary reference book. Clauses 15 to 25 inclusive of the Bill provide for this. This travel document is then endorsed at the border post with the particulars of the person by whom the Bantu concerned will be employed. In other words, the Bantu will not be able to enter freely to go and seek employment by himself wherever he wishes. Nor will he be able to work in the Republic for a continuous period of more than two years. Persons who require such foreign labour, will have to apply for it beforehand. and the requisition for the labour will then be submitted to the territory concerned. In the case of the border districts, or where a farmer may have farms on both sides of the border, or in the case of seasonal labourers, exceptions are made regarding the procurement of the requisite border post authorization. Full particulars about this will in due course be furnished by the Department. The question of the border posts is receiving very careful consideration by the Department concerned at the present time. Mr. Speaker, I should like to go out of my way now to assure everybody that it is not our intention at all to apply the provisions in such a manner that labour shortages will be created or will arise. The most important consideration is to ensure that we should be able to screen entrants so that they do not disrupt our labour market and so that we may have a record of every foreign Bantu, to enable us to ensure that he will be able to leave the country again in due course.

I think I have now said enough about the foreign Bantu and I shall return for a while to the question of the compulsory residence of Bantu in urban Bantu residential areas at our towns and cities. Section 9 of the Urban Areas Act already contains the principle that all Bantu in our cities must live in Bantu residential areas provided the urban area concerned has been proclaimed for that purpose. Various judgments have already been given on the validity of such proclamations proclaiming Bantu residential areas. At a place such as Carletonville in the Transvaal, e.g., the promulgation of such an isolating proclamation as it is generally called, was delayed for more than two years, and in the interim squatter conditions could have become aggravated there. The amendments in this Bill now eliminate the prior separate proclamations, and any Bantu, save those mentioned in a list referred to in Section 9 (2) of the Urban Areas Act, may be ordered to go and reside in a location or in an hostel if there is adequate accommodation for him. The principle of this compulsory residence in an urban Bantu residential area, or as some people call it, in an urban location, is of course the traditional policy of our country and also of our Government. I should like to emphasize here that we say that the Bantu whose presence here in the homelands of the Whites is justified, is entitled to be looked after and to be protected, and therefore we say that those Bantu whose presence in the White homeland is justified because of the labour he provides here, must be properly housed; they must be treated in a manner worthy of a human being; they must be able to enjoy social amenities; they must be protected by means of influx control against being unduly ousted from their employment, against bad housing, against wage threats, and they must as far as possible live in association with their own people in the urban Bantu residential areas, and not in association with people who are strangers to them. I see the hon. member for Hillbrow (Dr. Steenkamp) wants to agree with me.

In paragraphs 5 (e) to (o) of the memorandum we have submitted, the tenor of the amendments we propose here is dealt with in detail. In regard to domestic servants at private residences and blocks of flats, I should like to emphasize that this clause is not going to debar anybody from employing as many servants as he likes or can afford. If he wishes to employ ten or twelve in his personal employment, he may employ all of them, if he can afford them. But what is proposed here is that only one servant shall sleep on the premises of a private residence. If more servants are required to sleep on the premises in future, a permit or licence will have to be obtained from the local authority, and the matter will then be fully investigated. I take this opportunity to request local authorities throughout the country to be reasonable in issuing these licences, but definitely not to permit additional servants wherever it can be avoided at all. When the Minister deems it expedient, in terms of the provisions of the Bill, e.g. because of the proximity of a Bantu residential area, he may direct that no domestic servant may sleep in a backyard except only if he is licensed to do so. According to the Bill the local authority also has the right to ask that such a decree be issued; that nobody should automatically, in terms of the provision of one Bantu per site, be granted the right to sleep there. The City Council of Silverton probably was the first to ask for something of this nature; I think it is to the credit of the hon. member within whose constituency Silverton falls. I think the circumstances at Silverton, where there is a Bantu residential area in close proximity, namely at Vlakfontein, are in favour of an arrangement such as this one we are proposing here.

Is it a big Bantu township?

Yes, Vlakfontein is a large Bantu urban residential area.

Silverton?

Silverton is a growing city.

If you travelled there from Johannesburg you would get lost there.

It is my considered opinion, although it may perhaps be unpopular with some people, that our love of ease as regards our domestic servants living on our residential premises is something we should abandon. If the servants …

Nonsense.

Now that we are saying that the Bantu in our employ must be housed properly, in association with their own people, with their own amenities, in Bantu residential areas, we are told that it is nonsense. Mr. Speaker, if the servants were to reside in the Bantu residential area of the city or town concerned, they are near their own recreational and social amenities and they are then with members of their own family and other Bantu, which is fully in accordance with modern sociological ideas that people of the same kind want to reside together and wish to be together. They are near their own sports fields, churches, clinics, community halls, cinemas and beer halls, and they cannot be accused of creating disturbances after their working hours.

[Inaudible.]

The hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Gorshel) surely does not sleep in his office in the city; he sleeps in his home in the White residential area. Why then cannot the Bantu sleep in the Bantu residential area? Why must he only sleep in the White man’s backyard?

Are you sure he sleeps at his home?

How do the Bantu get there?

As I have said, the Bantu will after working hours be in their own residential areas, and they cannot then, rightly or wrongly possibly, be accused of causing disturbances in certain urban areas. In the backyard of the employer the Bantu has to do without all these facilities they have in the urban Bantu residential areas. In addition to that, congregation in backyards only too frequently leads to discord and friction which create racial strife, and which ought to be eliminated, and that is what we are trying to do in this measure. This strife and friction may be reduced to a large extent by a measure of this nature. In the backyards there is a lack of social control, particularly over female servants, with the well-known results in respect of immorality. Taking all these factors into consideration, it is desirable that domestics, just like all their fellow-workers in other sectors such as e.g. industry, should have the opportunity to live among their own people in the Bantu residential area. This provision will undoubtedly contribute largely to combating moral degeneration and is very valuable to the Bantu, and what is more, it is very valuable to the family life of the Bantu.

I have received numerous letters in which these provisions receive support. It is a good thing also to know that many Bantu themselves are in favour of this change.

Where?

The hon. member asks “Where”? I could mention two examples to him at once. The one was in a Bantu area where chiefs asked for something of this nature, and the other instance I am going to read here very specifically. [Interjection]. The example of the chiefs I have referred to really concerns another provision which is standing over until next year, and for that reason it is not so directly in point here, but the one I am going to read now is very directly in point, and as the hon. member for Transkeian Territories (Mr. Hughes) is so excited about this point, I should like to give him the assurance that this request emanated from the Bantu even before we published the Bill for information in February; it came from them spontaneously. I now come to the example I wish to quote here. I hear that the Advisory Bantu Committee of Potchefstroom expressed objection “that Bantu women are being accommodated in rooms by their European employers in town and that no control is exercised over them. Bantu men sleep with these women freely without the knowledge of the parents or guardians of such women. The large number of illegitimate children born as a result of such activities cause friction and discontentment.” That Committee then passed the following resolution—

“Be forced”. They put it very much more strongly than we are putting it in the Bill—

Hon. members must note that this resolution was adopted on the 28th November, 1962 already, before the Bill was published in February. This request came to us spontaneously. I was struck also by the fact that both the United Municipal Executive and the Institute of Administrators of non-White Affairs supported this point of view in principle, and they are the people who are directly concerned with these matters.

Statistics about domestic servants on residential premises in our towns and cities are not easy to procure, and are not completely reliable, but I have taken sample tests at random in a number of towns and cities in our country, and I should like to draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, one way or another and in anticipation, to the fact that there has already been a marked tendency towards a reduction of the number of Bantu living on their employers’ premises. In other words, with this measure we are completely in step with the events that have already begun to occur. I now should like to mention Johannesburg as an example to the hon. member who is sitting there so excitedly at the back.

Are you objecting to me listening attentively?

I am not objecting in the least; I deeply appreciate that the hon. member is so engrossed in what I am saying. I am sorry that the statistics in relation to Johannesburg cover only a short period. As I have said, it is difficult to obtain statistics. In Johannesburg, during March, 1960, as many as 85 per cent of all the domestic servants were living on the premises of their employers, and in December, 1962, it was still 85 per cent, but the average number of living-in domestic per home had already dropped by .01 per cent from 0.94 per cent to 0.93 per cent. For Vanderbijlpark a rapidly growing modern town, the corresponding particulars are as follows. 75 per cent of their domestic servants lived on the premises of their employers in 1948, as compared with 54 per cent in 1963, and per premises it was 0.75 in 1948, but 0.29 in 1963—undoubtedly an example worth following for the whole of South Africa. I am very sorry that our other equally young and modern city, Welkom, comparatively compares rather unfavourably, with 94 per cent of the domestics living on employers’ premises. When I visited Welkom recently, I was told without having asked for it, by the local authority and the public, that they are now going to take active steps to pursue the course other cities have already begun to pursue.

But why is legislation necessary then if there has been such fine progress without legislation?

In order to regulate what the public already desires.

In Pretoria the position is promising, comparatively speaking, because at the present time 66 per cent of the domestics there are accommodated on the residential premises, and they are on an average 0.53 per unit.

In the case of Cape Town, the number of Bantu domestics at private dwellings, according to the statistics we have been given, has dropped from 15,587 or 0.13 per dwelling in 1956 to 10,086 or 0.08 per dwelling in 1962.

In view of our recognized tradition of separate residential areas for Whites and non-Whites in urban areas, the following vital statistics undoubtedly reflect an unsatisfactory state of affairs, although there has also been an improvement in this respect in comparison with the position a number of years ago. I am now taking the Whites and Bantu living together on residential premises in White suburbs. In Brooklyn, Pretoria, in 1951 the Bantu constituted 46 per cent of the total number of the resident population—and that is a White residential area. In 1960 the figure in Brooklyn had already dropped to 28 per cent. In Gezina, another residential area of Pretoria, the percentage of Bantu on those residential premises was 29 per cent of the total number of White and Bantu residents, while in 1960 it was 14 per cent. I also mention two Johannesburg suburbs. One is a little unfair, and therefore I am going to qualify it: I mention firstly the suburb of Brixton. In Brixton in 1951 the Bantu constituted 14 per cent of the total number of Whites and Bantu residing in this White residential area, while the figure dropped to 10 per cent in 1960. In Parktown, Johannesburg, the percentage of Bantu living in was 31 per cent in 1951, whereas in 1960 it had risen to 41 per cent, and the qualification I wish to insert here in respect of Parktown, albeit that for a time I belonged to the National Party branch there, is that Parktown is unfortunately saddled with many blocks of flats where the evil of locations in the sky help to push up this figure. Mr. Speaker, in regard to these few suburbs I have referred to, I should like to draw your attention specifically to the fact that in 1960 the following numbers of Bantu were still living in in those suburbs. In 1960—that was when this favourable tendency had already emerged clearly in three of the four suburbs I have mentioned—there were still 1,476 Bantu residing on premises in Brooklyn, in Gezina 860, and in Parktown, Johannesburg, 5,959, and in Brixton only 431. You will see therefore, that the numbers were still great. although the percentage has already dropped considerably. I do not believe it necessary for us to assume that at other places such as Port Elizabeth, Durban, etc., the position is really any different from that in the instances to which I have referred here, and that is why improved measures, such as the one we are now discussing, are required.

As regards locations in the sky, figures have already been mentioned here during other debates indicating the alarming number of “rooftop residents”, and I do not wish to repeat all that in detail here again. I should like merely to give the following comparative figures of Bantu who have been permitted to reside in buildings, mainly blocks of flats, in Johannesburg. In 1956 there were 3,335 buildings which were licensed to accommodate 23,452 Bantu males and 5,866 Bantu females. In 1961 the number of buildings had increased to 4,222 and there were still 23,976 licensed Bantu males, while the number of Bantu females was 10,630. These figures show that while the number of blocks of flats in Johannesburg had increased by 27 per cent, that is to say from 1956 to 1961, the number of Bantu males had been kept at an almost constant level in the locations in the sky, with an increase of only 2 per cent, but the number of Bantu females in those buildings, alas, had increased by 80 per cent. I see that even the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) is puckering her eyebrows painfully. She says the figures are not correct. I obtained them from the local authorities. Various reports in the papers and in letters addressed to the Department are also focussing our attention to an increasing extent upon this evil, and everybody desires an improvement. I do not wish to make a general statement without mentioning an example, and therefore I shall now quote one. The example I wish to quote is from a suburb of Pietermaritzburg. We received a telegram from Pietermaritzburg as follows. It is only one example of many—

As regards these locations in the sky, much of course depends on the discretion of the local authorities which receive delegated powers from the Minister to exercise there. In this connection I wish to mention that Johannesburg has very methodically tried to tackle the matter, and has tried to implement it by devising a formula for the licensing of Bantu servants. We are now co-operating in putting into operation a new and better formula. I say this to the credit of Johannesburg. I am a proud Johannesburger; I always stand by Johannesburg; not always by its City Council, but by the city itself. Johannesburg’s City Council is the only large one which has in fact already progressed at least far enough to devise a formula according to which they are trying to regulate this matter. We pointed out to them that their formula had one big shortcoming, with the result that the percentage of Bantu females increased by 80 per cent while the Bantu males increased only by 2 per cent. That is why we are now implementing a new formula. I should like to ask hon. members in advance, particularly those who have been city councillors of Johannesburg, please not to make the position difficult for me. I am getting along fairly well with the present City Council of Johannesburg, and with the management committee—I would almost like to go so far as to mention the names of some of those persons—in connection with this difficult matter. We get along reasonably well. Here and there points of friction arise, but we are getting along fairly well. Improvements are being effected. Therefore I wish to appeal to hon. members not to say anything here which might be rued by their members in Johannesburg, or which will make things more difficult for me. There are many other city councils in the country which have to cope with the same problem, and which have not yet evolved such a methodical basis of administration as Johannesburg has. I now appeal most earnestly to those city councils to try to do so. I repeat to them the offer I made earlier, to the effect that we shall provide Departmental aid in assisting them to introduce as methodical a system of control as possible for the Bantu under the locations-in-the-sky system. In this Bill attractive conditions are provided in regard to the locations-in-the-sky concessions which will then be made by means of licensing.

One of the greatest defects in our existing legislation has been that the occupant of a dwelling or a flat could not prevent his or her servant permitting a visitor (male or female) to sleep in the room. The result is that it is very difficult for the municipal inspectors to take action against the occupant of the dwelling or flat, or against the Bantu concerned, because they have to prove in court that the visitor regularly goes there. In order to prove that, the inspector must find the same visitors in the same servant’s room on various occasions, which is a very difficult, and a most cumbersome, a very delicate and even a dangerous task. For that reason it is necessary that we should insert certain presumptions in this clause in regard to the presence of such Bantu who creep in where they have no right to be. According to the police there are about 20,000 of these “bed and breakfast” Bantu who unlawfully reside with domestic servants in the backyards of Johannesburg. Another point I must bring to the attention of the House in connection with this matter is that we are now making it possible for the Bantu to have the right of free access to urban Bantu residential areas, but of course if they misconduct themselves there they can be ejected. As hon. members know, Bantu could not move freely from one Bantu residential area to another, even if those areas were contiguous. If my Bantu servant wished to go to a Bantu residential area to attend a cinema performance she had to receive permission to do so. That is now done away with so that the Bantu will be able to have free access to their residential areas outside our cities and towns, provided, of course, that they behave themselves there.

In the same municipal area?

Yes. No. I thought the hon. member meant something else. Let me give an illustration. The hon. member will know that the Bantu township of Roodepoort (Dobsonville) is separated by only one street from the residential area of Johannesburg; it is also contiguous to the residential area of the Resettlement Board. In other words, the Bantu residential areas of three bodies are contiguous. To-day they cannot move about freely from one to the other, but in future they will be able to do so. I think that is a very clear answer to the hon. member’s question. I thought he had something else at the back of his mind. They may also go to municipal areas other than their own. Hon. members ought to know that under the Urban Areas Act a Bantu may be in any urban area for 72 hours.

Now I should like to pass on to another subject, because I think I have now said enough in this regard. The position of local authorities is dealt with in this Bill. Another important principle of this Bill, and which comes into its own here, is that it is expected of the local authorities to implement the State’s policy in connection with Bantu administration. Since Union it has always been the tradition that local authorities are the executive organs of State policy in this regard, and that they shall not devise and apply their own local policy of Bantu administration, because such a procedure could lead to the greatest possible chaos. Hon. members will find the embodiment of this principle in Clause 11, in which it is provided that the Minister may call upon local authorities to submit reports on Bantu administration and also call upon them not to implement resolutions on Bantu administration before he has approved them. The clear implication of this is that there can be discussions between the local authorities and the Minister or his representatives in order to arrive at some agreement. Of course we are hoping that the city councils will not be so dissentient that this measure will often need to be applied, or that it will ever have to be applied at all. However, I must emphasize in this connection that we expect local authorities, as our agents, to do everything in their power to limit the number of Bantu coming in, as well as the number of Bantu in the urban and town areas. In certain cities there is far too great a tendency wherever possible to permit the Bantu simply to enter the cities. I also wish to say a little more in respect of regulations, Mr. Speaker. As you have noticed, Sir, there is a new principle contained in the Bill which gives the Minister the power to publish a set of regulations for Bantu residential areas or for servants living in backyards, which local authorities may then adopt or which the Minister may then apply to a particular area, whether or not that place already has such regulations. The present divergent Bantu residential area regulations which differ from place to place are only causing the Bantu to become estranged. There are places, too, where the regulations are very out-dated. So, for example, the Bantu residential area regulations of Johannesburg date from somewhere in the ’twenties. From the very nature of things, a set of old regulations cannot keep pace with modern development. Sometimes our Department also is powerless to persuade a local authority to adopt new regulations containing the Departmental requirements in regard to the allocation of dwellings, for instance. Surely it is senseless for the Department to have to go to the city councils, hat in hand, to beg them to apply modern regulations. By means of the amendments contained in this Bill, the Department will now be able to implement its policy in the manner mentioned.

I think, Mr. Speaker, I have now covered the whole field of this Bill for the purposes of this debate. Not only the Department, but the nation as such, daily has a very great duty and a very big task to fulfil towards the Bantu, namely to interpret our policy to them so that they may understand the basis of it is sincere, namely that in South Africa there are parts to which the Bantu alone can lay claim, and where they have unlimited opportunities and where the Whites are of secondary importance, and that is the Bantu homelands. In the same way precisely there are other areas again, namely the homelands of the Whites, where the Whites have the sole right and where the Whites have unlimited opportunities and where the Bantu are of secondary importance. I myself have repeatedly in certain circles brought home this conception to the Bantu, and everywhere they listened to me and agreed with me, particularly in our urban areas. This concept which I have just set forth briefly is a fundamental concept and as all of us probably know, the Bantu are really fundamentalists. That is why they understand a fundamental concept such as this. They appreciate that by the implementation of this doctrine the one group composing the people of South Africa can bring peace of mind to the other group, and peace of mind for the various human communities in our country is surely a prerequisite for mutual peace and the safe continued existence of each group. I repeat what I said at the previous stage of this Bill, that all the proposed measures contained in this Bill are to the advantage of the Bantu. That conforms fully to the view I outlined briefly a moment ago. That is why my mind is not only at rest, but my mind has also been enriched by the knowledge that we are taking measures in this Bill which are positively in the interests of the Bantu and will actively promote good relations between them and the Whites. My one regret is that we have been able, owing to the passage of time and circumstances, to come forward only with this Bill of limited scope. While I am aware of certain differences of principle between the two sides of the House on Bantu administration, I should like to make a friendly appeal to hon. members to approach this Bill calmly and in a spirit of goodwill, to try to say nothing that will offend the Bantu and which they will misunderstand; not to distort matters and to make something useful and effective of this Bill.

This is a Bill with a history. It is a relic of possibly quite the worst piece of legislation that was ever brought before this House or introduced into our Parliament. The fact that the Bill which we have before us to-day is less obnoxious than those others which were published in the Gazette and which appeared before us, is perhaps a tribute to the attitude of the Opposition and a tribute also to perhaps the effectiveness of the forces of opposition in South Africa. With this short background, the hon. Minister cannot take it amiss that we view every clause in this Bill with suspicion, and what is so interesting is that the hon. Minister has told us that while he is not introducing the longer measure which still stands on the Order Paper, his reason for going ahead with this shorter measure is twofold, viz. the urgency of getting certain provisions on the Statute Book and secondly, for the implementation of policy. Now I have looked at this Bill, and I have studied all its 33 clauses, and quite honestly, I can find no single clause which in my opinion is urgent.

What about the foreign Natives? There is an agreement with the Protectorates on that matter.

Which one is urgent? There is some talk of taxation measures, there is talk of White homelands, there are various provisions dealing with domestic servants, which the hon. Minister seems to indicate are quite unnecessary because the public are already doing what he hopes to make them do under this Bill. Why worry? Where is the urgency? There is nothing urgent in this Bill. I think that a critical study reveals no single case of urgency. It reveals some good provisions, some bad provisions and some very bad provisions, but nothing urgent in this Bill at all. So as far as we are concerned, there are clauses in this Bill which may be necessary for the implementation of Government policy, and of course we don’t like the policy, and we like the clauses even less. Therefore I move—

There are, I think, five clauses which we like less than the others, namely clauses 1, 6, 9, 11 and 26. Clause 1 deals with the foreign Natives which the hon. member for Heilbron has such an interest in. We have had a figure to-day of some 270,000 foreign Natives working on our farms in South Africa. I believe the hon. Minister gave another figure in the Other Place, a figure of over 400,000 foreign Natives being resident on our farms. Can you imagine, Sir, that each one of those has not only got to have travel documents when coming into the Republic, but in every single case there has to be a permit from the Secretary for Native Affairs for such a Native to be allowed to work on a farm. Can you imagine what is going to happen if we have to go through all this rigmarole to try and get labour on the farms? Do you really think we would be employing them if we did not need them? The hon. member for Heilbron says that there is unemployment amongst our Natives. He has suddenly discovered what the Department of Labour never has discovered. He suddenly discovered a large number of Native unemployed, and he thinks that if he can keep the foreign Natives out we will have no unemployment. I must say I have never heard of a more fictitious argument or a stupider one. I believe, Sir, that that will have no effect whatever.

Then we come to this other clause which deals with the number of domestic servants who will be allowed to remain on the premises of their employers in urban areas by the good offices and the grace of the Minister. What worries us about that clause is that in certain areas it would seem the Minister has the right to say that none whatever will have the right to stay on the premises of the employer. He can limit it not just to one, but he can limit it to none at all. And while he may like doing his own housework, assisted by the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark (Dr. de Wet), there are a lot of people who don’t approach things quite that way and who think very differently. And what is so odd is the sort of argument that the hon. Deputy Minister is putting up. He says they must be near their own areas, their cinemas, their churches, their sports’ fields. I would have thought that it was important that they should be near their work and I would have thought that it would be important to try and save the expenses of transport to and from their work each day and I should have thought that this legislation is going to have the result that domestic labour is going to be more expensive in South Africa and that many people are going to suffer as a result. And I should have thought that the result was going to be, just what the hon. member for Heilbron is trying to avoid, namely more unemployment amongst the Bantu than there is at the moment because people will not be able to afford to keep them as domestic servants. I see no reason whatever for a provision of this kind. The hon. Minister says that if you have them together in their locations, they will be near their places of amusement. But I should think they would be handy for the agitators too; they can get them all together at the same time, and they would not be so much under the influence of their own employers. But there is one thing that worries me too and that is (a) (1) (b) of Clause 6—

The fact that a Native may not have the right to live there, of course, is conveniently overlooked in this Bill.

What?

The fact that Natives can live in an area does not mean that every particular Native has a right to live there. Has not this Minister himself and his senior colleague, asked chiefs in the areas to let him know when strangers come into their areas? What right have they to settle there? No, Sir, it is another case of something overlooked, something forgotten and not very good drafting.

Then we have the position that the hon. Minister is now becoming so omnipotent, so important that he is going to draft model regulations which he can apply in every local authority’s area. Sir, do conditions not change? Do the circumstances not differ between different local authorities? Are we going to have one blueprint for the whole of South Africa, regardless of the conditions, and is the hon. Minister going to force them upon every local authority? We cannot support a clause of that sort. We cannot support a provision of that kind. It is entirely unnecessary. What he is trying to do is to make those local authorities nothing more nor less than the agents to carry out government policy, whether they like it or whether they don’t.

Of course.

Yes, he does it quite unashamedly. He believes that that is what they are there for. In other words, these elected bodies which have their place in our development are going to become nothing more nor less than the lackeys of the Government. I will tell you, Sir, that the hon. Minister is going to find that it is not as easy as that. Life is not like that.

Do you want them to torpedo the Government’s policy?

The hon. member asks whether I would like to give them the power to torpedo the Government’s policy. No, I would like to give them the power to educate the Government a bit. That is not difficult, because they can say: “They make so many stupid regulations and they do such silly things that if we are going to work together, particularly when we are a voluntary body (like the members of the municipality), elected voluntarily, then at least let us have regard to our conditions in our own neighbourhood and let us have a little flexibility.”

Then under this Bill the Minister takes the power to provide that a local authority may not implement a decision which it has taken in respect of Native Affairs if the Minister wishes to have that decision put before him for review, unless it has his consent. In other words, he is going to interfere in their every decision. Whatever they do, he can demand that their decisions be placed before him and he will consider whether they should be implemented or not. Have you ever heard such interference in local government? I wonder why the hon. Minister just does not say that the local authorities will have no more powers, that he will take over everything and run it himself? But then he would have to appoint his own officials and not expect the local municipalities to carry out the provisions of the laws he makes.

There is another clause which provides that in certain circumstances the Urban Bantu Council which is taking the place of the old Advisory Board can be disestablished, and the Minister can have another board. What happens if the same people get elected again, of course one does not know. What happens if the same people get nominated again, one does not know. But where is the confidence? Where is the idea that there will be any co-operation when that sort of thing is going to take place? Why have a local authority if you are just going to disestablish it if you feel that way inclined because it does something you do not agree with? I know there have been requests from certain municipal councils for powers of this kind. Sir, I believe that this is a very dangerous power that the hon. gentleman is taking, and I think it is most unfortunate that something of this sort should be done.

This whole Bill is evidence of two things. It is evidence of the underlying philosophy of this Government that when you speak of the Bantu, particularly in the urban areas, you think of people who are just labour units and have no right to permanency at all. Secondly, it is symptomatic of the continual invasion by this Government in the age-old traditional functions of our local authorities in South Africa. Against both those principles we on this side of the House must lodge our objection. That is why I move my amendment.

I second the amendment.

The attack launched upon the Bill by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition started off with a very strong condemnation. He described it as “possibly the worst Bill” that has come before the House during this Session, and he described the clauses to which he objects as bad, and very bad indeed. After this attack one can really reduce it to five points, the provisions in respect of the foreign Bantu, in respect of domestic servants, the provisions in respect of the standard regulations, the provisions to respect of the local authorities’ powers to give effect to their own resolutions, and finally the restrictions placed upon the urban Bantu councils. He summarized it by saying that this legislation is offensive, because it once again gives expression to the philosophy of the Government Party that the Bantu are only an interchangeable labour unit, with no right of permanence, and that the traditional rights of our local authorities are being infringed. I shall not reply to these specific points; other speakers will do so. I merely wish to deal with one aspect, and that is the charge in respect of the infringement of the powers and the authority of local authorities. Local authorities’ powers are really involved in only two respects here, firstly in that standard regulations may be published which may be adopted by the local authorities or which may be forced upon them by the Minister; and secondly, that the implementation of their powers may be suspended by the Minister—a purely negative power and not a positive one.

What is the constitutional tradition and position, the age-old relationship between the local authorities and the Central Government, to which the Leader of the Opposition has referred and which are now in his view being disturbed? Is it not true that the local authority is the governmental body which was the last to evolve historically? In the two Republics, the Transvaal and the Free State, there was no system of local government at the beginning of this century. I unfortunately am unable to discuss the position in Natal. In the Cape the local authorities evolved after the Central Authority was established, and our Constitution has stated in the clearest possible terms the position of the supremacy of the Central Authority in respect of all matters of government. Our constitutional custom has been that the local authority has been used as an executive agent of the Central Government, and the best example of this is in regard to our health administration, which still applies at the present day. If the Leader of the Opposition wishes to make one of his two cardinal points of attack against this legislation, that we are violating an old-established constitutional practice in South Africa by touching the local authorities, I should like to go so far as to say that I am convinced that not even 1 per cent of the people of South Africa will know what kind of grievance he is referring to, let alone share it.

But I wish to react to the first aspect, the charge of the hon. member that this legislation once again is an expression of the philosophy of the Government Party that the Bantu is only an interchangeable labour unit, with no right of permanence. I have to link my answer to the objections raised by the Leader of the Opposition in respect of foreign Bantu, because the foreign Bantu also illustrate constitutionally what this Government regards as the true position of the indigenous Bantu, and in respect of the foreign Bantu, who constitutionally is nothing but an immigrant in South Africa, the Leader of the Opposition immediately adopted the attitude he adopted against the indigenous Bantu, that we regard him as a convenient source of labour, and that we do not hesitate to profit from his labour. That is how they regard the indigenous Bantu, and he does not even distinguish in principle between the foreign and the indigenous Bantu.

What is the position now? We have debated this matter so often already that I shall summarize it briefly. In principle there are three forms of attack on the Government’s urban Bantu policy. The first form of attack has again been demonstrated by the hon. the Leader’s statement regarding “no right of permanence”. He says our urban Bantu people are subjected to unlawful restrictions which ought not to be imposed upon fellow-citizens, and that it is an unfair form of government whereby certain citizens, namely the Bantu who are congregated in the urban areas, should be placed under restraint. That is their first point of attack. We have discussed it hundreds of times already. The Bantu constitutionally are citizens of the Republic of South Africa, but historically, as regards the exercise of civic rights and civic duties, they have never been full citizens. This party simply adopts the historical point of view of the realities, rather than the formal legal point of view, namely that the urban Bantu are indeed subjects of the Republic, but not fellow-citizens in the full sense of the term, legally and socially, that they are more in the nature of foreigners who incidentally happen to fall within the same State constitutionally, people who belong to another country. Accordingly they are subjected to restraints, not as discrimination against fellow citizens, but as a process of distinguishing between immigrants who have flocked here from territories which really are the homes of other nations. This point of view of principle is very clearly illustrated in the case of foreign Bantu, and the fact that the Leader of the Opposition does not want to distinguish between the foreign Bantu and the local Bantu merely goes to show what a difference of opinion we have in principle in this regard. The Opposition maintain that the Black people in Southern Africa, whether they are born here or came here in a lawful manner is immaterial, but the Black people of Southern Africa living with us are ordinary fellow citizens and it is unfair to subject them to restraints in urban areas. We adopt the view that they are in the position of a stream of immigrants that swamped us during a time of no control, and that they must be dealt with differently from the ordinary citizens. There is no further argument about the matter now. Those are the different points of view, which are irreconcilable.

That second point of attack has not as yet been developed by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, but it undoubtedly will be, and that is the attack that restrictions are imposed upon the economic functions of a large section of the population, and in the long run the full economic participation of this great section of the population just cannot be denied or, alternatively, the economic argument is raised in this form, that we are artificially and permanently retarding our country’s economic potential by subjecting the urban Bantu to all kinds of restrictions, by limiting their flow to the cities, and that even if it were theoretically possible to maintain that permanently, it would be a permanent infringement of the financial welfare of the Republic. As against that, the point of view of this party has been stated repeatedly, that we believe in the rationalization of the flow of labour for the protection of the wage standards of both the Bantu and the Whites, but that this regulation of the labour influx and the presence of the Bantu in the cities were primarily instituted in order to combat the potential political danger of numerically superior foreigners in the community. From the point of view of this principle we accept such unavoidable economic restriction and the consequences flowing from it, but we say that this legislation gives expression to the point of view that we are continuing to maintain the present economic realities, that the Whites adequately remain for the Bantu a source of labour and a source of earnings, and that the Bantu in turn again remains adequately available to the White employer as a source of labour for our various economic processes. In the provisions of this Bill there is nothing that contradicts this economic approach.

The third general attack launched on our urban Bantu legislation is that it amounts to a pattern of labour exploitation. The Bantu are subjected to restraint. He may not sleep in as a servant, and consequently he will possibly earn less. The Bantu do not have the right of free influx, and accordingly he does not have the free right, as a labourer, to sell his labour in the best market, and the argument is developed by pointing out the hundred and one restrictive provisions as if those provisions seek to compel the Bantu to do the maximum amount of work for the White community at a minimum wage. I readily concede that by viewing the matter maliciously we may interpret our entire system of urban Bantu legislation as an attempt to regulate that Bantu labour in a way that impedes the free and profitable marketing of that labour, and which accordingly may have a more depressing effect upon the earning capacity of the Bantu by means of his labour. But I say at the same time while this system of legislation is capable of this misinterpretation, the true, interpretation is not that we are concerned with legislation which will force the labour of the Bantu and make it available more cheaply, but that we are concerned with a system of legislation to control the physical occupation of a White area by non-Whites, and to restrict the eventual political consequences of the physical overcrowding of the White area.

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

Afternoon Sitting

When business was suspended I was dealing with the principal attack made upon the policy of this side of the House, as embodied in the Bill, and was indicating that in the first place it was an attack based on the assumption that we are imposing unjustified restrictions upon certain fellow-citizens, and in the second place that they are impracticable restrictions on the economic functions of certain citizens, or, at least, alternatively, that these are restrictions harmful to the country. In the third place I was dealing with the attack that we in this Bill and in the policy of this side of the House have a system of labour exploitation of the Bantu which debars him from selling his labour on the best market. To conclude this point, I wish to refute it by pointing out three aspects embodied in this Bill and in the policy which is being attacked. In the first place, this side of the House has always striven to maintain a proper wage standard for the Bantu by means of influx control, because excessive influx of Black people to our urban areas is surely the most dangerous of all threats to the Bantu’s own standard of wages; and in the second place this Government has a record, as has already been shown during this Session by reference to statistics in this House, of an increase in Bantu wages during the past eight years, which has been consistently encouraged, and is still being encouraged by this Government. Finally, to repudiate this charge that we are concerned with a system of restrictions to derive labour benefits from the Bantu, I submit that this Government’s policy aims, as an ideal, at reaching the position where we shall be using a minimum of Bantu labour, or no Bantu labour at all. In other words, a policy which is aimed at the elimination of Bantu labour surely cannot primarily be aimed at the continued exploitation of it.

In conclusion, I should like once again to state our basic point of view. We stand, in the first place, for the regulation of the influx of substantial numbers of Bantu foreigners to our urban areas in order to combat the social and political danger which their unrestricted influx must necessarily bring about; secondly, we stand for the rationalization of the influx of Bantu labour to the White urban areas because that influx at the present stage is an economic necessity on both sides, and we stand for rationalization in order to protect both the Bantu and the White wage structures. Thirdly, we stand for the maintenance of the present economic realities, in respect of the foreign Bantu as well as with the Bantu of the Republic in our urban areas, whereby we wish to make available primarily to the Bantu of the Republic, and secondly to a portion of the Bantu of Southern Africa, the White economic activities as a source of labour and a source of earning, and whereby we wish to make the Bantu available to the White entrepreneur as a source of labour under acceptable, human, sociological conditions; and finally, we stand for the principle, which falls outside the scope of this Bill, that the long-term economic, social and political welfare of the Bantu must be sought outside this Bill in their own areas.

In conclusion, as far as the speech of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is concerned, I should like to ask him two pertinent questions. In the first place, as regards his argument that the stricter regulation of the influx and the presence of the foreign Bantu is not a matter of urgency, and may also have an economic disruptive effect, in spite of the asurance by the hon. the Deputy Minister. I should just like to ask him this: The United Party’s speakers time and again say that the basic mistake of our whole policy is that in all the geographic area of the Republic of South Africa we shall never be able to create sufficient opportunities for employment for the Bantu so that the Bantu who are in our urban areas to-day may be attracted to the non-urban areas. They say the problem we will be faced with in the future will be lack of opportunities for employment. We on this side admit that the ultimate solution of the whole Bantu problem is intimately bound up with creating sufficient sources of employment for all the Bantu of the Republic, and we admit that it is a difficult task. In the light of this mutual approach, that it is a great and difficult task to create sufficient remunerative opportunities of employment for the Bantu in the Republic of South Africa, how can the hon. the Leader of the Opposition now come and complain that regulatory and restrictive measures are being imposed upon the foreign Bantu so that we may be enabled to reserve to the fullest extent the available sources of Bantu labour in the area of the Republic for own own Bantu; how can he justify that attitude, particularly in view of the fact that the hon. the Deputy Minister has given an emphatic assurance that this control will not have a disruptive effect in respect of the industries which customarily used foreign labour from the adjacent geographic areas?

The last point I wish to put to him is in regard to his attack in respect of the legal provision which will have the effect that in general only one Bantu domestic servant may sleep in on residential premises in the urban areas. How can the United Party, as friends of the Bantu, as they have in the past professed to be, and still frequently do so, refuse to admit the tremendous social advantages of this measure; that the Bantu should live in a circle where they will enjoy the normal social amenities of a human being, and not be relegated to backyards without any social amenities at all? How can the hon. gentleman justify his attack on this measure, and then reconcile it with their general show of goodwill towards the Bantu, which goes as far as wishing to give him a vote, but which verily refuses to grant him living room where he may enjoy the normal facilities of a decent human being? How can that party, which now at the present time, too, are diligently posing as a White man’s friend, refuse as a White man’s friend to give our cities the security of a greatly reduced Bantu population in our backyards, in view of the realities of Africa and in view of the realities of movements such as the A.N.C. and Poqo which are in our midst and which are accepted as facts? If the United Party is in fact the White man’s friend, should it not also seek, as we do, to reduce the risk of a huge Bantu population within the cities of the Whites? Finally, the Opposition fails on its own general policy, a policy which the hon. gentlemen never expressly accepted as such, but which they from the nature of their offices as members of Parliament must accept. They are, after all, fellow custodians of our national character, of the integrity and everything that is good in the character of this whole White South African nation. How can they oppose this measure which makes a start with labour self-sufficiency, which is making a gentle and modest start in teaching our people, who for too long have leaned upon subordinate and economically weaker people, to do their everyday work? How can they attack this measure if they wish to strengthen the moral fibre of our nation and restore it to the extent to which it has been lost? Mr. Speaker, when we look at the Opposition, then truly we as a Government Party can thank the good Lord that he has given us such a feeble Opposition, but when we consider the country and its welfare, we must grieve over the fact that the Opposition is so weak that it is quite unable to perform the functions of an Opposition in a democratic state.

I shall follow on the arguments advanced by the hon. member who has just sat down during the course of my speech. His closing remarks were to the effect that there was a very weak Opposition because of the arguments that were advanced during this debate. He used those arguments as demonstrating that fact. If I may use just one of the arguments of the hon. member to demonstrate a similar fact it is this that if anyone believes that whilst one has a large Native population in a town during the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. there is no danger at all but that if they are to be there during the hours of 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. then they constitute a grave danger then that is where the weakness lies.

This Bill is a shorter version of the Bill originally introduced but is, in the words of the hon. the Minister, nevertheless a further unfolding of Government policy. It is a further step, I believe, in the direction of legalizing what I think can be shown to be the myth of the apartheid policy. I shall attempt to demonstrate that in the time at my disposal this afternoon. This Bill embodies an attempt to create a framework of laws which accentuates the impermanence of the Bantu in the so-called White areas yet it does not do away with the availability of Black labour in those areas. It shows that hon. members opposite wish to have their cake and eat it because the problem which the Government has set itself how to reconcile two conflicting desires. The first of these is the need for more and more Black labour in our sector of the economy in the so-called White areas of the country, the Black labour which we must have if we are to have an expanding economy. That is the first desire: More Black labour to meet the needs of our expanding economy. The second desire which is in conflict with the first and which must somehow be reconciled is the need to move in the direction of removing the Bantu from the White areas for reasons of political theory and intellectual satisfaction in political spheres. These two are irreconcilable but this Bill, in an ingenious way, attempts to reconcile those two conflicting desires. I shall show how that is done. It sets out to provide a legal basis for that reconciliation in that its guiding force, as the Leader of the Opposition so rightly said, is the conversion of the Bantu people into impermanent labour units.

Foreign Bantu too?

I shall deal with the foreign Bantu. It is through the medium of that notion that the Government hopes to bring about this reconciliation between the two irreconcilable notions. Let us deal with this question of the foreign Bantu which my hon. friend from Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) has raised by way of an interjection. There are, according to the Minister, some 800,000 foreign Bantu in South Africa and roughly half of these live on farms and of those 270,000 work on the farms. These people are not here because they like the climate in South Africa. They are here because they need our money and we need their labour. It is not a question of charity as far as these people are concerned; it is not a question of coercion in any sphere or of press gangs or matters of that kind, it is a simple economic law of supply and demand. That is why they are here; the law of capital and labour combining to create wealth for both employer and employee. A remark was made by the hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. F. S. Steyn) in this regard when he said it was typical of the United Party to be interested only in making profit out of the labour of the Bantu. He said that that was really our guiding principle so far as our attitude towards the Bantu was concerned. Sir, that is a most unfortunate remark particularly for a member of the Government side because I do not believe that all Natives in South Africa or all foreign Natives are employed by members of the United Party. I am not aware that it is part of the attitude of that side of the House that Nationalist farmers, for example, who employ Basuto labour employ that labour only out of a wish to exploit that labour for their own purposes. So far as I know, in the area where I live and in the area in which the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) lives Nationalist farmers pay the same wages to their Native labour as the United Party supporting farmers. If there is an illegitimate profit motive behind the employment of Bantu on the part of United Party supporters it applies equally to Government supporters. For the purpose of outside consumption that was a very silly thing to have said indeed. Anyone who employs labour, be it Black or White, usually does so with the purpose of making a profit. In doing that, Sir, White employers in South Africa are performing a service to their Bantu employees to the extent that we in South Africa can boast that our Bantu here have a higher living standard than the Bantu anywhere else on the continent of Africa. That is attributable directly to the fact that we do employ more and more Bantu labour. To hear the hon. the Minister and the hon. member for Kempton Park one would think there was something undesirable in employing Bantu labour because every possible restriction is placed on it, every possible restriction is put on those who wish to employ Bantu labour not to mention the example set by the hon. the Deputy Minister himself who, instead of employing Black labour, employs the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark (Dr. de Wet) to do his domestic service for him.

By the look of him he does not do it very well!

The hon. Deputy Minister says you must restrict foreign Bantu from entering the Republic of South Africa so as to give employment to South African Natives. That was one of his arguments. Yet at the same time he advocates the elimination of Bantu from domestic service which can only create further unemployment amongst the Bantu. It is these contradictions which make it so difficult for people who do not understand the political theory of the governing party to understand the intentions of that party.

Mr. Speaker, if it were desired to restrict—and I hope the hon. member for Heilbron will listen to this—foreign Bantu coming to South Africa in order to give employment to unemployed South African Bantu then we would expect in a measure such as we are now considering provisions such as this: A total prohibition on immigration from the Protectorates to South Africa; a total prohibition on recruitment for the mines until all South African Natives presently unemployed in the vast numbers referred to by the hon. member for Heilbron were employed. We would expect a further provision in a Bill of this kind and that is a quota on the numbers of foreign Bantu from the Protectorates coming to South Africa in future. But we do not find anything like that. What we find is merely a cumbersome method whereby permits can be obtained from the Secretary for Native Affairs …

Why is it cumbersome?

Sir, it is self-evident that if coming from a foreign country he has to get permission from a high ranking official in the capital city of the country to which he wishes to go instead of having a place available where the permits can be obtained in the country from which he is coming, such as the foreign embassy or something like that. We have in this Bill, instead of the considerations I have mentioned and which would make for the employment of the unemployed Bantu in South Africa, a cumbersome method of granting permits and a policy which requires that those who are employed here must be sent back to the Protectorates after a period of two years. They may stay here for the present time but at the end of two years they must go back. They have to report back, so to speak, and then they can return to South Africa.

The provisions in this Bill are not the type of provisions you would expect if the real reason for its implementation was the employment of the unemployed Bantu in South Africa. Those provisions are simply not there. For that reason. Sir, we must look for some other motive behind this legislation. That motive is, as I said at the beginning of my speech, to legalize the political theory advanced by the governing party and nothing else. It does no more than to set a pattern of impermanence which pleases Nationalist political theorists, a constant movement backwards and forwards between the Protectorates and South Africa on the same pattern as it is intended to have a constant movement backwards and forwards from areas such as the Transkei.

Do you want them to live here permanently?

What the hon. member who has just interrupted seems to have difficulty in accepting is that because a man is here and lives here for three or four years he does not necessarily lose his foreign nationality. Surely the hon. member can understand that whereas you allow a Protectorate Native in, a Protectorate Native who technically is a foreigner, you can refuse to allow him, citizenship should he apply for it. Consequently he remains a foreigner. What purpose can be served in making him go back at the end of two years only to allow him to return to the work he was doing before other than to meet the requirements of political theory?

Mr. Speaker, this is not something that is going to become less and less as time goes on. As our economy expands so more and more Bantu will be drawn into it and so there will be a greater trekking backwards and forwards of this impermanent crowd of labourers. We are bringing in White immigrants from abroad. We are not recruiting White labourers abroad; we are recruiting skilled artisans. For every bricklayer, for example, brought in from abroad to work in Johannesburg three Natives must be brought in to work with him—someone to mix the cement, someone to carry the bricks and someone to carry the cement. That happens daily, Sir. For every skilled artisan we bring in we necessarily increase the number of Bantu employed in our economy. So this constant movement backwards and forwards, with which this Bill is designed to deal, will grow and grow as the years go by.

I should now like to come to the question of domestic servants because that is a revealing aspect of the arguments we have had in connection with this measure. The hon. the Minister quoted a great many figures of the percentage of Bantu working in the various suburbs of the big towns of South Africa. I do not know why he quoted those figures unless it was to show that it was a bad thing to have a number of Bantu working in those suburbs and our towns. I shall be glad if the hon. the Minister at some stage during this debate would indicate whether he is against householders employing Bantu servants.

No, I am not against that. I said our standpoint was that employers could employ as many as they wanted and could afford and could get but that only one must live on the premises.

I am very glad to hear that. The hon. the Minister went on to say that this legislation was to the positive advantage of the Bantu. He said he was out to do as much for the Bantu as he could in this regard. I should like to suggest to the hon. the Minister that if he wants an unambiguous answer as to whether this type of legislation is to the advantage of the Bantu he should ask anonymously my Zulu cook what she thinks about being told to go and live in the nearby location. He will get a reply in a few short sharp phrases which will clearly indicate the contrary. Let us look at this matter first of all from the point of view of the householder. What conceivable advantage can there be to any householder that his servant must be made to live ten or 12 miles away from where he works. The majority of householders have quarters built for the housing of servants. A servant living in those quarters is supplied in most cases with free food, free bedding, free light, free clothing, free power and heat, free blankets, a free bed and mattress, free washing facilities and free fuel. That is what the average domestic servant gets from his or her employer. Not only are there those advantages but where one has a servant from a rural area one is glad to have that servant living on the premises because if she does she can be properly trained not only in regard to the work she has to do but in regard to the way of living and the standard of life of the employer. All that is lost to the servant who has to go and live in a location. The additional burden which that places on the householder amounts to this that whereas the servant gets all those things free at the present time, he or she will have to buy those things when he or she lives in the location and a wage which will enable him or her to buy all those things will have to be paid in addition to what he or she is earning at the present time, not to mention the cost of transport. In common terms it means that the average householder will have to pay about double in the way of wages to his domestic servant what he is paying at the present time.

Let us look at this from the point of view of the Native servant. I wonder how many times hon. members opposite have had the chance of employing a reliable servant from the rural areas. And I wonder, if she is a female servant, how many times the girl’s mother has been to see their wives and said: “I am glad you are taking my child into your service; Madam, you run a good household; I want my child properly trained and I shall be glad if you will watch with whom she associates and how she lives”. Mr. Speaker, this is not something which one can laugh at. Whether we are dealing with a Zulu or Xhosa maid in South Africa or whether we are dealing with a country girl from Sussex who goes to work in London the situation as far as her family is concerned is the same. The family of the Native girl want to know that she is going to be properly looked after when she goes into service in a big town. That can only be done as long as that servant is allowed to live on the premises of the woman who employs her. If the hon. the Minister would speak to some of the rural Natives whom I believe his senior colleague knows better than he does, he will find that what I am saying is correct. Sir, I have raised this point merely to illustrate that this provision in the Bill whereby the Minister can decree that no Bantu servant may live on a man’s property is to the advantage of neither the householder nor the domestic servant nor to the advantage of the families of either of those two. Why have it, Mr. Speaker? One knows that there are certain areas in certain towns where an accumulation of idle hands after work hours can become a nuisance. I think that was the point the hon. the Minister had in mind when he argued at one stage on this aspect of the Bill. If that were the situation which the hon. the Minister genuinely had at heart he could provide for it in this measure by making these powers permissive and by making them effective only upon the application of a local authority as representing the ratepayers concerned who complain of any nuisance of this kind. He could make provision in this Bill whereby a local authority can request the Minister to apply these provisions either in the whole of the municipality or in any one section of that municipality where the nuisance exists. Then one could understand the protestations which are made about the welfare of the Bantu, about how undesirable it is for them not to have a place where they can gather on a Sunday afternoon for recreation and matters of that kind and how there were requests from places like Potchefstroom to the effect that there should be a provision of this kind because it was undesirable to have so many Natives living as domestic servants on the property of the householders. But, Sir, when you come along with a provision like this which is to be enforced in areas which do not want it and which are quite satisfied with the conditions under which Bantu servants live as domestic servants on White householders’ properties then I say again that one must look for some other motive for the introduction of legislation of this kind. As I stated at the beginning of my speech I believe that motive is to implement a political theory and nothing else.

I was a little amused by the reference on the part of the hon. the Deputy Minister to the letter which, I think he said emanated from Potchefstroom, about the immoral life led by many female domestic servants in that town. One wonders why women who are promiscuous and live in that way should suddenly have a change in their moral standards when they cease to live on a householder’s property in Potchefstroom and go to live in a location or in a hostel, as the hon. member over there so well points out.

Mr. Speaker, I would urge that if there is any necessity—and there may be isolated cases—for the thinning out of Bantu living as domestic servants on White-owned properties the Minister should make this provision permissive; let it be brought into force only at the request of the local authority concerned. The Minister might then have a case for this clause in the Bill.

Either the hon. the Minister or the hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. F. S. Steyn) made a point in regard to the question of agitation amongst the Bantu population. As I understood him he said it would be easier to control that sort of thing if domestic servants lived in Bantu locations. I believe exactly the opposite is the case. I can quote to the hon. the Deputy Minister from my own experience in that regard. The hon. the Deputy Minister will recall there was unrest in parts of the country some years ago. At that time there were disturbances at Cato Manor in Durban. I employed two domestic servants at that time living on my premises. I had occasion to enquire of one of them in regard to the disturbance in the location at that time. The reply I got from the cook was “What disturbances?”. Had that cook been living in the location not only would she have been well aware of the disturbances but she may have been swept up nilly-willy in those disturbances. Because of the dispersal of the domestic servant population over the suburbs of a town like Durban a good nine-tenths of them not only did not take part in that disturbance but did not even know that it existed. If we are living in times of disturbances of that kind it is highly desirable so to disperse the population so that those who do not wish to be caught up in them will not be caught up in them.

Another point was made by the hon. member for Kempton Park when he alleged that the United Party’s attitude as far as the foreign Bantu were concerned was to let as many Bantu come into South Africa as liked to come and that we would regard them thereafter as South African citizens. Sir, there is no justification for a remark like that. Not only have we always stood for influx control but it was originally introduced by the United Party. One does not agree with its implementation under this Government, one does not agree with many of the aspects of that implementation but there is no doubt that in the interests of employment and in the interests of good housing you will in the foreseeable future require a measure of influx control in our big towns. The same applies as far as the foreign Bantu are concerned. It is one thing to say that you must have a measure of border control. The Protectorates are to-day foreign states. Where one is contiguous to a border state one has border control and one has immigration control. That goes without saying. But it is quite another thing to support a measure like this which merely aggravates the situation as far as the requirements for permits are concerned and which contains this extraordinary provision that he must return every two years. That seems to serve no purpose from the practical point of view.

Then I come to those provisions of this Bill which deal with the Umlazi Location, the location which is so often quoted as an example of the Bantu villages established by this Government in the Bantu area. I refer to Clause 6 of this Bill. It extends the Minister’s powers beyond those which he presently has. At present he is entitled to require a Bantu to live in a location or a township. That is now to be extended so that he can require a Native to live in a scheduled or a released area. The White Paper gives Umlazi as an example of an area where Bantu villages have been established so that the Bantu working in Durban can live there. Umlazi is often used as the example, and I have never seen any other examples used and I wonder if any other examples exist, but Umlazi is mentioned as an example in close proximity to an industrial town.

Is Empangeni not in your constituency?

I would not call Empangeni a large industrial town, no matter how loyal I want to be to my constituency. I wonder if the hon. Minister would oblige the House at some stage by saying how many houses there are in the Bantu village at Empangeni.

It will be expanded.

Umlazi is unique so far as I know in that it is the only Native reserve—I refer to a reserve as being a scheduled area and a location as being a Bantu township, an adjunct of a big White town—Umlazi is the only reserve, scheduled area, so far as I know close to a large industrial centre sufficiently close for the occupants of that area to commute daily with the large industrial centre. Umlazi is particularly interesting because by comparison with Kwa Mashu, you have demonstrated a practical example of the extraordinary contortions of Government thinking when it comes to the housing the urban Bantu. Umlazi to look at is just like any other urban location alongside a large White town. It is an area with a lot of very nice small houses for the Bantu workers to live in, but because it happens to be, through an accident of history, geographically a scheduled area, the Bantu living there can own their houses, and one is very glad to see it. That is to the south of Durban. To the north of Durban, and further away, I may say, you have Kwa Mashu, an equally good and well-established Bantu township, but because that is deemed to be part of a White area the Bantu there cannot own their own houses. So that location which is closer to Durban, being part of the scheduled Native area, constitutes an area where the Bantu can permanently settle and dig in their roots, but Kwa Mashu, being further away, from the White city, being part of the White area, is an area where the Bantu are temporary sojourners. At the present time they are temporary sojourners, but there is currently a move, I believe to buy up the piece of land between Kwa Mashu and the Native reserve so that the scheduled area can be extended to cover Kwa Mashu and by a wave of the wand, the magician accomplishes that they cease to be temporary sojourners and they are now permanently settled there and enable to get freehold tenure and to dig in their roots. Where is the principle behind the political theory that advocates that sort of attitude? When the problem becomes difficult you simply extend the boundaries of the Black area to engulf the problem!

If that is to be the attitude that where there is a problem you simply extend the boundaries of the Black area, what value can one attach to the assurances of the hon. Minister and the Prime Minister so far as the boundaries of the Black areas are concerned? And we have an example of this in the Bill before us, in the Schedule, two areas, Hammarsdale and Cato Ridge where we are having an extension to the released areas because those areas are suitable for border industries. There again if you can’t take Mohammed to the mountain you take the mountain to Mohammed. You simply extend your Black areas to include those areas which you require for Bantu settlement or for the establishment of border industries.

Where does this get us? We have this endless series of involved Bills, of which this is one, and we have only a part of its ramifications before us to-day, because, as I said earlier, there is this basic conflict, and one must, if one is a government member, try and reconcile these two conflicts, the theory which is to get rid of the Bantu and the needs of the day which is to bring more of them in. To resolve that, they have evolved this motion of the movable labour unit, and it is really the implementation of that notion that is the driving force behind this legislation. It does not solve anything at all. And that is one of the reasons, in addition to those which will be offered in this debate, while this side of the House is opposing this legislation.

The hon. member objects to the fact that the hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. F. S. Steyn) called the Opposition a weak Opposition, but in fact the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman) has clearly demonstrated now how weak the Opposition is. He referred to the argument which the hon. member for Kempton Park advanced that the presence of Bantu in the White urban areas constitutes a danger at night and by way of defence the hon. member for Zululand asked this counter-question, “But do those people not constitute a danger during the daytime as well?” Surely even the hon. member can appreciate the difference between the presence in the White urban areas of Bantu at night, Bantu who are incited by Poqo, for example, and the presence of Bantu in those urban areas during the daytime. Surely there is a very clear difference. That defence which the hon. member for Zululand puts up therefore is a very weak one. Then he wants to know what the Bantu think of going to live in the Bantu residential areas; he wants us to go and ask his cook what he thinks of it; the hon. the Deputy Minister must go and ask his cook. But it is not necessary to go and ask the hon. member’s cook. Was the hon. member for Zululand not listening when the hon. the Deputy Minister spoke? Did he not hear the Deputy Minister say that even the Bantu Advisory Board of Potchefstroom had made representations to the Department to the effect that the Bantu should only be allowed to sleep in Bantu residential areas? I think the hon. member must have guided his cook along the wrong lines and that is why his cook made the statement which he did. The hon. member for Zululand comes along and says that it will cost the Bantu very much more to live in the Bantu residential area and that in the long run the Whites will have to pay for it. But the hon. member does not tell us what it will save the White man if his Bantu domestic servant lives in the Bantu residential area, because in that case the White man will only have to support his domestic servant; he will not have to support all the idlers who sleep on the premises and who have free boarding there.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition says that it will save transport charges if servants live on the premises of householders. Does that mean that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition would have no objection either if factory workers, for example, were allowed to sleep near the factory even if it is situated in or near a White residential area? After all, that would also save transport charges! The hon. member for Kempton Park has pointed out quite correctly that once again the hon. the Leader of the Opposition was simply stating the materialistic approach of his party to this matter. Every day that one sits in this House one comes to the conclusion more and more that the United Party no longer believes in the future of the White man in this country. The attitude which they always adopt is this: Make money in every possible way; make as much use as you can of the redundant cheap Black labour; make as much money as you can and as fast as you can, irrespective of the consequences to the White man in this country.

One of the most important principles of this Bill is the question of domestic servants living on the premises of White householders in cities and towns. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition has also objected to the fact that in certain areas where there is a Bantu residential area conveniently near by Bantu servants may be forbidden altogether to live on the premises of their employers. I welcome that provision. I am convinced that the time has come to do away entirely with the principle of allowing non-Whites to live on the premises of their employers in the White residential areas of our cities and towns. It is only when that stage is reached that we shall have truly separate residential areas in South Africa, which is not only the policy of the National Party but also the declared policy of the United Party. Such truly separate residential areas in our cities and towns are more essential to-day than ever before from the point of view, inter alia, of the safety of the White communities in these areas. But it is also in the interests of the Bantu themselves; it is desired and preferred by the Bantu themselves. On the other hand, not only will it be possible to put this into effect without much sacrifice on the part of the Whites but it will also benefit the Whites because it will cultivate and promote self-activity amongst the Whites. Furthermore, it will considerably reduce the incidence of crime and theft in our cities.

I fully realize that it will only be possible to bring about truly separate residential areas if sufficient housing is provided for the Bantu in our cities and towns. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition says that this legislation is not urgent. Mr. Speaker, I want to say here this afternoon that this question of truly separate residential areas is of such urgent importance that we should lose no time and spare no money in giving effect to it expeditiously so that v/e can have truly separate residential areas for White and non-White in our cities.

It will not help the United Party to try to run away from its policy. On page 14 of its “Native Policy” the United Party states—

One could not put it more clearly. If, therefore, the United Party criticizes the Bill on this point then they are running away from their own declared, written Native policy. The United Party would have been entitled to put forward criticism if it objected to this subsection on the ground that it still contains a concession, in that it permits one Bantu domestic servant to live on the White man’s premises.

Although it is our policy and although the Government has done everything in its power to create separate residential areas, we are still not in a position to say that that ideal has been achieved. We may have residential segregation and our residential areas may even be separate and clearly demarcated but as long as non-White servants are allowed to live on the premises of householders, we cannot really say that we have truly separate residential areas. In every city we find that there are still thousands of Bantu sleeping on the premises of Whites in the White residential areas. I repeat that it is essential to bring about truly separate residential areas as soon as possible. It was stated recently by the district commandant of police in Bloemfontein, Colonel A. J. Vermeulen—

If that is the position in a city like Bloemfontein we can accept that the position in the other cities of our country is not much better, and that state of affairs can no longer be tolerated.

I submit that it is the wish of the public—and the public is ripe for this idea to-day more than ever before—to bring about truly separate residential areas. In support of this argument I also want to say that in recent years the idea has taken root more and more in the minds of the public that we should make less and less use of domestic servants in our urban areas. I want to quote Bloemfontein as an example. In spite of the fact that the number of houses in Bloemfontein has increased over the past ten years from 7,283 to 11,235, that is to say by 55 per cent, and that the White population has increased from 53,000 to 64,400, that is to say by 22 per cent, the number of domestic servants in Bloemfontein has remained practically constant. In 1953 there were 6,912 domestic servants and in 1963 there were 6,988, only 76 more domestic servants than ten years ago. Let me quote to the House what the Chairman of the Bloemfontein Afrikaanse Sakekamer, Mr. J. J. Broekman, stated recently—

A minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, the Rev. J. J. K. van der Merwe, stated recently—

And so I could go on quoting what has been said from time to time by one prominent person after another. This feeling is being shared more and more also by the man in the street. One continually sees letters in the public Press in which the writers insist that the authorities should act immediately. We find that “Sien ek Spoke” of Bloemfontein recently wrote as follows—

He goes on to put forward the plea that eventually Bantu servants should sleep in the Bantu residential areas.

But it is also in the interests of the Bantu servant himself that this should happen. I want to quote to the House what a Bantu, W. H. Mota, wrote in a letter published in the Transvaler. Mota resides in Orlando West, and this is what he wrote on 13 February 1962, long before there was any question of this legislation—

He goes on in his letter to mention this question of Bantu living in with Whites as one of the main sources of all sorts of evil in the life of the Bantu. Whatever the hon. member for Zululand may contend, the fact of the matter is that the Bantu themselves realize that it is in their own interests to live in the Bantu residential area. In the first place it affords them the opportunity to spend their leisure hours in the company of their own people in their own area and to utilize their leisure hours according to their own habits and customs. Secondly it is ridiculous that a Bantu woman should have to sleep away from her husband when it is quite possible for her to sleep in a home together with her family. Surely it is preferable, for the sake of preserving Bantu family life and having regard to the influence which she as mother is able to exercise on the stability of the family, that she should live with the family and make her good influence felt there. We often hear the complaint from hon. members on the other side that the system of migrant labour has a disruptive effect on the family life of the Bantu. Sir, we have also received representations in connection with this legislation from the National Council of Women which expresses its concern over this legislation, but these are the same people who, because of their desire for comfort, constantly put forward the plea that their domestic servants should be allowed to live on their premises; they then lose sight altogether of the desirability of preserving the unity of the Bantu family, but when it comes to migrant labour they raise a hullabaloo. That attitude is a hypocritical one. They argue just as it suits them.

It will definitely also be in the interests of the Whites if the Bantu sleep in their own residential areas at night. I have already pointed out that that is essential from the point of view of the safety of the Whites in their own residential areas, and it is not necessary to enlarge upon it. The hon. member for Kempton Park has adequately dealt with it. It is not so much the servants perhaps who sleep on the premises who constitute the danger; it is the idlers and the visitors who share the room at night. These people who unlawfully sleep on premises in the White residential areas are able to do so for the simple reason that no control can be exercised over them. As a result of the shortage of manpower the police are unable to exercise control while Bantu are allowed to sleep on the premises in White residential areas. But apart from the advantage from the security point of view, this measure will also promote self-activity amongst White families. Is it really asking too much to expect members of the family to wash the dishes in the evening, to make their own coffee in the morning, to look after and care for the children and to see them off to school in the morning? I want to say that if we as White families are no longer prepared to do that, then the time has come when we should very seriously ask ourselves whether our nation still has any hope of survival in this country, or rather whether we as a nation are determined to survive. A nation which is no longer prepared to do manual work must eventually go under. That is the lesson which history has taught us over and over again. No, I really do not believe that there is any family which cannot get along without servants from 5 or 6 o’clock in the afternoon until 8 or 9 o’clock in the morning. I think in asking our White families to do without servants during these hours we are expecting little enough having regard to the fact that according to a survey in Britain there are millions of women in that country who go out to work, who have no servants and who still do their own washing by hand.

But a further advantage of truly separate residential areas that I want to mention is that there will definitely be less crime and theft in our towns and cities. In this connection the District Commandant of Police in Bloemfontein said the following—

The fact of the matter is that many of these Bantu who sleep in the backyards of White homes practically live on crime and theft. They use these abodes to watch the movements of Whites and as soon as the Whites leave their homes they go into action and it is an easy matter for them to commit theft. By the time the police come to look for them they are back in their hiding places. It is practically an impossible task for the police to exercise control over these people who sleep in the cities unlawfully at night if we continue to allow the Bantu to sleep on the premises of householders.

Before coming to the actual contents of the Bill, one must perhaps answer some of the points which have been raised by the speaker who has just sat down and who has exhibited an attitude of piety with regard to the welfare of both White and non-White seldom heard in this House. The suggestion was made by the hon. member that all this side is concerned with is that Bantu labour should be used in order to make money as quickly as possible, and as it is cheap labour it should in fact not only be used but even abused with the object of accumulating wealth. Now, Sir, that is the last person in the world who should use an argument of this nature, because this side of the House has for years pressed the Government to take some lead in improving the wages of the unskilled workers throughout the country, and the Bantu forms almost that entire force. In Johannesburg for instance, and in other parts of South Africa, where the same applies, an association for the improvement of productivity and wages has been operating for some years with marked success, and, if anything, its success has been exhibited by the many millions of rand—today I think approximately R30,000,000 to R40,000,000 per annum—that has been added to the wage packet of the unskilled Bantu workers in the urban areas. Then he goes on to say that the Bantu should live in their own areas and none should live in the White areas none should live in the backyards, and that they all should live in their own areas where they can enjoy their own amenites. But the hon. member knows very well that over the last ten years, under the regime of the present Government and its Minister, some additional 1,000,000 Bantu have come into the urban areas of South Africa, and homes had to be built, considerable finance had to be provided, not only for homes but also for services and for transport. If the hon. member was so certain about his point of view why were not these particular amenities provided simultaneously with the tremendous influx which they encouraged because of the demand of the developing industry and the impetus of our economy? Surely this is not the time to use an argument of that nature, that it is necessary for them to live in their own areas.

Talking about domestic servants, the hon. member is now absolutely satisfied that the housewife must prepare her own coffee in the morning, prepare the breakfast, send the children to school, and that the domestic servant should not be the pillar of strength which he says the domestic servant has become amongst the Whites in the country. But if the hon. member wants to reorientate the whole way of life of the people of South Africa, this is not the method namely to come along in a debate of this nature in order to adumbrate a philosophy of that kind. Surely it is a question of the economic outlook in this country. I will give him some figures in a moment to illustrate that his argument is purely a fortuitous one. He is using it merely as an opportunist because a couple of his co-members happen—due possibly because of the difficulty of getting satisfactory labour—to be providing their own coffee in the early morning and washing their own cups and saucers and their own breakfast utensils.

Sir, my hon. Leader has stated that this is a bad Bill, and there is no question that it is a bad Bill, and one has to go back to the very history of this Bill which the hon. Deputy Minister dealt with when he introduced the Bill, to see immediately how bad this Bill is. This Bill has virtually been on the stocks for some three or four years. Two or three years ago a similar draft Bill was sent to the local authorities for their opinion and comment and suggestions. The United Municipal Executive was busy a few years ago with a similar type of draft Bill, but the Minister did not proceed with that Bill. This year, again, an attempt has been made to bring about the completion of the philosophy of complete geographical apartheid of the Government, and to bring forward a Bill which would give the final chapter of the whole picture of their policy. But again the Minister finds himself in a difficulty, because the Bill itself, as it stood, would have brought about a complete change in the whole economic set-up of South Africa and its effect would have been completely to slow down the economic development of the country. When he was faced with criticism, not only from local authorities but from the Chambers of Commerce and Industries and economic undertakings, the matter was watered down, but nevertheless it is a very bad Bill. One of the effects of this Bill will be virtually to take over control of local authorities. The Minister went very far in expressing his appreciation of the work, e.g., of the Johannesburg City Council and said how satisfied he was with their co-operation and assistance, but he did not tell us that the Johannesburg City Council in many senses is a model of municipal Bantu administration in this country and has shown that over many years.

Really!

I am glad to find an ex-Mayor of Pretoria agreeing with me.

It was an exclamation mark.

This Bill continues the process of tightening Government control over every phase of the life of the Bantu in this country, and it goes further, and it now seeks to control and virtually to administer the affairs of the municipalities through the agency of the municipal officials, and it is in this sense that I feel that the Bill is bad and will do a great deal of harm.

It is interesting to reflect on the statistics of a city like Johannesburg. At the turn of this century the Bantu in Johannesburg numbered 59,000. In 1911 there were 102,000, in 1927 137,000, and that was the year when the city council established its non-European Affairs Department. In 1946 the number had jumped to 395,000, but in 1962 the number had almost doubled and stood at 609,000, under the regime of the present Government. Talking of domestic servants, the number of females, adults, in this number of 609,000 is 179,000, most of whom are engaged in domestic service or in light industry in the city. What has happened about the administration of this large number of persons? In the field of housing, the first housing scheme, started in Johannesburg in 1919, provided 2,000 houses, a scheme which to-day has been transplanted, but which was then known as the Western Native Township. At the commencement of World War II in 1939, the number of houses had increased to 8,700. At the end of 1953 the council had built 17,800 houses with hostel accommodation for over 14,000 men, but by 30 June 1962 the number of houses had increased to 58,890, with hostel accommodation for over 27,000 persons, and the area covered was over 20 square miles.

That is all very interesting, but it has nothing to do with the Bill.

It has a great deal to do with the Bill. I am trying to indicate the type of administration of a responsible local authority which was enjoined to carry out the administration of the Bantu under certain laws and which did so extremely efficiently and in a manner which has reflected a great deal of credit on the work of local authorities in the administration of Bantu Affairs.

Then we can deal with the Revenue Account to indicate the tremendous advance and the expansive administration built up by the local authority. In Johannesburg, under the Urban Areas Act, there is an obligation on a local authority to keep a separate account with regard to Bantu Affairs. The city council’s total capital investment in this Department is nearly R47,000,000, of which Government loans amount to only R21,000,000 and the rest consist of private loans, moneys provided on loan from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the city council, as well as a surplus of assets over liabilities representing moneys paid off under redemption.

So what? How does it apply here?

It indicates the tremendous range of the activities. The expenditure in 1952-3 was R2,500,000 and in 1962-3 it had risen to nearly R8,000,000. That indicates the tremendous amount of work which the non-European Affairs Department of Johannesburg has carried out over the years and the efficient manner in which it has built up a very fine administration. This credit can also be taken by many local authorities throughout the country, all of whom have played a very important and sound part in contributing not only to the orderly development of this tremendous pool of labour which our economy demanded and got, but also the tremendous part they played in bringing about better understanding, happier race relations, and the harmonious development that we have had over the last 30 or 40 years. I think it is one of the great social achievements by the local authorities of this country that they have been able over that period to deal with such a tremendous surge of labour into the towns, and despite all the difficulties have eventually been able through their own efforts, in addition to those of the Government, from the socioeconomic point of view, to provide housing and social amenities and all the other things that go with the development of a community.

Therefore when one finds in the Bill that the Government wishes not only to control everything that is done, by controlling the resolutions and actions of such a council, but further wishes to superimpose upon it its own regulations, one must wonder what is the value and the urgency of a Bill which in a context of this nature, where we have administration which is an example to any authority, replaces it by Government administration.

The other problem that arises is how the Government will provide the necessary staff and the close liaison that is essential if one is to maintain some form of happier race relations and better understanding between the various sections of the community in a local authority. There is no question that were it not for the local authorities the multifarious laws which control the life of the Bantu would have resulted in even worse conditions than we have experienced over the years. In the Police Report the figure of persons who appeared in court for pass law offences numbered nearly 500,000. The total number of non-Whites who appeared in court on all sorts of charges numbered nearly 1,000,000. That is a conservative figure because I have not got the papers in front of me, and I think the figures are even higher, but it has at least been maintained at that level. This large administration built up by local authorities has been able to deal intimately with the Bantu and to deal with these various problems. One only has to look through the departments of any local authority to realize the work that is necessary and the devotion to service and the interest displayed in assisting the Bantu, many of whom are illiterate, when they come to the cities and cannot find their feet.

The other factor one must take into account is that the flow is away from the rural areas to the towns. I think any Government that endeavours to cut across the municipal administration is not doing a service which is beneficial to the country. It will upset the officials and destroy the sense of devotion they have shown over the years, and instead of finding themselves administrators in the truest sense, they will be merely agents or even lackeys not only of Government policy but even of Government bureaucratic regulations, and that is a very serious phenomenon if it is to be the pattern for the future. In America, as an instance of the migration of labour from the rural areas to the towns, we find that in 1910, out of a population of 92,400,000, 13,600,000 were engaged in agriculture. In 1960, when the population had risen to 180,700,000, the number engaged in agriculture had dropped to 7,100,000, indicating that the move is always to the towns where industry and commerce are developing and where there are other attractions and amenities. So this process is a continuous one. We have local authorities with experience over the years when the Bantu came into the cities, and I believe that Clauses 6 and 9 will do a great deal of harm if the Bill becomes law.

If we deal with the question of the foreign Bantu, we find that in terms of the policy statement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, foreign Bantu after December 1965 will be compelled, not later than every two years after their entry into the Republic, to return to the Protectorates whence they came, or outside the borders of the Republic, in order to get fresh travel documents to come back again to work. If we are to employ foreign Bantu at all, and it seems at this stage we cannot visualize being without their services, we have to balance the attitude of the Government not only in so far as a certain ideological policy of theirs is concerned, but also in so far as our economy is concerned, and it is a well-known principle in labour that you cannot uproot or disturb your labour force at short intervals and have large turnovers in labour without adding to the cost of production and disrupting the even development of the economy. When this Bill, or its predecessor, was first contemplated, Ministers of the Crown, and particularly the Department of Information, went out of their way to talk of this Bill as aiming at improving good race relations. So good was this policy of promotion that the contemplated Bill became completely emasculated and it is presented in the form in which it is to-day. That is why we find nothing in it which is really of any value in the administration of racial affairs in this country.

I should like to deal with the actual clauses of the Bill. In Clause 6 we find that the Government wishes to take away from the local authorities their own initiative and certain rights with regard to exemptions. The one domestic servant who will be employed full-time without necessarily calling for a permit is able to do so because he is exempted in terms of the Act. In this clause the Minister reserves to himself the right, of his own initiative, in addition to the request of the local authority, to cancel such exemption. Here again he takes away from the local authority that right, and reserves to himself the right to cancel any exemption that has been granted. One of the dangers we see in this type of authority the Minister wants to take unto himself is that the Bantu will be completely confused. When it is suggested on this side of the House that he is virtually to be turned into purely a labour unit without any question of human relations, then this type of clause illustrates it very clearly indeed. If one examines Clause 9 carefully, one sees that irrespective of what regulations may have been passed by any local authority—and after all these local authorities have had years of experience now of drawing up regulations and administering the Bantu in their areas—the Minister has the right to make certain regulations as to any matters referred to in certain sections of the enabling section of the Natives (Urban Areas) Act, and if he wishes to gazette these regulations they will then supersede any other regulations which are applicable in such areas; which virtually means that he can, of his own accord, if he does not like certain things happening in the area of administration of the local authority, if he is perhaps not satisfied that his own pet policy is being pushed as hard as it should be, then supersede all these regulations by regulations of his own. Similarly, if the Minister is not happy with what is happening in any local authority, he immediately calls for certain reports and requires the submission of any resolutions taken and until he has decided what he wishes to do, the local authority is prevented from carrying out its own resolutions. I do not know how the Deputy Minister can say that he is not directly attempting to interfere in the administration of the local authorities when he is virtually wishing to take over the operative side of the work of the local authorities. In my view, and in the view of this side of the House, that will lead to a deterioration in the standards of administration and the confidence that has been built up over the years between the administrators and those administered. It will lead to a deterioration in goodwill and it cannot do otherwise than bring about the very evil effect of which members on the Government side have spoken. The tenor of their whole discussion is one of urgency because of a fear of disturbances, because of a fear that there will not be the happy relations that should exist, and a fear of the Bantu generally. Others who have administered these departments know that the Bantu has responded very satisfactorily and has by and large been a peace-loving citizen. I think we hold an enviable record in that respect, and even the Minister’s Department will admit it, because they boast of the fact that we have maintained peace in the country for many years. The Bantu has developed and has played a very important part in the economy of the country. Not only has he contributed to the development of that economy, but his spending power has increased to a stage where the Government boasts of its high level. Having over the years developed a system where the local authority has acted as the administrator for the Government within the confines of the relevant statutes, why then at this stage does the Government come along with a Bill which will disrupt the value of what has been built up over the years? Why must the Government regard the work of the local authorities with suspicion? Why must it know what the resolutions are and examine them? No authority can carry out its administration otherwise than in terms of the Urban Areas Act. No local authority can initiate a policy different from that laid down by the Government, but a local authority can with its experience administer that policy satisfactorily, and it has done so over the years. Why should its discretion be destroyed, because many of the provisions of the Acts give the local authorities discretion in regard to the actual manner of administration. The Minister has given us no good reason why it is necessary to take such stringent steps. In fact, these are watered-down steps and one knows what steps were contemplated in previous legislation. If it is the Government’s intention to indicate what its over-all policy is, the Deputy Minister should come with an entirely different story, not about the value of the work he is doing, but he should rather be frank and tell us that this Bill is intended to ensure that certain steps are immediately put into operation to enable him to present that longer Bill during the next session of Parliament; but in the meantime to lay the foundations for it, and that is to implement what they said is the only policy they could follow, namely to make the Bantu a completely temporary sojourner in the Republic and to provide homelands for him to which he belongs irrespective of where he is. That is actually what the Government intends doing, and if it does not intend doing that, why must we listen to the pious assurances and utterances of the Deputy Minister and the hon. member for Kempton Park and others who tell us what great virtues will be achieved by this policy when they have taken no steps whatsoever hitherto even gradually to educate public thinking along the lines they want to follow in regard to domestic service and the legitimate use of unskilled Bantu labour in the economic life of the country? Sir, we do not like this Bill because it is entirely opposed to the policy of the United Party, which is to make use of all the available labour in this country for the economic development of the country and for the building up of a better standard of living for both Whites and non-Whites and to improve the race relations, and to enable everyone to enjoy the benefits of what we have in this country without in any way taking over or destroying what the other section has. If the Government tries to approach the problem on that sound basis, which can be understood not only by ourselves but by the rest of the world, we will not have antipathy without or within South Africa. We would not have the antipathy from within about which the Government speakers are constantly warning us. If the urgency of this legislation and the position of the Bloemfontein City Council are based on the fear of the labour living amongst the White people, how can you continuously come with legislation to overcome that fear by more oppressive measures, instead of trying to overcome it in the normal way, and that is by improving the relations and better understanding and providing better conditions for the labourer? Surely fear is a thing which can be analysed and which can be overcome by proper thinking and the application of psychological principles. There is no necessity to take a complete system which has been in existence for over half a century and virtually destroy it in order to meet what hon. members opposite fear is the position. The only attitude which this side of the House can adopt is to move the amendment which has been moved by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, because it would be wise if the Deputy Minister withdrew even this shadow of a Bill on the same basis that he withdrew the original Bill, in order to give fresh consideration to his whole approach to labour in South Africa and the administration of the Bantu in the urban areas. If he would approach it from the modern trend, forgetting for the moment that he cannot reverse the whole basis of economic principles, then we would have a measure before the House to which both sides could give objective consideration and bring about something of value to the life of the country, and which will not eventually prove to be a millstone around the neck of whichever Government will be in power and all the White people.

If I were to reply to all the various points raised by the hon. member for Florida (Mr. Miller), it would take up all my time, but I should like to reply to a few of those points. The hon. member referred to the sound administration of the City Council of Johannesburg and praised them for their handling of Bantu affairs. I have no objection to that, but I am just very sorry that there are still so many locations in the sky in Johannesburg and that the city council is not yet implementing the Government’s measures in that respect. As against that, in the capital, Pretoria, there are no locations in the sky. I am glad that on a former occasion, years ago, when the hon. member was the chairman of the Non-European Affairs Committee of Johannesburg, we could enlighten him somewhat in regard to how the matter of Bantu housing was administered in Pretoria, I am also glad that Pretoria could set an example in regard to influx control, and that Pretoria at this moment can still claim that in its area there are more Whites than non-Whites.

The hon. member called this a bad Bill, and afterwards he called it “a shadow of a Bill”. He referred to the fact that it took a long time before this Bill was introduced, but that simply proves what thorough consultation there was with the various bodies interested in this measure, and therefore this Bill now appears before us as a thoroughly considered measure. Then the hon. member particularly objected to two clauses, Clauses 6 and 9, and said that they would do much harm. I should like to deal particularly with Clause 6 and allege just the contrary. The hon. member also said that this side of the House regards the Bill as urgent because we are afraid. He said: “The urgency is necessary because of a fear of disturbances.” That is not the primary object of this Bill. One of its primary purposes is to eliminate as far as possible the points of friction. I should like to refer to that in the course of my speech. I should, however, also like to refer to a remark made by the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman) when he said that Umlazi is the only Bantu town near a big city which is situated in a reserve. The hon. member has not done his homework. What about Garankua, north of Pretoria, and what about Pietermaritzburg, East London, Newcastle, Pietersburg and King William’s Town?

I was glad to hear from the hon. member for Florida that the United Party in fact has a policy, but if that is so I want to say that the policy of the Opposition is one full of paradoxes and anomalies. The opposition to this Bill is a striking example of that. The Opposition has always reproached this Government for making the cities in our country Blacker in spite of its policy of differentiation or of separate development. That was also repeated by the previous speaker. The Opposition Press now opposes this Bill, a Bill which aims exclusively at preventing our cities from becoming Blacker and which at least has the object of making the White cities exclusively White residential areas at night. The Opposition ought to think soberly and realistically about this matter, and approach it realistically and view the future in the correct perspective. Much progress has already been made. We also expect the constructive support of the public and we hope, too, that the United Party, when the measure has become law, will support it constructively, but in default of such assistance to stop the flow to the cities. The people outside, who have always retained their sense of logic, will have the right to see this sham concern on the part of the United Party as nothing more or less than mere selfishness and shameless hypocrisy.

The public itself is asking for this Bill. We have had that on various occasions already, and not only from the supporters of the National Party. Just recently the hon. the Deputy Minister addressed a large meeting which was representative of the constituency of Pretoria (East) which is adjacent to Mamalodi or Vlakfontein Location, and when he referred to this measure and particularly to the provision that only one Bantu would be allowed to live on a White residential site, there was unanimous acclamation, unanimous agreement. That was not the only place where there was unanimous agreement. The hon. the Deputy Minister also referred to it on other occasions. Everywhere he held meetings that announcement was received with acclamation. I say that the public wants this Bill, but what is more, the Bantu himself wants it. The Deputy Minister referred here to the request of the Native Advisory Board of Potchefstroom. The hon. member for Bloemfontein (East) (Mr. van Rensburg) quoted from a letter from one W. H. Mota of Orlando West. I do not want to refer to this letter further, but it affords convincing proof that the Bantu themselves want this Bill for their own sake and for the sake of their home life. But in addition, representative bodies, and particularly a very responsible body, the Institute of Administrators of Non-European Affairs, reported as follows with reference to Clause 6 when it appeared in the Government Gazette—

They underline the word “all”—

They want to go even further than the provisions of this Bill. This is a significant request from a body which continually has its finger on the pulse of Bantu administration in the cities. I repeat that it is a very representative and responsible body, as every member of the Opposition knows.

But I come to a further point, and I should like hon. members of the Opposition to listen carefully now. Even a newspaper supporting the United Party made a plea for a change to be made in the working hours of domestic servants to enable them to live with their families in the Bantu residential area at night.

I read from the Pretoria News of 3 December 1962 from an article which appeared under the headline, “Domestic servants ought to be non-resident employees”. I am going to read the whole of it—

Then the author poses this question—

Then he continues—

And then he makes this recommendation—

This article contradicts what the hon. member for Florida and other hon. members opposite have said in this debate thus far, and that is precisely what is envisaged in Clause 6. This measure is an essential step; it is a positive and well-considered Bill. At the present moment it is still not possible to direct the stream of Bantu back to the Native reserves and the homelands, as the result of the fact that the border industries and the other attempts made are not in full swing yet, but in the meantime measures have to be taken to combat the evils and the friction which arise from contact between Whites and non-Whites. The Bantu locations in fact provide accommodation for a large proportion of the domestic servants, but as we know there are many domestic servants living on the premises of the White people in the cities. This fact has had, and still has, two negative and consequently unfavourable consequences: In the first place, the presence of so many Bantu in the cities endangers the properties of the Whites. Hon. members cannot argue that away. There is the danger of damage to property and of housebreaking, as hon. members on this side have already stated, but on the other hand the idle Bantu, the undesirable element, embitters not only the lives of the Whites in those areas but also those of the Bantu. In season and out of it they creep into the White backyards without the White owner even knowing they are there, and they live on those Bantu. The second point is this: The moral life of the Bantu is affected when the father or the mother of those Bantu children is not with them. As early as 1955 the Government took the first step to try to combat this evil with the Act dealing with locations in the sky, but its effect, although it was beneficial in many cases, was perhaps not quite what one expected in all respects. This Bill is a second step in that direction and it will have a broader effect than the previous measure. In this regard, also, we should all co-operate.

We are glad to see that from various sides the idea of people doing their own work has been expressed, the idea of being independent of domestic help. In the school at which I was formerly principal the children came along and asked whether they could clean their classrooms, and they persevered with that. We have learnt from Press reports about universities and colleges where the students are already doing part of the work of the Bantu workers, and apart from the aspect of effecting economies there is the educational aspect, namely to teach our people, our students and our children, to have a respect for work. The idea has developed amongst our people during the last decade, and our children have grown up with that idea, that certain work is below their dignity because it is “Kaffir work”. Now the idea is being instilled into our young people that work is noble. That is an important effect which will flow from this Bill. We are glad that there are bodies and institutions moving in this direction.

In conclusion, I want to refer to Pretoria. The hon. the Deputy Minister referred to certain suburbs. I wish to refer to Pretoria as a whole. In my opinion, it is no longer necessary for a household to employ Bantu servants. Nowadays there are various means of facilitating housework. It is unnecessary for our White homes to be based on the weak black legs of servants. In Pretoria a recent survey revealed that 38.5 per cent of home owners or tenants do not have permanent domestic servants. If one section of the public can do without them, more people can do so. In suburbs like Villieria and Rietfontein—Villieria also partly falls in my constituency—there are already 6 per cent of the inhabitants who do without servants. In Brooklyn there are already 22.7 per cent and in Groenkloof 36.2 per cent who do without permanent domestic servants. That affords sufficient proof that White families can already organize their work in such a way that they can do without servants. We heard much here recently about a new drinking pattern. I want to recommend to-day that we should try to create amongst our people and our youth a new working pattern.

I am not going to reply in great detail to the hon. member for Pretoria (East) (Dr. Otto) except that in the course of my speech I will be referring to some of the things that he has said. I agree with one thing which he said and that is that this measure is not a Bill to deal with “misdadigers”, with tsotsis, who roam the streets at night. There are laws already to deal with those people, just as there are laws to deal with people who live illegally on the premises of householders. This law will not touch that situation at all, and therefore as far as I am concerned people will sleep no more happily in their beds after this measure has been passed because in any case it does not touch people who commit crimes or Africans who roam around the streets of the towns at night illegally. Sir, the hon. member said that the idea was to try to turn the towns into White areas at night; in other words, that Africans are to come into the towns during the day to work, and when night falls they must be emptied of their African inhabitants. Well, I am afraid that is an ideal which he will never be able to attain. Even this Bill does not try to attain it because the Bill provides for exemptions for certain numbers of people to stay in flat buildings and it provides for exemption for a certain number of domestic servants to remain on the premises. As I read it—and the Minister will tell me whether I am wrong—the Bill really does not touch people who live in hotels, boarding houses, social clubs, private hospitals, on church premises and so on, all of whom have Africans resident on the premises.

The locations-in-the-sky legislation applies there.

I am talking of buildings accommodating more than five Bantu which require licences, where licences have been obtained and where in fact, according to the figures I have, something like 34,000 Africans are legally housed and these people are not going to be affected by this Bill either. Sir, this is an ideal, as apartheid always will be an ideal, which cannot be attained, of apartheid minus a certain number of Africans to suit the needs of the White population of South Africa. That is the first point I want to make. The other point that I want to make is that the attitude which the hon. the Deputy Minister adopts seems to differ from the attitude which he took up when the sky-locations Bill was under discussion in this House, when he gave us a long dissertation in the course of which he was quite scathing about people who made extravagant use of domestic labour. He stated that “their desire for comfort forces them to lose sight of the most elementary facts of the existence of the Whites”. I quote from the speech which he made in those days. In those days he objected strongly to people making extravagant use of domestic labour. To-day he has become much more mature; he has been elevated to the status of a Deputy Minister …

I still say exactly the same.

… except that the hon. the Deputy Minister said that people can employ as many domestic servants as they liked. He repeated that in the reply to a question put to him by the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman). I want to know whether he has changed his mind and whether he still agrees or does not agree with the point of view put by the hon. member for Bloemfontein (East) who, when he spoke, elevated domestic chores to some sort of patriotic duty; that everybody should be prepared to make his own tea and his own bed and sweep his own floors, and that he should do it as a sort of holy patriotic duty. I know that the hon. the Deputy Minister and his colleague the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark (Dr. de Wet) are setting us all a grand example. We have seen many attractive pictures of them attired in frilly aprons doing their domestic chores.

Do you ever wash cups?

I can wash a cup probably a little more efficiently and more cleanly than the hon. the Deputy Minister does. But at any rate, I do not really think that it is a particular virtue to waste my time washing cups when I can employ my time more profitably elsewhere in the service of South Africa, instead of doing things for which I am sure the taxpayer is not paying me my parliamentary salary, and for which I am sure the taxpayer is not paying the hon. the Deputy Minister or the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark a salary, and a pretty high salary at that, to waste their time in doing domestic chores. I do not think it is a patriotic duty. I think it is an absurd waste of time. I am a great believer in the ancient idea of Adam Smith and that is division of labour; in other words, people should do the things which they are best fitted to do, and maybe the hon. the Deputy Minister and the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark have greater insight into what they are fitted to do than the taxpayers of South Africa who elected them to their illustrious posts.

Having said that I want to say one or two things about this question of influx control, of which everybody is making so much, although it is really not germane to this Bill. But other hon. members have said a couple of things about it and I am sure that the hon. the Deputy Minister will grant me that it is fair that I should be allowed to reply. I want to say first of all that the hon. member for Zululand is a logical and a reasonable young man, and I wonder therefore if he does not see the analogy between the example he gave, where he said that it was perfectly all right to erect barriers against South African Africans coming in to the urban areas from the rural areas. He thought that that was perfectly all right and he went on to say, “just as we have barriers against foreign Africans coming into this country”. Sir, does the hon. member imply that South African Africans are foreigners in this country and that they should not be allowed free movement throughout this country?

Neither proposition is correct.

The hon. member says that neither proposition is correct and yet he used this very analogy. To me Africans born in South Africa should not be placed on the same basis as foreign Africans. The hon. member quite agrees that they are citizens of this country. They should therefore be allowed free mobility. I think if he thinks this out a little further he will see that influx control acts as a border post against South African-born Africans, preventing them from coming into the urban areas, just as border control posts act against foreign Africans entering South Africa proper. Sir, if you want to assist urban Africans you must keep up wage levels by minimum wage rates, not by condemning two-thirds of the South African-born African population to everlasting poverty by making them stay in the reserves or by making them work in rural areas at lower rates than they would be entitled to earn if they could enter the urban areas.

How do you house them?

You house them by providing money for housing, just as—and this is to the credit of the Government—the Government made money available through the National Housing Commission, and made the Johannesburg Municipality get on with the job of providing houses which they had failed to do throughout the war years and in the immediate post-war years, when the then Johannesburg City Council’s finance manager, Mr. G. B. Gordon, did not vote one sixpence for the provision of housing in Johannesburg, and as a result of that we had those disgusting slums all around Johannesburg. [Interjection.] Sir, I hope the hon. member will listen because I am answering a question which he put to me. That situation arose because not a single house was built by the Johannesburg Municipality. The hon. member must remember that those Africans came in response to the war needs and we could not have conducted the war effort without those Africans, and influx control was lifted for that reason. If houses are built there is not the slightest reason why we should not have mobility of labour in South Africa just as any normal industrial country has mobility of labour. Build decent houses, keep wage rates up by laying down minimum wages below which people may not pay their labour, and then you would solve the problem of the undercutting of wages. I see no particular reason why the urban African should be protected against his rural brethren of the same country and of the same nationality. I want to add that it is the urban African in any case who wants to see these laws go because he is constantly harassed by being put into jail for not producing the necessary documents, and incidentally, he is not allowed to have his own family with him. I am therefore against all influx control.

Now I want to come to the actual Bill. First of all I want to say that, of course, compared to its two ugly step-sisters, the two original versions with which this country was presented, this Bill is undoubtedly an improved version, simply because it omits so many very bad clauses indeed. We have had a reprieve, albeit a temporary reprieve, from measures which would have put employers into a strait-jacket as far as further extension of the job reservation system is concerned; it would have added immeasurably to the burden felt by urban Africans who would have lost all status as far as their birthright is concerned and would, of course, have added greater difficulties to the movement of African women; would have extended the definition of “undesirable” and “idle”, and even in fact gone to the extent of making unemployment a crime. We have a reprieve now in that those clauses have been omitted from this Bill, and for that I am thankful because one never knows, the hon. the Deputy Minister might mature a little more in the ensuing year and he may decide not to go ahead with this measure next year when we come back to this House.

You will be disillusioned then.

Well, I have been disillusioned so much in the ten years that I have been in Parliament that a little more disillusionment probably will not do me any harm. In any case, Sir, we have had that reprieve. I want to say that there are certain things in the existing Bill which do in fact represent an improvement in the existing position. I want to say immediately what they are. The first is the relaxation of restrictions regarding the entry of Africans into their own townships. I think this is an improvement and I am glad the hon. the Minister has introduced it. It was an absurd provision that an African who was legally in a town was not entitled to move from one township to another. I do think that is a relaxation and a good provision. Anything that increases the mobility of our South African Africans is an improvement as far as I am concerned. I think Clause 6 (b) is also an improvement in that it extends the exemptions from compulsory segregation under Section 9 of the Urban Areas Act to all African land owners and not only those who have owned their land as from a certain date.

So you noticed that.

Yes, I have. The hon. Minister would be surprised to know how much time I spend on the measures which he cooks up in the dark watches of the night. I believe Clause 6 (f) is also a relaxation because to some extent it allows the wives and children of Africans housed by employers who house their labour to have their families with them without having to go round applying for licences. Of course this clause does not go nearly far enough as far as I am concerned. The Minister should relax all those provisions which do not at the present stage allow the wives and children of Africans in urban areas to be with their menfolk. Section 10 of the Urban Areas Act, as far as I am concerned, is ambiguous and it is limiting in the extreme. Some time or other I hope the hon. the Minister or his Deputy will explain the meaning of the odd little phrase in the section “who ordinarily resides with” to me. Because, Sir, how does a newly married woman “ordinarily reside” with her husband? How does an African, newly married, have his wife legally to come and live with him in the urban area? I hope the hon. the Minister will tell me something about that.

Clause 31 is a very good new clause. This clause was in the two original Bills and I am glad to say that it has been retained in this one. It makes provision for the partners of customary unions to claim damages from third parties who unlawfully cause the death of the other partner. This is a good provision in our law. It has been badly needed and I am glad that it has been inserted. Incidentally it is not the idea of the hon. member for Durban (North) (Mr. M. L. Mitchell). This is the idea of my ex-colleague, the then member for Parktown (Mr. Cope) who introduced it in this House. He introduced it although it was never proceeded with just as this hon. member’s idea was introduced and never proceeded with. In any case, it was a good idea, it is in the Bill, and I am very glad that it is, because it is a necessary provision in law. While I am on this subject of good provisions, I wonder if the hon. the Deputy Minister will tell me why he has omitted one other good provision that I found in the original version. Will he tell me why he has omitted Clause 98 of the second Bill? That was the clause which dealt with so-called pass consultants. It enabled steps to be taken against people who were not lawyers …

Do you want that clause in?

Yes. Put it in and everybody will agree with it. On this occasion I think I can speak on behalf of the Opposition and say that they will not oppose the clause. I think the hon. Minister must insert it quickly and it will be an excellent thing. I may tell him that I have discussed this with his own officials in Johannesburg some time last year. I am constantly approached by Africans who have been taken for a ride by these so-called pass consultants. There are about 20 such firms operating in Johannesburg alone. They promise to get passes for these foreign Africans. They charge them as much as R50 a time for something which they can hardly ever obtain for them and which in fact they hardly even do obtain for them. Nothing can be done about these people because they are not qualified lawyers. They just call themselves pass consultants. The Law Society deals with people who are registered as legal practitioners. I hope therefore the hon. the Deputy Minister will see his way clear to insert this pass consultants’ clause which I thought was one of the few redeeming features of the original version of this Bill.

I now want to come to the clauses to which I object in this Bill and object very strongly. Despite the few good things that I can say about this Bill, there are many objectionable clauses to which I want to refer and which are the reason for my voting against the second reading of this Bill and voting for the amendment of the hon. Leader of the Opposition that this Bill should be read this day six months. I object to Clause 6, except those sections I have mentioned, and to Clauses 9 and 11 and to a lesser extent to Clauses 26, 27 and 28. I do not want to go into detail as far as Clause 6 is concerned. Everybody who has taken part in this debate so far should know what that clause is about; it is an extension of the locations in the sky section. I want to know what the idea behind all this is? Why must the Government meddle in the affairs of everybody all the time? This is just another example of what an insatiable busybody this Government is. It cannot for one moment restrain itself from interfering with other people’s private affairs. If it is not telling people about which jobs they can employ people of different races or, if it is not interfering with perfectly peaceful multi-racial trade unions, if it is not interfering with mixed sport, if it is not turning the Police Force into a lot of Peeping Toms trying to catch victims under the Immorality Act, it is busy going around the backyards of people prying into people’s private domestic affairs to see how many servants they are housing on their premises. This is interference with an ordinary democratic right that most people should enjoy as far as I am concerned. I cannot understand what the whole point of this is. The hon. member for Bloemfontein (East) (Mr. van Rensburg) made a point about the National Council of Women submitting a memorandum in which they had complained about the original Bill which they said broke up family life. He said the Government now came along with this Bill and that they did not complain about this one because they wanted their domestic servants to stay on their premises instead of allowing their domestic servants living a family life with their own families in their own areas. Had there been anything in this Bill to increase family life amongst the Bantu I would have been the first one to support it. put that is not the intention of this Bill. I call the Government’s bluff immediately on this point. We know perfectly well from the debate which took place on the Designated Areas Bill which this House passed a few weeks ago that it is not the Government’s intention to provide married quarters for, shall we say, for example, the domestic servants in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg. Alexandra Township is the township closest to the northern suburbs. If the hon. the Minister and the Government were genuine about wanting to provide better facilities for married life there would be no question of erecting these single-quarter barracks for men and single barracks for women.

Are all of them married?

Of course they are not all married. In that case will the hon. member allow anybody to employ as many unmarried servants as they like? Will the hon. member for Kempton Park then agree that employers can employ as many unmarried women or widows as they like? If he does, there will be some sense in it. But that is not the basis of this Bill. The basis is a sort of quasi-apartheid. That is all it is. I say quasi for very good reasons because as I showed earlier it is not full apartheid; it can never be full apartheid. The hon. member’s own constituents would not allow him to implement full apartheid and he knows it. So in fact the question of supplying greater family life facilities to Africans in towns does not arise in this Bill; that is not its intention. I say it will be far better, from the point of view of actual accommodation, to leave them where they are because, in fact, most of them are decently housed. Where they are not decently housed, a system of inspectors will soon put that right. They are certainly being better housed than they will be in these single quarters which the hon. Minister is contemplating erecting at Alexandra Township. Let us look at the actual position as it exists in Johannesburg. As far as I can gather from official sources there are something like 75,000 domestic servants in Johannesburg of whom 18,000 are males and 57,000 females. Of these something like 14,500 are licensed flat servants; they work in blocks of flats where more than five African servants are employed. Of these 4,800 are males and 9,600-odd are females accommodated in about 795 blocks of flats and serving about 25,950 flat units. This means that if you deduct the flat servants from the total number, you find that about 64,000 domestic servants work in houses. That is more or less the correct figure. Incidentally, I have found out that there are about 69,000 houses in Johannesburg. This looks as if quite a large number of citizens are already emulating the hon. Deputy Minister and that they are doing their own chores. On the other hand, of course, there are many houses who have two and more servants on the premises. The number of these is not known. What is also not known, of course, is how many servants accommodated in backyards also maintain houses in the townships. A large number of them do that. In all fairness I must admit that not all of these people will have to be rehoused because a large number of them are already maintaining a home in the townships. But nevertheless many thousands of them will have to be rehoused, which is the point that I am getting at. Not only will they have to be rehoused but they will also have to travel in and out from the townships to the areas where they are working.

The DEPUTY MINISTER OF BANTU ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT: I should like to hear the hon. member’s views on the working conditions of these people, such as their working hours for example, etc.

Yes, I shall certainly say something about that. First of all I want to tell the hon. Deputy Minister that if he removed some of the restrictions which prevent Africans from seeking work under the best conditions offering to them, a great number of unscrupulous employers would have to change their whole attitude towards domestic servants. A great many servants are bound to their present employers simply because if they lose that particular job they are endorsed out of the urban area. That is a very important point. If people were released from the necessity of being tied to a specific employer a great number of unscrupulous employers will (a) have to improve the hours during which their domestic servants work and (b) improve the wages. Until the hon. the Minister does that, he is tying thousands of people to unhealthy conditions of labour because they cannot move to other employment. That is a point he must bear in mind. I hold no brief for those employers who (a) do not pay decent wages and (b) expect their servants to work completely unreasonable hours. I hold no brief for them but there is a happy medium and I hope we shall try to obtain that in this country.

To get back to the proposition that I was making, I think there_ are something like 64,000 servants working in houses in Johannesburg. I am not including the hotel servants, the hospital servants and so on, because to some extent they are excluded from this Bill. There are many thousands more; the compounds of the South African Railways which are outside the townships will also have to come in of course, if it is to be real apartheid; if we want to clear them from the White urban area of Johannesburg. But that is not implied in this Bill so I leave them aside. Johannesburg has to a great extent caught up with this tremendous housing back-log of the war and post-war years which I lay fairly and squarely at the door of the United Party City Council of Johannesburg of those days. There is no question about that. They were responsible for that tremendous housing back-log as everybody knows. That housing back-log has been eliminated to some extent but there are still 7,700 families on the waiting-list. I think it is a fair estimate to multiply this by five and to say that there are 38,500 people actually waiting for accommodation in Johannesburg. Before this housing shortage is cleared up we are going to add to that figure all the domestic servants who are at the present moment housed on their employers’ premises. As I have pointed out some of them have no accommodation in the Native township, whereas some have. Some of them only have the room in the backyard supplied by their employer. I am only referring to Johannesburg because that is the city with which I am familiar and in respect of which I have the figures.

How many do not have alternative accommodation in the townships?

I cannot tell the hon. member that. Nevertheless, I think, the hon. member must accept that accommodation will have to be provided to many thousands if the provisions of this Bill are to be implemented strictly.

I want to point out that the average wage of the domestic servant in Johannesburg is about R16 a month in the case of females and R18 to R20 in the case of males. This is the cash wage. I am not talking about the wages in kind such as food, fuel, lodging and those other things mentioned by the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman). The lowest wage, as far as I can estimate, in the poorer suburbs is about R10 in the case of females and R14 in the case of males. The highest wage in the richer suburbs is roughly R35 for a female and R45 for a highly experienced male servant. They are of course below the cash wages paid in industry and commerce simply because of the value of wages in kind. Unless the employers are going to increase these wages which are below the poverty datum line which is something like R48 in Johannesburg, admittedly for a family, the servant will now have to pay his rent out of his wages plus of course his daily transport fares in and out to work. This is a tremendous burden on the African who is now going to be required to travel in and out to work every day. I want to give members some idea of the costs of transport in Johannesburg. The train-fare between Johannesburg and Orlando is 43c weekly for a five-day week only and 85c including Saturdays. Domestic servants do not have to travel on Sundays. A monthly ticket is R1.72. Orlando is the nearest point to Johannesburg. To the furthermost point it is 60c weekly and R2.50 monthly. To this you have to add the bus-fare because people have to travel from the suburb where they are working, to the Johannesburg Station and when they get to the other end, when they get to Orlando or Westlake or Faraday, they have to catch another bus, because these townships are spread over an enormous area, to their homes. I want to give hon. members some idea of those bus-fares. From the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, for example from Rosebank into town, the fare is 7½c. That is 15c return. From the township’s station to the terminus nearest home is 2½c, i.e. 5c return. That is the cheapest fare. So one has to add an additional 20c per day in respect of bus-fares over and above the train-fares. I know those train-fares are subsidized but they are still very high for people earning those wages. Only the more scrupulous employers are going to pay for this; the rest are going to say: “I am not prepared to give it to you; you cannot leave me, because if you do you are going to get endorsed out of the area.” Many thousands are in this position. Apart from this thorny question of finance which is very thorny indeed because we have had so many surveys testifying as to the extreme poverty of these people living in the urban areas, we shall find that food will be sacrificed. Food is the only elastic item in their lives; rent is fixed, their bus-fares and train-fares are fixed, so apart from clothing their feeding is going to suffer. But apart from all this there is this big problem of the availability of transport. We are terribly short of transport in Johannesburg. Hon. members need only go to Canada Junction, which is one of the main junctions, at the so-called peak hours, which is any time from 4 or 5 o’clock in the mornings onwards, to realize what the position is. They need only go to the Johannesburg Station at 5 o’clock in the afternoon to see what is going on there.

Why as early as 5 o’clock?

The answer is: People have got to get to work. If they want to get to work at 7 o’clock or 8 o’clock in the morning they have to leave their homes very early. They have to travel out to the suburbs and in many cases the bus services are not adequate either. If they do not get up early, they have to wait for hours and hours to get a train. The hon. Minister must know that there is a tremendous shortage of transport. That is certainly the position in Johannesburg and I am prepared to say that that is probably also the position in all the other large urban centres. I can show the hon. Minister photographs that were taken at the Johannesburg Station only last year showing people clinging to the windows of trains, standing on the footplates, travelling under the most dangerous conditions. The tsotsism that goes on in those crowded trains is an absolute disgrace. This is going to increase because the trains are going to be even more crowded. The Minister of Transport did tell me that he intended putting on more carriages in the near future and some more later this year. But that will barely cope with the existing position leaving aside all the increases that will have to take place if the hon. Minister for Bantu Administration implements this Bill. The same thing happens in the case of Alexandra Township. There are about 112,000 Bantu train commuters using the service between the townships and Johannesburg every day. From Alexandra Township to the city there are 16,684 commuters using the bus service into the town every day. Again, those buses are terribly overcrowded and those people have to get up at 4 o’clock and 5 o’clock in the morning in order to get to their work on time.

In regard to the Minister’s rather well-chosen phrase about “bed-and-breakfast Bantu”, I want to tell him that the situation is a bit deceptive in Johannesburg. Not all the Africans whom one sees waiting at Rosebank for instance, in the early morning to catch the bus into town, are “bed-and-breakfast Bantu”. A great number of those people are in fact people who travel by Putco from Alexandra Township to Rosebank and then transfer to the Johannesburg Municipal buses because they find that a better and less-crowded service instead of using the Putco service which goes directly into town. I am not denying that there are thousands of Bantu who live illegally in the suburbs. But as I mentioned earlier this Bill does not deal with illegal people in any case. There are already laws on the Statute Book to deal with those people. The hon. the Minister told us this morning that Africans who were legitimately in White towns were entitled to good housing and entitled to live a community life. I agree with him 100 per cent. As I said earlier, however, it is not a question of good housing …

We are too much in agreement.

Are you beginning to have doubts about your own Bill? The point is this. Good housing is something which any good Government should obviously be providing for its under-privileged people in any case. I say the Minister should attend to the housing needs of those people who are on the waiting-lists before he adds to those numbers. Housing takes a long time to provide as past experience has shown.

As far as community life is concerned I want to deal with the hours the domestic servants are required to work. The hours of domestic servants are not the hours of ordinary factory workers, nine to five or eight to four. Normally any decent employer will give his servant a few hours off in the afternoon but they have to work in the mornings, over the lunch-hour, and then they have to come back in the evenings to finish their job. Even if their employers give them a few hours off in the afternoon they cannot go to their townships to enjoy community life because those townships are far out of town. So the community life argument does not help. Domestic servants will still work from early in the morning till late at night with perhaps two or three hours off in the afternoon.

The other point I want to make is that in other countries the richer people generally live outside the towns and commute in, but the position is quite different in South Africa. The decent nearby residential areas have all been grabbed by the Whites in this country. It is the poorer people who are doing the commuting. They have to commute 10 to 14 miles each way every day. [Interjections.] That is quite true. The closer residential areas have all been grabbed by the Whites. It is the poorer section of the working class that has to do the commuting. So here too we have a different pattern of life and it is not going to be changed so easily. There is a problem of course as far as recreational facilities are concerned. I will immediately hand that to the hon. the Minister. I am sorry the hon. member for Langlaagte (Mr. P. J. Coetzee) is not here. He keeps on accusing me of having organized a petition against a recreational centre in my constituency. I have told him before that I had nothing to do with that. In fact, I encouraged the people to organize a counter-petition to have that recreational centre. But he was wrongly informed by somebody on the city council a long time ago and he keeps on accusing me of the same old thing. I say, as I have said before, that White employers cannot have it both ways. If they want their domestic employees on their premises they must be prepared to have recreational centres for them nearby because it is impossible for them to go home during the few hours that they are off. I want to say at once too that the position in Johannesburg has already been eased by a sensible by-law which lays down, as it has done since 1954, that any block of buildings which houses more than, I think, six Africans must provide a common room for them. That at least is somewhere where they can get together …

For recreation?

It is at least better than nothing. Surely the hon. member does not think that when his domestic servant gets home in the evening he rushes off to play rugby. I would be very surprised if any of them did in fact do that.

I think I have covered most of the points I wanted to make. I hope the Government will not come with the old story that this is going to help the home life of the Africans. It is not; that is not the intention behind this Bill. They are not building family housing units in the areas which are supposed to be housing the domestic servants of the northern suburbs of Johannesburg. I agree with the hon. member for Zululand that there will be as many illegitimate babies as there are at present, conceived in the townships, as are conceived in the backyards of Johannesburg. The reason for that, of course, is nothing more or less than the migratory labour system which this Government is doing its best to promote. Until this Government gets down to proper stabilized family life amongst the African workers, be they domestic workers or factory workers or anything else, illegitimacy and bad social conditions will continue among the urban Africans. I could go on at some length about the additional administrative costs because we had increased administrative costs when we had to issue licences in Johannesburg for flats to house more than five Bantu servants. So this will also require more staff and so on. I do not want to dwell at length on the autonomy of the local authority being superseded by the Government. Other members on this side have already dealt with that. I agree that it is quite unnecessary for the Government to step in. It already has its watchdog committee and as far as I am concerned that is already too much. I have a basic objection in principle to the whole idea of this Bill, the idea expressed by the Minister in his second-reading speech, the idea of a fundamental concept of separate rights in separate areas—the Bantu in their own Black areas and the Whites in their own so-called White areas. [Time limit.]

Let me commence by saying that Potchefstroom has become rather an ideal place to talk about in justification of this Bill because of some vague suggestion that emanated from the Bantu Advisory Board there. Now although I myself fail to see in that instance any justification for this Bill, it does come to mind that this is not the only occasion that Potchefstroom has been the centre of influence in the determination of Government policy. But one thing that must be kept in mind when dealing with this Bill has been made quite clear by the hon. Deputy Minister, namely that this measure is just a prelude to a stronger blast of dictatorial power over the lives of African men, women and children which the Government is holding in reserve until Parliament reassembles next year. This measure, the third draft of the Bill in the course of this Session, is therefore to be examined not only in the light, perhaps one should say in the twilight, of existing legislation, but also on the gloom of coming legislation. For that reason it would be wrong, in fact it would be foolish to deal with it as just another amending Bill designed simply to close some small administrative gaps or to fill up some minor bureaucratic crevices in the tangled mass of legislation already on the Statute Book. On the contrary, we must recognize it for what it is: The short introduction, or the beginning of a larger tangled web of law-making which, if I may adopt and adapt for that purpose a Churchillian phrase, can best be described as a superb example of “bureaucracy, wrapped round authoritarianism, inside totalitarianism”. For there can be no doubt that this Bill is designed to start South Africa irrevocably and finally along the road of undiluted dictatorship in the handling of a human situation which dates back for 300 years, and which economically has become more interwined and entangled over the past 15 years than at any other time in history.

For the reasons given by my hon. Leader, Sir, every thinking person therefore must realize that if ever there was a time when a proper sense of proportion in the handling of human relations in this country was thoroughly needed, it is now. It is particularly needed in this year of destiny for South Africa when history is moving forward faster here and elsewhere in Africa than ever before. And this need for a proper sense of propriety in the handling of all domestic affairs exists at present, but especially in handling the affairs of our local White-Black race relationships; that is predominantly important at a time when all but the blind can fail to see that South Africa, regrettably but undoubtedly, is fast approaching the moment of collision in a critical world and for South Africa an almost friendless world. But once again this Government’s only answer to the human problem is more legislation, more bureaucratic authority, more arbitrary powers, more apartheid. The very first clause of this Bill which relates to foreign Natives in the rural areas creates two new offences, each of which has a specially built-in presumption of guilt. The term “foreign Native” is now broadened and will include all Natives who are domiciled in or who came originally from Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland. Moreover, in respect of these two new offences the Bill prescribes penalties so severe as a minimum fine, or a minimum period of imprisonment, or both such fine and imprisonment if the person concerned is found in a district or is employed in a district without having first obtained official permission. Mere absence of official permission is the gravamen of the offence in Clause 1. Deception or deceit or evasion on the part of the employer or employee has no part in it at all. All I can say, Sir, that this places a premium on officialdom at the expense of human goodwill and economic endeavour.

The Bill also lays down a number of new statutory directives and it gives new powers to the Minister and officials to issue directives to Africans or Bantu in urban areas as to where they should reside if they are employed and as to what they should do if temporarily they lose their employment. I do not want to go into the details. Certain of these provisions have been mentioned by earlier speakers. But in most of the cases the individual concerned, the employer or employee, are subject to penal sanctions if such directive is not complied with or not fully complied with immediately. The Bill goes even further than that, because in one instance at least there can be summary ejectment without any recourse to the courts at all.

As my hon. Leader has indicated, the Bill also tightens up the Minister’s hold on local authorities in their administration of local government so far as the employment and accommodation of Bantu is concerned in urban areas. The point has been made, and I think should be stressed, that the Minister for example can now superimpose regulations made by himself over those which are made, quite lawfully, quite competently, by the local authorities. But the whole basis of local government is that you leave those matters of local concern, which the local authority can best deal with, to a local body and those matters of material concern which the Government can best deal with, to the Central Government. But here the position is simply reversed and, as I say, the grip of the hon. the Minister over local authorities is considerably tightened. The hon. Deputy Minister is rather glib in saying that policy is laid down by the Government, but so far as the local authorities are concerned, the policy is what the law says, and so long as local authorities operate within the law, as they see it and lay down their own policy within the law, they are obviously carrying out what the Act of Union originally imposed on them.

But as I have indicated, and as the hon. Deputy Minister in his second-reading speech has more than adequately demonstrated, this Bill provides generally for the extension of arbitrary powers and for the widening of the scope of arbitrary decisions by the Minister and by officials of his Department in regard to such ordinary matters as employment, mainly in industrial areas, but also in rural areas and such matters as accommodation or residence in urban and industrial areas for the purpose of being so employed. I say, Sir, these are ordinary matters, but of course economically and humanly they are very essential matters, and it is in that regard that this superimposition by the Government over local authorities is going to play its part increasingly and adversely in respect of the people concerned. I mention this detail because of two paradoxical situations that have been established. The first paradox is this: Whilst the architects of Union wrote into the Act of Union an express opportunity for Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland to become incorporated into South Africa, this Government by this Bill writes over the portals of South Africa from those three territories the words “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”. Such is the degree of retrogression in the state of inter-territorial relationships that has come about under the regime of this Government!

The effect of all this in simple language is that any such worker from one of those territories must abandon hope, whether he may choose to come and render service on the White man’s farm in South Africa, just as much as whether he may choose to render service in the White man’s factory, or in his house in South Africa. In other words, it writes this warning in regard to what was a mutually beneficial state of affairs which has existed over many years and which the figures quoted by the hon. Deputy Minister confirm over and over again. And this is to happen in regard to future labour relations, regardless of two rather important economic truths. The first truth is this that the wealth of a community can be permanently increased only by making optimum use of its natural assets and its labour resources, and the next one is that any legislative measure or any executive action which restricts the earning power of a working population also restricts their buying. This Bill and what is to come—we can only deal with this Bill in the light of what exists and in the gloom of what is to come—is going to do precisely the opposite and is going to ignore these two very important and very essential economic truths.

That brings me to the second paradox, viz. this, that at the very moment when the Minister of Finance says that he can see signs of revival of the country’s economy after a state of near stagnation to which it had dropped after the Sharpeville shootings in March 1960, this Deputy Minister gets busy by means of new legislation incorporated into old legislation to grasp new powers wherewith to restrict and retard the natural flow of labour into those areas of the country where such a revival of the economy alone can be expected to come about and where it alone can be expected to develop. I say therefore: Such is the degree of retrogression in the state of sane law-making which we have reached under the régime of this Government.

The paradox does not end there. Significantly enough the new legislative and executive shackles that are being forged in this Bill to restrain and retard the natural flow of labour into industry are being placed in the hands of the Department of Bantu Administration and Development. Now in the whole of the Public Service that Department is the one which is the least well equipped by training, by tradition and by experience to take care of or to have regard to the economic needs and the economic problems of this country. In saying that there is no harsh criticism on my part of officials in that Department. My criticism is purely factual criticism and is based on how a Public Service is organized, how there is a division of labour in it and how each Department is trained to function in its own particular way. So your paradox is one which will continue and increase because of this situation. Mr. Speaker, when the hon. the Prime Minister set up his Advisory Economic Co-ordinating Council early in 1960, I ventured to suggest that it would in practice have to become the curbing and restraining council over the powers and functions of this Minister’s Department. I suggested at the time that the council would be well advised to make its first task the examination of the functions and powers of this Department if the economy of the country was to continue on sound lines. My view in that regard still holds. I venture now also to suggest that when this hon. Minister and his Deputy get started after the passing of this Bill, they will very soon convert the present Ministry of Bantu Administration and Development into a Ministry of Bantu Abstraction and Removal, because that is the trend of the legislation before us and that is the gloomy picture which we see in the legislation yet to come next session.

When the hon. Deputy Minister introduced this Bill, he did not tell us of any group of people, any local authority, other than Potchefstroom, who wanted this Bill to become law. Other than to state that it was Government policy and the rounding-off of an apartheid measure, he gave us no reasons for the introduction of this Bill. This Bill does nothing but bring hardship on various sections of the community, and when I say that, I will deal realistically with those sections that will experience hardships. Firstly, you have the domestic servants. The hon. Deputy Minister talks about the long hours that a domestic servant has to work and asked one hon. member on this side whether she would be prepared to work those long hours. Well, under this Bill, when they have to leave home at about four or five in the morning, they will have a greater scramble than ever to obtain transport to get to their work and they will have to travel at all hours of the night to get home again in the darkness. Sir, I wonder what is going to be the full length of the hours that they will be away from home including the hours of travel to and from their work. He quoted from a letter he stated he had received from somebody in Pietermaritzburg stating that he thought this was quite a good thing. He did not quote from anybody of authority in Pietermaritzburg, any group of people, local authority, or anybody representing citizens in that area, and for every one person he can quote in that area, I can bring him 100 if not 1,000 who are opposed to this Bill. Take the position of a woman with a big family if she is only to be allowed one servant to live on the premises, and she has illness in the family and is up all night perhaps …

Oh, come now.

Yes, it is all right for people to talk like that. The hon. Deputy Minister and the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark, as somebody pointed out, may not find it so hard to wash up some tea-things. But they are not washing all the nappies in the family. When they had half a dozen kids to look after when their wives are ill, they would talk differently. Let them show me a photo of themselves hanging out the nappies …

I will.

His wife may make him do that when he is at home. I do not know. But let us get down to more realistic things. You have illness in the family or where you have an elderly relative who in the eighties is practically bedridden, you have a big family, a female relative who may be bedridden and who needs a Native female living on the premises to look after them during the night. If they are going to be restricted to only one Native servant living on the premises there is going to be hardship on the wife of that family. I know of such cases and it is going to be harder on the poorer sections of the community than on the wealthier who can afford Coloured servants or Indian servants or even Europeans. The poorer sections of the community cannot afford White helps in those cases, and I think that this Government which says that they look after the poorer sections of the community ought to give this consideration. Then he referred to the question of illegitimacy in respect of the Native females living in backyards. I have served on a hospital board for many years, I have served on a city council for a number of years, and the cases of illegitimacy that were brought to the notice of the local authority did not come from the backyards; the larger number of females came from the local Native villages and the locations near by and they were taken to the local Native hospitals and they were delivered of illegitimate children. As a matter of fact where the parents bring their daughters in to work for people and place them in the care of the householder and where they live on premises where they are under control there is less chance of that happening than where the Native female goes back, travelling without any protection to and from the location or Native village to the town, at all hours of the night.

Coming to the domestic servants, you will find that numbers will be dismissed. If the employers have to pay for the transport in respect of two or three servants, it will mean that they have to pay still more for domestic servants and they will dismiss one or more. The average domestic servant, and I am now referring to the Deputy Minister’s own statement that the long hours are so hard, I want to point out that they are not trained for any other type of work. That is why they become domestic servants. What is going to become of them? Will they be sent back to the reserves? According to the figures quoted by the hon. member for Heilbron there are already some 400,000 Africans in the Republic unemployed. We only put it at 200,000, but if you take the figure of 400,000, what is going to happen if you add all these who are going to be dismissed? You are going to get a greater number of unemployed Natives, going hungry and becoming explosive, because do not forget these Natives are fed where they obtain their work as well as obtaining their accommodation and they are well fed. If they are going to send them back to the reserves without employment, you are asking for greater trouble. So it is going to be a hardship on those people as well, as well as extending the hours of those who will have to travel backward and forward to their work.

Then there is the question of economic expansion. If the labour is not readily available, people will think twice before going in for economic expansion because they have got to apply a long time beforehand to make sure that African labour or Native labour is available to them. They will not get it in the western Cape, as somebody has already said. But I am not even concerned with that—I am talking about my own area where we do not have the Coloureds. Because there is no housing to take them, we already have a tremendous backlog in housing, but I will come to that just now. If you want to expand a business now in these areas you have got to see to it that they are housed and you have to make sure that you are going to get Native labour and housing for them before you can get a permit to introduce that Native labour. The position is going to be 100 per cent worse if all the domestic labour that is at present housed in town will also compete for the housing that will be available—it is not available yet, but may be available in the near future. And who is going to cover the losses in regard to the housing? The ratepayers, because in Natal we are having huge losses on rentals as a result of bad debts.

No.

Oh, yes. If the hon. Minister will take over the housing and make up the losses to the local authorities and tell us how they can collect that debt from Natives, if they have no money, he may help us. Will you put them all in goal? You have tried the system of putting tens of thousands of Natives in goal. And I am coming to the use of these Natives for farm labour in a moment. But your ratepayers will have to pay for more transport run at a loss. We have already huge losses on transport, we have huge losses on sub-economic housing, as well as in respect of economic houses: and what is going to happen to the farmers if they lose their labour?

You do not know what you are talking about.

Let me ask why this Government is pushing this farm-goal idea, something of which I have been ashamed as a farmer all my life. I have stated it over and over again in this House that the day when I have to use goal labour to run a farm, that day I will give up farming. I think it is a disgrace when a man has to use goal labour to run his farm. And what has this Government done during the last ten years? They make the opening of a big farm goal an occasion for a public entertainment more or less. A Minister goes there and makes a public speech at the opening of a farm goal.

Order! The hon. member is going too far now.

Mr. Speaker, we are going to lose a lot of Native labour and we may have to use goal labour. We are going to lose 200,000 foreign Natives who are today employed on farms, and we are going to have great difficulty in making up for that, and with all due deference to you, Sir, I believe that is very germane to the question I am discussing. We are using farm goals all over the country already, but I will not pursue that any further. If there is no shortage of farm labour why is it that at every congress of the South African Agricultural Union and at every provincial congress of the agricultural unions there are resolutions asking the Government to make farm labour available?

Not for the last two years. That is not correct.

Of course it is true. The hon. member for Heilbron of course is not a farmer, but let him go to the Free State Agricultural Union, in a province where there are many farm goals, and let him tell the farmers that the Government is going to take away all the Basuto labour and that that will be the best thing for the farmers in the Free State, then I wonder what reception he will get at the congress. I challenge him to do so, but he would not dare. We are short of farm labour. What is going to happen on the smallholdings, on the dairy farms, on the poultry and pig farms? The Pietermaritzburg town-lands are about 67 square miles in extent and there are farms on it. Down here you have Paarl, in which there are also farms. From Durban you have such local authority areas almost right up to the Transvaal border. What is going to happen in those areas? Are they going to be limited to one domestic servant? I submit that this is relevant, because the question of domestic servants is tied up very much with the question of farm labour, inasmuch as your so-called domestic servant has to wash the separators and the other utensils used on a farm. The average smallholding farmer has three or four so-called domestic servants who do farm work. Are we going to be restricted? I have a farm inside a municipal area. Are we to be restricted to a limited amount of labour because we are inside the boundaries of the local authority? Will that be enforced, because it takes in that little corridor of land which is now being left to the White man right from Durban to Volksrust. Are we going to have all this difficulty about labour? It is difficult enough already. What will happen if all the foreign Natives are taken away and we inside those areas have to compete for labour outside? Some of us are seven or eight miles from the centre of any transport system. There are no buses coming from the Native villages. What will happen? No one wants this Bill. This is not the traditional South African policy. This country has been run on sound economic lines over the years, but it is this Government which is upsetting the country by this type of measure. It is this type of legislation which brings us into disrepute overseas. It is this unfair treatment of certain sections of the community in this type of legislation that does us all the harm. It is not what we or anyone else say, but what this Government itself does. It is this bad side of apartheid which is doing so much harm to the fair name of South Africa and brings us into disrepute throughout the world.

Mr. Speaker, having listened to the hon. members for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman), Port Elizabeth (South) (Mr. Plewman) and Pietermartizburg (District) (Capt. Henwood), it is perfectly clear to me that the struggle for the Wynberg seat has already started. It is not my intention to become involved in that struggle and I do not propose therefore to react to what has been said by the hon. members concerned. I do want to give this advice to the Leader of the Opposition, however, that if he wants to fight that election with determination, he must not send the two previous speakers to that constituency to state his case, because then he will find that the United Party, which I had always thought would win, will definitely lose that election.

I want to deal rather with a few amendments to the Native (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act, more particularly the amendments in Clause 6 relating to locations-in-the-sky as well as the amendments contained in Clause 11, in which the Minister’s powers are laid down more specifically. These provisions do not really contain new principles, but as I see the position they are necessary and practical measures which logically flow from the legal relationship between the State and the local authorities. This is a matter which has already been discussed here at length, and the hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. F. S. Steyn) has set out the position perfectly clearly. I do not want to go into it again, but I just want to read out what the then Minister of Native Affairs said in 1956. He said—

I put it to you, Sir, that it is clear from this statement that the local authorities are also recognized by this Government as a very useful and important link in the governmental chain. The present Government recognizes those bodies as very essential links and respects them as such. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the city councils in this country fully accept this relationship, and the remarkable thing is that the vast majority of them have no objection to this Bill. Moreover, they see no difficulties because they have nothing to fear from this Bill. But we are faced with this difficulty that the United Party, which has lost all general elections since 1948 and which is still trying, as it is entitled to do, to make the electorate change its mind, does not hesitate in its political campaign to use, I am inclined to say “misuse”, those city councils in which it has a certain amount of influence to adopt delaying tactics in respect of the policy which the Government is implementing and which it was elected to implement. I resent that attitude on the part of the United Party. I think that is the motive underlying the opposition to this Bill, and it is for the same reason that there is so little substance in the criticism which the United Party has put forward here against this Bill and that it makes so little impression on the House and on the public. I have here a cutting from one of the English-language newspapers in the country “De Wet

Nel’s men to be all-powerful: Bill makes puppets of municipal departments.”

That is true.

Mr. Speaker, I was really expecting you to call me to order and to point out that I cannot quote from a newspaper report dealing with the Bill now before the House. The hon. member for Germiston (District) thought that these remarks applied to this legislation. But do you know what the date of this cutting is? It is November 1960 and it applies to quite a different measure. [Laughter.] But that is typical. The United Party, when they criticized the Government’s Bantu policy, sing the same old tune ad nauseam, and that is what we had had here to-day again. That is why I say that we are not impressed.

I want to emphasize the necessity of the measures contained in this Bill and I should like to do so on the basis of examples which I take from the City Council of Johannesburg. I do not do this because I adopt a parochial approach to this matter but because Johannesburg, in the words of the hon. member for Florida (Mr. Miller), has such a model non-White administration. Moreover, I do so because Johannesburg is the city which I know best in the Republic. Let me say here that if any hon. member on the other side wishes to infer from this that this Bill is only aimed at Johannesburg, I definitely deny that that is the case. I contend that the advantages of the measures proposed in this Bill will apply as much to Durban and Cape Town or any other large city in this country as to Johannesburg. The hon. member for Florida has said that Johannesburg has a model administration. I want to examine that argument of his a little more closely. I want to mention just in passing that since 1956 the City Council of Johannesburg, on behalf of the Minister, has been granting licences for the accommodation in city buildings in which they are employed of Bantu performing so-called essential work. But I want to emphasize that the City Council of Johannesburg did not take that task upon its shoulders without having first put up a strenuous struggle. I want to remind the House, and hon. members who come from the Rand will recall and confirm what I say, that it was necessary for the then Minister of Native Affairs, after the Johannesburg City Council had undertaken to implement this locations-in-the-sky legislation and had then come along with an excuse for delaying its implementation, the excuse being that before they implemented this legislation they first wanted to remove from the city all the Bantu who were being housed there unlawfully, to issue a policy directive in which he had to tell the City Council specifically what they had to do and what he expected them to do. It is very important for hon. members to bear that aspect in mind when they level the reproach against the Minister that he is taking powers which are unnecessary at a time when there is such excellent co-operation. I want to say that once this clause is on the Statute Book I hope it will not be necessary for the Minister to take the unusual step of issuing a policy directive to a city council, and I therefore support this clause.

The then Minister anticipated that there would be a reduction of 10 per cent every year in the number of Bantu housed in locations-in-the-sky so that after 10 years the maximum number of Bantu accommodated under licence on the premises to perform essential work would be five per building, as laid down in the Act. But what do we find after five years? The hon. the Deputy Minister has already mentioned certain data. I want to go into it again just briefly. After five years we find that the number of accommodation permits for Bantu men housed under licence in blocks of flats, hotels, etc., has dropped in spite of the fact that the number of buildings to which they relate has increased. But as against that we find that the number of accommodation permits for Bantu women has increased alarmingly from 5,866 to 10,632 and of that number only 550 do not apply to blocks of flats. Instead of the original number having been reduced by 60 per cent, after the Act has been implemented for six years by this model administration of Johannesburg, we find that the numbers housed under licence in the White urban area have almost doubled. The United Party, in order to justify its attitude, comes along with the excuse that the formula according to which they worked at that time did not make provision for placing any restriction on Bantu women. I concede that that is so but then I still want to ask them whether the exploitation of this defect in the formula can be reconciled with the whole spirit of the Act? Can you imagine that any sympathetic local authority would blatantly allow this situation to develop simply because there is a defect in the formula in terms of which they have to operate? No, I contend that over the past six years the Johannesburg City Council, with its eyes open and, I would go so far as to say deliberately, allowed accommodation permits to be issued in respect of Bantu women because in so doing they saw an opportunity to thwart the Government’s policy of migrant labour. We know the United Party’s policy. Their policy is to allow them to come in, to settle in increasing numbers in the White areas and to acquire rights here and in that way to force the Government ultimately to recognize those rights. I do not want to assume the role of prophet, but we know that that is one of the arguments which was advanced against this measure even before it was introduced, and we know that that is the argument that will be advanced against the measure which is going to be introduced next year, but I say that this is a calculated attempt on the part of the United Party; it is misusing its power in the Johannesburg City Council because it wants to force the Government to recognize the existence of a permanent urban Bantu community in terms of United Party policy.

Moreover, I want to go further and say that the City Council has not always applied this formula consistently and fairly, as a study of the figures will clearly indicate. For the purpose of my argument I want to mention just two blocks of flats and three hotels. In the first place I take Block A in which there are 69 flats. In that case the City Council licensed 69 Bantu women, one per flat, as well as 50 Bantu men in the same building. Block B has 61 flats and it is licensed for 68 Bantu women, even more than one woman per flat, and also 47 Bantu men. Take hotel A. That hotel, with 300 rooms, is licensed to house 111 Bantu. Hotel B, with 235 rooms, accommodates 144 Bantu. Hotel C, with 116 rooms, accommodates 81 Bantu. Just imagine, Sir, going to bed as a guest in one of those hotels in which, without your knowledge, this enormous Bantu population is housed on the roof of the hotel. I think if members of the public knew of this they would probably exercise greater care in choosing their place of residence. I want to ask you, Sir, to note the fact that in certain buildings the number of Bantu women accommodated is more than one per flat, whilst the Bantu men housed there cannot possibly all be cleaners, boiler attendants or night watchmen as provided for in the formula. It is perfectly clear to me that the position in those blocks of flats is that licences have also been granted in respect of the private employees of the tenants, employees such as chauffeurs and other personal servants of the tenant. I say that if the hotels and blocks of flats in other cities of the country are able to get along with fewer permanent servants, and if in addition to that we take into account the servants housed in backyards and all the bed-and-break-fast guests whom they receive there, I am not surprised to find that every day of the week in Johannesburg bus-loads of Bantu travel to the northern suburbs where there are no locations because they are housed in blocks of flats and in the backyards of householders in that area. I say it is these circumstances which give rise to the statement that in a suburb like Houghton there are more Bantu who sleep on the premises at night than Whites. I do not know whether that is true. Perhaps the hon. member for Houghton will be able to tell us.

No.

That is the so-called “South African way of life” which the Opposition would like to be perpetuated, and that is why they object to this Bill. Since the beginning of this year the premises have been licensed on a different basis, a basis which takes this experience into account as well as other circumstances which have arisen over the years. Here too we find that there is no cooperation from the Johannesburg City Council; on the contrary we find precisely the same pattern of opposition, and that is that they are supposedly in favour of this but that they want to tackle it in a different way. We find that the City Council is prepared to apply this new formula to new buildings, but they say that other steps should be taken as far as existing buildings are concerned. The plea is put forward that the proposed hostels for Bantu women—the same hostels which the United Party opposed even during this Session—must first be built before the new formula can be applied to the existing buildings. In other words, here we have the same delaying tactics again. But worse still, it seems to me that the City Council now regards this new formula as the final step, and that is something which we cannot accept. We must allow ourselves to be guided by the progress that we are making and the changed circumstances which have come about as a result of that progress. Therefore you will agree with me that not only is it desirable, but essential that the Minister should have the right to impose conditions as far as the granting of permits in regard to the Act on locations-in-the-sky is concerned, and that he should also have the power to withdraw those permits when they have failed to serve their purpose or do not appear to be effective.

I refer further to Clause 11 and I would like to give a few examples as to why the Minister should have the legal right to ask the local authorities for a report, and why he should even be in a position to approve resolutions before they are put into effect. I really do not want to wash Johannesburg’s municipal dirty linen here in the House.

But that is what you do.

But I take exception to the attitude of the Opposition in using their influence wrongly in certain city councils and in compelling people to go so far as to do things which they themselves really do not want to do, and which are contrary to their own wishes and better judgment. The hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Gorshel) has just retaliated, apparently because he feels aggrieved as an ex-Mayor of Johannesburg. I would like to ask him why, if everything was going so smoothly in the administration of Johannesburg’s Bantu affairs, it was necessary for the Government to establish a supervisory committee in Johannesburg, with representatives of the City Council’s Bantu Department and the Government Department on that committee? I would also like to remind him that the Government was compelled to resort to the establishment of a body, which at that time did not exist, in order to carry out certain other tasks which the City Council refused to do, even after they had decided that they should be done. I am referring to the Bantu Resettlement Board. Let the hon. members opposite tell us why the Government was compelled to resort to the establishment of such a body, and then you can judge for yourself whether in Johannesburg we have such a wonderful model as far as Bantu administration is concerned.

I would like to mention another example. The Government laid down that only Bantu with an income of less than R30 per month were to be housed sub-economically. The whole Republic accepts that figure and works accordingly to that, and certain of the larger city councils even show a surplus on their Bantu revenue account, but not Johannesburg. Johannesburg refused to accept the figure of R30 and stipulated that it should be R40. Then the hon. member for Florida (Mr. Miller), another ex-Mayor, comes along and boasts here about Johannesburg’s wonderful revenue account. He forgets that after that account has been subsidized to the extent of more than R1 million from the Bantu Beer Account, the Johannesburg City Council still shows, on its Bantu Revenue Account, a deficit of over R1 million, despite the fact that it stipulated a figure of R40 per month, and not R30 as laid down by the Government. I again emphasize that this legislation is not aimed at Johannesburg, but I ask whether, in the light of these examples, could take it amiss of the Minister for wanting to resort to measures to which he has been forced? I remain convinced that the Opposition will come to realize that this Government is determined to implement what it has undertaken, namely the separation of residential areas, even if it has to be done in the face of opposition from unsympathetic city councils.

Sir, I recall that this morning the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Development addressed this House in very subdued tones, so much so that I was impelled to say to my bench-mate, “I wonder what is wrong with him?” Whereupon the Leader of the Opposition, who could not have heard me, asked the hon. the Deputy Minister to speak up so that he could be heard. Clearly that amiability, that genteel atmosphere in which he wanted us to discuss this Bill, has been destroyed once and for all by the speech of the hon. member for Westdene (Mr. van der Spuy). I recall that the Deputy Minister went out of his way to address a remark to me particularly, when he said that we should not say anything that would disturb the excellent relationship between him—that is, his Department—and the Johannesburg City Council.

Fair.

Sir, now suddenly it is “fair.” It seems the old Rialto is back again, you know, from 100 per cent he drops to 75 per cent, as soon as he is reminded of what he said. However, he said that the relationship was excellent and that co-operation was good. I hope that he reads his Hansard tomorrow.

I have my speech before me.

He adjured me and my kind, my bench-mate the hon. member for Florida (Mr. Miller) who was also a member of the Johannesburg City Council, not to say anything that would disturb this wonderful amity between his Department and the Johannesburg City Council. Sir, we have just heard the hon. member for Westdene, with whom I have at least one thing in common, and that is that we have an interest in the same city but from different points of view. The hon. member for Westdene devoted all his valuable time to making a slashing attack on the same Johannesburg City Council which, at approximately twelve noon to-day, was a model of co-operation as far as the Minister’s Department was concerned. As usual, the two extremes having been shown to us, the truth is probably somewhere between the two of them. I want to say immediately that I would never accuse—I use the word advisedly—the Johannesburg City Council of always having cooperated with the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development. I think it would be an insult to them to say that they have always co-operated, because so many of the policies of this Minister and his predecessors has been so hopelessly wrong that reasonable men could not co-operate; but I will also say that where a policy was reasonable, where it was possible of fulfillment and where it was in the practical interests of the city and of the Bantu under the administration of the Johannesburg City Council, the hon. the Deputy Minister was quite right in saying that then he had the co-operation of the Johannesburg City Council. Far be it from me to say anything this evening to disturb that happy state of affairs, beyond having to correct certain impressions which have been created here, amongst others, by the hon. member for Westdene. He says that there are certain hotels which, for example, having 300 rooms employ and house on their roof 111 Bantu; another one has 235 rooms and houses 114 and so on. He went on to say that if the people who check into those hotels—I am paraphrasing what he said—knew that there were so many Black people above them, they would exercise greater care in their choice of hotels. Sir, I wonder what he is going to do if he ever finds himself at the portals of heaven, where there may well be more Black people above him than White? Is he then going to make another choice? He is welcome to the alternative! Surely he does not expect any person who checks into an hotel in Johannesburg or anywhere else to enquire of the management as to how many Bantu are housed on the roof. He is entitled to complain if he sees Bantu in a European hotel, knowing the laws of the land; he is entitled to complain if Bantu or any other persons make a nuisance of themselves, and interfere in any way with the amenities for which he has paid. But it is of no interest to him whether one Bantu or a hundred Bantu are properly housed out of sight—and in this case, literally out of mind—on the roof of the hotel, because all he has gone to that hotel for is accommodation and if he gets what he wants in that respect, he is not interested in the number of Bantu who may be housed in the hotel building—incidentally housed there, in order to provide him with the amenities for which he wants to pay.

On a point of personal explanation may I just explain what I said with regard to Johannesburg. Here I have my precise words: “I get on reasonably well with the present City Council of Johannesburg. There are occasional hitches but we get along reasonably well.” I did not use the word “excellent” at all.

I thank the hon. the Deputy Minister for that correction, but I put it to him quite objectively that if he can “reasonably” negotiate and come to terms with the Johannesburg City Council, then that is “excellent” in any other context; it is nearly the millennium. I did not really mislead the House, therefore, in paraphrasing what he said. But the fact still remains that his colleague, and presumably his devoted follower, the hon. member for Westdene, who, I think sees himself in the role of “Deputy” Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration, has certainly done his Deputy Minister a grave disservice, for which I hope he is now beginning to prepare his apology—if not his resignation—by destroying this reasonably good atmosphere between the Johannesburg City Council and the Minister. Sir, I was about to say that the other points which the hon. member for Westdene made should be answered. He says that the Council deliberately allowed the number of female Bantu licensed to live on the roofs of blocks of flats to increase from 5,866 to 10,623; that this was a calculated and deliberate act on the part of the City Council in order to thwart Government policy.

That is true.

The statement is true, but not the substance. Sir, does the hon. member seriously believe, and does he really want the House to believe, that the Johannesburg City Council, whether publicly or privately, embarked on a campaign to persuade its citizens, being those who own blocks of flats and the tenants in blocks of flats, to engage as many female Native servants as they could—or could not, economically, do for that matter—in order to thwart Government policy?

They allowed them to move in.

If they allowed them to move in and they applied to the Minister, as they did, for the right to licence them. with the full knowledge and consent of the Minister and his Department, how on earth does the hon. member for Westdene come to the conclusion that the Council has by some subterfuge deliberately thwarted the Government in its policy? How can he say that? Well. I know how he can. but that is not something for discussion now. Sir. another statement which he made and which I think should be dealt with is that it must be clearly understood that the present formula is not a permanent formula. Sir, I do not like to give him shocks—but there is nothing on this earth that is permanent, and therefore Johannesburg will take the sad tidings with its usual courage, I hope, and assume that at some future time the Minister or the Deputy Minister may come to it and say, “the formula for licensing Bantu on the roof of a block of flats is X,” or that there is no formula at all. We will deal with that situation when it arises. I do not think it is right for this hon. member—who, apart from the differences which exist between us at this moment, enjoys a friendly relationship with me—I do not think he should come here to threaten Johannesburg. He can do that when he gets back to Johannesburg, on (I hope) 29 June.

He also wanted me particularly to answer the following question: If everything went so well with the administration of Native Affairs in Johannesburg, why was it necessary to set up the so-called watchdog committee? That was the question he asked me. You will have noticed, Sir, that he is afraid now to say “yes” or “no”, but he did ask me why it was necessary to set up this so-called watchdog committee.

I cannot hear a word.

You cannot hear a word? You are not missing a thing! Of course, I am surprised at the fact that the hon. member uses the word “so-called”. Last week it was a bad word here, and the week before. But he refers to the so-called watchdog committee, and I understand him to refer to the Mentz Committee. As you will remember, Sir, that was the name of the gentleman who was then the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and who caused a certain committee to be set up. as he put it to us—as I remember very clearly—to provide what he called the necessary liaison—and this was his Minister’s decision—between the Department of Bantu Administration and Development and the Johannesburg City Council. If the hon. member for Westdene thinks that that so-called watchdog committee was set up because the Government found that it was necessary to have a dog barking at Johannesburg, then if he wants to insult the Government by suggesting that it could act like a dog barking at a local authority, that is his opinion. I always preferred to think of it in a completely different context, that it was. in fact, a liaison committee because. Johannesburg was, and to this day is the largest centre of concentration of urban Bantu; Johannesburg was and still is and will probably continue to be the local authority where the policy of the Government, of any government, in regard to the administration of its affairs, is put to the severest test for obvious reasons. That is why the committee was set up. It was not because everything went so badly, as the hon. member would like the House to believe. It is perfectly true that Johannesburg, through its City Council, was heard from time to time to object very strongly, to certain aspects of the Government’s Bantu administration policy. But that was not the reason why the committee was set up—because what the Government could not do by compulsion, it certainly could not have done through a liaison committee. Surely that is clear. Sir, I do not want to deal with all the points which the hon. member made, but he even dragged in the Resettlement Board. He says that if the administration of Native Affairs in Johannesburg was so good, why was it necessary to set up the Natives Resettlement Board with the consequent removal of Natives to Meadowlands? Sir. I think he dealt with the same question last year—in fact, I am sure he did—and I think I gave him the answer then. I must say again that the Natives Resettlement Board was set up as a result of the serious objection of the Johannesburg City Council to removing Bantu from sites where they had freehold title to a place where, according to Government policy, they could not have freehold title. I do not want to pursue it any further. To the extent that the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) has attacked the Johannesburg City Council, even she will be heard to confirm my last statement.

In the meantime you did nothing at all.

Yes, you did object to it.

As to this question of the action of the Johannesburg City Council in refusing to accept R30 per month as the criterion for the letting to a Bantu of a house at a sub-economic rental, you know what the position is, Mr. Speaker. In fact the Johannesburg City Council chose, as the hon. member for Westdene quite correctly says, at the expense of the ratepayers, to fix this level of sub-economic tenancy at an income of R40 per month. Does the hon. member for Westdene seriously hold that against the Johannesburg City Council that because it was well aware of the fact which was stated here again this afternoon, that at that time the poverty datum line for a Native family so far as earnings are concerned was R48 per month; that they cannot live on R30 per month? Does he hold it against the White ratepayers of Johannesburg, including some of the supporters of his Party, that they, at their own expense, subsidized the Native Revenue Account in order to make it possible for Bantu to live in houses at all, and to be able to pay the rental? If he holds that against the Johannesburg City Council, then surely he has no goodwill towards any man who has goodwill towards his fellow-men. Sir, I do not want to pursue that any further. But, Sir, the whole catalogue of sins against the Johannesburg City Council ended with the statement that the Johannesburg City Council was so supine, perhaps, or inefficient, that in its Native Revenue Account it had a deficit of R1,000,000. That is what the hon. member said. I say again that if every local authority in South Africa had followed the example of Johannesburg, to the extent that it was able to educate its European ratepayers to the need to subsidize the Native Revenue Account in order to provide a large number of facilities for the Bantu living in Johannesburg, then our position in South Africa to-day might well have been a very much happier one. Again, I am not inclined, unlike the hon. member for Westdene, to go through the facts all over again, but I have them here; I have tried to persuade him before of the number of facilities which the Johannesburg City Council has set up. Sport has been mentioned here this afternoon. Amongst other things we have set up three large stadiums, three swimming pools, 75 soccer fields, 58 basketball courts and 34 tennis courts, etc., etc., etc., and all this could not come out of the Native Revenue Account unless and until the White ratepayers of Johannesburg were prepared to pay for the privileges that the Bantu enjoyed, and enjoy to this day. I must say, to the extent that I have been a member for that local authority and the mayor of that city, I am inordinately proud of this “sin” which the hon. member for Westdene hurls at me. and at my colleagues who had something to do with Johannesburg; that we had the temerity to make living conditions for the Bantu better than they would otherwise have been. I accept that impeachment; it is not a soft impeachment, but I accept it. I am proud to say that I plead guilty. Sir, all this, of course, comes back to the original argument which was raised here this afternoon before the hon. member for Westdene addressed the House. As far as I can make out, it appears that the winds of fear have been blowing through the local authority areas of Potchefstroom, Silverton, Pretoria and Bloemfontein fear of the Bantu who live in the White area and who are employed as domestic servants. The hon. member for Bloemfontein (East) left the House in no doubt on that score. He even casually talked about Poqo being involved, arising from the fact that there were Bantu present in the backyards of White employers in Bloemfontein, for example, and the hon. the Deputy Minister was very pleased to be able to cite the example of the Potchefstroom Native Advisory Board. The Potchefstroom Native Advisory Board had gone out of its way to say to the hon. the Deputy Minister: “Take these Natives out of the backyards and bring them into the Bantu townships or the locations.” Sir, that is a very interesting point. If we have got to the stage in South Africa where our motivation for removing Bantu, male and female, from premises owned or occupied primarily by Whites according to the experience of four local authorities mentioned here by speakers on the Government side of the House is fear of the presence of those Bantu, I say that we have come to a sorry pass in South Africa. It is perhaps because we in Johannesburg, through the years I have known that city, have adopted a somewhat different approach to the Bantu in our city and to the administration of their affairs than the Government has since 1948. that we have no fear of them being in our backyards. You may be afraid in Potchefstroom, in Roodepoort, in Silverton, in Bloemfontein and in Pretoria but we in Johannesburg have never had any occasion to fear the Bantu living in our midst in premises attached to a European-owned dwelling, and I think the reason is to be found in the point which I made a little while ago, and that is that we have always shown our Bantu in Johannesburg that it is our desire to treat them as well as circumstances permit financially and well as, in the last 15 years, Government policy has permitted us to do. That is why we have no fear. I want to say, to dispose of this one point, that we cannot surely be expected to believe seriously that what is good for Silverton is good for the whole country. A very well-meaning local authority rules Silverton, and it is a very pleasant little place that you pass through, between Pretoria and somewhere else, without even having been aware of the fact that you have been through it. We cannot be expected to believe that what is good for Silverton is good for the country. How can anybody stand up in this House, discussing a serious Bill like this because it is serious: we were told that it was a matter of extreme urgency to pass this measure—and hold out to the large local authorities and more particularly to those in the area known as the Witwatersrand complex, where particularly one-third of the urban population of the Republic resides, which means at least one-third of the urban Bantu population, that what is good for Silverton holds good in the Witwatersrand complex and in Johannesburg? Because if that is the reasoning, then we have no basis whatsoever for a discussion, and hence you will find that the United Party insists on the right of the local authority to administer its local affairs. That term includes the administration of the affairs of its Bantu residents and citizens, according to the needs of the population and the needs of the local authority. After the hon. the Deputy Minister has referred to it this morning, I was reminded again by the hon. member for Westdene that it is the Government which determines national policy, and that it is the local authority’s function merely to implement it. Now, the first part of the statement is obviously correct; I will say no more about it, but if anybody talks about tradition he must be very careful, because some of us have a long memory. In the first place, I want to say that traditionally the function of the local authority in South Africa, as in any other country where the local authority system, as we know it, functions, and certainly in those countries like Britain where it originated, was to carry out the policy of the Government or the State, tailored to meet the requirements of its own ratepayers and residents. That is the traditional policy, hence we are entitled to take grave exception to a clause which arbitrarily gives the Minister the power to publish, whenever he so deems fit, a regulation or regulations and in fact to ask for “a report on any aspect of or on any occurrence relating to the administration by such urban local authority” (Clause 11). We are entitled to take umbrage at that, because whether we succeed or not in our opposition to this clause or any other clause in the Bill—and I hesitate to believe that we will succeed in our opposition—the Government will not have won its case on the merits of the case but on the merit of numbers, on a majority vote. There is no doubt whatsoever that any reasonable man, in or out of this House, dealing with the matter apart from any political considerations, is bound to agree that this clause represents a very serious inroad on the powers of the local authority. It goes further than that; in lines 59 and 60 it provides that the local authority shall submit to the Minister, “within a period stated in such or any subsequent notice, copies of any resolution taken or which may thereafter be taken.” Can you believe it, Sir? The local authority is obliged to furnish copies of the resolution before it has taken it—unless words mean nothing! It says, “copies of resolution which may thereafter be taken.” In other words, the local authority according to this Bill, is placed under a duty not to think of, let alone to pass a resolution which requires discussion—not to think until the hon. the Minister has said, “you may think”, and then “you may take a resolution” and then “I may say it is of no force and effect.” I think the hon. the Minister himself is amused by the wording of this clause. It is completely ridiculous. Before the resolution is taken, they must get the consent of the hon. the Minister. How do they know what the resolution is going to be before the resolution is taken? Or have I perhaps misunderstood this clause? [Interjection.] Yes, of course, that is the explanation; I must have misunderstood it! The hon. the Deputy Minister is under a duty to explain it later on, and no doubt he will. The only thing which this does not lay down is that the minutes of the meeting at which a resolution not only was taken, but at which a resolution “may be taken thereafter”, must be provided to the hon. the Deputy Minister. That is all it does not say here; it refers only to reports. But I have no doubt that in the implementation of this particular clause it will be found convenient from time to time for the Department of Bantu Administration and Development to call for the minutes of a Council meeting. I hope that the Deputy Minister will deny that, or give an assurance that that will not happen but there is a deathly hush over him. It will be quite convenient to ask for those minutes, and then the position will have been completely established that the local authority is purely a local body, and has no authority whatsoever in Bantu Administration. If that is what the Government is after, then it could have stated the position much more simply, in two lines instead of having this lengthy clause. But the effect that this particular clause can have, if interpreted by a Minister who is determined to establish or make possible a dictatorship over a local authority, is to take over the administration of the local authority completely. And let no one suggest that he could only do so in regard to Bantu Affairs, because the hon. the Deputy Minister knows very well that Bantu administration in a municipality of any size, where there is almost invariably a larger number of Bantu than other residents, can well be inseparable from the whole of the administration. It permeates every aspect of the Council and of the local authority’s influence and administration. I think the Deputy Minister will be prepared to concede that this position may well arise in terms of the clause as worded here.

Sir, I wish the hon. member for Houghton had not left the Chamber. I have been trying to lay something at the hon. lady’s door.

An HON. MEMBER She has been waiting here for an hour. You are too slow as usual.

I am indeed too slow—but then I am a respectable man. What I want to say is that the hon. member for Houghton went out of her way this afternoon to say that it was the fault of the Johannesburg City Council that no houses had been built in Johannesburg over a certain period of years, and that it was actually the fault of the United Party. That, too, Sir, is a canard which I think I should dispose of immediately. The hon. member for Houghton, as far as I know, lived in Johannesburg for many years. It is not for me to fix the age of a person, but she lived there for many years, and she knows that particularly during the war and up to 1946 Johannesburg was not governed by the United Party. It was governed by a federation of ratepayers’ associations in which there were vigilantes’ associations and residents’ associations which were in fact dominated by people who supported the National Party in an area like Westdene, for example, rather than the United Party.

That is not correct. You cannot tell me anything about the United Party of those days.

You see what I mean, Sir? I say again that Johannesburg was governed by the federation of ratepayers, and whatever the hon. member’s opinion or my opinion may be of the political complexion or beliefs of the individual members, I say again that the United Party did not govern Johannesburg before 1946. That is my first point. My second point is that it is notorious—I do not want to raise a howl of laughter by referring to the war years; we know that it always does arouse laughter from the hon. members over there—it is notorious that during the war there were other complicating factors which did not make it possible to build houses ad lib for Whites, let alone for Blacks.

Business suspended at 6.30 p.m. and resumed at 8.5 p.m.

Evening Sitting

This is by consent, I think, a complicated Bill, even though it is shorter than its forebear. I think the effects of this Bill will be found to be even more far-reaching than its protagonists contemplate this time. I am trying to explain to the hon. member for Westdene that perhaps unwittingly he has misled the House, which has to come to a conclusion on fact rather than opinion. Before business was suspended I pointed out that in the case of the City of Johannesburg, it apparently suited the Government to blow hot and cold by saying at one time that Johannesburg was the stumbling-block in carrying out the policy of the Government in so far as Bantu affairs were concerned; and saying at another time—as we heard to-day—that Johannesburg was reasonably co-operative, and that the relationship between the Department and the Minister, and the officials and the Council was also reasonably good. That being the case, I think statements such as those made by the hon. member for Westdene and by the hon. member for Houghton are calculated merely to disturb that relationship which I think the Minister himself has created to some extent, and the hon. the Deputy Minister at some considerable trouble. It is necessary, therefore, to put some of those statements in their correct perspective by giving the true facts of the matter. I want to complete that aspect of the matter by saying that it is utterly wrong to accuse the Johannesburg City Council of having been responsible for the lack of housing for Bantu during and after the war, and to blame the United Party to boot, for the good reason that the United Party was not in control of Johannesburg; it was, in fact, a federation of ratepayers. Ratepayers are notoriously reluctant to have their rates increased for any reason whatsoever. It does happen sometimes in any local authority that the ratepayers refuse to make the necessary funds available for any purpose whatsoever, whether it be for the benefit of White or Bantu. When the United Party gained control of Johannesburg the position changed completely and very quickly, as the facts prove, because by 1948 the Johannesburg City Council’s housing programme was under way. In 1950 we had set up the Housing Division and the Special Housing Committee of which my colleague on the right was the first chairman, and I happened to have been vice-chairman. At times when the hon. member for Houghton was probably tucked up very warmly in her bed, on a cold morning, people like ourselves were trudging around the present south-western complex in order to inspect the sites, in order to choose the material and in order to proceed with the job of building houses.

That was your job.

Of course it was my job. I am only trying to prove that we did that job. Therefore let nobody be heard to say that the lack of housing in Johannesburg can be laid at the door of the United Party. It is due to the fact that since 1946 this same United Party has administered the affairs of the City Council of Johannesburg that there are to-day 59,000 houses for Bantu, and what is more, another 13,000 are at the blue-print stage. Johannesburg need not be ashamed of any political allegations about lack of foresight, or goodwill, or anything else.

I do want to deal very briefly with the point made by the hon. member for Pretoria (East) (Dr. Otto). He boasted of the fact that there were no “locations-in-the-sky” in Pretoria. He also said that there were more White people than Black people in Pretoria. Frankly, Mr. Speaker, in a country where there are roughly three non-Whites to every White, I do not see how it can be regarded as an achievement if there are more Whites than Blacks in a particular area. But assuming it is an achievement, Sir, then I must draw the attention of the hon. member for Pretoria (East) to the fact that Pretoria happens to be the administrative capital of this country, and that thousands and thousands of civil servants live there, and that in South Africa civil servants are White! Due to that fact, and not due to the efforts of the City Council of Pretoria, there are more White people than Black people in Pretoria. He knows it as well as I.

The general position in regard to the presence of Native servants on the premises of their White employers is one which, I think, merits a very brief consideration. It was held up to-day as if there was something morally wrong in having a Bantu servant housed by his employer. The simple fact—to which the hon. member for Houghton has drawn attention, I must say in all fairness—is that in the majority of cases, that Bantu employee is housed and fed and cared for far better than any Bantu in any township in South Africa. That goes without any question, I think. That being the case, the right of a local authority to give permission to any one of its residents to house Bantu employees on his property should be permissive, as far as this Bill is concerned. I want to go further and say that it should also be permissive in so far as the position between employer and employee, i.e. White and non-White, is concerned. In other words, where an employer gives his Bantu employee the kind of accommodation and the kind of employment that suits that employee, the State should not seek to intervene by saying the employer may not house that Bantu on his property, and the Bantu may not live on that property. It is very often an arrangement which does not only suit the employer, but which, from the point of the Bantu, is eminently suitable. That is borne out by the point I want to make finally—that the idea which the hon. the Deputy Minister put to us to-day, that this new provision would ensure what he called the “gesinslewe”, is completely fallacious. Certainly the majority of the female Bantu employed in the cities and towns do not. as a rule, have their homes in the townships at all. By way of an example: there are thousands of them in Johannesburg who come from the Pietersburg area. To say, therefore, that by taking those Bantu servants off the property of the White employer they are being given an opportunity of enjoying “family life”, is simply not true—because that “family life” may be in Pietersburg. or in some other place which is too remote for them to be able to commute daily to and fro, at will. In other words, Sir, they are going to be shunted out to the townships, which in some cases are already over-crowded, and which in many cases are not exactly ideal from the point of view of a woman who has to travel to and from her work in the early and late hours, alone. The whole effect of this can be merely to destroy a reasonably good living arrangement, and to substitute for it an eminently bad one.

The hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Gorshel) is a person who puts his brains into neutral and then idles with his tongue. He had a lot to say about the position in Johannesburg. I do not know much about that great city, nor do I wish to say much about it. but he set himself up here as an apologist for Johannesburg as a city. I have here before me a cutting from the Transvaler of Thursday, 11 April 1963. I may just say that at the highest levels things may be going fairly well in Johannesburg, but according to this report it seems that at a lower level things are not going so well as far as Bantu administration is concerned. This report is as follows [Translation]—

The report continues—

These are very serious allegations against the City Council of Johannesburg. I have watched the newspapers to see whether any denial has been published, but I have not seen any as yet. The report continues—

That, apparently, is what is going on at the lower levels in Johannesburg. In this connection I should like to submit that Bantu administration is a national matter in South Africa and that Bantu administration, as a national matter, is therefore primarily the duty of the Government of the country, and that local authorities may and should only deal with Bantu administration in so far as it concerns exclusively local matters. For that reason I really take it amiss of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition for saying this morning on this point that we are interfering with the autonomy of the local authorities. Let me say at once that no local authority in any country except South Africa may act as they are acting here in connection with a national matter, such as in regard to Bantu administration. Unfortunately it is something we have inherited from history. Bantu administration should be regarded as an exclusively national matter and ought not to be vested in local authorities. For instance, what concern of local authorities are labour affairs? Labour is a national matter and it ought not to be under the control of local authorities. I wish to deal with what the hon. the Leader of the Opposition further said. He condemned this Bill. He argued that there was not a single good clause in this whole Bill, but he did not adduce any proof for his statements. He simply condemned the Bill in its entirety. He of course went much further than the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman). We realize he is now competing with her because there is an election in the offing at Wynberg. The hon. member is at least honest in her competition because she has stated that there are at least five clauses of which she approves. She has also pleaded for a sixth, namely that the clause dealing with the pass advisers should be included. I should like to appeal to the Minister to accede to her request and to try to have that clause inserted. She condemned only one clause, namely Clause 6. I would like to make a few remarks in regard to what the hon. the Leader of the Opposition said here this morning in that connection. He said: “There is no urgency for this measure”. I am not saying this with the idea of abusing anybody, but I should like to say that the Leader of the Opposition this morning revealed his ignorance of Native legislation in South Africa. As far as any of his statements were concerned, he did not seem to know the existing law relative to the matter he raised here. I shall try to prove that. He said: “There is no urgency for this measure”. The position of the Natives of the Protectorates makes this legislation imperative. Surely he is aware that we are no longer a member of the Commonwealth. Surely he knows a change has taken place. Surely he saw the statement made by Minister Louw on the 30th April. In that statement Minister Louw said this—

I should like hon. members to note this date—

Did the hon. the Leader of the Opposition not read this? Does he not know that the date fixed is the 1st July? How can he then, with any justification, say that there is no urgency for this measure? This legislation must be passed within 14 days, because the date laid down in those negotiations is the 1st July.

What is the date of the Bill? 1965?

You are dreaming, my friend. You are not only dreaming; you are asleep. I should like to add that this legislation is part of a series of legislative and administrative measures. I should like to mention one, namely the amendment of the immigration laws we passed in this House two months or so ago in order to regulate the position between the Protectorates and ourselves. The Leader of the Opposition did not oppose it at the time. He lauded it. Now that we wish to give further effect to those negotiations from which the immigration legislation flowed, he says: “There is no urgency for this measure”. In the meantime administrative steps have been taken and a whole series of border control posts have been established, of which the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is surely aware. I may also mention, to indicate the urgency, the question of the proclamation of released areas in this legislation. Certain negotiations with certain farmers have already reached an advanced stage, but the negotiations cannot be concluded because these lands have not yet been declared released areas. That is a very important part of this legislation and it is a very important reason why a degree of urgency does exist. None of the principles contained in this legislation, as the hon. the Deputy Minister has said, is not of an urgent nature.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition made some statements regarding foreign Natives with which I should like to deal. He confined himself particularly to rural labour because this legislation now seeks to apply also to rural areas the laws relative to the foreign Bantu presently applying to urban areas. In this regard I should like to refer to the Committee on Foreign Bantu. I should like to refer briefly to their report in order to state the position clearly. That Committee tried to provide an answer to the question as to whether South Africa had at its disposal the requisite labour potential in order to maintain the country’s economy without foreign Bantu. After the Committee had reviewed the unemployment among the other racial groups in South Africa, as well as among the indigenous Bantu of South Africa of course, they came to the conclusion that we could manage in this country without the foreign Bantu. In this regard the Committee had at its disposal the report of a committee of the Department of Labour which investigated the matter of the labour potential. In this connection the Leader of the Opposition mentioned the figure of 505,000 indigenous Bantu, referred to as unemployed in the report. I should like to clarify that figure, because it is hurled across the floor of the House time and again as if there are half a million Bantu actually unemployed in South Africa. The Committee very nicely and expressly explained in their report that when they refer to unemployed Bantu, they mean Bantu who are not economically active. There are many Bantu in South Africa who are not economically active, and yet are not unemployed or looking for work. In the Bantu areas the women do the work. The Bantu sit in front of their huts; they do nothing. They are not unemployed; they are merely economically inactive. So when the figure of half a million unemployed is mentioned, it must not just be taken as the figure of Bantu who are unemployed. What is actually meant is people who are not economically active, and among them of course there are a large number who are not unemployed.

Now I come to the point raised this morning by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, namely rural Bantu labour. The Committee investigated this matter as well, and found that out of more than half a million Bantu who are economically inactive, at least 300,000 are in the Bantu homelands and in the rural areas. In other words, more than half of the 500,000 are in the rural areas and in the Banu homelands. The Committee found that 270,000 foreign male Bantu are employed in agriculture. Now, if this surplus of 300,000 is compared with the 270,000, it can obviously be assumed that the rural districts can draw all the labour they require from the homelands and from the rural areas. In this regard I should like to quote the findings of the Committee in that regard. On page 163 of their report the Committee says this-—

This legislation has now come before this House as a result of these findings of the Committee. The Leader of the Opposition has obviously not read this report. I am convinced he has not read it, otherwise he would not have been so concerned, and would not have asked where the farmers in the rural areas are to get their labour in future if the foreign Bantu are to be replaced.

The hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman) apparently treats the foreign Bantu on the same basis as the indigenous Bantu, and says that we want, by means of this legislation, to create a pattern of migrant labour because this measure provides that the foreign Bantu must return within two years. Is the hon. member for Zululand then completely in the dark? Does he not know that ever since we started the mining industry in South Africa, that is to say, for the last 70 years, that has been the pattern of Bantu labour throughout? It is not a pattern we are trying to create by means of this Bill; it is a pattern which already exists. Does the hon. member for Zululand not know that as regards the agricultural industry they are using migrant labour throughout? Even at present large numbers of seasonal labourers come from the homelands and the Protectorates to work for the farmers, and then they return. Does the hon. member not know that? He apparently wants all foreign Bantu to come and reside here on a permanent basis, and the only thing that distinguishes them is the fact that they are citizens of another country. But what security will there be in that, because we know that as soon as permanence of labour is extended to them, we shall have the same state of affairs, namely that they will have to come here on a family basis, and once they come here on a family basis we shall have the same position that arose in regard to the Asiatic population of Natal, which has become a great problem.

This measure also goes a little further. It provides that the Bantu from the Protectorates must be dealt with as foreign Bantu. As I have said, Section 9 of the Urban Areas Act has thus far placed all the Protectorate Bantu on a basis equal to that of our indigenous Bantu. There has never been any discrimination between the two. The measure we are discussing now changes the position and gives effect to the recommendations of this Committee on foreign Bantu, namely that all the Protectorate Bantu shall be regarded as foreign Bantu which in fact they are, and that they shall not use our reference books. Mr. Speaker, we even went so far as to give the Protectorate Bantu the same reference books that we gave our own Bantu. Now they will have to use travel documents. That is the logical outcome of the fact that we are no longer a member of the Commonwealth. Now the hon. the Leader of the Opposition takes exception to the “rigmarole” as he puts it, that will have to be gone through when Bantu from the Protectorates wish to enter the country. What is this rigmarole to which he has referred? The first is that such a person must have a travel document of his country of origin. Any person entering a foreign country from any other country must surely have some document issued in his country of origin. Why should that be a rigmarole now when applied to the Protectorate Bantu? A further requirement is that if he comes here as a labourer, he will be admitted only under a requisition of our Department of Bantu Administration and Development. In other words, his travel document is endorsed at the border control post to the effect that he is going to work as a labourer. In other words, he first receives the permission of our Department, in collaboration with the authorities of the Protectorates, to enter the country. May I emphasize this point: The submission of the hon. member for Houghton is completely wrong. She thinks we want to remove all the Bantu from the White areas. That is not and has never been our policy—and I should like to make this very clear—because we realize only too well that the Bantu need us if they wish to go on living in South Africa, and that at the present time we still need them too. We would disrupt our whole economy in that way. What we are advocating is that every labourer in the White area shall be under control. That is all we want. We must place him under control here in the same way that every White man who goes into the Bantu area will be under control there. That is what this legislation is trying to achieve.

Let me say this, too: The Bantu do not object to this. They realize as well as we do that they are not citizens of South Africa. The hon. member for Houghton adopts the point of view that every Bantu born in South Africa is a citizen of the whole country of South Africa.

That is correct.

Historically it is not correct. According to our constitutional law it may be so at the present time, but historically it is not correct. Historically those Bantu came from their own territories to the White areas; they returned again when their work was done. The pattern has always been that of migrant labour. Nor did they ever regard the White areas as their homelands. They always regarded their own areas as their homelands. Because we have, as it were, assumed guardianship over them, their State has not developed like that of the White section of South Africa. As they have always been under guardianship, their homelands have fallen into an inferior constitutional position. Therefore I say it is historically incorrect, but we are now also busy changing that pattern statutorily and in due course we shall achieve great success in that regard.

I should like to say this in regard to foreign labour. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition suggests that we want to remove the foreign Bantu from South Africa at once. The Committee has said that the influx of foreign Bantu must be stopped immediately, and that the Bantu who are here must be exported gradually, except as far as the mines and industries specified by the Minister and seasonal labourers are concerned, because we appreciate that we must not disrupt the economy of the country by immediately bringing about total separation. Mr. Speaker, we cannot and we do not wish to disrupt our economy. As I have said, all we are aiming at is to obtain control over labour in the White area.

Now I come to what the hon. member for Zululand said regarding borders. It seems to me that the hon. member for Zululand has an obsession as far as borders are concerned. He says we can no longer demarcate the Bantu areas, but every time we get a small number of Bantu in the White area we extend the border a little further. He has mentioned two examples which he maintains appear in this Bill. He says that the area of Hammarsdale is an example where we drew the line a little closer to the White area. He says there is no stability. The hon. member has not taken the trouble to ascertain the facts as far as Hammarsdale is concerned. What are the facts in regard to Hammarsdale? The hon. member has never taken the trouble to investigate the facts in that regard. In the immediate vicinity of the industrial area now arising at Hammarsdale in the White area there is a farm called “Woody Glen” which is already part of the released area, and the farm Woody Glen has already been sub-divided into a number of portions which are in the possession of Bantu, but the major part of the area just to the east of that, and to the south-east of the farm Woody Glen (which is in the released area) is already in the possession of the Bantu, and next to the farm Woody Glen, the Trust has already bought up farms as well. In other words, the entire area there which we now wish to declare a released area is already largely under Bantu control and the Bantu have rights of ownership there, and certain portions already belong to the Trust. I think there are only three Indians and one or two Whites living in that whole area. So for all practical purposes the area is already Bantu area. But what is more, that particular area is suitable for the establishment of townships, and a town is _being established there for those border industries now arising at Hammarsdale. Then the hon. member also referred to the area of Kwa Mashu, the location established to the north of Durban. One of the areas being declared a released area here, is Clermont Township. It adjoins Pinetown and New Germany and those parts of Durban, but it is virtually wholly a Bantu area already. It is controlled by a local health committee and this body has no objection to its being regarded as a Bantu area. Three thousand Bantu employees proceed from there to Durban, Pinetown and New Germany every day. It is almost completely a Bantu area. Now, between that area, which in reality is already in possession of the Bantu, and the Inanda reserve, there are two farms which are still White areas, and now they are being declared a released area in order to combine the Inanda reserve and Clermont so as to make that one released area. Now the hon. member contends that we are constantly extending the area, and he also intimates that we shall soon declare Pinetown a released area, and later Durban as well, and so on. That is the greatest nonsense in the world. It is a factual position we are dealing with there, and we are drawing the line there, because if is in fact the indicated border where the line should have been drawn. Those are the only two places where we are supplementing it.

I regret that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition made a few other blunders in connection with this legislation. He says that in this legislation we not differentiating between a released area and a location. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition now argues that under this Bill the Minister is empowered to order a Bantu to go and reside in a location, or he may order him to go and live in a released area, and the hon. the Leader of the Opposition argues that the last provision is something wholly new. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition has no knowledge of the existing legislation in this regard, because the existing Section 9bis already provides for this position. We are virtually consolidating Section 9 in this legislation; we are transferring it into this Bill, with some consequential amendments which are now necessitated by other measures, but the provision that the Bantu may be committed to a released area is already contained in 9bis of the Act. I really wish to appeal to the hon. Leader of the Opposition, when he attacks Bantu legislation, at least to acquaint himself with the correct legal position in that regard. He says he is a lawyer, but then surely he should at least act like one. However, I understand the Opposition have approached the Leader of the House, and have said that they are pushing four of their leading frontbenchers into this debate, and they will be followed by four assistants. Thus far we have had only a number of back-benchers who spoke together with the Leader of the Opposition, and it looks to me very much as if he has been led from behind and that he has not provided guidance from the front.

The hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) began his speech by making certain personal remarks against the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Gorshel), I must say that I was rather surprised at the remarks that he chose to level against the hon. member for Hospital. He said that the hon. member for Hospital puts his mind in neutral and then idles with his tongue. If there is any hon. member in this House to whom these remarks are most apt, I would say it is the hon. member for Heilbron. We have heard him in this debate making continual interjections and some kind of animal noises. The hon. member for Heilbron chose to attack the hon. Leader of the Opposition, and I suggest that he did so in a particularly petty way. He did so first of all by saying that the hon. Leader of the Opposition does not know what he talks about when he speaks on Bantu Affairs. I repeat that that was a particularly petty remark to make. The hon. member for Heilbron knows that that is not true.

Order! The hon. member may not say that.

Mr. HOURQUEBIE: I withdraw, Mr.

Speaker, and I say that the hon. member should know that it is not true. But we are used to this sort of remark from the hon. member who seems to think that he is the only member in this House who knows any-think about Bantu Affairs, and it is time that he was disillusioned about this. He then went on to say that the Leader of the Opposition had said that there was no urgency for this legislation. The hon. member tried to show that there was urgency for this legislation by referring to the fact that the Minister of Foreign Affairs had made a statement recently, pointing out that as from the 1st of July, foreign Bantu coming into the Republic would require travel documents. That statement is correct, but what I challenge is firstly the fact that Clause 1 of the Bill is not necessary to give effect to the Minister’s statement; but even if Clause 1 is necessary, by what stretch of the imagination is the rest of this Bill necessary to deal with this particular situation? This does not prove any urgency for the other provisions of this Bill. The hon. member criticized the Leader of the Opposition further by suggesting that this Bill does not really go any further than existing legislation relating to the Bantu and that it merely consolidates the position. If the hon. member holds himself out as an expert on Bantu Affairs as he does, he ought to know that this Bill in fact goes much further than merely a consolidating measure. It does in fact contain new provisions which are not at present in our law. provisions which go very much further than those which exist at present. The hon. Leader of the Opposition in particular objected to five clauses, 1, 6, 9, 11 and 26. So the remarks of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition were perfectly justified. The hon. member for Heilbron then went on to deal with the position of the foreign Bantu and pointed out that it was not the Government’s intention to prevent all foreign Bantu from coming into the Republic overnight. He said that the Government realizes that the economy of the Republic requires foreign Bantu and that they will be allowed into the Republic so long as their labour is required. Mr. Speaker, that is the kind of attitude that the Government adopts towards the Bantu in the Western Cape On the one hand the Government declares it as its policy to remove all the Bantu from the Western Cape, and on the other hand the Government says that it will not remove the Bantu in such a way as to disrupt the economy. The two are irreconcilable. So far as the foreign Bantu are concerned, their labour is required in the Republic, as has been stated by the hon. member for Heilbron, and the Government has to face up to that fact, and will have to make provision to provide for them. Any other attitude towards the foreign Bantu is not realistic.

Now before dealing more specifically with the provisions of the Bill, I should like to make certain general remarks. The first is that we on this side of the House have stated why we object to this Bill. Although it has had removed from it some of the objectionable provisions which are contained in the Bill tabled about a month ago. The crux of our objection to this particular Bill is that its aim is precisely the same as that of the previous Bill, although the Government is now taking only a few steps towards its objective instead of taking a great many steps towards it, as it would have done in the previous Bill. That objective is one to which we are entirely opposed, it is to remove from the urban Bantu all forms of security within the area in which he will work and in which probably he will live all his life. That that is so has been confirmed by the hon. member for Heilbron just now when he said that it was not the Government’s intention to remove all Bantu from the White areas because the Government conceded that the Bantu required employment in the Republic on the one hand, and we on the other hand required their labour. So for all time, or certainly for a very long time to come, the position is that there will be large numbers of Bantu in the White areas. So to adopt towards them a policy whereby in the area where they live all their life they will have no form of security must have serious unsettling effects on the Bantu, both physically and psychologically. This is a policy which I suggest should never be implemented. But what do we find? We find that this Government is beginning by this Bill to implement this policy at the very time when the Government itself says that subversive pressures among the Bantu are at their greatest, or at any rate are very great. The Government is therefore beginning to remove all forms of security at a time when the Bantu most need a sense of security and of a stable future. A policy having this effect is I believe not only inhuman, but it is lunacy.

I now come more specifically to the Bill and I want to deal at some length with the provision for limiting the number of Bantu who can live on a householder’s property, Clause 6(d). As has been made clear, we on this side of the House are entirely against this provision There can be no doubt that this provision will discourage the use of Bantu domestic labour and therefore greatly reduce the number of Bantu employed in households, because that labour (so far as all Bantu other than the one that is to be allowed to live on the property is concerned) will become far more expensive, because as hon. members have pointed out the servants will have to be paid so much more to enable them to meet the additional expenses. In fact I believe it is no exaggeration to say that their wage will have to be doubled at least in order to enable them to meet these extra expenses. So, although what the hon. Deputy Minister has said that employers may have as many domestic servants as they like, provided that only one lives on the property, is correct in theory, in practice very few employers will be able to afford more than the one employee who will be allowed to live on the property. So the result must inevitably be large-scale dismissal of domestic servants at a time when there is already serious unemployment amongst domestic servants. The hon. member for Jeppe (Dr. Cronjé) in a previous debate quoted the figure as something like 62,000. That is a very large number and it is a serious step to take to adopt a policy whereby that number will be increased by several thousands as must happen if Clause 6(d) is passed. It is more serious, Mr. Speaker, because domestic employees are generally not able to obtain other employment because they have not the capabilities or the experience to take on any other form of employment. There is no doubt that these people need the employment which they have. They need it not only to live themselves, but in most cases they need it to help them to support relatives either in the location or in the reserves. The Deputy Minister and other speakers on the Government side of the House have said that the Bantu themselves want this legislation. I want to challenge that statement because I cannot accept that it is accurate, and I cannot for this reason: If the domestic servants really prefer to sleep in the locations, they would be doing so now, because there is nothing to stop them from living in the locations and coming to their work every day. And who are all these domestic servants who are so axious to live in the locations and who are asking for this legislation? As usual very few names have been mentioned. One speaker mentioned a Mr. Motha and the Bantu Board of Potchefstroom. I would imagine that Mr. Motha is not a domestic employee himself, nor are the members of the Bantu Board at Potchefstroom domestic employees, and I doubt if they are in a position to speak on behalf of domestic employees. If the attractions of the locations to which the hon. Deputy Minister referred in such glowing terms were real, there would be no need for the provision contained in Clause 6(d) because the Bantu would be attracted to the locations of their own accord. So I believe that the fact that the Government has found it necessary to introduce this provision, makes it clear that the domestic Bantu themselves do not want to live in the locations. Otherwise it would not be necessary to introduce this legislation. The Bantu domestic servants I believe realize fully that no matter how attractive the locations might be in certain respects, and undoubtedly they must have certain advantages for the Bantu, the Bantu living on the premises of their employers realize that despite some advantages they are better off where they are, especially because of the hours and hours that they would have to spend travelling to and fro. Moreover, they would not be able to afford those attractions.

In the short time that is left to me, I want to deal very quickly with what two members on the Government side have said, namely the hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. F. S. Steyn) and the hon. member for Bloemfontein (East) (Mr. Van Rensburg), both of whom stated that the United Party does not care about the Bantu and that its attitude is to make as much money out of them as possible and to exploit the Bantu as much as possible. This is a deplorable statement to make. The United Party is not only composed of members in this House, but has hundreds of thousands of supporters outside, almost half the White population, and to say that about half the White population in South Africa is exploiting the Bantu and is only interested in how much money can be made out of them, is not only untrue but it is very bad for race relations in this country and also very bad for relationships between South Africa and the outside world. I hope that we will not have statements of this sort from the Government members again. We are continually accused on this side of the House of making statements which jeopardize the position of South Africa in the outside world, but statements which are more calculated to jeopardize our position I have yet to hear. So I cannot too strongly deprecate the attitude of these two hon. members. The other point which I wish to make is that I challenge the statements made by the hon. members on the Government side that the local authorities are agents of the Government to carry out Government policy. They are no such thing. A local authority is bound by the laws of the land in the same way as any other citizen is bound by the laws of the land. But members of local authorities are elected not by the Government and they are not Government agents. They are elected by the ratepayers and they are there to look after the interests not of the Government but of the persons living in their area of jurisdiction. I hope again that we will stop hearing these allegations that local authorities are agents of the Government. That is why we are so much against the erosion of the powers of local authorities and that is why we are so much against the provisions of this Bill which do that very thing.

I close by saying that the greatest need at the present moment is to give the urban Bantu security and stability, not in some mythical homeland which he will never see, but in the area in which he works and lives, and this legislation, although not as drastic as the first Bill, takes important steps along the road which will have serious, unsettling effects on the Bantu, and furthermore will result in greatly increasing unemployment among domestic servants. For those reasons I am against this Bill.

The hon. member who has just resumed his seat supported his Leader in respect of a point on which I also wish to address the Leader of the Opposition, and that is the question as to whether local authorities should act and serve as bodies administering Government policy jointly with the Government. The hon. member supports the Leader of the Opposition in saying that every city council in the country ought to lay down its own Bantu policy.

That is not what I said.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition this afternoon suggested most emphatically that the Government is wrong if it expects local authorities to carry out Government policy. I should like to refer hon. members to Section 111 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, which to a great extent gives him the answer to that.

Just listen to the constitutional lawyer of Krugersdorp.

You need not be a lawyer to know this. If the lawyers are too feeble to know it, then it is no wonder that the Leader of the Opposition has strayed so far from the responsibilities imposed upon local authorities. You need not be a lawyer to know that. It is common sense, ordinary civic knowledge. Section 111 provides—

Will the hon. member tell me whether I understood him correctly that it is the duty of city councillors not to take any notice of Acts of Parliament when they receive directions from someone in a higher position, like a Minister?

The attitude we adopt with regard to Bantu affairs, as also laid down in Section 111, is that the control of Bantu affairs is vested in the State President, in other words, in Parliament, and that chaos in South Africa would result if we were to have in this country what the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. member have pleaded for, namely that every city council in the country could arbitrarily lay down its own Bantu policy.

Who said that?

The Leader of the Opposition. That would lead to the greatest chaos in the world. If city councils could simply say to the Minister: Look, your policy is to control the influx of foreign Bantu to that area but our policy is to open the door wide, what is going to be the position? That is what has been urged here all day long, the gates must be opened wide not only to our own Bantu, but also to foreign Bantu. What chaos, if they were to clash with the Minister’s policy, could result in Johannesburg if as many Bantu as wished to come were permitted to enter from the Rhodesias and Nyasaland, Kenya, Tanganyika, Ghana and the whole •continent of Africa?

Does the hon. member not take the laws of the land into consideration?

But surely it is the Leader of the Opposition who does not want respect for the laws of the land, because the laws of the land are surely made here, not in Johannesburg by a local authority. The country’s laws are made here. The hon. member knows that, does he not? If the Central Government wishes to apply influx control and also wishes to control foreign Bantu, surely it must be done according to the laws of the country. The hon. members opposite are the persons who will have to answer the question just put to me by the hon. member. I should like to put the question to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. Let the hon. member for Germiston (District) rise. I think he will revolt against the rebellious attitude of his Leader that every municipality should lay down its own Bantu policy and should do as it pleases, in conflict with what the Central Government wishes to do. What a state of affairs we would have in South Africa if we were to give effect to what we have heard from the Opposition here this afternoon! No wonder the hon. the Leader of the Opposition made such a peculiar speech that nobody can understand why he made it. I, for my part, wish to say that this Bill is as timeous as a Bill could be. Since we became a Republic, not only have our relations with neighbouring states changed considerably, because we no longer have the same constitutional head of state that they have, and therefore they can no longer say that we have the same constitutional head we must accordingly treat them like brothers and sisters, but South Africa has in recent times developed at such a rate that it has attracted the attention of the whole world. In the same way that South Africa will soon be flooded with White immigrants from all over the world—they will flock to us in such numbers that we shall have to restrict them—if we do not have this legislation it is possible that within a few years half the population of the continent of Africa will be within our borders, and I shall tell you why. It is because, among other things, we have a five-year plan in regard to Bantu policy with which we have advanced quite a long way, and which has placed the Bantu in South Africa for the first time in a position where all the other Bantu of the continent are envious of them. Another point is that the wages paid here are constantly rising, and it is a great attraction to all the Bantu on this continent. Another reason is that schemes such as the Orange River Scheme have echoed throughout the world as a whole, and do you not agree that if we have no influx control there will be millions of them here before we know where we are? Do those people not hear all day how capital is flowing into South Africa from all corners of the world, and can they be so dense as not to realize that South Africa is a country on the threshold of great developments? Do they not hear on the radio, and do they not read in the newspapers, that South Africa is the one part of the continent which year after year produces a record production of food, while others are starving? Is that not a great attraction? I shall give another reason. The housing schemes in South Africa compare very favourably, and in fact are much better than those in any part of the continent, and people would even come here from Ghana and Egypt if they were given the opportunity. Take education. They know that we provide universities here for them, as well as secondary and primary education, better than any other part of Africa. Is that not a great attraction? More particularly, seeing that I have mentioned Ghana, do you not think, Mr. President, that many of them want to flee to this country because over there the Leader of the Opposition has been imprisoned, whereas here they could live happily with us. I could go on in this vein until to-morrow, enumerating the attractions that have emerged in the Republic of South Africa as a result of the policy of this Government, and because we have that tremendous attraction it is necessary that we should provide our borders firstly with gaps, gates and openings, so that we can ensure in the first place that our own Bantu in South Africa are not ousted by the Bantu from foreign territories. That is one of the primary reasons why this Bill should be placed on the Statute Book as soon as possible. There are many Bantu in South Africa who reproach us, and quite rightly too, for having permitted Bantu to be recruited outside South Africa to come and work here, whereas our own Bantu cannot find employment because their places have already been filled by foreign Bantu. As the Froneman report rightly said, it is not a question here of merely sending the foreign Bantu out of South Africa, but we have systematically to replace them with our own Bantu, and it is high time that this comes about and that the interests of the Bantu of South Africa are properly safeguarded and that they are not recruited only temporarily for employment in the mines and in industry, but that they should be given a proper opportunity to have full-time employment in South Africa, and that their place shall no longer be taken by strangers.

Will they be settled here permanently?

No, they will not. That is a senseless question and the hon. member knows it is our policy that they may earn their bread here, but they have their own homelands, and they may go and use to the benefit of their own homelands what they have earned here. Therefore I say this is a timeous Bill.

The question of domestic servants is to me one of the most peculiar things. I do not know whether it struck you, Sir. The hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Gorshel) said, among other things, that he had no objection to Bantu living among them.

I did not say that.

I clearly heard the hon. member saying that, and I should like to see his unaltered Hansard. That is one of the burning questions, which is a double-edged sword. If you permit that position to continue, where backyards in the White areas are virtually converted into dwelling-places, miniature locations, you are promoting the conditions which the hon. the Minister described to us to-day, and then it will be impossible for the police to exercise proper control. In the same way that hon. members opposite are concerned about the family life of the Bantu, we have here at hand a means of doing something in the interests of family life, but the Opposition are opposing it. The last speaker said the Bantu do not wish to go and live in the locations, but the word “location” is an obsolete word, something we no longer use. We refer to Bantu residential areas. It is the hon. member’s view, on behalf of his party, that they do not wish to reside there, but wish to live in the White areas. We disagree strongly with the Opposition when they say that, because our approach is that those people are also jealous of their own family life, and it is impossible for the Bantu domestic servants to have a healthy family life if they continue to live in the White residential area. Therefore I say that in the same way that any other employee goes to his place of employment in the daytime and returns to his home in the evening, so also must domestic servants return to their families in the evening, so that they may build up a healthy family life, and as we are now adopting this measure I am shocked that hon. members opposite, who are always so concerned about family life, now allow this opportunity to pass.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. M. J. van den Berg), knowing that I have only a few minutes, will no doubt forgive me if I do not attempt to answer him, much as I would like to. because it is always money for jam to reply to him. But he shocked me when he had the nerve to tell us that the Nationalist Party do not want to separate Bantu families: who has done more than that side of the House to separate Bantu families by much of their dreadful legislation? Sir, I do not want to hold up the House so I will state my case as shortly as possible. Our objection to the evil clauses of this Bill have been fully ventilated by previous speakers on this side, so I will not detain the House for more than a few minutes. I see the Whip has his eye on me, and I dare not. I want to deal only with one aspect, Clause 6 (3), because it concerns a number of people in my constituency. It is obvious that there are no ladies on that side of the House to watch the interests of the women of South Africa, and prevent placing more work on their shoulders. In my constituency, of the people of 45 years and under, I think 60 per cent of married couples both are working. When canvassing, if one goes to a home before 5.30 p.m., one might find some children in the house, but usually both parents are out working, and this is of great importance to them, not only from their financial point of view, but it is to the utmost importance of South Africa from her economic point of view, because we have a shortage of manpower and womanpower. That is why the Government are trying to get immigrants in. Many of those women who are working are not merely clerks but are doing highly skilled jobs and they cannot be spared from their work. If this Bill goes through, these trained women will have to leave their jobs and merely become housewives. There is also the case of the working woman who has several children. She cannot be at work all day and leave the children to come home from school in the afternoon unless there is somebody there to look after and feed them. This will lead to a receding of our birth-rate. We are anxious to see the White people building up the population as quickly as possible. When I was in Australia in 1938 they had that huge country, six times the size of the Republic, with all the national resources in the world and with a small population of about 10 million people yet Australia’s birth rate was about half of one per cent. I met a young couple there who had been married for about six years, and after I got to know them I asked the man why they did not have a family. I said I thought they ought not to wait too long, because if they did not have a family they would feel frustrated and unhappy when they became older. The wife said to me: “I would love to have children, but the trouble is simply that we have no domestics. My neighbour has a child of two and now she has had twins and this girl can now never leave the house after 5 p.m. because nobody will look after the children. The result is that when her husband comes home from work and wants to take her out to dinner or to meet other people she cannot leave the house. Eventually that marriage will break up because he is going out on his own.” Now, hon. members opposite take it for granted that all Bantu domestic servants are married, but that is not the case at all. Large numbers of them are young girls and their parents do not like them to live in the location or hostels, for the simple reason that when they have to go home after sundown they often have to walk along dark roads to get to the nearest bus or train and they are not safe; they might easily be attacked, and under the Immorality Act to-day the wife has to take them home because no man dare go alone in a car with a Bantu woman because he does not know what trumped-up charge may be brought against him. The result is that the wife has to drive them home or else those girls have to risk being attacked on a dark road. That is the position.

Let me say in conclusion that this Bill is another nail in South Africa’s coffin, both economically and for her good name outside. Further it will lead to a lower birth-rate, because when the man and wife are both working they cannot have three or four children unless there is someone to do the chores in the house. I would like to sum up the whole situation in a short apocryphal story. One of my constituents arrived at the Golden Gate and was met by St. Peter. St. Peter said: “You may come right in. We have your identity card; it is in order, and also your permanent exit permit from South Africa.” My constituent said: “One moment, St. Peter, I want to know what the position is here. Have you got any whisky?”. St. Peter said: “I am afraid that it is in very short supply. It costs R50 a bottle, and brandy costs R25 a bottle.” He asked whether there were any cigarettes, and when he was told that there were none he said he would rather see another gentleman before entering. So he went down to the other place, and met the honourable member Dr. Alcohol (Mr. Satan), and he asked him what the position was in regard to whisky. Satan said there was whisky galore at 50 cents a bottle, and brandy at 25 cents a bottle, and there were so many cigarettes that he did not know what to do with them. The man asked how it came about that he had all this stuff available. As you know, Mr. Speaker, Satan is bilingual and he said: “Ou maat, weet jy nie dat vandat die Nasionale Party aan bewind gekom het, het alles na die Hel gegaan nie?”. And that, in short, sums up the position in our poor old South Africa with all this bad legislation going through.

This debate has been remarkable, I think, for more variations of excuses for the extraordinary statements made by the Deputy Minister than I think I have ever seen in a debate in this House before. The Deputy Minister himself began the fantasy in the same way that the Minister of Information began the original fantasy, by saying that this was a Bill which would remove all friction between the races in South Africa. Here we had the Deputy Minister opening the debate and saying that all the provisions of the Bill were to the advantage of the Bantu. I have yet to see what the advantages are in those six clauses which the Leader of the Opposition dealt with. In fact, no one I have heard has even tried to point out how good they are for the Bantu, and where they did say so they were arguments which I will deal with very briefly. When the hon. member for Krugersdorp got up to speak, he made it quite clear that he was not interested in the Bantu but only in the implementation of the policy of the Nationalist Party, and that is all. He was not interested in the welfare of the Bantu. He and other hon. members opposite, when talking about the foreign Bantu, expressed the most wonderful sentiments about the South African Bantu being the ones they wanted to look after, but what do they want to do with them? What does the hon. member for Krugersdorp say he wants to do with the South African Bantu? They want to move them to another foreign place. [Interjections.]

One of the most remarkable things that happened here to-day was the lengths to which some hon. members went in trying to justify one of the most irresponsible statements made by the Deputy Minister, that the local authorities are the agents of the Government. (Interjection.] The Deputy Minister was followed by the hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. F. S. Steyn), who tried to justify the attitude of the Deputy Minister in regard to local authorities. What he said was that the constitutional and traditional pattern of local authorities was that they had always been subservient to the Central Government, and that they had arisen only after the Central Authority had been well established. He said he did not know what the position was in Natal, but in the two old Republics that was the position. I wonder whether the hon. member is aware of Ordinance No. 8 of 1856 of the Orange Free State, the long title of which says that it is an ordinance for electing municipal boards in the cities and towns of the Free State, as laid down by the Volksraad at its meeting in Bloemfontein on 15 February 1856.

So what?

I wonder whether the hon. member is aware of Law 6 of 1883 in the Transvaal? But it goes back much further than that. In Natal they were established as long ago as 1847, and in the Cape even before that. In 1836 there was a consolidating ordinance relating to local authorities and the hon. member for Kempton Park should know that before he makes such statements. In the Cape, which is the cradle of our civilization in this country, when it was ruled as a company enterprise and later as a Crown colony, local government was the only form of local self-determination available to the citizens. For various reasons these things continued, reasons such as the size of the country and the language barriers which existed then. This is part of the heritage of these people. It is the only form of local government they knew, and it was encouraged. [Interjection.] I am trying to prove that the basis on which hon. members opposite tried to justify what the Minister is doing is wrong; it is wrong in history, wrong in law and wrong in conception, and the Deputy Minister ought to know this. The hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Gorshel) pointed this out. We all know that there is a provision of the Constitution which vests Native Affairs in the State President. but it does not say that this policy is to be administered in the local areas by the local authorities under the strict direction and control of the Minister, as his agent. An agent does what his principal tells him what to do, and he may not exceed his authority. This has never happened here. Government as such is not a machine; it is an activity in which people engage, and the politics of local authorities are the activities in which we have been engaged longest in this country and those under which we have most experience. If the Deputy Minister wishes to know something about it—I am not allowed time to read all the quotations I was going to read—I want to refer him to Green’s History of Local Government in South Africa. If he reads this book he will get a clear appreciation of what these local authorities mean in our constitution. They were there when our constitution was formed: they were taken for granted. There is nothing in our constitution which provides for local authorities, save a provision in Section 85 that the Provincial Councils can set up more local authorities, and it is implied that Parliament can do so as well. But there is no other mention of them. The whole of the structure of our constitution was based in those days upon an already existing system of government, well established and well tried, and that is the system of local government. The Deputy Minister must remember that they are responsible to the local voters and not to the Department of Bantu Administration. Government in these areas depends on the interplay of all the various factors which exist, such as industry, the commercial and economic laws and the presence of householders and these persons, and upon the laws of the land which govern the matters in which this interplay is to take place, especially in regard to Native affairs. The point that the Leader of the Opposition made was not that each local authority should have the power to make a separate and different Native policy. That thought was buried at the National Convention in 1909. The Leader of the Opposition said you cannot make these uniform rules because the very basis of the existence of local authorities is that there are different conditions obtaining in each area. What the Deputy Minister wants to do is to create a model set of regulations which will apply right throughout the Republic and which will be devised by one of the Minister’s experts in a back room in Pretoria, and the local conditions and their interplay will never have an effect on these regulations, with the result that they will be useless and bad laws which will be unacceptable to the people of those areas. I want to warn the Deputy Minister that he will find himself in the position with his uniform laws that he will have to alter them to suit the conditions in the various places.

That may be so.

Why is the Deputy Minister taking this power then? Why does he not leave it to the local authorities to make their own variations? Surely they are more competent to do it than the Minister is.

No, they are not.

The hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) is as immodest as he is talkative. If there is one body that knows what is good for the local area, it is the body elected by and responsible to the local ratepayers who live there. [Interjection.] The hon. member for Heilbron seems to be under the impression that it is only the Central Government which has any interest in the maintenance of some sort of order in so far as Natives in the urban areas are concerned. I want to tell him and the Deputy Minister that the persons in the local authority areas are far more concerned about it than any hon. member over there, because they over there, are concerned, as the hon. member for Krugersdorp has made clear, with one thing only, and that is the implementation of the Government’s policy, and they are not interested at all in how this will apply in local areas and what effect it will have upon the administration of local government in those areas.

Inasmuch as Native affairs protrudes itself in every instance upon every local authority and effects the lives of everyone in those areas, it is quite evident that there is only one body which should and can properly deal with it. We know in Durban where the shoe pinches, and we do not want the Deputy Minister to come and tell us where it pinches. [Interjection.] I think this is undemocratic, apart from anything else. [Interjection.] I do not say influx control is undemocratic. I shall deal briefly with influx control. The hon. member for Krugersdorp must not talk to us about influx control, because the United Party introduced influx control, and we believe that it is necessary, unlike the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman). One of the hon. members said that not one per cent of the population understood what the Leader of the Opposition said about local authorities, let alone agreed with it, but I believe that they know more about what my Leader spoke about than they know about what happens in this House and of the affairs of this Government, because these are the affairs which directly concern them.

I will not be long, but before I sit down I want to deal with one of the specific aspects to which so much attention has been devoted in this debate, the question of servants. This Bill does not say that no one can have servants. It does not go as far as that, and yet hon. members have gone to the most extraordinary trouble to think of reasons why this clause should be there. It is going to protect us they say because we will not have servants on our premises. I do not mind telling you, Sir, that as far as my servants are concerned I feel very much safer if I have to go out in the evening knowing that my servants are in my house. But this Bill does not say you must not have any servants. Its object is that eventually we must not have servants living in our area; they must live in the Bantu townships. So they will still be here and we are still going to have the myth that they are not there permanently, but they will live in a place which the Government provides for them, with their families and all their amenities. This is the most typically half-baked attitude towards the problem. The Government is faced with the fact of a group of permanent urban Bantu, and what does it do about it? Nothing whatever. As far as the bed-and-breakfast brigade is concerned, the hon. member for Bloemfontein (East) (Mr. van Rensburg) said that if we cannot do these small things in the morning like making coffee, he does not know what will become of this nation. I think it must be a long time since that hon. member had a number of children to look after. What sort of position exists, as the hon. member for Green Point pointed out, when the wife works? Does the Deputy Minister say that all wives should now cease to work? In effect, this clause discriminates against the poor and makes it quite possible for the rich to have as many servants as they like because they can have White, Asiatic or Coloured servants.

I have very little time left and I want to deal very briefly with what the hon. member for Houghton said when she spoke about influx control. I pointed out that we are in favour of a measure of influx control. It protects the urban Bantu who are here permanently against those who are not here permanently. The hon. member for Houghton should draw a distinction between the urban Bantu permanently resident here and the true migrant labour which is not here permanently, and she would not be so confused.

Why? They are all South African citizens.

There is one clause of this Bill which I welcome enthusiastically and that is the clause providing that Bantu wives can now claim compensation for the unlawful death of their husbands. In this regard I want to point out to the hon. member for Houghton that she was wrong when she said that one of her former colleagues once introduced a Bill into this House dealing with the same thing.

Before I sit down, I should like to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister whether he would give us any idea of the criteria to be applied in the granting of licences to people to allow them to have servants in their home at all. Mr. Speaker, this Bill is completely unnecessary judged by the situation in which we find ourselves to-day. It is completely unnecessary. It is, if anything, an admission on the part of this Government that, in the first place, its townships are not so attractive and, in the second place, that the grass is not so green in the “tuislande” as the Government itself believes and tries to make others believe. Consequently, the problem which we have to-day—a problem which this Government is never going to solve—will remain with us and, what is more, worsen as the years go by.

In replying to this Second Reading debate, I am very sincere when I say that I wish to express my appreciation of the reasonable spirit we have encountered in this debate. When I say that, I include hon. members opposite. I concede that certain members opposite said certain things which might have remained unsaid, and for which insufficient reasons were adduced. Nevertheless I should like to say that if this attitude I have referred to is an augury of a better spirit in debates on Bantu legislation, another argument in favour of the timeousness of this measure can be found in that. The hon. member for Krugersdorp has already referred to that.

I should like to thank those hon. members who have made it possible for me, in the short time at my disposal, to reply to as many points as possible. The hon. member who spoke last, the hon. member for Durban (North) (Mr. M. L. Mitchell) used as his cardinal point the matter of local authorities. I shall briefly reply to his argument just now. I shall do so very effectively by giving an answer that emanated from the circles of his own party. He also raised the point regarding the issue of licences for the occupation of backyards. In this regard I should like to remind the hon. member of what I said this morning when I proposed the second reading of this Bill, namely that I am appealing to local authorities to be very fair in granting licences in this regard. There are people who are indisposed, there are people who are old and who for various other reasons must have their servants at hand during the night. Of course we are very anxious to meet people like those. It will be unreasonable of local authorities not to do so too. But a vigorous and healthy member such as the hon. member for Durban (North), and I myself too, do not qualify as yet for that indulgence. I think one servant is enough for both of us.

But he does not have a Carel de Wet to help him.

I admit the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark (Dr. de Wet) is very good at his work! Hon. members over there must not scoff at the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark and me for being able to do our own work. There are members like that on that side of the House, too. I know their names, but out of loyalty to them I shall not mention them. I see them as I look around me, from the very back row to the row right in front.

What will the hon. member for Green Point (Maj. van der Byl) look like in an apron?

With regard to the amendment moved by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, I should like to say that it is to me strange that such an amendment has been proposed, particularly in the light of the good and reasonable spirit in which the Opposition has conducted this debate. As regards domestic servants, no good case has been made out as to why this Bill should be postponed. This is not a question of injustice to the Bantu, but only of a little love of ease on the part of certain people such as, e.g., the hon. member for Green Point who years ago in this very House—he may have forgotten about it already—said he liked receiving his morning cup of coffee from the hands of his servant. That is what is involved here. It is going rather far to want to abandon this Bill for that reason. Does it concern the foreign Bantu then? No, it does not deal with that. Our own Bantu want us to keep the foreign Bantu out of South Africa. Our Bantu realize it is in their own interests. So this is not an argument justifying the withdrawal of this Bill. A further argument used by them in this regard relates to local authorities. I have already said I shall reply later in connection with this matter. I shall let local authorities themselves reply to that.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, who has informed me that owing to indisposition he will not be able to be present here this evening. referred to the permanency of the labour of the Bantu. Other hon. members, such as the hon. member for Zululand, e.g., also raised that point. The hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. F. S. Steyn), among others, very effectively replied to that argument. I should like to make a small addition to that, and for that purpose I shall associate myself with what has been said by the hon. member for Pretoria (East) (Dr. J. C. Otto). We in South Africa must realize that we have to alter the old deep-seated and wrongly developed pattern in South Africa too. We say that quite frankly. We say equally candidly and equally loudly that that labour pattern must be altered gradually without causing disruption in the labour market. It cannot be done at once. We will therefore have to do more ourselves and we must see to it that our labourers are properly housed in their own residential areas, and we shall to an increasing extent have to make use of our own South African Bantu in so far as their services are required. Labour is the test here. Indeed, it is the only test that justifies their presence in the White areas. Then there are other aspects also affecting the labour pattern such as, e.g., that more opportunities for employment have to be created in or near the Bantu areas. Hon. members know what we are already doing in this connection. Steps should be taken to ensure that Bantu are not attracted to the cities for employment in increasing numbers. All these are matters which are involved in the desired change in the labour pattern. The hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman) has said that we are trying to reconcile two things which are irreconcilable: To have more labour, but at the same time to try to remove the Bantu from the White areas. But these are not the things we are trying to reconcile with one another. What we wish to accomplish by means of this policy—and we are already doing so with a great degree of success—is the conception of different, separate homelands in South Africa for the various communities in South Africa: A homeland for the White man and a homeland for the Bantu. Combined with that we also want to bring about a position where the one may go and work in the other’s homeland, but only on a temporary basis. This is the basis of our policy and these are the things we wish to reconcile with one another, and not at all what the hon. member for Zululand has said we are doing. I also wish to refer to what the hon. member for Zululand said in regard to agitation. He referred to Cato Manor and other places. I think his was a very poor argument. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition also said that a greater degree of agitation could come about in an urban Bantu residential area. It is just the other way about. The greatest opportunities for agitations are more likely to arise in the White areas, where Bantu may in the dead of night, and without any supervision by the master of the house, incite all kinds of agitations. As against that, there is municipal supervision day and night in the Bantu residential area, and therefore there is better control against agitation than there is in the White residential areas. Accordingly this argument as to why increasing numbers of domestic servants should not live in Bantu residential areas does not hold water.

The hon. member for Port Elizabeth (South) (Mr. Plewman), who also apologized for his absence here this evening, referred to the flow of labour and suggested that our Department has not had sufficient experience in this connection. I should like to emphasize that our Department is the only Department in the country which has had country-wide experience as regards the canalization of Bantu labourers on this scale. There is no other Department to equal us in this regard. By means of our bureau system, labour is effectively canalized from head office through the district to every local town. This bureau system for the regulation of Bantu labour was introduced by the present Prime Minister when he was Minister of Native Affairs in the early fifties—a system which laid the foundation for the proper supply of labour from farms to the cities. So I think the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (South) has been very indiscreet in making that allegation. From the mines to the farms, and right into private dwellings, there has been a canalization of Bantu labour under the guidance and supervision of our Department since 1911 when the Labour Regulation Act was passed. I think the hon. member should have studied the matter more carefully before he made that statement. Moreover, the Bantu has learned to recognize our Department as the Department which is most eminently suited to implementing this canalization of labour. The Bantu realize that, and they understand us; we understand them and know how to talk to them about it.

The hon. member for Green Point (Maj. van der Byl) rose to raise only one point, and that was not even a green point. It was a very dry point he raised, namely in regard to servants. He said so many servants are needed in Green Point now because all the people are working. But that is irrelevant. There is nothing in this Bill that debars a Bantu or Coloured servant from looking after children in private homes. Here we are dealing with the places where such servants must sleep. So the hon. member had the wrong end of the stick completely when he used that argument. If it is necessary for the women to go out and work, it ought to be possible for them to have their servants brought from the Bantu residential areas in the mornings before they have to leave for work. I am of course not condemning the women who work, but I think that in such cases they should rather take their children to crêches.

Much has been said about the foreign Bantu, too. I myself do not have much more to say on this point, particularly as other hon. members on this side. amongst others the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman), very effectively replied to the arguments from that side. Let me just say this to the hon. member for Zululand, who spoke here on the high standard of living of the Bantu, that he should realize that that is just the argument against the presence of foreign Bantu in this country. The removal of foreign Bantu from South Africa will in fact result in better labour possibilities for the local Bantu, and therefore they will be able to earn more. The labour market should be reserved for the South African Bantu. Their standard of living will be benefited by that. In addition the money they earn will remain in the country for the benefit of the country’s economy in general and not for the benefit of other countries, as is the position now in regard to these foreign Bantu. The hon. member for Zululand really could have pondered on the matter a little more. He also referred to the “cumbersome method of permits”. He ought to know that our Department, with its Bantu Affairs Commissioners, with its urban areas commissioners and local administration of municipalities and their managers of non-European Affairs, has an extensive administrative network throughout the country. All these authorities and bodies have throughout the years treated the Bantu very fairly, and he knows that many permits are issued for all kinds of purposes. It has always been found that this system of permits works very easily in practice and that there need not be any red tape. There ought not to be any red tape either, as far as this Bill is concerned. That was a very poor argument of the hon. member and therefore I shall not dwell upon it any longer. The hon. member for Port Elizabeth (South) referred, in regard to the foreign Bantu, to the annexures to the Constitution of 1910, and asked what would become of the Bantu of the Protectorates. But that is not a question he should ask us. The hon. member ought to know even before we became a Republic, and even before we left the Commonwealth, Britain itself adopted a course in relation to the three Protectorates which departed from the agreement of 1910. The hon. member is quite wrong, therefore, in laying this matter at our door. The hon. member for Musgrave (Mr. Hourquebie) also referred to this matter of the foreign Bantu, and said that we are trying to reconcile irreconcilable points of view, in that on the one hand we want the labour of the foreign Bantu, whereas on the other hand again, we are against them. The hon. member must remember that we now have to unravel things that have developed in the wrong direction throughout the years. But this can only be done gradually. None of us has ever said that the goals of apartheid must be achieved overnight. As it is, the situation we have to face to-day has developed throughout the years, and it will take more than a day to unravel these things and to put them right. Hon. members know that. However, there is already a process of standing still and a process of moving back. But as I have said, it can only take place gradually in order not to cause disruption as far as the employer as well as the employee are concerned.

I now come to the question of domestic servants. Hon. members opposite made a great fuss in this regard. I cannot understand how intelligent people can ask how poor Bantu domestic servants can be expected to go and sleep for away from their places of employment. I just cannot appreciate such an argument. If they cannot do so, if the argument that people cannot live far away from their places of employment is sound, then the hon. member for Hospital should sleep in his office in Johannesburg instead of returning to his home; then all industrial workers should sleep in factories, and all other urban workers should sleep at their places of employment. But that is no argument. While it may be that hon. members sleep in their jobs during the day, they need not sleep there at night as well.

*The hon. member for Zululand wanted to know what the attitude of Bantu authorities were in this connection. Also the hon. member for Houghton raised the question of wives and children. In this connection I should like to quote from the minutes of a meeting held by chiefs in the Mtunzini area in Zululand. To do this, will be quite sufficient because it will demonstrate the attitude of the Bantu himself towards the question of women and girls working in urban areas and on the farms. During this meeting one of the chiefs said—

This he lamented. Later on in these minutes the following paragraph appears—

Now, this is not what the hon. Minister for Bantu Administration and Development has said or what I have said, but what the Bantu himself said about these matters. The paragraph then ends as follows—

If the hon. member does not agree with the Bantu chiefs, I can do nothing about it. We, however, must respect the views of these chiefs. But let me quote further from these minutes—

The following question was then put to the chief concerned by the Bantu Affairs Commissioner—

This was a straight and very pertinent question. Now, what reply did the chief give? He said—

Another chief said—

Now, what applies to the farms, surely also applies to the towns, because the places where they sleep on the farms are not nearer to their place of work than in the case of the towns.

Which chief said this?

I have his name here, but in fairness to him I shall not divulge it.

I now come to the question of local authorities. Various hon. members opposite, including the Leader of the Opposition, spoke on this matter. They spoke about the “disruption” which this Bill will cause in local authorities. At the same time, however, hon. members opposite admitted that the principle we are introducing here is not a new one but that it has existed for many years already, inter alia, in Sec. 41 of the Urban Areas Act. This principle is more sharply defined in that section and is more comprehensive because it gives us the power to have certain things done at the expense of the city council, which then has to pay for it. But Sec. 41 of the Urban Areas Act has only a limited usefulness, and therefore the principle is again introduced in this Bill with the object of making it applicable to a broader sphere. We have done so because we have gained much experience of city councils and we know that if something of this nature is introduced, a resolution of a city council can be held up so that it cannot be implemented immediately. Then we negotiate with the city councils; we give them the opportunity to negotiate with us, and we negotiate with them, so that we can come to an agreement. This procedure has already had success in many instances, and will therefore also be successful in future.

But I pointed out earlier that I would reply to hon. members by telling them what the city councils themselves have to say about this matter. In the first place, I want to quote a document received from the United Municipal Executive, i.e. the highest body in this sphere. As hon. members know, we published a Bill in February which, in addition to this provision, also contained a proviso to the effect that if a city council did not want to co-operate we could redraft the relevant resolution, although it would then still remain a resolution of the city council. The United Municipal Executive said that this provision went too far, and then asked this—

That is what we then did. They asked us at least to delete the proviso, and we did so. With the rest of the provision they were, in the circumstances, satisfied, although they grumbled about it.

Now I want to come to the Johannesburg City Council. What does the hon. member for Hospital, who is a former Mayor of Johannesburg, say now? He remains quiet. I never dreamt that I would ever see the hon. member for Hospital keeping quiet in this House when he had the opportunity to say something! I want to remind hon. members opposite, and particularly the hon. member for Durban (North), that apart from Natal the Johannesburg City Council is the only large local authority controlled by the United Party. In any case, the Johannesburg City Council was also dissatisfied with the relevant provision in the Bill published in February. Then they wrote to us and I want to quote the following from it—

Yes, but that was in regard to matters of policy.

That hon. member is jumping around now. He is one of those who tried to show this afternoon that it is wrong to say that the city councils are the agents of the Central Government, but here the Johannesburg City Council itself says so. They admit it. The only thing wrong is just that although the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak, because the flesh is the United Party. They know what should be done, and therefore the spirit is willing, but they do not always implement it. Therefore it has already been necessary for us in the past to help them to do these things. The fact that the spirit is at least willing is due to the educational work done by the hon. the Prime Minister when he was still Minister of Native Affairs. We hope still to convert hon. members opposite to that view. My time has almost elapsed—the Whip is sitting next to me—and therefore I want to conclude with these few remarks. I think I have said enough to show that even the Johannesburg City Council is already converted to this view and that in time we will also succeed in converting the United Party as well, although I expect that to be a slow and difficult process.

In the few minutes at my disposal still, I want to say a few words about the question of regulations. This matter is tied up with the matter of local authorities. The position in this regard is very clear. There are already standardized regulations of this nature, although they are not of such a well-founded basis as this one. The regulation in regard to urban Bantu councils is one example of it. These regulations can be issued and then the City Council can either accept them holus-bolus or adapt them to local conditions, or they need do nothing about it. In the last instance, if we are of opinion that the regulations are necessary, we can apply them to the city council concerned. I am convinced that these standardized regulations will promote better administration and modernize existing methods which have already become antiquated. Some of these regulations still date from the 1920s.

Question put: That the word “now,” proposed to be omitted, stand part of the motion.

Upon which the House divided:

AYES—71: Bekker, G. F. H.; Bekker, H.T. van G.; Bekker, M. J. H.; Botha, H. J.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, P. W.; Cloete, J. H.; Coertze, L. I.; Coetzee, B.; Coetzee, P. J.; Cruywagen, W. A.; de Villiers, J. D.; de Wet, C.; du Plessis, H. R. H.; Fouché, J. J. (Sr.); Froneman, G. F. van L.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Haak, J. F. W.; Heystek, J.; Hiemstra, E. C. A.; Jonker, A. H.; Jurgens, J. C.; Kotze, G. P.; Kotzé, S. F.; Labuschagne, J. S.; Loots, J. J.; Malan, A. I.; Maree, G. de K.; Meyer, T.; Mulder, C. P.; Muller, S. L.; Nel, J. A. F.; Nel, M. D. C. de W.; Niemand, F. J.; Otto, J. C.; Pelser, P. C.; Potgieter, J. E.; Rall, J. J.; Sadie, N. C. van R.; Sauer, P. O.; Schlebusch, A. L.; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Schoonbee, J. F.; Smit, H. H.; Stander, A. H.; Steyn, F. S.; Treurnicht, N. F.; van den Berg, G. P.; van den Berg, M. J.; van den Heever, D. J. G.; van der Merwe, P. S.; van der Spuy, J. P.; van der Walt, B. J.; van der Wath, J. G. H.; van Eeden, F. J.; van Niekerk, G. L. H.; van Niekerk, M. C.; van Staden, J. W.; van Wyk, H. J.; van Zyl, J. J. B.; Venter, M. J. de la R.; Venter, W. L. D. M.; Verwoerd, H. F.; Visse, J. H.; von Moltke, J. von S.; Vorster, B. J.; Vosloo, A. H.; Waring, F. W.

Tellers: W. H. Faurie and J. J. Fouché.

NOES—39: Barnett, C; Basson, J. D. du P.; Bowker, T. B.; Bronkhorst, H. J., Cadman, R. M.; Connan, J. M.; de Kock, H. C.; Durrant, R. B.; Emdin, S.; Field, A. N.; Fisher, E. L.; Gay, L. C.; Gorshel, A.; Higgerty, J. W.; Hourquebie, R. G. L.; Malan, E. G.; Miller, H.; Mitchell, D. E.; Mitchell, M. L.; Moore, P. A.; Odell, H. G. O.; Oldfield, G. N.; Radford, A.; Raw, W. V.; Ross, D. G.; Steenkamp, L. S.; Steyn, S. J. M.; Streicher, D. M.; Suzman, H.; Taurog, L. B.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Tucker, H.; van der Byl, P.; Warren, C. M.; Waterson, S. F.; Weiss, U. M.; Wood, L. F.

Tellers: A. Hopewell and T. G. Hughes.

Question affirmed and the amendment dropped.

Motion accordingly agreed to and Bill read a second time.