Mr Speaker, I move:

During the financial year now drawing to a close, good progress has been made with the investigation into the strategy, policy, management structure and organisation of the Post Office being conducted under the guidance of Dr W J de Villiers. Hon members will also have listened with interest to the announcement made by the hon the State President that the Government has decided in principle to consider converting certain State undertakings, among them the Department of Posts and Telecommunications, into tax-paying, profit-seeking enterprises either in their entirety or after subdivision into appropriate business undertakings. Before dealing with this important matter, however, I wish to refer briefly to a number of Post Office activities, the financial performance during the current financial year and the prospects for the next financial year.

Mr Chairman, it is an exceptional privilege for me to continue this SATS debate today. As hon members now know, the CP has in the meantime acquired two new members in the House of Assembly. [Interjections.] The old saying is true: if you throw a stone over a wall and you hear a howl from the other side, you know that it hit something. One need not be a prophet to predict that these two hon new members, through their exceptional expertise in various spheres, inter alia on aspects of the SATS, will make a very valuable contribution to the parliamentary activities of this party, and furthermore that these two hon members, with that expertise and against the background of their convincing election victories, are going to help place South Africa in the care of a competent government, a CP government. [Interjections.]

In his reply to the Second Reading debate, the hon the Minister of Transport Affairs alleged that the CP was misleading the voters. We want to tell him that on Monday, 29 February, the hon the Minister of National Education had an opportunity to prove this allegation true, if he could. On 2 March the voters of Standerton and Schweizer-Reneke returned a conclusive verdict on these allegations of his. [Interjections.]

During the Second Reading debate I indicated certain factors which in my opinion were the reasons for the financial problems of the SATS. At this stage I want to mention a few more. Firstly, as regards intercity goods services, we say that one of the most important reasons for these services becoming unattractive to the consumer is the enormous increase in theft and pilfering. According to statistics supplied by the SATS, 12 633 claims, amounting to R1 125 832, were paid out by the SATS between October 1985 and September 1986. In the corresponding period the next year 22 018 claims, amounting to R2 410 719, were paid out. The increase in the claims over this period was therefore 74,3%, and the increase in the amounts paid out to claimants was 114,1%. These figures indicate once again a serious lack of control in the SATS.

As regards the SA Airways, this service—apart from the increasing delays already mentioned in the Second Reading debate, which travellers are having to endure to an increasing extent these days and which are beginning to give the Airways a bad reputation—now seems to be becoming an official mouthpiece of the integration policy of the NP and other left-wing groups. In the monthly publication of the SA Airways, the Flying Springbok, of November 1987—I have a copy here—this repulsive picture appears, a posed photograph of a South African-born actress, Janet Suzman, and a Black South African actor, John Kani, nestling against one another with Suzman’s arm clasped fondly around Kani’s neck, and with her hand spread open on his chest. [Interjections.]

In this article on a theatrical production in which both of them appeared, the following was said by Janet Suzman:

Further on Kani has this to say:

With this type of publication the Government is not only using the SATS as a mouthpiece for its integration, but it is in addition losing the respect of foreigners as well as South Africans, foreigners who in general are aware of the efforts of the Government to make them believe that the average South African approves of racial integration, exactly like the rest of the world, and South African citizens who in general know how the Government is simultaneously trying to make the White voters of South Africa believe that they are not actively participating in making miscegenation acceptable in South Africa. [Interjections.]

Order! The noise level in this Committee is far too high. If hon members must converse, they must do so more softly. The hon member for Roodepoort may proceed.

To the best of my knowledge this publication is fully financed by money from the SATS. We on this side of the Committee have already objected on several occasions to this camouflaged utilisation of public funds for the propagation of NP policy. Again we want to express our strongest disapproval of this practice, and we shall also convey this to the voters of South Africa so that they can indicate to an increasing extent at the polls whether they agree with us or not.

We are discussing the integration policy of the Government, and hon members will recall that in the good old days when the NP was still what its name stood for—a national party—provision was made for separate facilities for the respective races on stations and trains. Round about 1985, however, the former Minister of Transport Affairs amended this policy to one amounting more or less to all unmarked facilities being thrown open to all population groups, while those for the Whites were marked. In other words, passenger coaches and other immovable facilities on stations reserved exclusively for Whites would be marked “Whites”, “Whites only” or whatever. But what has happened in the meantime?

The present hon Minister of Transport Affairs said in the House of Representatives on 9 June 1987 (Hansard, House of Representatives, 1987, col 660):

Earlier that day the hon the Minister had also said something very significant (Hansard: House of Representatives, 1987, col 614):

We now want to ask the hon the Minister since when this policy has changed. Why did the hon the Minister never address the House of Assembly as he did the House of Representatives, and why did he never tell us that this previous policy of the NP was also being surreptitiously changed and that the signboards have now been removed? [Interjections.] Is it true, as our information has it, that these signboards have been completely removed on most stations in the Western Cape? We are asking the hon the Minister to clear up this matter of this new direction and policy his party is adopting. [Interjections.]

Another factor contributing to unhappiness among SATS workers, and consequently to an unfavourable job atmosphere, is the parity programme of the SATS.

In the Salstaff Bulletin of November 1987 we read the following:

Later on in the same article indications in regard to the two questions are furnished. I quote again:

The reference is given—

I shall read out the following passage in regard to this matter:

These facts are completely unacceptable to this side of Committee.

Mr Chairman, as the first speaker on this side of the Committee this afternoon I welcome the hon member for Standerton and wish him a pleasant stay in this House. In a lighter vein I just want to say that I hope for his part his stay here this time will be a little longer than it was the previous time. [Interjections.]

I am not going to tire myself to any great extent by reacting to the speech made by the hon member for Roodepoort, but the pathological racism which radiates from that party was again discernible this afternoon. Now that they have finally swallowed up the HNP, as was clearly apparent from the results of the elections in Standerton and Schweizer-Reneke, it is to be expected of course that the racism of this racist party will also radiate from them.

Have you seen that you are going to lose Sasolburg as well?

Order!

I am not here this afternoon to complain, nor am I here to ask for anything. I would like to pay a few compliments.

Are you a member of the Broederbond?

If the hon member for Overvaal tells his hon leader to tell the AWBs to get out of his caucus, we on this side of the Committee will stop referring to his party as the right-wing radical party. [Interjections.]

Order!

I say again that I am not here this afternoon to complain or to ask for anything, but to pay a few compliments. On behalf of the industrialists, the businessmen, the farmers and the rest of the public at Sasolburg I want to express a few words of thanks for the excellent and competent passenger and freight transportation service from the SATS that we experience there.

This is particularly attributable to the quality of the personnel employed by the SATS. Last year I had the privilege of visiting the station, meeting most of the staff members and of seeing how they were functioning. I want to tell the hon members that under the direction of Mr van Dyk, the stationmaster, and Mr Grootjan du Toit, who is responsible for the freight transportation services, one quickly realises why the service there is so effective, why the people are so efficient and why they are so loyal and so hard-working. This applies not only to the Whites, but to all the SATS personnel in Sasolburg.

As regards passenger services, I had the privilege of commuting weekly as a passenger between Bloemfontein and Sasolburg for two weeks when a previous MP for Sasolburg, the late Oom Hans Ungerer, was still alive and I helped him there. One always received only excellent, courteous and competent service. By the end of December in the year 1987 an amount of R241 000 had been collected in money from passenger tickets on the Sasolburg station. The freight transportation service in Sasolburg is a wonderful example of how the most modern, and the most sophisticated bulk freight transportation systems work.

Chemicals, fuel, highly inflammable and other chemical products are being transported, as a result of the nature of the industries in our town. Hon members will experience only the most excellent service there, and that also applies to containerisation which is being implemented there on a large scale. In the year April 1986 to March 1987 three million tons of freight to the value of R93,3 million were transported, and if the first six months of the present financial year are taken into account, it is clear that a further sharp increase is occurring in both the tonnage and the rand value of the products there.

What is important, however, is that Sasolburg is the station in the Free State with the biggest turnover in freight transportation. It is also the station in the Free State which is operated on the most economical basis.

And is going to produce the biggest CP majority!

Mr Chairman, I shall not allow myself to be tempted into replying. I see you are watching me. I shall merely let it pass. We shall find another opportunity to react a little to that statement.

I said that Sasolburg was the most profitable station, at which the greatest turnover had occurred. This is attributable, in the first place, to the fact that under the black turf of the Northern Free State, we also find black gold, which of course creates the potential for the industries that have been established there. However, the most important asset of the SATS is the people in its employ there. On behalf of the people of Sasolburg, who make use of the services of the SATS, I want to pay tribute to the employees of the SATS in Sasolburg. We say thank you for the competent service we receive from them.

Mr Chairman, the hon member for Sasolburg has made a speech which largely pertains to his own constituency. Hopefully it might do him a little bit of good in his constituency; I think he is in need of that!

I would like to come back very briefly to the speech of the hon member for Roodepoort who really produced some of the most appalling racism I have ever heard in this House. [Interjections.] I think it is a sad day indeed when we have to listen to this sort of rubbish from hon members of that Conservative Party. One feels sickened, but also, of course, I would just call to mind a bit of history. A king of England of some thousand years ago tried to tell the sea to go back and stay back, just like the CP who are trying to stem the tide. Just as successfully as he stemmed the tide, will they. Nothing will stop it, and certainly not the CP, who are more likely to hurry on the process of change. [Interjections.]

During the Second Reading debate I made a very serious plea concerning the plight of the coal export industry—an industry which is in desperate trouble. In his reply the hon the Minister justified the huge jump in tariffs on the Richards Bay line by saying that they had enjoyed a very low tariff for a number of years. This may be so, but in no way does this solve the problem of what the industry has to do in the circumstances. He failed to comment on the fact that many mines are in a desperate situation, and if they are forced to close down it will do incalculable harm to many of the towns in the Eastern Transvaal. He gave the impression of being totally disinterested in the plight of these people. No wonder the NP are making no headway in this part of the country when they appear to pay very little regard to the well-being of so many.

I think the hon the Minister should realise that in a sense the SATS and the coal exporters are in a sort of partnership, and if the coal exporting industry is severely harmed, the SATS too will be severely harmed.

I must say that the hon the Minister’s reply was far from satisfactory. He did not answer any of the questions raised adequately. His replies were peripheral to the questions, and although I realise that he has very limited time to reply to the debate, I question the use he made of his time because the non-debate that resulted certainly gave the impression that the hon the Minister really just did not care at all and that Parliament was just a rubber stamp to give approval to whatever he decided and that any constructive criticism merely had nuisance value.

Nonsense!

Well, then I would like to hear a little more about it from him. I look forward to his answer.

We also did not get a satisfactory answer in his reply on the subject of inflation accounting. He claimed that the SATS approach to the question of amortisation was pretty standard as for most big companies. This is just not true. The whole question is a highly controversial one and the accounting profession differs sharply within its own ranks. All I can say is that the hon the Minister has been warned that his obstinacy is damaging the fight against inflation—I believe their policies are inflationary—and the effect thereof can only too clearly be seen when looking at the tariffs on the Richards Bay line.

While on the subject of bulk exports it would be interesting to know what is happening with regard to the Sishen-Saldanha line which, I presume, continues to suffer huge losses and is a tremendous drain on the SATS resources.

How much are the accumulated losses on this line now and what assistance does the central Treasury give and has it given in this connection ? One can only say that a little more thought in planning this whole line at inception might have resulted in taking the line directly to the coast instead of the long haul to Saldanha. The result would have been much lower tariffs, which could have put us in a more competitive situation. Again, I hate being wise after the event, but I first said this over ten years ago; in fact, a good number of years before that.

I want to turn to another subject during this Committee Stage of the debate, and that is the question of airways safety. At the time of the Helderberg crash some very disquieting rumours were prevalent. I know that the whole question of the Helderberg crash is the subject of an inquiry, so I am not referring to that specific matter, but I would ask the hon the Minister to answer some general questions about operations.

Firstly, I would like to speak on the subject of the black boxes. I believe that these are battery powered and that the batteries have to be checked and charged regularly. With the experience of an extremely costly search for the Helderberg black box in mind, are tests on the batteries carried out regularly? Is it possible for the batteries to go flat thus rendering the box nonoperative? Are all these batteries charged regularly?

The second question has to do with regulations with regard to the crew during overseas international flights. Do the crew have access at all to the cargo hold during a flight? If so, are they allowed to spend time off there during the flight? Are crew members allowed to smoke in the hold, and if there are restrictions, are they rigidly enforced?

The third question on safety has to do with communication with passengers. Many of our overseas flights carry passengers who speak neither Afrikaans nor English. I think I am correct in saying that the Helderberg, for example, carried some 47 Chinese and 35 Japanese passengers. My question is, are any of the cabin crew fluent in the languages of such passengers? Is there always someone on board who can communicate effectively with these passengers in the case of an emergency? I realise that one cannot possibly cater for every language under the sun, but I would hope that we cater for foreign language speakers who regularly travel on specific routes in large numbers. We know that from the Far East there are likely to be quite a number of Japanese-speaking passengers.

Another question concerns the availability of emergency equipment for cabin staff, such as torches in the event of the failure of the lights. Does each member of the crew have a torch and is that torch checked regularly? I believe each crew member should have a torch or at least access to a torch. We must say thank heavens that emergencies of this nature are very few and far between in the SAA, which has a very proud record indeed, but it is small details of this nature which have to be thought out to cover every eventuality.

The final question I have concerns first aid and first-aid equipment on board. Does anybody among the crew know what emergency action to take if a passenger has a heart attack or any other kind of seizure? Is there a well-stocked first-aid kit available for minor accidents with one of the crew taking responsibility for it? If there is such a kit, is it checked regularly?

I think that I should perhaps add one further question. This concerns fire-fighting equipment. I would presume that all fire-fighting equipment is regularly checked and that no ’plane ever leaves the ground without its fire-fighting equipment and its fire-detection apparatus in good working order.

I have raised all these questions because rumour at the time of the Helderberg disaster encompassed many of the points on which I hope the hon the Minister will comment. Many of these points I have raised are comparatively minor ones but I believe that reassurance from the hon the Minister on safety awareness would be very important to the travelling public. I look forward to hearing his reply.

Mr Chairman, I hope the hon member for Bryanston will pardon me if I do not follow him, but I want to tell a little story that I told hon members here a few years ago.

*The reason I should like to do so is that since then we have had a new Minister, several new members and a new General Manager. I think that this anecdote will bear repeating in an effort to get away from all this melancholy.

The story concerns the first railway line between Cape Town and Wellington. This, of course, brings me to the station at Wellington which is so unique, but I shall get to that later. I should just tell hon members that that station is unique because every passenger train, including the Blue Train, has to stop there. In all the years it has only happened once that the Blue Train has passed without stopping, and that was merely an error. Because all passenger trains stop there I do want to ask that we look into the matter of the maintenance, care and security of the station at Wellington. I think that foreign visitors in particular who travel on the Blue Train and stop there should at least be able to enjoy the fine sight of a well-cared-for station.

The story I want to tell took place because at the time the rail was being laid from Wellington to the north, Oom Pieter Malan of the farm Versailles at Wellington said that he would donate the land to the Railways on condition that every passenger train stopped there. Since 1 May 1878 this has happened every time, except for the one mistake.

This is a very interesting piece of history. After the passing of Act 20 of 1857 tenders were called for, and there is a lesson to be learnt from this. Four tenders were obtained from England, because that was the only place where tenders were called for. All those tenders were unsuitable, and as a result eight tenders were called for here in South Africa.

The tender of £400 000 submitted by the Cape Town Railway and Dock Co was accepted. This company then appointed a certain Mr Edward Pickering as contractor. He was not a “tame Englishman”. Hon members will hear about all the things he did. On 31 March 1859 Sir George Grey turned the first sod and construction began. Errors, problems and difficulties lay ahead for them. Right at the beginning they built the platform at Woodstock and then, when it was complete, discovered it was too high. This reminds me very much of what happens in construction nowadays.

They also ordered a locomotive, which was delivered as early as September 1859. It was two and a half years before that locomotive could operate, and accordingly it was stored on rails. Things went as they tend to do nowadays, with delays, poor communication and disputes about expropriation. They also fought about the route. There were constant changes to the route and the site of the station.

At Wellington things were far worse, because the inhabitants complained that the new station was three quarters of a mile out of the town, which was too far. In 1859 there was a great deal of correspondence between Wellington and Cape Town, and eventually the Government even appointed a select committee. Those who complain nowadays when select committees are appointed should note that here a select committee was appointed purely for the sake of a railway station! In September 1860 the Government decided that the station would be built there, but the people of Wellington did not give up and called for an interdict. Only in August 1862 did the court decide that the station would indeed be built there. This happened after three and a half years of deadlock.

That was not the end of it, however. I have already mentioned that this Edward Pickering was a somewhat difficult man. He was just like today’s builders and he kept asking for advances. Eventually he asked for so many advances that the company told him that he should do some work before getting an advance. He replied that he would go on strike and dismiss his labourers if he could not get the money. Neither he nor the company would give in, and he carried out his threat.

However, this Edward Pickering was not yet satisfied. He maintained that all the material and equipment, as well as the locomotive belonged to him. The company dismissed his claim as ridiculous and appointed guards to keep an eye on everything. On the night of 15 October 1861 Edward Pickering called his men together and overcame the guards. They managed to overturn the locomotive, which landed in a ditch. When that happened, the fight started in earnest.

On 4 November 1863 the railway was eventually commissioned. Five years earlier the first railway line in Africa had been taken into use, and three years earlier the short railway line from Durban to Point had been commissioned.

What I want to say now is perhaps more for the attention of the General Manager of Transport Services. I am going to mention some of the first Railway regulations of those years. When the train was full, they were not obliged to pick up any more passengers. It was not the same as the suburban trains of today, which everyone hangs onto and climbs onto. If only limited space was available, those who had furthest to go were given preference and the others who had shorter distances to travel had to get off. It is also very important to note that smoking and the playing of cards was prohibited on the trains. [Interjections.] No one was allowed to stand on the roof, the steps or the platform of the trains. If one sought to board or alight from a moving train, one was subjected to a spot fine of £2 10s.

On 1 January 1873 the Government bought this railway line for £780 000, which was almost double its original price. That is the opposite of privatisation. The Government immediately narrowed that railway line from 4ft 8½in to 3ft 6in, and we are still saddled with that gauge today.

However, the problems of this railway line were not yet at an end. The train travelled at a speed of between 20 and 30 miles an hour and for those days that was a fearful speed. Travelling at this tremendous speed, the train killed everything in its path—chickens and pigs—and the farmers complained. Moreover, the Rev van der Lingen of the “Strooidakkerk” was bitterly dissatisfied because the train ran throughout the week. He said that the Sabbath could not be broken in that way, and instead established a coach service between Paarl and the Cape. However, it came to nothing, because a clergyman cannot run a business properly! [Interjections.] When one expropriates land for any purpose, the farmers complain that the value of the land will drop. The farmers said that the value of their farms would drop if the railway line passed over it, but once the train was running, the value of all those farms increased.

It was for two reasons that Oom Pieter Malan set the condition that the train had to stop. He and his friends wanted to be able to board the train without difficulty to travel where they wanted, and in addition they wanted to go to the station on Saturdays and Sundays when the train stopped, to see who was on it. Nowadays people stop on the main road to watch the other cars drive past. Over the years they saw Presidents Paul Kruger, M T Steyn, F W Reitz, Jan Brand and Generals De Wet, Smuts, Botha, De La Rey and Hertzog. To their dismay they also saw Cecil John Rhodes and Jameson.

This unique aspect of this station is still upheld today. Perhaps the SATS does it tongue-in-cheek but I do want to thank them on behalf of the community for doing so. This is appreciated, because it is part of our history and our tradition. Once again I ask that we look after this station well and maintain it in good condition so that we can still go and look at the people travelling past when we have nothing else to do.

Mr Chairman, the hon member for Wellington entertained us with a little local history. I have no reason to react to that. He said that it was to draw attention away from all the melancholy. We can understand that.

There is a spirit of melancholy that is weighing heavily on—I assume—him and his colleagues, but one appreciates his effort to enliven their ranks somewhat, particularly when one also refers back to the speech made by the hon member for Umlazi the other day—he is not present at the moment—and his reference to the results in Standerton and Schweizer-Reneke.

At the time he mentioned that the votes cast for the CP had increased, but according to him the votes cast for the NP had also increased. The hon the Minister of National Education also referred to that, and I think we should place on record that the votes cast for the CP in Standerton increased by 1 882, while those cast for the NP increased by 80. In Schweizer-Reneke the CP votes increased by 878; those for the NP by 275. It is also important to note that there was an increase in the percentage poll in Schweizer-Reneke, whereas in Standerton there was a decline in the percentage poll. [Interjections.]

They cannot take it!

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: Is the hon member in order?

Order! The hon member may proceed.

Therefore, Mr Chairman, we just want that placed on record. I do not wish to deprive the hon member for Wellington of his pleasure in trying to cheer up his colleagues a little.

I should like to bring certain relevant matters to the attention of the hon the Minister, and I should be obliged if he could reply to me in this regard. My first question, in this year of the Dias Festival, the Huguenot Festival and the 150th anniversary of the Great Trek, is how matters stand with Afrikaans, that loveliest and most beautiful language, on the SA Airways. At this juncture I want to ask the hon the Minister whether he can bring me anyone who can say that he has been addressed first in Afrikaans at the weigh-in counter, at security or at the exit to the runway, and whether he has ever been addressed in Afrikaans first on boarding the aircraft. I want to ask him whether a passenger is ever issued with a domestic SA Airlines ticket in Afrikaans without the passenger specifically asking for it.

But Tom, you look so much like an Englishman!

I now want to ask him what his policy and his department’s directives are with regard to the use of Afrikaans in the SAA.

Sir, I want to say to the frivolous, garrulous hon Chief Whip of Parliament that if it depended on his type, not a word of Afrikaans would still be spoken in this country! [Interjections.] They were Afrikaners when it was part of the political struggle, but nowadays they do not care two hoots what language is spoken there. [Interjections.]

He was looking for that.

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: May the hon member refer to the hon Chief Whip of Parliament as “his type”?

Order! The hon member for Soutpansberg clearly meant it in a specific political context. The hon member may proceed.

Sir, perhaps the hon Chief Whip of Parliament is one of a kind. We shall look into that in the future.

When he is awake.

Nowadays the “Bosvelder”—the newly named train that runs between Johannesburg and Louis Trichardt arrives at Louis Trichardt, according to its new timetable, at about 09h50. In the past this train got there at about 07h00. That was before it had become a train with a name. Due to this new time of arrival there is total chaos as regards the delivery of the parcels conveyed on that passenger train. Accordingly the entire system of the business world at Louis Trichardt has been disrupted.

I know that representations in this regard have already been made to the hon the Minister by other organisations. Accordingly I wish to hear from the hon the Minister whether he intends having something done about the situation or whether this situation must simply continue, to the inconvenience of the town’s traders, suppliers, garages, etc. I put it to the hon the Minister that in the case of a change of this nature in the time of arrival of the main-line train, one should really consult in advance with the local bodies. They ought to be consulted in the matter. Only in this way could the hon the Minister have made sure that he did not have to adapt the new timetable to circumstances.

I want to tell the hon the Minister that I hope this matter will be given urgent attention. I have been informed that apparently the new general manager is considering taking another look at the running times of the train. Therefore I hope that we can expect something definite in that regard within the next year. I hope that this will take place very shortly. I hope, too, that that train service will again be extended to the Limpopo River.

Another aspect which is also related to the train service to the north is the following. Some bus operator or other has apparently applied to establish a bus passenger service between Soweto and Louis Trichardt on a daily basis and the regional director of the SATS has no objection to this. He has written to the town clerk of Louis Trichardt accordingly. The stationmaster of Louis Trichardt was not even consulted in this matter by the regional director. If this daily bus service between Soweto and Louis Trichardt were to be introduced, it would be a return service—once a day northwards and once a day southwards. On Fridays and Saturdays there would be two services.

I am convinced that this will be a tremendous drain on the passengers conveyed by the SATS. It would also cause a heavier loss for the SATS. A further loss of this nature for the SATS on that service could, I fear, eventually lead to the termination of that passenger service. A side effect of that will be that there will be even more traffic on the roads, which are already overloaded, particularly between Louis Trichardt and Pietersburg.

I should also like to know from the hon the Minister—I touched on this matter last year as well—whether something has been done to counteract fare evasion on suburban trains, particularly on the Rand. What, if anything, has been done? I should also like to know whether it has been possible to establish the monthly or annual losses suffered by the SATS in this regard.

I also wish to refer to tariffs. I should like to know from the hon the Minister what his aim is with his tariff policy. As matters stand at present—this has been the case for several years now—his tariffs for goods transport are not competitive. I do not have time to discuss that now. It is a matter that we can discuss later. The hon the Minister has made his tariffs impossibly high as far as competitive trade in the transport business is concerned. I should like to ask him what his policy is with regard to the transportation of goods. In what kind of traffic is he in fact interested, and in what kind is he not interested?

One of the more amusing pearls of wisdom last week was the accusation made by the hon member for Umlazi that the CP was becoming socialist. I do not have the time to go into this now. However, I just want to tell the hon member for Umlazi that it is quite clear to me that the last time he heard anything about the economy—if then—was at university. I want to ask him what Western non-socialist state has a free economy at present. There is no such thing. He can reply to us on that at a later stage.

Mr Chairman, when the hon member for Soutpansberg and I still belonged to the same party he was not as negative and full of complaints as he is now. I shall not discuss his speech further, since I do not have the strength to react to so many complaints.

I should like to congratulate the hon the Minister on this budget that he has submitted. In congratulating him, I at once want to refer to his staff, because he could not have introduced a budget such as this had he not had a loyal staff behind him; a proud, well-trained staff. We know that the 188 000 staff members of the SATS regularly undergo in-service training courses, and this budget is indicative of what one can achieve by way of in-service training. We therefore want to tell the hon the Minister that he can scale down other things, but he must never scale down the training of staff because this budget attests to the fact that trained staff are very important.

We know that all levels of staff undergo training, and that the SATS also identifies leaders who can undergo further training, long in advance and at tremendous expense. They always recover that expense because in this way the SATS develops a proud staff that is proud not only of itself but also of the work it does and the organisation it serves.

In the constituency of Koedoespoort that I represent there are two railway towns, namely Koedoespoort and Môregloed. Many SATS officials live in the other towns around Koedoespoort. We have come to know them as proud, loyal officials who work hard, and that is why the SATS is able to do so well. These 188 000 are officials who are employed by the SATS.

I should like to make an appeal to the hon the Minister on behalf of a group of former officials, namely the 33 300 who are now pensioners. A total of 11 500 of these people are between 65 and 69 years old; 9 500 are between 70 and 74 years old; 7 000 are between 75 and 79 years old; and 5 000 are older than 80 years.

We know that the people who retired before 1976 were very badly off, and to some extent still are. Nevertheless concessions have been made in regard to pensions as far as they are concerned. I want to give one example of a person I know there. He worked for the SATS for 34 years. He worked for virtually no one else. He is now 71 years old and he receives a pension of R800 per month. Owing to this amount that he receives, he has exhausted all his savings and he tells me that next year he will no longer be able to afford his house. Among these 33 000 people I have mentioned there are several other people who receive even less than this every month.

We should like to ask the hon the Minister whether there is nothing that could be done for these people to enable them to live a decent life in their old age instead of always living in a state of anxiety. This man is 71 years old and it will be difficult for him to leave the place where he has lived and fit in somewhere else. Accordingly we want to take this opportunity to ask that these people be considered and accorded relief.

Mr Chairman, I do not think anyone on this side of the committee will disagree with the hon member for Koedoespoort when he makes a plea on behalf of pensioners, particularly in connection with the SATS. All hon members will agree that the hon the Minister must try to give additional assistance in the cases described here.

†I would also like to refer to the speech of the hon member for Bryanston. He spoke about health facilities on SAA flights, and I would like to assure him, having checked the boxes he referred to, that I have always found them to be in tip-top condition. I have also found that there is great concern for the in-flight healthcare of SAA passengers.

I would like to ask the hon the Minister, however, to try to have medical doctors on flights identified when they book in and to ensure that each member of the cabin staff knows who those doctors are. I think it is very important that they know immediately where to find a medical man should the need arise. As one of the doctors who frequently have to help out either at airports or on flights, I would like the hon the Minister to ask his staff to give us a free overseas ticket once in a while for services rendered. [Interjections.] Perhaps—I am not requesting this on my own behalf—a short letter could at least be written simply to thank them for their services. I think it would be appreciated.

The hon the Minister of National Health and Population Development has just left the Chamber, but I am pleased to see that his deputy is still here. I would like to refer to the response of the hon the Minister and his deputy to my request for the banning of advertisements on the SATS property and buildings. I found both their replies quite poor and off the point. I asked for the banning of smoking and the removal of those big de luxe placards.

*The hon the Deputy Minister gave me an astonishing idea. Because other substances such as liquor are just as dangerous, smoking cannot be banned, and one must continue to advertise it. I think that is an even stronger reason for not allowing it.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon member whether he wants to start a campaign banning all forms of advertisements pertaining to smoking and drinking, that is to say hazardous addictive substances, in all places?

The ultimate object is in fact to do that. In the meantime we expect honest advertising, and that is a point I want to refer to. The advertisements allowed by the hon the Deputy Minister, the hon the Minister and the department are dishonest. They do not tell the truth, and I should like to refer to this. The argument put forward by the hon the Deputy Minister that other substances are also dangerous to one’s health, and so these cannot be stopped, I find absurd. That means that one must continue to advertise something which the hon the Deputy Minister himself admits is hazardous. He asked me:

My reply was “Yes” and then he said:

That is incorrect; I did that as well.

Why is that the ultimate ideal? Why should it not be done now?

It is going to be difficult to do it now because of the hon the Deputy Minister we have.

[Inaudible.]

If one looks at a packet of South African cigarettes—I should like hon members to take this seriously—one sees in fine print on the side of the packet: “Smoking is a health risk—Rook is ’n gesondheidsrisiko”. I almost have to use a magnifying glass to read it.

I should also like to request the newspapers, who are also represented here this afternoon, to help us in this matter, because they are playing along with this farce and dishonesty. In the newspapers one finds advertisements such as the one I have before me, in which it is stated: “Get closer to flavour”. I do not know how one can get “closer to flavour”; “closer to a favour” yes, but not “closer to flavour”. It also says “rich and rewarding”, and there is a beautiful picture in which everything looks idyllic. One can go through all these advertisements, but what is missing?

I want to make a plea to the hon the Minister today, and I am certain he is going to help me, because he is a very sensible person.

One will never find a warning on these advertisements. These photographs are taken in such a way that no warning appears on them. Is that not completely dishonest? The newspapers that attacked the hon the Minister when he introduced the ban on smoking on aircraft, are playing along for the sake of the revenue which they, just like the SATS, get from the advertisements.

If one goes to other countries, one finds on the front of the packet of cigarettes a very clear smoking hazard warning. I do not have a packet with me, but if one looks at this advertisement in a newspaper, one sees the truth in large print on the packet: Smoking reduces your fitness. The warning is therefore repeated in the advertisement.

Could the hon the Minister—I am addressing him and not the hon the Deputy Minister—not ensure that the advertisements he allows on the premises of the SATS carries this warning? Another request that I want to make today is that newspapers in South Africa may not allow advertisements to mislead people, particularly not if a Government department has anything to do with it.

Why is this packet of cigarettes being advertised at the airport? Every year they kill 13 000 people, and every year they have to look for another 13 000 people in order to get money from them. That is why they must advertise. If the hon the Minister allows them to advertise, he must also force them to advertise the risk or the hazard to a person that smoking entails.

I notice that the hon the Minister is not present at the moment, but I am not only addressing the hon the Minister via the hon the Deputy Minister in this connection, I am also addressing all advertisers in South Africa. Let the advertisements not only show how pleasant it is to be young and strong, how one can succeed in picking up a girl, and how one can play better rugby; let them also advertise how smoking can kill one. [Interjections.]

Would the hon the Deputy Minister clear up two points for me which he raised in his Second Reading speech. He referred to the free choice of pharmacists that the SATS personnel have. Will the 58 dispensaries of the SATS now have to be closed down or not? It will still be incorrect if the SATS continues to operate the dispensaries. All the railway doctors were taken away, and the freedom of choice as far as a doctor in the private sector was concerned, was retained. If the hon the Deputy Minister talks about a free choice, I understand that that includes the contracting pharmacists of whose services the SATS will no longer make use. Are the 58 dispensaries going to be closed, or is the Minister still going to allow them to operate? If he does that, it is not complete privatisation which is involved here, as it ought to be.

The hon member for Pietersburg had a problem in regard to parity. Approximately R250 million is being paid by the SATS to Transmed for privileges that can be enjoyed by only one group. The other group derives no benefit from it. When does the hon Minister expect to have parity in respect to Transmed, and the free choice of doctors for everyone in his employ?

Mr Chairman, I will not continue in the same vein as the hon member for Parktown, as his speech dealt mainly with cigarette and alcohol advertisements. Nothing he said was really contentious, and the request he made, as well as his allegations against the hon the Deputy Minister, will be dealt with by the hon the Deputy Minister and the hon the Minister personally. They will take care of him.

We all know that the SATS is founded on business principles and run on that basis. Presumably none of us would quibble about that, and that is why I feel we should bring certain matters to the attention of the hon the Minister and the department.

Another thing we are all aware of, of course, is how the circumstances in which the SATS provide their services have changed in the past 20 or 30 years. Twenty years ago, industries such as agriculture in remote areas were almost entirely dependent on the SATS for the transport of their products and requisites. Circumstances beyond the control of either the SATS or the communities involved have brought about a change in this practice, particularly since the latter half of the sixties and during the seventies, when a complete change in circumstances resulted in a shift away from the traditional use of trains to other forms of transport.

Agricultural producers, particularly of perishable produce and meat, played the greatest part in the change in transport practices and the movement away from traditional train transport. This change to the use of fast forms of transport was a direct result of South Africa’s rapid development under a sound NP Government, which ensured that proper roads with permanent surfaces were provided over the shortest routes to the nearest markets, so that agricultural producers in remote areas could get their products to market more quickly by making use of roads and modern forms of transport. This also had the effect of cutting down on the losses farmers had incurred when they used to transport their produce by train, which used longer routes and therefore took more time.

Having made this discovery, more and more farmers turned to road transport, which is for the most part in private hands. It should make sense to any reasonable hon member of this Committee that while the SATS is geared for the transport of massive quantities of goods, the changing demand for transport involved smaller loads, in particular from small communities in sparsely populated areas, which the SATS was virtually unable to accommodate. The SATS was then obliged to issue permits and licences to private businesses so that goods from these areas could be transported. We want to thank the SATS for this farsightedness.

The same altered circumstances also led to a change in the demand for passenger transport away from the traditional trains to faster forms of transport by road and also by other modem means. The same circumstances have led to the rural and remote areas suffering as a result of this.

The change in the demand for transport, and the services which have already changed by a process of evolution over the past approximately 30 years virtually without anyone noticing, are sources of grave concern to me. I want to ask the hon the Minister and the SATS to show even greater consideration and understanding when withdrawing certain transport services in particular communities than they have shown up to now. I am most grateful to the hon the Minister and the SATS for the fact that when it has been decided to withdraw a service, they have usually conveyed this decision to the communities involved, and in particular to the local MPs, in writing. We also want to ask them not to abandon this practice. I am convinced that it was this method which resulted in a shock for a community …

Order! Is that a newspaper which the hon member for Langlaagte is reading?

It is a cutting on the Group Areas Act, Sir.

Order! The hon member for Aliwal may proceed.

Because the withdrawal of a service is a shock to a community, I want to ask the hon the Minister and the SATS to inform such a community by other means. I want to suggest that this be done by the regional office of the SATS. Those communities, and also those Government departments which use the services provided by the SATS, for example the Department of Posts and Telecommunications, must conduct proper discussions on this matter so that they can be prepared when the service is withdrawn, the withdrawal can proceed in an orderly fashion and the provision of essential services in such a community, like the postal and medical services, can be continued without interruption.

I am calling for this approach because I know that placing all the facts before a community will make such a withdrawal of services by the SATS acceptable to them. If we do not do this we shall be creating a political opportunity for our CP friends in particular, who will use it to try to create political chaos in the community involved.

Mr Chairman, I am not going to react to the arguments of the hon member for Aliwal. I am going to make a few statements about the SATS services in my constituency. I believe they will also be relevant to other towns.

Certain actions by the SATS, which have taken place over a long period and for which I hold the hon the Minister of Transport Affairs responsible are the reason why such an assiduous attempt is now being made to get rid of this undertaking by means of so-called “privatisation”.

Surely the CP has made its point clear—we are in favour of judicious privatisation. However, we shall consider each case which comes up for privatisation on its own merits. I do not like misrepresentations of the kind which were perpetrated during the standing committee sittings which dealt with the Port Shepstone-Harding railway line. The Government pushed legislation through which gave it a virtual mandate to do what it liked with the railways. This decision had been typed out beforehand and everybody simply had to say yes. Is there more than one standing committee?

It is true that the SATS has had some good times in South Africa. In my constituency the Railway Bus Service provided all the transport to the various homelands until the time came when the Black taxi operators, licensed and unlicensed, were allowed to hijack the passengers of the SATS buses from under their very noses. Certain people even assaulted and intimidated these Black people in the buses so badly that they feared for their lives. Consequently they began to use the taxis more. The tariffs of these taxi buses are at least double those of the Railways buses. However, the passengers use the taxis for the sake of their own safety. Now no buses travel from Middelburg’s municipal area to the homelands. Is that how the Government wants to privatise? The CP will have nothing to do with that! This service has been given away and the Government cannot sell it to anyone. The Government privatised it without any compensation, and what happened to those employees?

If mention is made of 100 000 licensed taxis, I want to tell hon members that there are 100 000 unlicensed taxis in South Africa. In these circumstances, what happened in Middelburg is also happening in other parts of South Africa. Is the same going to happen to the railway lines?

In my constituency, trucks are conveying coal from 30 km north of Middelburg to Sasol II and III approximately 170 km away, although there is a railway line with loading facilities nine kilometres away from this open cast coal mine.

I have a further question in this regard. Are hon members aware of the scale on which coal is being conveyed on various roads to Sasol II and III in the South Eastern Transvaal, the powerhouse of South Africa? Between Van Dyksdrif and Kinross alone, 260 trucks travel in both directions every day. I recently sent the department a memorandum on this matter. Accidents claim lives daily. Vehicles suffer tremendous damage. Shortly after the election one of my colleagues suffered a few thousand rands’ damage to his car because of one of the potholes one now finds in the road. Urgent action must be taken, and urgent attention must also be given to the main roads of towns, which have become practically impossible to negotiate. My question is this: Is the State going to bear this expense or are the mines and the transport contractors, who created the problem, perhaps going to carry these costs? This whole problem can be solved very simply by having coal conveyed by rail.

I was instrumental in the hon the Minister’s receiving a report from the Co-ordinated Coal Exporters. Arising from answers during the Second Reading debate, the hon the Minister made it clear that he had already met these people. I want to thank him for that. However, I should like him to tell me why the relevant standing committee was not consulted in these important decisions, because the reports were also addressed to the members of the standing committee. Might the fact that I received one mean that I am an exception? Does the hon the Minister perhaps not trust the other members of the standing committee?

During my first speech in this magnificent Chamber I asked the hon the Minister what was envisaged in respect of the extensions at Middelburg station. Three street blocks, on which approximately 18 houses were situated, were expropriated. Most of these houses, some of which were brand new, have already been demolished. In the hon the Minister’s reply to that debate he said he would inform me in writing whether the extensions would be proceeded with. I am still awaiting his report and would greatly appreciate receiving it.

The SATS recently announced a new National Transport Policy Study consisting of five components. What are they going to do with the people when the SATS is privatised? I think this high-powered team should first be allowed to prove itself. I believe that given the chance, they could run even the very well-known Port Shepstone-Harding railway line on a profitable basis. In addition hon members should not be so ready to reject the term “cross-pollination” as if it is not applied anywhere else. It is after all an accepted form of business management. One component carries and helps the other component and vice versa.

In connection with the unilateral ban on wage increases for public servants, I want to know if it includes the employees of semi-State institutions such as the municipal officials of South Africa. To request the private sector not to grant increases to their employees is a farce. No one can be fooled by that myth, because they granted their increases on 1 January 1988. Those who have not done so yet, like the Allied Building Society, are now in the process of doing so. I am referring to an article which appeared in the Citizen of Saturday, 5 March.

I should like to conclude in a lighter vein and get hon members in the back benches going a little. During the Second Reading debate, the hon member for De Aar entertained us most delightfully with his knowledge of steam locomotives. I also experienced that wonderful era. Unfortunately he ended his story at the point when he had to blow the locomotive’s steam whistle, because no locomotive leaves without sounding its steam whistle. I suppose he feared it would sound like the death knell which tolled on Monday for the hon Leader of the House’s dreams of becoming State President when the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition had finished him off in that debate. [Interjections.] The hon member for De Aar is not here. The next morning that locomotive would have run out of steam and remained stationary, because the hon member would have had to blow his steam whistle 2 854 times to announce the victory of the hon member for Standerton. He would have had to blow it 794 more times to announce the victory of the hon member for Schweizer-Reneke. Then the NP would have run out of steam and ended up in a siding, as is going to happen to them in Randfontein.

Mr Chairman, it is pleasant to be speaking after the hon member for Middelburg because he did not say anything contentious. He dwelt on a few things, including the increase in the number of taxis on the roads which is making him very uneasy. We all feel uneasy about that, but we must admit that those people are providing their own people with a very good service. I do not agree with him that it is done at exploitative tariffs, because the competition is too keen. I think the service is being rendered by those people at quite a fair price. We cannot have train services everywhere and buses are too expensive and therefore we should actually welcome the fact that taxi owners look after their own interests and convey their people back and forth.

He also asked who was going to bear the costs of the repair work on the roads that these transport people are damaging. I shall come back to that later.

We are not bluffing with regard to the increase in salaries. It was an appeal which was made by the hon the State President, and I think that we are going to reap the rewards of it in future.

I want to return to the budget. Much has been said about it by hon members on both sides of the House. The good points were thoroughly emphasised, and those that are not so good were also mentioned. There is not much more to be said about the budget, except that it is really a very good one, and that we should like to help the hon the Minister with the implementation of the budget in the year that lies ahead. We are all going to reap the rewards of the budget, as he explained it.

The announcement that there was not going to be an increase in tariffs, was very pleasing for everyone to hear. It was rather unexpected; I do not think anyone expected it, but the hon the Minister nevertheless stated that the policy for the following financial year was that there would be no increase in tariffs, and that is a very good thing. We want to congratulate him on that announcement. We are also congratulating the hon the Deputy Minister and the personnel who helped to work out the budget. It is not child’s play to undertake such a venture, but what they are planning is quite clear and that we shall all have to work together to ensure that the traffic that was surrendered to rivals of the SATS is returned to them, where it belongs.

Although there are not going to be any tariff increases we must not think that the expenditure that they incur and have to contend with every day, is not going to increase. Immediately after the budget, the disasters descended on us, and we know how the Blue Train and two other trains were stranded in the middle of the Karoo, and how many railway lines and bridges were washed away. All this damage is going to result in unforeseen expenditure. We believe that a certain amount is included for unforeseen expenditure, but the damage that has been done during the past few days is exceptional. However, we are at the beginning of an upswing in the economy, and we believe that so much work is going to flow back to the SATS that the revenue will really and truly make provision for the expenditure on those damages, while we shall still be able to administer the SATS on a very good, healthy basis.

I referred to the fact that the SATS had to surrender much of its work. As the hon member for Middelburg mentioned a while ago, it ended up in the hands of private road transport contractors. He referred specifically to coal, and I am glad that he did so, but I also want to say that other private transport contractors are taking much of the SATS’ work away from them. They do it more quickly and also at competitive prices. One would like to ask who can compete with the SATS, because it should not happen, but nevertheless the SATS always takes second place when competing price-wise, and also with regard to the speed of the delivery.

Many firms that should make use of the services of the SATS, have their own vehicles in which they deliver their own products and fetch the goods that they require. These are people who are waiting to deprive the SATS of their work.

Then there are people who provide courier services and who concentrate on the delivery of small consignments of commodities from door to door in the various towns at a far higher tariff than that at which the SATS does the work. These are organisations that actually do more harm than good.

With the positive approach that the hon the Minister himself revealed, I believe the SATS is on the right path. They want to fight back. They want to do the work that is available and win back the transport business that should come their way. We should like to help them in that regard. They have the necessary infrastructure at their disposal. They have the necessary manpower to do the work. The traffic is going to increase, and we know that these days the private transport contractors are finding it very difficult to replace worn-out vehicles. Therefore I believe that we are truly in a position in which the SATS can provide a very competitive service provided they undertake the task with determination.

There is a further aspect to which I should like to refer. It has a bearing on the announcement that there are not going to be any tariff increases. I trust that the hon the Minister included the satellite undertakings that work for the SATS, inter alia the delivery service contractors in the various towns. These are the organisations that deliver parcels on behalf of the SATS. Nowadays, these people receive a very, very good tariff. I do not want to mention here how they themselves boast about it, but I want to indicate that before 1980 a delivery service contractor had to submit his profit and loss statement when he wanted an increase. This was then thoroughly examined by the SATS. The contractor then received perhaps half or even less of the increase that he had asked for. Since 1980 this has changed and those increases are also determined according to a sliding scale, based on a formula similar to that of the Seifsa formula, that prescribes the increases that must be applied. I can assure you, Sir, that the increases granted to delivery service contractors have improved by leaps and bounds since 1980. They are granted every year, and every year they are relatively better than those that would have been asked for. This was a mistake, and today the delivery service contractors are skimming off the cream that they do not deserve, that they are not entitled to.

We know that the SATS cannot provide a delivery service in every town. It is simply impossible. Where contractors are identified, I do not think that they will not complain if we do not grant them a tariff increase this year. They will perhaps kick up a fuss and ask what has become of their increase. However, if it is made very clear to them that they are not going to get an increase this year, not one of them will terminate his contract because the profits that are made on the service that he provides are quite adequate. Therefore, to skip a year will not do them any harm.

Mr Chairman, I want to conclude. The promise that the hon the Minister made in reply to the plea of the hon the State President that we should keep prices low, that we should curb inflation… [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, I am sure the hon member for Meyerton will not mind if I do not follow him. I want to address myself briefly today to an issue which has caught the imagination of many people in Cape Town recently. That is the prospect of developing the Foreshore wasteland and the Table Bay Harbour.

An editorial in the Cape Times of 12 February this year summed up the proposals for this redevelopment very well, I believe, in the following terms:

There is no doubt about it, Mr Chairman, this proposal does have enormous potential, and is in itself a most exciting prospect, for a number of reasons.

It has been made all the more possible by the Government’s recent announcements with regard to privatisation, but an important immediate consideration is that the plan has enormous potential, not only in itself but also in respect of the variety of job opportunities it will generate in both the short and the long term.

People with an interest in this will know that the plans are based on the Burggraaff Committee’s investigation into the tourist, commercial and recreational potential of the area of Cape Town Harbour which is at present unexploited. This is the area stretching from the Victoria Basin in the dockland to Mouille Point bordering on the Metropolitan Golf Course, and the City centre areas around the old power station. Some of the plans include restaurants, shops, a marina, a yacht basin and a living maritime museum.

The important point is that it would be a major tourist attraction, as well as a commercial and recreational centre, and one accepts that a recreational centre of this nature offering a wide range of facilities would be of tremendous benefit to the people of Cape Town. Much of the interest in the harbour among Capetonians disappeared with the development of the Foreshore and the building of the seafront highway, and yet at one stage in the city’s history the harbour was a major attraction for many people in the city as well as an important item on any tourist’s agenda.

I am aware of the fact that at this particular stage, no specific plans have been drawn up for this project. This is probably a good thing if one takes into account that a number of people over many years have made various specific proposals with regard to the redevelopment of this area. All these ideas will have to be carefully studied in order to ensure that the development which ultimately takes place is the most worthwhile. I say therefore it is important to agree with those who call for any planning at this stage to remain very flexible indeed.

As a matter of interest, I would like to mention that the second biggest tourist attraction in the USA is San Francisco’s highly successful Fishermen’s Wharf, which is second only to Disneyland. I presume it is possible, with some careful planning, for that whole concept to have as much impact on the tourist industry here in Cape Town. It will be interesting to see whether that potential in fact exists, but whether the suggested development has that attraction will depend to a large extent on how it is structured and, of course, how much money is available for it.

The plan is still awaiting final approval from the SATS, and there is no doubt that that body will play a major role in this development if it does go ahead. All reports certainly seem to suggest that it is likely to be given an official go-ahead fairly soon. I would like to quote Mr H J Loubser, Deputy Director of the SATS business development section, who said fairly recently that he saw it as “a major development opportunity and a major opportunity for the SATS to do something for the community”. That is an important and very positive statement. If it is in fact the case—I have no reason to doubt it—then this is a most pleasing development, and I urge the hon the Minister to make his decision soon and to allow the development to begin.

Even though it would be a long-term project taking from seven to ten years to complete, obviously at enormous cost, the possibility I mentioned earlier of the creation of 20 000 to 30 000 jobs will in itself be an important immediate benefit to Cape Town, while the benefit in both the short and the long term for the CBD of the city clearly should not be ignored either.

While we are talking about this, we must accept that there are problems which will have to be overcome, not least the question of finance; some people talk about this project costing in excess of R2 billion. Another problem involves one of the sad but perhaps necessary aspects of harbour life these days—of course this has been the case for some years—namely the very strict customs control exercised around the harbour. There are many restricted areas in which customs offices and procedures would have to be rearranged in order to allow this plan to go ahead, but that would obviously be an important step.

By giving the go-ahead for this plan, one would be giving the harbour back to the people and allowing it to become a focal point in Cape Town once again. Whereas it is important that consideration be given to such matters as the oil tank farms and either to the flooding or the redevelopment of this particular area, consideration should also be given to the commercial fishing industry as to whether it is retained at its present site or moved to a new one.

All in all, this plan has enormous potential, and I urge the hon the Minister to give it all the encouragement he can. Once a project of this nature is on the drawing board and in the stages of development, consideration could be given to other areas as well, such as Durban harbour, where there is much potential for similar types of development.

Giving back to the people the areas they used to enjoy will be a noble gesture on the part of the SATS. A good example is the success of the first SATS development at Germiston station, where developers and financiers have been given autonomy over the land previously used by the SATS. It would be in the interest of the SATS, and in the interest of all the people of this country, if underutilised and underdeveloped areas were made available for this positive development.

Mr Chairman, we have progressed to such an extent that at this stage I am able to reply to a number of the questions that have been put to me.

In view of the fact that the hon member for Roodepoort moved his amendment, I expected him to be able to indicate specifically to me where I could have done better and where I did badly. He implied that I could have improved my performance very much more if there had not so much theft. With the figures that the hon member quoted here together with those made available to him in the Budget Speech, as well as in the documents which I tabled, he could have seen immediately the extent to which theft is taking place.

I agree with the hon member that theft has to be limited to the absolute minimum. The hon member is aware of the fact that we had our own police force. This force was transferred to the SAP. There was a period of acclimatization and we discussed the matter with the SAP, and they adopted different methods. The fact is that we have already noticed a considerable and quite remarkable improvement in the situation.

I do not blame the hon member for having brought this to my attention. However, the hon member was unable to express any real criticism of this Budget. I do not blame him for the fact that he cannot admit that it is a good budget, because it is. The hon member must not shake his head; he can hardly do that.

Does the hon the Minister contend that policing has deteriorated since the Railways Police were taken over by the SAP?

The hon member was not listening. I said that there had been a period of acclimatisation in which problems had been ironed out and that the position had now improved.

In his search for arguments the hon member made no use at all of the chiefly financial nature of this debate; on the contrary, he quoted from an article in the Flying Springbok. Like his party, the hon member is continually running away from reality. He referred to a review of a film starring a White lady and a Black gentleman.

It was a posed photograph!

The fact is that we have long been discussing the question of mixed marriages. That is the reality. [Interjections.] We decided in this regard a long time ago and that law has been on the Statute Book now for some time. In this instance the hon member made much of the fact that the White lady placed her hand on the breast of the Black man. We faced up to this reality a long time ago. It could even have been a wedding. Therefore, this party said we were going to do away with that law so that each person can accept responsibility for anything he does across the colour line. The hon member actually came along here with an unreality which he wanted to show as a fact.

The hon member also raised the question of separate facilities at stations. It is no secret that this Government has said that it is doing away with discrimination. That is what we are doing. Neither was it necessary for the hon member to quote what I had said in another House. He could just as well have quoted what I had said in this House, namely that we monitor this matter from time to time because proper standards and order have to be maintained.

The hon member also referred here to the question of the internal psychological services that are rendered. I want to point out to him that the executive council of the trade union has taken note of this situation. The assurance was given at the time that any White staff member who was not happy about those services being rendered by a person of another colour, could make use of the services of White person.

As far as the question of supervision over White women is concerned, I want to tell the hon member once again that the executive council of the trade union involved has taken note of the situation, but absolutely no cases of friction have occurred to date. It is the policy of the SATS to ensure that there is no friction among its staff members, or as little as possible, because only then will one have successful undertaking.

The hon member for Wellington made a very interesting quotation from the history of train transport. In the course of doing so he also made a very fine appeal for the unique nature of the station at Wellington. I should like to thank him for having done so and I also want Wellington to know that it has a unique representative. [Interjections.]

I also want to thank the hon member for Sasolburg for his participation in this debate. He thank the SATS for the fine services that are being rendered. He also referred to the fact that Sasolburg station has the largest turnover of goods in the Orange Free State. He also paid tribute to the workers. I want to thank him for having done so. We appreciate his constituency and the fact that, as the hon member indicated here, it is our largest client in the Free State. We try consistently, particularly as far as the black gold is concerned—he mentioned this himself—to come to an arrangement with those clients of ours so as to be able to give them the very best and most beneficial service we can, notwithstanding what the hon member for Bryanston had to say here. However, I shall come back to him later; he is obviously uninformed. [Interjections.]

The hon member for Soutpansberg asked what our plans were as far as transport tariffs are concerned. He asked what our policy was in this regard. Our aim with the transport tariffs announced in the Budget is in the first instance to combat inflation. I am sure the hon member could have deduced this from the Budget Speech if he had listened to it.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon the Minister a question?

No, the hon member cannot ask me a question because my time is limited.

What sort of traffic are you trying to attract with your tariffs?

The next important aspect that we have in mind with our tariffs is to be competitive because we are in a deregulated transport market. The SATS’s share of the market is slowly beginning to increase. The hon member did not know that either.

With these tariffs we envisage in the third instance that our clients should also be more competitive. In other words, we envisage a revival in the country’s economy as such.

The hon member asked about the arrival times of the Bosvelder. I want to tell him that we are looking at this situation. These are problem areas that he can bring to the attention of management at any time or else he can do so through me. We shall see what can be done to improve the situation for our clients. We would like to do that.

The hon member asked about the question of Afrikaans. If he will look at our tickets, he will find that as far as the South African market is concerned, the tickets are bilingual. There is in fact a coupon that is unilinqual but an international document is included in it. I want to tell the hon member moreover that research has shown that 70% of our airways clients are English-speaking. It is therefore quite normal to expect that mainly English will be spoken. I want furthermore to tell the hon member that we are a business undertaking. We serve a person in the language in which he wishes to be served. That is, after all, simply ordinary good business manners. The hon member cannot blame these people if because of his surname they deduce that he is English-speaking and then speak English to him. However, if he speaks Afrikaans to them, they will speak Afrikaans to him. [Interjections.]

The hon member also referred to the bus service between Soweto and Louis Trichardt. That is a private service; the SATS does not oppose it. We are in a process of deregulation and we have already accepted this fact in our White Paper. We have said that we want to encourage private enterprise in our economy. It is for that reason that the SATS will not oppose it. We will compete but we will compete where we have a competitive advantage. Only then will the SATS become a financially efficient and successful undertaking.

What are we doing about fare evasion? We are of course tightening staff measures by means of which to combat it. We are continually improving our control and, as the hon member knows, there are certain fences that are damaged from time to time and which we then repair. In this way we keep the incidence of fare evasion as low as possible. We also ask the police from time to time to prescribe certain further measures for us to better enable us to handle this sort of thing. So much then for the questions of that hon member.

The hon member for Parktown said that we should identify passengers who are medical doctors. Although we cannot give them a free trip now and again, we will be only too pleased to write a letter of appreciation to doctors who offer their services there and apply first aid. That is most probably the practice and, if it is not, I shall ask management to make it so. I thank the hon member for having brought it to my attention.

The hon member referred once again to advertisements. I have already told him that although we are concerned about one another’s health, everyone has a free choice in this regard. As long as a person does not disobey the law, there is surely no reason for me to interfere with his free choice in regard to his health, as long as he does not exercise that free choice in such a way as to interfere with any other person who also wishes to exercise a free choice. It was for that reason I said that smoking in a confined space would be forbidden.

The hon member said that our advertising was dishonest. We place no advertisements and we draw up no advertisements. If the hon member feels that the law should provide what an advertisement should look like and what it should and should not deal with, I am surely not the right one to ask to make those laws. That does not fall within my province at all. The hon member may just as well tell a café-owner who sells someone a box of chocolates that he should tell that person that they are likely to make him feel liverish. That is also detrimental to his health.

That is not a good comparison.

The hon member must direct these arguments to the right quarters. We are a business undertaking and we are trying to do business.

The hon member referred to the free choice of Transmed members and the 58 pharmacies involved. I want to tell the hon member that I have just recently had a professional inquiry conducted of these Transmed pharmacies. This investigation was done by a professional outside organisation and it was found that these pharmacies render far cheaper services to our employees than can be done by the normal trade. To tell the truth, I think that the saving in the 1986-87 financial year was R51 million. So this is of benefit to our employees and it is not my intention to close these pharmacies. However, as I have told the hon member, the employees are free to make use of any pharmacy.

We expect a further three years or so to elapse before parity with Transmed is reached. We have ongoing negotiations with the trade unions in this regard.

†The hon member for Bryanston once again raised the question of coal exporters. The SATS and the coal exporters have reached an agreement on export rates for 1987-88 and for 1988-89.

That hon member has done the coal exporters a disservice. He is not fighting for them here, he is fighting against them.

Rubbish!

The hon member says I am talking rubbish. Is he that foolish that he cannot understand what I am saying? [Interjections.] I can tell him that exporters are at present negotiating prices for the coming year. I have agreed not to divulge information that would put them in a difficult situation. I ask the hon member also not to do that. That is why I say that he is doing the coal industry a disservice by discussing this over the floor in this House.

You must admit that they are not happy with the situation.

The hon member also referred to safety measures on SAA.

The answer is that safety on SAA is not negotiable and at all times we adhere to and in fact exceed all the safety requirements as laid down by international standards, the Federation of Aviation Authorities of the USA and the Department of Civil Aviation. The hon member can therefore rest assured that we are doing just that which he asked for in all the questions that he posed.

[Inaudible.]

The hon member asked innumerable questions and I have only 24 minutes in which to deal with all hon members here. He can put his question in writing to me and I shall reply to him in particular if he so wishes.

The export of iron-ore covers the full costs of conveyance plus an appreciable contribution towards the redemption of the outstanding capital. Over the past three years the outstanding capital was reduced from R814 million to R519 million as at 31 March 1987, in other words things are going quite well.

*The hon member for Aliwal referred to the changed demand for transport. This happened without anybody actually realising it. However, we were aware of it all the time. We know that there was pressure from the private sector and particularly from the agricultural sector to handle their own transport to a greater extent. This took place over a period.

The hon member asked that we should withdraw only unprofitable services, and then with great circumspection. He asked for proper discussions and negotiations with all interested groups when we do so. I can assure the hon member that that is exactly what we do. We will take nobody by surprise in this regard. As we also inform hon members of Parliament in this regard, we do it in the way suggested by the hon member. We will continue to do so and we will not withdraw any services without proper deliberation and without communities having the opportunity to do something to enable the service to be continued. What we actually do is try to keep the service going and not withdraw it, although in the long term we have to run the service profitably.

The hon member for Koedoespoort made an appeal for pensioners. Ex-employees’ pensions is a matter which is very close to our heart. An automatic annual increase of 2% has been granted to pensioners for some years now and, as the hon member knows, provision is made for pensioners in the usual way when general salary increases are granted from time to time. A considerable amount is paid to pensioners from revenue. This amount is already about R300 million per annum, and this ought to give hon members an indication of the sympathetic manner in which we treat our pensioners.

The hon member for Meyerton asked that the fact that we were not increasing tariffs should also be carried through to delivery service contractors. These people do business with the SATS on a contract basis but we will convey the request to them that in their case too there should not be any increase in tariffs.

The hon member congratulated us on a very good budget, as he put it, and had particular praise for the handling of tariff increases. I want to repeat what I said in my Budget Speech. I said that the fact that we had not increased tariffs was a courageous step which spoke of confidence in the future of this country. I also want to assure the hon member that we will become more and more competitive in future.

The hon member for Middelburg objected to the use of minibuses which resulted in heavy traffic on the roads. He asked who was going to pay for this. This matter has to be dealt with properly. It means a loss to us but it is also a fact that it is of enormous profit to the country as such for thousands of small entrepreneurs to be involved in the economy. That is why we say that the question of the expense involved in the repair of roads will be handled properly, and one way in which to do so is to have the road user pay a proportionate part of the expense involved in building and maintaining a road. Heavy vehicles are the particular culprits in this connection, and we shall deal with this matter. This question is being investigated in other departments.

The hon member also asked what the intention was as far as Middelburg’s station was concerned. I will provide the hon member with a reply in that connection.

As far as privatisation is concerned, the hon member was also very concerned about what was going to happen to the staff. I want to reassure the hon member once again that the interests of all the employees from top management down to the worker in the lowest echelons will be looked after. I stated in my Budget Speech that the units we envisaged privatising would be tested against the guidelines in the White Paper and that only then would it be decided whether privatisation was at all possible in their case. If it is possible, we will be prepared.

What are NP assurances worth?

I also want to assure the hon member that that top management could also be the top management in a privatised unit.

†Finally, I want to come to the hon member for Durban North. He referred to the development of Table Bay Harbour. I thank him for his contribution. He made a good contribution. The Burggraaff commission investigated the whole issue and in general I accept the terms of their report. I have now asked them to come forward with specific proposals and submit them to me, proposals in terms of which the private sector will also co-operate. I again thank the hon member for his contribution.

Mr Chairman, there are quite a number of aspects I should like to deal with in the course of the discussion of the SATS Budget this year. However, the hon the Minister will pardon me if I only refer to a few aspects which he touched upon.

In the first place the hon the Minister said he was disappointed in the hon member for Roodepoort again because he had thought the hon member would at least begin to enumerate the examples of how the budget could have been improved, in contrast to what we had before us. With specific reference to the question of theft and pilfering, to which the hon member for Roodepoort referred, the hon the Minister said that the hon member for Roodepoort could at least have glanced at the budget documents. One knows that the hon the Minister has a lot of work to do, that there is a great deal of information at his disposal, that he does not of necessity always know what happens under him and that he does not always have all of the information with him.

The fact of the matter is, however, that that is precisely what the hon member for Roodepoort did. There has been one theme running like a golden thread through the two speeches made so far by the hon member for Roodepoort in this debate, which is namely that there is something badly amiss with the control in the transport services set-up. He enumerated concrete examples. Times without number he enumerated examples. Every time he speaks there are new examples. I even make so bold as to suggest that there are so many examples that he will probably present the hon the Minister with further examples when he makes another speech later.

Besides, the hon member for Roodepoort did in fact have a look at the documents in question. He did look at the budget documents, and also at the typed questions and answers dealt with on the Standing Committee on Transport and Communication. I can refer the hon the Minister to one of the questions. It is not numbered. The page is not numbered either. Perhaps this is also one aspect which the management of the SATS could look at, so that one will in future be able to refer to these things more easily. The question entails details of the claims in regard to theft and pilfering. Because he looked at the documents, the hon member for Roodepoort merely quoted what was stated there. The hon the Minister said he thanked the hon member for Roodepoort for having brought it to his attention. This illustrates precisely the point the hon member for Roodepoort is always raising. There is a lack of adequate control. This is one of the elementary questions, and the reply to it—these things which are discussed on the standing committee and made available in writing to all the hon members. However, the hon the Minister does not know about it, and now he is thanking the hon member for Roodepoort for having brought it to his attention. Surely I am not being unfair when I say this. That is precisely what happened.

The hon the Minister went on to refer to the question of commuter services. The hon member for Roodepoort enumerated specific concrete examples and details to the hon the Minister of why he had reason to expect that there was inadequate control over the collection of fares at those suburban stations. He made a plea for the tightening up of supervision at those control points. The hon the Minister admitted there was a problem. However, he did not go much further than that. May I now, by way of repetition, ask the hon the Minister whether provision is being made in this budget for the cost that has to be incurred in improving supervision at those control points. Yes or no? It is a simple question. It is a fair question. We find no trace whatsoever of such an item of expenditure for which provision is being made in this present budget. Of course this strengthens our suspicion that the government of the day does not even feel like implementing separate development in the sense in which the existing infrastructure allows it to do. We are not referring to improvement, renewal and development in order to implement separate development better, as the CP does in fact want to do in future. No, we are working here with an example of where there is existing infrastructure which the Government does not want to use to the extent to which it is possible to enable Black people to live as much as possible in their own areas, among their own people, and at the same time reach their places of work in the White area.

In the final instance I want to refer again to the question of White facilities on stations and travelling facilities. The hon member for Bryanston referred to so-called racist remarks. I just want to tell the hon member for Bryanston that those cliches make no impression on us. Over the years they have made no impression on us. They are now making an impression on the NP. In that respect the hon member is perhaps succeeding when he refers to them. On us, however, they make no impression. After all, it is not racist to ask that one’s own people should have their own facilities where they can feel safe because they are among their own people—in safety and in a situation in which they are associating with culturally homogeneous people.

Mr Chairman, I do not actually want to react to what the hon member for Potgietersrus said. What he was in fact doing was trying to take over from his party’s official spokesman. He tried to put the case of his party’s official spokesman better than the spokesman himself did. I do not know whether he thought the hon member for Roodepoort had not performed his task well enough and that he therefore felt called upon to put it better. [Interjections.]

Order!

Like all sober people in this House, I should like to congratulate the hon the Minister and the SATS most sincerely on the budget under discussion. I want to take this opportunity to convey a few hints and ideas to the hon the Minister.

I think something is wrong with the planning and management of the departure hall at Jan Smuts Airport. On 29 February, when we had to come to Parliament, I arrived at the airport at approximately 19h15 and queued to buy my ticket. Hon members will understand that in Ladysmith, where I come from, there are no facilities to buy tickets in advance. At Jan Smuts Airport the ticket offices are in a passageway, and if 15 people queue there, they and their luggage block the entire passageway, because they have to keep their luggage with them. Congestion therefore arises in the passageway between the reception area and the rest of the departure hall for domestic flights.

In my opinion another problem on that specific evening was that there were too few people selling tickets, and as a result there was tremendous congestion in the passage way. This congestion is inconvenient because people cannot get passed with their luggage trollies, and this is a great nuisance. I must say that having to wait for more than an hour to buy a ticket is in my opinion a state of affairs which can be improved.

Order! Once again the noise level in the Committee is too high. Hon members must lower their voices. The hon member may proceed.

For that reason I am asking the department to look into the matter, particularly as regards that aspect.

Then I also want to talk more specifically about matters in Ladysmith, which is in my constituency. As a result of the privatisation policy there is at present uncertainty among certain employees in sections of the SATS in my constituency regarding their future and how they are going to be affected by privatisation. The complaint is that although they hear and read about privatisation they are uncertain as to where they stand in this process and nothing has such a paralysing effect on the morale of employees as uncertainty.

I would like to suggest to the hon the Minister that he should always take the employees of the SATS entirely into his confidence. I am not talking about the management; I think the higher level employees understand better and there is also closer contact with them regarding what is going to happen to them. I am actually referring to employees in the middle and lower income groups, who feel uncertain. I want to suggest that it is ensured that they receive good feedback and that the message reaches them, because there may be someone in the channels of communication who does not always do his duty and pass on the information.

Also with regard to Ladysmith I want to draw the attention of the hon Minister to the fact that the Transmed Offices, where there is also a pharmacy which serves the people, is situated in the flood area. As a result these offices and the pharmacy are flooded, which causes the problem that services cannot always be rendered. The building is also badly dilapidated and the parking facilities are inadequate. For that reason a situation has arisen where, with a view to benefiting the employees, serious consideration must be given to vacating the building, which used to be the old railways police station, and moving to a better area.

I also want to ask the hon the Minister to give serious attention to selling the houses which are standing empty in Newcastle Road as soon as possible. The houses are empty and are being looted, and slum conditions are being created there. In order not to embarrass the neighbours and the municipality it is extremely important for those buildings to be placed on the market as soon as possible.

Mr Chairman, it is a pleasure for me to speak after the hon member for Klip River. I should like to associate myself with what he said, as well as with the previous speaker who congratulated the hon the Minister of Transport Affairs and the officials of his department on the budget of the SATS. I share their view that the hon the Minister has ushered in a new era for the SATS and that an entirely new direction is being envisaged for the SATS. This is a very far-reaching trend. I support the privatisation idea and I am convinced that in the long run it will have a beneficial effect on our country’s economy if it takes place with the greatest circumspection and according to the guidelines in the White Paper.

I find it incomprehensible that the hon members of the Official Opposition have opposed this privatisation strategy from the outset and have tried to shoot it down. It is quite clear to me that they are progressing well in reverse gear as regards their transport policy and that one of these days they are probably going to manufacture coal from petrol again. This coal can then be transported on the uneconomic branch lines instead of closing them down or privatising them.

I greatly appreciate the excellent scheme which makes provision for officials to buy their own homes. In my profession I have frequently seen the misery which arises when the breadwinner retires and does not own his own home.

These people live their entire lives in a house which they rent for a minimum tariff and they never think of their retirement. I am appealing to the SATS to encourage its employees anew to make use of this scheme and in this way make provision for their old age.

There is great understanding for the problems the SATS is faced with at the moment, but it was nevertheless a great disappointment to me when I noticed that in the list of projects in the capital budget not even a tiny slice of the capital cake had been set aside for the goldfields. I want to assure the hon the Minister that—to use the words of the hon member for Brentwood—there are no cakehaters in the goldfields.

It is however a fact that the appearance of the railway station at Welkom is not a credit either to the city of Welkom or to the SATS. Welkom, which gained city status 20 years ago, is still served by a branch line, in spite of the fact that since the opening of the railway line in 1946, Welkom station expanded at a rate which at the time was unprecedented in the railway history of South Africa. Within two years it had progressed from a third-class station to senior grade, class one.

Although the number of passengers using the train services is following the normal downward trend, the number of goods consignment notes handled is still rising. At present Welkom is fortunate to have a bus service which was introduced by the SATS two years ago. There is great appreciation for this service on the goldfields and it is very well supported. However, the station building does not meet the needs which arose after the introduction of the service. There is not even a decent strip of tar outside the station building and the buses have to stop on a very uneven and dusty piece of road in the open veld. It is really very inconvenient for the passengers and makes a very bad impression.

Although the goldfields are situated on the development axis between the PWV-area and Bloemfontein, they are not yet on the main transport axis as regards road and railway connections. The ideal would be for the main railway line to the south to go through Welkom. I would very much have liked to ask for this today, but bearing in mind the present economic climate I will confine myself to asking for the upgrading of Welkom Station and its grounds.

I also want to ask for the rerouting and the building of the national road, the N1 south of Kroonstad, because for want of good rail links, a good road running through the goldfields could make a tremendous contribution towards the welfare of the goldfields and the surrounding towns. The route already planned takes the N1 very far from the goldfields.

As far as the Airways are concerned, the goldfields are served by a private airline. The flights are more expensive and very seldom link up with the flights of the SAA. It is therefore uneconomical and inconvenient and sometimes makes it impossible for passengers to make use of the services. For example it takes a passenger twice as long to fly from Welkom via Johannesburg to Cape Town with a connecting flight than it takes a passenger to fly from Bloemfontein to Cape Town. The tariff is also approximately 52% higher whereas Welkom is only 150 kilometers further from Cape Town. Today I therefore want to make a very serious appeal for the incorporation of Welkom in the circular flights of the SAA which at present include Kimberley, Upington and Bloemfontein. I also want to appeal to the SAA and the private airline to synchronise their flights so that they link up with one another and to grant a rebate on connection bookings.

In conclusion I want to ask the hon the Minister to investigate the safety measures applied by private airlines at smaller airports. The recent serious air disaster at Germiston is causing concern among passengers who make use of these services.

Mr Chairman, the hon member for Welkom raised a number of matters of a local nature which I am not going to take any further. Earlier in his speech, however, he addressed some of the problems that pensioners, in this instance the SATS pensioners, have and I would certainly support his view that the problems of all pensioners, the SATS pensioners included, need to be addressed in South Africa because many pensioners are suffering a great deal as a result of inflation and other factors.

Before turning to the topics I wish to address this afternoon, I would like to endorse a few points made by my colleagues earlier in this debate. The first are those which the hon member for Parktown made in respect of smoking. I believe all Government departments, including the Department of Health and the Department of Transport, should make an effort to have smoking discouraged. I believe there should certainly be statutory restrictions on the advertising of cigarettes and other tobacco products throughout South Africa.

I would also like to support the hon member for Durban North very strongly in his appeal that the redevelopment of the Foreshore and Table Bay areas be given high priority because I believe that such a redevelopment holds out great prospects for Cape Town.

I would like to address an issue which is not a new issue, but an important one which remains unresolved. It is the question of the cost of the Cape Town to London airfares. The facts are very simple. The distance that aeroplanes travel between Cape Town and London is less than that between Johannesburg and London. Despite this, an add-on fare is charged that amounts to hundreds of rands each way. This is clearly an unsatisfactory situation. In fact, it is a disgrace. There is no logic for this fare, other than that the people charging it are either monopolies or part of a cartel. I believe that is a disgraceful state of affairs.

It has been reported that at the IATA Tariff Co-ordinating Conference in November last year it was suggested that there be no change. Apparently the reason given for this suggestion is that it would adversely affect the competitive position of other carriers. Of course it would; that goes without saying. However, what they are really saying is that charging excessive fares on this route boosts profits. That is also true, and I accept that it is true, but that is not the point. There is no justification for this whatsoever.

I do not think that hon members and the department as well as the hon the Minister should underestimate the importance of tourism. It is of the utmost importance to South Africa in general and Cape Town and the Western Cape in particular. In respect of foreign exchange we earn hundreds of millions of rand. It is a competitive business, both within South Africa and internationally. To the extent that airfares are higher than they need to be, one is discouraging some people from coming to this country. Secondly, tourism is important to South Africa because of the public relations aspect. However many bad things there might be in this country, invariably people who visit here go away with a better impression and a more positive view of many aspects of South Africa than they had prior to coming. We spend vast sums of money on advertisements and so on in overseas newspapers to try to improve the image of South Africa but there is no doubt in my mind that the people who visit here end up having the most balanced views and, in many cases, as the best ambassadors that we could have.

Then, of course, tourism creates and provides economic growth for a country and a region. As far as that is concerned, it is economic growth that generates a great deal of employment. It is a labour-intensive industry and needs to be promoted at every opportunity. So I would appeal to the hon the Minister to recognise the fact that tourism is critically important to the Cape Town area and the Western Cape in general and to their economies.

If IATA is an insuperable obstacle that cannot be bypassed, then let us have non-IATA private carriers on this particular route. It is the Government’s current policy to deregulate and privatise, so I suggest that this would be a good place for the SATS to proceed further with privatisation and deregulation. If they were to deregulate and privatise this route it would mean getting around the problems that seem to be expressed year after year. It was in 1981, my first year in this House, that I raised the matter with the then Minister of Tourism. One has been up against a brick wall ever since.

I have said it is disgraceful and I believe it is. However, I believe it is also unjust to passengers who wish to travel from Cape Town to London and back and to the people of Cape Town itself. I also believe it is shortsighted, because it is not in South Africa’s interests to have this add-on fare discouraging at least some people from undertaking these journeys. I call on the hon the Minister to take action in this regard.

The second problem I wish to raise, is one for which I do not have the solution. I would be pleased to hear the hon the Minister’s comments. This time it relates to internal flights and block bookings. I am talking about block bookings in respect of major sports events such as Currie Cup finals and Comrades Marathons. What happens very often, is that agents block-book regular flights with package tours. They book virtually all the seats available on those flights at the key times. The result is that individual passengers on many occasions cannot get bookings unless they are prepared to pay for a whole package tour which they might not want and do not need. I would like to ask the hon the Minister if there is not something that can be done to accommodate both the agents and the individuals. I accept that the agents provide a service and that they are doing legitimate business, therefore I am not particularly trying to knock them. However, it does cause problems for many people.

I know that special flights are provided from time to time. In that regard I would like to point out to the hon the Minister that the fact that there will be additional flights is often announced too late for many people who would like to have made the journey to make the necessary arrangements. In respect of many sports events one needs to get a ticket to view the game well beforehand and for something like the Comrades Marathon one has to enter well in advance to be able to participate. It does not help if one is told one week in advance that there will be a special flight. I would like to ask the hon the Minister to see if he cannot help to improve an unsatisfactory situation in this regard.

The third point I would like to mention this afternoon, is the question of safety on trains, particularly on the Cape Flats. That position remains totally unsatisfactory. If the hon the Minister has the latest figures in respect of crime on those trains I would be very interested to hear them. It is clearly intolerable that people and their possessions are at risk day after day while travelling on these trains. I honestly do not believe that it would have been tolerated over all these years if those passengers had been White. I know some action has been taken, but I would like to ask the hon the Minister what further specific action is planned and when it is going to come into effect. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, once in a while it is a pleasure to follow an hon member of the PFP when he has made a speech. I would like to associate myself with some of the points that were made by the hon member for Cape Town Gardens.

First of all, it is a pleasure to hear him compliment our hon Minister on the no-smoking decision on the SAA. Secondly, it was good to hear him compliment the NP on its projected foreshore development in conjunction with the city council of Cape Town. [Interjections.] Thirdly—if hon members can hear me over the interruptions—I think it would be a very good idea if there were special flights to go to those areas where major sports events take place. There has been and will be a great need for these special services before major events like the Comrades, in which 10 000 runners participate, and the cycle tour which was held in Cape Town over the weekend.

Of course, the moment we were off local matters, we were onto the old racist issue again. It was quite good to hear him say that we were not regarded as jackbooted racists once people actually visited the country. That was a good point. However, I disagree with him where Black and White passengers on the trains are concerned. We have an economic problem to deal with in this regard. We are not necessarily being racists if there are more people in third class than there are in other classes.

*I actually want to discuss my own town. Personally I want to thank the hon the Minister for the promise he kept. [Interjections.]

Last year I asked for the renovation of our railway village, Pirowville. In his reply the hon the Minister promised that this would be done, and the work has already been carried out. I thank him on behalf of the people of Germiston.

Last year I also asked for the elimination of the unguarded level crossings over the eastern as well as the western main roads to Germiston. The hon the Minister mentioned that there were many such level crossings left in this country, and that replacing them with bridges had been placed on a priority list. I am pleading once again for the elimination of these two level crossings over our main entrances to Germiston.

One of the finest projects the SATS undertook last year was the modernisation of the area in front of the Germiston station, and the replanning of the entrances, exits, the bus terminus and taxi ranks at the station. Co-operation between the Germiston municipality and the SATS resulted in a very dirty old station, and the area in front of the station, being cleaned up and neatly modernised, so that thousands of commuters are now able to get to work very quickly and easily.

A portion of the residential area in Pirowville was demolished and a terminus for taxis that will be established there will do a great deal to improve the safety of Germiston’s roads. The one-way system which the buses are already using has brought about a great improvement to the traffic pattern.

Nothing is ever perfect, however, and the inhabitants of Germiston would like the hon the Minister and his department to keep an eye on the contractors who are going to complete the contract and construct the shopping centre in front of the station. They are the same contractors who received the contract to construct the Market Square shopping complex in Germiston two years ago. So far virtually nothing has happened, and every other month another promise is made and another excuse given to explain the delay. If the hon the Minister and his department do not encourage these contractors in some way or other, all the good work already done will have been for nothing.

Another question which we were asking in Germiston last year was what Germiston could expect in regard to the decision of the hon the Minister that there would be as much privatisation of the SATS as was possible. A part of the large factory manufacturing coaches for the railways has already been closed down and its employees discharged. There are large workshops for the maintenance of locomotives and coaches in Germiston. Is there a possibility that part of this work is going to be privatised, and will other sections such as the bus services perhaps be sold to the private sector?

The inhabitants of Germiston were very closely involved in the strikes between April and June last year. Strikers were shot dead in our city, and at one stage the lives of some of our children were endangered. Our local employees who did not strike, kept the trains going and earned the admiration of Dr Bart Grove and Dr Moolman, as well as our admiration, that of their fellow citizens.

The feeling arose that the strikers got away with too much, but I can testify here that that was not the case. All the strikers lost their thirteenth cheque, 1 700 of them were not re-employed and 17 000 lost three months’ salary.

Dr Moolman, Mr Le Roux and Mr Behrendt, who negotiated with the strikers, did everything in their power to make sure that it would be very difficult to go on strike again on a large scale. New contracts were drawn up, which were signed by every returning employee, and that makes it easier for us to deal with strikes. Eleven of the ringleaders of the last strike have already been found guilty in court, and there are many cases of murder and intimidation that are going to be decided in the courts during March and April.

Contingency planning has already been done for any future strikes, and we are certain that the trains will keep running even during a large-scale strike.

I know that the hon the Minister compensated everyone who worked overtime last time, but I hope that if the loyal employees ever have to perform extraordinary tasks again, they will perhaps receive a special bonus for their loyal service. The businessmen, commuters and the consumers of Germiston thank the hon the Minister for the fact that there were no tariff increases in the Budget.

Mr Chairman, it is now virtually exactly one year ago, during my maiden speech in this House, that I referred to the policy of the SATS to systematically close all level crossings, including pedestrian level crossings.

Although one can understand the reasons for doing this, I stressed then and I do so again today that the SATS, when it closes such level crossings—especially pedestrian level crossings—should make quite sure that what replaces the level crossing is not more dangerous to the user than the level crossing itself.

Some of the subways and pedestrian bridges that replaced these level crossings are actually more dangerous than the level crossings that were used before. In many cases the danger of being run down by a train when using a level crossing has merely been substituted by the new menace of being mugged, assaulted or molested by criminals lurking in the subways.

When I referred to this problem last year, I illustrated it by referring to a specific example in my constituency where a level crossing near Claremont railway station at Stegman Road was closed by the SATS. Plans to replace the level crossing with a pedestrian bridge are now in the final planning stages, but will still take some years to complete.

People commuting from Claremont to Cape Town, as well as hundreds of shoppers living on the other side of the railway line from the Claremont CBD, were left no choice but to use the existing subway at the Claremont station to cross to the other side.

Firstly as a city councillor for the area near the subway, and then also as MP for Claremont, I was contacted by dozens of residents who had personally been victims of such muggings, assaults, thefts and molestations in this area. After investigating the magnitude of this problem and also arranging a petition to test public opinion on this issue, I approached various authorities with the request that this specific pedestrian level crossing should be reopened to the people in the area.

Did you ask the police?

That hon member just wants to know whether I will have something to say about the police, and I will not disappoint him. I will say something about that a little later.

This request to reopen the level crossing was turned down by the SATS on the grounds that the train frequency on this line was considered to be too high. I believe there is another level crossing a little further south on the same railway line which basically has the same train frequency. Last year, the hon the Minister, when he replied to the same points I raised then, also replied by saying that the train frequency was too high to make a level crossing for pedestrians feasible.

*Although the hon the Minister also opposed the reopening of this level-crossing last year, he undertook in his speech to request the SA Police to patrol the subway in question more regularly. Sir, it is almost precisely twelve months later, and although I accept that the hon the Minister did what he promised to do, namely to approach the SA Police about this problem, I want to mention to him here today that assaults and molestations have continued on virtually a daily basis since February last year.

I am certain that the police did carry out additional patrols in the area after the hon the Minister’s appeal. All of us who live in or who represent that area are well aware of the fact that the police try only too readily to comply with such requests.

†In asking the police to patrol these areas more regularly, however, there are two problems, and I want to highlight them here today. The first one is the fact that victims of muggings, assaults etc as well as the eye-witnesses to such crimes, generally speaking do not report these incidents to the police. The result of this is that when I and other people—including the hon the Minister—request increased patrolling in these areas, we are told by the police that their statistics, which are based on reported crimes only, do not warrant such additional patrolling on a regular or ongoing basis.

The fault, therefore lies not with the police, Sir, but with the people who do not report these crimes. I will not go into the reasons for this. There are, however, many reasons why people do not report these crimes.

In raising this issue here today, I want urgently to appeal to the citizens of Claremont, Cape Town and wherever people experience similar conditions, to co-operate and report all such crimes to their nearest police station. The SATS could, for example, assist in this matter by placing billboards at all stations asking people to report such crimes to the police. Unless we develop a better reporting system, Sir, we are not going to reach the situation in which the police will say the statistics warrant an increased patrol system.

Why do you not join the police reservists?

Perhaps I should do that, Mr Chairman. I might even chase all those fellows out of the subways! [Interjections.]

†The second factor, Sir, is the fact that the police stations near these crime areas which I have mentioned are permanently understaffed. Here I speak from experience backed up by many policemen from these stations who frequently impress it upon us that they are understaffed and that they therefore find it difficult to attend promptly to every emergency call they receive. The fact that they are permanently understaffed makes increased patrols on a regular basis of vital areas virtually impossible. As things are, Sir, the few overworked policemen at the police stations in most of these areas can hardly cope, in particular at night, because that is when most of these crimes are perpetrated.

I want to tell the hon the Minister that he, as Minister of Transport Affairs, has a responsibility in this regard. Since the SA Railway Police—another hon member referred to this earlier—were taken away from the stations and off station platforms when they were amalgamated with the SA Police Force, conditions have deteriorated visibly. I believe that was actually a step backward because until that time there was a physical police presence on every station platform, which served as an excellent deterrent to people who were looking for possible victims in that area. I want to ask the hon the Minister to undertake to use his good offices with the hon the Minister of Law and Order in order to obtain more policemen so that those parts of our suburbs which are being used by our suburban commuters may become safer.

Without in any way wanting to politicise this matter, I must stress the fact that while we cannot get more policemen in Claremont, the townships are grossly oversupplied with policemen. I repeat that I am not trying to politicise this matter. I am merely stating the facts. I am only interested in having the crime rate curbed. I believe that this imbalance should be rectified by taking policemen from the townships, where they are in any case not really wanted, and placing them in those areas near our railway stations and subways, and also on our trains, where they are desperately needed indeed.

I could explain at length the dangerous conditions under which people have to travel. If we are to have “kitskonstabels”, Sir, let us have them involved in purely crime-preventing operations in the subways rather than in the complex and politically highly volatile Black townships. Placing “kitskonstabels” in our dangerous subways might even change their image.

*I want to emphasise, however, that something must be done straight away. We simply cannot allow the daily assaults on senior citizens and young people—many of them school-going children who make use of the pedestrian subways and who are molested there—to continue unabated. We cannot simply make a speech or two about the matter here every year, followed for only a few weeks by additional action.

If it is going to cost money to ensure greater security, that money will simply have to be found. I shall also tell you how we can obtain it, Sir. The hon the Minister must not come and tell me that the SATS does not have any money. On 23 February 1987 he admitted to me in reply to a question that the SATS had spent more than R4 million on what I considered the excessively luxurious buildings and roads erected in the recreational area at the recently completed road bridge over the Bloukrans River. The SATS spent almost R4,5 million on roads and buildings at a recreational area… The hon the Minister is shaking his head as though intimating that I am wrong. However, I have his reply here in front of me. [Interjections.]

I am sorry, Sir, it seems to me I am speaking to the wrong hon Minister. I shall simply have to put this request to the right hon Minister. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, I cannot believe that I should be so fortunate as to speak after the hon member for Claremont. To start with I want to say that it was really refreshing to hear him make positive suggestions. The problems being experienced with some of these subways are really causing concern, and in that connection I should like to associate myself with what the hon member for Claremont said.

If I have ever in my life heard a testimonial to good service, then it has been in this Chamber during the past week. This is a testimonial to the effective way in which the SATS is being operated under its present hon Minister and under the general managership of Dr Moolman. The staff of the SATS deserves the highest praise and appreciation of this side of the Committee, and in this connection I take pleasure in associating myself with hon members who have already conveyed this message.

I should also like to convey my congratulations to the CP on the results of the by-elections, and I do so in the spirit of “small things amuse small minds”. [Interjections.] It is a fact that for them the worst is still to come, but I, who have been in politics for a long time, know that when one gets such a result, one feels good, and I do not begrudge the CP that enjoyment. [Interjections.]

I should like to refer to two aspects, and the first of these is the situation in connection with the piece of land owned by the SATS in Port Elizabeth which stretches from the McArthur swimming pool up to the storage tanks near the harbour wall. It would appear that the SATS and the municipality of Port Elizabeth are discussing this, and we are looking forward to the day when finality can be reached. Spokesmen of the SATS say that if the municipality does not buy the land for the nominal amount of R100 000, the SATS will go ahead with a R100 million project for the development of that piece of land.

In this connection I should like to quote from the Eastern Province Herald of 27 November 1987. Mr Lloyd Coutts quotes the SATS liaison officer as follows:

Sakkie, are you glad FW lost the debate? [Interjections.]

It beats me how that hon member could have arrived at that conclusion. [Interjections.] I am an hon member, you know!

I am continuing to quote:

Order! Hon members are talking too loudly in the Committee. The hon member may proceed.

I am continuing to quote from this report:

I am completely in favour of this development, and I should like to congratulate the SATS on their taking the initiative. I should like to hear from the hon the Minister what the present state of affairs is with regard to this matter, because one is constantly hearing stories.

We are all also looking forward to the final report of the Burggraaff Committee in connection with Port Elizabeth harbour. The Port Elizabeth harbour encloses an area of water covering 115 ha. It is 11 metres deeper than other South African harbours and there are three main deepwater wharfs, as well as a separate ore wharf. The Chari Malan wharf is the largest, with a docking length of 1 058 metres. It is equipped with warehouses covering an area of 10 249 square metres. An ore wharf … [Interjections.] Yes, the hon member was quite right when he referred to it as a without-ore wharf but matters have improved a little. There is also an ore wharf which is 360 metres long and can store 460 ton. Ore can be loaded at a rate of 1 360 tons per hour. The harbour is also equipped with 52 cranes and is served by three tugs.

Various changes are needed to improve the harbour and I hope that this will be dealt with in the report of the Burggraaff Committee. As regards the handling of freight, I want to quote briefly what was written in Die Oosterlig of 16 June 1987:

I want to express the hope that this trend will continue and that in future there will be more activities in the Port Elizabeth harbour. I realise that we are facing a dilemma, but in spite of this I want to express my great appreciation to the hon the Minister of Transport Affairs, particularly because during the past three years, while our city was experiencing a major recession, they always listened sympathetically to our representations. The office doors of the hon the Minister and the officials were always open to us.

During the course of last year a big problem cropped up. Within a matter of 14 days the office of the hon the Minister brought the officials to Cape Town through the mediation of Mr Van Blommenstein and those people, who are major users of Port Elizabeth harbour, were able to put their case. I want to express my sincerest thanks and appreciation to the hon the Minister. I hope that the Department of Transport Affairs will ensure that specifically the export of mineral products, raw materials which were historically handled by Port Elizabeth, will be retained by us. I thank the hon the Minister and the Director General in the knowledge that they are both from the North West; courageous men. We have every confidence that they will develop the SATS even further and that the enterprising organisation of today will become even stronger.

Mr Chairman, judging by the reaction of the hon the Minister to the speeches of the CP in this debate I get the impression that in our approach to this debate we have put our finger right on the sore spot of the NP in this regard. To me it was significant that the hon the Minister, while we mentioned one example after the other of how expenditure could be cut and how we could help to increase the revenue of the SATS significantly, passed a remark like the one he did in his reply by saying that the Official Opposition had said nothing about finance or the Budget, but had simply dragged in other subsidiary issues.

The trouble with this Government is in fact that to them budgets are simply an exercise in bookkeeping. They simply see to it that the debit and the credit side do not differ too much and that the voters do not become too angry with them. If the credit side begins to differ too dangerously, they say: “Oh well, never mind, we are going to recover that money from the taxpayer in any case.” There is no initiative to see to it that the relevant departments are operated and managed in such a way that the taxpayer does not always have to take responsibility for the inability of the Government.

Sir, the approach of this side of the Committee is completely different. Our attitude is that a government must accept responsibility for the fact that when it runs a department—I am referring inter alia to the SATS—it must see to it that it first does everything in its power, within the context of that department, to cut expenditure and to realise the maximum income in a way it can afford. Then, if necessary, it can bewail its lot to the taxpayer.

We also say—this is our entire charge against the Government in this debate—that there is sufficient reason to believe that in this case the Government could have seen to it that the expenditure did not exceed the income. We feel it was not necessary to budget for a loss in the present financial year. [Interjections.]

The hon the Minister mentioned, inter alia in reply to the fact that I had raised the matter of thefts and pilfering in the Railways, that attention was being given to the matter and that the position had improved. Sir, I want to tell the hon the Minister that it is not true that the position has improved. I have practical proof of this.

Without further prejudicing the image of the security of the SATS and making the position of those persons who are responsible for security even more intolerable, I want to mention to him that there are simply too few policemen at some of the large depots of the SATS. There are also too few vehicles. At one such depot—it was a case concerning the theft of certain items which I myself had placed on the train—there was no vehicle available for the relevant policeman to investigate the matter, and I had to transport him in my own car.

There is the matter of telephone connections. For the same reason I initially mentioned, I am not going to give too many details, but telephone connections are pathetic. It is absolutely impossible for the people who are supposed to ensure security and prevent theft from doing so because in the first place the SATS has not provided them with sufficient equipment, and secondly it has not designed adequate methods to ensure that it is too difficult for the potential thief to steal anything. [Interjections.]

I also want to refer to another remark of the hon the Minister which I find significant. I am referring to his reaction to my reference to the article which appeared in the Flying Springbok in November last year. In the first place the hon the Minister said that it was a report referring to a play. I want to make it quite clear that the relevant photograph I referred to was a posed photograph. It was not a photograph taken while a play was in progress. The argument which could be raised, and which I think the liberalists would have liked to have raised and linked to the argument of the hon the Minister, namely that it was taken in the privacy of a theatre and that one should therefore not make too much of it, therefore falls away. It is a posed photograph in an official SATS magazine. [Interjections.]

Let us now consider the argument of the hon the Minister. He said the CP was running away from the realities because section 16 of the Immorality Act and the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act had been abolished and everyone now had to accept responsibility for what he did. Sir, this is an argument which we reject with the utmost contempt. It is characteristic of a government which has become spineless and is no longer prepared to accept responsibility itself for things it is selling to its voters as its policy. I am referring to the fact that he said that he was still in favour of an own community life, separate residential areas and own schools.

The Government is no longer prepared to support the policy which it wants to sell by means of positive actions. It is placing the responsibility to ensure that integration is not propagated on the individual, the voter. We say that it is betraying those voters in the process.

The hon the Minister went on to say that the assurance had been given that if anyone was not prepared to accept coloured professional psychologists, a White occupational psychologist could be called in. If Whites are not prepared to put up with people of colour supervising them, this can also be changed. The Government also says that there have been no cases of friction thus far. Now I want to ask him how he defines friction. Does the hon the Minister want to wait until violence flares up? The hon members of the Government have after all made a big fuss in this debate about the violent behaviour of certain sectors of the White population. Does the hon the Minister want them to resort to violence before he says there is friction? In addition, how can an employee oppose the state of affairs prevailing in his working conditions when a Minister like this hon Minister openly admits that he is in favour of integration? How can the employee turn to this hon Minister for protection with any degree of confidence?

In this, my last speech in this debate, I want to touch on a few other aspects. The hon the Minister in the State President’s Office entrusted with Administration and Broadcasting Services provided certain figures regarding the amount which had to be voted in order to complete the parity programme. He spoke about the Public Service in general. I want to know from this hon Minister what the amount is which the SATS is budgeting for in respect of this parity programme for the next tax year. If we look at the staff numbers, we see that there are more than 80 000 Black employees, more than 16 000 Coloured employees and more than 1 500 Indian employees. We would like to know what the financial implications of the SATS’s parity programme are.

Another aspect I want to raise in connection with the financial position of the SATS, which in our opinion is also a cause, is unnecessary expenditure, inter alia on so-called ceremonies of the SATS. In this regard I want to refer to a recent ceremony which, I hear, took place at Richards Bay when a new section of the facilities at the harbour were opened on 30 November of last year. I learnt in confidence that the reception costs at this ceremony totalled approximately R40 000. I want to know from the hon the Minister whether this figure is correct, and if so, why so much money is being spent on non-essentials, such as a mere opening of a section of the facilities at the harbour. This is typical of the spirit in which the Government approaches the economic problems of South Africa. As far as I remember R4,5 million was voted for the Dias Festival, and this at a time when the Government itself said that it was in trouble; the economy was at its lowest ebb. At this time these amounts are being voted for festivals. We say this is unacceptable to us, because a responsible government should show its voters that it is also battling at a time when the entire country is battling.

Next I want to refer to a few remarks made by the hon the Deputy Minister of Transport Affairs in this debate. He launched an attack on private firms which had made a profit of up to 300% compared with the previous year. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, at this late hour of the afternoon it is not pleasant to speak after a person like the hon member for Roodepoort.

I, with my background and considering the way I was brought up, feel ashamed when I think there are people sitting in this highest Chamber of this country who have so little confidence in their White fellow-citizens.

Ostensibly we need to be protected and our people need to be compartmentalised, because if one removes that protection in any way, those hon members think that people will rush across the dividing lines. I do not know what problem the hon member has with the photograph in the Flying Springbok. [Interjections.] Is the hon member afraid it is going to incite other people to … [Interjections.]

But it is a photograph from Othello.

The hon member ought to know that. [Interjections.]

Order!

I cannot understand what the hon member is concerned about.

Are you not concerned about Gumede?

At such a late hour in the afternoon I do not want to waste hon members’ time any further. I think the hon the Minister will reply in a competent way to what the hon member had to say. He discussed at least four subjects, and it is not my pleasant or unpleasant task to reply to his utterances. I shall leave that to the hon the Minister.

†Mr Chairman, I should like to refer hon members to Head No 5, item No 165 in the Brown Book. When one looks at that specific item one will see that for this coming year plus-minus R1,65 million will be expended to centralise the cargo handling and improve the facilities on the East Bank at East London harbour. I would like to explain to hon members what this is all about.

The existing layout and general environment within the traditional general cargo areas of East London harbour, with its relatively narrow quay aprons, is inadequate for modern cargo handling techniques—especially when containers and ro-ro traffic are included with general cargo. Due to the increase in containerised and bolsterised cargo on the East Bank, the existing stacking area on the ro-ro square has become inadequate thus affecting cargo operations. The present location of the container terminal on the West Bank adds to the problem as cargo handling activities are physically divided by the river. Consequently, certain grades of personnel are duplicated to serve both working areas of the harbour.

Motivational reasons exist for centralising cargo handling activities and I list a few. The ro-ro square on the East Bank is inadequate for present day cargo handling trends—container traffic, motorcars and timber are increasing whilst conventional break-bulk tonnages are decreasing. The equipment on the East Bank is inadequate for the handling and stacking of containers. There is a possibility of Unicorn withdrawing the coastal cellular ships, the Berg and the Breede, which worked exclusively on the West Bank. My information is that Unicorn considers introducing a third coastal ro-ro to the trade. The shifting of ro-ro activities to the West Bank is not supported because of the lack of sheds, restricted working space and the restrictions that the electrification of the main railroad line will impose on these activities. The consolidation of cargo handling activities into one area of the harbour would reduce operating costs. I am referring to the hauling of containers between the East and the West Banks.

Providing additional container handling equipment for the East Bank and upgrading the ro-ro square would only provide very short-term solutions. It would also not be cost effective. Increased productivity would be brought about by consolidating the working areas and developing East London into a “general cargo terminal”. This would be a multi-purpose terminal capable of handling containers and conventional cargo within the same area.

Hon members might like to know what ro-ro actually means. It refers to roll on-roll off cargo ships. A ro-ro ship has a door at its stern and can take fully loaded trailers into the hull of the ship to do the off-loading there. Cargo in the form of containers can simultaneously be stacked on the deck of the ship.

The relocation of the container handling activities effectively put the land at the disposal of the port for any possible future development of specialised trades. When one takes into consideration the size of equipment used at a container berth, electrification of the main line on the west bank has effectively divided the container terminal. This constitutes a real threat of electrocution.

The fact that we have a deeper berth available for container handling makes it more viable for larger vessels to call at our port. It will also facilitate improved security measures within the operational areas. At the moment we have the problem at East London harbour that we have two entrances—one in each bank of the river. By concentrating all the activities of the loading of ships it will only be necessary to operate one of these security checkpoints, namely the one on the East Bank. This will also make more land available to private enterprise, especially if one looks at the possibilities that the Mosgas and the Mosref projects hold for the economy of East London.

*It appears that this project is supposed to be finalised in two or more years. We should like to ask for it to be expedited. We are expecting a resurgence in our economy in East London and in general throughout our country, and it is not only the hinterland of the city that is served by this harbour of East London. Hon members will probably know that we handle freight from the PWV area here, because Durban’s harbour does not have all the facilities to handle all the freight. I am therefore making an appeal to the hon the Minister, if it is at all within the means of the department, to try to place these facilities at the disposal of the commercial and shipping community during the present year.

During the coming 1988-89 financial year an amount of R23 125 000 is still going to be spent on Post 6.1, the electrification of the East London-Springfontein railway line under Head 2: New Works on Open Lines. In the subsequent year an amount of R1 598 000 is going to be spent on it. Naturally it will be a great day for us in East London when this project has been finalised. I do not want to be presumptuous by asking for too many things, and I shall therefore not make an appeal to the hon the Minister to try to dispose of this project as well this year, because the first project is our top priority.

Mr Chairman, it is a pleasure for me to follow on the hon member for East London North. I want to raise a few issues of which the first is the intercity rail passenger service. I have noticed that there has been a drop of some 33% in the number of passengers in the past year. This has resulted in 42% of the number of trains being withdrawn from the normal services.

I would like to suggest that maybe the time has come for the position of the intercity rail passenger service to be reassessed. At the present rate we shall shortly find that there will no longer be any intercity service whatsoever. If we terminate that service it will be a sad day for those people for whom travel by train is a way of life.

Travel by rail belongs to a gracious way of life and it is still enjoyed by many people. I personally like to travel by rail at least once or twice a year, but I must admit that I was very disappointed last year—so much so that I am reluctant to travel by train again.

If the compartments are comfortable, the food is adequate, the service good, the stops few and the cost reasonable, I believe it will encourage people to travel by train again.

Not everybody is in a hurry to get to his or her destination. I suggest that the SATS do an exercise, because I believe they do have the rolling stock. I believe that if they embarked on a joint venture with private enterprise, we could encourage people back to rail. We would have to improve the service and the travelling time. I am not asking for anything like the Blue Train; far from it; I am looking for something that is a slight improvement on what we enjoy today.

I would like to suggest to the hon the Minister that maybe it is time that this was considered. It may well be that we will have to cut down on a few more trains, but if the service is upgraded we may well find that we will possibly encourage those people back to rail. I believe it would be a sad day if we had to do away with rail travel altogether.

I want to return now to a more local issue. The SATS have taken away all the rail passenger services between Kelso and Port Shepstone, which is my leg of the journey. It is quite obvious, then, that that line is going to be used purely for goods traffic in the future. Passengers will not return to it on a short service like that and one cannot blame them, because to travel by train from Durban to Port Shepstone took approximately 4 hours. One can do the journey by bus in an hour and a quarter or an hour and a half. We accept that as a fact of life.

I want now to bring to hon the Minister’s attention the fact that the SATS are now sitting on what I believe could be land which could be vital to the future of the holiday area on the Natal coast. In the old days the SATS acquired property for future development and I now believe that this property will never be utilized. I raised this matter in the debate last year, and I now want to refer to only one example that I know of, namely the piece of land situated on Oslo Beach. I think it is four or five acres. It is a prime site. It is adjacent to the narrow gauge and it will never be used by the SATS.

We know that 92% of property on the coast is owned by Whites. There has been a tremendous increase in the holiday population as well. Unfortunately, however, because of the shortage of land, it has not been possible to provide additional facilities to cope with the larger influx of holiday makers. I appeal to the SATS to do an exercise on the land that they own which is adjacent to the beachfront. It could be developed for additional beach amenities and beach facilities for the holidaymakers who are increasing in numbers all the time.

I believe that once this exercise has been done the SATS should then contact the Natal Provincial Administration and the local authorities within whose area this land falls.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No 19.

House Resumed:

Mr Chairman, I move:

Mr Chairman, the amending Bill before the House amends the Acts relating to the University of the North, the University of Zululand, the Medical University of Southern Africa and Vista University. It also amends the Education and Training Act of 1979.

As far as the university Acts are concerned, the requirement that the designation of degrees shall be as prescribed by statute is being deleted. In future, publication of the designation of degrees in the university calendars will be sufficient. A similar provision in the respective Acts of the universities mainly established for Whites was deleted by the Universities Amendment Act, 1983 (Act 83 of 1983), and for the sake of uniformity it is considered desirable that the Acts of the four universities to which I referred, be adjusted accordingly.

The Medical University of Southern Africa Act, 1976, regulates certain matters that applied to that Act only. In the first place, it is being provided that the rector and the vice-rector shall in future be members of committees of both the council and the senate, whereas, at present, they are members of committees of either the council or the senate, but not both. This amendment is being included at the express request of the council of the university, which considers it necessary for efficient administration. In fact, Mr Chairman, this is also the position at all other universities.

Secondly, in the English text, the expressions “principal” and “vice-principal” are being substituted for “rector” and “vice-rector” at the request of the council, in conformity with the usage at several other universities. Thirdly, it is being provided that all teachers who are heads of departments shall be members of the senate, as will those teachers who are not heads of departments but who are designated for this purpose by the council after consultation with the senate. The anomalous situation exists at present that all professors, although they are not heads of departments, are members of the senate while only those senior lecturers who are heads of departments are members of that body.

*Mr Chairman, I shall now deal with certain amendments to the Education and Training Act, 1979. To start with, the Bill provides for the establishment of “combined” schools, viz for primary and secondary education up to a standard higher than the seventh standard, but not higher than the tenth standard. As the name indicates, this will be a school in which the primary and secondary phases of education are combined. It is proposed to establish these schools in areas where the population is too small to justify a separate primary and secondary school.

The following provisions are the result of an in-depth investigation into the problems of rural education conducted by the Department of Education and Training. I might point out that this investigation was discussed at length last year in this House of Parliament. Certain amendments were effected at the express request of hon members of this House. Firstly, provision is being made for the representation of parents of pupils at farm schools on the governing body of the school, in order to give them the opportunity to be actively involved in the education of their children. Secondly, the Minister is being empowered to erect buildings for State-aided schools, including farm schools, for example where the owner of the farm is not in a financial position to do so himself. Finally, the use of pupils as labour on a farm during school hours is being prohibited as such practice is detrimental to their education.

Furthermore, provision is made for the delegation of certain powers, duties and functions from the Minister to the Director-General. These relate to the institution of courses and the conducting of examinations. The delegation of these matters is necessary for the sake of efficient administration.

In conclusion, the fines that may be imposed for contraventions of the Act have been increased to keep pace with the rate of inflation since 1979 when this Act was originally passed.

Mr Chairman, grant me a moment to explain to the hon the Minister who has just tabled this Bill why our component of the standing committee had problems with this matter for so long. I accept him and his peer, the hon the Minister of National Education, as two educationalists in our country, and in addition one of them is the State President’s prospective successor. I want to go further and sketch the climate in which this matter was laid on the Table.

The hon the Minister of Education and Culture in the House of Assembly is completely out of touch with the direction education is taking in this country.

He is a Free Stater. [Interjections.]

Order! I just want to tell the hon member that he must not treat all Free Staters alike. The hon member may proceed. [Interjections.]

I am very offended this afternoon about the way in which he dealt with the question concerning OKP, the training college. I feel the hon the Minister of Education and Training should consider this matter once again. He must not give me an answer this afternoon, but must consider the matter. As we went home last week, we saw large posters in Roeland Street reading:

Sir, that was a blow to us as people involved in education. I want to quote a sentence from Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country to the hon the Minister:

†That has to be done for educational purposes. Sir—that is why we have rain outside—we are crying out for that building in Paarl; so much so that even the White voters of the Western Cape are supporting us. We have always been prepared to take hands as far as educational matters are concerned.

Having made those introductory remarks, I give the hon the Minister the assurance that my party supports this Bill.

*We support it for certain reasons. We were confused about the definition of the word “rektor”, which is the Afrikaans word used for the principal of a university, whereas the word “principal” is used in English. This is what caused the delay in the standing committee. I am pleased, therefore, that the hon the Minister made it clear to us this afternoon that all heads of universities will now be addressed as “principal” in English and as “rektor” in Afrikaans.

This is quite a forward step, Sir, because it elevates the Black head of a university to the same level as his counterparts in the other population groups. Consequently he can now have representation on the respective bodies for university principals and so on. I am referring to clause 8 of the Bill in this connection.

I now come to the definition of the legal position of the parent of the child who receives his training at these schools. The Bill includes a security measure for the parent. You will see, Sir—I shall come to farm schools in a moment—that the Coloured and Black children in these specific schools were used merely as working units in the past. They were even used as labourers on the farms.

Clause 9 (c) contains a clear definition of “secondary school” as a school for education from Std 6 to Std 10. This brings me to my next point, viz farm schools. I also want to refer to clauses 11 and 15 in this connection. The first clause deals with farm schools and the composition of a democratic school committee. In future parents will choose the school committee members themselves, with the owner who will also serve on the committee. If any misdemeanours should take place, the committee can take the case to court.

I now come to the abuse of child labour which is arranged by means of the school on certain farms. I am pleased that everyone agrees that if a farmer should commit such an offence in future, he will be taken to court. He can be sentenced to a minimum fine of R500 or three months’ imprisonment. I have experienced this tragedy in education personally, and I feel the punishment could have been increased even to R1 000 or six months. Farmers must realise that they are dealing with people. These people have to be educated. They must receive the necessary education. In the same breath I want to mention that I have heard evidence in which it was said that this kind of thing flourishes at certain farm schools. I find it gratifying that fines can now be imposed with regard to this offence.

The hon the Minister also mentioned the building and maintenance of State-aided schools. In the past it often happened that someone who was very interested in education donated a piece of land for the erection of a small building. The church or the State then erected the building. When this person died, however, the farm often ended up in the hands of a new owner. Sometimes these new owners were real rogues who made matters very difficult for the school. By means of this legislation, this matter will now be resolved.

I want the hon the Minister to spell out clearly to us in his reply how the Government can become more involved in establishing farm schools. I am referring specifically to clauses 12 (a) and 17, as well as the amendment of section 42 of Act 90 of 1979. It deals with the provision of salary scales and allowances, the discharge of teachers and whom such teachers can appeal to.

I want to conclude by telling the hon the Minister that his Director-General, Dr Meiring, has been working overtime in respect of this matter of Black education. If it depended on me, I would ensure that he received a reward in the form of an increase.

Mr Chairman, it is truly an honour and a privilege to take part in this topical and very important debate on the Education Laws (Education and Training) Amendment Bill this afternoon. As the previous speaker said, the object of this amending Bill is to delete certain definitions in the English text and to insert new definitions. Provision is also being made for the principal and vice-principal to serve officially as members of committees and the senate.

This Bill also provides for the establishment of combined schools and the amendment of the definition “secondary schools”. In addition the Bill provides for the constitution of the governing bodies of State-aided farm schools. Most important of all is that this Bill grants the hon the Minister the authority to erect buildings for State-aided schools on farms and to maintain these buildings. Certain practices, or malpractices, which have occurred among farm owners, viz the use of our schoolchildren as farm labourers—as one of the committee members said, this is cheap labour or slave labour—will also be stopped.

In my opinion there is only one big problem with this whole amending Bill. In terms of the Republic of South Africa Constitution Act, Black education is an own affair. If Black education is an own affair, why was clause 11 (b) inserted, to the effect that a farm owner, who is not the parent or guardian of a Black pupil, can be appointed to the governing body of this school? Is the farm owner not liberally compensated for the piece of land on which the school stands? I ask once again whether Black education is not an own affair. If it is an own affair, why has this clause been inserted into the amending Bill?

I want to congratulate the hon the Minister and his department this afternoon on the wonderful reform that has quietly taken place in the educational system of his department. I want to tell the uninformed world at large that I had the privilege of going on an educational tour during the past recess. During that tour I saw things which the outside world does not know about. I merely find it strange that the department does not use its propaganda machinery to tell the world about the reform programme and the changes that have taken place in Black education.

If I am to judge by what I saw, and compare that with what takes place in the other departments, I believe the days of the inferior Black educational system which we heard about in earlier days, because it was made known far and wide and among our people, is a thing of the past. We must broadcast these things and tell the world that these are the changes that are taking place. We must show the world that we are honest in the course of reform we are taking. We must say: This is what we have achieved thus far; this is where we are going; this is the way. The world must see the ultimate goal. The world must know where we are heading.

The LP of South Africa has one purpose in mind. The LP’s educational programme is aimed at one unitary system of education with one Minister.

If one educational system were to be instituted in South Africa tomorrow, the LP would go out of its way to recommend a man like this hon Minister as Minister of Education. After seeing everything that has happened, I shall go out of my way to make hon members of my party understand that in this hon Minister we have someone who can be responsible for South Africa’s educational system in the future, because he has not been afraid to effect reform in his department.

Why must this be done in silence, however? Why must we keep quiet about the good things that are happening in this country? Why must we keep quiet about the things that can be said abroad to the advantage of our country? If we educate all the people of this country, we shall be uplifting and training the people so that they can fit into the modern world outside. I want to say today that the people must be given opportunities—and by the people I mean everyone, irrespective of race, colour, culture or whatever. They must receive equal education and equal opportunities. South Africa needs today’s young people for its development. We are living in a world which is antagonistic towards us and which is cutting off our lifeblood. The time will come when we in South Africa will have to be completely self-sufficient. We need every young man and young girl in South Africa to achieve that. They will have to be educated, however, in order to take their place. Then South Africa will be able to tell the world that if they want to cut themselves off from us, we shall be able to act independently because we are self-sufficient. [Interjections.] Our people must receive technical training and must be equipped so that they can accept the challenge that is facing them. Education is the most important activity in any country.

Order! I have permitted the hon member to discuss education in general, but he must come back to this specific Bill now.

Mr Chairman, I accept your ruling. With those few words I should like to support this Bill, and I strongly recommend that this House pass it.

Mr Chairman, …

What, you too!

Order! I want to point out to the hon member for Haarlem that any hon member has a democratic right to ask for a turn to speak so that he may state his case. The hon member for Ottery may proceed.

I rise to speak in support of this Bill, the Education Laws (Education and Training) Amendment Bill, because I believe that support for and acceptance of this Bill will indeed be a step forward in the development of Black education in South Africa.

The standing committee sat for many hours trying to reach consensus on this Bill. It was quite amazing that many people felt that we would only sit for a few hours and then walk out in unanimous agreement. [Interjections.]

In South Africa today equal education for all is the desire of every South African irrespective of race, colour or creed, but especially of Black South Africans. After listening for several hours to various officials of the Department of Education and Training, in particular its Director-General, Dr Meiring, I made a statement in the standing committee which I am going to repeat here today.

We realize that for many years the standard of Black education in South Africa has in many respects not been the same as that maintained in the case of the so-called Coloureds, Indians and Whites. The slogans are found on our walls. Our fight for equal education will continue as we are striving for one equal education system under one ministry for all South African school-going children. I believe that for many years the Government has failed to provide the same kind of education given to White South African schoolchildren to school-going children of all colours. However, under this hon Minister the Department of Education and Training has now reached that point in our history on the road of reform at which the State has at last realised that we need to address the problems in Black education. I believe that by supporting amending Bills like this one we are moving in the right direction in order to provide the type of education which we would like all South Africans, especially Black South Africans, to enjoy in this country if we are to achieve equality.

Equal education for all is no longer just a slogan.

Order! I have allowed the hon member a lot of scope and he must now please speak on the different clauses of this amending legislation.

He is singing praises.

Mr Chairman, I am not singing praises.

Order! The hon member must please confine himself to the Bill under discussion.

I support the Bill in toto, Sir.

In closing I want to say to the hon the Minister that I hope that some of the more than 5 000 schools in the rural areas, which remain under the control of farmers in such communities, will be taken over by the State as soon as possible. We would also like to wish him luck in the future progress of the reform process of bringing about equal education for all our pupils.

Mr Chairman, first of all I should like to crave your indulgence for a moment in respect of a matter which is perhaps not directly relevant to the principles of this Bill. However, I cannot let this occasion pass without referring to a friend of ours who is no longer with us, namely the former member for Natal MidEast, Mr Lewis. He was always an outstanding speaker in educational debates. He was a beautiful example of an educationalist who devoted his life to the progress of our country and the advancement of our children. He was someone who, as an elderly statesman, contributed to the standard and the quality of the debates on education in this House.

*I should also like to thank hon members for the various complimentary remarks they made today. The hon members for Esselen Park and Ottery referred to the contribution made by Dr Meiring as Deputy Director-General and spokesman of the department in the standing committee. I should like to tell hon members that one of the things that inspires me in my position as political head of the Department of Education and Training was the dedicated and expert people of quality we have in the various top posts. They are people who give everything, often under difficult and sometimes dangerous circumstances, in the interests of and for the development of better education. They are striving for more opportunities for the Black communities that will be served by this education. That is why I want to take hon members’ compliment to Dr Meiring in the broader sense that I have just mentioned.

In my opinion the hon member for Southern Free State made an important point. He complimented the department—I think the hon member for Ottery did so too—on the new initiative of equal opportunities for everyone in South Africa, without any racial differentiation, that has been taken in educational reform. Then the hon member for Southern Free State mentioned an important thing. He said we were doing the right thing, if I may interpret his words in that way, but we are not selling it well enough. He asked why the department’s activities and the progress that was being made were not made known properly. He said we should indicate this worldwide. He rightly said that we should show the world that the stories about inferiority, as he called it, are a thing of the past. I should like to tell hon members that the department has a special section which is giving a great deal of attention to introducing these reforms to the world. I must also tell hon members, however, that the moment certain newspapers see that one is trying to tell them something positive, something favourable, they simply lose interest. Either they do not report the information at all, or they hide it away in a tiny column. I think hon members of this House have experienced that with certain newspapers as well. Even if that is the case, I should like to invite the hon members of this House and in particular the hon members who serve on the expert committee of their caucus on education, to draw on their experience in order to advise me, the hon the Deputy Minister of Education and my department. Hon members have very good contacts in many respects, contacts which I do not have at all. They can therefore give us good advice derived from their experience on how best to make the department’s positive results known. I am suggesting that discussions between the relevant caucus groups and the hon the Deputy Minister of Education and me could be very useful, and I invite hon members to consider the matter.

This brings me to hon members’ specific contributions. The comments made by the hon member for Esselen Park with regard to my colleague, the hon the Minister of Education and Culture in the House of Assembly, are not relevant here. It is not for me to reply to what he said. I know, however, that the hon the Minister of Education and Culture in the House of Assembly also contributed to a serious and drastic change in the relative allocation of finance for education in this country in which non-White population groups in particular, who have the greatest backlogs in their education, viz the group represented in this House, but especially the Black groups, are going to get a much bigger piece of the cake than was the case in the past. This money will be available in the new budget. I want to say to the credit of that hon Minister that he sometimes incurs serious political criticism in his own constituency and his own community as a result of the part he is playing to effect a more favourable distribution in respect of education in the interests of all South Africans. I shall confine myself to that.

Order! Is the hon the Minister referring to the hon the Minister of National Education?

No, Sir. I was referring to the hon the Minister of Education and Culture in the House of Assembly, Mr Piet Clase. I wanted to make those comments although they may not be relevant here.

†Mr Chairman, the hon member for Esselen Park referred to the question of the nomenclature of the head of a university, viz that in English he will no longer be called a rector but a principal. Being a former principal of a university, I cannot help but remark that one of the objections to the name “rector” is apparently that it sounds too much like the head of a congregation, for instance “rector of the congregation”. It seems that former colleagues of mine who are heads of universities do not consider themselves religious enough to use this term. They prefer the alternative of “principal”.

*The hon member also referred to the extremely important definition of “parent” contained in the Bill. I should like to point out to members that because there are such exceptional circumstances, especially in the urbanisation process of Black families, one cannot have a simple definition such as “the person who is the parent of this child is the normal legal parent”. After making a thorough study and receiving inputs from the standing committee, we divided the definition of “parent” into four parts.

In the first place a parent is the person who has custody of that child in law or by virtue of a court order. That is the first possibility. The second possibility is a guardian who is the guardian of that child in terms of the law. The third possibility is found in the case of the absence of a parent or guardian, in other words, if the parent or guardian is not easily available. In that case the person with whom the child resides and to whom the parent or guardian has entrusted in writing the custody or control of such child, is regarded as the parent. In town schools for Black children in particular, there are many children whose parents are far away, who have entrusted their children to the care of an uncle or aunt. In the fourth place, if the child has no parent or legal guardian, the parent is the person with whom the child resides and who has the actual custody or control of such child. Hon members can see that we have made a very broad definition so that each child in the school will have someone who can be identified as his parent and who can have a share in the community involvement in the management of that school. I am very pleased that the hon member pointed this out, and I should like to emphasise the point.

The next point broached by the three hon members who supported the amending Bill concern the provisions in the Bill which will make it a punishable offence to use a school-going child for farm labour during school hours. In addition it is punishable to stipulate as a condition for admission to a school that children must work on the farm. Consequently no condition in connection with labour may be laid down on admission to a school. Normally the legislature makes laws to prohibit things only when they start becoming a serious offence or when matters get out of hand. The opposite is true here and I have the greatest confidence in saying that it is not general practice for farm owners to misuse school children in respect of farm labour. Two cases were brought to our attention last year, and we made a note of them. With reference to the enquiry instituted into rural and farm education by the special task group, we decided it was necessary for Parliament to tell the public, so that everyone—farm owner and labourer—could know, that South Africa’s legislature does not accept either the misuse of school children for farm labour or the stipulation of farm labour as a condition for admission to these schools. I want to make it clear, therefore, that the provision was not inserted because there is a fundamental problem in this sphere, but because we want everyone to know exactly where they stand in respect of the Government and Parliament.

Hon members also requested an explanation of the position in connection with the building of farm schools. Thus far farm owners have built farm schools on their land at their own expense in almost all cases. Part of this expenditure can be repaid to the farmer later by means of a subsidy. Provision is now being made, however, if the landowner does not want to build the school himself, for the Government to be empowered to build the school using State money, in which case there must be a long-term lease as determined in the provisions. The Minister can also lay down other conditions so that it will not be possible—as an hon member said earlier—for landowners to say, after the death of a previous landowner, that they want nothing more to do with the school. The long-term lease will not expire if the farm changes hands.

The third possibility—this is the preferable possibility—is to get right of ownership on a piece of the land, so that it can become a Government school.

As regards the parents’ say in the committee, if a school is a Government school, it automatically has a school committee as things stand at present. The parents are entitled to elect their school committee with their representatives serving on it. In cases in which the school is the property of the farmer, however—it is his school and he controls it—the parents had no say in the past. In terms of this amending Bill, the parents will have a say in future—this is set out in the Bill—in cases in which the schools are not Government schools, and where the Government contributes only part of the cost.

The hon member for Southern Free State said he felt that the owner was already being richly rewarded and that therefore he should not be a member of the controlling committee. That is why I tried to explain this point. If it is a Government school, the owner has nothing to do with it, because the school belongs to the State. In the past the owner had full control if he himself had built the school and had received a subsidy on only part of the costs. The parents are now being given a say in that they can appoint their representatives so that they can sort out matters together. This was discussed thoroughly in the standing committee. I think it is a good thing that the farm owner and the parents’ representatives, the workers’ community, will learn to do what is best for the school and the community in negotiation with one another. We must remember, Sir, that it is in the interests of that farmer to have good relations with his workers and to promote their well-being. One aspect of this is that the children of those workers must be happy and successful at school.

I want to raise another point. That school must not be there only for the teaching of the children; it should become a community centre. It should be a place, for example, where the clinic sister does her rounds on a Saturday morning, where church services are held and where sports facilities are developed, so that the whole community can take part in the activities over weekends. To an increasing degree it should also be a place where courses can be offered to the parents, parents who may be illiterate. They should be able to go there in the evenings and over weekends to take literacy courses and to learn other things that are important to them. We do not see this kind of school as a school only for children, therefore, but as a meeting point for the whole community. I want to give hon members the assurance that we should like to develop the schools in this sense.

†I think this remark also deals with the concluding request which the hon member for Ottery made. He suggested that the State should take over farm schools. I think I have now explained that we have these three phases in mind. We have no objection to taking them over but we have to move, within the constraints of available finances, from the present situation where we only have owner-built schools, to a situation where the State will be fully responsible for these schools.

* With these comments, Sir, I should like to thank hon members sincerely for their support. I also want to thank the members of the standing committee for the contribution they made in promoting this Bill in the committee.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Mr Chairman, I move:

Agreed to.

Mr Chairman, I rise on a point of order: On 23 February 1988 the word “stink” was attributed to the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council. It appeared in the unrevised version of Hansard, which I have before me. He said: “If I got a statement from them you would stink.” He subsequently made a statement, when asked by you, explaining the word as if he did not use it in this context. I would like a ruling on this.

Order! The hon member for Stanger drew my attention to this in my chambers and brought me a copy of that Hansard. I informed him in my chambers that the matter would receive my attention. I would like to inform him again that the matter is still receiving my attention.

Mr Chairman, I move:

Mr Chairman, many of us who stood for election faced great odds, criticism and of course pressure, especially from the extra-parliamentary forces. We did concede that the new dispensation was not acceptable, but nonetheless we decided to participate. Both the extra-parliamentary forces and we have a similar goal, but to achieve it we are using different means.

The results of the Tongaat election in November last year proved that the people have faith and confidence in the House of Delegates. They have placed this faith in us for one reason only, namely the question of survival. I believe survival for our people means today and now. What are the basic requirements of survival? They are good education, good welfare and health services, good job opportunities, and above all, good housing. My motion deals with this matter today.

We made promises to the public and the community but unfortunately it seems as though we are deceiving the people because we are unable to deliver the goods. The hon the Minister of Housing did mention that he had funds available but unfortunately there are other prevailing problems that prevent us from delivering the goods. I think every area and constituency will agree with me that there are waiting lists for housing that run into thousands of names. This is not only applicable to the Indian community but also to the other non-White groups, namely the Blacks and the Coloureds. Obviously I cannot say the same for the Whites because their situation is different. As far as the Whites are concerned, there is a surplus of housing and flats standing empty. When our people want to take advantage of this situation and move into the flats the Group Areas Act rears its ugly head again and our people are subjected to a great number of problems.

Why do we have this shortage of houses? The Indian community has always played its part and sacrificed its land. The land around Chatsworth was used for Indian housing, as was the land around Phoenix. The Indian community did not only sacrifice land for its own housing, but also for the other race groups. Sherwood was taken over for the Whites, Durban North was taken over for the Whites, Park Estates for taken over for the Coloureds and of course the Inanda area was taken over for the Blacks recently.

There are certain municipalities or local authorities who are not willing to assist in siting land that is suitable for Indian housing. Let us look at some of the land that has been allocated for Indian housing. In Ladysmith for example people were settled in flood plain areas. Only because some Whites were affected by the recent floods there seems to be a certain interest in the area. Another example is the recent housing project in the Newcastle area, known as the Fernwood scheme. I believe this area was at one time a river bed. They diverted the river but I believe that the new banks will probably give in one day and then the area will be flooded. Last year I had the occasion to visit the Verulam area with the hon the Minister of Housing during the floods and we saw that houses had been erected almost on the river bank.

Tongaat—the area that I represent—is no exception. Land belonging to the Indian community has been taken away for years without being replaced by agricultural land. Last year the Greylands issue came about and I believe we need to explain why there was a delay in the housing scheme in Tongaat.

I believe the House of Delegates passed a budget of R17 million or R22 million for a housing project in Tongaat. Unfortunately the local authority sited land that belonged to some 32 Indian farmers and that had about 300 to 400 people living there. The farmers were not consulted in the matter and were obviously upset when it happened. It is unfortunate that this took place during the election time and it became a fiasco in the election. We did not want to bring it up but I think the hon the Minister should be thanked for stopping the project because it would have upset a great number of people.

People who remember the Tongaat area well will recollect that housing …

You are not speaking on your motion. [Interjections.]

Land that was taken away from …[Interjections.]

Order!

Mr Chairman, the housing project in Tongaat has not been on the market for the last couple of years. This is attributed to the local authority which has not seen fit to identify land which belongs to the White Group in Tongaat.

In Tongaat we have land which is very close to the hub of activity in the Tongaat area. That land is opposite the main street in Tongaat.

Order!

Mr Chairman, is the hon member prepared to take a question? [Interjections.]

Order!

Mr Chairman, if he is prepared to listen to a junior member I shall reply to the question.

Mr Chairman, I am not certain that I want to listen to a junior member, because he is acting like a wild horse. [Interjections.]

Order! I should like to call the attention of all hon members to the fact that whilst the words “junior members” and “juvenile members” may be used, certain members take exception when these words are used continually. It depends on the context in which they are used and the mood in which the House is at certain times. Therefore presiding officers will sometimes call upon hon members not to use certain words whilst at other times they will let it pass.

Certain members may be junior in the sense that they are newcomers to Parliament, but after 20 to 25 years those junior members will be sitting here in these benches while we may be somewhere else, long gone.

I therefore appeal to hon members: Let us please give that respect which is due to our hon members who have just come in. Maybe they are junior in age, but we appreciate it that they are here. They also sometimes have their wives or their children sitting in here and all of them do not understand the term “junior member”.

Sometimes we use the term “juvenile member”. We know the term “juvenile delinquent” is different to a junior delinquent. I need the cooperation of hon members in this respect.

The hon member for Camperdown may continue.

Mr Chairman, I should like the hon member for Tongaat to tell us this afternoon precisely how many thousand houses there are in Tongaat and its environs and what is the number of houses that is needed there.

Order!

Mr Chairman, I just want to remind you that the hon member for Camperdown made a statement in which he said that the hon member for Tongaat was a wild animal.

Order! Is that a point of order? If so, what is the hon the Minister saying?

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: The hon member for Camperdown said “wild horses” and that is unfair.

Order! Did the hon member for Camperdown make such a statement?

Yes!

Order! We do not need the other hon members to shout out yes or no. The presiding officer is asking the hon member for Camperdown to answer that. Let us now give him the opportunity to answer this point of order which has been raised.

Mr Chairman, my statement was that the mover of this motion was running away like a wild horse without reins.

Mr Chairman, I think the question put by the hon member for Camperdown is irrelevant because I am talking in general and not only on Tongaat. [Interjections.]

Tongaat has a housing waiting list of 4 000 people. At the moment I am not able to supply the exact number of homes there.

However, we also have a unique position in Tongaat in that years ago the State did not provide homes for the employees of the Tongaat Group.

This issue is very relevant and I think it should be discussed here because I believe the Tongaat Group owns the largest mill in the southern hemisphere. It employs thousands of people and provides housing on a temporary basis, although the people might have lived there for 30 or 40 years. If they die, if they have to retire, or for some reason they are retrenched, they are given three months’ notice to move.

As I mentioned earlier, the Tongaat Town Board has a waiting list of 4 000. Of the 4 000, some 2 000 people—I would say 50% of the people—

What about business sites? That also happens.

I am talking about housing.

Oh, I see.

I have had a number of the Tongaat Group employees come to see me with regard to the housing problem. Right now over 20 people have been given notice to move out because they have been retrenched. I think it is sad in that the Tongaat Town Board has not deemed it necessary at this stage to negotiate with the Tongaat Group in order to purchase those homes, because the Tongaat Group is no longer building homes. Thousands of these homes have been constructed in Tongaat and in the surrounding area. Those people that have served the Tongaat Group for years have been used. They have worked hard for the group and at the time of their retirement they are left homeless. What is happening is that people applied to the Tongaat Town Board for homes, and these homes were not allocated to them. I noticed last year that some 20 homes were demolished by the Tongaat Group on the pretext that they were derelict. However, I believe they are trying to phase out these housing schemes. I am of the firm opinion that the hon the Minister of Housing should now be given the powers to look for suitable land in all the municipalities throughout South Africa, and to call upon the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning to take up this matter with any municipality refusing to part with land. The hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning did say he would act as an honest broker in a market issue. I believe that with his help we shall be able to persuade him to act as a good horse trader in the case of unwilling or difficult municipalities.

I do not want to be a racialist. I am not a racialist. It is simply a matter of economics. A great deal of our Indian land has been taken away from us. We are deprived of homes as well. We are homeless, whereas there is a great deal of land belonging to the Whites and the White municipalities. I think it is about time we decided to look to these areas for our housing needs.

I would like to make one statement. Ever since I came into this House there have been several attacks and counterattacks among our hon members. A great deal of time has been wasted when it could have been used for doing good work for the community we serve. I want to make an appeal here. This is own affairs I am referring to. We have our own hon Ministers in different areas and if we put our heads together and assist our hon Ministers—even members of the Opposition—we could try to bring some credibility to this House rather than have criticism levelled at us at all times, and work side by side to change unjust laws. Then perhaps, in the not too distant future, we will all be able to stand up and say proudly, without any hesitation, that South Africa is our land, our love and our life.

Mr Chairman, I want to be a little kind to the last speaker. I am constrained, though, but I shall try to be kind to him. However, I am afraid that I, from this side of the House, cannot support the motion we have before us. I propose an amendment to the motion, and I shall motivate the amendment. I move:

Before I come to the motion I want to make some reference to the final comments made by the hon member for Tongaat.

This motion has nothing to do with the need for more land. That aspect has been canvassed and debated in this House, and I think we are in agreement that we need more land for the Indian community insofar as housing needs are concerned.

As far as the statement that we in this House are wasting time is concerned, I think that this motion in itself is wasting our time. [Interjections.] It is obvious from the hon member’s comments that they do not understand what we are talking about, and that is why time is being wasted.

I wish to remind this House that not so long ago we passed the Housing Development Bill which became the Housing Development Act (House of Delegates). What was the object of passing that particular Act? It was to depoliticise housing; to make it apolitical. What this motion attempts to do is to politicise housing once again.

If one looks at the debates and the contents of the speeches by everybody in this House it is clear that we wanted an independent body, a Housing Development Board, to evaluate the needs and take decisions.

I do not mean it in a derogatory sense, but I think that the hon member is a new member in this House, and probably he does not understand what happened before this. I do not call him “juvenile” or “junior”; I do not wish to offend him. I do say, however, that he does not understand the provisions of the Act that was passed in this House. I believe that had he been aware of the provisions of the Act, he would perhaps have had second thoughts about moving a motion such as is printed in his name on the Order Paper.

Insofar as recalcitrant local authorities are concerned, if one goes back even to the Community Development Act or the Housing Act, one will find that provision is made in these Acts that if local authorities do not carry out what they ought to carry out, the Minister can take certain action, and that the Housing Development Act passed by this House has also retained that aspect of the provisions of these Acts. I have here for the benefit of the hon member for Tongaat and others so that in future we do not waste time, section 40(1) of the Housing Development Act (House of Delegates), Act No 4 of 1987:

I wish to emphasise the following subsection, subsection (2):

Subsection (3) reads as follows:

It is clear that there are remedies built into the Act. The hon member states that Ladysmith and other local authorities are having problems. The question I should like to ask is why this section of the Act has not been invoked against these recalcitrant local authorities. We do not need a motion in this House to come and tell the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council how he should do his work. Obviously his administration should know exactly how to deal with that situation, and he should have acted in the best interests of the community.

I also have here an example in this regard. Howick was a problematical local authority in this regard.

It is also true that the former hon Minister of Housing acted in that regard. In fact he pressurised the Housing Board into taking over this responsibility of building houses in the area. In other words, it could be done.

I do not wish to go into detail about another aspect which the hon member raised. Although I do not think it to be pertinent to the motion in question, we need to set the record straight. Insofar as the Tongaat issue and the utilization of agricultural land for housing is concerned, I wish to ask the hon member if he at any time raised an objection when the Greylands area was initially identified as an area for housing. Did he state that that area should not be utilized for housing and that there were other White-owned properties which were more suitable for housing? [Interjections.] Yes, he used it as an election gimmick, but I would like to know about when the actual decision was taken. When the hon the Minister of Housing stood on that particular piece of ground in Greylands and it was reported in the Press that millions of rands would be spent on housing, did the hon member for Tongaat object at that stage? No objections were lodged at that stage.

Mr Chairman, is the hon the Acting Leader of the Official Opposition prepared to take a question?

Mr Chairman, I am not prepared to take any questions.

You know that you are talking nonsense!

Mr Chairman, the hon the Minister of Housing has no tolerance in him. He will in no way allow anyone to make a point in this House, unless it is his point and everyone accepts it as such.

I do not wish to go into great detail, because that is not related to the motion before us. When we deal with these local authorities we should not allow housing to become politicised. We should allow the Housing Board, which is supposed to be an independent body, to take responsibility and invoke the provisions of the existing legislation. If that should fail, then we should be asked to support something of this nature. This has, however, not been tried and we have no evidence of it, because I listened to the hon member for Tongaat’s motivation for his case. There was no evidence whatsoever of this. With respect I say that he does not know the provisions of the Act. I recommend strongly for him to examine the provisions of the Act and to ask his party for a workshop on that issue, so that the other hon members may also be enlightened and may stop jeering and interjecting. [Interjections.]

I would like to state again, that this House should resist the politicising of the housing issue. Such powers should not be transferred to the hon the Minister, because it could only lead to further allegations of corruption.

Mr Chairman, there is one point for which I have to give the hon the Acting Leader of the Official Opposition credit. He is undoubtedly a knowledgeable person as far as housing is concerned, but I think he has only played around with words in his amendment. If I heard him correctly, he wishes the unwilling local authorities or municipalities which cannot provide housing, to be interceded with by the hon the Minister of Housing to provide that housing.

The board. I asked for the board to do that.

Whatever—whether it is the Minister or the board. The motion moved by the hon member for Tongaat is, in fact, basically similar. It is just a question of playing with words. I wish to support the motion as moved and as indicated on the Order Paper, because the House is indeed deeply concerned about these unable or unwilling municipalities.

There is an unwillingness in many instances. I have suffered as a result of this unwillingness, but I do not want to point a finger at anyone. The important thing is that housing must be provided for the needy people. That is the important thing. The question of how it is done and by whom it is done is not as important as the provision of housing itself. This is of paramount importance.

I just want to cite one case, which goes back to 1984, in support of this motion. I want to show how one local authority—be it a board or a municipality—has delayed the provision of housing since 1984, and in this regard I want to make specific reference to Winterton. I have here a letter dated July 1984 which was addressed to me by the Health Committee. In this letter they say the following:

The map is attached to the letter. They go on to say the following:

Here we come to another problem. The Development and Services Board must also be mentioned and, to a certain extent, indicted for the delay that is taking place in regard to the provision of housing. This does not only affect Winterton. Winterton falls within my constituency and I may be charged with only looking after my own constituency and not looking outside my constituency. I might mention Chaka’s Kraal as an example of an area under the control and jurisdiction of the Development and Services Board. There, too, there have been inexplicable delays and housing has not been provided.

What about Pietermaritzburg?

Pietermaritzburg falls under the local authority. I think the problem in Pietermaritzburg was due more to the availability of land, than an unwillingness on the part of the local authority. That situation will, I am sure, be remedied in the not too distant future.

Coming back to Winterton, I have been attempting to get the ball rolling as far as housing is concerned since 1984. In November 1985 I made a written appeal to the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council. I am not saying this by way of criticism, but merely to place on record that all attempts proved fruitless. A letter was even written to the Department of Local Government, Housing and Agriculture under the control of the former Minister, and when that failed I had to approach the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council.

To this day nothing has unfortunately been done in Winterton and for that reason I say that the Administration: House of Delegates will have to provide the infrastructure and the qualified personnel, which we do not have in sufficient numbers at the moment, in order to undertake housing on a grand scale throughout the country. The numbers of the personnel under the control of the Administration: House of Delegates are limited and it really is not possible to put this motion into operation throughout the country. It can, however, be done on a limited scale.

I want to come back to Ladysmith because the housing problem there has really been aggravated by the recent floods. I want to repeat what I said during a previous debate, namely that whilst approval for 60 houses was granted by the Housing Board in June 1987—we had serviced sites—and whereas an appeal was made by me and supported by the Local Affairs Committee, this appeal did not meet with approval. I have here a letter from the members of the Local Affairs Committee. All seven of them have signed this. They in fact said that they supported the idea that the provision of housing for Indians should be done departmentally.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the line something happened and we now have the situation that poor people are still having to occupy houses which are totally uninhabitable. For that reason I say that regardless of who will provide housing, whether it will be the local authorities, the development and services boards or the House of Delegates, for the sake of the homeless people in this country, we, collectively, must forget about personalities and scoring points, and see to it that the much-needed provision of housing goes apace.

Just to depart somewhat …

Do not depart yet.

Well, we will have to depart some day: If it is not today, it might be tomorrow. For the benefit of my colleague, the hon member for Reservoir Hills, the departure date is unknown to us mortal beings. It is controlled by somebody who has power to control our destinies. That is the departure that I worry about. The departure to which the hon member probably refers does not concern me. That is a matter of no consequence.

Coming back to the motion, I just want to digress a little. Not only must we provide housing, but I believe the identification of land must also be done in such a manner that we will not have the type of land I have to deal with in my constituency. In Greytown we received 92 houses and some houses were also built in Estcourt, which is popularly known as Dustville. The gradient of the lots where these houses were built, is in my opinion absolutely unacceptable for housing purposes. Yet local authorities have in fact identified these lots. My concern is that as long as we are in control of housing we must see to it that this type of imposition is not placed upon our people.

Recently a lot was identified in Estcourt, right in the middle of a valley, a natural water course. The Borough Engineer said to me that this land is suitable and he will be able to build houses there and provide stormwater drains. However, higher up, where Dustville is, they could not provide adequate cut-off drains to prevent stormwater coming down and flooding one row of houses after another. Recently we have seen cases of water coming in through the front door and going out through the back door. This is of importance. Land that is identified must be suitable. In the event of land being unobtainable, if there is a scarcity of land, adequate planning for sufficient and proper stormwater control must be made in the initial stage.

Fortunately this will not happen right away, but I know of a scheme in the North Coast area which is of concern. I will not identify it now, but I want to say that whoever approved the houses being built there did in fact not do our community a favour. These houses are a row of barracks. The houses consist of one big hall, with a corner partitioned off for a toilet. It has a front door and a back door. Some years ago houses were also built by the Department of Community Development with just a front door and a back door.

I made the comment then that the process of removing internal doors from houses provided to our people will turn these houses into stables. Such a house has a front door, a back door and a corner partitioned off for a toilet. There are no partitions for the bedrooms, kitchen, dining room or living room. If this is handed over to the people it will result in slum conditions. However, hopefully something will be done before the scheme is completed. This is an inherited problem and not one of the Administration: House of Delegates. It was planned prior to the establishment of the House of Delegates but it is now being finalised.

I believe the motion that the Minister of Housing of the Ministers’ Council of the Administration: House of Delegates must ensure that housing projects are undertaken by the Administration: House of Delegates merits support. At the same time, however, we do not have the infrastructure to do this countrywide but I believe it is necessary where we do have the municipalities. Take Ladysmith for example. I have no doubt in my mind that if Ladysmith had applied for funds just after June last year when the Housing Board had approved of these houses many of the persons who had to suffer the flood would have been housed. However, they unfortunately refused to do it and even at the present moment the application still has not been processed.

I want to make a suggestion and it is something that should be considered in future. I believe that the servicing of land should also be undertaken by the Administration: House of Delegates when it is found that the local authorities are not undertaking the servicing of land. I believe a pilot project should be undertaken where we have our own professional people designing the services and where we will ask suitably qualified people to deliver the services. It might be possible to save money and to obtain a better standard of services but I am also mindful of the fact that it might fall foul of the programme of privatisation that is taking place at the moment. However, I do believe that it will have some merit if the planning and the supervision of services are undertaken departmentally. The contractors will then work under the supervision of the House of Delegates.

The reason why I suggest that the planning should be done departmentally is because we have had instances where we were let down by professional engineers in the recent past. We do not receive the services that are due to us. Professional consulting engineers are employed to supervise the installation and provision of roads, sewage, water and electricity. These private engineers are paid according to a tariff but in many cases the end result is not satisfactory.

If the hon the Minister can consider a project…

Which Minister?

The hon the Minister of Housing. If the hon the Minister can consider a project where the planning is done by the department and we then call for contractors to undertake the servicing of land under the supervision of our own officials, I believe we will find that we will save costs and at the same time obtain a better quality of service. With that I say that the motion has merit and I support it.

Mr Chairman, I should like to support the concluding sentiments of the hon the Minister for Local Government and Agriculture when he says that the motion has merit. The motion does indeed have merit. It highlights a number of points which ought reasonably to engage the attention of the hon House.

I am not going to waste too much time on the hon member for Tongaat’s references to the elections in Tongaat. That is an unhappy state of affairs which has existed there. As a matter of fact I have asked the SAP in Tongaat to bring charges of perjury against a certain individual. That, I have reason to believe, may well result in other charges of attempting to obstruct the course of justice or of defeating the ends of justice being brought against other people. Steps for certain civil actions have already been instituted against certain people which may well result in other prosecution of civil proceedings against certain other people as well. Authors of defamatory statements are as equally liable as the publishers of those things.

It has been said in the Bible that the lame shall walk, but it is never said that the dead shall rise. These things do happen. That is enough of the Tongaat elections.

The motion itself is a matter of considerable interest not only to those who are served by the House of Delegates. It is also of considerable interest to all people in South Africa when any money is expended on building and housing for any person, whether that person is a so-called Indian in political terms or not.

Now I draw this distinction: Culturally one can say there is an Indian community. In political terms anyone who says that there are Indians in South Africa is talking absolute nonsense, because there are no Indians in South Africa who are entitled to political rights. Even those who were born in India only have political rights if they become South Africans. So let us draw a clear distinction between the two.

The motion says, and I quote:

I underline both those words.

The inability of a local authority would be extremely difficult to prove. It would be as difficult to prove as mala fides when one attacks the administrative act of any particular official. It may be easier to prove “unwilling”, but even that is not that easy to prove. Hon members will recall that when the Housing Development Bill was represented to this House it was the PRP which objected to certain features of the Bill which resulted in the appointment of a Joint Select Committee on which I—and I make no bones about it—played a prominent part as did the hon members for Stanger, Natal South Coast, Central Rand, the hon the Deputy Minister of Local Government who all played crucial roles.

We had long, strenuous, and sometimes heated, but at all times amicable discussions. The chairman of that committee is the hon member for Laudium. We had very amicable discussions and the decisions arrived at were arrived at unanimously after numerous discussions. There was a reason why that Bill was approved in the manner in which it was approved, changed in very many respects from the Bill that was tabled in this House. It was presented because we recognised that notwithstanding that many of us object to the concept of own affairs, the Government of this country has in a certain diabolical manner thrust certain responsibilities and made it impossible for those responsibilities to be fulfilled unless one follows a certain pattern. That pattern led to the passing of that Bill which became an Act of this House. After that Bill was accepted by this House the hon the State President declined to give his assent because that Bill, as passed by this House, incorporated a very valuable provision made on the proposal of the hon the Deputy Minister of Local Government, Housing and Agriculture. He insisted, and the committee agreed unanimously that we should not talk about providing housing only for Indian South Africans; we should talk about providing housing for South Africans, without qualification as to race or colour.

The hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council sent for me one day and he said to me that the hon the State President found it difficult to give his assent as long as that provision remained. In order to get the Natal Housing Development Board constituted, we had no choice but to assent to the necessary changes which suited the hon the State President and unfortunately restricted the functions of the proposed board to providing housing for members of the “Indian community.”

However, we in this House should be careful that we do not wear readily and eagerly the blinkers that were placed on that board because of considerations outside this House; otherwise we shall be falling into a trap and getting into a very dangerous state of affairs.

I opened my remarks by saying that the money for these houses comes generally from the fiscus. A certain amount of money is allocated but everyone contributes to that amount and no one knows exactly what proportion of the R220 million—this figure has been repeated about five times, giving the impression that it is five times R220 million—has been contributed by the so-called Indians, or the so-called Coloureds, or by the Blacks or Whites. Of course, the Whites think they contributed all the money all by themselves—some of them, at any rate, think that. One therefore has to be careful that in trying to provide the basic amenities for people, in this particular case, those that are culturally Indian people, one does not antagonise the other groups. One can have the best houses, the best universities and the best schools, but if one antagonises those that live around one, none of those things will last. They can go within 24 hours. Any one that plays the own affairs game is leading the Indian community into a lemminglike jump over the cliffs of Norway into the fjords. Let no one ever forget that.

Mr Chairman, this is a question just to elicit some information from the hon member for Reservoir Hills. I read the recent Press reports about squatter problems in Reservoir Hills. Does this squatter problem—where they have to be evicted—fall within the constituency of the hon member? Is the squatter problem referred to in the Press recently within the Indian area?

Mr Chairman, there are squatters, not only in Reservoir Hills, but in Clare Estate as well. Perhaps the hon member has no squatter problem, but squatters, whatever their shape, size or colour, are committing the offence of trespass if they squat on private property. If they squat on public property and there is no sanitation, they are committing a health nuisance, a health hazard. Therefore, if anyone says that they do not want squatters in their area, and constituents in Reservoir Hills say that they do not want squatters in their area—constituents in Chatsworth say exactly the same thing, as they do in Phoenix and other areas as well—they do so because they do not want a health hazard. They do not want dysentery, typhoid, typhus, cholera or other diseases of that kind to assume epidemic proportions. That is the reason. It has nothing to do with race. If some stupid idiot wants to give it a racial connotation, the stupidity rests upon the idiot who wants to give it a racial connotation. Nobody in Reservoir Hills or Clare Estate, however, wants to give this a racial connotation. That, I think, is the crux of the matter.

All people need houses, and we know that because of the obnoxious and diabolical system of own affairs, there are certain local authorities that—the hon the Deputy Minister of Local Government, Housing and Agriculture has told me this on several occasions over the last three years and I have no reason not to accept his word for it—have not been playing the game. I refer here to the local authorities of Howick, Greytown, Winterton and others. There are undoubtedly other local authorities as well, interestingly—I have said this before in print and I do not mind repeating it—in the Transvaal which, although they have practised racism, group areas and so on, have been quicker to provide housing for those who did not have it than the local authorities in Natal. We all know that the last bastion of colonialism still maintains a colonialist mentality.

Therefore we must find ways out of this. Why is it that the Housing Development Board can do nothing? Why is it that the hon the Minister of Housing can do nothing? Not even the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council can do anything vis-á-vis certain of the local authorities simply because of the policy of own affairs, because of the policy of the National Government that the National Party’s People seem to follow unashamedly and unabashedly. That policy leaves control of a large number of local authorities entirely in the hands of Whites. Those local authorities have adjuncts called local affairs committees, management committees, or whatever.

Way back in the 1960’s—I think it was 1965—Mr Percy Fowle asked me to become a member of a local affairs committee in Durban. I declined. He replied: “Well, this is merely to give experience to members of your community to work around the horseshoe and see how a municipal authority works.”

Well, Sir, they started these local affairs committees 21 years ago, and it seems—certainly in Natal and in the Transvaal as well, and even in the Cape—that none of the members of these consultative committees and local affairs committees or management committees many of whom have better education, better experience and better, longer participation in local affairs and local authority matters than some of the newcomers to local authorities, have “gained enough experience”. As a matter of fact, I know of one person who became a member of a municipality long after the Durban LAC was formed.

As such he occupies a very senior position in the council. Hence the determinant is race. Who is responsible for the continuation of this disgusting policy? The Nationalist Government which is supported by the National Peoples Party or the National Party’s people. They want to fill the members of the suppressed communities with so much frustration, by being starved of the amenities, that in desperation these people will be forced into taking what is referred to as autonomy. We know what the attitude of the people is towards so-called autonomy. Autonomy really means autonomous local authorities. The policy of the present Government, as formulated by its hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning, is to maintain local authorities on a racially segregated basis, and to try and convert these adjuncts into full-scale racial local authorities.

When I was in the President’s Council a certain Prof Geldenhuys gave evidence. He was supporting this notion of separate local authorities for separate race groups and I asked whether he was aware that Benoni consisted of Actonville, Wattville and Benoni proper. At that time I was unaware of the existence of another suburb for Coloured people. I wanted to know from him whether he was suggesting that each of these groups as represented by these areas was to have its separate local authority with its own mayor, town clerk, town engineer, etc. He replied in the affirmative. I then questioned the wastage of public money, upon which he answered that if it were the Government’s policy, it was to be carried out and the money had to be spent. Admittedly that was six or seven years ago and fortunately sense has penetrated a few of their heads. A Minister of the House of Assembly told his Nationalist Party congress that it was a waste of public money to duplicate and triplicate services. At least it is getting through to them.

We have a Minister of Housing to provide for less than a million people. This is laughable. In any other part of the world one would be laughed at if one were to suggest having a Minister of Health Services and Welfare for less than a million people. A simple medical health officer would take care of the health services and the welfare of 10 million people. Here again, we are paying the price of apartheid.

The motion admittedly highlights important facts. The hon member who brought this motion is a junior member and I say this not in a derogatory manner. His motion is good, but he was unfortunately not able to point out the real reason for these difficulties. It is simply the policy of apartheid. I exhort hon members on the other side of the House to say: Down with own affairs.

Mr Chairman, I support the motion introduced by the hon member for Tongaat. The hon members of this House know of the joint effort between the House of Delegates and the various municipalities. In the Transvaal platteland there are various municipalities whose attitude is one of simply ignoring the House of Delegates. They do not want to make land available to the Indian community. At times the local management committee finds it very difficult to deal with certain municipalities because of their verkrampte attitude.

Many hon members in this House have criticised certain municipalities who do not want to resolve their problems in their constituencies and who make use of delaying tactics. When confronted, they blame the House of Delegates for the long delay. I know that the hon the Minister of Housing has inherited this problem. Therefore, I call upon the hon the Minister to use his powers whenever he finds a municipality failing to cooperate with his department. Then the housing project should be undertaken by the House of Delegates. [Interjections.]

I should like to highlight my home town, Germiston, where we experienced a problem with the local municipality. A year ago the hon the Minister met the management committee of the Germiston City Council, together with the Germiston Indian Management Committee, to highlight a few problems. The problem we had there was that of the new rental formula that was introduced by the House of Delegates, as well as the capitalisation of arrear rentals in cases where people occupied new homes and could not meet the rentals. Moreover there was also a problem with the traders who had to be resettled from the old Chetty Bazaar to the new area. The hon the Minister made it quite clear to the Germiston municipality that the new rental formula should be introduced immediately and that all the arrears should be capitalised. To my surprise, however, the municipality adopted a different stance and served people with notices because they had not paid their rentals, even going so far as to attempt to prosecute them. One can see, then, that the municipality is even ignoring our own hon Minister of Housing. [Interjections.] The hon the Minister gave the city council the following instruction:

He also instructed his regional representative to send circulars to each householder, which he did. In spite of all this, some of these municipalities ignored the request of the House of Delegates.

I should like to quote from a document dated 25 February—that was last month. This was written after a meeting we held a year ago. It was addressed to the chairman of the Palm Ridge Management Committee. This is in connection with the traders. I quote as follows:

1. (1) On which sites did each of the traders on the list conduct their respective businesses?
2. (2) What was the area relevant to shops?
3. (3) They must indicate whether they owned the shops or occupied them as a tenant. Which traders on the list must be compensated by the council?

Mr Chairman, they sent a letter, and yet those traders have been living there for the past 60 years. Surely they know which erven they are occupying. These, then, are delaying tactics and I feel that the hon the Minister will have to attend to this matter himself. Therefore, I want to say that I support the motion introduced in this House.

Mr Chairman, the reluctance by certain local authorities to take up the housing issues of their constituents is not something new. I think it is something that goes back a long way; it is an historic fact. It must be remembered, however, that it is imperative for local authorities to provide housing for their residents, for their ratepayers and those who live within the perimeter of that local authority. That is in terms of the Slums Act, 1934. However, many of the local authorities shy away from it.

It has come to my knowledge that most local authorities in the rural areas believe that they will be saddled with the cost when they do not have the funds. There are others that simply do not care.

I think it is necessary for hon members of this House to study the Housing Development Act (House of Delegates), which was promulgated through this House, albeit under own affairs. We decided that in the interest of the needs of the community, we would go along with it. Arising from that Housing Act, which is adopted almost in toto from the Housing Act, Act No 4 of 1966 and portions of the Community Development Act, we created this Housing Act. From this a Housing Board was established to handle the housing requirements of the House of Delegates. The political head is of course the hon the Minister of Housing and we even have a Deputy Minister of Housing. However, it saddens me that the hon the Deputy Minister tells this House: “We shall do this” or “We shall do that”. I believe that, within the power they possess and in the Ministers’ Council, they should address these requirements. Much talk has been going on. Everybody knows that there is much talk, seminars, meetings, and so forth about housing. However, what is important is that we must get down to doing something, we must get on with the job.

We know that local authorities are not easy to deal with. The health committees are not empowered to develop housing. They in turn have to go to the Administrator. Therefore it is necessary that the hon the Minister instructs the Housing Board to attend to areas where health committees do not have the necessary ability, expertise or powers to do things, because they do not fall directly under local authority definition. However, the Development and Services Board does. I must say that the Development and Services Board has done a fine job in many areas.

The problem is no longer one of funds. I am sure the hon the Minister of Housing will agree with this. I think the problem is land, and if not land, it is planning. If planning is lacking, there is a problem with infrastructure. There are various stages. If somebody starts a housing scheme, it takes years before one can build the first house or turn the first key. Delays are very costly. I say, with respect, that provincial authorities are willing to amend certain ordinances to allow the speedy development of housing. Therefore it is important that these utility companies go ahead. However, they are not interested in housing for the very poor section of our community. It is embodied in the constitutions of utility companies that they will not work for profit, but do not make me believe that. They are not charity organisations. They are there to make money. Whichever way they do this is not for me to divulge. We are left with the problem of the very poor in our community and utility companies are not attending to their requirements. Therefore it is important that we get down to this.

I know that some local authorities will have to be dealt with. How are we going to do this if the hon the Minister and the hon the Deputy Minister do not know? They must look at the Housing Board, the Housing Act and if they do not find sufficient power there, they must bring a motion or a Bill here and we will support it, giving them powers …

You will be supporting own affairs.

I did say at the beginning that we do not support own affairs, but because of the need for housing …

[Inaudible.]

Well, we gave the hon the Minister the Housing Act and the Housing Board. Why can we not now give him power to act?

The board has certain powers in terms of its constitution but the Minister is the political head and he is the one who can instruct the board to undertake certain matters. [Interjections.] I do not want to start an argument but the facts are clear in the Bill and in the Housing Development Act (House of Delegates). We must therefore stop talking and get on with the job.

Mr Chairman, I would like to speak in support of the motion. I want to state that I have no problems with the Umzinto North Town Board. The problems that we do have in Umzinto lie with the Development Services Board, the Group Areas Act, the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning and the Administrator of Natal.

On 4 June 1986 I wrote to the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning, pointing out the injustices done to the Indian community in the Umzinto area. I also asked for an extension of the boundaries. On 16 June 1986 I received his reply which I would like to read to the House. I quote as follows:

And you are still waiting for that reply!

No, I received the reply. I have a letter here from the Administrator dated 21 July 1986 and it reads as follows:

I want to quote a paragraph from another letter from the Administrator. It reads as follows:

I think he means the Demarcation Board—

The matter now rests in peace. [Interjections.]

In Umzinto we have 1 500 applicants for housing in the subeconomic and economic categories. I have been approached by many Coloureds as well who want housing and my answer to them is that when we have provided housing for the Indians we will consider their case as well. The sugar company C D Smit is prepared to make available 25,5 hectares for housing but we are bogged down by the Group Areas Act. However, when certain Whites want to sell off land in a White area to Indians because it is monkey land and it costs too much to provide the services, permits are granted on an ad hoc basis. This is most unsuitable.

All we want is for our boundaries to be extended and more land to be made available for housing so that we can do our future planning.

Finally, I just want to read what appeared in the papers yesterday about how far Umzinto North has been going. I quote from the Sunday Tribune of 6 March 1988:

It goes on, but I do not want to bore the House with this. As hon members can see, the whole crux of the matter is the Group Areas Act.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon member if we were to transfer housing to the hon the Minister of Housing as envisaged in the motion, would it ensure that we would get multiracial and nonracial local authorities to solve Umzinto’s problems?

Mr Chairman, finally I believe that we should not worry about changing legislation. Basically what I think all South Africans need to do here is to change their attitudes in order for their to be a better South Africa.

Mr Chairman, in the first place, I must indicate that I feel very much for the hon member for Tongaat for the predicament he has found himself in.

Unfortunately, if I were to analyse the situation I should say he has again been misled into moving this motion because anyone can clearly understand that this is an ill-conceived motion. It is ill-conceived because of the illegitimacy of the case in that we are passing judgment on our grandchild. We happen to be the father of the province, the grandfather of the regional council and the great-grandfather of the local authorities. This is the question and if we analyse the situation of this motion as to whether the father or the grandfather or the great-grandfather should adopt this kind of stance in disciplining a recalcitrant local authority, we find ourselves in a very, very irresponsible and awkward situation.

The awkward situation is that this motion questions the political legitimacy of this House of Delegates. It is a serious indictment. We are now admitting the fact that the local authorities are challenging our legitimacy. They have to do our bidding and if they do not they should be brought to book. I think we should be able to specify. Unfortunately, the hon members of the ruling party who spoke did not come to the issue. They did not dwell on the issue. They did not convince us. They have been so unconvincing when discussing this motion. They skirted around the issue. [Interjections.] I do not want to reply to nonsensical things. I do not want to go over all of those things and waste hon members’ time. For instance, of course, my good friend the hon member for Tongaat dwelt on the deficiency in respect of housing in Tongaat. Much has been said about that by the hon members for Stanger and Reservoir Hills.

Unfortunately, the hon the Deputy Minister of Local Government, Housing and Agriculture mentioned some problems and experiences in Pietermaritzburg, Winterton and Ladysmith. He mentioned chronic issues in Ladysmith. Ladysmith has been a chronic issue, unfortunately, and if that is still an issue—if there is still a problem—whom does one blame? I do not want to point any fingers but it is a very sad situation.

Mr Chairman, since the hon member referred to Ladysmith, will he agree that those two young men who lost their lives while trying to rescue others in the recent floods are heroes to whom recognition should be given by this House?

Undoubtedly, and I think this House should support that to the hilt. I am sure we shall have the co-operation of the local member of Parliament, who is the hon the Deputy Minister.

If a local authority defaults I think we should be able to specify that local authority whether it is Pinetown or Marburg or any other and mention the specific default, giving specific documentation, saying what letters we wrote and what the fault was.

The Housing Development Act (House of Delegates) contains, inter alia, this section 40(2):

I do not want to be negative but I would like to ask whether the Minister has yet been found wanting. Has our hon Minister of Housing yet been found wanting? I can understand that he is overburdened. He is also the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council; he is our Cabinet Minister. He has taken on the onerous task of Minister of Housing. Anyone making a cursory study of the Housing Development Act (House of Delegates), and of the task of the board, would clearly know that if any local authority—Pietermaritzburg, Durban, Johannesburg or Pretoria—has not done its job, the Minister must delegate that task to the board which will have to put things right there. What is the need to discuss this motion here? We are merely saying that we have been ill-treated by the local authority and that places this House in a very invidious position in the mind of any reasonable, intelligent, critical person. I do not think we should ever bring up matters that affect the province by way of a motion because that can be rectified administratively. We should put our own House in order. We have our own problems I think credit should be given where credit is due. The hon nominated member Mr George Thaver in no uncertain terms emphasised the fact that the housing backlog in Durban is still a serious matter, and that is a fact. After five years of the existence of the House of Delegates, to what extent have we reduced the housing backlog? [Interjections.]

The point is that if a local authority has been unable to perform this function, it must be able to give a valid reason. If not, put them on the carpet, if they have been unwilling to do what they should. If they do not give us a valid reason, put them on the carpet! On the other hand, they might have a very good reason. For example, they might be subject to restrictive factors such as the Group Areas Act. Here one cannot blame the local authority. We should blame ourselves in this House for not fighting hard enough. We are protecting those people who have the muscle; we are playing ball with them. There are many issues in regard to which we are playing ball with them, and I think the day of reckoning will come. I want to warn, irrespective of whether one is an hon member of this House or an hon Minister, that every decision has been analysed in London, New York and Tokyo, and we will have to pay the price.

This matter should not come up for discussions here. When we move a motion here it would be nice for both sides of the House to get together and say: “Look here, must this motion appear on our Order Paper?” This should never have appeared on the Order Paper.

There are other aspects in this regard. One of the hon members opposite was talking about building standards. He said that the houses were like stables as far as their doors and fittings were concerned. What perturbed me recently was the standard of the housing project carried out recently in Unit 11 in Chatsworth, which our hon Minister opened about six weeks ago. So many houses are crumbling there. I ask: What for?

Could the hon member let me have details of how many houses crumbled, because I was there on Sunday. All the houses are intact. Not a single one has crumbled.

I shall provide the details in this regard, and I shall go there again. I am not referring to the September floods, but to the recent floods. [Interjections.] I am just wondering about the quality of these houses.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon member a question?

No, Sir, I shall not answer his question.

Some of these contractors are placing very large advertisements… [Interjections.] We want our money’s worth. [Interjections.]

On a point of order, Mr Chairman, the hon member for Cavendish is misleading this House because I was there on Saturday and no houses are crumbling.

Order! That is not a point of order. [Interjections.] Order! Did the hon member for Marianhill say that the hon member for Cavendish was misleading this House?

Yes, Mr Chairman, because there is no …

Order! I am afraid I shall have to ask the hon member to withdraw that statement.

If you so desire, Mr Chairman.

Order! The hon member must withdraw his statement unconditionally.

I withdraw it, Mr Chairman.

Order! The hon member for Cavendish may proceed.

Mr Chairman, to approach this matter plainly and calmly, if a local authority is flouting the authority of this House, it is tantamount to undermining this House. I want to go so far as to say that we shall even anger the House of Assembly and the hon the State President. I want this to go on record, because this is a matter of principle. The principle is that that local authority is questioning the credibility of the 1983 Constitution on which this tricameral Parliament is based. That is not right. There may be a case of default by a local authority but those cases must be handled administratively. [Interjections.]

Order! Is the hon member prepared to take a question from the hon member for Marianhill?

Mr Chairman, I know the quality of his questions and I do not wish to waste time. [Interjections.]

Your mind is crumbling.

We know whose mind is crumbling, and who is going to crumble before long!

He must drop the level again! [Interjections.]

Order! The hon member may continue.

Mr Chairman, some hon members have mentioned the Group Areas Act, difficulties with land and unsuitability of land as well as its boundaries. However, these are not issues for which we should pass a blanket motion in this House to give powers to the Ministers’ Council. What powers do we wish to give the Ministers’ Council? They already have the power. Therefore, let us not beg the question.

Mr Chairman, the previous speaker spoke about skirting the issues. The reality of the situation is, that this Chamber is an own affairs Chamber. We cannot deny that this is an Indian Chamber. We contested Indian elections and now we are here.

South African elections!

Are you an Indian?

I represent an Indian constituency because my constituents are Indians.

You are a South African, my friend.

Mr Chairman, is the hon member aware that an Indian attorney, Wara Tothi, travelled in a train and claimed to the Whites that he is an Indian?

Mr Chairman, it may be possible, but I am not aware of it. The reality is that we are in a Chamber created by apartheid.

Do you support apartheid?

I do not. [Interjections.] This motion before us has a number of merits, but before we deal with them it is necessary to put certain things in true perspective.

The hon member for Reservoir Hills has claimed that the majority party in this House is a partner of the NP and, as such, supports the policies of that party. This is not true. I want to place on record that the National Peoples’ Party’s policy on autonomy is that we are totally opposed to any kind of autonomy because we believe that it is racial segregation.

The motion in question gives a very broad scope and the hon member for Cavendish mentioned that it is the problem of the local authority and the province. However, this motion also states that we should call upon the hon the Minister to exercise certain powers which may not be covered in the Housing Development (House of Delegates) Act. Although there may be housing in a particular area, we can address the issue of the provision of facilities and amenities in that area. This falls under the scope of the hon the Minister of Housing in this House. I am referring in particular to the Lenasia South East. This may be a parochial issue, but it needs to be addressed by this House because it is responsible for that area. This area has no local authority and it falls under the jurisdiction of the Transvaal Provincial Administration and the House of Delegates. As such, we have to address those problems here, be it a parochial issue or not.

Mr Chairman, will the hon member accept the assurance that, when it comes to serving the people—whether it be with housing, health or welfare—nothing is parochial? It is all national.

Mr Chairman, I agree. I have no qualms about that. I am merely highlighting an area from which I come and which at this moment in time has no local authority. If anything needs doing in that area, one has to go to either the Transvaal Provincial Administration or the House of Delegates. This is why this motion affords me the opportunity to address this particular problem. Thirty-eight thousand people reside there and we do not have a single community facility like a civic centre, library, clinic or a single plain sports field. However, we do have a hospital which I would address under the Vote of the hon the Minister for Health Services and Welfare. This motion provides the opportunity to discuss this situation.

If we cannot bring them up here, then there is no other avenue open to us to bring up those issues. Therefore, to say that this motion should never have been introduced here and that it should be dealt with in the Housing Development Act, is not true. With regard to certain aspects, in relation to the proclamation of townships for instance, there is a technicality in the Housing Development Act. [Interjections.] Whereas it was initially thought that this particular Act would give the Minister the authority to proclaim townships, this is not so in terms of the Housing Development Act. There is a technicality and the Minister does not have the power to proclaim a township. That power vests in the State Attorney’s office. Therefore, on issues like that we have to deal with motions of this nature which give us a broad scope. It may be an own affairs motion but the motion before the House also gives us an opportunity to address larger issues.

I think one hon member mentioned the problem of squatters. We have a number of squatters and the Slums Act, Act 53 of 1934 does not adequately address this particular issue. We have squatters in Indian areas. There are some Indian people squatting as well. I am not saying that squatters are confined to one particular group; it is people of colour who squat.

My main concern, however, is the provision of facilities because even if there is housing, if there are no facilities then it does not constitute a stable society. We need services, amenities and facilities in these areas because these are an integral part of a combined and settled society. Until facilities of that nature are provided, that community will not be settled and it will always cry out in need. Therefore, Sir, I have great pleasure in supporting this motion.

Mr Chairman, in brief response to the previous speaker, I want to say that he claimed there was some merit in this motion. I cannot see the merit in this motion. [Interjections.]

Your leader said there was some merit in the motion.

He said there was definitely some merit in this motion.

Well, there you are! [Interjections.]

He also spoke about the broad scope it offers. I do not know what scope it allows.

Coming back to the hon member who moved the motion, he said in his preamble that the new dispensation was not acceptable. Nevertheless, he is participating here. [Interjections.] However, he was not concise. He was not clear. He did not tell us what his reasons were for participating in a system that is unacceptable to him. That leads me to believe that he is not here for the benefit of South Africa at large or for the benefit of his particular community, but perhaps for himself. [Interjections.]

I should like to read out this motion because the hon member who moved it simply stated that he moved the motion printed in his name on the Order Paper. [Interjections.] I should like to analyse this motion word for word. It reads as follows:

I wonder whether the hon member who moved the motion understood it. He did not motivate his motion. Nowhere, either in his preamble or in his presentation, did he motivate it, other than saying something about the Tongaat Town Board. He does not even know exactly how many thousand houses there are in that constituency. He does not know the size of the waiting list involved in resolving the problem of the shortage throughout the country. There is a shortage throughout the country.

Most interestingly, he calls upon the Administration, which itself is inefficient. He calls upon the hon the Minister who is also unwilling to provide houses. I have proof here. I want to read from this letter in support of what I have said. It is written by the Development and Services Board district manager for Inland District. It is addressed to the Regional Director, Department of Local Government, Housing and Agriculture, Administration: House of Delegates. It is dated 25 February 1987. I quote:

It is signed by the district manager, Inland District, Mr Byron. I read the postscript as well, and I quote:

This proves beyond any doubt that the responsibility for housing in that area and that township is that of the hon the Minister of Housing.

Mr Chairman, will the hon member take a question?

Mr Chairman, I have only six minutes left. I do not have time to take questions. I can give the hon the Minister a copy of everything concerning the project.

I furthermore have a letter from the Ministry of Local Government, Housing and Agriculture, dated 24 April 1986. It is addressed to me, and I quote:

1. (i) Community Hall, (ii) Housing, (iii) Allocation of religious site (Dalton)

Reddy was then a Minister.

The letter reads further:

No, it is the principle …

Sir, can I please have the protection of the Chair? I am not in a beerhall or a barroom or a gambling den. I am in Parliament raising certain points. Will hon members please bear with me? They must please open their ears and not their mouths. I continue:

This should really be Barker Sugar Milling Company. I continue:

I continue:

I continue from paragraph 5:

Reasons are given for this. This is an undertaking by a former Minister.

The point is that this motion seeks to transfer housing from one bad system to another, equally bad system. The hon the Minister of Housing is as guilty as any local authority of negligence or unwillingness. In Cool Air. since 1980, 83 fully serviced sites are lying idle. I drew the attention of the previous hon Minister to this and I also tried to …

Speak to the motion!

I am speaking on the motion. The motion calls upon the hon the Minister of Housing to accept responsibility, but that Ministry is also irresponsible. This is what I am trying to prove. That Ministry is also inefficient and negligent.

Eighty three sites are fully serviced but lying idle. [Interjections.] In reaction to the responses here I would certainly want to prove my point but unfortunately my time is up.

The Ministry of Housing is unwilling to build houses there. I do not know what their excuse will be because the fully serviced sites are there and the infrastructure is complete with roads, water and electricity. I think this is a tragedy. Finally I want to say that I support the amendment moved by the hon member for Stanger and I oppose the motion before the House.

Mr Chairman, I need to come into the debate because I think this is another example of what happens in this House from time to time when somebody draws up a motion for another member who then moves it. [Interjections.] The last part of the motion reads as follows:

I think it is very clear that we have repeatedly acknowledged in this House—not only this year but from the time that we first took our seats here—that there are unwilling local authorities that are unable to provide the necessary housing. As the hon member for Southern Natal said here this afternoon the Slums Act, No 53 of 1953 makes it incumbent on a local authority to provide housing for the inhabitants who fall within the area covered by that local authority.

The motion before us today should not debate the question of the House of Delegates undertaking housing projects because it is clear from the housing legislation that we passed here that the Minister of Housing has the authority to take action in this regard. What should be debated is the question of the land requirements in the local authority areas.

There are local authorities who because of political affiliations are not prepared to identify land for Indian or Coloured housing. That is another example of the politics of South Africa. I therefore concur that we are debating the issue of the powers that the hon the Minister of Housing of the Ministers’ Council already has in terms of the Act. The difficulty with this motion is that we are debating a matter that should not even arise because the Housing Development Act (House of Delegates) provides those powers for the Minister of Housing and the Administration.

I want to quote from the Housing Development Act (House of Delegates), section 10 (2) as follows:

1. (a) in respect of movable and immovable property—

There are various ways in which it can achieve the objective of providing housing. I think the debate is centred around the question of a local authority who is unwilling to provide housing. This happened during my time as the Minister of Housing and the hon the Deputy Minister of Local Government, Housing and Agriculture knows that we took it upon ourselves to provide housing in Howick.

I now come to my colleague the hon the Deputy Minister of Local Government, Housing and Agriculture. I think he is a victim of circumstances. It seems as though he is not getting what he wants for the people there. This also happened in my time. One receives instructions to do something in a certain area but not in another.

At some other time I shall be able to defend many hon members in this House and state many of the reasons why I left.

Let me tell you this, Mr Chairman, the problem is that I heard the hon the Deputy Minister in this debate again say that the problems of Ladysmith are such. All I am saying to this House—and everyone is saying this—is that that provision and that authority is there in the Act and all one has to do is to apply to the board if the local authority of Ladysmith does not want to provide housing for Indians. It is plainly and simply all one has to do.

I am not concerned about the issue of a building contractor and so on. I think these are issues which are clouding the real issues and the real problem and what happens is that we start bringing all sorts of other things into this arena. I think we must forget about who has got a building contractor. The issue being debated here is that the local authorities are unwilling, and the other issue is what we have to do about it.

The other issue I heard in this House is that local authorities make decisions which are not carried out. Again I say that the provision which two hon members have read out is there already. All I want to say is that we have to refer to other problems which confront local authorities and possibly not in this motion, because the scope of this motion is restricted in that it is the instance of the housing projects undertaken by the administrator to ensure that. It does not make provision for us to discuss anything else otherwise we could have looked at the Water Act. The Water Act also restricts the local authorities from providing housing in the 50-year floodline.

Now the problems faced by the administration and the hon Minister of Housing is that there are local authorities who have their own engineers providing plans. Now one cannot have one authority policing the other and in many cases one has to accept what the local authority says because there are recognised institutes of engineering and so on where these members are registered. If they say that housing has to be provided in a particular place the hon the Deputy Minister may do what he has done in the past when during my time he ably brought it to our attention and proved that the local authority which was going to provide housing in a particular area had been warned by him that it was an area that was not going to be suitable for housing.

Therefore I think what we have to do is to look at the problems faced by the local authorities. I believe while it is not the intention of the Government to take over the responsibilities of local authorities, the Act does provide that in those instances where they are unable to provide housing or are not doing it as timeously as possible, that action should be taken. I think that is already in the hands of the administration and the Minister concerned. Therefore I believe that there is no new direction which this House can give in this particular motion to the administration and the hon the Minister because he has those powers.

If there were a motion which said that the hon Minister was having difficulty in identifying land or is having difficulty in getting local authorities to identify land, it would be a matter that we would have to debate through the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning, because the hon the Minister of Housing does not have those powers. As the Government stands today they do not give him those powers. He will never have the powers to go and identify land because that is a matter of general affairs and therefore we have to strengthen his arm to use his authority in the Cabinet of which he is a member.

Therefore, Mr Chairman, I find it difficult to support the motion because I believe this House cannot give any other authority because authority has been given already.

Mr Chairman, I am naturally speaking in support of the motion moved by the hon member for Tongaat.

The irony in South Africa at this juncture with regard to the provision of housing is that one does have several local authorities in the country that are quite willing and able to do something, but that have no land available whatsoever on which to execute such programmes.

On the other hand, there are certain areas where land has been identified. The land is available but the local authority is not prepared to get a move on.

I am in agreement that the Housing Development Act (House of Delegates) does provide for the Administration: House of Delegates—naturally one of its arms, in this case the Housing Development Board—to act as developer of an area and I think in certain cases also—I speak under correction—to act as a local authority if need be. The statutory provisions are there.

I think the object of a debate of this nature is to highlight the problems throughout the country and thereby to try to get the authorities concerned, who have to execute these things, to take note of what is happening.

I would like to remind the hon member for Stanger that seen from that perspective it is not a waste of time for this House to debate this matter.

That was the hon member for Tongaat’s suggestion. I did not say that.

I think I remember the hon member for Stanger correctly as saying it was a waste of time.

No, I responded to him. He said it was a waste of time.

I want to assure hon members here that as a result of this debate all of us who leave this Chamber this afternoon will be better equipped to deal with the problems confronting us.

I am in total agreement with my colleague, the hon member for Tongaat. One of our problems lies with the Department of Constitutional Development and Planning. In the old days we used to call the old Department of Community Development the Department of Community Disruption. I wonder whether the time has not come to refer to this department as the Department of Constitutional Disruption, because the fact that this department does not react in the tiniest way to legitimate cases put before it for the identification of areas actually works against the interests of this administration. Let us not fool ourselves; let us accept that as far as the success or otherwise of the tricameral Parliament is concerned, we must concede that a great deal is going to depend on the extent to which these so-called own affairs administrations are able to address and redress the basic day-to-day problems confronting our people. Of course, one of the most important such problems happens to be housing and a roof over people’s heads.

I do not want to belabour any points much further, but I do want to say that the hon the Minister of Housing has statutory provision in the Housing Development Act (House of Delegates), and we believe that the time has come for those local authorities that do not want to move and do not want to do anything, to be told that if they are not prepared to do it, we will take up the cudgels ourselves.

I want to sum up by referring briefly to the implications of what happened on Wednesday last week in the two by-elections in the northern provinces. The message there is quite clear and knowing this Government as we do—it is reactionary at times—I believe it will now react by trying to “outverkramp” the verkramptes by taking action against people of colour who, because of need, find themselves in so-called White areas throughout the country. I think we should prepare our people for what is to come. I believe that before the October municipal elections action will be taken to enforce rigidly the Group Areas Act.

Shame! We must fight it.

Will you oppose it?

Of course I am totally opposed to it and of course I say the Act must go.

However, I am pragmatic and realistic and I see as the aftermath of what happened last Wednesday, the very real possibility that the Government will go out of its way to make things difficult. Those hon members who come from the coastal areas of this country must, I think, be prepared to see some problems on their beaches, because what is going to happen … [Interjections.]

*Oh, yes, I want to tell my hon colleague that they will no longer allow people of colour to swim where they want to. They are going to act against these people.

†I am being realistic; this is what is facing us. I should like to make an appeal to the hon the Minister of Housing, since one can also expect a snowball effect in this regard. They have something to offer the people, that goes to the very roots of their feelings, and that is about all they have to offer, rather than a viable alternative. It seems to be taking on. Once one tells people that the day after tomorrow, if they allow the Nats to remain in power, the residential areas will be flooded by non-Whites and they will never have a chance to bathe in the sea and laze around on the beach—once one starts telling them that kind of propaganda, it seems to take on.

Therefore I am satisfied in my own mind that come October, one is going to have problems with the local authorities. Several local authorities will fall under the control of the right-wing parties in this country. I do not think this is an understatement. One does not have to be a genius to see what is in the offing. I think that in the short term we are going to have that problem, and I want to appeal to the hon the Minister of Housing to see to it that wherever we have projects that are outstanding, where the local authorities are co-operative, we should move heaven and earth to see to it that those projects get off the ground so that by October this year these things are already done. There will then be little left for people to undo. Where we have local authorities that are not moving or doing anything, we believe that the Ministry of Housing should take over those projects and see to it that those projects get off the ground. If this is not done, then after October we might have difficulty.

There are many ways in which local authorities can help to delay issues. If one is not on the right side of those authorities, there are many things they can do to make things difficult for one. For argument’s sake, there is the provision of reticulation services and the provision of bulk services in general. All sorts of spanners could be thrown into the works to ensure that matters are delayed. I believe that the promise which the hon the Minister of Housing has made, namely that with the co-operation of all in this country we could within the next three years build 25 000 homes, may be badly dented if we do not do the necessary things now.

My appeal is that we support the motion of the hon member for Tongaat and get on with the job.

Mr Chairman, I am glad that we are debating the problems we are confronted with in respect of satisfying the housing needs of our community. Through the responsible Minister of the Ministers’ Council we are responsible to administer the Housing Development Act (House of Delegates).

I wrote down the words of the hon member for Red Hill. When dealing with the wording of this motion he indicated that he did not understand. Our problem today is that when he piloted the Housing Development Bill through this House he really did not understand. The Ministers’ Council relies on the bona fides of a member of the Ministers’ Council. I said in this House when there were problems, and ideological attitudes were expressed in this House concerning the dissolution of the Community Development Board and the National Housing Commission, that I supported my hon colleague at the time with a tremendous measure of reluctance. I indicated in the Ministers’ Council that it was not a good step to disband a single National Housing Commission and a single Housing Development Board. Of course, the person who brought the Bill to the Ministers’ Council gave me the impression, when we subsequently debated it, that—in the words he uttered today—“he did not understand”.

Let me tell hon members about the mistake we are suffering from today. The House of Representatives did the correct thing. They had a Housing Development Board and a National Housing Commission. The functions of the latter differed from those of the former. One project would be referred to as a commission’s project whilst another would be referred to as the board’s project. Can hon members say that we have that distinction?

This morning I had a delegation from the Middelburg Municipality in my office. We are confronted with a problem there as a result of the former Minister of Housing of the House of Delegates not understanding things. This appears to be a common problem and I would like the hon member for Red Hill to keep this in mind when commenting on Ladysmith and Howick. The Howick Indian Local Affairs Committee came to Malgate to see the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council. As a result of numerous cries it was in my boardroom that a decision was taken to send out troops into Howick. Likewise the Ladysmith LAC came to the boardroom of the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council long before April 1987 and it informed us officially of its intention to sort out its own local problems. When a person admits that he does not understand, then this really is true. It is obvious that the former Minister of Housing did not do his homework like the hon the Minister of Housing in the House of Representatives does. He merely took the Bill from his colleague, the Minister of Local Government, Housing and Works in the House of Assembly, scratched out the word “Assembly ” and wrote in “Delegates”. Today we are still suffering from those deficiencies and discrepancies and our Housing Development Act (House of Delegates) needs drastic revision.

Mr Chairman, is the hon the Minister prepared to take a question?

Mr Chairman, I may take a question at the end of my speech, but I would like to tell the hon member for Cavendish that we should be guided by the principle of truth. The hon member stated in this House this afternoon that the houses in Crossmoor are crumbling. He even went so far as to say that this is not as a result of the recent floods, but as a result of the recent rains. The hon member for Marian Hill, the hon the Deputy Minister of Local Government, Housing and Agriculture and I saw those houses last Saturday. Not a single house had crumbled. Who can say how many houses crumbled after Saturday? In the name of truth the hon member and I should phone an independent person later this afternoon and ask him to call us back and inform us of the condition of those houses. We could then report this to the House tomorrow. It is my contention that those houses are firm and strong. Even the hon member for Southern Natal will agree with me that if there are heavy rains during a new housing project, some erosion of soil will take place. This happened in Chatsworth during the first 10 years of its new housing project. The same happened in Phoenix and has happened all over the world. Let us not misinterpret a slight washaway as houses crumbling, thereby painting a black picture of the progress of the development programme of the House of Delegates.

Let us take this Notice of Motion into consideration. Let us examine the responsibilities of the various levels of government.

The first level has a certain responsibility, and let me make it very clear that the main responsibility of that first level—that is to say, the main responsibility of the Minister or the Department of Housing, or of any housing development board, or of the commission—is a financial one. We are financiers. We should not undertake housing projects. As to the spirit of the Housing Development Act (House of Delegates), which contains a provision to the effect that the Minister must direct the board to undertake certain housing projects, this applies only in those cases where a local authority does not exist.

And where they refuse.

Yes, and where they refuse. However, that only occurs in exceptional circumstances.

I think that although he spoke completely off the topic, the hon member for Reservoir Hills was very responsible this afternoon. He highlighted the root cause of our problem.

As for the hon member for Stanger, who is the Acting Leader of the Official Opposition, he showed in the first part of his speech that he did not understand the reason for submitting the Notice of Motion. He then proposed an amendment replacing the word “Minister” with the words “Housing Development Board”. Towards the end of his speech he said the Minister had the responsibility and he quoted the provisions of the Housing Development Act, saying that the Minister may give the board a directive. Where, then, is the need for his amendment? The hon member for Stanger was utterly confused this afternoon and he tried to create an impression, like a good Acting Leader of the Official Opposition. I think that when he found he had no part to play on the stage this afternoon, he really tried to act. He really did engage in some acting.

I want to say that I think he was personal. He motivated his amendment by referring to a depoliticisation process and then, when he saw that the necessary clauses were contained in the Housing Development Act, he conceded that the Minister had the power to issue a directive to the board. There is a provision to the effect that the Minister may direct the board, but the Minister does not have to direct the board in all cases.

Let us look at this Notice of Motion. What it suggests, is that where a local authority is unwilling or unable to fulfil its responsibility to provide housing for our people, the Minister of Housing in the Ministers’ Council of the Administration: House of Delegates should ensure that such projects are undertaken by the administration. There is very little difference between the Administration and the board. It is understood that the final decisions are really taken by the board, and if the Minister decides that we should undertake a housing project in a particular area—whether it be an area in which there is no local authority or one in which there is a local authority—the actual decision will be taken by the Housing Development Board. The administrative wing of the Housing Development Board, like the administrative wing of the former Community Development Board, forms the administration of a State department. In our case it is the Administration: House of Delegates.

Let us examine the reasons why a municipality may be unwilling to undertake a housing project. Our problem centres around one word, and that is jurisdiction. We want to provide housing. We find that there is sufficient land available to satisfy the housing needs of the community we represent. I am not going to split any hairs about group affairs. I have stated clearly and unambiguously that own affairs entail providing services in one’s own area.

If people feel so strongly about own affairs, they should not make the necessary representation. The hon the Acting Leader of the Official Opposition says that we must depoliticise this whole issue and let the Housing Development Board handle this. I suggest to him that as far as his work is concerned, wherever he wants to ensure that housing is provided, he must depoliticise it. If he wants to write a letter to an hon Minister, or see an hon Minister, he must substitute the word “Minister” for “Board” or “Department”. He was the only person who tried to be funny in this debate this afternoon. There is no doubt about the fact that there is only one person who brought down the level of contributions this afternoon. We had healthy contributions to the debate on this motion, which enabled hon members to highlight problems and predicaments they are faced with in their areas.

Let us not shoot down parochial affairs, because the collection of parochial affairs gives rise to national problems and national affairs. There is no doubt about the fact that there are municipalities that look negatively at the House of Delegates and the House of Representatives. I do not want to say that it is the CP, the HNP, the NP or the PFP.

I know that moves are made for hon members of this House to join the PFP. I know that the PFP makes these moves because they failed in the House of Assembly. As long as they last they will never succeed in the House of Assembly. They are now trying to gain control of the citadels of power in the House of Delegates and the House of Representatives. We know that certain White political parties might not have attained control at the first level, but they definitely have control at the third level. I speak from experience, and I am sure that the majority of the Indian community will agree with us that there is no difference between the PFP and the CP where they control the citadels of power.

I have had the experience of going to certain areas in the Eastern Transvaal and the Orange Free State, the so-called once forbidden territory. I found better treatment meted out to the Indian community in Bloemfontein than in that so-called liberal province of South Africa, the so-called last bastion of the British empire. I am speaking of attitudes. If anybody wants to assist the PFP to try to grab control of the House of Delegates or the House of Representatives, they are not doing the Indian community a great favour, because the Indian communities in the major towns have no confidence in the PFP. Let me be very clear about this. We have learned from experiences with that political party where they have definite control of a level of government in this country. I want to say, with all honesty, that we do not take sides in the arena of White party-politics.

I was really amazed with the kind of reception we got from certain municipalities in the Eastern Transvaal. I was amazed with the attitudes and the positiveness that prevailed. This is where we come to the crucial issue of a willing municipality or an unwilling municipality. Sometimes a municipality may be willing, but because they do not have sufficient land within the area of their jurisdiction, they might find it extremely difficult to identify land in an area outside their jurisdiction.

I think the biggest problem facing us, from a constitutional point of view, which reveals a severe shortcoming in the Constitution, is whether we are an Indian department. When the Group Areas Act was implemented, a bank, for example, was regarded as a White institution. A building society was regarded as a White institution.

Now, can anybody say that a State department which has a fair and equal representation in the Cabinet is really an Indian department? Does a State department need a permit to buy land? These are the questions that are relevant if we want land adjacent to an Indian area which could for example be declared controlled, Coloured or White in terms of the Group Areas Act. Do we need a permit from another State department to acquire land as a State department? These are the questions that will have to be answered.

There is definitely a problem and a deficiency centred around the word “jurisdiction” because our jurisdiction is limited to areas that are declared for Indian ownership and occupation in terms of the Group Areas Act. I think we have to address this problem and indicate to the authorities that we need legal opinion because we should be able to buy available land pending the machinery of the Group Areas Act. I want to say that we have come across local authorities that are dragging their feet when it comes to cooperating with us to satisfy the housing needs of the Indian community.

There are also local authorities that are definitely unable to satisfy our needs and it is for the following reasons. Firstly, they have no declared land. Secondly, even if they are willing, they are at the mercy of another State department, the Department of Constitutional Development and Planning.

I want to take a classic example. I want to refer to Mariannhill, the constituency of my colleague the hon the Minister of Local Government and Agriculture. We know that Indians have been residing in the area called Northdene for almost a century. The Indian customs, habits, activities and way of life are a little different—culturally we are a little different. These people do not want to be moved far away. We identified a piece of land adjoining Northdene and I can say that there should be no red tape and no obstacles. We have negotiated the matter since October last year and there is now a willingness on the part of the municipality to part with that land.

However, we have not been able to get the group areas advertisement—something which I believe can be done within two weeks. Windmill Park was advertised in a very hasty manner. I do not want to explain the circumstances under which Windmill Park was advertised but I think it was an all-time South African record. However, where the Administration: House of Delegates wants the necessary machinery to put a project into operation in terms of the Group Areas Act we find it extremely difficult. [Interjections.] We are also controlled and restricted in many ways.

I want to come back to the motion before the House. We have to decide on a policy. One should not propose an amendment and then talk against it in the same breath by saying that the words “the Minister” should be substituted by “the Housing Development Board”. One should also not talk about depoliticisation. It is personal. The same person who moved the amendment said in the end that the Minister has the power. Why is there then a need for an amendment? Practically every hon member of the opposition parties actually supported the motion in their speeches.

The provision in the Housing Development Act is there for one specific purpose and that is that the Minister directs the board to undertake housing projects where one does not have a local authority. If a local authority is really unwilling, anti-Indian and not prepared to undertake the responsibility to provide housing for their own ideological or political purposes, our structure in the Constitution is such that the Minister of Local Government and Agriculture is not in a position to direct the local authority to perform its functions as a local authority.

Housing is the responsibility of the local authority. It is really a local authority function.

There are deficiencies in this tricameral constitution. There are problems in this tricameral constitution.

I believe if a local authority or a neighbouring local authority agrees that an area should be used for Black, Coloured or Indian housing etc, a particular State department, whether it is going to be the Administration: House of Assembly or the Administration: House of Delegates, or the Administration: House of Representatives, should have the legal right to take occupation of the land even by way of an issue of permit. I do not think it is really fair to ask a central state department to make it a requirement that one has to acquire this land because it is not a declared Indian area or an area under the jurisdiction of the Administration: House of Delegates. One has to occupy this land by way of an issue of permit. I do not think that that is fair.

We have shown a lot of tolerance, patience and understanding with regard to the problems we are confronted by. However, I think if we take into consideration our delivery and our production of houses during the last few years and if one wants to look at the gloomy picture of our delivery and production of houses during the next financial year or the financial years that are going to follow, then, if nothing is done or if we do not take the proper responsibility of identifying the land and servicing the sites ourselves, we shall not be able to satisfy our housing needs. There has been a proposal that we should service the sites ourselves.

Our housing projects take certain forms. Even to take the initiative we rely very heavily on a municipality. We rely very heavily on a local authority and once a local authority delays then we have problems. Let us take Pietermaritzburg as an example. We have Copes Folly and Dunveria. The land is in our hands. Approximately 12 months ago in March last year the land was expropriated by our Housing Development Board. The land is in our ownership. However, from March last year to March this year one should actually have seen bulldozers on the site, but because we are relying on the municipality, and because they are talking to us and we are talking to them, 12 months have gone by without anything substantial or worthwhile having been done.

Tongaat is another example where the municipality is only interested in the direction where one can identify land which belongs to members of the Indian community. (Time expired)

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No 30 and motion and amendment lapsed.

Mr Chairman, I move:

Agreed to.