I move—

We have now come to the third reading of this Bill. I sincerely trust that the institutions to be established by the Minister will serve their purpose and that we shall be able to rehabilitate those unfortunate people who, either because of alcohol or drug addiction, have to go there for treatment. Most of the attention during the debate on this Bill has been concentrated on the question of addiction, addiction to either alcohol or drugs. But it also deals with those people who lead idle lives and who do not support either themselves or their families. At this last stage of the Bill in this House I wish to wish the Minister and his staff good luck in their efforts to make these people self-respecting and workers. I also want to tell the hon. the Minister that in so far as we can be of any help to him we are at his disposal. Everything we can do will be done with goodwill. There are signs that the Department is realizing that it is not enough to take people away from temptation and to keep them isolated for a certain or indefinite time and then release them back to the conditions which produced the state of affairs which caused them to be taken into custody. I wish him luck with his new hospitals. I hope, in association with the Minister of Education, he will get the universities with their sociology students to take part in this work. As I mentioned before the teaching hospitals depend on students to run their hospitals and the students depend on the hospitals for their training. I should like this hon. Minister to see to it, and to make a great effort, to bring into his work the Education Department and particularly the universities. We wish him luck, Sir.

At the third reading of this Bill I wish to say that as far as the discussion on both sides has been concerned this Bill has had a smooth passage. I wish to thank hon. members on both sides of the House for their suggestions and their support. As I said during the course of the second reading the main function of these centres will be to rehabilitate.

I wish to thank the hon. member who has just sat down for his kind words. I can assure him that we shall bear his suggestions in mind. I wish to thank him and all members for the assistance they have offered to the Department and to myself to see if we can make a success of this Bill. We will try to rehabilitate people properly and to return them to their families as worthy citizens of our social life.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

I move—That the Bill be now read a third time.

This is a Bill which is another welcome step in the treatment of those who are mentally disturbed. I want to emphasize, Sir, that it is only a very small step. If this Department, I refer specially to that part which comes under the control of the Commissioner for Mental Hygiene, keeps in touch with progress in other parts of the world, if the social life of the country can be so adapted to produce a life for these people who are disturbed and if the modern treatment and the advances in medicine and diet are accepted and studied, one hopes that the necessity for special legislation for these people will ultimately disappear. One hopes that the day will come when a Minister of Health will come to this House and ask for the repeal of the Mental Disorders Act. That day may be distant but it is not impossible of achievement. The original Mental Disorders Act was introduced under circumstances where it was felt that the only thing to do with those who were disturbed mentally was to put them out of sight, to put a wall round them until they died or until such time, by some freak or fluke, they became sufficiently well to be released. One sees in the future the possibility of an entire disappearance of this group of people, except perhaps the psychopaths who are criminals. And the criminal should be put where he belongs. Apart from those, Sir, it would be a fair day to this Minister if he could come to this House and repeal the Mental Disorders Act. I think that day will come.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Mr. Speaker, I will not detain the House for very long. When business was suspended last night, I was saying that provisional taxpayers experience difficulty in carrying out the provisions of the P.A.Y.E. system. As far as employees are concerned, I do not think there is very much difficulty. The new system has only been in operation for a very short while and I think the difficulties which are being experienced will probably be ironed out at a later stage. For that reason too I am one of those who do not want to advocate far-reaching changes at this stage. I would like to see this system operating for a little while longer to see how it operates in practice.

I want to support the hon. member for Pretoria (Central) (Mr. van den Heever) in his remarks about provisional taxpayers. I do not see very much use in the estimates which are submitted. If there are cases in which the income of provisional taxpayers has dropped considerably in the present year or drops in any future year as opposed to the preceding year, then I feel that it will be easy for them to make representations to the Receiver of Revenue and to make some sort of arrangement with him. We are going to experience a great deal of difficulty under this system whereby every provisional taxpayer is expected to make an estimate of his income every four months. I pointed out last night that the system was difficult, particularly for the farmers, and we hope that with more experience and after having had a longer period in which to gain that experience, far more simplified methods will be found for income-tax collection.

I want to associate myself with what the hon. member for Somerset East (Mr. Vosloo) said last night—that under this new set-up in terms of which so many involved forms have to be filled in, we have thus far received a great deal of assistance from the officials who are entrusted with the collection of taxes. I also want to associate myself with what the hon. member for Pretoria (Central) (Mr. van den Heever) said last night and that is that in his opinion we are spending a great deal of valuable time and money on forms which are being sent out to provisional taxpayers every three months and that it would be better if these taxpayers were merely sent an assessment for a quarter of the tax to be paid by them. I want to associate myself wholeheartedly with those remarks for the simple reason that in any case we are going to receive a great many complaints from people who are not used to having to struggle with forms and who will now have to fill in these tax forms every three months and work out how much they have to pay. I think that it will be better therefore if effect can be given to the suggestion of the hon. member for Pretoria (Central) that assessments should be sent to these people every quarter.

Another point that I want to make is this. If one makes one’s estimate for the coming year and that estimate eventually appears to be less than 90 per cent of one’s income, one is liable to a penalty. I want to ask that attention be given to this question of a penalty for the simple reason that it is almost impossible for many people to make an accurate estimate of what their income is going to be. Take the case of people whose income consists of dividends. These people have no idea beforehand of the dividend that is going to be declared by a company. The company may declare a far higher dividend than was anticipated. The shareholder will have no idea as to what that dividend is going to be. On the other hand, take the case of a wool farmer. His main income is derived from wool, and we know how wool prices fluctuate from year to year. Wool may fetch a certain price this year but next year the percentages may be higher than this year. That person will then also find himself in difficulty. I want to ask that attention be given to this question of the penalty.

A number of points have been raised and I shall deal shortly with them or with as many as I think merit a full reply. The hon. member for Pinetown (Mr. Hopewell) has asked me about income-tax collections. The figures I am about to give him have not yet been audited. The total income-tax, including non-resident shareholders’ tax, undistributed profits tax and donations tax is as follows: Original Estimate R357,350,000; Revised Estimate: R362,514,000; Collections (subject to audit): R367,115,693. I shall give the break-up for the more important variations:

The others are very close and I shall not mention them. These I have mentioned show the greatest variation between the original estimate, the revised estimate and the collections.

The hon. member has also asked me about the Transkei formula. He has particularly asked me about the term “ordinary resident”. People who have knowledge of the law will know that that has been one of the most difficult terms to define throughout the history of the country or of any country. You find it recurring in many laws but it has still escaped a close definition. There was a time when we said ubi uxor ibi domus (wherever your wife was there was your home). But circumstances and times have changed very much since then. That old adage of the Roman law has not got the same weight to-day as it used to have.

The provisions of Clause 30 only give effect to Section 52 of the Transkei Constitution Act. This phrase “ordinarily resident” will be given its usual meaning as it may be interpreted at any point of time by the courts of the land.

Are you leaving it then to give jobs to the lawyers?

If the hon. member can suggest anything better we will be prepared to accept it.

Whether a person is ordinarily resident or not, will be a question which will have to be decided in the first place by the Revenue Department in each case according to legal principles. If that Department’s decision is called in question there lies an appeal to the courts of law.

The other point is that a White person—I think that was the question—cannot be a citizen of the Transkei. As is known, those who are there now are excluded and unless the law is changed, a White person resident there is not a citizen of the Transkei. Ordinarily a Transkeian citizen employed outside the Transkei will be found not to be ordinarily resident in the Transkei. This will be so in respect of those citizens of the Transkei who work and are resident outside the Transkei. The formula of tax will be, as members know, the tax payable by Transkei citizens ordinarily resident in the Transkei over the total tax payable by Cape residents, expressed as a percentage.

The hon. member has also put certain objections to me in regard to the forms under P.A.Y.E., particularly the form I.R.P. 6. Here I must admit that things did not go quite the way in which we expected them to go. The I.R.P. form had to be ready for the payments which fell due at the end of April. These could, consequently, not be delayed any longer. The printing of the explanatory pamphlet took longer than was expected. Consequently it was not possible to issue the form and the pamphlet together in some areas. As a result, those who did not receive the I.R.P. 6 form together with the pamphlet were not in a position to know exactly what they had to do. In other areas, however, these two were issued together, i.e. for those taxpayers who are required to make payments at the end of this month. However, the pamphlet has now been issued to all provisional taxpayers. These should now experience no difficulty when they have the assistance of the pamphlet together with the form.

Hon. members will remember that we tried to educate the public in regard to the forms which were going to be required. In fact, several of these forms were published as early as 26 October 1962, to afford the public an opportunity of studying the requirements of the various forms and become accustomed to them. Hon. members will also realize that there is only one way of learning these matters and that is by doing the work in practice. Now we have the position that all the opportunities we gave the public of getting to know what is required of them in theory have broken down. Now they have to learn by doing the actual work. I think I can say that hon. members have all been very generous in admitting that it is to be expected that in a change-over of this nature there are bound to be hitches. I, too, said, when introducing the system at the beginning of this Session, that it was impossible to expect that the introduction of a new system such as this should be without teething troubles. However, I must ask hon. members as well as the public to be patient, and I ask my Department to be both patient and lenient.

In this connection I should like to say that I appreciate the tributes which have been paid by hon. members to my Department. That fact goes to show that the Department has already acted in that spirit. They have really been giving kid glove treatment to transgressors of the law on the understanding that that was due more to ignorance than to anything else. However, if there is a tendency consistently to run counter to what the law requires, the Department would, ultimately, have to take much firmer steps than in the past. But if the Department has already shown its willingness to be of assistance in this switchover period, I do not think I need ask them again to be indulgent. I am glad that the attitude of the Department is being appreciated. Hon. members will also understand that in so far as these forms are concerned, these are by no means final. The Department as well has to learn by experience.

*As regards the hon. member for Pretoria (Central) (Mr. van den Heever) and the other members who supported his argument, I just want to say that it is difficult at this stage to express a final opinion on the necessity or otherwise of the various forms. The idea which he has in this connection seems to be simple. As far as I have been able to ascertain, the main objection to these forms at the moment is that they do not fulfil the aim of the scheme, that is, to ensure that the payments made in the course of the year are as nearly as possible equal to the amount which will appear to be payable at the end of the year. The aim is to ensure that the extra amount still to be collected will be as small as possible. In any event, we shall give further consideration to the views expressed in this connection. It is understandable that at the outset there will be a good deal of difficulty in understanding all the forms, but once we have become used to them, it will be possible for these forms to be completed as automatically as one completes a cheque form.

I should like to point out to the hon. the Minister that I said that the third payment should be accompanied by an estimate of income.

In any event, we shall investigate the proposal. As I have said already, not one of these forms is final. On the other hand we cannot change them too soon. We must first give them a trial to see whether they are effective or not.

The hon. member for Pinetown has also raised the question of the classification of public and private companies. He said, and quite rightly, that I made a full statement about it last year accompanied with a promise that I would go into the matter. Hon. members will realize that the whole object of the classification is to compel private companies to pay out moneys to their shareholders and in that way to see to it that those shareholders, who are usually a small family group, do not evade taxation. That has always been the prime object as I also explained last year. Last year I said that as far as I could see there were only two alternatives. The one while having certain definite advantages, also has serious disadvantages. The second alternative involves retaining the classification and then having to tinker with the problem from time to time. If I am now asked what a fundamental solution of this problem will be, I must say that I still see only those two alternatives which I saw last year.

The Department is at present awaiting the result of an appeal which has been lodged with the Appellate Division in regard to this matter. The parties concerned have agreed that the case should go direct to the Appellate Division. The next step will be for the special court to prepare a stated case and reach agreement with the appellant in regard to the terms of that stated case, copies of which must thereafter be submitted to the Appellate Division. There is therefore an appeal pending and we should like to await the result of this appeal before introducing any changes. It would, I think, be unwise to do that before the result of the appeal is known. Further consideration will, therefore, be given to the matter when the Appellate Division has given a decision in the matter. If legislation is necessary, it can then be introduced next year. It was, furthermore, intended, as I said earlier, that this year we would not introduce any contentious provisions into the Income Tax Bill. My Department is fully occupied with P.A.Y.E. machinery and consequently we considered it advisable to keep to the minimum any amendments to the Income Tax Act this year. So, as far as this point is concerned, we are taking up the attitude that we would like to reserve judgment until the decision of the Appellate Division is known and until we have more time at our disposal to study it before introducing the necessary legislation. That will be done during the coming recess.

What are the two alternatives you referred to earlier?

Particulars can be found in Col. 8721 of the Hansard debates of 21 June 1962.

Can the hon. the Minister tell us whether, when he and his Department will be giving consideration to the question of private companies, they will also give consideration to the question of a public company where the majority of the shares are controlled by an individual or a small group of people?

Yes, we will give attention to that aspect of the matter, if it is on the same basis. Hon. members will realize that the status of companies is a very delicate matter which requires serious consideration and in many cases, perhaps, consultation with interested bodies.

The hon. member for Benoni (Mr. Ross) has surprised me by the extent of generosity he has shown towards the Department in regard to its carrying out of the P.A.Y.E. system. I want to thank him for that kindness. There is one other provision in respect of which he has asked for a further relaxation. We are now extending to mining companies the right to write off exploration expenses as and when incurred. In addition to this the hon. member wants us to give a rebate on income-tax. That is a matter which can be considered when we have a large surplus available for distribution among the various causes and people. At the moment I am afraid, however, that we cannot do more than what we have done in the Budget. Incidentally, this concession was gratefully received by the mining finance companies who in the past have not had the privilege which gold-mining companies had. The mining finance companies are now, however, also placed in the same position and they are very grateful for the generous concession which has been made to them in this respect.

*The hon. member for Somerset East put certain questions to me with regard to the purchase of breeding stock. I informed the hon. member that if I had to furnish him with a full answer I would have to give a lengthy reply. I tried to deal with the matter briefly in my second-reading speech, but apparently it was not sufficient. I therefore gave him, for his information and use, a complete and full statement about the position. He is entitled to make use of it. I did that because I did not think that I would be justified in devoting much attention in the debate itself to a relatively minor point. It is very difficult to do justice to it without dealing with it at length.

The hon. member for Smithfield (Mr. J. J. Fouché) also raised the question of the P.A.Y.E. forms. In this regard I have already said that we are not wedded to these forms, nor to the idea that the collection of income-tax from the provisional taxpayer must necessarily take place in this way. But we feel that we must first give this experiment a proper trial before we turn to another procedure. I do not think it can be said we have given the present procedure a reasonable trial as yet. All the suggestions made in this regard will be taken into consideration in due course.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

I move—

The present Bill, as its short title indicates, deals with matters affecting the revenues of the Republic. As these matters are essentially of a similar character, I feel—and here I trust hon. members will agree with me—that they can most conveniently be dealt with together in one and the same Bill. In the first place, the Bill contains a provision concerning the head of the Department of Inland Revenue, who is at present known as the “Commissioner for Inland Revenue”. The Public Service Commission has, for the sake of uniformity, requested that the Commissioner’s title be changed to the “Secretary for Inland Revenue”. This will be done in the near future by way of an amendment to the First Schedule to the Public Service Act, 1957. There are many references in various laws to the “Commissioner for Inland Revenue” and it is not at present possible to introduce amendments to all such laws. Clause 1 of the Bill provides for all such references to be interpreted as a reference to the head of the Department of Inland Revenue whatever his designation may be and the laws in question will be amended as and when the opportunity thereto arises.

Secondly, the Bill provides for the reduction from 12 to 7½ per cent in the rate of the penalty payable in respect of late payments of transfer duty. This reduction, which was foreshadowed in my Budget statement, will apply in respect of late payments of transfer duty made on or after 20 March 1963. The Transfer Duty Act allows a period of six months for the payment of the duty—six months, not from the passing of the transfer but from the date of sale. If the six-month period ends before 19 March 1963, the penalty will be calculated still at the old rate, i.e at 12 per cent per annum up to and including 19 March 1963, and at the rate of 7½ per cent thereafter. That may mean three months or more under the old rate or three months or more under the new rate, as the case may be. The rate of penalty-interest on transfer duty payments which have still to be made under various repealed statutes is similarly reduced.

The Bill makes various other minor amendments to the Transfer Duty Act, to the Exchequer and Audit Act and to the Stamp Duties Act. These amendments are explained in the explanatory memorandum which has been made available to hon. members. Consequently, I do not think it is necessary for me to deal with these minor points again.

Therefore I move that the Bill be read a second time.

Mr. Speaker, we on this side of the House have no objection to the Bill being read a second time. As the Minister has indicated, this Bill provides for a reduction in the rate of the penalty payable in respect of late payments of transfer duty. We consider the reduction in this respect from 12 to 7½ per cent to be realistic. Neither do we have any objection to the proposition to amend the title of the Commissioner for Inland Revenue. There are various other categories applied to his title. Accordingly, we have no objection to his title being changed to that of Secretary for Inland Revenue.

I welcome the reduction of the penalty interest on arrears transfer duty from 12 to 7½ per cent. However, I am rather concerned about the fact that this reduction will be applicable only from 20 March 1963. I should like to put it to the Minister that he can be safely generous here by making the reduction applicable to all transfers now taking place, irrespective of whether a deed of sale was entered into prior to 20 March 1963 or not. My reason for making this appeal is that it is the middle and lower income groups—this is a well-known fact—who usually purchase properties under deeds of sale and take a period of from three to anything up to five years before they take transfer. It is these groups which have been penalized throughout the years by having had to pay this heavy transfer duty.

Now that a concession is being made in regard to the rate of interest on arrear transfer duty, I suggest to the Minister that he should go the whole way and make it applicable to all transfers which will now be registered and not limit it to only those taking place after 20 March 1963. By doing that the hon. the Minister will show the middle and lower income groups that consideration which he really had in mind.

Mr.

Speaker, here is really a case where a gift horse is being looked in the mouth. The hon. member should realize that when you deal with revenue matters, the traditional course to take is to make any concessions applicable from the date of the Budget speech. That applies whether there is a decrease or an increase. I do not want to depart from this practice in this case because then I shall also have to apply it when I increase taxation falling under these revenue matters. That would, I think, be a wrong principle. And what is more, the hon. member would not agree with it. He should like to see it applied only when there is a reduction in revenue but not when there is an increase. I think it is best to stick to the old tradition and to make all changes in revenue date from the day of the Budget statement.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

I move—

In implementing the two Acts in question we found in the course of time that there were certain shortcomings which made the administration of the Acts difficult. It was therefore considered necessary to introduce this amending Bill. As hon. members perhaps know the provisions of the two Acts in question are almost identical. Thus it will be noticed that the amendments and additions made by this amending Bill contain the same principles in the case of both these Acts. In fact the changes are almost identical.

Under Sections 2 (3) and 3 (3) of the Extension of University Education Act, 1959 (Act No. 45 of 1959), and Section 2 (4) (b) of the University College of Fort Hare Transfer Act. 1959 (Act No. 64 of 1959), there may be paid annually out of moneys appropriated by Parliament for the purpose, such sums of money to the council of a university college as may appear to be necessary for the performance of the functions entrusted to such a council under the Acts referred to. Since the establishment of the university colleges for Indians and for Coloureds, these two colleges have been receiving funds within the framework of their respective approved annual estimates. These moneys are then utilized as they think fit by the respective councils by virtue of the powers conferred upon them by the relevant Act. It has now been decided to give greater financial control, similar to that enjoyed by the other two colleges since their establishment, to the three Bantu university colleges as from 1 April 1963.

But if that is done, it is necessary to make provision for proper control. Accordingly it is necessary that the Controller and Auditor-General should remain responsible for the auditing of the books of the colleges in question. There is no provision in the relative Acts, however, authorizing the Controller and Auditor-General to undertake the audit. Clauses 1 and 6 of this Bill now rectify the position; in other words, they empower the Controller and Auditor-General to undertake that work. Since the books of both the college for Coloureds and the college for Indians have been audited in the past by the Controller and Auditor-General, without any authority having existed for it, it is necessary to make the relevant provision in respect of Act No. 45 of 1959 retrospective. The provision with retrospective effect in this Bill therefore is necessary to validate the audit of the books of those two colleges from the date concerned.

The provisions of the existing Acts do not indicate in whom the power vests to transfer persons employed at the university colleges. It seems that it is vested by implication in the Minister concerned, in view of the fact that Section 37 of Act No. 45 and Section 36 of Act No. 64 of 1959 empower the Minister to delegate his powers under Sections 28 and 29 of the two Acts in question to the Secretary and other officers of his Department. That means in effect, inter alia, that the Ministers concerned may delegate the power to transfer. But there is no provision in the relevant Acts that the Minister in fact has that power of transfer. It is necessary therefore to rectify the position in this connection, and accordingly it is clearly provided in this Bill that the power to transfer will vest in the Minister. He will be able to delegate this power. In other words, the Bill merely sets out more clearly what is already the position under the Act by implication.

Furthermore, it has been found necessary to provide for the secondment of officials from one university college to another university college, a State Department or another body. Hon. members will appreciate that it is necessary to make provision for such a contingency. It happens sometimes that we want to use a person employed at a certain university college at another university college. However, the existing Acts make no provision for this. It is now proposed to insert a provision similar to that contained in other laws governing personnel, such as the Public Service Act.

Clauses 3 and 8 of the Bill now remedy these defects. It is further proposed to provide for the delegation of the Minister’s powers in respect of the appointment, promotion and discharge of persons employed in State posts as well as Council posts. The existing sections only provide for the delegation of this power in respect of State posts, other than teaching posts. Furthermore, delegation of the Minister’s powers is also being extended to include Section 24 (2) of Act No. 45 and Section 25 of Act No. 64, that is to say, the conversion of a Council post into a State post and vice versa. The position at the present time is that the Secretary of the Department may under delegated powers approve of the appointment of a person to a post which is to be converted, but the conversion of the post in question must still be approved by the Minister. The delegation of the power to make appointments does not therefore relieve the Minister of any work, unless simultaneously with the appointment the Secretary is able to dispose of the conversion of the post. The reason why that is being done is self-evident. It has been our policy from the beginning to give the staff to be appointed the choice to serve either in a State post or in a Council post. The post which becomes vacant may be a State post and there may be a good applicant who prefers to serve in a Council post. The Secretary has the power to make that appointment, but he does not have the power to convert the post. In the past this system worked so well at the colleges where the choice was left to the personnel to decide for themselves, in view of their future careers and pension interests, whether they preferred to occupy a State post or a Council post that it was not really necessary for the Minister to exercise that power himself. That is why we should like to have the authority to be able to delegate that task of the Minister to the Secretary as well. That is really all that is provided in this Bill. These are purely administrative matters. No principles are involved and I hope the House will give its consent to the second reading of this Bill.

This side of the House has no objection to these administrative arrangements and we will support the second reading. There are one or two things, however, to which I want to refer. The first is the acknowledgment by the hon. the Minister this morning that the attitude that we adopted when the original Bill was introduced was correct; that there were certain serious defects in that legislation. We pointed out those defects at the time. You will not permit me, Sir, to indicate further defects in certain of the clauses which are now before us, but I want to refer to one or two matters, one of which the hon. the Minister has already explained but which to my mind does not appear to be practicable except in so far as the hon. the Minister has said that the Auditor-General has already been undertaking these audits. In doing so he has therefore gone beyond the scope of the law. Have the audited accounts already been submitted to the House? As far as I can remember I have seen no audited accounts and I would like to know whether such accounts have been submitted. If it has not yet been done, I feel that it would be impracticable to ask that it should be done at this stage. So much time has elapsed that I wonder whether it will be worth while to do it.

Another matter which is not quite clear to me is that in Clause 1 (2) it is stated that sub-section (1) will be deemed to have come into operation on 19 July 1959 but Clause 6 (2) on the other hand says that sub-section (1) will be deemed to have come into operation on 1 April 1963. Why has that last date been selected? I hope that the hon. the Minister will explain this to us.

The original Act made provision for the hon. the Minister to delegate to the Secretary such powers in regard to (a) State posts for the administrative and clerical staff and (b) State posts for the other employees as he may deem necessary and also under certain circumstances to an “official” of the Department. The hon. the Minister will remember that we objected at the time to this delegation of power. In terms of this Bill that provision falls away. The provision dealing with the delegation of powers is being deleted, and I would like to know from the hon. the Minister why this is being done. As I read the section that delegation of power in regard to posts for the administrative and clerical staff and posts for such other employees as the hon. the Minister may deem necessary, now falls away.

I confine myself to these few remarks and questions and I hope that the hon. the Minister will explain these few points.

This Bill which has now been introduced is just one stage further on the road to reducing higher education among our non-White population to a lower status than higher education among the Whites. When the Separate Universities Bill was introduced, the Bill which became the Extension of University Education Bill, we said at the time that to create these State institutions and State posts was lowering the status of the academic man in higher education to that of an ordinary civil servant controlled by the disciplinary regulations of the Civil Service, and we felt that that was undesirable. Here again we have in this Bill another development of that policy. Here we have provision made in the Bill converting Council posts into State posts, and the authority is not only that of the Minister but it can be delegated to the Secretary of the Department. My suggestion to the Minister is this, that this university education should be cut adrift altogether from the Bantu Education Fund or from any fund that controls primary or secondary education. I know that the hon. the Minister and his Department, through the Department of Information, has advertised in papers overseas that these university colleges would soon become universities, but they will never become universities if we go along in this way. That is not the conception of a university that we on this side of the House have. We believe in a university as an institution where academic freedom prevails, but under this system which the Minister is following to-day that cannot possibly happen. The Minister has had to come along with this patching and changing, giving us new additions and new clauses, in order to perpetuate the system he has introduced. It is not so much that the Bill and its details are wrong; these may be necessary, but the policy is wrong, and the sooner the Minister changes the policy the better.

Mr. Speaker, I really cannot understand the arguments of the hon. member for Kensington at all. The only inference I can draw from his remarks is that he is completely unenlightened about the work that is being done and the circumstances prevailing at the university colleges in question. His allegation that the existence of State posts limits the academic freedom of these people is a figment of his own imagination. It is absolute nonsense and I think the work that is being done at these institutions is of such an outstanding quality that remarks of that nature can do nothing but create unnecessary suspicion. In fact, the university colleges, in the short period of their existence, have achieved so much and have succeeded in attracting such good teaching staff that they have produced work which has been so good that it has exceeded all expectations. I should like to remind the hon. member that the existence of State posts has been responsible for attracting to these colleges a number of people who would otherwise not have gone there because they would then have lost the Public Service pension benefits which they previously enjoyed. They are people who have been attracted there from very good Public Service posts and who would have forfeited considerable benefits if there had been no provision for State posts, people who might have contemplated returning to the Public Service at some time or another, but who are rendering service in the transition period at those colleges. But while they have been employed there, there have never been any complaints about any restrictions placed upon their academic freedom. In fact, the co-operation that we are getting from the personnel is such that we can only speak with the greatest respect of the work which those people are doing. The fact that provision is being made here for the conversion of a council post into a State post is nothing new; it existed in the past, but in the past the conversion had to be effected by the Minister personally after consultation with the council of the college. What we are doing now is simply to delegate that power to the Secretary, or to empower such delegation, and the reason for that is that the policy we adopted in the past was to leave the choice to the person occupying the post so that he could choose whether he preferred a State post or a council post. During the whole period of the existence of these colleges, it has not happened once that a person has chosen a council post and that it has been refused to him. In other words, anybody who thinks that his academic freedom is jeopardized by the fact that he occupies a State post can simply apply for the conversion of his post into a council post, and that will be done. But in all these years there has not been a single application of that nature which has been refused because the object of that section was not to restrict people but to create more opportunities for attracting the right people. I repeat that the remarks of the hon. member for Kensington can only be attributed to complete ignorance as to what is going on there.

As regards the hon. member for Hillbrow (Dr. Steenkamp), he used four arguments to which I should like to reply briefly. The first is that this amending Bill is an admission that they were correct when they originally said that there were serious defects in the Act. If it will help him I am prepared to concede that the hon. member was right, but that is the position in respect of all legislation. Just look at the legislation governing the universities and the legislation on higher education. Think of the numerous occasions on which amendments have been made to those Acts, because in practice things are continually discovered which were not taken into account initially; it is only human that one cannot foresee everything in advance. If there are defects then hon. members opposite are equally guilty because then they also should have foreseen them and they should have moved the necessary amendments at that stage.

But we did move amendments. *

Not in these particular instances. The hon. member can go and check up. The amendments which we are now making were never moved from that side.

The second argument concerned the submission of the reports of the Auditor-General on the Coloured and Indian colleges, the accounts of which they have already been auditing in the past. Unfortunately I do not know what the position is in that regard. As the hon. member knows, the Coloured college falls under the Minister of Coloured Affairs and I have only been in charge of Indian colleges since 1 April of this year. I am not aware of what the position is regarding the submission of those statements, but I shall find out and let the hon. member know. I shall also ascertain what the practice will be in future in regard to the tabling of the reports of the Auditor-General in this House, but I assume that since the Auditor-General is directed by legislation of this House to audit certain accounts, he must report the result of his audit to this House.

Then the hon. member wants to know the reason for this difference in Clause 1 (2), the provisions of which will operate retrospectively from 19 June 1959. It is simply because that clause covers the Coloured college and the Indian college, while Clause 6 (2), which will operate retrospectively from 1 April, only relates to Fort Hare, and Fort Hare and the other two Bantu colleges will only enjoy the greater financial powers, which the other colleges have had before, with effect from 1 April. That is the reason for the difference.

The hon. member says that the power to delegate disappears in regard to certain personnel. I think the hon. member has misunderstood the section. No powers of delegation are being done away with. What is happening is simply that a power which was impliedly vested in the Minister, because there that right of delegation did exist, is now being stated more clearly, but the power of the Minister to delegate it remains. There is no differentiation in the power of delegation. In fact, it is being extended in regard to the conversion of State posts into council posts. Therefore the only difference as regards delegation is that that power is being extended so that the power to convert a State post into a council post and vice versa may also be delegated to the Secretary. I can assure the hon. member that according to the legal advisers who drafted this Bill, that is the effect of these clauses, and that not a single one of the powers of delegation which previously existed is being done away with because of this, but that a defect in the law is simply being remedied; an existing implication that the Minister may delegate is being stated more clearly. It is really anomalous that one may delegate a power which one does not possess, and we want to make it abundantly clear that the Minister has the power to do so. I think that is all I have to reply to.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

I move—

Last year I foreshadowed the possible introduction during this Session of legislation to amend or repeal the existing laws affecting Indians which have become obsolete or which have fallen into desuetude. The relevant measures are mainly laws which were placed on the Statute Books of the Transvaal and Natal before Union. Since then circumstances have changed so much that these old laws no longer serve any useful purpose or have become incapable of implementation.

In terms of the old Transvaal Acts male Indian children in the Transvaal between the ages of eight and 16 years had to apply to the Registrar of Asiatics to be registered in a special register, whereupon Transvaal Asiatic Registration Certificates were issued to them. Failure to register was no contravention and in the light of developments since then these certificates have no practical value at the present time. The identity card issued to Indians under the Population Registration Act meets all the necessary requirements.

The old Natal Acts were applied only to so-called “Indian immigrants”. This term refers to Indian labourers brought to Natal on a contractual basis (indentured labourers). But other Indians who did not fall in this category also entered Natal in considerable numbers. They were known as “passenger Indians”, that is to say, Indians who had paid their own passages, who were not bound by any labour contracts and who were admitted because they were able to comply with the Natal immigration requirements at that time. The position then arose that special legislation was made applicable to the immigrant class and their descendants, while the passenger class were subject to the normal laws of the land.

That position still obtains at the present time, but in the course of time the conditions created by this anomaly became virtually chaotic. According to a judgment of the Supreme Court (Cross v. Cross, 1955), an Indian is a “descendant” of an Indian immigrant only if he is a person of pure Indian immigrant blood, that is to say, a person whose ancestors on both sides can be traced back—without any intervening intermarriage—to persons who were admitted to Natal as immigrants. At the present time it is virtually impossible to determine whether an Indian is of pure immigrant descent. A great deal of intermarriage has taken place in the past century.

The old Natal laws deal with such matters as the solemnization of marriages, the registration of births, marriages and deaths, decrees of divorce, etc. It is understandable that in actual fact many acts performed under these Acts are invalid because the person or the parties concerned were not full-blooded immigrants at the time the act was done in good faith, e.g. where marriages were wrongly registered. For this reason a clause has been inserted in this Bill to validate such acts.

It is against this background that the Supreme Court of Natal several years ago made representations for the amendment of the laws so that the anomalies could be eliminated and the law made practicable. The Law Society of Natal also made similar representations. All available information indicates that the Indian community welcomes this legislation. Leaders of the Hindu and Moslem sections of the Indian community (Moola and Pather) were consulted and they have indicated that they support the objects and the principles of this Bill.

Clause 1 of the Bill repeals Section 1 of the Indians Relief Act, 1914, which provides for the registration of marriages solemnized by Indian priests appointed as marriage officers with the power to solemnize marriages in accordance with the rites and rituals of the Indian faith concerned.

The reason for the repeal is the existence of Section 3 of the Marriage Act, 1961 (Act 25 of 1961), which provides for the appointment of marriage officers to solemnize marriages in accordance with Mohammedan custom or the custom of any Indian religion. Section 1 of Act 22 of 1914 is therefore superfluous because the appointment of marriage officers under the two laws has to be made by different ministers and may thus lead to confusion. Clause 2, paragraph (a), provides for the deletion in sub-section (1) of Act 22 of 1914 of the words “whether appointed under this Act or under any other law”. Since all appointments will be made, subject to the acceptance of Clause 1, under Act 25 of 1961 these words will no longer serve any purpose and therefore it is really a consequential amendment.

Now I come to Clause 2, paragraph (b). At the present time sub-section (1) of Section 2 of the 1914 Act provides that marriages registered in terms thereof will be valid as from the date upon which the union was entered into. The existing provision for retrospective validation of a marriage is a privilege granted to “passenger Indians”, excluding “immigrant Indians”. This really refers to child marriages. It is proposed therefore to eliminate such discrimination in the near future and to bring the registration of Indian marriages more into line with the general customs and laws of the land.

The original reason for the retrospective validation of Indian marriages was to make provision for the custom of child marriages which generally prevailed at that time. My Department has been assured by leaders of the Indian community that child marriages are no longer customary among South African Indians to any substantial extent. The provisions of the Marriage Act, 1961, relating to the ages at which and the circumstances under which valid marriages may be entered into ought in any event to be applicable to the whole Indian community. I think the time has arrived for us to abolish child marriages among the Indians in South Africa. Actually only the passenger Indians enjoyed the privilege of having their marriages registered retrospectively, and not all Indians. The object is to make this provision operative as from a date to be fixed by proclamation because my Department requires a little time to go into the question as to whether any practical problems will arise if some future date is fixed. If some future date is fixed we may find, since the discrimination between immigrant Indians and passenger Indians is being abolished, that in the interim an “immigrant Indian”, who formerly did not have the privilege of registering his marriage with retrospective effect, will have that privilege, and that is not our intention. We prefer, therefore, to determine the date by proclamation so that when we have gone into the whole question to see what the possibilities are and what practical problems arise from it, we can then immediately fix and proclaim a date.

Clause 3 repeals Section 4 of Act No. 22 of 1914, which excludes immigrant Indians from the provisions of that Act. The object is to have uniformity for all Indians. The amendment in Clause 4 is coupled with the provisions of Act 31 of 1949 in terms of which the functions of the Indian Immigration Bureau were transferred to the Government, and with the proposed repeal of the remaining provisions of Act 25 of 1891 (Natal).

Sub-clause 1 of Clause 5 re-enacts the provisions of Section 1 of Act No. 8 of 1944. It was considered advisable to insert a reference to the provisions of Section 3 of Act No. 31 of 1949 and to extend the validation of marriages registered after 2 July 1914 in terms of Act 25 of 1891 (Natal). This step became necessary because of court rulings after 2 July 1914. The object of this is to validate marriages wrongly registered under Act 25 of 1891 (Natal). In my introductory remarks earlier on I referred to the fact that marriages were simply registered under the wrong Act, because there were two Acts governing the marriages of Indians. The marriage was subsequently declared invalid and the object of this is to validate it if it was a bona fide registration. But we cannot validate marriages in cases where the court has already ruled that they were invalid, and for that reason they are excluded under sub-clause (3). Sub-clause (2) seeks to validate marriages wrongly registered under Section 2 of the Indians Relief Act, 1914 (Act No. 22 of 1914), instead of Act 25 of 1891 (Natal). Sub-clauses (4), (5) and (6) re-enact sub-sections (2), (3) and (4) of Section 1 of Act No. 8 of 1944 as being necessary exceptions to the validating provisions of sub-clauses (1) and (2) of Clause 5 of the Bill. Hon. members who have legal knowledge will understand this better than I do.

Sub-clause (7). In view of the doubt that has arisen in consequence of a number of Supreme Court rulings regarding the dissolution of Indian marriages on the ground of descent, it is necessary to protect rulings given by magistrates by virtue of the powers conferred upon them by Section 78 of Act 25 of 1891.

Clause 6 re-enacts Section 89 of Act 25 of 1891 (Natal) which makes provision for documentary proof of marriages entered into under the said Act which it is now proposed to repeal. Clause 7 repeals the laws referred to in the schedule to the extent stated therein. Clause 8 makes provision for the short title and the proclamation of the date on which the Bill will come into force.

Those are briefly the provisions of the Bill. As you will see, Mr. Speaker, we are concerned here with involved obsolete laws. It has taken my Department a considerable time to make a thorough study of the matter and to come forward with the proposals contained herein. These proposals, as I have said, have been discussed with the Indian community, and the two far-reaching measures contained in the Bill are firstly that the present discrimination between immigrant Indians and passenger Indians is being removed; in future there will be no further differentiation between Indians, whether they are immigrants or passengers; that is the first important principle and the second important principle is that for the rest, apart from putting a stop to child marriages among Indians which were still permitted in the past, we are taking the power under this Bill to bring relief. Unnecessary provisions are being eliminated without in any way affecting the control measures which we have over the Indians and which are necessary under the present circumstances. I hope that the House will consent to the second reading of this Bill.

The Minister has given us a very full explanation of the Bill before us. He has dealt with it clause by clause. Sir, I am not going to be long in dealing with this matter. In the main I agree with what the Minister has said, so I may say at once that we on this side of the House are not going to oppose the Bill; we will support its second reading.

Sir, when the so-called immigrant Indians, the indentured Indians, came to Natal they brought with them customs, including marriage customs which were respected by the Natal Government and indeed were part of the agreement under which those people came from India. That led to the passing of special laws to deal with their marriage unions, but as the hon. the Minister has pointed out they were not the only Indians who came to Natal. There were other Indians known as the passenger Indians who came along and who were by and large the trading class and who came with the immigrant class who were the indentured Indians; they were the workmen. The passenger Indian was a free Indian, and at that time, with virtually no restrictions, he was able to come to Natal and acquire trading rights and carry on his business. The special positions in which the Indians who were immigrant Indians found themselves called for the provision of a special Department of State to be set up under the Government of which Department the chief administration officer was known as the Protector of Indian Immigrants, and as his name implied, his job was to see that, subject to the laws of the country, the Indian immigrants who were strangers in a strange land were protected in regard to those matters which affected their own customs and traditions and so forth and that their special interests were represented to the Government through the direct medium of a special official appointed for that purpose. Sir, time has gone on and the particular provisions that were made in the law in those days, not only in regard to marriage customs but in regard to other matters, have more or less been abrogated. There were, for example, laws dealing with the cost of hospitalization, which became very involved after a time.

As far as I know, however, those laws have never been repealed by statute. Those laws placed a special responsibility for payment on employers under certain circumstances where immigrant Indians were concerned. The question as to who was an immigrant Indian became a very difficult one when it came to assigning costs in the hospitalization charges, and eventually the thing broke down because of that difficulty. But, Sir, there is of course a third group of Indians, a very large group, I fear. That group consisted of neither the immigrant nor the passenger Indian but the illegal immigrant who came in without any right to entry into South Africa, not only before the days of Union but subsequently, and whose existence, in the Transvaal at any rate, and I think Natal also, has in part been condoned by past Governments, for the simple reason again that it has been almost impossible to identify these people. That has meant that laws dealing with passenger Indians and immigrant Indians became more than normally tangled up when this extra group of people came into the population and intermarried, and then there was the question of the status of the father and the grandfather that was called into account for various purposes until the whole thing has become terribly entangled. I think that the Government to-day is wise in trying to get some of these things untangled by cutting through a lot of what is to-day quite superfluous legislation which is still on the Statute Book. As I say we are prepared to accept this Bill at the second reading, but there is one point I would like to make and that is that as I understand the position now, for all practical purposes the Protector of Indian Immigrants disappeared. The Department becomes not the Protector of Indian Immigrants, because immigrant Indians, for all practical purposes, now disappear by law; the passenger Indian disappears; the illegal Indian who has come into South Africa, the migrant, and who somehow or other has become completely absorbed in the Indian population and cannot be identified where there are second and third generations—those people have presumably ceased to exist as a class to-day. We see the Indian, the Asiatic, as a distinct, separate, independent racial group but not itself divided into these other sub-divisions which the law itself insisted upon in bygone years. The Minister will therefore become the protector or administrator of Indian affairs in South Africa, the Protector of Indian Immigrants having disappeared because there are no more immigrants for him to protect. In Indian Affairs then the matter will tend to simplify itself with the passing of this legislation in that it will now tend to bring all these matters directly under the purview of the Minister and his Department. That being so, I would like to ask the Minister whether he would consider repealing the remaining portion of Section 6 of the principal Act, which is being amended in Clause 4 by the deletion of certain words. I know that representations have been made to him; that he has been in consultation with leading members of the Indian group. Clause 4 of the Bill provides for the repeal of the words, “or out of the funds of the Indian Immigration Bureau (other than an Indian who is or may become entitled under Law No. 25 of 1891 (Natal) or any amendment thereof to a free passage to India”. These words are being deleted. I would like to ask the Minister to tell us frankly how he sees the repatriation scheme because that is what is dealt with in this clause. I do not know whether it is a live issue or whether it has reached the stage also where, like so many other aspects of the history of the Indian in Natal particularly but in South Africa generally, we simply have to say, “it is gone”. There was a time only a few years ago when the hon. the Minister and the Government and this side of the House refused to accept that the Indians were a permanent part of our population. That was not so many years ago. Those days are past with the passing or our own Citizenship Act and other legislation since then, culminating to-day in this legislation. What does this legislation do? It merely puts the coping stone on the recognition of the Asiatic as a permanent part of our population in South Africa. I do not think the hon. the Minister will quarrel with that statement. He will recognize that that is so. This is one more of the final determinations brought by this Government, for ratification by Parliament, of its own decision, its own determination, that the Indians are a permanent part of the population of South Africa. The days when they could be talked of as a population that was here until such time as we could, through a repatriation scheme, arrange for them to return to India almost ended after the Cape Town agreement of 1927. When the Revision Conference of 1932 took place it was already quite clear that the repatriation scheme was breaking down, that was 31 years ago already. Sir, much has taken place since then in our history, and this legislation in a sense puts the coping stone on the Government’s intention to accept the Indians as a permanent part of the population. They are being brought under the Minister and his Department as a racial group, just as the Coloured people as a racial group, as far as administration is concerned, have been placed under another Minister, the Minister of Community Development. Just as there is a Minister of Bantu Administration and Development to-day, we now have a Minister of Indian Affairs. Against that background my question is whether the repatriation scheme is serving any useful purpose. Is it doing anything at all? If it is not and the Minister is satisfied on that score, then I would suggest that in order to meet the particular point which the Indians are raising to-day, he should consider whether he will meet their request to have the remainder of Section 6 repealed because Section 6 stays there only as long as the Minister believes that the repatriation scheme is a scheme which is workable and that it is performing some useful function. We have to bear in mind that under that repatriation scheme we are now repatriating South African citizens. It is true that Mr. Nehru’s Government are making it easy for those people to go back because they have retained their rights in India in terms of their own legislation, but quite apart from that they are South Africans who are now going back. There is confusion and difficulty in recognizing the descendants of the old immigrant Indian, the descendant who in terms of these laws is still an immigrant Indian. We are now changing that; we are repealing that status of the Indian who was an immigrant Indian in terms of the law, falling under the Protector of Indian Immigrants; that status ceases the moment Parliament to-day passes this Bill. The status of the passenger Indians disappears. The passenger Indians, together with the illegal migrant and the Indian immigrant, remain merely as individuals in one common concourse of Asiatics here in South Africa. Sir, if we ask any of these people, whatever their background may have been, to participate at our invitation, in terms of the law, in a repatriation scheme to India and the scheme is a dead letter seeing that they are South African citizens, then I want to know from the Minister whether it is necessary that we keep that provision on the Statute Book or should we also cut the Gordian knot here and say, “this thing is worn out; it is no good, it is not getting us anywhere; let us accept that these people are part of the permanent population in South Africa and let us do away with that discrimination which always persists and under which they will be looked upon as people who are still here, partly on sufferance, because they may hereafter take advantage of the repatriation scheme”. If the Minister is satisfied that there is still some virtue in the repatriation scheme and that a substantial number of Indians—anything more than a mere handful of individuals—are going to avail themselves of the repatriation scheme, then I can understand that the Minister will keep that power; then it has some value, it serves some purpose; but if he is not of that opinion, then I suggest that to meet the request of the Indians concerned, who as I understand the position are behind this Bill in the main, he should consider the repeal of the remaining provisions of that section. Sir, we will support the second reading. *

I largely agree with almost all the arguments of the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell). The picture he has painted here of the various groups of Indians and how they arose, and the problems arising as a result of the differential treatment of the various groups, is quite correct, and it is correct that this Bill aims at putting a stop to the discrimination made in the past between the various groups of Indians. It is for that reason that the “Protector of Indian Immigrants” has already disappeared actually. His functions were transferred to the Central Government in 1949. The task he had in the past is now performed by my Department, not for the Indian immigrants alone, but for all Indians in so far as they can be helped.

With regard to his plea that the whole section in connection with the repatriation of Indians should be repealed, and not only those particular words, I agree with him in principle. All of us realize that repatriation of the Indian communities is no solution to the problem. All Governments have throughout the years tried to take steps in that direction.

We told you so in 1948.

The United Party also kept this scheme in operation while they were in power prior to 1948. They also tried to find a solution along these lines! Do not let us reproach each other about it. All Governments of the past thought along the lines of repatriation as a possible solution for the problem, and although some believed in repatriation longer than others, what does it matter? We have reached the stage where we realize that repatriation does not offer a solution for the problem. The question is why we are retaining those provisions in the old 1914 Act in regard to the benefits granted to the Indian if he wishes to be repatriated. The only reason is that there are a number of Indians who have children in India or Pakistan, and when they become old they prefer to return to the country of their birth or to the place where their relatives are living. They still avail themselves of this scheme but there are only a small number of them. If we were to repeal the section in its entirety, those Indians could in fact return but without any assistance granted by us. The amount of aid given to them is not very great. We felt, after consultation with several Indians, that we had better leave this provision, but on the clear understanding that it is not a provision which is to be resorted to as a method of trying to solve the Indian problem, but only as a means of assisting certain aged people who may have relatives or possibly children in India or Pakistan and who desire in their old age to return to those countries. In such a case we assist them to return. The numbers returning are very small, and the amount involved is small, but if we were to repeal that provision in its entirety, that trivial amount of assistance the little group of old people who wish to return are still entitled to get will lapse. That is the only reason why we are retaining it. I hope the hon. member will agree that we do not wish to take away that little assistance the old people are still able to get and I hope the Indian community will understand it in that light also. All of them to whom I put it thus in fact agreed with me that for that purpose we should retain this provision, but both the White people and the Indian community have realized that repatriation does not offer a solution to the problem.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

I wonder, Sir, if you will permit me just to say in general, because this clause is one which we want to discuss, that the official Opposition are not putting amendments on the Order Paper. We do not propose to move amendments to the various clauses of this Bill. We shall discuss most of them and oppose many of them. My Leader in the second-reading debate made our attitude clear with regard to many of these clauses, and the matter will be discussed further in Committee, but as I say we are not moving amendments. The hon. the Minister has made it clear that this is a measure of a stop-gap nature; that a more comprehensive Bill will be introduced, probably next year, and that will be the time then to deal with the details and so on. This is a stop-gap measure and we will deal with it merely on its merits without moving amendments.

Sub-section (1) of this clause deals with Bantu who are not born in the Republic or in the territory of South West Africa. They are not allowed to enter or to be or to remain in the Republic without a permit issued by the Secretary for Bantu Administration or a person authorized thereto. They are in the main Bantu who are outside of an urban area and areas proclaimed under the Native Regulation Act of 1911, which I think means the rural areas. I think that is a fair way to put it. I want to say at once that this clause is going to hit a lot of our agriculturists. Sir, there has grown up a feeling, I am afraid, in many official circles—even the Deputy Minister himself may think that that is the case—that if you have a Bantu workman then you have a Bantu workman. It does not matter whether he comes from this part of South Africa or of Africa or whether he belongs to this tribe or that tribe; he is a Bantu workman. If he has not got a skill of a particular type and you want him to acquire that skill, such as driving a tractor or whatever it may be, then you just train him. And when you have trained 100 you have 100 people with the same capacity and capability and level of attainment. Of course, Mr. Chairman, nothing can be further from the facts of the matter. There are some people who are particularly gifted in regard to certain jobs. It has been commented upon in the past, for instance, that when members of the Zulu tribe, which is a war-like tribe, go to the Rand they serve as house boys, they do not work in the mines. Members of other tribes, again, are mineworkers. We are dealing with a special group of people in this Bill, people who come from outside our borders. Those with whom we are concerned to-day are already in the Republic. They are now required to have a permit to be allowed to be here in terms of this clause. I want to say to the hon. the Minister that I do not know what kind of an organization he is proposing to deal with the issuing of the permits contemplated under this Bill unless the Minister has made up his mind to refuse permission, in a sort of routine fashion, to these people to remain. I want to show what the dire effects will be on our agriculture. Many of them have been here for years and years. I have a case at the present time in regard to which an application will very soon be submitted to the Minister. That man is a married man; he has his wife and children here; he has settled into the tribe with which he has been for over 25 years. He has adopted South Africa. But under this particular clause he will not even be allowed to be here until that permit has been issued. Thereafter, as far as I can see, he will have to return to the country where he was born every two years and return with the necessary documents. Because I cannot see how he is going to acquire those documents otherwise. I think he must return to get travel documents, identity documents, etc., to be able to come back again to the job he has been filling all this time, a job where a special aptitude is required. I think it is very regrettable indeed that this harsh, almost brutal, attitude should be adopted towards these people. We are saying in effect in this clause to those people who have been helping us considerably to build up our economy: “Forthwith you will not even be allowed to be here without a special permit.” The administrative work connected with this is going to call for a full-scale Government, Sir, never mind a Government Department. As a matter of policy the Government is recruiting non-Whites to fill hundreds of posts in that Department. That is quite right; I have no objection to it but I do foresee a build-up of many more people on the clerical side to carry out the administrative functions which are provided for in the various clauses. Is it conceivable that the Minister of an official is going to apply his mind fairly to the circumstances of every single case of the hundreds we know exist? When an application comes up before the Secretary for Bantu Administration and Development is it conceivable that he will have the time to apply his mind to all the circumstances of that case? The hon. the Minister will obviously have to delegate his authority to a number of officials. I do not exactly know what status those officials will occupy; but they will be senior officials, I take it. I am concerned with my own province. I take it the Minister will have senior officials there. If they are to apply their minds seriously to the circumstances of every case they will do nothing else for the rest of their lives. How these Bantu are going to get their permits timeously, before the law trips them up, I do not know. I should be glad if the hon. the Minister would tell us that until the new administration operates smoothly it will be merely a matter of routine for the Africans in these cases to get their permits which will at any rate give them the right to remain here for a further two years until the further sections of the Bill take effect. I think this is a most regrettable provision in this Bill.

I think that the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) ought to be ashamed of himself for having said the few words that he spoke here this morning. We have about 270,000 male foreign Bantu in the rural areas. Together with the women and children they number about 400,000. They are not South African citizens. They are people from outside South Africa and the hon. member made a plea for them. He asked that there should be absolutely no control over these foreign Natives in our midst. If he had any idea of the true state of affairs—that large numbers of indigenous Bantu both in the homelands and in the White areas are unemployed because of the foreign Bantu in our midst—he would not have spoken as he did. Those foreign Bantu do their work very well indeed because they know that action can be taken against them because they are foreigners. They try to worm themselves in—to express it in that way—with their employers in order to make themselves indispensable. That is the method that they use to become settled in our midst. The hon. member has asked that we should not retain this clause. What is the effect of this clause? This clause simply provides that the provisions that have held good up to the present in the case of the proclaimed areas—the urban areas in South Africa—where we already have control over all the foreign Bantu, where they have to register and so forth, should also apply on the platteland. Now the hon. member for South Coast asks that we should not apply that control on the platteland. His argument must then also hold good for the cities. Does he no longer want us to control the foreign Bantu in the cities? If he is not advocating this, why does he want to treat the employers on the platteland differently from the employers in the cities? What is the difference in principle between the one and the other? Why does the hon. member not rather join the Progressive Party because they want no control over foreign Bantu either in the cities or on the platteland? Why does he not have the courage of his convictions to advocate that? The fact remains, Mr. Chairman, that we cannot permit this large number of foreign Bantu—almost 400,000 of them—to continue to remain on the platteland without control any longer. We must exercise control. I really cannot understand why the hon. member should use such petty arguments such as that they are indispensable because they are skilled workers according to him and that for that reason they should not be placed under control. His other argument was that because of administrative difficulties this control should not be applied. Why then are there no administrative difficulties as far as the cities are concerned? I honestly think that the hon. member for South Coast has not made out a case at all in this connection.

I must say some conflicting principles are certainly involved here. A couple of months ago I opposed the Aliens Bill which was introduced in this House and which dealt with the position of foreign Africans on the very grounds on which the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) is now opposing Clause 1, and that is, that it is affecting the lives of many thousands of extra-Union Africans who have been in this country for many years, many of whom have married South African women and who have not been given the opportunity, or who have certainly not been made aware of their opportunity, to become South African citizens. I am going to oppose this clause on the same grounds because it affects those very same people. I do not argue that the Minister has not got the right to say who may or who may not enter South Africa. That is a right which any country enjoys. The Government must have that authority. My complaint is that people who have been here for many years, who have settled here virtually, and who have married South African born Africans, are under the same disability as people who have never been in the country at all or who have been in and out of this country for short periods only. So I am consistent in opposing this Bill.

The hon. member for South Coast did not object to the Aliens Bill; he voted with the Government. That is contrary to the attitude he is now taking up. For the first time farmers in South Africa—and this is the hon. member for South Coast’s big complaint—are being put under some restraint in that they are not allowed to employ extra-territorial Africans without a permit. Until now, as long as they were not in a proclaimed urban area, they could employ extra-territorial Africans. The same sort of thing that hits urban employers as far as South African born Africans are concerned, namely, that they cannot employ them without a permit, is going to hit rural employers as well. I have no doubt that the granting of permits will be much more generous to farmers than the granting of permits has been to urban employers employing South African born Africans in the urban areas.

I shall oppose this clause because, as I say, it makes no concession whatever for extraterritorial Africans who have been here for very many years. I also at the same time want to move an amendment to this clause, an amendment which is not on the Order Paper. I do not take the same attitude as the Opposition of not moving amendments to this Bill because I do not know whether these clauses will ever come back to the House next year when the new big Bill is introduced. I have no guarantee that I shall be able to amend the clauses then, which are before us now. It may be that some of them will be re-introduced in an amended form; I do not know nor does the hon. member for South Coast. So in certain cases, where I can, I am going to try to move amendments although in most instances I am also, like the official Opposition, simply going to vote against the major clauses to which I object. I have one or two amendments on the Order Paper which I shall move. This particular one is not and it is to reduce the penalty for first offenders to the original penalty that exists at the moment. I therefore move—

This is the existing penalty in law for first offenders and I see no reason why first offenders should now be subjected to the same heavy penalty as second or subsequent offenders. I move that amendment and I shall vote against the whole clause.

The hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) has said that the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) in his speech pleaded for no control in regard to foreign Bantu at all, and he made the case that there is large-scale unemployment amongst the South African Bantu in the land of their birth and that accordingly they should be given the protection of this clause against competition for employment from outside the borders of South Africa. I do not believe for a moment that the object of this clause is to prevent unemployment amongst the Bantu in South Africa and I propose putting it to the test by putting a direct question to the hon. member for Heilbron and to the hon. the Minister, and this will test the sincerity of their attitude. Is it the intention of the Government to prohibit all recruitment for the mines of foreign Bantu until such time as there is no unemployment amongst the Bantu in South Africa? Will all recruitment of foreign Bantu for the mines be prohibited from the passing of this Bill until such time as there is no further unemployment amongst the Bantu in South Africa? One gets no reply.

Do you want me to sit and speak?

You usually do. Quite clearly that challenge cannot be accepted and will not be accepted because it is not their intention to end recruitment for the mines until unemployment in South Africa has been done away with. Neither of these hon. gentlemen can accept that challenge and it exposes immediately the flaw in that argument.

What have the mine Natives to do with this clause. You do not know what you are talking about.

I would have thought that mine Natives worked in South Africa, but I am delighted to see the irritation exhibited by the hon. member for Heilbron because quite clearly the challenge got home.

The attitude of this side of the House in regard to the Bill is quite clear. Either one keeps out foreign Bantu by border control until such time as all employment is taken up in South Africa, or you let them in, as is proposed in this Bill, and you allow them freedom of movement in the rural areas as they had before. One must have the one thing or the other. It is one thing to maintain control of immigration of foreign people be they Bantu or anybody else, and it is quite another thing to let them in but to make their conditions of employment and the conditions for remaining in the country so onerous that their position and that of the employers becomes impossible. I said at a different stage of these proceedings that the object of this clause is merely to make the foreign Bantu’s presence here impermanent. They are not going to be kept out of the country entirely; they are going to be allowed in, but they are to be made impermanent and that is why they are to be sent back at the end of two years. Surely if it is the intention to allow these people in because they serve a useful purpose here, then they should be allowed in on reasonable conditions both to themselves and to the employers. Otherwise if they are not required here, they should be kept out. A point made by the hon. member who spoke first I think should be borne in mind because the figure quoted by the hon. member for Heilbron is that there are some 270,000 male foreign Bantu employed on the farms in South Africa, but the total figure of foreign Bantu according to the hon. Minister is something like 800,000. Now of course it is not only men who are employed, but women and juveniles as well.

I was referring to the platteland.

But the point is that this clause does not only deal with the platteland. It deals with everybody. It means therefore that there will have to be hundreds of thousands of applications made and permissions granted in so far as the administration of this piece of legislation is concerned, and this clause in particular, and the hon. member for South Coast was quite right in saying that this was going to clog up the administrative machine.

Why was the machine not clogged up when the other legislation was passed? Why did not the Urban Areas Act clog up the machine?

The hon. member for Houghton argued that the hon. member for South Coast was inconsistent in that having supported the Aliens Bill which was passed earlier this year, he was now taking up a different attitude and she criticized him because, as she says, he is opposing Clause 1 of this measure merely because it is irksome to the farming community. Not only is that untrue and a misstatement of fact, but the hon. member for South Coast also made it very clear in his speech that whilst it did provide irksome restrictions to the farming community, the greater part of his speech dealt with the harshness of this clause in so far as the foreign Bantu workers were concerned. We would get further, Sir, if criticism in respect of speeches made by hon. members was based on what they actually said.

You know what he said when the Aliens Bill was passed?

The objection of this side of the House is twofold. It is partly the stated intention behind this clause and it emerges partly from the conditions which flow from this clause as printed.

Hon. members opposite in their opposition to this clause have really revealed the attitude of someone who wants to do something and yet does not want to do it—like a man who pushes his car without turning the ignition key so that he can be sure that the car will not start. The two objections that we have to the presence of the uncontrolled number of foreign Bantu in the platteland areas are in the first place to the Bantu obtaining certain vested rights, which is now being advocated by the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman). That is her objection to this clause—that we do not agree to their obtaining these rights. Her argument is that the foreign Bantu already have established rights. We deny that but we do agree that because of the lack of control this illusion has been created to an increasing extent. Male Natives marry South African Bantu women who assume the nationality of their husbands. They also have children here who assume the nationality of the husband. But they are present here physically and they create a real problem which, if we allow it to continue, will eventually result in many of these foreign Bantu settling in South Africa and placing an additional burden on our educational facilities. Eventually they will also become a burden on our pension facilities.

May I ask the hon. member a question? Is there not a large number of foreign Natives who are here legally, who have been here for years, quite legally, and who have obtained permits to stay in South Africa? Does he not admit that some of those Natives have been here for 20 or 25 years?

It is quite true that many foreign Bantu have been here legally for long periods, but that does not detract from the view that the hon. member and I share—that an illusion in regard to vested rights is being created. For this reason it is desirable to restrict this element of the population to the absolute minimum; to keep them under continued and strict control, and to take steps in connection with their biennial re-entry into the Republic in order to completely destroy that illusion that they are obtaining permanent rights. That is our first motive in connection with this clause.

The second motivating reason for the clause is that the opportunities for employment for the Bantu in the Republic must be protected. We must realize that we are not dealing here with the most menial work. As the hon. member for South Coast rightly indicated, the foreign Bantu, as a result of his insecure status, has a tendency to worm himself in with his employer and he very often obtains for himself the most lucrative employment on farms in this way. And so, we are not dealing here with the question of the number of available jobs only but we must also open to the Bantu in the Republic the better jobs that are available, unless it is necessary to admit foreign Bantu under permit.

Now the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman) has said that he will test our good faith in connection with this clause by asking whether we will stop recruiting foreign Bantu for our mines. In the first place, the foreign Bantu who are recruited for work on the mines all fall under a special recruiting system for the prescribed areas. This is done through the medium of the Director of Bantu Labour and has absolutely nothing to do with the provisions of this measure. Let me put a counter question to the hon. member: Can he prove to me or to the recruiting organization of the mining industry that there has been any South African Bantu who has applied for work on the mines and has not been able to obtain employment there? Of course he cannot. Therefore that so-called argument of the hon. member is so much nonsense. Then he said that his opposition to this clause was based on the fact that the status of these Bantu was simply being made impermanent, and not only that, but that they should be kept out of the country. His argument was that they should not be caught like sitting ducks and prosecuted if they obtain work without a permit. He thought that it would be better if they all left. In the same breath, he, and before him the hon. member for South Coast, objected to the provision that they should leave every two years and then return with a completely new permit.

I raised no objection to that.

If I understood the hon. member wrongly, I apologize. In any event, the hon. member for Zululand objected strongly in this regard, and so the arguments of the Opposition are contradictory. The arguments advanced by this side of the House in favour of this clause are irrefutable. We say that foreign Bantu should only be allowed into the country in relation to the amount of employment available, and for specific employment, and that those Bantu who are allowed into South Africa should be under no illusion that they will be permitted to obtain permanent rights, which the hon. member for Houghton wants them to have.

And so their opposition to this clause simply reveals the attitude that South Africa must be recklessly considered as a homeland for all Bantu races who might want to come here in order to earn money.

There is no point in the hon. member exaggerating in the way he has done. The issue is a perfectly simple one. The clause now before us takes no account of the fact that we are dealing here with a group of people who came into this country, many of them on invitation from within South Africa, in order that their labour could be used in South Africa. They have, indeed, played an important part in helping with the development of this country. In the Rustenburg area, for example, the citrus industry has relied to a very great extent on the labour of the very sort of person who is being dealt with in this clause. It is quite clear that the Government’s policy is that all these persons must eventually leave the country. But they originally came into the country not as surplus labourers. On the contrary. I know of farmers in the Rustenburg area who told me that they simply could not have carried on and developed their farms in the way they did without the help of the services of these people.

That is not true.

I have every confidence in the person who told me that. He is a member of the Other Place and I accept his word without any hesitation whatsoever. I am sure that if that hon. member knew the facts of the matter, he would not have said what he just said. It is the hon. Senator Conradie who told me that these people had rendered invaluable services in the building up of his citrus orchards.

Do you want to tell this House that it is necessary for Rustenburg which has round about it sufficient labour potential, to import people to do its work?

I did not say it was necessary for them to do that. What I did say was that a member of the Other Place told me that the services rendered by these people were absolutely invaluable. In fact, they rendered services which, he assured me, were of such a nature that he could not have developed his farm to the extent he had done so without their assistance. He also assured me that the same applied to other highly developed areas in that part of the country.

Here is another instance where people are being unsettled. There are some of these Natives who have married in South Africa. Accordingly I can only hope that these provisions will not be carried out in their full severity. That could lead to great injustice to persons who have spent a good deal of their life assisting in the building up of this country. It seems to me that this particular provision is a hasty piece of legislation which has not been carefully thought out beforehand. It could have been framed in other terms to deal with the problem in so far as there is one. In its present form, it places the persons involved entirely in the hands of the Department. It is far more restrictive than it need be to achieve the same purpose. I should like to say that I believe experience will show that it is necessary that a large number of these people who are hit by this provision should be allowed to remain within the Republic in the interests of building it up. I do not believe that with the coming developments in this country we are going to find ourselves with a surplus or labour. On the contrary. It is highly likely that we shall find ourselves in the reverse position.

At any rate, this clause goes far further than is necessary to deal with what has been referred to as a problem. The attitude which has been adopted by members on the other side of the House is completely unrealistic in the light of the services these people have rendered. It is obvious that for all practical purposes many of them have for very many years been regarded as South Africans. What is more, they have come to regard themselves as such. After all, they have made this country their home and are working here with their wives and families. It will be of interest to hear from the hon. the Minister what the attitude of the Government is going to be to persons who find themselves in such a situation.

The hon. member who has just sat down said that foreign Bantu have come into the country legally in order to render service legitimately. I want to question this statement of his. Most of these foreign Bantu have come into the country without legal permission. They have come across the border without any travel documents and also without any permits. The hon. member knows that this is so, namely that as far as the immigration laws are concerned they have entered the country illegally. In other words, they are illegal immigrants in the country. Our immigration laws provide that when such persons who have entered the country illegally are traced, temporary permits can be issued to them. This temporary permit is issued because at that stage one does not know whether such a person is really an illegal immigrant or not. He has, therefore, first to be identified. With this in mind, a permit can be issued to him to live and work here temporarily.

Many of these people have been in this country for years and years, particularly the foreign Bantu over whom we now want to exercise control on the platteland. They may perhaps have been on the platteland for years without being traced. That is why it is necessary for us to extend our control to the platteland so that we can trace all of them and identify them as being foreign Bantu. That is why this control is necessary. The temporary permits that are issued to them are issued under certain conditions, amongst other, that they work. But now I want to point out that the Committee on Foreign Bantu heard a great deal of evidence from our own South African Bantu in which objections were lodged to the presence of these people in the country. The Committee heard the evidence of numbers of groups of South African Bantu in which they objected to the presence of these foreign Bantu. We also had the evidence of a group of ministers of the indigenous Bantu Churches who asked that these Bantu should be kept out of the country. It was pointed out that these foreign Bantu marry here in South Africa although they already have wives and families in their homelands. If they return there, they neglect their families in South Africa. If they do not return, they neglect their families in their homelands. In this way a large number of irregularities are created. The people who most strongly insist that these foreign Bantu should be kept out of the country are the Bantu of South Africa. The Committee heard evidence in that vein not only from the Bantu in the Bantu areas but also from those on the platteland. They asked specifically that action should be taken against those foreign Bantu. The foreign Bantu also create a great problem for the Bantu of South Africa because most of them do not belong to specific tribes. They marry Bantu women in South Africa without having any ethnic link with any group of Bantu in the homelands. These foreign Bantu create a great problem for the Bantu in South Africa themselves.

The hon. member’s allegation that these Bantu have entered the country legally is not true. Actually, they have entered the country illegally.

All of them?

All of those to whom this clause applies have entered the country illegally. The hon. member will not be able to produce one of them who was given a permit to enter the country legally; not one of them. The Bantu who have come into the country legally are those who have been recruited by the recruiting organizations. But they are not the people whom we are dealing with now. We are dealing here with those people who cross the border unlawfully. The hon. member who has put this question to me apparently does not know what the actual scope of the problem is. Every one of them entered the country illegally. Only after that temporary permits were issued to them. That is the position without exception. Not one of them entered the country legally. On the contrary, they sneaked across the border.

Is it not true that if a permit is issued to such a person it means that that person is legally in the country?

No. In terms of the Immigration Act he only receives a temporary permit to remain here under certain conditions until he has to be removed from the country. He remains a foreigner for all purposes although a temporary permit can be issued to him. He has entered the country illegally and accordingly he is regarded as an illegal immigrant. A temporary permit is only issued to him under certain circumstances and remains valid until such time as he can be repatriated. It is only a permit for temporary sojourn and does not make a legal immigrant of him.

But he is still in the country legally.

But the issuing of such a permit is surely a condonation of that person’s action in coming into the country illegally?

No. The permit gives him the right to remain under certain conditions until such time as he can be identified and returned to his own country. That still does not make him a legal immigrant. There is a great difference between a legal and an illegal immigrant. The fact that he has received a permit does not make him a legal immigrant. If he is a legal immigrant he is allowed into the country legally and can stay here as such. But as long as he has that temporary permit he can only remain here under certain prescribed conditions. In terms of that permit he is regarded as an illegal immigrant throughout. I have the appropriate section of the Act here in terms of which he is regarded and treated as an illegal immigrant.

Read it.

It states that notwithstanding such permit, he still remains an illegal immigrant. And so I say that all of these Bantu are illegal immigrants in the country. To advocate now that we should allow these people into the country on such a large scale is going too far. I cannot understand why these hon. members want to contest the by-election at Wynberg. They are now bidding against the hon. member for Houghton because she wants all of these Bantu, including those in the cities, to be allowed to stay here. Whether they have entered the country legally or illegally, she wants them all here. Hon. members of the United Party are now bidding against her.

I deny that these people have been recruited to work here. Those Bantu who are recruited to work in South Africa are sent back again to their own countries. They are mostly labourers on the mines and as such are not affected by this clause. It is only those who have entered the country illegally and who are now living on the platteland who are affected by these provisions. Let me explain the pattern that is followed by these illegal immigrants. They sneak across the border and then try to find work on the first farm they come to. They usually do seasonal work there, such as picking tomatoes in the Lowveld or something of that nature. After that they move a little further into the country and obtain work on a farm, let us say for six months or a year. In this way they move closer and closer to the large cities until they eventually succeed in entering the urban areas. They work there until they are traced and sent back. After this the whole process repeats itself. That is the problem that we are saddled with. We keep them out of the cities but they return to the platteland.

If we want to control the foreign Bantu it must be an absolute control that covers the whole country. That is what is envisaged by this clause.

Do you not agree that every Bantu in the country, whether he is a foreigner or not, should carry some or other document or else he can be arrested?

The hon. member knows that these Bantu whom we are discussing have entered the country without any documents at all. If they are traced, they have to say whether they are indigenous or foreign Bantu. Usually they say that they are our own Bantu. If it is discovered that they are not, they are given a temporary permit for six months. Because we cannot supply all of them with food and clothing in goal, one of the conditions of such a permit is that they have to work until such time as they can be identified. Many of them have been in this country for six years and even longer without having any document of any kind at all. When they are traced, one finds that most of them already have a family and so forth. Numbers of them are traced daily. And therefore they do not have any documents as the hon. member has tried to make out. They have entered the country illegally. There are numbers of them who masquerade with the reference books of our own Bantu. They obtain reference books that are issued to our own Bantu and they masquerade with them. Or else they say that they are really indigenous Bantu and in this way they try to obtain a reference book. Later it is discovered that they are not indigenous Bantu. These people create a tremendous problem which we cannot solve simply by controlling them in the cities. We can solve the problem only if we have a country-wide control over these foreign Bantu.

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

I feel that the remarks of the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman), who has now spoken twice, cannot be allowed to pass or to go on record as being a factual presentation of the present position. It is quite clear what the Government’s intention is, as reflected in the remarks of the member for Heilbron. The line which the Government is taking in regard to the provisions of this clause and the reasons for it is this: They say that these Bantu are here illegally. We now get the position that the Government is simply saying, “where there are illegal Bantu here, we have to take the necessary steps to see that they go back to their own homelands, outside the borders of South Africa, because they have no legal right to be here anyway, and secondly, they are taking work away from South African born Bantu who are entitled to the job.

Exactly.

The hon. member for Somerset East (Mr. Vosloo) says that that is the case. Of course, that is based on a complete fallacy. The hon. member for Heilbron said that he wanted one single case where one of these Natives referred to in this paragraph was here legally; when he was challenged he repeated that they had all come in illegally, every one of them, that there are none of them who are here legally. Sir, I take up his challenge. What is the position with regard to the Bantu dealt with in Clause 1? We have already pointed out that these Natives have been here for 25 years and longer. I know of a case myself …

But they have been here illegally.

If the hon. member for Karas (Mr. Von Moltke) will wait just a moment, I will put the position. Prior to the Abolition of Passes Act, which did away with the old identification pass and substituted the reference book system, the Bantu for identification purposes had the old identification pass. The hon. member for Heilbron nods his head; they had those passes. When they were furnished with those passes by our Government at the time, does he say that they were here illegally under those circumstances?

That does not make them legal immigrants; that only identifies them as foreign Natives.

What the hon. member is trying to say is that those Bantu who have been here for 25 years and longer have been illegal immigrants throughout that time, including the 15 years during which this Government has been in power, and the Government has done nothing about them the whole of this time until they came along with legislation at the beginning of this Session in regard to people who they now claim were illegal immigrants. What right has the hon. member to say that they were illegal immigrants?

Mr. VON MOLTKE: We have not been in power for 25 years.

Those Bantu came here perfectly legally at a time when they came into this country. The hon. member for Heilbron says that the Bantu who came here legally were those who were recruited; in other words, he means those who came for the mines. Yes, he nods his head again. But what the hon. member does not realize is that at the expiry of their term of service they were here legally and they remained here legally because they were furnished with identification passes. Because they were recruited by the Recruiting Corporation or the N.L.C., or whatever it was at that time it does not mean that at the expiry of their time they went back, any more than it meant that the Indians from Natal who came here legally, went back again to India at the expiry of their period of service. They were not illegal immigrants when they stayed on. The hon. member himself admits that the Bantu who came here to work on the mines were legally recruited. At the expiry of their term of service they stayed on and secured other employment, and many of them—I would go so far as to say hundreds and hundreds of them—secured employment by that means. As to the rest, it was not a case of illegality when they came from other parts of the Commonwealth or of the Empire as it was at that time. They came from other portions of the Commonwealth and from the High Commission territories. The position is simply that no documents were demanded at that time, either from Whites or from non-Whites. Up till now, with the passing of this Act, none of us has ever required travel documents to go into Basutoland or Swaziland or Bechuanaland. Last year, if I went through Basutoland to go to the northern part of Natal (because the road goes through the southern portion of Swaziland, from Golel), or if I went through Eastern Gate through the Transvaal to the Kruger Park, was I an illegal immigrant in Swaziland? The position was that by common consent there was no question of legality or illegality so far as the entry of these people was concerned, and I repeat that the Government of South Africa furnished these people with an identification pass which was identical in every respect with the identification passes of our own Bantu.

No.

The hon. member says: “No” I will prove it to him if he cares to put it to the test. When the abolition of Passes Act was passed and the new documents were issued, these Natives were picked up at that time if they disclosed the fact that they were born outside South Africa, but if they did not disclose that fact when they went to get their new documents, if they indicated that they owed allegiance to a particular chief, they were accepted and that was the end of the matter. Many of them have been furnished with the new identity documents now issued under the Abolition of Passes Act and they have still got them. I see the difficulty in which the Government finds itself, but I say to the hon. member and to the Government: If you are going to deal with those Bantu then deal with them on the basis that they came here because we wanted them; there was no question of their illegal entry but we are now for our own purposes taking steps to get them out of South Africa. Do not turn round and say to these Bantu who have been here all this time, “you are here illegally; we are getting rid of you because you are an illegal immigrant”, after they have served our purpose for 25 or 30 years or longer. I wonder, Sir, whether the hon. the Prime Minister approves of the line which his party is taking in this matter. The point about Clause 1 of this Bill to amend the Bantu laws is that these Bantu from the High Commission Territories and other territories who have been in South Africa for 25, 30 years and longer, have never been out of South Africa; they have stayed here, they have worked here, they have made their home here, they have paid their taxes here, and they have been furnished with identification documents here. Is the attitude of the Government, and is the Prime Minister going to accept it that they are illegal immigrants and that they are to be turned out holus bolus out of South Africa unless they get the necessary permit for continued residence here from the Secretary for Bantu Administration and Development or anyone to whom he may delegate that power? Is the Prime Minister going to claim that these people are here as illegal immigrants and that they necessarily have to be kicked out of our country after all the time and labour which they have put in here, after we have furnished them with documents and they have paid their taxes here and they have been accepted as part of the Bantu population? Is it on the ground that they are here illegally that they are being kicked out or is it for our own purposes in pursuance of our own policy that we feel that Bantu who were not born here should be sent back to their country of origin however long they have been in South Africa? In other words, are we going to try to base the eviction of these Natives on moral grounds as well as on the legal grounds that they are prohibited immigrants and that they are here illegally? Sir, I would like an answer to this point.

I think the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) is becoming unduly excited about this matter. The hon. member acted in a much more dignified manner this morning during his first speech. He even said things here in regard to this Bill which I appreciated. I really do think he is becoming too excited. I should like to remind the hon. member of what is provided in Section 9 of the Reference Book Act. The section reads as follows—

That permission is usually given by way of an endorsement on his documents. Where the hon. member for South Coast and the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) also make the mistake, is that they think that if a foreign Bantu has received permission to work in a district, he becomes a South African Bantu. Through being employed there he does not become a South African Bantu even if he carries on his person a reference book or other document. He has received permission to work there. Now I should like to reassure the hon. member. I should like to read to them once again what I said in my speech. I think the hon. member for South Coast possibly has forgotten this. I said—this is a reply in anticipation also to the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman)—

That is a reply also to the hon. member for Germiston (District) (Mr. Tucker) regarding his reference to Rustenburg. I continue—

You have his record.

Yes, and now in terms of the new situation that has arisen, we have to regulate the position by way of a new document. For that reason we are now making specific provision that in the course of the next two years the foreign Bantu may work here. In the meantime they can then obtain their new travel documents from their country of origin. Once they have it, they can enter and they then hand in their old documents to us. The permission he had in terms of the old document is then endorsed on his new document. This is done by means of the machinery of our Bantu Commissioners.

The hon. member for South Coast also expressed misgivings this morning in regard to the Bantu Affairs Commissioners. I now wish to reassure him. I should like to remind the hon. member that during all the years when this control existed in the past in the urban areas, it happened through the network of Bantu Affairs Commissioners, labour bureaux, etc. We still had some trouble sometimes with local authorities who were not our supporters. Now this switch-over from the old documents to the new documents may occur throughout the whole country gradually. We have our own Bantu Affairs Commissioners and our Justice officials throughout the country as our recognized Bantu Affairs Commissioners. There is not a district in the country where there is not a direct Departmental Bantu Affairs Commissioner or an indirect Bantu Affairs Commissioner. So the hon. member need not be concerned about the machinery becoming clogged up and that the work will not be done.

Do I understand the Minister to mean that where one of the Bantu concerned in this clause is to-day in South Africa on the strength of legal documents giving him the right to be here the Secretary for Bantu Administration and Development or his delegate will issue him with the new type of document permitting him to remain here until the next two years have elapsed when he produces his present document entitling him to be here. Will that be a formality.

Yes, in practice that will be the effect. The hon. member need not be concerned about it.

As regard the amendment of the hon. member for Houghton, I regret—I think she knows this also—that I cannot accept the amendment. That amount of the fine proposed by her and the imprisonment of two months are old provisions introduced more than ten years ago. I think at present there is justification for harsher punishments than those imposed hitherto. Then I should like also to point out to the hon. member that in both cases, that is to say, in both in the case of the fine and the period of imprisonment, it is said “not exceeding”. In other words, it is not an absolute amount or an absolute period a discretion is permitted.

Now I come to the courageous challenge of the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman). He is now doing what Baron Münchhausen did; he challenges those who do not wish to hit back. We have never yet said that we are going to tell the mines to stop employing foreign Bantu forthwith. Where does the hon. member get that from? Why does he issue that challenge to me? Surely it is completely out of place? I have already quoted from my speech as to what I said in this connection. The hon. member must remember that it is our point of view that the South African Bantu has the first claim to local labour. To supplement that, foreign Bantu may be used. We have had discussions in this regard with the Department of Mines and the mining people think it is generally speaking reasonable. They are satisfied that we have no plans to remove all foreign Bantu from the mines immediately. The hon. member ought to know that there are international agreements in this connection too. I do not know what the hon. member tried to achieve with his challenge. I think he merely wishes to be a little dramatic. Of course all employers including the mines will in due course have to educate themselves to use South African Bantu as far as possible. The South African Bantu who at present are averse to working in the mines, will also have to realize that rather than be unemployed it will be better for them to work in the mines.

I could not understand the hon. member for Germiston (District) (Mr. Tucker) very clearly. The hon. member went a little too far. I think he went much further than the hon. member for South Coast. I inferred from the speech of the hon. member for South Coast that he wholly accepted that there should be a measure of control over the foreign Bantu working in South Africa.

Of course.

Oh, then you have changed your mind during the lunch-hour? Before lunch the hon. member for Germiston (District) said things which sounded to me very much like a complete release of foreign Bantu to come to South Africa. If he no longer thinks so, and if he did not think so before, then I am not going to argue further with the hon. member. I am glad the hon. member also accepts that there should be control.

I am very pleased that the hon. the Minister has cleared up the mess into which the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) got this House by suggesting that every foreign Native in this country was here illegally. It is quite clear that most of the 800,000 or 900,000 foreign Natives in South Africa carry documents, documents which have been issued to them by Native Commissioners, documents which have enabled them to be identified and which have been issued through the proper channels. So they are here legally and that was what the hon. the Deputy Minister said. How the hon. the Deputy Minister is going to draw the line between what is a legal document and what is an illegal document, I do not quite know.

It has been suggested by this side of the House that this legislation was a little hasty and that there was nothing very urgent about it. I think Clause 1 bears that out. If we look at sub-clause (2) we find that not only is a person who enters without permission subject to certain penalities but any person who employs or continues to employ any Native in a district contrary to such provisions shall be guilty of an offence. The provisions referred to there are the provisions which oblige a Native not born in the Republic, before entering, to obtain such permission from the Secretary of Native Affairs. It is known that every Bantu person in this country carries a document of some nature. If he is a South African born Bantu he cannot enter any urban area without carrying some form of document issued to him by the agents of the Government which may be the urban local authority. So everyone carries some papers of identification.

In the farming areas, which are the areas which will be mainly affected by this clause, a very heavy onus is now being put on all employers of labour. Assuming that for some reason or another there is some technical fault in the document, the employer, particularly the employer on the farm who employs many seasonal workers, has an additional burden placed upon him in that he must himself check those documents and ensure that they are correct technically. I think that is an unreasonable clause in the circumstances.

Why not leave that to the farmers?

We are dealing with a Bill before Parliament. It is our duty to bring constructive criticism to bear upon the Minister in order to assist in proper and satisfactory legislation reaching the Statute Book. If it is unsatisfactory it is our duty to protest against it and not to leave it necessarily to an overabundance of farmers on the other side many of whom have not the foggiest idea what many of these Bills really mean. They are prepared to support whatever Bill the Minister puts forward.

The hon. member for South Coast has raised the point of the tremendous amount of work that will be involved. But I go further and I say the Deputy Minister must think of the tremendous onus that he is now placing on the shoulders of employers throughout this country in dealing with labour of this nature which, it is admitted, numbers nearly 1,000,000. The hon. the Deputy Minister and all those interested in this question must immediately admit that foreign labour is essential in this country. You cannot exclude foreign labour because there are certain avenues of labour which the local Bantu either will not or cannot perform. That is one of the main reasons why we have this migratory labour system for the mines. Why do we not supply our mines with our own labour, which, after all, number nearly 10,000,000? Why have we for nearly well over half a century employed this system of inviting foreign labour—even by international agreement as has been suggested by the hon. the Deputy Minister—to come here to provide the labour required by the mines? We know that foreign labour is used not only in the gold mines, it is used in the coal mines, it is used in alluvial diggings, it is used in every mineral-producing industry in South Africa in addition to being used in heavy industry. It is part and parcel of the system of this country. We have in fact been fortunate that we have been able to draw on these tremendous sources of labour in order to promote the development of our mining and general industry. The point one sees in this particular clause is that because the hon. the Deputy Minister retreated from the Bill which he originally brought before this House he has put some other legislation together very hastily in order to ensure that certain steps, “urgent steps” as he calls them, are placed on the Statute Book before this Session comes to an end. This clause should be considered very much more carefully because, no matter how much one wants to go with the Government in any issue it introduces, one must be very cautious before one interferes with the economic development of the country and with the satisfactory and smooth running of the machinery of industry in South Africa. This onus which is placed on the shoulders of farmers particularly and certainly on the urban employer is something which, I think, is completely unjustified. If employers were to know that they are going to be required to check the work of the Department to ensure that the labour which reaches the market has a legal right to reach that market I am afraid a great deal of confusion is going to ensue from the practical operation of a clause of this nature.

We are tired of this type of hasty legislation or ill-conceived legislation where even the supporters of the hon. the Deputy Minister are unable to give this House any clarity as to what the issues are that have made this type of legislation necessary. The hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. F. S. Steyn) has not given us any clarity at all. Then we had the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) who drew a red herring across the floor of the House which compelled the hon. the Deputy Minister to try to right the position and place it on a proper and more even keel. It is our duty to oppose a clause of this nature and I hope the hon. the Deputy Minister will now see the light and withdraw this clause and not waste the time of the House with explanations which are completely unsatisfactory.

A statement has been made in this House that I want to set right. I cannot allow that statement to pass by unchallenged. The statement was made by the hon. member for Germiston (District) (Mr. Tucker). The hon. member said that farming operations at Rustenburg could not continue without the assistance of the foreign Bantu. I said that that was untrue. The hon. member told us that that was what had been whispered in his ear. I wanted to give him the chance to correct himself and that was why I said that it was untrue. I did not want to condemn him immediately. The fact that I want to take him to task now is something for which he has only himself to blame. If he does not want to take my word that that is not so, he must consider the logical position. The sensible thing to do is first to investigate a matter before trying to make out a case. Rustenburg is bounded on three sides by Bantu homelands.

I know.

The fact that the hon. member knows it condemns him even further. On the western side there are bus services into the Bantu townships. Bus services are also run throughout the day on the north-western side. The Bantu from those homelands are transported to Rustenburg with the greatest convenience, I know that the hon. member will take the word of people who think as he does over that of anyone else. I did not expect him to take my word for it but I expected him to argue logically. I hope that he will not make me lose my respect for him unnecessarily. Once I lose it, I shall never regain it. Do hon. members think that a town like Rustenburg which is bounded by three Bantu homelands and where all the work is done by those Bantu should be used as an example to add a little United Party force to an argument to prove that the Bantu are not sent away? That did me a great deal of good because it made me realize that even a front-bencher of the Opposition has no argument against this case. The hon. member’s argument was ridiculous. If anyone agrees with the hon. member for Germiston (District) I want to invite him to investigate farming conditions at Rustenburg. It is one of the best districts in the Republic of South Africa as far as agriculture is concerned. That district does not need the protection of the hon. member for Germiston (District) in order to obtain its labour. It will look after its own labour. It has done so over the years and it will continue to do so. I am not concerned that the hon. member does not want to take my word and that he has taken the word of somebody else. He has already said that he would accept the word of his colleague in preference to mine. I will also believe this of the hon. member in the future but I will ascribe it to the fact that it is the only argument that he has to support his case. I want to conclude, Mr. Chairman. In future I shall believe the hon. member just as much as I shall believe the hon. member who is sitting there and laughing when she tells me that she will try to defend a saboteur with the object of having him set free.

May I ask a question? Can the hon. member tell me what percentage of the workers in the large citrus industry comes from outside the Republic?

The hon. member knows that no representative can give him that percentage now. No hon. member here can give him that answer. But I can tell him that there are many labourers in that district. What is more, the Rustenburg district is regarded as one of the districts where border industries ought to be established. If the Department considers that district as one of the districts where border industries may possibly be established, it ought to be clear to the hon. member that it is one of the districts which can provide its own labour requirements. I do not say that there are no foreign Bantu there. One finds foreign Bantu in any district in the country. I do not deny that but these Bantu are not found there to the extent suggested by the hon. member. How would those border industries be able to exist if we could not even supply our own labour requirements, and more particularly, our labour requirements for agricultural purposes?

I do not for one moment wish to become involved in this terrible fight between the hon. member for Rustenburg (Mr. Bootha) and the hon. member for Germiston (District) (Mr. Tucker). I am quite sure nobody imagined that it would bring on this tirade of patriotic defence of Rustenburg and environment. I cannot see what border industries have to do with the argument nor can I see how the hon. member managed to drag saboteurs into this whole argument.

I want to correct a statement made by the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) when he said in the course of an earlier speech that I had said that I wanted complete freedom of movement on the part of foreign Africans into this country. I said no such thing.

In the country; not into the country.

No you said into the country. I prefaced my remark by saying that the country was entitled to allow those people over its borders that it wished. My point is that I want freedom of movement for South African Bantu in the Republic of South Africa. I just wanted to correct that impression.

On this question of illegal immigrants it is quite possible in terms of the Immigration Act that when Africans cross the borders into South Africa from the adjoining territories or even from further afield that they are illegal immigrants, in that they did not have the necessary passports demanded by the Immigration Act which does not distinguish between illegal immigrants on the basis of colour. But the hon. member for Heilbron will surely concede that once such a person has been given a legitimate document by the authorities inside South Africa, his illegal entry into the country has in fact been condoned. This has been the practice since time immemorial. Africans coming from the adjoining territories have come in without documents. The minute they were given permits allowing them to work either in the urban areas or on the farms stating that so and so could be in the country for six months at a time, their original entry into South Africa had been condoned. I am sure any legal expert will treat that as condonation. One can no longer say that he is here illegally. Had he been here illegally the Government should have taken action against him which it did not do. The point about these so-called illegal immigrants being issued with Union registration books, as they were then called, is very valid. In fact this was done long after the Abolition of Passes Act of 1950. The hon. member for Heilbron will know the exact date but as far as I can recollect as late as 1957, even immigrants from the Rhodesias and elsewhere were carrying Union registration books. It is only quite recently that they were made to surrender those registration books. I think it may even be later than 1957; perhaps the hon. member for Heilbron or the Deputy Minister will give me the correct date. But it is certainly much later than 1950 when the Abolition of Passes Act was passed. Until quite recently, within the last five or six years anyway, these Africans were carrying Union registration books or Republican registration books as they are now known. No difference was made between them and the South African Bantu once they were granted those books. If they were not granted those books they remained illegal immigrants and were subject to deportation. Another point I want to make is in regard to the so-called aliens who have been paying taxes in this country. Many of them who have been here for a number of years have been paying taxes in South Africa. My whole objection to this Bill is that a clear distinction should be drawn between those aliens who recently entered the country or who entered and departed frequently as migratory workers and those aliens who came here many years ago, admittedly originally as illegal immigrants but whose actions were condoned by the issue, first, of registration books and later of the yellow card which the immigrants now carry. Among those are the people who have considered themselves as settled in this country; they have married in this country and they have paid taxes in this country. I believe therefore that they should be treated on a different basis altogether.

My answer to the hon. Deputy Minister who has unfortunately rejected my amendment in this: There is a tendency in the Bantu Commissioners’ courts for the maximum sentences to become the standard sentences. I have noticed in those courts which deal with foreign Africans that this is invariably the case. If one spends a morning in the special section of a Bantu Commissioner’s court for so-called illegal immigrants one finds that sentence after sentence is R20 or two months’ imprisonment. That is the position almost without variation. The hon. Minister now proposes to make a first offender liable to a fine not exceeding R50 and in default of payment liable to imprisonment for a period not exceeding three months. Because of my experience, I am prepared to state that within a few months the standard sentence will be the maximum sentence provided for in this clause. That was why I asked the Minister not to change what I considered to be a very heavy sentence anyway to an even heavier sentence, particularly as alien Africans coming to this country will be unaware of the changed regulations. This brings me to my final point: Will the hon. member tell me what steps are being taken by the Government to make all the Governments of other countries from which Africans have formerly come here under the old regulations, such as the Rhodesian Government, the Portuguese East African Government, etc., fully aware of the changed conditions? So that people leaving those countries and entering South Africa will know what documents they have got to have on them and will know the penalties that they now may expect when they do not comply with the law in respect of a contravention which until now has been tacitly condoned as far as illegal immigrants are concerned.

I am sorry that I have to rise a third time but there appears to me to be a great deal of misunderstanding in connection with what I actually said, and there appears to be some misunderstanding on the part of hon. members of the Opposition regarding the legal position. Let me state the case again: The Immigration Act of 1913 defines certain persons and certain groups of persons as illegal immigrants. Every Bantu who crosses the border without a passport is an illegal immigrant. He enters the country and when he is traced as an illegal immigrant a notice is served upon him to say that he is an illegal immigrant. Then he is given a permit for six months and on that permit is stamped “prohibited person” He is an illegal immigrant. It will be a good thing if hon. members are able to obtain possession of such a permit because then they will see that it is stated on the permit that such a person may remain in the country on condition that he has work and on condition that he is not a burden on the State.

Now I come to the reference books. The reference books have nothing at all to do with the matter. In spite of his reference book such person still has to have that permit under the Immigration Act. The reference book is only to identify him as a foreign Bantu. That is all. And these are the two laws which hon. members of the Opposition are now confusing with one another. They think that as soon as a reference book is issued to a person, that makes him a legal immigrant. A legal immigrant is a person who can stay here as long as he wants to because he has entered the country legally and has become part of the country, but a foreign Bantu remains a “prohibited person”, an illegal immigrant. That is stamped on the permit which he has to have besides his reference book. The reference book is only to identify him. It does not make him a legal immigrant.

Will the hon. member admit that reference books are given to foreign Natives even though they do not have the permit mentioned by the hon. member?

Quite right. We try to give an identification document to every Bantu person. That is the intention of the Act. We do not want to have unidentified persons in South Africa under the Population Registration Act. We must remember that the reference book forms part of the population registration machine. It only affects the Bantu but it forms part of the population registration machine. We want to identify every person in South Africa. As soon as he is identified he is told that he must have a permit and if he does not have the permit he must be repatriated. That is when the identification procedure between the Republic and the surrounding foreign countries starts as far as that Bantu is concerned because we cannot simply put any Bantu out of the country; he must also be accepted by his homeland or his country of origin as belonging to that country. This is actually where the great difficulty starts—of having him identified in his country as well, of having him accepted by his country of origin as a person belonging to that country. But that has nothing to do with this clause. The particular clause we are dealing with extends a control system that we have had for all foreign Bantu in the urban areas of South Africa. We have had a specific control system of control for them and this control system we have had in the cities is now being extended by this clause to cover the platteland as well. That is the whole matter in a nutshell. As I said, the hon. member for Houghton apparently wants freedom of movement not only for the Bantu in the cities but also for those outside the cities. I did not say that she wanted any Bantu to cross the border. That was not what I said at all. She wants freedom of movement within South Africa for them. I asked the hon. member for South Coast whether he subscribed to that attitude. I asked whether in their competition with the hon. member for Houghton for the Wynberg seat, they also wanted to repeal the existing legislation of 1945 which was placed on the Statute Book by the United Party and which exercises control over the foreign Bantu in the cities.

I rise simply to support a statement made by the hon. member for Germiston (District) (Mr. Tucker). The hon. member for Rustenburg (Mr. Bootha) appears to be a little touchy about the availability of labour in the Rustenburg area. His facts are correct to the extent that the area is very near one of the largest Native reserves in the country, and one would assume that Native labour would be in plentiful supply. I can only tell him this, that in regard to the citrus industry, of which I happen to have peculiar knowledge in that area because I participate in the industry, it has been a difficulty and a problem for many years to obtain local labour for the industry, for the farming side. I can say this that in many cases within my knowledge 75 per cent of the labour employed on the farms is foreign labour, in the main Rhodesian labour. It is foreign labour, not because you want to employ foreign Natives but because the local labour is not available. It may be peculiar and unique in that particular industry, although I do not think it is entirely so. Many others I have spoken too are in the same difficulty. It is a wide area. There may be other areas where labour is more plentiful. I want to point out to the hon. member for Rustenburg the position in that particular industry. It is a real problem. I tried to change my policy as a farmer there and employ only local labour. I have not succeeded. I have not been able to get local labour.

Pay them a better wage.

I pay wages as high as anybody pays in the area and better. So there is the difficulty and it shows the necessity for granting permission to these people to stay. Otherwise you are going to disrupt certain agricultural activities very considerably in this country.

Listening to hon. members opposite—and this holds good for a large number of them—trying to act as the champions of the farmers to-day, I was reminded of the old Netherlands saying: “As de vos de passie preekt, boer pas op je gansen”. Hon. members now suggest that when this clause is adopted and more control is exercised over foreign Bantu, the economic position of the farmer is going to be threatened because he will not have adequate labour. The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) (Capt. Henwood) stated in his second-reading speech that the farmers would be greatly inconvenienced because they would not be able to obtain the necessary labour. The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) also challenged this side of the House to appear before the agricultural congresses and adopt that attitude. I hope you will permit me to produce documentary proof for the benefit of hon. members opposite to indicate the attitude of the agricultural congresses and unions in connection with this matter. I have here before me the agenda of the East Coast Agricultural Union. This agenda will be discussed next week, from 25 to 27 June, in Port Elizabeth, and there are four items on this agenda dealing with labour, items forthcoming from various areas along the East Coast. They want these points to be discussed and brought to the attention of the Government. I want to read out all four of them [Translation]—

1. (1) To take immediate steps in order to provide the surplus Bantu in the eastern Cape with employment;
2. (2) To draw up long-term plans for the employment of Bantu in the eastern Cape;
3. (3) To appoint a local advisory committee in each magisterial district to advise the Department of Bantu Administration in regard to unemployment and possible local avenues of employment; and
4. (4) To take steps to ensure that labour bureaux in the eastern Cape function well and effectively.

Are these the people who say that our agricultural economy will be ruined if foreign Bantu are not allowed into the country?

What do the Transvalers say?

The hon. member can quote resolutions of agriculatural unions in the Transvaal. I am mentioning the points that emanated from my part of the world. We have had the evidence of the hon. member for Rustenburg (Mr. Bootha), a person who lives in the Transvaal. Hon. members are asking here this afternoon that the foreign Bantu should be given the right to settle in South Africa, even on the temporary permits they have. All sorts of arguments have been raised. The hon. member for Houghton, for example, said that these people pay tax here. But if, for example, she arrives in some other State with a passport and a visa and she is given a temporary permit there and earns money and stays there for two years, she will also have to pay tax there. But does that give her the right to settle there; does it give her a claim to naturalization? How can they argue now that because foreign Bantu have come to the Republic from the Protectorates and from the Central African States and have been given a temporary permit they should be regarded as Republican Bantu and have the right to work here and move about as they please and that they should have the right to stay here? And these are the people who tell us that we are oppressors! These are the people who tell us that they have the interests of the Bantu at heart while they do not even want the Bantu of the Republic to be protected against unjust competition from other sources. No, Mr. Chairman, those arguments do not hold water. I think that even the Bantu will take note of this attitude that they are adopting.

The hon. member for Somerset East (Mr. Vosloo) has completely denied the statement that was made a few minutes ago by the hon. Deputy Minister. The hon. Minister may well bow his head, as he is doing now, when he reflects on the position that has arisen as a result of a statement made before the lunch-hour adjournment by the hon. member for Heilbron. I think it was his turn to-day to put his mind in neutral and let his tongue idle! He told us this morning, regardless of the use of the past or the present tense, that the 835,000 foreign Bantu, who according to the hon. Deputy Minister were at present in the Republic of South Africa, were here illegally. I can only summarize a ten-minutes speech in one sentence, as simply as that. That is what he said before lunch. Then the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell), who was naturally rather surprised by the statement, tried to get clarity from the hon. member, and he went so far as to address his questions to the hon. Prime Minister—who listened, but did not answer him—and then he turned to the hon. Deputy Minister with the same question—and having done all that, the hon. Deputy Minister then, in a very gentle way, without repudiating his colleague from Heilbron, tried to extricate the foot of the hon. member for Heilbron from his own mouth! He tried to do it, Sir, but found it a physical impossibility. It did not work, because the foot of the hon. member for Heilbron was still in his mouth when he spoke a second time. Now he says: “I am only dealing with the documents. They did come in as foreign Bantu, as illegal immigrants”, and regardless of the time that they may have spent here, which he concedes may be 20, 25, 30, 40 years, he says they did come in illegally. But the point that we have been trying to clarify is whether he will consider them now and for all time to be illegal immigrants.

They are still here as illegal immigrants.

What do you normally do in any country with illegal immigrants? Is the hon. member for Heilbron prepared to come into the debate a fourth time and tell us what happens in any country with illegal immigrants? Are they “condoned” for evermore? I would ask him a further question. If he can point to any country in the world where the Government issues documents of identification of any kind to people who are there—in that country—illegally, I would like to ask him to mention the name of that country now. Give us the name of a single country where a Government gives to an illegal person, in the sense that that person resides in the country illegally, a document. In the United States when an American is identified, he is identified by his Social Security card. But that is not given to anybody who is there illegally, or to a foreigner. We have heard a lot about the fact that in the countries of Europe there are foreign persons, who work—say, in Germany, having come from Italy. The German Government does not give them documents to identify them with other Germans. Their identity is established by the documents of their country of origin. An Italian has got to have his Italian passport. That is why this argument is so ridiculous. It was ridiculous to begin with, and it was not helped at all by the attempt of the hon. Deputy Minister to side-step it. Because what he said was that in practice these people are not treated as illegal immigrants would normally be treated. That is what he said when he tried to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for the hon. member for Heilbron.

The position surely must be that either the Government will continue under this or any other legislation to condone the presence in South Africa of the 836,000 immigrants, foreign Bantu, or the alternative is that they must take steps to deal with people who are here illegally. I would like to point out that you cannot argue as the hon. member for Heilbron sought to argue when he took the second bite at the red-herring …

Still in neutral!

You cannot be heard to argue that because a man came in illegally and despite the fact that you condone his presence here for X years, that you have the right to go back to the original position and say that now he is illegal again! If that were the position, then certain hon. members of this House who started life in South Africa as immigrants, some very distinguished members, would find themselves in serious difficulties! Sir, no Government in the world has ever thought of operating in that way, and I do not think that this Government, particularly, should try to be as unique as the hon. member for Heilbron suggests. So I sincerely hope that this matter will be disposed of, especially in the light of the statement by the hon. member for Somerset East, which I say completely wiped out what the hon. Deputy Minister told us. I hope that this time the hon. Deputy Minister in reply to the particular question, put to him firstly by the hon. member for Houghton and then by the hon. member for Natal South Coast, will give us a considered and specific answer and ask his colleagues from Heilbron and Somerset East to stay out of it long enough for us to be able to understand what the position is.

When a motor car is in neutral it requires a decline to run, but it has been our experience of the hon. member to-day that a motor runs uphill in neutral. And do you know what happens then? It runs backwards faster and faster, and that is what the hon. member has done. The hon. member must really remember that the permission a foreign Bantu receives to work in our area is for six months. He cannot pretend it is a permission for 100 years or a permanent permission. The hon. member did not ponder this matter properly either. In any case, I have nothing further to say about the little incident between the hon. member and the hon. member for Heilbron, but I deny that I have in any way repudiated the hon. member for Heilbron.

Will the hon. the Deputy Minister tell us: If these people are prohibited immigrants, why then have this Clause in this Bill? Why do you not get rid of them under the existing law to which the hon. member for Heilbron has referred?

I explained before that in this Bill we are dealing with arrangements for providing employment. We are not concerned with immigration at all.

Now I want to reply to the hon. member for Houghton, namely to the question, which is a pertinent one: What is going on in connection with the arrangements in respect of the Bantu who are now coming from the various other countries? I think hon. members will remember that the Minister of Foreign Affairs made a statement in this House earlier this year that negotiations were and are now being conducted between the British authorities and the authorities of the Protectorates on the one hand, and our Departments on the other hand in regard to this new documentation, the establishment of border posts, control at the borders, etc! Therefore comprehensive negotiations are being conducted with the three High Commission Territories, and that is the immediate position we are now handling. The same kind of negotiations will of course follow also in respect of other areas, but we are first of all concerned with that which is most urgent.

I should like to say with reference to the utterances of hon. members opposite, in respect of foreign Bantu in agriculture, that it is no good their trying to pretend that our farmers do not realize what the position is in this regard. I have here the report of the Transvaal Congress of the National Party, and it appears from this that there also certain resolutions have been passed requesting the Government to apply stricter measures as regards foreign Bantu.

Question put: That the word “fifty” in line 25, proposed to be omitted, stand part of the clause,

Upon which the Committee divided:

AYES—83: Badenhorst, F. H.; Bekker, H. T. van G.; Bezuidenhout, G. P. C.; Bootha, L. J. C.; Botha, H. J.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, P. W.; Botha, S. P.; Cloete, J. H.; Coertze, L. I.; Coetzee, B.; Cruywagen, W. A.; de Wet, C.; Diederichs, N.; Dönges, T. E.; du Plessis, H. R. H.; Faurie, W. H.; Fouché, J. J. (Sr.); Fouché, J. J. (Jr.); Frank, S.; Froneman, G. F. van L.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Haak, J. F. W.; Hertzog, A.; Heystek, J.; Hiemstra, E. C. A.; Jonker, A. H.; Jurgens, J. C.; Keyter, H. C. A.; Knobel, G. J.; Kotze, G. P.; Kotzé, S. F.; Labuschagne, J. S.; le Roux, P. M. K.; Loots, J. J.; Marais, J. A.; Marais, P. S.; Maree, G. de K.; Maree, W. A.; Meyer, T.; Mostert, D. J. J.; Mulder, C. P.; 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.; Schoeman, B. J.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Schoonbee, J. F.; Serfontein, J. J.; Smit, H. H.; Stander, A. H.; Steyn, F. S.; Steyn, J. H.; Treurnicht, N. F.; Uys, D. C. H.; van den Berg, G. P.; van den Heever, D. J. G.; van der Ahee, H. H.; van der Spuy, J. P.; van der Wath, J. G. H.; van Eeden, F. J.; van Niekerk, G. L. H.; van Niekerk, M. C.; van Rensburg, M. C. G. J.; van Wyk, G. H.; van Wyk, H. J.; van Zyl, J. J. B.; Venter, M. J. de la R.; Verwoerd, H. F.; Viljoen, M.; Visse, J. H.; von Moltke, J. von S.; Vosloo, A. H.; Waring, F. W.; Webster, A.

Tellers: D. J. Potgieter and P. S. van der Merwe.

NOES—43: Basson, J. A. L.; Basson, J. D. du P.; Bowker, T. B.; Cadman, R. M.; Connan, J. M.; de Kock, H. C.; Dodds, P. R.; Durrant, R. B.; Emdin, S.; Field, A. N.; Fisher, E. L.; Gay, L. C.; Gorshel, A.; Graaff, de V.; Henwood, B. H.; Hickman, T.; Higgerty, J. W.; Hourquebie, R. G. L.; Hughes, T. G.; Lewis, H.; Malan, E. G.; Miller, H.; Mitchell, D. E.; Mitchell, M. L.; Moore, P. A.; Oldfield, G. N.; Radford, A.; Ross, D. G.; Steenkamp, L. S.; Steyn, S. J. M.; Streicher, D. M.; Suzman, H.; Taurog, L. B.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Timoney, H. M.; Tucker, H.; van Niekerk, S. M.; Warren, C. M.; Waterson, S. F.; Weiss, U. M.; Wood, L. F.

Tellers: H. J. Bronkhorst and A. Hopewell.

Question accordingly affirmed and the first amendment proposed by Mrs. Suzman dropped.

Remaining amendment put and negatived.

Clause, as printed, put and the Committee divided:

AYES—84: Badenhorst, F. H.; Bekker, H. T. van G.; Bezuidenhout, G. P. C.; Bootha, L. J. C.; Botha, H. J.; Botha, M. C; Botha, P. W.; Botha, S. P.; Cloete, J. H.; Coertze, L. I.; Coetzee, B.; Cruywagen, W. A.; de Wet, C.; Diederichs, N.; Dönges, T. E.; du Plessis, H. R. H.; Faurie, W. H.; Fouché, J. J. (Sr.) Fouché, J. J. (Jr.); Frank, S.; Froneman, G. F. van L.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Haak, J. F. W.; Hertzog, A.; Heystek, J.; Hiemstra, E. C. A.; Jonker, A. H.; Jurgens, J. C.; Keyter, H. C. A.; Knobel, G. J.; Kotze, G. P.; Kotzé, S. F.; Labuschagne, J. S.; le Roux, P. M. K.; Loots, J. J.; Marais, J. A.; Marais, P. S.; Maree, G. de K.; Maree, W. A.; Meyer, T.; Mostert, D. J. J.; Mulder, C. P.; 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.; Schoeman, B. J.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Schoonbee, J. F.; Serfontein, J. J.; Smit, H. H.; Stander, A. H.; Steyn, F. S.; Steyn, J. H.; Treurnicht, N. F.; Uys, D. C. H.; van den Berg, G. P.; van den Heever, D. J. G.; van der Ahee, H. H.; van der Spuy, J. P.; van der Wath, J. G. H.; van Eeden, F. J.; van Niekerk, F. L. H.; van Niekerk, M. C.; van Rensburg, M. C. G. J.; van Wyk, G. H.; van Wyk, H. J.; van Zyl, J. J. B.; Venter, M. J. de la R.; Verwoerd, H. F.; Viljoen, M.; Visse, J. H.; von Moltke, J. von S.; Vosloo, A. H.; Waring, F. W.; Webster, A.

This clause provides for the inclusion of certain land in the First Schedule of the Native Land and Trust Act. The land concerned in the First and Second Schedules, 5 (a) and (b), is dealt with in the White Paper. May I say that this side of the House has no sympathy whatever with the proposal the Government makes for the acquisition of this land. The White Paper explains that in regard to a number of these properties it is necessary to round off the Bantu area. Another explanation is that it is necessary for the purpose of consolidation and rounding off the Bantu area; it is necessary to establish a Bantu township and round off the Bantu area. We are completely opposed to that. We have no desire whatever to round off Bantu areas, which means the acquisition of land at present owned by Whites in Natal, and for no other purpose than to further their Bantustan concept. In the case of the White farms which are already there, the Government knows how to go about it if they want to establish a Native township for the purpose of providing labour for the industries being established at Hammarsdale and Cato Ridge, etc. They know what the position is in regard to the other areas they are proposing to take over here, like Clermont. The White Paper says the land is almost all owned by Bantu. Of course it is; it was established as a Bantu township, with freehold title. Why add it now to the released areas? Why not just leave it in its present condition? It is held by Bantu; leave them there. This is the kind of thing we have no sympathy with. It is flatly against the policy of the United Party to acquire land and add it to Bantu areas which the Government has destined to be a Bantustan area, such as they did in an Act we passed recently. One area of land is said to be compensatory land for the purpose of removing Black spots. We have no choice but to vote against it, although normally we would have agreed. We have no objection to the removal of Black spots, and where compensatory land is necessary we say it must be found in terms of the Act, but sandwiching it in here, we must oppose it.

Where land is necessary for the purpose of Bantu recreation, or to establish facilities for the Bantu so that they may live a normal life in their townships, we have no objection to the acquisition of land. In other words, it is possible, as far as this side of the House is concerned, for the Government to purchase land for certain purposes, including the elimination of Black spots and to provide recreation, etc., and to purchase land where it is necessary to reclaim denuded areas, but when the Government comes with proposals like this we are utterly opposed to it. The Minister will bear me out in the case of the one item here, No. 54, the area known as Nongweni. Why is it called the area known as Nondweni? Why do they not say it is the village of Nongweni and be done with it? It consists of a commonage and erven. [Interjections.] The hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) is showing his utter, abysmal ignorance, and I hope he will stop his inane interjections. This was the village of Nondweni, but this one of the first White villages in Zululand which will now go across to Black ownership. The White Paper points out that the commonage can be obtained already under a certain section of the Native Land and Trust Act, but it is not possible to purchase the erven, and these erven are owned mostly by elderly people who wish to leave the area and who have accordingly offered their land to the Trust. In those few words you have the tragedy of White South Africa under the policy of the Government of “skop die wit man uit”. You have the tragedy of a few elderly White people who are left there and who want to sell and get out, and why? Because they have been enclosed in under the Government’s policy and through never-ceasing pressure by the Bantu. Naturally the Bantu will increase the pressure when they are egged on by the Government. So you have this little residue of elderly people in what was a thriving little village. But now the Government says in the White Paper that they want to sell and get out. Of course they do, and that is the start; this is one of the precedents being established, and it will go on and on as far as Zululand is concerned, with bigger and bigger towns being established. The commonage and the other rights have been taken, and finally the erven have to be taken by Act of Parliament such as we have before us today. This, Sir, is the 1963 reflection of what this Government is doing to set back the clock in the history of the White man’s development in Africa and handing it over to the ownership and occupation of the Black man. The Government is setting the clock back. My hon. friend over there smiles, but he is not in jeopardy—not yet. When his own people are concerned in this kind of thing he will notsmile. This is the tragedy of our history in 1963 that the Government can laugh at the predicament of White people who, having built their homes there, now have to sell out. The hon. member for Vryheid (Mr. D. J. Potgieter) knows about Nondweni and the predicament these people are in.

I will tell you all about it.

Yes, he will tell us that the people want to get out. There will be continuously more pressure until, eventually, no future for them, so that they will be only too willing to sell out. Under these circumstances I repeat that it is utterly opposed to our policy and we shall vote against it.

It is a great pity that the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) did not check his facts before he spoke. He has now accused the Government of being responsible for the position at Nondweni at the present time, but I should like to remind the hon. member that the purchases of the land in the vicinity of Nondweni were started by the United Party while they were in power.

Yes, but not for Bantustans.

When this party came into power, there were a number of farms for which offers had already been made, and this Government was faced with a fait accompli and had to buy them. It was the United Party Government that surrounded Nondweni with a Black area and made a White spot of it. It was at this stage that I intervened and I pointed out to the hon. the Minister, even before he became a Minister, while he was a member of the Bantu Affairs Commission, that it is not a White spot such as Umtata for instance, but a White spot created by a Government, and for that reason an exception should be made here and that Nondweni should be purchased. We cannot permit those old people to live in that White spot. The promise was then made to me that an exception would be made in regard to Nondweni and that the Government would buy it. I wonder what the United Party would have done had they been in power, and whether they would have bought out that White spot and would have given those old people an opportunity to get their money back and to find a refuge elsewhere. That is the history of Nondweni and the hon. member for South Coast must not lay it at the door of this Government. This party is now saving those White people there, and is buying that land, and it has come before Parliament because not only the stands there but also the commonage has to be bought before the plots can be bought. I think it is very unreasonable of the hon. member for South Coast to blame the Government now for being the cause of Nondweni being what it is because it is that party which made a White spot of it, and it is this party which is now offering those people relief. That is the true position regarding Nondweni.

I just want to reply to the schizophrenia we heard here this afternoon …

Order! What is the word the hon. member used?

I said it was schizophrenia.

The hon. member must withdraw that.

Let me then say this double-talk, if I may not use another word. That party in 1936 entered into an agreement and now they want to repudiate it. The hon. member for South Coast cannot get away with it so easily. He referred to Hammarsdale. Let me tell him what the position is there. Adjacent to Hammarsdale there is a big farm which has been partitioned and transferred to Bantu. It has been done since 1936, and the 1936 Act says that no land outside the Bantu area may be transferred to a Bantu save with the consent of the Minister, and the Minister of Native Affairs at that time was the hon. member for Green Point (Maj. van der Byl), and he gave his consent to a whole number of transfers of land to Natives, in 1946, outside the released area, which borders on the farm Woody Glen, near Hammarsdale, which is in a released area. It was White man’s land he transferred to the Bantu and on those small pieces of land there are left only about two White people and three Indians. That was the work of the United Party Government. They then deprived White people of their land. Now we are declaring that land a released area, but they are making all kinds of accusations against us.

Let us take the second one now, Clermont. It is a Native township, but it is outside a released area and it is not a scheduled area either; in other words, it is White man’s land.

To whom does it belong?

It belongs to the Bantu at the moment, but it is not a Bantu area, and because it is not a Bantu area, those Bantu cannot sell that land to other Bantu or to Whites without the consent of the Minister, something they may well do if it were a Bantu area. That is the big difference. Now we are making Clermont which already is in the hands of the Bantu, a released area and they can lawfully deal with the land, something they could not do otherwise. [Interjection.] They could not deal with it lawfully without the consent of the Minister because it is a White area. Now the Minister has to give consent every time, but once it is Bantu area theymay sell to other Bantu without his consent. I shall repeat it for his benefit. In the White area Whites may purchase land from Whites without any consent. There free trade in land is allowed. In Bantu areas the Bantu may sell to the Bantu, but not from one tribe to another tribe; the one tribe cannot buy land in the area of another tribe. That is the critical position in Clermont; because those Bantu owners of land in Clermont cannot obtain loans on the land for the purpose of building houses, because it is White land, unless the Minister gives his consent to the land being mortgaged. That places them in an impossible position. That is why it now becomes a released area so that they may freely take up loans and can build and develop the town as a Bantu area, but now those hon. members are objecting.

I also wish to deal with Nondweni. The hon. member for South Coast has referred to my “inane interjections”, but he made an inane statement when he asked why we do not refer to a town, but to an area. Does he not know that a commonage is not a town, and because the commonage is affected together with the plots, we are referring to an area. But now he makes this inane and ridiculous little point. The hon. member for South Coast thinks he can talk all kinds of nonsense here, but we have now become fed-up with the double role he is trying to play here; he pretends that he wants to adhere to the 1936 Act, but on the other hand he wants to make a bid, together with the hon. member for Houghton for the Progressive vote. But that will not bring him any further. When this Government came into power that whole area around Nondweni had already been purchased with the consent of the hon. member for Green Point as the then Minister. They made a White spot of it. They abandoned those old people there to live among the Bantu, and they are in a critical position. But now that hon. member is pretending to be holier than the angels in heaven with regard to this matter. We will tolerate it no longer. That is why I rose to protest against this double role of the hon. member for South Coast.

When the hon. member talks about Clermont as White man’s land, he should get his facts clear. The land there was originally owned by the Swedish missionaries, and the land was occupied in the main by small Bantu huts. Then the Swedish mission sold it to two people, who developed it as an African township, but before these people bought it from the Swedish mission they ascertained from the Government of the day whether they would be able to divide the land up as a township. I do not intend giving the names of the two people who bought the land. One of them was a member of the Nationalist Party, and they were both Free Staters. They divided up the land into smallholdings for occupation by Natives, and they applied to the Governor-General for permission to sell the plots, and the plots were sold in freehold.

When was that?

It was 25 to 30 years ago. I have known that area for 40 years. I remember the days when it was owned by the Swedish mission and I knew at the time that the land was being sold as a Native township, and I know the people who arranged the loan because the loans were arranged through an office with which I was connected. So I know the facts first-hand. Each person who bought a plot had to obtain the permission of the Governor-General. It was sold in freehold and any trouble that may have eventuated was largely due to the owners who developed that township. They sold the plots and took no further responsibility. They laid out no roads and provided little or no drainage. Many of the Natives who bought plots only had the deposit to put down and many of the plots lay idle. The result was that over a period of years this area deteriorated to such an extent that it was virtually a nest of crime and there was the danger of disease breaking out and the Natal Provincial Administration established the local Health Commission which had to take over this area because no other local authority would touch it. They had to clean up the area from the health point of view, because the people who bought it originally were not concerned with the welfare of the Natives, but only with making a profit. The Swedish mission ran that land well when they owned it. To stand up now in unctuous righteousness and to talk about taking away the White man’s land when one knows the history of this, is carrying it too far. There is a word for it, but the Chairman will not allow it. To suggest now that this land was sold in United Party days purely out of hand is begging the question. The speculators who originally bought it provided no facilities whatsoever. They divided the land into as small plots as possible, with narrow streets, no drainage facilities, no facilities for recreation, no provision for post office and business sites, and it took the Natal Provincial Council Health Commission a good many years to clean it up, and now that they have done most of the work I would not be in the least surprised if in a year or two, when things are straightened out in that area, this Government will try to take all the credit for a township where Africans have freehold property rights, and we will find that in the publicity books of the Minister of Information distributed overseas the claim will be made that the Government is responsible for this effort on behalf of the Bantu. Sir, those are the facts of the situation. I felt that they should be put on the record for the sake of the record.

I do not have the advantage of being familiar with this area as the hon. member for Pinetown (Mr. Hopewell) seems to be, but it does appear to me thatthe areas mentioned in the schedules are not part and parcel of the original scheduled areas of the 1913 Act or of the released areas of the 1936 Act. I do not like all this talk about swopping White spots and Black spots. That goes right outside of my whole political philosophy, but nor do I like the sort of speech which was made by the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell). It smacks all too much and all too closely of the speech which he made at the 1959 Congress of the United Party where a thoroughly bad resolution was adopted with regard to land, the 1936 Land Act and Bantustans and all the rest of it, a resolution which was adopted by that Congress despite the fact that the Leader of the United Party voted against that resolution. Since this does not fall within the 1913 and 1936 scheduled and released areas, since I disapprove of the Government’s policy of swopping White areas with Black areas and all that nonsense and since I entirely disapprove of the sort of hysterical speech from the hon. member for Natal South Coast who talks about driving the White people off their land and so on, as if they are not being adequately compensated, I will abstain from voting on this clause.

No courage!

Courage!

I want to start with the hon. member for Pinetown (Mr. Hopewell). I am sorry the hon. member is somewhat confused. He was attacking the hon. member for Vryheid (Mr. D. J. Potgieter) and the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) all the time while he thought he was talking about Clermont, but he was completely confusing Nondweni and Clermont in his reference to those two hon. members. However, I do not intend chastising the hon member any further about that because I want to say “thank you” to the hon. member for Pinetown. The hon. member for Pine-town did something which I do not have to do now. He has given the historical background of Clermont which is the good reason for the step we are taking here. He has pointed out all the facts which justify this clause as well as I could have done it. I have already visited Clermont two or three times and I know it falls within or is just adjacent to the constituency of the hon. member, namely, Pinetown.

Inside.

I know. The hon. member has given all the reasons which I could think of why this step has been taken better than I could have done. He said that Clermont was originally started by a Swedish mission as a White town or within a White area.

No, it was not in the White area. The Swedish mission is in the Bantu area.

It is not in the released area nor is it in the Native reserve; the hon. member knows it. The point is this: The urban area was there; the erven were purchased, but there was still a number of vacant erven. The hon. member for Pinetown said: “The area has deteriorated; there are no drainage facilities; there are not even post office sites available,” and that conditions were poor there in all respects. Why is that the case? The hon. member gave further examples; I did not make a note of everything he said. The reason for that is the general uncertainty about that town. [Interjections.] The hon. member has now put both his feet further into the trap; he refers to the Public Health Commission. He referred to that a moment ago and I am also going to refer to it. [Interjections.] Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Transkeian Territories (Mr. Hughes) who is a Whip, has surely been in this House long enough to know his manners. He will have an opportunity of speaking when I sit down. Why is he so excited?

Excited? I just wanted to ask one question.

The hon. member ought to know how to set about asking a question. If everybody shouts at the same time I do not know who is asking a question and who is interjecting. The hon. member for Pinetown has confirmed that conditions in that urban area have deteriorated because the character of that town has always remained one of uncertainty. Is it a town which must one day be White or is it a town which must remain Bantu as far as the acquisition of property and the occupation of that town are concerned? That is the question mark which has been hanging over Clermont all these years and we are now going to remove that question mark. It is more in the interests of the Bantu than anybody else. It is also in the interests of those who advance money; it is in the interests of local governmental bodies: it is in the interests of the public; it is in the interests of commerce and industry which want a residential area for those Bantu who work in the vicinity, in Pinetown, in Germany and in Westville and in the large metropolitan north-western areas of Durban itself. The point is this that that town will now be included in the Bantu homelands. The Bantu need no longer have any doubt that they have a permanent right to purchase land there, to own a house there, to develop their plot and to raise loans to develop their property for both residential and business, etc. purposes. The deterioration to which the hon. member for Pinetown has referred could have been obviated had the uncertainty which existed in the past about that town, not beenthere. I repeat that I think the hon. member has done us a favour by describing conditions there as graphically as he did. As far as the Public Health Committee of Natal is concerned, we informed them of our intentions and they expressed their satisfaction because that is a town which will now fall within their area of jurisdiction. Just as they assist us in the administration of other similar towns in Natal, they will probably also be of assistance to us in this case. We informed them about it and they expressed their approval.

I do not want to say anything more about Nondweni; it is not necessary. There is hardly anything for me to add to what the hon. member for Vryheid, who knows the history well, has said and to what the hon. member for Heilbron has said about it. I can just say that I do not know why the hon. member for South Coast is so strenuously opposed, as appeared from his first speech, to what we call the rounding off of the Bantu areas. What is happening in the case of Nondweni is also a form of rounding off. That little town or little place—and the hon. member must not again get a fright when I say “little place” or “area he will notice that reference is also made to “erven” in the same line where the word “area” appears, and nobody hides the fact that this is a town which has been surveyed, but surely a little town is an “area"—that area is surrounded by Bantu areas. If existing conditions were allowed to continue, United Party members would be the first to come to us and to complain that those Whites were surrounded; that they did not know where to go to and that they did not know where the borders were. We shall again hear that story from them. What we are doing here is exactly to complete a rounding-off process. The way it is being done is this: We come to Parliament. This is not a process where erven are acquired one by one. In a little town such as this where the erven are sub-divided you cannot acquire the erven by way of a “creeping paralysis” method as some people call it. It would be unfair towards those people. Everybody knows what the future of that area is going to be now. It is being declared a released area by legislation and everybody knows what the future is, not only of a particular erf which is purchased, but of the whole area and everybody has a proper picture of what is going to happen. The public knows that we are going to treat them fairly and reasonably in this connection. I think we are doing a favour to the people who are trapped in that little town by tackling the question in this way instead of in the way which we could have followed, namely in a slow, paralysing and irritating way, not in every case, but in a case such as this where there are so many sub-divisions. We know, of course, that the whole objection of the United Party, as raised by the hon. member for South Coast, is an ideological objection. He did not state it as plainly as the hon. member for Houghton did, but their objection is an ideological one. Hon. members want to retain a place like Clermont and Nondweni as towns within a White area but in the possession of Bantu where the erven will be integrated one by one with an adjoining White city. It is because they are in favour of political integration or intermingling in their ideological conception that they adopt this attitude.

Clause put and the Committee divided:

AYES—81: Badenhorst, F. H.; Bezuidenhout, G. P. C.; Bootha, L. J. C.; Botha, H. J.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, S. P.; Cloete, J. H.; Coertze, L. I.; Coetzee, B.; Cruywagen, W. A.; Diederichs, N.; Dönges, T. E.; du Plessis, H. R. H.; Faurie, W. H.; Fouché, J. J. (Sr.); Frank, S.; Froneman, G. F. van L.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Haak, J. F. W.; Hertzog, A.; Heystek, J.; Hiemstra, E. C. A.; Jonker, A. H.; Jurgens, J. C.; Keyter, H. C. A.; Knobel, G. J.; Kotze, G. P.; Kotzé, S. F.; Labuschagne, J. S.; le Roux, P. M. K.; Loots, J. J.; Marais, J. A.; Marais, P. S.; Maree, G. de K.; Maree, W. A.; Martins, H. E.; Meyer, T.; Mostert, D. J. J.; Mulder, C. P.; 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, B. J.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Schoonbee, J. F.; Serfontein, J. J.; Smit, H. H.; Stander, A. H.; Steyn, F. S.; Steyn, J. H.; Treurnicht, N. F.; Uys, D. C. H.; van den Berg, G. P.; van den Heever, D. J. G.; van der Ahee, H. H.; 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 Rensburg, M. C. G. J.; van Wyk, G. H.; van Wyk, H. J.; van Zyl, J. J. B.; Venter, M. J. de la R.; Verwoerd, H. F.; Visse, J. H.; von Moltke, J. von S.; Vosloo, A. H.; Waring, F. W.; Webster, A.

Tellers: D. J. Potgieter and P. S. van der Merwe.

NOES—42: Basson, J. D. du P.; Bowker, T.B.; Bronkhorst, H. J.; Cadman, R. M.; Connan, J. M.; de Kock, H. C.; Dodds, P. R.; Durrant, R. B.; Emdin, S.; Field, A. N.; Fisher, E. L.; Gay, L. C.; Gorshel, A.; Graaff, de V.; Henwood, B. H.; Hickman, T.; Higgerty, J. W.; Hourquebie, R. G. L.; Lewis, H.; Malan, E. G.; Miller, H.; Mitchell, D. E.; Mitchell, M. L.; Moore, P. A.; Oldfield, G. N.; Radford, A.; Ross, D. G.; Steenkamp, L. S.; Steyn, S. J. M.; Streicher, D. M.; Taurog, L. B.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Timoney, H. M.; Tucker, H.; van der Byl, P.; van Niekerk, S. M.; Warren, C. M.; Waterson, S. F.; Weiss, U. M.; Wood, L. F.

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

Clause accordingly agreed to.

On Clause 6,

A portion of this clause limits a private householder to one living-in Native domestic servant and it puts in prospect the complete elimination of living-in Native domestic servants. Incidentally, I would like to ask the Deputy Minister how it is that after the Bill was published originally, we saw in the newspapers that the Minister of Bantu Administration said that he had given instructions to his Department to draft the Bill with no provision for Native servants living in, and how it came about that there has been this switch in such a short time.

When was that?

It was in the Press not long at all after the original Bill had been published for information.

I want to say immediately that this provision to limit the number of living-in servants to one is certainly not traditional South African policy. I make that point because we are so often told that what the Government are doing in regard to Native policy is traditional South African Native policy. It is well-known that this Bill is one (really a part of one) of the two pillars, as has been shown by legislation brought forward this Session, upon which Government Native policy stands. This clause represents a departure from the attitude which has been adopted by the people of South Africa down the ages with regard to the question of living-in servants and servants generally.

My second point is that this measure will undoubtedly create a measure of unemployment. Perhaps the Deputy Minister does not know, but we have not been told to what extent unemployment will follow. I should be very glad if he would indicate to us what his facts are as to the number of households in which there are two living-in servants or more. I think we must remember that the Government is closing off an important avenue of employment here for the Native people. I have always understood Government policy to be that they regarded the peoples of the reserves as being freely available to be taken into employment by people outside the reserves. I do not think it can be denied that it would be far more expensive to engage Native domestic help on the basis that will henceforth be open to householders. The hon. the Deputy Minister has said that it would be open to people to employ as many Native servants as they wish provided only that, save under permit, only one Native may live in the house of a householder.

I think it is clear that the whole relationship between householders and domestic servants will change to some extent. The hon. the Deputy Minister wondered why this provision was objected to because he said that most people do not sleep where they work. But the whole essence of domestic service is that you are closely connected with the household, and in normal circumstances you do sleep upon the premises. The work of the domestic servant starts early in the morning and tends to end in the late hours of the day, with proper provision made for a period off-duty during the afternoon.

Sir, when one considers this clause, and indeed this whole Bill, but particularly this clause, in the light of Government policy as a whole and above all in the light of their desire to see a flow back from the non-reserve areas to the reserves, one cannot but be left with the impression that this is a tinkering with the whole problem. One is not seeing any great suction machine established to draw these people back to the reserves. What is happening is that opportunities for employment, employment that has been valuable in households, are being summarily terminated, with no corresponding opportunities created or in sight of being created in the Native reserves, to which presumably these people are meant to go. I suggest that it is a severe injustice to these people that this sudden bar upon their employment should be dropped and no corresponding opportunities created or suggested or planned or in prospect. One hopes that the Government will set about immediately righting that position and creating these opportunities.

Sir, I notice from Clause 33 of the Bill that the various clauses may be brought into operation at different times. I trust that it is not the intention of the hon. the Minister to bring this clause into operation immediately. I hope he will enlighten this Committee as to when it is his plan to do so. Because once this goes through, clearly big adjustments will be needed, firstly by the servants themselves who will have to make new arrangements in due time and secondly, also by the householder because nobody likes to have to cast out a good and faithful servant in a hurry. It may well be that it will not be possible to re-engage them on the basis of their commuting daily from the townships, even if it is possible for them to get housing there. I should like the hon. the Deputy Minister to tell us what his intentions are in regard to the coming into operation of this clause, more particularly bearing in mind that if this clause comes into operation suddenly it will also aggravate the question of unemployment.

I think we can conclude that this clause will introduce a trend which I think is not the wish of the Government, namely to draw the Coloured people in domestic service in the Cape gradually into domestic service in the other provinces, particularly perhaps in the Transvaal. I do not know whether the hon. the Minister would care to say what he thinks of that.

But for these and other reasons we shall vote against that clause.

I want to move the amendments standing in my name on the Order Paper and I want to move them all together—

The hon. the Deputy Minister will see that the sub-sections which I have left in Clause 6 are the ones which I referred to at the second reading as being an improvement on the existing situation, and allowing greater mobility, etc., under the Urban Areas Act. For instance, there are clauses which enable Africans to be housed in married quarters together with their families, and there is one which allows land-owners, etc., to continue where they are without regard to when they acquired the land, and so on. Those subsections I have not touched, but I have more or less moved the deletion of practically the rest of the clause, and where I have not specified the sub-sections they are consequential, in fact, on the deletion of other subsections the deletion of which I have moved. Sir, this is the most important clause in the whole Bill. It deals with the interference of the right of citizens to house their servants as they have always housed them since time immemorial in South Africa, and it does not in any way mean an extension of family life or home life facilities for African domestic servants. As I mentioned at the second reading in discussing this clause, the Government’s intention is not to increase the facilities for home life for African servants or any other Africans for that matter. The Government’s policy is designed to encourage the perpetuation of the migratory labour system with which I am in wholehearted diagreement. I pointed out also to the hon. the Minister that this clause when implemented—and I hope that the granting of licences will be done on a fairly liberal basis as has been done in the case of flat servants for those who require licences, that is, more than five servants per block of flats—I pointed out that even if this was done on a liberal basis it would still mean additional accommodation for thousands of Africans who will now have to go and live in the townships. This is an extension of the compulsory segregation clauses which already exist in the Urban Areas Act. It will mean considerable additional expense for domestic servants so far as travelling is concerned, and, of course, the travelling of long distances on inadequately provided transport, despite the fact that the hon. the Minister of Transport, who is in the House, has assured me that he intends putting additional trains on the run between the south-western townships of Johannesburg and Johannesburg proper. The bus services are also not adequate, and they have to be used between the station and the termini, and, of course, between the Johannesburg Central Station and the far-reaching suburbs, where most of these domestic servants live. I do not think that this Bill will in any way assist African servants to enjoy greater recreational facilities, because the very nature of domestic service demands rather extraordinary hours of work, unlike the normal hours worked in factories, which are from eight to four, or in offices, which are perhaps from nine to five. The working hours of the domestic servants are different and the recreational facilities which they could enjoy are certainly not within easy reach of their places of work, so that they will not be able to enjoy them in the two or three hours per afternoon which they are given off by their employers. I mentioned, too, that the additional costs will bear very heavily on domestic servants. There are the transport costs, the additional train and bus fares in and out, and there is also the question of food and fuel and various things of that nature which are normally provided by the employer housing the domestic servant on his premises. There is also, of course, the question of the payment of rental in those case where the servants do not already have the additional room or house in the township as well as the room in the backyard of their employers. Because I believe this to be a further encroachment on the part of the Government on the private affairs of citizens who have managed these affairs in a perfectly satisfactory manner up to now—where the premises are not satisfactory the law provides that the inspectors can see that the premises are improved—and for the reasons I mentioned during the second reading I shall oppose this clause.

If the part of this clause has to be deleted as moved by the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) very little will remain of it. I do not think any one of these sub-sections should be deleted. On the contrary, I think every one of them should be emphasized. In connection with this clause, the hon. member for Houghton spoke about “interference with the rights of citizens”. If anybody wants to keep a number of domestic servants—whom I regard as luxury articles—over and above the one allowed by the law to live on the premises, he must pay the additional costs in connection with their transport and housing. The hon. member for Pinelands (Mr. Thompson) also referred to those “good and faithful” servants who have been with the same employer for so many years. I adhere to my attitude that if a person keeps an abundant number of servants he must pay for it if those servants then have to sleep in a Bantu residential area at night.

I want to refer to that part of the clause which the hon. member for Houghton wants deleted. In this connection I refer to Clause 6 (p). In her second-reading speech the hon. member referred to the concession which was being made here. She now wants the last portion of sub-section (p) deleted. The concession made in this clause is that Bantu canenter any Bantu area without first obtaining authority to do so. Had it remained like that, I, as one who has had a great deal to do with these matters, would have made serious objection to it. But with the addition of the proviso I can support this clause, because this proviso reads—

In other words, if that person is regarded as a nuisance in that particular Bantu town he can be ejected. I wholeheartedly agree with that, otherwise Bantu from other Bantu towns would have been able to flock freely to a certain Bantu town. The hon. member for Houghton does not want us to be able to control them. As undesirable elements they should be allowed to disturb the peace there; they can be agitators, but the hon. member for Houghton does not want us to be able to exercise any control over them. I want to refer the hon. member to a body which has far more knowledge and experience than she has in connection with this matter. In my second-reading speech I referred to the Institute of Admistrators of non-White Affairs, which made recommendations in respect of the Bill as it originally appeared in the Government Gazette of 8 February 1963. I should like to read a recommendation to the hon members opposite, a recommendation which is incorporated in this clause. The recommendation reads—

As it was at that time—

The members of this Institute are administrators or managers of non-White Affairs of the big cities and towns. These people deal with these matters every day of their lives. Now the hon. member actually suggests that this portion should be deleted. I cannot agree with that at all.

I cannot agree at all with those people who are so concerned about adequate transport facilities for those additional servants over and above the one servant who can still reside on the premises. We know it will be physically difficult at the beginning but it is something which will have to come about gradually. As I said during my second-reading speech it is something which the voting public wants.

Who says so?

I say the public want it. The Pretoria public want it in any case. In my constituency the majority of the people want it. I repeat that for the information of the hon. member who has made that interjection. We as White people must learn to do some of the work ourselves, and we must educate our children in that direction. It is essential that we do that. The nation which cannot do manual labour will perish. History teaches us that. The Romans who did not want to fight themselves and who hired people to fight on their behalf came to a fall. What happened to the Grecian Empire because the people no longer wanted to do manual labour?

I want to put two short questions to the hon. the Minister, and they flow from subsection (e). It is provided here that any urban local authority, if they think it can possibly be carried out, may request the Minister to withdraw permission for even that one servant who can now sleep on the premises to do so. When the hon. member referred to Silverton during his second-reading speech hon. members cast the reflection that it was a small little town in comparison with other big cities. I want to know from the hon. the Minister whether I understood him correctly that any urban authority, even in respect of a section of a suburb of the area which falls under its jurisdiction, can request this concession to be withdrawn.

In the second place I want to ask the Minister what the position is of those areas which fall under the jurisdiction of the Peri-Urban Health Board. About two-thirds of my constituency, Pretoria East, fall under the Peri-Urban Health Board. Will the Peri-Urban Health Board also function as such a local body in terms of this Act? As the hon. the Minister knows, the Pretoria City Council also controls the flow to the peri-urban areas in that vicinity. They also see to the housing of Bantu. I just want to know what the position is in connection with those areas which fall under the Peri-Urban Health Board.

During the second reading the hon. the Deputy Minister did not deal with specific items which we have raised in relation to this clause. We know that there is a shortage of Native housing; we know that losses are incurred on them; we know that there is a shortage of transport. The domestic servants will have to get up at an early hour of the morning with the result that their working hours will be even longer than they are to-day. When introducing the Bill the Deputy Minister did say that the hours worked by the average domestic servant were exceptionally long and that nobody wished to work those hours. He is now actually making those hours longer. Those servants were accommodated on the premises of their employers. They had good accommodation; they were well fed and right at the source of their employment. This clause goes a long way to create other disadvantages such as longer hours of work, etc. It has been pointed out by other speakers on thisside of the House that the average domestic servant has a very good break in the afternoon, and that it will be very difficult to fit in hours of work that will satisfy everybody under this new system. This will undoubtedly lead to unemployment. Domestic servants do domestic work because they are not trained for any other work. No other avenues of employment are open to them because they have no training and therefore they become domestic servants. There is the hardship to the householder who has a large family as was pointed out during the second reading. We have dealt with the vraious aspects of this question of large families. In some households the husband has to get up early to go to his work and this applies more specially to the poorer section than to the richer section who go to work much later and who employ Coloured and Indian servants. The rich man can also provide other means of transport for his servant to bring him to his place of employment. This is something the poorer employer cannot afford to do. The very fact that employers will have to pay for the transport of their domestic servants will mean that some domestic servants are going to be dismissed. This will cause unemployment. As has already been pointed out the general ratepayer will have to bear the losses sustained on sub-economic housing schemes. The hon. the Deputy Minister did not tell us how those rents are going to be collected without losses. He rather pooh-poohed it when reference was made to it but some of the local authorities suffer considerable loss in this regard. No section of the community really wants this particular provision. Take the position of a person who is fairly well-to-do and who lives in a university town or in a town where they have secondary schools. That person to-day lets rooms to university students on the bed-and-breakfast principle because, with an extra servant, it is no hardship to them and it assists the educational institutions and the students. If this Bill becomes law and they are only allowed one servant on the premises, I cannot see any of these people letting a spare room or more to students at a reasonable rental and to provide them with bed-and-breakfast. This Bill is going to have many repercussions. In some households there are elderly poeple, especially females, suffering from a chronic illness who have to have female servants looking after them. If only one servant is allowed to live on the premises it means a further hardship to that household. It has repercussions all round from every aspect. The hon. Deputy Minister says some control must be exercised because of the number of people who wander around in the streets at night. He has not told us how this provision will eliminate that. The fact that there is one person in a backyard has no bearing on this question of people wandering about the streets. There is nothing in this Bill to prevent people living in the Native village near by getting into a bus and coming into the local towns and wandering around the towns at night.

Have you ever heard of a curfew?

There is no curfew in the early hours of the evening and that is the time when the trouble starts. Most of your burglaries take place in the early part of the evening and in the early hours of the morning. They use a motor-car, usually a stolen one, to get away. Bag-snatching takes place during the hours of daylight; it does not take place during the night. All your big thefts to-day take place in the hours of daylight. It will not help one iota as far as that is concerned. Most of your burglaries take place while the people are in the cinema, etc. I cannot see how this is going to help. As far as I can see it will bring nothing but trouble to all concerned. You take a family where there are female children and you have to have a Native girl. Are you not going to be allowed to have a garden-boy in that case? If you only have one person on the premises she is going to be bored to tears if she has not got somebody to talk to. That is going to make her wander more than anything else. Anybody who has two servants will know that they are much happier; they have companionship and they stay on the premises at night whereas if you only have one she entertains other people or goes wandering around herself. The Deputy Minister has made out no case for this provision. There is no need for it and as I said during the second-reading debate, nobody has asked for it. I do not know of any big group of people that has asked for it other than one small group in Potchefstroom which the hon. Deputy Minister quoted for his own reasons. There is the shortage of houses; there is the shortage of transport and it is going to do nothing than to cause great difficulty to everybody in the cities and in the towns.

It emerges very clearly from the debate thus far on the second reading that the Opposition is completely out of touch not only with the Whites in South Africa but also with the non-Whites. The attitude which the Opposition has adopted in its objection to this clause reveals that very clearly. Unlike the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman), I want to appeal to the hon. the Deputy Minister to be very strict in granting permission for an additional domestic servant to live in at night on an employer’s premises. The hon. the Deputy Minister must ensure that the machinery which is being established for the issuing of these permits is not too liberal in this regard. The body which will be responsible for issuing those licences must ensure that thoroughly sound reasons exist for needing an extra servant. Permission should not be granted lightly.

Do you live in a town?

Yes, I live in a town. In asking that permission should not readily be given for an additional domesticservant, I would at the same time actually like to express my regret that permission is not required for the first servant to live in. Personally, I think the Minister is being too indulgent in this regard. However, as the clause has been drafted in that way, I shall support it.

Quite apart from the positive aims of this Bill, I welcome this clause for two other reasons as well. In the first place I welcome it because it will to a considerable extent jolt the White employer out of his over-rated and unhealthy love of comfort, and he will once again be able to take pride in doing his own work. With all the modern electrical appliances at our disposal to-day, doing one’s own domestic work should not present such a problem. There may be instances on the platteland where there is no electricity; I grant you that. Hon. members need not tell me that these electrical appliances are expensive, because I can tell them that non-White labour is not cheap, particularly when the White man has gone so far as to base the entire running of his household on Bantu domestic servants. In such a case it is no longer cheap labour. That is one of the reasons why I welcome this clause. As I see it, this clause augurs very well for the future. I welcome the provisions of this clause because one will get much better service from one’s Bantu domestic servant. It is an acknowledged fact that when one has two servants they stand around and watch each other. One will get a greater capacity for work from that single labour unit. That is another reason why I welcome this clause. As far as I am concerned, the advantages to be gained by this clause will greatly outweigh the disadvantages.

I should like to tell the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) (Capt. Henwood) that I contend that if all domestic servants were required to sleep off the premises instead of in the White areas, the incidence of crime would decrease in all these White areas. Personally, however, I still regard as the greatest advantage the fact that the Whites will have to learn to do their work themselves. I would very much like to see the day when even the first domestic servant would require permission, and when one would also have to prove that one really needed that servant. Once again I want to appeal to the hon. the Deputy Minister not to change this clause. In the event of an amendment TO the effect that even the first servant shall have a licence …

The Bill says that now.

No. The first servant is allowed. A licence must be issued for a second or additional domestic servant. That is the position as I correctly read the clause. I would very much like to see such an amendment brought forward, and if the hon. the Deputy Minister sees his way clear to arranging for such an amendment then I will have great pleasure in supporting it.

As far as Clause 6 is concerned not all the arguments advanced by the hon. member for Pretoria (East) (Dr. Otto) and other hon. members on that side of the House, such as the hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Mr. G. P. van den Berg), have convinced me of anything but that this is one of the most unhappy clauses in this Bill. I wish to single out particularly sub-clauses (a) and (e). I feel the whole philosophy behind this Clause 6 is based on the pretence on the part of the Government that the real home of the 3,000,000 Natives in the townships is the Native reserves, now the Bantustans. This Bill will make the urban Africans a shifting mass of humanity in this country where they have been born. Under this Clause 6 the hon. the Deputy Minister may do with these human beings what he likes. He may eject them from their domicile where they work; he may move them from one place to another and he may force them to live in single hostels in the nearest location. The first point I want to raise with the hon. Deputy Minister is in connection with appeals. Have the Bantu referred to in sub-clause (a) any right of appeal, if they do not wish to be moved; is there any effective appeals to the courts? The second point I wish to make is under sub-clause (e). This clause says that householders may employ as many servants as they like but that only one may be domiciled on the premises. The proviso to this clause says “that this exemption will not apply when, having due regard to the availability of accommodation for such Native in a location …” In that case the Minister may decree that not even one servant may be housed on these premises. I want to ask the hon. Minister whether there is any effective appeal against this blanket accommodation being available if single accommodation were not available to any one Bantu? Is there any appeal against this by both the employer and the employee or is it accepted by the hon. Minister that alternative accommodation must be available to house all those Bantu in the area before this clause is implemented?

I want to draw the hon. the Deputy Minister’s attention to two more facts under this Clause 6. Let us leave aside first the arguments whether the Bantu are better housed living in Bantu townships or not because I feel these arguments have already been very ably answered by hon. members on this side of the House during the second reading. But the Minister under this clause is taking the power to decree that only one servant may be housed on an employer’s premises, and these are powers which have not been taken in any other country in the world. No other country has seen fit to impose such powers, because in any other country whether the servant lives in the premises or not is a matter of convenience and arrangement between employer and employee and it is left to the people themselves to work it out. It is a question of convenience and finance. And even in a multiracial country such as South Africa such legislation is an imposition on both the employerand the employee. The day before yesterday we heard the hon. member for Musgrave (Mr. Hourquebie) who said that the Bantu who wish to live in the township are to-day perfectly free to do so. But most of them infinitely prefer to live on their employers’ premises, and they now have to give up that right, the employer as well as the employee, and they are no longer at liberty to do so. The hon. Minister should consider that he is now piloting this legislation through the House to move the Bantu like chessmen on a board, to compel them to move and live in accordance with the Government’s political machinery, and that many Bantu to-day—and I am not talking of the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, the area that I represent—many Bantu there are employed in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg as domestic servants, as gardeners, as part-time labourers, as office clerks and as shop delivery assistants and they live already in Native townships, such as Alexandra Township, if they so wish. But there has been no legislation up to now forcing them to live there. That is being brought about by Clause 6 of this Bill, and I feel that this Bill is a logical successor to the Better Administration of Designated Areas Bill, and it is created in Clause 6 the conditions to fill the proposed hostels for which provision is made in that previous Bill. This is part of the Government pattern to which we on this side of the House are entirely opposed. The Minister may, if suitable accommodation for all domestic Bantu is available, rule that even the one servant domiciled on those premises must journey to and from his work every day, with inadequate transport facilities in very many cases. Now these people are mostly respectable middle-class Bantu and very many of them are afraid of taking the buses to the townships even on their days off in case they are robbed or assaulted. Is the Minister under this Bill going to provide additional protection for Bantu servants as well as the additional transport that will have to be provided? I would like to make a parallel concerning the erection of accommodation for the servants who will have to journey to and from their work every day. When this Government banned the Bantu from White universities where at a youthful age the future leaders of the Bantu in South Africa enjoyed the civilizing influence drawn from contact with Europeans, what was the first reaction of Bantu students? The first reactions after being herded in these new institutions were demonstrated in arson and stoning, ever since the implementation of the Bantu Education policy. But I would also draw the attention of the hon. Minister to the fact that one of the worst hot-beds of African nationalism are the single quarters of the Harari Location outside Salisbury in Rhodesia. These single quarters have proved to be the hot-bed of nationalism in Rhodesia; and yet through this clause in this Bill the hon. Minister is deliberately introducing the very same situation into our locations. It is for this and the other reasons that I have outlined that I am going to vote against this clause.

It will not assist me much to try to convince the hon. member for Johannesburg (North) (Mrs. Weiss) precisely as to why domestic servants should no longer live in backyards, as the policies of the two parties differ so radically from one another. The policy of the Government has always been to do away with the mixed living conditions that have prevailed, and the Government has to a certain extent succeeded in removing to Bantu towns married people who were living amongst the Whites in the White areas. But now the Government is busy removing the second stronghold of Bantu still living amongst the Whites in the White areas, namely the domestic servants, and is housing them with other members of their own race. But the hon. member for Johannesburg (North), who is a person for whom I have the greatest regard, has now advanced a rather frightening proposition. She says of the hon the Deputy Minister: “He will move them like chessmen on a chessboard.” That is indeed a proposition that is not true. Every time this Government has moved a Native or his family, has it not given them better conditions, a more hygienic environment, and moved them to a better area to live together with their own people?

No.

The hon. member apparently lives in another world, because I challenge him to name one instance where the Government has not created better conditions for the Natives to live in. These conditions are of course not what the hon. member has been used to, because he and the Cape Town City Council still permit the Natives to live under the most parlour conditions, but as far as the locations established by the Government are concerned, one can visit any one of them. They are model locations, and a source of pride, and they are a great credit to the Government. But let us proceed further. The Minister does not say that we are not to have domestic servants any longer. We can still employ as many domestic servants as we like. But the Minister says that he is going to limit the number that will be allowed to live in the White residential areas. And I wonder whether the time has not arrived in South Africa when these domestic servants who are so exploited by certain employers should have certain fixed conditions of employment and reasonable working hours? Why do our people to-day set so much store by their love of comfort? Because we exploit domestic servants. In what other sphere of industry does an employee have to work from 5 o’clock in the morning until late in the evening in order to satisfy an employer’s love of comfort?

They get the afternoon off.

But who likes to have an interrupted shift? Everyone complains about broken shifts. The workers in industry do not want to hear about that. But here something positive is being done for domesticservants so that they may also have their time off and be able to enjoy social intercourse with their own people. Who would deny that to domestic servants? But some people want to exploit them and expect them to work for long hours unheard of in any other branch of industry. But it goes further. Provision is made in this legislation for powers to be delegated to the city councils for dealing with “hard luck” cases such as we have now been hearing about where more than one domestic servant is required, and the city councils have never acted unreasonably towards their taxpayers, and I would like to mention that since the Minister delegated certain powers to the city councils, the number of domestic servants who are now living out has increased considerably as far as certain city councils are concerned. In regard to the city council of which I was for years a member, where formerly over 60 per cent of the non-White population was housed in the White area, it is to-day less than 25 per cent.

Can the hon. member tell me in terms of which clause the city councils are given that authority?

I think that is a stupid question. The hon. member imagines she can use the skill she has acquired during all the years she has sat in this House to put a back-bencher off his stroke but she will not succeed in doing that. I should like to identify myself with what the hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Mr. G. P. van den Berg) said. Where do we find the greatest incidence of crime in our cities? The police will tell you that it is in the suburbs, where most of the domestic servants are housed. But we all moan and complain to the police, and we expect protection, but we are not prepared to cooperate with the South African Police in getting rid of the evil right in our very midst which constitutes such a threat to us. The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) (Capt. Henwood) says that the Natives can enter our cities whenever they like and they can ride around there whenever they like. I should like to tell him that as far as the Witwatersrand and the Transvaal are concerned, no Native is permitted to be abroad after 10 o’clock at night unless he has a permit from his employer. That is being applied there with great success. But I am not worried about the Bantu wishing to come from a Bantu township to the city. Our greatest danger is those very Natives who live together in our backyards, as they do not reside there alone but also house others as well, all the loafers. I am convinced that Opposition members are so out of touch with the electorate outside that they do not know what they are talking about. Some very good legislation has been passed by this House during this Session, but I maintain that this legislation will be welcomed because the electorate once again recognizes this as legislation which in the first place is fair and just towards non-White domestic servants and, moreover, because it further implements the policy of the National Party so that an end can be put to the state of affairs where Whites and non-Whites are living together on the same premises.

I think we should put matters right for the sake of the record. The hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Mr. G. P. van den Berg) and the hon. member who has just spoken and other hon. members adopt the attitude that in terms of this Bill a person is entitled to one domestic servant and that that servant may sleep on the premises. The hon. member for Wolmaransstad went so far as to say that he was sorry the Minister drafted the clause in this way. He would rather have seen it provided that permission had to be obtained for the one Native to live in the backyard of that residential area. But what is the true position? The truth is this—

The municipality have to see to it that the rooms in which the servants live are decent rooms and that the servants are properly housed. But only one person may live there. Then it goes on—

Be honest and read on.

It amounts to this that it may not be allowed if there is a proper location where such a Native can be housed.

No, you have not read everything.

I shall read on—

In other words, the hon. the Minister does not know his own legislation. The meaning is clear that where there is not a location and where there is not suitable accommodation and where there is not a released area in the vicinity the Minister can still say that all the Natives must leave.

Go and dance at Danskraal.

I can tell the hon. the Minister that when he comes to Danskraal he will not dance…

Order! Hon. members must not be so personal.

I want to put this matter right. Some daily newspapers have even stated that a person would be entitled to one domestic servant. That is simply not the case. The Minister can at any time say: “You may not have anybody in your backyard.” It is wrong, therefore, to take it that you are entitled to one servant. This is apartheid legislation. This is, as the hon. member for Brakpan has said, a measure to put an end to this way of living cheek by jowl. Mr. Chairman, if it is one Native, is he no longer a Native? They are only regarded as Natives if there are two of them, or three, but if there is only one it is not regarded as living cheek by jowl. That is the way grown-up people argue! They argue that if you have one Native in your backyard you are not living cheek by jowl with him, but the moment there are two or three you are living cheek by jowl with them. I want it to be clearly understood that this legislation is applicable to all municipalities in all towns. Am I right?

This time you are right.

It is also applicable to the small towns in the whole of South Africa. It is applicable to small places where women are to-day living alone. In many of the small towns you find widows who have moved from the farms and who have taken their servants with them, with the result that they have one or two of them in their service. Has the hon. the Minister already thought about it that those are farm Natives? Those are not people who grew up in Johannesburg. They are not people who grew up in Durban. Those Natives come from the farms. They are what we call the raw, primitive Native, they are the people who are dependent on the White man for protection. The father only gives his daughter to that woman to work for her because he knows she will keep an eye over her female servant and keep her under her protection. This is now going to apply to all towns. But it goes further. In most of the small towns the people have large erven, usually a whole acre, and they usually keep two or three cows and some poultry, and they keep two or three domestic servants. They are not only domestic servants, but they look after the cows and the poultry; they do all the little jobs.

They can still do those jobs.

I do not want to have anything to do with people who do not know what is happening on the platteland. For example, do you expect a widow living alone, or an elderly spinster living alone, keeping a few cows, when hearing a commotion in the cowshed during the night to get up to see what is happening? And if the Minister gets the idea into his head she may not even keep one servant. The hon. member for Wolmaransstad said that we were taking life too easy, the people in South Africa were taking life too easy. We know, of course, that the hon. the Deputy Minister washes his own cups but he forgot to tell us that he took his meals here in Parliament and that he did not cook his own food. He also forgot to tell us how much time he spent in that flat. I want to mention the case of a mother with four or five children who has to prepare the evening meal, bath the children and see to their needs. Hon. members argue that we have all these mechanical aids to-day. Mr. Chairman, can you switch on the electric current so that a gadget will hold the baby who is crying? What stupidity is this? And what foolery is this when provision is made in this year’s Budget for a house for the Minister of Finance which will have rooms for seven servants? Are they going to be White servants or will exemption be granted in respect of all of them? Are all the hon. members in the ministerial benches going to get exemption? What about the rest of South Africa? As I have said, what about the small towns? Mr. Chairman, what about my own case. I have servants who have come from the farm and who have lived for years and years and for generations and generations on the farm and who are unacquainted with town life. My Natives do not allow their females to go and live in the town. They are not allowed to go there because they say it is there where they learn all sorts of things that corrupt them. But they are allowed to work for me because when they work for me they are under my protection and they are in my backyard. They now have to leave and as the hon. member for Johannesburg (North) pointed out a moment ago, they have to go to single quarters where all these terrible things happen. The hon. member for Brakpan asks whether we have not yet heard about the bells that ring at 10 o’clock and after that a Native may no longer be on the streets. But surely that also applies to the person who lives in the backyard. That person may also no longer be on the street after that. Hon. members complain and say they have to seek policeassistance. Mr. Chairman, it is because they have run out of ideas; it is because they cannot exercise any control over their own Natives and because they do not know how to control and how to handle Natives. [Time limit.]

It was shocking to have to hear this afternoon that the United Party have now decided that they no longer propose to have separate residential areas in future. [Laughter.] Hon. members laugh, but that is precisely what hon. members are pleading for. The hon. member for Drakensberg (Mrs. S. M. van Niekerk) said that she has two or three or four servants to look after, and told us how brave she is and how she sees that nothing happens to them. I think the Minister of Justice should use her instead of the Police Force. Hon. members now want whole families, husbands, wives and children, to live in the backyards, plus all the hangers-on as well. What else can that mean but that they are renouncing the idea of separate residential areas? Should the Opposition in future tell us that they are not in favour of the races living together, then they are definitely not politically honest.

What is your opinion?

I represent a constituency with the third largest number of voters in South Africa, and I think they are voters, according to the Opposition, who are well able to judge because that same constituency at one time sent the Chief Secretary of the United Party to this House. On 3 June a conference of group leaders was held in Sunnyside, representing that whole constituency, and it was unanimously decided that no Native servant, of whatever kind, should be allowed to be present in that area from 6 o’clock in the evening until 8 o’clock the next morning. They request the Government to bring that about. That is what the voters of South Africa want, and that is what my constituency wants. It is only the Opposition members here who are quite out of touch with their constituents who are opposed to that. In Pretoria we have the position that 32.4 per cent of the servants are married, and the children of 76.1 per cent of those live in the locations or elsewhere, so that these Native women are completely out of touch with their children. If Opposition members want these women and their husbands to live in the backyards, are their children supposed to live there with them, or not? If the answer is “Yes”, then they clearly no longer support the idea of separate residential areas. If they say, “No, the children must stay where they are,” then this Opposition is busy wrecking the family life of the non-Whites. It is shameful to think that any member of the Opposition could be prepared to ruin the family life of the non-Whites in this way. I think they should be ashamed of themselves. In the whole area of Pretoria we have the position that 38.5 per cent of our residents have no full-time servants. That is far more than one-third. And if one inquires into the matter, one finds that those are people who carry their weight in society. They are people of standing. They are not like some of the Opposition members who are too lazy to do their own work and make sneering remarks about the hon. the Minister. I had the privilege and the honour to be one of 11 children, and no servant ever came near us. My mother brought us up herself. That is something I can be proud of. But if the members of this Opposition are given God’s gift of a child, they are too lazy to rear that child themselves.

Order! The hon. member may not say that. He must withdraw it.

I withdraw it. Sir, 70 per cent of the domestic servants in Pretoria are women. Now I should like to ask you whether those women are not entitled to live in with their own families and amongst their own people? Why will the Opposition not grant them that? Why cannot we allow them to live in their own family circles? Why should they be taken away to be cooped up in the backyards inside the White areas? We find that during the period 1 July 1960 to 31 August 1961 there were 5,000 male servants in Pretoria, Natives from outside, not local Natives. Why should those 5,000 work in Pretoria, and why cannot Pretoria’s own Natives do that work? Why should we have 836,000 foreign Bantu in South Africa? The hon. member asked what would happen to these servants when they were no longer employed, but surely the answer is obvious. Let the foreign Bantu return to their own homelands and let our own Bantu have those jobs. Then we think of recreation. Does the Opposition not want these domestic servants to have any recreation? What recreation does the hon. member for Drakensberg have to offer in her backyard? Has she a football field there for them?

No, they milk cows.

According to a survey taken in Pretoria, 1.6 per cent of all domestic servants make use of the facilities that have been provided for them in the locations. The vast majority of Native women, according to a survey, have stated that they would like to live in their own locations. If they lived there they would be able to make use of these facilities. Therefore I want to request the Minister that wherever possible all servants should be required to live in the locations, and let us not further encourage the policy of the United Party in trying to do away with residential segregation.

I do not think we have heard such a laughable debate in this House for many years. Listening to the protestations of members opposite that the White people should do their own domestic work and that the time has come to take into account the family life of the domestic servants, one cannot help being amused. The fact that we have two members on the Government side who have gained themselves a great deal of publicity for certain reasons in order to propound a theory is no justification at all for a Bill containing a clause of this nature in order to substantiate what they feel should be the new policy in South Africa. The hon. member for Pretoria (East) wishes to assure us that his whole constituency is behind him in the matter, but there is no doubt whatever that the women of South Africa will laugh at the suggestion that they should in any way subscribe to this reorientation of domestic life. There is no question of slavery here. There is service that is available. Just as service is available in industry and commerce, so service is available in the domestic field and there is no reason why that service should not be used.

Who wants to stop it?

To-day in practically every home that is built, satisfactory provision is made to house servants. There is no reason why the Railways should have the right to house their own employees in residences, as against families in the country who make similar provision on a smaller scale in their own homes. If there is labour available, why should it not be used? But let me go on to a more personal note. The women of South Africa are grateful for the fact that in this country we are blessed that we have this form of domestic service available. In other countries it is much more expensive, simply because the standard of living is different, but if domestic servants are adequately paid and housed there is no reason for any Government to bring such a system to an end; and to insist that the purpose of this clause is to ensure that the Whites should begin to appreciate the dignity of labour is in my view completely laughable, and a particularly laughable proposal for Parliament to be called upon to legislate on. There is no earthly reason or logic in any suggestion that domestic service which is available should not be made use of. In fact, the purpose of the clause is to ensure that the domestic service is not housed, because, according to the Minister and the Bill, there will always be domestic servants available provided they are not housed on the premises. The whole trend of the discussion is that the White man should work himself, and that the mother should do her early morning chores herself, and if she does that she will restore the dignity of labour. This type of debate is what makes this country look foolish, not only in the eyes of the outside world, but even more so in the eyes of our own people. This clause is completely unnecessary. Domestic labour has been the least cause of trouble in South Africa. As the hon. member for Drakensberg has pointed out, domestic servants have been in the employ of families for generations. That is nothing new. In other countries where there are no non-Whites, White domestic servants have been in the employ of families for generations and have been housed on the premises. No instance has been given of subversive action or sabotage or riots or dis order because of the system we have of housing our domestic servants on the premises.

The purpose of this clause is not only to grant an exemption in respect of one domestic servant, but at the same time it removes from the administration of the local authorities any power that it has in administering this system that exists to-day, because although the local authority would normally deal with exemptions, provision is made that the Minister himself can cancel these exemptions and administer the whole system himself. So much stress is placed on this simple issue in the normal life of a community that the Minister of Bantu Administration, a Minister of the Cabinet, takes to himself powers to interfere with the domestic arrangements of the community. No sensible person would do that. This is the one occasion one is tempted to throw back into the teeth of the Government the phrase they so often use, “Dit is ontsin”. This is not the type of legislation the Government can expect the country to consider seriously and there is every justification for this side of the House rejecting the principles contained in the Bill and particularly in this clause. It behoves the Government not to expect us to believe that the country does not want to maintain domestic servants. All of us who have travelled abroad know well how the women of this country are envied for the fact that they have these servants, but if one takes into account a city like Johannesburg where there are 180,000 adult females, most of whom are in domestic service, and one appreciates what might be the purpose of this clause, and that is eventually to deprive all those domestics of the right to occupy accommodation on the premises of their employers, and one realizes the complete disruption in domestic life due to the inadequacy of transport and satisfactory accommodation for single females and the difficulties the accommodation of a large number of single females under one roof would lead to, it is quite clear that the arguments that have been adduced here to-day can hold no water. They certainly cannot appeal to the electorate, for whom speakers opposite say they are pleading. We must reject the clause.

One can deal with the hon. member for Florida (Mr. Miller) by applying some of his remarks to himself. He said this was a ridiculous debate. I think that is eminently applicable to his contribution.

I want to reply to the two lady members who became ominously excited about this clause. In connection with the provisions of (a) and (b) the hon. member for Johannesburg (North) (Mrs. Weiss), contrary to her custom, expressed herself very vehemently against the Minister’s authority once again to move Bantu persons about at will. In the first place I wish to refer to something she said in reference to the possible result which may flow from this shifting when she compared those results with the results which flowed from the establishment of separate university institutions for the Bantu. She referred to the stone throwing andarson which followed upon that. In her excitement she committed a factual mistake and told an extravagant untruth which does not behove her. There was no stone throwing or arson as alleged by her. In the first place the provision in paragraph 1 (a) does not affect the masses of urban Natives. It affects the small number who are not accommodated in houses and who live within the proclaimed urban areas. Secondly. it is not applicable in the case where there is suitable and adequate housing facilities available. In other words, this is not a new principle. It merely affects peri-urban areas slightly more. The attack on the principle is completely unfounded.

I want to reply to the hon. member for Drakensberg in certain respect by simply stating the contents of this Bill as I see it. In the first place, reference is only made to Bantu servants and I am stating that deliberately because reference has so often been made to servants during the course of the debate. Coloured servants and White servants are not in any way whatsoever affected by this Bill. If persons keep servants other than Bantu that is no concern of this legislation. The second fact is that a general rule for the country is laid down here that every householder in an urban area may have one servant, but the hon. member for Drakensberg is right when she says that this general right in respect of the whole country can be cancelled by the Minister on the advice of the local authority concerned or even at his own initiative. What is the reasonable chances of cancellation? In the first place this cancellation, albeit on the advice of the local authority or at the Minister’s own initiative, cannot take place arbitrarily. It can only happen if there is adequate alternative accommodation available in Native residential areas in the vicinity. The Opposition based their argument on the fact that there would be inadequate accommodation to house the surplus Bantu servants if only one remained. What logical possibility is there, therefore, on the basis of their own argument, that the prerequisite can arise so that the Minister can easily cancel this right? Secondly, in spite of the fact that it is provided that the Minister can do so at his own initiative, I think most of us are politically sufficiently attuned to know that this is a power which will practically only be exercised at the request of a City Council.

Let us get clarity on this question of exemptions; (j) of (b), read together with (1), does indeed place the legal power in the hands of the Minister to grant exemption to keep more than one servant but administrative machinery is created whereby that power will be exercised by the local authority. This is a power, therefore, that will be exercised by the local authority as indicated by the hon. the Deputy Minister when he appealed to local authorities to exercise this power with great discretion. But the Minister has the supreme power in connection with the exercise of this right and be can place a restriction on its exercise.

The Opposition must also choose sides in connection with this clause. The hon. member for Drakensberg and Pietermaritzburg (City) made a great point of it and said that this would be an ineffective clause in order to avoid the overcrowding of a White area by Bantu. They say if one servant remains the position remains as bad as it is to-day. In that case does the Opposition want the Minister to exercise his power to remove all servants throughout South Africa? If they do not want that they have no right to argue that one servant will still give rise to an undesirable situation. If you criticize the presence of one servant, it is logical to accept that you do not want any servant there. Now, do you want one or do you not want any? In connection with the smaller towns which caused the hon. member for Drakensberg to become quite lyrical where the rural Native comes in and where there is not sufficient accommodation or no electricity, does the hon. member not know that those are the cases where exemptions will practically follow naturally? The Minister referred specifically to old people, the sick and other cases and he indicated that these exemptions would be based on psychological realities as far as the White employer as well as the non-White employee were concerned. I think the hon. member for Drakensberg will apparently be able to continue to keep her servants under her feudal authority. No case has been made out that this is an unreasonable threat to the White population as far as their right to have labour is concerned. A case has however been made out by this side that it will be a good thing to reduce the number of Natives by getting the urban servants to live in their own areas as far as possible and that it is desirable to decrease the gross number of Blacks who are in our urban areas overnight.

Up to now this debate has been something like a performance of “Hamlet” without the Prince, because the deputy dish-washer, the hon. member for Vanderbijlpark, has not said a word about his own activities, nor has he tried to explain to us how he, like his friend the Deputy Minister, has contributed to the stiffening of the moral fibre of the White people of South Africa. Can it be that he is afraid of the consequences of his actions when he goes home and his wife says to him that what he could do with the Deputy Minister in Cape Town he can also do at home? He may give us the reason why he does not want to re-open that happy episode in his life. He and the Deputy Minister set the country an example of how to do without Bantu domestic servants, and how, in that way, we would be making a very important contribution to the well-being and the moral rectitude of the White people of South Africa. The point is this: According to all the statements from that side of the House there is obviously a very high moral purpose in this Bill, and more particularly in Clause 6. I have here a document which states, amongst other things—

Bantoe is nie geskape om die Blanke te dien nie.

Those are the words of Fritz Smit. I put it differently. I will tell the hon. member in a moment what I said.

Then I must assume that the White man was created to serve the Bantu, because that is the only logical conclusion.

Nonsense!

That is the logical conclusion of all this talk, where you have an appeal from two hon. members on that side to the Deputy Minister that if he accepts any amendment it should be on the basis of not even one Bantu servant being allowed to reside on “White” premises. Once you get to that position of zero, the next move is to minus one. To extend the logic of this argument, I must assume that the Deputy Minister did not say, as he now tells us he did not say, that the “Bantoe is nie geskape om die blanke te dien nie”, and that he meant that the White man was there to serve the Bantu.

Those words of mine were distorted by political charlatans. What I said, and I said it twice, and I am going to say it to-night for the third time, is that I did not mention any race, neither White nor Black. I said no race was created to serve another race, and no race was created just to be served, and that is a truth, and I still say so.

According to the Bible there have always been hewers of wood and drawers of water for the simple reason that wood has always had to be hewn and water has always had to be drawn, so that this philosophical argument of the Deputy Minister is quite incomprehensible. In any society there are those who serve and those who are served.

The hon. member says the Bible says there will always be hewers of wood and drawers of water, but does the Bible say they must belong to a particular race?

No. If I had time I would read aloud the relevant passage, but I do not say that one race is created or destined to serve another. What I say is that it is inherent in the society of any country that there are some people who serve and others who are served. The Deputy Minister himself is a servant. He serves the public. I am not talking about race. There are those who serve and those who are served. The point at issue here is that there is nothing in law to prevent a White from engaging another White to serve him and to live on his premises, but now there will be a law to preclude that White man from having a non-White servant living on his premises. That shows the complete lack of logic, because while this deals with the Bantu there is nothing to prevent people from having servants provided they are not Bantu. They can be White or Brown. So I say that there is no moral purpose in this policy at all, and I do wish that for the sake of verity, if nothing else, the Deputy Minister and his supporters would stop preaching to us the virtue and morality of this Bill, because “there is not such thing”!

I was told a little earlier by the hon. member for Sunnyside that they were very happy indeed in Sunnyside, because they were not using any Bantu domestic labour at all, and he gave us a lot of figures to prove it. He says Sunnyside has joined the happy band which up to now was comprised only of Silverton, Bloemfontein (East) and a few other municipalities, which will show the people of South Africa how they must do without Bantu servants. I put it to the hon. member for Sunnyside that there must be something radically wrong in Pretoria, because, as the hon. member for Drakensberg has pointed out, in that city a house is being re-built where there will be provision for seven servants in the backyard! This is the point which apparently puzzled the hon. member for Drakensberg, so I will give her the explanation. It is that when one of my constituents, or hers, lives in a block of flats on the roof of which there is accommodation for Bantu servants, that constitutes a “location in the sky”, but when a Cabinet Minister lives in a block of flats where there is accommodation for Bantu servants, the position is perfectly normal and moral! Similarly, if one of my constituents has two servants living in his backyard, and his house stands on two or three acres of land, that is what the hon. member for Brakpan calls “deurmekaarwonery”, but when a Cabinet Minister has seven servants living in his backyard that is perfectly normal and moral. What kind of nonsense are they talking here? I cannot for the life of me believe that hon. members opposite believe these arguments, or expect us to believe them. The truth surely must be found in the fact that having said to their own supporters that they would eliminate the Black people from our towns, and having found that after 10 years of their rule, from 1950 to 1960, there were 1,100,000 more Bantu in the towns than before, they are now making this feeble gesture of removing a few thousand, or perhaps a few hundred thousand, Natives, not from the “White” South Africa, as they call it, and not from the environs of the White municipalities, but merely from the backyards. [Time limit.]

The hon. member who has just sat down has already been described as a person who, when he gets up to speak, puts his brainin neutral and idles with his tongue but it seems to me as if the hon. member is the court jester of the Opposition. That is how I regard the hon. member. He can make all sorts of jokes but he does not always know to what level he must descend with his jokes. The hon. member has twice quoted me incorrectly from all sorts of documents. He should learn to quote you correctly if he wishes to quote you, Sir. If the hon. member wants my written out speech dealing with those things he can have it. It is not necessary for him to use publications of political deserters for that purpose.

The hon. member for Pinelands (Mr. Thompson) had a great deal to say this afternoon in respect of which I just want to say a word or two. In the first place it was not quite clear to me what his reference was to the statement by the hon. the Minister in connection with this question of servants but I just want to state it very clearly that in this abridged Bill as well as in the unabridged one, with which we are not carrying on at the moment, as well as in the Bill which was published for general information in the Government Gazette in February, the provisions in connection with domestic servants were the same. No changes envisaging a different object have been made by the hon. the Minister or by me or by anybody else. I do not know what the hon. member was hinting at. If he were to show me such a statement I might be able to throw some light on it, if I can see any light in it.

It was a report in a newspaper.

Let the hon. member show me that newspaper report. The hon. member said that this provision in connection with domestic servants was not traditional. I want to tell him that it is definitely not traditional either to house numbers of Natives in your backyard or on your premises. The hon. member can ask the hon. member for Drakensberg (Mrs. S. M. van Niekerk) to take him to her farm and he will see that there and on other farms the servants are housed away from the house. There is no such thing that it must be regarded as traditional, that the servants who work for you must of necessity live with you and next to you and in your home. I have already lived in a rented house here in Cape Town where the so-called maid’s room was inside the house, but I still say that that is not traditional in South Africa. That sort of thing is very exceptional.

You are right there. They live in separate rooms on the same premises.

No, the hon. member is not au faitwith her own party’s policy. If I remember correctly it is stated in one of the editions of her party’s policy that they as a party also believe in residential apartheid. In other words, they also believe that the servants should live separately. When the United Party was in power they themselves, in their own way, however weak it may have been, through their Minister of Native Affairs who is now sleeping, proclaimed locations for the urban areas—not on the same premises. The hon. member has just said that it is on the same premises. The locations which they proclaimed were not on the same premises. The hon. member is distorting the policy of her own political party.

May I ask the hon. the Deputy Minister a question? Is the hon. the Deputy Minister unaware of the fact that there are locations—I call them locations although I do not like the word—in practically every urban area where certain Natives who are not domestic servants have to be housed: and is he unaware of the fact that, before a plan can be approved, it must be submitted to the city council concerned and that they have to approve of the servant’s quarters?

The hon. member must not refer me to locations in order to justify what she said a moment ago because she said that the servants should live separately on the same premises and I just want to show her that she is wrong. It is not traditional for domestic servants to live on the premises of their employers, similarly it is not correct for the domestic servants, even as far as the examples she has given us are concerned, to live on the premises. In those cases many of the domestic servants also live in Bantu residential areas or locations as the hon. member calls them. [Interjections.]

Order! The hon. member for Drakensberg will have another opportunity to speak.

I just want to remind the hon. member for Pinelands of what I said yesterday, namely, that although there may be only very faint signs of it, the general tendency in South Africa proves that what the hon. member for Pinelands chooses to call tradition, is gradually being broken to-day by the public in that the public is accepting, on a voluntary basis, that the Bantu rightly belong more properly to Bantu residential areas and we should like to promote that by way of this Bill. The hon. member also spoke about the “essence of domestic service is to sleep at your place of work”. That is not so. I have already replied to that. The hon. member then asked me another question which is a reasonable and a sensible question—that is the onlycredit I can give the Opposition as far as the questions they have asked me this afternoon are concerned—when he asked me when these provisions would be implemented because that proves to me that the hon. member has at least read the Bill right up to the last clause which deals with the question of when this Bill will come into operation. We intend making a variation as far as the proclamation of the date on which this measure will come into operation is concerned. In other words, those sections of the Bill which ought to come into operation soon, such as, for example, the clause dealing with foreign Bantu, will come into operation earlier. As far as the question of domestic servants is concerned, regulations have first to be drafted in connection with backyard occupation and licensing, etc.; in that respect, from the nature of things, time will have to elapse. I do not want to say today exactly on what date this clause dealing with domestic servants will come into operation. There are many aspects which must first be considered. I do think, however, that we can safely take it that it will not be possible to put it in operation in the year 1963. It will probably be in 1964.

As far as the amendments of the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) are concerned, I just want to set her mind at rest that I cannot accept them at all because if I do this Bill will be emasculated completely. The first part of her amendment amounts to this that the Minister must not give exemptions but that the local authorities have to do so. I just want to say that the very thing we do not want is local authorities to do this and for that reason I do not see my way clear to accept that amendment. We think that we shall be able to do it much better. The other amendment is consequential. The only other amendment of importance moved by the hon. member is the one she moved towards the end and which the hon. member for Pretoria (East) (Dr. Otto) has really disposed of, in which she says that the proviso which gives the Bantu free access to a location but which provides that he can be ejected if he misbehaves himself, should not be included.

There are already sufficient laws dealing with that.

On this point, as a matter of fact on all the other points, the hon. member and I differ so radically that both she and I as far as this point is concerned, are simply beyond redemption. I just want to add that local authorities who have to handle these matters of free access by Bantu to locations have been very insistent; they welcome it and they insist that this proviso be added, namely that it should be possible to eject those Bantu who misbehave themselves inside those Bantu residential areas. The municipalities want it. It is only the little Progressive Party who does not want it.

The hon. member for Pretoria (East) asked me a few questions. It is quite right that this provision dealing with one servant or no servant can be applied to a section of an urban area, in other words to a suburb. The hon. member asked me a second question in connection with those areas which fall under the jurisdiction of the Peri-Urban Health Board. If the Peri-Urban Health Board is recognized as the urban local authority for the purposes of Section 9, that is separate residential areas for Bantu in an urban area, the area which falls under its jurisdiction will also be covered by this. If it is not recognized as such in respect of the area concerned for the purposes of Section 9, it may make application to be recognized as such. I cannot say from memory whether all those Peri-Urban Health Board areas are areas in respect of which the Peri-Urban Health Board is recognized in terms of Section 9, but I presume that is the case, and if that is not the case it can easily be rectified.

Then we come to the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) (Capt. Henwood). I do not want to disturb his pleasant conversation. I could not reply to his question last night because time did not permit me to do so but I want to ask the hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Moore) please to give the hon. member an opportunity of listening to me for a change.

What an accusation! I am not wasting your time. You must control yourself.

The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) gave me a number of examples to-day. He gave the same examples last night. I hope he forgives me for not replying to him last night; I had to race against the clock last night. The hon. member spoke about “housing shortage, transport troubles, going on duty very early in the morning, boarding houses, sick people”, etc. The implication of his question is that if the position is so bad as that in respect of those matters, we should just let things develop. Is it right that if there are housing shortages you must simply allow the servants to live inside the White areas? If there is a housing shortage in the location must all the servants simply live in the backyards? If the transport facilities are inadequate must none of them avail themselves of those transport facilities and live in the towns? No, the point is this: Those of us who are suggesting this and all the local authorities realize only too well that housing facilities must be provided, that transport facilities must be provided and those things will be provided. The availability of accommodation, etc., is indeed being considered carefully. The hon. member need not think that we shall set about things without exercising any discretion, nor will the municipalities do so. He did not say it to-day but last night the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) said that particularly in Natal they were experiencing great difficulty in regard to deficits on housing scheme loans. I just want to tell the hon. member that theposition is not as bad as he has painted it. What is more, experience over the past two to three years has shown that it is characteristic of those housing projects, of those towns which have been erected inside the Bantu homelands that there have been hardly any arrears and no deficits as far as the financing of those houses is concerned. The hon. member has therefore made a general statement which is not 100 per cent correct.

The hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Mr. G. P. van den Berg) also asked me a small question. I can best reply to it by quoting what I said in my second-reading speech. The hon. member asked that strict discretion should be exercised when it came to allowing a second servant or more servants to live on the premises. I said—

I do not think I need add anything to that. I was really struck dumb by the hon. member for Johannesburg (North) (Mrs. Weiss).

Oh no, she did not “strike you dumb”.

The hon. member does not know what “verstom” (strike dumb) means. It does not mean that you become dumb. The hon. member spoke about the “hot bed of crime” which will supposedly result from the single quarters in the locations. Obviously all these servants are not going to live in single quarters in the locations. Many of these servants will probably live in homes which they themselves will hire, with their wives there. Many of them may probably live as boarders with their families. All of them will not necessarily live in single quarters. That, however, was not what struck me dumb; what did strike me dumb was this: Where the hon. member talks about “hot beds of crime” does she not realize that the backyard of a house where there is no supervision whatsoever, where no regulations are in force, where there is no patrolling, can much easier become a “hot bed of crime”, much more so than the single quarters in a city location.

I now come to the hon. member for Drakensberg. I am very sorry that she revealed such a weak tone in her speech. Like myself, the hon. member must learn to moderate her tone of her speeches sometimes. However, I do not want to teach her a lesson; I leave that to her age. The hon. member asked me where these provisions were to be applied. It is very clear that the provisions in connection with domestic servants are applicable to urban areas. An “urban area” is very clearly defined in the Act. An urban area is an area in which people live and where there is a local body which is recognized by us as an urban local authority. If it is a small little town, therefore, which is recognized as such it is an urban area in which case the provisions will be applicable and then, as one hon. member has rightly said, we shall act with great discretion if there are accommodation problems. The hon. member need not think that we shall set about things in a reckless fashion. What I find so regrettable as far as the hon. member is concerned, and that was actually what I had in mind when I spoke about her weak tone, was that the hon. member was once again the only member on that side who, politically faithful to her soap box tradition which she upholds outside when she addresses political meetings, dragged the argument of the danger of having servants in your backyard into this debate. That was not done by this side, That is not the motive here. The hon. member attributes such motives to this legislation for malicious consumption even though she does not intend it for malicious consumption.

I did not speak about that. It was the hon. member for Brakpan (Mr. Bezuidenhout) who said that.

She spoke about commotions in the backyard while the woman was alone in the house. The hon. member very skilfully suggested something like that.

I now come to the hon. member for Florida (Mr. Miller). There is not much I can say about him. I have always been under the impression that the hon. member for Florida himself was somebody who from his own experience, tried to exercise this, namely, to manage with as few servants as possible, and I am afraid the hon. member was not very successful in talking against his own better judgment.

I am surprised to hear from the hon. the Deputy Minister that there is no effective patrol over private properties in a municipal area.

Over the backyards.

To my mind that shows that he has very little knowledge of the subject on which he has brought a Bill before Parliament. Actually the patrols—and I am speaking for East London and other towns that I know—the municipal patrols there are very severe and very effective indeed. Private property owners can get away with very little in municipal areas so far as servants’ quarters are concerned. There is heavy patrol continuously and law and order is maintained there very carefully.

The hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Mr. G. P. van den Berg) supported by the hon. member for Sunnyside (Mr. van Zyl), said that this side of the House had lost touch with the feelings of the White population of South Africa in taking the line which we have done with regard to this Bill. It seems to me that for them to make such a statement there must be something radically wrong with the relationships between the White voters and the non-Whites in their areas because apparently the experience which they have had is entirely different from the experience which I have had in the area which I represent. In opposing this particular clause, I have had continuous representations made to me from my area. On my recent visit to East London I was stopped at every block on the street by people insisting that I should oppose this particular clause which provides for only one servant on the householder’s property. Furthermore, I have been receiving letters, and I want to quote just one short paragraph from one letter received recently which will indicate what the feelings are in that area—

That is where these people came from to East London—

I could go on quoting this letter but I do not want to take up the time of the Committee going into further detail. That is typical of the situation which we have in East London. To bring the number of servants allowed on a property down to one is going to bring serious hardships not only to the Whites but to the non-Whites who are employed at the present time where there is more than one servant on the property. The hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. F. S. Steyn) asked whether we were in favour of one servant or no servants being kept on a property, whether one was not sufficient. I submit that a fair proposition would be, if there must be limitations that the size of the property should be taken into account because on a bigger property the population density, the ratio of Black to White, is obviously spread over a bigger area and that can cause no difficulty whatsoever. If one is allowed on a property of a quarter of an acre, surely two can be allowed on a half-an-acre property, or even three or four on a one-acre property, without any serious consequences.

Leave it to the local authorities to decide.

What is more ideal in such a situation than to have a married couple living on the property, the woman doing the work in the house and the man working in the garden and cleaning the car, etc.? That is surely the ideal.

And how many children do you want to allow on the property?

Every member who has had servants living in locations who have to travel in every day, knows what anxiety they have that these people may bring diseases and all sorts of insects with them. If these people are kept on the premises, those things can be seen to. The premises are continually inspected by health authorities. The White householder will see to it himself that the premises are kept scrupulously clean and that health considerations are taken into account.

Each member is well aware of the conditions in his own district. A new township was recently established at East London to house a large number of people. There was accommodation available there for a short while until large numbers were sent over from the Western Province to fill those houses, but in the meantime while accommodation was available, I did not hear of one single instance in my area where servants willingly left the residences on the properties where they worked in order to live in the location, nor did I hear of any employer who was anxious to send his servants away. This gives the lie completely to the idea put forward time and again on the other side of the House that these servants are not wanted, that householders want to get rid of them and want them to be housed in the location.

The fact is that nobody in my area wants this Bill, neither the employers nor the employees. If it were put to the vote there it would be thrown out by an overwhelming majority. Then there is also the problem of time taken up in travelling and there is the problem of transport. In East London the Bantu Townships, as in most cities, are a long distance away from the suburbs. Rail transport might be suitable for industries which are usually built near the railways, but in our area I know of many instances where in the great majority of cases it would mean that the servants would have to make use of two distinct bus services, firstly from the Native area in the town and then out again to the private residences where he is employed. When a newtownship which the Government is building is completed, it will mean long walks for these servants first to the railway station, then it would mean a bus trip after the railway trip and then another long walk to the house. What about the time factor? When will these people arrive at their work?

How do you get to work?

I travel by car. These people do not have cars. My point is that in the early morning these people are required; both the man servant and the maid are required to get the people away; the children have to go to school; the man has to go to work and in many cases the woman also has to go to work. They need those employees on the property before they leave home. Another point I want to make is this. In many cases the man on the property guards the property. I find that my servants have respect for me as their employer. I am sure that that applies to many other hon. members. These servants have friendly relationships with their employers and when the employer leaves the property he simply says to the old boy: “Look after the property while I am away,” and the employer then goes away quite satisfied that the place will be looked after. The idea has been put forward here that these people are a menace to the property or to the neighbours. That may be the position in some members’ areas but it is certainly not in mine.

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

I shall vote against this clause. It extends the authority of the Minister over local authorities together with consequential clauses. Clause 11 in particular. Although the White Paper to this Bill states that “apart from the consequential amendments, provision is made for the promulgation of standard regulations by the Minister which may be adopted by a local authority or which the Minister may apply in the areas of local authorities …” I do not see that permissive word “may” in the actual Bill itself. Clause 9 (b) states—

This is not a permissive clause at all. Once the hon. the Deputy Minister has decided in consultation with or after reference to the urban local authority, (and he is not obliged to adopt the advice given to him by the urban local authority), he may frame regulations which shall be applicable in the area concerned. For that reason, Sir, and because I believe the hon. the Deputy Minister already has enough authority over local authorities in this respect, I shall vote against this clause.

I wonder whether the hon. the Deputy Minister has given any consideration to a report in which there is this statement—

The hon. the Deputy Minister will probably agree with that sentiment if I tell him who the author of that statement is.

What report?

You have just heard me read it. To-day the gentleman who was responsible for this statement will be regarded as somebody to whom the Nationalist Party and the Government should pay attention and respect. It happens to be a statement made in the report of the Holloway Commission of 1932. If I may say so, Sir, they investigated a lot of matters, including the question of the urban Bantu, as we call them to-day. That statement was made 30 years ago, and it is still perfectly true to-day. Despite the fact that this warning was given as long ago as 1932, the Government comes forward with legislation to-day which shows that it is not prepared to look at the reality of the situation, but that it is determined to legislate as though the Bantu were not in the urban areas despite the fact that they have grown in numbers to something approximating 4,000,000.

May I ask the hon. member on which clause he is speaking?

The hon. member for Kempton Park knows very well that I am speaking on Clause 9. We have now reached a position where it is not sufficient to allow the urban local authority, which is the responsible authority in each case, to regulate the residence of Natives in its own area in a satisfactory manner and to allow the local authority concerned to take cognizance of the simple fact that there were or are Bantu living in the local authority area, but it is necessary for the hon. the Deputy Minister to come forward with this Bill which, inter alia, provides for what is called the “guidance” of the urban local authorities. We know what that guidance means, Sir. It means a standard set of regulations. There is reference to it in the memorandum which says “apart from the consequential amendments, provision is made for the promulgation of standard regulations”. This uniformity, which is one of the passions of the Government, has got to be applied to a wide variety of cases which are not uniform, and which are not standard. By way of an example, I would remind the hon. the Deputy Minister about Silverton. Can the hon. the Deputy Minister seriously tell us that he believes that conditions in Silverton are identical, as regards the Bantu living in the local authority area, to conditions in Johannesburg? His habit of sniggering is no answer, Sir. I would sit down if I thought the Deputy Minister would reply to me. But I remember that before the adjournment this evening, all he could do was to be rude and not reply to an argument. That was all he did as far as I am concerned. So I won’t sit down for him to reply; I know what to expect from the hon. gentleman. We have the position here that it is expressly the intention of the Government to work out a set of standard regulations which will apply wherever a local authority has to deal with its own Bantu. I say again, Mr. Chairman, that I challenge the hon. the Deputy Minister to say categorically that conditions in Silverton as regards the Bantu who live in that local authority area are identical to the conditions which apply in the municipal area of Johannesburg.

They are not identical, they are better.

If they are better, all the more reason not to lay down standard regulations! Then you must have regulations that will improve the conditions in this “bad” local authority of Johannesburg, which was praised

yesterday by the hon. the Deputy Minister, and leave the position alone in Silverton, where it seems to be ideal. The simple point obviously is that since conditions in these various areas cannot be “standard” in the nature of things, it is not right of the Government to assume that it can reasonably apply what it calls “standard regulations” to all the local authority areas. By way of illustration, Sir: Silverton has no blocks of flats, as far as I know. Hon. members opposite have told us the difficulties and evils which have been created as a result of these enormous blocks of flats which exist in the city of Johannesburg, which require Bantu servants, some of whom have to be housed on the premises—and so on. You cannot therefore legislate for Silverton as you do for Johannesburg. I do not particularly plead for Johannesburg; I plead for the freedom of all local authorities to continue doing what some have done reasonably well, and others, very well, up to now, within the framework of existing legislation—and that is, to draw up such regulations as happen to be satisfactory for their own local authority area. I therefore say, Sir, that it is not a case of my making a plea for the one local authority as opposed to the other. I believe it would be to the advantage of the country as a whole if Silverton were permitted to continue to draw up its regulations, since it has a certain need there for one set of regulations and no need for another set of regulations, and to permit Johannesburg and the other local authorities to do exactly the same.

I want to say, as regards this particular question of regulations which will be drawn up for the guidance of urban local authorities, that when the Minister says in Clause (b) that when he considers it advisable to do so “he may after reference to the urban local authority concerned or to the Administrator …”, he immediately indicates once again the departure from established practice which is contemplated in this particular provision. He does not even refer to “consultation” which, as we know, can be a very one-sided affair, because if I consult somebody and I refuse to take his advice, the consultation, from his point of view, is fairly worthless. But, at least, there is the machinery of consultation. In this case, I draw attention to the significant fact that the word “consultation” does not appear in this clause, but there may be “reference to the local authority”, which in effect means exactly what it says—I believe that. It means that he will tell the local authority that he has drawn up certain regulations which have already been promulgated, and that on a particular date those regulations, together with any amendments which the Department may wish to make to them, will be of force and effect in that local authority area regardless of the fact that they are completely unsuitable in many respects, and regardless of the hardship that the implementation of the regulations will impose, firstly, on the local authority, secondly, on the Bantu (for whose benefit they are supposed to be designed), and thirdly, on the White ratepayers of that local authority. Mr. Chairman, I say in all serious ness that the hon. the Deputy Minister should not continue to assume that he is always right and that this side is always wrong. He must be prepared to admit the possibility that we are sometimes right.

That is impossible.

You see the difficulty one has, Sir, in speaking to people whose ears are blocked up. But at the same time it is our duty to the constituents we represent, and to the local authorities who look to us to voice a reasonable opinion on their behalf, to urge upon the hon. the Deputy Minister not to proceed with this particular clause, because it can achieve very little that he cannot achieve in a more reasonable way under the existing machinery. He can only bedevil the situation which exists between him and certain local authorities with whom, he says, the relationship is very good at the moment, or reasonably good. I give him one example, namely, that of Johannesburg. When he considers the position of Johannesburg with a population in its south-west complex of 437,000 plus, which has to be administered by the City Council of Johannesburg, and where there are 50,000 houses and a total of 23 townships, I think, in which conditions vary in one way or another—the hon. the Deputy Minister may well realize that it would be far better to allow the local authority to frame its own regulations under the law, and to carry them out. [Time limit.]

I am sorry that I have to reply to the hon. member …

Another case of boycott.

If I want to boycott the hon. member, and he has given me sufficient provocation to do so, I would have remained seated. I want to reply to the hon. member …

May I ask you a question?

Order! The hon. member cannot say “you”.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask the hon. the Deputy Minister a question? Is the hon. the Deputy Minister serious when he suggests that when I deal with legislation before this House I am provoking him?

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member provoked me when he said I was “rude”. That was what I meant. He was rude a moment ago when he shouted “you” at me instead of addressing me in the customary way. Seeing that he has now done so in a civil manner I shall reply to his question.

Mr. Chairman, standardization in administration is something modern. I cannot find anything wrong with that. I cannot see what inroads are being made on the so-called autonomy of a municipality when you issue standard regulations. I want to tell hon. members opposite that there is more standardization of regulations and of method in the administration of Bantu affairs than they think. The entire system of the Bantu Revenue Account has already been standardized. Regulations are already used as suggested here. There are many small municipalities who follow the regulations of other municipalities without changing them. The regulations of East London are regarded as model regulations and many other municipalities have adopted them with some adaptation to local circumstances. What is the position in connection with location regulations? The hon. member does not know what he is talking about that is why he says so many things which are completely wrong. The rent payable for houses is practically the only item which really varies from town to town because it depends on the nature of the housing and the economic aspects of the big projects tackled. The location regulations drafted by city councils must in any case be referred to the Minister for approval. Are we now expected to rectify regulations which were incompletely drafted and which were not drafted in terms of modern concepts later on instead of giving guidance beforehand and saying: There is a standard set; you can take it over just like that if it suits you or you can adapt it. If a city council does not want to accept a standard set at all or does not want to adapt it to its own circumstances then we can say: If you do not do so voluntarily we are going to make it applicable to you. I want to say this to the hon. member There are many things in Johannesburg he can boast about and I shall subscribe to what he says in respect of many things, but I can really not do so as far as its regulations are concerned. I am sorry that the hon. member has provoked me as far as Johannesburg’s regulations are concerned. He spoke about the few hundred thousands of Natives that were controlled in 23 or more Bantu residential areas. Does that hon. member know that the regulations of Johannesburg are the most antiquated of the antiquated; that they date from the year 1924? Johannesburg refused to modernize its regulations. It has long since been time for Johannesburg to do so. I hope Johannesburg will succeed, when we produce a set of modern regulations, to change its regulations in accordance with modern requirements. Standard regulations are necessary in order to control Bantu residential areas in general. That is again necessary in connection with backyard occupation. The hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Gorshel) has quite unnecessarily kicked up dust in connection with this matter. There are no evil intentions behind this. If there is a standard set of regulations a City Council can adopt it or change it subject to our approval. It need not be forced on to them if they behave them-selves properly and adapt the regulations. It is for that reason also that I want to say to the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) that her amendment is not necessary and therefore not acceptable.

I cannot understand this Minister. This is an unnecessary clause. The Minister says regulations are becoming standardized and that more and more municipalities are following the regulations …

I said the administration.

The administration, yes, and regulations. You referred to the regulations of the East London Municipality. Did you not refer to that?

Yes.

He singled them out as an example of good regulations which are being followed by other municipalities. Why argue with me then? The hon. the Deputy Minister said that regulations were becoming standardized and uniform. All the Minister need to do is to publish regulations for guidance in terms of Clause 9 (8) (a). If he wants all the municipalities to adopt the same regulations he need only publish them for guidance in terms of Clause 9 (8) (a). Why must Clause 9 (8) (b) be there? Why must he be given power to enforce these regulations on municipalities? If the Minister is correct and the municipalities are falling into line and carrying out uniform regulations there must be some special reason why they do not accept the regulations which the hon. the Deputy Minister wants them to accept. Why do they not accept them? Because conditions vary. Otherwise they would obviously accept his regulations which he says are model regulations. He said that Johannesburg was not falling into line.

I did not say they were not falling into line.

You said their regulations were old, antiquated.

I did not say they were not falling into line; you are twisting my speech.

Order! The hon. the Deputy Minister must withdraw that.

I withdraw it, Sir.

The hon. the Deputy Minister said they were antiquated; that they were“uit die oudoos”. Yesterday the hon. the Deputy Minister was full of praise for the Johannesburg municipality and he was now too. If the Johannesburg municipality have not changed their regulations and the hon. the Deputy Minister has requested them to do so there must be some special reason for it. They are co-operating with the Deputy Minister in every way, Sir, but they will not change their regulations. Why? They must have some special reason. That is why we object to Clause 9 (8) (b) which gives the Deputy Minister the power to enforce his regulations on every municipality in the country. Our objection to the policy of this Government is that they are gradually taking over the administration of municipalities and local bodies completely. They are leaving nothing to those municipalities and local authorities or village management boards to decide on their own. The hon. the Deputy Minister says they have to carry out the policy of the Government. Well, that is all right; we expect them to carry out the policy of the Government but let them carry it out in the way they think best. They are compelled to carry out the policy of the Government because of the Acts of Parliament which are passed. But let them administer the Acts as they think best in carrying out that policy. What we object to, Sir, is the fact that the hon. the Deputy Minister is making these municipalities and local authorities merely the agents of the Government. Yesterday the hon. the Deputy Minister tried to justify his making these municipalities and local authorities agents. I say that we on this side are opposed to that. We say local authorities must have some say in the administration of their own affairs. The Acts of Parliament lay down what the Government’s policy is and what restrictions must be placed on Bantu townships. But for heaven’s sake, Sir, let us leave something for these local authorities to administer themselves. We are opposed to this clause because this is a further step of this Government taking over complete administration, creating an empire of its own in Bantu Affairs and controlling every phase of the life of the Bantu in South Africa, no matter where he lives.

It seems rather strange that the hon. the Deputy Minister and those who support him in the discussions on these types of enactments always gravitate towards the City of Johannesburg. The problem that worries the hon. the Deputy Minister it this: The City of Johannesburg has the largest administration, has the largest number of Bantu under its care; the City Council of Johannesburg has virtually set up, even to the assistance of the Minister’s own Department, a model standard of administration that has been an example for all parts of the country, and much of which has been followed by other parts of the country.

That would be the day!

But for many years there has been a constant attack on the administration of the City Council, a constant attempt to wear down the efforts of the City Council in order to compel it, not to comply with the policy of the Government, but to compel it to comply with the type of administration which the Minister and his Department wishes to make use of in administering the affairs of Johannesburg. Not so long ago—and the hon. Minister read the statement himself—we even obtained the following assurance which came after a great deal of nagging, letter-writing and all sorts of, one might almost suggest, threats, the refusal to approve of housing schemes, the suggestion that money might be withheld for housing schemes. The assurance which the hon. the Deputy Minister read himself was—

Now I am absolutely satisfied that it is the City of Johannesburg’s administration that constantly worries the hon. the Deputy Minister. Sir, the clause that he seeks to amend makes provision for a considerable number of matters on which a local authority should provide regulations in terms of this Act. Not only does it enable the local authority to do so, but it even obliges not less than two-thirds of its members (not two-thirds of members present at a meeting) to assent to the passing of these regulations, after seven days’ notice has been given of the meeting at which the resolution is to be considered. Now what does it deal with? Terms and conditions of residence in locations, villages and hostels; management and control of these areas; matters concerning the keeping of animals, the grazing of stock; the prohibition or regulation of entry and sojourn in these areas; the regulation and control of burial grounds; the imposition of penalties with regard to payment of rents, and so on and so forth; the control and supervision and restriction of meetings or assemblies (all within Government policy); the regulation, supervision and control and prohibition of the use of buildings; the management, control and good government of any area within the jurisdiction of the urban local authority, approved by the Minister for residence of Natives, and the conditions which shall be inserted in title deeds and leases. These are all matters which are perfectly natural for a local authority to administer because it has the experience, it has the breadth of vision and has intimate association with the citizens. These are the things which a local authority should rightly administer, and we have constantly told the hon. the Deputy Minister what is the record of the Johannesburg City Council. Why, duringthe time of the Sharpeville riots, during the time of the difficulties at Langa down here, during the time when the Army was called out and placed on a war footing almost, what happened in Johannesburg? The Native villages, the hostels, the locations, or townships as they are called, were completely quiet. Why? Because there was a certain spirit that had been built up between the administration and the people whom they were administering.

May I ask the hon. member a question? Does the hon. member imply that the United Party Council of Johannesburg is better than the United Party Council of Cape Town?

There are no politics in the City Council of Cape Town. The City Council of Cape Town is a completely independent body. The hon. member was a resident of Johannesburg for many years and in fact was a supporter of the excellent work done by the Johannesburg City Council—in fact I think that a great deal of the knowledge that he has, little as it is, on this subject was acquired through his contact with the City Council of Johannesburg.

Mr. Chairman, they pass regulations, and I challenge the hon. Deputy Minister to give us the dates of the latest resolutions approving of regulations by the Johannesburg City Council. I challenge him that it is not an antiquated set of regulations that he has suggested here to-night. His Department can give him the date of the latest resolution and let him satisfy the House that they were the same regulations passed under the 1923 Act and that they are still in existence. There have been changes. Of course the whole aspect has changed. In my second-reading speech I indicated the tremendous advance made by the City of Johannesburg administering 600,000 Bantu people, having built 41,000 houses in a period of approximately seven or eight years, administering a revenue fund to-day of nearly R8,000,000—where do you get an administration of this nature? And the hon. Deputy Minister wants not only to frame a set of model regulations but to superimpose them over the wishes of this administration which is geared up to carry out what the law provides that it should do. I challenge the Deputy Minister further to give us concrete evidence of any way in which the Johannesburg City Council has failed in its non-European administration, has failed to carry out the spirit and the letter of the Urban Areas Act. I challenge him further to tell us whether it is not correct that every other municipality places the greatest reliance on what is done in Johannesburg, seeks its advice and in fact has learnt a great deal from all that has been done in the administration of Bantu affairs. I go further and I would like the hon. Minister to refute this suggestion, that his own Department has had the greatest co-operation from the City of Johannesburg and has been only too happy to appreciate some of the forward modem steps that have been taken in the administration of that city. Sir, the Department of Bantu Administration has in the past sent inspectors to the Johannesburg City Council to examine the revenue accounts, the detailed administration and examining the labour bureau set-up of the Johannesburg City Council. Nobody has heard of any suggestion that the Council has failed in its duty and in its obligations under the Act.

The hon. the Deputy Minister must come with very much more concrete information than he has given us to-night to satisfy this House that it is necessary to superimpose regulations on a democratic body which is doing its job in regard to this important issue in South Africa to-day.

Clause 9 put and the Committee divided:

AYES—62: Badenhorst, F. H.; Bekker, H. T. van G.; Botha, H. J.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, S. P.; Cloete, J. H.; Coetzee, B.; Cruywagen, W. A.; Diederichs, N.; du Plessis, H. R. H.; Fouché, J. J. (Sr.); Froneman, G. F. van L.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Heystek, J.; Hiemstra, E. C. A.; Jonker, A. H.; Keyter, H. C. A.; Knobel, G. J.; Kotze, G. P.; Kotze, S. F.; Labuschagne, J. S.; Loots, J. J.; Marais, J. A.; Marais, P. S.; Maree, G. de K.; Maree, W. A.; Martins, H. E.; Meyer, T.; Muller, S. L.; Nel, J. A. F.; Niemand, F. J.; Otto, J. C.; Potgieter, D. J.; Potgieter, J. E.; Rall, J. J.; Rall, J. W.; Sadie, N. C. van R.; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, B. J.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Schoonbee, J. F.; Serfontein, J. J.; Smit, H. H.; Stander, A. H.; Steyn, F. S.; Uys, D. C. H.; van den Berg, G. P.; van der Spuy, J. P.; van der Walt, B. J.; van Eeden, F. J.; van Niekerk, G. L. H.; van Niekerk, M. C.; van Wyk, G. H.; van Wyk, H. J.; van Zyl, J. J. B.; Venter, M. J. de la R.; Verwoerd, H. F.; Visse, J. H.; von Moltke, J. von S.; Waring, F. W.

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

NOES—37: Basson, J. A. L.; Basson, J. D. du P.; Bowker, T. B.; Cadman, R. M.; Connan, J. M.; De Kock, H. C.; Dodds, P. R.; Durrant, R. B.; Emdin, S.; Field, A. N.; Fisher, E. L.; Gay, L. C.; Gorshel, A.; Hickman, T.; Higgerty, J. W.; Hourquebie, R. G. L.; Hughes, T. G.; Lewis, H.; Malan, E. G.; Miller, H.; Mitchell, D. E.; Mitchell, M. L.; Moore, P. A.; Radford, A.; Raw, W. V.; Ross, D. G.; Streicher, D. M.; Suzman, H.; Taurog, L. B.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Timoney, H. M.; Tucker, H.; Van Niekerk, S. M.; Weiss, U. M.; Wood, L. F.

Tellers: H. J. Bronkhorst and A. Hopewell.

Clause accordingly agreed to.

On Clause 11,

This clause illustrates adequately, if not perfectly, how high a mancan rise from humble beginnings, because having started out with the intention of dispensing with foreign Bantu labour, and domestic labour, the hon. Deputy Minister now aspires to the position of being the “Great Dictator” of Bantu Administration throughout South Africa, and the proof of that, I think, is clearly indicated by the fact that he says in Clause 9 that he intends to make regulations for the guidance of every local authority, and standard regulations at that, and what is more important, that at any time he so desires….

Order! Is the hon. member now discussing Clause 9?

No, Sir, I am discussing Clause 11, but I want to show how this clause relies on Clauses 9 and 10, because having set out in Clause 9, the intention to determine the standard regulations and how he will apply them, when it suits him to do so, in Clause 11 he reaches the position that he may under any circumstances “require the local authority to report to him on any aspect of or on any occurrence relating to the administration by such urban local authority or by any committee or officer thereof, of this Act or of the Native Labour Regulation Act, 1911, or of the regulations made under such Acts, and may in addition require such urban local authority to submit to him within a period stated in such or any subsequent notice, copies of any resolutions taken or which may thereafter be taken be such local authority”. I will deal with the last part later. I say again, if I did not make my point clear to the hon. Deputy Minister, that he sets himself up here completely as a dictator, because firstly he makes the regulations or guidance, then he implements them whenever he feels that he should do, and on top of that, whether they have been implemented or not, whether the regulations have been carried out or not, he can demand a report of the local authority on any occurrence. Now, Sir, we have had the experience in Johannesburg, of which we were reminded by the hon. member for Brakpan, of having, what he called, a watchdog committee, but what I call the Mentz committee, the liaison committee, which was set up, as far as we were aware, to serve as a channel of communication between the Department of Bantu Administration and the largest local authority with the largest urban Bantu population—perhaps a necessary feature of local administration. But that position is completely changed by this, because to the extent that that Mentz Committee or its members could consult with the local authority, and could attend a joint meeting and could obtain information, or could even give information about the Minister’s policy, the position now is that the Minister can call for a report at any time on any occurrence. I think he will agree that this represents a very serious inroad into the domestic affairs (using “domestic” in the most common sense of the word) of a local authority. If he concedes that a local authority should have any autonomy—and I don’t know whether he does concede that, although he suggested a little earlier on that he was prepared to concede it—then he cannot at the same time demand the right to call for a report of that local authority on any occurrence at any particular time. He may, moreover, in terms of this particular clause ask for copies of resolutions or statements, and then he goes on to say—I have already stated that I can’t understand the meaning of this, unless it means that even before the local authority has taken a resolution, it must tell the hon. Deputy Minister that it is going to take a resolution! He watches it therefore from the beginning, which is when he sets up his standard regulations to the very end when he applies these standard regulations, and he does not allow the local authority any breathing space whatsoever. In other words, he is always breathing down the back of its neck. How does the hon. Deputy Minister expect good administration by a local authority in circumstances like that? There is always the personal and human element. There are officials, who are already licensed by the Minister, who may not do certain things without running the risk of their licences being revoked. They know their responsibilities in most cases. I believe the hon. Deputy Minister will say that in Johannesburg we have experienced officials in our non-European Affairs Department, and he is always in the position that his own Department and his own officials can maintain contact and can find out by ordinary consultation and discussion what is being done, why it is being done, or what is not being done, and why not. This, Sir, will merely serve, I think, to put into the hands of a Minister who wishes to exercise them not only the arbitrary powers already agreed to by the Committee, but moreover to make it almost impossible to carry out any administrative function without his consent. This will make it impossible for a local authority to carry out its duty to its ratepayers. I want to point out to the hon. Deputy Minister that, first of all, the finances which the State requires to set up this enormous super-structure which will be required in terms of this clause alone, are provided by the taxpayers of this country, many of whom are ratepayers in a particular town or city, and at the same time as they have to find the money with which the Minister intends to set up a completely new pyramid of administrative functions and functionaries, they have got to find the necessary funds in order to administer the affairs of the Bantu in their own area. In the case of Johannesburg, we have already heard that there was criticism of the fact that we do not conform to the Government’s sub-economic income ceiling of R30 per month in order to qualify for a sub-economic house, as sufficient, and we are being criticized for raising it to R40—at the expense of our own ratepayers. There I want to take this point with the hon. Minister. He referred earlier to the standard regulations, which he says already exist, and about which he can call for a report in terms of Clause 11, and he said there were at present such variations, for example in regard to the tariffs andin regard to the rentals. Does that mean that in calling for these reports, if he is told by the Johannesburg City Council that it is charging a certain rental for a certain type of house, for reasons of its own and at the expense of its ratepayers, he will, because he has strict standardized and uniform regulations, be able to compel that local authority to charge a higher rental the rental that he lays down? I hope he will deal with this point, because I believe very firmly that the only things that are left to a local authority under the present Government are two rights—the one, for the Europeans to fix their own rates and to decide how much they will contribute to the rate fund, which nobody interferes with at this stage, and the other, to determine, for example, the rentals paid by the Bantu living in their townships and their housing schemes. If the Government seeks to interfere in these matters—as it apparently intends to do by way of regulations in the first place, and the application of those regulations in the second place, and at all times, in terms of Clause 11 being able to call for endless reports as to why and wherefore, in respect of purely local day-to-day matters—then that is certainly not an improvement in administration, but the Government is trying very hard to destroy whatever good administration now exists in a city like Johannesburg. Finally, I want on this aspect of the matter, to draw the attention of the hon. Deputy Minister to a report by another commission of inquiry, which was held in 1958 the Report of the Commission consisting of Mr. Justice Centlivres, a former Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Greenberg, Judge-President of the Transvaal until his retirement and Mr. Justice Roper, and this is what they said among other things; in regard to the matter of local control by a local authority of its Bantu administration—

It would perhaps save a lot of time if I just said a few words about this Clause. I want to remind the House once again that for many years we have had a precedent in the existing Urban Areas Act for what we are doing here, but a precedent of such a narrowly defined nature that it was very little or seldom used in the past. I refer to the existing Section 41. In order to save time I shall not read it but the hon. member ought to know about it. It is stated there that if a City Council does not do a certain thing the Minister can compel them in a much more drastic way than is contemplated in this Bill, namely, the Minister can have it done quite externally and can simply send the account to the City Council. He has complete say in connection with tenders and everything in connection with the work. We do not go nearly as far as that in this Clause. There has, therefore, long since been a precedent for this sort of action of influencing the resolutions of a City Council or of taking action in its stead, something which is not suggested here at all. What will happen in practice in terms of this Clause? And this is something which is happening daily or regularly. We hear that a City Council has done a certain thing and we then ask for a report from that City Council. If we get a report from the City Council in connection with the matter, what is wrong with our acting in this way? What will happen if a City Council passes a resolution in connection with a certain matter and we think that that resolution is unwise and that it can create a precedent for other city councils, a precedent which may be dangerous or which can create a difficult situation for us? What is wrong with that? As Johannesburg itself said the City Council wants to act in the spirit of an agent towards us and what is wrong with it if we say to the City Council: “Do not put that resolution of yours into effect until we have approved of it”? The implication is obvious, namely, that we can talk to the City Council whether it be that of Johannesburg or of Amersfoort or of Jamestown about that resolution, or they can talk to us. We then explain to them what, in our opinion, would be the best resolution and why we are not in favour of that particular one. If we want to be wise, as we want to be—I have every reason to believe that the municipalities in all parts of the country consist of sensible people—it should be possible for us to come to a common agreement and that they will pass a resolution of which we approve. I simply cannot see why such procedure between sensible people is not possible. I speak from experience of the various city councils, from the biggest to the smallest, that when you go to them or they come to you and you explain all the implications to them, they understand the position and that they are sometimes prepared to change their resolutions completely. But hon. members opposite simply take it for granted that we now intend to get stuck into the city councils with a sledge hammer and a jack-saw and a branding iron. That is not the intention at all.

Particularly as far as Johannesburg is concerned.

Yes they are very allergic to Johannesburg. I do not know why. I told those two members who are both ex-mayors of Johannesburg yesterday that they were making my task moredifficult as far as Johannesburg was concerned; I want to tell hon. members that I have not made any attack on Johannesburg which has warranted a counter-attack or any defence. I have had drawn out and numerous negotiations with the Johannesburg City Council and in general I am quite satisfied with them. I do not know why hon. members are so obsessed with the idea of defending where there has not been any attack. The hon. member spoke about scales. Well, the hon. member was associated with the City Council a good few years ago and that is his trouble. He is no longer au fait with the administrative methods of to-day. We are already contemplating standardization in connection with scales as far as possible. It was only recently that I still had to approve the Bloemfontein scales for their house rentals. Before we approved of them we first made enquiries from other comparable city councils (in size) as to their scales. We try to bring about uniformity as far as possible because the Bantu cannot understand it if something costs so much in one place and twice as much in another place. We are trying to get as much uniformity as possible in connection with everything, also as far as certain financial aspects are concerned. That was why I referred to it a moment ago that we had already to a great extent standardized the budgetary system for all the 400 local authorities and Johannesburg is co-operating. I do not know why hon. members are making such an unnecessary fuss about these matters. They see bugbears where they do not exist.

As far as this very specific provision is concerned, I want to remind the House that although the United Municipal Executive and the City Council of Johannesburg did not care for the clause in the February Bill where something was added to the clause, as the hon. member ought to know, to the effect that if agreement could not be reached we could simply redraft the resolution, and asked us to delete that last part, which we did, the position has now changed as far as they are concerned. As I put it last night the United Municipal Executive is probably grumblingly expressing their satisfaction with this Clause as it stands. What about the Johannesburg City Council? I want to read something which I could not read last night in connection with this specific provision. Here Johannesburg says in a memorandum—this was written in connection with the February provision which included this drastic provision—

They are returning to “agency”. The previous resolution which I read out last night said that they knew they had to act as an agent, and here they say that if we were to delete that portion to which the United Municipal Executive objected they still did not care for the remainder, but they say “it can possibly be regarded as reasonably consistent with a form of agency”. In other words, the City Council of Johannesburg is also grumblingly accepting this Clause as it stands at the moment. I still doubt whether it is in a grumbling way, because they may have stopped grumbling about it now. But the hon. member opposite are grumbling very loudly. Where we are working with the City Council of Johannesburg on a permanent committee which we call the Johannesburg Committee and not the watch dog committee, because neither of the two parties has watch dogs on that committee, where we work together, the hon. member opposite has created a difficult situation for us in which to work together. There will have to be reciprocal apologies for what the hon. member has said to-night.

I move the amendment standing in my name—

Sub-section (c) is of course the objectionable part of this clause. I listened carefully to what the hon. Deputy Minister had to say in regard to this clause. How he can read any acceptance of this clause into what he has just told us in regard to the Johannesburg Municipality, is beyond me. All they said was that as it stands it would be better than what he proposed in the first version of this Bill. That is all, but one cannot possibly read any concurrence or agreement or approval of the clause as it stands now, by saying that it can possibly be regarded as compatible with an agency. As I say, it is preferable in the eyes of the Johannesburg Municipality to the clause which the hon. Minister first had incorporated in the No. I version of this Bill. The Deputy Minister tells us that that version was very much worse because he could have scrapped any resolution of a city council and could have substituted one of his own, and now all he can do is to bring about a stalemate. In other words, if there is a resolution of which he does not approve, he simply says it cannot be implemented until the Minister gives permission. It is much the same thing, the only difference being that he has not scrapped it and he has not substituted something else, but he has nullified any resolution by the City Council. Therefore it is still a very objectionable clause, and I have the same comment to make on this clause as I had on Clause 9, and as the hon. member for Hospital has pointed out, it is a further encroachment on the authority of local government and the watch dog committee that sits there growling. [Interjection.] That was bad enough, but this is much worse, because the Minister now asks for all resolutions to be submitted to him. The explanatory memorandum puts the matter in a much more mild form than the actual wording of the Bill itself. The clause itself is mandatory and talks about “shall if he so desires”, i.e. no resolution shall be implemented unless the Minister gives his permission, but here in the White Paper it says that the Minister “may” require that resolutions should be submitted to him for approval before they are implemented. It goes much further than that. It is a mandatory right which the Minister takes to stalemate and resolution passed by the City Council.

I want the Committee to consider this matter soberly. This matter is being turned into a Johannesburg debate, and I regret that that is the case. If we carefully consider this clause, we find that it nearly consists of two parts, one part where the Minister can ask for a report regarding the administration of Bantu affairs in terms of this legislation, in terms of the Labour Regulation Act, and in terms of the regulations under this Act, and I must point out that in terms of this Act, the Urban Areas Act—there are three authorities empowered to promulgate regulations. Firstly, the State President can make regulations, the Minister can make regulations, and the city councils can make regulations, all of which concern this matter in the Urban Areas Act, and all these regulations must be carried out in an urban area by the city council. Accordingly, three-quarters of the activities of the administration are in terms of legislation which is not a local matter but a national matter, the Urban Areas Act. Two-thirds of those are regulations promulgated by an authority other than the city council, and for the administration of those regulations they are actually the agents of the State as far as their application is concerned. Then I come to the Labour Regulation Act and its regulations, which is also not a local concern but a national matter, but which must be administered by the city council. This is the part whereby the Minister can request a report, and the Committee should not have any objection to that at all, because in all these matters the Minister ought to have the right for a report to be submitted to him.

Now we come to the second part where it says that certain resolutions must be submitted to him. This is naturally so as to give guidance to such a city council, because those resolutions might affect the administration of three-quarters of those affairs which are non-local matters, and therefore the Minister wants to be in a position to give guidance in this regard. Let me refer to the section to which the Minister referred, Section 41. It goes much further and says—

He can give instructions. He can go much further than merely to request a report. But how can one give anyone instructions when one does not know how he has done that work? It is in order to administer that section that the Minister must have the right to request that a report be submitted to him regarding the particular matter in regard to which the municipalities are actually the agents of the State. Hon. members can say what they like, but it remains a fact that as far as Bantu administration is concerned the municipalities are to the extent of 95 per cent the agents of the State in implementing the policy of the Government, and they cannot change that, because here we have the Acts which make provision for that. How they can regard any local autonomy as being greater than the autonomy of the State, is beyond me. We have already debated the matter in the second reading and I really do not think we need to spend any more time on that.

The hon. member for Heilbron was at least a little more frank than was the hon. the Deputy Minister. I do not know over whose eyes the Deputy Minister was trying to pull the wool by saying that this is just a little administrative clause. I ask him what major city council in South Africa has agreed to this clause, even as it stands now?

All the municipalities in the Free State have agreed to it.

What major city has accepted this provision—not this “brom-brom” acceptance, the “I would rather have my hands cut off than my throat slit” acceptance, which is the way the Johannesburg City Council put it. Because that is what this clause does. I challenge the Minister to name one major city council which is happy with this provision. At least the hon. member for Heilbron said openly that they now have the city councils 95 per cent under the control of the Department of Bantu Administration. He said that to the extent of 95 per cent they are the agents of the Department. He would like to have it 100 per cent, and this clause does it. The correct description of this clause is the “annexation of local authority powers” clause in regard to Bantu administration, because the hon. member for Heilbron carefully left out some very important words in the Act as it stands, and I want to quote it to him. This is the fundamental difference and he left out these important words in the existing Act. He quoted—

be able to take certain action. Why did they not tell the House that they left out the words to the effect that through that action “effect is not given to the objects and purposes of this Act”. Those are important words, which the Minister is trying to evade, because the Act lays down that if a city council fails to perform, or performs such act, and through that failure or action effect is not given to theobjects and purposes of this Act, the Minister may take action. But this resolution does not refer to its being an act contrary to the objects of the principal Act. The Minister ignores the very clear and definite restrictions presently placed upon his powers. In terms of his proposal now, he can enforce or reject resolutions, whether or not they carry out the objects and purposes of the principal Act, whereas under his existing powers he may only act if the city council is acting contrary to the spirit and objects of the principal Act. But the Minister did not tell the House that. He made out that this was a simple little extension. Why did he not tell us that this proposal means that he can prevent or enforce an action whether it is in keeping with the spirit and intention of the original Act or not?

But it goes further than that. This provision means that in practice he can completely hamstring a city council. How long does his Department take to deal with issues sent to it by a city council? I would like to ask him how long his Department sat on the regulations for the Kwa Mashu Bantu Labour Council submitted to it by the City Council of Durban? They were sent to and fro, as the result of which Kwa Mashu could not have an advisory board or an urban council. How long does it take for his Department to receive a resolution, deal with it and send it back to the city council? But he says this is just a little minor administrative thing and they do it anyway; it smoothes the road of consultation. What it does in practice is that the Minister prevents any action being taken by a city council until his Department has dealt with it administratively, and that can happen even if the so-called agent is acting completely within the spirit and purpose of the original Act. They can be carrying out what the law intends and the Minister can say he has changed his mind, in spite of what the law says, and he can veto that resolution. Then he looks into his crystal ball and says, “I want you to look into your own crystal ball and tell me what you are going to decide in future, and then I will guide you before you decide”. Why is he not frank and say that he is removing all power from local authorities; that he is simply going to abolish the control of local authorities over Bantu affairs? The reason is that he wishes to use the ratepayers’ money to do his work for him. He does not want to come to this House to ask for the millions of pounds which he would have to add to the budget of his Department. He is prepared to use the money of the ratepayers of Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban to build up the Bantu Administration Department, to do his work for him, but he is not prepared to give any local authority any power whatsoever, those so-called agents he is using. Why does he not come frankly to this House and say: I am absorbing all Bantu administration of all the city councils into my Department, and then let South Africa see what this Government is costing them in regard to its Bantu administration. Let the people see frankly what the true cost is of the policy which this clause intends to carry out. He is transferring the power to himself, but is hiding the cost of what he is doing behind the municipal budgets of the city councils of the whole of the Republic. I say the Minister should come to us openly and honestly and say: I want the control and I will show you what it costs, and I will pay for it out of my budget.

I should like to inquire whether the Deputy Minister was serious when he tried to off-load on to my shoulders the criticism of the Johannesburg City Council which was levelled at it yesterday by his colleague, the hon. member for Westdene (Mr. Van der Spuy). He said earlier in the debate that he now enjoys good relations with the Johannesburg City Council, but that if those relations turned out to be worse than they are now, it will be my fault and that of the hon. member for Florida, the two ex-Mayors, and he went on to say that I called the Mentz Committee the “watch dog committee”. The fact is that it was the hon. member for Westdene, and I wrote it down at the time. The Deputy Minister would surely remember that I said that I could not agree with the use of the term “watch dog committee” when in fact in Johannesburg we called it the Mentz Committee, and that if the hon. member for Westdene wanted to regard Mr. Mentz and the members of that Committee as a lot of dogs barking at the Council, I was not prepared to be associated with it. But to-night this term of opprobrium—in my opinion—has been taken out of the mouth of the hon. member for Westdene, and I am saddled with it, and I am going to be the cause of destroying good relations between the Deputy Minister and the Johannesburg City Council. Well, of course, the Deputy Minister knows that that is completely untrue. Although he says it is a long time since I was in the City Council, it is not as long as he may think. How long does he think I have been in this House? It my feel like ten years to him, but it isn’t. I still have contacts with the City Council of Johannesburg and with my former colleagues on both sides of the political fence in the City Council, and I have a fairly good idea of what they are trying to do and how they are trying to do it. The Deputy Minister read from a report which I happen to know about, and he said that even Johannesburg approved of this clause—but what is his evidence? His evidence is the most cautious statement which I think has ever been committed to paper—that “it could possibly be considered as reasonably consistent with a form of agency”. If one can call that approval, one has a very useful imagination. I do not call it approval, because I happen to know that the last thing the Johannesburg City Council has asked the Minister to do is to remove from its hands the power to regulate the affairs of the Bantu whom it has looked after for many years. And even if the “city” of Heilbron asked the Minister to take away its powers to administer the Bantu, he must not confuse Heilbron with Johannesburg. Apart from the topographical differences, there are other differences between Johannesburg and Heilbron. Johannesburg and the surrounding area has one-third of the total urban Bantu population of South Africa, and it has the longest experience of Bantu administration; and I think the Government will admit that it has made good use of the experience gained by Johannesburg. Therefore, rather than to force Johannesburg into the mould of Heilbron, it might be better to do the opposite, with due respect to Heilbron, or even Pretoria or Potchefstroom, which of course, is the summit of municipal achievement in South Africa, because it happens to have a Bantu Advisory Board which has asked the Minister to take the Bantu servants out of the backyards!

This Clause 11, regardless of what the Deputy Minister may say, goes much further than merely an administrative change. The hon. member for Durban (Point) has pointed out one material difference, and I would like to point out another one which the Minister himself mentioned. It is this question of tariffs, which is of paramount importance. Surely the Deputy Minister realizes that he cannot tell one town and then another town, where there is this tremendous disparity in population and in the cost of housing and the services to be provided, that both should apply exactly the same rentals to their housing schemes. I have developed this horrible fear since the reply of the Deputy Minister—that one of the reasons why this clause is inserted is in order to compel Johannesburg to charge a rental in its Bantu housing schemes other than it is charging to-day, and here is my reason for saying it. One of the most slashing attacks the hon. member for Westdene made on Johannesburg yesterday was because of the fact that it subsidized its Native Revenue Account to the tune of R1,000,000 a year. I said yesterday that it was to the credit of the White taxpayers of Johannesburg, and one of the few things that has maintained the prestige of the White man in South Africa, that there are still hundreds of thousands of White people, the ratepayers of Johannesburg, who are prepared to pay for the amenities which the Bantu of Johannesburg cannot afford to pay for.

Now the Minister does not like it, because it shows up all the other local authorities controlled by members of the Nationalist Party, in a bad light. It shows up Potchefstroom, which does not subsidize its Native Revenue Account, so that the Bantu there have to do without the amenities which they cannot provide themselves, and also Silverton and Heilbron. Therefore Johannesburg must now be compelled to fall into this iron mould of regulation by way of this clause, and it must consult the Minister before it makes any move. I do not know whether the Deputy Minister has ever been a member of a local authority. A local authority is aware of the fact that the State makes laws, and within a certain framework the local authority must carry out those laws. But from now on, before a local authority can take a resolution, it will first have to consult the Minister’s Department. Does the Minister know how long it sometimes takes to get a decision from his Department? I will give him one example. In regard to the vexed question of a sports field in Johannesburg, in the industrial area known as City and Suburban, does the Deputy Minister remember that the Council was obliged to wait for over seven years while the ball was being tossed to and fro, about the establishment of that sports field? Yet now he says the local authority cannot take any decision—because it cannot be implemented without his consent! Since the Minister has obtained a certain number of benefits in terms of the clauses the Committee has already accepted, I urge him to omit this Clause 11, since he says it will not make much difference, anyway. If he persists with it, it will create more evil than good. [Time limit.]

Johannesburg, of course, is not at all under consideration in terms of this clause, nor is any sportsfield, and I do not know why the hon. member is explaining so much in connection with Johannesburg. I have no battle to fight with Johannesburg to-night, and I must say to the hon. member that I think the lady doth protest too much.

In regard to the hon. member for Durban (Point) (Mr. Raw), he took the trouble apparently to read the existing Section 41 of the Urban Areas Act. If he looks further at paragraph (c), he will see that the two things involved there are the reports and the resolutions, and with regard to both it is clearly stated that it is reports in relation to matters connected with the administration of Bantu affairs, and a little lower down, in regard to the resolutions, it says that it is also in relation to any matter relating to such administration. [Interjection.] Well, well, well. Does not the hon. member know that all matters administered by the municipality are governed by this Act? Which other Act is there? It is this Urban Areas Act that governs Bantu administration. So I cannot see the argument and I cannot accept the amendment.

The hon. the Deputy Minister is completely wrong, and he has not answered my point, which is that the original Act specifies that he only has power if the municipality acts contrary to the purposes of this Act. The Urban Areas Act has certain objectives and purposes, and before he can use his power he must show that the municipality has acted contrary to the objects and purposes of this Act. That is the limitation upon his power. So if an urban local authority acts in keeping with the purpose of this Act he could do nothing about it, but the amendment contains no such limitation whatever. The amendment in Clause 11 (c) does not limit it to actions within the spirit or objects of the Act. So although a resolution may be in keeping with the purpose of the Act, he can still veto it, and that is my point. My point is that there is a veto power, irrespective of whether the resolution carries out the objects of the Act or not. That is the issue. If the Minister changes his mind he can ignore this Act and throw it away, because no localauthority acts except by resolution in regard to policy matters. If the Minister controls the resolutions of every local authority or any sub-committee of it, which includes its Bantu Affairs sub-committee, then he in fact controls every action they take, because every action must be approved by resolution. The Minister has not explained why in this amendment he removes this limitation upon his powers, nor has he explained why he requires this extra power. Why can he not act in terms of Section 41 (1)? What prevents him from acting in terms of the existing Act? He has made no case whatever why he must now control the resolution of every committee or sub-committee. Nor has he answered my specific point and my challenge to him to name one major urban authority which has approved and agreed to this proposal. I want the hon. the Deputy Minister to name one major local authority which has said that this is a good thing and that it agrees with it. I challenge him to deny that he has had protests from local authorities against this provision. His answer is that there are hundreds who have not objected but there are hundreds and hundreds of local authorities and everyone is of course not going to object. The point, however, is whether he has had any objections. I say he has had objections. The second question is whether he has had approval To that my answer is that he has not had approval. I ask him to deny it.

In regard to the points raised by the hon. member for Durban Point, I want to say that the difference between the provisions of Section 41 (1) of the Urban Areas Act and this clause of the Bill is this, that Section 41 (1) provides that the Minister may compel a city council to take positive action and even may involve a city council in expense in that way. The position therefore is that Section 41 (1) gives the Minister the power to compel a city council to take positive action, or to take action himself on behalf of that city council which will involve that city council in expense. That is correct, is it not?

Yes, but the negative side also applies.

Yes, but it also confers upon him this positive power. For that reason the proviso is there to ensure that the compulsion exerted upon a city council most obviously be compulsion falling with the empowering provisions of this Bill. The proposed new sub-section (3) (a) we are dealing with in this debate, does not confer upon the Minister any positive powers to cause a city council to take positive action, and consequently it is not necessary to say in that provision that.

No …

But of course. If someone is given the power to tell a city council to do a certain thing, that person is made a dictator, unless it is provided that he can only compel a city council to do certain things only, namely those things defined in this Bill. That is a completely different matter from merely giving the power to do a negative thing, but not to do the positive thing.

While I am on my feet, I should like to put only one more aspect of this question of the authorization of local authorities. We have to bear in mind that unless a local authority acts in respect of Bantu administration by virtue of a power conferred upon it by the Central Government, it will be acting ultra vires and provincial administrations do not have the jurisdiction to confer upon city councils any powers in regard to Bantu Administration. Accordingly the champions of local authorities are not justified in objecting to any restriction the Central Government may impose on the participation of the city councils in matters in connection with Bantu administration. It is a power which wholly belongs to the Central Government, and may be exercised by local authorities only in so far as those powers may be delegated to them.

Amendment put and negatived.

Clause, as printed, put and the Committee divided:

AYES—62: Badenhorst, F. H.; Bekker. H. T. van G.; Botha, H. J.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, S. P.; Cloete, J. H.; Coetzee, B.; Cruywagen, W. A.; Diederichs, N.; du Plessis, H. R. H.; Fouché, J. J. (Sr.); Froneman, G. F. van L.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Heystek, J.; Hiemstra, E. C. A.; Jonker, A. H.; Keyter, H. C. A.; Knobel, G. J.; Kotze, G. P.; Kotzé, S. F.; Labuschagne, J. S.; Loots, J. J.; Marais, J. A.; Marais, P. S.; Maree, G. de K.; Maree, W. A.; Martins, H. E.; Meyer, T.; Muller, S. L.; Nel, J. A. F.; Niemand, F. J.; Otto. J. C.; Potgieter, D. J.; Potgieter, J. E.; Rall, J. J.; Rall, J. W.; Sadie, N. C. van R.; Sauer, P. O.; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, B. J.; Schoeman. J. C. B.; Schoonbee, J. F.; Smit, H. H.; Stander, A. H.; Steyn, F. S.; Uys, D. C. H.; van den Berg, C. P.; van der Spuy, J. P.; van der Walt, B. J.; van Eeden, F. J.; van Niekerk, G. L. H.; van Niekerk, M. C.; van Wyk, G. H.; van Wyk, H. J.; van Zyl, J. J. B.; Venter, M. J. de la R.; Verwoerd, H. F.; Visse, J. H.; von Moltke, J. von S.; Waring, F.W.

Tellers: W. H. Faurie, J. J. Fouché.

NOES—37: Basson, J. A. L.; Basson. J. D. du P.; Bowker, T. B.; Bronkhorst, H. J.; Cadman, R. M.; Connan, J. M.; de Kock, H. C.; Dodds, P. R.; Durrant, R. B.; Emdin, S.; Field, A. N.; Fisher, E. L.; Gay. L. C.; Gorshel, A.; Hickman, T.; Higgerty, J. W.; Hourquebie, R. G. L.; Lewis, H.; Malan, E. G.; Miller, H.; Mitchell, D. E.; Mitchell, M. L.; Moore, P. A.; Radford, A; Raw, W. V.: Ross. D. G.; Streicher, D.M.; Suzman, H.; Taurog, L. B.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Timoney, H. M.; Tucker,H.; van Niekerk, S. M.; Weiss, U. M.; Wood, L. F.

Tellers: A. H. Hopewell and T. G. Hughes. Clause, as printed, accordingly agreed to. On Clause 24,

This clause is really related to Clause 21 which has just been passed. Clause 21 makes provision for—

Clause 24 provides for the issue of a document by the person in charge of that Bureau for the purpose of testing whether an accused person, a person accused of a criminal offence presumably in terms of this law, has in fact been issued with a reference book or not or whether a reference book which has been put in as an exhibit in the case is in fact the reference book of the person concerned or of any other person. In so far as proof is concerned, it is stated that—

Further on in the clause it is stated that such a certificate received from the officer concerned, a certificate purporting to be an affidavit, shall be prima facie proof of the fact that the reference book was or was not issued to the accused person according to the contents of such statement. I am anxious to learn from the Minister what is meant by saying that the certificate to be issued by the officer in charge of the finger-print Bureau will be a document “purporting to be an affidavit”. Why is it not stated categorically that the officer in charge shall make an affidavit—in other words, shall make a sworn statement as to the accuracy of the finding he has come to. I have, on the basis of statistics available to us, tried to calculate how many finger-print records will be lodged with this Bureau over a period of 12 months. According to my calculation, these will run into something like 6,000,000.

Under the circumstances, it is quite clear that when we are dealing with the provisions of this Bill even up to the point which we have reached now, we are going to be in a position where we will find that the only way in which the machinery of this Bill can be made to operate and can work effectively at all, will depend almost entirely in many respects, on the accuracy, firstly, of the records and, secondly, the interpretation of the officer in charge of the finger-print Bureau. If there is any doubt at all in regard to this aspect of the matter then the efficiency of the Bureau must break down because doubt has been cast upon it. It is necessary that the accuracy of the interpretation must be beyond any possible dispute. Now, it is not for us on this side of the House to say to the Government that it is going to get itself into trouble, and that we shall try to get them out of it. That is a matter for the Government. As long as we have warned them against it. Already under Clause 1 of this Bill I dealt with the burden which was going to be placed on the administrative side in having to deal with all the numerous matters which have to be provided for under each of these clauses we are dealing with. This clause makes the largest contribution to that burden. In thousands upon thousands of cases which will be brought before a Native Commissioner’s court or the other authorities specified here, the quilt of the person in each case will depend upon his being adequately identified. That is why I press the importance of this particular point. We have had this difficulty with identification for decades already and we have never yet found a satisfactory and adequate way of overcoming this difficulty. Now we are bringing within the purview of this administration literally millions of sets of finger-print cards because that will include all these foreign Natives with whom we have already dealt under previous clauses of this Bill. As far as these people are concerned, in a great number of cases their right to claim permanent residence in South Africa may depend upon the fact that they are the possessors of reference books. Consequently, the whole thing is going to depend upon their finger-prints.

I ask the hon. the Deputy Minister, therefore, to deal with this aspect of the matter so that we may be able to judge what in practice will be the position in connection with the statement to be made by the officer in charge of the finger-print Bureau, i.e. whether it is in fact going to be a sworn affidavit and whether it is to be given under oath. Is the hon. the Deputy Minister satisfied that there will, under the circumstances, be that complete and 100 per cent reliability upon which alone the public will be able to judge whether justice has been done to the Bantu whose fingerprints have been included in that register?

I want to give the hon. member the assurance that our intention here is as he has put it, namely, that it should be a proper sworn statement by the official concerned. The matter has been put into legal terms in this clause but if the hon. member will be satisfied, I promise

him that I shall go into the matter again and if it seems to be necessary, after proper consultation with the legal advisers concerned, to put the matter in better terms, it will be done in the Other Place. But I want to assure him that it is our intention that the affidavit referred to will be a proper statement made under oath. Except for this, I accept that the hon member subscribes to the general purpose which we have in mind here, i.e., that it should not be necessary for an official to travel long distances for the purpose of giving evidence but that such evidence can be made available to a court by means of a statement of that nature.

I am not questioning it; I am just testing it.

I accept that. I promise the hon. member that I will go into the matter and if an improvement can be made, it will be done in the Other Place. At the same time I shall, if necessary, make a study of the matter in conjunction with the provisions of other Acts—for instance, the Act relating to reference books.

Clause put and agreed to.

On Clause 26,

When I first read this Bill and come to this particular clause, I expressed to myself the hope that the hon. the Minister himself, and not the Deputy Minister, would be the hon. gentleman piloting the Bill through the House, because I remember the eulogistic terms in which the hon. the Minister himself introduced the legislation which created Urban Bantu Councils. In fact, it was not merely a question of describing these councils in eulogistic terms; it was a veritable panegyric on the part of the Minister. I remember that at the time there were some difficulties with the members of the Progressive Party on the question of whether all the members of these councils should be elected or whether the Minister should appoint some. And what a glorious picture the hon. the Minister painted of these councils. As a matter of fact, he pictured these councils as being in the nature of a rainbow with its bright colours in the sky. They were the very top level of creation, the very summit of creation, in so far as the hon. the Minister was concerned. But what is the position to-day? How the mighty has fallen! Here the hon. the Deputy Minister comes along and asks for power to scrap these councils with a mere stroke of the pen. He merely has to send a letter to the local authority concerned and, hey presto, the council will be wiped out. Because if the Minister does not like that council, he scraps it and replaces it by another one. Sir, can you treat these creations, creations from the fullness of the creative power of the hon. the Minister, in this fashion? Just a short little note to the local authority concerned and the council is wiped out! Most of them have not even been created yet! How many are there? I should like to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister to tell us how many of these creatures—“creatures” in the nicest sense of being creations of a statute—are there at present. And has the hon. the Deputy Minister any reason to believe that these urban councils should be slaughtered in this merciless fashion, i.e., by merely sending a letter to the local authority concerned, informing that authority that the Minister, for whatever reason he may have, does not like that urban council any longer and that, consequently, it should be scrapped?

Cut the baby’s throat!

Cut the baby’s throat By Jove, the baby’s body is being thrown to the wolves! As far as these urban councils are concerned, this Clause is pitiless, it is merciless. As far as I am concerned, I have never seen such a curt and rough withdrawal of favour from a favoured infant—in this case borne from the mind of the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development. These little sons of his on which he heaped all his love and which he built up with such fondness now are to have their throats cut and their bodies thrown to the wolves. Simultaneously he asks for power to create another council.

In the circumstances, Sir, I do not think we can just let this clause go through like this. I think the hon. the Deputy Minister, in the absence of the Minister himself, should explain to us why these creatures have fallen on evil days and why it is necessary to take such peremptory measures for their destruction. Let us have the whole story: How many of these children were born and how many of them is it intended to slaughter?

The hon. member for Natal (South Coast) has once again been most entertaining. But I rather enjoyed it. May I give the hon. member the assurance that the urban Bantu boards are already in process of being established. After the relevant Act for the establishment of these urban Bantu boards was passed by Parliament, representations were made by the United Municipal Executive and by various city councils to the hon. the Minister to me and to the Department in regard to various aspects of the legislation, inter alia in relation to the manner in which it should be implemented. A long time was devoted to devising a set of model regulations …

Another model!

…which was completed some time ago in collaboration with the relevant municipalities and submitted to the Institute of Managers of Non-European Affairs of municipalities. Since then we have had several applications from city councils for the establishment of these urban Bantu boards. As a matter of fact. even this last week I have received applications fromtwo city councils, in which it was stated that the required regulations were now completed and that they were now ready to establish urban Bantu boards. Competition even exists to a certain extent amongst some city councils, particularly in the northern areas, in getting these urban Bantu boards established. I can give the hon. member the assurance that the fact that so much time will have elapsed between the passing of the Act and the establishment of the first urban Bantu Board is due to just one thing, and that is because some municipalities, as well as the United Municipal Executive, had fairly lengthy negotiations with the Department. The hon. member asked me to spill the beans and tell the whole story. This I shall now do.

I do not deny that I also voted for that Act.

I know that. In drafting the Act in regard to the establishment of urban Bantu boards there was very little deliberation—indeed, the municipalities would say there was none—between them and ourselves. They, however, wanted consultation, and therefore we did subsequently have consultations with one another. As there had hitherto been no consultation with city councils in this regard, we felt that we might as well consult with them. These are the city councils which hon. members opposite say we are giving such a bad time. At all events, negotiations ensued and the changes proposed in this Bill are those which were suggested by the municipalities themselves. It is therefore the city councils themselves that say they want to retain power concurrently with the urban Bantu boards. It is they who say that a position of checkmate may come about, such as has already existed in Durban, East London and in other places in regard to the advisory Bantu committees. It is therefore at the request of the municipalities themselves that we have come forward with these amendments to put the position beyond all doubt. I should like to give the hon. member the assurance that he will quite early in the recess be able to read in the Press all about the establishment of the first urban Bantu board. All preparations have been made for that.

The hon. the Deputy Minister says that new Bantu councils are about to be established. But what I would like to know, or should like to know from the hon. the Deputy Minister is, why if these councils are only now being established, he is already taking steps to dis-establish them?

I have just said that at their own request we have had consultations with the municipalities. During those consultations municipalities put forward certain amendments, some of which are incorporated in this Bill. It is. therefore, at their own request that this provision is being brought forward. Meanwhile, we have had the necessary regulations drawn up and have laid them before the municipalities. Thereupon each one came forward with its ideas in this connection. At any rate, the regulations for certain municipalities have been approved and, consequently, the stage is set for some of these councils to come into being.

What I cannot understand, is why, when these councils are only about to be established, the Government is passing a steps to disestablish them?

But municipalities asked for it.

The hon. the Deputy Minister says that municipalities had asked for it. Which municipalities asked for it?

They asked for it through their Association.

I wish the hon. the Deputy Minister would tell us exactly which municipalities asked for it. But if it is correct that some municipalities did ask for it, it is proof that those municipalities are distrustful of the idea of Bantu councils. They do not know what is going to happen and, consequently, they want the Minister to take the power now to disestablish the councils should they go counter to the wishes of municipalities. One of the difficulties the Minister has had is to get the Bantu in the urban areas to accept the idea of these Bantu urban councils. As a matter of fact, there has been no request from the Bantu themselves for the establishment of these councils, except the one in Johannesburg. Nowhere else have any councils been established as yet. Let the hon. the Deputy Minister tell us how many Bantu townships have, through the municipality concerned, asked for the establishment of these councils.

Quite a number of them. Unfortunately I do not have the exact figure here.

The hon. the Deputy Minister can then give us that information some other time. I understood that the Bantu of the Bantu townships are not keen, or were not keen, on these councils, mainly because they do not want the selected members on the councils. However, it seems to me that the hon. the Deputy Minister has now prevailed on some of the municipalities to establish these councils. The relevant Act gives municipalities the power themselves to establish these councils, although the Minister can also do so on his own initiative. The position, as I see it, is that those municipalities who have been requested to establish these Bantu councils, have come to the Minister and have asked him how these councils could be dissolved should they go wrong. Thereuponthe Minister has promised them that he will see to it that an Act is passed, giving power for the disestablishment of these councils, if it is found that these councils are acting contrary to the wishes of municipalities and of the Government.

That is your version of it, but you are wrong.

When the original Act was introduced to establish these councils, the hon. the Minister, as the member for Natal (South Coast) has pointed out, was full of high praise and hopes as the following words he used on that occasion indicate—

Then follow nearly four columns of Hansard in which the hon. the Minister dealt with the reasons why we wanted these councils established. Now, if you are going to encourage the right spirit and sense of responsibility amongst the Bantu, then the last thing you should do is to say to them that you are going to give them a council which, however, will remain in existence only as long as it does what you want it to do. If it does not do what is required of it, it will be disestablished at once. What on earth is the use of having elected members if these elected members are going to be told before they take office that they will only be allowed to perform their duties, provided they do what the Government wants them to do. There are going to be selected as well as elected members on these councils but the number of selected members cannot exceed the number of elected members. One would have thought that the Government would have exercised control through its selected members and the representatives of the Chiefs. But now, Sir, before these councils are established, this Government is already giving notice to them that while municipalities will be encouraged to establish them, they will be disestablished at once if they go contrary to the wishes of municipalities or the Government. We cannot support an amendment of this nature.

Mr. Chairman, “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away”, but here the hon. the Deputy Minister taketh even before he giveth! Surely the hon. the Minister cannot expect the goodwill of the councils if he goes about it in this ham-handed way as he is doing in this clause. The nearest the Bantu in the urban areas has come to a semblance of democratic self-government is in the Native, or Bantu advisory boards. The hon. the Deputy Minister realizes that better than I do. These advisory boards constitute, essentially, the basis for the Minister’s Bantu urban councils. The hon. the Deputy Minister knows that these advisory boards have a say in the joint advisory board in the case of a place like Johannesburg, where there are so many townships and, consequently, as many boards. Now, it is this joint advisory board which is the sounding board of Bantu opinion in the Bantu townships. Moreover, it is this joint advisory board which advises the municipality concerned of the reasonable wishes and desires of the Bantu people. One of the things of which these boards are proud, is the way in which they have been elected, i.e. that only those people who elected them in the first place can disestablish them, by the ordinary democratic method of not electing them again. We have heard so much lately of the Government’s fervent desire to give to the Bantu that which the White man wants for himself. How many times did we not hear it! But what does the Minister say now? He is saying in effect that by means of a curt letter, the very board which he has set up for the Bantu, to help them to achieve the dignity of self-government within the limits of urban responsibility, can be dismembered and destroyed.

What is more, Mr. Chairman, is that the hon. the Deputy Minister does not have the courage of his convictions, because he himself will not tell the board what he himself has established, that he is disestablishing it—he leaves that to the local authority! For that, apparently, local authorities have all the autonomy they could want! Clause 26 lays down—

here it must be remembered that in Clause 9 we got down to “with reference to”, but here we have again been elevated to “after consultation with”.

In other words, the Minister will not send a direct communication to the urban Bantu council itself of its disestablishment. No, he advises, first of all, the municipality concerned, and this municipality then has to inform the urban Bantu council concerned that it is being disestablished. Does the hon. the Deputy Minister not see how wrong this is? These urban Bantu councils will have no tenure whatsoever because the Minister, whimsically or otherwise, can say—like the genie in the bottle—that it no longer exists—and that will be the end of the matter! I wonder, Sir, whether this is the method which is going to be applied to a Bantu urban council in Johannesburg in the light of the fact that we were told only yesterday that, according to the Transvaler, certain people in the City Council were inciting the people in the townships, members of the Bantu advisory boards, to oppose Government policy. This is what one of the Nationalist members of this House alleged yesterday. It is here, against an urban Bantu council such as that, that the hon. the Minister would like to apply the powers in this clause. On the other hand, a Bantu urban council which is showing enthusiasm for Government policy, will run a lesser risk of being disestablished. Consequently, I say that this is a completely immoral clause, in the political sense, because local authorities will be expected to do the dirty work of the Government by having to disestablish the same Bantu council with which they are expected to work in close collaboration.

I think it is time that the hon. the Deputy Minister should accept some amendment to this Bill. After all, we are already busy with Clause 26, and yet the hon. the Deputy Minister has been adamant in his refusal of all amendments so far. Let him at least show that he is prepared to be reasonable in regard to a matter which requires reason, not politics.

I really have nothing to add to what I have already said. The hon. member for Natal (South Coast) asked me to tell the whole story and I have done so. I have told everything. Consequently I have nothing more to say. All that is left to me to say is that it is clear that hon. members opposite ascribe motives to this clause which are entirely without substance. There is no justification at all for those motives. As far as I am concerned, I have said everything there is to say in connection with this matter.

Is it not a fact that municipalities refuse to establish these boards, unless they have the assurance that they may do away with them in the event of anything going wrong?

I have already said that the amendments which are here being proposed came in the first place from the municipalities themselves. I have said that when negotiations took place after the Act in connection with the establishment of urban Bantu boards was passed, the municipalities, the United Municipal Executive and the Institute for Managers of non-White Affairs requested these amendments. We accepted them in that form and I accordingly have nothing more to say in that regard.

At 10.25 p.m. the Chairman stated that, in accordance with Standing Order No. 26 (1), he would report progress and ask leave to sit again.

House Resumed:

Progress reported and leave asked to sit again.