announced that in terms of Standing Order No. 17 he had appointed the following members to act as temporary Chairmen of Committees: Messrs. W. H. Delport, F. J. le Roux (Brakpan), B. W. B. Page, H. H. Schwarz, R. A. F. Swart, C. Uys, Drs. L. van der Watt and H. M. J. van Rensburg (Mossel Bay) and Mr. A. C. van Wyk.

Mr. Speaker, in his half-hearted motion yesterday, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition tried to look for answers to the question of how conflict and revolution may be prevented. It was repeatedly emphasized in his speech that he was looking for steps which should be taken to avoid conflict and revolution in this multiracial country of ours. Let me concede to him at once that he even attempted—and in this his speech differed from what we are used to hearing from him—to provide solutions to these problems which he presented to us.

He did it well.

These were solutions which I could sum up in one sentence. He said: “Repeal all measures which differentiate. Give everyone identical rights in a completely open society, without any form of discrimination or differentiation whatsoever.” Now I know that as an academic— perhaps he should rather have remained one—he will concede to me without any argument that the solutions he offered yesterday immediately gave rise to a very pertinent and logical question, a question which is in any event fundamental to all political debating in South Africa. It is a very simple question, i.e. what security the PFP model offers minority groups, those groups that are legitimately concerned about their interests and their prospects as a group in a country with a population composition such as ours.

Our policy offers them more than yours.

At the same time, it poses the question of what the NP offers minorities and minority groups, as well as the question of what the NRP offers minorities and minority groups. It is self-evident that this question is relevant to us all. The NP has always regarded the effective protection of the rights of minorities as fundamental, and at the Western Cape regional congress of the PFP a few weeks ago, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition stated it as his well-considered standpoint that minority rights are a crucial issue in South African politics, although yesterday he did not deem it important enough to refer to at all.

The NRP, which I shall not discuss at any length because they are becoming more and more irrelevant, adopt the same standpoint. [Interjections.] At first sight, therefore, it would almost appear as though there were consensus about this question. Group interests are important, and minority rights are a crucial issue, especially when we are talking about constitutional development, about the prevention of conflict and about similar important matters. However, when one takes a closer look and one examines the way in which each party wishes to protect group interests and minority rights, it becomes clear why there is only one party which enjoys the overwhelming confidence of the White electorate. Then it becomes clear that what is a matter of profound concern to the NP, i.e. the effective protection of the rights of minority groups, is, on the part of the PFP, an empty and hollow game of words without any substance, and that on the part of the NRP, it consists of theoretical and impractical little plans, plans that are just as vague as the old United Party could ever hope to be. [Interjections.]

Let us analyse these policies with regard to the rights of minorities with reference to a number of subjects in order to gain a true understanding of how inadequate the PFP and the NRP are when it comes to assurances to minorities. I do not think anyone would argue with me if I said that before a party could claim to offer security to minority groups, it should at least be clear about the meaning of the concept of “minority groups”. The NP has no doubts about this. It recognizes the existence of nations and population groups, and it understands the enormous inherent power that is contained in nationhood and awareness of identity. That is why it unequivocally accepts, in word and deed, the recognition of multinationalism as a basic premise.

The PFP, on the other hand, is playing a game. When it suits them, the impression is created that there is room in their plan for a specific nation or population group to safeguard its interests within the framework of their policy. In practice, however, it is clear that they hold nationality and ethnicity in contempt and that they attach little or no importance to it. In order to prove this I wish to quote an example. In their criticism of the President’s Council, virtually all hon. members of the PFP made the statement— yesterday one of them did so again by way of interjection—that 70% of the population of the Republic had been excluded from the President’s Council. What does this really mean and what are they implying when they say that? Only one thing: That the will of Black nations carries no weight with them. They wish to ignore the democratic utterances of the Xhosas, the Vendas and the Tswanas in favour of independence. The constitutions of Transkei, Bophuthatswana and Venda do not exist in their eyes.

What has that got to do with it?

I shall explain that shortly. When one examines the statistics, one notices that there are 7 million Transkeians, Tswanas and Vendas. When one works out the percentage of the Black population without including the population of the independent Black States, one sees that it is not 70% of the population, but a much smaller percentage. However, they are so caught up in their narrow-minded thinking that they are still including the Transkeians, the Vendas and the Tswanas without attaching any importance to the will of those nations which they expressed when they said that they wanted to become independent.

What are the new percentages? [Interjections.]

Ciskei has now opted for independence. I ask the hon. the Leader of the Opposition whether his party will recognize the independence of Ciskei and attach importance to it by saying that Ciskei has found a constitutional solution. In a referendum, the Ciskeians decided by an overwhelming majority that they wanted this. Is the PFP going to continue including the Ciskeians in the Black population of South Africa itself?

It is Hobson’s choice. Where do they live?

Let us come to quite practical affairs. When speaking of group interests . . .

White domination is the only . . .

Order! Too many interjections are being made now and we cannot conduct a debate in such a way.

When one speaks of group interests, one is speaking of practical, fundamental matters which affect every individual and every nation in its daily life and which are of the utmost importance to them. I should like to come to these practical matters. Let us test in a few practical spheres the claims made by the PFP and the NRP to offer any security for minority groups.

Firstly, there is the educational sphere. Education is of the utmost importance to every parent and every child. All over the world, the instruction and the education of the child form an integral part of his nationality and his membership of a certain group. All over the world, the school is one of the powerful sources of identity and pride in one’s own language and culture. This fact is reflected in language instruction as well as in the contents of syllabi, especially in subjects which have a cultural relevance, such as history. The NP wants to give full recognition to this when it says that it considers it a non-negotiable principle that every nation should have its own schools. This right—to their own schools—we regard as an inalienable right of all minorities in South Africa. However, the PFP says no to this; they are opposed to separate schools for every population group. They say all schools should be open to all. Their educational policy contains no recognition of cultural and ethnic differences. The NRP, as always, is falling between two stools: Some schools are to be open; some schools are to be closed, according to local option. What a chaotic situation this kind of thing would create in South Africa!

We say the local community concerned should decide.

What about universities?

Another fundamental aspect for nations and population groups is their community life, which finds expression in practical matters such as who are their next-door neighbours, community centres of their own . . .

Sport.

. . . facilities of their own. In this connection, the NP once again states unequivocally that in a multinational society of the dimensions which we have in South Africa, it is essential to ensure that every population group has a community life of its own.

They have no choice.

We regard the rights of minorities to separate communities as non-negotiable and the hon. the Prime Minister has said so in this House. Once again, however, the PFP draws a line through protective measures which exist for the community life of minority groups and they advocate a completely open society and open residential areas. Once again, the NRP tries to have it both ways with its “local options at the lowest level of authority”.

It is the only way . . .

No wonder that they talk about the “lowest level of authority”, because they are at the lowest level a party can get.

May I ask the hon. the Minister a question?

No, because my time is running out.

In all probability, the most important mechanism that a minority has available to it in order to hold its own in a multinational country is political muscle and political ability. Without that, no minority can hold its own. Even the PFP has begun to realize this, hence their frantic manoeuvres with minority vetoes, an inflexible constitution, a bill of rights, the promises which they say federalism holds and an independent Bench which they say is to uphold such an inflexible constitution and the bill of rights.

By dressing up the matter in this way, they try to create the impression that minorities have nothing to fear in the PFP’s proposed new dispensation. But, Sir, the very insubstantial nature of these assurances of theirs appears from some facts which I should like to mention in passing. One has only to read the book written by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and his co-author, South Africa’s Options, especially chapter 8, to realize how fragile the PFP’s constitutional fig-leaf guarantees really are. I have found a few answers in it to some questions which have hitherto been left unanswered in debates in this House by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and his party. I shall read hon. members a few quotations from it. On page 140 of this book it is said—

Sir, when I challenged the hon. the Leader last year to admit that every one of the PFP’s federal States would have a Black or a Brown majority, he was silent, but in his book he virtually admits it in so many words. He concedes that the boundaries of federal States would not favour minorities. He concedes that a federation is not really suitable for South Africa. When in spite of his own negative conclusion concerning the suitability of federalism for South Africa’s problems, he nevertheless decides in good faith to accept federalism as a model, on what does he put his faith for minorities? I quote from page 140—

What is he saying by that? He is telling the White minority, for example, that as a minority group they will have to safeguard their interests by joining and obtaining the goodwill of large Black parties like Inkatha. That is where they will have to find their security. One has only to consider and to analyse the political situation in Zimbabwe to realize how slender this hope is that the hon. leader expresses. What is the position of minority parties in that country? And minority parties still exist there.

Sir, did you know that in terms of the proposal made by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, the independent Bench which is to uphold the inflexible PFP constitution and to implement the proposed bill of rights is not to be composed on the basis of merit? No, he says colour is to be taken into consideration in composing that independent Bench. He says the Bench should be integrated. He says on page 156—

Having blamed us for the fact that there are not enough Black lawyers capable of becoming judges, he says on page 157—

Just imagine that, Sir! A White Bench, composed on merit, is so unacceptable to him that it has to be “mitigated”. He uses the words “it must be mitigated.” One wonders whether the hon. the Leader of the Opposition realizes the danger of this inverted racism which he is advocating, after the controversy there was in Zimbabwe in respect of a specific court case which attracted a great deal of attention.

He says the same of the Defence Force.

Yes, he goes even further than just the Bench. On page 160 he advocates desegregation of the Public Service and the security services, and then he says—

If Blacks form 70% of the population, then 70% of the Directors-General should be Black, and so forth. This is to be the case at every level. He goes on to say—

Apart from the fact that it sounds as if the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is committing an error which he accused a colleague of mine of committing last year, it is clear that he wants South Africa to follow the same course that is being followed in Zimbabwe. I do not wish to analyse the situation in Zimbabwe, but I just want to say that these things he is advocating are being done there. Let us see what the minorities of Zimbabwe have to say about it. Are the Whites satisfied with that, or are they leaving the country in large numbers? And is the Black minority party of the Matabele satisfied, or is a rebellion brewing because they cannot safeguard their own interests and see no security in the open political system of Zimbabwe?

And if one adds to this the silly notion, which they advocate, of a Cabinet representative of all political parties and of regular vetoes which can paralyse effective government, it becomes clear that the PFP’s solution is much more dangerous to minorities and to good government than has hitherto been realized. Their model remains a blueprint for Black majority government, as the hon. member for Houghton and the hon. member for Constantia have had the courage to admit. They can deny it until they are blue in the face, but on the basis of these few quotations alone it is inevitable that a Black majority party would govern this country if the PFP ever came into power. Their policy is a model for bad government and a model for a power struggle between races in order to gain control, not only of the proposed federal parliament, but also of the councils of every federal member State. After all, there can be only one winner with their recipe of one man, one vote, and that is the Black majority. The PFP model certainly does not offer any security at all to minorities.

When we come to the NRP with their federation and confederation, we expect them to enlighten us on this. After all, the urban Blacks are a majority within the RSA. How is the NRP going to defend the White minority, the Coloured minority and the Indian minority against the Black urban majority in one federation? Their policy is identical with the Prog policy, only scaled down to the urban Blacks.

That is nonsense.

There is no further difference.

You are not that stupid. [Interjections.]

I think the hon. member for Durban Point would do well to go and read again the admission he has now made by implication, for then he will realize how close he has come to the truth this time.

The NP, on the other hand, offers all minorities the only model for peaceful coexistence. In addition to the recognition of multi-nationalism and the rigorous emphasizing of separate schools and communities for every population group, to which I have already referred, the NP realizes that it is a precondition for peaceful coexistence that minorities, nations and population groups should be granted self-determination on a rational and practical basis.

Only with an effective political power base of their own can minorities protect themselves against domination. Only by means of orderly political structures of their own can minorities and smaller population groups hold their own when it comes to consultation and decision-making concerning affairs of common interest.

Only with the retention of a full say in their own affairs, without interference by other nations and groups, can group security and the rights of minorities be maintained. This is realized by the NP and its leaders. We believe in this and we make no apology for doing so.

In spite of the misrepresentations and the charicatures that are made of the NP’s policy, every minority in South Africa—and every nation and population group is a minority on its own—may know that the minority guarantees advocated by the NP are not a smokescreen behind which unfair discrimination is being continued. On the contrary. The minority guarantees are essential to mutual trust, and only if mutual trust can be brought about between nations and population groups shall we be able to achieve peaceful co-existence and to eliminate discrimination. Without group security there is fear and suspicion, and when fear and suspicion enter by the front door, constructive co-operation flies out the back door. Only the NP’s philosophy and principles offer a logical and practical basis for what I want to call the essential group security without which no trust is possible between nations. For that reason, we on this side say “no” to the hon. leader’s motion asking for a declaration of intent, because his model, which he asks us to ratify in a declaration of intent, will mean the end of group security and the effective protection of the rights of minorities.

Mr. Speaker, we have listened carefully to the hon. the Minister who has just sat down, and I must say that we have once again been disappointed. We have heard nothing more than a eulogy of orthodox apartheid, dressed in the latest 1981 fashions. The hon. the Minister spoke of the protection of minorities and attacked the PFP for its plan in this regard, but what has the Government achieved in regard to the protection of minorities?

Peace.

Let me tell hon. members what it has achieved. This Government has achieved world rejection, rejection by every Western country. There is no political forum for the Coloureds of South Africa and no political say, or even inclusion in the debate, for the Black peoples of South Africa. How has the Government’s plan for the protection of minorities stopped mass removals? It has not stopped them. How has the Government’s plan for the protection of minorities saved the Black people from the evils of the pass laws? How has the Government’s plan for the protection of minorities saved people from economic ruin brought about by the Group Areas Act? How has the Government’s plan for the protection of minorities stopped the closing of the political organizations of the people who are not represented in this House? No, when that hon. the Minister speaks about minorities, he should first stop and look to see what is happening in terms of his own Government’s policy.

The hon. the Minister supports partition of this country. Most Blacks in this country, however, have not been consulted in the partition policy of this Government. Secondly the partition, as proposed by the NP, is not fair to the indigenous people of this land.

Are you going to recognize the Ciskei?

The entities that are being created by the partition are not economically viable and will be tied to the purse-strings of Pretoria, probably forever. The homelands policy is nothing more than an attempt to exclude the majority of South Africans from the mainstream of South African politics. That is what it is. It is an attempt to deprive people of their South African citizenship and heritage. It is merely an artificial readjustment of the numbers as those hon. members see them.

There is a final comment on that hon. Minister’s speech. To attack the PFP for debating personal merit in appointments to the Bench and other places, comes strangely from the NP. This Government has a history of political appointments in the Public Service, public corporations, in the SABC and even on the Bench itself. [Interjections.]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: Is that hon. member entitled to cast a reflection on the Bench by implying that judges in South Africa have not been appointed on merit?

Order! I think that there is much to be said for the statement that by saying that political appointments are made to the Bench is a reflection on the judiciary.

No, Sir. Some of them made very good judges.

Order! The hon. member is not entitled to use that phrase. He must withdraw it.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw it.

This is the first major debate of 1981.

You are a good agitator.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw that.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw it.

This debate is one day old. Several issues have been argued in this House, and yet scant attention has been afforded to an issue of great importance, one which has concerned the minds of all South Africans for the past week. I am referring to the summary closing of Post (Transvaal) and Sunday Post, the Black newspapers, and to the consequences this ill-advised act is going to have for our country. I shall deal with those consequences in a moment, because they affect the very tenets of the society in which we live. Responsibility for this action must be placed squarely at the door of two hon. Ministers who acted with the sanction of, or on the instructions of the hon. the Prime Minister. This most recent attack on the freedom of expression was raised by my hon. Leader yesterday in the course of the presentation of his motion. One of the hon. Ministers responsible for this closure, the hon. the Minister of Internal Affairs, has already spoken in this debate, for 45 tedious minutes and, to my astonishment, failed even so much as to mention the matter. Despite the fact that questions which are vital to the maintenance of an already shaky democracy, put to him by every newspaper editor in the country—English and Afrikaans—cry out for answering, he did not even react to my hon. Leader. I find that to be a scandal of arrogance and disdainful high-handedness such as has seldom been seen in this House. We want to know why, having done the deed, having closed the newspapers, that hon. Minister is now disinterested. Is he indifferent to public opinion? Yesterday he required answers from hon. members on this side of the House, but he seems very quiet at the present moment.

I did not get any answers yesterday.

Perhaps, having seen the stigma which is attached to this buck, he has now passed it on to his junior colleague, the hon. the Minister of Justice, to answer on his behalf, or did he act recklessly and is he just ignorant of the facts behind the closure of those newspapers?

That goes without saying.

There are still no answers. What that hon. Minister should have told us yesterday—and which he did not tell us—was why he associated himself with the cynical manipulation of the law for weeks on end in hindering the re-registration of those previously strike-bound newspapers while, at the same time, the Government gave out that the problems were really technical and legal and had nothing to do with a possible banning. All the time while he was giving that out to the public, however, he well knew that it was the Government’s intention to close them if ever they got near to publication again. No wonder he evaded the issue. Sir, it is very difficult to explain or defend hypocrisy.

Let me turn now to the hon. the Minister of Justice. It is he who in my view must bear the primary responsibility for this outrage against the Press of South Africa. There are several questions I believe the hon. the Minister of Justice must answer, for he does not only ban newspapers, but he bans people as well and mindlessly destroys the livelihoods of many persons in this country. He has stated that his main reasons for banning Post (Transvaal) and Sunday Post were that they were promoting revolution, or at least promoting a revolutionary climate, and were propagating the views of organizations his predecessors had declared unlawful. I asked the hon. the Minister: Where is the proof of that allegation?

In the paper.

I ask that hon. Minister again: Where is the proof of those allegations? If he has proof—and he is remaining particularly silent at this moment—or if he has any evidence at all, why has he not presented it to the public of this country? He still remains silent and is unable to answer these questions. Even worse: If there is proof of subversion, if there is proof of incitement to revolution, if there is proof of treason, or of illegal acts hostile to our society, why have there been no prosecutions? I put that question to the hon. the Minister now. Why then has nobody been brought before the courts? Let me ask him a further question, and I would be grateful if he would answer it now. Are there going to be any prosecutions? [Interjections.] Sir, that hon. Minister is not even able to look me in the eye. [Interjections.] He is not even able to look me in the eye and he is not able to answer. He refuses to answer. He is ashamed of what he has done. Are any of the allegations that hon. Minister has made in the Press going to be tested in an impartial court? There are plenty of laws on the Statute Book under which action could be taken. Why, for instance, has neither of the newspapers concerned been called before the Press Council, a body specifically set up to deal with examples of Press abuse or distorted reporting? What sort of guardian of the justice in South Africa is a Minister who speaks of plots of revolution and yet brings no prosecutions but only executive action based on secret information which he appears to have himself? What sort of a guardian of justice is that? Every single democratic and politically impartial legal process has been by-passed by the Government and by that Minister. He has set himself up as prosecutor, judge and executioner over his political opponents.

That is exactly what you are doing now.

Mr. Speaker, if that hon. Minister, who is usually rude in the House, wants to ask a question, he knows the rules. Let him stand up and ask his question. He need not be frightened. I shall then try to answer it. [Interjections.]

Order! I doubt whether the words “usually rude” can be allowed.

Then, Sir, let me say he is unusually rude today.

Order! The hon. member cannot merely change the words. He must withdraw them.

“Rude” is not an unparliamentary word, Sir. It never has been.

The hon. member may proceed in the meantime.

Sir, the hon. the Minister is the executioner of those he wishes to silence. Those are the tactics. They are to ban and then to issue a statement which smears people and organizations; they are the tactics of innuendo and unproved accusations.

At this very moment there is a commission sitting, appointed by the State President, to investigate and report upon the South African media. Yet it has not been consulted, it has not been advised, nor has it even been notified of the Government’s motivations for this action. I believe that it has been treated with shocking disregard and placed in an untenable situation.

Order! If the word “rude” means what I understand it to mean in Afrikaans, the hon. member must withdraw it.

It means “impolite”. It means “discourteous”.

It has been ruled unparliamentary.

Sir, I shall withdraw it and replace it with the word “discourteous”. The commission has been treated with shocking disregard and placed in an untenable situation. The report of the commission is clearly not needed by the Government, for whatever it counsels or reports, it is now transparent that if a newspaper steps out of line, it will be summarily dealt with without recourse to civilized law. At least the Press of South Africa now knows where it stands, for the moment. However, we would like to know whether the hon. the Minister will present his evidence of this “revolutionary plot” to the commission, or is he going to ignore the commission even now? Is the hon. the Minister going to place his evidence before the commission? [Interjections.] Is the hon. the Minister going to place that evidence before the commission?

[Inaudible.]

I am asking the hon. the Minister a question. [Interjections.] Sir, it is impossible to have a debate with this hon. Minister. He is incapable of debate. [Interjections.] If the hon. the Minister sticks to what he said in the Press, he will in all probability not appear before the commission. I then want to ask: What is the purpose of the commission carrying on with its work? What importance can the Government possibly place on its advice, especially if the Government is undermining the commission in this way already? It is surely a waste of public funds to keep the commission going. The honest thing to do would be to withdraw the mandate of the commission and to let its busy members go about their otherwise fruitful and normal occupations. The declared aim is to prevent the creation of a revolutionary climate and to forestall further polarization between Black and White politics. That seems to me to be the reason why this banning has been brought about, that appears to be the reasoning of the hon. Ministers concerned. But let me take hon. members back 40 years in our South African history, when this country was at war with Germany. There was then a newspaper, which still exists, namely Die Transvaler, a Nationalist mouthpiece, which appeared on the streets every day. It was virulently anti-Government; it openly sympathized with the Hitlerian cause and hindered the war effort in every way possible through the medium of the printed word.

They were traitors.

Even given the fact that the country was at war at the time, if the Minister of Justice of that day had closed the newspaper down, what would have been the reaction of the Afrikaner people of the 1940s? I want to suggest that the result would have been that those people would have been alienated from the Government of the day. They would have been alienated and divided from English speakers.

Your problem is that you hate the Afrikaner.

Mr. Speaker, I am trying to make a serious point. They would have been alienated and divided in those days from English speakers. The politics of those days, which were difficult enough, would have been even further polarized and many otherwise peaceful people would doubtless have been driven to radical action, perhaps even to illegal action. Those were stirring times. But yet that is exactly what the Government is doing to the Black people of Soweto today. Their only voice has been removed. They have no political forums in which they can seek redress. They cannot take court action to prevent this closure. They are already a politically and economically deprived community and now their only own public safety valve has been removed. Instead of hard news, rumour, underground pamphleteering and suspicion will reign. More than any other recent Government action, this step will alienate, polarize and radicalize the Black population of the Witwatersrand, just as the closure of Die Transvaler 40 years ago would have done to the Afrikaner people of those days.

Let us take the matter further. These two newspapers acted as barometers of the temperature of the township and as a means of conveying Black attitudes to the sadly ignorant White population of this country. Yet another, but this time most crucial source of information, is now blacked out and unavailable for assessment, not even to mention the hardening attitudes which this step is bringing from countries abroad, particularly from the Western countries, where the freedom of the Press is still regarded as being precious.

No, Sir, this Government’s commitment to Press freedom has, in my view, always been dubious. Its determination to achieve total control regardless of the consequences, is now obvious to all. Do you doubt the correctness of that statement, Mr. Speaker, when only a few weeks ago, just as a journalists’ strike had been settled, the Government, uninvited, stepped in and banned the journalist labour leaders, Sisulu and others, taking away from those people concerned, their freedom of movement, their freedom of communication, and their very means of earning a living, consigning them to a twilight life of non-existence?

I have travelled widely recently, and have spoken to many political people. I do not believe that there is such a thing as a “total onslaught” bearing down on South Africa. [Interjections.] I believe that there is hostility. [Interjections.] There is hostility towards the racist policies of this Government. Certainly, communist countries are exploiting this antipathy. A “total onslaught”, though, is arrant nonsense. What there is, is a Nationalist conceived total strategy to condition the people of South Africa, by every means possible, to a state of total obedience, and this involves a total onslaught on civil liberties within this country. [Interjections.] Hon. members are incredulous, but there are three signposts that we can look to. The first of these is the closure of newspapers, restrictions on the dissemination of news, censorship of publications and films; in other words the anaesthetizing of the minds of the public of South Africa. That is one of the tools of authoritarianism.

Is this denied? Is there any hon. member who denies that? [Interjections.] Sir, they deny it. The second signpost is the banning, the exiling, the restricting and imprisoning of people, without charge, without redress, without hope—in other words, the silencing of outspoken critics. Is there any hon. members who denies this signpost? [Interjections.]

There is also a third signpost; the tendency to govern by ministerial decree, by executive decision; in other words, the exercise of untrammelled power, free of constraints, which may be imposed by any court. In past years more and more power has been concentrated in the hands of the executive, a political body taking political action, and all this is enclosed in the tattered mantle of democracy, properly sanctioned by a legislature duly elected.

I am about to sit down. Hon. members may be pleased to hear this. [Interjections.] It is high time that a warning was issued to South Africa and to South Africans. If the Government can close down someone else’s newspaper today, it may close down yours tomorrow. If the Government does not hesitate to deprive another man of his freedom this week, it could be your freedom that is affected next week. This drift to autocracy must, in the interests of all of us, be halted.

Finally a very serious word in the ear of the hon. the Minister of Justice, and in the ear of the Government itself, as well as in the ear of the public: I do not regard the NP as a latter-day Nazi organization. I do not regard it as that at all, nor even as committed despots. Let there, however, be no mistake. No matter what the good intentions may be, if this Government uses the weapons and the tools of Nazism, of Fascism, of dictatorial communism, of totalitarianism, if the Government continues to use those sort of tools in their struggle to preserve that in which they believe, then the opponents of the Government, the victims of their actions, will, in greater numbers, day after day, turn to the very ideologies which the Government seeks to destroy, because for such people this brand of so-called democracy is not worth saving.

Mr. Speaker, I shall reply to the hon. member for Sandton during the course of my speech. Let me say at once, however, that he was extremely unfair to the Minister of Internal Affairs. The hon. the Minister of Internal Affairs, after the registration of these newspapers had lapsed and after a court order had confirmed this, stated clinically and directly what was stated in the Act and what the rights of these people were. He did not conceal them. What the hon. member overlooked was that these provisions are contained in the Internal Security Act and the legislation pertaining to the registration of newspapers. It was the duty of the hon. the Minister to state the matter in that way, without beating about the bush. At that stage it was not necessary for him to indicate what the situation of those newspapers in respect of security was for the simple reason that those people must have got the message that the registration of those newspapers did not lapse in terms of the legislation on the registration of newspapers, but in terms of the Internal Security Act, which was created for the very purpose of dealing with such situations. The hon. member, as well as other people involved, did not get this message. Consequently the hon. the Minister has not been dealt with fairly.

Mr. Speaker, it has been said that the hon. the Minister shut the newspapers down, that he closed them. Let us see who shut what down. It is necessary for us to examine this situation to find the correct perspective. There were four Post newspapers, viz. the Post (Transvaal), the Saturday Post, the Sunday Post and the Post (Natal). Post (Transvaal) and Sunday Post were closed by Black strikers who made publication impossible, with the result that the registration of the newspapers lapsed. After the owners, who applied for reregistration and condonation, were given an indication that a ban was being envisaged, they relinguished the registration like adult people, because they got the message and knew what it was all about. The Government did not close them down. The Saturday Post was closed by the owners themselves. It was decided to stop publication even before the registration of that newspaper lapsed. Allow me to put this fair question to the Opposition and some journalists: Why did you, who were so concerned about the mouthpiece for Black people, not rebuke the strikers when the news did not come through for weeks on end? Why are they not rebuking the owners because they allowed the registration of the Saturday Post to lapse. Surely they, too, stifled the Black voice. Were the striking journalists concerned about the grievances of the Black people which had to be aired? Were they concerned about ascertaining what they were thinking? What is more, in this whole process Post (Natal) was not affected at all.

Is that the next on the list?

There was no, nor is there now any intention to take action in regard to that newspaper, for the simple reason that the Government is not of the opinion that its publication, as the newspaper has been produced up to now, was harmful to the security of the State and the preservation of law and order. Another newspaper, the Sowetan, is available to the readers, and the same owners are continuing the publication of that newspaper. That newspaper was reregistered. It is now a daily. I wish to state unequivocally that the policy of that newspaper is determined by the owners, and as long as it does not affect the security of the State there will be absolute peace and we shall not be interested in anything accept uninhibited and unmanipulated purveyance of news to Black readers—to which I shall refer in a moment.

What qualifies you to be the judge?

Sir, it is wrong to say that the Government begrudges the Black population a mouthpiece. The Government also demands for the White reader, in exactly the same way as for the Black reader, and vice versa, the right to receive the correct news.

Of these five newspapers for Black readers owned by the Argus Company, one closed down itself and two remain operative. Hon. members must not forget that. I hope that this will put an end to the accusation that the Government is in any way interested in curbing Black opinion-formers.

There are other newspapers as well which are aimed at the Black readers’ market. I hear that the Rand Daily Mail Extra has benefited considerably from the strike and also from the lapse of the registration. I understand that their circulation figures have risen considerably.

Now one knows who they vote for.

I wish to deal briefly with the alleged impulsive actions of two Ministers, and I wish to say at once that the image which was projected of these actions having been arbitrary and dictatorial is extremely misleading. It was not that way at all.

A responsible Government deliberates collectively on questions of security which affect a country, for it is the task of the Government to guarantee an orderly community and the safeguarding of that community. A Government can delegate many powers. It can farm out many initiatives and responsibilities, but the preservation of law and order within the borders of its country— and that includes the safeguarding of its borders—it will not delegate to a single Minister or a single Government organ, or farm it out to private enterprise, and least of all to an Opposition.

The Government, being a responsible Government, accepts its primary obligation of safeguarding South Africa against any attempt, internal or external, to endanger the orderly continued existence of the South African community. Attempts to destabilize the country so that it has to follow the same course taken by Iran, will be neutralized by all means at the disposal of the Government.

The Government considers its safeguarding action to be an essential prerequisite— and this I wish to emphasize very strongly— for its initiatives in the field of ethnic relationships and for the promotion of its efforts to achieve a dispensation in which each population group will be able to exercise its fundamental rights and realize its aspirations without let or hindrance.

Hon. members may perhaps now ask: If the Government cannot farm out or delegate these responsibilities, what does the machinery look like? Over the years a stable Government has been building up a collective expertise and insight which does not rely on the expertise of the Opposition, or on the insight and advice of any individual member of the Government. Such a Government sees to it that those of its State organs which are principally concerned with security matters remain on the alert in a continual process of assembling information. These processes are geared to looking after the security interests of the State and not those of a political party which is in power. This, too, I wish to emphasize.

The South African machinery which is discharging this function, and which has been refined by the hon. the Prime Minister, has been disclosed on more than one occasion. And that is why I am astounded at the charge of so-called unilateral, arbitrary actions on the part of some Minister or other.

The machinery which was created to deal with security matters has various components. Let us begin at the top. There is the Cabinet, the State Security Council, the working committee, and various subcommittees on which senior Public Servants serve. In fact it is not only Ministers who have expertise in these matters; expertise is widespread among our State organs and is thoroughly utilized. I reiterate that the acting parties who are interested in sabotaging South Africa’s present dispensation are also interested in knowing how and what we know in regard to security and also in regard to their plans. That is why it is essential that what is being envisaged should be kept within the machinery in a way which one does not publicize every day as so far as security intelligence is concerned. That is why it is essential that we should also ensure that the expertise is protected. That is why I shall not refer to any particular person in this connection. However, I do want to put it to the hon. members that it requires a practised ear and observer when one is listening to one and the same report which a clandestine radio station is broadcasting from a neighbouring State to South Africa and is also being published in The South African Communist in London and Sikaba of the ANC. It requires further expertise to be able to observe and realize that a particular reporter of Post, for example is suddenly, almost simultaneously, beginning to publish similar reports verbatim. If this happens once, it is all very well, but if it happens repeatedly, then warning bells ring, and it would be an irresponsible Government that did not take heed of them. Therefore, to ask me to produce the evidence of revolutionary intentions is surely absurd. If I give hon. members the one report, and they do not have the necessary background, how can they judge? Therefore, because this expertise is an integral part of the executive, it is admitted in the Western world that the executive is pre-eminently equipped, and also has the duty, to evaluate matters of security and that it also has the power to take preventative measures if it has to protect the security of the country as such.

To come back to the Post newspapers: I have sketched a system to hon. members. I hope hon. members understand that there is a large measure of expertise in regard to the matters in question. It has been more than a year now that the newspapers of the Post group have been coming to the attention of our security service. For obvious reasons I shall not be able to tell hon. members what procedures were adopted, although I think the Opposition would very much like to know. Although, as a result of this, sufficient material and evidence exist to take action against a newspaper, the Government is aware of the counter-productive consequences which could result from such a step. We also realize the value which something like this would have for the hostile propagandist. Therefore one must realize that the alternatives were weighed up, the possible consequences. Therefore, in order to escape this situation, alternative methods of trying to deal with the situation are constantly being examined. Towards the end of last year it was becoming clearer all the time that drastic steps would inevitably have to be taken against the Post. A fact-finding committee, prescribed by the Internal Security Act and consisting of experts, was appointed to report on the Post (Transvaal), the Saturday Post, the Sunday Post and Post (Natal). This fact-finding committee which instituted an independent investigation, assembled facts from other sources besides the intelligence organs of the State and found that Post (Transvaal) and Sunday Post and the Saturday Post were indeed a continuation of The World. In addition they served as a means of expressing views which were being propagated by unlawful organizations and also of expressing views or furnishing information which was aimed at endangering the security of the State and the preservation of law and order. No finding was made in respect of Post (Natal). [Interjections.]

Was Post allowed to rebut any of those allegations?

In assessing the Post newspapers the Government paid thorough regard to the premise that the media has a right to criticize . . .

Was Post allowed to rebut any of those allegations?

… but that this right should not be confused with fomenting revolution, or with incitement.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. the Minister a question?

Mr. Speaker, I shall give him an opportunity later. I would be unfair if I did not also state that the Post did in fact have a quota of sober and enlightening reports, particularly in the beginning, but before long the image of objectivity was supplanted by revolutionism, activism and far-left radicalism. No report can be considered in isolation. Surely there has to be an interaction between reports. The sum total of such reports would in themselves, I believe, be sufficient to enable a finding on the Post to be made. Nevertheless this was not sufficient as far as the Government was concerned. What was sufficient then? In the past in was not deemed to be in the public interest to furnish reason for a standpoint or decision such as this which involved security matters. However, I consider it to be of greater public importance that I inform this House of what was in fact happening in the editorial offices of the Post group. The overall picture which was presented, was sufficient to enable a decision to be made that the actions of these newspapers were conducive to revolution. What am I referring to? I am referring to a court case in which a certain Mkhwanazi was involved, a member of the editorial staff of Post, who was charged in terms of the Terrorism Act. Consequently that is my reply to the hon. member’s question of why a prosecution was not instituted. Here is a case in point. Here is an example.

You should have prosecuted the newspaper.

On 12 March 1980 this person, together with a number of others, was found guilty in a Pretoria regional court. In the course of the case tape recordings were made available, and from those it appeared that the accused had liaised with the news editor of Post in Johannesburg and that they had agreed that the latter would publish certain reports which would coincide with the departure of prospective terrorists from South Africa.

Was he charged?

They were charged.

Who was charged.

Mkhwanazi was charged. [Interjections.] If hon. members insist, I can say that that news editor was implicated until a short while ago. That shows how serious the matter is.

Was he charged?

Cognizance was not taken of the fact that he was involved. There is also the additional fact that the Freedom Charter of the ANC was published in full by the Post in June 1980.

Ton Vosloo says that you must speak to them. Are you going to prosecute him as well?

One can therefore understand what happened. In the court case it was disclosed that the Post offices was the place where terrorists met and received their briefings before they left South Africa. [Interjections.]

So you ban the whole newspaper!

If that was not sufficient evidence, allow me to elaborate further on this point. During the period 28 September to 29 October 1980 900 cm of propaganda in the Post was devoted exclusively to the ANC. Converted into the old terms—which the hon. member would perhaps be better able to understand—that is approximately 30 ft of propaganda in favour of the ANC, unmistakably revolutionary, unmistakable incitement, unmistakably intended to polarize, unmistakably intended to foment hatred not only of the Whites, but also of Mr. Gatsha Buthelezi and other leaders of National States.

The tremendous scope of the pro-ANC propaganda which was published in that particular month becomes particularly more significant in the light of the fact that the Government has very good evidence that Mr. Percy Qoboza indicated round about that time, during the second half of last year, that he could no longer endure the pressure of a specific revolutionary organization and that that organization had already taken over the Post and that there was nothing he could do to stop them. I maintain that no Government possessed of that knowledge— and most of it is public knowledge—could allow an organization, which had stated that it wished to overthrow the State, to control a newspaper in this country. The consequences could be destructive, not only in the sphere of security, but also in other spheres. What would happen if it were to become known among investors in this country and elsewhere, for example, that such a situation was being tolerated? There would no longer be any confidence in the government of the day. What measure of distrust would there not be if the Government were to fail to take action? Consequently I say that one must call a halt at some point and say: “So far and no further.” One must do this, for if one ends up on the slippery slope where one allows subversive elements, alien elements, to control one’s newspaper, the conclusion can be drawn that there may be conflict, and if conflict is inevitable—and someone has to lose—one may even be on the losing side, and the next step is that one may as well give up.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. the Minister: If he was aware of the fact that people who, according to him, were supporters of the ANC and of revolution, etc., had taken over the newspaper, why did he not take action against those people? Why did he take action against the newspaper?

I told hon. members a moment ago what the Government had already done and what it was still going to do. Up to now it has been public policy to say nothing about it, and I shall adhere to that standpoint. [Interjections.]

You boycott the courts!

When we come now to the question of registration, it is an accomplished fact that the Post had the scent of revolution in its nostrils. The owners of the newspapers were informed that this was the case, and they understood very well what was at stake. They then withdrew their application for reregistration. My reply to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is that if the messenger has contracted a contagious disease, if he has become leprous, he must be isolated, otherwise he will infect other people and the disease will become an epidemic. Therefore one preferably finds a new, fresh messenger who cannot be manipulated.

I wish to deal briefly with the allegation that the staff should have been charged and that the evidence in regard to subversion should have been made available. I state categorically that the hon. member for Sandton is thoroughly aware that one cannot charge a person on the grounds of a single newspaper cutting, but only on the grounds of an entire complex of facts.

Why do you not bring Jimmy back?

Order! I want no further interruptions from the hon. member for Bryanston.

One can only charge a person on the grounds of an entire extensive complex of facts. When the State therefore thinks fit, it charges and prosecutes, as it did in fact do in the case which was adjudicated in March 1980.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. the Minister a question now?

Just wait a minute.

I now want to deal briefly with the question of the hon. member for Sandton in regard to the Press Commission. Is that hon. member arguing that the Terrorism Act should be suspended for two years while this commission and the Rabie Commission on security matters are deliberating? If he is saying that, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition must please repudiate him when he makes his reply, because it is an absurd approach.

The Terrorism Act is a blight on the Statute Book of South Africa.

Order!

The hon. member also asked whether I would make the evidence which we have at our disposal available to that commission. That commission is competent to call for evidence as it sees fit and I shall leave the matter at that.

In conclusion I wish to dwell for a moment on The Cape Times. The Cape Times attached a whole series of persons, myself in particular.

Are they on the “hit” list?

I must say that it made me feel considerably better when I found that they were not praising me. It is very clear that they, in the same way as the hon. member for Sandton, want us to prosecute and find guilty on the grounds of a single cutting. That is a naïve, childish and, at best, child-like approach. If that is being expected of the Government, we are being expected to make ourselves ridiculous, and we refuse to do that.

Mr. Speaker, may I now put my question?

Yes.

Were the management of the Argus company or the editorial staff of Post given any opportunity to rebut any of the allegations that have been made here or earlier, prior to the banning or closure of their newspapers?

In terms of the relevant section of the Act it was not necessary to do that at all. [Interjections.] It is not required at all. What is more, we are not dealing with a question of banning, but with a question of registration. On this issue the owners decided to abandon their request for registration. The question is therefore totally irrelevant, superfluous and argumentative.

Mr. Speaker, at a later stage I shall go into what the hon. the Minister has just said, in greater detail, but I just wish to make the initial comment that one of the most disconcerting things he actually said today was that the newspapers had been closed down but that the guilty persons were still at large.

That was not what I said.

Then why did he not charge the guilty persons?

I first wish to refer to the Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs. He is actually one of our more clever Ministers, but today was certainly not one of his best days. He ventured onto dangerous ground by trying to make out that the NP was the only party that could protect the rights of minorities. Sir, we hear this from a party that has absolutely no formula for the protection of the rights of minorities. The hon. the Minister referred to schools. Let me say at the outset that the NRP unequivocally accepts that the matter of education and schools is an intimate one which, politically and administratively, should be controlled by each group separately. That is how one protects the rights of minorities. But what do we find under the Government of the hon. the Minister? The Coloureds are a minority group. But who has the final political say over their schools? Who controls the budget? This House controls their budget. Where is their representation here? The Coloureds as a minority group are being absolutely dominated under this Government. What about the Indian community? Where are the Indians who represent them?

†The Government has no formula for the protection of minority groups. It is just a question of domination, of “baasskap”.

On Friday, when notice of the motion of no confidence was given, there was once again laughter from hon. members opposite, but it was not the best performance of laughter I have witnessed here, and there are very good reasons for this. The main one is that deep down in their hearts hon. members opposite also have doubts about their faith in the Government to rule the country effectively and to protect us.

There are of course those who will only wake up after disaster has struck South Africa. I am very pleased that I am speaking after the hon. the Minister of Justice, because he is one person who should know how little time there is still left for laughter in South Africa and how powerless the Government is. Last week he gave us the startling news, which he repeated today, that according to his and the Government’s considered opinion two Black newspapers must be banned because they are fomenting revolution in South Africa. Today he gave us a long list of reasons which he regarded as conclusive proof of their attempts to foment revolution. If the hon. the Minister is right in his assessment—no one will ever know, because the Government’s action will never be tested in court—then, surely, the Government must go and deserves a motion of no confidence, because if our safety and security depends on banning actions and threats, the Government has lost control over the situation in the country and cannot survive. There cannot be one hon. member who honestly and seriously believes that by banning two, or even five or six newspapers, that the problem will just go away and be solved. Newspapers can only foment revolution if conditions exist in the country which make it possible for them to foment it. The Government has failed in the past and is still failing today in providing South Africa with a programme of action to remove the platform from which would-be instigators of revolution, be they newspapers or politicians, can operate. I am saying this with full cognizance of the so-called new deal which is supposed to come. Black newspapers are mainly directed at the urban Black communities. We have had to listen to what extent the Government has lost control, to the extent that those newspapers’ offices were a sort of point where would-be terrorists gathered and information was passed on. This indicates to what extent the Government has lost control of the situation. They have now closed the newspapers, but possibly these people are now meeting a few streets further on. If these newspapers are directed at the urban Black communities, what should be the number one priority? It must be the proper political accommodation of those urban Black communities. There is no real evidence to show that the Government is even seriously attempting this. At this point the Government deserves a motion of no confidence because it has no programme whatsoever to meet that challenge. The problem, of course, is that the Government stubbornly believes that there are easy, cheap and painless solutions to our problems and that they will go away with a minimum of effort, but that is where they are wrong. Let us take the urban Blacks as an example. We have heard about the so-called “Koornhof new deal”. Even if they should take cognizance of most of the 500 proposed amendments or suggestions that were put to them, what would be the result? Perhaps it would make life somewhat easier for some Blacks and improve and beautify their cities, with an increase of municipal rights as a bonanza. But that is all. If this is all that is required to solve our problems, South Africa has never had a problem.

Do hon. members know what the problem is? The problem lies in the policy, in the philosophy of this NP Government, because within their policy and within their philosophy no solution exists to the question of the proper political accommodation of urban Blacks. They can fiddle around with half a dozen laws but it will be of no use unless they can provide for the political aspirations of those people. The sooner South Africa realizes that the hon. the Prime Minister and his party are not part of the solution to our problem but that they are part of the problem itself, the better it will be. No matter how “verlig” they try to be, their philosophy will ultimately prevent them from delivering the goods, as it were. Therefore, the road ahead under the present Government will become one along which bannings will become almost a permanent feature.

That is already the case.

Only three years ago The World and Weekend World were banned. It is no use only fighting the manifestation of this problem. The root causes of the problem must be tackled. We must meet the political aspirations of the people in question. There can be no special deals in terms of which we can try to solve this problem.

I should like to turn now to another very serious problem. That is the problem of accommodation which has occurred as a result of the phasing out of rent control and the indiscriminate conversion of blocks of flats to be sold under sectional title. Representing, as I do, a central urban area, I can assure hon. members that never before have the people living there found themselves in a situation in which their future is so dark. What lies at the root of this problem? In the first instance it is once again a stubborn Government. Secondly, it is a Government which always has all the answers, which never wants to listen to advice. Thirdly, it is a Government which always rushes into things without considering the possible results. Basically it is a Government which has lost all contact with the ordinary citizen and his needs. Let us accept that during the past six to twelve months the whole accommodation scene in South Africa has changed. It has been disturbed. The former fine equilibrium that existed has been disturbed. Disturbed by what? By the phasing out of rent control without steps first being taken by the Government to make alternative accommodation available and possible.

Secondly, the problem has been aggravated by the complete laissez-faire attitude of the Government. “Hulle laat maar net Godswater oor Godsakker loop.” This has been allowed to happen through the indiscriminate conversion of flats which have been put up for sale under sectional title. This is an absolute disgrace. Now, after all these things have taken place, the hon. the Minister suddenly wakes up. This is the sort of thing that always occurs. It is the one thing of which we can always be sure. When the Government has been doing the wrong thing for a long time it invariably wakes up too late. The Government now wakes up and comes to the fore with proposed legislation and with—mind you—an indignant outcry about people who are allegedly abusing the system. The Government, however, is the guilty party. It refused to listen to advice, thereby making the abuse possible. No single threat, I believe, can undo the harm that has already been done. One cannot unscramble a scrambled egg. From these Opposition benches we pleaded in vain that the conversion of flats to sectional title should be controlled and be restricted only to new or fairly new buildings. Arrogantly our advice was dismissed. Instead of new developments taking place, the only thing that has happened has been the conversion of buildings which should never have been allowed to be converted. This has resulted in an effective increase in rentals. In some cases rentals have increased fourfold and in others even up to eightfold. Modest, single-bedroomed flats have been sold for R30 000 or even R40 000. Whoever has purchased such a flat must be able to show at least a 10% return after allowing for rates, maintenance, administration etc. The original rental of between R70 and R80 a month has, as a result of this, increased to at least R350 or R400 a month. There is nothing the Government can do once these transactions have been concluded. It is of no use to say that a need tenant will enjoy protection. That protection has become a joke. Ultimately rentals approved by rent control boards will be brought into line with rentals charged for uncontrolled flats. We have already been informed of instances in which rentals for controlled flats are in excess of those charged for uncontrolled flats. This is also a result of the current system.

The Government has double-crossed a great number of people, including those who have now purchased accommodation under the sectional titles scheme, and especially our senior citizens, who live on fixed incomes and on pensions. This is the sort of thing that can only happen in a country in which the Government has been in power so long that it has lost contact with the ordinary citizen; when those who rule the country have forgotten what it is like to be poor.

We are told that the phasing out of rent control will bring new housing units on to the market; but where are they? For instance, in the central city area of Durban only one new luxury block has been built and, according to Press reports, the rentals of these flats will be about R1 000 per month. It is absolutely soul-destroying to have to listen to the tales of distressed elderly people, many of whom are in their eighties, asking one for advice in regard to alternative accommodation. One knows that there is no alternative accommodation available and that, if it does exist, it will be at a price that these people cannot afford. I say that unless something drastic is done the Nationalist Party is going to drive elderly people into backyards and force them to live under the most distressing and appalling circumstances.

That has already happened.

Either this will happen or these people will be forced to take action themselves. One elderly gentleman said to me: “Let us establish a squatter camp. At least then I shall be able to buy food.” I think that in many ways the authorities are so busy planning grandiose new schemes for future generations that they have forgotten about the people at present requiring accommodation. They must never forget that they have a responsibility towards those people as well.

The Government always decides on the right thing too late. Let us take the situation as far as Black housing is concerned. For years and years the then member for Green Point, Mr. Lionel Murray, pleaded for site- and -service schemes. What did we find? This was rejected; but what do we find today? The Director-General for Co-operation and Development says now: “Let us have a new deal. Do not let us use the old traditional methods but let us meet the problem through site- and -service schemes.”

No original thinkers!

Now, Mr. Speaker, when we talk about a group of people who have been cheated over the years—I am not going to use the word “boereverneukery” (confidence trick)—we can of course talk about the teachers of South Africa. I cannot understand the position at all. When one listens to the super Afrikaners, they tell one that the education profession is the one in which one finds the largest number of broeders. Now, Sir, if one broeder can do to another broeder what the broeders have done to one another in education, then I do not want to see how they treat their enemies! I have now reached a stage where I am no longer prepared to take promises seriously until such time as I have seen results. How can one? Over the years we have had wonderful promises being made to the mother of professions. We heard them from State Presidents and even from Ministers of Finance, and on top of that we have also heard them from an ever-changing succession of Ministers of National Education.

†You know, Sir, that the portfolio of National Education has of course become a sort of portfolio in transit. One sees Ministers come and one sees them go, something like a railway truck at Germiston or De Aar.

*Sir, the atrocious neglect of education in South Africa is something that cannot only be laid at the door of some Minister or other—and that is the charge I am making today. Some of them were incompetent Ministers, and there were also some of them who were not incompetent, but this neglect has its origin within the Cabinet and the blame for this neglect must be placed where it belongs, and that is at the door of the Nationalist Party. It was the Nationalist Party that simply did not accord education the priority it should have enjoyed over the years. In that same Nationalist Party there is still a lack of understanding in respect of the position which education ought to occupy in our society today. For too long, education and the teacher, male and female, have been exploited. In my view, if ever the Government deserved a motion of no confidence, it is on the question of education as a whole. There is no time now to discuss the whole tragic history of what has happened over the past 10 years. I just wish to refer to one point, and that is that it has been scientifically proved that in real terms, salaries in education from the primary school to the university, are in a poorer state than they were in 1970, and we must also bear in mind that in 1970 already the teaching profession had a Cinderella place in the heart of the Government. How can one support a government that has never made a serious attempt to let education share in the material welfare of the country? We have experienced economic booms and also economic recessions in which the private sector made an effort to adjust salaries; but this simply did not happen in education. I am not trying to be unreasonable. I can accept the fact that there might never be parity between salaries in the Public Service and those in the private sector. I can accept the fact that there will always be some gap or other, but that gap should be a reasonable one. Under the stated pretext that it cannot compete with the private sector, the State has continued to pay teachers salaries which are an insult and then tried to appease them. There were people who were prepared to work because they had a love for education, but on account of their love for the cause, they were ultimately exploited. I know I will be asked why I am mentioning this now, since we have heard so many promises about what is going to be done for the teacher this year. Why am I discussing the subject in this vein, since so many commissions of enquiry are looking into the matter? Look, we are no longer accepting promises in this regard. Even if it were to happen that an equitable increase in the salaries of teachers were to be announced in April, I still believe that the Government will have to offer more than just that. The Government will have to make a reconciliation offer. It will for example have to offer to pay out a single amount to compensate that profession for the harm it has suffered over decades. Of what use is it to approach someone now and to tell him that he will receive an increase upon his retirement the following year? Such a single amount would perhaps be something that would create confidence and perhaps be accepted as a token that the Government can in fact keep its promises.

The payment of such a single amount is possible and it is not necessary for me to motivate this on the basis of the financial position of the country. I need not even mention the money that is available as a result of the gold “bonanza”. One need merely listen to the Nationalist Party MPs when they relate how well it is going with the country, how tremendously we are growing, etc. The money is available.

†I want to point out that there must also be a realization on the part of the Government that the crisis in education covers the whole spectrum of education, and not only the schools. It covers the whole field from the university or tersiary level downwards. It also covers the education of the whole community, White and non-White.

Unco-ordinated education planning for the various race groups in South Africa is one of the most important problems and should be eliminated urgently. In the past I have pleaded for that elimination in vain, because the problems still exists. The time has passed that we can deal with these matters on an ad hoc or haphazard basis.

In conclusion I should like to say to hon. members whether they like it or not, the new Republic must come in South Africa. [Interjections.] As I see it, however, in the New Republic there will be no place for the present Government. The main reason why I believe there will be no place for them, is that the Government has through the years acted too selfishly. They have unnecessarily tried to retain power in their hands. It is precisely this that is endangering us and it is why we have, according to the hon. the Minister of Justice, newspaper offices becoming focal points for terrorists and subversive organizations: The Government has tried to be too selfish. For too long the Government has denied the other population groups in the country a meaningful say.

Let us look at the situation. A period of only 19 years remains before we move into the next century. We are now in the third year of the supposedly verligte Prime Minister’s Government, but what realities do we face today? We have a unitary system of government and only one Parliament that is all powerful. What is more, it is an all White Parliament. Yet, there are 2,5 million Coloured people as a minority group. An hon. Minister spoke only yesterday about the protection of minority groups, but this minority group has no political representation whatever except for two, three four or five nominated members of the President’s Council which in turn has nothing more than advisory powers. Is the Government playing the fool with us? [Interjections.]

There is another minority group, but what does this verligte Government do about them? I am not even going to make a Dallas joke about the situation because I believe that the members of the NP are very sensitive in that regard. The Indian community has no representation whatever in South Africa; they only face domination. The next century is only 19 years away, but a newspaper’s office is being used as a so-called focal point for terrorism.

There are millions of urban Blacks, but they too have no real political representation where they live. Yes, we shall make their cities pretty, etc., but they will have no political rights where they live. They do not even have a say in the President’s Council. Yet we sit here and say that we are going to protect them and save them! This Government is endangering the White community in South Africa as no other Government has ever done before. Why? It is because of their selfishness. They are not prepared to give to others what they want for themselves. Who are they trying to bluff in regard to the year 2000?

I just want to end off by saying to my hon. friends on my right . . .

Your friends?

Well, there may be friends there as well. I just want to say that even the official Opposition must have a good look at themselves. As long as one denies groups in South Africa political accommodation in the negotiation process one will find that one cannot find a solution to the problems in South Africa.

And no support.

Well, somebody says “and no support”. That may be the root cause of the problem.

No Nats will support us; that is the whole problem.

No right-minded person can withhold his support. [Interjections.] The NRP’s experience has been that we are the party who do not have to fear the negotiation process because whenever negotiations have taken place what was the likely settlement? It has not been a denial of groups as the NP sought to do by saying that there would be no urban Blacks. Neither was it a sort of no-group accommodation such as the PFP wants, viz. that everybody must be on the same roll with a counting of heads and a proportional representation. Every time there has been accommodation on a group basis. We experienced this in Natal in our negotiations on local government level. In the end there was group accommodation after negotiation. What brought the people at the Turnhalle together at the end? It was a group accommodation formula. What brought peace to Zimbabwe at Lancaster House when Mugabe and Nko-mo, Muzorewa came to agreement? What did they agree to in the end? In the end they agreed to a form of group representation.

What does that mean now?

They did not agree on proportionate representation but they agreed that even though there were only 5% Whites, they would have 20% of the seats and that this would be done on a basis of separate representation. All I am saying is that the new republic will be built as a result of negotiation, but in the end the philosophy of the NRP will be the one on which the foundations will definitely be laid.

Mr. Speaker, I have to hold a by-election meeting in Bezuidenhout and perhaps another one in Cape Town Gardens and I shall want to get in some practice now. I just want to say briefly what I shall say at those by-elections.

Come to Moos River and tell them about dairy farming.

I have already sold all my cows. I should prefer not to discuss that. If I were to hold an auction with this lot—they are all old mastitis cows—I should get nothing.

To begin with I should like to say something to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and afterwards I shall come back to what the hon. member for Durban Central had to say. I have got hold of his 13-point plan. Actually there are a few more, in fact about 26. I quote—

The hon. member for Durban Central asks: “What brought peace to Zimbabwe?” If we adopt this policy, there is one thing we must realize. If we seek to bring about peaceful coexistence for minorities and majorities then we must get one thing into our heads: In our political thinking we cannot follow the path of the rest of Africa as represented in the political thinking of the African. It simply does not work. It will not work in Zimbabwe and it is doomed to failure. In every country in Africa where there has been a cry of “one man, one vote” there is no longer a cry of “one man, one vote”. There is no such thing any more. On our own threshold we can look at a country like Lesotho. One can mention them one by one. Those hon. members want to go in that direction, but I predict that there will no longer be one man, one vote in Zimbabwe. There will be domination of the small one by the bigger, stronger one. What is happening in the countries which the White man has left? I shall refer to this again in a moment. One has but to analyse a country which the White man has left. I do not wish to oppress anyone or trample them underfoot, but when the White man has left a country, that country’s economy has decayed, as has its agriculture. Subsequently such a country experiences a food shortage. Is it, then, so necessary to tell a man that you are giving him a vote, but at the same time depriving the country of its brainpower or initiative? Should one not rather say that one prefers to give the brainpower the opportunity to educate and develop people until they are in a position to govern themselves as a Western country is able to do? That is what I ask myself.

The official Opposition says—

They are not going to invite anyone. They will not be able to invite anyone, because they should just take a realistic look at their basic principles and consider how they may be applied in the milieu of Africa. They must then decide what section they will be able to invite because that section is prepared not to be rebellious.

There is something I should like to say to the people of Bezuidenhout and, if need be, to the people of Orange Grove. The people of Bezuidenhout must realize that according to the norms of the PFP, a large company in Bezuidenhout could buy out every third White house—as a capital-strong company it will be able to do so—and allow Blacks to live there. That is in accordance with the policy of the PFP. I am now addressing the voters of Bezuidenhout. Chaos would occur in this country if that policy were to be implemented. Let us take a realistic look at circumstances. I have said in this House that I do not demand for myself anything better than any other man. I am prepared to live in Mamelodi or Atteridgeville. Must I be forbidden by that party to say: “I shall go and live in Mamelodi and the Black man of Mamelodi can go and live in Sunnyside, but what I want—and I stand by this—is that a person of my own colour should live to the left and right of me?”

And behind and in front of me.

Yes, behind and in front as well. Is it wrong if I say that I call that group of White men in Mamelodi together and ask them to go and plant trees with me on Saturday afternoon in order to beautify our residential area, and we see to it that tarred roads are built there? In other words, we shall beautify the place of our own accord, and beware the man who chops down a tree. May I not have the right to say that I prefer to live like that? May the Black man not also develop so far as to be able to say that he wants to live with his ethnic group?

How many Blacks are living in Sunnyside now?

That is not the question. I am holding a meeting in Orange Grove and I am telling the voters of Orange Grove what my party stands for. Can I be condemned if I adopt such a standpoint? [Interjections.] Then I shall also go to the Zulu and say to him: The hon. Dr. Van Zyl Slabbert wants you, as a Zulu, to have a Tswana as a neighbour. And I would also say to the Tswana: The policy of this Opposition is that the Zulu and the Tswana should live together and throw their ethnic principles overboard.

Not “must”, but “can” if they want to.

But surely that is how it goes if there are 5 million Zulus and 2 million Tswanas. What will eventually happen? The Tswana will tell me: With your skills, ensure my continued existence.

I speak to the Black man under the Bushveld tree. I do not speak to him in the Carlton Hotel. I speak to him under a shady tree when the Bushveld sun is at its height, and I know his language and his character. It is pointless wanting to develop a small group now if the masses do not understand this thing. What do the masses seek? The masses seek job opportunities, stability, a full stomach and a happy family. That is what the masses seek. The masses do not understand the principle of what is discussed in these council chambers. They have no idea what goes on in the UN.

Do you say they think too slowly?

Order!

We must look at these things realistically. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition criticizes the Government. We have made mistakes and I admit it. We are engaged in new initiatives and new breakthroughs, but things do not happen overnight. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition made a very reasoned speech. I am not prepared to simply disparage everything. He made certain points effectively and I listened attentively. I have respect for his reasoning ability. However, he sank to the level of asking whether the NP could carry out these initiatives, and his words were: “Is Andries going to move?” I wish to tell the hon. the Leader of the Opposition here and now that everyone on this side of the House speaks the language that I speak.

Oh no, now you are really talking nonsense! What role do you play in Dallas? After all, the Prime Minister is JR.

I just want to say to the hon. member for Yeoville that because he understands this kind of infighting, he does not understand what goes on . . .

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: Is the hon. member for Yeoville entitled to make that remark? [Interjections.]

Order! I was unable to hear the point of order.

Mr. Speaker, the point of order is this: Is the hon. member for Yeoville entitled to make that remark, namely: “What do you play in Dallas? The Prime Minister is JR.” I want to know whether that is permissible.

Order!

Mr. Speaker, there is a report in this afternoon’s newspaper that the hon. member for Rissik referred to the hon. the Prime Minister as “JR”, and that was all I was referring to. I do not think that the hon. the Prime Minister is “JR”. It is the hon. member for Rissik who thinks that he is “JR”.

Order! The hon. member for Yeoville referred to such a report here. I know nothing of the report; I have been sitting here from 2.15. Any direct or indirect reference by the hon. member for Yeoville to the effect that the hon. the Prime Minister is “JR” must be withdrawn.

Mr. Speaker, I shall withdraw it, but really . . . [Interjections.]

Order! I am not here to play games. I have already given my ruling. As far as I know, this character is regarded as a kind of villain, and for that reason I decided that the remark should be withdrawn.

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: I want to make it very clear that I in no circumstances sought to infer that the hon. the Prime Minister was “a kind of villain”, to use your words. I never intended it and I never said so. I resent that.

Order! I have already given my ruling.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Yeoville interrupted me. He speaks of problems on this side of the House. He speaks about the Ewing family and such people when he speaks to us. I read here: “Schwarz threatens walk-out—hisses from congress as he loses power bid.” That is where the problem lies. Ever since I came here in 1966, the number of Opposition benches has steadily dwindled. However, look at the Government benches after 32 years, despite all the cruel allegations that have been made. I understand that an allegation was made in a newspaper to the effect that a colleague of mine supposedly spoke about a “JR” and so on. I serve on a committee which investigated the matter. The hon. the Leader of the House will also make a brief statement for what it is worth. [Interjections.]

Why not ban the newspaper?

What did we find? The whole thing was based on gossip. From beginning to end it was gossip. However, I am speaking to the voters of Bezuidenhout, and I say to them: “With their policy they can never come to power. They have only one tiny ray of hope and that is that there may be a split in the NP.” However, I can give the assurance, as far as the split is concerned, that if we split within the next 20 years, I shall buy a case of wine for each of the hon. members opposite. There will not be a split in the ranks of the NP. [Interjections.] Our cause is too important.

“Sir De Villiers Graaff Schoeman”.

Order!

‘“No Prog split’, say Suzman and Schwarz.” Sir, can you believe it? “There is no split in the PFP on the basic political philosophy according to Mrs. Helen Suzman and Mr. Harry Schwarz”. I, too, can read what Mr. Harry Schwarz said in October at their congress. Deep in his soul he knows that he is not at home in that group.

At least I have a soul.

We know you have a soul, but your soul is unhappy in that clique.

There are a few fine members opposite, but can you imagine, Sir, how inherently frustrated they must be? When I speak to Blacks and ask them what they think about the policy of the hon. members opposite, they laugh. They ridicule them. In that congress—it was in the newspapers— one of the members of that party said: “Not even the Blacks accept our policy.” That is the situation one has today.

Who said that?

Now this kind of smokescreen is put up. The Whites of Bezuidenhout and of Orange Grove reject their policy and the Blacks of the country reject it. The tragedy is going to be that after the by-elections, we will have conquered yet more Opposition seats. We tell the voters frankly: “You must not concern yourselves about all these smokescreens.” A former Prime Minister said: “Jelly cannot split.” However I maintain that jelly, too, can split. You can take my word for it that there are going to be more problems in that party. In contrast, our party is constantly engaged in drawing up plans so as to find solutions and order affairs in the best interests of all groups and all colours in the country.

Take for example the recent discussion concerning the Press. Why should double standards be used? If there is one person who advocates Press freedom in a democratic country with a free economy, it is I. [Interjections.]

You have got me fooled.

The hon. the Minister of Justice spelt out clearly that the survival of even a leader of a Zulu group has been assailed due to certain activities.

But he did nothing about it.

No, he is not doing anything about it.

Order! Hon. members may reply when they have a chance to speak.

Since the freedom of the Press is under discussion, I want to read to hon. members from their own Bible. I kept this stuff in my drawer thinking that I would only have the opportunity to speak about it later. In any event my turn is not coming up with regard to railway matters. It seems to me that the Railways are running so well that they do not want to attack them. Let me read what the Rand Daily Mail had to say. I said that double standards were being used. I am in favour of the freedom of the Press.

Turn the page over. There is a bargain offered on the other side. [Interjections.]

In an editorial entitled “Mr. Mugabe and Press Freedom” the Rand Daily Mail has the following to say—

Hoe waar tog—

The article goes on—

It is understandable in Zimbabwe, but it is not understandable in this country. It resulted in infringements on Press freedom on a vast scale. However, no one is dissatisfied with Mr. Mugabe. [Interjections.] Is that the direction in which things are developing? For the Black man something is all right, but if the White man takes the same steps for certain reasons as spelt out by the hon. the Minister of Justice, it is wrong. I repeat that I regard the freedom of the Press as something which each of us wants to retain. Fortunately the Press in South Africa, with a few exceptions, does not seek to assail the survival of the minority group by organizing rebellions. If the Press does not do this, then they can criticize me if they want to. It keeps me on my toes if I know that the Press is going to criticize me about the administration of my department. I welcome the freedom of the Press, but they must not assail the survival of a minority group and bitterly attack the Government about such a thing.

The problems concerning inflation to which the hon. member for Durban Central referred, do exist. He referred to the new hon. Minister of Community Development and State Auxiliary Services. Where can one find a better man as Minister of National Education than Dr. Gerrit Viljoen? [Interjections.] The hon. member should afford the hon. Ministers the opportunity to show how they are going to rectify matters. I was sitting in the House when hon. members advocated the lifting of rent control. I was in the House when hon. members called for the introduction of sectional titles, but we were unaware that a slump in the building industry was on its way. No one invested capital. Those with capital were not prepared to invest. There was a financial slump, and then suddenly we had a growth rate of as much as 8%. There was an industrial revival and flats were sold under sectional title. The new hon. Minister will furnish the replies on these matters in due course. The economy recovered so rapidly and the rand is so strong today that we are in fact having a difficult time with regard to exports.

Then give the teachers what is due to them.

But I am asking the hon. member to give the hon. the Minister a chance. He does not hold the purse strings. The person with the key to the safe is the hon. Minister of Finance, and they are engaged in coming to an agreement and they will find a solution. The future of the child of every hon. member in this House, whether he be for or against the Government, is in the hands of the teacher and I share and sympathize with the feeling that there should at least be calm in that profession.

We have been hearing that for decades.

The hon. member will see how it is going to be solved. [Interjections.]

What about overtime payments to the Railway staff? [Interjections.]

I am a member of a Government which came forward with a President’s Council. This is a totally new development in a new direction. The hon. member for Durban Central says loudly that we on this side take the decisions, but where are the other groups that can take decisions? I have given the hon. member the reason why we cannot simply give those groups the right to take decisions. If we were to do so, we should go the way of the rest of Africa.

Oh no, Hendrik.

Mr. Speaker, I know what will happen, after all. We know what happened in Zimbabwe. If perhaps the hon. member for Durban Central comes back to this House next year, then we can talk again. Then I shall outline to him what has happened in Zimbabwe.

When is the election, Hendrik?

The by-elections are on the way. [Interjections.] I was referring to the by-elections that are going to take place. I am looking at the hon. member for Orange Grove. When we do have a general election one day, I think he will have to keep a very close eye on matters in his constituency. [Interjections.] The hon. Leader of the Opposition wanted to know what Nationalist understood the 12 point plan. As far as the 12 point plan is concerned, I am going to tell the voters in Bezuidenhout that I can give them a guarantee that they will not have mixed schools under an NP Government. I shall give them the assurance that they will have separate residential areas. I shall tell the Black people what the NP Government, particularly the hon. the Minister of Co-operation and Development, is doing. I shall tell them that we want to uplift and develop them and do not want to oppress them that we want to improve their situation constantly, and make it better than in any other African country which can be compared with South Africa.

This Government—according to hon. members opposite, the weak one—this country on the southern tip of Africa of which the population comprises a mere 6% of that of Africa and the surface area a mere 4% of the continent of Africa, is a country which today generates 50% of Africa’s electrical power and possesses 60% of Africa’s rail network and which has created employment opportunities as a result. I concede that we are faced with the problem that 4 million Whites have to do the thinking and planning on behalf of more than 20 million. We shall have to uplift the Black man more rapidly so that he, too, can assist in the economic development of this country. I am not ashamed to say that we are training Black people to do certain types of work which are today still done by Whites. After all, we have to keep the country’s wheels rolling despite a shortage of labour. I do not know how much time I have left. I have another nice thing to say but I do not want to irritate my hon. Chief Whip. Accordingly, in conclusion I just wish to state clearly that I go to meet the future with optimism and enthusiasm. I am not prepared to oppress anyone and I am striving to afford everyone in this country—Black, White and Coloured—a job opportunity, to provide him with food and to develop him to the stage in which he will be intellectually mature enough to take part in self-government in the way in which we shall prescribe to him and not in the way hon. members of the Opposition prescribe to him. If we were to listen to the official Opposition, then we should really be in trouble.

Mr. Speaker, I am really very sorry indeed that we have had to listen to the hon. the Minister in his new capacity as Minister of Transport Affairs, making what I can only call a completely racist speech. I never expected it from him. It was the sort of speech that one used to hear in the Deep South of the United States in the 1940s. It is not the sort of speech that one expects to hear in the Republic of South Africa in the 1980s.

I might say the hon. the Minister should remember that there was a time when everybody swore that there would never be mixed hotels or mixed sport or mixed restaurants or mixed pubs in South Africa. Yet all these things have come to pass and the heavens have not fallen. For the hon. the Minister therefore to threaten to make byelection speeches in constituencies such as Bezuidenhout, Orange Grove and, no doubt, Houghton, in the 1980s is, I believe, a most extraordinary thing for him to have done.

I should like to put it to the hon. the Minister that in every one of those suburbs of Johannesburg there are in fact more Blacks living there than Whites. He seems to think, however, that as long as it is a master-servant relationship, the most intimate type of residential integration may continue, but one may not live with a Black man as a neighbour. I think the hon. the Minister should examine his own sentiments again.

I would also remind him that he is now Minister of Transport Affairs, and that he perhaps has more important things to think about. One of the more important things to think about is how to get the Black urban population to work in such a way that they do not have to get up at four o’clock in the morning to use his trains. That is something the hon. the Minister should be worrying about instead of working out racist speeches to deliver in Orange Grove and Bez Valley.

Sir, I want to come back to the no-confidence debate. We are about to launch ourselves this week on the uncharted seas of another session of Parliament, and this is, I think, as good a time as any to issue a warning. Of course I am well aware, as the hon. member for Durban Central has pointed out, that it is not the custom of this Government to listen to good advice. It is not the custom of this Government to take any notice of objections which come from this side of the House. Indeed, I think I could probably count on the fingers of two hands the number of meaningful amendments to Bills that have been proposed by the Opposition and accepted by the Government over, say, the last 10 years. As for changes in policy, it seems that it takes about 25 years before the penny drops.

They are slow thinkers!

Yes, they are slow thinkers. I think, for example, of the whole question of the bottleneck in skilled labour in South Africa. I think of the warnings that were uttered from this side of the House year in and year out about the absurdity of trying to develop the resources of South Africa with the skills of only 20% of the population. Now, Sir, we are paying the price for that, not only because of the skills which have been denied these people, but also because basic education and training has been so poor for the remaining 80% of the population that we have virtually lost a whole generation of potentially skilled workers. We cannot train all those people now to be skilled workers because they have not had the basic education which would enable them to be trained. I think of the ludicrous policy of regarding all urban Blacks as being temporary sojourners, which has been followed by this Government for over 30 years, and which has resulted in this enormous backlog in urban Black housing. To date it has reached a figure of something like 420 000 houses, according to Mr. Mills, the Director-General of the Department of Co-operation and Development. Now we are faced with an estimated cost of something like R820 million per annum over the next five years just to wipe out that backlog, let alone to try to provide for the natural increase. Now, at long last, as the hon. member for Durban Central has mentioned, the Government has finally decided to accept a sort of site and service scheme, which members on this side have been proposing for many years. I want to warn the hon. the Minister that if that scheme is to work, he will have to have community participation. If you do not have that, it will not work. Most important, you have to have acceptable title. It is no good just providing the infrastructure and the land, giving people access to raw materials and saying: “Build your own houses.” You have to have the community participating actively and, most important, they have to have some stability; they must have security of tenure of those houses.

Despite all these examples of Government obstinacy over so many years, one goes on trying, although one knows very well that this Government is not likely to take any advice. I wish to give a warning today that we simply cannot afford to repeat 1980, the year of unfulfilled promises, the year of expectations aroused but not realized, the year of disappointment as nothing was done to remove the laws entrenching discrimination or to reduce the daily harassment to which Black South Africans are subjected.

We hear that 800 laws are going to be repealed. I sincerely hope they are not simply going to be laws that have fallen into disuse, but that they are going to be laws whose repeal will in fact improve the daily lives of the Black population. We read every day in the papers of grandiose schemes. Right through last year we read of grandiose schemes. Only the other day I read that R600 million has been set aside for Soweto and Alexandra. The report details a number of projects which are on the drawing board. Sir, they must come off the drawing board and become a reality.

Last year Parliament voted large sums of money and we were told there was going to be a crash housing programme. The hon. the Minister himself told us that thousands of houses in Soweto were going to be provided with electricity by September 1980. He told us this in March; he said that within six months thousands of houses in Soweto would be provided with electricity. I wonder if the hon. the Minister will tell us how many houses had been provided with electricity by the end of last year. My information is that not more than 1 200 houses in Soweto had been provided with electricity by the end of last year.

It is amazing that we could have arrived at that position in such a short time.

It is not a short time. In March the hon. the Minister said that thousands of houses in Soweto would be provided with electricity by September, yet by December only 1 200 had been provided with electricity. That is not a crash programme, Sir!

The hon. the Minister’s speech yesterday was full of these burgeoning schemes, these wonderful promises. I want to tell the hon. the Minister that two weeks ago I drove around Soweto and I looked for signs that there are large scale . . .

And you did not see anything?

No, let me make my own speech; I let the hon. the Minister make his. I noticed some better quality houses being built in Pimville and elsewhere by a building society and by the Urban Foundation, but I did not see any sign of a large scale housing scheme per se that would provide housing for the masses. The hon. the Minister shakes his head; I hope he will tell me where to go and look next time because I traversed the length and breadth of Soweto, east, west, north and south, and I saw nothing, nothing that could really be said to improve the quality of life for the masses of people in that township and that, surely, is what we are aiming at.

The hon. the Minister must tell us how many new houses in fact were built during last year. Is it any wonder that Mr. Mills, the Director-General of the department, said only the other day that the position of Blacks is “stagnant, hardly different from the ’forties”?

I want to warn the House of the consequences of the disappointments of 1980. These consequences are to be seen in the disturbances that occurred last year; for instance, the school boycotts in which something like 85 000 schoolchildren took part and the bus boycotts when people walked for months rather than pay an increase in busfares. We also had a number of industrial strikes last year and in all this, of course, the mailed fist of the Government was very evident through police action, arrests, detention under the security laws, the banning of newsmen and the closing down of newspapers serving Black people.

None of these strong-arm tactics has any effect whatsoever except to increase the hostility and resentment among Blacks but that appears to be lost on the Government. One cannot curb criticism by closing down Black newspapers and one cannot ban ideas by banning Black newsmen.

Every year that passes in South Africa without real improvement in the lives of the masses is a further step towards the ultimate polarization between Black and White, and that is a fact that is not understood by the Government.

Now we enter another year and all eyes are fixed on the hon. the Minister of Co-operation and Development’s “New Deal” as he presented it. He is the archpurveyor of promises. The “New Deal” has been embodied in three draft Bills which the hon. the Minister published in the Government Gazette at the end of October. The public of South Africa was generously given two weeks in which to comment on these Bills, on these highly complicated, badly worded, ambiguous Bills and, when an extension of time was requested, it was refused.

For several reasons I am not going to go into these Bills in any detail today. In the first place, they will be presented to Parliament and there will be ample opportunity then to discuss them in detail. Secondly, the hon. the Minister told us yesterday that the draft Bills are going to be amended. Furthermore, the explanatory memorandum told us that the Bills as presented reflected departmental thinking only and that the Cabinet had not yet had time to reflect on them.

I can only presume then that when the great brains in the Cabinet do reflect on these Bills we are going to get really meaningful amendments which will take cognizance of the strong, adverse criticism that has been levelled against one of the draft Bills—which, by the way, was originally incorrectly entitled. That is the Bill on Black Community Development—and criticism has been voiced by every person or organization that has had the misfortune of having had to wade through that ambiguous measure, be it the Press, the Legal Resources Centre, Inkatha, the Chamber of Commerce, the Black Sash, the Institute of Race Relations or the hon. the Minister’s favourite organization, the umbrella Urban Councillors’ Association. However, whether the draft Bills are going to be amended or not, does not absolve the hon. the Minister of Co-operation and Development from explaining to this House how he had the brazen effrontery to misrepresent the contents of those Bills at the Press conference which he held at the end of October.

Yesterday, my leader quoted the words the hon. the Minister used, and they were—

He went on to say—

What blatant nonsense the hon. the Minister was talking! Are Whites subject to a fine of R250 for being in an urban area without authority? Will the hon. the Minister say . . .

Why do you not wait until you see the final Bill?

Is the hon. the Minister . . . [Interjections.]

I am not prepared to argue with you along those lines because these Bills are still under scrutiny and I resent your attacks on me.

The hon. the Minister can resent the attacks as much as he likes but the comments he made were on the draft Bills. They were on the draft Bills as they were published and that is what he said at the Press conference.

For what reason were they published?

Do Whites have to produce permits on demand to prove their right to be in an urban area? The penalty, I must remind the hon. the Minister, as I read the Bill, has now been increased from R20 for non-production on demand to up to R250. Do Whites have to have approved accommodation before they can move into an urban area or before they can move from one urban area to another urban area? Does an employer have to get permission from a designated officer before he can give a White man a job? Does he have to have permission? Of course not! In other words, what I am asking is whether influx control, which is what regulates the movement of Black people and which the hon. the Minister says he wishes to retain anyway, applies in any way at all to White people.

I say you are misrepresenting the case.

I am misrepresenting nothing at all. I quote the hon. the Minister verbatim.

You are misrepresenting grossly from . . .

I am asking the hon. the Minister questions of law.

I thought by now you would be much more responsible than I have now found.

I thought that by now the hon. the Minister would have realized that all these airy-fairy promises that he so vaguely makes will eventually come home to roost. Eventually he will be asked to make good the promises which he has made.

I now want to tell the hon. the Minister that production on demand, whether it be on the street, at the work-place or at the home of the Black man, is going to entail just as much harassment as before the hon. the Minister declared war on the dompas. That is what he must look at before he presents his amended Bills to this House.

What do you think he is doing at the moment?

I hope the hon. the Minister realizes that in their present form the Bills destroy whatever security of tenure section 10(1) Africans have as far as future generations are concerned. He had better take a very close look at that. Unless the Bills are drastically amended I believe that these measures will go down in history as a scandalous betrayal of a solemn undertaking. I also believe that the credibility of the hon. the Prime Minister, who sent all those businessmen home all starry-eyed and bushy-tailed from the Carlton Hotel last year, will disappear like the morning mist, let alone the credibility of the hon. the Minister of Co-operation and Development who is already being known as the dispenser of Smurfy’s Law of Rising Expectations. I want to warn the hon. the Minister and the hon. the Prime Minister—they must not be too frightened of the Kappiekommando!— that they must take their courage in both hands and they must go ahead and implement measures which are going to make a difference to the lives of the masses. I say that because already there is a deepening mood of hostility amongst Black people which has been aggravated by the deprivation of citizenship, by the ever-rising cost of living and by the rise in the cost of rent, transport and foodstuffs. This great economic boom that we read so much about seems to have evaded the Black people.

The only saving grace is that the Blacks listen to us rather than to you. If they had listened to you, we would have been in hell a long time ago.

I do not talk about the clock reading five to twelve, because I know full-well that with all the powers at their disposal, the military and paramilitary might, with all the banning powers that Ministers have and with all the detention-without-trial powers that Ministers have, they can hold the situation for a very long time, but the warning I want to issue is that that situation can only be held at the cost of an increasingly uneasy life for all the White people in South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, to begin with I want to point out that I have been listening to the arguments of the hon. member for Houghton for many years already. Consequently she must forgive me if I say that her time in Soweto is running out, because she is systematically picking up political problems with regard to Black affairs in South Africa. Why? For months the hon. the Minister has been formulating legislation to improve the standard of living of Black people in the White areas in South Africa.

And only two weeks allowed for comment.

For days I witnessed how the hon. the Minister consulted for hours with various bodies, community leaders amongst the Black people and leaders in the national States, regarding this so-called new dispensation that he wants to create. However, the problem is that that hon. member has to attach a political stigma in advance to this legislation which the hon. the Minister proposes to submit to the House during this session.

[Inaudible.]

After all, it is easy to create a stigma concerning Black affairs. Politically speaking, this is one of the most sensational, emotional matters, and over the years that hon. member has specialized in whipping up emotion regarding every possible matter when she argues in this House about the position of Black people. However, under the leadership of this hon. Minister, she is going to find herself on the losing side as far as her popularity is concerned, when it comes to improving the position of Black people in White South Africa.

She thinks she is the MP for Soweto.

Allow me briefly to mention a few aspects with regard to the improvement of the position of the Black people in White areas. The hon. member referred to the question of housing. It is true that we in South Africa have a housing backlog. This applies to all population groups. Under the leadership of this hon. Minister, this Government has taken certain initiatives in order to alleviate the housing problem for Black people, in Soweto in particular. I am thinking, for instance, of the leasehold scheme. I have the relevant figures here in front of me. We are making tremendous progress in this regard. At the beginning of this year there were only 50 requests in connection with this scheme. At the moment 600 requests have already been granted, and 1 980 are being deliberated upon. Therefore, this scheme has begun to gain momentum, a scheme by means of which a Black man can build his own house by means of leasehold and accumulate assets for himself in order to develop greater commitment for his family within his own area.

No thanks to you. Thanks to the employers.

I can mention various examples. There is the Planning Committee, under the chairmanship of Mr. Rive, with its electrification scheme—I think this is common knowledge—to the tune of R180 million. It is a very extensive scheme which proposes ultimately . . .

Yes, ultimately!

… to make electrification facilities available for houses at a cost of an additional R150 million.

They should have had it years ago.

That is progress. The upgrading of the standard of living of Black communities in White areas is increasing all the more rapidly. The Co-operation and accord of our Black leaders is also on the increase. They are beginning to co-operate within a specific system which this Government has been implementing in South Africa for years, viz. our policy of separate development.

In his motion of no confidence, the hon. member referred briefly to Black affairs, but he did not use the arguments which the hon. member for Houghton used. He used something else. He produced a newspaper cutting in which it was reported that the development of the national States was not a success. He elaborated upon this and said that it was in fact a failure. Then, with reference to the magazine published by the Bureau for Economic Research, he said that this is what Benso says in this regard.

The development studies.

Development studies. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition referred to it, but I think that he wrested the entire matter grossly out of context by means of that reference. I want to say at once that it is old news to this Government that all the development programmes have not proceeded as successfully as we would have liked. But it is in fact as a result of the reports by Benso that it became part of the development strategy of this Government in the national States.

Thirty years later.

We do not want to allege that there should not be a much greater demand for development programmes. On the contrary, the strategy of the Government is to make more and more instruments of policy available in order to further promote development in the national States. I could refer to several of these matters, but I should just like to quote a few paragraphs from Benso’s document from which the hon. the Leader of the Opposition did not eventually quote. He simply referred to it.

Can you give me the page number?

Page 433. It is from the concluding paragraph of the specific article where the writer states the following—

I quote further—

That is a contradiction.

No, it is not a contradiction. I continue—

Surely this is the policy of this Government. Surely these are the foundations that he speaks about. Now they grasp this sentence—

We do not deny this fact. On the contrary, we accept it. It is in fact because of this that we can continue our development strategy in this regard.

Allow me to mention a few examples of progress in the national States as far as the development of their own economies is concerned, as well as the development of their own values and independence. The hon. the Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs referred to the independence referendum which was held in the Ciskei. I may perhaps mention for the information of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition that the Minister has already agreed in principle to kwaNdebele being declared a self-governing territory as from 1 April 1981. There we have another territory that is going to be placed on the road to independence and is going to move towards it. Over the past years and months there has been thorough consultation on a variety of subjects between the leaders of all the different national States and the various Cabinet Ministers. It concerned matters relating to citizenship, constitutional affairs, a development bank for Southern Africa and the Small Business Development Corporation. New legislation is being discussed with them. An excellent spirit of co-operation was shown throughout these discussions. Therefore, consultation and co-operation is taking place all the time.

With a view to planning, a technical committee was put together which will ultimately submit proposals to the Government regarding possibilities for co-operation and standpoints with regard to principles. I am thinking here of a specific matter which, to my mind, is a very important step in the development strategy of the national States, viz. the idea of a development bank and the growing awareness of the economic interdependence which arises in consequence thereof. This will mean that greater consultation will take place in the economic sphere between the various national States with regard to the different development programmes. In the nature of things, a bank of this kind will have to discuss the financing aspects in detail. One can also think of the Small Business Development Corporation. It is common knowledge that this has met with a great deal of approval, in the private sector too. Within a matter of a few hours, the shares were fully subscribed. This indicates confidence. It indicates a spirit of Co-operation. It shows that there are greater possibilities for development, etc.

I could refer to various co-operation projects, although I do not want to go into them in detail. For instance, there are Co-operation projects in the sphere of forestry. When a national State has this natural resource at its disposal, funds can be made available by the development bank or the development corporation in order to launch a tremendous economic development project on the long term. I could continue in this way. There are various co-operation projects in which the private sector too is involved, amongst others. For instance, there is the scheme in which the Tongaat group of companies is involved. The management of that group provides the skill and the Economic Development Corporation provides the financing. This is to the advantage of approximately 3 000 Zulu families. The annual turnover of this enterprise is about R5 million and this is channelled to the Zulu families. I could continue in this way to point out the economic co-operation with the national States and how it will continue to bring about growth and development. In the process of co-operation, which forms the basis of a constellation, more importance will also be given to the independence of national States. On the basis of this, on the basis of the initiative of the hon. the Prime Minister, national States are beginning to show an interest in the development project and agreements can be made on a multilateral basis in order to obtain co-operation and create opportunities and to build them into a system of economic inter-dependence. In that way, the independence of people is being realized and the policy of the Government is continually creating a more dynamic position and the leaders of the National States will continue to show more interest in the development system that the Government is proposing for the Black people.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Deputy Minister of Development told us with some pride that there are now some 600 applications for the 99 year lease scheme in Soweto. I think it seems reasonable to assume that with a population of over 1 million, there are probably some 200 000 houses in Soweto and that 600 houses represent something like 0,3%. If, after 32 years of NP Government they feel that this is an achievement I feel that we are still going to see on their tombstones the epitaph: “Too little, too late and not done properly anyway”, because we should not have a 99 year lease scheme. We should have proper home-ownership for those people there to give them a real stake where they live. If the Government could make up its mind what it is going to do with the urban Blacks, or had made up its mind some years ago, as it should have done, when the old United Party told them then to grant homeownership to the people in Soweto, I lay claim to say that we would not have had the riots in 1976 and we would not have had the sort of situation today where the hon. the Minister of Justice has to ban newspapers because they are preaching revolution. If we had treated these people properly, made them feel part of South Africa and made them feel that we could co-operate with them and together evolve a system which would involve them in Government we would not have had these problems.

Tell us about your system.

The hon. the Deputy Minister has heard about our system. We have raised this issue and we will raise it again and again. However, the Government is taking it over piecemeal. If the Government is going to take over our system and ideas they must give us credit for the fact that they have seen the light in regard to some of the moves we have made in Natal. Give us credit, take over the ideas and carry them out properly. Do not take them over piecemeal, little by little, which is too little, too late and then . . .

. . . muck up the whole job.

We have before us a very wide term of reference in the open motion of no-confidence in the Government. I think it is an interesting exercise to look at the different portfolios and to look at the situation as it pertained a year ago, or perhaps a little longer ago, and to ask whether we are any better off today than we were when we assembled here last year to debate a previous motion of no-confidence. I believe that if one looks at hon. members opposite from the Opposition benches one sees a very worried Government. I sense that. I sat in the public gallery 20 years ago and listened to the no-confidence debate of 1961 and I have had the opportunity, over many years, of seeing the Government in action, or inaction, as some people might say. My gut feeling today is that we face some very, very worried men. I believe that if I were in their shoes I would also be a very worried person because their policies have led us to a stage where South Africa is in a tricky situation today and the Government have no one to blame but themselves.

I want to look at some of the portfolios on which I speak on behalf of the NRP. Let us look at the crises we have had in our health services over the past year. We have had large outbreaks of typhoid. We have had a rabies crisis in Natal, which was dealt with half-heartedly at first until it became a major crisis. We have had the outbreak of cholera. I think it is a disgrace and an absolute blot on our copy-book that in a healthy, Westernized country like South Africa, we have had 22 deaths to date from a disease like cholera, which is entirely combatable. By means of simple, sanitary measures and by supplying communities with clean water there is no need in the world of today for any country—let alone a country as wealthy as South Africa—to have to say that 22 people have died of a preventable disease. One only has to look at the provision of ambulance services to see that the Government is incapable of carrying out its own legislation. The Health Act of 1977 provides that ambulance services must be provided by the provincial administrations, but that can only happen if the Government votes the funds to the provincial administrations to carry out those services on its behalf. We are awash with money. We hear over the television network at the drop of a hat how many thousands of millions of rand have accrued to our benefit from the gold bonanza but, three years after the passing of the Health Act, we are still in a situation where the Exco in Natal does not know whether the Government is going to pass this session or next session or some time in the future a budget which includes the amount of money which is necessary to run the ambulance services.

This sort of administration is just untenable from a Government that has been so long in power, and that is so strongly in power. It is not as though they sit here with only a tiny majority. They have a strong majority and they should get on with these things.

One looks, for instance, at what they are doing with the environment of this country. One looks at the projections of the population to which we are going to have to hand over this country by the year 2000. The figures are startling, and if we are going to hand over to them a country in which the quality of life is good, in which we leave things as clean, as productive and as beautiful as we can, I think the Government is going about it the wrong way. I should like to take, as one example, the coastline of Natal. We are at present dumping into the sea, along the coastline of Natal, wastes, effluents, poisons, sewage—one can only name it, it is being dumped out there—as a result of permission given by departments of this Government. I submit that it is time to call a stop to this despoliation and this polution of our environment. It is a fragile environment. We are taking chances now without even knowing whether, in future years, we shall be able to restore to its natural and proper state that part of our coastline, if we continue to dump into the ocean there the sort of substances that we are dumping there now. This proposed pipeline, for instance, which is going to be built into the sea at Richards Bay, is going to be used to dump into the ocean over 3,5 million tons of insoluble gypsum over a one-year period. It will amount to 18 million tons in five years’ time. That means that in five years’ time we might have to come back here and say we should not have done this. This gypsum is smothering the ocean-bed. It does not dissolve. It is floating down the current in suspension and it has made a tremendous mess of our coast. Then it will be too late, however. We will not then be able to go in and remove 36 million tons of gypsum. On behalf of the people of Natal, on behalf of the conservationists in Natal and of the Natal Parks Board, as well as fishermen and the visitors who go there from the other provinces, I urge the Government to put a stop to dumping and to using our oceans as dumping grounds. [Interjections.] We have to accept in principle that we have to stop dumping at sea what we do not want, or what industrialists do not want, on land. They will simply have to build into their cost structures a way of disposing of those wastes without dumping at sea what we do not want to have on land.

They can dump it in the sea at Mossel Bay, and then we will see the reaction from those hon. members. [Interjections.]

I look at the portfolio of energy and I examine the record of the Government in this field over the last, say, seven or eight years, since the war in the Middle East. During the year in which the Arabs decided they were going to put up the price of oil we had frantic changes in South Africa. Nobody had ever considered the possibility that the price of oil might go up dramatically. What happened? We did not have an in-depth investigation into the possible effects of this price increase. The speed limits were chopped arbitrarily overnight, and huge penalties were imposed on motorists who broke those speed limits. That was bad enough because that carried on for four or five years. Then, however, we had the crisis in Iran, and that was when the panic really started within the ranks of the Government. Sure, we had contingency plans. It would have been criminal neglect if we had not had contingency plans. I have heard it on very good authority, however, that when the then Minister was told what we actually had in strategic oil reserves at the time, he “nearly fell off his chair”. I believe that events subsequent to that proved that statement to be very likely true. What happened then? We had instant panic on the part of the Government. We had the yo-yo years with the speed limits. It was 120 km/h, then it was 90 km/h, then 80 km/h, then 70 km/h, after which it went back to 80 km/h, and again to 90 km/h. We had people whose full-time job it was to drive round changing the signs just about every week because there was not sufficient information and no proper research had been done in order to come to a really proper decision in the matter. Our freeways became snail trails. Motorists had to travel over long distances to appear in court, using up the very petrol they were supposed to be saving. Field officers pulled in something like R5 million a year in fines. Then, Sir, what happened after that? Selling hours were chopped, changed and changed again. Today nobody really knows what the situation is. All we know is that the fuel price rocketed. And then there was the secrecy. We passed Bills in this House which made it almost impossible for anyone to find out what the true situation was, and I believe members of this House, either privately or publicly—although I would prefer it to be public—should know what the situation is. An informed House and an informed public is our best guarantee of people co-operating with measures that might be unpopular. But no, Sir, everything was swathed in secrecy. Nevertheless, the news has leaked out that we are not short of petrol. There is no shortage of petrol in this country. We have been exporting it all over the world.

You are a Hertzogite, are you not?

No, I am not a “Hertzogiet”. That is the most ridiculous thing to say, and that hon. member knows it. I would never be a “Hertzogiet”, although he might be, and a lot of his colleagues might be—probably more than he would be prepared to concede. There are no “Hert-zogiete” on these benches, of that I am sure. In any event, that secrecy achieved nothing, and today we have the situation that the public has lost confidence. There is a gaping credibility gap between the Government and the public. The public are not supporting those conservancy measures because they do not believe that they have been told the truth. They are tired of stories. I wonder what the South African motorist would say if the media, which are supposed to be open to all of us, were to tell him that we are exporting petrol to overseas countries where they sell it for 20% less than we pay for it here, seven days a week.

Where?

I shall tell you, if you want to know, but I wonder what the motoring public would say. I think the people who are getting to know these facts are thoroughly fed up with the Government for conning them in regard to the fuel situation in this country. People are entitled to ask where they stand in this issue. It is no secret that last year I launched a petition in Natal calling on the Government to open up the petrol selling hours, to make petrol available seven days a week. I want to repeat that call here today.

What happened to that petition?

It is getting a very good public response. I have had ’phone calls from all over the Republic asking me for forms. Hon. members opposite would be surprised to hear that the public supports calls like this, but they know that they have been conned. Sir, we would make petrol available to this country seven days a week because we do not believe the present legislation is achieving anything. We believe that it has been imposed on our motorists for too long. Because of this we are finding that petrol is being sold on the black-market. Motorists are carrying tins of fuel in their boots because they may have to make long trips over a weekend. They are turning their vehicles into travelling time bombs. We have had to give the police another unpleasant job, stopping people at road-blocks to search out these tins of fuel. And yet we have an excess of fuel in this country, Sir; it is flowing out of our ears. I do not say so; the chairman of Sasol has said so on TV. But this House does not know it, Sir. This House is not told the true facts of the situation. The Minister has never come to me and said: “Look, I shall give you this information on a confidential basis.” [Interjections.] It comes out of the back door every time. That is why I am raising the matter in this House. The whole situation has been grossly mishandled.

There is another thing, Sir. I believe we are paying far too much for fuel. I want to say that the NRP is committing itself to a fuel price of 40 cents a litre in this country. It is an absolute commitment which we make to the people of this country, that we will supply petrol to them at 40 cents a litre. I believe it is time the Minister looked very seriously at this situation, because we are paying amongst the highest prices in the world for the fuel that we buy. I want to say, Sir, that if that tired old coalition over there cannot do it, then it is time they made way for some new people with new ideas to look at ways of solving problems and not making the problems worse. [Interjections.] I refer deliberately to this Government as a tired old coalition, because I believe it is the broadest-spectrum coalition government this country has ever seen. We have sitting there artificially united trains of thought in a coalition that is proving itself daily incapable of governing this country in the face of the day to day problems that arise.

We have a Prime Minister who has lost a great deal of credibility in the past year. I believe this time a year ago he would have carried much of the country with him if he had decided to hold an election but he is a prisoner of his own past policies and the history of his past is catching up with him. We have seen this in the debate of the past two days. I believe that what we have seen is a succession of Cabinet Ministers going full-speed in reverse. I do not believe we have heard anything positive in the speeches that we have had from the members of the Cabinet who have spoken thus far. I believe the right wing in the party is stronger than we feared was possible and it is clear from the tenor and tone of the speeches made in this House that that right wing has to be placated at all costs.

The Government and the hon. the Prime Minister have shown absolute genius for keeping themselves in power.

What is wrong with that?

I can only say what a tragedy it is for this country that they have not shown the same genius in giving South Africa clean, honest, efficient government. I think history is going to record that over the past two years the hon. the Prime Minister could have moved South Africa ahead but preferred to entrench himself in a position of tremendous personal power. Today it is no exaggeration, I think, to say that the hon. the Prime Minister enjoys power to an extent that is absolutely unparalleled in our history. He has concentrated that power in himself in a series of moves that have been so swift and all-embracing that even today I do not think the public realize just what power is concentrated in his hands.

Stop talking nonsense.

I am not talking nonsense. If the hon. member would open his eyes and see the concentration of power in the hands of one man, he too would be worried.

I do not know what you are talking about.

I say this because it is not a good thing for South Africa, and that is the ultimate test. He can dictate at will and the machinery of State is there to enforce those dictates. I believe that freedom-loving South Africans will yet come to rue the day—and we have seen the situation creep up on us—when so much power was concentrated in the hands of one man. I think we are in a sad situation today because in all honesty I believe that whichever way one looks at it, this country is barely a democracy. I say that advisedly because we have the trappings of democracy but we are barely a true democracy in the sense that the world knows it today. Yet for all the power that the hon. the Prime Minister has, he does not have total control over either his Cabinet or his party. We sit here, as I have said, facing worried men because they know the tensions in their party. They know that this artificial coalition cannot go on very much longer. It is tragic that at this time we are not going ahead and accepting that there is going to be a change in our politics. There is going to be a change in the dispensation in the building of the new republic, to which the hon. member for Durban Central referred. We know that that split is coming and the hon. the Prime Minister knows that the split is coming. The right-wing forces that are gathering outside to confront the hon. the Prime Minister also know that that split is coming. In the light of that, I want to say that it is no good the hon. the Prime Minister’s saying that he is going to hold a referendum. I believe a referendum would be a totally sterile way of apparently papering over the cracks in his party once more. I believe that it would be a simple issue which would give us a sterile, a meaningless answer and South Africa would still be in stalemate. I believe that the time has come to say to the hon. the Prime Minister: If you are in this situation—and we believe you are and it is fairly clear that you are—the thing to do is to hold a full general election in South Africa and to allow all the registered political parties to go out and campaign on their platforms so that if you are interested in democracy and if you want to prove us wrong when we say that democracy is running thin in this country, you will really get the view of the people of this country. What I suggest we consider is to let all the political parties put up a list of candidates for Parliament and to have the White electorate vote for those parties on a proportional basis.

The hon. the Prime Minister is hiding behind the artificial advantage of delimitations that historically bear no real relation to the situation today. We need list candidates. We need the citizens of South Africa to go and vote for the political parties so that we can really see what the situation is. Instead of having NP voices, HNP voices and central NP voices, all speaking together from those benches, we would have members who would be able to speak separately from their own benches in this House and we would then know what the situation in South Africa is. We would then be able to break the deadlock that there is at present in our politics. I believe that the hon. the Prime Minister owes it to this country to do that, to take away all the artificial strictures that prevent this House from reflecting the situation more accurately than it is doing on the strength of the result of the phoney election of 1977. This is necessary so that we can know where we stand, can learn from our mistakes, build on those mistakes and work towards a new republic, with the moderates of this country continuing to give the lead that we, through NRP government, are giving in Natal.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Berea has raised a number of topics here this afternoon with quite a remarkable amount of self-assurance. Many of those topics, I think, would be better dealt with in other debates in this House. He did refer, however, to the question of pollution in Natal. The NRP, as far as I know, is in control of the Natal Provincial Council.

That is correct.

I imagine therefore that its influence extends to most of the local councils in Natal. I therefore think that much of his criticism to do with pollution, which is a problem that affects the whole of the country, should be directed at the NRP administration in Natal. [Interjections.] We are all concerned with the problems of pollution.

Well, give Natal the power and we will do the job.

Legislation has been passed in this House in recent years, but it is difficult to enforce. The culprits very often escape. After discharges from the ships in our territorial waters, the culprits are difficult to follow up. There are also discharges into rivers from factories, and such discharges are often difficult to trace. There will be opportunities to debate pollution during this Parliamentary session. I think that today, however, we are actually debating another kind of pollution. We are dealing with a kind of political pollution that we find here in the Republic. In this connection may I say that the NRP is to be congratulated on having dealt with the political pollution that was found in East London North.

New members in this House make maiden speeches and maiden speeches are, by tradition, uncontroversial. I made my own maiden speech in this House light years ago, in 1966, and on the premise that one can only be a maiden once in a lifetime, I assume that I am released from the frustrations, the inhibitions and claustrophobia of political virginity. [Interjections.] In other words—in language that Mr. Eddie Barlow will understand—I do not propose to bowl another maiden today.

*I should like to take this opportunity of thanking a few people. Firstly, I wish to thank the hon. the Prime Minister for the very important role he played throughout the by-election in Simonstown. His leadership and his personal contribution to and participation in the election itself were invaluable to us. Secondly, I want to express my sincere thanks to all the hon. Ministers who acted as speakers for their own very important contributions. Thirdly, I wish to convey my sincere thanks to my colleagues in the House of Assembly, former Senators and my colleagues in the Provincial Council for their aid, support and encouragement. Finally, we owe a very great deal of thanks to the hard-working team of organizers, supporters and friends we had in the field. The Simonstown victory proved the effectiveness of a team effort, and both South Africa and the NP have gained by it.

†The Progs suffered a hat-trick of political defeats in Simonstown. The first PFP wicket fell on the day that I announced that the South African Party was to dissolve and its members were to join the hon. the Prime Minister’s party. This had the PFP stumped!

I have since studied my Hansard of that day and I found that prominent Progs could scarcely contain themselves for joy when they heard that I would be resigning my seat to fight in a by-election. The hon. member for Pinelands, “Bishop” Boraine . . . [Interjections.] . . . interjected—

You still have not.

When he heard that we were joining the NP, the hon. member for Yeoville, Mr. Swart Harry, yelled—

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: This is the second time . . .

Order! The hon. member for Simonstown must refer to the hon. member for Yeoville in the proper parliamentary way.

Sir, I beg your pardon; it was a lapsus linguae—a slip of the tongue.

That is about the only Latin you have learnt.

Of course, since I was speaking at the time, I could not personally see the facial expression of the hon. member for Yeoville, but I must say I did detect a note of envy in his voice. [Interjections.]

Some of my friends who were sitting up in the gallery at the time told me that the hon. member for Sea Point, that bosom friend of the recently deposed Mr. McHenry, was beside himself with joy. He was clapping his hands above his head like Cassius Clay, or like McHenry did when Rhodesia fell, and almost standing on his seat with excitement. After all, he is the head of the PFP organization and how better could he teach his ungrateful colleagues a lesson than by winning Simonstown for the Progs with his American-taught political expertise!

I am told that the then hon. member for East London North went several shades paler than his usual ruddy self. [Interjections.] Perhaps he had a premonition of the fate that was to lie ahead of him when the voters that he canvassed in the Simonstown constituency shamed him into resigning his own seat.

I am told that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition looked slightly apprehensive and displayed very little emotion. I can only imagine that he had Japie on his mind!

What did I see? I saw expressions of emotion and gleeful anticipation clearly visible on the delighted faces of the mentors and the masters of the PFP sitting up there in the Press gallery. [Interjections.]

Next day my speech took second place in the columns of The Argus and Saan newspapers to the confident predictions of the genius in charge of the PFP organization here in the Peninsula, known affectionately to some of the members of the Press as Ross the Boss, and by the Peninsula chairman of the Progs, that political know-all, the hon. member for Green Point who, I am pleased to say, will soon have to find a job outside of this House more suited to his very well hidden talents. [Interjections.] That gentleman said the Progs were certain of winning since they had been organizing in Simonstown since the last election. I must say he became wiser as the election campaign continued, because three-quarters through the campaign the hon. member for Green Point said: After all, Gardens is a much better bet than Simonstown. After all of these initiations in the House, all that remained to crown the Progs’ jubiliation with my resignation was to find the lucky candidate to carry the banner.

There was inspired speculation within a matter of days of my speech here that a well-known cricketer, Mr. Eddie Barlow, was both ready and available to have greatness thrust upon him. Indeed, it has since transpired that Mr. Barlow anticipated well in advance that greatness would be thrust upon him. If the story is true, somebody— and it is said that it was the hon. the Leader of the Opposition himself—had whispered in Mr. Barlow’s ear the previous year that he should get himself acquainted with the indigenous inhabitants of the Simonstown constituency before the next general election. Therefore Mr. Barlow, his wife and his family made several appearances as budding yachtsmen on the waters of False Bay. I now want to ask the hon. the Leader of the Opposition why on earth the PFP went through the motions of having a nomination contest when the candidate was already earmarked for the constituency. Why did they have to humiliate a gullible ex-Admiral, a frustrated ex-Commodore and a local yokel, as well as two or three anonymous aspirant candidates, when the choice was already cut and dried? Since we are talking about candidates and selection committees, who are the mysterious figures who comprise the candidate selection committee of the PFP here in the Peninsula? It is all very well for the PFP to have newspapers that are controlled by secret groups, but surely PFP-candidates can be chosen openly and democratically by a party that worships at the shrine of liberal democratic institutions. The harassing and terrorizing of the inmates of homes for the elderly in the constituency, in which the hon. member for Bryanston played quite a leading part, and the political seduction of the young at wine and cheese parties at which the hon. members for Wynberg and Green Point were also prominent, did not go down well in Simonstown.

That is a blatant lie.

Order! What did the hon. member for Green Point say?

Mr. Speaker, I said that that is a blatant lie.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw that remark.

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw it, but I say that it is a blatant untruth.

The tired salary earners and the housewives did not appreciate being telephoned and harangued to come to house meetings. I am sure The Argus established an all time record in South Africa for its adulation of the Prog candidate, his wife, his children and even his pigs! We in the Simonstown constituency are moderate and conservative and we are not used to such political behaviour. The moderate and conservative voters of Simonstown gave the Progs out and this resulted in the fall of their second wicket, legs before wicket because they put both feet in it! [Interjections.] The last Prog wicket to fall was by way of a run-out which took place on election night after the collapse of the PFP election day organization, and I am pleased to say that their candidate, Mr. Eddie Barlow, was spared to play for Province once more with a score of 5002 not in.

*The members of the PFP said that Simonstown would be a watershed in the politics of South Africa. Right at the start of the campaign I made it quite clear that I would be fighting the election on the urgent need for the greatest measure of national unity in these dangerous times, and more specifically on what the hon. the Prime Minister is now doing for South Africa. Simonstown is the most splendid proof one could get of the way in which English-and Afrikaans-speaking people who used to belong to different parties are able to cooperate in the national interest when South Africa requires this. Simonstown also proves how moderate South Africans will increasingly accept the direction and the policy of the NP under the leadership of the hon. the Prime Minister if it is conveyed with enthusiasm and conviction from political platforms and in pamphlets.

†Simonstown was a watershed for another reason. It showed that South Africans are sick and tired of the negative and obstructive stances that are always adopted by the PFP and the newspapers that support them. South Africans want to participate in their future, not to boycott it. South Africans reject those who dance to the tunes of foreign powers. South Africans reject the hands-up and hand-over appeasement policies of the PFP and their newspapers. Simonstown showed it and I am convinced that when an election takes place the rest of South Africa will show it—that South Africans reject utterly the sort of permissive society in our country for which the PFP stands.

True South Africans recognize, I think, their own faults and shortcomings, but they take pride in their achievements and they are prepared to share the fruits of their civilization with others who are willing and capable of helping them to build a safer and a greater country in which all of us can live. No one, either from outside of the Republic or from within it, is going to take what we have built up here in Southern Africa away from us. That is what Simonstown told the outside world, that is what Simonstown told the internal Opposition loud and clear and that is why Simonstown has indeed been a watershed for the Progs.

Mr. Speaker, the House will not expect me to join in the moderate orgy of self-congratulation by the hon. member for Simonstown. Selfcongratulation is his business. It is not my business. He says that the Simonstown electorate are a moderate people. They are lucky to have a member who is moderate in his self-esteem, who is moderate in his about-face from one party to another, who is moderate in his humour and who moderately sat down before he went too far.

I want to deal now with a question which I believe to be of considerable national importance, and that is the events in Geneva, the breakdown of the talks on South West Africa/Namibia and the possible consequences. A great deal has happened since the last debate on foreign affairs in the House. I believe there are many matters which could with advantage have been discussed. Significant trends have developed. Some ground may have been gained, but ground has also been lost. The fact is that the events in Geneva are of such importance that it is right and proper that we should take this first parliamentary opportunity to have a frank and constructive debate so that the issues may be clarified to the greatest possible extent and the people of South Africa left in no doubt as to what the real options are.

Parliament has no inter-party machinery for the formulation or conduct of a jointly agreed foreign policy. There is nevertheless a tacit convention that, especially in view of South Africa’s embattled position in the world and in international relations, foreign policy differences should not be exploited for mere party-political advantage. We propose to continue to follow this convention and we would expect in return that our good faith should not be questioned if we think it in the national interest that controversial matters be honestly and objectively debated in the House. I am sorry that the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs has not yet taken his seat—I believe it is his intention to do so. In his absence—unfortunately—I should like to mention that Opposition members appreciate it that, through the good offices of the hon. the Minister, some of them were recently able to share a valuable opportunity to make or renew their contacts at the United Nations in New York. I should also like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the ambassador of the mission in New York and his staff who did everything humanly possible to make our visit fruitful and convenient.

Hear, hear!

We would hope that the traditional parliamentary courtesy of allowing the hon. Leader of the Opposition and the official Opposition spokesmen on foreign affairs ready access to the Minister of Foreign Affairs will continue and we are ready to accept that the recent unexplained inaccessibility of the Minister to us was not intentional. I see the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs has returned to the House. I thank him for it.

It will certainly be common cause that an equitable settlement of the South West African situation and the independence of the territory is not only a necessary foreign objective to which South Africa is formally bound, but that it is also essential to the evolution of that internal political, economic and social process to which the Prime Minister stands committed and which is vital to our own internal progress and security.

It is probably true that our own vigorous economy and some changing attitudes abroad could enable us to withstand trade and other sanctions, the withdrawal of overseas investments and the escalating costs of open-ended military commitments. But it is certainly true that all or some of these pressures would seriously impede our rate of economic progress and therefore our ability to meet those reasonable expectations, and to make those corresponding adaptations, which are vital to the peace and security of our own country. As the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has said in this debate, there is no simple choice between a settlement of the South West Africa/Namibia issue and the maintenance of the status quo. South Africa is committed to the independence of South West Africa and the issue now is not whether it should be done but how it should be done.

There is no particular profit in discussing the details of Security Council Resolution 435 in this debate. It was the product of hard negotiation involving all the principals in the settlement process and contains interwoven commitments which no individual participant can arbitrarily alter. Agreements of this kind cannot be put together without a balance of concessions achieved by the investment by all parties of a good deal of political capital in the form of prestige, ingenuity, time and patience. No document of this kind can be perfect from every point of view but it is a tribute to the main negotiators that it was not an important point of contention at the preliminary talks in Geneva. I shall return to the question of its future usefulness as a basis for a settlement.

A development which has disturbed some observers in Geneva is the over-riding role played at Geneva by the internal parties of South West Africa. The main foreign affairs spokesman for the Opposition suggested last year “that all the major political parties of South West Africa could be brought together to draw up an agreed constitution before proceeding to the final election to establish an independent government”. The hon. the Minister then welcomed the idea and was in fact successful in obtaining international support for a preliminary conference at which the internal parties could participate on equal terms with Swapo, though not to draw up an agreed constitution. The idea of drawing up a constitution in advance of a settlement was perhaps too ambitious, but it would have been of enormous value if some of the time given to the question of impartiality had at least been applied to reaching a basic agreement on minority and individual rights after independence. The hon. the Minister’s initiative, in my view, was nevertheless a successful one, in that it gave the internal parties an international forum where they could demonstrate a breadth and quality of representation which was a salutary lesson to those who might hitherto have believed that only Swapo provided an authentic and independent voice for the Black peoples of Namibia. In this particular respect the comparative reticence of South Africa and indeed, the hon. the Minister, at the preliminary conference in Geneva, was well judged, for the independent attitude of the internally elected parties was widely remarked on in Europe and fortified the confidence of anti-Swapo opinion in South West Africa. I shall come to the hon. the Minister’s reported intention to abdicate to them, wholly or mainly, the conduct of future international negotiations for the independence of Namibia.

The criticisms which have been voiced elsewhere, and which deserve the attention of this House, relate more particularly to two main arguments employed by the internally elected parties, the first of which lay at the root of the breakdown and led to a situation where they were permitted to precipitate that breakdown.

This situation arose over the lack of impartiality. The General Assembly of the UN is obviously not impartial and is the author of the claim that Swapo is the sole authentic representative of the people of South West Africa. No reasonable person who has tried to follow, however objectively, the proceedings of the General Assembly over the years can be in any doubt about the bigotry and bias that prevails in this and related matters. That bias is, in my opinion, not based on any objective study of the manifold realities in the territory, but arises vicariously from the hostility of the vast majority of the members of the General Assembly to South Africa and the policies of apartheid. In this context, as I have said, South Africa is automatically seen as the villain of the piece in South West Africa, and Swapo as the heroic force of liberation.

The General Assembly has done a great deal, by generating a militant propaganda and substantial financial aid in support of Swapo, to create deep distrust in the minds of the anti-Swapo sector of the territory’s people. In so doing it has gravely prejudiced the prospects of a peaceful solution and has done no service to the high principles of the world’s peace-keeping organization of which it is a noisy but not insignificant part.

None of this is new. There is little prospect of changing it in the foreseeable future. In the two years of discussion preceding Geneva the sensible course was taken to by-pass it or to neutralize it and to try to transact a just settlement of the Namibian dispute in other bodies and other places.

If therefore the impartiality of the General Assembly was to become a precondition to a settlement, Security Council Resolution 435 and all the diplomatic efforts, multilateral good offices and agreed processes for 1981 were an exercise in illusion and a total waste of everybody’s time. So, I suggest, will all future efforts be which equate the General Assembly with the United Nations. The bias of the General Assembly cannot be allowed to be the determining factor. That would be to give the General Assembly a dominant authority that it neither has nor deserves. The framework of agreement was negotiated between South Africa and the five principal Western members of the Security Council— the so-called contact groups. It was these five—they are also the core of the Nato Western Alliance—who, by patient diplomacy, secured the acquiescence of the front-line States, who painstakingly achieved passage of Security Council Resolution 435 and who thus committed the UN Secretariat to the plan. It was these again, who together secured the further co-operation of the front-line States and, with their help, the temporary forbearance of the General Assembly and the OAU.

The effective agents and supervisors of the settlement would therefore have been the UN Secretariat and Untag acting within the terms of reference given by the Security Council; South African and South West African civil servants, electoral officials and police; the front-line States acting within the conditions they have agreed upon; the observers of the Western powers who sponsored the agreement, and the World Press who would be the busy watchdogs in Namibia of any irregularity. The General Assembly, the Trusteeship Council, the Council for Namibia and others have no assigned role in the electoral procedures in situ in South West Africa.

There would certainly be difficulties and imperfections in maintaining impartiality to the letter. The South African Government openly supports the internally elected parties and opposes Swapo, but was willing to commit itself to respecting the terms of the cease-fire and to the conduct of free and fair elections. The UN Secretariat, whatever its private views on Swapo might be, gave categorical assurances of the impartiality of its electoral supervising team and of Untag, and there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Mr. Urquhart in this respect.

It was reported in Geneva to have offered a further package deal aimed at removing remaining causes of suspicion and unequal treatment, an offer which was reportedly rejected by the SWA delegation. Perhaps there is no such thing as total impartiality in a truce and a subsequent election, but practical impartiality in situ, whatever the bias elsewhere, could surely have been made at least adequate to ensure fair procedures.

I would therefore add that for Mr. Mudge, whom I greatly admire, to ask Mr. Urquhart to repudiate at Geneva the General Assembly’s 1976 resolution on the status of Swapo was simply to force a negative reaction. Mr. Urquhart is not the master of the General Assembly; in implementing resolution 435 he is the servant of the Security Council, whose instructions to him were to ensure a free and fair election.

It would be a great contribution to a settlement if the UN could ensure that all its activities and expenditures, notably those of the General Assembly, would in future observe an even-handed neutrality in the settlement of the Namibian issue. But I fear it is only realistic to proceed in the knowledge that the UN is not a uniform body; it is not a homogeneous body, nor are all of its actions fair and consistent.

The other obstacle more clearly heard since Geneva, is the anticipated danger that a terrorist regime may be installed in Windhoek. The hon. the Minister made this point in his TV interview the Sunday before last and it is undoubtedly in the minds of many people in South Africa and South West Africa.

I think it is only fair to state that there are other views and attitudes on this possibility, or this probability as it is in the minds of some people. I think that these views and these attitudes should be carefully weighed before we allow this prospect to dominate local thinking.

The first of the arguments is that even if an election in Namibia is held in circumstances which lead to democratic government from the very outset of independence, even if that can be achieved, there is obviously no way of guaranteeing after independence that such a situation will remain permanently. The history of Africa since decolonization has taught us a great deal about the impermanence of its political structures. Leaders come and go; military coups d’etat succeed and are then liquidated voluntarily by themselves or forcibly by others; dictators rise and fall, and behind all this instability is the grim economic catalyst of poverty and famine. We would all wish to give a newly independent Namibia every favourable wind, but there is no way of ensuring in advance, either for the short or the longer term, that political changes will never take place.

The second argument challenges the assumption that Swapo is communist dominated. Again Africa has shown us that while communist aid is often accepted, this has in no real sense led to the installation of any African Government which has capitulated to the USSR or its satellites. In fact, in the whole of the Southern African area there are only two communist parties and they are both banned; one is the South African Communist Party and the other is the Lesotho Communist Party; there are no other Communist parties in Southern Africa.

It needs to be added that external Swapo whose fighting forces are variously estimated at around 10 000, with perhaps as many camp followers, can in no circumstances win an election without substantial internal support. Even if the full 20 000, that is including the women, children and all the camp followers, were all allowed to vote, it would only be 20 000 votes. It may well receive substantial internal support, but there is no evidence that Marxism is dominant in the territory, nor that the majority of Namibians, or even of internal Swapo supporters, would accept a regime that was a client to Moscow. Indeed, the information published by Swapo, for what it is worth, but which includes various constitutional proposals, points to the contrary and asserts that Swapo advocates a socialist democratic system and not a communist one.

Nujoma and other members of his divided faction have certainly had many open associations with communist and socialist countries and they have certainly propagated Marxist ideas in their base operational areas. It is being widely predicted that Nujoma’s charisma as revolutionary leader will quickly fade once a settlement is reached and that younger and more able leaders will then emerge from both the dissenting external factions and the internal wing. It is not easy to predict who or what persuasion they will be, nor am I sufficiently expert in these matters to attempt to tell the House.

These arguments—some of which I will continue with—are nevertheless arguments which need to be taken seriously and weighed carefully. They come in fact from the Kremlinologists, the experts in Europe and America who spend their time translating the Russian documents, reading the official material and trying to determine what the intentions of the Soviets are.

The third argument is that if the combined factions of Swapo were likely to be communist-dominated after a settlement, then the USSR would certainly support a settlement in which, as the Soviets seem to believe, Swapo would take power. In fact, it is not the USSR but the leaders of the Western alliance, the major participants in Nato, who have worked long and hard to achieve a settlement, and certainly not the countries of the Warsaw Pact. They favour a violent solution. Mr. Richard Luce, UnderSecretary of State at the Foreign Office, reacted accordingly to the breakdown of the Geneva talks and said—

The interests of the latter lie in continued disorder and military confrontation along the frontier and its east-west extension from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. We seriously question the facile assumption that a settlement would play into the hands of terrorists and that the indefinite postponement of a settlement would improve the prospects of a peaceful outcome.

The fourth argument is that the internally elected parties are already functioning as an effective Government in certain respects; that an independent Namibia will depend heavily on the maintenance of the existing infrastructure and services, and that their experience and skill will be indispensable in any new political structure that is formed.

The fifth argument is that all major political parties in South West Africa now seek independence and that it is certainly not in South Africa’s interest to frustrate that intention. Even if the first four arguments did not all prove valid, South Africa will, as in the case of our other independent neighbours, adjust to any peaceful new Government by pursuing policies of constructive interdependence. We on this side shall support such policies, for we agree that they will far better serve the future peace and welfare of our sub-continent than will compulsion and frustration in our relationships. Some years ago I suggested in this House that Walvis Bay could become a key element in this process. Without conceding our sovereignty, we could develop it as an open port, linked to a railway system which would give the landlocked countries of our subcontinent valuable access to the west coast and contribute greatly to the economy of Namibia as well. I have no time to develop this theme. Maybe I will raise it again on another occasion.

I conclude now with a few questions and remarks about further initiatives towards a ceasefire agreement, elections and independence. Last Friday the SABC’s “Current Affairs” broadcast comment on South West Africa’s “unstoppable momentum” towards independence and maintained that the “extraordinary report submitted to the Security Council by Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim” had virtually destroyed the chances of achieving a settlement under UN sponsorship. Dr. Waldheim, they said, could no longer bulldoze Pretoria into an agreement against the wishes of the territory’s peoples. The UN plan had been made obsolete by internal administrative developments, including a territorial Police Force and compulsory military service. I quote—

I take it the SABC would not express such strong views without official authority. They appear to be at least partly substantiated by the hon. the Minister’s recent press, radio and TV announcements.

Does this mean, firstly, that the plan contained in the Security Council’s resolution 435 is really obsolete and no longer a basis for settlement? Secondly, will South Africa now try to negotiate the revised terms demanded by Windhoek? If not, what are the prospects of new initiatives coming from the United Nations or the five Western countries and of direct negotiations by them with the Minister’s Council of South West Africa? If instead—if that does not work—South Africa is asked by Windhoek and agrees to negotiate on its behalf, will South Africa be accepted as the mere agent or intermediary for a principal whose independence is not internationally recognized?

Will the question of continued hostilities or a ceasefire be determined by the South West African Council of Ministers? According to Mr. Kaura in the Sunday Times of 25 January 1981—

Does this mean that the employment of South African forces, or their withdrawal, will be determined by Windhoek? Who will be responsible for enlisting the essential good offices of the frontline States in a future settlement? Could the hon. the Minister please enlighten the House as to the condition of South Africa’s present relations with them, including in particular the outcome of his department’s discussions in Angola last year? We heard very little of this in the South African Press or in public. We heard a great deal about it abroad. In England, France and the USA the people were talking about it. I had to confess relative ignorance. I did not know anything about it. These questions, and others which may flow from the replies to them, are matters of grave import. They are of grave import to this House and I ask that, so far as possible, they be frankly answered by the hon. the Minister.

We on this side of the House have been deeply concerned at the breakdown of the talks in Geneva, particularly at a time when conditions seemed more propitious than ever before. We were concerned also that the breakdown occurred for a reason which was less relevant than the more recent argument that the internal parties of South West Africa have proved themselves sufficiently mature to negotiate their own independence. But this latter development, though apparently relieving South Africa of responsibilities in a territory in which it is alleged that South Africa has no legal status, leaves it in practice still engaged militarily, financially and diplomatically. The problem may have been further complicated, rather than simplified, and the risks both for South West Africa and South Africa increased in the short-term at least. South Africa remains committed, whether we like it or not. The onus is now on the Government to signpost a clear route out of and around the impasse into which we have been led. It will certainly be costly in time and momentum to put things right or to get things on the move again, and time and momentum are vital ingredients in our own domestic progress that is so indivisible a part of our international relations.

Geneva and its aftermath, as well as another matter, namely the arbitrary banning of two newspapers, for which the hon. the Minister is not held responsible, both events which occurred within the first four weeks of this year, have set South Africa off to a very bad start internationally in the year 1981. I believe that our hopes for 1981 depend at least in part on the success we have in relieving ourselves of international pressures and the embarrassments which arise from some events which occurred in 1980. We hope for better things in 1981. In the meantime, these two are amongst the important reasons which motivate my support of the motion of no-confidence introduced by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Speaker, in the words of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, the hon. member for Constantia definitely did not succeed in making us on this side of the House really angry. Consequently, he will have to excuse us if we do not go into his speech in detail. However, at the very outset I must congratulate the hon. member on the first speech he has made in this House as the chief spokesman on foreign affairs on the side of the official Opposition. He succeeds a very colourful figure and we trust that he will have an equally colourful career in the future. In the second place we must note that the speech of the hon. member for Constantia cannot really be considered as support for the motion of no-confidence. The hon. member spoke about foreign affairs, but he did not attack the department or the hon. the Minister. In fact, he had no serious criticism of the Government in this regard. Consequently, one wonders whether the official Opposition is experiencing a shortage of speakers to support the motion of no-confidence at the moment. That is what it seems to me.

In one respect I want to associate myself with what the hon. member said in his speech. I am referring to the gratitude and appreciation that he expressed towards the staff of the Department of Foreign Affairs at the mission in New York. I accompanied the hon. member on that visit. I also want to extend my gratitude to the Ambassador, Mr. Eksteen, the Deputy permanent representative Mr. Steward and the rest of the staff on behalf of the members on this side of the House. The Department of Foreign Affairs and South Africa have dedicated, hardworking and competent members of staff abroad, people who make a great sacrifice to represent the interests of South Africa there. I just want to mention that we also appreciate it a great deal.

I must say the hon. member for Sandton came close to making one really angry this afternoon, because this afternoon he delivered a tirade aimed at the hon. the Minister of Justice and the Government, and in the process he tried to shout down this side of the House. I do not want to be guilty of shouting at the hon. member for Sandton or any other hon. member on that side of the House down today, but I should like to take up certain matters with the hon. member for Sandton.

What was at issue in this House? The freedom of the Press and State security was at issue. The control of the freedom of the Press and the way in which State security must be applied and maintained was at issue. We were also discussing the mutual relationship between these two concepts.

Let there be no doubt about the fact that the NP and the Government place a high premium on the freedom of the Press, nor let there be any doubt about the fact that the Government also places a high premium on State security. Let me say very clearly and frankly that the freedom of the Press is of relative importance in the community. It is not an absolute right. It is not a licence that a newspaper, an editor or anyone else has to do as they like without any limitation whatsoever. In my opinion, the correct view of the freedom of the Press is described very well in the book Die Suid-Afrikaanse Persreg by Strauss, Strydom and Van der Walt. Yesterday I heard the hon. the Leader of the Opposition referring to one of these auditors too. As I said, we place a high premium on the freedom of the Press, in its proper context. A free, responsible Press is one of the most important assets in a democratic community. It is the artery through which the life blood of the democracy flows. A free, responsible Press is a medium that provides information regarding matters of the day. It is a medium that provides an opportunity for an exchange of opinion. It is a medium for the never-ending debate which contributes towards the formation of public opinion. As the hon. the Minister of Transport Affairs said this afternoon, it is a medium that is responsible for criticism of the authorities and which calls the authorities to account. A free, responsible Press is a medium through which the spirit and conscience of a nation is aroused, by means of which the indolent are spurred on to action and the rash are exhorted to be prudent. However, then we must emphasize once again that, as a matter of importance to the community, the freedom of the Press is relative to the other matters of importance in the community. We have a high regard for the freedom of the Press, but it is not of prime importance in the community. In Suid-Afrikaanse Persreg the following is said in this regard, and I quote—

In the same book, elsewhere, the following is said—

Then the following is said—

I want to put it clearly today: it does not matter whether limitations are imposed on the freedom of the Press; nor does it matter whether there is a degree of control over the Press; nor does it matter whether action is sometimes taken against the Press. The Press is free in principle. According to Suid-Afrikaanse Persreg—

If we look at the newspapers that are published daily, the English newspapers, and Die Afrikaner, which is published weekly, each one of us in South Africa knows that the South African Press is free in principle. To allege the opposite, is not simply being libellous towards the Government, but in my modest opinion, is besmirching South Africa.

The fact that there are limitations with regard to the Press in general in South Africa, has been handed down to us through history. We find this in the rest of the Western World too. There are not limitations on the Press in South Africa alone, but, as I said, there are limitations on the Press in principle in the rest of the Western World as well. If we look at our own history, and more specifically at the Constitution of the Republic of the Orange Free State, it is stated there very clearly, and I quote—

The same provision was included in the Constitution of the Republic of the Transvaal in 1858. There are also similar provisions in the modern legal systems of the Western World. Without it necessarily being pointed out in detail, it is stated that there are limitations and the Press is subject to prevailing laws. In the Pressegesetz in Austria, dated 7 April 1922, which is still in force today, the following is said—

In Germany it is stated clearly in the Constitution of 1949—and we know that a manifesto of human rights is built into it—

What are the general laws of Germany? They are laws that concern State security in Germany, inter alia, and there is no doubt that the laws of this country, as in all other countries, place limitations on the right of the Press.

They are implemented by the courts.

The hon. member says the laws are implemented by the courts. As a general statement, that is rather ridiculous. The Minister implements laws every day, and people appear in court and then the courts implement the laws. However, it is not a case of the court alone implementing a law. Where does the hon. member get hold of that? This is not the case in South Africa nor is it the case in any other country in the world.

Just to round off my argument, I want to say that it is also included as such in the Italian constitution.

The conclusion that we come to, is that the Press in South Africa is free, free in principle, in relation to the rest of the world—although not in the same way. The Press is as free as a fish in water. A fish can swim. It can swim wherever it likes, but in its freedom it is limited to water because this is its milieu, this is its territory. If one removes him from the water, he dies, and if one exceeds the limits of one’s freedom, one must expect action to be taken against one.

Against this background, I wondered whether we could not take the debate further by asking the hon. member for Sandton whether he is prepared to agree with me that the Press in South Africa is free in principle.

No, not entirely.

I have explained to the hon. member that the freedom of the Press is a relative concept. However, I asked whether the Press is free in principle. Can the hon. member tell us whether the PFP agrees that the Press in South Africa is free in principle? [Interjections.] In this way political propaganda is being made not in South Africa alone, but South Africa is being besmurched abroad by saying that the South African Press is not free. The South African Press is free in principle.

I did not close Post (Transvaal) down. You people did.

The South African Press is free in principle and the PFP is doing a disservice by not endorsing this statement with me. Can the hon. member for Sandton tell us whether he and the PFP accept that limitations must be placed on the Press?

The normal laws of defamation and libel, certainly.

My next question is an obvious one. Does the hon. member accept that limitations must be placed on the Press for the sake of State security?

There is legislation to cover that already.

All of a sudden I cannot hear the hon. member for Sandton. [Interjections.] Will the hon. member tell us that the PFP accepts that limitations must be placed on the Press for the sake of State security?

I say that there are sufficient laws to cover that and that the court must be the adjudicator of those laws.

The hon. member has given his answer and his answer to the question was “Yes”. [Interjections.] The only aspect with regard to which he differs with us, is how those laws should in fact be implemented. We can put a further question to the hon. member. We can ask him whether the Press is entitled to create a climate of revolution in South Africa.

You are creating it. [Interjections.]

The hon. member says “No”.

Is the Government entitled to do so?

I think that there is a considerable amount of consensus in this country with regard to the fact that action can be taken against the Press in the interest of State security. The only question is: How does one take action?

Now one comes to the general principle of how one goes about taking action in order to protect State security. We now have the situation where two newspapers are no longer going to be published. This is an action for which the Minister is responsible because he considered it to be in the interest of the security of the country. This calls into question the entire principle of action on the part of the authorities with regard to State security. I want to make a request here this afternoon. I want to allege that it is not possible in a complex community for the authorities to stand aside and say: “I am not taking action myself to protect State security.” What I want to say, is that the authorities not only have a right to take action, but that the authorities also have a duty to act according to their own discretion in order to protect State security.

Mr. Speaker, may I now ask the hon. member a question?

I shall give the hon. member an opportunity a little later.

Come on. You asked me four questions.

One often hears the cry: “Take them to court”. The answer to this is of a two-fold nature. Firstly it is true that many people who commit crimes against State security, are in fact taken to court. We have had terrorist trials in various places in the country, for instance Johannesburg, Kempton Park, Bethal, Pretoria, Durban and Pietermaritzburg. Therefore, in certain circumstances the Government does in fact take people to court. But then what is the aim of the Government? The aim of the Government is to punish someone for what he has done. However, when the hon. the Minister takes action, as he did in this case, the aim of the Government is not to punish, but to prevent. The Government has certain data at its disposal. The Government has various sources of information and it is obliged to protect some of its sensitive sources of information. Against the background of these sources of information, the Government must decide which is the best way to take action; to punish or to prevent. When someone is prosecuted, he often ends up in jail for five, 10, 20 years or even for life. However, when the Government takes preventive action, we have a completely different situation in South Africa and the Government has a duty in this regard. The hon. member for Sandton may ask his question now.

Mr. Speaker, what right of rebuttal, before executive action was taken against these newspapers, was given to the management of the Argus company, or to the editorial staff of the newspapers concerned? What right or chance to answer the charges against them were they given?

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member knows very well what the answer is to that. No right of rebuttal was granted to them with regard to the charges that possibly exist against them. We are all aware of this. The hon. member is aware of it, and everyone in this House is aware of it. Surely this is not an important question. I thought the hon. member was going to ask an intelligent question. I thought the hon. member was going to ask a question to which he did not know the answer, and now he asks a question to which he does in fact know the answer.

The issue at stake, for us, is the prevention of intervention in the sphere of State security. In this regard it is the duty of the Government and the hon. the Minister to act as a good house-father—as a bonus paterfamilias. He must not take action when things are over and done with, and consequently when it is too late. What is the use of that? He must not take action when it is no longer any use taking action. He must take action with the objective of preventing an intervention in State security and his evaluation and his judgment are different in this regard than they have to be in the case of someone being charged in court. Surely this is obvious.

What is also at issue here, for us, is freedom. Freedom is a precious jewel. We must work for freedom. Each one of us in this country, whether White or Black or Brown or Asian, must have ideals of freedom. We must also be prepared to fight for our freedom, if the opportunity should present itself. There can be no doubt about the fact that the entire purpose and striving of the Government is freedom. The purpose and striving of the Government is to free the Black and Coloured people of South Africa from the burden of illiteracy, from poverty, from a lack of opportunities and experience in the Western world, to give them freedom to decide on their own affairs and to be able to determine their own destiny. The objective of the Government is freedom and emancipation, not discrimination and suppression. The objective is development.

However, we also know that in the world today, and in our country too, there are powers on the loose which want to destroy freedom under the cloak of freedom. I want to say emphatically that this is something that the hon. the Minister of Justice, the NP, the Government and the nation to which I belong, will not tolerate.

Mr. Speaker, when I sat here listening to the speech of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition yesterday, I felt like playing the old game of “He loves me, he loves me not”. One did not really know whether the hon. the Leader of the Opposition was satisfied or dissatisfied with me as Prime Minister and with the Government as a whole. He simply tried to balance the scales between no confidence and confidence. I do not know whether he was trying in that way to make up for his mistakes of the past. I must say that he paid dearly for his mistakes. However, we shall come back to that later.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition put a few questions to me and I think I may as well refer to them now. One of the questions concerned the referendum which I had referred to. If the hon. Leader of the Opposition remembers correctly, he will know that I have a precedent for it, from the history of my own party. It had always been the policy of the NP to establish the Republic with a large majority vote. It was said that it should be a decisive majority. There was even talk of a two-thirds majority. When the late Dr. Verwoerd became Prime Minister he adopted the standpoint—and began to proclaim it—that he would establish a Republic with an ordinary majority vote, even though it was a majority of only one. Eventually, under his leadership, his party congresses subscribed to this viewpoint. It was a drastic departure from the earlier fundamental viewpoint of his party. Dr. Verwoerd did not leave it at that. He then called a referendum. Legislation was introduced in Parliament. It was my privilege to deal with that legislation here myself, legislation in terms of which we made the holding of a referendum possible. Then we went to the country on that same issue, viz. the establishment of a republic. It was said that an ordinary majority vote would be sufficient, even if it was a majority of only one vote. Consequently I do not find myself on new ground when I advocate this issue. All I am saying is that if the President’s Council proposes a drastic departure from the proposals before the Schlebusch Commission—proposals emanating from this side of the House and of which, so I assume, the President’s Council will take notice—I shall in the first place go to my party congresses with those proposals. The party congresses will have to determine whether the party is satisfied to accept those drastic changes. I think that is a fair standpoint to adopt. If the congresses do accept them, it is still only the party which is accepting them. Then, so I said, I believed I owed it to the country to call for the verdict of the electorate on those drastic changes by way of a referendum. That is all I said at Ladismith.

In other words I am prepared to test the standpoint which I am adopting against the prescribed powers through the prescribed bodies which exist to determine this for me.

Mr. Speaker, I should just like to have clarity on the impression created in the Press reports on this speech, the impression that the hon. the Prime Minister drew a distinction between “drastic departures” which required a referendum and “changes in principle” on which party congresses could decide.

Yes, but drastic changes are also changes in principle. I stated that if they were not drastic, but lesser changes, the Government would deal with it. I have always drawn a distinction between principle and policy and I stated as much to the congresses. I think principles are fundamental. Policy is the form of administration, the procedure of administration. I think we agree on that. I hope the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is satisfied now.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition put a second question to me. He wanted to know from me why I had asked in Ladismith who the person was who was going about with a dagger in his hand to stab me in the back, and he wanted me to tell him more about the matter. However, he is in the position to tell me more about it, because his friends were in collusion with this person.

What friends?

The Rand Daily Mail. I take it the hon. the Leader of the Opposition agrees with me that that newspaper made a great blunder. [Interjections.] Oh yes, it made a very great blunder. In fact it made a fool of itself because it tried in banner headlines to implicate me in the matter of so-called changes to documents, which ultimately turned out to be the changes made by a judge. In the first place, however, the newspaper does not have the decency to apologize. In the second place it did not have the decency to ask me in advance what the facts were so that it could tell the public the truth. Consequently the hon. the Leader should not put this question to me. He should put it to the newspaper who made the blunder. At the same time he must ask himself why he is protecting a person who came tattling to him with news in that hypocritical and despicable way, news which was untrue. That is my reply, and I hope he is satisfied with it.

Who is the person?

He is not a member of my party.

Was he a member?

The hon. member will quite probably know better than I, since he seems to have someone in mind. [Interjections.]

Then the hon. the Leader of the Opposition asked me questions about the issue of the so-called differences in my party. Let me tell the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, and I wish to say this here tonight, that any attempt to get me to split the NP, from his ranks or from the ranks of the Press which supports him, are futile. I shall not help to bring about a split in my party which I helped to build up over a period of more than 40 years. Let us understand one another very clearly on this point now. There are no differences in principle in this party. On fundamental issues we are in agreement with one another. If there were any person here who differed with his party on matters of principle, he would, as an hon. person, go his own way.

Goodbye, Andries.

Voetsek!

Order!

What I am prepared to admit, however, is that there may be a difference of opinion in my party on the system of the application of principles, on procedural principles, on procedural issues, on administration and the way in which one implements one’s policy. Why not? After all there are differences of opinion in his party. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. member for Yeoville are not always in agreement.

Never!

What is more, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. member for Pinelands are not always in agreement. The hon. member for Pinelands has completely different ideas in his mind to those of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. His ideas are not the ideas of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. And his ways are not the ways of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

You are a mindreader.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

Mr. Speaker, I move—

Agreed to.