When the hon. the Minister of Education, Arts and Science introduced this Bill two days ago he devoted some time to tracing the historical background which had led to the introduction of the Bill. I think he would like me to follow him to some extent in that and refer to some of the movements—perhaps not commissions because he dealt exhaustively with the commissions—which have led to the introduction of this Bill. I should like to mention one which the hon. the Minister mentioned as well, the “Inter-kerklike kommissie”. That “Inter-kerk-like kommissie” consisting of 13 distinguished members of the Dutch Reformed Church was not a national movement; it was a movement from those special churches and, of course, they gave us a very valuable pamphlet which I have here. Then in addition to that we, in this House, have been accustomed to a good deal of propaganda. Practically every session leading educationists introduced motions asking for a national policy in education. We were accustomed to that; we had debated such motions on many occasions. Then there was another point which I think I should refer to. Nationalist congresses debated this exhaustively. They were anxious to have this centralized system. Then finally there was a pamphlet published by the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurverenigings on “Christelike nasionale onderwys.” I hope to have an opportunity to refer to that later in the course of my remarks. Well, we have known these movements from time to time, and I should like to say that all this propaganda took place after the Nationalist Government came into office. When they thought they were safely in the saddle their propaganda took this new turn. Before that, as was revealed in the 1944 debate, they had quite a different outlook. They asked for tolerance, for freedom. They said that forbearance on the part of the majority in a democratic state was even more important than rule by the majority and they pleaded for their own special schools. But now we have to deal with this new movement.

Now, Sir, I come to a movement which is much more recent, the movement that was introduced by the hon. the Minister himself. Some years ago he came to us and asked for support for the appointment of an education advisory council to advise him in bringing about this new era, in introducing a national policy in education. Of course, we were prepared to help, but we said that the Bill should be referred to a select committee before the Second Reading. Eventually that Bill was considered by a select committee consisting of members representing both sides of the House. We received evidence from many quarters, from all sections of the South African community. Sir, it was a very pleasant experience. We had an outstanding educationist as chairman, Mr. Dirk Mostert, who was then the member of Parliament for Witbank, and we all enjoyed working together. We did not support the report because the report introduced by the Nationalist members did not meet our wishes, but we were able to explain to one another where we stood and what our views were. After introducing that Bill to create the advisory council, the hon. the Minister was not prepared to accept any of our suggestions with regard to the constitution of the council. He insisted on having his own system of appointing the council. I will come to the appointment of the council later when we deal with clause 4 of the Bill.

Well, Sir, after that council had been appointed, a veil of secrecy descended over all the discussions on the attainment of this new system of a national policy. We have heard nothing more although we have made inquiries from time to time. As recently as August last year, during the second session, I asked the hon. the Minister to tell us what this Bill contained so that the country would know what was contemplated by the hon. the Minister but he refused consistently; and then when the Bill was introduced I felt that it was incumbent upon us to register a protest because we had not had time to consider the Bill with our constitutents, with the educationists in this country. As recently as this morning I received a telegram from prominent educationists asking me to try to obtain a postponement because they wish to discuss the contents of the Bill. The telegram came not from political agitators but from prominent educationists in Johannesburg. That is the position at present. We have made requests for information but all those requests have been refused. I think the hon. the Minister has not been fair; he has not taken us into his confidence, and now, Sir, we have the Bill …

He has nothing to hide!

We have now had the Bill and the Minister’s speech. I listened very attentively to the Minister’s speech, in order to try to find out why he needs this new system as revealed in the clauses of the Bill. Apparently there are two major reasons. The first is that we should have a more uniform system for the training of teachers, and the second major consideration is the divided control of secondary education. I should like to take the first one, the question of the training of teachers, first. Sir, I do not think there is any serious problem in that regard; there is no serious problem about certificates and training. We all know that a high school teacher’s training means a university degree and one year’s professional training, and when we come to primary school teachers it is a question of a two-year period of training after matriculation or a three-year period. I am quite sure that if the hon. the Minister could convene the heads committee or a contact committee they could give him a solution in a very short time.

I am sure the teachers’ associations could do that. There is no difficulty about it and there never has been any difficulty. We have a system to-day of equivalents. Take the Matriculation examination. How many Matriculation examinations have we? We have the Joint Matriculation Board examination and we have a Matriculation examination in every province. We have gone further now and we are having people qualifying without an examination. It is a question of arranging equivalents. There is not substance in that case put forward by the hon. the Minister.

Now I come to the second point, the divided control in secondary education. I should like to ask my hon. friends opposite who have had experience of education to assist me in this. Who is responsible for the divided control? This Government is responsible. This Government introduced the Vocational Education Bill in 1955, and in that Bill they first said to the technical colleges that they would now become Government Departments. They also said that vocational education would be divided between the Union Government, as it then was, and the provinces. I see no difficulty whatever in solving that problem. It has almost been solved in the Bill the Minister has given us now, this Educational Services Bill, one of the three Bills that he is introducing. There is no difficulty there. I should like to know what the problem is. The hon. the Minister talks about uniformity in examinations. Well, I have referred to the Matriculation examinations. We have uniformity there, as much as we need. He even mentioned uniformity in syllabuses. Why? If you wish to have a degree of uniformity, why not convene a meeting of representatives of the teachers’ associations? There is no difficulty about that.

Then why do you not accept the Bill?

The hon. the Minister gave this as the reason for introducing the Bill and I say it is not the reason. I will come to the details of the Bill, and I think the hon. member for Brakpan may change his mind.

I want to come to the Bill itself. We did not get very much information from the Minister. At this stage we are considering the principle of the Bill in the second reading. This Bill is brimful of principles. One clause is devoted to principles only. I have no doubt about what the principle of this Bill is. To know that I need only read the long title, which says: “A Bill to confer upon the Minister of Education, Arts and Science certain powers in respect of the policy to be pursued in providing education to White persons in certain schools.” If one word is changed, it would give my interpretation of this Bill. Instead of saying that it confers on the Minister “certain” powers, I would say “absolute” powers, because that is what the Bill does. The Bill creates a new autocracy in education in South Africa. The Minister becomes a dictator. [Interjections.] As we deal with the clauses, hon. members will see that. Sir, he is the whole cricket match. He is the batsman and the bat; he is the bowler and the ball; the umpire, the pavilion cat, the roller, pitch and stumps and all. He is everything. “As who should say, I am Sir Oracle, and, when I open my lips, let no dog bark!” [Interjections.] The hon. the Minister told us in his speech about the “rekenoutomaat, die wonderkind van die wiskunde”, the computer which is the wonder child of mathematics. Well, I do not know whether it is, but I do know who is the wonder child of this Bill. It is the Minister himself. He appears here as the dictator of the provinces and of his own Department. No one can introduce any legislation but the Minister himself. That being the case, let us look at the clauses which contain the principles.

I want to say that the title of the Bill is explicit and says definitely what it means, but the clauses are very vague, especially clause 2. There is one slight amendment in clause 1, regarding the definition of a school, but I do not need to refer to that now; we can discuss it in Committee. I come to the important, clause 2. In that clause the hon. the Minister states the framework of the principles he will apply in carrying out his new instructions to the provinces and his own Department. I should like to devote a little time to that.

Now, Sir, the Minister has been very well brought up, because instead of ten principles he has given us ten commandments which will guide him. But he needed only one: Thou shalt have no other Minister but me. [Laughter.] He goes on and gives us his ten principles. One principle is that white school-children (in future will) receive free books and free stationery, which is a great step forward. Those are not the only accessories that are necessary in education, but it is a great step forward. The obvious thing that people have said is: What about the other schools, the schools for Coloureds, Africans and Indians? Well, I feel that this is a standard towards which we can work. I am not going to discuss that further. I think it is a matter of financial relations between the provinces and the Central Government. If the Minister says he is going to do this, then naturally he will finance the provinces. Then I come to the three principles to which I should like to devote a little time. My hon. friends behind me will have sections of the Bill which they will discuss. The three principles I should like to discuss are the fist three. Clause 2 (1) (a) says that our education should have a Christian character. We are all agreed about that. The second principle is that it should have a broad national character. In other words, it must be “Christelik en nasionaal”. It must be “Christelike nasionale onderwys”. [Interjection.] Do you want the hyphen in it? There is no hyphen. The only difference between this now and the pamphlet I have here is that now it is “Christelike nasionale”, but in the pamphlet it is “Christe-like-nasionaal”, with the hyphen. When I first came to this House there was a controversial debate on the subject, and I had the temerity to make my maiden speech in that controversial atmosphere. I am not changing my outlook about “Christelike nasionale onderwys”, I am inspired by the greatest educationist I know on that side, Prof. Chris Coetzee, whom I knew very well and for whom I have the deepest respect. Prof. Coetzee, in all his articles and conversations on this subject, made it perfectly clear that “Christelike nasionale onderwys” is a system of education for a section of the population, the Afrikaans-speaking children whose parents belong to the D.R. Church. [Interjection.]

Order!

That was the system advocated in this pamphlet. But now the Minister says it should be Christian and have a broad national basis. I have no objection to that, but I want an assurance from the Minister that he is not going to impose upon all children in school the system that was advocated in the beginning for “Christelike nasionale onderwys”.

I can give you that assurance now.

I am very grateful, because the C.N.O. schools have a very rich tradition, from those dark days following the Anglo-Boer War, when they were established. I had old colleagues, senior to me, who taught in those schools, and I have the greatest respect and admiration for the work they did. Provided this is a broad Christianity such as we have to-day in our schools, there can be no objection to it. But I should like to say that I do not know why hon. members should feel concerned about it, because if you have a good Afrikaans-medium school—and I have taught in them and I have visited them—they come from a homogeneous section of the community.

They are prepared to give the English-medium schools similar facilities. But ours is not a homogeneous section of the community. We have Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants, Anglicans and non-conformists. We have many sections and we have Afrikaans-speaking people as well. We believe that we should have schools that make provision for them. I think that is fair and we want it. I do not think we should have any quarrel about “christelike nasionale onderwys” after the assurance of the Minister.

I come to the third principle. The third principle is, of course, a very difficult one, the thorny one in South African education, namely, the home language. I want to read how the hon. the Minister has stated this in the Bill because it makes me a little suspicious:

Now where are the existing practices at variance therewith? Why does the hon. the Minister not say in the Bill, “with a jackboot to deal with Natal”. I should like to speak about home language instruction. I want to take the tradition of South Africa, the background to this very important subject, because it is the key to our whole education system. I go back to the model republic, the Orange Free State. In their laws from 1854 to 1891 they laid down their system of education. There was a similar law in the Transvaal. I am going to speak of the two boer republics first. In the Free State the law said:

There it is, parental choice, from the beginning. In the Free State, Afrikaans-speaking people laid down “Hollands of Engels, na verkiesing der ouders”. There is the principle of parental option laid down in the old Free State law. Now what did they say would happen after Std. II—

That was their law. After Std. II you had to take half your subjects in the official language. If you were Afrikaans-speaking you had your language right through, but if you were English-speaking they made provision for you. The Transvaal had a similar provision. They agreed with this principle of parental option. That is the golden thread that ran right through our system until it was bedevilled by the Transvaal system we have to-day.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I go a step further. At the time of Union when the fathers of the nation gave us the Union of South Africa, they said that a most important subject with which we had to deal was this question of education. They appointed the Beyers Commission which reported from 1910 to 1911. This report has been quoted in this House over and over again. These principles were applied throughout the country. They advised the provinces; they did not dictate to them. In the Transvaal we said that the medium of instruction of every child in every standard in a public school up to and including Std. IV, shall be the home language of the pupil, provided that the parent can claim. that the other language shall be gradually introduced and regularly used as a second medium of instruction. They said also that if there was any doubt as to which was the home language, the parents, decision would be final. That is the law of the Transvaal. That is the system from which we built up the Transvaal system but that is not what we have to-day. To-day we have something quite different.

Can we not improve?

All changes are not improvements, as the old farmer said. What do we say to-day in the Transvaal? When a child comes to school and he is English-speaking, his father says: “I am bringing my boy to the English class” and he goes into the English class. If he comes to school and the principal knows that his father generally speaks Afrikaans, he is put into the Afrikaans-medium class. Then when a child comes to school who speaks two languages fluently at the age of six, and there are thousands of them in this country, what does the principal do? He says: “Here comes the problem child. What shall I do?” He says “I must call the inspector, appeal to the director. I must appeal to the Administrator, call out the guard and have a Nationalist Party congress—a bilingual child has come to school”. That is how it operates to-day. Can anything be more ridiculous? [Interjections.] Hon. members may ask questions if they like. I think that we can get on better that way. That is the position. When I say you should have parental option, I am on good sound ground with the Nationalist Party. Dr. Malan and Mr. Serfontein praised it. I can quote them here if you wish. They did so in the 1944 debate they had in this House on a motion introduced by Mr. C. R. Swart and Mr. Strijdom. Their motion was debated and they supported this principle of freedom. Dr. Malan said: “What does it come to? The parents’ decision will be final”. That is what we stand for to-day. What is the policy of the United Party? I want to state it very frankly.

Have you got a policy?

I am now going to give it to those hon. members. When a child comes to school we say that the decision as to which will be the medium of instruction in the beginning, will be the parents’ decision, if a child does not speak the language chosen by the parent, then it is the function of the principal, not to call for the inspector, but to advise the parent, as a doctor who tells the child’s parents that the child’s tonsils should be taken out. He does not decide whether they are to be taken out. The parent decides and the doctor advises. That is the function of the educationist. Now they think this is a great problem. I want to say that with many years of experience in schools, I met one child in that category. There was never any doubt otherwise. They have made a mountain out of a molehill. There might have been many such children 50 years ago, before what we called “die wonder van Afrikaans”. We do not find it to-day. It is quite unnecessary to have any provision of that kind. That is our policy for the instruction of a child when he goes to school.

I come now to my second point. The second is how would you organize your schools? Would you have Afrikaans-medium schools, would you have schools with parallel classes, dual medium, and so on? We, and this is the policy of the United Party, say this: If a group of parents say: “We wish our children to be educated in an Afrikaans-medium school”, as Mr. Strijdom said they wanted in the 1944 debate, we say: “You shall have it”. If a group says: “We want a purely English-medium school, we say: “You shall have it”. If a group of parents say, as the Van der Bijl parents did: “We wish our children to be in the same school; we wish them to have parallel classes; their fathers work together in the factory; we wish them to have one school”, then we say: You shall have that school as well. In other words there again it is the option of the parents. The story of the Van der Bijl school is very well known. In Vanderbijlpark there were 2,100 children in Afrikaans-medium schools, three fine Afrikaans-medium schools. There were about 400 or 500 children in an English-medium school. But at one school, the Hendrik van der Bijl school, there were about 430 Afrikaans-speaking children and about 350 English-speaking children in parallel classes. They were a happy community. The Administration said they intended to split the school, so that the children would have to go to English or Afrikaans-medium schools. The parents said: We do not want to do that. They had a ballot. There were 876 parents. Two did not vote. Six of the 874 voted for separate schools. 868 said: We want to remain as we are. We are a happy community. Over 99 per cent said they wanted that type of school. As I have said, the policy of this Party is: You shall have it. What did the Transvaal Administration do? They said they were going to split the school. These parents went to the courts. We then had the famous judgment of Justice Marais, in which he found in favour of the parents. What did the Nationalist Party do in the Provincial Council? They changed the law. That is the outline of our policy in the United Party, namely freedom in education: the freedom of the child to develop his personality, the freedom of the parent to say how his child is to be educated, the freedom of groups of parents to have their own type of school. And if a group of parents for religious or any other reasons wish to have a private school outside the Government system, we say: You shall have it provided you conform to certain minimum regulations. The minimum regulations are generally in regard to buildings and so on. So much for the three principles I have to deal with.

I come to the subsection (2) of clause 2. What happens to the administrators under this Bill? They become puppets. The Minister pulls the strings and the Administrators dance. Look at clause 3. They cannot introduce any legislation without his permission. Now I come to clause 4. Clause 4 establishes an advisory council. I want to say at once that I have no confidence in the Minister’s appointment of an advisory council. We have had our experience of the first advisory council. When the Minister appoints this council, he will appoint 19 members, five of whom will be on the executive. They will all be appointed by him. They will be his nominees. When he appointed the last council, the Transvaal was very strong. This was his executive: the rector of an Afrikaans university, a professor from Potchefstroom, an Afrikaans professor, head of a training college, a principal of an Afrikaans-medium girls’ school, and one English-speaking member who did not come from a Government School. He was in a private school. What representation did we get? He nominated eight professors, seven Afrikaans-speaking and one English-speaking. We got a raw deal there. We appealed to him. As for the Cape Province it was ignored, so that the Transvaal could be strengthened. Die Burger objected just before the Session started. Die Burger does not object during the Session. When the Transvalers come to town, Die Burger has to behave. Before the Session Die Burger welcomed the members of Parliament coming to town. It said that if the Transvalers feel lonely, all they have to do is to ask the Minister of Education to convene a meeting of the advisory council, because there will then be so many Transvalers in Cape Town. The S.A. Onderwysersunie objected to the manner in which the Cape had been treated. But most interesting of all, the hon. member for Malmesbury gave tongue. I have his criticism of this appointment. When the hon. member for Malmesbury disagrees with a Minister it is a very serious situation. He knew what he was saying, and I agree with him. That is what I have to say about this advisory council. I do not want to see another advisory council appointed by the Minister. We have had enough of it.

I shall mention the other clauses briefly. We come to clause 5. This is an easy clause, because it deals with staff and how they will be treated. In clause 6 provision is made for a committee of educational heads. We do not need an Advisory Council when we have this committee of heads of departments, or directors of education and the Secretary of Education. They could have given him all the information he needs. He did not need any Parkinson’s Law with more offices and more officials. We do not need that. He could get what he wanted without it.

I like clause 7. There will be some laughter in the Transvaal about this. If the Minister is not satisfied with the manner in which they are behaving in the provinces, he will send down his own inspectors. After a school has been inspected by the Transvaal inspectors— some of my old colleagues may still be there— and he is not satisfied, he will send down an inspector to inspect the inspectors. This is the new service of super snoopers.

I come to clause 8. Clause 8 of this Bill is the final absurdity. To suggest that no more experimentation in education, and that no new movements can be initiated, without the consent of the Minister, and that he may confine them to one province, is really too absurd for any educationist to contemplate. The question is: What can be done with this Bill? We cannot mend it, because the principle is so bad. The only thing to do is to end it. Therefore I wish to move the following amendment—

Mr. Speaker, I do not think that the hon. member for Kensington was doing education in South Africa an honour to-day with the comical fashion in which he tried to poke fun at a sound education measure which seeks to determine the future of our education in South Africa. The hon. member tried to present the entire Bill in a ridiculous light. His approach was entirely childish in that regard. I want to say to the hon. member that the would have maintained a higher standard had he tried to analyse the principles of education embodied in this measure and had he tried to deal with them in a dignified fashion as befitting a front-bencher. I do not think it is worthy of the hon. member to have tried to poke fun at it.

It hurt you.

No. it did not hurt, on the contrary. I want to tell the hon. member that he contradicted himself altogether. His criticism was, inter alia, that we were centralizing education and that that was such an unnecessary and foolish thing to do. I should now like to quote from Hansard and I shall do so in English in case the hon. member does not understand Afrikaans 100 per cent. I know, however, that the hon. member is quite bilingual.

In 1953 we passed a Bantu Education Act and that Act provided for the control of Bantu education to be taken from the provinces and to be centralized. The hon. member criticized that line of action and used an argument which I shall now quote from Hansard of 17th September, 1953, col. 3666. The hon. member said the following—

That was what the hon. member said, that hon. member who was making such a fuss here a short while ago. I go further. The hon. member said at that time that the Bantu was getting a centralized system of education, and in pursuance of that he said the following—

That is exactly what we are now doing in this legislation. What did the hon. member say in addition? He said—

That is exactly what we are now doing here, Mr. Speaker. That is the ideal position, as the hon. member himself pictured it at that time, which we are now introducing into our system of education. But to-day the whip suddenly cracked very loudly behind the hon. member and he had to oppose this measure and he proceeded to do so in the caricaturish fashion in which he did do so. I do not want to spend my time on the arguments raised by the hon. member. There are, however, one or two arguments to which I shall come in the course of my speech. As it happens, I am going to discuss the same three principles the hon. member also discussed.

I want to begin by correctly stating the concept of C.N.E. The hon. the Minister gave a very clear assurance and for that reason I do not want to reconfirm or repeat it. I just want to say this, however, and that is that the Opposition and the Opposition Press have attached a meaning to the concept of C.N.E. and have masked that concept in terms of their interpretation and in terms of what they want it to be. Now that mask is being attacked and criticized. The aim is very clear, namely they do not want C.N.E. or Christian education, they do not want to see a Christian character and a national character in our education, as these things really are. No, what they would like to see there is the caricature they have made of C.N.E., because then they can attack it. There can be no arguments about this. The fact remains, something which the Minister confirmed, that C.N.E. as an organization was an historical event immediately after the Second Anglo-Boer War, and as an organization it belongs to the past. But as a conviction in the schools of the South African nation it cannot ever be allowed to come to an end. Our education must be Christian and I shall presently define what I mean by “Christian” and what is meant by “Christian” in this measure. Our education must also be national, because without that we cannot continue to exist.

I immediately want to state our general standpoint. In South Africa the education of the nation must be Christian, in other words in accordance with the principles of the Holy Scripture. That is not determined by the dogmatic concept of any particular church or organization. That is the Christian character of education. In the second place all education must be national, that is, for the promotion of South Africa as our only fatherland. That has no connection with any political grouping or language grouping or any other formulation of the concept. That is the broad basis of being national.

And now I do not know why the hon. member is making such a fuss. In the rules of the Natal Teachers’ Society I found the following—

1. 1. We revere God.
2. 2. We honour the Queen.

I take it that I consulted an old version. I hope that the new set of rules reads, “We honour the State President.” I take it that that is the case. Well, in those two rules of the Natal Teachers’ Association they are dealing with Christian and national education. They afford it full recognition in their own rules.

I now want to leave my discussion of what the hon. member said and I want to make my own speech, and I shall try to place it on the level on which I think this debate ought to be conducted. We are dealing with education, and to the child and the nation of South Africa education is something holy which does not lend itself to mocking and ridicule.

I want to begin by congratulating the Minister, his Advisory Education Council and everyone who co-operated in drafting this measure, on a major achievement, and I want to thank them for the many years of exertion, negotiation, and consideration, which eventually enabled them to present this legislation. There were people who had their own principles and their own standpoints. There were people who were attached to ideas of their own. From all sides and on a wide, national basis, concessions had to be made to give this measure its present form. In the first place, on behalf of all of us, I want to pay tribute to the Minister for his competent guidance and wisdom which resulted in such a great deal of progress having been made in this matter. I think his tact had a great deal to do with that. In the second place I want to express our gratitude to the National Advisory Education Council which took the lead in giving this legislation its present form.

What exactly does this legislation do in broad outline? I want to tell you this by using a metaphor. In the first place we have the four provinces. The four education departments of the four provinces ran like four keen and fiery horses. They were fiery and keen because they believed that what they were doing was the right thing. However, each one moved in its own direction because each one was on its own. This legislation marks out by means of ten prescribed points of policy, the direction to be taken. The horses are rounded up and are told, “Here you are, this is the road in the interests of education in general, this is the road in the interests of South Africa in general, this is the road you have to follow in future. Your energies have now been co-ordinated, you are running in one direction and you are pulling the national wagon in that direction instead of dissipating your energy by running in four different directions.” This, in the first place, is what this measure does.

In the second place, education in South Africa is being placed unequivocally on the four pillars which are basically sound in any educational circles, the four pillars being, in the first place, the authorities, which to a large extent bear the financial and administrative obligations; in the second place, the child, who must be the focal point of education seeing that education was primarily introduced for the sake of the child; in the third place, the parent, who must play a part and have a larger share in education as such; and, in the fourth place, the teaching profession as such, the teaching community, which must also get its full, rightful place. This measure makes provision for all these aspects except—and the hon. the Minister referred to this and I too want to express my sorrow about it—that the teaching profession and its co-ordination has not yet been included in this Bill. We do, however, have the Minister’s promise in this regard, and I know that by next year we shall also plant the fourth pillar very firmly and solidly whereby we shall place our education on a strong and sound basis.

I want to deal with the same three principles with which the hon. member dealt. I want to begin with mother-tongue education, the point with which the hon. member concluded his speech. It is a fact, and we all know it, that educationists throughout the world unconditionally state that a child makes the best progress when he is instructed through the medium of his mother-tongue. No two educationists in the entire world differ about this basic principle. When the mother-tongue is not used there are usually ulterior motives, because if the mother-tongue is not preferred as the medium of instruction there usually is another motive. The welfare and education of the child are not the first considerations, there are other ulterior motives.

I now want to make a few quotations in this regard. I want to begin by quoting from a book by Michael West, entitled “Bilingualism”—

I also want to read another quotation. In 1951 an Unesco Conference, the so-called “Meeting of Specialists” on the medium of instruction, was held in Paris and I quote a small portion from the report of that meeting—

But, Mr. Speaker, I do not want to quote strangers only. To the hon. members of the Opposition I want to quote a person whom they held in high esteem in the sphere of education. I want to quote them Dr. Louis Steenkamp, the former member for Hillbrow; I want to quote what he wrote in connection with mother-tongue education on page 210 of his thesis for the doctor’s degree entitled (translation) “Education for Whites in Natal”. Listen to what Dr. Louis Steenkamp, educationist, politician and up to last year main United Party speaker on educational matters, states (translation)—

He then proceeds and expresses the following wish (translation)—

After having done research for his doctor’s degree, that was the finding of Dr. Louis Steenkamp in connection with mother-tongue education and he appealed to the authorities to introduce legislation for making it compulsory. Now the hon. Minister comes along in a reasonable frame of mind and says that mother-tongue education as such, as a broad principle, will be introduced and that he will do so gradually. He is not going to enforce that to-morrow with a law of the Medes and Persians. I clearly want to express the hope, however, that the hon. the Minister is not going to postpone doing so for an indefinite period. I think that it is essential that in this regard we must choose the right direction, the direction of educaiton without ulterior motives. If all these educationists are convinced that mother-tongue education is the right thing, why does this correct principle of education suddenly become bad and unacceptable and wrong when one enforces it by means of legislation on those people who do no want to accept that which is good? Surely it does not detract from the good principle of the matter if one enforces it by means of legislation, and for that reason I say that educaionally speaking there is no choice; the entire world agrees with us when we say that mother-tongue education is in the interests of the child.

I now come to the idea that education must have a Christian character, and I immediately ask with all due respect whether the South African nation can ask for anything else but that our education must have a Christian character? Dare we ask for anything else if we bear our history in mind? Dare we for a single moment desire to ban the Christian idea from our education or dare we object to that idea if we consider the history and the past of our nation step by step? After Vegkop and after Bloedrivier, dare we, if we accept that we have been planted here as a nation with a task and a calling in Africa, and if we look at the future, hesitate for a single moment to speak out for the Christian standpoint of a nation that has been planted here from the Western civilization of previous centuries in Europe? We recognize that; this House recognizes it in the preamble to our Constitution, in which we state in all honesty and humility—

That states our religious conviction very clearly. It is stated even more clearly in section 2 of our Constitution—

We state it unambiguously, beyond any doubt. This recognizes not only religion on that basis but also the specifically Christian religion. Is it not so, Mr. Speaker, that the positively Christian approach of this nation and of this House is professed here every day when you yourself. Sir, in all respect open the meetings of this House by reading a Prayer which ends with these words—

Every day in this House itself we have a confession of our belief in Christ, and every member, to whatever language group he may belong, and whatever his religious convictions may be, bows his head here, because that is the policy of the country and the general inclination of the South African nation. In view of the fact that that is so in this House and in view of the fact that that is generally accepted, what then is wrong with providing in legislation that the education of the children of our nation must have a Christian character? However, it is not only us who want our education to have a Christian character. Let me quote what Dr. Curtis, Professor of Education at the University of Leeds in England states on page 1 of his book “History of Education in Great Britain”—

Then I want to read a short quotation from the Spence Report drawn up by the Consultative Committee on Secondary Education in England—

I even want to quote Sir Winston Churchill. In a radio talk on 21st March, 1943, he said—

Therefore, one has Christian education in Britain: it is not the mask of which hon. members of the Opposition speak; it is Christian education as we see and understand it.

Mr. Speaker, I want to go further, also as regards education. Because man consists of body and soul, it is absolutely essential that he be educated for life and for death, for heaven and for earth, because not only does he live on earth but also for the hereafter. Everyone yearns for the earthly and for the temporary but also for the eternal because he is an earthbound creature but his spirit yearns for his Creator. One has this eternal conflict because man is mortal but carries an immortal soul within him, and for that reason Christianity must be carried into the character of our education.

Who are you quoting now?

I am quoting myself, in case the hon. member does not know. Our education must have a Christian character and hence this determination of policy in our law. Mr. Speaker, we do not flinch from that; on the contrary, we ask unambiguously for that to be and to remain in our legislation. As a nation we have the courage of our convictions to tell the whole world, “We on this southern point of Africa are a Christian people who place our trust and our faith in God, and want to give the education of our children a Christian character”. In addition we are also a people who believe in religious freedom and for that reason—I state it frankly—this measure provides that if anybody has conscientious or religious objections to religious instruction which has a Christian hall-mark, he may obtain exemption and need not attend such instruction. Must we, for the sake of a few people who object, change the entire nation’s character? That would be foolish. We demand that our education must have a Christian character and as a Christian people and as a people who believe in religious freedom, we give children the choice to absent themselves from periods of religious instruction if they have any conscientious objections thereto.

Mr. Speaker, I want to come to the broad national basis of our education. Our educational institutions deal with our most valuable possession, namely our children. Every piece of legislation which is introduced in this House, is, in the last and most important instance, introduced to make this fatherland of ours a safe one for our children and the children of our children. That is the basis on which we base our legislation, and if that is the basis, then I say it is essential that we shall exercize supervision so as to ensure that those children, who are our most precious possessions, will receive the best education we can possibly give them. I want to quote Dr. Malan. In 1948 he put this as follows (translation)—

The struggle for the survival of our nation will be won or lost in our educational institutions and not on the battlefields or in this House. If we prepare our young people for life by imparting to them spiritual values, a spiritual awareness and knowledge and by creating in them a fine spirit, fine qualities of character, national pride, morality, loyalty and devotion, then this nation will continue to exist and will survive any onslaught which may be made against it. But if these values are not impressed upon them by our education, if our people become lazy, domineering, spineless, lotus-land citizens of the Country of the Weak, then all the arms and ammunition for which we provide money each year under the Defence Vote will be of no avail, because the people who will have to take up those arms will not have the courage and the strength to do so. If we lose our children, in the sense that they lose their idealism and faith, then we are losing them because they are becoming selfish and are showing no interest in preserving their heritage. Everything loses its meaning when the spirit of a nation is killed. Our schools must be able to accept the challenge of this century, to resist the onslaughts against our national spirit and to venture into this space age; they must be able to prepare our children for a full life in the times we are now entering and to make them proud of this their only fatherland which the Creator gave them. Therefore our education must be national, national in the broad sense of the word as embodied in this legislation, namely fostering a love for those things which are one’s own; that love for their flag, their freedom and their national anthem must be impressed upon them daily. To the child those things must be beautiful and precious. Whether this love of their own country is impressed upon them in an English-medium school in Natal or in a nursery school in the Transvaal or in an Afrikaans-medium primary school in the Karoo does not make any difference to me. Education must foster in our people a love of and confidence in our own fatherland, South Africa. That is the task. It does not matter in what language that is done, but it must be done for the sake of the Republic of South Africa. The coming of the Republic brought us constitutional maturity, away from the past, away from the petty fears we always harboured when we were afraid of our curricula and afraid that we may say or do something which, on account of our past, might give offence to or hurt some-one else. That was buried for all times with the coming of the Republic and now we are all republicans. We all have one allegiance, one loyalty and one single fatherland. We are no longer Cape Province people, Natalians, Transvalers or Free Staters; we are all republicans. We are no longer British subjects; we are all citizens of the Republic of South Africa. Our education should breathe this spirit. That is what we mean by national education. That is the driving force in a man when he is lying in last trench. It is this national feeling that urges him on. It is that which gives him the gleam and the fire in his eye when he enters battle. It is the pride that burns in his heart when he returns from abroad and sees Table Mountain looming up from the blue of the sea. It is his national feeling, his own, a place where he belongs, where he is anchored. That is what we want to give our children in our education. They cannot be international, rootless citizens. We want to raise citizens in all our schools and with singleness of purpose our education must be suited to that special task. Now I immediately want to say that if we have these three principles in mind and move in the direction of national unity, it is not at all the idea that that should lead to stagnation or dreary uniformity. From the nature of the case, that cannot and need not be. We can indicate a general direction in which we can move as far as policy is concerned, and along that broad way which has been indicated, every teacher can realize his own personality, his own nature and character on the broad basis which this Bill very clearly outlines for him. Each province can realize itself while being a part of the Republic of South Africa. Everyone of us, if he is really a true South African, can realize himself to the fullest extent under this legislation. We believe in diversity in unity. That is the power of this legislation. And now we may come along with the small, practical matters if we must, but I do not wish to refer to them unnecessarily. We may speak of the curricula which must be drawn up and which are already in the process being drawn up, and we may speak of uniform salary scales for teachers and of their conditions of service. But then we have already done the basic thing, and that is that we have placed our education in South Africa at long last—and this is a debt of honour which we have been owing since 1910—on that road where we now for the first time have a national policy, as every civilized country in the world has, as Britain has with its Butler Act of 1944, as France has with its education laws, and as every other country in the world has which is founded not on a federal basis but on a union, republican basis, as we are. Education is diversified in various countries. I want to concede immediately that in certain countries it has been transferred to local authorities entirely, but any civilized country which has a similar form of government as we have, which grew from a union and not from a federation, education is a national matter, and what is wrong with it if we determine a national policy while the provinces carry out the administration of that policy? That is exactly the ideal situation for which the hon. member for Kensington asked in 1953, centralization of policy and decentralization of administration. That is what this legislation is doing for us.

I want to conclude by saying that here we have an important milestone in South African education, and that 1967 will come to be regarded as the year more than any other, in which the turning-point was reached in our education, as the year in which a debt of honour which we have been owing since 1910 was paid for the first time, and as the year in which we placed our education on the road which we believed was peculiar to this nation, namely that we shall proceed on a Christian and national basis towards the ultimate goal which we, as a Christian nation, firmly believe has been destined for us in this country.

Mr. Speaker, I do not propose to follow the hon. member for Randfontein. I shall have occasion to refer to part of his speech as I make my remarks, but I would merely say that the hon. member has expressed some wonderful sentiments here in regard to the education of our children. But they leave me stone cold. I remember him as the hon. member who not long ago in this House said that when he was a teacher he taught certain children and when they had finished their education with him they would never vote anything except Nationalist Party. [Interjections.]

Be honest. Read further, and you will know that you are not speaking the truth.

That was a plain and clear admission that he had indoctrinated those children. That he could use his position as a teacher and subsequently come to Parliament and make that assertion with pride, influences me in saying that I am not prepared to listen to his wonderful sentiments in regard to the education of our children.

This Bill before us has been a matter recently of some discussion, if for no other reason than because of the secrecy which surrounded it since it was first conceived. But there are one or two points in regard to which we are entitled to ask the Minister a few questions. On 8th December the Administrator of Natal in a public statement said that his Executive had had the Bill for 17 months. The other day the Minister said that the Provincial Administration had had the Bill since October.

This Bill?

Yes, this Bill. I am glad the Minister says it is this Bill. But how can the Minister say that there was agreement by the four Provincial Administrations?

There was.

Was there agreement in regard to this Bill? [Interjection.] I challenge him. Was there agreement in regard to this Bill?

Just carry on.

[Interjections.] The Minister was emphatic that this Bill went to the Executive in October.

Not this Bill—before it was finalized.

So there was another Bill.

The moment I test him in regard to whether there was agreement in regard to this Bill, he says yes, there was agreement. I ask whether there was agreement in regard to this Bill. We do not have another Bill before us. This is the Bill we have before us.

This was perilously near an attempt to delude the House when the hon. the Minister made this statement that there had been agreement as far as the four provinces were concerned. We were led to believe that it was agreement in regard to this Bill because we have no other Bill. What were we to understand when he said that there was agreement in regard to the Bill—that there was a Bill which we had never seen and are never likely to see? Of course there was another. I want to ask the Minister how many others there were. The Minister is now quite unable to say that there were two or three as the case may be before this one came to Parliament. Or is he afraid to speak for fear he may be caught out? I suggest that that is the trouble. The Minister is now dead scared to speak. He put his foot in it a minute ago and he has given away a vital particular in regard to the question of our consideration of this Bill. It has never been agreed to by the provinces and certainly not by Natal. What is more, Natal and the other provinces, as provinces, have never been consulted. The other day the hon. the Minister stated that it was the consensus of opinion amongst educationists. The educationists of South Africa have never been consulted. The tame hand-fed members of the Educational Council may have a lot of educationists among them, but that is not South Africa. The Bill has not been before the people of South Africa, nor the educationists, nor the four provincial administrations. There was one way of dealing with this measure if the hon. the Minister was going to be fair to everybody concerned. That was to publish it timeously so that the four provincial councils could have dealt with it. He was dealing with a matter which up to now and until this Bill is passed, still is, the constitutional prerogative of the provincial councils. It was their constitutional right. It was not a privilege but a right. Only this Bill takes it away. I do not want to deal with a lot of clauses this afternoon. I say that when clause 3 is passed, it will be the end of provincial control of education in South Africa. Once you have taken away the right to legislate all else is discarded. Why did they hon. the Minister not take South Africa into his confidence when he was planning this Bill? I am going to make a suggestion. It is because the original Bill put forth by the Educational Council was not only not this Bill, but it did not have these provisions. Will the hon. the Minister shake or nod his head? No, he will not because he is dead scared that he is going to put his foot in it.

I will knock you out in my reply, easily and totally.

Mr. Speaker, I have already told the Minister and I will repeat what I said here with the utmost seriousness. When this Bill has gone through its stages neither you nor I nor anybody else in this House doubts that the Minister will get his majority behind him and this Bill will become law. The Minister has not taken over education in South Africa. Let the Minister not believe that for one moment. When we have not been consulted in regard to the education of our children and the power is taken away from us in this manner by force majeure, then it is tyranny. Tyranny is not the exercise of unconstitutional power. Tyranny can be the exercise of power constitutionally obtained. This is tyranny. The Minister has the power and he is forcing it through. It is not the votes in this House that count. The Minister is doing something in South Africa to-day which makes the talk of unity and agreement between the various sections of our population just empty Dead Sea fruit in the mouths of every member of the Nationalist Party.

That is the position because we have not been consulted. We have not been consulted and we are now losing a right which carries with it a very strong overtone in regard to interference with the religious beliefs of our people and of our language rights. The hon. member who has just sat down went to great pains to try to explain away Christian national education as referred to in paragraphs (a) and (b) of subsection 2 (1). It does not matter what he tries to explain away. There in front of us for past years has been the precise document issued by that committee which has been commented upon time and again by leading educationists and politicians on the Nationalist side year after year as being the desirable final outcome of education in South Africa. As long as that stands and until that document is repudiated, and I would say repudiated by the Prime Minister, until that is done all these well-rounded phrases about “national” meaning national in its broadest sense as the hon. member said, it means nothing. Those terms are not defined. What does clause 2 (1) (a) say? It says—

What is the machinery established to care for the religious conviction of parents and pupils? How is that going to be done? I say that that is not defined anywhere. How is it going to be done in practice in schools throughout the Republic? What steps are taken to care for the religious feelings of children in big Government schools? How is it going to be done when there is religious instruction to be given? How can a child come home to his parents and say: “The religious instruction I had to-day was such and such. Is that in conflict with your belief mummy.” Is that to be the position in South Africa? What is this religious instruction in South Africa? The hon. member for Kensington has given the explanation which is not only accepted by this side of the House, but it is one from which we will not move as long as that document stands here in the history of education in South Africa.

I want to deal with the next paragraph because the hon. member for Randfontein dealt with it. It reads as follows—

The hon. member for Randfontein tried to explain what is meant by “national”. What has been wrong with our education up to now? Why, when the hon. the Minister got up to move the Second Reading, did he not tell us what output from our schools is wrong. Have I to look at the output of our schools at the present time and say that they are good and of the best. What is wrong with the output of our schools, boys’ or girls’ schools. The hon. the Minister did not attempt to show one single weakness in the fruit on the tree and the tree shall be judged by its fruit. I hope that the Minister is not planting a fig tree which when the time comes will have no fruit because he knows what happened to that tree. He knows that that tree was cut down and cast into a furnace. What is wrong with the fruit on the education tree in South Africa at the present time?

I want to suggest to the hon. the Minister that the other Bill which we have before us on the Order Paper now, known as the Educational Services Bill, and I challenge him to deny it, was in its essence tied on to this Bill when it was printed in its original form two years ago. Does he deny it? No, he cannot deny it. He knows that it was so. He knows that when he went to the various executives and asked them for their approval, he went there with the suggestion that the whole control be handed to the provinces. That was the suggestion from his committee. The Minister changed the whole thing, not his committee. The Educational Committee may be being blamed for many things for which they are not responsible. Yes, the hon. the Minister did it. He has now divided the whole question into two Bills because, as the hon. member for Kensington has said, the Minister is going to take a firm grip and become the dictator of primary and secondary education for white children in the whole of the Republic. When this other Bill brings under the control of the provinces, certain aspects of technical and commercial education and so on, what does he do? He brings it under the control of the province, but he is going to control the province so that he still keeps it. He has got it all.

What a lot of nonsense.

It is easy for the hon. the Minister to say that. I challenge him again: Did this Bill not have clauses dealing with the amalgamation with technical and commercial education?

I have replied fully to you.

So much has been said about the question of mother-tongue education. I put it in the plainest possible language. The hon. member for Randfontein— he is the only member on that side to have spoken so far—and the Minister in his Second Reading speech the other day, have no faith in the ability of Afrikaans-speaking people to properly control the language of instruction of their own children. This clause in this Bill is a vote of no confidence in the Afrikaans-speaking parents of South Africa because of their inability to control the education of their own children properly. In Natal we have had the greatest confidence in Afrikaans and English-speaking parents. [Interjections.] Yes, German-speaking parents as well.

May I ask the hon. member a question?

No, you will have a chance to make your speech. We have said in our law that parents shall have the right to determine the medium of instruction. The hon. member for Kensington said that in all his great experience he came across one case where there was maladjustment. I was not a school inspector. I was not as close to education as he was, but I controlled that portfolio for three years in the Provincial Council. How many cases did I find? None. Never did we have a case where it was pointed out to us that a parent had chosen wrongly.

They did not have an opportunity to choose in Natal under your administration.

You see, Mr. Speaker, that interjection by the hon. the Minister is the kind of thing that is said repeatedly here in Parliament and elsewhere, with no evidence to bear it out.

You refused Afrikaans instruction for ten people in Utrecht. [Interjections.]

Order! The hon. the Minister must contain himself.

Mr. Speaker, I am used to it. This kind of interjection is thrown at us over and over again. Wild statements without any foundation in fact whatever are made. There is no real opportunity under Parliamentary procedure to deal with them. They are not true, Sir. That they are not true is shown by the fact that all the ouderlinge and the skakelkomitees and all the rest of the organizations they have in Natal, as elsewhere, have never come forward with the claim that their children are in any way being discriminated against. When our present Administrator, appointed by this Government, was appointed, why did he not attempt to put things right? There is an hon. member who was in the Provincial Council. Here is a Minister who, I think at the time or soon afterwards, was a member. There is a member who was in the Provincial Council. Why did the Administrator not put things right? What did he say was wrong?

[Inaudible.]

Nothing. The truth of the matter is that the Minister consulted with nobody whom he could possibly avoid consulting with. He has kept this Bill in the womb of secrecy to the last possible moment, afraid to let it come out into the open and into the light of day where South Africa could see what he was proposing. I say again that this has been forced on us. The other three provinces, where they have Nationalist Administrators and a Nationalist executive, will agree. I accept that. I accept that there are provisions in the Bill which are aimed deliberately at Natal. There are hon. members in this House who will think that they are now fighting one of the last stages of the Boer War. I accept that. But, as part and parcel of the pressure, I am not going to be put under pressure by the Administrator of Natal. I have a telegram which I received just as I was walking into the House this afternoon from the Administrator. I am going to read it. It reads as follows:

Eighteen months, and not this Bill, Sir. He continues:

That is an attempt to influence me in my duty as a member of Parliament. [Interjections.] That is how I read it and that is how it is intended. Sir, why should it not be published? I say, in the words of the title of that well-known book: Publish and be damned! The executives have kept their council under an immense strain and have maintained the secrecy of the hon. the Minister and the Administrator. This file about which the Administrator talks so glibly and which he says he will give to the Press is not his file. Constitutionally he cannot do it without the approval of the executive committee. That is an official file. What right has he to threaten me that he as an individual will hand that file for publication to the Press? It does not belong to him. This is a matter for the executive committee. If the Administrator is looking for a constitutional row where he will not be able to have the Nationalist Party caucus and the Nationalist Party Cabinet defending him, he is going the right way about it. If he does this, I want to assure you that there will be constitutional row in South Africa in which he will get no defence from anybody. [Interjections.]

I am not going to be threatened by the Administrator or anybody else when I come to Parliament to do my job as I see it. If I think that the Minister has done wrong in keeping it a secret with the Administrator, then I ask: When did the Minister give the Administrator the power to publish these documents which he has been keeping secret all this time? If he had the power to publish them now, he has had the power to publish them for the last 18 months. Why has he not done so? He is supposed to be a constitutional administrator acting with the consent and on the advice of the executive committee. He has done nothing of the kind. The Minister has been privy to it. The Minister has had private meetings with the Administrators, keeping members of the executive committee out of the meetings. The Minister cannot deny it. The first knowledge we had that something like this was happening behind the scenes and in the dark secrecy of the Minister’s mind was last year in this House during the short session—I think it was on 2nd or 3rd September—when he said he was having a meeting with the Administrators on 26th September to finalize the last few things that needed to be straightened out in regard to the Bill that was then before the Provincial Administration. He said that in a speech either on 2nd or 3rd September last year.

We naturally looked into it to find out what was happening. Why was he meeting the Administrators? All the Administrators are appointed by his own Government, they are privy to him and answerable to him and to no one else. We thought that the Administrator in Natal was answerable to the people of Natal and to the executive committee and to the Provincial Council. We found that they have no such concept whatsoever. He was meeting the Minister. He was meeting the Minister without any member of the executive being present. The question of our education is a question for the province and for the Provincial Council or for the executive committee representing the Provincial Council. They have been put under the cloak of secrecy which they have maintained for more than 20 months. I think that it is shameful. I think that it is a shameful point in the history of this Government and of the Minister, that in a matter of such importance, a matter affecting every parent in the Republic of South Africa, he should take these steps in the dark, that he should put people who knew under an oath of secrecy while he proceeded to bring the Bill before Parliament. Moreover, presumably he proposes to make it law within a matter of ten days or so. I repeat, Sir, that the Minister can make it law. But if he thinks that he has now reached the end of the road as far as this piece of legislation is concerned, he should better think again. Gone are all the fine words about unity now, destroyed completely by the Minister. There is no question now that the gloves are off as far as the Minister is concerned.

Ultimately the Bill will go through.

Yes, I know all about that, I know all about the majority the Minister has, and all the rest of it. When our women and children are touched then something that is deep in the soul of every South African is touched. [Interjections.]

I conclude my speech by saying a few words about education. We have left untouched the parental right to choose the medium of education of his child for a good reason. It is many years ago since it was last mentioned. It arises from section 108 of our Constitution, where it says as follows—

That was held to be a guarantee to the people of South Africa as individuals, and every parent and every child has that right of equality of languages, and the parent has the right to decide on the language medium for his child in terms of our Constitution. This is the only entrenched clause left to-day in our Constitution. Equal language rights, the right of the parents to choose the language medium, was a guarantee in our Constitution to each individual person that he would be allowed to use the language of his choice. The parent can choose for the child and say that he chooses a particular language for the education of his child. We have maintained that parental right in Natal throughout the years against pressure to change it, because we believed that that section in the Constitution preserved that right of the parent.

Mr. Speaker, the United Party has in its attitude towards this important legislation once again proved that that party really does consist of “wise and good men”. The only difficulty is that the wise men are not good and the good men are not wise. The hon. member for South Coast who has just resumed his seat emitted so much emotion and volume here that one could, as a result of that, hardly make out what he was saying. What are the facts in regard to this matter which is now before this House? Mother-tongue education is acknowledged and accepted throughout the world, pedagogically and otherwise. Throughout the world, in every Christian country, Christian education is acknowledged and accepted as a matter of course, pedagogically and otherwise. Throughout the world national education is accepted and acknowledged. But only in one country in the world is there a small Opposition which has the temerity to carry on with so much emotion in regard to this internationally-accepted matter as we have experienced here to-day, and that is the United Party in the Republic of South Africa. Then, in truth, the question arises why the United Party is acting in this fashion. The reply is very simple, the United Party is doing so because it is prepared to make a political football of education and the child in South Africa. That is the only reason why they are doing so. That is why it is as difficult to argue with these hon. members on this matter, which is something sacred for all of us, as it is to try and read Die Burger on the foreshore when the South-easter is blowing at 95 m.p.h. It becomes practically impossible because in reply to certain things which one broaches with the United Party they react with arguments charged with emotion, and it is difficult to get them to argue on factual statements.

I just want to prove my point before coming to the matters with which I actually want to discuss. In the general elections in 1953 and 1958 the United Party, and the hon. members who are now sitting on the opposite side, used the Transvaal Mother-Tongue Ordinance as their most important election platform against the National Party. On both those occasions the United Party suffered a resounding defeat. What was the United Party’s slogan of abuse against nationalism? I just want to refresh hon. members’ memories a little. It was that the Nationalists were the people who were keeping Afrikaans-and English-speaking children apart in mother-tongue schools. The United Party used the term of abuse “White apartheid” and said that the National Party wanted apartheid not only between Whites and Blacks but also between Whites and Whites, between English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking people in South Africa. But what are the facts of the matter? The facts of the matter are that when the United Party were themselves in power in the Transvaal— and I know that that was such a long time ago that I cannot take it amiss of the hon. Opposition members for knowing nothing about it— they themselves came forward with the dual medium ordinance of 1945. What did they do at that time in terms of that ordinance? They made mother-tongue education compulsory. What choice did the parents have under that United Party Government? There was no choice for the parents.

What is the moral of this story? When the United Party were in power they made mother-tongue education compulsory because it was an internationally-accepted thing in the sphere of education and otherwise. It was the right thing to do when they applied it. But when the National Party was in power and they did precisely the same thing then it was suddenly wrong. The moral of all this is that the United Party logic in truth stands revealed before the nation as we have learnt to know the United Party—there is simply no logic in the United Party in respect of these matters. The position is simply this that in practice by far the majority of parents, Afrikaans- as well as English-speaking, themselves prefer their children to receive instruction through the medium of their mother-tongue. How could it be otherwise? The English-speaking parents throughout the Republic of South Africa have over the years, and quite rightly so, preferred to send their children to English-medium schools. How many English-speaking parents are there in the Republic who send their children to Afrikaans-medium schools? I still remember very well how the English-speaking parents were up in arms when it was being planned, a few years ago, to convert the Lord Milner school at Settlers and the Umtata school—both English-medium schools—so as to make provision for Afrikaans instruction as well. I can mention more examples in this connection. What is more, there are many English-speaking parents in the Republic who are not even satisfied with the existing English-medium schools but who send their children to private English schools which they have themselves established. We do not deprive them of that right, neither do we have anything to say about it. The point is just this: Surely these facts prove that the English-speaking parents themselves, and quite rightly so, prefer to send their children to a mother-tongue school? That is all that is being laid down in clause 2 (1) (c). I could react very strongly in this connection, but I should not like to do so. I just want to mention that there was a Dr. Clayton, Archbishop of Cape Town, who pleaded that the English schools should be “unashamedly English schools” and that they should be “different”. The point I want to make is this. If the United Party is in power and they do those things in accordance with the wishes of the parents then it is right, but if the National Party Government is in power and it does those same things, also in accordance with the wishes of the parents, then it is wrong. Surely that is not an argument.

The right to earn one’s bread is the right of every individual. But the right to receive education through means of one’s mother-tongue is a national right and in general it is coming, as I have said, internationally acknowledged and accepted in every way.

In this regard I just want to quote what Churchill said once in his typically witty but nevertheless striking way—

I maintain, Mr. Speaker, that we on this side of the House are only saying the same thing. We do not begrudge the English-speaking people that right—“Whip them hard for not knowing English”. But allow us to say to our children, “Learn Afrikaans”—and, Sir,—“We will whip them hard for not knowing Afrikaans”. Surely that is fair and right.

I should like to come to a few other matters. The hon. member for South Coast said that there had been no consultation, and so on, in regard to these matters, and he speaks of “tyranny”, and so on. I do not want to go into that to any great detail, because I know that he is going to be brought up very short in the “march” which he is making now, if he continues his “march”, by the hon. the Minister in his reply, and then the hon. member will be dealt a well-deserved knock-down blow—I have no doubt about that whatsoever.

However, there are a few things in this regard I would like to bring to the hon. member’s attention. I know of no other matter in the Republic of South Africa which has been advocated for so many years by so many commissions and bodies than this very matter which is being embodied in this Bill, i.e. a national policy for education. As far back as 1912 the question of the formulation of a Union-wide education policy in the sphere of technical education arose. Subsequent to that there was the Jagger Commission in 1916 which pleaded for these things; there was the Hofmeyr Commission in 1924, the Roos Commission in 1934, the Nicol Commission in 1939, the Natal Education Commission of 1946, from which I want to quote a short extract in a moment; there was the De Villiers Commission of 1948; and the Pretorius Commission of 1951. These inquiries covered a period of more than 50 years, and then I am not even mentioning the reports of the Interdenominational committees; I am not even mentioning all the different educational bodies which have pleaded that a national education policy be introduced by legislative means. If one examines this history stretching over a period of more than 50 years, one may well say: “Patience, O patience, which can bear so much.”

But after 50 years we have now come to this important milestone where we are ultimately introducing a national education policy by legislative means and then the hon. member for South Coast can, I almost want to say has the temerity to, stand up here and say that there had been no consultation. These things which we have pleaded and begged for for 50 years are now being embodied in this measure. Mr. Speaker, South Africa is the only country in the world where the Central Government carries the costs of education without exercising any control over provincial education policy, so much so that in this House the representatives of the people have up to now not even been able to discuss those aspects of education controlled by the provinces. The result was that education could never be seen as a whole by the highest authority in this country. Can that be correct? I say that South Africa is the only country in the world where one finds this position. One has central control in Belgium, in Sweden, in Denmark, in Australia to a certain extent in Canada and in the United States of America, in the Nëtherlands, etc. That is why we say that the hon. the Minister is definitely deserving of the highest praise and honour and gratitude from South Africa—and he will receive it—for being able to make so much progress with this matter under the National Party Government that after a struggle of 50 years this Bill is ultimately going to be placed on our Statute Book, despite the opposition of the United Party. Mr. Speaker, in this case as well, just as with the establishment of Iscor, just as with the introduction of the National Anthem, just as with the introduction of Bantu self-government, just as with the national flag of South Africa and just as with the establishment of the Republic of South Africa, all important milestones in the history of the people of South Arica—we find again that the United Party shines like a brilliant falling-star due to the fact that it is also fighting this measure tooth and nail. The United Party fought all these great milestones in the history of the Republic of South Africa tooth and nail, and that is why it is not surprising that with this supreme milestone in the history of education of the child in the Republic of South Africa the United Party has once more adopted this attitude. I do not think it requires a prophet to predict that just as the judgment of the people was a severe one in the case of the other milestones in this nation’s history where the United Party adopted the attitude which they have again adopted, so the judgment of the people on the United Party is going to be merciless and severe because they have, as far as this milestone is concerned, once more adopted this attitude and opposed it.

Who do you mean when you talk about the “people of South Africa”?

Mr. Speaker, Aristotle said—

That is what we also believe in, and that is in the broadest sense what is being embodied in this Bill. The United Party are opposing this Bill on the basis of three things in particular, i.e. clause 2 (1) (c) (mother-tongue), clause 2 (1) (a) (Christian education) and clause 2 (1) (b) (National education).

I want to put the following question to the United Party: Is it narrow-minded and bigoted and insular if we provide in this measure that the character of the education in South Africa must be Christian? I immediately want to give the reply to that myself: Unequivocally, a thousand times no. It is not bigoted and insular if we say that the character of our education should be Christian, and that is why I say that the United Party’s suspicion-mongering in regard to this matter will cost them very dearly. Christian education is the fountainhead, the alpha and the omega of civilization against heathendom in all its forms, be it primitive or be it modern, as it is being revealed in so many places in the world to-day and I hope is not being revealed in South Africa. In this regard I want to quote from the very brilliant work of a prof. Dr. J. Woltjer, a Hollander, who published this masterly work in 1910 under the title Christelike Onderwijs. He says this (translation)—

I am quoting this to draw attention to the fact, if it is in any way necessary to do so, that Christianity is supranational; that Christianity transcends these things. That is why I say that Christianity is not narrow-minded, but strong and pure. It serves as an eternal guiding principle for our nation, as well as for other Christian nations, as I tried to indicate to you in that striking quotation. We as a nation are justly proud of this, and when I say that I include the English-speaking people a 100 per cent. We are justly proud of this and I hope that the United Party are also proud of it. To come here and say, as the United Party newspapers are saying in regard to this Bill, that these things are narrow-minded and bigoted and insular is to my mind virtually tantamount to blasphemy, and if they continue in that way the nation will in truth destroy them. Mr. Speaker, in essence our national character, English as well as Afrikaans speaking, has as its salient feature one major quality and that is our Christian national character, and that is why it obviously follows that the character of our education must be Christian, and that is all which is contained in the relevant clause. It cannot be otherwise; that is what is being embodied in the Bill, together with the retention of the right of dissenters in South Africa to have other convictions, which is also in essence Christian. The first action of our founding fathers on this soil here in South Africa was to send up a prayer, and our history is laden with examples of men humbling themselves before the Almighty and of His merciful guidance. Can the Opposition tell us that this is not the case with the English-speaking people of South Africa? I challenge them to say that. They will come off second-best if they dare say so. The Christian nature of our view of life, of English as well as Afrikaans-speaking people in South Africa, forms the basis of our history, of our culture and of the whole nature and essence of our nation. Are the English-speaking people any different? I am asking the Opposition, and then they dare to come here and say that the Christian nature of this Bill is narrow-minded and bigoted and insular. We did not learn our outlook on life and the world from abroad. I wonder whether the English-speaking people did not perhaps learn it from abroad? We grew up with it; we learnt it at our mother’s knee, just as the English-speaking children learnt it at their mother’s knee. Because our lives are far deeper and encompass far more than mere reason and logic, we feel that our outlook on life and the world is the motive force behind our whole existence. It is the basis of our pattern of life. And if the Opposition were opposed to these things, why did they accept the preamble to the Constitution of the Republic, and why are they saying in their newspapers and are hon. members standing up here this afternoon and stating that the Christian character as it is contained in the Bill is under suspicion? Surely that borders on blasphemy. Why do they not reprimand their own newspapers when they make this kind of allegation? Do they think the people of South Africa, English and Afrikaans speaking, will be satisfied with this kind of narrow-minded attitude which is being adopted by the United Party? I think they will castigate the United Party mercilessly because of this kind of attitude. That is why I say it is obvious that these things must be embodied in the Christian character of our education in South Africa and I do not believe that a Christian English-speaking parent can say one word against that. I cannot understand how people can throw suspicion on these holy things and say that they will be bad. Mindful of the fact that we as a Christian nation make the Bible our guiding light and criterion, and that we as a nation endeavour to direct our lives and those of our children according to the principles of the Holy Word, I want to quote the following, and I am doing so with the necessary respect, from Psalm 78, and as far as I know the British nation as well as all Christian nations still adhere to the scriptural basis of the eternal word of God. There it stands, under the heading, “Lessons from History, a Homily”, and I am reading the following—

I am asking whether the United Party is against these things. That is the principle of education. Can they be against that? And if we stand for this, why do they say, “You have something to hide”? Why? Surely it is to make the child and his education a political matter. I personally find it difficult to forgive them for that, and I hope that for the rest of this debate that kind of superficial argumentation, not befitting a piece of legislation of this nature which is a milestone in the history of our nation after 55 years and which is now going to be placed on the Statute Book under Nationalist policy and Government, will not again be forthcoming from the Opposition. The nation deserves a better Opposition than that sitting on those benches, and I do not think either that the nation deserves this kind of suspicion-mongering which it is getting from the Opposition and its newspapers.

I want to go even further and point out that if the United Party thinks that we are alone in aiming at a Christian character in our education, I want to quote, in the hope that I will in this way convince them, from the brilliant work of Sir Walter Moberly of Great Britain, who is acknowledged and accepted there by all as a very honourable person, from his book “The Crisis in British Education”, which was written in 1949. He says the following—

He then concludes this statement on page 294 of his book, by saying—

That is all we want to do, and then the United Party throws suspicion on it. Shame! Why? Because they want to make a political football of education. I wish I could have used the facts which the hon. the Minister is going to use here, then their drubbing would have been twice as severe.

In conclusion to this matter, Socrates of Athens, where the torch of Western civilization was kindled, in the light of which we are still being nurtured to-day, said once that if he should be asked to make a speech, he would go to the highest vantage point in Athens, and his speech would be concisely and briefly the following (translation)—

I wish the United Party will realize this, and I almost want to say to them: My fellow citizens on the Opposition benches, I cannot understand why you are adopting this attitude in regard to matters which are highly important and sacrosanct for this nation, for English as well as Afrikaans-speaking people.

I really think the hon. member for Primrose should have taken a sedative before he got up to make his speech. He got very worked up and excited and I think he had better go out and have a cup of tea. He made several extraordinary errors in the course of his speech. He referred to a school in Umtata. He was entirely wrong in his description of that school. It was a parallel medium school, and when the parents were given the choice they voted by a large majority to let it remain a parallel medium school. [Interjections.] But they were forced to become a separate school. Sir, may I just say another thing about the speech of the hon. member. He quoted all the Commissions, the Hofmeyr Commission, the Roos Commission, the De Villier Commission, the Pretorius Commission, the Wilks Commission, etc. We know all about them. He said that the whole lot of them had advocated a national system of education. May I say that not a single one of those Commissions—and I have read the contents of them all—advocated that there should be total Ministerial control over education in South Africa.

I did not say that.

Oh yes, the hon. member did say so. Then the hon. member talked about Australia. He said there were countries all over the world where they have this type of central national control and that if it was good for them, why was it not good for South Africa. Let me just remind the hon. member that in the very first country he mentioned, Australia, each of the six states in Australia is responsible for education within its own territory and has its own school legislation. In Canada the control of education is a provincial prerogative. There are therefore ten provincial systems of education, similar in many respects but different in others, and each independent of any control by the federal government or by any other province. In New Zealand there are nine district education boards which have wide powers of local jurisdiction in the educational field. [Interjections.] The hon. member said that in these countries there was national centralized control of education. This is not so. All the different cantons in Switzerland, through the local authorities, supply their own systems of education and make their own regulations. Each has its own education department. In the United States of America, there is no national system of education at all and each of the 48 states has its own system. There is no centralized control of any kind. I quote this from the evidence which I had the privilege of compiling and submitting on behalf of the Cape Provincial Caucus of the United Party in 1962 to the select committee of this House which sat on the National Education Advisory Council Bill. I wrote every word of it myself and I did the research work. I must say that when the hon. member talks like that, he is talking through his hat. He took a chance.

There are only five clauses in this Bill which are worth mentioning. They are clauses 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7, as I see it. Clause 2, which has already been mentioned, deals with the framework within which the national educational policy is to be decided upon and applied by the Minister. Paragraphs (a) to (j) purport to set out the bases upon which such policy shall be applied. Paragraph (a) says specifically that education in all schools “shall have a Christian character”. My hon. friend made great play of this. But the clause goes on to say that “the religious conviction of the parent and the pupils shall be respected in regard to religious instruction and religious ceremonies”. I should jolly well think so—there is nothing extraordinary about that. What I want to ask the hon. the Minister is this. Are not all our schools in South Africa already Christian in character, whether they are public, semipublic, subsidized or unsubsidized, private or otherwise? They are already. Because the Government chooses to put in this pious statement, it does not impress anybody.

Pass it by then, why worry about it?

Because the hon. member who has just sat down made great play of it. I want to remind the hon. the Minister that in every single one of the provincial ordinances, as they exist at the present time, governing the whole sytem of education, this principle of a Christian basis for our schooling is already incorporated. In fact a specific number of hours, as the hon. the Minister will know very well indeed, has for years been set aside for the undenominational teaching of scripture in all the schools controlled by the provincial administrations and certainly in the church schools as well. In the Cape—I am not quite certain about the other provinces— we had until fairly recently, religious inspectors who went round to see that these times, set aside for the teaching of scripture, were adhered to. What is more, there was a religious schedule, and, to my knowledge, it is still in existence, attached to the education ordinances in these provinces. It therefore seems a little curious to us that there should be this unnecessary emphasis because we accept that it is the case. Are we a Christian country or are we not? What is the purpose of the Minister in stating this as he has in this Bill? But we now have some doubts, because now that Big Brother, if the hon. the Minister will not object to me referring to him in those terms, is on the job, Heaven only knows what kind of interpretation is going to be given to this sort of thing. I think that we are justified in being somewhat anxious about it.

If you look at paragraph (b) you will see that it provides that “Education shall have a broad national character.” What else would you expect it to have? I think that the hon. members protest too much. What sort of basis would you expect it to have, except that of a broad national character? Or are we perhaps to assume that the word “national” when the Bill provides that education “shall have a broad national character” should be interpreted as nationalist? [Interjections.] I hope that the hon. the Minister will tell us when he makes his reply.

Paragraph (c) provides that the medium of instruction shall be the mother tongue, either English or Afrikaans, with “gradual equitable” —these lovely woolly words—“adjustment to this principle of any existing practice at variance therewith”. If you cut out all the cant and frills …

The Natal Executive Committee insisted on those words.

I can believe that the Administrator of Natal might have insisted on those words but I find it very difficult to believe that the Executive Committee insisted on those words. Mr. Speaker, if you cut out all the frills, all that these nice woolly words really mean is that the system of compulsory mother tongue instruction can now gradually be enforced from Sub A up to and including Std. X in any school in South Africa.

What is wrong with that?

The hon. member for Namaqualand should be ashamed of himself because he sat in the Cape Provincial Council with me … [Interjections.]

He was never in the Provincial Council.

I am sorry, I mistook him for someone else—but all those hon. members look the same. The Cape Provincial Ordinance, which was introduced and passed by a Nationalist administration, lays down that mother tongue instruction is compulsory up to Std. VIII. After that the parents have the choice to change this in Stds. IX and X. In Natal, as hon. members know very well, the matter is left to the parents to choose whatever medium they prefer. Now Big Brother is going to come along and tell us that we must have it from Sub A to Std. X which means of course that we must come into line with the Transvaal. We get a bit tired of that. I am sorry that the hon. member for Primrose is not here but the fact remains that there is a real danger of another kind of interference in respect of this question of language medium. I want to bring it to the attention of the hon. the Minister and I hope that he will give us an answer. Will he tell us whether or not the hundreds of Afrikaans-speaking children, who have at the present time been sent by their parents, for one reason or another, to Roman Catholic convents are likely to be removed from those educational institutions in terms of this Bill? We in the Provincial Council in the Cape received special representations from some of the leading ministers of the Dutch Reformed Churches, asking that this should be done. I should like a clear answer to this question.

Clause 2 (1) (d) provides that “requirements as to compulsory education, and the limits relating to school age, shall be uniform”. We take no exception to that. It simply means that the Minister decides the minimum age of school entrance and the minimum age of school leaving. There is nothing wrong with that. Clause 2 (1) (e) provides for free books for all children. This I must say will be a great boon to the Cape Province. There have always been free books in the Transvaal. We have not had this in the Cape Province. This will be a great boon for the people in this area. Let me remind hon. members, however, if they think that this is such an attraction, that it is going to make this whole Bill acceptable to us. It is not the kindness of the Government nor any particular national system that is suddenly making this possible. The Cape and other provinces may not have had free books in the past and are now going to get them, but this particular gratuity, this assistance, will come, not from largesse handed out by the Government, but from the pockets of the taxpayers which means you and me. Therefore the Cape people could have had it many years ago if the Minister or the Minister of Finance had not been so stingy in the allocation of funds to the Cape Province.

Now even you can go back to school.

That is all right. You can come with me.

(Mr. J. H. Visse): Order! Will the hon. member please not react to every interjection which is made?

Mr. Speaker, it is a little difficult, but I shall accept your ruling. Clause 2 (1) (f) makes provision for the introduction of a degree of differentiation in our State schools. This I must say is something that anybody welcomes, although we do not welcome it on the basis of total ministerial control. The next Bill, which we are not allowed to discuss now, but which will be before us shortly, deals with this matter. We are in favour of differentiation. It should have been introduced years and years ago. We have in fact been pleading for it for a very long time.

Clause 2 (1) (g) provides for complete uniformity of syllabuses, courses, examination standards and research. Those are the words used. Then there is the grudging proviso that regard shall be had “to the advisability of maintaining such diversity as the circumstances may require”. There you have it again—this curious, ambiguous, woolly wording. The fact is that the Minister will decide what these circumstances are and what circumstances require. [Interjection.] Of course he will. It is a one-man show. With the big pooh-bah in charge, nobody else will have any say whatsoever.

Clause 2 (1) (h) says that parents and teachers will have to be taken into some account and (j) states that the services and salary scales of teachers shall be uniform. We agree with that. We agree with the uniformity of salary scales. We think that that is a good thing. In regard to the parents having some say, does the hon. the Minister not know that under all the provincial systems, ever since they have existed, we have had parent-teacher associations who work happily through their school committees? Heavens alive, why should all this suddenly be controlled from up top as though nobody had ever had this right before? [Interjections.] The provision exists in the existing provincial ordinances. There is no need for this type of legislation whatsoever. One can understand the need for some kind of uniformity where public examinations are concerned, but the Matriculation Board took care of all this. There was no particular difficulty in that regard. I fail to see why the courses and syllabuses and curricula for the different provinces should be uniform. It is all very well to talk about civil servants who are transferred or children who move from one province to another. They are an important factor, I agree. The fact is, however, that this cannot be the only reason. The greater the diversification we have the better and the healthier our educational system is going to be.

The hon. member for Primrose—a most incredible name for a gentleman like that—referred to the Butler Act in the United Kingdom. The Butler Act of 1944 in the United Kingdom, which is a kind of Magna Carta of British education—I know it and all the subsequent amendments very well—lays down a national policy. That is quite correct, but it gives the local education authorities the greatest possible autonomy, rights and responsibilities and in fact the most incredible degree of discretion in regard to syllabuses, books they use, and practically anything they like to decide in connection with the school, with the Advisory Councils acting as a link between them and the Minister. In the United Kingdom it is fundamental to the whole system, in spite of the fact that they have a National Education Act that the local education authorities are elected bodies and that they have the maximum amount of initiative. They even prescribe the text books. They go as far as that. They have the right to prescribe text books. These matters are left to the local education authorities and to the managers and governors of the different schools, who, in turn, leave it to the headmasters and headmistresses.

In clause 3 the Provincial Administrations are simply turned into rubber stamps, no more and no less, as the hon. member for Kensington quite correctly said when he opened this debate. All I can say is that I hope they like it, because I have certain reasons to believe that many of them do not. Perhaps I know more about what went on behind the scenes than the hon. the Minister would care to know. The Minister, merely by issuing a regulation in the Government Gazette, can overrule—just like that, by snapping his fingers—any single action taken by an administrator whenever the hon. the Minister, in his apocryphal wisdom, thinks fit. I think it is an absolute disgrace. What it amounts to is a total vote of no confidence in the administrators of our provinces, who without exception, have been appointed by the Nationalist Government itself. As I said when I was asked about this by the newspapers, if it is stooges the hon. the Minister wants, he is going to get them. No self-respecting administrator will function on this basis. Clause 3 in its entirety makes the functions of the provincial councils in regard to the introduction of legislation in the field of education a farce. An administrator is not only deprived of his initiative and his interpretation of the requirements of his own province. They do differ, Sir. No two provinces and no two areas are the same. He is deprived of this initiative. What is going to happen? The official opposition in any provincial council and the governing party itself will be unable to alter by amendment or by any other means any single piece of draft legislation which is put through that provincial council, unless the Minister has given his assent.

Is that the existing position?

It was the existing position from 1962 or 1963 onwards after the passing of the National Education Council Bill, but, as we understood it, for a limited time the position was frozen, in order that the National Education Advisory Council …

You had no right to understand it in that way. It works very well. There are no complaints whatsoever.

On the contrary, Sir.

On the contrary?

We were told that that Bill was passed in order that the National Education Advisory Council might specifically investigate certain aspects of education which were going to prove beneficial to South Africa as a whole. Now this Act is repealed. As the Minister knows very well indeed, a large majority of the people—not the executive committee, but the people who serve on the council itself—were people who were nominated by different means. They were not all elected by the Minister. It was stipulated in that particular section of the 1962 Bill that all the people who served on this council should have a specific knowledge of education or have achieved some status in the field of education. In terms of this Bill the Minister can appoint Mr. Poggenpoel, Mr. Van der Merwe or Mr. Anybody he likes whatever their qualifications.

Or Mr. Carr.

All I can say is that if the hon. the Minister wants to have a host of gentlemen from Potchefstroom, as I have said in the Press, who are going to receive enticing emoluments in terms of the Bill in return for advising the Minister how best he can produce these breeds of conformist Nationalists in our schools, then fair enough; that is exactly what he is going to do. [Interjections.] Oh, yes, Sir.

In this Bill provision is made for a committee of heads of departments from the provinces. All they are entitled to do is to recommend to the Minister. It is not even laid down that the people who have power to recommend to the Minister need have any specific educational qualifications. The people who represent the provinces are not even specified as having to be heads of education departments. They can be almost anybody the Administrator likes to nominate. Clause 7 seems to me to be almost the worst clause in the Bill, because the Minister can appoint anyone he likes to inspect, as the wording of the Bill goes—

Why does the Minister not join the Special Branch? This is what it means. I think the Minister is creating his own special branch. He will create a sort of chief assistant to the assistant chief who keeps a big watch on what the provincial inspectors are doing. What a shocking thing! What a shocking system. To think that a provincial inspector should be subject to this type of investigation. Big brother is watching you! I want to ask the Minister a question. I want to ask him whether the Administrators of the four provinces signified their approval of the Minister’s right to carry out secret investigations over the heads of their local inspectors? Will the hon. the Minister tell us that? Have they agreed to it? Are they happy about it?

All that I can say in a general sense is that the philosophy of the Nationalist Government as regards education is entirely different from the philosophy of this side of the House. Of course it is, Sir, because we say that in the last resort the individual is the important thing. We also consider that the greatest possible degree of decentralization and diversification is absolutely essential in administering education. If one deprives local authorities, if one deprives people in local areas of the right to play a maximum part in a positive sense in the administration of education, what does one do? One loses their interest, their effort, and the dynamic behind the whole thing. Why should Pretoria control all these matters that have functioned so well and so happily under our provinces ever since the Act of Union? Why should Pretoria waive the rules? I do not call this an education Act, I call it an indoctrination Act. I consider it to be an ill-considered hotch-potch, nothing more nor less, of prejudice and fear, because that is what is behind this Bill. The Government does not have the courage to let the provincial administrations deal with these things on an independent basis. I want to know, where will one find in the modern world, the hon. member for Primrose notwithstanding, any sort of legislation similar to this measure? It is nothing more nor less than a conglomeration of ideological prejudices and fear. On those grounds we on this side oppose this measure holus-bolus.

Mr. Speaker, apparently the hon. member for Wynberg supports several of the most important principles contained in clause 2. She did not actually say a great deal about them. She asked the hon. the Minister a few questions which revealed her suspicions. She actually also spoke about each clause and made some kind of Committee Stage speech. But towards the end of her speech she said that she did not actually regard this measure as an education Bill. Her exact words were: “I do not call this an education Bill, I call it an indoctrination Bill.” In the course of my speech I should very much like to answer the hon. member on that score.

I should now like to refer to an observation made by the hon. member for Kensington with regard to the work of the National Advisory Education Council. He made the accusation that the work of this Council was always enveloped in a veil of secrecy.

By the Minister.

Well, that is incorrect, Mr. Speaker, for since 1963 the reports of the National Advisory Council have been Tabled here every year. The latest report is that in respect of the year 1965.

That has nothing to do with the Bill.

Yes, here in the 1965 report is a reference to the Bill. Paragraph 13 (2) on page 4 of the latest report contains a reference to the recommendation of this Board with regard to this legislation. During the Second Reading Debate on the establishment of the National Advisory Council, on 6th June, 1962, to be exact, the United Party’s main speaker at that time—the then member for Hillbrow, Dr. L. S. Steenkamp—referred to the evidence heard by the Select Committee at that time, prior to the establishment of this Council. In the course of his speech he made the following comment, amongst other things—

But this incidental admission by the then main speaker on the Opposition side actually showed that he had lost contact with practical teaching. I found it a most significant comment. I also believe that to be honest the present main speaker for the Opposition, the hon. member for Kensington, should admit categorically that after all these years he has also lost educational contact with teaching, and that his knowledge and contact to-day actually have a political colour to some extent. The trouble with that side of the House is that they have very few people who played a practical part in education, who had physical contact with education. As we have seen, the Opposition simply cannot approach this measure from the viewpoint of what is to the benefit of the education of the child and of education as such. They approach it from a purely political point of view.

That same United Party front-bencher to whom I referred a moment ago, appealed to the Minister at that time that the National Advisory Education Council should be constituted of practical educationists. He added: “And people who are concerned with the products of education.” He also quoted from evidence given by the S.A.O.U., to the effect that the representatives of the teaching profession should be chosen from a list submitted by them. The Minister then appointed practical educationists to that council, educationists who are in the profession. Those five members to whom the hon. member for Kensington referred a moment ago, who constitute the executive committee, are people who are concerned with education in practice. The same applies in respect of the other members of the advisory council. Those 28 members unanimously made certain recommendations which the Minister incorporated in this Bill.

But now the hon. Opposition are not prepared to accept that, and are also tremendously critical of the whole matter.

In the education of the white child in South Africa there always has been and still is a lack—no, more: a total absence—of unified vision, and the time has now come that this long-desired unified vision must simply be created. It must be appreciated, and this truism should also penetrate to the Opposition, that education is a national matter and that it should certainly have a national character. It should be fully realized that narrow provincialism is no longer appropriate when the education of our white children in the Republic is at issue. This legislation seeks to meet that long-felt need. It is correct that this Bill lays down that education shall have a broad national character. But apparently the United Party react to this like deer to a volley of buckshot. That is what makes them argue that this education policy signifies an assault on the human spirit and means the indoctrination of the youth. In fact, “indoctrination” is the word used by the hon. member for Wynberg—indoctrination to make them think like young Nationalists. But The Cape Times expressed it in even harsher terms in an article in its 16th February issue—

Now that is what I call political suspicionmongering of the highest order.

But true, nevertheless.

It is suspicion-mongering directed against a Minister with lofty and noble motives, an ex-educationist conversant with the needs of the children of our people, and desirous of giving each child the fullest opportunity to develop its potentialities. He is the person who has always maintained that teachers are concerned with living organisms. Never has the time for the introduction of a national education pattern, as proposed in this Bill, been more opportune or riper, psychologically or historically, than now, now that we have had a Republic for five years, and after we celebrated last year to commemorate the coming of Republic. Mr. Speaker, if the Opposition are sincere in acceping the Republic, they should also accept the principles of the introduction of a national education policy unequivocally. If they fail to do so, I lay it at their door that the education of the youth of our nation is not a matter of serious concern to them; then I accuse them of seeking to uphold the principle of divided loyalty, and of still professing a dual loyalty. Then I shall also accuse them of the fact that despite their affirmation of South African patriotism they have apparently not yet relinquished the imperialistic past. I want to emphasize that after the constitution of the Republic the need for a uniform, co-ordinating national education policy became an absolute necessity. It is necessary and it is essential to make every child a true South African.

What do you think they are now?

In saying that, I expect members of the Opposition—and that is exactly what the hon. member for Wynberg tried—to accuse us of introducing this Bill in order to indoctrinate the children. The word “indoctrinate” is a word which is readily used by the United Party—in fact, it is a word the United Party use at each of their congresses. They use it against the Afrikaansspeaking teacher. But if the United Party sees indoctrination as a factor in this measure, then indoctrination forms an essential part and object of the education of the youth in any country in the world. If what the United Party sees in this measure is true, and if educationists in other countries demand it for the children of their countries, educationists in this country can also ask and demand it. We dare not withhold it from them. But to the United Party it is an unforgivable sin if the teacher or the educationist wishes to inspire in the child of South Africa pride in his own nation, in his traditions and his heritage, and wishes to encourage love of his people, his language and his history and his fatherland, wishes to foster in him a correct view of life and the world, and stimulate his moral and spiritual vitality. As soon as he does that he is accused, from force of habit, of indoctrination and of dragging politics into the classroom. Indirectly the Minister is actually also accused of that. But I maintain that it is only the Rip van Winkels in our midst —there is a high percentage of Rip van Winkels amongst the Opposition—who are obsessed with this ridiculous notion. That kind of notion became anachronistic, particularly after the coming of the Republic.

This measure proposes that the youth shall be permeated with love of their own, with loyalty and fervent patriotism. As far as that is concerned, hon. members will not disagree with me. The child must feel a surge of pride when he hears about the achievements of his country, and it should be a cause of pride to him that he is a citizen of the Republic of South Africa. He should be able to throw out his chest when he sings or hears the National Anthem. Or would hon. members deny or repudiate the words of the poet Scott, who said—

Other people may say that; the Englishman may say that; it is only the South African who may not say that. If a teacher teaches that to the child here, he is engaged in indoctrination. [Interjections.] Then one hears the howling of whipped curs. Under the policy of the fragmentary education to which the child of South Africa has been subjected until now, it could not be succeeded to the highest degree in educating them to become worthy citizens and to render selfless service to their country and their people. I believe that it will be possible to realize this ideal in education as a result of this Bill.

I should like to come to another aspect which has already been debated here to-day, and that is the matter of mother-tongue instruction. In this Bill there is reference to the mother-tongue, if it is English or Afrikaans, as the medium of instruction, with gradual equitable adjustment to this principle of any existing practice at variance therewith. This is not something suspect, as the hon. member for Wynberg would interpret this sincerely meant clause. Each year since I have come to Parliament as a member we have had a debate on this matter. It has already been said, but I want to repeat it, that the mother tongue as the medium of instruction is surely a recognized educational principle which is accepted, in particular, in countries that have the problem of bilingualism. This principle is even adhered to and accepted in the underdeveloped black states of Africa. It is accepted by educationists that mother-tongue instruction is best. In other words, it is accepted as a sound educational principle. I do not think the hon. member for Kensington could disagree with that. The mother tongue is not merely the language of the child; it is more than the language of the child; it is part of his way of life; it is part of his thinking; it is part of his soul, and it is the medium through which he expresses his personality.

What about the bilingual child from the bilingual family?

Then there is still a mother tongue. The mother tongue is the only language in which the child can really express himself, in which he can crystallize his thoughts and convey his experiences in life. It is also an axiomatic prerequisite that education should centre on the child, that education should be directed towards the child, and that it should not so much be directed towards vocations or languages; in other words, education and teaching should centre on the child, and if the child is taught in a foreign language, the full human being in the child cannot be educated. If a child is taught a foreign language that foreign language should not be used as the medium of instruction. In the educational sense it is uneconomic to use a foreign language as a language for instruction in other subjects. The fact that it is uneconomic is borne out abundantly by the abortive United Party Language Ordinance of 1945 in the Transvaal. The United Party in the Transvaal are now admitting unequivocally that this Language Ordinance was its biggest blunder on the provincial front. What was the aim of the United Party leadership at that time? At that time the United Party leadership tried to impose bilingualism on all high schools in the Transvaal within the short period of five years —a forced bilingualism in terms of which certain subjects had to be taught through the medium of the second language.

Without parental choice.

Yes, without parental choice. Mr. Speaker, great educationists and bodies have passed judgment on this matter, and the hon. member for Randfontein quoted some of them here. I just want to read some other quotations to bear out his argument. In the first place I refer to a pamphlet issued by the Ministry of Education in Great Britain in 1954. This pamphlet relates to mother-tongue instruction for the Welsh children. I quote—

It then continued—

I also want to quote from the report of an educationist, i.e. Dr. P. A. Duminy of the Faculty of Education of the University College of Fort Hare—

The hon. member for Randfontein also quoted most tellingly from a book written by Dr. Louis Steenkamp, in which he actually pleaded for the protection of the child in Natal against irresponsible parents.

To conclude, mother-tongue instruction is not merely the wish and the aim of the Afrikaans-speaking parent; it is also the aim of the English-language parent, and it is for that reason that in South Africa, as far as I could ascertain, there are no fewer than 240 private English-medium schools, and as far as I know not one of them is a parallel-medium school. The United Party’s opposition to this Bill is purely an opportunistic gesture, and their objection rests solely on political hypocrisy and ulterior motives …

Order! The word “hypocrisy” is unparliamentary. The hon. member must withdraw it.

I withdraw it. I repeat, however, that the United Party’s opposition to this Bill rests on ulterior motives and not on educational principles.

The hon. member for Primrose asked us not to become emotional about the legislation before us. Let me say right away that if you touch education and the education of our children, it creates the greatest possible degree of sensitivity and it evokes some of the most deep-seated of human passions. But I will oblige the hon. member; I am not going to become emotional.

The hon. member for Koedoespoort has suggested that all practising teachers or all those who have practised as teachers should make a contribution in this field. I cannot oblige him because I am not a practising teacher. But I think it is perhaps useful if laymen like myself who stand outside the teaching profession also have a look at this legislation. The hon. member for Koedoespoort also referred to patriotism. We are concerned here with the education of our children and the child of to-day is the man of to-morrow. We are concerned with the whole future of South Africa. We want to create for our children some of the benefits which perhaps we ouKselves did not enjoy. We want to shape the sort of South Africa of which all of us could be justly proud, and that to my mind is the essence of patriotism. That is the sort of patriotism we have and we do not concede a monopoly on this score to anybody else.

I think what is a major difficulty here is that unfortunately we have a situation where there is not an understanding of ordinary common terms any more. Hon. members opposite say we are against the concept “Christian”. We are not, but they must tell us how they define “Christian”. Is it intended to distinguish between Muslims and Buddhists and ourselves? Is it “Christian” as accepted by the World Council of Churches? Or is it a narrow, sectional, dogmatist, fundamentalist type of Christianity? [Interjections.]

Read the Bill.

The same applies to the term “national”. The Bill says that this education must have a national character, and no one would argue on those grounds, but how is “national” defined? Is it an attempt to differentiate between the clique on the one side and the international on the other? Because then we accept it. But to many people in South Africa the concept of “national” has become synonymous with the term “Nationalist”. [Interjections.]

Exactly the same argument has been used in regard to “mother tongue”. We are not against mother-tongue education. But will hon. members opposite tell us what happens if a child has a considerable measure of proficiency in both languages? Does this Bill do away with parental choice under those circumstances? Does it tell us what sort of schools we will get? Does this Bill tell us that if the parents at Vanderbijlpark want to have a parallel-medium school, they will be denied that right? Those are the questions we ask.

I have listened with great attention to what has been said this afternoon, and what is clear to me is that there are only one or two issues on which there is agreement between ourselves. I want to enumerate them. It is quite clear that there is agreement on both sides of the House on the importance of education itself. Indeed, the Government must regard it as important; that is why they have introduced this Bill. We also regard it as important and that is why we are opposing the Bill so strenuously. We specifically accept the importance of education because we believe that in the youth of South Africa we have probably our biggest national asset. We believe that all education is a human investment, and if it is properly handled the dividend and the returns will be tremendous. So we agree on the importance of education.

Then there is a second point on which we agree. We agree that it is desirable to have a greater degree of co-ordination in our educational services. We disagree in regard to the manner of doing it. But if there are defects, as there are, they must be rectified. If there are inconsistencies, as there are, they must be eliminated. We accept that principle.

The third point on which I think we agree is that this Bill contains certain positive features, features which are concerned primarily with things like school books and stationery, etc. But we believe these are overshadowed by many undesirable features.

I think hon. members opposite should try and project themselves for a moment and look at this measure as we do. I think the differences which exist stem in the first place from the fact that there is a fundamental difference between ourselves on the whole role and purpose of education and its place in the modem society. We believe that education is not merely a question of pumping a lot of knowledge into people, or of imparting certain skills to them, or of preparing them merely for a particular vocation. The fundamental feature of education is to get people to the position where they will have judgment without bias.

We go further than this and we say that the purpose of education is to develop a body of enlightened and responsible citizens who will be able to think independently. That is the sort of education we seek, and we do not see any of it in this measure before us. This Bill is supposed to give us an education policy. I see very little of what one would expect in the way of a statement of policy. In education one must distinguish between what they call the externa and the interna of education. The interna is concerned with syllabuses and things of that kind which normally you cannot legislate for. The externa are the things which you would expect to see in a Bill of this kind, matters concerned, for example, with the equalization of educational facilities and opportunities, and educational financing. These are policy matters which you would expect to see featured here, but they are not.

But I think the fundamental difference between ourselves and hon. members opposite is one concerned with the issue of centralization as opposed to decentralization. This is the charge that we make, we say that in terms of this Bill the hon. the Minister will be in complete control of education in this country. The man who sets the policy is the man who is ultimately in control. Indeed, this is all specified clearly in this Bill. No provincial body can legislate without reference to him. He can control by means of regulation. He can introduce inspections and investigations and there is even provision for penal sanctions. By doing this what are we doing? We are taking this control away completely from our provincial systems and we are leaving them with nothing. This Bill is the death-knell of the provincial system as we have known it for half a century. I do not know why the Government does not just disband them altogether, because there is precious little left for them to do.

Talking about this question of decentralization, I was interested to see that the hon. the Minister referred to a number of commissions, as also did some other hon. members, and the suggestion that came was that this Bill is really as the result of the agitations which have come from all these commissions. They were concerned about divided control, and now the Minister is rectifying it. Sir, I have looked at these commission reports also, and it is true that they were concerned about divided control, but what was the solution they suggested? I refer now to the Nicol Report. This is what it said—

Then it refers to the vocational schools and says—

Then let us look at the Wilks Report of 1946. What is the most important recommendation that follows from that—

Interjections. Now, reference has been made to the “Interkerklike Komitee”. What did the “Interkerklike Komitee” say? These I find are the significant passages—

But then comes the crux of the matter—

They even motivated this. The “Interkerklike Komitee” says—

And what about the Wentzel report of 1963? They say, “daar moet gedesentraliseerde provinsiale onderwysbeheer wees”, and they show how this co-ordination should be achieved. This is their recommendation—

That is precisely what happened.

There was another important commission in 1964 or, at least, a report by a group of people who were sent overseas by the Transvaal Provincial Administration. They came with what I think is the most significant answer to the issues that have been raised by hon. members opposite. This is the conclusion they arrived at—

If you look at the question of centralization as against decentralization you find that there is indeed a high degree of centralization in education in certain countries, but these countries are primarily the Latin countries with predominantly a Roman Catholic faith. In the so-called Germanic countries, on the other hand, where Protestantism is the dominant faith, one finds that generally they insist on decentralized control.

These two gentlemen from whose report I have quoted were sent overseas by the Transvaal. They visited ten countries on precisely this issue and submitted a report under the title “Grondwetlike beheer oor onderwys”. What are the things they have to say—for instance in regard to the U.S.A.? It all centres round this issue of centralization versus decentralization. Of the United States they had this to report—

And further—

But let us go on to Canada. This is what they had to report about Canada—

In regard to West Germany they reported—

Of Switzerland they say—

Now we come to Belgium. What is the position there—

The emphasis in this Bill on uniformity is, we think, overdone. This issue was also considered by the Nicol Commission. That Commission agreed that a measure of uniformity was essential, but how did they suggest it should be approached? “The Commission is of the opinion that such uniformity if imposed upon the four systems would retard their natural development.” This, then, is the crux of our argument. Here we see a highly centralized educational system which is being imposed upon us and we say it will retard development. Because what does decentralization give us? It gives variety; you can have a rich mosaic in education. But what will uniformity give us? It will give us a cloth which is bleak and drab and strictly utilitarian. The Kotzee Report even dealt with the whole matter from the point of view of embodying it in legislation and this is what that report states—

Is that not what the Government is trying to do here?

That is our charge and that is why we are against this Bill in the form in which it stands at the moment. If in the face of all these authorities the Government persists in this particular approach, what do they then have in mind? Must we then not look for deeper motives? That is the reason why we are probing the way we are—because we suspect that there are deeper motives. Did Prof. Munro of McGill University not indicate this clearly when he said—

We now ask what is in this legislation, as it stands before us, that is giving anybody additional freedom? Who is getting more freedom from this legislation? Nobody is. Will this Bill create greater national unity in this country or will it separate our people? Dr. Lauwerijs, probably one of the biggest living educationists in the world, has made the following indictment of the South African system—

That is the charge. That this policy should come from hon. members sitting on that side, hon. members representing the Afrikaansspeaking members of our community—have we not suffered from the old Milner policy for many years? And what is this? It seems to us it is the Milner policy working in reverse. Our fundamental contention is that this legislation does not give anybody any additional freedoms—indeed it is just a further step on the road of the erosion of freedoms we have been enjoying over a long period. We have a tremendous tradition of personal freedoms to uphold. Those of us who are from Afrikaner stock, could we ever overlook the fact that our own forebears many years ago were prepared to face the hazards of a vast and unknown hinterland rather than to submit themselves to a system which impinged upon their personal freedom? Those of us who are from British stock, how could they forget that their own forebears many centuries ago first lit the torches of individual freedom? And those who came after them have kept these aloft under conditions very often of great trial and stress. And how could we, as descendants of these two groups, to-day do anything else than to fight for the maintenance of these basic freedoms which have always been enjoyed in our country? If we do not do this, we will be denying the heritage of our past and will be prostituting the future for those to come after us and none of us dare to be a party to this form of ravishment.

That is why we oppose this particular piece of legislation. Hon. members say that we are mixing politics with education. However, it is not we who have introduced this measure, but hon. members opposite. It is true that politics and education should not be mixed. But this measure is giving us this mixture, a mixture which will go sour on us, and South Africa will still come true this day.

Mr. Speaker, I find it a strange experience to see how some people judge others by their own standards. The other side of the House has just made the statement that we want to drag politics into education by means of this measure, this Act. It so happens that politics were not dragged in by this side of the House.

Read your Bill!

I shall quote to you, Mr. Speaker, as well as to the hon. House, who the first person was who dragged politics into education in regard to this matter. I am quoting from the Natal Witness of 2nd November, 1966. “In a subsequent interview Mr. Mitchell told me that the Congress of the United Party in Natal has said unanimously that it stands by parental option. That is binding on the Natal Provincial Administration.” In other words, if the United Party Congress takes a decision of any nature in regard to education, irrespective of whether it is right or wrong or whether it has any educational grounds, it must be binding on the Natal Provincial Administration. Can you see now why the hon. member for South Coast came with a tirade to the effect that we want to drag education into politics, or as they put it, politics into education, when they themselves are doing so in Natal and have been doing so all these years? Actually this protection of the parent in regard to parental option, which they feign to be asking for, has never really existed in Natal. As a matter of fact, not only in Natal, but throughout the Republic, I think. I quote further—

At that time they had already destroyed parental choice. I shall continue. They said—

Then they say what the advice is, that when

What was it?

Are you not listening? Mr. Speaker, I said that it had been destroyed as early as 1945. Now the hon. member for South Coast says that we are coming with an entirely new system. But we must judge a tree by its fruit. Actually I did not come here this afternoon to argue the burden of proof placed on me by the hon. the Leader of the United Party in Natal, but now I am obliged to do so. I want to go as far as to make the accusation that education in Natal is being used, in the first instance, to draw a red herring across the trail as regards the fact that they are saying that parental choice does exist in Natal. Parental choice can only exist in respect of the language through which those children are to be instructed at school, if there are sufficient facilities for that child so that the parents may, on behalf of the child, choose his language medium as they please.

It is true that one has the unfortunate position in Natal that, when the Afrikaans parent wishes to choose the Afrikaans medium for his child, he is faced with no choice at all, as was still the case up to the beginning of last year, that when his child has to be instructed through the medium of Afrikaans at primary school, the facilities for that medium of instruction are only available up to Std. 5. Subsequent to that such a parent, if he wants to keep his child in the same town after Std. 5, has to place his child in English-medium schools, which means a switch-over from one language to another. In other words, parental option really plays no important part there. If he does not want to do that—I mention to you Eshowe …

How many English-medium schools are there in the Transvaal rural districts?

Wait a minute. I shall deal with that in a moment. I shall give you the figures if you do not know. Mr. Speaker, the parent who, under those circumstances, does not want to send his child to a school which uses the other language as its medium of instruction, is obliged to send his child to a school 64 miles from that particular town, in order that his child may receive instruction through the medium of his mother tongue. It is interesting that in respect of Natal, where they pride themselves so on parental option and on the fact that they are making adequate provision for parents, the following figures can be furnished to illustrate the position. During 1966 there were the following Government schools—

Mr. Speaker, these figures I am going to mention now, are important. 25,801 children are attending parallel-medium Government schools, and 47,354 children are attending single-medium Government schools. Of those children attending parallel-medium schools, only 11,638 received Afrikaans-medium instruction and 14,163 received English-medium instruction. That means that the provision made for the Afrikaans-medium child is such that a tremendous struggle is continuously being waged in Natal. That struggle will be terminated now by this legislation, because this legislation also provides that the aids by means of which the Natal United Party deceived our children, can no longer be used there.

Where did you get those figures?

I got these figures from the Director of Education in Natal. In the past ten years 16 single-medium high schools were built in Natal, whereas only one parallel-medium high school was built during that period. As regards primary schools 29 single-medium and 19 parallel-medium schools were built.

The number of Afrikaans-speaking pupils attending Afrikaans single-medium schools in Natal amounts to 8,500, and the number of English-speaking pupils in English singlemedium schools amounts to 38,854. [Interjection.] Mr. Speaker, I am quoting to you the United Party’s policy in terms of which they are strongly in favour of dualand parallelmedium schools. Initially dual-medium instruction was their main policy. In 1945 they introduced dual-medium instruction in the Transvaal. But these so-called champions of bilingualism saw to it that a strange situation developed. In actual fact there is only one high school in Natal which is a dual-medium school—Greytown High School. That is all that remained of the United Party’s dualmedium policy.

Now I come to what is truly diabolical in the whole set-up in Natal. That is where the United Party affects us, the future of those people and the children who have to enter upon that future, in our very being, in our marrow and in our character. If the sports-grounds of the Afrikaans-medium schools are compared with those of the English-medium schools, one finds an unbalanced state of affairs. It should be remembered, Sir, that there are also Nationalists in those English-medium schools, just as members of the United Party are also to be found in Afrikaans-medium schools, and therefore it is not really a party matter. At any rate, at an English-medium school such as Pietermaritzburg College there are six A-standard rugby fields, whereas the Vryheid High School, which has as many pupils, does not even have an A standard rugby field—it only has a B-standard rugby field. We are not complaining about that. But, Sir, do you know what is behind that? The motive behind this is that our children in the rural districts are begrudged facilities which can be compared with the facilities of pupils in Durban and Pietermaritzburg—the areas which the United Party actually regards as Natal; the other areas are, as it were, outside the borders of Natal. Sports facilities in the rural districts are so poor that those children lag behind in sport as a result of the inadequate facilities and as time goes on they develop an inferiority complex. [Interjections.] That is what that side is defending, because they are going on with this process.

Do you know, Sir, how they are going on? The hon. member for South Coast said that we should know a tree by its fruit. In Natal there is a system of hostels which is administered and controlled by the province. The following is what happened: When certain parents experienced financial difficulties and approached the province with a view to a reduction in hostel fees, the provincial administration increased the hostel fees for all provincial hostels in the rural districts. Those children live in those hostels because their homes are too far from the school. In addition their parents have to buy extra clothes for them because they have to live in a hostel. These are the children who are given accommodation in these hostels. The hostel fees in respect of primary school pupils were increased by 30 per cent, and those in respect of high school pupils, by 40 per cent. The additional revenue amounted to the meagre sum of R78,000. Yet, during the same session of the Natal Provincial Council, a rebate of R70,000 was granted to gamblers, that is to say, the horse-racing people. In other words, they took money which should have been used for the education of our children and gave it to the gamblers in order to accommodate the latter. Then they are the people who claim that we are trying to pilot through legislation with sinister objectives. Now we can see where they come by this idea of sinister objectives, which they lament so.

In Natal they go even further than that, Mr. Speaker. In Natal there is a secret formula according to which children are admitted to hostels. Nobody but a few people—let us say the members of the executive committee— knows what this formula really embraces. If I have to judge the tree again by its fruit, I want to make the statement that the children of a person who earns more than R100 a month do not qualify for any State aid as regards admission to a hostel. The result is that parents who work for the Roads Department, parents who work for the Forestry Department as well as those who do field work, are being penalized.

Those people who are working for the Roads Department, are they public servants?

They work for the provincial administration, and as far as I know it is a United Party administration. The people who work for the Roads Department, are paid by that same administration. If such a person earns more than R100 a month, he cannot obtain any assistance in respect of the boarding fees of his children. That is the position if a parent has more than two children. If there are quite a number of children, a small amount of assistance is given in respect of the first two or three children of that parent. This has the result that the parent is obliged to take out his children in Std. VII or VIII so that he may get his younger child into the hostel. On his small salary he simply cannot afford to keep more than two or perhaps three children at boarding-school. This has led to a sub-class of people developing in Natal, people who are being supported by the Provincial Administration, the object being that these children from the rural districts will become the hewers of wood and drawers of water of the future, people who will be working in their factories and in other industries in their towns. This policy in Natal, which is always kept under cover, is aimed at making the children of the rural districts workers in these industries. This is the existing position in Natal to-day. [Interjections.] I can understand why hon. members on the other side are laughing and why the hon. member for South Coast is making such a fuss. Actually he is therefore not concerned about education. I almost want to make the statement that as regards the educational implications of this measure, the hon. member does not have the required technical knowledge to express Natal’s views on this matter strongly enough. If he does express the views of Natal, he is merely expressing the views held by the few over whom he has control—and they are very few. The system which is being applied in Natal in respect of education and which they are nursing there, has had the effect that the United Party has been going downhill at a rate of 100 per cent every five years. All hon. members can make calculations to see how soon not a single one of them will be left!

I am coming to another aspect, the aspect of the teacher. Teachers in Natal may not take part in politics. That is determined in the conditions of his appointment, if he is a Nationalist, but if he is a United Party supporter, he may take part in politics. He may even go as far as to stand for election as a candidate of the United Party, and if he is not elected, he is re-appointed, but if the wife of a National Party candidate, who is not connected with education at all, helps him to do street canvassing on behalf of the Party, she is warned by the Administration itself that if she does not cease interfering in politics, her services will be suspended. That is what is happening in Natal. This legislation will put a stop to that sort of thing, and that is why the United Party opposes this measure. This Bill offers everybody in Natal equal treatment. Do hon. members on that side think that we shall be so stupid as to apply to the whole of the Republic educational legislation which will have the same effect on us and on the children of our supporters as that of their legislation in Natal? No, I think that if ulterior motives are mentioned, as the hon. member for Houghton also did here, then there are most certainly no ulterior motives to be found on this side of the House.

I just want to make one last point. I think that I, as a younger member, am entitled to object to the fact that, when hon. members on that side of the House attack the Minister on this legislation, they accuse him of being a dictator and of laying down his word as the law. As far as I know Parliamentary procedure, any action arising from the powers conferred upon the Ministers, may be debated in this House. If the argument advanced by hon. members on that side in their swansong to the Minister, signifies that they are afraid that they will disappear from this House and no longer be represented here, I can understand that. After all, what difference does it make whether the powers to which they are objecting are assigned to the Minister or to the provincial administrations? At the present moment these powers are in the hands of the provincial administrations, but since hon. members on the other side know how they are treating a minority group in Natal, they are afraid that they will receive the same treatment in this House at the hands of the hon. the Minister. It is for that reason that they are making such a fuss. We know what is happening in Natal to-day where the United Party is in power; we know how they are treating certain teachers there. I want to mention certain other things here, but I think that in all fairness to those teachers, I should not mention them at this stage. I shall do so at the Committee Stage instead. Those matters are more specifically concerned with the system of promotion of teachers in Natal.

Mr. Speaker, we are going to pass this Bill whether the hon. members on the other side like it or not, whether the hon. member for South Coast runs or stands still.

He will march.

No, he said he was standing. We can assure hon. members on that side who expressed fear on behalf of the English-speaking parents that they have no reason to be afraid. But I can also assure them that the other parents who were wronged in Natal because their language was not English or because their views did not agree with the views of the United Party, even though they were English-speaking, will be very happy when this Bill is passed. In this respect I am referring to immigrants, for instance, whom we could only offer education facilities in Natal after a terrible struggle. They did not want these people in certain parts, and with their delimitation they succeeded in isolating these immigrants in various other camps.

I want to conclude by making one more statement only. One realizes that it is essential that hostels should be attached to schools, and I want to ask the hon. the Minister to see to it that under the new policy certain amounts will be earmarked specifically for hostels, so that parents in either language group may send their children to the school of their choice and have them taught through the medium of their choice. At the moment this is not the case in Natal. A large, mighty Afrikaans school such as Port Natal in Durban merely has accommodation for 74 children in its hostel. I most certainly do not consider that to be adequate hostel facilities.

For how many pupils does D.H.S. have accommodation?

The education authorities in Natal have virtually smothered the initiative of all principals with their delimitation tactics. By mere manipulation they are able to determine the number of pupils at a school, the standard and size of that school. We trust that this measure which is before the House to-day will put a stop to this unnecessary manipulation. We regard this question of manipulation as an extremely serious matter, because certain parts of the province are skimped with teachers who are not acceptable in other parts of the province or who may perhaps have been unsuccessful as regards examination results. Such a teacher is then pushed out by mere manipulation to those parts which the education authorities do not like.

In conclusion I just want to say that I hope that we shall yet have many dealings with hon. friends on the other side and that they will not be quite as hot under the collar then, but I want to extend this invitation to them, namely that any one of them will be welcome to join me in holding meetings in those parts of Natal, outside Pietermaritzburg and Durban, where I am not so familiar with the circumstances. This invitation includes all of them, their Leader as well.

The hon. member for Vryheid made certain allegations here this afternoon, some of which I feel would have been better directed to the provincial council because they refer to provincial matters and more or less domestic matters. But in reply to some of his accusations, which I know will also be dealt with by some of my colleagues in this debate, I would like to draw his attention to the following fact: Taking the Witwatersrand, for example, there is not one single hostel for English-speaking girls. As far as his remarks concerning Pietermaritzburg College are concerned, I wonder if the hon. member for Vryheid is aware of the fact that many of the facilities which have been provided there, have been provided by the goodwill of the parent/teachers’ associations and by the Old Boys themselves, who have dug deeply into their pockets to provide these facilities. [Interjections.]

Order! I must refer hon. members to the Rule that hon. members are not allowed to make interjections. If hon. members wish me to apply that Rule stringently, I shall do so.

Sir, the hon. member for Vryheid referred to smokescreens and he also referred to the policy of the United Party. I believe that a policy can only be applied when there is goodwill on all sides, and I believe too that there have been deliberate and inspired attempts by certain people in Natal to nullify the sincere efforts of the Provincial authorities in regard to education and in regard to the policy of the United Party. I think the best answer I can give to the hon. member for Vryheid is to quote a human and poignant case which came to my own notice in 1961. I was in Pretoria with my wife and we were visiting friends; the husband of “ware Afrikaner” stock and the wife and mother of Anglo-German stock. They had four children. We were sitting round the table talking and my wife said to the husband, “I suppose you speak Afrikaans to your children in the home”. Sir, I wish you could have seen the look on that man’s face. He said: “No, I never speak Afrikaans to my children in my home”. Sir, we were shocked. In Natal, in our home, we encourage our children to speak Afrikaans. We asked what the reason was. His answer was this: “I am not in Natal; I am in the Transvaal. I decide that my children should be educated in their mother tongue, which is English. If I speak to them in Afrikaans and they become too fluent, they will arbitrarily be moved to an Afrikaans-medium school”.

Nonsense!

This man had to deprive his children of the opportunity of speaking their father’s tongue in his own home.

I want to come back to the debate itself and I want to associate myself with the remarks made by speakers on this side in regard to the unseemly haste with which this Bill has been introduced. I believe it has been done possibly to avoid criticism, because there is mounting: criticism; and I believe, too, that the hon. the Minister has been misinformed with regard to the reaction in Natal. I want to add to some of the background which the Minister supplied in his second reading speech, because I believe it is necessary to do so. Before the actual formation of the National Education Advisory Council there existed a body known as the Provincial Consultative Committee. This body was brought into being in 1935 and consisted of the Minister of the Interior as Chairman, the Minister of Education as Vice-Chairman, and the Administrators and Provincial Executives of each province, and it was assisted by a permanent sub-committee of the four provincial Education Departments and the Secretary for Education. In 1962 I was told by this Minister that this body had drawn its last breath in 1962 because it had not been a success. Then we had another body, the National Advisory Council for Education, which consisted of the Minister of Education and the five provincial Administrators. This body met at its inaugural meeting on 13th October, 1957, and in 1962 I was advised that it had not met since that meeting, and that at that meeting only domestic matters had been discussed. The hon. member for Kensington has referred to the introduction of this Bill and to the Select Committee to which it was referred, the National Education Advisory Council Bill, in 1962. I feel it is right to say that the evidence placed before the Select Committee by the bodies which gave oral evidence was such that it indicated that 23 of them intimated that they were in favour of the formation of an advisory council. It is also interesting, in passing, to mention that eight of the bodies giving oral evidence were for the appointment by the Minister of members of the Council, and nine were against it. Well, the Bill is now history. It was passed in 1962 although it was strongly opposed by this side of the House. I want to refer to some of the remarks the Minister made during the second reading debate of that Bill, because I believe that the Minister has done what he ought not to have done and has left undone what he should have done.

He referred in his second reading speech to the importance which he attached to the convening of national education conferences. He said this several times, and I quote one from Hansard of 1962, Col. 7194. The Minister said—

The Minister stressed in a further part of his speech that it was a very important aspect that these educational conferences should be held every two or three years, “where everybody interested can air their views”. These are positive statements, but the Minister made further positive statements and I want to quote again from Hansard in regard to the formation of this Council. He said—

This was the National Education Advisory Council. Well, we know that the Council was appointed in October, 1962, and commenced its duties on 1st January, 1963. It is interesting to examine some of the reports of this Council which have been published. Take the first one, RP.41 of 1964, being the annual report of the work of the Council for 1963. The Council indicated that it called for the submission of memoranda from the bodies which had supplied information to the Select Committee and had given evidence before it. Then the Council made specific reference to its attitude towards education conferences and it concluded that education conferences fell within the scope of its functions and sphere of interest, and I quote from the report—

Fine words, Sir. There was no national conference that year. Let us go to the report of 1964, RP.32 of 1965. Here we see a special heading in the report, “Conferences and Congresses”, and then it was indicated that members of the Executive Committee and other members of the Council had attended various conferences during the year to which they had been invited. Again, there was no national conference. Let us refer briefly to the report for 1965, RP.35, paragraph 20—

But again there was no national conference. There was no consultation in terms of the Minister’s undertaking, when he said that the people who were interested in education should be allowed to put their point of view. The reports show that the Council emphasized the progress which was made on the question of divided control and the development of a national educational policy. But I have pointed out that there has been no positive test of public opinion in regard to this, because in the whole of the brief life of the Council not once has an attempt been made to have this contact and to establish dialogue with all the people interested in education. This is the Council which the Minister said was a model council; it was not a political football, and on the appointment of the members of which he was staking his political reputation. It is a council instructed by the Minister, making conclusions acceptable to the Minister, but not consulting the people outside. It is interesting to ask what form of consultation the Council has had. That, too, can be revealed by a study of the report. The Executive Committee of the Council established what was known as a “contact” body. It comprised the Executive Committee of the Council and the heads of the Education Departments of the Republic and South West Africa, a body not very dissimilar to the moribund body that was appointed in 1935 and drew its last breath in 1962.

This was the contact body. The consultation and the opinion of the council was one side of the picture. There is another aspect to this matter. I want to refer to the 1961 Education Panel. Here we had a body of eminent educationists supported by distinguished individuals who were interested in education and who saw fit to investigate the situation in South Africa and to report upon it. Their first report which was issued in 1963 was endorsed by the signatures of 28 of the members who served on the panel. It is very interesting to note that we have here the Minister’s committee of experts, we had another committee of educational experts and we have between these two bodies only one individual whose name appears on both lists of members. The Education Panel issued a second report in 1966 which was signed by 23 of the individuals who comprised the panel. It was also made clear that there were individuals who were nameless and who did not subscribe to the report as it was published. The interesting part of this report, as I saw it, was that it listed 69 recommendations.

I have been through these recommendations and I could not notice any great emphasis being placed on the urgent need of establishing a national education policy as visualized by the Education Advisory Council. I did notice a stress on decentralization. There is obviously a division among educationists in South Africa. Surely the time had come for consultation to see what via media could be arrived at to suit both interests! Why is such haste necessary in connection with this Bill? There is a further matter which arises out of the report of the Advisory Council. I refer to the report for 1965, page 4, paragraph 13 (1) in which the report refers to the delay in their deliberations with the contact body as a result of the non-release of the Schumann Report, a report for which the country appears to have been waiting for a long time, the report on the financial relations between the Central Government and the provinces. How, in all seriousness, can a Bill of this nature come before the House when the contact body of the Minister’s own council is unable to study such an important report!

I want to deal with certain aspects of the Bill. I believe that there are many aspects in this Bill which would find general acceptance among the vast majority of White people in South Africa. I refer primarily to clause 2 (1), paragraphs (d)-(j). I do not believe that there would be great difficulty or argument in regard to aspects such as the uniform requirements concerning compulsory education and the school entering and leaving age, free education, education according to ability, co-ordination of syllabuses, courses, examination standards, parent participation in school administration, the recognition of teachers’ associations, uniform conditions of service and salary scales. I believe that the introduction of those factors by legislation as soon as possible would offer immediate benefits not only to the teaching profession but to the parents themselves. We have heard it said on more than one occasion that the diversity in certain aspects of education is a hardship for parents themselves when they move their domicile from province to province. I believe that an economy in school books could be effected on the basis of some sort of co-ordination.

I believe that it would lead to a more contented teaching profession. But what worries hon. members on this side of the House are the insidious implications of paragraphs 2 (1) (a), (b) and (c). They are cause for anxiety. I believe that they are contrary to claims made by the hon. the Minister in his speech. I believe that this Bill does not enjoy the majority support of the people in Natal as the hon. the Minister led us to believe through the provincial executive. I believe that it has been indicated by the province, by the Natal Education Association and by many educationists in Natal who are sincerely disturbed. For the record I feel that the Press release concerning the attitude of the provincial council should be quoted. I quote a Press report which is given in inverted commas:

Then there was an appeal to members of Parliament to which the hon. Leader in Natal, the hon. member for South Coast, responded this afternoon. I would like to ask the hon. the Minister what paragraphs 2 (1) (a), (b) and (c) mean. Varying interpretations have been placed upon them this afternoon. There have been strong denials from the other side of the House. Is a national education policy with a Christian character not the groundwork of C.N.E? I should like to ask the hon. the Minister and I would like to read something because I believe that this will put it on a basis whereby the whole country will know if the Minister or hon. members opposite are prepared to deny it. Does this mean that this statement is something which is not yet refuted? I refer to a statement made in 1948 and I quote:

I should like to ask the Minister and hon. members opposite if that is the intention with these clauses or is their intention that education should be dedicated to uniting the two language groups in the interests of South Africa and in the interests of the safety of our future? Is it the aim of these paragraphs to educate White South Africans to participate fully in the activities of international bodies, such as the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, Red Cross, St. Johns Ambulance Association and Rotary or is it to inculcate a “verkrampte” outlook? Is this clause aimed primarily at Natal? The figures indicate that it might be. I quote the figures for 1964 as they are the latest available in the Statistical Year Book. It is indicated that the total White pupils at public schools is 700,000. For the sake of convenience I am quoting to the nearest thousand. This consists of 210,000 pupils in the Cape, 76,000 in Natal, 346,000 in the Transvaal and 66,000 in the Free State. An examination of this figure will show that 11 per cent of the White schoolgoing populations is in Natal. What about the other 89 per cent? The scholars making up that 89 per cent are already subject to Nationalist domination through the Nationalist-controlled provincial councils.

They have their specifically laid-down regimented regulations concerning the mother tongue. They have the restricted parental choice to which I have already referred. Is this the Bill which is going to bring Natal into line? Will the implementation of the paragraphs in clause 2 not also help to antagonize and penalize immigrants who come to this country? I think of immigrants who wish to be absorbed into the community and who wish to become true South Africans and who by virtue of this determination may not be allowed to choose the language through which their children will be educated, because many of them would have a greater working knowledge of English and other languages. I ask the Minister whether the Christian character is to be confined to scripture and public devotion which is carried out in schools or will it form part of history, biology and geography? I believe, as has been said, that clauses 2 and 3 imply an erosion of the powers of the Natal Provincial Council. I want to refer briefly to clause 4 which makes provision for a council of 19 members. I am referring to the National Education Advisory Council. Ten members are to be appointed by the Minister without consultation and nine of them are to be appointed by the Minister with consultation with the Administrators. Now we have a smaller council. Clause 9 repeals the National Advisory Education Council Act of 1962. You will remember, Sir, the glowing terms in which the Minister described the National Advisory Education Council of the 1962 Act. He staked his political reputation on the appointments he would make to it.

That is not correct. We are incorporating the necessary parts in the new Bill.

I am coming to that. In regard to this shrunken council, is this a means of indicating that the objective has been attained by this Bill and that the council as it was then can be disbanded or substituted by another body even more dictatorial in the sense that it is now more the Minister’s mouthpiece than it was before? I should like to quote the Minister’s own words. During the Third Reading debate on 21st June, 1962, the Minister said, referring to the council:

Now the council has shrunk. It has been reduced from 28 members to 19. Then, Sir, on the 6th June, 1962, the hon. the Minister said:

That still holds good. There is nothing wrong with that.

This is the piece de resistance, because this council has been repealed. I can only go by what I see in the Bill. This is what the Minister said in 1962 in the same paragraph (Hansard, vol. 4, col. 7198):

Clause 9 does away with this council. It creates another body. I say advisedly that this is another body because the terms of appointment of this new body differ so fundamentally from those of the body created in 1962. Therefore I associate myself with my colleagues in their objection to the Bill and I support the amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I hope we shall not, before I get much further, have the rowdy laughter that we had last Friday, as though from a sepulchre. We shall gradually savour the medicine according to a somewhat ominous prescription we received a moment ago. I am pleased that the hon. member for South Coast is still present. I should like to refer to the attitude of the hon. member for South Coast this afternoon. The last time I saw him like that was in 1961. There is a tale about a certain young Lochinvar who was to marry a young girl, but the father was not very pleased about it and quickly married her off to someone else. The young Lochinvar attended the wedding. He was an accomplished rider and a woman-hunter without peer. As they were dancing he steered the bride in the direction of the door and then through it. He put her on his horse and made off with her through the dark of the night. Langenhoven then tried to record the episode in rather impossible Dutch. That sometimes happens if one deviates from one’s mother tongue. I shall just.quote two lines. He put it as follows: “Hy sprong door de door van haar vader het huis; hy schopte en danste en brieste en bruis.” I watched the hon. member for South Coast as he was speaking, how he “schopte en danste en brieste en bruis” (snorted and seethed and fretted and fumed), like a locomotive that was derailed and simply puffed along over the veld.

This entire Bill is being opposed vehemently. I should like to state, and I hope not to the too unpleasant disillusionment of the hon. members on the opposite side, that we are now standing on the brink of what is to be expected and of what is to come, because our vision regarding our national education is even higher and more incisive and wider, particularly in respect of the Christian principles, mother-tongue education and the national character. The ice is getting thin and I shall have to cover the field with this promise: I will not repeat. So much has been said about this, but if I were to repeat what someone else has already said, I would do it as excellently as though it had never been said. As in the case of all legislation in the pure national interest, the Opposition is always on the watch to ensure that in claiming our due we do not perhaps spoil the chances of success of elements which oppose us for dark motives. That is why, when we are dealing with such legislation, that which is not nearly enough for us is already too much for them. The Sunday Times of 19th February, 1967, made this significant statement—

The English language troubles my Boer tongue Sir. Thus it was during the language struggle. I want you to take note of the last part of each of these composite words I am going to use. Thus it was during the language struggle, the flag struggle, the anthem struggle, the citizenship struggle, the Commonwealth struggle, the Republican struggle and the coinage struggle. And thus it is now with the education struggle. Why is that so? Show me another country where one section of the population deems it necessary to wage a struggle against another section of the same population when it wants to claim its dues. Why must there be a struggle? There was always a struggle regarding the national language, the national flag, the national anthem, the citizenship, etc. All education is concerned with and for the benefit of the child in the first, the second and in the final instance, because the nation of to-morrow grows from the child of to-day. Therefore we must cultivate the child at school until he has reached the stage where he will be fully aware of his calling and where he will be spiritually strong under all circumstances and at all times.

It has become my Nemesis, when I take part in a debate, to be interrupted for the sake of food and drink, which man cannot do without, and it so happens that hon. members have all discovered that “ ’n voile maag die preekt niet graag” (one does not like to preach on a full stomach). Consequently I could not do justice to the meal served to me.

With regard to education I just want to bring it to your attention that notwithstanding the progress we envisage as a result of this Bill, the progress made in the field of education has been so phenominal that I always find it disturbing—in fact, I regard it as dangerous and undesirable—to be continually comparing our educational achievements with those of the black states of Africa; there is no conceivable comparison between the two.

Tell us about the 14,000 faulty payments in respect of the salaries of teachers in the Transvaal.

Mr. Speaker, what I have to say I would rather tell the hon. member in simple language, the way Antonie Staring described a lion: “ ’n leeu word vier-voetig geboren, twee van agteren en twee van voren” (a lion is born a quadruped, two in front and two at the back). But there is another example I may give the hon. member, and that is the description of a dog. If a man wants to give a good description of a dog, clearly understandable by everybody, he says of the dog: “zolang als zijn neus maar nat en fris is, is het ’n bewijs dat meneer so gezond als een vis is” (as long as its nose is damp and fresh, it is a sign that it is as healthy as can be). I shall continue along the lines of simplicity. I regard it as dangerous to draw a comparison between South Africa and the black states of Africa, because the necessarily shining achievements of the Republic as against the meagre and primitive efforts of the black states must obviously result in overestimation of our own achievements. On the other hand it is undesirable because there is no point of comparison between the Republic and the black states, and the black states may decide to move back into the bush from sheer despair. America has taken a great deal of trouble to get them out of the bush.

Mr. Speaker, let us rather compare the achievements of South Africa in the field of education with those of the United States of America, England, France and Holland, taking into account, of course, the duration of their existence as a nation, their economic strength, their cultural wealth, their geographic situation, their scientific heritage, their internal and outward-directed struggle to survive, and then calculate those results on a basis of averages and consider the relative results. If we do that, we shall have no need to be ashamed of the end results we have achieved.

Clause 2 (1) (a), (b) and (c) deal with the much-discussed subjects we have heard so much about to-day, i.e. the Christian character of education, the national character of education and the mother tongue as a medium of instruction. This is in fact where I run the risk of entering ground which has already been covered, but I shall be true to the promise I made at the beginning of my speech. That path has been trodden to dust, but I shall find somewhere to leave new footprints.

Mother-tongue instruction is accepted all over the world. Even Unesco, with its liberal character, accepted it as a guiding line and recommended it to all the nations of the world, but we find that the Opposition has been teetering as long as we can remember between parallel-medium and dual-medium schools in an attempt to avoid the mother-tongue-medium and in an attempt to gain support to its left and to its right by trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. The existence of 250 private English-medium schools in the Republic of South Africa should surely serve to prove that English-speaking parents accept the mother-tongue medium as educationally sound; desire it and obtain it for their children at great expense. Mr. Speaker, here I have one significant fact about Natal, but I think I should omit it, because there are other members who can speak about it with greater authority. In that territory—I have now led myself into temptation—one finds that the facilities determine the medium of instruction. There is a lot of space in English-medium schools and the English medium is forced onto Afikaans-speaking children. Take the Werda High School in Durban as an example. It took seven years of begging and pleading to have that school built, and after it had been built there was an immediate enrolment of 450 pupils, which soon increased to 1,150 pupils. What a vast need there must have been for many years, for this most essential educational institution! Mr. Speaker, let us all manifest in practice the truth of the maxim: “Through language one retains the soul of the nation”, and not force a foreign-medium onto the child, in the knowledge—and this is another maxim which is equally true—that “through a language one destroys the soul of a people”, when it is not the mother-tongue medium. Sir, Totius said: “Uit die leed ons lied, en uit die lied ons taal” (from sorrow our song, and from our song our language). The late Dr. Malan said: “From language a nation derives confidence in its potentialities and faith in its ultimate destination.” Let us consider the Christian character of education, of which a great deal has also been said to-day. The Sunday Times of 19th February, 1967, wrote as follows—

It then continued—

This concept of a Christian National Education appears nowhere in the Bill. Enough has been said about that to-day, and I shall leave it at that. Mr. Speaker, one wonders where the hereinafter quoted men of darkness are lurking, men who achieve so much that the entire world should shake and shudder, because one simply does not know who and what and where they are, and what they may do to us to-day or to-morrow. The Sunday Times continued—

—of blessed memory—

Imagine that! What is the opinion of a certain Mr. B. L. Bernstein, chairman of the Council of the Witwatersrand University and comradein-spirit to the Sunday Times? He said this— and listen to the decisive way in which he says it, without doubt or hesitation, as though it is his birthright in this country; let it be his right; we grant him that, but we shall clamp down at once on him and his comrades in spirit and claim the same for ourselves. He said this—

The Rand Daily Mail was moved to ecstasy by this, and said that Mr. Bernstein could not express it better. Mr. Speaker, I am hostile to no group and I do not want to take an aggressive line. This demand comes from a minority group and nobody denies it to them in the least. And now I want to affirm the statement made most strikingly to-day by the hon. member for Primrose and by the hon. member for Randfontein: This nation is eminently Christian. Believers in the Holy Trinity—and we say this in the utmost piety and the highest esteem and respect and with humility in our hearts—number from 1½ to 2 million in this country. Why must they be granted their dues by legislation and in the face of the most vehement opposition, while this Bernstein gentleman exclaims: “We shall say who, we shall say how, and we shall say what” and gets it without striking a blow! Nobody withholds it from him. Very well, then.

But there are other people as well in the Republic. There is a group which maintain that education, as far as their children are concerned, should have a Christian character; that it should have a national character and that instruction should be given through the medium of the mother tongue. That group, in so far as they do not have it, will and shall get it, at the universities as well. Therefore I, for my part, shall continue pushing and prodding at the conscience clause at certain universities, because the conscience clause is positively in the service of those who want no Christian and national education, and is negative to those who do want them. Hence the temerity of the Bernstein gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, if one group prefer the so-called neutral education and it is financed from public funds, it is right, and if another group claim Christian education, education with a Christian character and based on Christian principles for themselves, it is a vicious form of indoctrination and the public Treasury must be carefully locked and bolted. Just to show how far some people are prepared to go in their rejection of what is Christian, I want to quote from Die Rasionalis of July, 1966. In this publication J.B. objects to the inscription Soli Deo Gloria on the R1 coin. The inscription is supposed to be sectarian. Even the two sparrows on the one-cent coin come under fire because they refer to what Christ said about the two sparrows. That is going just too far. And those are people who also enjoyed an education! Those are people who may also qualify for the teaching profession, and those are people with whom I will have nothing whatsoever to do in my school. Could anything be worse, Mr. Speaker? I will have nothing to do with a school in which the spirit of this man and his publication is predominant. Through this legislation we shall get education on a national and Christian basis and through the medium of the mother tongue. We shall get it for ourselves and in the greatest love also for those who are opposing this Bill so vehemently to-day, for which they will ultimately be grateful.

I want to refer once again to the medium of instruction, and conclude by doing so. I went to school under the Milner régime. Amongst other things I was taught Afrikaans and history, but in addition also arithmetic, geography and Dutch. That was not our mother tongue, and yet I had to cram the Jaromier cycle into my head, without understanding any of it, and later reproduce it. Listen—

I wonder whether the hon. the Minister was impressed with the speech he has just heard. I think he ought to be, because the hon. member who has just sat down prevented the hon. the Minister from holding that same seat. Since I have been in this House one thing has impressed me, and that is the two things that the Nationalist Party stands for. One is intolerance of anybody who does not support the Nationalists. I want to start by saying that I believe that this Bill has been badly named. It has been named the National Education Policy Bill, but I believe its correct name should be the Christian National Education Policy Bill or perhaps, even more aptly, the Nationalist Party Indoctrination Bill. No amount of protest and no amount of pious statements can alter the fact that C.N.E. is the purpose of this Bill only. Surely no Bill ever introduced into this House has been conceived with so obvious an intent to ensure that the will and image of the Nationalist Party becomes built up in the minds of our little children. If that is not so, why does the Minister take upon himself such powers, and why take from the provinces that control they have exercised for so long?

On a point of order, may the hon. member read his speech?

The hon. member may proceed.

I would like to suggest that the Minister wants these controls because he controls the education in the other provinces through his Provincial Councils, and the only province he does not control is Natal, and this Bill will enable him to do so. This is his master plan, and I believe that it is intended to control and regiment free thought and must fail because of this one reason only. Authorities have said that the centralization of education is a good thing, but not one reason advanced here can carry the argument that this Bill is for no other reason at all than to bring Natal to book, and to get control of education in Natal. With this Bill the Nationalist Party reaches the end of the road which they set upon 30 years ago when they first came out into the open with the policy of C.N.E. This Bill is nothing more and nothing less than Christian national education being put into practice, despite the Minister’s words. To prove this, look at the words of the hon. the Minister of Finance when he said in this House—

He went on to say: “We agree with the general principles of C.N.E.” In the last election we had candidates of the Nationalist Party trying to put up the pretence that Christian national education had never been the policy of their party. They said this because they knew that in Natal Christian national education was abhorred by every person there, and certainly by every parent in Natal, as something of which they wanted to know nothing. If by Christian education, and if by “Christian” is meant Calvinism then I have no objection to this except that they can keep it to themselves. I am no Calvinist and I do not wish my children to be brought up as such. Every concept of the originators of C.N.E. would have been achieved by this Bill. First it was Bantu education, then coloured education, then Indian education, and now they are getting control of white education. The whole gamut has been run and education will be under the control of one section of the population, a minute section of the population, and the Minister himself will become the headmaster of every child in South Africa. There are 22 major religions in this country. I have the Minister’s own booklet to show it, and I want to know what right has one religion to force its dogma on to others. The records will show what has happened in the Transvaal.

Now I would like to deal with the case of subsidized schools. In Natal there are no fewer than 33 private schools in receipt of subsidies and 38 Government aided. These schools will or can be made to carry out the policy of this Bill. What happens if an Afrikaans-speaking child attends an English-speaking religious school which is in receipt of a subsidy? Will the school be in danger of losing that subsidy if it does not comply with the mother-tongue provisions of this Bill? The other question is what happens when a subsidized school invites a person to address it on speech day, if this person should make a speech attacking the policy of the Government and attacking this particular Bill? Will that school be in danger of losing its subsidy? [Interjections.] We on this side of the House have had experience of some of the Government’s promises in the past and I personally accept very few of them. The Afrikaans child attends a convent where English is the medium. Will that child be removed from that school? If so, then this Bill is nothing more or less than an attack on religious freedom. [Interjections.]

I would like to go a little further. The Administrator of Natal and the Minister can protest as much as they like, but this Bill is an attack on religious freedom and I sincerely believe that the hon. members opposite do not realize the consequences of the road they are set upon, or else they do not care. The evil that will result from this Bill will return to haunt us in the years to come and by it they are setting in reverse, if they were ever sincere, their cry of national unity. In my constituency I have English-speaking parents who send their children to Afrikaans schools. This will not be possible in future. [Interjections.] I think I know my constituency a little better than the hon. member for Umhlatuzana does. In Natal we think of the hon. member for Umhlatuzana as the most misguided missile ever to have emanated from Natal, operating in an ill-conceived orbit and heading for an undetermined destination.

Order!

What I would like to know is whether this child of English-speaking parents attending an Afrikaans school is doing wrong. This Bill seems to think so and hon. members opposite also seem to think so. This Bill will achieve something all right. It will achieve the end of the Nationalist Party in dividing our children in schools once and for all. Is our present system so un-Christian, so unnational, that we have to have a Bill of this kind? What makes me realize just how little this Government cares for the feelings of those people who are not Nationalist Party supporters is illustrated in this booklet published by the Department of Information, of which the same Minister is the head. In this booklet, published before this Bill, it is said—

I want to know how it comes that this book was published before the Bill was? Does it mean that certain people had information about this Bill which the Administrator of Natal never had and Parliament never had? Surely that is nothing more or less than contempt of Parliament if a booklet like this which is sent overseas tells people about the Government’s intentions before we even knew what those intentions were. The only conclusion I can come to is that the Minister himself wrote this heading in the booklet. I believe it is arrogance that enables this Government to care so little for the processes of government that even before this matter comes before Parliament it can advertise its intentions to people overseas. But more important is that even the parents of South Africa did not know what the Government had in store for them when this book was published. Even the Administrator of Natal did not know, and to prove that I would like to quote from a speech he made in regard to education. Mr. Gerdener said that in terms of the Constitution education for Whites would rest in the hands of the provinces and would not be centralized as in the case of Bantu education. He went on to say that it is unfounded to allege that single-medium education would become the policy in the country. He said, further, that the medium of education is not discussed in the Bill, and that parallel-medium as well as single-medium schools would, as is the case to-day, exist in the province. This is what the Administrator of Natal said in December, 1966.

What is wrong with that?

What is wrong with that? It is that he was saying one thing in a speech while knowing that, in the light of the contents of this Bill, what he was saying was not correct. Mr. Speaker, as a parent I do not wish the Minister to decide to which school my children should go. As a parent my children belong to me and no Minister, nor any of his political commissars have the right to interfere with my rights as a parent. Governments of the past have tried to do this. We have a typical example of this in the Hitler youth. If you think that is too far fetched, let us get nearer home and take note of the indoctrination going on in the Transvaal at this very moment and, what is more, admitted in the provincial council. What about the history books used in Transvaal schools? These have become nothing else than tools of indoctrination. [Interjections.] Let me give the House some extracts from these books—

Hear, hear!

Here is another extract—

Hear, hear!

Race studies textbooks emphasize African tribal life in order to convey an impression that the African way of life is inherently primitive and tribal. Urban Africans tend to be seen from a European standpoint, with only the problems they create for the Whites being stressed. A history book available in English and Afrikaans has the following to say: “From the beginning the Whites and Blacks were sworn enemies”. Sir, if this is not indoctrination, what then is? But here is another quotation: “The language of the conqueror in the mouth of the conquered is the language of the slave”. Here is another one—

What is indoctrination if this is not? Surely this is sufficient to show that C.N.E. is already a fact. I want the people of Natal to realize that this is what they may expect from this Bill despite the fact that it was the Administrator of Natal who said that they had nothing to worry about. Sir, does “national” mean love of South Africa or does it mean being Nationalist? The Nationalist Party defines nationhood as the love of one’s own but nowhere does it refer to the greatest commandment of all. i.e. love thy neighbour. Does “national” mean that children will be used to parade at political meetings in school uniform? The hon. member for Umhlatuzana will know what I am talking about, because in my constituency schoolchildren have paraded in school uniform at political meetings and, furthermore, I have seen them parading at a political meeting carrying the banners of the local Nationalist candidate. [Interjections.] We have already had examples of this type of national being used like a bunch of goose-stepping “ja-broers”. This Bill allows that sort of thing to happen. Is this the type of national the Minister has in mind under this Bill? It has been said in this House that we want to make Nats of our children; so why should we beat about the bush? This was said here by an hon. member opposite. [Interjections.] There we have it: They want to make Nats of their children but I want to tell them they are not making Nats of mine. [Laughter.]

Order!

But while they claim that they want to make Nats of their children, I have not heard one of them getting up and stating that they want to make South Africans of their children. I want my children to grow up as South Africans and if later they want to support a political party different from the one I support, that will then be their free and proper right. Sir, the minds of children may be regimented by this Bill as the minds of many parents have already been regimented. But the time is surely coming when this process will be halted and then the very people who are now being regimented and indoctrinated will turn their backs in scorn on an administration which deliberately sets itself out to stifle freedom of thought and the freedom to have an inquiring mind. Under this Bill apartheid is being applied amongst the white race. The other races in this country are separated on the grounds of colour; now the white race is going to be separated on grounds of language differences. As the hon. member for Hillbrow asked: Where else in the world is there a nation which uses its education system to separate its people? Many thousands of immigrants are coming to this country. Would it be such a dreadful thing if some of them elect to send their children to an Afrikaans-medium school? Will that upset the Afrikaans-speaking people? Will that make worse Afrikaners of those people? Is it such a dreadful thing if some English and Afrikaans parents decide, as many have done in the past, to send their children to another language medium school? Sir, this legislation will not harm the English language but I hate to think what it is going to do to the Afrikaans language. The hon. the Prime Minister has made appeals for unity and for an end to language squabbles. How then can we allow a provision in this Bill dealing with language, i.e. the denial of parental option, to go forward? Because parental option is the key and not mother tongue. Is he satisfied that to make a fetish of language, to make it binding on the parents of South Africa, is not going to be looked upon for what it really is, i.e. merely a cheap and blatant attempt to lasso people to the totem pole of narrow Afrikaner Nationalism and make a mockery of the motto of our country “Unity is strength”? This Bill divides. I want to warn the Government and hon. members opposite that when so little is sacrosanct in South Africa to-day, so little is needed to set in reverse that which has been changed.

One of the former leaders of the party opposite had the following to say in this House once—

This was said by a former Minister of Education of that party sitting opposite. I agree with it. Furthermore, I consider this Bill to be an attack on religious freedoms and the rights of parents. Therefore it is totally at variance with our constitution.

The hon. member who has just resumed his seat will excuse me if I say that I am not prepared to deal with this subject on the same level as that on which he dealt with it. However, I want in a few words to reply to certain factual statements which he made. Much reference was made here to a so-called pamphlet of the F.A.K. That pamphlet has never, at any time, been accepted by the National Party as its official policy. The hon. member had a lot to say about parental choice, but in the same breath he objected to parents exercising their choice of allowing their children to attend political meetings. He said that his children belonged to him. Well, we have never begrudged him his children. But in the same way surely that hon. member must also admit that another man’s children belong to that man. The hon. member complained about the contents of the history syllabus in the Transvaal, but as a result of this legislation the hon. member will, year after year, have the opportunity of rising in this House and bringing these things to book with chapter and verse when the Education Vote is being discussed. He spoke about a booklet, but did he not read the report of the Education Advisory Council for 1965? All those things were also contained in that report.

But I do not want to follow the hon. member any further in his discourse. All that I still want to say is that what we had here was an exhibition of racial hatred and jingoism. [Interjections.] But as I have said, I am not prepared to move on that level on which the hon. member moved.

You cannot get there.

[Interjections.] Allow me to say that it is seldom given one to participate in the final achievement of an ideal towards which one has worked. As ex-teacher and as ex-M.E.C. member, charged with education matters in my province, it is a privilege for me to be able to participate in this debate and in the final realization of a policy for which we have worked for many years. It is my privilege to see in this legislation the beginning of a national policy and the end of divided control, that divided control which has plagued the children of our country for many years. The hon. member for South Coast used the word “tyranny” in his speech. As far as I am concerned there was only one form of “tyranny” in the past and that was the tyranny of divided control.

[Interjections.] Those hon. members who are laughing, are people who know precious little about education in our country, because even those members on their side who do know something about education candidly admitted that that was the case. For the first time in the history of our education there will now be an opportunity to introduce properly differentiated education. This Bill is the key to and the guarantee of the survival of our nation. In the fourth century before Christ one of the greatest philosophers and teachers of all times, Aristotle, said, “All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of their youth”. That is why we have always felt a need for a national education policy, a policy which would indicate the main guiding lines of our education. Our country has a national policy in regard to many things, defence, agriculture and practically every other facet of our nation’s activities. But we do not have a national policy for educational matters. This need has been emphasized time and time again by interested parties. The hon. member for Kensington exonerated himself from all these things here this afternoon by stating before this House that if lack of co-ordination and policy existed in education then it was the fault of this Government.

Hear, hear.

With that the hon. member has testified to the fact that his knowledge of the science of education is apparently restricted to those two words. Long before this Government came into power, the Jagger Commission emphasized that education should form an organic whole and stated that that was not the case with education in South Africa. The Hofmeyr Commission was not one appointed by this Government either. In 1924 that Commission complained about the confusion which had arisen as a result of, and I quote the words, “a lack of well-planned coordination and policy”. Neither was the Roos Commission of 1934 a commission appointed by this Government, and it stated the following (translation)—

The Commission stated further—

In 1935 the then Secretary for Education, Arts and Science—and this Government was not in power at that time—stated in his annual report that, “the Union has no national education policy”, and he then proceeded to point out all the disadvantages thereof. In 1946 there was a report from Natal, that of the Wilks Commission. All these reports date from the time before this Government came into power and against whom the hon. member for Kensington made all those accusations in this House. That Commission decided as follows—

They want, Sir, a governing principle, and they go so far as to say that—

The hon. member for South Coast had a major share in that impossible state of affairs which arose at that time. Why was it that steps were only taken in this connection after 1948? This afternoon hon. members have merely referred in passing to these reports. They quoted from certain provincial commissions, but they probably did not want to quote from commissions appointed by the Central Government. What was the finding of the De Villiers Commission, a commission which had been appointed by the then Government, a Government which shortly afterwards became the Opposition? Its finding was—

Those are the findings of scientific commissions consisting of honourable men whose integrity cannot be questioned.

I come next to the Interdenominational Commission and its evidence before the Select Committee of 1962. Reference was made here this afternoon to this Commission, and I must say that that Commission was sometimes referred to in a way I did not like, almost as if the evidence given by the Commission had been sectional. If there are any hon. members who want to view the matter in this light, I cannot stop them from doing so. This Commission gave detailed evidence before the Committee of 1962 and adopted a strong attitude there in favour of a national education policy.

I want to come now to certain observations made by the hon. member for Kensington. The hon. member is after all an educationist and knows a little more about these things than the “Hear, hears” sitting behind him. [Interjection.] I shall allow both members the luxury of a private squabble. We are dealing with a very serious matter now, namely the education of a child. In any case the hon. member for Kensington asked, and he did so very seriously here, why the opinion of the teachers’ associations had not been obtained in regard to this matter of a national education policy. The hon. member for Kensington allowed himself the privilege of referring to the ten points, calling them the “Ten Commandments” and then adding another commandment himself. I should not like to follow his example, but I want to remind him of the fact that in colloquial English there is also a saying which maintains that the eleventh commandment is, “Thou shalt not be found out”. There is proof now that the hon. member has broken that commandment. I want to refer to certain evidence given before the Select Committee of 1962, of which the hon. member for Kensington was also a member. The Federal Council of Teachers’ Assocations in South Africa appeared before that Committee. This Federal Council consists of the following bodies: The Transvaal Teachers’ Association, the Transvaal Secondary Schools Teachers’ Assocation, the Orange Free State Teachers’ Association, the South African Teachers’ Association, the S.A.O.U., the “Natalse Onderwysunie” and the Natal Teachers’ Society. A deputation appeared before the Committee and spoke on behalf of all the Associations. They furnished certain replies to questions, amongst other things that they wanted an advisory council such as the one we already have. According to their evidence: “The Federal Council of Teachers’ Associations advocates a similar approach, i.e. that there should be a national policy in regard to certain matters and that the provinces should implement such a policy.” [Interjections.] The deputation was asked whom they represented, and their reply was 27,000 teachers of both language groups. The question was asked by the former M.P., Dr. Steenkamp. He also asked them the following questions to which they gave the following replies—

Now I want to maintain that many Unitarian states have found it equally necessary to stipulate a national education policy, even where control over education and its implemention was decentralized, as in Great Britain for example. During the course of the afternoon reference was made here to the British Act of 1944. I also want to refer to that Act, and I do not merely want to refer to it in passing. I want to quote from the House of Commons Hansard and specifically to what the President of the Board of Education said, as reported in Col. 209-210—

He proceeds to mention certain Acts which are being repealed. He then continues—

At the conclusion of his Second Reading speech in the House of Commons the hon. the Minister also came to the Christian principle to which a question mark has been appended in certain places here. But Mr. Butler had the courage of his convictions, and so did the House of Commons. He stated—

Not the 22 religions of the hon. member for Port Natal—

There they also have an advisory council nominated by the Minister, and there they also have a ministerial responsibility. We are now coming forward with legislation which will give us ministerial responsibility here too, and which will make it possible for the first time in the history of South Africa for members of the Opposition to hold this Minister responsible under the Vote for all educational matters in South Africa.

I come now to the Education Advisory Council. Its 1965 report is available to all members. The Education Advisory Council states here that it submitted the principles of this legislation to the Minister unanimously, drafted in the form of a Bill but in laymen’s language because it had been easier to formulate it in that way so that the legal draftsmen could subsequently do the necessary work on it. When I come to the Education Advisory Council and its advice to the Minister, when I come to certain insinuations made in this House, then I want to state here before the nation and in public that I went a certain part of the way in that matter, that I was a member of an execuive committee which attended Administrator’s conferences. I am now forbidden to make public certain documents which are lying on my table, but I want to say what the procedure was, and it is also contained in the Education Report. The five Educational heads of South Africa, together with the Executive Committee of the Education Advisory Council formed a Contact Body and the report states here that unanimity was reached in the Contact Body. Do you know, Mr. Speaker, what happened? After every meeting of the Contact Body the Director of Education and his Executive Committee reported and received instructions—matters were ratified or left unratified. So we continued through all those months, and that is why it took so long, with differences of opinion at the highest level. If the Education Council and the Contact Body reached an agreement, then I ask the hon. member for South Coast how is it possible that the Executive Committee of Natal were not satisfied with it? From whom did the Director of Education receive his instruction then? The Executive Committees dealt with these matters separately with their respective directors of education. That was the procedure. I was present at an Administrators’ conference in 1965, which I may not discuss now. Let them recall what happened then. I take the strongest exception to those insinuations being made about the most pre-eminent professional officials in the teaching profession. I take the strongest exception to it being said of the professional men of an occupation of which I am proud and of which I was a member, i.e. the teaching profession, by members of the Opposition here this afternoon that they have no faith in these eminent educationists who were members of the Educational Advisory Council. I take exception to an attitude which, in its political weakness, has to hide behind officials and professional educationists who are not present here to defend themselves. We are dealing with clause 2 in this House which was unanimously recommended by these men, men who are not only held in national esteem, but who are internationally famous.

We adhere to the policy clause, this clause the contents of which were unanimously submitted to the Minister. I admit, as was stated by the hon. member for Wynberg, that many of these principles are already being applied in practice. If there are good practices in our national way of life, does that preclude us from embodying them in legislation? Does the fact that a nation had been celebrating a Day of the Covenant all those years prevent this House from declaring the Day of the Covenant to be a holiday with all the attributes of a Sabbath; did the fact that we celebrated Settlers Day and Krugers Day prevent this House from embodying it in its legislation? No, the policy is being embodied in the legislation because this legislation is not merely a law but because it is a manifesto for education in the Republic, because it is the charter which gives shape to these education principles. We notice in particular in the preamble to this clause, to which so many objections have been made, that there are two main principles embodied there which I want to emphasize. In the first place the Minister may, “after consultation with the Administrators”—not as he pleases, like a dictator—and, “from itme to time”, in other words with gradual adjustment, “determine the general policy” within the framework of the principles. I ask you, what is wrong with that?

Too much was said here which was distorted. Things were presented in a very slanted way. In respect of the contents and the practical application of these principles, I want in particular to draw your attention to the Christian character and the national character of the legislation before us. I was shocked this afternoon to learn from one of the most respectable members of this House that he finds in these two principles in this legislation an onslaught on his religious convictions and on his language; I am talking about the hon. members for South Coast. We are dealing here with one of the most momentous decisions which legislative council in this country has ever faced, for side by side with the safety of the State which sees to the physical survival of a nation, goes the education of its youth, which sees to its spiritual survival. I want to emphasize now that this Christian character has nothing to do with dogmatic Christian instruction. It has nothing to do with political aspirations. These principles are already being applied in the Orange Free State, they have been cut into effect in the province and have been included for 14 years in its ordinances, which ordinances read as follows (translation)—

In all the years I served on that Provincial Council where I held a responsible position, neither parents nor inspectors nor voters ever objected to the application of those principles. Who is objecting to them now? Does the Opposition want to make us believe that the children should grow up in an empty vacuum? Throughout the country there are schools which begin their day with Bible readings and prayers and where there is provision for Christian religious instruction. Are we ashamed to acknowledge in the legislation of our country the fact that we are a Christian nation? Whom will he offend? Is it not right for the youth to attend school in a Christian atmosphere and to receive a Christian view of life as their share? As the hon. member for Randfontein pointed out, the highest Council chamber in the country begins each day with a prayer. May the legislator claim for himself what he begrudges his child? [Interjections.] No, hon. members are wasting my time. In this legislation full provision is being made for all religious convictions, even for private schools which do not have to be Christian. The Jewish community may establish private schools which can receive support from the State. I have already pointed out that in the British Education Act these Christian principles are emphasized and that a Minister associated himself with them on behalf of his nation. Here in our country we want to let the emphasis fall, as far as the national character is concerned, on the national and the communal assets of all citizens.

You will allow me to tell certain hon. members of the Opposition in all earnestness that I take exception to the attitude which has been adopted by hon. members on that side of the House, implying that the English language and the English spiritual and cultural assets were their sole prerogative and private possession. I acknowledge in this House and before the public that I am as jealous as they are of the beauty of the English language and its development. I also want to admit that there have been occasions in this House when I sat here and shuddered at the’ misuse to which the English language was at times being put in those benches. Sir, I want to state that the languages are communal spiritual and cultural possessions. We are fellow-trustees in the Republic of South Africa as far as both languages and culture are concerned. We must guard them jointly.

Sir, if you will allow me the time I was deprived of by hon. members’ interjections I want to say this: Man, and therefore also the child is a social creature, in need of ethical and religious values. The child has a need for social and national ties. He is not merely a socio-economic unit. He is not merely a worker or citizen or a member of a family. He also has a need for national and church ties, and for tradition and cultural and historical anchors. He is bound to the moral norms of the aesthetic and the ethical in the social sphere. He is a creature of God and a citizen of the country. Those who want to concern themselves with education, must take cognizance of these basic truths. I do not want to cover the entire field. Enough has already been said about that matter. I want to say, without fear of contradiction, that it can be stated as axiomaic that man, and therefore also the child, feels a need, in the shaping of his personality and character and therefore also in his education, for religion and patriotism. It has been said that Christian National Education is an absurdity. I have stated what is understood by Christian and what is understood by national principles. The Christian and the national education which we want to offer the child is not a different or a new kind of education. It is purely normal instruction. It is the education which a South African child is entitled to because of his history, because of the place in which he finds himself and because of the faith which is practised in this country. For the Arab it would possibly be Mohammedan national. For Israel it may be something else. However, I want to point out what we regard as being typical of the home country and what we regard as being typically South African in these principles.

Reference was made here this afternoon to Bishop Clayton. I do not want to quarrel with the honourable Bishop. On the contrary, I want to agree with him. He said: “Be unashamedly English.” He said the right thing but at the wrong time and the wrong place. I want to associate myself with him in these words: “Let us be unashamedly South African.” [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, of the six Government members who have so far taken part in this debate, five are exteachers. All of them support this legislation with great enthusiasm. Now I want to ask them: Why did, then, they make such a mess of their profession? Did they produce bad students and pupils, that it should now be necessary to make such a great change, or are they perhaps looking at their colleagues around them and thinking that there should be a change in that quarter? [Interjections.]

The hon. member for Odendaalsrus, who has just sat down, told us that he is also an ex-teacher and in addition an ex-member of the Executive Committee of the Free State Provincial Council. He, too, supports this Bill enthusiastically. Is that an admission that he could not implement the existing policy in his province, or did he also fail in that respect? That is the only conclusion one can come to.

The hon. member for Randfontein, who was the first to take part in the debate this afternoon, said that the hon. member for Kensington had tried to ridicule this legislation. If this legislation had not been of such a serious nature, one could have described it as ridiculous. In my opinion, however, it is dangerous legislation, as I shall try to demonstrate later in my speech. From the hon. members who have taken part in the debate to-day, we heard a lengthy oration on Christian education, on mother-tongue instruction. Nobody has any fault to find with that. Nobody has any quarrel with that. What we are fighting about is the kind of education that we get nowadays and that is making Nationalists of our children. [Interjections.] They presented only one side of the matter. The hon. member for Randfontein said that it was a milestone in the history of the Nationalist Party or of the Government. There are some milestones which they planted along the road of South Africa of which we are ashamed to-day. Nor will it be long before they regret this milestone they are planting now.

I have one observation to make with regard to something said by the hon. member for Koedoespoort. He said that it was the duty of education to instil a unified vision into our children. Well, that is quite correct, but this legislation is not necessary to be able to do that; there is a much easier way, and that is to bring our children together in the same schools, and then we shall be able to understand each other, and bring about unity.

The hon. member for Koedoespoort objected most strongly against our use of the word “indoctrination”, but his colleague, the hon. member for Randfontein, told the House that that was exactly what he did in the schools; his principal object was to indoctrinate the children; to make Nationalists of his pupils. I cannot understand, therefore, why the hon. member should object to the word “indoctrination”.

The various aspects of this Bill have been discussed fairly thoroughly in this debate. The question I ask myself is this: What is the object of this legislation; is it the intention to improve our education system by these means; if that is so, was the system so bad in the past? So far no member on that side has told us that. We must therefore assume that there is something else behind this Bill. The second that occurs to me is whether this legislation is an attempt to canalize the ideas of our children. I think that is the answer. The object of this legislation is to bring about uniformity in the thinking of our children. The Nationalist Party has succeeded in doing so in the Free State, in the Transvaal and in the Cape Province; in Natal they have not yet succeeded in doing so.

Not in the Cape.

The object of this legislation is to compel Natal to follow the course of the Free State and the Transvaal. It has been admitted frankly, amongst others by the member who represents Pretoria (District) in the Transvaal Provincial Council, that if it had not been for the Education Department and the churches, the Nationalist Party would not have been where it is to-day. What is that if not indoctrination? Why, then, should hon. members object to the use of that word? They should be grateful that the children have been indoctrinated.

Mr. Speaker, through this legislation it will be possible to enforce this system throughout South Africa. I admit that the Nationalist Party as such will gain a great deal from that, but the question is whether it is in the interests of our youth. Indoctrination is a short-term investment which yields very good dividends for the party that applies it. This is not the first time in the history of the world that this has happened. We had the same kind of thing in Italy before the Second World War; we had the same kind of indoctrination in Germany under the Hitler regime. What was the result of that? It proved of tremendous advantage to the ruling parties; it kept them in power; but what was the ultimate result? In Russia we still have indoctrination to-day. What is happening in China, where the same kind of mass indoctrination is applied, where the youth is incited to uphold the ideology of the ruling party?

Where are we inciting the youth?

Indoctrination in this country will also succeed, but ultimately we shall have to pay the price, just as those other countries had to pay it. Who among us is looking forward to that?

Why do you not also incite the youth?

We should have enough confidence in our cause to leave it to our youth to decide for themselves whether or not to accept the principles of a certain political party. The object of this Bill is to give us an education system which we do not need. In the past our provincial education departments produced excellent results. There is nothing wrong with the education system as such. Unfortunately we did not have enough teachers to give all our children a high school education; that is all that was lacking. There was nothing wrong with the system. For this deficiency in the field of education nobody is more to blame than the Nationalist Party Government, which has now been in power for 19 years. If our education system has short-comings, the Nationalist Party Government alone is to blame for that. This legislation will not improve the education system; in the long run it will prove to be of great harm to us, and we shall have to pay a high price for it.

My thoughts went quite far back in the past when I listened to the hon. member for South Coast, when I had to listen to a plea being made by a person who for many years had taken the lead in Natal and who had become used to speaking on behalf of Natal. I remembered a time, it happened not only during my life-time but during those of our forefathers, when other people also had to make a plea similar to the one made here this afternoon by the hon. member for South Coast. The only difference is that the hon. member for South Coast made his plea in a louder voice than we did when, during this generation and during previous generations, we in Natal had to go hat in hand and ask for the recognition of the rights of the Afrikaner child in Natal, when we did not ask for privileges but for the recognition of a right which is the due of every child, the birthright of a nation and of a child.

You make me cry.

Mr. Speaker, I wish I could get that hon. member in a serious frame of mind in the discussion of this matter, because what lies buried in the past of the Afrikaans-speaking people of Natal will never be forgotten. That was a time when one had to struggle to obtain one’s rights in Natal. [Laughter.] Hon. members of the Opposition may laugh to-day, but they ought to hide their faces in shame under those benches, because I have never seen politicking do so much harm to a people as it has done to the Afrikaans-speaking people in Natal. I listened here to the plea of the Leader of the United Party in Natal who begged that this Bill should not be placed on the Statute Book. I say to you, Mr. Speaker, that many thousands of people in Natal will kneel down to-night and pray for this legislation to be placed on the Statute Book of South Africa, and now I am speaking of serious-minded people—not people who make speeches such as that made by the hon. member for Port Natal a short while ago—people who take up a serious stand in politics as regards important matters like this one which affects the whole of South Africa. For many years we have had to plead for the recognition of the rights of our children in Natal. If this legislation wronged the English-speaking section in South Africa to the slightest degree, I would oppose it. We are convinced in our hearts that this legislation has one aim only, and that is to place the Afrikaans-speaking child in the Republic of South Africa, including Natal, God be praised, on the same basis as the English-speaking child.

May I ask the hon. member why, if things were so bad for the Afrikaner in Natal his Government did nothing about it for 18 years?

Mr. Speaker, I shall reply to the hon. member’s question. What standpoint has the United Party adopted throughout our history? I shall begin with Iscor; I shall come to the Flag Act; I shall come to the referendum on the establishment of the Republic. During the referendum hon. members of the Opposition stood on the street corners of Natal like willow trees and wept because the Republic of South Africa would supposedly go to rack and ruin.

Tell us about the schools in Natal.

That hon. member knows as well as I do that up to now the schools have been in the hands of the provinces.

Why have you done nothing about that up to now?

Tell us about Slagtersnek and Majuba.

Will the hon. member for Transkei, who is a United Party Whip, please try to maintain order in this House if he does not want to leave that to me. I warn hon. members to stop interjecting.

The plea made by the Leader of the United Party in Natal, the hon. member for South Coast, was the last cry that will ever be uttered in an attempt to withhold the votes of English-speaking persons in Natal from the National Party. The hon. member for Port Natal made a speech here which will be headline news in the Natal Daily News and in The Natal Witness and The Natal Mercury to-morrow and which was calculated to drive English-speaking Natal away from the National Party. That is the only reason why he made that speech here, and unfortunately there are some people there who are ready to believe anything, and for that reason we still have United Party representatives from Natal in this House to-day. Unfortunately there are some of those people who are unilingual and who only read the English newspapers with the result that they never hear the other side of the story. That is why the United Part still tries to keep those people away from the National Party by telling that type of story.

The last occasion on which I heard the hon. member for South Coast make such a lively speech, however, was when he did so from the balcony of the City Hall in Durban during the referendum. Between 40,000 and 50,000 of his people were standing there and after throroughly having aroused them, the hon. member pushed his chest out and shouted to them, “Will you be prepared to march again?”, and with one voice the reply came, “Yes”. Since that time, since it was said that this Party would cause the banks to close down and that this Party would deprive English-speaking people of their rights, those hon. members have no longer been able to withhold those people from voting for the National Party. For that reason this cry tonight, which I foresee to be the last, will, thank God, be the last attempt to conjure up spectres to scare the English-speaking vote away. That will be something of the past, and I hope that in future we shall have something constructive from hon. members of the Opposition. After the struggle is over, when this legislation has been placed on the Statute Book, the day will arrive when these hon. members of the Opposition will say, “That is our baby”. As was the case with other things in the past, they will claim this legislation as being their brain-child and they will do so with pride.

To-night I want to tell the hon. Minister that Natal and South Africa as well as English- and Afrikaans-speaking South Africans owe him and this Government a debt of gratitude for having had and having displayed the courage of their convictions to place this legislation on the Statute Book of the Republic of South Africa. I say this on behalf of people who have been engaged in a struggle, in Natal in particular, for many generations. I want to tell the hon. member for South Coast that the time when he could speak on behalf of Natal has passed. That time has passed that he can claim unto himself the right to speak on behalf of the Province of Natal. He has to accept that together with the grey hair on his head. I want to tell you, Sir, that during the past few days, since newspapers in Natal published the news that the United Party was going to oppose this legislation, I have been flooded with telegrams from Natal. I shall read only one. I can read them all if you want me to, but this one reads (translation)— “Education Act meets with approval. Stick to your guns.” All the telegrams are in this vein. They were sent from all over Natal, and not by members of the National Party; I think only two came from National Party branches and the rest came from organizations representing hundreds and thousands of people and from individuals. That then is the message which comes from Natal to this House to-night in gratitude for what is going to be placed on the Statute Book.

Let me mention a few facts. A few years ago in Natal—and I intentionally say a few years ago, because I understand that principals of schools have been prohibited by the executive committee to furnish any information in respect of the number of Afrikaansspeaking and English-speaking children in schools. When I was in Natal five years ago, before I came here, when I was a member of the Provincial Council, we could obtain this information. Now, you will recall, Sir, that hon. members of the Opposition have always advocated very loudly that we should bring the two groups, Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking children, together in the same school and should let them play together.

Hear, hear!

It is so nice to say that one should bring them together on the same playgrounds so that they may play together. Six years ago there were 263 white schools in Natal. Of this number of 263 schools 190 were Government schools, 35 were State-aided schools and 38 were private schools. The hon. member for Vryheid furnished the figures for last year. I say that five years ago when I was a member of the Provincial Council, these were the figures. There one had a total number of 263 schools and on the basis of the medium of instruction one could divide those schools as follows: parallelmedium schools 80, English-medium schools 183. Now you must remember that they wanted the children to be together in the same schoolgrounds and that they said, “Hear, Hear!”. The hon. member for Pietermaritizburg (District), who knows so little about education, stuck his neck out to make that statement and as always he said the right thing at the wrong time. He admitted that they wanted the children in the same school-grounds. In Natal 30 per cent of the children are in parallel-medium schools; 70 per cent of the children are in singlemedium schools. My children attended those parallel-medium schools, but I challenge the hon. member, the Leader of the United Party, to say where his children went to school. I challenge them to tell us that because they are in favour of this bringing together of children. They preach these things, but they do not practise them.

Where were the children of Lourens Muller?

May I ask a question?

No, my time is very limited. The hon. member may speak later. A person like Mr. Marais Steyn, the Deputy Leader of the United Party, visited Natal in 1966 just after the election. On 24th June, according to The Natal Witness, he said the following—

He is an authority on the Afrikaners, because he himself is one. He then said—

Sir, may a man of integrity use these words in public on a platform in the province of Natal where one has 183 single-medium schools 167 of which are English-medium schools?

Shame!

They say we must bring our children together in the same school-grounds, and you will recall how the Transvaal Ordinance was opposed by the United Party in one election after another. You will recall how they cried out that it would be the end of the world if the National Party were to govern in the Transvaal as far as education was concerned and how the children would be herded into different camps. But these are the people who are sitting here to-day with pious faces and without blinking an eyelid. I say they enroll their children in 167 English-medium schools, while the Afrikaans-speaking children attend 16 Afrikaans-medium schools, for every single one of which, except the few smaller schools in the rural areas, the Arikaans-speaking people in Natal had to put up a struggle. May I remind the hon. member for South Coast, the Leader of the United Party in Natal, that when Sir Heaton Nicholls was the Administrator of Natal a deputation came to see General Smuts in this very Assembly Building to beg for a small school for small children in Pietermaritzburg and that General Smuts told them, “Go back; Mr. Heaton Nicholls is very sympathetic towards the Afrikaans-speaking people and I am sure he will fix everything for you”. And that was the end of that; nothing was fixed. In The Natal Mercury I read the following—

Mr. Speaker, 50 years have passed. The National Party has never governed Natal. [Interjections.] It will certainly govern Natal within a few years. However, the National Party has never governed Natal in the past, and I am telling you to-night that it was during that time when the United Party governed Natal that the Afrikaans-speaking people, my people, hat in hand, had to come and beg for their rights. I am telling you to-night that since the National Party has governed the Republic of South Africa, there has never been any discrimination against any English-speaking person in the Republic. [Interjections.] I challenge anybody to give me an example of that. This is the second time I have issued this challenge. [Interjections.] All this noise will not get us anywhere. The hon. member for Orange Grove should not make an interjection when I am speaking, because he knows that I know too much about him. I want to warn him that he must be careful.

On a point of order, Sir, may one hon. member threaten another hon. member?

That is not a point of order.

What The Natal Mercury wrote was the confession of faith of the United Party in respect of education. Let us examine the facts in Natal. What children are in parallel-medium schools? In Natal 71 per cent of the Afrikaans-speaking children are in parallel-medium schools. As regards the English-speaking people, those people who, according to the United Party, want children to be brought together on the same playgrounds, only 25 per cent of their children attend such schools. What right does a member of the United Party or his child have to speak of and criticize this legislation? What right does a member of the United Party have to open his mouth and to say anything against this legislation? They do not know what a language struggle is; they do not know what an education struggle is.

As against that 71 per cent in those 80 parallel-medium schools in Natal, the Afrikaans-speaking section only has 16 single-medium schools, whereas the English-speaking section in Natal has more than 167 English-medium schools. [Interjections.] Hon. members opposite must not speak of national unity now. We shall be able to do so on another occasion. [Interjections.] Hon. members opposite will not get me away from my point— I shall rub it in. Apart from the 167 English-medium schools, they also have 35 English-medium State-aided schools as well as 38 English-medium private schools. Mr. Speaker. I feel like asking your permission to use a certain word to describe hon. members opposite. Tell me the rudest word which I may use, and I shall do so

I must make haste because my time has nearly expired. I want to come to the question of parental choice. General Smuts’s legislation of 1907 in the Transvaal prescribed mothertongue education and made that compulsory in the primary classes. The parents had to obey that law. There was no parental choice. Compulsory mother-tongue education was included in the Rissik Ordinance of 1911. In terms of that legislation children were obliged to take their subjects in their mother-tongue up to standard 4. There simply was no such thing as parental choice. The double-medium ordinance of the United Party of 1945 made mother-tongue instruction compulsory up to and including standard 5. The parent had no choice. That was the law of the Medes and Persians. That was indoctrination. But even up to matric that child and parent had no choice, because from standard 6 up to matric those children had to take half their subjects in one language and the other half in another language. There simply was no parental choice. I want to ask hon. members of the Opposition to-night whether they want to give the parent of a school-going child the choice to decide whether his child should also be inoculated against smallpox if other children are inoculated against it? No, when scientists decide that something must be done, then that is done. Why then, do they want to insist on parental choice in this case? I say the reason is, Sir, that they have not succeeded in providing the necessary facilities for both language groups in Natal and that they have succeeded in preventing that there is Afrikaans-medium instruction in Standards 9 and 10 in a high school, so that a parent has to enrol his child in an English-medium school in standard I and he has to remain in that school right up to matric. In that way the United Party succeeded in having between 7,000 and 8,000 Afrikaans-speaking children in Natal in English-medium schools six years ago. Let hon. members opposite get up and tell us how many of their children attend Afrikaans-medium schools. They do not attend them. But by means of this policy of theirs they have forced our children to go to English-medium schools. For that reason I feel at liberty to give the fullest measure of support to this legislation, this measure which is aimed at ensuring that justice will prevail as far as Afrikaans-speaking people are concerned and also at placing English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking children on an equal basis. This is what we feel called upon to do as regards this legislation. That is what is being done here, and those are the fruits which the Republic of South Africa will pluck in the future as a result of this step taken in 1967.

Mr. Speaker, I almost feel at home at hearing the hon. member for Klip River letting loose a diatribe of which he has just given us the benefit. I remember this hon. member from many years in the provincial council of Natal. The tone has not altered, the words have not altered, and the story has not altered. The only thing that worries me about the hon. member, because I am quite fond of him, is that he may some day bite his tongue, because, Sir, I am sure he would not survive. What we heard from the hon. member was the old, old story. What I wanted to hear from the hon. member, and what I did not hear, was what this Bill was going to do to improve the lot of the people in Natal. I want to know, and the hon. member did not tell me. I have here before me a newspaper with the headline, “Natal dwing Afrikaners in Engelse klas”. I do not know how all the Afrikaners can be forced into a “klas”, but that is what the headline says. The report says—

I repeat, Sir, that the report refers to “die meeste”. The hon. member for Klip River mentioned the figure of 71 per cent as being the percentage of Afrikaans-speaking children in Natal who are attending parallel-medium schools. May I ask him what language medium is used in parallel-medium schools? Is it Afrikaans or English? If 71 per cent of them are in parallel-medium schools, how can “die meeste” of these children be in English medium schools? The report reads further—

Now which one of the hon. members representing Natal made this “beskuldiging”, may I ask? Because. Sir, out of the mouth of the hon. member who holds himself out to be a prophet, this allegation is completely discredited. Hon. members on the other side go even further. The case of the “Hoerskool Werda” was mentioned here this evening. The hon. member for Waterberg spoke about that. I do not know how he came to make a foray into Natal and bring forth this fact, which he must have dug up somewhere, unless he read it in a newspaper. He said, “Daar was minstens sewe jaar vir die skool gepleit, maar die uitvoerende komitee se antwoord was altyd dat daar nie behoefte aan is nie”. May I tell the hon. member that at exactly the same time there were in the school at Fynnlands, on the Durban Bluff, 847 children on a plot of ground only four acres in extent. Will the hon. member tell me where the priorities are? Will the hon. member deny that every single executive committee in this country has to make allocations of its money on the basis of priorities decided by numbers? To say there is no “behoefte” is to use the wrong word altogether. Every single school is dealt with on a priority basis determined by the numbers and the demands. That hon. member, and other hon. members on that side, have put this case in the wrong light altogether, and the wrong word has been used in order to create advantage for the Nationalist Party. Hon. members there could not be more wrong, even if they tried.

I must say that when this debate started the Minister made a speech about education, about the highest ideals, and the most wonderful system that can be followed. He was followed by the hon. member for Randfontein, who brought forth very high quality stuff. Then the hon. member for Koedoespoort spoke about national unity and all fine-sounding things. Well, Sir, I had begun to worry whether I would be able to take part in this debate. Because it is all so amazing—what are we fighting about, what are we worrying about? Then the hon. member for Vryheid came along— again a friend of mine from the Natal Provincial Council—and he told the same old story. I have heard all that before. I have heard about the grounds at the Vryheid school, about the facilities, or lack of facilities, at the Vryheid school. The only thing that the hon. member forgot to mention this evening was the grey bricks and the stones used to build the Vryheid school, something which he made a point of mentioning at every single opportunity in the Provincial Council in Natal. I think that the hon. member’s memory must be failing, perhaps he is getting old.

The hon. the Minister came here with a curate’s egg wrapped up in this fancy silver paper used by people to disguise Easter eggs. Here we have a Bill which, admittedly, has quite good features. But there are certain things in this Bill to which we on this side object, and object very strongly indeed. What is more, our objection has never been hidden. But the purpose of the Bill has been hidden, because we were never told, the public were never told, what the purpose of the Bill was, nor were the clauses released for public knowledge. This Bill was brought before the people; the covers were whipped off; it was to be debated and finished in a matter of a week. Is this the kind of thing that people expect when a measure of this nature is sought to be placed on the Statute Book in our country? This measure will affect the future of every single child in the country. Is this the way in which the Nationalist Party operates?

I want to ask what the reason is for the introduction of this Bill, and I think that we have been given the answer by the hon. member for Klip River. I see that he has left the Chamber—perhaps he has gone somewhere to cool down. Mr. Speaker, I believe that this Bill is designed to be punitive of the province of Natal. [Interjections.] What have hon. members on that side been saying throughout their speeches except that the Afrikaners in Natal have had a bad time through the years, and now this Bill is going to put it right? [Interjections.] The hon. member for Vryheid made that very point.

It is only one of your many sins which has to be put right.

If that hon. member has no sins then I am sure he will be able to forgive us ours.

I want to ask the hon. the Minister a question. Would this Bill have been necessary had the Nationalist Party won control of the Natal Executive Committee?

Yes, of course.

But why? If it is possible now to have consultation on all fields with people who are all members of the same political party, people who can come together in the fullest harmony and the fullest unity and give their attention to this Christian National Education which is going to be brought in by this Bill, why then would it be necessary to change the status quo of education in this country? I believe that the underlying reason for this Bill is simply to bring into line the province of Natal, and specifically to bring into line the Afrikaans-speaking elements in Natal who have so far escaped the control of the Nationalist Party.

I now want to know what has happened to this dream of unity that we heard so much about? Here we have the Nationalist Party during the last election telling us about the unity of our people. They said that this was the most wonderful thing to happen. Suddenly, after 50 years, they had woken up and realized that we were all South Africans. Was it not a wonderful thought? [Interjections.] Mr. Speaker, I do not think that the United Party has anything to fear from unity. What we have suffered from a great deal is the drive of the Nationalist Party to isolate their own people, to herd them off and kraal them off from the rest of the nation. And we on this side fear that the intention of this Bill is to extend to the last remaining corner of South Africa this claw of the Nationalist Party which has so far been turned back by the protection given to our people in Natal by the United Party control of the Provincial Council. We have always upheld certain ideals there. Hon. members may not agree with our ideals, although there are certain very prominent members of them who have, however, sent their children to English speaking private schools. I cannot understand why they did so in the light of their convictions, but it has been done. I fail to see why this Government should now bludgeon into submission the province of Natal with this Bill. That object has been clearly stated by the hon. member for Vryheid. We are clearly told that that is the intention of this measure. I fail to see why this should be done, because, surely, diversity was allowed to flourish for many years, and are we any worse South Africans for it? Will the hon. members on that side tell me that any Afrikaners who grew up in Natal under the United Party system of education are worse Afrikaners and worse South Africans than any other citizen of this country? [Interjections.] Hon. members on that side say that in spite of what we did to them they are good Afrikaners. I believe that to be absolute nonsense.

I want to say to the Minister that centralization is a two-edged weapon. Let the Government remember that what they have done, when this Bill is passed, is to give into the hands of any future government in this country the right, the power to influence education in any direction that they deem fit according to their whims. This will be the right of any future government. I believe that this is something which has in the past been very carefully and very jealously guarded by the Provincial Councils, namely their right to protect local interests, a right which is being swept away by this Bill. I believe that the Nationalist Party must to-day have become so certain of its hold on power, so arrogant and so full of certainty that they will never be beaten, that they can now come with legislation of this sort. Because. Sir, I am telling them now that this will be visited upon their heads with coals of fire some time in the future—make no mistake about it. [Interjections.]

Order!

I do not believe that education in Natal has suffered. I do not believe that the Afrikaans speaking people in Natal have suffered. I believe that we have here in this Bill nothing more than this pathological desire by the Nationalist Party to dominate the whole process of thought in South Africa. The hon. member for Port Natal set it out very carefully and very clearly. [Interjections.]

Order!

The purpose of education is to train and to direct the thought of the youth, the whole future of our country. Our purpose in putting them in schools is to train and equip them for what is coming. I believe that the system under which we have run education in this country under the control of the provinces, has been very efficient. It has served its purpose. It has produced outstanding South Africans.

Except in Natal.

I defy anybody on that side to tell us that we in Natal are not good South Africans, that we have not played our part, fully and clearly, in every single way demanded of us by this country. We have done everything that has been demanded of us, and I challenge that hon. member to tell me that we have not, to point a finger at Natal for anything that we have done that has not met the demands of good South Africanism. [Interjections.]

Order!

The Minister asked what about the Roos Commission? The hon. member who sits next to me submitted a document to a Select Committee. The hon. members for Randfontein and for Kimberley (South), and the Minister of Transport, were members of that Committee. A summary was made of the five commissions from which the following points emerged. “All five Commissions were agreed about the impracticability and the inadvisability of restricting the powers of, or interfering with the autonomy of the provincial administration. Furthermore, none of the commissions suggested placing any restrictions upon the provinces regarding the introduction of draft legislation.”

What is happening in this Bill? Is that right not being taken away completely, the right of a province to decide its own future, the direction in which its education will go? Only the Hofmeyer Commission suggested that the Minister should have full powers to appoint all the members of such a council. Only the one commission recommended that. The De Villiers Commission recommended the election of experts by their own associations. What is happening in this Bill? Are these the recommendations of these commissions? Are these recommendations being followed? We have heard from hon. members opposite who have spoken here about the consensus amongst educationists, about how everybody is in favour of this Bill. What does this report say? Does it support that contention? Does it support the statements made by hon. members opposite? [Interjections.] It does not matter who wrote it. This is a summary of the finding of the commission. The hon. member for Zululand can, if he wishes to, get up and tell me where it is wrong.

I wish to say very carefully, Sir, and in a very considered way, that we in Natal do not accept this legislation. We accept that this is being forced upon us by the Government, as they have the power to do. [Interjections.]

Order! The hon. member may proceed.

I want to tell hon. members that we do not intend to march. But let me tell them that we have in our hearts a very deep bitterness against this legislation. It is something which we will not forget. [Interjections.] The hon. member for Krugersdorp can shout and rant and carry on as much as he likes. [Interjections.]

Order!

My people in Natal do not accept this legislation. We have had many telegrams asking us to hold meetings, to hold protests, to bring the opinion of the people to the attention of the Government, but this Government has given us no opportunity of presenting it. We have had no chance to bring to the attention of the Minister the feelings of our people in Natal. This thing is being pushed through in such a way that the people who are vitally concerned— and I plead the case of the province of Natal, because we are the ones most affected … [Interjections.]

Order!

I return to the hon. member for Vryheid. He made the amazing statement that the provincial council of Natal are making hewers of wood and drawers of water of the entire school-going population of the platteland. My people at Mooi River will be very interested to hear that statement.

I want to ask the hon. member whether he admits that a very necessary subject like Latin, for instance, is taught at only one Afrikaans school in Natal.

And what about the Cape?

The Government of our country has gone out of its way to make available to pupils from platteland schools who do not have the advantage of a Latin education, facilities to study law. Is this making of those people hewers of wood and drawers of water? I say this is a gross exaggeration on the part of the hon. member. Furthermore, it is completely and absolutely untrue to say that these people living on the platteland of Natal are being made hewers of wood and drawers of water. Because some of the finest schools in the country are going up on the platteland of Natal. For instance, there is the Ixopo school in my own constituency; there is a very fine school at Richmond—as a matter of fact, schools are dotting the entire countryside of Natal, schools with some of the best facilities.

But they are English-medium schools.

The whole pattern of development on the platteland of Natal has been in the direction of parallel-medium schools. The hon. the Minister knows that. Is Howick an English-medium school? They are starting a new high school there.

I have here a clipping from a newspaper containing a complaint about prefabricated classrooms going up in Afrikaans-medium schools, but, as a matter of fact, they are going up at every single school in Natal. Why? Because the province of Natal does not get enough money. This Government has the information and the reports but they do not want to act upon them. They will not give us the money that we need. The hon. the Minister may sit there and grin like the Cheshire cat but what I am saying, is the truth. We cannot do any better than we are doing. I now come to the hon. member for Klip River. He was careful to stop at a point six years ago with the figures he supplied to the House. He did that because he knew Natal now has had a Nationalist Administrator, for how many years? That he knows. I want to ask him what the Administrator of Natal has done?

Your leader in Natal says that the administrator cannot act against the advice of the Executive Committee.

I have heard speeches made by the present Administrator of Natal when he was in the Provincial Council, speeches which are very near to those made by the hon. member for Vryheid here this afternoon. But I want to know why, seeing that there has been a Nationalist administrator in Natal now for many years, the position is as bad as it is?

But he has a United Party Exco.

The United Party Exco in Natal deals with the people on the basis of priorities allocated in the most impartial manner. But if that is not the case, why then does the Administrator not come and tell this hon. Minister that that is the case? Why does he sit quiet and do nothing? Why does he not complain that there are people there who are being discriminated against?

But I want to ask whether this Bill is really only educational. Of course, we are told that it is. We are told that it is a Bill to foster education but I believe it is a political Bill under a sheepskin.

That is a scandalous statement to make. You yourself are the sheep. [Interjections.]

Order!

I want to say again that we in Natal have been suffering for many years under the results of the actions of this parsimonious Government, this niggardly Government, because it has never yet given us a fair deal. We have never had a fair deal in Natal, a province where we carry a higher ratio of non-Whites to Whites than is the case in any other province. We have to meet extraordinary expenditure and hon. members who have been in the Provincial Council of Natal ought to know how true this is. As a matter of fact, some of these hon. members even went so far as to suggest that we should shed certain of our powers so that we would have more money available rather than pressing this Government to give us some money so that we could make a decent show of whatever we were attempting to do.

We were told by the hon. member for Klip River that the English-speaking people in Natal were voting Nationalist and that they were getting closer and closer to the Nationalist Party and that under a United Party Provincial Administration. Why are these hon. members complaining or are they going to accelerate this process when this Bill becomes law? Is that the purpose of this Bill? I want to say that those English-speaking voters in Natal who voted for the Nationalist Party in fact voted for this Bill. That is what they have voted for. This is the thanks that they get for that. This is the action the Government takes after having been put into power with their support. Well, I hope they are happy with it. All we require in Natal is more money so as to enable us to carry out a policy which we have always carried out with scrupulous fairness. But what we see here to-day is a Bill designed to destroy the last bastion of anti-Nationalist thought in South Africa. [Interjections.] Mr. Speaker, what will the result be? Are hon. members introducing this Bill just for fun? They say this is a Bill with such benevolent aims and a Bill which is so much to the good of South Africa that we ought to be ashamed of ourselves to oppose it. Mr. Speaker, everything done by the Nationalist Party has some kind of ulterior motive and here there is no exception to the rule. Let me say that I was touched by the tone in which the hon. the Minister introduced this Bill. He introduced it in the most glowing terms, like a cooing dove. He advanced all these wonderful reasons for the introduction of the Bill. I have already told the hon. the Minister that we in Natal do not accept this Bill. We shall watch its operation with the utmost concern. We shall watch every single thing that he does in terms of it. Let me tell him that if he wants to make progress in Natal he must give us proof of the unity which the Nationalist Party today talks about so much. If the Nationalist Party means it, then we should like to see it being applied in practice.

Leave it to us. You keep out of it and everything will be all right. [Interjections.]

I only wish it was as easy as that—if we could leave it only to the hon. the Minister and then everything in the garden will be wonderful. How nice politics will then be in South Africa! But the record of of this Government counts against him. In everything they have done there was an ulterior motive and it is on these grounds that we suspect this Bill also. On those grounds we suspect that there is an ulterior motive in this Bill, a motive which is going to be used against us.

Let me repeat, that we are completely and absolutely against this Bill. We shall watch with concern and suspicion whatever is done in terms of it when it has become law.

Mr. Speaker, it is striking that as the debate on this Bill proceeds, all the Natal United Party members enter the debate. And then the hon. member for Mooi River came along to-night and said that they would accept the passing of this Bill with bitterness. I shall tell you that the fact of the matter is that these Natal United Party members have a strong interest in this Bill. They have a great deal to account for to the parents of Natal in the first instance. They have a great deal to hide, and that is why they are afraid of this Bill being passed in the House of Assembly. The hon. member for Mooi River asked that we should forgive him his sins. We do so gladly. But what we shall most certainly never be able to do is to forgive him his education sins in Natal. He said the Afrikaners did not suffer. The point is, and I want to put it to the hon. Opposition, that most of them sitting over there have not the slightest inkling of the extent to which the Afrikaner in Natal suffered. We have known the member for Mooi River for quite a while. According to the Natal Mercury of 26th May, 1960, the hon. member for Mooi River said the following under the caption “Hedged in”—

In 1960?

That was in 1960. He was speaking even then. What the hon. member is actually afraid of, is that the Afrikaners of Natal are now breaking through that wall of the education policy of Natal. A shudder will run through this House if the full story is made public.

No, Mr. Speaker, that is not the tone in which I want to deliver my argument. I could hardly think that I would find myself in this position, that I would have to stand up here to-day for the right of the English-speaking children to receive instruction in their own interests through the medium of their own language. And I do so gladly, for with my party I believe in equal treatment for both language groups. You will appreciate, therefore, that I also feel compelled to speak up for our own Afrikaans children. We are frank with each other, not so? We do not begrudge each other the best and most efficient educational facilities for our children? I believe that by respecting our own we shall be best able to promote mutual respect. I deeply regret it if this Education Bill is used by the hon. Opposition solely for political gain. That is cause for bitterness. But let me warn them. The parents of Natal have long seen through their politicizing, and they will not allow themselves to be misled. The parents of Natal understand and have great respect and appreciation for the educational principles embodied in this Bill, and they will not allow themselves to be deluded. And what is more, the United Party will not succeed in annulling the spirit of unity which has germinated and grown between the Afrikaans and the English-speaking people in Natal, particularly in recent times, and which will in no way be adversely affected by this Bill.

We shall wait and see.

Yes, we shall wait and see. Truly, Mr. Speaker, we shall wait and see. The National Party gives that assurance to the parents of Natal. We have never gone to the voting public of Natal with sophistry. We shall see that. It is a joyful day for the Afrikaners in Natal. That is so. And I want to put it to you that I hope that we shall accept that joy in humility and modesty. I welcome this Bill.