I move—

This Bill is short and lucid, and therefore I do not consider it necessary to make a long introductory speech on the measure.

Sub-section (3) of Section 20 of the Separate Representation of Voters Act provides:

It is now proposed to substitute the wording as contained in Clause 1 of the Bill for the said sub-section (3).

By means of this measure we are dissociating the Coloured Representatives from the factors which are often decisive as regards the declaring of general elections for White Representatives in this Parliament.

Thus it may happen that for some reason or other a Government wants to consult the White electorate in regard to a particular matter after it has been in power for one year or more.

As the Act stands at present, an election of members of the House of Assembly for the Coloureds registered in the Cape Province must also be held in such cases.

The Government’s attitude is that that should not be so.

The Coloured Representatives are the elected members of the House of Assembly of a particular group of voters, and most of them sit in this House as members of an independent group—as a matter of fact, until a few years ago all of them did so. Accordingly they ought not to be affected by contingencies which may arise as a result of clashes between political parties which, among other things, are involved in a struggle to get into power.

If they were subject to being affected by such contingencies, they would be less able to represent and plead the true interests of their group of constituents.

ADMINISTRATIVE CONSIDERATIONS

The present position also means that before a general election for the House of Assembly the Department of the Interior is time and again burdened with extra administrative work which has to be completed at least eight days before that general election.

A Government may decide to hold an election on a particular issue after only one year, and then the State first has to organize an election for the Coloured Representatives.

PROPOSAL

The proposed amendment briefly amounts to this, that, as in the case of the Coloured Representatives in the Cape Provincial Council, the four representatives of the Coloured group in the House of Assembly will also be elected for a fixed period of five years and that their period of office will only terminate by effluxion of time. That is provided in the proposed new Section (3) (a). Although the House of Assembly and the Provincial Council therefore remain properly constituted in terms of the Constitution, Coloured representatives will, as a result of the amendment, not be affected by the dissolution of the said bodies. A member who is elected at a by-election will only be entitled to serve for the unexpired portion of his predecessor’s period of office. It is further provided that an election of new Coloured representatives shall be declared not later than seven days after the termination of the period of office of the sitting members, which is considered to be sufficient time for publishing a special proclamation. It is also provided that for the purposes of this Bill a general election means an election at which all Coloured Representatives in the House of Assembly or the Cape Provincial Council are elected on the same day. In this latter connection I refer hon. members to the provision contained in the proposed subsection (3) (d).

The proposal now before the House assures the Coloured Representatives of an uninterrupted period of five years in which they can attend to the interests of their particular group of voters.

In conclusion I want to point out that there are precedents in parliamentary and provincial history for fixing the period of office of members. In this connection I refer to the principle contained in Section 29 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. We find that, upon the expiry of the period of office of the Senate, the one Senator who is nominated in terms of the Separate Representation of Voters Act remains in office for his full period of service, if it does not coincide with the period of service of other Senators.

This principle is also embodied in Section 71 (1) of the Constitution, which prescribes the period of office of provincial councils.

Mr. Speaker, it is therefore clear that this Bill does not introduce any new principle into our law, and I am convinced that it is in the best interests of the country and the particular voters who are affected by it.

The United Party is most strongly opposed to the motion of the hon. the Minister and we move as an amendment—

To judge from the speeches which the hon. the Minister and Government members have made recently, we have been promised that steps will be taken by the Government to “sever” the Coloured community from the general politics of the country.

On a point of order, is the hon. member permitted to advance the arguments which he is now advancing in the light of standing Order No. Ill which provides that a member must speak to the Question before the House? The Question before the House is exclusively the question of whether the Coloured Representatives shall be elected at a fixed stage and at a stage which will be different to the stage when the White Representatives in this House will be elected.

Order! The hon. member may proceed.

In order to enable this Parliament to judge a Bill properly and to decide whether it is desirable or not, it is obvious that it will have to analyse the motive behind the Bill and also determine its effects, otherwise Parliament cannot arrive at a proper decision. It is the duty of this side of the House to investigate the motivating reasons behind every Bill. The hon. the Minister has stated that the purpose of this Bill is to “sever” the Coloured voter from the factors which are of importance in the general politics of South Africa. I want immediately to ask the hon. the Minister this question: When he promised previously that the Government would take steps to apply this policy, did the hon. the Minister have this Bill in mind? Or is this simply part of a larger pattern; is it only an installment? I think it will help us a great deal if the hon. the Minister can tell us whether this Bill is what he had in mind ... I am satisfied with the hon. the Minister’s silent reply. It is sufficient indication to me that we are dealing here with something which is part of a broader pattern.

The fact that the Government has seen fit to come forward with a meddling Bill of this nature after 17 years in office, and that it is not yet able to leave in peace the few political advantages and privileges which the Coloureds enjoy, is proof to us on this side of one thing and one thing only and that is that the Government has failed hopelessly in working out a suitable and a just place for the Coloured in the political life of South Africa. It is becoming more and more clear to reasonable people, on that side of the House as well, that the Government is unable to succeed in this along the path of segregation, the greater alienation between the Coloured and the White man, which this Government is following.

On a point of order, I put the question to the Chair once again as to whether a discussion of the scope and nature of the political rights of the Coloureds falls within the confines of the Question before the House as contained in the wording of the Bill before us? I put it that the hon. member is exceeding the provisions of the relevant Standing Order.

Order! The hon. member may proceed but I hope he does not go too far in the development of his argument.

Mr. Speaker, I want to try to show that this Bill is going to affect the position of the Coloured voter and the position of the Coloureds’ Representatives. I shall try to prove this and, if I am unable to, you may rule me out of order.

The Bill which is before us is not the last word. If I am wrong, the hon. the Minister still has the opportunity to correct me. Will he stand up and tell us that this is the last time that he and the Government will interfere with the political position of the Coloured? I know that the hon. the Minister cannot say this.

Order! The hon. member is now going beyond the scope of the Bill.

Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, I shall show that this Bill affects the position of the Coloured voter and that of the Coloureds’ Representatives. I think I am entitled to an opportunity to prove this. If I cannot prove it, Sir, you may rule me out of order.

Order! I shall determine when to rule the hon. member out of order, not he. The hon. member may proceed but I want to warn him to remain within the scope of this measure.

That is my intention, Mr. Speaker. I do not have the slightest reason for wanting to go further than what this Bill intends to achieve. But I cannot see how this Parliament can take a decision in regard to the desirability of a Bill if it may not discuss the motives behind that Bill. It is quite clear to us that the hon. the Minister and the Government want to have this measure glossed over and passed as soon as possible and that there is an organized attempt being made here to restrict the freedom of speech.

Order! The hon. member is now going too far. He is reflecting upon the Chair. I want to know from the hon. member whether he is casting a reflection upon the Chair?

Mr. Speaker, I am referring to hon. members opposite.

Mr. Speaker, I ask your protection. An accusation has been levelled at me to the effect that I am participating in an organized attempt. Nobody has organized me but I like to obey the rules of this House.

Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member is entitled to discuss the motives of the Government in introducing this Bill.

Order! That is not a point of order.

That is the point of order I am raising, Sir. I maintain that the hon. member is entitled to discuss those motives if he wants to.

I am listening to the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. J. D. du P. Basson) and I shall give him the opportunity to develop his argument as long as he does not offend against the rules.

The point is whether his speech is within the rules and is restricted to the subject under discussion. I put it to you, Mr. Speaker, that during the second-reading debate on a Bill the hon. member is entitled to make any allegations he pleases in regard to the intentions and motives of the Government as far as the Bill is concerned, as long as his remarks are germane to the contents of the Bill.

Order! The hon. member has made his point and must resume his seat.

Mr. Speaker, with respect, I have not yet made my point. I am still speaking. I say that this is an amendment of an existing Act and in as far as it is an amendment of an existing Act the implications of the amending Bill as far as the existing Act is concerned must be considered when we are dealing with the question of whether the hon. member’s remarks are relevant or not. I put this to you, Sir.

The hon. member may proceed but I want to warn him again that he must stay within the confines of this Bill.

That is my intention, Mr. Speaker. I do not think we have ever seen the Government members as nervous as they are this afternoon. They know that they are doing wrong and they now wish to gloss over that wrong!

According to the statement of the hon. the Minister himself the purpose of this Bill is to try to isolate the Coloured from the general politics of the country. Am I right or am I wrong? [Interjections.] I am going to argue this point. I hope that I have the right to argue whether it is a good thing to isolate the Coloureds from the general politics of the country or not. The purpose of the attempt to isolate the Coloureds is to try as far as possible to ensure that the Coloureds will be exposed to only one political contact and direct influence, and that is the political contact and direct influence of the governing party only. In other words, we have here an attempt at isolation with the purpose of manipulation.

This is not a new attempt on the part of the Government. This is not the first attempt on the part of the Government to try to isolate the Coloureds from the general politics of the country. I should like to mention two previous attempts in this regard and to prove that this effort will fail in its purpose just as the other two attempts failed. The first step the Government took to try to isolate the Coloureds from the general politics of the country was in 1951 when it placed the Separate Representation of Voters Act on the Statute Book.

You subscribed to it.

I am quite prepared to argue this point, but I do not think that this is a suitable occasion to do so. We shall have this opportunity at a later stage. If you would permit me to do so, Mr. Speaker, we could discuss it immediately!

That was the first attempt made to isolate the Coloureds from the general politics of the country. The argument was then advanced that if one took this step, if one placed the Coloured on a separate roll and allowed him to be represented by Whites in the House, one would reach the position where he would be “lifted out of the White politics of the country” and that good relationships would therefore be born between the two groups of the population. Unfortunately, this first step taken by the Government had an inherent weakness and I want to maintain that this measure before us is suffering from the same weakness and must therefore fail. The inherent weakness of the first step of the Government was that the Coloureds had to elect Whites and had therefore to bring Whites into their political struggle.

Order! The hon. Member is now going beyond the provisions of this Bill.

The second step taken by the Government to try to keep the Coloured away from the general politics of the country was the creation of the Coloured Representative Council. The Government hoped that by giving the Coloured something which looked like a parliament of his own . . .

Order! That is not relevant either.

... it would achieve its purpose.

We are faced to-day with a third attempt. This is why I said at the start that the fact that the Government has had to come forward with a meddling Bill such as this 14 years after the principal Act, which had the same purpose, was passed, is a clear proof that every attempt which it has made up to the present to isolate the Coloured from the general politics of the country has failed. The same thing will happen in regard to this measure. As is its wont, the Government blames others for its failures instead of its realizing that its policy and attitude is wrong. The whole pattern which is unfolding here to-day is a pattern which we had in regard to the Native Representatives Bill of 1936. A similar attempt was made then in regard to the Natives. It is a striking thing to my mind that the hon. the Minister did not mention the fact but in 1936 a fixed five-year period of service was also pegged for the Native Representatives. The aim of the previous Government at the time was to separate the Bantu from the general politics of the country. But what were the results of this step?

Order! That is not relevant.

Mr. Speaker, I . . .

Order! I have given my ruling.

May I not discuss the fixed five-year period which the Natives . . .

Order! No, the hon. member may not discuss the question of Native representation and its consequences.

Mr. Speaker, the term of office of the Native Representatives was also fixed at five years and this fact had certain results.

Order! That has nothing to do with this Bill.

Mr. Speaker, how on earth is one to prove then that this Bill will bring about irregularities . . . [Interjections.]

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, my submission is that the hon. member is entitled to deal with the 1936 legislation. The hon. the Minister referred in his introductory speech to the precedents for this legislation. He referred to the election of Senators. The hon. member is now referring to another precedent and it is my submission that he is arguing in the same vein as did the hon. the Minister.

On a point of order, the hon. member for Bezuidenhout said, just after you had given your ruling, that it was a shame. I think that is a reflection on the Chair.

Order! Did the hon. member for Bezuidenhout say that? Is he reflecting on the Chair?

Mr. Speaker, it was not my intention to reflect on the Chair, but if you view it in that light, I cannot but withdraw it.

On a point of order, may I point out to the hon. member for Durban (North) (Mr. M. L. Mitchell), who rose on a point of order, that Standing Order No. 52 makes provision for amendments. In order to extend the scope of a debate, the Opposition may, in terms of Standing Order No. 52 (b), move an amendment to omit all the words after “That” and to substitute other words giving some or other special reason or reasons why the Bill should not be read a second time. If the hon. member for Bezuidenhout was desirous of using the argument advanced by the hon. member for Durban (North), he could have set out his reasons in his amendment.

Order! The hon. member for Bezuidenhout may proceed.

Mr. Speaker, I should like your guidance. I want to try to prove that there are precedents in our legislation for the fixing of a five-year period and that this led to irregularities. May I use the precedent of the Native Representatives just as the hon. the Minister used the precedent of the Senate and of the Provincial Council?

Order! It ought to be clear to the hon. member that these were related references and that the precedent to which he wishes to refer is not related. The hon. member may proceed.

But, Mr. Speaker, . . .

Order! The hon. member may not argue with me. I have given my ruling.

The point I want to make is that the pegging of a five-year period has led to irregularities and that those irregularities have already been proved in the history of this Parliament. Let me tell you, Sir, what those irregularities are. If one pegs the election of a group of members it is going to happen on occasion that Parliament will be in session but that those members’ period of office will expire and that they will therefore not be able to take their seats in the House to represent the interests of their voters. This has already happened, Mr. Speaker, in the case of the Native Representatives, and what was the result? Because at the time we had a Government which had more respect for the rights of persons than this Government has, General Smuts took special steps to nullify that provision. The hon. the Minister should look at Act No. 45 of 1947. When the five-year period of office of the Native Representatives expired and they had to hold an election in this regard they found that Parliament would then be in session. General Smuts had to pass a special Act to nullify this five-year period provision. He had to extend the period of office of the Native Representatives for nearly a year so that they could be present when Parliment proceeded to business. Because of this fact, a similar position as far as the Coloured Representatives are concerned will be unavoidable. If their period of office is pegged, a time is going to come when the Coloured Representatives will not be in Parliament when the House is sitting. That is why I say that this measure will lower and devalue the effect of that representation. If the Coloured Representatives miss one session in five years, the force of their representation is devalued by 20 per cent. Is this fair towards the voters whom these people have to represent?

There is another important objection to this Bill and that is that if one “separates” the Coloureds from the general politics of the country, one removes them from the problems which have to be resolved at any particular time. The effect of this measure is to try to remove the Coloured voter from the problems which will be before the country at any particular election, problems which affect him just as much as they do the Whites. The hon. the Minister has admitted that this is the main aim of this Bill. I want to ask why the period of office of the White representatives is not pegged at five years? Why is the period of office of the members representing South West Africa, which is also a particular class of representation, not pegged at five years? There is a good reason for this. We all know that a national crisis of some or other nature can arise in the political life of a country when it is in the interests of the country for Parliament to be dissolved and for the voters to be asked to reconstitute Parliament with a new mandate. In this process, a number of new members are usually elected; a new Government can be elected, as indeed happened in 1924 and 1934. A state of emergency may arise in which the lives of everyone in the country may be in jeopardy; there may be political happenings in which the interests of everyone are affected; an economic crisis may arise which may lead to the dissolution of Parliament.

This Bill provides in effect, Sir, that only the Whites may in such circumstances, when Parliament is dissolved, elect new members to interpret their views according to the circumstances of the time, but that the Coloured voter will be deprived of a similar opportunity because his representation has been pegged for five years. I ask whether this is fair? Must his citizenship in his own country be brought down a peg on every occasion? We who sit here are also in reality elected for a period of five years. If a member does not serve his five-year period and the Government finds it necessary to ask the country for a special mandate and to dissolve Parliament, there is usually a good reason for it. If there are no good reasons for it, was it then unnecessary to dissolve Parliament in 1961, two years before the time? If there are good reasons why White representatives should not on occasion serve their full period of five years and thus enable new members to be elected, does this not hold good to the same extent for the Coloured voter? If there are good reasons why the White representatives should participate in a new election from time to time, before the expiry of their five-year period of office, then the same reasons hold good for the Coloured Representatives as well.

No matter what the policy of the Government may be in regard to the separation of individuals, nobody sitting here can deny that the fates of the Whites and the Coloureds are most closely bound together. There interests are the same; their needs are the same; their future is inextricably bound together. I do not think I can put it more clearly than the chief spokesman of the Government (translation)—

This is one of our strongest objections to this Bill: One can separate people physically from one another on a lower level, but one cannot separate the common interests of people from one another. This Bill intrudes directly upon the truth; it seeks to separate the common interests of people, people whose needs are the same, people who live together as citizens in the same country.

May I ask a question? If the argument which the hon. member has just used is true, why does he, according to the Sunday Times, now want the Coloureds on a separate Voters’ Roll?

Order! That is not relevant.

If the hon. member will put that question to me when it is relevant I should very much like to reply to it.

We now have the position where the Coloureds were recently incorporated as full soldiers in our Defence Force. Let us imagine that there is an election at which the Whites alone will have to decide on a question of war or of life and death, what will be the position of the Coloured soldier? Will he have the right to say: “I had no share in the election to decide on this matter and therefore I am not co-responsible”?

No, Mr. Speaker, this Bill solves nothing; it simply presents Parliament with new problems; it harms the Coloured voter; it presents the Coloured Representatives with complications and it will lead unavoidably to recriminations against the White man.

I want to conclude on this point. This Government has been interfering with the political position of the Coloured for 14 years. No reasonable people can understand why the Government always selects this minority group, this peaceful group, this most advanced group among the non-Whites, this group which is most closely aligned to us, for political victimization. We see already what effect it has had in the country. That is why we say that we on this side oppose this Bill, firstly, because it is futile and unnecessary and because it solves nothing. Secondly, we oppose it because it must on occasion of necessity affect the effectiveness of Coloured Representation and at times leave the Coloured voter unrepresented if an election has to take place when Parliament is in session. We also oppose it because the Coloured voter will be unjustly excluded from the problems and decisions which are before the country when, as a result of the dissolution of Parliament, a general election has to be held. That is why we oppose it. We consider it to be a piece of political manipulation and we ask hon. members to join us in rejecting this piece of political trickery.

Order! Before the hon. member resumes his seat his must withdraw the word “trickery”.

I withdraw it, Sir.

The hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. J. D. du P. Basson) is looking for motives in this legislation. I want to tell him that there is an old saying to the effect that you measure another man’s corn by your own bushel. He says that this is an attempt to isolate the Coloured from the politics of the White man. Mr. Speaker, that position has already applied for many years. Ever since 1955, when the Coloureds were placed on a separate Voters’ Roll, the Coloureds have been removed from the politics of the White man. We need have no illusions about that. The hon. member raised a few objections in the course of his speech. He said that this Parliament might be dissolved while the Coloured Representatives continued in office, and that the Coloured Representatives might have an election while Parliament was in session, and that they would then for a certain period lose their right to attend the sessions of Parliament. But that is not the position. A member of this House does not lose his membership before the day of the election, on which day someone else is elected in his place or he himself is re-elected, in which case he does not lose his membership at all. That argument of the hon. member does not hold water at all. He has another objection. He says that special mandates may be called for and that the Coloured Representatives would then still remain in office. But for that, too, we have precedents in the recent past. In 1960 the referendum on the Republic was held. The Coloured voters were not consulted on that issue. A mandate was called for from the people and the Coloureds were definitely not consulted. I am of the opinion that in future there will also be urgent problems in connection with which it will also not be necessary to consult them. We have precedents in our recent past as far as this matter is concerned, and the objection falls away.

Two wrongs still do not make a right.

The politics of the Whites and of the Coloureds have already been separated to a large extent. They have almost been separated completely, and that is history. That objection by the hon. member therefore falls away, because that position already exists. The hon. member gave no reason whatsoever why the Coloured Representatives should be elected along with the Whites every time. The general idea is that members are elected to this House for a period of five years, but since 1910, since Union, it has happened times without number that Parliament was dissolved before five years had expired. It is a fact that a general election is usually accompanied by an upsurge of emotions. The question is: Under the circumstances which already exist—not those to be created by this legislation—and in which White and Coloured politics are separated, is it worth the trouble that the Coloured population should be dragged into the matter whenever feelings run high? There is another reason why I am of the opinion that the Coloured Representatives should not always go out of office at the same time as the White representatives. An election costs a great deal of money. That is a recognized and well-known fact. It is also true that the Coloured people are poor. Why must they always be dragged into an expensive election which in actual fact does not even affect them? If they are dragged in every time this House dissolves, the Coloureds will never get an opportunity to work out their own political salvation. It is also a recognized and well-known fact that the Government wants the Coloured population to get an opportunity to work out their own salvation, to a very large extent their own political salvation as well.

I repeat that there are no ulterior motives in this measure. We have nothing to hide. But I say that this measure is one method to achieve the object of enabling the Coloureds to work out their own political salvation. We say that they will never be able to do that if they are to remain the bottle babies in White politics.

What do you know about bottle babies?

I would readily concede that the hon. member knows much more about bottle babies than I do.

The hon. member for Bezuidenhout kept on hammering away at the Native legislation. It would be out of order to refer to that legislation, but I just want to say that in my opinion that legislation was deliberately cast in the form in which it is. It was not just done without thinking. It was done with the deliberate object of keeping the Native out of the White man’s politics.

Order! That is irrelevant. The hon. member cannot go into that.

I cannot understand why a simple amending Bill such as this, which contains no new principles, causes the United Party to scratch open the whole colour problem and race problem. That was probably the object of the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. None of the principles of the Electoral Act is being interfered with here. The Coloured voters know in any case that they elect a member for five years. They cannot do anything about that. It is a matter for the Government. It is the Government’s right to dissolve Parliament before its full term has expired if it wishes to do so. They cannot alter that in any respect. But the members are elected for five years and the franchise rights of the Coloureds are not being interfered with in any way. It has already been pointed out that all the provincial councils are elected in that way, as well as the Legislative Assembly of South West Africa. If that is an accepted principle, then there is no new principle involved in this matter. I just want to say that we have nothing on our conscience at all, because we do not hide the fact that we want to separate White politics and Coloured politics. We shout it from the rooftops. The whole world knows it. The Coloured population knows it. The voters of South Africa know it, and in spite of these well-known facts this side of the House is returned with ever-increasing majorities and the numbers of that side diminish at every general election which is held. Mr. Speaker, there are certain questions which must be answered by the United Party, and which in actual fact must be answered by the Leader of the Opposition, before the United Party as an Opposition will have the right to come to this House to take up the cudgels for the Coloured population. Because that is what is being done here. The Opposition are taking up the cudgels for the Coloured population. What they ought to have done, was to have afforded the Coloured Representatives an opportunity of first declaring their attitude. I say that the United Party does not have the right to act as the champion of the Coloured population in this House, because in my submission they have no policy in regard to the Coloureds.

Order! The hon. member must confine himself to the Bill. What the hon member is discussing now is irrelevant.

It is irrelevant, Mr. Speaker, but the very recent past has proved it and I think it is relevant . . .

Order!

We on this side are not going to allow ourselves to be put off by the argument of morality either.

We know that.

The people on that side who talk about morality in connection with this matter should read the book by the late Mr. P. K. Long in which the history of the Coloured vote in South Africa is described.

I am sure that this House will appreciate the invidious position in which my colleague and I find ourselves in relation to this Bill. In terms of this measure it is proposed that the representatives of the Coloured People in Parliament should hold office as members of this House for a definite period determined only by effluxion of time, viz. five years after the date of the general election of Coloured Representatives to this House. This proposal will undoubtedly distinguish our life as parliamentarians from the rest of the members of this House, in that in their case, in terms of the Electoral Act, they hold office until the dissolution of Parliament which can take place at any time within the period of five years after the date of the last general election, whereas in terms of this new Bill the Coloured Representatives will have a fixed period of five years determined only by the effluxion of time. Therefore to that extent our position in this House will be distinguished. You will appreciate therefore, Mr. Speaker, that it may be contended that my colleagues and I have some personal interest in this Bill before the House, and accordingly we have decided that we will not vote on the matter.

At the same time we feel that we are in duty bound to let the House and the country know not only our own views on this Bill, but the views that have been expressed to us by a number of prominent Coloured leaders whose reaction we have sought to the principle of the Bill now before the House. Stated succinctly I think I can say, that in our considered view there can be no fundamental objection to this Bill. This Bill in no way impinges upon the established rights and parliamentary representation presently enjoyed by the Coloured people. In all conscience, I want to say that we know that such rights and representations are very limited, but in all fairness there is absolutely nothing in this measure which in any way diminishes those limited rights of representation. I want to analyse this position. At present the Coloured Voters are on a separate roll. This Bill in no way affects that position. From what the hon. the Prime Minister has told us in this House and out of this House, the Coloured voters will continue to remain on the separate roll as long as the present Government remains in power. Therefore this Bill in no way affects that position. At present the Coloured voters are represented by four European representatives in this House. This Bill in no way affects that position. From the declaration of policy, again enunciated by the hon. the Prime Minister himself on several occasions in this House, it would appear that the Coloured people will for the foreseeable future at any rate continue to be represented by four European representatives. Therefore this Bill in no way affects their position in regard to representation. At present the four White representatives are elected for a period of five years. In terms of this Bill they will continue to be elected for a period of five years. The period of office of the Coloured Representatives will be determined only by effluxion of time and not by any interim decision of the Government who may decide to dissolve Parliament at any time, before the end of the five years. These representatives in future will have this fixed period of office. In other words, the terms of office of the Coloured Representatives envisaged under this Bill and those of us now elected to represent the Coloured people under the provisions of the Separate Representation of Voters Act will be for a period of five years from the date of their election, and they will not be subject to any dissolution of Parliament which may take place during that period of five years. What fundamental objection can be taken to such security of office? What real objection can there be to a measure which establishes a degree of certainty in respect of the parliamentary life of representatives who have been duly and properly elected to represent the Coloured people in this House? And this is what this Bill envisages.

One possible criticism that can be levelled, and which was mentioned casually by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout is that this is another form of differentiation between the representatives of the White population and the representatives of the Coloured population in this House. Mr. Speaker, does that differentiation really affect the Coloured people? Does it affect them one iota? Does it in any way impinge upon their existing rights? That is the crucial matter to be investigated in this case. Does it in any way impinge upon their existing rights, however limited those rights are at present? Does it make the slightest difference to the Coloured people whether their representatives remain in this House for a full fixed period of five years, or whether they are subject to the whims of the Government of having to seek re-election at any period during the five years? I would unhesitatingly say that the fixed period of five years is infinitely better for the Coloured people in the present circumstances. Their duly elected representatives will not hold office at the whim of the Government. The representatives of the Coloured people will not be subject to the whim of the Government in terms of this Bill. They will be given security of tenure of office, so to speak, and I suggest that it will put them in a much better position to carry out the onerous responsibilities they have towards the Coloured people of this country.

Another possible criticism which could be raised, and which in fact has been raised, is that by separating the two elections, you are separating the Coloureds from the White elections in this country and you are divorcing them from the national issues which may arise in this country. I want to say immediately that I cannot see the force of this argument, and I want to illustrate this by a point that was made by the hon. member who has just resumed his seat. To illustrate this point I would like to remind the House of the farcical position which arose when South Africa became a Republic. Despite our protests, the Coloured people were denied the right of having any say in this most important national issue. As citizens they were denied the right to vote in the referendum whether this country should become a republic or not, Yet in 1961, when the hon. the Prime Minister wished to establish the first Republican Parliament, the Coloured Representatives in this House were obliged under the existing legislation to go back to the Coloured voters and seek their suffrage on a national issue in which they had no say whatsoever. This Bill, to my mind, will prevent a recurrence of such a situation. I do not know whether the point is appreciated. The Coloured people were denied the right of taking part in the referendum and yet when the hon. the Prime Minister decided to have the first election, all of us had to resign and we had to go back to the Coloured people to seek their suffrage on a national issue in which they had no say whatsoever. Under the present Bill this farcical situation cannot arise again, because if the Prime Minister, at his sole discretion, decides to have a general election in this country, the Coloured people’s representatives, will be unaffected by what the Prime Minister decides. They will still continue for their fixed period of office.

You want them to be left out of national issues?

Apparently the illustration I gave is not yet clear to the hon. member. I have indicated how under the old legislation they were precluded from taking part in a national issue. I repeat that I cannot see the force of the argument that this Bill will separate the Coloureds from the White electorate and from the issues which will arise in an election.

The Coloureds, unfortunately, are already separated from the White voters. That is the position under the existing law. They are not on the same roll, they cannot participate in a White election and they are confined and restricted to vote for candidates who seek their suffrage under the Separate Representation of Voters Act. Sir, this participation in an election is already a separation, and it is entirely distinct from the White elections in this country, despite the fact that the issues placed before them may in many instances be the same issues which are being placed before the White voters.

In view of the fact that under the existing law they perforce are obliged to vote under a separate roll, I think it makes no difference at all to them whether they vote in one month or the next month, whether they vote in one season or the next season.

Or at all!

Please do not put words in my mouth. Under the law they have the right to elect four representatives for five years. I say it makes no difference to them whether they vote in the course of a general election or in an election of their own, as is the position at the moment. In point of fact, I want to remind the House that under the existing law, without this Bill coming into force at all, the principle has already been established that the elections for Coloured Representatives will take place not at the same time as the White elections. In terms of the Separate Representation of Voters Act, of 1951, as amended, the election of Coloured Representatives to Parliament must take place prior to the White elections in this country. So this principle of having Coloured elections separated from the White elections is already enshrined in our law and it has been acted upon by the Coloured voters in previous elections in 1958 and again in 1961. The principle is already part and parcel of our law. I feel therefore that there is no real new principle, important new principle, involved in this Bill. It is merely giving a fixed period of office to the Coloured Representatives as opposed to the uncertain period, the very uncertain period given to the Representatives of the White electors in this House because they must upon a decision of the Prime Minister face a general election. In the case of the Coloured Representatives they will have security of tenure of office. Incidentally, the election of the Coloured Representatives may come about one week, two weeks, as it is at the moment, or one or two months or even nine months after the White election under this Bill. That is no new principle, because in terms of the existing law these two elections take place separately already.

But there is another important point that motivates my colleagues and myself in expressing our views in regard to this Bill. In terms of our Constitution the life of our provincial councils is fixed for a period of five years and can only be terminated by the effluxion of that fixed time. The hon. Minister in introducing this Bill referred to that aspect. He also referred to the aspect of the Senators appointed by the Government to represent the Coloured people in Parliament. Despite the dissolution of the Senate, such an individual remains in office for a fixed period of five years and can only be removed by the effluxion of time.

Let us test the position. Recently there have been elected to the Cape Provincial Council two White persons to represent the Coloured voters in that council. In terms of our law their period of office is fixed for certain for five years and they cannot be removed from office before the lapse of that period. They are therefore securely entrenched for five years from the date of their election as representatives in the Cape Provincial Council. In all honesty I want to ask: What justification is there for giving to these members of the Provincial Council who represent the Coloured people security of office for a fixed period of five years and denying the same privilege to the Coloured Representatives in this House? What reason can there be for denying the same facilities to the Coloured Representatives here? Surely, Mr. Speaker, if the Representatives of the Coloured population in the Provincial Council can hold office for a fixed period of five years, there is no reason whatsoever to my mind of denying the same privilege to the Representatives of the Coloured people in this House. In fact it would be a ludicrous position if the Coloured Representatives of the Provincial Council were assured of a fixed period of office and the Coloured Representatives in this House were to hold office at the whim of the Government in power.

As I see it, this Bill seeks to remove that anomaly. It lays down that notwithstanding anything to the contrary in any other law, the Coloured Representatives in Parliament and in the Provincial Councils will continue to hold office for a fixed period of five years, either in Parliament or in the Provincial Council, as the case may be, and their respective periods of office shall only be determined by the effluxion of the period of five years. This Bill envisages therefore that there will be parliamentary and provincial elections on set days and at fixed periods, irrespective of general elections in this country and irrespective of as to whether the White electorate are voting in an election or not. Quite frankly, I want to say that in view of the fact that the Coloured people are already on the separate roll, and in view of the fact that we have this position of separate elections already enshrined in our laws, I cannot see that this Bill will make any difference whatsoever to the Coloured people. It does not make the slightest difference to the Coloured people whether their Representatives are elected in the course of a general election or in the course of a special election, if they have to vote on a separate roll. On the contrary, I want to say that the fixed period of parliamentary life and the Provincial Council life of all Coloured Representatives is a far better piece of legislation than the uncertainty that exists at the moment. In the circumstances which prevail to-day so far as the Coloured people are concerned, namely that their political rights have been pegged, and they will for the foreseeable future, at any rate, continue to remain on a separate roll, I cannot see that this Bill makes any difference whatsoever to them. There is no deprivation or diminution of rights whatsoever in this Bill. They are not being deprived of any rights which they have under the existing law of 1951, as amended. On the contrary, their Representatives in Parliament under this new Bill will obtain greater rights in that they will be given a measure of security of office for the fixed period of five years and will not be affected by any general elections which may take place during their period of office.

Coloured leaders with whom my colleagues and I have conferred in regard to this measure have come to the same conclusion. They cannot see that this Bill deprives them of any further rights whatsoever. They feel, and quite rightly so in my opinion, that their loss of political rights already took place in 1951 and again in 1955, when they were removed from the Common Roll. They feel, as I do, that the only statesmanlike way to deal with the Coloured people is to restore their Common Roll rights. Anything short of that does not measure up to the aspirations of the Coloured people. While I am on this subject, I should like to say merely in passing that I am totally opposed to the new policy adumbrated by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. J. D. du P. Basson) with regard to the future political rights of the Coloured people.

Order! That is irrelevant.

I say merely in passing that the hon. member for Bezuidenhout envisaged a new policy.

Order! The hon. member must come back to the Bill.

Then all I want to say is that I am totally opposed to that policy of allowing the Coloured people to remain on the separate roll, and to send Representatives here directly. The Coloured people do not want to have anything to do with such a policy. They would rather be restored to the Common Voters’ Roll.

Order! That is not under discussion now.

They would rather have the right to send Whites or Coloureds to represent them in this House.

Order!

The Government has indicated that the political rights of the Coloured people will be pegged. Their political rights have already been settled by law, which put them on a separate roll, and as long as that Government policy continues—and the hon. the Prime Minister has indicated that it will continue—I cannot see that this Bill makes any difference whatsoever to those rights.

Order! Hon. members must not converse aloud.

I want to say that the Coloured people by and large wish to have their Common Roll rights restored to them as citizens of this country, but as long as they remain on the separate Voters’ Roll and as long as they cannot have the unfettered right of voting as ordinary citizens of this country, it does not matter two hoots whether they vote in a general election or in a separate election. As far as this Bill is concerned, my colleagues and I feel that for the reasons we have advanced there is no real prejudice suffered by the Coloured people. I want to say immediately that if we felt the slightest doubt about this matter, if we felt that the Coloured people were in any way being prejudiced or in any way had their existing rights and privileges diminished, we would unhesitatingly have voted against this Bill. But in view of what I have stated here, we feel that there is no deprivation of rights and no diminution of rights, and in the circumstances therefore we feel that there is no real justification for opposing this Bill. But in view of the possible suggestion, as I indicated earlier on in my speech, that my colleagues and I may be personally interested in this matter, and in terms of our rules, we propose to refrain from voting for the second reading.

I find it very difficult indeed to answer the arguments of the hon. member for Peninsula (Mr. Bloomberg) who has just sat down. I have listened to many fatuous arguments in this House in my 12 years here, but the arguments advanced by this hon. member are to my mind the most fatuous of all. According to him, one of the reasons why he vocally, anyway, supports this Bill, although in the division he and his colleagues will refrain from voting, is that this Bill gives a fixed time of life to the Coloured Representative in this House, and he considers it unfair that the Provincial Councillors recently elected by the Coloured people should have been given that right without an equal right being extended to their representatives in Parliament. That is just nonsense. The White Provincial Councillors who have just been elected to represent White voters equally have had their term of office fixed until the effluxion of five years, so the hon. member’s argument surely should be that if they can have that, all members of this House should equally have their normal period of office.

Then he used another extraordinary argument, that the Coloured people were not allowed to vote in the referendum on South Africa becoming a Republic, and yet the following year, when a general election was held, largely on the issue of our having left the Commonwealth, in that election he and his colleagues had to put themselves up for election although the Coloured people had not been consulted on the previous issue. This, he said, was obviously wrong. But the hon. member’s equation does not add up. What should have been rectified in that inequal equation, the Coloureds not being allowed to vote in the referendum on the issue of South Africa becoming a Republic, or the Coloureds being allowed by their representatives to express their views about South Africa having left the Commonwealth? Surely to my mind, and I should think to the minds of most reasonable people, the inequality of that equation is in the first part where the Coloureds were not allowed to express their views about South Africa becoming a Republic. So this is also to my mind a completely fatuous argument. I believe if the hon. member thinks that this Bill is in no way a diminution of the rights of the Coloured people, he has lost all touch with the Coloured people, and I believe that if he had to go back to-morrow and stand for election on this issue he would find that he would be rejected completely.

Order! The hon. member must get back to the Bill.

I am just trying to answer the arguments of the hon. member for Peninsula. Now I, of course, unlike the hon. member for Peninsula and the hon. the Minister, certainly see this Bill as a limitation of the existing rights of the Coloured people, because this Bill removes them still further from the national stream of thinking in South Africa. To my mind that is a decided diminution of the influence and the rights of the Coloured people in the political life of South Africa. I believe that this Bill is the opening chapter of yet another phase in the long history of the Coloured franchise in South Africa. I am not going into any details because that would be beyond the scope of this Bill, but it is a chapter which opened many years ago, in 1951, and it has had a sordid history in South Africa and I believe that we are now seeing the beginning of a further phase of that history.

The hon. the Minister, in introducing the Bill, has told us that the Bill is designed to make sure that when an election takes place for White voters, the Coloured voters will be unaffected by the actual issues which will be put to the country at that time. The actual terms of the Bill appear to be innocuous in that all it does is to ensure the life of the sitting M.P.s and the Provincial Councillors representing the Coloured people. But the Bill is designed, as the Minister has said, to remove the Coloureds from the broad stream of the parliamentary system in South Africa. Until this Bill was introduced to-day, elections had to take place, it is true, not on the same day as the White elections, but not less than eight days within the election of the rest of the representatives of this House; and elections did take place until now in such a way that they were bound up completely with the general choice of a Government for South Africa. It is in that context that I see this Bill as a diminution of rights. From now on the election of the Coloured Representatives to the House of Assembly will in no way be bound up with the choice of a Government for South Africa. I want to point out that when the first elections were held under the system of separate representation for the Coloured voters, there was no talk then of having widely separated elections. The issue was not raised in 1951 when the Bill was introduced, nor was it raised when amending Bills were introduced to the principal Separate Representation of Voters Act in 1956,1958,1962 and 1964. We have had amending Bills in each of those years, but on no occasion was this particular issue raised of divorcing the Coloured elections completely from the election of a Government for South Africa. I want to come back to this point for a moment because I think it is very relevant. I want to say, however, that when the original Bill was introduced in 1951 actually at that stage the Bill, as it was presented to the House, and the clause relating to the actual time of the separate election, laid down that the elections were to take place not until at least 28 days after the White elections. That is how the original Bill read, but the then Minister in charge of that Bill amended it to read not less than eight days, thus making it possible to hold the Coloured elections nearer the date of the White elections, and not further away. I use the point to illustrate that it was never in anybody’s mind that the election of Coloured Representatives to this House should be divorced from the general election of White Representatives. Nobody then considered it necessary to prevent the Coloured people from participating in national issues at the time of a general election affecting the White seats. On the contrary, I want to state that it was emphasized that the Coloured Representatives should have full voting rights in this House, not just on issues affecting the Coloured people themselves but on all issues, and that they should have the right to argue and take part in debates, not only debates affecting the Coloured people but debates affecting all the wide national issues affecting South Africa. If the hon. members here have not seen fit to avail themselves of this right . . .

Order! That is a different matter altogether.

I am linking this up with the existing right of the Coloureds to send to this Parliament representatives who can take part in all the debates on all the issues. Sir, I put it to you that this is extremely relevant to my argument because the Minister made the point that he wished to divorce the Coloured elections from the national issues which might face the White voters.

He never said so.

He said that there might be an issue in front of the country which is really not part and parcel of the interests of the Coloured voters.

That is a Progressive distortion.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw that word.

I withdraw it.

As I was saying, it was emphasized at the time when the Coloured voters were put on the separate roll that full rights would be accorded to their representatives and that they should have the right to debate every main issue. Indeed, I want to point out that this was one of the points of argument used by the then Minister of Finance in explaining why he accepted the Coloureds being taken off the Common Roll. In this way he was able to assuage his conscience about there being any diminution of rights, because he said that the Coloured Representatives would not be deprived of any rights in this House. Surely by this means one is entitled, therefore, to carry the argument a step forward. If the representatives of the Coloured people in this House were to have full rights of argument on all issues and full voting rights, surely it can be assumed that the electorate who put those representatives into this House should equally have a say in the national issues confronting South Africa. Surely that should have been the argument used by the hon. member for Peninsula about the Coloured people not having the right to vote in the referendum. Surely it was understood that if the representatives of the Coloured people had full rights in this House, equally the electorate who chose them should have the right to know what those representatives stood for on a national issue and how they were going to vote in this House on such an issue, and what point of view they would put forward. This Bill denies the Coloured voters that right.

Nonsense!

Let me put the probable eventuality. This Bill does not come from nowhere. I of course have very strong reasons for believing that there is very much more behind this Bill than appears on the surface, but I know you, Sir, will not allow me to argue that, but perhaps you will allow me to put one or two points in passing. This much is quite clear, that by presenting this Bill and prolonging the life of the Coloureds’ Representatives in this House but making it possible for the whole country to go to a general election for the White representatives it is clear that the Government is envisaging just that eventuality; that the Government is considering that it may be faced later this year or early next year with an important issue on which it wishes to go to the country

Order! That is not relevant.

With respect, that was one of the reasons given by the Minister for introducing the Bill. He said there might be an issue coming up where he wanted the White voters to express an opinion, an issue which is not germane to the Coloured people. May I not carry that argument a little further and say that it is obvious, therefore, that this is the reason for this Bill, and that the Minister is anticipating what the Government is going to do and that there is going to be an issue before the country on which the Coloured voters are not going to be allowed to ask their representatives what they stand for in regard to that issue. Nobody knows what the issue will be. Let us suppose it is the issue of South West Africa, or the issue of the falling reserves, and the Government decides to go to the country to try to present a solid White front to the world at large.

Order! The hon. member is going too far.

The Government may decide to test the views of the Whites on a certain issue, but it deliberately refrains from testing the views of the Coloureds. Yet here in Parliament sit representatives of the Coloured people who are going to vote on those issues. The position is obviously utterly inequitable, because every single White representative who goes to his voters will have to pronounce himself as being for or against the particular issue, but not the representatives of the Coloured people, and why should this be? I say that what the Coloureds think and how they choose should be completely indentified with the national issues that will be taken to the White voters and they should not be completely unidentified with the issue, because whether we like it or not the Coloureds live in South Africa with us, and not on a different planet, and they largely speak the same languages that the Whites do and they largely go to the same church that the greater section of the White people attends.

When did the Progressive Party discover that?

In origin and in culture they are more South African, not only than the Africans and the Indians, but more South African in many ways than the White people themselves. Their record of loyalty to this country is unimpeachable.

Order! The hon. member must come back to the Bill.

What I am trying to say is that the Coloured people are identified completely with the national life of South Africa, and they represent a very important section of the economic life of South Africa. On their professional skills and work, the wealth of this country also depends, and therefore I do not think they merit the reward they are getting to-day, a reward of divorce from the White people of South Africa and from the political scene and the national issues that are going to confront South Africa in the near future. The very title of this Bill indicates that there is a constitutional change being envisaged affecting the election of the representatives of the Coloureds. I want to know whether the Government has discussed these proposed changes with the Coloured people themselves. The hon. member for Peninsula says he has discussed it with the Coloured people. I challenge him to tell us which Coloured leaders he has discussed it with, and then we will judge for ourselves. The vast majority of Coloured voters, given the last free opportunity of voting for the representatives of their choice, did not vote for the candidate supported by the gentleman sitting in front of me, so it is unlikely that the vast majority of the Coloured electorate who did not support the hon. member and people who think like him, would support him on this issue. I challenge him to tell us who are the Coloured leaders and the people with whom he consulted. My contention is that this is not only a matter for the 105 members of the Nationalist Party caucus or even a matter for the 160-odd members of this House, but it is a matter which vitally affects the Coloured people. I do not believe that this Bill is as innocuous as some people would have us believe it to be. I do not believe that its objective is only the objective outlined by the Minister, and that is simply to see to it that the Coloured elections are not held at the same time as the White elections. He gave us another extraordinary reason. He said there was such an administrative burden on the Public Service and other people running the elections that it would be far too difficult to have two elections at the same time, or within such a short time. Well, if we are going to worry about administrative difficulties, let us scrap elections altogether. That would make things much easier for everybody, but it is of course nonsense. Since when have the administrative difficulties in running elections ever entered into the question of the Coloured franchise or when elections are to be held? Nobody thinks twice about plunging the country into a general election whenever it happens to suit the Government of the day and the administrative difficulties are just a fatuous reason given by the Minister.

As I say. the Government may very well want to hold an election in the near future, but what it does need to do is to buy time, and I put it to you, Sir, that that is the real reason for this Bill. The Government is buying time while it works out its next step on the road towards removing any real influence that the Coloured people may exercise in the political life of South Africa.

Order! The hon. member must come back to the Bill.

I am saying that the objective of this Bill is not in front of the House to-day. It is simply a measure to give the Government time to prepare its further steps. When the Coloureds were originally taken off the common roll in 1951, there was no talk then about their not having a say in national issues or about not allowing the Coloureds to take part in elections more or less at the same time as the White elections, or about White politicians meddling in Coloured affairs. The Bill was presented as an advance for the Coloured people, the removal of a festering sore in race relations. As I said before, one of the conditions on which it was agreed to by the then Minister of Finance was that the Coloureds’ Representatives should in no way have diminished rights as compared with other representatives. The Minister who introduced the Bill at the time denied that there was any diminution of rights for the Coloureds. He asked what was more useful to the Coloured people, “to have four winners or to have 55 also-rans.” I wonder whether after the passage of years, when one has seen what has happened through the separate representation of Coloureds in this House . . .

Order! That has nothing to do with the Bill.

All I can say is that the hopes expressed in those days by the Minister of the Interior about four winners seem to have gone sadly awry. I personally am not deceived in any way by the arguments advanced by the Minister to-day, and I am quite sure that the Coloured people will not be deceived either. I read a letter published in the Burger to-day from a Coloured man who is not a Progressive and did not vote in the last election, but who tells the White people of this country in no uncertain terms that the Coloured people are not the unsophisticated, simple people that the Government would have us believe, and that they will not allow themselves to be used as tools by political parties of any kind any more; they are sophisticated people who know what they vote for and the Government, before it takes any further steps which will remove the Coloured people still further from the general stream of national political thought in this country, should reflect upon the fact that the Coloureds are no longer children, but grew up long ago.

This debate was characterized by two interesting subsidiary aspects right at the outset, and those were that the hon. members for Malmesbury (Mr. van Staden) and Peninsula (Mr. Bloomberg), who live with and amongst the Coloured population, support this legislation, but that the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman) and the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. J. D. du P. Basson), who are Johannesburgers, are opposed to the legislation. It seems to me that the further they stand from the problem, the further removed they are from its solution.

But you are a Transvaaler too.

Therefore I shall be the arbiter and I shall evaluate the arguments we have heard. The second interesting aspect was that although we had been brought under the impression that there was a certain conflict between the United Party and the Progressive Party, we had the spectacle to-day that the one substantial argument advanced by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout constituted the whole of the argument advanced by the hon. member for Houghton. Now we are wondering whether they had prior consultations, but what is more likely is that it was an expression of spontaneous agreement. I need not go into what was said by the hon. member for Houghton, because I shall be replying to her when I deal with the main argument advanced by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout, but I just have to deal with one aspect of the argument put forward by the hon. member for Houghton, and that is her attack upon the hon. member for Peninsula.

With rather feminine logic, which was presented very plausibly, she attacked the hon. member for Peninsula on the assumption that he was disregarding the interests of the Coloureds here. The hon. member for Peninsula adopted the attitude that he was opposed to the separate representation of the Coloureds, but that if he accepted the fact of separate representation—although he was opposed to it—he would for the rest argue in support of this legislation. The reproaches which the hon. member for Houghton heaped on his head were all based on the assumption that he was supporting the separate representation of Coloureds. I regret that the hon. member for Peninsula has not yet seen the light, but while he is still in the dark his companion in the dark should not condemn him for being in the dark; they are both in the dark, but the hon. member for Peninsula has the sense to want to feel his way carefully, while the hon. member for Houghton does not do that.

I now come to the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. In the first place, in the light of the political constellation of which we are aware, it is significant that that hon. member has spoken but what is even more significant is the fact that the hon. members on the other side have not brought a reasoned amendment before the House of Assembly. In terms of Standing Order 52 (b) they could have moved a reasoned amendment setting out their objections to this legislation and they could have avoided all the problems occasioned by the restrictions which have been placed on this debate in that we are only allowed to discuss this particular measure now. They could have travelled far afield in such a reasoned amendment. But the significance of the fact that that party have not moved an amendment is that they are too divided to introduce a reasoned amendment here. They are not making use of their first opportunity of stating their case, of giving publicity to their new approach, of trying to sell their new political personality to South Africa. I also want to give a word of advice to my youthful friend, the hon. member for Bezuidenhout, and that is that the elegance of newborn greatness lies in modesty and not in swagger.

The hon. gentleman advanced four arguments. We shall dispose of the fourth argument immediately, because it was not even worthy of him. He said that this legislation was futile and unnecessary. That is the type of argument which one can demolish by saying that it is erroneous and silly. His first substantial argument was that a session of Parliament might be held while an election of the representatives of the Coloured group was in progress and that as a result they might have to miss a part of that session of Parliament. The hon. member for Malmesbury (Mr. van Staden) has already made the point that in actual fact that cannot happen. The persons concerned may be physically engaged in an election, but I believe that, as General Smuts on a former occasion ruled out any real injustice by extending the period of office of Bantu representatives, we in South Africa may anticipate that if such a situation should ever arise, the period of office of the Coloured representatives would be extended to rule out any real injustice. In this regard, however, we did have half an argument being put forward, and as regards that half an argument I feel myself at liberty to say that the constitutional precedent established by General Smuts is good enough for us too and that we shall see to it that the Coloured population is never done any injustice under this head. The main argument, which was one that was shared by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout and the hon. member for Houghton, was to the effect that by separating the election dates, further discrimination was being made between the Coloured voters and the White voters and that the Coloured voters were being excluded from participation in the normal national elections and consequently being prevented from playing any part in deciding on current matters which might be issues in an election, and that in a time of crisis, when a new mandate was called for, they might possibly have no share in the decision which was given.

But that is the Minister’s argument.

That constituted the main attack by the hon. members for Bezuidenhout and Houghton; that is the United Party-Progessive front of attack as far as this legislation is concerned. Mr. Chairman, the reply to that argument is to be found, firstly, in the fact that the Coloured voters number 30.000 out of a population of 1,400.000; they are voters which are limited to the Cape Province alone. Is it a substantial argument that 30.000 Coloured voters, who are limited to the Cane Province, out of 1,300,000 or 1.400.000 Coloureds, should have a decisive joint say in any mandate in which matters concerning the fate of South Africa are involved? Just as we said “No” to that argument in the referendum, we also say “No” to it as far as future elections are concerned. One cannot want to grant a small faction out of one element of the population, and a faction which happens to be elected out of one province only, a special right to decide critical issues.

Now the cat is out of the bag!

In connection with the right to decide critical issues there is this additional factor which hon. members on the other side must take into account. At the moment the Coloureds, like tire population of South West Africa, are c er-represented in this House. Those hon. members like to complain about the fact that South West Africa has a relatively large number of representatives. That is also an argument against the right of decision.

But the real counter-argument to this aspect is the following: What is the essential and unique character of Coloured representation in this Parliament? In the first place it is a historic relic of the constitutional history of the Cape Province and the Cape Province alone, a relic which has been fully accepted by this Government and by these times. The right which the Coloured has is his right to be present in this Parliament through White representatives and his right of normal co-decision on the political problems of the country —normal decision, not abnormal decision. This normal representation of Coloured voters which lasts for a term of five years may just as well have a decisive effect in certain crisis situations. The five-year life-span of their representatives may perhaps give as decisive a turn to a certain crisis as a special election would have done. But in any case, the recognized historic right of the Coloured is his presence here through White representatives and a normal right of decision, not a special concession that he may have a say in every critical decision. A second function of Coloured representatives is that there are administrative duties to be performed by them in Parliament for their Coloured constituents and for the Coloured population in general. The performance of these duties was a specific motive for the separate representation of the Coloureds. Previously the Coloureds had not had their own specific representatives who could perform the administrative functions of Members of Parliament for the Coloured population and for the Coloured voters. We say that it is highly expedient that an elected Coloured representative should have a fixed period of five years in which he can perform those administrative services for his voters and for the community represented by him. That task can best be performed in a fixed period which is not subject to interruption.

You know better than that.

In addition there is this consideration: The Coloured representatives are here to make an opinion-shaping contribution on behalf of the Coloured population. In that regard it is also of the utmost importance that they should be in Parliament for a fixed period irrespective of changes in Government; it is of the utmost importance that those gentlemen who speak on behalf of the Coloureds should be able to put a point of view on behalf of the Coloured community continually for a period of five years and that they should be able to inform and guide public opinion in South Africa through this House.

Then we come to a very important practical consideration and that is the enormous electoral divisions which are represented by some of the Coloured representatives. Where we have the position that various developments in the political struggle between the White political parties may plunge us into elections at much shorter intervals than five years, is it fair, reasonable and right to plunge the people with the most difficult constituencies in South Africa into election contests along with our White political parties?

Why can’t you increase the number of Coloured representatives and reduce the size of the constituencies?

The hon. member for Houghton would very much like to hand over this entire Parliament to the Coloureds and the Bantu; we are impervious to that argument of the hon. member.

Order! There is no need for the hon. member to take any notice of interjections such as that.

I agree with you, Mr. Speaker. I offer my apologies. My submission was merely that as a result of political quarrelling our White political parties might easily become embroiled in a series of successive elections, to which we are adjusted in that we have political organizations which are comparatively strong financially, small constituencies and a political task which is a manageable one, while at least two and really three of the Coloured representatives have unmanageable, uncomfortably large constituencies, and that it was therefore essentially unfair and unjust to plunge those people into a special election on account of issues which probably do not affect them at all. Added to that there are the arguments which have already been advanced that the provincial councillors representing the Coloureds are elected for a fixed period of five years in any case, that White and Coloured voters have different polling-days in any case, and that therefore the formal distinction has already been made.

The last argument put forward by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout was that this measure was one of political victimization. He used the strong term “political victimization”. Mr. Speaker, who are the victims of this alleged political victimization? Because the United Party are now saying to South Africa and to the world that people are being politically victimized as a result of this measure. The Coloured representatives themselves are most certainly not being victimized by this measure, because they say that they accept the Bill within the framework of the separate representation of voters. The Coloureds outside the Cape Province, in the Provinces of the Transvaal, the Free State and Natal, although they also had a certain limited franchise in Natal, are most certainly not being victimized. It is not victimization for 97 per cent of our Coloured population who do not enjoy their political rights by means of parliamentary franchise but by means of a different franchise. And in so far as it may be misinterpreted as constituting a curtailment of the rights of perhaps 3 per cent of the Coloured population which exercises the right to vote, I say that it represents a change in political rights which does not make victims of them but brings them more advantages than disadvantages.

I have listened with more than interest this afternoon particularly to the last speaker who is so concerned about the size of our constituencies. He is worrying because men like myself might have to fight such an election.

You fortunately have a Cadillac.

The difference, of course, is that I paid for that car. Sir, the limited scope of this debate brings me to the cardinal point around which the Bill really revolves. The whole intention of the Minister was and is to move the date of the White election away from the date of the Coloured election; in other words not to make the Coloured election fall on the same day as the White election. The intention of the Government is to diminish the Coloured man’s rights politically in this country. That is the essence of the whole thing. Do not let us hoodwink ourselves. That is the aim and object, and I will tell you why, Sir. For some months warnings have been given by Ministers of the Cabinet and by speakers on that side, on the platforms of the platteland, that the Coloured people must be warned about what they were doing in regard to certain elections which were taking place, and prior to those elections. Of course, at that time the cry was that there was to be no White interference in Coloured politics.

Order! That has nothing to do with the Bill.

What the hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. F. S. Steyn) said here this afternoon amounts to this that we do not want the Coloured man in White politics. Sir, what are politics? Politics are the things that affect the economic life of people. The Coloured people are 1,500,000 strong; they have 30,000 registered voters, according to the hon. member for Kempton Park; there might be many more and many problems could be resolved by increasing the number of members in this House; it is a simple thing. Sir, those are fatuous arguments. I agree with the speakers who have said that this is not the end of the story. I believe that this is only the first leg. I believe that this Bill has no comfort or benefit for the Coloured representatives in this House. I do not think for one moment that this is intended to protect them in any shape or form. I do not believe the high-falutin’ argument that this is intended to move the date of Coloured elections away from the date of White elections. I believe that this is designed merely to give the hon. the Prime Minister elbowroom, room to manouevre, and that is why the Bill is designed in such a way that this debate is limited so that we cannot cover and traverse /the field which really leads up to this Bill and the results that flow from it.

You can discuss those things if you have the courage to move that amendment.

I do not want to argue the rights or wrongs of anything with the hon. member or Vereeniging (Mr. B. Coetzee). I just want to say to the hon. member for Kempton Park that it is astonishing how the Transvaal people on that side seem to know so much about what the Transvaal people on this side should or should not know. The Coloured people represent a portion of the population of this country. They are politically involved; they are economically integrated. I know that that is a word which is not very popular on the other side, but it is an incontrovertible fact. These people are involved in national issues. Let us assume for the sake of argument that this Bill is passed and that we get a general election where the Coloured representatives are in a position to cast a decisive vote; they might even throw out the Government, which would be the United Party Government which would have won the election! I put it to the hon. the Minister: Should they or should they not be allowed to do so; that is the cardinal issue. You are either a full representative here fighting in a general election which is the proper time to test the theories, the policies and the practices of the Government. I do not accept that I am here as an administrator on behalf of anybody. I was elected here on a political ticket and I make no bones about it. [Interjection.] Sir, I was just going to say to the hon. member who interjected that my desk is a clear indication of the amount of work that is accomplished: I do that work as a labour of love. It is my job and my duty, but that is not what I was elected for. I was elected to represent these people and to state their case. The place to state the case for the Coloured community is here. Sir, when I state the case for the Coloured community in this House, am I taking part in White politics? If I make a speech and indicate that the Government is treating the Bantu badly, or that they are not treating the Indian correctly, am I taking part then in White politics, Where persons appear with me on platforms and talk to the Coloured community, is that taking part in Coloured politics? What is Coloured politics? The legislation of this Government bears hardest upon them. They resent it, and the indications over the last few years . . .

Order! The hon. member must come back to the Bill.

Sir, I think I am the most affected person in the House; I am the one man who can speak from experience. I am trying to indicate what the Bill will do. I was going to pay a compliment to the hon. member for Boland (Mr. Barnett) They say that he and the member for Malmesbury lived amongst the Coloured people. I happen to know that he lives at Sea Point.

What is that in aid of?

It is for the hon. member’s benefit. Sir, I cannot see any reason at all for this change, and I do not for one moment believe that it is designed to assist the Coloured people in any shape or form and, least of all, their representatives in this House. I regret that I have had to listen to the statements made by the hon. member for Peninsula (Mr. Bloomberg) because I did not know for which side he was arguing. Eventually he made up his mind. I do not however wish to discredit him because he has the same experience that I have had. That experience is, that when testing Coloured opinion on this basis, we shall find ourselves not having to decide what to do with the Government, because only the White electorate is going to decide what is to be applied to the Coloured man. Then two or three years afterward the Coloured elections will take place and they will take place in a vacuum. That is the whole intent of the Bill, in my opinion. It is a facade; it is intended to create the impression that the Coloured people are enjoying voting rights, that they are taking part in elections, that they are having a say in the affairs of the country, that they are having a say in regard to their own destiny and the destinies of their wives and children, when in actual fact they are in a vacuum. They would be fighting an election in a vacuum, all on their own, whereas what they really want to do is to express disapproval of Government policies, and the time to express disapproval of Government policies is at a general election and at no other time. That is a well-known fact and everybody sitting in this House is experienced enough to know it. Everybody knows that a general election, when the whole country is faced with the issues of the day is the time when the Coloured persons should have the right to say whom they like and what policies they support and what policies they reject, in just the same way as the White group does.

I come now to the suggestion made by the hon. the Minister that one of the reasons for the introduction of this Bill is that the Department of the Interior is overloaded with work at elections. I give the Minister credit for knowing that Coloured elections are usually fought and have always been fought by persons who are entirely different from those who fight in general elections or elections which take place at the same time. I cannot for one moment see how a minor matter of that kind can be advanced as an argument in favour of this Bill, because nobody has asked for this Bill. I am told this afternoon that certain people have been consulted. I put it fairly and squarely: Who has asked for this Bill? Nobody. No Coloured group as far as I know has asked for it; no Coloured person has asked for it. No approaches have been made by Coloured people to have it introduced. I am convinced therefore that the inention is one which is still to appear. We have had a long line of legislation affecting the Coloured people from 1951 up to the present time. The hon. the Minister recently extended the life of the Union Council for Coloured Affairs. It is all part of the plan. There is no shadow of doubt about that. Sir, the Coloured man does not want a second-class election. He does not want an election the date of which is to be decided at some time in the future. May I just say in parenthesis that the discussion about the Provincial Council is fatuous because the Coloured Representatives in the Provincial Council became members of the Council on the first sitting day of the Council and they were there for five years. I know because I was a member of the Provincial Council and I represented the Coloured people and I sat there on that basis.

Sir, I do hope that the hon. the Minister will tell us the basic reasons for the introduction of this measure. The hon. member for Malmesbury spoke about a great upsurge of sentiment and the stirring up of emotions at election time. Sir, the Coloured people are not affected that way. I think the hon. member for Malmesbury made the worst speech I have ever heard him make on this subject, and I have heard him make many. If ever a man was putting up a poor case and scratching for arguments, the hon. member certainly was.

As you are doing at the moment.

The hon. the Minister himself, who is such a forthright person, a man who calls a spade a spade, made in my humble opinion, a most guarded, carefully considered statement here—“mincing” might even be the correct word. It is perfectly clear to me that the hon. the Minister, who is a man of personality, a strong man, introduced this Bill in the way he did, carefully selecting his words, dancing on the eggs . . .

Order! I think the hon. member must get away from personalities and come back to the Bill.

Sir, I am being complimentary.

That is not necessary; the hon. member must come back to the Bill.

My case is a short one and I will summarize it in this way: There is no need for this legislation. The Coloured people are part of us; they belong with us; they work with us, they live with us and they will fight with us, but they may not vote with us. That is the whole essence of this Bill. We are pushing them away. We are telling them that they are second grade, that they are second class. That is what this Bill will do; that is the effect of it.

Nonsense.

It is perfectly clear that this legislation does what the hon. the Minister has set out to do. It is too simple to be arguable. Sir, I would say: Let us stay where we are and let us fight these things. If the hon. the Minister wants to do what he really wants to do and that is to keep certain political parties out, then he should alter his style and his attitude towards the Coloured community.

I have never before seen such division in the ranks of the Opposition in regard to any measure in this House as in regard to this measure. We have seldom in the past heard such hollow arguments, only slogans, in fact, in connection with any matter. Before discussing the advantages of this legislation, as I see it, I should like to deal with a few of the thin arguments put forward by that side of the House.

At the end of his speech the hon. member for Karoo (Mr. Eden) spoke about “a second-class election”. Hon. members on the other side always want to represent to their own voters, and apparently to the world at large, that in all circumstances we want to give the Coloureds something which is second rate. I want to ask the hon. member for Karoo this: If he wants to call what is proposed in this legislation a second-class election for the Coloureds, what does he call what we already have to-day? Because what we already have to-day, does not only have all the disadvantages inherent in that, but has already been placed on a separate basis from that of the White Representatives in this House. If the criterion used by the hon. member for Karoo in determining whether or not it is a second-class election is the fact that it is separate from the White election, surely that is already the position, and then his argument in making the old hackneyed allegation that something which is second class is being given to the Coloureds is completely unfounded.

The hon. member wants to know who asked for this legislation. The Government has a policy which it already advocated long before it came into power in 1948. What we are coming forward with to-day forms part of the development of that policy. We cannot consult the hon. member for Karoo on all our policies. If we had had to do that, we would quite possibly not have been here to-day. The reason why it is necessary for us to introduce this legislation is that it represents the policy of this side of the House. The hon. member says that the general election is the time when the Coloured election should also be held. Why must that be the position? The hon. member perhaps wants that to be the position because he wants the interests of the Coloureds to be tainted with issues involved in the election of the Representatives of the White group in this House. The hon. member went further and said: “I see no advantage in this legislation for the Coloured people.” He sees no advantage in it. The hon. member went further than the hon. member for Peninsula (Mr. Bloomberg), who said that he saw no disadvantages in it. He demands to see advantages in it; in other words, the attitude adopted by the hon. member for Karoo is that when he sees no advantages for the Coloureds in legislation, then he does not want us to proceed with that legislation. Admittedly the hon. member for Peninsula adopted a different attitude. I appreciate the objective speech which he made to-day. Admittedly he did not say that he saw advantages for the Coloureds in this legislation, but what he did say—and he based his arguments on that—was that he saw no disadvantages whatsoever for the Coloureds in this legislation.

My own attitude is that this legislation does in fact contain a large number of advantages for the Coloureds, and not only for the Coloureds, but also for the Whites and for the whole of South Africa as far as the political relations between the various races are concerned.

I want to deal with a few arguments. The hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. J. D. du P. Basson) said that we were always busy isolating the Coloureds from general politics —and I am putting it exactly as he did. In what respect are we isolating the Coloureds by means of this legislation? What are we doing in this legislation to isolate them? Nothing whatsoever. The hon. member is merely stringing together a few words, words which he thinks may make an impression, not in this House—here they will most certainly not make an impression—but outside. The hon. member said that we cannot separate the interests of the Coloureds from our interests. That may be the position under the policy of the hon. member for Bezuidenhout, because he advocates a policy which is quite different from that of this side of the House. We have to deal with a factual position today, a factual position which is based on the policy which is being carried out by the National Party Government. As the position is to-day, there is no doubt whatsoever that the Coloureds have interests which are not our interests. We should like the Coloureds to pursue their own interests to the best of their ability, and that is the essence of the question we are dealing with here to-day. It is because their interests are separate from ours, and because we feel that they must do what is best in their own interests, that we are of the opinion that this legislation is necessary.

I should like to deal with the view ex pressed by the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman). She reacted to what the hon. member for Peninsula had said in connection with the referendum and the election that followed upon it. The statement made by the hon. member for Peninsula is a very valuable one. In our opinion it was not desirable that the Coloureds should take part in the referendum, and they did not take part in it. As a result of the referendum certain things happened which led to an election being declared. And although the Coloureds had had nothing to do with what originally gave rise to those events, they were nevertheless drawn into that election. That is why the hon. member for Peninsula mentioned it as a good example of the fact that there can be advantages for the Coloureds in their elections being held separately.

The hon. member for Houghton also said that the Coloureds ought to know what their candidates stood for and that for that reason the Coloureds should hold elections at the same time as the Whites. How ridiculous to make a statement like that! Must we infer from that that the candidates who will stand for election, whether they belong to the Progressive Party or the United Party or the National Party or whatever party are unable to tell the Coloureds what they stand for? What does it matter at what time the election is held? What does it matter whether it is held at the same time as the election for the Whites or quite separately? Surely the candidate who seeks election as a representative of the Coloureds in this House is in a position to say to the voters, “I stand for this and for that.” Is it necessary for us to hold general elections for the Whites and the Coloureds simultaneously in order to afford the Coloureds an opportunity to find out what their candidates stand for? I am not making this statement only in respect of the interests of the Coloureds. I said a moment ago that the Coloureds have wide interests which do not affect the Whites. What I am saying here I am not saying in respect of those interests alone; those interests which affect the Coloureds alone should really be placed before the Coloured community separately, so that they can form a better conception of what is in their own interests when considering what is their own. I also make that statement in respect of other matters which are not peculiar to the interests of the Coloureds alone, but are also in the national interest. Surely when an election is held they can listen and find out what a candidate stands for as far as these matters, too, are concerned, no matter when that election is held? Surely if they have elected him, they can then tell him what attitude to adopt in this House? I therefore say that there is no substance whatsoever in that argument which was put forward by the hon. member .

Now, Sir, I want to refer you to the other comparison which was made and which the hon. member for Karoo said a moment ago was no comparison. I am referring to the example given by the hon. the Minister that in South Africa we have already accepted the principle of appointing members and councils for a fixed period of five years. As far as the Provincial Councillors are concerned, provision is made in Section 71 of our Constitution. I just want to read the first paragraph—

He told you that.

I know. If the hon. member will just exercise a little patience he will see why I am mentioning that. That is not only the position in respect of the White members in the Provincial Council; it is also the position in respect of the representatives of the non-Whites. If it is wrong, hon. members on the other side must not blame us alone. If the principle is wrong, surely it must have been wrong at that time as well?

They are totally different bodies.

They are totally different bodies, Sir, but the principle is exactly the same. This principle was approved by hon. members on that side of the House. This same principle was approved a few years ago by hon. members on that side—they approved it in the Constitution. That Constitution was before a select committee and this principle was accepted and approved.

That is not an argument; it is an assertion.

That principle was accepted by them. What right do they have to oppose this same principle to-day as far as the representation of Coloureds in this House is concerned?

I just want to mention one further little point and that is the objection raised by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout that there will be a period during which the Coloureds will not be properly represented in this House. I do not know whether this point has been stated with sufficient clarity. The hon. member for Malmesbury (Mr. van Staden) did touch upon it. Mr. Speaker, that will not happen. Section 53 of the Constitution is made applicable to this legislation as well. Section 53 of the Constitution specifically provides that when this House is dissolved the members shall remain in office until the day immediately preceding the next election. I do not know whether that is the objection raised by the hon. member. As I understood the hon. member, he said that there could be a time during which those people would not have representation in this House.

I said that they would miss a session.

That may be so, Sir. If that is the only objection which the hon. member has, then it is not such a fundamental one. The date upon which the next election will be held must be announced within seven days after the expiry of the period of five years, and I think the convenience of representatives in this House will be taken into consideration in all circumstances.

The good that I see in this legislation is actually contained in one main idea, and that is that at elections the interests of the Coloureds must not be prejudiced by factors which are applicable to the Whites. I am not making that statement in respect of the Coloureds alone; I am making that statement in respect of the Whites as well. It is as essential to be fair to the Whites as it is to be fair to the other races.

Is that the reason for this Bill?

That is the reason, Sir. The hon. the Minister said so. That is the main reason for this legislation. Irrespective of what hon. members on that side may think and irrespective of the statement by the hon. member for Karoo that in his opinion this was only the first leg of what was going to come, the statement that this was to give “elbow space” to the Prime Minister, and the nonsensical and foolish statements of that type that we heard this afternoon. I am convinced in my soul that it is in the best interests of both the Coloureds and the Whites that we keep Coloured politics, in so far as it is applicable to the Coloureds alone, separate from that of the Whites. As a matter of fact, that is something that derives from our policy. We are aware of the fact that we are dealing with a minority group here, that we are dealing with various minority groups. Instead of those minority groups having to string along behind the majority group, we should like to grant them authority over their own affairs in so far as it is at all possible. Not only do we want to grant them authority over their own affairs, but we also want to afford them an opportunity of exercising the rights we grant them to the greatest advantage for themselves. The main consideration here is the right to vote. We are not saying that they must be represented by a United Party man or a Progressive or a Nationalist. We feel that when the Coloureds consider the question as to who should represent them in this House their line of thought in considering that question should not be disturbed by political issues which affect only the Whites. When they go to the polls their main consideration must be what is in the best interests of the Coloureds, so that they will elect representatives to this House who will indeed represent the Coloureds; not representatives of other interests, but persons who understand the very soul of the Coloureds, as it were, and who know what they want. That is what we want. We realize that we shall not always get that position. We realize that we may still meet with opposition from the Coloured representatives all along We realize that they will not always agree with us. But it is our unshakable belief that it is in the best interests of the Coloureds that they should in the first instance consider their own interests when they elect their representatives to this House.

What about South Africa’s interests?

South Africa’s interests should also be considered by everybody. However, the interests of the Coloureds are to a large extent separate from those of the Whites.

That is not so.

Oh yes. The Coloureds have their own interests to a very large extent. They have interests which affect their own community and their own people. When they exercise their judgment at the polls we do not want them to be influenced in their thought by the considerations of White politics which are forced upon them by other factors. To me that is the most important consideration of all.

Give us an example of their separate interests.

The hon. member knows very well that there are many issues which affect the Whites but not the Coloureds and vice versa. It is of no use for us to argue or quarrel about that. Surely the hon. member knows what those issues are.

Are they members of your party?

The Coloureds have their own schools, their own universities, and so forth. I need go no further. It is no use for hon. members to try to create a fuss about that. I therefore say that that is the principal reason why we are introducing this legislation and why we think it is desirable that this legislation be carried into effect. My personal opinion is that if we want to grant the Coloureds, as a minority group, a real say here instead of their just tagging along, then we must enable them to promote their own interests without being influenced by White politics. This legislation is not only in the interests of the Whites or the Coloureds, but in the interests of South Africa and of better relations between the various races.

Just between you and myself, Mr. Speaker, I suggest that never have I seen any act so well rehearsed as the action by the hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. S. F. Steyn) when he got up and interrupted the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. J. D. du P. Basson). But he jumped up before he got his queue from either the Prime Minister or the Chief Whip or the prompter. And you in your great wisdom and knowledge, Sir, ignored the objection. Even his second attempt also failed. Now I am beginning to have qualms, not really for the first time, as to what is behind this Bill. I think what is behind this Bill is something very sinister.

The hon. member for Kempton Park protested! too much, I feel. Seeing the hon. the Prime Minister, benigh, and kindly listening I realized what a fine impresario he made at a full-dress rehearsal.

I cannot disagree more profoundly than I do with the hon. member for Peninsula (Mr. Bloomberg). Surely he and the two hon. gentlemen behind him are not so naive, as to believe that this Bill does not adversely affect the Coloureds! I fear that when he and his colleagues face their election at the end of the five year period they will realize what the Coloureds feel about the action they have taken to-day. I prophesy—it is very bad for a politician to make a prophecy and I sincerely hope I will be proved wrong—that he and his two colleagues will never see Parliament again. The hon. member was certainly not representing the interests of the Coloured people to-day when he spoke as he did. If the hon. member feels so strongly in favour of this Bill—the hon. the Minister could not have done better in showing what a fine Bill it was —he should have been consistent and voted with the Government and not walked out. How can a Coloured Representative, dealing with a fundamental Bill which deals with the Coloured people whom he represents, refrain from voting one way or the other on a fundamental question such as this? To refuse to take any decision, to me, is a very strange phenomenon

I now come to the hon. member for Ceres (Mr. S. L. Muller). In his laboured reply to the hon. member for Karoo (Mr. Eden) the hon. member for Ceres made one thing clear and that was that the legislation passed this Session had not only made the Coloured man a second-class citizen but have made him a lower citizen than the Bantu. The Bantu at least have a homeland and the Coloureds not. However, that is beside the point as far as this Bill is concerned.

In view of what the hon members for Kempton Park, and Ceres have said I feel that there is much more in this Bill than meets the eye. In view of the very restricted limits to the debating, due to the contents of this Bill, I wish to raise only one or two points. In view of the statements made by the hon. the Minister a short while ago — and by other Ministers — that White political parties shall not play any part in Coloured politics or Coloured elections, it would appear that this Bill is really there to prevent the Whites from playing any part in any future Coloured elections. If this Bill has nothing sinister behind it, it is a strange coincidence that this should be so. We now have the ridiculous position that White parties are not allowed to take any part in Coloured elections; they are not allowed to advise them how to vote: what is in the interests of the country or what is in their interests but when they are elected and are members of this House and a Bill comes before this House which affects the White people very seriously, e.g. the result of the decision of the International Court or money to be voted for White education, or White medical schemes and so forth, a matter which does not interest the Coloured at all, then the same people, whom we could not advise how to vote, can talk on a subject which only affects the Whites and even vote for or against it as they think fit. It is an extraordinary position. If the parties are very evenly divided they might even have the balance of power in their hands.

I would like to see what was in the Bill the hon. member for Ceres said was to the advantage of the Coloured or even what was in the Bill the hon. member for Peninsula spoke about, for that matter. This is the first move to isolate the Coloureds from the politics of the Whites. I say this is a manoeuvre of which we will only see the final outcome later. There are many other points I could raise but I shall not do so. Let me just say in passing that we have a Coloured regiment fully armed to fight as combatant troops and not merely as auxiliaries. Are they going to fight in a war only against Coloured or Black enemy? Or are they going to fight side by side with us when South Africa is in danger?

As we are so restricted by the wording of this Bill I do not wish to overstep the Rules of the House and I shall not raise any other points which I would have liked to raise and which in my opinion are behind this play acting we have seen here by the Government to-day. This Bill—when the full results are finally seen—will be found to be something which is going to have very serious repercussions on the interests of the Coloured people at a later stage. This is not the first move I feel sure.

If there was any doubt as to the Opposition’s attitude regarding this legislation, the position has now been clarified because one United Party speaker after another has alleged that this Bill is not what it purports to be; that there is something behind it.

Of course.

You see, Mr. Speaker, that is exactly what we are guarding against and what we want to prevent in this country, and that is that the Coloureds—an under-developed section of our population, a section that our law-givers in this country have at all times held to be different—should be used by certain politicians as political footballs to satisfy their own whims. Do you see what is happening, Mr. Speaker? Now that the Progressive Party has dealt the United Party a blow at the Provincial elections, the United Party is courting the Coloured vote, which is still of material importance to it both in this House and in the Provincial Council. In order to disturb the Coloured’s peace of mind, the United Party now comes along with the alarmist story that this Government anually has something different in mind from what this Bill purports to be. That is what we want to prevent in this country’s politics, and this afternoon we have had clearcut proof that it is high time we did so. I have said that throughout our history the attitude of our law-givers, regardless of their political viewpoint, has always been that the Coloureds differ from the Whites and that they should be treated differently as regards their franchise rights. When the National Party, in terms of its beliefs, implemented its plans by way of the 1951 legislation, it maintained that that legislation formed part of our plan of separate representation for the Coloureds in the House of Assembly. Indeed the object of that legislation was that the Coloured representatives should devote more attention to the problems of the Coloureds; that the Coloureds should not be a mere political pawn in times of elections and then promptly forgotten, but that something should be done for the Coloureds from within their own ranks. That was explicitly stated to be part of our plan, not merely to put these people on a separate voters’ roll but at the same time, by developing their own governing bodies and by removing the Coloureds from White politics, to enable the representatives of the Coloureds in this House to promote the interests of the Coloureds.

That is not true.

The hon. member knows it is true, and so does the hon. member for Bezuidenhout; that is why the hon. member for Bezuidenhout supported that legislation in 1951 and that is also why the hon. member still stands by that part of the legislation that relates to separate representation. I find it strange that the hon. member for Bezuidenhout and other hon. members of the Opposition can get up this afternoon and say: “This legislation is no more than an attempt to isolate the Coloured still further from the Whites as far as his franchise is concerned.” If the hon. member for Bezuidenhout wishes to reproach anybody, he should reproach himself —not only for having voted for this legislation in the past, but also for what he is advocating in certain sections of the Press as the policy of the United Party. Surely that policy also amounts to differential treatment of the Coloureds as opposed to the Whites. Surely that is what he is also advocating to-day. Whether he advocates direct representation of the Coloureds by Coloureds, or representation by Whites in this House, is not at issue—what does matter is that he wants to treat them differently. He wants to isolate them from White politics. He still has to clear up that point with his party, but that is the course he has chosen. And it does not behove him to say, with reference to this legislation, that it is a further attempt to isolate the Coloureds from the Whites. After all, it is generally recognized that our attitude is that we want to enable the Coloureds to develop by having them represented separately. And when I say that, the question arises how the Coloureds can be enabled to promote their own cause by means of their own leaders and their own representatives. How can they apply themselves to the promotion of their own interests? If the Coloureds are to have their elections simultaneously with the Whites, if arguments of the kind used by Opposition members this afternoon are to be used to scare them, then in my view we will be right back again where we were in former days, before we had the separate voters’ rolls, and then we will have the same disadvantages all over again. As soon as the election of Coloured representatives in this House and the election of White representatives no longer occur at the same time, I can envisage the Coloured being able to say to his candidates: “Forget about the Government’s aims, forget about this scaremongering and tell us what you yourself, are going to do for the Coloured population? What is your plan of action for them?” The Coloured’s interests would then be decided at a time when there is a lull in White politics and at a time when the spotlight falls on Coloured politics. I do not want to enlarge upon this matter. I merely wish to say that in my view it is self-evident that the Coloured’s interests will be best served in the way envisaged by everybody who believes in separate development and that by ensuring that the Coloured representatives concentrate on the interests of the Coloureds. And anybody who supports that view cannot but agree with the Government that Coloured votes should not merely be cast separately, but also at a time that suits them, not a time that necessarily suits White politics.

I think one’s approach to a measure of this nature must be basically, Sir, the approach of how one views the Coloured people. If one accepts that the Coloured are not part of the Western way of life, the White civilized aspect of South African affairs, then one must support a measure of this nature, but if one starts from the assumption that the Coloured people of South Africa are part of the White civilization of South Africa, then one must oppose a measure of this nature Therefore hon. members opposite find themselves in a quandry. Take the case of the hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. F. S. Steyn). He argues: Well, it does not matter if you put the election of Coloured Representatives on a separate date from the election of the White people, because, after all, there are only 30,000 Coloured electors, their numbers are of such insignificance that it really does not matter if they vote with the White electorate on national issues or if they have to vote on some separate occasion and exercise their judgment in regard to the sensational issues. I think that sums up the hon. member’s arguments fairly. If that is the case, then I want to know why on earth, if this is now the outlook of the Nationalist Party, the Coloured voter was ever put on a separate roll.

Order! That is not relevant.

I am trying, Sir, to answer one or two of the contentions of the hon. member for Kempton Park. It shows, you, Sir, the fallacious thinking, because one of the reasons, if not the prime reason why the Coloured should vote separately, is now that he can exercise a greater influence over the affairs of national South Africa as a whole rather than just the group interests of the Coloured people as such.

Mr. Speaker, there is one other statement of the hon. member for Kempton Park which I think should not go unnoticed, and I think the Minister must give some clarification of this statement, because I would like to know if that now represents the thinking of the Nationalist Party and the views of the Government. The hon. member said that in his view, in any event, he could support a measure of this nature because of the insignificance of the Coloured vote as such, and also because of the insignificance the Coloured vote in his view, the Coloureds were overrepresented in this House. I do not know if that is one of the reasons for the introduction of this Bill, as a means of restricting Coloured representation in this House, and I think it is a statement that should not go unnoticed and upon which I hope the hon. Minister when he replies to the debate will give a clear indication of government intent and whether the hon. the Minister supports the views expressed by the hon. member for Kempton Park in this regard that the Coloured population of South Africa presently is overrepresented in this House.

Then to come with the completely ridiculous contention that this Bill in fact is putting into proper perspective what the hon. member describes as the historical remnant of Cape tradition as far as the representation and the say and the expression of Coloured opinion in this House is concerned! I think it is a statement which the hon. member should deal with again, because certainly it is not in context with what we have heard in this House over some 14 years, and all the fights and struggles that took place in this House in respect of the rights of Coloured voters in South Africa. I think the hon. gentleman . . .

Order! The hon. member must not go too far into that aspect.

I will stop there, Sir, but may I just give this word of advice to the hon. member that before he enters a debate of this nature, he should go and read Hansard and make himself more fully acquainted with the history of these matters.

Give your advice to the Sunday Times.

Sir, this hon. Minister is the last one . . .

Order! That is not relevant to the Bill.

Mr. Speaker, may I direct your attention to the fact that neither is the hon. gentleman’s interjection. The hon. Minister is too afraid to speak on matters of this fundamental nature.

I come back to my original contention that an approach to this measure or any criticism of this measure must fundamentally be based upon one’s viewpoint towards the Coloured people as such, and if one accepts that the Coloured people of South Africa are separate from any other non-White group and that they are part and parcel of White civilization in White South Africa, then one must weigh this Bill in that context. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, when one speaks of voting rights, the factors which the hon. Minister says might affect White elections, one must think of the powers and rights that representatives elected by the Coloured people can exercise in this House, and it would be my contention that this Bill makes of the Coloured Representatives in this House and those that may come in the future nothing but hybrid members. Where they now have every right to participate and express their opinions on national issues, and in fact on every issue that comes before this House, this Bill implies that the election of Coloured representation is merely on the basis of pure group interests. In other words, the Coloured representatives in this House should really not express an opinion on national issues, but in fact should really express opinions only on the group interests which they represent in this House.

Where do you get that from?

If the hon. member cannot draw his own logical deductions from the full implications of this measure, then the hon. gentleman does not know what we are talking about. The Coloured representatives sit in this House with a full right to speak on all issues. If that is so, then it is obvious that they will vote and air their views as representatives of the Coloured people on all matters, and on matters obviously of fundamental difference of opinion and policy between the major contending parties, policies and issues which inevitably are put to the test before the electorate at the appropriate time, or when the Government at any time may feel that their policies do not enjoy the full confidence of the people of South Africa, or of the electorate. I want to remind hon. members and the hon. Minister, because he sat here in those days, of the discussions that took place in this House when the Act which we are now seeking to amend was discussed in this House. I want to remind the hon. Minister of what the viewpoint of the Nationalist Party was in regard to the responsibility of representatives of the Coloured people.

Order! That is not under discussion now.

With due respect, Sir, one of the contentions made by the hon. Minister in introducing this Bill was, that the Coloured voter should be separated from factors which affect the White electorate of South Africa, and obviously that must imply the right that Coloured representatives under such conditions exercise in this House. Now the question as to how they exercise their rights as responsible members was clearly stated in the past by members on the Government benches and by the Minister himself because he was party to these statements. I quote the hon. the present Minister of Finance, who said this—

he was talking about the responsibilities of these representatives—

Rightfully, as the hon. member for Peninsula said to-day. Then he went further and said—

He concluded with these words—

In other words, the hon. Minister was very emphatic that the function of the Coloured representatives was not only to look after the group interests of the Coloured people, but their function here was also to look after the broad national interests of the country as a whole in respect of all issues. The Minister was emphatic and said that if any Coloured representative failed to carry out that function, he was not fit to sit in this House, and he would have to go.

At the time when the original Bill was considered in this House, there is no shadow of doubt, whatsoever, that the atmosphere was created by the Government and the Nationalist Party of that time that on a separate roll the Coloureds would be afforded a better opportunity of playing a part in national politics. I do not want to bore the House with other quotations to confirm that point of view, but I can bring no better witness than the hon. member for Humansdorp (Mr. Sauer), because he was quite emphatic in those discussions that the Coloured voter in South Africa must, in recognizing his own identity, recognize the national identity and express views in respect of national issues in this House. There is much evidence of this kind from government benches to support this point of view. I think I have brought sufficient proof to show that what the Minister is now doing is in fact a betrayal of an undertaking and promises made by the Nationalist Party in getting the country to accept the principle of separate representation at that time. Now they are betraying a solemn undertaking and promises made to the Coloured man and the Coloured voter at that time.

Dealing with another aspect of this Bill, I want to point out that the Bill’s provisions clearly imply that the Coloured electorate while separated on a separate roll and electing their own representatives to Parliament, are incapable of exercising judgment with the White electorate at the time of a general election because they do not have the same loyalties to the same national issues. You see, Sir, the Minister says that he wants to divorce the Coloured electorate from factors which affect the White electorate. Then one is allowed to deduce by the normal logical process as to what are these factors. There must be reasons, and it is significant that not even the hon. member for Ceres, who usually is a member who expresses his views on the government benches fairly in this House, that neither he or the Minister could advance one factor to bolster up this bold general statement of the hon. the Minister in introducing this Bill. Certainly also the hon. member for Kempton Park (Mr. F. S. Steyn) did not do so, neither did the hon. member for Malmesbury (Mr. van Staden) or the hon. member for Stellenbosch (Mr. Smit). I think it is therefore perfectly fair to deduce that because the Minister says that these factors which influence White elections should not be an issue for the Coloured voters upon which to exercise a judgment, and that they must be divorced from these issues by having their elections at another time, that the Minister is of the opinion that the Coloured man of South Africa does not have the same loyalties to the same national issues. In other words, the Minister’s contention is that they would identify themselves and the Coloured interests not to those of the White group, but to those of the non-White bloc in South Africa.

Order! The hon. member is again going too far.

Mr. Speaker, I am trying to analyse . . .

Yes, but the hon. member’s analyses are coupled with a very big imagination.

Mr. Speaker, that is all I am left with in the light of the very limited statement of the hon. Minister. I am attempting to define what are really these factors, because I want to point out that the Minister did not talk in the singular, but in the plural. He enunciated a whole set of circumstances in which the Coloured voter should be separated from the White voter, and I am trying to indicate, Sir, that one of the factors can be the Minister’s lack of confidence in the Coloured electorate and that for that reason he considers it necessary to separate their decision upon who should be their representatives in this House from the interests of the White electorate. One of the consequences of that will be inevitably that the Coloured group will be chased not into the camp of White civilization, where this side of the House believe they should be, but that he will be driven into the extremist camp, the non-White bloc that exists in South Africa. I think no one will dispute the fact that there are already discernible trends in this connection. One only has to look at the recent elections for the Provincial Council.

Order! The hon. member is going too far.

Mr. Speaker, I am not going to deal with that, I am only making an observation. I am using it as an example to indicate that the decision that they made in that election by voting for the Progressive Party, was taken because they accepted the Progressive Party end of the road that eventually South Africa must be ruled entirely by non-Whites, a contention which we do not accept on these benches at all.

To tell them now, as this Bill does, that they in the election of their representatives to this House will be called upon to vote provisionally on national issues, merely offers confirmation of our contention that they feel a deep resentment as to what is being done here. Measures of this nature, where we are simply separating Coloured opinion from White opinion, creating an atmosphere that they have no part in the national structure of South Africa, in White civilized South Africa, will drive the Coloured population into the hands of extreme non-White opinion in South Africa.

Order! The hon. member must come back to the Bill.

Mr. Speaker, there is one other aspect which I would like to refer to. This Bill apart from creating what I would call hybrid Coloured representatives in this House, does something else. It recognizes, or the Minister at least attempts to do so, a form of what one may term of political incompatibility between the Coloured electorate and the White electorate, because the Minister says that factors that affect decisions by the White electorate in choosing their government, should be separated from the Coloured electorate. Thereby the Minister says that the Coloured people are politically speaking in compatible with the White electorate of South Africa. He attempts to divorce the election of Coloured Representatives and infers that Coloured Representatives will vote only as far as group interests of the Coloured people are concerned . . .

Order!

Mr. Speaker, may I point out that one cannot discuss the factors affecting the decisions of the Coloured electorate as separate from those affecting the White electorate, without at least making some logical deductions in this regard.

There is one other issue in regard to this Bill that I wish to deal with. It divorces clearly the Coloured voting population from issues before the country in any national election. At the time when the Separate Representation of Voters Bill was considered, it was contended that separate representation would lift the Coloured vote out of the party political sphere, out of a position in which it had been a football of party politics, a contention made again to-day by the hon. member for Ceres. The argument was that issues relating to Coloured interests are exploited for party political gain particular at election time, resulting in friction under Europeans and disillusion among the Coloured population. That, Sir, is the basis of the thinking that has sponsored the hon. the Minister to make the statement that he made here to-day that factors affecting White elections should not be brought into question at the time Coloured Representatives are elected to this House. With this Bill, Sir, we have the same fallacious contention, and I want to dispose of that argument very quickly. Sir, issues in regard to Coloured interests are the cause of friction among the White electorate, and this has been the proposition for the past 14 years, ever since the passing of the original Act, and I am sure that the mere fact of transferring an election date for representatives of the Coloured people in no way is going to remove the position that Coloured interests can still remain an issue of political difference between the White electors of South Africa.

Order! That is not at issue.

Mr. Speaker, with respect, the hon. member for Ceres . . .

I have allowed the hon. member a lot of latitude but he is going too far.

With respect, Sir, the hon. member for Ceres, a few minutes ago, referred to the fact that one of the purposes of this Bill was to divorce the Coloured man from White politics and I interjected and said “What do you mean by ‘White politics’ ”? And I am attempting now to answer the allegation of the hon. gentleman and I say again that the fact that the election of Coloured representatives is being separated from the election of White representatives will in no way remove the question of what should happen to the Coloured people from the political arena, or not making it an issue between one White political party and another. The question I therefore ask is: Surely if that is the case, why should not the Coloured voters express their view as to whether or not they support the policy of one or the other of the White parties?

No, that is not the point at issue. The hon. member is going too far all the time, and he must now return to the Bill.

I will conclude by saying this: Arguments on the original Bill began as a battle over the Coloured franchise and the rights of minorities. That in time became the battle over the Constitution. But the introduction of this Bill and our opposition to the measure to-day, show that the third battle, the battle of the western way of life, the civilized way of life and government in which Coloured political rights form such an important issue, as evidenced by the provision of this Bill, that that battle has not yet been fought to its conclusion. It will not be decided in a vote that will be taken on this Bill in this House. That battle, I believe, will be fought out on the political platforms of South Africa, in which both the Coloured people and the White electorate will have a decisive say. This final battle, I say in conclusion, on these issues, I hope and I believe, will be fought when we as White electors and the Coloured electors have conquered both our fears and our bad faith, both as Whites and as Coloureds, and until we have established that situation where we can go in good faith and vote together in good faith, until we can achieve that end, the honour of South Africa in the eyes of the non-Whites of South Africa will still be in question and until we can achieve that end, there will be no hope of restoring the opinion and the respect of those beyond our borders for our country, South Africa.

Mr. Speaker, you said that the hon. member was going very far; he did go very far but he arrived nowhere. The hon. member says that this Bill will result in the election of so-called hybrid representatives to this House and that in future the Coloured Representatives will not have the right to discuss what they like, to say what they like and to take part in debates on motions of no confidence. Where does the hon. member see any provision in this Bill which detracts from the privileges and the rights of the Representatives of the Coloureds? How does the date on which they are elected make any difference? Is it being suggested that if a Coloured representative is elected on one date he can say one thing in Parliament and that if he is elected on another date he can say something different? If that is the case then I want to say that I am very sorry that I was elected on the same date as the hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Durrant). The date of one’s election has nothing to do with the matter. Sir, hon. members of the Opposition, including the hon. member for Houghton (Mrs. Suzman), see very sinister motives behind this Bill. The hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. J. D. du P. Basson) says that the object of this Bill is to isolate the Coloured voter from the White man. I do not know precisely what he means by that, but if the hon. member means, as I think he does, that the result of this Bill will be to remove the Coloured from the politics of the White man, then I want to say that if that is indeed going to be the result of this Bill it is no reason for voting against it but rather a reason for supporting this Bill much more enthusiastically. I do not know what is in the Minister’s mind. He has explained the Bill but I do not know what he has in mind for the future. If it is his intention to take further steps in the future to remove the White man from the sphere of Coloured politics, then I for my part will welcome it wholeheartedly. If this Bill is the forerunner of such a measure then as far as I am concerned I welcome it wholeheartedly.

I hope the hon. member will not pursue those lines.

No, Mr. Speaker. The entire attack of the Opposition is based on the supposition that this Bill is designed to remove the White man from the sphere of Coloured politics. If that is correct then they ought to welcome the Bill because we struggled for years to separate Coloured politics and White politics and to hold the elections on different dates; this matter gave rise to one constitutional crisis after another but we did eventually succeed in separating them. We now want to separate them even further and spread the election dates even further apart. I cannot see what objection the Opposition can have to it because for years they have always been in favour of separating the two. May I remind the party over there that at the time when the Coloureds were placed on a separate roll they were not prepared to say that they were going to put the Coloureds back on to the Common Roll again.

Order! That is not relevant

Mr. Speaker, you are ruining a very fine speech ! [Laughter.] This Bill deals with one thing only; it provides for different election days for the White electorate and the Coloured electorate and indeed that is what the hon. member for Bezuidenhout wants; he wants the Coloureds on a separate Voters’ Roll.

Order! That is not relevant.

He wants the elections to be held on different days. He is either running away from it now or his party is beginning to convince him, but in that case they should have no objection to this Bill.

I want to ask the hon. member for Houghton since when she has been so interested in the days on which the Coloureds vote. Until recently neither she nor her party cared a hoot on what day the Coloureds voted. Their interest in this matter is a recent development; they have only been interested since they have discovered what is happening to them.

If the Coloured elections are held at an entirely different time, will it not give the political parties much more opportunity to interfere because they will not be engaged then in fighting their own election?

Sir, the hon. member thinks he can catch me with that question, but he was the man who said that this measure was being introduced to keep the White man out of Coloured politics; I say that the Government’s intention—and we are not concealing it—is to take steps to prevent the Whites from participating in Coloured politics. The Minister said so and the Prime Minister also said so, and I repeat that if this Bill is the forerunner of such legislation then I support it with even greater enthusiasm.

Order! The hon. member must come back to the Bill.

Until recently the hon. member for Houghton and her party were appealing to the Coloureds to boycott the Coloured elections; not to vote on any day at all. The hon. member advised them to have nothing to do with the separate Voters’ Roll; she said that they condemned it in principle; they were not going to take part in the Coloured elections and they appealed to the Coloureds to boycott them. Now suddenly the same hon. member who did not want Coloured elections even once in 50 years, is very perturbed because this Bill provides for Coloured elections to be held only once every five years. As a matter of fact, it is because of the interference of her party and because of the reckless, evil work done by her party amongst the Coloureds that it has become necessary to take certain steps.

On a point of order, Sir, you refused to allow me to talk about the intervention of the White parties in the political affairs of the Coloureds. May I ask you to apply the same rule to the hon. member over there?

Order! Is the hon. member casting a reflection on the Chair?

No, but I am asking you to apply the same rule.

Order!

This Bill only deals with the date on which Coloured elections are to be held and I say that the hon. member did not want those elections to be held on any date at all.

Order! The hon. member must come back to the Bill.

Surely, Sir, I can discuss the attitude of the parties in connection with the holding of an election every five years. For my part I am in favour of it; hon. members on the other side are against it and the hon. member for Houghton is opposed to the holding of elections once every five years, she says that an election should be held whenever the White Parliament is dissolved. I want to show her how inconsistent she is being and why she is adopting this attitude, because their was a time when her attitude was that there should not be an election even once every 50 years. She is only adopting this attitude to-day because they have been rejected by the White voters.

I want to conclude by saying that they are making a great mistake if they think that we are going to allow them, in their interests and not in the interests of the Coloureds, to bedevil the harmonious relationships which have been developed between the Whites and the Coloureds.

This is perhaps the shortest speech we have had from the hon. member for Vereeniging (Mr. B. Coetzee) on a matter of this sort, but I do not think it was altogether his fault; I think he would have liked to speak for 30 minutes.

The usual thing in dealing with a Bill is to try to establish what the principle of the Bill is so that one can be guided as to what is at issue. In this particular Bill, in trying to establish the principle, one runs up against many difficulties and we were not helped in any way by the Minister himself. In introducing the Bill he did not deal with the principle or suggest what it may be. So we have to examine it and try to eliminate what the principle may not be, and I find that the position is that you, Sir, would no doubt permit an amendment to the Bill, which says that the period should not be five years or ten years but three years. The length of time is not in issue here. That is not the principle. The next question one has to determine is whether we are faced with a law which will prohibit the Coloured electorate from taking part in a general election on a date other than that set aside for the White elections? We find that there is no legal prohibition against that. In fact, the elections can take place on precisely the same day. Administrative action may possibly stop it, but there is nothing in this Bill to prohibit the election from being held on the same day. That being the case, if one wished to discuss what one could do to bring this Bill into line with sound constitutional procedure, if I were to move an amendment of this sort it would save me explaining in detail what the position is. If I were to move to delete Section 3 and substitute “(3) the election of members of the House of Assembly or of Provincial Councillors under this Act shall take place upon the date proclaimed tor polling day in terms of paragraph (b) of sub-section (1) of Section 35 of the principal Act for the purposes of a general election”, the effect would be that we would always have the election of the Coloured Representatives and the election of the White representatives on precisely the same day. I put this forward because the Minister has said that the present position is unhealthy; he wishes to remove from the existing Act that portion which enables the election of the Coloured Representatives to take place eight days before the general election of White representatives. In examining that position, I find that we are faced with a very big issue. The Minister said this was a simple Bill, but I venture to suggest that its simplicity is deceptive. What we have here is a provision for two general elections, one for the White electorate and one for the Coloureds, and there is no provision that they cannot be held on the same day, but the point I wish to make is this, that with all the discussion about the undesirability of the White elections being mixed up with the Coloured elections, we still have to face the issue that as the result of the two elections being held at different times the State President will find himself in this position, that as the result of the constitution of Parliament the four Coloured Representatives can overthrow the Government in power. That is the effect of this Bill. It is not an exaggeration but a fact, that if we had an election between now and October of next year and the result gave the present Government a majority of two, it would be quite simple for the present Government, as the result of the intervention of the State President, to be elected for a further term of office.

But that is not a diminution of rights.

I am suggesting that what is happening here is to put into the hands of the Coloured electorate a weapon of great value in this sense, that with a majority of two a Government could be overthrown at a general election of Coloured Representatives. That was very nearly the position in 1948. My point is that the position we are faced with is that, depending on when an election is held in terms of this Act, in relation to the election of White representatives to this House, we can very well find ourselves in this position, and we must remember that there is no legal provision which can guide the State President in calling on a particular party to form the Government. It is traditional that the State President would normally call on the party which was successful in gaining a majority at the White general election. That is the normal position, but what would be the effect once this Bill was passed and the general election for the White representatives took place during a time when there were no Coloured Representatives? What would guide the State President in determining whom he should call upon to form the Government? Because we have this simple proposition, that he cannot say in advance how the Coloured Representatives are going to vote in this House, and he will be faced with the position that he will call upon the present Leader of the Opposition to form the Government, or on the Leader of the Nationalist Party, and a short time afterwards, at the general election we are now providing for here, the whole position may be upset. That is what the Minister is providing for in this Bill. There is no argument about it. I do not say it will happen, but we are dealing with legislation which makes it possible. It is not possible under the existing legislation because the election of Coloured Representatives takes place eight days before the general election for the White representatives.

And if there are eight Bantu representatives?

Order! The hon. member should not allow himself to be misled by a Whip.

No, I will abide by the Bill and say that because this party believes that the Coloured elections should not be divorced from that of the Whites we do not see the same dangers as the hon. Whip does in regard to the Bantu. I have made this point because I believe it is essential that the House should appreciate that what we are doing here makes for instability in Government. No one wishes to have one general election after another in order to establish a majority Government, and yet this Bill makes provision for that eventuality because there is almost a fixed date for the election of Coloured Representatives, but the date for the election of White representatives is not fixed, it cannot be more than five years from the date when the first elected members are called upon to take their seats in this House following a general election, but it can be less. That is where I see the possibility of this Bill causing confusion at a time when we should be absolutely clear as to what the electorate wants, so that the State President can give effect to what the electorate wants. But now we have this amazing position, that as a result of the election of the White representatives, the will of the White people can be destroyed completely by this measure.

Do you draw a distinction between these representatives and the will of the people?

I am saying that the State President will have to interpret the will of the people with an unknown factor coming along afterwards to destroy his interpretation. I am suggesting that we are now introducing in the place of one general election which determines which political party should govern the country, a second general election which can cause the type of disruption I have mentioned. I am not one who is keen on legislating for disruption. I believe that we should know what we are doing. I believe it is necessary that the White electorate should know precisely what is involved in legislation of this sort, and I say that in the place of certainty we are introducing uncertainty at the highest possible level. It is not a question of whether the Coloured Representatives should have this power or not; the issue is how to get proper Government. I say that we should well consider this measure in the light of what I have said and in the light of our past experience, and of what almost happened in 1948, which proves that my contention is not a wild one.

If I may say so, Sir, one of the most remarkable effects which your ruling as to relevancy in this debate has had has been to show us that when strictly confined to the contents of this Bill and the justification for it, the hon. members opposite, not being able to make emotional appeals on the ground of colour, have no arguments at all in regard to the principles of the Bill. It must be a long time since a Minister introducing a Bill in this House could give no reason for it at all except that he thought it was desirable to have the separation between the elections of the Whites and the Coloureds. Then we come to the next figure, one of the authoritative speakers on Coloured affairs opposite, the hon. member for Malmesbury (Mr. van Staden). What was his argument? He says that the Coloured people did not take part in the referendum. What does that prove? It simply shows that the Government did not regard them as being part of the Western group. That is all it shows, despite the statement of the hon. the Minister of Finance that they are part of the heart of the Western group which beats as one. Apparently their hearts are part of us but their minds are not with us. The other argument he used is that we openly say that we want to separate White and Coloured politics. He says that is what this Bill does, as indeed it does. But then this Bill must be part of that plan, to separate White and non-White politics. Why does it do it, and in which direction are we moving? I say that the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. J. D. du P. Basson) was quite right when he asked the Minister to say that this would be the last time that this Government would interfere with the Coloured political rights and their representation in this House, and I hope that the Minister will do that. It is a fair question.

Are you a babe in the woods?

Babes in the wood are often afraid of the wolves in the woods. [Interjection.]

Order!

There are many babes in the wood. Who are the babes in the wood in this picture? They are the Cape Coloured people for whom this Minister has adopted responsibility.

And your party are the wolves.

Surely if anyone can give us an assurance that this is the last time that the Government will interfere with the representation of the Coloured people, it is the Minister of Coloured Affairs, but he is shrugging it off. If he does not give us that assurance, all the fears expressed on this side of the House as to what this Government intends doing are fully justified. The hon. member for Malmesbury wanted the Coloured and White politics separated, and he says this Bill does it. Sir, how do you ever separate it, as long as you have an undertaking that there will be White representatives of the Coloureds sitting in this House? How can this Government even talk about separation of White and non-White politics and of interference by Whites in non-White politics?

The only other argument used by the hon. member was the question of elections, which he says are very expensive. Those are the only arguments we have had from hon. members opposite. The fact of the matter is that in determining whether or not we favour this Bill, the crux of our decision surely is: Do we regard the Coloured people as being part of the Western civilized group in South Africa? If we say that we do, then we cannot support this Bill. If you say that you do not, you can support it. I should like the Minister to tell us how he regards the Coloured people; are they part of the Western group? If he does not, he does not deserve to hold the position he does, to speak for the Coloured people.

Are you the Shadow Minister of Coloured Affairs?

If the honesty of my shadow were to be measured against the body of this hon. Minister, as far as the Coloureds are concerned, I submit that there will be far more substance in my shadow, because all that is left to the Coloured people to-day is the shadow of the United Party, the shadow of what the United Party did for them in the past.

Order! That is irrelevant.

It has been said that this Bill does not affect the position of the Coloureds’ representatives in Parliament. Of course it does not affect the position of the present representatives, but what are Coloureds’ representatives? What is any hon. member sitting in this House? Why is he here? He is here because we do not have a place big enough to accommodate all the qualified voters in all the constituencies of South Africa, and that is why the Coloureds’ representatives are here, and everything that is done to the Coloureds’ representatives, any separation of those representatives from the functions and activities of other members of Parliament, is a separation of the Coloured people from those functions. The representatives can never be different from the people; they are elected by the people. We have heard representatives of the Coloureds speak this afternoon. We heard the hon. member for Karoo (Mr. Eden) also. The hon. member for Peninsula (Mr. Bloomberg) was placed in a difficult position, as he indicated. He and his colleagues have decided that in the circumstances they have an interest in the outcome of these debate and therefore they are not prepared to vote. In those circumstances obviously the voice of the Coloured people does not come from them. [Interjection.]

Order! The hon. member must come back to the Bill.

In the light of the pattern that is developing here of which this Bill is a part, what of the Government’s promises in relation to the Coloured community? What of the promise that they are not going to interfere with, that they are not going to alter the law relating to the four White representatives sitting in this Parliament. What does it mean if you have a Bill like this to-day and perhaps another Bill to-morrow and the hon. the Minister refuses to assure us that this is not part of a scheme, that there is not going to be anything else, that there is not another half of an apple? This may in fact be only half of the apple. Sir, we are dealing here with a people, the only non-White people in South Africa of whom you can truly say that they are part of the Western group. They are our flesh and blood; they speak our language; they know no other tradition, no other history, no other way of living than ours. They are the only non-White people in this country of whom you can say that. What sort of insurance is this for the future that we now want to try to separate them in their growing numbers from the body politic of the White people? What is the object of the operation, Sir? Do they not recognize that here we have a group of people who morally, if for no other reason, they cannot “afskei” from the White people of South Africa? We all accept that there are differences between the Bantu people and the Indian people and ourselves. We accept that there are differences between the Coloured people and ourselves but they are not differences that go to the roots; they are mainly sociological and economic differences. Those are the people whom the Government is deliberately driving further into the wilderness and one wonders how the Government can adopt an attitude like this towards a group of people like the Coloureds. Sir, that attitude is manifested not only in this Bill; it is manifested in every other thing that this Government does in respect of the Coloured people. I think the most remarkable thing that I heard from the hon. the Minister when he introduced this Bill was that the Bill, as he put it, was “kort en duidelik”.

“En kragtig.”

Well—not “pragtig”. It is short but it is by no means clear, and I want to ask the Minister certain questions. If in fact this Bill, as he says it is, and as all his lieutenants argue, simply provides that the life of the Coloured representatives will be fixed at five years—the hon. the Minister referred to constitutional precedents in this regard—why has he not followed the form of the obvious precedent, namely the Representation of Natives Act of 1936? This is not a clear Bill by any means. This Bill expresses in the most obtuse terms what could simply have been expressed this way—

Sir. there we have a precedent in the Representation of Natives Act of 1936. Why did the hon. the Minister not do that? When I look at this Bill, with the hon. the Minister not prepared to give the assurance for which the hon. member for Bezuidenhout asked that he is not going to come back with another Bill to interfere with the situation of the Coloured representatives in this House, I am entitled to be suspicious about the form in which this Bill is presented to us. As I say, there is a very simple formula and a very simple precedent that could have been followed, but the Minister has not done so. He describes in the Bill how by effluxion of time, five years after the date of the last general election, the term of office of Provincial Councillors will expire. The “last general election” is later on defined. It would have been very simple to say that their term of office will last from the time that they were in fact elected and thereafter for a period of five years from the date of their election. Sir, we did it in the Republic Act. We provided that the term of office of members of this House, in relation to the life of Parliament, would extend from 4 July 1958. It was provided that the Republican Parliament then in existence would be deemed to have been elected in terms of the new Act and that its life would extend as from that fixed date. Sir, that is not done here and I want to know why it is not done here. I want to know why certain words are omitted and why this Bill is so unclear. I do not believe, looking at a Bill of this importance which appears to be so clumsily drafted, that the draftsman did not know better; I would never suspect that. I am entitled to look at this Bill and believe that it was drafted deliberately in the terms in which it has been drafted. I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether he has in. mind that a general election in relation to the life of Coloured representatives is in fact going to be the time when these hon. members sitting here were last elected or whether it is going to be on another occasion. That is a question to which we would like an answer. It goes with the answer that the hon. the Minister must give us as to whether or not the Government is going to introduce any more legislation to deal with this matter.

Sir, there is another extraordinary feature of this “kort en duidelike” Bill, and that is that for the first time the State President is obliged to issue a proclamation in terms of Section 35 of the Electoral Consolidation Act of 1946 within a specified time. He is obliged to do it within seven days. If we have an election in terms of that same proclamation mentioned here, if this House reaches the period of five years from its first sitting, the House must be dissolved and the State President shall issue a proclamation. There is nothing in the Electoral Consolidation Act or anywhere else which provides when he must do it. But here we have the position that he must do it within seven days. I want to ask the hon. the Minister why he thought it necessary at this stage to insert this in relation to the Coloured community. Here we have the difference: If the situation which the hon. member for Umhlatuzana (Mr. Eaton) has just mentioned should arise, because you call earlier elections and later general elections, that is to say, relating to the persons elected by the White voters of the country, then they (i.e. the election of White and Coloured representatives) may well coincide to fall on the same day or they could be very close together. In order to avoid that, what does the Government do? It says, “We will advise the State President not to issue the proclamation in terms of Section 35 for the White voters for some considerable time”, because he is obliged in terms of this to issue a proclamation after the expiry of five years. I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether that was inserted in the Bill for that purpose. Sir, the Minister has not explained this Bill to us and I hope that when he replies I hope that he will indicate some of these things to us. This is not a mistake in drafting; this is something quite new in our law. and I hope that the Minister will give us a reply to these various questions.

Sir, I do not want to cover any more of this ground save just to sum up and say this: This Bill does two things. It separates the elections of the White representatives and of the Coloured representatives; it fixes the term of office of the Coloured representatives to five years and the effects of this Bill are going to be to estrange, perhaps for ever if this Government stays in power long enough to implement its policies, the Coloured people from the White people of South Africa; and when that day arrives when they are completely estranged, then the hope of our once more going back and finding some part of this non-White multitude, with whom we will always be living, whatever Government policies are, are going to be torpedoed almost forever. Sir, if the hon. the Minister accepts that the Coloured people are part of the Western group in South Africa, then it is his duty morally, it is his duty as a Christian and as the guardian of these people, not to proceed with this Bill, not to encourage the further “verskuiwing” of these people from the body politic of South Africa, but to give some hope that there will be a group of people with whom we can begin once more to co-operate and build a South Africa, which must necessarily be built, on the co-operation of the non-White groups, particularly the people with whom we are dealing here.

For the same reasons that I had little to say when I moved the second reading. I have little to say after listening to the speeches of hon. members who oppose this Bill.

They said nothing.

Take the hon. member who has just spoken, for example. One can sum up his whole argument in one sentence; he says that we are going to lose the goodwill of the Coloureds because we are passing a measure here which provides that they have to elect their representatives every five years and not at least eight days before a general election. That is the reason why we are going to lose their goodwill, according to the hon. member. He works himself up into a state of anxiety and then takes fright at his own shadow. Sir, as the Act reads at the present time it provides that any election to elect representatives of the Coloureds to sit in this House, shall take place at least eight days before a general election. We now come along with this Bill which provides for the elections of Coloured representatives to take place every five years. They will therefore sit in this House for five years. The hon. member says that we are going to lose the goodwill of the Coloureds as a result of this change. Sir, it is only that hon. member who would believe such a thing. He works himself up further and he says that he believes that this Bill was drafted in these terms with a certain object; that there is something behind it, and then he goes on to tell us what he thinks is behind it; he knows precisely what the aim was of the law adviser who had instructions to draft this Bill. Sir, what happened here? The law adviser had instructions to draft a Bill in terms of which the representatives of the Coloureds will sit in this House for five years; those were his instructions. But reading between the lines the hon. member now comes along and says that the law adviser wrote a lot of diabolical things into the Bill. That is the sort of shadow at which the hon. member takes fright. Sir, what the hon. member is brewing here is a witches’ cauldron. What is his object in doing so? He wants to scare the Coloureds. His whole object is to get headlines in the newspapers—and he is going to get them; I congratulate him. His sole object is to stir up feelings—and then the hon. member talks about harmonious relationships between the Coloureds and the Whites!

But, Sir, we had a second spectacle here. In the first place we had the speech here of the official mouthpiece of the United Party, who mentioned a whole series of reasons to show that this Bill allegedly amoufits to an injustice against the Coloureds; that it tramples upon their rights and that it is tantamount to a diminution of their rights. That was the attitude of the official mouthpiece of the United Party. But one of the Whips of the United Party stood up a little while ago, and what did he say? He said that this Bill was placing a power in the hands of the Coloured representatives; that it would enable them to thwart the will of the White electorate as expressed at an election, and that it gave them the balance of power. Sir, the official mouthpiece of the United Party says that what this Bill does is to destroy the rights of the Coloureds, that this is just another step which is being taken by the Government to do an injustice to the Coloureds; that once again the Government is meddling with their rights, as it has been doing over the past 14 years, and the hon. member for Umhlatuzana then stands up and says that this Bill places a power in the hands of the Coloured representatives which will enable them to thwart the will of the White voters as expressed at an election. Sir. what a spectacle! And this is the Opposition Party that is supposed to be the alternative Government! But we had a second spectacle here and that is that the Coloured representatives who sit in this House, who have no party political ties and who view this Bill solely from the angle of the Coloureds, say that there is no question of any diminution of rights. They go on to say that they consulted the Coloureds with regard to this Bill. The Coloured representatives in this House who do not stand under the whip of a political party, who do not stand under the whip of a caucus, say that this Bill does not amount to a diminution of the rights of the Coloureds, but the one and only Coloured representative who stands under the whip of a party caucus comes here and says that nobody asked for this Bill; he says that it amounts to a diminution of the rights of the Coloureds. What he says is diametrically opposed to the views of the three independent Coloured representatives. Whom are we to believe? Sir. what has happened here to-day proves, without further argument, the correctness of the statement which I made here at the beginning, and that is that the Coloureds must not be made the victims of the party political activities of White political parties. Because what is the position? The hon. member for Karoo (Mr. Eden) was not the free choice of the Coloureds. He was forced upon them by the machinery of a political party. He made the point here that he could speak on behalf of the Coloureds; I say that he cannot speak on their behalf. He was forced upon the Coloured population by a White-controlled political party . . .

Just as you were forced upon George.

In fact, the hon. member’s election is one of the main reasons why the United Party was rejected recently by the Coloureds at the provincial elections.

Order!

With all due respect, I am replying to arguments advanced from the other side, and I think I should have the right to do so.

I confined myself in my introductory remarks to the very narrow limits of the Bill itself, but certain arguments have been advanced here which I cannot leave unanswered. I want to come to the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. The hon. member says in the first place “that the Government has failed hopelessly in dealing with the Coloureds; the object of this Bill is to isolate the Coloureds from the general politics of this country, in spite of the fact that destinies of the Whites and the Coloureds are inseparably linked”. Sir, I do not want to do the hon. member an injustice; I am quoting his own words. He said: “This is political manipulation.” Actually, he used a stronger word which you, Sir, made him withdraw; that is why I am not quoting it: “For 14 years this Government has been meddling with the political rights of the Coloureds. The Coloureds cannot be separated from White politics.”

Every word of it is true.

Sir, I propose to reply to the hon. member in the words of a person of whom he thinks a great deal, a person for whom he has the greatest respect; as a matter of fact a person of whom he thinks more than he does of anybody else in the whole of this country; I want to reply to the hon. member in the words used by that person when he was talking about this specific question of the relationships between the Coloureds and the Whites. This is what he said (Hansard, Vol. 78. Col. 4165)—

In other words, one finds that the same tactics which are used by the Press are also used by the United Party; one gets the same type of language from the Opposition, and that is that we are meddling with the rights of the Coloureds, that we are diminishing their rights. The hon. member then went on to say—

One finds this sort of abusive language. And what does he go on to say?— He says—

And then this man, of whom the hon. member thinks so much, goes on to say (Col. 4166)—

Sir, do you know who this person is of whom the hon. member for Bezuidenhout thinks such a great deal? He is a certain Mr. Japie Basson who, at that time, was M.P. for Namib.

Look at what you have done since then; that was 15 years ago.

That is why I found it so interesting to watch the hon. member here this afternoon in his new role. Whereas in those days he defended this side of the House and acted as the champion of Afrikanerdom. he now represents us in just the opposite light, that is to say, as people who seek to deprive others of their rights. Whereas in those days he said, “Take the Coloureds out of the White man’s politics, and then there will be national unity and peace in South Africa”, he now comes along and says, “Bring the Coloureds into the White man’s politics”.

What happened subsequently?

Nothing happened subsequently. The only thing that has happened is that the hon. member has changed his constituency.

What about all your permits?

Sir, what a spectacle, coming as it does from the official representative of a party ! The very things which he condemned and cursed a few years ago he now attributes to his fellow-members! He ought to be ashamed of himself. Sir, I leave him there. I do not think it is worth while taking much more notice of the hon. member. I just want to say to the hon. the Leader of the Opposition that we make him a present of that hon. member.

There are just one or two further points to which I want to refer. The first is the point that was made here that the Coloureds may be unrepresented at a time when Parliament is in session. The facts are these: I have gone into the position and the very worst that can happen is that the Coloureds may not be represented for two or three days.

[Inaudible.]

I am not dealing now with that hon. member; let him stew in his own juice. I am replying to the hon. member for Karoo who made this point. The second point that was made here was this: Why are the Coloured representatives being singled out; why will they be elected every five years only? That was really the refrain that we had from the Opposition. Why single out the Coloureds only? Sir, the principle of drawing a distinction between Coloured representatives and White representatives in this Parliament is one which has been laid down in our legislation ever since 1910. Our Constitution provided in 1910 for White representatives only in Parliament, not for Coloured representatives. In other words, the principle of drawing a distinction is one which has applied ever since 1910; it is not a new principle that is being introduced here. As a matter of fact it is one of the corner-stones on which the Union of South Africa came into being. That is my reply to hon. members opposite. Sir, I think I have now disposed of the main objections and I leave the hon. member for Bezuidenhout to stew in his own juice.

Question put: That the word “now” stand part of the motion,

Upon which the House divided:

AYES—79: Badenhorst, F. H.; Bekker, G. F. H.; Bekker, M. J. H.; Bezuidenhout, G. P. C.; Bootha, L. J. C; Botha, H. J.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, P. W.; Botha, S. P.; Coetzee, B.; Cruywagen, W. A.; de Jager, P. R.; de Villiers, J. D.; de Wet, J. M.; Diederichs, N.; du Plessis, H. R. H.; Faurie, W. H.; Fouché, J. J.; Frank, S.; Greyling, J. C.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Henning, J. M.; Hertzog, A.; Heystek, J.; Hiemstra, E. C. A.; Jonker, A. H.; Jurgens, J. C.; Keyter, H. C. A.; Kotze, G. P.; Labuschagne, J. S.; Loots, J. J.; Malan, A. I.; Marais, J. A.; Maree, G. de K.; Meyer, T.; Mostert, D. J. J.; Mulder, C. P.; Muller, H.; Muller, S. L.; Nel, J. A. F.; Odell, H. G. O.; Otto, J. C.; Pansegrouw, J. S.; Pelser, P. C.; Potgieter, J. E.; Rall, J. J.; Rall, J. W.; Rall, M. J.; Schlebusch, A. L.; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, B. J.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Schoonbee, J. F.; Smit H. H.; Stander, A. H.; Steyn, F. S.; Steyn, J. H.; van den Berg, G. P.; van den Berg, M. J.; van den Heever, D. J. G.; van der Ahee, H. H.; van der Wath, J. G. H.; van Eeden, F. J.; van Niekerk, G. L. H.; van Niekerk, M. C.; van Staden, J. W.; van Wyk, H. J.; Venter, M. J. de la R.; Venter, W. L. D. M.; Verwoerd, H. F.; Viljoen, M.; Visse, J. H.; Vorster, B. J.; Vosloo, A. H.; Waring, F. W.; Webster, A.; Wentzel, J. J.

Tellers: D. J. Potgieter and P. S. van der Merwe.

NOES—41: Basson, J. A. L.: Basson. J. D. du P.; Cadman, R. M.; Connan, J. M.; Dodds, P. R.; Durrant, R. B.; Eaton, N. G.; Eden, G. S.; Field A. N.; Fisher, E. L.; Gay, L. C.; Graaff, de V.; Hen-wood, B. H.; Hickman, T.; Higgerty, J. W.; Lewis, H.; Malan, E. G.; Mitchell, D. E.; Mitchell, M. L.; Moolman, J. H.; Moore, P. A.; Oldfield, G. N.; Plewman, R. P.; Radford, A.; Raw, W. V.; Ross, D. G.; Steenkamp, L. S.; Steyn, S. J. M.; Suzman, H.; Taurog, L. B.; Taylor, C. D.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Timoney, H. M.; Tucker, H.; van der Byl, P.: Warren, C. M.; Waterson, S. F.; Weiss. U. M.; Wood, L. F.

Tellers: H. J. Bronkhorst and A. Hopewell.

Question affirmed and amendment dropped.

Motion accordingly agreed to and Bill read a second time.

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

Evening Sitting

This is the clause where-under the hon. the Minister proposes to vary the existing legislation to the effect that he can limit the term of office chairman and vice-chairman of any irrigation board. The limitation proposed is that a chairman or vice-chairman shall not be elected for successive periods which altogether exceed five years except with the consent, in writing, of the hon. the Minister. The position is this that in terms of this amending Bill, the hon. the Minister has, rightly in our view, taken power to ensure that the election of officials of this kind, shall take place properly. He has taken power, correctly, to see that, if there is any suspicion that there might be any irregularity in the election of these officebearers, somebody from his Department can supervise the election. I don’t want to go into that, Sir, because it is not in this clause.

But where the position is that the hon. the Minister can ensure that the elections are properly carried out we believe it should be open to the local community whose interests are governed by the irrigation board to elect, as chairman and vice-chairman, the person they think best fitted for that office, even if it means that the man may hold office for six years which is a period beyond the limit the Minister wants to impose by this clause. It is quite clear to anyone who has experience of rural communities, particularly the smaller ones, that you very often find that there are one or two members of the community who alone are really fitted to manage, either a farmers’ association or an irrigation board of this kind; one or two who are not only able to do so but who are willing to do it. I believe that, where there are persons properly qualified to do the job, the community should be entitled to elect those people for a number of successive years if they believe that that is the proper thing to do. I wish to emphasize that this cannot be manipulated in any way because the hon. the Minister has seen to it, by way of the amendment as contained in this Bill, that the elections shall be properly governed and conducted, if necessary, under the auspices of an official of his Department.

In those circumstances I think that a wrong principle is being introduced in this Bill, a wrong principle which will not be to the advantage of the various irrigation boards concerned. I would be glad to hear from the hon. the Minister—perhaps it is wishful thinking—that he has changed his mind in this regard and that he will leave the position as it is at the present time, i.e. let the community of the irrigation district concerned elect as chairman and vice-chairman the persons they think best suited to hold those jobs.

I want to support the views expressed by the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman). In the administration of the water affairs in any district you get a number of complicated situations which call for experience. As the hon. member for Zululand has just said, you often find that in a small community there is only one individual who is prepared to devote his time to it. He makes a hobby of it. As the years go by he becomes more and more valuable, more and more versed in the needs of the area and the best means of dealing with those needs. If the people affected have sufficient confidence in him to put him forward as chairman for a year or two years over the period of five years stipulated in this clause surely it will be to the advantage of the district and of the community. In the long run it will be to the advantage of the country. It is true that there is a proviso which gives the Minister power, in exceptional cases, to authorize that extension but even so, measured in terms of democracy, the proposed limitation is a step to curtail the democratic rights of the people themselves in selecting the man they believe is best qualified to do the job.

I associate myself with the hope expressed by the previous speaker that the hon. the Minister has given this some thought and will be prepared to move an amendment, either here or in the Other Place, so as to remove this restriction. Unless there is some very compelling reason of which the Minister has knowledge that makes this limitation necessary I regard it as a step in the wrong direction. It seems to be something which is not to the general advantage of the people concerned and deprives them of the ability and the experience of the man who has grown up in that area, who has given a lead in water affairs and who best knows what their requirements are.

I gave this matter my attention particularly after the hon. member for Ceres (Mr. S. L. Muller) had expressed his misgivings in the second reading debate. I have now decided, for the reason mentioned by the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman) and the hon. member for Simonstown (Mr. Gay), to move the following amendment—

To omit paragraph (a).

Sub-section (b) now become Clause 4. The portion dealing with the limitation of the term of office therefore falls away.

I wish to say that I appreciate the point of view expressed by the hon. the Minister. This clause will consequently not be opposed by this side of the House.

Amendment put and agreed to.

Clause, as amended, put and agreed to.

On Clause 7,

I wish to move the amendment standing in my name—

1. (4) Notwithstanding the foregoing, in any case where the Minister delegates authority in terms of sub-section (3) of Section 164 bis, he shall also delegate to the local authority, board, body, department or administration concerned the power to limit or control the practice of water sport on Sundays.

The effect of this amendment is to make it obligatory on the hon. the Minister, in any case where he delegates authority for the control of water sport to a local authority, board or department or administration, also to delegate power to limit or to control the practice of water sport on Sunday. This clause, which is a very lengthy one, has much merit in it, i.e. that section of the clause which deals with the making provision for power to various bodies to control the practice of water sport. That is desirable. We all know that in many areas where various kinds of water sport are undertaken there have been accidents and there has been confusion from time to time. We know various types of water sport are engaged-in which are not compatible one with another. You have people engaged in water sports which require the use of fast speed boats, such as water skiing and so forth. That often takes place at the same time and on the same place as yachting, fishing and bathing. If the position were not controlled, as is provided for in this clause, chaos would result and you would have the accidents which have already occurred in various parts of the country where there are large sections of water where this sport takes place.

But the clause as it stands would enable a Minister to limit the practice of water sport merely because it takes place on a Sunday. I wish to say at once that I am aware of and appreciate the sentiments expressed by the hon. the Minister at the second reading when he said that it was not his intention to invoke the powers which existed here to control water sport merely because it took place on a Sunday. That was the point of view expressed by this hon. Minister. But, of course, this hon. gentleman may not always be the Minister of Water Affairs and his successors may take a different view from that adopted by him. Were he to do so he would have the power, in the Bill as it stands, to impose a limitation on the practice of water sport on Sunday merely because it took place on a Sunday. It is sought by the amendment we move to obviate that difficulty whilst taking account of the fact, which we know exists, that there are different views amongst the various sections of the community so far as the practice of water sport or any other game on Sundays is concerned. We know there are people and communities who would like to be free to be able to indulge in water sport on Sundays. We know equally so that there are other communities who would prefer that that does not take place. The effect of this amendment is to give the power to the local community concerned either to allow water sport to take place on a Sunday or to prevent it depending on the wishes of the community who live in the area where that piece of water is situated. That is what is called local option and I believe that is the best guide in matters of this kind. Leave it to the people concerned to have the power either to control or not to control as they wish.

Don’t you think it is undesirable to lay down a hard and fast rule?

We believe it is undesirable to lay down a hard and fast rule. I agree entirely with the hon. member who has just interjected. As the Bill stands a hard and fast rule is laid down. We believe that that should be broken down to enable communities to adjust the situation for themselves. That is the purpose of this amendment.

The phrasing used, Sir, is precisely the same as that used in the clause under which the Minister has power to delegate power to local authorities, provincial administrations and bodies of that kind.

Particularly in the case of the big holiday resorts along the coast it is a matter of life and death to them that there should be no limitation on the exercise of any sort of activity which holidaymakers might wish to indulge in on this day or that day, be it a Sunday or any other day. It is important to those communities that their economic lifeblood should not be hindered in any way. That is an additional reason why we have moved this amendment, because it meets both their case and the case of other communities in this country who may think differently from the large holiday resorts which are mainly situate at the coastal towns. I believe this amendment should be accepted by the hon. the Minister because it does meet the wishes of both the conservative thinking community and the more liberal-minded thinking community so far as the practise of sport is concerned.

I cannot understand why the Opposition wants this clause to be changed. We realize what difficulties exist. We realize that there are certain people who have no objection to Sunday sports but, after all, there are people who do object to it. This measure gives the Minister the right, in cases of that kind, to say that sports will not be permitted on Sundays. Why should the Minister not have this right in such cases? No Minister would be so silly as to place an unnecessary prohibition on Sunday sports [Interjections.] There are cases where certain Churches and members of the public object to it. There has already been trouble in Parys. I think it would be wrong to alter this clause. It merely gives the Minister the power to act in certain cases. Surely he would not prohibit sports on Sundays where there is no need to do so. I feel that it is absolutely essential for the Minister to have this right.

I rise to support the amendment moved by the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman). You will probably remember. Sir. that as long ago as 1963 I put questions to the hon. Minister of Water Affairs and the hon. the Minister of Transport in their respective capacities in regard to a case which actually happened in Natal on the Chelmsford Dam. It was obvious from the answer the hon. Minister gave me that he had to intervene there as a result of a local complaint to curb organized sport on the Chelmsford Dam. The reference is Col. 374 of Hansard, Vol 5, of 1963.

In the same Hansard I put a similar question to the hon. Minister of Transport and he said he did not intend controlling sport in an area such as Durban Bay unless legislation was introduced. This could well be the legislation. Fortunately the Minister of Water Affairs has given us the assurance during the second reading that it was not his intention to use this legislation to curb water sport on Sundays in all areas. I think that the hon. the Minister should be prepared to give us more than that assurance. That is why the hon. member has moved this amendment. I think the Minister would be well advised to accept it.

Just let me give the Minister and this House some idea of the sport, or almost the industry, which is being threatened if the hon. the Minister does not accept this amendment. I have been fortunate in being able to get some figures which deal with a period of five years, i.e., from the end of November 1959. The amount of money invested at that time in sailing dinghys, cabin cruisers, speed boats, motor boats and so forth was £3,500,000 R7,000,000. The amount spent per year to keep this sport going by way of refits, maintenance, insurance, and so on, was R 1,851,000. That was more or less the size of this sport or industry in 1959. Since then, in March 1965, which gives us approximately a five-year period, those figures have grown from R7,000,000 invested in this sport to R 14,500,000. In other words, the amount of capital invested by people who indulge in this sport along the coast, on the estuaries, the rivers and the dams of South Africa, has in fact doubled. It has become a huge industry as well as a huge sport which South Africans enjoy. The amount of money which was spent in connection with these pleasure craft has increased from R 1,851,000 to just on R8,000,000. The hon. the Minister will appreciate from these figures that this is not just a case of stopping a few people from having a little sport at some time or other, especially on a Sunday, on a local dam. This is something which South Africans are indulging in and enjoying on a very big scale. One of the interesting features is that this is not localized to areas near the sea and so on; it is spread all over South Africa. I have a list here of all the registered clubs in South Africa. Let me read a few: Northern Rhodesia, Bethlehem, Nairobi, Beira, three in Bloemfontein, one in Durban, East London, Carltonville, Broken Hill. You get them in all the country districts. It would appear that the breakdown is such that the bulk of the people who enjoy this type of sport are people in the country and not so much along the coastal areas. One cannot go into these figures in detail in ten minutes, but I believe that if the hon. the Minister would go into these figures he would agree with me that something more than the assurance he gave us in his second-reading speech was necessary to put at rest the worries he had given to these people who to-day enjoyed water sport throughout South Africa.

I can read him an editorial from a publication called Yachting, which is now the official journal of these clubs. It is clear from that that in the space of the last seven years the number of clubs has increased from 64 to 125, that the memberships of those clubs has increased from 15,000 to 30,000. So the figures go on multiplying, and it is calculated by this journal that each five years from now, automatically, the amount of capital invested in these pleasure craft and the amount of money expended each year on maintaining them will in fact double, irrespective of the fact that certain of the boats are written off every year.

So I believe it is incumbent upon the hon. the Minister to give something more than just an assurance. I think he would be very well advised to accept the amendment which has been moved by the hon. member for Zululand.

I do not know why the hon. member for Umlazi (Mr. Lewis) put forward such an ardent plea here. After all, nobody had differed from him. Everybody knows that sport has become a big industry. The Minister has given the assurance that it is not the intention at all to restrict water sports on Sundays. Hon. members on the other side want the Minister to accept an amendment which deprives him of that power. It is for the Minister, of course, to decide whether he is going to accept the amendment or not, but even if the hon. the Minister accepts the amendment, how is it going to give greater security? After all, if any successor of the Minister’s wants to place restrictions on Sunday sports, there will be nothing to prevent him from doing so. This Minister has given the assurance that it is not his intention to prohibit it and that the object of this legislation is something entirely different.

I think I am entitled to take part in this debate, representing the constituency which I do, because, after all, I am the person who initiated this legislation as a result of representations made to me. I want to thank the Minister and the Government for the fact that they acted so expeditiously once we had brought this matter to their notice. [Interjections.] I am not speaking against the amendment; I say that the amendment is quite useless. Hon. members on the other side point out that the present Minister will not always be occupying this portfolio. Let us assume that we accept his amendment and that we then get a new Minister who wants to prohibit sports on Sundays. This amendment would not prevent him from doing so; he would still be able to do it.

This legislation owes its origin to the tremendous increase in the number of people taking part in water sports; whereas three years ago there were about 30,000 power boats there are 80,000 at the present moment. The reason why I became involved in this matter, and very gladly so, is that the headquarters of the Transvaal Power Boat Association and the Transvaal Ski Association are situated at Vereeniging; moreover, the headquarters of the Yacht Association are also in close proximity to Vereeniging. Sir, a very dangerous situation has arisen there as a result of the lack of control on those dams and rivers. The clubs are well organized and they exercise very good control, but on Sundays and holidays literally hundereds of people come to Vereeniging from Johannesburg and from the whole of the Witwatersrand. As I have said, the clubs are well organized, but we have these hundreds and hundreds of people who are not members of these clubs and who simply ski wherever they like. I said to my wife one day that I was surprised that so far there had been no fatal accidents, and just the following week we had the fatal accident at the Barrage where a woman who was skiing collided with a power boat and was practically cut to ribbons. I was then approached by the executive committees of the Power Boat Association, the Yacht Association and the Ski Association with the request to ask the Government to control these waterways. Sir, my reason for rising is simply to inform the Minister that all these associations in the four provinces have now established a Federation of Water-sports Associations. The Federation is very anxious to assist the Minister with the framing of regulations for the purpose of controlling sporting activities on our waterways. They argue, and I think quite soundly, that the Minister can pilot the legislation through Parliament and frame the regulations, but thereafter it is a question of the implementation of those regulations. It would be practically impossible for the South African Police to see to it that the regulations are applied. These associations to which I have referred are very well organized and they consist of very responsible people. As a result of this legislation they have now organized themselves into a Federation of Water-sports Associations so as to have a central body. They are now offering their services to the Minister and they are asking that they be given certain powers to take steps against people who contravene the regulations on holidays, Sundays, etc. I rise to make an appeal to the hon. the Minister to accept their offer. They propose to ask him for an interview. They are going to offer him their services and put their knowledge at his disposal. I want to make an appeal to the Minister to accept their offer and to make use of their assistance. They will then be able to see to it that the regulations which the Act empowers him to promulgate are properly implemented on our waterways and dams.

I think the hon. member for Vereeniging (Mr. B. Coetzee) has made out a good case for the acceptance of our amendment. He has just suggested that the various clubs, which have formed themselves into an association, should exercise control over the very thing that this Bill is setting out to control, i.e. the dangers that can be created by the indiscriminate use of some of the craft used in water sport are best controlled by authorities on the spot.

The amendment moved by the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman) is not that there should be no control but that the body best suited to exercise necessary control in the different areas, each with his own particular type of problem, is the local authority itself who has knowledge of the problem in their area. That authority would be responsible to the people in its own area and those people would very soon take action if the local authority abused the powers granted to them. In other words, local authorities are best suited to take some of the load off the Minister’s shoulders; the load of control which must develop from this Bill. I think it is a perfectly fair and reasonable request to make that where the hon. the Minister delegates authority, as delegate it he must do, otherwise he will have to set up a new empire to exercise this control, he should also delegate to the local authority concerned, the full right where it is necessary for some reason or other to do so to exercise such control either on Sunday or any other day.

I think the day may come when there may be some necessity, from the public safety point of view, to take steps to exercise some control, without controlling sport on Sundays altogether. In that case the local authority again would be the body best able to do that. They know their own area; they know how the people feel about it, because they have to work very largely in conjunction with those people. I believe the question of Sunday sport is largely a matter for a man’s own conscience. The individual decides for himself whether it is right or wrong. If he decides it is not wrong and indulges in it on a Sunday or any other day and oversteps the rules, the local authority is there and can put him on the right road. But I do not think State control at top level applied throughout the whole country is warranted in any shape or form at this stage. I do not think there is any doubt about that. I think, as far as both sides of the House are concerned, that has already been made quite clear. But in view of the way water sport has developed, as outlined by the hon. member for Umlazi (Mr. Lewis), some form of control has to be exercised in order to avoid loss of life and limb. Here in the Peninsula we have the position that three or four types of sport, incompatible with one another, are practised in an area which cannot cope with all of them. We have already had accidents and as the number of craft grow, as grow they will, the risk of accidents will also grow. Control is necessary, and I am in complete agreement with and strongly support the amendment moved because I believe it is a step in the right direction, in a practical direction which will make the control feasible.

There is one point which I raised at the second reading, and I want to raise it again, and that is that in any delegation of authority made account should be taken as to whether the body to whom the Minister is delegating authority is competent and capable, both in manpower and financial and other resources, to exercise such control. Part of the trouble has been that under the old laws there has been a certain amount of delegation of powers to authorities who never possessed the staff or the equipment necessary to exercise that control at all. Up to now we have been dealing with boating and yachting, but there are so many other facets that have to be dealt with under this control, other types of water sport altogether. In fact the Bill goes far beyond boating problems. One of the clauses here says “the control over and the use of craft and appliances of whatsoever nature upon or in the water of an area designated as being an area for water sport”. It also says here—

“Navigation” covers a tremendously wide range. Some of the waters used for water sport are also necessary to navigation for commercial purposes of other craft. I raised the point again at the second reading with regard to the encroachment of professional fishing craft on areas where fishing “water sport,” the big-game water sport of fishing is indulged in and where the encroachment of the commercial fishing industry is wrecking and killing a sport which could be invaluable to this country, a sport which in other countries has been built up into a million dollar industry. There again, as it is worded, the Bill would give the right to a certain measure of control over that type of interference. Again: Who is better suited to exercise that control than the authorities in the area who are conversant with its needs, conversant with the dangers that are implicit to the sport in its area by this encroachment, and who are also in touch with the people on both sides— the people who are utilizing the area for sport and the people who are encroaching on it? They know both sides of the case and would be best qualified to take steps to control it. That goes a bit away from the control exercised by this particular amendment, but the principle is just the same, namely that the local authority, the people in authority in the area concerned would be able to take a tremendous load off the hon. Minister’s shoulders or off any other body that has to exercise such national control. It is quite ridiculous to expect that the police of the country are going to exercise all this control. It is not even altogether a police duty until a local authority finds it necessary to call in the assistance of the police in connection with any of its measures of control. Again it comes back to the fact that the local authority on the spot would be in a position to call for that additional aid if they require it. The hon. Minister showed himself very amenable to reason with regard to the first suggestion that we put to him. I would commend to him for very careful thought and sympathetic consideration the amendment that has been put before him now and the plea that when he delegates authority, he should delegate the full authority and not just a part of it.

If this amendment were to be inserted in the clause, it would make the difference that the hon. the Minister would be abandoning his discretion. Because the Minister has the discretion in terms of the clause to hand over sport to a public body if he deems fit to do so. But if the hon. members now want the Minister, when he hands it over, also to abandon the discretion in regard to Sunday sport, it makes a big difference. I do not want to argue this at length, but I just want to say that we are aware that sport is practised privately throughout the whole country and it is, as hon. members have said, a matter for a man’s own conscience. These things happen all the time, and as the hon. member for Vereeniging has said, in so far as the law is concerned the Minister can do what he likes and this amendment will not make a very big difference. But I do think that one of the main reasons why the Minister should retain his discretion is that if Sunday sport were to become quite commercialized later, there are also other values we must retain and then the Minister must help to protect them. I do not think the Minister can abandon his discretion, even though it is only for the reason that the Minister has to ensure that the practising of Sunday sport does not get so out of hand that it will later become commercialized on Sundays, and if he abandons his discretion that may happen. I do not want to argue with hon. members on the question of whether it is every man’s conscience which should drive him, but I think for this reason alone the Minister dare not do it and I believe that in so far as this is concerned the Minister should also take into consideration that there is something like the general conception of the nation in regard to these matters, and in the last resort the Minister is surely the protector as far as that is concerned, and therefore I hope the Minister will not accept the amendment.

I think we are getting nearer together rather than further apart, although we continue arguing. I put a plea for one class of person who could well be affected here, in support of the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman), but there is another class of user entirely, and here I would like to refer to the statement made by the hon. Minister during the second reading when he said that this did not touch on the question of the seashore at all, because I contend that the hon. Minister is quite wrong in that. If he looks at sub-section (4) of 164 bis, it says—

Sub-section (1) is the sub-section which says that the Minister can declare any area to be a water sport control area, and according to this sub-section (4) it does in fact include the seashore. Now a little further down, in 164 ter, having proclaimed that, the hon. Minister then takes control of all the land as well as “the use of the land in such area between the surface of the water therein and the boundary thereof, for any activity contemplated in paragraph (c)”. And paragraph (c) refers to “navigation or any sport contemplated in paragraph (a)”, which in turn speaks of “navigation or any sport which is practised upon or in water”. In other words, Sir, this goes much further than anybody in this House has envisaged. The hon. member for Simonstown has put it quite plainly to the hon. Minister that he won’t be able to control this depart-mentally, because it would need such a huge department that he could not possibly implement the control which is given under this Bill, and he will have to delegate. Now when he delegates, he has already indicated that he does not want to control Sunday water sport or anything to do with it. He is not only going to control the water in these areas, he is going to control the land attached to these areas, whether it be the seashore, or land around dams, or estuaries and so on. The more you look at this thing, the bigger the area and the bigger the control becomes. I think at this stage, the hon. Minister would be very wise to ensure that the status quo remains, and the only way he can ensure that is by accepting this amendment, whereby he gives the local authorities the right to decide whether their seashore, whether the Durban Bay which is controlled by the hon. Minister of Transport, and so on, whether that, in fact, is open for Sunday sport or not, according to the wishes of the local authority. You see, the Minister can even lay down fees. Now obviously he is going to delegate that authority to the local authorities to levy fees for the storage of craft, or for the use of the land surrounding the water. Surely it does not mean anything more, it does not mean to include the option of the local authority, or the people in the area of a dam or an estuary to decide for themselves on the basis put forward by the hon. member for Simonstown (Mr. Gay) as to whether they want to indulge in Sunday sport or not. It is an assurance, and I am sure that the people of South Africa will appreciate it.

I have deliberately waited in order to give members on both sides an opportunity to express their opinions so as to be able to see how far they differ from one another. The hon. member for Umlazi (Mr. Lewis) said that they were coming closer to one another but it does not appear to me that they are coming closer to one another; it appears rather as though they are drifting further away from one another. The fact is that in my second-reading speech I gave the House the assurance that it was not my intention to use this Bill and the powers given to me thereunder to control Sunday sport. I think hon. members must accept that fact. If my assurance is of so little value that they now want me to give away the discretionary powers, which I can provide by regulation, in respect of one matter, then this appears to me to be tantamount to a motion of no confidence. I want to assure hon. members opposite. This Bill gives me the right to delegate certain of my powers. If I declare certain areas to be water sport areas, then I can delegate the powers which I have for control purposes, to other bodies which I select for as long as I want to and under conditions laid down by regulation. Even if I accept the amendment, it will mean nothing because I can still act in this way. If I want to restrict Sunday sport I can simply refuse to delegate these powers to a public body and I can leave the powers with the Department. There is nothing which compels me to delegate powers. If hon. members opposite want to go so far as to say that I as Minister who has these powers must be compelled at any time on application by a public body, a municipality or city council or provincial authority, or whatever the case may be, to delegate these powers, then it appears to me that they are going too far. Of course, I should not agree to that, just as little as I see the necessity for accepting this amendment. I want to repeat that even if I accept the amendment I can by-pass its provisions and make it worthless simply by refusing to delegate powers. I can simply ban any entertainment and any sport in this area, or I can have it controlled by the Department. I have said that it will be ineffectual in practice. I do not think that it will have the approval of the public and for this reason I shall delegate powers. I shall not withhold them unnecessarily. I am going to delegate powers to the bodies controlling those dams, at the places where that sport is practised and where I think such delegation is necessary, and the necessary regulations will then be issued. But I want to repeat that I shall not use this legislation either by way of regulation or otherwise for the purpose of restricting Sunday sport because there is legislation in this regard in the various provinces, even though that legislation is not the same in each province. As long as this legislation stands and as long as no other comprehensive legislation governing Sunday sport is passed for the whole of the Republic as such, I shall respect that legislation or ordinance.

I don’t propose to continue the discussion at any length, but there are two points raised by the hon. Minister which, I think, should be replied to. Firstly, I am well aware that the amendment as it is presently framed brings about a situation whereby if the hon. Minister chooses not to delegate powers at all, he, of course, retains the power to control sport on Sundays. I am well aware of that, but we cannot approach this problem from any other point of view, as the hon. Minister’s legal advisers will tell him, because the Minister cannot delegate powers that he has not got himself, and unless the hon. Minister retains the power to prohibit and control sport on Sundays, which is what the Bill contains at the present time, unless he retains that power, then of course he cannot delegate it, and unless we allow the hon. Minister to have that resilient power, he cannot of course delegate it to a local authority to have its “local option”. So we are in the position that no other form of amendment is open to us. That is why the hon. Minister can still retain that power, even in terms of our amendment, if he chooses not to delegate. The other point which I think requires a short answer is this: The hon. Minister says: Why in view of this assurance I have given that I do not propose to stop water sport on Sundays, why in view of that do we persist with our amendment. As I have said, we accept the hon. Minister’s assurance that that is not his intention, but the country does not run on ministerial assurances, however well intentioned they may be. The country runs on legislation, and the simple fact of the matter is that whilst we accept the assurance given by the hon. Minister, it is not binding on his successors, and in order to make the position clear, we believe that this amendment should still be accepted.

Amendment put and negatived (Official Opposition dissenting).

Clause, as printed, put and agreed to.

Remaining Clauses and Title of the Bill put and agreed to.

In the early part of this debate, the hon. the Minister made certain allegations in favour of the Bill. He pointed out certain defects which he thought were present in drug and drug control which he thought he could remedy with this Drug Control Bill. Now, Sir, most people who have knowledge of drugs and those who handle drugs, accept the principle that there is need for control by some competent authority. We feel that so long as the control is exercised purely in a scientific manner and is confined to a scientific manner, without extraneous principles being introduced, that nothing but good can flow from such a Bill. But when we look at the origin of this Bill and the speech of the hon. the Minister, we find that he constantly refers to the Snyman Commission on the high cost of medicine. What is more, in the Report of the Snyman Commission there is evidence that the commission felt that in some way or other this Drug Control Council could be used to control prices. Now, Sir, we feel that that is undesirable in a Bill of this nature. The State has certain means of controlling prices by its own methods and such methods should be used if it is necessary to control the price of drugs. When I mention that the most commonly used drug in the world to-day is the ordinary common salt which you have on your table, that common salt in the chemist shop will have to be controlled. When I mention that the food which is supplied to cattle and horses, namely bran, will have under certain circumstances to come under the control of this Act, and when I say that the usual powder that you see on the “melktert”, namely cinnamon, is also commonly used in the pharmacist’s shop, you will see how far-reaching can be the control which this Bill will exercise. Considerations of this character led the Medical Council to pass the following resolution and forward it to the hon. the Minister, namely, that the term “in the public interest”, which is not defined in the Bill but which is the reason why drug control is being exercised, “should be regarded amongst others as affecting the quality, the therapeutic efficacy, the safety and the presentation of the drug”. That was passed practically unanimously, I think by 20 votes to one, and that is a resolution of the official authority created by the State to give advice on scientific, medical and pharmaceutical matters to the hon. the Minister. We find also that the Federal Council of the Medical Association, which is representative of over 50 per cent of the doctors in this country, and probably 80 per cent of the doctors in general and ordinary practice in the country, passed a resolution which said—

In other words, the practising profession in the country is gravely disturbed as to the possible effects which this drug control can have upon the profession which is responsible, Sir, to the individual patient for his health. And this responsibility cannot be passed to anyone. The Drugs Control Bill will allow the Drugs Control Council to limit the number of drugs available to the public, to the doctors in their work for the public, and so long as in the words of the Medical Council it is based on the therapeutic efficacy, etc., and not on any other consideration, the council and the doctors cannot possibly object, because that will leave to the doctors freedom to prescribe what they in their wisdom believe to be the best for the individual patient, and the responsibility for that cannot be delegated, because no council can know what is the need of that particular patient. It cannot be delegated to the pharmacist. He has no discretion. He must dispense what the doctor orders. So we come back to the point that this Bill must not give to the Drugs Control Council any power to limit the right and the duty of the individual doctor to treat the individual patient in what he believes to be the correct manner. That is the basis of the faith which the individual patient has in his doctor. He knows that his doctor will do his best for him and he trusts him. Nothing must be allowed by State action to interfere between the patient and the doctor, and we have a strong suspicion that the failure of the hon. Minister to agree to define “in the public interest” means that this Bill is going to be used for purposes other than securing the therapeutic efficacy, the safety and the purity of the drugs prescribed.

Now I want to pass on to another item to which we would like to draw attention. The hon. Minister said when he introduced the Bill that the pharmaceutical manufacturers supply with their drugs information to the doctors. That is true. But what the hon. Minister also said was that this is the source from which the doctors obtain their information and knowledge. He went even further and he suggested that the pharmaceutical manufacturers are not accurate in the information that they supply. Sir, these are grave statements. Does the hon. Minister not realize that the doctors have spent none of them less than seven years in a university learning their profession? Does he not know that the code of ethics, the basis of knowledge to which the man must aspire, the responsibility which rests upon the doctor’s shoulders, the thought that he might make a mistake is ingrained in him and that he sieves the information that he receives through a fine sieve of knowledge and judgment? If we cannot trust men whom we have given a university training of not less than seven years, who are trained and taught by precept and example to observe a strict code, who can we trust? While there are possibly men who have difficulty in keeping up with knowledge as it moves, with knowledge in medicine and pharmacy advancing at a great rate, nevertheless they do go back frequently to the universities for refresher courses. The hon. Minister knows that. He provides refresher courses.

What percentage does go back?

I don’t know, but I do know this that the South African Medical Journal reaches nearly every doctor in the country and many of them attend lectures, especially those in the university towns. Nearly all belong to medical societies which are addressed regularly on subjects such as drugs. They meet each other, they discuss their findings and, in general, I say without fear of contradiction that every doctor does his best for his patient, and every doctor tries within the limit of his time to keep himself up-to-date, and while he does receive information from the pharmaceutical manufacturers, I personally have never met with misleading information, nor have I ever known a colleague to tell me that he has received misleading information.

There are other portions of the Bill which we disagree with. We feel that it will interfere with clinical research. Now this is a very grave charge for me to make. We are trying to do our share of research in this country. We are limited in funds. But at least we should have freedom to carry out that research. Any doctor or research worker (who may not be a doctor), who wishes to investigate qualities and actions of drugs should be free, within the limits of the strict professional code and within the limits which are exercised not by a drug council, but by the ethical code controlled through the Medical Council. They are the sole judges of what is right. This Drug Control Board cannot judge those things. It is not necessarily composed of sufficient practising doctors, and that again, we feel, is a fault in the Bill.

But that a Bill should be introduced which may perhaps be used for price control and be used also unwittingly, perhaps—because I hope the hon. Minister will accept amendments on that point—to prevent or to delay research, is unthinkable. There are other points which will be touched upon by other speakers, but I say also that the last thing which the profession will tolerate and which I believe the public will tolerate is the danger of the substitution of drugs, and that danger is inherent in this Bill. That anybody should attempt to substitute one drug for another when the doctor has prescribed the one is a gross interference with the rights of the individual—not the individual doctor but the individual who is ill and needs the service. It is no good the Minister saying that this drug, although it is in a different box and is made by a different maker, is really the same. We who practise medicine know that there are certain brands of certain products which have a certain definite action and which in some cases have certain side-effects which are desirable and in other cases undesirable. It is only in the discretion of the doctor, with his experience and his knowledge of that patient, to prescribe for that patient, and nobody should be permitted to exercise substitution. That danger is inherent in this Bill. Ask any housewife whether beef is always beef, no matter how it is cooked. Because that is what the man who substitutes one drug for another is saying. He says that although the label is different and the colour is different, it is still the same drug, and that is not true.

Lastly, we do not feel happy about the arrangement for appeals in cases of disagreement with the Drug Council. We feel that there are better methods in which appeals from the decisions of the council can be heard. That is an aspect in regard to which we will introduce amendments.

The hon. member for Durban (Central) (Dr. Radford) has made a very interesting speech to which I have listened attentively. There is not much in his speech that calls for criticism, except that in my view he may have exaggerated the position slightly in quoting examples of control. I think his fears as to the possible results are unfounded. I shall deal with some of the other points made by him in the course of my speech. It is quite clear, however, that he does in fact believe that there is a need for control, as do most other persons and bodies, and that we cannot continue along the present lines. In fact, the need for control over drugs for human consumption has been appreciated for years. We find that our legislation made provision for control as far back as 1928. For example, in the Medical, Dental and Pharmacy Act, in Section 83, the Minister was given the power to make regulations in respect of what at that time was called therapeutic substances. This measure authorized the Minister to make regulations which provided, in essence, that the drugs could not be used except under licence issued by the Department of Health. At first glance our method of control would appear to be fairly good, but this control affects only some 2,500 drugs, whereas there are already some 25,000 drugs on the market. There are other control measures that I could mention. I have in mind control over poisons and habitforming drugs and possibly harmful drugs over which further control was imposed in 1954; it was then provided, inter alia, that these drugs may not be used without a doctor’s prescription. As I have said, the control is there, but in actual fact all the existing control measures and regulations form part of the normal activities of the Department of Health; they do not cover the entire field; they cover only about 7| per cent of all the drugs on the market. It is clear that this problem has gradually assumed more and more alarming proportions. If we bear in mind that the modern drugs in particular that appear on the market are very active preparations with very active and frequently dangerous effects on the human body, and that more than 200 of these new preparations appear on the market every month, then I think we will all recognize the need for some new method whereby proper control can be exercised. One can readily appreciate that the Department of Health cannot control these drugs in the course of its ordinary duties. The Snyman Commission carefully considered this matter and expressed its concern about the lack of adequate legislation to ensure control over drugs. The commission emphasized the fact that there was legislation to impose control over veterinary drugs, but that there was no such legislation in the case of preparations for human use. That is why this Bill is based to a large extent on the recommendations of the commission. It looks as though the hon. member for Durban (Central) is greatly concerned about the fact that the Minister referred to this commission. It is an indisputable fact that there is a tremendous influx of drugs every month. Many of them consist of preparations with very complicated chemical compositions; they are highly active in their effects, and they may have very harmful effects on the human body. I maintain that it is impossible for the Department to keep track of all these developments and to see to it that proper control is exercised. To take action after a harmful preparation has already caused damage is just about all the Department can do. It is clear therefore that the task of control has become so comprehensive that it has become necessary to adopt more effective measures, and that is why this Bill introduces the idea of a very highly specialized and expert body to exercise the necessary control. I want to repeat that all parties concerned recognize the need for control and welcome control.

We find that this Bill contains certain principles. Firstly, I should like to mention the question of the establishment of an autonomous, expert body which will be responsible for the passing or condemnation of all drugs. The Bill contains the further principle that as a rule and where possible the recognized name will be used for a particular drug. The object of this provision, of course, is to assist the medical profession. The Bill also contains the principle of making available advice to doctors and chemists inasmuch as this body may advise the medical profession as regards the therapeutic value and the effects of a drug, and also how the drug is to be used. Finally, there is the further principle that this body will be responsible for the elimination of all harmful drugs.

There is nothing new about the idea of control. We find that there is similar control over drugs in many countries all over the world. For example, there is control in West Germany, Holland, Belgium, England, America, Canada and France. I have not examined the control measures applied in all these countries, but I was struck by the method used in France. It appears that the entire population there is highly satisfied wtih the system, which functions very efficiently. It is based mainly on a plan similar to the one contained in this Bill, namely the registration of all drugs. In addition, the principle is accepted that the manufacturer is held responsible for the effectiveness, quality and harmlessness of his drug. That principle is accepted in this Bill, too, and I am convinced that it will function very well in our country. In France inspectors are sent to the factories and the laboratories regularly, and doctors know that once a drug has been registered, it was manufactured under sound and acceptable conditions.

There is another point in connection with the French method of control that I want to mention: Regulations are used extensively there. I am prepared to admit that control by regulation is not popular; in fact, it is a very unpopular method of doing anything. But as far as this Bill is concerned, I am convinced that there will not be many complaints about the use of regulations. I believe that as far as this Bill is concerned, the whole matter is inherently of such a nature that it will be impossible to provide legislatively for every individual case. That is why I feel that extensive use will have to be made of regulations in this country as well. But I should like to point out that where regulations are to be made, it is specifically provided in this Bill that the council may not promulgate regulations unless such regulations have been published three months in advance. This will give all interested parties an opportunity to submit comments and representations in connection with the regulations. It is only after three months, after all possible representations have been made, that the board will have the right to promulgate such regulations. This offers all parties concerned the opportunity of having a say in the drafting of regulations. In my view, a basic democratic principle is contained in this provision and that everybody will have the opportunity of having a say in the drafting of the regulations. It is my personal conviction that we should be grateful to the Minister for the inclusion of this provision in the Bill.

I should like to say a few words now about the Drugs Control Council itself. It becomes clear when one examines the constitution of this council that it is intended to be a council of very high standing, an expert council, a specialized council, a body that will inspire trust. Its high standing is further emphasized by the fact that the council will not, as is usually the case, be nominated by the Minister but by the State President, who will also nominate the chairman and vice-chairman. I repeat that I am convinced that when one examines the constitution of the council, it is evident that it will be a very capable, scientific council of high standing, one which cannot but inspire trust.

As regards the period of office, the members will serve for five years. I regard this as a good period. A brief period of office with frequent changes would have been undesirable. The five-year period provides for continuity. I am particularly pleased that provision is being made that members may be reappointed after five years. It is clear when we consider the functions of this Drug Control Council that this council will carry a tremendous responsibility, since the doctors and the public will depend on the Control Council for protection. As is the case in France, the position will be that if the Control Council registers a drug, then it will bear the stamp of quality. That is why I say that a tremendous responsibility is being placed on the shoulders of the council, and that is why strict control will be necessary. But for my part I want to say that if we recognize the need for strict control, we should also recognize the need for judicious control. It is possible to exercise control too strictly and to curb competition unduly, with the result that we may bring about a situation which is diametrically opposed to what the Snyman Commission recommended; in other words, instead of bringing about a decrease in the prices of drugs, we may bring about an increase. I also suggest that if the control is too strict, research may be impeded. That is why I am pleading for judicious control.

I should also like to mention another aspect. I want to emphasize that every doctor is entitled to choose a particular drug for a particular patient and for the particular disease from which he is suffering. All doctors take an oath to do what is in the best interests of their patients at all times, and nobody can decide for the doctor what is good and proper; only the doctor himself can do so. But whilst admitting that there should be a choice, I also accept that doctors need not have an unlimited choice. I say therefore that as long as the doctor is left with a fair choice and is not restricted to one or two drugs, I feel that he will be satisfied; he will feel that he is able to perform his services unhindered. It is for these reasons that I am pleading for judicious and not too drastic control. I do not want to press this matter any further because I have faith in the expert, specialized council on which a very large percentage of doctors are to serve. I am convinced that members of this House will see the matter as my colleague over there and I see it and that is that this problem will be amply provided for.

While I am dealing with the question of control, I should like to ask for strict control in another aspect as well, particularly when it comes to false or doubtful advertisements and the distribution of drugs which are actually useless but which are represented to the gullible public as infallible cures for their particular diseases. These gullible people are exploited to a vast extent. We find that Bantu persons are sent to the Bantu areas; they are given white coats or jackets to give them a professional air, and the most inferior rubbish is palmed off on people at exorbitant prices on the pretext that it will cure all their ills. That is why I suggest that the council should be very strict in this respect. This measure as I said, holds out the possibility of doing what the medical profession has been begging for so many years, and that is to curb the activities of quacks in order to safeguard the public. There we have an opportunity of dealing a death blow to quackery.

Apart from control the Council has another valuable task to fulfil, and that is to register all drugs. But I should like to draw attention in particular to its duty to advise doctors and chemists with regard to the therapeutic value of drugs and instructions for their use. This will prove an important service, not only to chemists and doctors but to the entire public. In this connection I want to ask the Drug Control Council to bear in mind that its information in connection with various drugs need not necessarily derive from laboratories or scientific institutions or hospitals. I think the Council should bear in mind that there is a wide field from which it can gather information, and here I refer to the general practitioners whom one finds all over the country and who have gained experience of the various drugs. If the Council avails itself of that knowledge, it can be of great value to the profession and the public.

Then there is the Appeal Board. I am grateful that an appeal board is provided for in this Bill, an appeal board of high standing and absolute impartiality. There cannot be the least hint of Government domination, and I am convinced that all of us are grateful for that. In fact, I maintain that all of us who are doctors should handle drugs very carefully and with great respect, since we know that there is always the possibility of a sudden, unexpected effect, even in the case of drugs that we know well and that we regard as quite harmless. These drugs may have very unexpected effects on particular patients, for individuals differ. That is why we should always use drugs with care. I want to conclude by saying that we should bear in mind that accidents and even tragedies will still occur—even though the drugs we use may seem quite innocuous—but we should realize that that is the price that mankind has to pay for demanding development and progress.

I have heard the Minister and two other speakers and I think the time has come for us to adjourn this debate and to send the Bill to a Select Committee. It seems to me from what has been exposed up to now that a lot that is contained in this Bill should have been studied a little more than it has been by the Minister.

Let us take the position as we find it at the moment. With all the spectacular advance that has been made in the field of drug production and experimentation, we find that the chemist and druggist who sells the article has deteriorated in status. That is not as it should be, because the chemists and druggists are professional men who have spent many years in being trained and who have proved themselves to be an essential link between the patient and the doctor. As things are in this country to-day, we find this state of affairs that people go to the grocer to ask for stomach medicine and they go to the chemist for Christmas cards. We have allowed this sort of thing to progress in our country. Why should it be necessary for chemists and druggists who have reached this high proficiency in their profession to have to eke out a living by selling fancy goods, handbags, etc. in their shops? In some chemist shops it is so bad that one wonders whether one is entering a bazaar or a dispensary.

When we talk about the control of drugs, I think the time has come for us also to control the sale of drugs. We should say that the chemist and druggist shall sell the medicines and the grocer shall sell groceries. How long can we go on allowing unfair competition from the large chain-stores who sell over the counter all sorts of medicines? It is not even sold over the counter any more because the customer can take it off the shelf himself, and without any control at all, in many cases. How can we expect the chemist and druggist to make a living if this state of affairs is allowed to exist? I do not know whether or not the Minister is going to do anything about this, but the time has come where he has to do something about it, otherwise we will find much opposition to this kind of legislation from the people who are selling the drugs.

The Minister made some strange observations during his speech. He gave us an example of what can happen if you do not control drugs properly, and he mentioned thalidomide and its tragic consequences. Let us just think for a moment of the millions and millions of prescriptions which have been written by doctors and dispensed by chemists over the years. How many times has an accident occurred? I think it is of the utmost importance for us to realize that the dispensing of medicine in the hands of the chemists we have in this country to-day is of the highest order. There is nothing that anyone can put a finger on to show they are not doing their job properly. When we talk of control. I hope it means that it is not the chemists and the way they are dispensing medicines who should be controlled. What should be controlled are the places from which we buy medicines. The Minister has also said, and I think quite rightly, that the main object of drug production to-day by the great concerns is to make profits. Why did he not tell us about the Burroughs Welcome Organization? Why did he not mention people like that who produce the highest grade of medicines and drugs and vaccines and not a penny of that money is used by the directors for anything else but to go back into research? That is the sort of thing we want to encourage. The trouble with the Bill as it is now is that the Minister has been influenced by the recommendations of the Snyman Commission as far as price control is concerned, and that should be the last of our worries when it comes to the efficacy of drugs. If he wants to find out why drugs cost a lot, let him employ people from the Department of Economic Affairs and let them trace the origins and the reasons for the high prices. We all agree, and there can be no gainsaying it, that it costs millions to produce a drug. I find no fault with the fact that companies try to get their money back. How many thousands and thousands of drugs are experimented with and discarded before the right one is found and put on to the market? Surely that must cost millions of pounds. Surely, Mr. Speaker, that must cost millions of rand! We know, and it has been said over and over again by people in the know, that there is only one commodity on the market to-day that comes down with use from a maximum level, from the starting price when the commodity is introduced to the market. That commodity, Sir, is drugs. When I first used penicillin I think I paid as much as R6 for only a small bottle. But to-day I think we are paying about 15c. Is there any other commodity that has come down in price in as spectacular a manner as that? And that without price control. Does the price of bread come down? Does the price of butter come down? Does the price of a suit or a pair of shoes come down? No, Sir. To the contrary. Prices are going up and up all the time. Over the years drugs have proved to be efficient and as a result they are in demand. Yet they have come down in price. For that reason I say that when the hon. the Minister speaks of public interest the last thing that should cross his mind is how much the drug costs. What should weigh heaviest with him in his whole approach should be the efficacy, the purity, and all the other aspects of drug production and drug use that can benefit, and only benefit, the patient. If the hon. the Minister does that then I say he has done his job. In the Bill the hon. the Minister has created a Board of Control. In the context of this Bill there is no guarantee that this Control Board will be governed by scientists or experts. Mr. Speaker, I say to the Minister that even if he had 11 experts on this Control Board—not five but 11 experts—nevertheless this board can only do its job properly if it has sufficient personnel who are going to do the actual research and testing on the drugs. Now, Sir, I want to ask the hon. the Minister where he is going to get the personnel from. The Minister cannot buy them for money today. The Minister cannot import them. What is happening in our country to-day? I regret to say—and this is of course common knowledge—there has been an exodus of brains from the Republic. We must try and stop this brain drain, Sir. What will be the use of having a Drugs Control Board and we have not got the personnel to see that the information which is conveyed to the board is efficient?

If the Minister can guarantee to me that he has the personnel to do the job properly, I will say to hon. members on this side that they should support this Bill 100 per cent. But before he can give that guarantee. I can only support this Bill with reservations, in the hope that he will have sufficient personnel in our country to carry out the job which he sets out to do here in a proper and efficient manner.

If they cannot do it, what will happen then?

I do not know. I do not know what use the Control Board will be. They will have to implement the other provisions of the Bill. They will, e.g. have to see that bottles are labelled properly; that the ethical brand name or generic name is stamped on the bottles. These are important aspects. For all the years doctors have been writing prescriptions without fear of mistake and without any control being exercised by the hon. the Minister.

We are speaking about control. Well, I should like the hon. the Minister to control those people who sell quack medicines; people who advertise nonsense in the newspapers and over the radio. If we can control this type of person, he will do the country a service, Mr. Speaker. But I do not know whether he intends doing it. I have looked through the Bill, but I fail to see how he can really efficiently control this sort of thing. It was mentioned here by the hon. member for Odendaalsrus that people go into Bantu reserves, or into compounds, and they buy all sorts of rubbish in the hope that it will help them. Yet, knowing this, the hon. the Minister implies in this Bill that he is going to control the number of drugs which are supposed to do the same thing. In other words, Sir, if there are going to be more than, for instance, six or seven brands of aspirin, he is going to decree that there can only be three brands.

Where do you see that?

You have obviously not read the Bill. Mr. Speaker, I am not going to lecture the hon. member for Brakpan on this Bill to-night. But to-morrow I will spend a few minutes with him and I will show him all these things that are in this Bill. I will show it to him—I will explain it all to him. This Bill has been on our desks for weeks past now, and if the hon. member does not know yet that this is the sort of thing that is implied in this Bill, then he has simply been unable to interpret the substance of the Bill.

You are indulging in wishful thinking.

Wishful thinking? If I had to think about this matter, and I had the control of this Bill, it would not be set out as it is now. That is for certain, Sir.

If the hon. the Minister is sincere, if he really wants the public to benefit by this Bill, why then does he not insert a clause defining “public interest”? Why does he exclude that? Why did he not put in a definition of “public interest”?

Will you define “public interest”?

Yes, I will define it. Mr. Chairman, I would say that public interest would depend on the efficiency of a drug. Also, the drug should help to cure disease in the quickest and best possible manner. If the hon. the Minister can build a definition on what I have just said, then, in my view, it will be sufficient, it will be adequate. But the Minister has excluded a definition for one reason only, namely so that he can bring in a certain measure of price control into this Bill. And I do not like that, Mr. Chairman. I do not like it. I do not think that any person who knows the value of drugs; any person who is used to prescribing drugs; any person who is used to dispensing drugs will agree that price control should be a factor, that it should be an issue, in this type of drug control.

If the hon. the Minister is concerned about the price of drugs—as he said he was— then I say he should make an investigation in those institutions that supply drugs to patients, especially nursing homes, to mention but one instance. He should see why a nursing home which buys a drug from a chemist shop should be allowed to make an additional profit on that drug before it is supplied to a patient at the nursing home. Things like this become annoying to a patient, Mr. Speaker. It is not the original cost of the drug that worries him so much. No, Sir. What does annoy him is the unfair cost, through second and third hands. This process raises the price of drugs. I do not think there are any chemists that are party to this practice, Sir. I do not think there exists a chemist who would allow himself to be a party to a transaction of this nature, to this sort of trading that is going on all the time. The medicine is dispensed in the chemist shop, it is sent to a nursing home for use on a patient, and by the time the patient receives the account for the drug another 20 per cent or 30 per cent has probably been added to the price. That, Mr. Speaker, is the sort of thing we must try and control.

Doctors in the various councils have raised objections to this Bill. The hon. member for Durban (Central) has read a portion of the resolution that the Federal Council has set out. I should like the hon. the Minister to know exactly what resolution was passed at this Federal Council meeting, Sir. I quote from “Medical Proceedings” No. 5, dated 13 March 1965—

Mr. Speaker, in the short time that I have been speaking I think I have said enough to ask the Minister to consider very carefully, when we come to the Committee Stage, the amendments which we on this side of the House are going to put forward. These amendments will be put forward in the hope that this Bill will become an improved measure. If we leave it as it is now, it will contain too many flaws. I hope the hon. the Minister will have an opportunity of studying the amendments which we are going to put on the Order Paper, and I hope that when the Committee Stage arrives, he will agree to what we suggest.

I have listened very attentively to what hon. members have had to say about this Bill thus far. Some of them made worthwhile suggestions and others not. Control over drugs as such is nothing new. There has for some years now been some measure of control over drugs in South Africa. In most overseas countries legislation was passed a long while ago making the registration of medicines compulsory.

We have heard a great deal over the past while about expensive medicines, and dissatisfaction has been expressed in this regard. But we have not always borne in mind the fact that medical science has made tremendous progress since the Second World War. We find this to be the case in all spheres of medical science. We find this progress in the surgical field and in the pharmacological division of medical science. Consider the progress that has been made over the past few years in regard to heart and artery operations, operations which have only become possible over the past few years and then only as a result of the progress which has been made in the pharmaceutical sphere. This progress in medicine has made these operations possible. Consider the vaccines which have been made available to humanity over the past years. We can think back to-day on the years when many small children died or were crippled as a result of meningitis. This is no longer the case to-day. The same thing holds good for diphtheria, enteric fever, tuberculosis and other diseases for which vaccines have since been discovered. We must consider the shortening of the duration of diseases which has been brought about by the discovery of the sulfa drugs and other antibiotics. It has not only been the individual who has benefited in this regard; the whole country has benefited because by shortening the duration of diseases it is no longer necessary for a worker to be absent from his employment for a long while. This has also resulted in the fact that over the past 20 years human life expectancy has been increased by ten years. This fact is also of great benefit to the country.

But these benefits did not materialize without research—research by the medical profession, by biologists chemists and pharmacologists. It is also understandable that this research should have cost vast sums of money as well as a great deal of work. We are dealing here with legislation for the control over medicines and I should like to confine myself to the pharmaceutical aspect of this matter.

The first question which comes to mind in this connection is whether it is necessary for a control council of this nature to be established. As far as I am concerned, I want to say that it is necessary. A doctor does not always have the time or the facilities to-day to go into the merits of every new drug. Accordingly, he accepts the information which is given to him by the traveller or else he accepts the information contained in the pamphlets which are sent to him by these pharmaceutical undertakings. The establishment of a council to exercise proper control over these drugs can only be to the advantage of the doctor as well as of his patients. There are a few thoughts in this connection that I should like to submit to the hon. the Minister for his consideration.

I want to ask in the first instance that the hon. the Minister should ensure that the registrar of the Council is not simply an administrative clerk. I should like to see the registrar being a doctor with a pharmacological background. He should be an eminent person, a person who can study the literature, the clinical tests and the research which has already been done in overseas countries and arrive at a judicious decision. If he considers that the clinical tests made and experience gained overseas are satisfactory, he must be able to recommend to the executive committee of the council—a committee which I hope will meet every month—that a particular drug be registered. When he is not satisfied, he must recommend that further tests be carried out. I should also like to see this registrar having a well-equipped laboratory at his disposal and sufficient funds to enable him to undertake tests and analyses. He has to report to the executive committee which can then in its turn report to the full council.

If we follow this procedure we shall be able to eliminate a great deal of delay. We shall be able to have the new drugs on the market sooner and this will be to the advantage of the public as a whole. What I am suggesting is not in conflict with the provisions of the Bill. Clause 12 provides that the Minister can issue any instructions to the registrar. The duties of the registrar as laid down in Clause 15 are not in conflict with my suggestion either.

I want to point out in the second place that where companies spend a great deal of money on the manufacture of a particular drug, those companies are entitled to recover their capital investments plus a reasonable profit. No right-thinking person would object to this. But I think that there are companies which are allowed patent rights for a period of ten years. I think that this period is too long. It ought to be shortened to about four or five years. This will give them the opportunity to recover their expenses. In my opinion this is a better method of control than on the grounds of the public interest. In my opinion this public interest provision will cause many difficulties with companies.

Thirdly, I want to tell the hon. the Minister that I am grateful that the uncontrolled advertising of “cure-alls” is now to be restricted. We read daily in the newspapers or we hear over the radio of this or that pill which will cure anything from sore eyes to bladder ailments or ingrowing toenails. Control will now be exercised in this regard in terms of this Bill.

What about rejuvenating pills?

I do not know. If the hon. member has found that he has been tricked in this regard, we shall perhaps have to control them as well! I shall move an amendment to Clause 1 at the Committee Stage.

In the meantime I want to say that it still bothers me that we are seeking to control drugs while the channels by means of which these drugs are distributed to the public are as yet under no control. At the moment any shop or supermarket can sell patent or proprietary medicines across the counter to the public. I do not think that we should allow this state of affairs to continue. We expect a chemist to undergo a course of three years at university and thereafter to have a further year’s practical training before he can be registered as a chemist. Because we expect him to be so highly qualified I think it is our duty to ensure that he performs the task for which he is qualified. They and not the shops must sell these approved medicines to the public.

It is not yet clear to me how the knowledge which this council is going to gain will be made available to doctors, dentists and so forth. I do not know whether the hon. the Minister has perhaps in mind that this knowledge should be circulated by means of a monthly pamphlet or perhaps through the medium of the official professional periodicals.

In conclusion I want to thank the hon. the Minister for this legislation. I am sure that it will meet an urgent and necessary need in our country.

I was very pleased indeed to hear the remarks made by the hon. member for Geduld. The opinions he expressed have, I think, been adequately endorsed by the hon. member for Rosettenville. It is pleasing that these remarks should have come from a fellow profession, remarks to the effect that the time is ripe for the control of medicine to rest fully in the hands of chemists and druggists, as far as its distribution is concerned and also that some consideration should be given to the status of chemists and druggists. I am grateful to these two gentlemen for the opinions they have expressed in this regard.

The hon. member for Geduld also referred to the status of the registrar. That is a question which was adequately dealt with in the Snyman Report. In that report it is suggested that the registrar of the drugs control board should be a chemist and druggist. There is no such provision in this Bill but I do think the Minister should adopt that recommendation.

Clause 12 deals with the appointment of the registrar.

But there is no mention there of the registrar having to be a chemist and druggist! As I said, this is a recommendation which emanated from the Snyman Commission.

I think I am correct when I say that the pharmaceutical profession as a whole is anxious to see that some form of control is exercised over the distribution of medicine and it also accepts the necessity for public protection. Hence the pharmaceutical profession is prepared to accept the additional responsibilities as well as the many restrictions which may flow from the application of this measure. I do appeal to the Minister, however, that wherever possible he should accept amendments, which will make for a smoother working of the Bill. Such amendments will be proposed during the Committee Stage.

The Minister in his opening remarks said that new medicines were coming on the market at a rate of about 200 per month. I must take issue with the Minister on this. The information which has been given to me and which comes from a very good source does not indicate that the figure mentioned by the Minister is correct. I take it that the Minister was referring to all countries and not only to South Africa when he made that statement. According to my information, about 356 new remedies are being placed on the market every year. In a vast country like the U.S.A. the number of specialities which have been introduced during the last few years by 51 of the leading drug houses in the United States are: in 1959 —54; 1960—39; 1961—34; 1962—29 and in 1963 only 15. It would seem therefore that the number of new remedies being placed on the market is not as large as the Minister seems to believe.

The terms of reference of the Snyman Commission were to investigate the high cost of medical services and of medicines. It presupposed therefore that the cost of medicines was high. Ample evidence has, however, been deduced subsequently, to prove that that supposition was not altogether accurate. As far as this Bill is concerned, I do not think it will have a direct effect on the cost of medical services. It might have such an effect as far as the cost of medicines is concerned. I wonder whether the provisions of Clause 35 do not have the opposite effect. This clause deals with the regulations laying down the maximum fee which can be levied in regard to the registration of medicines. Well, the maximum fee is as high as R100. I do not consider it as being correct that a body of the nature of the one that is proposed in this Bill should have the power to impose such a high fee, because by this means the operating costs of the council are being placed on one section of the community only, i.e. the sick. I say this because somewhere along the line of distribution, this additional fee which the manufacturer will have to pay, will be passed on to the public. I feel that the costs of the work of this council should be borne by the whole nation and that the money should be provided by Parliament. I do not consider that the object of this council should be to justify its own existence from a financial point of view.

On this question of cost reduction, the Snyman Commission had other concrete suggestions to make. I should like briefly to refer to one which apparently has been overlooked until now, although it is deserving of attention. I refer here to the question of import duty. The Commission found that there was no justification for the imposition of an import duty on essential medicines, medicines which are not and cannot be manufactured in South Africa. Neither is the duty justified in respect of raw materials required for the production of such medicines. Let us take a concrete example, i.e. medicines ordered by a doctor on prescription. In many cases a 20 per cent duty is charged. So the ultimate price to the consumer is increased by as much as 20 per cent. I think the time has come for .the Minister to use his influence with the Minister of Finance to see that the imposition of a duty on medicines which cannot be manufactured in South Africa should be stopped.

What does that mean in terms of money?

The effect of that in Rands and cents would be that a preparation which is being retailed to-day at R3.12 would retail at R2.60, i.e. a saving of 52c. That would be the position if the duty imposed at the point of entry is removed. This constitutes a substantial reduction.

I believe there is one aspect of the Bill which will tend to reduce prices, i.e. the provisions of Clause 15 dealing with the question of an approved name—in other words the internationally recognized name. It is interesting to note that this particular term is now being defined. In Clause 18 the use of an approved name is taken a step further. There the conditions are laid down under which the approved name can be used on labels and in advertisements. The intention here I believe is to encourage doctors to prescribe preparations by the approved name because in many cases the cost of brand name articles can be higher than the equivalent article under an approved name. There are, however, two sides to this question. Here I want to read a very apposite quotation from a journal published in the United Kingdom, a journal known as The Practitioner. This particular quotation is headed “Generic Names” but I am going to substitute for it “Approved Names” because this term is more appropriate. The quotation reads—

I said that there were two sides to this question. There are many factors to be considered when it comes to the question of deciding on the point of a product being supplied under an approved name. There is the question of potency, of compatibility, of purity, etc. It must be borne in mind that as far as potency and purity are concerned, analysis alone offers no assurance of equavalency. In this connection I should like to quote from a publication by the Pharmaceutical Council of New York. This is from a booklet called “The Importance of Pharmaceutical Know-how”. The quotation is as follows—

This brings me to the term “public interest”, a term which has been referred to by hon. members on this side of the House. It is a term which is mentioned in the Bill in four different places—in Clauses 15, 16, 23 and 25. I believe that the main principle in this Bill should be the welfare of the public. I also believe that the interpretation of “public interest” should be defined in the Bill itself, to make absolutely sure that the aspects relating to prices and price control will not be a function of this particular Bill. Some of us believe that it may be the intention to institute some form of control which will embody four major aspects: purity, formulation, presentation and price. I know that my medical colleagues here have taken strong exception to any limitation that should be applied to any drug on the basis of price, and in freedom of choice, in so far as the medical practitioner is concerned. I do not believe that this should be a function of this Drug Council. While on the subject of prices and cost I want to refer to the question of the registration fee. I have already indicated that the maximum fee will be R100, a fee which I think is excessive.

Here we have a good example for the purpose of comparison. We have the Fertilizers, Farm Feeds, Seeds and Remedies Act of 1947. In this Act agricultural remedies are dealt with on a similar basis as this Bill proposes to deal with drugs for human use. The registration fee for an agricultural remedy is only R4. There is a provision for 50c per annum for a renewal fee but it nevertheless is much less than the registration fee proposed in this Bill. This is something which the Minister should bear in mind when the matter is again considered in Committee Stage. I appeal to the Minister not to create a situation where the sick will be called upon, albeit indirectly, to contribute to the costs of this council.

There is another aspect of the Act relating to agricultural remedies to which I have referred. It also deals with control. Since its promulgation in 1947, 1,800 remedies have been registered under the Act. It is interesting to see that the necessity for supervision under the Act has been accepted by the Minister of Agricultural Technical Services when he, in reply to a question from me earlier this Session said that control was being exercised, but that it was the intention to appoint eight full-time inspectors to deal with the sale and marketing of agricultural remedies. That is in respect of 1,800 remedies only! We are told that the council proposed in this Bill will ultimately deal with approximately 35,000 remedies! So obviously there would have to be control, supervision and policing under the Bill. I know that Clause 26 makes provision for the appointment of inspectors but here I want to point out that I do not believe that adequate control in terms of this Bill will be possible especially in view of the staff position in the Department of Health. In this respect the Minister told me in reply to a question that his overall staff position was adequate. I do not believe therefore that the inspectorate staff will be able to cope with the control and supervision under this Bill.

I now want to deal briefly with the composition of the Council, i.e. Clause 3. I believe that the composition proposed can be improved by stipulating that the appointments should be restricted to registered people, people registered under Section 22 of the Medical Dental and Pharmacy Act. In other words, the majority of people on the Council would then be medical practitioners, dentists and chemists and druggists. These are professions which are vitally concerned with the implementation of provisions of this Bill. I am sure the Minister realizes that there is no room on this Council for a faddist, or for someone who may have strange ideas. The decisions to be made by this Council must be realistic decisions. Here I want to relate what can happen if we had someone on the Council with revolutionary ideas on the question of drug control.