Mr. Chairman, I just want to say briefly that the Conservative Party cannot support this particular clause, for the reasons I mentioned yesterday. I do not want to say much more about that. At present we are dealing with another Bill during the discussion of which we can speak in detail about our various standpoints as regards universities. I want to tell the hon. the Minister that under the old dispensation we supported the same basic principles in respect of the constitutional principles of South Africa. Therefore we would, in fact, have had the opportunity to show how such a clause could be detrimental to the whole question of separate universities and the service they render to their communities, and how hon. members of the Progressive Federal Party and people who support their view of universities are able to distort the fundamental aspects of separate universities in South Africa. I am merely putting this to the hon. the Minister by way of background and I do not think that we on this side need say anymore on that score.

Mr. Chairman, I am amazed that the hon. member for Rissik could imagine that one could get away with this kind of vague, obscure argument on a clause of this nature. My charge against the hon. member today is that as a former lecturer at the University of Pretoria, who is therefore familiar with university affairs, he ought to realize that we in South Africa have never adopted, nor will ever adopt, an absolute view of or approach to matters pertaining to universities. I want to focus his attention on the fact that if we object to the recognition of university degrees from, for example, the University of Durban-Westville, as well as the university he spoke about yesterday, we should ask ourselves whether we object to recognizing a degree, whether we object to a member of another group lecturing students of another colour, or precisely what we object to. I want to point out to the hon. member that in the early ’sixties I took a course in North Sotho at the University of Pretoria—the hon. member for Rissik is aware of this—and that we had a Black man in the complex in Proes Street who assisted us. I simply cannot understand the logic behind this kind of foolishness; that we do not want to recognize a degree from another university because we are afraid that someone whose degree is recognized could take a post-graduate course or give lectures, as is now the case with Durban-Westville. If I understand the hon. member for Rissik correctly, he is of the opinion that one can learn about other people, Black people, Coloureds and Indians. According to him, one can learn from this and teach one’s children, but one is not allowed to be taught by these people personally. In other words, one is permitted to learn about them as long as they are at a distance, but when they are nearby, one may not do so. The kind of attitude those hon. members are displaying has a most unfortunate effect on race relations.

Do you eat with them in the Parliamentary dining-room?

The remark the hon. member for Brakpan has just made, is one of the very things that are symptomatic of the spirit and attitude I detect in those hon. members, viz. that they are all too willing to make public use here for party-political gain of matters which are sensitive in South Africa.

Let me come back to the clause. I want to tell hon. members of the CP that this clause simply deals with the recognition of qualifications of people of other colour groups to enable them to undertake post-graduate studies at the University of Durban-Westville. We as a party have no objection to that in principle. Since the hon. member was a lecturer at the University of Pretoria, may I ask him whether he objects in principle to the recognition of the qualifications of a Black, Indian or Coloured for the purposes of postgraduate studies and to his being able to lecture at, for example, the University of Pretoria? [Interjections.] I do not know whether they object to this clause in principle or whether they are trying to exploit it for their own gain, as they do with everything else.

What is important in this country is often not what we say or do or what we wonder, but, in fact, how other people perceive what we say or do. This perception is vital and of the utmost importance in the field of sound attitudes. If, like the hon. member for Rissik, one objects to this clause, one is instrumental in causing others to perceive us, as hon. members of this House, and our view of them as people, in the sphere of studies at universities as well, in such a way as can only lead to problems on the road ahead. That is why I want to tell the hon. member not to be afraid of stating what his standpoint is as regards this clause. He must stand up and tell us. In this country we have no absolutist division as regards university education and the obtaining of degrees. I think it is a good thing, as was stated time and again yesterday, for a degree of cross-pollination to take place. If we do not learn about and from one another; if we do not know one another; if we are not prepared to speak to one another; if we are not prepared to do our utmost to promote good relations among people, in this sphere as well, can we in this country really face the future with an attitude like that? In conclusion, I want to ask the hon. member once again to spell out for us what their objection to this clause is.

Mr. Chairman, since the hon. member for Innes-dal has now made his speech and the hon. the Minister of National Education is present, I just want to dispose of one point briefly, in view of certain discussions we had earlier this year. The hon. member for Innesdal has often told me that as far as universities and all the other matters are concerned, we should do the following: I should invite the hon. member to my constituency so that we can hold a meeting on this matter there, then he will invite me to his 22 branches. I said that I would not accept the invitation, since I should like the hon. the Minister to be there so that he and I could talk about this matter. [Interjections.] However, the hon. the Minister has indicated very clearly that he does not want to do this. I shall therefore leave it at that as far as the hon. the Minister is concerned.

Order! Will the hon. member and the hon. the Minister of National Education be debating this clause then?

Sir, I should have liked this clause, among other things, to be discussed there.

Briefly, I just want to tell the hon. member for Innesdal that I should very much like to accept his challenge to hold 13 meetings with the students on this matter and that I will then attend the 22 meetings in his constituency. [Interjections.]

Answer the question now.

To come back to the clause, our experience with the hon. the Minister and with the governing party has been—we learnt a costly lesson—that while we were in the same team, we could not trust the Minister and the governing party as regards terminology, principles and policy. Consequently, this clause, as it is worded at present, based on the fundamental principle of the governing party in respect of universities, is contrary to the fundamental principles of the CP.

The new fundamental principles!

When this Bill has been disposed of, there will be a debate on the whole question of the presence of people of colour at White universities, etc., and we can debate this matter then. My hon. colleague, the hon. member for Koedoespoort, has already made a start. I shall also be participating in that debate. Therefore, all I want to say to the hon. member for Innesdal is that we are opposed to this clause because we do not trust the governing party since, as in many others, they are undermining the sovereignty and authority of the Whites. This is also true in respect of the universities which belong to the Whites and which have to serve the White people. We do not agree with that.

Mr. Chairman, if the CP were to come to power, would they repeal this clause?

Let me put it this way …

Just say “yes” or “no”.

As regards the laws we do not agree with, we shall change them in such a way that they will be in line with our fundamental principles. [Interjections.]

Order!

The CP adheres to the principle of separate universities for the various peoples in Southern Africa. Secondly, we believe that all peoples should have the opportunity—and we shall assist in this in so far as we are responsible for it—to enjoy full academic education up to the tertiary level. We have no problem with that. Furthermore, we have no problem with Whites making their knowledge available to others who also live here in Southern Africa. We do not have a problem with that principle either. However, we are not prepared to pursue an education policy in terms of which the control and the sovereignty as regards White institutions are taken out of the hands of the Whites. We are not prepared to create a university community in which the Black people, the Coloured people and the Indians are involved in universities and then, as the PFP says—and I agree with them—not to grant them full student and academic rights. Either one must grant them those rights, or one must follow the path the CP wants to follow. The NP wants to involve Black, Coloured and Indian students at White universities on a limited basis, but then they want to impose certain restrictions on them. We say that this is not ethically correct and does not fit in with our standpoint on our universities. So much for the hon. member for Innesdal.

Mr. Chairman, I should like to tell the hon. member for Rissik that I find his argument in respect of this clause astounding. He said that they were opposed to this clause because they could not trust the Government. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous? To them the issue is not the contents of the clause and the CP’s standpoint on it, but simply that they do not trust the Government. This is the spirit in which the CP conducts politics.

As far as this clause is concerned, I want to warn the CP that they are playing with fire if they want to make a political football out of race relations. We in South Africa cannot afford to look back. We cannot dwell on what is past. We have to look to the future, for the sake of our children and our country. The question with regard to this clause is simply whether it would be wise and expedient to recognize the degrees of students from other universities for postgraduate studies at the University of Durban-Westville.

I want to point out to the hon. member that the former Minister of Education and Training, the hon. member for Lichtenburg, in his capacity as Minister, gave his consent for hundreds of Black people to study at White universities. For example, there are hundreds of Black students studying at the University of the Witwatersrand with his permission. He consented not only to their undertaking post-graduate studies, but also to their entering other fields of study for which no provision is made at Black universities. If this is the case, I want to ask the hon. member why he did not stand up and object to this in all the years he sat with me in the NP caucus. The hon. member is engaging in reckless politics when he simply states, in this highest Chamber in the country, that he cannot trust the Government and that as a result he is opposed to a clause of this nature.

I should like to state clearly the NP’s standpoint on this clause. The NP is in favour of retaining the identity, as far as communities are concerned, of people and peoples in South Africa, and this applies to universities as well. We are not arguing about that. That is the essence of the University of the North, it is the essence of the University of Durban-Westville, which we are discussing now, and it is the essence of all our universities. However, just consider how racist are the politics of the CP. They say that these universities belong to the Whites. I want to tell hon. members of the CP today that all South African universities belong to the people of South Africa. Due to our ethnic diversity, we say that we are creating universities to extend the field of identity of peoples. As regards the hon. member’s argument pertaining to this clause, it seems to me as if the gap between him and the PFP is very narrow. He says that one can switch immediately to the PFP’s standpoint from the standpoint of the CP. Therefore, should he change his mind, he should join the PFP immediately. He is just like the hon. member for Kuruman. Let us look at this clause. There is no absolute division among people and peoples and individuals in South Africa, in any sphere whatsoever. This also applies to universities. Although we speak in broad terms about the identity of communities and try to maintain this, we as the Government party are prepared to admit that although there is a world of diversity and separate development as far as these matters are concerned, there is also an intermediate world, an interface area where people come into contact with one another in all spheres, in respect of universities as well. As a White, I am saying in this Parliament today that I cannot imagine that in the long term there would be anything else that could contribute more to positive, sound attitudes among people, peoples and communities than bringing students into contact with one another at a post-graduate level, thereby enabling them to learn not only about one another, but also from one another; enabling them to speak not only about one another, but to one another, and not only from a position of superiority. The hon. member for Rissik was my lecturer. Whenever we spoke about Black people as people who lived very far away, people who had particular standards and particular norms, then all was well, just as long as they were at a distance. I want to tell the hon. member that we in the NP do not feel threatened when we speak to people. We do not feel threatened when there is interaction between ourselves and others, and that applies at university level as well. The NP feels that it is meaningful and makes good sense for us to speak to one another and to communicate with one another at the post-graduate level too. That hon. member’s descendants will be grateful to the NP for having been prepared to do our duty in this sphere and for not being prepared to practise reckless politics, and not wanting to divide South Africa into absolute, separate components; recklessly ignoring the reality of the intermediate world between people and peoples in South Africa. I appeal to those hon. members to come to their senses. I shall go around to all the hostels at the University of Pretoria with the hon. member for Rissik and address the students on the realism of the NP’s vision of the future, as opposed to the stagnation of the CP’s absolutely narrow-minded view of the future of South Africa.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Rissik must make one matter a little clearer to me. Clause 20 grants the council of the University of Durban-Westville the right, the freedom, to recognize qualifications from other universities and to act accordingly. One must conclude from the fact that the hon. member begrudges the university that freedom, that the hon. member wants this university to remain exclusively and Indian university in all respects. If we consider briefly the policy of that hon. member’s party—let us contemplate this ridiculous idea for a moment—we see that their policy means that the Indian community in South Africa will live in a homeland where they will have full self-determination. Since they are now fighting for an exclusive Indian university, one must assume that they regard that exclusive Indian university as the academic seat of that homeland, whether or not it is situated in that homeland. Of course, it cannot be situated in the homeland, since they say that the homeland is going to be in the Stanger district, whereas this university is very far from the Stanger district. If, however, we assume that the CP is going to regard the University of Durban-Westville as being autonomous, independent and self-sufficient—as it will be in terms of this legislation—as the academic seat of an Indian homeland, and that party says that they are going to grant that homeland full freedom, full independence, how does he account for the restriction he wants to impose on this university as the academic seat of that community, the restriction that they do not have the freedom to say whose qualifications they want to recognize? Must one conclude that the freedom, the self-determination and the independence the CP accords others in this homeland, will be restricted, in terms of its own paternalistic view, to those freedoms, that self-determination, that independence the CP considers to be reconcilable with White interests?

In other words, White domination. [Interjections.]

Mr. Chairman, I should like to associate myself with the hon. member for Umlazi by pointing out that one of the most praiseworthly situations that exists in South Africa is that the possibility is being created for people of colour to under-go further specialized education and training at White universities.

Or vice versa.

Yes, vice versa, too. Of course, there is another matter that is of the utmost importance. I should like the hon. member for Pietersburg to tell me what his standpoint is as regards the following. One of the Theological Colleges in South Africa, that of the University of Potchefstroom, permitted students from South Korea to study theology there. After the classis of the Cape Province, having received a request from Coloured students who did not want to study at the Theological College at Hammanskraal, but at the Theological College at the University of Potchefstroom, had decided that this was permissible, theological students enrolled at that university and produced some of the best work in theology. Now I want to know from the hon. member for Pietersburg whether he has any objections to that in principle.

We object to mixed universities.

The hon. member must please tell me whether he has any objections in principle to students of colour studying at the Theological College at the University of Potchefstroom, students who have been permitted by the curators and the university authorities to study there. Does the hon. member for Pietersburg object to that in principle?

Yes. That is this party’s standpoint.

The hon. member must simply say yes or no.

Yes.

Now we have placed that on record, Mr. Chairman. The hon. member for Pietersburg has just said that his party objects to that. That is the standpoint of the CP, a party I would call the Treurnicht faction. It is not a party, Mr. Chairman. It is not a conservative party. It is the Treurnicht faction we are dealing with here. It is therefore the standpoint of the Treurnicht faction that people of colour will definitely not be allowed to study at theological colleges for Whites in South Africa.

Mr. Chairman, after the effective participation of three hon. members of the NP in this discussion, it is really unnecessary for me to expose any further the indefensibility of the standpoint of the CP. There are, however, two important misapprehensions I should like to dispel.

The first misapprehension is that by inserting the present clause in the principal Act, as far as this university is concerned, the Government is for the first time laying the foundation for mixed universities.

Yes.

The hon. member for Rissik says “yes”. I should like to refer the hon. member to section 29 of the University of Durban-Westville Act, Act No. 49 of 1969. If the hon. member would read section 29 of that Act, he would see that the wording is almost identical to the present provision in the Bill before this House. This provision has therefore been part of our legislation since 1969. [Interjections.]. Mr. Chairman, surely this is what one could call deception.

Mr. Chairman, when I asked him whether he was claiming that we were now trying to introduce new elements of integration into this legislation, the hon. member’s reply was in the affirmative. Before I even came to this House, the hon. member for Rissik assisted in incorporating this provision, which he is now opposing, into legislation in South Africa. [Interjections.]

Mr. Chairman, I went to the trouble of looking up who the members of Parliament were in 1969 who are now accusing the NP of practising integration. What did I notice when I looked at the names of those who, according to the division list, voted in favour of this provision in 1969? During the debate on the original legislation, some hon. members paired off; others did participate in the division and voted in favour of this provision. I noticed the name of a gentleman by the name of T. Langley. I also saw the name of the gentleman who was a member of the Cabinet and who helped place this clause; which is now to put an end to separate development, on the Statute Book, viz. Dr. C. P. Mulder. We also see the names of the hon. senior member of the CP, Mr. J. C. B. Schoeman and—you may be surprised to-hear the following name after having heard his argument—Mr. H. D. K. van der Merwe. [Interjections.] He himself participated in debates which gave rise to the Act of 1969, which is supposedly so hazardous to White security, being placed on the Statute Book. [Interjections.] We also see the name of Mr. W. L. van der Merwe, NP for Heidelberg at the time. This is the kind of politics the electorate is being exposed to at present in South Africa. They are going to absolutely outrageous lengths to create the impression that this side of the House is deviating from its basic, fundamental standpoint of “own” communities and of maintaining the identity of “own” communities. Those hon. members want to arrogate to themselves the right to be the protectors of White identity. If we were to entrust our identity to them, in view of the morality that has been displayed in the argument on this clause, they would destroy this precious identity of the Whites within three months. [Interjections.]

This brings me to the second misapprehension I want to put to rights, and that is that the Government has all of a sudden renounced its stated policy. Surely you heard yesterday, during the discussion of another Bill, how this side of the House was accused by the hon. member for Bryanston, in a torrent of words, of firmly embracing and clinging to apartheid. Could this be the same party hon. members of the CP say is deliberately giving the identity and the security of our people away on a platter? [Interjections.] Particularly in this sensitive sphere, we stand for the vitally important objective of each population group maintaining control over its own education, since this is an integral part of its identity. It would be a lie for anyone to say that the Nationalist Government is not absolutely unshakeable in this regard.

Mr. Chairman, a few thousand kilometres away there is another Conservative Party that has led its Opposition by the nose. [Interjections.] Although we regret that she does not adhere to the same principles as we do, I should like to congratulate Mrs. Thatcher on beating her liberal opponents in England.

She would shudder to hear that you have congratulated her. [Interjections.]

Quite probably, Mr. Chairman. I should like to tell the hon. the Prime Minister that the difference between 1943 and 1948 was five years.

I know all about that, but dyed-in-the-wool United Party supporters do not know much about it.

The hon. the Prime Minister wanted to leave with Japie Basson in 1958. [Interjections.]

The hon. the Minister has just spoken about our kind of politics, and he read out a list of names. The essential difference between what the NP consistently proclaimed then—the principle of separate development—and what the NP proclaims today, is such that one cannot compare the present-day NP with the NP of last year in the same breath. I say categorically to the hon. the Minister that that is the difference. He went on to say that the PFP was accusing them of practising apartheid. The problem with the governing party is that they are like the old United Party: When it suits them, they want separation, and when it does not suit them, they want integration. That is also the reason why the governing party is going to disappear.

The hon. the Minister was a student leader with me at the time the debates on the establishment of separate universities were in progress. He is therefore acquainted with the background to the creation of separate universities. The principles the old NP established at that time are the same principles the CP advocates today. As I have just said, when we come to power, we shall in fact see to it that primary and secondary education, right up to and including tertiary education, is aimed at the particular people that education has to serve. Secondly, where necessary we shall educate people of other population groups in such a way as not to destroy our own principles.

Mr. Chairman, could I ask the hon. member whether the CP, if it were to come to power, would permit English-speaking people to attend the universities of Afrikaans-speaking people?

Of course we should permit that. Our view on nations differs from that of the NP. We see the Whites in South Africa as one nation and the Coloureds in South Africa as another nation. We see the Indians in South Afrika as being yet another nation. What I object to is that the NP regards the Whites, Coloureds and Indians as one nation. When one sees the South African nation in this way, one has to fully integrate Coloured and Indian people into one’s universities. They must then have full student and academic rights.

That is quite correct.

One cannot tell people they are part of the nation and then exclude them. Afrikaans and English-speaking people are one nation, after all. We have universities which are attended mainly by English-speaking White South Africans, but at the same time there are also universities that are attended mainly by Afrikaans-speaking White South Africans.

Order! I have allowed hon. members considerable latitude, but I should appreciate it if hon. members would henceforth confine themselves to the clause. The hon. member for Rissik may proceed.

Mr. Chairman, could I ask the hon. member what he meant when he said that they would educate people of colour where necessary?

I want to tell the hon. member, since we are speaking to one another again, that we shall not chase Coloureds from our stoeps. [Interjections.]

Order!

I think the hon. the member for Heilbron would even chase the hon. the Prime Minister away if he came and sat on his stoep all day and bothered him. So much for that hon. member.

I wish to conclude. This clause is based on the governing party’s new view of a nation, in terms of which the whole essence of the old NP standpoint on universities has altered. This clause is based on that, and that is why we oppose it.

Mr. Chairman, I really feel that we should spell things out clearly to each other as far as this clause is concerned. You allowed the hon. member for Rissik to digress somewhat and I hope you will allow me to curtail that tendency of his a little.

The hon. member referred to the election in Britain in connection with this clause. I was in Britain last December and many other hon. members were also there. Some hon. members of the CP have also been there. It is the most absurd argument imaginable that the hon. member wants to advance in connection with this clause, namely that the fact that Mrs. Thatcher won the election against her more liberal opponents is giving the CP the green light to continue with their hysterical policy. [Interjections.] Sir, have you ever heard anything like that in this House before? I want to tell that hon. member that the standpoint, the political philosphy, of the British Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher, is to instil pride and self-respect into her people. Here we are discussing universities. That is the essence of the NP’s philosophy. I want to ask the hon. member for Rissik which leader in this country has contributed more than our hon. leader to instilling nationalism into the people. [Interjections.]

Order!

I want to ask him which leader in this country has contributed more to instilling an awareness of identity community into people—and I am referring now to the Coloureds in the Cape and the Indians in Durban—than our leader?

Mr. Chairman, may I ask the hon. member whether, in the light of what he has just said, he considers the Whites, the Coloureds and the Indians to be one nation?

I want to tell the hon. members of the CP that it is in this regard that we in the NP differ totally and absolutely with them.

Do you consider them to be one nation?

I shall reply to that question. They see South Africa as a country where there is absolute division among people, communities and nations. Points of contact do not exist; meeting points do not exist, and they ignore the necessity for legislation such as this. However, the worst aspect of all is not the way these people look at things, but the fact as the hon. member for Pietersburg has again implied in his question, they base that view entirely on race. I want to tell them that they have a Jaap Marais view of race and people. The hon. member for Rissik has exactly the same attitude in 1983 as he had in 1969 and 1970. He is just like the hon. member for Pietersburg who, if I am not mistaken, still has shares in the newspaper, Die Afrikaner. I want to tell the hon. member for Rissik that we in this party see South Africa as a country of peoples and communities, but we recognize the interdependence of people. That is why we say that in South Africa, side by side with our policy of separate development for peoples, there is a general and common South Africanism which we are not prepared to disregard. This is a general South Africanism which is based on what the hon. the Prime Minister has referred to as values and norms which we consider to be important for the future. I want to know from the hon. member for Pietersburg whether he understands the reply. Or did I not reply to his question. [Interjections.]

Order!

Those hon. members argue about the concept of “people” (“volk”). The hon. member for Pietersburg asked me for my views on this; he asked me whether I see it as one common nation or people. I want to indicate to him how absurd their argument is when they talk about people and nation. The hon. member for Koedoespoort must correct me if I am wrong, because I was not here. But I read in the newspaper that in reply to a question put by the hon. the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning he said that he did not mind at all, as long as people were White. Now I just want to debate this point with him: In this Parliament where a White people is …

Order! The hon. member must now return to the clause.

Mr. Chairman, this clause 20 is very important for the preservation of identity, for the preservation of the NP’s view of the development of identity and for co-existence. That is why the argument of a man like the hon. member for Koedoespoort, who is becoming very excited now, is very important. Their view of a people means that all Whites are members of one people. It does not matter what you are; it does not matter if you are a heathen; it does not matter if you do not support any of the norms and standards important to the NP. That does not count at all. Just as long as you are White. Now I want to ask them: How White do you have to be? This reminds me of a very interesting anecdote. [Interjections.]

Order!

Mr. Chairman, if you will allow me in my reply to the question of the hon. member for Pietersburg, to refer for the sake of interest to the debate we once had with Mr. Jaap Marais on the Maoris. In my constituency the question was put to Mr. Jaap Marais: How White or how Black does a man have to be before he is acceptable? I want to tell those hon. members that we in the NP cannot envisage how in 1983, and in the future, one can hold such racistic and absolutely ridiculous views in regarding people.

The hon. member for Rissik told the hon. the Prime Minister that he had wanted to leave with Mr. Japie Basson. I want to tell the hon. member for Rissik—I feel I am justified in saying this—that since 1969 he has never broken away from Mr. Jaap Marais. [Interjections.] In conclusion I want to repeat to this hon. member—if he wants to understand—that when we discuss university training, we are not in favour of stagnation in South Africa. We are not in favour of confrontation either. We are not prepared to move forward at a snail’s pace. It is absolutely essential for us to adhere to those things the hon. member for Rissik adhered to along with us in 1969 when the original Act was passed. In 1983 we maintain that it is absolutely essential that as far as universities are concerned we should adhere to the principles and practical standpoints the hon. member for Lichtenburg adhered to when he was still Minister of Education and Training. I cannot visualize the hon. member for Lichtenburg saying from a platform that the hundreds upon hundreds of applications for admission to universities which he approved were all mistakes. I cannot visualize that. If he were to say that, then he and the hon. member for Rissik have gone all the way back to 1969 and to an absolutistic racist view of the realities in South Africa. The NP cannot and will not tolerate that.

I, who represent a so-called “conservative” constituency as do they, have no doubt that we shall be able to defend the course the NP is following with these matters in our constituencies. I am also absolutely convinced that the voters of South Africa are sensible and intelligent enough and have a broad enough vision to grasp this matter. This is one of the major problems of hon. members of the CP. They have a simplistic, egoistic and absolutistic vision. They cannot look down on South Africa from above. For example, they cannot tell themselves that there are already over 7 000 Coloureds in South Africa with university degrees. They cannot ask themselves what one should do with the thousands upon thousands of well-qualified Indians in South Africa. We in the NP want to tell them that all those people— Blacks, Coloureds and Indians—are our allies on the road ahead to establish and to protect our ideals, norms and standards against the onslaught of communism. We do not see those people as people who have to be alienated. Above all, we realize that we should not say and do things in this House which cause the Black, Coloured and Indian communities, when they are witnesses to these things or read about them, to ask what we in this highest council chamber in the country think of them. People of colour in South Africa have a perception of what we think or say about them and what we consider good for them, which is absolutely disastrous for our future. The NP wants to and will totally destroy that perception, irrespective of the emotions stirred up by that party in connection with these matters, as contained in this clause.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to discuss the implications of this clause for a while. The CP has adopted a tremendously strong standpoint of principle on this clause. However, if one considers the implications of this clause in the South African context, I maintain that the standpoint of principle the CP has adopted on this is completely inappropriate. The CP maintains that the clause counteracts the idea of universities for specific people. In actual fact there are hundreds of Indian students who have obtained degrees at universities other than the University of Durban-Westville under the existing legislation. If those students now want to return to the University of Durban-Westville this clause would be needed. If the CP were therefore to consider drafting an Act stating that an Indian may study only at the University of Durban-Westville, they would still need this provision to enable students who have obtained degrees from other universities to return to the University of Durban-Westville. Even if they were therefore to implement their principle, they would still need this provision. For that reason the standpoint of principle adopted by the CP here is based on a fallacy. They seize upon every opportunity to bring this matter up and in the process they are violating the principle at issue.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to make the point that the hon. member for Rissik failed to reply to my question. I want to repeat my question. What did he mean when he said: “We shall give education to the other population groups where they need it”? Was he referring to the site or premises, or did he mean, for argument’s sake, where they need it to repair a motor vehicle? In order to expand the question a little I should like to know from the hon. member for Pietersburg whether he did anything about it when he was opposed to the decision of his synod.

Mr. Chairman, I find it very interesting that the hon. member for Rissik, old Parliamentarian that he is, when he realized that he had started something which he could not finish, simply decided that he would remain silent. He is not replying to any questions. Hon. members on this side of the House have risen to their feet one after the other and put specific questions to him and argued with him about what he said, but he has no desire to defend what he said. However, I do want to pay him this compliment that he is a practised Parliamentarian who knows when to keep quiet.

He only has three turns to speak.

But there is not only one member on the CP side. There are quite a number of them who could have replied.

What standpoints has the hon. member for Rissik put forward on this one clause in the course of the morning? First his standpoint was that this was a new addition which proved to what extent we were liberalizing our universities and were taking them towards integration. Then he discovered that the provision had been on the Statute Book since 1969. He then said that such a provision was acceptable as long as the Government of the country could be trusted to apply it. However, before he found out that this provision had been on the Statute Book since 1969, I asked him whether the CP would change it if they came into power. He replied in the affirmative. From this I have to deduce that if they come into power and change it they do not trust themselves as much as they trusted the NP from 1969 to 1981. Can one imagine a person who has been in this House since 1966 adopting four conflicting standpoints within 10 minutes in three speeches in a short debate on one clause! First he said it was something new; then he said they would change it; then he said it was not something new; and then he said it could remain as long as the Government that had to administer it was trustworthy. This is absolutely shocking.

In the second place, in his reasoning on this specific clause the hon. member would seem to have adopted the standpoint that the section as it has stood since 1969, already went too far, was already too liberal, was already a deviation from real separate development as the purists ought to see and understand it. But surely the hon. member for Lichtenburg administered legislation such as this when he was Minister of Education and Training. He never objected to administering it. I should like to know whether he shares the opinion of the hon. member for Rissik on this clause. If I am correct, it is interesting to note that this kind of provision was placed on the Statute Book at a time when the hon. the leader of the CP was still involved in legislation on Black education.

It was allowed from the outset.

The hon. member says it was allowed from the outset. He is the expert. The hon. the leader of the CP also applied the provision to regulate the exception to the rule in quite a number of cases and never had any objections in principle to this. All we want to know is whether hon. members of the CP have deviated from the NP principles as they have existed since 1969 or whether they are adopting a new standpoint.

You are deviating.

I want to stay with this clause and make it easy for hon. members. They were satisfied with the standpoint, but say that it is no longer good enough. However, they also say that they have not changed, we have. It is so absurd that it is no wonder the hon. member for Sunnyside referred to secondary schools in connection with this clause a while ago. To me it seems as if many of them are experiencing problems in rising above the secondary level.

Clause agreed to (Conservative Party dissenting).

Clause 23:

Mr. Chairman, I move the amendment printed in my name on the Order Paper, as follows—

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, agreed to.

House Resumed:

Bill, as amended, reported.

Bill read a Third Time.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to apologize for a voice problem I am experiencing at the moment. I shall nevertheless try to continue with the speech I was making yesterday evening.

I want to begin by stating—I am doing so on the basis of the debates held at that stage in this House—that in terms of its policy of separate development, in spite of all the accusations of racial discrimination, the old NP established separate universities for the Black, Coloured and Indian population groups. It was not merely the intention to create separate tertiary institutions for the other population groups for educational reasons, but to remove students of these population groups who were occupying White universities to an increasing extent from those White universities in terms of the policy of separate development and to establish them in full-fledged universities for each population group. It was necessary to do this. Today it is still necessary for the sake of ordering the community in accordance with our ethnic diversity. Today there are laws on the Statute Book which are still valid, laws which the then Opposition condemned and which the present official Opposition still condemns as apartheid laws, which require separate universities for the various population groups. At every university there is community life and there is student life. I maintain that in terms of the policy of separate development and in terms of the specific laws which are needed and which are on the Statute Book, legislation which is considered to be apartheid measures by the official Opposition, it is impossible for students of colour at White universities to participate fully in the community life and the student life at such universities. These students of colour are affiliated to that university, but owing to the policy, owing to the pattern in the community and owing to legislation they can never fully become part of that university, of the community life and of the student life of that university. Those students are denied the right to participate fully in student life. It is taboo for them. Existing legislation places restrictions on this. However, now we have the situation that there are already over 4 000 students, according to the hon. the Minister, studying at White universities. This is therefore an enormous number of students against whom this legislation and the ordering of the community actually discriminates in the sense that they are allowed to study at the universities but that they are not free to participate in the community and student life. I just want to ask: Is that fair and right, in this grey situation, to treat these students in this way? Is it not far better to withdraw these students to the universities created for their own group where they can participate fully in community life and student life within their own community?

This Bill confirms and strengthens a pattern which is in conflict with the original intentions which were aimed at preventing these students from withdrawing from their own institutions and being sent to White universities. If the maintaining of own institutions was not necessary, why were they introduced? Why was this done, if we still continue to fill the White universities with students of colour? Then we could just as well have opened all universities in terms of the policy of the PFP, and allowed all students only to study there—after all studying is not the alpha and the omega of a student’s life—but also to participate fully and to integrate fully as far as the whole of student and community life is concerned.

I feel that the imposition of restrictions in such a situation is not fair. What is, however, fair is the implementation of division so that students of colour can study at their own universities. The only two alternatives between which one can choose if one wants to act fairly, justly and ethically, are division and integration. What we are dealing with here is in conflict with the ordering and the pattern of the community. It is also in conflict with the policy of separate development, and on that basis I repeat that we on this side of the House cannot support this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to refer to the two previous speakers on the Opposition side. I want to begin with the hon. member for Bryanston, and I wish to ask him once again: Who wrote the speech he read out in this House yesterday? He became totally confused about the concept of academic freedom. He tried to subsume under the concept of academic freedom several things which, of course, were not at all at issue when the concept of academic freedom was orginally defined. [Interjections.]

At this stage I want to urge the hon. member for Bryanston—and this applies to the hon. member for Koedoespoort as well—to give careful consideration once again to what the hon. the Minister said in his Second Reading speech to motivate this legislation. The questions asked by both of them have already been replied to. Therefore I do not know why they keep asking those questions. The hon. the Minister answered those questions clearly, particularly the last question, which the hon. member for Koedoespoort has just repeated here, and which he tried to use to play politics.

The problem of the PFP and the CP at the moment is, of course, the result of the fact that the PFP brands this legislation as an apartheid measure while the CP, through the hon. member for Koedoespoort, contends that it is a measure that will result in integration. Surely it cannot be both, Mr. Speaker. I really regret to have to say that one of those two hon. members is not talking the truth. I gain the impression that neither are speaking the truth. [Interjactions.] I am therefore of the opinion that this Bill ought to be dealt with as the hon. the Minister requested. After all, it is a sensitive matter. I shall also tell hon. members why it is a sensitive matter. It is because the newspapers, in conjunction with certain universities and certain political parties, are whipping up feelings against this. One of the most important examples of this is, of course, the large full-page advertisements published in newspapers by the vice-chancellors of certain universities in which they state their standpoints and also put forward their grounds for objection. What I find interesting, however, is why it is always certain universities that resort to this hysteria, which they are now instigating once again with regard to clause 9 of this Bill. Certain other universities never take part in this. I think it is one of those objectors that wrote the speech of the hon. member for Bryanston for him. In any event, that is the impression he gave me. The content of his speech did not differ a great deal from those of some of the reports we are reading in the newspapers nowadays and which are also being published at great expense in the form of large quarter-page advertisements. [Interjections.] I am very pleased that the legislation on the University of Durban-Westville and the University of the Western Cape has been introduced here and discussed together with this legislation. Fate has treated us well in that we have had the opportunity to discuss this matter as a whole. The statement by the hon. the Minister of Internal Affairs, to the effect that the hon. member for Rissik had changed his standpoint four times in less than 20 minutes, is a fine example of the conduct of hon. members of that party who have never quite managed to set their policy straight and who then come here and try and fish, to find out how they should implement their policy. The example of the universities legislation indicates this most clearly, because there is one hon. member in that party who was formerly a Minister who had to implement this legislation, and reference to this has been made on several occasions. I should like to tell you what actually happened.

When the hon. member for Lichtenburg was the Minister of Education and Training he administered this legislation. When he was administering the legislation, did he do so because he had to, because he was a member of the Cabinet, or did he do so with conviction? The hon. member for Lichtenburg is not present at the moment. He was present a few moments ago, but he has gone again. The hon. member for Lichtenburg was appointed Minister of Education and Training in 1979—I think it was 10 June— and from 1980 to 1983 he granted approval more often during the academic years for students to be admitted to the 10 residential universities than had been agreed to during the previous 7 years. Therefore I say that it is as well that we should discuss this legislation. There are hon. members of the CP who adopt a standpoint and go around telling stories without knowing what is going on. From 20 June 1979 up to and including 2 March 1982, when the hon. member for Lichtenburg was Minister of Education and Training, 3 183 Black students were admitted, as against 2 831 Black students admitted from 1973 to 1979. These figures are contained in the reply to a question, No. 402 of Tuesday, 8 March 1983, which was put to the hon. the Minister. Since the hon. member for Lichtenburg is not present, I want to put this question to the hon. member for Rissik, who echoes what he says. Is that how they change their standpoint? I want to request the hon. member please to be honest about this. He must say that they have changed their standpoint. They must not come here and fish and say that they have not changed. Like the hon. the Minister of Internal Affairs, I want to ask the hon. member to be a man and to tell us that they have in fact changed their standpoint. The hon. member will compel respect if he does so.

The matter of identity is often discussed. I gain the impression that every time the hon. member for Rissik stands up, his identity is threatened. That is the impression he gives me. I want to say to the hon. member for Rissik that he must not challenge the hon. the Minister of National Education. On a previous occasion when he challenged the hon. the Minister, he came a poor third, because there was not even a first or second place for him. The hon. member is going to have a turn to speak and I want to ask him to state his party’s standpoint on this matter very clearly. The hon. the Minister of Internal Affairs also explained to us how that standpoint put forward by those hon. members has changed and accordingly I wish to ask hon. members of the CP to tell us, when they have another chance to speak, on what basis they are all of a sudden opposed to this legislation. When those hon. members were sitting on this side, the deputy leader of that party, who was acting leader during the recent by-elections, implemented that legislation as the Minister. [Interjections.]

In his introductory speech the hon. the Minister spelt out very clearly to us what the legislation is about. He also indicated what the debates on the legislation were about. When it comes up for discussion here, and in other legislation as well, I want to ask that the whole aspect of the conferring of degrees be dealt with again by the hon. the Minister so that a comprehensive statement can be made with regard to the whole issue of reciprocal recognition. We cannot continue with this disparagement in the academic community of South Africa, because the next step will be to call some universities good and others bad. I call upon the hon. the Minister to spell out very clearly the aspect of reciprocal recognition in his reply to this debate or when we deal with the Third Reading, so that it will be quite clear for once and for all, because the CP will soon be saying that the universities for people of colour are second-rate, and I want to prevent that right away.

The legislation embraces several matters of importance. I think it is high time that the Bill was introduced. The time is ripe for us to make provision for the principle Act to be implemented more effectively than it has been thus far. Certain problems have cropped up in the past with regard to its implementation. There are people who were “hurt” because they were not granted permits to study in certain fields. Therefore I say once again that this is sensitive legislation.

This matter has been discussed and I should like to refer to a statement by the hon. the Minister as reported in Die Transvaler of 13 April 1983, in which the hon. the Minister says the following—

Here I have something of a problem, because the universities waited until the Bill was read a First Time before beginning their agitation. Meetings were held, and I have also referred to the large number of advertisements placed in Sunday newspapers at great expense. These were quarter-page advertisements, and the cost involved must have been anything between R2 000 and R3 000 for one advertisement. To the universities that employ funds in this way I want to say they must bear in mind that more than 70% of their total expenditure is approved by this House. I think that in due course they must come back and report on how the funds approved by this House have been utilized. I ask what funds granted by this House be utilized in an orderly fashion. Anyone can criticize the Government—it is not above criticism—but when there is agitation about certain matters, and funds approved by this House are used for that purpose, then I believe that Parliament does not approve.

In that same statement the hon. the Minister added—

In this regard I agree with the hon. the Minister.

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

Sir, I shall give the hon. member an opportunity to ask a question at the end of my speech.

Reports have been submitted on this matter. The first report submitted in this regard was the Holloway Report, which was signed as long ago as 17 September 1954. Moreover, this principle was already contained therein. If one does research into this matter, one concludes that the principle is not at present at issue in the discussion of the Bill because the principle was spelt out in the Holloway Report and in the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Separate University Training Bill. There are hon. members present who submitted evidence to the commission at the time. I do not believe the hon. member will take it amiss of me if I mention him by name. I refer to the hon. member Prof. Olivier. It is stated here very clearly—

On page 60 of that report they say—

And then they explain certain standpoints. I do not take it amiss of him for adopting the standpoint he puts forward in this report. What he said there was quite correct. However, I now just wish to ask him to stand by his standpoint today. If he does not do so, he must just tell us why he has changed his mind. I do think that these are two very simple questions to ask an hon. member. He put forward the standpoint; I do not take it amiss of him for adopting that standpoint. I want to repeat that. However, he will have to tell us then, because he is going to have a turn to speak and he is going to change his standpoint, and I shall want to know why. [Interjections.]

That hon. member will agree with us that it is time to make certain adjustments to this legislation relating to universities by implementing a system that will eliminate the problem of criticism of the Government and the hon. the Ministers that have to allocate these permits. These permits have caused a great deal of administrative red tape and have given rise to several problems in the past. Therefore I think that the present system, which moves away from these permits, is one of the better systems in the administration of this legislation. However, I want to repeat what I said: The principle is not changing. The principle was laid down in the Universities Bill of 1959. It is only the implementation of that principle that is changing.

Elevating this Bill to the status of a problem area has given rise to an additional problem. It is already giving rise to bitterness among certain student communities. Hon. members will recall that some time ago the University of Cape Town held a great academic procession and great speeches were made in the Jameson Hall. However, the result was that the university said that they had to oppose the legislation and that they had to encourage the university authorities to resist this legislation. I should like to make use of what the hon. member for Bryanston said. If one then speaks of academic freedom then that, too, is not a point which belongs under that heading. The incitement by a student body of the university authorities to oppose certain legislation does not belong under the heading of academic freedom, and I wish to express my opposition to this in the strongest terms.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Minister also referred to the next point that comes up in this Bill. This was when someone came here from the United Kingdom and was immediately attacked here as the new head of the University of Natal. It was Prof. Stock. I want to refer once again to what Prof. Stock had to say. Immediately on arriving here, the first day he was here, the chairman of Nusas tackled him and asked him to give a broad perspective on his standpoint concerning the issue of academic freedom and admission. The hon. the Minister quoted very clearly what Prof. Stock said on that occasion. However, I want to go further and read the following—

I just want to quote this one short sentence that he said to the chairman of Nusas. I think it was one Mr. Curtis at that stage. He spelt it out very clearly to him. And I want to put the same point to the hon. member for Bryanston. The question of whom one admits is not all-important to the concept of academic freedom. It is an ancient British principle that will be further elucidated by one of our speakers on this side of the House, who will state where it came from and how woolly concepts have been added to it to suit certain political principles.

Mr. Speaker, this only applies to certain universities. I cannot believe that it applies to all universities. After all, the University of Stellenbosch cannot be so far wrong, and the other universities cannot be so far wrong, when the rector and vice-chancellor of the University of Stellenbosch, Prof. Mike de Vries, says the following—

Here the devolution of power comes to the fore. The universities can now decide for themselves who they admit.

It is not true, and you know it.

The hon. member will have his turn to speak. He can attack me then.

What about the quota system?

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: Is the hon. member for Pinelands entitled to say that it is not true and that the hon. member knows it?

That is just my opinion.

The hon. member may not say that. He must withdraw it.

But that is my opinion, Sir.

It is irrelevant whether or not it is the hon. member’s opinion. He must withdraw it.

I withdraw it, Sir.

Prof. Du Plessis of the University of the Witwatersrand put it very clearly when he said—

It seems that the most important reason why certain universities are opposed to this statutory amendment, particularly clause 12, is that they do not want the power to decide. At the moment that is the crux of the matter. Everyone is satisfied that the system can be implemented as it has been implemented thus far, but on condition the Government and the Ministers in question keep the power in their hands and consequently can be criticized as to whom they allow or do not allow. We are now making the matter so much easier by providing that a university can decide for itself. It is true that this involved a quota or platform, as the hon. the Minister said.

The hon. the Minister also went further and said in an interview on one occasion that he would discuss the matter further with the various university authorities. However, these people do not want to accept the responsibility of deciding for themselves. That is the crucial issue that has come to the fore thus far in the advertisements or statements which they also send from time to time to hon. members in this House. They do not go to the heart of the reason why they do not want to accept it. The only person who has come up with an indication—I respect him for it—is Prof. Du Plessis, who said that he was not going to do the Government’s dirty work. That was his standpoint. I fully respect his standpoint and the fact that he came forward and said that he would not do the Government’s work. However, if he does not want to do the Government’s work in terms of this legislation, he must bear in mind that the consequence of his step will be that he will be unable to accommodate some of the students whom, I think, should in fact be accommodated in certain circumstances.

The Other point I want to state very clearly is that M and D students are not involved. I do not know why there is agitation in respect of all academic levels. M and D students are very clearly excluded. Accordingly I call upon the hon. the Minister when he replies today or on Monday, to spell out very clearly to us if possible when he intends implementing this system, so that universities will be given ample time to set their machinery in operation in order to implement this legislation in an orderly fashion.

I also wish to request that we take another look at the contents of the statements issued to the Press, and the advertisements that have appeared in the Press. Careful note must be taken of certain points, particularly the fine print.

Censorship as well as quota. You are really doing very well.

Just give me a chance. The hon. member will get his chance. [Interjections.] The hon. member can again assume his priestly garb shortly and stand up for the lesser privileged.

Stick to the facts.

Let me quote an example from the advertisements—

I should like to dwell on the words “miskien onrus”. Judging from the fuss people make here I think that some of them will take part in this agitation. I should like to request that when it sits again, the Committee of the University Principles issue a very clear joint statement on this problem that is building up, in that we are being threatened with unrest.

I support the Second Reading, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I do not want to reply directly to what the hon. member Dr. Welgemoed said. However, in the course of my speech I shall deal with aspects to which he also referred. There are just two aspects which he raised to which I want to refer directly. I want to say that the universities have the same rights as any other institutions to voice their opinions in public. That obviously includes advertisements as well. I do not consider his threat addressed to the universities as a good one. He said, in fact, that if the universities expressed their opinions on a matter in an advertisement, the Government might again consider reducing its financial assistance to universities. I also want to point out to the hon. member—in fact, he mentioned it himself—that 30% of the income of the universities comes from other sources, including private donations.

20%.

Together with university fees and things like that it is 30%. I just want to tell the hon. member that universities have the same right as any other institution in South Africa to voice their opinion in public.

Without stirring up unrest.

Yes, of course. I should like to ask the hon. member: When it comes to making a statement on academic freedom, is that an incitement of the people? It depends on how it is done and what it deals with. In this instance it is not the case.

Secondly I just want to refer to the statements of Prof. Stock when he arrived here in South Africa. The hon. member Dr. Welgemoed stated that Prof. Stock had said: “Racially integrated universities are not vital to academic freedom.” Of course that is true. If one finds oneself in a country with a homogeneous population, it is obviously not possible to practise integration at universities because there will not be members of other population groups. That is obvious.

May I send you the argument?

To quote that as substantive or logical support for the Government’s point of view that one should not have multiracial universities really begs the question. At this stage I just want to say that in the course of my speech I shall react to other matters which the hon. member dr. Welgemoed raised.

As far as the first part of the Bill is concerned, namely that aspect which refers to the status of the University of the Western Cape and of the University of Durban-Westville, we welcome the envisaged improvements and the fact that these universities will now be given equal status with the 11 so-called autonomous universities in South Africa. We welcome in particular the fact that the principals of the universities I referred to will now serve on the Committee of University Principals and will do so in their own right and with parity in terms of their status. We welcome this and hope that the other Bills referred to in the House earlier today will be passed by the House in the coming week so that equal status can be given to the University of the Western Cape and the University of Durban-Westville. That aspect of this Bill we welcome.

However, it should come as no surprise to the hon. the Minister and hon. members in the House that, as regards the second aspect of this Bill, namely provisions such as those contained in clause 9 which empower the Minister to impose a quota system on universities in South Africa in respect of members of one race group attending the university of another race group, we reject that totally. I will motivate our standpoint on this. Let me make it very clear that, when it comes to education, the attitude of the NRP has always been that pre-primary, primary and secondary education should be provided within the framework of a particular population group’s culture. The reasons for this are well motivated, for example by the De Lange Committee and other well-informed bodies, namely that primary and secondary education should be performed within the framework of that particular culture or group. When it comes to tertiary education, we are looking at a totally different aspect of education. In the first instance university education is normally undertaken by no more than 5% to 8% of any particular population group. It is not an institution in which you learn parrot-fashion or have note learning where you learn A, V and C or 1, 2 and 3. It is an institution where the student can make a contribution to the expansion of the frontiers of knowledge as well as to absorb the ethic of education which a university provides. From this it will also been seen that it is very logical to deduce that within the environment of a university, university students also receive a social education while they are exposed to this ethic of education.

Let me say quite categorically that what we are going to be deciding in this House in respect of this Bill does not only relate to the administrative aspects of admitting students to a university or academic freedom. We are dealing with something here that can fundamentally affect the very structure of the South African society of the future. We therefore have to give very careful and responsible consideration to our deliberations in this debate and to what we finally decide to pass in this House.

Coming first to the subject of university autonomy or university freedom and how it is affected by the hon. the Minister’s standpoint and his motivation, for example by clause 9 of the Bill, I want to say the hon. the Minister has in his Second Reading speech and on many previous occasions said that the quota system represents an improvement in the admissions procedure for students of other groups to the various universities. However, you cannot improve something which you reject totally. Let me start off with the premise that we see academic freedom or the autonomy of a university to include the right of the university to decide whom it should admit as student and by which criteria they wish to enrol their students. Hopefully it will always be on merit and according to educational criteria and not racial criteria or sex or some other criteria. We see academic freedom in the broad sense, and in particular university autonomy, standing from outside university, as an absolute concept. In other words, there is no question of being able to improve on a concept such as academic freedom or the right of a university to admit students. It is not a relative term. It is only relative within the framework of the university itself where they determine the criteria. We see the admission of students to universities as an integral part of academic autonomy, which to us is an absolute factor and not a relative factor. If one accepts that standpoint, it is not an improvement to bring in a quota system, because it then becomes a relative system. In this respect let me just state the rationale to the hon. the Minister: If you practise religious tolerance or freedom of religion it must be an absolute concept. It cannot be a relative concept, because then you are going to exclude certain people and only allow certain other people the right to participate and to be protected by that concept. To us it is very much a question of an absolute right and not a relative right.

Just like racial discrimination.

I will be coming to the question of racial discrimination very shortly, because I anticipate that the PFP would want to know from us how, in terms of our policy based on cultural differentiation, we can justify the concept of academic freedom. [Interjections.] Some members understand it and some do not understand it. However, I will be responding very shortly to this.

Let me go a little further and say that the hon. member for Bryanston based the argument of the PFP as to why they are going to vote against this Bill, entirely on the apartheid system. They see this measure as a manifestation of apartheid and because they are totally against apartheid they want to get rid of this as well.

Let me just clarify the position for hon. members of the PFP as to what the standpoint of this party is on group autonomy or group rights.

If one looks at the concept of apartheid I think one must apply a certain amount of intelligence in discriminating between what is apartheid in South Africa or any other country and what is a natural sociological phenomenon, namely group differentiation or cultural differentiation—whatever one would like to call it. This is a natural and legitimate sociological phenomenon. One cannot deny it.

It is not on the Statute Book.

I am going to come to the voluntary association aspect in a moment. Cultural differentiation is a natural phenonmenon and I am sure even the PFP’s most left-wing member, like the hon. member for Pinelands—the only one who is prepared to admit that he is a left-wing member—will acknowledge that it is a reality of life. But apartheid is the abuse of the natural sociological phenomenon of cultural differentiation and therefore to us apartheid means …

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. member how he squares his argument with the fact that he was quite happy, as I was, with the fact that the so-called Black universities, which were once restricted on a cultural basis, i.e. Zulu here, Xhosa there and Tswana there, were open to all despite the very real cultural and language distinction.

I am going to come back to that a little later. The short answer to that, of course, is that we also believe in local option and for different communities to decide for themselves what they want to do. However, I want to deal with apartheid first because the hon. member for Bryanston based his whole argument and his opposition to this Bill, especially to clause 9, on the basis that it is an entrenchment of apartheid. I think he has got it wrong. There are other reasons, legitimate reasons, why one should oppose clause 9 and not only because it is a manifestation of apartheid. I should like to qualify what our perception of apartheid is. Apartheid is an aberration or an abuse of a natural sociological phenomenon, namely cultural differentiation, which one finds throughout the world and in particular in a plural society such as one finds in South Africa. To give a comparison in order to produce a better understanding in the minds of the PFP, if one takes monopolistic profiteering within a free-market capitalistic society, that is an excess which occurs within an acceptable concept. We believe in capitalism; we believe in private free enterprise, but we do not wish to allow excesses due to monopolistic or profiteering motives that exploit the population. It is exactly the same as apartheid. To me apartheid is the abuse of cultural differentiation in order to promote the welfare, interests and aggrandizement of one population group at the expense of another. Looking at universities, one could say that a certain aspect, such as the permit system or the quota system, is an abuse of natural cultural differentiation and therefore it could be labelled apartheid.

However, unfortunately the PFP have a totally blind spot when it comes to the recognition of cultural differentiation and the needs of the people concerned within each cultural group. The PFP are denying them the right of an own university. I ask the hon. member for Bryanston: Is this correct? Perhaps the hon. member for Pinelands will tell us in his speech later on. Will the PFP agree that any university should have the right to remain exclusive to any particular race group should it wish to do so?

Not while it depends on the funds that it derives from the entire South African population for its existence.

Yes, including that particular group. That group also contributes considerably to the coffers of the State. That is where their blind spot is. That is where the danger lies in the generalization that the PFP has, namely that this is an entrenchment of apartheid. In fact the attitude of the hon. member for Bryanston is an abuse of the natural phenomenon of cultural differentiation. He wants to deny other groups the right to disassociate themselves from other population groups.

Mr. Speaker, we in the NRP—and this is the point I want to stress—believe that education at tertiary level should be viewed as a holistic concept. Tertiary education should be available to members of all population groups who have reached the level at which they can indeed benefit from tertiary education, and in particular university education. They should be able to participate in an environment, a university environment, which will lead to them becoming better members of their society, contributing to the welfare of all.

If we are going to deny universities the right to admit students of other population groups as well, we are indeed being totally insincere in the application of our principles in respect of what is really ethical both in politics and in education, because the very graduates who leave the university obtain employment in organizations where they work shoulder to shoulder, and sometimes even hand to hand, with members of other population groups, and in the very same environment. If we are to train them to work in a situation of that nature, surely the training itself must prepare them for taking up employment in that environment. There is no question about it that Blacks in particular in South Africa benefit from the environment of the university, which is a considerable change for them from their ethnically orientated school education. The opportunity for them to be exposed to this different atmosphere is to be found at university level.

We know about the difficulties which these students have in adapting to their new environment. We do believe that, at the University of the Witwatersrand for instance, there is a need for preparedness courses for these people. I welcome that because it is indeed changing their attitude to certain norms and values in South Africa.

I do not believe, however, that we can get away from the idea that education at tertiary level is a holistic concept and should be viewed in that light. I want to put it to the hon. the Minister and to the hon. members of the NP that they have the cat completely by the tail in his respect. They are pleading for separate universities with limited right of entry to members of other race groups, and they are doing so for completely the wrong reasons. They say that they are doing this because it is NP policy, and they are afraid that if they should allow members of other race groups to attend their universities that would water down the Whites’ culture and that the ultimate result would be that the White culture would be swamped by other cultures. That is nonsense. It is absolute nonsense. The one culture which is not going to suffer as a result of allowing members of other race groups to attend these universities is the White culture, because when the Indian, Coloured and Black students come to White universities they are in fact, absorbed into the White culture, the White value system. Indeed they become part of the White value system. It is not the Whites who are becoming undermined or who have their culture watered down.

Furthermore, if we believe that the leadership element in all population groups must make a contribution towards the improvement of the quality on life of the whole of South Africa, it is to everybody’s advantage that people of other colour groups should become part of the culture and part of the value system of the Whites. Therefore it is indeed beneficial to the survival of the White culture that these people should have a full appreciation—even if they do not accept it totally—of the value system of the Whites. Therefore I do not believe that allowing people of other race groups to attend our universities will pose any threat to White civilization and to White culture. On the contrary, I believe, it will be an enriching experience for us to learn to understand and to get to know other people’s cultures better than we do at the moment.

The question is of course always: What is the alternative to this Bill? Here in particular I want the hon. members for Pinelands and Bryanston to listen to me. We believe that the aswer to this question lies—and we recognize both the right of voluntary association and the right of voluntary disassociation—in looking realisticially at what our society really needs. I say this also in reply to the hon. member for Houghton, who is unfortunately not in the House now. I am sure, though that hon. members of her party will convey my words of wisdom to her. They can even give her a copy of my Hansard.

We do not want to bore her. [Interjections.]

Especially for the benefit of hon. members of the PFP I want to point out that when it comes to finding a solution to this problem, and if we want to be realistic about what our society is going to require in future—and that is the proper training of all leadership elements of all population groups—and if we want to satisfy the cultural differences which exist between English and Afrikaans language universities—every university, I believe, has the right to be culturally orientated.

[Inaudible.]

Well, I believe they do have the right to do that. They have the same right which newspapers have. The editors of the English-language newspapers of South Africa have told me that they are Prog mouthpieces. I believe it is their right to remain Prog mouthpieces if they want to. Because private capital is involved, it is their local option to do so. Therefore, the answer we seek in order to reduce tension and improve educational facilities in South Africa lies in what this party has stated repeatedly and that is local option. The hon. the Minister should allow the universities to decide for themselves what criteria they are going to apply in respect of the admission of students in relation to the question of cultural differences. For instance, it will then be possible for the University of Natal in Durban—I give this purely as an example—if it wished to admit Indians or Coloureds or Blacks to do so freely. If Potchefstroom University wanted to admit only White students, they would have the right to do so. That is the real answer to the problem.

What if they wanted to admit only Afrikaners?

Then they will have to be able to convince our South African society that they have a right to admit only Afrikaners. However, let me tell the hon. member for Parktown that when it comes to the question of culturally identified universities, they must decide for themselves whether or not in fact they can be a viable university by catering for a specific group. They have the right however to do so. I believe that a university has the right to be purely an English-language university also provided it can justify its existence in terms of numbers. Why should that not be so? We have private schools sponsored by certain churches and they said that as long as a person was a member of that church and subscribed to it and went through its rituals, one’s children could attend that school. Of course, when it became an economic necessity, they had to widen the scope and one found the Catholics and the Jews also attending Methodist schools.

I should like to say from personal experience that I owe my university education to the fact that there are Indians in Natal. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend Natal University on a part-time basis and there would have been no extramural part-time classes for me had there not also been 17 non-White students. I went through that university for four years with them. There were only three White students and one or two Coloured students and the rest were Indians. I want to give the hon. the Minister the assurance that this did not make me a raving liberal—the fact that I associated with Indians. In actual fact, I gained a more realistic concept of what cultural differentiation is all about as well as acquiring a greater appreciation of the Indian South African’s culture in this country. Therefore, to claim that this is a threat to White culture is absolute nonsense.

I want to make an appeal to the hon. the Minister with all the responsibility at my command. I want to appeal to him to withdraw this Bill or alternatively, to negative clause 9 and to remove it from this Bill. We are going to do university education in general a considerable amount of harm both in South Africa and externally if we do not do this. If the hon. the Minister insists on going ahead with these provisions, it is going to lead to a confrontation between universities and the State the nature of which we have not seen in this country before. No self-respecting university is going to do—in the words of the hon. member Dr. Welgemoed—the dirty work of the Government if it has any self-respect and dignity as a university that preaches and practises academic freedom and the autonomy of universities. I want to repeat my appeal to the hon. the Minister: Do not go ahead with this Bill as it is. However, if he wishes to modify it to permit various universities to practise local option, we could see our way clear to allowing that to form part of this Bill. As clause 9 stands at the moment, it does South Africa no good, it does the 5% to 8% of our population who are our leadership material no good and it does our whole social structure no good at all, and it will certainly radically affect the attitude of universities towards the State.

Business suspended at 12h45 and resumed at 14h15.

Afternoon Sitting

Mr. Speaker, in the course of my speech I shall be returning to the speech of the hon. member for Durban North.

I first want to refer to the speech of the hon. member for Bryanston. In the speech delivered by him, but written by somebody else, the hon. member devoted his time, yesterday afternoon, to quoting liberally from the book Open Universities in South Africa. It is very necessary for us to go back slightly in history and look at the origins of this book. On 9, 10 and 11 January 1957 senior staff members and councillors of the University of Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand met here in Cape Town as part of a protest against the erstwhile legislation on separate universities. This conference of lecturers and councillors elected, from amongst their ranks, an editorial committee to formulate their decisions and views. Those decisions were formulated in Open Universities in South Africa. We must therefore see this book as the credo of the so-called open universities. I also want to quote from this book—

One can find no fault with that, but then I read the following in that same credo—

It also says the following—

This is the credo of these universities for whom the hon. member for Bryanston is supposedly the mouthpiece, stating as he does that—

In the light of these people’s acknowledgement in Open Universities in South Africa, how does the hon. member, who speaks here of “human freedom”, reconcile the fact that a person may not mix in the sense of attending a university dance? He may not take part in sport, but: “Human freedom and academic freedom are indivisible”. The following is also stated—

Is it not discrimination when a person tells a student that he may attend a science class with him, but that he certainly cannot come dancing with him? Surely there is discrimination in that. Why, then, the hon. member for Bryanston’s tirade?

Let us take a further look at the motivation for this “segregation on the social level”. Here we are not talking of apartheid. It does not fit in here. Here we are merely speaking of “segregation and non-segregation”. Let me quote—

That is “segregation on the social level”—

Have the conventions of the communities, in which these universities exist, changed?

Yes.

To what extent?

Largely.

To such an extent that they now accept this? [Interjections.] I should just like to point out the honesty of people in this struggle against the so-called separate universities. If one reads these things in Open Universities in South Africa, and one compares this with what happens in practice, one feels like saying: “You hypocritical herald of a thunder-clap, your name is the PFP!”

Now I come to the hon. member for Koedoespoort. I am sorry to see that he is not in the House at the moment. That hon. member said that it was the CP’s policy to develop each population group’s universities to the full. In this context the University of the Western Cape, for example, must have all the university faculties, including engineering and medicine.

Do you not agree?

Give me a chance; I am coming to that. According to the policy of the CP, the same facilities must also be available to the Indians. In this connection I should like to ask two questions. Is the hon. member for Koedoespoort aware of the costs involved in the establishment of a faculty of engineering at a university? According to their policy all universities must have such a faculty. This includes Black universities such as the University of the North, the University of Zululand and the University of Fort Hare, as well as the University of the Western Cape and the University of Durban-Westville. According to that view we would then be equal, would we not? Is the hon. member aware of the costs involved in the establishment of a medical faculty at a university?

Yes, I said as much.

If the hon. member is aware of the costs involved in the establishment of these faculties, has he ever thought of where the money is to come from?

Apart from that, are they simply going to develop all these things immediately, without there being any applications from students for study in these fields? Are they going to do so in the hope that when there is possibly such an application from a prospective engineering student in the future he can, for example, be referred to the University of the North at Turfloop where such a faculty may perhaps already exist? Must the faculty therefore be ready and waiting? What are they going to use as a criterion when that faculty is established? Are they going to wait until one application is forthcoming from a Black student who wants to study engineering? Are they going to wait until there are five applications? Or are they going to wait until there are 10? What is the criterion?

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

No, Sir, the hon. member can make his own speech. [Interjections.]

You have got some principles, provided they do not cost money!

I think it is necessary to obtain answers from the CP about the idea of each university for each population group having to be fully developed so that each one can provide for the needs of its particular population group.

I should like to continue with my speech. In the course of my speech I shall be coming back to the hon. member for Durban North. I want to allege that the objections levelled at this Bill in this debate by the official Opposition are virtually the same—word for word—as the objections of the erstwhile official Opposition to the legislation on the extension of universities in the years 1957 and 1959. The methods of extra-parliamentary action, i.e. protest meetings and protest marches by students, also encouraged by the staff of certain universities, follow exactly the same pattern as that adopted in the years 1957 and 1959. Even the arguments against the legislation are the same as those put forward in 1957 and 1959, i.e. that the legislation encroaches upon the autonomy of the universities and interferes with the academic freedom of universities.

It is necessary for us to take an in-depth look at the autonomy and the academic freedom of a university. I should like to do so on the basis of the views of several recognized university principals and educationists. Dr. T. B. Davie, former principal of the University of Cape Town, demands that the university should, by virtue of its autonomy and academic freedom, be able to decide for itself what persons it wishes to teach, how such teaching is to be done, what is to be taught and who will do the teaching. If that is the alpha and the omega of a university’s autonomy and academic freedom, it is quite clear that a university’s autonomy and academic freedom can never be absolute.

Let us look at these requirements for academic freedom and autonomy. In the first place, the “persons” to be taught are restricted, amongst other things, by those requirements for admission to a university laid down by the Matriculation Board, a body different to, and outside the normal ambit of, the normal university authorities. These “persons” to be taught are further restricted, in the first instance, by what Trümpelmann describes, in his Faculty Entrance Requirements of Universities in South Africa, in the following terms—

In the second place—

In the third place—

In other words, there are clearly quite a number of limiting factors involving who is to be admitted, apart from what the universities themselves have to say.

There are, however, also other restrictions on a university’s autonomy and academic freedom. The J. J. Holloway Commission of Inquiry into Separate University Education in 1953-’54 made the following very important statement—

Such as a university—

H. B. Thom stated, in the above-mentioned work, that universities have their origins in legislation, the acceptance of which has the interests of the country and its people at heart. In other words, one cannot think of a university as a completely autonomous body, because it is impossible to create a kingdom within a kingdom. This idea, put forward by Prof. H. B. Thom, is echoed by Trümpelmann in the aforementioned publication in which he states—

Here it is therefore alleged that a university cannot be fully and absolutely autonomous.

In the light of all the restrictions which I have mentioned, and to which a university is subject, when it comes to the persons it must teach, how it must teach and what it must teach, it is clear that the formulation of what is meant by a university’s autonomy and academic freedom, by Dr. T. B. Davie in 1953, is no more than a handy and convenient slogan in the political campaign of the ’fifties against the establishment of separate universities. It can be re-employed in the present opposition to what must be seen as an honest endeavour to order and regulate admission to universities.

It seems to me that we should rather see a university’s academic freedom in the way in which it was set out by Prof. A. L. Lowell president of Harvard University, in his book What A University President has Learnt, i.e. that what academic freedom amounts to is that—

As far as I am concerned, this is an acceptable definition of what academic freedom means. I have now said enough about the myth of a university’s absolute autonomy and unrestricted academic freedom, upon which the opposition to this Bill is being based. As I have illustrated in my argument, these are not fundamental objections and must therefore be rejected as simply another effort, on the part of the official Opposition, to frustrate or defeat any effort at creating order in the sphere of the admission of students to universities, in spite of the fact that this legislation now grants the universities themselves the right to choose, within certain numerical limits, the number of students of colour to be admitted to the universities. In judging the legislation, it is all important to remember that the foremost considerations that applied when the Bill was introduced were based on purely educational principles and norms. Therefore it is necessary for us to listen to the considered opinions of educationists of repute about mixed or so-called open universities. It is a fact—and remains a fact—that a university, firstly and lastly, is and must be an institution whose task it is to serve education. What a wonderful view of this is adopted by Holmes when he says—

I want to allege that it is only the university which is steeped in its own culture and traditions that can rise to the lofty heights envisaged by Holmes. That is why educationists of repute unconditionally support the idea of separate universities, underpinned by their own cultures, and are fiery advocates of universities being culturally linked or having cultural ties.

Let me say at once, with all the conviction at my command, that the policy of separate universities is and will remain NP policy. This legislation, and in particular clause 9, is merely a method of ordering matters and making provision for the necessary exceptions in our country with its many peoples, limited funds being a further restricting factor when it comes to the expansion of universities. The principle of admitting people of another colour has already been entrenched in the Extension of University Education Act, 1959. That Act was introduced by Mr. John Vorster, as Deputy Minister of Education, when Dr. Verwoerd was Prime Minister. It is therefore not a new principle to have people of colour admitted to White universities.

As has already been said, the NP policy of separate universities is supported by the opinions of educationists. Let me just quote a few, and this is important, because what I now want to quote, has its origins in Africa—

In connection with the University of New York, Trümpelmann finds that—

Let me quote another educationist. Prof. Eysenek of London says in his book Towards a New Society—

Prof. Kgware of the University of the North tells of his visit to the Black university, Morehouse College, in Atlanta, Georgia, and says that in earlier times Whites did indeed try to attend classes at the university, but according to the rector the Blacks did not make them feel at home there at all. Consequently there are no White students left. Prof. Kgware goes on to say—

The truth of Prof. Kgware’s view is confirmed by the fine achievements of the Black, Brown and Indian universities since their establishment. In this connection I also want to quote from what Gen. Smuts wrote in reply to representations for financial support for the establishment of a university. I quote—

He expressed this opinion on 9 November 1910.

In conclusion I want to refer to a very interesting snippet of news from a radio broadcast on 13 May of this year. I am referring to the fact that the Canadian Government is going to establish a separate university for the Eskimos. One can almost say with exultation that Canada now eventually finds itself in good company as far as education is concerned.

Sir, I should like to support this Bill because, as I have already said, it contains no new principle, its object merely being to order and regulate any exceptions that may be discerned.

Mr. Speaker, I have listened attentively to the hon. member for Kimberley North. He accused the PFP of hypocrisy, among other things. I just want to put it to him that as far as the PFP is concerned, we are very firmly committed to the principle that we do not believe in any form of discrimination whatsoever on the basis of race or colour. Now I want to ask the hon. member for Kimberley North a question. In terms of this Bill, every university will be able, if it so wishes, to admit students belonging to other race groups in accordance with the quota determined by the hon. the Minister. Now I want to ask the hon. member for Kimberley North a very personal and direct question. Would he argue that where students of colour study at White universities, there should be no form of discrimination or differentiation with regard to social activities? I am referring to dances and so on. Would the hon. member argue in favour of this? [Interjections.]

Go and read the motivation behind this legislation again. [Interjections.]

Mr. Speaker, I also want to put a further question to the hon. member for Kimberley North. Here in South Africa we have the so-called international hotels, hotels where, in terms of a Government provision, people are not allowed to dance together or do anything of that kind. Now I want to know from the hon. member for Kimberley North, when he alleges that we should not be hypocritical, whether he will support me if I ask the Government to abolish those measures. [Interjections.]

[Inaudible.]

Oh, no. [Interjections.] Mr. Speaker, surely the hon. member for Kimberley North cannot accuse other people of hypocrisy if he is not prepared to give an honest reply to my questions. [Interjections.] No, that is not reasonable. [Interjections.]

Mr. Speaker, this was just by the way. I shall reply to the hon. member later with regard to a few other matters. [Interjections.]

To come back now to the Bill and to the speech by the hon. the Minister, I should like to endorse what was said by the hon. member for Durban North and to say that I am grateful for the fact that the University of the Western Cape and the University of Durban-Westville are at last going to be granted a status equal to that of White universities. It is high time this were done and I welcome it.

Furthermore, I also welcome the statement by the hon. the Minister that attention is being given to the representation of the rectors of the Black universities on the Committee of University Principals. I think that this, too, is something which is long overdue. From the nature of the case, I find the provision contained in clause 9 of the Bill completely unacceptable. It is completely unacceptable to me, and therefore I associate myself in this respect with the standpoint adopted by the hon. member for Bryanston. Before coming to the Bill itself, however, and to my attitude towards it, there are nevertheless a few positive aspects which are evident from the Bill and from the hon. the Minister’s speech, and which I should like to refer to at this stage. The first aspect to which I want to refer is the hon. the Minister’s reference to the Coloured people’s aversion to the permit system. This is a very important statement which the hon. the Minister made. I hope, therefore, that the hon. the Minister will co-operate with us in having the permit system removed from our society; not only in this sphere but in other spheres as well. That aversion which people feel for the permit system does not exist only with regard to the question of admission to universities; the life of the non-White person, and especially the life of the Black man, is regulated and controlled by permits every day. I want to request the hon. the Minister, therefore, not to be selective when he considers the weight of the aversion to the permit system which exists among people of colour.

In the second place, the hon. the Minister said that one of the reasons for the movement away from the permit system and towards the quota system was in fact the tremendous administrative burden which the former involved. This is an important criterion, of course, Mr. Speaker. When I look at our public life, and at all the red tape, as well as all the unnecessary administrative work caused by all these restrictions on people, I believe that this in itself is sufficient reason for abolishing many of those restrictions.

In the third place, when I look at the Bill and at the replacement of the permit system by the quota system, I ask what this means. In that sense, it amounts to recognition of the failure of another Verwoerdian fantasy. That fantasy was based on the premise that there should be total separation. Accordingly, it was not only provided in legislation that the Minister could grant permits, but provision was also made in the Act for an absolute prohibition, i.e. a situation in which not even the Minister would be able to grant a permit. This was the ultimate aim of the late Dr. Verwoerd.

With this Bill, therefore, we have the recognition today of the fact that that policy was based on nothing but a fantasy. In that sense I am grateful for the fact that at least that limited degree of recognition is being given to this fact today.

In this connection, the hon. member Dr. Welgemoed referred to the report of the Commission on the Separate University Education Bill. I just want to tell the hon. member that I do not blame him for not knowing the background to this matter. I want to say, in the first place, that this commission was appointed to consider the 1957 Bill which was referred to a commission after Second Reading, with the result that the commission could not express an opinion on the principle of separate universities. In paragraph 4 of its report, therefore, the commission said—

In the second place, I want to say that the hon. member Dr. Welgemoed should have mentioned the fact that the quotation which he made in his speech came from the minority report which rejected the particulars of that Bill, a minority report signed by the late Dr. Moore, Mr. Louis Steenkamp, Mrs. Margaret Ballinger, Mr. J. A. Steytler and Mr. Ronald Butcher. They are the people who quoted with appreciation the standpoint which Sabra had adopted before them, to the effect that if those universities were to succeed, there must be no form of discrimination on the basis of race or colour. This is the standpoint which we have adopted, as is evident from this report as well.

In this connection I want to make two remarks. The one is that the hon. the Minister himself knows how upset we in Sabra were when that Bill was published in 1957, with all its provisions concerning separate councils, a separate White council with an advisory Black council, separate senates, only the White lecturers being allowed to serve in the senate, with the Black professors serving in the advisory senate, the differentiation in salary scales and all the other matters. The hon. the Minister knows that in spite of the assurances given to Sabra that this would not happen, all those principles were embodied in the Bill. That is what we were implacably opposed to.

In this connection I also want to say the following. Before the legislation had been published at the time, the Government asked me whether I would be prepared to accept an appointment as principal of Fort Hare when it was taken over by the Government. With this in view, the Government— Dr. Verwoerd’s Government—appointed me to the council of Fort Hare. When I was eventually confronted by Mr. Willie Maree, who was Minister of Bantu Education at the time—we nicknamed him “Willie hand-geenie Maree”—who asked me what my final decision was—this was before the Bill had been introduced—I first asked him certain questions. I asked him how the university was going to be administered, and when he told me that the maximum degree of separation was going to be maintained between the White lecturers and the Black students, that there were going to be these two councils, that there were going to be two senates, that there was going to be discrimination with regard to salaries, I told him what he could do with his post. It was as simple as that. So the hon. member Dr. Welgemoed must not tell me that I condoned things which I have in fact been fighting against all my life. We of Sabra were not opposed to the establishment of separate universities, provided that those universities were placed on exactly the same footing as White universities and provided that the open universities remained open. That was our basic premise and that is my reply to the hon. member Dr. Welgemoed.

I also want to say that I find it regrettable that the hon. the Minister apparently did not fully investigate other possibilities before introducing this Bill in this House, because he said in his speech—

The hon. the Minister was saying, in other words, that he would be prepared to consider another possibility. It seems to me, then, that the introduction of this Bill was ill-timed, because it was the responsibility of the hon. the Minister to explore those ways and means in consultation with others. I should like to know from him whether no alternative proposals were made to him in this connection. If such proposals were made to him, why, in the light of this statement, did he reject them?

There are two further statements by the hon. the Minister which I should like to comment on. I regret that I do not have time to discuss the speeches of the hon. members for Virginia and Kimberley North in detail. The first statement made by the hon. the Minister to which I want to react is that there has never been such a thing as absolute autonomy, because the Government has had the right to limit the autonomy of the universities in respect of academic standards and matters of that nature. The same applies to the approval of courses, faculties and so forth.

Those are not restrictions on the essential autonomy of universities, because they are relevant restrictions. As long as the State provides funds, those are all relevant restrictions. However, to extend those restrictions so that the State obtains the right to exclude people on the basis of race, colour, sex or whatevever, is not, in my opinion, a relevant restriction on the autonomy of the universities, and therefore that kind of restriction cannot be justified. He cannot mention such restrictions in the same breath as the other restrictions which the State is entitled to impose in the case of every university.

The next statement made by the hon. the Minister which I should like to comment on is the following—

I do not understand this statement. He says that the quota system enables him and the department to bring about more effective coordinated planning. I cannot understand this, because he is able, after all, to impose restrictions on the growth of the universities by other means, for example by limiting the subsidy. He certainly does not have to impose them by means of a colour or racial provision. I honestly cannot understand that statement.

I find it extremely regrettable that the hon. the Minister did not take account of the effect, the implications and the impact of these numerus clausus which he has introduced into the Bill. I do not believe that hon. the Minister has properly considered the effect which those numerus clausus has had in the Western world. However, I shall not elaborate on this, because the hon. member for Pinelands will go into this whole matter in his speech in due course. I only want to tell the hon. the Minister that the whole idea of imposing a numerical restriction on people on the basis of race as far as the attendance of a university is concerned is one which indeed—I choose my words with care—stinks in the nostrils of the Western world.

I have searched the hon. the Minister’s introductory speech for a motivation for the introduction of the quota system. It seems to me that there are two basic considerations of principle, and here I endorse the remarks made by the hon. members for Virginia and Kimberley North and the hon. member Dr. Welgemoed. The one consideration I find in the hon. the Minister’s speech where he mentions the Retief report and says, among other things that the report refers to the need for the State to have this right, because, he says—

in connection with universities. This is in line with another statement made by the hon. the Minister. He said —

The idea, therefore, is the creation of separate institutions. I repeat that even if there are separate institutions, even if one accepts the principle of separate institutions, it still does not mean that this can serve to justify the quota system in terms of which restrictions are imposed on universities with regard to the admission of students. I want to ask the hon. the Minister, with reference to this quotation and with reference to the Retief report, what threat to the social order he anticipates if non-Whites were to be admitted to White universities, for example? What threat would this pose to the social order? What social order is being threatened? How is the social order being threatened? I cannot understand it. If it would result in large-scale friction at a university, it would be different. But surely the university authorities are there to ensure that such friction does not arise. This is not the task of the State. Even if it came to the worst in that one or more White universities had a majority of non-White students—this is what the Government is afraid of—how would this threaten the social order? Such a thing could only happen, firstly, if the university involved knew in advance that it could allow such a situation to arise and, secondly, if it had come to be acceptable to society. Therefore I cannot understand how the social order could be threatened by such a step.

It is not in the first place concerned with diversity. It is not concerned with the social order. However, it may be concerned with the group affiliation of the institution—the hon. the Minister as well as the hon. member for Kimberley North referred to this. So it could threaten the particular group affiliation of a university if students from different race groups were admitted to that university, or so it is feared.

Our experience in South Africa has shown that the freedom of a university to decide for itself whom it wishes to admit has not led to the disappearance of the group affiliation of a university. Our Afrikaans and English White universities freely admit English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking students respectively. Not one of those universities has experienced a threat to its particular character as a result. Stellenbosch remains an Afrikaans university, even though English-speaking persons study there. Therefore it does not necessarily follow that the group character of a university—if one has to use the concept—is going to be violated when students from a different language, colour or ethnic group are admitted to that university.

One could also say—it has in fact been said here—that the particular character of a university may be harmed or threatened if people from different race groups are admitted to that university. Let us analyse that statement. In order to clarify the matter, it is essential that we analyse the validity of the arguments that have been advanced in this House. It is obvious that what is feared is not that the language character of a university may be threatened. That fear does not seem to exist. Nor does the fear exist that large numbers of White students would register at the University of the Western Cape, the University of Durban-Westville or the Black universities. Hon. members will concede this to me: That fear does not exist. The fear which does exist is that for some reason, large numbers of non-Whites will register at so-called White universities and that the particular character of these universities will be endangered as a result. I want to repeat what I have said before. If this happened, it would mean that that university had already accepted the implications of this at that stage. It would mean, secondly, that such a development would have come to be acceptable to society. Let us examine the possibilities. Let us examine the dangers, because this is indeed the only reason which has been advanced by the Government for the imposition of restrictions of this kind. Let us examine the real, practical probabilities. In 1982—I regret that I have to tire the House with figures, but I think they are important—a total number of 11 487 students were registered at the University of Cape Town, of whom only 1 470 were non-Whites—this figure includes Coloureds, Asians and Blacks. At the University of the Witwatersrand, there were 14 659 students, of whom only 1 393 were non-Whites. At Rhodes there were 3 201 students, only 322 of whom were non-Whites. At the University of Natal there were 9 039, of whom 1 669 were non-Whites. At the University of Stellenbosch, there were 11 878, of whom 137 were non-Whites.

What are the percentages?

I am coming to that. At the University of Port Elizabeth there were 3 054, of whom 254 were non-Whites. At RAU there were 5 428, of whom 27 were non-Whites. At the University of Pretoria there were 16 380, two of whom were non-Whites. [Interjections.] At the University of the Orange Free State there were 8 095, of whom 21 were non-Whites. At the University of Potchefstroom there were 6 899, of whom 25 were non-Whites.

What can be inferred from these figures? The first inference we can draw is that the universities that have allowed relatively large numbers of non-Whites have mainly been the English universities. These are the very universities that have objected most strenuously to this quota system—not so much the Afrikaans-language universities. These are the universities that are most closely affected, and they are telling us and the Government: “We do not need the quota system.” I could still understand it if the NP members were concerned about what might happen at Afrikaans-language universities, but why should the Government, which is mainly an Afrikaner Government, have the arrogance to dictate to English-language universities what they may do and what they may not? [Interjections.] This is nothing but arrogance of the worst kind. Now I want to ask: Have those English-language universities lost their character or identity in any way? Not at all!

Let us examine the future objectively, because it is with regard to the future that the NP is always living in a world of dark forebodings. The NP is continually afraid that evil will befall us and that we shall perish in the dark. The De Lange Committee calculated that by the year 2000—I do not want to go any further than that—the number of White students at residential universities will be approximately 100 000. They calculate that the Coloureds at all residential universities will number approximately 11 500, the Asians just over 14 000 and the Blacks just over 16 000 at the lower projection and just over 26 000 at the higher projection. These are all the students, White, Black. Coloured and Asian. The University of the Western Cape already had 3 800 in 1982, the University of Durban-Westville 4 800 and the Black universities more than 11 000. This does not include the University of Bophuthatswana, the University of Venda and Vista University. What do these figures indicate? I want to tell the hon. the Minister that we can only assume that the universities which I have mentioned, i.e. the University of the Western Cape, the University of Durban-Westville and all the Black universities, will in the normal course of events continue to increase their student intakes as the year 2000 approaches. Therefore the number of students that are going to apply for registration at White universities are going to be limited from the nature of the case. I have already indicated that the De Lange Committee calculated that there would be more than 100 000 White students at the White universities. The fear of being swamped by Blacks, the fear that the White universities would lose their character or identity if they were allowed to admit students without any restriction, was obviously based on a total misconception.

Because I want to be honest with the hon. the Minister, I have tried to ascertain whether there are in fact grounds for that fear. I have had to come to the conclusion that that fear is indeed totally unfounded. In the light of this, it is unacceptable to me that the hon. the Minister should have introduced a Bill of this nature in this House. There is no valid reason why the quota system should be implemented at this stage. Like the hon. member for Bryanston and the hon. member for Durban North, I want to ask the hon. the Minister, for the sake of everything that is at stake—for the sake of good relations in South Africa, with the English-language universities, the good relations between Whites and non-Whites, the status of our universities at home and abroad—to withdraw this provision in the Bill even at this late stage.

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin with a quotation from a report in Beeld of 4 May 1983, which appeared under the heading “Witsies skop teen kwotas”, as follows—

The last paragraph of the report reads as follows—

It is as though the old debates of 1959 and before, to which the hon. member Prof. Olivier has just referred, had to be reopened and the whole principle of ethnic universities argued all over again in terms of this measure.

I also want to quote at the outset from Hansard of 1959, col. 3167, where the Minister of Education, Arts and Science at that time said the following in a Second Reading speech—

Here it says that the principles were debated over a long period during the fifties and that the 1959 Act gave effect to a certain principle. The Bill which is before us does not violate that principle, but the English universities and the PFP have seized upon this opportunity in an attempt to reopen that whole debate which was conducted on this principle long ago.

Against this background I should perhaps sketch the origins of our universities and discuss the concept of university autonomy.

In its philosophy, its legal structure and its functioning, the South African university system is largely based on the British universities of the late 19th century. As a result, most of the attitudes and customs which prevailed in Great Britain at the time, and which still prevail there today, were taken over by our universities, with regard to the internal functioning of the universities as well as the relationship between the universities and the authorities. Some of the typical British assumptions in connection with universities have been quoted in this debate, and I just want to repeat them—

These are the four points that are mentioned when university autonomy is discussed. This view, which developed in Great Britain during the late 19th century, is still held and defended in South Africa today by our English-language universities in particular. The fact that only one of the four points I have mentioned, namely “who shall be admitted to study”, is to some extent affected by our statutes, seems to be a cause of dismay among our English-language universities and a matter which they are strenuously resisting. It seems that the resistance to this infringement of a particular aspect of university autonomy arises from the great struggle between the British universities and the Church during the previous century. Only in 1871 was a law passed—the Universities Test Act—which removed the last vestiges of the implementation of religious tests for the appointment of lecturers and for the vetting of students in Great Britain. With the abolition of the religious tests, a golden age in the British university system began. The ordinary man was admitted to the university. Merit alone became the criterion in that society. Curricula could be expanded and new courses and fields of study could be introduced.

It is against this background of the enslavement of universities in Great Britain and their liberation in 1871 that we should see the resistance offered in South Africa by the English-language community in particular to the infringement of the principle of “who shall be admitted to study”.

I want to say a few words about the meaning of university autonomy and how this may vary from one country to another. We all know that universities all over the world, and not only those in South Africa, attach very great importance to their autonomy and the freedom in respect of administration and academic affairs which flows from that autonomy. I want to argue that the forms of university autonomy in various Western States and at various universities are not necessarily the same. University autonomy cannot be defined in absolute terms. The norms which apply in one country cannot be transplanted intact to another university in another country. In this way, for example, one cannot have the same norms for university autonomy in an African State, where there is a one-State-one-university situation, as one would expect in Great Britain, where the university system is quite different. I also want to compare this with the meaning which the NP and the Government have been giving to the concept of “democracy” in South Africa since 1948, in the constitutional structures which we are developing in South Africa. I want to argue that the meaning which the concept of “democracy” has for us is different from the meaning which it has under the Westminster system of government. We also believe in democracy and in a system of one man one vote, but we qualify this because our society is different from the society in which the Westminster system developed.

I now want to deal with the present qualifications for the admission of students to South African universities. In South Africa there are two considerations which apply when students are admitted to universities. The one is based purely on academic standards and is implemented by the authorities, by the council or whatever, of the university concerned. The second requirement is concerned with the population group to which a student belongs and comes into operation when someone applies for registration as a student at a university which has not been established for his population group. We know that in such a case, a Minister has to give his consent. But even after the Minister has given his consent, the admission of that person remains a matter for the university authorities. They can still lay down a minimum academic norm for admission.

The admission of students to tertiary educational institutions in South Africa, especially to university, on the basis of non-academic requirements is a very emotional and particularly sensitive matter in the political sphere. In fact, one could say that it is today the most important policy issue in tertiary education in South Africa.

I now want to say a few words about the way in which the pesent status quo in South Africa developed. It is a long story, and I do not want to tire hon. members with all the details. If one wants to understand the status quo in South Africa, it must be seen against the background of the NP’s philosophy with regard to the various peoples in this country. The mandate to govern this country has been given to the NP since 1948. In the fifties the Government realized that all universities anywhere in the world generally had a dual character. In one sense, all universities are universal, and in another sense, all universities also have a national basis. Arising from this, it was realized that since ethnically homogenous States would gradually develop in the Black areas of South Africa, open universities would never satisfy the requirements of the non-Whites, because those universities would give those students a background which would not be in harmony with their own national heritage, but which would alienate the students from that heritage and make them contemptuous of it. Statutory coercion was necessary, because non-White students could be influenced not to register at the university colleges which had been created for them. Furthermore, there was the danger that they could inundate the English language universities in particular. Therefore control by the State was necessary, because the State is the only authority which has the money to exercise control and to ensure that the university colleges that were to be established would take on and develop a national character.

Let us examine the success which has been achieved by means of this policy. The history of the ethnic universities, the history of their development since 1959, testifies to the fact that the concept of community-orientated universities was not built on shaky foundations. Yesterday and today we had legislation before us conferring full autonomy on the University of the Western Cape and on the University of Durban-Westville. These two universities are monuments on the road of the policy of the NP. In fact, I maintain that those universities could not have developed to the level they have attained today if it had not been for legislation passed by this Parliament, if it had not been for NP policy. It can be confidently stated that the establishment of separate university facilities for specific cultural groups which was condemned by so many people and organizations in 1959, has since been proved right in many spheres.

One comes to the inevitable conclusion, therefore, that the only matter on which there can still be any difference of opinion concerns the legal restrictions which to a certain extent hamper the free access of students to universities. No argument is possible any more about the success of community-orientated universities. After all, we have the indisputable proof of their success in this country.

What is the position today? We have the situation at the moment that the Government is still following the same policy and still accepting the same responsibility of providing for separate training for the various population groups. There are still State universities today for which this House appropriates the necessary money; universities which still find themselves in an establishment phase. The arguments which I have advanced with regard to the protection of those universities are just as valid today as in the past.

Without being guilty of repetition, I just want to refer to a few things said by previous speakers in connection with the meaning of the statutory amendments which we are discussing at the moment. The hon. the Minister talked about the administrative advantages, and about the red tape that was being eliminated. In this respect I want to point out three facets. It is clear from this legislation—I am referring to clause 9 in particular; in fact, this is what the whole debate is all about—that the authorities wish to avoid taking decisions at a high level which could equally well be taken at a lower level. This is a very sound principle, of course, because the decision-making body at the lower level then has to weigh the full consequences of its decisions. In fact, it must accept responsibility for them. For that reason, among others, I support this legislation. Furthermore, the central Government retains overall responsibility. The Government has a certain regulatory function and it also has an interest in the actions taken by lower authorities, of course. The central authority has a specific interest in ensuring that authorities at the lower level do not sabotage its general policy for which it has received a mandate from the electorate. Therefore the central authority has the right, in delegating decision-making powers to lower authorities, to give consideration to the provision of statutory security factors. After all, these are merely security factors which are being brought about in order to contain the undesirable results of certain actions by the lower authorities, or even to prevent the lower authorities from guiding developments in a different direction from that envisaged by the central authority.

In the case of the universities, the fact is that the central authority—the NP Government—wants to make university autonomy as meaningful as possible. The Government wishes to give universities the freedom to regulate their own affairs as far as possible. At the same time, however, we must ensure that the development of community-orientated universities is not inhibited.

The third aspect to which I want to refer is the following: I believe that this statutory amendment enhances the meaning of the concept of university autonomy in so far as it is in fact affected by existing legislation, and that this is in fact one of the reasons why it should be supported.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask the hon. member whether he would support the idea that the percentage of students from different population groups should be the same at all universities, or whether certain local circumstances should be taken into consideration which would cause the percentages to vary from one university to another? How would he make these calculations and what would he suggest in this connection?

Mr. Speaker, I should prefer not to answer the question. It is quite an involved one. I should have liked to have received prior notice of this question, which would have enabled me to reflect on it. The question of the quota should be discussed with the hon. the Minister. I believe that it will vary from one case to another.

But why should it vary? [Interjections.]

Mr. Speaker, I did not quarrel with the hon. member for Bryanston. Therefore he should not quarrel with me either. In spite of what he said in this House yesterday. I gained the impression that he was reading from a speech which had been written for him by others. Those long sentences which he read certainly cannot come from a speech prepared by a member of Parliament. [Interjections.]

Finally. I want to quote from an article by a visiting Canadian professor, Prof. Calvin Woodward, which appeared in Politikon. Vol. 7, No. 2, of December 1980. The heading of this article is “One party dominance in democracy: Widening the perspective on the pregnancy of the National Party in South Africa”. The quotation deals with the English population of South Africa. I have great understanding and respect for the English population of South Africa. My own mother comes from an English home, so no one can tell me anything about an English background. The concluding paragraph of this article read as follows—

In this connection I just want to add that they actually try to act as the conscience of the White English speaker. He went on to say—

The English-speaking people in this country have high liberal ideals, which we may concede to them, but the security which they have in this country is due to the fact that the country is governed by the NP.

Mr. Speaker, in a certain sense I want to agree with the hon. member for Pretoria East. To a very great extent past debates in this House in this regard have been repeated. One need only take a look at the debate which took place— the hon. member referred to it—when the Extension of University Education Bill came before this House in 1959. We see there a repetition, to a very great extent, of the arguments we had today. However, it is interesting that at that time evidence was submitted to show that the issue of ethnic universities—tertiary education in universities in accordance with the culture and tradition of the ethnic group in question—was a fait accompli. In this regard I wish to quote from column 3059 of Hansard, 8 April 1959, where the then Minister of Education, Arts and Science said the following—

I think that this is a key sentence in that whole debate. It is also a key approach that the CP still adopts in this regard—that ethnic universities must be allowed to develop to the fullest degree. That is the ideal. By moving away from the permit system to a quota system, however, the governing party is departing from that crucial idea that we all believed in, namely “own” ethnic universities. [Interjections.] The hon. member for Kimberley North asked where the money was to come from. He also asked whether we realized what the cost of a new faculty as well as new universities, and so on, would be. Therefore his principle only depends on the availability or otherwise of funds. [Interjections.] Have we not, over the years, battled with these same matters in respect of the various White universities of South Africa? Have we not told one another that it has become essential that there has to be an engineering faculty at Stellenbosch, as against the engineering faculty at the University of Cape Town, and a medical faculty at Stellenbosch as against the one at the university of Cape Town? Thus a medical faculty has been established at the University of the Orange Free State. This has also happened in the case of other universities, and in this way new universities, too, have been established as the demand for them has grown and as the necessary finance became available.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. member whether he can tell us what, in the meantime, is to become of prospective engineers who are Coloureds before that faculty is introduced at his university?

I shall come to that … [Interjections.]

Order!

Since the hon. members are getting so excited about it, I shall reply at once. We regard the whole matter as an interim measure. It is an interim measure for the purpose of phasing this out and that was the approach. When one studies the history of this matter one notices that the whole approach was that it was an interim measure, that the permit system was an interim measure for use while the other universities and university colleges developed. However, by means of clause 9 we are giving permanence to an interim measure. That is why we say that this matter ought to be phased out. The incentive for those universities to develop themselves to full-fledged universities possessing all the faculties is now being taken away due to this approach.

No, that is not true. [Interjections.]

The hon. the Minister can reply to me in this regard at a later stage. In passing, I want to point out to the hon. member that one of the most important aspects of nationalism—this is really just in passing—is that one must be faithful to the traditions of the university to which one belonged. The university at which he studied has a certain tradition as far as Fridays are concerned, but now I see that he does not comply with it as certain other members on his side of the House do. I put that to him for his consideration—only in a lighter vein. He must not take it too seriously.

That is a good point.

I just hope the hon. the Minister will bear that in mind in future.

[Inaudible.]

The hon. the Minister of Education and Training—I am sorry to say it—is not such a faithful, tradition-bound student of the university from which the hon. the Minister of National Education comes.

Once again I want to outline a few of the principles in which the CP believes. I have already dealt with the first, viz. that we believe in separate ethnic universities for the various groups of South Africa. [Interjections.] We therefore believe that the other universities should be encouraged as far as possible to develop and establish the facilities they do not possess at this stage.

The second principle we believe in is that every effort must be made to give that essential assistance to the developing universities, in accordance with the requirements.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. member what he intends doing about the Chinese group in the country? At what university is he going to place them, or is he going to establish a separate university for them too?

In this regard I can put a question to the hon. members opposite, because the hon. member for Kimberley North spoke about Eskimos and said that no provision has been made for an “own” university for the Eskimos in Canada. The permit system exists due to circumstances.

The second approach is in respect of the granting of essential assistance such as lecturers, administrative assistance, finance and so on. In the third instance, where that assistance is provided and where the opportunity is provided by way of permit for those students to study at White universities or to make use of those White facilities, students will not be entitled to become students at the university of the other population group. They will continue to be enrolled at the university to which they belong and will only be able to use the facilities of the other university. That solves the governing party’s problem at this stage with regard to the quota system and the permit system. The Government’s problem—the problem to which the hon. member for Kimberley North referred—is whether those students who are enrolled at another university in terms of the quota are immediately able to participate in all the other activities at that university. Will they be able to use the sports facilities at that university? Will they be able to participate in the social activities of that university? Will they be able to live in the same hostels and so on? That is the dilemma that the governing party is faced with in this regard.

At the Vista University, facilities have been created for people of colour to attend class and receive an education. I repeat: The approach with regard to this aspect has always been that this is a temporary, a transitory measure which is being implemented while the universities develop further. We therefore reject what the hon. member for Innesdal said here this morning, which is that all universities are open to everyone. I should be obliged if the hon. the Minister would react to that and indicate whether this is in future to be the official standpoint of the NP.

He did not say that they are all open.

He specifically used those words, the universities are open to everyone. Hon. members would do well to look at the Hansard of the hon. member for Innesdal. [Interjections.]

As far as the autonomy of the universities is concerned, I want to say that the standpoint of the CP in this regard corresponds with what the hon. the Minister said about this in his Second Reading speech. We recognize that there cannot be absolute autonomy. We accept the statement by the hon. member for Kimberley North that an institution or body cannot have absolute autonomy within a sovereign State. I think hon. members of the PFP will also agree in this respect, because there was a time when the late Mr. Hofmeyr was Minister of Education when the Minister even had the right to veto the appointment of a rector. That was how the spiritual forefathers of the PFP went in dealing with these matters: A rector could not even be appointed without the permission of the Minister of Education. There was a time when the appointment as Rector of the University of Pretoria of a person like Dr. Nicol was vetoed by the late Mr. Hofmeyr. That was the autonomy championed by the predecessors of the PFP. We have moved away from that standpoint too. However we believe that autonomy is not an absolute and unlimited autonomy. We believe that that would be in conflict with the approach in a democracy as we see it; that the State, the Government of the day, must be able to implement its policy in regard to the universities.

To sum up, our objections are chiefly …

Sir, may I ask the hon. member to explain what he means by it when he says that the State should have the right to have its policy implemented by the universities? In what respect should that be so?

I can refer the hon. member to the Second Reading speech by the hon. the Minister in which he dealt with this aspect. Account must be taken of the Government’s overall policy and the Government’s right to guard over the identity, the character and the tradition of a university and the composition of a people. I think that the hon. the Minister is correct in making that observation.

However, we in the CP are opposed to the provisions of clause 9. We say that by means of clause 9 the identity and character of the university will be jeopardized and we say that this will not constitute an incentive to the other universities to develop and unfold to the fullest extent. Accordingly we cannot support the Second Reading of the Bill.

Mr. Speaker, I listened very attentively to the speech by the hon. member for Brakpan. To my amazement I gained the impression that in fact the hon. member supports the Bill, including clause 9, but simply does not know how to say it. Let us examine what he said. He said that ethnic universities should be put in a position to develop to their full potential. This side of the House cannot differ with him in that regard. I should just have preferred him to talk about some other kind of university, not an ethnic university, because nowadays we no longer speak about ethnic universities. He then said that the permit system was an interim system and that we were now moving away from it. That is not true. In the sense in which he speaks about an interim system, this whole system is still an interim system. One standpoint he put forward with which I must differ is his statement that a student must enrol at one university but study at another university if the university where he is enrolled does not offer the course he wishes to follow. To me this is a somewhat ridiculous idea. It would mean that a student was de facto a student where he was studying, and that is just where the problem lies, the problem that is so accentuated by the hon. members of the CP. However, at this stage I want to leave the hon. member at that. I shall come back to the standpoints of his party in the course of my speech.

The Government of South Africa was placed in power by the voters of the country on the basis of a certain policy. One component of that policy is that there must be separate educational institutions, at the tertiary level too, for the various population groups. That policy has already been implemented and is developing wonderfully. Moreover, this development is very successful. After all, the results speak for themselves. This very week two universities that were established in terms of this policy are being emancipated, and in the debate that took place on them everyone was agreed that these universities had become proud institutions for tertiary education.

Therefore our policy is well-known. After all, at this stage we are not imposing new restrictions on the admission of students of colour who wish to go and study at predominantly White universities. The Government’s purpose in introducing the measure at present before the House is to largely depoliticize, decentralize and facilitate the existing process of the admission of students. After all, it is true that this supplements the autonomy of our unversities, because every individual admission of a student of colour need no longer be submitted to the Minister. Surely this is a simplification and a facilitation of the procedure. I now ask myself why the official Opposition is so violently opposed to the measure. After all, they do not wish to preserve the status quo, or do they? Do they want to perpetuate the permit system? If they do not wish to do so, then why do they want the measure to be read a Second Time this day six months? After all, in effect this means that they want the existing system to continue. We all know that the PFP wants everything in our country open, and open immediately. However, they are unable to achieve this, because the voters do not give them sufficient support to enable them to do so. That is their dilemma. Therefore they ought to make use of the only means that is in fact at their disposal. I think they ought to support the Government when it makes adjustments on the basis of the realities in the country, even if those adjustments are made within the framework of Government policy. If they want to be honest they ought to say that they are still opposed to separate universities and that they confirm that standpoint of theirs anew, but that they support this measure because it represents an improvement on the existing measure. Surely that would be constructive opposition. It would also have an intellectual basis and would have shown that they do not run away from the realities of South Africa. There is no intellectual justification for resisting reality if one is not able to do anything about it oneself. However, they dig in their heels against progress which in their opinion is inadequate, and prefer to accept absolutely nothing. They do not play along. If they are unable to obtain everything they want, then they want nothing. How is one to understand that? Surely that is blind opposition. It is an unacademic and intellectually indefensible approach. The PFP is always trying to project an intellectual image. How then are we to understand them? They are trying to make us afraid. Because we do not do what they want us to do, they say that South Africa degrees will not be recognized abroad, that our students will not be allowed to study abroad, etc. Why should the outside world take stronger action against us if we seek to improve conditions by way of this measure? I contend that the outside world will not act against us if the PFP do their duty and tell the outside world the truth. In the first place, they must tell the outside world that in their eyes this measure is inadequate but that it does represent progress. In the second place, they must tell the outside world that this Government acts in terms of the realities of South Africa and within the restrictions imposed by those realities. They must go on to say that they themselves were unable to do anything about it and could not do any better than they have done because there are not enough people in South Africa who want to vote for them. Since they themselves lack a power base whereby to bring about changes in this country, it would behove them, it would be academic and it would be intellectually defensible to debate the sound measures proposed by this side of the House and to support them. That is all I want to say about the PFP.

I now wish to turn again to my friends in the CP. I want to speak to hon. members of the CP from a milieu with which I am well acquainted. The University of Stellenbosch is situated in my constituency. It is an institution that openly states that it identifies itself with the aspirations of the Afrikaner people. Incidentally, this university is also the alma mater of several of us who are sitting here. When this university was founded there was opposition to its founding. Looking at the history of that time I think that one would also say that in its early years the University of Stellenbosch was a “tribal college” for the Afrikaner. If this university had not been founded and if it had not sought to promote the Afrikaner cause, our country would have been the poorer today. The Afrikaner would then have had a lesser role in the development of an autonomous and self-respecting South Africa, or perhaps he would not have played such a role at all, particularly in the early years. What, then, is the position as regards that university I have just mentioned to hon. members? The position is that the university still strives to be a spiritual home for the Afrikaner. It still is and it will remain so. However, it is realized and recognized that the cause of the people—when I speak of the people. I speak of the people, viz. the Afrikaner people—cannot be served by isolating it. That is why the English-speaking people have always been welcome with us if they have been prepared to accept the character and aims of our university. That, too, is why we are proud that there are many English-speaking former students of the University of Stellenbosch occupying prominent positions in South African society. The University of Stellenbosch recognizes and accepts its responsibility in the broader South African community. For example, it recognizes the demands made on high-level manpower in this country. It recognizes that the future of this country cannot be determined by the Afrikaners and the White people alone. Therefore, where it is able to provide education to non-Whites, education that is not available elsewhere, it accepts its responsibility, firstly, to the student seeking that particular study opportunity, and secondly, to South Africa, that needs that person as a well-trained specialist. It has been doing so since 1978, and as yet it has not forfeited its character. Rather, it has become a more mature and rounded institution that renders a complete and meaningful service to our country and to the future of our country. Students have accepted one another, across the colour bar, and have accepted one another in the spirit that they have been brought together there, and within the framework of the statutory measures that made this possible. In this regard I want to dwell for a moment on the speech made this morning by the hon. member for Koedoespoort. The hon. member for Koedoespoort made a few statements here. He said that the poor Brown students at a White university like Stellenbosch were being deprived of the privilege of full participation in student life. He said that that was taboo for them. He said that the Act discriminated against them. He then asked: Is that right and is that fair? He asks: Must they not be withdrawn and sent to those universities that have been created for them? However, the hon. member for Koedoespoort is not concerned about the Brown students in my town. He cares nothing for them. He simply makes these statements for the sake of a little political capital. In any event, he can leave them to us. We in Stellenbosch will know how to co-exist with them in a decent fashion. Let us test the statement the hon. member made, viz. whether we should not withdraw them and place them at the universities created for them. In 1978, when it was decided for the first time that people of colour would be admitted at Stellenbosch, the University of Stellenbosch had a Department of Physical Education, which the University of the Western Cape did not have. What happened then? Several Coloured men and women have qualified as physical educationists at the University of Stellenbosch over the past number of years and today they are doing valuable work in society. In the meantime a department of physical education was established very recently at the University of the Western Cape and students of colour are now no longer trained at that department at Stellenbosch. Therefore I now put the question to the hon. member: What was to have happened in the meantime with regard to those people who wanted to undergo training in this field? Should we have told them: No, because you are in South Africa and although facilities are available for you, you cannot become physical educationists? That is the problem we are saddled with. We have people whom we are unable to provide with specific facilities in what they call ethnic universities. Are we, then, to leave them out in the cold and tell them that they do not have the right to be trained in their own country? I believe that that is something that they will have to justify.

What will you say now in reply to my question?

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Koedoespoort was sitting chatting while I made certain statements here. I said that students across the colour bar were prepared to live in Stellenbosch, but within the framework of the statutory measures that made that possible for them. When I said that, the hon. member for Koedoespoort was sitting chatting to someone else. That is why he does not know that I said that. [Interjections.] However, I shall leave it at that now, Mr. Speaker.

Let me emphasize that all that we do, we do within the framework of the statutory measures by means of which this is made possible. The University of Stellenbosch and the students that study there, White and non-White, abide by the laws of the land and the customs of our land. Indeed, the university does so without forefeiting or jeopardizing its academic freedom in any respect. After all, basically, academic freedom has nothing to do with the question of whom the university wants to admit as a student and who not. It is unnecessary for me to say this. After all, I know very little about it. Senior academics, for example the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Stellenbosch, stated this very forcefully before a group of students two weeks ago. As I have already said, the University of Stellenbosch abides by the laws of the land, without humiliating itself. The of the university. Prof. H. B. Thom, said the new chancellor following in his inaugural speech on 6 May this year, and I quote him—

That is the standpoint of the University of Stellenbosch. Therefore the University of Stellenbosch will not contend that specific measures will give rise to unrest. In any event, that university will not suggest that by way of advertisement in the public media. Indeed, we believe that that is below the dignity of a university institution. We believe that that is totally unacademic; it does not behove a university to do that. That is the approach of the University of Stellenbosch. That has been that university’s approach even in the most extreme cases, even in the cases where we would not agree with the Government.

As far as the question of autonomy is concerned, the University of Stellenbosch recognizes that in this regard it is limited and that this has always been the case. Moreover, the hon. the Minister put this clearly in his Second Reading speech. In any event, a university is not financially autonomous. Nor is a university a kind of separate little State in South Africa, like the Vatican City in Italy. Moreover, the university is not an ivory tower which is separate from the community in which it has to function. As I have already said, the university recognizes that it cannot operate outside the framework of the laws of the land. As far as I am concerned, full autonomy for universities is a mere myth, a myth which is used by certain people for their own purposes in an opportunistic way.

As a university that is proud of its academic autonomy, the University of Stellenbosch wishes others to have what it has. Therefore that university is not prepared to be part of a process that seeks to rob a proud institution like the University of the Western Cape of its own academic leadership potential. There are separate population groups in South Africa, whether we like it or not. That is a reality and it will remain so in the future. We recognized that and we shall moreover go out of our way to assist in the development of those people. We shall do so, again in their group context, in every possible way. Moreover, the University of Stellenbosch will try to assist that progress so far as it is able and so far as it is permitted to do so.

The permit system is an unwieldy system. It is a cumbersome system. It is time-consuming. It is unnecessary because there are better methods. The measure we are discussing at present provides for a far better system, and accordingly I give it my whole-hearted support.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Stellenbosch spent a great deal of his time at the beginning of his speech expressing his dismay with the official Opposition at the strong stand that we were taking against this particular measure. He then also spent quite a while telling us what we really ought to have said, and what we should be telling people in the international community. I have listened very carefully to his advice and I want to tell him that we reject it out of hand, that we have our own point of view that we have maintained since the beginning when we first had sight of this Bill and that we will continue to oppose the Bill with all the force at our command.

The hon. member also identified himself with certain remarks made by the hon. member Dr. Welgemoed particularly in regard to the advertisements that were placed in newspapers by certain universities. He was making the point that this was not really very becoming to a university and was therefore to be strongly deprecated. The hon. member Dr. Welgemoed, of course, went a great deal further. He suggested in almost as many words that not only was this the wrong thing to have done but that he would also suggest that we take a very careful look at the content of those advertisements. It seemed to me that the hon. member was very close to suggesting that what we ought to do is not only have a quota system at our universities but also censorship. [Interjections.] This follows very carefully along the lines of the remarks made by that hon. member. I should like to put this point to the hon. member across the floor of the House: Is that a correct interpretation of his remarks?

Under no circumstances did I say that. You put those words in my mouth.

Therefore, Sir, the hon. member is opposed to censorship but what he is in fact saying is that we should take a much closer look at the form and the content of the advertisements.

That’s it!

what on earth does that mean? I shall have to leave it to this hon. House to draw its own conclusions from that interjection of the hon. member.

I should like to make one further comment in regard to the hon. member for Stellenbosch. He made the point that we in the PFP should say to the international community—why always to them I do not know—that whilst this is not a perfect Bill it is at least an improvement. This is a very interesting statement. I should like to put this point to the hon. the Minister: Is this a first stage to something that he is going to introduce a little later on? Is this a step in the right direction, as it were? Is he suggesting to this House that one has step by step to take over PFP policy?

I have never said anything like that at all.

No, Sir, we are not suggesting that.

The hon. member for Stellenbosch said it.

The hon. member for Stellenbosch said that this was not a perfect Bill but that it was an improvement as far as the quota system was concerned. When we criticized the permit system, those hon. members defended it, of course, with might and main. Now the hon. member for Stellenbosch says that the permit system is a terrible system and that it is quite wrong. It did not work. He says now that we must scrap it and we must introduce the quota system. I want to say to that hon. member and to the hon. the Minister that the day will come in this House in the not too distant future when the quota system will be scrapped. It will be scrapped because it cannot work and because it is morally indefensible. There is no doubt about that. Within five years that hon. the Minister is going to have to come back to this House and then do you know what is going to happen, Sir? The hon. member for Stellenbosch is going to say: “Well, we always thought that the quota system would not work and this is a great improvement. It is not yet perfect, but at least it is a great improvement.” [Interjections.] That is typical of the response that we have had over the past two days from that side of the House. One hon. member put it this way: “Die universiteit is die spieëlbeeld van die maatskappy”. That was what I heard him say anyway. This was said by the hon. member for Virginia and I am quoting it straight from his Hansard.

I want to suggest for a moment that we take a look at, for example, the University of Cape Town. I want to suggest that we look at where it is situated and at the people whom it serves. It is situated just ten minutes by road from this hon. House on the slopes of the mountain and if one stands on its campus one can see the whole of the Cape Peninsula.

“Die maatskappy”.

That is “die maatskappy”. Thank you very much. That includes the Gardens, the finest constituency in South Africa, Pinelands, the Cape Flats, Langa and Guguletu. That university is in the midst of a multi-racial community and if it is going to be able to mirror the community, the society in which it finds itself, then it ought to be allowed to admit all students who have the academic merit to enter that university.

Will they be able to walk through Pinelands?

They can walk through Pinelands, they can walk all the way from Graaff-Reinet, they can even come on their bicycles and in their motor-cars.

That hon. Minister, other hon. Ministers, hon. members on that side and the Government want to preclude people within the same society. I want to invite the hon. the Minister of Environment Affairs and Fisheries to walk with me down the streets of Cape Town; what will he see? All White? Only Whites in this so-called White spot?

But you want to preclude them from Pinelands.

No. I want that hon. Minister to open his eyes widely when he takes a walk through Cape Town. What will he see? He will see Whites, Blacks, Coloureds …

But why do you want to preclude them from Pinelands?

The hon. the Minister knows full well he is ducking the issue. [Interjections.]

If it is the policy of the Government that a university should be a mirror of the society in which it finds itself, then it is the best reason for scrapping the quota system and saying to the universities that they can allow anyone from that community to come in. The Government lacks consistency in its arguments. It holds up an argument, but as soon as one attacks it, it surrenders that argument and jumps to the next one. Of course the next one, and many, many speakers have advanced it, is the cultural one. Once again the cultural identity of a university must be maintained at all costs, excepting of course the University of Stellenbosch, because if one is an English-speaking White South African one is not barred from that university. One can go there; one is no threat to the culture of that university even though one’s first language happens to be English. One does not need a permit; one is not part of a quota.

Especially if one plays rugby.

Of course, it helps if one plays rugby. What is more, any Black student in South Africa can attend any Black university; that is policy, a policy introduced only recently by the Government. If one is a Zulu one can go to a Xhosa university and nobody is terribly worried that a Zulu is going to lose his culture or his language. When it comes to a so-called White university, however, then suddenly culture is number one and we must maintain it at all costs. It is a dishonest argument. It does not hold water. I notice, as I look around me, a number of hon. members on that side are beginning to nod their heads because they realize what I have said … [Interjections.] … is true. Therefore, both those arguments we have to put aside, because they do not hold water at all.

The hon. member for Virginia, that side’s chief spokesman on education, and I have had many, many debates in this House. What does he say? He says another reason why we have to have the Bill is the maintenance of the structures of South Africa, its forms and traditions. Has he not heard about the new constitution? Does he not see that according to the hon. the Prime Minister and especially according to the hon. the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning the structures are being changed, that one is now introducing Coloureds and Indians into this Parliament?

And you are against it.

No, I am 100% for it. [Interjections.]

Even on a quota system?

I am 100% for Indians and Coloureds being in this Parliament, but I am totally against the quota system whether it be in this Parliament or outside. The structures of society are renewed and reformed according to the hon. the Prime Minister, but when it comes to education, then we must maintain the structures at all costs and therefore we must close the door and we must have a quota system.

Are we closing the door?

Yes, the Government is closing the door to some people who want to go to university. Is that clear?

That is clearer.

That is clearer, but am I right though? [Interjections.] I must answer that hon. Minister’s questions, but he is not prepared to answer mine.

The final reason why that side holds that the State should have the right to interfere—that is what it is doing; it is interfering—is that there is a State subsidy which is paid. I want to make it very clear that it is not the State who pays the universities but the taxpayers of South Africa. There is a very real distinction in that. The remark made by several hon. members on that side of the House is reminiscent of the remark made by the hon. member for Waterberg when he was in the Cabinet. He is on record as saying to the Black students in Soweto: We pay for your schools and we will decide what language medium we will use. That was an arrogant statement and it has been echoed again yesterday afternoon and today.

The final point is that hon. members on that side have tried to suggest that they are not using political arguments but that they really want to stand by an educational philosophy. Of course, that is absolute nonsense. I think the hon. the Minister would be the first to concede that the reason for the quota system stems from the policies of the Nationalist Government. That is the real reason. It is not based on an educational philosophy. He knows better than most hon. members in this House that this is not true. I want to suggest to him that he should stop pretending and just admit that the quota system is a further implementation of the apartheid ideology of the Nationalist Government.

What are the major points? First of all, reference has already been made to the permit system. The present situation is that a person who is not White and who wishes to study at a so-called White university must receive Ministerial consent by way of permit. The new situation is no less offensive than the Ministerial permit because it lends greater efficiency—I concede that—to the application of an ethnically based and discriminating measure. Yes, the Government is applying it more efficiently, but it is not removing the offence one bit. It is against Black students. It is not for anybody, it is against Black students. The quota is racially determined and not on academic grounds. The whole argument, therefore, that this is an educational measure is bankrupt. The quota system is a system which restricts admission on the grounds of race. It is based, therefore, on race classification on the Population Registration Act. When one applies for a permit or when one applies under the quota system one produces one’s birth certificate. That is the kiss of death, as it were, for a young Coloured, Indian or Black student, because the moment he applies he is not asked for his matriculation certificate—they do not ask him how well he did at school or what his symbols were, but he is asked what his colour is. That is the quota system. It is racially enshrined. I do not know how certain hon. members on that side—I can understand it of the majority—have the gall to remain in that party when they continue to go against anything which is real reform and real progress but enshrine racism once again. [Interjections.]

I want to tell the hon. member for Stellenbosch, as well as other hon. members who spoke on this Bill, that this measure, this moving away from the granting of Ministerial permits, compels the university to do the Government’s dirty work. I want to quote from a speech made recently by the distinguished principal of the University of Cape Town. He said—

This measure is an attempt to co-opt in particular the English-speaking universities of South Africa. The hon. Ministers do not want to have to sign permits any longer, particularly the hon. the Minister of Education and Training. He knows he does not like that system. In his heart he knows he does not like it. He reads the letters I and others send on to him. He knows he has to read some heart-rending stories of youngsters who have got their matric certificate, who have obtained entrance to the University of Witwatersrand or to the University of Cape Town, who have got the qualifications and the bursaries and concerning whom the hon. the Minister of National Education then says: “I am sorry, but I cannot see my way clear to allowing him in”. The hon. the Minister does not want to do that, nor does the hon. the Minister of Education and Training. So what do they want to do? They want to say: Let us take it off our shoulders and place it on the shoulders of the university councils and the university principals. The universities now have to do the dirty work which even those hon. Ministers are ashamed to have to continue to do.

What I am saying is that this measure does not resolve the conflict but simply shifts the responsibility. It does not want to take away the hurt, the insult, the anger, but it redirects the onus away from the Government to the universities. That can do our universities no good whatsoever. The reputation of the universities, both here in South African and overseas, will be grievously impaired and bedevilled by this.

The measure before us today is here not because of research done, not because of commissions of inquiry which have done their work and have reported, but despite the HSRC investigation into education. In paragraph 5.7.2 on page 216 of the HSRC’s report it actually recommends that universities should be allowed to admit students of all colours. It actually recommends that, but directly against that recommendation this Government goes on with this measure. It does so despite the university principals who have stated categorically that they do not like the present system of permits and that they believe that the quota system is nothing else but a substitute for that and consequently want no part of it. The Government is proceeding with this despite the universities themselves and despite the Retief Commission which suggested that there should be voluntary integration, to coin a phrase.

Local option.

I shall come back to local option in a minute. I can promise the hon. member that I will give him an answer to that just now. Despite all the factors I have mentioned and despite the man power needs of South Africa, this Government continues with its quota system. It does so despite the fact, as I tried to make clear in a previous debate, that in order for South Africa’s economy to grow, develop and expand we need to find some place where people can get to know one another, understand one another and work together. What better place could there be for this than a university, what better place for our people of higher learning, our skilled people, to be able to find one another and to learn from one another in order to go into our society, our factories, our industries and our commercial enterprises and work together. What we are doing now is perpetuating the system where they are thrown together and expected to find one another. This is direct interference on the part of the State.

What are we to make of this quota system? Where does it come from? What is its inspiration? Where did the hon. the Minister learn of this quota system? From whom did he learn of it? I have done some research. I have looked at this whole concept of numerus clausus or “closed number”, the quota system. Where does it come from? In the 19th Century this was imposed in order to limit the admission of Jews to institutions of higher learning and was applied in the 19th Century by Tsarist Russia and extended in the 20th Century particularly to countries in Eastern Eruope but also to others. It is perhaps not without coincidence that during the rule of Stalin, who came to power in 1948 in the Soviet Union, such a system was also applied. This hon. Minister has learned well from what has taken place in Tsarist Russia and in the Soviet Union. Perhaps the most infamous of all took place in Nazi Germany. I have in my hand an extract from what is entitled the “Hitler decrees”. I want to quote from page 55 of this document. It was issued on 5 April 1933. I quote—

That is the quota system in Nazi Germany. It forms part of laws restricting enrolment in German schools, colleges and universities. In a book from our Parliamentary library entitled Higher Education in Nazi Germany by Prof A. Wolf we read the following—

They had many motives and in fairness let me repeat them all. First of all they did this to try and counter the unemployment of ex-university men. They tried to reduce the number of people going to universities. Hitler wanted to reduce “the evil consequences of study”. Thirdly, he wanted to stifle independent thought. However, he did this mainly so that non-Aryans could be excluded. Certain exceptions were made, in the same way as we have certain exceptions, provided that the non-Aryan did not constitute more than 1, 5% of the students in any faculty. Whenever they admitted a student after the rise of Hitler and the Nazis they had to produce a birth certificate in order to determine whether they had any Jewish blood. This was a racial decree and I want to say to hon. members on the other side that quota system is nothing more and nothing less than an approximation of the Hitler decree.

That is untrue.

It is the truth. Tell me why it is not the truth? Exactly the same approach is being followed here. What I am in effect saying, is that members on that side have sat at the feet of the Soviet Union and of the Nazis and have learned, and now they are introducting a quota system where Blacks are denied entrance into our universities, not on the basis of academic merit, but purely and solely on the basis of race. You explain that to the Coloured people and to the Indian people. We tell them to come and join in our constitution, to come and work in our armaments factories and to come and fight for their country, but that only a few of them can come to the universities of their own choice and preference.

This is a disgrace and I am amazed that this hon. Minister, at this time in our history, has the gall and the audacity to introduce it. I want to warn the Government that it is playing with fire with the introduction of this Bill. The depth of feeling at some of South Africa’s finest universities can be measured by the reaction of distinguished vice-chancellors, university councils, academics and students in many parts of South Africa. This Government is placing an impossible burden on those who have stood up for university autonomy and academic freedom. They are placing an impossible burden on the principals and the administration of our universities. If there is active dissent on our campuses, then the full responsibility must be laid at the door of this Government, and this Minister in particular.

Mr. Speaker, I shall return later to the statement by the hon. member for Pinelands that what is before this House in the form of clause 9 of this Bill is not an improved measure regulating the admission of persons of colour to other universities.

I want to argue that this is not really a method of improving the position. I shall also return later to the hon. member’s statement that persons of colour are being excluded from admission as a result of the so-called quota system. It is not the intention of this Bill to open universities completely. We shall continue to differ on this score no matter how much he complains. It is a violation of the principle and object of this Bill and most certainly does not redound to the credit of the hon. member for Pinelands if he alleges that the hon. the Minister borrowed the idea of the quota system from the method used in Nazi Germany to eliminate Jews. That is a despicable statement, it is a repugnant statement which he made in this House this afternoon.

Why?

It is an extremistic Prog standpoint which is so objectionable that one can scarcely react to it. We reject the hon. member’s view with the contempt which it deserves.

The reaction of the Opposition parties to this Bill reminds me of a group of boys playing soccer next to a rugby field while an important rugby match is in progress. They have no interest in what is really happening. The contents of this Bill make no impression on them. It is probably entertaining to stand on the sidelines, to shout and carry on, but it is definitely a different matter to participate in the game itself. I think that in their argumentation of this Bill the Opposition parties have eliminated themselves in this process of playing the game as far as this Bill is concerned. They stood on the sidelines and shouted, and croaked and carried on as if there were measures inherent in this Bill which would steer this country onto the road to perdition. In the discussion of this Bill both the PFP and the CP maintained the standpoint of outsiders. They shouted and they criticized, but so far not a single speaker on that side of the House has come forward with an alternative solution. Not one of them has indicated what the alternative is which he offers in this delicate and difficult situation.

That is nonsense. Let the universities decide for themselves.

What I have said is true. The hon. member for Pinelands can shout if he likes. He had a half an hour to discuss this Bill and to come forward with alternatives and he did nothing to state those alternatives. It is important to remember that this side of the House has the responsibility of governing the country. In that process of governing the country there are certain inherent responsibilities to which the Government must subject itself and it is not possible to carry on in such a reckless way as both the CP and the PFP did here today. The fact that this side of the House has the responsibility of governing is something which we as the governing party must constantly bear in mind. For the Opposition parties it is purely a matter of political-ideological reasons. The PRP wishes to include everyone and everything in a so-called “open society”, regardless of the other relevant factors which exist in this respect. They ignore all other factors. For example, they ignore the educational factors which have a bearing on this decision-making. The CP on the other hand adopt a head-in-the-sand tactic. They close their eyes and make use of the statement that South Africans are only the Whites in South Africa. As far as they are concerned, no other groups apart from the Whites exists in South Africa. To them the only thing that matters is the accommodation of the Whites here in South Africa.

Each university has its own character. This was emphasized by many speakers on this side of the House. It has its own character, which is not only recognized and ratified by protective measures as contained in the status laws of the various universities but which is also confirmed and stabilized by customs and conventions which have arisen over the years, and which are rooted in the functional activities of the universities concerned. Surely it is true that that character imparts a uniqueness to each separate university. Surely it is also true that that ingrained character forms part and parcel of the greater whole which is located in that university itself. This unique character is a precious possession for each university and must be preserved at all costs. Consequently it is the intention of the NP to intervene as little as possible in that uniqueness.

If we consider the standpoint of the PFP, it becomes apparent that they totally ignore that character and try to reduce them all to one level, where no uniqueness exists any more. These characteristics are inherent in the concept of group affiliation. Because a group of people came together, a university was established. Because a group feeling caused the need to arise, and led to this being identified as a need for a university, the university was established. A university is not first established, and a group of people then attracted to it afterwards. A university comes into existence as a result of needs which arise among a specific group of people. That is also why each university has its own character.

We find universities with a completely English character, and on the other hand, we find universities with a totally Afrikaans character. And then of course we have universities in South Africa which accommodate the needs of both language groups—Afrikaans as well as English-speaking. In this way Afrikaans and English-speaking persons are then accommodated in one university. This is not something we are going to quarrel over. In the same way, of course, there is a university for Coloureds because a need for tertiary education was identified among the Coloureds. And so we also have a university for Indians, as well as several Black universities, universities intended for the education of Black people. With these we have therefore succeeded in meeting the unique needs of the separate population groups. This is where we differ with the hon. member for Pinelands and the PFP. Each group has its own specific needs, as far as tertiary training is concerned as well.

These needs may best be satisfied if the inherent and traditional uniqueness is maintained to the greatest possible extent. If it is broken down, however, if that traditional uniqueness is destroyed, the—character of that university is also destroyed.

Provision is therefore being made for this principle in clause 9. It is sometimes necessary for one to be protected from oneself and this is what is being done in this case. A reckless admission of one group to the universities of another group could harm the most precious quality of the university concerned, viz. its unique character. I think this is the pedagogic principle on which the Bill was based. It is not merely a mad idea which emanated from the hon. the Minister of National Education; it is pedagogically sound and is precisely intended to make it possible to maintain and preserve that precious characteristic of the separate universities. That is why we welcome the restrictions as envisaged by clause 9.

I wish to refer briefly to another important feature of the Universities Act, viz. the procedure which regulates the composition of the Joint Matriculation Board. The board consists of the representatives of the various educational institutions and these are represented on the board as such. Their task is to lay down the standards for university entrance. There are specific, uniformly formulated standards which are laid down by the Joint Matriculation Board on the basis of which the universities may then attract their students.

In the first place it is necessary to have uniform standards; the same standards should apply to all universities. That it can be argued that there is a lowering of standards at some universities and particularly in respect of Black universities is surely ridiculous. It is a ridiculous argument to use. These activities of the Joint Matriculation Board bring about a generality in the education process on which all of us are definitely agreed. It will be interesting to ascertain what the position of the CP is in regard to this statement. To what extent will they accommodate this generality if they are ever in a position to decide?

In the second place it is necessary that there should consequently only be one such institution regulating and determining those standards. Standards for admission to a university in South Africa are relatively high. I want to conclude by advocating that this should continue to be the case. A lowering of standards could lead to overcrowding at our universities. What is even more important, is that it could lead to standards at universities having to be lowered in order to accommodate the masses. I do not think this is the purpose of tertiary education. We should see, in the entire process of tertiary education, the preparation of economically viable human material which could lead this country of ours—which is in a process of development—on to the next phase and further.

Mr. Speaker, I do not propose to try to put across the sort of political diatribe that we have heard here today from some hon. members. If possible, I should like to persuade the hon. the Minister to consider certain changes, preferably by logical means rather than by the screaming and shouting we have heard emanate from other quarters in this House.

At the outset, I should just like to touch on a few points that have been raised. The first point I particularly want to mention is that raised by the hon. member for Pretoria East who stated that the English-speaking people very strongly back university freedom and that they make use of this to exercise their liberal politics. I want to assure you, Sir that not even my worst enemies can accuse me of being a liberal politician and yet I feel very strongly about university freedom. The hon. member also mentioned the factors upon which the English-speaking people base university freedom, namely who is to be taught, who is to teach, what is to be taught and how it should be taught. I think that this is the key to our problem. It would seem to me that hon. members on the other side of the House do not look at this matter from quite the same angle as do the English-speaking people. The first point to be made concerns who shall be taught. As far as we are concerned, this is one of the reasons why we shall not be able to support this Bill. It is clear and unequivocal to us that that is one of the basic university freedoms. If it is the intention to take away the basic freedom of a university, then obviously there can be no compromise on our part in that particular respect. I feel therefore that it is important that we should bear that in mind.

Having said that, I also want to say that at first glance this Bill did give the impression of being an improvement on the existing legislation. Within the political philosophy of this party generally we are prone to say that, if it is an improvement, we shall support it. However, bearing in mind the point I made earlier that this is a total abrogation of one of the fundamental aspects of university freedom, it cannot be an improvement. Something that is totally unacceptable, as my colleague the hon. member for Durban-North pointed out this morning, cannot be improved. I want, therefore to make that particular point as well.

I agree that, in so far as universities are concerned, it may seem to be somewhat better from their administrative point of view to have the quota system rather than the permit system. Several speakers on the Opposition side have however, already made the point that, although superficially this may be so, the disadvantage of their having to bear the opprobruim for administering what they consider to be an apartheid policy more than outweighs any advantage that could be achieved as a consequence of reducing their administrative work. It would seem to me, therefore, that the universities are quite rightly adamantly opposed to this particular concept.

I have a considerable problem with this provision because I have been trying to work out in my mind just why we have to have this provision. Why do we have to have this provision? I should like to pose a few questions to the hon. the Minister in order to see whether we can obtain some answers from him. Do we feel that without this clause opportunities for University education for any group would be reduced? Do we feel that through the removal of this clause the culture of any one group would be polluted? Thirdly, do we feel that association with other communities in universities beyond certain limits would be socially detrimental? Do we believe that university standards would fall? These, I believe, are legitimate questions because there must be a positive reason why this clause has to be included before I can even seriously consider accepting the reasonableness of it.

The only other possibility that I can think of is that the clause is purely a matter of prejudice. That can, so far as I can see, be the only other reason for it. Of course, to a reasonably logical person prejudice is not a reason. I can therefore not accept that prejudice would be reasonable.

As has already also been mentioned, when people—whether they be Coloured, Indian, Black or White—leave these universities and get out into the big world, they very definitely, particularly in the professional field, have to work with one another in the same studios, studies, hospitals and in the same environment on a basis of total equality. Yet their education has been totally separate. Surely, if that is the case—and of course it is—then one gets a situation where they have an in-built mistrust of one another right from the word go. I do not think that that can be to the advantage of anybody.

I will accept that, as a consequence of the establishment of these ethnic educational institutions, which have subsequently become fully-fledged universities, the various communities—Coloured, Indian and Black— have had facilities provided for them which they might not otherwise have had. In other words, their facilities have been increased and improved in comparison with what they were in the past or might have been otherwise. I think any fair and reasonable person must accept that as a fact. However, once these establishments have achieved full university status, I cannot help but feel that the strictures that have been placed upon them in their early formative years should be removed.

As I see it, the key to this whole operation lies in the standards. I believe that one of the genuine fears—it has already been expressed by other hon. members in the House—is the fear that, if one opens the universities on a broader basis or allows for them to be opened on a broader basis, the standards will fall. One hon. member quoted the example of, I think, the University of New York and what an appalling mess resulted there as a consequence of dropping standards. Well, that may well be so. The hon. member no doubt knows what he was talking about. However, the point is that a university is not an island on its own. A university, although it has its autonomy and must have the maximum possible freedom, is still answerable to the people, to the public, and, to a lesser degree, the Government itself.

As a consequénce of an agreement recently reached between the Government and the universities, a system of subsidization is in force, which means that, if the standards of the universities do fall below a certain level their subsidies will be reduced. As regards the question of the bursaries and endowment income the universities receive from various benefactors, if the standards at a university fall below a certain level, there will be very little appreciation for that institution and the moneys will fall away in that category also. If a university has a bad reputation, people will also not want to go to that university so that the university itself will start suffering. If the council of the university are responsible people, as I believe in most universities they are—I know of none that are irresponsible people—then they are certainly going to ensure that those standards are not allowed to fall. The financial situation of these universities is such that, putting it very, very bluntly, in the long term they will not be able to allow that to happen.

As I have said before, we will not be able to support this Bill unless there is a reasonable likelihood of clause 9 being removed and replaced perhaps with another clause 9 which would also amend the offending provision in the existing Act. That is going to be one of our problems. I do not really understand why the hon. members on the Government side are so adamant that this Bill should go through as it is because, if the Afrikaans universities of their own volition wish to impose quotas to ensure, shall we say, the purity of their institution, they are perfectly entitled to do so without this clause. As I have already indicated, I think the other institutions will have to exercise reasonable caution to ensure that, whomever they allow in as students, those students will not be allowed to reduce the standards. Therefore, I just for the life of me cannot see the necessity for this. There is no diminution of the protection of the Afrikaans-speaking universities at all and I am quite convinced that the children of the hon. members on the Government side do for the most part attend Afrikaans-speaking universities. As regards the English-speaking people, I think that generally the overwhelming majority of the English-speaking people have said that they are not frightened of their culture being polluted. They are not in the least frightened of standards being reduced.

They vote for the NP.

They are not worried about these things at all, because they are sure of themselves.

That is why you get 312 votes in Waterkloof.

Please, man! That hon. member looks like Groucho Marx; he must not behave like him as well. [Interjections.] We are not unsure of ourselves. We are absolutely sure of ourselves in the English-speaking community. Therefore we do not feel that this protection is necessary. With due submission, I do not believe that the Afrikaans-speaking community have to be unsure of themselves. The Lord alone knows, over the last 20 to 30 years they have proven their abilities in almost every field. They do not need this sort of protection. So I would suggest that it is not necessary to have this clause. Over many years now we have been suffering as a consequence of a bad sports policy. Now the Government is spending a great deal of time and effort in an endeavour to normalize sport. Let us not make the same sort of mistake with the universities and then within a year or two have to start with the whole dreary business of trying to normalize the situation in respect of the big outside world as regards the universities. If we are not careful, these people who do not like the South African way of life will surely start on the universities and the graduates of these universities. I rather suspect that if we are not very careful indeed, this is the sort of attack we should anticipate.

In conclusion I want to say that it is not necessary to have this clause. The protection is not needed. The universities know perfectly well that they are primarily for a particular group, because everything happens to work that way. I do not think they are so unwise as to wreck their own institutions.

Mr. Speaker, when one considers the question before the House today, one has to go back quite a long way in order to see the matter in its correct perspective. This was indeed what some hon. members did.

The objections to this measure raised by the PFP and the CP, and to a certain extent the NRP as well, were based on philosophical grounds, on a specific view of society or outlook on life. The outcome is therefore largely predictable. If one considers the basic philosophy of each party, its reply to this question is very predictable. The hon. member for Pinelands took us to the steps of the University of Cape Town and let us look out over the panorama stretched out in front of us from that vantage point. All the hon. member saw was people, and he could not perceive that we are dealing here with a diversity of communities. That is the essential difference between us and the PFP, not only in regard to this legislation, but in regard to our entire approach. We see South Africa as a country which consists of a diversity of groups, while the PFP does not wish to make provision for that reality.

You only see racial groups. Are the Doppers also a group?

Within each specific group there are always specific sub-groups. I found it interesting to note that in his speech yesterday, the hon. member for Koedoespoort accused the PFP of having an ideological view of the matter. In contrast, he said, the CP adopted a standpoint on the matter which was based on principle. I found the distinction which the hon. member drew very interesting. The normal meaning of the word “ideology” is usually that it conjures up a picture based on certain premises which have become rigid, with the result that one becomes blind to certain truths. It causes one to take a specific decision, regardless of what the truth in regard to a matter is. In my opinion this is to a certain extent applicable to some of the arguments of hon. members of the PFP. In that respect the hon. member for Koedoespoort was correct. However, when the hon. member described his own standpoint as one that was based on principle, the whole thing no longer made any sense to me. If one considers the arguments which have been advanced during the past few days by the hon. members of the CP, in connection with the other legislation we dealt with as well, it is clear that these standpoints of theirs which they say are based on principle, are mere ideological standpoints. They are obsessed with the requirements of separation and everything has to comply willy-nilly with those requirements.

Mr. Speaker, would the hon. member explain the difference between ideology and philosophy in regard to apartheid?

If the hon. member wants a lecture on that subject, I do not know whether this is the best place for it, because I do not think all hon. members need such a lecture. Nevertheless I shall try to explain it in brief. A philosophy is a specific conception of life, but in a certain sense this description is not practical. It is neither here nor there. It is neither good nor bad. An ideology is, as I have already said, in a specific meaning of the word as it is mostly used, a philosophy which has deviated slightly from reality and has become rigid. I am stating it very concisely and briefly. However, it has the effect of closing the eyes of the person who adheres to that philosophy to specific parts of the truth and in particular makes him unreceptive to any form of persuasion. That is normally the sense in which the word is used.

Before I was interrupted I had been stating that the CP had produced sufficient evidence to show that they, in exactly the same way as the PFP, simply did not wish to recognize specific realities in South Africa because they had a specific view of the matter and that was the end of it. They do not listen to further arguments and do not wish to perceive specific truths. So we are in fact dealing here with two views. On the one hand we have the compartmentalized apartheid idea which the CP adheres to, and on the other hand the open community idea which the PFP adheres to. It is traditional that we have been faced for many years with these two choices. Over the years wisdom prevailed however and it was realized that apart from these two extremes, there was yet another possibility and that was the possibility of communities co-existing in one country without the one dominating the other. That idea is not all that new. This is basically the idea which applies on the international level, the only difference being that it applies under a slightly different set of circumstances as those which apply in South Africa. If one transfers that same idea to South Africa so that every group in South Africa is granted an opportunity to maintain itself in the midst of the others, then the arrangements which are being made to this end are only slightly different to what they are on the international level. It is in this light that we should view the approach of the governing party. It should also be seen in this sense that for an ethnic group to be able to survive properly with its own identity, it requires specific instruments. One could also number educational institutions among those instruments. These educational institutions are very important.

The hon. member for Umbilo, albeit rather reluctantly, conceded at one stage that universities that had been established for the Black people, Coloureds and Indians, had complied with the specific needs of those people; that they had brought those people something which they had not had before. This is a fact; we should accept it as such, he said. I am not quite certain, but I think one of the hon. members of the PFP said the same thing yesterday about the University of Durban-Westville. There is an interesting truth inherent in that as well. After all, what happened here? These universities were established in the face of extreme resistance from the official Opposition of that time, and they had to be protected, protected in the sense that those for whom they were intended had to be channelled to them. Otherwise they would not have become viable of their own accord. It is the same principle which applies when one curtails the idea of academic freedom slightly for the sake of another advantage; the same principle as when, for example, one curtails the idea of absolute free trade by building tariff walls in order to protect a local industry. This is only effective for a time. One cannot go on doing it forever. Now we have reached the stage in which the viability of those universities has to a great extent been demonstrated; a stage at which one can now be slightly more lenient and make the tariff walls somewhat thinner. That is the stage we have now reached.

It may possibly happen that at some point in the future we may reach a stage in which it will be possible to break down those walls entirely without this having detrimental consequences for a single population group. If we reach that stage we shall eliminate those barriers, those tariff walls, particularly if we can in that way achieve the same object we are now endeavouring to achieve, namely to develop an instrument for the use of every cultural group. If we are able to achieve that ideal without the help of these barriers, we shall do so. The erection of barriers is after all not a principle to us. It is merely a means.

Another truth which was uttered here today—I think by the hon. member for Kimberley North—was that academic freedom was an untrammelled search for the truth and for the transmission of that truth as it was found. However, the truth also has a diversity of facets. Separate individuals experience the truth in different ways without any of them necessarily being occupied with a lie. This is particularly the case if one considers how separate cultural communities deal with the same basic truth. So we find that Christianity, for example, manifests itself in a variety of ways in separate communities. Therefore we must afford every cultural group in our country an opportunity to discover the truth in its own way and in its own milieu, and to make that truth its own, and in that way part of itself. That is also why we have to offer them the instruments to reconnoitre, discover and experience that eternal truth against the background of their own cultures.

That is the reason why these universities for the separate population groups are necessary, and why it is also necessary for them to be protected. The hon. member for Umbilo argued that the protection of the English and Afrikaans language universities in this way was not necessary. I shall concede to the hon. member that that would have been a good argument if we had not also been dealing here with a situation of development which up to this stage has been unequal; a situation in which there is a small number of people who academically are highly developed—people with a relatively strong academic background and strong academic institutions—opposed to a large group of people which do not yet possess this strong academic background. Consequently if one did not retain control over this matter, a tendency to inundation could possibly develop.

In so far as the hon. member for Umbilo is correct, we can follow his advice. However, this is something which one will have to do experimentally in order to establish whether it is possible to remove the barriers completely without that inundation in fact taking place. We shall deal with this matter in this way, because it is also true that no fixed quota is prescribed in the Bill. No specific ratio is being created here; the Minister will determine it. He will determine it from time to time in consultation with the university. [Interjections.]

Order!

We shall simply have to find a little more time and discuss matters with one another for a little longer until we are able to co-operate.

As a final point, I feel that I must come back to something which was raised by the hon. member for Pinelands. He broached a matter which I really did not find pleasant when he compared the quota system to quota systems in the Soviet Union, in Czarist Russia and particularly in Nazi Germany. He then wanted to know from us in what respect our quota system was any different, but he himself gave the answer in the sense that he quoted certain points, the purpose of which was to deny specific groups of people access to academic institutions. They wanted to prevent specific people from receiving university training. That is what they wanted to do, but that is not what we want to do.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. member whether in relation to the quota system he has in mind for South Africa, all Coloured people who are academically qualified will be given permission to study as engineers, for example?

Mr. Speaker, if one examines the Bill, one notices that it provides that certain quotas may be allocated for specific fields of study. Consequently, if I consider the present scarcity of engineers in South Africa I am convinced that full provision will be made for all people of colour who wish to study engineering. [Interjections.] The point is that we do not wish to prevent people from receiving either university training in general, or university training in specific fields. The only reason why there is a quota in this connection is to prevent people who wish to study for a B.A. degree, for example, which they could just as well obtain at one of their own universities, streaming in large numbers to other universities. That is the object of this exercise.

Are they a threat while there is no quota? [Interjections.]

That is not what I said. The point I wish to make is that the hon. member for Pinelands said in so many words that we had copied this quota system from, inter alia, Nazi Germany; that we had learnt from them. That is not true, for the whole object with the quota system in South Africa is completely different and the overall effect is completely different. The effect is merely to channel people from one institution to another. If the Opposition is trying to imply in this way that the quota system does in fact prevent people from attending educational institutions, then they are casting a reflection on the universities in connection with which we passed legislation a short while ago. If, by means of the quota system, we say to a person, “You cannot go to these universities; you must go to that university”, then we have not deprived him of an opportunity of acquiring academic qualifications.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have already replied to so many questions that I think I should leave it at that now. I am in the process of completing my speech.

The only “helder” (bright) part about you, is your “kruin” (crown). [Interjections.]

As long as the “kruin” is “helder”, I am happy.

There is just one further point which was raised by various hon. members of the Opposition that I should like to deal with in conclusion. They say that universities will now be expected to do the dirty work of the Government. I really cannot understand that. Those people are in any event highly skilled at neatly shifting the blame for everything from themselves to the Government. Previously when it was necessary to obtain permits, they had to say: “Unfortunately we cannot allow you because the Government does not want to give you a permit”. All they need now say, however, is: “Unfortunately we cannot admit you because the Government’s Act provides that we may not admit you”. That is still precisely the same. That tremendous argument which was built up around the fact that this will harm the image of the universities, is therefore in my opinion unfounded.

I really think this legislation is an improvement on the principal Act. It reflects a more adult development in our society. The arguments levelled against it did not convince me, and consequently I gladly support this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Helderkruin tried to take the hon. member for Pinelands to task for using what took place in Russia and in Nazi Germany as an analogy for what is taking place here today in relation to our university education. The hon. member tried to indicate that there was a difference, because he said, the Nazis were trying to prevent specific people from attending institutions. The point made by the hon. member for Pinelands—and it was very well made—was in fact that the situation in Nazi Germany in relation to university institutions was based on a racial criterion, and this is exactly the same situation that is operating in South Africa in terms of Government thinking at the present time. It is the race of a person that determines whether or not he can be admitted to a particular university institution.

There is a tremendous difference.

The hon. member says that there is a tremendous difference. The principle is precisely the same. What the Government is applying here is a racial criterion as to who should be admitted to a university. This is exactly the same thing that happened in Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

The hon. member must realize that the restriction applies, of course, to both Black and White universities on the grounds of race, because the racial criterion is the dominant criterion which the Government seeks to apply in terms of either the permit system or the quota system. I should like to ask the hon. member for Helderkruin, who dealt with the permit system, whether he is suggesting that in the experience of the Government up to the present there are no Blacks in South Africa who have in fact been denied a university education because of the permit system. Does he suggest that? Can he answer that question? Let me repeat it: Is he suggesting that since the inception of the permit system in South Africa there have in fact been no Blacks who have been denied a university education because of the operation of that permit system?

I have no knowledge on that point. [Interjections.]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member does not have knowledge of that. I can assure him that there are hundreds of Blacks in South Africa who have been denied the privilege of a university education because of the operation of the permit system. This is quite irrespective of the other universities that are in operation.

Nonsense.

The hon. the Minister says that is nonsense. Sir, the hon. the Minister, of all people, says that is nonsense. Is he really suggesting that there are no Blacks in South Africa who have denied a university education because of the operation of the permit system?

Not in meaningful numbers. [Interjections.]

The fact is that there are Blacks who have been denied the privilege of a university education because of the operation of the permit system. I think every hon. member in this House, certainly every hon. member on this side of the House, have had people coming to us to ask for assistance, people who have been denied a permit to attend university and thereby they have been denied university education. Hon. members must therefore realize that this sort of system, based as it is on racial criteria, does operate in a way which is totally detrimental to the interest of large sections of the South African population.

The hon. member for Helderkruin also indicated that the objections of this side of the House were based on philosophical grounds and therefore were predictable. He said that the hon. member for Pinelands simply sees people when he looks at the university situation, as if there is something wrong in seeing people when one is thinking in terms of students who are attending a university. The hon. member said the National Party sees a variety of communities. In other words, the hon. member has shown so clearly by his own words that he is totally tied and hide-bound to a political ideology, even when he approaches a matter such as university education. This is what we are dealing with here. We are dealing with the universities and their right to decide whom they should admit. It is not a case of deciding as communities, but a case of deciding as people, as students wanting to enter a tertiary education institution. I want to tell the hon. member that our attitude is based on the generally acceptable principles of universities throughout the civilized world through the ages, namely that the university should have the autonomy to decide for itself who should attend that institution. The hon. member wants to support some different sort of institution. Let him do so, but for heaven’s sake let him not say that he is talking in terms of what is accepted as a university throughout the civilized world.

If one looks at the way in which academic freedom is looked at throughout the civilized world one cannot in any way equate what is being done in this Bill with the standards and norms of universities anywhere in the civilized world. It is ironic that the hon. member should also say that we on these benches do not recognize the specific realities in the South African situation. That is totally ironic because it becomes quite clear as hon. Government members speak in this debate that it is they who are living in some sort of strange cloud-cuckoo-land, totally removed from the realities of the situation in South Africa. They claim, the same as the hon. the Minister does, that on an issue like, this universities must be subject to or subservient to the general policy of the Government. I believe that is a totally frightening thought when one comes to deal with universities in South Africa. I will come back to that argument during the course of my remarks.

I want to say that the comments of the hon. the Minister in his introductory speech, and of hon. Government members throughout this debate, on the autonomy of universities would be depressing in any circumstances because those comments epitomizes very much the fact that their thinking on the status and rights of universities is so very far from the norms of the rest of the civilized world. That would be depressing in any case. However, what makes this debate even sadder and more depressing is that in this time of alleged reform in South Africa there has in fact been no basic change in the attitude of the Government since 24 years ago when university apartheid was first introduced.