Mr Chairman, I move:

The idea of a population register was, as far as can be established, first mooted in 1921 by Sir Patrick Duncan, later Governor-General of the Union. The suggestion was not followed up, but when the matter was raised again by J H Hofmeyr, Minister of Interior in 1935, a select committee was appointed to investigate the possibility of establishing a population register. The main obstacle in the way of such an undertaking, was the physical handling of all the data and information necessary to maintain a register.

In 1950, the technological scene had changed and the population register became feasible. The result was the Population Registration Act No 30 of 1950.

Population identification by way of registration is an internationally accepted phenomenon, and a very useful, if not indispensable, tool of modern administration.

Even in 1950, a system of population registration was not exclusive to South Africa. Foreign countries with similar systems were Canada, France, Belgium, England, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Kenya and Israel. Essential personal statistics concerning citizens and other non-citizen residents are accumulated and stored by the authorities. In many countries some form of document is issued to citizens and other persons as a means of personal identification. An example in point is West Germany, where certain rules concerning identity documents—to be carried on the person and to be produced on request—are more stringent than those contained in legislation in South Africa. To the German, his personal identity card is one of his best guarded and most used documents.

The identity card, which was originally issued in terms of the Population Registration Act, 1950, has since been substituted with an identity document containing additional information, such as drivers’ licences and licences to possess fire arms, the purpose being that all personal documents should, for the convenience of the public, be contained in one document.

Separate provision is made in the Blacks (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act, No 67 of 1952, for reference books to be issued to Blacks.

Until 1 November 1984, this Act was administered by the then Department of Cooperation and Development, in particular by the section known as the Reference Bureau. On that date, it was transferred to the Department of Home Affairs, pursuant to the Government’s decision to introduce a uniform system of population registration.

Reference books were intended to serve a wider range of purposes than identity documents issued to Whites, Coloureds and Indians. The best-known applications included influx control to urban areas, labour registration and taxation.

In anticipation of the legislation required to introduce the uniform system of population registration and identification and to replace influx control with a programme of orderly urbanisation, the Government, on 23 April 1986, declared an exemption from prosecution for a number of offences relating to reference books. These include not being in possession of a reference book, failure to produce a reference book on demand, and employment without particulars being endorsed in a reference book.

It is proposed in the Bill now before the House that the Blacks (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act be repealed in toto. The Bill is intended to come into operation on 1 July 1986. It provides inter alia that:

1. (a) details of all population groups, Blacks included, must be recorded in one population register, and
2. (b) a uniform identity document must be issued to members of all population groups, including Blacks.

Salient particulars to be recorded in the population register in terms of clause 6 are:

1. (a) identity number
2. (b) birth entry number
3. (c) electoral division
4. (d) address
5. (e) marital status
6. (f) occupation.

In terms of clause 5 every person will be assigned two numbers in the register, namely an identity number and a birth entry number. The population group code currently appearing in the identity number will be replaced by a neutral index number for all population groups. The population group code will be retained in the register as part of the birth entry number.

In the Bill it is also proposed that—

1. (i) when a person who has attained the age of 16 years applies for a new identity document or for the re-issue of such a document, he shall have his fingerprints taken so that they may be included in the population register;
2. (ii) the fingerprints of every person in possession of an identity document issued in terms of the Population Registration Act, 1950, be taken within five years from the date on which this Bill has come into operation.

It is provided in the Bill that an authorised officer may at any time request any person who has attained the age of 16 years to prove his identity by—

1. (i) the production of his identity document, certificate of birth particulars, temporary identity certificate, passport, travel document or other proof of identity issued by the State and on which his name and photograph appear; or
2. (ii) the making of an affidavit by himself or by another person who has identified himself in accordance with one of the prescribed documents.

Failure to produce such a proof of identity or providing such an affidavit to prove identity, is an offence punishable with a fine not exceeding R100.

It is furthermore proposed in the Bill, as a transitional measure, that an identity document referred to in section 13 of the Population Registration Act, 1950, or a reference book as defined in section 1 of the Blacks (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act, 1952, issued to a person before the Bill becomes law on 1 July 1986 shall be deemed to be an identity document until such time as the new identity document has been issued to that person.

The standing committee performed a valuable task with regard to this Bill. I thank every member of the committee for the dedicated manner in which he contributed to the deliberations on the Bill.

Mr Chairman, the PFP will be supporting this Bill.

Allow me, however, briefly to address a few words to the hon member for Innesdal who is the chairman of the standing committee in which this Bill was discussed. I should like to place on record my appreciation of the role played by that hon member in the standing committee, and also of his patience. I do believe that that particular standing committee functions in such a way that a degree of deliberation and discussion is often allowed there in a way which, I understand, is not always customary in other standing committees. I believe it is for that reason that one often has the opportunity in that standing committee to produce better legislation. It is also, I believe, a direct result of the very thorough and in-depth discussion of the issues brought before that standing committee.

It is true, Sir, that we are often very critical of the hon member for Innesdal. As one of my hon colleagues said yesterday, he had never met a man filled with so much unjustifiable optimism and enthusiasm as the hon member for Innesdal. I must say I agree with that remark. I dare say, however, that it is indeed the hon member’s unjustifiable optimism and enthusiasm which cause him to be the very pleasant person he is. It makes it a pleasure to work with him, and I want to thank the hon member for the very positive role played by him in that standing committee. I believe he has made a very positive and useful contribution so far, and I wish him well for the future.

Mr Chairman, the first significant aspect of this Bill is of course the fact that it repeals existing legislation in terms of which the old “dompas” system was administered, and in terms of which it was imperative that the “dompas” should be issued to all Blacks. All Black people were compelled to carry their “dompas” on their person at all times. It is ironical that the particular law in terms of which this was made compulsory should have been titled the Blacks (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act, 1952. Despite its title, Sir, it did not abolish passes at all. It merely caused one rotten system to be replaced with another equally rotten system. I am indeed delighted by what we are doing here today. The legislation now before the House is definitely aimed at changing the existing system in a very significant way. That is possibly the most positive aspect of this Bill.

The existing identification documents, then, are going to be replaced by what has come to be known as a uniform identity document. Some time ago the State President announced that he saw the introduction of the system of uniform identity documents as a significant step in the reform process. One can of course bring about reform in a number of ways. One of these ways is actually to make things easier for those people who are on the receiving end, as it were, of a discriminatory practice or law. In a sense this can be seen as making things easier for the Blacks by bringing them into line with the Whites. Another way is to remove discrimination by making things more difficult for the Whites in order to bring them into fine with the Blacks.

As far as this Bill is concerned, the former option appears to have been exercised in most cases. Things appear to have been made easier for the Blacks in that there will now be a new uniform identity document which does not carry nearly as many onerous and discriminatory implications for them as the old identification documents used to carry.

Another amendment that was agreed to during the committee’s deliberations concerns the “race-indicator” digit contained in the identity number. Up to now this digit has been fed into the population register system and has also appeared on the identity document itself. The committee agreed that this digit should be removed and replaced if necessary with a neutral digit. This particular suggestion was first made by my colleague, the hon member for Johannesburg North, and I compliment him on it. [Interjections.] I may mention that initially this suggestion enjoyed the overwhelming support of the committee as a whole and that most of the subsequent discussion on that particular issue dealt more with the technical feasibility of that particular innovation than with the ideological or political acceptability of it. The amendment was eventually accepted and, in the case of the new identity documents, one will not be able to establish ex facie the document the race of a particular person.

I believe one should not underestimate the significance of this particular innovation. After all, this uniform identity document has been heralded as a step in the reform process. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that this amendment that was accepted by the standing committee is much more significant than the uniformity of the document per se among the different race groups. I think this is a very significant step, and I suggest that it will significantly enhance the acceptability of such a document. That it is necessary to increase the acceptability of identity documents is without question, particularly in the light of the system that has been used up to now in respect of the Black people. As I have indicated, the legal requirement for Blacks perpetually to carry their identity documents with them—for that matter, any kind of document—must have brought with it a terrible stigma over the decades. I think one must accept that there will be a residue of that kind of resistance which will continue to manifest itself in the future. One does not get rid of that kind of stigma and that kind of difficulty overnight. I do believe, however, that the fact that the “race-indicator” digit has been removed, will make a significant contribution towards countering that resistance.

A further aspect is of course the way in which the use of this document is going to be enforced. In this regard we had in clause 14, before the Bill was amended by the standing committee, fairly onerous requirements of a person having to identify himself to an authorised officer. There were very onerous requirements indeed for a person who was found somewhere by such an authorised officer when that officer had reason to believe that such a person had not applied for an identity document or had not been issued with an identity document. In fact, the provisions in the second respect were so onerous that they did not allow an authorised officer any discretion once he had a suspicion that a particular person did not have such an identity document.

*The requirements set in terms of clause 14(2) were therefore so strict that if such an official encountered someone in the street or anywhere else, and had reason to believe that that person was not in possession of an identity document, and that he had not applied for one either, he could not even use his discretion but had to take that person there and then to a regional office of a department, or to an official acting as an agent for the department. Such a person would have to apply for this document there and then. This would of course have entailed tremendous problems. It would have meant that in the middle of a very busy day and on the way to a very important appointment, someone could simply be grabbed and told that he had to go along to apply for an identity document.

Those conditions were considerably modified by amendments adopted in the standing committee, and I think that this, too, was a positive development. If there is one way we could undermine the value of a uniform identity document, it is by specifying that that document, or even the requirement for such a document, should be used in any way reminiscent of the way the old pass laws were applied. Any suggestion that someone, particularly a Black man, could be stopped on the street or taken off a bus would mean that the uniform identity document would not be regarded as reform. If someone can be stopped and told—if he does not have the document or if one believes he has not yet applied for one—that he has to apply or take certain steps, then that will be the end of the idea of the uniform identity document as a step towards reform, without any doubt. I am therefore pleased there were improvements in that respect, too, even though it was not taken as far as we should have liked. There are still requirements with regard to the way someone should identify himself in particular circumstances, with which we do not agree. I genuinely want to express the hope that in so far as authorisation does still exist for Government officials—be they officials of the department concerned or the Police—to use identity documents to cause problems for people in that way, and to stop them somewhere if they are busy or in a hurry, the Government will state very clearly to the officials that this document should under no circumstances be used in this way in future. People must not feel they are still being pushed around because of this document. In this regard it is perhaps a pity this Bill had to come before Parliament right in the middle of a state of emergency, for there are already indications that things are being done in terms of the emergency regulations that are clearly reminiscent of the application of the old pass laws and also of the way influx control was applied in the past.

There is once more an additional problem, namely that the institution of a new document of this nature, which is a progressive step and should be regarded as such, is almost relegated to the background because a state of emergency exists and because people are justifiably obsessed with other things that are more important and more problematic to them than the significance of this new document.

I now come to the issue of fingerprints.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon member a question? He has thus far made no reference at all to the population classification. Firstly, I want to know whether the PFP is satisfied with this and secondly, whether he is going to refer to the issue of population classification, too.

There is no doubt that the PFP is in principle opposed to classification according to race. The party has always been against it. The reason I am not making specific reference to the issue is that the system of racial classification as such is not contained in this Bill. What we do have here is that the sections indicating which personal details are included in the population register and the identity document, are indeed being rewritten in this Bill.

I want to place on record that we should of course have preferred no reference to race at all in the population register or the identity document. We should of course also prefer no legislation in this country, be it the Constitution or any other legislation, to be based on a person’s racial classification, and that no such thing as racial classification should exist. This is, however, merely incidental, since it is not the essence of this Bill.

Of course we are pleased that the race indicator, both in words—it did not appear in the old document either—and particularly also in the code, has been removed from the document. That document will therefore be just as valid at any stage in the future, when we hope that race will no longer play a role as it is today. These changes could then be effected in the population register without the necessity of reissuing identity documents.

I return to the issue of fingerprints. As I indicated, the requirement already existing in our legislation has again been incorporated in this Bill, namely that a person applying for an identity document for the first time will have to provide his fingerprints. Those fingerprints will then appear in the population register but not in the identity document itself. We as a party have expressed our opposition to this, as we did in the past when this condition was inserted into our laws for the first time.

Unfortunately, this is one of the issues in which State security is concerned. If there is one issue these days that causes problems when one discusses it, it is, as everyone knows, the question of State security. If one mentions State security in this House, in any committee or anywhere else, it is the best way to get a Nationalist to flatten his ears and hide himself in an “erdvark” hole. [Interjections.] Then the curtains are drawn and one cannot talk to him any longer. This is of course a great pity. [Interjections.]

We asked for evidence to be given on this matter, and the Police have done so. To this very day I remain unconvinced that the requirement for fingerprints in the population register can make any significant contribution towards State security in this country.

I also want to remind hon members that in the past, when these conditions were written into our laws for the first time, the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning—he was still the Minister responsible at the time—used the same arguments. He told us about the terrible things that would happen if fingerprints were not taken, and how necessary they were for efficient identification and for State security.

The fact is that these conditions have now been on our Statute Book for several years, and they have never been applied to Whites, Coloureds or Indians. All the arguments used in the past were therefore merely theoretical; one does not know what measure of justice was concealed behind them but because the Government for one reason or another did not see fit to implement those conditions, I doubt, in all honesty, the degree of sincerity and conviction in Government circles with regard to their importance.

The argument was also advanced that taking fingerprints was important for efficient immigration and emigration control, particularly in respect of illegal immigration by Black people who enter South Africa from the neighbouring states and take job opportunities away from our own Black community, and so on. Mention was made of Blacks from Mozambique, Zimbabwe and other countries. Various figures are available in this connection. A figure of over two million, as well as one of 200 000, was mentioned in respect of people involved in this.

Apart from these figures, this argument does not hold water because the Black population in South Africa has in any case for a long time been subjected to the requirement of having to make their fingerprints available for the purposes of the old pass system. For one reason or another—owing to its poor implementation, owing to the fact that the system in itself could not be implemented, or whatever the reason—we saw a considerable population of illegal immigrants in South Africa in spite of the conditions. I therefore repeat that I find it difficult to accept the efficacy of such a system.

A further argument is also being advanced that fingerprints could be useful in identifying people, particularly after their death. The identity of people that have, for example, drowned or been killed in motor accidents can easily be determined using fingerprints. There may well be some value in that but I suggest that in this regard the game is not worth the candle. I am afraid the condition that fingerprints must be given could indeed influence the acceptability or otherwise of the identity document.

Hon members on this side and on the other side will know that if one wants to launch a new Government initiative these days, the time that one could do so quite simply by forcing legislation through has gone for ever. One simply has to be able to depend on a high degree of co-operation and sympathy from the population itself. If one does not obtain this, one simply cannot get anywhere. In that respect I am very sorry that fingerprints are indeed being included as a condition in this Bill.

Nevertheless, I want to express the hope that the system will succeed to some extent because a successful population register is necessary. Information of that nature must be available—even if I do not necessarily agree with all the information requirements in the Bill—because it is useful for planning on a national level as well as on other levels. It is also necessary for, inter alia, compiling voters’ rolls. For that reason one hopes this system will be found acceptable, and we therefore want to express our support for the Bill.

Mr Chairman, I am very pleased to hear from the hon member for Green Point that the Official Opposition will be supporting this Bill. I must say it was very welcome news to us, because the hon member himself expressed such strong feelings about fingerprints that some of us were worried that the Official Opposition might not see the wood for the trees. Maybe the hon member himself has come to the conclusion that the evidence for the need for fingerprinting is so overwhelming that his arguments do not hold water. [Interjections.] It may also be that wiser counsel prevailed in his caucus, and that his caucus overruled his own reservations about this Bill. Be that as it may, the fact of the matter is that we are very happy to find the PFP of the same view as ourselves.

The hon member for Green Point made one point which I think is a very valid one and one upon which I think we can perhaps dwell further. He said that the Bill and the additions and amendments effected to the Bill by the standing committee, increased the acceptability of the identity document. I think that this is a crucial consideration because the purpose of the Bill is to give effect to the State President’s announcement that we will have a uniform identification system in this country.

It is all very well to say that a uniform identity document will be devised, but if that identity document is not acceptable to all South Africans, one will not really have given proper effect to the State President’s undertaking.

*When we work with identification and different aspects of identification, we have to do with prejudices which are irrational considerations. One cannot refute prejudices and perceptions with reasonable arguments, and I think, with his arguments against fingerprints, the hon member for Green Point himself gave the best example of how perceptions can be completely irrational.

On occasion the hon member specifically raised the objections which a very small portion of the White population, possibly a negligible portion of the White population, may have against fingerprinting. He himself argued that Nationalists bury their heads in the sand as soon as they hear of security. I want to add to that that whenever one just mentions state security one gets the impression that the PFP get up onto their hindlegs, without reasoning it out at all. [Interjections.] It is a question of perception and prejudices.

It is so that in this Bill the standing committee had to do with two important aids to effective identification. I specifically want to describe them as no more than aids to effective identification. One of these is the indication of the race or population group of a person and the other is his fingerprints.

There is no doubt that these things are both important components in the identification of a person. However, it is also true that there is a stigma attached to both of these aids. As the hon member for Green Point argued, it is so that there is a certain stigma attached to fingerprints, possibly among the Whites in our multi-ethnic society in particular. That is so because fingerprints are associated with crime, or because, for a section of the population, fingerprints have an unwelcome association with State Security. Whatever the consideration may be, the fact remains that to a certain degree there is a stigma attached to it.

In the same manner population classification has another connotation for a different section of the South African population. This kind of classification has an unpleasant connotation for a section of the non-White population because in the past race classification used to close doors to a part of our population while they remained open to others.

If it is the case that both these aids to identification are regarded by a section of our population as having a stigma attached to them to a certain degree, it will not help a standing committee of Parliament, which not only has to consider the question of uniformity, but also take into consideration the question of the acceptability of the uniform document, as the hon member for Green Point said, to flee from the fact that there is a stigma attached to these things. Then it does not help to say they should not feel that way about it, that the Whites should not feel that way about fingerprints, or that the Coloureds should not feel that way about classification. It is as useless as telling a child there are no ghosts or that he should not be afraid of the dark. One will not convince him by using reasonable arguments. I heard a former Minister using an example in this chamber. If one is told there is a snake in this House, it is useless saying that it should not be here. If it is here, it is still going to bite one. Therefore, when one gets to do with perceptions and prejudices, it does not help to say they should not be there.

Maybe I can mention just one more example. During the previous century the colonial rulers could not understand why the Afrikaans section of the population did not grab with both hands the opportunity to have their children, by means of a process of anglicisation at school, participate in a culture prevalent throughout the world and a language spoken all over the world. Yet that process led to the founding of the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners. Once again it is the question of a perception giving people driving force.

The standing committee could not discount those factors. Therefore it had to ask itself whether it was necessary to incorporate both these factors in the identity document, given the evidence before it that they were both important aids to the identification of people. Gradually it became clear to us that although these two aids are necessary in the central data bank, which the population register ultimately is—the population register is nothing but a data bank—and just as important as it is to incorporate the two aids in that data bank, just as unimportant it is to incorporate in this particular identity document all the information concerning a specific person which is stored in the data bank, because the identity document is nothing but someone’s proof that all the information about him has been incorporated in that register. It is nothing else than one’s proof that the information concerning one is in that data bank.

However, that does not imply that all the available information about one has been incorporated in this document, or that it is one’s proof that the information in it is also the information in the data bank. Therefore it is not necessary to incorporate all information in the identity document, just as it is not necessary, for example, to incorporate in it all the information that appears in the front of the present document, for example, whether one is married, or whether one has a firearm or a driver’s licence. It may be that these things appear in it for the sake of convenience, but strictly speaking it is not necessary.

I believe the standing committee reached the ideal solution by agreeing that all this information in the data bank should be incorporated in the population register, but that one should distinguish between the birth entry number and the identity number. Again that is also nothing new, because hon members will know that their identity number appears on the first page of their book. Their birth entry number already appears on the back page of the book presently in use.

In this manner the standing committee not only reached consensus among its members to a large degree, but furthermore, as the hon member for Green Point also said, it also created the possibility that this new identity document will be acceptable to all South Africans.

In so doing it therefore gives effect to the second leg of the State President’s implied undertaking that the identity document will be uniform, but also that the identity document will be acceptable to all South Africans.

We are most grateful that this was possible, and I believe that the standing committee did particularly valuable work, not only concerning the question of the identification of South Africans, but also in making a particularly valuable contribution by creating another building block in the advancement of trust and peaceful co-existence among all South Africans. We gladly support the Bill.

Mr Chairman, I move as an amendment:

I am very pleased that the chairman of the standing committee, the hon member for Innesdal, did not open this debate because I should very much like to broach certain matters in my contribution to this debate to which I should be very pleased to have his reply. I want to say that to be a member of the Standing Committee on Home Affairs often makes me feel as if I am sitting in the joint caucus of the PFP and the NP.

You’ve got a hope! [Interjections.]

The reason for my saying this is that on the one hand the principles on which legislation is argued and reflected upon are actually those of the PFP. There is one difference, however, and that is that the PFP contribution is purely and simply based on the principles its members have recognised over the years. That is why I always find it interesting to listen to their particular arguments although I must say that the PFP, in the full knowledge that the NP is heading for that party, is no longer as sharp in its analysis of NP action. [Interjections.]

On the basis of this I had to put a question to my namesake, the hon member for Green Point, this morning to regain a specific perspective on what we are dealing with here today. I find it surprising that the PFP has so far not reached the crucial question on which it still differs fundamentally. I think, however, that the PFP also realises that everything is moving its way and its members do not wish to hamper the amalgamation or the formation of a new party. [Interjections.]

The hon member for Umlazi used the term “prejudices” again. “Prejudice” is frequently the term used by liberals towards conservatives as if we are the people who are racialistic, discriminating, etc. I wish to tell the hon member for Umlazi the standpoints and principles of the CP are not based on prejudices. Our principles are based on knowledge of Southern Africa, on knowledge of the formative process of the Afrikaner and the Whites—those who wish to see our identity survive.

Our forebears came to South Africa without any knowledge of the internal situation and formed an opinion only after they had acquired knowledge of their distinctiveness as a group but it was never a prejudice. Consequently when we speak about these matters it is not because we are prejudiced. We speak from knowledge and experience of quite a few centuries in Southern Africa.

Other people have no knowledge! [Interjections.]

It is interesting that the NP recognised all the points of principle which we recognise until a few years and in some cases until a few months ago. That is why I say I could talk to the PFP but the NP first has to be destroyed as a party in South Africa before real debating on matters of principle can take place again. That process is occurring.

You are making a very interesting statement there!

When I was ruminating about this debate this morning, I told myself that the hon member for Innesdal, who I hope will speak later, should actually change his surname from Nothnagel to “Nothwhite”! [Interjections.] This hon member’s arguments and standpoints are aimed at a South Africa in which one has to say “non-White”. [Interjections.] Nor does it stop there! “White” is a term which one uses in the science of race. To him it is also a question of “non-Xhosa”, “non-Sotho”, “non-Pedi”, “non-Ndebele” to “non-Afrikaner”! The argument used against the question of racial classification and the definition of racial origin used in an identity document provides further proof that the next step will relate to ethnicity. We saw those arguments used by the PFP. The onslaught on racial classification in South Africa was launched over a number of years. Recently the ethnic or cultural aspect is also under attack; these differences also have to be negated now. [Interjections.]

Unlike the hon member for Green Point, I think one cannot debate only on the Bill per se. It has to be seen in the light of a political philosophy which the NP advocates in South Africa today. One cannot otherwise put these pieces of legislation fully into perspective. I wish to say today that the NP has one purpose in view and that is the creation of a new South African nation in Southern Africa based on the American melting-pot idea. That is the destination to which it is heading. The argument of the Government party is fashioned on the American idiom. Actually it was those very Americans who over the past few decades got to the NP youth and leaders to condition them into accepting the American idiom.

That is the most arrant rubbish you have uttered yet this session!

By the way, I wish to remind the hon the Minister that he was present at the Tukkies Forum in 1982.

[Inaudible.]

No, the hon the Minister must listen to me; he is not at Brits now! [Interjections.] The hon the Minister is the leader of the NP in the Transvaal and he is the one who said the CP were rumourmongers if we claimed he wanted to involve the Blacks in one political system in South Africa. He said people saying that were spreading gossip and lies about the NP! [Interjections.] The more this hon Minister makes this type of comment, the more we know we are driving him into a specific corner! [Interjections.]

I wish to repeat that it is the NP’s desire to have one nation growing in South Africa and that this nation should grow into a single unitary state. How is this to be accomplished? The NP is the vehicle through which to reach this state comprising one nation—that is the American ideal. It is because it has had most support so far over the past 40 years and because it has already created a certain confidence among the voting public of South Africa. A further very important aspect to note is that the NP uses accepted and respected terminology such as “reform”, “change” and “renewal”. There is also a Bill like this, for instance, with the fine name of the “Identification Bill”!

The process which has to take place is one which should start gradually. As early as 1982 a start was made with a single sentence—“gesonde magsdeling met Bruinmense en Indiers”—in breaking down one cornerstone of separate development after the other over the past few years. The process therefore had to take place gradually, as in the case of the current legislation as well, as the legislation before us has a different purpose and I shall revert to that in a while. All I want to say at the moment is that it has to be a gradual process toward the ultimate attainment of what they want.

The hon the Minister also gave a fine illustration of further methodology which is that one should make one’s opponent appear suspect.

That is what you are doing the whole time.

I am not making the hon the Minister appear suspect; I am repeating facts. The hon the Minister is free to rise later and refute any of my arguments. [Interjections.]

The process is one of insinuation. The Progs have to be used to frighten the conservatives in South Africa. One must tell them the Progs desire a system of one-man-one-vote in a unitary state; do not vote for the PFP. In this way one instils fear of the PFP into voters but it may also be done the other way round. One can frighten the enlightened or ignorant with the CP by saying we are racists and desire bloodletting and isolation in South Africa.

My next point—which is also occurring in this debate—is that one should attempt to disparage the NP’s past. Over the past few years strings of backbenchers, mostly of the younger generation, handpicked by the liberal wing of the NP, have attempted piloting this legislation through the caucus and the standing committees.

People like John Wiley. [Interjections.]

Then there is also the effort to convert this nation into one South African people. The NP is concentrating on this.

Not even John Wiley.

Yes, the hon the Minister of Environment Affairs and Tourism is a single swallow on the other side of the House.

He used to be a member of your party.

The hon the Minister has one foot planted on that side of the House and the other with us. [Interjections.] I have known the hon the Minister for years and have never regarded him other than as a strongly conservative person with only a tiny flaw here and there concerning South African politics. [Interjections.] The flaws to which I am referring deal with the Brown people.

Daantjie, at least John and Japie are back in the same party.

Well, that is where the problems started.

The CP, as people who insist very strongly on ethnicity and ethnic identity and so on, obviously feel strongly about identification. We view the identification document as having much deeper philosophical significance than merely the specific document with which the legislation before us deals. We are strong proponents of individual identity— that is a human characteristic. From the first book of the Bible the man’s name was said to be Adam and the woman’s Eve and years later the individual was even better identified by the addition of a surname or frequently more than one name. We insist very emphatically on the identity of the family as the smallest social unit in an ethnic society. We also insist emphatically on identification of sex—of male and female. We insist very emphatically on the identification of the individual or family within the context of town, region, province and fatherland too. We therefore come out very strongly for the principle of the identification of the individual—within his specific ethnic relationship as well. We claim that the stronger a person’s ethnic identity is, the stronger one’s view as an individual of one’s own ethnic relationship, the stronger and more fastidious one is about how one wishes to identify one’s citizens and about whom one wants to include in one’s specific ethnic organism and whom one wishes to exclude. That is why the state the CP stands for will not be ashamed of indicating on every document—internally, abroad, wherever—what a person’s ethnic relationship is.

In this legislation the National Party is doing a few things and here I am referring especially to clauses 4 and 5. The NP ignores group identity in this legislation because it has removed group identity from a particular document. What is the method followed and what are the consequences? By doing this, it makes people ashamed. It makes individuals ashamed of their specific ethnic relationship. A further step in the elimination of ethnic identity is belittling a person’s identify— one’s identity is made contemptible. Ultimately it is rejected as racialistic and discriminatory.

And the misery?

The hon member is interrupting with talk about misery. When the policy of the Conservative Party develops in South Africa—something we shall accomplish yet—a person will not need to be ashamed of the fact that he belongs to a specific ethnic group. Some of my colleagues will speak later on the question of security and the security situation in South Africa when one simply removes all measures from people which one’s instrument of authority or police should have to be able to identify those people.

Nonsense!

Well, you may say it is nonsense, but I do not regard it as such.

*That hon member need only go to any other country in the world, for example Israel, and see whether the people there are ashamed of being Israelis! [Interjections.] If that hon member is ashamed, I wish to tell him I am not ashamed. [Interjections.]

They do not even want to be buried in the same cemetery.

Yes, what my colleague here says is true—they do not even want to be buried in the same cemetery. Hope persisted in this standing committee that the specific ethnic group to which a person belonged could be indicated in the identity document but from the start it was very clear that the House of Delegates and the House of Representatives together with the PFP did not want this included. I therefore wish to put a question to the hon member for Innesdal. The National Party says there are certain non-negotiable matters in South Africa. There is the question of separate voters’ rolls and separate primary and secondary schools. If one is ashamed of indicating in an identity document to which of the groups in South Africa one belongs, a relationship according to which one wishes to build one’s constitutional structure and according to which primary and secondary school classification can take place and how the voters’ rolls can be compiled, can the hon member tell me whether the classification of the population—whatever one wants to call it—is a non-negotiable matter to the National Party. I want a National Party representative speaking after me to give me a clear, unequivocal reply to the question whether racial classification or population classification is a non-negotiable matter in South Africa. [Interjections.]

Yes.

I think it is “No” as regards the left wing. [Interjections.] I think it is “No”. The right wing is very eager to retain this but the PFP, the House of Delegates and the House of Representatives said racial classification should be removed from South Africa. The hon member for Johannesburg West inquired about this yesterday. There was talk of people wishing to reach consensus. My question to hon members is now: Is racial classification, on which this constitutional dispensation ultimately has to be built, non-negotiable or not?

Yes.

Is it non-negotiable?

Yes.

It is non-negotiable—all right! [Interjections.] I now want to ask the hon member Dr Vilonel: How long will it remain non-negotiable?

But then it is apartheid!

As long as we are able to keep it like that.

My colleague here says: Then it is apartheid. [Interjections.]

Then it is separate development!

If one has racial classification or population classification in South Africa, it is apartheid! One cannot get away from that!

Perhaps it is separate development!

Perhaps it is separate development. We shall hear what hon members have to say.

The NP has reduced White survival by means of four or five thin threads from which that party dangles. I want to state today that the approach of the PFP, the Brown people, the Indians and the Blacks will also be to destroy racial classification in South Africa.

We request the Government party to tell us today why its members have become ashamed of saying who and what they are in their identity document.

I also wish to know whether we may accept that, as regards future referendums, they will be held according to voters’ rolls which will be compiled at the time. Another question I wish to put in this connection relates to the abolition of the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and section 16 of the Immorality Act. Since their abolition there have been almost 400 or 500 mixed marriages. I should be pleased if hon members would tell me how this is to be indicated when voting takes place.

Something else done by liberals in society today is to adopt non-White children, Black, Brown or Indian children, who then become part of their family life. I should like to know how the identity of these particular children will be indicated in future.

This, to us, non-negotiable, this clash and conflict which the NP ultimately has to meet has simply been postponed by it until later when it will have to debate the entire question of racial classification in South Africa.

Another aspect I wish to broach briefly is that of fingerprints. This was raised earlier in a debate—I think it was at the beginning of 1982. I am well aware of the opinion that one’s fingerprints are taken only when one is regarded as a lawbreaker. I do not feel as strongly about it; I said in a previous speech that I did not mind having my fingerprints taken. I also wish to add that it should be absorbing to those with an interest in genealogy to see in two or three hundred years’ time how the fingerprints of their descendants correspond with or differ from those of their ancestors.

You will not see those of your descendants.

I shall not see theirs but at least they will see mine.

The hon member for Umlazi said that we were making a law which would be acceptable to most South Africans. I wish to tell the hon member that perhaps the NP already does not have the majority but in future it will definitely not have the majority of Afrikaners on its side. [Interjections.] The days of the prophets are long past.

And we English-speaking people do not count!

I am speaking about the majority.

We non-Afrikaners do not count?

The hon member for Bezuidenhout must not pick a quarrel with me this morning. He is very sensitive and I realise why he is sensitive. He belongs to a specific ethnic group which has suffered as much as we have over the centuries.

I am a South African.

Yes, but in spite of the fact that he is a South African he belongs to a specific ethnic group. I want to tell the hon member I have no Israel to which I can go when things are made impossible for the White man in this country. [Interjections.] The hon member for Bezuidenhout must not cause us to start a debate on these particular matters in South Africa today. This is a very sensitive matter which can hold no good for his group as well as mine. I am telling the hon member this in all seriousness.

[Inaudible.]

I am simply making this statement and the hon member can take it to heart—he together with his little friends in his party. The majority of Afrikaners want to be identified as Afrikaners. We are not ashamed of announcing this fact in our identity documents. As regards this House, the hon member for Bezuidenhout will see shortly that we shall be the majority party here too. [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, can the hon member for Rissik tell us whether he is in favour of an identity document indicating quite clearly, for example, that the holder is a member of the Afrikaner volk or the Jewish group, and so forth?

Mr Chairman, I find no problem with that; nor do I have any objection to it.

But is it your party’s policy?

No, but we are satisfied if there is an indication in the identity document that the holder belongs to the White, the Brown, the Black or the Indian racial group. I have no problems with that. Nor will it provide me with any further problems if it indicates that I am Afrikaans-speaking. It creates no problems for me when someone says I am an Afrikaner. [Interjections.] I hope I am not humiliating anyone either when it is indicated in my identity document that I belong to the White ethnic group in accordance with accepted practice and on the strength of the population composition of this country.

What about your church affiliation, Daan?

Mr Chairman, I wish to get back to the hon member for Umlazi. [Interjections.]

Order!

Mr Chairman, the hon member for Umlazi said the majority of South Africans were in favour of the measure before us. In making that statement he is doing exactly the same as he has accused the PFP of doing over the years. He adds all the individuals within the borders of South Africa and asserts they are all South Africans. He adds White, Brown, Black and Indian together and then says— and this obviously leads us to the State President’s terminology—he belongs to a minority group. [Interjections.] In consequence, as a member of a minority group he believes he simply has to bow to the will of the majority. [Interjections.]

Daan, you are talking absolute nonsense!

But then the hon member should be consistent and say … [Interjections.]

It is absolute nonsense!

The hon member for Turffontein may believe it is nonsense. The hon member for Umlazi himself said the majority of South Africans were in favour of an identity document which would satisfy the majority. [Interjections.] Yes, the hon member said that. But then the hon member should be consistent regarding every single aspect of the South African situation. Then he should also accept, when he ultimately puts his constitutional dispensation together, that a government in South Africa will also have to be chosen by the majority of the population of the country.

Oh, please!

No, that has already been the argument in South African politics for the past number of decades. The National Party will not escape this reality at all—as its members are so intent on speaking of realities. Now or in future they will come up against a situation in which they will also have to face the consequences of their present views that all within the borders of this country are South Africans and that all those people will have to constitute a government jointly. [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, would the hon member inform us whether he and his party would like to see a constitutional dispensation in South Africa which would ultimately be acceptable to the majority of South Africans?

But of course. [Interjections.]

But not in a unitary state.

No, we do not want a unitary state in South Africa.

Yes, you first had to wait for your hon leader’s prompting again! [Interjections.]

The old post-1948 National Party did not want a unitary state in South Africa either. It was our particular desire throughout to escape the situation that all of us in South Africa were South Africans in accordance with the borders the British imperialists drew for us. We have said this repeatedly in recent debates too.

[Inaudible.]

Oh, come now, Sergeant!

What did we do then and why? Why did we grant Transkei, Venda, Bophuthatswana and Ciskei independence? [Interjections.] No, the hon member for Bezuidenhout must give me a chance now! [Interjections.]

Order! The hon member for Bezuidenhout must contain himself.

Oh, he is certainly an irritable old chap! [Interjections.]

Yes, I cannot understand it, Mr Chairman. Whenever I become involved in an argument with the National Party, the Progs give me blazes.

Yes, the Progs protect them. After all, they are hand in glove!

They cannot even protect themselves any longer! [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, the National Party will come up against that decision today, tomorrow or the day after. Then it will also be rejected as the United Party was rejected by the old National Party. [Interjections.] Here, where there are more of them than of us, hon members of the National Party are very brave, of course. Hence my request to them that we had better go to the voters so that they may make the final decision on this. [Interjections.]

Human history is very interesting, especially in certain respects. According to history, it happened that Black people were taken to America from here as slaves. In my travels and conversations with American Black people or Negroes, I made the interesting discovery that the question of identity was often a great problem among a large number of them. To many of them the question, “How do I identify myself?” was a great problem. There is an Afrikaans poem which runs:

A person therefore asks oneself: Who and what am I? Where do I come from and where am I going? [Interjections.] A person’s identity is one of the most important aspects of one’s life. The individual who cannot identify himself, the individual who cannot find a specific place in life for himself becomes frustrated. That was my deduction after inter alia my discussions with American Negroes and after I had read the book Roots. The book obviously deals with a man who returns to Africa and goes back three or four centuries in search of his roots.

This brings me to what this Government is doing in South Africa. We do not have a large community built on a background of slavery. Unlike countries in other parts of the world, we in South Africa can still say, for instance, “Here are the Vendas and here is their territory; we have not touched them.” [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, I listened carefully to the hon member for Rissik and he must bear with me if at this late stage of the parliamentary session we say a few things to one another which we should have said long ago. It does not even matter to me whether he will attempt to listen to me or not because we have not always had pleasant relations with them since the time they left this party. Although we are colleagues within this House, we have simply accepted them outside as people who somewhere along the line for some reason or other abandoned normal courtesy, decency and gratitude which cause people to greet one another and address one another politely however they may differ with one another. As far as I am concerned, this self-appointed cream of the Afrikaner has gone sour somewhere along the way. In their daily lives outside this House they visibly demonstrate an attitude to life which jettisons normal courtesy to other people and which militates against what lives within the Afrikaner.

What the hon member for Rissik said to me as a person about my surname today is symptomatic of a sickly negativism alive in his thinking. What he said to me today is symptomatic of the spirit in which all those hon members are conducting politics in South Africa today. [Interjections.] What he said to me today …

Now you are becoming sick.

The hon leader of the CP says I am becoming sick now. I ask the hon leader of the CP whether he was present when the hon member for Rissik said that to me.

I was here.

The hon member for Rissik said my name was “Not(h)nagel”, but it should actually have been “Not White”. I now ask the hon leader of the CP if this bears his approval as the leader of that party.

You can see perfectly well he wants to make political capital. [Interjections.]

I want to tell the hon leader of the CP I shall not drop this subject even if I have to devote half an hour to it. I tell him straight: What the hon member for Rissik said to me had nothing to do with my political convictions. It referred to my surname, to me as a human being, as an individual. I now want to put one simple question to the hon leader: Does he agree with what the hon member for Rissik said? [Interjections.] The hon leader is not replying to me. I therefore deduce that, when one raises an argument and drags in another person’s surname, another person as an individual and as a human being, one is permitted to say anything about what this person is and what he is like, about his feelings, his thinking, integrity and character; and having said that, one can say it is not personal but is aimed at his politics. [Interjections.] I want to tell hon members of the CP I understand …

Those are your greatest points of distinction.

I want to tell the hon member for Sasolburg I do not have a desire to argue with him this early in the morning. My political standpoint differs radically from his but I respect him and Mr Jaap Marais who is one of my constituents in the sense that they say the wrong things from complete conviction. I understand that. [Interjections.]

The hon member for Rissik spoke about identity today. I told him on a previous occasion he could shout as he liked but he would not—neither would other hon members of his party—make us on this side of the House liberal through shouting.

That is what you are.

Other people need not tell us what we are. Every single hon member on this side of the House, regardless of what hon members of the CP say and how they slander us—what is more, there are people like us in the NRP and PFP and there are also such Black people, Brown people and Indians—has only one political thought in his entire being and that is the thought, spirit and propensity for nationalism and a love for what is his own. [Interjections.]

Oh, come now!

The hon member for Barberton is saying by implication with that remark of his that he does not believe me. Therefore it does not matter— according to the way in which hon members of the CP conduct politics—that I, my hon colleagues from Bellville and Standerton and all the others rise and say we are nationalists and people whose entire being and thinking are permeated with love for what is our own, our country …

You do not understand this; you are multicoloured nationalists.

So I do not understand this. It is only the hon member for Pietersburg who understands it. Fantastic! I now tell him in cool calculation that he is here and in public life with a Godgiven mission to say what is right. Whatever the rest say is wrong because he has been called, sent, a missionary and the only person who can understand nationalism; he is the only person able to understand what love for his country and his own is. This is the presumptuous arrogance of people who cannot grasp their own identity and have to proclaim what they are from morning till night. [Interjections.]

Order! There are too many interjections from the side of the CP. I note that quite a number of speakers of the CP are still to take part. If they have good points, I am sure they will keep until they speak. The hon member may proceed.

I tell my children from morning till night that one must personify what one is. If one has to rise from morning till night to say what one is, there is truly something wrong. I say that to hon members of the CP. I regret having to say this to them because it sounds insulting and perhaps it is but God knows one can endure insults only up to a point. We are sick and tired of this presumption of saying they speak on behalf of the Afrikaner. The way in which they conduct politics convinces me 110% that the Afrikaners, Whites, Jews, Germans, English and all the people in South Africa have rejected them utterly. They elevate themselves to an exclusive calling and, when someone else says he is a nationalist, they say with presumptuous arrogance that he does not understand this. When someone else says he loves the country, they say they cannot trust him. When someone else puts his political standpoint, they say they cannot trust him because he has done this or that.

I want to say—I feel like doing it because I think it could serve a purpose—that a person should feed the speeches of hon members of the CP into a computer—they rise one after the other here—for the sole purpose of seeing how many times they have risen since sitting there and adopting political standpoints; risen to state a policy; risen to say what they would do regarding a specific problem and risen to say what their political plan is and why it can work …

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: I am not accustomed to interrupting other hon members in the House but I wish to ask respectfully whether this hon member is anywhere near the Bill at all? [Interjections.]

Order! The hon member for Innesdal may proceed.

I shall help the hon member and tell him I took notes of what the hon member for Rissik said on the Bill. I have copious notes but the hon member for Rissik probably made only three or four comments on the Bill. The CP must not think we are afraid of them! I want to tell the hon member for Waterberg and the hon member for Rissik that they speak arrogantly here on what the people supposedly say, think and feel. They take pleasure in rising here and telling hon NP members that they will not return.

I represent only one constituency and, regardless of whoever tells them what goes on there, I shall put up R1 000 against the hon member for Rissik that the Innesdal seat will remain in NP hands for ever. [Interjections.] Will the hon member for Rissik take on a R1 000 bet with me that the Innesdal seat will remain an NP seat and that the CP will never win it? [Interjections.] The hon member for Rissik accepts!

What I am saying here now is not to conduct petty politics; this is not what it is about. I am merely trying to make the point that we are sick and tired of CP arrogance. If it is true that White voters are trooping after the CP because of solutions offered in their standpoints of principle, then I say all of us in South Africa are doomed to destruction. Then this country will go up in flames and only ash will remain.

Today the hon member for Rissik, in discussing this legislation, said exactly why I am right, because he implied that that identity document should elevate the people he regarded as the most important and whom he considered he represented to the position of the most important group. According to him the South Africanship of all the rest should be reduced to where he thinks they should be, that is people to one side who do not count as much as the people of the group to which he belongs.

There is no other way in which we can interpret his politics. These are the politics of covert White mastery; these are the politics elevating the Afrikaner and the White in South Africa to the exclusion of all other groups and people. These are politics—the hon member for Rissik said this today—leaving the rest of the people in this country no choice but to take up arms because they are being reduced to nothing in their own country and because they are being rejected in their own country by those people who want to seize power.

But you can …

I say to the hon member for Rissik and the hon member for Barberton …

Now you sound like Swapo!

I wish to tell hon CP members it makes no difference to me whom I sound like because I am part of the NP and this party is the political instrument which has to bring about vital changes—and many of them remain—in this country in the time in which we live so that the country can survive. There is room in the NP for these changes. We have frequent scuffles with one another but we shall win through. There are many people in the PFP, the CP and the NRP who have to join company on the road of political development in South Africa and who will see that the NP is vital as a political instrument. Let us have a rough and tumble with one another and tell one another where we differ but for heaven’s sake the one thing we should not do to South African politics is to rise here in selfassumed arrogance. [Interjections.]

What is the difference between radical “Black Power” politics, the Azapo type of politics which say only the Black people count, and the type of politics conducted by the CP? [Interjections.] Everyone claims the monopoly and says he should have power. Everyone claims the sole historical right, South Africa belongs to him and he must have exclusive land. What is the difference between “Black Power” people and the CP? [Interjections.]

Nothing!

We are diametrically opposed to that. The CP thinks it will frighten the NP by saying we have changed radically. Of course we have changed entirely on many aspects; there is no doubt of that.

That is correct!

Have we ever been afraid of this? Have we ever tried to hid it from anybody in South Africa that we came up with a political policy according to which regarded separate states to one side and homelands for the Coloureds and the Indians too as the correct political solution at some stage? Have we ever tried to deny that we started there and have now reached a political system in which groups and people in this country have to rule together? We have changed!

You yourselves have changed!

We are not afraid to say we have changed. [Interjections.]

You have changed your identity. [Interjections.]

We have certainly changed but we shall not permit hon members of the CP to tell us how we feel about this or that we do not care. It is not for them to say our language, values, religion and culture mean nothing to us. We reject that arrogance with immeasurable contempt.

I want to repeat: Heaven help South Africa if the majority of Whites really acquire that type of attitude in their hearts in which each thinks only he is right. Those are sectarian politics at their worst. [Interjections.]

I was sitting thinking the other day …

Shall I fetch you a soapbox? [Interjections.]

The hon member for Barberton does not frighten me. [Interjections.]

[Inaudible.]

I do not intend this nastily. The hon member was always an absolute arch pessimist. That is how he sees politics but I am not angry with him about it. One cannot shout a political message into life but that is what the CP is trying to do. [Interjections.]

[Inaudible.]

We have been reading one another the Riot Act on racial grounds for long enough in this country and the CP wants to continue this. Let it do so but the NP will see to South Africa, its people and its future. We are interested in a person’s merits.

It is not the NP which has plunged South Africa into a crisis. Only a political fool cannot see that we are actually in a crisis but we are not responsible for it. [Interjections.] What is of importance is that we are the only ones who have to haul the country out of the crisis. By “we” I mean the Government, supported by responsible hon members of all parties in the House. We cannot follow the way the CP wants to take.

The hon member for Rissik spoke about identity. What is a person’s identity? Every person on earth can define his identity in 210 ways. Everyone can speak of his religious, political, cultural and linguistic identity. Because the world is becoming smaller as a result of the influence of communications media, one may also speak of the world identity of people in a certain sense. One may define and think oneself into all these identity compartments. Members of the CP say we have no identity and we do not care. What they are actually saying, therefore, is that we do not know what we are and—still worse—those who may know do not care. No, we have had enough of this type of political arrogance!

Here we are discussing a new identity document and in the light of this I wish to ask hon members of the CP and especially the hon member for Pietersburg whether this new identity document which is accepted by all people because it does not contain a racial codification …

[Inaudible.]

… affects his identity because we have removed that racial code. [Interjections.]

Do you still believe in separate development?

No, that is not the question. [Interjections.]

I am merely asking him—the self-appointed cream of the Afrikaner people—whether his identity will be affected if we remove that racial code and produce an identity booklet for all South African citizens to indicate that they are South African citizens and people of South Africa. It is a booklet of which all may be proud because it does not say one citizen is better and the other worse. [Interjections.] What we say makes no difference; ultimately every step of reform has to be tested against the fact whether the other population groups accept it or not. It is irrelevant that the CP says we are selling the White out and making concessions. What is relevant is whether there is national unity in South Africa regarding people’s perception that they belong to South Africa.

On the standing committee we said that, if we removed that code, we were pre-eminently telling all South African citizens that they were citizens of South Africa. We were doing it without painting a White man black or painting any person a different colour and we were not affecting his identity as a person. We were not affecting his cultural identity, his language or his religious identity. We were merely asking: Who is this man? Is he a South African citizen, yes or no? That is what we are dealing with. There is a specific identity which South Africans possess as citizens of this country.

As a party we say we are taking the way of national unity in South Africa. On that way of national unity we reach out to people across all borders in South Africa on the basis of a feeling and a perception of national pride because we want national unity. I wish to tell the hon member for Pietersburg honestly we want national unity among all persons and peoples in South Africa—Black nationalists and all other persons in South Africa with a feeling of national pride, a feeling of “we belong to South Africa” and love for South Africa. As an instrument of change, this identity book contributes to this.

All NP members on the standing committee agreed that we should remove this code. We all said it was right and a good reforming step. Not one of us said we were under pressure from other people. We all said it was right in principle because what does it involve? It involves a document which has to be accepted by all people in South Africa as an instrument of reform because it identifies them as citizens of South Africa and because it permits them all to belong to the country of South Africa. This is the country for which they have a feeling, a feeling of national pride. This is not the feeling they would have if the CP were in power. They would then feel rejected and that is a feeling which must lead only to aggression, revolt and tension.

The CP can rant and rave at us. Its members can say whatever they like but they will not cause us to back off a single step. We shall do what we believe to be right for this country. We shall be fearless and inexorable and honestly tell our people from conviction that there is no other road to take. All of us in this House have children; I have three. We all love our children and grandchildren. [Interjections.] Of course, or do hon members of the CP claim it is only they who care? That is patently untrue.

Oh, just don’t cry.

Let the hon member for Jeppe differ with us. It is of no concern to me if the hon member for Jeppe says our standpoint is wrong. That is politics and it does not worry me. He can say we are wrong but what he must not say—this is what they are doing in politics out there—is that we have no feeling.

I did not say that.

They must not say we do not respect our standpoint and we do not care about identity. The hon member for Rissik was a lecturer at the University of Pretoria. [Interjections.] The trouble is not that the hon member for Rissik is not an informed man. I want to say in all fairness that he was a good lecturer. There is only one difficulty and that is that he stopped learning when he left there. I could not believe my ears when he spoke about knowledge a while ago. I am not saying this to insult him. One can have a world of knowledge according to one’s interpretation but ultimately all that counts in politics is not the knowledge but the ability to evaluate that knowledge. It is insight that counts. It is not the feeling for what is our own which is going to pull South Africa through. It is a person’s ability to reconcile one’s feelings with those of other people, to reconcile one’s ideals with those of other people and to defuse the conflict in other people’s minds.

I intend saying something strange to the hon member for Pietersburg today. I have a great deal of respect for that hon member. He also prescribes good medicine but I must say I have been afraid to ask him for a prescription over the past few years because of my fear that he would prescribe the wrong thing. [Interjections.]

I wish to say the following to the hon member for Pietersburg: If it is true that the exclusive politics his party feels will let us succeed are to be conducted throughout by them, in the near future we shall find ourselves in a position in which we shall have to admit to the Black nationalist—and let me state roundly I include the man I want to lay down his gun—that we as nationalists who believe that South Africa belongs to all of us have more in common with him than with the hon member for Pietersburg because the Black man does not begrudge me a place to live in my country whereas the hon member for Pietersburg rejects that Black nationalist as a South African. Surely that is the inevitable road on which we shall land. [Interjections.]

You do not know what you are talking about!

I know full well what I have said as I have thought it out very carefully. The hon member for Barberton is clever enough to understand what I am saying. He knows I claim they are involving only a group of Afrikaners in their views. They know perfectly well that is what is happening. I do not say they wish to do this but ultimately a confrontation will ensue between people in consequence of their political standpoint. I am involved in that conflict and I cannot follow the way they wish to take, which is that of White Afrikaner exclusiveness to the exclusion of other people. That is the way to chaos. I request them to declare their political standpoint to the people of South Africa. It is no disgrace to have a political standpoint but they must not proceed with this debate in which they are elevating themselves to the chosen while rejecting others as sell-outs. They must stop denigrating other people as those who do not care. Personally I am not concerned at what they say about me. I can honestly say I am able to reject all those statements. [Interjections.] But there is a limit to everything. It does not affect me but it affects my colleagues on this side of the House. We in this party have often bumped our heads and experienced ructions and differences of opinion. We are continually moulding and shaping one another but ultimately this does not matter because every single hon member on this side of the House is my colleague too. Hon members of the CP make allegations, however, which create an atmosphere in the entire political debate which we had better leave at that.

Let us examine this identity document which was accepted by a standing committee of this Parliament. This document announces symbolically to all people of South Africa that they are all citizens and people with rights. No one in this House tells anyone in South Africa to reject his identity, to integrate or to renounce his group relationship. My experience throughout the world has been exactly the opposite of that of the hon member for Rissik. As I have experienced matters overseas—I think I have actually made a reasonable study of the problematical aspects of race—there is a group formation which links the racial identity of people in countries where there are no laws whatsoever identifying people according to race. There is group formation because of the cultural association of people. I say to hon members of the PFP that, whatever they may say, the NP’s understanding of groups and that policy and standpoint of group existence will survive in this country for all time. I challenge hon members of the PFP and anyone else in South Africa to establish a political party in this country which extends across all racial boundaries and see whether it has any vigour. It does not have it and that is why people’s group commitment is the most natural thing in the world. Nevertheless it becomes a point of conflict if one group—like the CP—wants to elevate it.

In conclusion, I wish to ask the hon member for Waterberg a single question. As regards the ethnic diversity in the world—I shall define it broadly as Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid—is it part of the Creator’s plan? I say this reverently. [Interjections.] Does it form part of the design of creation?

Of course.

All right, the hon member for Waterberg says it forms part of the design of creation. I wish to put one more question to him: Where that ethnic diversity extends across borders in the world, is it part of the Creator’s design?

Read what The Acts 17 verse 26 has to say about boundaries.

There is great symbolism in that reply. The ethnic diversity of the world—Whites, Black people and Oriental races—is part of the Creator’s design. We are not interpreting Him but, the moment there is overlapping in the world, it is no longer the Creator’s design; then we as simple people say what it is. All I wish to add is a request to stop these debates. Let us cease these senseless debates which hurt people. Let us forge ahead instead. Here we have come up with an identity document which can mean something to South Africa and to all of us in this country.

Mr Chairman, there is one thing that no one can accuse the hon member for Innesdal of. No one can say that that gentleman lacks either enthusiasm, tenacity or dedication of purpose. In him I see a true reformer in the NP. I have had the privilege of watching him over the years in this Parliament and I hope he will not mind my saying that I have seen the change that has come over him. To my mind he epitomises the change that has taken place over the years in the governing party.

There is one point I want to make. I do not want to get involved in the political argument here. I think I would rather talk about the Bill before us. There is one thing, however, that I said in the standing committee, and I shall repeat it now. It is simply that I do not believe it is discriminatory to tell me what I am. I do believe it is discriminatory to deny me anything because of what I am. To my mind, that covers it all, and I think that if we can all understand that simple statement then we will all come a lot closer to finding each other in respect of the problems that we have in South Africa today.

Having said that, I hope I shall now have the ear of the House in talking about the measure before us. I want to say that to me it is a pleasure to be a part of a standing committee that insists on producing a report. The other day I called it a précis of deliberations, but there was an objection to the use of that terminology. It has produced a précis of deliberations—but because of our parliamentary system it has to carry the name of a report—after the work it has done on each Bill during the course of this year. I hasten to add that the Standing Committee on Home Affairs completed its 37th meeting for this year on Wednesday.

This Bill is no exception. It contains a report that was printed in the Minutes of this House, and that report accurately reflects the workings of the committee. I think the production of these reports is important because I think it is of assistance to the media. They then immediately have an inkling as to what has happened. It certainly is of assistance to other members who were not party to the deliberations but naturally want to know what took place. From that report it will become apparent that two issues appeared to be almost insurmountable obstacles when we started working on this Bill, namely race classification and fingerprinting. I am happy to say that I believe we found acceptable solutions on both issues.

What was our main objective? The main objective was clearly to introduce a uniform identity document for all which would be acceptable to all. In achieving this objective, we were hoping to do one thing, namely to remove the stigma of the much hated passbook or reference book and all that that has implied in certainly the Black society over the years. I think we can look forward to better days ahead.

However, I want to stress that I am of the school who believe that an identity document is vital in any society. I do not think an identity document should ever be looked upon as an enemy; it should rather be looked upon as a very close friend. It is, after all, or should be, an extension of oneself in that it shows, for the benefit of others, who one is; it reflects where one lives; and it contains proof of what vehicle and firearm licences one holds. Above all, if properly maintained, I believe an identity document could become the most vital, in fact the only, document that should be used when we go into an electoral process in this country. With the introduction of this Bill, I think everyone should be made aware of the responsibility of maintaining an updated identity document, particularly in respect of domicile, in order to ensure his or her correct participation in the electoral process.

Let us now deal with the racial issue. At present we have an identity number that consists of the date of our birth reversed—I think those are the first six digits—which is followed by a digit that indicates whether one is male or female. When it is anything between 0 and 4999, it indicates the female sex and, from 5000 to 9999, it indicates the male sex. That is followed by what I like to call one’s place in the queue on the particular day on which one was born. According to my identity number it would appear that I was the 37th baby born on 14 September 1928! I therefore have the number 280914 5037. That is to all intents and purposes my birth number. It is the number which identifies me, and for the purpose of identification it is sufficient.

However, the books we have at the moment reflect a further three digits. At present one’s number reflects whether or not one is a South African citizen; it indicates one’s race; and the final number is a computer number which is merely a reference and is of no significance whatsoever to the holder. It is with the last three digits that we have difficulty. That is where the rub lies.

I am happy to say that we have now reached complete accord on this issue. We agreed that the identity document need only contain the first ten digits which are specific to the individual while the full number which is vital to the individual as far as his voting rights are concerned, for one thing, will be maintained in the central register. Therefore, the document which the individual carries around with him will no longer reflect his race, which is an acceptable situation. I wonder if one treads on hallowed ground if one says that race is pretty obvious.

Having dealt with that, let me look at the fingerprinting problem. With that we are, I believe, moving onto very emotional ground, because there is a lot of emotion wrapped up in the fact that people look on fingerprinting as being in the first place something that is done to somebody who is in some way involved with a criminal act. Secondly, fingerprinting is looked upon as being a very messy operation—this may sound frivolous, but it is very, very serious indeed—and a lot of people resist it for that very reason. We in this party have been consistently against compulsory fingerprinting and I want to state that we have not altered our view in this regard at all. We are still opposed to the principle of compulsory fingerprinting, but we understand that we do have legislation on the Statute Book, and have had it on the Statute-book since 1982, that in fact caters for compulsory fingerprinting. However, faced with arguments in the standing committee—and I make absolutely no bones about this—from hon members of both the House of Delegates and the House of Representatives, I find that I am prepared to accept what they have laid down as conditions. They say what is good for one must be good for all. I think that is a very simple credo and we would all do well to learn a little from it.

In order to cater for a need expressed with great determination by particularly hon members of the House of Representatives, we now have a clause in the Bill which says that all South Africans, irrespective of race, colour and creed and irrespective of whether or not they already hold identity documents, will have to have their fingerprints taken for the records, either upon application for a document, or within the next five years. That is based on the simple principle of what is good for one must be good for all.

I must also confess that evidence before the committee did prove to me the vital necessity for a central register for fingerprinting for purposes of identification. This evidence supported my first thoughts in this regard on a visit to the department last year, where we were able to see how enormous volumes of fingerprints are classified and filed. We were able to see for ourselves how effective this register can be; because of the little-understood method of classification, how accessible it is, once that classification has been completed. I must confess that I am influenced by the fact that there is no gainsaying the fact that violent death is becoming more prevalent in our society; and I am not referring to deaths because of the unrest we have at the moment. We have to face the fact that the slaughter on our roads is quite unbelievable. Accidents frequently occur—this is a morbid subject—and, I think, drowning was also mentioned. There are problems identifying people who have suffered death by violent means. So there is a practical and realistic reason why fingerprinting on a central register could be invaluable.

Having considered all the evidence, however, I still believe—and I moved amendments to this effect—that we could have made fingerprinting optional. I say this although I personally would have no hesitation in having myself fingerprinted. I personally have come to realise that having my fingerprints in a central register could save those I leave behind a tremendous amount of trouble. Nonetheless, I do feel that this should be an option. I moved amendments in this regard and was accorded an interesting debat on this issue. My amendments were defeated, and I now accept the fact, but I do not believe that we should oppose the Bill on this point. [Interjections.] No, not a local option. If the hon member wants to be childish, he should get a little bag of marbles, go outside and play “voortjie” or something like that. [Interjections.] We are not talking about local options now.

We note that this Bill will come into effect on 1 July, but I urge that there be an effective marketing campaign so that all South Africans can enjoy the benefits of a uniform identity document. This marketing campaign is of the utmost importance. I am pleased that both the Official Opposition and we in this party find ourselves able to support this measure today. I think we should go further and support any efforts that are made to market this aspect, because I believe that there are members of the public who would make mischief—particularly amongst our Black population—and try to have this exercise fall by the wayside.

I would urge the hon the Minister to embark with all the means at his disposal—certainly from the 1st of next month—on a dynamic advertising exercise so as to get all South Africans to appreciate that we have at last arrived at a situation in which each and every one of us, irrespective of race, colour, religion or creed or what have you, will have a uniform identity document which could be and is acceptable to all.

Mr Chairman, it has been a long week! [Interjections.] It also appears as if today is going to be a long day, because with war having broken out between the National Party and the Conservative Party, I fear that mine is going to be the last speech, following upon that of the hon member for Umhlanga, which is going to be presented in any reasonably quiet, logical way, and I regret that very much. [Interjections.] I fear that after I have spoken, the battle between the Conservative Party and the National Party is going to consume the rest of the day. [Interjections.]

Are you going to the rugby?

Yes, it is unfortunate that the rugby is on today, something of more interest to hon members than what is going on here now. That is indeed a great pity, but after this long week I hope that tomorrow morning I do not get dressed and walk down the road to catch the bus to work again!

The hon the Minister’s introductory speech to this Bill, delivered in one of the other Houses, was very interesting in that he placed the historical perspective of identify documents on record. I personally found that of great interest. We in this party have no problem with the concept of identity documents per se. It is just the way in which they have been put to use—or abused—in the past that has concerned us. With this Bill before the House, however, that situation has now been improved, and as my colleague, the hon member for Green Point, has indicated we are going to support the Bill, although we have serious problems regarding fingerprinting.

This new uniform identity document, which is to be made available to all citizens of the country, is going to be an improvement. One would hope that in due course we would move to some sort of system similar to the one the Germans have. Their system involves a card with a computer code similar to that on a credit card many of us use. From my investigations at embassies in this country in the course of the deliberations of the standing committee it seemed to me as if the system that the Germans adopted had a great deal of merit, and I hope in due course something like that will be looked at for South Africa.

I must join my colleague in paying tribute to the hon member for Innesdal for the way in which he conducted the deliberations of the standing committee. I have mentioned before that I find his chairmanship most satisfying and I compliment him again on the way in which he allows discussions to range far and wide so that we can canvass every possible point of view.

I do not want to get involved in the argument which the hon member for Rissik has with the hon member for Innesdal but I do think he owes the hon member for Innesdal an apology for indulging in personal matters. That is my point of view but I do not want to get involved in the argument between the two hon members.

Towards the end of his remarks here today the hon member for Innesdal said that emphasis was being placed on groups in this country and challenged us in these benches by saying that we will never get away from that. I simply want to tell him that we are in the process of building up a multiracial party in spite of all the obstacles that are being placed in our way by the NP, and we are going to suprise him in due course. [Interjections.]

While we are still in calm waters I think I should also pay tribute to and thank the hon member for Umlazi for his performance in the standing committee. He also made a positive contribution to the deliberations. He expressed his pleasant surprise here today because he said that he was worried that we might not support this Bill. He should not have been worried because he knows that we in these benches also always make a positive contribution in these matters and that we try our best to improve the Bills that come to us from the department and from the Government. We have to be there in a watchdog role to guard against incorrect actions and to guide them into what the correct way should be. We did provide some amendments which I think have improved the Bill.

The major significance of this Bill is that it brings about the end of the “dompas”. That hated object is finally to be removed from our Statute Book and one should not underestimate the effect of abolishing the pass laws. It really is a very significant step. As my colleague, the hon member for Green Point, pointed out it is a rotten system which goes back to the Black Administration Act of 1927, the Black Service Contract Act of 1932 and the Blacks (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act of 1945. So these Acts have been on the Statute Book for more than fifty years. Major sections of them are now being repealed and that is a very significant step and something we should be very pleased about.

The passes that Blacks have been required to carry have meant years of grinding misery for millions of Black people. That booklet has guided their destiny from the cradle to the grave but with this Bill those passes are finally disappearing. One does not want to harp on negative aspects or place undue emphasis on negative aspects of passes but, of course, there has never been anything positive about them. They became the most hated object in the lives of Black people. People frequently burnt them in times of national tension and lately they have simply ignored them and refused to carry them. That shows how discredited passes have become. It is therefore a very significant day. While acknowledging that, it is also appropriate to pay tribute to the thousands of people who, over the years, have fought the pass system. One thinks immediately of the hundreds of thousands of Black leaders who have led the attack on the passes over these many years. One pays tribute to them, too. One also pays tribute to all those women who marched on Pretoria in the early fifties to protest at the extension of passes to Black women. While talking of women, one woman in particular comes to mind, and that is of course our colleague the hon member for Houghton. One pays tribute to her too for the ceaseless and relentless opposition to passes on her part over all these many years.

Hear, hear!

Then there are other organisations too such as the Black Sash—that small dedicated band of women who, over the years in which they have been active, have done all they possibly could to assist millions of Blacks in working their way through the minefield of pass legislation and to make their lives a bit easier. Therefore, Sir, one pays tribute to the Black Sash and, of course, to the Institute of Race Relations as well, who have done their very best to highlight the iniquities of the pass laws. This is a happy day indeed for all those individuals and organisations who have opposed the pass laws for so many years.

It is, however, also a significant day because instead of the prisons being empty since passes have been abolished, the prisons are still full, and they are filled, unfortunately, with political prisoners.

No, man!

It is a very sad occasion as well!

It is true, and you know it!

What else do you want to call those prisoners?

Sir, there are indications that many, many people have been detained in terms of the emergency regulations and are being held in those prisons which should be empty because of the abolition of the pass laws. I think the available figures are terribly understated and that the numbers of those detained could run into thousands. The figures I was given, however, show that 1 034 people …

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: Does the number of people who are now being held in prisons in terms of the emergency situation have anything to do with the Bill in question?

Order! It does not actually relate to the Bill. However, the hon member has also linked it to the fact that many detainees who at present are still being held in prisons, should actually be freed on account of the abolition of the pass laws. I am listening to the hon member very carefully, and I shall allow him to proceed.

Thank you, Sir. This does not constitute a major portion of my address here today. I merely want to say that I have been advised there are 1 034 people currently being detained, including teachers, scholars, university lecturers, clergy and church leaders, political and community leaders, journalists, attorneys, doctors and a large number of unknown people. These are the people on our list. These 1 034 people are presently being detained when the prisons should be empty as a result of the abolition of the pass laws. The whole concept of passes has been abolished. The “dompas” has gone. The prisons should therefore be empty. They are, however, now filled with political prisoners. That, Sir, is a cause of great sadness. One hopes the prisons will be used as community centres in the near future. One really hopes the situation will improve and, as time passes, with the passes having been abolished, one hopes there will no longer be any need for so many prisons. I can recall how, over the years, when the reasons for the vast prison population of South Africa have been questioned, the answer of the National Party has always been to build more prisons and not to attempt to reduce the number of people who were being held in prison.

Nonsense!

That is absolutely correct! [Interjections.] One can go back and check in Hansard. There has never been any real effort to do away with the laws that created the high prison population. The answer has normally been to build more prisons. So, Sir, now that we are doing away with these obnoxious laws we are going to have large numbers of prisons around the country that will no longer be necessary, and one hopes that they will be put to some appropriate use. [Interjections.] I hope the hon member Dr Vilonel is not going to find new ways of filling those prisons. I would hope that he could agree with me that the prisons are now empty and that we must find some constructive way of using those buildings.

Lock up the AWB in them!

Flats for MPs to live in!

Sir, I believe there are two major improvements brought about by this Bill. The first is the removal of the racecode number. The hon member for Umhlanga has gone through all the numbers to indicate how they work and what they signify, and we are very happy that the identity number will now only contain the first ten digits, and that any reference to race in the identity number is to be removed. This is a major advance because one’s race should not be so easy to establish for people to whom it is of no consequence. For instance, if I go along to a departmental store to open an account and I have to produce my identity document to prove my identity, it is of no consequence to the credit clerk behind the counter what my race is. What is important to her is whether I will be able to pay my bills.

What about the fact that you are Prog?

Well, when she hears that I am a Prog she will know that I will be able to pay my bills and that I am a good credit risk. She will know that I am an upstanding member of the community and will open an account for me. [Interjections.]

I can cite another example. If the hon the Minister of Transport Affairs wants his staff on the trains to make sure, for instance, that the people sit in their proper compartments since he feels it is important that the facilities provided are used by the people for whom they have been provided, it will be more difficult for them now because the racial code will no longer appear in the people’s identity documents. [Interjections.] I think that is a very definite step forward.

Unfortunately, the racial code will still appear in the population register. That is something we greatly regret. It is not, however, an issue we could address during the course of the standing committee deliberations upon this Bill. That would have fallen beyond the scope of the standing committee. [Interjections.] Nevertheless, we will continue to oppose that concept and work for its abolition because we know that when the racial code in the population register goes, the Nats will have gone too. [Interjections.] That, after all, is fundamental to their policy. In fact, it is the very basis of their policy. The day on which one will no longer be able to tell who is White or Coloured or who is a Prog or a Nat will be the day that the NP goes, for that is the very basis of their policy. The fact, then, that the racial code is no longer included in the identity number is a major improvement. We are very pleased about this change and obviously we support it.

The other improvement is the amendment to clause 14 of the original Bill moved by the hon member for Green Point. In its original form clause 14(2)(a) read:

That is, that he does not have an identity document—

That provision, namely, that an officer of the Department of Home Affairs could “without delay take the person in question” and have him issued with an identity document, was quite severe. However, clause 14(2) has now been amended to read as follows:

That means that if one goes into an office of the Department of Home Affairs now and has not yet applied for an identity document, the official concerned will then take steps to provide the individual with the identity document. It does not mean, however, that officers of the department can, for instance, stop people in the street and require them to produce their documents. That therefore is an improvement.

Unfortunately, however, clause 14(1) remains the same. Thus one aspect of our national way of life, that phrase that all of us have heard so often and know so well— “Where is your pass?”—will stay a part of our national way of life because clause 14(1) provides that a police officer may still require an individual to produce his identity document. I hope, however, that this practice will fade away. In fact, merely by its not being resorted too often, this practice will eventually fade away as the new uniform identity document becomes more acceptable.

It is our hope that it will become more acceptable among the members of all the various population groups in our South African society. It has a good chance of becoming acceptable as it is uniform in all respects, even to the concept of fingerprinting—to our great regret because now all will have to be fingerprinted. The hon member for Umlazi wondered whether there had been any change in our point of view since the sitting of the standing committee. I can assure him that there has been no change whatsoever; we are still opposed in principle to the concept of fingerprinting the entire population as we regard it as an invasion of privacy. We say that it is simply a sop on the part of the NP to the hon members of the House of Representatives and the House of Delegates who were fairly adamant that all had to be fingerprinted. One cannot argue against the principle that all should be fingerprinted but we would rather have had it that nobody was fingerprinted rather than that everybody should be fingerprinted.

I believe it will just not be possible for all of this to be done within five years. My fear is that it will endanger the acceptability of the new identity document. Like the hon member for Umhlanga I believe the department should do all they can from 1 July to promote the book and to ensure that people are aware of the benefits and the positive aspects of the document. There might be some resistance among people who already have identity documents and will not go along to have new ones issued because they will then have to be fingerprinted. Although there is this provision that all Whites have to be fingerprinted within five years, I want to predict that that will not happen. Those Whites, Coloureds and Indians who have not yet been fingerprinted and who are already in possession of identity documents are I believe going to resist going along to ask for new identity documents because their fingerprints have to be taken. I think that before 1 July 1991—that is five years from now—the Government will have to have amending legislation to extend that period.

That will be a different Government.

Mr Chairman, I want to reinforce our opposition to the concept of fingerprinting by saying that the whole tone changed during the course of the standing committee meetings. We were told at the beginning of the meetings, some weeks or months ago, that the fingerprinting was an important aspect of identification when it came to national disasters or when people were found at the side of the road dead or unconscious and that this was the one sure way of identifying people. We were told that it was important for that reason that people should be fingerprinted. However, as the meetings wore on and people possibly became a little tired of the subject a tone of hysteria crept in and there was constant and repeated reference to terrorism. This then became the overriding factor in this debate on fingerprinting. So, having moved away from the idea of pure identification, it became an important national security matter that everybody should be fingerprinted, and that rather swayed the opinion of the members of the committee. I regret that very much.

The other point I want to raise is that the department gave us information at the beginning of our deliberations that other than Spain and Portugal, it was only the banana republics of South America that enforced fingerprinting for their entire populations. In the United States of America only foreigners are required to be fingerprinted. In enforcing fingerprinting on the entire population of South Africa we will therefore join the banana republics of South America.

However, in spite of our strong objections to fingerprinting we will support the Bill because of the other positive aspects contained in it—the whole question of the uniform identity document and the fact that the racial connotation has been removed. We wish the department well in the formidable task that lies ahead of them in the next couple of months in issuing millions of documents to those people who bring along their applications. It is going to be a difficult job for them. They are familiar with all the details of this Bill. Mr Pretorius and Mr Tredoux spent many hours assisting our standing committee in running through the various clauses that we had to deal with and we were glad that they were there to assist us. However, they have a heavy job ahead of them and we wish them well in that formidable task.

Mr Chairman, I shall return to the hon member for Johannesburg North in due course, but I want to return to the hon member for Innesdal immediately. I want to refer to his tirade of this morning and to everything he said about the CP. Obviously I cannot react to everything, because then I would have to dedicate my whole speech to a tirade as he did.

At the outset I want to say that what the hon member for Innesdal said about the CP this morning is exactly what the United Party said about the NP in the old days and what the PFP says about the NP today, although they may not be saying it quite so loudly about the changing NP.

The hon member said the CP wanted to claim the whole of South Africa for the Whites. That is very far from the truth. The CP is in fact the party which, with its policy of partition and territorial separation, wants to create an area in the country for each population or race group.

Where?

There it is again! I shall not allow myself to be misled by that, however, since I cannot stray that far off the point. I merely have to react to what the hon member for Innesdal said. In addition he said the CP merely claimed rights for the Whites and refused to recognise the rights of the other people. Yet the CP is the party, which, with its partition policy, will give each race or population group full rights within its own partition area in which such a group will govern itself.

Where?

I shall tell those hon members where in a moment. It will be where the Whites’ bodies will eventually lie and where the vultures will congregate, according to their policy. That is where.

The hon member also said the CP’s policy was wrong and they believed their policy was right. On the other hand, they do not allow us to say we believe our policy is right and theirs is wrong. The hon member then went on to say the CP’s policy was wrong because it meant domination and would entail conflict and chaos. We say, however, that there will be conflict and strife about who will govern whom when one throws everyone together in one country and in a unitary state. The strife and conflict will be about who will govern whom. It will concern the question of who will eventually dominate.

Mr Chairman, may I put a question to the hon member?

That hon Minister must please just sit down. I do not want to hear anything from him. I shall not answer any of his questions, because he is always insulting when he talks to me. He has never dared to reply to any of my questions. Therefore I do not talk to him. [Interjections.] He knows I do not talk to him because he is always insulting me. He has never treated me properly in the House, and that is why he is out! [Interjections.]

Order!

Mr Chairman, will the hon member take a question from me?

No, I am merely challenging the hon member for Vryheid to meet me on a platform in Vryheid. [Interjections.]

We say there will be friction, conflict and a struggle for eventual domination in the NP’s unitary state. In our opinion Dr Verwoerd was the level-headed thinker of all time and he said that eventually nothing but numbers could triumph in a unitary state. Dr Verwoerd has never been proved wrong in respect of any standpoint he assumed. [Interjections.]

The hon member for Innesdal also ventured into a very sensitive area when he asked whether the existence of Negroids, Caucasians and so on were part of divine Creation. That is not all that is involved. The existence of separate nations and peoples, the fact that each separate people and nation must have its own territory and boundaries and the length of its existence is also part of divine Creation and was determined by it.

I now want to read from Deuteronomy chapter 32 verse 8.

Do you want to hold a service this morning? [Interjections.]

I expected the NP to run from the Bible. [Interjections.] I quote as follows:

I now want to read from Acts chapter 17 verse 26. It is the text the hon member for Waterberg referred to. The hon the Minister of National Education need not smile about what the Bible says. [Interjections.] I quote:

The hon member for Waterberg is laughing! [Interjections.]

It is extremely interesting that when God led the Israelites out of Egypt to Canaan as one people, He commanded that that one people be divided into territories according to its tribes. He gave each tribe its own territory in Canaan and they were not to live there as a unitary people.

Hon members must have a look at the new translation of the Afrikaans Bible. On page 245 there is a map which indicates this division. It is interesting that the territory each tribe received was not equally large.

Is that still the case?

What is most interesting of all is that there was not even consolidation of their territories. [Interjections.] The tribe of Manasseh got two pieces of land which were not consolidated at all, because the land of two other tribes separated those two areas from one another. [Interjections.]

Just like the Coloured homeland!

Frans, it won’t be Sunday before tomorrow! [Interjections.]

If those are the facts, why are we arguing as if it is wrong for us to divide South Africa with its different population groups in such a way that each group has its own territory and boundaries within which it can live as long as it pleases God for them to be in this country?

Is that still the case today?

It is still the case today, because in Biblical times, and in fact within Christianity, the peoples of the world as we know them today were placed in their various countries where they are still living today. Each exists as long as it is God’s will for it to exist. [Interjections.]

With more time at my disposal, I am prepared to defend this standpoint to anyone, on any platform and anywhere in this country.

You say that is true?

It is true. My challenge stands, because I know what I am talking about. [Interjections.] I want to tell any hon member who thinks he is a professional in his sphere that I am also a theologian who has written the highest available examinations. [Interjections.] They can laugh about that, but I am prepared to debate my standpoint on any platform with any theologian in this country. [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, may I put a question to the hon member?

No, Sir. I do not want to accept questions from that hon member who carries on like a radio announcer in this House. [Interjections.]

The CP stands by this one standpoint which was held by Dr Malan. In his time Dr Malan had to contend with the reality of this country, just as we have to today. What is that reality? It is the presence of Whites, Coloureds, Indians and Blacks in one country. This was the reality Dr Malan had to contend with. He saw how chaotic the situation was when he assumed the reins of government, and he then introduced his policy of separate development or apartheid. With that policy which was continued by his successors, he began to effect the separation and a proper ordering of the peoples in this country.

Dr Malan did this against the background of the danger he had warned us against. He told us what the results would be if that policy of apartheid was not implemented in all its consequences. He said:

This was the danger Dr Malan saw in this unitary state and in integration.

That was why he issued a very serious word of warning against this and said if the Whites wanted to survive in this country and wanted to retain their civilisation, their racial purity and their mastery over themselves, they should partition, separate and apply apartheid, so as not to be swallowed up by the Black majority and—Dr Verwoerd later said exactly the same thing—be overpowered by the Blacks. [Interjections.]

I want to move a bit closer to the Bill. This Bill is another one of those the Government has brought before the House recently, which create problems for us because we no longer have a Committee Stage in terms of the new rules, since the Bill is now concluded in the standing committee, and we are being confronted by the accomplished fact of a Second Reading. One then either has to reject the Bill as a whole even if one endorses certain clauses, or one has to forget that one is opposed to certain clauses and vote for the Bill, which, of course, is absurd. We have a similar situation in the case of this Bill.

On the one hand this is a Bill which contains certain imperative and supportable clauses, but on the other certain principles we do not agree with have been included in it, and the Bill therefore contains clauses which we cannot support. Because of the ineffectual system we have, we therefore have to vote against this Bill. The population register is essential, especially in a country such as ours. A record of the country’s population must be kept, particularly in a multinational country such as ours. This is very important and we need not argue that point. In the second place identification is essential, especially in South Africa with its multiplicity of races. Identification is even more imperative here than in a country which does not have to contend with a multiplicity of races. We need not argue about this either.

We in this party have one problem, however, and that is that we are dealing with various races, but that all of them are now being registered in one population register. We object to that. We say it is wrong to include all the races of this country in the same population register. Naturally it is the logical consequence of the Government’s new policy and its new nation concept and really goes without saying in terms of this, that everyone who Eves in this country forms one nation. Then a “political” meaning is suddenly attached to it. In those circumstances we cannot accept this concept of one nation. We reject it.

It is only the ruling Government which is still struggling with its concept of “nation”. This “nation” concept is essentially an integrational concept. The NP did not regard it as such earlier. The former Prime Minister, the late Mr John Vorster, a famous lawyer— do hon members want to dispute that?—said in his time, as recently as eight years ago, that he rejected the concept of one nation. He said the White nation was distinct from the emergent Coloured nation and that they were not to move towards one another or be forced towards one another, but should develop away from one another in terms of the policy of separate development so that the Whites could retain their own nationhood and not become absorbed in an integrated nation and community.

Why did he design the 1977-policy for us? [Interjections.]

Of course the hon the Minister wrote the “scare stories”, and when he was confronted about it in this House, he ran away and said he had had to write what Dr Connie Mulder had told him to write. He did not have the courage of his convictions to take a stand for his principles and to tell Dr Connie Mulder that he did not agree with him and the NP and was packing his bags and leaving. [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: May the hon member for Rissik tell the hon the Minister of National Education he is a coward?

Order! Did the hon member say that?

Mr Chairman, I said this hon the Minister was a coward.

Order! The hon member must withdraw that.

I withdraw it, Mr Chairman. [Interjections.]

Order! There must be order in this debate now!

Everyone thought so then. Everyone repeated Mr Vorster’s words and everyone said he was right. Even the present hon Minister of Education and Development Aid, before entering politics and before becoming a Minister, wrote in his book Ideaal en Werklikheid that he supported Mr Vorster’s standpoint. He went further and said he believed it was essential for a central area to be singled out in the one state for the Whites. He said this central area should be a homeland for the Whites in which they could govern themselves. It seems he was almost an Oranjewerker when he wrote that, because he said they themselves should work in this central area and homeland of the Whites.

On the basis of the racial variety we are in favour of separate population registers for the various race groups. In any case, in the hands of this integration Government with its concept of one nation, with its lack of respect for identity as reflected in the abolition of the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and Section 16 of the Immorality Act as well as other apartheid legislation and the introduction of a new colourless identity document which this legislation makes provision for, one population register becomes a danger to existence and creates an identity crisis for the Whites. This is the beginning of the eventual elimination of race classification as the PFP wants it. What the PFP says today is what the Coloureds and the Indians demand tomorrow, and what the NP complies with the following day. That is the prevailing recipe today.

As far as identity is concerned, two sets of numbers are now being introduced for the sake of a colourless identity document. This is another concession to the PFP, the Coloureds and the Indians. There will be a birth entry number and an identity number, and the details stipulated in clause 6 in respect of the birth entry number are exceptionally comprehensive. I merely hope the hon the Minister will give us the assurance that the proposed clause 5(3)(a) will be carried into effect, so that the concept of race will be included beyond all doubt and this information will remain. It must not be included now and then taken out again by an amendment of the legislation tomorrow or the day after. It must remain in existence, since that is the only place race classifications will eventually be identifiable, since it is going to disappear from the document. It is therefore becoming a colourless identity document, and our fundamental objection to such a colourless identity document is that the indication of race on the identity document is disappearing. Such a colourless document is a denial of and an assault on the racial reality, of the identity reality of this country. I simply cannot understand that one can be ashamed of one’s own identity, one’s race and one’s descent. I cannot understand that one can be ashamed of one’s race. I cannot understand that one cannot have respect for one’s race, and that one would rather erase it so that no one in the world can see on the document one carries that one is this or that. We must not start reasoning as follows: “You are White, after all, and every one knows that.” There are people in this country whose colour is very close to that of others, but who belong to different races, and that is why must be very careful in this respect.

Race and colour is a fact world-wide. There is no point in our trying to deny it, hide it or conceal it in South Africa. Race is concealed even on the birth certificate, because as I understand it, it is identifiable only in the figure code of the birth entry number. If, however, one does not know anything about that code and one does not know how the identification works, one does not understand what those little figures mean. One does not understand what they indicate.

I want to say that these colourless identity documents are going to cause problems for the Government in future. Last time it used the identity document instead of the voters’ roll to hold its referendum. Is it going to use that colourless identity document for its next referendum, or is it going to force the Government to return to the correct thing, viz the voters’ roll? [Interjections.] Of course we on this side of the House would prefer them to return to the voters’ roll, because that is the clean-cut and the correct method.

I also want to refer hon members to clause 12 which deals with change of address. We on this side of the House support that clause for example. We find no fault with it, except that we have the problem that we are dealing with people, and when one is dealing with people, one can include whatever one wants to in the legislation, but people do not react to it. Despite this clause we shall still have the problem that people do not report their changes of address faithfully, and we shall have problems with the population register because of that. We shall have problems with the voters’ lists for the same reason, and we are going to have the same problems we have today. That is why it is imperative that the department think of a system by which it can effect the reporting of changes of address effectively, so that it is not simply the task of the voters to report their changes of address, because many people inevitably fail to do so.

Clause 14 contains provisions in connection with the proof of identity. It determines inter alia that an authorised official can demand the identity document of anyone older than 16 years of age for the purposes of identification. This is another very important clause, and we endorse it.

We merely want to express the confidence that, in respect of clause 14(3)(a), in view of the abolition of the influx control measures, consideration will be given to the stream of Blacks who are going to enter the White areas, and wander around there, unemployed, without identity documents. It is possible for them to creep into the country from across our borders. We shall have to keep a very careful eye on this situation if we do not want chaos because of this. Those people who wander around where they are not supposed to so purposelessly, will have to be dealt with in some way, because it is going to lead to transgressions and crime. The prisons will not be full of people who did not have their passbooks on them, as the hon member for Johannesburg North said, but of people who transgressed the law and were guilty of misdemeanours.

We regard the cancellation of identity documents and especially of temporary identity documents as an import provision. Clause 16, which concerns the cancellation of the document of a deceased person, is also important to us. I merely want to mention something I want the hon the Minister to think about. Provision is made in clause 16(2) for a relative to apply for the deceased person’s identity document to be returned for his personal safe-keeping. I want to suggest that that document be handed in first in any case to be cancelled in some or other way, and then returned as a memento, so that there can be certainty that it has been cancelled like all the others that have to be cancelled. I mention that so that no loophole may arise as a result of this.

We should also like to support clause 18 which is about fraud and forging in respect of this legislation. I do not want to say anything else about the question of fingerprints, since other hon members on this side of the House will talk about that.

In conclusion, with these few thoughts, I want to say once again that, on the grounds of the clauses we object to, we cannot support the Bill although there are clauses that we do agree with.

Mr Chairman, I should very much like to make use of the opportunity to congratulate the chairman of the standing committee on behalf of this side of the House on the endless patience he has displayed. It was not always easy to listen to facts in that standing committee and remain as patient as he did, especially since this standing committee met 37 times this year. I think the hon member for Umhlanga has referred to that already. The committee’s work really demanded a great deal, especially of the chairman. I therefore want to make use of the opportunity to express my absolute and sincere thanks to the hon member for Innesdal, the chairman of that standing committee, for what he meant to us, and for what he did in that standing committee. I have great respect for the hon member.

Who is the deputy chairman?

The hon member for Kuruman is asking me who the deputy chairman is. I just want to say thank goodness he is not the deputy chairman!

But who is he? Is he not perhaps a Coloured?

In the second place I cannot but thank the officials of the department who had to react to the requests of the standing committee in season and out. I am thinking, for example, of Mr Joe Pretorius and others who had to come from Pretoria and give evidence on a number of occasions, not only in respect of this legislation, but also in respect of other Bills that we dealt with. I merely want to assure them of our sincere thanks and appreciation for what they did.

We have heard a variety of speeches here today. Hon members of the CP spoke, and we heard nothing but a tirade from the hon member for Rissik. The hon member for Rissik said the CP’s policy was founded on knowledge of South Africa and its multinational society. He said their policy was not founded on prejudice. That may be so, but all I want to tell him is that it is high time he and his party took cognisance that not only are there White Afrikaners in this country, but there are also Coloureds and Blacks and those people have certain needs and certain political demands. [Interjections.] Those people have the same yearning for freedom that we White Afrikaners have. [Interjections.] It is high time the hon member for Rissik’s party took cognisance of that as well as that there are other people here,

Are there also Coloured Afrikaners?

Yes, there are Coloured Afrikaners.

Are there Black Afrikaners?

Language forms a very strong component of the Afrikaner-character. Religion is another very strong component of the Afrikaner. Is the hon member for Kuruman saying that those two components are different in a man whose skin differs from ours? My reply to that is that such a person is a good Coloured Afrikaner, just as I am a good White Afrikaner.

Mr Chairman, may I put a question to the hon member?

No, you will get an opportunity to put your questions later; we shall get around to that. I shall not reply to your questions now.

Tell me, are there Black Afrikaners?

Mr Chairman, I want to continue, and I am even less inclined to reply to that hon member’s questions.

Mr Chairman, on a point of order, may the hon member for Kimberley South address other hon members as “jy” and “jou”? He has to address the Chair. That is very arrogant of him.

Mr Chairman, I shall really make every effort to address those hon members correctly during the rest of my speech, but it does require a great deal of effort.

I also want to refer to the hon member for Rissik. If one enters the House or the passage or any area in Parliament and whispers “Heese” softly, some of those hon members get the trembles, yet the hon member for Rissik is the man who told the hon member for Innesdal to change his surname to “Nothwhite”. I regard that as a disgrace. It was an absolutely disgraceful remark. These are the cowboys who say cowboys don’t cry! I expect the hon member for Kuruman, as the Chief Whip of his party, to comply with the demands he made. In addition he can address his fellow Whip and ask him to withdraw that hurtful accusation against the hon member for Innesdal. He can rise and withdraw it and apologise, for the reason advanced by the hon member for Kuruman. I regard that as hurtful to the hon member for Innesdal. [Interjections.]

The hon member for Koedoespoort referred to the identity card. It is of fundamental importance to them that it should indicate that one is White. It is important to them that it should say that one is an Afrikaner, a Portuguese or an Englishman.

Are you ashamed of its saying that?

No, I am not ashamed of being White; I have never been ashamed of that. Nor do I need an identity document to indicate that I am White or to convince those hon members of my being an Afrikaner and that my language is Afrikaans. I am not ashamed of that and I do not need a document to show that I am a White Afrikaner. I do not need that. [Interjections.] Oh, no! The hon member for Rissik went further. I do not want to debate that point with him, however. Nor do I want to enter into a debate on that point with the hon member for Koedoespoort who quoted from the Bible. [Interjections.] I do not want to venture into that area, but there I do want to say one thing.

You cannot either.

Perhaps I cannot. The hon member is quite right. I want to admit I cannot, and I am not ashamed to admit I cannot. I do not want to debate with him on the Bible, since I am no theologian, but I shall debate politics with him or anyone else.

Let’s go!

In Kimberley! We accept that!

Order! It appears that there are certain members who are tendering to go home to listen to the rugby. I shall not send hon members home, however. I shall punish them in some other way! [Interjections.]

The hon member for Rissik …

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: May I inform the hon member for Kimberley South that we accept his challenge … [Interjections.]

Order! That is not a point of order.

Oh, shame, Sir, it is tragic if one has to seek an audience by means of challenges in this House, in Kimberley or wherever in South Africa. [Interjections.] No, go and hold your own oeloe-oeloe meetings as is your habit.

You are an expert as far as that is concerned.

Order!

I merely want to refer briefly once again to what the hon member for Rissik said. The hon member for Rissik said even Adam could be identified—he was a man, he was a human being. In the same way it is true that there is no indication anywhere that Adam was white or black. There is no indication anywhere that he belonged to a specific race or a specific people. We simply accept that in a childlike naive way as it is conveyed to us in the Bible. [Interjections.] I really want the hon member for Rissik’s undivided attention, because I want to put a question to him. He challenged speakers on this side of the House to say in clear, unequivocal Afrikaans whether we regard race classification as non-negotiable, yes or no. Not that I want to pretend to be a leader of the party …

Not at all.

Rather grant me the opportunity to quote a leader of the party unequivocally and clearly. I should like to quote from Hansard what was said by the hon the Minister of National Education, Mr F W De Klerk (House of Assembly, 4 February 1986, col 145):

The CPs made a terrible noise then, because there are just a lot of interjections here:

Take note, “residential areas of its own”:

He forgot about the beaches!

I continue to quote:

This is where they wriggle out of it!

I continue:

Read that bit.

The PFP is begging me to read the last sentence about themselves. Shame, they do not get much attention!

Where is the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition now?

Here he is!

Where is the leader to whom that question was put? [Interjections.]

The hon member for Koedoespoort said they did not want to govern the Blacks; they wanted the Blacks to govern themselves. I want to put a question to the hon member for Koedoespoort, however. Since he will not be able to reply to it now, I shall be pleased if another speaker on their side will reply to it. If he says the CP does not want to govern the Blacks in South Africa, my question is: Who is going to govern the Blacks in the PWV area? Who is going to govern the Blacks in Guguletu, Soweto, Mamelodi, Alexandra, Atteridgeville and Daveytown? Who is going to govern the Blacks on the White farms?

On my farm I am in charge, Keppies.

That is correct, Sir. The hon member for Kuruman says on his farm he is Oorlog’s master, but he does not even know how many children old Oorlog has. The name of a Black man who works for him is Oorlog, but he does not even know how many children Oorlog has.

Order! I want to point out that we are discussing the Identification Bill and not who is governing whom. The hon member may proceed.

The hon member for Koedoespoort referred to the variety of peoples and White nationhood—he spoke about people and nation in the same sentence—and then said the system did not work well because we could not debate a Committee Stage here. I want to tell the hon member and the hon member for Rissik that the various political parties were able to put their standpoints unequivocally and clearly in all 37 meetings of the standing committee. Everyone knows exactly where the NP and the other political parties stand in such a standing committee. When witnesses are called in, their standpoints are heard and questions are put. Sometimes there is an in-depth discussion. The PFP put their standpoint very clearly during such a sitting of a standing committee. Nor is there any doubt about the NP’s standpoint on a matter serving before the standing committee. [Interjections.] The Labour Party make their standpoint on specific Acts clear and there is no doubt about where they stand. Even the National People’s Party put their standpoints clearly and unequivocally in the standing committee. Not in one of all 37 meetings that have been held by the Standing Committee on Home Affairs have I heard hon members of the CP saying anything in that standing committee, except right at the end of the meeting each time—and this happened time and again—when they said: “Just remember, we are against this in principle—that is the end of it!” One will never hear a single statement of standpoint from those hon members in a standing committee meeting, however. [Interjections.]

In principle they are simply against everything!

Yes, they are against everything in principle. Whether it is right or wrong, whether it can convince or not—they simply are and remain against it. Why? Because they are afraid of being convinced. [Interjections.] They are afraid of reality. They do not want to take cognisance of the realities in South Africa.

Mr Chairman, in conclusion I want to say it is a privilege for me as an Afrikaner and as a White to be able to say here today it is not necessary for me to take out an identity document to show the world I am White. Nor do I need to do so to show the world I am an Afrikaner. I am grateful that at last we have reached the position in South Africa in which all South Africans—Whites, Coloureds, Blacks, Asians, it does not matter—will carry the same identity document in future. I believe—as the hon member for Johannesburg North rightly said—that that caused tremendously traumatic experiences for Black people. It must have been terrible for a Black man to be taken into custody simply because he did not have his pass with him when he was asked for it at a given moment. By doing what we are doing, I believe we are defusing a situation in South Africa which has become absolutely explosive. Those hon members, however, rely solely on this one single aspect of politics—emotive politics. They want to elevate everything in South Africa to emotion. In this way they can incite the emotions of people at large. They have no established ground, however, for the things they stand for.

Our politics is sound politics!

Mr Chairman, the hon member for Kimberley South said that the Coloureds were Brown Afrikaners. Did he make this statement on behalf of the National Party? Is that the National Party’s standpoint?

Yes!

The hon member for Kimberley South was an organiser of the National Party. He helped to drive me out of the National Party.

Yes, I helped to get you in too! [Interjections.]

Now I want to know from him whether that statement he made here today, was his own personal opinion. Of course if that is the case, I shall take no further notice of it. [Interjections.] But if that is the standpoint of his party, I want to address him on this. What is his reply to this?

Everyone is entitled to his own personal standpoint!

I am not asking you to reply. I am asking Keppies Niemann to answer me. [Interjections.] The hon member must tell me whether that is a party standpoint.

Ask the hon the leader of Natal!

Yes, let us hear what the hon the Minister has to say.

Louis, why do you not ask the Coloureds what they themselves say?

What does the hon the Minister of Home Affairs say?

I shall react to that in my reply.

Will the hon the Minister react specifically to this point?

I shall get back to that point specifically.

Very well, then we shall not discuss this for the moment.

Louis, why do you not continue with your speech instead? [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, this Bill deals with the very important matter of identity—the identity of people. Of course people are the same in some respects. Not long ago the hon member for Krugersdorp said here rather vehemently that an old person was an old person and a hungry person was a hungry person. Of course that is so, Sir. In many respects people are the same. In a war soldiers wear fairly similar uniforms—particularly on parade—to give the outside world the impression of unity, of unanimity, of a single identity as regards purpose and action. But people also have their differences. People differ in character. They differ in talent. They differ in appearance. Just think of all the pretty young girls, for example. How much trouble do they not take to look different to the other girls! Of course this is the case for very good reasons. It makes life interesting. It also introduces variety, and this means that our lives and the world in which we live is not as dull as it would otherwise have been.

People also differ in interest. One can carry on like this. Today I want to tell hon members here that it is the fundamental differences between people which give them their identity. The fact that two people are both hungry, or both old, or both young, does not yet determine their identity. Their identity is determined by their differences. Carlyle said that the core of every person was his philosophy, ie his attitude towards and outlook on life. This is first and foremost what distinguishes him from other people, because it is his attitude towards an outlook on life which determine his actions. This is indeed a fine point which Carlyle made.

The characteristics of a people were also enumerated by the State President when he spoke at Pietersburg in 1982. He first referred to the concept of nation. Let me dwell on this for a moment. He said that a nation included all the citizens living together in one state. Of course this is not true. If one talks about the Zulu nation and the Zulu people, for example, one is talking about the same thing. If one talks about the Afrikaner nation and the Afrikaner people, one is talking about the same thing. If one talks about the Boer people and the Boer nation one is talking about the same thing. It is the State President who gave his meaning to the word nation. He gave the Afrikaans word “nasie” the meaning which English constitutional law gives to the word “nation”, namely that everyone in the king’s domain forms one nation. We learned that in constitutional law at Stellenbosch.

The State President may perhaps make laws for us here and impose laws on us, and he may still win temporarily, but he must know that he cannot prescribe to the Afrikaner what meaning and content he must give to words; not that State President, and no other State President either, and particularly not one of the hon members on the other side of the House! [Interjections.]

In other words, I refuse to accept that the words “Afrikaner nation” and “White nation” mean everyone living in the same country. We stick to the standpoint that nation and people are interchangeable terms. The Afrikaner nation and the Afrikaner people are the same thing; and anyone who wants to arrive at a term which includes everyone in a single state, will have to explain over and over again. Simply to take the word “nation” for this, does not work.

The State President was a little more explicit regarding the word “people”. He said in Rapport of 2 May 1982:

I have no fault to find with this. But I will add to this that a people also includes persons of the same race. The Afrikaner people is a White people. The Zulu people is a Black people. If the Zulu people was to become a brown or a yellow people, it would no longer be a Zulu people. The Afrikaner people will cease to be Afrikaner people if it becomes a Brown or a Black people, or if it becomes a totally racially mixed people.

Consequently here, as in many other respects, the State President was very wide of the mark when he did not include the important difference of race as one of the most probable and most determining factors as far as identity is concerned when one is talking about a people. Differences do not only determine identity, but differences and identity together determine man’s feeling of his own worth. I have a certain conception of what value life has for me and what my life is worth to my fellowman, and this feeling of own worth which every person has, whether to a greater or lesser extent, is determined by those things which distinguish him from other people and not by those things which may make him the same. These are the distinguishing elements which give content and sense and meaning to his feeling of his own worth.

It is a fact that I am an Afrikaner and not a Jew, for example, which gives my own worth that content and sense and meaning. To the hon member for Hillbrow, on the other hand, the fact that he is a Jew is possibly far more important than the fact that he lives in South Africa or in the South African community.

No!

I am merely saying it is possible. I know it depends on him. The point I am making, is that I will understand if his being a Jew means to him what being an Afrikaner means to me. I appreciate that, and in the same way I accept that he appreciates my feeling of being an Afrikaner.

I do not want to dwell on this any longer. I just want to ask the hon members on that side of the House, particularly the hon the Minister, whether it is objectionable to distinguish. Is it objectionable per se to distinguish? I say it is not. To distinguish, or to draw distinctions and record distinctions, is not objectionable in itself; on the contrary, the English word “discriminating” has an extremely good meaning. “A discriminating person” is a highly civilised person. I consulted the dictionary this morning. “Discriminate” means to distinguish. According to the dictionary the meaning hon members are giving the word is “to discriminate against”. This means to wrong, to place at a disadvantage, to distinguish at the expense of. Consequently one must clearly say: “To discriminate against”. Simply to say that discrimination is wrong is a lie. There is nothing wrong with discrimination per se. But to discriminate against something is a different matter. “Discriminating” means “distinguishing, discriminating, discerning, with discretion, fastidious, perspicacious.”

Consequently “a discriminating person” is a highly civilised and developed person. In English it is probably more highly rated than “gentleman”. A discriminating person probably has more culture than quite a number of gentlemen.

Consequently here we have another distortion of the use and meaning of words being perpetrated in our time by the liberalists to promote their policy. As far as they are concerned discrimination per se is objectionable. This is not true! It is discrimination against a person which may be objectionable to them—not necessarily, but for the sake of the argument I shall not pursue this matter. Discrimination as such can indicate a level of refinement which, with all due respect, everyone in this House will not necessarily even reach, particularly when one listens to some of us.

Consequently I want to ask the hon the Minister again if it is discrimination when the Coloureds, Blacks, Whites and Indians are designated as such in an identity document? Has he asked the Coloureds, Blacks, left-wingers and liberals what objection they can have to a fact, a piece of reality, such as that there are racial differences, being accepted and acknowledged?

Louis, have you asked them?

The hon member must keep quiet. I do not have problems with myself. Hon members of the NP must go and ask that, because they are introducing this legislation. They are being driven and pressurised by those people who say that passbooks and other identity documents are discrimination. As I have already indicated, discrimination as such is not wrong.

I also want to tell hon members what the other reason is. They are against the White man. These left-wing forces in South Africa who do not want us to identify ourselves in our identity documents are against us. I have said this in another debate and I repeat that it is the Afrikaner and the White man who insist on their identity. We do not begrudge the Coloured his identity. I now want to give the Coloured the same identity I am demanding for myself. Nor do I begrudge the Black man the same identity I am demanding for myself. Why do they say that the fact that a White man is identified in a book is wrong and it must be deleted? The NP will have to explain to us why they are doing this. Today the hon the Minister will have to explain to us why identification on the basis of race as such is objectionable to him. It is not objectionable to us.

The hon the Deputy Minister of Information did give us the reason. Perhaps this will make the task of the hon the Minister easier. According to Beeld of 21 November 1985 the hon the Deputy Minister said:

This is another one of the reasons. It is to indicate their break with the past that they are going to issue this identity document.

As I have said, there is no objection to the old system on the basis of discrimination, but they want to prove to themselves, to us, to the outside world and to the left-wingers that they have broken with the past. How can one indicate this more clearly than by telling every person in South Africa that it will no longer be stated in his identity document what he is and what his race is? This is the clearest, most manifold and most symbolic evidence—I almost want to say the omega—by means of which the Government is finally telling the world and itself that we have changed our identity in the sense that in politics we are no longer what we were. They say we are no longer the Afrikaners that we were.

Our standard Afrikaner was a man like Dr Verwoerd. Now our standard Afrikaner, is someone like the hon member for Innesdal. That is the difference. The hon members for Innesdal and Kimberley South, who talk about Brown Afrikaners, are the people who today epitomise what is going on in the NP and reflect it to the outside world.

He spoke about Black Afrikaners too!

I am not all that conversant with that; I shall stick to the Brown Afrikaners.

This is the break with the past. Together with the question of identity there is also the question of policy. The hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning said the following in a debate on 20 March, and I am quoting from his original Hansard:

Of course this is not true, because apartheid was an entire policy. It was the entire pattern according to which South Africa had to expand and develop. But the hon the Minister says it was merely an instrument through which they sought to regulate conflict. What instrument do they now have in the place of apartheid to regulate conflict? It is because they do not have an instrument to regulate conflict, that the country is in its present state. That is what happened!

Consequently what we are doing here, is not only a matter of identification, because it affects the crux of the entire course of politics in South Africa. The fact that the Government is no longer regulating conflict with apartheid and does not have anything in its place either, emphasises that it has broken with its past.

But it has not broken with our past. Neither the NP nor anyone else can make me break with my past! My identity is precisely what it was. Today I want to say here that the future and the course of Afrikanerdom depends on every Afrikaner who stands up and says that this is his identity and the policy he stands by. It does not depend on those persons who have changed their identity; on the contrary, they will be left behind and will fall by the wayside. They will fall by the wayside and the winds of the future will blow over them. There will be no memorials to them. Yesterday the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning said here—I could not get hold of his Hansard in time—that I was an embarrassment to the Afrikaner.

You are!

Who said that? [Interjections.] All the right-wingers and I are quite prepared to let the future decide in 10, 15 or 50 years’ time who was an embarrassment to the Afrikaner people at this stage—me or the hon members for Innesdal, Kimberley South and Kroonstad. I am not going to pass judgment, because I am quite satisfied to know that time will tell who was and who was not an embarrassment to the Afrikaner at this stage.

We shall see!

You will no longer even be a factor by then!

It has been said that the new identification system of the Government must make the South African society colourless, but I have another quotation I want to refer to. One must not only listen to what they say in public, but particularly to what they say to the internationalists behind closed doors where dark plots are hatched. I want to go so far as to say that what I am going to quote is the standpoint of the State President, because who spoke to the Eminent Persons Group, that is the Reject Persons? It was the State President and a few of the top men. The group did not come here to talk to the unimportant people like the hon member for Kimberley South. I am quoting from Rapport of 18 May of this year:

How can one remove discrimination from the South African society more quickly, better and more effectively than to say nothing in the identify books regarding the differences between races which are pre-eminently the characteristic of our communities?

And then they say we are not losing our identity!

That is why I repeat that the present supporters of the NP are changing their own identity. That is why in future we shall have to know them as such and shall have to draw the distinction which was drawn in the Anglo-Boer War between Bittereinders and Hensoppers. [Interjections.] We are sorry, but we cannot do otherwise. We are not going to cease drawing distinctions. An Afrikaner who does not stand up to be identified at this stage, is already on the other side along with the colourless persons and those persons who want to remove race and differentiation from our community. [Interjections.]

I am also concerned about the Population Register.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon member a question?

I cannot answer questions now, Sir.

The entire concept of a population register is collapsing. The foundations are visibly cracking under us. This is happening because the Government wants to arrive at a system of one man, one vote. Prof Piet Cillié, former editor of Die Burger said so. There are many members of the NP who have already declared one man, one vote. The State President and the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning have spoken about this, but how can one arrive at one man, one vote if the Population Register remains on the Statute Book? It must eventually be totally destroyed.

We must not forget about the matter of a Black State President. That is why according to a banner headline in Die Transvaler of 6 May 1986 the hon member Dr Vilonel recently emphasised that the State President did not say that it was impossible that South Africa would have a Black State President. The hon member said that after the hon the Minister of Foreign Affairs had been repudiated, and no one repudiated him. I have the report here in front of me.

I am very concerned about the fact that the Bill does not provide that the new identity numbers which are going to be allocated will indicate race. Only the old numbers will still indicate this. Early this morning I tried to find such a provision in the Bill.

It is being left out.

A legal expert from the Vaal Triangle wrote me a letter, in which he asked what the case would be with the new identity numbers. The Bill is silent on this. The hon the Minister will have to tell us how he can discriminate on one population register?

Read the Bill!

The old numbers still indicate race, but what certainty do we have and what provision is being made for the new numbers to include an absolute indication of race too? [Interjections.]

According to the Bill this must be removed.

That is my point. The Bill is going to take it away, but I challenge the hon the Minister to say so out loud, because this is not clearly spelt out in the Bill. Even in his Second Reading speech the hon the Minister did not make a point of the fact that as far as the new numbers are concerned, there will no longer be race. He must say so clearly, because the voters outside want to know about this. [Interjections.]

In this connection I want to make an appeal to the entire White community in South Africa and actually, if I may, to the Coloureds and the Blacks too. Everyone in South Africa must know that this Government is going to be overthrown, and when we come into power, we are going to keep a strict racial classification register again. [Interjections.] All Whites must keep all documents they acquired in the past which will help to prove their identity. This also applies to Coloureds and others. We will be strict rather than lenient in our actions against the inclusion of any possible mistake in the White community. [Interjections.] We are very worried and upset. [Interjections.] That is why I am making this appeal. If a man has an old identification card, he must keep it. He must ensure that he keeps his birth certificate, adoption certification and all other documents which indicate his identity, because we are entering an era in which the Government is no longer going to do this for us. That is why we are going to do it ourselves. [Interjections.] When the HNP and the right-wingers come into power, we shall use those documents as first-hand evidence and we shall classify the people strictly according to race. [Interjections.] Strictly according to race!

There is another reason why the Government is virtually destroying this race classification, and is on the way to destroying it entirely, and that is that they want to get rid of the Group Areas Act. Look what the newspapers are reporting: “Mr Heunis hints at green light for all-race residential areas”. Mention is made of “grey residential areas which will soon be open to all”, according to the hon the Minister. From Port Elizabeth it is reported:

Another newspaper headline reads: “Die NP sê ‘ja’ vir ’n bont Mayfair”.

There you have it, Mr Chairman. This Government wants to throw open the group areas. It will be able to do so far more easily if there is no longer race classification. That is all it has to do. It need only put an end to race classification. How are the estate agents going to know? Think of the court cases which are going to result from this, the misery, the expense, the delays and the losses people are going to incur. If they can destroy race classification, it is a cleverer way to throw open the group areas than to abolish the Group Areas Act itself. They can leave the Group Areas Act on the Statute Book. They can then tell the voters that the Group Areas Act is still on the Statute Book, but because they are cleverer, slyer and more dishonest, all they need do is destroy race classification and there is nothing standing in the way of mixed group areas.

There is also the matter of the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning who in another House appealed to the Coloureds to help him in his fight against the right-wingers. He told the Coloureds that he in his turn would help them in their fight against the left-wingers. It is going to be far easier for the hon the Minister to use the help of the Coloureds effectively against the right-wingers if there is no race classification. They are trampling all these obstacles underfoot because they have objectives.

In 1969 they started with the throwing open of sport, and look how far they have got! Look how far they still want to go. [Interjections.] We were not born yesterday and we have not only been in this country for a short while. We know dishonest politicians when we see them.

You are one!

They do one thing and say another. They are setting about doing things with the hand of Esau and the voice of Jacob.

I am sorry, but today I shall have to say something else here about race classification and re-classification. We are deeply concerned about the fact that it is being left to Government officials to decide in the dark, behind the scenes and behind closed doors which Coloureds and other non-Whites are going to be classified as White. I have here a report written by the parliamentary staff of the former Hoofstad …

What is the date?

10 March.

Of which year?

It appeared on 10 March 1982. The report reads as follows:

More statistics have been added since then, which I do not have at my disposal. [Interjections.] The point is that this Government is administratively making the Whites coloured to an increasing extent.

That is not true!

That is what they are doing. They also stand up here and quote from Heese’s book …

Order! I have allowed the hon member to refer to re-classification in support of his standpoint with regard to the Government’s approach, but I am appealing to him not to divert the entire debate in that direction. The hon member may proceed.

I am merely emphasising that we are rebelling. When we come into power, we shall re-classify everyone who is not correctly classified as White as belonging to one of the other population groups again. [Interjections.] I am telling you this now, Mr Chairman. We are going to put right what is being done wrongly. We are not going to allow this Government, even if it remains in power for another 10 or 15 years, to change the racial composition of the Afrikaner as is gradually happening as a result of re-classification.

Consequently everything indicates that with the cause the Government is adopting it is totally indifferent to the question whether or not the Afrikaner people are gradually going to become a half-breed nation. [Interjections.] It is now leaving this entirely to the individual. I am telling the Government every people also has its weaker element. [Interjections.] The Jews have their weaker element, and the same applies to the Germans and the English. Every people makes laws to protect itself against its weaker elements. There are laws against murderers and against adulterers. [Interjections.]

Order! I appeal to hon members to give the hon member for Sasolburg an opportunity to make his speech. If it had not been that the hon member had a loud voice I would find it difficult to understand him. The hon member for Sasolburg may proceed.

Hon members must not think we do not know what is going on. There were the Buyses; there were Afrikaners and English-speaking people who did not mind marrying non-Whites and having racially mixed children. I am not suggesting that there are not going to be such cases in future too. We are also sober-minded people. We are idealists. We have high ideals. We are seeking peace in Southern Africa on the basis of separation, but we are also level-headed and business-like. We know the realities. Every people has its weaker elements from thieves to murderers to adulterers. It is to protect a people against its weaker elements …

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: Is the hon member saying that people of mixed parentage have no future? Is that what he is saying?

Order! That is not a point of order. The hon member for Sasolburg may proceed.

That is not a point of order; that hon member should know better than that. [Interjections.] He only did that to interrupt me. That is all. I know this old story.

I shall not repeat what I said because I stated it clearly. In conclusion I want to point out that it is not true that race, if one can put it like that, does not have a spiritual aspect too. It is not true that race does not also indicate the innermost thoughts and feelings of a person and the composition of the entire person. Race is not only a physical aspect. This becomes apparent from the fact that Blacks do not want Raka taught at their schools, although it is one of the best poems in Afrikaans and is rated highly by great English writers. I do not have time to touch on this matter now; I shall do so on another occasion. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, I must say I found it very interesting that when the hon member for Sasolburg said that the Government was in the process of changing the colour of the Whites, a stream of personal insults was hurled in his direction, to the effect that he was a disgrace, and so on. [Interjections.]

You are a disgrace to the truth.

The hon member for Heilbron says I am a disgrace to the truth. I am glad he mentioned this because all I want to say is that what the hon member for Sasolburg said was of course the truth. Is it not true that recent publications revealed that since the abolition of the Mixed Marriages Act, there have been 450 mixed marriages?

What percentage is that?

I shall reply to the hon member on that point. Whether the percentage is great or small, is irrelevant, because here we have 450 to 500 marriages per year. That means that over a period of 10 years 5000 such marriages will have been consummated. Out of those mixed marriages between 10 000 and 50 000 Coloured children will be born who have to enter a society in which no proper provision has been made for them. Therefore, whether the percentage is 1%, 2% or 0,5%, thousands of people are changing colour. That is why I say that the hon member for Sasolburg was correct. The hon members had a feeble argument. When they cannot refute an argument, as we have now seen throughout these debates, they become personal.

Another thing which the hon member for Sasolburg said that was completely correct, was that what the Government was doing with this legislation was to terminate its own identity as well. The identity of the Afrikaner and of the Government is being terminated in this way. Now I want to ask: As is the case with all these things that are being abolished, what comes in the place of the Government’s identity? Nothing! It is all part of the process of equalisation.

I want to refer to the semantics being constructed around the words “people” and “nation”. Today that question came up again here: What is a people and what is a nation. It originated with the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning, who is not present at the moment. [Interjections.] He introduced semantics into the debate by trying to imply that a people was certain things. It was done with the aim strictly according to the recipe of Prof Huntington—of sowing confusion. I now want to tell hon members that the word “people” (volk), according to their new definition, applies only to the Afrikaner people. Is that not true? A people is the Afrikaner people only. The whole of South Africa is not a people; it is a nation. That is the argument which is being used. A people is a specific, small segmented group, and the whole group is a nation. However, when the Speaker reads out the prayer he says, inter alia, the following:

Who is that people? It merely refers to the terms “people” and “nation” used interchangeably to indicate the same concept. When the hon member for Sasolburg says that in the past we spoke either of the Afrikaner nation or the Afrikaner people, then it merely referred to the same thing. To try to score debating points here on the use of two words is a futile exercise. It is quite simply a brain-child of the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning, which he took from Prof Huntington’s formula.

I should like to refer to the contribution made by the hon member for Kimberley South. I think that the most sensible remark he made in his entire speech was when he said at the end: “I shall now resume my seat.” [Interjections.] It is significant that he never—or very seldom—takes part in debates. He very seldom takes part in a debate, and it is now quite clear to me why he never takes part in a debate. The reason is that he is an embarrassment to his party, be cause the things he said …

Say something about the Bill!

The hon nominated member Mr Schutte, who lost his seat, says I must say something about the Bill. I am in fact reacting to the standpoints which the hon member for Kimberley South stated in respect of the Bill. [Interjections.] He should wake up, because he never takes part in a debate either. The hon member for George should perhaps go back to George again and see whether, this time, his colleagues can perhaps shoot a video of him running away from me to his red car. [Interjections.]

That is a public lie!

Order!

It is not a lie, and what is more I have a witness to the event. That day I told him I was going to thrash him, and he ran away. [Interjections.]

Order!

I have a witness to that event. He ran so fast you couldn’t see him for dust! [Interjections.] He jumped into his own little red car. He has such a beautiful car!

Order! It seems to me hon members have no idea of what is expected of them when the presiding officer calls for order. The hon member for George must withdraw the words “it is a public lie”.

Mr Chairman, if you ask me to, I shall withdraw it. [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: The hon member cannot withdraw it merely because you ask him to. He must withdraw it unconditionally. [Interjections.]

Order! As I interpret the hon member’s words, he was complying with the request made by the Chair to withdraw it. The hon member for Jeppe may proceed.

Mr Chairman, may I put a question to the hon member? I should like to ask the hon member how many times he has publicly threatened people by saying that he was going to thrash them? [Interjections.]

I have never threatened this hon member, and there are very few people I have threatened. All I have done, when someone messed with me, was not to threaten them, but simply to thrash them and get done with it. [Interjections.]

At one stage during his speech the hon member for Kimberley South started shouting and became so aggressive that we thought he wanted to thrash us! [Interjections.] However, when he was challenged on what he had said—he had trodden squarely on a landmine in respect of the challenge he had issued, and which the hon member for Kuruman had seized upon very neatly when he said: “Yes, fine, we shall both appear on a platform in Kimberley”—he ran away from a challenge which he himself had issued, in a bigger dust-cloud than the one left behind by the hon member for George! I now want to tell him …

Are you the strong man of the CP, Koos? [Interjections.]

Sir, I should just like to tell the hon member for Heilbron that I am an old man now! I am almost 50. Now I make love; not war! [Interjections.] The hon member for Kimberley South created the opportunity for a challenge inter alia debate this Bill on a platform in Kimberley with the hon member for Kuruman. When the hon member for Kuruman accepted this, the hon member ran away. It is an embarrassment to his party! That is why his party uses him so rarely to participate in debates here!

For example, he once asked in this House: “But who is going to govern the Blacks?” He almost pleaded! Who is going to govern the Blacks in the White areas, he asked. I want to tell him that the NP has a mandate from the voters. It is the twelve-point plan which was approved in 1981 by White voters at the general election held on 29 April 1981. The NP is committed to that, and in terms of point 3 Blacks outside the national states will exercise their political rights in their own states. The hon member does not even know what his own party’s policy is! He is an embarrassment to his own party. He got up and asked: “Who is going to govern them?” Once again I want to tell him that the mandate of the NP says that Blacks will govern themselves in their own areas.

The hon member for Kimberley South then quoted extensively from a speech by the hon the Minister of National Education, who was here until a short while ago, but has now left. [Interjections.] He read to us that the hon the Minister of National Education, the chairman of the NP in the Transvaal…

He is the leader! [Interjections.]

I beg your pardon, he is the leader.

He read that the leader of the NP in the Transvaal had adopted inter alia a standpoint favouring separate residential areas. Sir, but that does not exist in this country! It exists only for propaganda-mongers! That concept merely exists for propaganda purposes!

The hon member for Johannesburg West knows that that is true. He knows that this is mere propaganda. He knows what goes on in Mayfair and in the central areas of Johannesburg. I had a survey undertaken in central Johannesburg, only in the vicinity of Joubert Park. Of the approximately 10 000 people living there in flats—it is a White area—51% are Blacks, Indians and Coloureds!

That is in your constituency!

Yes, it is in my constituency.

Do they vote CP? [Interjections.]

No, they cannot vote for me, unless hon members want them to be included on the common voters’ role as well! [Interjections.]

We are talking about people being crowded out, of the fact that people are losing their identity. Do you know, Sir, that I as an MP, am losing my identity! [Interjections.] Hon members are laughing about it, but the reason why I mention it, is that 51% of the White voters that could have voted for me or another White, have already left that area! They were crowded out by Indians, Coloureds and Blacks who are now living there.

I want to tell the hon the Minister of Transport Affairs …

Order! I appeal to the hon member for Jeppe to relate his arguments to the Bill under consideration. The hon member may proceed.

Sir, I am reacting solely to what the hon member for Kimberley South said, and my arguments relate to that. I want to tell the hon the Minister of Transport Affairs that there is a building in the central area of Johannesburg, the ground floor of which is occupied by 250 Blacks. In the central area of Johannesburg nearly 5 000 Blacks, Indians and Coloureds are living in White flats. Then the hon member for Kimberley South, referring to the hon Leader of the NP in the Transvaal says that they stand for separate residential areas. It is simply not true.

Order! Once again I must point out to the hon member that separate residential areas is not the subject under discussion. We are dealing with the identity document. If the hon member is able to relate his arguments to the identity documents, then that is in order, but up to now he has not done so. I therefore appeal to him, if he intends to continue in this vein, to relate his arguments to the subject under discussion. The hon member may proceed.

Mr Chairman, I am relating them to the arguments which the hon member for Kimberley South was allowed to raise. I am merely reacting to something which appears on the Order Paper. If I do not react to it, it is said that we accept it. [Interjections.]

There is another matter I should like to raise. The NP stands for the maintenance of group identity. Do hon members know how weak it has become? When a vote took place on open or closed beaches, the NP had lost its identity to such an extent that it did not even have a standpoint. An hon member of the NP would …

One MP.

One MP of the NP even went and voted “yes” for open beaches. I do not know how one can maintain group identity if one does this kind of thing.

Which MP was it?

It was the MP for Newton Park. The last point of the hon member for Kimberley South to which I should like to refer is that he said there was built-in protection for minorities. What protection? The question of protection for minorities is extremely relevant to this debate; it is concerned with identity. The hon member for Kimberley South quoted someone else, and I noticed that he did not understand what he was quoting. Nevertheless, I wish to test the hon member. He said that the NP’s fundamental premise was that we now had a number of groups in the country and one had to find a formula which obviated domination of one group by another. That is neat; it is a wonderful challenge. If the NP can come up with safety mechanisms which are more acceptable to me than partition, for example, then I might join the NP, if they would have me. [Interjections.] If there are safety mechanisms which are more effective than partition, by means of which one group will not dominate another, then we will have a look at it, but no one is spelling those mechanisms out.

They must be able to identify them.

That is correct. I have personally asked the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning during the course of four debates, what the safety mechanisms are that he wishes to introduce, so that one group cannot be dominated by another. He said nothing here, however, but he did reply in a letter which appeared in Die Burger on 7 June, and mentioned two safety mechanisms. He said one could entrench them in a constitution and he said that one could have judicial measures.

So the NP has now mentioned two measures against group domination. That is after all the essence of today’s debate: How are we going to prevent one group being dominated by another? The only two measures mentioned by the NP, Prof Arnheim …

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon member whether he would agree that the Jewish community has retained its identity without partition?

That is a faith, little brother.

I cannot reply to the hon member on that score, but whatever the Jews’ safety mechanisms or arrangements entailed, the NP says it has the measures which will prevent group domination. That is the central theme—in the same way a tennis racquet has a “sweet spot”. The “sweet spot” of today’s politics is how one can prevent group domination. [Interjections.] That is what we want to know from the NP.

The hon member for Pretoria East has just said something. Do hon members know what he is good for in this House? He makes the feeblest jokes and then laughs the loudest at his own jokes.

He is a card.

He is a card. [Interjections.] Since we are dealing with the preservation of identity, is the NP able to spell out for us how they want to prevent one group dominating another? How many times have we not asked that question? However, we have still not received an answer.

I now wish to deal with the hon member for Umlazi. He floundered about, trying to rectify the NP’s mistakes of the past. With reference to clause 14, he tried to bring about reconciliation between Whites who now have to carry identity documents, and Blacks who no longer have to do so. He was trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. The hon member is throwing his hands in the air.

You do not understand.

I shall tell the hon member what I do understand. The hon member said we must get people in this country to co-operate—this is a method we must use so that people can co-operate better, can become better acquainted with one another, etc. What I am saying is that he is trying to reconcile the different groups, but he is trying to reconcile things which are irreconcilable, and I shall indicate why. One of the reasons is that there is an unbridgeable gulf between the races in South Africa and the chief strategist … [Interjections.] The hon the Chief Whip is also noisy sometimes. Naturally he never speaks, although that is in terms of convention. Of course that suits the NP, because when he opens his mouth something goes wrong! [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, if there is an unbridgeable gulf between the various races in this country, how do he and his party envisage bringing about a future for this country?

By means of partition. Since the groups are separate, one draws the boundaries of the states. [Interjections.] He knows the answer to that, of course. [Interjections.]

Order! The hon member for Jeppe is replying to a question put by the hon member for Umlazi. The hon member for Jeppe may proceed.

Mr Chairman, I should like to know whether the hon member is going to negotiate this partition voluntarily, by means of an agreement between the various population groups, or is he going to force it upon them.

I do not want to force anything upon anyone. All I want is that the Whites must have the right in a certain part of South Africa to decide that that part is theirs. [Interjections.] As far as I personally am concerned, what the Indians, Coloureds and Blacks want to do eventually, is their concern. [Interjections.]

Order!

I should just like to return to the hon member for Umlazi and say, by way of a quotation from the Sunday Times of 15 June in which the chief strategist of the NP, Prof Huntington, who set out the whole formula of political deception for them, said the following …

Who is that?

He said the following:

So much for Prof Huntington. Those hon members ought to know him well.

Who is he?

The hon member for Innesdal wants to know who Prof Huntington is. [Interjections.]

Order! Too many questions are being bandied about the floor of the House, and there are too many replies from other hon members while the hon member is speaking. The hon member for Jeppe may proceed.

In September 1981, Prof Huntington held a meeting in South Africa at RAU where he set out the formula of deception according to which the NP is now engaged in reforming South Africa in a devious and deceitful manner. [Interjections.] That chief strategist then also said—and I am returning to the question of the hon member for Umlazi:

That is a somber warning that the gulf is widening, but that hon member is trying, by means of artificial methods, to reconcile the groups. It cannot work.

The hon member for Rissik reacted to what the hon member for Innesdal said, but before that the hon member Dr Vilonel reacted to what the hon member for Rissik had said about the fact the NP must be destroyed first. Dr Vilonel then said the ANC also wanted to do that.

I said that was a very interesting statement. [Interjections.]

Order!

Mr Chairman, may I put a question to the hon member?

Order! Does the hon member want to reply to a question?

No, Mr Chairman.

Order! The hon member for Jeppe is not prepared to reply to a question.

It is an old NP tactic to link the CP and the ANC. [Interjections.] I accept the word of the hon member Dr Vilonel that he does not do so, but it is an old tactic. [Interjections.]

Order!

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: Is it permissible for the hon member continually to deviate from from the legislation we are discussing here?

Order! The hon member for Caledon can leave the ruling about that matter to the Chair. The hon member for Jeppe may proceed.

Perhaps the hon member for Caledon could attend the debates in order to acquire some knowledge concerning this matter, for example the fact that Mr Speaker, and not the hon member for Caledon, decides on this kind of thing.

People who say that the CP and the ANC are bed-fellows, as the SABC has already announced because we both want to destroy the NP—destroy in the sense that we want to destroy them as rulers so that we can govern—must please answer the following question for me: The NP and the CP both support the security legislation. Are we and the NP bed-fellows, therefore?

Order! The security legislation is not under consideration at the moment. The hon member must return to the Bill.

The hon member for Innesdal delivered a tremendous tirade today. Apparently he was quite worked up.

Emotionally.

Yes, emotionally. The hon member for Barberton offered him a soap box at one stage. I think he would have trampled it to pieces. He accused the hon member for Rissik of personally assaulting him. I heard everything and we can talk about it. The hon member for Rissik said “Nothnagel” should rather be “Notwhite”.

He said you!

Yes, that hon member. He said the hon member should change his surname from “Nothnagel” to “Notwhite”. Then he also used the terms “NonXhosa” etc. The hon member for Rissik can speak on his own behalf, but as I understood it, he was merely referring to the political perceptions of the hon member for Innesdal. The reason for that is that in a debate dealing with identity, that hon member made an appeal for a South Africa devoid of identity. He does not want to be White, he does not want to be Black, he does not want to be Coloured, he simply wants to be without identity. That is why the hon member for Rissik made a statement relating to his political philosophy and not to him as an individual.

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: It does not concern me personally, but I should like to ask you, a propos of Mr Speaker’s ruling that we should not be personal in this House, whether a statement such as that made by the hon member for Jeppe is in order. Although he said the remark was not meant personally, he said that a member of this House did not want to have an identity, but rather wanted to be without identity. He says this hon member did not want to be White, he did not want to be this or that and the whole drift was that an hon member of this House, as a human being and a person did not care what he was and wanted to be without identity. This statement was definitely that that hon member wanted to be without identity … [Interjections.] Sir, I am addressing you on a point of order …

Order!

It is a statement about an expression of will as well as a characterisation of a particular member that he has contempt for something which is meaningful to everyone; he wants to be without identity. In all courtesy I should like to suggest that the hon member for Jeppe is circumventing the ruling of Mr Speaker, as is the case with virtually all those members.

Order! I am aware that the hon member for Rissik referred to the hon member for Innesdal in the terms mentioned earlier on in the debate. I did not follow the debate personally, however. I have really not heard anything in what the hon member for Jeppe has said thus far which is so offensive as to be unparliamentary. I can, however, understand that it could be embarrassing for a particular hon member. I cannot rule that it is so offensive as to be unparliamentary, however. The hon member for Jeppe may proceed.

I want to react to another point by the hon member for Innesdal. This hon member protested vehemently when the hon member for Rissik said we spoke on behalf of the majority of Afrikaners. I merely want to point out the following facts to him which he can consider to decide whether we do in fact speak on behalf of the majority of Afrikaners.

We were opposed to the abolition of the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and according to the HSRC report of 1984, 78,9% of Afrikaners were opposed to it. Among Afrikaners 81,3% were opposed to the abolition of section 16 of the Immorality Act. We therefore articulate the feelings of roughly 80% of Afrikaners as far as those issues and other separation measures are concerned, and that is why the hon member for Rissik said we spoke on behalf of the majority of Afrikaners. Then the hon member for Innesdal spoke—and that is what I found so amusing—and jumped around in pure rage because we said we spoke on behalf of the majority of Afrikaners. He furiously accused us of acting arrogantly and incorrectly. He then said that everyone would reject the CP completely and utterly. He then pulled out his cheque book and wanted to write out a cheque for R1 000 for the following senseless bet—“we must wait until eternity”. Now, Sir, I am not going to live that long. No one is going to live that long. It is a pointless bet, therefore. [Interjections.] He also says the CP wants people of colour, in their own country …

Mr Chairman, would the hon member for Jeppe and his party enter into discussions and try to reach agreements with Blacks concerning boundaries in South Africa.

Yes, of course! Of course!

Good Heavens, what a silly question that is!

The hon member for Innesdal said the CP wanted to reduce people of colour to absolutely nothing in their own country. That is utter nonsense! We grant the Transkeians the whole of the Transkei. We grant the same to the people of the Ciskei, Bophuthtswana, Venda and all the other Black states, as well as the Coloureds and the others. We grant them exactly what we grant ourselves.

The following pointless argument of the hon member for Innesdal concerned nationalism. You see, Sir, he is very honest. He articulates the new nationalism. Afrikaner or White nationalism has disappeared from the National Party completely. It has been replaced by a South African nationalism. The hon member for Innesdal articulated it and is trying to foster a love and a respect for it. He is trying to bring about an inherent yearning among the Blacks, Indians, Coloureds and Whites, to be nationalists in terms of a common South Africa.

Yes, that is correct.

The hon member says that is correct. I know that. I said he was honest.

Patriotism!

I say that no such nationalism exists. If it does, it is a small, feeble choking little flame of nationalism. The nationalism which gave the National Party its name, is something entirely different. I have here with me copies of statements made by the State President when he was still Prime Minister. In one of those statements he said that nationalism had originated from the Afrikaners and from the Whites. That is Afrikaner-Nationalism. That is also the word to which the National Party has always linked its name. The National Party … [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, I should like to confine myself to the Bill before the House.

Northern Transvaal is going to lose today!

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: Has the hon member for Vryheid the right to keep shouting at me that Northern Transvaal is going to lose today? [Interjections.]

Order! The hon member Mr S J Schoeman may proceed with his speech.

Mr Chairman, I should very much like to raise a few matters in connection with the Bill itself. However I have no option but to react briefly to what the hon member for Jeppe said earlier. I therefore have no option but to cover a wider field than the Bill under discussion. Unfortunately, however, it is difficult to react to the hon member for Jeppe without also stooping to his level of debate.

My level is hopelessly too high for you!

All the hon member for Jeppe did was to launch a personal attack on all the other hon members on the government side who took part in the debate and to disparage them. For example, he launched a personal attack on the hon member for Kimberley South and said that he was an embarrassment for the National Party. [Interjections.] I put it to the hon member for Jeppe that there is a phenomenon in psychology known as projection. Therefore, when he is an embarrassment to his party, he should not project that onto hon members of the National Party. Indeed, there is not a single hon member of the National Party who is an embarrassment to the National Party. [Interjections.] The hon member for Jeppe then went on to refer to the hon member for Innesdal and attacked him about his reaction to what the hon member for Rissik had said earlier. When the hon member for Stilfontein made statements in a speech that were not half as personal and insulting as the things that the hon member for Rissik said to the hon member for Innesdal, the hon members of the CP demanded that the hon member for Stilfontein withdraw what he said and apologise. Now the hon member for Jeppe wants to try to explain what the hon member for Rissik tried to say. I think that we, the NP, can also demand of the hon member for Rissik that he rise and make a personal apology for the absolutely reprehensible and insulting way in which he referred to the hon member for Innesdal. [Interjections.]

Daan is lacking in courage.

Who says I am lacking in courage?

I say it.

Mr Chairman, I call upon you to request the hon member to withdraw that. He will not say it outside this House. [Interjections.]

Order! I see that the hon member for Rissik is rising. [Interjections.] Order! Is the hon member for Rissik rising to put a point of order or to ask a question? [Interjections.] Order! I am quite in the dark as to what is happening now. Hon members are simply getting up and taking part in the debate as they please. The hon member Mr S J Schoeman is speaking.

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: May the hon member for Standerton say that the hon member for Rissik is lacking in courage? [Interjections.]

Order! Did the hon member for Standerton say that the hon member for Rissik was lacking in courage?

I did, Sir, and I withdraw it.

Order! The hon member has now withdrawn the words objected to.

Mr Chairman, on a further point of order: is the hon member for Rissik entitled to threaten an hon member of this House? [Interjections.]

Order! No hon member is entitled to threaten another hon member. I am not, however, aware that the hon member for Rissik threatened another hon member.

Mr Chairman, if I may, I wish to explain it to you. The hon member for Rissik said to the hon member for Standerton: “Come outside and repeat what you said inside.” [Interjections.]

All he said was: “Go and say that outside”.

Order! Did the hon member for Rissik say that?

Mr Chairman, let me explain. I had not intended raising a point of order in this regard. All I meant was that the hon member should say that in public so that we could argue about it in public. [Interjections.]

You did not say that.

Order! The hon member for Rissik has explained what he meant, and I must accept his word. The hon member Mr S J Schoeman may proceed.

Mr Chairman, …

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: May the hon the Minister of Health Services and Welfare say that the hon member for Rissik is lacking in courage.

Order! Did the hon the Minister say that?

I did, Mr Chairman, and I now withdraw it.

Come on now, Morrie, behave yourself!

Mr Chairman, on a further point of order: the hon member for Turffontein has shown contempt towards you because despite your ruling, he told the hon member for Rissik that he was a puppet.

[Inaudible.]

Sir, may that butterball say to me what he has just said?

Order! The hon member for Langlaagte must withdraw that word. [Interjections.]

I withdraw it, Sir.

Order! For the rest of this debate, for as long as I am in the Chair, not a single hon member will make derogatory or insulting remarks about any other hon member. That is final. The hon member Mr S J Schoeman may proceed.

Thank you very much, Mr Chairman.

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: With all respect towards you, Sir, I must say that the attitude of the hon member for Langlaagte is provocative in the extreme. [Interjections.] While you were giving your ruling, he was pointing at the hon the Minister of Health Services and Welfare and making absolutely objectionable gestures at him. I saw it with my own eyes, Sir.

Order! If any hon member makes improper signs at another hon member by way of gestures, I shall regard it in a serious light. I did not observe this particular case. [Interjections.] Order! The presiding officer cannot be aware of all manner of signs or gestures made, but in general I do not regard such conduct as becoming to hon members of this House. The hon member Mr S J Schoeman may proceed.

Thank you very much, Mr Chairman, for the opportunity of once more continuing with my speech in connection with this legislation. Turning now to the legislation, I just wish to point out to hon members …

If you don’t come to the Bill, somebody might take a point of order! [Interjections.]

As the hon member for Unhlanga rightly says, it almost feels, in these closing stages of the session, as if we are ending the session with a no-confidence debate. It has been that way the whole week now, and I shall now confine myself specifically to the Bill since up to this stage the poor hon Minister of Home Affairs has probably been able to write very little about what has been said about the Bill itself. [Interjections.]

Turning to the Identification Bill, its history has been as follows: As far back as his opening address the State President announced that a uniform identity document would be issued to all persons in South Africa. Moreover it was clearly spelled out in the White Paper that we are to have a uniform identity document for all population groups in this country.

It is true that there has now been a great deal of debate about the fact that all reference to race has now been eliminated from this identity document. It is argued by the CP that the fact that the reference to race has been removed from the identity numbers impairs the policy of the Government, namely that we in this country participate in politics on the basis of separate voters’ rolls, taken from a population register. It is not true that the fact that the number referring to race has been removed from the identity number, in any way affects the principle that provision is still made in the Population Registration Act for population groups to be registered separately and the voters’ rolls compiled on the basis of that population register is still drawn up in the same way as before. These things have nothing to do with one another.

The CP has the tendency to link together very simplistically two matters which in fact have nothing to do with one another, so that the speeches they make here about that matter can be used to confuse the general public of South Africa. That is just what those hon members are doing in connection with this identity document.

Another matter I wish to refer to briefly, is the issue of fingerprints. We obtained evidence on fingerprints in the select committee. As hon members have already heard, the standing committee deliberated on this legislation on several occasions. We gathered evidence from several bodies, and I quote from the evidence we received from the CSIR:

They then mention examples such as the issue of identity documents; the payment of pensions to certain population groups—they say that all the population groups ought to be included—and the identification of casualties during catastrophes. They also mentioned the example of the identification of cases of terrorists as in the case of the Volkskas incident in Silverton.

Therefore we did not include or exclude things from this Bill on the basis of a feeling. Instead, on the grounds of scientific research and inquiries we reached the conclusion that we had to include in this Bill compulsory fingerprints for all people in South Africa. I think it is a very meaningful and good Bill, and it is a great pleasure to support it.

Mr Chairman, the hon member Mr Schoeman said that the past week’s debates had sounded like a no-confidence debates. The CP wants to express its utmost possible lack of confidence in the legislation introduced by the Government during the past week. The NP Government, which was elected in 1981 on the basis of a policy of separate development, has no mandate for the legislation discussed during the past week. [Interjections.] It is now making power-sharing with Black people a reality.

Let us look at the Second Reading speech of the hon the Minister of Home Affairs. He says, and I quote:

About clause 6 he says:

This does not in any way refer to colour:

So even the electoral division has to be recorded in the population register.

I want the first hon NP member who has the floor after I have finished speaking to explain to us in detail whether the Government intends to divide South Africa up into Black constituencies in which Black people, in accordance with the electoral qualification inherent in South African citizenship, are going to obtain the right to vote at the age of 18 for institutions which are yet to be decided upon. That information must be given to us, because according to this legislation South Africa … [Interjections.] I beg your pardon? The hon member Dr Vilonel says “yes”. [Interjections.] Thank you very much. That is all I wanted to know.

I want to say today that the hon member for Innesdal is a proud Afrikaner. He is one of the hon NP members who always, very honestly and sincerely, interprets and spells out the logical consequences of present-day NP policy. He is one of the hon members who, at public meetings, at oeloe-oeloe house meetings, in the House of Assembly or wherever he happens to be, always honestly and sincerely spells out the logical consequences of NP policy. I take my hat off to him for that. Never in this House has the hon member, like some of his colleagues, tried to explain power-sharing as supposedly being separate development. For that I have the utmost regard for the hon member for Innesdal, even though I disagree with him completely.

Are you now apologising?

Apologising for what?

[Inaudible.]

No, I think the hon Chairman has just accepted the explanation that was given and I think the hon member must abide by the hon Chairman’s ruling. [Interjections.]

[Inaudible.]

I want to ask the hon Whips of the NP please to give the hon member for Winburg, who is lying there sprawled out in his bench, a chance to speak so that he can also say a little something in this House. All he ever does is interject.

The hon member for Kimberley South today quoted the hon the Minister of National Education as allegedly having said that the NP stood for own schools, an own community life and own political institutions. I do not think South Africa can take any more notice of the NP when it says that something happens to be its policy, because how many times has the NP not changed its policy in the past few weeks? Let me just quote the hon the Minister for Constitutional Development and Planning.

That is not true!

Wait a moment, I am going to prove it, because I never say anything that is not true.

I want to quote what the hon the Deputy Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning said during an NP youth conference at Calitzdorp on 2 May 1986:

Up to 1985 that was NP policy, and I know how strongly the NP adhered to this. In the 12-point plan of 1981 the NP highlighted this as specifically being one of its strongest points. At the time it was said that members of Black peoples who were citizens of the national states and were living in White South Africa would have to exercise their political rights in their own fatherlands. In 1985 the NP changed its policy. If the hon member for Kimberley South says today that the NP stands for separate schools and separate residential areas, let me tell the NP that that standpoint or promise is not worth the paper it is written on, because the NP changes its policy from one day to the next.

The legislation before us is the result of the acceptance of power-sharing with Black people, for which the NP does not have a mandate. It is a result of the change in policy introduced in 1985, which now places the Black people of the national states on the population register in South Africa. They are also to be given identity documents identical to those that every hon member of the House of Assembly has to carry. That is why I am saying that the NP’s policy is not worth the paper it is written on.

At its congresses this year the NP can unanimously adopt certain policies, but at the same time, at his congresses, the Rev Hendrickse will be adopting diametrically opposed standpoints on precisely the same issues. So when it comes to deciding in the Cabinet, or consensus has to be achieved in the standing committees, according to the hon member for Randburg it is a question of give and take, with everyone eventually having to be satisfied with second choice or third choice. The NP congress has become the gathering point for people who can now only dream of the fine things the NP once did in the past. [Interjections.]

The hon member also referred to own community life. Here I have a report from last week’s supplement of the Sunday Times under the heading: “Black and White in Northern Suburbs.” I should like to quote the following:

There are also quite a few photographs of the intermingling of Blacks and Whites in these residential areas, which is also part of the community life in South Africa.

We are not complaining!

That merely goes to show that there are no problems. [Interjections.]

And sport is, after all, also part of the community life of a people, and the Government has accepted multiracial sport as a policy even up to club and school level.

Did you watch the tests?

The hon member said the NP stood for own political institutions. Yesterday the NP destroyed the last political institutions in which the White man alone had a say, ie the provincial councils. Yesterday in this House that party and its coalition partners in government destroyed the last White political institutions in South Africa. What the hon the Minister of National Education referred to, and the hon member for Kimberley South too in a quote, they themselves are in the process of destroying.

The hon member for Kimberley South also said the Coloureds were Coloured Afrikaners because they spoke Afrikaans. I am sorry the hon member is not here and I hope he is going to read my Hansard speech.

[Inaudible.]

Let me tell the hon member for Kimberley South and the hon member Mr Vermeulen that the White people in Rhodesia speak English, but are Rhodesians. They are not Englishmen. In Australia the people speak English, but they are not Englishmen. They are Australians. [Interjections.] The Indians in South Africa, whom the Government has given a separate House …

Are South Africans!

… must, according to the hon member for Kimberley South, be Coloured Englishmen. If the Government places them in a separate House, it can only be doing this on the grounds of their skin colour. [Interjections.] That is the most blatant form of discrimination there is in this country.

The fact that the Indians in South Africa speak English surely does not make them Coloured Englishmen. The Coloureds who speak English are surely not Coloured Englishmen. [Interjections.] Now I want to tell the hon member for Kimberley South, and the hon member Dr Vilonel, who always plays the role here of an extra voice in the choir, that it is surely ridiculous to call a Griqua or a Malay who are Afrikaans-speaking, Coloured Afrikaners.

The Englishmen are in England.

I now want to ask the hon member for Kimberley South and his party, who accept the Coloureds as Coloured Afrikaners because they speak their language and share their religion, why they have given the Coloureds a separate House. They must tell me. [Interjections.] That party says the Coloureds speak their language, are Coloured Afrikaners, share the same religion and belong to the DR Church, and now I want to ask them—I want to ask the hon member for Krugersdorp—why they have placed them in a separate House?

They are not quite White, Jan. [Interjections.]

The hon member is gulping for air like that carp the hon member for Soutpansberg spoke of the other day. The only reason that could be found for the fact that the Coloureds have a separate House, bearing in mind the NP’s policy and its presentday pronouncements, is that they have a different skin colour. That is one of the most immoral forms of discrimination that exist. [Interjections.]

The hon the Minister of National Education said here that the Coloureds were not a people and that they were not a people-in-the-making. I want to quote to him what his own State President said just the other day at the Transvaal NP congress …

Order! The hon member has been speaking for a long time now, and I would appreciate it very much if he would bring his speech closer to the subject of the legislation.

Mr Chairman, since we are talking about various peoples, let me say that those peoples are at present identifiable peoples because they also have representation in this Parliament on the basis of the fact that they have been identified …

Order! The hon member will concede that it is still true in regard to population registration, but this is not the Population Registration Act.

In terms of this legislation a person’s electoral division, his residential address and his identity number must appear on the voters’ list. The voters’ list must be drawn up from the population register and eventually these Houses must be constituted on the basis of the voters’ fists. I am now setting out clearly …

Read section 6 in its entirety.

Mr Chairman, would you not like to give the hon member for Middelburg a turn to speak as well? [Interjections.] On that occasion the State President said:

The State President speaks of the Black and Coloured “peoples”. He said that in 1981 at the Transvaal congress.

What, however, does the hon the Minister of National Education say? He says:

He refers to the three Parliaments of the 1977 proposals and says:

The NP therefore referred to Coloureds as a people—we know that, after all, because we were all there. [Interjections.] In their programme of action, on the basis of which they were elected to this House of Assembly, it is also stated:

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon member whether he, too, was not elected to this House on the basis of that manifesto?

Yes, I was elected on the basis of that manifesto, and the only way in which the CP now disagrees with what is contained in that manifesto, is that the CP now says that it also wants to give the Coloureds and Indians their own homelands where they can govern their own people. [Interjections.] Over the years … [Interjections.] Mr Chairman, I cannot understand it. That hon member asked me a question. I have had the decency to answer his question, but now people are making such a noise that he cannot hear me.

Over the years the NP has, in principle, rejected integration with the Coloureds. They said a Coloured homeland was not practicable. When the State President unlocked the door of integration for the Coloureds in this multiracial tricameral Parliament, we stopped in front of the door and said we would not enter because we had, in principle, rejected integration over the years. Then we got together and said we were not prepared to accept as a policy what the NP had rejected in principle. We said we would weigh up the practicality of an own fatherland for the Coloured people. We accepted this as our policy at a congress.

We are asking the Government to hold an election. They should already have done so prior to 29 April, because that was when their mandate lapsed. [Interjections.]

Order! I have already asked the hon member once to make his argument more relevant to the subject of the legislation. I am now, for the second time, asking him to do so.

Mr Chairman, the voters’ lists, in accordance with which the members of this Parliament were elected, must be drawn up in accordance with the population register.

Order! This is the first time in the past few minutes that the hon member has spoken about voters’ lists.

Mr Chairman, I am replying to a question put by the hon member, a question which you allowed him to put to me. That is why I am saying that the CP held a congress meeting. I also said that the Government should call an election. As a result of this new population register, which the Government wants to set up in terms of this legislation, I want to tell the Government that all the other hon members of the CP and I are prepared to resign our seats if everyone in the governing party also does so. I am now speaking to people who do not have a mandate to govern. [Interjections.] I am, however, prepared to guarantee that the Government will not do so because the majority of those hon members are very concerned about their gratuities and pensions. [Interjections.]

What about you?

I am not concerned about my gratuity or my pension. Whether I sit at home or sit here is all the same to me.I shall be fighting these integrationists in every comer of the land. [Interjections.]

I want to suggest that this Bill, which will be known as the Identification Act, should actually be called the “Camouflage Act”. This legislation camouflages the identity of people who are not proud at all of what they are. [Interjections.] In terms of this legislation all South African citizens—Whites, Blacks, Coloureds and Asians—are now obtaining the same identity document. An identity document is now becoming an colourless document. It is giving substance to the State President’s promise, in the letter he wrote to everyone, that of equal opportunities, equal treatment and justice for all. This Bill gives substance to the standpoint, adopted by the State President and his Government, of one country, one South African citizenship and one nation. It gives substance to the policy, propounded by the State President and his party, of equal opportunities for everyone, with the concomitant elimination of discrimination on the basis of race and colour. If this Bill is passed, it will mean that all South Africans—Blacks, Coloureds and Indians—will be carrying exactly the same identity document.

Hear, hear!

The PFP says: “Hear, hear!” [Interjections.]

What is interesting is that the PFP fully supports the Government on this legislation, because the Government is falling in line with precisely what they have advocated over the years, ie one country, one South Africa, one citizenship and one identity document. [Interjections.]

Order! There are a few hon members here who are under a completely wrong impression. If they have a question to ask, there is a procedure to be adopted. The relevant hon member stands up and asks permission to put a question. What is happening now must stop. The hon member for Kuruman may proceed.

If the NP says it will be removing discrimination when it passes this legislation—one could call it differentiation on the grounds of race or colour—and that everyone should have the same identity documents, there is something I want to ask them. What moral right do they, in the NP, have to say that the children of those carrying these identity documents may not attend the same schools? What moral right do they have to do so? I want the next speaker to stand up and tell me that. If they say that all South Africans must carry the same identity documents because they are all South African citizens, they must tell me what moral right they have to say that the children of those carrying those identity documents may not attend the same schools. What moral right have they to say that those carrying similar identity documents may not live in the same residential areas? They must stand up and tell me what moral right they have to do so. [Interjections.]

The NP says the Coloureds speak our language and share our religion and culture. They are part of the South African nation. They will now carry exactly the same identity documents as you and I sitting in this House of Assembly, and the fact that the Coloureds have a separate House in this Parhament, that there are separate schools for them and that they have to have their own residential areas is not merely based on the colour of their skin. That is a fact.

The NP says it stands for separate schools, separate residential areas and an own community life. That is the only bit of separation the NP still identifies with at this stage. I now want to ask them: Seen in the light of the NP’s policy of one country, one citizenship and one nation, with the same identity documents, is it not one of the most immoral forms of separation that can possibly exist? Now we do not hear a word from them. [Interjections.]

We shall be replying to you as far as that is concerned!

I want the hon member to stand up and answer. I can understand why the PFP and the outside world condemn the NP’s apartheid, its kind of separation. It is incomprehensible and indefensible that one can say that Whites, Coloureds, Indians and Blacks have one fatherland, that they are part of the same nation, that they have one citizenship and that they should carry precisely the same identity documents, but that they should all have their own separate schools and residential areas. [Interjections.] That is indefensible. It is the grossest form of discrimination there is.

Absolute discrimination, yes!

You therefore agree with him? [Interjections.]

It is the grossest form of discrimination, yes!

The hon the Minister must just listen to what I am saying. I said that if the NP discriminated against these people on this basis, I agreed with the PFP that this was the grossest form of discrimination there could be. [Interjections.] It is this indefensible little bit of apartheid that the NP is still maintaining in order to hold onto a large number of its trusting Nationalists who still believe in separate development. I am now speaking of separate schools, separate residential areas and separate voting lists.

On separate voters’ rolls the Rhodesians have their identity, but they are slaves in a country which they helped to build up and which, at one stage, they governed. We have seen what happened with separate voters’ lists in this country, and with separate voters’ fists there could be Black majority government in this country.

Dr Boy Geldenhuys, the hon member for Randfontein, said that on separate voters’ fists the Coloureds had more representation in this Parliament than they would have had on the PFP’s common voters’ lists. [Interjections.] That is why I am saying that it is this indefensible bit of apartheid that the NP is still keeping intact to retain the support of a few trusting Nationalists who still believe in separate development.

The NP’s government partners and the outside world will force the NP to relinquish separate schools and separate residential areas in order to give substance to a South African nationhood symbolised by these identity documents without any identity. They are going to be forced into that, and that is why the Group Areas Act has already been referred to the President’s Council. I want to predict that the Group Areas Act is going to be abolished before the end of the next parliamentary session. Not one of them advances any argument to refute that. [Interjections.]

The CP acknowledges the diversity of peoples here on the Southern tip of Africa. There is a diversity of peoples, each with its own language, culture and traditions, each with its own view of life and view of the world and each with its own identity. The CP says the only morally defensible policy in terms of which, in a multi-ethnic country, one can truly give substance to the identity of the respective peoples and to the preservation of that identity, is by way of the policy of partition. In saying this, I call to witness the NP’s programme of action, on the basis of which those hon members were elected.

You were elected on that basis too, Jan!

Yes. That is specifically why I am still standing by what I am now going to quote:

That is the ideal dispensation! The CP advocates that ideal dispensation because we say that an own fatherland is the guarantee for the maintenance of the identity and the freedom of each of the respective peoples here on the southern tip of Africa. An individual fatherland for each people guarantees that that people will not be dominated politically, economically or in any other way by any other people.

Today I want to say that if the Ndebele people were to request Parhament to have the 500 000 ha of their land area excised from the territory of South Africa so that they could be truly free within that area, and if that were granted, that people would have more freedom than the White man has in South Africa, because we must first ask Rev Hendrickse and Mr Rajbansi for their permission before we can take such a decision in this Parliament!

Through Kuruman? Where are you going to draw the boundaries? [Interjections.]

One of the hon members asked where the fatherlands of the respective peoples were. My district and the district of Vryburg relinquished 633 000 morgen of land to give the Tswana people their own fatherland. Today they have a fully fledged system of self-government and have more freedom, as an identifiable people, than we as White people have in this country! The boundaries of the Black fatherlands have been drawn. [Interjections.] I have said that every piece of land to which the White man has title is part of the fatherland of the White man of South Africa!

What about the Coloured homeland?

We shall be spelling that out for hon members.

Well tell us then!

Christmas is also coming! [Interjections.]

Sir, the NP to which that ridiculous academic from RAU, the hon member for Waterkloof, belongs, has been governing South Africa for 38 years now, and I still cannot tell the people in Kuruman precisely where the ultimate boundaries of Bophuthatswana, which has been independent for 10 years now, are going to be, because the Government is still giving away land and has now decided that the citizens living in that portion will now obtain South African citizenship! [Interjections.] In terms of a Bill which is still to come before this House, the Government is giving them citizenship and placing them on South Africa’s population register. That people is being placed on this population register on the strength of land already offered to them. [Interjections.] [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, do I understand the hon member for Kuruman correctly if in a few sentences I sum up what he said in his speech as follows: The acceptance of this uniform identity document actually forms only a part of the dangerous game and the objectionable form of power-sharing—according to the CP—in which the NP is engaged. Is that more or less a correct summary of the way the hon member feels about this? [Interjections.]

This Bill rejects ethnicity because no people’s identity will be indicated in the new identity document! [Interjections.] It is only the Progs who agree with you!

Fine, I understand what the hon member wants to convey; I followed his speech well. I should also just like us to judge that hon member’s contribution today according to his standpoints over the years. I mean no harm by this but at one stage that hon member served with me on a select committee. The decision was taken in that committee that Black people, too, would serve on environment councils. The chairman of that board said so.

You are not completely correct. It was decided that they could be considered, but they would report to a White Minister of Parliament.

The chairman of the committee recommended in principle that non-Whites and Whites could serve jointly on such a council. [Interjections.] That principle was accepted by the hon member. The hon member for Rissik should therefore be careful when expressing himself on powersharing …

You have been confused since 24 February 1982 and you have not come out of it since!

Let us have a look at how confused I am while we are dealing with the hon member for Rissik. [Interjections.] I said the hon member for Rissik was one of those who accepted power-sharing in terms of the 1977 proposals, as the NP is implementing them today. [Interjections.] The hon member says no. Well, let us call an independent witness. What did Mr Jaap Marais say in his work Waarheid en Werklikheid? The hon member must calm down now and listen. I refer to page 35 of this book, in which the 1977 proposals are dealt with. He stated in the book that if the 1977 proposals could not be described as power-sharing, it was purely a semantic exercise.

Jaap did …

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

Mr Chairman, it has been brought to my attention that the hon member for Sasolburg agrees with me wholeheartedly. [Interjections.] Seeing that he agrees with me I shall think about using him in future debates as well. It appears to me that, after all, a measure of wisdom is detectable in his behaviour. I want hon members of the CP to follow what I am saying. This side of the House would never have considered assenting to the present legislation if we had believed that the principles contained in the Group Areas Act would in no way be dismantled by adopting this legislation. One hon CP member after another laid this accusation at our door. If this legislation dismantled the principles of the Group Areas Act in any way, it would not be acceptable to the NP. I want to go further. If this legislation were to dismantle the composition of a complete population register in which the group identity of the individual, inter alia, were also recognised and registered, this legislation would be equally unacceptable. [Interjections.] The hon member says it is being dismantled but I say he is totally incorrect in that assumption. It is not being dismantled. I want to take the matter still further, since this is a point the hon member raised, too. If this would alter the approach in solving the political problems in this country in so far as the status of the independent Black states would be jeopardised by it, the legislation would once more be unacceptable.

I should like to return to the hon member for Rissik. He expressed the opinion that we were starting to subscribe to the whole “melting pot” idea from America in accepting this legislation. I want to say to the hon member: Far from it. This legislation does not affect the maintenance of the group identity of any population group. I should like to call a witness, and this time it is not going to be the hon member for Sasolburg.

Oh, shame!

What does clause 6 say?

We are going to get specifically to clause 6, too. Before we reach it, however, I wonder whether the hon member is going to be quiet. [Interjections.] In 1982, after the formation of the Conservative Party, we discussed the Population Registration Amendment Bill. I now call my witness, and he is the hon member for Rissik. [Interjections.] What does the hon member for Rissik say about identity documents that do not include a race code or any indication of a person’s group? I quote from Hansard, House of Assembly, Thursday 27 May 1982, col 7864:

The hon member is speaking on behalf of the CP:

Hon members must listen attentively now:

Rightly or wrongly:

[Interjections.] I should actually like to read this again because if there has been a political somersault in respect of this standpoint, it is in this respect. But allow me, to quote further:

The hon member must listen to me now:

As they are now, Sir:

Where is the hon member’s assistance and support now in respect of a standpoint that that hon member himself voluntarily adopted in this House? [Interjections.]

Order! The hon member for Winburg’s voice is being heard too often. The hon member may proceed.

I should like to return to further standpoints of the hon member for Koedoespoort. The hon member for Koedoespoort—I notice he is unfortunately not in the House at the moment; I have not seen him—regarded the adoption of this legislation as a deviation from the standpoints of Dr Verwoerd and Dr Malan to such a extent that if we were to accept this legislation we would thereby be saying in so many words that we were on the way to a unitary state, that we were on the way to a voters’ roll on which all population groups would be accommodated. The hon member should perhaps do his homework a little better with regard to these matters. If the hon member were to refer to Dr Malan as a person who would never have said or accepted that more than only the White population group should be placed on one population register, the hon member would be completely mistaken. This is exactly what Dr Malan did. I should like hon members to react to this. What did Dr Malan do? In 1950 Dr Malan compiled a population register for Whites, Coloureds and Blacks—one population register! Now hon members come along, however, and say we are deviating from a policy standpoint. If hon members want to argue these matters with us, would they please check their facts and not impute standpoints or statements to respected NP leaders of the past? In 1967 the Coloureds in the population register were further divided into various groups by proclamation, but it is equally true that the Black reference bureau was created in 1972, a reference bureau where information on the Black people was kept.

If by means of this Bill the situation were to revert to the status quo before 1972, and Black people were also included in the joint population register, it would be significant to me. I find it significant that all the citizens of this country should be included in one central population register in which their group connection,—this is important—is clearly mentioned too. If that principle is accepted—and this is the way we should read the Bill; I can refer to specific clauses here—I should ask hon members of the CP whether they do not agree with me that they have simply made a great deal of political noise today. [Interjections.] In respect of standpoints of principle they really have no valid complaint against this side of the House that holds water at all. I take pleasure in supporting this Bill.

Mr Chairman, firstly I want to ask the hon member for Fauresmith whether the hon members of the NP who are sitting there are satisfied with this Bill. [Interjections.] My feeling is that they are not all that happy at the fact that a person’s race will no longer have to appear on his identity document. The hon member for Fauresmith must now tell me whether they were completely and unreservedly in favour of that.

The basic objection which the CP has to this legislation is specifically that we are now obtaining a raceless document which is therefore a document without any identity. It is therefore going to become an integral part of the movement towards a unitary state. The hon member says that if, in any way, it posed a threat to the Group Areas Act, he would also be opposed to it. In that case he should come and join the CP right now, because the hon the Deputy Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning said, in one of the other Houses, that he was not going to use the Group Areas Act for the purposes of influx control. If one cannot determine, from the identity document, what a person’s colour is or to what group he belongs, how is the hon the Minister going to implement the Group Areas Act? That is the reason why there are members of that caucus who are unhappy about this legislation.

The hon member also referred to the 1977 proposals and mentioned Mr Marais as an authority in that connection. Let us look, for a moment, at how we all viewed the matter in 1977. In 1977 we accepted that there would be three Parliaments, but we also accepted that this White Parliament, as it then was—the hon member for Fauresmith agreed with us—would be a sovereign Parliament. All legislation would initially emanate from that White Parliament. The White Parliament would remain a sovereign Parliament. The only powers we would have relinquished would have been those that the White Parliament was prepared to relinquish to the other Parliaments. That was the gist of the 1977 proposals and that is the interpretation reflected in Bangmaakpraatjies and by the hon the Leader of the House opposite. We accepted it as such. It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, regarded as being power-sharing.

Hendrik said the Indians would sit in Durban.

Yes, he said the Indians would sit in Durban and the Coloureds would sit somewhere in the Western Cape, and he said that if the Blacks were ever brought into the system, he would cross over to our party. We are still waiting for him. Our doors are open.

Here I have Bangmaakpraatjies No 5. I quote:

This was drawn up by the hon the Minister of National Education.

Old Jannie, however, says it is not true!

Let me quote further:

Order! The hon member for Brakpan is a very experienced hon member of this House. He must now confine himself to the legislation before the House.

Mr Chairman, with all due respect, I want to point out that the hon member for Fauresmith said that we had accepted the 1977 proposals.

Order! Peripheral arguments cannot be expanded into one of the main topics of this legislation. If the hon member is linking up his arguments to the main argument in regard to the Bill in question, that is all very well. He cannot, however, base his speech on peripheral arguments. He may comment on those arguments, but then within limits. The hon member for Brakpan ought to know that, because he is a very experienced hon member of this House. I am therefore asking him to assist me and to relate his arguments to the content of the legislation.

Mr Chairman, I would very much like to assist you. I do want to ask you, however, also to consider our point of view as far as this is concerned. [Interjections.] Mr Chairman, I am now addressing you. I cannot do so, however, whilst the choir on the other side is singing. We ask you please to regard this matter from our point of view too. Our argument is that this legislation is part of the process that is eventually going to result in a unitary state in South Africa.

Order! If the hon member wants to relate his arguments to that aspect, he must do so. I cannot, however, guess what he intends to do. I should like the hon member to prove to me that he is relating his arguments to that aspect. For now the hon member may proceed.

With all due respect, Sir, that is what I said. I shall be relating my arguments to that aspect. As I said, the hon member for Fauresmith alleges that the 1977 proposals formed part of a process which we accepted and which would result in a unitary state, if our argument is correct.

I have, in any event, made my point in that connection …

Order! I accept what the hon member says. I asked him once to relate his arguments to the legislation. I am satisfied that I have put my request to him in the proper fashion. The hon member may proceed. He must remember, however, that I have already asked him once to relate his arguments to the relevant legislation.

Mr Chairman, I now want to turn to the hon member for Innesdal. I want to ask him whether someone is correct in saying: “As jy vandag nie ’n man aan sy bontpratery kan beoordeel nie, dan toets jy hom aan sy verlede, want dan kan jy nader kom aan wat daar werklik in die man se gemoed aangaan.” Does the hon member for Innesdal agree with this statement? Does he agree that when one is not certain where exactly someone stands, one should turn one’s attention to his past? [Interjections.] Does the hon member agree with that?

When you have the decency to greet me courteously when we meet outside this House, I shall be prepared to answer your questions.

Very well, Sir. The hon member is now referring to a private matter between the two of us. I just want to know whether he agrees with the statement that: “Wanneer ’n mens ’n man aan sy bontpratery nie kan oordeel nie, jy hom aan sy verlede toets omdat jy dan nader kan kom aan wat daar werklik in sy gemoed aangaan.” Does the hon member want to tell me whether he agrees with that statement? Yes or no? [Interjections.] Very well, he does not want to tell me whether he agrees with this or not. I just want to point out to him that this is a statement that he himself made. [Interjections.] It is a statement that the hon member for Innesdal made in the Transvaal Provincial Council on 21 February 1973. He went on to say, amongst other things:

Those are the words of the hon member for Innesdal, Sir.

Our Albert!

Let me quote him further, Sir.

At the time that was Mr Oberholzer:

[Interjections.] The hon member for Innesdal then went on to say:

Mr Chairman, may I put a question to the hon member?

I shall reply to that question in a moment. Let me first quote further:

Then he goes on to say:

This is now the hon member for Innesdal who says:

[Interjections.] The hon member for Innesdal also said at the time:

That is what the hon member for Innesdal said at the time. This morning, however, he says we are virtually sectarian. [Interjections.] What is more, it was in an insulting fashion that he made his comments about denominations which, supported his party, amongst others. [Interjections.] When he said we were sectarian, what he meant was that we were fanatical. [Interjections.] Thus he insulted certain denominations, some of whose members are members of this House.

That is totally untrue.

It is not untrue. He was so hysterical…

You know it is untrue.

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: Is it permitted for the hon member for Roodeplaat to say to the hon member for Brakpan: “It is untrue and you know it is untrue”?

Order! Did the hon member for Roodeplaat say that?

But, Mr Chairman, the hon member for Brakpan knows it is untrue. The hon member for Innesdal never said that.

Order! Did the hon member for Roodeplaat say the hon member for Brakpan said something that was untrue knowing that it was untrue? Did the hon member say that?

But, Mr Chairman …

Order! The hon member will please answer my question. Did he say that, yes or no?

Mr Chairman, I did say so, yes.

Order! Then the hon member must withdraw it.

Mr Chairman, you know yourself that it is untrue.

Order! Is the hon member withdrawing it or is he not withdrawing it?

No, Sir, I am not withdrawing it.

Order! Since the hon member has disregarded the authority of the Chair, he must withdraw from the Chamber for the remainder of the day’s sitting.

[Whereupon the hon member withdrew.]

He wants to go and watch rugby! [Interjections.]

Order! I do not think the rugby has started yet. [Interjections.]

Sir, I just hope that is not a bad omen for Northern Transvaal. [Interjections.]

I want to reiterate, Sir, that it is on record in the hon member for Innesdal’s Hansard that we are virtually sectarian in our condemnation of the policy. We, however, use the same language that he used in the provincial council. In the provincial council he went on to say:

Now Albert is doing it.

Now Albert is abolishing it.

The hon member went on to say:

[Interjections.] Enough said, I think, about the hon member.

Then he went to America.

Yes, then he went to America, and there he was brainwashed. That was the end of “our Albert”.

I now want to turn to the hon members of the PFP.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon member whether he is aware of the report in the Sunday Tribune of 22 March 1970 under the headline “Tom Langley—eers Liberaal”? In the article it is stated: “His previous connection with the interdenominational religious Moral Rearmament …” and what follows. Then it is said: “Furthermore, he is an aartsverligte.” [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, the hon member is referring to a document, but the hon member for Soutpansberg will, in due course, be taking part in this debate and he can then reply to that. [Interjections.]

The hon members of the PFP reject this legislation on the grounds of the concept of “freedom of association”.

Which legislation?

They support the legislation, but reject the separate register

Yes.

… on the grounds of the fact that the PFP advocates a policy of free association. On 16 February 1979 we conducted a debate on this issue. There was a motion by Dr Van Zyl Slabbert to repeal section 5 of the Population Registration Act. The arguments put forward at the time for section 5 to be retained are just as valid today as they were then. Freedom of association means freedom for the infiltrator, with a person or group against whom the infiltration is being perpetrated having no say. That is the first point I want to make. I also want to give a further reply to the hon member for Fauresmith, because that goes hand in hand with this. The purpose of the Population Registration Act is, firstly, to enable the various population groups to achieve, preserve and maintain their own group identity. Does the hon member for Fauresmith agree with that? The purpose is, secondly— and now I quote from Hansard (House of Assembly, Vol 79, Col 886):

Does the hon member for Fauresmith agree? I quote further:

Does the hon member agree? Now he is getting a bit quieter. Now comes another question, because what I am quoting is the standpoint adopted by Mr Alwyn Schlebusch, as NP representative. I quote further:

This is one of the important aims of the Population Registration Act. Fifthly the aim is to get away from the domination of one group by another.

He heard it was Schlebusch and now he is again nodding his head.

In the sixth place it helps to create peace and orderlines in the country. Those were the six grounds on which the erstwhile NP defended the population register, as it then was. That was a brief seven years ago. The hon member for Fauresmith still stands by that. Now, however, he is prepared to remove, from that identity document, its most important aspects, ie the question of the group to which a person belongs. He thinks he can then still succeed in carrying out the classification process successfully. [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, may I put a question to the hon member?

No, Sir, I do not have any time to answer any further questions. [Interjections.]

The situation in Africa specifically ties up with ethnic and tribal differences. The specific problem in Africa is that the boundaries that were drawn up were not properly drawn up in accordance with ethnic and tribal differences. The OAU, in its wisdom, has decided not to discuss those boundaries for some time. This has, however, consistently been a source of problems in Africa. The whole question of ethnicity sometimes comes to the fore more strongly, and sometimes less strongly, in debates throughout the world. It even happens in Britain and the USA.

We all remember the Allan Bakke incident. Minister Schlebusch refers to it in Hansard, 16 February 1979, col 889. Just to refresh the memories of hon members of the House, let me quote:

Ethnicity is part of a deeply divided, plural community, and one cannot do away with that concept. It is even applicable in Russia.

This ethnic aspect is now disappearing in the Bill as far as identity documents are concerned, and we know that there are certain sensible hon members in the NP caucus who are not happy about this. It is the Achilles heel of the Bill.

I want to conclude by referring again to the security situation. Before I come to that, however, there is something I want to ask the hon the Minister. Supposing there is someone who is so proud of the group he belongs to that he asks that it be recorded in his identity document that he is a White, a Zulu, a Swazi or a Xhosa. Is the hon the Minister going to allow that to be recorded in his identity document? The hon the Minister does not need to answer me now; he can do so when he replies to the debate. Would the hon the Minister allow an item to be inserted in someone’s identity document indicating that he is a White, if such a person wished to have this done? [Interjections.]

Now I come to the security aspect. Firstly, no one is being asked to show his identity document any longer, and that was done away with even before there was any legislation to take its place.

We know what is happening in the Eastern Transvaal at the moment. People are coming in from Swaziland, Botswana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe and we have no right to ask such people for any passbooks or documents.

They are foreigners!

Let me ask the vociferous hon member Dr Vilonel whether he can, for my benefit, distinguish between a Shangaan from Mozambique and a Shangaan from Gazankulu?

[Inaudible.]

Could the hon member tell them apart? Is there any hon member who could do so? Could the hon the Minister of Transport Affairs, who is a farmer, distinguish between a Shangaan from Mozambique and a Shangaan from Gazankulu? [Interjections.] And could he distinguish between the Swazi of Swaziland and the Swazi of KaNgwane?

[Inaudible.]

One cannot ask him for his identity document! [Interjections.] At this critical stage in the history of the Republic of South Africa we have continual outbreaks of terrorism. We also know that the success achieved in follow-up operations against terrorists is not very great. The terrorists involved in the Kempton Park incident have not yet been traced. The people responsible for the events at the shopping complex in Amanzimtoti in December have not yet been brought to book.

The man responsible has been sentenced to death!

There are numerous other cases of terrorism in which the accused have not yet been brought to book. We used that document at least to try to ascertain the reason for a person’s presence in a certain area. If a person enters at the border posts, he must have a visa or other proof of identity, but the way in which they infiltrate across the borders under present-day conditions, there is no control whatsoever over the situation. The Government, however, closes its eyes to this fundamental, dangerous aspect of their laissez-faire policy.

Neatly done, Frank!

I furnished relevant figures the other day. Stone-throwing incidents increased from 589 in January 1986 to 1 015 in April 1986. The corresponding figures in regard to arson during that period were 253 and 377. Thus the totals for such crimes increased from 1 103 in January to 6 508 in April.

Then we come up against the absolutely alarming phenomenon that law-abiding Black citizens are afraid to go to the police to report crimes. One can also mention cases, such as that in Sunnyside in Pretoria, where the crime rate increased by 30% the moment the pass laws were abolished. It is going to lead to chaos! That is why we have a state of emergency today.

We do not have a fence such as that at Bryntirion, surrounding us.

Those are the problems we are experiencing, but in its haste to establish a unitary state in South Africa, the Government does not mind.

Before I conclude, I just want to refer again to the accusations repeatedly hurled at the hon member for Kuruman in connection with his chairmanship of the select committee on environment affairs, a committee on which the hon member for Fauresmith and I had the privilege of serving. What committee was that? It was for the establishment of an advisory board on the environment with the sole intention of advising the Government.

[Inaudible.]

A White Parliament!

The advice was given to a sovereign White Parliament. [Interjections.] There was absolutely no legislative authority, powers or any substance to that body. How can the hon member regard it as an exercise in power-sharing? It is only someone who does not vote at the most critical time in the survival of a people who can put forward such an argument. [Interjections.] We reject the Bill.

Mr Chairman, I have listened attentatively to the hon member for Brakpan. I have quite a few questions in my mind on what the hon member was trying to achieve here this afternoon with his argument.

The CP’s main argument against the new identity document is that ethnicity has been taken out of it and as a result of that everything will collapse. I want to ask the hon member for Brakpan to what he ascribes the fact that his party is so greatly alarmed in regard to this.

When I read the definition of identification and everything that it entails means as far as I am concerned, identifying, recognising, acknowledging and all the other concepts in connection with this. The figures which indicate the specific race, but are now being left out, according to the hon member removes ethnicity entirely and does not only detrimentally effect the system in the country, but also has a detrimental effect on the security as well as every other aspect of society in South Africa. That is the argument of the hon member. Now, I firstly want to ask him where specifically there is such a negative effect.

If the hon member, or the hon member for Kuruman had to turn up at the polling booth, certain of those members have already by implication conceded that identification can take place by means of that identity document, linked to a voters’ roll. In that regard the hon members should therefore not have a problem.

Let us examine the whole gamut of life, from top to bottom. If the hon member for Brakpan or Kuruman, as a father, had to turn up at the Registrar of Births with his identity document, in what respect would there be a problem then? I want to say with respect that every office of the department is linked to other offices by means of a computer or something similar, and can immediately gather all the information they have needed up to now. The appearance of the hon member or members or of whoever goes there, can in no way affect the matter.

The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and section 16 of the Immorality Act and all those things have been abolished. I cannot see what the problem of those hon members could be if they want to have a marriage confirmed. If one of the hon members were to die one really wonders, unless one belongs to a specific selective race in the world, whether one’s burial place or the fact that one dies could really have such consequences as far as this document is concerned.

If one goes to register property, the existing legislation applying in South Africa is so clear that I cannot see how the hon members could have specific problems.

Oh, no man.

I really do not know what the hon member’s problem is.

Mr Chairman, may I put a question to the hon member?

No, Sir, I am not interested in questions at this stage.

Then he should not speak nonsense either.

I want to go further and tell the hon member that I shall listen with great respect to what the hon member for Barberton has to say about the Bill. I have considerable respect for this legal expert and for his opinion on this. Even if we had to come up with specific amendments, I do not think the Government would lightly encroach upon vested interests as far as the issue of registration of property is concerned. If one reads the Strijdom Report and looks at the recommendations in connection with this, I really do not know why the hon members are so terribly concerned.

There is something I want to tell hon members with conviction this afternoon. I refer amongst others to the hon member for Kuruman, who, it would appear to me, sees the only guarantee for Whites on the road ahead in the linking of this people with a particular homeland or fatherland.

Up until last year you yourself said this!

I respectfully want to tell the hon member for Kuruman that it is not the only solution to the problems of South Africa.

When did you discover this?

I discovered it a long time ago!

Why are you saying this now only?

I want to tell the hon member that if he had to take the trouble to read the speeches I have made in the past, he will see that I said that the homelands idea is a part of the solution.

Mr Chairman, may I put a question to the hon member?

I do not have the time now to reply to questions. I shall allow questions from the hon member at the end of my speech, if there is time for it.

I say with respect, also to these hon members, that someone’s group ties and ethnicity does not depend on an identity document. It goes much deeper. It is to be found in the pride, the ethnic identity of a particular community.

Why do we have group areas then?

Let me say with the greatest of respect that no problems or doubts exist on this side of the House about what position the Indians and Coloured communities, or whatever community in South Africa, want to occupy. We are not dealing with exceptions. We are following the universal order of things. [Interjections.]

With respect to the hon member for Brakpan I want to point out that security has nothing to do with this identity document.

My good heavens! But it has a moratorium on it, man!

If the hon member Mr Theunissen gave any attention at all to the information which has already been given to hon members of this House on what is being envisaged by the HSRC and in particular by the studies carried out by people like Adv Theunis Botha, he would know that the minute one gives one’s identity number, in which there is no mention of race, to an official in South Africa who has access to the data bank, the official can within three minutes on the basis of what the person carries around with him, determine not only to which race one belongs, but also what colour one’s car should be, as well as how many accidents one has had, how many parking tickets one has not yet paid and everything accompanying it, and how many wives and children one has.

And if he does not have his ID book with him?

The hon member asks what would happen if he does not have his identity book with him. In that particular setup the identity document would not have a role to play, would it! Now what is his argument? [Interjections.] As far as the security aspect is concerned, I want to ask hon members if they really expect a terrorist who is involved in terrorism, to carry his identity document with him and to tout it around?

Go and ask the Police in Pretoria!

Let me say the hon member is naive if he wants to state things in that way. Members of the public who commit the common or garden crimes from day to day, do in fact carry an identity document. The particulars of the member of the public who does in fact have his identity document with him, regardless of the code which is not entered in it, can in fact be established by the police officer, traffic officer, or officer of the peace who has access to terminals of the data bank. Those officials can establish what the facts are within seconds.

It is shameful the way I am allowing the hon members to distract me. I am now really speaking about things which I did not want to discuss at this stage at all.

You are completely ignorant!

I am pleased to note what the hon member Mr Theunissen says about my absolute ignorance. I want to tell the hon member I have very great respect for his knowledge, his wisdom and besides that also for his exceptional behaviour as a gentleman under all circumstances. That is why I shall not even try to attack him in that regard by giving him an answer. [Interjections.]

Blush, oom Louis!

This particular document, I say without any shame, has nothing to do with the control or government of a country, and has nothing to do with ethnicity, but is one of the provisions in this country which the Government is unashamedly prepared to admit has specific discriminatory connotation for members of other races in South Africa who are not Whites. We should not beat about the bush in telling each other these things, and we are not ashamed to tell hon members this. If it hurts fellow citizens of South Africa, and if specific components in a particular setup which virtually has no purpose excepting to hurt—which really only has a few other minor aims—can be taken away to advance South Africa, we do so gladly.

I should also like to say that as far as the 1977 proposals are concerned, we have already moved away from the issue of identification and the particular identity of the White group was moved away from and that one leader after another in South Africa said that that which was discriminatory in South Africa, which hurt other races, and which served no other purpose, would be removed from the legislation. This legislation has resulted in this amongst other things.

I should like to refer to what is on our Statute Books at the moment. I am referring to things such as the National Council and I should like to ask the hon members and other members in our country if they do not want to consider participating in measures in connection with this. As far as the mandate is concerned, it is only the NP that can ask these particular questions. At the parliamentary level there is no other party which has the mandate to put this particular question either to the public at large or to any other group. I should like to support this legislation, because I have no doubt that it is a step in the right direction.

Mr Chairman, may I put a question to the hon member? I want to ask the hon member: When we held the election in 1981, did he really intellectually and emotionally support number three of our 12-point plan?

I do not have the 12-point plan before me, and I have never learnt to say I know about something when I do not know about it. Could the hon member perhaps tell me what point number 3 is?

It concerns the NP’s views on the constitutional future of the Black peoples. [Interjections.]

I unfortunately do not have that point 3 very clearly in my mind. I do not know what is meant by it, and I therefore cannot reply to the hon member. [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, the hon member for Reigerpark in the House of Representatives, Mr Jakobus Rabie, said inter alia the following on 5 February 1986 whilst speaking about the bargaining position of the House of Representatives in the tricameral parliamentary system (Hansard: Representatives, 5 February 1986, col 221):

He continues in the next column. [Interjections.] Oh, Mr Chairman, we have been sitting here for two days now, and there is a cricket in this House. I do not know whether you have also noticed it, Sir! It is someone who was in the Krugersdorp area in the early days. The hon member Dr Vilonel keeps on chirping like a cricket, without making any sense! [Interjections.]

No wonder Leon ousted him! [Interjections.]

Yes, it is no wonder! Mr Rabie continued as follows (col 222):

He went on in that vein and named as examples trains, beaches and residential areas which had to be separate. People could not live where they wanted to. He went on to say:

He mentioned the influx control measures and race classification. He then went on to say:

He continued:

I quote further:

A little further on in his speech he said the following:

[Interjections.] Did the hon member for Rustenburg wish to ask me a question?

Yes, Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon member for Soutpansberg, instead of reading to us what Mr Rabie has said, rather to tell us what the leader of the AWB, who is now their leader as well, has to say in this regard? [Interjections.]

Sir, if that hon member, who surely has some form of university training behind him, is going to come forward with such an infantile question, then he must be prepared to endure the contempt he deserves! [Interjections.]

This Bill represents a triumph for Mr Jakobus Rabie and his political methods! [Interjections.] It is a triumph which indicates the resourcefulness which the two new Houses have displayed in finding a method of exploiting and wrecking this tricameral system. They have the NP Government on the run, and they are going to keep them on the run! [Interjections.] This Bill is a glowing example of the capitulation of the NP, and of what can happen to consensus politics when it takes place in the jellyfish-milieu in which the NP finds itself at the moment! My question to the hon the Minister is whether it is true that his department has already prepared pamphlets in anticipation of the new legislation, in which a race code would still be inserted. I want to suggest that he may simply answer me by way of interjection in the course of my speech. [Interjections.] If it is true, I should like to know what the cost of those pamphlets amounted to. [Interjections.] Were such pamphlets prepared? If the hon the Minister says that not a cent was wasted, I may accept that such pamphlets were prepared. I therefore want to accept that it was the Cabinet’s intention that this legislation should be accepted in its original form, without clause 5.

There are no intrigues.

Very well, there are no intrigues, thank you. I want to refer to the chairman of the standing committee. Preparations were made, or room was left for the retention of that code which would be indicative of the race of the bearer of such an identity document. Even if, in terms of the promise made by the State President, they were to receive the same identity document …

Did the hon member’s colleague in the standing committee not brief him fully on this matter?

This is a debate. The hon member may talk about whatever he wishes!

We know the hon member for Innesdal has tremendous frustrations. We know his personal frustrations and we know that the only way he can sometimes rid himself of them, is by way of tirades like the one we witnessed today, yet we shall say nothing further about his personal frustrations. [Interjections.] Was his pitiful, pathetic performance, his outburst today, a consequence of the fact that he had to leave his Cabinet in the lurch owing to the workings and the decision of the standing committee, or was he, against the will of his Cabinet, hand in glove with the Coloured and Indian representatives in the standing committee? [Interjections.] He therefore capitulated on behalf of the Cabinet.

You are the poorest speaker in the CP.

The hon member for Innesdal’s frustration lies in the realisation…

Mr Chairman, may I ask you to establish whether there is a quorum present in the House?

Order! My attention has been drawn to the fact that there is in fact a quorum present in the House.

The hon member for Innesdal got a lot off his chest in his tirade against the CP. All I want to tell him in this regard, however, and I shall also let this suffice, is that… [Interjections.]

Order! It is very difficult for the hon member for Soutpansberg to formulate his argument while hon members are making interjections which make no contribution to this debate.

Mr Chairman, the hon members of the NP have a problem— that is true of the hon member for Innesdal as well. They know that their party no longer has any credibility, any respect or any esteem among any of the population groups in South Africa! [Interjections.] That comes from the members of the House of Representatives and the House of Delegates. We sometimes sit here next to them in the joint sittings, and then we hear with how much contempt they speak of the NP. [Interjections.]

They were probably talking about you.

There is contempt from members of the public, from foreigners—from every quarter there is contempt for the National Party! [Interjections.] On the other hand, those people tell us that they differ with us, but that they have respect for us because the Conservative Party is one which acts honestly and forthrightly and which says exactly where it is going and where it stands. [Interjections.] In reply to the nasty insinuations made by some of those hon members in respect of this party’s attitude to other population groups, I want to say that I respect every person for what he is. I respect the Coloureds, the Blacks, the Indians, the Englishmen and the Jews for what they are. What is more, I have friends among all those people I have just mentioned, with whom I communicate with the greatest of ease.

I also have strange friends!

The Afrikaner has a special place in South Africa. That is not what I say. It is what the non-Afrikaners say. The question on the lips of those people in South Africa who are not Afrikaners, is: What is the Afrikaner going to do? Many of the immigrants—Greek or German immigrants, or immigrants from whatever country—immigrated here because they based their expectations of the future on the confidence they placed in the Afrikaner, on an Afrikaner-dominated political situation. The Crockers of the United States are also interested in what the Afrikaner is going to do. [Interjections.]

Order! I do not quite follow how the hon member for Soutpansberg relates that to this legislation. Will the hon member please deal more specifically with the legislation.

I relate it to the legislation in the sense that I am talking about the Afrikaner as the person who dominates the general political situation. In this debate, which you permitted to proceed while the hon member for Innesdal was speaking, reference was made with great acerbity to the kind of Afrikanerdom which the CP supposedly represents. Buthelezi also talks about the Afrikaners when, on certain occasions, he …

Order! I do not want to interrupt the hon member unnecessarily. However, he will have to remind himself of my remarks to the hon member for Brakpan. We cannot elevate peripheral arguments to the status of central arguments in respect of the Bill. The hon member has now been speaking for some time. I shall still give him a further opportunity, but the hon member must relate his arguments more specifically to the Bill.

In my lifetime I have come across many people of many nations in the world, and I am now replying to a question which the hon member for Krugersdorp put to a colleague of mine who has just spoken. He came forward here with every conceivable senseless, acrimonious question. He referred to the ties I supposedly had with the moral rearmament movement. My whole life long I have been regarded as an Afrikaner. That was no problem. People knew me and accepted me as an Afrikaner who never concealed his Afrikanerdom, who was never apologetic about it, and who never kowtowed. No American or anyone else has ever pulled the rug from under my feet. [Interjections.] I should now like to say something to the hon member for Krugersdorp. Sir, I think you will grant me this little bit of politics, because it is politics in a political Second Reading debate. He asked me the other day whether I was aware of the good meetings which he, the hon member for Turffontein and the hon the Deputy Minister of Defence had held in my constituency. I have heard about his meetings. According to him they were very large meetings, but I just want to tell him that in my constituency, meetings of my electoral councils are usually larger than the public meeting they held. He subsequently held a meeting at Alldays.

Order! The hon member will understand that there are many hon members here who are gazing at me questioningly because he is once again wandering very far from the subject.

Sir, I just want to say something about the confidence which those people have in the NP. That meeting, which he did not advertise as an NP meeting …

Order! The hon member will now cease that line of argument.

I just want to tell the hon member that as far as my identity as a White person is concerned, I would not be ashamed if it were to appear on my identity document in terms of this Bill. I do not think there has ever been any question in the debate in South Africa of the Afrikaners, English speaking people, Jews—the various subgroups of the Whites—wanting to have themselves further identified in a population register in South Africa. If that were the case, however, I do not think that any of them would object to their subidentity as Whites being indicated. [Interjections.] I am not running away from my White identity, I am not running away from my Afrikaner identity, nor am I running away from my Christian-Protestant identity.

The Afrikaners were never imperialists and they were never enslavers. However, Afrikaners in the mould of Hertzog, Malan, Strijdom, Verwoerd and Vorster did set a certain ideal for their people and strove to attain it. A part of that ideal had to be realised by means of an Act such as the original Population Registration Act.

There is a great deal of respect and appreciation for the Afrikaner’s identity. When he received my hon leader recently, his Majesty King Zwelithini Goodwill Zulu said the following:

That is the Zulus—

I refer to this inasmuch as the Afrikaner identity is under discussion in this debate.

This is also the sense in which Dr Verwoerd revealed and defined the policy of the NP when he said the following on 5 December 1950 in Pretoria—it appears in an English publication of the NP and I assume it was probably also stated in English:

What does that have to do with the Bill?

Sir, I believe hon members on that side of the House ought to allow you to decide when an hon member should be called to order. I do not believe it is up to them to continually interfere with the work of the Chairman in this way, or to continuously make interjections pertaining to the order and maintenance thereof in this House. [Interjections.] I quote further:

“As far as possible”, he said.

My colleagues and I have never been ashamed to state our view with regard to the ordering of peoples in South Africa. Moreover, we do this with the aim of giving effect to sovereign self-determination of the numerically weaker Whites in South Africa. This Bill, and most of the measures which are now being bulldozed through by the NP, represent legislation which is intent on the destruction of the basis of those ideals. Every legal measure which the Government is now repealing in accordance with Mr Jakobus Rabie’s instructions, is tantamount to the dismantling of the fine dispensation which was brought into being by the NP under its great leaders.

The NP is creating racial chaos in this country. Possibly they are deluding themselves into thinking that the greater the chaos, the better their chance of survival as governing party. I believe that is what they have deluded themselves into thinking, because then it will also be easier for them to usurp power—in the typical manner in which it is done in the South American countries.

The hon member for Innesdal expressed a good many portents in relation to what would happen if the CP were to come to power. I want to put it to him that someone who has just returned from overseas—someone who, I believe, is a very good observer—told me that the spirit and attitude towards South Africa abroad at the moment, is such that foreign countries would give just about any other government a fair chance to rule in South Africa, just as long as they can get rid of the NP Government.

Hear, hear!

Does this have anything to do with the Bill?

That is what is happening because you are repealing this sort of Act! [Interjections.]

What is the aim of this legislation, now that clause 5 has been inserted by the standing committee? What purpose does it serve, other than that it allows the NP to retain a semblance of self respect? When details of a person’s race are no longer indicated, surely there is no sense in having legislation of this nature in South Africa? What is the use of it? For example, it can no longer serve as the basis for the compilation of the voters roll. Nor can it serve as the basis on which a voters roll may be drawn up for any of the three Houses of Parliament—and not for a possible fourth House in future. The identity documents arising out of this, may no longer be used for voting purposes in referendums, because that number is not a guarantee that the bearer does in fact belong to the population group for which that referendum is being held, or in respect of which that specific poll is being held.

Is there another advantage to it, as population register? I foresee inconceivable chaos in respect of the population register. Originally it was announced that the register would shortly be compiled and that the Whites would all be in possession of new identity documents within a short period of time. That has now been moved forward 18 months. I foresee, Sir, that before the five-year period has expired within which everyone’s thumbprints must be taken, yet another amendment will be made to the Act.

Yes, but by that time we shall already be in power.

Oh yes, then we shall be in power, as the hon member for Jeppe says.

Apart from all the wasted costs occasioned by it, we must also take into account the fact that all the South African Blacks are now to be included. All the Southern African Blacks who are living in South Africa, or who are living in one of the Black states but who are not citizens of those states, now qualify for this document. I therefore ask the hon the Minister whether the citizenship issue has been completely sorted out between South Africa and the TBVC-countries.

That relates to the next Bill, the Restoration of South African Citizenship Bill.

I ask that question in respect of this Bill, however, because clause 4(a) contains a provision in respect of “all persons who are lawfully permanently resident in the Republic”. Furthermore, clause 4(c) contains a provision in respect of—

I have just been telling the hon member that it related to the next Bill.

Why, then, do you not introduce the other Bill first?

Yes, then we must deal with the other Bill first.

They are always putting the cart before the horse. [Interjections.]

I now want to ask the hon the Minister who is going to decide whether a particular applicant complies with the provisions of clauses 4(a) and 4(c). Will the TBVC-countries do it, will the applicant himself do it, or will the RSA do it? My colleague the hon member for Brakpan also referred to this. What about the immigrants from Mozambique who come to South Africa via Gazankulu? Furthermore, what about the 2 million workers from other African countries who have been working in South Africa for who knows how long, and who may now quite simply come forward and apply for a South African identity document?

Once again, I say that I foresee that this population register will never be complete. If this register is not nearly complete—if, for example, it is even 80% to 90% complete— then its compilation represents a futile exercise and a waste of money. In that case, they might as well have left the register as it was. The reason why they are compiling it, however, is to save face after having bowed to pressure from the other two Houses and having included clause 5, thereby destroying separate identities. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, I always feel slightly uncomfortable when individuals of parties start vying with one another about how much respect they have for the Blacks, the Whites, the Afrikaners, the Jews or the Coloureds.

Or the Germans.

Yes, or the Germans.

The hon member for Soutpansberg also tried to make an impression today by telling us how much respect he had for the Blacks, the Coloureds and the Whites. One feels uncomfortable about it, because you know that the majority of the White voters, irrespective of which party they belong to, have racial prejudices.

Are you including your own party?

I am including all parties. The majority of Whites, irrespective of which party they belong to, inside or outside Parliament, have racial prejudices. [Interjections.]

Politically speaking it is important to note how the various political parties deal with these racial prejudices and what they want to do about them. Here one can see the enormous differences between the various parties in the House of Assembly. The HNP and the CP …

And the AWB.

… and the AWB try to imply that they are opposed to racial discrimination. When one examines their policy, however, and listens to their speeches, it becomes clear that they intend to apply racial discrimination on every possible level—socially, economically and politically.

Now and again the NP professes not to be in favour of racial discrimination. They speak of eliminating points of friction and soon, but when one listens to their speeches and examines their policy, one sees very clearly that they are prepared to abolish racial discrimination on social and economic grounds. They are doing that and we support them. In the political sphere, where this may affect their position of power, they are, however, prepared to retain racial discrimination in their laws. They are going to retain it; their language may sound very verlig, but they are going to make racial discrimination an integral part of their basic position of power.

That is why it is a conflict model. [Interjections.]

I would say that although hon members of this party also have racial prejudices, it is our policy to eliminate and abolish racial discrimination on every possible level. That holds true for the political, constitutional, economic and social spheres.

It is interesting to see how the various parties camouflage their racial prejudices. The CP uses expressions such as “self-determination” and “respect for others”. Their policy and that of the HNP are nothing less than a very crude form of racial discrimination. The NP’s policy is probably not as crude; one could probably call it slightly more refined. However, it is even more dangerous than that of the CP.

†When one looks at the history which preceded the abolition of the dompas and the introduction of a uniform identity document, one asks oneself: “How did this come about?” I have no doubt that the reason for that is not really a sudden purification within the NP or a sudden moral dilemma about the reference book and the identity document. The change came about because of pressure which was applied on the Government from within its own society but even more so from outside Parliament. There was pressure from the churches; there was intense pressure from extraparliamentary groups—whether it was the trade union movement, Cosatu, the UDF or the business sector. From those sources pressure was brought to bear on the Government to effect the changes which we have been dealing with during this week and today. The reason why those pressures were taken into account and the reason why they resulted in positive change was because communication existed between the churches and the Government, and between business and the Government. There was communication through the Press between trade union movements and the Government and between other extraparliamentary groups and the Government. Why is the Government prepared to heed and to take account of pressure from those people who are not represented in this Parliament? I believe it is because it has shown a greater degree of realism than in the past towards its responsibility towards people not represented here. It has realised that the aspirations and grievances need to be taken seriously and on the basis of those aspirations and grievances which it could identify, the Government took decisions to move.

One can take the trade unions for example. We know that Cosatu and others threatened to start mass dompas burnings in April this year unless the Government moved to abolish the dompas. I am not suggesting that is the only reason why the Government moved away from the dompas and introduced Bills like this but it was most certainly a form of pressure. One could release that pressure by responding to it.

Trade unions do have a powerful lobbying effect on the Government and the business sector because they have an accountable leadership. It is an elected leadership that is accountable to its members. We all know that virtually every union has as its slogan “An injury to one is an injury to all.” We know that the question of accountable leadership is therefore important to trade unions.

What will happen if it becomes impossible to communicate with trade unions, extra-parliamentary groups and other groups in order to try to find out where the grievances and the pressures lie? What will happen if we are not able to do that? We would be operating in a cocoon in Parliament and the Government would be operating in a vacuum as well. That is what we are doing in South Africa at the moment. Parliament is operating in a cocoon at the moment and the Government is operating in a vacuum.

Once again a regulation has been introduced preventing comment by office-holders of numerous organisations including Cosatu, the UDF and many others—specifically in the Western Cape—from commenting in the Press at all. It may not be published.

This has the result of creating a false sense of relative stability among the Whites specifically. It has the result of bluffing us that things are improving whilst in reality the pressure is building up. Whom are we bluffing by cutting out all public communication links in the belief that that will in any way calm down the population? It will lead to further rumours and this is what is happening.

If the labour relations area suffers grievously as a result of these actions we must not be surprised.

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: What has this got to do with the Bill under discussion?

Order! The question of the rejection of certain documents does not relate directly to the Bill.

Mr Chairman, may I then come back to the question of security.

*The hon member for Brakpan discussed the security aspect. He spoke of the chaos that would follow on the abolition of influx control, as has happened now.

†I want to talk about the security aspect because if one is worried about chaos in the security area as a result of the removal of identity documents, then we have no idea of what chaos could result if we bluff ourselves as to what is happening outside Parliament. We have no idea of the industrial chaos that will result if trade union leaders continue to be arrested and if no communication is possible between business leaders and the trade union leaders. Second-grade union leaders are now expected to communicate with management on behalf of the unions and that leads to chaos. [Interjections.]

Order!

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: Once again, what has this to do with the Bill under discussion?

Mr Chairman, may I address you on this? It was made quite clear in the debate earlier today—I believe you were not in the Chair then—that a major portion of the discussions before the standing committee was based on the security needs for identity documents.

And evidence!

Evidence was led and the standing committee debated specifically the security issue as coupled to identity documents for days on end.

Mr Chairman, I should like to address you on the same point. Evidence was led before the standing committee on various aspects of security and safety.

It is absolutely relevant!

The hon Minister would not know.

Order! I understand that a previous ruling was given to the effect that these issues may be referred to peripherally but should not become the major part of the debate. The hon member may continue.

The reason why I believe that trade unions specifically are highly relevant to this debate is that they have played a major role in focusing the spotlight on the irritations of the dompas and the reference book. They were in the forefront of threats to initiate mass burnings of the dompas, and on that basis it is highly relevant to take into account how this will affect labour unions and their attitudes.

If the Government, and particularly the hon the Minister of Law and Order and others who are responsible for security, do not show a greater sensitivity in the area of labour relations, any short-term impression of a decrease in violence in the townships will be nullified by the certain long-term bedevilment of labour relations, and that we cannot afford.

That would sabotage the economy.

Any other reforms, like this Bill which we support, which the Government introduces will not help achieve stability in the country at all if chaos results in the area of labour relations as a consequence of labour leaders being detained and not charged.

That has nothing to do with the Bill.

If the security situation … [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: I again rise to ask respectfully whether these observations by the hon member have anything to do with the Bill? [Interjections.]

Take your medicine like a man!

Take your medicine and go back to sleep!

Order! I am watching the situation and I shall take action should the need arise. The hon member may continue. [Interjections.]

I am not talking without any factual background. A Cosatu official, Mr Gerry Mtombela, has been detained under the emergency regulations. [Interjections.] A Mawu official, Mr Peter Dantjie has been detained in Brits under the same regulations.

Order!

A National Union of Textile Workers official, Mr Musa Khaeowa has also been detained.

Order! The hon member is going beyond the scope of this debate. What he is discussing now has no relevance to the identification document. I have just indicated that the periphery should not become the main point of the debate, and I appeal to the hon member to confine his comments to the content of the Bill under discussion. The hon member may proceed.

I would then like to deal with another aspect of the security situation and refer specifically to the hon member for Sasolburg.

*A week or two ago we became involved in a political struggle with the HNP and the right-wingers for what was probably the first time.

And with the CP!

I like the hon member very much, but he made a few dangerous statements today. In future we are going to meet that hon member’s party on the political battlefield more often, because the NP is starting to sit on the fence. [Interjections.]

We fought them in Port Elizabeth. The HNP and the CP, as well as the PFP adopted very clear standpoints. We told them where we stood. I do not know if the NP was too ashamed or too weak, but they did not adopt a standpoint. [Interjections.]

Excellent! Hear, hear! [Interjections.]

Order!

The hon member for Newton Park was the only one who had the courage of his convictions to put his standpoint, and I am glad he did.

What the hon member for Sasolburg said that was dangerous and a threat and could well cause chaos, was that the influx control policy would be reintroduced in future and, even worse, that race classification would be strictly reapplied.

Yes, very strictly. [Interjections.]

I know that that party will never come to power.

The CP will come to power.

The CP will never come to power. [Interjections.] It is impossible. It can never happen.

What happened in Port Elizabeth?

Those parties, the CP and the HNP combined, represent 3% of the total South African population. [Interjections.] It is impossible for them to come to power.

How do you come by your figures? [Interjections.]

So I am not concerned about the possibility that that policy could be put into practice, but the hon member’s attitude and his threats that he wants to reintroduce strict race classification, will lead to nothing less than bloodshed. It will be impossible to carry it out. The hon member can make a big fuss now, but we are not impressed by that kind of threat. [Interjections.] Something like that could never be done again. We have moved too far ahead.

Who are “we”?

“We” are all the South Africans. [Interjections.] As the hon member for Greytown said the other day, the political battle against apartheid has already been won by the majority of South Africans. [Interjections.]

The NP accept it more or less, but they are still trying to hold on to their position of power.

You are not even winning on the beaches.

Those dangerous attitudes of the HNP and the CP can create even more chaos …

We will fight you on the beaches.

… than any abolition of influx control and the implementation of such measures as these. [Interjections.]

The hon member for Roodepoort correctly pointed out that the uniform identity document would have no effect on the registration of properties. He correctly pointed out that voters’ rolls would still be separate because they were actually compiled in accordance with the Act that specified that race and ethnicity had be specified.

I do not know why the CP was so angry today because I cannot even see how this identity document can make any difference to power-sharing, for example.

You do not know the Nats as well as we do.

The NP is determined to retain race classification. [Interjections.] They are going to retain it, because they want to retain power in their own hands as a small minority group in the country. That is what they are going to do. They are going to make speeches on reform and the hon Minister for Foreign Affairs will be seen on television overseas. It is going to sound very nice, but they are going to retain the Population Registration Act because they want to remain in power, and it does not matter if it causes bloodshed or requires a state of emergency. That is what they are going to do. [Interjections.] That is why I do not know why the CP became so excited. The NP is going to protect them. [Interjections.]

We are supporting this Bill because it removes the ethnic aspect from the document which one has to carry around in one’s pocket every day. [Interjections.] If one is stopped in the street and asked to produce the document, one is doing it as an individual, as a South African. One’s name and identity number appear in it and it does not matter to which race group one belongs. [Interjections.] That is something which we support, and it is something which applies in every country I know of in which identity documents are required.

This Bill is not going to make a great impression on the citizens of the country upon whom it is applicable. It is not going to lead to less tension in our community. Why not? The Government is trying to carry out reform actions with the one hand, but with the other hand they are wielding a big heavy iron bar with which they are crushing and destroying debate, communication and free association among extraparliamentary groups. This state of emergency is going to nullify and overshadow the positive effects of any reform actions on which we are now working. [Interjections.]

We support this Bill.

Mr Chairman, it is tragic to think that while we are dealing with such an important Bill here, which is applicable to the future of White South Africa and its identity document, there were only 16 hon members a moment ago in the 85 seats in front of me here. Another two hon members have just come in. That is the extent of the interest displayed by the NP in White South Africa. [Interjections.] They take no interest whatsoever in the Whites of South Africa. [Interjections.]

Order! I am not going to allow any further interjections until the hon member for Sunnyside has finished speaking.

This is an absolutely important Bill which is now before this House. It deals with an Act for which our predecessors in this House of Assembly fought through the night for weeks and months in order to have it placed on the Statute Book. How much interest is there, however? We see it. The hon the Minister provided us with a copy of his Second Reading Speech, and perhaps the lack of interest is attributable to that. In this speech he said inter alia the following:

It is going to become a neutral thing.

They are a neutral party.

They are a neutral party. Their pride, their ideals and their vision of the future as Afrikaners and White South Africans …

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: You ruled that no interjections could be made, and the hon member for Jeppe has already made interjections on three occasions now.

I did not make a single interjection—merely a little joke!

Order! I want to warn hon members that I am going to apply this ruling very strictly.

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: The hon member for Sunnyside said there were only 16 Nationalists. Then another two came in. However, there are 35 of us, and I just want to rectify this. It sounds very much as if we are not here.

Our identity document was a proud possession which we always carried in our pocket. All of us were able to carry that identity document around with us because it was able to disclose all the information in regard to a person. I am not ashamed to carry it on me, and I do not think there were any of the NP supporters, my former colleagues, who were ashamed to have it on them in the past. It seems to me they have suddenly become ashamed to look the world straight in the eye and say: “Look, I am an Afrikaner. Here is my identity document”. No, the NP now wants to become a neutral little population …

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: I want to suggest that the argument that we are allegedly ashamed has now been used for just about the 300th time in this debate.

Mr Chairman, may I just address you in passing? I have been sitting in this Parliament for 25 years, but I have never before seen such an unbridled and unashamed senior member as that hon member. He must please take a few lessons from the backbenchers, who can set him an example on how one should behave in this Parliament.

I want to quote further from the Second Reading Speech of the hon the Minister. I am very grateful that it is a short speech. In his speech the hon the Minister said the following:

1. (a) details of all population groups, including Blacks, must be recorded in one population register …

We are now going to have only one population register. The hon member for Soutpansberg has already referred to the fact that the voters’ lists are going to be drawn up according to the population register. Hon members also said it was now going to be very easy to draw up a voters’ list. No problems would be experienced with it. I want to tell those hon members candidly, however, that I do not trust them, the NP. I do not trust them, and do hon members know why? [Interjections.] An hon member said that the information could be made available by a computer within three minutes …

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: The hon member for Brits made an interjection.

Order! The hon member for Sunnyside may proceed.

An hon member said here a person could go to a computer, and within two minutes he would have all the particulars concerning a person. Suppose we were to hold an election in this vast South Africa. I want to know from the hon the Minister, if I receive a voters’ list of my constituency, on what authority can I say that that voters’ list is correct.

Read the Act!

Order! I want to point out to the hon member for Middelburg that when I say no interjections must be made, it applies to all hon members. The hon member for Sunnyside may proceed.

Mr Chairman, I now want to tell the hon the Minister that when one has a voters’ list, one does not know who those people are. In my own constituency, a few years ago, there were approximately 4 500 people every six months who had changed their address. This probably applies to the other electoral divisions as well, and in some electoral divisions that figure is perhaps a little higher. In regard to a name on a voters’ list—any name—I want to ask him how I can now go and find out, among 4 500 people who have left, whether a person is now registered according to the identity document, the population register, or some other way? Hundreds, or thousands of names could appear on that list, which neither I nor any of my other colleagues can verify or control. After all, one cannot go and work alongside the people in the department. Do not try to tell me we can all go and waste the time of the officials in those offices every day. I think the officials have better things to do than that. In addition I want to make it very clear, in respect of the postal vote system, that 5 000 or 6 000 postal votes may be cast in an electoral division, and one cannot control that.

For example one arrives at a certain address and a person is not there. Otherwise one finds a strange man who says: “No, that person used to five here, but he moved”. I am now telling the hon Minister that in an electoral division in which people move as often as they do in the central urban areas, one cannot pin down all those people. One does not know who they are. After all, I was once a member of the National Party. I am now referring to the days when we still had many branches, and out of 30 branches I had 12 branches in which all the members of the executive committee had moved away. They had all moved away; not one remained. This is a general pattern everywhere. That is why I say this is a monstrosity, and the day on which the hon the Minister comes forward with such legislation is a tragic day. I do not take it amiss of him, however. He probably has to say “yes, master” to his leaders. His lot is not a happy one!

I want to come back to the hon member for Innesdal. He also said, for example, that the NP would hold the seat for Innesdal forever. When the hon member said that—“to all eternity”—I wondered whether he thought that we should go so far as to speak of “to all eternity”. It made me feel heartsore this afternoon. I am an elder in the church, and I want to say that when it comes to people’s religion, I take it very seriously. Irrespective of what religion and what church it may be I say we should consider the matter. When the hon member makes such allegations, though, I must say I do not know why he said that.

The hon member was also furious when the hon member for Rissik told him his name should be changed from Nothnagel to “Not White”. I now want to tell the hon member that I am pleased that he has some pride. I am pleased about that, but I am heartsore that he does not uphold the pride in him by saying that he wants to see the White population, the Coloured population, the Indian population and every Black population registered on its own. Where is that pride of his now? Where is that pride of the hon member for Innesdal now?

What will happen now if we have only one identity document? Will peace and quiet and amity and everything that is fine and splendid, and that one can only have in an association or amalgamation, where there can never be war or dispute or strife, all disappear now that the Government has come forward with this new dispensation, in terms of which everything is being thrown into one melting pot? We are now receiving one identity document and expectations have been created among the Coloureds and the Blacks that they will come into this Parliament.

Why is a state of emergency now prevailing? Why is there this continuing extreme violence?

I want to come now to the hon member for Durban Central. They support this Bill. After all, they did a great deal to make certain propaganda among the Blacks! I am not going to use the word “incite”, but those Blacks were stirred up in that way to do certain things; or certain expectations were created among them. I now want to ask that hon member why approximately 39 people have been burnt alive in the Eastern Cape during the past week. Surely peace should now be prevailing among those Blacks!

Does that hon member, the whole NP and all its supporters think for one moment peace and quiet is going to prevail if this new Identification Bill comes into operation now?

Oom Jan, must we retain the dompas?

Order! I shall not direct the hon member for Rustenburg to withdraw from the Chamber now; he just wants to go and listen to the rugby! The hon member for Sunnyside may proceed. [Interjections.]

It is a pity that the hon the Deputy Minister is not here at the moment; I should have liked to have reacted in his presence to the remarks he made here across the floor of this House.

The hon member for Kimberley South spoke very angrily here. He said—in spite of all these things the NP is doing, including the introduction of this new identity document—that all groups in South Africa were going to be protected. I now ask that hon member the same question I asked the hon member for Durban Central: If all the groups are ostensibly going to be protected, now that all these new things have come about, including this new thing, why is there a state of emergency in the country, and why did the two pieces of security legislation have to be rushed through the President’s Council in all haste?

We are functioning under this new dispensation, and the charge is now being levelled at the hon member for Rissik and some of my other colleagues that we discussed these matters comprehensively on the standing committee. I have said before that this proves what a farce this system is! The matters are discussed there, but why are the. Press and the public not admitted? No, these things are rushed through those committees, and the public at large, South Africa, the world, is not allowed to know what happens behind those locked doors! I say those standing committees should be thrown open, so that the public and the Press may be present there. If the NP does this—it is a morally justifiable step—they can talk about a democratic system. If they do that, they can say— it will contain a grain of truth, although not even the full truth!—that the world in general cannot then say to them that they have not done these things well.

I now want to point out a few other matters. I want to refer to the memorandum on the objects of the Bill, which the hon the Minister submitted to us. The public in general—everyone who receives Hansard—does not have the opportunity to read memoranda such as these. That is why I should like to quote the first paragraph from this memorandum, so that it may be placed on record in Hansard:

The two offences are then mentioned.

I now want to ask why these things have to be abolished at this precise juncture?

It is the dompas.

Yes, it is dompas to which we are referring now; I am pleased the hon the Minister has now used this term to describe it to me. It is not true that the Black people are inevitably opposed to it; they are opposed to the entire system—to the White people in this country. Communism and big money world wide are behind it, and I shall spell out these things in greater detail a little later in my speech. Even if we are going to make these identity documents precisely the same for all population groups, we are still going to encounter adversity. How is the hon the Minister in the short space … [Interjections.] Mr Chairman, there is a conversation going on to the left of me …

Order!

Carry on, Jan, the Press are writing.

These people have declared war, and we know it. “Africa for the Black man” has been the slogan for decades. They said long ago they wanted to drive the White man out of Africa. The hon the Minister can throw all the existing legislation overboard, he can involve them in Parliament as he sees fit—this is going to happen and it is no use concealing it—but he can do what he likes, he will no longer have any peace and quiet in this country.

The Black man believes in a strong government, but now the NP is falling over backwards, lying down and saying that it is first going to ask the Blacks what they want. Heavens above, surely that is not how one governs one’s own fatherland! If they tell us what they want in their own fatherland, that is in order, but they must not prescribe to us what we must do in our fatherland. No other member will prescribe to me this evening what I must do in my own home, nor will I prescribe to others how to run their households. [Interjections.] Every person is lord of his own castle, but in my fatherland the White man is master.

I shall also quote point 2(iii) of the memorandum on the objects of the Bill:

What is being referred to here is all lawful inhabitants of the Republic, but there are more than a million workers from other states present. They are here lawfully. Not one of them is here unlawfully; they are contract workers.

Contract workers are not being involved in this, nor will they be involved in this in future.

Those people are at present in South Africa and how is the hon the Minister going to get that vast number of people out of the country without their identity documents?

They have proof. They have passports.

They have passports and other proof of identity, but I had a case on my farm of a Black person who came to me and said that he had lost his documents. When then had to acquire other documents for him. I asked him where he came from. He then told me where he came from. I then said he should bring me all the witnesses because I had been informed by the department that I had to submit certain affidavits from his family. According to the department it then appeared that he had never been in South Africa.

When the State President took office in 1978, he said that he advocated a clean administration. When a prominent person in the private sector said there was corruption in the Public Service, the State President urged him to take his complaints to the Police. Subsequently the irregularities came to light one after the other. Even under the administration of Escom, R8 million was taken out of the country.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon member a question?

No, Mr Chairman, I do not have time for questions now.

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: With all due respect, the hon member for Sunnyside really cannot relate those arguments to the legislation.

Order! The hon member for Sunnyside may proceed.

Mr Chairman, identity documents are one of the most important facets of the administration of a state. [Interjections.] Surely I cannot stand here and repeat the words identity document 50 times. [Interjections.] Surely I must do so in full sentences, and then link my argument to it. Identity documents form part of the administration of this country, and surely hon members know that people were previously prosecuted—I know about this—because they issued falsified documents.

Can that happen at present?

It can happen now as well. Those who want to remain in this country can create problems—I am referring to the foreigners who have been residing here for 10, 15 or 20 years already. We are going to encounter problems on that score. How is one going to control them? The safety of this country comes first, and I do not think there is anyone in this House who would not agree with that. If a person crosses the border—suppose he is a terrorist—he does not need to have a document on him. At present it is a fact that vagrants …

They can be caught.

They can be caught, it is true! At the moment, however, a crime has been committed in my constituency, and the police are finding it difficult to catch the people involved, although they are walking around there. When influx control was abolished, it was one of the greatest disasters that ever struck us. I want to leave it at that however.

I now want to refer to the Bill, to the question of an “authorised officer”, to which reference is made in clause 14(3). There it is stated that in the application of this section, “authorised officer” means inter alia a peace officer or a person designated by the hon the Minister by notice in the Gazette. Then, too, a sworn statement must be made. Reference is only made to an sworn statement. What about people who do not wish to make this sworn statement? Will they simply be allowed to make an ordinary statement? Will it be read that way in terms of the law? If that is not the case, if one wants to be wilful, one could say that the Act does not make provision for it. The point, however, is also that anyone else may also make a sworn statement. I should like the hon the Minister to spell this out to us, because not all of us are as conversant with the Act as the hon the Minister or other legal experts. There are the ordinary citizens who are not au fait with it. The hon the Minister must spell it out to us more clearly.

The Government says it wants to broaden democracy. Well, I shall simply regard this identity document as one of the steps in this direction since everyone is now going to receive the same document and there are no longer going to be separate documents for each population group. Consequently I want to regard this document as a kind of broadening process.

I should now like to quote what is said by Louis Marschalko in his book The World Conquerors:

This broadening of the democracy is being spoken about, as happened in the case of the abolition of the provincial councils, with the State President above and an executive committee appointed at a lower level. There are no elected MPCs who can control matters further, etc. Is that really a broadening of the democracy, and is this identity document which we are going to get also a broadening of democracy? In what direction are we really moving? I just want to quote a little further:

He is referring now to conflicting parties:

It would seem to me as though this new document is a kind of “re-education”, a “new moral code”, a question of “peacepropaganda”. [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon member whether he now thinks this little document can protect a person from atom bombs and such things?

I have already told that hon member he should first go and ask the backbenchers how a person ought to behave in this House. I want to make this matter very clear. Is this a broadening of democracy now. Is this that “new moral code”. After all, the National Party says it wants to be moral, it wants to be Christian, it wants to pursue civilised standards and Christian norms, and so on. Then I ask myself this question: Who is governing this country today? We have a coalition cabinet with Coloureds, Whites and Indians, and now this identity document is going to disappear.

Order! I want to make an appeal to the hon member to be more relevant with his arguments.

To me the issue is this identity document. It would have continued to exist if we had not had the coalition cabinet, because the other members in the Cabinet advocated and prescribed its abolition. This is the major deficiency. It has been told already, and I am not going to repeat it, how they demanded the disappearance of this document. As a result of their involvement we are therefore getting this uniform document now, although each population group used to have its own.

Sir, the Black radicals in South Africa will not be satisfied with this identity document of the Government. The Government can be sure that they will not stop burning their own people alive, razing houses to the ground, plundering and boycotting, because they demand everything. This document will not satisfy them. I want to quote what President James Garfield of America said in 1881:

We can issue new identity documents, or do whatever we like, but there is an overseas moneyed interest—and we have seen this again when the overseas banks foreclosed on our loans—and even if we came up with 10 new identity documents, those people have only one object in mind, namely to get at White South Africa. Now we all have one document and we are one jellyfish nation, but we will not satisfy those people.

Order! I want to point out to the hon member for Sunnyside that he cannot merely advance any argument and then occasionally append the word identity document. [Interjections.] I want to make an appeal to the hon member to debate relevantly on the contents of this Bill.

Sir, I am discussing the Bill before us.

I would appreciate it if the hon member would adhere to it.

I am discussing the abolition of the existing documents, which are now going to be replaced. I think it is correct if I say what power is behind all this and is exerting pressure for this to be done. Other speakers can present evidence to refute this, because we have proved that there are people behind this.

I shall not allow hon members to react to irrelevant accusations.

Sir, Kenyon said for example:

Whatever we do, therefore, we must just be sure that this Bill is going to cause problems.

In the 10 years after UNO was established in 1945 the communism advanced 44 square miles per hour over the whole world. That is the power behind this matter.

In conclusion I want to ask the hon the Minister … if I could just have the hon the Minister’s attention … to tell us what the total cost of replacing all the identity documents of White South Africa amounts to. If the hon the Minister cannot tell me at the moment, I shall put a question, because I want to hear the answer. This is money which is being wasted. For example, what is it going to cost to replace everyone’s documents—Whites, Coloureds and Indians? Does the hon the Minister think it is morally or ethically justifiable, while there are so many people out of work or without food in South Africa today, to waste so much money on a new document while the others have to be thrown into the fire.

Mr Chairman, we have been listening to a debate on one single Bill in this House for about seven hours today. There have been so many digressions in the course of the discussion that I really feel it is necessary for us to pause for a moment and to ask ourselves what the objective of this measure really is.

Hear, hear!

Sir, this is actually quite a simple measure. It has only two objectives. In the first place, it is aimed at providing for the compilation and maintenance of a uniform population register. This is the first objective. Now I want to know from the hon member for Sunnyside why the Conservative Party is opposed to a uniform population register which takes account of the multicultural composition of South Africa’s population.

I ask this question because we had a uniform population register in South Africa from 1950, when Dr Malan first introduced that legislation in this Parliament, right up to 1972, when the reference book bureau for Blacks was separated from the central population register. Surely this is a fact, Mr Chairman. Therefore one really does not know what the argument of the hon members of the Conservative Party is based on.

In the second place, this legislation provides for a uniform identity document to be issued to all South Africans. In this regard one must ask the hon members of the Conservative Party the same question. We must admit, after all, that this legislation specifically provides for the retention of the Population Registration Act as we know it today. In addition, the old reference book bureau for Blacks is being reincorporated into the population register. The identity document must be regarded as separate from the population registration aspect, after all. To advance arguments about the neutral index number in the identity document, therefore—as the hon member for Sunnyside does—is quite nonsensical. The neutral index number does not detract in any way from the Government’s standpoint regarding the granting of political rights to groups rather than to individuals in a system of one man, one vote.

Another argument advanced by the hon member for Sunnyside to which I wish to react is the one in which he spoke of “my fatherland”. I want to know from the hon member where that “my fatherland” of his is situated. Is it the “Boerestaat” of the AWB? Does it comprise only those parts of the Transvaal, the Free State and Northern Natal to which Eugène Terre’Blanche has already laid claim? I want to know this from the hon member for Sunnyside, Sir!

Come on, Oom Jan, speak up!

Or does it include all the rest of South Africa? Where is that “my fatherland” of which the hon member speaks? Is he perhaps referring to the Oranjewerkers’ idea of a White homeland at Morgenzon?

Oom Jan, this is your chance to reply!

The hon member for Sunnyside must reply to us on this, Mr Chairman.

Come on, Jan, come on!

The hon member for Kuruman and other hon members of the Conservative Party have made a great fuss in this House. They have been challenged by hon members on this side of the House to tell us where that so-called fatherland of theirs, that so-called White homeland—call it what you will—is actually situated. Please give us an indication! Have they aligned themselves with the AWB in this regard, or do they have their own ideas with regard to the homeland—a “my homeland”, as the hon member for Sunnyside keeps calling it? The hon members of the Conservative Party must reply to this, Mr Chairman. [Interjections.]

A further argument advanced by the hon member for Sunnyside is in connection with aliens entering the country—especially Black aliens from our neighbouring states. I do want to point out to him that those who enter the country legally are in possession of the necessary passport, after all. Regarding those who enter the country illegally, I shall simply refer the hon member once again to the provisions in clause 14 of this Bill relating to proof of identity. In clause 14 it is clearly provided, after all, that a person who is suspected of having entered the country illegally can be requested by an authorised officer to prove his identity without delay. For the same reason, the Bill provides for the taking of fingerprints, so that if a problem should arise, the person concerned may be properly identified and action may be taken against him if necessary.

One of the primary reasons for this legislation, however, is to replace the old reference book system for Blacks. I have an idea that the hon member for Sunnyside was beginning to talk in that direction. I believe, too, that hon members of the Conservative Party will concede to us that the old dompas, as we knew it, had really acquired a negative connotation among Black people in South Africa. Surely the hon members will admit that, Mr Chairman. I believe it is true, and no one would try to deny it. The old reference book system is part of an outdated system, which simply does not serve its purpose any more.

Apart from the fact that the system of influx control was simply not serving its purpose any more, the old system of the reference book and the dompas has always been regarded as discriminatory by Blacks in South Africa.

Mr Chairman, would the hon member for Turffontein tell us why, in his opinion, the dompas is such a hated thing?

Mr Chairman, the dompas is such a hated thing because the Government maintained a system of influx control, and because people who were illegally present in certain prescribed areas were arrested in terms of that measure.

But surely that does not affect the dompas!

Mr Chairman, let me put it as follows to the hon member for Sasolburg. The most important aspect, that is to say, the aspect which was most hurtful to the Blacks, was the fact that wherever they went, they were sometimes confronted at the most impossible times and had to produce that book on the spot. If they did not have that book with them, they were jailed and charges were laid against them. [Interjections.] Now the hon member for Sasolburg is producing his identification. However, I want to repeat what the hon member for Umhlanga said, namely that the situation which one would like to create in South Africa is one in which the identity document would be a friend of the individual and not his enemy. The identity document must not “bum” the individual wherever he keeps it. That is why the hon member for Sasolburg feels quite at liberty to take out his identity document and to say that he will carry it and produce it. He has never been confronted by people and jailed because he did not have it with him. [Interjections.] That is the problem; and it is a fact.

Mr Chairman, does the hon member for Turffontein agree that it is not the dompas as such, but rather the apartheid policy which angers the Black people?

But Sir, I have told the hon member that it was the system of influx control which caused problems for these people. That is why the Government has removed those measures and replaced them with a system of orderly urbanisation. The point I want to make is that the Black people went about with a document in their pockets which “burnt” them. The Blacks did not want to carry it and objected to doing so. We as Whites believe that our identity documents are essential, and that is why we carry them about on our person. [Interjections.]

What is the Government’s standpoint in this connection? The Government’s standpoint is not affected by this measure. It remains a fact that this country has a multicultural population. We know that we have White, Coloured and Asian representatives in this tricameral Parliament. We know that in six self-governing states we have Blacks who have ethnic links with those states. We know that 50% of South Africa’s Blacks live outside the self-governing states in the urban, metropolitan and rural areas of South Africa. However, those people are all citizens of South Africa.

In addition, the Restoration of South African Citizenship Act, which is to be discussed after the present measure, specifically provides for those people who became citizens of the TBVC countries merely as a result of the attainment of independence by those countries to regain South African citizenship if they are permanently resident in the RSA. No one can reason away this fact of the population composition. Nor is the NP running away from it; on the contrary, we acknowledge and accept it. It remains the NP’s standpoint that political rights should be allocated to groups and communities. Therefore every individual in South Africa must in some way be linked to the group of community through which he is able to exercise his political rights.

That is why this Bill provides for the present Population Registration Act to be retained. This is a fact, after all. Therefore I do not know what the hon members of the CP are getting so worked up about. [Interjections.]

I just want to make a general remark in this connection. The CP has asked the PFP whether the PFP is opposed to the population register in principle. I want to tell those hon members that we on this side of the House are not apologising for the existence of the Population Registration Act. I may refer to America in this connection. When a census is taken in America, for example, filling in the census form is optional. People are not obliged to do so, and the individual may decide whether he wants to fill it in or not. But if he does, he must also indicate whether he is White, Black, American, Indian, Eskimo, Asian or Pacific Islander. We are not arguing about that principle, therefore, and that is why that part is to remain on the Statute Book unchanged. In terms of this principle, a population register has to be compiled and kept up to date. The identity document becomes merely a form of identification. In other words, if one has to identify oneself, one simply produces one’s identity document to prove that one is a specific person. It does not matter whether one is White, Brown or Black; the identity document is merely a form of identification.

When we come to the compilation of voters’ rolls, or when we are negotiating a dispensation with regard to political rights, the Population Registration Act remains in force and there is no change in this connection. The hon members of the PFP argued somewhat tongue in cheek about the powers of an authorised officer to ask a person for his identity document. When we observe the situation in the rest of the world, we find that such an arrangement is by no means unique. In many Third World countries, but also in countries such as Belgium, Israel, Greece and Spain, people are required to carry identity documents. However, we must ensure that we create an identity document which is not offensive to any population group in South Africa. I think the rigid system in terms of which the documents were required in the past has been very satisfactorily modified in this legislation to make it less stringent.

The last point I want to make is in connection with fingerprinting. I think we should not object so much to fingerprinting; on the contrary, hon members of this House should really try to sell the concept of fingerprinting to their people, because I think that problems may arise among our people in particular when they are asked to have their fingerprints taken. What is the world situation as far as fingerprinting is concerned? In Argentinia, Brazil, Chile, Greece, Paraguay, Portugal, Spain and Uruguay, fingerprints are put on the application form for an identity document or card. In Japan, it is only required in the case of aliens, and in the USA, one’s fingerprints are taken when one is an alien who is visiting the country and has obtained a right of temporary residence there.

I just want to make a final remark to hon members of the PFP who make such a fuss about the fact that we are telling people in the Population Register that they belong to this or that group. It is very interesting that in a country such as Israel, it is stated on one’s identity document whether one is a Jew, a Muslim or a Christian. I think, therefore, that hon members of the PFP should find it very easy to support this legislation without violating their conscience. If they still had any problems, these should now have been removed.

I want to put a request to the CP. The hon member for Rissik said that the method we used on this side of the House was to cast suspicion on our opponents. That is what the hon member said. Now I want to tell him that they must not try to use this measure which the Government has now introduced—it retains the Population Registration Act and merely introduces a uniform identity document—to cast suspicion on the whole situation. We would really find it difficult to sell the idea, especially to Blacks, if there were any degree of suspicion on the part of the Blacks of South Africa.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon member a question?

No, Sir.

Mr Chairman, surely the hon member for Turffontein could have employed a large section of his speech more successfully during the discussion of the next Bill. We shall return to that when we discuss that Bill and the hon member for Turffontein or his kindred spirits take part in the discussion.

Right at the beginning I want to ask hon members to grant me some time to refer briefly to certain remarks made by the hon member for Innesdal, including remarks with reference to me as a person. He said inter alia that I was a pessimistic person. There was a period in my life when the hon member for Innesdal and I were still political and ideological kindred spirits, when not only he was exceptionally optimistic about South Africa’s future and in particular about the future of White South Africa, but I was too. I must say quite honestly, however, that when I have to listen to how the hon member has done a political about-face in a very short period and is now holding and proclaiming standpoints completely opposite to those he held and proclaimed earlier, I not only become pessimistic, but sometimes want to despair. I cannot understand what has happened to the good, young Afrikaners who inspired other young Afrikaners with the ideal of separate freedom, division and partition. They have changed into the complete opposite overnight.

Those are the realities of the country!

In all the debates that hon member and I have had around the coffee table in the past, we took thorough account of the realities as well as of all the stumbling blocks on the course to the achievement of what was then our common ideal. That ideal that he and I cherished together still remains my ideal today. We on the side of the CP do not speak in a different idiom from that we used five or ten years ago; we still speak the same language.

The world is round, it is not flat!

I want to return to the provisions of this legislation. It has specific reference to population registration, the form thereof and its necessity. We know what the PFP’s standpoint is. It is not always clear to me whether or not they want any population registration at all.

In the time we are living in, I think it is absolutely imperative for any modern state to have some or other form of registration for the sake of regularity. We in the CP believe the registration of the total population—the citizens of the country as well as strangers who may find themselves within the boundaries of one’s country from time to time—is imperative.

In the past it was the NP’s standpoint that a population register is not only there for the sake of normal requirements for the maintenance of law and order and the identification of individuals. I do not know whether there are hon NP members who want to deny this today, but the Population Registration Act was originally introduced primarily as an aid to the implementation of the ideological policy of the NP of that time. That is the truth of the matter.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon member whether he is claiming that this legislation is adapting the Population Registration Act as such?

The hon member can rest assured; I shall come to that.

That was one of the cornerstones the NP created during the early years of its reign for the implementation of its ideological policy of separate freedom for each people in South Africa. These are the peoples which are being reduced to groups by the NP today.

It is now being maintained here that it has become imperative in the times we are living in for a colourless identity document to be issued to everyone. It is argued that the mere fact that that document indicates that the owner of the document is White or Black, is discriminatory, insulting and offensive. I do not know whether any member in the House takes offence at the fact that his being White is indicated in the identification book. Can any hon member take offence to that? [Interjections.]

I do not think the State has the right to classify me.

Apparently there is one member who objects to the State’s saying he is White.

The State has to classify.

Why should the State classify?

I should like to know whether there are hon members of the NP who object to this too. [Interjections.]

In the same breath I want to ask where the idea comes from that it should be regarded as discriminatory or insulting that the mere fact that one is Black—Xhosa, Zulu or Swazi—is mentioned in an identification book.

His own identity is important to him in any case.

The NP says we need not worry, since the Central Register is being retained. Is the NP implying that this Bill is the umpteenth cosmetic change they are placing on the Statute Book? If the NP Government is still prepared to retain all the provisions of the population registration legislation with the intention of applying it for the implementation of a policy of apartheid, why are they ashamed of the real situation’s being reflected in the identity document that is issued to every individual?

Your passport also says which country you belong to.

Why must that fact be concealed?

I want to state our misgivings, however. The same NP Government tells us they stand by the Group Areas Act, viz the policy of separate residential areas, but what is happening in practice? Does the NP Government, which is responsible for the application of the Group Areas Act, still stand by that Act or is the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning granting exemptions almost without exception?

They are not enforcing it. [Interjections.]

I know what I am talking about. The hon member for Jeppe has already referred to the situation in his constituency. I am sorry to say that for that reason we can no longer trust the present Government with its track record, when they tell us they also intend to use the population register to maintain the former policy.

That is the point!

Everything points to that. This Bill cannot be seen in isolation. The Government has come forward here with a whole package of legislation, such as the Abolition of Influx Control Bill…

Hear, hear!

That hon member says: “Hear, hear!” In addition there is the Bill, which still has to be discussed, about the so-called restoration of South African citizenship. There are others too, and one cannot look at each individual measure without seeing a new pattern with the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning as its chief architect. That pattern is moving in one direction.

Hear, hear!

The hon member of the PFP is rightly saying “Hear, hear!” in anticipation. That pattern is eventually going to end up in one mixed multiracial South Africa. That is the pattern which is unfolding within the NP which has made a left turn very recently. That is our problem with every measure the NP is putting forward.

By means of legislation the NP now wants to change one measure after another which indicates the separate existence or the permanence of the separation between people and people as well as between race and race—the realities of life and the situation of South Africa. I remember our having a discussion about this question of people and race in the inner circle of the NP. Many NP members on the opposite side over there want to deny today that the policy of the NP of the past, of the other day, was a racial policy. They want to deny that and say it was only a national policy. We had a discussion in our own ranks, and some of us held the standpoint that our policy was not only a national policy, but also a racial policy. We said our policy was based on two legs, one of which was people—which is important—but equally important was race.

I remember that some hon members who are sitting on the opposite side—I am not going to mention names—supported us enthusiastically in that discussion at the time.

The chairman was one. [Interjections.]

There were hon members who fought it enthusiastically too.

Yes.

I am afraid—this may contribute to my feeling of pessimism—if I may tell the hon member for Innesdal…

I was not trying to be nasty.

No.

Now you sound optimistic.

No, but what is contributing to that feeling of pessimism is that those hon members of the NP who denied and fought the racial element in the NP then, have got the upper hand in the NP and in the Government of today. [Interjections.] They are wielding the sceptre today. [Interjections.]

I do not want to speak for much longer. We were accused in this debate and in other debates of being racists; of granting other people nothing …

Hear, hear!

… of wanting to claim the whole of South Africa for ourselves …

Hear, hear!

Listen to that chorus.

Yes, let me rather say nothing.

The hon chorus!

That hon member who has been a chorus on his own for the whole day…

The Vilo-vilo chorus.

I merely want to tell him, who accuses us of not having time for Blacks, that I am meeting Black nationalists in my own home next week. [Interjections.] Not for the first time either.

They are going to kick you out of the CP!

I am going to talk to those people man to man, also about the CP’s policy, since they are not only interested in the CP policy, but have begun to see that the course the NP is taking with South Africa at the moment is going to end in domination of a small people, even if it is Black, by other Blacks.

Are you talking to me?

I am not talking to the hon member, I am talking to the House. The hon member need not listen. He may leave the House if he wishes. [Interjections.]

We on this side of the House are not racists. If I have reason to be proud of what my people and race have achieved, it does not mean I hate another people. Love of one’s neighbour does not require me, however, to throw overboard what my people has achieved for itself by committing political suicide, and in that process perhaps physical suicide. We refuse to do that. If there are appeals from the ranks of the NP, and we read between the lines, that in the time we are living in and in these exceptional circumstances we must try to restore White unity and possibly also Afrikaner political unity at all costs, I tell the NP that, as far as we are concerned that appeal is senseless, as long as they continue in the direction they are moving in with South Africa at present. [Interjections.] We cannot be partners in the preparation of a destination in which the political power of my people over themselves will eventually come to nothing.

Mr Chairman, twenty speakers have by now participated in the debate. I do not know whether this is a record, but it is certainly close to one. I thank the hon members of all the parties who participated in this debate. I think hon members on the opposite side of the House referred to unnecessary matters in the discussion of this Bill, but I think they have every right to discuss anything as long as it remains within the Rules of the House.

First of all I want to convey a special thanks to the members of the standing committee who, as we all heard, attended 37 meetings and did thorough work over a long period of time. I also want to thank the officials of the department who assisted them. The standing committee system is new, but I think this system has already proved its great usefulness. I shall come back to this in a moment, when I react to a question put to me by the hon member for Soutpansberg. I think, however, that we can see that useful work is being done and that this is one of the good systems we have introduced.

At this stage I just want to ask the hon member for Rissik something. Under the circumstances I think it is necessary for him to explain what he had in mind when he made the reference to the hon member for Innesdal. The hon member for Innesdal indicated how he understood it, and I think the hon member for Rissik will in fact react to that.

From time to time the hon members on this side of the House came back to the Bill before us, and told us what was being dealt with in this Bill. I do not want to hurl any accusation at any hon member on the opposite side, but quite a few of the hon members did not have the advantage that hon members who served on the standing committee had of being able to acquire knowledge there by hearing evidence, listening to the arguments and so on. I must also add that it is my impression that hon members did not really master this very difficult subject of population registration and race classification. It is difficult to master such a matter, particularly towards the end of a session. I want to emphasise, however, what the hon members on this side of the House have already said.

The Population Registration Act of 1950, a very important Act that was considered by this House, consists of two components. The one deals with race classification. I want to repeat this: It is a separate component in the Population Registration Act. It deals with race classification, and that component is not being touched in this Bill. The principle of race classification is not being affected at all in the Bill before this House. [Interjections.] That is still the basis of NP policy. It supports group identity and group rights. The hon members of the PFP—very frequently they do not agree with us—told hon members that this was still the basis of our policy. They do not agree with us on this score, but we don’t mind that.

I must say with all due respect for hon members on the opposite side of the House that all the complaints they raised against us in this connection—that we are renouncing some of the provisions, and that we are watering them down—were untrue. That component is not being affected.

What does emerge from this Bill is the question of identification as far as the population register is concerned. This identity document, inter alia, is now being produced from the population register. Also as far as the population register is concerned, that classification which is still firmly in place in the 1950 Act remains an integral part of it. It is, in a manner of speaking, being preserved there under lock and key. Various hon members have also referred to the quick reference which is now possible from that source. We have several points, throughout the country, at which one can obtain the information within a few minutes. In addition, these particulars will appear in all documents dealing with race. I am referring, for example, to the birth certificate. I want to point out to hon members that at present the certificate pertaining to particulars of birth contain the name, the identity number, the date of birth and the place of birth. With effect from 1 July, after this Bill has come into operation, it will still contain all these particulars, but it will contain something else as well: The birth registration number which indicates the race. That document is the original document, and surely those hon members who are legal practitioners know—I think the hon member for Brakpan also referred to this—that when transactions in respect of land take place and it is necessary to determine whether a person belongs to the population group concerned which may or may not purchase land in a certain area, the present identity document does not in any way adduce acceptable proof that he belongs to that race. The person concerned must in addition make a declaration under oath, and that declaration under oath must be submitted to the Deeds Registry.

We discussed the measures we now have in this new Bill thoroughly. We discussed them with the private sector and we were in contact with the legal profession. We conducted in-depth talks—and the standing committee heard all the evidence—with all the Government departments and with all the provincial administrations and local authorities, and not one of them required the racial code in the identification document.

I want to try to finish by six; the hon the Leader of the House told me not to speak too long. [Interjections.]

I come now to the question of the voters’ fists. I want to tell the hon member for Rissik and all the Other hon members who referred to this matter that the position remains precisely as it was. As far as voters’ lists are concerned, it is clearly indicated of which group a person is a member. After 1 July the same process continues. The voters’ lists are therefore being retained as they were before.

Of course we still have problems. There are many people who have changed their address and who have failed to notify us. As far as that aspect is concerned there is therefore no change. The classification continues. Consequently there is no danger! The particulars are, it is true, recorded in one register, but these days we make use of modern technology. There is no danger of confusion occurring or that there will be any mix-up; on the contrary, technically the data is better preserved and cared for than ever before!

I also want to point out that the principles which I have just mentioned are set out clearly in clause 5(1) and 5(3)(a) of the Bill—hon members will simply have to go and read them for themselves. Consequently there is no reason whatsoever for hon members to fear that there is any watering-down of the principle of classification, because we are not touching it! The identity document is not documentary evidence of original value because one still needs that original document. A child who goes to school or university cannot simply produce his parents’ identity document upon enrolment; he must also produce an original document. Where does one obtain that? It is obtainable from the same places one may now obtain it, such as magistrates’ office, where the necessary information is drawn from our register. In it the child’s name, as well as his race is indicated, in accordance with the old principle of race classification. All the documents that have to be submitted to a court are therefore acquired in the old way. Those hon members who are legal practitioners will know that the identity document cannot be produced as evidence of the truth or correctness of its contents, since it contains second-hand information. It is necessary to tap into the original source, and an original withdrawal must be made from the register.

There is another matter I want to raise here. The hon member for Sasolburg said a few interesting things about race, people and nation. Incidentally, I want to thank hon members for giving me an opportunity to speak, and that no interjections are being made. I do not want to preach to hon members, but merely want to ask them that we try to do things in this way. This philosopher, Wittgenstein, once said that unsound thinking led to unsound deeds.

In which book of his did that appear?

By that he meant that ill-considered ideas or, expressed in Afrikaans, “ondeurdagte denkbeelde”, in practice frequently lead to irresponsible conduct. [Interjections.] Surely we must in politics, economics, or wherever, know clearly what we mean. Concepts and words are windows through which our people look out at the world. If our windows are not clean, we cannot see clearly or far, and we form images for ourselves which do not exist. At present confusion is prevailing in South Africa, and we must ensure that we use concepts such as race, people, nation, Afrikaner and South African correctly. Hon members must listen carefully now, because I want to put a concept to them today, as I see it. The word “race” must not be confused with the word “people”. The word “race” has primarily biological-genetic characteristics, referring to the physical, and I think the hon member for Rissik will agree with this. It refers to the physical and biological characteristics of a specific group of people, separating them from other groups, for example skin colour, the colour and shape of the eyes, physique and characteristics of that kind.

The word “people”, after all, has primarily a cultural implication. The hon leader of the CP will concede that I am correct that it refers to a group of people of the same language group, with a shared system of values, with more or less similar customs and with a shared tradition and history. The members of a specific people say that they associate themselves with the language with and what has been achieved by a specific group of people.

Yes, but the word people also has a racial connotation.

While racial boundaries are relatively rigid, and no one can change his race, the boundaries between people are not so rigid. That is why people of Scottish descent, for example the well-known Thoms, Murrays, McDonalds and others, were in due course able to become part of the Afrikaner people. [Interjections.] Their descendants identified themselves completely with the culture, language, traditions and history of the Afrikaner—and so too did the Morrisons. [Interjections.] Hon members must remember that this process did not take place at random. A cultural community usually allows others to become part of the people, or refuses to allow them to do so.

I just want to make one further point in this regard, and that is that a people has the right to retain its cultural character and identity. The NP believes firmly in this. [Interjections.] That is why such things as cultural organisations exist.

Which you are throwing open to the Coloureds.

It is no form of discrimination, and with that I am not reprimanding hon members of the CP, but hon members of the PFP. These are forms of cultural association, and are an inalienable right. [Interjections.] That is why the State cannot compel a person to associate himself culturally with a person from another group. [Interjections.]

Furthermore I come to the point on which I differ with hon members on the opposite side of the House. The word “nation”— compared with the world people—is a constitutional term. That concept includes everyone, regardless of race, culture or language. It refers to the citizens of a specific state, regardless of the race, language or culture of those citizens. Those who may possess a South African passport, and therefore have South African nationality, are part of the South African nation. That is why I say we must define these concepts better, otherwise it just leads to arguments, and I think hon members have argued very unnecessarily today. [Interjections.]

We differ on the question of co-operation.

I do not think the meaning we attach to that and the meaning those hon members attach to it, differs very much. Nationhood is therefore something different from ethnicity (yolkskap). My nationhood is determined by my citizenship, while my ethnicity is determined by my cultural identity. Here I should like to add something. The quality of my nationhood is also determined by things such as my patriotism, my respect for the symbols of the country and my willingness to serve my country. [Interjections.] As far as race and culture are concerned, we are not similar, nor shall we ever be, but as far as our nationhood is concerned, we are a unit, together we form that element which makes the beam strong and sturdy. We need not be similar—I think we agree we should not be similar—but this does not exclude the possibility that we as a nation can have a common patriotism and find in that our unity. Hon members still remember the “unity in diversity” at the Republic Festival when I was still Administrator. What I said should also indicate the following, and I do not think hon members will differ very much from one another. I need not choose to be either an Afrikaner or a South African. I can and I must be both. The two are not opposed. The one does not exclude the other. I am an Afrikaner because I am a member of the Afrikaner people. After all Afrikaans is my language, my home language.

Are the Coloureds then Brown Afrikaners?

I am not going to reply to such absurdities. If the hon member had been listening carefully, he would be able to draw his own conclusions. [Interjections.] The language is my home language, the culture of this people is my culture and the traditions of this people are my traditions. However, I am also a South African because I am a member of the South African nation. I identify myself with South Africa. I am ready to sacrifice my life for my country. I am proud to be a citizen of the Republic. A good Afrikaner is inevitably also a good South African, someone who maintains an equilibrium between ethnic interests and national interests.

Mr Chairman, I just want to ask whether the hon the Minister will distinguish between a State nationalism and a nationalism of the people.

I do not think the hon the leader of the Conservative Party intends to put trick questions to me.

No, no, definitely not!

We can continue this discussion. If the hon member has considered this, we can continue the discussion. However, I want to add something in connection with what the hon member for Helderkruin said, because it is something which in my opinion we should try to deal with— and with this I also want to reply to the hon member for Sasolburg. I received a note from the hon member for Helderkruin on this subject and I am going to refer briefly to that note. I quote:

I shall now refer to the hon member for Sasolburg, because this could perhaps be a reply to his question too:

I think we have discussed this matter at length. Once again I want to thank my colleagues for their participation. I want to go on however and deal further with one or two matters.

The hon member for Brakpan put a few questions to me. I cannot agree to a racial code, according to choice, being inserted in the document. We on this side are convinced that it is not necessary because people’s race is in fact recorded elsewhere, and the identity document is not necessary for that. There is a better source available for that. Consequently I cannot agree to that.

The hon member—as well as the hon member for Soutpansberg and the hon member for Rissik—also referred to the influx from Mozambique and other countries. The position remains precisely the same after this Bill has come into operation. We are experiencing problems with them, but any foreigners entering the country can be prosecuted in terms of the Criminal Procedure Act. They can be detained. That Act and others remain in force. We therefore have numerous measures we can apply. As far as our security is concerned, the position really is not going to change, but is instead going to be improved because we are now going to make fingerprints compulsory for the other groups as well.

There are approximately 13 million Black people to whom we want to distribute these documents quickly. These documents are very much like those which you and I and the Coloureds and Indians have at present. They are not precisely the same, but are very similar. Whites, Coloureds and Indians are not obliged to replace their documents now, but the new identity document will be issued to all new applicants, or if documents are lost.

Mr Chairman, it seems to me I am not going to make it. There are still a few things I want to say, but I shall do so in greater detail on Monday.

Order! It is not yet time to adjourn and the hon the Minister is therefore welcome to proceed. If the hon the Minister wishes to move the adjournment of the House, he is also welcome to do so. [Interjections.]

Sir, I prefer to continue, because certain remarks were made to which I must reply. [Interjections.]

At this stage the issuing of these documents to the Black people will consequently be concentrated on. Any White person over the age of 16, however, can at any time apply and the new document will be issued to him. The same applies to members of the other population groups. The cost involved in ths large scale replacement of the dompas of the Black people by this document is estimated at approximately R30 million. However, no money is being wasted in this connection, because the identity documents of Whites, Coloureds and Indians need not be replaced now. The documents which are going to be issued to the Blacks are in any event going to be very similar.

The fact that we have already printed a large number simply means that we are preparing ourselves, when the rush occurs, to have a sufficient number of documents available.