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, G. C. du Plessis, Z. P. le Roux. 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. A. Venter.

Mr. Speaker, just before the House adjourned last night I intimated that if time permitted, I should like to deal with the standpoints of the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg North. Before doing so, however, I should first like to react to the speech by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. I want to add at once that the remarks I want to make must not be interpreted personally because I do not intend them that way.

To begin with, I wish to point out that a speech made by the leader of a party in this House must necessarily reflect the standpoint of that party and also typify the image of that leader.

To sum up, and by way of introduction, I contend that the speech in which the hon. the Leader of the Opposition motivated his motion is typical of the political thinking of the party of which he is leader. It also illustrates the fact that in the politics of today they represent the unrealistic nineteenth century Western concepts of democracy, concepts which are unrelated to the South African situation.

The second statement I should like to make is that it typifies him and his party as a man and a party incapable of understanding the multi-dimensional facets of the circumstances of South Africa. It typifies him and his party as an individual and as a party, as an institution, which fail to grasp the emotional and economic limitations to reform in this country. Those limitations are deep and broad. There is no point in paying lip-service to the concept of reform—I choose my words carefully in this regard—because we in this country are not engaged in a process of change; we are engaged in a process of reform which must change the structure of the society and which goes much further than mere change. His speech typifies him as a person who does not understand that the development potential in every sphere of this society is dependent on the feeling and the security of the First World part of the population of the country. Whether this country is going to be a land of hope and will be capable of realizing its potential, will depend on the First World part of the population of the country.

I want to state bluntly that the time has come for us to understand that it is in the interests of Black, Brown and Asian that there be no doubt as to the position of the Whites in South Africa. It is essential that we bring home this message. I did not gain the impression that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and his party understand this essential truth. [Interjections.] It remains a fact— and I do not say it in self-glorification or to denigrate others—that the degree of development on this continent can be directly related to the security of the group that we represent. I believe it is time we understood this. I believe, too, that the time has come for all of us to propagate this message. The speech by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition—and I repeat that I understand the limitations attached to his position—is typical of one who does not address himself to those who brought him here, but one whose speech is intended for consumption by other parts of the world.

You are speaking nonsense, absolute nonsense.

I am speaking to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. Allow me to say this—and I do not say it maliciously or in a spirit of condemnation—that I believe that we have a collective task in this country, and that is not to win a debate, but to win the country. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition and his party are a typical example of a party prepared to moralize about alleged injustice in this society, but unwilling to play a part in the processes of reform. Moreover, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition speaks to an audience that is not sitting here. Allow me just to refer in passing to the conduct of the hon. member for Port Elizabeth Central. See how derogatively he refers to the majority of a small minority that enjoys the confidence of the country at large. Go and read his speech. No one in this House would dispute that all population groups have the right, individually and as groups, to take part in the decision making process with regard to those matters that affect their lives. But to speak in the language used by the hon. member for Port Elizabeth Central and to think in terms of his terminology and the attitude he displays, viz. that one can persuade people to accept the reform that must take place in the country, is futile. The biggest obstruction, the biggest hindrance in the path of the process of reform, is not to be found in Brown or Asian or Black; it is in White ranks. The hon. leader has enough experience to know that. Surely he knows that he constitutes no alternative to the present Government.

As regards the Steyn report, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition expressed himself in the same terms and announced the same standpoints as those he put to his congress in November 1981, before the report was available. I quoted them yesterday, but I shall quote them again (Hansard, 3 February)—

Further on (Hansard 3 February)—

You answer that.

I intend to answer it; just give me a chance. I want to ask the hon. the Leader of the Opposition what he means by this veiled threat. Is this another symptom of withdrawal—to put it in a friendly way—from the processes of reform in the country? Is this another example of the fact that the hon. leader has led his party into avoiding those instruments that have to make history, that have to change history as well? The hon. the Leader of the Opposition refers to the effectiveness of the Opposition. I agree with him: The effectiveness of the Opposition is in question. Indeed, he himself is questioning it, and I share his concern about the ineffectiveness of the party he leads.

Then why are you spending so much time on us?

I share his concern. But he must seek the reason for his ineffectiveness elsewhere. His ineffectiveness is the result of the unacceptability of the party he leads, because it is unacceptable not only to White voters, but also to Black and Brown people.

Give them a chance to choose. [Interjections.]

The fact is—and the hon. the leader agrees with me—that whatever form reform in this country may assume, it must, if it is to be constitutional, be carried out by this House. This means that the people who comprise this House must be convinced of the merits of that reform. The fact is, however, that the voters who, in the final instance, are going to be responsible for it, reject his formula for reform. [Interjections.] Of course, I understand the hon. the leader’s problems. I even understand the fact that he tries to project the ineffectiveness of his party on other people, instead of seeking the reasons in himself and his policy. However, I object to the objectionable way in which the hon. the Leader of the Opposition does so. There is no excuse for that whatsoever. [Interjections.] I should like to illustrate this.

I have said that the speech by the hon. leader typifies him and his party as people who speak to an audience other than that which brought them here. They speak to, inter alia, a foreign audience.

Unadulterated nonsense.

His benchmate is one of the people who advocate foreign pressure against South Africa. [Interjections.] Therefore I am not saying something which the hon. member for Houghton did not advocate, because what are the facts? Let us take a look. The outside world, certain Western countries, salve their conscience about their racist, imperialist conduct on this continent by projecting or transferring it to South Africa. We as Whites in this country are faced with the resistance of the people of Africa to the actions of countries of the Western world. That is a fact, and the hon. the Leader of the Opposition knows it is so.

It has nothing to do with your policy, of course!

What does he do in an effort to cover up or conceal his party’s ineffectiveness? [Interjections.] He adds his voice to the foreign chorus, and I should like to quote two recent examples of this. The temptation to play the right role in addressing the great international audience becomes too great for the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. Let me prove it.

When, in the course of his speech replying to the motion by the hon. the leader, the hon. the Prime Minister explained that he regarded it as his life’s task—and that means that he commits himself to it—to plan and work for peace, prosperity and orderly coexistence within South Africa and beyond her borders, and at the same time addressed a warning to those who think that they can change this country by violence, what did hon. members opposite call out? “Götterddmmerung” and “Scorched earth” were what they called out. Was that necessary?

That is what the Prime Minister said. [Interjections.]

This brings me to the second point.

“Silence and desolation”, was it not? [Interjections.]

Order!

When a commission makes recommendations about the media, certain newspapers entirely ignore the hon. the Prime Minister’s statement in which he says that the Government takes cognizance of the report and the criticism of its own actions and that he will institute an investigation to determine whether there are grounds for the criticism and will take corrective steps if there are in fact such grounds and, in addition, that no steps will be taken on the basis of the report before negotiations have taken place with the interested parties. What does the hon. member for Sandton do? He makes a speech based on assumptions for which there is no justification whatsoever. He comes here and makes one of the 20 speeches written for him by one of 20 editors.

The Steyn report is a myth. It never appeared.

Let me proceed. This reasonable standpoint adopted by the Government in respect of a commission report is not newsworthy. But unreasonable expectations such as those created by the hon. member for Sandton and the hon. the Leader of the Opposition—he must consider his position at some stage—concerning everything that could happen, imaginable or unimaginable; that is what the world wants to hear. In this way, cheap political advantage is derived from the circumstances of the country. It is easier to say that the Government makes it impossible to be effective than it is to say that one is ineffective because one does not understand the realities of the country, that one is ineffective because one lacks perspective concerning the parameters of the action it is possible for one to take in an international world, on the continent of Africa and in connection with the internal circumstances.

The party of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is ineffective because its policy is incapable of accommodating the circumstances of our country. His party shuts its eyes to the complexities of Africa. It shuts its eyes to the complexity of the South African circumstances. Surely it is a fact—and when I say this, I am not saying anything new—that the realities which must be taken into account when we adopt our standpoint and formulate our policy in this House, concern the international, regional and local dimensions of the circumstances of the country. I do not hear the hon. the Leader of the Opposition or other hon. members opposite referring to this, but it is a well-known fact that the international dimension—and even America recognizes this—is linked to the global power struggle between the East and the West, in which the strategic location and assets of South Africa play a role. It relates to the struggle between North and South and the redistribution of wealth among the wealthy countries and the poor countries. I shall come back to this later if time permits.

The regional dimension relates to the politico-military conditions in Southern Africa. It relates to the conditions over the past decades, but more specifically to the changes which took place due to the withdrawal of the Portuguese régime in 1974 from Angola and Mozambique. These changes in this region held implications for South Africa as an arena for the East-West and North-South conflicts. When will we in this House understand what the significance of this is to us in this country. For more than a decade, Soviet-supported military activities have taken place in this region. After the fall of the Portuguese régime Zimbabwe passed into socialist hands and the onslaught is being stepped up to bring about a similar change in South Africa.

All the evidence points to an intensification of the onslaught on South Africa. Standpoints adopted by the OAU and in the international world are aimed at the increasing isolation of South Africa. The wave of decolonization has reached the borders of our fatherland. That is the reality which the hon. the Leader of the Opposition does not wish to take into account.

Within the borders of our own country and beyond our country’s borders there are many people, including the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, who seek to make the simple prognosis that South Africa will be the final victim of this process. People who speak in these terms and plan for surrender have a distorted image of the reality of South Africa, of its economic strength, of its military strength and also of its will not to add this country to the list of failures in Africa and elsewhere in the world. And the interior—and the party of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition ignores this totally—is a dimension which we must take into account, namely the heterogeneity of the population, something which manifests itself so strongly that we can describe this country as a population comprising a series of minorities, and the essential problem is to bring about reconciliation among the often conflicting aspirations of the various groups.

I have said that the party of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition projects a nineteenth century image. Those who champion and prescribe for the South African problems the stereotyped political formulas of Western Europe and of North America— and here I include the party of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition—have a false perception of our circumstances. Not only in Southern Africa but throughout the world it is being realized to an increasing extent that the formulas that arose out of the late nineteenth century in Western Europe were inapplicable not only to Africa but also to the developing countries of the world and that national democracy as they saw it had no place in those countries of the world. I therefore wish to call upon the hon. the Leader of the Opposition to come home and see his country as it is.

He does that.

He must see that limitations of the country as they are, against the background of the circumstances and the demands of the times. What are the facts? The hon. the Leader of the Opposition puts forward only one policy. He can use as many verbal definitions as he likes to conceal it, but the fact remains that what he is seeking is a one man, one vote State. May I remind him that all the African States that have become independent over the past decades started where the hon. the Leader of the Opposition wants to start with South Africa. All of them started where he and his party want to start with South Africa. And what is the result? And here I am not even referring to the economic decay; I am not even referring to the deterioration and the poverty. However, the fact is that not one of those models has really survived, but what is the fact of the matter? There are three dictatorships in Africa, there are 11 one-party totalitarian States and there are 22 one-party “democracies”. Nothing of real value has remained of the model which the hon. the Leader of the Opposition advocates for South Africa.

I want to go further. We seek reform in the country and we say that that process of searching for reform must occur in the real world; not in an ideal world, but in a real world. That solution which does not take into account the complexity that is reflected in the diversity of the population and the dualism in the economic pattern has no viability for South Africa. This is not because I want it to be so or because someone else in the country wants it to be so. These are purely the facts of the circumstances of our country. If we do not take into account the fundamental contradiction and conflict which exists among the interests and the aspirations of nations and groups—put blatantly, between the Afrikaner and the non-Afrikaner, among the Black peoples, between Black and White and Brown and Asian, between the haves and the have-nots, between the Christian and the non-Christian and, in the final instance, between those who seek change on the basis of development and evolution and those who seek it on the basis of revolution—we are not dealing with reality and finding answers to it. In the nature of my work I am one of those people who understand how intense are the emotional limitations in such a society and how this extends the financial capabilities of the country to the utmost degree.

The main theme of the speech by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, if I understood him correctly, is that the Government has lost the initiative in effecting necessary changes. You will agree with me that he and I, together with some of our colleagues, agreed that reform is a lengthy process, that it is a complex process and that one of the conditions attached to it is that it should increase the mutual acceptability of people. He agreed on that. He also agreed on another point, viz. that because in the normal course the lifetime of a select committee of Parliament is not very long, we should seek a different instrument. It is true that he disagreed about the composition of such an instrument. However, he agreed about the other points. Why then, does he come along now, after one year, and say that we have lost the initiative?

Let us look at the facts. The content of his speech—I really do not say this in a spirit of reproach, and I hope he accepts it in that spirit, because it is in that spirit that I say it—was to spell out in a superficial way that all reform measures tackled are in fact a confirmation of a rigid apartheid policy, as if it were an ideology.

What laws have been changed?

Labour legislation has been changed, for the information of that hon. member who has a squatter situation on his plot. However, I do not want to go into that now. I am arguing about fundamental matters with the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. Kindly allow me to continue.

Let us look at the reform policy and actions of the Government in this country. They comprise certain basic components. In the first place, the Government has committed itself to reform moving in the direction of—and I want to state this here today without qualification—participation of individuals and groups in the decision-making processes which affect their lives and their circumstances.

Are the Coloureds going to get representation in this Parliament, yes or no?

The Coloured, like the White man and the Asian, will obtain representation in institutions which will be decided on jointly. [Interjections.]

Secondly, reform cannot take place in the political sphere alone, as the hon. the Leader of the Opposition advocates. He knows that if reform takes place in only one sphere it has a destructive effect, and that this must therefore be synchronized with reform in other spheres.

What have we achieved by way of our economic policy? In all fairness, have we succeeded, by putting into effect the free enterprise system in the economy, in increasing the participation of people and groups, or have we not? The surest way of destroying or devastating the free enterprise system in the country is to ignore the interests of minority groups in the country. What are the minority groups? They are the South African interests in the economic life of the country as against the foreign interests, but they are also the interests of the minority groups of our population in the economy of our country. I now ask him: If we had not taken steps, by establishing national corporations, to increase the participation of minority groups in the economic life of the country then surely it would not have been possible to synchronize this with movement in the political sphere. Surely he knows this is true.

Let me conclude. The hon. member knows that attitudes, a climate for reform, are quite probably more important than anything else. The hon. member knows that the possibility of change unleashes expectations, and he knows that to this extent it can give rise to impatience, that there can be impatience with regard to the process of peaceful change. I say that frankly today. Some of the members of his party are responsible for the fact that some people in the country are impatient with peaceful change. He knows— and I need not outline it for him—what conflict potential this has in his own party. He knows how this can lead the country on the path of violence and revolution.

I realize that on the other hand there are people who feel threatened by change. It is a truism to say that those who have profited in the past, fear the future. We in this House must persuade those whom we represent to accept reform. We must prevail upon them to accept the merits of reform. We shall not succeed in doing so if, as the model for reform, we seek to adopt the example of the failures of the world and of Africa.

Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition will, when he speaks tomorrow, be able to demolish in one or two sentences the arguments of the hon. the Minister as well as the personal attack he has made on him. I want to say to the hon. the Minister I believe that this House—viz. the hon. members of the Opposition and his colleagues behind him—and the public outside are starting to find his tyle of rhetoric and his attack on the Opposition quite boring. [Interjections.]

Every time he stands up he pretends to be the man who knows all about the global issues. We know as well. He is the man who understands the problems of Africa while we do not. He is the man who understands the complexities of South Africa. He is a great man. I want to tell him that we in these benches also have knowledge of things. We also have an appreciation. We also have a perception. It may differ from his but it is not for him to stand up here and refer in a “smalende” kind of way to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and the members of the official Opposition.

We understand the various situations. The fact is that we differ in our perceptions of the African situation.

We differ in our perception of the problems of South Africa. Because we understand the realities of our country in a certain way—and I shall deal with some of them— we believe that this Government is incapable of giving South Africa a lead that will take us in the direction of peace and prosperity. I say this because the Government is trying to adopt a policy which flies in the face of the realities of South Africa and this is leading South Africa, not only the Whites but all South Africans, to disaster. That is how we see it.

The hon. the Minister followed the hon. the Prime Minister’s tactics. The hon. the Prime Minister said that the people who are preventing reform taking place are the Coloured leaders who are making demands. Now the hon. the Minister of Internal Affairs has said that the people who are making reform more difficult are the Opposition because they are making demands.

We must all sit back and wait.

I want to ask the hon. the Minister what he would do if he were a Coloured man who had grown up in politics over the past 33 years. Would he be making any demands? The hon. the Minister states piously today that the NP recognizes the principle that everybody in this country is entitled to a direct say in the determination of affairs affecting him personally. What has been the record of the National Party over the past 33 years in respect of the Coloured people? When has he stood up for this principle? When did he manufacture this principle? Has that been the principle which is on record as having taken the Coloured people off the common roll, of taking the Coloureds off the separate roll and kicking such representatives as there were out of Parliament? Is that the principle that is on record—taking these people off the provincial roll and the municipal roll? In what way has this Government over a period of 33 years stood by this principle that the hon. the Minister has enunciated? He says one day it will happen. We say that based on the record of this Government he is entitled to expect the Coloured people to make demands. The record of this Government shows that he has led his own White people in the other direction. He has led them away from the very principles he has enunciated today. If he is having difficulty in reforming, he is simply reaping the whirlwind of years and years of preaching racial prejudice.

The hon. the Minister tells us today that we have in fact to take into account the realities of reform and what is acceptable to the White people. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition read out a list of reforms in the socio-economic field in regard to which tests have shown that the majority of Whites want reform. However, this hon. the Prime Minister is not prepared to follow the majority wishes of the Whites. That is why our charge is that this Government and the hon. the Prime Minister in particular have become so mesmerized by the growth of the right-wing political movement in South Africa and the threat that it poses not to South Africa but to the NP that the hon. the Prime Minister is now saying that the pace of reform must not be the pace of reform that he wants to set, not the pace of reform of ordinary average White South Africans but the pace of reform of Jaap Marais and his colleagues. In spite of all his apparent power, the hon. the Prime Minister has become captive to the right-wing political movement in South Africa.

Perhaps the hon. the Prime Minister could deal effectively with this movement if his own party and his own caucus were united in spirit on this matter. He could do this if they were united in spirit but he knows that as there is a shift to the right as a result of years and years of NP propaganda, the threat to his party becomes greater. At the stage where these right-wing parties, educated by the NP of the past, become viable enough to win a seat, he knows that the NP will split from stem to stem. The hon. the Prime Minister knows that and hon. members opposite know it. As a consequence the hon. the Prime Minister is not moving at a pace that is acceptable to White South Africans. The hon. the Prime Minister is paralysed because he is moving at the pace set by the right-wing political movements in South Africa.

I want to come back now, Sir, to the question of realities. The hon. the Minister of Internal Affairs has alleged that we ignore the fundamental realities of the South African situation. I want to state, Sir, that this Government has persistently refused to recognize certain fundamental structural changes that are taking place in our society. These structural changes are taking place in defiance of NP policy. They are taking place in defiance of the traditional thinking of that party and the hon. the Prime Minister. They are taking place because of the forces—social, economic and political, and particularly economic—which are being generated in our society.

I thought you said that there was no change taking place.

I should like the hon. the Minister just to listen for a few moments. He is not always the fountainhead of wisdom. Perhaps he could listen for a few moments. The hon. the Minister of Community Development can read the report of the Viljoen Commission. He can also read the statement made by the hon. the Minister of Co-operation and Development. The first thing that they ignored, over the years, is the process of urbanization. One can look at the latest report of the Human Sciences Research Council. Let them examine it very carefully and let them see that this process of urbanization is far from complete. Let them realize that although 88% of Whites, 91% of the Indians and 77% of the Coloureds are in the cities, only 38% of Blacks are in the cities. In the next 18 years the 6 million Blacks in our urban areas will increase by another 15 million. This is not our report, but the report of Dr. Smit of the Human Sciences Research Council. It does not include the independent States. We are talking about heartland South Africa here. There has been a massive shift to the cities. There has been a process of industrialization, and Coloureds, Indians, Whites and Blacks have become locked into a new urban society. This cannot be ignored. The Government has tried in the past to stop the trend and has called these people temporary sojourners. It has applied restrictive laws and coercive pressures, but it has just not worked and valuable time has been lost. We have to look at the new South Africa, not in terms of the past or even the grand ideas of Dr. Verwoerd, but in terms of the new South Africa—the heartland South Africa that will consist of Coloureds, Indians, Whites and Blacks locked together in a common economic, and in due course a common political, endeavour. There is no escape from this, and this is one of the realities which this Government has ignored for years.

The second reality which has been ignored for years is that there is a restructuring taking place within our society. The hon. the Minister mentioned that he was busy with “hervorming” which involved a fundamental restructuring of the society. Let us look at what is happening—and I am talking about heartland South Africa. I am talking about the industrially active South Africa and the South Africa that will continue even if more and more homelands and Bantustans are created. I am talking about the economically active, viable South Africa to which he belongs, I belong and some 26 million others belong. What is happening to the restructuring of the society in that South Africa? In spite of separate development, in spite of his concept of self-determination and vertical differentiation, in spite of the Group Areas and Population Registration Acts, this South African society is in an organic way structuring itself in a direction which is the opposite of the apartheid philosophy. It is structuring itself in a direction that is the opposite because the various elements within the society are becoming more inter-dependent, more shared and—I know they will stumble at the word—more integrated. That is the reality. The hon. the Minister of Manpower knows this is happening in almost every field. There is an irony, that while the NP is polarizing the South African community in the racial and political fields, an interesting process of deracialization is taking place in the structure of our society. The nature of it is changing, not towards apartheid and the grand design, but it is being restructured by the emergence of a number of substructures which are not racially exclusive, and which are not segregated, where apartheid is not practised, and which are multi-racial and which are shared. One only has to see what is happening in the society in spite of the polarization. In spite of the racial and political tensions the structure of heartland South African society is moving in the other direction.

This is what is happening and this Government can try to retard the process for a while if it wishes. The hon. the Minister can kick the squatters out if he wishes and the other Ministers can apply the Group Areas and restrictive laws, but the fact is that although he can make the process difficult, he cannot stop it. If we are looking for a solution for the future of the South Africa of tomorrow, it cannot be based on an apartheid South Africa; it has to be based on a shared South Africa. This Prime Minister is bluffing himself if he thinks he will be able to lead South Africa in the years ahead in the direction of apartheid and self-determination.

What has happened as a consequence of this restructuring that is taking place? The policy of separate development and apartheid have just become a hurtful fraud. It is still there but it is hurtful; it is fraudulent. It is attacking the goodwill that still exists in South Africa. Every attempt by this Government to bolster the principle of separation is shown up for what it is. It is no longer a viable political principle for the future, but just a surrender by this Government to the forces of racism and prejudice.

Let us look then at the realities of South Africa, at this heartland of South Africa with the on-going urbanization that is going to take place and the restructuring that has to take place in the direction of a shared society. There are implications which strike at the very root of NP philosophy. The hon. the Prime Minister has made it quite clear that he does not believe in sharing political power. Power-sharing is out. The sharing of political power between Whites and Blacks is out. He has also made it clear, in terms of his twelve-point plan, that he does not believe in the sharing of political power among Coloureds, Whites and Indians. In the House the other day he reaffirmed his commitment to the twelve-point plan.

The hon. the Minister of State Administration, when asked by the hon. member for Yeoville what he believed as far as Coloured representation was concerned, said he stood by the principle of the twelve-point plan. What does that plan say? It states, “The acceptance of vertical differentiation with the built-in principle of self-determination on as many levels as possible.” It states “Division of power among White South Africans, Coloured people and Indians, with a system of consultation where matters of common interest are involved.” This is a fundamental principle of the NP contained in their twelve-point plan. It was reiterated by the hon. the Prime Minister and by the NP leader in the Transvaal in this very debate. The principle is the division of power among White South Africans, Coloured people and Indians, with a system of consultation. The hon. the Prime Minister rejects the principle of the sharing of political power. [Interjections.] He rejects the principle of the sharing of political power. Yet, in our perception of South Africa we believe that it is moving inexorably in the direction of the sharing of political power. It is moving inexorably in that direction. He cannot escape this. If one looks at the problems he had the other day when he was asked about the representation of Coloureds in this Parliament, one recalls that he said that because they are not “’n volk in wording, kan daar nie ’n afsonderlike Parlement vir hulle ingestel word nie”. There cannot be a separate sovereign Parliament for the Coloured people. That is what the hon. the Prime Minister said. He also said he was totally opposed to the principle of sharing political power, because that is what the twelve-point plan says. I ask the hon. the Prime Minister how he is going to reconcile these two things. Is he going to uphold the principle of the twelve-point plan or is he in fact going to allow the Coloured people to participate in a sovereign Parliament of South Africa? That is the dilemma facing the hon. the Prime Minister. That is the dilemma in which he is one day going to have to bite the bullet, whether the right wing of his party will like it or not.

To return to this society, there are two simple facts relating to political dynamism in South Africa. The first is that the fields in which South Africa can divide power are becoming fewer, and the fields in which we have to share power are becoming greater. That is the first principle which, we believe, must be accepted. Secondly, the relative political power of the Coloured, Indian and Black South Africans is growing day by day. Political power is not only expressed in the vote. It is expressed in one’s ability to influence the course of history in a society. This growing political power cannot be wished away. It cannot, as the Government likes to do it, be turned off like a tap. The longer the Government continues to deny this growing power effective expression in the constitutional structures of this country the more the Government itself will be undermining the stability of this country. That is our charge against this Government.

With its policy the threats from outside will fade into insignificance when one compares it with the threat of political instability because of the Government’s stubbornness.

Let us look at the dilemma of the Government in this field. I want to deal for one moment with the hon. the Minister of Internal Affairs, because the result of this dilemma is that one has a spectacle of the Minister of Internal Affairs, in his own inimitable and obtrusive way and with a complete lack of sensitivity for the political feelings of the Coloured people, trying to bolster at this moment in time the discredited management committee system in South Africa. This is what he is trying to do. And let me say that the system is not discredited because of the individuals who may serve on it. They all oppose it but feel that it is the only way open to them. I do not criticize them, because, but for the grace of God, there go I. But it is discredited because the management committee system was a device that was used by the NP at the time to rob the Coloured people of municipal franchise.

I am sorry to see that this attitude of the Minister has now infected the hon. the Minister of Community Development, because in reply to a question I put to him, i.e. whether in fact he had agreed to meet a deputation from the Cape Areas Housing Committee on the questions of rentals in the Cape Flats, he said “no”. He said they should use the proper channels, viz. the management committees. [Interjections.] I want to say to the hon. member over there that that is absolute stupidity. The Cape Areas Housing Committee represents more than 39 organizations. The decision to approach the Minister was taken at a mass meeting of over 2 000 people in the Cape Flats. Apart from this, the management committees do not fix the rentals. It is done by the Minister’s department by way of a financing formula and by the Cape Town City Council because of the services levied. Does the Minister not realize the intensity of feeling in the Cape Flats on the rental issue? Does he not realize that a tinderbox situation is developing? And here he follows the ham-handed performance of his colleague, the Minister of Internal Affairs. Surely, the hon. the Minister must realize that the issue of rentals is a burning issue. Is he trying to force the Coloured people in the Cape Flats into a confrontation with the Government? Is that how he sees it?

Mr. Speaker, forget the stupidity of the action. I want to appeal to the Government, to that hon. Minister and perhaps even to the Minister who has now left. Surely, after all that you have done to the Coloured people’s political representation, surely after all that you have done in 33 years—indeed, you have left them with nothing—and while you say you are looking for a new dispensation, you should show some sensitivity towards the feelings of the Coloured people. Surely that is the least we can expect even of an arrogant government. Surely, on certain issues the Coloured people should be allowed to decide who should represent them and not dictate to them from above. Where is that hon. Minister’s common sense and sensitivity?

I say this Government has become an arrogant Government. It tries to fly in the face of the realities of the South African situation. We have heard a lot about a new dispensation. I want to say to the hon. the Prime Minister that he must negotiate a new dispensation in which all South Africans— and we on this side of the House say it must include Black South Africans as well because Black South Africans are a fact and a reality both today and in the future—are represented. He must get a new dispensation in which there is an effective sharing of power by all the peoples of South Africa. If he does not, then we believe that the onslaught from outside, perhaps inspired by the Soviet Union, will fade into insignificance compared with the political instability inside South Africa, caused by the shortsightedness and the ineptitude of the present Government.

Mr. Speaker, it is absurd for the hon. member opposite to allege here that the Government does not take the realities of our society into account. I want to deal with one aspect only, namely the urbanization process as it applies to Black people, a matter in which I am personally involved.

Since we discussed the matter in this debate last year, Dr. Smit has been appointed adviser to the Department of Co-operation and Development, and he is doing a fine job. The Commission for Co-operation and Development has also been enlarged, specifically to give attention to this matter, and I can attest to the fact that those people are also doing a fine job.

It is only Parliament that is not doing a fine job.

We are also working out a strategy in connection with urbanization that is extremely important. In addition, we have been working very hard on three pieces of legislation for some time now, and only yesterday a reply was given to a question in that connection here in this House. These are undoubtedly important matters. Therefore it is really absurd for the hon. member to make such allegations here. [Interjections.] He repeated the same old story that we are not really bringing about reforms because we are afraid of the so-called right wing. I am working on these three specific pieces of legislation, and if ever there were measures to bring about reform, then these three pieces of legislation are such measures.

Aren’t you afraid of Jaap?

I can state here this afternoon with utter conviction that I do not even know what the HNP has to say about this matter. [Interjections.] To be absolutely honest, during the entire time I was working on these measures nothing of that kind had the slightest effect on what these pieces of legislation must eventually look like. We are engaged here in an important, dynamic process in terms of which we must try, step by step and with the greatest expertise, to bring about the necessary reform measures for Blacks and Whites in this country, and these measures will be implemented.

In common with the hon. member who has just spoken, I should also like to discuss the interests of our society on this occasion. In the first place I honestly believe that any person, any political party, that underestimates the nature and magnitude of the Russian imperialist onslaught on South Africa … [Interjections.]

Et tu Brute!

I should like to address the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and try to make a positive contribution, and all I ask is that hon. members give me an opportunity to do so. We can play games some other time. I am not interested in playing games now. I want to be serious. We gave those hon. members an opportunity to have their say, and all I ask is that they now give me the same opportunity.

But talk about your own portfolio.

I am quite prepared to deal with interjections, but I should like to make a serious speech in the interests of our country and in the first place I am addressing the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

After the appearance of the Steyn and Rabie reports, any person or political party in this country that still doubts the nature, magnitude and intensity of the present onslaught aimed at this country, is giving damning evidence against himself and such a party. [Interjections.] I am absolutely convinced of this. If that hon. member can talk about the interests of this society, I am also entitled to talk about the interests of this society as I see it, and I have taken part in this debate for many years. I am speaking candidly, honestly and from the bottom of my heart. [Interjections.] The 1982 Parliamentary session can become a turning-point for the better in our history, because if we can see eye to eye here, in this House, Whites, Coloureds, Asians and Blacks in South Africa will be able to agree to an increasing extent, so that the common enemy threatening us all, can be effectively overcome. This is of fundamental importance because from that vantage point we will be better able to understand one another’s aspirations and expectations and will really be able to implement them much sooner and more effectively. This onslaught on South Africa is continuous and is being waged with every means at the enemy’s disposal. It does not only involve a military onslaught on military targets, and surely this is obvious to everyone. Some of those hon. members own sons are there. It is more particularly a non-military onslaught as well, and all non-military means are being used in their own right as a means of coercion, persuasion and inducement. The purpose of this onslaught is quite obvious. It is intended to force the will of the aggressors unconditionally on the RSA. The time has undoubtedly come for us in this House to face up to this matter squarely if we want to have meaningful debates in the session which lies ahead. This aim is also a total one therefore, and it can only be achieved by the total surrender of the RSA. Their aim is the total surrender of the RSA. As far as the aggressors are concerned, any normalization of relations, any concessions, any reforms and any negotiations are no solution, but only interim measures to achieve their objective, namely total surrender of the RSA and everything it stands for and incorporates. They do not want solutions to the problems of South Africa. They do not want sound relations or a successful constitutional dispensation for all the population groups in South Africa. I say this out of long experience in the field of sport and also in the field in which I am now involved, Black nations and Black people. My practical, realistic experience has taught me that every time there is a success in this country, they either subtly try to foil it or openly oppose it and try to gain maximum benefits for themselves from it. The aim is total surrender of the RSA …

To whom?

… and that includes every Prog in this House including the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. member who has just spoken, the hon. member for Sandton and the hon. member for Houghton, as well as the wives and husbands and children of those who are married.

A well-known Russian leader, Solodovnikov—he is well known in Africa and the hon. members will probably have heard of him—who at present occupies a position of leadership in Moscow, wrote a book a few years ago from which I should like to quote. He was the man in charge of the entire strategy in Southern Africa and he is at present in charge of this strategy in Moscow. When will we wake up to this threat in our father-land? He wrote—

This is not what I say, this is what he wrote a few years ago. He went on to say—

This was long before Zimbabwe became what it is today—

He continued—

This is what Solodovnikov wrote. There is no doubt at all that if we really have people and politicians in this House who do not want to take notice of these important facts, and if the Cape Times as it did this morning, writes that “The only thing the hon. the Prime Minister is offering South Africa is ‘total onslaught”’, with all the unbelievable implications that this entails, one really feels under these circumstances like sitting down and crying.

I have seen at first hand how ruthlessly and calculatingly the Russian imperialists succeeded in ringing Nicaragua in South America to a fall. In 1968 I stayed the night with President Somoza at his home and he told me about the aims of the Russians in South America. That was 14 years ago. In 1972 I visited him again. By that time the onslaught had increased in intensity and he complained to me: “What I really cannot understand is that the Western world cannot wake up to what is happening.” In 1974 I was there once again, and he told me: “The onslaught has reached a crescendo and we are losing”. A year later he was brutally murdered and the whole of Nicaragua was overthrown. We all know about this. I also experienced this at first hand in El Salvador, starting from 1968. I was there three times. Did hon. members not hear what happened to our ambassador there? I visited him at his home in El Salvador many times. Have we in this House not all had first hand experience of and shared in what happened and is still happening in Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe? Are we not witnesses to what is happening in South West Africa? Are we really so blind that we don’t want to see what is happening around us, what is being said and written, that we cannot reach unanimity among ourselves here about the most important point affecting the interests of every one in South Africa? Can there be anyone in this House who doubts these things? I am sure this is absolutely impossible. This is where the following question again arises, justifiably and fairly. I do not doubt the patriotism towards South Africa of any of those hon. members. I should like to accept it.

No!

I should like to accept it. My side of the House is always levelling this accusation at me: “Piet, you are too trusting”. But I gladly accept the accusation. However, this is where the problem arises, namely if those hon. members cannot agree with us about this basic thing which affects the interests of this society, then the fact is that there are not only people sitting in this House who doubt it, but there are also people outside this House who really doubt it. Can we not clear up this matter during this session? It is against this background that not only the actions of the Government, but also of the Opposition Parties—of everyone in South Africa—must be judged when we say we love our fatherland.

And now I, who work with the Black leaders, want to give certain evidence. I wish hon. members could come with me to experience the love which those people have for the Republic of South Africa, not only in words, but also in deeds. Then I could show hon. members the strong allies we have in this regard. One of my colleagues said that one of our greatest problems is some of the White people in this country. I can affirm every word of this statement. If we cannot eliminate this major problem, we shall always be talking at cross purposes, and we shall make no progress in South Africa.

It is against this background that our behaviour must be judged, and we must learn a lesson from what we have seen and experienced around us. During the last world war Churchill said—and hon. members opposite have a great deal of respect for Churchill—

That is what they are also seeking to achieve here. Do we want to hand it to them on a platter? Surely those hon. members do not want to do that.

That is the question we must ask you.

The war being waged against South Africa can only be combated by the co-ordinated use of all the means at this country’s disposal. A plan of action in terms of which it will be possible to use all the available means in a co-ordinated manner, is therefore necessary to ensure that this country can ward off this onslaught. If hon. members do not want to do it for our sake, they must do it for our children’s sake, and for the sake of the Black children in this country, who will be just as hard hit. Do it for the sake of the Coloured and Asian children as well. Let us be inspired here to oppose what is really confronting us and see if we cannot find common ground in this regard.

The Steyn Report was tabled on Monday. If we were to create such a plan of co-ordinated action, I want to ask the Press, in consequence of the Steyn Report, if, under these circumstances—circumstances which are realistic and actual, and which cannot be wished or explained away and to which one cannot close one’s mind—they cannot also draw up a charter so that they can also make a contribution, in the interests of the economy and everything for which South Africa stands, towards warding off this onslaught on us effectively. The national interests of the RSA are included in the preamble to the Constitution of the Republic, to which we all, when we are sworn in, swear allegiance and what does it say? I quote—

I am therefore not asking hon. members to do the impossible. Hon. members swore before God that this is what they want to do.

So did you.

Of course; I am not referring to those hon. members only, I am also referring to myself.

What is our national goal under these circumstances? I think we are all agreed when I say that it is to improve the circumstances of life of all people and nations in South Africa.

Why do you just talk about it? Do it.

All I can say to that poor lady is that I am working flat out day and night to do just that.

You do not do it very well.

All she can do is talk; I act. No one can be opposed to this national aim, namely to improve the circumstances of life of all people and all nations in the RSA. In this regard, surely we can find common ground? In order to achieve this national aim and ensure the continued existence of the RSA and all its people, the Government gives priority to the following aims—they are terse and to the point: In the first place, to ensure self determination for the nations and population groups in the RSA; in the second place, to strive in the economic sphere towards the optimum combination of economic and social development and the self-sufficiency of all people and all population groups. Can those hon. members, including the hon. member for Houghton, disagree with that? Surely it is not possible. The third important objective is to recognize the human dignity of all people, to promote social welfare and to allow stable communities, based on individuality, to develop. Surely no one can disagree with that. The fourth major objective is to protect the national security of the RSA against any threats. Does anyone here disagree with that? Surely no one can disagree with that.

That is why I say the RSA is striving to build-up and maintain sound relations and aid in all spheres, based on mutual respect for cultural values and the like, to all States, without the RSA sacrificing its political and constitutional principles and without its power bases being affected for, if we allow our power bases to be erroded, we leave ourselves powerless. In these attempts to safeguard the RSA’s interests, to which, surely, no one can be opposed, we must all, in other words the Opposition parties as well, at least try to do one thing during this session, and that is to work together to emphasize the strategic interests of South Africa, and to emphasize the mineral and technological potential, and so on, of South Africa. Surely we are not doing anything wrong if we do that. Is it asking too much? Who will hold it against us if we do so, except the aggressors and enemies of South Africa in the UN? Surely it is in the interests of our own children if we do so. Is it asking too much? I do not think so. In addition, is it asking too much not to underestimate the danger of communistic and Russian imperialistic infiltration and the magnitude and implications of the threat of such a revolutionary takeover in South Africa, and constantly to ask: What contribution is being made to building up morale in South Africa, what positive contribution is being made for the future? If the Opposition does not want to do this for my children and your children, then do it for the Black children in South Africa and the Brown children in South Africa. If only we wanted to do this, if only we wanted to do this together and in time, we would be creating a most powerful common will. Those hon. members who are always boasting that they have read my thesis that I wrote 30 years ago at Oxford ought to know that at that stage already I wrote about the creation of a common will in South Africa. It appears in the first chapter of that thesis. I am therefore not just speaking because I like the sound of my own voice. I am speaking from utter conviction, because I love this country just as much as other hon. members do, and because I have seen and experienced many things and I know that a common will can be created here. With all due respect, Sir, no one in this House knows it better than I do, because I work with Black people and Black leaders in this country every day. It is possible, it is within our reach, to create a common will among all South Africans, Whites, Blacks, Coloureds and Asians. If we can do this, surely we will be able to ward off this onslaught in a peaceful way, and then our enemies will not get away with what they are doing; they will not succeed in their aim of taking over our fatherland completely. I wish to reiterate that if only we are prepared to do this, we will be able to convert this onslaught into a glorious epoch in our country’s history by bringing about real and meaningful reform in respect of the elimination of hurtful discrimination. Surely hon. members have heard from speakers on this side throughout this debate that we are honest in this regard. We need no longer argue about that.

I maintain that we could make for more rapid progress in the elimination of hurtful discrimination if we undertake it together and do so properly, on the basis of the realization that we must do so together. There is also the question of creating real human dignity for all people of all population groups and the creation of equal chances and opportunities for everyone regardless of race or colour. There is also the question of equal treatment before the law for all people regardless of race or colour and the creation of a confederal dispensation in which all people can participate in the decision-making processes in this country, with the preservation of self-determination and the rights of minorities. We could create a political dispensation here which would make provision for all people, regardless of race or colour, to enjoy full civil rights, again with the preservation of self-determination and the safeguarding of the rights of minorities. This could be created on the same basis. It would be a dispensation in which real human rights would be created for all people in the RSA, with the preservation of self-determination and of the rights of the rights of minorities. For the specific information of that hon. member, what I have just said is a precise rendition of what I said at the time in my Washington speech, on which he has constantly challenged me in this House. I have said it before in this House and I have just said it again.

This is the first time.

The hon. member can go and look it up. I have said this before. No one in this House can differ with what I have just said, least of all the Opposition. I have found that they do not differ with these four things I have just mentioned in Washington, or in Britain, or in Europe; as far as these four objectives are concerned, this country and the world can agree. There is no doubt about that at all. We can still achieve them in South Africa in my lifetime and in the lifetime of most of the hon. members in this House. Why should we not try to do so? If I am wrong I shall be the first to apologize, but all I can suggest that will enable us to debate meaningfully about these things during this session, is just to arrive at this one point. I am not using this for political purposes, believe me: I am speaking with absolute sincerity. We must arrive at one point, i.e. that we must all be agreed that here we are dealing with a real and actual onslaught that we in this country must ward off and avert together for the sake of its future and the common interest of all its people. In this way the onslaughts and challenges can be changed into great opportunities and into victory for everyone in the RSA. If we do not underestimate the dangers of this onslaught but would just stand together in this regard, we can use it to build a new South Africa and enter a glorious era under this hon. Prime Minister. I may sound enthusiastic about this, but I am absolutely convinced—I cannot do otherwise for I believe this to be true—that we can work together to bring this about. Surely it is at least something worth striving for. The question is whether we can co-operate to ensure our own survival. To us this is a simple question. It is above all a struggle for survival by a White nation and by other nations which we cannot ignore. In world history the most memorable events occurred when a nation was fighting for its survival. We are not aggressors; we are fighting aggressors who threaten our very existence, the continued existence of Whites, Blacks, Coloureds and Asians. The underlying characteristic is not to begrudge others their continued existence, but we inexorably demand the same right for ourselves too. In history the struggle of the small nation has always borne fruit. As far as I know, there has never been an occasion when something good did not come from a small nation’s being prepared to fight for what was its own. It is not easy to destroy a nation with a firm will and an inner strength. This onslaught—on all the people in the RSA, Whites, Blacks, Coloureds and Asians—must be confronted by all of us together. We must learn to understand one another better. There must be a reconciliation between Whites, Blacks, Coloureds and Asians in South Africa, between all the nations and peoples of the RSA. We must learn to take each other by the hand and stand together to defend South Africa, to face this common enemy, Russian imperialism and Marxism, and to overcome it. In this way what we believe in, our religion and all the things our forefathers brought to this country, what they fought for and died for at the stake, will remain intact. People who are active in the economy of South Africa, the top economists of this country, tell me in private discussion that they are experiencing the results of this onslaught in the field of economics to an ever-increasing extent, because this onslaught is not aimed at Government; the onslaught is aimed at the RSA.

As a result of the Government’s policy.

To an increasing extent it will be found that the onslaught will not be confined to the political sphere, but will spread to the economics sphere. All I, as an old member of this House—although I am still young—am asking is that we wake up and think about what we want to protect. If the hon. members opposite specifically want to protect economic interests, I am perfectly satisfied; let us then stand together to do so. [Interjections.] We on this side want to protect other things as well, but let us nevertheless stand together. What I want to say, therefore, is that we can reach agreement on this basis. We are called upon to carry the valuable and precious things we inherited and earned in fairness and justice safely through the multitudes of Africa and the world. However, we must then be faithful and determined. We must have the will, the perseverance and the faith, and if we have it we will not be the first nation that does. Read what Abraham Lincoln and the great Presidents of the USA said to their nation when they were facing difficult times. I could quote—hon. members would enjoy it—how Churchill encouraged his people in times of great danger. I could also testify to what other great leaders said. Why cannot we in South Africa be great and think big as well? Why cannot we be like that in this House?

Athens was once a small village, the size of a small town in the Free State, but in Athens the flame of the civilization, which we are being called upon to protect and to cherish here in the southernmost point of Africa, was kindled. Many years later Johnson wrote a book about that small village and asked: “But how was it possible that Athens, such a small little village, could produce what it did produce?” What Athens produced, was so great that we still bask in the rays of what was kindled there. People who know, will agree with me that Johnson is a great writer. After he had analysed and considered everything well, he gave this wonderful answer: “The reason why Athens could have done it, is very simple: Athens expected of its men and women to be great men and great women.” All I ask is this: Why in the face of this tumult we have come to in our time cannot the Republic of South Africa, beginning in this House— Opposition and Government—also strive “to produce great men and great women”? If we can do this, we shall not keep on scoring petty political debating points off one another, but we shall be able to have meaningful debates. We must be able to get co-operation on the one point and stand together on it. It is that a threat to South Africa is not something cooked up by this side of the House, but a reality which affects all of us. We are therefore all called upon to oppose it with a steadfast will and with certainty; if we do not do so, we shall perish. However, if we are prepared to do so, we shall experience one of the greatest, most glorious eras in the history of the Republic of South Africa. I say that I hope I am not in this House when the time comes when it has become necessary to separate the sheep from the goats. Hon. members opposite must be careful that they are not counted on the side of the goats when the time comes.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say at the outset that the enthusiastic speech by the hon. the Minister on his subject does him great credit. We on these benches are totally aware of the onslaught in all its forms as described by the hon. the Minister, but we are unenthusiastic about the methods used by the Government in combating the onslaught. Our lack of enthusiasm stems from the fact that our country in suffering from a loss of confidence. The very nature of this debate—which I would like to pursue today—speaks for itself. Surely the acid test is not whether the mighty ranks of Government members have confidence in the Government’s performance, but whether all the people of the country have confidence. All the people outside this House must have confidence to fight this onslaught. There are two important words involved, “sharing” and “confidence”. We might share that confidence. In this case they are unable to share that confidence because they do not have a share in the Government of the country.

I want to use the time available to me to come to grips with some fundamentals, because the very absence of clarity on these in the minds of the South African public is causing a saddening lack of confidence and this is what this debate is all about. I want to try to clear up some of these points. Confidence in a person or a body is brought about and maintained by a sense of trust. It is a wonderful thing to be able to say: I trust a person or persons. There is a perceptively heightened lack of trust in South Africa today which we must rectify. This is occasioned by the lack of a vision or goal for South Africa, as my hon. leader so effectively illustrated earlier in the debate.

This lack of trust is also caused by several other factors which serve to confuse and undermine our nation’s faith in their leaders and as a result they begin to lack the essential ability to face the challenges that confront us. It must surely be the responsibility of a nation’s leaders to use words in a manner which leaves no doubt in the minds of their people as to what they mean. Leaders should not confuse them with clever political and ambiguous meanings and must not give empty reassurances. That is surely their duty and at the same time the right of the nation to expect it from them. I ask that the Government and the Opposition, as well as the media, say clearly and exactly to the people of South Africa what they mean about certain matters, some of which were debated in this House this week. This must be done in the interest of creating greater trust. We may—and indeed we will—differ in our opinions, but let us kill this lack of trust that lurks in our society.

It was interesting that when my leader questioned the hon. the Prime Minister about his commitment to change, arising from the Government’s failure to spell out a clear vision for the future of South Africa, the hon. the Prime Minister’s response was to suggest that neither he as the Leader of the NP nor my leader knew what the future would be, because neither knew what proposals would be forthcoming from the President’s Council. I put it to the hon. the Prime Minister: This is not a satisfactory answer. The NRP, apart from the HNP, is the only party in South Africa with a crystal clear vision for the future. For the HNP it is “baasskap” for as long as it can be maintained, putting its trust in pathetic arguments about the need for nuclear deterrents and other desperate proposals. Notwithstanding the hon. the Prime Minister’s protest that he does not know what is coming from the President’s Council it is interesting that he has been preparing the ground for certain constitutional changes. There are a number of key elements which emerge very clearly.

Firstly, there was the statement that the Coloureds cannot be regarded as a separate national entity, and a certain alluding between the lines to the fact that the Coloureds and the Whites have a joint political future. Secondly, there was a complete avoidance of any mention of the political future of Blacks outside their homelands and, thirdly, the prospect of a referendum. Can it be that the hon. the Prime Minister is anticipating— either with divine insight or merely because he is the hon. the Prime Minister and is therefore in the best position to know—that the President’s Council is going to propose that the Coloureds be given representation in this Parliament, probably on a separate roll and with certain qualifications? Does the hon. the Prime Minister anticipate that after this had been put to the NP congresses the country will decide on the matter by way of a referendum later this year? I now ask the hon. the Prime Minister—assuming that this was so, and let me concede immediately that I might be right off the mark—whether the Indian community would not have the same moral rights to representation on the same basis? Would we not be extremely foolish if we were to acknowledge this while at the same time ignoring the now already accepted permanence of the Blacks in the urban areas? I do not need to remind the Government of the danger of playing the numbers game in constitutional thinking. It does not work for South Africa. There is only one constitutional solution to our political impasse. That is the plan presented by the NRP to the President’s Council. Despite the protestations by the hon. the Minister of Education and Training when the hon. member for Amanzimtoti called upon the Government to accept our policy, I urge the Government to undertake some serious soul-searching in connection with the real burning issue of our constitutional dilemma which needs to be settled. That is the reality of the growing permanency of Blacks in our cities. If in our future planning we ignore this, we do so at our extreme peril.

Let me add immediately that the NRP has no problem with the possibility of the White and Coloured communities eventually fusing their interests into one political entity. We are the first to acknowledge that apart from pigmentation the cultural differences are very slight, and we have stated repeatedly that the communities, of their own free will, will eventually agree to merge their interests. Provided it is mutually agreed, this party will have no objections. However, I want to warn against a deal being made between the Whites and the Coloureds to the exclusion of the other population groups in South Africa. That is not on.

The other issue which my hon. leader raised with the hon. the Prime Minister, was the question of the creation of a climate for change. We are not impressed by the hon. the Prime Minister’s answer. Nothing prevents the hon. the Prime Minister from beginning to apply the principle of local option to soften the hurtful effects of the Group Areas Act. As it is, the Act, in its present form, makes allowance for undeclared areas. Why then did he not accept the proposal by the President’s Council on District Six and Pageview? Why then did he not accept the result of the Constantia referendum? There were two excellent opportunities to make efforts in order to prepare the climate for change and to give it a significant boost.

They do not care.

The concept of “grys gebiede” has been bandied around in NP circles for some time now. I should hate to think that even now they are unable to accept it. Local option is going to be one of the most suitable tools for the bringing about of reconciliation. Why not put it to work immediately in bringing about the climate which we so desperately need and in which we can make the new constitution plant grow?

Let us go on to the question of whether political power-sharing is in principle acceptable to the NP or not. Will the NP accept a form of political power-sharing if proposed by the President’s Council? The hon. the Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs said in this House yesterday that we were all pursuing the same goal but that we differed in our methods. Does the NP principle include power-sharing? This is a fundamental issue. We cannot have a shared economy—with which we all agree—without some form of power-sharing. The Government has accepted the permanency of Blacks in White urban areas. Is this a change of principle or a change of policy? They should tell the people clearly, when a cornerstone of their philosophy changes, that such a change has indeed taken place. Great leaders of the NP who claimed that the party had changed its principle are now referred to as “politieke smouse”. Ek wonder hoeveel ander smouse daar in hierdie Raad is.

The hon. member for Pretoria Central—I am sorry not to see him in the House now— is looking very trim on his special post-election diet evidently flavoured with a particular brandy sauce. He used the word “moderates” to describe the NP. It is time we defined this word once and for all in the current South African political context. No political party which either refuses to share political power on one hand or accepts majority rule on the other can claim to be moderate. Ideologies to the extreme left or right can solve nothing for South Africa. The moderate centre is where the real practical solution lies, and this party lays complete and total claim, fair and square, to that approach.

The official Opposition are equally guilty of deceiving the public with fancy phrases and they contribute greatly to the lack of trust in our country. The hard core of that party accepts the inevitability of majority rule. Indeed, their proposed policy can only result in that, but they shamefully deny it or avoid telling the public. Will the hon. Leader of the Opposition tell the people of South Africa once and for all that the chances of their policy not resulting in majority rule are purely academic, and that the consociational democracy …

You are much too nice a fellow to talk such nonsense.

It is the truth. The consociational democracy proposed as their answer to our political problems is the most unstable type of government existing in Europe …

A nice fellow like you talking such nonsense! Really!

Order!

… despite the fact that there they have the tremendous advantage of a homogeneous culture and a single value system. That is a fact. There is absolutely no example in Europe of a consociational democracy with any stability in it whatsoever, yet this is the model proposed for this country. [Interjections.]

Order!

Will the hon. member for Constantia equally clearly tell the people that the referendum he used in Constantia will not be available to them under the proposed PFP policy?

That is right!

They will mandatorily open all areas. Whatever the feelings of Black, White and Coloured or Asians are about the matter, they will have no say in it. How unethical can people become? No wonder people are confused and lacking in confidence. How can they stand for the devolution of power? How can they stand for, as they call it, the freedom of choice but not make it available? How can they use a system that is unacceptable under their party principles?

I can understand the hon. member for Constantia’s dabbling with local option, and that the referendum was not appreciated in certain Prog circles as he would have hoped. He certainly got the hon. member for Pinelands by the short and curlies! It is to be understood because it is not their policy. However, let us ask the hon. the Leader of the Opposition this question: If the PFP had been in power, would he have allowed the referendum to take place and, if the result had been a negative one, would he have honoured the decision of that constituency?

No! They don’t believe in the freedom of choice.

Finally, there is a very vital reason for lack of trust in our country. The hon. the Prime Minister has given and undertaking that nobody will suffer as a result of the consolidation of the homelands. That is not a quote but the man in the street’s understanding of what the hon. the Prime Minister said, and I am sure the Prime Minister will agree that that is what he intended to convey on the occasion he made that announcement. The affected citizens of this country accepted that undertaking in good faith, and after some years of painfully slow progress, insecurity and highhanded maladministration of consolidation, they were encouraged that the hon. the Prime Minister had seen fit to appreciate their position. The hon. the Prime Minister’s words were used to calm and reassure where all else had failed and where a situation of desperation had been reached by land owners. The truth of the matter is that people are suffering and have been suffering for a long time. Their crops and their livestock, their possessions and their peace of mind are being plundered. The value of their properties and life’s work is depreciating before their eyes.

Will the hon. the Prime Minister live up to his undertaking? It is vital that he does. Frightened, insecure people do not make for good neighbourliness, nor for a positive contribution to human relations. I therefore call upon the hon. the Prime Minister to honour his undertaking and rekindle trust and confidence in these people’s hearts by the immediate acceptance of the Agricultural Union’s proposals for concessions to border farmers, together with the enactment of legislation empowering the relevant authorities to proceed with these measures.

Mr. Speaker, I listened very attentively to the speech by the hon. member for King William’s Town. The hon. member touched on a long series of subjects. In any event, he devoted the greater part of his speech to the President’s Council, and since we on this side of the House and the party opposite both participate in the deliberative process of the President’s Council, in contrast to the official Opposition, I should prefer not to enter into a debate with him on that score. Apart from the other subjects he referred to, i.e. the Blacks in the cities and the problems on the border farms, and their “local option” idea of politics in South Africa, he said one important thing which I should like to endorse, and I believe that everyone on this side of the House will endorse it, and that is that whatever we do to solve the problems of South Africa, we must do it in such a way that we do not confuse the electorate. This means that we must not create any confusion amongst the electorate by way of statements, terminology and the expressions we use in our political arguments. I agree with the hon. member and I believe that all of us on this side of the House wholeheartedly endorse that. Although we are not perfect, we try to do everything in our power to achieve this.

The hon. member left me an opening. In fact, he introduced a certain degree of calm into this House, except when he was having some fun at the expense of the official Opposition. The hon. member for Yeoville then gave him a little advice.

And with the hawkers.

Yes, particularly when he came to the hawkers. I should like to approach this debate from a somewhat different angle.

It is a debate in which the Opposition has the fullest right to try to motivate their motion of no confidence in the Government. In the process the hon. the Leader of the Opposition stated that the Government of the day was inept. In motivating his motion of no confidence he used such words as “ignorance”, “neglect” and “destruction”. However, let us approach the debate from the point of view of the voter. What is the aim of a debate such as this? I think the aim is for the official Opposition to try to convince the electorate of South Africa, which returned this Government to this House recently with an almost two-thirds majority, that the Government is an inept Government, a Government that is ignorant, a neglectful Government, a Government which advocates the destruction of certain facilities. That is what the hon. Opposition seeks to do in a no confidence debate. They have to try to convince the voters that this is the kind of Government they have put in power. However, if they want to convince the voters that this is the kind of Government that has been put in power, then surely they must also be able to convince the voters of the converse, viz. to show the voters what their policy is, in contrast to that of the Government. They must be able to say that when they come to power they will be able to give the voters a policy in terms of which concepts such as ineptness, ignorance and neglect cannot exist. By doing so, they create a climate in which the electorate, with a view to a future election, can decide whether the Government they have elected is indeed guilty of these offences and whether they should elect an alternative Government with an alternative policy, a Government to which the concepts of ineptness, neglect and destruction will be totally inapplicable. After listening to the debate I think that this is where the official Opposition failed totally. They fail because they cannot succeed in stating their policy in clear terms and telling the voters clearly that in terms of their policy and their régime, all the monstrosities they ascribe to this Government will not exist. Accordingly they fail entirely to provide a comparable …

At least our economic policy is on black and white.

I shall come to the hon. member for Yeoville in a moment. As I said, they fail because they are afraid to spell out their policy in detail. That is why the hon. member for Yeoville asks questions and is tremendously surprised when we do not have answers to his questions concerning the findings of the President’s Council, which we do not yet have before us. Why do they ask us such questions? We could ask them, in turn, whether they would permit Black people in this Parliament. Will they tell the voters of Johannesburg, in the municipal election in Johannesburg, whether they will open all residential areas to all population groups? Will they say whether they are going to open all schools in Johannesburg and in the country to all population groups? We, too, can ask such questions. However, that is not what is at issue. In a no confidence debate the issue is an alternative Government, a lack of confidence, according to the Opposition, in the existing Government and a confidence in the possible alternative Government.

Let us look at this debate. What have we seen in this debate? On the one hand there has been a speech by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition which reached its culmination when he discovered that “Vryburger”, now, according to him, speaks on behalf of the Cape. That was the highlight of his speech. What did we have by way of contrast? The contrast was the speech by the hon. the Prime Minister. Looking at the seven points of his amendment, we see that he explained those seven points one by one very clearly, intelligibly and without verbosity, to the electorate. In it we find a positive direction indicated by the leader of the NP and of the Government, the Prime Minister of the country.

On the other hand, what did we have from the hon. member for Constantia? He devoted his entire speech to an effort to explain why the NP should accept his referendum. On this side of the House, however, we have had speeches which have clearly outlined the road ahead. One calls to mind speeches such as that of the hon. the Minister of State Administration, that of the hon. the Minister of Community Development, that of the hon. member for Florida and all the others. These are speeches in which the path the NP wishes to follow was clearly spelt out. That is the contrast between the contributions of the two sides of the House.

However, we on this side of the House have not only had a prospect of a path that we want to travel; this has also been supported by results that can be proved, of the path we have travelled over the past 34 years. Let us go a step further in our comparison of the two parties. At his congress the hon. the Leader of the Opposition attacked and sought to undermine the image of our security forces, whose task it is to ensure the security of the country. That was followed up by a motion proposed there in which the image of the security forces was attacked still further. The hon. member for Yeoville had difficulty having that motion rejected.

However, the hon. member for Yeoville went a step further during his speech in this House. He is aware that there is a total onslaught against South Africa. He does try to support this, but he does not call it a total onslaught. He calls it an attack. I do not know what the difference is. He says that we are faced with an attack on us and we say that we are faced with a total onslaught on us. He is trying to retrieve the image of the security forces which was attacked at their congress. But what is he doing at the same time? He is making a veiled attack on the hon. the Minister of Police so as to keep on his Prog mask a little longer.

But you agree with those words.

In other words, the hon. member would like to build up the image of our Defence Force but at the same time he does not want to harm his image as a Prog.

What are we getting from the other side? This is the one picture that we get from the official Opposition, but what is the picture we get from the governing party? The hon. the Prime Minister, when he became Minister of Defence in 1966, devoted himself to building up a Defence Force, in co-operation with the chiefs of the Defence Force, one of whom is today the hon. the Minister of Defence. In co-operation with them he built up a Defence Force comparable with the best in the world. Over the years the hon. the Prime Minister also established an armaments industry in this country, an industry which is today capable of providing virtually all our armaments requirements with which to avert the total onslaught on South Africa. On top of that we can even export armaments. This is the image of the PFP on the one hand and of the governing party on the other, a party that is being accused of ineptness and neglect. And yet it is this hon. Prime Minister that has built up a Defence Force that is capable, in combination with the other security services, inter alia the Police, to guarantee the security of our country, to guarantee peace, to guarantee freedom and to guarantee stability in South Africa. Let us go a step further and consider the hon. member for Yeoville. In the speech he made here he made four statements about the economy. He said: “This Government failed in the fight against inflation.” That is the first statement he made. Let us now consider the facts. Let us see what has really happened in recent years. The hon. member for Yeoville said that we had failed to combat inflation but he does not have a word to say about how we are to do so or about how their party would combat inflation. I shall come back to this in a moment. Let us first consider the position as regards inflation. In 1980 the inflation rate was 15,9%. For the 1980-’81 financial year it was 13,9%. Let us analyse the position as regards inflation in somewhat greater depth. Let us take a look at the lower income group. We see that in 1980, inflation for the lower income groups was 20,1%, and we see that in 1981, inflation for the lower income group was 13,4%. This is a considerable improvement, but we still believe that this is far too high and that it must be further reduced. Nevertheless we should like some recognition of the fact that the position has improved. Let us consider the higher income groups. In December, 1980, inflation for these groups was 14,1%, while in December 1981 it was 14,3%. Therefore these figures clearly show that the position of the lower income groups has improved considerably.

The following statement made by the hon. member was: “The Government allows the money supply to get out of control.” Surely it is terribly easy to make such a remark. It is published information which any school-child could also go and read, after which he could perform a calculation and say that the money supply has increased. But let us consider the actual position. When the gold price was very high and our balance of payments position was very positive, we admitted that we had difficulty controlling the money supply. The hon. the Minister of Finance acknowledged that in this House. But let us consider what the money supply position is at this moment, since the hon. member for Yeoville is now levelling a general accusation at the Government. We know that the money supply increased by approximately 25,6% in 1980. In the first quarter of 1981 it increased by 46%, in the second quarter by 26%, in the third quarter by 10% and in the fourth quarter by 20%. Since we are now discussing the money supply position, the hon. member must tell me what his attitude is to the fact that this money supply includes a vast sum, a sum of hundreds of millions of rands, with which the Reserve Bank has to support the Land Bank so that the latter can finance the co-operatives to provide for the farmers’ crops. Does he agree that that should be so, or does he not agree?

Mr. Speaker, will the hon. the Deputy Minister answer a question?

Mr. Speaker, I cannot answer a question now since I have only a few minutes left at my disposal.

My question to the hon. member is whether he supports this creation of money whereby the Reserve Bank must support the Land Bank, so that the Land Bank can finance the farmers’ surplus crops over a long-term. I want to address a challenge to the hon. member. In the course of this session there are another three economic debates in which the hon. member will have the opportunity to speak. I challenge the hon. member to spell out and motivate in those debates his party’s policy with regard to the combating of large money supplies in the present economic situation, with all the side effects, the marginal effects, that that policy will have. I challenge him to state what his party will do to combat inflation in this country, with all the economic effects which such countermeasures will have.

I should like to say more to the hon. member, particularly with regard to the point he made about “exploitation and profiteering”. The hon. member will recall that we agreed with him last year and that the hon. the Minister of Commerce and Industries, the hon. the Minister of Finance and myself warned the people not to exploit. I should now also like the hon. member to tell us in the debates that he ahead how he would combat this and what measures he would introduce which would not inhibit the free market mechanism. The hon. member must tell us that.

There is no free market in South Africa. You are bluffing the people. There is no such thing in South Africa.

If that is so, the hon. member must say it and then he must also tell us what he is going to do about it.

I have only a few minutes left at my disposal, and in this brief time I should like to make a statement to give an indication of the serious light in which this Government views the the economic situation in South Africa and the measures it is prepared to take to deal with the monetary and fiscal position in South Africa, not in an inept way but in an effective way. At this moment a Press statement is being issued by the hon. the Minister of Finance. I think it is important that this House should also take cognizance at this moment of the contents of that statement. I now wish to quote the Press statement issued by the hon. the Minister of Finance. It reads as follows—

1. 1. Treasury Tender Issues

   A number of improvements in the method of issuing Government stock was introduced in the recent past, including the marketing of issues on demand (“tap issues”) by the South African Reserve Bank.

   Although the whole question of marketing techniques of Government stock already enjoys the attention of the De Kock Commission, I have decided as a result of several well-motivated proposals from market institutions and from investors, to experiment at this stage already with one of these techniques. The next issue by the Treasury is only scheduled for April but as a test run tenders will be invited for issue prices on the re-issue of two existing Government stocks, namely a short-term stock with redemption date 1 November 1984 and a coupon of 13 per cent, and a medium-term stock with redemption date 15 August 1992 and a coupon for 12,9 per cent. Only limited amounts will be offered for subscription, namely R100 million for the short-term paper and R200 million for the medium-term paper. A separate press release with full details of all conditions will be issued by the Department of Finance.

   One of the most important advantages of the tender scheme (which is aimed at the institutional investor) will be that prospective investors will be able to indicate the optimum yield rates at which they will be prepared to invest. In this way actual market related rates can be determined. If investors’ interest in this method of issue is sufficient, the Treasury will consider repeating the exercise with similar term paper during the 1982-’83 financial year.

   In the present transitional phase of the economy, the Treasury is not inclined to offer large amounts of long-term Government stock at the prevailing high yield rates. On the other hand, certain institutional investors have a natural preference for long-term stock at existing, or even higher, yields. As a compromise the Treasury has decided, apart from the short-term stock, also to include in the tender the medium-term stock redeemable in 1992. No long-term stock will be offered during the first half of 1982. What will happen thereafter will depend on market conditions.

   As the economy cools down, the inflationary pressures and tightness in financial markets should ease somewhat and it can be expected that interest rates will flatten out, and then decline. Given the budgetary policy of financial discipline which was applied with so much success over the past number of years and which will definitely be continued in future, the Treasury expects that it will be able to finance its full loan requirements during the 1982-’83 financial year from non-inflationary sources.

2. 2. Treasury Bonds

   While dealing with Government issues, I also wish to announce that, in accordance with the changes that have already occurred in short-term rates, the interest rate on tax-free indefinite term Treasury Bonds will be increased from 8¾ per cent to 9½ per cent with effect from 1 February 1982. The investment limit of R60 000 per taxpayer remains applicable. Details in this regard, too, will be released by the Department of Finance.

   Furthermore, adjustments will also have to be made to conditions applicable to National Defence Bonds and Defence Bonus Bonds, but due to technical problems this cannot be done immediately. I hope to be able to make an announcement in this respect soon.

3. 3. Treasury Bills

   I also wish to announce that the Treasury will again arrange, with the assistance of the South African Reserve Bank, for the sale to provisional taxpayers of Treasury bills with redemption dates coinciding with tax payment dates. These tax bills, which will be available on demand from the end of February and will mature at the end of August 1982, not only offer the taxpayer a convenient and rewarding method of meeting his tax obligations, but moreover has the advantage that receipts of the Exchequer are spread more evenly throughout the year. Similar bills have been marketed with success in the past, the latest having end February 1982 as redemption date.

4. 4. IMF Drawing

   Finally I wish to mention that the South African Reserve Bank, as part of its action to obtain foreign bridging finance, has made arrangements to utilize that part of South Africa’s official foreign reserves held in the form of Special Drawing Rights (SDR’s), and to draw the so-called “reserve tranche” at the International Monetary Fund. Amounts which can be made available in this way and as foreign currency if and when necessary, total R107,4 million and R115,2 million, respectively.

The final announcement also concerns a Press statement. What is very important is that it concerns the taxation of fringe benefits. The commission has submitted its first interim report, which has been considered. The following statement is also being released at this moment by the hon. the Minister of Finance—

I am sure that the hon. the Deputy Minister of Finance will not expect me to comment on the long statement that he has just read on behalf of the Minister of Finance. I shall leave that in the capable hands of the hon. member for Yeoville, who is our spokesman on finance.

I want to deal with one or two other matters and I wish I had the time to devote some of my speech to the hon. the Minister of Co-operation and Development, but I cannot do that; in any case, he is a lost cause. I say this more in sorrow than anger. Gone is the swashbuckling knight in shining armour that we all looked to two or three years ago to drag this country out of the morass of apartheid legislation. Gone is the man that made all those heady promises when he was in Washington and in other parts of the United States. Now, the hon. the Minister has retreated completely and utterly behind the whole facade of the “total onslaught” which is so useful for every Minister in the Government to excuse their sins of omission and commission. I am afraid there is no point in my devoting any time to the hon. the Minister’s speech. If a man can stand up in this House—a man who knows as much as he does about the conditions under which the Black population of this country is living—and ascribe everything, all the dissatisfaction and unrest to Moscow agents and Soviet ambitions in Africa, then the hon. the Minister is either pretending ignorance, or he has sadly misunderstood the situation in this country.

That is not what I said.

That is how I understood it. He begged us; his entire speech was a plea for this side of the House to forget everything and to get together with the Government to defeat the total onslaught on South Africa. There was not one mention of the fact that the Government has failed to initiate a single important reform which will change the conditions under which the Black people in South Africa live. I will not devote any more time to this. As I say, I say this more in sorrow than in anger because, naïve creature that I am, I actually had hopes that that Minister meant what he said when he spoke fn the United States of America.

We have enjoyed quite an eventful week here in the House. We have been bombarded—and I use this word after having chosen it carefully—with commission reports. We had the Viljoen Commission report, the Steyn Commission report and the Rabie Commission report. I believe that all these reports could probably have been presented to us during the recess. But no, we are bombarded in the first week during the no-confidence debate.

What does the Viljoen Commission say? It says in essence that the Government has to abandon its policy of believing that the Black people of South Africa are in the urban areas as temporary sojourners. What a remarkable discovery! The Government has accepted that finding. It is like discovering the law of supply and demand, and I congratulate the Government on its intelligent discovery. But, Sir, had this Government— when it came to power 30 years ago—taken heed of the words of the Fagan Commission which reported in 1948, they would have found that the Fagan Commission pointed out then that to believe that Black people were in the urban areas temporarily, was simply begging the facts of the situation, and that to believe that total segregation was a possibility, was of course an absolutely hopeless dream. If that Government, when it came to power in 1948, had faced the facts of urbanization and developed a housing policy which had not led, as the present policy has led, to this enormous shortage throughout the whole country—according to the Viljoen Commission we will need R1,7 billion to clear that and hundreds of millions to clear the shortfall in Soweto alone—what a different racial situation could have faced us today in 1982!

How many houses did we build in the thirty years?

If the Government had gone in for a policy of housing on a family basis and if it had not in fact gone for a deliberate policy of maintaining this nonsense of temporary sojoumism and a migrant labour system, which the hon. the Minister knows better than anybody else destroys family life, we might have avoided— and I say this in all earnestness— the disasters of Sharpeville and the disaster of the unrest in Soweto from 1976 to 1978.

Yet a moment ago you said there was no reform.

But there is not. The hon. the Minister does not even understand what I am saying. [Interjections.] The Government continues to follow the old absurd policy which the Fagan Commission report advised them to abandon in 1948. The Government did not listen to the Fagan Commission report. It continued, and indeed deliberately fostered the old policy of believing in the temporary sojourn of Blacks in White urban areas. Not only could they have avoided the disaster of Sharpeville and the Soweto unrest, because we would have had a contented urban population living under family conditions based on some sort of security, but I also believe we would not have needed the harsh security legislation that we now have in South Africa. That brings me at once to the Rabie Commission report which was tabled yesterday; long overdue, I might say. The Rabie Commission was appointed in August 1979 to examine the necessity, the fairness, the efficacy and the adequacy of our security legislation. I might say that the investigation itself was even more overdue.

The first banning order in South Africa was issued way back in 1951. Since then more than 1 300 people have been leading the miserable life of banned people. Included among them is Winnie Mandela, who has suffered this treatment for 20 years. Today 132 people are still living under banning orders in South Africa. The first house arrest occurred in 1962. The first detention without trial occurred in 1963, then the 90-day detention legislation was passed, and hundreds of people were held in the two or three years during which that law was in operation. Many more hundreds of people have been held under the indefinite detention legislation, which was passed in 1967. That is the Terrorism Act. Hundreds of people have also been held under the preventive detention legislation, which was passed in 1976.

Since the beginning of last year at least 360 people have been detained in terms of security legislation in South Africa. That is excluding Transkei, Venda, Bophuthatswana and Ciskei, where hundreds more have been detained. At present there are 99 people being held under section 6 of the Terrorism Act, 12 under the 14-days’ detention legislation. That is section 22 of the Terrorism Act, which the Rabie Commission proposes be abolished but with another similar law being reinstated in its place. There are 56 people in detention under section 12B of the Act, as witnesses in security trials, and one person is in preventive detention. That makes a total of 168 unfortunate people, deprived of their liberty, without trial, kept away from their friends and families. Possibly their jobs are in jeopardy when they come out of detention, and their home life in shreds. Many of them have been kept in solitary confinement for many months.

I have had several conversations with the hon. the Minister of Police and with the head of the Security Police about detainees. I have been informed by them that several trials are pending. Indeed there are hints of a big conspiracy trial. I have been told that everything possible is being done to speed up the process, that a senior advocate has been seconded from the Attorney-General’s office to consider the charges. I was told this in November. I was told this in December. I was told this in January, and I was told this again yesterday. Yesterday the hon. the Minister of Police told us again all about the speed with which the trials are now being hastened. I want to know how much longer, he thinks, he can just keep people locked up while he trundles along with his investigations.

There is violence and terrorism, sabotage and subversion in other countries, such as Israel in particular, and also in Northern Ireland, both of which, I believe, has experienced a total onslaught to a much greater extent than has South Africa. Israel, since the State was actually founded in 1948, has been in a constant state of either war or emergency, surrounded by hostile neighbours and subject to constant attack from without and from within. In Northern Ireland, in the five years between 1970 and 1975, over 1 000 people were actually killed and 11 500 people injured, mostly owing to IRA activities. How do these countries cope? Both countries originally had tough extra-judicial powers, but even then the detention orders were subject to review; they were limited in time, there was right of appeal and right of detainees to legal representation. Mr. Rubenstein, who is a member of the Knesset and who spoke at the UCT conference on human rights in 1979, said: “Israel has learnt to cope with a permanent national emergency situation without giving up most of what we Israelis consider normal peacetime freedom of expression”. In other words, the laws have been considerably modified. The same thing obtains in Northern Ireland, and today administrative orders, that is extra-judicial detentions, are limited to 48 hours and they can be extended only by order of the Secretary of State for a further five days, not 5, 6 or 7 months the way the hon. the Minister and his police keep people locked up.

In England and in Ireland there was international supervision, and the hon. the Minister may know that actually Great Britain was found to be in breach of article 3 of the Convention of Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights found that England was in breach of that article because of the five techniques that were then used for interrogation. Those five techniques, I say, are familiar to anyone who has heard ex-detainees relate their experience while in the hands of the Security Police of South Africa. They are: Standing for long periods of time; hooding—in other words, hoods being placed over the persons’ heads—subjection to noise; deprivation of sleep; and deprivation of food and drink. I have heard very disturbing reports from ex-detainees about the sort of treatment that is accorded to them, and there have always been these disturbing rumours of electric shocks. Now I want the hon. the Minister of Police to give this House the categorical assurance that those techniques are not used in interrogations. Yesterday he said that everything possible was done to keep detainees in the most comfortable situation under the circumstances. He said everything was done to make sure that they did not harm themselves or commit suicide and that they were not harmed by other people. Can the hon. the Minister of Police, whose responsibility this is, give this House the categorical assurance that those five techniques are not used? Can he do that, Sir?

Carry on, I am listening to you.

Surely you can answer that?

Are the detainees visited in private by magistrates once a fortnight, as stipulated in section 6 of the Terrorism Act? In private—that is the important thing.

Ask Boraine how his son was treated. [Interjections.]

Does the hon. the Minister of Justice inform these detainees that they are allowed to make written representations to him, which is one of the few rights they have? How much attention does he pay to those representations, if they are ever made? And is the hon. the Minister of Justice receiving monthly reports, as he should be doing, as to why the detainees are still being kept locked up? He must be getting 99 reports every month about the detainees presently held under section 6. Does he study those reports, Sir? I wonder when he has time to do anything else if he is studying 99 reports every month about why these detainees should not be released. Or do the reports just say: “I, the Commissioner of Police, consider the man should not be released”? Does the hon. the Minister look at those reports and make a reasoned judgment as to whether or not those people should or should not continue to be held?

I do not intend to discuss the Rabie Commission’s report in any detail today, because, firstly, I do not have the time and, secondly, a special time for a debate has been set aside for this. I merely want to say that at first glance the Report is a decided disappointment and I believe that the Rabie Commission’s recommendations will simply bring South Africa to the position of Israel and Northern Ireland before modifications were made to their security laws. And, as I have said, these are the two countries that have suffered a far greater total onslaught than South Africa has. I do not deny that there will be improvement in the law such as at last restoring discretion to the courts—that is if the draft Bill is adopted by the Government. We have had no reaction yet from the Government on this. All of us are reacting, but not the Government. Discretion is to be restored to the courts; in other words, there is no longer to be a minimum sentence for these security crimes or crimes against the State, and juveniles are going to be afforded a certain amount of protection again. But shades of Rhodesia! The commission recommends the setting up of a Ministry of Law and Order. What does that not sound like in this day and age! It also recommends, of course, the retention of section 6 of the Terrorism Act, which is our most draconian piece of security legislation. The protection afforded to other detainees under preventive detention, to banned people, to organizations that are going to be banned and to publications that might be prohibited is not given, as I read the report, to section 6 detainees. As I read it, there is a board of review and the hon. the Minister can reject the recommendations, and that is that. In the case of the other type of detainees, if the board of review’s recommendations are rejected by the hon. the Minister, there is referral to the Chief Justice. Is that going to be implemented in law, and does the hon. the Minister think he will extend it to section 6 detainees because that is, of course, the crux of the matter.

I see the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications is here. Good. In future he is going to have to be a lot more careful about intercepting my mail … [Interjections] … and tapping my telephone. I do not care, let me tell the hon. the Minister, because my correspondence is there for all to see.

I can assure you I am not interested in your mail.

If the Government does not, by now, know what I think of it, it will never know, because I have told the Government across the floor of this House exactly what I think of it and its policies. So I do not mind if it hears what I say about it over the telephone.

There will be a debate, there will be legislation and you will have an opportunity to debate the matter.

Good.

There will be legislation?

Let me conclude by saying that what the Rabie report does say— and let me add that this badly needs to be said, and said loud and clear—is that security laws alone do not guarantee law and order. That was the whole basis and theme of my hon. leader’s speech, and of every other speech on this side of the House.

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

Sorry, I have only one minute left. He can ask me in the lobby. The commission indicates that socio-economic and political issues that are beyond its terms of reference are very relevant. The commission actually says that, and in so doing says no more, let me add, than the Gardiner Committee said when it examined the laws applying to Northern England in 1974, as a result of which there were very considerable modifications to the laws in England. I go further than that. I say that if law and order is to be preserved in this country, the law has to be just. We must have just laws, and the people to whom the laws apply must consent to those laws. That is the crux of the matter. The hon. the Prime Minister appreciated that yesterday when he said that if he wanted to bring reform to South Africa, he would have to take the people of South Africa along with him. But of course when he talks about the people of South Africa he is thinking only of the White voters.

That is the point.

Yes, that is the point. He is thinking only of the White voters, and of course mainly of the Afrikaner Nationalists. When we talk about getting the consent of the people to the laws of this country, however, we are referring to all the people of South Africa, whether they be enfranchised people or not, whether they be Black or White. Not even the hon. the Prime Minister, although he is a past master at self-deception—and in this category I now include the hon. the Minister of Co-operation and Development—can believe …

Thank you for the compliment.

… he has the consent of the Black people to the laws that litter our Statute Book, laws that separate families, laws that uproot people, laws that deny the Black people any say in the laws we pass in this House to govern their lives from the cradle to the grave. He cannot—and no member on that side can—believe he has the consent of the people to these laws, and as long as our Statute Book contains these laws, I believe that this country is going to continue to be under the heel of the Security Police in South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Houghton started her speech by referring to the hon. the Minister of Co-operation and Development. She said that the hon. the Minister’s argument ascribing all unrest to Moscow’s intrigue, was grossly fallacious, or words to that effect. It is quite obvious from the actions of the official Opposition in the House, or at least of certain elements of it, that they just do not want to accept the involvement of Russian imperialism in the unrest which is prevalent worldwide. For some reason they just totally reject that. Whether it is deliberate, whether it is planned and part of a strategy of which they are part, deliberately or otherwise, I cannot at this stage say.

I want to quote from a book by a former President of the USA, Mr. Richard Nixon. The book is called The Real War. [Interjections.] It is quite typical of pink liberals to try to discredit him. Apart from his involvement in the Watergate Scandal, it has been generally conceded that he has been one of the most able presidents of the USA. Certainly, he has an extremely good insight into international politics. About that there can be not the slightest doubt. In his book he writes that—

His own opinion is that—

He also says it will try to get to those countries where it can create the greatest instability by insurgence and assistance to elements such as those which are at present threatening the stability of Southern Africa—not only South Africa—and many other countries, including those in the Middle East.

I wish to quote from another very interesting book, The Terror Network. This book was written by an American foreign correspondent, Claire Sterling. She has reported on European, African, Middle Eastern and South-East Asian affairs for the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times Magazine, The Reporter, Life, The Reader’s Digest and other publications. She writes—

I do not know whether this includes the official Opposition—

This is where the crunch is—

What is “avuncular”?

The hon. member must go and look it up in his dictionary if he does not know. She writes further—

And we have some adventuristic elements in the House as well—

This is quoting Boris Ponomariev—

Valentino’s bed-time stories.

In this book, The Terror Network, there is virtually no reference per se to South Africa or to Southern Africa. It deals with the terror network internationally, on a worldwide scale. But it indicates very clearly that there is an orchestrated, coordinated involvement. The action, words and participation in debates in this House clearly indicate that in the Opposition in this House they have useful fellow-travellers.

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: The hon. member says that the forces of international terror have fellow-travellers in this House.

Will the hon. member just expand on what he means by that?

I am referring to those puppeteers, shall I say, those who plan this international terrorism. That they have useful fellow-travellers, whether it is wilful or not, and people who support them directly or indirectly, can be regarded as a fact. In terms of the actual words that have been used in this House in trying to focus attention away from the real problem and in trying to create the impression that no international terrorism is threatening this country, i.e. that Russia is not behind the organized destabilization of this country, I can only say that they are the useful handmaidens of those who would like to destabilize this country.

The Nationalist Government is behind the organized destabilization of South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: Are you not asking the hon. member to withdraw that?

Does the hon. member for Klip River in any way associate the official Opposition with the forces of terrorism?

Mr. Speaker, I do not consider that the Opposition here actively participates in the forces of terrorism.

That is something.

However, by their actions they do not dissuade people from participating therein. In fact, by their actions they make it easier for the forces of terrorism to spread their evil deeds in this country.

*The hon. the Leader of the Opposition does not represent the central ideology of radical liberalism. Let me concede that. There is, however, a niche in his party for radical liberals, and that niche is actively occupied. The overall strategy of the PEP, that now dares to say that this House has no confidence in the Government, is to give the PFP a broad basis, a mask of acceptability. The leader does not represent radical liberalism, but at the actual core, the vortex of power, the whole motive of the PFP, the whole justification for the existence of the PFP, is ultimately to promote that radicalism. That is why it was necessary in previous years to destroy Sir De Villiers Graaff personally and to destroy the UP. It was even necessary to replace the leader of the PRP with a more acceptable mask for the outside world, with someone with a pleasing personality, a person who is an Afrikaner academic. It is necessary to project that image to the outside world. It is necessary to create this broad base by means of infiltration into municipal authorities. That is why they are at present trying to take over the Johannesburg City Council. That is why they have already succeeded indirectly in gaining a broad base in the Durban municipality, in Pietermaritzburg, and also here in Cape Town. They must have a broad base. The hon. member for Yeoville is also one of those who assist in creating an acceptable image, but that hon. member is not part of the core of that ideology. In fact, I should say that being in the PFP at present makes the hon. member for Yeoville feel like a turkey does just before Christmas.

As the PFP has a broad base accepted by the gullible, there is, in fact, an entrenchment of the actual core of the PFP, radical liberalism. Some of them are sitting in this House. [Interjections.] Jokers do not necessarily belong to that core, and some of them are sitting in the front benches.

Who are they?

They are those who irritate the hon. the Prime Minister with broad smiles.

Now we are concerned with this struggle in South Africa while South Africa is bent on bringing about stability and peaceful coexistence in a multinational, a multiracial Southern Africa. The NP has repeatedly stated that it has the best intentions towards all population groups in South Africa; the Coloureds, the Indians, and all Black ethnic groups; that it has deep and earnest intentions towards each one of the ethnic groups of South Africa. There are Ministers who have repeatedly stated that there is not a single member of the NP who would deny any real leader of the Blacks, Coloureds, or Indians a real, positive share in the decision-making process concerning their own affairs. The point is, however: How can we, in a multinational and multiracial country such as South Africa, knowing what has happened in the rest of Africa, and what is still happening in Zimbabwe, move towards a system of which the whole premise is that constitutional reform can take place on the basis which has been known over the years to European democracy and which is modelled on the standards which applied in Europe in this and the previous century? Under no circumstances can we move towards something like this under the present circumstances. There is a total difference in the values of life of the various peoples of Southern Africa.

I contend that it will not even help us to seek unanimity among the Whites, the Coloureds, and the Indians, should the Blacks be enemies of the Whites. Therefore it is not the standpoint of the NP to involve the Coloureds and the Indians more closely in the White community as mutual opponents of the Blacks. [Interjections.]

Our premise is clearly that we in Southern Africa must find a basis, so that all the population groups and their leaders can be established on the basis of co-operation by means of consultation and, as the hon. the Prime Minister stated, on the basis that there can be joint decision-making concerning the supply of services.

You cannot even get an Indian in Ladysmith …

The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg North is one of the hon. members who likes making interjections, but he is also one of the hon. members who is secretly involved in a great deal of destabilization on a political level. It has also been pointed out in the House that he seconded a motion during the PEP congress. That motion has been pointed out as being clearly anti-South African by the hon. member for Yeoville. Therefore, if I were the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg North, I would rather remain absolutely quiet in this House, especially when he deals with people who know him, know his background and know his political opinions.

We in South Africa have a problem situation. We have the international tension of the whole world in a microcosm here in South Africa. That is why we cannot carry on as if it does not exist. We can only proceed on the basis of bringing order to the political system in South Africa.

An article appeared in today’s Argus written by a certain Mr. Wilf Nussey which indicates that the Buthelezi Plan will be announced shortly. The Buthelezi Plan is something which, unfortunately, I cannot endorse under any circumstances, because it operated outside of the sphere of authority of Chief Minister Buthelezi. Personally I know him very well. I have nothing against him. In fact, I have a great deal of sympathy with the problem he is facing, because I know that the ANC is out to destroy him.

Under the circumstances, since my time is very limited, I should like to address a question to the NRP. In Natal the NRP claims that it has the basis for co-operation. The Natal leader of the NRP is a member of the Buthelezi Commission, and now I should like to know if the NRP is prepared to say in advance that they are prepared to acquiesce in the recommendations of the Buthelezi Commission, since they were so eager to co-operate in that commission.

Mr. Speaker, I find it impossible to follow the tortuous reasoning of the hon. member for Klip River. For one thing I do not belong to the same book club as he does and for another thing I find it very difficult to agree with him in his eulogy of ex-President Nixon who was surely the most discredited American President in recent American political history. As far as the remainder of his speech is concerned, in trying to understand it I imagine that what he was trying to do was to slot in with the discussions that we have had throughout this week, from Government benches in particular, suggesting that we are faced with a total onslaught against South Africa. In fact, that has been the theme of nearly every speech that we have had from hon. members on Government benches.

I should like to deal for a moment with this question of a total onslaught as well. It was mentioned yesterday that the Government and the Opposition are talking past each other and, to avoid this, it may perhaps be useful once again to attempt to define what is meant and what might be understood by the term “total onslaught” which is used so frequently by the NP. Perhaps the best way to do this will be to pose certain questions. Firstly, I want to ask this: Is there an onslaught and, if there is, can it be described as a total onslaught? Secondly, I want to ask: What is the cause of that onslaught? I ask this because the very fact that a party that has been in power for 30 years and more uses this argument to justify appeals for further support, the very fact that the party uses an argument like this invites the question as to responsibility for an onslaught if in fact there is an onslaught against South Africa. The third question we should ask is …

May I ask the hon. member a question?

No, Sir, I am in the middle of developing my argument and my time is very limited. The third question we have to ask ourselves: Is the onslaught an onslaught from outside or inside or both? I believe that the answers to these questions must regulate our attitude towards the existing situation. In my view the answers are these. Yes, certainly there is an onslaught against South Africa. It is probably Marxist-oriented and it is probably part of the Marxist expansion strategy to which the hon. the Prime Minister has referred. However, it is a Marxist onslaught just as there is an onslaught against the United States of America, against Great Britain, against France, against Poland, against Afghanistan and against many other countries. Nobody who has studied recent history and events around the world will dispute the fact that there is a Marxist expansionist programme. However, what makes our situation here in South Africa so different from that in most of those countries that, are being subjected to the same sort of onslaught, and what brings us to the grim situation of the totality of the onslaught against South Africa, is that whereas most of those countries can rely for support upon the Western Alliance, we cannot. That is the difference. Our natural and our traditional allies are not automatically or enthusiastically on our side.

This brings me to the answer to the second question, namely, why is there an onslaught against South Africa? What is the cause of the onslaught which is so acute in the case of South Africa as opposed to the situation in respect of other countries that are threatened by Marxist expansionism? The answer lies very clearly in the policies of this Government which have progressively and consistently alienated the sympathy and support of our natural allies. One can think of all the policies and legislation on the statute book e.g. the Group Areas Act, the Mixed Marriages Act and the Population Registration Act, some of which have been mentioned here today. One can think of all the statutory discrimination in South Africa. One can think of detention without trial and one can now even think of the Steyn Commission report. All these things have served through the years to distance us more and more from our Western allies, our natural and historical allies. All these things have driven us into a situation where we are moving into a realm where there might be totality in the onslaught against us.

There is also the third question: Is the onslaught an internal or external one or both? I have already indicated that there is an external onslaught which is made much more acute by the lack of support from our natural allies. However, from the internal point of view, because of the policies of discrimination and oppression over 30 years and more which have persistently been followed in the country, we have built up in this country an attitude of hatred, despair and suspicion among the majority of our own population, which perhaps completes the totality of the onslaught against the system in South Africa. This is what the onslaught is against. The onslaught is against the system in South Africa.

To sum up our attitude on this issue: Firstly, certainly there is an onslaught against South Africa; secondly, it is made infinitely worse by the policies of the Government and, thirdly, we are compelled to live with it because it is a fact of life in South Africa. We are locked into this situation because it is part of the heritage of 30 years of NP Government in this country. The policy of this Government—the apartheid policy, separate development policy, call it what you like—constitutes the soft underbelly of South Africa which encourages Marxist expansionism in South Africa. While we in these benches loathe the system, because we love South Africa and because we seek peaceful change in South Africa we are committed to working for peaceful change and seeking peace and security for all in South Africa. We will continue to work for reform in the country for so long as that reform is possible. That is why we appeal to the Government for reform. We are saddled with this situation, largely of the making of the NP Government over 30 years. We have to get away from that situation and make the necessary reforms to find the real security which we all seek in this country.

I want now to take up the theme developed by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, viz. that the Government’s stubborn adherence to ideology makes it incapable of meeting the needs of our South African society at the present time. The Government is unable, because of its obsession with ideology, to adapt and to produce real reform in South Africa unless it is able to escape from the straitjacket of that ideology. Nowhere is this restrictive commitment to ideology more evident than in the Government’s attitude to the whole process of urbanization in South Africa. I believe that the Government has neglected to deal with this situation effectively and when it has made attempts to do so, it has been far too conscious of the restrictions of its own ideology. The Government’s attempts have therefore either been totally ineffective or in many cases totally counterproductive. Unless the Government discards its rigid adherence to outmoded beliefs and theories and unless it meets the challenge of the process of urbanization in South Africa, our society can well be overwhelmed by that process. This is a process— and this we must recognize—that cannot be reversed. I was in the House when the late Dr. Verwoerd and others were able to prophesy that by the year 1978 the flow of people from the rural areas to the urban areas would suddenly be reversed and that they would flood back from our cities to the rural areas. Nobody even takes that seriously now. That is evidence of the total failure of the whole concept of separate development. Mr. Speaker, we must therefore realize that we cannot sidestep the issue or sweep it under the carpet, that we cannot dodge the issue but that it is a challenge that must be met. This will require courage and initiative and, above all, adaptability and flexibility in Government attitudes.

The flow of people in South Africa to our cities is a fact of life in this country. As I say, it will need a flexible approach on the part of the Government. It will need an approach on the part of the Government which will allow authority to provide basic services for the tens of thousands of people who are going to move out of the rural areas into the urban areas. Much has been said in this House about the squatter situation in the Western Cape. Experience has shown that it is not only peculiar to the Western Cape. We have similar problems in other urban areas of South Africa. Experience has also shown that however powerful the Government may be, and however restrictive its laws, if the sociological and economic causes are there no one can stop people from moving from an impoverished rural area in South Africa to the urban areas of South Africa. In this context I should like to refer specifically—and I should like the hon. the Minister of Co-operation and Development to listen to me—to the area on the northern boundary of Durban, known as Inanda. The hon. the Minister will know it. It is an area which is very much in the news at present. It is an area in which the population density is growing apace. It has thousands of people living in the most primitive conditions. Only small parts of the area have access to reticulated water and sewage disposal facilities. It is an area which, two years ago, was hit by an epidemic of typhoid, and it is an area which is now being hit by cholera. I believe there are presently some 200 000 people living in the area of Inanda. Estimates have indicated that within 20 years that figure will grow to some 650 000 people. It is an area, therefore, which cries out for planning and development, both short-term and long-term.

We are doing precisely that.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Minister says they are doing precisely that. I want him to listen to me further because I am going to indicate that there has been gross neglect. Whatever they are going to do in the future, it substantiates again our motion of no-confidence in the Government. There has been gross neglect on the part of the Government, on the part of this Hon. Minister’s department, gross neglect in Inanda over a number of years.

You give us the money. [Interjections.]

Now the hon. the Minister says we must give him the money. Let us deal with that. [Interjections.] Obviously, if one takes into account the desperate emergency health situation which exists at the present time, the short-term need is one of water and sanitation. It is in the interest of the health of the people in that area and in the interests of the health of the people in the greater Durban area. While we sit here debating it is a stark and startling fact that in the area of Inanda, at the present time, more than 200 cholera cases are being treated. I want to know how this disgraceful situation has arisen. Most of the area concerned is under the control of the Department of Co-operation and Development, and the welfare of the people in that area is the responsibility of that department. I want to state that I am not satisfied that the department has in any way shown an awareness of the seriousness of the situation and of the urgent need to do something about it. I can certainly see very little evidence of real planning in regard to the needs of the area. In fact, the department’s record would indicate totally otherwise—a lack of planning. The record of the department is confirmation of this hon. Minister’s own assertion some time ago—it may be confirmation of this—that there were tortoises within his own department which were impeding progress. The hon. the Minister need not pull a face. He did talk about tortoises. I do not know who these tortoises are, but this is the hon. the Minister’s own comment.

And the Minister is the boss of the tortoise farm.

Serious as the allegation about tortoises in his department may have been at that time, in the situation that prevails at the present time in Inanda, I should say, a tortoise is as dangerous as a viper, because delay and equivocation in providing fresh water and basic amenities can only mean death and disease, and that is the reality. This is what the hon. the Minister must consider.

Health authorities are certain that the most effective way of fighting the disease is the provision of a regular supply of clean water to the inhabitants of Inanda. Again, however, the history shows a lack of planning, a lack of foresight, a lack of a sense of urgency. In parts of Inanda, over 18 months ago, when the typhoid epidemic broke out, the department arranged for fresh water to be taken into the area by means of water-tankers. That went on for some time but suddenly, in October 1981, those water-tankers were withdrawn. At the time …

And what happened?

I shall tell the hon. the Minister what happened.

I wrote to the hon. the Minister at the time and expressed my concern over the withdrawal of the tankers.

[Inaudible.]

I am going to concede that—just be a little patient. The hon. the Minister is very edgy, and I can understand why. I wrote to the Minister, warning him of the health hazards and I asked for those tankers to be restored. To his credit I must admit that the Minister replied to my letter and said that he was aware of the situation and that he had ordered the restoration of the tankers, and I commend him for that. However, I now want to ask the hon. the Minister who gave the orders for the tankers to be withdrawn in the first place? The hon. the Minister takes credit for restoring them, but what happened in his department? Which tortoise intervened and gave the orders for the withdrawal of water supplies to those areas? [Interjections.]

Was it the turtle?

This is a very serious matter, Sir. In the light of the previous history, in the light of the typhoid outbreak and in the light of what we know now, the act of withdrawing water supplies was in my view no less than a criminal act. It was no less than a criminal act to take water away from those people, and I want to know who gave that order. What is happening in the Minister’s department? Where is the planning? Where is the consideration? Where is the compassion for people? Where is the control? While I welcome the restoration of the water tankers, it is, of course, only a short-term solution to the problem.

It now transpires that as far back as June 1980 the Umgeni Water Board submitted a report to the Minister’s department, showing the feasibility of establishing a low-cost main supply from a local dam to Inanda and adjoining areas. According to Press reports, however, the Minister has to date, 18 months later, not yet seen this report from the Umgeni Water Board, and the Press report which quotes an information officer from his department, indicates that the Minister will look at this plan early this month. This newspaper report appeared last week and it quoted an information officer from the Minister’s own department.

Chuck them all out!

[Inaudible.]

The hon. the Minister must not complain. I have sympathy for him, but I believe things are happening in his department that he is not aware of.

For 18 months nothing happened. Why? The result is that we now have a disastrous outbreak of cholera in this highly populous area. Is it because nobody bothered about it, because nobody was concerned about it? Or is it again perhaps because in terms of Government ideology the people there do not really exist? Because they are temporary sojourners as their permanency has not been recognized? Is this perhaps the reason when here again we get the situation that these are squatters, they are not recognized by the authorities, they do not exist so why should we have particular concern for a supply of fresh water to them? I want to ask what the hon. the Minister is going to do now. Is he going to wait until the cholera disease spreads, or is he going to take urgent action in regard to water supplies? [Interjections.] The hon. the Minister says: “Give us the money”, and I know there is money involved, but this is an emergency situation. I know that water reticulation costs a lot of money. I know that it is a serious matter, but it is an emergency at the present time. Lives are being lost, the health of people is being affected and the health of the whole city of Durban and surrounding areas is being threatened.

We are treating it as an emergency situation.

The hon. the Minister says they are treating it as an emergency situation. Then it should not take him more than 18 months to read the report, because that does not give an indication that he appreciates that this is an emergency situation.

So much for the short-term needs. I want to deal now with the long-term needs of the particular area, because here too I fear that, because there is going to be a conflict between ideology and the reality, we are going to get nothing done. In the first place the Government must recognize the permanency of these people and must do something about it. Secondly, the Government must decide and indicate what sort of authority should administer that whole Inanda area. At the moment the principal responsibility is the responsibility of the Minister’s department, although there are other units and people involved. Thirdly, the Minister must look at the self-help schemes that exist in Inanda, because not all is bad in Inanda at the present time. There are self-help schemes, for example a scheme where the Government is giving money to allow people site and service schemes. They are working in co-operation with the Urban Foundation, and certain houses are being built. However, this is being impeded again by Government policy. There is the whole question of doubt about section 10 rights, because there is no incentive for people to try to build any home that is permanent if they do not think they are going to get section 10 rights or if they think that their children are not going to get section 10 rights in an urban area. Then there is the question of the type of title they have to their property. They are given, not freehold title, but title which allows the township manager to withdraw their ownership in certain circumstances. This is not going to encourage them to get money from their employers or from financial institutions to enable them to build homes. Again a clash between the reality of the situation and the policy of the Government. This is what I fear is going to happen when one looks at the whole process of urbanization in South Africa. [Interjections.] I believe that I have indicated again the lack of forethought and consideration on the part of the Government, and I believe that in those circumstances there is full justification for supporting the motion of no confidence moved by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Speaker, we have now been sitting and listening to the hon. member for Berea for a long time. We thought we were also going to have the question of the $1 million of Sun City on our agenda this afternoon. [Interjections.] I am waiting for his question about Sun City, but it has not yet come up.

He and old Dalling were to have raised it.

At the beginning of the month we read in the newspapers that the hon. member for Berea had said that he was going to challenge the Government to prove that it had not helped to sponsor the Sun City golf tournament. A few days later we discovered that this was not what he had said, because he then said that the possibility had simply been put to him that the Government might have been involved with the financial support for the golf tournament and that all that he had in actual fact said, was that after he had discussed it with the David of Sandton he would have stepped in as Goliath, if necessary, and would have taken steps to gain the assurance that Government funds had not been used. [Interjections.]

A shocking statement.

Where can one find a more pathetic example of political clumsiness, and I want to add irresponsibility, because surely this is to the detriment of the country? [Interjections.] On the other hand, one could say that it is an illustration of unprofessional journalism on the part of the man who dealt with the report, a degree of unprofessionalism that one seldom encounters, and this too was to the detriment of the country. [Interjections.] One would have thought that the hon. member for Berea would have put his question about the $1 million today, or would at least have said honestly that it was an example of irresponsible, careless and unprofessional behaviour on the part of the Press and to the detriment of the country.

However, what does he do? He analyses the total onslaught. They admit that the total onslaught is chiefly Marxist. He asks, however, why the onslaught is aimed at South Africa. Then he says it is because of the policies of the Government. Does that hon. member honestly think that a Marxist total onslaught would decrease or lessen if policies other than those of this government were to be implemented one day? [Interjections.] Do they believe that the Marxists are involved in this onslaught because they are opposed to the policy of this specific Government? [Interjections.] The hon. member goes on to say that the internal aspect of the total onslaught is aimed against the system. Does he believe for a single moment that the reason for the onslaught against South Africa by the Marxists has anything to do with the current political system?

Of course.

Does he believe for a single moment that if it were ever to happen—and may the Lord preserve us from it—that the total onslaught were to succeed, the Marxists would come and implement the policy of the PFP here? [Interjections.]

That is not what he said.

I should now like to leave the hon. member for Berea at that and refer to a statement that the hon. Leader of the Opposition made and that he tried to bring home strongly when he accused the Government of ideological prejudice and said that the Government has been blinded and misled by its ideological prejudice. This is typical of the type of accusation that the opponents of this Government, the people who are so inclined to speak sneeringly about Afrikaner nationalism, make against this side of the House, viz. that their thoughts are ideological thoughts, a philosophy which deals in preconceived formulas rather than a philosophy that deals with sensible, well-thought-out standpoints. It is a representation that also alleges that this side of the House is dealing with prejudices.

Exclusively with prejudices.

The glaring irony, and the almost tragi-comical anomaly, is that this remark was made by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. He is the leader of the party that advocates a policy that is totally alienated from reality. They talk about ideological prejudices on this side, but they advocate a policy that has been discredited by the realities of Africa and that has been pointed out as impractical, untenable and disastrous. The PFP’s policy of undifferentiated liberal democracy, with universal franchise in a unitary State and with a Black majority Government, clashes with reality. Then they presume to talk about ideological prejudices. It is a biased ideological theoretical policy that has nothing to do with reality. It clashes with the realities of ethnic diversity in South Africa, a diversity that is emphasized both by the large number of components that constitute this diversity and the deep-seated mutual differences between those components of the ethnic diversity. It also clashes with the reality of the differences and even the discrepancies between the level of development and sophistication of the various population groups in the country.

I should like to put it to the consideration of the official Opposition that the essence of democracy is not to be found in a majority as such, that the essence of democracy is not necessarily to be found in a universal participation either, because I think that one can still have democracy without a majority decision, without universal participation. In my opinion, the true essence of democracy is that it is government by persuasion. If democracy in this true sense is to be implemented on the basis of the standpoint of the Opposition by means of universal franchise, it clashes with the realities that make government by persuasion an impractical possibility in this country if one includes all population groups and all inhabitants on an undifferentiated basis. Government by persuasion requires as joint values and joint traditions as a foundation, those that everyone sharing in that form of government has in common. It also requires experience of a political style of negotiation, consultation and dialogue which everyone who wants to participate in that form of government, should have gained over the years. Furthermore, it requires all the members of the population who are co-operating in that undifferentiated system which the official Opposition is advocating, to have common goals. It also requires patience and experience of the rules of the game that people have learned and built up together over a long period of time. All these components that are necessary for the essential government by persuasion which is the basis of democracy, will definitely make the implementation of a policy like that which the official Opposition is advocating, totally impractical and impossible if we take into the account the realities of South Africa. Then they talk about the ideological prejudice on this side of the House!

The policy of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and his party also clashes with the realities of practical experience in Africa that have already been pointed out by some of my colleagues on this side of the House, realities of Africa where politics depend on power; realties of Africa where, apart from Botswana perhaps, there is no single example of free elections that take place on a regular basis, of truly elected majority Governments and of a true tolerance of an Opposition; realities of Africa based on the model of the one-party State, where in the vast majority of cases, changes of Government have occurred by military coups in recent years; realities of Africa from which each one of us clearly sees that the application of this type of policy by short-sighted idealists has lead to administrative mismanagement and collapse. Finally, we see clearly from the Steyn and the Rabie reports what the realities of the onslaught and threat are, circumstances in which the policy of the Opposition would be the approach most lacking in reality and the most unrealistic. The driving force of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and his party is in fact to be found in a prejudice that is dogmatic and ideological, that is theoretical and romantic, that is lacking in reality, that has not been put to the test and that has not yet been tested against the realities.

[Inaudible.]

Order! The hon. member for Bryanston must stop making so many interjections.

Then you could learn something, old friend. Just be quiet for a moment.

I should like to come to my own sphere of responsibility and I should like to point out that there are few areas where the ideological obsession and blindness of the Opposition is as clear as in their continual insistence on integration in education, on open and mixed schools, on the free association in terms of the so-called local option. I should like to emphasize once again in this House today that the Government does not reject this approach of open or mixed schools for ideological reasons alone, not because of some prejudice or other, but for considerations of educational responsibility that have been based on common sense. I want to underline a few of these reasons here once again. In the first place, it is because the basic function of schools is that of conveying culture. I should like to emphasize once again that the hon. members of the Opposition and their associates are always trying to make this idea ludicrous, as happened again recently when a speaker at a symposium at the University of the Western Cape referred inter alia to the fact that—

He goes on to say—

This attitude is typical of the hon. members of the Opposition. They are “old values”. They are obsolete. Anything that deals with culture and tradition, that is different to the type of universal neutrality which they advocate, is dismissed as old, obsolete, ludicrous and primitive. However, if they do not want to listen to what we are saying, I should like to call to mind here a speech made by someone who will definitely not be considered as a supporter of the policy of this Government. I am referring to Prof. Mphalele, the director of the Council for Black Education and Research on the Witwatersrand. I searched in the English newspapers for a report, a fairly full report, of what he said, but I could not find one, and therefore I am quoting his speech, which he delivered in English, as it was reported in Die Transvaler of 5 January. It is a speech that he delivered at the 60th annual congress of the African Teachers’ Association of South Africa. He said, and I quote from the report—

This is what those hon. members would call “bush culture”, “babes in the bush”. He goes on to say—

He goes on to say—

These are not the words of the so-called ideologists of the Government; they are the words of the Black educational leader, a person who can scarcely be considered as a lackey of the Government.

There are also other reasons why this Government rejects the concept of mixed or open schools. For instance, there is the practical consideration that it is difficult to imagine that there could be anything that could cause a greater degree of tension and friction on the local level than if the different approaches to opening schools by the different schools themselves were to be compared to one another and exploited by various pressure groups. This would bring about a polarization of education on the local level which would be untenable and would simply be to the detriment of education. Furthermore, it would lead to unfair pressure by so-called majority groups on minority groups who would then simply have to be content with what was decided and subject themselves to an educational system that is not acceptable to them.

Indeed, I think it is not unlikely that under the guidance of the Opposition we would be faced in such a case with the notorious “bussing” found in America, where they bring people from different residential areas in order to achieve the correct pro rata population ratio in these open schools. Am I simply indulging in pipe-dreams now? No, I am referring to the book that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has written together with Prof. Welsh, in which he advocated inter alia that in the Public Service in his proposed dispensation, in the Defence Force in his proposed dispensation, indeed, on the Bench of his proposed dispensation there should be a pro rata representation according to population ratio. Apparently this would also have to take place in the schools, and it would therefore bring about “bussing” with all the misery that it has caused in other countries. We would be faced with conflict and hostility if we were to accept such a system of open schools with local option. It would be at the cost of and would have a disruptive effect on the individual pupils and would not be to their benefit. I also want to put it very clearly that it is the biggest cosmetic bluff on the part of the Opposition if they allege that by opening schools they would be making a single contribution towards the solution of the problems and shortcomings in the educational sphere. Opening schools would not result in any worthwhile advantage. It would affect a very small minority at most, and would do nothing to establish educational facilities for the masses. The need in education is for the expansion of facilities and the improvement of facilities, to bring them up to equal quality, to equal opportunities. Throwing open schools will do very little to improve this and in any event would do little to accommodate more pupils.

Therefore, from this side of the House, I can rightfully say that we are adhering to this policy not for ideological reasons, but for practical, educational reasons that are based on common sense, reasons that I have pointed out, and because we want to make an honest attempt to do something concrete to improve education and do not merely envisage opening of certain schools. I want to go further and point out that this attitude on the part of the Opposition with regard to the abuse of the schooling system for political purposes—this is what they are doing with their policy of open and mixed schools—is a typical example of abusing valuable, precious community institutions for purposes other than the actual, true purpose of those institutions, a purpose that is actually dealing with seeking political profit for which that party is striving. This policy is manipulating the school and education for a non-educational goal, viz. a political ideology, for ideological prejudice. The educational concept of parents’ option and of freedom of choice are being utilized by them through this approach in order to make the school an instrument for achieving non-educational political purposes without being able to achieve any real benefit in the educational sphere, indeed, to the extent that it will largely be to the detriment of the children involved. This type of ideologically-obsessed shortsightedness or squint is also apparent from the superficiality—I am tempted to say the obstinacy or the malevolent deception— with which the hon. member for Pinelands made his remark about certain poor matric results in 1981. He came up with the answer—

He went on to say—

I have now summarized his words, but I think that this is essentially what the hon. member said. But what is the true position? Over the previous years, including the immediately preceding year, the results in those schools were fairly good. There was even an upturn, and the system then was surely the same as the system of today. Indeed, the current system is probably better because improvements are being introduced every year. Therefore, if the system was the reason why results were so poor this year, how can it then be explained that the same system, in perhaps a less improved form than at present, did in fact produce better results before? Surely it is clear that the issue here is the temporary factors that arose and led to these unfortunate results, factors that were the consequence of the extended boycotts and strikes that took their toll in the form of educational disruption. Even though it was the system that they were boycotting, it was nevertheless a system that had produced fairly good results recently. When we argue in this House on such an important subject as the education and future of our young people, we must really act with responsibility and not use this type of superficial, cross-eyed arguments.

In contrast to this negative, destructive approach that the hon. Opposition displayed towards the educational policy of this Government, I should like to refer here to a very interesting report that I received from America. I should like to quote from the South African Education Programme Newsletter that was distributed by the International Education Programme in New York, financed by the American Government, and dated August 1981. This Newsletter reports on a conference that took place, at which various Americans and South Africans consulted on what America can do “to promote the educational needs of Black South Africans”. The speaker that represented the State Department there, Mr. Dlouhy, says inter alia that the acceptance by the Government of the eleven principles of the De Lange Report—

They go further. They are realistic. They display a realism that we should very much like to see on that side of the House too so that they could contribute towards a meaningful debate on this subject. They go on to say—

He points out the tremendous population explosion and says—

Therefore it is not caused by the faulty policy of this Government. He goes on to say—

He also talks about “this laudable effort”. He says that America must adopt a sympathetic attitude towards this—

One does not ask the Opposition to adopt the Government’s policy. One simply asks the Opposition, in the times in which we are living, for a responsible judicious, balanced judgment on subjects that are of such importance to all our children and to the future of our country, such as education. Then, even if we reach different standpoints, let us at least talk about these matters in a mature, responsible fashion here. I want to ask the Opposition to take note of the standpoints of people like Prof. Mphalele and this standpoint that was stated by the Americans at the conference. One hopes that on the road ahead we will hear more positive sounds from the hon. Opposition with regard to these matters.

Mr. Speaker, I listened attentively to the hon. the Minister, although he spoke very fast. He reminded me once again of the idea we have repeatedly had from the Government side concerning the total onslaught on South Africa. I think that we on this side of the House have proved during this debate that we also realize that there is a total onslaught. What we definitely disagree about in this connection is what is going to influence this total onslaught and what is going to hinder or promote this total onslaught.

During this debate it was clearly apparent from the Government side that apartheid still formed the basis of their policy. We on this side believe, however, that apartheid will be the most important factor promoting the total communist onslaught on South Africa. On this we disagree. The hon. the Minister said that we should discuss this realistically. I should like to ask the hon. the Minister whether he can really tell me that apartheid no longer exists in South Africa. We have asked to the Government side repeated questions about apartheid, but we have not received a single reply. The hon. member for Helderkruin did not want to reply; not one of the hon. members on that side wanted to reply. Apartheid is the problem and the Government cannot get away from that.

It is a great privilege for me to support the motion of no confidence moved by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. Nothing I have heard from the Government side in the course of the debate can prevent me from doing so. Absolutely nothing can prevent me. The Government is no longer able to lead; nor can it be led, but unfortunately it is causing a great deal of suffering.

Strangely enough, a Press statement was made this very morning concerning the subject I had intended to discuss this afternoon. I am referring to the Press statement about cholera issued by the Department of Health and Welfare.

†I cannot express the concern about the cholera epidemic better than the department did and therefore I thank them for this report. I wanted to use different words, but now I shall use the department’s own words—

The report further states a lot of essential detail about cholera—

*The department has been fighting this disease for 10 years, therefore, and at the moment it is an epidemic in South Africa. I wonder whether the hon. the Minister could tell me whether cholera is now endemic in South Africa or not. I have no wish to blame the hon. the Minister for this. Of course I blame him for being a Nationalist, but I cannot blame him for the cholera epidemic; that we cannot do, because, as I shall indicate later, the hon. the Minister understands the problem. In the course of the debate we have learned that certain hon. Ministers are no good, but none of them can be any good since their policy makes it impossible. I sympathize with the hon. the Minister of Health and Welfare, because it is impossible for him to prevent the outbreak and spread of cholera in South Africa. It is the policy of the NP which makes it impossible for him. [Interjections.]

Order!

I do not blame the Department of Health and Welfare either. In fact, I give them credit that under the most difficult circumstances they are trying to restrict and combat the disease. I feel sorry for them. They know what to do, but it is impossible for them to be successful.

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

Is the hon. member for Parktown prepared to allow a question?

No, Sir; I have only a short time to speak.

†The cholera epidemic had to happen and it did happen. This is a frightening indication. I notice that the hon. the Minister of Co-operation and Development is laughing again.

I am laughing at you.

Very well. [Interjections.]

The cholera epidemic is a frightening indication of the dangers created by the implementation of the NP’s policy. Cholera, with the suffering it causes, does not only cost money, but also human lives. It is the inevitable bitter price we have to pay for the implementation of the homeland policy, the migrant labour system, the breaking up of families, the resettlement of Blacks and the criminal neglect of primary health care facilities among the disadvantaged people of South Africa. The hon. the Minister, to his credit, understands this problem because he recently announced a six-point health plan. What I am saying is borne out by this Health Bulletin. What I am saying today, this report proves. It states, inter alia—

For any of these strategies to have a chance of success, there will have to be a radical change in Government policies and national health spending. Maybe it will be of help if we define what we mean by “health”. The 155 members of the World Health Organization have defined health as follows: Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity. Hon. members on the other side of the House will agree with me that this is an acceptable definition.

[Inaudible.]

Even that hon. Deputy Minister will agree. However, if we accept this definition then we must also agree that under the Nationalist Government the majority of our people will never— and I repeat never—be healthy because they might attain physical or mental, but never social, well-being. This is how we must judge health matters and the opportunity of the Government to do something about it.

It will be argued: What is happening in the rest of Africa? Is there not cholera in other countries as well? Do we however compare the worst of South Africa with the Black countries, or do we compare the best of South Africa with them? Do we want our health system to be like those in the rest of Africa? From the report of the Department of Health and Welfare it is evident that they have tried their best—and it is true—to show that cholera is spreading from Mozambique and other Black countries. However, what they fail to say—although they give the answer—is: Why is it spreading through South Africa? It is coming from outside, but why is it spreading in South Africa? It is clear that with their policy the Nationalist Government cannot stop cholera spreading, because everything that makes it spread is a result of the policies of the NP.

The question is not only how much cholera there is in other Black countries, or whether we want to compare ourselves with other Black countries. I want to ask the hon. the Minister of Health and Welfare a very simple question: How many Whites have contracted cholera in South Africa? If they are much fewer than the nearly 4 000 Blacks, why? I shall tell you why. This health report states it very clearly and it gives all the symptoms and a fine synopsis. The hon. the Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs was very confident yesterday when he spoke about what the NP had achieved since 1948. I would like to read what the hon. the Minister’s own department says has happened in the 33 years since the NP took over power—

The report says that after 33 years of NP policies on health matters, they have still to provide for the basic subsistence!

The Press release goes on to say—

This after seven years. The Government—or the Department of Health, at least—have tried, but even after such a long period we still have the biggest outbreak of cholera yet in South Africa. I quote further—

Mr. Speaker, there was hilarious laughter in the House yesterday when the hon. member for Yeoville spilt a glass of water, but that was only clean water. Just think of it that thousands upon thousands of South Africans do not know what clean water is. One of the basic rights of every individual is a safe supply of clean drinking-water.

You are getting quite silly now.

You are being very foolish. [Interjections.]

This is what we have after 34 years of NP rule. The first of the basic subsistence needs mentioned in this document is a safe drinking-water supply. The second one is a sufficient food supply for human existence. The third basic need mentioned here is that of adequate sewage and waste disposal, and the fourth one is adequate housing and hygiene. The reason why people still have to live without these basic subsistence needs being fulfilled, is the policy of the NP. All this is a direct result of the NP’s policy of racial discrimination in this country. [Interjections.] Let me give an example of how the NP and its policy makers deal with this problem. I have here a copy of the January 1982 edition of Flying Springbok. In an article under the title “This is Our Land”, on page 21, there appear some interesting facts and figures being an extract, so it says, from South Africa International Bone of Contention, published by Dr. Jan S. Marais. The hon. the Minister of Transport Affairs can tell me whether the figures quoted here are correct. Or did the hon. the Minister of Health perhaps release these figures to Dr. Marais? His figures are usually somewhat low. I am therefore not so sure that these high figures could come from him. [Interjections.] In this article it is stated, and I quote—

I should like to know from the hon. the Minister whether these figures are correct. The hon. the Minister should tell us whether this is indeed so. Should it really be the case, any South African will be delighted about it. Many South Africans will quote this as proof of how well we are treating our Black people and how badly Blacks are treated in America. I should ask, however, whether this is what health amounts to in our opinion. Do we equate the state of health in South Africa with heart valve operations? Many patients have to have heart valves replaced as a result of rheumatic fever which, as we all know, is a major cause of heart disease. I should like any hon. Minister to tell me now in which hospital in Pretoria between 2 000 and 3 000 heart valve operations are performed each year. What is the name of that hospital? Is it a Black hospital? How many heart valve operations are performed in the whole of South Africa each year? The hon. the Minister of Health and Welfare, of course, can never think of any other figure than 20. Perhaps his reply will also be “20” now. [Interjections.]

He looks as though he has 20 heart valves. [Interjections.]

Nevertheless, I believe I have the right to ask these questions. I also hope that the hon. the Minister will reply to them in due course. [Interjections.]

Order!

The figures I have quoted are those supplied by Dr. Jan S. Marais, and I should like to know from the hon. the Minister of Transport Affairs or the hon. the Minister of Health and Welfare which hospital in Pretoria is being referred to here and how many heart valve operations are performed at that hospital each year, as well as how many similar operations are performed yearly throughout South Africa.

You should have your valve operated on too.

The hon. the Minister of Co-operation and Development, in his speech earlier today, waxed lyrical about the greatness of ancient Athens and its people. In reply to that hon. Minister I should also like to end with a quote. The great English philosopher and political commentator, John Stuart Mill, said something to which I should like hon. members opposite to listen very carefully. I quote—

The NP Government policy is aimed at dwarfing its men, and for that reason I have no other choice but to support the motion of the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. Speaker, I have attended many meetings, but since the start of my involvement in public life, I have never yet been so amazed as I was this afternoon. I am amazed that a man who is known as one of the country’s foremost, best heart surgeons …

Was!

… can utter things of this nature. The hon. member has now had the opportunity of delivering a speech that could have been positive for South Africa, because a few days ago the hon. the Prime Minister accused the Opposition of never saying anything positive about South Africa. Why does the hon. member not tell South Africa how many hundreds of Black, Coloured and Asian patients he has operated on in Groote Schuur and has treated with the most sophisticated methods in the world? Indeed, he has even brought patients here from Kenya, Hungary and elsewhere. Why does he not talk about the good things that are being done in South Africa? Why does he make the shocking statement that the NP is responsible for the outbreak of cholera in South Africa, that it is due to the policy of this party that it is spreading? [Interjections.] The hon. member is interrupting me once again. He must give me a chance now and take his hiding.

The hon. the Minister of Co-operation and Development is in the process of spending millions of rands on the upliftment of the Black people, and I myself have seen what he is trying to bring about. Go to a country like KwaNdebele, for instance. There one finds a reservoir on every rise and water pipelines and sanitation facilities in every new residential area. Take Soweto for instance—what does the drinking water there look like?

The hon. member comes here and makes an accusation that is going to be sent out into the world tomorrow. He should not be surprised if this report is broadcast throughout the world tomorrow. We have become used to this already. Indeed, the hon. member admitted this himself when he spoke about the total onslaught against us. Of course there is a total onslaught against South Africa, and it is people like the hon. member for Parktown who are at the head of that total onslaught, because accusations like the one that he has just made, find an echo in the UN.

He did not bring the cholera here.

This type of accusation is being orchestrated. It is not a new idea; here it is: “Cholera a symptom of apartheid.” This is a heading in the Sunday Tribune, a newspaper that is published in Natal.

I think that the notes that the “backroom boys” drew up for the hon. member for Parktown, became muddled, because out of the blue the hon. member for Berea also spoke about cholera and made a few accusations too. He too said that it is the fault of the Government that cholera broke out. However, the Government has been in power for thirty years already, and now for the first time there have been cases of cholera in South Africa over the past few months. Is it not strange that it was only in the last election that a few PFP members were elected in Natal?

Yet the hon. member for Parktown knows that poor hygiene can cause cholera. He also knows that cholera is an organism that is spread by way of water and that it can be combated easily. He knows that if one takes a 20 litre jug of water—it can even be muddy water—and pours a teaspoonful of Milton or Jik into it, all cholera germs are destroyed. He knows that one simply has to boil the water to destroy the germs.

We are involved in a programme of upliftment and amongst other things we have distributed millions of pamphlets at Black schools for the very purpose of encouraging hygiene. In Natal we use aircraft to address the people from the air and to warn them that they should not drink the water there before it had been boiled. The people in those areas obtain their water from the streams and puddles. Very often they do not even have to walk a few kilometres to find clean water. Hon. members will know that we cannot give everyone in the rural areas piped water. What country does that? [Interjections.] That hon. members says that apartheid is the cause of cholera. So does this report at issue, a contemptible report. But we are acquainted with this type of underhand report because they are orchestrated in the onslaught against South Africa, which I shall elaborate on in a moment. Let us look at what this report says. [Interjections.]

Order!

After all, the hon. member must admit that India is the home of cholera—from childhood one has heard about cholera in India—and where is there apartheid there? Where is there apartheid in Pakistan and Sri Lanka? This newspaper report that I have here, says there is cholera in Angola, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Zaire and Maputo. Is that a sign that communism is also the cause of cholera because there is cholera in Maputo? That hon. member knows that people cross our borders and enter our country. They come from Mozambique to visit their people in this country. We did some detective work and discovered that there is cholera in Swaziland too. However, where is there any apartheid in Swaziland? [Interjections.] Swaziland called in our help and we gave it to them with pleasure. We established a joint committee with Swaziland in order to combat cholera because it has nothing to do with politics or with Black or White. [Interjections.] The hon. member asks me why the White people do not contract it, and the answer is because the position is such that the largest concentration of our White population lives in cities. Why do the people in Soweto not contract it? Because they have flush toilets and piped water. [Interjections.] I just want to say that we did in fact also find traces of cholera in the sewage effluent of the Whites in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. Does that hon. member know that only 2% of people who do in fact have cholera show visible symptoms? 98% show no symptoms at all. There could be people in this House who have cholera. [Interjections.] I do not want to take up much of my time with this, but perhaps it is a good opportunity for the application of one of the Department of Health’s special programmes that examine members and administrative staff from time to time. Perhaps the hon. PFP members, particularly those from Natal, should especially come along so that we can look at them. They may perhaps be among the 98%. It is not impossible. [Interjections.] The hon. member was correct in saying that the report to which he referred, is our report. However, what is the latest information? The latest information is that there were 4 375 confirmed cases of cholera, but since August last year only 46 people have died. Why then does he not praise the Department of Health? Praise them a little and say it is one of the most extensive programmes that has ever been launched in Africa. We can treat such cases very effectively if we catch them early enough. This is what surveillance means. We have taught people to pick up the symptoms of this disease. Then we can trace it more easily. We treat the person wherever he may be, even in his hut. We have teams who are working throughout that area. However, that hon. member comes along with the story that apartheid is the cause of cholera. [Interjections.]

It is a contributory factor.

When one is involved with serious matters, one cannot descend to that level in politics.

But it is a contributory factor.

If we trace the cases early enough, we give the patient a transfusion and within six hours he goes home. This is what the Department of Health does.

Give that hon. member a transfusion and send him home.

Order!

There has not been a single death over the past two weeks. Why does the hon. member not tell that to the House? Why does he come along with a hare-brained story that he tries to support with evidence from reports in the media? Why does he send statements like this out into the world, statements that could cause repercussions in the UN? We must bear in mind that we are dealing with a total onslaught, an onslaught that is being carefully orchestrated, and I should just like to quote a few things in order to support my point. Our medical practitioners have done their best to recover our place in the World Health Organization through the Medical Association of South Africa. A few years ago we withdrew from it when our representatives were unable to obtain visas to visit Japan and we did not want to put anyone in an embarrassing position. What happened when our Medical Association tried to enter the world body once again? A document like this one was sent to the World Medical Association. Its title is “Apartheid in Medicine”. Sir, does it not sound familiar to you? [Interjections.] This afternoon we heard about cholera and the NP and this document is titled “Apartheid in Medicine”. I quote from it—

This is our Medical Association of South Africa—

Is this what the hon. member opposite is saying too? I give him the opportunity to say whether he too is saying this. Is he saying that the White doctors in our country attend only to the few Whites who have money; and not to the Blacks? [Interjections.]

Order!

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

No, Sir, I cannot answer questions now. I am developing an argument. The hon. member may put his question on the Question Paper.

The same pamphlet that was distributed gives an indication of the number of people who have TB as well as the number of White, Black, Coloured and Asian children per thousand that die. They are the most horrible figures. But most of them are lies. They give the number of beds and this is quite wrong. They make out as if the Whites have all the beds. They talk about 78 000 beds for the Whites in South Africa, which is an absolute lie. Then they write—

This was the theme of the hon. member for Parktown’s speech in the previous no-confidence debate in this House. I read further—

Surely this is what the hon. member said this afternoon too.

Who drew up this document? Who tried to keep us out of that body? I just want to quote a few more things from this because I should like to dispense with it. One reads here—

Does the hon. member agree with this? Does he say that the Black people cannot receive medical treatment? Then he simply has to think back to the time—not long ago— when he worked at Groote Schuur Hospital where three-quarters of the patients are non-White patients. Three-quarters of all the patients treated at provincial hospitals are non-White. And what do they pay? What do we spend on curative medicine? The sum for the country amounts to nearly R700 million. And then one finds this type of subversive action that the hon. member is echoing this afternoon. He is a hanger-on of these people. [Interjections.]

Order! The hon. the Minister must withdraw the word “hanger-on”.

I withdraw it, Sir. One reads further in the pamphlet—

They go on to write the following to the world association—

I have here a whole list of the people who drew up this document and sent it to the World Medical Association. They include the Natal Health Workers’ Association, c/o the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health of the Faculty of Medicine in Natal. Surely the hon. members opposite know some of these people.

They are good people.

The hon. member for Berea knows them, after all. Then there is the Transvaal Medical Society, the Health Workers’ Society, the Cape Health Organization, the Port Elizabeth Doctors’ Group, the Durban South Doctors’ Guild, the Port Shepstone Doctors’ Guild. “Guild” is a type of key word here to show the world association that it represents thousands of people. I say that most of these have been fabricated. There is also the Pietermaritzburg Doctors’ Guild and, what is important, the Medical Graduates’ Association of the University of Natal. This is the cauldron of the evil in Natal…

It is also the cauldron of cholera.

… where the type of articles appear in which it is said that cholera is due to apartheid. Yes, we are talking about cholera, but I include the hon. member for Greytown in a different class that I shall deal with later, that of the insects, flies, midges and mice. [Interjections.] Other names that one finds here, are the Interns’ Representative Committee, the Islamic Medical Association and the Medical Students’ Representative Council of the University of Natal. Surely the hon. member for Pinelands knows these chaps at the Medical Students’ Representative Council of the University of Natal—those who have not yet been locked up. [Interjections.] Then there the Witwatersrand Medical Discussion Group, the Black Students’ Society of the medical section at Wits. This is what is being sent out into the world. Why is this being done? It is being done in an effort to besmirch us and then in addition we have the onslaught this afternoon to the effect that cholera comes from apartheid. If I were the hon. member for Parktown, I would hang my head in shame today. The hon. member accused all health authorities in this country. It is not only the Department of Health and Welfare that combats cholera. There are also the local authorities that do so, including those hon. members’ own local authorities in Natal, for instance the Provincial Administration in Natal. After all, these are the people who have to help combat it.

However, this is not the end of my story. I want to come back to the total onslaught because this is aimed at health too. In this document that I have in my hand, which is known as “Press”, and is regularly issued by the World Health Organization, it is stated very clearly above the title “Apartheid and Health” that—

It says here “in Africa”. They held a congress—

They held a big congress in Brazzaville in the Congo. I quote further from this report—

And who were all those present at this meeting? Hon. members must bear in mind that they spoke in their camp this afternoon. Hon. members helped them to attack us further at the World Health Organization. The report goes on to say—

The only name that does not appear here is that of the PFP. However, that is not all. After all, the hon. member for Parktown endorses this report that is distributed by the World Health Organization because” he says that apartheid is the cause of cholera. Apartheid and health are thus being linked in this way. The congress to which I have just referred, which was held on 20 November in Brazzaville, asks: “How long can it last?” They write—

Does the hon. member for Parktown endorse this?

Yes.

There one of them says “yes”. [Interjections.] The final passage I want to read from the report is—

This is what the hon. member too said here this afternoon. It is part of the total onslaught on South Africa. The hon. member for Parktown rises to his feet here and says this, after the hon. the Minister flattened them the other day and said that they were participating in this total onslaught in South Africa.

Against apartheid.

The other day I read how the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg North jumped from the one party to the other. Then I read an article that he had written in an English-language newspaper a few weeks ago. He is now an expert on Zimbabwe. He was in Zimbabwe and he says things are not too bad there.