Mr. Speaker, not the least interesting aspect of the address given yesterday by the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) was that portion of his speech wherein he sought to justify the discrimination which is taking place in the Transkei, and which was complained of by the hon. member for Transkeian Territories (Mr. Hughes), and when he sought to justify the discrimination which was taking place against the White owners of trading licences in that area: and he did so despite the fact that those people find themselves now, through no wish of their own, and by an act of this Government, in a Bantu homeland which has been forced to become self-governing. So we have reached the stage that people established in their businesses under previous Governments, legally and legitimately established, are now to be discriminated against by the emergent Black Governments, with no redress at all, because such discrimination, in the words of a senior Government spokesman, the hon. member for Heilbron, has the positive approval of this Government. That is the effect of his speech. The key issue then that faces us now. and particularly the issue which faces the young people of this country, is: Where can they safely settle and establish themselves and their descendants and be sure that they will be free from interference in the future by a Black Government established by the Nationalist Government. That is the issue, and my friends opposite will say to me that of course the answer to that question is simple; they should establish themselves in the White homelands and then they need not fear any discrimination against them by an emergent Black state established by this Government. But then the question arises: Where are the White homelands? And more particularly, where are the White homelands in Natal? And, to be more specific: Where are the White homelands in Zululand? Unless, as the result of what we have heard in this debate, you establish yourself in an area which is clearly a White homeland, clearly and specifically demonstrated to be a White homeland, then you are liable to find yourself being discriminated against by a Black Government with the approval of this Nationalist Government. It is no use hon. members opposite saying that you are perfectly all right if you are established outside the existing Native reserves, as they exist at the present time, because they may not be the future Bantustans. It is no use their saying that because we know that it is basic to the hon. the Prime Minister’s case and to the majority of members opposite that there must be consolidation and expansion of the Native areas. We know that from the Tomlinson Commission’s Report. We know it from the speech of the Commissioner-General for the Xhosa people when he spoke with reference to the Ciskei and said that they could not have their territorial authorities until their area had been consolidated; and we know that from the speech of the hon. the Prime Minister himself, particularly that speech in 1962 when this new policy of Bantustans was enunciated. Indeed, so far as my own province is concerned, over two years ago a commission was appointed specifically to deal with this issue, the consolidation and the realignment of the Bantu areas in Natal. That was eight months ago. I see the Minister of Lands is present in the House. I had hoped to hear from him yesterday when the contents of that report would be made public, and when it would be laid before this House. Perhaps the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration will come into the debate and tell us when the contents are to be made known, seeing that the Minister has been studying that report for over eight months now.

In view of the trend of events in this debate it is not surprising that this no-confidence debate has been so different from the others that have taken place since the Prime Minister’s announcement of separate sovereign states in 1962. For the first time since I have been in this House—and I have been here for about three years—before the end of the second day of a no-confidence debate we have had four Cabinet Ministers in the debate, not to expound Government policy, not to tell us the direction which that policy will take and the manner in which it will be unfolded to the public: not to expound this policy which hon. members opposite say has the support of the electorate and of the Bantu people, but to conceal it, as though they had no confidence in it, a rearguard action of immense proportions, with two exceptions, one by the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and the other the unforgettable speech made by the hon. member for Heilbron.

First the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration made a major policy statement yesterday to the effect that it was the policy of the Government to abandon sovereignty over large portions of South Africa.

Shame!

It is a major policy statement, to abandon sovereignty over large parts of the country in favour of alien control, and I use those words advisedly, because the hon. members do not regard the various races and peoples of South Africa as being part of the South African state. They are separate nations, Sir. So to abandon sovereignty to one of those nations is to abandon it to alien control. I believe that is putting it fairly. It is curious that this major policy statement never saw the light of day in the S.A.B.C. reports this morning. I have no doubt that when the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs hears of this he will see that that oversight is put right, and this major policy statement, which I am sure the hon. members on the Treasury benches will want the country to know about, will be put right as far as the radio is concerned either to-night or to-morrow morning.

The other exception to this rearguard action was the speech made by the hon. member for Heilbron, who, I am glad to see, is now in the House. He explained with a picturesque phrase the manner in which the Transkei would become independent. His words were: “Jy se nie vir die appel Ek het nou besluit jy is ryp’ nie; hy sal self besluit”.

Look at my Hansard.

I have the Hansard in my possession. I have read out to the House a quotation from the hon. member’s Hansard. [Interjections.] “Jy se nie vir die appel, Ek het nou besluit jy is ryp’ nie; hy sal self besluit”. [Interjections.]

Order!

Nobody in this House could have illustrated better or more graphically the fears expressed by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition in so far as the development of the Transkei and other Bantu states are concerned. The Leader of the Opposition said that we would lose control of the time-table, and that the emergent Government would itself decide when it wants sovereignty. That is illustrated precisely by the example given by the hon. member as to what will take place. But it went further. That graphic illustration by the hon. member illustrated the other fears expressed by the Leader of the Opposition. An apple, when it becomes ripe, either turns red or yellow, and the way the Leader of the Opposition expressed it was that red stood for Communist Russia and yellow stood for Communist China. I do not think we can express it better than did the hon. member for Heilbron. The lesson to emerge from this expression of Government policy is this, that an apple ripens at its own pace, and it drops off the tree of its own volition, and no one can tell whether or not that apple has a worm in it. In referring to the policy statements both by that hon. member and the Deputy Minister, we are dealing with persons who by their office indicate that they are in the confidence of the hon. the Prime Minister, and so we are entitled to assume, therefore, that the sentiments expressed by those gentlemen have his approval.

Now, during the reply by the hon. the Leader of the House to the speech of the Leader of the Opposition he sought to taunt the Leader of the Opposition by saying that whereas the Leader of the Opposition has made general charges of maladministration in respect of the Government, particularly in the sphere of communications and transport, he had not sought to illustrate that by reference to any examples. I propose in the time at my disposal to remedy that situation, if it needs remedying at all, and as one can remedy it only by giving examples, and as examples must naturally relate to specific areas I shall be obliged to refer to specific instances which are within my knowledge. Now, I shall speak of communications in the broad sense, to include telecommunications, transport, and road communications, and I shall also deal with railway communications. The examples and the figures I give are actual. Now, there is a great deal of timber grown on the North Coast of Natal. There are in that area magnificent forests worth a great deal but worthless unless the timber can be delivered to the buyers. At one loading point which is within my knowledge, an important loading point for that industry, I have been able to find some interesting figures in regard to the Railways. There are five loaders at that point. Their daily requirements in respect of trucks to remove their timber are as follows: The first loader has a daily requirement of ten trucks. Over a period of five months last year, his requirements being ten, he got 3½, on an average. The second one, requiring 12, got 5½. The third one required 61, but got 33, and so it goes on through the whole list. The result is that over that period of five months, at this one major loading point, with a daily requirement of 93 trucks, they in fact got 47, a shortage over that period of 5,060 bogie trucks, and that is only at one loading point in a major industry. As the result of that, these five loaders had waiting at the loading site over 81,000 tons of timber, lying idle because the Railways could not transport it. I may say that these loading sites are rented from the Railway Administration at rentals which were substantially increased last year, against the protests of the industry concerned. Not only has this meant a substantial loss to the growers, but it involves a tremendous disruption in the working of those plantations.

Let me give another example, this time related to the sugar industry, and again these figures are actual. I have the figures of one large mill on the north coast, taken over a five-week period at the height of the crushing season. And when I speak of a mill, Sir, I am not speaking of a little tin-pot show but of a R10,000,000 enterprise working for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and for which a stoppage of one day means a loss of tens of thousands of rands. Now over a period of five weeks in respect of one of the railway lines feeding this mill there were 433 trucks required to feed it but not placed at the sidings at all. The intake of that mill was cut by over 12,000 tons as the result during that five-week period. Now, why were these trucks not placed? I have the actual reasons here. On 1st July a train was cancelled because there was no staff to run it. On 9 July a train was cancelled because there was no engine to pull it. On the 17th two trains were cancelled because there were no engines to pull them. On the 22nd a train was cancelled because there was no locomotive to pull it. On the 31st a train was cancelled because there was no staff to run it, and on the 3rd of the following month a train was cancelled because there was no locomotive to pull it. In addition to the trucks simply not being made available to the farmers to be loaded with cane, over the same period 1,400 trucks never reached the mill on schedule, because either the trains were so delayed that they never got there to keep the mill going, or there was such a lack of locomotive power that these loaded trucks were left at sidings all along the line because there was nothing to pull them. At this time I may say there was in the vicinity concerned for the period of the whole of the recess two locomotives standing on their tails facing each other on the railway line, having had a collision, and for a substantial portion of the recess two other locomotives were lying on their sides because there was no equipment to put them right. The large industrial enterprises are not the only people to suffer as a result of this. The individual farmer suffers enormously, because in every case I have dealt with in so far as the sugar industry is concerned labour has been sent anything up to five miles to the local siding to wait for trucks, and they sit there waiting all day for the trucks to arrive, and in every instance the trucks never arrived, with the result that that labour is lost for the day, resulting in a wastage. That is not the fault of the men on the spot. I wish to emphasize that. The staff on the spot perform a wonderful job under the most impossible conditions. The fault lies with the planning at the top with the Minister, or the lack of planning at the top. There appears to be no planning ahead at all, and the position is snowballing, because the worse the position gets in regard to the shortages, the worse becomes the position of the railway staff, because they are placed under increasing pressure. It is no use saying, as I have no doubt hon. members opposite will, that this is all due to the boom in our economy at present. If hon. members believe, as I think they do, that they are responsible for this boom in our economy, then they are guilty of not having planned accordingly to meet that boom; and if they do not, I believe they are equally guilty for not having seen it coming. I believe one can say that, because private enterprise saw it coming. Private enterprise in the form of banks, shops, etc., every branch of private enterprise which renders service to the public, has been able to accommodate itself to this boom and has been able to give services to the public in spite of the boom, unlike, of course, of the Government services, which have fallen far behind, and in particular the Railways and the Post Office.

Now let us come to the field of telecommunications. I believe I get as much post as any other hon. member in this House, and by far the greater part of that post consists of complaints in regard to the postal services, and in particular the country telephones. It is nothing to wait for anything up to three hours for a call to a place within 100 miles of Durban. I have personal experience of two instances where a call was put through from a place within 100 miles of Durban to Durban, and the people concerned got into their cars and travelled that distance before the call went through. I have two specific instances of my own where calls were put through to towns within that 100-mile radius, and in one case the delay was four hours, and in the other case the delay was indefinite and the call never went through. Now, take the party lines in the country areas. The over-loading has reached the stage where, in order to do business on the line, one has to set aside a morning to sit next to the telephone. Sir, we cannot go on like this. The cause is twofold. It is partly a lack of equipment and it is partly a lack of staff, and the reason why there is a lack of staff is because there is no accommodation.

Order! There is a motion on the Order Paper in this regard and I cannot allow the hon. member to go into that aspect too deeply.

Then I will finish off that aspect by saying that if the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs wishes to staff his country telephone exchanges he will have to find accommodation for those people. Otherwise the position will be impossible. I may say that we have reached the stage where these matters cannot be corrected departmentally, and that is why it is necessary to raise them in this House.

Now, what about the conditions of service which apply to all Government Departments? Here I have no better authority than the publication of the public servants known as the Public Servant. In an editorial this year this is what that organ had to say—

I do not know what better proof one can have to substantiate this no-confidence debate so far as the public service is concerned than that.

Now let us go into the question of national roads, these days perhaps one of the most important aspects of our communications. We have in the same area I have been describing, the north coast of Natal, a route declared to be a national route, the one linking Durban with Swaziland and Mozambique and with the Eastern Transvaal, a route which goes almost entirely through a White farming area which is developing faster than almost any other area I know in this country. If one approaches the National Transport Commission, the position is that there are no funds to build that road for the foreseeable future. The money in the Road Fund has been given priority under the direction of the Minister of Transport, which precludes that road being built as a national road for the foreseeable future. But when we come to deal with the Bantustans, things are rather different. Last year, towards the end of the Session, we were able to extract from the hon. the Minister an admission that some R197,000 was being paid, not from the Roads Fund but from the revenue of the Department of Transport, to make national roads of all the major routes in the Transkei, as a matter of strategic importance. These roads, on the admission of the Minister, had been investigated and had been given such a low priority by the Transport Commission, under the Minister’s guidance, that there was no hope of them being built as national roads for the foreseeable future. But because the Government came to the conclusion that they were of such strategic importance that they had to be built straight away, this initial sum of almost R200,000 was granted as a prelude to the tens of millions which still have to come. Now, what an admission that is! [Time limit.]

Mr. Speaker, I had not intended participating in this debate because the few matters mentioned here which concern my Department have been replied to very effectively; but in the second place because what I have heard here during the past few days I have already been hearing for the past 20 years, and for the past 20 years I have already been giving replies on those matters. I must say that the United Party reminds me very much of an old horse I had. Through some freak of nature he had no teeth but only a few stumps. The Bantu have a saying to the effect that a horse’s brain is in its teeth. That is equally true of the United Party. All they came to light with were a few little stumps, but no teeth. Now they will say yes, but such a horse can kick. I do not know how far this is scientifically correct, but I have been told, and I noticed it myself, that a horse born like that cannot even kick, and that is also what we have seen here during the past few days. We have not even had a kick from the opposite side of the House. They did not even say a single word about that federation plan of theirs. They did not even come to light with an alternative policy. They were afraid and ran away from it. But this old horse of mine also had another characteristic. As the result of this defect it used the whole farm as its grazing field, as well as the neighbours’ farms, with the result that the Bantus later gave it the name Hamba-honk-hdwawo, which meant that it grazed everywhere. When the Leader of the Opposition was busy grazing over the whole field I could not help but be reminded of that horse. It not only grazed over the whole field, but also on the neighbouring pasturages. But this old horse also had another characteristic. It always searched for long grass, with the result that the other horses discovered this and went out grazing with it, but then it showed enough intelligence to evolve a plan. It flattened its ears and swished its tail into the air and made a few unearthly noises and ran as fast as it could. Every farmer will tell you that if a horse does that it is a warning to the other horses to flee for their lives: and the other horses fled, but this old horse ran just a little way and then returned and resumed grazing. Then the old horse-herd told me that the first day it did that all the horses ran with it, but the second day only half of them ran, and the third day not a single one ran along with it. That reminded me of the tactics of the United Party, because when the Leader of the Opposition and other hon. members were speaking here we again had the old tactics of ghost stories and scaremongering. They started with this in 1953 and I must honestly admit that many people then agreed with them and voted for the United Party, but in 1958 very few people took any notice of it, and when we became a Republic I doubt whether any people at all took any notice of it. But now the United Party comes along with the same tactics, except that this time, apart from all the other stories, they now grasp at Communism in order to frighten the people. These Bantu areas are now supposed to be the breeding places of Communism. The Leader of the Opposition blamed us because some communists escaped out of prison. Was that not the same party which opposed us in regard to that legislation? But one thing was not done here, and I wondered why it was not done. I had expected to see those maps of 1953, large maps which were distributed right throughout the country to show what the country would look like if the National Party came into power, with the whole of Southern Africa pitch black, including the Protectorates. That is what South Africa would be like under the Nationalist regime, and then they came along with their own map, snow-white, to show how it would look if they were in power, and on that map not even one little Kaffir was to be seen in the whole of Southern Africa! But fortunately they have learnt a lesson and have not again come to light with a map, although I still expect that they will try to frighten the people in the same way again. I just want to tell those hon. members that by this time the people take not the slightest notice of that scaremongering.

I just want to pause to deal with a few matters for a moment. We have had reference here to the development of the Bantu areas. Enough has been said on that subject. If I have to discuss that subject it will take me all day, but I just want to make this statement. In the first place we note with appreciation that there has at least been a change of attitude on the part of the United Party in regard to the development of the Bantu areas. The Leader of the Opposition said that he offered last year to co-operate in the development of the Bantu areas. But I can compile a big book to prove how the development of the Bantu areas has been depicted to the public as the greatest danger to the Whites, and that we are busy undermining the trade and everything else of the Whites. I can compile a book of all the scaremongering which has been indulged in. I am glad that we have at least made a little progress in this regard. But I just want to say one thing. Where the Opposition is prepared to cooperate in the development of the Bantu areas, they must just remember one great truth. They must remember that the development of the Bantu areas does not consist only of the development of the soil and of the cattle and the development of the human being merely as a human being. It also lies in the development of his cultural riches, and in the development of his forms of government. Those are things which lie near to the heart of every person in the world. One of the big mistakes which was made in Africa, and which aroused a form of hatred towards the Whites in Africa, is that this was not borne in mind, and this is where the Nationalist policy stands out as an example for the rest of Africa. I just want to mention this fact: Some time ago there was a very prominent Bantu here who was not well disposed towards us, and after he had travelled through South Africa he did not hesitate to say that South Africa was the only country, and that we were the only people, who also recognized the soul of the Bantu;

that our policy was the only one which was not aimed at destroying the soul of the people, but at recognizing it. That Bantu quoted a very good poem which I just want to read to the House, a poem which was published under the pseudonym of “Anonymous Black Prints”. It reads as follows—

• White wisdom you, White man, have brought me,
• But what has it brought to my heart?
• Hate of my father’s customs,
• Hate while I play my part,
• A mimic king in a land that sleeps,
• And my heart for the sake of its dead Dreams, weeps—DEAD.

That is what comes from the heart of a Bantu when in the rest of Africa he is forced to see that his national soul is being murdered, and where his imagination is fired by a policy which at least grants recognition to the soul of the people.

The development of a nation consists of a number of facets which should be borne in mind, and a policy which does not bear that in mind is doomed to failure. The United Party still makes the great mistake of seeing the Bantu particularly as a mere labourer, as a person who is entitled to nothing more. Just think of the sneering remarks which have been made here in regard to the culture of the Bantu. However, I do not wish to deal with that now.

Mr. Speaker, there are members of the United Party who say that we have made no progress in regard to the development of the Bantu areas. Here I particularly wish to refer to the hon. member for Pinelands (Mr. Thompson). I should like to give a little advice to that hon. member to-day. That advice is contained in an old English adage which I think is of great value. I do not apply it to him, but when one makes a statement it is always necessary to bear that adage in mind in order to ensure that one’s facts will not be quite wrong. I refer to the adage that fools rush in where angels fear to tread. I repeat that I am not saying that he does so, but I just give him this advice, that before making a statement he should first remember this adage. It is of great value to all of us.

I am going to make the statement here today that in regard to the development of the Bantu areas we have made fantastic progress. I could pause here to quote the conviction of experts who have visited our Bantu areas, and what their impression is of many places where we really opened up large areas of land and practically created new country. I think we can all be grateful for the progress made here.

Please give us the facts of the Transkei.

I will come to the Transkei. But, Sir, there is another very important principle which hon. members opposite will not bear in mind in their policy, and that is the principle of national units. Here we have one of the great injustices committed by the White man vis-à-vis Africa—let us frankly admit it—by simply drawing lines left and right and dividing up national units into two or more groups. There will never be peace in Africa before it is demarcated on the basis of national units. That is my firm conviction and I think it is the conviction of everybody who has devoted attention to this matter. There is the clear example of Nigeria. Everybody sat watching Nigeria in great expectation because there at least they did what we are also doing in South Africa, namely, acknowledging the conservative elements. But I want to make this prediction here to-day, and you will remember my words, Mr. Speaker. It is just a question of time before there will be an outburst in Nigeria. There will not be peace in Nigeria before it is divided up into at least its three main national units. To-day there is no peace in Nigeria, but a smoldering suspicion and hatred which goes much deeper and is much greater than most people realize.

Therefore I now come to the policy of the United Party which has repeatedly been expounded here, namely that we should differentiate between the Bantu in the Bantu areas and the Bantu in the urban areas. But, Mr. Speaker, if we did that we would be committing the same injustice towards the Bantu of South Africa that was committed in regard to the other Black states of Africa. Is it not an immoral act to tear asunder the unity of a nation? Is it not the duty of a guardian, the duty of any White man who really has the interest of the Bantu at heart, rather to create ways and means of establishing the unity of the nation? This is one of the things which lie very deep in the life of a nation. We have many splendid examples of this even in our church life. In our church life in South Africa this mistake was also made in the missionary work in earlier years, but it caused a split between the Christian and the ordinary man, with the result that missionary work was made more difficult; in many places murder was committed on such a scale that eventually this policy had to be abandoned. But why is there so much hatred for the English Church to-day in most African states? Here I mention Ghana particularly. Do hon. members know in those states a bitter hatred exists towards the English Church, that church which follows the policy of equality? What is the cause of that hatred? It is this fact, that there the English Church always tried to take the westernized Bantu into its own White church instead of developing his own church for him. That is the cause of that hatred, and it is not I who say so. I am sorry that I did not bring along a certain book to read to hon. members in order to prove that this is the conviction of more than one expert in that sphere. I just want to say that there are various Roman Catholic churchmen who also hold the view that a mistake was made as far as that sort of approach was concerned.

Hon. members have always told me that I was talking nonsense when I said that the Bantu in the cities were still connected to their own homelands. One finds that even here in Cape Town. How many times already has than statement not been disputed in this House? I want to ask hon. members to read a book which has appeared just recently. I refer to the book of Dr. Sheila van der Horst, “African Workers in Towns”. A survey was made by one of the firms which, according to her, pay their Bantu workers the highest wages. In most cases they are Bantu who have been living in Cape Town for ten years already. There is no case where the Bantu concerned has been living in Cape Town for less than five years. Experience shows that only 20 per cent said that they would like to remain in Cape Town permanently. The other 80 per cent said that they wanted to return to their homelands. She says what she cannot understand is that 37 per cent of them are people who have families, who have their wives and children here; nevertheless they said that they wanted to return to their homelands. Now what of the United Party’s proposition? Sir, one cannot divide a people. We would be making a big mistake if we were to abandon that principle.

There is another matter with which I should like to deal. It has again been repeatedly said that the policy of apartheid has failed by reason of the many Bantu who have come streaming into the White areas. We have already been discussing this matter here for the past 20 years. My predecessor repeatedly stated that there would be an increase in the number of Bantu in the White cities …

Until what year?

Only in 1978 will there be a flowing back to the Bantu areas. [Laughter.] Sir, I have often heard that type of laughter. In many cases hon. members opposite no longer laugh at statements made by this side of the House, statements at which they laughed in the past, because it has been proved that those statements were true. I myself have stated repeatedly that there would be an increase in the Bantu in the White areas. Only when the Bantu development in the Bantu areas is in full swing will there be an attraction in that direction. I can state to-day that this process, that flowing back of the Bantu to the Bantu areas, is already in progress to-day. I can give hon. members numerous examples of medical practitioners who are practising in the White areas and who packed up and went to the Bantu areas. They tell me that they are happy there; they are very happy there and do not wish to return to the White areas. [Interjection.] The hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) should keep quiet. She should rather go to Arenstein.

Mr. Speaker, how many Bantu traders have not gone to the Bantu areas in recent times? That movement is already in progress. We have no doubt that as this development takes form, to that extent the flowing back will increase, and I want to say here that we have every reason to be very proud of the phenomenal progress we have made in the last few years in regard to the development of the Bantu areas. Hon. members of the Opposition get up here with pious faces, particularly the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, and he says that this policy of apartheid is nothing else but the old colonial policy. Just imagine a responsible man making such a statement—that it is the old British colonial policy.

That is just what it is.

And they are the very people who repeatedly got up here some time ago and told us: “Our policy is the same as that of the federation”.

That is not true. Who said that?

Robinson.

They should not now pretend to know nothing about it. Hon. members got up here and said: “There is the moral of Cyprus; our federation plan will work as it works in Cyprus.” Now let hon. members ask me who said that! But how many of them got up here and said: “Look at the success of Nigeria, and of Ghana”.

Never!

My hon. friends’ memories are very short. But let us just analyze the matter for a moment. Every policy has certain qualities and one of the main characteristics of the old British colonial policy is that it did not recognize the culture of the Bantu; that it tried to force the culture of the White man on to the Bantu. Is that not precisely the policy followed by the United Party to-day? But another objective was this: Divide the people and let them shout and say what they like—just as the United Party today wants to divide the Bantu into those in the cities and those in the Bantu areas. Surely this is a matter of principle—the principle of national unity. But let us take another example, the important example of self-government based on their own institutions. The old colonial policy took its pattern from Downing Street and sought to force it on to the Bantu everywhere, with the exception perhaps of one or two of those colonial officials with very clear vision. But with the exception of those few officials, all the others simply forced that same pattern on to the Bantu. And what does the United Party want to do to-day? Precisely the same thing. Is it not they who have consistently accused us of wanting to send the Bantu back to the bush? I wish I had the time to deal this afternoon with this matter and to remind hon. members how they repeatedly tried to depict our policy overseas as a policy of oppression; how they said that we were a police state and what is happening now? When a communist escapes from prison, they attack us and want to know why we did not prevent it. But they did not want him to be arrested.

They allowed them in Parliament.

Yes, there we have an example. One of them was in Parliament. He himself said that he should not be in Parliament, but the United Party said: No, you should be in this Parliament.

I just want to pause for a moment to deal with the hon. member for Transkeian Territories (Mr. Hughes). We heard his speech here yesterday. Let me say immediately that it was a desperate speech, the desperate speech of a desperate man. It was desperate in the first place because it was so bitter for him to see how the National Party’s policy of separate development is blossoming into a splendid thing. He finds that hard, particularly in view of the fact that he is the man who went around frightening people so much. But he is a desperate man in the second place because he is to-day one of the unpopular people in the Transkei, unpopular among the Whites in the first instance, because there are numerous people who to-day say that there are few people who have rendered the Transkei such a disservice and who have done as much harm as that man, Mr. Hughes. There are many people who will say to you: There are many places here where industries would already have been established had it not been for that man, Mr. Hughes. That is how he frightened them. On one occasion when I paid a visit there they told me that the banks would not even lend money to people any more.

Which one?

All the banks there.

Did you go to Volkskas there?

I think I still have a letter which the hon. member wrote me in regard to this matter.

Yes, in regard to a farmer, not a trader.

I made a special point of getting into contact with those banks, and they then showed me that they were lending larger amounts to people than formerly. They have confidence in the policy of the Government; they do not listen to the hon. member for Transkeian Territories. But the hon. member is no longer a popular man among the Bantu there either. These continuous attacks on Matanzima are unfair. All kinds of things are being blamed on Matanzima to-day. Every journalist picks up a little story there and then he publishes it in the English newspapers as being the true facts. I have already come across various reports in which the facts have been distorted. If there is one place where we should act cautiously, it is particularly there. I have always treated the Bantu headmen there with respect; I do not continuously make statements which undermine their authority. But I can understand the hon. member for Transkeian Territories. He is one of the most apt students of the great magician of the United Party, the hon. member for Yeoville (Mr. S. J. M. Steyn). You know, Sir, there are various groups among the magicians (dolos-gooiers). I have had the privilege of being present at a number of the training centres for these people, and one of the groups who train them are those magicians who must frighten people. The ugliest things are evolved as regalia; then the witchdoctors must don them and must make the most hideous noises in order to frighten the people, so much so that I have even seen adults beginning to cry. That is what is being done to-day in the Transkei by the hon. member for Transkeian Territories. [Time limit.]

I am sure the hon. the Minister will forgive me if I do not deal with his speech. In the limited time at my disposal I propose to deal with some matters affecting the Coloured population we represent in this House. I am quite sure there are other hon. members on this side of the House who will deal in due course with the Minister.

Sir, there is no gainsaying the fact that South Africa is at present enjoying an economic boom and that provided we can overcome the manpower shortage in this country, this economic boom is likely to continue for a number of years. I wish to avail myself of this opportunity to make an earnest plea to the Government to open up new opportunities in the labour field for our Coloured citizens so as to enable them to participate and share as citizens of this country in the benefits flowing from our thriving economy. I do not propose to spend any of my limited time to discuss again the political position of the Coloured people. I have done so time and again, session after session in this House, all to no avail. I am sure that time will prove that the Government is wrong in not heeding these appeals for the political advancement of our Coloured people. As I say, to-day I propose to avail myself of the opportunity of making an earnest and sincere appeal to the Government to open up new avenues of employment for the Coloured people so as to improve their economic position and to enable them to derive their just share of the boom conditions which prevail in this country at the present time. In all conscience I cannot see how the Government can fail to acquiesce in this appeal of mine.

Sir, I was struck very forcibly by a passage in the State President’s address at the opening ceremony of Parliament last Friday. In the course of his address the State President said this (page 4 of the Minutes of Proceedings)—

I repeat that: “Now, however, a shortage of skilled workers must be met.”—

Sir, the Government will naturally accept responsibility for the State President’s statement which I have just read out. It is the responsibility of the Government and I am sure they accept that responsibility. This statement in terms means that the Government feels that provided a certain standard of immigration is maintained and other suitable measures are taken it will not be too difficult to overcome the shortage of skilled workers in this country, at least over the next five years. In point of fact therefore—and basing my argument on the statement made by the State President—the Government’s solution is to follow a vigorous immigration policy. I would like to say immediately that everyone would welcome and encourage large-scale immigration, particularly in the field of skilled workers. Unhappily, however, we know from past experience that the incidence of immigration is not sufficient to make up for the large shortage of skilled workers we have in this country. The shortage is becoming worse and worse in the thriving economy which the country is enjoying and which we hope it will continue to enjoy for several years to come. Sir, if in fact it were possible to ensure that South Africa could have large-scale immigration over the next five to ten years, this would help to some extent in overcoming the manpower shortage in this country. As I say, however, our past experience has shown that we cannot be over-optimistic in regard to our immigration plan. In any case I am certain that immigration on its own is no solution to this very serious problem with which we are faced and which is likely to become worse as time goes on. In any event I want to say this to the Government: no country in any event is justified in importing labour when it has a large reservoir of desirable labour of its own. I feel that if we are going to make a serious endeavour to overcome the manpower shortage in South Africa, the Government will have to give the most serious and earnest consideration to the question of a complete overhaul and re-examination of our restrictive labour laws in this country. I feel that for the sake of the future of our country our Government should not be influenced by any political motives in this regard. With the strong position which the Government holds to-day vis-à-vis the White electorate of South Africa the Government can really afford to adopt a more tolerant attitude towards our non-White population and particularly towards our Coloured people. I feel that the Government should at the earliest possible stage re-examine its restrictive labour policies without fear of the possible repercussions that may come from a handful of White workers. You will always get some resistance from some of the White workers of this country. But I am quite satisfied, and I say this advisedly, that the vast majority of the White skilled workers of this country would be prepared to take a farsighted view with regard to this very serious position. They would realize that the greater the opportunities for the Coloured people to improve their skills in the labour field and thus increasing their productivity, the healthier it would be for the economy of our country. Larger benefits would flow to every group of this country—Whites and non-Whites. I am certain that the vast majority of the White skilled workers of this country would be prepared to take this long-range view in the interests of the country generally. I realize only too well that it is not going to be an easy task. But I feel that in the interests of our country we cannot defer for very much longer the question of allowing our Coloured people the absolute freedom of engaging themselves in any type of employment or calling which they may desire. This, I suggest, is in the interests of our country. This question has to be courageously faced and the sooner we face it, Sir, the better will it be for the future of the country and the better will it be for our own economy. Quite apart from the economic aspects of this matter I would like, very briefly, to have a look at the moral aspects involved in this policy of the Government. On moral grounds, Mr. Speaker, what justification can there be for legally debarring our Coloured citizens from certain occupations merely on the ground of the colour of their skins and because of their classification in the population register of this country?

What are those occupations?

I say what moral justification can there be in denying this important section of our citizens the right to engage themselves in whatever trade or calling they wish to pursue? And job reservation does just that and I shall deal with that in a moment. Are we morally justified, Sir, to deny our Coloured citizens their just share in the economic boom which this country is experiencing at the moment? I know the Government may claim that traditionally in South Africa non-Whites were excluded from certain jobs because of custom and because of social distinctions, quite apart from any statutory restrictions. We know that that has existed but my answer to the Government, if that is the basis upon which the Government is going to justify the continuance of job reservation, is a very simple one. My answer is this that the Government should only concern itself with the statutory restrictions. As far as custom and social distinctions are concerned that should be left to the individual employers and employees. And I am quite satisfied in my own mind, Sir, that they will sort themselves out in due course. It is the statutory restrictions under the job reservation policy of the Government that I feel calls for complete overhauling.

Already a very large section of industrialists, supported by their more enlightened employees, I would say, are clamouring for the abolition of job reservation. They are clamouring for it. White employees and White employers are asking for the elimination of job reservation, particularly as it affects the Coloured people here. They are motivated in this approach, I suggest, purely in the interests of our country. There is no doubt whatsoever that job reservation is causing a vast shortage of potential skilled labour and is directly responsible for creating inflation in South Africa. The continuance of the job reservation policy is, to my mind, directly responsible for creating an artificial shortage of skilled labour. It is directly responsible for that. At the same time, unfortunately, this policy has an inflationary tendency because it limits the sphere from which the country’s labour needs can be supplied and it fails to train the majority of our citizens to use their undoubted skill. It is obvious that once you deny these people the free right of entering any trade or occupation you are doing yourself a disservice in the sense that you are failing to train these people to use their undoubted skill.

Order! I have allowed the hon. member in view of his particular position in this House to state his case for the Coloured community but I would like to draw his attention to the Notice of Motion by the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) on the Order Paper. I do not think I can allow him to go into too great detail as far as this is concerned.

I appreciate that, Mr. Speaker, I do not propose to go into it in great detail except to deal with the general policy of job reservation in so far as it affects our Coloured people. I shall not go into any detail at all.

I feel certain that if we abolish or relax these discriminatory labour laws—and I have to put it as high as that for the moment—we shall be going a long way to fight the inflation which is being caused by this critical shortage of skilled labour in South Africa. We have in this country a vast source of labour, some of it skilled, the use of which we are not encouraging because of these discriminatory laws.

I speak particularly this afternoon on behalf of the Coloured people. Among them we have a large field from which our labour needs could be met and yet the Government is responsible for retarding our development by reason of the fact that it hangs on to these policies of discriminating among the people in so far as labour classifications are concerned. Surely the time has come for the Government to reconsider its entire attitude with regard to this policy. We have in this country a thriving economy which should be encouraged as much as possible. We are faced with increased labour demands, particularly for skilled workers as is evident from the statement which I have read by his Excellency the State President himself. We know that appeals are made daily by industrialists, from employers of labour, for additional skilled labour. Surely the time has come for the Government to yield to these appeals which are being constantly made by industrialists, by economists and even by trade unions themselves, for a relaxation of this policy. The appeals justify the conclusion. I am afraid, that this policy is motivated entirely as a political innovation.

In so far as the Western Cape is concerned I submit that there is no economic or moral justification for the continuance of this policy. It is nothing more than a system of sheltered employment for the White people and a statutory system of discrimination against the Coloured people. To my mind it is wrong, morally, for a policy to be continued which protects inefficient workers at the expense of experienced Coloured workers. Surely the Government must realize that neither this policy nor immigration can stop our workers from becoming increasingly non-White as time goes on. The sooner we face up to this truism the better for the future of our country. The sooner we realize the futility of proceeding with this policy of job reservation the sooner will we be able to stop the rising criticism which is being levelled at our country in that respect. I know the Government will claim, as the hon. the Minister of Labour has claimed often in this House and outside, that there is no evidence of any person or race having been prejudiced by reason of this policy. But I want to say that that is far from being the true position. As a result of this policy many Coloured people are prohibited from following any occupation they wish to follow. The worst aspect is this, Sir, that many responsible Coloured parents are prohibiting their sons from becoming apprenticed in some of the essential industries in this country even in industries where Coloured boys are allowed to be apprenticed. They do this because of a feeling of complete frustration and fear. The Coloured parent does so because he feels that because of the uncertainty that is being created by the continuance of this policy, his boy may at a later stage be deprived of the means of earning a livelihood if he followed that particular occupation.

Take, for example—I want to mention this very briefly because someone asked me for examples—the circumstances which prevail in the building industry. Coloured skilled artisans, by reason of the Government’s policy, cannot leave their employment in the Cape and take up any similar employment elsewhere of their own free will. In other words, there is no freedom of movement allowed to these Coloured artisans. No wonder, therefore, that out of fear for the future and out of sheer frustration, responsible Coloured parents are now prohibiting their sons from becoming apprenticed in that industry. The same applies to many other industries.

All this creates a terrible amount of uncertainty in the minds of Coloured workers and is causing an unnecessary amount of irritation and resentment. Quite apart from that the Government must surely realize the absolute futility of continuing with this policy. The restrictive labour laws caused by this policy are responsible for this critical shortage of skilled labour. In an endeavour to overcome this serious shortage the Government itself has been obliged to relax this policy in respect of the S.A. Railways, the Post Office and in respect of our public transport systems. I am not criticizing the Government for relaxing their policy in that regard. On the contrary, Sir, I applaud their action in facing up to the reality of the serious position with which this country is confronted. I applaud the Government for relaxing that policy and allowing this to take place. Despite their policy the Government has been obliged to accept Coloured employees in the Government service, a field which has hitherto been reserved for Whites only. This, to my mind, indicates—I feel certain about this—the commencement of the failure of this policy of job reservation. Mr. Speaker, it will become increasingly worse as time goes on and as our economy improves. It will become worse and worse. We have fortunately been blessed in this country with a thriving economy and it is our duty to encourage that economy as much as possible. We are faced day by day with increasing labour demands particularly in the field of skilled workers. Has the time not come for the Government to go the whole hog—it has already gone some way—and abandon this policy of job reservation which it has now realized is impractical and which they have been forced to relax to a very large extent by reason of our country’s labour needs. Do we wish to perpetuate the ridiculous position—again I quote this as an example—which arose in the Mother City because of this policy. You will remember last year, Mr. Speaker, that because of the failure on the part of the Government to raise the percentage of non-White drivers in Cape Town the bus service in this city suffered tremendously. There were many complaints about the bus services because workers could not get to their work on time. There was only one reason for that disorganization and for the criticism which was levelled against us and that was the shortage of drivers. This shortage was brought about because of the regulation which demanded that only 16 per cent of the drivers could be non-White.

Order! I have allowed the hon. member to state his case …

I am merely giving this as a third example because hon. members have asked me to give examples.

The hon. member should not allow himself to be led astray by interjections.

Mr. Speaker, then I should just like to say this that that position corrected itself in no time when the hon. the Minister agreed to allow the percentage to be increased. As the tramways people pointed out only an additional 50 drivers were needed to remedy the entire position overnight.

Order!

Mr. BLOOMBERG: Sir, I leave that alone. I want to go on to the final aspect of this matter. A leading industrialist recently made a public statement that he had discussed this position with Government officials and that when he suggested that non-Whites should be trained as artisans in the building industry he was told quite blatantly that he could not do so by reason of this restrictive policy of employment of the Government’s.

I suggest that the economics of our country necessitate a change in Government policy in so far as restrictive labour laws are concerned. The Government must now realize that the only way in which we can hope to solve this manpower shortage in this country is to admit non-Whites to jobs which have hitherto been reserved for Whites only and where conditions demand it.

Order! That falls under the Notice of Motion. The hon. member cannot continue on these lines.

I want to say this that this is no political argument in which I am engaging myself. I say no one will be justified to make any political capital out of any change of policy on the part of the Government in regard to these restrictive laws. On the contrary, Sir, I feel certain—I wish to say this finally—that every well-disposed citizen in South Africa, whatever his party affiliations may be, would welcome the Government’s action in relaxing the industrial laws wherever it is necessary. I say that this relaxation should apply particularly to the Coloured people. We have among our Coloureds a large labour field from which our labour needs could be met. It is urgently necessary that some positive action should be taken by the Government in this matter. We should do everything possible to narrow the gap which exists between the White and the Coloured groups in this country. We should do everything possible to destroy the endeavours which are being made by certain misguided so-called leaders of the Coloured people to sever for all time, the tie between the White and Coloured people of this country.

I am quite certain that a more enlightened policy towards the Coloured people, particularly in the economic field, would help us tremendously to restore the goodwill which has always existed between the White and Coloured people of this country. The Coloured people are inextricably bound to the Whites of this country and it is ridiculous to fail to recognize that fact. The Coloured people, more than any other section of the non-Whites in South Africa, are anxious to restore racial harmony between themselves and the White people. I am certain that the continuance of these restrictive labour laws can only militate against that racial harmony. I am certain that if this country, particularly the Western Cape, is to develop economically and industrially it is absolutely essential for us to capitalize on the potential of the human material which we have in our midst. The Coloured people present to us the opportunity of utilizing to the best advantage that human material. To reject this opportunity and to continue with these restrictive laws is, to my mind, doing the greatest possible disservice to South Africa. The elimination of these laws will help us not only to overcome this serious labour shortage but will help us tremendously in improving not only the economic life but also the spiritual and social positions of the Coloured people we represent. I appeal to the Government to take a firm and bold step to eliminate these restrictive labour laws.

Three speakers on the other side have referred in this debate to the manpower shortage—the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Durrant) and now the hon. member for Peninsula (Mr. Bloomberg). I should like to reply first to the latter hon. member. The hon. member for Peninsula has created the unfortunate impression here to-day that the government begrudges the Coloured community better employment opportunities in this country. I am very sorry that the hon. member, in the light of all the facts at his disposal, gave such a distorted picture in this House. The fact of the matter is that the Coloureds to-day have more and better opportunities of employment in the Peninsula and in the country than they have had at any time in our history. I do not propose to reply at length to the hon. member. I think that opportunity will present itself when we deal with the motion of the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman). I want to reply to just a few of his statements, however. In the first place I want to point out that the Coloureds are being employed as semi-skilled workers to an ever-increasing extent here in the Peninsula. That is shown by one report after another of the Wage Board and of the Industrial Tribunal in connection with factories employing operatives and in connection with other sectors of industry. But, Mr. Speaker, apart from the fact that ever-increasing numbers of Coloureds are being employed in industry in semi-skilled occupations, they are also being employed in skilled occupations. That is why I was astounded to hear the hon. member mention the building industry as an industry in which the Coloureds are begrudged opportunities. Does the hon. member not know that practically 90 per cent of the building industry in the Cape is in the hands of Coloured workers? The building industry here is in the hands of Coloured workers to such an extent that the employment of Whites is limited to just a certain amount of mechanical work and masonry. But 90 per cent …

Ninety-eight per cent.

Yes, 98 per cent is in the hands of Coloured workers here in the Cape. Apart from manual work, skilled work, just think what this Government is doing to give the Coloureds academic training and technical training so as to enable them to do more highly skilled work. Coloureds are being trained at the University College of the Western Cape to become city treasurers and town clerks in the future; they are being trained to become chemists. Apart from education, which offers them enormous scope, they are being trained in innumerable other directions.

What about apprenticeship?

As far as apprenticeship is concerned, take the furniture industry, the clothing industry and the building industry, for example. These are industries in which the employees are predominantly Coloured. Sir, these are things that one ought to appreciate. We are even going so far now, under the leadership of the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs, as to have Coloureds trained as waiters, so that they can be employed in that capacity here in the Western Province in our hotels. However, I do not want to deal with this at length because I should like to refer to the other statements made here by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and by the hon. member for Turffontein. Sir, when one thinks of the hundreds of Coloureds who are employed to-day as typists in business firms in Cape Town, when one thinks of the hundreds of Coloureds who are doing clerical and administrative work, then I think one can only note with appreciation what tremendous headway has been made by the Coloureds in the sphere of employment here in the Western Cape and elsewhere.

In that connection I also want to deal with one of the statements made by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, a statement which is linked up with this, and that is that the Government is refusing to make sufficient use of non-Whites in our labour force. The impression is created in season and out of season that this Government begrudges the non-Whites a place in the labour world, that the Government begrudges them opportunities of employment; that the Government, as an English newspaper put it the other day, wants them to do pick and shovel work. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, to use his own words, said this in referring to the plans in connection with South Africa’s development—

Sir, if ever a nonsensical statement was made it is that statement. It is a nonsensical statement which gives an entirely distorted picture of the utilization of the services of non-Whites in this country, not only for “manual work” but in all technical and professional occupations. Just think of the 1960 census, Mr. Speaker, which indicated, as far as Bantu alone are concerned, that there are 17,000 Bantu serving as nurses and midwives; that there are 24,000 Bantu serving as professors, teachers and instructors, that there are more than 500 Bantu in medical service in our country. When one bears in mind, as far as Bantu teachers are concerned, that they are being trained at the rate of 2,000 per annum and that 200 Bantu are graduating annually, then one realizes the senselessness of this cry on the part of the Opposition.

Apart from this participation of the non-Whites in our labour market, it is also important to note that 39 per cent of the total number of economically active Bantu are employed at the present time as operators and as semi-skilled workers in South Africa. And then the Opposition newspapers talk about “pick and shovel” work and the hon. the Leader of the Opposition says that we want to limit them to “manual work”. When one bears in mind that under the leadership of Bantu Education we have now established a training school for Bantu at East London where 400 Bantu will be trained annually as textile workers, who will be semi-skilled workers with a high degree of training, then it certainly does not look as though these people are being limited to manual work. That is why I say that it is foolish to allege, as the Opposition so frequently does, that 3,000,000 Whites have to serve 16,000,000 people in this country. That allegation is foolish because the fact of the matter is that 30 per cent of all professional workers in this country to-day are non-Whites. It is far-reaching therefore to say that our whole population of 16,000,000 has to be carried by only 3,000,000 Whites. In the Bantu homelands more and more use will be made of Bantu as clerks and executives and in technical and scientific positions. That development is going on to-day and will take place to an ever-increasing degree. It may very well be that more and more opportunities will be created for non-Whites here in our own country, in the White areas, but it will always be done judiciously and not by simply opening the sluice-gates and creating chaos as the Opposition wants to do. If we were to allow non-Whites to penetrate overnight into all the traditional spheres of employment of the White man, it would lead to racial clashes here in comparison with which the bloody 1922 strikes would look like a mere bagatelle.

You would be stupid if you did that.

Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member over there is the last person who should talk about stupidity. He should rather first coin a better slogan for them than “We can govern better”, and then we can come back again to this subject of stupidity.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition went on to use the following words in connection with our manpower. In referring to the shortage of manpower he accused the Government, to quote his own words—

Thereafter the hon. member for Turffontein, who always believes in exaggerating things, started challenging the Government and everybody on this side; he said, to use his own words—

When one hears that statement of his, bearing in mind what the Government has done in the past to train and to equip our manpower so that we can make the best use of it, that statement is really too ridiculous for words. When one bears in mind the fact that over the past number of years this Government has followed a visionary policy in order systematically to develop our available manpower, then it is clear that this Government deserves the praises of the whole country. But before I refer to what the Government has done I want to say first of all that I think the private sector can do much more than it has done up to the present moment to make proper use of our manpower. I want to make an appeal to-day to our industrialists and to our employers to make the maximum use of our manpower. I want to mention just one case to show what can be done. Between 1961 and 1963 the chemical industry, which is a very important industry in our country, reduced its labour force by 6,000, and over the same period during which it reduced its labour force by 6,000 it actually increased its production. I therefore appeal to our industrialists and our employers to do more to utilize their manpower to the best of their ability. In this connection I might mention that the Manpower Committee which the Government appointed last year and on which 27 Government, Provincial and other bodies were represented, is at present conducting an enquiry to find out where there is any waste of manpower with a view to inducing employers and industrialists to make better use of the services of those people.

I think it is necessary, since hon. members on the other side seek to create the impression that under this Government our industrial labour force has become blacker and blacker, to correct their perspective in that regard. Here I want to mention just one sphere, the manufacturing sphere. In September 1958, 172,000 Whites were employed in the manufacturing industry, that is to say, 26.5 per cent; six years later the number of Whites had risen to 219,000, which brought the percentage to 25.7. In other words, the percentage of Whites remained practically constant. It is true that there was a corresponding increase in the number of non-Whites, but the important point is that the percentage of Whites in the manufacturing industry remained unchanged, so the statement that the labour force has become blacker is entirely incorrect.

Then I should also like to reply to the statement made by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. member for Turffontein that this Government has neglected its duty in connection with the technical and scientific training and the education of our people so as to meet our manpower requirements. It is not really necessary to remind the Opposition once again that it is not only since yesterday or the day before yesterday that the Government has been engaged in planning in connection with the utilization of our manpower. It is true that we established the Manpower Committee last year only, but that was simply done in order to co-ordinate the numerous investigation projects which had already been launched in connection with our manpower. As a result of the far-sightedness of this Government a start was made some years ago already to ensure, by way of education, and by way of training facilities, that we would be able to make the best use of our manpower. When one bears in mind that the State allowance to our universities has increased by 534 per cent since 1948, that the State allowance to-day is 233 per cent more per student than it was in 1948; that in 1948 only R139,000 was granted to the universities in capital loans and that that figure has risen this year to R5,500,000, then one can understand why our universities were able to admit 38,000 students last year.

But that is not the only yardstick by which we can test the actions of the Government in this connection. During the past few years the average growth of our student population has been 6½ per cent; as against that the average growth of our entire White population has been only about 2 per cent. The success of our university policy is demonstrated by these figures, and it is also evident perhaps from the fact that of all countries in the world, except for America, South Africa, as far as White students are concerned, has the greatest number of university students in relation to its White population. And then the Opposition come along and say that this Government has neglected its duty with reference to education! Is this not an achievement, Sir, of which we can be proud?

That may be true, but what percentage of our national income is spent on university education?

May I put a question to the hon. the Minister? Is the percentage in South Africa higher than in the United States of America?

No, I said that apart from America, which heads the list, South Africa has the biggest student population in relation to its population. Our percentage of White university students, in relation to our White population, is just below that of America; it is higher than that of the United Kingdom or any other country.

But there is something else that I want to put to the Opposition. They have come along in this debate with the reproach that we are not doing enough with regard to education. I just want to put this fact to them that in 1954, as far as matriculants are concerned, we had 12,000 successful candidates, and in 1963 that figure rose to 26,000. When one looks at these figures, one realizes that this Government has not neglected its duty in the sphere of education; one realizes the scope and the importance of its dynamic programme to train our manpower.

May I just ask the hon. the Minister, in connection with what he has just said, whether he disagrees with the report of the committee which was appointed to go into the question of the use of personnel?

What is the point? The hon. member’s question is vague and I do not propose to reply to it because I have no idea to what he is referring. My time is limited. Sir, when one considers the question of manpower, one does not think only of skilled manpower, of people with high academic training; one also thinks of the apprentices who eventually have to make up one’s skilled manpower. And in this respect I think this Government also deserves every credit for what it has done in recent years to supplement that manpower. Sir, I just give the House a few facts. As a result of the overhaul of our apprenticeship system by this Government, we were able last year to register 7,300 apprenticeship contracts, the highest number in our history. We registered 700 more than in 1963 or in 1962. As a result of the system introduced by us whereby they can now undergo efficiency tests earlier, it has now become possible for 38 out of every 100 apprentices to qualify a year earlier and thus to supplement our skilled labour force.

But between the skilled tradesman and the engineer there is still a group that one can describe as technicians, and in that respect the Government’s achievements are just as remarkable. We started a few years ago at our technical colleges with the training of this group of people who fall between the skilled tradesman and the engineer, and in this respect we have achieved the greatest success, so much so that in the past year 4,500 of these people, who will serve as technicians, have written their examinations in South Africa. When one bears that figure in mind, one realizes what an enormous amount of positive work has been done by this Government to strengthen our manpower.

We have also strengthened our manpower from other sources; we have strengthened it from a source which nowadays, unfortunately, ruffles the Opposition. I refer to immigration. It is significant that over the past two years we have supplemented our skilled manpower with 30,000 economically active immigrants—not people who come here to ask for unemployment benefits or for charity. The immigrants who are brought to South Africa by this Government are skilled people; they are able to take their place in our economy.

All of them?

Not their wives and children. The people to whom I referred are actively engaged in our economy.

May I put a question to the hon. the Deputy Minister? Does the hon. the Deputy Minister admit then that the Government was wrong at the time in putting a stop to immigration?

What was wrong with immigration during the war years was that the United Party used the immigration scheme as a political stick with which to hit the Nationalists. Hon. members on the other side said that they would make use of immigration to plough under the Afrikaners in this country. They were the people who used immigration as a political football, and it was due to their attitude that a certain amount of feeling arose against immigration amongst the Afrikaans-speaking section in our country. It then became this Government’s task to break down that prejudice which the other side of the House had created by making immigration a political football. That is why our achievement in this sphere is all the more remarkable.

Talking about immigration, I just want to say to the hon. member that in getting 30,000 immigrants over the past two years we gained an asset which many countries envy us.

To sum up, let me say this: As far as manpower is concerned South Africa must realize, and the United Party in particular must realize, because it takes them a little longer to realize these things, that this shortage of manpower that we are experiencing is the result of our prosperity. And South Africa is not the only country which has to contend with a shortage of manpower. Every rapidly developing country in the world has to contend with a shortage of manpower. And where this Government has to choose between a shortage of manpower on the one hand and unemployment on the other, we admit that unemployment might perhaps give the Opposition a certain amount of pleasure, but in choosing between the two, this Government would rather face a shortage of manpower, and we shall continue, along the lines I have indicated, to do the best we can in the circumstances. With the steps taken by this Government we are now reaping the fruits of our training facilities by means of which we shall be able to make the best use of our own people in the first place; by means of which we shall be able to make the best use of our young people by developing their skills to the maximum of their ability. We have courses at our training schools for adults, and at the same time, by means of immigration, we are getting excellent, first-class people in this country and not people whom the United Party used to describe as “the good and the bad.” We are getting immigrants to-day who are able to take their place in our industrial life and who are showing every sign that they are going to become good South Africans. That, Sir, is due to the systematic action and to the policy of this Government; it is due to the far-sightedness of this Government. We are making South Africa not only a prosperous country but also a peaceful country, a country of strength and a country offering happiness to Whites and coloured.

Members on the Government side are always giving us impossible choices to make in South Africa. We have heard from the hon. the Prime Minister that South Africa had to choose between being poor and White or mixed and rich; this afternoon we heard from the hon. Deputy Minister of Labour that South Africa has to choose between a shortage of labour and prosperity. Does it never occur to hon. members on the other side that these are not the only choices lying before this country? The country can be prosperous and does not have to suffer this shortage of labour. Indeed a little advanced planning would have seen to it that we would not suffer such a shortage of labour. What is more, I want to warn the hon. Deputy Minister that prosperity will disappear in South Africa and that we will have inflation unless steps are in fact taken, drastic steps, to overcome the shortage of labour.

I saw the hon. Deputy Minister of Labour in a new role this afternoon. Usually when one discusses job reservation, or any other of the methods that inhibit the full utilization of labour resources in South Africa, the hon. Deputy Minister comes along and defends the rights of the White workers in South Africa, proclaiming that people wish to undermine the standards which have been reached by White workers in South Africa, proclaiming that the removal of the industrial colour bar would spell doom for the White workers in South Africa. This afternoon, I am glad to say, the hon. Deputy Minister took a different line, a much more intelligent line; even if it was not completely accurate it showed that he is thinking on new lines.

We can deal with that further when we come to your motion.

I have got a lot in reserve for my motion as well. The hon. Deputy Minister and I will cross swords on that in due course, but I want to say that I am very glad to find this new pattern of thinking in the hon. Deputy Minister’s mind, because he was trying to tell us to-day that in fact job reservation was not as serious as people were making out; that thousands upon thousands of Coloured workers were engaged in skilled trades in the Cape—which of course is true—but he forgot to add that there are other areas in the Cape Province where there are statutory barriers against the employment of Coloured workers in certain skilled trades, and most important, he forgot to remind us that although existing workers may continue in their skilled occupations in the Cape, new entrants to those occupations are in fact forbidden …

That is a very limited sphere, as you know.

It is true that it is limited, but it does exist. Then the hon. Deputy Minister gave figures which were accurate, but he used them in a misleading way. The hon. Minister told us, quite correctly, that 30 per cent of the workers in South Africa who are engaged in managerial, technical, administrative and other high standards of occupation are non-Whites. I think that figure comes from the Bureau of Statistics. But the hon. Deputy Minister did not tell us the other half of this equation and that is that Whites, who only represent 20 per cent of the total economically active population in South Africa (1960 figures) represent 70 per cent of the country’s managerial, technical and skilled workers; the non-Whites representing 80 per cent of the country’s totally economically employed population represent only 30 per cent of that higher class. These are equations that the hon. Minister should have given to the House for the sake of accuracy. What I am trying to point out is that 80 per cent of the working population, the non-Whites, represent only 30 per cent of any form of skilled workers, and this represents an imbalance in the country’s economy,

It may also be a question of ability.

Well, let us give them an opportunity to show whether they are less gifted. That is all I ask: equal opportunity. It is quite possible that the hon. member is right, but we do not really know if we deny them an equal opportunity to become skilled workers. We do not give them an equal opportunity because we do not give them the necessary education. There is no free education for non-Whites, and we do not allow them to enter skilled trades because they are not included in the definition of “employee” Therefore until the hon. member for Kempton Park is prepared to withdraw these very real barriers and restrictions to the full employment of non-White labour in this country, both he and I will be guessing in regard to the non-White’s ability. But I say that the hon. member has less faith in the White workers than I have, because I am prepared to withdraw the superficial colour bar that protects the White worker, because I believe the White workers will be able to hold their own with non-White workers. Is the hon. member prepared to withdraw these restrictions? Is he prepared to allow the non-Whites to become apprentices, to join trade unions and get the necessary education? That will be the only way to see whether they can take full advantage of such opportunities. The hon. member of course is not prepared to commit himself on that. But I do commend the hon. Deputy Minister on the fact that at least he is not standing up defending the rights of White workers against the intrusion of non-Whites in their field.

I want to come back to the main trend of this no-confidence debate over the last three afternoons, and I must say that I have been profoundly depressed by what I have heard in this House. Both the Government and the official Opposition have been vieing with each other in pretending to be the main defenders of White supremacy, domination, in South Africa. The official Opposition now say that their policy is White leadership. It used to be White leadership “with justice”. I am afraid I did not hear the words “with justice” uttered in this House over the past few days. I heard much talk about the maintenance of White leadership. They say that what they stand for is White leadership in the whole of South Africa. The Government on the other hand also claims to be upholding White leadership in South Africa, but with this difference: They claim White leadership over the whole of South Africa minus 13 per cent, and that 13 per cent of course represents the land allotment under the Land Acts for the Bantustans, for the Native reserves. In that 13 per cent of South Africa, the Government is prepared to set aside what it calls “White leadership”, and at some distant time in the future it will be prepared to give independence to the Bantustans. On this basis the hon. member for Vereeriging (Mr. B. Coetzee) bluffs himself presumably, because he speaks with great sincerity, but he also imagines that he is bluffing the world that the Nationalist Party has a policy of non-discrimination and that indeed they are offering a fair quid pro quo to the non-Whites because they are giving them rights in 13 per cent of the country as against the deprivation of all rights in the White areas. The hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Frone-man) yesterday admitted that there is discrimination in the White areas of South Africa. He likened this to the discrimination suffered by immigrants who go to any country in the world. Well, I would like to find a country first of all which classifies persons born within its borders as “immigrants” and a country where immigrants who have been living there for one generation or two generations and are still classified as immigrants with no rights in the country where they are now living. In other words, all the Africans who have been in the so-called White areas of South Africa for two and three generations are in the mind of the hon. member for Heilbron still immigrants. But this he claims justifies the whole policy of the Government. The hon. member for Vereeniging had a vision in this House which he put across with his usual skill, of South Africa as the leading nation on the great Black continent of Africa, the leading light in Africa, in this Commonwealth of Nations. He was not very pleased for having to use the word “commonwealth”, but at the moment he could not think of anything better. Now I ask him whether he can carry this vision a little further for us and tell us how he imagines this image measures up to the realities of the situation where South Africa is not welcome at international conferences held in the Black states of Africa, where she is denied air space and landing rights and airports throughout Africa, where South Africa has not got a single representative in any Black country in Africa and where South Africa is only prepared to accept diplomats from the rest of this Black commonwealth under the most stringent conditions. By virtue of what does the hon. member for Vereeniging bluff himself that South Africa is going to be the leading nation in Africa under such circumstances? Now the interesting thing about this vision is that it could indeed come to pass if South Africa made some very necessary adjustments in racial policies, and I want to put it to this House that there has never been a time when White South Africa could more easily afford to make the necessary adjustments so as to make this country able to take what I do believe is its rightful place on the continent of Africa, as the leading light on the continent of Africa, with friendly neighbours and not hostile neighbours on our continent. I want to put it to the Government that without any sort of partnership policy there are still methods whereby it could in some way readjust its position in the eyes of the rest of Africa. I put it to the Government that now is the time to do this in a position of strength. Concessions which are made in a position of weakness are of no use at all, which is the main reason (I might add) why the partnership policy of the Federation failed. It failed because that Government did not make concessions at a period when the Government was in a position of strength, but waited and only in the last two years of the ten years of the Federation Government real concessions to partnership were made. For the first eight years of partnership a policy indeed of apartheid was practiced. It was the old Huggins policy of the partnership of the man and his horse, with the man riding on the back of his horse as his partner. If the hon. member for Pinelands (Mr. Thompson) would speak to Rhodesians, they would tell him that during the last two years when concessions were forced on the Rhodesias, it was too late. By then the Black man had lost all faith in the White man’s good intentions. Of course in my opinion the Government should go in a different direction, in the interests of common justice, viz., a multi-racial partnership in South Africa, a country where merit and not colour would be the yard-stick. But while I do not expect the Government to go in this direction it could still make very important adjustments which would help us in our present position, and I want to tell the Government what I mean by that. I mean that the Government must stop some of these devastating implementations of policy which are going on at the present time. Call a halt to them. After all it has been ticking over very nicely gathering White votes unto itself on the, shall I say, paper policy that it has been presenting. But now we are seeing the devastating effect of the actual implementation of these policies and I think the Government should call a halt. I am not talking about “petty apartheid”, which really does not interest me very much. I am not talking about the sort of nonsense like the Adam Faith-Dusty Springfield debacle which makes us ridiculous in the eyes of the civilized world because it is such a ridiculous example of the Government’s obsession in regard to any sort of multi-racial mixing. I am not talking about that nonsense, although heaven knows those incidents should never have occurred. I am not talking about the removal of notices which say “Whites only” or “non-Whites only”, which certain people think would solve the trick right away. I am not doing that because to me they are just symbols of the deeper malaise of attempted separation. So what I propose goes much further than that but it still could be done and still could help this country without, as I say, the Government having to throw overboard all its prejudices. I am referring to the Government’s senseless policy at the present stage in regard to the devastating group areas proposals, where one sees proposals to make the whole of the Western Cape bar small areas entirely White, spreading alarm and despondency amongst thousands upon thousands of non-Whites, the sort of group areas proposals for Durban, for Johannesburg, for the Transvaal, where one pattern evidences itself all the way through: Get rid of the non-Whites, out of the town, out of the suburbs, push them across the river, onto the veld, miles away outside the trading areas of our towns. These are devastating instances of the implementation of this policy of apartheid which I believe is spreading despair among our indigenous non-Whites and is making it absolutely hopeless for South Africa to play her part on the continent of Africa. I believe the implementation of the Bantu Urban Areas Act should be called off. It is having a most far-reaching effect on the family lives of the Africans in our cities. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition called this Act “a gesture to apartheid”. I want to tell him that it is very much more than a gesture to apartheid, irrespective of whether economic integration is going on apace. It is going on apace, but this does not mean that Africans are not feeling the effect of the implementation of apartheid.

Indeed, they are feeling it in a more and more critical way every year, because they are now being integrated as migratory workers and not as permanent workers, and that means that family life is more and more adversely affected, and it means that Africans coming to work for Whites are tied to specific employers and are unable to take jobs where they can better their position. They run the risk of endorsement out if they lose their jobs. Now, however many additional Africans come in to towns as evidence of integration, I can assure this House that the effect of the apartheid legislation is felt in stark reality and these are things which the Government should score out at this stage of the history of Africa. Otherwise we are sowing a legacy of hatred for ourselves which we may be able to weather but which I can assure the House our children will certainly not be able to weather. I think that the Government, apart from taking what I will call a positive and they will call a negative step of calling off the devastating effects of the implementation of the apartheid policy, should be willing to take a far more positive step in tackling the very real problem of poverty among the non-Whites in this country. That is the overriding problem, and it does not matter whether one allows Africans to come into the urban areas or applies influx control in order, as it is said, to protect the urban Africans, if those Africans are going back to the rural areas to starve. The problem is one of unemployment and of poverty, and of course I believe that industrialization will solve that problem if the Government would only allow it to. But nevertheless these are the problems to which the Government is not paying sufficient attention, and these are the factors which are sowing bitter despair among the non-Whites. We heard the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration painting one of his charming pictures of satisfied Africans in the tribal areas. He is always coming to us with examples of people enjoying themselves in the tribal areas. If it is not a man walking along in the track with £1,000 tucked in his moochi, it is another one cycling along with his Hansard tucked under his arm. But the realities of the situation are those of poverty and unemployment in those areas, and of Africans living at subhuman standards of living and the break-up of family life. [Interjection.] The Chairman of the Bantu Affairs Commission should be the last person to ask me where that happens.

The industrialization in the rural areas that he speaks of is a farce. There are two factories in the Transkei, which is after all the only Bantustan which now exists. We do not know when the others will come about. There are two factories employing between 200 and 300 people. The border industries are mostly in the established industrial areas. As I pointed out last year, the Witwatersrand could easily be a border area in terms of the argument that you simply declare Soweto to be a Black area. But none of these areas touch the fringe of the vast poverty of the non-Whites in this country, and there is poverty in the urban areas as well, because the Government refuses to introduce minimum wage legislation, which I asked for in a motion in this House the year before last and which was rejected, and which the White trade unions are now asking for in South Africa because they are beginning to realize that the prosperity of the non-Whites is the corner-stone of the prosperity of the Whites, and that unless we expand the productivity and the consumer power of the non-Whites, our present prosperity is not going to be of any lasting duration. The figures I want to quote emanate from the manager of the Non-European Affairs Department of the Municipality of Johannesburg. In a recent survey—he delivered this paper in December 1964—he found that most families are living below the poverty line. The average family income was calculated in Johannesburg at R58 a month, and the average income earned by the head of the family was R42 a month; 48 per cent of all the families in Soweto, which is a huge African township, depend on the income of the head of the family, and the calculated minimum budget is R48 a month, and therefore unless the wives and children go out to work the majority of the families are at least R6 below the poverty datum line.

Nonsense!

I do not know how the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) substantiates his idea of what is really going on in the country. I am talking about figures taken out by a responsible official who is hardly likely to produce figures simply for my benefit. As long as important members like the hon. member for Heilbron—and he is important, ex officio—persistently ignore the realities of the situation in South Africa, I for one am filled with despair. I am not interested in which side of the House is going to maintain White domination. I only know that unless real and important changes are made in South Africa, the future of the White man in this country will not be ensured either by the Government party or by the Opposition, nor even by the Security Police of the hon. the Minister of Justice. None of these things will help, because there are genuine underlying grievances and injustices in this country which are not being set right. Therefore I ask these necessary adjustments, and not because I want to set us right in the eyes of the outside world. That is not my basic reason, and not even because I want to meet Black demands, but simply because of the demands of natural justice. I can see no justification for denying people rights simply on the basis of the colour of their skins, for not allowing a man to live a family life just because he is an African; for not allowing an Indian to continue to run his shop which he has been running for 20 or 30 years, just because he is an Indian; and for not allowing Coloured folk to go on living in Kalk Bay or District Six simply because they are Coloured. I can see no justification for not educating people to take full advantage of their potentialities, simply because they are not White. Not only do I see no justification for this, but I consider it incredibly short-sighted of White South Africa not to realize what a legacy of resentment and hatred it is building up against the White man in South Africa. That is why I ask for what I believe to be very necessary adjustments in this country.

Now I want to say a few words to the hon. the Minister of Justice. I am sorry he is not in the House now, but I must say it. The Minister has told the country that he has restored law and order in South Africa.

He has not restored it; he has maintained it.

Well, in that case it means that there never was any unrest in this country. I understood that there was a state bordering on an emergency some time ago when we had to introduce the 90-day law. I want to say right away of course that I never believed that there was any justification for that law. I believe that our Police Force and our Special Branch should be quite competent to handle any such manifestation of subversion, without recourse to any law as far-reaching as this 90-day law. I want to warn the Minister that I believe, as I said earlier this afternoon, that there will always be unrest in South Africa unless the basic injustices are set right. I believe that there are injustices and I will not adopt the ostrich-like attitude of people in this country who say there are no injustices, and that it is all only the work of agitators and communists, and that everything is fine. Everything is not fine as long as there is poverty and there are group areas and such things. But I want to come back to this question of the 90-day law and I want to say that I believe this law has done more harm than any other single law that has ever been passed. It is not a law which a Western civilized country requires to maintain law and order. That should be possible if the Government is governing with the consent of the majority of the people, and if the Government takes cognizance of the injustices before it is too late. I believe that this law should be not suspended but repealed. I was against its introduction and I am against its continuation on our Statute Book. I think the Minister should not only suspend it but should repeal it. It is a law which lends itself to abuse, which allows people to be subjected to standing interrogation for long periods, the sort of thing done by the Ogpu, standing for hours while being interrogated by teams of officers. It kept people in solitary confinement week after week, a devastating form of torture. [Interjection.] Of course, I am not in favour of sabotage, but I can tell the hon. member that it is no use trying to stop sabotage unless one tackles the basic underlying reasons for it. The 90-day law should be repealed.

In the few minutes remaining to me I want to raise a final matter, again with the Minister of Justice, and that is the banning of Professor Roux and of Professor Simon under the new use to which he is putting his anticommunist law; in other words, the prohibiting of these men, because they were listed as communists, from teaching at our universities. [Interjections.] Professor Roux in fact has not been a member of the Communist Party since 1936, when he resigned from it. [Interjections.]

Solly Sachs also resigned.

Professor Roux wrote a book which is a standard text-book for students and he is now prohibited not only from teaching but from publishing his work or from continuing with his research in plant physiology. I think this is the most absurd banning order on a man of science who has contributed a great deal to South Africa. As far as Professor Simon is concerned, he remained a member of the Communist Party until it was banned in 1950, and to the best of my knowledge since that time he has taken no part in political activity and, indeed, he has broken no law, because if he had broken a law one wonders why the hon. the Minister of Justice has not hauled him, as well as Professor Roux, into the courts of law, where they can be dealt with under proper procedure, and not simply by arbitrary banning by the Minister of Justice. [Time limit.]

Mr. Speaker, I merely rise to reply to one of the accusations made by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. It is very difficult for me to hear the hon. member who has just sat down but if I understood her correctly she said: “Free education is not for the non-Whites in South Africa.” If she said that no greater untruth can be uttered in this House. There is free education for the non-Whites in South Africa as there is for the Whites. Must ideas like those be sent into the world? I am not quite au fait with parliamentary rules, Mr. Speaker, but I think that is nothing less than causing trouble as far as circumstances in South Africa are concerned. The hon. member said that the co-operation between Whites and non-Whites under this Government could almost be compared with that which exists between a rider and his horse.

No, you misunderstood me.

Well, as I know the policy of the hon. member it will be the kind of co-operation which exists when the horse rides the man.

I want to say a few words about the matter which the Leader of the Opposition raised the other day in connection with the lack of co-operation between Military Intelligence and the Security Branch of the police. The hon. Leader said that if it were true it was so serious that it ought to cause the downfall of a Government. I wish to give an explanation in that regard to-day. The entire story concerning a lack of co-operation flows from a report in the Sunday Times.

And an interview with Brig. van den Bergh.

I shall read it out before I continue with my speech. The report says this—

The quotation ends there. Then the report in the newspaper goes on—

Brig. van den Bergh did not say that; that was said by the Sunday Times. The report then goes on to say that the brigadier had said that had he known in 1962 what Plotz had known he would have been able to apprehend these people. I too think he would have been able to apprehend them had he known what Plotz had said he know, and had it been true what Plotz said. I simply cannot understand how an Opposition in this House can grasp at a story from a person like this, from somebody who seeks sensation like this person Plotz. Before I continue with the Plotz comedy I want to give a brief outline of the method of co-operation employed by these two sections, Military Intelligence and the Security Branch of the police and I shall then tell you what the results of that co-operation are.

The police co-operate to the extent that they have made available a desk in their office to our liaison officer. He sits there and has access to all their files. If that is not co-operation on the part of the police I do not know what co-operation is. We from our side co-operate to the extent that a weekly conference is held on which both these two sections are represented. Then there is another body, at higher level, which co-ordinates and discusses these findings. What is the result of this co-operation? As far as Military Intelligence is concerned I want to say this. The first time Military Intelligence heard of the A.R.M. was, I think, in April 1964. It may have been March 1964. And we heard about it certainly not from the comedian Plotz. We received that information from one of our own military people in the Cape Province. The report we received towards the end of April was passed on to our liaison officer in a letter dated 9 June.

Two months later?

No, I said I was not sure which month it was. It may have been a month later. That letter was sent to the liaison officer. A conference was held on 30 June and the matter was again discussed. The minutes of that conference were sent to our liaison officer and to the Security Branch of the police. There was co-operation therefore but what were the results? From July 1963 to December 1964, 143 reports were sent by Military Counter-Intelligence to the police. During 1964 our evaluation section sent out 264 reports. How can the accusation be made that there is no co-operation?

Let us deal with the Plotz story. What is the truth? According to the Sunday Times we are supposed to have known about Plotz in 1962. The first time we heard about Plotz was in January, 1963. Plotz then got in touch with an officer in France. He wrote a letter to that officer and contact was then made between a member of Military Intelligence and Plotz in February, 1963. At that interview Plotz told a number of stories about a broken love affair here in South Africa and said he believed he could obtain certain information from a certain Joan Glover who had also had a love disappointment in South Africa. It was then agreed that he would try to get certain letters from her. In March, 1963 he again contacted one of the men of our branches overseas but he had no positive information whatsoever. On 1 April he again reported that he had ascertained that the name of a certain Bob was that of Robert Watson, but he know nothing whatsoever about Robert Watson. He had no information of any kind whatsoever about Robert Watson. However, a few weeks later he again contacted us and said he had reason to believe that if he came to South Africa he would be able to find out something about these people from friends of Joan Glover. He was assisted by my section and he came to South Africa. Colonel Le Roux met him at the Jan Smuts Airport on 25 April He took him to an hotel treated him to a meal and financed him to come to Cape Town to work here. They gave him an address in Pretoria to which he could send his information, and he gave an address in Johannesburg to which letters to him should be sent. I think it was the address of his father. Remember, Sir, he arrived in Johannesburg on 25 April and he had to come to Cape Town. On 6 May we received a cable from Paris that we must contact him at a certain place in Cape Town. On 7 May an address to which he should write was sent to him. Our people could only think he had lost the address why else would he again ask for the address from Paris. At that stage two letters were addressed to him at the address in Johannesburg he had given us but there was no reply to either of them. That was the end of Mr. Plotz and nobody has heard another word about him. But according to his own story—here I have a sworn statement—he was sitting in a bar in Johannesburg after the sabotage trial of these A.R.M. people. He then started to chat to a certain person whom he did not know at all and he then told this fantastic story that he was the person who was responsible for the fact that those people had now been convicted. He told that fantastic story and said he thought that was the reason why the Sunday Times had placed an advertisement in a newspaper to trace him. It was then that he went to the Sunday Times and told them this story. Mr. Speaker, this brilliant detective, in his own opinion, who discovered the terrible things that were happening in South Africa, has the temerity to state under oath that it was quite impossible for him to contact our military people again here in Cape Town. He said he even tried to contact the Security Branch of the police but that that was impossible. Can you believe it, Sir, this wonderful detective who has discovered all these things cannot get in touch with either the police or the Defence Department. And the Opposition launches an attack on this Government based on the story of a person of that calibre. I want to say this afternoon that the co-operation between these two branches is sound and I want to emphasize that Military Intelligence never heard about anything these people had done or who they were. We got the names of four persons who belonged to the A.R.M.; they were the names of four non-Whites, names which were already given to the Security Branch of the police on 30 June last year. We know they were concerned but we did not know what they were doing.

Nor does that come from Plotz.

No, that does not come from Plotz and was not a conspiracy to sow dissension between the police and the Army. We did not hear that from Plotz but that was a report we received from our own people.

It is the duty of the Opposition to raise matters in regard to which the public are doubtful, and I think it is a good thing that the Opposition have raised this matter about which so many doubts exist. It has given the hon. the Minister the opportunity to clear the air in regard to this matter.

I want to come back to the speech of the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development. The hon. the Minister said at the start of his speech that he had noticed a change of attitude on the part of the Opposition in connection with the development of the Bantu areas. The hon. the Minister is wrong. The attitude of the Opposition has always been crystal clear and there should never have been any doubt in this regard at all. When the report of the Tomlinson Commission was published, the United Party made an unequivocal statement in regard to the report of the commission. The party stated pertinently in its statement—I quote from the English text—that the first step in the implementation of the party’s federal idea was—

This has always been the official policy of the party. Indeed, in 1961 on the occasion of the general election this was one of the main points in the Opposition manifesto. Let me quote from the election manifesto of the party for 1961. (Translation.)—

Indeed, our accusation against the Government is that its method of development of the areas is hopelessly inadequate. One cannot develop any young country without free capital from outside. Not even this highly developed South Africa of ours can develop swiftly unless we import free foreign capital and know-how. But the Government refuses to allow free capital to enter the Transkei and other developing Bantu areas with the result that we have this anomalous position that a man like Dr. Anton Rupert can make use of his South African know-how in Malaya and expand there but he cannot do so in the Transkei. In our election manifesto we stated clearly that the Bantu areas must be developed with the assistance of free capital, “White capital, enterprise and know-how, but with full protection for the interests of the Bantu in these areas”. But the Government is opposed to this. The Government even wants to remove the White man from the Bantu areas. Free development has suddenly become “imperialism” and “colonialism” in the eyes of the Government. No wonder the Chief Minister of the Transkei himself, Chief Kaizer Matanzima, stated in the Legislative Assembly of the Transkei last year—

The fact of the matter is this: the Opposition is in favour of a far more direct and large-scale development of the Bantu areas than the Government is. The difference between ourselves and the Government does not lie in this fact; the difference lies in the fact that we want to develop the Bantu areas in a federal association with the rest of South Africa. And there are many good and practical reasons for this as I understand the policy of the Government—and if we are wrong we are open to correction—it wants at least seven independent Bantu states to come into being in the Republic. The Tomlinson Commission had seven in mind. It saw Vendaland and Tsongaland as one area. But according to a statement made by the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development a short while ago, the Tsongas refused to be included with the Vendas. They want their own separate state if there is to be anything of that nature. In that same statement he said that the Ciskei, against expectations, did not want to be included with the Transkei, so that may also become a separate state. As we see matters—we are open to correction—the position therefore now is that nine independent states will come into being in the Republic of South Africa. But that is not the end of the story. The Government sent an expensive commission to South West Africa to work out a similar pattern there. The printing of the report of the commission alone cost more than R21,000, the report containing all those wonderful maps. The Government announced here that it had accepted the political portion of that report. It wants to establish 11 non-White independent states there. Altogether then there will be 20 independent non-White states. Then there is one so-called White state. It will be a “Deurmekaarstan” and not a “Blankestan”, but for the sake of argument we will use the term “White state”. But then we still have the three British Protectorates. Therefore, if the policy of the Government is implemented in practice. it will result in the fact that South Africa as we know her—and South West must certainly be included with South Africa; I do not think that the Government has any doubt at all about its own policy—will undergo a process of balkanization which will put even the Balkans in the shade; because South Africa as we know her will then be cut up into 24 independent states, almost as many as in the whole of the rest of Africa. But the practical position will actually be far worse. The hon. the Minister has announced that he will give self-government to these new states, even before their respective areas have been consolidated. If this is the policy, as it stands in writing, there will then be tens of thousands of miles of borders; there will be a patchwork-quilt of states in South Africa—perhaps as many as 50 or more independent bits and pieces. I fear that one will have to keep one’s passport in one’s hand if one wants to go on a picnic in certain parts of the country during the week-end!

The Government has never explained to us what the position will be in connection with the Railways. It has not yet explained to us how roads and transport will be organized; what it is going to do if difficulties arise and one or all of the 23 non-White states close their air space to our aeroplanes, as is the case in the rest of Africa. Having regard to the ultimate aim of the Government’s policy, the plan is half-baked. It talks about the formation of a “commonwealth” fashioned on the last of the British Commonwealth, but this is a voluntary matter. What certainty is there that any one of these states will want to join this commonwealth? The Government’s commonwealth is a hope; it is not a plan.

Mr. Speaker, this is the reason why there is a radical difference of opinion in regard to the matter within the ranks of the Government party itself. The difference of opinion is in regard to the ultimate end. As far back as December 1960 Mr. Willem van Heerden wrote an article in Optima in regard to the future of the Bantu areas, and I want to quote what he said. He had this to say—

Mr. Willem van Heerden is in actual fact following the line of thought of the United Party. He makes it known in this article that he himself sees a federal solution as the ultimate objective. I can quote a long list of prominent thinkers and writers who are supporters of the Government and who are in favour, just like Mr. Willem van Heerden and many hon. members sitting on that side, of a federal future in South Africa, not this policy of the balkanization and disintegration of South Africa. This is the solution which Dr. Malan foresaw. This is the solution which even Chief Kaizer Matanzima foresaw. He made a speech in Durban recently, and, if he was correctly reported, he said—

He uses the word “commonwealth” only in the sense that it should have a federal basis. Mr. Speaker, there can be no doubt that our future does not lie in the balkanization and disintegration of South Africa; it lies in federation. Everywhere in the world where one has had to deal with a situation of various nationalities in the same state, the federal philosophy has been the solution. That is why the vast majority of the world’s population—far in excess of half the population of the world—are living under federal systems of government. The counter-example of the Rhodesian Federation is quoted to us, but it was not federalism which failed there; it was the method used. Two of the three units were, completely against their will, forced into a situation in which they were regarded as being subordinate to Southern Rhodesia. But, even if we say that federalism did fail there, surely we will not discard democracy because it met with a temporary setback in France? The fact of the matter is that more than 50 per cent of the world’s population, particularly in the case of multi-national states, are living successfully under federal systems. This has appeared to be far and away the best available political solution for the peaceful co-existence of people on an equal footing with each other because it recognizes diversity; because it can effectively protect minorities and yet achieve unity on a high level.

The hon. the Minister has said that there has been a change of attitude on the part of the Opposition. Let me say this to the hon. the Minister: During the past recess a completely new idiom has been born on the part of the Government and this has best been evidenced in speeches which have recently been made by the hon. the Minister of Defence and the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs. For some time now the hon. the Minister of Defence has advocated the acceptance of the principle of equality and equivalence between people in South Africa. There is a qualification to this and it is not my intention to omit the qualification of the hon. the Minister. He speaks of equal opportunity for people of all races but in different spheres, and he usually refers to the Bantu and the policy of the Government of the establishment of political units for the Bantu which can become politically independent. I do not want to omit this qualification but what is to our mind of the greatest importance in this statement is the question of principle, the principle of freedom and equality in the relationships between all groups of people in our country. In a speech which he made at Dingaanstat on 16 December last year he put his point of view in terms more challenging than have ever before been used by anybody on that side of the House. He advocated a change of attitude towards race relationships in our country and went on to add (translation)—

He concluded by saying—

Mr. Speaker, this is a far-reaching statement. I was pleased to see that this statement had its effect even in India and that it was interpreted there in the newspaper Himmat as a “fresh wind of change in South Africa”.

The hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs in his turn also made this new approach known to the outside world. According to the official text of the speech which he made at the opening of UNO, the hon. the Minister painted an entirely different picture of South Africa there from that painted by his predecessors. I am prepared to say that the speech which the hon. the Minister made there was the best speech made there yet under this Government, and I am prepared to congratulate him on it. At least now we have reached the stage where words are being used which bring us closer to the day which I hope may yet come in which a bi-partisan foreign policy will come into being. The hon. the Minister praised the principle of the UN Charter there. He must have had in mind the fact that the Charter opens on the high note of—

And against this background the hon. the Minister put the policy of the Government in completely new terms. He said—

There are hon. members who say that this has always been the aim of apartheid. The fact of the matter is, however, this—let us be honest in this regard—that these statements are actually the direct opposite of the language of apartheid which for 15 years has been the idiom of the Government. [Interjection.] I objected to it at the time and that fact was held against me then. For 15 years apartheid was moulded in terms such as mastery, domination, supremacy, and the superiority of the White man. Thousands of volumes in every language in the world have been written about it. These are based on statements made by leaders on that side of the House. These things are linked officially with the name of South Africa and I fear that the harm which has been done by this means to the good name of South Africa is irreparable and ineradicable and will stand for all time as a black mark against the Government. But I feel now that we must accept the fact that the Government has at last realized its mistake and that it is eager now to get away from all this as far as possible, to get away from its old language and idiom of mastery. So determined is the Government now to change this image that the chief secretary of the Government Party in the Cape, the hon. member for Moorreesburg (Mr. P. S. Marais) even stated at a meeting at Murraysburg that it was just gossip that the National Party was a narrow, “backveld”, conservative party. He said that it was not a conservative party but “a party of radicalism”! I thought that I know my politics; I have always regarded radicalism as a leftist idea. When I saw this statement I felt, however, that I should make sure of whether my political knowledge was correct and so I consulted Webster’s big International Dictionary. There I found the following explanation—

I wondered whether the banned Chief Albert Luthuli ever advocated more than this. The dictionary explains further: “Radical (in politics): opposed to conservative”. In fairness towards the hon. member I must say that he added later that what he actually meant was “conservative radicalism or radical conservatism”, It does not make very much difference. I think that I have made the point that there has been a radical swing on the part of the Government during the past recess. We have now to deal with a political vocabulary which accepts the idea, which wants to see radical discrimination terminated and which propounds the ideas of freedom and equality. This is a remarkable change. The slogans of the French Revolution are now echoing across the plains of the Karroo; this has come in place of the language of mastery and domination. Of course, one asks oneself, what has happened to bring about this remarkable change on the part of the Government? I think that the reason for the change is to be found in the New Year message of the hon. the Prime Minister. In his New Year message the hon. the Prime Minister referred in a very sombre tone to the approaching case in regard to South West Africa and the extremely delicate nature of the situation. He informed the West further that we would be in no position to play an outside role if weapons and equipment were withheld from us and he came to the conclusion that the year 1965 would be a test year for us. This was the key of his message. A few weeks earlier, on 16 December, he told a small group of young people whom he addressed at Betty’s Bay that he expected 1965 to be “a difficult year”. He asked that every man “be at his post” because “we stand against a mass of states which have the West on their side”. (Report from the Burger of 17 December 1964.) Now, it is a fine thing to hear people speak hopefully of a change of heart in our favour. But I think that the hon. the Prime Minister, the hon. the Minister of Defence and the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs know better. They know that there is every indication that either this year or early next year we will reach a critical stage as far as South Africa’s position in the world is concerned. A very great responsibility therefore rests upon the Government and a very great responsibility rests also upon the Opposition. If ever there was a time for us to put our House in order, it is now.

Tell that to Douglas Mitchell.

I think that the Government will have to show the country that it is making every effort to carry out the promises which it is now making before the entire world that discrimination will be done away with. Sir, I am one of those who believe that over the years the Opposition has had far more success policy-wise than people think, and that it has achieved far more results for South Africa than it is given credit for. If it were not for long and ruthless but purposeful opposition, the Government would never have come so far as to change its approach so drastically. I consider it to be in the interests of South Africa that the Opposition should continue with this process. No matter how difficult and exhausting it may be, I feel that the Opposition, no matter what the immediate party political advantages or results may be, must keep the Government at it and ensure that the Government put South Africa’s house in order. It is the duty of the Opposition—and it will carry out its duty—continually and ruthlessly to ensure that the actions of the Government match its words. The Government will have to give White and non-Whites a society which everyone will be prepared to defend if that necessity arises. If not, if it does not do this, we in South Africa will have in a time of emergency the greatest fifth column that the world has ever seen and that is why we want straightforward answers from the Government to-day, not tomorrow. We can all understand that if an area like the Transkei, and any others which may follow upon it, becomes independent, the people living there will then be free of discrimination. But that freedom will spring from the fact that those people have, as it were, packed up and placed themselves outside our political association. The test of the Government’s sincerity therefore, does not lie there; the test of its sincerity and honesty is going to lie in the practical implementation of its policy in respect of those who are destined to remain permanently within the South African political association, that is to say, the 3,000,000 Whites, the 1,500,000 Coloureds, the 500,000 South Africans of Indian descent and that percentage of Bantu who, just like the White man, have left their original homelands as emigrants. Why should there be two yardsticks? Our forefathers came from Holland, France, Germany and England. We Whites, even in this generation, can sever our connections with our homelands and settle elsewhere as immigrants, but a Bantu cannot do so. There is a percentage of Bantu—how small a percentage makes no difference—who have severed their connections with their “homeland” and have legally settled permanently elsewhere. In these spheres will lie the test of the sincerity of the policy of the Government. When we ask the Government how they are going to apply their policy of removal, of discrimination as far as the Coloureds are concerned, the Government must not tell us that they cannot see ahead, because if they cannot see ahead, they must not advocate such a policy. We all know that we cannot have two Parliaments in one country; there can only be one Appeal Court, only one Defence Force, only one Police Force, only one Parliament which makes all the sovereign decisions in the life of the country and in regard to everyone living there. One cannot talk about sovereign equality for Coloureds and Whites or for Indians and Whites if one wishes to bring this about on the present basis of apartheid. One is then only playing with words. I think that this would be unforgivable. Let me say this to the credit of the Government: In the old days when supremacy was the policy, it beat its chest and said: “People, I am blunt and undiplomatic, but I am honest”. It has now become more diplomatic. I sincerely hope that because it has now become more diplomatic it will not place South Africa in the position in which the Government says one thing and means another. We regard it as our duty as an Opposition to demand a reckoning from the Government, mercilessly and time and again, in regard to the implementation of this new language which it is now using before the world and before the peoples of South Africa. [Time limit.]

There will be a general provincial election on 24 March and it has been noticeable that the Opposition have spoken more about White mastery during this debate than ever before. I want to start with this supremacy of the United Party in pursuance of the speech of the hon. member who has just sat down. I refer to the Opposition’s policy in respect of White supremacy within the framework of an undivided state in South Africa. Let me say immediately that I am one of those who believe that in regard to certain political behaviour patterns in this country the days when Nationalist and United Party supporters could oppose one another in this country within the safe framework of Western power and order, are last. When hon. members opposite started talking about White supremacy—more so than ever before—I tried to listen patiently to what the official Opposition in South Africa had to say about this specific subject. Let me say immediately, Mr. Speaker, that reasoning from the point of view of the White man’s position in South Africa, I come to this convincing conclusion that as far as the United Party is concerned, that Party has lost its cardinal reason for existence in our present political situation. If we reason from the point of view of the White man’s position of power in South Africa then I say that the United Party has lost its cardinal reason for existence in our present political situation. It lost it first after the Second World War. Since that time the United Party has not come forward with a single dynamic idea, with a colourful slogan to attract interest on this specific plane of reasoning. Why does that Party not say unequivocally to a hostile world that the White man in South Africa is not a minority of settlers who can give way? Why does it not say this to a Black majority in South Africa? I shall tell you what is happening, Sir. Instead of that Party doing what I am saying now and what I think it ought to do, they are continually engaged in our South African politics in swinging backwards and forwards between the two extremes of White supremacy, or White leadership with justice, as they call it, which they promised to a section of the population, and increasing integration, increasing integration particularly in the economic sphere in order to break into the White man’s power structure in his own country. We are continually seeing these two poles, Mr. Speaker. We had it again last year on the occasion of the congress of the United Party in the Transvaal. At the end of that party congress the Leader of the United Party stood up with a message of hope for his Party. What did he do? In that same message for the future he told a White minority in our country that he was prepared in the second half—note well, in the second half—of the twentieth century to give a large Bantu majority a handful of White Members of Parliament, subject to a non-Black veto right. This is what he said in one part of his speech. In the other part he said that the United Party’s hope for the future lay in this tremendous economic upsurge which South Africa was experiencing at the moment. This brings with it greater economic integration, a greater lessening of the power of the White man in his own country. And in this, he said, lay the future salvation of the United Party—in this increasing economic integration. You see, therefore, Mr. Speaker, that on the one hand we have an involved paper formula for White supremacy within the framework of an undivided state, and on the other hand great joy in regard to increasing integration which must have a detrimental affect upon separate territorial freedom for the White man or must even terminate it. This Party is continually swinging between these two poles to-day. They are sometimes even reactionary and liberalistic at the same time. That is how that party really is to-day. It is in regard to this truth that the Opposition is in essence a sort of political paradox in our whole political structure to-day. On the one hand it is a half-alive political anachronism and on the other hand it is the most disastrous party South African politics have ever known. It is a half-alive anachronism. Mr. Speaker, look at it from the outside. Where is the United Party to-day? It is no longer even news to its own Press. It has simply nothing to say to the people of South Africa. Look at the Cape platteland, the part of the country that I know. One has to drive miles to-day to find one single United Party supporter who comes forward voluntarily to assist that Party. [Interjections.] These are the old die-hard United Party supporters who still think back to the past.

All the big farmers are United Party supporters.

That is why that Party is to-day essentially broken-down and fossilized. Over the past years that Party in its blind opposition to everything that this Government has tried to do, has opposed every sensible innovation in our politics and has thereby condemned itself to a completely negative and unimportant role in South African politics. And then the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. J. D. du P. Basson) comes along and asks that we should think ahead in regard to our present political structure. What he asks is without a doubt not true to-day in respect of the United Party. It is a half-alive anachronism in our present political situation.

On the other hand I say that it is true that that Party is the most disastrous Party that South African politics has ever known. The disaster—and I want hon. members opposite to listen to this, particularly the hon. member for Sea Point (Mr. J. A. L. Basson)—about which I am speaking was born out of that Party’s reply to our basic problems in our present politics—in regard to the future handling of a black majority in South Africa. From the point of view of the White man the United Party is failing in its handling of this Black majority. This Black majority in South Africa has three characteristics, three characteristics in regard to which we on both sides of the House cannot differ in the times in which we live. The first characteristic of this Black majority is that it is basic. The Black man has once and for all wiped the sleep from his eyes on the entire Continent of Africa, and also in South Africa. This urge for freedom on the part of the Black man is basic in the first instance. In the second instance it is unassailable in principle. On one occasion General Smuts said: “You cannot put a barrier to the development of a nation”. This is a nation which is wiping the sleep from its eyes. In principle, this urge for freedom on the part of the Black man is unassailable. But he has a third characteristic: In the long run this urge for freedom on the part of the Black majority in South Africa will be irresistible. One cannot control him by means of a paper formula within the framework of an undivided state. One cannot do that. It is in its solution to these basic problems that the United Party has revealed itself in our political structure to-day as the most disastrous Party that this country has ever known. In its solution to this basic problem this Party comes along and tells a large Black majority about a gradual extension of political rights in an undivided South Africa. Not liberation by division, but what I want to call a sort of one-nation theory. What is the result of it? It makes a Black majority in South Africa aim continually at the whole; not Black liberation by division. This point of view of an undivided state in South Africa is continually teaching a Black majority to aim at the whole. I want now to bring the most serious charge against the United Party that can be brought against them. In this respect the United Party as far as its internal politics is concerned is actually what I want to call a preparer of the way and an instrument of Black imperialism in the White man’s country. Who wants to deny this? I say this because the aim of all the world forces in South Africa is Black mastery of the whole of South Africa.

Who can deny this: In one large undivided South Africa freedom for the Bantu does not mean a few White representatives in this Parliament. No, it means the eventual supremacy of a Black majority over the whole of South Africa. No one can deny this statement. After all, it is silly to think that a White minority will in the long run and within the same country, within an undivided South Africa, be able to remain in authority over a large Black majority.

There is a further danger. There is the danger constituted by that party as far as the outside world is concerned. And the disaster as far as the outside world is concerned is contained in the fact that the United Party is today helping to determine the course and the intensity of outside pressure upon South Africa. Why? From time to time that party pleads for concessions, concessions which will make it possible for the West to withstand Black and Red pressure for action against Africa. And what is the result of it? This in its turn strengthens the belief on the part of our bitterest enemies that universal franchise in an undivided South Africa, that is to say, Black supremacy, can be achieved by means of considerable White assistance from within. That is why I say, Mr. Speaker, that that party represents great disaster in our present South African politics. I want to go further. That party is continually showing the outside world an image of an undivided South Africa in which the Black man must also enjoy his freedom. And it is precisely on this plane that it is so difficult to convince the outside world. I want to refer here to an article which appeared in the Burger and which originated in the Netherlands newspaper Trouw. An article appeared in that newspaper by the editor, Dr. J. A. Bruyns Slot. Unfortunately, I do not have the time to read the entire article. I should actually read it all in order to illustrate what I mean. But I do want to quote certain portions of it. The Editor says—(translation.)

And then this—

I say that where we have to foster this idea of a divided South Africa in which both Black and non-Black can enjoy his freedom, it is in the first instance very difficult to foster it in the outside world. I say that if I were a member of the United Party to-day, I would not be able to reply to this article by the editor of Trouw. I would not be able to reply to it, presupposing that the White nation is a nation in its own right in South Africa. If I am to reason on the basis of my party’s policy, then it is easy for me to reply. I can for example immediately ask this editor whether the national borders in Europe and elsewhere in the world did not to a very large extent come into being through the medium of various forms of coercion over many years. I could even point out that the power factor has always played an important part in human situations and, what is more, that it is this particular power factor which more often than not lies behind any political discussions of moment throughout the entire world. But if I reason from the point of view of the United Party and I hold the view that the White nation is a nation in its own right, then I cannot answer this editor.

I want to conclude by saying this. The attitude of the United Party that we have to share the political power with a large Black majority within the framework of an undivided South Africa will probably draw much applause initially on the part of the outside world; if we suddenly change our policy so radically they will probably applaud it but we will then immediately be faced with another danger. We will be adding stature to the fundamental and highly dangerous misunderstanding in the outside world that we are in fact nothing more than a minority of settlers in South Africa which can be liquidated at some stage or other. For this reason the Government states unequivocally to the world to-day that the picture of South Africa as a peaceful and prosperous country with the Whites in an inferior position, is a complete fantasy. This party does not view the White nation as a minority of settlers which will depart sooner or later; we see the White nation as a nation in its own right.

The only party which qualifies to-day to look after the interests of this White nation from now on, viewed from the point of view of our policy pattern, is the National Party. This party is eminently suitable for what I have just stated. It is so for three reasons. This party is essentially national. It can understand the urge for freedom on the part of the Black majority in South Africa; it can handle it. This party was and is still to-day throughout the whole Continent of Africa the greatest exponent of the principle of national freedom. The freedom which this party claims for the White man in South Africa to-day is something of which it will never deprive a Black majority. But this party has a second basic characteristic.

May I ask a question?

No, Mr. Speaker, I want to finish. This party has a second basic characteristic. It is also essentially conservative and patient. It goes by the recognized basic things in our whole national structure.

Lastly, this party is essentially radical. It is and remains the dynamic and colourful builder of a new South Africa.

The hon. member for Moorreesburg (Mr. P. S. Marais) has treated us to-day on the same theories on which he has treated us previously. He tried to tell us that the problems of South Africa would actually be solved when we were no longer an undivided South Africa but a divided South Africa.

The hon. member concluded his speech by telling us what the Nationalist Party actually stood for. The hon. member for Moorreesburg reminded me of the definition I read years ago of what a real statesman and what a real politician was. I read that a politician always talked about the problems of the future because he did not have a solution for the problems of the present, whereas a statesman tried to solve the problems of the present and tried to leave the problems of the future to the generations to come. The hon. member for Moorreesburg told us that the solution lay in our no longer being an undivided South Africa but a divided South Africa.

I think every one of us would have agreed with the hon. member had we started to establish a nation here to-day as we did 300 years ago. Had it been possible to divide South Africa it would then have been the easiest thing in the world. [Interjections.] The hon. member for Moorreesburg says we of the United Party have no courage. Yet they are the party who are always telling us that in order to turn South Africa into a purely White man’s country we should start in the Western Province and the hon. member for Moorreesburg is one of the great advocates of a purely White man’s country in the greater Western Cape. They say that in their policy. They do not lack the courage to carry out that policy. What is the position, Sir? Are there fewer Bantu in the Western Cape Province to-day than there were a year ago, for example? The hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development again told us to-day that they were busy implementing the policy of removing the Bantu from the Western Province. If they cannot even remove the Bantu from the Western Province how do they think are they going to remove them from greater White South Africa?

Here I have a report which appeared in the Cape Times of 18 December 1964. It contains a statement by Mr. Mitchley, Secretary of the Interior in the Transkeian Government. It says—

An increase from 6,500 to 15,000 and then they are the political party who accuse the United Party of a lack of courage. The hon. member for Moorreesburg and his party now want to divide South Africa. Let us see you divide South Africa and tell us where the borders of the future Bantustans are going to be. Why did the hon. member for Moorreesburg who subscribes so fully to the theory of a divided South Africa not reply to the hon. member for Durban (Point) (Mr. Raw) who asked where the borders of the Bantustan in Zululand, for example, were going to be.

Can’t you grasp it?

We are not the only ones who cannot grasp it. In that case the entire South Africa cannot grasp it. In that case no farmer in South Africa grasps it. At every congress of the Government party they are asked where those borders are going to be. Hon. members opposite say we do not grasp it. They want to divide South Africa and create separate freedoms. Tell us where you are going to create the state you wish to establish for the Coloureds? Then we can listen; then we can argue. Not a single member on that side appreciates the practical position of South Africa. They are only a bunch of theorists. They want to tell us what South Africa ought to look like but they do not tell us what South Africa looks like outside. The crux of the motion by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is that we have a Government which is busy maladministering South Africa; that they are a party which cannot present us with a clear policy because they close their eyes to the practical circumstances obtaining in South Africa. Wittingly or unwittingly they are continually creating images. So they try to create the image that they alone are the champions of Afrikanerdom, for example, and of that which the Afrikaner stands for and that they are the only people who have that monopoly. They try to create the impressions that they are the only people who fight for the interests of the White man. They try to create the impression that they are the only people who promote true South Africanism; that they are the only people who try to create national unity. Similarly, Mr. Speaker, they also tried to create the impression that they were the only people who were trying to protect the interests of the farmer in South Africa. They are the big champions! They are the big champions of the farmer! Prior to 1948 they said to the farmer: All you have to do is to produce with our assistance and our support and we shall always ensure that you are reasonably remunerated for your labour plus your costs of production. They are the people who told us they were concerned about the platteland. It was only last year that we had the good example in this House of how they tried to create the impression that they were the only people who were on the side of the farmer of South Africa.

I want to refer to a motion which was introduced in this House last year by the hon. member for Gardens (Mr. Connan). When the hon. member for Gardens introduced that motion he said the following—

We were then told by hon. members opposite that they were the only people who protected organized agriculture in South Africa. The hon. member for Wakkerstroom (Mr. Martins)—now the Deputy Minister of Agriculture—then got up and said the following—

Remember this: “the spokesman of the farmer”—

The hon. member for Wakkerstroom then went on to say—

His entire speech was an attempt to create the impression that they were the people who were the spokesmen of organized agriculture. Why? Because we moved a motion to the effect that the farmers did not share in the economic prosperity of South Africa. They then had to create the impression that they were the people who looked after the interests of the farmers. The hon. member for Wakkerstroom has been appointed Deputy Minister of Agriculture and what happened at the congress of the South African Agricultural Union which was held at Bloemfontein last year? I am quoting from the Farmers’ Weekly of 4 November last year—

That was the motion which was introduced and it was then discussed. That was exactly what the United Party said in their motion in this House last year, namely, that the fanner of South Africa was not sharing in the economic prosperity the country was enjoying. We now come to the hon. the Deputy Minister who replied to this motion. Let us listen to him—

In other words agricultural planning must be on the same basis as the planning in regard to any other industry in the country. Would that that had been the case, Sir. Had that been the case it would not have been necessary for the South African farmer to be satisfied with approximately 2½ per cent or 3 per cent on his investment.

I get much more than 3 per cent, double that.

The hon. Deputy Minister then went on and dealt with the resolution passed by the farmers.

At Bultfontein the hon. Minister of Economics and Marketing said the following—

Last year, however, hon. members opposite were the people who told us that they were the spokesmen of organized agriculture in our country. When organized agriculture refutes the claim of hon. members opposite that the farmers do indeed share in the economic upsurge in South Africa, we on this side want to know whether the Government can still claim that they represent the farmers of South Africa. Can hon. members opposite still claim that when they are not prepared to carry out the resolution which the South African Agricultural Union passed at their congress? How can they claim that they have the confidence of the farmers and organized agriculture? It seems to us that the policy which is to-day being followed in the country amounts to this: The fewer farmers the greater the number of Ministers to be appointed for them. However, the fact that they have appointed a new Minister ought at least to prove to us that they apparently realize that the problems of the South African farmers are getting progressively more serious. What has happened in spite of the fact that they have been trying to create the impression that they were the friends of the farmers? What has happened under this Government? Under this Government there has been a fantastic depopulation of the platteland. Not only has the platteland become depopulated but there has not been any industrial development on the platteland worth mentioning. During the past 17 years under the regime of the Nationalist Party there has not been any industrial development on the platteland worth mentioning to assist those people.

Are you talking about the platteland?

The hon. Minister only has to read the report on White occupation of the platteland.

Do you say there has not been any industrial development on the platteland?

The hon. Minister must only think of the entire platteland of the Cape Province. Take the south-western districts which is the Minister’s own area. What has been the extent of the industrial development there?

Are Sasol and Vanderbijlpark and Phalaborwa not on the platteland? And what about Odendaals-rus and Welkom?

There are many branches of our agriculture. In the dairy and wheat-growing industries we find that the number of entrepreneurs is dwindling. Because it has no policy the Government is not only undermining the confidence of the producers it is also undermining the confidence of the consumers. As an hon. member on this side put it to me the other day: One does not know whether this Government is following a policy of producing cheap food or of assisting the farmer. The Government has to choose between those two. It must tell us which direction it is following: Is it cheap food in South Africa or assistance to the farmer of the country? It cannot have its bread buttered on both sides. The hon. Minister knows how to solve the problem. They have the means at their disposal. They boast daily about this fantastic economic development. They boast about the fact that we have a surplus of R128,000,000. They boast about that in every country in the world. But how much of that money is being spent on assisting both the farmer of South Africa and the consumer of the country so that the latter does not have to pay through the nose for his requirements.

If there is one claim which the Government can no longer make then it is that they have the confidence of the farming community of South Africa.

Why do you not put that to the test on the platteland and see what happens?

Let me give further examples to show that they no longer look after the interests of the farmers. The greatest portion of South Africa has in the past few years once again suffered from severe drought conditions. There are still certain areas in the Transvaal where the drought has not yet been broken, in some cases not within five, six or seven years.

The Government is assisting.

I wonder whether the hon. member has read the letter in the Burger this morning from a young friend from Upington in which he describes the position of the farmers in his area as a result of the drought.

Is the Government to blame for the drought?

Order! I trust the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) will get up and reply to the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West).

I know we all entertain the hope that the hon. member will do that, Sir. But the only thing the hon. member will tell us is that the Marketing Act is the Magna Charta of the farmers. That usually suffices as far as he is concerned. But as I have already said there are numerous other examples why the Government should no longer enjoy the confidence of the farmers in the country. I have, for example, referred to the drought conditions which prevail in the Transvaal, certain parts of the North Western Transvaal, where drought conditions have prevailed for six-seven years. Is any hon. Minister opposite prepared to say that they have looked adequately after the interests of the people?

The farmers themselves will reply to you.

Yes, after scores of them have already left the land. As the hon. Minister knows there is land to-day which is unoccupied, it has no owner. People are working in the towns and cities to augment their income.

Because there is a drought.

The hon. Minister says: “There is a drought.” How long has there been a drought?

For seven years in some places.

I want to ask the hon. the Minister this: When did he for the first time offer a little more assistance to those people?

Six years ago.

The hon. the Minister’s Department offered those people a little more assistance last year for the first time after there has been a drought for so many years.

May I ask the hon. member a question?

No, Sir, I still have a great deal to say. How many of those people will ever become rehabilitated? Can the Minister tell me that? The hon. the Minister knows that the grants, the subsidies, which are given to those people in respect of their stock are totally inadequate. The Minister ought to realize that the assistance the Government gave in those areas was only to assist the people to keep their ordinary breeding stock alive. Now that it has rained in certain areas, do those people still get that subsidy? Of course, they do not. A few years ago we had a serious discussion in this House on the subject of drought conditions. The previous member for Kimberley (North) (Mr. H. T. van G. Bekker) introduced a motion which dealt with assistance to farmers in drought-stricken areas and what the Government ought to do. Was any attention paid to that? The hon. the Minister ought to realize that our sheep population, for example, has already for the past 30 years consistently remained the same at plus minus 32,000,000. He ought to know that our cattle population has remained constant at plus minus 12,000,000 and is even declining. Are those not problems which the Ministers and their Departments ought to solve and in respect of which they ought to give the necessary guidance? They say they are busy solving the problems of the farmer. No, they are not busy solving the problem of the farmer, of the workers, of the wage-earner and of the salaried man. They are only busy solving one thing and that is how to give expression to race prejudice and race consciousness in South Africa.

The hon. member for Maitland (Mr. Hickman) and other hon. members have already pointed that out. The practical problems of the country are not being tackled by the Government. Has the hon. the Prime Minister himself not admitted that the Government has been busy with ideologies and racial matters too long and has not had the opportunity of paying attention to the bread-and-butter problems? Has the time not arrived for this Government to forget about its theories, forget about its visions of a divided or undivided South Africa? Has the time not arrived for the Government to realize what South Africa’s position is? Should it not give its attention to these bread-and-butter problems? If this Government does not avail itself of this opportunity of solving the bread-and-butter problems of South Africa, particularly the problems of the farmer, I say this country and this House should not have any confidence in this Government. In spite of the fact that hon. members opposite think they are in a strong position and that they have over a hundred seats in this House that the day of reckoning will come, not brought on by us but by the electorate, as surely as they have had a chance since 1948 of governing South Africa.

I hope that the hon. member who has just sat down will forgive me if I do not follow his line of debate.

Mr. Speaker, it is now some 12 months since I joined the National Party, and I want to say without any hesitation that politically I have never been happier in my whole career. Having sat on both sides of the House, having sat in both the United Party caucus and the National Party caucus, I have had a priceless experience and I feel somewhat qualified to pass an opinion. Mr. Speaker, without doubt there is a far higher standard of democracy practiced in the National Party caucus. It is a real joy to be completely free to express oneself, and I dare say any of the hon. members on this side of the House who have left the United Party can corroborate my statement. One soon realizes that herein lies the strength of the National Party, this completely free expression of opinion, and strength through leadership.

As a South African whose mother-tongue is English, I feel perfectly happy amongst my Afrikaans-speaking South Africans. The warmth of friendship that has been extended to me is quite a priceless treasure as far as I am concerned. Mr. Speaker, there is a singleness of purpose among the Nationalists, a burning love of our country—we are building one nation with two languages, a country of proud South Africans. We are prepared to serve all sections of our population, to protect our White civilization, to give full development to the Coloureds, to the Bantu and to the Indians—each group to the fullest extent in their own areas, separate from us. Sir, the transformation that is taking place in the Transkei makes one realize that this policy of ours will work, and that those people are now on the long hard road to civilization.

I listened once again with intense interest to hon. members on the other side hoping against hope for some constructive criticism. My mind goes back to the two very unhappy years I spent on that side of the House, trying to live to double standards, talking to the right and moving to the left. I am afraid that as far as the present debate is concerned, the no-confidence debate goes off with less and less of a bang. The Opposition has not realized that we are living in a realistic age. The voters are more intelligent by far than what they give them credit for. I paid close attention to what the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) had to say. Two words sum up his speech. I think I would be unparliamentary if I were to use them. The hon. member gave us a long brash speech against Bantustans. Why did he not give us a clear-cut policy, an uplifting talk on race federation? Or is it race integration? If he hates Bantustans so much as he has declared, would he then not rather have eight Bantu in this Parliament, the same as his leader? The hon. member for South Coast has made some astonishing statements in Natal over the years. Most probably he wants to forget them. So I will not dig them up all at this stage.

There is, however, one of his statements I will recall in a few minutes. I want to jog his memory and to say in passing: We note that he is by and large now leaving those statements to his Leader.

I want to take his mind back to October 1963 to a meeting of some 1,500 United Party supporters in Pietermaritzburg. Since the statement then made by his Leader, the United Party have never had a meeting to equal that one. The highest number of people they have ever had at a meeting since then was somewhere in the region of 500. The meeting at the Royal Showgrounds was, I think, the high-water mark of the United Party in Pietermaritzburg. Perhaps the hon. member will recall the words of his Leader. I myself will always be grateful to his Leader for using those well-chosen words. If he had not used them, Mr. Speaker, it is more then probable that I would still be languishing on the other side. It is indeed an ill-wind that blows no one any good. It was indeed the winds of change for the United Party: “I would rather have eight Bantu in Parliament than eight Bantustans.” That was the statement of the Leader of the United Party. After the hon. member for South Coast refused point blank to give me a written statement on this cardinal principle of the United Party, I resigned, as is well known. I gave a full statement to the political correspondent of the Daily News and it was truthfully and fully recorded. The hon. member for South Coast then had an interview with the editor of the Natal Mercury and was, I am sure, truthfully reported. Mr. Speaker, this is an extract of the statement that he gave, headed “No non-Whites in the House, says Mitchell”. No non-Whites, not even Coloureds. This is surely the new United Party policy that we have been hearing about, the so-called lighthouse policy—now you see it, now you do not. Now it is black now it is white.

The question put to Mr. Mitchell as embodied in this statement was—

Mr. Speaker, that I think is a deliberate untruth, because shortly after this meeting which took place on 25 October a further statement was given early in November when the hon. Leader of the Opposition had a meeting in Greytown, Natal, and the Natal Witness came out in headlines—

Well, Sir, I do not know, but there was a subtle change. Here the Leader of the Opposition used the words—

Mr. Speaker, we have all got to make the choice. There is no “if” about it. Our Prime Minister does not lead in that way. He gives a definite lead. He does not say to us “if”.

On being questioned about it last year, the hon. Leader of the Opposition made no bones about it. He replied fully and said again that if he had to choose, he would rather have eight Bantu in this Parliament, thereby making it a multi-racial Parliament. When, however, I put the question to the hon. member for South Coast in Parliament, his answer was: “I will answer you from the City Hall in Pietermaritzburg.” That was 12 months ago. I am sorry the hon. member is not here in the House, but to my knowledge the hon. member has been to Pietermaritzburg on two occasions and attended public meetings, but he has sat there as a Harply statue completely mute. I want now to challenge the hon. member for South Coast to go to Pietermaritzburg because there is a provincial election coming, and I want him to answer me and I want him to state quite clearly: “Does he follow his Leader, is he prepared to accept eight Bantu in this Parliament?” The people in Pietermaritzburg will want to hear that. And I want the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) (Capt. Henwood) to go with him and also to make that quite clear: Does he accept the principle laid down by his Leader that there will be eight Bantu in this Parliament? I want to suggest this to the hon. member for South Coast and the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District): Take your provincial councillor, Capt. Smith, to this meeting you ought to have, and I would like Capt. Smith to give an undertaking under oath that he did not make representations to members of the National Party in 1961 to stand as an independent with National Party backing. I would like him to give that on oath. The people in Pietermaritzburg who are entering this election are most anxious to know the answers to these questions. It is of vital importance to them. The Progressive Party are going to answer them. The Nationalist Party is going to answer them, and I hope the United Party will have the courage to do so. I want to say this to the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) that if he does not go to Pietermaritzburg and hold that meeting and tell the people exactly where he stands, then I am afraid I shall call him a coward.

I see the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration is here, but I regret that the hon. the Deputy Minister of Labour is absent. Towards the end of his speech to-day he intimated that the Nationalist Party, during the regime of the United Party, could not support immigration because we wanted to bring in immigrants to swamp and suppress the Afrikaner. I have referred to what happened in 1947 in this House during a very important debate at the time in regard to immigration. The standpoint of the United Party was as follows: “Large-scale and State-supported European immigration of related races on a selective basis and taking into consideration the absorptive capacity of our country; the preservation and the strengthening of the European nature of our civilization, and with the assurance that such immigration can only lead to a more developed economy, to more avenues of employment and to higher standards of living for all sections of our population.” To this we received the reply of the Nationalist Party, when the hon. member for Brits (Mr. J. E. Potgieter), who is at present Chief Whip of the Nationalist Party, was also a member of this House, through the mouth of the then Leader of the Opposition, Dr. Malan, which I will now give. Dr. Malan said that the Nationalist Party could not support this principle of immigration, for the following reason: Because it was not necessary “to go and hunt for” immigrants overseas. I wonder what the Nationalist Party is doing now? Because South Africa “would not be able to absorb” these thousands of immigrants.

Of course that was true at that time.

Because it was “State-supported”, and “it has never been the policy of South Africa”, and also it is “a deviation from the tradition” because we would “allow the good and the bad to enter our country” because “delegations” would even be sent to Europe to recruit immigrants; because it was “deliberate” and, so he says further, there are advertisements and announcements are made widely in many countries of Europe to the effect that “the doors of South Africa stand open and that just as many immigrants as wish to come can come”. What is happening now? Dr. Malan further said that the Nationalist Party was against the “recruiting” of immigrants. Mr. Speaker, what is happening now? Another reason he gives is that we cannot allow immigration because it will change “the whole face of South Africa” and it will also change the “character” of the country and its people, Dr. Malan said, “South Africans constitute a nation of their own with its own character and future, and we must protect that character and that future of the nation.” What are they doing now? Furthermore he says he is opposed to it because immigrants will deprive soldiers of their homes and of their opportunities for employment; because the Nationalist Party is opposed to South Africa “becoming the market square where every Tom, Dick and Harry and everybody else will have the same rights” because we will not have houses for the immigrants; because our agriculture and industries cannot absorb these people; because our mines do not need more labour; because the “shadow of depression” is already spreading over the world and over South Africa, and therefore we cannot bring in these people; because the labour market cannot absorb these immigrants. Where do those hon. friends get the reason mentioned by the Deputy Minister? He sucked it out of his thumb. What I have just stated are the actual reasons given at the time by Dr. Malan, but we cannot do otherwise than encourage the immigration policy of the Nationalist Party to-day. It is, however, a policy they have stolen from the United Party. It is the greatest piece of plagiarism that has ever yet been committed in the political sphere.

But in so far as this debate is concerned, and particularly in so far as the Bantustans are concerned, I think that this debate, in all honesty, has borne more good fruit than any debate that I have attended in this House during the last 20 years. I think we have been frank with each other, and I shall also be frank. This side is frank in regard to its policy, and that side of the House was also frank to-day, and if the voters now make a mistake, and if they adopt a course which will harm South Africa, then it is not the fault of this House or of that party or of this party. The two courses have been clearly stated to the country. Both they and we have unequivocally revealed the basic principles of our non-White policy here, and in regard to those principles there can therefore no longer be any uncertainty.

Before I come to the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration, I should first like to refer to the hon. the Minister of Bantu Education. He commenced his speech by saying that the policy of the Prime Minister, the Government and the Nationalist Party was based on the policy implemented by the Voortrekkers. He stated that Pretorius came to an agreement with Panda, and in that he sees some similarity between the two courses. But the Minister forgot to tell us that Panda’s territory was not part of the Voortrekker territory. Panda governed an area for the Zulus which was their own; they were independent. In the second place he forgot to tell us of the mistake which was made under the then policy, and that Panda’s son Ketswayo, who was one of the cruellest men in South Africa, launched the 1879 war with the Isandhlawana, Rorke’s Drift and Ulundi, horrible bloodbaths. Only thereafter was the mistake discovered and remedied. The Minister omitted to tell us that.

I now come to my hon. friend, the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration. He made a good speech. I think he made an honest speech and I want to congratulate him on telling us honestly: “As far as our side is concerned, we simply cannot promise to retain the leadership of the Whites over the whole of South Africa”. He admitted that this was opposed to their policy. Their policy is to create independent states where the Bantu will be the masters, just as we are the masters in our area. He also referred to the speech made by the Prime Minister in 1950 to the Natives’ Representative Council. But then he goes further and gives the bases for his policy; he quotes examples to show why the Nationalist Party’s course must be followed. He quotes what Dr. Malan said in 1923; he also quotes what the late General Hertzog is supposed to have propagated. He could also have quoted General Botha. But what he quoted there did not concern Bantu-stans or apartheid as we know it to-day; it concerned the old traditional segregation policy in South Africa. That segregation policy was followed by all of us; it is conventional in our country; it is traditional in our country that the control should remain in the hands of the Whites—precisely the policy of the United Party. Listen to what Dr. Malan said in 1951 or 1952 when he referred to the apartheid declaration made by Dr. Verwoerd in 1950 and to our attacks from this side. Dr. Malan stated that total apartheid might be the ideal but that it was not practical policy, nor was it the policy of the Nationalist Party.

Read what he said.

I have already done that often in this House; I do not have it in front of me now. He said that it might be an ideal, and I challenge my hon. friend to prove that I am wrong. He said that total apartheid may be an ideal, but that it was not practicable and that it was not the policy of the Nationalist Party. What did Mr. Strijdom tell me when I asked him whether he was in favour of total apartheid? He said: “If the hon. member says that, he is distorting”. He was not in favour of total apartheid. This policy of total apartheid was never the policy of the Nationalist Party until such time as the present Prime Minister (Dr. Verwoerd) came into power. I must admit that he consistently stood by that policy which he announced in 1950, but the members of his party were divided. My hon. friend knows that as well as I do. Dr. Malan did not believe in it, Mr. Strijdom did not believe in it, and some of our hon. friends who still sit here to-day told me that that was not the policy of the Nationalist Party; the policy of the Nationalist Party is the old traditional policy in South Africa; those Bantu homelands would never become independent, they said. That is why I am so glad to-day that we have eventually had clarity to-day in regard to the principle of this matter. I am glad that eventually, after all these years of fighting, after these years of argument, after these years of foxy evasion, of evasive statements in regard to the real position, our hon. friends have now admitted through the mouth of my hon. friend there that their policy will lead to seven, eight or nine independent Black states within our borders. Now we know where we stand. Now the public also knows where they stand. The Nationalist Party will establish eight or nine of them, and then there are still the Protectorates to which I will revert. The question I wish to ask, and which I hope the hon. the Prime Minister will reply to, seeing that the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development has already spoken, is this. I cannot take the word of anybody else; I want to hear it from the Prime Minister or from a responsible Minister. My question is: Where will the borders of these Bantustans be? Where, for example, will the borders of the Transkei be? Last year I told the Minister of Bantu Administration that the border of the Transkei could not stop at the Kei River; that that was not traditional Transkei land. The transkei land, or the Xhosa land, or the Fingo land, or the Pondo land, extends further. It extends to the Gamtoos River or at least to the Fish River.

That will be the day!

That is precisely what Matanzima is already asking for. He demands it, and the Bantu will get it yet, because one of these days the Ciskei will also receive its own form of government, and when once it has its own form of government its chief Minister will demand it. He will also demand Somerset East and he will get it, because “the apple does not ask us when it is ripe; it knows when it will fall”. And what will happen when once the Ciskei is independent? And that must happen if the Nationalist Party honestly wants to implement what they have promised the Bantu, viz.: “You will get the land which is your own, which is traditionally and historically your land”. In other words, the Transkei will extend to the Gamtoos River or at least to the Fish River; in other words Queenstown, East London, King William’s Town and Cathcart will be lost to us!

May I put a question to the hon. member? I should like to know from the hon. member when the Gamtoos area was ever in the possession of the Bantu?

Read your history.

I should appreciate it, without answering that question, if that hon. member will promise to study the history, and then he will see that long before the year 1800 the Gamtoos River formed part of the Xhosa area. That was one of the borders.

You do not know your history. That was Hottentot territory.

Surely the hon. member cannot teach me history. In other words, I say that if the Government implements its promise to the Xhosa and the other tribes of the Ciskei and the Transkei, then the Nationalist Party will have to give away that area.

What promise is that?

The promise that their traditional land will be given back to them.

When was that said?

Time after time, by that hon. Minister himself. It is recorded in Hansard. [Interjections.] I am not wrong. However, I wish to go further. What about the Bakwena, and what about Rustenburg? Where will Rustenburg fall? We want to know, as well as the Bantu. Where will Pietersburg fall? Where will Potgietersrus fall?

Where will South Africa be under your policy?

I am not discussing our policy now; I am first discussing the Bantustans. Can the Chief Whip get up and indicate the borders to me? At the moment I say that if they fulfil their promise the borders will be as I have indicated. Let me now come to Zululand, which I know much better.

You believe in the borders of 300 years ago.

I believe in the borders fixed by my forefathers. I believe that we must retain those borders—borders which we on this side will not shrink.

Pottie, you are a teacher, you ought to know.

Mr. Speaker, where will the borders of Zululand be? I want to repeat what I said before. I put a question to the Minister, but he has not replied to me; he tried to make me appear ridiculous when I told him that the Zulus would demand the Emakosini.

What about Hill-brow?

No, they cannot claim that; Hillbrow was never theirs. Hillbrow is White and Louis Steenkamp will retain it. But I am not so sure about Colesberg and Barkly West or Brits!

What about this Parliament?

I will come to this Parliament. What about Babanango, what about Eshowe, what about Empangeni, what about Hluhluwe? [Interjections.] No, those are not just names; they are places and towns. What about Pongola? What about that new dam, or our new dam? Where will it fall? If my hon. friends implement their promise to give the Zulus their traditional areas, even Vryheid and Utrecht will fall within it.

You want to give away South Africa.

That is precisely what will happen under the Bantustan policy, and my hon. friends ought to tell the people that.

You want to give them this Parliament, and that is not traditional Bantu territory.

I am now dealing with Zululand and with the policy of consolidation of my Nationalist Party friends. In other words, I want my hon. friend to tell the people outside what the possibilities are in regard to the implementation of this Bantustan policy of theirs.

We have told them. Now tell us what you want to do with this Parliament.

Do not try to distract me. The hon. the Prime Minister some time ago referred to the Protectorates and, quite unsolicited, perhaps correctly, promised them certain things in regard to independence provided they threw in their lot with the Republic of South Africa. He held up to them “the road of freedom for the British Protectorates”. Inter alia, the hon. the Prime Minister told the Protectorates the following—

My offer was to give full information to the inhabitants of these territories (if the British Government should give permission) on the advantages that would accrue to them if they of their own free will were to decide to accept South Africa as their aid or guide or guardian to independence and prosperity.

We need not argue about that. Prosperity and independence have already been promised to them, and he continued—

Before I proceed further I would just like to say that incorporation of the Protectorates has always been the policy on this side and we will adhere to that; we are not prepared to give away what belongs to South Africa. The Prime Minister continued—

1. (1) These states would become fully Bantu governed in accordance with the pattern of development elsewhere in Africa, and the White inhabitants still necessary for the development of those territories could exercise their political rights in the adjacent Republic.

I will mention the second point last. I now come to the third—

1. (3) Where desirable South Africa would be prepared to help the Bantu of those territories to regain presently White occupied portions by purchase or exchange.

Those are White spots within the area—

1. (4) The economic development of these territories could be planned and financed in co-operation with the Republic of South Africa;
2. (5) These territories as they become politically independent states would be linked with South Africa and with the Bantu states in South Africa it is creating within its own borders in a consultative body dealing with mutual political interests as well as in other coordinating bodies envisaged on the principles of the Common Market.

Then I come to No. (2)—

The Prime Minister tells the Protectorates that provided they come in under the protection or guardianship of the Republic of South Africa, he will also give to them that which is traditionally and historically theirs within the borders of the Republic of South Africa. Here it stands. It means, as far as Bechuanaland is concerned, Gooshen and Stellaland …

It does not mean that at all.

It means Vryburg. Do not argue with me; Stellaland and Gooshen are traditionally, historically, Bechuanaland. Until 1884 Stellaland and Gooshen were part of Bechuanaland and only then did Rhodes intervene, after Van Niekerk had taken it. It is traditionally Bechuanaland. What of Marico? Why does the hon. member for Marico (Mr. Grobler) sit dead quiet? We do not hear a word from him. What of Swaziland? I have very little time left, but let me come to Basutoland. What of the Free State? Where is the member for Ladybrand? Why does the hon. member not rise? What about the conquered territory? It is traditional, historic Basutoland area. The Whites there will be left in the lurch just like the Whites of the Transkei. So I could go on and also refer to Swaziland. What about Pongola, what about Piet Retief, all areas which were formerly Swazi territory?

But what about Parliament?

That is what I want to know from the Prime Minister and from the Chief Whip. And now I come to our policy [Time limit.]

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 23 and the debate adjourned until Friday, 5 February.