I move—

1. (1) on Tuesday, 16th August, and Tuesday, 23rd August, after 4.30 p.m.;
2. (2) on Friday, 19th August, and Friday, 26th August, after 12 o’clock noon; and
3. (3) on and after Tuesday, 6th September, for the remainder of the Session.

Mr. Speaker, the meaning of this motion is that apart from to-day and Friday, on only two further sitting days during this Session will private members’ business have precedence. I am very reluctant to take away the rights of private members, but I am afraid that in this case it is quite unavoidable. The Government would like this Session to end round about the third week in October, and as the Estimates, together with the financial measures, will take approximately 190 hours, very little time is left for some urgent legislation which must be passed during this Session. In fact, it might even be necessary for Parliament to sit additional hours apart from those hours laid down in the Standing Rules and Orders. However, that is a matter which will be decided upon later in the Session. The Opposition has a list of these Bills which must be passed this Session, and they are aware that a number of these Bills are quite contentious and will entail quite a lot of discussion. Therefore, as I say, it is quite unavoidable that this motion is moved to-day, and I hope to have the support of the House.

Motion put and agreed to.

As has been evident from the discussion up to now, this Bill has met with fairly general approval, and consequently it is somewhat strange that we have had such a long drawn-out discussion in this House during the Second-Reading debate. Since this largely non-political measure has received such a large measure of support, one could perhaps have contented oneself with matter-of-fact discussions during the Committee Stage on any amendments which hon. members might want to introduce. However, one advantage of this Second-Reading debate has been that it has afforded ample opportunity to members of the House of Assembly to make their non-contentious maiden speeches. For the rest we are, in actual fact, merely following in the wake of the hon. the Minister and the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. When the debate was adjourned at six o’clock last night. I had pointed out that emergency planning meant, inter alia, the safeguarding of the population in times of disaster—be it in times of war or peace—against acts of God and against disasters resulting from war, and that it was a disturbing fact of modern warfare that if the vital areas of a country’s war potential had to be destroyed, sacrificing the lives of even hundreds of thousands of women and children seemed to be legitimate tactics.

Of the numerous possible disasters which can befall a society we have already mentioned large-scale incendiarism, the destruction of food and water supplies, the disruption of lights and power supplies, as a result of which transport will be paralysed, and the impairment of the health of the people through infection by germs, sabotage, etc. The object of this Bill is to enable us to combat these things as effectively as possible. We all know that in the event of a world war the aim would be to bring the drama to its conclusion within a few months, if possible, and in order to achieve that the fiercest struggle will be waged behind the front lines. That is where the fiercest struggle will be waged and where the main blow will be struck. So it is really behind the front lines that defence and security measures will have to be taken, as is contemplated in this Bill, and that must be done not by taking action only after hostilities have commenced, but by taking precautionary measures during times of peace.

Those are, inter alia, the objects and purposes of this Bill. The wide range of possible emergencies is demonstrated in this Bill by the reference to the Public Safety Act, Act No. 3 of 1953, the Defence Act. Act No. 44 of 1957, and the General Law Amendment Act. Act No. 76 of 1962, the latter referring more specifically to various forms of sabotage. In order to be able to deal with these emergencies effectively, it is necessary to grant comprehensive authority to the hon. the Minister. I am deliberately using the word “authority” instead of “powers”, as objections are frequently raised against the granting of powers to a Minister in terms of an Act. In order to be able to achieve the objects of this Bill, comprehensive authority is required, such as the authority to compel people to give evidence in order to obtain essential information, the authority to expropriate private possessions and property, and the authority to make use of the services of existing industries and organizations whenever it may be necessary in order to be able to take successful action. This is where the general public is being afforded a golden opportunity to co-operate and by so doing to provide protection and assistance to the inhabitants of the Republic of South Africa and to prevent civil disruption, should the need arise. But on the other hand, as we have found in the past, this very aspect will be a happy hunting-ground for those who are going to protest on the basis that too many powers have, allegedly, been granted to the Minister and that that constitutes interference with human rights. Persons who customarily adopt wrong-headed attitudes will seize at every such opportunity which is afforded to render service to the people, in order to raise protests on farfetched grounds, protests which are often based on deliberate misapprehension and egoism. Let us hope, however, that that will not happen in this instance, although the insertion of Clauses 7 and 11 (2) in this Bill seems, prophetically, to point to a remedy which can be applied in the case of the reluctant and the wrong-headed.

Considerable attention has to be given to the training aspect in connection with this Bill. My interpretation is that both the protectors and the protected will have to receive training. The protectors will have to receive advanced training in the matters summarized in Clause 3 (1), sub-paragraphs (i) to (x), in order to be able effectively to carry out the provisions of Clause 3 (1) (a) and (b), i.e. the aims and objects and the steps for the achievement thereof as summarized in this Bill. On the other hand, those who are to be protected will have to be instructed in the primary principles of the dangers which may threaten them, the dangers to which they may be exposed; they will have to be taught to carry out orders promptly without creating panic. Practical problems will be experienced with age categories in connection with the provision of training and training courses for all concerned. We are thinking of, inter alia, the aged, the elderly, adults, teenagers and children; this information and training must be provided to all of them. As far as the school-going population is concerned, instruction must be given to high school and primary school pupils, and it must also be given to pre-school children. Extra-mural training must be provided to the citizens in general and intra-mural training to those attending schools. Both the protectors and the protected must be able to act militaristically. as it were, i.e. with military precision, care, thoroughness and promptness. In the schools such, training courses may possibly be linked up with cadet detachments and first-aid sections for boys and girls. Those courses can provide practical training to the young people by means of the planning of mock disaster conditions which then have to be combated.

Not only do I want to thank the hon. the Minister for the timeous introduction of this Bill, but I also want to congratulate him on the general support he has received—except of course for the opposition from the hon. member for Houghton, which he must find very reassuring. I say that he must find it reassuring, because it proves that he is on the right track. This Bill, which is being introduced for the benefit of the entire South African community, of all sections of the population, deserves the wholehearted support of this House and deserves to be passed with acclaim.

Mr. Speaker, may I take this first opportunity of thanking you and, through you, the Secretary of this House and the officials for the assistance and helpful guidance that you make available to the new members of this House. I am sure that you have correctly emphasized to us the responsibilities and the privileges of membership of this House, with its customs and traditions so deeply rooted in history.

Sir, I follow in the footsteps, as representative of the Green Point constituency, of a distinguished South African, Major Piet van der Byl, and I am sure that he would wish me to do the hospitable thing this afternoon and that is, as the member for Green Point, to mention again that this House assembles within that boundaries of that constituency. I am sure the hon. member for Krugersdorp will not take it amiss if I react to his remarks yesterday when he referred to the hon. member for East London (North) and when I say that we in Green Point, as hospitable as we are, would find some pleasure in the erosion, by electoral processes, of the numbers that sit opposite us in this House.

Sir, I wish to deal with two aspects of the Bill before us, aspects which have reference to the preparation of aspects of our life prior to the coming into being or the existence of a state of emergency or the happening of a disaster. The first is to refer to the position of the hospital facilities, and the beddage which exists in the Republic at the present time. In doing so I wish to emphasize how necessary it is to ensure that the hospital facilities are adequate, particularly when one looks at the recent occurrence in Johannesburg where a hospital such as Baragwanath had, within a very short time, to have facilities available to deal with something like 400 casualties after a train accident. One knows that it is possible in planning to anticipate in time of war that a certain offensive will result in so many casualties and to prepare the hospital and medical facilities in advance as one would prepare the other aspects, but when it comes to dealing with this particular Bill, one will have to deal, as the title itself emphasizes, with an emergency. I want to draw the attention of the Minister, in preparing his blue-print of preparedness in South Africa, to the situation as it exists so far as hospital accommodation is concerned. Sir, I have taken these figures from the current capital budgets of the four provinces. The Minister will find that there are planned in the four provinces extensions to hospital facilities at a total cost of R131,857,000. The amount which has been expended to date is R34,000,000 leaving R83,000,000 or 67 per cent of the work still to be done. That, Sir, has regard to work to provide facilities which are required now, not in the future or during a period of emergency. These figures which I have given exclude hospitals in the Bantu homelands, and the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development will know what commitments his Department has to provide hospitals for the Bantu people in the Bantu areas. This represents a colossal financial demand on this country. The rate at which we are building represents a rate of 8 per cent of the total requirements each year. That means that it is going to take the Provinces, with the finances now available to them, something like ten years to build what is required to-day. Sir, I realize the difficulties of the Minister of Finance in making more funds available for this work and at the same time not neutralizing his anti-inflationary measures, but the demand is there and the urgency is there and I feel that I should draw it to the attention of the hon. the Minister. The whole preparation of the blue-print and its execution must depend on the sufficiency of the facilities existing for normal peace-time conditions. I want to say that in the Republic at the present moment those facilities do not exist as far as hospitals are concerned. Sir, the Minister may ask in what manner this can be dealt with. I suggest that there are two ways. The first is a speeding up of research into the method of construction of hospitals, which has been in the hands of the C.S.I.R. for a long time but it has not yet reached the stage of definite guidance to the Provinces. The second is the expansion and construction of what one might call convalescent hospitals to which patients can be decanted from expensive specialist hospitals for the period of their recuperation under specialized nursing, without the need of the facilities of an expensive hospital. I mention these matters because I think they are important to the planning to meet an emergency.

The second point is the provision in the Bill, under Clause 9, which precludes those who are on the reserve of officers from even volunteering for enrolment for duties for other services envisaged under this measure. I am not opposed to this but I wonder whether the Minister of Defence can give us an assurance in this House that that list of reserve of officers is being reviewed and re-categorized from time to time. I need hardly mention that some of us who appear on that list on the reserve of infantry officers, are not as agile as we used to be when we were placed on the list, and one wonders, although there is a reregistration every year, to what extent the reserve of officers is reviewed with a view to those people being categorized for services, in a time of emergency, other than those for which they were used at a younger age. I wonder whether the Minister of Defence particularly could not take the House into his confidence in that regard and tell us whether that is being done. I am sure that in that regard the ex-service organizations in this country would make themselves and their organizations available to the Minister and help him in so far as it may be necessary. I refer particularly to the Moths and the South African Legion, in that regard. I mention these two matters to-day because I do believe that they are urgent matters. They are measures which are necessary and of primary importance in any preparations to meet an emergency. In my view they are basic to the planning of any emergency scheme or to deal with an emergency and they are matters which, I am sure, would enjoy the support of all sections of our people in South Africa.

In the first place, it is a great privilege to congratulate the hon. member for Green Point on his first speech in this House. He had the unenviable task of speaking on a matter which has been exhaustively discussed in this House and yet succeeded in introducing new viewpoints. He is an exceptionally experienced politician and I am sure he will be able to put that experience to good use in this House.

Mr. Speaker, there has been some facile criticism by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition on the fact that the hon. the Minister had already made so much progress with this Directorate of Planning before legislation was introduced. Let me say at once that we are perhaps all grateful that conditions in our country are of such a nature that one’s criticism in this regard can be of an academic nature. But, Sir, if an emergency arose and the necessary planning had not been carried out, there would be severe criticism in this House because the necessary planning had not been finalized. We should therefore be grateful to the hon. the Minister that this co-ordinating directorate has reached such a state even before it will be recognized in law.

As regards the Minister’s powers in terms of this measure, I want to refer briefly to a few matters. In his Second Reading speech the hon. the Minister mentioned quite rightly that it would be uneconomic and impracticable to erect shelters and underground shelters on a large scale. I want to appeal to-day to the relevant sub-department to concentrate, in accordance with the hon. the Minister’s policy, in particular on organizing the evacuation of our population to the rural areas and other open areas. We are very fortunate in having these open spaces. I should therefore like to see this sub-department concentrate not only on being prepared for large-scale evacuation to subsidiary centres, but also even further. Because, Sir, some subsidiary centres, for example Welkom in the Free State, will in future also become metropolitan and target areas.

I now come to the question of compulsory training and service. In terms of this legislation the hon. the Minister has the power to impose such training and service on the general public. But I cannot envisage the Minister making such training and service compulsory within the foreseeable future. Where other departments impose certain obligations on the Republic, this sub-department will also benefit indirectly. I am referring, for example, to the Department of Defence and its scheme of ballotee training. Indirectly this sub-department will benefit by the training and disciplining of ballotees. Now I want to ask, Sir, whether it is fair to leave the training and coaching of the public to voluntary organizations such as youth and first aid organizations. Therefore I want to suggest that this sub-department, in co-operation with other departments which are perhaps more directly concerned with this matter, should devote some attention to intensive post-school training for girls. Our boys are given nine months’ compulsory training, but not our girls. For a year after leaving school our boys are so to speak held back as regards their further academic and other training, but our girls simply continue with their training, etc. That means in effect that the girls are one year ahead of the boys. What is more, those girls are not disciplined. For that reason I think that six or nine months of post-school training for our girls will be of great value to our country. Such training can include nursing, self-defence and cooking, to mention only a few important subjects. In that way both our boys and our girls will be disciplined, and our girls will also be able to form an important link in respect of any obligations imposed in terms of this measure. I feel that as regards the disciplining of our youth, we lag behind a country like Israel. And yet, in a certain sense we—like the people of Israel—are also in a state of siege. I therefore feel that the time has come to give very serious attention to the training of our girls as well as our boys.

Mr. Speaker, listening to the acclamation with which this Bill has been received by the House, I do not think that anybody doubts that some sort of organization should be established, to take care of emergencies, when they arise. I have listened with great interest to suggestions made, regarding the provision of hospital beds and the use of our medical men, as well as other aspects of an emergency which must receive the attention of the Minister responsible for dealing with such emergency. I have been thinking in terms of experience, which I had during the war. That is why I feel that any training and instruction that might be given after this Bill has passed through Parliament, will initially be received with great enthusiasm, but with the passage of time interest will flag, because unless one’s training can be utilized in an emergency one tends to forget what one has learnt. I remember, Sir, how burdens were placed on local authorities, and I see that in terms of this Bill, the burden will again be on local authorities, who, through their officials, will have to carry out the requirements of the regional officials placed over them. The municipalities will now have to spend some, if not a lot of, money in getting this organization on its feet. Therefore, Sir, I should like to ask the hon. the Minister what financial provision will be made in this regard. As the hon. the Minister knows many municipalities have done quite a lot already. I wish to emphasize that municipal officials are fully occupied in executing their official duties with their respective municipalities. These extra duties which the Bill seeks to impose upon them, will be something quite outside the scope of their ordinary duties. Usually the firemaster of a city or town is the person around whom these emergency measures revolve. In deciding upon the organizations to be set up to deal with emergencies, the hon. the Minister should consider the facilities available to him.

The hon. member for Peninsula made a plea on behalf of the Coloured community, and I should like to confirm that they would be quite happy to assist where they could and to be drawn into the machinery which will be set up to deal with emergency situations. But the vast mass of Bantu, or Africans, are really the people who should be trained, and who should be advised what is expected of them. I do not think it is necessary for me to say that in the event of an emergency, a panic is the worst enemy with which to deal. Some of us have seen what happens when panic takes over, and I can assure you. Sir, that it is a frightening experience. Say, for example, a bomb had to drop on Cape Town, I do not doubt that within a few hours the entire population of Langa will be in the city to see what is going on. I say this quite seriously. In the past we have had minor riots in a municipal area, and it is surprising to see the numbers of people who go just to see what is in the wind, to find out what it is all about. Looking at this matter objectively, what sort of emergency do we envisage? It will be relatively simple should it be a natural catastrophe, an act of God. for example an earthquake, flood, or a fire. But what will be the position in the event of an atomic attack, of which we have heard so much? We hear of long-range rockets and inter-continental ballistic missiles. The type of emergency, which will arise in an attack of this nature, could be confined to certain target areas. I would suggest to the hon. the Minister that our main efforts should be directed to those centres which are regarded by the authorities, especially by the Defence people, as likely target areas. I do not think that the whole country should be an emergency area in the event of scattered attacks, because I can assure the hon. the Minister that should certain strategic and vulnerable places be bombed, we would have lost the war and be on the losing side. There is no shadow of doubt that the target areas—areas which are well known—are the places which are most likely to be the objectives of an attacker. We have a few closely-settled big cities where our industries and other essential services are located. Therefore I suggest to the hon. the Minister that in view of the serious effort which is being made to combat the type of thing, which he thinks might happen, these places should receive priority in the emergency programme.

But let us for the moment forget an atomic attack. In the event of conventional warfare, then I think we would have plenty of warning, because the logistics of an all-out attack across the sea, in my humble opinion, make such an attack a remote possibility. We must rather think of countries on our northern borders and states to our north. I may be wrong, but I am satisfied that we must be most concerned about our northern frontiers. Because, no matter what type of bomb is used, the infantry must still march in and take possession. Therefore I do not think we should get too excited about possibilities and potentialities. Furthermore, Sir, I feel that if the hon. the Minister is going to inspan—to use a colloquialism—everybody between 16 and 65—he should inspan everybody, Black and White. Because our great Black masses, totalling 12,000,000, will be those most affected. Let me put it in this way, Mr. Speaker. If the hon. the Minister were in charge of the attacking force, would he not in the first instance, try his best to create panic conditions? Such conditions can only be created by attacking the masses who are concentrated and congregated in the greatest numbers. Therefore, these large townships like Soweto and others around Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London should receive the special attention of the hon. the Minister. Should something then happen, these people will be his allies and will assist the country, instead of saying, “Thank God. our deliverance is at hand!” I really feel the hon. the Minister must include these people in his planning, because by the thousand they are loyal to the country, and they would like to be considered as a part of, and to participate in, any scheme which aims at defending their homes, themselves, and those they hold dear.

I also heard mention of air-raid shelters. Well. Sir, I say again that to build shelters for the large numbers of people in this country is a most formidable task. Therefore I think a better course to adopt would be to disperse people, rather than to congregate them in buildings, both existing and to be built.

These are a few of the points that have exercised my mind in listening to this debate. I think the hon. the Minister is doing the right thing in introducing this measure in the House. I think the country as a whole welcomes the organization which will be established in consequence of this Bill. As has been mentioned before, many of our young people require a certain amount of discipline. But what worries me, Sir, is that once the ball starts rolling, we may find a meeting held in the first week, perhaps another meeting a month or so later, and then people start losing interest and the whole thing falls by the way-side. I also take it that we as a country have some effective means of distant early warning. I should like the Minister to state whether that is so. because if we are going to be involved in a war which is going to be by way of a land attack from places to the north of us, surely we must have some form of early warning, the same as they have in the United States. I find that studying things in the United States where they have also done this on a much bigger scale, people are inclined to have forgotten during the past two years what the real intention was. I would further say that the Minister should avoid at all costs alarming the citizens, as to what might or might not requirements really are, and to have a small organization concentrated in those areas where they consider it is most likely that such an happen, and take a sombre view of what the attack might eventuate. I did not hear the Minister make any reference at all to the Bantu people and I should like him to reassure me and say that they are not to be excluded completely from all these schemes, because I particularly want to say in this House and to place it on record, that if we are going to set up such an organization composed exclusively of Whites and perhaps Coloureds, with the sort of distant thought in our minds that they may one day be useful and may be used against the Black proletariat, then I think this Bill takes on a very different aspect. One might even say it takes on a sinister aspect. I think that is an extremely bad thing, because when a country organizes itself, shall I say, by getting a portion of its population into a state of anxiety and fear, to be ready in case other population groups may create the emergency, then I think we are on dangerous ground. I ventilate this point of view because I have not heard it ventilated very fully up to now. and so I put it fairly and squarely to the Minister and ask him to reassure the House that the creation of this Directorate and the establishment of this system of training are intended for the defence of South Africa, as a whole, and as a nation, which intends to survive, and that every man and woman and child within the boundaries of this country will receive instruction and be able to take part in, and to participate in, whatever activities are envisaged, and furthermore, that they will be those who will be assisted promptly, if they are the victims of some catastrophe, which might befall us.

That, in short, is the contribution I want to make to this debate, reaffirming what I have said before, that I think this is a move in the right direction. This side of the House has given it its blessing. We may have some suggestions to make in the Committee Stage, but in the main, this legislation is sound and reasonably acceptable. But. these points do exercise the minds of those persons who work amongst the great majority of our population, and on that score I would like to ask the Minister to take particular note and to reassure me so that we may reassure others who ask us these questions.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Karoo, who has just sat down, said that the danger to us, if it came, would come from the northern border. Sir, why should the danger be on the northern border of our country? Is it because there we have to deal with the Black States of Africa? Yes, that is the case. There we have to deal with “human dignity”. The concept of there being such a thing as “human dignity” must be very strongly qualified. It has been our experience that the people in Africa are in many respects still savages. [Interjection.] I shall give an example of that. An example of that was the attitude adopted by certain representatives of African States at the UN recently when an attempt was made to save the hostages in the Congo by means of paratroopers from America and Belgium, and when the representatives of those Black States protested at the UN because those hostages—men, women and children—were being saved, and maintained that they should remain in the hands of people who had stated that they would parade in their skins.

Order! The hon. member must return to the Bill.

Yes, Sir, it is very closely connected with the Bill. We are dealing with two questions here. The first is whether it is essential to have emergency planning, and the second is how it is to be carried out. I do not want to deal with the question of how it should be done, but with the question of whether it is essential that we should have it: and it is essential because we are dealing with savages. When the revolt in Angola started, the people there also claimed that they were fighting for independence, for freedom. The so-called Black Nationalism is only a very thin veneer on the surface of the Black States. One can reach no other conclusion. During that revolt in Angola prisoners were asked what they meant by independence and their reply was as follows. I read from a booklet compiled by a certain Ronald Waring—not the hon. the Minister—“The War in Angola”, in which he says—

Order! The hon. member must talk about emergency planning.

Mr. Speaker, it is because …

Order! The hon. member must obey my ruling.

Emergency planning is most essential and will boost the morale of our people both in time of war and in peace-time, if the emergency organization is at hand, and the stronger our nation is, the better its chances of victory. Surely that goes without saying. I regret that I cannot pursue this matter any further, because I wanted to point out the necessity of our people being alert to all contingencies, because we are dealing with savages in Africa.

In the rather short speech made by the hon. member for Kempton Park, he made one point which I agree with, before I go on with the rest of my speech, and that is in regard to the danger of Black Nationalism in Africa. In this discussion we have had on this Bill up to now many important facets have been discussed by hon. members on both sides of the House, but there is one very important factor in regard to civil defence on which I should like to offer a few ideas to the hon. the Minister, not that they may not already have been considered by his skeleton committee. It deals with the use of the broadcasting services in time of national emergency.

Your radio is to-day actually an instrument of modern war and its weapons are ideas. During a time of national emergency you will find that a Government is entirely powerless unless it can immediately and efficaciously get its message across. If one reads Clause 3 of the Bill one sees that there is hardly any one of the aspects mentioned in which the radio does not play its part. When it comes to matters like fire-fighting, evacuation work, warning against raids and transport and mobilizing forces, the whole work of civil defence in a state of emergency or in war-time would collapse without the assistance of a well-prepared broadcasting service. I therefore advocate naturally the closest collaboration in time of emergency between the S.A. Broadcasting Corporation and the Minister’s Directorate of Emergency Planning, and for that it is necessary, I believe, that certain initial steps should be taken now already.

There is a special technical committee which has already considered these matters.

Is that the technical committee of the S.A.B.C., or is it the communications committee?

Communications.

I am very glad to hear it, because I have read about work which is already being done about the technical aspect of the ordinary radio services in times of emergency. We on this side of the House have always pleaded for the impartiality of the radio services, but we realize that in an emergency such as war it can become a tool of defence planning, a national tool in the broad sense of the word. I am wondering how this integration, as you might call it, of the radio services in time of emergency or of war can be effectively done. The Minister is no doubt aware of the licence issued to the S.A.B.C. and which in fact gives the Postmaster-General wide powers over the S.A.B.C. in times of emergency, and such powers, I take it, can be taken over by the Minister in such an emergency. Section 14 says—

I see that here again the way in which an emergency is defined is probably not the same as it is defined in the Act itself. In the Act the Minister is given the power, while under the licence it is the State President-in-Council. I do not know whether this is merely a very minor difference which one might ignore because in practice, I take it, it is very much the same thing, but it might be advisable to have the wording the same in both cases.

During a time of emergency I see the task of the radio as being of a fivefold nature. Firstly, when such an emergency takes place, the radio will have to broadcast to the people in the country itself. Secondly, it will have to be used in support of our defence forces. Thirdly, it will have to be used in support of our allies. Fourthly, it is very important to use the radio services for the purposes of monitoring, and, lastly, it is important to use the radio service when it comes to replying to enemy propaganda.

I regard the first one as the most important. Suppose an unforeseen catastrophe were to happen, and bombs were to fall on some of our densely populated areas in the country, the first and only way in which the Government can get into contact with the people will be through the radio. It is, therefore, essential to have the central organization, the technical organization, so that even if certain of the major stations are completely destroyed throughout the country it will still be possible to have broadcasts sent out to the rest of the nation. I know that a technical committee has been working on those lines and I hope that the Minister might be able to give _ us some further indication as to what is being done. Of course, your radio will have to give orders in case of a disaster. It will have to tell the people where to go, where the shelters are. when raids are expected, and when further attacks can be expected.

The radio will be essential for building up your civilian morale. It is important to plan now for regular news services, preferably on the hour, and coming from the person whose name is mentioned as the broadcaster and whose voice can be recognized. It was considered rather important during the last war that the voice of the announcer should be a voice which could be easily recognized so that somebody else could not imitate that voice. Such a radio service in a state of emergency will also have to give information to the people to build up civilian morale as well as information in regard to matters on which the whole of the nation will be agreed, information as to the nature of the aims of South Africa against any enemy, information as to the nature of the enemy and the war issues which are at stake.

The radio will also act as a sort of honest broker between Government Departments which insist on having statements made by their departmental heads or by the Minister on matters connected with defence or the emergency. Experience has shown that during the last war there were often many more demands by Ministers for radio time, so that it created a real embarrassment to the B.B.C., and on more than one occasion a final appeal had to be made to 10 Downing Street, on whether a Minister should be allowed to broadcast a particular statement or not. We would not like to see a similar state of affairs happening in South Africa. During a state of emergency it will be the task of the radio to explain the need to the country in regard to recruiting, the sale of defence bonds, possible rationing, the need to conserve petrol, etc.

In an emergency, of course, immediate security measures would have to be taken. I am thinking of the total cessation of all weather reports. The reasons for that are, of course, obvious. At the same time all your amateur radio stations will have to go off the air. Audience-participation programmes would probably have to stop immediately, because it would indeed be dangerous to allow an ordinary member of the public access in one of these programmes to the microphone itself. These are small matters, but it is as well for us to know about them and to be prepared.

I shall not stress further the important role of our radio in our Defence Force. We know that there is scarcely a tank or a plane to-day without a radio. We know how the long radio waves can be used for one’s own friendly aircraft to home in on, and how these long waves can also be misused by the enemy for homing in on a target. The great role played by the radio was shown in the last war in a particular case, namely the sinking of the Bismarck. It was a single patrol plane with its radio which alerted the naval forces of the Allies and led to the sinking of that ship. We shall also have to think ahead in regard to the use of the radio by our Allies. I assume we shall have allies and it is quite possible that we will have allied forces on our soil. It might then be necessary to transcribe programmes and to relay programmes for these forces from their mother country.

Surely we are very far away from the Bill now.

I am only indicating these things to the Minister to show how the radio was used during the last war, and how it can be used in any future emergency. I sincerely hope that these disasters I have mentioned will not be necessary.

I mentioned as a fourth important factor where the radio could be of great use, the question of monitoring. One of the great dangers when there is an emergency is the illegal use of secret amateur radio stations by enemy agents in your own country. I believe we should have some or other force prepared to monitor those stations and to catch these people red-handed as soon as possible. Quite a large number of agents were caught during the first month of the last war by such a well-prepared organization. I know the Minister has an organization for discovering illegal radio stations, and I trust that it has been kept up to the mark. In the United States during the last war they had no fewer than 90 of these monitoring, patrolling units trying to trace these illegal stations, and they caught no fewer than 251 of these stations which were broadcasting illegally. Monitoring will also involve the analysis of foreign broadcasts, the analysis of mistakes made by the enemy and even as a news source from the enemy country. In the last war the first news that Italy had declared war came over the radio and was transmitted by the British monitoring system within two minutes to the Cabinet Secretariat. One does not realize that the radio and the monitoring service might act more quickly than the General Staff itself; it might be quicker than any news service. It is a news source which can bring news of the latest developments. And, lastly, the radio is important as a medium for counter-propaganda and for softening the morale of the enemy, as it did in the last war.

Order! The hon. member is ranging too far now.

I fully appreciate your remarks, Sir. Happily I am at the close of what I wanted to say. I just want to say again that the radio is a weapon in an emergency which can be used for good and it can also be used to counter the attacks of our enemies. Having said all this, I wish to conclude by saying that I am very glad that we can support this Bill, and I am sure that the full support of this side of the House will be given to all measures for the defence of our country in a state of emergency. I am sure that the radio can and will play a most important part and therefore it is necessary that there should not only be technical planning but that all these other different aspects should be considered which I have mentioned in connection with the radio; and above all, it is essential that the people of South Africa should get to know and to trust the radio, but that is the subject matter of another debate and I will not pursue it now.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot follow in the footsteps of some of the other hon. members here who have paid tribute to the previous members who occupied their seats, because the seat I occupy has not been previously represented in this House. But the seat I represent borders Durban Bay and as such it is one of the most rapidly developing areas in the Republic, and therefore this Bill is of vital importance to the people in my constituency. I have another reason for paying particular attention to this Bill, and that is that some few years ago we were instrumental in my constituency in starting a movement called by the hon. member for Wynberg, the Home Guards. Within 24 hours we raised something like 2,000 volunteers among the ex-servicemen of Durban for this Home Guard Unit. These members were not interested in the reasons why it was necessary for them to protect their homes and families; they were only interested in the fact that it was necessary, in much the same way that a fireman puts out the fire first before looking for the reasons which caused the fire. So we are particularly interested in this Bill. I am interested in it in view of my association with the Home Guard Unit, whose functions are now being performed by the Police Reservists, but I would like to ask the hon. the Minister whether he has consulted the ex-servicemen’s organizations in discussing this Bill. Anybody who witnessed the war in Europe and saw the devastation around the seaports will appreciate just what could happen in a seaport like Durban. I think also that some attention should be paid to the children who will be affected by a bombing raid on our cities. Those of us who saw what happened in Europe will realize what a terrible thing it is to see young children running around helpless, bewildered and very often without their families immediately after a raid, and I would commend this particular aspect to the Minister as well.

It is my great privilege to congratulate the hon. member for Port Natal on an excellent maiden speech. He certainly has studied his subject well and has made an outstanding contribution to this debate. We all, I am sure, wish him well for a long and successful future in this House.

I think we are all in agreement here about the necessity for the introduction of such an Emergency Planning Act, but we must be very, very careful that we do not misuse the emergency part of this. In other words, we must distinguish between emergency planning and the emergency. In this Bill, as I read it, there are parts of it which should only be implemented during a time of emergency and not during the planning for an emergency. I am one of those who agree wholeheartedly with my leader that this planning for an emergency should not be in the hands of the Department of Justice, but should rather come from the Department of the Interior. Not for one moment do I suggest that the Minister of Justice will not do this better than our present Minister of the Interior; not at all, but I do say that it will come better from that Department. If one looks at Clause 3 of the Bill one sees that it states that the objects and purposes of the division are to take measures other than measures taken under the Public Safety Act or the Police Act, and then it lists some of the duties the division will be called upon to perform. Take, for example, fire-fighting. I do not think fire-fighting has anything to do with the Department of Justice. Take rescue and evacuation work. I would say that that would probably come under local government and under the Department of Mines. Take shelters against air-raids and radio-active fallout. Surely that comes under Health. Take the medical treatment and care of the injured and sick persons and health services. That speaks for itself. There is the provision of emergency housing, food and clothing. Has that anything to do with the Department of Justice? Take the re-adjustment of communities and individuals. Surely that is a matter for the Department of Planning. Take the maintenance of essential services and the protection of essential industries, places and areas. This is a matter for the police. This is the one aspect of it which should come under the Police Department. Take transport communications and warnings. What has that to do with the Minister of Justice? Take the continuation of existing central, provincial and local government. That is more a matter for the Department of the Interior, and so it goes on. Why it had to come under the Department of Justice is a mystery to me. I would say that the fact that it happens to be planning for an emergency denotes that the word “emergency” has attached itself to the Department of Justice and therefore that Department must tackle it. I think it is wrong in the first place for this Minister to have this special emergency planning under his wing.

Sir, I want to offer, firstly, one or two criticisms and then one or two suggestions as to what should happen. Firstly, I do not think ‘hat the present Department, as it is established now, has given sufficient publicity to work it has already done. I do not know what type of publicity has been given, except for the pamphlets that were issued to householders. I do not know how many of the householders went through those pamphlets carefully, whether they read them, whether they retained them or whether they destroyed them. But in this type of propaganda, surely what is needed is repeated propaganda, and the issuing of one pamphlet is not sufficient to keep the people on their toes. The work of the Minister to-day is to get as many people as possible interested; to get volunteers to come forward, and I do not know what steps he has taken, in any of the 13 target areas, that has stimulated volunteers to come forward in those areas and offer their services. I do not know how he gets fire-fighters. I do not know what he has done to look for people prepared to undergo training in shelter work, excavation and so on. I should like the Minister to tell us when he replies to the debate. I feel that he should make far better use of the radio and of the newspapers, and he should try in particular to produce a short film which can be shown to stimulate interest in this type of work.

It is in production.

I am very pleased to hear that

When we come to the directorate I find that here again it is very weakly described. It may be very wide or it may be very narrow. Perhaps the Minister can tell us whether all the departments are included in this directorate. I am also a little bit perturbed about the setup of the directorate. Is he leaving it, at this stage at any rate, only to the public servants? Has he only got public servants in charge of the various branches of this emergency planning campaign or has he got private individuals as well? Is there any possibility that the one will over-ride the other? Is it possible to have in one department public servants and individuals who do not belong to the Public Service, both at the head of affairs or is the one subservient to the other? I do not like to suggest that there will be a clash of interests but it is quite possible that there may be, and I think the volunteers should be separated from the full-time public servant.

Sir, I want to place emphasis on the necessity of the survey. I want to emphasize particularly how necessary it is for the survey to include the rural areas. In my opinion it is much more essential to know what is available in the rural areas, as far as housing is concerned, as far as accommodation is concerned, as far as facilities for storing food are concerned, than to know what is available in the larger cities. The hon. the Minister knows as well as I do that at a time of emergency there can be one of two types of accident. On the one hand there is the natural disaster which occurs inside the country and then there is the disaster caused by factors outside the country. The disaster caused by outside factors may result in mass destruction requiring mass evacuation, a situation that we would not face if the disaster was caused by internal factors. It is this question of mass evacuation which perturbs me very greatly because with this vast destruction we will have to find accommodation for those who are left without housing, and I say again that it is of vital importance to know what accommodation there is available in the rural areas.

I dealt with that in my Second Reading speech.

I know, but the hon. the Minister did not give us any indication as to how far he has gone. I want to know how far he has gone.

I gave you examples.

I want to know what shortages the Minister found. I want to know whether the remarks made by the hon. member for Green Point also apply to other sectors. Can the hon. the Minister tell me, for instance, whether it is possible for our present road system to cope with mass evacuation quickly? Is he satisfied that the roads we have from, say, Johannesburg to Delmas, for example, can cope with mass evacuation?

We are building the South Rand road now.

You see, Sir, when I talk about planning for an emergency, it is these things which strike me as being important, these very things that we will need quickly and which cannot be provided quickly, which have to be prepared over months and perhaps years. The road system is one of those things, and so is transport. The hon. the Minister knows that we do not have enough roads to-day to carry our normal traffic. We have not got enough transport to carry all our traffic. Perhaps we have enough for the White people, but when bombing takes place from outside, when sabotage takes place from inside, when railway lines are blown up, have we got enough transport to convey these people from the White areas back to the Black areas? We in this country have a problem with which no other country is faced, because of the separation of the races. We have to provide double the services that other countries have to provide.

Quadruple.

I would like to hear from the Minister what he has done to combat these difficulties that may or may not arise. We should be prepared.

As far as health services are concerned I want to say firstly that the Minister, in conjunction with the Minister of Health, should start mass inoculations now. He knows as well as I do that when there is a run from a town into the country, or into another town, sanitary facilities of the highest standard must be provided; without them there could be a great disaster. We do not want to be faced, in addition to casualties, with thousands of people who are laid up with cholera or smallpox. That is the sort of thing that we must avoid. I want to say to the Minister that he should impress upon the Minister of Health the necessity to enforce mass immunization against those illnesses which spread so very easily during a period of emergency. Sanitary conditions in the country are not what they should be. Water supplies may not be sufficient. Those two matters must receive the attention of the Department of Health in all areas which are adjacent to large cities. Fire-fighting is the work of specialists; excavation work is the work of specialists, and I would say to the Minister that he must try his best to augment our present force of fire-fighters by enlisting the services of a body of people similar to the mines engineering brigade which was so very valuable during the last war. I do not know whether the Department of Mines has given any advice to the Minister; I do not know whether he has asked the Department of Mines to take active steps in this connection but I would urge him to do so as soon as possible and to train as many men as possible to do evacuation work. It has been mentioned here—and I want to emphasize that—that at a time of emergency the White people alone will not be able to look after themselves plus the Coloureds and the Bantu. The Minister has said that he is taking steps to train the Bantu and the Coloured. I want to know what steps he has taken, who is teaching these people; when they have their lessons and how he ensures continuity of these lessons. Will he tell us what response he has had from the Bantu and the Coloured people in these teaching classes. Will he also tell us what arrangements he has made to provide a better fire-fighting service in some of the Native townships. What fire-fighting services have they got in Soweto? Would those services be sufficient to cope with an emergency? Are sufficient fire-fighting services available in Langa and Nyanga, for example, for the present time, let alone in time of emergency? Have we got sufficient fire-fighters in the cities to cope with any large-scale fire?

I want to say to the Minister that we on this side do not think it is necessary for this Bill to go to a Select Committee. We think that sufficient work has already been done in other countries which we could follow and adapt to our conditions. It would only mean a delay in providing the necessary services if we refer this Bill to a Select Committee, then wait for its report and then only start to implement its recommendations.

We would get a better Bill in a few weeks’ time.

Finally, Sir, I am sorry that the Minister has found it necessary to include a conscription clause in the Bill. I say this because I think I know the South Africans as well as anybody else. I am sure that the Minister will not find it necessary to resort to conscription at a time of emergency. The volunteers who come forward will be more than sufficient and I only hope that they will have sufficient training. Their numbers will never be in question.

There are one or two aspects of the medical part of this Bill which I think need a little emphasis. Most of the points have been covered by my colleague, the hon. member for Rosettenville. In the first place I think we will have no difficulty in dealing with natural disasters. We have dealt with them in the past and there is no reason why we should not be able to deal with such disasters in the future if they come our way. We therefore have to consider only man-made trouble. Atomic energy is almost certainly not going to be wasted on a country like this, so we have to be ready for either war or internal disturbances. Most of the provisions of this Bill are based on the experience of other countries, but we have unique responsibilities of our own which are different from those of other countries. I do not think it is possible to transplant holus-bolus the experience of Western Europe to this country because our climate and our racial situation are so different. In the first place the danger of major epidemics in Western Europe is small. Those countries are carefully protected by efficient health services and in addition they usually have large numbers of highly skilled manpower, both professional manpower, such as medical practitioners and nurses, and technicians, enabling them to take care of their sanitation, their water supplies and similar essential services. We in this country, however, do not have sufficient skilled mechanical manpower at the moment even to serve our own railways. We have not enough doctors and we are not importing doctors in worth-while numbers. The whole country is dependent for its water on four rivers and the damming of these rivers. Our rainfall is intermittent, so there are periods when the water supply is more or less stagnant and we find periodically, as is the case at the moment, that there is a shortage of water. All these factors will interfere with the maintenance of health services, as compared with Western European countries. We should rather go to countries which have faced the same problems, or perhaps problems even worse than ours, countries like Malaysia or India where there are large numbers of people, who, although not far from civilization, readily tend to riot. Even the Blacks in America who have been associated closely with civilization for a long period and who in many cases are highly educated have a marked tendency to riot. Recent events have shown that it does not need very much to start a riot in South Africa. It only takes a railway accident, as we saw recently, to start a riot. This brings home to us the great importance of protecting our own people, not only from war but from local disturbances and seeing that they are cared for. Lastly I want to lay stress particularly on the fact that there are many things which are in short supply in this country. We have the power to manufacture much of our essential medical supplies such as small-pox vaccine, rabies vaccine, typhoid vaccine and similar substances, but in almost every instance—and this is of grave significance—each of these articles is manufactured in one place only for the whole country. With the recent outbreak of rabies in Durban, the most that could be purchased, with the greatest effort, throughout the world was 20,000 doses of vaccine and it took the Department of Agricultural Technical Services, who were not caught unprepared, nearly three months to produce the 60,000 monthly doses required. The same applies to blood and blood substitutes. We have little capacity to manufacture blood substitutes and we have little prospect of importing them. We are faced with the problem that our stocks are nearly always maintained in one or two areas in the Republic. If a few bombs were dropped or if a few explosions were to take place in the small-pox vaccine-manufacturing area, at the Onderste-poort laboratories, and in the various blood transfusion depots we would find ourselves in a serious situation. In general it is not possible to import these things. I feel that it is necessary that we should draw attention to the fact that the Minister should see that stock-piling is carried out.

We have already done that.

I am very pleased to hear that. I hope it is being turned over at regular intervals.

I should like to raise a matter of limited scope before the hon. the Minister replies to this Second Reading Debate. It deals with the powers granted to the Directorate in terms of Clause 3 of the Bill in respect of fire-fighting, medical treatment and care of injured and sick persons, and health services. What I want to bring pointedly to the notice of the Minister is the fact that there is at present no co-ordination whatever between fire-fighting and ambulance services in the various provinces of South Africa. We all know of serious cases where injured people were neglected on our roads for hours on end, where fires were allowed to rage on while fire-brigade machines failed to turn up. simply because there was a dispute about the jurisdiction of the municipality or local authority in question which had to deal with that case. It would, of course, be a disaster—if a state of emergency should ever arise in South Africa—if there were to be no proper co-ordination of these services to prevent arguments and quarrels and uncertainty. I wonder whether the Minister can tell us when he replies to this debate what steps can be taken by the Directorate in order to plan ahead in regard to this matter, seeing that from the nature of the case one cannot determine beforehand how and when a state of emergency may arise; it may happen very suddenly. In view of conditions in South Africa at present, one is concerned about the fact that a state of emergency might suddenly arise and that there will be no proper co-ordination of these important services for which the Minister specifically accepts the responsibility in a state of emergency. Mr. Speaker, this is not a matter one should treat lightly, neither should one shrug it off with generalities and say that proper provision will be made when the time comes: it must be done in good time. For instance, in the Star of 22nd June of this year I read about a case of a young man who was left to lie bleeding on the road immediately outside Alberton for hours on end while the responsible bodies were quarrelling amongst themselves about who was to send the ambulance to fetch him. If this case were to be multiplied by hundreds in a time of emergency, one can imagine the extent of the chaos which would result. Would the Minister not consider the introduction of some form or other of co-ordination of these services at the present stage, instead of waiting for a state of emergency? There should be a central clearance depot which people can telephone for an ambulance or where they can ascertain which place to telephone in order to summon one. What happens at present is that somebody telephones for an ambulance or for fire-brigade services and simply meets with the following reply, “It does not fall within our jurisdiction.” Such a person then has to try to ascertain what ambulance or what fire-brigade he has to summon. There is no central clearance depot where he can be told immediately what number to dial. We cannot permit this state of affairs to continue. Once a state of emergency arises it is too late to start training people; they must be trained now. I should imagine that police stations should act as liaison depots in a state of emergency. When anybody requires an ambulance or the fire-brigade, he can telephone the police station and the latter should then tell him immediately where he can obtain help. I shudder to think that in an emergency a situation could develop where there might be confusion in essential services such as those provided by the municipalities at the moment. One cannot but agree with the Star that a state of affairs in which one finds that even in normal times, in peace-time, someone has to lie bleeding in the road, can only be described “as something which carries one into a realm of helpless wonder, and it goes beyond indignation”. It is because of our concern about the situation which is developing in all four provinces at present, that we are asking the hon. the Minister, in view of what he wants to prevent in South Africa—and it is our prayer that it will never be necessary, that it will never occur, but we must nevertheless be prepared—to take the necessary steps in good time in order to terminate this unfortunate state of lack of co-ordination, of useless quarrelling among local authorities about whose responsibility a particular case is, so that matters may be dealt with smoothly, thoroughly and effectively if a state of emergency does arise in South Africa.

Hon. members have held a very broad discussion on this Bill, and I welcomed it. At the beginning of my speech I praised the Director and his staff for the way in which they have carried out their work up to now. After hon. members’ participation in the debate I feel obliged to praise the Directorate even more highly, because I want to give hon. members the assurance that they have not mentioned any aspect which is not already receiving the attention of the Directorate. But, Sir, and I say this with respect, hon. members rather lost sight of what we have to deal with here; we are dealing with this Bill here, not to stipulate in detail in the Bill what the duties of the Directorate are, but to recognize the establishment of the Directorate and to provide what its functions are. Hon. members have mentioned many very interesting matters, and in particular I wish to congratulate all the new members on both sides of this House, who took part in this debate with distinction. I listened with satisfaction to the contributions made by every one of them.

I say that hon. members raised many matters in this debate which they really wanted to take up with my colleagues in the normal course of their business, and I take it that my colleagues have taken cognizance of hon. members’ views in that regard. Because I fear that owing to lack of time I shall probably not get an opportunity later, I shall reply to the last point, for example, merely by way of illustration: Does the hon. member for Yeoville want me at this stage already, while there is no state of emergency, to do the things—that is in any case not how I understood him—which he wants to be done?

I say that machinery should be created and that the people should be trained.

I fully agree with the hon. member that that is essential, but I cannot go beyond the limits of this Bill. I have no powers whatsoever at this stage to do the things referred to by the hon. member; they fall outside the scope of my duty, but what I can say to the hon. member is that we have not only had discussions, but have established an entire organization in case a state of emergency should arise. I want to mention a few examples to him. Take the case of the Vanderbijlpark-Sasolburg-Vereeniging triangle, for example. There the town engineer of one of those towns has already been appointed to be the co-ordinating factor. In any state of emergency he will have control over the various services of all the surrounding places. The same applies to Cape Town. The city engineer of Cape Town will have control over the material and machinery of all the neighbouring local authorities in order to do what is necessary. All those things have already been done. Hon. members therefore need not feel concerned about this not having received attention or that not having been done.

I shall begin with the hon. the Leader of the Opposition. He found it a pity that the Bill gave him the impression that sufficient use had perhaps not been made of existing machinery. I cannot agree with him, because that is the entire basis of the Bill. We are not creating new machinery. Where we have to deal with health problems we are not establishing a new health organization. Where we have to deal with other matters we are not establishing new departments; we are co-ordinating the functions of existing State Departments in order to give effect to the Bill. With the best will in the world I therefore cannot understand how my hon. friend can come to the conclusion that we are not making sufficient use of existing machinery, because we are making use only of existing machinery, except in so far as the person in charge of a target area is not tied to some State Department or other, but to this independent sub-department. Nor is it the position that the matter has been included under Justice as has been stated by hon. members. We are dealing with an independent subdepartment in every sense of the word. It only falls under the Ministry. The hon. member expressed the fear that the Department would become top-heavy. I cannot share that fear, in the first place because it is not the intention to do that. In the second place the manpower required to build up a top-heavy department is not available in any case. I am not arguing that this Ministry is the proper body or is not. The matter has been decided by the Cabinet, and the Cabinet has decided that that was to be the position. It is no use arguing about that any further. We simply accept that to be the position. The hon. member also said that the period for which this Department of Emergency Planning will be in charge of a state of emergency has not been stipulated anywhere. I told him by way of interjection that the answer was to be found in Clause 3 (2), which provides specifically that no function which in the normal course of events would be that of another Department shall be carried out by this Department except in consultation with that Department. I went out of my way to explain to hon. members that it is a question of stepping in to minimize and, if possible, to prevent distress and suffering until such time as the State Department whose normal function it is to deal with those matters can do so. There is therefore not only the closest coordination, but also full utilization of the normal functions of the various State Departments. In that connection I also want to deal with the questions raised as to whether it will be for Whites only. I am sorry that some people have made that insinuation by setting up their own puppets. There was no need to do that. Nowhere in my second-reading speech or in this Bill has any mention been made of any race group. What we have to deal with here is the minimizing of suffering for people irrespective of their colour. Surely that goes without saying. There was no need to raise that.

I have pleasure in replying to the hon. member for Peninsula, who has told me that he could not be present here. We have kept in touch and have co-operated with the Coloured Representative Council, the Coloured leaders, the Indian Representative Council, the Indian leaders, the Department of Bantu Administration and Development and the Bantu townships. We have arranged for the various first-aid organizations to give classes to the Bantu and to the other race groups as well. After all, a state of emergency will not affect one race group only. It will affect all of us. It is the duty of the Government to see to it that the primary needs of all those various people are provided for. Naturally it goes without saying that in its own area each race group will not only have to look after itself, but will also have to look after the other people in that area. In cases where they lack the necessary, it goes without saying that one will provide the necessary to those people as best one can. I appreciated the fact that hon. members raised this point, but this matter falls outside the scope of my duty. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition said that I should make provision for alternative water supplies, but that, too, falls outside the scope of my duty. It is the responsibility of the Department of Water Affairs, which is doing it in any case. That Department has already investigated all ways and means in that connection, or is busy doing so. The same applies to the various medicines. My duty is only to investigate the position, as we have in fact done. To mention an example, we have done so in respect of blood plasma. We have ascertained what our present production is and what our requirements in that connection will be. In that regard, therefore, the necessary planning has been carried out. In other words, Mr. Speaker, all the matters mentioned by the hon. members have already received attention. The question has been asked whether we shall be able to use the radio in a time of emergency. It goes without saying that that is one of the most important aspects. We not only think so, but as I told the hon. member for Orange Grove by way of interjection, we have already done the necessary in that regard.

Let us now consider the argument put forward by the hon. member for Rosettenville. On the one hand he asks me what I have done to train firemen and what I have done to train people who will be able to carry out rescue operations in rubble areas. I have not been able to do anything in that regard because I have not had the legislation to enable me to do so. Nor will I be able to do anything unless I have the powers of conscription provided for in the Bill. Surely I have already explained that to hon. members? If I do not get enough volunteers to perform those services, I simply have to make use of those powers in order to train people and to commandeer people to do those things. How can hon. members expect me to do those things and at the same time express their regret at the fact that people have to be compelled to do those things?

Thus, Mr. Speaker, I could have dealt with all the various aspects of the matter, but my time is limited. In the Committee Stage I shall again deal with most of the points raised by hon. members. As far as the amendment moved by the hon. member for Houghton is concerned, I think I must just say this to the hon. member, that she reminds me very much of Totius’s turtle-dove. She likes the water she drinks to be turbid. For that reason alone I therefore cannot accept the amendment moved by the hon. member, but at the very outset I should like to give the hon. member this friendly piece of advice: If she wants any notice to be taken of her, she must not be silly, as she has been in this debate. Most of the other matters we shall discuss in the Committee Stage. My colleagues have taken cognizance of the other matters which do not belong under this Bill. I move.

Question put: That all the words after “That” stand part of the motion and a division demanded.

Fewer than four members (viz. Mrs. H. Suzman) having supported the demand for a division, Question declared affirmed and amendment dropped.

Motion accordingly agreed to and Bill read a second time.

It being 4.30 p.m., the House proceeded to the consideration of private members’ business.

I move—

1. (a) the financial assistance rendered to farmers in drought-stricken areas;
2. (b) the reclamation of natural grazing and other agricultural resources;
3. (c) the exemption of agricultural production from credit restrictions; and
4. (d) the increase in produce prices in order to keep pace with rising production costs,

and requests the Government to consider further measures to counter increases in the cost of the requirements for agricultural production which contribute towards the continually rising cost of living.

I consider it to be a great privilege to move in this House the motion standing in my name. I move this motion in my capacity as a farmer, a farmer living in these areas in which major drought conditions have prevailed during the past few years. For that reason I am not speaking as an outsider, but as one who is familiar with the conditions which have prevailed there and the measures taken by the Government to alleviate those conditions. Before I continue, I want to quote a few words which also create the impression that the measures which are being taken are not only in the interests of the farmers, but also in the interests of the entire country. I should like to read part of the introduction of the latest report of the Secretary for Agricultural Technical Services—

I want to identify myself fully with this statement. As a result I feel greatly emboldened, because I consider it to be in the interests of the entire country that the steps I shall now mention should be taken. However, I am also speaking on behalf of people in my own constituency and neighbourhood where those distressing conditions prevailed. Prominent farmers met recently and they took the follow ing resolution (translation)—

We have often been faced with drought conditions in this country. Nothing is as certain as the fact that they will once again occur in the future. In the course of years it has become apparent that less severe droughts occur every ten years. However, every 30 years these drought conditions take a serious turn as was the case in the years 1913, 1933 and 1963 until 1966. I want to refer to one of the greatest droughts we have had. In 1933 there was a drought which bears the closest comparison with the present one. although it was not quite as extensive. The drought of 1933 was coupled with a depression and that made for very difficult circumstances. Together with the latest drought we are contending with a certain amount of inflation. I want to state immediately that if I had to choose between these circumstances, I should choose these inflationary conditions instead of the conditions which prevailed in 1933. In 1933 a tremendous number of relief works had to be set up. Amongst other things we commenced work at that time on the Vaal Dam together with the entire development of the Vaal, as well as the Vaal-harts Project which formed part of it. At that time farmers’ sons had to work at 4s. a day. In the present circumstances we have also tackled many works. However, the farmers who are at present unable to meet their debts, or who are struggling, are working at 40c an hour. That was their daily wage at that time. There is yet another difference. Farmers work eight hours a day at present. If they work longer than eight hours a day, Saturdays included, they recieve 60c an hour for such overtime.

The state of emergency of 1933 brought with it two advantages. Committees and commissions were appointed, and one of the first that was instituted was the Farmers’ Assistance Board. Mr. Speaker, I want to say immediately that I am afraid that the United Party is greatly mistaken if they want to claim for themselves the credit for that. It is fortunate that we did not have the hon. member for Constantia as Minister of Finance at that time, but Mr. Klasie Havenga. It is fortunate that we had General Jan Kemp as Minister of Agriculture and not—I do not know who the obvious person would have been—the hon. member for Durban (Point) perhaps. The consequences of those drought conditions were therefore that good results were obtained in the course of the years. Some of the consequences of those conditions are still in operation to-day. I want to add the following immediately: in those years when the United Party was in office the Farmers’ Assistance Act had not yet come into operation, except for the fact that they collected debts from previous loans.

The drought we have at present has also given rise to the appointment of two very important commissions. We anticipate that these commissions will present us with tremendous results in the future. The first commission is the Commission on Agriculture, which has very extensive terms of reference. This Commission was granted these wide terms of reference to inquire into matters relating to the entire agricultural industry. Mr. Speaker, I do not think that that inquiry can cover a wider field than the one which is covered by the terms of reference granted to this Commission. The second commission which has been appointed—on which I shall not elaborate, but which I merely wish to mention—is a commission appointed to inquire into water sources in South Africa, both on the surface and subterranean, and to make recommendations in regard to essential matters in the meantime. Mr. Speaker, in these conditions we anticipate great results of those two commissions. The Government has therefore already taken the necessary steps and they cannot be improved upon. I repeat that this drought which has occurred again after 30 years and which has lasted for a longer period than the others, has been much more extensive. But I should also add that the results of this drought will prove that, as a result of the steps taken by the Government, conditions have not only been made much easier for the farmers, but that thousands of our stock, which are essential to the country, have been preserved. Stock losses are therefore not as extensive as they have been in previous drought conditions such as those of 1933. I should like to mention a few of the steps taken by the Government, steps for which we are particularly grateful.

The first step is in contrast with that which the United Party took in 1942. At that stage the country was also experiencing drought conditions. They refused to make Crown lands available for grazing. I am thinking of the years when there were thousands of morgen of unoccupied land in the Vaalharts and the farmers eventually broke down fences. When the Government was faced with this accomplished fact, it eventually said, “Oh, well, take the stock away now”. This Government immediately made all Crown lands available to the drought-stricken areas. Both Crown lands and trust lands were made available. Grazing was made available not only at Vaalharts, but also in Natal and other areas. We also want to express our gratitude to so many farmers who offered grazing, where grazing was available, for that purpose. However, that was not all the State had done to bring relief after this disaster. In order that the farmers might make immediate use of the grazing that was made available, the Government subsidized railway tariffs by 75 per cent and even arranged bus and private transport to undertake the conveyance of stock. The amount for these purposes for this year only comes to R840,000. That amount was spent by the State to render that assistance. However, further steps were taken. The danger existed that breeding stock would suffer to such an extent that it would not have been possible to repair the damage in a short period, particularly as a result of the growth in the population and the resultant greater number of stock that has to be slaughtered. Steps were taken to preserve at least breeding stock. The Government introduced a subsidy of 50 per cent, to a maximum of R2.50 per unit. That proved to be a tremendous help to our farmers. The Government also helped by subsidizing basic stock licks in an attempt at keeping these animals alive. It went further than that. Where large tracts of cultivated lands were drying up, it also helped those farmers by taking over the withered grain. Last year the Government made available to the agricultural unions—we are grateful for what the agricultural unions have done—the amount of R12,000 for administrative purposes, and this year the amount of R20,000 was made available to them for administration and the distribution of fodder. The Government also assisted them further by taking over dried-up maize for which it had given a guarantee of R10 per ton. But it did more than that. When fodder was extremely scarce—and we anticipate that it will also be scarce this year—use was made of Natal’s sugar cane of which part had probably been exposed to poisoning. A guarantee of R50,000 was then given to agricultural unions in respect of stock losses owing to poisoning. Mr. Speaker, this is the first time that the State has taken immediate action in an attempt at saving our stock, something which is essential and in the interests of our country.

I cannot elaborate on all the amounts spent to make provision for these states of emergency, but another aspect I should like to refer to is the agronomic areas, the maize regions in particular, where crops were a complete failure last year. Some of those areas have not had any crops in the past two years. I want to say immediately that if a crop has failed, the matter cannot be remedied by means of higher prices. As a result of the development of the country, production costs are tremendously high, particularly in respect of maize and wheat cultivation. For that reason the State had to take steps to be of assistance and to enable those people immediately to produce crops again. The first measure that was taken was to authorize the Department of State Advances to increase its loans for production purposes from R600 to R4,000. That made it possible for smaller farmers to obtain the necessary loan facilities in order to produce crops again. However, as far as the bigger farmers are concerned, production costs are much higher than R4,000. It is for that reason that we are grateful that, when representations were made to the State on a subsequent occasion, it undertook to grant the Land Bank certain guarantees—an amount of R10,750,000 was made available to it. I enabled the bigger farmers to obtain the necessary means of production. The Land Bank was then guaranteed that amount. It was then able to give it to the various corporations to loan to the farmers.

How much of that was taken out?

One of the corporations did not avail itself of that. The other corporations used a total of approximately R4,250,000. I want to say immediately that it does the farmers credit—and I say this with a feeling of gratitude—that it is expected that in the areas where there have been better crops this year, the amounts which will then still be outstanding will amount to less than R2,000,000. In particular I want to thank the Department of State Advances for the kindness and helpfulness they have displayed towards farmers by granting them overdrafts when they had no crops.

The measures I have mentioned up to now are those which have been brought into operation for the present state of emergency. I could mention further measures, but time does not allow me to do so and for that reason I shall proceed to a discussion of some of the long-term measures which have been taken. Before I refer to the steps taken by the Department of Agricultural Technical Services, I want to refer with gratitude to certain steps taken by the Land Bank. In the latest report of that bank it is announced that when conditions return to normal, the bank will be prepared to consolidate outstanding loans and interest. This implies that the farmer will not immediately carry a heavier burden, but that it will simply be extended over a longer period. As regards steps taken by the Department of Agricultural Technical Services, I want to refer to, inter alia, the Rautenbach Committee and the steps recommended by it with a view to research, steps which came into operation within one year after the Committee had brought out its report. I want to call the attention of the House to the fact that our country is at present divided into 815 soil conservation districts with a total area of 12,778,039 morgen. Except for irrigation areas and a few small areas here and there these districts cover the entire country. Another step taken by the Department was to increase subsidies for boreholes, a subsidy which varies at present between 7 per cent and 95 per cent. Then I also want to refer to inner-camps and watering-places on which the subsidy has been increased from 33f per cent to 50 per cent, a step which will contribute tremendously to protecting and conserving our country.

Another step taken by the State, was to prop up prices. The price of white maize has been increased by 42½c, that of yellow maize by 35c, that of meat by 2c and of butter-fat by 5c per pound. This curve of rising prices has also had its detrimental effects. In 1961 the hostile press in South Africa and our friends on the opposite side tried to conjure up a picture of the disadvantageous position in which our country would find itself economically and financially if we were to proceed to proclaiming a republic. The House is aware of the steps the Government was forced to take at that time to safeguard the financial position of the country against the excessive outflow of capital. One of the steps taken by the Government, was to increase wages and salaries, a step which pleased us very much because it resulted in an increase in the purchasing power of our population. We anticipated that once the State increased the wages and salaries of its employees, the private sector would also increase the wages and salaries of its employees. That is in fact what happened. Unfortunately the private sector did not pay attention to the necessary increase in productivity which should have been coupled with the increase in salaries and wages. The result was that we landed in a spiral of rising prices which contributed to the fact that salaries and wages had to be adjusted continually to meet the increased cost of living, because the manufacturers had also increased the prices of their products. Here I should like to mention the matter of bags as an example. To the maize or wheat farmer the price of a bag does not really matter, since the price of a bag is eventually included in the price the farmer receives for his products. However, somebody has to pay for the bag and eventually it is the consumer who has to do so. Thus there is a rise in his cost of living and in due course this will cancel any increase in his income. There are also some manufacturers who have increased the prices of their products by as much as nine per cent in one year. In this regard I should like to remind you of the warning Professor Dr. Jacobs recently issued to manufacturers, and that is that they should pay attention to the productivity of their workers. I realize that this is a complicated matter with which I as a layman do not wish to meddle, but even to me as a layman it is apparent that if the manufacturer fails to increase the productivity of his employees, we shall remain in this spiral of rising prices. As long as we find ourselves in this spiral of rising prices, any increase in wages and salaries and increases in the price paid to the producer will be of no value whatever.

Mr. Speaker, I realize that I have used up the time allotted me and for that reason I want to conclude by expressing my gratitude towards this House for the manner in which they have listened to me.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to move the following amendment to the motion moved by the hon. member for Christiana—

We all expected, as a matter of fact, it goes without saying, that the hon. member for Christiana would hold up the measures taken by the Government in the recent past as representing assistance rendered to the farmers of South Africa by this Government. But it should be noted that the situation in which the farmer finds himself to-day has not developed in the course of the past year or two. On the contrary, it is the result of years of negligence on the part of this Government in respect of the farming industry in our country, and it would be a grave mistake if hon. members on the Government side were lulled into a false sense of security that as a result of those measures everything is now in order as far as our farmers are concerned. We are of course all deeply aware of the grave drought which still obtains in many parts of our country and we extend our sympathy to those regions which are still suffering under that burden. At the same time we all trust that those regions will soon enjoy relief.

As regards the motion by the hon. member, I want to say that it could never have been as inappropriate as now. We have never before perceived such an oppressive sense of impending disaster as that which is to be perceived amongst the farming population of our country right now. In fact, I think it is ironic that the hon. member for Christiana comes up with this particular motion at this time. He comes along and thanks the Government for what he calls the “stability” it has afforded the industry. Take note, Mr. Speaker, that the hon. member thanks the Government, and that while this Government sat with folded arms while thousands of farmers were leaving their farms during the past 18 years. Take note that he thanks the Government for the “stabilization” of the industry, and that while it has now become necessary to spend so much money in order to save the farmers of South Africa from disaster! Besides, the measures taken recently are in no way new. There is nothing new about them, except for the decision by the Minister of Agricultural Technical Services to withdraw portions of farms from grazing. But all the other measures boasted about by the hon. member this afternoon, such as rebates on transport, railway concessions and so forth, are measures of which we did not hear for the first time this afternoon. On the contrary, all of them are measures to which we have been used for the past 25 years.

I want to refer the hon. member for Christiana to a speech made by the head of our field services in 1963. He then said at Potchefstroom that in 1963 there were only 106,000 farmers left in the country; in other words, 70,000 fewer than in 1936. Of the period since 1936, that is, 30 years, this Government has been in power for 18 years, and note well, 70,000 farmers fewer! [Interjections.] Now the hon. member for Christiana comes along and thanks the Government for the “stability” it has brought to agriculture. But how can the hon. member be proud of the measures taken by the Government while his own Minister of Agricultural Economics and Marketing said a year or two ago that the flow of the population from our agricultural sector to other sectors should be facilitated? Surely it is the fundamental duty of the hon. the Minister of Agricultural Economics and Marketing and the hon. the Minister of Agricultural Technical Services to prevent a decrease in the number of farmers. They should see to it that they remain on the land. He said that the flow of farmers from his sector, from the agricultural sector, to the other sectors should be facilitated. Apparently this Government thought that the intensity of its agricultural problem was closely related to the number of farmers. In other words, they thought that if the number of farmers in South Africa could be reduced, then the problem …

Can you not talk about something real and make a few suggestions?

I am dealing with the hon. member’s motion. He would thank the Government. Mr. Speaker, this Government thought that if the number of farmers in South Africa decreased, the problems of our agriculture would become fewer. They always want to act when it is too late. First it is alleged that higher prices for agricultural produce are no solution. As a result of that, the farmer is caught on the horns of the cost-prices dilemma. He is denied an equitable entrepreneur’s remuneration plus production costs, and is advised that he should rather increase his productivity per unit in order to make a decent profit. The remaining farmer may in fact make a living, but he is unable to build up reserves which will support him in times of adversity such as we have been experiencing in South Africa in the past number of years. Now that we have reached the stage where tens of thousands of farmers are forced from the industry and we are beginning to experience a shortage of certain essential foodstuffs, however, the industry is encouraged by increasing the prices of produce. I want to submit that we are pursuing a needless cycle, Mr. Speaker. Because when we have a surplus, the prices of produce must be reduced, while an increase of prices is allowed in times of shortages. In the meanwhile thousands of farmers have been forced off the land.

Senator Conroy forced them off.

In times of drought the farmers gave each other much more assistance than the Government gave them. The agricultural unions and farmers’ associations rendered wonderful assistance to the farmers. As a result of the condition of our agricultural industry, those engaged in it often have sleepless nights, while consumers of agricultural produce should have reason for concern in future. The fact that the agricultural industry contributes less to our national income than other sectors, does not mean that this industry should be ignored. It is only a matter of time before the Government will be at its wits’ end as regards this problem. I foresee a large-scale shortage of food in South Africa, because our population is growing steadily. The number of farmers, on the other hand, will become less and less capable of meeting the needs of South Africa. We know that it has already become necessary to import tremendous quantities of agricultural products in order to meet our food requirements. I am convinced that this position may deteriorate much further in future. Mr. Speaker, large amounts of money will have to be spent in order to rehabilitate our agricultural industry. Earlier this year my hon. Leader made certain suggestions in this House. He made certain suggestions to the Government. For example, on 25th January this year he spoke about the establishment of a special agency to look after the rehabilitation of our farmers. He said the following (Hansard, Vol. 16, col. 36)—

He spoke of cash loans which will have to be given and of what may be done for the reestablishment of our breeding herds. Concrete suggestions were made, but the hon. the Minister and other hon. members on the opposite side simply took no notice of them.

But surely you are talking nonsense now. Those measures were all taken long before you mentioned them.

I shall come to the hon. the Minister’s scheme. I want to say, Sir, that the prophet of doom is quite as unrealistic as he who fiddles while Rome burns. I want to submit that in this respect the Government is fiddling while Rome burns. By means of a Press statement the hon. the Minister of Agricultural Technical Services explained his short-term policy in respect of the rehabilitation of farmers in the drought-stricken areas. But that scheme will not come into operation before 1st September of this year. The first payment will only be made after next year’s winter. Nobody seems to know how this cheme will be carried out in practice. Has the hon. the Minister the necessary technical officers, for example? And what about the necessary extension officers to supervise the implementation of the scheme? There can be no criticism about the implementation of the scheme’s basic principle, namely to withdraw certain portions of the pasturage from grazing for two growth seasons and one winter.

The hon. member is seeing a lion in the way again.

No, we are seeing nothing of the kind. But what we are in fact seeing is that unless this industry is rehabilitated much more rapidly, a situation will arise similar to that of the rich patient who could not be treated because the doctor had been devoured by the lion of the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Education. We want to prevent such a situation. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, the Government’s schemes are always too late, and in addition not comprehensive enough. They always lend themselves only to short-term solution to our agricultural problems.

Are you calling our rehabilitation policy a short-term policy?

Yes, because according to the announcement which has been made, it will be carried out for six years only. Every two years a third of a farmer’s farm is to be withdrawn from grazing, and because there are only three thirds in a whole, the scheme will last only six years.

I have said time and again that if the land has recovered by that time …

We all know that the past drought has had a tremendous effect and still has one. It has destroyed our land to a large extent. But now the hon. the Minister should not forget the Soil Conservation Act. That Act has been on the Statute Book since 1946. And let us hear what some agricultural leaders have to say about the implementation of that Act. This is what Mr. Coetzer, the chairman of the Midlands Agricultural Union, says—

That is what most of our farmers and our agricultural leaders are noticing. I think reference has already been made in this House to a remark made by Dr. Ross when he said that our leeway in respect of soil conservation is so vast that it will be almost impossible to make up. And whose responsibility is that, Mr. Speaker? It seems to me as though the Government adopts the attitude that there must be a disaster before action is taken. The hon. member for Christiana also boasted about the reclamation work which is being done. But the hon. member knows that only minimal success has been achieved in that regard. The reason for that lies in the fact that the individual farmer’s meagre profits from his farming do not permit the investment of thousands of rands in soil reclamation work. I admit that in most of the intensive areas good progress has been made in respect of soil reclamation work. But let the hon. member go to the extensive areas. In those areas only a minimal amount of reclamation work has been done during the past ten years. Not only because the Government has done so little about it, but also because the individual farmer is simply unable to do anything about it.

Have you read the latest report?

The hon. member knows as well as I do that reclamation work costs thousands of rands and that the people simply do not have enough money to be able to undertake the work. If the farmer had made a decent living, if he had received a decent entrepreneur’s remuneration, he would in fact have been able to give the necessary attention to soil conservation and erosion. Mr. Speaker, soil reclamation work is one of the most expensive undertakings a farmer can engage in, and I fear that unless the Government takes more rapid action and plays a more significant part in this respect, our present leeway will simply become bigger and bigger. It will be of no use for the Government to threaten action against the farmers, because according to the hon. the Deputy Minister they regard the farmers as the main factor. The Deputy Minister said the land is in such a bad condition because the farmers over-grazed it in times of prosperity. But I want to submit that if any land was in fact over-grazed, it was more probably done in times of adversity. I want to ask the hon. the Ministers whether they are satisfied that with the meagre assistance given at present, it will in fact be possible to make up the leeway. I fear the hon. the Ministers will now have to think big and act big in respect of soil and water conservation. Because, Mr. Speaker, soil and water conservation go hand in hand, and here we shall be able to kill two birds with one stone. This side of the House maintains that soil conservation should be treated as a matter of national importance and should receive serious attention. It will be of no avail to set out in fine words everyone’s duty in this regard. What the farmer of South Africa expects is prompt and practical on the part of the Government. But until now the Government’s action has been so meagre that it will not help to save the land and the water of our country. I therefore move this amendment, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, while I was listening to the hon. member who has just sat down, I could not help recalling the election. That side of the House went around telling stories of this very nature before the election. I remember, for example, the words used by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition at Middelburg, when he said: “The Nationalist Party is not in the least concerned about farmers’ remuneration.” Now I want to ask this Opposition—which is the country’s alternative government—whether they can mention one occasion, during all the years I have been in this House, on which they offered suggestions to place the farming industry on a sounder basis than that on which it has in fact been placed by the National Party Government. I now issue a challenge to hon. members on that side. I shall give them the opportunity to mention such occasions. Not one member on that side can get up here and give such an example. And we should bear in mind, Mr. Speaker, that amongst other things the official Opposition, the alternative government, is co-responsible for the future of the farmers. What they can in fact do is to criticize, and that is what they are always doing. I now want to appeal to the hon. member who has just sat down to stick to the truth. He claimed that in the days of the United Party Government there were also rebates on milage and fodder. He claimed that all the National Party Government’s special concessions and measures were also in operation in the days of the United Party régime. But, Sir, surely that is not true. When did that Government, in the years 1933-34, at the time of the great drought, grant a subsidy of 50 per cent in those regions where the drought lasted longer than three years? There is no reply from the hon. members. They obviously cannot reply. The hon. member has therefore told us an untruth. Can hon. members on that side tell me which previous Government—as the hon. member for Christiana has rightly asked—went so far out of its way as this Government to assist farmers in drought-stricken areas, in areas where no rain had fallen for six, seven years, as much as possible and in all respects? I must admit that the Government itself bought no fodder. But the Government recognizes the executive of the South African Agricultural Union as its agricultural advisory council. It consulted the agricultural advisory council of organized agriculture and discussions were held as to what assistance could be rendered to farmers. Thereupon organized agriculture and the officials of the Department drew up schemes to put their decisions into practice. A beginning was made with the scheme “Operation Maize Stalks”. The Government donated R12,000 to the South African Agricultural Union in respect of the administration expenses of that scheme. And the Government also voted R1,000,000 for the purchase of those stalks. I now challenge the opposite side of the House to give me a single instance where the Opposition, when it was in power, acted in a similar fashion. I can also mention operation No. 2, namely that concerning wheat in the Eastern Free State which had been destroyed by frost, and in respect of which the Government donated R20,000 to cover administrative expenses. I further think of “Operation Makatini Plains”, when field-grass was collected and the Central Meat Board granted a loan of R150,000 to organized agriculture. Of that amount the Government guaranteed R45,000. I think of operation No. 4, when sugar-cane was collected by organized agriculture. And. Mr. Speaker, I feel that although organized agriculture has received acknowledgment, I want to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation towards the Transvaal Agricultural Union. At that time the hon. member for Pretoria (District) was still the secretary of the Transvaal Agricultural Union. Those people endeavoured actively, and did everything in their ability, to save the thousands and thousands of cattle which would otherwise have died of hunger. Enough fodder has now been stock-piled to meet requirements until the end of November even if it does not rain. On behalf of this House and of the farmers of South Africa, I therefore want to express our sincere gratitude towards the Transvaal Agricultural Union in particular.

Then the hon. member who has just sat down, and also the Leader of the Opposition—on the same occasion at Middelburg—said that when the National Party Government came into power there were 132,000 farmers in our country, and that after 18 years that figure had been reduced to approximately 100,000.

The hon. member mentioned the figure 166,000.

I was quoting what Dr. Penzhom said.

No, the hon. member cannot do arithmetic. We shall pardon him that. Let us therefore take the figure quoted by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, namely that the number of farmers has decreased by approximately 32,000 during the past 18 years. But I should very much like to know—and if the hon. the Leader of the Opposition wants to be honest he should tell us—what was the decrease in the number of farmers from 1934 to 1948. Is that really a valid argument? Is it not a fact that in 1900 we were all farmers? We all found matters very difficult after the Anglo-Boer War, but in those years we were all farmers, with the exception of a few ministers and teachers. Can one really use that as an argument? In the United States of America the number of farmers in relation to the total population is decreasing much more rapidly than in the Republic of South Africa. That is therefore no argument. And now the hon. member for Newton Park comes along and says these things. The hon. member does not represent a rural constituency like Bethlehem, Cradock or Fauresmith, for example, Oh no, he represents an urban constituency. But in spite of all their publicity and the terrible things they said about the Government during the past election, they were sent home with a flea in the ear and were defeated with overwhelming majorities. Mr. Speaker, I hold it against the Opposition that in the times in which we live—times of absolutely unheard-of droughts—it accuses the Government of having no policy. According to them this Government will be the cause of total disintegration of our agriculture.

What is your policy?

It was said that this Government was doing nothing as regards water conservation. I do not want to elaborate on that. But if this Opposition is in earnest, they should join us in praying to Almighty God for rain. There is enough water here, there are enough dams, there are enough reservoirs in our country, and the problem does not lie in the fact that this Government has failed to do its duty. Our problems are to be attributed solely to the period of unheard-of drought we have been experiencing. So much for the Opposition: I want to leave them to the farming population out there, which has given them a sound drubbing and has no confidence in them.

I want to continue by thanking the Government for the further measures taken to achieve greater stability in agriculture. I want to thank the hon. the Minister of Agricultural Economics and Marketing for accepting the principle of a crop insurance scheme, which should bring about a reduction in the crop farmers’ factor of risk. I am very glad that certain schemes will come into operation even as regards the next wheat crop. I am very glad to say that I was one of the first 50 farmers in my area who subscribed to that scheme. But I want to make an appeal to the hon. the Minister. We are glad that the Government is prepared to bear the administrative expense of that scheme. But I ask myself this question: What would have become of our country if the rain had not come during January? This country would have been threatened by a famine, and it would not have been attributable to ineffectual action on the part of this Government. I therefore want to say this afternoon that as the Government is prepared to bear the administrative expenses and the farmer the premium of the crop insurance scheme, it is only fair that a portion of the premium should be contributed by the consumer, for whose sake I as a farmer invest my capital in the land and have to take the risk. I also want to thank the Government and the hon. the Minister for legislation which will shortly be piloted through Parliament and provides for certain functions of the Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition is a man who usually suffers from hindsight and not foresight. It is our experience that when the Government produces a scheme to rehabilitate our farmers, such measures are always emphasized by the Leader of the Opposition, and all kinds of suggestions are made by him. He usually makes those suggestions at a stage when everything is cut and dried. I want to assure the Opposition that this National Party Government will do everything in its ability, by means of the new Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure, to assist every farmer who is worth assisting and who will be an asset to his country, in such a way that he will be able to make a decent living. I also want to make a brief appeal to the Minister of Economic Affairs as regards the last part of this motion, in which the Government is requested to consider further measures to counter increases in the cost of the requirements for agricultural production which contribute towards the continually rising cost of living. I have here the index figures from 1947-8 until 1964-5, and also the first quarter of 1966. I want to be honest and admit in all fairness towards the Minister of Economic Affairs that the index figure in respect of fertilizer is fairly low. The index figure stood at 135, and shot up to 145 during the first quarter of 1966. In comparison, the index figure for agricultural products stood at 145 in 1964-5, and shot up to 150 during 1966. I therefore admit that in relation the index figure in respect of fertilizer is not high. The difference is this, however, Mr. Sneaker, that the index figure is determined on the basis of the price I receive for my produce, as against the price the fertilizer company receives for its fertilizers. When I use that fertilizer on my lands I run the risk of losing everything, while the fertilizer company does not lose a cent. In view of the fact that the consumption of fertilizer was trebled from 1952 to 1963, I should like to appeal to the hon. the Minister to request fertilizer companies to be so kind as to make more concessions towards our farmers. We live in an era in which farmers are farming more scientifically and are using—and in future will use—much more fertilizer. In view of the higher prices, however, the risk is so tremendous that we really cannot do justice to the production. I know that the profit of fertilizer companies is 13½ per cent before deduction of taxes, and comes to approximately 9 per cent. Nevertheless, the hon. the Minister can in my opinion point out to the fertilizer companies that they should send out fewer agents, use fewer technicians of the Department of Agricultural Technical Services, and do less advertising. I am convinced that if these measures were taken, the companies would be able to reduce the prices of fertilizers considerably.

When the hon. member for Bethlehem—staunch fellow that he is—got up, I hoped to hear something in his panegyric that I had not heard in that of the hon. member for Christiana. As for him, we are used to the fact that he can do nothing but offer panegyrics to the Government. But what did the hon. member for Bethlehem do? Instead of using the meagre 18 minutes for which he spoke to tell us what reasons he had to praise this Government that had not been set out in this motion, he went and flung a brave challenge at the Opposition, asking it to name one measure that it, the Opposition, had suggested in the past number of years to improve the position of agriculture. The hon. member for Bethlehem spoke of “foresight” and “hindsight” which the hon. the Leader of the Opposition was alleged to have. This allegation bears testimony to “blindsight” on the part of the hon. member for Bethlehem. The hon. member for Bethlehem is so blind and his memory so short that he cannot remember that last year and in the preceding years we had continually asked for the gradual adjustment of agricultural prices, as justified by circumstances, in order to meet the increased production costs. The other side turned a deaf ear to that request. In the second place we asked that in order to save our stock in times of drought, special measures should be taken to enable the man who has grazing but no money to buy the stock of a man who has neither grazing nor money. The hon. the Minister of Agricultural Economics and Marketing opposed me last year and the year before and asked me whether I would be satisfied to have my stud stock bought up and perhaps never to recover it. Mr. Speaker, the stud animals are lost anyway. So many of them are lost. We also pointed out that a body should be established for agricultural financing. Now that the situation has become so critical that it is hard to believe, the necessary legislation arrives at last. The Bill in this connection will be dealt with at the appropriate time. We also referred to a fodder bank for times of drought. Mr. Speaker, how long have we been pleading for a fodder bank? Not a fodder bank by means of which the Government grants the Transvaal Agricultural Union R12,000 under one head and then grants agriculture R20,000 to collect wheat that has been destroyed by frost. I am surprised to hear a responsible person like the hon. member for Bethlehem refer in his speech to minimal, insignificant assistance such as R12,000 and R20,000 for drought relief. Since when has it been the duty of the South African Agricultural Union to save the stock in times of drought? Is it the duty of an agricultural union which is not a statutory body, which is merely a voluntary body and which has never been able to obtain authority from this Government to collect compulsory membership fees from its members? I want to associate myself with the hon. member for Bethlehem in expressing the highest gratitude and appreciation towards the Transvaal Agricultural Union for doing so much in an endeavour to save the stock of the Transvaal. It was indeed an outstanding effort. In the meantime this Government was too inefficient to do anything in that connection. In support of the amendment, I want to say that for the first time in this House every farming member on the opposite side—amongst them the hon. members for Christiana and Bethlehem—should support the amendment. [Interjections.] The amendment maintains that the assistance was inadequate and provides for more assistance. If any member on the opposite side claimed that the assistance was adequate, he would be violating his conscience. The assistance was not adequate. With reference to the speech by the hon. member for Christiana, I want to point out that there are many other things in the field of agriculture for which he could have thanked the Government, and on which we would have agreed with him. I am thinking, for example, of the transportation of drought-stricken stock which was carried out so efficiently by the Department of the hon. the Minister of Transport, and on which we have already complimented the Minister. Now, however, the hon. member refers to the financial assistance rendered by the Government in times of drought. What was that financial assistance? For the most part that assistance was too late to save what could be saved by means of fodder loans, fodder subsidies, railage subsidies, and so forth. How many times have we said in this House that we do not want to live on alms and that we do not want subsidies if it can be prevented? The drought has been continuing for more than three years and its grip on us is becoming stronger and stronger. This Opposition’s concern about the deterioration of farming in the country is quite as strong as that of the hon. member for Bethlehem. We warned and pleaded repeatedly that the various kinds of fodder should be conserved. When I suggested a year ago that even the chaff which was rotting on the lands should be used as roughage, one of the hon. members on the opposite side told me I was talking rubbish. Mr. Speaker, do you know what enormous prices were eventually paid for that chaff? That is how bad the situation has in fact become. But did we not warn against that in advance? Not only did we ask for fodder banks; we also asked the hon. the Minister to make it possible for the farmers to remove their stock from the drought-stricken areas of the Northern Transvaal, and to make the necessary funds available to farmers elsewhere, to enable them to buy that stock at decent prices and not for the price of an animal which is on the point of dying because it is a bag of bones. But what is the position in this regard, according to statistics? According to an announcement by the Department of Agricultural Technical Services reported in the one o’clock news to-day, the country’s cattle stock has decreased by 318,000 in recent times. I am prepared to accept these statistics, and also that White farmers own 8,000,000 head of cattle at the moment. But what do the statistics also show?

The hon. member always has so much to say about Australia. Can he perhaps tell us what it looks like there after the drought, and how much stock died there?

The hon. the Minister has always been quick to say that I should not use other countries as comparisons. The hon. the Minister should wait until I start talking to him about New Zealand. According to statistics there were 36,000 quarter carcasses of beef in stock in January, 1965. In January, 1966, there were 67,000. In January, 1965, there were 15,000 sheep carcasses in stock, while in January, 1966, there were 26,000 sheep carcasses in stock. In other words, over and above the numbers we are losing as a result of the drought, we are slaughtering our stock at a rate which is not justified if one considers the numbers of stock in the country at present. Now the hon. the Minister may refer to an argument by Mr. Van Wyk, according to which the number of breeding stock has increased whereas the non-breeding stock has decreased. The fact remains, however, that the stock of cattle has shown a large decrease and that the numbers are now smaller than five or ten or 15 years ago, and that a larger population with a higher spending capacity has to be fed by means of these smaller numbers. To what is this state of affairs to be attributed? If a farmer sells his stock and thus reduces it, there can be two possible reasons: Either the drought is forcing him to sell so that he has to send his stock to the controlled markets or elsewhere, or capital is so hard to raise that he has to reduce his stock in order to get money. Surely there are no other alternatives in this case, except for a person who is prepared to give up farming. Surely those are the only alternatives. Both of them hit the farmer equally hard. He is forced to reduce his stock and he has to sell it for what he can get. I wonder how many hon. members have been in the Northern Transvaal and have seen the condition of the stock they are trying to sell there to stop them from dying. They are so thin and emaciated that people are afraid to buy them because they do not know whether the animals will survive transportation. That is the position of stock farming in the Northern Transvaal, and not only there but also in many other regions. Now the hon. member for Christiana comes up with a special motion of gratitude to the Government for the financial assistance it has rendered to the drought-stricken farmers. I want to submit that if the financial assistance had been rendered in a different way, if it had come sooner, the Government would not have been faced with this dilemma. Because it is no use maintaining that the position of agriculture is sound; agriculture is sick. I maintain that if this financial assistance had been rendered sooner and in a different way, if it had come by means of the fodder banks for drought we have requested so often, if it had come by way of a system through which people could sell their stock at a guaranteed price so that other people could buy it and continue farming with it, our stock would not have been in this desperate position to-day. And I want to add this: While we were in this hopeless plight and stock was dying everywhere because the drought had forced them to eat soil or poisonous plants or shrubs, what was the position regarding veterinary services? We put the questions and received the answer that there are now 166 Government veterinary surgeons for a stock of approximately 10,000,000 head of cattle and 38,000,000 sheep. Do you know what the ratio is? There is one Government veterinary surgeon for 60,000 head of cattle and one Government veterinary surgeon for a quarter of a million sheep. But that is the Government the hon. member wants to thank for all its assistance because it has tried to save the farmers in times of drought.

I have to hurry, and I want to move on to the next point for which the hon. member wishes to express gratitude, and that is the reclamation of our grazing. Sir, the improvement in grazing that has so far been brought about in this country, was brought about on the initiative of the farmer himself and not of the Government. I have mentioned this point before. Although experiments have been carried out with grazing, and with good results, I repeat that the improved grazing found in this country and the reclamation of grazing at its best is found from Caledon to Mossel Bay, where it is done by means of the cultivation of lucerne and other crops. But despite the improved grazing and the higher fertility of the soil, the numbers of our stock have decreased and are still decreasing. Can anything be more ironic? We improve the grazing, but the numbers of our stock decrease. There must be something drastically wrong, and that is the fault of this Government.

Then there is the so-called exemption of agriculture from the credit restrictions. I do not know whether the two hon. members who have already spoken are under the impression that their loans are exempted from those restrictions. I find that I still have to pay 8 per cent interest on my loan, except for the Land Bank loans, and I have to pay even more on my overdraft. The farmer has to pay exactly the same interest as everybody else in the country. Where could the farmer obtain financial facilities, except at the Land Bank? At which ordinary banks could the farmer obtain facilities other than those obtained by other industries?

The hon. member also spoke of agricultural prices which, he claimed, had shown such a wonderful rise. When did they rise? They rose-suddenly and quite rapidly in April, May and June—after the election. The prices of sugar, meat and dairy products shot up. This Government was afraid of adjusting the prices before the election. They were afraid of the consumers. [Interjections.] If they had increased the prices before the election, they would not have been returned so easily. We can only hope that every farmer on that side of the House will be convinced, as this Opposition is convinced, that the financial assistance rendered to the farmers by this Government is inadequate for agriculture.

Mr. Speaker, if, from time to time, there were not special circumstances in which the United Party Opposition could say a few words about agriculture—the drought prevailing at the moment is an example—then I am afraid they would have nothing to say about agriculture. They accused the Government of coming forward too late with emergency measures. The hon. member for Newton Park quoted figures to prove how the farmers in the rural areas had decreased between 1936 and 1963, and he said that as a result there was a danger that there would be an inadequate food supply to meet the country’s future requirements. Unfortunately however he chose a very weak date to draw comparisons with, for in 1962-3, in spite of the decrease in the number of farmers which the hon. member has referred to, the Opposition’s accusation against this Government was that it had not displayed sufficient foresight to develop adequate markets for the surpluses of mealies, dairy products and all those other commodities which had accumulated at that time. In other words, the argument which the hon. member used was that the decreased number of farmers which there were would not be able to continue supplying the country with food, but in 1963 they produced a surplus, and then they accused the Government of not having foreseen that the decreased number of farmers could produce so much more, and that no provision had been made for the exporting of surpluses. Now the hon. members are asking: What about the present? Of course there have been drought conditions which decreased production tremendously. Nobody denies that. Of course we have had conditions in the past few years which altered the position from that of surpluses to that of shortages. But that was not because the farmers were only able to produce less; it is because nature did not co-operate. That is why there has been a decrease in production. They say that the Government has not taken steps in the past to take care of agriculture. What was the position when this Government came to power in 1948? There were then six products which were being controlled under the Marketing Act and of which the prices had been fixed, and to-day there are 17. Then the hon. members come here with their eloquent gestures, members like the hon. member for East London (City). We know him only too well, however. In the past he has succeeded in bluffing the wool farmers, but he cannot come and do that here. There are people here who know that hon. member only too well. He says the Opposition has in recent years proposed certain steps which the Government have taken no notice of, and he mentioned a few. He said that there had never been any adjustments in agricultural prices by this Government, except after this recent election, but surely that is the greatest nonsense in the world? When the United Party was in power, to mention only one item, what was the fixed price or the floor price for mutton and beef, seeing as how it is now so concerned about the decrease in meat production? There is just no comparison. Producer’s prices for mutton and beef have increased 100 per cent since 1948, and now I am talking about floor prices on the one case and fixed prices on the other—in the case of the United Party. But he says there has never been adjustment. [Interjections.] The hon. member does not always know what he is saying. He said they have been asking the Government for years to make adjustments in agricultural prices in order to meet the rising costs of living, but that the Government has never responded, except this year after the election. In other words, the hon. member is now admitting that he was wrong. Merely to come here and make these kind of assertions does not hold water. Over the years the prices have always been adjusted to circumstances and this has been done in the case of every price being fixed. The hon. member for Newton Park also accused my colleague of having done nothing for soil reclamation, but on the other hand he says that this is the case in the intensive agricultural areas. Progress has in fact been made there, but in the extensive areas progress has not been made because the Government does not see to it that the farmers receive worthwhile prices for their products. The extensive areas to which the hon. member for Newton Park is referring, those which have not made progress in recent years—does the Government fix the price of products in those areas? Does the Government fix the wool farmers’ prices? I just want to show how foolish these arguments are. I would not mind if the hon. members made concrete proposals, but they must not make use of foolish arguments. The hon. member himself admits that progress has been made in the intensive agricultural areas. [Interjection.] Now the hon. member is saying that it is mixed farming, and the hon. member has said that it is precisely in the intensive areas that the prices of the products are being fixed by the Government. Surely then his argument that the farmers could not do so because the prices were not right is in-correct. It is in the case of those very farmers whom the hon. member mentioned as an example and in whose case the Government has nothing to do with the fixing of prices that he made the accusation that there had been no progress in the field of science.

Then the hon. member for East London (City) came along and said that the second thing they had warned the Government about was the preservation of the stock in the drought-stricken areas. However, he then thanked the agricultural unions for the work they had done and said that the Government had also contributed, but on the other hand he said that the Government had not taken any steps to preserve the stock. The hon. member is a stranger in Jeruselem. Is the hon. member not aware that for more than two years fodder for those areas has been subsidized by 50 per cent so that the farmers can keep their stock from starving? [Interjections.] The only thing the hon. member mentioned was that R20,000 had been received from the Government by the Agricultural Union of the Transvaal for administrative purposes, and he asked of what use R20,000 was? But the Government did not only make that administrative contribution; it subsidized the transportation of stock and fodder by 50 per cent and granted the farmers long-term loans for fodder. But the hon. member maintains that nothing is being done; the Government is not taking any notice of the farmer.

He then went further and stated: We have said the Government should create adequate finance for the farmers in the drought-stricken areas. We are now hearing about a new department and of legislation to come, but the hon. member maintains that nothing is being done. These auxiliary measures which are contained in the legislation are not something which still has to take place. The Government brought the Farmer’s Assistance Act into full operation as far back as 1959. That was seven years ago. The hon. members do not know what is happening. R25,000,000 was made available to the farmers at that time to rehabilitate them in those regions, but the hon. member says that nothing is being done. But apart from that, the State Advances Recoveries Act was made generally applicable in our maize and wheat producing regions. Where previously only those people qualified where a special scheme was introduced for a specific area, that scheme has been made generally applicable and any person insufficiently solvent to acquire his own production means is assisted under this scheme. The hon. member for Christiana has mentioned this matter and I do not want to repeat it, but the hon. member for East London (City) says that the Government is doing nothing.

The hon. member also came out with his old annual story. He said that they had been asking the Government for many years to establish fodder banks. If the hon. member were to make an analysis of all the lucern exported from South Africa during the past ten years, and he were to assume that it could all be collected in one fodder bank and stored at a tremendously high cost, he would still find that he would only be able to feed 100,000 head of cattle at the most for a few months. But the policy of the Government is to have fodder available and that is why, through the Mealie Board, it keeps a quantity of mealies in the country annually so as to have fodder available. But as a result of the circumstances in this country in the last few years, coupled with the drought, our fodder production has suffered a tremendous set-back. The hon. member knows that. Even if one had been able to establish a fodder bank during the last few years, one would not have been able to obtain the fodder to put in that fodder bank. One would not have been able to obtain fodder, except mealies which are available in fair quantities. That is one of the things we are concerned about: Apart from all the financial assistance which is being rendered, we are being faced with the problem, as a result of the drought and the empty dams, that fodder is going to become extremely scarce and difficult to obtain in this country, not because there is no fodder bank but because there is just no fodder production under the present circumstances. But the hon. member comes along and states that they had warned the Government, but that no notice whatsoever had been taken of their warning and that the Government was not taking any notice of what was happening to the farmer. The hon. member said that he had on various occasion asked that the farmers be enabled to purchase stock from the drought-stricken areas and he said that nothing had been done in that connection either. The hon. member does not know what is going on. Special funds were made available to certain bodies by the Land Bank in order to finance farmers making purchases of stock from the drought-stricken areas and a special rebate was allowed on the transportation of those cattle to new grazing areas. I am asking the hon. member to be realistic.

Where in South Africa to-day do we have grazing to which cattle can be transported? In what area within the boundaries of South Africa do we have farmers to-day who can purchase cattle in other areas on a large scale and provide them with grazing in their areas? Can the hon. member mention one such area to me? It is no use saying that one should make this or that possible. The state of affairs is such that even if one were to make everything possible, those areas would simply not exist. It is very easy to stand up here and say: We said this or that, but no notice is being taken.

I want to tell the hon. member why it often happens that no notice is taken of what hon. members on that side suggest. This happens precisely because the things which they suggest are already being implemented. Their proposals usually come after the event, such as the proposal to which the hon. member for Newton Park referred for example. He said that the Leader of the Opposition had proposed the previous year that a special council with committees be created to deal with those people who had found themselves in difficulties as a result of the drought and other circumstances.

Mr. Speaker, neither the hon. member nor even the Leader of the Opposition know what is happening in South Africa. This special council to which he referred was created a long time ago. The Farmers’ Assistance Board is there with its committees and deals with each case according to its merits, and this has continually been done since 1959. With the new legislation we are now going to coordinate this position better and consolidate it with the assistance which is being made available in terms of it. The hon. member’s proposal was that the board should deal with each individual farmer. It is not necessary for an individual farmer to leave his farm as long as it is still possible for him to farm economically, while he can obtain assistance from the Farmers’ Assistance Board, while this consolidation is taking place or while he can be rehabilitated and assisted in terms of the Farmers’ Assistance Board. It is so easy to make mere general accusations. The hon. member for Newton Park made the assertion here to-day that on some occasion or other I allegedly said that we must make it easy for the man wishing to leave the rural areas in order to find work in the city. Of course it is essential that one must make it easy for the man wishing to leave the rural areas, for he usually does not have the necessary training when he arrives in the city. But whatever steps or measures you might take, there will always be people leaving the rural areas and moving to the cities. Surely the farmers are not the most unproductive sector of our population. Children are being born in the rural areas and from time to time they must find refuge in the cities.

There are also farmers who, from time to time and for many reasons, want to go to the city. Both the hon. members on that side who spoke in the debate, spoke of the depopulation of the rural areas, of the decrease in the number of farmers. I want to ask them this: Has not one of them ever bought-out a fellow-farmer’s property in order to increase the size of his own? Naturally if one buys out a farmer, whether he is rich or poor, he leaves the rural area as a matter of course. If this is so, surely one cannot make the accusation against the Government that the number of farmers is decreasing? Those same hon. members who make that accusation, also buy out their neighbouring fellow-farmers. That is why they leave. When those farmers are bought out they have to go somewhere, not so? They do not remain in the rural areas, they go to the cities. Ts it not obvious, therefore, that one must make it easy for them to go to the cities?

What about the other man who sub-divides his land and gives it to his two sons?

If one sub-divides land and gives it to as many as five sons, those people still remain there. They do not go to the city. One son may perhaps buy out the other; I am not talking about that. The hon. member was talking about farmers who left the rural areas. Of course, under circumstances such as these drought conditions, more of our farmers will vanish from the rural areas than will be the case under normal circumstances, whatever the price of the product may be.

Are you not concerned about the depopulation of the rural areas?

The removal of farmers from the rural areas does not only take place in bad times; it occurs far more often in good times and in times of high prices, because the higher the price of a product, the easier it is for the big farmer to offer an even higher price for the small farmer’s land. If you want to prevent it, therefore, the price factor is not always the solution to the problem of the depopulation of the rural areas. It is much more probable that farmers will leave the rural areas because they are offered high prices for their land than that they will leave because they have experienced a number of difficult years on account of drought.

Do you know how many farms in the Northern Transvaal have been sold, where the owners have left?

Of course, they left on account of the drought; I am not denying it. But I want to ask the hon. member this: If those farmers had to leave the rural areas owing to those circumstances, should we not then try and make it easier for them to be assimilated in the cities? That is the accusation which the hon. member for Newton Park made, which I am replying to. He stated that I said we must make it easy for those people to be assimilated in the cities, and he objects to that. As far as agriculture is concerned, the Opposition is doing what they would like to do in all the other spheres; they always want to ride the crest of the wave. If there has been a surplus of agricultural products this year they accuse the Government of shortsightedness for not having developed adequate markets in order to dispose of the surplus overseas. If there is a shortage in any other year on account of drought they say it is the Government’s fault because it did not ensure that there was adequate production. It is because the Opposition takes that kind of attitude, because they see in every action an opportunity to gain a little political advantage for themselves, that they cannot succeed, even in a time like this when our farmers are experiencing more hardships than they have done for a long time in our history, and despite all their propaganda, in persuading the farmers that the United Party can also mean something to them. The farmers have rejected them, to a worse degree than ever before. I want to give hon. members of the Opposition a little piece of advice: If they were really interested in agriculture in South Africa and were not doing so for mere political reasons, they would come forward with more constructive ideas in this House with which agriculture might be served. But their purpose is not to serve agriculture; their only purpose is to serve the United Party. The voting public outside this House is better informed than that; they saw through the Opposition long ago. For many years they knew the United Party as the ruling party. I am not sure whether they know this lot now sitting here.

On a point of order, is the hon. Minister entitled to refer to members on this side as a “lot”?

They are so few. They are no longer a “lot”.

I shall withdraw the word “lot”. I do not know whether the farmers know those “few” on the opposite side but they knew them previously, when they were the governing party. Of course, the farmer in South Africa has his problems—and his temptations—problems which in this stage are major ones as far as agriculture is concerned—nobody denies that—but even under these extraordinarily difficult circumstances the farmers of South Africa, whether it be individual farmers or farming organizations, have faith in the actions of this Government, and no matter what the Opposition does, despite all their insinuations, and despite their accusations that the Government is taking no positive steps in regard to these matters, the people outside this House still do not believe them and as a party they are going downhill rapidly.

The hon. the Minister has made a lengthy speech, but has made no attempt whatsoever to make a statement of broad policy. I thought that this debate would be the occasion for a Minister of Agriculture to make a major statement of broad policy to the people and to say to them: That is the agricultural policy of the Government. If there is anything that has become clear it is that this Minister does not know where he is heading with the farmers of South Africa. I am sorry that he has not been appointed Minister of Water Affairs, because one portfolio he would have been capable of managing well is the portfolio of “laat Gods water maar oor Gods akker loop” (letting things take their own course). I remember reading once that the communists, or those of them that lead an easy life, let their beards grow a little before they fight an election, that they deliberately soil themselves and put on old clothes and then visit the factories and give themselves out as workers. Then they tell the workers: “You must vote for me, because I am a worker just like you.” This Government has led the farmers to believe that it is a farmers’ government and to-day the farmers have become the dirt of the country under this Government, and the Minister of Agricultural Economics and his agricultural colleague who is now the Minister of the Interior have to accept responsibility for what they have done to the farmers of this country, because whatever he may say, what is the position? Over a period of ten years under their regime the rural areas of South Africa became blacker. For every White person who left the rural areas, 20 Bantu moved in, and this hon. Minister and his colleague, the present Minister of the Interior, must be held responsible for that. Those are facts that cannot be argued away. Even if those Ministers were to grow stubbly beards they would no longer succeed in convincing the farmers that they are the friends of the farmers.

I do not want to devote too much time to the hon. the Minister, because, after all, he merely repeated what had been said by the hon. member for Christiana, but there is one thing I want to tell him before I go on: He boasted here of what the Government had done about the price of meat and he said that the floor price of meat was twice as high to-day, that the price of meat fixed in 1948 had increased by 100 per cent. Does he want to take the credit for that? After all, he was the one who prayed for a drought so that this situation could arise, and now that the drought has come the hon. member for Christiana comes along and says that we should adopt a motion of thanks because of the drought. The first thing this Government did when that party came into power was to throw overboard the Marketing Act altogether as far as meat control was concerned; they simply let things slide. [Interjection.] That is the truth, not so? Let the Minister tell me how he has fixed meat prices. He knows that representations have been made to him from time to time. [Interjection.] No, the Minister must not talk to me about floor prices at all, because he knows there is a shortage of meat. He knows there is no meat control scheme to-day. The levy charged on meat to-day is nothing but theft committed against the farmers, because the Meat Control Board is doing nothing at all and neither is the hon. the Minister doing anything in that regard. What is being done for the farmers? What does the Meat Control Board do apart from erecting fine buildings? Why do the farmers pay a levy to-day? I do not think it necessary to devote any further attention to the hon. the Minister, but I want to come to the hon. member for Christiana. The hon. member came here and said—he read it out and I take it that it was a quotation: “No other government has done as much as this Government to promote farming.” He did not say who had said that.

I said that leading farmers said so.

The hon. member was very reluctant to introduce this motion—this motion of thanks for the drought. He was forced by the Nationalist Party caucus to introduce the motion. We know that, Mr. Speaker, because the hon. member is a farmer and we know he is concerned about the farmers. He is now being used here to do something he does not like. He went further and said—I think this too was written out for him by his caucus—that no other government has granted so many subsidies and loans to the farmers as has this one. Subsidies and loans! This Government first caused the farmers to go bankrupt and now it wants to assist us by means of subsidies and loans so that we can just breathe. We do not want to live on subsidies and loans. No independent, decent farmer wants subsidies and loans. He wants an agricultural policy which will enable him to look the rest of the economic community squarely in the face and to say: “I do not want any subsidies, loans, favours and bounties; I make a living out of the reward I get for the work I do in the interests of South Africa.” That is the policy of the United Party. What does the Government do? It gives the farmer a little bit and then takes it back again, but even worse: that hon. member said he wanted to take us back to 1932-3 and he added that two good things were born of the drought of 1932-3; the first was the Farmers’ Assistance Act and the second was the Marketing Act. Sir, may I have the hon. member’s attention? I see he is blushing, because he knows what is coming. He said that two good things were born of the drought and misery of 1932-3: the Farmers’ Assistance Act and the Marketing Act. What he did not add, however, was that the misery was so great that a third good thing happened as a result of it. He became a supporter of the United Party during that time and he joined the United Party. He accompanied us from one platform to the other to tell the people what a wonderful salvation it was for South Africa that we had a United Party Government again and not a Nationalist Party Government which caused the people to go bankrupt and let them work for 3s. 6d. per day. In fact, he was the biggest shouter for the United Party Government at that time, and to-day I have to see him being used here as a pawn of the Nationalist Party to introduce a motion to express thanks for the drought. How the mighty of the past have fallen!

But I want to go further. The hon. member mentioned 1932-3. Does he still remember how a Nationalist Party Government ruined South Africa in 1932 through their gold standard policy and how they ruined the farmers? Does he still remember that? No, he does not answer now; he just sits and smiles. He realizes that in his heart, but he feels too ashamed to say, “Yes” in this House in the presence of other farmers. He knows that is the truth. Surely he knows that Whites were ruined, humiliated and destroyed by the Nationalist Party in 1932; surely he knows that that was why the Farmers’ Assistance Act was passed?

You are talking nonsense.

Surely he knows that was why Coalition came about and why he himself joined the United Party.

I have never been a United Party man in my life.

The hon. member is still a United Party man in his heart, and his entire family, who stand under the discipline of the Nationalist Party caucus here, are all still United Party supporters in any case. There are only four corner-stones to the farming industry in South Africa to-day, namely the Farmers’ Assistance Board, the Marketing Act, the Co-operative Societies Act and the Soil Conservation Act. The farmers are proud of those corner-stones, because they enable the farmers to keep their heads above water. All four those corner-stones were set up by United Party Acts. Not one of them was set up by a Nationalist Party Government. Whenever something concrete had to be done for South Africa it has always been a United Party Government which had to do it.

Do you not remember how the United Party opposed the Marketing Act? They did not even want to vote.

Our Minister of Agriculture at that time met with opposition from men like Barlow, whose son-in-law sits on the opposite side to-day. That was how the then Minister had to bulldoze the measures through against the opposition of people sitting on the opposite side of this House to-day. Sir, I shall tell you what this Government did. They had been in office for hardly three months when they exempted meat from price control under the Marketing Act. The hon. member for Christiana must be honest and speak the truth. They are the people who began to destroy the Marketing Act, the true foundation of the farming economy in this country.

Name me one product which was proclaimed “cost plus” in your time in terms of the Marketing Act?

The hon. member came here with a motion on which he spoke without having his heart and soul in it. Mr. Speaker, the difference between this side and that side of the House is that they simply do not have any agricultural policy over there and, what is more, they do not make any attempt to get one. Now they have appointed a commission to try and find a policy for them. But how many commissions have already been appointed by this Government to inquire into the agricultural industry? How many committees have already been appointed? I do not know how many there were altogether, but I think there must be a very long list of them. I think I shall put a question to the Minister in this connection next week.

Now I come to the hon. member for Bethlehem. I notice that he is not in the House at the moment.

He does not like to listen to a clown.

The hon. the Deputy Minister must keep quiet please. The first thing he did under this Government was to sell his farm and to obtain a business concession on a settlement. Why did he do that?

He knew what was coming.

It is a pity that the hon. the Deputy Minister has been appointed to an agricultural portfolio. I could still have understood it if he had been placed in charge of settlements. But I want to come to the hon. member for Bethlehem. I recall that a commission was appointed to enquire into the high repair costs of farm implements. The hon. member for Bethlehem served on that commission. I do not know whether any of the hon. members opposite have read the report of that commission, but it has been read by some of the members on this side. That commission revealed that farmers were expected to pay as much as 200 per cent profit to the manufacturers of spare-parts. Now the hon. member for Bethlehem comes along and says that that was reasonable “because their net profit was not more than 14 per cent”. But the hon. member knows only too well what one can do about excessive profits in order to show a “net profit” of 14 per cent. The tragedy of the matter is that these hon. members who come here and give themselves out as farmers have no sympathy with the farmers, but allow them to be exploited by people who do not care what they charge the farmer for spare parts, repairs and other essential services.

I am, amongst other things, a grain farmer. I now want to ask hon. members opposite to tell me what grain farmer can still show a profit to-day with the present high production costs? The fact of the matter is that our approach to the problems of the farmer is a different one. This Government wants the farmer to live on alms, while we on this side want to grant him the opportunity to continue living as an independent farmer. As a matter of fact, the hon. the Minister for Agricultural Economics and Marketing stated that very clearly himself. According to Merino he said the following in October, 1963 (translation)—

This then is the difference between them and us: we want independent farmers, farmers for whom it will not be necessary to crawl on their knees and to say “Thank you, Master” to a Minister; hon. members opposite, on the other hand, come along time and again with a motion to thank the Government for the alms it doles out to the farmers. Allow me to show in which way the Government discriminates against the farmer time after time. During the war and immediately thereafter this country experienced a shortage of food, but at that time the then United Party Government was not afraid to fix the prices of products. We were not afraid to tell the farmer that he had to perform a service to the country instead of making profits. But at the same time there was an understanding with the farmers that their prices would at least be kept constant in times when they experienced difficulties again. That, however, was thrown overboard by this Government. We have heard so much to-day about stabilizing the fodder-banks. One of the products which is being used very successfully as stock-fodder to-day is fishmeal. Hon. members opposite need not blush, because I shall not say what they think I am going to say. However, I am pleased to see the hon. the Minister of Agricultural Technical Services listening so attentively. I want to tell him that ordinary shredded chaff mixed with fishmeal makes an excellent fodder for stock. But what has happened with this fishmeal which is such an essential ingredient of stock-fodder? What has happened? When this Government came into office the price of fishmeal was R64 per ton. When we subsequently asked for an increase in the price of butterfat and of milk because we could not come out on the existing prices, the request was refused, but the Government nevertheless allowed the price of fishmeal to increase by 30 per cent, that is to say, from R64 per ton to R79 per ton. When we approached the hon. the Minister in this connection he replied that he had to assist the fishmeal industry. He said, “Look, the real profit is not made on fishmeal, but on canned fish.” To-day, however, there is such a rush for licences for the manufacturing of fishmeal that we cannot believe the hon. the Minister. But the point is that the hon. the Minister saw his way clear to allowing the price of fishmeal to increase notwithstanding the fact that it was a basic ingredient of stock-fodder. When he was approached by the wheat-farmers for an increase in the wheat price, he refused it and said that although wheat-farmers were perhaps suffering a loss on their crop they could make good that loss by the net result of their farming generally, that is to say, if sheep, cattle and so forth are also taken into account. Then it was no longer said, as was said in the case of fishmeal, that wheat farming was not a profitable part of the whole.

The hon. the Minister to-day again referred to what we said in 1963, namely that this Government had to look for markets for the farmer and that we blamed this Government when there were surpluses. Surely it is the duty of any government to look for markets; what is the hon. the Minister being paid for then? Surely he is paid to work?

What has this Government done to the dairy farmer? They have kept the price of dairy products so low that our dairy herds are disappearing. The position has become so bad that we have had to import butter and cheese at prices the housewife simply could not afford. The fact of the matter is that this Government simply does not have any plans. They simply do not know where they are going. They are doing nothing. All of them are Ministers of Water Affairs because all of them adopt the attitude of “laat Gods water maar oor Gods akker loop” (let things take their own course). This is the Government which told us, with reference to surpluses which had arisen, that we should learn to compete with the outside world. Naturally we want to learn to compete with the outside world, but then this Government should also learn to compete with other governments in the outside world. For example, are they aware of what England is prepared to do for her farmers? Do they know how many millions of pounds are paid out in the form of assistance to the farmers in England?

But you said you did not want any subsidies.

We want assistance and I want to tell you what kind of assistance we want. I want the assistance that is being granted to others to enable them to compete in the outside world to be granted to us as well so that the farmer will not be in a worse position than those people are. The hon. Minister who has just made an interjection is Minister of Water Affairs. Is the hon. the Minister aware of the fact that there is a Drought Relief Act on the Statute Book? Does the hon. the Minister know the history of that Act? At the time when that legislation was being considered by Parliament a terrible drought prevailed in the Transvaal and the Free State. While the Bill was being discussed here, thunderstorms broke there and instead of the farmers having to contend with a drought, they then had to contend with terrible floods. Minister Kemp then came along and asked what he should do, because the farmers had first asked for assistance against drought, but then came along and asked for assistance against the floods. He thereupon asked Dr. Viljoen whether it would not look rather silly to proceed with the Bill under such circumstances. Dr. Viljoen’s reply was that all they had to do was to insert only one word in the title of the Act so that it would read “Drought and Flood Relief Act.” It still appears under that title on the Statute Book today. Surely the hon. the Minister knows that our country is a country of extremes, and that consequently we must expect difficulties of that kind?

Why does the hon. the Minister not try to find out what is being done in countries like England, West Germany and even Russia to keep the farmers stable? Is the hon. the Minister aware of the fact that we in South Africa pay twice as much for artificial fertilizer as the people in England do? Does he know that in this country we pay more than twice as much for nitrogen, which is produced here, as does the farmer in England or even in Germany, where they produce four times as much as we do per hectare? Why does the hon. the Minister not take a look at what is ’happening in other countries? Why cannot the hon. the Minister sometimes have sympathy with the so-called “boer nation”? Why is it that hon. members opposite no longer have any sympathy with and love for the farmer the moment they enter this House, and can say, as the hon the Minister of Agricultural Economics and Marketing has done, that the farmers should not forget that there is no constituency in which the farmers are still in the majority?

You on that side are twisting our words.

No, I do not twist words. Can anyone here deny that the hon. the Minister of Agricultural Economics and Marketing said at the Nationalist Party Congress two years ago that no further concessions could be made because people had to realize that there was not a single constituency left in which the farmers were in the majority?

That is untrue.

In that case one cannot even believe the Nationalist newspapers any longer. The moment hon. members on that side are driven into a corner one hears the cry, “That is untrue”! In any case, if that is not true, why has the Government done nothing since that time? Why does the hon. the Minister deny only now that he said something like that? Why does the hon. member, and not the hon. the Minister, now deny for the first time that he used these words? [Interjections.] This side of the House is not asking that our fanners should be placed in a better position than farmers elsewhere in the world as far as artificial fertilizer is concerned. All we are asking for is that our farmers should be placed in the same position as that prevailing elsewhere, and I believe that our Afrikaner farmer will then be able to compete with the rest of the world.

Let us now deal with a second point, a point I have raised so often in the past. At first I was laughed at when I spoke about it. Some said that I did not speak the truth. But my statements have been proved correct by court cases. I am referring to the labour question here in the Western Province. As a result of the ideological measures of this Government the farmers in this part of the country are finding it quite impossible to continue owing to the shortage of labour. Look what has happened to the dairy herds. Look how people are selling their dairy farms because they cannot get milk-boys. I hope the hon. member for Moorreesburg is listening to what I am saying. I hope that major developments in respect of irrigation will take place in his constituency (which is also mine). I now understand that as a result of the increased wine quotas which have been allocated to the Western Province an additional 5,000 families will be required to cultivate the vineyards. Mr. Speaker, where will they come from? We now have to import people from the Transkei for a year. What do they know about the pruning of vines? What do they know about the treatment of vineyards?

What do you suggest?

Another government! Mr. Speaker, has this Government ever paid serious attention to the labour position in the Western Province? If not, then what this Government is preaching, namely that we should increase wages, is nonsense. Wages can make labour more expensive, but it does not make labour more plentiful. I just hope this hon. Minister will not come along and tell us that the farmers here should go in for greater mechanization. He hears that story from hon. members who represent constituencies in the Western Cape, but who know nothing at all about farming. The pruning of vines simply cannot be done through mechanization. A machine for that purpose simply does not exist. I can continue in this vein, Mr. Speaker, but this Government just does not care. It does not feel concerned. After all, it has been stated that the farmers are in the minority and that they can no longer vote that party out of office. But, Sir, I just want to say this. I know the farmers. Some hon. members, party organizers who happen to be members of this House, may laugh. I know the farmers. More than one Minister of Agriculture has been broken because he neglected the farmers. Recently a Minister of Agriculture was transferred to a portfolio dealing with internal affairs. And if I interpret the signs of the times correctly these people are still going to break this Government. We cannot go on like this. I am grateful that the hon. the Minister almost had sufficient courage to support something about which we feel very strongly here in the Cape. We should very much like to build houses for our labourers which are just as good as those built by the Government for people in the towns who fall in the sub-economic class. It would cost a great deal of money, but we are quite willing to do that. But we pay for our labourers’ houses ourselves. We do not have people who work in industries and whom the State supplies with cheap housing on easy terms. The farmers themselves will build the houses. We should like to see our workers have decent housing. But do you realize, Mr. Speaker, that because we have this peculiar divisional council system in this province we have to pay rates on the dwellings of our workers? Rates such as those are not required to be paid in the Transvaal and the Free State. This Government is simply too scared to touch this system, because … [Interjections.] There is not a single Nationalist member here who in his heart does not agree with me that divisional council rates should be abolished. But not one of those hon. members has the courage to get up here and to admit that. [Time limit.]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Sea Point made a large number of unmotivated assertions to which it is very difficult to reply. It is simply impossible for one to do so. One has to be like the hon. member in order to be able to reply to all his assertions. The hon. member as well as other hon. members on the opposite side expressed their concern over the depopulation of the rural areas. In dealing with agricultural matters hon. members on that side have repeatedly deplored the depopulation of the rural areas. The hon. member for Yeoville even went so far as to ask by way of an interjection—because that is all that he is capable of when agricultural matters are being discussed—whether this side is not concerned over the depopulation of the rural areas. But is the Government not showing its concern by spending hundreds of millions of rands to bring people back to the rural areas so that they may find a livelihood in the agricultural industry there? The United Party has also announced a policy in respect of the problem of the depopulation of the rural areas. Part of its policy reads as follows ( translation)—

They are not seeking to improve agricultural conditions. They are not going to make an attempt to improve farms in such a way that it will be possible for more people to find livelihood in the rural areas. They are only interested in decentralizing industry. They want people in the rural areas, yes, but not in the agricultural industry—they want them in industry.

Read further what our policy is.

They want decentralization to rural areas, and not only to border areas. Well, it is news to me that they have plans in respect of border areas as well. Their policy reads further—

Hon. members on that side have to-day gone back on their policy in that respect for the umpteenth time. They refer here to certain circumstances which force farmers off their land. To what circumstances are they referring?

Circumstances which have been created by the Government.

That hon. member, who has now been promoted to the front benches, is very clever at making senseless interjections, but he is unable to put forward sound arguments. I ask again, Sir, what circumstances are referred to here in the United Party’s statement of policy?

Read a little further.

Then they say that the agricultural industry should be such that people will not leave the rural areas. Their policy is that more people should be attracted to the rural areas. What circumstances would cause people to leave the rural areas? How does one understand that? What is their solution when, as they say, people are forced to leave the rural areas owing to circumstances beyond their control? It is simply to retrain them for other occupations. And this point of policy caps everything, Mr. Speaker: they also propose the introduction of pensions for elderly farmers who cannot be trained for new occupations. That amounts to this, that farmers who are forced to leave the rural areas when that side is in power will be so poor that they will have to receive pensions in order to be able to survive. And those hon. members want to criticize this side, this Government! They are the people who, according to an hon. member on that side, laid the four corner-stones of the agricultural policy of this country. The boast has been made that the four most important agricultural Acts were passed by the United Party, are Acts that were placed on the Statute Book by a United Party government. But what happened immediately after those so-called United Party Acts were placed on the Statute Book?

In actual fact it was five.

Yes, hon. members on that side frequently contradict one another. The hon. member for Sea Point spoke about four Acts. What happened immediately after those Acts were placed on the Satute Book—with, let me add, the support of the National Party? Mr. Speaker, the rural areas were cleared of United Party supporters. In 1958 the whole of the Eastern Transvaal was cleared of United Party representatives. With a few excepttions the whole of the rural areas has been cleared of United Party representatives. Why has that happened? I shall tell you, Sir. Because when it comes to the application of laws affecting the agricultural industry the people in the rural areas, our farmers, simply cannot trust that party. Those people know whom to turn to, they know where their salvation lies, when it comes to the application of agricultural laws. That is why they entrusted that responsibility to the National Party 18 years ago. And what has happened in the years after that? National Party representatives in the rural areas increased their majorities considerably at every election. Their majorities have become larger and larger. That, Mr. Speaker, is an indication of the support given to the policy of a political party. The voters, and particularly the farmers amongst them, are not stupid. They know when they are doing well. They know when their interests are being looked after. Can one imagine that the farmers would vote for the same party again and again if that party did not look after their interests?

Sir, I want to associate myself with the hon. member for Christiana in thanking the Government sincerely for all that has been done for the farming population and for our farmers, particularly during the difficult times we have experienced and are still experiencing. In addition, Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Government for the sympathetic way in which they have approached the problems with which the agricultural industry has had to contend. I want to thank the Prime Minister and the hon. the Ministers of Agricultural Economics and Marketing and of Agricultural Technical Services for the sympathetic way in which they have treated the agricultural industry in times of emergency.

Business interrupted in accordance with standing Order No. 32 and motion lapsed.