Mr Speaker, this appropriation debate is taking place in the shadow of the most fateful election in South African politics. Later this year the politicians of the House of Assembly on this side of the House will go to the White voters of South Africa to ask them for a mandate; to request a brief with regard to the direction, the philosophy and the principles in accordance with which the government of the country must be structured and pursued.

Now it is true to say that in reality there are only two options open to South Africa. There are only two choices open to the voters of the House of Assembly. There is no middle path. Forget about it! The first choice is that of a unitary state, a citizens’ state, with the logical consequences of this, viz full and equal participation by all citizens of the citizens, state in the wide-ranging realisation of culture with regard to every facet of society. This includes full participation in the political, social, ecclesiastical and every other facet of society without distinction or qualification. That is more or less how I understand the policy of the newly formed DP, and as I understood it from Dr Worrall’s TV interview yesterday evening.

The second choice is that of a “volkstaat” for the Afrikaner who has a historic right and a right under international law to a government of his own in a fatherland of his own. Am I not right in saying that this is the inalienable right of a people which has undergone its formative process over a period of three centuries on South African soil? This is, in fact, the standpoint of the CP.

We have not stolen this country from anyone or robbed anyone of it. In fact, the Boer Republics enjoyed world-wide status and recognition during the previous century. For this reason we cannot agree with the standpoint of the hon member of Vryburg, who says that every square inch of this country belongs to all the peoples of South Africa. [Interjections.]

An imperial world power forced us into a unitary state by force of arms at the turn of the century, whilst that same power partitioned Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana into “volkstate”, or ethnic states, in their own right. Are we not entitled to the same right in our portion to this Southernland?

In fact, this is precisely in accordance with section 1, paragraph (2) of the Charter of the United Nations. When one speaks to any outsider, he will concede this. The section reads as follows:

This is a reference to the right of peoples to self-determination

Even with regard to non self-governing territories, the Charter declares the following in Chapter 11, section 73 (b):

It was on the basis of these principles that a Government which still believed in “volkstate” led the Republics of Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Vendaland and Ciskei to become independent states and led a further six peoples to self-government. However, this Government did an about-face in 1982 and accepted power sharing in a unitary state.

The absurdity of power sharing was practically illustrated when the NP caucus refused to allow the governmental power to be shared by the hon the State President and the hon the leader of the NP. They said no, the Leader of the NP must be the State President of South Africa.

I should like to ask the hon the Leader of the NP whether what I have heard is true—that candidates in the forthcoming election will have to sign an undertaking to the effect that when the first caucus meets under the new dispensation, they will vote for the present hon Leader of the NP. [Interjections.] I should like to ask him that.

This power sharing concept of the NP is a farce. What do the NP say about this power sharing? They say that they will share the power on condition that they retain the power.

Order! Does the hon member for Brits have a message for the Presiding Officer, or what is the position?

Mr Speaker, I am merely telling the hon member for Pietersburg that five minutes have elapsed.

Order! It is disruptive when the hon member continually holds the notice up in the air. The hon member for Pietersburg may continue.

Mr Chairman, this was, after all, implicitly built into two conflicting decisions that were taken by the NP caucus within weeks of one another. In truth, this illustrates the unfeasibility of a power-sharing situation in a multi-cultural situation such as the one in South Africa. The NP cannot even share power within the party context.

The only possible chance of success would be if the various peoples arid cultures here were able to fuse into one nation with unifying national symbols such as a flag and a national anthem which would be dear to the hearts of every people here in Southern Africa and which would give them cause to say: “It is mine. I shall stand up for it, I shall fight for it and I shall pay the supreme sacrifice for it if needs be”.

Alas, who was the first person to voice a protest when he was confronted by my colleague the hon member for Brits with the loyalty shown to existing national symbols? It was none other than the hon the Leader of the LP. I myself heard him say so. He objected. [Interjections.]

The NP must tell us now whether they are in favour of achieving consensus in respect of new national symbols which will be acceptable to all the peoples in their new-found unitary state. If the flag and the national anthem of South Africa are unacceptable to a people or a group who pride themselves on the fact that they speak Afrikaans and adhere to the same faith as my people, how on earth will other peoples who have no language or cultural ties with the Afrikaner people ever accept it? It is foolish to expect that. In other words, there is no question of a real single nation concept in one South African citizens’ state, as proposed by the NP. Forget about it!

Just as the Greek and Turkish Cypriots were unable to unite in one country such as Cyprus, just as the various peoples in Nigeria, namely the Hausa, the Jeruba and the Ibos of Biafra in the East, were unable to unite under a common state nationalism, so this will not be possible in South Africa. There is not a unitary state in the world comprising various peoples and cultures which is not experiencing problems. Yugoslavia, for example, has always been held together by means of force and violence. For decades the minority peoples, the Croats, the Slovenes, the Macedonians and the Albanians, have been waging a struggle for survival against the dominant Serbians.

It is this sort of power struggle or struggle for survival that the Government is initiating in South Africa, and the magic word in order to deal with the situation in South Africa, was used in Durbanville, by the new hon Leader of the NP, whom I quote as follows:

The word “indaba” is the magic word.

Let us take a look at what the word “indaba” means. What does it mean? According to an early dictionary by Kritzinger, Steyn, Schoonees and Cronje, it is translated from the English as “’n vergadering van ringkoppe, in besonder Zoeloes”, and in the 1986 edition of Collins Concise Dictionary it is described as “a Zulu topic, a meeting to discuss a serious topic”. In other words, it is a Zulu topic which is discussed by Zulus. [Interjections.]

In its edition of 3 March, after the hon the Minister of National Education’s speech at Nigel, Die Transvaler said the following in its leading article, under the heading “Indaba-tyd”, and I quote:

The CP says no, a thousand times no, just as we said at the time of the referendum which resulted in this constitutional dispensation. We in the CP demand totally separate decision making with regard to our own affairs, as was achieved on 31 May 1961. We reject the gradual impoverishment of the White voters under the present Government and we abhor the reports and the extent of the corruption and fraud which are rampant in those Government departments which are still under investigation, as well as the way in which three representatives of the governing party have had to resign from Parliament, and the improper and unethical actions of a former Cabinet member who, as the Advocate General has pointed out, made himself guilty of “a reprehensible concealment of true facts, which may be regarded as grave deception, according to the judge’s report.”

The South African taxpayers must ultimately pay the price for this. They are quite entitled to be up in arms about this, and the only way in which the voters of South Africa can protest against the present state of affairs, is by voting against this Government on election day in September. Just keep an eye on the scoreboard. The decline of the Governing party, which began in 1977, is going to continue and will probably assume catastrophic proportions for the NP in the year that lies ahead.

They really should not come forward with slogans and promises about separate residential areas or own areas like Windmill Park. They are empty promises. The voters of South Africa will not believe them again and they will reap the fruits of this on election day in September.

Mr Speaker, unfortunately, time will not permit me to react to the contributions of the hon member for Pietersburg. However, I would like to welcome the hon members of the new party—the Democratic Party—to this Chamber for the first time today. We say welcome to those hon gentlemen and lady. We would also like to congratulate the hon member, Dr Zach de Beer, on being elected by his caucus as the parliamentary leader.

This unification of political parties to the left of Government will be followed with keen interest, more so when one couples this with the call made by the hon leader-in-chief of the NP for a great indaba and a new Constitution to be drafted for the Republic. I do believe that the hon the State President has himself called for a great indaba. There is no denying that a new constitution is long overdue. Strides have been made since 1984 but sadly they have been either too little or too late.

The delay in implementing reformist ideas thought of in 1989 for even a year means one year lost. Time and advantage lost can never be recouped.

The introduction of joint debating in this Chamber of Parliament is a very positive step. Hon members now have the opportunity to address Parliament as such and not just their respective Houses. Nobody has lost self-respect with the introduction of this exercise; on the contrary, joint debates have afforded hon members the opportunity to put across views that would in other cases be misunderstood or unknown. The debate on the Group Areas Amendment Bill is a very typical example of the benefits of joint debate and I do believe—I have said this before, but I will repeat it—that two of the most impressive contributions made in the joint meeting were delivered by the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council in the House of Representatives and the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council in the House of Delegates. However, sadly, these contributions were either ignored or covered in a very small measure by the so-called liberal Press in this country. History will record that the tricameral system was the forerunner to political acceptability of persons of colour; and latterly, with the introduction of joint debates, the recognition that we as members of Parliament are equals and the realisation that South Africans are capable of sitting around a table and drafting a new democratic constitution for the Republic. It is unfortunate that our fellow Black South Africans have been excluded from this process, and the sooner they are brought into this exercise, the better. The NP Government has to be credited for and complimented on the reform process. Unfortunately the problems surrounding the NP leadership and the State leadership have superseded the country’s needs in determining priorities.

We have no quarrel with either the hon the State President or the hon leader-in-chief of the NP. We wish them both well. It is reassuring though to know that in the future we will have a capable State President in the guise of the hon leaderin-chief of the NP.

No constitution is going to be acceptable without the participation in the drafting thereof of Mr Nelson Mandela. The release of Mr Mandela is unquestionably a prerequisite to any indaba. The letter recently addressed by Mr Mandela to Dr Buthelezi gives hope and encouragement for the future. It is for our Government to grasp the opportunity that now presents itself.

This Government considers Mrs Margaret Thatcher an ally of South Africa when one talks of her standpoints regarding sanctions and disinvestment. Even latterly her statements regarding SWA-Namibia have been welcomed. Yet, when this great friend of South Africa calls for the unconditional release of Mr Mandela, the call is ignored. Members of Parliament in Europe, who are favourably disposed towards South Africa and supportive of our efforts to find peace in this region, see Mr Mandela’s release as being the key to solving the problems of South Africa. A free Mr Mandela will speak for himself, and the self-appointed spokesmen will fade into obscurity, as will the satellite committees that have appeared on the scene.

Solidarity calls upon the Government to unconditionally release Mr Nelson Mandela and other political detainees as a step towards true constitutional reform.

In the time allowed to me, I would like to address myself to the hon member for Randburg and ask him to clarify here his standpoint on the participation of members of the House of Delegates and the House of Representatives in the tricameral system. It would appear from Press reports that he is willing to go along with the views of the extra-parliamentary forces and questions our ability and integrity. I believe the extra-parliamentary forces question the legitimacy of this Government and this Parliament.

That being so, the hon member for Randburg should ask himself the question whether he should not also, like Dr Van Zyl Slabbert, have the courage of his convictions and resign from this Parliament.

As far as the CP is concerned, their policies are completely unacceptable to us. It is not only Boksburg, but many other avenues that have led us to this conclusion. However, we will give credit to the CP for having brought about action in Boksburg by having the Boksburg municipality threaten eviction on the basis of illegal occupation by Indian residents of Windmill Park. As far as Windmill Park is concerned, I want to pay tribute to the hon member for Boksburg and the hon member for Benoni for having steadfastly stood behind the residents of Windmill Park in getting what they have now achieved.

In conclusion, I want to appeal to the Ministers’ Council in the House of Assembly to restore all public resorts to province, or alternatively to allow all South Africans to share in and benefit from that which was established from funds that came from general affairs. If tourism to South Africa is to be promoted and goodwill created, then this backward step has to be rectified immediately. [Time expired.]

Mr Speaker, it is pleasant to be able to take part in the debate on this historic occasion today on which we are welcoming a new party to the House. On the other hand, I must say that it was frustrating to have to listen to the hon member for Pietersburg’s standpoint. I shall come back to the new party a little later on.

I should just like to touch on a few points with regard to the hon member for Pietersburg’s speech. He voiced the standpoint here that before they could enter an election, candidates of the NP would have to sign certain undertakings with a view to the leadership of the NP. I want to tell him in plain language on behalf of every hon member of the NP sitting in this House and every Nationalist in the whole of South Africa that we are a democratic party. The hon the leader-in-chief of the NP was elected in a democratic manner, and all NP members, including all hon members in the caucus of the present Parliament, support the democratic choice. For this reason it will do the CP no good to start making that sort of insinuation. [Interjections.]

I predict that in the September election, due to the leadership of the hon the leader-in-chief of the NP, the CP are going to be given a bigger shaking than they have had in a long time. [Interjections.] They are not only going to be given a shaking because the NP and all the other hon members in the House are looking to a new South Africa and a new way of thinking with regard to our political future, but also because the CP approaches the voters with political absurdities like these.

The hon member for Pietersburg said here today that the choice lay between a unitary state, or a citizens’ state, and a “volkstaat”. In fact, he called that state a “volkstaat” for the Afrikaner. He then went on to speak about the Afrikaner’s rights, and said that the Afrikaner had a historical right to the land in this country. I just want to show him how many fallacies there are in his standpoint. There are some hon members to my left in this House who speak Afrikaans and who, by virtue of the language which they speak, may lay just as great a claim to an Afrikaner identity. Many of them have an even greater claim than that hon member. [Interjections.]

I also want to ask him since when the White Afrikaners, of whom I am one, have had the right to say that historically speaking they have the greatest claim to the land in this country. I want to ask him what about the thousands of people—Blacks, Coloureds and Indians—who are born in South Africa every day. According to his historical evaluation of rights to land, must all those people be excluded from this citizens’ state, and is that “volkstaat” of his the only geographical area in South Africa in which people have rights?

I want to tell the hon member that the average White Afrikaner, and even the majority of people in his constituency, reject this sort of constitutional claptrap and this brand of conflict politics. If he were to tell them openly and honestly, as he has done here today, what his standpoint and that of his party is, all the voters of Pietersburg would reject it.

I shall point out to the hon member for Pietersburg, on the basis of the factual history of the Northern Transvaal, that if one chooses to go back into history, then in terms of his way of thinking, he as a White Afrikaner actually has no right whatsoever to certain parts of South Africa in that area. Long before the Whites arrived, there were indigenous people there. [Interjections.] Should we now go back into history and say that because there were Bushmen in the Cape when Jan van Riebeeck landed here, this part of the country belongs to the Bushmen? That is a ludicrous argument. Let us refrain from that foolish brand of politics.

The essence of the hon member for Pietersburg’s political standpoint is actually White supremacy. [Interjections.] He is merely attempting to conceal it in a geographic area. We want to tell this hon member, as well as the hon member for Brits, who spoke last week, that when the NP speaks about a new South Africa, we are speaking about a South Africa in which all people, regardless of the colour of their skin, culture, race or anything else, will have certain fundamental rights. [Interjections.]

That is the truth. The NP does not have all the answers regarding the constitutional rights of people. It is equally true that the Labour Party does not have all the answers to the political conflict in South Africa either. Neither do the hon members of the CP have it. The hon members of the DP themselves are also grappling with the conflict potential in South Africa. South Africa is a country with a perennial conflict potential and for this reason its constitution should not be tested against foolish, historically absurd arguments. Its policy and standpoints must be evaluated in terms of whether they are going to pursue justice in a new South Africa. That is the essence of the NP’s policy.

The hon member for Brits inquired of the hon the Minister a few days ago what we had to say about symbols of national unity. I want to tell the hon member that as sure as he is sitting there, the NP as it stands here today does not have the complete and final answer with regard to symbols of national unity in the South Africa of tomorrow. We do not have it. We shall have to work on those symbols of national unity in conjunction with all South Africans on the road ahead, because ultimately this country will have to have national symbols of which everyone can be proud.

That is not to say that I am not proud of our present flag. Of course I am proud of it. I grew up with that flag, but I have heard that some of my hon colleagues in this House are saying that the flag is not a historical part of their cultural background. I can understand that, and for this reason I can listen to what my other colleague says and he is prepared to speak to me about it. The hon member for Pietersburg’s approach to Afrikaner and White interests is creating conflict among everyone in the country.

I want to tell the hon member for Pietersburg that during my university days I was secretary of the Bantu studies association at the University of Pretoria. We sat around camp fires in camps in Natal together with professors who today are among the greatest CP supporters in South Africa, and sang the song “Nkosi Sikelel’i Africa!”.

I want to tell the hon member for Pietersburg that he would do well to go and read the words of that song, which is a national symbol to many Black people in South Africa, and he will see that it is not the song of a terrorist. It is a spiritual song which embodies a great deal of sentiment for many people in South Africa. I do not wish to comment on that because “Die Stem van Suid Afrika” arouses certain emotions in me as I stand here and—let me say this openly and frankly—it makes me feel good and it gives me goose-flesh.

However, I am not alone in South Africa. My White Afrikaner people are not alone in South Africa. We who are White, are not alone, and for this reason we have a long path to tread, also with regard to the issue of symbols.

The hon member for Pietersburg must know this. The NP is going to enter this election. We do not intend to tell our people a pack of lies. We shall keep our people fully informed with regard to the realities of South Africa.

The hon member spoke about peoples. I find this interesting—let me ask him this question: Does a Zulu man who lives in Johannesburg belong to the Zulu people? [Interjections.] The hon member says that a Zulu in Johannesburg belongs to the Zulu people. The same applies to a Xhosa man, not so?

On the one hand the hon member says that in his view a Zulu and a Xhosa in Johannesburg are a Zulu and a Xhosa, and that they should therefore be linked politically to the Transkei and KwaZulu. Then that hon member’s colleague from Brits comes along and says that there is a Black majority. One of them talks about a people, and the other one talks about a Black majority. When it suits him, he says that Blacks belong to a particular people and that they must only receive political rights as fellow-citizens.

When the opposite suits him, he says that it is a Black majority.

Let me tell him that everyone in this country, the man in Johannesburg, the Zulu, the Xhosa, the Tswana, and the Afrikaner in Pietersburg, are first and foremost South Africans.

Secondly, no matter how proud one feels of one’s national or cultural identity, one also has rights as a South African. One cannot take those rights away from people in any other manner than by bloody violence. If this is the path which the CP wishes to tread and which it will of necessity tread, then we want to tell them that we shall tackle them on this point at the ballot box. [Interjections.]

When I listen to the wild emotions of the privileged Whites in South Africa under the leadership of the CP, I ask myself how wild the emotions of underprivileged people of other colour groups in this country must be. The CP should just think about that for a while. If they think that their own wild emotions represent a political means to enable them to win through, they must ask themselves how the other people view their own wild emotions regarding injustice.

They talk about the rights of the Whites as if the Whites should obtain even more rights. It is a political lie that the Whites in South Africa should obtain more rights. Historically, we as a White community have all received rights and privileges over a period of many years in terms of the laws and realities of South Africa, and our continued existence is going to depend on whether we are going to build a South Africa in which everyone else may also obtain rights and privileges and in which everyone else may also feel that they have something to lose. As long as we maintain the present situation in South Africa, in which the vast majority of people have nothing to lose—no political rights and very few other rights—whereas they are encumbered by a great many disadvantages, we as Whites will have problems in this country. Our greatest guarantee lies in our giving rights to other people, and for this reason I am proud to belong to a party which intends to do precisely that.

The hon members of the CP talk about power as if power were something which one could entrench in a constitution, whereafter a man would sit in an office and lord it over everyone and dictate to everyone what they must do and when they must do it. I want to tell the hon member for Pietersburg that the only real power is that power which is vested in a system, and the only system which can work is a system which entails justice for all.

Real power lies in a system, a political system, in which every individual, group, region and everyone else feels that they have rights. Real power lies in a system in which people feel there are no injustices and discrimination. Real power lies in a South Africa in which everyone should feel that they have rights to land, a South Africa in which we shall also have to look at the historical injustices with regard to land—the hon member for Bethelsdorp made a very good speech on this subject a few days ago—and we shall have to rectify some of those matters. [Interjections.] If we do not do this, then I predict that we are going to be confronted by more and more tension, which is unnecessary since it is not in the spirit of the NP’s standpoint.

If everyone around one is acting violently, and tensions and unrest are breaking loose around one, there is no future for the White man in this country. We in South Africa are faced with a potential for revolution—a smouldering revolution—and with people who want nothing to do with a peaceful solution. That is why we in the NP say that we as South Africans, together with our hon colleagues of the LP and together with our hon colleagues of the DP in this House—we are going to give them a good hiding in the election—are going to work on a South Africa in which we know that we can attain peace and tranquility.

There are always individuals in every society who feel called upon to mislead a people. [Interjections.] There are always such individuals. If the CP wishes to fulfil that calling to mislead the Whites with a lack of knowledge, we shall place those people back on the right track. The CP preys on the fears and anxieties of the White voter. [Interjections.] We in the NP are educating our people to bring out the finest in people. We also practice various sorts of religions and every one of those religions requires of us that only the finest in every person should come to the fore.

That is why we are educating our people. We do not intend to give them a pasting, and I want to tell the hon member for Pietersburg that if one is blinded by hate, one should rather not tell other people what one sees.

Hon members of the CP are working politically with the NP’s rejects. [Interjections.] Everything which the NP has been unable to make work in absolute terms, such as a policy for every “volkstaat”, which we have seen cannot work absolutely—a reject—they are taking over. [Interjections.]

As for economic discrimination—we told ourselves that this could no longer work—they are taking this over and using it in situations such as the one in Boksburg. They are fighting with us about what is happening in other places in South Africa. The question, however, relates to where one is headed. We in the NP are moving away from injustice and discrimination in respect of all these matters. We are moving towards a country in which the best in every person may come to the fore.

I have already said on a previous occasion that a man and a people who cannot shift their feet, will most certainly lose their balance. If one is standing with one’s foot on a foundation of justice, one’s balance is assured. The CP must know that they will never be able to get away with racist cries in the election that lies ahead. We shall dog them with the facts, the realities and the sensible plan which the NP, together with our other colleagues, is trying to establish in practice in the interests of Whites, Blacks, Asians and everyone else, because we love our country and we are working towards a new South Africa.

Mr Speaker, allow me to come back to the Budget. If ever this country was presented with a budget which has imposed a heavy burden on the man in the street, then it is this one presented to us by the hon the Minister of Finance.

No thought has been given to the struggling masses who are forever battling to make ends meet, yet this Government, which the hon the Minister represents, has the audacity to indicate that it is doing its utmost to protect the consumer. We wonder which consumer they are trying to satisfy: the rich or the poor. Manufacturers, businessmen, building societies and others are exploiting every conceivable means to increase their prices and interest rates, and yet the Government has never stepped in by saying: “So far and no further”.

Bond rates have increased as well and this hits the man of colour the hardest. Because of group areas proclamations, he and his family are forcibly removed to areas where they are forced to take loans from financial institutions in order to purchase their homes. These increases in bond rates pose the question when he will become owner of that property.

One of the principles of my party, the LP of South Africa, is that the rights of the individual are paramount and that the State exists to serve the individual. However, with this Nationalist Government, the principle is rather that the State enforces its will and policy, be it economically, socially or otherwise, on the individual. If the individual expresses dissatisfaction he is faced with detention.

So long as separateness still remains on the Statute Book so long will we remain the outcasts of this world. Apartheid has cost and is still costing us dearly, yet this Government is adamant not to remove every scrap of discrimination. To prove this point I pose the question whether it was not the hon the Minister of Finance who said during this year’s mini-budget debate that the only means of the redistribution of wealth was through separate development. The NP keeps pointing an accusing finger at the CP and saying: “There sit the verkrampte Afrikaners,” yet one—I do not like saying this—must admire the CP, for they are carrying out the NP’s policy to the hilt.

Why does the NP not accept the challenges of the CP who have repeatedly said, as we all have been saying, that they should remove the Group Areas Act, the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act and the Race Classification Acts. Although we have no love for them, the CP is at least honest whilst the NP, as far as we are concerned, is dishonest.

When the hon the present State President, Mr P W Botha, took over the reins as Prime Minister in 1978, he promised that he would clean up the administration of the departments of State and reduce the number of Ministries and departments.

What do we find today? State departments including Ministers have trebled, more Deputy Ministers have been appointed and, should the NP remain in power, we might find Assistant Deputy Ministers being appointed. We were also told that corruption, fraud, dishonesty and theft would be brought to an end. However, what we hear and see today is that these evils have grown at an enormous rate. Here I wish to quote from the March 1989 issue of Reality:

There has been overspending in subsidised motor transport, and accidents and bungling have increased to an amount of no less than R70 million. All this has been borne by the taxpayer. It is not simply that the wealthy have become wealthier; they have also become the most dishonest persons whilst the man in the street, who at times does not even receive a living wage, has become poorer and destitute.

We look at the edifices of apartheid—the independent casino states—where we the taxpayers are paying for the luxurious living of presidents and ministers. One of these presidents receives a combined income far beyond that of the hon the State President.

Our aged and disabled are denied further increases because our money—an amount of not less than R50 million—had to wasted on an airport at Bisho for use of phantom international flights. Is it not time that less was spent on the independent states and homelands, so that more money can be available for the South African economy? All this waste including the corruption, fraud and squandering of our taxpayers’ money is but to uphold the pillars of apartheid.

This Government would rather give increases to those who are not in need than to the worst sufferers—the pensioners, the unemployed, the poor and those living in destitution.

Perhaps it is that the NP has been too long in power and has become blind to the needs of the suffering. With all these sanctions and boycotts upon us has the time not arrived for this Government, instead of depending so much on imported goods, to encourage growth by substituting our own goods which can provide jobs for its people and so create a stronger purchasing power and stability.

Recently it was said by a member of the NP that we the Coloured people should forget the past and stop harping on apartheid, but be more realistic and see and appreciate the good that has been done for us. We should also help by working towards the future and the reform process.

Firstly, we ask the NP what reform they are speaking about because we hear so much about it, yet the stench of apartheid is still there. Money can so easily be found to erect monuments to the Voortrekkers, their wives and children as well as oxen and wagons. However, there is no monument for the people of colour who trekked with them, fought with them and died alongside them. Yet there is one monument which we still see today; the monument of bitter memories—the Group Areas Act.

This country’s political position has deteriorated and the situation become worse when political factors complicate matters and when there has been an internal loss of economic control. Today we are paying the price for the narrow-minded politics of the NP. No tricameral or quadricameral system will solve South Africa’s problems. It will only aggravate the situation. The LP’s proposed geographical federal system is the only solution for South Africa.

Mr Speaker, it is pleasing indeed that events have turned out in such a way that I have this early opportunity to address this House on behalf of the DP. I do so with great pride and with high hopes. Ours is a party with a clear vision; a vision of one great South Africa of 37 million—a nation united by common goals and not divided by racist laws; a nation built on the reality of freedom whose people take charge of their own lives, seek their own paths to personal progress and together build a society which honours the highest human value, namely the dignity of the individual person; a nation governed by all its people for all its people; in a word, a democratic nation.

These are our aims. This is our mission. We shall work creatively for these values and we shall fight against all parties and groups which oppose them. Racial discrimination is a denial of these aims and so is the employment of violence as a political weapon. This leads us to reject both the right and the left.

*Let this be known to everyone. Our party is patriotic to the core. Our patriotism is inclusive. It is for everyone. We shall fight for the welfare for all our citizens, and this is only attainable in terms of the democratic principles to which I have just referred. Our love for our fatherland does not exclude anyone. It is not limited by any prejudice. It is there that we differ from the narrow sectionalist preoccupation with groups which we heard from those benches this afternoon, and which we have often heard from the Government in the past.

Speaking about that, it is appropriate that I should make brief reference today to a few remarks which were made by the hon the Leader of the NP before the Easter recess, when he made certain personal remarks about me. The hon leader wanted primarily to make fun of my business background, and he made bold to say that I had ostensibly looked at the balance sheet of the PFP and had decided to liquidate it. He could not be more wrong. That is precisely what did not happen. [Interjections.] Since the hon leader wished to be so funny, he would have done well to look into my history as a company chairman. He would have seen that there were mergers, restructurings, takeovers and extensions, but never a liquidation. Neither did this happen during the last week. What took place was a merger, a restructuring and an extension. I issue a friendly warning to the hon leader, however, that he will shortly gain experience of the power of the new party that has now come into existence. [Interjections.] He will yet learn what he should have understood in the first place, namely that there is a world of difference between a liquidation and a vital agreement between merging forces. [Interjections.] I shall leave the hon the leader’s remarks at that, but I shall continue to talk about the DP.

This is a party with a clearly delineated vision of the South Africa that will emerge after the collapse of apartheid. It is the only kind of South Africa that will be able to comply with the demands of the future. The resolutions of the party are known to hon members. They may be conveyed in a few words, namely equal rights, human dignity and freedom, the rule of law, a charter of human rights, a federal system, the rejection of violence as a political weapon and of race as a foundation—true democracy, therefore.

As I have already said, these standpoints are well known. It is not only the Democrats who support these things. They are often contained in the advice of the Government’s expert advisers, but it does not have the courage to implement them. One need only look, for example, at the Marais Report of the HSRC published with regard to inter-group relations in 1985, which is now gathering dust.

Particular reference may be made to the Law Commission’s working document which was published a few weeks ago. These weighty pieces of evidence spell it out. There will be no peace and no end to the conflict in our country until we do the same democratic things that are done in other democracies, including our countries of origin and other countries in the world which we often say we admire and respect.

Without true democracy our only prospect is one of perpetual oppression by force of arms such as we are experiencing now. This will be accompanied by a drawn out conflict and creeping poverty. The only way to restore the creditworthiness Of our country, as the hon the Minister of Finance says he wishes to do, and the only way to return to prosperity and progress, is to apply democratic government in our country. Neither is the answer to our country’s serious economic problems primarily a financial or an economic one. The answer lies in the political sphere. Our economy is basically strong enough, but its ailments emanate from the Government’s continued application of an undemocratic and thus unacceptable policy.

My advice to the hon the Minister of Finance—with reference to this Budget as well—would be to abolish apartheid and to implement democracy. Then he will create an opportunity for the economy to flourish; then we shall truly be able to do better than 3%.

†Mr Speaker, we Democrats are coming into being as an opposition party though we have every intention of gaining power. For as long as we are in opposition hon members can be sure that we will be a loyal and constructive opposition. I say to the hon the State President and the hon leader of the NP and to all those in Government that everything they do which takes us a step nearer to democracy, which takes a step nearer to universal human dignity, will receive our support.

However, everything which is done by the Government to further its own sectional interests, anything which divides the people of South Africa or impoverishes them, or further restricts their rights and freedom even below the low level to which we have already sunk, or which drives us further from the world community, all such acts will be relentlessly fought by the DP.

Let it be known that the DP fights corruption and that it does not regard corruption as confined only to financial matters. To discriminate against any citizen is corrupt; racism itself is the most corrupt of all.

*The well-being which we are pursuing for South Africa, also includes economic welfare in particular. It is in the economic sphere that we have fared so badly during the present decade. I offer this assurance on the basis of all my experience in the business life of our country. The wealth of a country does not consist of the money in the banks. It does not even consist of the ores which lie under the ground.

The wealth of a country consists of the efforts, the productivity and the creative labour of the people. The productivity of the people depends on their motivation and this, in turn, depends on every worker’s knowledge that he or she is respected as a person; that he or she is being treated fairly and that every door is open for his or her further advancement. Economic welfare is very closely linked to a just, democratic system of government.

†The saddest feature of all in the hon the Minister’s Budget Speech and presentation is where he says that the 3% is not really as much as we need but it is better than we did the year before, and it is all we can hope for for the present. He admits that he cannot do more.

Everybody knows that if South Africa is to have the jobs that it has to have, South Africa needs 5% and not 3%. Here is one party which is unwilling to settle for less than the 5% we need. Too much of our future is at stake.

I understand the hon the Minister’s sense of frustration. He knows that he and his very capable officials are prevented from performing adequately by the near-sighted and narrow-minded policies which his colleagues force upon him.

In particular I congratulate him on the following statement in his speech (Hansard, 15 March 1989, col 2847):

Correct economic measures are of course necessary. We could do with a lot of them but, frankly, it would surprise me if correct economic measures by themselves could do very much for our creditworthiness. What everybody will be interested in is the political progress that the hon Minister correctly says is needed, about which we hear so much, and of which we see so little.

We saw recently that Mrs Thatcher, surely the very best friend South Africa has among world leaders, has said that the bottom line is of course universal franchise. She added that it was not necessarily in a unitary state. That is a perfectly fair addition. One would have thought that the lifting of the emergency, now three years and some months old, and the cessation of detentions without trial, would be essential for political progress the hon the Minister talks about, and, of course, the hardy annual, the release of Nelson Mandela. The Government must surely tell the House by now whether it is prepared to do these things or not. It must make up its mind sooner or later. It must get off the fence on which it is so uncomfortably perched.

The reason why the hon the Minister cannot offer the country growth at more than 3% is that the politics of his Government are wrongheaded and unjust. The fact is that whether the NP likes it or not, South Africa must have sustained growth at 5%, not 3%. That necessary growth rate is only attainable by very far-reaching change in present political policies. That is the message which the DP brings to the economic scene in South Africa.

One more thought: This is not a party of the right or the left. The right in South Africa consists of those parties which maintain White domination over the majority in this country, by hook or by crook. Whatever the theories may be about ultimate separate states, which, as the hon member for Innesdal rightly said, is a discarded policy of the NP which the CP now follows, whatever the miasma may be into which the gentlemen in the NP think they are leading us now with their hopelessly ambiguous presentations of policy, the right in practice maintains White minority domination over the majority in South Africa and that can never be a permanent policy for this country and it can never lead South Africa to salvation. Apart from its immorality, it is utterly unfeasible. It offers no protection to White people; on the contrary, it results in the White people being steadily painted further and further into a tighter and tighter corner, targets for revolution and aggression with no hope of escape.

Neither are we disposed to have much sympathy with the left in South Africa. The left in general favours socialism and we are a free enterprise party looking for rapid growth through free market policy. The left, or much of it, stands for the employment of violence as a political aim. I have said before and I say it again: We reject this entirely. A good deal of the left pins its hopes upon sanctions and disinvestment, policies which can only slow down progress in South Africa and if one slows down economic progress one also slows down the likelihood of political advance. Sanctions is a policy which punishes the poor and achieves nothing in terms of their aims.

My appeal to hon members is for them to look at all South Africa instead of looking into their own backyards and they will see that the parties of the right sit here. The parties of the left are outside this House. However, they should not be. Their exclusion from the political process lies at the root of much of the chronic conflict that bedevils our peace and productivity. That is where the left lies, this is where the right lies. Ours is the party of the moderate liberal centre.

Mr Speaker, permit me in the few minutes at my disposal to congratulate the hon the leader of the Democratic Party on the powerful message he delivered today. It was pleasing to see that everyone was listening to what he had to say. Permit me also, however, to come back to the hon member for Brits, who launched a shameless attack on the NP last week. He really made me sit up, but disappointed me greatly afterwards. I was actually disappointed that instead of resuming his seat, he did not cross the floor at that stage to join the House of Representatives, because what he said was what the House of Representatives has been saying all these years.

Society is a vehicle for earthly heroism. It is man’s burning desire to reach a point at some stage where he too matters. What man truly fears is not really extinction, but in fact extinction by inanities. That is why it is tragic that once again an election which will exclude the majority of South Africans has been announced.

I want to put this question. How many mandates does the NP want before one can initiate sincere peace initiatives within the boundaries of South Africa? As long as we have to contend with political terrorists who shout out slogans that the economy is poor as a result of power-sharing, there will be no hope for any of us in South Africa.

I appeal to the NP today, when they go to the electorate, to convey a true message to them in order, to get the right mandate this time. The right mandate is based simply on the message that apartheid is finally dead. Tell the electorate that there will never be another Boksburg. Tell them that there will never be another Carletonville. The easiest way in which to do that is to abolish all these unholy Acts that hurt our people so. Tell the electorate we are no longer going to permit signs on beaches. Tell them the new South Africa does not make provision for what already exists. There will be no point in coming back afterwards to berate the CP for implementing the Act. The best thing is to abolish the Act, to get rid of it, and then we can all start building the true South Africa, which is so necessary in this country of ours.

I congratulate the hon member for Innesdal, because he has the courage of his convictions to stand up here in the Chamber of Parliament to tell the rest of South Africa what he is going to tell his voters. I hope there are more people with that kind of courage and drive, who will come forward to spell out the truth to their voters in this long election campaign that lies ahead. We can no longer permit the majority of the people in this country to be left without any political say. It has been said here that this is not an election Budget, but the hon the Minister will have to give the voters something, otherwise I am afraid that this will be the last Budget introduced by the hon the Minister in this House.

Mr Speaker, we listened to the hon member Dr De Beer this afternoon who spoke on behalf of the new opposition party that came into being over the weekend. We congratulate the hon member, because apparently he won the toss to talk this afternoon. Last night one of his fellow leaders won the toss. We find it interesting that the hon member said that although they are an opposition party, they intend to take power in the country. The hon member must tell us now—because the election will probably take place in these six months in which the troika will be in charge in his party—that if we should be unfortunate and his party takes power, they will also draw lots for the position of State President. [Interjections.]

†In passing, it is relevant to refer to the obituary of the PFP that was delivered on Friday by the hon member for Port Elizabeth Central. In his attempt to resuscitate old obsolete Afrikaans-English animosities and to blame the NP for an imagined under-representation of English speakers in Government, he illustrated one of the main reasons why the PFP died such an ignoble death, which is its futile attempts to keep old worn-out issues alive. As it is, the NP today has more English-speaking members than the so-called traditional English parties in the House of Assembly. Even if most of them are still relatively junior members, the hon member can rest assured that they will take up their rightful senior positions in due course without his help.

*Whatever the case may be, I should like to express my congratulations on the launching of the new party. My problem is just that I do not know who to congratulate. It is clear that we cannot congratulate the members of the former PFP, because it is certain that the birth of this new party is no reason for festivity as far as those members are concerned. On the contrary, it is much more like a gesture of despair.

The establishment of this new party proves to me that if we in the NP made any mistake it was in completely underestimating the depth of the despair that surrounded the PFP after the 1987 election. Where has one ever seen a 30-year-old party with an established organisation, traditional support at the polls and regular donors, throwing its whole organisation overboard for the sake of two unproved splinter parties and a shadowy so-called fourth force? We cannot congratulate the IP either, because to them the establishment of this party is a marriage of convenience. They and the NDM of the hon member for Randburg were little more than convenient vehicles in which these two leaders went on their ego trips.

As the moment of truth approached in the form of an election, those parties must have realised that the honeymoon was over and that they had to find a protector. It was their good fortune that they focussed on a despairing parliamentary party and that they could cook up a new party. This encompasses the crucial problem of the new political party to the left of the NP. That is why no one is really happy about the establishment of this new party.

The new party is not a fundamentally organic unit, but an artificial combination which means different things to different groups. To the old Progressives, it is nothing but a new mask to hide behind while they proclaim the same old unacceptable concepts. Involuntarily one thinks of the old bar parrot who, when he ended up in church said, “New barman, same old crowd.”

For the IP and the NDM this new party is a Trojan horse. The one wants to use it to get Dennis Worrall back in Parliament, and the other wants to give its little UDF friends a say in the country’s politics. In the case of the highly esteemed fourth force, which would not have been seen dead in the company of the old Progs, this new party gives them the semblance of political decency.

The fact remains that this new party is new only in name. Despite all the show of the founding congress, the DP has not attracted a single new element; not a single element which had not raised that same despairing cry as early as 1987. The Progs, Dr Worrall and the hon member for Randburg, the so-called members of the fourth force, were all there. Even the colours of the new party are a copy of those of the CP. The colours of both those parties are mere pale reproductions of the NP’s colours.

To tell the truth, these groups which have united in the Democratic Party, were even better off during the 1987 election in two respects. At that stage Dr Worrall and the hon member for Randburg were still in a partnership, without any sign of their later bitter enmity. In addition they could still rely on the alliance of the former NRP, which no longer exists today.

Even the old NP deserters, who have suddenly obtained the status of a fourth force, had not been Nationalists for some time in 1987. Jannie Momberg, Sampie Terreblanche, Louis Luyt, to mention only a few, are all old trouble-makers. It is clear that they have not abandoned their publicity-seeking at all. In this respect we think of the former leader of the PFP, Dr Van Zyl Slabbert. There were resounding announcements that he would be an adviser to the new party. Yet there was no sign of his presence at this founding congress. [Interjections.]

The new grand leader whose name hon members are shouting out at me from the DP’s ranks, Dr Wimpie de Klerk, showed the signs we have come to know so well among the fourth force within 24 hours after the establishment of the new party. He became an embarrassment to the party he has embraced through his statements to newspapers.

This DP adviser said in the Sunday Tribune: “Nats ‘set for considerable election win’.” How many seats does he give the DP in this election? Twenty-three, just as many as those of the CP. This is the adviser who has embraced that party. [Interjections.]

The one common characteristic of this so-called fourth force, these so-called dissatisfied Nationalists, is that it is much better to have them against one than for one, because they are merely an embarrassment to the party that has their so-called support.

It is only when one judges this new party according to three essential criteria that one realises what a great marketing ploy the whole affair is. After all, there are three things in terms of which every political party can be judged and measured, viz its principles as contained in its constitution, its policy and its leadership.

Let us take a look at this new party. Yesterday’s Sunday Times says that the DP’s draft constitution was not discussed at the party’s founding congress. Apparently this will be done by a special congress once it has been discussed by the branches, and in all reality it will be done only after the election. Can one imagine that a political party can boldly tell the electorate a few months before an election that they have no principles as yet?

The result of this is that we were regaled to large full-page advertisements of this new party’s so-called principles yesterday. The principles they mention here, viz representative government for everyone in South Africa, an independent judiciary and sovereignty of the law, the maintenance of law, order and security, an economic system that promotes private initiative, and so on, are a lot of absolutely meaningless generalisations with which I, as a lifelong Nationalist, can associate myself just as easily as anyone else in this House.

Let us take a look at their policy. The new party is even more secretive about their policy. Their own newspaper, the Cape Times, said the following about their first policy release: “Grumbles at DP policy release”. According to the Cape Times, one supporter said the document made them feel they were entering the party blindfold. In fact, even before the party was established, there were serious policy differences between one of their three leaders and one of their members in the House of Delegates about the participation of this new party in the elections of the Houses of Delegates and Representatives.

We are on the eve of an election, which is going to be held in a few months. That party, which is being established with all the razzmatazz in the world, cannot even tell the supporters it is recruiting with these advertisements whether it is going to have candidates for all the Houses in Parliament or for only one.

The third criterion is leadership. Surely the quality of a political party’s leadership is a test for its quality. What can one say about a party that will be participating in an election before the end of this year and which tells its supporters in advance that they will appoint a leader only in six months’ time? Apart from the obvious risk of division, surely that is the best indication that, certainly as far as this next election is concerned, that party is not fighting for a majority in any House, let alone the electoral college.

If this new party fails in every sphere—those of principles, policy and leadership—this whole so-called founding becomes a non-event.

No wonder the whole of the South African Press is sceptical about this new party. One need only look at the headlines in the newspapers that usually support those parties. Let me quote one day’s newspaper headlines: “Grumbles at DP policy release”; “PFP likely to dissolve with much dissension”; “Beneath the bonhomie, who will lead the DP?”; “Progs determined not to give up their principles”; and “DP opponents say merger will be fragile”. Those are only one day’s headlines.

†When all is said and done, this party is as old as yesterday’s news. If one removes the tinsel and the gift-wrapping, one will find the same old shop-soiled demonstration model that has been standing in the display window for years. It is the same worn-out credo, the same old crowd and even the same old cronies. The credo—that of a nonracial society in a multiracial community—is as old and as untenable as the dreams of Drs Philip and Van der Kemp almost 200 years ago and is still as impractical today. The crowd is just the same as those who formed the much-vaunted turbocharged Indaba Alliance in 1987. Even their overall support according to opinion polls shows that the same voters have simply reallocated their respective preferences. The cronies remain the same—the same extra-party restless spirits we had ranged against us in 1987.

They include those who love to pontificate from their lofty heights but who in the words of Prof Sampie Terreblanche in 1987 confine their contribution to a welter of ideas without ever coming down to the nitty-gritty of everyday politics. They also include those extra-parliamentary organisations like Idasa, the UDF, the End Conscription Campaign, the Black Sash and all the other organisations which will not soil their hands by entering establishment organisations.

This new party is all presentation and no substance and in the coming election the voters of South Africa will simply not be fooled.

Mr Chairman, first of all I want to wish the Muslim community of South Africa—this being their sacred month of Ramadan—well over this sacred period. With their rejuvenation they will be able perhaps to face the challenges that confront us every day.

Secondly, I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the new Democratic Party, notwithstanding the statements made by the last speaker. I look at South Africa—as stated by the hon leader of the Democratic Party—as one South Africa with one boundary and one nation.

In that spirit I want to say that if in any part of the world at a particular juncture in the history of a country one has individuals, communities or political movements that decide that perhaps the direction in which their country is moving is not the correct one but that the correct one would be unification for the betterment of the country, then such an organisation must be given the respectability it requires.

It is a fact that political parties get together, realising the importance of a political movement, even more so due to our complex situation. With this unification I am sure the new Democratic Party will play an important role in charting a new course for South Africa. I want to compliment and congratulate their leader, the hon nominated member Dr Zach de Beer, and wish him well. His statements, when he talked about a great South Africa with a new vision, gave me new hope. Above all, no person under the sun has the right to disrespect any person. After all, in the eyes of God we are all his children. [Interjections.] If that policy is adopted it is a policy that we must respect. At the same time it is the responsibility of community leaders and political parties, together with any organisation under the sun, to see to it that there is that unification and that there is no polarisation within our communities.

South Africa is equally unpopular throughout the world, but let us prove to the world and the international community that we have now realised that all of us, notwithstanding our colour, caste or creed, are travelling on the same road in order to find the South Africa we all want. Therefore I utter these words in the period of Ramadan and I am quite sure this message will go far and wide and that we will be able to establish what we are searching for.

In regard to the economic factor in South Africa, we have an internationally organised onslaught on this country. It is known and it must be taken into consideration. The actual financial budget has become a reality. It has been dissected by all groups. It has been praised in certain quarters and condemned in others. However, a budget that has been submitted before Parliament, constitutes an analytical exposure of the financial situation for the present, and perhaps even for the future.

The two important pillars of human society are democracy and economics. They remain inseparable in the pursuance not only of a well-balanced society but of a well-balanced world as a whole.

South Africa, although being a country which happens to be of topical interest within the international community and despite all its resources, still requires the harnessing of all the race groups. In this instance, as a starting point, within a short period the presence of the House of Representatives and the House of Delegates highlighted the hidden inadequacies, the long-suffering and the impoverishment, more so of the non-White communities. Much of this burden of inadequacies rests on the single pillar of the Ministry of Finance. I am sure that our young and agile hon Minister of Finance, now more than ever before, appreciates the gap that exists between the various race groups. The task to narrow it overnight is indeed beyond the scope of any Government. However, every effort to expedite the narrowing of this objectionable gap which causes so much agony should be a matter of priority.

Foisted upon us today were political ideologies and much has also been spoken about the SWA/Namibia issue. I think the world today appreciates the stand South Africa has taken, not only with regard to the independence of SWA, but also with regard to peace and stability in that region. Even the recent Swapo incursions and Swapo’s indiscipline regarding the peace agreement bring us to one point, namely that the greatest enemy man has to fight is not a certain nation but war itself. These unfortunate events require huge financial injections at the expense of the already struggling territory and very much more of South Africa.

Some of the characteristics in these historical moments are the open-mindedness and realisation of world leaders on South Africa’s problems. Mrs Margaret Thatcher featured prominently in her crusade for peace, justice and freedom in South Africa. In Malawi she said that Black South Africans must be allowed to play their part in politics and Government. Other leaders have also made statements on the position of South Africa. At some stage, I must say, these all appear to be noble and inarguable comments but certain countries should also look over their own shoulders at the problems that exist within their own countries.

I want to commend the hon member for Yeoville here this afternoon for his quoting of the hospital services as an example. This is an issue which is very close to me, as is the welfare of people as a whole and especially of the silent masses of any country.

When the hon member quoted hospital services as an example he stated that some 82% of the total population of this country need some form of health assistance and that 18% are privileged and thus covered by medical aid etc. In this country we have developing areas and in some instances up to 20% of the rates revenue goes towards the upkeep of the clinics. The vast majority of our people in this country will proceed to wherever they can receive medical attention, and in some cases 50% of the patients do not fall within the group which certain services are being established for.

I could not agree more with the hon member for Yeoville when he says that of the R63,5 million, more than R24,5 million is being spent on social services and not on a non-discriminatory basis. Any further fragmentation of health services is not going to help the preservation of the infrastructures of health services in any way.

With the announcement of the possible forthcoming election and our participation therein, we are faced with certain stark realities as to what extent we have justified participation. Understandably, various discriminatory Acts have been repealed, but my appeal to the hon the Minister of Finance is that just as Germany immediately after the war concentrated on development, so the development of the non-White community in this country in terms of housing, education, welfare, work opportunities and the preservation of culture is a priority which, if attended to, will lead us to a better quality of life which in turn will immediately remove the obstacles of communication. Funds have to be budgeted for according to these requirements.

One aspect of society which strikes me is the question of the aged. Provision for the aged should be looked upon as the responsibility of an authority which is not profit-oriented, but will genuinely serve the needs of the aged.

Coming from the Natal Province, I would like to raise a further important point which I always highlight. Natal has been a focal point for many years and I want to reiterate my concern for the future development of the Tugela Basin because of the limited lifespan of the coal industries in Northern Natal. As the Tugela Basin falls within this region from the point of view of development, the harnessing of the labour force, resources, water and other facilities together with the available mineral resources and the fact that it is within reach of the important harbour of Richards Bay will contribute immensely towards productivity and this province could be self-reliant in many respects.

In conclusion I want to quote these words: “He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone”. Having said this, tremendous misgiving has been expressed by South Africans in all walks of life. Political leaders, the business sector and journalists across the political spectrum record a marked deterioration in ethical standards in our society. Sordid incidents of bribery and corruption and allegations of a lack of integrity reach into the highest circles. The fear of most people is whether the shocks revealed so far are merely the tip of a squalid iceberg. These are important factors and we as South Africans must take the complex situation which we are faced with into consideration. At leadership and representative level there is a need and desire for absolute ethical principles. Therefore, every one of us must make a positive and honest contribution to see to it that the ultimate of one South Africa and one nation within one boundary and the prosperity which we require is achieved in the not too distant future.

Mr Chairman, it is always a pleasure for me to follow the last speaker from North Coast who always makes a very constructive speech.

At the outset I wish to refer to the DP who are here today in their first attendance as such. I must say that I wish them well. I have noted the remarks of the parliamentary leader of the party when he talks about the vision for the future. One accepts the dedication of that call.

There are just a couple of points I would like to put to that party and its leader. I would like to suggest to them that they give very serious consideration to giving a clear indication as to how they intend to achieve this new vision. May I ask them how they will deal with the structures that have been put in place over the past 40 years by the Government? How will they approach this challenge in practical terms? When and how will they start? I think that the future success of this party is going to lie in providing the answer that must be given to these questions in the next election. It is on those aspects that the party will be judged in the election.

The curtain is falling now on the first Parliament of the tricameral system. I think that it is opportune to make certain observations. By and large one accepts the fact that the tricameral system in the first phase of its existence has been a success. As one who voted yes in the referendum I have no hesitation in saying that I am pleased that I did so.

Much has been learnt from the contributions that have been made. Having observed very closely the contributions made by those public representatives of the Houses of Delegates and Representatives one is amazed at the experience that they have gained. I believe it is much to their credit that their whole approach to the parliamentary system has matured to the degree that it has. However, I want to say that there is one aspect that worries me in this regard. There is a tendency towards confrontation politics which has crept into the system. I accept that mistakes have been made, but I would say that I am optimistic about the future, particularly bearing in mind that one ought to be moving towards creating or expanding this present structure so that it is representative of all population groups in the country.

I would like to refer to the situation in South West Africa. At the outset I want to make certain observations, because it is a cause for concern that so important an issue should have found its way into the party political arena, as was revealed in last week’s debate. One can only hope that a more cohesive political approach will emerge from all sides of this Parliament which will strengthen the hands of those who are entrusted with the responsibility of finding a solution to so delicate a matter. I wish to make it clear that I support the initiatives that have been taken in regard to the granting of independence to the territory. The South West Africa issue has been a thorn in South Africa’s side for many years and the stage had been reached where it needed to be resolved expeditiously. One cannot get away from the fact that South Africa’s decision to support Resolution 435 some 10 years ago committed the Government of this country irrevocably to work towards the granting of independence.

This, as I see it, is the stage we have reached today, the only debatable issue being the manner in which the accord is implemented. I think it is fair to state that South Africa is now facing one of its greatest international tests of all time where the future international credibility of the country is at stake. This is why we must do all in our power to ensure that we are not provoked into taking decisions which could be seen by our Western friends as an attempt to renege on Resolution 435. At this stage one can only commend the actions of Mrs Thatcher and the responsible manner in which she has always looked upon this country in regard to the problams that confront us.

While the provocation of the past few days has been immense due to Swapo’s complete disregard for basic morality, the hon the Minister of Foreign Affairs deserves to be complimented on his efforts to bring the issue back on track. [Interjections.] There is little doubt that Swapo’s recent irresponsible incursion into South West Africa has vindicated South Africa’s actions in the past in defending the country from Swapo insurgents. The price has been high but the outside world will now have a better appreciation as to why South Africa saw fit to go so far as to move into Angola to prevent incursions of this nature. Swapo has now shown its true colours for all to see and there can be no doubt that the Security Council’s actions have been questionable during the past week as a result of its apparent reluctance openly to condemn Swapo’s actions, and it is essential that members of the Untag peace-keeping force be closely monitored in order to ensure that they are not in any way seen to be partisan or sympathetic to any particular political group.

I wish to turn my attention briefly to the question of the toll road at Mooi River. I have repeatedly expressed my opposition to the toll at Mooi River, particularly in regard to the tolling of a road that has been in use for some 20 years. I want to say to the hon the Minister and to the hon the Deputy Minister that they should not underestimate the reaction of the people in the Natal Midlands to the imposition of a toll on a section which they justifiably feel they have a right to use as in the past.

Furthermore, let me point out that the present toll fee is totally unacceptable at its present level. I feel that we have two choices in this matter: Firstly, to do away with the toll as such, and secondly, to grant concessions to motorists living within a specific radius of Mooi River. I call upon the hon the Minister to renegotiate the agreement with Tolcon because there is no doubt that the present agreement is unduly favourable to the concessionaires and, in its present form it is not acceptable to the surrounding public.

I want to point out that the manner in which the whole matter has been handled reeks of inefficiency and is a perfect example of how a public relations exercise should not be conducted. I must warn too that the resistance to the toll will persist and will not disappear until such time as those who are directly affected are afforded an opportunity of expressing their views on a matter about which they feel so strongly.

Finally, may I say that I support the principle of toll roads but I support them only in the context of tolling new roads and not existing roads. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, right at the outset I would like to take this opportunity to wish my hon Muslim colleagues well over the Fast.

It was tragic listening to the hon member for Umlazi. As a member of a party which says that they are dedicated to creating a new future which is not based on discrimination I would have expected him to at least welcome the formation of the DP; that he would have looked forward to an opposition to his left rather than to his right. After all, the DP’s ideals and aims are similar to those of the LP and they are the aims and goals for a future South Africa.

Regarding the hon member for Mooi River, I accept that his comments were well-intended, although paternalistic.

As the largest opposition party in this Parliament, we welcome the formation of the DP. Listening to Dr Wimpie de Klerk explaining the aims and objects of the DP I found no basic differences to those of the LP of South Africa. We thus look forward to a complementary relationship with them and I hope that they will succeed in replacing the current negative Official Opposition in the House of Assembly, thereby assisting us in focusing attention on the future rather than on the past.

As a party which believes in a free and independent Namibia, we have supported the implementation of Resolution 435 from its inception. We have also publicly stated our support for the Geneva Accord and other agreements. I had the pleasure of being in Windhoek on 1 April and of attending rallies of both the DTA and Swapo. There were at least 10 000 people at each rally.

What impressed me most that afternoon was an atmosphere of celebration and of goodwill. Despite there being not a single policeman in sight, there were no incidents of violence. People were tolerant of one another. I came to the conclusion that the Namibians were tired of war, of fighting and of violence.

It was therefore with shock that we noted the violation of Resolution 435, the crossing of the border by Swapo and the resultant fighting and death. The tragedy is compounded by the fact that on a day so important in the struggle of the Namibian liberation, there were people prepared to continue spilling the blood of young people.

In the past we have supported this Government when we agreed with them and believed them to be correct, and we will continue to do so, just as we will oppose the Government when they do things that we consider to be wrong for the future of South Africa.

I believe that the Government in the person of the hon the Minister, Mr Pik Botha, is to be thanked for his relentless pursuit of a settlement. I think that he has gone will beyond the call of duty in serving this country.

It was with pleasure that I heard that a further agreement had been reached over the weekend. Any agreement that will prevent the shedding of more blood must be welcomed by all responsible South Africans and Namibians.

South Africa’s handling of this situation has been commendable. Our attitude should be to let the Namibians decide about Namibia, and once again we want to call upon all the parties involved in Namibia and elsewhere to commit themselves publicly and unequivocally to the letter and the spirit of Resolution 435.

Closer to home, I listened with interest to various Government members speaking in this and the State of the nation debate. I listened especially to the hon Minister Barend du Plessis, and I believe there is a general consensus among those of us here present that the economy needs to be stimulated, that we need a mininum growth rate of 5%.

I have also heard the Government explaining to us the need for budget cuts and that South Africans will have to tighten their belts, but I have failed to hear the truth. Why is our economy in the state it is? It is because of apartheid. I listened on Thursday to the hon member Dr Geldenhuys’s semantic acrobatics in trying to rationalise apartheid.

*It was full of “if’, “if’ and even more “ifs”. It reminded me of a previous speaker who referred to “apartheid as the world understands it”. Apartheid is wrong in theory, in principle and in practice. It is a sin and an iniquity that cannot be condoned. It must be buried once and for all. This apartheid policy of the Government has cost our country dearly.

It was the hon the Minister, Mr Clase, who said the Government’s apartheid policy was expensive. He said, and I quote:

†In monetary terms we note that approximately 15% of our Budget is for the maintenance of apartheid. Can we afford this? I say no. I see the voter and the person in the street becoming more and more impoverished. We see the possibility of school fees being introduced at White schools. A figure being mentioned is that of R250 per student. That is R1 000 per year for a family of four. Where will the ordinary White voter find this money?

We see on television programmes about the depopulation of the platteland and White schools standing half-empty or having to be closed as a result. Yet in those same towns we have a shortage of Coloured and African schools. Why cannot White children in the interests of our children’s education, share these facilities with us? So one can go on and on.

The biggest proponent of sanctions is not Dr Boesak or Archbishop Tutu. No, it has been the Government’s policy of apartheid. How much has South Africa lost because of sanctions, because of apartheid? How much money have we lost in foreign capital? How much have we lost in terms of future development that is so essential to the future of our country? Why do we have cultural, sport and economic boycotts against our country? Why are our sportsmen and women denied international competition? Why do we have to buy players with large sums to come to us? Why cannot we get access to overseas television programmes? Just this weekend we saw that SATV had to cancel a few programmes. Why do people not knowingly want to buy our products? Why do we have to resort to subterfuge and expensive third party dealings in order to buy and sell on international markets? It is because of the Government’s racist apartheid policies.

How much has apartheid cost us in lost opportunities, opportunities denied us to take our rightful place in the sun, opportunities denied us to make the kind of contributions we as a country are capable of making in the fields of medicine and research, opportunities denied to the best of our academic and professional people?

How much has apartheid cost us in terms of unrealised potential both human and mineral. How many unrealised doctors, lawyers, teachers, nutritionists, dentists, technicians, mechanics and others are walking the streets? Will we ever be able to calculate the damage suffered by South Africa because of apartheid? How many lives have been lost in the struggle against apartheid and in defence thereof? How many families have been split through detention, jail, conscription, exile and death? How much has it cost us in terms of social life destroyed?

*How much does it cost us in White boys who have to go into the army? It was Mrs Marietjie de Klerk who said:

I agree with Mrs De Klerk that we cannot afford it. Apartheid is a sin. It is too expensive in view of the above, but more than all that, it is morally wrong. Therefore we must get rid of it.

Can we permit this wonderful and rich country with all its potential, human and other potential, to be destroyed because we do not want to share toilets? Someone said that on television. While we are so involved in fighting for the future of our country, the bottom line is that some people do not want to share toilets with us. I think that is a crying shame. When I spoke in this Chamber previously, and I am sorry that the hon the leader-in-chief of the NP is not here now, I reacted very negatively to the appointment of the hon the Minister of National Education as leader-in-chief of the NP, but since then I have listened to his speech on his credo, and other speeches, as well as to what other people have said about him, and I have read what is written about him. I see the hon the Minister has resumed his seat. I thank the hon the Minister for having returned.

†The hon the Minister’s speech was filled with good intentions. I particularly noted, and agree with, the following which he said:

He continued by saying that:

I agree with the hon the Minister with regard to what he said and I support him in that. I also support the goals of the hon leader of the NP as spelt out in his credo speech, where he said:

*But, Mr Speaker, South Africa’s past is filled with broken promises. We hear what the hon the leader-in-chief says, but we are watching him to see what he will do. Is the hon the leader-in-chief prepared to tell the voters that just as no law is necessary to say that he is a Afrikaner, no law is necessary to specify that he is White? At this moment this country is seeking great statesmen to lead us into the new future—a future free of race classification, group areas and separate facilities. Is the hon the leader-in-chief prepared to accept this challenge?

Mr Chairman, I do not intend to follow on the hon member for Addo but would rather like to try and bring the debate back to one on economic and financial affairs. [Interjections.]

I would like to start off by thanking the officials who appeared before the Joint Committee on Finance for the support and help they gave us.

I would also like to pay particular tribute to Mr Clive Kingon who is resigning later in the year and I would like to thank him personally for the help he has given not only the committee but also myself in a personal capacity when dealing with various pieces of financial legislation. I would like to quote to him these words from the book of Deuteronomy: “May he live his life with joy and drink his wine with mirth.”

One of the most interesting proposals in the recent Budget has been the reaction of the Government on mining taxation. The Margo Commission’s proposals on the mining industry were not conclusive and it was recommended that the matter be further investigated. To this end a technical committee under the chairmanship of the hon the Deputy Minister was appointed.

As mining forms such an important part of the South African economy, especially with regard to its position in providing job opportunities and its role in the earning of foreign exchange, the authorities face the very real dilemma of either literally taxing the mines into the ground, or on the other hand allowing them to continue mining at a loss while being indirectly subsidised by the fiscus.

One of the main thrusts of this Budget has been to increasingly expose our capital markets to the forces of free enterprise. Perhaps the most important move in this regard has been the abolition of the prescribed assets requirements that applied to certain categories of financial institutions. It is therefore desirable that tax rates for mining undertakings be so fixed as to ensure neutrality between the different sectors of the economy.

The recommendation that the existing surcharge on all mining companies be removed is therefore to be welcomed, especially by the mining community. At present there is a surcharge of 15% in the case of non-gold mines and 25% in the case of gold mines. The Marais Committee recommended that this surcharge be phased out over seven years in the case of gold mines, and over five years for other mines.

The Government has accepted the recommendation that gold mines are eventually to be taxed at a rate that brings them into line with normal company taxes, but my sympathy is with the hon the Minister when he states that he cannot commit the Government to a fixed period for their readjustments. In view of the fact that mining is based on long-term planning and that a new gold-mine shaft can take up to seven years to develop, it is to be welcomed that the imposition of additional ad hoc taxes is considered undesirable by the Government.

The Marais Committee recommended that future mining projects should not be subject to mine leases and that existing leases should be phased out. The Government has stated that it is in favour of maintaining the status quo. Their arguments are that mines are replacing a non-replaceable asset and that they should therefore be responsible for other infrastructural developments.

This is a valid argument up to a point. It is based on the thesis that mineral resources are part of the national patrimony. In reducing these resources mining companies should pay an additional tax to the State. It has been further argued that the scarcity of minerals justifies the imposition of additional taxes. However, modern technology provides considerable scope for substitution. Unless metals and minerals are priced competitively, they will lose market share to other materials. It is no longer possible to justify a resource rent on the grounds that scarcity lends a special value to mineral products.

The second argument is the net loss to the fiscus of R200 million. However, if mining leases are seen as distortionary and going against the neutrality principle of allocating resources such as capital, then this argument must fall away.

The other important matters raised by the Marais Committee were those of capital expenditure, ring-fencing and capital allowances for new marginal mines. The attitude of the Government in replacing capital allowances with ad hoc subsidies is to be welcomed. In so many cases fiscal allowances are misappropriated by undeserving causes and are not always to the benefit of those in real need.

I believe the hon the Minister and the tax advisory committee should look again at the matter of ring-fencing. Ring-fencing, as contained in 36 (7F), serves to my mind as a disincentive on mining investment.

New mines are high-risk ventures and existing mines can be used as a basis for financing new ones. Ring-fencing is an anomaly which is unfair to the mining industry and if neutrality is to be achieved, mines should be treated as other tax entities in the economy when they expand. The problem with ring-fencing is that capital expenditure can be directed from its most productive use to the avenue where it is most effective in reducing tax. The Margo Commission has pointed out the possibility of capital deepening within the ring-fence in the long run. It is argued that ring-fencing prevents the deferment of tax but consideration must be given to its effect on the development of the mining industry.

Krige has argued that South Africa still has a potential of developing 15 new gold mines which could serve to prolong the existence of the industry well after the year 2030. The Marais Committee made two alternative suggestions in replacement of ring-fencing. The first was a minimum tax and the second the concept of flexible fencing. I believe that flexible ringfencing has an advantage over an original minimum tax and it could be justifiably recommended to the Tax Advisory Committee to reconsider the implementation of this concept.

I would like to join other hon members in this debate in welcoming the DP to this House. It was with some interest that a lot of us looked at the new logo of the party which, we are told, represents a new dawn rising out of the sea. If I were an art critic and had to look at this logo in terms of abstract art, we could well call it “Crepuscule descending,” or “twilight falling”. One could well also consider the name “The fall of the fatal conceit”.

I think to others it looks very much like a big fish swallowing a whole lot of little minnows, very much as if the old lately lamented PFP has swallowed the two smaller parties of the NDM and the IP. I am sure not all of these newly-weds who have returned from Johannesburg are quite certain whether they have attended a woeful wake or a joyful jamboree. Like Cassandra I would like to make the prediction that they will come back here in lesser numbers after the election than they are here at the moment.

They are going to win Wynberg!

That is the one seat that they will not win, I can assure you!

It was with great interest that we listened to the hon leader of the DP, the hon member Dr De Beer, and it certainly sounded to me today as if he had acquired a new copy-writer. There was certainly more verve in his language although perhaps less expression in his gestures. Many of us wondered if he has not now acquired Dr Worrall’s copy-writer for preparing his speeches in this House. What we all missed in the content of his speech was a clear definition of what the constitutional proposals of the new DP are going to be. In the run-up to the election many of us are going to look with great interest at what those constitutional proposals are going to be.

There is apparently a new placard being issued by the CP which says the following: De Beer, Du Plessis, De Pontes, De Next. I believe that some NP wag has written underneath: De Boksburg Disaster. I would just like to say to the DP: Divorce is nigh.

Mr Chairman, grant me the right to comment on the speeches made by certain hon members who have taken part in this debate up to now.

Let me begin with the CP. As a matter of interest, I should like to know from the CP how they are going to unravel the South African economy, which has no colour and is fully integrated at present, in terms of their partition policy. It is an accomplished fact that partition affects the White businessman’s cash register and impoverishes him. Boksburg and Carletonville are real practical examples of this.

†While I truly appreciate the remarks made by the hon member for Kuruman concerning debaters and agitators, perhaps the hon the Minister of Law and Order would be wise to have these agitators investigated by the Security Police instead of the hon member for Eldorado Park and myself.

To the hon member for Yeoville, who is not present here, I would like to say that he is the epitome of true patriotism. The Labour Party of South Africa shall always cherish dearly that for which the PFP stood in the struggle for freedom and justice for all in this much divided land.

Regrettably the same cannot be said of the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition in the House of Representatives. They are still fascinated by the idea that they can catch the wind.

*They will have the wind against them, however, and the imminent general election will prove that.

†Perhaps they should pay heed to that old American cowboy saying: “Put a fool on horseback and he is sure bound to ride to hell.” I want to remind hon members of the Democratic Reform Party that hell is a place prepared for the devil and his followers.

*Mr Chairman, also permit me to pay tribute to Parliament today. Although we in the LP do not agree with the tricameral system, but nevertheless regard it as a point of departure, I want to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to all hon members of the different Houses who were involved in the abolition of discriminatory legislation. I want to convey my sincere thanks to my beloved leader, the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council in the House of Representatives, as well as all hon members of the LP, for their constructive contributions.

†This reminds me of what Sir Winston Churchill once said: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” Allow me to come to the blessings and miseries of the Budget of the hon the Minister of Finance and share some thoughts on tax matters.

I feel that taxes are still generally high and that the opportunities for reducing taxes are limited because of the present state of the economy. As I see it, taxes constrain development and as a result the suppressed needed investment cannot be addressed. Among these are, firstly, taxes paid twice by shareholders on company profits—once in the company itself and again in the hands of shareholders when they receive dividends. I feel the tax rate is very high in this regard. Secondly, the individual tax rate is too high, although I agree that some advance has been made with the introduction of Site, especially as far as married women are concerned. However, that relates only to married women earning remuneration.

Married women in other categories—though some categories enjoy the new joint assessment allowance—are not benefited. Thirdly, on the matter of export incentives being reduced to 20% of export development expenditure, I feel that established exporters benefiting from the weakened rand are not overly hit. However, businesses wishing to enter the export market have to incur considerable market development costs. The greatly reduced incentives make it that much more difficult. Fourthly, the fact that retailers in the PWV area are purchasing stock from wholesalers and manufacturers in Bophuthatswana, where no GST is charged, and in return selling the goods in the RSA, needs to be addressed urgently, particularly seeing that Bophuthatswana is by and large financially dependent on the RSA. I feel that we should have some political trade-off here and Bophuthatswana should be approached about this.

*Unfortunately the hon member for Vasco is not in the House. Political change is associated with economic change. Positive political breakthroughs are essential for a stable South Africa. The secret lies in only one existing discriminatory law, viz the Electoral Act.

Hon members must allow me just to show the hon the Minister that if we address only one cardinal aspect of this abominable Act and rectify it, all this country’s financial problems will be a thing of the past. The solution is that we must give all our country’s citizens, irrespective of colour, equal franchise. In my opinion there is no legal reason not to do so. Even the South African Law Commission addressed this aspect strongly. We must also not lose sight of the fact that the South African legal system is aimed at the individual.

†I am reminded of a time in history when the distinguished Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon. Who would have thought that one day we would actually live to see that happen and hear him say: “That was one small step for man, but one giant leap for mankind”? The NP must be bold enough to take that one small step by placing all South Africans, irrespective of colour, on one common voters’ roll. [Interjections.]

In the informal sector in Soweto ‘spasa’ shops have seen the light. When we were kids we used to play ‘Spasa Dead’. ‘Spasa’ is a slang word which means make believe. People of colour speak of ‘spasa’ voters’ rolls. The mere fact that we have separate voters’ rolls for separate race groups is discriminatory, as they are based on the colour of a man’s skin. The late Senator Robert Kennedy, in his Day of Affirmation Speech in Cape Town in the mid-1960s addressed this very issue when he reminded South Africans then that it was every individual’s right to call governments to their duties. Regrettably, people politically, socially and economically deprived by apartheid cannot do that.

It was very interesting to note how, in an advertisement on American television during the most recent American presidential elections, Black voters who had the right to vote were urged to bring out their votes, while millions of Blacks in South Africa who desire to vote, do not have the vote. If the Government has any doubts on how to tackle this issue, the LP has a plan.

*Let all of us in this joint meeting be positive in our attitudes and let us see what consequences a step of this nature will have for South Africa. When the NP takes that step, I am convinced that everyone in this country, regardless of colour, will join hands. Such a step will promote a strong bond of unity. The motto of the Republic of South Africa will become reality—unity will definitely be strength. All true and loyal South Africans will be proud of our country’s flag, as well as of our national anthem. That is not the case at the moment.

With regard to the economy, this would mean that sanctions and disinvestment would be suspended. Foreign capital would flow into the country freely, the gross national product would shoot up and South African manufacturers would once again have international markets for their products, which could lead to a healthy balance of payments.

In conclusion, as the hon member for Addo rightly said, in the international sphere influential international politicians who are antagonistic towards us at present would be obliged to become our friends. All South Africans would once again be permitted to take part in international sport. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, my question today is where the Government and the NP are heading with South Africa. We are still being presented with new visions of the direction we are taking. I want to ask this with particular reference to what the hon the Minister of Foreign Affairs said during a meeting he addressed at Piketberg on 18 March this year.

That meeting was reported in Die Burger of 20 March, and I accept the correctness of the report, because there was never any denial in this regard from the NP ranks or from the hon the Minister.

Under a large headline reading “Nuwe era hier” the hon the Minister waxed lyrical and bubbled over with excitement about his future vision for South Africa. In order to “enter the promised country”—these are his words, therefore in order to enter Canaan—certain conditions have to be complied with first, according to the hon the Minister. In the first place there must be a new constitutional dispensation, and this has been said on many other occasions as well.

What must this new constitutional dispensation look like? It must not contain any racial discrimination. According to him it must not contain any laws that have a racial sting it must be free of the baggage of the past; it must be a dispensation in which achievement, standards and values are the criteria, and in which a charter of human rights is accepted. If there could be any doubt about what the hon the Minister means in saying that these laws must go, or that they ostensibly have a racial connotation, I say that he has eliminated all doubt, because he openly advocates the abolition of the Group Areas Act. He openly advocates that the Population Registration Act must go, and I may add that it goes without saying that the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act must go too. Naturally the present Constitution must go as well, as I have pointed out. That is what the hon the Minister was reported as saying, and I quote:

I think the hon member Dr Geldenhuys must listen too, because what did the hon the Minister say after this? He was reported as follows:

In this regard he was referring to the Acts that I indicated. It is spelt out here in the clearest possible terms that that is what that hon Minister advocates. [Interjections.] Then we say that this is no different from what has been advocated by all the left-wing groups in this House at all times. That is precisely what the LP and other parties in the House of Representatives are advocating. That is exactly what the DP is advocating, if I understand them correctly. Then I say that what this platitude finally amounts to, is that a so-called non-racial democratic dispensation of one man, one vote in an undivided South Africa is being advocated. At least there is an hon Minister in the NP, and in the Cabinet of the NP, who represents all these voices from the left. This hon Minister is also eager for this new dispensation to begin. He says there is no time to waste. His statement is that South Africa should not become soft, and that these objectives must be attained as soon as possible. He says:

Unlike the hon the Minister for Administration and Privatisation who feels that there may be a diversity at present which can disappear in due course so that a new situation can come into being in South Africa, the hon the Minister says that he is in a hurry and that this new era must be established immediately. Involuntarily I think of an earlier statement made by this hon Minister that, given the Government’s reform policy, it is also inevitable that South Africa must have a Black State President, and now he says, if we understand him correctly, that this must happen as soon as possible. I give him credit for that, because he is honest. He says that is where we must end up. We know that that hon Minister has never withdrawn these words of his as his subjective view. [Interjections.] I want to ask the hon the leader of the NP whether the standpoint of the hon the Minister of Foreign Affairs has his and his party’s official approval.

The hon member’s deductions are distorting what the hon the Minister said.

I invite any person to deny it, and the hon the Minister must come and do so himself if he likes, but that is what he said. There it is in black and white! I want to tell the hon the Minister that because of the deathly silence there has been on this matter so far, it looks as though it has the approval of the NP. I would have expected at least some reaction on the part of the leadership of the NP if a senior Minister made this statement. [Interjections.]

I am going to say, therefore, that when a senior Minister advocates this, unless it is denied by the hon leader in this House, we are going to tell the people at large that the NP leaders are openly advocating the abolition of the Group Areas Act and the population registration legislation. [Interjections.] We are going to say that, because it is not sufficient …

You were in charge alone for long enough!

If it cannot be denied in this debate, that is what we are going to say!

We shall determine our own standpoints!

I could have expected that there would be an attempt to evade the issue!

The man with this view is the man who has to take care of the interests of South Africa, also in SWA! As the hon member for Brits indicated the other day, this hon Minister wants to use SWA as a guinea pig for whatever has to happen in South Africa! [Interjections.]

I want to turn to the hon the State President and tell him that if he retains this hon Minister, with his political views, as a member of the Cabinet, we accept that the Government agrees with this hon Minister’s vision for the future of South Africa. I want to make it clear that the mere denial that that hon Minister’s standpoint or view is not the official NP policy is not sufficient as far as we are concerned. We say that only the dismissal of that hon Minister will convince us that that is not the course the NP is taking. Naturally, for the sake of South Africa, we should like to believe that the Government will contradict this hon Minister and say it finds his words objectionable, but the most recent indications are that this is the course the NP is taking and that the NP accepts the inevitability of this situation. They merely do not yet know how to get past the voters when they get rid of this legislation. That is their problem.

In the first place it is almost unthinkable that a Minister could make such a statement without having cleared it with his leaders in advance. One is struck by the fact that the hon the Minister visited the hon the leader of the NP before he went to Piketberg.

Secondly, the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning and the new hon leader of the NP themselves identified these three Acts as being ostensible stumbling blocks on the course of reform.

Thirdly, for practical purposes two of these Acts, viz the Group Areas Act and the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act, are not really being applied by the NP any longer. In addition, according to a report I received … If I am wrong the hon the leader of the NP must tell me. According to the information at my disposal, the hon the leader of the NP said the following at a meeting of office-bearers and registered members of the NP which was held on 16 February 1989:

That is quite right!

He also said, in the second place, that prosecution in terms of the Group Areas Act was unchristian. [Interjections.] The hon the leader can deny that, but that is the information I have at my disposal.

When I look at what the hon the Minister had to say, according to the hon the leader of the LP, with reference to the relationship between the hon the Minister and the hon the leader of the LP, I see the following in yesterday’s Sunday Times under the heading, “LP and NP agree on ‘common aims’”:

This is with reference to the so-called ‘common aims’. He said:

and the legislation that we have just mentioned.

Finally we say that if this vision of the future that has been presented to us here by the hon the Minister is to succeed, it will mean the end of the Afrikaners as a people. Once again, however, I say that he who tackles anything in South Africa without taking the Afrikaners into account as a people must know that his enterprise is doomed to failure. We shall prove that in the next election.

Mr Speaker, this being the first national Budget to be discussed at a joint meeting, I think all of us will agree that a lot of duplication and triplication has been done away with, and the hon the Minister must be pleased that he does not have to listen to debates in three Houses and to reply in three separate places.

In this Budget the Government has made a brave policy shift in its fiscal arrangements. That is the abolishing of prescribed asset requirements together with the removal of tax-free interest earnings. These moves herald the acceptance of a free market system which is healthy for the economy.

The Government has to compete for funds on even terms on the open market with the banks, building societies and other financial institutions to cover the budget deficit before borrowing. This will have certain consequences for the money market, namely the rising of interest rates. It also affects the Government’s functions such as financing, social welfare and health services to the needy in our country, bearing in mind that only a mere 18% can afford medical care on their own, and that the rest, 82%, need State help and thereby become the responsibility of the Government. Therefore it is not to be wondered that the largest slice of the Budget is allocated to the heading “Social services”—an amount of R24,2 billion, which is more than a third of the total Budget.

This Budget provides for 4,1% of borrowing to the GDP. This is down from 4,4% in the last Budget. If we take away the R1 billion which appears as a contingency provision in the estimates, then it will bring the percentage down to 3,7%, the target being 3%. So far so good. I think that we are doing very well.

The question is whether the Government will contain its expenditure within the budgeted amounts and stay within the percentages mentioned above or will it allow, as it usually does, the overruns to continue and present an additional estimate to be approved by Parliament later. If this happens, the whole scene changes and the percentages projected in the Budget may well go out the window. I say this because the present Government has an unenviable track record of overspending.

I believe the hon the Minister of Finance, through his department, must inform all heads of departments and accounting officers that they must strictly adhere to the Budget and any overruns should in future be dealt with in the same manner as unauthorised expenditure, that is, by explaining to the Auditor-General the reason for overspending. By introducing this method, the Treasury will have a better control on overruns. That is not to say that overexpenditure is a crime, but it should only be allowed if it is an absolute necessity. It reminds me of a story on the lighter side. Once a man asked his friend if he knew the difference between employees in the private sector and employees in the public sector. The friend said: “Yes, there is a difference. Employees in the private sector work hard to earn money and employees in the public sector work harder to spend it.”

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the Government on introducing a Bill on licensing control and measures that are necessary to allow freemarket enterprise to be activated within the unnecessary constraints being applied by local authorities. It is evident that local authorities were found to be very reluctant to remove inhibitions in the path of small business undertakings. We all know that two years ago a deregulation Act was introduced but very little was done where the local authorities were concerned.

Taking the view that one thing leads to another, I am compelled to touch on the question of restrictions placed on business premises and agricultural land, which require permits to be obtained before acquiring or even occupying such land. This is a question which should be directed at the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning. It is terrible that in this day and age one should have to apply for a permit to occupy agricultural land.

It then takes from 8 to 12 months before a reply comes. Whether it is favourable or not is another matter. However, everybody is interested in freeing the economy. Persons who cannot occupy their agricultural land want to lease or sell it. The whole machinery starts here and we are supposed to be waiting for this to take place—even on business premises. One wants the local authorities to deregulate licensing. However, one will be holding onto the apartheid laws and group areas before that licence is granted. Even if there are going to be no licences the Group Areas Act will come into play and business premises will not be occupied by persons of colour.

This reminds me of a couple of problems that we have in my own constituency. For example, a person applies for a permit. The Natal Provincial Administration will take between eight and nine months before it replies favourably or otherwise. By the time the reply comes, if it is favourable, the premises are gone. If it is unfavourable it stops dead in its tracks.

I do not see any reason why commercial, industrial and agricultural areas should be restricted to the Group Areas Act. The hon the Minister and his department have conveniently now passed the buck to the provincial authorities who are now new players in the game and are taking up the cudgels and are saying now that they will decide who is not going to get or who is going to get.

I think the hon member for Springfield made a very important point that when people make application for permits the record speaks for itself. Most of the applications that are from Whites are approved and most of the applications that are from non-Whites are not approved. He mentioned that very clearly in the debate held in Natal.

The new Bill which is being introduced to remove the licensing requirement is welcome because it will now open up avenues for the informal sector. Of course, the hon the Minister and all of us know that the informal sector is the only sector that provides job opportunities at the lowest cost when one takes into account that jobs are created in the region of R25 000 per job in the formal sector.

The informal sector will do the same thing at a very much lower cost. Agriculture is another field where the lowest cost is involved in the creation of jobs. Therefore I appeal to the Ministries that they deregulate the requirement of permits to buy or occupy agricultural enterprises.

Mr Speaker, it is inevitable that debates in Parliament are going to become increasingly election-oriented, because it is a fact that in the coming election parties are going to be setting policy against policy. However it is also becoming an election focusing on leadership, particularly since the NP has a new leader. For that reason this election is going to mean that the White electorate, at least, is going to the polls to elect a new State President for South Africa. The situation is that in terms of the provisions of this Constitution, the leader of the party in the House of Assembly which wins the election—the party which becomes the majority party in the House of Assembly—will govern South Africa for the next five years. [Interjections.] I say that that is how it works in practice.

Let me begin with the more unpleasant aspect, and refer to the leadership of the opposition parties in the House of Assembly. Turning to the DP, one sees at once that an unidentified leadership is a grave problem for that party, since just as its policy is—and, we predict, will continue to be—vague, the White voter will be equally in the dark as to which person will govern South Africa if the DP were to assume power.

This, of course, brings us to the leadership of the CP. I think the story about Swapo terrorists walking backwards across the border that was told by the hon leader of that party, is typical of his party. It is a party which puts its shoes on backwards, so that if anyone in the course of history were to find its tracks, they would think it was heading for the future. That is the CP—it is a party with a wavering leadership, a party with an opportunistic leadership, who are demolishes rather than builders. The CP is in trouble as far as its leadership in the coming election is concerned. The party’s leadership has always been hesitant to condemn the AWB for what it stands for. It waited for someone like Miss Jani Allan to destroy the AWB, and now they are kicking it when it is down.

The party’s leadership knows precisely where it wants to go. There is no doubt about that. They say they strive for justice and peace through partition, and their spokesmen wax eloquent about this. However, the problem is that they do not know how to get there. They do not know whether they should achieve this justice and peace through partition in the way proposed by Prof Carel Boshof, or whether they should adopt the course advocated by Mr Eugène Terre’Blanche of the AWB, or whether they should achieve it by means of Mr Robert Van Tonder’s plan, or perhaps by means of the Hartzenberg plan. We still do not know whether the justice entailed by partition, will coincide with the justice relating to the allocation of land. Up to now they have yet to adopt a standpoint in this regard. We still do not know today—no-one in this House knows, because the hon the leader of the CP has not spelled it out—whether their policy is still one of White majority occupation. Their propaganda in respect of White money that must be spent on non-White development is just as lacking in credibility as their propaganda—and of course their propagandist-in-chief—in respect of majority occupation. There is a hesitation to make clear statements in this regard. It is a party which does not keep its election promises, and CP city councils refuse to carry out their party’s policy when they are in power. Where their policy is indeed carried out, CP city councillors resign, as in Vanderbijlpark and Welkom, because they see that partition is impracticable.

This is a party which, as we have seen in Boksburg and Carletonville, wants to build the future of South Africa on war. This party would inevitably have to extend the period of White national service from two to five years to quell the riots caused by their policy.

There is no co-ordination among CP city councils, since the party leadership is wavering. Each one does what he wants to and those who do not want to implement that policy know and can see, after all, that the CP’s policy cannot be applied in practice. The White voters of South Africa know it is not going to help to vote CP. They cannot and do not want to implement their policy.

This, of course, brings me to the leadership of the NP. The NP has appointed a new leaderin-chief. He openly admits that his strength comes through the mercy of Almighty God. He does not hesitate to say that. He is what one might term a practical realist, a person who always has his feet firmly on the ground. He always argues from a standpoint of principle. When one speaks to him, he always wants to know whether what one stands for can be applied in practice, or whether it will simply enable one to keep one’s head in the clouds. Foreign journalists call him Mr Clean. He has no skeletons in his cupboard. His career is eloquent of success. He believes in participatory management and he gathers around him as many experts as possible. He is a dynamic leader who radiates energy. He inspires people and fires the imagination of young people in particular. He has proved this in the short time that he has been leader-in-chief of the NP.

He is a decision-maker par excellence. He does not hesitate to take even difficult decisions. He is a collector, who does not alienate people. He is also purposeful and knows where he is going. In contrast to the party leadership of the CP, he knows how to get there. Together with the NP, he also champions justice and peace in South Africa—not through partition, but through power-sharing without domination. We know how to get there. We must recognise individual rights, as well as group rights, in this country. The condition is that group rights must be protected without discrimination.

The NP says through this leader that ethnicity is a fact in South Africa that one has to take into account when one speaks about group rights. However, if there is discrimination—not as we, as Whites, see it, but as those who are discriminated against, experience it—in existing laws, then that discrimination, too, must be removed from our legislation.

The NP’s leader-in-chief builds South Africa’s future on peace, not on war. He earns South Africa’s loyalty. We shall have to work selflessly to give him the mandate he deserves. I have no doubt that South Africa will give him a giant mandate to rule this Republic of ours as State President for the next five years.

Mr Speaker, I find it a privilege to take part in this debate. This is especially so if one bears in mind that this debate will be one of the last joint debates which will be held in this large Chamber before the present Parliament is dissolved.

†The hon the State President stated in this Chamber that he had committed his Government to honest and clean administration. Every hon member in this House and the public at large, especially the business, industrial and mining communities upon whom the economy is so dependent, have seen adequate evidence of this determination. Heads have rolled, and if we were part of those dealing in this type of iniquity we might well lament and say: “Oh, how the mighty have fallen!”

Former Ministers of State and hon members of Parliament have gone.

This brings me to the speech made by the hon leader of the DRP in this Chamber on 6 April when he spoke of corruption in the ranks of the majority party in the House of Representatives. [Interjections.] He put it pertinently to the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council in the House of Representatives that he had asked hon members of his caucus to submit claims for unspent balances due in the constituency allowances. [Interjections.]

Order!

The headline of a report in the Sunday Times Extra of 9 April 1989 reads as follows: “MPs accused of fiddling funds.” [Interjections.] How did the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council in the House of Representatives reply to this accusation? He conceded that the suggestion had been made, but he did not say by whom. He said that the suggestion had been made to claim these moneys but that it had not been an instruction.

It was alleged by the hon leader of the DRP that false documentation had been submitted to the accounting officer of Parliament to further this fraudulent act. In the interview which the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council gave the newspaper he did not touch on this accusation. He did not deny the allegation that false documentation had been submitted. What was most significant to us and to everybody who read that particular article was that the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council in the House of Representatives stated that it had been left to each individual to decide how he wanted to spend his full R10 000 or how to dispose of the balance.

That is a most remarkable statement—that it was left to each individual how to spend the balance of his constituency allowance. [Interjections.]

By the way, on Saturday evening I happened to go to the ex-servicemen’s club in Athlone …[Interjections.] … and although the people are just ordinary men, the first thing they said to me when I walked in, was: “Julle word genoeg betaal, maar nou steel julle die Regering se geld”. That is how the public reacts to this type of business and the type of reply they are getting. [Interjections.] The thought behind this reply is clearly that the money belongs to the individual and not to Parliament …[Interjections.]

Order! I am not prepared to permit that. I am trying to assist hon members to enable us to have a place for open debate in Parliament in which there is room to manoeuvre without our having to keep one another on a tight rein all the time, but I cannot permit hon members to go on as they are doing now. It is difficult to follow what the hon member is saying. He is speaking into the microphone, away from the Chair. I have to try to follow what speakers are saying. I cannot follow speakers if hon members carry on like this. Hon members must control themselves and give the hon member an opportunity to finish his speech. The hon member may proceed.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. [Interjections.]

Order! Who passed that remark?

Mr Speaker, I did.

Order! The hon member is to withdraw it.

Mr Speaker, I withdraw it.

Order! The hon member for Daljosaphat may proceed.

The thought is that the money belongs to the individual and not to Parliament. I must inform the hon members of the Labour Party that that is absolutely wrong. The money is Parliament’s and it is given to them for parliamentary work in their constituencies. It is not given to them to spend as they wish or to donate to the Labour Party. [Interjections.]

I want to go further. The hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council in our Chamber says that it was suggested. I want to state that if one suggests to a person that he must commit the criminal offence of fraud—that is what it amounts to—especially if one is in a position of authority over him, then in terms of the law as I know it one is instigating, inciting, aiding and abetting him in the commission of that offence. It is absolutely disreputable and unethical for an MP to behave in that manner. [Interjections.]

Order! Is the hon member implying that the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council in the House of Representatives has been inciting hon members to commit a crime?

Mr Speaker, that was said in this Chamber.

Order! Is that what the hon member has just said?

Mr Speaker, my interpretation is …

Order! Is that what the hon member said just now?

Yes, Mr Speaker, I did say that.

Order! Then the hon member must withdraw it.

I withdraw it, Mr Speaker.

We therefore urge that this matter be investigated in full. I also agree with the hon member for Port Elizabeth Central that any suggestion of wrongdoing in any of the Houses should be investigated. Friend or foe must go if he is wrong.

Why do you not resign then?

What for?

Yes, ask him what for. [Interjections.]

*Many speakers have referred to the fighting which took place in South West Africa/Namibia as well as the loss of life there. The fighting has lasted more than a decade already. Swapo does not want to negotiate and wants to seize the territory by force. Numerous people have been murdered and maimed over the past 13 years. If the South African Government had not carried out the mandate which the then League of Nations granted it to assist South West Africa, that country would probably have gone up in flames already. The South African Government was given a task which was a matter of conscience, that is a mandate to develop and uplift the inhabitants. South African involvement in South West Africa over the past 70 years is well known. I want to refer to it again, however. According to a recent report which appeared in the Press … [Time expired.]

Mr Speaker, I am unable to follow the unfortunate line of argument of the previous speaker, and I would like to return to the formation of the Democratic Party.

History was made last Saturday with the formation of this party. We in these benches who represent the DP have a job of work to do, for we represent those who have come together out of a love for our country and a belief that this Government has, through its self-seeking party-political and sectional interests, no vision of what a truly democratic, non-racial South Africa can mean and that it has lost its ability to govern. As a result of their inability to abandon apartheid and to recognise the rights of individual South Africans, they are leading us all down the road into a wilderness of racial strife and economic impoverishment.

The hon member for Umlazi devoted his entire speech to the formation of the DP. This could have been construed as flattering had his heart been in what he had to say. However, this was not the case. In fact, he said very little that was new. He stated that our principles and policies contained “the same old unacceptable concepts”. Yes, the tragedy is that these policies, representing everything that is decent in political life, are unacceptable to the NP. Outside of that party, its narrow support base and those to their right, these principles and policies are embraced by the majority of South Africans.

There is a growing desire among our people for a return to fair and fundamental principles. There is a strong desire for the kind of South Africa that they know can exist and which can be left to our children and our grandchildren. There is general despair at what they see around them, but there is hope. Such hope stems from a recognition that we have to stop this Government on the road that it is leading us. Such hope rests on a belief that we can negotiate a future in which all 37 million South Africans can live in peace. It rests on a belief that our economic problems can be solved in a truly free market system with a corresponding reduction in State control over the lives of ordinary people. It also rests on a belief that injustice can be countered through due legal process and a respect for the rights of the individual, for ultimately it is the rights of the individual that are paramount. Justice starts with the individual, his right to live in peace; to house, feed and clothe his family; to educate his children and to determine who will govern him in matters of public concern.

The enthusiasm of those who attended the founding congress of the Democratic Party on Saturday was their way of quite simply saying that they have had enough and that there is another kind of South Africa worth fighting for. [Interjections.] These were not just the same old people attempting to keep old worn-out issues alive, as the hon member for Umlazi put it. [Interjections.] These are issues which many South Africans hold dear and which this Government ignores because of their fear of the consequences.

Yes, real change will involve sacrifice, but the rewards will far outweigh that cost. The hon member Dr Zach de Beer summed it up as follows:

The DP will meet this challenge. Our principles will be embraced by South Africans who are the true South African patriots. These principles are namely the protection of fundamental human rights; representative government through general adult franchise for all South Africans; an independent judiciary and the rule of law; the maintenance of law, order and security; the limitation of the authority of central Government; negotiation of a truly participative democracy; rejection of violence; sound industrial relations and a system of private enterprise which promotes growth, but recognises the important State functions of human development and upliftment. If these are the same old unacceptable concepts, then heaven help us! Denial of these rights has created violence and bloodshed, has led our friends to abandon us and has dragged our economy down.

I wish to comment on an area of human development and upliftment where this Government has failed miserably. That is the area of Black housing and more specifically the allocation of suitable land for this purpose. In determining expenditure priorities the Government has failed to allocate sufficient funds for this purpose.

Last year legislation was passed, which we vigorously opposed, tightening up on control over illegal squatting. In its paranoiac concern to eliminate squatting the Government failed to recognise the other side of the equation, namely the complete lack of suitable alternatives. That was our primary objection to this legislation.

This lack of foresight has been perpetuated in the Budget. I thought that rapid urbanisation with its inevitable strain on urban resources had been recognised as a challenge that we have to meet. But providing R917 million, a modest increase of 8,9% over last year, is totally unrealistic. It shows a failure to recognise the severity of the problem.

This has been carried through to the provinces. In the Cape Province the Administrator has confessed that only R49 million of the R392 million needed for housing and infrastructure in Black residential areas has been provided. I sincerely ask how we can allow this intolerable state of affairs to continue. The net result is that people are forced to continue squatting under unsanitary conditions of extreme discomfort. People are harassed by the police and other authorities. People are hounded from one bush to the next, carrying their miserable possessions on their backs.

I submit that this Government has paid lip service to this problem. The hon the Deputy Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning was quoted recently as stating in George:

There is no doubt that this is true. But the question is: What does this Government intend doing about it? In the Cape only 12,5% of the amount deemed necessary by the hon the Administrator has been provided. I contend that this is a gross dereliction of duty. The DP will strive for a high growth rate through a system of private enterprise but will not abrogate its responsibilities in the field of human development and upliftment.

In the time available to me I wish also to comment on the question of the taxation of working wives. The announcement that working wives receiving salaries will no longer have to submit a tax return was welcomed—that their income other than from rental or dividends will no longer be taxed with that of their husbands. It is regrettable that this falls far short of the requirement because self-employed wives are not eligible for this concession. Their position will in fact worsen. I believe that this is a serious shortcoming in what is otherwise a most welcome concession. I therefore appeal to the hon the Minister to address this matter urgently.

Mr Speaker, I believe that the last time I stood at this podium, I said: “Ek is nie ’n Indiër nie, ek is ’n Suid-Afrikaner.” I am not an Indian, I am a South African. My father was an Indian. Indians are in India. We are here in South Africa. Today I say: “I am a Democrat.” I am proud to be a Democrat. The Parliamentary leader of the DP, the hon member Dr De Beer, in my eyes is not a White man, not an Afrikaner but a South African who symbolises everything that I would like to stand for. He personifies my own wishes, views and opinions of what is good for South Africa as a whole. That is the DP.

The economy in South Africa is in a mess because the politics of South Africa have been a mess for such a long time. Inevitably, then, one impinges upon the other. One cannot discuss the financial situation in South Africa without lamenting the sorry state of our political situation.

I would like to address a remark to my good friends sitting on the benches diagonally opposite me and ask them to convey to their own associates in Carletonville and Boksburg a real experience which I had some years ago in Durban when I got on to a bus. In those days only 10 seats on the upper deck were reserved for what is called non-Whites. The other seats were all reserved for Whites, even if those seats were empty. The 10 seats were filled up and a Black man got on the bus. The conductor said to him: “I am sorry but I cannot let you in here.” This Black man said: “Excuse me, Sir, this is the last bus. If you do not allow me on it, I will have to walk.” The conductor said: “Go to hell!” Then the Black man calmly said: “Excuse me, Sir, I have been there.” All of us held our breath. He said: “Yes, Sir, I went to hell but I had to leave there, because all the signs read ‘Whites only’.”

We have to be careful that we do not have that kind of situation in South Africa in which people confine themselves to a spiritual hell, into which those governing the city councils of those particular towns have in fact gone.

The hon chief leader of the NP has proclaimed—I respectfully agree entirely—that the status quo cannot endure. There has to be change. There has to be a new constitution. The status quo is quite definitely a no go but we need to take steps which will bring about a realisation of the changes that we want. I entirely agree that the changes have to be brought about in a constructive, orderly and progressive manner. We cannot simply upset the entire apple-cart because we want the change, but unless we start the processes, there will be no orderly progress.

One of the initial things to do is to release Mandela. I do not want to use this as a shibboleth. I do not say that he must be released just to promote the change. I say he must be released because he has been immorally detained in jail for at least five years by the South African public represented by the South African Government. The man was sentenced to life imprisonment. Normally “life” means 20 years. He served his sentence. He paid whatever debt he owed to society and he is being held, I would say, in terms of the strict rule of law, illegally and certainly immorally!

Recently the hon the Minister of Law and Order felt it necessary—I would not say he was obliged to—to release at least 400 people who had been detained without trial. The fact that the hon the Minister released them does not necessarily mean that our police forces are stupid. It does not mean that they were incompetent in that if these people had committed any crimes the police could not gather the evidence to have these detainees brought to court. It means only one thing: Persons who were totally innocent of any crime were incarcerated by the Government of this country. That is disgraceful and it is not conducive to change.

The Cape Times of this morning mentions talking to the ANC. Of course we should talk to the ANC. We should also talk to the PAC and the BPC. We do not have to talk only to the ANC. We must talk to these organisations, we must listen to them and they must listen to us. We cannot dictate to them and I cannot or will not allow any of them to dictate to me.

The options of the ANC are gradually being diminished. Mr Mikhail Gorbachev has played a part in diminishing the options of the ANC. He said to them that the armed struggle was no longer acceptable and that they would no longer receive free armaments. Once that takes effect, the money that the ANC receives from the Americans, the Swedes and the West Germans, among others, will also diminish. The ANC will be left with only one other option, unless they want to wither away. That option will be to participate in all the available avenues, including the tricameral Parliament and other so-called Government-created institutions. They clearly want to decide when they will participate. They are entitled to make their decisions and we shall make our own decisions.

Some time ago Dr Van Zyl Slabbert said that in South Africa we only had two choices. We could either have violent revolution or peaceful constitutional progress. That means that those of us who abjure violence have to choose the constitutional path, which in this country means the Parliamentary path. That is what many of us are trying to do in this country.

The ANC still calls those of us who are in this Parliament collaborators. I was in India recently and a component of the UDF sent a telegram to the Prime Minister of India, asking that I be arrested and deported on the grounds that “Poovalingam is a collaborator with the apartheid regime”. Last Saturday the hon the Parliamentary leader of my party said that those who use these terms, like the ANC who says that we are fellow-travellers of apartheid, lie. Indeed, they lie and I will call that a lie too. We are not collaborators, we are opponents of apartheid. Anyone who has the slightest bit of decency and honesty will recognise that. Yet, we have to talk to the ANC and the PAC. We have to have a national convention in this country where everyone will participate.

We have to talk to the Broederbond. We have got to talk to the AWB. We have got to talk to every component which has a political opinion in South Africa so that we will eventually have consensus. We have got to talk to the SACP. We have got to talk to the Kappiekommando. No person can live in isolation in this country. [Interjections.]

Talk about what, however? We must talk about creating a new constitution. To quote the hon the leader of the NP again … [Interjections.]: “Yes I will talk to Wynand Malan and I will talk to you as well. I will talk to everyone about creating a new constitution for South Africa”.

Unless a constitution is devised in which all political opinions in South Africa have an input there will not be peace, there will not be proper orderly progress in this country. So that is what we need. Those in Government and in power say we need it, yet they take no steps to promote it.

Why is there this paralytic inaction? This paralytic inaction is because they know what they have got to do and they do not have the courage to take the steps which are necessary to promote it.

We need a federal constitution with proportional representation in this country and the best exemplar of that is West Germany. In that country such a system works very efficiently. It brings people together—it does not separate them. It also makes it possible for minority political parties to participate fully in the affairs of the country. All of us who have been watching West Germany have seen it grow from the ashes of the Second World War into one of the mightiest countries of the present time.

South Africa has that potential. We have the human resources and we have the physical resources. What we need is to bring about a proper reconciliation and that not only can be done, it must be done if we have any consideration for our children, for our grandchildren and for the future of our country. [Time expired.]

Mr Speaker, it is always a pleasure to follow a man as voluble as the hon member for Reservoir Hills. I nearly said the member for the Thousand Hills in Natal because I think he has been in three political parties in this year alone. When I first met him he told me at one stage or other he had been in the South African Communist Party. Before I finish with his parties, he told me that change must take place in an orderly and constructive manner. This had me very worried because I think the next party that he will apply to is the NP because that seems to be our policy.

That will never happen!

I would like to ask the hon member, when he criticises the sort of things that go wrong in our social structure—he says he is a South African; I welcome him as a South African and I am proud to work with him—whether India, where he came from, has a better or worse social system than ours. I would like to find this out from him one day when he criticises us. [Interjections.] I wish the hon members who are shouting at me from the left-hand side would stop because I was just about to wish them well over the fast. I hope they have a good year to come.

I listened to the hon members of the DP including the hon member for the Thousand Hills and the hon member for Pinetown and I would like to say that when one listens to a cynic he is a man that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, but when one listens to one of the hon members on the left, they are people who know the value of everything but they never know what price it costs. When the hon member for Pinetown tells us that we have not got enough ground to give the people for housing, I wonder why his party and their ilk in their PFP seats would not allow a Norweto. There we have a lot of ground for a lot of people, land that we created for them but they would not allow them to stay there. It is always easy to give advice but it is very difficult to carry it out.

I would also like to reply to an hon member from that party who made a speech on Friday that really worried me. I know that it was a political speech and it was given with an eye to the next day and who was going to be elected, but it came across as a manifestation of something we have not seen in this House for a long time.

The speech, for the first time since I have been here, had to do with what I would call “naked boerehaat”. One of the members of that party, the hon member for Port Elizabeth Central—and I must say on Friday he was the only one of his party left here—picked out 30 words of the millions of words uttered by the hon the State President over the past ten years. He accused us of being a purely Afrikaner party and then, with unctuous concern for the 13 English-speaking hon members on our side of the House, asked the hon the leader of the NP please to look after the English-speaking people on our side better than they were being looked after at the moment.

One thing is certain about that party, namely that they represent everybody in the world except the people in their own constituencies. Right next to my constituency, two weeks ago, they went to look after the people in Reigerpark. The people in Reigerpark, at that inaugural meeting of the DP, had one message to give them and I hope they remember it from now onwards: “We can look after ourselves. Do not come and tell us what to do. We do not need you to do it.” I am saying to these hon members from the 13 or more English-speaking people on my side: “You do not have to look after us. Thank you very much. We will look after ourselves very well. We are being looked after very well.”

Before I got here in 1987, I think there were four English-speaking people elected to this side of the House. One was a Minister, one was a Deputy Minister and I think one was a Whip. We already have this year a Minister, a Deputy Minister, a Whip, I think we have a head of a joint committee, we are well-represented on the joint committees and we are well-represented on the study committees. We do not have to have that hon member appealing to our leader to look after us. We are very, very happy to be here. Much more important to us than what we are getting out of this, is that we are happy to be in a South African party and we are at home. “Ons is tuis.” There are not, as was suggested last week, “Rooinekke” and “Boere” on our side. We are happy to be together.

The other thing of which I would like to assure the hon member for Port Elizabeth Central is that we have a new species of bird in this country. She is called the many-toothed hen. The public servants who are English-speaking are not as scarce as hen’s teeth in this country. We have three Directors-General who are English-speaking. We have got two Assistant Directors-General, 23 Directors of departments and 223 Assistant Directors-General. We had the Admiral of the fleet last year. We could go on forever. If we could get past that old stigma that that party has given the English-speakers joining the public service we would have even more. We are well looked after on this side of the House.

We know that that party—when it was the Progressive Reform Party, or the progressive something else party and then another party and now they are called the Democratic Party—has always existed because there are people in this country who are unhappy about the fact that the Afrikaners took the Government into their hands. They were far happier when the British ran this country and when they were part of that British establishment which ran this country. We have forever in the past called those people and the dissidents amongst the Afrikaners who associated with them “souties”.

We are not a “soutie” party. I know that that speech on Friday was made to placate the “souties” who are joining that party. From my point of view we are a SA party. We do not have to make speeches. It would be horrible to see that kind of politicking take place in this House anymore.

Order! I have allowed the use of that word for the purpose of this speech. I hope it will not be used as a regular parliamentary term. The hon member may proceed.

I give you that assurance, Mr Speaker. I have listened to a week of the weakest debate that this Parliament can offer. Why? The reason is that we have been dealing with money. The economic policies of the two opposition parties in the House of Assembly are perhaps the weakest that the world has ever seen. Economics is the purest form of politics. Economics is where all the hot air is reduced to implacable maths and the economics reduces our opposition to fine ash.

A three-year-old retarded ape could have worked out that whenever it comes to debate on economics, the Official Opposition party in the House of Assembly recites the budget figures from the Minister’s reports in a way that reminds me of somebody who knows the words of a song, but does not know the tune of the song. Then the chorus from the side of the CP comes up with a bit I like. It always happens. The first speaker talks about economics and the next one talks about die Afrikaners—and then follows the bit I like—“en die Blankes”. I have always tried to work out what that means, “die Afrikaners en die Blankes”. Then, like a chorus, follows “die Afrikaners über alles”, and then they go on. They talk about the money affairs of our country in that way.

I should call the democrats that “progressivist” party because they always talk about us as the Nationalist Party. They have the most quaint Victorian democratic socialism that I have ever seen. However, as, I think, they have now finally packed for permanent oblivion, we do not really have to deal with them.

However, at some time, no matter how much we love them, somebody will have to bring the truth home to the hon members of the House of Delegates and the House of Representatives with their simplistic cry of apartheid still exists, do away with it, and we will have no more economic problems. One of the leaders of the opposition today said exactly the same thing: do away with apartheid, and all the other problems will go away. The hon member for Addo actually said we spend something like R32,5 billion in this country on apartheid, and if he does not believe me, then he must look up his own Hansard. In the first place the word “apartheid”, in its original form, does not exist. Could any of the hon members who today jeered at that apartheid or criticised that apartheid have sat here 40 years ago in this Chamber, with the Budget that we have? That apartheid has gone. If anybody here thinks that that is what we have in the country now, his IQ is suffering from an illness and he should see someone about it, or he does not listen to what our Ministers have been saying over the years. No, apartheid is like a swearword.

One can use it to describe anything without taking the trouble even to think about it. It is like calling a person a bloody idiot when he does not even have one scratch. One can swear and use the word apartheid without thinking. Doing away with the swearword apartheid is not going to solve this country’s economic problems.

I am almost sure that in ten years’ time, if our leaders are right and we do include Blacks in this Parliament here today, those Blacks who come here are going to describe those hon members and their policies, these hon members sitting on our left, as apartheid. I am willing to bet that. It is a swearword and not a descriptive term. [Interjections.]

The fact is that the swearword apartheid is one used by our economic enemies to justify the economic war they wage against us to protect their own interests. [Interjections.]

The world is well aware of the real economic war. The world is waging a “resources war” against those hon members and against me. [Interjections.] It is called a “resources war” in the textbooks. Why do hon members not look it up? It is not about apartheid.

Our greatest enemy in the world is Australia. Why is this so? Australia is our enemy since it is more or less in exactly the same economic phase as we are. They produce the same things as we produce and they cannot compete with the Asian economies around them since they are not as sophisticated. The only market near them is Africa. Who stands in Africa and can compete with Australia better than they can? Who can sell gold which is becoming an important commodity in Australia, who can sell cars, wool, maize, coal and wheat—Australia and South Africa. [Time expired.]

Mr Speaker, firstly, I want to start by telling the hon member who has just spoken that in the 10 to 15 years that he is talking about, his children will be sorry for what their father said today. His children will deny that their father ever said anything about apartheid.

*Mr Speaker, I want to continue in my own language. I am an Afrikaans-speaking person. I want my hon brothers of the CP to take note that I am speaking only Afrikaans. I want to start by taking the hon member for Daljosaphat to task. It is not good to come here and disparage people without having proof of one’s allegations. That hon member must return to Daljosaphat, where the people do not even know what he looks like. He must go and talk to his voters because the last time that they saw him was when he stood as a candidate in the election to represent them here. That was in 1984 and they have not seen him since! [Interjections.]

He has no right to come and launch attacks here because he has not asked his voters in Daljosaphat whether he may represent them in another party. I want to ask him to look at the skeletons in his own cupboard. He should see whether that skeletons are so wonderful that he can afford to come and do an injustice to others here. As I have so little time at my disposal, I do not wish to spend any more on him. I want to go on.

We are well aware of the headache which the hon the Minister and his advisors must have had in balancing this Budget for the three different Houses and in satisfying everyone. Of course, everyone is not satisfied but I do not want to concentrate so much on finance today as on the policy of his party, as we see it.

The NP policy is responsible for the weak financial rand. The NP policy is responsible for the weak performance of our gold price. That policy is responsible for sanctions and also for creating hostility toward our beloved country, South Africa.

Can we really shout at the tops of our voices: “Ons vir jou, Suid-Afrika”? We cannot do this. I admit that over the past six years more changes have taken place in South African politics, at the social level and in labour relations, than during the previous 300 years. These changes did not take place accompanied by great fuss in the Press but became a reality very quietly.

In this process the Government went out of its way and perhaps upset a number of people. Has there been an end to sanctions, however, to hostile attitudes toward our country? What does the future hold for our country? It is difficult to reply to this. All the people in our country want to know what the future holds for them.

I want to go even further. As a result of the conviction and the tradition that no taxation may be levied if no representation exists, it is accepted in a democratic state that the executive institutions may not collect or spend money before the legislative institutions, which consist of elected representatives, have granted authority for this. Usually this underlying principle is clearly acknowledged as the cornerstone of the financial policy in the constitution of any democratic state. Because the Budget is in fact a working programme for the executive institution, it is a fixed principle that only the executive political office-bearers who have the support of the majority of the elected members of the legislative institutions concerned will submit proposals for the expenditure of public money.

Against this background of the principles of sound and civilised administration, the LP certainly finds it disappointing as well as shocking to see in the papers that this Government had to contribute an amount of R6 million to the independent existence of the Ciskei alone.

I think that the time has come to incorporate these homelands in South African society so that less money can be spent on them. We demand that the hon the Minister immediately furnish us with information on all the amounts of money which are spent annually on carrying out the NP’s homeland policy. We do not expect the hon the Minister to furnish those statistics in his reply. We want a detailed explanation of the amounts of money which are spent on maintaining the ideology of apartheid. [Interjections.]

When one travels the roads nowadays, one sees slogans on cars such as “Born free, taxed to death” and “The Lord giveth, Du Plessis taketh away”. These slogans are a sign of people’s frustration and unhappiness because they have to pay for things for which they did not ask. They are held responsible for things for which they are not responsible. That is the truth and my party and I want to state it clearly that the maintenance costs of the four independent states and the approximately 16 self-governing semi-homelands, as well as the co-operative federal system which we apply in the form of a tricameral system, really force us to move a motion of no confidence in the NP policy of separate development.

Our party accepted this tricameral system merely because we could do no other. We are clearly on the way to a free South Africa in which one and all can be free and in which we can all say: “Ons vir jou, Suid-Afrika”. We want to see this realised just after the next election. That is why we will take part in the election and why we shall tell all our voters: “Give us just a little while longer and we shall continue and bring you the freedom for which you have been waiting.”

The ordinary inhabitants, the taxpayers, have to pay the piper. They have to pay the piper for the ideology of apartheid. They have to explain these matters to their children—why books are so expensive, clothes are so expensive. That is why it cannot be expected of them to say amen to this ideology.

My party wants to emphasise that every policy is continually re-evaluated. Our party considers it very strange that a party like the NP, which is so academically orientated, does not relinquish policies which are unacceptable to the majority of the South African community. Is it not time for them to pause and re-evaluate their policy for a change? Has the time not come for them all to sit together round a table? I agree that all people who matter should sit around that table and re-evaluate the position.

We can no longer afford group areas. We can no longer afford the knowledge that we are hurting people. That is why I ask our hon Minister of Finance, the man who holds the purse strings at the moment—and ready money is a ready medicine—to help to ensure that these matters which are such a cause of dissatisfaction to us are abolished.

I want to go even further. There are many matters about which we are most concerned. One of these matters about which we are concerned is that the situation in our country is not improving. I think the time has come for the Government to start thinking seriously about the fact that “Die Stem”, which is played on television every evening, should also be accompanied by “’Nkosi Sikelel ’i-Afrika!” It would be a good thing if we could make a start because we know—whether we want to or not—that in time to come that anthem will have to be played in any case and, before we are forced to play it, we would rather make a start now so that we may accustom the community in general to it. [Time expired.]

Mr Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak after the hon member for Robertson. He made an interesting speech and I can certainly support some of the statements he made. There is at least one positive aspect, and that is that there has been certain progress as far as the tricameral Parliament is concerned.

The hon member went on to refer rather disparagingly to some of the so-called slogans in connection with the hon the Minister of Finance and the tax system. I therefore believe that he will support me if we can create a climate among all our representatives in this House in accordance with which we can say that everyone who asks for a service must at the same time ask the voters please to cough up more and pay more tax. He must be able to say that they are prepared to pay more tax for that additional service.

The hon member also referred to the song “’Nkosi Sikelel ’i-Afrika.” I want to tell him that as far as the SABC, and specifically the programmes geared to Black audiences, are concerned, I would have no objection to the song being played there.

Let me proceed. I am also grateful to the hon member Mr Seedat, who in my opinion made one of the best speeches today. I agree with all the hon members who have spoken about this. The tricameral Parliament has withstood the test of time and is going from strength to strength. It is remarkable that despite growing pains, there is greater unity today. A simple comparison with the debates of the extended public committees on provincial affairs last year will bear this statement out.

Who would ever have dreamt in 1984 that the highly publicised Group Areas Act and the trilogy of laws could be debated in an open joint meeting? [Interjections.] The system has survived. What is more, after that debate there was greater understanding of one another’s problems and the bitterness of the past. The tricameral Parliament has served an excellent purpose, and I agree that we should continue with it until such time as a new dispensation can be negotiated within which all South Africans can be meaningfully accommodated. The growth towards unity and an undivided South Africanism is truly happening. [Interjections.]

It seems as if the opposition groups in the House of Assembly are mesmerised by this tripartite concept, and in particular by the number three. The troika of the new Democratic Party was aptly described by the hon member for Walvis Bay, when he said that the trojka reminded him of that piebald calf with three heads that wanted to gobble up everything as far as policy was concerned, but had only one outlet channel.

The three leaders are really striving to speak with one voice. I accept that is so. What is more, they are even prepared to draw lots as to who is to speak. I do not know whether that is in line with what Lood had to say in Beeld. Thanks to sound planning in the building of this great Chamber, those three hon members had better make simultaneous use of this podium, because this is the only place in Parliament that I know of where there are three microphones next to each other for three speakers. That may enable them to say their say jointly, and we say to them, “good luck”.

The microphones are weak. [Interjections.]

The CP, too, has a three-stream policy, characterised by three reverse gears, namely the partitionists, the “Boerestaat” cum AWBs and the homelanders. The latter are in turn divided among the Morgenzonners and the Boshof “red-aksie”. Prof Boshof is at least honest and realistic, but his honesty is not acceptable to the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition in the House of Assembly. It is therefore understandable that the CP also has a trojka, all of whom are in this House, but it also has a trojka outside, that varies from Eugëne and Jani to Anna and Carel.

Besides this the hon member for Overvaal has also, in co-operation with the PFP and the ANC, made them part of the Bermuda Triangle. Under his liberal leadership and with his kicking prowess he has now got them where he wants them. I am told someone referred to him recently as “a verkrampte liberal”.

Just think of the three alternatives we can offer here in the House of Assembly when election day comes. We can even imagine a theoretically possible candidate for State President. The public’s choice will lie between that three-headed calf, a tortoise with three reverse gears or, right in the van, the hon the leader-in-chief of the NP. What a choice! The voters of South Africa will know whom to choose when they do choose.

In 1987 I addressed this House on the economic guidelines for South Africa and in particular, the lessons we can learn from Japan in that regard. In this connection I drew attention to comparable issues in Japan about 20 years ago. In particular I referred to deregulation, the privatisation there, the small business sector and then the so-called Saibatsu.

The Saibatsu comprises six or seven of the biggest corporations which co-operate as a unit very closely with the State in determining economic policy and strategy. The executive officials of the State and the Saibatsu even exchange positions on occasion, in order to promote better mutual understanding. There is a place for both the small businessman and the large corporation, side by side. Indeed, in Japan they complement each other ideally.

The hon the State President and the Economic Advisory Council deserve the highest praise for the fact that privatisation and deregulation today form part of South African economic policy. I am looking forward to the employment of the Japanese and Taiwanese formulae in South Africa. Walking in the street the other day, it was wonderful to see the following banner headlines in Business Day:

The fear of the influence of large organisations is often exaggerated and unjustified. Indeed, the contribution of these organisations in times of recession and in the taking over of smaller organisations, which would otherwise go under, is a stabilising factor.

In this regard I can refer to a statement by the late Fred Du Plessis:

Dr Du Plessis’ influence will be felt in the South African economy for many years to come.

I had the privilege of studying under him, and later I undertook a very enriching research tour with him overseas. Up to the time of his death we had occasional conversations, and what I will always remember are his politico-economic views, particularly his ideas in regard to a combined business management which would advise the State on an official basis. To a large extent this corresponds with the Saibatsu of Japan.

How wonderful that despite a wide variety of views, the eight biggest private organisations in South Africa were able to reach consensus on this.

With reference to the appeals and conferences of the hon the State President, these large organisations, in co-operation with the SA Foundation, appointed a steering committee to investigate shortcomings in the economic management of and cooperation with the State. Senior officials representative of the top companies, the Foundation and advisors drew up a comprehensive and in-depth report. The major proposal is the establishment of a business council for South Africa.

†The broad objective was to research the creation of this new body which, through the participation of the country’s leading business policy makers, could create an effective and influential means of business involvement, both domestically and abroad, in the growth, development and propagation of the South African economy for the benefit of all the country’s peoples.

This went hand in hand with the view that a number of bodies existed to represent sectional interests in South Africa, but no single umbrella body represented the overall interests of the private sector.

This report stated that bodies exist in other countries such as Australia, Canada Japan and Germany which speak for business as a whole and where sectional interests are subordinated, in effect so-called “cabinets of business”. These councils bring the chief executives of the major companies together providing them with an intelligence and research backup and creating an effective and influential medium for communication with government and others.

In the absence of a body of this kind South African business is lacking co-ordinated action and in certain cases co-ordinated response. The steering committee came to the unanimous conclusion that under no circumstances were the functions of Assocom, the FCI, the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut etc to be usurped; on the contrary, the business council should complement their role and serve as an overall mouthpiece for the private sector which could rise above sectional interests. This can only be achieved by a body which comprises of the major companies of the country represented by their chief executive officers. Members of that business council would therefore not merely be organisations of business but true policy makers acting in unison. Based on international precedent other classes of membership would be created for smaller companies, associate members and individual members. I understand that the major business corporations would primarily form the chief membership, but there would also be a general membership including corporate, individual and associate members. I have no doubt that this proposed body can play a significant role in combating inflation and, in the long term in the revitalisation of the economy and privatisation. I wish them well.

Mr Speaker, the hon member for Jeppe, who spoke just before me, will excuse me for not reacting to what he said. I do not think it is necessary to do so. He stated his case well enough.

This gives me the opportunity to touch on some other minor matters I should like to discuss in this House.

It is a privilege to participate in this debate. Many different matters have already been raised in these debates over the last few days—serious matters, such as the SWA/Namibia issue and the implementation of Resolution 435. Then, too, there has been South Africa’s very serious diplomatic initiative of the past few days, and specifically over the weekend. I should very much like to take this opportunity to congratulate and thank our hon Minister of Foreign Affairs and our hon Minister of Defence for what they have achieved thus far over the weekend in resolving this difficult situation.

Accordingly this debate was on occasion highly emotional as well, particularly judging from the exclamations that have emanated from our CP colleagues. On Friday, when the issue of Resolution 435 was debated, some of those hon members lost their tempers in a private discussion and in fact went so far as to brand us traitors. I regard it as a serious matter when we employ such language to attack one another in this House.

That is not true.

No, it is not true, and that hon member knows that it is not true. If it is true, go and say it in public. Go and say it to the Press, so that they can publish the fact that the CP contends that its colleagues in the NP are traitors. Then the hon member must also state who they are betraying. I challenge them to go and say that in public. I think it would be a good thing if the hon member displayed the courage to do that, so that he could see what feedback he got.

I also gain the impression, looking at all the contributions, that this debate is tending to become a real cake-cutting debate. It is a pity that this is so, because we are increasingly beginning to think in terms of who gets what and how little our own group is getting. The hon the Minister is doing his best to satisfy the needs of the inhabitants with the funds at his disposal. However, we sit here arguing and complaining and looking to see whether the next group is getting more than we are. Today I want to appeal to all my colleagues to change our approach completely. We should rather adopt the approach of trying to ensure that by spending judiciously, we attempt to address the reasonable needs of our people. We must also try to encourage our people to be sparing with all our country’s production factors—particularly its capital.

In the current political debate in our country it has become fashionable, particularly among our group, to compare and play off one race group against the next. I want to say here this afternoon: When I speak in my constituency it will not be necessary for people to try to play this kind of game and conduct this kind of debate with me, because there is nothing to compare. We shall see to it that our people’s needs are satisfied, on the basis of what the needs are, and not in an extravagant way. Therefore such action will be in the interests of the country and we shall always gain by it.

Good speeches have been made in this House on the subject of productivity. I agree wholeheartedly with efforts to increase productivity. We must all do this. We must all provide guidance in order to increase productivity. We must all take the lead in this regard. One calls to mind efforts such as productivity promotion campaigns. I think we can begin with that; simply with greater dedication and harder work—perhaps working until Friday afternoon at five rather than half past four. We must utilise our expensive infrastructure to the full. There is too much expensive equipment that is not being used because the staff to man that machinery is not available.

I represent the platteland and I have compassion for the problems of the platteland and the regions. I can see how our platteland has changed in recent decades. I can see how the quality of fife of our Brown people has improved. It is constantly being said that the platteland is depopulating, but that is not true. The platteland is merely changing colour. I can see that the Brown people are earning more money. I welcome that and am pleased that our Brown people and our Black people in the platteland are also making economic progress and that their quality of fife is improving. I welcome this. It is of great importance for our rural economy.

However, I want to say in this House this afternoon that the CP with its petty politicking and narrow vision wants to fragment the platteland economically. I contend that the CP is seeking to bankrupt the small towns of the platteland. The CP’s policy in regard to central business areas, as articulated in the Transvaal situation will be the death-knell of the small towns in the platteland. This applies to the cities as well. According to Mr Dorfling it even applies to Port Elizabeth, which was in jeopardy in the municipal elections.

The CP must tell us how they see the economic consolidation of buying power, particularly in the platteland. They must also tell us what will be the consequences of the way in which they wish to implement it. Dr Treurnicht says that the CP has nothing in principle against the business community, but that it must be borne in mind that the community’s interests are more important than financial interests. What does he mean by that? How can one separate the two? How can one disentangle a community’s interests from its financial interests? Surely that is not possible.

The CP has a point of view as to how it is going to fragment the business communities in the small towns. What is more, they are doing it. They did it in Boksburg. This Allesverloren, blanc de blanc Boksburg is therefore an outstanding example of what the KP in fact has in mind for South Africa.

These statements are making my people in the platteland very worried. [Interjections.] My people in the platteland work very hard to maintain their communities and keep them intact. However, the CP is rendering these efforts futile. They must tell the people what they have in mind. The CP wants to do to South Africa what they did to Boksburg.

Have you ever been in Boksburg?

It is not necessary to go there. Surely it is not important for me to have been there. After all, those people themselves are telling us what is going on there. [Interjections.] Considerations relating to the economy do not exist for the CP. They do not consider the economic interests of the Republic of South Africa. The CP must address this issue, because their voters would very much like to hear about this. The country’s White votes want to know what they are going to do with the country’s economy.

Before I conclude, I should just like to say something else. Reference was made to symbols in this House this afternoon. The hon member for Pietersburg had a great deal to say about symbols, but I think that what must happen first, is that they must tell us what the symbols of the White homeland will look like. They will definitely not be the national flag as we know it, nor “Die Stem van Suid-Afrika”.

Debate interrupted.

Mr Chairman, I move without notice:

Mr Chairman, I rise on a point of order. This motion is incompetent also. In terms of the Standing Rules of Parliament the times for the sitting of this House are clearly laid down. Only Mr Speaker …

Mr Chairman, on a point of order …

Order! The hon member for Reservoir Hills is making a point of order. He may proceed.

In terms of the Standing Rules of Parliament, times for sitting are clearly laid down and those times may only be changed by order of Mr Speaker, which order has not been made, or by decision of this House. There can be no sitting tomorrow at 10h00 because this House has not decided that it will be sitting tomorrow. [Interjections.]

Order! I wish to point out to the hon member for Reservoir Hills that what has in fact happened is that the hon the Leader of the House has given notice that he will move tomorrow that the House sit on Wednesday.

If the sitting is going to be at the normal hours as set down in the Rules then I have no objection. However, I rather understood the hon member to move that the House convenes tomorrow at 10h00 until 12h30.

Order! The hon the Leader of the House has given notice that he will move tomorrow that the House will sit on Wednesday morning. That is in order.

Mr Chairman, there has been no arrangement for this House to sit tomorrow in the normal sitting hours, because the Joint Sitting will be held in the normal sitting hours tomorrow.

Order! There will be questions for tomorrow afternoon at 14h15.