presented petitions from the—

1. (1) Paarl Municipality;
2. (2) Paarl Divisional Council;
3. (3) National Monuments Council;
4. (4) Department of Nature and Environmental Conservation of the Provincial Administration of the Cape of Good Hope,

in opposition to the Paarl Mountain Amendment Bill (Hybrid).

Paarl Mountain Amendment Bill and petitions referred to a Select Committee in accordance with Rule 38 of the Rules relating to Hybrid Bills.

as Chairman presented the First Report of the Select Committee on the Accounts of the South African Transport Services (on Unauthorized Expenditure), as follows:

Your Committee begs to report unauthorized expenditure mentioned in paragraph 4, page 2, of the Report of the Auditor-General on the Accounts of the South African Transport Services for 1981-’82, namely:

Your Committee, having made enquiry into the circumstances under which this expenditure was incurred, recommends that the aforementioned amounts be appropriated by Parliament.

D. M. STREICHER, Chairman.

Committee Rooms,

House of Assembly.

21 April 1983.

Report to be considered.

Proceedings and evidence to be printed.

Mr. Chairman, I ask for the privilege of the half-hour.

The traditional manner in which to commence a debate on a ministerial portfolio is to refer to the annual report of the department. I intend to follow that custom today. As always, the report before us of the Justice section of the Directorate has been drawn up in a competent and workmanlike manner. The words that are written, however, are one thing, but the work of the department is in fact quite another. The functions of the department are multi-faceted and it provides essential services of great value to thousands of South Africans. We thank the Director-General and his staff for these services and for the work that they have done over the past year.

In mentioning the report, two welcome and very happy aspects present themselves immediately. Firstly, I think it is a pleasure—and I am sure the hon. the Minister will agree with me when I say this—to read a document which does not for once carry a message of doom. The measures taken in response to the second report of the Hoexter Commission to arrest the drainage of qualified staff seem to be working on nearly all if not all fronts. Certainly, on the professional level, the steps that have been taken are in fact working well. However, if the hon. the Minister is honest, he will readily admit that the downturn in the economy has also had the effect of supplementing his department’s ranks. In this connection I should like to issue just one word of warning and it is one that I have issued before. An army is only as good as its back-up services. Professionals can only operate effectively if their administrative services are adequate. In this respect the department has not kept up to date. The economic recession will not last for ever and the drain of clerical and administrative staff will yet be felt again. Now is the time to start upgrading the conditions of service of those who are not in the professional category but who nonetheless make it possible for the qualified legal officers to render efficient service.

The second welcome aspect of the report relates to the fact that this department no longer administers the repressive legislation which the Government deems necessary for the maintenance of the security of the State. In the traditional sense, I have always seen a Minister of Justice as being a person whose main task was to ensure that justice was administered to the benefit and the advantage of the individual, the ordinary citizen. I have never seen him as a Minister whose task it was to be the Gauleiter of the State, banning, restricting, detaining and spreading terror through the ranks of those opposing the Government. That, Sir, is best left in the hands of the hon. member for Potchefstroom. [Interjections.]

I should like at this early stage to ask the hon. the Minister to give the Committee an update on policy decisions and the implementation of those decisions in practical form with specific reference to the several reports of commissions that have been before him for some considerable time.

The first of these commissions that I should like to mention is the Commission of Inquiry into the Desirability of Converting the Witwatersrand Local Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa into an Additional Provincial Division of the Supreme Court. The report of this commission is commonly known as the Diemont Commission Report. Basically, the Diemont Commission made three major recommendations. Firstly, it recommended that a Deputy Judge-President of the Transvaal be appointed and that he take up office on the Witwatersrand and administer the Witwatersrand Local Division. Their second recommendation was that appellate jurisdiction be granted to the Witwatersrand Local Division and, thirdly, that the Witwatersrand Local Division incorporate the areas of Vereeniging and Vanderbijlpark into that district. These are all very important recommendations affecting both the profession and the public, and I believe that this report should not be allowed to lie dormant. It should not be allowed to lie on the hon. the Minister’s desk to await much longer the coming of further reports.

The second document that I wish to mention is the third interim report of the Hoexter Commission which, of course, as we all know, is a commission appointed to study and report upon the structure and the functioning of the courts. This report, which made far-reaching recommendations, is geared to ease the work of the Appellate Division. The question I want to ask is: What is happening in this regard? What steps are being taken? Is the report to be implemented; if so, when and how and in what terms?

The third document I wish to mention is the fourth interim report of the Hoexter Commission. I should like to quote the main finding of this commission. On page 197 of its report the commission has the following to say—

In this connection I should like to refer to a speech that I made in the Justice Vote on 6 June 1977, col. 9324. I should like to offer this speech to the hon. the Minister with my compliments, because it deals directly with the major aspects of the Hoexter report.

I shall frame it.

The recommendations of the fourth interim report of the Hoexter Commission virtually word for word take over the suggestions I made in my speech in 1977. [Interjections.] I therefore suggest that before finally implementing this report, the hon. the Minister should use, as a basis for that implementation, a far shorter version of the report, i.e. my speech of 6 June 1977, which I recommend to him as required reading.

There are several basic reasons why it is becoming urgent and essential for small claims courts to be instituted in South Africa. We all know that the costs of litigation have, over the past years, escalated beyond the normal means of the ordinary citizen. We all know that even the smallest of claims has to be backed up by pleadings, summonses, rebuttals … and that long delays are being experienced in the settlement of small claims as a result of all the paperwork required. We all know, too, that there is, owing to the shortage of professional staff to handle them, a huge backlog in regard to civil claims. Basically the situation that is now arising is such that if a person has a claim of under R750, it is just not worth prosecuting that claim. Probably the hon. the Minister does not even have statistics on how many such claims are not prosecuted, and the reason for this is that most attorneys, when seeing individuals who bring small claims of this sort to them, advise them to either settle the claims or not pursue the matter. This particular state of affairs has consequences for the ordinary man, for those persons who are not necessarily rich. It places the ordinary person, the man in the street, in a very disadvantageous position when it comes to dealing with the major corporations which have a lot more money to spend. I believe that a new legal system, in this sense, is imperative. Let me now give the essence of the recommendations which I made in 1977 and which were adopted by Mr. Justice Hoexter. They were that a simple procedure be introduced, that no attorneys be involved on either side that no pleadings be accepted, except in so far as a statement of claim is concerned, that volunteer adjudicators be asked to play a role in this matter and that there be a limited right of review or appeal. The then hon. Minister of Justice was “left cold” by my ideas, but I am grateful for the fact that that has changed.

The second recommendation—and I know that the hon. the Minister has already responded to these recommendations; so he need not start paging through the past statements that he has made—is contained on page 201 as follows—

There are consequently a few questions I should like to ask. What progress is being made by the department in this connection? What are the department’s plans? When and how will those recommendations be implemented and what is the time-table for the implementation of those recommendations? Finally, I should like to know: What has the response been to the hon. the Minister’s efforts to give effect to the recommendations of this report?

The last report that I should like to mention is the report of the Select Committee on the Matrimonial Property Law. Without discussing what is happening in that committee, because it has not yet finished with its work, I would nevertheless like to say that it has been a privilege to serve on it, certainly with the other hon. members who are members at this time, including the chairman, because I find that very valuable work is being done on that committee. I do, however, want to refer to a recommendation made unanimously by this committee on 17 January 1983, and it reads as follows—

Why this recommendation came about is because the committee which was sitting at that time did not feel itself qualified to handle the intricate details of the law relating to Black marriages. It was felt that a far more in-depth study should be conducted by a body more qualified than a Select Committee. Secondly, the Select Committee does hope to bring out a report during the course of this session. If at all possible, the Select Committee would like all aspects of matrimonial property law to be modernized and not just those relating to Whites and Coloureds. I hope therefore—this is the only reason for me mentioning it—that the hon. the Minister has taken that recommendation seriously. I want to ask him to advise the House as to what is being done in regard to that particular recommendation.

I should like to turn very briefly to a rather more controversial aspect of the administration of justice. In 1980, 130 people were hanged in this country. The figure for 1981 was 96, while last year, for a variety of offences, 100 persons suffered capital punishment. Over the years when the hon. the Minister has given these statistics in reply to questions put to him, he has consistently refused to reconsider public policy on this form of punishment. I believe it is time that the hon. the Minister reconsiders capital punishment. Most modern Western democracies have abolished the death penalty, and where it has not been abolished it has virtually fallen into disuse. South Africa probably, although I have no statistics for other countries, hangs more people per year than are hanged or executed in any other Western country.

You are correct.

I think that is correct. This is not a fact to be proud of. It is an inhumane and an archaic form of retribution. However, I am not dogmatic nor do I intend to be unreasonable. I concede that there are differing views. While I do not believe that the death penalty, or the absence of it, radically affects crime figures, it is certain that others will disagree with me. What I ask therefore is that the hon. the Minister at least go so far as to agree that there are weighty and well founded arguments in favour of varying or changing the policy of capital punishment in South Africa, and, having done that, that he at least be prepared to seek advice, other than from political people. At the very least he should appoint a properly qualified commission of inquiry to investigate, to hear evidence and to report on this issue. In the interest of the good name of South Africa and of the humane and enlightened administration of justice I call upon the hon. the Minister to initiate such an inquiry. It can only do our country good.

I should like to quote from two Press cuttings. The first is an article written by a man called Koos Coetzee. I regret, I do not have the date, but the article was written very recently. However, if necessary, I can hand the cutting to the hon. the Minister. I quote—

We therefore have a six-year sentence as well as a three-month sentence. I quote further—

This the hon. judge apparently found to be a mitigating circumstance. In most cases that would be found to be an aggravating circumstance. That is the first cutting.

I also want to quote from an article in the Rand Daily Mail of 23 December 1982, under the heading “The unanswered questions” and written by Stephen Friedman. It relates to the verdict on the Aggett inquest. I want to quote quite extensively from the article. I might say, just in case the hon. the Minister rises later, that what I am going to quote, is reasonably selectively quoted. I obviously cannot quote the whole article but only aspects which I believe support a viewpoint that I am going to express in a few moments. I quote—

I quote further—

I quote again lower down—

I quote further—

I quote a bit lower down—

I quote once again a little lower down—

The last few quotes I want to make are the following—

A little lower down I want to quote the following—

The final quote I want to make is this—

I commend some of this reading on these two particular judgments to the hon. the Minister. While the hon. the Minister is not directly responsible for what occurred and while I expect him to take no immediate action in regard thereto, I would like to say as the Opposition spokesman on Justice that any fair-minded person regards both these verdicts and judgments with revulsion. If what happened in these two cases bears any resemblance to justice, then that is purely coincidental. Fortunately, not all the courts in South Africa, nor all the cases heard, are handled in so distinctly a biased and prejudicial manner. Clearly, in some cases, particularly where a political flavour is present, and depending on who is on the bench, there are in some cases two sets of laws depending on what side of the fence the accused or the complainant is to be found.

Did you read the record?

There is one thing the hon. the Minister can do …

Did you read the record?

I would like to finish what I am saying. There is one thing the hon. the Minister can do and that is to be more careful with his appointments and promotions to either the magistrate’s court or to the judicial bench. If there is one facet of public administration which must be retained it is the impartiality and the fairness of judicial pronouncements. In the two cases I have mentioned these pronouncements fall far short of that standard.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Sandton has directed certain questions at the hon. the Minister to which I am sure he will receive adequate replies in due course. As far as his reference to the Aggett case is concerned, one of my colleagues will deal with that matter a little later in the debate. I shall have something to say about the hon. member’s reference to capital punishment and other sentences later in my speech.

*On this occasion, before going further, I should like to convey some congratulations. Firstly, I congratulate the hon. the Minister and the Director-General on an exceptionally good annual report. Even the hon. member for Sandton, who is not usually overflowing with praise of the departments, had to concede in his perverse way that “for once there is no message of doom” in the report. Coming from the hon. member for Sandton, that is high praise. I believe that the department does indeed fully deserve this praise.

I also congratulate all officials who were promoted during the year under review. In particular, I refer to Adv. C. M. van Niekerk who was promoted to Deputy Director-General, Mr. S. J. M. Marais who was promoted to Chief Director, Administration, Adv. A. Bosch, promoted to Chief Director, Security Legislation, and Adv. J. H. L. Booysen, promoted to Chief Director, Law Services. I believe that these promotions represent appropriate recognition for outstanding services rendered by these officials. I trust that they will regard their promotion as an opportunity and an incentive to perform further outstanding service in the positions they now occupy.

As far as the annual report is concerned, I shall like to refer to certain outstanding facts revealed therein. It is exceptionally gratifying that with the exception of the State Law Advisers’ Division, the filling of professional posts is very satisfactory. In the non-professional divisions, too, the staff position has improved. The number of resignations among legally qualified persons over the past three years shows definite downward trend. This trend has been particularly marked since the introduction of a law allowance with effect from 1 April 1981. It is gratifying to take cognizance of this improvement in the staff position which has, it is true, been cause for concern in the past, but at the same time one is so much the more grateful that in spite of the problems encountered in the filling of posts, the services have been maintained throughout, thanks to the dedication of the officials employed in the service.

It is also exceptionally gratifying to note that in general, efficiency has improved, that the amendment of the Criminal Procedure Act, 1977, resulted in the better utilization of court time—that the number of witnesses dropped by 42,19%. One also takes note with gratitude of the success achieved with the system of granting postponement for the payment of fines, which is still receiving positive attention. It appears that at 17 of the larger magistrates’ offices, 29 815 sentenced persons were granted postponement for the payment of fines. This system has the following benefits: Firstly, sentenced persons can still be productively employed in the labour market; secondly, fewer sentenced persons are taken up into the already overcrowded gaols; thirdly, there is a saving in administrative and maintenance costs; and fourthly, there is a saving of valuable manpower and a better utilization of staff. I should like to recommend the extension of this system of postponement of the payment of fines.

It is also evident from the annual report that financial control has been satisfactory. If one bears in mind that officials of the directorate deal with millions of rands annually, the amount lost in the year under review due to theft and other losses is really minimal.

The Legal Training Branch, too, has once again seen to it that during the year under review, functional training has been extended considerably. Progress has been made with the training of magistrates in the administration of civil law. With the experience gained thus far, this training can be developed further. This is an aspect about which I personally am very gratified. The academic training of officers has continued to yield good results. During the period 1978 to 1981, 65 out of 145, or 45% of the officers who attended a course at the Legal Training Branch gained a legal qualification. I believe that everyone will agree that this can only lead to better administration of justice.

In the Magisterial Division the number of criminal cases has remained relatively constant. It is apparent that regional magistrates, with an average time on the bench of 990 hours per annum, as well as district magistrates, with an average time of approximately 823 hours per annum, are subjected to a considerable workload. In spite of this workload they succeed in doing top quality work.

During the year under review the Attorneys-General experienced an increase in almost all aspects of their activities. This can largely be attributed to an increase in serious crime in general. I do not think it is always sufficiently realized with what great responsibility Attorneys-General are vested, responsibility that requires the highest degree of integrity. In this regard they have to rely solely on their own discretion. It is their duty to see that justice is administered fairly, rather than, to ensure convictions at all costs. Today I should like to thank and pay tribute to our Attorneys-General for their striving for justice in our judicial administration and the great circumspection with which they exercise their discretion. To that I should like to add my thanks and appreciation to all officials of the Directorate of Justice who, through their dedicated service, unassailable integrity and sense of justice maintain the administration of justice at such a high level that not only is it a credit to the Republic, but all who are involved can also be rightly proud of it.

Order! I regret that the hon. member’s time has expired.

Mr. Chairman, I rise merely to allow the hon. member for Mossel Bay to complete his speech.

I thank the hon. member.

*Sir, I should like to make a few remarks about sentencing. Virtually every day one hears insistent demands for heavier penalties, whereas on the other hand there are also complaints that penalties are already too heavy. Last Friday in this House we also had the official Opposition complaining that sentences were too heavy. Today again the hon. member for Sandton advocated the abolition of the death sentence.

Because the interests of the community are an important consideration in determining the nature and extent of the sentence, courts are not insensitive to representations from the public for heavier or lighter sentences. Those concerned, viz. those who make the representations, are, however, often not in possession of all the facts and are not aware of all the considerations that apply in meting out punishment, and they often advance unjustified criticism. It is in the interests of justice and the administration of justice in general that greater understanding be shown for the difficult task of the sentencing officer. Our courts are one of the cornerstones—but I sometimes even think that it is one of the only remaining cornerstones—of our orderly society, and it is in the interests of all that our courts should not be disparaged. Constant criticism of the sentences imposed by the courts, whether for being too heavy or too light, can only cast the courts in an unfavourable light.

Sentencing is probably the most difficult task of the judicial officer. John Hogarth, a recognized authority on the imposition of punishment in Canada, has this to say about it—

On the one hand the community demands the squaring of accounts for the infringement of its norms and protection against offenders, and here one is reminded of the old Roman maxim salus populi suprema lex, the welfare of the State and its inhabitants is the highest law. On the other hand, the offender asks for understanding for his personal circumstances and expects the sentence to be imposed with moderation and compassion. Moreover, there are different conceptions in the community of the nature of the punishment for a specific offence. For example, when there is a wave of a specific kind of crime, the community begins to demand that heavier sentences be imposed for that crime.

In an enlightened community it is realized that it is meaningless to punish if the punishment is not also aimed at the achievement of a positive result. However, there are also those with exaggerated humanist convictions who elevate the interests of the offender to a position of supreme importance and negate those of the community, who reject the element of retribution in punishment and regard the treatment of the offender with a view to rehabilitation as the sole objective. When the hon. member for Houghton expresses an opinion on sentences and punishments from time to time, she often shows that she belongs squarely in this category. In recent times, particularly last Friday, and today as well, we have seen that the hon. member for Sandton joins the ranks of those who see the offender as a person suffering from an illness, someone who must be cured of a complaint. The impression that those hon. members tend to create is that they are more concerned about the welfare of the offender than about the interests of the community. Unfortunately this is an impression we cannot get away from.

Between these extreme poles the sentencing officer, in his wisdom, has to maintain the correct balance and try to do justice to all considerations. Our magistrates and judges are deserving of praise for the way in which they succeed in this virtually superhuman task day after day. Sir, one would have expected the Opposition benches to react to that by saying “Hear, hear”. However, only silence prevails.

Say something more worthwhile.

The question arises as to whether the legislator is entitled to prescribe to the courts as far as the imposition of punishment is concerned. The Commission of Inquiry into the Penal System, in its report of 1976 on the various considerations that apply in the imposition of punishment, expressed criticism of obligatory sentences. On the one hand, obligatory sentences prevent the judicial officer from imposing a retributive and fair sentence as a stabilizing factor. On the other hand, it prevents the judicial officer from individualizing, in the sense that he wants to take the offender into account.

The solution is not for the legislator to impose unreasonably stringent punishment and so oblige the courts to impose those punishments without investigating whether the prescribed punishment will alleviate the problem. The commission was also of the opinion that the prescribing of compulsory sentences is alien to our legal system. The task of the legislator is to make legal provision for sufficiently severe maximum punishments, to enable the judicial officers to impose a sufficiently heavy sentence in the right of the circumstances of each case. The judicial officer must not find that he is not empowered to impose an appropriate sentence in the light of the circumstances of a specific case. He must not find, as Mr. Justice Curlewis did in a case to which the hon. the Minister referred last Friday, that he would have liked to impose a heavier sentence but was not empowered to do so. Therefore the function of the legislator is to determine the parameters within which the judicial officer may exercise a discretion in the light of the circumstances of each case.

Mr. Chairman, the CP certainly cannot associate itself with the plea of the hon. member for Sandton that the death penalty for capital offences be abolished. Unfortunately my time is limited and for that reason I cannot motivate our standpoint properly on this occasion. At this point I merely want it placed on record. I also wish to associate myself with the standpoint and the sentiments expressed by the hon. member for Mossel Bay in regard to the imposition of punishments. I want to say to him that he made a good speech.

Having read the report of the Director-General, I felt as I used to feel in the days when, as director of our agricultural co-operative, I would go through the various branches of the activities of our co-operative with the general manager of the co-operative once a year; the various activities were housed in different buildings. We walked through all the buildings together, and when we were finished, one always said: Now I feel that I know far more about the activities of the co-operative. One felt that in spite of the fact that we regularly held meetings of directors, once or more per month, during which one discussed all the different facets of one’s co-operative. That is how I felt when I walked through this report with the Director-General. From our side we wish to convey our sincere thanks to him and to his colleagues who drew up this excellent report.

Every year that we page through the report, viz. the report as at present compiled concerning the activities of the Directorate of Justice and the report of the Prisons Service—at this stage I want to say that it has been thoroughly prepared and drawn up by Gen. Otto and his colleagues—we indeed realize how much we still have to learn about and in connection with the activities of this very important Department of Justice under the able leadership of the hon. the Minister. Over the years we sit here as colleagues and discuss and pass legislation initiated by this department but, as I said, one does not realize quite so fully what the activities of this department entail before taking this annual report and making a study of it. Every year we find this a good and edifying experience.

In my contribution I am going to confine myself specifically to one particular chapter of this annual report. Here I refer to Chapter 4 which concerns the magisterial division. In my contribution I am going to confine myself more specifically to the functions and activities of the district magistrate in the rural areas. In a later contribution I shall be wanting to say more about and elaborate on this specific matter. At this stage I also wish to say that I want to make a point of referring not only to the judicial work of the magistrate, but to all his activities, his judicial work and the quasi-judicial work that this important official performs in many of our country towns. When we do so, we really gain an overall picture of the work of the magistrate, and particularly the work of the magistrate in the rural areas.

I do, however, want to refer just in passing to the work of our regional magistrate’s courts. When one considers the regional magistrate and his activities one is struck by the enormous task which this particular magistrate renders to our country and our community. One should bear in mind that the report before us draws our attention to the fact that—as the hon. member for Mossel Bat has already said—46 274 criminal cases are heard in our magistrate’s courts countrywide. Analysing this, one finds that what it amounts to, is that 95 867 hours are spent on the bench by the regional magistrates concerned. Thus the average time per regional magistrate spent on the bench every year is 990 hours, as the hon. member for Mossel Bay has mentioned. This is an enormous task to be performed, in any language, and we all know that to a large extent the regional courts have taken the workload off the shoulders of the Supreme Court. We are all aware, too, of the brilliant lawyers on these regional court benches. We should like to pay tribute to our regional court magistrates in this House today for this outstanding work that is being done. I personally would welcome it if the more prominent occupants of the regional court bench were taken into account for promotion to the Supreme Court bench. There is another matter in the annual report that I should like to discuss at this stage. I refer to the chapter on the Master’s Division. It is indicated that in the past financial year, 40 708 deceased estates were registered. It is also pointed out that this year 3 496 insolvent estates were reported or recorded, considerably more than the 2 959 estates the previous financial year. As the report tells us, all this indicates that there have certainly been deteriorating economic circumstances which have been an important contributory factor in the increase in insolvent estates. I think hon. members will agree with me that the annual report implies that in the year ahead we shall certainly have a far greater number of insolvent estates, due specifically to several factors that are going to have a contributory effect in this regard. One is of course very sorry about this.

We are also told in the report that estates valued at more than R1 million are no longer exceptional. Once again this is, among other things, an indication of how important it is that very serious consideration be given to the finalization of estates, because it is cause for grave concern that many billions of rands are frozen in undistributed estates in our country, to the grave detriment and disadvantage of our country in general. Accordingly I regret that in my opinion there is a deficiency in the annual report. No mention is made of how many registered estates are finalized annually. We should have liked the hon. the Minister to give us an indication in this regard. I know that it is a very difficult task to do so because it differs from estate to estate, but one should very much like to have this concern that exists, eliminated. This is also related to the fact that many of our Master’s offices definitely lack sufficient staff to deal with this important matter. However, it is not only a matter of a shortage of staff, but also a case of the people responsible for the administration of estates being able to make a very considerable contribution towards an estate being finalized promptly and well.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to associate myself with the words of thanks expressed by the hon. member Mr. Theunissen to our regional court magistrates. It is indeed true that the regional courts in particular, but also the magistrates’ courts in general, make a tremendous contribution to the administration of justice in our country. In the course of my speech I want to refer to the lower courts in particular.

Changes in the economic, social and constitutional spheres also require that the structures of the administration of justice be reviewed so as to ensure that they keep abreast of these developments. For example, our Bench has required constant expansion in consequence of the increased work load in order to prevent the Supreme Court from degenerating into a production court and so as to ensure that it will still be able to fulfil one of its basic functions, i.e. the proper supervision of the administration of justice in the lower courts. There have been delays in the completion of cases, which has resulted, inter alia, in a rising trend in legal costs. Consequently a Commission of Inquiry into the Structure of Functioning of the Courts, the Hoexter Commission, was appointed on 29 November 1979 to make recommendations on, firstly, the efficacy and functioning of our legal structures; secondly, the desirability of changes which may lead to the more efficient and expeditious administration of justice and, thirdly, the reduction of the costs of litigation. In his inquiry the commission had to give attention, inter alia, to the possible establishment of an intermediate court outside the Public Service, which would replace the existing regional court, the establishment of a family court, as well as special mechinery for the settlement of minor civil disputes.

The commission has already published four interim reports and these deal mainly with problems surrounding the Appellate Division, with the duties of prosecutors and the settlement of minor civil disputes in an inexpensive informal manner. According to what I have heard the fourth interim report of the commission, which deals with small claims, has already been distributed for comment, and attention is being given to a draft Bill to implement the proposals. Some of the commission’s recommendations, as contained in its interim reports, have already been translated into legislation. The most recent of these is the Appeals Amendment Act of 1982, which came into operation on 1 April of this year.

The structure of our courts forms a unit, however, and ought to be built up systematically from the bottom upwards in the shape of a pyramid with the Appellate Division at the pinnacle. The size of this pyramid is, in its turn, chiefly determined by the jurisdiction of the various courts, both as regards civil and criminal cases. Consequently, to effect a meaningful adjustment to the structure, it is essential to effect a thorough restructuring from the bottom.

Therefore the commission itself points out in its first interim report that some of its recommendations in respect of the Appellate Division might not offer a permanent solution for the Appellate Division. This was confirmed in that the commission made quite the opposite recommendations in its third report. In this report the commission stated, inter alia that its recommendations in respect of the number of additional appointments to the Bench could only be determined by trial and error. Similar problems could be experienced if the recommendations contained in the fourth interim report were to be implemented without consideration being given to the structure and function of the lower courts.

The recommendations contained in the Galgut Report, which dealt, inter alia, with particular matters pertaining to the process of the Supreme Court, must also be kept in abeyance pending the final recommendations of the Hoexter Commission. Any adjustments in respect of the present Commissioner Courts and the Black Divorce and Appeal Courts and the possible incorporation thereof into one structure, must await the final recommendation of the Hoexter Commission. The high cost of litigation continues to remain a source of concern. Seen as a whole, it is consequently of pressing importance for the final report of the Hoexter Commission to be submitted as soon as possible in order that expeditious adjustments can be made to our court structures in a meaningful way.

I should like to refer in brief to another aspect, viz. community service sentences as an alternative to imprisonment. Penal methods are closely related to the penal motives of the community. With the emphasis on rehabilitation as an objective of punishment, I believe that this latest development in the field of punishment which amounts to an offender being obliged to render a free service outside the prison, a service which is of value to the community as well as the offender, can play a particularly positive role. By these means the disadvantages of short-term imprisonment, on which the Lansdown Commission expressed an opinion as far back as 1947 and which was also emphasized by the Viljoen Commission, can be obviated. It was said that it might, inter alia, start a vicious circle rather than promoting rehabilitation and that it caused no significant withdrawal and that it had little, if any, deterrent effect. It could also counteract the alarming increase in the prison population.

The necessary provision for community service as punishment has been in our legislation since 1977, i.e, in section 297 of the Criminal Procedure Act. This section empowers the court to postpone or to suspend a sentence on certain conditions, including the rendering of a service to the benefit of the community. However, with the exception of Cape Town, where a purposeful attempt is being made to utilize the provisions, they are for the rest, only seldom applied. One of the main causes for this state of affairs is apparently the problems being experienced in carrying out such sentences in practice, which can only be done in a meaningful manner if community-oriented organizations, and, indeed, the community itself become involved.

South Africa cannot afford large numbers of offenders, particularly youthful offenders, ending up in prison because an alternative solution for dealing with them in the community does not exist. Consequently methods must be found for remedying the position. The State will, of necessity have to take the lead in drafting any possible further legislation as well as in creating a wide-ranging infrastructure in which officers of Government departments and institutions, the courts and the Department of Health and Welfare, along with voluntary workers and organizations from all communities can cooperate so that this alternative may be utilized successfully for all the South African population groups.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for East London City will excuse me if I do not directly react to the points he has made as so many points regarding statistics have already been covered by other hon. members addressing this portfolio. I would, however, like to add the NRP’s congratulations to the hon. the Minister, his Director-General and staff on a very comprehensive and encouraging report. In particular I should like to express the hope that as far as staff, both legally trained and administrative staff, is concerned they now are in a position to conduct their very important task to far greater satisfaction and to maintain the high traditions of this department they have managed to uphold throughout the years.

I should like to address myself to two particular points in regard to the justice aspect of this Vote. In doing so I should like to commence by quoting from an article entitled “Court costs crunch” in Finance Week of 14 to 20 April 1983. I should like to quote selectively from it. Obviously many hon. members have already read this, but I am sure they will not mind me quoting selectively as they can in fact verify for themselves in paragraphs I have chosen to quote. Some of this in fact bears a little thinking about, such as the involvement of the legal profession in certain matters. I may say that being one of the few justice group members of all the parties who is not a legal man it is perhaps a little easier for me to say this. I think I might have the assistance of the hon. member for Houghton in this regard. If the boat rocks a little, they must not get scared. The first paragraph I should like to quote is—

From what are you quoting?

Finance Week, 14 April.

The article continues—

It goes on—

Not on justice; on legal costs. It then says—

[Interjections.] I think the boat is rocking a little bit. [Interjections.] The next paragraph I want to quote reads—

Here is another interesting quotation—

It then continues—

There is one last quotation from this erudite and legal article—

In that particular sphere the annual report for the period ended 31 March 1982 of the Legal Aid Board gives some interesting figures. The total number of applications received for civil cases and inquiries was 30 519. An interesting point—once again, I am going about it a bit selectively, but this is available to everybody and time is my enemy—is that 10 237 cases were refused. To be fair, I must add that, of the applications refused, 3 906 were refused for some reason other than disqualification under the means test. However, the picture painted is one of justice in civil cases not being available. We on these benches would urge the hon. the Minister to use that very excellent body formed by an Act of this House in 1973 and which has been involved in 26 projects many of which have already been reported on, namely the S.A. Law Commission, to investigate this situation very urgently and to see that in South Africa, where we are shaping the constitution to meet our own needs as a starting point for reform, we also look into the method of handling civil cases and introduce our own system to cope with what is obviously a very touchy set-up in which justice in the true sense of the word is not available to all.

In the very short time left to me, I want to reiterate the NRP’s standpoint with regard to the judicial side of the administration of the Internal Security Act. We believe that there must be seen to be an on-going effort by the hon. the Minister to reduce to an absolute minimum the period for which a detainee is held under that Act without trial. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I shall reply to the hon. member for King William’s Town in due course. I first want to react to the speeches made by a few other hon. members.

I should like to start by thanking the NP’s Women’s Club most sincerely for the beautiful floral buttonhole they gave me in my office, as they did last year. It is indeed inspiring. I also want to thank the woman who personally presented me with the buttonhole. She plays a very important supportive role in the life of one of our top officials. He was present when she pinned the flowers to my lapel. It took place with his full co-operation. [Interjections.]

I should very much like to take this opportunity to thank the Department of Justice, consisting of two directorates, namely Justice and Prisons Service, for the privilege of having been able to work with them for the past two years. It is a fact that the Directorate of Justice has people in its employ who have been schooled in the best tradition of independence. This has made them people with their own views, objective and honest views. It gives me great pleasure to be able to report today that when we have had occasion to hold round-table conferences and the officials have put their standpoints on specific matters, my impression was: Here are objective and honest thoughts in the best interests of the administration of justice. 1 want to tell the Directorate of Justice, with specific persons at the helm, that we are appreciatively reaping the benefits of what has been presented to us in this powerful and positive report. I do not want to elaborate on this now.

Sir, you will permit me to tell Mr. Coetzer, the Director General, that with him at the helm of both directorates, but the Directorate of Justice in particular, we are in fact introducing reforms in such a way—this is the impression I have gained—that we are introducing reforms but not merely for the sake of reform. The second impression I gained from Mr. Coetzer’s leadership was that he had remained receptive to new ideas and I want to give hon. members on both sides of this House the assurance that no ideas they may come up with are considered too trifling. No recommendation is ignored. Mr. Coetzer with his unique qualities sees to this. He has a unique feeling for reform and improvement, a characteristic which is particularly valuable in these times.

Mr. Van Niekerk is the head of the directorate. Hon. members will have to forgive me for discussing our officials a little today. They do not often have the opportunity to defend themselves when they are criticized. No one pays tribute to them when they retire, except the Minister, the Department and so forth. But I know I am speaking on behalf of all hon. members. Mr. Van Niekerk is a modest, firm person with a resourceful, keen and analytical brain. When the professional groups meet to formulate standpoints, he thinks nothing of telling me that he disagrees with me and then giving reasons for doing so, and more often than not his advice is taken. I can attest to this because I myself have been a member of such groups.

The two chief directors, Mr. Marais and Mr. Booysen, involved in administration and administration of justice respectively, are also excellent officials. Mr. Booysen was promoted during the course of the year. They are excellent officials who ensure that the relations between the Ministry, the department and the various professional groups remain sound. This is a task requiring the greatest circumspection, good judgement and wisdom. There are many other good departments with excellent officials who are willing to do their work at any time of the day or night, and perhaps they are as good as, but they are not better than these officials. This spirit that is emanated works through to all the officials with whom they have dealings, and there are a great many of them at the head office of the Department of Justice. There are a great many officials directly involved in either the administration of justice or administration or subsections of each of these divisions. That spirit is also found among all the officials—I am not going to mention all their names—of the Directorate of Justice, who assist us during the Parliamentary session and who reply so politely and timeously to all the hon. member for Houghton’s incessant questions. They are people who are only too willing to lean over backwards to be of service to everyone. I think it is a feather in their caps.

This brings me to the Directorate of Prisons Service under the leadership of Gen. Otto and the chief deputy commissioners, Gen. Brink, Gen. Willemse and Gen. May. Sir, this directorate is a very modest but nevertheless very effective one. As far as their public actions are concerned they have elicited nothing but praise. There is for example the fact that there is a very low percentage of escapes. As a matter of fact, the total number of escapes decreased during the latest year under review. Allow me to add that this directorate is not without its troubles. However, I can say this of Gen. Otto and his top management, which is something both I and I am sure everyone else in this House appreciates namely that when something happens which could hurt us, there is an immediate investigation and the necessary steps are taken.

In conclusion there is the staff of the Ministry itself. I do not want to single out anyone except to tell my private secretary—he is very close to being the doyen of private secretaries—that he has tremendous stamina. He has stood by me very well during the past two years. He is the person who has ensured for quite a number of years now that all hon. members are given the same quality of service. I am singling him out because he is now returning to departmental service. I want to wish him everything of the best and to welcome his successor, Maj. Gordon.

I now come to the speech of the hon. member for Sandton. I think, Mr. Chairman, that you will agree with me when I say that in comparison with previous occasions, his speech today was a very responsible one.

†The hon. member was even prepared to say a few flattering things about the department. Of course, he on purpose omitted the Minister, and for that I thank him. I want to quote to the hon. member a very appropriate extract from the famous law-giver Murphy whom I would not put second to Fucius. The relevant quotation is—

I thank the hon. member for his positive approach.

The hon. member put a number of questions to me. For instance, he wanted to know what we were doing about various reports we have received from commissions of inquiry. What I do find significant is not what the hon. member asked, but what he omitted to ask. According to the departmental report the reports of various commissions are still in the pipeline. There is, for instance, the final report of the Hoexter Commission. Then there is the Eloff Commission, who is investigating matters relating to the S.A. Council of Churches. This commission is still operative. Another commission the hon. member failed to mention—a glaring omission, for which I must reprimand him—is the Rabie Commission. This commission has brought about considerable change in our handling of security matters. Because the hon. member did not refer to this commission I must infer that he has a very limited interest in these matters. Then there is the Diemont Commission, and I thank the hon. member for the opening he has given me. The hon. member is aware what in the course of last year we received its third report covering the backlog in appeal matters and recommending how it should be dealt with. There is on our Statute Book now an Act relating to appeals. That Act and all its relative regulations have come into operation on 1 April. I hope and trust that with time we shall see benefits flowing from this, e.g. fewer appeals going to the Appellate Division, only matters relating to questions of law and other complicated issues. Only matters of that nature will go to the Appellate Division. Hopefully we will retain with the Appeal Courts of the provincial divisions those appeals that may be finalized in terms of that Act.

I hasten to reply immediately to a matter raised by the hon. member for King William’s Town. He asked me to refer the cost situation to the Law Commission for review, a factor which he says acts as a deterrent on effective litigation. I shall come back to this. The facts, however, are that if we succeed—and I say we are going to succeed—we shall see a positive effect on the lost structure. We shall also succeed in presenting a complete package which I am sure will emanate from the final report of the Hoexter Commission.

*Mr. Chairman, while I am discussing this point, we also foresee as far as the Hoexter Commission is concerned, excellent results from the other report we are expecting, namely the report on small cases. This should also have a considerable effect on the cost structure. According to the proposals in future there will only be a summons and the initial costs, for example of stamps. Consequently also foresee considerable restructuring in this regard. However, this cannot be implemented overnight. We must first ascertain what the rest of the structure will look like. We have already given the Supreme Court appeal jurisdiction, and we are hoping to reduce the number of appeals to the Appeal Court. In the near future we shall publish a draft Bill for general information in connection with a court for small claims. Then the hon. member for Sandton can take that Bill and his speech and compare them, and he will be able to say: Well, it is a pity that the NP has lost such a tremendous prophet. I am saying this in consequence of his own political views. The fact remains that the hon. member did make that speech. He did voice ideas of that nature and he cannot deny it. The fact remains that it was fairly obvious that there was a deficiency. These are the two points, the highest point and the lowest point. What is happening between those two points? I do not want to anticipate matters. The hon. member for East London City and other hon. members argued in this direction, namely that the position of the lower courts should also be reviewed. I am expecting the Hoexter commission to deal with this in its final report, so that we shall have an overall picture of how that commission viewed this matter. I therefore feel that the hon. member will accept my explanation that we cannot introduce the court for minor cases at this stage except to publish a Bill for general information in this connection. We want to deal with the matter in toto and we shall hopefully be able to do so after Parliament has been prorogued. I am convinced that the hon. member will accept this.

This brings me back to the Diemont report. At one stage we said that to a certain extent the implementation of every aspect of the Diemont Commission’s report duplicated the implementation of the Hoexter report. When we received that report we had a complete picture of how they viewed the flow of appeals from the Supreme Court to the Appeal Court and how they viewed the granting of appeal jurisdiction to the Supreme Court itself in connection with certain cases, such as the decision of a single judge for example. Then we could eventually take steps. What did we do? We in fact, in legislation which we adopted last year, namely the Appeals Act, made provision for the Witwatersrand Local Division to be granted appeal jurisdiction. We also made provision for the Judge-President to be able to place certain districts under the jurisdiction of that local division. Perhaps the hon. member did not read the legislation very thoroughly. He should go back and read it again, because that does appear in it. Possibly he just wanted to give me an opening to discuss this, but as I say, it does appear there.

The next step we took was to place the findings on the Statute Book as quickly as possible. In this connection I want to take this opportunity to thank and congratulate Chief Justice Rabie and the Judges-President of the various provincial divisions. The same applies to the professional groups, the advocates, and law societies. I want to thank them because they made these findings available, the implementation of which was so important, as quickly as possible so that we could place them on the Statute Book. The objective now is to make progress with that Act which was passed last year. This is our intention and this is also my reply to the hon. member for King William’s Town. If I have an opportunity, I shall return to this matter again.

There is also another step we took in connection with the report of the Diemont Commission. We found it necessary to appoint an Attorney-General for that local division. We made a study of this, which we dealt with last week. The hon. member also welcomed it. In a relatively short period of time we therefore did everything possible to implement these recommendations, and I want to thank everyone involved for their work which, in fact, enabled us to take these steps.

†The hon. member also asked me what we were doing about the recommendations of the Select Committee on Matrimonial Property Law in regard to the property rights of married Black woman. That matter is in the hands of the Law Commission and the commission will proceed with that investigation and the necessary research as soon as it is feasible and possible for them to do so. I shall be returning to the question of the Marital Law Commission later, if time permits. I think the hon. member may rest assured that the matter is receiving the necessary attention. Owing to another Bill being dealt with by another Select Committee, however, this matter has become a pressing one. I shall have to negotiate with the chairman of the Law Commission to ascertain whether it is possible to give it a higher priority, and even then I cannot say that we shall be able to solve the problem of that other committee.

*The hon. member also asked me a question in connection with the death penalty. I want to point out to him at once that the matter of the death penalty is a very delicate and thorny matter. I think the hon. member will admit that he may have neglected to approach this matter from another quarter, namely the approach which emerged from a question put by the hon. member for Houghton. She asked me how many death sentences had been commuted for each race group for each year since 1975—up to and including the most recent year for which figures are available. I should like to give this House a reply to this question now. In 1975 eight Blacks, two Coloureds and no Whites were reprieved. In 1978—I am moving ahead a little now—10 Blacks, one Coloured and two Whites were reprieved. In 1979 the figures were 16 Blacks, six Coloureds and two Whites. In 1981 the figures were 27 Blacks, eight Coloureds and one White, and in 1982 22 Blacks, four Coloureds and no Whites. The total number of executions also dropped by more than 30% in comparison with three or four years ago. Because this is a matter I do not want to discuss in detail, there are only a few things I want to say. Surely the hon. member is aware that the executive government, and the executive council in particular, handle these matters with the greatest circumspection. As a young backbencher I remember the hon. member for Houghton once introducing a motion here. [Interjections.] I think it was in 1969. Then the late Mr. Peet Pelser dealt with the matter in his calm manner. I remember how he dealt with the matter at that stage in the same calm atmosphere that is prevailing now. After he had spoken, I came to the conclusion that even the hon. member for Houghton—although she had very strong feelings about this matter—was impressed by the seriousness with which the then Minister of Justice, the executive government, the executive council, handled such matters. I do not think that the hon. member will make it necessary for me to have to elaborate on this fact either. There is one thing of which I am utterly convinced. Every case which could not be taken on appeal because no appeal was made, or because the petition to appeal did not succeed or because the appeal itself did not succeed, is handled with the greatest circumspection after it has passed through the hands of several law advisers.

That is not the point.

I am merely mentioning the fact that these things are handled with the utmost circumspection. If there is any impression at all that we in this country are not sparing in imposing the highest toll, I want to eliminate that impression right now.

The member also asked me whether I could not give an indication as to whether there is a possibility that this matter will be investigated. This is a very difficult issue. The fact of the matter is that the death sentence is an institution in our country. Hon. members on this side of the House asked last year that the death sentence be introduced for rape. This is an extremely emotional matter as far as the women in our country—White, Black and Coloured—are concerned. I adopted a firm standpoint on that occasion. Hon. members on this side of the House, as well as the hon. member for King William’s Town, requested that the entire matter of rape, as well as other crimes—crimes of violence in general, involving women—be referred to the Law Commission. Allow me to correct myself. After it had investigated this problem the Law Commission announced that it felt it was desirable to investigate crimes of violence involving women in general. I respect that standpoint of the commission. That is where we now stand. It is an extremely emotional matter. The matter has various facets.

A few days ago a letter was published in the Rand Daily Mail under the caption “Death penalty helps to deter”. In this letter it was stated, inter alia—

The letter writer went on to say—

It is a very severe letter. I am not suggesting that I share the letter writer’s sentiments.

I also have another newspaper cutting with me with the caption “Doodsvonnisse meer as ooit in die VSA”. The USA is a country in which the death sentence was abolished at one stage. This article is dated 20 April 1983, a mere five days ago. The article is from Perskor’s bureau in Washington. I am quoting—

I shall now quote from the next paragraph—

I also have another newspaper cutting here in which the strong opinions which individuals hold become apparent. The letter is entitled “Why not public hanging?” It is a disturbing thought. [Interjections.]

Are you prepared to take a question?

No. The hon. member must not interrupt me now. The hon. member for Sandton asked me a question and I want to tell him that this is a delicate matter. The spectrum of people with opinions on this matter ranges from those persons who feel the same as the hon. member for Houghton and the hon. member for Sandton do to the public who feel differently. The point the hon. member for Houghton did not understand and which she did not understand in the late Minister Pelser’s time either, is that the death penalty is an established institution in our country. The question is not whether it should be introduced. It is already an institution in our country. The hon. member has asked me for my own views. I want to tell the hon. member the following: A certain Mr. Justice Basby of New York expressed the following opinion on the deterrent value of the death sentence. He said—

I am not prepared to be instrumental in doing away with an institution which has been described here by Mr. Justice Basby of New York as a lighthouse which has to perform specific function. However, I am prepared to say that as long as I fill this post and as long as the Directorate of Justice exists, I shall pay the utmost heed to the way in which this very delicate matter is handled. As long as I fill this position I shall promote and respect a delicate and circumspect handling of this matter. On the other hand I shall not be instrumental in causing South Africa the embarrassment those hon. members seem to be concerned about in their hearts. This is my standpoint on this very delicate matter and I trust that the hon. member for Sandton will not pursue the matter. I could raise further arguments in connection with the death penalty and I could also mention to the hon. member the various theories which exist, for example the theory of retribution and so on, but I do not want to pursue this matter further because I think these arguments could be more appropriately discussed on some other occasion.

Mr. Chairman, in the light of the fact that this is a highly controversial matter and in the light of the fact that South Africa has, as far as I know, the highest rate of executions of any Western country, is the hon. the Minister prepared to have a fresh look at the whole question of the death penalty or has he closed the book on it?

Mr. Chairman, I have found a closed book and according to my philosophy nothing, except well-known arguments of the nature now raised by the hon. member, has happened to justify the reopening of that book.

Mr. Chairman, I am rising to put a point of order, but if you rule in accordance with Standing Order No. 135 that the point of order is not being taken in time, I am asking to be allowed to state this case by way of a normal speech as part of this debate. [Interjections.] I beg your pardon, I was under the impression that my colleague, the hon. the Minister of Justice, had completed his speech.

May I just ask the hon. the Minister of Justice whether he has completed his speech or whether he wants to proceed with his speech?

Mr. Chairman, I have not yet completed my speech.

Mr. Chairman, will the hon. the Minister answer a question?

Yes.

Mr. Chairman, I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether this means that he is not even prepared to consider appointing a commission of inquiry into the desirability of retaining the death penalty? He knows there has never been such a commission of inquiry directly putting its mind to this particular point. There has been an overall inquiry into penal sanctions, but that is all.

I think I have already responded to a question in the same vein by the hon. member for Sandton. Nothing has happened, nothing new has been advanced since 1969. That is why I specifically referred to that debate which followed a motion introduced by the hon. member to bring about the abolition of capital punishment. Nothing has happened since to reopen this book.

But they have never examined it.

That is the situation. This is my response to the hon. member, and I trust that she will accept it. If she wishes to introduce a motion, nothing can debar her from moving such a motion in the House.

*I want to give my colleague the Minister of Law and Order an opportunity to put his point of order. If it is concerned with the matter I think it does, I want to tell the hon. member for Sandton that I would have discussed it in due course; it is the final point on my list concerning what I wanted to say to him. The fact of the matter is that I wanted to deal with the other matters first.

It is concerned with his handling of the Aggett affair. In his handling of this affair I really have a bone to pick with him, because he addressed us here and impugned the integrity of the relevant official concerned on the strength of a newspaper report.

I followed that case very closely.

The hon. member Mr. Schutte asked him whether he had read the report, but it is quite clear that all the hon. member could recommend we read was those newspaper reports. [Interjections.] I think it is an absolutely unforgiveable step for a chief spokesman on justice to do a thing like that. He attacked the decision and the relevant official solely on the basis of a newspaper report.

Of course we examined the judgment of Mr. Kotzé. We ascertained whether we would be able not to influence the decision, because we do not do that, but to give the hon. member a hearing if he were to react to this. We anticipated correctly. I am not going to quote at length, because the hon. member can get the judgment references from me—it is a record of almost 4 000 pages.

But do you not think the question of the hon. member Mr. Schutte was that much more stupid?

The entire matter of whether or not there was an assault and whether or not there were certain actions was dealt with at length. One must bear in mind that the magistrate had to make a finding on the strength of which the Attorney-General could decide whether or not to prosecute. That was the aim of the inquest, because the legislation states that if the Attorney-General has insufficient evidence to decide for himself, he has to refer it to an inquest. I myself went out of my way to ensure that all the evidence was placed before the court. I was still in control at that stage. I gave certain restricted persons—we may perhaps disagree on this—special permission after I had consulted my hon. colleague the Minister of Law and Order. The fact remains that this was done. Now the official is being criticized. Why? Because his finding did not suit the hon. member. There was the simple question: Was there an assault or not. What was his finding? He said—

We are not going to rehear the case now. I just want to ask the hon. member—he must look me in the eyes now—whether he as the chief spokesman on justice on that side thinks that he did the right thing today in the spirit of objective administration of justice.

I though very carefully before I said what I said.

How could he have done this? Throughout the year evidence was received—I can bring documents to this House in this connection—expressing the greatest appreciation for our judicial officials. Our courts have repeatedly proved their objectivity. At times they have been inconvenienced by the Government in the process.

However, the hon. member made an attack here. Was it justified? No, it was totally unjustified. The magistrate had to make a finding on a balance of probabilities, but even on that basis he could not make a finding, never mind beyond any reasonable doubt. We had contradictory evidence here. If the hon. member wants to take the trouble, I shall allow him to inspect the analysis of the extent to which quotations from newspapers etc. were completely at variance even to the available evidence and its analysis.

I attended court, and it is not true.

How many times? Two, or three?

Oh, many times.

The hon. member for Houghton is now a self-appointed critic with the necessary knowledge, etc. She knows that people are tried in our courts every day and that they are occasionally acquitted on technical points and, more frequently, owing to a lack of evidence. There are people who have been acquitted in this connection. Was Mr. Fine not acquitted?

How many of their friends have not been acquitted.

Yes, how many of them have not been acquitted. They enjoy the benefit of our legal system.

I should hope so.

That is only right. However, when they are inconvenienced and when the decision is contrary to what the hon. members want, it is criticized. I want to make an appeal to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. He must order his side to draft a fair criterion for assessing the judgment, of our legal officials. We cannot allow an hon. member to criticize a magistrate’s decision on the basis of a newspaper cutting. I recommend that hon. members read that newspaper cutting.

Are you going to pass a law about it?

It was a totally outrageous decision. [Interjections.]

The hon. member also referred to my hon. colleague and in this connection he honestly did not do this House a service. The hon. the Minister is carrying out a task which has been assigned to him by law, a task which devolved on him as a result of the Rabie Commission, which the hon. members supported.

What are you talking about now?

I am referring to the fact that my colleague is being called a “gauleiter”. [Interjections.] If the hon. member was joking, I want to tell him that it was totally inappropriate. I am certain my hon. colleague can deal with these points. The fact remains that he is carrying out a task that was delegated to him by law that resulted from a commission which in my opinion hon. members opposite did not initially welcome. However, I know that all of them now welcome that report and want all parties to benefit from it. I know that the hon. member for Houghton in particular is very happy with the results of the Rabie report, with the measures which arose from it.

You must be out of your mind.

I know that this is the case, no matter what she may say. She cannot say anything else. However, I know that she is happy about it.

Mr. Chairman, in reply to a question by the hon. the Minister of Justice as to whether he had read the decision of the magistrate in the Aggett case, the hon. member for Sandton did not say that he had read it. He said: “Follow that case very closely.”

†Now I want to ask the hon. member: Did he actually read …

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order: Is the hon. the Minister asking a question, making a speech or taking a point of order?

I am making a speech, and am asking the hon. member: Did he in fact read that particular report?

What report?

The magistrate’s decision in the Aggett case. Did the hon. member actually read the magistrate’s decision in that case?

I read most of it.

The hon. member only said that he followed that case very closely. The question, however, is whether he read the magistrate’s final decision as reported in the final report. That is the question I am asking the hon. member. He can reply to that during the debate.

Earlier this afternoon, when the hon. member for Sandton opened his address, he said the following (Hansard, col. 5456)—

*At that stage there was a conversation going on around me and I could not hear properly what the hon. member was saying. I therefore took the trouble to look at his Hansard first and acquaint myself with the meaning of the word “Gauleiter” as we would see and interpret it in South Africa. One dictionary describes it as follows: Gauleiter—the leader or chief official of a political district under Nazi control.” Webster’s Dictionary describes it as follows: “Gauleiter—a person that in social outlook and responses may be likened to a Gauleiter, often an arrogant, overbearing subordinate or henchman.” Once again reference is made to certain Nazi political parties. Mr. Chairman, I am bringing this matter to your attention by way of a short speech under this Vote with the co-operation of the Whips on this side of the House because, in terms of Standing Order No. 135 and 136 with reference to points of order, I cannot at this stage introduce it as a point of order. That can only be done while the hon. member is making his speech. I took the trouble to establish the facts first and I am now bringing them to your attention, Mr. Chairman, and I ask that you give a ruling on it, or if it is not convenient now, then at a later stage.

Mr. Chairman, may I address you on this?

Order! I want to point out to the hon. member for Sandton that in terms of a Speaker’s ruling of 1959 the use of the word “Gauleiter” in respect of any hon. member is unparliamentary.

Mr. Chairman, I was going to address you before you gave your ruling. I would have preferred it if you had heard it before you gave your ruling. I was going to say that I am sorry if I have offended the hon. the Minister. I think the word “Gauleiter” is a bit strong, and I therefore withdraw it.

Mr. Chairman, I am delighted to also be able to take part in the debate. Up till now the standard of the debate has been high, until the episode with the hon. member for Sandton which you, Sir, have now dealt with.

The hon. the Minister touched on a wide variety of subjects and I should like to endorse wholeheartedly his remarks about the officials of his department, in Justice as well as in the Prisons Service. They are people who, together with the Minister, form a team in whose hands the administration of justice in South Africa can safely be left.

I now want to say something about the Legal Training Branch of the department. Today and in the days ahead the intensive training of our available human material will be vital for maintaining an efficient administration and, as regards the Department of Justice, the efficient administration of justice. We have the material at our disposal. All we have to do is refine and develop it by way of continuous training. That is why it was gratifying to be able to take cognizance once again in the annual report of the Director-General of the purposeful efforts of this department to properly train all the officials, White as well as people of colour, to enable them not only to maintain the very high standard of the administration of justice in South Africa, but also improve and refine it even further.

With regard to academic training, the section offers three courses for Dip.Iuris students as well as three courses for B.Iuris students annually. These courses in particular contribute tremendously towards assisting officials to acquire minimum legal qualifications. In addition, functional training has once again been considerably extended in recent months. For example, the number of courses for magistrates and prosecutors has increased drastically over the past year with the result that almost double the number of courses are being offered annually than was the case previously. The training projects for civil magistrates which commenced in 1981 also seems to be meeting a very great need. This year this project is being extended considerably. Whereas previously there was only one course of four weeks, two courses will be offered this year, each of which will last for five weeks.

It should also be noted that the training programme of the Legal Training Branch is not directed at the needs of the officials of the Department of Justice alone, but also assists in the legal training of other agencies, for example officials of the Department of Co-operation and Development, the staff of the Deeds Office, Nature Conservation officials, trade inspectors, etc. In addition, the lecturers of this training section also regularly lecture at courses arranged by other State departments or Government insitutions, for example at courses offered by the Department of Co-operation and Development, the Commission for Administration, the South African Police, the Transvaal Provincial Administration, etc. With regard to this aspect, I want to conclude by saying to Mr. Coetzer, the Director-General, and Dr. N. J. van der Merwe, the head of this training section, and the staff as well that we wish them well in these endeavours. They are making an indispensable contribution to the prosperity of our country.

Further to this, I should like to make a few comments in connection with our State law adviser’s division. Having read the report and acquired a little further information, I want to say that we are somewhat concerned about the situation in this division. For organizational purposes the legal advisers of the central Government fall under the Director-General of Justice. Their task for the most part consists of the supplying of oral and written legal advice to State institutions and the formulating and legal drafting of draft laws, draft ordinances, etc. Especially with regard to the formulating and legal drafting of draft acts, the State law advisers perform a particularly complex task, and every year they are called upon to inspect and even to draw up a large amount of draft laws. If one looks at the statistics, one sees that the number of bills drafted in 1980-’81 was 74. In 1981-’82 it increased to 158. In 1980-’81, 54 bills were drawn up and introduced in Parliament, and this increased to 169 in the following financial year. In 1980-’81 only 51 bills that were eventually placed on the Statute Book, were drawn up, and this increased to 163 in the following financial year. I think we owe it to these people to tell them that we appreciate the work they are doing. Many of us are unaware what they really do because in the nature of things they remain in the background and work behind the scenes. We accordingly pay tribute to Mr. Fölscher, the Chief Law Adviser, and his team of law advisers for the task they perform with dedication and often without recognition. It is a demanding task which they perform with great distinction under extremely difficult circumstances.

A prerequisite for the task of legal draughtsmen in particular in a considerable degree of legal expertise, language, skills, insight, vision, etc. The successful performance of this task requires a corps of experienced and knowledgeable legal draughtsmen. However, for a number of years there has been concern about the deterioration in the staff position in the ranks of State law advisers. At the moment the position is such that out of a total of 21 posts for State law advisers, 10 are vacant, and this is an inhibiting factor which inevitably has a detrimental effect on the rendering of efficient service to the rest of the Public Service. However, I am afraid that it goes much further than that, because it also has an extremely detrimental effect on parliamentary work, because the quality of the legislation of this Parliament depends largely on the experience, insight, etc. of the legal draughtsmen. These qualities have a direct bearing on the legislation passed by us in this Parliament. With a view to ensuring that, as far as legislation goes, functions smoothly and at the required tempo, there should be at least eight law advisers sufficiently experienced and able to work on their own. At the moment, however, there are only a few State law advisers who have experience of the drafting of legislation. Unfortunately the services of two of them, Messrs. Fölscher and Verschuur, will shortly also be unavailable to this division, due to retirement. As a result of the loss within the next year or two of these two experienced legal draughtsmen, a situation could arise in which it will not be possible to prevent serious disruption of the flow of parliamentary work, not even by a more intensive effort on the part of the State law advisers. As a result the proceedings of Parliament itself could be in danger of being inevitably delayed. In order to maintain the quality of legislation at the required level, it is vital that intensive investigation be carried out into measures whereby to attract the services of the most capable advocates to the profession of law advisers, but not only to attract them; we have to retain them as well. There is no clear-cut solution to this problem, and nor do I think that any solution can be suggested without an in-depth investigation. However, it is clear—and this is my plea this afternoon—that the search for a solution to this matter should receive the highest priority.

Mr. Chairman, I agree with the hon. member for Verwoerd-burg and I also take pleasure in paying tribute to the training in the Department of Justice.

The public’s concept of sentencing is very important. We find that members of the public feel threatened by the world-wide phenomenon of increasing lawlessness and—as they see it—increasing violence and the disregard of the rights of the individual. In such a situation it is very important that they must be confident that the interests of society will be taken into account and will not be sacrificed to the interests of the individual as such. They are afraid that the interests of the community will be made subservient, and in most of the cases I have dealt with, retribution is demanded as a deterrent to others, with a view to preventing the recurrence of crime. Very often newspaper cuttings are collected so that the apparent anomalies occurring in respect of sentencing can be pointed out, but this is only the case if, like the hon. member for Sandton—one relies solely on newspaper reports, reports which have not taken all the considerations in respect of a sentence into account. In this regard the media has a major duty to perform.

I should like to suggest something which may perhaps contribute towards establishing a greater degree of confidence among the public; it concerns the discretion of the courts. This is one of the factors which may help. I refer to the question of compensation for victims of crime. In section 300 of the Criminal Procedure Act provision has already been made for that. Section 297 also provides for it. It also makes further provision for suspension of sentence where compensation to the victim of the crime is not complied with. Usually criminals allege that they are not concerned about the victim and that to them the victim is faceless. If he is required to pay compensation, it will humiliate him in the eyes of his victim and may serve as a further deterrent. However, there are many problems with regard to its application. The most important of these problems is that in most cases it is completely academic, because the criminal does not possess anything like the means to compensate the victim of his crime. He simply does not have the financial resources. It is also very difficult to determine the amount in a criminal case, because one does not have the advantage of pleadings and expert evidence. The Apportionment of Damages may enter the picture, and in a criminal case there is no time to go into that. Nor must the plaintiff be afraid that he, too, will be put in the dock to determine the degree to which he was a joint wrongdoer.

It can further be argued that the plantiff’s evidence, if he has a large or partial interest, may be regarded with more suspicion. However, I do not believe that this argument is valid, because it is very difficult for any victim of a crime to remain an objective witness. He is always involved, in all instances. On the other hand, it is, in fact, possible that the recovery of damages in certain instances, if it is not possible at that time, may become possible at a later stage. Since the financial position of the accused may improve in time, the onus rests with the plaintiff to prove his claim afresh ab initio in a civil court. This means that in those changed circumstances all the witnesses must be called once again. The plaintiff himself is not always in the position the State is in to get hold of witnesses, and this also entails far higher costs of civil cases.

What I advocate is that with the retention of section 300 and section 297, where applicable, the court must in all cases where there is a criminal conviction reach a finding with regard to the liability of the accused. The court must determine whether it is able or unable, on the basis of the evidence, to find that the offence gives the plaintiff the right to compensation or, alternatively, that the offence gives the plaintiff the right to compensation but the court is not in a position to determine the amount. The effect of such a finding can be like that of a civil finding, as in the case of section 300, so that the only onus resting on the plaintiff will be to prove his damages in a civil court at a later stage. The accused must have the right of appeal against that part of the sentence, and if the plaintiff feels that he does not want to become involved in an appeal court case, he should have the right to abandon the finding in his favour without res indicata being pleaded against him.

Since the test in a criminal case is that the onus of proof must be discharged beyond reasonable doubt, and in a civil case on a balance of probabilities, I believe that if the court can find beyond reasonable doubt, there can be no objection to a finding being reached which should actually succeed if a lesser test were applied. This should not impose any further workload on the courts, since the courts can only give that ruling in cases where they are very sure that that ruling can be given. However, as regards civil proceedings, it could save the plaintiff and the victim of the offence a lot of time and money in future. Furthermore, if the offender is aware that such a civil claim may follow, it may serve as a deterrent at a later stage. I should like to know whether the hon. the Minister will consider such a request favourably with a view to amending the law in this regard later.

Mr. Chairman, several members have made positive reference to the department’s annual report and I should like to associate myself with their comments. It is a comprehensive report that covers all the activities of the department in considerable detail. We received it early enough to enable us to study it for this debate. However, the same cannot be said about the report of the Legal Aid Board. This is a very important branch of our administration of justice. We received the annual report today. I only received it at 1 o’clock, in other words, about one hour and 15 minutes before the debate on the hon. the Minister’s Vote was due to begin.

†This is a most unsatisfactory state of affairs that such an important report is made available an hour and 15 minutes before the hon. the Minister’s Vote proceeds. Perhaps the hon. the Minister should indicate why the Legal Aid Board takes so long, not only with this report, but also with previous reports when it operates on a relatively small budget.

I wish to deal with the question of legal aid. The importance of legal aid in our system cannot be over-emphasized. The present president of the Association of Law Societies, Mr. Van der Post, touched on this in a recent article in De Rebus where he said the-following—

He stated further—

We are still far away from that ideal situation. In reality, the rich are in a far better position to have their rights and interests protected by our courts than the average citizen. This undermines confidence in our legal system. The concepts of “equality before the law” and “equal access to the courts”, therefore, remain meaningless to hundreds and thousands of South Africans. The fact that in this year’s estimates only R2,911 million is set aside for the Legal Aid Board indicates that the Government seems to have attached a low priority to legal aid. It is far too little, but even with the handicap of the lack of funds, there are aspects of the Legal Aid Board’s activities which require attention. I shall deal with a number of them.

Firstly, there is the means test. The present limit, as far as I could establish, is R220 per month per single person and R440 per month for a married couple. This means that the middle income groups are left in the lurch. The board maintains that it was not empowered to extend legal aid beyond those that are indigent because that is what the Act prescribes. In the annual report for 1981 the chairman of the board states that only the authorities, i.e. the hon. the Minister and his department—and I hope he will react to that at a later stage—can deal with this matter of extending legal aid beyond those who are indigent. I wish to ask the hon. the Minister if he has given attention to this problem and whether we can expect the Act to be amended in order to extend legal aid beyond those who are indigent, in other words, the middle income group.

Secondly, I wish to deal with an aspect which was raised by the hon. the Minister already in 1981, namely the Human Sciences Research Council investigation into the activities of the board. They have been busy with this since 1981. I can imagine that it was a very important and most crucial investigation. However, what has happened? When can we expect the report, what are the findings if the report is already available and will the hon. the Minister tell us whether the report will be made available to the public so that other clinics and legal aid activities can benefit from it?

The third question with which I should like to deal, is the question of the indigents. Even amongst those who qualify in terms of the means tests, namely the indigent persons, only a very small proportion seem to have benefited from the Legal Aid Board’s activities. During the year ending March 1982, the year for which the most recent report is available, for example only 7 932 Blacks approached that board for assistance. That is a figure which is lower than that for the previous year. There were 922 fewer applicants than in 1981. This calls for an explanation. The chairman of the Association of Law Societies has called for more publicity. According to the report we have received just now the board is paying attention to the question of publicity. He has also called on all lawyers to assist in expanding the role of the board. I believe that it is high time that a national conference be held at which representatives from the board, legal aid clinics, universities, advice centres and the Department of Justice can compare notes and endeavour to work out more co-ordinated approach towards legal aid in South Africa. In the annual report which I have hardly had time to study, it does appear that there are legal aid clinics attached to universities that are keen to co-operate with the Legal Aid Board. There, are many advice centres which I assume are also keen to do so, but at this stage there is no total co-ordinated approach towards the question of legal aid. I believe that a national conference or something similar to that can assist in moving towards a co-ordinated approach.

Fourthly I want to say that the hon. the Minister criticized me in 1981 for suggesting that one of the reasons why so few Blacks make use of the facilities is that the board is not seen as an independent body. The board itself seems to be at fault to some extent, particularly if one looks at the case of the Mbekweni Community Council, to which reference is made in Vol. 99 of the South African Law Journal. In this instance the board refused to give legal aid to individuals because of information which it had received from other authorities who suggested that there was no case. The applicants did succeed with other assistance and obtained a Supreme Court order to set aside an election. That case illustrates that confidentiality was not and is not being observed by the board. This is a very important aspect. It also illustrates that there is confusion about the Legal Aid Guide. The hon. the Minister ought to indicate whether or not that guide will become a clearly defined guide which is enforceable by law, because that is an area in which there is great confusion.

Fifthly I should like to deal with the restrictions which exist even as far as the indigent is concerned. At present such an applicant can be refused legal aid merely because the legal aid officer considers that he “is unemployed for no good reason or that he leads a criminal life.” Arbitrary exclusions like this defeat the object of legal aid which is to promote equal access to court. These arbitrary restrictions should be scrapped and the hon. the Minister should give us an indication as to whether he or his department would be prepared to look into this aspect.

A person who is regarded by the legal aid officer as being a criminal ends up in a never-ending spiral if he is refused legal aid. He is branded a criminal before he has even been to court where a judgment is to be made on that very same question.

The chairman of the Association of Law Societies said something which is quite correct. I quote—

That is to say legal aid—

At present the guidelines to the Legal Aid Board make it impossible for everyone to obtain this assistance, and the President of the Association of Law Societies is correct that the aim should be that everyone gets assistance. The hon. the Minister ought to indicate whether he can redefine that guide in order to enable everyone who is in need to obtain assistance from the Legal Aid Board.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased that I have been called upon to speak next, because I want to point out to the previous speaker that when one speaks of legal aid, I am of the opinion that it is one of the most favourable aspects of the legal profession in South Africa. The legal profession in South Africa contributes more than its share and works at reduced fees to help people who are not well-off. We sympathize with such people—we understand the problem—but one thing is certain, we cannot advocate the socialization of our legal system. If that is the object—actually that is all the hon. member was advocating—I do not know where it is all going to end. In this connection I now ask: Why single out the legal profession for this socialization process? The fact of the matter is that the legal practitioner also has expenses. His salary structures rise, his rentals increase, so do his administrative costs, but he has to do the legal work and has to be compensated in one way or another. In fact, legal practitioners even go so far as to work at reduced rates. Therefore I should like to pay my compliments to the legal profession which, under these circumstances, set other professions in this country the example of working at reduced rates.

I should like to pass on to another subject, and at this stage congratulate the hon. the Minister on what he has done for the legal family. The hon. the Minister has not been in charge of this portfolio for very long, yet during his term of office he has already done a great deal for the legal family. I should like to illustrate a few points briefly. The first point I should like to single out is that judges have for many years felt that they would very much like to make use of or participate in some form of motor transportation scheme or other. Judges have spoken to me about this and for that reason I want to convey to the hon. Minister their thanks and appreciation for the fact that he has now made this possible. This is something that should have happened long ago. It accords with their status and it makes it more convenient and easier for them to fulfil their very difficult task.

I also want to congratulate the hon. the Minister on the sharpening up of the legal process. We are discussing this here in very simple terms, but the fact of the matter is that certain appeals are now being heard by Provincial Divisions. This is a tremendous step forward and under the circumstances it alleviates the work-load of the Appeal Court.

In the third place I wish to refer to the establishment of a president for the regional court. To have a president for a certain regional court division is a major step forward which accordingly enhances the stature of the regional court and the magistrates.

In the fourth place I want to congratulate the hon. the Minister on the introduction of the new rank structure of the Master’s Office. This should also have been done a long time ago, but now he has done it. I should like to congratulate him.

In the fifth place, I also want to congratulate him on the legal allowances which have been obtained for magistrates and prosecutors.

My reason for congratulating the hon. the Minister on this is in order to indicate that the NP, in the person of the hon. the Minister, has an exceptionally high regard for our administration of justice. This is an important point and the results are in fact that certain posts are now being filled in a competent way so that we can continue to be proud of the way the law is applied in our country.

Having said that now, I want to deal with another matter. Arising from what I have just said, I want to point something out to the hon. the Minister which perhaps requires attention. The rural areas are becoming depopulated and consequently certain of the judicial officers, such as magistrates are now being withdrawn from certain towns. The administration of justice there is now done on the basis of periodic visits by the judicial officer, who goes around from one place to another in the rural areas doing certain work. This is a real problem and for that reason I want to ask why we cannot again appoint special justices of the peace in such areas who will then be able to exercise certain special functions in connection with the hearing of cases. I want to point out that the function of the justice of the peace today is very limited. It is limited in the sense that it depends on what is defined in the Criminal Procedure Act. It revolves primarily around his being able to issue warrants, for example search warrants and warrants of arrest. Be that as it may, it is very limited.

If one looks at this Act, one finds that mention is mostly made of a justice of the peace in conjunction with a magistrate. The magistrate is mentioned, and then the justice of the peace as well. One even finds this connection between the justice of the peace and the magistrate in the Act. Section 21 of the Criminal procedure Act states that subject to certain provisions a search warrant may be issued “by a magistrate or justice”. The point I wish to make is that the juxtaposition of magistrate with justice of the peace has existed for years now.

The fact of the matter is that at present the justice of the peace also derives powers from the Justices of the Peace and Commissioners of Oaths Act, Act No. 16 of 1963. When one examines that Act, one discovers that the powers of justice of the peace are very circumscribed. In reality he has very few powers. His powers, for example, are to carry out the duties imposed on him, to carry out instructions from the magistrate and to render all assistance possible in suppressing disorder or disturbances. As everyone knows, the justice of the peace is also a very important person in this time of elections, when it comes to postal votes. With that, however, I have just about stated what justice of the peace can in fact do in today’s circumstances.

If we go back to 1959, we will see that the picture then was completely different. I should like to present the picture as it was at that time, and suggest that this could possibly offer a solution to the problem of the depopulation of the rural areas and the smaller country towns. Act No. 19 of 1957, which was repealed in 1968, for example contained the following provision in section 1—

Such a person may therefore hold court sessions. Section 2 provided inter alia that—

1. (a) within the area for which he holds office hold a court for the exercise of the jurisdiction …

imposed upon him. We also see that such a person may impose certain sentences. For example such a court may impose a fine not exceeding R20, and imprisonment for a period not exceeding one month. The point I am making is that consideration should be given to whether circumstances have not changed to such an extent now that we should give serious attention to the situation prior to 1968. I should like to suggest that an investigation should now be instituted in this connection. I am aware that the Hoexter Commission will quite probably give attention to this matter. I shall appreciate it if the hon. the Minister, if he agrees with it, would bring this suggestion as well to the attention of the Hoexter Commission. In the past of course, the special justice of the peace played a special and very important role in our history. It is also correct that today we have presidents of regional courts, people who are indeed highly qualified and have a lot of experience, and therefore there is no reason why these special justices of the peace cannot, for example, work under the direction of a president of a regional court division. Alternatively, all his sentences and orders can be subject to review, also by a regional magistrate or even a higher-ranking judicial officer. In the circumstances in which we are living today I should like to bring this matter emphatically to the attention of the hon. the Minister.

I regret to say that the hon. member’s time has expired.

Mr. Chairman, I am rising merely to afford the hon. member an opportunity to complete his speech.

Mr. Chairman, I say thank you very much to the hon. member for the opportunity to complete my speech.

I want to point out briefly that there are certain advantages attached to this—that goes without saying—which are that less time will elapse between an arrest and a sentence. Far less time will be wasted in transporting magistrates from elsewhere to hold court periodically. For that reason I should like—to put it briefly—to request that attention be given to this idea of special justices of the peace.

Then I should like to touch upon another subject at this stage, a subject which is of some concern to me, and which I should also like to bring to the attention of the hon. the Minister. I think we should give attention to the part which the notary can play when it comes to the drawing up of wills. I should like to discuss this. Let me first give some indication of what a notary actually does. Let us consider this for a moment. There are judgements which I should like to quote briefly. For example, as in Curlewis JP, in the case of The Incorporated Law Society, Transvaal vs. Kuyper, 1925, TPD, 760—

The point I want to make is that exceptional value is attached to a document drawn up before a notary. I conclude my quotations with the following. It comes from the court case The Incorporated Law Society vs. Kantor, 1914, TPD, 510 and reads as follows—

It is very important, and I want to emphasize this, that a notary cannot delegate his function to another person. For example, he cannot ask his clerk to draw up a document on his behalf. What the notary must do is that he must give his personal attention to every document executed by him. I shall come back to this later, because it is very important.

Next I want to dwell for a moment on who a notary actually is. Let us see for a moment whether a notary is the right person when it comes to the drawing up of certain wills. The basic qualifications, as hon. members of this House know, are those of an attorney. When someone is admitted as an attorney, he may also be admitted as a notary if he has acquired certain necessary qualifications. The same applies in respect of a conveyancer, but I wish to concentrate for the moment on the notary. The notary is a person who is specialized in certain respects, and I want to outline briefly the main aspects. There is for example, the drawing up of contracts for people who are going to get married by ante-nuptial contract. There is also the drawing up of trust deeds, notarial bonds, personal servitudes, etc. For all those documents the notary is the person who by law has to deal with the matter when registration has to take place. Hon. members will observe that all these matters relate to the position of a person in regard to the law of property. The notary is the person who will deal with those aspects of his client’s case which pertain to the law of property.

When we look at the aspects pertaining to the law of property, I want to suggest that one of the most important documents which a person can draw up in that connection is in fact the will. The will is that document which is drawn up by a person to make sure how his property will pass by inheritance. The husband and wife get together and draw up a joint will in which they decide that their children should inherit in a particular way. For the heir this is most certainly one of the most important documents that can play a role in his or her life. In this connection there are primarily three problems. The first problem is that a will may be declared invalid with the result that the inheritance occurs intestate. The inheritance therefore occurs in a completely different way to that intended by the testators. This invalidation takes place because ignorant persons did not execute the will correctly. That is the first problem.

The second problem is that there are many people who sell wills of a stereotyped kind to persons which most certainly deal with the particular interests of those particular persons and in that case, too, inheritance does not occur correctly. When such stereotype wills are examined we find that there is one thing which is very certain. One always finds in that stereotype will that the clause appointing the executor is very clearly defined. That seems to me the only interest which many organizations have in drawing up such stereotype will. It is merely to have themselves appointed executors so that they can get the executor’s fee.

The third problem one finds—and I want to discuss this for a moment—is that such a will can get lost. If a will gets lost the will of the testators is not carried out. The will may be destroyed, perhaps deliberately or it may get lost, perhaps through negligence. Then the situation is as follows—

In this connection I want to say that it can be extremely difficult to satisfy the onus of proving all those aspects. For that reason one must certainly try to ensure that wills cannot be lost. For this reason I want to make a suggestion which can be investigated. I want to suggest that it should be possible to register wills executed by a notary in the office of the Master. This means that if a will is executed before a notary, that will may then be registered in the office of the Master. I am convinced that the Master will take cognizance of this and will agree because it is going to save him a great deal of trouble.

If this were to be done, however, there are quite a number of advantages attached to it. The first advantage is that no person’s existing rights are being tampered with. No person’s existing right to execute a will is being affected. All that happens is that the assurance exists in certain circumstances that a will may be registered.

The second advantage is that here one is going to have a skilled person in the person of a notary who will ensure that that will is correctly drawn up and, because it is a personal matter—because the notary must draw it up personally—it will be possible to obtain the best legal advice when such a very important document is being drawn up. Another point is that the notary is obliged to maintain the utmost good faith. He can recommend that the executors shall consist, for example, of jointly an auditor and an attorney and/or the surviving spouse. The appointment of the executor will in this connection be recommended on a basis of uberrima fies.

The fourth advantage is the greater legal security, because a will will not be lost and cannot be destroyed, because it has been registered.

The fifth and last point—and a very important one—is that we are dealing here with a service which is being rendered to the public. It is indeed a service the introduction of which should have been negotiated for long ago. Therefore I want to ask the hon. the Minister to refer this matter to the necessary organizations, because it is truly a very important aspect.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. the Minister should not look so surprised at my rising to participate in the discussion of his Vote. I also have the privilege of presenting a bouquet if, before the end of the discussion of his Vote, a positive reply is received from him. For a period of nearly two years the department of the hon. the Minister has been in possession of a memorandum of mine in connection with a magistrate’s office for Midrand, the youngest town in the Witwatersrand complex, either in the form of a detached office or an independent office. In my opinion the motivation contained in my memorandum is sufficiently strong to render it unnecessary to deal with it in detail here. Moreover, I think that the offer made by us on behalf of the community is an extremely fair one. In my opinion our arguments also relate to a practical view of the situation pertaining to the surrounding magistrate’s courts in that area. In this regard I should like to reiterate my plea, hoping that the hon. the Minister will go into the matter with traditional sympathy and will be able to give us a decision within the foreseeable future.

My second remark may not be so flattering. I want to address a very earnest plea to the hon. the Minister to go into the matter of the role, preparation and training of public prosecutors in our courts. I say this specifically as a person who has an interest in the border areas and as a person to whose attention certain cases have come which demonstrate the necessity of possibly going into this matter.

I want to describe one specific case. I do not want to mention any names, because the people are not here to defend themselves. There is the case of an electric motor which was stolen from a farmer. The matter was reported to the police. There was a follow-up action over a distance of 4 km and the motor was found on a specific site. The motor was returned to the farmer, but the suspect who was apprehended was acquitted by the public prosecutor concerned on the ground of the fact that there was not sufficient evidence to prove that the site on which the person concerned had left the stolen article belonged to him, whereas it had been clearly determined that he was in fact living there and had been living there. The case was summarily dismissed. The amount involved was a few thousand rands. I am afraid that theft in those areas is not an exception to the rule. Consequently I think that the time has arrived for something to be done in this regard. I do not want to raise technical arguments for or against this approach. However, if it is added that the previous record of the suspect was a very bulky one, a record proving his complicity in similar offences, we can realize that if we do not give attention to this problem, and allow it to continue, it may give rise to the frustration on the part of our criminal investigation department and our police as a whole. Those people had to cover a distance of 4 km on foot and went to all the trouble of recovering the article, but found that nothing came of the case. The situation is so urgent that there are members of that community who decided, after a theft of 300 cows and all the vegetables in a shop, not to report the matter to the criminal investigation department or the police because they presumed that nothing would come of the case. Therefore, what we are dealing with here is possible frustration to two sides. We have on the one side the public who have an interest that has to be protected, and we have on the other side those who are instrumental in rendering these services for protecting the public against the misdemeanours of irresponsible people.

These are the few matters I should very much like to bring to the attention of the hon. the Minister.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for North Rand will forgive me for not reacting to his speech. The hon. the Minister will reply to him.

I think the most important question which can be posed in the discussion of this Vote is whether the Department of Justice is serving its lofty and exalted purpose. In my opinion this is not only the most important question, but also the first question which any Opposition party ought to pose. However, there is another primary question which should be posed. This question is: What is the lofty and exalted purpose of the administration of justice? Consequently it is necessary for this basic question to be answered first before we can ascertain whether our administration of justice in South Africa is effective.

Throughout the ages political and legal philosophers have been struggling with and reflecting on the State’s own unique nature and place in society. It goes without saying that one’s view of society will basically influence one’s view of the State. Time does not permit me to give a full review of the character and nature of the State and society. After all, the history of our Western civilization extends over 26 centuries.

In the ancient heathen era of Greek and Roman there were Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. It was the Romans in particular, and more specifically Cicero, that strongly advanced the legal aspect, although their view of society and State was the scheme of sharing the whole. Then there were the Roman Catholic philosophers, and more specifically Aquinas, who made the State subservient to the Church. Another view was that of the humanists, with various offshoots. One important offshoot was liberalism, in which the idea and thinking of the PFP are rooted. This was evident this afternoon from what was said by the hon. member for Sandton. This school of thought makes of the freedom of man an absolute; so much so that he does not heed the authority of any organization or form of life.

To Christian thinkers and philosophers on the State and law, such as Augustine, Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, Herman Dooyeweerd and others, wrestled with the same question, so that today, building on the heritage they left us, we can come to the conclusion that the State, as distinct from other forms of life, has a unique nature and character of its own, viz. that the State is a legal association. The aim and purpose of the State are to be found in the juridical aspect. That is why we have a Department of Justice. That is why this Vote is so important. That is why this Vote is fundamental. If the legal order in a State collapses, corruption, chaos and disorder prevail and ultimately the State comes to a fall.

I now come back to my very first question, viz. whether the Department of Justice is serving its lofty and exalted purpose, which is to ensure the maintenance of justice and balance and harmony in a multitude of legal interests. Is there a legal order which is being maintained? Is there administration of justice in South Africa? To those questions my reply is a positive “yes”. This is evident from the following: Apart from the head office which is administered by the Directorate and which advises the Government there are also the following divisions maintaining the legal order: The Registrar’s Division, which regulates the business of the Supreme Court. There are ten offices. There is also the Magisterial Division, which handles the administration of justice in the inferior courts. There are 305 magistrate’s offices and six regional court seats. There is also the Master’s Division, which supervises the administration of estates. This Division has six offices. In addition there are the Attorneys-General, the State Advocates and the Public Prosecutors, who deal with prosecutions in the courts of law. They have eight offices. The State Attorneys’ Division, which performs all the functions of attorneys for State institutions, has six offices. Then there is the State Law Adviser’s Division which furnishes legal opinions to public institutions and drafts legislation. There are also the attorneys, indirectly part of our administration of justice. Our advocates and attorneys are amongst the best in the world. The world court case of South West Africa in 1966 proved that our legal team need not take a back seat to the best in the entire world. There are also lecturers in law who are amongst the best in the world as well.

The legal process has to develop constantly. Our administration of justice cannot stop at the Roman law of Cicero and our legal history cannot stop at the Dutch jurist such as De Groot and Voet, even though our law is based on the Roman Dutch law. Our administration of justice has also drawn from the English law. We must continually develop, adjust and improve our own judicature and administration of justice. The Department of Justice also stands this test. There are numerous examples I can mention in this regard, but I want to mention only two. In the first place there is the South African Law Commission, which has the following projects, inter alia, on its programme: The evaluation of the effect of the Divorce Act, Act No. 70 of 1979; the revision of the law of evidence; the revision of prize law and the revision of preferent claims at insolvency. We should like to learn from the hon. the Minister on what other important projects the commission is engaged and what progress it is making in that regard. Another example is community penalties. What this amounts to is that the offender renders a free service outside the prison to the community and to himself. This is a new development in the field of criminal law. A related aspect in this regard is the large number of short-term prisoners and Act No. 51 of 1977. I should like to learn from the hon. the Minister with what degree of success this Act is being applied by our courts.

In conclusion I want to say that in our history since 1910 we have had 15 Ministers of Justice. Each one has made a contribution in his own special way to the development of our law. The very first Minister of Justice was an advocate and judge as well the founder of our party. I am referring to Genl. J. B. M. Hertzog. One of our other great leaders, Adv. J. G. Strijdom, also practised as an attorney, and in his last message in this House on 8 July 1958 (Hansard, col. 44)—he died several weeks later, on 24 August 1958—he spoke these words—

Proverbs 14, verse 34, reads: “Righteousness exalteth a nation.” I do not have the least doubt that the Department of Justice meets these exalted purposes.

Mr. Chairman, I should like to refer briefly to a remark made by the hon. member for Pretoria West with regard to the special justices of the peace and the sentiments he expressed on that score. I think we should be careful not to return to the era of “necessity”. Many of those benign special justices of the peace had the nickname “necessity”, since, it was said, “necessity knows no law”. This reminds me of a benign special justice of the peace in the Pretoria area who was also on the Bench on occasion. One of our esteemed lawyers from Pretoria was engaged in conversation with him. Every now and again the old man would interrupt him with: “But Mr. Silber, that is not the position in law!” He persisted with this to such an extent that my learned colleague became impatient. Finally he said: “Your Worship, the law be damned, let’s talk sense.” I think we shall have to take cognizance of that.

Earlier this afternoon, I referred in particular to the role of the regional court magistrate. I said that I should like to refer in particular to the role and the function of the magistrate in the rural areas, especially that of the district court magistrate. When we refer to this magistrate, we think of someone who is a leading figure in the rural community in which he finds himself and we think of the extremely important work he does there, not only the legal work he performs, but in particular of the quasi-legal work he does there as well. When we think of this, we should pay special tribute here today to our magistrates everywhere in the rural areas. When we think of these magistrates, nowadays we also think of the tremendous problem we have to contend with in the rural areas, viz. the depopulation and consequent deterioration we are experiencing in those areas. Linked to this, is the increasingly difficult task which rests with the district magistrate, precisely as a result of many factors which make circumstances in the rural areas less attractive.

As I have said, the district court magistrate does not only fulfil a judicial function. He is a symbol of State authority in all our country towns, a quality for which he is greatly respected. It is essential that he should be a symbol of State authority even in the remotest corners of our country.

It is also true that the particularly sound training the department gives prosecutors, the formal legal training which prospective regional court magistrates undergo, the special training which is undergone in the criminal and civil courts, courses which are continually offered to magistrates and the refresher courses offered to experienced prosecutors, are evidence and proof of the high standard of the administration of justice our magistrates in the rural areas maintain in this era we live in.

Apart from the many departmental duties a country magistrate has, he also has many other obligations imposed on him by way of statutes and ordinances. I just wish to point out a few of these. Inter alia, there is his role as chairman of the agricultural credit committees. Many of my colleagues in the rural areas know what an important function this is the magistrate has to fulfil. Particularly in this time terrible droughts we are experiencing in large parts of our rural areas, we cannot be grateful enough for the role our magistrates are playing in this regard. He continually conducts interviews with applicants who are applying for assistance, he gives advice, he has to examine, carefully formulate and draw up numerous applications for a great many forms of assistance, he has to convene and chair agricultural credit committee meetings and he has to send motivated recommendations to Pretoria, where these matters are considered. If the loans are granted, as everyone knows, the documents are sent back to the magistrate and it is his responsibility to see to it that those documents are carefully, neatly and correctly completed and signed. One could truly say that the country magistrate has developed into an agricultural extension officer on a small scale. In these particularly difficult times this quasi-legal work the magistrate does is extremely important to our country.

It is true that the magistrate, who is often a product of the rural areas, has to give advice and assistance to the farming community with a great deal of wisdom and understanding. At times he also has the unenviable task of not recommending applications that are border-line cases. The magistrate also has a role to fulfil when it comes to roads boards. We are familiar with his function as chairman of the roads board. He has to chair meetings and give guidance with regard to legal aspects which may arise. In this way, he becomes an expert in yet another department which does not fall under him. The numbering and deproclamation of roads, as well as the necessary inspections, and the recommendations concerning the appointment of members of the roads board, are all duties which rest on the shoulders of the magistrate. In addition, he often has to deal with MPs who want a particular person appointed to a particular post.

The magistrate also has many other functions with regard to licence boards, elections, the registration of voters, census taking—too many to mention. These all form part of the daily task of this exceptional man—the country magistrate. The magistrate also has a number of duties as the representative of many departments that do not have local representatives. Loans from the Land Bank are extremely important to our people in the rural areas, and the magistrate plays a very important role in that respect as well.

There is a problem I should like to point out to the hon. the Minister. We often find that staff problems arise in the larger centres and because the staff in those large centres have to be supplemented, they take our staff away from the rural areas to go and serve in the larger centres. Consequently, our smaller offices in the country are sometimes downgraded. I request the hon. the Minister to look into the matter, since depriving the rural areas of many important officials who have to assist the magistrate is detrimental to us. In conclusion, I say that today we in this Committee can truly pay tribute in all sincerity to the magistrate in the rural areas.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the hon. member Mr. Theunissen for his constructive and interesting speech. The magistrate in the rural areas certainly plays a very important role, not only as far as the administration of justice is concerned, but also with regard to the administration of the rural areas.

I also wish to react to the hon. member’s first contribution, in which he referred to the Master’s Office and to the administration of estates. There are various proposals which I wish to make and which I believe will expedite the process in the long run. It is clear, from the report of the department, that the amendment of section 18(3) of the Administration of Estates Act, which came into operation in October 1981, has had the desired effect. This amendment increased from R1 500 to R15 000 the value of estates in respect of which it is not necessary to appoint an executor. The figures show the effect this has had, for whereas in 1980-’81, 39 500 estates were reported, and this number rose by almost 1 100 to 40 700 in 1981-’82, the number of executors appointed during that period dropped by more than 5 000 to 30 000. Therefore this measure has considerably relieved the pressure on the Master’s Office. I understand, too, that further measures are likely to be introduced during the course of this session to simplify the process of administration as far as the Insolvency Act and the Administration of Estates Act are concerned. I believe, however, that the time has come for an in-depth investigation into the whole process of the administration of estates. The purpose of this investigation should be to rationalize this process in the long term. In particular, the supervisory role played by the Master in this process should be examined. We should see whether this cannot be simplified without detracting from its effectiveness. In the administration of deceased estates, the executor and the heirs are the people who play an important role and who have a major interest in the matter. Therefore I believe that the process of administration should to a larger extent be left to these two parties. The Master should only play a role where a dispute arises between these two parties or where the estate may be liable for estate duty. In those cases the State has a role to play.

I want to suggest, therefore, that consideration be given to simplifying the requirements relating to the administration of estates, reducing them to the following: Firstly, the Master should appoint the executor and require him to furnish security, as is the case at the moment; secondly, the procedure should be laid down which must be followed by the executor in administrating the estate, which is also to a large extent the position at the moment. In this connection, provision will have to be made for the following: It will be obligatory to draw up liquidation and distribution accounts; it will have to be advertised; there will have to be receipts and approval by the heirs; there may have to be directions in respect of the time scale within which the executor has to act; the approval of the Master will have to be obtained in the event of any deviation from this time scale; and the account will have to be submitted to the Master if there is any possibility that the estate may be liable for estate duty. In addition, I want to suggest that an informal tribunal should perhaps be created in which the Master may act as the presiding officer. Then he will be able to hear disputes between executors and heirs without delay. Considerable powers should also be conferred upon the Master to call executors to account. There may also be penalty provisions for executors who fail to comply with the regulations.

I believe that such a procedure would lighten considerably the administrative burden of the Master’s Office, because the Master would not be obliged to examine every liquidation and distribution account. That obligation would only arise in cases where there is a dispute or where the estate may be liable for estate duty. I also believe that it would expedite the process, for the executor would then have little excuse for not keeping to the time scale. He would not be able to point to the Master’s Office as the source of the delay, as often happens at the moment. I believe that to a large extent, this system is already functioning very effectively in several countries, and I suggest that this aspect be referred to the Law Commission for its consideration.

I also want to refer briefly to the pro Deo tariffs, which have recently been considerably increased. I want to thank the hon. the Minister for that. These tariffs, which were increased by 110% in April 1981, were increased by a further 66% as from 1 April 1983. Over and above this increase, the advocates are now for the first time being remunerated for the drawing up of petitions to the Chief Justice, the drawing up of heads of argument and the preparations for appearances in the Appellate Division. It is clear that whereas the hon. the Minister has provided a very good and improved remuneration package for the judges, he is now doing the same for the pro Deo advocates. It is also gratifying to learn that a subcommittee of Legal Aid Board has recommended that there is no objection in principle to cases involving capital crimes falling under the Legal Aid Board. This matter is now the subject of a further in-depth investigation by that board. The recent change in the jurisdiction of the regional court has meant that the cases involving capital crimes which are now being heard in the Supreme Court are of an extremely serious nature, and it is essential to ensure that accused have a very good defense available to them when a capital crime is involved. By increasing these tariffs, the State is doing its duty in this connection as well.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to deal with the further points raised by hon. members and the questions put by them. It is very interesting to note, and to me this has been one of the significant aspects of the debate so far, that little criticism has been voiced by most hon. members on both sides of the House, perhaps because there is little to criticize. However, it remains a fact that hon. members realize that the department goes out of its way to improve efficiency by means of reforms; otherwise we leave well alone. Therefore I am very grateful to hon. members for correctly interpreting the steps which we have taken in recent years, steps occasioned by the recommendations of commissions and by other considerations, and for pointing out the positive aspects to us, as well as expressing criticism where this is called for. The hon. member for North Rand may rest assured that I take his criticism in good part. I am thinking of the request of the hon. nominated member. I am thinking of the positive criticism voiced by the hon. member for Sandton when he said that we were quite up to date as far as our staff position was concerned. However, he added: What are you going to do when the economy starts looking up again? That is a reasonable question. It is a well-timed question. The spirit of the debate, therefore, is one of understanding and of identifying the things that will still need to be done. That is why I found it such a great pleasure to listen to the multi-disciplined hon. member for Pretoria West, a man of many occupations and master of all. He made an extremely interesting contribution here today. I shall come back to it presently. This has been the spirit of the debate so far. I can see that many hon. members do wish to talk about prisons. My problem, however, is to afford the hon. member for Houghton an opportunity of debating in the same positive, constructive and reformed way.

Hang on a moment.

I am convinced that she is going to do it in the same spirit. However, I shall leave it at that. I found a very apposite quotation somewhere—and it does come from Murphy’s Law—which reads: “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator.” We accept that this is so. That is the reason for taking action in good time.

The hon. member for Sandton raised a few points in connection with staff. He says that we should take action in good time, because there were certain positive situations which we should utilize. We should remember, in view of the future and of the fact that the economy is going to improve again, that there may be a great demand for legally qualified people again on the part of the private sector.

The hon. member for Mossel Bay also spoke about staff. The hon. member also gave us a very constructive analysis of the staff position. I want to thank those two hon. members, as well as other hon. members who have spoken about the staff situation, and I want to inform them about the present situation in the department with regard to vacancies. The vacancies in the professional division at the moment represent 1,2% of the establishment. This is indeed a very reassuring situation. As far as the future in concerned, I can give the assurance that the management of the Department of Justice will watch this matter closely. The top management meets once every month, or more frequently if necessary. They also let me have their minutes, and therefore I can report to this Committee with the greatest assurance that the point made by the hon. member for Sandton is receiving the attention of the management. They will certainly adjust their staff policy accordingly and take action in this connection in good time.

There are some other points, too, on which I want to reassure hon. members. Occupation-orientated investigations have been instituted in respect of all our occupational groups, and all that remains at the moment is the matter of the law advisers which still has to be finalized. The hon. member for Mossel Bay also mentioned this. The shortage which exists in that establishment at the moment is a matter we do not feel easy about. We expect that the Commission for Administration may produce recommendations in this connection, which may give us something to hope for. It is true that the importance of that service must never be underestimated. If we regard this House as the factory in which the laws are made, then those people are the stokers. They are the people who provide the fuel, not so much for the political debates, but for the debates on legislation. They are the people who provide the fuel for correct legislation, in so far as it is ever humanly possible to draft correct legislation. There is also the question of the advice they give us as well as the full-time attention which is generally given to the activities of State law adivsers. I am convinced that we shall find a solution in this connection, but whether that solution will be sufficient I cannot say at the moment. However, hon. members may rest assured that we shall handle this matter with the same conviction as the other affairs of the department. A reason for optimism in this connection is the fact that we are increasingly finding people with legal qualifications in the department itself, who keep improving their qualifications. In this way, for example, we have had the phenomenal success of Justice officials who obtained the following legal qualifications last yeat: LL.B., 40; B. Iuris, 79; Diploma Legum, 12; Diploma Iuris, 28; B. Proc., 7; and B.A. Law, 4.

I also wish to tell the hon. member for North Rand that it is true that in the lean years we have gone through with regard to our professional staff, we have become a little short on experience. This is true. Even quite recently, the average degree of experience of our prosecutors—I must be frank with the Committee about this—was 2,8 years. This does not mean that the administration of justice is now collapsing. The members of staff vary from people who only started a few months ago to others who have more experience. The fact remains, however, that we have taken action in good time to keep the services of those people. The hon. member knows, too, that we point out in our annual report that we are introducing more courses for prosecutors, that we are encouraging them to attend these courses to a larger extent and that we are also offering refresher courses. In this connection I cannot omit to thank Dr. Van der Merwe, the Director responsible for this, for his contribution. I can assure the hon. member that we shall go into this matter, and if it is at all possible to remedy the situation, we shall do so. As far as we are concerned, it is not our intention that anything of this nature should happen or that anyone should feel frustrated. The hon. member has only to look at the statistics, at the large number of convictions which are in fact obtained. After all, no one has gone to prison as a result of being sentenced for something he did not do. The hon. member should correlate the figures and establish the connection between things. The hon. member should look at the statistics. There are many thousands of people—almost 50%—who have been sentenced, and I am referring to short-term and long-term prisoners. These people are not there without having been tried. They are there as a result of a sentence imposed by a regional magistrate or by a judge of the Supreme Court. Therefore I want to add a qualified answer as well. I am satisfied that our magistrates’ courts are well-served as far as prosecutors are concerned. We are continually giving attention to this matter. In addition, of course, there is the fact that the Attorney-General can continually monitor these matters. The possibility is by no means excluded, of course, that he may be able to take or initiate steps of some nature in this connection. Therefore we are ready to deal with such situations. In a system of such magnitude as this one, of course, such things may crop up. However, we keep an eye on them. We could also investigate this matter more specifically if the hon. member would give us some more information in this connection.

I think I have devoted enough time to the hon. member for Sandton. If there is anything I have not dealt with, I shall gladly let him have an answer in writing. I now want to come to the points raised by other hon. members.

The hon. member Mr. Theunissen had two turns to speak, and in both cases he made a very strong plea on behalf of the inferior courts and the regional courts. I could hardly improve on it. I think the hon. member did justice to those courts and to the important work they do. [Interjections.]

The hon. member referred to the question of promotion from the regional courts. The hon. member knows that we are dealing here with sensitive matters. Therefore the hon. member should not expect me to give a final answer on this here. He advanced a personal view. I think I should leave the matter at that.

The hon. member also referred to the question of deceased estates. If I remember correctly, he referred to the backlog which there was. I think the hon. member Mr. Schutte has furnished an adequate reply to that. He pointed out that section 18(3) had been amended to increase the size of small estates, so that more estates would fall within the definition concerned, and within a year of doing this, we succeeded in effecting a considerable improvement. With the number of estates that were reported, there were more than 11 000 estates in South Africa by 30 June 1982 which fell in that category. With the dynamic approach that is being followed by the Masters’ offices and the Supreme Master of the Supreme Court, I expect that we shall make considerable progress in this connection. The hon. member Mr. Schutte was right; we intend to introduce legislation which will streamline the administration of estates even further.

While I am on the subject of estates, I wish to deal with the other point he raised. He asked whether we should not review the whole process in any case. I found it interesting that he did not go to the other extreme by saying that we should completely abolish the control and supervision of the office of the Master of the Supreme Court. This is in fact the position which obtains in certain European countries, where there have been quite a number of court cases precisely because there had been a lack of supervision and control. Let us first introduce reforms in this field, therefore, and then we can discuss the matter again. That is the first point.

The second point is that there is an interaction between the law societies, trust companies, the Master’s office and the department. We shall keep a close watch on this matter and report back to this House if we do not make the desired progress. However, I think I may venture to state that we expect the condition to improve. It certainly appears to me that the staff of the Master’s office have the determination and the energy to handle this matter.

Our staff position has been adapted considerably. Whether this will be sufficient, however, only time will show.

The hon. member for East London City and the hon. member for Nelspruit raised a matter which I could have discussed in detail, but time will not allow me to do so. The hon. member for East London City dealt with the question of community service as a form of punishment, and the hon. member for Nelspruit discussed the whole question of section 297 and section 300, which provide for compensation when a sentence is imposed. These two facets are receiving the attention of the Krugel Committee, which was primarily appointed to investigate and to consider measures and make recommendations in connection with the over-population of our prisons. The committee has already published statistics—the hon. member for Mossel Bay referred to these—concerning the question of whether magistrates make adequate use of their power to defer the payment of fines. The hon. member for Mossel Bay rightly pointed out that this was a formula which could be put to very good use. However, time did not allow him to point out that the various magistrates’ districts in the country use this power in various ways. It is interesting that that power is found in areas in which there may be a sensitivity to over-population in particular. Without dictating to our judicial officers what sentences they should impose, I am convinced that they will take cognizance of the sentiments which have been expressed in this House, namely that this power exists in terms of the Criminal Procedure Act and that it should please be exercised. We cannot dictate to judicial officers. It is their prerogative, and I should be the first to emphasize this very strongly. Nevertheless, I am convinced that our judicial officers have taken cognizance of this.

There are methods for bringing it to their attention, of course. This can be done, for example, by the magistrates’ association itself—it serves an extremely useful and constructive purpose—by the chief magistrate and, of course, by the Judges-President of the various regional magistrates’ courts.

Arising from this, the two hon. members mentioned some further points as well. I can give the assurance that if this power, namely to defer the payment of fines, had not been used, our prison population would have been even bigger. The two points which the hon. members have now raised are also important with a view to achieving this end, i.e. of ensuring that people who can be kept out of prison—I want to put it quite simply—should be kept out of it, and that there should be room for others who have to be in prison. That is our problem. These two hon. members have made a very useful contribution. Both aspects mentioned by them are at present receiving the attention of the Krugel Committee, which has come to useful conclusions concerning the power to defer the payment of fines. We are also involving other disciplines in this matter, and if necessary, we could widen it even further at a later stage. Mr. Justice Hiemstra’s contribution is not inconsiderable, especially with regard to the handling of the circumstances surrounding a compensatory sentence, a sentence in terms of which a person is ordered to pay compensation. His contribution is not inconsiderable, and I should very much like to convert it into a positive result one day. However, there is resistance to this on the part of employers. I am thinking, for example, of his proposal that a fund be started among the prisoners themselves, to which the prisoner can make a contribution to keep him out of prison. These are very useful proposals which we shall certainly consider in due course. When I say in due course, I mean in the short term. We are not going to shelve these proposals, because they are extremely important for the handling of this problem as a whole.

As far as community service is concerned, we have people outside this House, such as Miss Justice Leo van den Heever, who are campaigning very actively for this matter. We also have Nicro and other welfare organizations who are campaigning for this. They have my support and that of the department. However, there are many obstacles that have to be surmounted. Just by way of illustrating to hon. members what is involved, I want to refer to the person who started the fire which engulfed Table Mountain some time ago. He was sentenced to 200 hours’ community service. He had to go and work at Kirstenbosch in order to gain a knowledge of the conservation of the flora and fauna of our country. This was an appropriate sentence, if I may commend it. However, there are many other problems. Look at the people who commit offences at Sandy Bay and who are convicted, not for what they have done but for what they have omitted to do. If they were to be sentenced to community service, for example, they could be sentenced to teaching Sunday School for six months at some religious institution! That would be quite appropriate. [Interjections.]

Order!

However, let me illustrate the problem at once: Who is going to see to it that the sentence is carried out? Take, for example, the situation of the person who has been involved in a motor vehicle accident and who has been found guilty of negligence. He is then sentenced to performing tasks in the casualty section of a hospital for a certain number of hours, until he has served his sentence. Suppose he slips while pushing a trolley and it is found that he was guilty of neglect. Who will be responsible for the damage? Our judicial officers are seeking a solution to this problem at the moment. They are thinking in terms of insurance. I think this may be a partial solution. But the total solution will have to go much further than that. The judicial officer will have to be satisfied, in imposing such a sentence, that it will be carried out. Secondly, we shall have to ensure that the carrying out of such a sentence is supervised. Thirdly, in the event of damage, we shall have to ensure that such damage is covered, and fourthly, it will be necessary to ensure that there are persons who will to a large extent accept responsibility for the social effect of the integration of such a person into the activities of a hospital, for example, or of any similar institution. Therefore we shall have to consider reforms in this connection. Once again I want to mention the Krugel Committee, the departmental working group which is investigating this whole matter. I also want to mention another factor which we may examine presently. Gen. Otto and Gen. Willemse have gone abroad to make a study of overcrowded prisons there, and they may have some solutions in this connection. Very interesting proposals could be made in this connection. What I want to tell hon. members, however, is that we are not helpless and at our wits’ end with regard to the overpopulation of our prisons, We have definite plans, and although there are obstacles, the matter is being investigated. We shall probably be able to give hon. members an overall view of this whole matter in due course. I trust that hon. member will accept this.

The hon. member for East London City raised some other matters as well, but I think he will allow me to proceed to another point at this stage. I shall then reply to him in writing.

†The hon. member for King William’s Town raised the question of exorbitant costs. He also mentioned the question of delays in trials. In response to the hon. member for Sandton I have given an exposition of the effects of the third and fourth reports of the Hoexter Commission, especially the third report. As far as the fourth report is concerned, I also mention the Bill that we shall possibly give notice of in the Government Gazette pertaining to the small claims courts. I do not think I should debate this point any further. He mentioned the Law Commission and I will deal with that in a moment.

*I must point out to the hon. member that in spite of the fact that the machinery for reform is by no means fully operative as yet—and now I am referring in particular to the Appeals Act, which only come into operation on 1 April—I am satisfied that those who administer our courts, the Judges-President and the Attorney-General, have given special attention to the problem mentioned by the hon. member for King William’s Town. Looking at the annual report, we see that as far as our criminal cases are concerned, specific mention is made of the situation which has prevailed and still prevails in the Cape of Good Hope Provincial Division, where attempts by the Judge-President and the Attorney-General and his staff to reduce the delay in the trying of criminal cases have produced good results. However, I anticipated that the hon. member would ask me about this—because I also read the article to which he referred—and I may inform him that the delay to which he referred does not quite correspond with the information I have before me. The delay in the Transvaal Provincial Division in respect of civil cases is about seven months, and I take it that this is after pleadings have been closed and after an entry has been made in respect of the date of the hearing. I shall refer to this matter again in a moment. The delay in respect of criminal trials is six months. In Johannesburg, the delay in respect of civil cases is somewhat longer, namely eleven months, while in the case of criminal trials it is only two months. As far as the Cape of Good Hope Provincial Division is concerned, the delay in the case of civil hearings is only five months, while the period in respect of criminal trials is four to six months. However, I want to assure hon. members, on the basis of a discussion I had recently, that the delay in the Cape of Good Hope Provincial Division is even shorter than that. In the Natal Provincial Division, the delay in respect of civil hearings in Pietermaritzburg is three months, while in the case of criminal trials it is six months. In Durban, it is nine months, while the delay in respect of criminal trials is two months. So the picture is not quite so dismal.

†However, there is one matter which I should discuss with the Committee. The hon. member only pointed out factors which may cause a delay from an administrative point of view. He suggested that it could perhaps be rectified by referring the matter to the Law Commission, suggesting that there is something which is wrong. I have already indicated to him that the Hoexter Commission will fill in the picture and we will be able to give a package to the Government as far as trials and court cases are concerned. However, has it occurred to the hon. member that litigants are many times themselves to blame for delays? Secondly, lawyers receive instructions from the litigants themselves. Many a time undue delay is caused by exceptions, technical points, etc. Had the hon. member expressed the hope that the Hoexter Commission would come forward with recommendations to simplify civil procedure over and above the small claim jurisdiction of R750 as proposed, then I would have agreed with him. I do not think he has given us the full picture, with all due respect, and I think we should await the report of the Hoexter Commission.

* Reference has also been made once again to the law advisers and to the value of legal training. I am very grateful for that. I have already replied to the speech of the hon. member for Nelspruit, but if there are any outstanding points, I shall deal with them.

†The hon. member for Durban Central raised the matter of, as we refer to it, legal aid. It is not only legal aid, but it is really legal support for our system because it ensures as far as possible access to our courts to all people.

*The hon. member Mr. Schutte referred to the considerable increase in pro Deo fees. If there are any hon. members who entertain any doubts about my bona fides or those of any other former lawyer in this connection, I want to give the assurance that pro Deo fees have not bee increased for a considerable period. I regard this as an interim measure to ensure that there will be enough pro Deo advocates available to provide the necessary legal services, to whom? In the first place, to those who are being charged with capital crimes. We have had to keep up with what the private sector pays, and it has been impossible for us to keep in the full sense of the word, because astronomical amounts are being paid there, but at least we have been able to make it possible for practitioners to make their services available.

I also want to put it to the Committee that in making this service available, one wishes to ensure that one will not only involve the juniors, because it is also necessary sometimes to involve experienced senior junior advocates in certain matters. The overheads of these people have also risen enormously, and we have had to make provision for that. I submit that the hon. member for Durban Central should have taken cognizance of the fact that the amount had been considerably increased for the year under review. He should have a look at it. To a very large extent, the amount has been sufficient to meet the requirements.

The hon. member criticized me for the fact that the report had been tabled rather late.

It has not yet been tabled. It will only be tabled tomorrow.

I apologize. The hon. member criticized me for the fact that he had received the report rather late. The hon. member ought to realize that I sent it to him to enable him to debate these matters. I was not doing him a favour; I was offering him something to which he was fully entitled. I could simply have tabled it tomorrow, but now I have made it available to the hon. member in advance.

Today.

I shall come to that. If the hon. member wants to blame me for the fact that the report was not available in time, he can argue to this effect, but I just want to point out to him that the report was sent to us at a stage which we consider reasonable. We did not delay it. Nor do we believe that it was unduly delayed for the purposes of the debate. After all, our annual report was made available in good time. We can discuss the principle as much as we like. However, I think there is room for improvement, and I shall look into the matter and make sure that our reports reach the hon. member in good time.

Then I also want to refer to the question of legal aid. The Chairman, Mr Justice Boshoff, has an extensive investigation of legal aid in mind. Hon. members should not think that that board itself is happy with the state of affairs. In fact, Mr. Van der Post is a member, and I respect his opinion. So hon. members need not argue that there is a shortcoming of which we are not aware. We are having a lot of problems with our overheads such as rentals. Considerable pressure has been brought to bear on us to advertise our services. Do hon. members know what it costs to advertise on television and how many people could be provided with legal aid with that money? The necessary information concerning legal aid is made available by the magistrates’ offices in every region. It is also made available in the prisons. No one has to do without legal aid.

Now there are some other problems as well. It is true that we do not always have general funds available. Also, we do not always have everyone’s co-operation in recovering costs. To my mind, we do not recover nearly enough of our costs. With all these problems in mind, I am at present considering a proposal by the judge that a committee of the Legal Aid Board itself be allowed to investigate these facets. I think they are very well equipped to deal with this matter. They have identified the problems with complete sincerity and objectivity. They feel very strongly about them. I do not wish to burden the hon. member any further with this matter, except for saying that I am prepared to give them a chance.

The hon. member also referred to the HSRC investigation in connection with the cost of supporting individuals and families. Such an investigation takes place on an ongoing basis. The hon. member asked me what had happened. The board decided to raise the maximum under the means test as from 1 April 1983. A single person or a person with an estranged spouse and with a calculated income not exceeding R250 a month, plus an additional R50 for every dependant, qualifies for legal aid at the moment. As against this, a married person with a calculated income not exceeding R500 a month, plus an additional R50 for every dependant, qualifies for legal aid at the moment. Now it is recommended that these amounts be increased. The maximum of R250 is being raised to R500. I think this should afford considerable relief. I shall leave the matter at that.

I come now to the hon. member for Pretoria West. He did the House a favour by referring to the question of the justices of the peace and the services they could render. I have here the guide which applies to justices of the peace at the moment. From this guide it appears that they have fairly extensive and interesting powers at present. The ideas which the hon. member expressed have already been submitted to the Hoexter Commission and we expect that they will deal with them. The hon. member also made a recommendation in connection with the role of the notary. I think he has a point there. I think there is a statutory or a common law provision to the effect that the value of a notary’s signature is equal to the value of the signatures of seven ordinary people as witnesses. While the value of the signature of a Commissioner of Oaths is equal by law to the signatures of two ordinary persons, that of the notary is equal to seven. I think the hon. member raised a very important point there. This may create greater certainty as far as wills are concerned, and we shall certainly take up his idea. I think the hon. member for North Rand deserves one more answer. It concerns his representations in connection with Midrand as a separate magistrate’s district. Unfortunately, the hon. member is not here at the moment, but his colleagues can give him the assurance that we would have discussed the matter with him last year, but in the light of his illness at the time we postponed our decision, precisely because the hon. member had not had the opportunity of arguing the matter with us any further. There are two other hon. members present in this House who have made representations. We have already informed the one hon. member that we shall unfortunately not be able to accommodate his views. He took it like a man. I hope that the hon. member for North Rand will also take it like a man if the decision goes against him. However, I do not want to anticipate the decision. We want to give him a fair opportunity to exchange views with us. We have delayed the decision to accommodate him. The hon. member for Bloemfontein East made a fine philosophical speech, even though he comes from Bloemfontein, and he made a very good contribution in identifying the position occupied by Justice in the organization of our State. We are indebted to him for having quoted such good criteria, so much so that the hon. member for Rissik even invited him to accept his illustrious blue card. The hon. member for Bloemfontein East asked me to decline the offer.

The hon. member Mr. Theunissen referred to the whole question of services in the rural areas. I think the hon. member for Pretoria West also referred to this. The hon. member Mr. Theunissen asked us to ensure that the services in this connection were not adversely affected. We can assure the hon. member that it is being done with great circumspection. However, there was a time when we had a great shortage of legally qualified people. The hon. member will concede to me that where it was possible to use legally qualified people elsewhere in order to make better use of their legal expertise, we were simply compelled to do so. There are criteria which are used in grading a legal or non-legal post. I once discussed it with hon. members. As hon. members know, that criterion amounts to 500 court hours, measured in terms of the amount of criminal work done there. I jokingly advised the hon. members to get the attorneys to address the court at greater length, but apparently the hon. member Mr. Theunissen did not accept this. The fact remains, however, that this is a reasonable criterion, and this whole matter will be reconsidered once the Hoexter Commission has submitted its report. I want to recapitulate the position at this stage by saying that services in the rural areas, whether they be agency services or legal services, are very close to my heart, as a person who was born in a rural area. As far as I am concerned, and as far as the department is concerned, we shall not sacrifice quality. As far as possible, we shall also provide better training for our supporting staff, our administrative staff, so that they may provide the necessary support where this is required.

With this I wish to conclude, and I want to thank hon. members sincerely for a good Justice debate.

Mr. Chairman, I should like to devote one or two minutes to reading certain quotations to the Committee relating to a matter I raised at question time some while ago. I put a question to the hon. the Minister of Justice and Prisons in his capacity as Minister of Prisons relating to a sports matter, namely that the Westlake Prison Officer’s Club had been instructed to dissociate itself from one rugby association and/or to join another. The reply that I received was that an instruction had in fact been given to this particular club and that it had been given on the authority of the Commissioner of Prisons. It was stated furthermore that an oral indication had been given to the club that the club had been dissolved and could be reconstituted as a club under certain conditions. What were these conditions? The conditions were that it had been accepted as policy by the South African Prisons Service that Coloured personnel of the Prisons Service in the Western Cape who played rugby under the standard of the South African Prisons Service, should affiliate with the S.A. Rugby Federation or integrate with the Prisons Service Rugby Club which is affiliated to the Western Province Rugby Union. That was the answer given to me by the hon. the Minister.

This question was asked as a result of a letter that had been addressed to me by the Tygerberg Rugby Union. I should like to quote this letter to the Committee. It comes from a Mr. Titus and it reads as follows—

This is the important part and I should like the hon. the Minister to pay attention to this—

That was the letter that I received at the time.

To the letter I have just quoted was attached a letter from the Prison Officers’ Recreation Club which was written to the secretary of the Tygerberg Rugby Football Union and which reads as follows—

Certain things become quite clear as a result of reading that correspondence. The first thing that becomes clear is that the club itself comprising members of the Prisons Service who run this recreation club have been forced against their will to leave one particular rugby union and/or to join another. The second point is that it is clear that this decision has not been taken in consultation with the club but in fact against the majority will of the Prison Officers’ Recreation Club at Westlake.

The next point that is very clear is that the decision that was taken does not relate to the efficient administration of the Prisons Department, not at all! It relates to the private, ordinary recreation of the people who work for the Prisons Department. It does not involve the efficiency with which or the manner in which they do their work, or the efficiency of the service as a whole. It revolves around their private right to enjoy themselves in the way in which they choose to enjoy themselves in their free time. It relates to sport. It does not relate to the work of the department.

If we go back over debates of the past years, debates concerning the portfolio of National Education and Sport—we realize how the hon. the Minister, who has sat in on those debates, has heard many times, from Minister after Minister, and NP speaker after NP speaker, that the policy of the Government is that sports people enjoy autonomy, that they can make their own decisions in regard to sport, that they will hot be governed by the policies of the Government or dictated to or interfered with by any governmental authority. This policy was adopted in response to an outcry in this country against interference in sport, and as a result of that outcry the Government adopted the policy—and stated it for the world to know—that sportmen were independent of the Government, that they were not the representatives of the Government and that they were not subject to the instructions of the Government, but that they practised sport in their own time …

This is a sport and recreation speech.

… and in their own way. In answering the question, the hon. the Minister alleged that a certain discriminatory act had been perpetrated against one member in this particular regard. He said the following—

Do you not agree?

I am going to deal with that. I shall tell the hon. the Minister exactly what I feel about this. Let me tell the hon. the Minister that I have played in many sports clubs and have also played rugby. The situation is that if one plays for one club, one cannot play for another. If one does, one is suspended. That is how it works. If one belongs to one union and one plays for another, one gets suspended.

Have you ever played for Sacos?

The other aspect is that if that particular person wanted to play for another club, he could have joined the other club. He did not have to be a member of Tygerberg. It does not mean, however, that because that club used a disciplinary measure against the particular member, one must force that club to leave a union and then move away completely.

There has been discrimination against the Tygerberg Union in many ways. It does not have the fields that the rugby establishment has, nor has it got the coaching facilities or the finances. It has been discriminated against by municipalities and by many organizations, but that fact is not raised by the hon. the Minister. He only raises one isolated little case. The decision of the Prisons Department negates the Government’s every public announcement in regard to sports policy. He has taken away the right of ordinary individuals and has introduced a heavy-handed authoritarianism in sport within the Prisons Department.

What are they saying? They are saying that unless one joins Dr. Danie Craven’s rugby union one may not play rugby at a prison officers’ recreation club. That is what the Prisons Department is saying. Let me tell the hon. the Minister that that embarrasses Dr. Craven. It embarrasses the Western Province Rugby Union. They do not want people forced into their union against their will. I therefore ask the hon. the Minister to reconsider, to let the people of that club, on the basis of a majority decision, decide for themselves, and not to take the Prisons Department and to dump it in the midst of the political hassles involving the sportsmen of this country. I believe that one must keep sport out of politics and the Prisons Service out of sports politics.

Business suspended at 18h30 and resumed at 20h00.

Evening Sitting

Mr. Chairman, I take great pleasure in congratulating Gen. Otto and his staff of the S.A. Prisons Service most sincerely on an excellent annual report. I should like to emphasize a few aspects of the annual report to indicate that it is indeed an exceptionally good report.

As far as the staff position is concerned, the Prisons Service has had a particularly successful recruiting year. The staff turnover has also shown a satisfactory decline. There has been an increase of staff of 843, as opposed to only 8 members of staff in the previous review period.

As far as finance is concerned, it appears that the year under review was characterized by strict financial discipline that had to be maintained in order to be able to absorb within the budget the considerable cost increases caused by inflation.

As regards prisoner control it appears from the annual report that the Prisons Service still has to be contend with an overpopulation problem. The relevant figures indicate an overpopulation of as much as 22,4%. I shall come back to the population problem as such at a later stage. What is important in this regard, is that, in view of the overpopulation, it is all the more pleasing and remarkable that the number of escapes decreased during the year under review. Not only was the percentage of escapes 8,38% lower than the figure for the previous year, but the number of escapes was also the lowest for the past 13 years. Calculated as a percentage of the daily average number of prisoners in custody, the number of escapes per day amounted to as little as 0,0039%. This points to increasing efficiency in the Prisons Services’ task of safe custody, something we may well congratulate the service on.

The prisoner’s successful reintegration into the community remains extremely important, and the Prisons Service is giving this matter its urgent attention, inter alia, by preparing prisoners thoroughly for taking their trade tests in order to achieve full artisan status.

I think that these few extracts from the annual report endorse my initial statement, viz. that the Prisons Service has indeed had a very successful year.

The Prisons Service was the target for malicious reporting and misrepresentations during the past year under review. A report appeared in the Sunday Express of 19 December 1982 under the headline “Experts demand reform as pass offenders swell the already jammed-packed jails”, in which the following statement was made—

That was the essence of the report. The public relations division of the Prisons Service immediately lodged objections to this report with the newspaper editor. It was pointed out that the alleged total was unfounded, confusing and misleading. The correct facts were then give. At the insistence of this division the newspaper published a so-called corrective report on 2 January 1983 in which the correct figure was mentioned. For example, it was stated that only 1,82% of all prisoners who were in detention on the evening of 31 March 1982 had been sentenced in terms of influx control measures. That is instead of the 40% the newspaper had previously given as the figure concerned. The percentage of the total prison population which the influx control offenders constitute, can only be determined if the occupation of accommodation is analysed on a specific date. The report of 19 December 1982 contained the further misrepresentation that in June 1980 70% of all prisoners were serving sentences of six months or less. However, te fact is that the correct figure in this case was only 14,1%.

The report of 2 January 1983, which was supposed to correct the original report, was in fact, if one analyses the wording, an effort to justify the distorted reporting. It is reports such as these that are blazoned abroad and appear as front page reports in the foreign news media. Consequently, a completely unjustified and unfavourable image of the South African Prisons Service is projected.

That the South African prison system is, in fact, held in high repute internationally, is apparent, inter alia, from the fact that on several occasions informative material concerning the South African Prisons Service was furnished to interested bodies overseas via the Department of Foreign Affairs and Information.

Mr. Chairman, particularly after the Second World War, crime has increased considerably in most Western countries. The Republic of South Africa has not escaped this abnormal increase in the incidence of crime. From the annual report of the Directorate of Justice it is also apparent that the incidence of serious crime is increasing. In view of this, it is surely not exceptional or surprising that the overpopulation of prisons has also become a well-known phenomenon in the Republic of South Africa, as in other countries of the Western world. No less than Rill 522 773 has been spent during the past five financial years on the construction and improvement of prison accommodation and associated services. A number of new prisons have been built over the past few years, for example, in Johannesburg, Durban and Pietermaritzburg, while modernization projects have been undertaken at a number of other prisons.

There is no instant solution to the problem of the overpopulation of prisons. However, methods are being sought to alleviate this situation in a calculated and well-considered way. The Krugel Committee found, for example, that the alternative sentence in the case of fines is still the largest single contributing factor to the influx to prisons. Earlier in this debate the possibilities presented in this connection by the system of deferred payment of fines was referred to. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, may I ask for the privilege of the second half hour? I would like to be able to second the sentiments of the hon. member for Mossel Bay about the satisfactory nature of the annual report. In certain respects I can do so in that I am glad to see the amount of training which is being given to prisoners. However, there are other figures which I can use which I do not think give rise to any complacency as far as our present system is concerned. Although my first reaction on reading the annual general report was to note with satisfaction that the daily average number of prisoners had dropped from 100 533 in 1980-’81 to 87 539 in the year under consideration, I had second thoughts because I remembered that a large number of prisoners—about 50 000—had been released as a result of the amnesty which was granted on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Republic. In reply to a question …

It was about 20 000.

In answer to a question which I put, the hon. the Minister might remember that although it was only 20 000 at the time I put the question, it had apparently been estimated that up to 50 000 would have been released by the time the amnesty was over.

All those affected will receive the benefit. There are some in gaol who are still receiving the benefit.

At least a sizeable number of those people are included in the figures reflecting the drop in the daily average. I noted that in answer to a question put by the hon. member for Standton, the latest figure—for January—as far as the daily average is concerned, was 102 069. That is not a decrease. According to paragraph 1.6 of the report, if the prison population stands at 91 000, it is overcrowded to the extent of 22,4%. As the hon. member for Mossel Bay has remarked, three new prisons are being constructed at Diepkloof in Johannesburg, at Durban and at Pietermaritzburg which will probably relieve the overcrowding situation. I would like the hon. the Minister to give us a more up to date figure than the one we have. However, I would like to point out that the figure for the daily average prison population is very high indeed considering our total population. I want to compare South Africa’s figure with the figures of two other countries, both of which, although they do not have the same racial proportions, nevertheless have sizeable populations of different racial groups. I am referring to the United Kingdom and the USA. The UK today has an estimated population of 56 million and it has a daily average prison population of 52 000. Therefore that country the population of which is twice the size of the RSA, has a prison population of about half of ours. Thus, there is no cause for complacency.

They are a homogeneous society.

As far as the USA is concerned, they have a population of 228 million people and a daily average prison population of 293 000; in other words, a country with a population which is nine times our present population has a daily average prison population equal to three and a half times our daily average.

You are comparing incomparables.

Everybody says I am comparing incomparables. You see, I am looking at populations and I do not always like to look at everything from the racial point of view. I say that we have no cause for complacency with such a large prison population. The hon. member for Mossel Bay was at pains to tell us that the report that appeared stating that the majority of prisoners are pass offenders, was not correct. It is a very large proportion. The annual report of 1978-’79 gave us a very considerable number of pass law offenders and gave us a table of people admitted because of pass law offences. We have not had that table since then, and I do not know why.

Because it can be misleading.

Well, possibly because the hon. the Minister thought this might be represented, but it was a figure of about 90 000 people having been admitted to gaol simply as pass law offenders, and that was the official…

I explained to you the correct way of calculating.

One can use statistics any way one likes. I can use these statistics too in a different way, for instance, I can show that of the admitted sentenced 221 449 prisoners indicated in the report we are considering today, the largest category is in respect of those who fall into “over one month and up to four months”, and they account for 35,1%. The second largest category, i.e. up to one month, accounts for 31,9%. The two added together come to 67%. So, where do we get with all our statistics?

But there are statistics and statistics.

Well, these are authentic statistics taken from the official report.

It is your handling of the statistics which is wrong.

No, it is the hon. member’s handling of the statistics which turns them into another figure. To me the statistics indicate that something like 67% of the admitted convicted prisoners are prisoners with sentences of up to four months, and I think it is a logical conclusion to believe that most of those are there for pass law offences. [Interjections.] Well, let us leave all that to one side. The hon. member for Mossel Bay can use his statistics and I shall use my statistics but we shall not get very far.

What is worrying me is that there are numerous omissions from the report. First of all there is not a word, not that I could see anywhere, about prisoners on farms. We know that large numbers of prisoners do work on farms. I want to know something about the conditions on those farms and what efforts are made to have those farms inspected to make sure that those prisoners are treated in the proper way.

The hon. the Minister mentioned that he was very gratified that the number of escapees had in fact decreased, but I do not think he took the number of escapees from the new Diepkloof gaol into consideration. Apparently this gives some cause for concern. A large number of prisoners, 48 since the beginning of this year, have already escaped from Diepkloof, while there have been only 108 escapees from prisons in the rest of the RSA. This figure of 48 therefore constitutes a considerable proportion of the number of prisoners who have escaped this year.

I should like to know all about this new multi-million complex near Soweto. How many prisoners do we have in Diepkloof in each category according to race and sex, since this is a multi-racial prison. I should like to know what the ratio is of staff to prisoners in Diepkloof because I understand it is very understaffed. Diepkloof prison is the new Johannesburg prison. I should also like to know what facilities exist for recreation and for study and what library facilities there are. I should also like the hon. the Minister to tell us something about the medical and dental facilities at this prison.

Let us leave the report to one side for a moment. I should like to comment on something the hon. the Minister said in reply to the hon. member for Sandton when he asked about an inquiry into the desirability of capital punishment in South Africa. The first point is that we have never had a proper in-depth inquiry in this country. The original inquiry into penal reform in South Africa many years ago devoted half a dozen pages to the death penalty but made no in-depth inquiry because it was excluded from its terms of reference. When I move a private member’s motion in 1969, I did not get the support of a single member of the House. I asked only for an inquiry although I made it quite clear that I myself am in favour of abolition. The hon. the Minister says nothing has happened, but in fact a lot has happened. I can today get the support of a number of members of the House if I ask for a commission of inquiry into the desirability of maintaining the death penalty. The hon. member for Sandton himself is an obvious candidate for that.

The hon. the Minister says nothing has happened since 1969, but does he realize that we have probably executed well over a thousand people in that period between 1969 and 1983? I would say it has been an average of at least 100 per year. A conservative estimate for that period would be 1 000. A more likely estimate is 1 400. So, a lot has happened as far as capital punishment is concerned during that time. Because the hon. the Minister has not changed his mind about this subject, he has no right to assume that South Africa as a whole has not moved forward and brought itself into line with Western democracies as far as capital punishment is concerned.

I do not think the hon. member for Yeoville will support you on that.

He may, or he may not. The hon. member need not waggle his finger at me. I believe there should be a free vote on this subject.

In any case, I would support an inquiry into the matter.

Exactly. The hon. member for Yeoville will at least support an inquiry into it. What he would do after the inquiry had been completed is a different matter. In any event, he would be fully entitled to differ. In every country in the world where this very delicate question is debated, it is always left to a free vote. In England there have been two attempts over the last five years to reinstate the death penalty. Mrs. Thatcher happens to be in favour of reinstating it. On both occasions that was left to a free vote of the House of Commons, and the death penalty was not reinstated despite IRA terrorism and despite all the statements made about this being the obvious deterrent. Jenkins, for instance, stated that people who go in for terrorism of the IRA type do not care whether they die or do not die. That is something the hon. member ought to remember.

What are they doing in America? [Interjections.]

I want to repeat what I have said previously under this Vote, by asking the hon. the Minister to what extent he has implemented the policy change which was introduced last year regarding remission of sentence for prisoners serving sentences for offences against the State. I believe this to be very important. There is no information in the report about this. The category which used to be excluded from consideration for remission until last year was the category of people who committed offences against the State. How many people have since then been released? I know about Breyten Breytenbach. We all know about him. I know about a few youngsters on Robben Island who were released a couple of weeks before their sentences would have been completed. What about everybody else? There are to the best of my knowledge about 38 people serving life sentences for crimes against the State. Has the hon. the Minister put his mind to this? Is he considering releasing any of the people in this category? I refer, of course, to people like Goldberg, Mandela, Sisulu, Mbeki, Kathrada—I cannot remember the names of all of them, but there are about 38. Their cases ought to be considered on merit. Many of them have already served about 18 years in prison. In any normal democratic country that would be considered punishment enough for the crime for which they were convicted. Then there are others I can think of. There are the young people in the Pretoria maximum security jail, people like Cronin and Rabkin, and older men like Kitson. Has the hon. the Minister considered the release of any of these prisoners who, as I say, are now included in the categories of people who may be released from jail? I believe South Africa would gain an enormous advantage in the eyes of the world, which is used to hearing only bad and unpleasant stories about South Africa, if South Africa would do this.

I told you where they get their stories from.

Yes, very often they get the stories from replies to questions which I put in the House. I want to point out, however, that it is not my questions that give us a bad reputation, but it is the answers that we get from the other side of the House. Just for once let us get a good answer from the hon. member for Mossel Bay and the hon. the Minister, say that he is putting his mind to this question and is considering releasing some of these people.

Mr. Chairman, I do not intend replying to all the arguments of the hon. member for Houghton, except to point out that when she complains about the number of prisoners, she should certainly not address her complaints to the prison authorities. They are merely the recipients. They have no control over the number of prisoners that are referred to them. They merely have to take custody of those people. She must therefore address her representations to other bodies. That is my first reply to her. Secondly, as the hon. member for Mossel Bay said to her by way of an interjection, why does she choose Great Britain and the USA to draw a comparison between the population and the number of prisoners? Why does she not refer to our neighbouring States, Zimbabwe, for example? What is the ratio there? She may perhaps find a scientific basis for her comparison in the light of those figures. As it is, her comparison is completely worthless and I hope the hon. the Minister will take no notice of it.

I also read the annual report which covers the period 1 July 1981 to 30 June 1982 and I must say I was really impressed with what the prison authorities are doing for the prisoners as such. It was an account which I personally found tremendously impressive, particularly if one bears in mind that the people placed in their care are, in fact, people who have violated the rules of society and who now have to pay the penalty. If one considers against that background what the prison authorities are doing for the prisoners, one is amazed. For example, I took cognizance of what is being done in respect of the health of the prisoners. I took note of what is being done for them in the social sphere. I also took note of what is being done for them in the religious sphere. More important, is what is being done for the prisoners in the field of education. A survey was made in 1965 and it was found that approximately 20% to 30% of the Black prisoners were illiterate. The prison authorities intervened in order to remedy that situation and a literacy project was instituted to try to teach those people to read and write and to do simple arithmetic, at the very least. The facts in the report are that during the year under review 1 885 students were involved in the literacy course, and that 318 students completed the programme successfully. The literacy project was simply meant to make the prisoner receptive to further training. When I consider what is being done in this regard, I cannot but praise the prison authorities. Incidentally, I also want to say that what I found interesting as far as the literacy project was concerned, was that the prisoners were taught in their mother tongue and that training was being given through the medium of no fewer than six Black languages. I do not wish to give all the details here, but if one looks at the figures for 1968 to 1978 in the report, one finds details of the remarkable progress which has been made in the training of prisoners. During the year under review approximately 300 prisoners received formal training. 71 of them were undergraduate students and six were post-graduate students, whereas 50 enrolled for diplomas and 188 for technical qualifications. Technical qualifications include, inter alia, training in agriculture. I do not wish to deal with the matter in detail, except to say that these people are trained in the various branches of agriculture. Women are also trained as hairdressers and sewing machine operators.

What is more important to me, is that some of the prisoners are also being trained as artisans. I wish to focus special attention on this aspect. I noticed in the report that those prisoners who have received training in the building industry are used in conjunction with the staff of the Prisons Service to construct their own buildings. To me, this is extremely valuable and I think the Prisons Service is unique in the Republic’s Public Service in this regard, in that its own members of staff, with the assistance of the prisoners, are engaged in constructing their own buildings. I am sure that the department is able to construct those buildings much more cheaply than the contract prices for the construction of such buildings. In this regard it seems to me as if the amount of money made available for the construction of buildings for the Prisons Service might be rather I limited. It only amounts to R9 million, and I wonder whether the hon. the Minister could not perhaps persuade the hon. the Minister of Finance to make a larger amount of money available to the department, since it seems to me as if these are funds which could be used effectively in this regard.

I am only the building contractor. The hon. the Minister controls the purse-strings.

I wish to point out to the hon. the Minister of Community Development that, as I understand it, the Department of Community Development does not build as cheaply as the Prisons Service.

I also wish to raise another aspect, and that is the question of wills, which was also dealt with earlier by two speakers. Recently the practice has arisen—as a practising attorney I have encountered this and I am sure that other organizations have also experienced this—that testators want to create trusts and bequeath funds to these trusts so that those trusts can be administered by experts even for long periods after the death of the testator concerned. These trusts are usually of two kinds. There is the normal trust which is created in terms of the will and which is called the testamentary trust and, secondly, the trust which a person creates during his lifetime which is usually called the inter vivos trust. This is a trust which is created while the Founder of that trust is still living. He donates an amount of money to the trust and that trust is then administered for particular purposes as set out in the trust. This trust also has objectives which have to be carried out long after the death of its creator, with the result that such a trust has to be drawn up in great detail. Firstly, the requirement is that the powers of the trustees have to be defined in full and those trustees have no powers apart from the powers defined in that trust. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Port Elizabeth North reacted correctly to the speech made by the hon. member for Houghton in the sense that the Prisons Service, the Prisons authorities, which we are considering at the moment, are in actual fact the authorities which receive and deal with the prisoners in prison. I think she was barking up the wrong tree with her objections as far as these particular aspects were concerned.

The hon. member went on to mention the health services and other matters in the Prisons Service. He spoke of training in building activities and so forth. What strikes one in particular, as far as the building activities and their workshops are concerned, is the uniform and the neat appearance of these people while they are engaged in these activities.

I also want to associate myself with a previous hon. speaker and convey my sincere congratulations on their exceptional achievements during the year under review.

I also want to return briefly to the question of justice. The hon. member for Mossel Bay referred to the aspect of the report dealing with the evaluation of the Criminal Procedure Act. In this regard it is interesting to recall the long debates we conducted on this matter in the early ’seventies, first under the guidance of the late Mr. Pelser and subsequently Mr. Kruger. It is interesting to take note of the opposition we encountered from the PFP and the old United Party and of the way in which we argued for many nights to have that piece of legislation placed on the Statute Book. One need only recall the times when the matter was broached for the first time by Mr. Justice Hiemstra in the Law Journal and then observe where we are today. Now we have the situation in which there is no criticism to indicate that the situation is unjust, and the very problem was that the equilibrium between the State and the accused would be disturbed as a result of the new piece of legislation. However, at this stage we are not getting that kind of criticism, and this, in my opinion, is a unique achievement.

As I have said, however, I want to confine myself to the Prisons Service and point out in passing an important aspect to which reference is made in paragraph 1.10. I think reference was made to this by the hon. member for Houghton and other hon. members as well as the hon. Minister himself. I am referring to the prison population. In my opinion it is regrettable that the hon. member for Houghton does not give a little credit where credit is in fact due. This is the finest achievement in 13 years.

[Inaudible.]

The report of the Prisons Service probably gives us one of the most complete descriptions, in many years, of the scope of this most important facet of the domestic affairs of the State, commencing with the staff and covering matters such as training, the reintegration of prisoners into the community, the treatment of the sick, and terminating with pastoral and psychological treatment. I want to emphasize a few aspects.

The first of these is that there is, in fact, over-population, and the figure is 22,4%, but I want to read this fact in conjunction with what has just been said with reference to the question of the imposition of fines and the establishment of the Advisory Release Board. This board has to advise the Minister on general policy in connection with the release of prisoners, the basis upon which remission of sentence is granted to prisoners, etc. It consists, inter alia, of representatives of the Bench of the Supreme Court and regional magistrates. The problem of overpopulation is to play no role in the matter of considering the role or the remission of sentence. The very fact that the Bench has an important say in this regard is significant. Sometimes criminal trials may last very long and often they are very involved. Over the years the judge and the regional magistrate develop a deep insight into the personality, the thinking, the psychology, the cunning of the criminal. The contribution of the judge and the regional magistrate to the proceedings of this board can be of positive value to the department. Last year the hon. the Minister said that this board was still going to gain added momentum. We look forward to receiving further reports in this connection.

Possibly the most important of all is the contents of chapters 9 and 10 of the report of the Prisons Service, which deal with psychosocial treatment and spiritual care, to which the hon. member for Port Elizabeth North referred. After all, the principal motive is the rehabilitation of the prisoner, his eventual reintegration into society, the training which he receives while he is in prison, etc. The Community Integration Section was established in October 1981 and concentrates on the rendering of material assistance, the co-ordination of the provision of employment, accommodation, and on reconstruction and after-care services to released prisoners. According to the annual report, the activities of this section are still in the planning stage. It would be appreciated if the hon. the Minister could give this House further information on this matter.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the hon. member for Brakpan for the appreciation he expressed with regard to the activities of the Prisons Service. It is a great pity that the hon. member for Sandton did not see fit to refer to the annual report. He merely dealt with the rugby team. I do not want to deny him the pleasure he takes in discussing sport, but I think that as the chief spokesman of the PFP on the Prisons Service, he ought at least to have referred in passing to the annual report.

I wish to refer to the intensive reorganization project in which the Prisons Service is engaged. An essential feature of a dynamic organization is that it constantly looks at its structure, evaluates it in order to ascertain whether it is effective, and then effects the essential changes. The S.A. Prisons Service has succeeded pre-eminently in this regard. As far back as 1981 an intensive reorganization campaign of the structure of the Prisons Service was launched. The first phase of this reorganization involved an intensive investigation into the objectives of the Prisons Service itself so as to ascertain what functions had to be included in the structure. The dominant function of the Prisons Service is the care of prisoners in terms of statutory prescriptions. This gives rise to two functions: Firstly, the function of the safe custody of prisoners and, secondly, the treatment of prisoners. By implication there is also the staff function, viz. the manpower, finance and logistic function without which the first two functions cannot be performed. When these two functions were identified the structure of the Prisons Service was divided into three main sections, viz. Safe Custody Services, Treatment Services and Staff Services. These divisions have been carried through at all levels of the organization, i.e. not only at head office level, but also at regional commissioner level, commanding officer level and chief of prisons level.

The second part of the first level of reorganization concerned role analysis. In this phase it was ascertained under what service the various posts would fall. This resulted in the top management being freed from routine duties, enabling them to concentrate on strategic planning and managerial strategy. On the other hand, administrative control functions were delegated to lower levels. Subsequent to this role analysis the structure and function were as follows: The Prisons Service headquarters is a policy-making body only; the office of the Regional Commissioner has a purely co-ordinating and executive function; the command headquarters have an inspecting and executive function; and the prison itself has an executive function. This division led to various results, inter alia, job satisfaction. Because decision-making was carried through to the lowest level the opportunity was given to more to accept responsibility themselves, and this also prepared them for accepting greater responsibilities. There was also more purposive work orientation, and this promoted greater effectiveness in the Prisons Service. This phase has already been implemented at all command headquarters and prisons. In addition, seven divisions of the headquarters are already subject to role analysis, and the results will be implemented shortly.

The next phase of the reorganization which will commence before long, is goal-oriented management, according to which the supervisor and the subordinate agree to a rational and attainable goal and then commit themselves to attaining that goal. The advantage of reorganization is that there is uniform management, the goals constantly enjoy attention as a result of which there is more effective functioning. The individual has the advantage of knowing what is expected of him and consequently has the opportunity to evaluate himself.

The third and final phase is integrated action planning. This embraces proper estimates of anticipated trends and anticipated end results. This obliges a manager to make provision in good time for certain developments. It is being planned to have phases 2 and 3 of the reorganization effort implemented at all components by the end of 1983. This will be followed by a follow-up action, the purpose of which will be to integrate it as an operational feature of the department. The Commission for Administration will also be kept informed of this on an on-going basis as, in the final instance, it has to give its approval for this. This reorganization project originated at the instance of the directorate itself and is being implemented by its own ranks. This is the surest proof of the South African Prisons Service being a very dynamic organization.

I should also like to say a few words on computerization in the directorate. This is an imaginative project, and whereas computers were used in the past merely for the processing and maintenance of salary records, the payment of accounts and certain staff statistics, which were a by-product of this, the object now is to implement a total system. It is being envisaged to have all facets of the Prisons Service computerized in decentralized computers. Examples of aspects to be covered by the computers, are total prisoner control, administration of training and treatment and improved information to other departments and outside establishments. Computers can also be used in the prevention of crime and for coping with logistic requirements. In addition they can be used for monitoring the movement of prisoners and for the mechanization of certain tasks, for example, the calculation of release dates and the printing of warrants. Since these computers will be accommodated at the point at which the need for computers is the greatest, the possible ways in which they can be utilized are virtually unlimited. At present 25% of the staff are being used for administrative processes. With full computerization this can be reduced to 20%. The first three minicomputers were installed at the head office, Pollsmoor and Pretoria Commands in April 1982. The rest of the computers ought to be put into operation in the next 5 to 10 year period. Eventually the computers will be linked to one another by means of a computer network. Consequently head office will be able to monitor all command systems. Information to be disseminated, decisions taken, policies laid down, etc., can be transmitted virtually immediately to even the most remote prisons.

Mr. Chairman, in the light of all these circumstances and in the light of this dynamic action of the Directorate of Justice, I am of the opinion that there are few Public Service organizations which at present have the enthusiasm and the initiative in respect of efficiency and renewal which the Prisons Service has at present.

Mr. Chairman, it gives me pleasure to follow upon the hon. member Mr. Schutte, except in one respect and that is that the hon. member has stolen most of my speech. Being the fifth or the sixth speaker, I was hoping that what I wanted to say could not have been discussed and would have been something new. However, what he had had to say, is extremely pertinent and we on these benches have no hesitation in congratulating the hon. the Minister, the Commissioner and his officers and staff on the new direction taken and also as far as the report is concerned. The direction taken is one in which there is a new management style which, I must say, is very much in keeping with the follow-up action taken by the hon. the Minister in respect of justice resulting from the various commissions which he has discussed in this House today. By implementing the findings of those commissions, he is keeping pace with the requirements of our society and bringing about the necessary legal reform.

Certainly, this report, as far as the prisons are concerned, has some very edifying aspects. For the sake of the record, I would like to make one or two remarks, particularly in regard to the new management style. The career planning section which was recently commenced, the goal-oriented management systems using the role analysis technique, the quality of personnel and the whole approach to updating and modernizing is ensuring the best possible use of both the human resources and the financial resources under debate in this House today. All these aims are very commendable and we look forward to the results of this new management system and the new management style and to keeping abreast of the efforts put into this work because of the enormous responsibility which the State has towards a part of our society.

On page 42 of the report, in paragraph 1.10, this is very neatly summed up in these words—

That is a very short synopsis of a field of endeavour in which officials of the State have a very great responsibility towards society, and I believe that the efforts detailed in this report are very clearly directed towards maximum modernization in the approach to these affairs.

Mr. Chairman, having said that, I hope you will excuse me if perhaps I digress a little. I think the report on the Prisons Service is quite complete and on the whole indicates a positive approach in spite of it being allied to that somewhat out-of-place word incarceration which is not a word I like to use. I prefer a word like detention. As far as my first speech in this vote was concerned, I omitted to mention this aspect. In fact I think there was a miscarriage of justice because I was robbed of 30 seconds.

However, I would like to carry on and indicate that this party feels that it is vital that the hon. the Minister who still maintains control of the administrative side of internal security as detailed in the report of the Rabie Commission and passed by the House as the Internal Security Act of 1982, should make every effort to ensure that the period for which a detainee is held without trial in terms of the Internal Security Act, is kept to an absolute minimum before that person is brought before the courts and also that the periods between the review process are shortened. This process must be seen as an instrument to which constant attention is given so as to ensure the return of that person’s right of access to the courts. The review mechanism must have a judicial character, which seeks as one of its prime functions, a return from the executive action taken by the State in order to preserve the security of the State to a judicial action by the courts at the earliest possible moment. Whilst fully realizing the sophistication and the professionality of the revolutionary methods in undermining the State, I must point out that the question that remains in every thinking person’s mind is—if there was sufficient knowledge of the detainees action to invoke the powers of the Internal Security Act, why within a reasonably short period can they not be taken before the courts and proven guilty. That is what the public continually ask themselves.

We of the NRP believe that on-going improvements to the security laws are essential in the best interest of reform in South Africa and we appeal to the hon. the Minister of Justice that he, together with the review board, examine every possibility of both reducing the period between reviewals as well as strengthening the intent and effort to bring detainees before the courts. We believe that this will only redound to the credit of our country. We believe that that function should remain with the hon. the Minister and that he should see to it, together with the review board, that there is an on-going process of reconsidering the periods concerned here because this is a vital reform measure within the judicial processes which themselves are continually reformed as has been discussed here today.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for King William’s Town will forgive me if I do not respond directly to the arguments he raised. I thank the hon. member for a very positive speech and I believe that the hon. the Minister will reply to him in full with regard to the matters touched on by him.

I should like to turn to another aspect with regard to the S.A. Prisons Service. I believe that no one will take it amiss of me if I refer to the S.A. Prisons Service as a service of which we are especially proud. This is not my view merely because the training college of the service is situated in my constituency. I have come to know the men of the service as model citizens of the community, people who make a contribution not only in the work they do, but also at all levels of that community.

To keep pace with the rapid development taking place in our country very heavy demands are being made on our country’s top level manpower and South Africa today has to face the disturbing fact that the availability of this manpower can no longer come anywhere near meeting our needs. The pressure on the White management corps in South Africa is therefore increasing rapidly and the efficient utilization of staff becomes more necessary by the day. The efficient utilization of manpower through purposeful manpower planning has become one of the highest priorities in our country, not only in the private sector, but in respect of the public sector as well.

In this regard the S.A. Prisons Service deserves the highest praise, because rather than let the grass grow under their feet they have given positive attention to the problem and taken purposeful action to achieve efficient utilization of manpower by way of purposeful manpower planning.

When one looks at the budget one sees, inter alia, that an amount of R7 961 000 is being budgeted for the training of staff. Manpower is therefore a particularly expensive investment. In the case of the Prisons Service I have not the slightest doubt that specifically in view of the exceptional initiatives and programmes they have already launched, this department will spend every cent of those funds in such a way that this will indeed prove to be an investment.

In the limited time at my disposal I should like to highlight a few of the facets of the programme to which I have referred and try to illustrate them further. I do so gladly, because I am of the opinion that it deserves special mention and because one is impressed by the exceptional brainpower and dynamics at the disposal of the department, something which has always been so characteristic of this particular department. The Prisons Service has over the years always, in the face of the ever-increasing demands, endeavoured to keep pace, with the developing world around it. In the light of this the Commissioner of Prisons and his management team have identified the more efficient utilization of manpower as an urgent requirement and a high priority, and in February this year proposals to launch a purposeful manpower planning programme were approved. This decision resulted in the establishment of a permanent manpower planning committee to control and co-ordinate the project. The function of this committee is, mainly, to plan the manpower of the Prisons Service in such a way that the right type of persons can be utilized at the right time in suitable posts where they can do work which will in the long-term be to the maximum advantage of the service as such and themselves. The eventual result of this process is, therefore, a central manpower plan which will provide the guidelines for action and which will also spell out the needs of the times with regard to recruitment, training and utilization. It therefore embraces the entire manpower spectrum of the service. With this in mind specific projects were embarked upon to set a planning cycle in motion which will eventually culminate in a well-founded manpower plan.

In the mean time, several tasks have already been identified and are receiving attention. One notes with great appreciation the progress that has already been made in respect of career planning. This is a very important matter which, in theory, means that one should like to say to every member of the department, at an early stage, what the expectations are as regards his career. The member is then also given the opportunity to contribute his personal input in this regard. This action will therefore mean, among other things, that the Prisons Service will shortly be in the position that the career of every member can be developed purposefully on the basis of his specific abilities and within the framework of the needs of the service. While this will undoubtedly promote more efficient rendering of service, it also entails the advantage for members of greater job satisfaction, because it ought also to eliminate many of the frustrations which members sometimes experience. This project undoubtedly shows a lot of promise.

Another facet to which I should like to refer, is the assessment and development of management potential in the Prisons Service. Today there are just not enough trained people to meet the demand for managerial posts, and the demand is increasing daily. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that each and every one with management potential must be developed to the optimum and his ability fully utilized. With this reality in mind the Prison Service, after an investigation of the available techniques, decided on the technique of an assessment centre—in Afrikaans it is called an “evalueringsen-trum”—to evaluate its management potential. The assessment centre technique is at the moment one of the most popular means of selecting and evaluating staff. This technique is being applied world-wide in about 40 countries in both the private and the public sectors. Time does not allow me to go into this, but I may just mention that the results of the utilization of this centre have been particularly interesting, because this is where staff development in particular comes into the picture. It concerns with the evaluation of officers, the placing of staff, promotion purposes, organizational anaylsis, etc. One can continue in this vein. A tremendous amount of success is being achieved with this. Since the implementation of the management assessment centre in January 1982 about 114 majors have already been evaluated. This also includes Black officers, and on the basis of this information amongst other things, the Prisons Service was recently able to promote two Black majors to the rank of lietenant-colonel. Good process has therefore already been made with the design of a training course which will probably be offered shortly in two phases and which has been specially designed to develop those managerial skills that are critical for the effective functioning of senior managerial posts in the Prison Service and which will be evaluated during this course.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Kroonstad assures me that it is a particular honour and privilege for me to follow him. However, the hon. member for Bloemfontein East informs me that this privilege may only last five minutes, and I therefore make haste to refer to only a few aspects relating to the information and liaison service of the Prisons Service.

The Prisons Service fulfils a particularly important and also very sensitive role in the South Africa community. As the aim of the imposition of punishment, and accordingly the primary function of the Prisons Service, is the rehabilitation of the transgressor, particularly in the interests of the prisoner himself, most of the activities of the service take place away from the public eye. In the nature of things, this exposes the Prisons Service to accusations of concealment on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is vulnerable to misrepresentations by those who seek to undermine confidence in the integrity of state institutions. It is also vital, in the interests of the prisoner, that the necessary steps are taken to counter any such misrepresentations and abuses. Various measures have therefore been introduced and steps taken to ensure that the Prisons Service will in fact be seen in perspective and that prisoners will not be exploited by false, sensational reports. In the first place, legislation had passed for this purpose which, by determining appropriate penal provisons, seeks to counteract false reporting. It is contained in section 44 of the Prisons Act, Act No. 8 of 1959. As could be expected, this section was and is the target of sharp and, in the main, slanted criticism from certain elements, that maintain that this is an effect to smother reporting about the Prisons Service and its activities. Unfortunately, time does not allow me to go into this more pertinently, except to say that the Supreme Court has acknowledged that the Prisons Service’s interpretation of this section was correct, namely that the only aim in this respect is to prevent false reporting and that only deliberate or negligent publication of false information is punishable.

Furthermore, as long ago as 1976 the Prisons Service established a centralized incidents report service to ensure that the departmental management will be informed on a 24-hour basis of any relevant incident affecting the Prisons Service. The emphasis falls here on the prompt forwarding of details of incidents of that nature so that the necessary action and, where applicable, liaison with the media can take place as quickly as possible. An important example of this is the release of information in respect of escapes and those involved in them. Together with this, there is the Press liaison section of the service, which is also manned on a 24-hour basis and which is available to the media at all times. A media monitoring programme was also introduced in terms of which the most important newspapers and magazines, as well as radio and television broadcasts, are continually monitored with the aid of the commanding officers of the different commands. An analysis of the essence of any report affecting the Prisons Service, together with any other relevant information about it, is forwarded in terms of this to the central information section, from where the necessary follow-up action, if any, can then be taken.

In addition, the system of regular visits by independent persons is followed. For example, judges of the Supreme Court, at any time and without prior notice, visit any prison unhindered and can talk to any prisoner at any time. Regular visits by magistrates, clergymen, doctors, legal practitioners and—especially important—the family and friend/friends of a prisoner are also allowed.

Through aid to private organizations in respect of film projects in which the administration of a prison is depicted or touched on, the general public is shown what life in prison is all about. Various such projects were tackled during the past year. The most well-known was probably the TV series “Vyfster”, which was based on true incidents in our prisons over the past 75 years and which gave thousands of viewers a better insight into prison life. I think that congratulations to all involved in this excellent production are in order.

In addition, the Prisons Service purposefully endeavours to reach all population groups by way of personal and promotional programmes in order to bring to the attention of the general public the role of the Prisons Service as a community service organization. It is clear that the Prisons Service makes its contribution in every possible way, in so far as is practicable, and with the interests of the prisoners themselves as the first priority, to make its activities public and to operate openly. Its purposeful efforts in this regard very often require of its members sacrifices and a considerable amount of voluntary duty after hours, for which they deserve our gratitude. One trusts that all interested parties, and especially the news media, will utilize to the full the institutions that have been created in order to ensure objective reporting about this important and unique State institution.

Mr. Chairman, we have now come to the end of this debate on the Department of Justice and on the Prisons Service, and I want to thank hon. members who participated for their contributions. I also include the hon. members of the Opposition. They could in fact have been far more difficult, but I think, owing to their inherent decency, they refrained from doing so. I shall deal with the matter raised by the hon. member for Sandton last, for then we could perhaps conclude on something of a high note. I think the hon. member will understand when I say that I do not think we should generate any heat before we arrive at that point. Let us therefore deal with the rest of the matters calmly.

The hon. member for East London North utilized his five minutes very usefully and neatly and I shall come back to him in a moment.

The hon. member for Mossel Bay tendered his apologies for not being able to be present here. The hon. members raised quite a number of matters, including the question of the over-population of our prisons. The hon. member also referred to escapes, as well as to the report in the Sunday Express. When I reply to the hon. member for East London North, I shall refer to this matter as well.

†The hon. member for Houghton asked me a number of questions in regard to the new prison in Johannesburg. As a matter of fact, that is a very impressive building which provides accommodation for several thousand prisoners. However, that prison is definitely experiencing teething troubles. I am sure the hon. member will appreciate the fact that we are certainly not co-operative as far as escapes are concerned. We will, of course, do our very best to prevent them. In view of the fact that the hon. member apparently shares my feelings in this regard, I want to assure her that immediately after the last escape a group of top officials was assembled. They reviewed the situation, and certain structural adjustments are in the process of being brought about. Other arrangements will also be made in order to avoid a recurrence of such an event.

The hon. member asked about the facilities available to prisoners. The same facilities are available as at any other prison, including medical attention and a library service. Apart from anything else, there are opportunities for recreation and exercise. In fact, it is a very impressive arrangement that we have there. I am sure that we shall have the pleasure of inviting the hon. member, some time in the near future, to visits that institution. [Interjections.] The hon. member also dealt with the question of capital punishment. I do not intend replying to that, because I think I have already done so in no uncertain terms.

Things have changed.

Yes. She also asked me how many prisoners had been released in terms of the policy of also releasing those prisoners sentenced in terms of our security laws, should they qualify for such release. To date we have released 61 prisoners. The portion of the sentence that had not yet elapsed at the time of release varies, in fact from 17 days in some case to much more than a year in other cases. I have one instance here of two years and six months, one case of one year and 19 days and another case of one year and 11 months. So I think the hon. member’s criticism is completely unjustified and completely unwarranted. [Interjections.]

I was just seeking information.

She mentioned the fact that there was no reference to the relevant aspect in the report itself. I should just like to add to what I said about this matter on 12 May last year. The process by which prisoners come under consideration for release is a complex process, involving various institutional committees and release boards and covering the entire duration of the prisoners’ imprisonment with a view to establishing each prisoner’s progress, prognosis and readiness for release, based on the extent to which a prisoner has paid his debt to society on the one hand and the extent to which those factors are present which could allow a prisoner to come into consideration for a remission of sentence or a conditional release on the other hand.

*I should just like to summarize. In the consideration of mitigation of punishment for this category of prisoners—as in any other category—the reports on such prisoners by the various institutional committees, reports which are based on observation over a long period and which embrace the total spectrum of their behaviour and functioning, are taken into consideration and a profile of the prisoners is constructed. The extent to which a prisoner has turned his back on crime, and the prognosis in regard to the prisoner’s successful reintegration can then be directly deduced. In this process attention is paid to reports by a multi-disciplinary team of professional officers such as psychologists, social workers, educationists, as well as those from pastoral workers, and particularly to reports resulting from the observations of control personnel who deal more directly with institutional discipline and co-operation on the part of the prisoners.

The representations which the hon. member for Houghton is making in this connection will not take the matter any further, one way or the other. We are doing all these things in terms of existing policy. Of course we take cognizance of what the hon. member says. If her request were to fit in with this policy, a compromise may be possible at some point. It is not impossible that we may consider a specific category of prisoners—who could then include security prisoners—for mitigation of punishment on the basis of health considerations, age, and life expectancy. That possibility is not excluded. An example of this kind is that we did this in the case of the late Mr. Sebukwe.

He was not a prisoner. He was a banned person. He was already released …

Agter that he was restricted. However, he is an example. The hon. member does not know her history.

That is a bad example.

The next point I want to make in this connection is that this is a continuous process and that in the course of it some of the persons whose names she mentioned to me just now in this House, or earlier in private conversation, will in fact receive attention. I want to give the hon. member the piece of friendly advice that she should not try to precipitate matters. She must have patience. This matter is receiving attention in general, but also in respect of particular persons.

As long as you have not forgotten.

The hon. member for Mossel Bay, as well as other hon. members, referred to the question of overpopulation. I think it is necessary for me to inform this House of the latest figures in this connection. I want to say at once that if this figure is higher than the figure mentioned in the Sunday Express, it is not because the Sunday Express figure was too low. The point is, however, that at that stage, as the hon. member for Mossel Bay quite rightly pointed out, it was incorrect information based on obsolete figures. All we are asking is that the correct figures should be used, that these figures be checked with the prison authorities and this matter be placed in its correct perspective. Even the ratio between various groups of prisoners—short-term prisoners, long-term prisoners, etc.—is relevant. I really regret having to inform the House this evening that the total prison population on 31 March this year stood at 105 634. This is even higher than the number before we granted amnesty the year before last. As we interpret matters, this is to a large extent due to lesser crimes, coinciding with economic conditions, even with unemployment. This is a phenomenon which is being experienced in all countries of the world.

However, there is an additional factor which is causing alarm and of which we must take cognizance. Several farms belonging to the Prisons Service—the total of prisoners on these farms is quite considerable—can be jeopardized as a result of the drought conditions. In places the drought conditions have become so serious that we have to make considerable additional provision for prison rations because we will have a reduced production on the farms in question. The 1983-’84 appropriation is based on normal expectations. The present situation is abnormal. Although I do not have the ear of the hon. the Minister of Finance at the moment, I want to place this matter in perspective for hon. members and say that if some of these prison farms have to be evacuated, the overpopulation of other prisons will inevitably increase. However, we have already made provision in our planning—for example at the new prisons in Westville, Johannesburg and Pietermaritzburg—for a moderate overpopulation. We are planning for this contingency so that we can even cope with an overpopulation of up to 50% at certain new prisons without the situation becoming really critical. Consequently we have not yet arrived at that critical stage. The hon. members can work out the figures for themselves. However, we are keeping an eye on the situation. The discussion we have had this evening, which revolved around short-term prisoners, sentencing, certain sections of the Criminal Procedure Act which can be applied to ensure that fewer short-term prisoners find their way to the prisons, the question of alternative sentences, deferred payment of fines, etc. make this all the more relevant. Consequently I just want to say that we are giving this matter our attention.

Mr. Chairman, having said that, one can only add that it is something which is being experienced throughout the world. Overpopulation of prisons is being experienced in America and Canada, everywhere. I do not think it is in any way relevant to draw comparisons here between our population and that of America, because if the issue is colour here, the facts are that in America Black people comprise 80% of the prison population, while they only represent 20% of the total population. This is consequently a very interesting figure which indicates that crime among the Black people in this country is not exceptionally high.

Mr. Chairman, I must make haste. It seems I only have 25 minutes left. I now wish to come to a very interesting and valuable contribution in regard to the question of overpopulation, and that is the contribution by prisoners to building projects. At present prisoners do building and repair work and carry out improvements in the ratio of R1 contributed by the Prisons Service to R2,50 made available by the hon. the Minister of Community Development. A very interesting and valuable argument was put forward here by the hon. member for Port Elizabeth North. I believe that it creates an opportunity for me to approach my hon. colleague and to suggest that we will stretch the rand and reap the benefit of it for a longer period if we are given an opportunity to build ourselves, because the fact of the matter is that we do indeed build considerably cheaper than the private sector. However, we shall have to maintain an equilibrium and ensure that we do not surpass private enterprise to such an extent that it jeapardizes our position with private contractors. So much, then, for that situation.

Finally, as far as prison accommodation is concerned, I want to say that hon. members must know that this is the most expensive form of accommodation. To build accommodation for one prisoner at present costs in the region of R17 000.

For that amount you can build each one a house.

It includes all the precautionary measures and all the equipment, etc. This emphasizes once again our undertaking to Parliament that we wish to keep the prison population as low as possible. However, we definitely need more funds. Firstly to be able to deal with the prison population which we can expect to increase in future, and secondly to give our prison staff, of which the ratio to the present population is at present 1:7, a better work load. A ratio of 1:3,5 would be a more acceptable work load. We should very much like to arrive at that point, but we are still a long way away from that ratio. I think the hon. members will pardon me if I provisionally leave the question of overpopulation at that now.

The hon. member for Houghton asked me about prison farms. It is not clear to me whether she was talking about outposts. There is a difference. As far as outposts are concerned, we have control bodies. During the past financial year we accommodated a total of 6 462 prisoners in these outposts. Control takes place in terms of the regulations and standards laid down by the Commissioner of Prisons. As hon. members know, we had no complaints in this connection. In fact, the indication is that prisoners are very keen to go and work at such outposts where they can enjoy the fresh air and special privileges.

I do not wish to elaborate for too long on prison farms under the control of the Prisons Service. We heard more about them last year in the debate on this Vote. I think it is fitting to say that if the Prisons Service had not operated these farms it would have cost the taxpayer astronomically more than it does at present to feed our prison population. I want to let that suffice. The hon. member for Houghton is completely conversant with that situation and I think we can only take cognizance of it with appreciation This brings me to the hon. member for Brakpan, who also discussed the question of overpopulation. I have already replied to a great extent to what was said in connection with this matter. The Advisory Release Board had already been functioning for several months. The hon. member asked me to give the Committee more information in this regard. I can only say that a variety of assignments have already been given to the Advisory Release Board, with Judge of Appeal Viljoen as chairman and Mr. Justice Cumleben as secundus. I receive very valuble advice from them and I should like to mention a few examples to the Comittee. For example, they were asked to give advice on the provisional release on parole of short-term prisoners sentenced to a term of imprisonment of 6 months and less. They produced a very thoroughly considered piece of work. They gave me an answer to the question of whether certain offences ought to be excluded when considering the provisional release of prisoners, in particular prisoners sentenced for stock theft, regardless of the sentence imposed. I dealt with this matter the other day in reply to the hon. member for Schweizer-Reneke’s references to stock theft. They advised me on the provisional release of persons convicted for crimes of violence. I have already referred many individual cases to them for consideration and reconsideration, so that they can give me advice on these cases. With the feedback I am getting, I can only say that this board is functioning successfully. It is undoubtedly true that it will be of greater service to us as time goes by.

The hon. member Mr. Schutte and the hon. member for Kroonstad are two of the members who pay regular visits to prisons so that they can serve us in this House as specialists. In fact, they have already accumulated a great deal of expertise on these institutions. I think they can also testify to the hospitality of the Prisons Service. In fact, the doors of the Prisons Service will always be open to them.

The hon. member Mr. Schutte also referred to the financial administration systems which had been introduced. All I can do is draw the attention of the hon. member to page 59 of the report. The same theme was dealt with by the hon. members for King William’s Town and Kroonstad, and I wish to content myself with that. This afternoon the Directorate of Justice and Prisons Service came in for quite a lot of praise. I think that this is to a large extent a question of their administration systems being geared to identifying and coping with problems. Over the short period of a year certain problems experienced in connection with the payment of accounts have to a large extent been brought under control. They succeeded because to a large extent they channelled financial transactions to the command headquarters of the Prisons Service, to such an extent that commanding officers also developed a responsibility. This is to a great extent in accordance with the whole concept of decentralized administration.

†The hon. member for King William’s Town perhaps emphasized this matter correctly when he drew the attention of the Committee to the system which enables us to have in effect, decentralized management. A climate is now created under which there can be greater responsibility and initiative and more decision-making at all levels of management. It is not only a question of decentralizing decision-making, but is is also creating responsibility and accountability which in turn create better management. I am very grateful to be able to say tonight that I think the Commissioner and his top officers have succeeded in bringing about a greater sense of responsibility and involvement down to the very lowest level.

*This must work through to the warder as well. That is why I am pleased that the hon. member for Kroonstad referred to these things—training, involvement—because one must motivate the warder. He is after all the person who has to do the work, and do so without being armed. There is the story which reached me via one of our judges who received a small group of American visitors some time ago. He took them to a certain prison near Pretoria. While they were being shown about, a prisoner accompanied them to the outside of the prison to point out certain things to them, and accompanied them all the way. When that had been done, he took leave of them outside the premises, went inside the fence and locked himself in. This made a tremendous impression on the American visitors. What also impressed them was the fact that the warders were not armed, completely at variance with all the stories they hear about South Africa. It seems to me the hon. member for Houghton does not care; she is busy with something else. When the prisoner locked himself in, one of the Americans said: “Well, that was well staged.” The judge said: “It was neither staged nor orchestrated; this is the truth, the way in which we in South Africa run our prisons.” I am telling this story in order to indicate the realities to hon. members. This is what is happening there. I thank the hon. members who scrutinized this important administration system a little and made it better known.

†The hon. member for King William’s Town also referred to the management system, but then he raised the matter of security. I have responsibilities in terms of certain sections of the Internal Security Act. The State President appoints the review boards on my recommendation. I, together with the Director-General, provide the infrastructure for the review boards, but the review is independent. It comes into operation in terms of the Act. When the Minister of Law and Order acts in terms of any of those sections and any of the sections become applicable, then automatically the review board comes into operation. In certain cases an affected individual may of course invoke a review or assistance from the review board. The hon. member should be aware of that. I nevertheless understand the vein in which he has made his point. I have certain responsibilities in terms of section 28 which relates to preventive detention, and I have certain responsibilities in terms of section 31 which relates to witnesses detained by virtue of an order by the Attorney-General. In respect of both of these sections certain regulations are operative. Regulations in terms of section 28 were issued by me shortly after the Act itself came into operation and regulations in terms of section 31—the old section 12(b)—are also still operative. However, these matters are reviewed from time to time and we shall see to it that the objectives of these sections are not defeated. We shall look at the hon. member’s speech again and see whether any matter has perhaps been overlooked. I understand his support for this Act. As a matter of fact, it has been that party’s policy all these years that a tribunal should have the opportunity of reviewing various extensions, etc. He has said nothing that is incompatible with the old policy.

May I ask the hon. the Minister whether we are able to see the regulations under section 28? Are they published?

Yes, they have been published.

Where, if I may ask?

I shall let the hon. member have a copy. It is a very short set of regulations. I shall take this matter no further now. I have very little time and I must still deal with the hon. member for Sandton.

*I think that I have, with this, dealt with all the points hon. members raised. We shall go through the speeches and if anyone has been omitted, I beg their pardon and we shall come back to the matter. I also wish to apologize for having omitted to point out earlier this afternoon that your contributions, Sir, in connection with the State law advisers, was very highly appreciated. I want to make certain that the hon. member for Verwoerdburg receives the necessary recognition in Hansard in this connection.

Can we discuss rugby for a while?

In conclusion I want to come back to the hon. member for Sandton. He again raised the matter of the rugby arrangements which were made on the insistence of the Commissioner of Prisons. The hon. member asked me during the debate whether I had consulted my colleague, the hon. the Minister of National Education.

Ask whether Dawie agrees with you. [Interjections.]

At that stage I did not deem it necessary because there was no conflict of interests. I was right too. Admittedly I did consult the hon. the Minister of National Education post de facto, as one might say, and although he did not comment on the contents of the Commissioner’s decision, he admitted one very important point, namely the authority of the decision-making party. Who is that decision-making party? It is the Commissioner. Furthermore the Sport and Recreation Branch recognizes the autonomy of sports clubs provided they are not utilized for political purposes.

No, that is not the policy. That is a new side to your policy.

The hon. the Minister indicated that he fully understood that the sports club that had been dissolved derived its origin from the rules which created it, viz. the authority of the Commissioner. Consequently the authority of the Commissioner also applied at its dissolution. This is the autonomous authority and it has to be the case that not only the sporting body or the sports club is autonomous, but also the party which created it and from which its authority was derived, and that is the Commissioner. The hon. member must take cognizance of the fact that in terms of regulation 7A of the Prisons Service, the Commissioner has that specific power. The hon. member must accept that that regulation empowers the Commissioner in connection with the establishment of Prisons Services sports clubs. In other words, to reconstrue the matter in this way, the body which is really involved here, is the Prisons Service. The participants in a specific sports, inter alia, in the case of rugby, play rugby for the Prisons Service. They do not play for a separate club of their own. They are actually playing for the Prisons Service. Consequently the rules of the Prisons Service are applicable to them. So, for example, it entails that rugby is regarded as a service and injury time when rugby is played as is considered to be an injury while on service. This is seen as a service benefit. They are taken to rugby functions because they must have recreation. It is part of their service conditions that they may relax and that they must be fit.

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

No, just wait a minute. The hon. member can ask his question if there is time left over at the end. Therefore it is also in the interest of his own players—this is the policy of the Commissioner—that they be given an opportunity to acquire provincial colours as well as South African colours. With that point of departure he is entitled to tell his people where they should play and for whom they should play, because that affords them the maximum advantage. The hon. member knows that with the affiliation of Saru and Sacos, this is not possible, because they are applying discrimination in reverse. The hon. member knows this, yet that is what he is advocating. That is what the hon. member is trying to dish up to us here today, and what he is asking me to remedy. No, I refuse to do so. I think it is in the interests of the members that they should be afforded a maximum opportunity, of playing representative rugby without inhibitions, without boycotts, but only sport for the sake of sport.

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

Unfortunately my time has expired.

Votes agreed to.

Vote No. 17.—“Mineral and Energy Affairs”:

Mr. Chairman, I am sorry to note, although this is quite understandable, that the officials of the Department of Mineral and Energy Affairs have not yet had the opportunity to take their seats in the officials’ bay because I want to start this debate by paying a tribute to them and by thanking them for the final proof of the draft report. I appreciate the fact that the moving forward of the date for this debate gave them as many or more problems as it gave us. We must also thank them for their work in the past year in a situation where once again there was serious understaffing. I am rather afraid that this understaffing will continue while we have to take four years out of the economically active life of young men between the ages of 18 and 32. I believe this call-up is having an effect not only on the private sector but the public sector as well.

This brings me to my first subject which is departmental professional staff. We are short of no fewer than 142 professional staff and another 64 positions are filled temporarily. Only half of our professional staff are therefore permanent. We have to ask: Are the incentives sufficient to attract and keep professional staff within the Department of Mineral and Energy Affairs? I believe they are not. For instance, let us look at only one category of professional staff, the category of geologists. There are 92 posts in the Geological Survey of which only 43—in other words, considerably less than half—are permanently filled. I believe that remuneration could be part of the reason why this is happening and I should like to put the following questions to the hon. the Minister in this regard. Has consideration been given to turning the Geological Survey into a statutory body? If not, should this not be considered? This would enable them to pay more private sector related remuneration to their employees, and perhaps also offer them other advantages which could be of overall benefit to the country.

Without doubt minerals are South Africa’s most important source of economic wealth and, consequently, export earnings and employment. It is heartening to see that earnings increased by 5,7% in 1982 and also to note that export earnings rose by 4,3. However, I believe that the hon. the Minister needs to put us in the picture regarding State assistance to mines for which in this financial year an amount of R30 million has been budgeted. In December 1981 a commission was appointed to inquire into this very subject and I should like to ask the hon. the Minister across the floor of the Committee whether that commission has already reported to him. I ask again: Has the commission regarding State assistance to mines reported to the hon. the Minister?

You make your own speech. I shall reply to you in good time.

Very well. Perhaps the hon. the Minister would care to make a note of this second question to which he can reply when he has plenty of time to think it over. Is the commission’s recommendation that State assistance to gold-mines be dispensed with? My third question is: How many mines currently qualify for assistance? I ask this question because I understand that only ERPM has costs in excess of $400 per ounce of gold mined. We believe that State assistance could easily be phased out and that mines could adjust accordingly as did West Rand Consolidated and South Roodepoort.

I want now to turn to another subject, namely the Mining Corporation. I am fully aware of the fact that the Mining Corporation reports to the hon. the Minister of Cooperation and Development because it falls under that department. However, it is basically a State corporation whose shares are held jointly by the S.A. Development Trust and the Corporation for Economic Development, and whose affairs are, by private sector standards, disastrously unprofitable. Up to March 1982 they had lost in excess of R16 million of which R2,889 million was lost in the last audited year. In addition, the auditors say that they are unable to express an opinion on the assets of R8,2 million in subsidiary companies or on the recoverability of an amount of R800 000 in establishment costs. This means that more than half the invested capital has already been lost. I want to ask: Should this state of affairs be allowed to continue? Surely this hon. Minister’s department would be the best department in the Public Service to answer that question? I am aware that the department has representation on the board of the Mining Corporation, but is that enough. It would appear as though the affairs of this corporation need an in-depth investigation. Perhaps the corporation should be taken away from the enormous empire of the Department of Cooperation and Development.

In the last few minutes available to me I wish to discuss the question of Soekor. I should like to thank the Managing Director of Soekor for inviting us to visit the Sedco K rig off Mossel Bay. At the same time our thanks go to the S.A. Air Force for transporting us there and back safely. I also visited two oil platforms in the North Sea last year, so I have a basis for comparison. I want to say that I was most impressed with the rig, the personnel and the very apparent efficiency of the operation. I was less impressed, however, with the chances that exist for finding oil. We have spent 18 years and R351 million in the search. Others have spent approximately R80 million. We have not yet found payable quantities of oil or gas off the South African coast. We are budgeting to spend a further R98,9 million this year, although Soekor’s budget is R134 million. There can be no doubt that we need to mount a major search for oil—a find would be of major significance to the future of South Africa. If, however, we do not find oil, there must come a time when we stop looking. There are geologists who believe that our chances are extremely remote, more is the pity. I would therefore like to tell the hon. the Minister that the gold medal goes to the person who finds payable oil or gas, the silver medal goes to the man who recognizes that the remoteness of the likelihood of a find warrants no further expense and the wooden spoon goes to the man who keeps spending money regardless.

I now wish to concentrate more on the energy field. I want to tell the hon. the Minister that I still find it unacceptable that the funds flowing into the State Oil Fund and the Strategic Fuel Fund are not audited by the Auditor-General. I also wish to ask a few follow-up questions about these Funds. I want to start by saying that I now query the fact that we took the Salem chance because of a critical shortage of crude oil. I refer to an article in Die Vaderland. The heading is: “Te veel petrol laat S.A. uitvoer”. The article goes on to say—

The date of that report was 26 September 1979, just two months before the Salem affair. Secondly I was under the firm impression that we had a large amount of crude oil, for strategic reasons, stored up. Was this not so in November 1979? Or was it?

There are two further questions. Was the Salem affair the only occasion on which the Strategic Fuel Fund or Sasol was taken for a ride in the purchasing of oil? It has been suggested to me that this might not have been the case and that the person concerned was either from Southampton or the South of England. Apparently, what happened was that we established a letter of credit and sent a tanker to Rotterdam to load a cargo of oil which, on the arrival of the tanker, proved not to exist.

Secondly I was informed that a respected Johannesburg trading house made an offer, through a merchant bank, to supply oil in 1979. In November Sasol refused to take the matter any further as it said that it had oil supplies well organized and was sick and tired of dealing with people who approached it. Is this so?

Finally I should like to ask for a progress report from the hon. the Minister on the investigation initiated by the hon. the Minister seven months ago. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I should like to begin by sincerely congratulating the hon. the Minister on his appointment as Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs. Thus far the hon. the Minister has had a very colourful and successful parliamentary career. He is a man of exceptional ability and I do not doubt that he will administer this extremely important and sensitive portfolio very ably and in South Africa’s best interests. He must know that our best wishes accompany him. [Interjections.]

The hon. member for Port Elizabeth Central kicked off suprisingly well this evening. One waited for the disclosures, but they will probably only come tomorrow, when more members of the Press are present. It is really a pity that the hon. member is unable to forget the Salem incident, because we have already settled his hash in this regard in past debates.

You would love us to forget it, would you not?

He has already been given the assurance that experts are still investigating the problem, and it is to be hoped that this matter will be brought to a close at some stage. [Interjections.]

I now want to turn to occupational diseases, and confine myself in particular to what, in my opinion, we as a responsible Government owe to the workers in our labour sector.

In the first place I want to ask that the hon. the Minister afford financial relief to all sufferers from occupational disease in South Africa. One realizes that our State Finances are under pressure, but at the moment these people, who have made a major contribution to the progress and properity of our country, are hard-pressed by the increased cost of living, and they require urgent assistance. Whereas we are at present awaiting the results of the Nieuwenhuizen report—whatever the Cabinet may decide about it—I want to make a very earnest plea for the granting of interim financial relief to sufferers from occupational disease and their dependants.

In the second place, I want to make an earnest appeal to the hon. the Minister to see to it that the benefits that have been negotiated for the mine-worker over the years in terms of legislation on occupational diseases in mines be retained, but also that they be extended to others who, apparently, are not in an equally favourable position. When one studies the Nieuwenhuizen report one encounters a clear anomaly, viz. that over about the past 70 years we have devoted our energies to establishing and refining an industrial disease dispensation for the workers in the mineral industry, but that unfortunately we have omitted to do the same in regard to the working population of the rest of the country. As a result there are at present different occupational disease dispensations. Therefore our workers cannot all be accorded the same treatment as regards this important matter. Not only are there differences in regard to compensation; standards of reimbursement, selection mechanisms, preventive measures, risk determining and risk combating techniques vary very considerably.

The fact that occupational diseases in the mining industry were not linked to the Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1941 also has a historic background. Occupational disease legislation is of course older than workmen’s compensation legislation. Long-term compensation obligations with regard to occupational diseases were accepted by the authorities and regulated by statute long before workmen’s compensation legislation was introduced. However, in the course of time it was found that occupational diseases such as pneumoconiosis that occurred in the mining industry also occurred in other sectors of industry. To the extent that this disease occurred outside the mining industry, it was included in the schedule to the Workmen’s Compensation Act as a compensatable disease. Because industrial disease legislation with regard to the mining industry had been established for more than 30 years at that stage and had already progressed so far, it could not simply be abolished and included in the Workmen’s Compensation Act. In particular, acceptance of the principle of the Workmen’s Compensation Act for the purposes of compensation to miners for occupational disease would also have had to be accompanied by a withdrawal of established statutory rights. Accordingly, in my opinion, compensation, but particularly the certification mechanism, appears to be more favourable under the occupational disease legislation then under the Workmen’s Compensation Act. Making the occupational disease legislation part of the workmen’s compensation dispensation would be a backward step for beneficiaries and potential beneficiaries.

However, there are other reasons, too, why legislation in regard to occupational diseases exists separately from the Workmen’s Compensation Act. The first reason is that the two differ significantly as regards the basis of financing and compensation. As a result the amalgamation of these funds would entail tremendous practical problems. The fact that damage to health in the form of an occupational disease is diagnosed up to 30 years later also means that a unique financing mechanism, which is closely connected to the nature and extent of the occupational disease risk to which workers are exposed, is necessary.

The second reason for the separate existence of the two Acts, relates to the fact that ordinary accidents and injuries in the occupational context cannot be dealt with in the same way as occupational diseases. After all, an occupational disease cannot be compared to the loss of a limb, for example. An occupational disease is often a progressive disease condition accompanied by a gradual decline in the worker’s active working life and live expectancy. As far as an accident is concerned, there are more or less fixed norms, depending on the occupation, in terms of which a degree of permanent disability may be determined.

The third reason for the existence of separate legislation arises from the fact that the diagnostic techniques for occupational diseases on the one hand, and accidents on the other, necessarily differ. I am therefore convinced that as regards the position of occupational diseases in South Africa we must retain what is good and to the benefit of the workers and build on that.

Accordingly, I wish to request the hon. the Minister to see to it that the workmen’s compensation dispensation and the occupational disease dispensation in South Africa remain distinct from one another. However, we join the Nieuwenhuizen Commission in calling for a uniform dispensation for all workers in the Republic’s industrial sector, based on the legislation of the Department of Mineral and Energy Affairs.

I fully realize that if the hon. the Minister were to comply with this request this department may no longer be the appropriate functional home for a national occupational disease dispensation. As far as this aspect of the matter is concerned, I have full confidence in the negotiating abilities of the hon. the Minister, for which he is well-known, and which will enable him to come to an acceptable arrangement with the interested parties.

I believe that if the hon. the Minister were to give us a favourable hearing in this regard, we should also succeeed in taking a positive step in the right direction for the sake of the worker in South Africa.

I should like to associate myself with the congratulations conveyed by the hon. member for Geduld to the hon. the Minister in this new portfolio. He is now at the head of the oldest Government department which, as the hon. member for Port Elizabeth Central said, regulates the industry which contributes the largest amount of the State revenue.

I realize that the hon. the Minister and his department have been faced with problems as regards the submission of the annual report because the time of this debate was advanced, but we in the CP appreciate the fact that such a bulky report could, after all, have been made available to us before the weekend and that we were afforded the opportunity to study it. We should like to convey our sincere congratulations to the department on an exceptionally thorough and up-to-date report on so many aspects of the department of the hon. the Minister.

One of the matters which one finds striking when one studies this report is the purposeful research that is evident from various aspects of the report. To mention only a few examples: The mining industry, the dangers of asbestos, the best methods of combating the large quantities of airborne material caused during coal exploitation—this is expounded on page 27—energy research, and in addition, in connection with the report of the Bureau for Occupational Diseases, the Epidemiological Research Unit. The reports are full of details of research, the attendance of symposia and the convening and arrangement of symposia. I think that this is an excellent achievement of which the department can be proud.

To proceed, I just wish to stress a few aspects arising out of the report. The first is that as far as employment is concerned it is desirable that the outside world should take cognizance once again of the fact that the Employment Bureau of Africa, Limited, which is by far the biggest employment of mining labour in the RS A, has recruited 14 400 workers from the BLS countries, Mozambique and Malawi. This represents 38,39% of those recruited. This is the country which, in UN circles, is condemned specifically for the treatment of its Black workers. This percentage, 38,39%, of the Black workers who, in the year under review, have come to South Africa, refers to the workers of the BLS countries, Mozambique and Malawi.

There is a further aspect to which I want to refer. It often happens—and I have often heard complaints to this effect from interested parties—that the inspectors sent by the State mining engineer to inspect mines, give prior notice of their arrival. As a result everything is prepared for them. It is interesting to note that of the total number of 7 122 underground and surface visits, 1 295 were unannounced visits. In other words, in the case of 20 of the inspections no prior warning whatsoever of an intended visit by the inspector was given. This is to be welcomed, but I feel that this percentage could be increased.

A fourth aspect to which I want to refer is the report of the Director of Geological Surveys. We in the CP wish to congratulate them on the 70th year of the Geological Survey Division and the success achieved in the mapping of the surface area of the country. Only 9% of the total surface area of the country has not yet been covered. This is a fine achievement.

I also wish to refer to the price of fuel. A great deal has already been said about this, not in this Committe or in this House so much as in public. South Africa is in the grip of a severe drought. Its people are engaged in a grinding struggle against inflation. One of the biggest factors in the inflation spiral is the cost of fuel, the rapid upward spiral of the price of oil since 1973. The hon. the Minister recently had a pleasant and welcome windfall in the form of a drop in the oil price by a significant percentage. I now just wish to ask the hon. the Minister why he, in turn, cannot show more generosity to the man in the street. He can do so before 10 May if he wants to; we shall not be angry with him. This is a debt that he owes a hard-pressed community. We believe that he is in a position to do so. If he cannot do so he must prove to this Committee in chapter and verse why he cannot reduce it by a larger percentage.

At the same time, I also wish to make an appeal to the hon. the Minister please not to tamper any further with the speed limit. I simply cannot associate myself with the old argument that the commercial and economic demands of our times make increased speed limits imperative. The higher the speed of one’s vehicle the less one’s chances are of retaining full control of it in a crisis. When the driver is travelling at a restful speed he arrives at his destination in a restful mood. If it is a business trip he is more productive, or if a holiday trip, he is already relaxed when he reaches his destination. Driving a car can really be relaxing and pleasant if one is at all times in control of one’s vehicle. I think that a speed of more than 110 km per hour is a speed that means that one cannot have full control of one’s vehicle. One’s chances of bringing the vehicle to a halt in time are less and one’s control and so on is less.

In the time still at my disposal I want to dwell on the Nieuwenhuizen Report. However, I do not wish to adopt an entirely objective approach as the hon. member for Geduld did, because I still feel very unhappy about what the Government has done in regard to this report. It is general knowledge that the Nieuwenhuizen Report was tabled as long ago as 23 March 1982. The predecessor of the hon. the Minister rebuked me for having criticized him last year because it had taken so long before the report was tabled. On 10 May 1982 in the Standing Committee I expressed the disappointment of the CP that the tabling of the report had been delayed. The predecessor of the hon. the Minister denied that there had been a delay and intimated very clearly that commentary would be awaited up to 15 June 1982 and said that after that a White Paper would be prepared without delay. The hon. the Minister then added that he would not anticipate the report and that he at least wanted to be exposed to the representations he would receive. He wanted to study those representations in conjunction with the contents of and the arguments contained in the report.

Those are very fine words, but it has now been almost a year that this matter has been in the hands of the Government. The closing date for the receipt of representations is 10 months in the past. What is the difficulty? Why has a standpoint not yet been adopted by the Government on the recommendations of the Nieuwenhuizen Report? This is just not good enough. We want to know the reason for this delay. It is an unreasonable delay. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, minerals and energy are still one of the most important arteries of our domestic economy and accordingly I should like to wish the hon. the Minister and the Director-General and the officials that assist him, all of the best as regards the great and responsible task that rests on their shoulders.

I should like to confine myself to coal. The reason is that I represent a constituency with very rich coal deposits. Coal is still one of our most important earners of foreign exchange. In the year 1982 coal mines in one group earned R208,4 million from the export of coal. The world coal market is still depressed, particularly in Japan, where coal consumption has declined sharply, with the result that the demand for coking coal has also declined. The situation in Europe is also far from bright, the majority of European consumers still have considerable coal supplies and together with the fact that there is virtually no growth in the consumption of electricity, these factors combine to present a dreary outlook for the present as far as the market situation is concerned. Even when the world economy shows an upswing, the existing stocks will first have to be exhausted before the coal market will be able to harbour any hopes of an improvement in the demand.

I am still full of confidence in the future of coal in the medium and long term. My confidence is emphasized by the fact that one group of mines in my part of the world is going to spend R2 600 million on the expansion and strengthening of its coal activities in South Africa.

However, the exploitation of coal also creates problems which have a detrimental effect on the environment. This evening I wish to single out some of those problems. Most important of them is pollution. I turn first to water pollution, because nowadays water is one of our biggest problems. Section 23(1) of the Water Act provides, inter alia, that any person who makes water less fit for various purposes than it would have been if the person had not done that act, is guilty of pollution and has committed an offence. It is calculated that there is approximately 1 360 million cubic kilometres of water on the earth. If unusable and unreachable water is deducted, only 140 000 cubic kilometres of water, or one hundredth of one per cent of the water on the earth, remains for man’s use. This means that for every 10 000 units of water on the earth only one is fresh and within reach of man. Every drop of water must therefore be utilized as effectively as possible.

Rivers and streams have the ability to cleanse themselves. In the case of mineral pollution, however, this is not possible. The Rhine is polluted daily—I mention this as an example—with 40 000 tons of waste material deriving from communities and industries in Switzerland, France and Germany. Due to a low rainfall South Africa is extremely sensitive to water pollution. Moreover, there are no natural purification processes capable of combating mineral pollution. Moreover desalination is a very expensive process.

Spread across a region of approximately 250 km to the northwest of Witbank there are various old deserted coal mines. They were closed before the Water Act of 1956 and the Mines and Works Act came into operation. The mining methods in those years were the board and pillar methods. As a result 400 million tons of coal was left in the mines. The mines are at present full of water, and the water comes into contact with coal, as a result of which acidification takes place. This region drains through the streams and rivers to the Loskop Dam. In 1959 an investigation was carried out and it was found that at that stage 12 000 tons of mineral salts and 500 tons of sulphuric acid had been added to the contents of the Loskop Dam. Efforts were made to counter the problem. In terms of section 23(2) of the Water Act the Minister is empowered to take steps, using funds approved by Parliament, to limit pollution from worked-out mines. A scheme was launched and dams were built in an effort to resolve the problem by way of evaporation. However, this did not have the desired effect either. In 1977 that scheme was completed and the cost involved was R1 million. It has still not had the desired effect. Subterranean water sources in the vicinity are also being polluted. People who sink boreholes in the vicinity get water, but it is unsuitable for human consumption. Streams of water that are unsuitable for consumption by man or beast are still flowing away. It is lifeless water.

When conventional mining methods are used, only 25% to 30% of the coal is exploited in the mines. In contrast, we now have the open-case mining methods, by means of which up to 95% of the coal is exploited. Regulations in terms of the Mines and Works Act were made in 1980 by the Department of Mineral and Energy Affairs to make it compulsory to restore the environment. The instruction is: Keep our air clean; keep our water pure; restore our soil. At present open-case mining activities are being investigated throughout the country and I can say that the mining groups are giving their full co-operation. There are mining groups that are paying up to R18 000 per hectare to restore that top soil so that it can be used for any purpose for which it may be suitable.

I now turn to the combating of air pollution. Over a period of 25 years the mining industry has spent R51 million out of its own funds to cover mine dumps with vegetation and by so doing prevent air pollution. The State, too, spends an amount annually to prevent air pollution by covering the mine dumps with vegetation, and the amount concerned for the 1981-’82 financial year was R460 000. In the case of coal mines, dangerous gases are released, the coal dumps burn, and in addition there are underground fires that cause pollution. In my part of the world the hon. the Minister is aware there is a mine that has been burning for approximately the past six months. One cannot help thinking of the precious mineral, coal, which is being lost in the process. I am particularly grateful for the concession that has been made by the hon. the Minister and the department which must assist him in taking the necessary steps to deal with that problem. I might just point out that the cost involved in this respect, for a mine that has agreed to be of assistance, is R100 000, whereas the local authority also contributes R100 000 in this regard. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, may I take this opportunity to congratulate the hon. the Minister on the discussion of his very first budget Vote and also to wish him everything of the best in the portfolio which he has taken over.

Tomorrow I shall actually be dealing with the main argument of my party with regard to this Vote, but let me just pass comment on the Nieuwenhuizen report as such which strove among other objectives to try to create an argument for uniformity between the two Acts dealing with workmen’s compensation as we know them in this House. I should like to express the opinion that we in this party believe that it will become practically impossible to amalgamate these two Acts as far as compensation is concerned—I must agree with the hon. member for Geduld and the hon. member for Brakpan in this respect—if for no other reason than the fact that the risk factor in mining to the individual, whether it be hard-rock mining such as a gold-mine or soft-rock mining such as a coal mine, is a progressive risk factor whereas in industry there is an absolute risk factor. By this we mean that the longer a miner works in a mine the greater the probability of pneumoconiosis or some other disease affecting his respiratory system, whereas in an industrial setting, i.e. a factory or similar situation, the workers is exposed to an absolute risk. If a man falls down off a tank in a factory or gets his collar or trousers caught in a machine, that is not a factor in or a function of the longevity of the man’s performance in the job. In the mining industry, however, the risk factor is a progressive one and therefore the compensatory factor and the principles underlying compensation cannot be compared between the two situations. Therefore the principle that this party supports is that we are not to be found for the amalgamation of these two Acts because I think it will be unfair to the one party or to the other. Therefore we believe that the Nieuwenhuizen Commission, although it has performed very valuable work, should be supported in respect of its recommendations for the maintenance of the separation of these two compensatory Acts.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 22.

House Resumed:

Progress reported and leave granted to sit again.