When this debate was adjourned yesterday, I was dealing with the question of the Unemployment Insurance Act as amended in 1962. Unfortunately, the Minister of labour and the Deputy Minister of labour were not in the House at the time, and it appears that the Minister of labour has also left the House now. I regret that as I believe that a very strong case has been made out for the revision of the Unemployment Insurance Act, as amended in 1962. Those contributors, particularly the older contributors, who have made substantial contributions to this fund now find that they are unable to claim any further benefits after the initial 26 weeks’ benefits, and in view of the fact that the Fund has improved over the latter six months of 1963, I think a strong case can be made out for revision. During those six months the amount accruing to the Fund totalled R7,234,000 and the amount that was paid out in benefits during those latter six months of 1963, amounted to R6,290,000. So there has been an excess of income over expenditure of R1,000,000. Also in view of the present employment position, it is likely that this fund will continue to gain in strength during the next six months. In view of the fact that a large number of organized trade unions have also made representations to the hon. Minister on this important matter, I do hope that the Minister will see his way clear to bring about a revision of the amendments which he brought about in 1962. I understand that the Trade Union Council of South Africa has made very strong representations to the Department of labour to review the position on behalf of the 758,000 contributors to the Fund. Similarly the National Union of Distributive Workers have also pointed out to the Minister the unfairness of bringing about restrictions in the benefits of those workers who in time of need require assistance from the Fund to which they have made contributions. I do therefore hope that the hon. Minister of labour will realize the necessity for bringing about a complete revision in our present Unemployment Insurance Act, particularly as it adversely affects many of the contributors who are genuine work-seekers and who now find that they are deprived of obtaining any further benefits from the Fund.

I do not want to follow up what was said by the hon. gentleman in connection with the question which he put to the hon. the Minister but there is an important matter on which I want to say a few words. Each year without fail the Opposition raise the question of what is known in this country as job reservation. They try to blame the Government and at the same time they encourage the hon. the Minister to bring more immigrants to South Africa. The answer is simply that if one wants to be practical and wants to attract people from our countries of origin to come to South Africa one must stop telling the silly story in South Africa that one is opposed to job reservation. The question of the “rate for the job” is already known amongst organized labour as the Oppenheimer policy. The “rate for the job” is responsible, under the guidance of the Oppenheimer policy, for the fact that the foreign White workers are afraid, particularly the artisans who come to South Africa, because they do not see their way clear to standing shoulder to shoulder and competing with the Native and non-White in this country on the basis of the “rate for the job”. The sooner the Opposition realize that they are responsible for the fact that South Africa cannot obtain the immigrants she requires from our countries of origin, the better things will be for South Africa. Hon. members know that because of the pressure exerted by the Oppenheimer policy a considerable number of industrialists consistently and on every opportunity make it known that they are opposed to work reservation. By adopting that attitude they are responsible for the fact that we cannot obtain the necessary trained artisans from our countries of origin. And so I want to ask the Opposition to give up that inconsistent attitude and to give up frustrating the efforts being made to obtain for South Africa the White artisans that we need so much. We know how over the past years the White people have been forced out of all the industries where the “rate for the job” has been applied simply because they have had to compete with the Black man on the basis of the “rate for the job”. The sooner the Opposition stop acting as propagandists of the Oppenheimer policy, the sooner South Africa will be able to obtain well-trained artisans from other parts of the world. But as long as they are in favour of the “rate for the job” I can tell them in advance that they do not want to reserve various trades for the White man in South Africa but that they want them to be taken over gradually by the non-Whites.

The hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. M. J. van den Berg) will forgive me if I do not take up his arguments. I merely want to say it is no secret that I, as a Coloured Representative in the House of Assembly, where I do not want to express my opinion on job reservation or the rate for the job as far as the Bantu are concerned, have always adopted the attitude that as far as the Coloured people were concerned the rate for the job should be applied to them and that there should not be any job reservation, not in the mines, not on the Railways nor in the Public Service. I think when you have a national group which must of necessity attain full citizenship and which is fast developing in that direction, it is unheard of to place a limitation on them and that you cannot maintain a position where they are not allowed to do certain work which they are able to do while they have had the same training and attained the same degrees. I have in mind, for example, teachers who get a lower salary than their White colleagues.

I have always regarded my duty in this House as a representative of the Coloured voters, not only those of the Outeniqua constituency, but also those in other parts of the country, in a very serious light. Where my assistance has been sought, even in the Transvaal or in the Free State or in Natal, I have always felt that my first duty and my first task was to put up a fight for them in this House and to bring it to the notice of the Government that that national group had to be economically and educationally uplifted. Nobody will deny that great progress is being made in that sphere. There are gratifying signs of progress. We need only think of the tremendous housing programme that has been completed up to date. Where building is done at such a pace it is understandable that as far as the type of house is concerned there is some room for improvement. But the fact remains that thousands of houses are still required. I think the national group which I represent here is fast approaching the stage where they can be placed on the same footing as the Whites. When you think of it, Sir, that the Government is assisting in that, you think of the 58 new schools that have been established from 1 January 1962 to 30 December 1963 and of the 17,000 additional Coloured children that are attending school. I regard it as my duty, however, to bring to the notice of the authorities that a host of very unnecessary and superfluous legislation has been placed on the Statute Book since 1948. I do understand that it was placed there at a time when a few “old political scores” had to be settled, something that was unfortunately done at the expense of the Coloureds. I do understand that it was placed there at a time when apartheid was the battle cry and when many people in their ignorance thought that that would be the salvation of the White man in South Africa if applied against the Coloureds. I am pleased to be able to say, however—I am not going to mention any names—that many members on the Government side feel to-day that a stage has been reached where many of those unnecessary and superfluous legislations which cause humiliation and frustration to the Coloureds, can be abolished and I trust I shall live to see the day in this House when many of those laws will disappear.

As a representative of the Coloured people I regard it as my duty to appeal to the Government to reflect on the application of apartheid. There are so many respects in which apartheid measures are unnecessarily applied. I think of the taxi apartheid in Cape Town, for instance. I shall not dwell on that. I do want to say, however, that I have never as yet supported legislation which discriminated against or humiliated those people whom I represent. I have never yet supported any apartheid measure in this House. However, if I want to be consistent and I oppose any form of discrimination in respect of those people whom I represent, I have reached the stage where I must not only oppose that discrimination which is applied by the governing political party, but discrimination in all respects. Over the last five to six years in particular I have been in very close contact with the people I represent here and I have learnt of their problems and their frustrations. When I talk about discrimination on the part of Whites I mean discrimination applied by the White political parties which represent the White voters in this House. That includes the United Party and it includes the Progressive Party, it includes every political party.

During the years before I became a member of this House and since then I have often had the opportunity of sitting in the gallery or here on these benches and to witness how a member of this House who was chosen to come here as a member of a certain party and on the basis of the policy of that party, revolted and walked over to the other party. What was always so tragic to me was to think that a person who had identified himself with a policy, who was elected on the strength of that policy, who sat in this House in support of that policy, revolted for some reason or another and within a day or two could salve his conscience to such an extent that he adopted a directly opposite attitude. When he adopts such a directly opposite attitude it is never done without his immediately casting recriminations and reproaches and insults at his former colleagues with whom he had sat here and with whom he had been chosen on the strength of a definite policy.

I had the experience in 1961 in my constituency, as a member of the United Party, to have been opposed by an official member of the United Party and I decided, in spite of that, to make myself available and to leave it to my voters to decide. I shall not go into the unsavoury history of that except to say that I have documentary proof and that I have the minute book of one of the most prominent Coloured men in Port Elizabeth who were present at that time at all the consultations and meetings and discussions where he took a careful note. To say the least of it, Sir, things were done in a dishonest, misleading and treacherous manner by a few people. I shall not mention the names. Two are Members of Parliament and one is a Provincial Councillor. As far as I am concerned, when I was returned in 1961, that was something of the past. My duty was to represent the Coloureds in this House and I have been doing so to the best of my ability. In a constituency which stretches for 1,000 miles not one voter has the right to say that I was not at a certain place at one or other time when I was needed there. The Minister and the departmental heads know that when I approach them in connection with a matter, whether it concerns Umzimkulu or Caledon, I had been there personally and knew what was happening there and that they could take my word for what I said. I continued doing my duty and as far as I am concerned that episode is something of the past. I retained my seat in spite of certain members of the United Party who wanted to unseat me. I find, however, that United Party organizers are besmirching and discrediting me in the eyes of my voters in my constituency, as appears from the Kokstad Advertiser of 30 January in which an organizer by the name of van Rooyen wrote a lot of rubbish. He says—

I shall leave it to the people who I represent in this House to give judgment on this sort of thing on the evidence of my record as their representative and on the evidence of the attitude I have adopted on their behalf, namely, that they were a national group whose life and hopes and inspirations had become my own. That kind of accusation is made simply for the sake of political gain. All those poor organizers regard themselves as aspirant candidates for my seat and they will be out-manoeuvred just as they were out-manoeuvred at the meeting at Beaufort West held in November when a Provincial Council member was nominated. Those poor chaps will never get it; they will be outmanoeuvred.

Having given this explanation I leave it at that and I shall continue to represent my voters as in the past. In passing I just want to say that if allegations were made in the past that there was corruption and bribery or whatever it was under the old set-up when the Coloureds were on the Common Roll, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition knows that if there were signs of that in his constituency, I wiped those signs out completely, because I do not believe it promotes the interests of the people concerned. But I predict that if the sort of thing we have had recently in connection with Coloured elections continues you will have corruption and bribery, Sir, on a scale hitherto unknown in the history of South Africa.

Daantjie Scholtz.

When I automatically lost my membership of the United Party in 1961 I continued to represent the interests of the voters. It was no easy task for me to oppose the official candidate and to give up my membership of the party, because I turned 21 in May 1942 and I joined the United Party in March 1943. Since I became a citizen entitled to vote in this country I have never belonged to any party other than the United Party. It is no easy task for me to break old bonds, albeit only technically. My behaviour in this House has been such that, in spite of the evidence I have in connection with what has happened, I did not hurt old friends and former colleagues. I gave them no reason to think that I wanted to do them harm. Naturally, not all of them were concerned in what had happened there.

They did the same thing with Strauss.

Order!

After 1961, when I sat in this House as a Coloured Representative without any party connections I came to the conclusion that as long as I represented my Coloured fellow citizens in the country in this House, I would not belong to any political party of which they could not become members. And they cannot become members of the Nationalist Party or of the United Party. During the past years I have worked together in this House with my former colleague, Mr. Tot le Roux, and have learnt to know him to the depth of his soul. Literally and figuratively his seat is vacant in this House at this stage. I knew him before I sat with him in this House, and I knew him as a a full-blooded United Party supporter—if I may put it that way, Sir, somebody who was a United Party organizer and a supporter of the United Party at the time when his father was a Provincial Council member and when the late Mr. Joël Krieg was Speaker of the House of Assembly. Against that background, which was much firmer than my United Party background, he was willing and able, as a representative of the Coloureds in this House, to adopt a totally objective attitude. I have reconciled myself with that. Nobody will deny that he knew the Coloured people. Both sides of the House testified to that during the motion of condolence. He was praised for that. I adopt the same attitude as the one we have adopted in the past. I shall miss him. His death has been a bitter blow to me. I was the last person, except for members of his family, who saw him alive. He was objective and exerted all his energies in the interests of his voters. As their representative he remained in close contact with them. I was the last person who spoke to him when he was still fully conscious and, if I may put it that way, he left me a sort of political legacy, also to the hon. member for Boland (Mr. Barnett) the following day. When that vacancy occurred towards the middle of August I decided to assist Mr. D. J. Scholtz as candidate in the election. I knew that Mr. Scholtz had formerly been a Nationalist Party member in this House when legislation was passed which I hope with all my soul I shall still see removed from the Statute Book. I knew that. I also know, for example, that the hon. member for Bezuidenhout had been party to that legislation and that he had become converted and had ultimately joined the United Party. I am convinced that in his heart of hearts Mr. Scholtz has identified himself with the aims and aspirations of the Coloured people in South Africa and that he is quite honest about it. I stood nothing to gain by supporting him. I came to the conclusion that he was absolutely honest about it. I asked myself who could be of greater assistance to me in this House, and I asked myself that not simply from the point of view of the representative of the Coloureds in the Outeniqua constituency. You have the Coloureds in the Transvaal, in the Free State and in Natal who are not represented here. I regard myself as the representative of that 1,500,000 Coloured fellow citizens of mine who are citizens of this country and who have no other home. I have been reproached by old friends of the United Party and told that I should not have interfered in that election, but I am an independent, and I only did what any party member on this side or on that side of the House does in an election; whether his constituency is concerned or not, he assists if he has the time or if he is instructed to do so. I had no instructions and my motive for doing so was not self-gain; I did so because I was convinced that was the right thing to do. I asked myself, who was the best person to assist me in this House to fight this uphill struggle and to bring it home to the authorities where the rightful place of the Coloured people was in South Africa? It is of no avail my bringing it home anywhere else than here. It is only the Government that can do away with legislation which I do not want on the Statute Book. It is only the Government that can assist me to “soft-pedal” in the application of apartheid, as Mr. Scholtz said on 20 November 1960 while he was a member of the Nationalist Party and a Member of Parliament. I had to decide who was the best person to assist me to bring home to the authorities that feeling which I have in my heart and soul on behalf of the people whom I represent here; bring it home to the Government on whom we are dependent for everything we want to achieve. I decided that a man who identified himself with the aims, the struggles and the aspirations of the Coloureds, who was not a political enemy of the Government, would be worth more to me than a sour jingo and that was why I decided that the best person who could assist me at this stage in the history of the Coloureds would be Mr. Scholtz, because he had convinced me that he had completely identified himself with the interests of the Coloureds. I just want to quote something, Sir. The basis on which I have always represented my voters in this House is more or less set out in the following—

That is something which has never been done by any previous Government, but this Government is to-day in the process of doing it—

That is my attitude, Sir, and I just want to know from members of the Government whether what I have just read is their policy? Because this happens to be Mr. Scholtz’s election manifesto, and I subscribe to it 100 per cent—

Mr. Scholtz went on to say this—

That is the basis on which I have represented my constituents and I think it would be a catastrophe if, at this stage in our history, the Coloured voters were to bind themselves to political organizations of which they can, in any case, not become members, and which cannot do anything for them. Their fate is in the hands of the Government. But what I resent, Sir, is when people act like this towards me; I who have done my duty towards my voters and who have adopted the attitude which I adopted in the Karoo election last year in their interests, in spite of the fact that it was stated that I had received R4,000 from Mr. Scholtz—that is an absolute lie, I reject it with the contempt it deserves. Others, again, talk about a new motor-car I received. Even to-day I cannot pay all my debts and the motor-car I am driving is 26 years old. I think I should in all seriousness issue a warning on behalf of the people I represent that we should not at this stage do things that will endanger the developmental process to full-fledged citizenship and which is “aided and abetted” by this Government. Parallel development is along two roads. The Whites are far ahead and the Coloureds a long way back on their road. What is going to happen when the two run neck to neck? That is what I want. Let us run neck to neck and see what happens. [Interjections.] Mr. Speaker, I know what the policy of the Government is and I disagree with most aspects of it, but as long as you recognize the fact that I am entitled to disagree with them, and give me the right to explain why I disagree and why my constituents cannot accept it, I shall continue to do my duty.

When it comes to an alternative policy in my constituency, and when attempts are made to discredit me, where I have done my duty more conscientiously than any member in this House, by people who themselves have no alternative policy for the Coloureds—I do not hold it against the United Party that their policy is not as I have just read because they are a White party which can only come into power on the strength of White votes and they have to formulate their policy in such a way that they do not alienate the White voters—then I say: Leave the Coloured man alone. And remember they are no longer the former Coloured “party boys” and the “old guard” of 1948. Sixteen years have gone past and a younger generation is on the Voters’ Roll, a generation which does not in the least share the views of the older people who were still prepared to choose between two evils. [Interjections.] How can I remain silent when I and my constituency are prejudiced in this way by associating me with the Nationalist Party and calling me “a Nationalist supporter” by people who themselves do not want to give the Coloureds what they want? Take one aspect only. The United Party say it is their policy to restore the Coloureds in the Cape Province to the Common Roll and that a Coloured man will also be able to stand for Parliament when they know that no United Party divisional executive committee will ever nominate a Coloured. But nothing is said about the Coloureds in the Transvaal. Is that not discrimination? They say that the Coloureds in the Transvaal and in the Free State have not as yet reached political maturity and that they will not be able to vote for a Member of Parliament: there they will be able to vote for a Senator. In other words, politically immature people can now vote for a politically immature Senator to represent them in the Senate and that Senator can sit there and form part of the electoral college to elect a State President. When I have dealt with this point I shall not return to it but I shall none the less tell my constituents that that is the sort of thing the United Party organizers are spreading in my constituency.

But I go further. During the no-confidence debate the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) made great play of the fact that the hon. the Minister of Transport had admitted that they discriminated between the Coloureds of Natal and those of the Cape Province. It is a pity that a Minister and the Government can admit such a thing to-day, but I want to know from the hon. member for South Coast whether the United Party does not discriminate against the Coloureds of the Cape and those of the Free State and the Transvaal? No, to-day they are politically too immature to vote for a Member of Parliament but the Bantu of the Transvaal and the Free State can elect eight representatives to this House. The Bantu have reached the necessary political maturity to have representatives here but not the Coloureds. Surely that is nonsense. I say that if the United Party feel that it must follow a policy that will conform with what the Whites are prepared to accept to-day, it is no concern of mine and I shall not interfere, nor am I going to argue with the Whites about it, but just leave me in peace to represent my people here on the basis on which I have done so hitherto and to do my duty towards my constituency.

I said something about job reservation a few moments ago. I think job reservation is a farce as far as the Coloureds are concerned and it should be done away with as soon as possible. We are looking for immigrants and the State is spending thousands of rand in that regard. It is a good way of strengthening the White population. But has the time not arrived for us to give the necessary training to this source of labour which we have in South Africa so that they will be able to do that work? But then I want to carry it right through. Then I say the oldest form of job reservation which every political party which has ever governed this country has maintained, must also be abolished, namely job reservation on the Railways, in the Public Service and on the mines. In other words, we have a position where job reservation has been maintained on the Railways, the mines and in the Public Service but as soon as the National Party Government came into power and they took it a little further, we said: No, now it is going too far and when we come into power we shall repeal it. I say do away with the whole lot and give the Coloured man with his labour potential which we need so desperately an opportunity of becoming a fully-fledged citizen.

If the hon. member wants to do away completely with job reservation how does he propose protecting the Coloureds against competition from the Bantu?

Surely I have confined my remarks to the Coloureds. I said there should not be such a thing as job reservation between the Coloureds and the Whites. I am not a Bantu representative, nor is that aspect under discussion. [Time limit.]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Outeniqua (Mr. Holland) evidently enjoyed himself very much in the by-election last year, and is enjoying himself still more in the in-fighting with the United Party of which he was formerly a member. Well, I do not want to deprive him of his pleasure, and therefore I will leave him there, in the pleasant mood in which he held his speech.

We are now nearing the end of this Part Appropriation debate, a debate which was remarkable to me, not in the sense that the Opposition put up a very good show, but in the sense that the debate revealed that the Government had made a breakthrough which is of still greater importance than the tremendous economic prosperity we are experiencing at the moment. This breakthrough is that the Opposition now for the first time, albeit very unwillingly, must begin to admit that the Government has been following a wise economic policy all these years and that it has further succeeded in moving the Opposition to loyalty on the economic front, which is definitely no slight achievement.

We have become accustomed over a period of years, particularly from the hon. member for Constantia (Mr. Waterson), to hearing repeatedly what catastrophes the Government’s economic, constitutional and racial policies will cause the country. Now, for a change, we have this year experienced that hon. member having to admit how strong our economy is at present. The hon. member for Durban (Point) (Mr. Raw) even tried to claim credit for his party for some of the achievements of the Government when he referred to Sasol and said that that was really the baby of the United Party. Sir, I remember the years, not very long ago, when the ex-Minister of the Interior, who was then Minister of Economic Affairs, had to wage a bitter battle in this House in regard to the provision of the necessary capital for the further expansion of Sasol. Therefore one will perhaps not be surprised if in the near future the hon. member for Durban (Point) gets up to congratulate the Government on the wise policy it followed in turning South Africa into a Republic. All that is possible, if one has regard to what has happened in this debate. For the first time the hon. member for Constantia not only admitted that things were going very well in the economic sphere, but he went so far as to say—and it was the most wonderful music to my ears—that the hon. the Minister of Finance has no problems in regard to providing capital. Where are the years when we repeatedly had to hear, just after we came into power, “Do not give them a sporting chance”; and shortly after that we heard: “The banks will close,” and that within a short time we would hear the tread of the marching feet of the unemployed in the streets, and that the foreign investors had no confidence in the Government all of which was aimed at shaking confidence overseas, at a delicate period when this Government had taken over, and well aware that they had a Press which would publish those things abroad. The hon. member for Maitland yesterday blamed hon. members on this side for referring to their disloyal and un-South African actions. But can one do other than blame them for such actions over such a long period of years? I want to go as far as to say to-day that the things they tried to do in order to bring this Government to a fall by means of economic weapons, and in that way to try to take over the Government, constituted a greater danger to South Africa than the boycotts which the Afro-Asian group to-day try to apply against us. But they did not succeed, thanks to the wise policy followed by this side, and thanks to the trump card we held then, and still hold to-day, viz. our great natural resources. But the hon. member for Constantia the other day tried to belittle our economic progress by expressing doubts as to how long this prosperity would last. He says prosperity now exists, but how long will it last under this Government? Now it is interesting to see what the industrialists in the country think. The official organ of the Federated Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the Manufacturer, printed an article in December last year, with reference to the most important news in all the countries of the world during the past year, and it said that the greatest news in South Africa was certainly the tremendous progress we had made in the economic sphere, and particularly in the industrial sphere. Then in regard to the future, the following was said in a leading article—

That is what people at the head of our industrial machine think of the future as opposed to what the hon. member for Constantia thinks. The hon. member also alleged that the rate of growth has been too slow under this Government over the past 15 years, and I know that if the hon. member for Jeppes (Dr. Cronje) gets an opportunity to speak—I do not know why he always waits until the end, after the Minister of Economic Affairs has spoken …

The United Party gets no opportunity to-day.

Order! Is that a reflection on the Chair?

No. I withdraw it.

I know that if the hon. member for Jeppes, who is batting twelfth, as the hon. the Minister over here says, were to have an opportunity to speak, he would also complain that the rate of growth has been too slow during the past few years, just like the hon. member for Constantia, who said that under the United Party régime that growth would have been much faster. I do not want to go into the matter further as to what the position would have been had we had a United Party Government for the past 15 years. That matter was fully dealt with by the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs yesterday. But I want to mention this point. The hon. member for Constantia himself admitted that to-day we have no problems in regard to capital, and as we heard yesterday from the Minister of Economic Affairs, South Africa has now progressed to the stage where we can practically supply our own capital needs. What better proof could we have of the actual growth we have had over the past 15 years than the fact that South Africa, as a young industrial country, already at this stage of its development, has become self-supporting in regard to capital?

Hon. members opposite also said that this prosperity was not due to Government policy, but was due primarily to our natural resources. I am the last one to belittle the value of our natural resources. We are grateful to have them, and we believe that with the assistance of those resources, together with a sound financial policy, we can use those resources to make South Africa a really great country. But much depends on Government policy. If hon. members opposite allege that that, and not Government policy, is the only reason for our prosperity to-day I should like to quote again what an industrial leader in South Africa said. Mr. Dirk Meter, who retired last year as president of the Federated Chamber of Industries, and who certainly is not a supporter of this Government, said the following in his presidential address—

Where could we get a better testimonial to the role this Government has played in the utilization of our natural resources to promote the prosperity of the country? Then Mr. Meter continues—

In other words, even the industrialists appreciate and recognize the fact that the handling by this Government of our economic resources enabled us to have this phenomenal growth. I want to say that the prosperity we are experiencing is proof of the skilful handling by the Government of the financial matters of the country, the more so because this achievement came at a time when we had to work with a spade in one hand and a sword in the other. The greatest achievement of the Government is that it was able in such a difficult period to weld the people together and to instil confidence despite the attempts made to undermine it. The investor and the entrepreneur are guided by factors such as the available capital and labour and natural resources, but particularly in recent years the investor has sought safety for his investment. Even if all the capital were available, and even if there were no labour problems, and even if the natural resources were wonderful, if uncertainty existed in regard to the future of the country, as to who would govern the country and as to whether there would be a stable Government, and as to whether one’s investment would not be devalued overnight, nobody would be prepared to invest. But the investor and the entrepreneur know that under this Government in South Africa that is not the case, because this Government is able to guarantee safety for the investor both in the economic sphere and the military sphere. It is also significant that the series of economic boycotts applied against us has failed. The entrepreneur and the investor realize that under the leadership of the present Prime Minister South Africa is following a policy which ensures stability and safety in the political sphere; and he knows that in the present Minister of Finance, as also in previous years under a Nationalist Government, we have a person who acts cautiously and does not gamble with the economic future of the country, and that the investor can invest in safety. They also know that the Government, under the present Minister of Economic Affairs, encourages a spirit of enterprise, and that he does everything to promote the development of South Africa as an industrial country. I am sure there were certain people who were waiting for a change of Government—I am referring to certain businessmen—and who thought that the United Party would come into power again, and therefore they hesitated to do what they are in fact doing to-day, but now they have come to realize, particularly in the light of the difficult circumstances prevailing in the world, that the policy of this Government ensures safety for them, and therefore they have set to work. The joint effect of all the policies adopted by this Government is that confidence has been engendered and there is a spirit of unity amongst the various population sections of the country, and that a feeling of loyalty has been fostered which now finds its expression in all these vital developments, in order to meet all the challenges in the world. I want to associate this achievement with the philosophy of the National Party, a philosophy of love for what is one’s own and its protection to the very utmost, and in addition of not yielding to any pressure exerted to bring us to our knees. That philosophy of the National Party has placed its stamp on the policies of this Government in numerous spheres, but it also gave rise to the confidence and the progress and the real patriotism which we now see developing in this country and which will make us one of the economic strongholds in the Western world.

Finally, in this connection I want to pose this question: In view of the fact that we are criticized in a debate like this for our handling of the economy of the country, is it an insignificant fact, or merely a coincidence, that South Africa’s fast economic progress is in precisely the converse ratio to the growth of the Opposition?

As we became an industrial country, certain changes came about. One is that the position which agriculture took in our national production gradually decreased. Now there are some hon. members opposite who also criticize this phenomenon and want to lay it at the door of the Government, and who say that it is wrong. I want to allege that it is a purely natural phenomenon for a young country like South Africa to develop into an industrial country so fast that agriculture loses its relative importance. Sir, I want to put the actual position before you. Whereas in the years 1920 to 1930 agriculture contributed about 20 per cent per annum to the net inland production, and industry only about 12 per cent, the situation has now changed so that agriculture today contributes only about 10 per cent and industry already about 22 per cent, and it is expected that in the next five to ten years industry will still expand enormously. What hon. members opposite forget when they reproach the Government for this phenomenon of the relative decrease in importance of agriculture is the fact that agriculture during the same time also tremendously increased its volume of production and the value of that production, and when hon. members make this reproach they are doing just what the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West) (Mr. Streicher) did the other day when he imputed words to the hon. the Minister of Agricultural Economics and Marketing which that hon. Minister had never used. The hon. member came along the other day with a whole number of Press cuttings to prove that the Minister had said that he was not in favour of higher prices. The Minister never said it. I have more than sufficient proof that the hon. the Minister said that higher prices alone could not prevent the depopulation of the platteland. But then the hon. member went further and argued as follows: “If the Minister says that stable prices and increased prices for the farmer’s products are not good for him,” does he want to intimate that the farmers should be satisfied with lower prices? And then he argues further in this illogical manner by saying: “Then there is only one alternative left, namely that there should be lower prices, and then that is the policy of this Government.”

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 99 and the debate adjourned.

I move—

Sir, in South Africa we are familiar with two classes of Government investment. There is, of course, the long-term loan, from 12 to 20 years; then we have the medium-period loans from seven to 12 years; and we have short term loans. These loans are usually available to and money is invested in them by financial groups, pension funds, trust funds and wealthy individuals. They are not intended for the ordinary, everyday small investor. But we have a second class of investment. Our second class of investment is what we call national savings investments, and we in South Africa are familiar with two of these national savings investments—two especially. One is the Post Office savings bank and the other the issue of national savings certificates. Premium savings bonds belong to that second class of investment, an investment for the small investor. As the name implies, savings bonds are investments in loans, and as my motion indicates I am advocating investment in Government loans. Although premium savings bonds belong to this second category of investments they differ from the Post Office savings bank and the national savings certificates investments in this respect: Unlike those two investments, interest on premium savings bonds is not paid directly to individual bondholders, instead a sum of money equivalent to the total amount of interest is paid into a prize fund and that prize fund is distributed to bondholders in a prize draw.

Gambling.

Well, we can discuss that, if that is the hon. member’s interpretation; it is not my interpretation. He may regard it in that light. Sir, that is an essential feature of premium savings bonds. Perhaps I can illustrate the manner of the investment by taking an example, and I do so tentatively because hon. members may have other suggestions to make or improvements to put forward or their own original schemes. I would suggest that premium bonds should be issued at the value of R2 for one bond, and that the maximum number that any citizen may hold should be 1,000, so that the maximum amount that any citizen could invest in premium bonds would be R2,000. These bonds would be repayable at par at any time. An investor could have his money back at any time he wished to make application for it. That is the first point. The second question is this: How much should we expect in a series of bonds? I give as an example a paid-up series of bonds and the prize distribution I would recommend. I would suggest that we take a paid-up series of bonds of R10,000,000—a total of R10,000,000; that is to say, there will be 5,000,000 bonds in this R10,000,000 series. The interest on that R10,000,000 over a period of 12 months at 5 per cent would be R500,000, and my suggestion is that prize draws should take place four times per annum. If we have R500,000 interest per annum, the quarterly amount available for distribution would be one-quarter of that amount, that is to say, R125,000 at any distribution of prizes. How should these prizes be allocated? I think that is a very important question. Let me give my suggestions. As I said at the beginning I do so tentatively because there may be better suggestions. I want to have one prize of R10,000: I would have five prizes of R5,000. I would have 20 prizes of R1,000, 50 prizes of R500, 200 prizes of R100 and 500 prizes of R50, making a total for distribution of R125,000. Now, how should the names of the prize winners be made known to the public? I would say that no name should appear in any publication, but the numbers of the winning bonds should appear in a Government Gazette. They would, of course, appear in the newspapers because the winning numbers would be news. Then the Government would notify the winning bond holder that he has drawn this prize and ask him how the money should be paid to him. That is a simple explanation of the operation of premium bonds, which the hon. the Minister of Finance knows are used regularly as investments in modern civilized countries. A very important aspect of this premium bond award of prizes is the manner in which the draw is to be carried out. One should try to eliminate as far as possible the human element in any draw. In modern states this draw is carried out by an electronic machine. I am quoting from the one with which I am familiar, the electronic machine which is in use in Great Britain. This electronic machine draws the winning numbers and prints them. In addition to doing that it is necessary to check the numbers. Some of the numbers on the list may be numbers which have been repaid and are therefore not eligible or there may be numbers which have not been invested long enough. That has to be checked, and there the human element comes in. In Great Britain there is a triple check. That is the only case where the human element comes into the draw.

In your second draw, are these numbers then excluded?

I thank the hon. member for that question. I was coming to that later. A bond can draw a prize every quarter, as long as it remains there. It cannot draw two prizes in the same draw but it can draw prizes every quarter as long as it remains invested. Sir, this electronic machine in Great Britain is known to the investing public by the name of Ernie which, of course, is a boy’s name. It stands for Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment. This machine carries out the draw. I would not say that it would be impossible, but it would, of course, be cumbersome to have numbers put into a drum. I am afraid we could not do that; it would be quite impossible in the ordinary way of making a draw for us to say that we will put all these numbers into a drum. Some of them may not be eligible, but through the electronic machine the correct numbers go into the draw. But the point I want to emphasize is this: that after every draw the investor’s capital, his principal, remains there; his savings remain there. For that reason there are many people who say “I would like my children to make savings in that way”. Some people have in fact done that. I am not prepared to discuss that aspect of it. But the savings remain intact. It is not like an ordinary lottery where you put in your money. You may win a prize or you may lose your money. In this case your capital, your principal, remains there.

Now I want to consider and anticipate possible objections to or criticisms of this scheme. There may be criticism, and there may be criticism from hon. members who have religious scruples. When hon. members have religious scruples I think we should try to meet them. Now, what possible objection can there be to this scheme? There are two which have occurred to me. They are not my objections but possibly they occur to other hon. members. The first is that we do not draw interest on individual bonds, and the second is that prizes are awarded by lot; that we draw for prizes. I should like to deal with both of those and anticipate that kind of criticism. Let us take the first one, the payment of interest. Sir, there is nothing sacrosanct about earning money as interest on a loan. If members have religious scruples they should refer to their Bible. They will know that in the Book of Exodus, in the Book of Leviticus, and again in the Prophet Nehemiah, we are told that in certain circumstances it is unlawful to draw interest, although I will admit that in the Book of Deuteronomy we are told that when lending to a stranger we may draw interest. But generally speaking we are told that it is not according to the law to draw interest. In this connection I want to quote from a very well-known authority, Alexander Cruden’s “Concordance of the Old and New Testaments” and his dictionary of biblical terms. We know that interest is referred to in the Bible by its proper name—usury. This is what the Concordance, the dictionary of biblical terms, tells us about usury: “By usury is generally understood the gain of anything above the principal, or that which was lent, exacted only in consideration of a loan whether it be in money, corn, wares or the like. It is most commonly taken for an unlawful profit which a person makes of his money or goods.”

Sir, I do not think that one’s scruples about having an investment where there is no interest carries any weight. There is no substance in that. I do not think that can be an objection.

I come now to a second possible objection, that we draw for prizes. Well, casting lots is a very common practice in all civilized countries. Hon. members who are familiar with company legislation will know that we draw for the payment of debentures. It is quite common. Those men who hold debentures which are drawn first are placed in a better position than those holding debentures which are drawn later. Secondly, if we have to think of religious scruples, hon. members must remember that the Israelites on the plains of Moab drew lots for their farms. Casting lots is an old-established historical custom and, of course, it operates the other way as well. The man who is drawn may be a loser. We all remember the case of Jonah who was the loser. But we have another case of casting lots in South Africa. Every year we have a ballot. The young man who is drawn in that ballot has to leave his work, his career, and serve his country in the fighting forces—the Army, the Navy or the Air Force—for about 12 months in all. But the man who is not drawn may continue in his chosen career. The man who is not drawn is the winner. He can go to university; he can carry on as an apprentice; he can carve out his career. We do that under our law and we do it regularly. Now Sir, I should like to say, that hon. members who feel that there may be something morally wrong about drawing prizes in the manner that I have indicated should bear this in mind: We should look into our hearts and say, “If there is anything morally wrong it is a trifle compared with what we have done to the currency of South Africa and what other civilized states have done to their currencies over the last 30 years”. We have depreciated our currency, we have robbed the pensioner and we have robbed the man who has his money invested in stock, because of this depreciation. That is a more serious thing than anything I have advocated here to-day. Sir, I submit that in South Africa to-day there are people who through a sense of frustration are unable to obtain the kind of investment they would like to have. I think this is the kind of investment which they would say would satisfy them. They feel that if they invest their money in the ordinary way there will be depreciation. How much? Possibly 3 per cent per annum. I know of pensioners to-day, old colleagues of mine, who paid for their pensions in golden sovereigns. They are drawing pittances to-day in small pensions on which they cannot live. I do not think we should have any moral or religious scruples in a country which tolerates that state of affairs.

Sir, I think this premium bond scheme is one that is suited to South Africa; it is suited to our people; and it is one which I am sure will benefit the Government. This may not be the ideal time to introduce it. Perhaps I should have said that the Government should investigate the scheme, but I think they cannot possibly go wrong if they immediately say, “We are going to go on with the scheme”. There are certain difficulties that the Minister’s Department will have to consider. We shall have to consider the manner of the draw, and I should think it will take from six to nine months to put this scheme into operation.

We have listened with interest to the hon. member’s motion and his motivation of it. I must say at the outset that I was rather struck by the fact that the hon. member not only stated his case very briefly but that he did not succeed at all in convincing us of the necessity for the Government to institute the sort of scheme which he has proposed here. I shall come back to this later on but as far as I personally am concerned the question is simply whether such a scheme is necessary at all. According to the information I have it seems to me that this is a scheme which the hon. member is really trying to import from overseas. This scheme to which he referred was introduced in Britain in the middle ’fifties when the British Government and other authorities were very concerned about the huge sums of money which were being wagered every year by the British nation. It is stated that the amount gambled away in the years 1954-5 was £650,000,000. A method was then sought to obtain more money for the State and it was decided to institute the so-called premium savings bonds. Well, I doubt whether our Government finds itself in such a plight at the present time, and I doubt whether our people have such a particular predilection for gambling away such fantastic sums of money. The hon. the mover has succeeded in couching his motion in very innocent terms. He talks in his motion about the encouragement of thrift and patriotic investment, and in the course of his speech he pointed out that at least the investor does not lose his capital. He might also have added, as some people argue, that capital which sometimes lies idle is used in this way. He calls this a popular method which is used in many civilized countries to-day and he points out that it is not a lottery. He suggests that we ought to have no religious or ethical objections to it. Mr. Speaker, in essence it amounts to this: The State institutes such a scheme and it is practically agreed upon that the State will not pay the interest to which the public is entitled. As the hon. member himself has said, the interest which is really earned on that money is given back to the public by way of lottery prizes. According to this scheme which he has presented here it amounts to this, that the State will in fact give back 4 per cent or 5 per cent to the public by way of lottery prizes, and then the question arises again what the value of such a scheme really is. Is it of any value; are there any benefits to be derived from it? To me it seems that there are really no benefits to be derived from it except that we will be satisfying those people who are very anxious to gamble with their money, as it were; that they will be willing on the one hand to demand no interest in return for the possibility of receiving more interest on their money by way of a lottery prize at some future date. As he stated the case here, it seems to me that such a scheme will not attract a great deal of capital except from people who are anxious to introduce the principle of gambling and who have a predilection for gambling. I have already pointed out that it seems to me that at the present time there is no real necessity for our Government to attract capital in this way.

I want to deal therefore with the objections that I have to the hon. member’s motion. The first objection that I want to mention to him is based on educational grounds because I take it that he also considered his motion from an educational point of view. The authorities expect every citizen of the country to do his duty and to improve his position and to create prosperity for himself by faithful Iabour and devotion to his task and service to his country. I ask myself whether it is correct educationally, whether it is wise, whether it is a far-sighted policy for the State to start encouraging its subjects, by the introduction of the principle of lotteries into our whole system of savings, not to try in the first instance to improve their position and to make headway by working hard and living frugally, but to obtain income from a lottery? I feel that in the long run the introduction of that principle is going to harm us much more than it is going to benefit us. In the long run we may perhaps accumulate and mobilize a little money for useful purposes, but in holding out this idea to our young people with the blessing of the authorities we are harming and breaking down the essential and the main basic principle underlying the progress of our nation, a principle which should also be instilled into our youth while they are still at school. Our children are taught at school that they have to learn to work in order to make headway in life and in order to be able to enjoy the facilities of our society. They are taught that that is the way to earn their money. But if this scheme is introduced they will say to themselves, “No, there is another way too and that is to buy these premium savings certificates from the State; we will then have a chance of winning a prize and earning a large amount of interest on a small sum of money”. Here we are introducing a principle which is completely wrong educationally and which will prove to be harmful in the long run. To my mind it is no valid argument to say that this is being done in many countries to-day. There are many things which are wrong and which are being done in many countries, even in countries well disposed towards us. The fact that it is being done is no valid reason in my opinion why we should introduce it here. We have already established fine South African traditions in more than one respect. If there is one fine South African tradition that we have established it is the tradition that the State must encourage its people not only to work but also to save a considerable portion of their earnings and to invest their savings in different ways but to invest them in such a way that they will earn a good, fixed interest and thus make their contribution towards building up the country’s reserve funds. It seems to me that the hon. member, who is also an educationist, has entirely overlooked this consideration. At first glance it may seem very insignificant but in the long run the principle which is sought to be introduced here is a harmful and wrong principle from the educational point of view and that is my objection to it.

I should like to ask the hon. member what the difference is between what is proposed in the motion and the purchase of shares, where you buy shares yielding a low rate of interest but offering an opportunity of capital appreciation? The hon. member says that we must earn our money and save our money. But hundreds and thousands of people buy shares because they hope to increase their capital in that way. What is the difference?

The hon. member will admit that there is a material difference. In the one case you make the payment of interest on your capital dependent upon the possibility of winning a lottery prize. In the other case the man who invests in shares is really making a patriotic investment; he believes in the future of his country; he believes in the development potential of his country; he invests in shares, not with the idea of earning interest only but with the idea of developing his country. If I had to recommend a patriotic investment to the hon. member, that is the sort of investment that I would recommend to him. In the long run it will give him a much better return than the interest which the mover of the motion is trying to offer him.

I also have an economic objection to this motion. We already have in this country a whole series of bodies which canalize the nation’s savings. The hon. member has referred to the Post Office savings bank and Government loan certificates. I can also include our building societies, our commercial and trust banks. These are all bodies which take up a considerable portion of our people’s savings and which put them to use in a wide sphere. I think these bodies are held in very high esteem by our people. It is accepted to-day by our non-White population that their money is safe when they invest it in the Post Office savings bank or when they invest it in Government loan certificates. I think our building societies and our recognized commercial banks in this country are held in very high esteem. Many people are prepared to invest their money with some of these bodies at a comparatively low rate of interest in the knowledge that their money is safe and that they will regularly receive interest on their money. Similarly there are large numbers of trust companies which play a very important role in the development of our national economy and in our whole economic structure and which are doing very good work.

The question which I ask myself is this: If the Government does introduce such a scheme, to what extent will the State draw funds away from those particular bodies in another direction; to what extent will the State come into unfair competition with existing building societies, trust companies and other bodies, because this lottery system will be more attractive to many people simply because there is an element of gambling attached to it. I contend that we run the risk of doing an injustice to those existing bodies which have rendered very good service over many years, which have built up a very good reputation and which have gained the confidence of the public, and that nothing useful will really be achieved by introducing such a scheme. Another question is whether the State will then also enable some of these bodies, which may feel that they are not getting enough of the savings of the public, to issue savings bonds on the same basis? In other words, will they be allowed to distribute lottery prizes instead of paying the normal interest? To my mind, Mr. Speaker, we would be introducing a wrong principle. Viewed from an economic aspect it would also be short-sighted because such a scheme would create no new avenues for our people to earn money. It is simply a clever trick to get hold of money in a popular way—if it is going to be popular, and with some people it will no doubt be popular. I say again that in our present economic position there is no necessity for such a scheme. As far as the State is concerned it will mean the introduction of a wrong principle. It will mean State competition with existing financial institutions. We may even find that in this way the State canalizes savings which should have been used more productively in other ways. Let me put it to you this way, Mr. Speaker. If the breadwinner of a certain family is very anxious to qualify for these lottery prizes and he decides to invest more and more in these premium bonds referred to by the mover, it will mean that he will not be able to give his sons and daughters the training which they need to be able to fulfil their role in the national economy. Or it will mean that whereas people with initiative would otherwise have invested their money in private undertakings, they will not do so if this scheme is introduced. More and more the State would be mobilizing an unnecessary amount of capital in this way, and I say that it would be very short-sighted on our part to allow it. The result would be that there would be many people who would not be trained and equipped to make a worthwhile contribution in the long run to our national economy. In the long run therefore we would lose.

Mr. Speaker, when a nation saves more than it ought to save then private initiative is smothered. Large savings do not necessarily mean prosperity and opportunities of employment for the whole population. As I have already said, our economy at the present time is not such that we need such a scheme. What we need, rather than such a scheme, is healthy private enterprise; what we need is broader, stronger leadership with the necessary technical knowledge, more skilled Iabour and a higher standard of professional skill. From an economic point of view therefore I cannot see how the hon. member’s scheme can really make a positive contribution.

I should like to deal now with the religious objections to the hon. member’s motion, objections to which he himself referred. I want to conclude by saying that we do in fact have a strong ethical objection to this motion. It will not help the hon. member to quote a few texts from the Bible and to tell us that the Israelites also drew lots for portions of the promised land which they would eventually inherit or that lots were drawn on other occasions to decide some issue or other. The position, Mr. Speaker, is that much reference is made in the Bible to the drawing of lots, but it was resorted to mostly, according to the Bible, in those cases where people looked up for guidance to the Lord, who controls our destinies, and where they lacked discernment. It was resorted to mostly where people had to be assigned particular tasks and where it was not possible for man to say, “This man or that man will be the best”. As far as the earnings of a nation are concerned the Bible lays down a well-tried principle. I do not propose to quote texts to the hon. member, but that basic principle is that man shall earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. In other words, if man wants to live, if man wants to make a comfortable and honourable living, he must be willing to work. That is the factor which earns money; that is the power which enables civilization to make headway; that is the Dower which man uses to make headway in life and to earn more comforts for himself. Our objection, a very serious ethical objection, to the hon. member’s proposal to introduce the lottery principle to enable people to obtain income, is that in principle it is wrong.

It is no use saying that there are lotteries in many countries. Ethically it is a wrong principle. Nothing positive is created, nothing is truly earned, by winning a lottery. It amounts to economic exploitation of the community; it means that people lay their hands on money for which other people really worked and which other people really earned.

The hon. member says that there is one very fine aspect of the scheme and that is that it is not ordinary gambling because the capital of the investor remains safe. Let me tell the hon. member that the capital of the investor is just as safe in the Post Office savings bank; it is just as safe in the building societies; it is just as safe in our Government loan certificates. Moreover, his co-pensioners or excolleagues about whom he is so concerned, are at least assured of a fixed interest when they invest their money with those institutions. They can decide whether they want to invest in the Post Office savings bank or in Government loan certificates or with a building society. They can decide where they can get the best rate of interest and if they invest their money there they ought to be able to live reasonably.

I want to conclude by saying that the hon. member timed the introduction of his motion very badly. There is no urgent need for such a scheme in South Africa to-day. I personally feel that with such a scheme the Government would compete on an unfair basis with existing financial institutions. Personally I think that the hon. member, as an educationist, did not consider this matter thoroughly from the educational point of view. From the economic point of view I think his scheme is tantamount to economic exploitation and that it will make no positive contribution to our national economy. In the last instance I am convinced that we would be introducing a principle here which is wrong ethically and it would be even more wrong if the State introduced such a scheme. The Government should rather give a positive lead. We have enormous opportunities in our country; there is enough work to enable everybody who is willing to work hard to make an honourable living. We should rather encourage our people to create a better future for themselves and for the nation as a whole by loyal, hard, honourable labour. I am sorry therefore, Mr. Speaker, that I cannot support the hon. member.

Mr. Speaker, I was most impressed by the obvious sincerity of the hon. member for Piketberg (Mr. Treurnicht) and the way in which he expressed his sentiments and views on this problem. Perhaps, Sir, if all of us lived by the high standards shown by the hon. member in his speech, much of what he said would be correct. But unfortunately we have to take things as we find them. The standard of values, the standard of ideals of the average man is probably a lot lower than that enumerated by the hon. member. Because, Sir, we have in existence already a number of things which must be objectionable to the hon. member for Piketberg in the light of his speech. For example, from August 1962 to July 1963 R23,516,781 went through the totes of South Africa. That is quite apart from normal backing. I am not objecting to racing, Sir; I do not want to be misunderstood. But these are things that are in existence and these are things that are happening. In terms of the values set up by the hon. member, I do not know whether we should not close down the Stock Exchange, because if ever there was a form of gambling it is the Stock Exchange. Not that I object to the Stock Exchange.

The prime question the hon. member asked was why should the Government introduce such a scheme and had it any value?

May I ask a question? Can the hon. member tell us where he voted in 1958 in the Provincial Council of the Transvaal on this question of premium bonds? For or against it.

I do not remember it ever having been introduced in that province, Sir. The first thing we have to analyse is what is the purpose of these premium bonds. And I do not like to call them premium bonds; their proper name is premium saving bonds and it is a very important difference. Now what is the purpose of these premium saving bonds? There are two purposes. One is to produce loan revenue for the State and the second one—and the more important one as far as I am concerned—is to provide an incentive to the public to invest. What is the position of public investment to-day? The hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Moore) has dealt with forms of investment in the broad field. But let us take the small man. What are his avenues of investment to-day? He can invest in the Post Office; he can invest in the building societies and similar institutions. Here, if I might just deviate for a moment, I think the fears of the hon. member for Piketberg (Mr. Treurnicht) are a little unfounded when he says this scheme will compete with certain established normal business organizations, because they already have to compete with such things as savings certificates and with the Post Office, etc. There is no change in principle. The small man can invest in these institutions and what does he earn by way of interest? For every rand he invests he is lucky if he earns 3c to 3½c per annum. That is the return he gets on his small investment. It is so infinitesimal that it has no meaning. What is really the position of institutions like the Post Office and the building societies? They are simply used as a depository for the small man’s funds. I am not talking about the big investor who invests large amounts of money in these institutions to receive interest. I am talking about the man in the street. His basic reason for putting his money in a building society or the Post Office is simply to have somewhere to put his money. He does not use that institution as an interest-earning medium. Over a period of a year, for example, Sir, you will find that as much money comes out of the Post Office as goes into it. Because all that is happening is that the Post Office and the building societies and similar institutions are being used to run current accounts for ordinary people. In the case of a premium savings bond you have a different situation. Here you have the possibility of a substantial reward instead of 3c per rand per annum, a reward that will mean something to the investor. So he has two incentives: Firstly, to invest, and, secondly, perhaps more important, an incentive to leave his money invested. I mentioned the Post Office a minute ago, Sir, and the figures are interesting. At the end of March 1962 the balance due to depositors in the Post Office was plus/minus R134,000,000. The deposits for the following 12 months were R52,000,000, and the withdrawals over the same period amounted to R55,000,000. You thus have the situation that more money was withdrawn than was put in.

What about national loan certificates?

Does the small man buy national loan certificates? I do not think so. When you analyse these figures, Sir, you will find that of the original balance at the beginning of the year of R134,000,000 plus the deposits of R52,000,000, 33⅓ per cent of the total amount held as balances plus the amount deposited for the year was withdrawn during the year. So you see what is happening, Mr. Speaker. Money goes in and money comes out. That reminds me of one of the organizations with which I was associated. We started a savings scheme for the non-White employees. At the beginning of every month they used to put in their money; on the seventh of every month they withdrew it.

In England where premium saving bonds have been in existence since 1956 we are able to make some more interesting comparisons. I quote from Whitaker’s of 1964—

So you have these comparative figures of investment and withdrawal: 529 to 402 for saving bank deposits; 104 to 92 on saving certificates but 53 to 30 on premium savings bonds. In other words, Sir, the premium savings bonds have a longer life of investment than any other national form of saving which is available to the small man. At the end of June 1963 the total amount invested in premium savings bonds in England was no less than R805,600,000.

What are these bonds, Sir? The hon. member for Kensington has told us. But I think the cardinal principle of the bonds is as follows: Firstly, is you can never lose your money; your money is invested and it is always available to you. Secondly, it is available for return to you at any time you want it. There is no difference between a premium savings bond, as far as the investor is concerned, and any other kind of Government saving which is short term. You put it in when you like, and you take it out when you like. The only thing you hazard is the question of interest. Here is what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in England in 1956 when this matter was introduced—

That is a fair statement. You are gambling your interest with the incentive of fortune, but to such an infinitesimal amount that it does not really matter. Then he says—

We have plenty of media, Sir, for people who want to save for interest, for their 3c per annum on their rand. They can invest in the Post Office. The hon. Minister of Finance will give them as many channels of investment as they like. But here is something for the little man, this is something to encourage him to invest. I was interested as well, Sir, to read what Whitaker says about premium savings bonds because you will notice that the accent is on saving. They say here—

Now, Sir, basically what does all this mean? The investor invests his money in a bond secured by the Government. He invests his money in the full knowledge that he will not receive interest and that he can get his capital returned at any time he desires. He knows that as long as he holds the bond he has the opportunity of a substantial reward as against a small amount of interest. If he does not get a substantial reward the amount he has hazarded by loss of interest is negligible. These bonds are usually limited to a reasonable ceiling by any individual, perhaps R1,000. I cannot remember what the hon. member for Kensington suggested as a maximum investment.

R2. 000.

Will that be the maximum? In England it is R1,600. It is not available for corporations, it is not available for business houses; it is there for the small man. Mr. Speaker, I think there is no doubt that it will encourage people to save, and people do not save unless there is an incentive. I know the hon. Minister of Finance will tell us that the degree of saving in this country is very high. That is true, but what we want is to encourage the smaller man to save.

Now let us look at it from the Government point of view. The hon. Minister of Finance has told us that there is too much money in circulation. He has taken a certain amount of that money away by over-issuing Treasury bonds and he has transmitted those funds to. England. Here is another excellent opportunity for him to do exactly the same thing, to have investment in premium savings bonds, take the pressure of money from the market, remit those funds to England or anywhere else where the hon. Minister would care to invest those funds and keep them there until such time as we need them. The hon. Minister also told us of course that very soon he may be short of money. Now if he is short of money, here he has the opportunity again of building up the state finances.

I find merit in the scheme from the point of view of the investor, I find merit in the scheme from the point of view of the Government. I find nothing to disturb me on moral grounds in this particular case. In fact, Mr. Sneaker, it is something which is not new to this country. We have had terminal building society deposits for many, many years. A group of smaller building societies allow you to put your money into a building society. They do not pay you any interest, but a draw is made and the lucky drawer is given an interest-free loan for a pre-determined period. If he does not want to take the interest-free loan, that loan can be auctioned, and whatever the price may be that is fetched, it goes to that investor. It is not a new principle, it has happened in this country and it is happening to-day—the principle of a group-investment for a little special return. I hope that real consideration will be given to this matter of premium savings bonds because it is a method of investment which can be of benefit to many sections of the community.

I should like to help the hon. member who has just sat down and I want to refresh his memory. It appears to me that he has deteriorated since he last appeared in this House. On 8 June 1958 a similar motion was moved in the Transvaal Provincial Council by Mr. Ronnie Nestadt, the Provincial Council member for Benoni. After the debate, in which it is true the hon. member for Parktown (Mr. Emdin) did not participate, he elected of his own free will to have his name recorded with the names of those who voted against that motion. What is more, he was one of only three Opposition members who voted against it and if he cannot remember who those members were I should like to remind him further that those three names were S. Emdin, Miss McCarthy and Mr. Toffie van de Venter, all of whom voted against the motion of Mr. Ronny Nestadt. This was less than six years ago. The hon. member may of course have changed his mind since. Either he did not know what he was voting against at the time or else he does not know what he is asking for to-day. The hon. member for Parktown, just like the hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Moore) who introduced this motion, tried to draw a comparison between the wording of this motion which is at the moment under discussion and the purchasing of shares. But there is no comparison. Any person who buys shares studies the shares he is going to buy.

I said nothing about that at all.

I apologize if the hon. member did not say that but he did refer to shares that one can buy, speculative shares, and the hon. member for Park-town mentioned the Stock Exchange. But apart from that fact, the buying of shares is in no way comparable with the wording of this motion that is before the House to-day. The emphasis in this motion is not on “saving” and the emphasis is not on “patriotism”. The emphasis in this motion is on gambling. Let us give the child a name. But when a person buys shares he knows what he is buying.

Oh, yes?

I want to ask the hon. member whether he puts the names of a number of companies into a hat and then draws one at random and says that he is going to buy those shares? Or does he draw lots to find out which shares he wants to buy? Or does he study the share market and then buy the shares in which he has confidence? That is precisely my argument. He has a say in it, in the shares that he buys, and he expects to draw dividends from those shares. Those shares are not bought haphazardly. They either appreciate or they depreciate, one of the two. This principle is not at all the same as that contained in this motion. I want to refer again to the contents of the motion of the hon. member. His motion states: “That this House requests the Government to encourage thrift and awaken patriotic investment by the issue of premium savings bonds. ” The two reasons which the hon. member advanced in support of his motion were very fine-sounding reasons. We were all impressed by them. There is something in promoting a sense of thrift and there is something in patriotism. But when these two reasons are advanced in order to hide the barb of gambling, then the two words lose their meaning, they vanish. That is why these two parts of his motion fall completely flat. They do not hold water. They have been placed there simply to hide the barb of gambling. This is my contention and the hon. member for Kensington knows that that is so. To my mind this is proof positive that he realizes that he is going to meet with opposition and that in principle his motion is wrong.

Are you opposed to gambling?

I am opposed to gambling. Is the hon. member not opposed to it?

No.

The hon. member is not opposed to gambling. I say that the meaning of both of these words disappears when we consider the true purpose contained in this sugar-coated pill. Mention has already been made of it, but let us for a moment analyse the question of thrift, the plea that a sense of thrift should be encouraged. There are adequate opportunities for investment if one wants to save and the State also makes these opportunities available. But the virtue of thrift lies in the fact that one does it of one’s own accord. In this case the pill has to be slightly sugar coated. We have to be encouraged to save. It is no longer a voluntary saving. There is no compulsion upon a person to save but there is a different motive on the part of the person buying these premium savings bonds; he is driven by a different motive, another motive than simply a desire to save and that motive is to gamble. The motive is the possibility of winning some of that money. That is the whole intention of the motion and that is what it envisages—to attract people who are driven not by an inner compulsion to save or a feeling of thrift but an urge to gamble. When we analyse the second motive that the hon. member has given us, that the investment must be patriotic because it will then be an investment with the State, well, we have the Post Office savings bank and if anyone wants to be patriotic he can prove his patriotism by making use of the opportunities that he has to invest his money with the State. He can then go to the Post Office savings bank and he can buy tax-free Government bonds. The opportunities are there and there is therefore no need at all for this motion, at least not the need that the hon. member has mentioned in the written text of his motion—not as far as a sense of thrift or patriotism is concerned. Mr. Speaker, each year 10,000—this year I think the figure is 16,000—ballotees go away for their military training. The law compels them to go. It is my privilege to have a son doing his military training in one of these camps this year. But I have tried to impress upon him that he should not go simply because he has been balloted in terms of a system which we have or because he is compelled to go. I told my son that he should feel that he is going voluntarily because of his love for South Africa. I told him that he should learn all he can in the military sphere not in order to defend himself but to defend his homeland. This to my mind is the difference between a person who goes there unwillingly, who goes there under duress, and a person who does this sort of thing out of a feeling of patriotism. The same thing holds good in this case in connection with the investment of money in the country that we love, the Republic of South Africa. If one makes use of the facilities that we have for investment in our country, that is a patriotic action, but when one invests one’s money in the hope of drawing one of these two large sums of money which the hon. member has mentioned—as he sees the position (which does not of necessity have to remain that way if his motion is adopted)—then the patriotic motive disappears from his motion and all that then remains of his motion is its primary object—gambling. That is the only characteristic that remains.

I am absolutely opposed to this motion and I want to appeal to the hon. the Minister not to accept it. I am convinced that the House will not adopt a motion of this nature because we have no need of it, not now or in the future. Here I also differ from an argument that may be advanced—that this is not the time to introduce the motion. If this motion, if gambling, is immoral, then it is immoral now and it will be immoral in the future and it will be immoral at any time.

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

Afternoon Sitting

Before business was suspended I was trying to prove that as far as the motion of the hon. member for Kensington was concerned only one element remained and that was the element of gambling. If this is so, it brings me to the moral grounds on which I object to this motion and to the attitude that I adopt in objecting to this motion. It is very clear that if this motion is adopted it will only be the thin end of the wedge, the forerunner of a State lottery.

Hear, hear!

The hon. member who says “Hear, hear!” is a member of the Afrikaans-speaking community in our country and since I am dealing with the moral grounds on which I base my objection and protest to this whole motion, I want to tell the hon. member that I also stand here as a member of a specific language group, the Afrikaans-speaking language group, and I am not trying to be negative. As I know the history and the development of the Afrikaans speaking people of our country, I can say this afternoon that the Church of the Afrikaans speaking people has had a tremendous influence upon the attitude and outlook on life of the Afrikaner in the years gone by. Hon. members can view this statement of mine in any way they want to. It makes no difference to me. But I do not hesitate for a moment in saying that in the language group and the family from which I come and in the families from which the Afrikaans-speaking people come—and in this I do not want to exclude English-speaking people because there are many of them who think as I do—the Church has certainly exerted its influence upon the character of the people, upon the thinking of our people and upon the outlook on life of our people. I want to ask the hon. member for Kensington, who has moved this motion, whether he thinks that it is right that the State in particular should take the lead in a gamble which in my view—as I have tried to explain here—is something that cannot be reconciled with the views of our people as influenced by the Church to which I belong. Does he think that it is right that the State should take the lead in instituting a State lottery or a gamble of any nature? I want to ask the hon. member, if his party were in government and if he were the Prime Minister, whether he would move a motion to the effect that the Government of the Republic of South Africa should take the lead in initiating a means of gambling in our country. I want to put this question to the hon. member because there are people with different senses of value in our country; there are various yardsticks by means of which we can gauge the worth of a nation and of an individual and of a State. I want to say this afternoon that it is not exclusively the material value which gives a nation its strength. When I look at the development pattern of our people, I say that the spiritual values and the spiritual possessions and the spiritual strength of our nation have played a very important role and have been the binding elements in the formation of our nation. The hon. member will get nowhere with this cheap story of his of asking people whether they buy lottery tickets or not. I am sure that from time to time all of us do things that we ought not to do but when we are gathered here as a House of Assembly to make the laws for the country, then I want to ask hon. members opposite whether their consciences will allow them to say that the State should initiate a gambling system in this country simply for the sake of possible financial advantages or for financial reasons? I hold the view that gambling is immoral.

And the High Court of Parliament?

The hon. member is so bankrupt politically, that he cannot think of anything else but times of the past. But an appeal is being made to-day to this House, to the House of Assembly of the Republic of South Africa, to give a decision for or against gambling. I have expressed myself against it and I am against it and I trust that the State in South Africa will declare itself against gambling. I hope too that the voters outside this House will take note of the different attitudes that have been adopted here in connection with this matter.

This is a private member’s motion.

The hon. member will not get away with that. Why is the time of the House being taken up and why is this House being asked by way of a private member’s motion to request the Government to issue premium savings bonds? This is not being done to encourage patriotism, as I have proved, or to encourage a sense of thrift, but to initiate gambling. The hon. member for Kensington as an educationist knows this only too well. And just as any parent in a family will call a halt and will combat any wrong tendencies that may develop, the State is called upon to apply the brake and oppose what we consider to be wrong.

I have had the opportunity of seeing the effect that dog racing has had upon the people in our country.

And horse racing?

I am coming to that. I want to tell the hon. member that the National Party in the Provincial Council of the Transvaal had the courage of its convictions to abolish dog racing in the Transvaal. I want to give the House the assurance that this action did not have any adverse effect upon the prestige of the National Party.

What about horse racing?

Horse racing is not initiated by the State; it is not a State institution. [Interjection. ] Dog racing was not a State institution either. I personally am opposed to horse racing but this motion does not deal with horse racing. I want to say that we abolished dog racing without losing any of our prestige or votes in the Transvaal, and if hon. members doubt my words, they need only count the number of members on the Government side in the Provincial Council of the Transvaal and the number of members of the Opposition. No, we have tried to show what is behind this motion and where it will eventually lead us. I trust that we will cling to our spiritual values. In any case, we do not need this motion to strengthen ourselves financially because we are strong enough.

I sympathize with the strong feelings expressed by the hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Mr. G. P. van den Berg), who evidently feels deeply about the matter, but I hope to convince him that this is not gambling. I am sure that once he sees the logic of the motion, he will appreciate that it will be a good thing. His objection really lies in the fact that he feels that the whole question of gambling is wrong. I also have sympathy with the hon. member for Piketberg (Mr. Treurnicht), who says that by the sweat of your brow must you live. For years I have sweated my brow and did not need to gamble, and I feel that he and I are also in sympathy with one another, but I hope that when I have finished he will also say that this is a good scheme. On the other hand, I do not altogether agree with the mover of the motion, the hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Moore). There are details of the scheme which I do not like.

Firstly, I want to draw the attention of the hon. the Minister of Finance to the fact that the State is a dishonest borrower. It borrows funds and is dishonest about it, because it promises to repay a certain value at the end of a certain time, and it does not return that value. The hon. member for Parktown (Mr. Emdin) drew attention to this point. I am not a financier, but I understand that there is a permanent 2 per cent loss from inflation in the value of our currency right throughout the world. I do not think the Minister need worry about large institutions which can look after themselves, but this is a scheme primarily directed to the little man with small funds who tries to save some of his money and wants to invest what he has earned from the sweat of his brow. One asks whether the State makes it easy for this man to save for his old age? Well, it does not. It cheats him of 2 per cent every year, and this State has failed to realize that fact or, if it does, it has not done anything about it.

Now there are various schemes by which the State could help itself and treat its poor people honestly. For instance, when it raises money it could tie the loan to the cost of living, so that when the debt is repaid the capital and interest have risen with the cost of living and is adjusted every year. Another scheme it could adopt is to tie the loan to the average wage of the country. As the wages rise, so would the value of the loan rise. Another scheme that has been adopted is that when a corporation like Escom borrows money it ties its loan to the price of electricity. The man who lends his money to Escom does not lose the value of the money while Escom makes the profit. This scheme of the hon. member for Kensington is an effort, if it is modified a little, to try to protect the little man. I believe that if a scheme were introduced where bonds of R2 are issued and the capital and the interest are repayable in ten years at 230 cents, it would be possible without gambling to tempt people to go in for it and to let them profit. The scheme adopted in France is roughly that a sinking fund is created once the loan has been floated. So much is put into the sinking fund every year, but instead of investing this money or spending it the State uses each year’s sinking fund to redeem so many of the bonds. In other words, a man whose name is drawn in the first year, instead of obtaining his 230 cents in ten years’ time will draw it in the first year or in the second year or in the third year. In other words, a chosen few will receive their capital and interest back a little earlier. Obviously there is no question of giving prizes. That can be included, but the prizes are incidental. What is important is that the man receives his money back earlier. His name is drawn by lot and he receives the full capital he would have received in ten years’ time, and he is at liberty if he so wishes to re-invest it. The loan must be continuous and it should always be available and be on sale at banks and post offices. It should be issued in the form of bearer certificates, with squares marked out showing each six months interest as it falls due, and it should be saleable at every bank or post office with the interest due, or if a man wishes to keep his bond he can cut off the coupons and cash them. But the main thing is that over the years a certain number of people will receive back their capital earlier, until finally the loan is wiped out in ten years’ time for everybody. In this way no element of gambling can enter into it. Sir, what is gambling? Gambling is gaming. The hon. member for Wolmaransstad will, I am sure, not regard a game as a gamble.

I do not have the same philosophy of life as you have.

Just look at the chance they took on Hitler!

In games, the man who loses or wins the toss is gambling. When a man kicks a ball, hoping to put it between the goal-posts, can he foresee that God will send a puff of wind to send it astray? We must be sensible about these things. We must bear in mind that life is not certain at any moment, and that every action we take can have consequences which we cannot foresee and cannot prevent. To that extent, it is gambling. Life is a gamble, and so is marriage. Therefore in this sincere suggestion of mine and of the hon. member for Kensington we are actuated by the motive of trying to protect the little man who gets no other chance of saving money. We know quite well that the average wage-earner cannot save.

Why not?

Because the cost of living is high and the Minister of Finance gets his cut out of it.

Then where will he get the money to buy these bonds?

The hon. member for Wolmaransstad told us about the philosophy of the Afrikaner. I agree with him that on the whole they are a God-fearing group, but I wonder what the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs could tell us if he counted up how many lottery tickets belong to that particular group. [Interjections. ] I am not saying it is wrong; all I am saying is I wish I had thought of asking the Minister that.

You must be an atheist.

On a point of order, may that hon. member say that this hon. member is an atheist (Godloёnaar)?

Order! The hon. member must withdraw that word.

I withdraw it.

Sir, fortunately I did not hear all that. But I want to draw the Minister’s attention to the necessity for being honest, and for putting these bonds on the market so that the little man who puts away a few rand a month has a chance of saving his capital and of getting repaid in a currency which has the same value as that which he gave to the Minister. The hon. the Minister knows what inflation means. The only man who is left in the lurch is the little man who invests his money at a fixed rate of interest, and he must make provision for this inflation and protect the little man against it.

Your scheme does not protect him from the depreciation of the currency.

Then it is for the Minister to accept the principle I am putting forward and to devise a better scheme. We on this side will welcome it if he comes forward with a scheme to protect the small investor from inflation. It is his duty to do so. [Interjection. ] I said that I differed somewhat from the hon. member for Kensington. Finally, I want to say to the hon. member for Wolmaransstad that the proverb says “The lot is cast into the lap but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord”.

After listening attentively to hon. members opposite I must say that I have been able to draw only one conclusion and that is that the hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Moore) has failed completely in the point that he has been trying to make. He tried to prove that this motion had very good intentions. The hon. member pointed out that the idea was to request the Government to encourage thrift and promote patriotic investment. This is probably a very good intention and none of us can have any objection to it, but I want to point out that the method he wants to follow to do this will undermine those virtues. That is why we can never support his motion. What does this motion envisage? It has in mind making money available to the State more cheaply. I must say that after reading the debate that took place in the Transvaal Provincial Council on the same matter, I think that they made out a far stronger case. They pointed out what could be done with that money and how the State could make use of it in the meantime and save a great deal in interest thereby, and that this was a patriotic action. They went further and pointed out that money would then be available to enable the State to initiate large charitable works and so forth. I want to say that if the mover of the motion wants to promote this object he will have to use arguments that will be more attractive to people than this intellectual approach. We are dealing here with a motion which in our view has nothing in mind but the taking of a first step in the direction of the eventual establishment of a State lottery; because the whole principle that is embodied in this motion is nothing but a form of gambling. A lottery has certain characteristics which make it easily recognizable as such. The first is that the deciding factor is always luck and that ability and aptitude are pushed into the background. It is pure luck that determines who the fortunate person will be. Furthermore, the reason why a person participates in a lottery is because he hopes that he will be the lucky one who will suddenly win a large sum of money. In other words, there is a very selfish motive. Its effect is that it always causes the money of the masses to flow in the direction of a few individuals without those persons having achieved anything, without their having been productive in some way or other. If we consider this particular suggestion in that light, we can say that it amounts to nothing less than a lottery because the same kind of thing will happen in this case. In this case only the individual is enriched. The money of the masses is obtained by the individual without his having been productive or having any achievement to show for it. If this proposal is given effect to, no matter how innocent it may appear, it will open the way to a large-scale lottery and eventually to a State lottery, because the mass of the people do not see any difference between this form of lottery and any other form of it. When one reads the debates of the Provincial Council of the Transvaal on this question one notices that the people who have studied the matter split hairs and argue amongst themselves. The one says that it is a lottery and the other says that it is not, as we have heard here to-day. How will the mass of the people be able to tell the difference? They will say that the State is promoting it and because of this fact they will participate on a large scale in gambling and lotteries.

Various hon. members opposite have said that they have no objection to lotteries. That is exactly where we differ from one another. We condemn this motion and can never vote for it because it promotes gambling and because we are opposed to any form of gambling. If we are asked why we are so opposed to gambling we say in the first place that no good purpose is served by a lottery. We may start rationalizing and saying that more thrift can be encouraged and so forth, but these are only excuses. These things are said in order to try to find a good excuse for the real purpose that lies behind the matter. But even though it were to serve a good purpose, the ethical rule by which we are governed is that the end never justifies the means. That is why we must condemn it, no matter how good the end may be.

We can point out further that no matter who may be benefited, whether it is the State or individuals, the fact remains that the victims in these cases are always greater in number than those who are benefited. The number of victims is so large that this sort of thing can never be justified. I want to tell the House why I hold this view. As far as we as legislators are concerned our one important purpose in regard to all legislation that is passed by this House must be to try to enable the people to live in such a way that they will be able to achieve the fullest measure of self-realization in any sphere. Our purpose must be to cultivate citizens possessing all those virtues of which we are so proud. The mover of the motion has thrift in mind as well as hard work, honesty, helpfulness and all those virtues that we would like to cultivate amongst our citizens. But the spirit that we want to combat and eliminate is the spirit of wastefulness, extravagance, laziness, dishonesty, selfishness, stinginess and so forth which is not to the advantage of the citizen or of the State. I want to say that once we start the type of thing mentioned in the motion we will not be able to avoid the building up of a gambling nation. I want to state that if we investigate the position in all the gambling countries where the gambling spirit holds sway, we will see that there is a very large negative correlation between the scope of the gambling spirit and the productivity of that nation. It has not yet been proved that the one is the result of the other but there is a strong feeling that this is indeed the case. People hope that they will make a large profit easily and the result is that they lose those other virtues of diligence and so forth. When I am asked whether a lottery or gambling, no matter how innocent it may appear, really has such a destructive effect, then I shall say: Let us ask the people who are qualified to pass judgment in this regard. I think of what our Churches have to say. The D. R. Church of the Cape, which is a very influential Church, adopted two resolutions at its Synod in 1949, resolutions that still stand, and this is what the Synod resolved (translation)—

If we were to adopt a motion such as this we should imagine the effect it would have on the Church. The same Synod resolved further (translation)—

These are strongly worded resolutions adopted by the Church. But let us leave the Church out of the picture and ask what our social workers have to say in this connection—the ones who work every day amongst those people who have become the outcasts of society. What is their experience? When we look at the court reports and we see how families are broken up and how many children are committed, we notice what a tremendous role gambling plays in the breaking-up of those families. I ask what the sociologists have to say about this matter. I want to make one small quotation from the “Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences”. The writer has this to say—

That is why I say that when we let the experts in these various spheres give us their opinions, the evidence of all of them is highly condemnatory of this sort of thing. That is why we reject this motion and say that anything that can lead to gambling or lotteries must eventually result in dishonesty. Adam Smith contended that no lottery existed that could really be justified on the grounds of honesty. In the British football pools it has been ascertained that the chance of winning is one in 5,000,000 but here we are saying that we will give these people the opportunity to buy those bonds. The poor man about whom so much has been said will not be able to afford more than one costing R2. But the rich man will be able to buy many more than this and he will thus have a far better chance of winning something than the poor man. That is why we say that this is not a protection for the small investor but rather gives the large investor more opportunity to make a profit. For those reasons we say that it will be an evil day for us if we accept or adopt a motion of this nature and that is why we feel that we must reject it.

The hon. member who has just sat down adopts the attitude that this whole motion is based on gambling. The hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Moore) and those who have spoken after him have tried to make it perfectly clear that this is not a motion dealing purely with gambling. What is proposed here is not a lottery in the pure sense of the word. This is an investment where the Government gets the public to make capital available to it, and the only element that may be regarded as chance is the fact that the interest is drawn for and paid out in the form of prizes. Well, it has been pointed out that the public are spending their money on other forms of gambling at the moment. You will never be able to stop it. The hon. member referred to the abolition of dog-racing. But what has been the effect of the abolition of dog-racing? It has not diminished the amount of money that comes into the coffers of horseracing. If anything it has increased it considerably. Not only has it increased it, but we have the strange spectacle of the Cape Provincial Council sponsoring a horse-race meeting, as we saw at Milnerton last week, where we saw the Administrator of the Cape presenting a prize. Sir, is that not tacit consent to gambling? And if that is not enough, may I ask the hon. member who has just sat down what his impression is of the S. A. Broadcasting Corporation involving itself in gambling. After all, it does gamble. Do you know what the S. A. Broadcasting Corporation does? It draws lots in order to give prizes to the listeners. Is that not gambling? What about the Department of Justice? Has the Department of Justice not made itself an accomplice to gambling? And how has it done it? The Department of Justice gave its consent to the Newspaper Press Union to allow the Press of this country to publish names of the winners of lotteries in countries outside our borders. Are the public not entitled then to conclude that there is nothing terrible about this question of gambling? If the Government-sponsored Broadcasting Corporation is giving out prizes by the drawing of lots, if the Department of Justice gives its consent to the publication of the names of winners of prizes in lotteries, what is wrong then with a motion such as this? And what about the Nationalist Party? Do they not draw lots for prizes at their Stryddag bazaars?

That is a lie.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw that.

I withdraw it.

I think it will be generally conceded, even by those members who have spoken against this motion, that public opinion to-day is strongly in favour of a scheme such as has been put forward here by the hon. member for Kensington. If hon. members who have spoken against this motion feel that they cannot support it on moral grounds, I would say to them that here they had a wonderful opportunity to save face by accepting a compromise measure such as has been suggested by the hon. member for Kensington. They would then be giving the public something that they really want. If you want to put it to the test, look what was happened throughout the country in places like Bredasdorp, Bloemfontein, Randfontein, Pretoria and other places which incidentally are Nationalist strongholds. The people there have formed voluntary committees and they are asking that the Government should allow them to indulge in what is a natural inclination and that is to take a chance. After all, that is man’s natural inclination; he wants to take a chance. Why not give it to him in this form which is also a fine face-saving measure for the Government? Moreover, it is a scheme which will bring money into the coffers of the country and which can do no harm whatsoever. Sir, I think we have reached the stage where we must not always be telling members of the public what they ought to do. We must not become so sanctimonious as to believe that we are the only people who know what is right. Let the public have their point of view. We must stop telling them that they cannot swim on Sundays; we must stop telling them that they cannot read this, that or the other. Let us have enough faith in our public to allow them to do what they feel is right. Let us rather concentrate on finding out what is the cause of the high divorce rate in this country—divorce by consent. Let us concentrate more on the circumstances which give rise to offences under the Immorality Act and to the number of cases which come before the courts from time to time. I think if we did that, then the public would appreciate our efforts much more. Let the public have their say. And, will you tell me, Sir, what is going to happen to-night in Beaufort West?

Will you tell me what is happening in Israel?

I want to indicate that by drawing lots at Beaufort West to-night, they will decide who is the winner. If that is good enough at Beaufort West, surely that principle is good enough to introduce throughout the country.

Sir, a very interesting trend about these debenture savings bonds in England is the fact that there they make a feature on their proposal form of the fact that application can be made for bonds in the names of children under 18 years of age, and it is a very interesting fact that a large amount of the money invested in Britain to-day in the hands of the Treasury—the British Treasury has R800,000,000 available—is invested by the British public in the names of their children. In other words, that is an indication that the people of Britain want to make these investments for their children. Greater space is devoted in the application form to applications in the name of a child than to applications in the name of the parents.

The hon. member who spoke last, says that you get no interest on money invested in such debenture savings bonds. He did not decry the fact that your capital is absolutely safe and there is no danger whatsoever of your losing your capital. The interesting thing that we must bear in mind is that under this scheme your money is guaranteed by the Treasury.

But it depreciates.

The hon. member says that you get no interest on your money. Well, I want to remind him of the fact that he is getting no interest on his bank balance. He gets no interest on the money in his current account. Does he regard that as something unholy and bad? All the hon. member’s colleagues on that side are in the same position; their money is secure in the bank but they are getting no interest on the money in their current account. That is all you are doing under this premium savings bond scheme. Sir, I appreciated the point of view of those members who have spoken against this motion. They may have moral objections to it. We are all entitled to our own opinion in these matters, but I would like hon. members opposite to give the people of this country an opportunity to express their views by way of a referendum.

Since my time has nearly expired I will now conclude with the earnest request to the hon. the Minister to give this matter his serious consideration and to allow the public of South Africa to express their opinion. He can save face by accepting this compromise scheme, which is not a lottery but a method of encouraging savings and giving the small man of this country an opportunity to save for the future.

There may be justification for the institution of a system of premium savings bonds by the Government, but if any such justification exists I have never heard of it, and certainly not in the arguments advanced here to-day. I leave the moral aspect of it aside for the moment. The hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Moore) has tried to anticipate objections to the scheme, but what he has done is to indicate what justification exists for the State to take such action. Apart from those objections, the onus rests on him to convince us that the State should institute such a system. The hon. member who has just resumed his seat said: Give the people what they want. If we give the people what they want, I do not know whether that will always be wise. There was a time when it was very popular in a welfare state to give the public as much as possible, but later it was discovered that the welfare state to a large extent was only the first step towards a farewell state. All those splendid characteristics of independence and initiative are undermined if one simply always gives the public what it wants.

Mr. Speaker, as far as I know this is the first time that a motion has been introduced here in which the Government has been asked to institute a system of premium savings bonds. I want to say that in essence and in principle this system of premium savings bonds in no way differs from a State lottery. Let me just mention a few points. In both cases the scheme is calculated to provide the State with funds, in the form of loans which the State can then use for its own purposes, or funds to be used for certain social purposes. In both cases the tickets are paid for out of people’s incomes. It makes no difference whether a person buys a ticket out of the salary he draws at the end of the month, or whether he buys it out of his income in the form of dividends, or his income from the sale of products. It comes out of his income, and it makes no difference whether he buys that ticket with the interest on money he has invested but not received. In every case that money comes out of his income. The only difference is that in the last-mentioned case it is income which has been stopped before it reaches him. But if I go to my employer and I sign a stop order and ask him to deduct a certain amount every month and to buy tickets for me with that money, surely that is precisely the same as what is envisaged in this scheme. In the third place, in both cases it satisfies the urge to gamble which unfortunately most of us have—the urge to get rich as quickly as possible without working for the money. I therefore say that all the objections which can be raised to a system of State lotteries can also be raised against this system. Premium savings bonds are only another form of State lottery. In essence and in principle it is the same. In common parlance, one can say that a State lottery is just as far removed from a system of premium savings bonds as Worcester is from Wor-cester, where the only difference is in the pronunciation.

It is the opinion of the Government that a State lottery is not in the interests of South Africa.

What is the justification advanced for it? There is no financial justification for the institution of such a system. The Government is not yet in such a predicament that it has to obtain its loan funds in this way. If it needs loan funds for the development of the country it can obtain them in the ordinary way. The argument was advanced here that this scheme offers the small man an opportunity to save. It is estimated that in the United Kingdom, if one takes all the money invested in Government loans which are ordinarily subscribed to by individuals—not by large companies—these premium savings bonds will constitute only about 10 per cent of the total. The amount invested in national savings certificates is £2,140,000,000, whereas the amount invested in premium savings bonds is only £395,000,000. Then there are still Defence bonds, the tax reserve certificates and national savings stamps. Hon. members will therefore see that this is not the only way in which the small man can invest his money even in England. There is therefore no financial justification for this motion on this ground.

In the second place, such a scheme is also unnecessary as a channel for personal savings. We have heard much here about the encouragement of thrift, and hon. members have said that it will encourage particularly the small man to save. They pointed out that our currency depreciates at the rate of approximately 2 per cent per annum; that is a world phenomenon, and this is now the reply to it. But is that so? If a person invests, say, R200 in premium savings bonds, what is his position then? When he withdraws that capital, whether it be in a year’s time or in two years—or in ten years’ time, that capital has also depreciated, just as it would have depreciated had he invested it at a fixed rate of interest in any other form. His capital is then less also, because in two years’ time the purchasing power of that money has decreased, and it makes no difference whether he invested it in this form or whether he invested it in a savings bank or a building society or elsewhere. Not only does the purchasing power of his money depreciate, but in addition he gets no interest on his money. He may be one of the unfortunate people, and the unfortunates are in the majority by far. In the U. K. the prizes in 1962-3 amounted to more than £15,000,000, and that £15,000,000 did not find its way into the pockets of the people from whom it came. That money which was invested by millions of people found its way into the pockets of a small minority. The great majority of the people who risked their money in it got nothing. It is therefore not a means of encouraging thrift. We in South Africa are fortunate in the sense that we have many channels in which the small man, too, may invest his savings. We have national savings certificates; we have the Post Office savings bank; we have the building societies and we have the ordinary savings banks. There are many ways in which even the small man may invest his money safely.

Proof of the popularity of our national savings certificates lies in the fact that the amount invested in national savings certificates increases tremendously year after year. There the small man is building up something for his children. He gets no interest on it, but at the end of five years he gets his capital back with the highest interest possible, viz. more than 5 per cent compound interest, tax free. We therefore have no lack of means. But is this now the way to encourage people to save, by dangling before their noses the root prospect of winning a prize? Is that real thrift? Thrift which has to be stimulated in that way is not thrift at all. The person who buys these premium savings bonds does not do so to save money; he does so because he hopes to win a prize. It does not encourage thrift.

But in the third place there is also no financial justification for the scheme, because it is not necessary to stop the outflow of capital to foreign countries. There was a time when it was a very strong argument to say that there was no other way of stopping the outflow of capital. On a former occasion when the matter was discussed here, that was one of the most important arguments advanced, that we could not stop this outflow, and that the only way of keeping that money here was to institute a State lottery in South Africa. But even if the money had been able to flow out freely, a State lottery could not have stopped it. It would probably have encouraged it all the more. People would have said to themselves: “We have only invested R2 in it; we still have more than enough money to send to Rhodesia or to Malta. ” But we see what happens now. Without a State lottery measures were applied which quite effectively control the outflow of money. At least, it certainly restricts it. Figures were mentioned here of the amounts which have already been stopped from flowing out by this measure, and which would otherwise have left the country. But have hon. members ever thought how ridiculous we would look if we were now to institute a State lottery and at the same time place an embargo on sending money out of the country to buy lottery tickets in other countries? Surely that would be a ridiculous situation. If we were to establish a State lottery here in any of its forms, whether it be a system of premium savings bonds or any other system, it would mean that we would no longer have any moral right to tell people that they could not send their money out of the country to buy lottery tickets abroad. If we introduced the system asked for here, I do not see how we would be able to intercept the money which is today being stopped from flowing out of the country.

Not only is there no financial justification for the institution of such a scheme, but there are also many sociological objections to it. I do not want to expatiate on that. The hon. member for Kimberley (South) (Dr. W. L. D. M. Venter) particularly pointed out, as a sociologist, how it undermines character, how it discourages the will to work, and how it cultivates a spirit of wanting to make money without any exertion at all. It is unfortunately a human weakness to want to gamble, to get something for nothing wherever possible, but that is no reason why we should increase the opportunities for gambling. I think there are already more than sufficient opportunities for gambling, as hon. members have already said. Gambling is undoubtedly the source of many social evils. I do not want to expand on that; that is self-evident. That is the experience of sociologists all over the world. We regard the matter in the same light, because in South Africa we have legislation against gambling, but if we were now to allow a State lottery, how can we make other forms of gambling illegal? That would surely stultify our whole position.

Certain hon. members in passing referred to horse racing. It is quite true that that is a form of gambling. We have many other forms of gambling here to-day, but fortunately that has never yet been regarded as being sufficient reason for allowing further forms of gambling. In other words, two blacks do not make a white. When the Transvaal Provincial Council legislated against dog racing, it did not allow itself to be frightened by the argument: Logically you are now being ridiculous because you allow horse racing, and why not dog racing? They adopted the standpoint that if one cannot eliminate all forms of gambling, there is still no justification for encouraging further forms of gambling. We adopted the same attitude in this House not long ago in regard to sports pools. We know what dimensions that evil has already assumed in other countries. We noticed that it gained a footing here, and this House took action against it. That is just another form of gambling, with a little more use of intelligence. We smothered it in embryo, and we did not allow ourselves to be influenced by the argument: You allow horse racing, and why will you not allow football pools? As I say, the fact that there are possibly other forms of gambling in South Africa and in other countries is still no justification for the institution of new forms of it, as is proposed here.

Then I just want to say that there are also objections on moral grounds. I have said that there is no financial justification for it; I have said that there are many sociological objections, and now I say that there are also moral objections.

Mr. Speaker, whether you agree or not, the institution of a State lottery in South Africa, as our population is constituted at present, will only be a new source of dissension. Why should we do it just at a stage when there are many things which encourage us to promote unity and to avoid points of difference? We cannot get away from the fact that many among the conservative section of our population, of which I am one, would be deeply aggrieved if the State were to place its stamp of approval on the sort of thing proposed here.

Their own congress voted against it.

Yes, that shows how wise they were. They bore our national character in mind. I was not aware of it, but I am glad to hear that the congress of the United Party is opposed to it. Now I just want to say what the Government’s standpoint is. Seeing that there is no financial justification for it, and that it is liable to have harmful social consequences, and that it will deeply hurt many religious persons, the Government feels that it is not in the interests of South Africa to institute a State lottery in any shape or form. If the Government thought otherwise, it would have stultified itself. If it institutes a State lottery …

This is not a State lottery.

It is the same as a State lottery. The one is just as far removed from the other was Worcester is from Wor-cester. Both have the same object; both satisfy the same instinct; both just constitute a form of gambling in the hope of getting something for nothing. In essence, the two are precisely the same. I should perhaps have said right in the beginning that where I use the term “State lottery”, it has reference to the premium savings bonds. I began by saying that there is no difference between them. It is just a little easier to say “State lottery” than to say “premium savings bonds”. It remains the same—“a rose by any other name”. I say we would be stultifying ourselves by instituting a State lottery or a system of premium savings bonds on behalf of the State, when at the same time we have legislation prohibiting sports pools and dog-races and participation in foreign lotteries and other forms of gambling.

One of the far-fetched arguments was: What is the difference between buying a ticket in a lottery or buying shares on the stock exchange? I cannot give a better answer than the one given by one of my predecessors. The same arguments were used at that time. Somebody said that even marriage was a gamble. I just want to read what Mr. Hofmeyr said in 1936—

That was his reply. In the case of the other forms of gambling, one at least needs a little intelligence. It is not a case of a man buying shares simply by blindly putting the point of his pencil on a list of shares and then seeing where it rests. He uses his intelligence. That is what distinguishes it from this form. Here no intelligence is required. All the intelligence comes from “Ernie”. “Ernie” is the man who works it all out. There is nothing of one’s own intelligence in it; one hands one’s intelligence over to “Ernie”.

I think it will be an evil day for South Africa if a Government should ever go so far as to put the stamp of approval of the State on an institution of this nature. Previous Governments of all parties have thought along the lines of this Government. It is not necessary for me to read long extracts, but I just want to read two. In 1930, at a time when there was perhaps more justification on financial grounds for it than there is to-day, when there was a measure of depression, there was also a similar motion, and this is what Mr. Havenga said then—

That is what Minister Havenga said in 1930, and it is still true to-day. There are certain things which do not change with the times. There are certain spiritual values and a sense of values which, even in the times in which we live, cannot completely be blunted. Although there is an agitation, and there will perhaps always be an agitation for this sort of thing—it was already there in 1930 and perhaps even before that, and it will probably still be there in 1990—I am glad to see that the responsible people of the country feel that this is not a demand on the part of a section of the people which should be acceded to, because it is just not in the interests of one’s country, South Africa. To me that is the only test.

Then I just want to read what Minister Hofmeyr said in 1936—

It is perhaps a good thing that at this stage the opportunity is again being offered to Parliament and to the Government to express its complete agreement with the views of former Ministers of Finance and their Governments, in this House. We have had this discussion now. I do not think this debate will be the end of the agitation. That is perhaps expecting too much, but I hope that where we have respect for those people who have no moral objections to it, they will show as much respect for those people who do have moral and other objections to an institution of this nature. Therefore, as far as the Government is concerned, we find ourselves quite unable to agree with what is proposed here.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to thank hon. members for the interest they have taken in this debate. During the few minutes at my disposal I should like to make a few remarks in conclusion. I should like to deal with the hon. Minister first. The hon. the Minister has kept on repeating himself for about 25 minutes or half an hour and the whole of his speech is fallacious; it is built on a fallacy. This is not a State lottery. All the quotations he has given us of what was said in the past, how his predecessors had condemned a State lottery, are not applicable to this debate. He has failed completely to deal with the investment aspect.

I want to say this: that I have never said that this investment would be a counter to the depreciation of our money. But I do say now at the conclusion of the debate that any form of saving is a counter to inflation.

[Debate having continued for 2½ hours, the motion lapsed in terms of Standing Order No. 30 (4).]

I move—

1. (1) having a survey made of our available fresh water resources, both surface and subterranean;
2. (2) having a scientific investigation instituted into possible methods of supplementing such water supplies;
3. (3) creating machinery for protecting these water resources against (a) evaporation and (b) pollution; and
4. (4) making available the necessary facilities for giving information and guidance to local bodies in this connection.

I want to say immediately that I am moving this motion to illustrate the interest which this side of the House takes in the difficult task of the hon. the Minister of Water Affairs. If I can succeed in holding the interest of the whole House and that of the public outside then I feel that I shall have succeeded in my purpose to a large extent.

If you look at the motion, Mr. Speaker, you will see that it consists of three parts. The first deals with the amount of water that we have; the second with the way in which we can supplement those water supplies scientifically and the third how we can protect and conserve those supplies. The whole purpose of this motion is this: Whether we can increase what we have and, if not, how we can adequately protect what we have. Our country experiences droughts from time to time. It is a country with a widely fluctuating and low rainfall. Up to the present moment the damage that these periodic droughts cause has been confined mainly to agriculture, to our crops and our livestock. I do not want to waste the time of the House by discussing the great damage that has been caused in this country by drought in the past. We are all aware of that fact. I just want to add that that damage is very great. Although efforts have been made in the past to do so I do not think it is possible to ascertain the amount of that damage. As the country develops and as our population increases, we must realize that in the future that damage is not only going to be restricted to small platteland towns and farms. That damage is already starting to assume larger proportions. As the country develops that damage will increase and spread to our larger towns and our cities. I do not think I can put it any better than it was described by the present Minister of Lands a few years ago when he said—

I think that this is the true position, Mr. Speaker. An expert once said: No matter what your resources may be, no matter what possibilities a country may have, you are faced with this great problem that all those possibilities are bound up with your water supplies, that is, both surface and subterranean water. Future development depends upon the availability of water. Because we are developing rapidly to-day more than ever before we must realize that we have now reached the stage where that damage which in the past was suffered by farmers generally, will be felt further afield.

At a conference held from 1 to 25 October in Pretoria under the auspices of the C. S. I. R., the following remarks were made (translation)—

At this conference an expert stated that it had been estimated that over the next 60 years our population would increase to about 70,000,000. He regarded that as the maximum which this country with its present available water supplies could possibly carry. They estimated that in the course of the next 30 years Johannesburg and Pretoria would have a shortage of about 200,000,000 gallons of water per day. If that is the position, then the question arises whether it is right that the State, knowing that that will be the position in Johannesburg and Pretoria in 30 years’ time, should permit the development that is taking place in that area to continue or whether it should not gradually start applying the brake. The position is now becoming so serious that we shall have to find some solution or other. Even though we may use water over and over again, expert opinion is that we are going to reach that position. It may be said that that is 30 years hence and that we still have plenty of time. But this matter requires research, and research requires time. With the industrial development that is under way at present this problem is steadily increasing. The damage that has been limited hitherto to the platteland will be felt by our cities to an ever-increasing extent. I would like to mention what is stated in this regard in the Manufacturer. They say that you need about 240,000 gallons of water to print one ton of news reports; that you need 65,000 gallons of water to produce one ton of steel and 10 gallons of water to produce one gallon of fuel. If we continue with our industrial development we must realize what the eventual position will be. Perhaps we should make use of the Tugela whose water, so it is said, could supply six Johannesburgs and six Pretorias, or perhaps we could divert the water of the Tugela to Johannesburg. I just want to say that we must not think that we will only reach this stage in ten or 20 years’ time. We have reached it already.

The following telegram which came from Rustenburg was recently sent to the hon. the Minister (translation)—

I quote this merely as a practical example of the position that is developing. I want to add that about 70 per cent—according to a statement made on one occasion by the previous Minister of Water Affairs, the present Minister of Lands—of the smaller towns in the country are dependent upon subterranean water. More than half of our small stock and about half of our large stock are dependent upon subterranean water. As this development goes ahead we must realize that more and more we will have to tap not only the running water—which is limited in South Africa—but the subterranean water as well. I think that the hon. the Minister will probably be able to tell us which of our rivers have a fairly constant flow of water. I do not know for how many months they flow. It is clear that the continual droughts experienced by our country also results in a very poor flow in most of our rivers. Secondly, these continual droughts means that less and less water finds its way to our subterranean dams or pans. This water has apparently collected over a long period of time but with our steadily increasing needs those water resources will become smaller and smaller and will eventually dry up altogether.

I am aware of what the hon. the Minister is already doing. All I am asking is that he should try on a larger scale to use various methods to strengthen those subterranean water resources. Many people think that a great deal of water runs into the sea but according to scientists it appears that we have a very weak flow of water and that only about 8 per cent of our water finds its way into our rivers.

If that is the position of our water supplies—that it is critical as far as our future development is concerned, that tremendous damage has already been caused and that this damage, so it is anticipated, will increase in the future—then we have to ask ourselves this question: How can we increase the water resources of South Africa scientifically? People have come forward in the past with suggestions in this regard. We had the Schwartz scheme which was rejected. It was investigated to some extent but it was rejected. During a previous discussion on subterranean water reference was made to the plan of Professor Taljaard, a professor in geology at the University of Stellenbosch, to divert the warm water current to the West Coast. I do not want to discuss this suggestion, Mr. Speaker, because I do not think that either the hon. the Minister or I can say that Professor Taljaard is wrong. This is a scientific matter. What I think we must do is to encourage people to discover scientific methods of supplementing our water supplies and to undertake research to discover how this problem should be approached. We are living in a scientific age. Things which ten years ago were considered to be absolutely impossible are regarded as possible to-day. If I had told somebody in the past that there was the possibility that he could some day fly to the moon he would have thought that I was mad. But if we tell someone nowadays that he cannot fly to the moon he will think we are mad. Have we not reached the stage where we have to encourage and pay people to do scientific research? I do not think that we have done this as yet; we have simply rejected all the plans which individuals have put forward in the past; we have simply said that they cannot possibly be implemented. I want to tell the House that America with its great water resources is already working on a scheme for supplementing its waters over a ten-year period. There is a certain Dr. Nace who has suggested a plan of this kind and he has in fact been commissioned to draw up such a plan. One of the plans that he suggests is that the mass of ice at the South Pole should be melted. He considers that if this can be done gradually, it will be possible to ensure that all the rivers in the world have a steady flow of water for about 830 years. I do not want to elaborate on this matter but this is a plan that has been suggested in regard to this problem—the idea of getting people to do research. Whether they succeed or not is another matter but we will then at least have taken steps to have the necessary research done in the event of a development of this nature in the future. I think that in this regard we in South Africa have never encouraged people to do research. I think that if ever it was necessary to give encouragement in this connection it is now. We must consider this matter in a serious light and give the necessary encouragement for research and planning and investigation into the question as to whether we can supplement our water supplies scientifically and improve our climatic conditions in the future. But if there is such a likelihood or possibility, then there are a few problems which my motion mentions specifically. The first is the tremendous amount of evaporation of water that takes place. Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Minister in his policy motion in the Other Place last year said that we were losing about 6 feet of water per annum through evaporation only. On a previous occasion the hon. the Minister of Lands put it on a broader basis; he said that the degree of evaporation varied as a result of climatic conditions between 5 and 9 feet per annum. If only we can succeed in preventing some of that evaporation we will have achieved a great deal. Here again it is a question of research. We realize that this is a great problem; we realize that we are living in a warm climate, a dry climate; we realize that we have long periods when no rain falls, long periods of drought. We have the position in the Transvaal at the moment—it is the rainy season there now—that more than two months have gone by during which time hardly any rain has fallen at all. Because of this fact everything is very dry and it is extremely hot. One fully realizes that this is a very great problem, but here too it is necessary for us to make some sort of plan. I know that last year the hon. the Minister emphasized the fact that this was a tremendous problem. If we can succeed in salvaging a portion of that water that is evaporating at present we will be able to add a large amount of water to our existing supplies. But there is another matter that has recently caused us a great deal of concern. In his policy motion last year in the Other Place the hon. the Minister also referred to water pollution. I know that he has the power to prevent pollution under the new Act of 1956. Certain exemptions are given and I feel that this fact gives cause for concern. It is clear that the time has come when we have to use and re-use every drop of our water. Once the water has passed through the machinery it is usually polluted and that water must in the first place be kept away from our public streams. I know that exemptions are granted and I am really worried about the situation. I do not know to what extent these exemptions are granted, but if a certain number of exemptions are continually being granted, large quantities of our water may be completely polluted. I do not know what research has already been done in this connection. I know that the C. S. I. R. are doing research in this regard but to my mind as a layman it does not seem possible that this water can be used by factories and municipalities and other bodies and then used over and over again after it has been cooled, even perhaps without having undergone a purification process. But I do not have the necessary knowledge to be able to express an opinion in this regard. All that I want to emphasize is that this polluted water must be kept away from our public streams as far as possible. I think that we run a risk as far as the future is concerned if we allow this water to flow into our public streams, even in small quantities.

I realize that my motion covers a matter which presents a very great problem at the moment. A tremendous task rests on the shoulders of the hon. the Minister and his Department. A great responsibility also rests upon the municipalities and city councils but I think that it is necessary for the hon. the Minister to get people and bodies to help him to advise city councils and municipalities and encourage them to combat water pollution in all its ramifications. This is only one aspect of a very complex problem. I have tried to discuss these matters to the best of my ability. It is a pity that this motion is not in more capable hands. I urge that for the sake of the future of South Africa, for the sake of her whole population, for the sake of her future development, this great task be given priority and that it receive the earnest attention of everybody concerned. Otherwise we will find ourselves in a position where we will be bogged down and will not be able to make any further progress.

I have read the motion of the hon. member who has just sat down and I have listened with great interest to his speech, and I want to say that so far as I am concerned, I think there is not much that the hon. member has said with which we on this side of the House can quarrel. I think, however, that in some respects the hon. member has missed the point. His resolution asks for an inquiry, particularly in regard to our available fresh water resources, surface and subterranean, and an investigation into possible methods of supplementing such water supplies, and so on. We cannot quarrel with that in so far as the substance is concerned. The point I want to make is this: I do not know whether the hon. Minister will thank the hon. member for the form of his resolution, because the hon. member asks for an inquiry into these matters. That is the point, as far as we on this side of the House are concerned. Why inquire into these matters? The hon. member referred to the Act of 1956. I want to say that I was a member of the Select Committee which sat for about three years before that Act was put on the Statute Book; we were all proud to be members of that Select Committee. If the powers given to the Minister there are inadequate, then the Minister has only got to come to Parliament and in my opinion we will give him further powers. The powers are here. The hon. member’s resolution is only wrong in my opinion not because of its substance but because of the form. He asks for an inquiry into these matters. What are the Minister’s powers today under the Act? Let me quote under Chapter I, Section 2—

1. (a) to acquire, construct, extend, alter, maintain, repair, control and dispose of water works or such other works as he may consider necessary in the exercise of his powers or the performance of his functions under this Act;
2. (b) to sink boreholes and wells, obtain supplies of water from underground sources, conserve water so obtained and supply or deliver it …

And then I want to come to paragraph (e)—

And so on. The Minister has got the power. It is no good asking for an inquiry into matters when the Minister has got all these powers. I am going to move the following amendment—

That is the amendment, and now I come to the first point. We condemn the Government. I do not know what the difficulties of the hon. Minister are. If these things that are asked for by the hon. member who has moved this resolution and the matters which we have in mind and which the framers of that Act have in mind are to be adequately carried out, then the first thing was to give the Minister adequate staff. I do not know what his troubles are in that regard. If the Minister has not got an adequate staff, a scientific staff as well as a professional staff, he cannot adequately carry out the functions under the powers given him in this Act. I do not know how far he is haltered, limited, how far he would like to go and is unable to go because he has not got behind him the backing of the Government in his desire to place his Department in the position which it should occupy. And there I agree with the hon. member who has moved this motion: “The position that it should occupy. ”

Mr. Speaker, I recently in dealing with this question of water conservation and so forth came across a book which I am afraid hon. members cannot yet get in our Library, but it is on order. It is “The Meaning of Wilderness to Science”, by David Brower. It was published in New York. I want to quote from it a little this afternoon, and I want to simply say this in explanation that it is really a grouping of addresses given by leading scientists in the United States at a symposium held under the aegis of what is called there the Sierra Club, where the preservation of natural resources is the main principle upon which that club is formed. The particular authority that issued a paper that I want to quote from is Dr. L. B. Leopold, who is the chief of the Water Resources Division of the United States Biological Survey. One of the points that he makes, and I think it is a matter that we will all agree with, is that for the purpose of water conservation in its widest form and from the angle of the best that we can get from it, the Minister concerned, must have scientists of all different kinds and professions and callings. It is not merely a matter of a scientist who is dealing with hydrographic matters. You require botanists, ecologists, zoologists, so that you have a team which can carry out this work. Sir, when I say that we agree with the hon. member as to the place in which he puts this question of water supply, may I say this that here on page 39 of this work the statement is made—

That is clear and succinct human life would disappear. As the hon. member has said we are limited in our supplies of water in this country. We want all that we have got, and we want to know what the position is so far as our water supplies are concerned. Mr. Speaker, I do not only want to be destructive this afternoon, I want to be constructive also, and I want to say to the hon. Minister that in dealing with a matter of this kind, notwithstanding the importance attached to it by the hon. member who has moved the motion, how far is there a public appreciation of what we are dealing with? I ask hon. members to look around and to look at the Press. Sir, we are here because of water. Without water we perish, the lot of us. We are spending millions and hundreds of millions of Rand to provide for the specific physical defence of South Africa against certain enemies. What are we doing in the way of expenditure to provide for the necessary defence of our country against internal effusion, which is just as vital to our country and our civilization? You are just as dead if you die from thirst as if you die from a shot by a bullet. Our country is more dead if you are killed from thirst than when you are killed by a bullet. You can be killed by a bullet and your country can survive, but if your country is dead, what is left?

I want to make this appeal to the hon. Minister—I said I want to be constructive, although I am criticizing the Government and am criticizing them bitterly for their lack of attention to this fundamental problem: I think the hon. Minister has got to make this particular question newsworthy. He must get the Press on his side. Make it interesting. It is interesting. There are facets of this matter that should be presented to the public so that they will find the greatest interest and enjoyment in it. Let me mention an item—I am not going to quote any more than I can help from this book, but let me give you an example of something which I believe is newsworthy, and where I believe, if the hon. Minister has got the right scientists, an article could appear in the Press which would be read with avidity by the ordinary reader, who is not going to read an ordinary article about water conservation and soil conservation. He says: “I know all about that, but if you open a tap you still get plenty of water”, and as far as soil conservation is concerned, one can go to the market and buy vegetables. “What the hell do I want more than that?” He is satisfied the sun will shine to-morrow and that is all that he is concerned with. But let me give this item. In a soil survey that they were making in the Belgian Congo two-and-a-half years ago, they came on a large area where in the soil there was no bacillus of tetanus—the only place, I think, in the whole world. Here is this widespread germ, to call it like that, all over the world in the soil, tetanus, one of the most shocking things that we have got, and throughout the world the bacillus of tetanus is found in the soil. Goodness knows how long it can stay there dormant, but probably for centuries, and here you have a great area where it does not exist? Why? Here is a wonderful story. If they can solve the problem of the absence of the tetanus bacillus in that area, they will have found the answer to what we normally call lock-jaw. Hon. members will understand what I mean.

There are numbers of other facets. This is not as dry as dust. It is a subject as liquid and as fluid as water, and it can be presented in an interesting form if the hon. Minister will get the Press on his side. It can be presented by small pieces of what is really propaganda, propaganda for the preservation of our water supplies. It can be done. It only needs the people who have the know-how and who know how to do these things. Make it interesting, make it newsworthy, and the public will read it with avidity. In that regard there are people who can help the Minister. I realize, as I have said, that without staff he is knee-haltered. But all the provinces to-day have some kind of wild life preservation, game preservation organization, all the provinces. I know that in my own province the C. S. I. R. to-day are continually asking the Natal Parks Board to help them with regard to scientific investigations of various kinds which they are carrying out, including certain data in regard to water, evaporation tables, flow, etc. We are only too willing to help and I am sure every one of the provinces would be willing to help, as also some of the bigger municipalities; anybody who to-day can assist in this particular matter I am sure would be willing to assist if only the Minister would make use of those voluntary organizations which will be at his command if he will only appeal for the assistance of these various agencies. What we want is: Spread. We want to know what is happening over the whole of the country. We want to know for as long a period as possible where there are long-standing records which are of far greater value to us than records that have been held over two years. I have here, again from Dr. Leopold, a section which I found most interesting—

Sir, this scientist, Dr. Leopold, has stated that in his opinion, although the United States, he feels, is backward itself, that the only way to deal with these matters is to establish what he calls reference points or bench marks, dealing particularly with the flow of our natural waters. There he has this to say about it (and how applicable it is to our country!)—

Then he goes on to answer that point himself on page 38—

Here is the basic question that these scientists are all dealing with: How far are we as men through our influence on our environment ourselves interfering with even rainfall, let alone the ability of the soil to bring back to us the water which falls in the form of rain from the heavens and so forth. I have come across a particularly topical point which Dr. Leopold makes here on page 39—

I think he is right. This was written about two years ago. Here is man likely to be changing the hydrologic conditions of the moon before we put our own country, let alone our own planet, in a proper state. Sir, we have heard so much from time to time about the necessity to store our water, to save it in this fashion and that fashion. Dr. Leopold drives a cart and horses right through such a large number of popular theories, right through them. There was one I read two or three times and then had a look at the discussion that took place thereafter, before I could really believe that what he had said was as set out here in its ordinary meaning. He said this—

The evidence for this view, interestingly enough, is mostly inferential. The ability of a good vegetative cover to main soil tilth, and thus infiltration capacity, is very well known. But infiltration into the soil mantle is not synonymous with infiltration into an aquifer. At each level, soil capacity for moisture, that is field capacity, must be satisfied before water can move to greater depth. Nearly all vegetation draws its moisture from this source. Since, in the hydrologic cycle, an average of three-fourths of precipitated water is returned to the atmosphere by transpiration and evaporation, it can be seen that the take of the first claimant, evapo-transpiration, is large. Thus it should not be assumed a priori that there will be in any individual case a net gain of water to surface streams, or to aquifer storage, by building surface-storage reservoirs.

The whole way through this book you find some of our most cherished ideas knocked on the head. We see his plea for what he calls bench marks. In America they are putting these bench marks mostly in the mountains, because that is where man has interfered least with his environment. Let the Minister establish bench marks under the control of his Department. It is their job. Let them control the other scientists. We must not feel that a botanist or a geologist is out of place if he falls under the Secretary for Water Affairs. His job is to use his specialized knowledge so that the aggregate value of that knowledge can be brought to the attention of the Minister of Water Affairs. We must not feel that the Minister must have under his control only water engineers. We must realize that so many of these problems in our country are so different from those in other countries, although in America we find that, in parts of the country, they are dealing with problems which are almost identical with ours. But there is still variation. We think at present of the huge works that are being carried out, where every resource of the Minister’s Department is being strained to get on with the work. But that is only handling the water we have at present. The other work remains to be done. What will come afterwards? What are we taking? Are we taking something which will be replenished, or are we draining our resources, and will we leave the country in a worse position? We see the progression of the desert. We still do not know for certain what is happening. One of the most highly populated countries of the world is India, and reference is made in this book to the progression of the desert there. I saw it myself when I was there a few years ago. The desert is creeping towards New Delhi at the rate of seven miles per annum and nobody knows why. Until they get down to a proper scientific investigation they will not know, nor will we in this country. It is not only a question of the vegetative cover of the soil. There are many other factors involved in it. I repeat that this is an essential job, upon which our country and its growing population depend. Our population will ultimately depend on our water supply. The water supply can limit our population. There are all sorts of experiments being made at present in regard to desalting water, it is true. Only last night over the radio I heard of the U. S. A. having a joint undertaking with Israel, and they will put some of the finest brains in the world on to the job. It is only a question of time before they find an answer, and then there will be open to us a completely new reservoir, literally, of water. But that water will have to be taken somewhere else to be used. It is in the sea, but we will have to bring it inland if we want to use it. The Government itself should see to it that the Minister and his Department are adequately staffed with scientists of all different kinds, so that specific research can be done into these problems, so that the sum total of that knowledge can be used to save our water supplies, whether it is on the surface or underneath it. We want our water supplies safeguarded, and for that reason I move my amendment.

Mr. Speaker, it is significant that we are discussing water to-day, whilst large areas of country, like the Northern Transvaal, are suffering from a scarcity of water. It appears we seldom discuss water here in the House without there being a shortage of water in some part of the country. That is simply our fate, and I suppose that will in future also be the position, and therefore it is always a good thing to discuss this important asset, water, without which we would in future be unable to have any life here at all. Unless we conserve it we shall not be able to plan the country properly either.

I think it is a good thing that the hon. member for Christiana (Mr. Wentzel) moved this motion, and I want to congratulate him on having done so very efficiently. I think he showed the right perspective. The hon. member has succeeded in giving us a picture of the broad problem, as it affects our whole country.

Then the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) moved an amendment. I do not want to quarrel with the hon. member, but I tried to follow what he said without fully understanding everything. He is interested in water, and he feels the way we do about these matters, but I do not think the hon. member quite understood what the motion says. What the hon. member for Christiana did was to ask the Minister to continue to comply with certain requirements mentioned in the motion. He asked that a survey should be made of the available water resources and that scientific methods should be investigated further to conserve them, and that machinery should be established to protect these water resources. I think the hon. member for South Coast really misunderstood the motion. The hon. member for Christiana only asked that the Government should consider the advisability of investigating the matter.

Has the Minister then not done his duty?

Of course the Minister has an Act which enables him to do so, and he has the will to do it, but the hon. member was a little confused about the whole matter. In any case, I have very little time and I do not want to deviate from the subject.

I want to raise another point, namely this, that just as the hon. member for Christiana stated the physical problem of the shortage of water and the necessity for conserving and implementing it, there is another problem I want to discuss, and that is the important question as to who will eventually control the water of the Republic? Who will eventually be the actual owner of that water? Because the principles underlying our water legislation have already been changed twice in our history. The first period was that of dominus fluminis, or control by the State, i. e., the State is lord and master of all flood water. In terms of this principle, it is clear that the State has the right to do what it likes with water, and that it can, in its discretion, by way of a favour or a privilege, grant somebody the right to use water. That was the position for many years until approximately 1826, when this period came to an end, and changed radically, because under the influence of English law, after the British took over the Cape, a different legal principle was applied in our water legislation, namely the principle of the rights of riparian owners, the principle that the State is not the owner of the water, to distribute it in the way it deems fit, but that the right to water attaches to the land bordering on such a stream. For more than a century, the history of the distribution of water also grew together with the development of the land, and the Department of Water Affairs was nothing more than an instrument to ensure that this main principle was applied. But that is not all that our Water laws consist of. In the first place, it was based on the application of this principle by the Department, but also on an infinite number of decided cases, no two of which were precisely the same, because no two streams were precisely alike and the circumstances were not identical. The Courts gave an infinite number of interpretations to this principle, and so over a long period we eventually got the complex which we later called our water laws. The main emphasis here fell, firstly, on the rights of irrigators. The rights of irrigators enjoyed preference over the use of water for secondary and tertiary purposes. The second important principle was that the system of distribution, i. e. the principle applied when water in a stream had to be divided amongst the people living along the banks of that stream, was that everybody living along its banks would have a share in the water of that stream. If water was available, everybody had to get some of it. That was the golden rule.

Had our country had more water, had we had more streams and had our rainfall been higher, it would probably not have been necessary to change this principle. But as the result of a number of factors it was necessary to make an important change. In the first place it was important to take into account the protracted and continual shortage of water. The second was that the decisive role played by water in the whole of our national life as well as the role it will have to play in the future development of the country, made it essential for the State again to start thinking anew in regard to the matter, whether it was right that the principle of riparian ownership should continue to apply in this period when shortage of water exists, or whether the State should reconsider the whole matter.

The 1956 Act, which was actually passed as the result of an investigation made by Judge Hall, again put us back where we were more than a hundred years ago. That was the second time that the principle which is the basis of all our water legislation was radically changed. The principle which applies to-day is again the old one of dominus fhiminis. In other words, the State was given full rights of control over all water in the country. Now one can understand that when a country has been developing over such a long period and people have obtained vested rights, they cannot just be deprived of those rights, and that has to be kept in mind. Therefore the new Water Act has been based on two important principles. The first is that existing rights which are being exercised will be maintained and protected. The second point is the right claimed by the State in terms of the new Water Act to take control in certain water areas, in catchment areas, in dam areas, in irrigation areas, over the whole flow of the stream and to declare them to be State water-controlled areas. In other words, in all areas where there was no proper control the State could step in and take control in the public interest. That means that the State can now do as it wishes with the water. It can even take water from one area and transfer it to another. In other words, it has again reverted to the principle of taking control wherever possible. That is a very important development in these times, because water is becoming increasingly more important. But the Department of Water Affairs is also becoming more important as the result of it. And now we are on the eve of a further development in regard to our control of water, and the essence of my argument is that we now have to take one of two decisions. In regard to water control, the State can now do one of two things. It can decide in terms of the Act, to take full control of the water and its use and all planning in connection with water, which will mean that the Department of Water Affairs will have to be expanded as these needs develop; or the State can adopt the standpoint that whereas in the first place it has control of all the water in the country, it will adopt the principle of handing over control to ad hoc bodies which want to take over the distribution and control of that water. Should the Department of Water Affairs come to be regarded as a great, comprehensive Department which should also play its role in the future economic planning of the country, that will mean that the Department will have to play a very important role, perhaps even more important than in the past. It will mean its also having to act as a co-planner for the future, and it will play a much greater role in planning than it did in the past. Should the State decide to adopt the principle that it is prepared to transfer its rights to certain bodies, that would mean that the State would have less authority in future in regard to the planning of water and the economic planning of the country.

There are various examples of pressure being exerted on the State to take over large water projects for water areas from the State. I mention the Rand Water Board. That Board controls approximately 4,300 square miles. It controls 42 per cent of the potential of the Vaal River. In its area it has 45 per cent of the total population of the Transvaal. Many years ago it was found necessary to transfer the whole of the Vaal River complex to such an authority, and that authority, the Rand Water Board, has already become so important that the State is to-day in the position where, in regard to the planning of the Rand and its water supplies, it cannot just take action without more ado, but is really dependent on that Board. That is one example. When the Orange River Scheme was announced, pressure was immediately exerted by various people who wanted the State to step in and to transfer the whole complex to a body similar to the Tennessee Valley authority in America, which meant that if the State submitted to such pressure it would have to hand over the whole complex to such a body. There are also other examples. We have had the example of municipalities which thought that they could establish an authority to step in and to take over such a water complex.

The point I want to make finally is that in the past we have had examples of such bodies which want to step in and take over some of the responsibilities of the Department of Water Affairs. I hope that the Minister will take this opportunity of putting us on the right road once and for all, also for the future, and to say that the Department of Water Affairs is the highest authority controlling water in S. A., and that he does not intend to decentralize his powers and to hand them over to bodies which already exist, or may exist in future, in order to carry out part of his functions; because it is imperative that the State, if it spends such huge amounts as it is already spending and still intends spending, should have control over that water. That is the point I wish to make, and I hope the Minister will reply to it so that we can have clarity for the future in regard to the control of our water.

I associate myself with the approach of the hon. member for Christiana (Mr. Wentzel), to water affairs, and I admire his sincerity and his approach to the matter. But I would say that I think he has rather spot-lighted the deficiencies in the Department of Water Affairs, and I think he has indicated that the Minister himself has failed to carry out certain of his obligations. However, the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) has dealt with the broader issue, and I propose dealing with the motion as it appears before us.

There must be very few rivers in the country about which the Minister’s Department has not a fair measure of information and data. Much of that could have been carried out. Much of it was planned as long as 15 years ago, if not longer, and still nothing has been done. However, I must sympathize with the hon. the Minister in some respects, because his colleague, the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration, is laying claim to some of the most valuable water-sheds in the country and particularly along the Eastern coast of the Republic. He is actually buying them to-day, and he is actually destroying many of those water-sheds on which some of the largest towns in both Natal and the Cape are dependent for their water supplies. Now, what does the hon. the Minister propose doing about it? Up to the present nothing has been done. Does the Minister know that the Minister of Bantu Administration is laying claim to areas that represent some of the indigenous forest and mountain land, on which an enormous tract of country is dependent for its water supplies, and that he now intends to fill those areas up with Natives? And what does he expect from them? Surely the examples we have had can show the Minister what will happen. What are we going to do with this area now claimed by the Minister of Bantu Administration? The Minister has seen dust bowls himself, but the Minister of Bantu Administration is now establishing more dust bowls in South Africa.

The hon. member wants scientific investigation in regard to supplementing our water supplies. I want to suggest to the Minister that he has himself to blame in many respects. The hon. member for South Coast referred to the fact that he wanted scientists and technicians and he has not got them. How can he expect to carry into effect any planning for the conservation and development of water when he has not the people to carry it out? I refer to the fact that the Minister has one of the most powerful and best organizations in the country in his extension officers, but there are extension officers sitting in many districts alone, without any technical officers or assistants of any sort. Those officers, with their soil conservation committees, can become a wonderful source of information to the Minister any time he wants information for the purpose of developing any of those districts. But how can they do that when that extension officer sits there alone? He cannot leave his office. He does no field work and he can do no observation or investigation. That state of affairs exists, and the Minister knows it. The Minister has all the machinery that he needs under the 1956 Act to do all that is asked for in this motion. I want to ask the Minister to apply his mind to the third leg of this motion, dealing with pollution. I wonder whether the Minister realizes the extent to which the waters throughout South Africa become seriously polluted as the result of dipping tanks existing on the banks of rivers or very close to water sources? Those dipping tanks contain some of the most deadly poison that we have in this country. Does he realize that these border industries that are being established have to discharge their effluent into perennial rivers on the borders, and that they are doing it in fact? I need hardly remind the Minister that one of the more recently established factories is going to discharge 5,000,000 gallons of effluent a day into the Nahoon River, and there are serious complaints about what is taking place there. Will not the Minister tackle this question of pollution in the proper way? And what about the lower riparian owners? How are they affected?

There is another point, on the last leg of the motion, and that is that the Minister is aware of the fact that the Okavango River loses the bulk of its waters between Lake Ngami and before it gets to Makarikari. Sir, that represents a volume of water—and I am quoting a figure which was given to me many years ago—of 52,000,000,000 cusecs of water per day, which is an enormous quantity of water. Sir, has the Minister investigated what effect that would have on our waters in the southern reaches in the Republic? Surely if that water disappears in the sands of the desert there it is going somewhere. Is that not one of the biggest courses of our subterranean waters in the Republic of South Africa? Has the hon. the Minister investigated that particular aspect of it? We know from experience or from information that we have received that certain of those waters are discharged on to the west coast, but I think it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that that water is not all being discharged there; that it is part of the subterranean waters which are feeding the Republic of South Africa. Those are matters which I think require attention and I think the hon. the Minister could well apply his mind to them. But I am going to ask the hon. the Minister for two things now: I want to ask him to exercise his mind on this question of deprivation of those owners of land below where the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration is claiming this land in the water-sheds, in the dense forest areas, in the mountains where he will destroy sponges and springs. Those matters require attention. The second one is this question of pollution, not only by effluents from industry but by the poisons that are taken out of dipping tanks, by the waters that are thrown out and must find their way on to the streams.

Lastly I want to refer to a question which I have raised here before, and that is the development of those schemes where you have heavy rainfall; there it is possible to store large quantities of water at the very lowest cost in this country. I indicated to the Minister on one occasion that it would be possible to build 20 weirs in one of those rivers at a cost of R2,000 per weir, to store not less than 100,000,000 gallons of water in each of those weirs. Does the hon. the Minister realize what that would mean to that part of the country? I am sorry that the Minister was not able to go down and see what is happening down there. One of the people employing one of those weirs is producing no less than 25,000 bales of lucerne per annum, not for sale but for the maintenance of his stock. I make an urgent plea to the Minister because that section between the Fish River and the Zululand border has perennial streams that can be harnessed for the benefit of this country, and I would ask the hon. the Minister to apply his mind to that particular part of the country while he is helping other parts of the country with enormous amounts of money.

It is true that this is a very important subject that we are discussing here. It is a subject which should not be dragged into the political arena. What is being asked for in this motion is definitely in the interests of the country as a whole, and I think therefore that we should leave aside the political aspect and see what is in the interests of the people of South Africa. We know that water is worth more to us than gold. We know that gold is a wasting asset, but the whole of our future development in South Africa will depend on water. Let us all put our heads together therefore and co-operate and let us keep politics out of this matter. The motion of my hon. friend sitting next to me was moved in that spirit. I am sorry that a certain amount of politics has again been dragged into this debate. I am also sorry that my hon. friend over there (Mr. D. E. Mitchell), who is a very good farmer and who served with me at that time on the commission, discussed the 1956 Act here in the spirit in which he did. The Act of 1956 is probably one of the best measures ever placed on the Statute Book in South Africa. It is as a result of that Act that we have this enormous development to-day. The hon. member agreed with me that the waters which fall in South Africa must be under the control of the State so that the State can harness those waters in the best way in the interests of the country. If we had not had the 1956 Act we would not have been able to tackle the Orange River scheme to-day. Under the old Act it would not have been possible. It was Advocate Strydom who introduced that Act in 1956 with a view to the implementation of the Orange River scheme at some future date. Before the passing of the 1956 Act, as hon. members will remember, water could not be taken from one catchment area to another without passing a special Act of Parliament. I know that my hon. friend over there helped to get that Act on the Statute Book but he must not come along now with motions of no confidence right at the start of this enormous development. I am sorry that he did so and that he attacked the Government and the Department here. Sir, one is amazed when one thinks of the miracles which have been achieved by this Department since 1956, with a small staff, in order to make this huge Orange River scheme possible. Even a person like Mr. Shand, one of our great experts, says that he does not know how on earth they managed to do it. It is said that this scheme is based on statistics collected in the past, and to a certain extent that is true. But this scheme, one of the biggest schemes in the world, was drawn up by our engineers in a short space of time and I want to give them all the credit which is due to them. I also want to give credit to our Minister of Water Affairs for the wonderful work which has been done hitherto.

However, I do not want to pursue this matter because I want to talk about our subterranean waters. Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that our water table has dropped considerably. I recall that in 1934 I was sent by the Farmers’ Assistance Board to investigate the conditions in the north-west. In those days one could still get water there at a depth of 60 to 100 feet, and in those same areas to-day one has to drill 200 to 500 feet before one strikes water. This only goes to prove that we are depleting the waters which have been building up for centuries behind natural barriers. And if you go into the history of North Africa you will see that the same thing was done there, and eventually the whole country changed into a desert. If we do not utilize all the waters which fall in South Africa then parts of our country will also change into a desert. I hope the time will come when we will no longer allow any water at all to flow away into the sea. I hope that the fine waters which we get in Natal will be preserved for future generations. If those waters are preserved they will stimulate our subterranean waters. Now that we are building more dams in the hinterland we will also get a higher rainfall as a result of the evaporation which will take place there, and these dams in turn will also stimulate our subterranean waters. With modern pumping installations it will be possible to pump water out of these dams to the dry parts, thus supplementing the subterranean waters in those areas. I am thinking of areas such as the north-west, for example. I feel that some of the water which is pumped out of the Orange River should be pumped back again into the Kalahari and other areas which are very dry. After all, one cannot farm without water and the greatest asset which a stock farmer can have is water on his farm and camps on his farm to preserve his veld. Here I want to say that the Government has done extremely good work with its erosion schemes. On the Springbok Flats, e. g. where the water table was about 35 feet it has been raised by large erosion works by as much as eight or ten feet. We admit that it is very difficult to pump water into the mountainous regions, but once we have stronger waters in the valleys again it will be possible to pump up that water to the mountainous regions. As I have said, the Government has already done a great deal to combat erosion, but there are still certain parts of our country where there is a great deal of erosion taking place. There are many areas in which the people are not looking after their veld. There are thousands of farmers, however, who have in fact made use of the various schemes introduced by the Government. Just think what has been done by the Government to supplement our water supplies in the Eastern Province. A start has already been made with the building of a tunnel from the Verwoerd Dam to the Fish River, a tunnel of 51 miles which will cost about R28,000,000. With the construction of the tunnel, roads have to be built, of course; camps have to be laid out and medical services have to be provided. Let us give the Government credit therefore for the wonderful work which is being done there, and let us also give our engineers the credit which is due to them for the excellent work which they are doing there. We must not only criticize; we must also be grateful for what the Government is doing in the interests of our farmers. The Government cannot complete all these works within the space of a year or two; it can only be done over a period of years. I want to say to the Department of Irrigation that we in our part of the country are very, very satisfied. In those areas there is a future to-day for farmers who formerly had no future there. Sir, I predict that the Karoo will flourish again when this vast Orange River scheme comes into operation. Moreover, it will also put a stop to the depopulation of the platteland. Sir, we often talk about the depopulation of the platteland, but I just want to refer to the Tennessee Valley and what happened there. I had the honour of spending seven days there with the Tennessee Valley Authorities. That scheme is nothing less than a miracle, but I feel that our scheme in South Africa, the Orange River scheme, is a much bigger, more extensive scheme than even the Tennessee Valley scheme. Whereas formerly the three provinces in the Tennessee Valley were the poorest provinces in the United States, they are to-day the three richest states. But there is one thing that we must not forget. The farmer himself cannot bear all the costs connected with this scheme. He will be assisted through the power stations which are going to be erected along the Orange River—and there will be no fewer than 20 power stations—but we must remember that the industries which will come into being as a result of the implementation of this scheme will also make their contribution because they will also be supplied with power from these power stations.

Then I want to say to the Minister that we are very glad that the walls of both the Van der Kloof Dam and the Verwoerd Dam are going to be raised by 60 feet. I predict that the whole of the Eastern Province and the whole of the Northern Karoo are going to be changed into Tennessee Valleys as a result of the Orange River scheme.

Mr. Speaker, I am very perturbed about our water table as a whole, in spite of what has already been done and is still being done to raise our water table. I feel that this is a matter that we shall have to watch very carefully and that more and more we shall have to follow the system which is being applied in Australia, where water out of their big rivers is pumped over long distances into the hinterland. I notice that a pipeline of 1,500 miles is now being laid to carry water to areas which have hitherto been lying fallow, and if that is possible in Australia then it is surely possible in this country.

In conclusion I want to say once again that I am sorry that my old friend, the hon. member for South Coast, has practically come along here with a motion of no confidence. I hope he will withdraw it.

I have no argument with the hon. member for Christiana (Mr. Wentzel) who introduced this motion, but I think that contrary to the opinion expressed by the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) the Minister has got off, very, very lightly up to now in this debate. I would say that the very presence of this motion on the Order Paper in the name of a senior member of the Government is an indictment of the Minister and of his failure to carry out the powers and the charges given to him with the passing of the Water Act of 1956. You see, Sir, in this motion there is not one aspect that is not provided for in the Water Act. As the hon. member for Cradock has said the Water Act is a very good Act. A select Committee sat on that Act for some three years and I believe that they put on the Statute Book a law which gave the Minister every power necessary to carry out what was intended and to do the things which his own Government asked for in that Act. The present Government wanted a Water Act which was comprehensive and they have one, Sir, but what has been done? I believe that comparatively little has been done. The hon. member for Soutpansberg (Mr. S. P. Botha) indicated that the hon. member for Natal South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell), who I think made a very good contribution here this afternoon, did not understand the motion. I should say that if anybody did not understand the motion it was possibly the hon. member for Soutpansberg who did not speak to the motion at all, so I shall not take up any further time in trying to deal with the subject which he raised.

Sir, why am I critical of the Minister’s administration? The hon. member for Cradock gets up here and starts to talk about the Orange River Scheme and all that has been done. I know just as everybody else in this House does that lots of things have been done. But may I remind the hon. member for Cradock that the Orange River scheme has come in spite of this hon. Minister, not because of him. Is the hon. member’s memory so short that he cannot remember the speech made by this hon. Minister in the Other Place in 1959? Well, this hon. Minister belittled the man who originally thought of this Orange River scheme, Sen. Conroy. How many times has that hon. member sat in this House and listened to this hon. Minister telling the hon. member for Albany (Mr. Bowker) that he did not have a hope of getting the Orange River scheme? Now he stands up in this House and thanks the Minister for the Orange River scheme.

The Orange-Fish river scheme, not the Orange River scheme.

Sir, I did not interject when the hon. member was talking; let me have my chance now. Let me tell the hon. member that the Orange River scheme came in spite of this Minister and the decision was taken far above his head. I do not believe that basically the decision was taken to help the farmer; it was to try to stimulate the economy which his Government had jeopardized because of their policy of isolation, and they had to try to stimulate it. I believe that that is a generally accepted fact. Now, Sir, why can I say that this Minister has failed? I want to deal particularly with one aspect and that is the question of the pollution of water. A lot has been said about the preservation of water. Our amendment sets out quite clearly what our thinking is. But let me give you a few examples, Sir, and ask this hon. Minister what he has done about control of the pollution of our water? It is all very well having all these ideas for increasing the quantity of water we have, conserving what we have and using it to the best advantage. That is all very well if the water is fit to use when you have it. But this hon. Minister has taken few steps in the way of seeing to that. At one stage I thought that the hon. member for South Coast and I were the only two who needed to fight about it because it was only our oceans that were being polluted. But, Sir, if you take a trip through this wonderful country of ours and take particular note of the rivers and water supplies, I doubt if you will find many that are not polluted either by mud or clay, in many cases through ploughing too close to the river. If you go to the country towns more especially and many of the bigger ones too, you will find that there is a lack of proper sewage treatment plants. You will find that the river is used as the most convenient spot to dump everything that is unwanted by a city. You will find industries established and just pumping their effluents into the rivers, thus spoiling the water for future use. Sir, it is all very well to say that it does not matter if the water is dirty or not; you can use it for irrigation and its like. Just this last week-end I went down to Ceres. I had always thought that the people in the Cape were very lucky because their rivers appeared to be so clean and free from effluent. And what did I see there? I saw the processing house for the farmers—fruit crops in a place like Ceres, a beautiful place like that, and I heard their complaints because their own packhouse is polluting the water, so that when they used it for irrigation the rotting fruit that is discharged with the effluent spread on their lands and attracts insects to harm their crop, insects which would not otherwise come into the area. But for these insects they would be saved very much in spraying costs and their crop would be far, far better. I am glad to see that the hon. member for Ceres is sitting here, because he probably knows more about the Water Act than the hon. the Minister.

Sir, there is not only this particular aspect. The aspect of industrial euents has been mentioned here by the mover of this motion, and rightly so. This is a great problem and what has the hon. the Minister done about it? What happened when we went to make inquiries as to why a permit to discharge effluents into one of our rivers had been granted to a certain industry which was of a noxious type? This Minister’s Department gave us the answer. It said, “The Department of Commerce and Industries asked us for a permit so we gave it to them. ” They had made no investigation into the possible harm that might be done by the discharge of that effluent. Sir, one can go on and on giving examples. One of the finest ones, I think, is the fact that although this Act was promulgated in 1956 and this Minister has adequate powers for controlling pollution under this Act, in terms of Sections 21 to 26, what he had to do to make that portion of the Act work was to publish standards for the purity of effluent that was redischarged into rivers and the like. And, Sir, when did he publish them? He published them some three or four days before his Vote came up in 1961. It took him six years just to lay down standards for industrial effluent. If this is the way in which this hon. Minister and his Government are going to administer this Act, which we all accept is a good act—I have no quarrel with this Act; I think it is a very fine Act indeed—if this is the way in which he is going to administer the control of pollution of our precious water, if he is exercising the same lack of control of our water which has induced the hon. member for Christiana to come to this House with a motion such as he has come to-day, then I believe we are in a sorry state, and I believe that a very much stronger motion than that of the hon. member for Christiana is necessary. But I realize that he has to be diplomatic. I believe that he is in an awkward position and I believe that in his heart of hearts he would far sooner vote for our amendment than he would for his own motion.

Sir, I have to end and I have to end on this note, that I have no confidence whatsoever in the ability of this hon. Minister to achieve the aims and the objects which are sought by the hon. member for Christiana in his motion to-day. I have seen no indications of his ability to carry out the terms of this Act, and at the moment I would say that unless some revolutionary process takes place in that particular Department, the waters of our country are going to remain in a very sorry state.

I am very pleased to have the opportunity, in the few minutes at my disposal, of making my voice heard in this debate which I regard as one of the most important that we can have in this House. I want to congratulate the mover of this motion on the fine way in which and the level at which he dealt with this important matter. I want to give it my support.

I want to confine myself more particularly to our subterranean water and the importance and urgency of having a proper survey made of this water. I do not think that we can say today with any degree of certainty how much subterranean water we have. We only know that we do not have the large supplies of subterranean water which have already been found in other parts of the world. That being the position it is of the most vital importance for us to make an immediate study of this matter and to undertake the necessary research. Much has already been said and written about it. I have a book here, for example, in which they refer to a scientific conference that was held as far back as 1949 in Johannesburg to deal with the problem as it manifested itself at that stage throughout the whole of Africa. Because I am pressed for time. I shall not be able to quote from this book, Mr. Speaker, but in the book they tell us that even at that time it was regarded as urgently necessary to undertake a proper study of our subterranean waters.

The farmers in my constituency are continuously drilling for water. The hon. the Minister’s Department makes drilling machines available to them. They are good machines and the men operating them are well trained and they are doing excellent work. But the difficulty is that the farmers do not know where to drill for water. There are no technologists who can give them guidance. We do not have trained men for this work and that is what I want to plead for this afternoon. We must cross that bridge. The fact that we are spending millions of rand to supply our farmers with water makes it imperative for us to have those men. We must train them speedily. I want to make a most urgent appeal to the hon. the Minister to ensure that in the future our farmers will not have to fall back on the water diviner to tell them where they should drill. The farmers who drill at the spots indicated by the divining rod are only taking a chance and nothing else is available to them. We know that scientists, if we have them, can tell us where to find water. That is why I want to confine my plea to a request to the hon. the Minister to ensure, apart from everything that he has done in the past—and it has been nothing but good—that when he provides the farmers with drills, the necessary technicians will be available to advise the farmers where to drill with the greatest chance of success.

My constituency, and perhaps that of the hon. member for Kuruman (Mr. du Plessis), is probably one of the most difficult in our country as far as drilling for water is concerned. I know that the hon. the Minister has people investigating the question of the desalination of water which is a very great problem in those parts. But I also want to ask him whether we cannot go a step further and obtain a proper report from people who can give us such a report, after investigation, in connection with the possibility of using pipes to lead water to those parts where the water is so polluted that it can hardly be used for stock instead of draining off the subterranean water which is available in that area from places where it is already serving as drinking water for stock. I do not have any knowledge of this matter but I have discussed the question with scientists and they have assured me that the amount of water required to supply drinking water for stock will be a mere bagatelle in comparison with the amount of water required for irrigation. The town of Vryburg is already receiving its water from Vaalharts. Can that water not be led further to the Molopo area where that pollution takes place? It is all downhill. If the water can be taken to a certain point, it will flow further by gravitation. I am assured by scientists that the water that we will need for that area which is so poorly endowed with natural subterranean water will be a mere bagatelle in comparison with the amount of water required for irrigation purposes. This does not appear to be impossible therefore. I think it will perhaps be more practicable to take water from the Orange River to supply the needs of the waterless area of Kuruman. The water from Vaalharts has already been taken as far as Vryburg and it is just a question of taking it further. If we can save the millions of rand spent each year by the State in an effort to drill for water, it may be a very good investment to lead the water which is so essential for man and beast through to those parts where it is required. The water-tanks and subterranean water in that area will then not become exhausted from time to time with the result that new boreholes have to be drilled.

Mr. Speaker, conditions in that part of the world are such that I do not think I should take up the time of the House unnecessarily in trying to prove the seriousness of the position. I want to assure the hon. the Minister that I appreciate what he is doing, but I rise to try to make South Africa aware of the—I could almost say—great drama that will be enacted if we do not take note of the signs of the times and if we do not make it our business to provide for the future. We must not reach the stage where we will have to leave large areas of our country uninhabited because we will have no more water there.

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon, member for Christiana (Mr. Wentzel) who was responsible for this motion and for the discussion this afternoon, for the way in which he put his case, constructively and in a stimulating way. I am very sorry that I cannot say the same for the contribution that we have had from the other side of the House. The amendment that was moved by a front-bencher on that side, and a prominent front-bencher there, rejects this motion because the Government, meaning the Minister and his Department, have completely failed to give effect to the powers which they have under the Water Act. The hon. member has not produced one single shred of proof to show where we have failed to give effect to those powers. He simply moved the amendment because he interpreted the wording of the motion of the hon. member for Christiana as being an attack upon the Government. Well, one can always read something and interpret it as one wants to interpret it.

I am very pleased that the hon. member for Christiana has introduced this motion. I do not want to get away from the motion as so many of the other speakers have done. This motion asks for certain things to be done—that the Government should make surveys in respect, firstly, of our available surface and subterranean water resources. By his motion the hon. member for Christiana has given me the opportunity to tell the House and the country that what he is asking us to do can only mean, in my opinion, that we must continue doing what we have been doing for so many years. In regard to surveys as far as surface water is concerned, there is hardly one single important river in our country of any economic importance worth mentioning in regard to which the Department cannot draw conclusions as far as the flow of those rivers is concerned either directly by way of surveys or by way of a correlation of the information that it has. These surveys will be very nearly correct, if not completely correct.

This division was brought into being before I became Minister of Water Affairs. It was brought into being towards the end of the period of service “of my predecessor, now the hon. the Minister of Lands. A few years” ago we brought a special Division of Hydrological Research into being in the Department. When one establishes a division in a Department it does of necessity take some time before that division gets into its stride. But that does not mean to say that it has only been since that division was established that a start has been made on surveys and the collection of data in respect of the flow of our rivers and of our available water resources. There are certain rivers in our country in connection with which we have information that was collected even before the establishment of Union, information that has been collected over the years. For example, we have to-day no fewer than 88 major State water schemes—they form probably our best survey stations because all the water that flows down is taken into consideration—where we make regular surveys of the flow of rivers; the amount of surplus water, the average flow per annum and so forth. Besides this there are nearly 500 separate survey stations in various parts of the country and distributed throughout the country at places where we think it is necessary to have these surveys made. When one sets up these survey stations throughout the Republic, one is able by means of the information that one collects and having regard to the rainfall figures and other climatic factors and vegetation, to work out reasonably accurately the flow of the rivers in which those survey stations stand. The Department has so much information dealing with the average flow of rivers per annum that I think we will not be far out if we estimate that the total surface flow of water in the rivers of South Africa is about 18,100,000 morgen feet. Of the 18,100,000 morgen feet of water that we estimate is available in our rivers, we will—when the large dams, the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam, the Van der Kloof Dam and the Pongola Dam are finished—be able to conserve more than twice as much as we are storing to-day in State dams and irrigation board schemes—about 15,000,000 morgen feet of water. We are using about 2,000,000 gallons per day and we will then have conserved about one-third of the total available quantity of water in South Africa. Besides what we are doing within the Republic we have no fewer than 16 survey stations beyond the Republic’s borders which we maintain in our neighbouring States by means of consultation and negotiation and from which we also collect information which is of importance to South Africa and to the future of the Republic.

As far as our subterranean water is concerned this same division of the Department has been engaged for a number of years in determining from the hundreds of water holes that have been sunk and that exist in certain parts of the country not only the amount of water available underground but also the effect of the withdrawal of water from these boreholes, the effect of rainfall on that subterranean water and the effect of boring in dry seasons, better seasons and very poor seasons. Recently we have also been making studies of and performing experiments in regard to the manner in which we can supplement that water, the effect of certain conservation works that we have on the surface which enables us to conserve water and the effect of all of these things on our underground flow. The fact is that whether the water is surface water or subterranean water, all the water that we have originally came from above. Our water supplies in this country, limited though they may be, are undoubtedly one of the most important natural resources that we have and may perhaps be the determining factor which may eventually control development in South Africa and the size of her population.

I just want to say that although we are making these surveys and are aware of the flow of the rivers, we are not yet anywhere near the stage of being able to harness and use all the available water in an effective and productive way. It is true that we have made a great deal of progress, particularly when we consider the size of our population, our limited manpower and the fact that it is virtually only the State that makes any contribution worth mentioning towards the conservation of water in South Africa. We must also consider the efforts that we are making to make better use of our water and to try to keep pace with the economic development of our country in general. This is something of which we can be proud. When we consider all these things, I think that the Republic of South Africa compares favourably with other countries where comparable circumstances prevail. Besides this we must remember that the number of our taxpayers and also the number of people who have the required knowledge is extremely limited. I think that with a view to all these things we need not stand back at all for any other country in the world. In 1956 I was in the United States and amongst other things I said—and I want to repeat it to-day”that it could not be denied that comparing the taxpayers of the United States of America with the taxpayers in the Republic of South Africa, on a per capita basis we had spent more on water conservation in the Republic than they had in the mighty United States of America. So we have not stayed behind in doing what we have been able to do as the need has arisen and as it has become necessary for us to make the best possible use of our water resources.

We have been asked to use scientific methods and to have research done into the manner in which we can possibly supplement these water resources. “Supplementation” is perhaps not the correct word. Let me put it this way: How can we best conserve and use it both for the present and for the future? It is said that the Department of Water Affairs is the only body responsible for this work in terms of the Act; that it is the supreme authority as far as water in our country is concerned and for this reason all these matters are its responsibility. But we must not lose sight of the fact that we cannot separate water from the land and that there are other State Departments which in their turn are responsible for other activities in which water is also of great importance. I mention the Department of Agricultural Technical Services, the Department of Forestry and also the Department of Lands which has control over State land in our mountains and our catchment areas. Research is being done by the Department of Forestry in regard to the effect of afforestation on certain catchment areas. The question of fire prevention on our mountains is a function which falls under the Department of Agricultural Technical Services. Fire prevention, or controlled burning, if necessary for the development of agriculture, is also of the most vital importance. What effect does this have on our surface water as far as the flow of our rivers is concerned? These are all matters which require study and research. Just as we have to make a study of our subterranean water resources, so research is also necessary in connection with the factors that I have just mentioned. It takes many years before one can make deductions and say that this or that has been the effect. That is why I welcome the fact that the hon. members for Christiana and South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) have spoken so objectively. The hon. member for South Coast only acted in a negative fashion when he moved his amendment. For the rest his whole speech was constructive. I am overjoyed that they emphasize the fact that we should not cut down but that we should do a great deal more. I just want to give the House the assurance that what is being done is also being done by the other departments in the closest co-operation with the Department of Water Affairs. Not only do we exchange knowledge but we also have regular discussions in regard to our various findings; how the various departments that have to deal with our water resources, both on the surface and below ground, derive benefit from this experience and how the departments can obtain the best information jointly and correlate it and make it available to the public. I agree with the hon. member for South Coast who has said that the whole of the public in South Africa has over the past year become far more water-conscious and water conservation-conscious than was the case a number of years ago, just as the public have become more soil-conscious. I think that our nation grows older and as we all eventually realize that this is our homeland and that this is our country, not only for our generation but also for our children and their descendants and their descendants, we become necessarily more attached to our land and we give more thought to those who will make use of the land after us. As the late Dr. Malan said, it is not given to one single generation to do everything for a nation but this does not mean that the present generation should not do the things that need doing and give its attention to those things which are perhaps to form the foundation of future building work.

I also want to say here that this hydrological division of ours has not only led us to collect information, but also to make that information available to the public so that the public can utilize that information that we have. I think I shall convey the suggestion of the hon. member, which I appreciate, to the Department—that we must try to impart the scientific data and the statistical information to the public in a more attractive manner so as to stimulate their interest. But we are living in a time when if something is not sensational, when it is too positive and not sufficiently negative, it appears as though our present generation and our Press are inclined to say to a large extent that it is not worth reading, that it has no news value, that it is not sufficiently interesting. Perhaps we can improve the relationship between our Department and the public Press and concentrate more upon persuading the Press to publish information in the interests of the country.

I may just say that as far as subterranean water is concerned we have three areas that have been declared State controlled areas. We have the Uitenhage sub-artesian area, the area at Kroondal which was recently proclaimed, the Markiana area, and thirdly, the upper Molopo area. We can proclaim that area under the Water Act because we have discovered that we have sufficient information available in regard to the subterranean water supplies in that particular area. Otherwise of course, one would make a mistake by summarily proclaiming all the subterranean water in the whole country as falling within a controlled area because one would then have to issue withdrawal permits and so forth and one would not know sufficient about it. The hon. member for South Coast asked whether the Department of Water Affairs had an adequate staff. My information is that in our country to-day we have more than 250,000 civil servants, that is, in all departments. This means that a quarter of a million out of a population of about 3,500,000 Whites are in the service of the State. There are people who ask whether we are not already overloaded as far as public servants are concerned. As far as scientists and technologists are concerned we have the necessary technical staff who are needed in certain technical departments just as is the case in the private sector. Up to the present, as far as our geological surveys are concerned, we have been more dependent upon the geological survey division of the Department of Mines, although I am sure that they have concentrated more on the geological work of the discovery and mining of and prospecting for our mineral riches below the ground than they have upon the question of our water resources. We are trying to obtain more scientists. We have succeeded, by means of an inspection carried out by the Public Service Commission into the requirements of my Department, in increasing our staff. Fortunately we have been granted a considerable number of extra posts. As far as engineers are concerned I may just say that one does need them in planning these things. Of course, as the country develops, higher salaries than the State can afford are offered to them by private companies, and because of this fact some of our best people have been taken from us. New departments have also come into being. Development work is being done in the Bantu homelands and the Department of Bantu Administration does not always have the necessary staff available. They sometimes appeal to other Departments and if posts are advertised, some of our people may accept those posts. I may just say that I have received permission from the Cabinet to send two persons abroad to recruit engineers. Not only do we want young engineers without experience but we also want people with experience whom we can use immediately. Just before I left Pretoria I had the privilege of meeting personally 45 new engineers who have already arrived in South Africa and who are now under contract with the Department of Water Affairs. I met them at our head office. I was introduced to them and welcomed them to South Africa. Things are not going so badly. We do not have sufficient staff to enable us to do everything as quickly as we want to do it but I think I can say that we do not have so few that we cannot do what we ought to do, even though it may not be done as swiftly as the public would like it to be done.

I just want to say that in regard to the two other matters that were mentioned in the motion, one of which was evaporation, we have the hydrological research division which is giving serious attention to the elimination of losses caused by evaporation. We have already tried various methods to see whether we cannot reduce the rate of evaporation by the use of certain chemicals in our dams. This has apparently not been successful. I do not think there is a country in the world that has as yet overcome this problem.

As far as water pollution is concerned I must say that particularly since we amended this Act which no longer makes it necessary to lay down a union standard, but makes provision for various standards to be laid down in regard to factories where pollution takes place, we have now set up a full division within the Department which concentrates solely on the problem of water pollution. I want to give the hon. member for Umlazi (Mr. Lewis) the assurance that we do issue temporary permits but that we do not do so arbitrarily because we are indifferent to the pollution that is taking place. But we are sometimes compelled to issue temporary permits in the general interest of the economy of the country and sometimes we have to extend the validity of the permits to cover those problem cases in which proof is shown that the general purification standards that we have laid down for that region or area should not be applied to a particular organization but that that organization should be given an opportunity to take steps to improve its position. In the case of one factory we simply said after long discussions that we could no longer issue a permit or extend the temporary permit. This resulted in the factory closing down. It was a factory that was of considerable economic importance. But taking everything into consideration, we felt that this was the right decision to take. Accordingly I want to give the hon. member the assurance that the Department is anxious to carry out the provisions of the 1956 Act to the best of its ability and in such a way that one will always be able to ask oneself what is in the best interest of South Africa. Nobody wants a Department, which has as much power as the Department of Water Affairs, whose activities are so comprehensive and are steadily becoming more involved, to use those powers injudiciously. We will act as judiciously as possible but we will not be so careful as to neglect to do what must be done.

May I ask a question before the hon. the Minister resumes his seat? Reports recently appeared in the Press of an inexhaustible source of water that was discovered near Oudtshoorn—a subterranean lake, or so it was called. Has a geological survey been made of that lake and is the hon. the Minister prepared to make geologists available to do research in order to discover whether we do not have more subterranean lakes in our country?

In the few minutes left it is difficult to answer the hon. the Minister. He started off by explaining some things which had been cursorily put to him, but towards the end he did make some effort to answer the questions of the hon. members for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) and Umlazi (Mr. Lewis), whose constituencies are mostly affected by this motion. But to my mind he failed completely to appreciate that water is not only pure or purified, but water is a living structure, and that it is not so much geologists and engineers that he needs. I tremble to think that he failed to appreciate the words of the hon. member for South Coast, who pointed out the importance of the ecologists and the botanists, etc. in regard to this matter. He seemed to answer only the question of water conservation, and not of quality conservation. He failed to realize the importance of the establishment of two atomic energy stations in the country, stations which will have radioactive waste to dispose of. He has failed to appreciate the importance of oil in the destruction of water supplies and the damage it does, and he has failed to appreciate the importance of fish. He takes no notice of the life of the rivers and he does not appreciate that it is more than bricks and mortar and concrete that need to be attended to; it is the life in the water, and this is being destroyed both by sewage and by industry. It has not been found possible yet to lay down a standard for effluent. Each effluent must be studied on its own in the environment into which it will flow. It is not enough to say that there must not be more than so much organic matter, or that there must not be more than a certain degree of dust. Each effluent has to be considered by a group of scientists, as was suggested by the hon. member for South Coast, and I think that is one matter which has failed to penetrate the understanding of the hon. the Minister, namely that he has much more to do than to conserve water. He has to do more than keep it pure; he has to keep it alive, and unfortunately the scientific tests for this have not yet been fully worked out.

Debate having continued for 2½ hours, the motion lapsed in terms of Standing Order No. 30 (4).