Mr. Speaker, when this debate was adjourned yesterday I was dealing with the pollution of the air in Durban by various noxious gases and other causes which created these unbearable smells which received the attention of the Department of Health. I was speaking of the various industrial processes and the possible cause of smells from the discharge of sewage into the sea, and also the growth of vegetation in the bay such as sea lettuce. I do not think the effects of the gases caused by these things have been properly investigated, or the effect of sewerage on these growths, but it is a possible cause of the pollution of the atmosphere and the creation of these smells.

All these various smells and all this pollution is caused in various ways, e.g. by industry. In the end almost every industrial process which one finds along the Natal coast has as its end result the production of some sort of liquid effluent, and it is got rid of either by discharging it into the river, which leads to the sea, or by burning. At the Mandeni Paper Pulp Factory, which is the cause of most of the trouble in Durban (North), the black liquid is got rid of. In the refinery they also produce a black liquid which has to be disposed of. At Mandeni the liquid is burnt, and so it falls within the purview of this Act, but in some cases it is being discharged into the sea. That does not fall within the purview of this Act; it falls to be dealt with by the Department of Water Affairs. But the discharge of that liquid nevertheless does cause and can cause pollution of the atmosphere in the sense that it produces these obnoxious smells.

Let us take the sea lettuce, if that is the cause. That also produces obnoxious smells and leads to pollution of the air, but neither this Bill deals with it nor the Water Affairs Act nor, as far as one can see, anything else.

I mentioned sewerage in Durban, from the Minister’s point of view a most important matter. The Durban City Council was faced with two choices, either the complete treatment of the sewage producing pure water which could be sold for industrial purposes and so pure, I understand, that it can even be drunk, and a solid which could be used as a fertilizer; or it had the other choice of discharging either raw sewage, as is done now, or partially treated sewage, into the sea. But the Department of Water Affairs gave the Durban Corporation a permit to discharge it partially treated into the sea, with what effects I do not know. I do not think anyone knows what the effects are, because what the water currents around the coast will do with this sewage has, I think, not been properly investigated. Indeed, the possibility exists, as I indicated yesterday, that many of the causes of this pollution and these smells—the possibility exists that they are caused by the currents washing up sewage, in the same way as they have been caused by the currents washing up the effluent from the various factories. They create exactly the same problems, the pollution of the atmosphere.

This Bill is the beginning of the solution, and not the end of it. I am very sorry that we started in South Africa about four years later than we could have started. This Bill should in fact have been introduced about four years ago. But be that as it may, the Bill must be tested, and only experience can teach us. I hope the Minister will have liaison with the Department of Economic Affairs, and particularly with the Department of Water Affairs because, as I indicated yesterday, I do not believe that this can be done by any other authority than by the State. But if there is no co-ordination, as the position is at the moment, and as this Bill does not provide, between all the authorities concerned with the sources of the pollution, I do not believe we will ever deal properly with the question of the pollution of the atmosphere in so far as these obnoxious odours are concerned. I am sure the Minister will agree with me that not only must there be co-ordination, co-ordination of research and co-ordination of powers, but there must be a central authority dealing only with air pollution, which must have the power to deal with matters at the moment dealt with by other Departments. The Minister will recall the difficulty it had in trying to trace the sources of the smells in Durban, as reported in Scientiae. It was thought at that time that it might be caused by the discharge of effluent into the water. If it was caused by that, it was a matter for the Department of Water Affairs, to deal with, but when they were approached they were not concerned with the smells; they were not concerned with air pollution. They were concerned only with the pollution of the water. The Department of Health went to great lengths to help the people concerned, but it was concerned with the pollution of the atmosphere, from the possible health aspect, but they were powerless to do anything about it at all because if in fact it was due to water pollution the power was in the hands of Water Affairs. Therefore I hope the Minister will give his attention to this and will endeavour to get a central control over all these matters which at the moment fall within the purview of so many Departments, most of them not concerned with the pollution of the atmosphere.

As far as research is concerned, there is much to be done still. This Board will of course start with a wonderful legacy in the form of the research that has already been done, and I do not suppose that anyone has done more research than the State of California. Up to 1962 the State of California had spent 130,000,000 dollars purely on research into atmospheric pollution, with very fortunate results, as the Minister knows. They found that in Los Angeles 80 per cent of air pollution was caused by automobile exhaust gases. They spent this money and they produced some sort of formula. This is a legacy which the Minister’s Department will have, and from there we can go on. Much more research is necessary into the effect, e.g., of sewerage on sea lettuce and the effect of the various industries’ odours when they come together, and the effect of effluents discharged into the sea. All this research must be done under one co-ordinated authority, and that authority I believe should be the authority created in this Bill. I hope the Minister will work on this Bill and will not hesitate to come back to this House, not only for those amendments he may need, but to take powers where he needs them, because I repeat that nobody but the State can possibly make this thing work. In America they found exactly the same thing, and in South Africa exactly the same position applies. It is the Minister’s responsibility and he will have the backing of the whole country if he has the determination to see it through and to see that the other Departments do not frustrate the purpose for which this Bill is being passed.

Mr. Speaker, after listening to my learned colleague, I am beginning to consider whether I should move my residence and wait for the effects of the work of the hon. the Minister. [Laughter.] Although the smells in Durban are disturbing, they are not quite as disturbing as that, and there is still time for the hon. Minister to rescue us.

There is an interesting commentary on this country. If one goes back about fifty years one will find that at that time it was regarded as a health resort for people who suffered from lung diseases. It was one of the countries to which the rich English people suffering from tuberculosis would come, and after a few years of living in the pure Karoo air or some other dry part of the country they would return home apparently cured. Yet here to-day we are actually considering dealing with the pollution of our own atmosphere. It shows to what extent we have slid down the slippery slope of neglecting the air in which we live. Few people realize that man can live for five weeks without food and for five days without water, but that he cannot live for five minutes without air. It will therefore be appreciated to what extent even a very limited amount of toxic or irritating substances in the atmosphere can affect health. In fact, the need for this Bill is in many respects, I feel, a reproach to the profession to which I have the honour to belong because we have allowed this to happen and to go on under our eyes. For years those of us who have dealt with the sick have counselled them to go on a sea-trip or to take a holiday in the mountains or in the country, thinking that a change of atmosphere and of environment was needed, when really we were counselling them to leave the foul, poisoned atmosphere in which they lived and move temporarily into pure air. As time goes on the pure atmosphere into which we were born many years ago has become steadily worse and we now have to go out to sea if we wish to find a reasonably pure atmosphere. Man. like all other living creatures, pollutes his atmosphere and his environment. He has done it from time immemorial, but so long as the population was sparse and scattered it did little harm and the processes of nature by which she keeps the balance between plant and animal life corrected any difficulties that arose. But as soon as Man learnt to make fire, he began to pollute the atmosphere more than was necessary for his nutrition. He began to use the atmosphere to produce more articles than he needed for his food, and he disturbed the balance of nature. It still remains true that fire is the main polluter of the air. Until such time as we can find a way of doing away with the products of combustion in some healthy way, we will be faced with this atmospheric pollution, and we will finally make our own environment almost uninhabitable. It is this breaking of the natural balance, of animals fertilizing the soil and profiting from it by eating the fruits of that soil, which has been destroyed, and that is destroying life in this world. Solid pollution—that is sewerage, chiefly—by its very presence, and being the first to collect, had to be disposed of. Even primitive people like Chaka’s Zulus showed abhorrence of bad smells and considered it something to be avoided. They had no sanitation, but they had that primitive knowledge. Water pollution so manifestly injured health that water had to be purified, or at least some method had to be adopted to stop the contamination. Sometimes, instead of polluting the water, Man contaminated the air. There are factories, or they did exist until recently, where instead of letting their effluent run into the streams, because they were forbidden to do so, they merely erected a chimney and by means of fans forced their toxic gases out into the atmosphere. This happened in one instance in Durban where the working conditions in an asbestos factory were so bad that the Health Department interfered, and the factory merely replied by introducing fans and a small chimney to throw it into the air. and the city’s Health Department was unable to take any action. This Bill will control that type of thing.

The difficulty about atmospheric pollution and the reason why it has progressed to the extent it has is that it has been gradual. It happens before our eyes without our realizing it. It is obvious wherever you go that there is pollution. If you go to the fertilizer factory at Somerset West you will see the leafless, dying, eucalyptus trees, due to the effect of the wind and the fertilizer dust. If you go down to the Foreshore you will see the stunted and blackened pine trees, blackened by the smoke of the Railway engines. It is no new problem. It is said that Queen Elizabeth I was offered by the citizens of London that when she came into the city in winter they would give up burning coal and would bum only wood because the coal was said to affect her throat.

Order! Is it necessary to go so far back?

I am sorry, Sir, but if you will permit me I should like to go a little further. I want to give an obvious example. One is the ordinary sheep one sees so much of in the Cape. They show the first signs of air pollution. The sheep is born white and when it is sheared it is white underneath that dirty wool, which is discoloured by air pollution. In the north of Scotland, where air pollution is very limited, the sheep are white all their lives. The wool fibre shows gradually increasing discoloration.

One of the great features of this Bill is that it has teeth. It gives the Minister power which he can delegate to his staff to control air pollution. In most cases air pollution can be stopped by goodwill and compromise, and that is what has been found by the only fulltime air pollution officer in the country, the one in Durban, who tells me that he rarely has to use the legal sanctions at his disposal. On the whole he is able to convince the people who cause most of the pollution that it is in their financial interest to correct it. Contrary to what most people believe, the pollution is not chiefly produced by industry nor, to a massive extent, by the internal combustion engine but, as in England, the domestic fire is the commonest cause of air pollution by smoke, and it is one which nobody has yet been able to correct. We in this country are creating for ourselves a new burden in the large Bantu and Coloured and Indian townships which are being built. Many of us who have lived in the country or who have travelled through the Transkei have seen in the early morning how the smoke rises from every hut, but the huts being scattered, undue pollution is prevented.

Now we are concentrating on that pollution. In these townships we are putting a grate in every house, and nobody has yet been able to invent an open grate which will burn fuel like coal without smoke. It is for this purpose that this Bill gives power to cities to subsidize the production of smokeless fuel. This has already been tried on a large scale in England, and it has been a failure. Not enough can be produced nor sufficiently fast, and the cost is greater than that of ordinary coal. As it is the poorest people who use coal for cooking and warming themselves, it has not been found possible to correct it. In Durban the air pollution officer found that the worst pollution came from that long line of large hotels along the beach front. It is interesting to realize that here we have a long line of structures, perhaps two miles long, with the sea on the one side—an open space—and the city on the other side, and yet the worst pollution came from that area. It has now been corrected, and that was done in every instance without having to use any legal sanction; this officer has been able to show to these institutions that not only is it in their interests to keep the air clean, but it is also cheaper to do so. By efficient combustion they save coal and their bills are appreciably smaller. That, in general, is true of all air pollution corrections—that in the end it is economical.

It is important that the officer the Minister appoints shall be knowledgeable and courageous and that he shall feel that behind him is the full force of the State, because he will sometimes have to speak very firmly to large industries such as the petrol refineries. There are two petrol refineries outside Durban, and both have a perpetual flame burning. In other words, the end product of their refining is something which they cannot use and so they burn it, and when they burn it they pollute the atmosphere. This will become a serious problem to them and to the town because sooner or later they must be compelled to use up that gas, unless they can in some way or other correct the smell which is complained of on the Bluff and the hospital nearby. This matter has been before the House before but nothing has been done. No doubt it will now receive attention.

This Bill must correct the damage of the past. It has to try to undo what has already been done. It has to deal with industries already established, and it must go further than that. As one of those who took part in its development, I hope that this Bill has been so worded that it can also take care of the future, because pollution will in future get increasingly worse unless something is done to control it. The price that we pay in damaged health cannot be measured in money. The health of every person in the cities and I suppose also of many in the country is shortened by years. It is not possible to estimate to what extent. That would take much time and much investigation, but we do know that it does affect the health of people. Such diseases as asthma, bronchitis, hay fever, etc., are, if not produced by contamination, certainly aggravated by it. In many cases we used to believe that if you sent people with asthma to a higher altitude they would be cured, because of the altitude, but it was not because of the altitude; it was the purer atmosphere. They would do just as well if they went out to sea or into the country. Now we have discovered that some of the pollutants of the atmosphere can cross the placental barrier. In other words, if the mother is carrying a child, the unborn child can be affected by the pollution of the atmosphere. I do not go so far as to say that we can produce a deformed child such as the children produced by that German drug some time ago, but I do say that children now unborn would be born healthier if the mother breathed a healthier atmosphere. We have one certain cause of cancer in the asbestos in the atmosphere. That is known with certainty to be a cause of cancer if other factors are added to it. I do not go so far as to say that smoke or any other substance except asbestos causes cancer. I do not believe there is any one cause, but air pollution is a contributory factor. It contributes to many chronic diseases. When the atmosphere has been thoroughly cleared the doctors in future will suddenly find that certain diseases, the causes of which are not now known, are disappearing from the scene. In my lifetime there have been diseases which have disappeared through better food and sunlight and clothing. Those things did something to human life which we could not foresee at the time. In this Bill we are creating for the country a great opportunity not only to prolong the lives of the people but to make their lives happier and healthier. The U.S.A. Surgeon-General said the following—

In America they have established 250 stations for sampling the air to judge how their campaign is progressing. In 1958 the U.S.A. gave 31 bursaries for research into air pollution, and at present they are giving 85. It has been noticeable that the powerful American programme for air cleansing has scarcely caused a ripple in the economic sphere. In the great London fog of 1952, 4,000 people died. There was a similar fog which recurred in 1962, and the death-rate then was 750, showing that there was a tremendous change even in that short period.

How can we deal with air pollution in other ways? It should be considered in the design of cities. It is not merely a question of stopping the fires burning, but cities should be so designed that they will avoid air pollution, and groups of houses should be heated by a common method, not only by electricity, but by common fires with a common chimney. We have learned to contain many and great perils against which we were once virtually powerless, famine, floods and epidemics. The problem we face now is one which has been created by Man, and Man must cure it.

Lastly, I would like the hon. the Minister to reassure me on one point, and that is that the great State-aided institutions like Iscor and Escom fall within the control of this Bill. In drafting this Bill we have been compelled to exclude the S.A. Railways. I appreciate that that was necessary, but industry is concerned with these great semi-Government institutions, especially Sasol, which can create a great deal of air pollution, that they should not be allowed to escape this brake on their activities.

Lastly may I say that this is a great measure; this is a great thing in the history of this country. It is going to do more for the health of the people of this country and for the animals than has been done under any other Act of Parliament up to the present time.

I just want to say a few words because my constituency is the constituency which is affected to a greater extent by this legislation than any other constituency and I would be neglecting my duty if I did not also make my contribution as far as this measure was concerned. I do not want to kick up a great deal of dust about dust when I admit that I have not much to say but I should like, in the first place, to congratulate the hon. the Minister who has introduced this Bill in the House and particularly the committee which has done such excellent work I do not want to criticize this measure: had I come forward with criticism I would have been assuming more unto myself than I was entitled to because I think this is an experiment which should be encouraged in every respect and that we should do our utmost to make a success of this legislation.

The biggest power station in the Southern Hemisphere is to-day situated in my constituency. The power station which is now being constructed in the constituency of the hon. the Minister, the constituency of Ermelo, will, of course be bigger, but to-day it is the biggest power station in the Southern Hemisphere—it is situated in the constituency of Heilbron—namely the Highveld, Taaibos and Vaal power stations. I take it that these power stations are also affected by this legislation. The smoke emitted by these power stations affects the whole surrounding area for a distance of at least 50 miles, but that is not the worst; I do not really want to complain about that undertaking because smoke is still something you can tolerate, Sir, although the smog is already beginning to have an affect on the vegetation and the way of life of that entire district. I have already received complaints from all over about the unpleasantness of it and the detrimental effects of the smoke emitted by these power stations.

In addition, of course, Sasolburg, the biggest chemical undertaking in our country, is also situated there. Most of the noxious gases emitted by Sasolburg are burnt of course. There are other gases as well which are not regarded as noxious at the moment but which are nevertheless very unpleasant. These gases are to some extent unpleasant to the inhabitants of the town. You are still miles away from Sasolburg when you already become conscious of the smell emitted by the Sasolburg factory. It has its own characteristic smell, as hon. members all know. I will not say it is like the smell of a rotten egg, but if I were to criticize this Bill, I would say we should not deal with it in the Atmospheric Pollution Prevention Bill but rather in a Cleansing of Atmosphere Bill. That may perhaps be putting it too widely because we shall then have to take the poison out of this Chamber and include the debates which are conducted here, especially those coming from a particular side of the House.

Apart from the gases emitted by Sasol there are also a number of other industries there. The first industry which was started there was the fertilizer factory. That fertilizer factory has really destroyed all the vegetation around it for a distance of 500 yards. Trees and grass no longer grow in the vicinity of that factory. I am referring to the gases emitted in the process of manufacturing certain acids and the use of those acids in the manufacture of fertilizer. But numerous other factories are being erected there. Recently a rubber factory was established there. All these factories emit these effluent gases and smoke which is very unpleasant to the surrounding area and I rise to express the hope and confidence that this measure which is before the House at the moment will also be utilized to place a limitation on big undertakings like Escom and Sasol and that we shall not, because they are utility companies to generate power and to promote the chemical industry in South Africa and therefore in the public interest, allow these undertakings to emit as much gas as they want to but consult them. I am sure they will be co-operative and I trust it will also be possible to put this legislation into effect there.

I want in the first place to make use of this opportunity to thank hon. members who participated in this debate for their very constructive approach to this problem. I also want to thank them for the time and attention which they have given to this problem—most of them had a share in formulating this Bill—and for the solution which they have tried to find to this problem. Objection was raised on various sides to the fact that this measure has only now come before the House. Various people have expressed the opinion that this Bill should have been introduced some years ago. Let me remind hon. members of the history of this Bill. The Bill was ready for introduction in 1963 but at that time certain industries and the mines asked that it be held back because there were still certain problems which they wanted to iron out. That was done. These matters were rectified during the course of last year but towards the end of the session, when the Bill was introduced here, the House had so much work to do that we did not unfortunately have the opportunity to deal with this Bill.

Mr. Speaker, smoke, mist, gases and smells are all nuisances which we will always have with us in our present-day society. We have been trying to eliminate these things by means of legislation for generations now. This problem of creating a nuisance is a very difficult one because it is difficult to know when a man is causing a nuisance; in other words, when he does something which is not only unpleasant but which is unreasonably unpleasant. Every owner of land has the right to use that land; one has the right to use one’s motor-car; one has the right to build a chimney on one’s house; the question is simply how far one is allowed to go. Is one allowed to build a chimney which is continually gushing smoke; must one have a chimney which smokes less, or must one have a chimney which does not smoke at all? I mention this as an example to show that it is simply a question of being reasonable. As far as legislation is concerned it is extremely difficult to prove when a person is being unreasonable. Does that person’s chimney smoke too much? When is it reasonable? The same thing holds good for gas and for one’s motor-car. I may buy a car which runs on diesel fuel and this fact may cause a great nuisance. The question is: When is it unreasonable? How far can I go? It is this problem which has made it so difficult to apply our legislation in the past. It is for this reason that one finds it so difficult to prove in court that a person has caused a nuisance, because one has to prove that the accused has been unreasonable. He may very easily prove that he has not been unreasonable. The great advantage of this legislation is that it lays down hard and fast rules to enable us to determine when something is reasonable and when it is not reasonable. The Bill does not use the word “reasonable”, but it does lay down certain standards which have to be complied with. If one does not comply with these standards one becomes liable and one can be stopped, but if one complies with these rules, one can continue with what one is doing. The first standard which this Bill lays down is in regard to colour. The Bill provides that certain colours can be fixed for smoke and the local authority or the chief air pollution control officer can determine that smoke of a certain density may not be emitted within a specific area. A standard is therefore being laid down by means of which it will in the future be easy to determine whether a man’s chimney or motor-car is emitting too much smoke. But there are further difficulties. There are certain chemical processes in which these gases are emitted and this Bill now provides that these gases may not be emitted in certain areas. In other words, it is clear that a new standard is being laid down here—the standard of the type of gas which may not be emitted by an industry. A person may start an industry which emits some or other acid or which emits sulphuretted hydrogen. This therefore is the second way in which this measure makes provision in regard to the determination of reasonableness. The Bill makes provision throughout for the appointment of a chief air pollution control officer. This man will be selected for his ability, knowledge and, of course, also for his sympathetic attitude towards society. He will decide whether a particular thing is unreasonable or not. He can tell a person: “You are not using the best methods of preventing smoke or gas; you must use another method: there is a better method.” The judgment of this official will be final; it will not be the judgment of a court but the judgment of an expert.

There is a fourth standard which is being introduced, a more difficult standard, and this is in connection with the fumes emitted by motor-cars. There is also a standard in regard to colour in this connection but the content of the gas itself is defined. A certain content will be laid down for the fumes emitted by motor-cars and if the fumes exceed that content, the owners of those cars will be breaking the law and those cars will have to be repaired. This Bill is therefore aimed at supplementing the measures which were difficult to apply in the past under similar circumstances. It lays down certain definite requirements which have to be complied with. We can accept the fact that this Bill is by way of being an experiment. We may find that it may be very effective in certain respects but we may also possibly find that improvements can be effected to it, that better methods can be applied and that better standards can be determined. It is the ideal of all of us to try to keep South Africa’s air pure and to this end we will have continually to ask ourselves whether we cannot improve our methods and whether we cannot improve the Act in any way. This Bill is by no means the last word in regard to air pollution prevention.

In this process, during which we will be continually on the look-out and continually trying to improve this measure, we will of course have the assistance of a very important committee, the National Air Pollution Advisory Committee, a committee consisting of leading and important personages who are interested in the purification of the air, people who will always make it their business to advise us in regard to new methods which can be applied. From the nature of the case, this Bill will cover the whole country and its machinery will therefore also be extensive; one cannot arrange matters in the large cities and towns by means of inadequate machinery. In this we will be fortunate enough to have the assistance of the large city councils who have in their service persons who have already given a great deal of attention to these problems. We are therefore fortunate to have a large general staff at our disposal with the result that the staff which we need in the Department itself will perhaps not have to be so large. For this reason we can also say that we have complied with the wishes of the hon. member for Parow (Mr. S. F. Kotzé) and the hon. member for Florida (Mr. Miller) because the one said that we should have a large machine and the other said that he hoped that our machinery would not be too extensive. As far as the Central Government is concerned the machine will not be so large but the machine of the whole of the State as such, with the assistance of the various city councils, will indeed be large.

The hon. member for Durban (Umlazi) (Mr. Lewis) said that we should start in Durban immediately. We may be able to comply with his request. Because we want to make use of the machinery available in the various cities, we will most probably succeed in being able to start at a number of places simultaneously. The hon. member for Durban (Umlazi) was also concerned about the Railways. He pointed out that the Railways pollute the air to a large extent nowadays by means of the smoke emitted from locomotives. I realize and I think we all realize what Durban’s problem is and what the problems are of the smaller towns along the Natal coast. I want to assure the hon. member that the Railways are aware that they are partly responsible for the pollution of the air and for this reason they are adapting the old electric units which they can no longer use on long journeys, for shunting purposes. We hope that more and more of these locomotives will eventually be put into service so that the contribution of the Railways towards air pollution may eventually be reduced to a minimum.

The hon. members for Kempton Park (Mr. F. S. Steyn) and Pietermaritzburg (District) (Capt. Henwood) pointed out the great importance of the chief air pollution control officer. They are quite correct because the effectiveness of this measure will eventually depend upon the judgment of that official. It will be difficult to obtain the services of such a person, a person who will comply with all the requirements we set but if we can find such a person, we may be sure that we will in all probability be able to apply this measure with great success. I promise that we shall do our best to find the best man for this position.

A problem which comes to mind immediately as far as the appointment of such an official is concerned is one to which the hon. member for Kempton Park referred. He said that we must have a man who can act independently, a man who need not be afraid that pressure will be brought to bear upon him by the large industries, a man who will put efficiency first in every respect. I should like to appoint such a man from the Public Service but how will it be possible to sever completely the ties of such a person with the Public Service when he has to control public servants? And how can one sever completely the ties of such a person with the Public Service when such a person has to be under the authority of a body like the Department of Health which guards the health of the country? We will not be able to appoint a person who will be a law unto himself; it will have to be someone over whom there is some measure of authority. I think that hon. members will all admit that this is a difficult problem. I did think that we could perhaps solve this problem by appointing a contract official, an official who is in the Public Service and who will to a certain extent be able to act in accordance with the machinery of State. For example, he will not be able to incur expenditure at will; he will only be able to incur approved expenses. In other words, the Public Service will have to have a certain amount of control over such official. I hope that we will be able to solve this problem by appointing somebody on a contract basis—someone who is partly in the Public Service and partly not in the Public Service.

The hon. member for Florida expressed the hope that it will be possible, as is the position in Germany, to make loans to city councils to enable them to acquire smokeless heating equipment and so forth. I think that I will be able to satisfy the hon. member completely in this connection. I forget now which clause makes provision for it but there is a provision which makes it possible for city councils to obtain loans for this purpose.

The hon. member for East London (North) (Mr. Field) complained that the Bill did not provide for air pollution in buildings, in cinemas, for example. The fact of the matter is that ordinary local authorities have the power under ordinances to see to the ventilation of buildings. They can prevent a building from being used if there is not sufficient ventilation, so they have complete power in that regard. If the hon. member had occasion to open the windows of a cinema in order to let in clean air, I think it is because the municipality concerned did not fulfill its duties. Since sufficient provision has already been made in this connection I do not think it is necessary to introduce a clause in this measure to deal with it.

The hon. member for Port Elizabeth (North) also disagreed with me and also with some of his colleagues on the other side as to the cause of lung cancer. He did not want to know anything about air pollution being a cause of lung cancer. He attributed lung cancer solely to the smoking of cigarettes. I do not want to enter into any discussion with him as to what is really the cause of lung cancer.

I did not say that it was the only cause.

Well, then we are agreed on this very important point, namely that there are many causes. You can call one a contributory cause or a contributory factor, but in reality every contributory factor is a cause; it is just another way of putting things. Some things may make a small contribution to the evil and others may make a large contribution, but as long as we are satisfied on that point, then I think there is justification for the introduction of this measure and all I wanted to do was to justify the introduction of this Bill.

*The hon. member for Geduld (Dr. Jurgens) pointed out that it would be of great advantage to us in South Africa if we were able to design stoves which were smoke-free—which, for example, burn coal but which do not give off noxious gases. I think that the hon. member has raised a very important point here. If it were possible for the C.S.I.R. to design a stove of this nature they would be making a tremendous contribution towards the solution of our air pollution problem. As various hon. members have already indicated, one of the important factors in the pollution of our air is the stoves and ovens in private homes. One need only pass by a location in the evening at about five o’clock or later to see smoke gushing from the chimneys and a great smoke-cloud hanging over that location. One need only see this to realize how much private persons are responsible for the pollution of our air.

The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) (Captain Henwood) was not quite sure whether this Act would apply to ships. This measure will apply to ships if they do not belong to the State. The State falls outside the scope of this measure. All other ships fall within the scope of this measure, and if the hon. member looks at the definition of “premises” he will see that ships are specifically mentioned there. It also applies to houses, but with this distinction: Initially it will not apply to private dwelling houses, and it will not apply to private dwellings for this reason that we have not yet found a way to produce smokeless fuel, unless, of course, we want to supply fuel at exorbitant rates which nobody would be able to afford We cannot provide stoves which do not cause smoke unless, of course, we wish to go to extremes. At the present moment there is no solution so far as private dwelling houses are concerned. That is why under Section 15 (3) (a) dwelling houses are exempted, but the time may arrive—and let us hope fairly soon—when we will find a solution to those problems, and the moment we have a solution we can apply Section 20. Section 20 would apply to every house in a particular area. We are dealing here really with a culprit which would fall under two provisions; initially it will be quite free but eventually it may fall within the orbit of the Act.

*The hon. member for Prieska (Mr. Stander) pointed out the very harmful effects of asbestos dust. We have been aware of these harmful effects for some years now and we have been trying to find a solution to this problem for some time. I want once again heartily to thank the hon. members of the committee who assisted in the formulation of this Bill for having given attention to this new problem which is not mentioned in the legislation of other countries, a problem which no country has as yet taken steps to overcome—the pollution of the atmosphere by means of dust. Asbestos dust is particularly important in this regard because, as the hon. member said, we have the strange position in South Africa that people one mile away from an asbestos dump are exposed to diseases such as lung cancer. There are two provisions in this Bill which apply in this connection. The first provision is in regard to gases. In other words, the processing or collecting or use of asbestos in any way which is dangerous to human health, can be prohibited in a specified area. There is a second provision in the Bill and that is that asbestos can be controlled in the same way as dust can be controlled. The moment that asbestos is regarded as being dust the provisions of the Bill come into operation. These provide that if the owner of an asbestos dump is no longer there, in the event of the mine having been closed, the State together with the provincial council and local authority concerned can undertake and pay for the removal of that asbestos dump.

The hon. member for Prieska also mentioned another problem. He pointed out that it is possible for water to become polluted by means of asbestos. I am not able to say how correct his statement in this regard is. I can only say that it has not as yet been brought to my notice that people have been poisoned by water containing asbestos dust. Asbestos dust is not something which in the normal course of events affects the digestive system, but it does affect the respiratory system. I do not know therefore in how far the hon. member is correct when he says that it can poison one. If this is the case, it is a problem to which the attention of the Department of Water Affairs will have to be drawn.

The hon. member raised a third problem—the problem of compensation. The hon. member reasoned quite correctly that I did not have the right to affect my neighbour detrimentally by doing something which was to my advantage without compensating him in this regard. If I knock my neighbour down in the street, I am compelled to pay compensation to him. But if I put my neighbour at a disadvantage by having an asbestos dump which gives him lung cancer and shortens his life expectancy, I get away with it scot-free. The hon. member feels that there ought to be a law to make compensation compulsory in such a case. This is a problem which has many facets. In the first place it is difficult to prove that such person contracted lung cancer because of the asbestos dust. There may be a number of people who have asbestos mines in the vicinity. There may be many asbestos dumps in the area. There may be a great deal of asbestos lying around. How is one to ascertain who the guilty party is? Who is responsible because that man contracted lung cancer as a result of asbestos dust? That is the first problem and it is a very difficult one. Perhaps the solution to it may be sought in the direction of what the gold mines have done. They make everyone contribute to a fund out of which compensation can be paid to persons who become the victims of mining diseases. This is merely a suggestion on my part because it is a matter which does not fall under my Department but under the Department of Mines.

The hon. member for Durban (North) (Mr. M. L. Mitchell) expressed concern about the possibility of people starting a pulp mill in the centre of Durban. I think I can assure him by telling him that that is already covered by this Bill. Clause 10 (4) provides that every site must be approved by the chief officer. In any case where such a factory is established it must be in accordance with the town planning scheme. So if the town planners are against any industries in a particular area they will obviously not be allowed.

The hon. member also quite rightly drew attention to the sewage problem. He said that by allowing the sewage to flow into the sea it might be that all sorts of smells would blow back to the land. That is quite possible, but such cases, too, I think can be met under Clause 9. Clause 9 provides that if atmospheric pollution is caused the chief officer can insist on the best practical means being employed to avoid polluting. If the chief officer decides that sewage should no longer be allowed to flow into the sea the question immediately arises what is the best, practical way for its disposal. I would say the best practical way is to treat the sewage the same way as is done in inland towns and cities—first treat it and then allow it to run into the ocean.

The hon. member for Durban (Central) (Dr. Radford) wondered whether the Act would also apply to State agencies like Iscor and Sasol. If the hon. member would refer to Clause 47 he would see that certain State institutions are exempted from the Act. They are State institutions not companies owned by the State. This only refers to institutions which belong to the State such as the Railways for instance, or a department of the State, something which is really part of the State itself, not something which is controlled as a separate entity by means of share-holdings.

Such as Sasol?

Yes, and such as Iscor. As far as I am concerned I am quite satisfied that that is the position but the hon. member might just draw my attention to it when we come to that clause. If I am right I think the hon. member’s difficulties will disappear entirely.

I think that this is the same sort of problem which faces the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman). Whenever one visits Heilbron one is struck by the fact that the grass is pale and that the trees seem to be dying. Up to the present it has not been possible to do anything to prevent this sort of thing, but I think that as soon as this legislation comes into operation it will be possible for steps to be taken to bring about an improvement in this regard.

Allow me once again to express my appreciation to all those hon. members who not only participated in the debate but also assisted in the formulation of this Bill. I hope that the introduction of this Bill will have a very salutory effect upon our country and our people.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

I move—

That the Bill be now read a second time.

This Bill amends five sections of the Public Health Act. I am sure that once I have explained the provisions of this Bill, hon. members will agree with me that it is uncontentious and that it merely brings about amendments which hon. members themselves have for some time felt are desirable.

The first amendment is in regard to the powers of local authorities. Section 10 (1) of the principal Act imposes a duty upon certain local authorities to promote public health. For example, it imposes a duty upon a local authority to take steps to prevent the spread of infectious diseases and to ensure that the people under its care are immunized, and so forth. As reasonable people, we would all say that the imposition of a duty upon a person also implies that that person must have the right to do whatever is necessary to be able to carry out that duty. That is how the law has been applied over the years. The city councils throughout the years have spent money on clinics, on immunization campaigns and so forth. In other words, they have spent money in order to promote the health of the people under their care. We have always accepted that because it flows from the duty imposed upon them by law. But strangely enough a lawyer in Johannesburg now contends that the city council has no power to incur expense in connection with the prevention of disease even though the duty to prevent the spread of disease has been imposed on the city council. Our law advisers have investigated the position and have come to the conclusion that this legal opinion is probably correct. That is why we are now bringing about this amendment in Clause 1 to bring the legal position into line with what we are convinced it was intended to be.

The second amendment is contained in Clauses 2, 6 and 7 and deals with the question of salaries and transport expenses of health visitors. Section 14 of Act No. 57 of 1935 provides that when a local authority appoints a district nurse, that local authority may recover from the State seven-eighths of the expenditure incurred by it, that is to say, in respect of salary and transport expenses. The reason for this is that the State wants to encourage local authorities to employ district nurses. We want to promote public health in this way. District nurses do curative work in the main; they nurse the sick. But prevention after all is better than cure. That is why the State employs nurses who are called health visitors. These are nurses who have completed their normal nursing course but who at the same time have also obtained a diploma in preventive medicine. They are better qualified because not only do they nurse the sick but they prevent illness. They visit the families and teach them to live more hygienically, to eat correctly, to sleep correctly, to live correctly and so forth. They keep the people healthy. They are far more valuable to us than the district nurse because they often make it unnecessary for district nurses to be employed. There is a shortage of district surgeons to-day and the health visitors can therefore be of great assistance to society because to a large extent she can take over the duties of the district surgeon. Up to the present the State has refunded only one-third of the salaries of these nurses and not even one-third of their travelling expenses. We now want to take the next step. We want to encourage city councils to appoint health visitors, as they are called. In future therefore we will refund seven-eighths of their salaries and seven-eighths of their travelling expenses to local authorities. We hope that in that way we will be able to succeed in improving the health of the people of South Africa considerably.

The third amendment is contained in Clause 3. This clause amends the provision in the principal Act in regard to notifiable diseases. You will remember, Mr. Speaker, that in order to enable us to combat diseases, particularly tuberculosis, we made it compulsory for every case of tuberculosis to be notified. The law provides that when a doctor is able to ascertain by means of clinical tests that a person has tuberculosis, each such case has to be notified, but that he must not take tuberculin tests into consideration because they are not always reliable. That is the provision at present. But recently our attention has been drawn to the fact that there are many other diseases whose symptoms are the same as those of tuberculosis of the lungs or of the cerebral membranes. In other words, more cases of tuberculosis than there really are will be notified because other diseases show the same symptoms. We are now seeking to amend the law to provide that cases which can be determined clinically and radiologically or by way of a laboratory test must be notified. It is only these cases which will have to be notified. This is to make sure that only actual cases of tuberculosis will be notified.

There is a further point that I want to mention and that is that a positive reaction to a tuberculin test in a child under five years of age, a child who has not yet had B.C.G. treatment, must be notified. We are now making provision herefore for the result of the tuberculin test to be recognized in the case of children under five years of age.

Clause 4 refers to the supply of vaccine to local authorities. You will remember, Mr. Speaker, that in terms of Section 50 of Act 36 of 1919 we are empowered to make vaccines available free of charge to local authorities for use in the combating of certain specific infectious diseases. We want to combat serious diseases by making these vaccines available. We know that new vaccines are continually being discovered, new vaccines which can perhaps be used more effectively in combating certain diseases. In terms of the Act as it stands, every time a new vaccine is discovered we have to come to Parliament for permission to supply the vaccine free of charge to local authorities. In terms of Clause 4 of the Bill we are now seeking authority to be able to make all vaccines available to local authorities in the future for the combating of diseases.

The last clause, Clause 5, deals with the control of surgical facilities outside hospitals. There is an increasing tendency amongst doctors to-day to do minor operations in their consulting rooms and not at hospitals—for example, the removal of a wart or a toe-nail or something of that nature. The Medical Council is worried about this trend. They point out that this practice has become so general that it is time for us to ensure that the doctors’ consulting rooms which are used for these purposes comply with certain requirements. This clause now gives us the power in cases of this nature to promulgate regulations imposing certain conditions upon doctors who do minor operations of this nature in their consulting rooms.

These, in brief, Sir, are the provisions of this Bill and I hope that I can rely upon the co-operation of the House in passing this measure.

We on this side of the House welcome this Bill. It is a constructive Bill. It is an Act which, we hope, will improve existing health regulations covering the health of people in general. That is why I say we appreciate it. We go so far as to say that in the Act under which the Department of Health functions there are many faults and deficiencies. We can assure the hon. the Minister that if he were to take the trouble of looking through that Act and finding other respects in which the resources of his Department can be improved we shall be only too pleased to give him our assistance. Some of the clauses of this Bill are the result, we feel, of our own suggestions in this House. We therefore hope that it will not be the last time that the Minister will come to this House with this type of Bill.

As the Minister says the description of the health officer is being improved. That is all to the good and it gives the health officers the protection of the Health Act which is so necessary. In Clause 3 the Minister modernizes the systems of diagnosing serious diseases particularly in the case of tuberculosis. The hon. the Minister thus comes to the assistance of those unfortunate people who were often in the past labeled as tuberculotics when in fact they suffered from some other wasting disease. He introduces once and for all a positive method of diagnosis. I hope this means that the hon. the Minister is going to spread wider the facilities which he places at the disposal of the public in the form of free laboratory services to patients suspected of suffering from tuberculosis as well as the service rendered in the form of miniature X-ray plants. I hope he will increase the number of his X-ray plants and send them through the country. Last year we on this side of the House asked the hon. the Minister to do away with the two shilling charge which is made for X-ray of chests by his Department. I believe it is free when tuberculosis is diagnosed but when tuberculosis is not finally diagnosed is costs the patient 2s. And it is with the greatest difficulty that Bantu can be induced to go to an X-ray department, be X-rayed, and told afterwards that there is nothing wrong with them. I think if something is diagnosed they probably think that they are getting their money’s worth. But contrary to the civilized outlook they regard the payment of 2s. to be told that they are perfectly well as something which is rather unjust. We have raised this before and the hon. the Minister said he could not get Treasury’s consent, as I understood him. So I hope he will go back and see if he cannot arrange it because this is a very real hardship to the Bantu and to the people who employ them. The problem of nursemaids and houseboys working in homes is a serious one when the boy has some wasting condition which may be merely worms or something of that nature but which the housewife, considering her young children, regards as dangerous and serious. I therefore think that every effort should be made to provide this service free. It is such a necessary service. It is such a valuable service. The Minister spent R11,000,000 last year on the care of patients suffering from tuberculosis. That was what he gave to the Department dealing with tuberculosis in his own Department. Can the hon. the Minister not be persuaded to provide this other service of early diagnosis free of charge? It would cost extremely little and the money that it costs will probably be returned indirectly in a shorter illness when it is detected early.

I go on to the next clause which deals with other notifiable diseases. I refer particularly to the supply of vaccine and the general tendency I see in the Minister’s Department to utilize direct immunization as far as possible. I hope this does not mean that the Minister is going to allow his Department or the health departments in the country which come under his indirect control to move away from the old and tried system of environmental control, the control of health in the way of food, water and general sanitation. Last year and the year before the Minister asked for power—and we helped him to get it—to compel active immunization, i.e. immunization by using vaccines, etc., in the case of young trainees in the army. And last year he took the power to compel it on the general public. We on this side of the House believe that, in many ways, this is a valuable and a useful form, but so often the introduction of something easy, something which one can say is spectacular, like the vaccine for poliomyelitis, tends to do away with the old-fashioned methods so long tried and the methods which produced the modern healthy environment of all states. This has happened frequently in various ways in medical treatment. The easy way has been taken and the old tried methods have been allowed to lapse. This is serious because there are aspects of bacteriological infection which are not known. We know for instance that if you use penicillin excessively you will produce a penicillin-fast organism, i.e. an organism which is resistant to that particular drug. We have had that experience in the recurrence of gonorrhoea. Whereas penicillin was first used in cases of gonorrhoea it was regarded as an absolute miracle drug. Now we are faced with this problem it is spreading and recurring. We have the development of hospital infections which is causing the greatest difficulty throughout the world, particularly in the more civilized countries, countries which go to great trouble, countries like England and America. Most of this has been brought about by the abuse of these powerful anti-biotic drugs. By so doing we have forgotten the old and tried methods. I do hope, Sir, that the Minister’s Department will pay the strictest attention to this aspect and see that the great cities and the country districts do the same. It is an aspect which I see cropping up not only in the case of infectious diseases from which man suffers but to some extent in the case of infectious diseases transmissible to man from animals.

The Minister is, in this way, creating his own troubles. He has created a problem in the case of acute poliomyelitis, where he had his great and successful campaign. He has got himself in the position that he dare not now allow the acute poliomyelitis vaccination campaign ever to fall away. He is faced with the problem that at any moment one of the strains which are now controlled by his vaccine, will go wild. His vaccine will be ineffective. Although we have had this wonderful reduction in the incidence of poliomyelitis the country sits, as it were, on the edge of a precipice. I hope that this immunization, which is now being applied to some extent in tuberculosis with B.C.G., nevertheless should not permit and allow and encourage the old tried methods to be ignored. The methods by which contagious diseases and the toxic diseases came under control before the discovery of immunization by vaccination. Such neglect would lead to a great catastrophe in the country.

Furthermore, I want to mention how pleased we are about the inspection of doctors’ equipment. This, as the hon. Minister said, was causing great concern to the Medical Council. On the other hand the reason is admirable. In the report of his own commission, the Professor Snyman Commission, it was said that hospitalization was one of the chief causes of the high cost of medical services, and it is in this respect that doctors setting up small surgeries in their consulting rooms or near their consulting rooms, are doing something which is of great value. With it goes the health visitor who can be of assistance in this respect too. The Medical Council was concerned that this service might to some extent be abused and could lead to slackness and possibly the spread of some infection. Therefore they have asked the Minister to take these powers onto himself, because the Council for itself does not want these powers, it wants to see that such powers are used. Now the Minister takes the power to inspect the doctors’ consulting rooms.

But, and here I am not on completely secure ground, there is a tendency for small companies to be formed which establish what are called clinics. They are not nursing homes. In most instances they have no beds in which patients can pass the night, although there are beds on which patients can rest during the day. They are well equipped, and trained nurses are available to assist the doctors. Even the dentists make use of these facilities and they mean a great saving to the patients in the case of minor operations. Not only are they a saving but they are a comfort to the patient and to the doctor. The doctor and the dentist feel that instead of doing a small operation and sending the patient out into the street, being taken home perhaps by a relative, the patient now can remain say for the rest of the day quietly under supervision and then safely return home later.

That leads me to the great pleasure it gives me to see that the hon. Minister has now decided to increase the subsidization of the health visitor and to some extent to pay also part of the transport. This is a very wise move, it is something which will be of great saving to the sick public. It will bridge the gap by which in the old days we used perhaps to keep a patient ten or 14 days in a hospital, whereas now we can send the patient home in three, four or five days because the doctor can rely on the health visitor to keep an eye on the patient. Our difficulty was that we were unable to visit these patients as often as we would have liked to do, without adding to the expense, and yet if we kept them in the hospital in order that they would be under supervision, their expenses rose very high. I believe the hon. Minister is honest in his efforts to reduce high cost of medical care. I do not think it is unnecessarily high, but I think judicial action like this will reduce the cost. I know that the Department of Mental Hygiene makes great use of this type of care and with the modern tranquilizing drugs, patients who would have stayed perhaps months in the mental hospital now return within the space of weeks. In other words, these patients thanks to this type of care, never break the link with their homes. The great thing in mental care was that these unfortunate people broke the link with their homes. It was said in England that if a patient stayed in a hospital, particularly an aged patient, for three months, she never got back into the home she had left; somebody else has climbed into her bed and there was no bed for her in the home. This vital health visitor is going to make a great difference to the care of the sick. The only problem that the Minister faces, and it is a great one and an urgent one, is that the service has been so badly paid up to the present on account of the small subsidy; that nobody is joining the service. The Medical Officer of Health of Durban informs me that he has vacancies for some 40 to 50 nurses of this character, whether they be clinic or school nurses or whether they be health visitors, but the important point is that very few are taking up the course. The Department of Education has only last year brought out a syllabus, and so far as I have been able to discover—I may be wrong here—very few are taking up this course. I hope that he will do the best he can to encourage the taking up of this work and that he will ask the Nursing Council and the nursing associations to propagate the idea that more nurses should take it up. There is a lack of them and there is no evidence that more are coming forward; in fact there is a great deal of evidence that they are not coming forward, and they are vital links in the health care of the people.

I think I can on behalf of everybody assure the hon. the Minister that we welcome this amendment to the National Health Act. I think it will bring about a great improvement and assist in the smoother functioning of medical services. I have nothing to say about the amendments contained in Clauses 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 but as far as the amendment contained in Clause 5, which amends Section 133 of the principal Act, is concerned there is one minor point I wish to bring to the notice of the Minister. I hope he will agree to something we inserted there. This clause confers the right upon the Minister to promulgate regulations in which the standards are laid down with which a medical practitioner, who wishes to perform minor operations in his consulting rooms, has to conform when equipping those rooms. I feel that it should not be the Minister alone who promulgates those regulations but that they ought to be promulgated in consultation with the Medical Council of South Africa. I do not want to cast any reflection on the present Minister, but a future Minister, whether he be a layman or a medical man, may perhaps act differently and think he can simply prescribe to the medical profession whatever he wants to and that he himself can lay down the standards to be observed in consulting rooms. I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether he will amend this by providing that the Minister may promulgate regulations in consultation with the Medical Council of South Africa. I think that will reassure the medical profession that they will not be required to comply with impossible demands, as for example, making expensive alterations to their consulting rooms.

I, like the other hon. members who have spoken on this Bill, welcome it, and at this stage I want to go straight on to Clause 5 of the Bill. To me this is a very important clause and I want to say a word or two about it to show how necessary it is to bring this type of legislation on to the Statute Book.

One of the more serious aspects of treating the sick to-day is the inability of doctors to get beds in nursing homes, and because of that there has arisen a desire by groups of medical people to build small clinics where they can do operations and where the patient will be able to be discharged on the day of the operation. All types of minor operations are done at these clinics. That as it is, is avery good thing. But I do not like the attitude that nursing homes have been taking, whereby doctors find it difficult to get the beds for other types of cases. I want to make myself quite clear, and I would like the hon. Minister to know what is happening. The provinces, as the Minister knows, are short of hospital beds, for one reason or another. In many cases they have the physical space, they have the beds, but because of shortage of nurses very often they are unable to use the beds. So what they have been doing is that they have been hiring beds from nursing homes and the nursing homes find that it is far more profitable to take in surgical cases than medical cases. A vicious circle is set up so that the more surgical cases that are taken in by the nursing homes, the fewer medical cases can get in, and the greater are the demands on hospitals for medical beds. It has been said over and over again that it is far easier for a doctor to get a patient into a nursing home to have an operation for cosmetic purposes, or for minor operations—the removal of a toe-nail, as has been said here—than it would be for a man to get in when suffering from a coronary thrombosis. I think a stop should be made to this. We cannot discourage the clinics to do minor surgery because that would aggravate the position still further. So I would urge the Minister to investigate the position of the hiring of the beds by the provinces in nursing homes for non-urgent cases, and to make it imperative for nursing homes to set aside a certain number of beds for medical cases.

When it comes to the inspection of clinics that are run by doctors, or the inspection of their consulting rooms where minor surgery is done, I think there is no doctor who would object to this. I want the Minister to go further. To me it is far more important for inspectors to examine the paramedical services, than the surgical services rendered by the doctors. By that I mean that he must find a way of inspecting the massage clinics for a start; he must have an opportunity of inspecting the chiropodists’ rooms. Those of us who are still in practice know how often it is that people leave a chiropodist and develop a septic condition very soon afterwards. Sometimes it is unavoidable, but often it is due to infection which takes place in the chiropodist’s room or offices. I am much more concerned with this question of the massage clinics that are opening up all over the large cities. There we have two types of institution, if I might call them that. One is the general massage clinic which is run by trained personnel; they have in their establishments fitted out for electrical treatment; sometimes with very special and expensive machinery, and I am sure that these people would be pleased to subject themselves to periodic inspection by the local authorities. But there is the other type which we have been reading about in the papers, places which are allowed to exist in the towns, and I think these pseudo-brothels which go under the name of massage clinics should be closed up as soon as possible. Now is the time for the Minister to step in and through his inspections to find out whether or not such things actually do take place in our cities.

This is a very serious business because the genuine masseur is being stigmatized by the actions of these half-trained and non-trained people who advertise in the newspapers and who are allowed to run wild in their efforts to keep their type of business going. I think the time has come to close them down.

There are many other types of inspection which could be undertaken by the Minister, but I think we can leave that over for another occasion. I wanted to take this opportunity primarily to point out to the Minister what is taking place in these pseudo-paramedical services and secondly, the difficulty that has arisen as a result of the provinces hiring beds in nursing homes.

I want to say a few words about the immunization that has been taking place recently in the towns. I think that the time has come, when we have mass immunization, that every conceivable method should be used to get the people immunized. I think here is when services of the district health visitor or the trained nurse, or the trained sister can play their part. I know how difficult it was for large groups of people to be immunized during the day in the towns. In Johannesburg, for instance, at the clinic in the centre of the town there were queues which sometimes stretched several hundred yards, and one would have to spend the whole afternoon in a queue before one’s turn would come to have the vaccination done. What struck me as very peculiar was that in this queue there were so many children who were being brought for vaccination. I think that when this type of preventive medicine is undertaken, the Minister should make it imperative that every schoolchild must be immunized at the school by public vaccinators or a district nurse, or whoever is going to do this type of work. It would relieve so much of the congestion that takes place at the depots in the towns.

The hon. member for Durban (Central) (Dr. Radford) pointed out the great use that can be made of the district visitor and he touched briefly on the part that can be played by the nursing sister in helping to treat and look after the mentally ill. Here mention was made of transport. The mentally ill particularly cannot be looked after properly unless sufficient transport is provided for both the patients and the health visitors. That is the important thing. There are one or two organizations in some towns which provide this service at a very nominal rate, to take the mentally ill person or the feeble-minded person or the cerebral palsy child from the home to the clinic. I would like to see the Minister setting aside a sum of money which would help these voluntary organizations to get a sufficiency of transport to cater for these people who will be treated partially at home and partially in the clinics and be visited by the health visitor at their homes after they have received part of their treatment at the clinic. I so often wondered how mothers managed to look after cerebral palsy children when these children come back from the clinics each day. It is a great difficulty and the difficulty is very often aggravated in families where both parents are working. The mother comes home from a day’s work in the factory or the office and then has to set about the cooking for the family and on top of that has to look after a child that is mentally or physically crippled. It is a very difficult task. This is where the district nurse and the health visitor can play their part to assist the mothers, especially the working mothers, by helping to look after the children at the times that they come back from the clinics, or in the mornings before they go to the clinics for treatment. I hope the hon. Minister will bear those two little points in mind which may not seem very important to us, but which are of great importance to the mothers and fathers of these unfortunate children.

I am very pleased as well to see that the Minister has made provision for a better way of certifying tuberculosis. It is well known and has been known for a good number of years how often we make mistakes in the diagnosis of tuberculosis. There is no greater example of missing cases than has been shown up by the examination of mineworkers. How often when a mineworker goes up for an examination and he is examined clinically, no tuberculosis is found. Only by X-ray may the suspicion of tuberculosis be found, and it is then that the other clinical findings and laboratory findings play their part. I am pleased that the hon. Minister recognizes these difficulties and has made it imperative now that before a person’s case can be notified as a tuberculotic, every care is taken to prove conclusively that he has got tuberculosis.

Finally, I want to say to the hon. Minister, as has been said before, that we welcome this Bill, that we hope he will now start sifting through the Public Health Act, and find other matters similar to these which we in this House can rectify and modernize.

The two previous speakers on this side of the House have indicated the attitude of the Opposition to this Bill. It is a Bill which enjoys the full support of members on this side of the House. It could be said that the Public Health Act is one of the vintage Acts, having been placed on the Statute Book as far back as 1919 but having been amended more than 12 times to bring it up to date in the light of modern conditions and developments. I would like to confine my comments to Clause 4 of the Bill which deals with the supply to local authorities free of charge of various materials required for immunization. In the past, as the Minister has pointed out, this particular provision has had to be amended in order to make provision for various infectious diseases when it was considered desirable to have them placed within the purview of the Act, but now by the amendment before the House, it will no longer be necessary to effect an amendment to the Act each time a new addition is desired to this particular section. It is gratifying to note this new procedure, and it is gratifying too to note the increase of the functions of the local authorities, because they are mainly concerned with the implementation of the various steps concerning immunization. It is very interesting to note that a provision exists in the new clause “that the Minister may when he considers it to be in the public interest …” that obviously leaves plenty of room for matters which may develop in the future. In so far as immunization is concerned I would like to deal briefly with the method applied by the municipalities. They seem to use a three-pronged approach to immunization; they deal with it through child-life clinics, campaigns in thickly populated areas and in schools themselves. In so far as the schools are concerned it is customary with some of the municipalities to use mobile vans to visit private and state schools and state-aided schools. It is quite apparent too, Sir, that the public is well aware of the need for immunization, particularly of the very young. This was brought to my notice by a report from the City Medical Health Officer of Durban. He says this—

He was talking about diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus—

I believe that no immunization campaign can be completely successful unless there is a complete coverage of as many people as possible. While I am satisfied that every means has been adopted to provide the facilities for immunization, I believe that publicity and the dissemination of propaganda is of vital importance. I would like to suggest to the Minister that there is an avenue which he could use which I believe could assist greatly in the dissemination of information concerning immunization. The Minister has at his disposal more than 1,600 pharmacies throughout South Africa which, I believe, could be used as a base from which information could be distributed. Various means of contact are possible between a chemist and druggist and members of the public, and I believe that we could use this useful link to publicize the services which the municipalities are providing under this particular clause of the Bill. I realize that in the past an attempt was made through the Department to seek the distribution of immunization material through pharmaceutical channels, but I realize, and I think most people do, that there were difficulties in that respect which made it impracticable for such a course to be adopted. But in regard to the dissemination of information, I believe that there is a great potential. I think we can say that this has already been put into effect because the Department of Agricultural Technical Services has already used this method. Recently it was suggested that pamphlets should be distributed concerning the use and the dangers of insecticides and the disposal of empty containers which might contain a small residue of poison, and from what I can gather from the Department itself the response by the chemists and druggists to obtain these pamphlets for distribution was so great that there were not sufficient pamphlets to distribute.

This clause deals with what may happen in the future and I believe that there will be great advances in the techniques of immunization. I believe that eventually we will have a breakthrough and that we will reach the stage where we will triumph over the common cold and the influenza virus. As I understand the position, this particular clause could make provision for the State, in the interests of the public, to provide immunization vaccines as far as the common cold and influenza virus is concerned. I agree that normally colds and flu are not regarded as serious conditions or as fatal, but I believe that the loss of efficiency which results from colds and flu, and the loss of man hours to industry, commerce, in the schools and in the universities, as the result of colds has never been assessed, and we have never been able to estimate what is lost in time, and what it is costing our country. Therefore I believe that at some stage when science has overcome this problem it will be possible through this particular clause of the Bill to make provision for an immunization process which could, in the end, spell the death-knell of the common cold and influenza.

In conclusion, I should like to reiterate my suggestion to the Minister that he gives some consideration to the suggestion about the dissemination of propaganda and information through the channels of the pharmacies, because I believe that this service will be given willingly and that it could play a very important part in ensuring complete coverage in the provision of publicity concerning immunization services.

Mr. Speaker, I intend to raise certain matters which affect the Coloured people under this Bill, but before coming to that I should like to say that any legislation which assists the local authorities in the carrying out of this very important function in regard to the health of the people must be welcomed. I want to say that having served on the City Council for many years, I could tell the hon. the Minister and the House that the City Council of Cape Town has a very outstanding and excellent service. I am sure that this Bill will be able to assist them further and that it will increase the efficiency of what is already a very outstanding service.

I have been concerned for some time, and so have my constituents, about the medical inspection of schools. I am very happy to say that to-day I have received information that the question of the inspection of schools has been handed over to the Minister’s Department by the Department of Coloured Affairs, and that the Minister has already set in motion the machinery to make this an efficient service. That is good news for us, but I do believe that it will take some time for it to be effective, and my plea to the Minister to-day is to do something in the meantime. I might say in passing, however, that the advertisements which I understand appeared for doctors to inspect schools offered salaries which again differentiated between the amount paid to a White doctor and the amount paid to a Coloured doctor. Now, for goodness sake, Sir, for once and for all let us realize that if a doctor renders services he does so as a doctor and that the colour of his skin has nothing to do with it. The Minister may receive many more applications from Coloured doctors if he would pay the same salaries as for Whites. It is all wrong, and do not let us perpetuate this cancer. Let us make a start with this new outstanding and excellent service it is proposed to give the Coloured schools by paying the Coloured doctors the same salaries. I believe that we can build up the health of the Coloured community in South Africa from the schools. It is there where it can start. It is there where the Government and the Department can eventually save a considerable sum of money because we know that if a child gets ill in his home there is the fear of medical expenses on the part of the parent, and there is an attempt to cure the child without the aid of the doctor. They may suffer from diseases which are not easily ascertainable or cannot be diagnosed by the parent, but which could be diagnosed by the school doctor. I believe that the Minister can, in terms of the new clause he introduced, appoint so many public health nurses as are deemed necessary to render service in any area. That could be a start of a tremendous service and it could be the opportunity for the employment of many Coloured nurses, many of whom are unemployed to-day, I understand. It could create a further avenue of employment and be an encouragement to Coloured girls to enter the nursing profession if they know that their services could be used under this new clause. Here is an opportunity, I repeat, which we must not allow to let slip. I would like to ask the Minister immediately, as soon as this Bill is promulgated, to instruct his Department to encourage Coloured girls to begin taking up nursing so that they can be used.

In what way, do you suggest?

I understand that these health services will take some time to get into top gear, and it must of necessity be a limited service. By that I mean that there are many Coloured schools—and I hope that more and more are coming—where you will need a tremendous staff of doctors if you have to give school children individual attention daily. But these Coloured nurses could in the meantime attend the schools daily and report to the doctors in charge. They could render a tremendous service to the health of the people and it would be a wonderful opportunity for them. I may say that at a meeting last night I was asked by a Coloured man why there were so many Coloured nurses walking around unemployed, and I could not give him an answer, but it seems to me unfortunate that with the shortage of nurses there should be any nurse who is unemployed, Coloured or White. A determined effort should be made to employ all nurses, of whatever colour, in the interest of the health of a community.

I am very happy indeed to have been afforded this opportunity of making it public to the Coloured people of South Africa that there is in the process of being established this school inspection service, and that there will be no question of only White doctors being employed, but that Coloured doctors will also be employed. I think it is a service which the Coloured people of South Africa will be forever grateful to the Government for instituting. I only hope the Minister and his Department will make use of the hundreds, and perhaps even the thousands, of Coloured girls who, I think, are willing to enter the nursing profession, for service not only in the schools which will, I am sure, increase in number, but I think they can be used also by the local authorities to detect disease, and so assist in the establishment of a health service which will build up the Coloured people. I do not want to deal with the position of the Coloured child at school to-day, or the fact that we once asked the Minister of Coloured Affairs to re-introduce the school-feeding system. I believe that it should be unnecessary in this country, with our vast resources, with the money at our disposal, that there should still be organizations which have to look after the health of the people. All these organizations should really disappear, or they should be incorporated in the Health Department of the Government. It will save thousands of rands if this better system of school inspection is put into effect as soon as possible. I want to express my thanks to the Government on behalf of the Coloured people for the establishment of that service.

I want to thank hon. members very much indeed for the support which they have given to this Bill and for their interesting contributions to the debate. I want to make use of this opportunity to reply briefly to some of the questions put to me by hon. members. I hope hon. members will forgive me if I do not reply to every point which they raised because much of what they discussed is not covered by the provisions of this Bill. I am sure hon. members will only expect me to deal with those matters which fall specifically within the provisions of this Bill.

The hon. member for Durban (Central) (Dr. Radford) discussed the charge of two shillings for every person X-rayed. I want to remind the hon. member of what the exact position is. We charge 20 cents per case only for persons who are not suspected of having come into contact with tuberculosis. Every suspected case, or in every case where we suspect that the person has had contact with a tuberculotic, he is X-rayed free of charge. We want to discourage people from flooding our X-ray units. We have only a limited number of X-ray units in operation, 19 in all, but often some of them have to be serviced when they are out of order, so that we could not possibly cope with the tremendous number of cases that would have to be examined if everybody comes forward. That is the reason for charging a fee, to discourage people who are not contacts and those who are not suspected cases. It is really a method of ensuring that the people who are the most likely cases will be examined.

I am very grateful to the hon. member for having pointed out the importance of these health visitors. We all appreciate their importance more and more as time goes on. It is for that reason that we have this year increased our grant to the Nursing Association from R1,200 p.a. to R15,400, for training health visitors. So we are doing our best to keep up the number of these girls because we appreciate the tremendous importance of the role they play in our nursing services.

Is that publicly known? I did not know it, and I have been very interested in this subject.

I think the hon. member will see it in the Estimates. The hon. member also pointed out the necessity for overhauling the Public Health Act. We all realize that. It is really long overdue, but it is a tremendous task, and it needs expert draughtsmanship. It requires the recrystallization of many of the principles which are incorporated in this Act. We have to reconsider them and recrystallize them out in a new form. It is a much greater task than one would ordinarily imagine, and it is for that reason that at the present time, with the shortage of staff, we have not been able to tackle this job.

The hon. member for Geduld (Dr. Jurgens) asked that we should take into consideration consulting the Medical Association when we promulgate the regulations in regard to the consulting-rooms of medical men. I think the hon. member should rather refer the matter to the Medical Council, but the hon. member may raise the matter again when we deal with the relevant clause. I shall certainly devote attention to it.

The hon. member for Rosettenville (Dr. Fisher) pointed out the abuse that is being made of the so-called para-medical services. That is a very difficult problem, because it is not really something for this Department to deal with, but for the Department of Justice. I think the problem will be solved to a large extent when the para-medical services are registered, because then we as a Department will also have the right to supervise them and to enter their premises at any time to see what is happening there. At present we have no such right. The hon. member will appreciate that it would not do for a Government official just to enter any business or any other place at any time if he thinks that things are not exactly right. So I think the solution to this problem will only be found eventually when a Bill is introduced to register the paramedical services.

I very much appreciate the suggestion made by the hon. member for Durban (Berea) (Mr. Wood) as to the possibility of getting the assistance of the pharmacies in the various cities as a sort of propaganda medium, to teach mothers to bring their children to the clinics, etc. If the hon. member would be good enough to submit practical suggestions, we shall be only too glad to consider them.

*The hon. member for Boland (Mr. Barnett) referred to the question of the medical inspection of schools and also to the difficulty of obtaining the services of nurses. That is true, but it is also true that we already have posts for 30 Coloured nurses in the inspection service of our schools and this number will grow in due course. I can assure the hon. member that we will be only too grateful to make use of the services of Coloured nurses as the need arises. The principle followed by this side of the House is that each group of the population must be served by its own people. If we can bring that about, we will be fulfilling the ideal which we have set ourselves.

The other point raised by the hon. member was that the salaries of all doctors should be precisely the same. There was a great deal of support for this idea but I want to ask the hon. member whether that would be fair as far as the Coloured community is concerned. Let us consider the position carefully. A Coloured doctor is in the service of the Coloured community. We must accept the fact that the Coloured community to-day is not as well off economically as the White community because they have a lower income. The hon. member wants Coloured doctors to be paid on the same basis as White doctors. He wants us to pay a Coloured doctor a higher salary than his own community could afford to pay him. The moment we set that process in motion, we will draw all the Coloured doctors to the Public Service; we will draw them away from the Coloured community and in doing so we will be doing the Coloured community a great injustice. We want more Coloured doctors to care for the Coloured community and it would be wrong to encourage them to enter Government service rather than to serve their own people. It so often happens that with the best of intentions. an hon. member in this House tries to do the Coloureds a service but merely succeeds in doing them a disservice.

Is it not a fact that because of the salaries which have been advertised, the Department has had only two applications from Coloured doctors?

I am not sure how many applications we have had. I do not think it was so few. Many of these Coloured doctors have been misled into demanding the same salaries as those paid to White doctors. These are people who think only of themselves; they do not always consider the needs of the people in their own national group.

I think I have now replied to all the questions that have been put to me.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Mr. SPEAKER announced that the Committee on Standing Rules and Orders had appointed the following members to serve on the Select Committee on the Insolvency Amendment Bill, viz.; Dr. Coertze, Messrs. Hopewell, Hourquebie, M. L. Mitchell, S. L. Muller, J. A. F. Nel, Pelser, A. L. Schlebusch, Tucker and Visse.

I move—

That the Bill be now read a second time.

Mr. Speaker, when this proposed legislation is passed it will in my opinion be another important milestone on the road of community development in the Republic of South Africa. I want to take this opportunity briefly first to sketch the background of the provisions of this Bill, which needs explanation. I do so in order to remove any uncertainty about the objectives and functions of this Department, the Department of Community Development, as it is now known, because since the last session of Parliament a complete reorganization has taken place and I think hon. members are entitled to learn from me how this machinery works, as a background to this Bill.

I therefore want to pose two questions and I shall try to reply to them. The first is what is meant by community development, and secondly, what are the functions of the Department of Community Development? Thereafter I shall deal with the Bill and its most important clauses in more detail.

Community development is a concept which in recent times has received attention in all countries, and the following internationally accepted definition of it is contained in a publication entitled “The Report of the Mission to Survey Community Development” (translation)—

I should like to point out that the concept of community development has enjoyed particular interest right throughout the world in recent years and that even centuries-old civilizations like those of Western Germany, Holland and Greece devote attention to it. The fact that we already have a Department of Community Development proves how far we in the Republic have already advanced along this road. The Department of Community Development and other State Departments, Provincial Administrations and local authorities already exist to provide the means from the side of the authorities to enable the community to help itself. In view of the fact that the Bill I am now introducing deals with certain of the functions performed by the Department of Community Development, I should like to confine myself to the constitutions and the functions of this Department.

The first step taken to give this Department its present form was when the Group Areas Development Board and the organization entrusted with the functions emanating from the Group Areas Development Act, together with the National Housing Commission, which was already an organ of the then Department of Housing also became an organ of that Department. Those two bodies were brought in under a single departmental machine. This Department’s functions with the two aforementioned statutory bodies forming part of it, consequently expanded considerably. On 4 August 1964 the hon. the Prime Minister announced in a Press statement that the functions of the Department of Housing were reorganized by adding to them the activities flowing from the Group Areas Development Act, and also the broadening of the Department’s objectives and scope. He then announced that the newly-constituted Department would be called the Department of Community Development and that it was to ensure that all population groups were properly settled and housed and would develop into healthy communities, and that adverse conditions which hampered such community development would be removed, for example, by slum clearance and urban renewal. It was thereafter announced in a Government Notice that the statutory powers, duties and functions contained in the following Acts would be entrusted to me as Minister of Community Development—

1. (i) The Housing Act No. 10 of 1957 in which the National Housing Commission, which is an organ of the Department of Community Development, was established, inter alia;
2. (ii) The Group Areas Development Act No. 69 of 1955 in terms of which the Group Areas Development Board was established, which Board therefore also became an organ of the Department of Community Development. (I just want to point out that the Group Areas Board is the board which makes recommendations to the Minister of Planning in regard to the demarcation of group areas and it therefore functions in that Department. The Development Board is concerned with the development of areas);
3. (iii) The Rents Act, No. 43 of 1950, as drastically amended in 1964;
4. (iv) The Slums Act, No. 53 of 1934;
5. (v) The Government Villages Act, No. 28 of 1950;
6. (vi) Certain provisions of the Group Areas Act, No. 77 of 1957, but only provisions affecting an area which has already, generally speaking, been proclaimed as a group area.

Mr. Speaker, I trust that this exposition, however brief, will lead to greater clarity in regard to the functions of the Department of Community Development. Therefore two bodies doing development work have been added to this Department, and whereas formerly we only had a housing office that is now an organ of a full-fledged Department, and whereas formerly we had only the Development Board, that is now also an organ of this Department, which also handles the Slums Act, the Government Villages Act and other legislation.

I also want to say for purposes of the record. because there is still much confusion on the part of the public sometimes, that the Secretary for Community Development in the person of Mr. Niemand is not at the moment the secretary of the Housing Commission, but in fact the head of the Department concerned, and that these two bodies are organs of that Department. From what I have said hon. members will also infer that the Department of Community Development as a rule comes on to the scene after the various areas envisaged for the development of communities have been demarcated. Cases may, however, occur where the Department of Community Development can initiate community or area development even before an area has been demarcated, e.g. where the redevelopment or replanning of an area within the controlled area, i.e. before the area’s group character has been indicated by way of proclamation, may be undertaken after consultation with the Minister of Planning in terms of the provisions of the proposed Section 12sept, which I shall deal with in a moment. This example clearly indicates that the Department of Community Development and the Community Development Board will do much more than the development of group areas. If it is noted further that the Department of Community Development performs all the functions such as the provision of housing, slum clearance, urban renewal, community development and the administration of the Rents Act, it becomes clear that the Department is concerned with infinitely much more than merely the development of group areas. I may also add that the Community Development Board in places like, e.g. Newclare and Fordsburg (no group area has as yet been proclaimed in the latter centre), plays its part in the very substantive urban renewal schemes and community development projects which are being undertaken in co-operation with the Johannesburg City Council. I established a joint committee there on which the Johannesburg City Council is represented as well as the Development Board of my Department. This Government Committee undertakes to replan and redevelop those backward areas. I also refer to urban development like the establishment of a community at Triomf, the former Sophiatown, and to what we are envisaging at Bosmansdam near Cape Town and in Algoa Park in Port Elizabeth, where practically new communities are being established. That illustrates how far the ideal of community development has already surpassed the antiquated concept of the mere development of group areas. I trust that by means of this exposition I have succeeded in explaining how far the Department of Community Development has already progressed along the road of community development. And in so doing. Mr. Speaker, I have already explained why the short title of the Group Areas Development Act, 1955, is now being changed to the Community Development Act, and why it is being proposed that the long title of the Act be changed inter alia also to make provision for the development of certain areas and the promotion of community development in such areas.

I can now proceed to explain certain of the other most important provisions of the Bill. In the first place, I want to refer to the change in the name of the board and the fund and the cessation of reference to the Group Areas Act as the principal Act, which is contained in Clause 1. For the reasons I have already given, the functions of the Community Development Board go much further than the development of group areas only. The development of an area which now corresponds to the borders of a group area may be a mere coincidence, and it is therefore wrong to refer in the Community Development Act in future to the Group Areas Act as being the principal Act. Where there is now reference in the Community Development Act to the Group Areas Act, the name of that Act must therefore be mentioned pertinently. That explains the amendment proposed in Clause 1 (a), (c), 1 (d) and 1 (f), and also the further references in Clauses 1 (b) and 1 (e), where it is now being provided that the Group Areas Development Fund and the Group Areas Development Board will in future be known as the Community Development Fund and the Community Development Board.

Then I come to the objectives and powers of the board. Clause 5 (Section 12) sub-clauses (1) (a) to (c) of the Bill are very important because the objectives and the general powers of the Community Development Board are defined therein. As hon. members will know, and as I have explained, the functions and actions of the Community Development Board are not limited now to achieving the aims of the Group Areas Development Act, 1955 and the Group Areas Act, nor to the handling of affected properties only, but it can now, subject to the approval of the Minister, develop areas designated by the Minister, or assist in the development thereof, and it can promote community development. These areas should not include (a) Native Trust areas designated in terms of the Natives Trust and Land Act, 1936 (Act No. 18 of 1936), (b) locations or Native hostels referred to in Section 2 of the Natives (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act. 1945 (Act No. 25 of 1945), (c) Coloured settlements, mission stations, and (d) any other areas referred to in Section 20 (3) (c) of the Group Areas Act, 1957 (Act No. 77 of 1957). I have already dealt at length with this proposed amendment in my previous remarks.

As hon. members will note, large sections of the existing Section 12 were retained, but I want to pause to deal with the following important new provisions contained in it: There is, firstly, the freezing of development in the interests of slum clearance schemes. In the new proposed Section (12) (2) (e) a new power is envisaged for the Community Development Board, viz. that in order to promote a slum clearance scheme the erection or alteration of any building structure in an area in which a slum clearance I scheme or urban renewal scheme is being implemented, which may be in conflict with the proposed replanned township, may be prohibited and controlled. This freezing must be announced in the Government Gazette and in at least one newspaper circulating in the area concerned, and the area to which it refers must be defined in such publication. I am glad to be able to say that the Municipal Executivesx2019; Association has indicated that they welcome this provision. I had consultations with them about it just recently. I have accepted their suggestion to provide a sanction if the person concerned does not offer the property to the Board, but disposes of it to somebody else. This provision is contained in sub-section 5 (c) of Clause 5. I may add that the provision in regard to the freezing of the development of a property in the interests of slum clearance (Section 12 (2) (e)), which I have just dealt with, is supplemented by the provision in the proposed Section 12 (5) (a), in terms of which the owner of a property in an area where a slum clearance scheme is being carried out and where development has been frozen by means of the prescribed notice in the Government Gazette and in the local newspaper, and who wishes to dispose of his property, must first offer it to the Board. So the Board therefore has a preferent right to purchase. Provision is made for the payment of compensation by way of arbitration, and for the method of appointment of an arbitrator by the Minister at the request of one of the parties if the Board and the owner cannot agree.

Then I come to the payment of goodwill value and the exclusion of advertising costs, etc. as portion of the compensation paid for an affected property. I wish to deal in somewhat greater detail with these two provisions in the Bill. The first provision is contained in the proposed Section 12 (2) (h) and provides that payments may be made in respect of goodwill value which may be attached to any profession or business which is likely to be lost as the result of the person carrying on that professional business having to cease carrying it on in consequence of any proclamation of group areas or steps taken in terms of the Group Areas Act, 1957. The maximum compensation in this regard is equal to the net profit for 12 months before ceasing to carry on the professional business, or 12 months immediately preceding the date of the proclamation of the area to be a group area, whichever is most beneficial to the person concerned. Hon. members will therefore see that this compensation is calculated to compensate persons for goodwill value according to a formula, as I have indicated.

The second provision is contained in the proposed Section 20 (6) (a) (Clause 13 (b)). This amendment is in accordance with an undertaking I gave last year during the debate on my Vote. The existing Section 20 (6) (a) amounts to this, that the monetary value of any conditions of sale which the purchaser pays by law or in terms of the conditions of sale forms part of the compensation for the affected property. The only exceptions are the costs connected with the drawing up of the deed of sale, the transfer costs and the transfer duties. This provision has resulted in costs like agents’ commission and advertising costs being included in the compensation received by the seller because he was compensated for it by the buyer. By allowing these as items of expenditure for the seller, the Development Board may, for example, by unrealistically high advertising costs or even fictitious advertising costs and/or agents’ commissions, have have allowed appreciation contributions to be lost or unnecessary depreciation contributions to be paid. I feel, however, that the Board should have discretion to exclude also advertising costs, agents’ commission and similar costs from the compensation paid. That is why this provision is being inserted.

A further point I wish to refer to is that the Community Development Board must transfer properties which are transferred to the Housing Commission for housing purposes at the purchase price plus interest. As hon. members know, the National Housing Commission is, in terms of the Housing Act, concerned with the provision of housing for certain income groups. A further provision that is now being made is the one contained in the proposed Section 12 (3) in which it is provided that the price which the National Housing Commission must pay for affected property which it acquires for the Community Development Board shall not exceed the cost of acquisition of such property to the Board plus interest on such cost at the rate of interest which was at the date of disposal of such property being paid by the Board on loans obtained by the Board. This provision ensures that the Community Development Fund will not make a profit out of the Housing Fund and that housing provided on land purchased from the Development Board by the Housing Commission will therefore be kept as cheap as possible to the persons who will use that housing. The same principle is contained in Clauses 13 (a) (Section 20) and 16 (Section 24). There it is provided that when the Housing Commission buys an affected property for the purposes of the Housing Act and an appreciation contribution has to be paid, that contribution goes to the Housing Fund instead of to the Development Fund so that persons belonging to the group for which houses are supplied out of the Housing Fund, i.e. the lower income group, will be able to enjoy the consequent benefit of the reduced cost. I trust that these proposals will be welcomed by all hon. members.

Mr. Speaker, the last clauses in the Bill with which I want to deal during the course of this explanation are Clauses 6 (b) (the new Section 12bis (2) (b)), 8 (the new Section 12 (6) and the new Section 12sept), 10 (new Sections 14ter and 14quat) and 19 (Section 35).

Clause 6 (b) (Section 12bis (2) (b)) is designed to speed up the physical development of an area. It is provided in that clause that an application for the cancellation of the general plan of a township, all the sites of which have passed to the Board, need not be made if the Minister is of the opinion that it is in the public interest or in the interest of the speedy and effective development of the township or any part of it that the general plan should be retained, but the necessary provision is being made for the lapsing of the conditions attached to the title of any erf or site. So it happened, e.g. in Nance-field near Johannesburg, that it appeared necessary to retain the general plan, which could in fact be used after unnecessarily hampering conditions had lapsed, in order to prevent a completely new township plan being drawn up with the accompanying delays which sometimes waste a lot of time. The sub-paragraph furthermore lays an obligation on the relevant Registrar of Deeds and the Surveyor-General to make the necessary entries in the registers. In this respect also agreement has been arrived at.

Then the Board is relieved of certain regulations, town planning schemes, etc. The proposed new Section 12sept will, after it is passed, relieve the Board of certain local authority regulations, and provides that the Board may obtain the same exemptions as the Housing Commission in order to enable it to develop areas speedily. These relaxations refer, inter alia, to the submission of maps relating to the subdivision of land, the type of building or structure to be erected or the value thereof, the siting of a building on an erf and the making of streets. I already fully explained this provision during the discussion on it with the United Municipal Executive. The United Municipal Executive informed me that they accepted it in principle; they have no objection to the principle but they merely desire that the exemption, particularly from the provisions of a town planning scheme, should be granted by me after consultation with the Administrator concerned, and that it should not merely be left in the hands of the Board. I decided to comply with their request in this regard, and during the Committee Stage I shall move the necessary amendment, as agreed with the United Municipal Executive.

Then I come to the question of redevelopment in controlled areas and the termination of leases in certain areas. The proposed Section 21 sept (Clause 8) contains two important principles, viz.—

1. (i) that the Minister of Community Development, when the Board, a local authority, statutory body or any other corporate body to which the Board’s powers have been delegated, or the National Housing Commission, has authorized the redevelopment of an area within a controlled area, or has undertaken it itself with the consent of the Minister of Planning, authorizes the relevant body to make available in that area sites for occupation as tenant or owner, even if the person is precluded in terms of the provisions of the Group Areas Act, and
2. (ii) that the bodies mentioned in (i), viz. local authorities, statutory bodies, the National Housing Commission, etc. may terminate existing leases in those areas mentioned in the proposed Section 12sept (2), viz. Asiatic bazaars and the areas mentioned under (i), i.e. areas in the controlled area which are about to be developed, on giving three months’ notice.

In the proposed Section 12sept (3) provision is made for the termination of occupation rights in the areas to which I have already referred, and provision is made further for the payment of compensation for improvements made legally and which existed on the date of termination of the lease. The formula for compensation is an amount equal to the estimated cost of the erection of the improvement on the date of the termination of the lease less the depreciation which has taken place since the date on which the improvements were made. Provision is also made for arbitration if the parties cannot agree.

This provision is particularly necessary in places like Pretoria and Fordsburg, in Johannesburg, where redevelopment for, e.g., uprooted traders is hampered by old provisions which practically no longer serve any purpose other than to preserve old existing slums and to hamper redevelopment. As hon. members will know, ample provision is made for compensation for improvements. Persons whose leases are affected by this provision will of course, wherever necessary, receive preference in the areas being redeveloped for their racial groups.

A further point is that the board can obtain exemption from the restrictive conditions in a township plan. The proposed new Section 14ter (Clause 10) contains a provision that if the board cannot obtain exemption from a local authority in respect of a restrictive condition in a town planning scheme, or from the conditions of establishment of a township, and such exemption is in the opinion of the Minister necessary to enable the Board to effect development in the most effective way possible on land belonging to it, the Minister may request the Administrator to amend or to suspend such a condition. This measure is essential to prevent the provision of urgently required housing and development being unnecessarily delayed.

Then I come to the next point, viz. the development of an area pending approval of the plan if the plan is not approved within three months. This provision has been drafted in favour of the National Housing Commission, and I have already explained it. I also have the support of the United Municipal Executive for this.

Clause 10 (new Section 14quat) provides that the Minister, if the layout plan of a township has not been approved within a period of three months after its submission, and he is satisfied that this layout plan can be effectively applied, with the concurrence of the Administrator concerned, may grant authority for the necessary development of the area to be continued. This provision is necessary to prevent delays which may occur in the finalizing of layout plans. A similar provision already exists in the Housing Act of 1957, after we introduced an amendment last year with the consent of all four Administrators.

Then I come to Clause 19 (Section 35). If this clause is passed police officials will no longer be used for the purposes of the Community Development Board, as is in fact already the position now in practice. The Secretary will then authorize an official or member of the board to act as an inspector in a prescribed area in order to promote the objects of the board.

I have tried to explain as fully as possible all the most important clauses in the Bill. The few I have not dealt with are either consequential or else they can be dealt with more fruitfully in the Committee Stage. Mr. Speaker, I trust that hon. members will accept this Bill as a measure for promoting happy and independent communities, and for the improvement of existing provisions where certain steps to promote the wider objects and aims of the Department are not sufficient, such as, e.g. the freezing of development in areas where slum clearance is necessary and for the granting of relief to persons where the existing provisions are considered to be not quite reasonable enough, such as the payment of goodwill value and the provision that agents’ commission and advertising costs, in the discretion of the board, will no longer be regarded as part of the compensation for affected property. Finally, that if this Bill is passed we hope this year still to introduce a consolidating measure which will embrace the whole of the law.

I have listened carefully to what the hon. the Minister has had to say in regard to this Bill. I must say at once that the case which the hon. the Minister appears to have put up seems to be one which has been occasioned by certain difficulties in regard to specific cases with which he and his Department have had to deal. Why it is necessary to come with general legislation of this kind to deal with those cases is not clear to me. I want to say at once that we were prepared last year to give the Minister certain powers in regard to the clearing up of slums and to use that land for other purposes. There is presented to our mind to-day a picture of the Minister taking these powers in regard to certain pieces of land, no longer in group areas, pieces of land of which only the borders of the Republic are the limits, pieces of land in regard to which we state categorically that we are afraid he is merely creating the slums of the future. Nobody is more anxious than this side of the House to see slums cleared up. As I have said we had evidence of that last year. We did not like to give the Minister those powers. We made our position quite clear. We felt, however, that there was an evil, that the evil should be grappled with and if the Minister was prepared to grapple with it and take strong measures so that the problems could be dealt with quickly and new houses built, we were willing to say, “All right, this is an emergency; we are willing to assist the Minister”. We did not oppose his Bill. We gave him those powers last year. But to-day the Minister is once again making much of the provisions of this Bill which deal with slums clearance. Let me repeat this Bill is not restricted to group areas. It is specifically not limited to group areas. It can be applied throughout the whole of the Republic. To give hon. members a better understanding of the attitude of this side of the House, I move the following amendment—

To omit all the words after “That” and to substitute “this House declines to pass the Second Reading of the Community Development Amendment Bill because, inter alia—

1. (a) it extends the area of operation of the existing Group Areas Development Board, which it renames, from the confines of proclaimed group areas to the whole of the Republic;
2. (b) it vests both the Minister of Community Development and the Community Development Board with excessive and unnecessary powers which could destroy the existing concept of town and regional planning;
3. (c) it destroys the universally accepted safe guards which the home owner has always enjoyed and
4. (d) it empowers both the Minister and the Board to usurp the rights, privileges and functions of local and Provincial authorities.”.

The hon. the Minister may move amendments in the Committee Stage which may have some bearing on the powers and functions of local authorities and provincial administrations, but as the matter stands at the moment, in the light of the hon. the Minister’s speech, that is the amendment which I move.

I believe we on this side of the House are showing a greater faith in the future of our country than the hon. the Minister and his Government. We know there are slums. I want to repeat that we want the slums cleared up and we are willing to give the Minister powers towards that end. We want houses for our people. But what is the Minister doing in this Bill? He is taking powers unto himself and his boards to sweep away all town planning concepts. I shall deal with those powers in a moment and show how wide they are; how far they go. That is why we say the Minister is merely creating slums for the future. It does not matter what conditions may have been found necessary in the past and laid down, conditions in regard to the limitation of dwellings on erven in an urban area … they can all be swept aside. An unlimited number of buildings can now be erected on erven in terms of this particular Bill and so on. I shall come to the details presently. In my opinion there is lacking from this Bill a definition of “community development”. The Minister has explained that in his speech but there is still no definition in the Bill and I think that is an omission. I think it is a great pity. Because as time goes on it will be very unfortunate, when anybody wanting to know what is happening as a result of the activities of the Community Development Board, is told: “If you want to know what ‘community development’ means go to Hansard and read what the Minister had to say at the time of the second reading”. That is very unsatisfactory. While the Minister has given us the explanation, I repeat, I think it is unfortunate that there is no definition of it in this Bill before us.

I want to move on to one or two of the particular provisions. I want to deal with Clause 2 (3), but before doing so I think this is an appropriate moment to refer to a duty which laid upon the Registrar of Deeds. Further duties are laid upon the Registrar of Deeds and the Surveyors-General in the clauses that follow. I do not know what the existing administrative arrangements are between the Minister and his Department and the Registrar of Deeds and the Surveyors-General. But it was the position in the past that when this kind of legislation was contemplated and when provision was contemplated of the character of Clause 2 (3), namely—

it was referred to the Registrar of Deeds or the Surveyor-General, as the case may be, to ask whether they approved of such a proposal being enacted. They were asked what the practical effect would be as far as the work in their departments was concerned. Perhaps this is the time when I should ask the hon. the Minister whether that has been done in the case of this Bill, and whether these officials have indicated their approval.

Yes.

The hon. the Minister says “yes”. We on this side of the House are very concerned. When these sweeping endorsements have to be made by these officials, endorsements on all sorts of documents which are registered with them, it does not only throw a tremendous burden on them, a burden which in addition to the ordinary burden which already rests upon them, in which respect many complaints have already been made from this side of the House in the past years, but it is only half the picture. Because in addition to any conditions that may be endorsed on a document in terms of this provision, conditions may also be deleted. It cuts both ways. The Registrar not only has to make endorsements, he has to delete all sorts of conditions of title whenever those titles are registered in the Deeds Office. The same applies in the case of the Surveyors-General. We believe it is a most unhappy state of affairs that title deeds should be treated in this particular manner. We believe it is an unhealthy state of affairs that blanket authority should be given to statutory bodies to have the right to go to the Surveyor-General or the Registrar of Deeds and, merely upon request, have large-scale sweeping endorsements made or conditions deleted from title deeds in this particular manner. We have come to respect title deeds, Sir, but some of the legislation the hon. the Minister is putting through this House is making it difficult for us to continue to respect title deeds. We admit that we have approved of legislation in regard to slum clearance. But, where in our opinion, it is not necessary, we say there should be greatest care and the greatest circumspection on the part of Parliament to see that that kind of legislation is not embarked upon more than is absolutely vital and absolutely necessary. We do not agree that it is in this case.

I have dealt with the question of the lack of a definition of “community development” and I have explained that this Bill now virtually covers the whole of the Republic. I should like to refer for a moment to Clause 5 of this Bill which inserts a new Section 12 in the principal Act. In terms of this provision, the Board may do certain things “with the approval of the Minister”. That phrase rings throughout this Bill. This is in essence a Bill for the Minister, acting through the Board or through the agency of the administrator or a local authority, as the case may be, to have his way in regard to planning and the replanning of areas which, in his opinion, will suit his idea of what should be done in regard to the development of group areas, now community development, for the wider purposes of this particular Bill. The Minister is the determining factor. This Clause, like the previous one, starts with “with the approval of the Minister”. Then you have “after consultation with the administrator of the province concerned”, “after consultation with the local authority concerned, if any, for the area concerned” and “subject to such conditions as the Minister may determine”. I want to pause here for a moment and ask what is “consultation with the administrator”? This is a phrase which is used over and over again in our legislation. Does it mean anything more than the Minister conveying his intention to the administrator and asking him whether he has any other views, whether he has any objection, and when the Minister has received those views, whatever they may be, from the administrator, setting the matter aside and going on precisely along the course he has determined for himself in advance? I submit it means nothing more than that. What can the Board do “subject to the approval of the Minister” and “subject to the conditions the Minister may determine”? “Subdivide land, plan and develop any land or portion thereof belonging to the board, lay out land”. It can “cause surveys, plans, sections, maps, diagrams or drawings to be made”, “construct roads, streets, bridges, etc.”. The Board can, in fact, do the whole of that development which was in fact part of the function of the Group Areas Development Board. But now they can do that without being limited by group areas, but in respect of any area the Minister may determine.

Now I come to one reason why we have inserted the third leg to our amendment, “t destroys the universally accepted safeguard which the homeowner has always enjoyed”. The Minister, in his desire to get on with the job—we have no objection to the Minister getting on with the job—is setting aside all those necessary controls and checks which have been shown to be necessary in the past if we are to have well-balanced development of our urban centres. I shall come back to this amendment of mine in a moment. It is here where we say we have faith in the future of our country, faith which the Minister obviously has not got. We have already seen what has happened in the case of some of his plans. He has started development schemes in areas where it is quite clear those schemes will be swept over by the natural growth of our towns and cities and left behind as islands. That must be so. Where do we go from there? Then those people will have to be uprooted; there will have to be replanning again; there will have to be replanning of re-planned areas. It is inevitable. These schemes are simply just hotchpotch schemes, schemes thrown together to meet the need of the moment, as the Minister may determine. That is what is taking place.

Where?

In the areas which the Minister is devising. Where are the areas which the Minister dealt with under the powers granted to him in the Slums Act last year?

Give me one example.

I am quite prepared to deal with that. I want to know where are the areas the Minister was given power under the Slums Act last year to deal with? Before the Minister has exercised that power, he comes along and seeks more power, very far-reaching power. We shall very soon have more to say about that, Sir. I think the time has come when in the case of legislation of this nature we should ask Parliament to insert a clause limiting the life of it to a stated period. We should say to the Minister “We shall give you two years within which to do something; you are continually coming here and saying you are getting on with the job; you are in a hurry.” Through you, Mr. Speaker, I want to say that that is all very well but we want the goods delivered. We want to see what the Minister is doing for South Africa in his haste and hurry. Is he not just building up slums in the place of those he has demolished?

To come back to this leg of our amendment: The Minister may deal with areas which are no longer in a group area, areas which may lie adjacent to a built-up area of an existing town or city. There is nothing to say that it may not be so. On the contrary, the whole of the circumstances seems to indicate that it may well be so. If the Minister only sticks to the so-called Black spots and the areas in which, unfortunately, people of a very low economic standard have to live, areas outside our cities and towns, but where the cities and towns are growing up against them, and takes them in hand—as I understand is the case as the result of the recent interview the Minister had with the mayor of Durban (I want to recall that to the recollection of the Minister)—then I say that if that is what the Minister is contemplating, what about the people who are living in the adjacent areas? What about those people who never contemplated that they were going to have the kind of development which the Minister obviously contemplates, because it has been announced by the mayor of Durban? People have built their homes; they have a reasonably large piece of ground; they have created an atmosphere; the area has become one in which a certain type of person lives. Then the Minister comes along—there is nothing to prevent him from doing so in this Bill—and in his hurry, in fact he seems intent upon it, develops areas which may completely annul the whole of the life work of people who have put their savings into homes in such a residential area. It is not a case of it being a residential area any longer or an area in which the title deeds have a prohibition against trading. This Bill provides for the Minister to sweep aside all those restrictions of title. He can wipe out the whole lot. Once one of these areas for development has received his approval then restrictions against title, whatever they might be, go down the drain and a completely fresh lot of restrictions, or no restrictions at all, can be imposed or withheld in that area at the desire of the Minister. He and he alone has the right to say whether fresh restrictions will be imposed or not. It is very important, in the view of this side of the House, that in an area where an atmosphere has been created, where amenities and facilities are provided and where things have gone forward in the ordinary course of development, the Minister should not have the right to come along and cut right across it, wipe out all restrictive conditions on which the people have relied in the past and even impose new conditions or leave it without any conditions at all as he may deem fit. As far as the ordinances and the laws dealing with town planning, ordinances and laws which make provision for the proper planning of roads, sewerage, water supplies, etc. are concerned, this Bill again provides that they can all be swept aside. All the standards which have been laid down in the past can be swept aside. There have been legislative bodies who have been concerned with the development of these urban centres, whether they are in the Cape or the Transvaal or in the smaller provinces, legislative bodies which, over the years, have had standing committees which year after year have studied the conditions under which our towns and cities were developing. They have been the source of our legislation to deal with the ordinary establishment of our towns. If the Minister is in difficulty in regard to the laying out of these areas then he must remember what happened last year when he wanted to clear up slums as distinct from other areas. We were prepared to meet him there but we are not prepared to acquiesce to the brushing aside with contempt all of those town planning standards which have been laid down by legislation in the past as a result of decades and decades of experience, as a result of planning, as a result of seeing where mistakes were made in the past, and where we have to avoid making those mistakes again and where in times of emergency, as in times of war and so forth, when there was a tendency to rush in and do hasty construction and quick planning, to meet the exigencies of the moment. We have paid the penalty for that afterwards, Sir. We had to learn a bitter lesson in some cases. But the Minister now comes along and repeats the same mistakes made in the past, as far as we are able to judge from the Bill before us.

I therefore say that we view these schemes, outside the schemes to do way with slums, with great concern. Where a scheme is doing away with slums and areas contiguous to a slum, which we recognize often had to be dealt with as one whole—you can’t just limit a scheme to the precise geographical limits of a slum—we accepted it. We accepted that some people had to be hurt. They had done no wrong; they were not slum owners; they were not slum landlords, but they were people in an area contiguous to a slum and, in the general interest, something had to be done. We have put up a plea for them. We asked that they should be paid adequate compensation.

Clause 5 (e) deals with an urban renewal scheme. This is another phrase which is not defined. I hope when the hon. the Minister replies he will tell us what he has in mind by an “urban renewal scheme”. There is no definition of it. The language is so wide that it might mean anything. It could mean a tremendous lot in view of the powers conferred upon the Minister by other clauses of this Bill. If an urban renewal scheme has anything to do with areas other than slum areas—in this particular clause it is linked with slum areas—it may well be that it has some link with slum areas in the mind of the Minister—e should like to know so that we can deal with it more adequately in the Committee Stage. In terms of this Clause 5 (e) the Minister can publish a notice in the Gazette and at least once in a newspaper circulating in the district in which any area defined in the notice is situated, and prohibit for such period as may be specified in the notice, the erection or alteration of any building or structure within that area or the use of any existing building or structure within that area for a purpose other than the purpose for which such building or structure was being used on the date of the publication of the notice, except with the written consent of the board. This is a freezing notice, Sir. It does not say if there is anything wrong with the building. It does not say if it is a slum area; it may be buildings in an urban renewals scheme which, as I have said, we do not know what it means. As far as we are able to judge it may be an ordinary area in which humanity is carrying on with its ordinary daily avocations in keeping with the four corners of the law and where the people are ordinary law-abiding citizens. This freezing can be issued and everybody must remain where they are; they cannot repair their buildings. The notice can “prohibit, for such period as may be specified, the erection or alteration of any building or structure or the use of any existing building or structure for purposes other than those for which they were designed”. Sir, when you look at (5) (a) at the bottom of page 8 you will see that “Any owner of immovable property in an area in respect of which any notice under paragraph (e) of sub-section (2) is in operation, who desires to dispose of such property, shall offer such property for sale to the board, and the board shall thereupon have a preferent right to purchase such property at a price agreed upon between it and the owner concerned, etc.”. How long does that take? How long will the owner of the property remain in that property before anything is done? Is there a limitation? I have not been able to find it? This, of course, is part of the difficulty. People can have their property frozen; they cannot carry out repairs; where they are conducting a business they cannot use that property for some other purpose. A man may be renting property and living on the rents. If the lease lapses and the lessee moves out he is stuck. He now has to make application to the board in order to get another tenant or for permission to use the property for some other purpose. That onus is placed on him right from the moment the proclamation is issued. But there is nothing to show that this can be attended to. Owners must see their property falling into disrepair, depreciating in value, and apart from going to the Board from time to time and making application, something which we abhor (we do not think that is a good way of dealing with property in South Africa), he can do nothing about it. We do not agree that it is a good system for people to go to a board and making personal application from time to time for exemption permits. We believe that people living in these circumstances should know precisely what their rights are and what they can or can’t do as permitted by law without having to go to a board. And this covers the whole of the Republic of South Africa. This is no trivial matter. How many of these people and how many of these properties are going to be affected? I don’t know, but I think the hon. Minister won’t quarrel with me if I say that it may well run into many thousands.

Then the owner who disposes of immovable property referred to in this section in respect of which the Board has not advised him in writing that it does not propose to exercise its preferent right, becomes a criminal; he can be fined R200 or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months. Why does not the Board get on with it? Don’t they know what is happening? How does he sell his property? If the freezing takes place, then why is it not frozen; how is it that the fact remains that the man is able to sell? The hon. Minister by this clause is putting an embargo on the man. He is telling the man that he is freezing the property, but he is doing nothing whatever administratively to see that that embargo is maintained through the official channels. There is nothing to prevent apparently the Registrar of Deeds and the Surveyor-General from registering a transfer, and the sale takes place. The Minister goes out of his way to punish the man and to make a criminal of him if perchance he has not seen that one notice in one newspaper circulating in the district. I think it is a shocking state of affairs! We have necessarily had to put in our legislation the necessity for advertising in the Gazette, and no doubt the legal folk and all those people whose interests lie in these matters collect Government Gazettes. Where they put them, heaven only knows. I started it once and I had a whole room filled with the blessed things before I had been in the Provincial Council for more than about three or four years, until eventually there was nothing for it but to use them to fire my hot water system. There must be millions of Government Gazettes around South Africa, and we have got to do it, there is no other way. When you say that there must be an advertisement also in a paper circulating the neighbourhood, will that cover the difficulty? What do Coloured people and people living on the lowest economic standard in South Africa, people living in the slums, people for whom presumably the Minister is trying to do something in Bills of this nature, what do they know about the Government Gazette, or notices appearing in the Government Gazette, or for that matter, what do they know about what appears in a daily paper? And then to impose a fine of R200 or six months’ imprisonment on a man who quite unwittingly may have sold his property, a sale in respect of which the Minister has done nothing whatever to prevent that sale from taking place, I think it is a shocking state of affairs.

The hon. Minister dealt with the question of compensation, and I now refer to the subsection (h) on page 8. I do not want to go very far into that matter. I merely want to say that here for the purpose of goodwill provision is made for a 12-month period to be taken into account, but it does seem to me a little bit unfair (let me put it that way) that the period here for the purpose of goodwill is 12 months, whereas the committee that has been investigating the position of the Whites and the Coloured people in the Transkei, feel that it is fair to have three years’ profits for the purpose of assessing what is “goodwill”.

The last three years.

If it is felt that it is reasonable to take three years as a basis in the case of the Transkei, why take one year here? Mr. Speaker, we the Parliament, determine that we are going to take a man’s property away from him whether he wills it or not. That is the basis of this kind of legislation. We have not got willing sellers. When we provide here for compensation, it is compensation for people who have lost their property and their homes without being willing sellers. We should be generous to these people, Sir, I have always felt, all my official life, not only in this House, but also in another Legislative Assembly of which I was a member, that when the State steps in and for its good purposes, to serve the needs of the generality of the population and we feel that it is necessary in the interest of the population as a whole that we shall take a man’s property from him, that we shall forcibly take his title deeds and take his home and his lands, then the least he can expect of us is that we shall ask the generality of the population (which means the revenue of the country) that it shall pay adequate compensation for what he is losing, and that we shall not haggle and try to beat him down and say to him that as far as his goodwill is concerned we are going to limit him. I would ask the hon. Minister to be generous when it comes to the question of compensation to the people who are losing their homes and their properties in terms of this Bill.

Sir. I have been dealing with the hardship to a man who loses his business, get paid for his goodwill; he probably has now to go out and try to find some other place to re-establish himself, and he has got to take the money which he has received in compensation and do his best with that to re-establish himself again. But. Sir. I would like to refer you to Clause 8 of the Bill which brings in after Section 12ter, Section 12quat, on page 12. It says—

he does not pay on the due date, or he has been told to vacate the property on a certain date and he does not do so, then—

“To some adult person living on the property”—

And when the Board has done that, then in the next sub-section it says—

which I assume includes the police. Mr. Speaker, a man has not had the notice under this clause; it can have been given to his servant, because it says “any adult person living on the property”. If he has a Coloured man living on the premises, who is an adult, then the notice can be given to that Coloured man and the owner himself may be away for two or three weeks—how often are we away from our homes? The man may know nothing about it and the next thing is that the police enter upon his property and say to him “You have had your seven days’ notice, out you go, because you did not pay your rental on due date.” And he has no appeal to the courts. Nothing can be done about it. Mr. Speaker, have you ever read a more cold-blooded provision in any Bill that has come before Parliament? [Laughter.] I want it to go on the record that I am ashamed of hon. members opposite who laugh at that state of affairs. I am ashamed of them. I am ashamed that they are prepared in this Parliament as Afrikaners to laugh at the plight of people who lose their homes in this fashion, after seven days’ notice.

Why don’t you rather read the Bill first?

They should be ashamed of themselves. Here is a cruel thing, a bitter thing. Why? Because the Minister wants to vest the power in the Board to just kick these people out if they are behind with their rent. No going to court, no handling them with kid gloves: A man with a business, or an industry, gets notice to quit and if he is not out on due date, after 30 days the Police can come in and say “You abandon your factory, you abandon your store, out you go!” No judgment, no audi alteram partem. Not a word. And the notice may never have been given to the man himself. Special provision is made here for that notice to be given to somebody else, other than the man himself or member of his family. It says “any adult”. I have said that it may be a Coloured man who is on the premises as a servant, but there is no reason even why he should be employed there, he might be a man living on the premises and still not be employed there. What a callous, bitter provision to put in a Bill of this kind! Well may the hon. Minister laugh. That smile on his face shows the Minister’s lack of all feeling in dealing with this particular matter. All he is concerned with is that he shall have these powers. All that he is concerned with is that he shall be the big boss and have the big stick and that he shall wield it, and no interference from the law courts. He takes the power to himself and wield it without any interference from the law courts, and before very long no doubt, we will have him standing up here and say that there is one thing South Africa can be proud of and that is that we have some of the finest law courts in the world, perhaps the very finest, and the integrity of our Judges is beyond all dispute, and that kind of thing, as he and his colleagues say from time to time. But he does not trust them when it comes to hearing the other side of the case, and he does not tell them of the possibility of a magistrate or a Judge saying: “No, no, this is most unfair, you have to give longer notice, this won’t do at all, you have got to be reasonable.” No he is not going to allow the judiciary to come in here. The Minister takes powers to change the names of some of these townships. I am not quite certain why. There may be good reasons why he wants to change the names. They may be registered names. Many private townships which have got their names registered could be dealt with in terms of this Bill when the time comes, and it does seem to me to be unfortunate, unless there is a very good reason that where a name is registered and the name is known, it has to be changed. Unless, as I say, there is some very good reason for it.

Then we come to the famous 12sex that the hon. Minister dealt with at the bottom of page 12, sub-paragraph (a). This exempts the Board under certain conditions “from the provisions of any bye-law, town-planning scheme or regulation of a local authority and the conditions of establishment of a township prescribed by any Administrator, Township Board or Townships Commission relating to—

I am not going to read it all, Sir, because I do not want to weary you, but it goes on to refer to the type of dwelling, the siting of a dwelling or structure or any portion thereof, the permission of the local authority or owner of an approved township to commence building operations, and then we go on and come to “any restriction in terms of which the transfer of land or any particular land in a township is subject to the condition that prescribed requirements must be complied with in respect of the construction of streets, the provision of water, the removal of rubbish, and so on, etc. The lot. It all goes. The Minister in turn will determine just precisely what in place of all these things which he takes power to sweep aside, he will place in substitution, if anything. If he does not want to do anything, so much worse for the people concerned who are living in the neighbourhood. Because, I repeat, that this type of thing which is set out here as being matters which can be swept aside, have been embodied in the legislation of our country. That is why they are being struck out here. Through the years, through the decades of our history, it has been found necessary that we shall have these particular provisions for the guidance and the orderly development of our towns and our cities.

In regard to 12sept I do not want to say anything but will leave it to others to deal with that provision, but I listened carefully to what the Minister had to say in respect of the last few lines of 12sept, but I am still in doubt as to the precise meaning here because it refers to “occupation as lessee or owner by any person in a controlled area (including any person who in terms of the Group Areas Act, or any proclamation or notice issued under that Act or in terms of any other law is a disqualified person) who is not in terms of any law precluded from occupying such land or premises.” The doubt in my mind is simply this, as to whether there is any conflict here, because I cannot quite see how a disqualified person is not precluded in terms of the law from occupying such land or premises, and it is quite clear that in this clause there is permission for a person not only to occupy but to purchase land, and if he is a disqualified person in terms of the law that disqualifies him, there seems to be some conflict here. Perhaps the Minister will give us a fuller explanation of the apparent conflict between those two provisions.

Sir, the hon. Minister in the new 14ter, in Clause 10, is not satisfied with the powers which he has taken, but here in a most amazing manner, in brackets, he empowers the Administrator to tell a local authority to amend a town planning scheme or the conditions of establishment of a township in accordance with a request that the Minister has made, and to cause the conditions of title of the land in question to be amended accordingly. This Bill gives power to the Administrator in one line, in brackets, to do those things. Mr. Speaker, you know under ordinary circumstances where the Minister comes along and asks the Administrator in dealing with local authority to get a local authority to modify or waive such conditions or provisions as may be necessary, would almost take a Bill in itself, just to deal with that one issue, and it would have led to a full-scale debate in this House ten or fifteen years ago, just to deal with that one matter, and here it appears in brackets in one line. The Minister can go to the Administrator and ask the Administrator to get the local authority to alter and waive these conditions, such as they may be, and the Administrator is hereby empowered to do just that. It is quite amazing, it is fantastic! The Administrator obviously in this particular case may have no wish to go to the local authority to have a change made, he may think that the Minister is quite wrong. But that does not matter. Where the Minister is not taking powers to do it himself and where he is not giving the powers to the Board to do it, he is now taking these powers to the administrator and he can now compel the administrator to go to a local authority and the local authority willy-nilly will have to amend the title of the land. Conditions will be swept aside which are registered against title. It is almost overwhelming in this particular Bill, to the vast disadvantage of the ordinary landowner in South Africa, who has come to look upon his title deed as being more or less sacred.

Just one more point. The Minister when he was speaking just now in regard to Clause 19 of this Bill, amending Section 35 of the principal Act, said—he can correct me if I am wrong—that it will no longer be necessary to call upon the police to act in certain matters in connection with the work of the old Group Areas Board, which will now become the Community Development Board. Why? Then the Minister says why. He says because this provides that “the Secretary may authorize in writing any member of the Board or officer in the Department of Community Development to appoint in writing any member of the Board or officer in the said department as an inspector”. What a curious position, Mr. Speaker, that a member of the Board becomes an inspector for the purposes of the Act! The hon. Minister seems surprised. Let me tell him that that is the measure of our astonishment on this side of the House that a member of the Board that is administering the whole thing, shall himself be an inspector under the Act, when it is passed. What is the position of the members of the Board? Are they not to sit there unbiased, completely objective in their approach to the problems, completely objective in the wielding of the immense powers which are conferred upon them, with the approval of the Minister, in terms of this Bill? Are they not supposed to sit there and try to divorce themselves entirely from any personal association with the issues which may come before them? No, in this particular clause every member of the Board can be an inspector, and members of the Board can appoint members of the Board, provided that you get over the first hurdle, that is the secretary, and what is the secretary? The secretary is the creature of the Board. So the secretary can say to the members of the Board, “I authorize you to appoint members of the Board to become inspectors for the Board”. I hope that when the time comes the hon. Minister will give us some other example anywhere in our legislation. any legislation in the Statute Book of anything of this kind. Perhaps his staff will be able to give him the cases which he can use. But I think it is one of the most curious provisions that I have ever come across that members of a board who are expected to act not only fairly but in a spirit of sympathy towards the people who have been placed in their power, entirely objectively and fairly, that these people are themselves to be inspectors who can make inquiries, and have these far-reaching powers. They can question any person found upon the premises, inspect books and title deeds and other records, call upon any person to furnish any information at his disposal relating to the ownership or occupation. “Any person”, not the owner. They can go out and do a detective job. I do not know what powers they are going to have to compel compliance on the part of the people they question, when they question people. I don’t know whether that is inherent here because of a statutory provision or not, but I think it is a provision in this Bill which the Minister should be ashamed of. If he wants inspectors, let him have his inspectors. He made the point, “We will no longer need the police now”. He said that they were going to arrange for inspectors and that they would no longer need the police. Why were the police necessary in the past? I suggest that the time has come when the Minister should go back to the police and delete this clause altogether. I move the amendment.

The hon. member for Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) has again taken advantage of this opportunity to do what he unfortunately does fairly often and that is to superficial, sentimental, extravagant as well as create a fuss about nothing and to put forward misleading criticism, which he backs up by his reputation as a man with long administrative experience and a man of sober judgment. The hon. member’s tactics apparently are to give some semblance of weight to this superficial criticism of his, backed as it is by his personality. I want to warn the hon. member, who is an honoured and elderly member of this House that if he persists with such superficialities he runs the risk that his reputation may become just as threadbare and as hollow as the criticism that he puts forward. Before I come to the gravamen of his criticism, I want to deal with three examples which the hon. member mentioned here. In the first place I want to deal with his strong and sentimental allegations with regard to the method whereby notice of ejectment can be given under the new Section 12quat. The hon. member said in effect. “What inhumanity, what a terrible negation of the rights of the courts that a person can be ejected from his home on seven days’ notice served upon him as owner or upon any adult in the house!” The hon. member said nothing about the background of very great trouble in collecting the rent. But what the hon. member also omitted to say. and I hold this against him, is that one can issue summons in the magistrate’s court, with three days’ dies induciae and that service of the Department’s notice can be effected upon any one of the persons mentioned here.

But he cannot defend himself there.

That is not the point. If he has a defence he can defend himself, but if a man has not paid his rent he has no defence.

He must have the right to defend himself.

Oh, is he to have the right to defend himself if he has no defence? The hon. member can go and tell that to the Law Society. Three days after the service of such a summons judgment can be taken and an ejectment order obtained. The hon. member now tries to create the impression that a great and terrible injustice is being done here. And after having raised this terrible hullabaloo, the hon. member finally comes along and says that the hon. the Minister should allow a longer period. That last remark of his is not entirely without substance. I think there are many members on this side of the House who are not opposed to the sober suggestion, “Why not give these people 14 days’ notice or even 30 days, as is provided for in the case of business premises?” My accusation is that the attack which has been made here is an extravagant one. It is even said cynically and ironically that one of these days the hon. the Minister will rely on the virtues of the South African court system but that in this case he chooses to by-pass our court system.

The second example that I want to mention is the new compensation basis in paragraph (h) of Clause 5. In this connection he launches an attack upon the hon. the Minister and says that we are dealing here with cases where people will be compelled under the Group Areas Act to sell their home and hearth, as it were, or business premises which they have refused to vacate and that provision is only being made here for the payment of goodwill based on the trading results of the best year since the proclamation of the Group Areas, and he then contrasts that with the position in the Transkei where the committee recommended the payment of goodwill based on the best trading results over a period of three years, a recommendation which has not yet been disposed of. There are two radical differences that I want to point out.

Business suspended at 6.30 p.m. and resumed at 8.5 p.m.

Evening Sitting

Sir, I have to make a confession. I listened so attentively to the hon. member for South Coast that he infected me with the result that I too became reckless in dealing with the facts. I stated before dinner that the Government had not yet accepted the recommendation, in connection with the basis of compensation in the Transkei, that compensation should be based on goodwill over three years. That statement was wrong. The Government has in fact accepted that basis.

But that is not enough.

The argument that I was advancing related to the proposal put forward by the hon. member for South Coast in connection with sub-section (h) of the new Section 12 (2), the new compensation basis that is being introduced. [Interjections.] This compensation basis differs from that in the Transkei in this respect: Primarily the rights which are being appropriated in the Transkei and for which people are being compensated, are occupation and trading rights; it is only in exceptional cases that property rights are involved. The rights which are being appropriated here and which have been appropriated under the Group Areas Act are property rights, and in exceptional cases it will also include occupation rights and tenants’ rights. In this particular section therefore we are dealing with a different type of right, to wit, property rights. That is the first aspect, but the most important aspect is that since the passing of the first Group Areas Development Act about eight years ago, there has been no provision in the Act for compensation for goodwill. This is an enormous concession. If the hon. member for South Coast wanted to give the correct facts, he should at least have admitted that an important concession was being made here but that in his opinion it did not go far enough.

Are you introducing it with retrospective effect?

That is another aspect which the hon. member may argue; it is something which the hon. member for South Coast did not even notice, but it is self-evident that he could have come along with the criticism that other people have already been compensated for property rights that they lost without the goodwill of their business having been taken into account. But we all realize that it is practically impossible to introduce legislation of this kind with retrospective effect, although I agree with the hon. member who has just interjected that it would be desirable for the Minister to be given the power to make concessions with retrospective effect, even ex gratia if necessary. But that does not detract from the fact that the hon. member for South Coast erred in saying what he did about the effect of this clause.

The next example that I want to give of misrepresentations made by him—and I should like his namesake to listen to this and try to reply to it—is in connection with sub-section 5 (5) at the bottom of page 9, the buying of land which is frozen under Section 5 (c), namely that no alteration may be made.

Which page is it?

I refer to the bottom of page 6, sub-section (e) which contains the freezing provision, and in conjunction with that there is the board’s preferent right to purchase which is dealt with at the bottom of page 8 in Section 5 (a), (b) and (c). The hon. member for South Coast in his criticism of (a), the Board’s preferent right to purchase, stated that the property of an owner was being frozen here and that he cannot alter the building on it but that there is no limit laid down within which the property has to be bought from him. But, Sir, 5 (a) lays down a time limit in the clearest possible terms. The owner to whom a freezing order applies may offer his property to the Board when he feels like doing so, and if the Board has not bought the property within a period of 60 days, then the matter goes to arbitration.

Read it again.

Here again the clause leaves no opening to permit of the arbitration being indefinitely postponed. If the Board and the owner do not come to an agreement concerning the price to be paid, within a period of 60 days after the date on which the offer was made, then the matter goes to arbitration. The clause contains a provision empowering the owner to force arbitration within 14 days. In other words, there is absolutely no substance in the statement made here by the hon. member for South Coast that the Board’s preferent right to purchase hangs in the air. The owner of the premises concerned can force the Board to exercise its rights within this prescribed period.

The last point to which I want to refer in respect of which the hon. member for South Coast raised a hullabaloo without having any grounds for doing so is in connection with 5 (c) on page 10 of the English text which provides that it will be an offence for the owner of the frozen property to sell it to some other person in conflict with the Board’s preferent right to purchase. The hon. member for South Coast calls as his witnesses all absent lost spirits to testify to the fact that this is such a terrible thing; that here an offence is being created after publishing a notice first in the Government Gazette and in one newspaper! But, Sir, ever since our State has had an orderly form of government statutory offences have been created and the relevant law has been published in just a single issue of the Government Gazette and not even in an ordinary newspaper. The entire basis of our legal administration is that there is an unfortunate presumption that people know the law. The National Party Government still makes provision for an extra publication of the notice, but the hon. member comes here and calls as his witnesses all the evil spirits to testify to the fact that something terrible is being done here. He is either deliberately misleading the House or labouring under a misconception which is inexcusable.

Order!

If it was not a case of deliberately misleading the House, then the hon. member found the temptation irresistible when he saw this opportunity.

The last aspect of the speech of the hon. member for South Coast with which I want to deal is his comment on the question of definitions. He said that the hon. the Minister would have been well advised to include in this measure a definition of community development, and later on in the course of his speech he contended that it would have been advisable to include in this Bill a definition of urban renewal schemes. Sir, the expression “community development” is not used in this measure as a juridical concept. It is an administrative concept which has been adequately explained to us. But I must agree with the hon. member that the term “urban renewal scheme” is used as a juridical concept in connection with the rights of owners to bring about alterations, and I agree with hon. member that we will have to see to it in the Committee Stage that this concept is defined, because at the moment it is a grammatical concept which has not yet been defined by law and which is a new concept even in the vernacular and it ought to be defined.

You are beginning to make me think that I must be wrong.

He is tempting me to think that he is capable of thinking. [Laughter.]

I want to deal now with the main difference between the hon. member for South Coast and this party. The hon. member attacked Section 5 (e) on page 5, the Minister’s planning powers. He did not put it quite correctly; these planning powers are powers which will be exercised by the board with the Minister’s permission. The Minister’s powers are dealt with on page 10—the retention of the general plan when amending the conditions—and particularly on pages 14 and 15, the right of the Ministers to set aside certain conditions in consultation with the Administrator. The real difference between the two sides of the House is this: Is it right and desirable that the Minister should have the power to interfere with the planning and even the title conditions, for the purpose of implementing community development, in conflict with the wishes of the traditional organs which have been undertaking this planning in the past, namely the city councils and the provincial councils? That is the issue that we really have to decide. Is it right that the Minister should be given these powers of intervention? The United Party says, through the hon. member for South Coast, that the Minister’s power in this connection is going to hamper development which has been undertaken for decades by these traditional organs and is going to lead to “hotch-potch development” which will then necessitate replanning later on. Our attitude on this side is that not only is the Minister the most competent person to exercise these powers but there is nothing inconsistent or undesirable in giving the Minister the right to exercise these planning powers in conflict with the wishes of the provincial and local authorities which formerly undertook this planning. Sir, what is the history of the laying out and planning of towns? In the whole of Western Europe until about a century ago the laying out and the establishment of towns was in the hands of the authorities, and in South Africa the well-established republican tradition of the Voortrekker Republics and thereafter of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal was that the laying out and the planning of towns was a matter for the State. In the Cape Colony, under British rule, and also in Natal, during the 19th century, the laying out of towns became a matter which was initiated by private enterprise, and the only function performed by State bodies was a supervisory one. This system then became the system of the Union of South Africa; it was accepted that the laying out of towns was primarily a matter which rested with private initiative, which was undertaken for the sake of gain, but which was under the supervision of the provincial authority on the one hand and the local authority on the other.

Has the Central Government at any stage abandoned this right to undertake the planning of towns? I say “No”; the right to plan has never been abandoned in specific terms by the Central Government. By usage it has traditionally become the field of the provinces and, through the provinces, of the local authorities. When we look at Section 84 of the Republican Constitution we find that there is no direct reference to any of these powers in connection with town planning, the amendment or otherwise of title conditions, etc. Sub-section (f) of Section 84 of the Constitution gives the Provincial Councils powers over municipal institutions, divisional councils and other local bodies of a similar nature and this also includes the peri-urban boards of the Transvaal and Natal.

What about the provision in the same Act that no provincial authority’s powers may be reduced except by Parliament on petition from the province?

I say that these planning powers have never been given to the provinces in specific terms. That is my point. Any powers which the provinces have arrogated to themselves are powers which were left to them under (m) which says “all other subjects in respect of which Parliament has by Jaw delegated the power to make ordinances to the provincial councils, or in general all matters which in the opinion of the State President are of a purely local or private nature in the province.” There is no direct provision either in the old Union Constitution or in the Republican Constitution whereby the provinces in South Africa have acquired the right to deal with matters concerning the laying out and the planning of towns and the title conditions governing towns. Hon. members on that side continually come along with the charge that legislation of this kind allegedly makes inroads upon the powers of the provinces. The hon. member feels sorry for himself because he can only think provincially; the result is that he is very sensitive about any shrinking of provincial powers. [Interjections.] Sir, that is the simple position in South Africa. These powers have never been granted specifically to the provinces.

Let us look at the record of the existing institutions in connection with planning and the new concept of community development, that is to say, to provide living space on an orderly basis for the people of South Africa. What is the record of all these institutions to which the hon. member referred and which through decades have brought about such beautiful planning! Sir, it is under this system of local planning that we got such things as Alexandra and Evaton which are examples of the most ineffective planning of which one can conceive anywhere in the world. It is under this system that all our cities have to contend with the difficulty of unduly large residential plots with the result that municipal costs in all our cities are unduly high because their services have to be spread over too large an area relative to the number of inhabitants. It is under this system that we have had amendements to town planning schemes initiated by the municipalities with the permission of the Provincial Councils, and that we find that these schemes have had to be amended more often than not. There are innumerable examples in this country of amendments to town planning schemes. Can we say in the light of this record that there is any ground for suspicion that the fact that the Central Government, for the purpose of community development, will take over and exercise these powers through the development board in the majority of cases and in other cases on the initiative of the Minister himself, will lead to “hotch-potch”development and to unplanned development? How can we make such an assumption? There might have been some substance in this argument if hon. members had been able to mention examples of cases where the hon. the Minister allowed injudicious development to take place, but no such examples were mentioned. Is the replanning of a suburb like Triomf in Johannesburg an example of “hotch-potch development”? Is the United Party candidate going to tell the inhabitants of those beautiful houses that their houses are examples of development which should not have been undertaken; that they are examples of objectionable community development? Take the numerous inhabitants of the Province of Natal and of the Durban area in particular who have already reaped and are still going to reap tremendous advantages under the old Group Areas Development Act; are they going to reject this development as unacceptable? Let hon. members opposite mention examples of developmental work that has been done under the Department of Community Development on the basis of injudicious planning that will justify the withholding of the powers sought here by the Central Government!

The amendment moved here says that the House declines to approve of this legislation because it extends the area of operation of the existing Group Areas Development Board from the confines of proclaimed group areas to the whole of the Republic. But if we accept the concept of community development instead of group areas development, why should community development be confined to the areas which happen to have been proclaimed under the Group Areas Act? Why should it not be general? Because what we are dealing with here is the development of the community. On what logical basis can they oppose it?

The second objection is that both the Minister of Community Development and the Community Development Board are being vested with excessive and unnecessary powers which may well destroy the existing concept of town and regional planning. But where is that regional planning, except to a limited extent under the Natal South Coast authority—I am not sure of the name—and also to a limited extent under the Transvaal Peri-urban Areas Board. For the rest regional planning is exclusively a function of the Natural Resources Development Council, an organ of the Central Government and an organ which the United Party itself established in 1945 in recognition of the fact that regional planning was the function of the Central Government. But now, suddenly, because it will fall under the Minister of Community Development, the powers of the Community Development Board are excessive and the existing concept of town and regional planning is going to be destroyed! The third objection is that it destroys the universally accepted safeguards which the home-owner has always enjoyed. Sir, the powers which the hon. the Minister may assume are powers which deal only with the things which are mentioned specifically at the bottom of page 12 and on page 14, that is to say, that the Board shall be exempt from the provisions of any by-law, town planning scheme or regulation of the local authorities and the conditions of establishment of townships prescribed by any Administrator, township board or townships commission, under five specific heads which are then set out. There is no general attack on title conditions as represented here by the hon. member. The only matters affected are those mentioned in these five specific heads. [Time limit.]

The hon. member who has just sat down has now given clear proof of the hollowness of the case that has been presented to support the motion for the second reading of this Bill. Far from adding anything, to the value of the motion, I think he has shown quite clearly by the offensive manner he has adopted that the Minister really has no case for presenting a Bill of this nature. In fact, the dulcet tones in which the Minister introduced this motion reminded me somewhat of the story of Little Red Ridinghood, where Little Red Ridinghood constitutes the local authorities and the provincial councils, and the big bad wolf is the Minister. The Minister seeks by this Bill to assume Draconian powers to himself and to swallow up practically entirely every vestige of authority which has for years not only by tradition been in the hands of local authorities and provincial councils, but which has been established as the sphere of activity of a local authority, namely to be concerned with the immediate affairs of a community over which that local authority administers, and which is elected by the people who live within the boundaries of that local authority. After all, municipalities and local authorities have been established to look after the immediate needs of the community. That is their purpose and their objective, and it has been enshrined not only in our law but in the so-called system of Western democracy which we always boast about in this House. But what amazed me more than anything on the part of the hon. member who has just sat down was his quotation from the Constitution. He quoted from Section 88, where he said that this section proved conclusively that the provincial councils had no authority at all. Section 88 deals with the constitution of the Provincial Revenue Fund. What relation that has to the powers of provincial authorities generally I do not know, but he quoted Section 88. I presume he possibly felt that we on this side might not have time to deal with this section. I would like to hurl back into his teeth immediately all the remarks he made concerning the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) about being superficial and misleading and trying to draw red herrings across the floor of the House. Sir, this indicates immediately that there is no case for us to meet at all.

Now, Sir, what is this Bill? This Bill seeks to amend the Group Areas Development Act. It does not seek to establish a new concept of community development. It clothes it in a different cloak. It is almost like putting a wolf into sheep’s clothing. It is an amendment to an Act which virtually follows that Act except for certain wording, which seeks to remove certain redundant wording, because it is found, for instance, on page 4, in clause 5, which amends Section 12 (c) (i), where it talks about “to acquire by purchase, exchange or otherwise any immovable property”, and eliminates the words “where situated in a group area or elsewhere”. And the reason for the elimination is that it is obviously being felt that the words “any immovable property” would cover the case. The words that are being removed were actually inserted in 1962 by the amending Act, No. 49 of 1962. The same thing applies on page 6 of the English version where in subsection (iii) similar words apply. In line 9 it talks of “such property to any person” and eliminates the words “including a disqualified person”, because it is regarded that the words “any person” fit the Bill; and the same thing applies in the succeeding sub-paragraph (iv). So this is a Bill which deals with an amendment to the Group Areas Development Act. But I listened to the Minister when he introduced the Bill, and when he spoke about what was happening in the international field, but after having heard what he had to say it suddenly struck me that the words he spoke were very familiar. For instance, I read in a publication, the report of the Department of Community Development for the period 1 August 1961 to 31 December 1962, the following—

Those are his very words. In fact, if you continue to read Clause 11 of that report, you might have thought that what the hon. the Minister did was to take a precis out of this report and present that as his argument to support this motion. We were left under the impression, and that was the impression that he intended to create, that quite recently something new had developed, and a new concept had been given to the words “community development”.

I said it had existed for several years already.

Sir, the Minister left us with the impression that he had been abroad and had suddenly decided to adopt this new concept. But this whole question was thoroughly discussed in this report which is now three years old, and the decisions he talks about are referred to in this report. What does it suggest? I will refer to the English version where it talks about the functions of this particular body. It talks about the aims of the body, about territorial planning, dealing with race groups in accordance with the needs of it throughout the Republic; the planning eventually culminates in proclaimed group areas or other areas set aside for other purposes under the Group Areas Act; land ownerships and occupation are controlled and regulated by permit under the administration of the Group Areas Act.

What is your point?

I will make my point in my own good time. Then it talks about the putting into operation some of the decisions of this Group Areas Development Board. Now this is the point I make, that if this is a new concept, if this is something entirely new which a Minister undertakes after travelling abroad, then I wonder whether the trip is necessary at all. The Minister brings back a new concept and he now wants to engulf everything. He speaks about rent administration and the planning of new towns, the removal of slums and new urban development. But how does he do it? How would any Minister do it? A Minister would bring forward an entirely new Bill, something which brought a new principle into the administration of this country, something full of life, something that meant something in the affairs of the country. But what does he do? He takes the Group Areas Act, he takes the words “group areas” which he does not like because the Government is very embarrassed by those words … [Interjections.] They do not like it because it destroys the image abroad which they want to create, probably under the gentle influence of a very nice Minister of Foreign Affairs, and to do that he changes the title and now gives it the grandiose title of the Community Development Act. I do not think anyone on this side of the House is prepared to accept that with such an important new concept, such a complete change in the whole set-up in this country, a Minister is going to take an act like the Group Areas Development Act which in itself is a pretty rotten Act, if I may say so …

Order!

I withdraw the word

“rotten”, Sir, and I will say instead that it is a very unfortunate Act. But the Minister takes that Act and tags certain amendments on to it thereby taking unto himself Draconian powers because with these powers he will become the arbiter over every phase of development in South Africa. The hon. member for Natal South Coast also made this point.

What has been the position hitherto? We have had many cities, towns, and villages developing in this country of which every citizen can be proud. What is more, we have developed them in a manner which is fitting not only for a country like ours but for any country in the world. In this connection I need go no further than my own constituency where Florida Hills has now developed into a housing scheme through private initiative—I should like the hon. member for Kempton Park to note that it is through private initiative”which will make Florida Hills the show piece of South Africa and that in an area where no-one ever dreamt of building because of the cost involved in building houses on the slopes of hills and the building of roads. But now it has been given the appearance of a Switzerland. As a matter of fact, when we had the snow-falls on the Rand last year, one could imagine oneself being in Switzerland.

Now. what has brought about this tremendous development in housing units? What has brought about the development of our cities? What has caused the whole community to develop to such high standards? It would not have been were it not for private initiative which was encouraged by sound local administration. Do hon. members realize what—through the years—has gone into the efforts of engineers, town planners and civic leaders to draw up a town planning ordinance for each province? Do hon. members realize what tremendous amount of planning has been done. What happens when a town planning scheme has to be dealt with? It is not only prepared, but also advertised. Objections are called for and people have to be compensated for any loss they may suffer to their rights, because if certain rights have to be taken away because of a certain town planning scheme, the owners of those rights have to be compensated adequately. There are those who do lose rights through such schemes in order to allow orderly development in cities. That is why to-day we have a model country …

And a Diemont Commission!

Come to the point!

Mr. Speaker, is it my fault that the hon. member is somewhat stupid to-night?

Order! The hon. member must withdraw the word “stupid”.

I withdraw it, Mr. Speaker, and should like to substitute the word “dull”. I hope that will not upset the hon. member!

But, Mr. Speaker, what I want to make very clear is that the crux of this Bill is not only the detail with which the hon. member for Natal South Coast dealt so capably, i.e. the arbitrary powers that are being taken, etc. but that across which the hon. member for Kempton Park has tried to drag a red herring, namely the powers proposed to be granted to this Community Development Board to take away from every local authority as well as from every provincial authority whatever rights they may have in regard to the work they have done over nearly a century of planning. What does one expect from the department the hon. Minister is administering? One would expect that he would take additional land to plan new townships in respect of which he could lay down his own conditions as far as their establishment is concerned but one does not expect of him to cut across vested rights of home owners! He has the right, without advertising and without calling for objections, to rename that part of a township in which his department owns houses.

Bothaville!

There need not be any discussions with anybody, nor any advertising for objections. Oh. no! He has already made one concession. He has indicated that he might during the Committee Stage make provision for consultation with the Administrators of the various provinces. What a remarkable concession! Really, what a remarkable concession this is! Even an Administrator deals with such matters only when they are presented to him by the local authority. As a matter of fact, the Administrators work in close conjunction with local authorities in these matters.

But there is even a worse feature of this whole Bill. The submission of the hon. the Minister was that here there was co-operation. This remarkable structure, the Community Development Board and its organization, was going to combine and co-operate with all the local authorities in a spirit of friendliness and understanding. He said there was going to be a community spirit. That is what he said in this speech of his, namely that he is going to improve the social, economic and cultural conditions of communities; to integrate the various communities of each population group into the life of the nation as a separate but interdependent social and economic units; to enable the community to contribute to its own as well as to the general welfare and national progress. This, word for word, is a translation of his speech.

If one analyzes what the Minister said, your analysis will lead you to accept that here is a benign gentleman who wishes to co-ordinate all the good work that has been done in South Africa over many years, work of which he is proud and rightly so. We all are proud of it. He is now going to co-ordinate all this work and do something really worthwhile with this complete integration of interest and thinking. But that is not what the Bill says. It is only what the Minister says. Let me say here that I do not think the hon. member for Kempton Park read this Bill carefully enough. In the proposed section 12sex it is provided that the board shall be exempt:

1. (a) from the provisions of any by-law, town planning scheme or regulation of a local authority and the conditions of establishment of a township prescribed by any Administrator, townships board or townships commission relating to (i) the lodging or approval of sub-divisional diagrams of land and of plans of proposed dwellings or other structures.
2. (b) from the provisions of any ordinance in terms whereof approval must be obtained from local authority for the sub-division of land.

It will also be free from any restriction in terms of which the transfer for instance of land is subject to a condition, etc.

In other words, what the hon. the Minister takes unto himself here is, virtually, arbitrary powers—a thing which Parliament has to watch with the utmost caution …

That is an old story, the old parrot cry!

That may be so as far as the hon. member is concerned. But it is a thing of which the pattern and picture have over the years bit by bit become complete—a completely arbitrary control of the affairs of the nation. And that when it is the Government’s boast that we are a democratic people. That is what they state in their publications abroad, and what we as an Opposition also state when we are abroad but which we, when we come back to our country, have to defend against a Government which seeks arbitrary powers in respect of every conceivable facet of work it undertakes.

But I should also like to say to the hon. member who preceded me in this debate that if one investigates the details of this measure, one finds oneself even more mystified. The hon. member derided the hon. member for Natal South Coast when the latter referred to the viciousness of Clause 8 which gives the board the power summarily to eject a person through the action of one of its own officials—mind you, no sheriff, messenger of the court or any other legal person!—after giving a person seven days notice if such person occupies residential property or 30 days in any other case. The board can eject such a person if he fails to pay the rental payable by him on due date or fails to vacate property on or before a date on which he has lawfully been required by the board to do so. We do not know what this latter provision entails. “… lawfully … required by the board …” may be due to the development of a township. But even under the Rents Act, an Act which the Minister also administers, a statutory tenant if he fails to pay his rent by the seventh day of a month, has an inherent right, when he is summoned to vacate his premises, to appear before the courts to defend his case. If he has no case, there are other means which can be used to deal with him. such as an application for summary judgment. So I was completely taken aback when the hon. member for Kempton Park, who has had long legal experience, brought an example like this to this House. That is not an example whereby to justify this clause. In this respect the hon. member for Natal South Coast was entirely right. I have no personal grudge against the hon. member for Kempton Park but I feel I must take up the cudgels in a case where the hon. member has erred and, if I may say so, could probably have misled this House.

The first reaction I experienced when reading this clause was to be taken aback completely because I felt this was a unique provision to be in the law of this country, a provision in terms of which a tenant can be ejected virtually by the landlord himself. There is no other similar provision in our South African law. Our law has to be applied through the courts and through the servants of the courts but here the law is going to be carried into execution by private people who are servants of a department of State. [Interjections.]

Order!

I challenge any hon. member on the other side of the House to name me one other instance where the law can be executed by a person who is not a servant of the arm of the law.

A police State! [Interjections.]

That type of degrading remark “do not call this a police State” coming from that side of the House, is meant only to excite emotions. But that is not an uncommon procedure as far as this hon. member is concerned. I have made this point about this clause merely to indicate that this is a very important clause.

But there are further aspects which the hon. member has raised. He mentioned the fact that in the Transkei a commission only recently reported on the question of compensation recommending a period of three years, which the Government accepted. On that the hon. member for Natal South Coast asked why these people should then be treated differently. The hon. member for Kempton Park thought it was generous of the Minister to do it immediately in terms of this Bill and not to have to wait. But if you talk to people in the Transkei they will point out to you that in terms of the Odendaal Commission’s report people in South West Africa will get what is called “verdrietgeld”. i.e. sorrow money. We know of the evidence about “verdrietgeld” published in the Press. But not in the Transkei! What happens to the Whites in the Transkei is not necessary to be told abroad but what is necessary is “verdrietgeld” in South West Africa so that we can get petitions such as those about which we read in the Press this morning being presented to the Government and that on the eve of certain other important events.

But let me say to the hon. the Minister and to those who support him that the details of the machinations—by which I mean the machinery—of this Bill are auxiliary to its main theme and main principle. The hon. the Minister is trying to introduce what he calls a new concept into our thinking and indeed for a moment we felt as elated as the Minister appeared to be, but only until one was suddenly reminded of what stood in his own report of some time ago. To satisfy the dictates of accuracy I even sent for the Afrikaans version of his speech. Now let me say that he has brought us nothing new. He is covering up that horrible concept they do not like, i.e. group areas. He is bringing us a Bill which, like others introduced in the past, contains powers which in a sense are foreign to an amending Bill. These are the type of powers which if they are really necessary should be embodied in a fresh Bill and brought before this House as such so that we can deal with the principles involved. This House should deal with the principles of legislation concerning the country and not find that it has to search in the little dark corners of an amending Bill in order to find provisions which bear no relation to the principle which the hon. the Minister said was the purpose of his Bill.

Mr. Speaker, I do not think the hon. member for Florida (Mr. Miller) will hold it against me if I do not follow him too far in his arguments but it is very clear to me that the hon. member has not, in the first place, read the proclamation under which this new Department of Community Development has been established. Had he read it he would not have talked about a “new concept” or “putting a wolf in sheep’s clothing”because this new department is definitely not—figuratively speaking—a new name for the Group Areas Board. I rather want to direct myself to the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) who has moved the amendment.

That hon. member went to great pains to explain that the hon. the Minister now wanted to create new slums alongside decent residential areas. But. Mr. Speaker, is it not this very Government who holds the most proud record in regard to slum clearance in the Republic of South Africa? Is it not this Government who has removed such a very disfiguring blemish like Sophiatown, for example, from the fair face of South Africa and replaced it by a Meadowlands? The Government has been successful in clearing slums and that in spite of flagrant attempts by certain people, inter alia, supporters of that party, to thwart them. In spite of serious efforts to thwart those attempts and in spite of opposition, is it not this very Government who has cleared up extremely bad slum conditions and replaced them by housing schemes, schemes which are an asset to South Africa? Mr. Speaker, it is quite clear to me that the hon. member for South Coast said what he did say merely because he is seeing ghosts. However, I do not hold that against the hon. member because I think he has reason to see ghosts in another sphere as well. An election campaign is being conducted in Natal at the moment—the election is at our door—and I do believe the hon. member has good reasons to see ghosts in that connection. I say that because it should be clear to everybody who has eyes to see that his supporters in Natal are falling off him like the oak leaves falling to the ground in the Avenue in late Autumn. A Groenewald and an Odell are merely the symbols—they are definitely not exceptions—and no Wainwright-letter will stop that stream and nothing they do will cause that stream to flow back because that stream is flowing very strongly away from them in our direction. That is why I say the hon. member has good reasons to see ghosts, Sir. I on the other hand welcome this piece of legislation wholeheartedly. I want to refer to the remarks made by the hon. the Prime Minister when he announced the creation of this Department last August.

Before dealing further with this legislation, I want to congratulate the Secretary of this Department very sincerely on his appointment as chief of the Department. I verily believe that under our present Minister, assisted by such an extremely capable and dynamic Secretary, and a practical Community Development Board, we can expect and predict a wonderful new set-up for the Republic of South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, just as the old so-called economic policy of laisser-faire has had to make room in all developed countries for a planned economy, the community development policy of laisser-faire must likewise make room for properly planned community development. The hon. member for South Coast complained about slums which the Minister is supposed to have allowed to develop alongside so-called selected residential areas. But is that not precisely what happened under the old policy of laisser-faire? Just look at the beautiful cities of the Western Province where beautiful residential areas have deteriorated into slums because Coloureds were allowed to acquire property amongst the Whites. Did a similar position not develop in Durban when Indians went to live in areas which were formerly occupied by Whites and where those areas eventually deteriorated into slums? Is it not the very object of this legislation to prevent such conditions from developing, to bring about a new set-up? I suggest the hon. member goes and looks what has happened in Wright Street, Durban. Must we meekly allow the policy of laisser-faire followed in the past to be followed in future thus bringing about the disfigurement of the towns in the Western Province? Must we for all time to come allow our beautiful cities to be disfigured? The hon. the Minister has now come forward with legislation to save the situation, legislation which is precisely aimed at preventing those very reprehensible conditions and improving existing conditions, legislation which will ensure that our cities and towns become the ornaments of South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, the object underlying the establishment of this department is to bring about proper planning and I predict this evening that, as in the case of many other steps taken by the Government in the past, steps that were fought tooth and nail by that side of the House but subsequently accepted, they will yet claim paternity for the little child which is being born here.

It is a deformed child. [Interjections.]

I want to deal for a moment with the criticism expressed by the hon. member for South Coast of the compensation to be paid to property owners and the way in which it will be done. I want to state this evening that experience has told us, experience gained in applying the Group Areas Act, that where owners had dealt direct with the Group Areas Development Board they were eventually much more satisfied than those who had not availed themselves of that facility. I can speak from experience because in my own constituency I have seen time and again that those people who had availed themselves of this facility were eventually much more satisfied than those who had not done so. That, I believe, will happen here if use is made of the facility created in this Bill.

There is only one other point I wish to bring to the notice of the hon. the Minister and in respect of which I want to make an earnest appeal. My plea is this that when it comes to planning these communities we should see to it that our fertile agricultural land is retained and safeguarded as far as possible. There is infertile land everywhere around our towns and let us, for heaven’s sake, build our houses on that land. South Africa cannot afford to allow the small area of good agricultural land that we do have to be used, to a greater and greater extent, for the erection of houses. That aspect should therefore be borne in mind when these community schemes are planned.

You will have to come and vote with me!

I wish to point out that in the past our towns have been established without any prior planning and apart from that they have been established on our most fertile agricultural land alongside water streams. After that they have expanded and developed without any planning and in the process more and more of our fertile land alongside water streams has unfortunately been taken in use. I naturally do not begrudge the town-dweller the privilege of having a little garden in which he can perhaps cultivate flowers, a few vegetables and fruit trees, but at the same time the economy of the country demands that we rather leave that fertile land in the hands of the agriculturist who can then make the most of it in order to provide the nation with the necessary food.

With a view to that I want to make an appeal that the most judicious care be taken when deciding to what use our land should be put. That idea, however, is already inherent in the concept “Community Development” and this Bill makes it possible for us to keep the most fertile land for the agriculturist and to use the poorer land for the construction of houses. Allow me in this connection to refer to the beautiful Constantia Valley, Sir. Must we sacrifice this fertile agricultural land for the sake of building a few houses?

Rather talk about Paarl.

Paarl is indeed an example of where poor agricultural land is being used for the building of houses. It is precisely as a result of the steps taken by this Government that that is being done. I bring this aspect of the matter to the notice of the Minister because I know he is sympathetically inclined towards it and has already in the past acted sympathetically. I am confident that more attention will be given to it in future. We dare not allow what is to-day happening in Constantia to happen elsewhere. The agriculture of South Africa cannot afford it and I am grateful for it that this measure gives the Minister the necessary power to prevent that.

I think we should bring this debate down to the level of human values. When I heard the hon. member for Paarl, who has just spoken, speak about defending our agricultural land, I wanted to smile if not laugh hilariously.

The hon. the Minister, when introducing this Bill, led us to believe that his aims, ambitions and objects were to make this a very nice country by means of fine planning and the like. But what I want to point out is that there has been no petition from the Provinces asking that their powers be taken away from them.

Section 114 of the Constitution.

The Minister is aware of that section. So let me ask the hon. the Minister whether the provinces agree to the powers, which he now seeks in this Bill, being taken away from them. The objective of this Bill is quite clear. The Government is in a hurry. It wants to present a picture to the outside world to show that its schemes and policies are being worked out, that we are all going to be sorted out in a pattern of the multi-coloured jacket of the Scriptures and that everybody is and will be happy and contented in the little patch allocated to him.

But I cannot understand why the Minister should wish to interfere in established townships. There may be some merit in his contention that in respect of new townships, he should have the power to deviate from rules, regulations and standards set up by local authorities. I cannot, however, at first blush see—of course, I do see, at second blush—exactly what the Minister is after, because I believe that the whole object of this Bill is to deal with that section of our community which has such difficulties in presenting its point of view before the Government, i.e. the Coloured and Asiatic communities. Let us look a few things fairly and squarely in the face. Who are the people who are being persistently moved out of urban areas? They are the Coloureds! Who is the individual who is persistently and relentlessly being moved out of business areas? It is the Coloured man and the Asiatic. It is a well-known and established fact in this country, over many years, that the Bantu through the medium of the local authority has been housed in townships adjoining urban areas. Now, I believe, that the intention of the hon. the Minister in asking for powers, outside group areas already declared, is merely to expedite the removal of Coloured persons from those parts of the urban areas. I should like to hear what the response of the hon. the Minister is to my assertion that this is the main objective of this Bill.

The position is that local authorities, going through the processes and machinery of town planning schemes and submitting proposals to Administrators, find themselves, shall I say, hedged around with a number of rules and regulations regarding requirements and no matter how many experts they may have to employ, to have these townships laid out, there are delays. I believe that the correct approach to the problem in this country of providing better and more houses is not by way of accumulating all the power in the hands of one man. That is what this Bill does. The Minister will direct this new board, which is simply the old firm with a new sign-board. The old firm is the Group Areas Board. My charge against the Minister and the Government is this: Why have they done so little since 1953? Because, the Group Areas Development Board has been in existence. They might well reply and say that local authorities have not co-operated, which is the big word used by the Government to-day, “co-operation” of local authorities. But, the fact is that local authorities do not find their paths made easier by the legislation which is thrust upon them. That is where I think the whole of this problem should be tackled if we are sincere in believing that the intention behind the Bill is to provide housing for more people in double quick time.

I should like to say to the hon. the Minister that I cannot understand why he wishes to over-ride local authorities and all their regulations and restrictive conditions which may exist on townships. After many years of experience in local government I want to say this to the hon. the Minister. He will say, probably justifiably, that his intentions are honourable, that he does not intend to do what I suggest can be done. It can happen, that in an existing township, there are single storey residential buildings. The Minister says in the Bill that he is taking the power in order to make better use of the land. He can in his wisdom decide that those three plots with single storey residential buildings should be used for the erection of a block of flats with consequential difficulties in regard to water, sewage, power, drainage and many other things. The Minister will tell us that he won’t do that, but the fact remains and the Bill provides, that he can do that. He can over-ride the local authorities. I go further. If a town council or the Administration of a province has not come to grips with a town planning scheme the Minister can, if he wishes, override them by consultation with the Administrator. I have often said in this House that this word “consultation” is not enough, because what is consultation? A telephone call, a letter, a message saying “I am going to do this” or “I am going to do that.” I believe that the whole intention behind this Bill on the part of the Minister and the Government is to carry out the policy of moving every Coloured person and every Asiatic out of the areas in which they have been residing for years, in double quick time.

In regard to leases, I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether I read the Bill correctly, when I say, he has the power to terminate a lease. Is that a lease vis-à-vis his community board and the tenant or is that a lease vis-à-vis the landlord and the tenant? There are many cases where Whites owners are leasing business premises to non-Whites. I want to know from the hon. the Minister whether it is his intention—I believe this Bill gives him that power—to terminate those leases forthwith? And, if the people do not move within seven days or some short period like that, will they be ejected? Of course the miserable compensation they get, namely, one year’s profit, is totally inadequate. It is my honest contention that arising out of the experience of the hon. the Minister on his trip overseas where he saw many kinds of housing problems and projects, problems which could have been resolved in this country, he should have delegated power to the provinces and to the local authorities to get on with the job. something which many of them have done before. Those local authorities will be able to provide all that the Minister requires in an orderly and advanced type of society.

The hon. the Minister has given himself the power to eject people from properties at short notice. My learned friends have dealt with the legal aspects of that. I want to deal with the human aspect. I have had some experience of it. What is the position in regard to persons who are thrown out of their property and have nowhere to go? This is the problem which faces us all. I also want to ask the hon. the Minister whether he is setting himself up as a local authority above all other local authorities, and, whether that local authority, which will be his Community Development Board, will employ the staff and call for tenders as before, ride rough-shod over all local rules and regulations and proceed to do what it wants to do in regard to planning? My experience over many years is, that the number of people competent to plan in this country is limited. There are few of them. The town planners spend time deciding on the best use to which land can be put, the best design and what is required by way of roads, public places and shopping centres. Because these plans may not be passed within the time he expects, the hon. the Minister is giving himself the power, simply by consulting with the Administrator, to ride rough-shod over all that. I believe, although I think the intentions of the Minister are perfectly sound, if his main objective is what he says it is, that his methods are not the methods that will produce the best results. Mr. Speaker, you know that we have built up a very sound system of local government in this country in which local people are elected to local councils and boards. They give up their time; they feel they are doing something in the interests of the community; and they are controlled in terms of the law. In three provinces the governing party in this House is also the governing party. Natal is the one and only province which has a proper regional planning board. I cannot see the necessity for the hon. the Minister to come here and ask for these tremendous sweeping powers. The Administrators are appointed by the Government itself and they must surely want to see that the Government’s policy is carried out. These are the people, in my humble opinion, who should see to it that the Government’s policy is carried out to its logical end with, if need be, the opposition it finds on local level. But now the whole thing is being assembled under the control of one man. There is nothing personal against the present incumbent of the office but I say it is thoroughly bad for any community to have one man with so much power. The whole basis of the democratic system is that no one man should have absolute power.

What I do not understand is that the Minister, in dealing with established townships, has all the power in the world under the Slums Act. This House gave him that power quite recently but he has not used it. I do not understand why the hon. the Minister is asking for these additional powers when the machinery which is already under his control is not used to the maximum of its potential. These are the things which we on this side, and I in particular, speaking on behalf of that vast group of people who have so little voice in the public forums of the country, find a little bit difficult to accept. We are finding ourselves faced with legislation, session after session, in which more and more power is given to the Minister in regard to this particular problem. It all revolves around the fundamental issue facing this country namely the implementation of group areas. We can call it by any fancy name we like. We even have the expression “urban renewal scheme.” That is a fancy word for slum clearance. I won’t labour the point at this stage. I believe that “urban renewal” simply means turfing the Coloured man out of the urban areas.

I want to say to the hon. the Minister that I have made an extensive tour of the province, particularly that portion which falls within the constituency I represent. It is an astonishing fact, Sir, that in every instance Coloured people are being forced out of the urban area to the outer perimeter of towns. The councils who are doing this are not councils which favour this side of the House. I have gone to the trouble of talking to these people, discussing the matter with them and asking them to show a little bit of the milk of human kindness. It is the Coloured man in every case who has to move. If the Coloured man is not moved out of the urban area the Group Areas Act, as we know it, is a failure. There are many areas which are not declared group areas in which Coloured people reside. The whole province—I suppose the rest of the country is the same—has many examples of what I am telling you this evening, Mr. Speaker. I say to the hon. the Minister that it is grossly unfair. This whole Bill is a camouflage; it is a disguised attempt to put across the fact that with sweet actions and nice words which can be explained in the forums of the world, certain sections of the community are going to be taken by the scruff of the neck and moved. That is what it really means. I don’t think we should delude ourselves. Where a council shows sympathy towards the people who are affected, the Minister is going to reserve to himself the right to deal with it by ignoring all the rules and regulations and restrictive conditions on any townships that have been established. I repeat, Sir, that where new townships are concerned, where there are new lay-outs, the hon. the Minister may be able to make a case. But I believe I can even argue that with him that he has not got a case because the planners who are employed by local authorities, planners who are vetted and supervised, instructed, cajoled and even forced by the provincial authorities into doing certain things, are the people who study local conditions. I put it to you fairly and squarely, Mr. Speaker, that if a piece of land is intended, naturally or otherwise, for a certain type of development, surely, the persons, who decide that this is the type of development which should be undertaken there, are the ones whose opinions should be heard and accepted. I say with all due deference to the hon. the Minister that neither he nor his Department can arbitrarily overrule the opinion of those experts who are employed by local authorities to do the planning of every township within the borders of their province.

The whole problem facing us is a matter that could be resolved in a very different way, from the way in which we are approaching it. I believe that as the Minister of Coloured Affairs he would be the person to whom to appeal where there have been injustices, hardships, unfair treatment of Coloured communities in the various towns with which I am associated and which I know. The Government, in its wisdom, has taken the planning away theoretically from him and given it to another Minister. So he has avoided the unpleasant task, and we are unable to attack him because there is a Group Areas Board, which sits between him and the people concerned in deciding what a group area is. But the hon. the Minister is a party to it and so is the Administrator. So that when the Administrator says he agrees that this should be a group area and the Minister of Coloured Affairs, as distinct from the Minister of Community Development, agrees, he is also a party to that decision. That is why I say we should face this thing fairly and squarely. Don’t let us delude ourselves into thinking that this is a matter which is sweet and lovely, because we are really going back to 1953. We are creating a group area; we are forcing people to move; we are not paying them adequate compensation and, if they are traders, they are going to get the miserable pittance of one year’s profit.

[Inaudible.]

I say to that hon. gentleman who is a professional man, would he like to be thrown out of his profession for one year’s profit? I believe the time has come in this country when we should look at these things fairly and squarely and ask ourselves whether we are being fair and reasonable and just. Because I contend that we are not. There are persons, their skins are not white, who find themselves now the objects of the Government’s activities in having them removed. Those people have built up good businesses over years …

May I ask a question?

No, Mr. Speaker, I have not the time to answer questions. These people have built up good businesses over the years, they have no police records, they are good citizens, they pay their taxes promptly and they are going to be subjected to notice to move on the basis of one year’s profits. I put it to you, Mr. Speaker, and all the hon. members who are not sitting in their benches opposite because they might find it unpleasant to listen to what I have to say, that no man who has spent his life, be he Black, be he White, be he Yellow or Brown, can be taken out of his business and moved at the will and the whimsy of a Minister, no matter how well-meaning that Minister may be. I concede that in that respect the Minister may have good intentions. I hope he has, but I say to him, even now, at this late stage, if he wants to create a picture in the outside world of being fair, reasonable and just, the time has come to put a stop to this kind of legislation, which leaves absolute power in the hands of one man.

The hon. member for Karoo (Mr. Eden), who has just sat down, has wept the same crocodile tears as all the speakers on his side who spoke before him. He also saw the same bogies that they did. I therefore do not think it necessary for me to react specifically to what he said. There is, however, one matter I should like to take up with him. He pertinently asked what happens to all the people thrown out of their houses and who have nowhere else to go? I want to ask him whether he rejects the assurance the Minister gave in this House last year, or whether he just conveniently pretends not to know about it and tries to create an effect in this House. I should like to hear his reply. Does he reject the assurance given by the Minister that nobody will be put out of his house without alternative accommodation being available? He now seems very deaf as he sits there.

After having listened attentively to all the speakers opposite, it is not quite clear to me why they feel so unhappy. We know that the Opposition has opposed everything which has to do with group areas and that in fact it is stated in their race federation plan that this is one of the Acts they will repeal if they come into power one day. Now the hon. the Minister is trying to lead us over that stumbling block. He offers us a whole new approach to this matter. In other words, one would expect the Opposition to be grateful for now getting away from that bogy which worries them, but what happens? They are dissatisfied about it. Now they quarrel with the hon. the Minister. They blame him for doing certain things which they think he should not have done. I really cannot understand those hon. members.

Sir, this Bill should be seen against the background of certain reorganization in the Department. I just want to remind you in passing. Sir, that since April 1964 the Group Areas Development Board has been added to Community Development, which has to carry out and promote the State’s housing policy. This is a very great and important change that was made and its object, as the Minister has explained in this house, is more effectively to promote the development of communities. The Minister also mentioned what the task of that new Department was. He said that it was there, firstly, to assist local authorities when they applied for assistance to provide housing at a low cost. It should be noted that I am saying it is to assist local authorities where they desire to be assisted, and not to overlook those people and to do things against their wishes. A second task of this reorganized Department is to undertake schemes itself. A third function is actively to carry out slum clearance. The fourth function is to renew dilapidated areas in cities. In other words, here we have the practical position that there is no quarrel between the Minister and the local authorities. The local authorities welcome the help the Minister can give them, and the Minister readily offers all means, even funds, which are available to him in order to assist them to carry out this task. I emphasize that there is no conflict between the local authorities and the Minister. Under the existing laws the Minister already has many extensive powers in order to achieve these objectives which I have just enumerated. Only last year, in terms of the Slums Act, we added to those powers. I must say that after having listened to the Opposition to-night, it is quite clear to me that they are just like a lot of turkeys one tries to drive along in the dark. They refuse to budge an inch unless one drives them, and if one drives them they take one step, or at the most two steps, forward and then stop again. Sir, I want to ask the Opposition—no, I want to put it more strongly, I want to challenge them—I am sorry the hon. member for Florida (Mr. Miller) is not in his seat—to mention a single case where the hon. the Minister has abused his powers and functions under the Slums Act. Can they mention a single case where the Minister simply ignored municipal regulations and pretended they did not exist; where he contravened the building restrictions? We know of a city council whose own building regulations have been contravened. Some of their ex-members are sitting in this House also I challenge the Opposition to mention a single case where the hon. the Minister abused the powers he received last year by contravening building restrictions and municipal regulations.

Some of the amendments embodied in this Bill affect only administrative arrangements. I do not want to expand on that. I could refer to Clauses 12 to 19, but I leave them there; I do not think there is any quarrel about them. Other amendments emanate from the experience gained in implementing the Housing Act and the Slums Act. They have been taken over because their efficiency in practice has been proved. In this connection I refer specifically to Clauses 8 and 10. They are provisions which have the same effect as those of the Housing Act or the Slums Act to which I have just referred. This Bill should further be seen against the background of the achievements of the Minister and his Department. It behoves not only me but the whole House unanimously to congratulate the Minister and his Department on what they have achieved under very difficult circumstances. One naturally is tempted in such circumstances to quote figures, but I shall resist that temptation. I just want to make a few general statements to show what this Minister and his Department has achieved. I want to mention that the Republic of South Africa is one of the countries which lead the world in the sphere of housing at low cost. It is interesting to know that U.N. has recommended the standard plans of South Africa’s Housing Department to its member countries for use in those countries. The research which has been done by officials of the Department in conjunction with the C.S.I.R. has led to the proud achievement that since 1948, in spite of rising costs of material and wages, it has become possible to reduce the cost of erecting houses for Whites by as much as 20 per cent to 25 per cent. That is indeed an achievement of which everybody in South Africa should be proud. It does not seem to make much impression on the Opposition.

I should like to read a quotation from the publication issued by the South African Brick Association. It is a periodical which devoted one whole issue to the achievements of the Department and more particularly to what they had achieved in Triomf at Johannesburg, in Riverside in Pretoria and, in so far as Coloured housing is concerned, at Bosmont and other places. They say this:

For the information of the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell), who unfortunately is not in his seat now. that hon. member who dared to say that the hon. the Minister was busy creating the slums of the future, I want to read something else from the same publication:

This is for the information of the hon. member for South Coast. We therefore have before us a Bill which emanates from the reorganization of the Department on the one hand, and from the practical experience gained and the achievements of this Department on the other.

What is interesting in this regard is the fact that the same objections, I might almost say the same objections verbatim, which were raised here to-night were also voiced last year against the Slums Amendment Bill. I wonder whether hon. members opposite realize that they could have saved us much time if they had simply quoted the Hansard column of last year and told us to read it, because they still feel the same about it to-night. Then we would have made appreciably faster progress.

I repeat that I challenge the Opposition to mention a single case where the Minister has abused his powers in recent times and where he has not consulted the local authorities and taken the local circumstances into consideration in what he has done.

I should like to deal with more positive matters. I want to refer to Clause 5. Most of the large cities in South Africa, just like the majority of American cities, have developed very rapidly. The open spaces surrounding them attracted development to those open spaces. The result was that the outskirts of the centre of the city became neglected.

There are building restrictions and municipal regulations and all kinds of provisions by means of which an attempt was made to control that neglect, but all the existing measures proved to be ineffective. We felt the need for specific legislation to deal with urban renewal. I now ask the hon. member for Florida and the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Gorshel), who is evidently going to speak after me, whether he does not agree that the City Council of Johannesburg, of which he was once the Mayor, supports this standpoint that in South Africa we need legislation specifically aimed at urban renewal? I think. Sir, you will hear in a little while that he agrees with me on that point. Sometimes he can be reasonable.

Prof. J. Marshall Miller writes in The International Handbook on Urban Renewal that there are three basic requirements for urban renewal. The first and the most important one he mentions is redevelopment.

Is his name Miller? Is that not Hymie Miller?

This professor talks more sense than the hon. member for Florida. He writes that the first requisite for urban renewal is redevelopment, which is essential in areas where patchwork or repairs can no longer be effected and where (and this is important) considerable purchase of land, much clearance work and comprehensive rebuilding must take place.

It is obvious that where schemes of this kind are tackled it is simply not possible to make use of the existing, long drawn-out and cumbersome machinery. In fact, the Minister would be blamed if he were to delay the development of such areas, the renewal of such areas, by making use of these slower processes. Therefore, in accordance with the requirements stated by this professor, this is one of the essential things that have to be done, and drastic measures have to be applied. The second prerequisite he states for urban renewal is rehabilitation, by which he means the restoration of so-called “middle-aged” areas. He mentions certain steps which are necessary to achieve that. He says the first of those steps is the defining of the area, which is really obvious. The second is the purposeful and very systematic application of certain building standards. But now the Opposition blames the Minister for allegedly intending recklessly to abandon all building standards and for ignoring all the building regulations. Thirdly, according to this professor, loans will be required for the improvement of houses; fourthly for clearing up of slum spots. Fifthly, unsightly spots should be eliminated, and in the sixth place there is the provision of local open spaces and children’s playgrounds. The third basic requirement, according to him, is conservation. He mentions that as a third condition for urban renewal, and he says it applies to areas which are still inherently good but in which deterioration and neglect should be guarded against. Now Sir, I ask you, after having listened to these conditions which this expert has stated for urban renewal, whether the provisions of Clause 5 which introduce the new Section 12 (2) (e) are not completely in accordance with the requirements he states and which I have just read out? I consider it essential that if we want to launch an urban renewal plan, we should have the basis which the Minister lays for it here, an urban renewal plan which does not only mean that, as the hon. member for Karoo (Mr. Eden) has said, one moves certain people out of certain areas and resettles theme elsewhere—that is what we call resettlement—but an urban renewal policy forming part of the campaign for improving the general standard of our people’s health, so as morally to uplift large groups of our community and also to instill greater civic pride in these people. That is urban renewal. I think if one sees it in this connection then it must be admitted that the hon. the Minister has come here with a great idea, something which we all ought to welcome. Therefore I deplore the Opposition being so blind that it cannot or will not admit this. I really hoped that we had a measure here which, at all events in the second reading, would enjoy the wholehearted and unanimous support of the House, and that only in the Committee Stage would there be amendments. That is not the case, I am sorry about it. To me it is a privilege to support this Bill wholeheartedly.

Anyone who has any doubt about the virtue of sitting on Wednesday-night will have that doubt completely removed by the hon. member for Westdene (Mr. Van der Spuy) who was heard to say of me to-night that I am a reasonable man, sometimes. While I accept that left-handed compliment, Mr. Speaker, I am nevertheless obliged to say that I disagree fundamentally with some of the statements made by the hon. member for Westdene. You see, Mr. Speaker, he referred in the very last moment of his speech to this Bill as being something that would provide a moral uplift for our people—“om die volk sedelik op te hef” was the phrase he used. Well, Sir, I have thought all kinds of thoughts about this Bill, but I must say that moral re-armament never occurred to me as being the principle of the Bill. I thought, on the contrary, that this was a Bill designed to arm a Minister, already well-armed with powers to do certain things in the field of group areas, as we have known them up to now, with even greater powers—in fact, Draconian powers—in order to achieve out a limited objective. The only difference between “group areas” as we have known them up till to-night, and the subject of group areas, which after this Bill is passed will bear the fancy name of “community development”, is the difference in name; it is another name for exactly the same thing. It is the old story—“a rose by any other name”.

This question of group areas, as we understand it on this side of the House, is not a question of morality at all. We have seen the way group areas legislation has been carried out in South Africa, and many people, inside and out of this House, will be heard to say, with chapter and verse, that this is one of the most immoral things that the Government of the Republic of South Africa has ever been guilty of doing. So where is the moral uplift to be found in this Bill? I ask the hon. member for Westdene: Where, in this Bill, is the morality that he was so pleased to emphasize in the closing phrases of his speech?

Then the hon. member referred to an authority by the name of Professor J. Marshall Miller. I still think this is the nom-de-plume of my colleague Hymie Miller, be that as it may, what professor J. Marshall Miller says we will not quibble about, because he lays down certain principles in respect of urban renewal which, I think, are generally accepted, be it in this or any other country. But wherever he may be Professor Marshall Miller would be amazed, I am sure, to hear that those principles of urban renewal are now being equated with the policy of group areas as we know them in South Africa because in the United States, where presumably this Professor J. Marshall Miller has his being, there is no such thing as group areas; furthermore, there is no Act which gives a member of the Federal Government the power which the hon. Minister of Community Development seeks in this Bill. I have had occasion to look at the situation, from time to time, and I know that the Federal Housing Authority provides the funds which are expended by a local authority. I have seen this for myself as recently as November and December, last year—expended by the local authority, for example, in Boston, where there is an enormous renewal scheme going on right now, expended by the local authority in carrying out its own plans and its own designs in regard to urban renewal, not under the direction of the Federal Housing Authority, but with the financial support of the Federal Housing Authority.

Are we a federation?

We are not a federation. We will be, when this party gets into power one of these days, before you know it’s happened. The point I want to make is this: that other than the Federal Housing Authority, the only other authority that has any interest in the expenditure of that money for urban renewal is the State legislature which, in our context, Sir, is the Provincial Administration.

Why?

Why? This is a question, Sir, which I should answer outside of the House because I cannot answer it here politely. It is not for me to say “why”. I am only telling you that since the hon. member for Westdene was trying to raise as an analogy the situation in regard to urban renewal schemes in the United States, I suggest to him, with great respect, that that is a false analogy. If anything, the facts of the matter as they are known in that country prove completely and entirely that this is exactly the kind of legislation which the Federal Housing Authority in the United States would not want for itself. Yet this Government, and this particular hon. Minister, wants this kind of power because he says in effect, without putting it into the Bill, that he cannot depend on the local authority to do its job, and he cannot depend on the Administrator and the Provincial Administration to do its job. This is the allegation underlying this Bill.

Quite right and we are a Union and not a federation.

The hon. member for Kempton Park says “quite right”—that the Minister says in effect “I cannot depend on the Administrator of the province to do his job”. That is a remarkable statement, because in every case, regardless of the political composition of the Administration, the Administrator is appointed by the Government; and do you now say in effect—I address the question through you, Mr. Speaker, to the hon. member for Kempton Park, who was a member of the Executive Committee of the Transvaal—do you now say in effect that the Minister cannot depend on the co-operation of Mr. Odendaal, the Administrator?

He can rely on his cooperation.

Then why talk about a federation? The hon. member for Westdene tells a story about how urban renewal operate in the United States …

Order! We are not discussing whether this country is a federation or not.

Among other things, Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Westdene said that he challenges the Opposition to give an example of the Minister exceeding his powers under the Slums Act. I am now paraphrasing what he said. Well, I would like to challenge him to give us an example of the Minister using the powers he already has under the Slums Act. That is the issue. We have not come here to-night to say “You already have those powers and you have exceeded them”. If anything, we have said to the hon. Minister “you have had those powers nearly two years, and you have not used them”

You are welcome to raise that under my Vote.

I will do so; what I am saying to the hon. member for Westdene, who unfortunately is not here now, is that he must not accuse us of saying that the Minister has exceeded his powers under the Slums Act. What we say to the hon. Minister is: You have certain very important and very far-reaching powers under that Slums Act. What have you done under the Slums Act to achieve the position which you say you will achieve in terms of this Bill? We cannot get an answer from the hon. Minister beyond the answer he just gave me—“Raise that under my Vote”. We say that he has not used those powers at all. This hon. Minister may well be suffering from delusions of grandeur. He has tremendous powers already, and he wants more; he does not yet know what he is going to do with them, but he wants more. Last year, Sir, I was constrained to say, in another context of course—in connection with the Coloured Persons Representative Council that that was “P.V.’s private Parliament”, but in terms of this Bill, if I may say so, he will now have his own judiciary he gets around the courts and does not use them any more and he has his own police force, because he sends inspectors in who ask questions and who look at the persons there, and who take statements. So this hon. gentleman is becoming the Czar of South Africa, spelt C.Z.A.R., or T.S.A.R., just as you like. In fact, he combines in his own person so many powers that he is veritably the original Poohbah not the man in a Mikado, but the Minister is now Poohbah, and all this, Sir, in order to put on the Statute Book legislation which, by all the records that we have available, is not justified in so far as either the Provincial Administrations are concerned or the local authorities. The hon. the Minister said, by way of explanation, that he wanted to ensure that he would be able to undertake community development and he gave some explanation of community development. I wrote it down. He was speaking in Afrikaans but in the English translation I would say that what he told us was “that community development is the processes by which the efforts of the community itself are co-ordinated with the efforts of the state to improve the conditions of the community in the socio-economic and other fields”. That is what I think the hon. Minister said. We once understood the meaning of the word “community” in a far more practical, if narrower sense, as you, Sir, will agree: A community consists of a group of persons who have in common a certain interest. Hence “community”. And traditionally in this country, as in all the Western countries, in one form or the other, the self-expression of that community in regard to its democratic right to rule itself, to conduct its own affairs, has been, at the first and closest level, the local authority whether a village management board, the town council, the city council, the metropolitan authority, if the city is big enough. That is the government of the community in a democratic system. The community has never been “the hon. Minister” of anything, of community development, group areas, or anything else. The structure of community development is based entirely on the right of the community to regulate its own affairs within the framework of the laws of the State, and, obviously in step with the advancement or the progress of the country, to regulate its own affairs to the best of its ability, with such benevolent interest and assistance as the State will give it. If that is not the whole story, then surely as we know our system in South Africa, the larger community is the province, of which we have four, and in each case again there is an administrative body, the Provincial Council, and the Provincial Administration, at the head of which—since the very day on which the four territories formed the Union of South Africa, now the Republic of South Africa—is the Administrator. Now the hon. Minister comes along with a Bill of some 20 clauses and wipes out both the local authority and the Provincial Administration wipes them both out, because the more you read of this Bill, the more you are struck by the recurrence, almost monotonous recurrence, of phrases like “with the approval of the Minister”, “with the consent of the Minister”, “at the instruction of the Minister”. There is no such thing as a local authority left in South Africa after this, and there will certainly not be such a being as an Administrator, except for that kind of consultation which, as I have pointed out before to-day, merely means a nod in the direction of the Administrator, and the statement “I am going to do this, and in terms of clause so-and-so I am informing you”. Not “What do you think about it?”. but “You have got your instructions, and now you jump to it”

My point, for the consideration of the hon. member for Westdene particularly, and I hope that of the Minister, is that community development “has nothing to do with the case”. I quote one W. S. Gilbert. There is nothing in this Bill that suggests in the slightest degree that the motivation of this Bill is the desire to develop what any reasonable person understand by “community development”. There is, however, a basic, and unfortunately for the Minister very obvious design, to gild the lily, to take this very unpopular connotation, this very unpopular description of “group areas”, and having clothed it with this wonderful cloak of “community development to make it appear” as if all is well with the world of group areas, as far as South Africa is concerned. We on this side of the House are absolutely convinced that the Minister in embarking on this particular course is not doing himself a service, is not doing his Government a service and is not doing democratic Government in South Africa a service.

The country.

Do you know, Sir, how I can succeed in luring the hon. member for Cradock into this debate, to tell us how the Minister is doing the country a service? I cannot flog him into it, or even provoke him into it.

When the hon. member for Westdene tells the House that in his administration of the Slums Act, the hon. Minister has made South Africa a world leader …

I never said that of the administration of the Slums Act.

Well, the hon. member for Westdene says that it is not possible for the hon. Minister to make South Africa a world leader for any reason whatsoever. I will accept that.

The hon. Minister has to rely on the statement by the Prime Minister, which he quoted to the House, a statement made on 4 August 1964—this is the famous statement with a frown, the one in which he said that the Government frowns on mixed audiences, on imported artists appearing before mixed audiences, but in the same frown he indicated that this new development had to take place in regard to what the hon. member for Westdene called “the re-organization of this Department”. So in order to eliminate slums, to ensure urban renewal, etc., etc., this now has to become a new department of community development, and this particular Bill is required in order to make it look respectable. All I can say is that if this is reorganization, and this is a very large piece of reorganization, then I do not understand the word “reorganization”. Surely this is more than reorganization, and the hon. member for Westdene knows it. This concept of community development has something to do with another concept which is unfortunately inherent in so much of the legislation of the Government, the concent that the State must busy itself with every detail of administration in the affairs of the community—in other words, the State must be the supreme busybody at all material times. That is the motivation of this Bill. They can never, never let well alone, and allow a local authority to do its job for which it was elected, and allow a provincial administration and the Administrator to do their job for which they were either elected or appointed.

Your city did not do its duty.

I am very glad that we have the hon. member for Geduld here. He makes life more interesting for me. The hon. the Minister, in the course of his speech today, 2told us of certain things that had been done in regard to areas like Fordsburg “with the co-operation of the City Council of Johannesburg”—before this Bill was ever thought of! “Yes” or “No”?

“Ag!”

What do you mean “ag”? That is no answer. I think that on at least four, if not five occasions during his speech, the hon. Minister relied on the statement that he had discussed the provisions of this Bill with the United Municipal Executive which met fortuitously in Cape Town during this month, and he said four or five times in regard to a particular clause of the Bill that the United Municipal Executive had expressed its approval. I do not want to doubt the words of the hon. Minister, especially as he was heard to say in public last year that he thought I was an honest man. I return that compliment. He is an honest man, too. But where does he get the information that the United Municipal Executive approves of this Bill, when I have this information, in the form of a public statement by the chairman of the United Municipal Executive of South Africa—a gentleman whom I happen to know, a former mayor, not of Johannesburg, not of the Sodom of South Africa, but of the respectable City of Pretoria, Mr. van den Berg? If anyone on that side of the House will say that Mr. van den Berg is a supporter of the United Party, I will be the first to welcome him. However, Mr. van den Berg made certain statements to the United Municipal Executive and to the Press, and one of them is as follows—“he said he was concerned at the curbs on the powers of local authorities in their own fields.”

I want to ask the hon. member for West-dene, or the hon. member for Geduld: Does that sound like approval of this Bill? Say “yes” or “no” or say “ag” if you cannot think of anything better. He went on to say, in case he did not make his point clear enough—

How is it that the Minister and I, both honest men, are not on the same wave-length? He has one story of the attitude of the United Municipal Executive and I have, not my story, but that of the chairman of the United Municipal Executive. For that reason I sincerely hope that the hon. Minister will forgive me when I say that until such time as he proves to this House that he has the authority of the United Municipal Executive when he says that that body, which represents the local authorities in South Africa, approves of the clauses which he cited as carrying their approval, I will have what I will put no higher than a reasonable doubt.

want to deal with one or two other statements that the hon. Minister made. He said, among other things, that this was a measure to build happy communities. I thought, until this evening, that South Africa was a reasonably happy country. If we read anything put out by the Department of Information, this is the happiest country in the world. That being so why do we need laws to make happy communities? We are one large happy community already. What I am trying to get at is that all this camouflage about a new concept of community development, and the desire to make happy communities, has nothing to do with this Bill. The Minister already has under the various Acts all the powers that a Government can reasonably require to ensure urban renewal, to ensure the removal of slums, to ensure the provision of amenities and to ensure the establishment of happy communities. He has got all these powers. Why then does he want more powers, except to prove that Pretoria rules the waves? Is that it—or does it waive the rules? We see how this desire to concentrate power in the hands of the Government and into the hands of one Minister is really the motivation of this Bill. In Clause 5, e.g.—

If it then had said to develop or assist in developing the amenities of such areas, it would have been a reasonable expression of the intention of the clause of the Bill, but no, Mr. Speaker, it says—

Why “subject to the directions of the Minister”? He controls that Board, he appoints that Board, he fixes their remuneration, he appoints their chairman. Why must he still say “subject to the directions of the Minister”? Is he afraid that a board appointed by a Minister of the State may have an opinion of its own, may see the merit, for example, of getting the willing co-operation of the local authority? Is that possible? Why does he not set up a statutory body, like a corporation, which he can control completely and be done with it, because he is the controlling shareholder? Why have a board, which ostensibly consists of people who have minds of their own to carry out a certain statutory obligation? Why do that when you already have this reservation “subject to the directions of the Minister”? In the same paragraph (a) we find “with the approval of the Minister and subject to such conditions as he may in consultation with the Minister of Finance determine …” There is not a thing that this Board can do without either the Minister directing it or the Minister approving of it. I do not for a moment suggest that ministerial responsibility should be divorced from this or any other legislation. It is a reasonable thing for the responsible Minister to exercise a measure of control, but if he has any intention of allowing the free play of ideas in a board like this, he cannot say “subject to the directions of the Minister”, because then he will ensure that they do not lift a finger, that they do not have a thought about anything until he says to them “I direct you to do so”, or “I direct you to think so”. They are merely puppets dangling at the end of his string. In my opinion they will be completely useless as a body which should have an objective, but not subjective opinion of any area in South Africa which requires urban renewal. In other words, the Minister himself will decide, invisibly behind the Board, but ostensibly through the Board, exactly what shall be done in regard to urban renewal in South Africa. This is his real intention, and had he stated that simply and in simple language, he could have covered the entire Bill, other than the clause in which he makes certain changes of nomenclature, like changing “Group Areas Board” into “Community Development Board”, he could have had this condensed into one simple clause which would have read: “The Minister shall take full responsibility and has full authority to do exactly what he pleases”. “Ek is die baas”

It was inevitable, I suppose—but as of the passage of this legislation, the Republic of South Africa becomes one vast group area. In fact, we would be better and more properly described as “the Group Area of South Africa”, because the area started out as something which required a certain part of a certain city, or town or village, to be set aside for the habitation of a certain race group. That is how the group areas started, but to-night we come to the position that the entire Republic of South Africa, errors and omissions excepted—such as the errors of the Bantustans that the Government is planning—the entire Republic of South Africa, becomes one vast group area, coast-to-coast, as the Americans say. I think that we should be aware of this, and that the people of South Africa should take cognizance of this. This is a very important piece of legislation …

Why don’t you put up more candidates in the coming elections?

Why didn’t you oppose us in Hospital to-day? There you have a wonderful opportunity …

Order! That is not under

discussion.

Sir, this Bill, as I have said before, makes the entire territory of the Republic of South Africa one vast group area, and since we are told that this is an important piece of legislation, I can only express my surprise that there is not more than a score of members on the Government side here tonight. In fact, I doubt whether, but for the fact that the Opposition has been here, we would have had a quorum to-night.

Order! That has nothing to do with the Bill.

Sir, may I then deal with Clause 8? Clause 8 refers to the position that arises when a tenant or other occupier of immovable property belonging to the Board (that is the Community Development Board) fails, as can happen, to pay the rental payable by him on the due date, or to vacate such property on or before a date on which he has lawfully been required by the Board to do so. The point has been briefly dealt with by some of the speakers on this side of the House, but I want to ask the hon. Minister where the emergency is in so far as the occupation of property which the Board already owns is concerned—where the urgency lies which requires this very harsh clause to be inserted in the Bill. Is this community development? Is this his concept of community development—that the occupier of a property who, without any consultation as far as he is concerned, becomes a tenant of the Community Development Board, should then be subject to all these restrictions, and if he cannot observe them, to all the penalties? Surely that is not a reasonable way of regarding the responsibilities of this very well-meaning board, which means in fact the Minister. Considering that this is the attitude of the hon. the Minister in so far as the occupation of a property acquired by the board is concerned, it might have helped matters considerably if he had been prepared to consult with the local authority of the area where this particular person had his habitation, or with the Administrator of the province. [Time limit.]

At this late hour it is difficult to reply to a speech and one does not know whether the hon. member is the acrobat of the United Party circus turning somersaults on the trapeze or whether he is only the clown of that circus. I am inclined to accept that he is the latter. He has made a great hullabaloo about the powers which the Minister is supposedly taking unto himself in this Bill. If he studies this Bill carefully, Sir, the hon. member will not find a single new power, except that under Section 12sex, taken by the Minister. That is all. But the hon. member never said a word about that. We are slowly beginning to get tired of the United Party coming with the old story that the Ministers of the National Party Government continually assume powers unto themselves by way of legislation. The United Party make that allegation from time to time without producing any proof to substantiate it. This particular new Section 12sex is already contained in the Housing Act. The principle has already been accepted in our law; it is contained in our Housing Act. The only two new provisions in this Bill are contained in (a) and (b). They are new powers which the Minister is assuming unto himself and the hon. the Minister has explained in detail why he was doing so.

Before I actually deal with the Bill itself I just want to say a few words about what the hon. member for South Coast (Mr. D. E. Mitchell) has said. The hon. member became very indignant this afternoon because of the provisions of this Bill, particularly the one which provides that after seven days’ notice certain steps can be taken. Let me say immediately that the principle that after notification certain steps can be taken against persons who are in arrear or persons who have been given notice that they may be ejected from a house, was incorporated in the legislation of South Africa as long ago as 1920 under the United Party regime. As far back as 1920 the same principle was incorporated in legislation practically word for word. You have Section 9 in the Housing Act of 1920, Act 35, which reads …

It has been amended.

I shall come to that. The section reads—

This will please hon. members—

… or after giving three months’ notice by prepaid registered letter.

Not seven days.

But the principle is the same. It says further—

That is the principle and it was subsequently reiterated in the Housing Act of 1957. It was reiterated there with this omission (let me say it at once) of “may by action in a competent court” because it was found, as the then Minister clearly indicated, that it could be omitted because it was of no use and no longer effective. The period was then made shorter than three months. It was found that in the thousands of cases with which the Housing Board had had to deal with at the time or with which the municipalities had had to deal with, people did not avail themselves of the opportunity to defend themselves in court and the time-lag which was provided for was regarded as unnecessary.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 23 and debate adjourned.