Mr. Speaker, I move—

Mr. Speaker, there are roughly speaking three principles evident from the notice of motion given by the hon. the Minister. The first is that there will be a further extension of the lives of those members representing the Cape Coloured people in this House. The second is that there is a prohibition upon filling the vacancies which have arisen, and may arise, both in this House and in the Other Place in respect of representatives of the Cape Coloured people. The third is that at the end of the life of this Parliament there will be the abolition of all representation of Coloured people in this House.

The reason for extending the lives of the existing representatives of the Cape Coloured people is of course not given, but the hon. the Prime Minister has made no secret of the fact that it is because he and I agree that the roll is so full of irregularities that it is not possible to hold an election on it at the present time. Surely it is the duty of this Government to see that elections can be held and to see that the roll is “clean”. I cannot see that this should be a reason for further extending the lives of the present hon. members. It is the Prime Minister’s duty to see that this roll is “clean”.

That was not the reason why it was extended at all.

The hon. gentleman says why should we worry to extend it at all?

No, I said that was not the reason why it was extended.

The hon. gentleman knows very well that one of the reasons why it was extended was that we could not hold elections on the roll as it existed.

No, that played no part at all …

Oh, yes, and because of the agreement that he and I reached that there should be an investigation into the state of affairs.

Not of the roll.

That was the fact of the matter, in respect of the irregularities, and the irregularities, according to that commission, existed very largely in respect of the roll.

The roll was not discussed at all at that time.

I do not know what was in the Prime Minister’s mind but I know what was in mine very well indeed. Now comes the second principle of this Bill, a prohibition on the filling of the vacancies in this House and in the Other Place. One of the representatives of the Cape Coloured people is no longer with us and there is now a prohibition on filling his seat in this House. Why? Because the Prime Minister said the other day it was the state of the roll.

I never mentioned the roll whatsoever.

I will have to give the hon. gentleman a course in memory training before we are finished. He has not discussed it and it has never occurred to me for one moment that he would deny it. I go on from there. If that is one of the reasons, why then fail to fill vacancies which may occur in the Other Place? Surely the members of the Senate are nominated and not elected. Can there be any possible reason why if a Senator were to die tomorrow there will be no additional Senator appointed to represent the Coloured people before the end of the life of this Parliament?

For the reasons I advanced at the time, which have nothing to do with the roll whatsoever.

The hon. the Prime Minister is free to get up and advance his reasons again. I want to know what reason there is, and I do not believe there is an adequate one.

The third point is that it is the principle of this Bill to abolish all representation of the Cape Coloured people in this House at the end of the life of this Parliament. That involves a fundamental principle, a principle to which this party is bound, namely that there should be representation in this House of those whose destinies are affected by the decisions of this House. On what basis that is done does not matter. They should have some say and a right to be consulted. There should be somebody in this House who can put their point of view. We have had a commission which has gone into this matter. We know that it has reported its findings. I think that after the debate we have had in this House, without going into all the evidence again, it is quite clear that the principle involved in this Bill is contrary to the weight of evidence given before that commission.

That is not true.

Hon. members can say that it is not true and try to twist the evidence as much as they like. They can try to read into it whatever they like. No fair reading of that evidence can result in any other conclusion than that this recommendation is contrary to the weight of the evidence given before that commission. No fair reading of that evidence can result in any other conclusion than that the decision involved in the notice of motion before the House to-day to abolish Coloured representation is contrary to the wishes of the vast majority of the Cape Coloured people. What is so interesting is that in the past the hon. the Prime Minister has said that he was prepared to consult with the new Coloured Council, notice for the creation of which we have had to-day, as to their powers and the methods of consultation with this House. The one point on which he was not prepared to consult with them was as to whether representation of the Coloured people in this House should be continued. The Coloured Council can never replace representation in Parliament. Parliament has all the residual powers. Certain powers will be given to the Coloured Council, but if this Bill is passed by this House the Coloureds will have no say in those residual powers. The exercising of those powers can affect them as much as it can affect any other inhabitants of South Africa.

The principle involved in this Bill involves a complete somersault as far as the Nationalist Party is concerned in regard to the representation of the Coloured people. The late Prime Minister, Dr. Verwoerd, expressed himself very clearly on this issue on a number of occasions. We have since had explanations in this regard from the Minister of Defence and others to the effect that while he said he stood for one thing, he meant another. The hon. the Minister of Defence has asked us to accept that the hon. the late Prime Minister was deceiving the people and that he was giving them assurances when he never intended to carry them out. I can only say that as far as the public of South Africa is concerned this is a somersault and a complete reneguing on the policy of the late Prime Minister. The Coloured people have had an unfortunate history since the Nationalist Party came into power. When the Nationalist Party came into power the Coloured people were voting on the Common Roll. Because they did not support the Nationalist Party, and this was the crux of the matter, it was decided to remove them from the Common Roll. The sop was that they should be placed on a separate roll and get a number of representatives in this House. Now, Sir, because those separate roll representatives are fighting the Government, as they are perfectly entitled to do, and for a number of other reasons, that representation is to be removed. The sop this time is a Coloured Council with enlarged powers. [Time expired.]

Mr. Speaker, I do not rise to take part in this debate, except to express my astonishment at the fact that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition has made a blatant statement here which is not true, namely that the extension of the life of the Coloured representatives was based on the fact that the voters’ roll was either incomplete or in a state of confusion. I want to tell the hon. the Leader that there was never any mention of the voters’ roll. I never spoke about the voters’ roll in this House. I never discussed the voters’ roll with him. What I did discuss with the hon. member, was the improper interference of the Progressive Party, on which he agreed. We discussed that across the floor of the House. But that had no bearing on the voters’ roll as such, nor was there any talk of that. The reason advanced by this side of the House for the life of the representatives being extended twice, was that the commission that had to inquire into improper interference, had not yet completed its work. It was agreed that this matter would stand over until then. In the meantime we conducted a debate here, and I stated my point of view. That was not the first time the hon. the Leader heard that from me. He heard that from me immediately after I had taken over this office. During the first discussion on the Prime Minister’s Vote in 1966, I stated my point of view in this regard to the hon. the Leader. I told him very clearly that I stood there as a person who had not committed himself in respect of the abolition of Coloured representation in this House. I made it very clear to him; this is not news to him.

As regards his other arguments, I do not want to argue with him about them now. If would be out of place to do so We shall have an opportunity of doing so when this Bill is before the House, and I am looking forward to that discussion.

So do I.

Not only am I looking forward to the discussion, but I also want the hon. member to furnish evidence in support of the statement he made here to-day. He has now consulted the Hansard and has simply put it away again. One does not make such statements without having evidence to support them.

In the second place, Sir, it astonishes me that hon. members opposite are for the umpteenth time priding themselves on being the champions of freedom of speech, as has become their habit, but are for the umpteenth time objecting to legislation being discussed in this Parliament. I expect that from the Progressive Party.

And Dr. Malan!

I say I expect that from the Progressive Party, because that type of liberalist is the most intolerant of all. But I want to assume that the hon. the Leader has, as usual, no option. He cannot allow the Progressive Party alone to raise objection; that is why he rose to object. As one Parliamentarian to another, I can understand that. But that is no excuse for the hon. member acting wrongly once again in this regard.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to lodge my formal protest against the motion before the House and, particularly, against the third principle set out in this motion, which seeks to repeal the Separate Representation of Voters Act of 1951, with effect from the date of dissolution of the House of Assembly. This principle will have the effect of completely and finally abolishing all representation of our Coloured citizens in the Central Parliament of our Republic. I want to take this opportunity to protest against this basic principle enunciated in the motion. I feel that I would be failing in my duty to the Coloured people of South Africa, if I were not to oppose at every stage the Government’s determination to abolish in its entirety, all representation of our Coloured people in our sovereign Parliament. I regard this step as a complete volte face of the Government’s publicly declared policy over the years. I regard it as a repudiation of the pledged word of former Nationalist Prime Ministers of this country, in the persons of the late Dr. Malan, the late Mr. Strijdom, the late Dr. Verwoerd, and indeed of every Nationalist leader who has spoken on this subject during the past 15 years. I consider it as politically immoral to deny a large section of our westernized citizens any representation in the sovereign Parliament of their own country. This motion, to my mind, is a retrogressive one which will have the effect of relegating our Coloured citizens to a position of constitutional and political subordination in their own country, the only country they know. For all these reasons, Mr. Speaker, I propose to take this earliest opportunity of voting against the motion.

Strong protest was registered against this Bill by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition and by the Leader of the Coloured Representatives in this House, the hon. member for Peninsula. I understand that they can speak this time, since the intentions of the Bill are clear. But, on the other hand, this legislation may have particular aspects which may shed more light on the whole situation. In fact, I submit therefore that the Bill the first reading of which we have just agreed to, is very closely connected with this measure. Why do hon. members opposite not wait until the Minister has been able to state his point of view at the second reading before they weigh the pros and cons against one another? [Interjections.] I do not have any time for “botterbulletjies” in the backbenches. I am making a clear statement. By way of a resolution this hon. House has just adopted, the United Party agreed to more powers being granted to the Coloured Persons Representative Council. But now they oppose this measure, and we did after all have numerous examples of Coloureds who told us specifically that they were not in favour of the Coloureds having two mouthpieces. Their point of view was that the Coloured Persons Representative Council, as it is about to be constituted, may adopt one attitude, whereas the Coloured Representatives in this House may adopt another attitude. If that happens, the following question arises: what representation should be regarded as the mouthpiece of the Coloured population in South Africa? If we want to avoid such a situation, there is only one alternative, i.e. to abolish Coloured representation in this House.

But they did not ask for that.

Of course, they said so. Even Dr. Van der Ross said that the Government would be to blame for such a situation if it should arise. The Government must therefore provide a solution. I honestly think the Opposition is chasing up hares. Why do they not place the accent where it ought to be, on the fact that here for the first time we are granting political rights to 700,000 Coloureds? Why does the accent not fall on that? But, no. They are placing the accent on the 35,000 privileged Coloureds, who, with a qualified vote, have been able to elect four representatives to this House. The accent is falling on that, whereas the development of a brand new situation for the Coloureds is being underrated.

But there is yet another point of view that I can state. The hon. the Leader came forward here with the story of “the weight of evidence” which was supposedly against this legislation. Let me say at once that his argument in regard to the so-called “weight of evidence”, is a foolish argument—totally foolish. I restrain myself from mocking at the way he was supposedly weighing it! I want to put it differently. We could after all have contrived it artificially so that 30 or 40 Coloureds, all of them adhering to the opposite view, appeared before the commission. We could after all have contrived this artifically if we wanted to do so. Therefore, the argument advanced by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, i.e. that the “weight of evidence” was allegedly in conflict with the Bill, is in point of fact not worth the paper on which it is written, because, who is to say that this evidence was not artificially instigated by the Progressive Party or by the United Party? This is the first question one can put in this regard. The argument advanced by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition in regard to the “weight of evidence”, is therefore no argument, because, as I have already said, the other side could have made a deliberate attempt at causing to appear before the commission 30 or 40 witnesses, all of whom could have told the same story there and could have said that they are in favour of the abolition. Then, we on this side of the House could have said in turn: count the witnesses and weigh the evidence. Therefore the argument advanced by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition is indeed a foolish one.

The fact of the matter is that with the exception of the Labour Party of Dr. Van der Ross, all the other Coloured representatives stated before the commission that the representation in this House was of no value to them; that it meant nothing to them; that it was not worth the paper on which it was written. But, they added, they could not ask for its abolition, since the Coloureds outside still attached importance to it. If the Government were therefore to decide to abolish this representation, it would not make any difference to them at all—only, they may not ask for it, because if they do so, they will become hard-pressed by their own people. It is as clear as daylight that this is a case of pure political opportunism and expediency. The Government has the courage to come forward with a proposal that we should cut the Gordian knot, a proposal in terms of which this Parliament will be the Parliament for the Whites of South Africa and for them alone. The Bantu are being granted political rights in their own territories and the Coloureds are being granted their own Council and the Indians theirs, which may develop in that direction. [Interjections.] Now we are cutting the knot finally and permanently, and that is why it is essential that this legislation should be placed on the Statute Book, in spite of the squabbling of the Opposition.

I am surprised that the hon. Leader of the Opposition wasted his precious time by advancing such an extraordinary reason for his having agreed to previous extensions of the term of office of the Coloured Representatives in this House. I do not know whether there is anybody who is under the illusion that the reason therefor was anything other than that stated by the hon. the Prime Minister. Let me say that I am seldom, if ever, in agreement with the hon. the Prime Minister. However, here he was at least honest enough to give the reason, namely that the Government was seeking desperately for time during which to work out some method of preventing the Progressive Party from winning any more seats in this House. That and that alone is the beginning and the end of this whole absurd farce which, let me say, did not start with only two extensions of the term of office of the Coloured Representatives in this House, but with three. The roll had nothing whatever to do with it and if there is anything this highly inadequate Commission’s report reveals it was that all the accusations hurled against the Progressive Party had absolutely no foundation whatever. To my mind that is the only thing of value that came from that investigation.

The appearance of this Bill in this House is a familiar spectacle. This is not the first time, or even the second time that a Bill has been introduced into this House extending the term of office of the Coloured Representatives. As a matter of fact, we have already had three such Bills. The last two had practically the same clauses as the present one, although this one goes further in that it spells the doom of any representation for Coloured persons in this House after 1971—the date when this Parliament’s life ends. The history of this little Bill does not start to-day. It started in October, 1965—on March 10th to be exact. On this date the Progressive Party won the two Coloured Provincial Council seats. That is where the history of this measure begins. Because when it was obvious that we were also going to win the parliamentary seats in 1966 the hon. the Minister of the Interior first came to this House with a Bill extending the term of office of the sitting Coloured Representatives until October that year so that a general election for Coloured Representatives in this House could not take place in March, 1966, when the general election for the Whites took place.

That was the beginning of it. We had long specious arguments advanced then as to why this was necessary; we had to divorce the Coloured people from the main stream of political thought in South Africa; we had to clear up a lot of administrative difficulty and so on. Sir, nobody was under any illusion in that regard, not even the United Party, which opposed that Bill at the time. It was clear that all one’s assumptions were correct when the following year the Improper Interference Bill made its appearance in this House and the Government before introducing the second reading, decided to send that Bill to a Select Committee, a course with which the hon. the Leader of the Opposition was in full agreement. He could not admit that he was as much against the Progressive Party winning more seats in this House as the Government was, although for different reasons of course—the Government because it knew that this would be a complete denial of its assertion that the Coloured people agree to and accept separate representation and that they accept the whole concept of apartheid. That is the reason, Sir, that and nothing else. The United Party’s reason, of course, is rather different. They just do not want their own deficiencies exposed to any greater extent than they are already exposed now. With that agreement between the Prime Minister and the hon. the Leader of the Opposition, the Bill was sent to a select committee, and when the select committee could not report in time we had to have another little Bill, Bill No. 3, extending the life of the Coloured Representatives and, of course, no vacancies were to be filled. The last two of these bills both contained a clause which provided that in the event of resignation, as if that was likely, or in the event of death, the vacancies would not be filled. Now, Sir, the untimely death of Mr. Barnett, the former member for Boland, has, of course, created just such a vacancy and this vacancy would not have been filled under the terms of the Bill which was introduced last year and in fact also under the terms of the Bill introduced the year before, which extended the period of office of the Coloured Representatives till 1969. So in any case there would have been one constituency completely unrepresented until 1969. Now, according to the long title of this Bill, should there be another vacancy in the three remaining seats which are filled, there will be no vacancy filled until 1971. That is what the long title of this Bill tells us. In any case, this now becomes relatively unimportant because in terms of the new wording in the long title the principal Act is going to be repealed from the date of the dissolution of Parliament, and that is not later than the year 1971. So from 1971 onwards in any case the Coloured people were not going to have any representation in this House.

Sir, I agree with the hon. the Leader of the Opposition when he says that this is a gross betrayal of all the assurances that have been given inside this House and outside this House by Nationalist members of Parliament and Prime Ministers since the Coloureds were removed from the Common Roll. I am not going to argue what the late Prime Minister thought. Other members here seem to know definitely that what he thought went a lot further than what he said. In other words, his spoken word in this House was apparently to be disregarded because certain members on the other side knew what the late Prime Minister’s inner thoughts were. But, Sir, the present Prime Minister stated over and over again that he believed that one of the great tests of democracy in South Africa was that there shall be free and regular elections and that since South Africa had free and regular elections we were therefore a democracy. Now there are to be none of these free and regular elections in the one body that really matters for the Coloured people (or for any racial group for that matter) and that is in this House. That is my answer to the hon. member for Randfontein. Whatever so-called rights are given to the Coloured people through the Coloured Council, they can in no way be regarded as a substitute for rights and for a say in the political structure of South Africa, in the power structure of South Africa, in the House that makes the laws which apply to these people, the meaningful laws, the laws which affect where they shall live, the laws that affect what property they may own, the laws that affect with whom they may associate, the laws that affect what jobs they shall do, the laws that affect the type of education they get and, most important of all, the laws that affect how they shall be taxed and how those taxes shall be spent. Therefore I register my strong protest against the introduction of this Bill and I shall most certainly vote against it.

One can forgive the hon. member for Houghton. She is afraid that her party’s political platform will be swept away from it.

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition as well as the hon. member for Peninsula said that they did not see any necessity for the period of office of the Coloured Representatives having to be extended, but there is an important reason. Approximately two weeks ago the hon. the Prime Minister announced here that a link would be formed between this Parliament and the Coloured Council, but that it would be effected in consultation with the newly elected Coloured Council; and for that reason it is important that the Coloured Representatives should remain here until that Council comes into operation. The intention is that it will come into operation next year. That is why it is important that the Coloured Representatives should remain here until that consultation can take place. Who are the people who want to remove the Coloured Representatives from this Parliament? The United Party. It is the United Party which has always been saying that there should be consultation, and now that the Coloured population are being afforded the opportunity of being consulted properly by way of elected representatives—who will be elected by 700,000 voters and not by 16,000—now they do not want that consultation to take place. The United Party itself should like to be consulted. For many years they themselves have been keen to be the mouthpiece of the Coloureds, and now they are being deprived of that opportunity. They are longing for the flesh pots of Egypt. It is noticeable that there is again some life in the skeletons over there to-day, but during the latest debate we had here on Coloured affairs, the United Party did not succeed in disturbing the calm of the Coloured population; nor did they succeed in stampeding the English-language Press, and they are not going to stampede those people either. They are not going to succeed in making those people “march”. The hon. member for South Coast is no longer going to get even the Black Sash to march along. Sir, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition made a very filthy remark here in reply to an interjection. He said that we could twist the evidence as much as we liked but that we would not find any witness who pleaded for the termination of the present Coloured representation.

I never said that.

I want to ask the hon. the Leader of the Opposition to read Mr. Fortuin’s evidence. Mr. Fortuin was very explicit on this point. He said that two Voters’ Rolls may not be permitted to exist side by side. He pleaded for additional representation here, but he pleaded for representation by experts, experts who had to be appointed by the Government and not elected by the Coloureds. He does not want two Voters’ Rolls under any circumstances. It was my privilege to serve on that Commission and if there was anybody among the Coloured population who, to my mind, made a tremendous impression on the whole Commission, then it was Mr. Fortuin. I want to ask the hon. the Leader of the Opposition to read that evidence. This racial hobby-horse of the United Party’s has had its day. It no longer wants to run, because the United Party is once again acting as negatively here as it has always done in the past. The positive steps, namely the hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs’ legislation of which notice has been given here and which also appears on this Order Paper, they are allowing to pass by, because you see. Sir, they agree, and they also did so on the Commission, that many things must be given to the Coloureds. But we are taught that life as a whole consists of giving and taking, and I think the Coloured population also views it in this light. In exchange for the many things which they are getting now and which they have never had before, there are certain things which they will have to sacrifice. I think they see it this way, but the United Party wants to give and give and give, but in exchange for the things they are giving they would like to have the votes of the Coloureds, and that is where the difference between them and us is to be found, because the basis of separate development is to give without taking.

I want to add my protest to the introduction of a Bill which seeks to do away with the rights of the Coloured community in the form of representation in this House, which is direct. I want to remind hon. members opposite that this system of having four representatives for the Coloureds here in Parliament is their own brainchild. They were the people who, as far back as 1951, thought that they had the answer and that they would give the Coloured community representation in Parliament by four white persons. The fact that the persons who filled these seats do not support the Government, because the Coloured community does not support the Government, is the real essence of the background to the introduction of this Bill.

Nonsense!

This is part of a plan, and I would like to say to the hon. member for Randfontein that his knowledge of the Coloured people is so limited that he should be silent. His knowledge may be big in many cases, but I say that in regard to the Coloured community his knowledge is zero—double zero—nil. I can say that I speak on behalf of the Coloured people when I stand up here to do so, I speak with the support of the Coloured community. I challenge the Government to conduct one simple test. Hold a referendum among the Coloured people and see how it goes. It is as simple as that. Let the Coloured people speak in the only way they can speak, through the ballot box and the vote. I am not impressed by what the hon. member for Malmesbury says, because if any man should know the Coloured community, he should. I do not rise here to-day in any spirit of anger; I speak in a spirit of sadness because the Coloured people do not deserve this treatment. I was shocked the other day to listen to the hon. the Minister of Defence making a public statement and relying upon the evidence of a dead man to substantiate his case.

You are talking utter nonsense.

The Minister made a long statement and all his references were to his assurance that he had had discussions in private and in secret with the late Dr. Verwoerd. I wonder if that is true, because what I would like to say is that Dr. Verwoerd gave assurance after assurance. It is immaterial who sits on these coloured seats. It is not a personal matter. I am not concerned with whether or not the Progressive Parity wins or loses a seat. I am not concerned with the bombastic attitude that they will take the lot. What I do say is, that fundamentally and democratically, the Coloured people have a right to be here, because they have had that right for over 100 years. In this modern age the thinking is to give people additional rights and not to take rights away. A big smokescreen has been thrown up about the powers of this proposed Council, and the consultations that will go on. Every person who has spent any time at all in public life knows that consultations are worth nothing. The living evidence of that, the one and only monument which condemns the Government itself, is that they have a Union Council for Coloured Affairs but they dare not go to an election with that council, because they will not get Government members returned. The Coloured people are frustrated and disappointed, and they are getting to the stage where they really do not care. It is all very well for the hon. gentlemen from the Transvaal to speak as they do, but they do not know the Coloured community.

We have many Coloureds there.

You have no Coloured people at all. [Interjection.] There is one thing that pleases me, namely that when I speak about the knowledge of the Transvalers in regard to Coloured persons, as they say in Afrikaans, “tjank hulle, en hulle tjank baie”, because they have no case. This is all part of a pattern. The Government intended all along to do this and the previous Prime Minister, I think, would turn in his grave if he knew that his assurances and his assertions of good faith towards the Coloured people of this country were being thrown overboard for political expediency. Coloured persons—and I know them well; I have been with them and I speak with knowledge of them—will never support the Government’s policy. There are one or two odd ones, the nominated gentlemen who get fringe benefits. You find these in any community, but I can assure you, Sir, that the greatest blow that has been struck at democracy in this country is the intention of the Government as embodied in this Bill. As I said before, it is not a personal matter at all. The hon. member for Peninsula has stated the case very succinctly, and I say it is a blot upon the escutcheon and the honour of this country and of the Nationalist Party and of the Prime Minister himself, who was going to be the successor to a man who had achieved great heights. But the Prime Minister has sunk to the depths because he has broken the word of the white people of this country.

This opposition to the First Reading of this Bill really did not come as a surprise to me, because I thought that, in the first place, the Opposition would be foolish enough to register their protest and, in the second place, that the hon. member for Houghton, the only representative of the Progressive Party in this House, would indeed be clever enough to do so, because she has been the only person who has adopted a consistent attitude in respect of this matter which is dealt with by this legislation. She and her Party have all along stood for the extension of political powers and rights and, if possible, for absolute equality of powers and rights. But the fact that the United Party wants to contest this measure, astonishes me. I do not want to make a second-reading speech now. The hon. the Prime Minister as well as other hon. members on this side of the House, such as the hon. members for Randfontein and for Malmesbury, called attention to certain aspects. They replied to certain points. But what is the hon. the Leader of the Opposition saying now? He says three basic principles are involved in this measure. The first is the principle of the further extension—for certain purposes and for certain reasons—of the currency of Coloured representation as it exists in this House at present. Now he wants to quarrel about this principle, but he has already agreed to it, he and his Party. When we suggested for the first time that the period of office should be extended, and last year when we once again introduced a further extension of two years—in contrast with the extension of one year on the first occasion—this clause, which provides that the vacancies will not be filled, was included in the suggestions. Now suddenly it is two. At that time the hon. the Leader and his Party voted for the extension. They also voted for the second principle which he is violating now and wants to evade, namely that vacancies should not be filled. Why did he vote for it at the time? The only deduction one can make is that the United Party is only an opportunistic party which will violate any principle if that can further their own political ends. That is the only logical conclusion one can draw. The third objection to the removal of the existing political representation is to my mind even weaker still, and this applies to all hon. members opposite who spoke about this matter. They spoke of this “wonderful political representation” of the Coloureds in this Parliament, in the highest legislative body in the country. But the Coloureds, as the Coloured population of South Africa, have never at any stage exercised any political rights in this House. [Interjections.] A small, minimal fraction of the Cape Coloureds have in fact exercised such rights. To my mind this is the greatest political swindle of which I have ever heard in my life, and that side knows the historical background of this matter. The United Party in particular is the Party which said that it was terribly unfair to grant this sort of representation to the Coloureds—the Coloureds must remain on the Common Voters’ Roll. By adopting this haughty attitude of being the patron and champion of Coloured interests in South Africa, particularly in respect of their political rights in this country, they were the people who—even before I submitted this measure in terms of which this representation is to be abolished and better and more extensive political control is to be granted in respect of those matters which really affect them—intimated beforehand that they were no longer agreeable to the Common Voters’ Roll. Then they said that they accepted this system of which they are now saying that it was our own creation. That was said by the hon. member for Karoo. I want to tell that hon. member that if there is one Coloured representative who has stabbed in the back that section of the Coloured population that is enjoying representation here, more so than anybody else, then it is he, because he is to-day still a member of the United Party and he acts upon the instructions of the United Party caucus. The hon. member does not receive his instructions from the Coloureds, but from the United Party. [Interjections.] Now, I find it so strange that the United Party, who agree to the extension of the period of office of the present Representatives because actually they want to protect the political rights of those Coloureds who do have them, have never told the hon. member for Karoo that, in the interests of the Coloureds, he ought not to take his instructions from the United Party caucus.

Now I want to make my last point and just say this. There is simply no proof to the effect that any substantial percentage of Coloureds in our country has been pleading for a return to the old dispensation, namely Common Voters’ Rolls. Owing to the abuses that have been taking place all these years, the National Party has effected this change, a change effected by placing this small section of Coloureds who had the right to vote, on a separate Voters’ Roll and by granting them separate representation in this House. There is no evidence whatsoever to the effect that the Coloureds in South Africa, or the vast majority of them—there may be a few exceptions—* do not regard this creation of the National Government as a major improvement on the existing position. I now want to hazard a prediction by saying that in another few years’ time, the United Party will not only plead for the retention of what we have at present, something the National Party has created, but also for the retention, along with South Africa’s entire Coloured population, of what the National Party is now creating for them.

Motion put and the House divided:

Ayes—99: Bodenstein, P.; Botha, H. J.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, M. W.; Botha, P. W.; Botha, S. P.; Carr, D. M.; Coetzee, B.; Coetzee, J. A.; Cruywagen, W. A.; De Jager, P. R.; Delport, W. H.; De Wet, C.; De Wet, J. M.; De Wet, M. W.; Du Plessis, H. R. H.; Du Toit, J. P.; Engelbrecht, J. J.; Erasmus, A. S. D.; Erasmus, J. J. P.; Frank, S.; Froneman, G. F. van L.; Greyling, J. C.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Grobler, W. S. J.; Haak, J. F. W.; Havemann, W. W. B.; Henning, J. M.; Hertzog, A.; Heystek, J.; Horn, J. W. L.; Janson, T. N. H.; Jurgens, J. C.; Kruger, J. T.; Langley, T.; Le Grange, L.; Le Roux, F. J.; Le Roux, J. P. C.; Le Roux, P. M. K.; Loots, J. J.; Marais, P. S.; Maree, W. A.; Martins, H. E.; McLachlan, R.; Meyer, P. H.; Morrison, G. de V.; Mulder, C. P.; Muller, S. L.; Otto, J. C.; Pansegrouw, J. S.; Pelser, P. C.; Pienaar, B.; Potgieter, J. E.; Potgieter, S. P.; Rall, J. J.; Rall, J. W.; Rall, M. J.; Raubenheimer, A. J.; Raubenheimer, A. L.; Reinecke, C. J.; Reyneke, J. P. A.; Rossouw, W. J. C.; Roux, P. C.; Sadie, N. C. van R.; Schlebusch, A. L.; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, H.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Smit, H. H.; Smith, J. D.; Steyn, A. N.; Stofberg, L. F.; Swanepoel, J. W. F.; Swiegers, J. G.; Torlage, P. H.; Treurnicht, N. F.; Uys, D. C. H.; Van den Heever, D. J. G.; Van der Merwe, C. V.; Van der Merwe, P. S.; Van der Merwe, S. W.; Van der Merwe, W. L.; Van der Wath, J. G. H.; Van Rensburg, M. C. G. J.; Van Staden, J. W.; Van Vuuren, P. Z. J.; Van Zyl, J. J. B.; Viljoen, M.; Visse, J. H.; Visser, A. J.; Volker, V. A.; Vorster, B. J.; Vorster, L. P. J.; Vosloo, A. H.; Waring, F. W.; Wentzel, J. J.; Wentzel, J. J. G.

Tellers: G. P. van den Berg and H. J. van Wyk.

Noes—37: Basson, J. A. L.; Basson, J. D. du P.; Bennett, C.; Bloomberg, A.; Bronkhorst, H. J.; Eden, G. S.; Emdin, S., Fisher, E. L.; Graaff, De V.; Higgerty, J. W.; Hourquebie, R. G. L.; Jacobs, G. F.; Kingwill, W. G.; Lewis, H. M.; Lindsay, J. E.; Malan, E. G.; Marais, D. J.; Mitchell, D. E.; Mitchell, M. L.; Moore, P. A.; Murray, L. G.; Oldfield, G. N.; Raw, W. V.; Smith, W. J. B.; Steyn, S. J. M.; Streicher, D. M.; Sutton, W. M.; Suzman, H.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Timoney, H. M.; Wainwright, C. J. S.; Webber, W. T.; Wiley, J. W. E.; Winchester, L. E. D.; Wood, L. F.

Tellers: A. Hopewell and T. G. Hughes. Motion accordingly agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Mr. Speaker, I move—

Mr. Speaker, I wish to object to the First Reading of this Bill. I do so because, although it is true that one does not yet know the contents of the Bill which the hon. the Minister will present to this House, we are nevertheless fairly certain of the substance of this Bill. I say this for two reasons. The long title of the present Bill, although not quite as clumsy in construction as that of the Bill the hon. the Minister presented to this House some two years ago, is precisely to the same effect as the long title of the 1966 Bill, certainly as far as the political sphere is concerned. It may be a little more intelligible but I believe that it is going to be just as unspeakable as the 1966 Bill. The motion states:

It then adds a new rider:

I know nothing about the latter part of this motion and I am not even going to discuss it. I am not aware of the objective behind this stipulation. I also do not know which political parties have been receiving funds from abroad. What I do know is that the 1966 Bill had as its long title:

To all intents and purposes that amounts to precisely the same as the long title of this Bill. That is one reason I advance why we have no real reason to assume that the present Bill will be very much less encompassing than was its ugly predecessor. We have no reason to assume that at all, although of course one sincerely hopes the contrary.

We have also had the majority recommendations in the report of the Commission on the Prohibition of Improper Interference Bill. We debated that matter in this House for several days. It is quite clear what the reasoning and the motivation of that majority report is. We have the commendations here and they are very clear. They recommend that the Government introduce a measure which will prohibit, inter alia, “active participation by a member of one population group in the party political activities of another, political parties with mixed membership, financial assistance by one political party of one population group to a political party of another population group and the acceptance of financial aid from abroad”. We know too from what the hon. the Prime Minister said during the debate on the report of that commission that it is his intention to translate into legislative action the recommendations of the majority report. We therefore have very good reason indeed for anticipating what the major provisions of this Bill will be. The wording may have improved a little but I do not believe that the actual provisions of the Bill will differ greatly from those of the original Bill, although slight improvements may have been brought about. I believe of course that the 1966 Bill was quite ludicrous because of the restrictions it placed on the right of association, the restrictions on the freedom of speech and discussion across the colour line, the restrictions on legitimate political parties and their activities, and of course, in regard to their influence across the colour line.

I want to say that even if the new Bill is restricted in its ambit to political parties as such and even if it no longer includes, as I sincerely hope it does not, multi-racial organizations of all kinds, I still believe that it will be a gross and unwarranted intrusion on the freedom of speech, political action, political discussion and political persuasion, which is the most important of all. I think that the long title of this Bill makes it absolutely clear that the Bill is going to be yet another assault on freedom of association across the colour line in this country. It is going to be an assault on freedom of association in what I believe to be an absolutely fundamental field, namely the political field. To me the meaning of opposition in a democratic country is that one can plead for changes in the status quo and that one can advance outside accepted Government policy in trying to persuade the electorate to replace that Government with a different government. As I read the long title of this Bill, particularly if one reads it together with the evidence given before the commission and accepted in the majority report, such as that by the spokesman for Sabra, the Bill is going to be so wide that in future it is going to be very difficult for anybody to present political opposition in this country outside the ambit of apartheid.

I think it is going to make it very difficult indeed. I think that it is going to endanger every political opponent of this Government, by so restricting any discussions on politics across the colour line. The word “politics” as used in the long title of this Bill, has a very wide meaning. Such a word can he defined very widely indeed. I believe that this is another intrusion into the rights of freedom of association, and we have more than enough of this in this country already, It seems quite extraordinary to me that, at a time when the entire world is seeking ways of extending and improving dialogue across the colour line, South Africa is taking exactly the opposite direction. For these reasons I oppose the First Reading of this Bill.

Mr. Speaker, we on this side of the House will support the First Reading of this Bill. We are opposed to the receipt by political parties of financial assistance from abroad. We stated our views in that regard in the Commission on Improper Interference, which has submitted its report to this House. In respect of the limitation of interference by one population group in the politics of any other population group, the attitude has been that it is not possible to define what that interference should be, improper or otherwise. Perhaps the Government has succeeded in squaring the circle. We believe they should have the opportunity of explaining their new ideas to us. For these reasons we will support the hon. the Minister in the introduction and the First Reading of this Bill.

Motion put and a division demanded.

Fewer than four members (viz. Mrs. H. Suzman) having supported the demand for a division, motion declared agreed to.

Bill read a First Time.

Mr. Chairman, during my second-reading speech I pointed out to the hon. the Minister that I was not satisfied with the wording of clause 6, and I suggested then that we should have another look at the wording and perhaps rephrase the clause, so that it would really mean what was intended. The clause has, however, not been changed, and I would like to move as an amendment—

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member was kind enough to bring this amendment to my notice. I have looked at both in Afrikaans and the English version of the clause, and I agree with the hon. member that it reads somewhat strangely. However, the law advisers inform me that there are many such instances where one is dealing with various matters which have to be covered in the same clause. In such a case this is the form in which it is drafted. It has been drafted in this manner in other legislation as well, and this was also the position in the previous legislation. However, this does not alter the fact that the hon. member’s amendment will, in my opinion, also improve the language in a certain respect. I therefore have no objection. It does not alter the intention of this clause in any way. I therefore have no objection to this amendment, provided that we also make the same consequential amendments in the Afrikaans text.

†In other words, that in line 41, after “persons” be inserted “and the safety of”. I should just like to make sure from the hon. member whether the words he would like to be inserted are “and the safety of” or “and safety of”.

“And the safety of.”

Amendment put and agreed to.

Clause, as amended, put and agreed to. House Resumed:

Bill reported with an amendment.

During the second-reading debate we told the hon. the Minister that during the Committee Stage we should like to obtain greater clarity in connection with the application of clause 1. The interpretation we attached to that was that the Act would not be applicable to the provision of security. We all agree that only one form of security should be given, but we should like to have the assurance from the hon. the Minister that if this clause is passed, it will not relieve the auctioneer of any other obligation which he has to meet in terms of sections 3, 4 and 5 of the principal Act. I think the hon. the Deputy Minister has now had an opportunity of discussing this with his law advisers and we should like to learn from him what the position is in this regard. Section 5 of the principal Act, as well as sections 3 and 4, imposes certain obligations on auctioneers in respect of the statements they have to submit and the price which is to be paid for the farmer’s product. We should just like to have the assurance that this clause, if passed, will only relate to the question of security, but that all other obligations imposed on the auctioneer by sections 3 and 4 of the principal Act will remain of full force and effect.

If the hon. member looks at clause 1, he will see that the new section 5A provides—

The purpose of this amending Bill is to exempt agents of the Meat Board from the obligation of giving security to the Department in respect of that business carried on by them in their capacities as agents of the Meat Board. That security will now be required by the Meat Board by means of an agency agreement only. Any auctioneer acting on behalf of the Meat Board will have to do so on the basis of a contract approved by the Minister of Agriculture in terms of the provisions of the Marketing Act. This is the first aspect. The Minister will see to it that the necessary security is given. Any auctioneer doing any work on a contractual basis for the Meat Board will be exempted from giving security in respect of slaughter animals or meat handled by him as the agent of the Meat Board. As regards other livestock handled by him, he will still be obliged in terms of the principal Act to give security. In other words, I may give the hon. member the assurance that there is no danger of auctioneers being exempted from the obligation of giving security, except as regards stock handled by them as agents of the Meat Board.

Clause put and agreed to.

House Resumed:

Bill reported without amendment.

I should like to move the following amendment—

The purport of this amendment is as follows. According to the amendment the hon. Minister wants to introduce, money can only be lent to companies for the erection of dwellings for non-white farm labourers. I do not think the hon. the Minister is correct, but his view is that he was in any case able to lend money to individual farmers for the erection of dwellings for non-white farm labourers under the existing Act. This entire section is now being inserted so that loans can also be granted to companies for the erection of dwellings for non-white farm labourers. But why are white farm labourers being excluded? I thought the hon. the Minister would want to encourage farming. In fact, the hon. the Minister of Agriculture has already stated that the time has come for us to have larger farming units, and where one has a larger unit it is absolutely essential to employ white persons on such a farm as well. Here the hon. the Deputy Minister is now coming along and stating that he is prepared to lend money for the erection of dwellings for non-white farm labourers but not for the erection of dwellings for white foremen. Sir, the time is past when white foremen were prepared to live in the type of house that had then been provided for them. To-day they want a better house and in order to give them a better house the farmer needs more money. The Minister was wrong in adopting the attitude from time to time that the farmer had the right to deduct the cost of providing housing for his employees from his taxable income. I do not have the time at my disposal now but I shall prove to the hon. the Deputy Minister how ridiculous that argument is by simply stating briefly that if I establish a small company and accommodate my Coloured labourers on estates belonging to the company and then pay them increased wages and have them pay rental, it would be much better for me rather to pay income tax on that than to deduct the cost of housing for my employees from my taxable income, because in the long run I shall gain much more by doing so. The hon. the Minister simply does not want to realize this. I do not know what the hon. the Minister’s intention is; I do not know why he is prepared to lend money to companies for nonwhite housing but is unwilling to help the farmer to keep his white employees on the farm by providing housing for them which does not consist of shanties. The farmers to-day do not have the money to build reasonable, decent houses for their white employees. A person working in a factory here in Cape Town can go and live in Bothasig at a subsidized rental, but when the farmer has to compete with the industrialist, the Minister of Agriculture is not willing to help the farmer to do for his employees what the industrialist in the city is able to do for his employees. When I raised this matter in the second-reading debate he vented his spleen here and stated that I had not read the Bill correctly. I did read the Bill correctly. If Afrikaans means anything then the Bill means what I stated here it meant. If the hon. the Minister believes that he has the right in terms of the principal Act to do what we are proposing here, let him then accept this amendment or move a similar amendment himself. He will not do so, Mr. Chairman.

Why not?

I know why, but he would not like me to state the reason. I think it is a reasonable, fair and necessary amendment, because if farming in South Africa is to survive, we must train a class of white person in the rural areas who will be able to work as farm foremen or farm managers and who will not be regarded as labourers but as the manager of a business in the same way as one to-day has managers of business undertakings in the cities. The time is long past when a farm foremen was merely a servant or a labourer on the farm, and the Minister must help us to bring about a position where the farm foreman will not be regarded as a servant or a labourer.

Would the hon. member please bring his amendment to the Table?

I am afraid, Mr. Chairman, that you are going to rule it out of order.

The hon. member’s fear is well founded. I am afraid that I am unable to accept this amendment as it would involve increased expenditure requiring the State President’s recommendation.

I do not want to discuss the amendment: I merely want to furnish an explanation. The hon. member made certain assertions here, and the assertions he made contain the accusation that special provision is now being made in this Bill for the erection of housing for non-Whites while this is being denied to white employees.

Yes.

He admits that that is the accusation he made. It is an accusation of political significance and that is why I think it is essential that I put the matter in its correct perspective. The original Act makes provision for the financing of farmers who fall under category three. They obtain subsidized loans. They obtain loans at a fixed interest of 5 per cent, whereas the rate of interest in other cases is more than 5 per cent. The original Act does not provide that those loans may not be used for certain purposes. In other words, in terms of the principal Act farmers can be financed even in regard to the erection of housing, the building of barns, etc. which are regarded as essential for the purposes of his farming. The intention of this amending Bill is to enable a new legal personality, i.e. companies, etc., to obtain loans for special purposes, i.e. for soil and water conservation, and now for the erection of housing for non-Whites as well. The story that we are coming forward with the excuse of income tax does not hold water; a company may deduct the cost of any improvements on its farm, including the costs of the erection of housing for its white employees, from its taxable income. But we are now dealing here with the problem of housing for white employees in the rural areas. We are not dealing with the problem that companies do not have sufficient housing for their managers. The Department of Agricultural Credit and Land Tenure is not a department whose purpose it is to finance big companies and rapidly expanding agricultural undertakings. That can be done by the Land Bank and the normal financial institutions. That is why I am not prepared, even if such an amendment were advisable, to consider it.

Clause, as printed, put and agreed to.

Clause 3:

In the second-reading debate the Minister gave us the assurance that this amendment was in no way going to affect the creditworthiness of the farmer who received assistance under this Act. I accept his assurance in this matter, but for the sake of clarity I would like to ask him one or two questions in this regard. In the first place, I want to ask him what set of circumstances brought about the necessity for amending this section at this stage. You see, Sir, we have had a lot of experience of legislation of this kind, and there must be some reason why, after all the experience the Government has had in framing legislation of this nature, this amendment is considered necessary. We passed this Act in 1966 and I want to know why in this short interval it has again become necessary to amend the legislation.

Order! The hon. member must confine himself to the amendments and not to the section as it stands in the principal Act.

Then I would ask the Minister whether the amendment we are dealing with in clause 3 is in any way connected with the Department of Agricultural Credit not being able to finance all the applications for assistance by way of consolidating farmers’ debts? Is the reason for the amendment possibly because the Department has found that it did not have sufficient finance to grant all the applications made to it? The wording of the clause is also particularly obscure.

In what sense?

As section 3 stood in the original Act, and as I read it, it says that if one of the properties of an applicant is bonded privately, then the State, when making a loan to the owner, cannot impose against the privately bonded property any of the conditions set out in paragraphs (a) to (e). But now, as the result of the amendment, the State will not be in a position to impose condition 1 (b) against the owner’s second property where that property is already privately mortgaged. But the State will now be empowered to impose against that property any of the other conditions (a) to (e), even although a private bond already exists when the State bond is registered in terms of section 34 of the Act. It seems to me that this places the Minister in a position to impose more severe restrictions on the applicant when he applies for assistance under the Agricultural Credit Act. If that is so. I think we are in a position to say that the farmers’ creditworthiness is being curtailed. What we want to know is whether the Minister will give us the assurance that that is not so, because it says in this clause that the Minister may impose these conditions. If he imposes them in such a way that the farmer’s properties will not become so curtailed by the restrictions imposed in this Act that he will be placed in a difficult position to get further credit from private lenders of money, that will satisfy us.

In the first place I want to say that this is not a question of not having adequate funds; it is a question of sometimes not having the necessary funds. One has several cases where the applicant who comes forward has a Land Bank mortgage, and he does not expect the Land Bank mortgage to be taken over because at the Land Bank, for example, they have the insurance of a life policy which covers them if the person should die, and then the full amount is paid out. That is why such an applicant sometimes prefers to keep his Land Bank mortgage, but he then needs extra money to purchase another piece of land in order to turn his land into an economic unit. That is why we are making the provision that it is possible for one to have separate registration. But precisely because the extra money is being given to him in order to turn it into an economic unit, he has to take precautionary measures to prevent it from subsequently being subdivided. I stated very explicitly in my second-reading speech that one cannot with this Act deprive the existing mortgage holder of his rights. This is impossible, because an existing mortgage holder can only be deprived of his rights if one redeems or takes over his mortgage. In other words, there is no danger here of undermining the solvency of the farmer as a result of this extra assistance. On the contrary it is going to have just the opposite effect.

I also asked the Minister what circumstances have changed the position in this period of 18 months? For what reason has the amendment to be made? The Minister has not explained that point as clearly as I would have liked. As I see it, with the section as it was, the encumbered property of a farmer was already protected in the sense that the position of the private bondholder was already secured. For that reason I cannot quite see why the amendment has to be made at this stage.

I shall explain it once again very briefly. I also said in the second reading that we had recently been faced with problems which we came across which made this amendment essential. I shall mention an example. I am referring to movable property. I said that the old Act did not make provision enabling us to take as security in the form of a pledge crops which had already been planted. In this way we were faced with a problem, which cropped up for example in the case of the washaways along the Orange River, because the Act prohibited us from accepting the crops which had already been planted there as security for a loan to enable the man to undertake the repair work in regard to the damage he had already suffered. This entailed that one was sometimes unable to give a man assistance, because he was not solvent, and because it was impossible for one to accept that as security. We are now making provision in the Act that one can also accept this as security in order to render the necessary assistance to him. That is the one reason why it has become essential to amend this section.

The hon. member asked about the security of the existing mortgage holder.

I have already explained it the first time. The mortgage of the private mortgage holder is registered in the Deeds Office, and one cannot with legislation amend the registration in the Deeds Office in a way which would prejudice the interests of the mortgage holder. He already has that protection, and that is why it is not necessary to include that protection in the Act again.

Clause put and agreed to.

House Resumed:

Bill reported without amendment.

During the second-reading debate the Minister made it clear to us that although he was using this omnibus phrase “any ordinance”, what really concerned him was the fact that although all the other provinces were on the same level in dealing with townships, and his Department and the Community Development Board were on the same basis with all the provinces, he had struck a difficulty in Natal where the Durban municipal area is governed by its own Townships Ordinance. If that is so, the Minister perhaps has a case to come to us and to ask that this section of the original Act be amended so as to cover that particular point which has arisen and which could create difficulty by having one municipal area only not falling within the purview of the Act. But then the Minister has told us that although that is what he is aiming at, he now wants the board to be free of any ordinance which may affect this section 20 and all the wide powers contained in section 20. These powers are wide and have a far-reaching effect. I have placed on the Order Paper an amendment which is merely intended to free the board in so far as section 20 is concerned from a particular ordinance, the Town Planning Ordinance of Natal, but I am not certain that that is the correct ordinance. The Minister and his Department should know which ordinance or which section of an ordinance is the one which causes him difficulty. I move the amendment standing in my name—

I want to tell the Minister immediately that if he wants to substitute some other ordinance, I will be quite happy to accept it and to withdraw my amendment. But we on this side of the House are not prepared to accept an amendment now to the original section of this Act which is of an omnibus nature in the way in which it is before us now. It is all very well for the Minister to say that he only wants to use this power because he cannot bring Durban into line as far as endowment fees are concerned. We have had in this House recently tongue-in-the-cheek statements which we now discover were tongue-in-the-cheek statements which were not meant to be taken at face value. I am not suggesting that is the case with this Minister, but once we pass this clause in this form, referring to “any ordinance”, any successor to the Minister can act according to the full legal effect of such an amendment. For those reasons I repeat that if the Minister indicates that there is some other ordinance which worries him, and not the one which I believe is the one, I would be quite happy to withdraw my amendment with the leave of the Committee, and to allow the Minister to put in the section which is worrying him, but in its present form this clause is unacceptable to this side of the House.

I regret that I am unable to accept the hon. member’s amendment, the reason being that the provisions of section 16 of the Town Planning Ordinance of 1949 of Natal do in fact deal with town planning in general and so forth, but form part of Chapter III of that ordinance of 1949. Section 39 of the same Chapter provides that the entire Chapter III, in which section 16 is contained, is not applicable to Durban and Pietermaritzburg. But then section 39 of that ordinance further provides that the provincial authority may exempt any other municipality from the provisions of Chapter III of that provincial ordinance. That means, if I were to accept his amendment, that I would be in exactly the same position as I am at present as regards Durban. Durban is already excluded from section 16 of the Ordinance. I hope hon. members who are lawyers will understand my problem. I tried to remove the difficulty by narrowing the provisions and stating my aims more clearly. But now I want hon. members to understand what is provided by section 20 of Act No. 3 of 1966. It only refers to this. Section 20 (1) of the principal Act provides that the board shall be exempt from the provisions of any by-law or regulation of a local authority and the conditions of establishment of a township prescribed by any Administrator, townships board or townships commission “relating to …” Then a number of matters are stipulated. In other words, section 20 (1) does not exempt the board from anything else, but only from those regulations of local authorities and other provisions relating to these specified matters. If the word “ordinance” is now inserted here, it will only refer to those particular provisions stated in section 20.

We know that.

We passed legislation for the removal of restrictions last year. That legislation was passed at the request of the provinces. After the proposed legislation had been examined by a Select Committee, it was unanimously adopted by this House as the Removal of Restrictions Act. Section 5 of this Act provides that I may, after consultation with the Administrator—not, “in consultation with”, but “after consultation with”—suspend any servitude or statutory provision—and “statutory provision” includes “ordinance”—relating to the subdivision of land, the purpose for which land may be used, or the requirements that must be complied with in the erection of buildings or the use of land. Therefore I already have the power to suspend any ordinance dealing with the same matters as those mentioned in section 20 (1), except as regards endowment fees. This means in effect that if I were to insert the word “ordinance” in the principal Act now, it would only refer to ordinances in which endowment fees are charged in the case of subdivision of land. It can have only this meaning and this meaning alone. Consequently it does not mean that simply because the word “ordinance” is being inserted here, I am taking wide powers. That term is limited in its scope and effect. Only where endowment fees are concerned is it necessary for me to act in terms thereof. I searched for another definition, but one comes up against so many problems and difficulties because reference has to be made to so many Acts, ordinances, private ordinances and private ordinances that might possibly come in the future. As a result of the cumbersome definition which will then become necessary it will eventually lose its clarity. I hope the hon. gentlemen will agree with me that this being the position, although I do not insert “ordinance” here, I can already act under another Act in respect of all those matters except endowment fees. I can exempt the Community Development Board from the obligations elsewhere. As only endowment fees remain and as exemption from the provisions of the Provincial Ordinance in terms of section 39 of the consolidated Provincial Ordinance may be granted only in respect of those cities and towns in Natal, this provision is only applicable to ordinances of that type and only to endowment fees that are payable in the case of the subdivision of land. This is the only meaning it can have in legal terminology and in practice. I am therefore not removing a wide power. It has a very limited and narrow legal meaning. I hope hon. members will be satisfied with that.

Amendments put and negatived.

Clause, as printed, put and agreed to (Official Opposition dissenting).

Clause 6:

Mr. Chairman, in the second-reading discussion of this Bill the hon. the Minister indicated to the House that it was his desire to have some control over the licensing of business premises, i.e. general dealers’ licences and others under Schedule II of the Licensing Act, in order to give some degree of preference to what one might call displaced traders moving from one place to another in compliance with the Group Areas legislation. I believe there might be some justification for giving these persons some degree of preference because they are displaced from their businesses through no fault of their own but because of Government action. However, I believe the provisions of this clause are far too wide and are introducing a principle, as far as the granting of licences is concerned, which is highly dangerous and undesirable as far as the country is concerned. I want to deal particularly with sub-section (3) of the proposed new section 43A, and I wish to move the following amendment standing in my name on the Order Paper—

In terms of this sub-section the Minister seeks to have the right to control the issue of licences issued under Schedule II throughout the whole country. The amendment standing in the hon. the Minister’s name on the Order Paper is to the effect that the control envisaged in the new sub-section (3) will only be exercised in respect of “declared group areas”.

The Minister knows it is the intention of the Government and the purpose of the Group Areas Act that every corner of the Republic will be a group area in terms of that Act at some time or other. A number of group areas have in fact already been declared. That means that in terms of the proposed sub-section (3) every person applying for a trade licence throughout the whole country eventually will have to come to this Minister for a certificate stating that he is eligible to be granted the licence in question. The Minister may say to me that he has no intention of proclaiming the whole of the Republic, that he has no intention of using those powers throughout the Republic. If that is so, why does he then want these powers? What my amendment seeks to achieve is this. Where the Department of Community Development through the Community Development Board establishes a township and business premises are provided within that township, then I am prepared to suggest that the hon. the Minister and the board should have the power of a licensing authority. In other words, licences to be issued in townships established by the said board should be controlled by the Minister himself.

Some days ago I placed on the Order Paper a question directed to the hon. the Minister of Finance asking him how many trade licences have been issued each year since 1965 in terms of the Second Schedule of the Licensing Act. The reply was these statistics are not available. Perhaps I directed my request to the wrong Minister for the statistics are available, and if I can quote from the Statistics Yearbook which I have here it will he clear what powers the Minister is asking for. The total number of tade licences issued under Schedule II were as follows. In 1964, 182,185 trade licences wee issued in the Republic, whilst the figure for 1965 was 184,296. What the figure is for 1967 I do not know. Now the Minister is asking this House to give him power by proclamation to say he is going to control 186,000 trade licences in this country. He tells me that is nonsense, that he has no intention of exercising those powers. My reply to him is this: Why are you then asking for these powers? They are unnecessary and undesirable. The powers he seeks and the number of licences concerned are such that his department will not be able to exercise those powers. There would be chaos if every applicant for a trade licence had to approach his department and ask for a permit.

What is more, the Minister quoted fom the report of the Commission of Inquiry Into Trade Licensing but he very carefully, or unintentionally, overlooked the provisions of paragraph 358. Let me read the recommendations of the Commission—

That is the recommendation of the Commission, namely that the licensing authorities should continue to control the issuing of licences. The Minister now seeks an omnibus power and we on this side are not prepared to grant him that power. In terms of my amendment we say he can exercise that power of control and in effect constitute the licensing authority in townships established by the Development Board.

Mr. Chairman, I regret that I unfortunately cannot accept the amendment in that form, because the Community Development Board hardly ever develops areas itself. Most of the areas to which we want to make subsection 3 of clause 6 applicable, are areas which are being developed by municipalities with funds they receive from, for example, the Housing Commission.

Will you redraft the amendment and put it into proper form for the purpose?

Yes. Therefore I unfortunately cannot accept that amendment in its present form, but I feel as the hon. member does that the original provision in the Bill, as it stands, empowers me to exercise control in white group areas as well, as a matter of fact in every group area. I do not think that is my job. I am not concerned in that, nor do I want to be. Therefore I want to move the following amendment in lieu of the amendment standing on my name.

Do we not get copies of these amendments any more?

Order!

I wish to move the following amendment:

In line 51, after “land” to insert “situate in any group area as defined in section 1 of the Group Areas Act, 1966 (Act No. 36 of 1966),”; in line 4, page 7, after “land” to insert “situate in any group area (as defined in section 1 of the Group Areas Act, 1966), in which the provisions of any section referred to in section 51 of the Community Development Act, 1966 (Act No. 3 of 1966), have, in terms of section 51 of that Act, been applied or situate in an area designated by the Minister in terms of subsection (1) of section 15 of that Act”; and in line 6, to omit “thereof” and to substitute “of any such premises or land”.

Why did you move the amendment so suddenly? How can we follow that now?

We have had this on the Order Paper for weeks, and now you suddenly move another amendment.

Order!

Mr. Chairman, I admit that the amendment, as it stands, is fairly involved. I too have been looking for the correct wording and we have had several discussions. Only late this morning I received this amendment in its final form from the law advisers after having discussed the matter with them. The amendment means that in respect of those group areas or in respect of those areas to which the Community Development Act is being made applicable—where it can be of assistance in providing loans and in laying out the township and where it may fulfill any of its functions—I am being empowered to deal with these matters. This immediately limits the areas, because the Community Development Act is not being made applicable to a white group area, for instance, in which there are no affected properties. Hon. members should bear in mind that as soon as matters relating to affected properties have been finalized in a white group area, for instance, it is again withdrawn as a designated area. Eventually this will only relate to those groups areas in which we are actively engaged in the removal of dealers who are disqualified persons, etc. This provision will only relate to those areas in which the Community Development Act actively operates. I think it restricts the operation of the Act. I can see no other way in which we can restrict that and achieve our object at the same time.

Mr. Chairman, it is unfortunate that the hon. the Minister did not find the opportunity of letting us have this amendment or notice of it beforehand. In the very short time that we have had while he was on his feet, a matter of a few minutes, it appears that what he is endeavouring to do, is to interpret my amendment legally by reference to the Act and that his powers should be applied to townships established by the Board. For that reason we must have a reservation on this side of the House, as we have not studied all the implications of the amendment now moved by the hon. the Minister. It would appear however that he has attempted to meet the amendment which I placed on the Order Paper, that is to restrict his powers to only those areas in which the Group Areas Act actively operates in the development or the creation of a township area.

The discussions can take place at the Report Stage.

Yes. That is so, but we must reserve our rights either to have a discussion, in the Report Stage, or alternatively when the matter goes to the Other Place we can consider this section again. But I do want to say as bluntly as I can to the hon. the Minister that it is rather unfortunate that he is placing some difficulties in our way to perform our proper functions when we have a complicated amendment passed to us across the floor.

With the leave of the Committee, I would like to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment proposed by Mr. L. G. Murray, with leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Chairman, I should just like to explain. After the matter had been discussed I received several proposals which were not always satisfactory and which for some reason were not ready. This amendment which I eventually received from the law advisers only reached me while this House was sitting. Therefore I too received it only at a very late stage although I did discuss it with them in advance and knew what it contained.

Mr. Chairman, I want to say that I accept the hon. the Minister’s explanation, but I want to register our protest more strongly. We have had our amendments on the Order Paper for the best part of two weeks. This hon. Minister has had all the time in the world to consider these amendments. He has had all that time to do something about it, but I believe he has only just started to reconsider it, because I heard there was a deputation coming to see him. Now when they come along, he starts to take notice and goes back to the law advisers. This is the point. So this is why we only received a copy of this amendment now. I am sorry, but I am not prepared to accept that this Minister should have neglected this matter as he has, and now implies that the law advisers have taken something like two weeks to attend to it.

Order! The hon. member is not speaking to the clause now.

Yes, I am, Sir.

No, the hon. member is not. He must come back to the clause.

Anyway, I have had my say, Sir.

Hon. members opposite have just made two statements. In the first place they accused the hon. the Minister of having intentionally withheld this draft amendment for some obscure reason. Now I want to give hon. members opposite this advice.

Order! The hon. member is now discussing a matter which he may raise during the third-reading debate. It does not belong in the Committee Stage.

Mr. Chairman, you allowed that hon. member to slight this hon. Minister. I just want to explain.

But I stopped the hon. member and he resumed his seat.

But after he had had his say. I just want to explain in connection with clause 6, Mr. Chairman. With all due respect to you, Sir, I want to explain that the allegations deal with the details of clause 6.

The hon. member may discuss clause 6. He may not discuss other matters which have no bearing on that clause.

No, Mr. Chairman, I have not spoken about that yet. This hon. Minister moved a very reasonable amendment to clause 6 this afternoon.

We have accepted the amendment.

Now hon. members shout from the opposite side that they have accepted the amendment. The fact remains that the hon. member for Umlazi deemed it fit in his arrogance to reproach the hon. the Minister of Community Development with his not having introduced the amendment timeously for some obscure reason.

When has he ever said “some obscure reason”?

That hon. member may speak when I am through. As regards the details of clause 6, I want to say that if those hon. members ever again want to introduce an amendment at the invitation of the hon. the Minister, they should rather spend two weeks on that in order that they will be able to introduce amendments here which may be debated fruitfully. The other hon. member spoke here in a sanctimonious way of clause 6 containing a new, dangerous principle. He referred to the details of the clause. I want to ask the hon. member whether he is aware of the fact that that principle is older than the United Party?

The Minister agrees with me. He has amended this clause.

No, this is an entirely different matter. The Minister has not changed the principle by means of this amendment. [Interjections.] The hon. the Minister has not changed the principle. That principle remains as it was when this Bill was introduced. Mr. Chairman, I politely want to refer you to the fact that those hon. members introduced a similar principle in their days.

Order! The principles of the Bill were dealt with at the second reading. The hon. member is not discussing the clause. The hon. member must come back to the clause or resume his seat.

Mr. Chairman, I shall do so, but you allowed the hon. member for Umlazi …

Order! The hon. member should not tell the Chair how to act.

Amendments proposed by the Minister of Community Development put and agreed to.

Clause, as amended, put and agreed to. House Resumed:

Bill reported with amendments.

Mr.

Speaker, I move—

That the House do now adjourn.

Mr. Speaker, the time is now 4.45. The sitting hours of this House take us on a day such as this until 7 o’clock. I rise to protest against what amounts to a collapse of the Order Paper. For some time during this Session what has continually been happening is that the House has been adjourning for many days on end an hour or half an hour early because there has not been the business to keep the House occupied. If you consider how much time has been wasted, you will find that more than 20 hours have now been wasted through early adjournments. I have not taken private members’ days into account because the time of the sitting of the House then belongs to the private member. I also take no account of the few times when we adjourn early by 10 minutes or a quarter of an hour. We have now wasted almost a week of Parliament’s time. In other words, we could have met a week later than we did.

This raises many questions. The Government as such considers its Parliamentary programme of legislation, as I understand it, some time in October to decide what the legislative programme for the session will be. This is then set in motion and the necessary Bills are prepared. Why is it that they cannot be available sooner than they are, and not only when we are already assembled in Parliament? Why is it that they cannot be available before we meet in Parliament? Mr. Speaker, you will remember that last session this matter was raised in this House. We then came to an agreement that an effort should be made to allow Bills to come forward more readily and in a more organized manner so that persons outside would be informed of what is taking place in Parliament. What is happening to-day is that legislation is being brought before this House and we are being asked to deal with it before the printers’ ink has dried. This is what is happening. The position has become serious. The Order Paper has collapsed.

We had to-day notice of most important legislation. It is probably the most important legislation to come before this House during this Session. [Interjections.] It is affecting, as my hon. friend says, the rights of certain people. It is basic legislation. When are we going to be asked to consider that legislation? Tomorrow this House will only have to deal with the Budget and the few items on the Order Paper which took very little time this afternoon and which will take even less time tomorrow. Are we going to be asked to consider this legislation to-morrow? Is that how the House is to continue its business? Mr. Speaker, it is scandalous. This attitude cannot but be interpreted as a contempt of Parliament. It is contempt for Parliament, for the system under which we operate as well as for the people who support a parliamentary system. This is simply not good enough. I know that the Leader of the House has done his very best and has been very concerned about the Order Paper from time to time. But he does not seem to be able to get the Ministers to come forward with their legislation. What is the hon. the Prime Minister doing about the discipline in his party, as far as his Ministers are concerned, in order to get them to come forward with their legislation? What are the Ministers themselves doing?

It seems that the Government did not know clearly what its legislative programme was. The House was called together a week late. We did this by arrangement as an experiment. It seems that by trying these experiments we have landed in a worse situation than any other I have known since I have sat in this House—and that covers a period of many years. This shows crass incompetence on the part of the Government by allowing Parliament to reach this stage where it has to adjourn because the Order Paper has collapsed and we do not have the business to go on with. There is something wrong. Very often it is said that it is the draughtsmen and legal advisers who are responsible for the bottleneck. But that has been said for many years. Why is it that if that is the position something has not been done about it and that legal draughtsmen have not been trained or the services of more legal draughtsmen obtained so that the Government can put forward its legislation and the House can deal with it? That excuse is a hardy annual and it is no longer an excuse. I have shown that there is something wrong and that the responsibility rests with the Leader of the House, the Prime Minister and members of the Cabinet and the Government as a whole. I believe that unless this kind of thing is rectified and does not recur in the future, you only damage the good name of Parliament in the eyes of the public outside. Democracy is sniped at sufficiently without it being sniped at gratuitously by the Government itself in this manner. I therefore protest most vehemently against what has happened this afternoon. It is the culmination of what has been happening during the whole of this session.

Mr. Speaker …

On a point of order, Sir, the Minister moved the motion for the adjournment, and there are members who still wish to speak. If the Minister replies, it will close the debate.

Order! I call upon the hon. member for Brits to speak.

The hon. the Chief Whip of the Opposition is an authority on parliamentary procedure. He is virtually the father of this House. He has sat in this House for many years. I want to remind the hon. member that what is taking place here today is nothing but the old yearly political sham fight that we get here. What he has done here to-day, we did when we sat on that side. It has been done since 1910 and since he made his appearance in this House.

Only we were better at it than they are.

This opportunity is always seized upon by the Chief Whip of the Opposition; it is actually a temptation to such a Chief Whip. At the time when hon. members of the Opposition were sitting on the Government benches and we sat on that side, we had the same situation, but we did not say that parliamentary procedure was collapsing. When the United Party was in power there were times when the Order Paper also looked as it does to-day, but perhaps not quite as thin. But what is the reason for this thin Order Paper? This Government comes forward with such a programme that its legislation is virtually unassailable; because it has its ear to the ground. We are engaged in the implementation of policy. It is the Government’s task to place important legislation before the House, and I believe that in a Parliament one should have effective debating, but what happens? We must sometimes help the Opposition; they are suffering from complete political exhaustion; there is no longer any effective debating from that side. We create the opportunity for them; we come here with positive legislation and instead of the hon. the Chief Whip making a positive contribution, he seizes this opportunity of putting up a sham fight. What is happening here is like a kind of film one gets every year. In saying this I do not want to suggest that the hon. the Chief Whip of the Opposition is a film star, but I want to say to him that if one is an Opposition Whip and wants to play-act in this manner, one is not a film star; one becomes the evening star of the party. The hon. the Chief Whip knows that we have had this situation all these years, and with the change-over from the monarchic to the republican form of government, we came together and decided that the Standing Rules and Orders should be modernized, and hon. members of the Opposition all cooperated in that connection. We modernized the Standing Rules and Orders with two aims, namely better utilization of our precious time and, secondly, to achieve effective debating. Those were the two objectives, and to-day, in terms of the Rules of the House, one can no longer debate endlessly. The fact that a debate lasts for days on end does not necessarily mean that one has a good Parliament. We do not only want to have quantity of words here; there must also be quality, and that is what happens here. Now the hon. member comes along as an authority on parliamentary procedure and ever so piously again makes use of this sham fight to create the impression outside that this is a wonderful Opposition, an Opposition with an inexhaustible capacity for work. Mr. Speaker, that party is not merely asleep; they have departed this life. A tired party such as the United Party now wants to come and tell me how keen they are to work. They protest because the House has to be adjourned. They have nothing to do. Why? Because they do not have the inner strength to debate effectively. Mr. Sneaker, 47 Bills have so far been passed by this House. Day after day the wheels spun and one Bill after another went through the mill, and now it seems to me that a destructive desire is rampant, in the form of the hon. the Chief Whip, like a political predator seeking its prey. I cannot understand it. Mr. Speaker, is it fair that this attack is made against us; that the country should be told that there is an active Opposition in this House, that they are so industrious, that they are so keen to work, that we on this side are the work dodgers and that we do not want to work? It is making a mockery of Parliament. This Parliament is for effective debating. We are here to place under a magnifying glass any legislation which is introduced, and if good legislation is introduced and an interruption occurs such as occurred to-day, one does not resort to a sham fight in the way the hon. the Chief Whip of the Opposition did to-day.

Sir, I do not say that the hon. the Chief Whip on the other side is responsible for this collapse of the Order Paper; I do not say that he is the engine driver. He is just the man who runs alongside so that when the engine driver brings up the locomotive to the truck he can drop in the “skakel” pin. That is all that the Chief Whip does, but he seems to be taking it personally amiss that the Order Paper has collapsed to-day, and he talks in a glib manner about the legislation which the Government is bringing forth and which he says we cannot oppose on this side of the House; because this legislation is designed to carry out the policy of the Government and it is a policy that we cannot oppose. Look at the Order Paper to-day, Sir. Where is this wonderful policy in the legislation that we have been dealing with to-day? The Bills on the Order Paper to-day deal with census and statistics, livestock sales, mines and works and so forth. Let the hon. Chief Whip go back and have a look at the matters that we have been dealing with since we came here at the beginning of the Session. The truth of the matter is that this Government has more Cabinet and Deputy Ministers than we have ever had in the history of South Africa before and they still cannot produce legislation timeously. We are wasting our time here when we have other work and other matters to attend to. Day after day we are knocking off before the proper time that has been set for the purpose of adjourning the House because members of the Cabinet have not done their job. Sir, while I am on my feet and dealing with the question of members of the Cabinet doing their job, I would also like to say that I think it is reaching almost a scandalous state that important Bills are brought before us at the last moment, as the Chief Whip on this side remarked earlier on, instead of having them published beforehand so that people can see what legislation is coming. If members of the Cabinet are doing their job, that is what they should be doing; they should be having those Bills published so that the people of South Africa whom we represent here will have the opportunity of stating their point of view. I challenge anybody on that side of the House to say that the people ought not to know in advance what type of legislation is to be brought before the House. The first time that they know about it is when they read about it in the newspapers. I object to being steamrollered by the Government because the Cabinet will not do their job. They look upon it as a sort of half-holiday when we get away a bit early. We have our job to do and we should be doing it here. We are not doing it and the Government is to blame.

The hon. the Chief Whip on this side was quite right in blaming this state of affairs on the Opposition. We have seen how the Opposition have virtually collapsed in this House in the past couple of years. The fact that we have at this stage of the Session already passed 47 Bills and that we have now reached the stage where the Order Paper is clearing up, is largely to be blamed on the Opposition. Last year we put 117 Acts on the Statute Book, an all-time record since 1910. Mr. Speaker, we have not experienced anything like this for years, and now hon. members of the Opposition come here and complain because the Order Paper has virtually been disposed of. Is it not their duty as members of the Opposition to take part in debates, to keep the Government occupied and to act as watchdogs? Surely this is the, one may almost say, proverbial task of the Opposition. They are watchdogs, but their teeth have gone blunt. They are watchdogs but they cannot bite, and this is the reason why we find ourselves in this situation to-day. We could very easily have kept up this debate until 7 o’clock to-day. We on this side could easily have done this.

Which debate?

The debates that took place here this afternoon. Today, apart from the notices of motions, of which we had four, we dealt with six orders of the day, some of which were very contentious, as for example the Community Development Amendment Bill. Hon. members on that side fought this legislation at the second reading and when we came to the Committee Stage, they were completely satisfied. Sir, the state of affairs we have here to-day I blame on the Opposition. What we need in this House is an Opposition that can offer the Government some opposition, and can conduct a proper debate as this party did when it was in opposition. We were in opposition for a long time, but it seems to me that hon. members on the opposite side have not taken to heart the lessons we taught them from 19— whatever it may be. We tried our best to teach them what an Opposition should do, but today they have proved to be a failure.

We have now heard quite an extraordinary argument from the hon. member for Middelland. We are discussing the merits of the matter here and we expect to be answered on merit; but the reply of the hon. member for Middelland is that the Opposition must oppose, whether it is necessary or not; that we must waste time and talk incessantly. He could not mention one example of a Bill or a motion which the Opposition did not deal with according to merit. He simply makes wild statements and wants to reproach us for not having wasted the time of the House. I want to mention two examples in order to show what is happening. Take the Order Paper for to-day, to which the hon. member referred. We had here, for example, a Bill relating to agriculture, being the fourth item on the Order Paper. Apart from the Minister, not one farmer member of the Nationalist Party took part in the debate, although a number of members on this side of the House debated the matter. We had the Community Development Amendment Bill here, a Bill for the implementation of policy, as the hon. the Chief Whip on that side called it. Not one member of the Nationalist Party, except the Minister, took part in that very interesting discussion; except, towards the end, the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central), on a technical point—and then he was out of order. The most important argument that has been put forward on the opposite side was that of the hon. the Chief Whip, a man I normally respect, but I cannot say that of his contribution to-day; his main argument was that we are dealing with a state of affairs in Parliament for which there are many precedents and which occurs every year. But I want to say to the hon. the Chief Whip on that side, and I want to say to you, Mr. Speaker, with the greatest respect, that there is no precedent for the procedure we have followed this year. Last year we were asked to come to Parliament later this year than ever happened before. The reason given was that the Cabinet wanted more time to prepare their legislation, and the intention was to publish the most important Bills in the Gazette for public information before Parliament assembled. Sir, do you know how many Bills were published in the Gazette beforehand? Only four small ones. Not one really important Bill in which the public is interested was published for public information, and many of us members had to suffer personal inconvenience in undertaking this experiment. The schools of our children closed and opened during this period. We did not know what to do with them. Some of them had to come to Cape Town for a week and then go back. We suffered this inconvenience to give the Government an opportunity to show how they could shorten the Session if they had more time to prepare the work of Parliament, but as we see to-day, this experiment has failed completely as a result of the incompetence of the Cabinet, who did not do the work they had promised to do.

Order! That argument has already been used.

We want to lodge very strong protest against this. Now I want to say this to the Chief Whip and to the Minister. We hope and trust that towards the end of the session we shall not again be asked to work day and night in order to make up for the time wasted as a result of this incompetence. I think we must now give notice that we will not accept it as fair if we are asked during the last fortnight to sit morning, noon and night, while we have already wasted more than a week of the time of Parliament during the first month and a half of the Session. It must be put on record that the Opposition is protesting most strongly against the incompetence on the Government side which is rendering Parliament a disservice through the spectacle we are having here today.

I just want to point out briefly that under the rules of the House …

Now they start talking. [Interjections.]

Sir, may I draw your attention to the fact that all that happened here to-day is not, as the hon. member for Yeoville described it, a spectacle. All that happened, was that under the rules of the House, by which this House is bound, the House had by 4.45 p.m. effectively disposed of its business for to-day, i.e. everything that appeared on the Order Paper. It is not for the Government to keep debates going. There is certain legislation that has been introduced and has to be passed. Parliament is asked to pass that legislation, and who could foresee that the Opposition would collapse as we saw it doing here to-day? It was not the Order Paper that collapsed, and I submit that there is no merit in the objection raised by the Chief Whip of the Opposition to the Minister of the Interior’s motion that the House should now adjourn. This Parliament has effectively disposed of the business it had. It is the task and the function of Parliament to dispose of that business, and that is what happened here. If the rules of the House had been different, other work could now have been proceeded with, but that, Sir, neither you nor the House can allow, simply because it is prohibited by the rules of the House.

What other business?

There is a great deal of other business to be dealt with. Weeks ago notice was given of a Budget, and all this legislation that was introduced to-day has not yet been taken through all its various stages. There is legislation the further stages of which could have been submitted to the House to-day. [Interjections.] I shall sit down when you, Sir, rule me out of order or when I have finished speaking, but not when the Opposition shouts that I must sit down.

Order! Hon. members must give the hon. member a chance.

I say that a tremendous amount of business has been disposed of here. The objection raised by the Chief Whip of the Opposition has therefore no merit.

That point has also been made already.

It is because we have disposed of the business we had, and this happens in any meeting. No one can foresee how much work has to be set down in the Order Paper in order to keep the House occupied until 7 p.m.

The hon. member who have just sat down obviously does not know the rules of the House. One of the wild statements he made was that we could have dealt with other stages of these Bills, but not one of the Ministers dealing with these Bills this afternoon asked for another stage to be taken. The hon. member should know that, if he is doing his job as a whip. The Order Paper is finished and there is nothing further to discuss to-day. If the Government decided to go on with the business of the House, there would have been nothing for this House to do, and the hon. member should know that instead of trying to mislead the House. It is quite clear that there was no further business to do, and the charge made by the Chief Whip on this side has not been answered by a single hon. member opposite.

Order! That point has already been made several times.

Sir, I should just like to say that that point has not been answered yet.

Motion put and the House divided:

Ayes—100: Bodenstein, P.; Botha, H. J.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, M. W.; Botha, P. W.; Botha, S. P.; Carr, D. M.; Coetzee, B.; Coetzee, J. A.; De Jager, P. R.; Delport, W. H.; De Wet, C.; De Wet, J. M.; De Wet, M. W.; Du Plessis, H. R. H.; Du Toit, J. P.; Engelbrecht, J. J.; Erasmus, A. S. D.; Erasmus, J. J. P.; Frank, S.; Froneman, G. F. van L.; Greyling, J. C.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Grobler, W. S. J.; Haak, J. F. W.; Havemann, W. W. B.; Henning, J. M.; Hertzog, A.; Heystek, J.; Horn, J. W. L.; Janson, T. N. H.; Kruger, J. T.; Langley, T.; Le Grange, L.; Le Roux, F. J.; Le Roux, J. P. C.; Le Roux, P. M. K.; Malan, G. F.; Malan, J. J.; Marais, J. A.; Marais, P. S.; Marais, W. T.; Maree, W. A.; Martins, H. E.; McLachlan, R.; Morrison, G. de V.; Mulder, C. P.; Muller, H.; Muller, S. L.; Otto, J. C.; Pansegrouw, J. S.; Pelser, P. C. ; Pienaar, B.; Potgieter, J. E.; Potgieter, S. P.; Rall, J. J.; Rall, J. W.; Rall, M. J.; Raubenheimer, A. J.; Raubenheimer, A. L.; Reinecke, C. J.; Reyneke, J. P. A.; Rossouw, W. J. C.; Roux, P. C.; Sadie, N. C. van R.; Schlebusch, A. L.; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, H.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Smit, H. H.; Smith, J. D.; Steyn, A. N.; Stofberg, L. F.; Swanepoel, J. W. F.; Swiegers, J. G.; Torlage, P. H.; Treurnicht, N. F.; Uys, D. C. H.; Van Breda, A.; Van den Berg, G. P.; Van den Heever, D. J. G.; Van der Merwe, C. V.; Van der Merwe, S. W.; Van der Merwe, W. L.; Van der Wath, J. G. H.; Van Rensburg, M. C. G. J.; Van Staden, J. W.; Van Wyk, H. J.; Van Zyl, J. J. B.; Visse, J. H.; Visser, A. J.; Volker, V. A.; Vorster, B. J.; Vorster, L. P. J.; Vosloo, A. H. ; Waring, F. W.; Wentzel, J. J.; Wentsel, J. J. G.

Tellers: G. P. C. Bezuidenhout and P. S. van der Merwe.

Noes—35: Basson, J. A. L.; Basson, J. D. du P.; Bennett, C.; Bronkhorst, H. J.; Eden, G. S.; Emdin, S.; Fisher, E. L.; Graaff, De V.; Higgerty, J. W.; Jacobs, G. F.; Kingwill, W. G.; Lewis, H. M.; Lindsay, J. E.; Malan, E. G.; Marais, D. J.; Mitchell, D. E.; Mitchell, M. L.; Moore, P. A.; Murray, L. G.; Oldfield, G. N.; Raw, W. V.; Smith, W. J. B.; Steyn, S. J. M.; Streicher, D. M.; Sutton, W. M.; Suzman, H.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Timoney, H. M.; Wainwright, C. J. S.; Webber, W. T.; Wiley, J. W. E.; Winchester, L. E. D.; Wood, L. F.

Tellers: A. Hopewell and T. G. Hughes.

Motion accordingly agreed to.