I move—

May I say on behalf of this side of the House that in dealing with the Third Reading of this Bill we do not consider, for all the assurances that the hon. the Minister has given us, that the 1959 Fort Hare Transfer Bill is a satisfactory model when dealing with the Coloured people. We feel that the Coloured community deserve a good deal better and are rather more advanced, if I may put it that way. A great many of them have achieved some degree of scholarship; a number of them have a high reputation in the academic world, as we know, and we consider that justice has not been done to the Coloured community by using the prototype in this instance for this particular community.

Having said that. Sir, I would like to make my first point which is that we regret very much indeed that this legislation breaks all the links that used to exist between this institution, the University College of the Western Cape, and Unisa. In fact, it removes them from the orbit of real university life and activity in the Republic. Do not let us bluff our selves to the contrary. No matter what the representation from outside, they are bound to study and work very much in isolation as a result. We regret that the principal of this university is not to be a member of the committee of principals in terms of the 1955 Universities Act, which deals with the affairs of all existing universities as we know them. We do think that this could and should have been a very vital link between this institution and the other academic institutions, whether they are white, or not, in the rest of the Republic. Sir, I must say also that we do not believe, on this side of the House, whatever the representation from outside bodies on the senate of this university, that the degrees bestowed upon graduates by this institution will receive the same recognition that is given to those obtained at our other open universities, and the more is the pity, Sir. If this university, so-called, had retained its link with Unisa, the situation would have been entirely different.

The hon. the Minister knows that we dislike and reject in toto and in principle the whole concept of an advisory council and an advisory senate. Sir, in the world of scholarship, there are no such boundaries and communication at the level of the university campus, it seems to us, must, in the very nature of things, prove of vital importance to the development of all our peoples in South Africa, particularly where the Coloured folk are concerned. The absence of opportunities to exchange ideas in the academic field, in the world of scholarship, we consider could have serious consequences in years to come for the country as a whole. Our view is that this should be one of the essential bridges of communication at the academic level. There should be this communication at the level of the university campus more than, perhaps, at any other level, and I think that the day may well come when this Government is made to realize how very dreary and unimaginative their ideas and actions have been in this field. Sir, we think too, of course—and we made this quite clear in the course of the debate—that the ministerial powers involved in the control of this institution are far too extensive. In fact, we go so far as to say that they lower the dignity and the status of the institution as a whole. The fact that the Government is producing all the money to finance this university does not seem to me to be an adequate reason for denigrating the academic status of the institution as a whole, and we consider that far more discretion and far more power should have been left in the hands of the council of the university, particularly as it is a nominated council in the first instance.

Then, Sir, a word about the convocation. I would say that the lack of a convocation for this university gives rise immediately to the question as to whether real university status is being granted at all. As you know, Sir, a convocation of past and present students at any university gives meaning and content to that institution as nothing else can. Its members help to build up a proud tradition, which presumably is what the hon. the Minister himself would like to see happen. Its members help to build up a proud tradition throughout the whole of our society, a tradition of scholarship and of service. There are already sufficient Coloured graduates in this country—people who graduated at other institutions and who graduated at this university college—who could quite easily, if this principle had been admitted, have formed a convocation within a very short period of time had this Bill had made provision for it. We consider that a convocation gives a university its own identity. This is something of which every university has a need and feels proud. This identity, of course, under normal circumstances, is constantly being reaffirmed by the right of this body to elect a new chancellor as and when the occasion arises. But no such provision has been permitted here. Our amendments were ruled out of order and the whole concept of a convocation appears to be very far from the thoughts of the hon. the Minister with regard to this institution, and the more is the pity. I must say that to me it seems to be a very great shame indeed to deny this to the Coloured community.

Then, Sir, we do not like the absence of a conscience clause. I cannot for the life of me understand why the insertion of a conscience clause should have been prejudicial in any way to the control or administration of the affairs of the university, academic or otherwise. It suggests to us that the Government has other plans as to what is to be taught and how it is to be taught at this university. I hope we prove to be wrong.

But if we do prove to be right, then perhaps time will show whether the Government is wise or not in refusing them this right. It is very difficult, for instance, to understand how there can ever be a medical school, for example, attached to this institution in these circumstances, because in this faculty, more than any other perhaps the students have a prior right to complete freedom of conscience. It applies of course to all the scientific disciplines, to all the philosophical, the sociological, the literary as well as the political studies, which we presume they will undertake there in the normal course of their work.

What does the ordinary citizen of South Africa think about the restricted basis of this university? I want to quote a letter which appeared in Die Burger on 25th March, It is quite true that it is a letter referring to the Bantu universities, but the text of this Bill is identical and it seems to me that the criticisms here, which are very valid, apply equally to this University of the Western Cape for Coloured people. The writer of the letter says—

We know it is to be 100 per cent in the case of this university—

Those are the recognized powers of school committees, subject to the approval of school boards, and the writer of that letter is entirely correct.

So I would say in conclusion that although we have certain promises and reassurances from this hon. Minister, he has not convinced us of the validity of his case in regard to so many of the restrictive aspects of this university. In fact, we go so far as to say that this cannot possibly be described as a university in the true sense of the word, no matter how dedicated the staff and the council may be. The whole concept is too circumscribed and too little trust is shown in the local community itself. It seems such a pity because this was a golden opportunity for this Government, and for all of us, to prove the soundness and honesty of our intentions towards the Coloured people, had the Government really upgraded this institution in any significant way. I think it is sad indeed, after all these years, to find the Government, with all its stated good intentions, creating an institution for higher learning which is devoid of so much of the initiative and control that normally should be granted to it. It is a kind of second best for the Coloured people and in those circumstances we are quite unable to accept the Bill as it stands at third reading and we shall vote against it.

With this Third Reading of the Bill which provides for the establishment of the University of the Western Cape, we now come to the last stage of the statutory establishment of five new universities in South Africa. This is a very great and significant event for South Africa, which will undoubtedly still have far-reaching consequences. For the academic and cultural progress of the various non-White population groups which will be served by these universities, the consequences will definitely be incalculable. I believe that the Coloured community has already benefited tremendously from the University College of the Western Cape. I also believe that now, in obtaining their own university, they can build on this with pride because its foundations have solidly and firmly been laid. Admittedly this university, just like the other four which are now being established, is still a State university. The State finances these universities and I believe that specifically because of that the Coloured community will be very grateful because it costs a great deal of money to finance a university. It costs several million rands to finance such a university. Since the Coloureds are less developed economically than the Whites, the State kindly foots the bill and provides the money in all respects. Of course, the State will have to exercise greater authority, owing to the fact that it is fully supporting the institution. Therefore the university will have to forfeit its autonomy. But the fact that the university is not receiving full autonomy, does not mean that the Coloureds should be less proud of their own institution. It need in no way detract from the effective execution of the university’s task and calling, much less from the tremendously positive contributions which this university can make in supplying the Coloured population with leaders. They have a tremendous need of leaders and at this university their leaders can be brought to the fore and be trained there to meet that need.

A man with many years experience of university matters, someone who, by the way, was definitely no supporter of the National Party, wrote something very interesting about this question of university autonomy. I am referring to what Dr. E. G. Malherbe wrote in his book Die Outonomie van Ons Universileite en Apartheid, where he expressed himself as follows about State institutions (translation)—

The hon. member for Wynberg will therefore be able to realize from this that this is not an evil creation of the National Party, but a world-wide phenomenon. There is nothing wrong, evil or sinister in connection with this kind of university.

The hon. member also objected strongly to the fact that the university is now being segregated. They are complaining because it is intended exclusively for Coloureds and other race groups can be refused admission. In this connection I want to quote an authority which dates back much further than the establishment of the National Party. This idea of separate universities for separate population groups is nothing new. Neither is it the evil creation of this side of the House. As far back as 1910 General Smuts wrote the following letter to Messrs. Wernher and Beit—

When, in 1910, General Smuts wanted £500,000 from these gentlemen for the establishment of the University of Cape Town, and they said that the donation would be subject to the condition of there being “equal opportunities for all”, he wrote that this was something absurd in South Africa. He then wrote: Yes “equal opportunities for all Whites”, but not for the non-Whites, because it would be essential to provide a separate institution for them and the time for that would come. The time for that has now come, and therefore we have established this university.

As far as the question of convocation is concerned, I really do not know why hon. members are so terribly concerned about it. A convocation is a body which never functions at existing universities. To my knowledge there is very seldom a quorum at meetings of convocations. The only time when they function is when representatives for the council must be elected. Therefore they are in fact not bodies that function in respect of the whole university set-up. I do not think it is worth the trouble to establish such a body.

I now come to the question of the conscience clause which the hon. member has now once more raised here. I think that it is perhaps time for us to do a little straight talking about this matter. I personally regard the conscience clause as a totally worthless and obsolete clause in our university legislation and my reason for saying so is because we no longer live in times of religious intolerance and persecution and hatred on religious grounds. We in South Africa are particularly proud of our freedom of religion and worship, which we do not begrudge one another. In our day and age there simply is no discrimination against a man on the basis of his religion or his church affiliations. This is simply not done any longer. Therefore the conscience clause is altogether obsolete. Of course, when one appoints someone as a lecturer at a university one expects him to have character. If a person is altogether without church affiliations and a religion there can possibly be deficiences in his character. Therefore a person is usually chosen who at least belongs to one or other church or religion. But there is simply no such thing as discrimination on the basis of religion. But even if one wanted to discriminate, the conscience clause is worthless because we no longer live in times where a person cannot come into contact with people. If I am serving on a university council and someone applies for a post, I can contact someone telephonically who knows that person. I can find out about him. I can find out what his religious convictions are. I can even ask him during a personal interview, even though it is not official. I can determine precisely what his religious convictions are. If I want to discriminate against him I shall do so whether this is incorporated in the Act or not. It is therefore a totally obsolete and worthless clause. I consider it altogether ridiculous that this clause should appear in the university acts of a religious country such as South Africa, of a nation which prides itself on its religion. A short while ago I was talking to an ex-rector of a foreign university. He was altogether surprised that this conscience clause was still written into our university acts. He was altogether surprised. If we think of the fact that when Van Riebeeck landed here his first task was to pray in order to entrust the welfare of this new establishment to the Almighty; if we think of the fact that the Dutch Protestants and the Huguenots came here for the sake of their religious freedom; that the preamble of our Constitution is based on our religion; that every day when we commence our activities here we pray to the Almighty, we realize and appreciate that we are a people who attach great value to our religious convictions, that we acknowledge and respect one another’s religious convictions and do not discriminate against one another on those grounds, but that we at least believe that one ought to have religious convictions. Therefore I say that this conscience clause is worthless. It is quite right that it ought not to be included in these new university acts. Therefore I think that the existing fully autonomous university councils should also be allowed—and I think they probably are allowed—to do a way with this when they deem it necessary to do so.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Algoa has given us a very interesting little dissertation on his views on the conscience clause. I want to say that he is quite right when he says that, to some extent, the conscience clause may be valueless in practice, because it can easily be circumscribed. He has told us that it would be easy enough, even if there were a conscience clause, for him or for other members choosing presumably staff for a university to find out the religious faith to which the applicant belongs. However, this argument is surely not of much value, because after all laws can be broken and faxes can be dodged. But this does not mean that we do not pass laws hoping that people will abide by them and that we do not levy taxes hoping that people will pay them. Equally there are certain principles that we have inscribed in our Statutes, also hopefully believing that the majority of people conform to the law and that the majority of people will therefore carry out the letter of the Statute. It so happens that in South Africa’s university history the inscription of a conscience clause in the constitutions of our white universities, has always existed. It has always existed ever since the constitutions of the white universities were drawn up, since they were transformed from colleges into universities. The 1955 umbrella Act of the universities lays down that one restriction on the ability of the university council to appoint staff and to accept students. Even the University of Port Elizabeth itself accepted a conscience clause when the constitution of that university was presented to this House. I feel strongly that the conscience clause should have appeared in the constitution of the University of the Western Cape, just as I feel that it should have appeared in the constitutions of the other four universities which have been produced like rabbits out of the hat by the hon. Ministers in charge of the different departments. Hon. members have deceived themselves into believing that by simply putting a tag of “university” on the university colleges, they have produced full-scale universities. I must, of course, inform them that I do not believe an/thing of the kind. I doubt very much whether any academics will believe this either. The hon. member for Algoa has quoted Professor Malherbe. I do not think he quoted the entire paragraph which pertains to this particular subject from the book that he read. I also could refer the hon. member to an article which appeared only two nights ago in the evening Press. In that article Professor Malherbe made some very hard remarks indeed about the production, of what he calls, these “kits” universities, the instant universities. I therefore doubt very much that he will find that Professor Malherbe really is the champion of the point of view which he has produced to us this afternoon.

I also feel strongly about the question of convocation referred to by the hon. member for Algoa. Convocation plays a very important part in the life of a university. I am amazed that he dismisses it with a few words and says that convocation only really functions when there is an election for members to the council. That is not true at all. It certainly is not true of the university convocation to which I belong. That is in fact a very active convocation. Members are actively engaged in fund raising for the university. They take an extremely active part in all the interna of the affairs of the university. They will be surprised to hear that convocation plays no part at all in the life of their university. It is extremely important. If it is not important let us then argue on the hon. member’s logic. Why was it considered necessary when the Rand Afrikaans University’s constitution was produced in this House last year to include provision for a convocation so that as soon as the university had produced a certain number of graduates those graduates would immediately play their part in the councils of the university? Surely, Sir, what is sauce for the white goose should be source for the Coloured gander. Why is it not so? Either convocation is of use, in which case we make allowance for it, or it is not, in which case we discard it for all our universities. This is part of the difference in thinking between the hon. member for Algoa and myself. I do not draw these distinctions on colour lines. He draws them even so far as universities are concerned, at the highest level of education in this country. He does it to such an extent that he cannot conceive at this moment that there are Coloured people well qualified already to serve on the council and on the senate of that university and to play their part in administering the affairs of the university set up for their own people. This is a matter of our way of thinking and we will never agree in this respect. It is of course one of the reasons why I am going to oppose the Third Reading of this Bill.

No single change of any importance has been accepted by the hon. the Minister during the Committee stage. Like his colleagues who discussed the other Bills the only two amendments were accepted during the Committee Stage were minor amendments concerning the election of the chairmen of the council and the senate. Since both the council and the senate consist entirely of nominated members, I do not consider this concession of any value whatsoever. Finally, Sir, I want to say of course that the major objection that I have to this Bill is the fact that this Bill enshrines the principle of segregation at university education level. It does not permit of any white students being admitted to the University of the Western Cape. Not even the Minister, the almighty Minister who has his finger in every pie …

Not almighty.

All right, I withdraw the word “almighty” if it offends the hon. member. It is the mighty Minister then who has the finger in every pie in the university, who controls the admission of students and appointment of staff and the conditions of service. He can even interfere by virtue of the type of posts created, and the donations which he receives or rejects, with the actual teaching at that university. Even he, Sir, is not given permission to admit a white student to the University of the Western Cape. The principle of segregation is therefore once more enshrined in this constitution as it was enshrined in the 1959 Extension of Separate Education Act to which I certainly took the strongest exception at the time.

Hear, hear!

The hon. member says, “hear, hear”. I say that it is a sadness in this country that our students are not allowed to choose to go to the type of university that they wish to go to. For all these reasons and also because of the fact that I am not at all sure that the time is opportune for this University College of the Western Cape to be converted into a full university, I shall vote against the Third Reading of this Bill. I shall do so also because there has been no proper inquiry into the standards and criteria as was done in the case of the university colleges to which white students went before they were converted into full universities, into the standards and criteria of staff and students, the achievements of staff and students, whether or not degrees will be maintained at the same standard that Unisa has up till now maintained, and whether these degrees will in fact be acceptable both here and in the outside world. None of these things has been inquired into or ascertained. For all these reasons I shall vote against the Third Reading of this Bill.

The hon. member for Houghton has already told us for the umpteenth time that her one great objection to this university is that it exists on the basis of apartheid, of separation, and will be run on that basis. She does mention additional factors, but essentially this is her great objection to this university. But what, then, does she expect of the National Party? Does she expect the National Party to allow this institution to continue to exist and develop on a basis other than that of separate development? What is more, she is not the only one adopting this attitude. Members of the Opposition follow her in this. To a large extent she is their standard-bearer in this respect. We have seen how in the case of each clause they have done their level best to have the principle of integration inserted there, even if initially only fractionally. Just take the clauses dealing with the advisory council and advisory senate. Repeatedly the hon. the Minister was asked when a little integration was going to take place which would lead to the realization of the eventual ideal of this university. Integration is not necessary at all and the Minister will not even consider it. As a matter of fact, at no stage did he suggest that he was indeed contemplating anything like that. The Opposition cannot see that there are avenues other than theirs along which our ideals for this university can be realized. What is going to happen here, and to an increasing extent, is that powers, additional to those which they have to-day, will be granted to the advisory council. Depending upon the abilities of these people to carry their greater responsibility, the ideal which the Minister has for this institution can be realized without the need of introducing integration by fractional stages.

Hon. members opposite opposed this university college from the inception as being a “bush college”. They even went as far as seeing it as a “festering sore” in the future. But now they are displaying a frankness which borders on the hypocritical, in equating this university with, and casting it into the mould of, white universities, without taking into consideration the level of development, capabilities, ideals and character of the population group concerned. One of the characteristics of the National Party, therefore also of this Government, is that what is done is done well, i.e. according to the principle of gradual implementation. Just see, for example, how the number of students at this university institution has increased. It was 164 in the first year, increased to 228, then 320, then 361, 391, 406, 505, 566, 665, 808—one of the neatest illustrations of the way in which the National Party does a thing gradually but well. This will also be the case in the future. In such a way will this university institution be developed in future to provide for the growing needs of a population group which is increasing more rapidly than any other in South Africa. Here, too, the National Party reveals its intimate knowledge and experience of the non-white population groups, a knowledge and experience built up by virtue of its guardianship over those population groups. The National Party does not take leaps which can have detrimental consequences for its ward and for the Whites. We have seen in Africa how certain white nations of Europe failed to prepare the non-white nations under their charge for independent government. Suddenly, when under pressure, they surrendered their estate just like that, with disastrous consequences for themselves and for their erstwhile subordinate peoples. No, Mr. Speaker, that is not the way the National Party sets to work. The National Party is here also displaying that principle of guardianship towards the Coloured population which is based on and is a result of the Christian conviction fundamental to the National Party. The assertion was quite wrongly made here that the number of non-Whites —and I am here referring only to the Coloureds—at the existing white universities are not showing proper increases in numbers and that actually, by allowing this, we are not applying this principle of separate development for the Coloureds in the university sphere as well. This is not true. If one looks at the figures it is very interesting to see that they vary from year to year. In 1964 the number was 139, the year after that 156, the following year 126 (a big decrease) and in 1967, 146. But the figures indicate a comparative consistency. The number of Coloureds studying at the University of Cape Town, the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Natal evidences a consistency which speaks volumes for this Government and for the application of its policy. We know that they are only granted permission to study there because the faculties in which they want to study have not yet been instituted at the university concerned.

Then, in conclusion, Mr. Speaker, mention has frequently been made in this House of the great ideal cherished by the National Party that the Coloureds will develop their own nationhood, a feeling of having their own national ties. We on this side believe that this institution, which it was my privilege to visit along with other persons, is one of the most beautiful that this Government has yet established for the non-white population groups in South Africa. We believe that this institution is going to make a grand contribution in the promotion of this idea of individual nationhood for the Coloureds. We have no fears in this process; we have no doubt that only good will come of it for the Coloureds and that we do not have to be concerned about it. We do not have to be concerned about the development of the idea of individual nationhood for the Coloureds, with this stipulation that this National Party remain in power to apply and execute its apartheid policy, narrowly and consistently, in respect of the Coloureds, and for that reason we shall also keep this Party in power.

I feel that I should say at the outset that it would be wrong for me to take part in a debate concerning the University College of the Western Cape without paying tribute to the retired rector of that college, Professor Dr. Meiring, who retired some time ago. I was proud in the first week of this year to take some foreign visitors to this university college, to show them what it looked like and to tell them something about it. Sir, with the knowledge I have of what was done there during the period of the rectorship of Dr. Meiring, I feel that the Coloured people, when that university becomes a fully autonomous university, governed and administered by Coloured people, as is intended, will always be indebted to Dr. Meiring for the work done by him there. Of course, he was fortunate in having a very efficient and able registrar who, I am glad to say, is the present Director of Coloured Education. I can testify to his devotion to the position which he holds.

Mr. Speaker, when the Bill to establish the University College of the Western Cape was before this House I voted against it. My standpoint was that it should be an open university because I did not believe in segregated universities when it came to the Coloured and the white people. I must honestly say here to-day that if a Bill were placed before this House to make this an open university I would be compelled to vote against it, for the simple reason that if that university is made an open university to-day—I am not talking about the future; I am not referring to what the hon. the Prime Minister said about issues that our children will have to decide—the Coloureds will be ousted from it within a few years.

Why do you say that?

This university gives the opportunity to a certain class of Coloured people—when I talk about a certain class I mean in the economic sense—to ensure university education for their children. Coloured intellectuals holding degrees now have an opportunity of taking up posts in the field of higher education. I do not know what the figure is to-day but a year or two ago Coloured high school teachers holding degrees represented only 13 per cent of the high school staff. Sir, how could we expect Coloured education to progress under those circumstances? As I have said, a certain class of Coloured people, in the economic sense, were given the opportunity of sending their children to university at fees which they could afford, whereas they could not afford the fees charged at the University of Cape Town or at other universities. At the same time the Department of Coloured Education instituted bursaries and other means of helping promising Coloured matriculants to attend university. This was one of the greatest steps in the effort not only to make the Coloured people self-sufficient as far as education is concerned, but to advance their education, and I firmly believe that the position of the Coloured people in South Africa can only be assured by giving them educational facilities right up to university level. I realize, of Course, the importance of the socioeconomic development of the Coloured people and of the provision of housing for them, of ensuring that every family has a roof over its head, however humble that house may be, but in my opinion the most important thing is to give the Coloured people adequate educational facilities. Sir, the position that we have at the University College of the Western Cape, in this sense that there is only one Coloured lecturer, should be an indication to those people who talk about Coloured affairs without the necessary experience, that the Coloured people are not ready for what they are expected to do at the moment. Here we have a Coloured university with only one Coloured lecturer on the staff.

There is a lot that you can write into the Act which can be implemented in time.

I accept the Minister’s word that it is the intention to develop this university into a full-fledged autonomous university under the control of the Coloured people. What difference does autonomy make at this stage? I will deal with the hon. member’s interjection in due course. Let me carry on with my notes. The fact that there is only one Coloured lecturer indicates how unprepared the Coloured people are for what they have to do at the moment and for what is being expected of them. Let me qualify that; it is not their fault. It is the fault of the various white Governments over the years, one might say over a period of 300 years. It is not the Coloured people’s own fault. They were not in a position to help themselves and they did not get the help they should have got as valuable citizens of this country. But the fact remains that at the moment they are unprepared for it and the example I want to give is that with all the Coloured educationists in South Africa it was possible to find only one with the qualifications to be a lecturer at that university college. I do not know whether I will see the day, but my ideal is that that university college will be fully staffed by Coloured lecturers, professors and administrators. And when the Coloured people have learned how to do the work, I hope they will not aspire to become lecturers at the University of Cape Town or the University of the Witwatersrand, but will turn their education and energies and their knowledge to the upliftment of their own people at this university.

Have many Coloured people not left South Africa?

Yes, and many have returned. I do not know with how many cases of Coloured teachers, etc., who wanted to leave South Africa the hon. member for Berea has had to deal, but I have dealt with many. I have also had to deal with a few dozen who wanted to return after they had left when they found that all that glitters is not gold, and although the pay overseas is much higher the cost of living is so high that they soon wanted to return.

How many came back?

What a stupid question. If that is an indication of what that hon. member has in his top storey, I think very little of it. How must I know how many came back? I am not an immigration official. The position is that we can only welcome the fact that this university college is being upgraded to a university. The trouble is that many measures coming before this House concerning the Coloured people are criticized and opposed by certain hon. members because of the fact that they do not have enough knowledge of the circumstances and the conditions under which the Coloured people live, what they aspire to, what their needs are, and what they are interested in. Certain people talk here about measures concerning the Coloured people, but they do not have enough experience of the Coloured people themselves and they do not know what the Coloureds most urgently need. I wish to mention a few examples. When the Bill establishing the University College of the Western Cape came before this House it was opposed. Then the position was that there were only a handful of Coloured students at the University of Cape Town, but to-day the position is that there are facilities for hundreds of Coloured students at the University College of the Western Cape. It was provided in that Bill that certain Coloured students could remain at the University of Cape Town because certain faculties did not yet exist at the university college. But a fair percentage of the students at the University of Cape Town consisted of medical students. Let us examine the procedure for a Coloured student to enter the medical faculty of the University of Cape Town. The first requirement is that he must have a matriculation certificate. Consider the circumstances under which a Coloured child attends school. Most probably when he comes home in the afternoon he has to sell newspapers to help keep the family pot boiling. In the evening he sits in a crowded room with the rest of the family and he has to do the same work that my child in matric is doing, but under completely different circumstances. He is expected to get a first-class pass in order to be enrolled as a medical student. That is not the fault of the University of Cape Town. They had to apply that rule because they could not cope with all the applicants. But I am grateful that within the foreseeable future, under the auspices of the University of the Western Cape, there will be a medical faculty. A properly planned teaching hospital is already being completed at Tiervlei and under the auspices of the University of Stellenbosch I hope this medical faculty will be established soon.

Now we come to the Coloured Development Corporation, which was also opposed here. It was described as a fragmentation of our economy. Who will deny to-day that the establishment of this corporation was the greatest spur to the economic development of the Coloured people?

What about the money they are losing?

The hon. member asks what about the money they are losing. When that Bill was before the House, the then member for Karoo said to me: “Bill, ons stem vir die wet, maar hulle gaan waaragtig baie geld verloor.” We are not all born businessmen, but the people with business acumen never had the opportunity to get hold of capital, which they now have with this corporation. They must be given that opportunity. As I say, that Bill was opposed. Take the transfer of Coloured education. That Bill was opposed too, but who will deny to-day that that was the greatest step in furthering Coloured education that was ever taken by a Government in the history of South Africa? My contention is that this is again happening in regard to this Bill which makes this university college a full-fledged university, and it is only due to lack of knowledge and experience. Every step that has been proved to be in the interest of the Coloured people was opposed. As far as I am concerned, I will support this Bill, because I am convinced that it is in the interest of the Coloured people. To the hon. member who has just sniggered, I just want to say that that member may sit in this House for the next 50 years representing a white constituency and she will never have the experience of the Coloured people that I have at present.

I know them quite well; you would be surprised.

That hon. member knows the Coloured people quite well. I will go into that matter under the Community Development Vote. But when one sees how well that hon. member knows the Coloured people, one doubts her knowledge of her own white constituents. But I will deal with that at another stage. It is all very well to say you know the Coloured people well because you visited a place where a few shacks were bulldozed, but that is not the point. From Kokstad to Aliwal North to Caledon it has been my duty over the past 11 years to get to know these people and their aspirations, their hopes and their fears. That hon. member will never have the experience I have, and I say this Bill is in the interest of the Coloured people whom I represent here.

It was argued here that this university college does not have full autonomy. I want to ask the hon. member whether she agrees that full autonomy should have been given to the Congo at the time it was given.

What has that to do with it?

It has this to do with it. The reason why the granting of full autonomy to the Congo was a fiasco was that the people who then had to administer that country did not have any experience. This Government says we cannot give them autonomy now because we do not have experienced people from that community to exercise that autonomy. What can be simpler? There is one Coloured lecturer at that university college now, and where must they get the people from to administer that institution as an autonomous university with a full Coloured senate? How can we do it? It is not that the Coloured people do not have the ability or the potential, but they never had the opportunity to get the training and the administrative experience. It is a well-known fact. Look at the position to-day in regard to the Coloured political parties now that they have to face the election for this Coloured Council. Since 1853 the Coloured people were on the Common Voters’ Roll, but to-day when they have to organize their own political parties it is abundantly clear that they never had the opportunity to gain organizational and administrative experience. The white man always did it for them. “Hulle het altyd saam met die baas gekom.” You have never come across such a shemozzle as you have with these political parties now. Let me give the House one example. They are trying their best …

Order! The hon. member must not give an example, he must come back to the Bill.

Mr. Speaker, I am trying to prove something. I have discussed this Bill with leading Coloured people whose names I can mention here if necessary and they approve of it. Since they were given administrative functions, they have realized they do not have the people with the experience and the training to do this work. They need time. Let me give an example. Hon. members who do not have experience of the Coloured people do not know what jealousies and self-interest exist among certain people who claim to be Coloured leaders.

We know all about it.

The hon. member knows all about it. Can she tell me then why when there was a congress held during the first week of this year by three political parties, they did not form a fusion?

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

I will be right on the Bill, Sir, but I think the hon. member talks far more than she knows what is right.

Order! Yes, but that is off the Bill again.

Since I came to this House 11 years ago I have never deviated from my standpoint that the Coloured people must have full citizenship in the land of their birth, and I still stand by it. But after 11 years’ experience, although I still stand by that viewpoint, it is perfectly clear to me that they have quite some way to go still.

In my humble opinion this measure is the right thing at the right time. It is in the interests of the Coloured people. It places responsibility on the Coloured people. The only way in which Coloured people can be trained and gain the experience of what would be expected of them if they serve on the senate of a university is for them to serve on this advisory senate. I have gone into the matter very thoroughly and my experience has been that since the establishment of the University College of the Western Cape the members of the senate and the administrators in the University College have gone out of their way to see to it that the people serving on the advisory senate gained experience and were trained in order to do things on their own.

It is my sincere hope that as far as the institution this Bill creates is concerned, the Coloured people will exert themselves. I trust that those appointed to the advisory senate will not go there for selfish reasons just to be members of the advisory senate, but I hope they will bear in mind that they are there to play their part as far as the upliftment in the higher educational field of the Coloured people is concerned. I hope not many years will pass before the Coloured people will be in full control of this University.

Mr. Speaker, I only want to say a few words, because I think few Bills have been gone into in such detail as this measure now before us. I do not think there can be any doubt at this stage as to why it is necessary for this side of the House to oppose the Third Reading of the Bill.

All that remains to be said, is the following. In our opinion there is nothing wrong with the idea that there should be a Coloured university which gives priority to the interests of the Coloured student and which makes it possible for him to realize himself fully. At such an institution he need not feel he is merely being tolerated as a second-class student. But for this very reason we feel, and on this point we cannot yield, that the white Government should not go along now and intrude its white political ideas into this Coloured university.

What political ideas?

Mr. Speaker, at the white universities the Whites are fully entitled to organize matters so as to fit in with the needs and the wishes of the White community. We do not ask for instance that a Coloured should serve on the council or the senate of a white university. Then, surely, it follows logically that the interests and needs of the Coloureds must receive priority at a Coloured university. Therefore the Whites should not intrude their political ideas there. Otherwise the whole idea of an individual and separate university loses its entire moral basis. It is mainly because of this that we on this side must to our regret oppose this measure.

I should like to stress the fact that the issue is not the idea of the Coloured people having their own university. The Opposition is opposed to the way which the Government is acting here. I think the hon. the Minister himself will be slightly embarrassed when he goes to the Coloured people and tells them: “Parliament has passed this measure, the Coloured people now have their own university, but no Coloured person will serve on the council or the senate of the university, for the simple reason that we do not want to sit there together with you people.” I think it is one of the tragic things about the Government that it often does something good, but in such a way that the Whites are placed in a bad light. Surely no fundamental principle can be involved here. We have discussed this and I do not want to cover the same field again. There is no logic in the attitude adopted by the Government in regard to this matter. I have already mentioned that we find in other fields of daily life in our country that there are so many cases where Whites and Coloureds serve together at a high level. I mentioned the executive church council of the D.R. Mission Church. Take the Synod of the D.R. Church; there Coloured representatives sit together with Whites in an executive capacity. The Government has no objection to sending white officials to the Transkei to work under Bantu there. It has no objection to sending white officials to Malawi to work and to give assistance under black rulers there. There is therefore no principle or logic involved in the Government’s attitude. But in the case of the Coloured university we now have the position that the entire council must consist of Whites only and that no Coloured person may enter there, and this at their own university.

I know the hon. Minister stressed here that it would be changed one day. Well, we shall have to wait a long time for that.

But it will come.

I am sure it will come one day, but even then you will not have the position that the University will receive the best possible service if all Whites are kept out of the higher councils. Even if the University becomes a completely autonomous institution, it will probably have to get people from overseas; they will have to appeal to white specialists to help them. If it wants to remain a good university one will not have the situation where one will never have a white lecturer who will qualify for the senate. One may possibly get the position that one wants a white person—perhaps as a result of large donations to the university—on the council of the University. I want to tell the hon. the Chief Whip that the promises of “some day” do not remove the hurt caused by the offence that is given to-day.

Generally speaking, I want to add that another great objection of this side is to the fact that in general too much political control has been brought into the measure. We all know that when one has to refer every little matter to the Minister for his decision, it causes delay as well as extra expenditure, which could rather have been applied towards the development of the university itself. As soon as a Minister takes powers for himself, it follows almost automatically that those matters over which he takes authority necessarily become the subject of political decisions and political pressure. This is so from the nature of the political system. When a Minister has taken a power, he cannot always take a decision on merit, because as a result of the political system he is then subjected to political pressure and must often take a political decision, instead of a decision according to merit. That is why, in a democratic country, it should be the aim that the Minister should arrogate to himself, and lay down in legislation, as few powers as possible. Ministerial interference should always be restricted to the minimum. The Minister is always advancing the argument that the State is providing the money. I concede that. No one is asking that the State should give up all say in the matter whatsoever. But then the Minister must not adopt the attitude either that the funds provided by the State are his funds which he, as it were, gives to the Coloureds as a gift.

It is the taxpayers’!

They are taxpayers too. In other words, he is in fact taking the money from the Coloureds and handing it back to them.

You would have given nothing back to them.

No. On what does the hon. member base that statement? It is really time that we dropped that kind of argument. The argument is that the State should give back to the Coloureds as much, as in the case of this university, as they are paying in tax. But surely this is not a fair statement to use against the non-Whites all along, because the State is restricting the income of the non-Whites. I am not going into the question of the fairness or the unfairness of that now.

No.

Yes, of course. It is a fact that when the State pays a teacher, the non-white teacher receives less than the white teacher, or doctor, or whoever. The State is therefore restricting their income. Now the State surely cannot be as unfair as to say “I am restricting your income; consequently you are paying less tax. But I still hold the fact that you pay less tax against you, for look at the way I have to feed you now”. No, this is a very poor argument. We can discuss it again later. But the point of the matter is that the standard of living of the Coloured is being kept low artificially. The professional Coloureds are not getting the income the Whites are getting from the State.

They are not all teachers.

No, but it also applies to work reservation and all such like provisions. I just want to say that we should really stop using the argument, which holds no water, that, because a person contributes less to the State coffers by way of taxation, he is in an inferior position and everything the white man does for him is regarded as a gift. He is also paying tax. Moreover, his income is artificially lower than that of the white man. It would have been considerably higher if it had not been restricted artificially by legislation and by the actions of the State.

The standard of living of the Coloureds has nevertheless increased.

Yes, the standard of living of the Coloured is still lower. But this should not be used as an argument against him, because in many cases it is being kept lower artificially by us as a result of his lower remuneration. The Minister’s saying that the State is providing all the money and that he must therefore exercise control in such fine detail is no sound argument. We grant him a measure of control, but we think that when the Minister exercises excessive control, he will be subject to political pressure and decisions.

It is a pity that we must for these reasons oppose the Bill in its present form. I want the hon. the Minister to know, however, that in this side he will have a friend of the University. When he wants to bring about improvements, he can always rely on the sympathetic support of this side of the House.

The hon. the Minister made quite a fuss about the fact that some of us have not yet visited this University, I do not think that is a good reason why a man should not be allowed to discuss the nature of the University. But I want to say that I am sorry that I have not yet had the opportunity of visiting the University. I have been invited. I have also told Mr. Cobus Louw myself that I would go there, but the hon. Minister knows how things are. One often neglects what is near in favour of what is far, because one thinks that one can always go to what is near. In any event, he must regard this side of the House as a friend of the University. When he wants to effect improvements, along the lines we have indicated in this debate, he will find that this side will be sympathetic and will support those improvements.

Mr. Speaker, I listened attentively to the hon. member for Bezuidenhout. I am sorry, but I nevertheless have to ask him certain semi-reproachful questions at this stage. I agree with him that at this stage little remains to be said as far as this legislation is concerned, in that it has already reached the Third Reading stage. I also notice that he now accepts that the establishment of this University is an accomplished fact. I was glad to hear his offer of assistance when improvements have to be made to the Coloured University. But at this stage one feels inclined to ask why the Opposition took up so much time at the Second Reading to object to the principle of the establishment of a university for the Coloureds. I think this is a question we are entitled to ask, because after all the principle of a Bill is involved at that stage.

Since the hon. member gave the National Party advice in respect of non-interference in the affairs of the Coloureds, I just want to say to him that this has been the National Party’s policy throughout the years, especially in regard to politics. It was specifically as a result of the many abuses owing to interference by the Whites in Coloured politics, and the bedevilment of feelings between Whites, that many different measures were necessary which would otherwise not have been necessary.

The hon. member further spoke of the Coloureds being offended and about excessive political control. I think that especially at this stage, when, at the end of ones argument, one is expressing one’s sympathy and goodwill, one should not use words of this nature. They can no longer serve any useful purpose. They serve as a kind of prompting which is a bad thing at this stage.

Replies were given ten years ago on this side of the House to questions about why institutions such as those for higher education for the non-Whites were established. This was thoroughly debated. But the replies in connection with the acceptance of it by the nonwhite group, especially here in the Western Cape, have indisputably been furnished over the past ten years. The university College of the Western Cape, especially through the increases in the number of students from a mere 164 to more than 800 this year and through its general progress, has indicated the acceptance by the Coloured of the good faith of the National Government. The increasing numbers have brought us to this milestone which we have reached to-day, but this milestone which was reached by the eventual establishment of a university is also proof of the National Government’s faith in the possibilities of the Coloured youth and the Coloured leaders.

We have taken note of their progress. At this stage I want to say that the new change of status ought to be the sign for the ending of frustration, not only in the United Party, but especially among the Coloured leaders and Coloured academicians, about matters such as advisory councils, advisory senates, etc., which are indicative of a measure of subordination. The fact that we are dealing here with a gradual process was stated very neatly by the hon. member for Worcester.

After all, guardianship presupposes the termination of subordination at some stage or other. Experience inherent in this policy has taught that progress is still taking place. This is my criterion. How long it will last depends upon our Coloured leaders, Coloured students and the Coloured people themselves. For this reason I should, in conclusion, like to make two appeals, because I deem it necessary to do so at this stage. The first is to the progressive element to leave these people alone now. I am not making this appeal to the United Party, because they can no longer obtain any votes from these people. From now on they will leave them out in the cold anyway. The Opposition has already accepted it, as hon. members opposite have also said. The progressive element—I am not using the word in a political sense in order to disparage—but I should not like to use the word “party”—are in a sense more honest. They have a clearer alternative and therefore specifically an alternative to be repudiated all the more, as far as we are concerned. I want to ask them to leave these people alone and to stop this excitation and agitation or, if I may say so, this incitement of agitation for open universities. Stop doing this! You can achieve nothing by it. Leave the people alone, because they want to be left alone. They can then make progress and serve their own people.

The second appeal I want to make presupposes that I place an onus upon the leaders of the Coloured national group. To those who regard themselves as leaders, and who also have qualities of leadership, which we recognize, I want to make the appeal that they should not try to be bigger and better than their own people by regarding themselves as the cream which must be skimmed off to be taken up elsewhere. I want to appeal to them to serve their own people. This appeal comes to some at a late stage, but there are already others who have bethought themselves and who are now doing very good and constructive work among their own people. With the eventual ratification of this measure we as a Government want to express this confidence by establishing these universities for the people. If these two appeals which I have made do not fall on deaf ears—I do not hold out much hope that the progressive element will lend a willing ear, but the Coloured leaders might do so—I am sure that the University of the Western Cape will only go from strength to strength, as has been the case with the University College of the Western Cape in the past ten years. I then want to make the prediction that there will be many of these Coloured leaders, of whom there may nevertheless be a few who feel frustrated for some reason or other, who will one day have the satisfaction which one only gets when one has served one’s own people and used one’s powers to give assistance where the need has really existed.

Mr. Speaker, when this Bill was before the House during the Second Reading I spoke against it and voted against it. The Bill now comes before us virtually unchanged and I see no reason at all why I should change my mind in regard to this Bill. One of my fundamental objections to the Bill during the Second Reading debate was that I felt that the Coloured people as such had not been afforded adequate opportunities of expressing their views on this measure.

I have said to the hon. the Minister, and I repeat it now, that I think the basic intention behind this Bill of establishing a separate Coloured university for Coloured citizens is a right one and is laudable under the present circumstances. They have been denied the opportunities of going to the open universities of this country and it is only right that in due course they should have university facilities of their own. But in order that this Bill, if it becomes law, should be one which carries the goodwill and respect of the Coloured people, I feel it is essential that they should through their elected leaders have had an opportunity of expressing their views on the constitution of their own university. I say that they have been denied that opportunity.

Parliament itself decided the course by which the Coloured people’s voice in regard to these very matters should be heard. In 1964, and again last year, this Parliament passed a Bill in which we created a Coloured representative council which is coming into being this year. The elections take place in September of this year and it is hoped that the nominations of the Government would be concluded by the end of the year. By the end of this year this new Coloured representative council will be functioning as a statutory body in this country. We all hope so. One of the fundamental functions that has been vested in this council under section 20 of the Act is to advise the Government on request and to make recommendations to the Government in regard to all matters affecting the educational interests of the Coloured people of this country. This is one of the basic reasons for which this council is going to be established. I suggested to the hon. the Minister during the course of the Second Reading debate that I could see no reason at all why, within a few months of the establishment of this council, the Government should rush this legislation through the House and create a Coloured university for our Coloured people without affording them the opportunity through their duly elected and nominated leaders to express their views on the constitution of their own university.

Surely it is one of the basic and fundamental rights to which they are entitled. Parliament has said that in regard to all matters affecting the educational interests of the Coloured people in this country, this council should be the body to advise the Government. This council is going to be created within a few months from now and we find, for reasons that have not yet been satisfactorily explained—I am going to deal with the hon. the Minister’s reply in a moment—the Government rushes through this legislation, however laudable it may be ultimately.

I feel that if this Coloured University Bill is going to be something worthwhile it should carry with it the goodwill and the co-operation of our Coloured people and it can only carry with it that goodwill and co-operation if the Minister and the Government have followed the steps which Parliament envisaged should be followed, namely to seek the advice of this council which is being established for this very purpose. During the course of the Second Reading debate I asked the hon. the Minister what necessity there was to rush this legislation through the House. After all, if the Coloureds have already suffered under the disability of not being able to go to the open universities for ten years, will another extra few months make any difference? Does it matter two hoots whether the legislation is delayed another year or two years? But at least let there be a measure which this Parliament can say carries with it the absolute goodwill of our Coloured people. What was the hon. the Minister’s reply to this very point? The hon. the Minister left it right to the end of his speech and then said that he wanted to deal with the points raised, inter alia, by the hon. member for Peninsula. He then went on to say this:

I want to pause here and ask the hon. the Minister what he meant by that? Can you imagine anything more important in the educational sphere than for the Coloured Council to express their views and give their advice on their own Coloured university?

Yes, the hon. the Minister said they would be too busy.

I am coming to that. I again ask whether there can be anything more important than to ask the Coloured people to express their advice on their own Coloured university? I think this is what Parliament envisaged when we gave them this power under the 1968 Act.

Then the hon. the Minister went on to say this:

Let us analyze this. This council can deal with a budget of R60 million for the affairs of their own people. However, they cannot be entrusted with giving advice as to the constitution of their own Coloured university. This is what the hon. the Minister advances as a reason for rushing this legislation through without seeking their advice. They can be entrusted with this enormous budget, almost, I think, as big as the budgets of some of our provinces. They can be entrusted with this budget to deal with their own affairs. And this is only the start. But they cannot be entrusted with a simple matter of giving advice as is envisaged in the Act on the constitution of their own university. Then the hon. the Minister in reply to me continued and said further—

They can be entrusted with taking care of the education facilities and affairs of 500,000 children, but they cannot be entrusted to take care of the 500 or 600 Coloured students of this university. This is the reason that the hon. the Minister gives why he cannot wait until this council is appointed before going ahead with this Bill. Then the hon. the Minister goes on and says this:

Honestly, I have never heard of anything more futile in my life.

They do not have the academically developed people.

I do not want to reopen the Second Reading debate. Members on this side of the House pointed out numerous examples of the type of academics which the Coloureds can produce now who are far above the level of many of us. However, let us not enter into that matter.

I merely feel that the time has come when one should really analyze these reasons. I am driven irresistably to the conclusion that the only reason why the Government is rushing through this, is that they have every intention of politically controlling that Coloured university whatever may happen. I feel that that is really one of the fundamental reasons why this Government is pushing through with this Bill, because I can see no necessity for rushing this measure through at this stage, when in three or four months time, we will have this council which is being established for the very purpose which I have mentioned.

I have listened this afternoon very attentively to the remarks made by my colleague, the hon. member for Outeniqua, who is unfortunately not here. I am not concerned with his opinion and what he feels is in the interests of the Coloured people. There is only one people who can speak in this regard. That is the Coloured people themselves. We have given the facility to the Coloured people, Parliament has given the facility to the Coloured people, to speak for themselves in regard to this very matter; to speak through their duly elected council, which will be established before the end of this year. That is the body whose opinion I would seek; that is the body whose opinion I would respect. For these reasons I propose, as I have done at the Second Reading, to vote against this Third Reading.

Mr. Speaker, I think it has already become common knowledge that the story of the University College of the Western Cape is one of success. In spite of that it is interesting to note that this afternoon we had to hear different views on this matter from two representatives of the Coloureds in this House. One of these representatives has praise for this establishment as well as for the measures being taken here to grant a greater measure of academic independence to this institution and to sever its ties with Unisa. The other hon. member does not feel happy about it. Now one asks oneself which one is actually voicing the feelings of the Coloureds in this regard. What the hon. member who has just resumed his seat is concerned about, is that there has not been sufficient consultation, in spite of the fact that time and again the assurance was given in this House that the Coloureds had in fact been consulted and that this Bill, in its present form before the House, had been discussed with them and that they were satisfied with it. The hon. member for Peninsula is apparently not prepared to accept this. However, we shall leave it at that. But then the hon. member should not level the accusation that the Government is engaged in rushing this Bill through. These matters have probably been under way for well over two years, two years of consultations, requests and representations. Although one always welcomes a certain measure of objectivity, it is nevertheless difficult for a person such as the hon. member, who is quite detached from and has nothing to do with this institution, to make such a statement here. What is involved here, is not a question of “rushing through”. This is a well-thought-out measure which is being taken in the interest of the University College, at the request of and in the interests of the lecturers of that institution and, through them, in the interests of the students whom they serve. This has to be appreciated.

I also want to refer to a few observations made by other speakers on the other side of the House. For instance, I want to refer to the hon. member for Houghton who, so it would seem to me, is always privileged to speak on such contentious matters just before it is my turn to speak. Now one has to bear in mind that the hon. member’s latest public appearance was at a protest meeting of students last Monday night.

During lunch-time.

And that, mark you, Sir, was during lunch-time. This was a speech one can only describe as inflammatory and inciting.

Order! The hon. member may not use those words.

But, Mr. Speaker, I must refer to it for it concerns that hon. member’s sentiments.

You may refer to it, but you may not call it that.

I beg your pardon, Mr. Speaker; it concerns her sentiments, about which we have also spoken to her time and again, almost with great affection. That is that the hon. member should not allow herself to be imposed upon for this type of work, i.e. to incite people in the interests of certain points of view which are quite out of touch with the attitude to and way of life here in South Africa. We know that what the hon. member actually wants, is open universities, not only white universities which have to be thrown open to non-Whites, but also non-white universities which have to be thrown open to Whites and all other races. She believes that there can only be an academic atmosphere when there is an element of multi-racialism on a campus. That is where we differ from her, where we are poles apart. The hon. member proceeds on a very great illusion. [Interjections.] The hon. member should listen to what I have to say to her instead of passing the time in small talk. The illusion on which she is proceeding, is the belief that everybody who pretends to be a member of the Progressive Party, thinks just as she does. Well, that is not so.

Not so?

Definitely not. There are better Progressive Party people than that. There are those who can buy and pay for the separateness of their existence. They form one group. The others are merely prepared to speak about it from political platforms, while in actual practice they are not prepared to live up to it. The hon. member for Houghton labours under the delusion that all of them support her, and this is not the case.

I did not like the reflection she cast on the standards and criteria at the University of the Western Cape after severing its ties with Unisa. This was a very unfair reflection, something which can only come from her because she is not conversant with the real conditions obtaining at this institution. Her attitude in this regard links up with that of the hon. member for Wynberg. Incidentally, I hope that the fact that I am specifically confining my attention to the two ladies here in the House will not be allowed to pass unnoticed! The hon. member for Wynberg also deplored the fact that having severed its ties with Unisa, this institution would now have to continue its existence in isolation. What grounds are there for such a statement? If this is the case, the Rhodes University and so many others should also have existed in isolation, because they did not have any contact with Unisa either. [Interjections.] The hon. member should keep quiet now.

Earlier on she preferred to talk rubbish, and now I want to give her a reply to that. The attitude she reveals by doing so, is the same as to say that a university college is being established somewhere in the bundu, which is really a relative concept. If one is in London, the University at Durban would also be in the bundu, and if one is in Durban, one could probably say that the University of Zululand is also in the bundu. In other words, this is a relative concept. The same applies to saying that an institution exists in isolation. What do academic standards really involve in the final analysis? What is it that makes a university a university? It is not where it is situated, but the standards it applies, the qualifications and abilities of the staff, the physical equipment which is available to the lecturers and students. These are the things which determine whether a university is a university, and not where it is situated or whether it has contact with another institution. Provision is in any case being made for the latter in this Bill.

Doubts were expressed as to whether the degrees conferred by this university would be recognized all over the world. Why not? If this university has been constituted properly, if its academic standards comply with academic criteria and not with political criteria, why should its degrees not be acceptable? The criteria applied here this afternoon by two representatives of the Coloureds, an hon. member of the United Party and the hon. member for Houghton, are not academic criteria. I say that in terms of academic criteria the degrees which the institution is going to confer, will in fact be recognized by the whole world, definitely by unprejudiced countries. I have no doubts about that. But the real object here was to sow the seeds of doubt. This is nothing but malicious propaganda made in advance. The only aim they have in view by doing so, is to try to ensure that such a problem will in fact arise in future. And should they not succeed in evoking that by those means, I make bold to say that they will try to evoke it in other ways—for political reasons and nothing else.

The question of finances and that of academic standards are two matters which are not related to each other at all. After all, the fact that this institution will be kept going through State finances, has nothing to do with the academic standards that will obtain there. Surely, these two things are irreconcileable. The Government has never, and I have reason to say this, interfered with the academic standards which obtained at this university college in the past. Is it conceivable that a Minister, even if he has the time to do so, would interfere with what is happening on the campus as far as academic aspects are concerned? This has never happened and I do not think it will ever happen, and yet this is an argument that was advanced by the hon. member for Wynberg as being the reason why she would not support this measure.

The other aspect that was touched upon, was the convocation. In the course of the discussion of this series of university Bills this aspect was over-emphasized. It has no significance. After all is said and done, what is the meaning of a convocation? After all, where does a convocation enter into our Afrikaans set-up? It is, after all, nothing but an institution inherited from England. I do not know how many convocations the hon. member for Wynberg belongs to. I myself belong to two. The letters I receive from them, I immediately throw into the waste-paper basket. The hon. member for Houghton says that she belongs to a very active convocation, i.e. the convocation of the University of the Witwatersrand. This, she says, is indeed a very active convocation, but it is a protesting convocation. That is all it is; a leftist protesting convocation. [Interjections.] I assume that the hon. member for Wynberg spoke on behalf of her Party. One cannot always be sure of that, because there is a member over there who does not agree with her views when she speaks on behalf of her Party. Who is going to form part of the convocation of this university institution? How many graduates are there at the moment? This is probably not a question of thousands at all, although I speak under correction.

One hundred and ninety.

How many of them will be able to attend meetings of the convocation? How many of them will want to attend such meetings and feel the necessity of doing so? And now this is being advanced here as a reason why this institution cannot function properly. One does not fall for such a weak joke just like that. I know the hon. member for Kensington is awaiting an opportunity to speak on this question. That is why I am stating our views on that matter now, in anticipation, so that he may know.

Then I come to the last aspect that was mentioned by the hon. member for Wynberg, a question about which she also feels sore, i.e. the omission of the conscience clause from this Bill. I suppose she read the letter this morning which appeared in Die Burger on the question of the conscience clause. I want to tell her that this conscience clause is not a thing of which we in South Africa are very fond. I could mention to her universities in South Africa which only make use of the conscience clause for the exclusive purpose of importing lecturers from countries abroad to lecture to our people here at our universities, and then they are unilingual people who have to lecture to bilingual South Africans. [Interjection.] This is the case; if the hon. member disputes it he must prove to me that my statement is wrong. After all, the absence of a conscience clause does not mean that a dogmatic doctrine is going to be presented to these students, a one-way religion, and that the lecturers who are going to be appointed at such an institution would have to conform to that pattern before they can be appointed. That is not the case. If we refer to the University of Potchefstroom for Christian Higher Education, that principle holds good; they do not only have lecturers on that staff who are members of one specific church.

Sir, I assume that the hon. member for Wynberg was speaking on behalf of her Party when, in the course of the Third Reading Debate here, she summarized the reasons why her Party would not vote for the Third Reading. From what I have said, it ought to be clear that the reasons she advanced are insubstantial. I repeat that we on this side of the House welcome this step and that we are looking forward to the Third Reading being agreed to as soon as possible.

[Interjections.] Mr. Speaker, I must thank hon. members on the other side for welcoming me here. I am very glad to be able to be in at the kill. This is the fifth of these universities that we have established and I am glad that I have been able to last out. With regard to what the hon. member for Zululand has just said, I should like to say that never at any time have we cast any reflection upon the staff at the University College of the Western Cape and certainly not on the Department of Coloured Affairs. On the contrary, we admire the work that they have done and we should like to use this occasion to pay tribute to them. That is my first point. I am not going to defend the hon. member for Houghton. I have been in the House with her for quite a long time, and I know that it is not necessary to defend her. She is quite able to look after herself here, and certainly to deal with the hon. member for Zululand. I should like to say this to the hon. member for Zululand who dealt here with the argument of the hon. member for Houghton that the degrees of these colleges will not be recognized throughout the world. They are not recognized by the Minister of Education. He does not recognize these universities. Hon. members have seen the Bill to amend the Act of 1955. What is a university now? In the definition of “university” these five are excluded.

Sir. the next point I wish to discuss is the question of convocation; whether we should have a convocation or not. This matter was raised by the hon. member for Algoa, who, I understand, is a member of the council of Port Elizabeth University.

Quite right.

I am sorry the hon. member is not here because I would like to tell him something about the University of Port Elizabeth. I was here when it was established; he was not. The Act provides that the University of Port Elizabeth shall consist of a chancellor, a principal of the university, a council, a senate and a convocation. The hon. member has a convocation in his own university. What is a convocation? A convocation is described in sec. 11 of the Act; it says quite clearly what a convocation is—

The hon. member says that you do not need a convocation.

Nor a conscience clause.

Sir, the hon. member for Worcester in this debate has come back to the old canard that this United Party, this Opposition, opposed the establishment of these university colleges.

Of course you did.

I say it is quite untrue; I have said so several times in this House, and in the course of these debates I have had to quote from one of my own speeches in 1959. What we said was this: Establish the five colleges for the Bantu, for the Coloureds and for the Indians, but leave the open universities as they are. That is what we said. We said that where you have open universities, as in the case of the University of Cape Town, the University of the Witwatersrand, Rhodes University and Natal University, these should remain open. That was our contention. Sir, I hope that this will be the end of the story that the United Party said that these were going to be bush colleges. As I said at the Second Reading, I was present at the opening of the University College of the Western Cape. The then Minister of Education, Arts and Science was there and I think the hon. the Prime Minister, who was then Deputy Minister of Education, was there as well. We attended the opening. As a matter of fact, we sat on the select committee that helped to establish these university colleges. It did not establish them as we wanted them to be, and what progress have they made in the past ten years since their establishment? The Government said that they would never have people of different races sitting together in a university college; and what is the position now? I am going to quote now from the annual report of the Department of Coloured Affairs on the subject of education. How many Coloured students are there to-day in what we used to call the open universities —the Witwatersrand, Cape Town and so on? In 1966 there were 156, in 1967, 126, and in the following year 20 more, 146; the number was increasing. In other words, they have not been able to provide the education they undertook ten years ago to provide. We said to them at the time: Give us an interim period of ten years; allow the open universities to exist for ten years, and when you are ready to provide the necessary facilities, then you can deal with this situation again. Even under their own policy, that is the position we had reached.

So much, Sir, for the hon. member for Worcester. I do not know whether they are going to establish an “eie nasieskap” for the Coloureds. We are certainly not going to do it in this House. Our children, we are told, will have to deal with this situation, but I think when it comes to the university it will probably be our grandchildren; that seems to be what they have in mind. Sir, to-day in South Africa we have the Witwatersrand University, the Cape Town University and others who are again declaring their belief in the principle of an open university. They have told us that they lost the battle ten years ago. Sir, they were not the people who lost the battle; we lost the battle across the floor of this House. We fought for several days, extending over a period of weeks, to maintain open universities and, if necessary, to establish these colleges. We believed in that then and we believe in it now. We say that we stand for the autonomy of the university.

You want open universities.

If they have autonomy it means they can please themselves. When the hon. member talks about open universities, let me explain to him that Stellenbosch was an open university. It made no difference to Stellenbosch because when it was an open university the council exercised their autonomy and said “We do not wish to have Coloureds”. They exercised their autonomy; they had the fullest right to do that, and we concede it. But if there is another university that says “we will make provision for Coloureds”, why should not they? There is nothing new in students of other races being at a college that is established for one race. Fort Hare has always had students of other races. They had white students at one time; distinguished South Africans came from Fort Hare. I come back again to the 1968 report of the Department of Coloured Affairs. Under the heading “Expenditure for the year 1968-’69” they refer to “financial assistance to University College of Fort Hare for the education of Coloured students”. They are still there and, as the hon. member for Houghton said the other day, the heavens have not fallen yet; nothing has gone wrong. In the case of the University College of the Western Cape we are going to make provision there that when the council or the advisory council sits, the rector and the chairman of the council will also be present. They are both Whites; they can sit with Coloureds; there seems to be no objection to it, and the meetings can be conducted in that same satisfactory manner.

Sir, I want to say that we are still adherents of the policy that we advocated ten years ago.

You have made no progress in ten years.

The hon. member does not understand the difference between progression and retrogression; he is dealing in retrogression.

You have retrogressed.

Sir, we stand for that principle and other people to-day are convinced of it too. I am sure the hon. the Minister can conduct his affairs in that way. I want to say in conclusion that I got the impression, especially in the Committee Stage, that the hon. the Minister—I do not wish to make any comparison—has shown that he is receptive to constructive suggestions; he is prepared to consider them and I hope that in the future when his Vote comes before the House and we have similar constructive suggestions to make, he will accept them in the same courteous spirit.

Mr. Speaker, with the Third Reading of this Bill, this Parliament has reached a very important milestone to-day, an important milestone on the road of the development of this university institution into an entirely autonomous university institution. At the very outset I want to emphasize that this is a phase of development on the road which this university institution is following so that it may in due course become entirely independent and autonomous like any other university in this country. But whereas this measure on this road of development is concerned to-day with granting academic independence to this university institution, I cannot omit to express my sincere appreciation once again to those persons who have made this phase of development possible. If it had not been for the guidance provided by the competent men on the council, the first rector, Professor Meiring, and the present rector, Professor Sieberhagen, the staff and the students, we should not have been able to deal here to-day with the Third Reading of this measure. Ten years ago these people undertook their task with dedication, and they set a standard which is above criticism, even above that of the United Party. I deplore the insinuation which has been made here as though these standards were allegedly not justified. The people who gave an opinion on the standard of this university, on the strength of which the Government came forward with this Bill, are experts on universities; they are deans of faculties of other universities; they are people who are in a position to express a comparable opinion and judgment. They are people who are aware of the responsibility which rests on them as university graduates and of the consequences if they were to advise us wrongly; for this university institution is one of those shop windows of South Africa. That is why I really trust that in the time that lies ahead our friends of the Opposition will avail themselves of the opportunity of visiting this institution. At the end of his speech the hon. member for Bezuidenhout boasted of his being a great friend of this University. I just want to say that friends do visit one another.

I should like to express my appreciation for the attitude adopted in this regard by the students as well; students who came to this university college under very difficult circumstances. They arrived there in the midst of the pressure of propaganda made by the Opposition and others, which made it difficult for them to hold their own in that institution. Nevertheless, they did so, and over these ten years they have maintained a positive attitude there. I want to praise them to-day for that positive attitude, without which it would not have been possible for us to grant this academic independence to this institution to-day.

I just want to say this, i.e. that whereas we are granting this academic independence and not autonomy to this institution to-day, but are in fact placing them on the road to autonomy, I want to tell the United Party and the Progressive Party that what strikes one, is that these pleas made by the United Party-Progressive Opposition do not have the backing of one single responsible Coloured leader. There is not a single responsible Coloured leader whose plea is that this university should now have autonomy. But the United Party and the Progressive Party come forward here with their soap-box speeches and suggest that this is the ideal the Coloureds allegedly want now. No, in this respect the Coloured leaders are much more practical than is the opposition sitting opposite me. They realize that in this phase of development in which they find themselves, they cannot have autonomy. That is why I immediately want to reply again to what the hon. member for Peninsula said here. He wanted to know why the Coloured Council and the Coloured leaders were not consulted in this regard. In my reply to the Second Reading debate I said that the Coloured leaders were well and truly consulted, but apparently I have to repeat it. The Coloured leaders who serve on that advisory council were consulted in this regard and they are fully aware of this development, and they are convinced that at this stage this is the right development. That is why I am grateful for the fact that they are not participating in this agitation to which they have been incited by the Opposition. They have made no statements of this nature: on the contrary—and I am very grateful to them for that.

The hon. member for Wynberg regretted that this university would allegedly be cut oft from the university world now. Because of its academic independence it is now being removed, according to this hon. member, from the university world. Surely, that is outrageous. Are the representatives of faculty boards of other universities not going to serve on this senate, for the very purpose of maintaining contact and ensuring that the standards are comparable to those of other universities? Is it not true that outstanding professors from other universities are serving on the council of this university? You regret that the liaison with Unisa has now been removed, but you should note that Professor Van der Merwe, one of the leading figures at Unisa, serves on this council, and it will always be our endeavour to consult the University of South Africa in this regard and, if need be, to grant representation to them, also as a token of our appretion for the extensive assistance they granted in the past. No, this university institution will not be removed from the university world. On the contrary; thanks to this academic independence which it is being granted, it is now for the first time possible for it to blossom forth, and it can now develop into that pearl which it has a right to be as a university institution in the university world.

Mention was once again made of the conscience clause. Why should we write into our legislation things for which there is absolutely no necessity? During these ten years of this institution’s existence, has there ever been one single case of which the Opposition is aware, where there was discrimination against anybody at that institution on the grounds of his religious convictions? No, there has not been such a case, because this is inconsistent with the actions of the council and the Government in a country such as this, where we have religious freedom. Why should we write such things into legislation if there is no necessity for them? I gave the assurance to the hon. member for Wynberg yesterday, and I want to repeat it now, that at this university there will be no discrimination against any lecturer, applicants or whoever, on religious grounds. You may test us against that, and if this is not the case you may come to this House year after year and reproach me with these words. You have that right; that is the control you have in this Parliament, i.e. that we shall keep our promise.

The hon. members for Houghton and Kensington once again pointed out to us the necessity of having a convocation. This measure and the line of thought on which it is based, do not preclude the establishment of a convocation in the future, when that juncture has been reached. When we have enough Coloured graduates, more than the 190 which I mentioned by way of interjection to the hon. member for Zululand, when the time comes when there are more of them on whom one can draw, and when the time comes when this university will no longer be completely dependent on State funds, but when outside organizations and also Coloured businessmen, and others, are also able to contribute to the funds of that university, then the time will be ripe for considering the establishment of a convocation. This measure and the underlying idea do not preclude that. All that is necessary is that the time should be ripe for doing so.

The hon. member for Bezuidenhout came forward with one of his characteristic expressions. He said that the white régime should not introduce its political ideas at the university. What does the hon. member mean by that? Does he mean that the council or the lecturers are going to introduce their political ideas there?

I mean the system of two councils and two senates.

These are not political ideas. This idea of separate or parallel development is the policy of this Government, but it is also the pattern of South Africa. This is the pattern which was laid down at the polls by one mandate after the other, and this is the pattern which humanly speaking will not be changed by anybody in the future. To bring that pattern to these people does, after all, not amount to introducing political ideas. This is the traditional pattern of the country within the framework of which they are afforded their opportunities to develop. To maintain, either by way of insinuation or otherwise, that those students are being indoctrinated, is outrageous, surely.

I did not say that. I only referred to the structure.

In reply to that idea I just want to say this: The other day the student leader, Brian O’Connell, specifically replied to this question when he was asked in a Press interview whether there was indoctrination. In reply to that he said—

I just want to ask the hon. the Minister to take my word for it that in this respect I was merely referring to the structure and not to indoctrination of political ideas by lecturers. I merely referred to the two councils and the two senates.

If you referred to that, I accept it in full, but this is not politicking. This forms part of our whole national tradition and national pattern of parallel development, and if one wishes to declaim against it, one should do so at the polls where it is possible for one to bring about a change of pattern. You really blamed us for implementing this pattern. Let me tell the hon. member and the United Party that this conduct on the part of the Government, i.e. of being honest and frank with the non-Whites at all times, is one of our most valuable assets in our policy of race relations in this country. These people know exactly where they stand with us. They know what they can expect from us. They know what we are prepared to do, but they also know what we are not prepared to do. This question of separate senates and councils is not something we are hiding. The things I am saying to you here I shall also say in their presence, when I am asked about them, and I shall phrase them in the same language. Those people appreciate sincerity, and in that way this Government will definitely continue to foster good race relations in South Africa.

I also want to avail myself of this opportunity to-day to make an appeal to our Coloured students who are at that university and those who will still go there. The hon. member for Gordonia made an appeal to Coloured organizations, but I want to make an appeal to-day to our Coloured students to exert themselves to a greater extent than they have done up to now to qualify themselves so that they may in future take up posts as lecturers at that university. In the course of this debate we have already expressed regret at the fact that there is only one Coloured lecturer at that institution. I furnished the reasons for this being the case. Since we must maintain the standard, we must appoint people there with the required qualifications, and then I said what I want to repeat now. If we, as the council, were for reasons of popularity to appoint a person as a lecturer simply because he is a Coloured and that person did not possess the required qualifications, the Coloured leaders would be the first to blame both the council and us. We dare not do that, and because we dare not do that, because we have to maintain this standard, in order that the United Party and the Progressive Party may not have grounds for their charges, for disparaging this institution because of the lowering of standards, and in order to allow the university to retain the prestige it has, it is necessary for the Coloureds who are appointed to these posts to be qualified properly. I want to make a serious appeal to the Coloured students to qualify themselves to such an extent that in future it will be possible for us to appoint more of them than was possible in the past; for I think that, whereas it is our ideal that this University should flourish as a separate university institution, it is, as a matter of fact, only fair that it should also be staffed properly by people of its own colour. If in the course of time it is not possible for us to make a complete success of this, I want to admit that one would expose oneself to criticism in regard to the implementation of this policy. I want to grant that readily, and I think it is a challenge to all of us, and to the Coloureds in particular, to take advantage of these opportunities. I trust that the ambitious young Coloured students will take advantage of these opportunities which will enable them to advance to the highest level of academic development in their own institution. I have no doubt that in future this institution is going to fulfil an even greater task and function in training Coloureds in the political sphere as well as the other spheres. Mention has rightly been made here of the shortage of Coloured leaders. This is the case. In my contact with them over the past three years I was impressed time and again by the shortage of trained Coloured leaders to take them to these heights which one envisages for them. Therefore, in the time that lies ahead this institution has a greater task than it has ever had before; whereas more and more opportunities are being afforded to them in the academic and political spheres to-day, I believe that this university will also have to be prepared to play a greater part in this than it did in the past.

I want to conclude by saying that this institution has now been in existence for one decade. One may rightly regard this as being the first stage. This legislation, which is being passed here today, actually ushers in the second stage, and I think this will be convincing proof to the Coloureds that the Government and the Whites of this country are favourably disposed towards them on the road that lies ahead. Over the first ten years their accomplishments were such that they put their critics to shame, so much so that some of the latter who had previously described these institutions as “bush colleges”, to-day no longer want to admit to having done so at all. I do not have any doubt that in the next ten years this University with its new status of academic independence will flourish to such an extent that it will come up to all our expectations, and on that road ahead I wish them every success.

Motion put and the House divided:

Tellers: P. H. Torlage, G. P. van den Berg, P. S. van der Merwe and H. J. van Wyk.

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

Motion accordingly agreed to.

Bill read a Third Time.

Mr. Speaker, when the House adjourned last night I had indicated that we on this side of the House were opposed to the Second Reading, because firstly the terms of the Bill conflict with the constitutional principle of three-tier government in the Republic; secondly the Bill takes no cognizance of the basic democratic principle of “convince” and not “coerce” so far as the lower formations of Government are concerned; thirdly, the Bill endangers the established settled technical planning by experts at local level; and fourthly this Bill has been considered to be unnecessary by at least one member of the Executive Committee of the Cape Provincial Council.

I want to go further now and I want to refer to the hon. the Minister’s attitude towards the United Municipal Executive. This Bill directly affects local authorities. As the Minister is well aware, there exists a United Municipal Executive which is representative of local authorities and through them is representative of ratepayers in the cities, towns, and villages of the Republic of South Africa. It is a long-established body and it is a responsible body which has been utilized by successive governments over the years for purposes of consultation. But what has happened in this instance? According to reports the Minister has apparently been requested to delay this Bill so that the U.M.E. could be consulted. But he has refused that. Apparently he has refused to the extent that it became necessary yesterday in East London, where the Cape Province Municipal Association is in session, for the president to express his regret that the Government had not consulted local authorities before introducing this Bill. In fact, he went further and said, as reported in the Cape Argus of last evening:

Why do you not read the rest of that report?

I am coming to the rest of it. I want to say that first of all, it is apparent that there was no consultation with the United Municipal Executive; and secondly, the Minister has in a cavalier manner refused to postpone this Bill to allow consultation when he has been requested to do so.

The Minister suggested yesterday that there was no new principle in this Bill. I want to read what was said yesterday by Mr. Dempsey, the president of the Association, from which, no doubt, the Minister would find some encouragement. He was reported as follows:

While the principle that the Community Development Board should be able to take over an area and develop it, is an accepted principle, what it is empowered to do in terms of this Act, is certainly no accepted principle so far as the law stands at the present time. I want to say immediately that the powers of the Community Development Board at the present time entitle the board to enter and to develop a defined area and to exercise over that defined area the powers of a local authority.

I should like to ask hon. members here, as well as Mr. Dempsey and the others who have not had an opportunity of consulting and seeing what is implied in this Bill, whether they will now look at the Bill itself. If we turn to section 17, we see that the present powers are wide. I agree that they are wide, but the fundamental basic principle of section 17 (1) is that the board exercises powers only over the defined area.

The second point is, as the law stands today, what the board does in that defined area, is for its own account and its own cost, and not for the cost of the general body of ratepayers. So the position is that whatever it does in that defined area, must be financed by the board. That is so, because it is in fact the position that applies at the present moment. If the hon. the Minister is so confident that this is merely a regularizing Bill, without departing from the existing powers, I wish to point out to him that he has already caused a proclamation to be published in the very terms of this Bill, dealing with Stellenbosch. If that is a valid proclamation, why does he come to the House for this authority? Either he has acted illegally in issuing this proclamation and has exceeded his authority, or this Bill is extending whatever powers he has.

It is making certain.

It is a most strange way of government if, after a responsible Minister has purported to exercise a power under a section of an existing Act, he now wants to say, “In case I am not quite certain, in case I should not have done it, I now want the powers”.

What is wrong with it?

Why bother to have proclamations at all? Let Parliament do everything.

If you think it is illegal, take me to court.

If I may proceed to the Bill which is now before us, I wish to point out that the powers under section 17 (1) remain. When one reads the amended clause 17 (2) in this Bill, there are vast, wide and unnecessary powers which go well beyond the powers already held by the board. The powers of the board are now to extend outside the defined area which has been entrusted to the board. It not only becomes a local authority for the defined area, but it can usurp and exercise all the powers of the local authority outside of that defined area if the area falls in a local authority area. The Minister presents himself and the board as the ultimate authority, the ultimate group who must not be subjected to the opinions, advice and planning which have been provided all the years by technical and qualified experts at local levels. We are all aware of the extent that municipalities have laid out town planning schemes with a view to development over a period of years. Because the hon. the Minister feels himself not in agreement with these established plans, these established programmes for the future, he can say that it is not binding on him and that he can do exactly What he likes. The board can do exactly what it likes within an area and can bind the municipality. So the Minister now has power, so far as the local authorities are concerned, to override the town planning. He can incur financial obligations in the name of the local authority, raising loans and in other ways.

It has always been so.

No. Mr. Speaker. I would ask the hon. member for Parow when he speaks to tell me where in the Act it is indicated that he has had that power.

Thirdly, which is the most important point, he need have no regard whatsoever to the priorities which have been determined by the municipality for the development of the areas under its jurisdiction. From a Central Government Department he will be able to exercise all those functions which have up to now been vested in a local authority elected by the people who pay rates within that area.

A local authority might be quite happy to accept the planning for the future, but if it does not agree as to the timing and method of implementation, the Minister can step in and exercise all the functions of the local authority. He may raise loans under this Bill without complying with the fundamental provision in respect of raising loans by local authorities. That is the consent of ratepayers at a general meeting, and then confirmation by the provincial authorities. He takes unto himself to ignore those procedures. He can ignore the very existence of the provincial administration in so far as its surveillance or control over local authorities is concerned. These are tendencies which we on this side believe are undesirable. They are tendencies which should be avoided, because they are white-anting the foundations of local government in this country. Local government has an accepted and valid place, an important place in the constitution of our country. It has an important place, because particularly it brings the ordinary citizen through his local government into contact with the administration of the part of the country in which he lives.

It gives him a responsibility. It allows him to feel that he is part of the community so that he will have a pride and an interest in the development of his particular portion of the Republic of South Africa. But now whatever the local people might plan or think desirable, the Minister can step in and say what he believes should be done. I want to say to the hon. the Minister and his Government that it is all very well to say that this is Government policy and that this is the policy that they wish to be carried out. There must however be regard for the lower formations. There must be regard for that 40 per cent of the electorate which does not support this Government. They are the ones who must be convinced as to the correctness of actions taken at the lower tiers of government which are the safety valves as far as our democratic system is concerned. This Government has no mandate to destroy or undermine our systems of local government. They have never received a mandate to destroy local government and I believe that that is what this Bill is doing.

I want to go further and say that there are specific questions which I believe we are entitled to put to the Minister. Firstly is it the policy of this Government to maintain the lower tiers of Government as they exist in this country, or must this Bill be seen as another systematic step in removing bit by bit the powers which our local authorities enjoy at present under our system of government? This in itself might be regarded merely as one aspect of local government. It may even be seen as a very small aspect of local government. This step is however certainly forming part of a pattern of government action which is emasculating lower formations of government. Every piece of legislation which concerns local government seems to have this effect.

As far as Stellenbosch is concerned I also want to ask the hon. the Minister whether that local authority has expressed its satisfaction in regard to the fact that the hon. the Minister now can spend money to carry out development as he thinks best, and then if he so desires levy a rate to cover the cost which he has incurred without the approval of the Town Council of Stellenbosch. In terms of this Bill he can then levy a rate on every rate-paying property owner in the whole of the municipal area of Stellenbosch. Is this view acceptable? Must this view now be regarded as an accepted principle as far as this Government’s actions in relation to local authorities are concerned? In the last few days we have often heard the saying that he who pays the piper calls the tune, but what is happening in the case of this Bill? What does the hon. the Minister envisage with this Bill? In terms of this Bill the Community Development Board can do what it likes within the municipal area under the jurisdiction of a certain local authority. Having taken whatever action it deems fit, the ratepayers in the local authority must bear the cost incurred. In terms of this Bill the local ratepayer must bear the cost incurred, but the local ratepayers have no say whatsoever in what the Community Development Board chooses to do and spend.

Mr. Speaker, for these reasons I wish to move the following amendment—

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Green Point spoke for a very long time and made use of his opportunity to speak to raise all the old stereotypes and hackneyed United Party objections which they raise here from time to time in regard to legislation of this nature. He dredged up these old objections for us again to-day, and added absolutely nothing new. The principle embodied in this amending legislation was written into the 1959 principle Act. Every argument which the hon. member for Green Point used was used at the time that Act was being discussed here. The only difference is that the hon. member for South Coast, who was at that time the main speaker of the United Party in regard to these matters, did so with far more conviction and originality than the hon. member for Green Point did. The hon. member for Green Point expressed great concern here about the fact that the Municipal Association had not been consulted in regard to this matter, but we adhere to the viewpoint that this principle was written into this legislation as far back as 1959, i.e. 10 years ago. These people were consulted at the time. The then Minister held discussions with the Administrators and the executive committees of our provinces, as well as with the municipal associations. He also consulted deputations from the largest city councils. The upshot was that he received notification in writing from the executive of the Municipal Association to the effect that they supported the principle embodied in this legislation. We heard the evidence submitted by this body from the hon. member for Green Point here to-day. He quoted what the president of the Cape Municipal Association, Mr. Dempsey, had said, Mr. Dempsey had stated that he could confirm that this principle had been written into the Act 10 years ago and that there had been no departure from this principle. All that is being done now is that an amended procedure is being followed. That principle was approved by the people who were consulted at the time. It is therefore unnecessary that people should be asked anew to approve a principle which was approved 10 years ago. The hon. member for Green Point stated, without giving much thought to the matter, that we should try to persuade the local authorities rather than compel them. That hon. member is a person who has his home in the Peninsula. He knows Cape Town, and he was a member of the executive committee of the Cape Provincial Council. He knows that here in Cape Town, the mother city of South Africa, we are dealing with a city council which, to say the least of it, is far from enthusiastic; a city council which is very reluctant when it comes to the implementation of National Party policy. As proof of this I just want to repeat what the hon. the Minister mentioned in his Second Reading speech. I want to point out that more than 10 years ago an Indian group area was declared for the Peninsula, i.e. Rylands. This group area is situated within the city limits of the Cape Town City Council. During all these years the Cape Town City Council could not be persuaded to lift a finger in respect of the development of this group area. What was the result? It had the frustrating result that municipalities in the northern suburbs, whose Indians also had to go to that area, had a few Indian families in their area. I am talking about Parow, Bellville and Goodwood who have for years already been rid of all the unauthorized groups in their areas, but to-day each of these municipalities has a few Indian families that are waiting for Rylands to be developed. But they are waiting in vain, and this state of affairs must be attributed to the Cape Town City Council.

But these powers already existed.

I shall inform the hon. member in a moment of the truth in respect of all the stories about encroachment into the territory of the local authorities, the undermining of the authority of the provinces and the violation of the Constitution. Sir, if this legislation had affected any of the principles of our Constitution, you would have ruled that the matter could not be taken any further. How dare the hon. member for Green Point now allege a thing like this, well knowing that it is not correct? I can indicate that this same hackneyed story of undermining, of the undermining and the abolition of local authorities was raked up with great acclamation in 1959 as well. Because there is a lack of things to say on this occasion, it is being repeated by the hon. member for Green Point. Let us look at the kind of amendment they moved in 1959 and compare it with the amendment the hon. member for Green Point has moved to this legislation. In 1959 their amendment was moved by the hon. member for South Coast. It read as follows—

1. (a) it constitutes an unwarranted and undesirable interference with the legitimate rights and powers of local authorities.

The same old story therefore! The amendment reads further—

1. (b) it derogates from the powers of the Provincial Councils in respect of matters reserved to them in our Constitution …

The same old story therefore! And further—

1. (c) it gives a nominated board the power to burden local authorities and rate-payers with the cost of its schemes, and to do so without regard to their ability to meet such costs.

The same old story therefore! Here we also find indisputable proof of the unmotivated nature of their attitude in respect of costs. Why did they then at the time, in their amendment of 1959, object to local authorities and their taxpayers being burdened with the costs?

Where in this amending legislation does the hon. member for Green Point see that the Minister is derogating from the autonomy of local authorities? Where in this amending legislation does he see that we want to violate the Constitution, that we want to do away with provincial and city councils? Does he base his conclusion on the fact that the Development Board is being designated as having to perform a specific function in respect of a specific matter, i.e. community development, when the local authority does not want to undertake to do it? Can that mean that we are dismantling the powers of provincial and local authorities? The amendment by the hon. member for South Coast in 1959, and the tenor of the ensuing debate, is indisputable proof that everything which is embodied in the principle which is affected here, was at the time clearly written into the Act. But the hon. member for Green Point maintains that this is not the case because section 17 of the principal Act stipulates that within such a defined area, in which the Development Board may exercise powers, the Board must bear the costs itself. Of course there is nothing in this Act about that. If the hon. member uses his common sense, he will know that the Development Board can draw money from the Development Fund only for functions of the Board itself. When the Board is designated to carry out the functions of a local authority, these are after all no normal functions of the Board itself, and it cannot therefore utilize its own funds for that purpose. [Interjection.] I am still coming to the town council of Stellenbosch. At the moment I am dealing with your argument. I am pointing out the hollow argument you brought forward here. The position is that the Development Board will in this case not take steps to fulfil one of its normal functions, but will act as a local government, and because that is the case, it cannot make use of its own funds. We are not making a mistake here. We must get proper clarity on the principle with which we are dealing here. This is a principle which deals with the powers which can be granted to the Development Board in order to take over a function of a local authority. That is the principle at issue here. And we must not allow ourselves to be side-tracked into matters of procedure. The hon. member for Green Point tried to do this. This principle, the same as is contained in section 17 of the principal Act, gives the State President the power to invest the Development Board with all powers and factions of a local authority. That is what is at issue here, and not points of procedure. The Minister has stated here that this legislation will now enable the Development Board to take rapid and effective steps in cases where a local authority neglects to fulfil its function properly.

The Development Board will exercise this function in only two cases: Firstly, where a smaller local authority is not able to develop a group area, and secondly, when a local authority offers resistance. In both these cases the Minister and the Development Board need this power. With that we probably all agree. Of course, it depends upon the local authority itself whether the Minister is going to make use of these powers. Of course the vast majority of local authorities choose to exercise these powers themselves and to fulfil their duties satisfactorily themselves. It is only by way of rare exception that town councils, as in the case of Stellenbosch for example, adopt an attitude in regard to which the Minister can do nothing else than to act in the public interest. There is consistent evidence that the cooperation between the Minister and his Department and local authorities is of the best. In fact, they place a high value on this; they are sticklers for this, and are therefore continually making efforts to achieve this. But when a local authority opposes National policy, it is quite a different matter. I cannot summarize the principle behind this to better effect than the Deputy Minister of the Interior did in 1959. At the time this principle was first laid down in legislation. In column 8661 of Hansard the then Deputy Minister of the Interior stated—

Do you regard the action, or lack of action, on the part of the Stellenbosch Municipality as resistance?

If you had been listening. you would have known that I have already stated, earlier on in my speech, that the town council of Stellenbosch adopted such an attitude that the Minister could, in the public interest, do nothing else than to make use of these powers of his.

He has already made use of these powers, but he is only now coming forward with the legislation.

What is involved here is the procedure. That hon. member does not know much about anything, and about this matter he knows nothing at all. I want to point out that this is not a new principle in South Africa. This is an age-old principle, and I want to draw the attention of hon. members to the fact that this is not the first time the National Party Government has made use of these powers. There was a time when the Johannesburg City Council opposed attempts to clear the slum areas at Sophiatown and other residential areas. The then Minister of Native Affairs then took the same powers in terms of the Resettlement legislation in order to clear those slum areas in Johannesburg. The United Party at that time said the same thing they are saying to-day. Who would not admit now that it was essential and in the interests of the country and to the best advantage of South Africa in order to promote good race relations that that had to be done? I do not want to spend much time on this matter, except to point out that many of the sections of the Resettlement Act relating to this question of taking over the powers of a local authority are defined in the Bill we are now dealing with. This principle was also utilized long before 1948, by the United Party itself. I now want to read out to them what is stated in an Act which they themselves passed. I am referring now to the Native Urban Areas Consolidation Act (Act No. 25 of 1945). The hon. member for Green Point was so sanctimonious in his conduct here, and one would swear that hon. members on the opposite side would never even have considered a thing like this, let alone have proceeded to do it. I now want to read out to the hon. member what is stated in the legislation of his own party. Section 4 (1) of the Act reads as follows—

It is not only a question of taking over the powers of an urban local authority. The United Party went much further. I come now to the Administrator and the provinces. I want to ask the hon. member, when they passed this legislation, whether they then wanted to abolish the town and provincial councils? Section 4 (2) of the Act reads as follows—

There is not even prior consultation, it is simply proclaimed in the Gazette. [Interjections.]

I have not yet administered all their medicine to them, and I want to read further. A great deal was said here about the powers which the Minister will supposedly be able to take to exercise authority within a municipality. Subsection (4) reads as follows:

The Minister is granted the power to take the local authority to court in order to recover the money he has spent. What does the hon. member for Green Point have to say about that? The subsection goes on to state—

The Minister can even levy taxes on property in the area of the urban local authority in order to recover his money. How does the hon. member like that? I go further—

In other words, if the Minister had applied all these measures, and still did not have sufficient money, he could recover the money from the funds which the State appropriates annually for the provinces from the Revenue Fund. In spite of this the hon. member was terribly concerned about the powers which the Minister is receiving in terms of this Bill. That was not all. Even prior to 1930 the administration of the province of Natal saddled the Durban City Council with the task of leaving certain slum areas outside the Durban city limits. They had to be satisfied with this. Among them is the hon. member for South Coast who knows about this, and they can ask him. Hon. members are talking about something they know nothing about. The provisions of this particular Bill are a very necessary instrument in the hands of the Minister, the Development Board and the Department of Community Development. These provisions are a deterrent to the municipalities who are hesitant to exercise their duty and to carry out the National Party policy. As a result of the fact that this clause is contained in the Bill we have, even to-day, progressed much further in the field of community development than would have been the case if we had been dependent upon the municipalities and had tried to persuade them to do their duty.

Mr. Speaker, before dealing with the background against which the hon. the Minister is taking these draconian powers and the quotations by my hon. friend with which I will deal in a minute, let me emphasize that the hon. member for Green Point was entirely correct in saying that previously the Community Development Board could only take over the functions of a municipality in a defined area and not outside it. To that extent the powers are increased. The proclamation in regard to Stellenbosch makes this perfectly clear. As the hon. member for Parow knows perfectly well, the board formerly had to bear the costs of any action taken to develop the so-called defined area and not the local authority. That is the basic difference. The hon. member for Green Point is perfectly correct. Under this Bill the board can, by proclamation, operate as the local authority for the entire area over which that local authority has jurisdiction and it will have power to control, to subdivide, to lay out, to plan, to develop, let or sell—all the things which are set out in detail in clause 2 of the Bill. But, finally, the board having carried out all its plans, can demand repayment of all the costs from the local authority, which, as the hon. member for Green Point has said, is a new departure. But, Sir, the board can also in the process levy a special rate. My hon. friend over here quoted from a previous statute in regard to this particular provision. We find that this particular provision is one to which we cannot agree. They can levy a special rate on all rateable property within the area under the jurisdiction of such a local authority. What that means in effect is that they can levy this rate without consulting the ratepayers, the Provincial Administration or anybody else. We on this side maintain, I think correctly, that the powers contained in this Bill are the most far-reaching powers that have ever been exercised by a central government over a local authority.

We only learned from the United Party.

It overrides the basic right of the local citizens to decide upon the rateable assessment of the properties and areas which they control by law and it throws overboard the whole concept of really effective local government, which is the infra-structure of our democratic system. Sir, let us just take this Stellenbosch proclamation, it is very interesting indeed. It was issued on the 28th March. The Stellenbosch Municipality—the hon. the Minister knows all the facts—has been trying to develop Ida’s Valley as a housing scheme for the Coloured people as fast as it can and for a number of years. In the meantime the Government has insisted in this area of Stellenbosch, as in all other peri-urban development schemes for the Coloured people, that a large percentage of the new houses should be allocated to Group Areas removals. By this means the Minister and his Department have been holding up the elimination of slums and the proper housing of those people presently in squatters’ camps, and now he blames the local authorities. The hon. the Minister, in reply to a question yesterday by the hon. member for Green Point, said, amongst other things—

I want you to notice, Sir, that the Minister’s reference there was to the Slums Act. The hon. member for Green Point then asked by way of a supplementary question whether the province was consulted before the proclamation was issued on the 28th March, and in fact refers to a defined area, unlike this Bill, and the Minister’s reply verbally, across the floor of the House, was “no”.

They were notified as required by the Act.

Let me say that section 17 (1) of the 1966 consolidated Act states quite clearly that the Minister has an obligation to consult the province. The section reads—

The matter was referred to him.

Why then did the hon. the Minister say “no” to the hon. member for Green Point?

It does not say I must consult him.

He was simply told that the Minister was doing it.

Sir, the Minister’s reaction is very interesting, because what was the reaction of the M.E.C. for the Cape Province on this issue? His reaction, as the hon. the Minister knows, was very outspoken indeed. This is what the member of the Executive Council here in the Cape said—

He denied that.

This appeared in Die Beeld, so I am quoting from a Nationalist newspaper. This all appears in inverted commas. He then went on to say—

This Nationalist newspaper goes on to say—

He was responding to the member of the Executive Committee—

So he reacts to a denial.

In other words, if this was denied, why did the hon. the Minister bother to react to it in that way? The fact of the matter is that the Stellenbosch Municipality, once this Bill is passed, will lose its jurisdiction altogether in this particular matter as from April the 15th, where any development project is concerned, and for as long as the Government thinks fit. Then they have to pay the bill. I would just like to say how ironical it is that these drastic powers which are considered necessary for the implementation of Government policy in this very controversial field of local government should, for the first time, be applicable to a local authority composed for the most part of good supporters of the Government itself. May I say that it is very significant indeed that, in spite of this proclamation, the hon. the Minister, when he moved the Second Reading, only mentioned one area as being in need of attention and that was Rylands Estate for the Indians. I would like to ask the hon. the Minister why he did not mention Stellenbosch because he has admitted that the Bill was specifically designed to back up that proclamation. I would also like to ask him why, if Rylands Estate, which means the Cape Town City Council, is involved, we have not had a proclamation for them too? There is no proclamation for Rylands Estate.

I may say that they are cooperating very nicely.

They are developing Rylands Estate very nicely. But, Sir, let us get this clear. There is much more to this argument than the terms of this Bill. What lies behind the pressures that have been brought by this Government upon the local authorities? The hon. the Minister said in his answer to the hon. member for Green Point that the local authority was responsible for carrying out a certain section of the Slums Act; in other words, they were responsible for eliminating slums. Sir, let us get the record quite straight in this House once and for all. The majority of local authorities, particularly around the urban areas, have for years been battling not against the officials of the Department of Community Development, but against the Department and its policy, to obtain priority for the rehousing of poorer people in terms of the Slums Act. The Government, on the other hand, has insisted, over all these years, upon priority for group areas; in other words, they have insisted upon moving people who very often are living in perfectly good houses, but they want them moved in terms of Group Areas proclamation. The situation has now become completely desperate, as the hon. the Minister knows, in quite a number of areas, particularly in the larger municipalities. The Municipality of Cape Town has 66,000 Coloured people in the lowest income group who are in need of housing. I have here a newspaper report, which appeared in the Argus and the Cape Times on the 24th February, 1967, two years ago—

He was very pleased about that and then he went on to say this—

There was a time when this Government was demanding 100 per cent of the building pro gramme of the Cape Town City Council for group areas purposes. That was until 1967 The Secretary of the hon. the Minister’s Department issued a statement on the same day in which he said—

Sir, I think that proves, if nothing else does, the extent to which the local authorities have been handicapped in this matter. May I say that in the Cape Divisional Council area to this day 75 per cent of all new houses built by the Cape Divisional Council are allocated to group areas and not to slum clearance.

Sir, I have personal experience of some of these things. Not very far from where I happen to live, in one of the suburbs of Cape Town, we had a concentrated, small pocket of Coloured people living in dwellings which had gradually deteriorated until the place became a slum. I wrote to the secretary of the Council concerned and asked him whether anything was being done. These Coloured people had come to see me to ask whether I could do anything to obtain better housing conditions for them, so I wrote to the secretary of the local Council and asked whether something could be done. Sir, this was his reply in February, 1967—

Now listen to the next paragraph, Sir—

This report from the medical officer of health sets out all the medical details from the point of view of public health and asks that this matter be reported to the Slums Court. He could not get any co-operation from the hon. the Minister’s Department in this regard. Sir, that will show the Minister the difficulties with which the local authorities have to deal.

Who is to blame for this state of affairs? You see, Sir, the local authorities work under the most impossible conditions with regard to the Government’s policy of housing and the demarcation of land. They are subject to provincial ordinances and to controls in that field; they are subject to constant interference from the Government and they are the most unfortunate victims of the lack of co-operation, which is the only way I can put it, between the Department of Planning and the Department of Community Development. Both those Departments, with respect to the hon. the Minister, are in their turn subject to political pressures either from Cabinet Ministers or from Nationalist Party supporters in the background. Sir, does the hon. the Minister not know—he should know—that representatives of his own Department—I am not talking about personalities at all—frequently ask the medical officers of health in their areas not to report areas under the Slums Act to the Slums Court until some alternative housing is available, often involving a wait of several years? Sir, these removals are held up indefinitely and it starts with the allocation of housing under the Group Areas Act. And yet when it comes to Stellenbosch or anywhere else, the local authorities are blamed for their failure to deal with slum clearance. It is not the intransigence of the local authorities at all, nor that of the provinces, which is the reason for this Bill, but it is this impossible position which is the result of Government policy. The policy is based, if I may say so, quite frankly, not upon the practical needs of the situation but upon the ideologies which motivate this Government in so many things. The people responsible at Government level seem to be quite unaware of the conditions under which some of these people, who should be moved in terms of the Slums Act, are living. The local authorities are unable to zone land for housing purposes, no matter how desperate the local situation may be, nor can the provinces do it. They are forbidden to allocate, on the basis of practical local requirements and conditions, the houses that they do build. They are pushed about by the two senior bodies because they are the lowest echelon of local government, and the wishes and the decisions of the ratepayers who elect them to office are frequently ignored. Mr. Conradie’s statement makes it quite clear that there was no prior consultation whatsoever with the provincial authorities here in the Cape before this step was taken, and yet this Bill overrides, without a doubt, a whole series of provincial ordinances. I want to remind the hon. the Minister of what he had to say in reply to the hon. member for Brakpan’s motion in the House earlier this year when he was talking about housing. He said: “What is happening in connection with this urban renewal? We are eliminating the slum conditions.” Of course, that is incorrect. The local authorities do not get a chance to eliminate slum conditions for the reasons I have just given. Then the Minister went on to say—

I then interjected and said: “What about the Provincial Administration?” To that the Minister replied—

Did I say that?

It sounds all right as a joke when you hear it, but it is not so good when you read it.

He said: “We are taking over from the local authorities.” Sir, what right has the Minister to make that type of statement? I would say that the Government is getting altogether too big for its boots. [Interjection.] You bluff yourselves that you have all that support. We have 43 per cent of the total number of votes in the country. [Interjections.] The hon. member for Parow decried the fact that we frequently made reference to the Constitution. May I remind him that it was Mr. Conradie, M.E.C., of the Cape Province, who said that this Bill went counter to the Constitution in the first instance. May I tell the Minister that the wording of our amendment was framed very much on the lines of Mr. Conradie’s protest; and when he says that it abrogates the Constitution, just let me remind the Minister that the Republic of South Africa Constitution Act of 1961 incorporates that section dealing with the powers of the municipalities. The powers of the local authorities were reinstated in sections 84 and 92. Then the Minister must be very familiar with a section of the Constitution Act, which has been quoted before, namely section 114. It says that Parliament shall not abolish any provincial council or abridge the powers conferred on provincial councils under section 84, except by petition to Parliament by the provincial council concerned; and the powers given to the provincial councils under section 84 deal specifically with local authorities. The Government simply ignores this aspect of the Constitution. It has been so often abused by legislation in this House that we wonder that the Government bothered to put it into the Constitution Act at all.

Now, clause 2 of this Bill, according to the Minister, forbids the local authorities’ presence in the area covered by a proclamation once it has been published. What a fantastic state of affairs! We have the unhappy situation in the Republic to-day, brought about by this Government, in which local authorities are controlled to an increasing extent by the Central Government and the position seems to us to get steadily worse. By all means let the Government, in conjunction with the provincial councils, formulate the broad principles of policy to be carried out by local authorities. That is accepted practice and there is nothing wrong with that, but it is absolutely essential —and this is our case from this side of the House—in this country or any other, not only to preserve but to strengthen the qualities of local government and civic pride and activity. This type of Bill is certainly not going to encourage that, and I would say that we weaken the powers of local authorities at our peril, because local government is the very best instrument in any country with which to distribute power on democratic, sensible and practical lines. And power must be distributed in this way. After being elected to this House in 1963 I had my first session in 1964, and this was the subject of my maiden speech. May I remind the hon. the Minister that in three out of the four provinces in this country the Government has a majority. The Nationalists are in control there. Can it not be left to the Provincial Administrations, in consultation with the Government, to see that the policy is implemented? Many of the additional powers, which the Minister is exercising now and intends to exercise in terms of this Bill, duplicate powers already conferred on the provincial councils and set down in ordinances passed by them. They do not know what is happening. The Municipal Ordinances, the Divisional Council Ordinance and other legislation applying to other provinces already provide these powers. I suggest that this Bill is a case in point of where local or provincial legislation is being rendered null and void by the type of legislation introduced here. During the past 10 years or so the prevailing tendency has been to act on matters of vital concern to the provinces. not as though the Administrator and his officials did not exist, but as though the provincial councils themselves as legislative bodies did not exist. That is what the Government forgets. They also have elected members and the provincial councils in the Republic have been treated with a remarkable disdain by this Government, which is getting far too big for its boots. I would say, in conclusion, that it is a very bad business when guidance on policy interferes in details which the provincial and local authorities can best settle for themselves. Then it becomes dangerous. It is worse still, I would say, when public-spirited local citizens are deprived, as they are going to be in terms of these proclamations, of the right to make decisions on matters of concern to themselves and the communities they serve. That is what is happening here, and the powers which are added here are not identical with the powers in the 1966 Act.

My last comment is just this. When I went into the question of the 27 families who were ejected from their homes and had their houses illegally demolished at Grassy Park in November of last year, as the Minister admitted to me earlier this Session in this House, I was in touch with the local authorities about the matter. I had no possible means of taking any action myself so I contacted the local authorities and they were absolutely desperate. They did not have one acre of ground on which they could put those people without the Minister’s permission. They were reluctant to let them set up a camp, quite rightly, in any other place, because they were not prepared to create another black spot. But before these people could be housed in an empty stable, or the local council could be provided with funds to deal with the crisis, the secretary of the Divisional Council had to fly 1,000 miles to Pretoria and back to have urgent consultations with the Minister of Community Development or the heads of his Department and the Department of Planning, in order to come to some decision about these families who were ejected and had their houses illegally demolished. They should, of course, have been able to solve the whole problem in Wale Street, with the Cape Provincial Administration. That is where the power should lie in these matters. I want to say that the action taken by the Minister in terms of this Bill is autocratic and high-handed, and it is entirely wrong in principle. The Government’s continued attempts to interfere in the affairs of local authorities, and of the provincial councils in particular, have weakened the whole fabric of democratic government in South Africa and we wish to record our strongest objection to this Bill.

The hon. member who has just resumed her seat devoted part of her speech to the provisions of the Slums Act, and problems in connection with that Act. In addition she alleged, if I understood her correctly, that if problems were being experienced by local authorities in regard to the housing of people living in slum conditions, it was in fact attributable to factors outside the control of local authorities. She also raised another matter, which was precisely what the hon. member for Green Point raised, i.e. that this proposed legislation was supposedly in conflict with the provisions of our Constitution. Now I cannot understand this. The hon. member has been a member of this hon. House for a number of years already, and if she had really been convinced that this was the case, she could have objected to the Bill at the First Reading. The matter could then have been debated in this hon. House, and the hon. Speaker could have given his ruling. In other words, the hon. member herself did not believe the statement which she and the hon. member for Green Point made in regard to this constitutional matter. But what was rather tragic in the entire spirit of the hon. member’s speech was that she tried to mar the fine relations which exist between the Government and the local administrations, apart from one or two problems which have recently cropped up, that she wanted to try to create the impression that as a result of this legislation we were displaying little or no regard for our local administrations. However, what I cannot understand is the fact that the hon. member made a very strong plea in this House last year in regard to community development. I listened to her very attentively to-day. I thought she would realize that the entire purview, the entire purpose of this legislation is to promote the one, most important facet of community development, that she would have assimilated that concept and that she would, under the standard of that fine ideal also have been able to find something good in these provisions. In that debate I spoke after her, and I asked the hon. member to do me the honour of conveying the ideas in connection with group development as well to her fellow party members. I think she gave me the impression that she would do so. I also think the hon. member for Green Point has sat at the feet of this hon. schoolmistress. However, I must testify to the fact that I have noted little or no progress in his knowledge to-day in regard to this matter. But what I also find strange is the following. In the latest edution of New Nation I read an article by the hon. member for Wynberg, which deals with the “Administrative Costs of Apartheid”. She commences this article with the statement—

And in support of this tirade on the alleged tremendous costs which we are supposedly incurring in our policy of implementing separate development the hon. member referred here in one place to the following. The hon. member stated that 497 white families, 23,587 Coloured families and 17,723 Indian families had been resettled.

That is in terms of group areas only.

Yes. Can hon. members on the opposite side participate with any moral justification to-day in a debate, the integral part of which deals with community development and then by implication object to the resettlement of white. Coloured and Bantu families? This hon. member, as well as the hon. member who spoke before her, omitted to go into the major ideal of community development and to bring it into account with the extent of the importance of this legislation before the hon. House. Secondly the hon. member who has just resumed her seat, also omitted to take back what she had said in this article. Now I want to ask the hon. member whether she can in fact participate in the discussion of the chief provisions of this Amendment Bill on community development? Can she, in this multiracial country, object to our resettling Whites and non-Whites, while this is one of the basic facets of community development? [Interjections.] The hon. member for Newton Park has just passed a remark now. I will therefore be so kind as to ask him a little question. It will bring us nearer to the practice. There in our part of the world, where I and the hon. member hail from, thousands of Whites and non-Whites from my constituency, and also from the constituency of the hon. member for Walmer, have been resettled. Is the hon. member for Newton Park opposed to that as well?

But surely that has been the practice for many years.

In other words, the hon. member is repudiating the hon. member for Wynberg. Very well, then I shall ask the hon. member a second question. Is he opposed to the areas South End, Fairview and Port Elizabeth Central being redeveloped in terms of this Act? Surely he is not opposed to that. If that is the case, the hon. member would do well to listen, because then he would also be learning something to-day.

If one scrutinizes the main provision of this Amendment Bill it strikes one that provision is being made for one of the fundamental pillars of community development, i.e. the development of a piece of land situated in a defined area, in terms of clause 2 of the Bill. In this Bill we can see the fine ideal of community development. In the principal Act reference is made to certain legal actions. That is why these legal actions are simply mentioned in the Amendment Bill. There is, as the hon. member for Green Point and the hon. members who spoke before me have said, no new principle in this Bill. It is purely an explanation of the powers and rights which the Community Development Board already has in terms of the principal Act. If I then recognize in this Bill an integral facet of the fine ideal of community development, then any person in this House, and perhaps the hon. members on the opposite side of the House as well, can ask what the other facets of this fine ideal are? I should like to put it in this way, i.e. that this entire concept in fact consists of three facets. The first facet is the physical development of the area itself in terms of section 2. This can be done by the Community Development Board, as laid down in the Act, or by the private sector or the local authority of that area. This physical development is one of the basic facets of our concept of community development. The second facet is that all our people must be properly accommodated and settled. The third facet is that, after all these things have been done, the State, the private sector and the community in general should see to it that the entire community concerned participates in its human development. If all these three facets are present we can say, as said at the time in Cambridge, England, in 1948, that “community development is a movement to promote better living for the whole community”. Now I want to put it to the hon. members on the opposite side that if they have assimilated this ideal, if they understand this ideal, they can conduct a fruitful debate with us on this description of the legal actions for which provision is being made in this new Amendment Bill. Until such time as they have done that I think we are merely talking at cross-purposes, we are on different wave-lengths and we do not understand one another.

The two hon. members on the opposite side also committed a third act of omission. It is that they neglected to go into what the then United Pary Government would have done if the policy of the Government of the day had clashed, either with the actions or with the policy of a local government. The hon. member for Parow referred to various statutory provisions. I think that if hon. members had gone into what the old United Party would have done under such circumstances, if the Government’s policy of the day had clashed with the actions or the policy of the local government, they would not, without rhyme or reason, and word for word have imitated the actions of the hon. United Party provincial council member of Johannesburg and opposed this fine legislation. What does Mr. Widman, the United Party provincial council member for Johannesburg have to say in regard to this legislation? He states—“The new Community Development Amendment Bill published last week will give the Cabinet complete power to run local authorities.” Surely that is not true. The entire gist of the legislation before this House deals with a specified piece of land in a defined area. Suppose it were possible for the United Party to come into power suddenly and this legislation was to be placed on the Statute Book, and we accepted the United Party interpretation, it could happen that our wonderful old Mecca there in Stellenbosch could, when it woke up the next morning, perhaps have the hon. member for Orange Grove as mayor and the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg as the town crier. Then the old Mecca would probably have been done for. If the hon. members on the opposite side had taken the trouble of finding out what their own Government would have done at that time if the Government policy of that day had clashed with either the policy or the actions of the local governments, they would not have imitated this nonsense of that provincial councillor, without any rhyme or reason.

In addition I want to refer in this connection, for the sake of interest, to section 4 of Act 25 of 1945. The marginal note to that section reads as follows—

I should also like to refer to section 8 of Act 7 of 1946 which determines that no licence can be issued, by any local authority whatsoever, in a Coloured settlement area unless the hon. the Minister has given his consent. Is this not the action a government takes when it wants to implement its policy in respect of certain matters? As a matter of fact there are only two questions left to cogitate still. The one is: Are we dealing here with a new principle? The hon. member for Green Point stated by implication that we were not dealing here with a new principle. The hon. member for Parow confirmed this. In fact we are transferring word for word the principle as contained in section 17 (1) of our principal Act. This Bill is taken unchanged from section 12ter of Act 81 of 1959. In addition it has a history which goes back to the old Act of 1945. In other words, this principle as contained in section 17 (1) is as old as the hills. What is now being stated in clearer terms are the relations between the Community Board and the local authorities. In clearer language the powers, obligations and rights between these two bodies are now defined in terms of clause 2 (a) and (b). I then come to the second question, and I have already replied to this in part, i.e. what is in fact the nature of this Amendment Act? The legal actions which are set out in the main principle of this Act are now defined and given in detail in this Amendment Bill. In other words, section 2 (a) and (b) replaces the old sections 2 and 5 for the sake of clarity, so that in future, when the Community Development Board or the local authority has to determine the rights of each, there can be no doubt at all about what the rights of the Board on the one hand and those of the local authorities on the other hand are. However, this is a matter of cardinal importance. Reference has already, to a certain extent, been made to that. It is namely that it is after all obvious that the 752 local authorities—most of them, with a few exceptions—will never even know about the practical existence of this Amendment Act. Why? It is because they are prepared to co-operate with the Department of Community Development in implementing community development in the best interests of South Africa and all its people.

In conclusion I want to pay tribute on this occasion to those hundreds of local authorities which, at all times, have been prepared to co-operate with our Department and were, at all times, prepared to serve their own people and were at all times prepared to extend our community development. But I also want to say that those few local governments that did not respect the will of this autonomous Parliament must not think that this Government will hesitate for one moment to act if community development will suffer as a result of their stubbornness. It will always remain our ideal to accommodate, to settle them properly and to help these people develop into healthy communities.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central) quoted from an article in New Nation which was written by the hon. member for Wynberg. He only read a small portion of it, which placed the whole article in a wrong context. I therefore think that I should read a particular paragraph in full so that the House can sum up for itself what the article in effect says. I read the following passage—

That is what the article says. I do not want to repeat unnecessarily items raised by members on this side of the House. There are, however, a few points which I too would like to raise. I think this Bill is in direct conflict with the democratic system outlined by our Republican Constitution. I mean the three-tier system of government as mentioned by the hon. member for Green Point. From experience I speak mainly for Natal from where, the hon. the Minister has previously admitted it, he has always had full co-operation from all local authorities. I therefore fail to understand why this drastic step is now necessary. I say “drastic” because among other things the board is empowered to control, subdivide, lay out, plan, develop, let or sell any land or property owned or controlled by a local authority in areas specifically defined. It may in addition cause works of whatever nature to be carried out on or under the said land or properties. Surely it would be far better to seek co-operation with these authorities instead of overriding them in the way set out in the Bill. Clause 2 of the Bill is presumably intended to clarify the application of subsections 2 and 5 of section 17 of the 1966 Act. The necessity of this amendment can only mean that the sections of the original Act were not clear, hence the present Bill. The hon. the Minister stated earlier during the present Session that we do not know of any local authority not doing their duty regarding community development. That is a very important statement. Surely the Bill now usurps the work of municipalities. If local authorities have cooperated. why the necessity for these measures? I take it that the hon. the Minister can now take a short cut, by-passing the present channels existing at provincial and local authority levels. In such a case, what happens to the existing planning programmes of local authorities, which may have taken years to compile, apart from the expense entailed? Does this also do away with the “need and desirability certificates” as required under the existing laws? Embarking on new programmes as envisaged by this Bill, will this not be to the detriment of other essential services of local authorities concerned? In the case of Stellenbosch, as per proclamation in Government Gazette No. 2335, dated 28th March, 1969, by which the State took certain serious steps, was it a case where they refused to co-operate? Comparing this proclamation with the present Bill, was it not a case of jumping the gun? This proclamation is identical with the subject matter of the Bill.

Order! Is the hon. member reading his speech?

No, Sir. I believe that one idea behind the Bill is to prevent local authorities and town developers from selling land at high prices and making fortunes at the expense of local residents. Here I should like to quote from the 1969 Hansard, No. 2 (weekly edition), column 570. This is what the Minister said—

Well, what is wrong with that?

Why then take them over? The President of the United Municipal Executive has asked the Minister to withdraw the Bill and give them an opportunity of further studying the implications of this legislation, but unfortunately the Minister has refused to do this. The Minister replied to them on the 14th of this month. Let me quote from his reply, addressed to “Die President, Verenigde Munisipale Bestuur, Pretoria”. The letter ends as follows—

Surely, the fact that the Bill is not being withdrawn is because of the Stellenbosch Proclamation. I ask the Minister to reconsider the matter. I ask him to delay this Bill to give these people the opportunity of examining the Bill. I speak subject to correction, but I want to say to the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central) that his people in Port Elizabeth have also requested that this be done.

I also want to say this. By levying a special rate on rateable property in a local authority I think the Government is doing something which is very far-fetched. It hurts me to say this, but this is analogous to what is happening daily in the case of Bantu where levies are raised on tribal authorities with which to execute various sorts of work in the tribal authority area.

What effect will this measure have on future municipal elections? Will we still get our responsible citizens to come forward to be elected to the various organizations, when practically all responsibility, especially financial responsibility, has been removed by the Minister? The assumption of these powers will mean there will be virtually a stranglehold on local authorities, and I say it is totally unjustified. All I can say in conclusion is that the “cure is worse than the disease”, and as a result I must support the amendment moved.

Mr. Speaker, I see there are only about two minutes left before we adjourn for dinner, and consequently I wonder whether I cannot move now that the debate be adjourned.

No, go on.

Very well, then. In my opinion the hon. members opposite are speaking around and at a tangent to these amendments. The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (City) has just repeated that local authorities are being deprived of their democratic freedom by this Bill. The hon. member for Green Point stated that we had three different levels of Government in our country. He spoke about the Central Government, the Provincial Councils, and the local authorities. But surely that is not the case. Surely there is only one Government in the country. To these Provincial Councils and the local authorities powers have been granted and entrusted to them by this and previous governments. This Government determines in principle the policy and tells the local authorities how they should exercise their powers. Surely this is also the case as far as the Department of Community Development is concerned. The Government is not depriving the local authorities of any powers now. However, when a local authority is unwilling or too inept to exercise its powers, then the Government steps in and exercises those powers which it has entrusted in this way itself. But it is not depriving any local authority of any right or power by means of this measure.

I have said that the United Party is talking at cross purposes entirely to these amendments. Yesterday the hon. member for Green Point spoke about clause 1, and said it was a waste of money. As I read the clause, it has nothing on earth to do with new money. It simply determines how the payment of costs which have already been incurred or the obligations which the board has towards the local authority can be expedited.

Business suspended at 6.30 p.m. and resumed at 8.05 p.m.

Mr. Speaker, when the House adjourned, I was trying to explain how, of all the members of the Opposition, only the hon. member for Green Point dwelt for a moment on the first clause of this Bill, which consists of three clauses. He levelled an accusation to the effect that it would be a waste of money. I should like to point out that that clause has nothing at all to do with new amounts which will be spent, but that it will merely expedite the payment of costs which have already been incurred. I think it is a very important amendment and will enable local authorities to pay back the costs which they have incurred more rapidly. If the hon. member for Green Point were to allege that money would be wasted in regard to new planning which is taking place, I would have been able to accept that, but this has nothing to do with this amendment. I want to state that this Government is fully aware of the fact that as circumstances develop, provision has to be made for new planning. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with that. The United Party changes its policy every so often, and we have to accept this as well. We have to accept that with the change in their policy …

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

Mr. Speaker, with your permission I want to state that I am talking about the policy in regard to community development in South Africa. We have always kept pace with this policy, except that a change in respect of planning can take place, with the result that expenditure is being incurred by local authorities, which now collapse when it comes to undertaking new planning. This clause is aimed at rectifying that position. The hon. member for Green Point also alleged that since we were depriving the local authorities of powers with this amendment, it would be better if the Government persuaded these local governments of the need for implementing the policy. But that is precisely what this Government is doing every time. I know what I am talking about when I refer to the constituency I represent. In the case of the local authority of Johannesburg, for example, the Government has been trying to persuade them for the past 20 years to implement that policy. But the fact of the matter is that these people sometimes have to be brought up short, as common parlance has it, in order to implement that policy. Another hon. member on this side of the House also referred to the time when the hon. the Minister had to take steps in respect of the Johannesburg City Council and undertake the clearance of Sophiatown itself. Johannesburg was so convinced of the advisability of this step that they then followed the pattern and to-day they are making a great fuss of the housing which they have established for the Bantu population. But they only did so after the Government showed them how to do so, and after the Government had convinced them that it was the right thing to do. I must admit that the Johannesburg City Council is to-day far more convinced in other respects as well than it was years ago. This testifies to the patience which the Government displayed in trying to persuade them. If they had had the same conviction in respect of the housing schemes and the proclamations in regard to the Indians and Coloureds, then Johannesburg would in that respect have been a model city to-day. But they have omitted to do so, and that is why they only take a pride to-day in referring to the Bantu population, But when it comes to community development in respect of the Coloureds and the Indians, it is precisely because they would not allow themselves to be persuaded that the situation is still chaotic to-day. I also want to refer to the Indians.

Order! The hon. member should refer to the Bill for a change.

I am referring to clause 2 which now gives a better definition of those powers which the hon. the Minister and his Department have. I am thinking for example of Page View. When the Government proclaimed this area, the City Council of Johannesburg was not willing to undertake that development. If the hon. the Minister had had these powers at the time, and had applied them, that development would already have been completed. But the City Council of Johannesburg has allowed itself to be persuaded to come to its senses. The City Council is now, tor example, making its contribution, whereas previously the Government undertook the development of Lenasia and the City Council of Johannesburg refused to make services available. If they had done so years ago, much more progress would have been made with that development. I must say that fortunately they subsequently agreed to do so. They decided to do so with the conviction which hon. members opposite have referred to. They rendered those services and that is why the area can be developed further. The hon. members opposite also referred to the Slums Act. The City Council of Johannesburg agreed, after a long struggle, to undertake, for example, a renewal scheme at Vrededorp and Jeppe, with the co-operation of the Department of Community Development. These amendments are in fact necessary because there are certain local governments which do not want to make use of the powers conferred upon them by the Government to undertake that development. It is for that reason that it has become necessary to make these amendments, so that when they fail to make provision for that development, the Minister can do so by means of his Department.

The hon. member for Green Point also referred to clause 2 and stated that the hon. the Minister would now become a “town manager”. He objected to the many powers which the Minister would supposedly now have. But the very purpose of these amendments is not that the Minister should have too many powers but that he should have all the necessary powers in order to take steps against these local authorities that do not carry out the task allocated them by the Government. By means of these amendments the Minister will now be able to effect that implementation. That is why provision is being made for these amendments. No local authority is being deprived of any rights or any powers. These amendments are in fact aimed at granting the Minister the power to take the power out of the hands of the local authorities and to effect the implementation of a development when local authorities fail to make use of their powers to implement the policy of the Government. They must make use of the powers entrusted to them. I find it surprising that, as the United Party has always tried to do, the hon. member for Wynberg again advocated here to-night the development of those schemes which, according to her, fall behind in the hands of a city council such as that of Cape Town. Mention was made here of a scheme which was proclaimed 11 years ago for the Indian group, and it leaves me speechless that the United Party should now oppose these amendments and at the same time pretend that they would like to see this development take place. The entire purpose of the amendment, the whole principle, is to be able to compel those people who have failed to implement the scheme, or who are too incapable of doing so, to do so, so that we can give the various population groups in South Africa the privileges and benefits they deserve. This is our policy, and we are not afraid to inform the United Party of what our policy is and what steps are being taken to implement our policy. The purpose of the amendments we have here before us, is precisely to grant the Minister and his Department the powers to implement schemes which municipalities fail to tackle.

The hon. member for Mayfair followed the same trend as the two previous speakers in this debate. The hon. member would have us believe that we are making much ado about nothing, that there is really no implied threat in this amending legislation to any local authority in South Africa but, of course, he forgot to add “provided the local authorities jump to the ministerial whip”.

Utter nonsense.

It seems quite incredible to me that the hon. the Minister of Community Development can come along with a Bill of this nature, a Bill which will give him the power to make very serious inroads into the autonomy and freedom of any local authority in South Africa, and then quite seriously expect us to believe that the Bill is quite innocuous, that nothing can really happen and that all he is really asking for is for permission to dot the i’s and cross the t’s of section 17 (1) of the principal Act. I believe that the hon. member for Green Point and other speakers on this side of the House have dealt very adequately with the change of principles contained in this amending legislation. I am not, therefore, going to take up the time of the House by repeating these particular arguments. Sir, I wonder too whether the hon. the Minister of Community Development—I sincerely hope I am wrong—is adopting the attitude towards local authorities of “I am going to show you who is the boss; you will either do it or else …” I hope that this is not true, because I feel that the hon. the Minister will learn and learn very quickly that even with these additional powers that he will now have, he will still need the very full co-operation of the local authorities, to exercise them.

As we had from Johannesburg in the case of Sophiatown.

I wonder whether the hon. the Minister will tell us, when he replies to this debate, whether in fact he agrees with the approach by his predecessor to local authorities in South Africa, because on 10th May in this House, during the debate on the Community Development Vote, the former Minister of Community Development said this—

What has that to do with this Bill?

It has this to do with it: I am trying to establish that there should be a spirit of co-operation between this Government and the local authorities. The previous Minister then went on to say—

Then he went on to say, and this is very significant—

In other words, the local authorities are equipped to do a job which this hon. Minister now wants to do.

That has nothing to do with this Bill.

In this statement made by the previous Minister of Community Development we have a very clear indication that the Government was quite satisfied, at that time certainly, that the function of providing housing and all the ancillary services that go with housing, is primarily the function of the local authorities and not of the State. Sir, what do we find to-day? We find that now we have a new Minister of Community Development, a Minister who because he finds that he has not the power to remove the Coloured families presently living in Stellenbosch to a new group area favoured by this department and the Department of Planning but not by the local authority of Stellenbosch …

Nonsense.

… comes along and asks for powers which will in fact enable him to run every local authority in the country from his Cabinet office. In other words, because the hon. the Minister finds that his big stick has not been successful in the case of Stellenbosch, he now asks for powers that will enable him effectively and, if he likes, completely, to take over any local authority in South Africa. What is very significant is the fact that the defaulting local authority in this particular case is known to be pro-Government, and yet even this local authority cannot see its way clear to agree to the Minister’s way of applying the Group Areas Act in that particular area. I want to warn the hon. the Minister in all seriousness that he is not doing the country a favour by introducing dictatorial legislation of this kind, because the end-result can only be a very serious undermining of the system of local government in South Africa, and this must obviously be to the detriment of the country as a whole. Sir, in making this statement, I accept without reservation that the higher tiers of government in South Africa are entitled to a say over the local authorities.

When that say falls within the ambit of broad Government policy, there can of course be no argument about it, but we find that under this Government a tendency has developed to exercise detailed control over virtually every action of local authorities in South Africa.

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

One wonders then whether the hon. the Minister realizes that local authorities in South Africa have always been a major feature in the democratic set-up of our country. Surely you will agree, Sir, that any legislation which might serve to upset this balance is not in the interests of South Africa. One wonders, too. whether the Minister realizes that by introducing this restrictive legislation he is in fact running completely contrary to world trends in this particular respect.

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

I am trying to point out that this Bill will serve to centralize government in South Africa, whereas the trend is to decentralize it, and it has been proved that decentralized government makes for far better government. I want to say to the hon. the Minister that I believe sincerely that this legislation is not in the interests of local authorities or of the people in South Africa. I feel, too, that because there may be the occasional local authority which misbehaves itself, I believe that this does not justify the sweeping type of legislation the Minister is asking us to approve. For this reason, and others which I have given already, it gives me very great Pleasure to second the amendment of the hon member for Green Point.

In contrast to the hon. member for Johannesburg (North) who said that he was highly pleased with the amendment, I in turn want to congratulate the hon. the Minister on this step taken by him to serve the community and South Africa by implementing, by means of this legislation, the policy as formulated by the Government. The United Party says that this Bill is a new thing, and secondly, they say that not only is it a new Act but it also contains new principles. Hon. members opposite are confusing procedure with principle. They also maintain that this is a theoretical Bill, in keeping with what was said by Mr. Alf Widman, who made the following remark according to The Star of 2nd April. He said—

Now, if somebody can explain to me what this means, i.e. that there can be something like a theoretical power as opposed to a practical power, I shall be pleased. If the person means that there has never been any reason to implement the existing Act, he is mistaken, and undoubtedly so, because this consolidated Act, Act No. 3 of 1966, has been applied on various occasions. It was applied in Johannesburg, and it had to be applied in Pretoria, when the Indians had to be moved to Claudia. At that time the Department had to take over the area and transfer it to the local authority. However, hon. members opposite also say that this is a drastic measure. But in what respect is this so drastic? The hon. member for Parow drew a very clear comparison between the legislation under discussion and the 1945 Act, and he pointed out what the United Party had done under that Act.

But was that not untrue?

In addition they are complaining that local authorities and the provincial administrations are being deprived of their powers. Now I should like to illustrate what the spirit of the Opposition is in respect of this legislation, the attitude behind this spirit. This is nothing but political talk in order to make political capital, and I am now going to prove this. Even in 1959 an hon. Senator said the following in the Other Place in respect of the Group Areas Development Amendment Bill and I quote from Senate Hansard, col. 5474—

Please note, Sir, “a hostile reception”—

Can you see now, Sir, what the attitude of those people on the opposite side of this House is?

Order! The hon. member should not refer to “those people”.

In that case “hon. members”, Mr. Speaker. Now the question arises, why “hostile”? This becomes clear when I quote from col. 5476 of the Senate Hansard of 1st July, 1959, what was said by Senator Jordan who was still addressing that House—

This is the attitude with which hon. members opposite approach this amending Bill as a whole. Then there is constant talk of morality. In this Bill there is nothing immoral. It has the opposite effect. It is just and fair in all respects to the groups concerned, as well as to the local authorities that will be placed in a better position than prior to the intervention of the Department of Community Development in that the assets of the local authority will be increased as a result of such intervention. However, the difference between the National Party and the United Party as far as policy is concerned is this. This Government does not do things for the sake of popularity. If they did do things for the sake of popularity, they would in any event not have intervened in the Cloetesdal case in Stellenbosch in order to put things right. Hon. members opposite have often accused this Government of discrimination. Where was there any discrimination in this case? Because it had become essential to resettle these people after seven years of struggling, the Minister intervened in this case and decided to undertake such resettlement himself. The United Party, however, wants the slum conditions which existed when they were in power, those squatters’ camps which sprang up all over the Republic in those days, to continue to exist. This is the other reason for their opposition to this Bill.

After seven years the Stellenbosch local authority had still not succeeded in carrying out this resettlement. Section 17 (1) of Act No. 3 of 1966 makes provision for a proclamation to be published by the State President in the Gazette to determine that the Community Development Board may act in a defined area as if it were a local authority. It may act subject to the “conditions and restrictions” set out in the proclamation. The consolidating Act, Act No. 3 of 1966, does not define these “conditions and restrictions”. Consequently the Minister has deemed it fit to introduce an amendment to section 17 by means of clause 2 of the Community Development Amendment Bill we are dealing with at the moment. If the Act were to be left in its present form, it might have given rise to all sorts of problems because of obscurity as to what those “conditions and restrictions” were. It could even have given rise to further unpleasantness. For that reason these things are now being set out. This is now eliminating the possibility of even court cases resulting and situations arising, which will be difficult for the court to resolve, from such obscurity. In order to remove all possible misunderstanding these conditions and restrictions are now being defined. Clause 2 of the Bill under discussion defines the relationship, and this is important, between the Community Development Board and the local authority. Section 17 (3) of the consolidating Act reads that while the Development Board is acting as local authority, the local authority may not and shall not be competent to act in respect of that defined area and those functions.

There must be clarity in the Act in regard to two matters. In the first place, the area must be very clearly defined; not only the area as such in which the Development Board is acting, but also the area over which services may possibly have to be provided, i.e. the group area being developed. In the same way the functions in respect of which the Development Board is intervening, must be specified in the proclamation. In that case the local authority ceases to be the local authority and only in respect of those functions and no other.

After this group area has been developed, this area is handed back to the local authority. Then the local authority will again act as such as if the Development Board has never had anything to do with that, apart from recovering the expenditure incurred by the Community Development Board from the local authority. What is unfair or immoral about this? When expenditure has been incurred which increases the assets of such a local authority, it is no more than right and fair that such costs should be recovered. In addition, this Bill makes provision for the Development Board to borrow money from the Department of Community Development in order to acquire the land, etc. However, it also makes provision for the Community Development Board to borrow money as a local authority, while it is functioning in this capacity, from the Housing Commission in order to provide the necessary housing. Under those circumstances, the Community Development Board may therefore enter upon any land which it has to enter upon in order to perform its functions and duties in connection with the execution of such development.

I want to congratulate the Minister once again on his statement that when local authorities are not able or prepared to develop these group areas, he will have to intervene for the benefit and for the good of the community. In view of the fact that the Government determines policy, it is only right and fair that the Minister should make use of these powers.

Mr. Speaker, we have heard a speech from the hon. member for Hercules. With a constituency with such a distinguished name, I would have expected the hon. member to have bearded the Nemean lion, the hon. the Minister of Community Development in his den, on account of the things he is trying to do. It seems to me that he has actually fallen into the stable that Hercules tried to clean, and that he has not come out yet.

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

That was by way of introduction, Sir.

I do wish to say to the hon. member for Hercules that I agree with one sentence of his speech, namely that this Government does not do things in order to be popular. This Government does not do popular things. If ever there was an example of an unpopular measure, it is the one we have before us tonight. I think it has been a disappointment to us on this side and to myself to have seen hon. members representing great cities such as Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth getting up here to-night and agree to a measure which is undermining the authority of the local authorities.

We heard a speech from the hon. member for Mayfair. His constituency is in Johannesburg, in a great and a wonderful city, the gold capital of the world. One would have expected him at least to defend that city against the threat and the onslaught implied by this Bill. But we find a servile attitude towards the provisions of this Bill.

You want us to support the United Party town councils.

We had expected more from the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central). I am not talking about the hon. gentleman sitting next to him. He never speaks. I am talking about the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central). We are discussing a Bill here this afternoon which will undermine local government. The hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central) obviously was at a loss as to what to say. He referred us to a certain Act as an example of what had happened previously. He referred us to section 12ter of the 1959 Act. I just mention it in passing. I looked up section 12ter of the Act. It has nothing whatsoever to do with this Bill.

We had the example of the hon. member for Parow to-night. In the Western Province we have some of our most distinguished local authorities in the country. What did he do? He bowed to the Minister, he salaamed to him, he said this was a wonderful Bill. What has happened to the spirit of independence in this area of the Republic, when a person like the hon. member for Parow, who is regarded as an enlightened person, can support a Bill such as this one now before us?

I deplore the attacks made by the hon. member for Mayfair on the Johannesburg municipality and I particularly deplore the attacks that he made on the management committee and a distinguished member of that management committee, Mr. Alf Widman. who happens to be the provincial councillor in my constituency. He does not know it, but last night the hon. member for Newton Park and myself had the opportunity of discussing this matter with Mr. Widman in Johannesburg. We were there. We support every single word that he and his management committee say in their memorandum on this Bill. We say this is the introduction of something entirely new, something which will give the Minister power over the Johannesburg municipality and the other municipalities of this country entirely out of line with what was originally intended in the Bill. No wonder that I do agree with the hon. member for Hercules when he says this Government does not do popular things only.

I deplore the speech made by the hon. member for Parow in which he made a veiled attack against what I think is one of the most responsible municipalities in this country. The majority view of that local authority does not agree with that of this side of this House. I refer to the local authority of Stellenbosch. Some of the phrases used by the hon. member for Parow were utterly deplorable. He said: “Hulle het in verset gekom teen die landsbeleid.” Does the Minister really agree with that? [Interjections.] Does he really agree with the hon. member for Parow when he says the Municipality of Stellenbosch “torpedoes’’ the policy of the Government? I have never yet heard such words used against a responsible municipality. It does seem to me as if this Government is exceeding all the bounds of democracy in a Bill of this nature.

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

This Bill I believe is one which affects every Member of Parliament who has a local authority in his constituency. I do not think there is a single constituency which has not got a local authority. I believe the extension of the powers is so vast as to stagger the imagination. I believe this Bill is almost akin to martial law, if the Minister were to exercise to the fullest extent the powers granted to him. He can indeed become the commandant of any local authority of this country, or the commandant-general of any local authority, under this Bill.

Let me refer to some of the provisions of this Bill which I have in my hand. It gives the Minister the power to control, to develop, and to sell any land or property owned by any local authority. He can order work of whatever nature to be carried out on the said land or property. He can do anything he likes with any property owned by a local authority. He can break it up, he can smash it, he can send his bulldozers into it, he can dynamite it, he can undermine it, he can do whatever he likes. These are the words of the Bill. No wonder the Minister is smiling complacently about the powers he is giving himself in this Bill. The Minister can do the following under this Bill. He may apply to the local authority for the supply of all information or assistance in the performance of whatever duty he wants that local authority to perform. He can go to Stellenbosch Municipality and say: “I want to do this; go on, send your staff, get your people working, give me the information, do everything I want, stop everything else, stop all other development, you are my servants, now you are going to do as I tell you.” These are the powers, and he can order them to pay.

I have those powers already.

The Minister says he has the powers. He did not have them under section 17 of the old Act which I have here. He can read section 17 (1) and he can read section 17 (2), which is the section he is replacing. He will find that section 17 (2) was in fact an innocuous provision, whilst the new section 17 (2), occupying nearly a whole page of the Bill, is one of the most pernicious provisions we have yet had in a Bill undermining our democratic processes in this country.

He can go to the local authority and tell them: “If you fail to render such assistance, the board may incur any costs necessary for the rendering of those services by any person and it may recover the costs from you.” He tells the local authority: “Obey my law, do what I order you to do, and you have to pay for it. If you do not. we will do the wrecking, we will send in our bulldozers, we will destroy what has been established over many years, and once we have done that you will have to pay the costs involved.” This is what the Bill says. It says if the local authority does not pay for what the Minister is going to do to a local authority, such as Stellenbosch, then he can take them to court if they do not do so within 30 days. This is the Government of 180 days, 90 days, and now it is 30 days!

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

Then he can say to the local authority: “You will have to pay for what the Community Development Board will be doing in your township.” whether it be Stellenbosch, Johannesburg or Port Elizabeth. He can say to them: “You will have to pay for it out of your own rates.” The hon. the Minister can appoint a receiver in a town such as Stellenbosch to see that those moneys are collected and paid to the board. Furthermore, he need not ask anyone for permission to do this. Under the old Act and under the provisions of our Constitution, normally when the Government interferes with a local authority’s jurisdiction it must consult that authority, it must get the permission of the provincial administration. It takes long weeks of negotiations before anything really can be done. But according to this Bill the Minister can override all those provisions. He need not go to the provincial administration for authority to do what he intends doing, he can force any local authority represented by any hon. member on the other side of the House at the point of a political gun to do what he demands that they should do.

But I do not need their authority now.

Then why this Bill? Mr. Speaker, there is a certain type of degree of religious proclamation, known as a “bull”, for example, a papal bull, and so forth. The dictionary definition of a “bull” is “a degree or a proclamation which has to be obeyed, such obligation being enforceable by severe penalties” This is not a Bill, it is the “Bull of Barzillai”! This Bill hits at the very spirit of our Constitution, it is a slap in the face for the provincial councils.

Order! That point has been made over and over again.

It is a kick in the teeth for the local authorities in our country.

Order! That point has also been made.

I only trust that every Member of Parliament on the other side who has a local authority in his constituency will realize what is happening in this Bill. May I give one example? I want to take the example of the hon. member for Uitenhage. Where is he? He has a provincial councillor who happens to be a member of the Executive Committee of the Cape Provincial Council, and that gentleman has come out against this Bill in language even stronger than mine. I agree with every word that was said by Mr. Conradie, M.E.C. I want to know why the hon. member for Uitenhage is not here.

Mr. Conradie laboured under the same misconception as you are now; he did not know the contents of the measure.

That is interesting …

Order!

That is interesting. We have it on record now that the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (North) …

That is down in Hansard.

… has stated here in public, in this House, before the country, that the Executive Committee member Mr. Conradie had not read the Bill when he made this remark about the Bill itself.

No, I said that he was labouring under the same misconception as you are. [Interjections.]

He said he …

Order! The hon. member need not take any notice of these interruptions.

Hear, hear! [Interjections.]

[Inaudible.]

Order! The hon. member must obey my ruling.

I am trying to make the point, Sir, that a member of the Executive Council of the Cape …

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

May I not say that, Sir … ?

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

May I infer then, Sir … ?

Order!

On a point of order, Sir, when an hon. member is speaking in a Second Reading debate and an hon. member on the other side makes an interjection of the nature of the interjection made by the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (North) just now …

A stupid member.

Order!

Do you rule it is out of order if the hon. member who is speaking even gives a reply to the hon. member making the interjection? Is that out of order?

Order! I have given my ruling. He need not take any notice of the interjection.

But I should like to know for our guidance, Sir. We continually have these interruptions …

Order! I have given my ruling, and my ruling is he need not take any notice of the interjection.

Is he allowed to reply, Sir? That is the point.

No, I do not want him to take any notice of the interjections.

Is that your ruling, Sir?

That is my ruling.

So a member who is speaking is not allowed to reply to an interjection?

I rule that.

No, Sir, is this a general rule? I want a ruling, Sir, as a general rule. Is he not allowed to reply to an interjection?

Order! The hon. member must kindly resume his speat.

But I want a ruling, please.

I have given my ruling.

I am asking on a point of order, Sir, what is the general ruling. I want a ruling applicable to everybody in this House, a general ruling applicable to everybody on both sides of the House, all members, members on that side and on this side. We do not want a ruling for one member on this side …

Order! The hon. member can proceed.

Mr. Speaker, I submit to your ruling that that interjection is one to be ignored, but I should like to point out what was mentioned in a memorandum submitted by the Johannesburg City Council which I have before me here. In this memorandum the point was made firstly that the United Municipal Executive was not consulted on this very important matter. That is the first thing I wish to ask the hon. the Minister. Why was the U.M.E. not consulted? It was so easy to do so. They are in congress in Port Elizabeth. He could have found out what their views were. Why did he not do that? The Act itself says he must get in touch with the Administrator in regard to a Bill of this nature. After reference to the Administrator of the province concerned he then decides. The Act states he must refer the matter to the Administrator of the province concerned. Did he refer this matter to the Administrator, or did he just send him a little note? Is that how he “refers” a matter to the head of a province?

Yes.

There you have it, Sir, the Minister says that referring a matter to the head of a province simply consists of sending the man a little note. What a shocking state of affairs! What a denial of democracy!

How do you refer a matter otherwise than by sending a letter?

Surely you should consult with him, surely you should approach him through the proper channels? You do not send him a note in the way the Minister has suggested. No wonder that in this memorandum of the Johannesburg City Council Management Committee here before me they point out—and I do believe you will allow me to refer to this because it is relevant-—that a Cape Provincial member of the Executive Council definitely opposed this Bill. We have here a case where a prominent person, a person who is much more than a member of the Provincial Council for Uitenhage, deplores and rejects this Bill. I appeal to the Minister to have second thoughts, I sincerely hope the local authorities of this country will realize what is behind this Bill and that they will reject it. As I say, it is not a Bill, it is the “Bull of Barzillai”.

Mr. Speaker, at the outset of the Second Reading debate, I thought that the debate would be conducted at a high level, but it seems to me as though the previous speaker, the hon. member for Orange Grove, has lowered the level even more. He said, inter alia, that the hon. member for Hercules had said that this Government would take steps which would not be popular. I agree, because the National Party and this Government have not, like his party and like him, sold their birthright for a mess of potage.

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

For this reason I want to say that this Government and this side of the House will not take steps which will be in conflict with its principles and policy which have been stated very clearly time and again. This Bill deals with a principle which has been stated time and again. To-night is not the first time, and hon. members who were here in 1945, will remember, as the hon. member for Parow pointed out, that there was talk of this principle even at that time. In 1959 and again in 1966 this principle was under discussion. These are powers which were granted to the Government in respect of local authorities as long ago as that. The only difference which this Bill is introducing is that it defines this principle more clearly in order to make it more streamlined. The principle remains unchanged, but I can clearly see the motive behind the arguments used by the opposite side of this House. They say the local authorities are being deprived of their rights by this measure. In other words, it amounts to that old slogan of theirs which we first heard many years ago, and that is, “Vote for the right to vote again”. Hon. members opposite want to suggest that the local authorities are now being deprived of all their rights, that there is no longer any democracy in South Africa and that we are living in a police state. They maintain that this Government is nothing but a dictator. This, of course, is the biggest nonsense imaginable. I have very close contacts with the local authority in the constituency I represent, and I know that there are many local authorities and residents of local authorities who will welcome this measure. The State can now assist in developing areas which have not been developed by local authorities for some reason or other. Any matter of national importance must come first. In this case, matters of provincial and local importance must follow behind. To me the main principle of this Bill is to be found in this. When hon. members speak of certain powers being taken away from local authorities, I want to ask them what existed first—the Central Government, or local authorities? Were powers not given to local authorities by the Central Government in the first place? Therefore are theirs not powers which were given to them and of which some have subsequently been withdrawn?

During the Budget debate the hon. members for Yeoville and Bezuidenhout discussed the taxation proposals and spoke of a one-stop tax. In other words, they advocated the withdrawal of the rights of local authorities and provincial authorities as regards the levying of certain taxes. Does this not amount to a withdrawal of certain powers as well? Is the principle not the same as that in this Bill? That side of this House is prepared to deprive their local authorities of the fights to levy their own local taxes as well as to deny each province the right of collecting its own taxes. Now, however, they want to raise a dust here when the Government wants to develop certain areas in the interest of certain income groups and population groups for the use of those groups. Is the same principle not at stake? On the East Rand, from where I come, an investigation is being conducted at present into the possibilities of finding an area in which to accommodate the Coloureds of the East Rand. I want to ask hon. members opposite, if all local authorities on the East Rand were to refuse to accommodate the Coloureds, what would become of those Coloureds? Should the Government then not have the right to say that in its opinion a certain area is the right place in which to accommodate them? Should the Government not have the right to tell a local authority that it must accommodate the Coloureds and that it must provide the facilities which that requires? Is that not in the interests of the particular population group, the authority concerned as well as the country? We know that the Coloureds are being accommodated on a regional basis in areas in which they can develop as independent communities. If local authorities stubbornly refuse to provide the necessary services for the Coloureds, is the Government to wait forever until they may be prepared some day to provide those services and to re-settle the Coloureds where that would be in their own interests and in the interests of the community? I believe that the Government and the Minister will not be unreasonable, and that they will only act after consultation with the local authorities. If, at such consultations, the local authorities were still to refuse, this measure would be applied.

I want to deal with the barb which is to be found in the United Party’s line of action. They want matters to take their own course as far as local authorities are concerned. They want to let things develop as in the past. They want conditions to be created which would subsequently enable them to tell the outside world that it should look in what circumstances certain population groups were being left. They would then be able to say that the Government was taking no measures for creating better living conditions for these people. The hon. member for Wynberg said the only object of this measure was to put matters right in respect of one single local authority, namely the Stellenbosch local authority. Now I want to ask them, if that is the only case, what are they afraid of? If that is so, surely the Government has had many opportunities to act in such an autocratic way. It is a pity that the hon. member is not present, because I want to tell her that her problem is that she is afraid that those Indians will be removed to Rylands. After all, that is in conflict with their policy. After all, they want residential integration. To me the finest quality of this Government is the very fact that it does not hesitate to take action even against a local authority such as that of Stellenbosch, even though such an authority supports the National Party. This only goes to show how just this Government is in that it is even prepared to act against people who are its supporters.

There are certain local authorities that are not interested in providing housing to the poor man. We are well aware of this. They are only interested in the rich man. They only want to develop rich men’s residential areas in which no poor man can live. They are engaged in building up prestige townships for themselves. We know that there are such local authorities, and we know what local authorities these are. If this Government were not to have the power to intervene, in cases where it is possible to build economic and sub-economic houses, and to tell Local authorities that they too should make provision for people in the lower income groups, where would these people have to go? Therefore, if the State looks after the lower income groups as well, through the agency of this Bill, is that unfair? We know that the Department of Community Development is continually making money available for housing, also for the lower income groups. I know that there are local authorities that meet their obligations, that know what their duty is towards the lower income groups. However, I have learned that the Department of Community Development had more than R20 million available for housing last year. The Department phoned local authorities and asked them please to make land available, as it had the money to place at their disposal so as to provide housing for the lower income groups. The hon. the Minister may correct me if I am wrong. I think, however, that I am right. This to me is sufficient proof that local authorities have neglected their duty towards the lower income groups and that they have not made use of the money placed at their disposal by the Department. Consequently I am pleased that townships which are being developed are not for the wealthy only. I also want to ask the hon. the Minister that he, if possible, should also make use of his powers to intervene in cases where local authorities are developing residential areas for the wealthy only, so that part of such areas may also be placed at the disposal of the lower income groups.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who has just spoken started by saying that this Bill introduces no change in principle in our legislation.

That is in fact the case.

The hon. member confirms this. Well, if this introduces no change of principle, then there can be no principle to the Bill. Surely the hon. member does not imply that his hon. Minister will take up the time of this Parliament to introduce a Bill with no principle, with no reason or logic to it. I will come back to that. The hon. the Minister has power by regulation to deal with the carrying out of the existing 1966 law. If there is no change in principle, what is the need for this Bill? The hon. member who says the Bill has no principle or changes no principle …

I did not say so.

The hon. member who says it changes no principle …

Yes?

… and who stood up to defend the Bill in this House did not even know the issue which led to the introduction of this Bill. He talked of this Bill as being designed to deal with Rylands. He talked of this Bill as being introduced to deal with the Indian community of Cape Town. Now, Mr. Speaker, he should first have talked to the hon. member for Stellenbosch, who spent the whole afternoon and evening being briefed by the hon. the Minister. But he has not as yet got up in this House to tell us what the Council of Stellenbosch has to say about this Bill. Member after member on that side has stood up but the hon. member representing the constituency in whose area the whole problem arose and for the disciplining of which the hon. the Minister has introduced this Bill has sat silent and unspeaking—unable to defend his own local authority, his town council, the council which has clashed with the hon. the Minister and whose obstinacy has led the hon. the Minister to introduce this legislation. Why does the hon. member for Stellenbosch not get up here in the House and tell us what he thinks of legislation designed to hamstring and subjugate the local authority elected by the ratepayers of Stellenbosch to handle the affairs of Stellenbosch? He has to be defended by an hon. member from the Rand, from Boksburg, who does not even know that it was Cloetesdal which led to this controversy. He talks of the Indian area in the Cape. The hon. the Minister shakes his head and says “No”. I suppose the hon. the Minister will say in a moment that he agrees with the hon. member for Hercules, who is now absent—obviously cleaning out the Augean stables. He has a lot of cleaning to do. I am sorry, I see that the hon. member is in the House. There are the two hon. members, one who spoke this afternoon and the other this evening sitting together and obviously comparing notes. Does the hon. the Minister support them? Does the hon. the Minister support what they said this afternoon and this evening?

Yes.

He does. Thank you. Then obviously the hon. the Minister will accept an amendment when we introduce it during the Committee Stage which will bring this measure in line with Act No. 25 of 1945 which was quoted by them with such glee to this House this afternoon. I assume that if this measure is intended to be the same as Act 25 of 1945, then obviously if there is a slight slip up, a slight difference, he will accept an amendment to bring them into line. Because the hon. the Minister has now said that he accepts what those two hon. members said. Those two hon. members said that this measure to-night does no more than the United Party Act No. 25 of 1945 in respect of Bantu. [Interjections.] Yes, Mr. Speaker, that was the whole theme of the hon. member for Parow’s speech, namely that this Bill did no more than the United Party had done in 1945. The hon. the Minister says he supports what the hon. member for Parow has said. Therefore he agrees in his own mind, however clouded his thoughts may be on this matter, that this Bill should do no more than the 1945 legislation.

I said that I supported what the hon. member for Parow said, but not what you say he said.

Sir, let us look at Hansard. I am sure the hon. member for Parow would be glad to give me the transcript of his Hansard, from which it will appear that he said that this measure did no more than the United Party was prepared to do in 1945. Is that incorrect?

Yes.

Well, what was the hon. member for Parow talking about then?

May I, on a point of explanation, say to the hon. member for Durban (Point) that …

No, if I sit down I lose my right to speak. At the end of my speech the hon. member for Parow may stand up on a point of personal explanation. I am too old a hand to be caught by that little trick. Sir, let us see what the hon. member for Parow did not tell this House when he purported to quote the law this afternoon. When he quoted section 4 this afternoon he started by saying, “Upon the failure of an urban local authority within the time fixed in any notice given under section 3, or within any extension of that time granted … “The basis of the hon. member’s claim was that this measure was exactly what the United Party did.

Were you present here?

Sir, the words he used were: “Maar die Verenigde Party het dieselfde gedoen in 1945.”

Were you here?

Yes, I was here. Why did he not quote section 3? He started off by saying, “Upon the failure of an urban local authority within the time fixed in any notice given under section 3 …” but he did not tell the House what section 3 provided. I will tell him what stands in that section. Section 3 (1) reads as follows—

The latter words were inserted in 1964—

I repeat “and other parties interested”—

What are you trying to prove now?

Sir, this is the crux. I go on quoting and I ask the hon. member for Parow to listen to what he omitted to tell the House—

Sir, this is the crux, namely the “provision for the needs of Natives ordinarily employed within that area for normal requirements is inadequate or unsuitable”. The hon. the Minister says that he supports the contention of the hon. member for Parow that he is asking no more than the United Party did in 1945. I ask the hon. the Minister now whether he is prepared (a) to consult the local authority and the Administrator; (b) to hold a public inquiry at which the local authority and all interested parties concerned can be heard; and (c) to confine this power to the normal housing needs of people employed in an area —not what is required to carry out ideological movements, not for the shifting of people from A to B but to meet the normal housing requirements of the people. Will he confine this measure to the need to house people and not for shifting people, shoving people around? I repeat, will the Minister confine it to the need to house people in their proper areas and not for shoving people around like pawns, not to pushing them about like bits of ivory on a chess board but to meet the housing needs of human beings, the normal requirements of people? Will he do those three things? Will he confine it to the needs of the people; will he consult with the people and hold a public inquiry? If he will do that, in other words, if he will add as a proviso to these powers the wording of section 3 of Act 25 of 1945, then we will be prepared to support him. But then the hon. member for Parow and the hon. member for Hercules, who is again out cleaning the stables, must withdraw what they said this afternoon. If the Minister is not prepared to accept section 3 as an amendment in the Committee Stage then he must repudiate his supporters and say in fact that what the hon. member for Parow said about this measure was incorrect; that the powers for which he is asking here are not simply the powers for which we asked in 1945. Sir, the hon. the Minister is asking for blanket powers now. He asks us to trust him. That hon. member says that he will not abuse these powers. He put it as “die hoofbeginsel”, the main principle, that the State was the be-all and end-all of everything.

Who said so?

That was the implication. He said that it was the State that gave its powers to the local authorities. The whole of the second part of his speech was aimed at showing that what was important was the national interests, the interests of the State and the Central Government, and that the local authority did not matter; its interests were subservient to those of the State. Sir. what that hon. member has revealed is the fundamental philosophy behind this Government and behind the Nationalist Party, the philosophy that the State is all-powerful and that the State must have every power that it requires to override local authorities or anyone else. That hon. member made it clear in his speech this evening; he let the cat out of the bag when he said that the local authorities did not matter and that the State came first. He said, “Wie was eerste daar?” “Who was there first?” And he went on to say: “Dit is die hoofbeginsel”; the main principle of this Bill is that the State must be able to override the local authorities.

Do you deny it?

He went on to give as an example the Coloureds on the East Rand. Sir. I want to come back to this question of powers because this hon. Minister made a public speech which was reported towards the end of last year and in which he said—

Now he is asking us to give powers to him which he will exercise in the light of the tremendous responsibilities that go with these powers. In the same speech he went on to say—

Sir, we are being asked to give unlimited power—and the Minister confirms it—to a Minister who says that he will blatantly and wholeheartedly use those powers to foster the interests of one local authority. What confidence can any other local authority in South Africa have in a Minister who says publicly and now confirms in Parliament that he will blatantly use his position to further the interests of one local authority? Sir, what sort of Minister is asking us for these powers, powers which he admits carry tremendous responsibilities with them? The power to build townships; the power to foster development; the powers which he has already and now the powers for which he is asking in this Bill, namely, the powers to enter upon, control, subdivide, lay out, plan, develop, let or sell any land. These are powers of a dictatorial nature, covering a whole page, in terms of clause 2 of this Bill, and the Minister who asks for these powers is the Minister who says that he will blatantly use his position to further the interests of his own constituency. [Laughter.] Mr. Speaker, I do not know who is making a political sandwich of “rou wors” between “Blare”. I have not finished quoting that hon. member. [Interjections.] I am dealing with the powers for which the hon. the Minister is asking. This report goes on to say—

Sir, is the hon. member for Ermelo going to accept these powers which we are going to give the Minister? We are giving him powers to take over areas of a local authority and to build a township for Bantu, in terms of the proposed amended section 17, wherever he likes without reference to the local authority and then to Charge the ratepayers of that town, because he says that it will be some time before the Natives can be absorbed in the homelands and therefore he does not anticipate any shortage of Bantu labour in Vereeniging. These powers could therefore be used by the hon. the Minister to build vast Bantu towns around Vereeniging. He has said that he will use these powers blatantly to further Vereeniging’s interests, and how can he further Vereeniging’s interests unless he has labour?

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

Sir, I am dealing with paragraph (a) on page 4 of the Bill. It reads—

Sir, I want to be serious now. I laughed a moment ago because the hon. the Minister was obviously enjoying his own discomfort. But this is a serious matter. The Minister is taking power to take from a local authority land belonging to that authority in order to build upon it as he will, for what purpose he will and in any form he will, and then make the ratepayers of the city or the town concerned pay the costs.

The foundations have already been laid.

I use this example, which may sound funny—and let us admit that we laugh about it—but it is not funny. It is not funny because here a Minister who believes that you are going to need housing, as that hon. Minister does, whether it be for Whites or Coloureds as wanted by the hon. member for Boksburg or for any other race, asks this House to give him a blank cheque to take over land from a local authority and to develop housing for any race group for any purpose he likes.

And that is the Minister who says that he foresees that the normal development of White and Black together will continue. That hon. Minister must tell his own party, and he must tell this House, and he must tell those within his own party who disagree with him, whether he is going to use this Bill to further the interests which he claimed he would further in his own town, of having an adequate supply of Bantu labour. He may blatantly further the interests of Vereeniging, but what about Durban? On 11th April the General Purposes Committee of the Durban City Council directed an appeal to the hon. the Minister to delay this Bill so that they could consider it, consult on it and make their representations. The chairman of the General Purposes Committee on 7th April issued a public statement that she had not yet seen the Bill and that she had only seen the Press reports about the Bill being tabled the day before. An emergency meeting of the General Purposes Committee was called and that meeting took place on 11th April and called unanimously upon the Minister to delay the Bill.

What are you reading from?

I am reading from a report in the Daily News of 11th April of this year—

Why is the Minister prepared to ride roughshod over a city like Durban and over all the other cities who disagree, over the whole of the local authority organization of South Africa, to carry out a Bill which he maintains makes no difference to the principles of this legislation. I want to conclude by saying simply this, before I ask the hon. member for Stellenbosch to stand up and to talk on behalf of …

May I ask a question? I should just like to know from the hon. member where in Durban they made provision for the housing of Indians and Bantu before the Government took them out there?

Sir, obviously the hon. member never got on to his ox-wagon to ride to Durban before the Nationalist Party came into power. He has obviously never heard of the locations and townships in Durban.

The hon. member should not take any notice of that question.

It was stupid, and I agree with you, Sir, that I should not answer. In conclusion, I ask the hon. the Minister whether he will accept an amendment in the Committee Stage supporting the view of the hon. member for Parow that this measure is no more than Act No. 25 of 1945 and therefore limiting it to the scope of that measure. I support the amendment.

I have no intention of arguing and acting in the same emotional way in this debate as we have just had from the hon. member for Durban (Point). I want to try to state the views of this side on this matter calmly and clearly. I think it is essential to introduce some calm into this debate. After a fine dinner, we have now had sufficient emotion. The hon. member for Durban (Point) tried to make out a case here in connection with Act No. 25 of 1945. I do not think the hon. member read that Act very carefully, because the point to which the hon. member for Parow referred was the Minister’s powers upon the failure of a local authority to comply with requirements made in terms of this Act. This is very important. These are the powers the Minister takes if local authorities fail to comply with any requirements. We know the hon. member for Durban (Point) as a very good debater who can quite easily wrest something like this from its context and make a big thing of it. Section 3 (1), to which the hon. member referred here—he need only read the side note—refers to the Minister’s powers where inadequate or unsuitable accommodation is provided for natives in urban areas. These are the powers which the Minister has, but if there is any failure to comply with those things, the Minister takes further powers under section 4 in order to deal with such failure. But the hon. member was very adept at trying to turn this whole thing upside down and making it a point for debate, but I think he got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Section 17 is very clear; it deals with certain powers which the Minister takes in the case of default.

Where do you find that? Quote it.

I can only refer the hon. member to the principal Act. Where there is default on the part of local authorities and certain things are not done in accordance with the provisions of this Act, the Minister takes these powers.

But quote it.

This is what the entire matter is about. Yesterday in his Second Reading speech the Minister said that officials, especially the legal people, found that when it came to the application of the provisions of section 17 of the Act, we were skating on thin ice. That is why this amending clause is now substituting a much clearer subsection (2).

Would the hon. member be kind enough to indicate where the provision is in the existing law that these powers should only be exercised in the case of default by a local authority?

It is not only in the case of default by a local authority. This is the point at issue. The Minister stated very clearly yesterday that we had the highest degree of co-operation in this country from local authorities in the application of this Act, but that it may become essential to do certain things. The whole issue is the question of authorization. The hon. member knows that this is not a mandatory law; it may be made mandatory. It is a permissive piece of legislation. It is enabling legislation which gives the Minister the power to do certain things he may in due course find necessary to do, and this is the whole point. When one reads section 17, one sees what steps the Minister may take. That is why I say that in my opinion the hon. member for Durban (Point) completely overlooked this point.

But where do you find that in this legislation?

In 2 (a) (iii). That is where it is to be found. I do not have the time to quote it now. I should like to come back to what was said here by the hon. member for Wynberg. I think the hon. member for Wynberg wrested the entire speech of the Cape M.E.C., Mr. Conradie, from its context, and I think the newspapers most probably also misreported him. My information is that Mr. Conradie rectified the matter and said that the meaning of his speech was not as reported in the newspapers. I have here a copy of his speech and I want to quote the paragraph to which the hon. member referred. Here he was dealing with the question of decentralization and the desirability of maximum autonomy on the lower levels, and this is what he said (translation)—

I think in this case it is a matter of the compatibility of things to sound administration.

But I want to come back to what was said by the hon. member for Green Point. I want to say that there is nobody in this House who is more in favour of maintaining three-tier government in this country than I am, and you can take it from me, Sir, that I will fight to the bitter end against any weakening of any of these three tiers of government, but I am also a strong supporter of ensuring the more effective and streamlined operation of the lower tiers of government. The hon. member said that in terms of this legislation the powers and the autonomy of local authorities were being weakened and that this was in reality a violation of the democracy, as local authorities, elected democratically, were governing democratically. I want to say this. The Government we have in this House to-day, was elected democratically. The legislation being discussed to-day, was introduced by a democratically elected Government that had democratically been given a mandate by the nation time and again to implement this legislation. These lower tiers of government we have, the provincial government, and the local authorities, are authorities established under a Constitution framed by this democratic Government, this Parliament. I do not think the democratic Parliament assembled here will want to make itself subservient to a democratic form of government elected on the lowest tier of government we have in this country. We shall most definitely not allow that lowest tier of government to dictate to us. The democracy operates in a strange way and I cannot understand why we should make ourselves, as the highest democratically established body in this country, subservient to the lowest democratic tier of government. This legislation lays down the question of co-operation. In this legislation we go much further than we did in the 1945 legislation. Mr. Speaker, I had a hand in drafting section 17 as it now stands on the Statute Book. These amendments were made, so I have been told, in co-operation and consultation with the provinces and the United Municipal Executive. For that reason I want to say that this Government will not allow itself to be bound by any local authority when it comes to the question of implementing the mandate it has been given by the electorate of South Africa.

What is the mandate in respect of Stellenbosch?

As regards Stellenbosch, I want to say that if its local authority is not prepared to implement the provisions of this Act, a government which will not make use of the powers granted by this legislation to compel that local authority to implement the provisions of this Act, will be a cowardly government.

What is the mandate that has been given to the Government?

The mandate we have been given is to implement group areas in South Africa. This very United Party opposed us to the bitter end in this House and outside when we wanted to place legislation on the Statute Book for the delimitation of group areas in this country. We fought the 1953 election, and all subsequent elections, on this question of the implementation of group areas, which is inherent in maintaining the policy of apartheid in South Africa. This, in brief, is the mandate we have received from the South African nation. To me it makes no difference whether we are dealing with Stellenbosch, Parow, Johannesburg or Durban. However, if there is one city council in this country which is stubborn in respect of the implementation of the Group Areas Act, this Government will take the legal powers, as it is now doing, to enforce this on them.

I want to say that the story now being told, i.e. that the autonomy of the local authorities is being weakened, is a red herring which is being drawn across the trail. We have had this type of tactics from the earliest days. We had this kind of tactics in the year 1951 with the Resettlement Board in Johannesburg. The hon. member for Johannesburg (North) will remember this very well. At that time they were the difficult ones who did not want to remove the black spots in Johannesburg, as that fitted in with the implementation of our group area provisions in Johannesburg. This Government did not hesitate. It placed the Resettlement Act on the Statute Book in order to enforce the implementation of those provisions in Johannesburg. This is history, but it is not unknown. What is happening to-day? Johannesburg is being cleared. It may still happen that we shall apply the provisions of this Act to Johannesburg as far as Page View is concerned. Where in this country will one find a worse spot than Page View? Who are the people who have always been thwarting the attempts of this Government as regards the removal and the clearance of that area? They are the United Party City Council in Johannesburg. I want to say that this country can no longer afford local authorities to be used in this way as the henchmen of the United Party to be used against the National Party. The United Party is using the City Council of Johannesburg and other United Party controlled City Councils to embarrass the National Party. I also want to say that this is an expensive process for which this country has to pay. If one takes into account the time and energy and the patience we have to display when we have to beg these people to do these things, and we have to do these things on the instruction of the South African nation …

What does the United Party have to do with this? According to the Minister Stellenbosch is the only place that is actually involved.

No, it is not only that one place. I am speaking of the past, but this can also happen in the future.

The United Party is costing the taxpayers of South Africa millions of rand because of this waste of time and energy, not only in this house, but also outside.

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

This Bill deals with the powers we are taking to combat this expenditure. For that reason we want to give our wholehearted support to this legislation. In the few minutes remaining I should like to refer to the amendment moved by the hon. member for Green Point. To me there is something very strange in this amendment. I now want to put certain relevant questions to the United Party. The amendment reads as follows: “To omit all the words after ‘That’ and to substitute ‘whilst’ this House desires the provision of adequate housing in separate residential areas for the different race groups, it declines …” Do this House and the country now have to accept that the United Party is by implication in this amendment accepting apartheid and the Group Areas Act in principle? Are those hon. members now accepting apartheid and the Group Areas Act? Is this the implication this has, i.e. that those hon. members now accept separate residential areas, because this is the amendment of those hon. members. I have put this question, but I have received no reply. In other words, I accept the United Party will tell the South African nation at the next election “We now are supporters of apartheid and accept separate residential areas and group areas”. [Interjections.] This afternoon we had a demonstration from the hon. member for Green Point of the extreme opportunism we may expect from the United Party. This afternoon we had a fine demonstration of that. This legislation is enabling legislation which will enable the Minister to do certain things in the case of default by local authorities. This, in brief, is what this legislation deals with. It does not seek to encroach upon the autonomy of local authorities, as the United Party wants us to believe.

Mr. Speaker, before I return to the hon. member for Benoni who has just resumed his seat, I would like to leave a thought with the hon. the Minister and make a plea to him particularly. I want to say to him that he must please spare us having a photograph of him in the departmental offices, as was the case with the previous Minister. I say this in all seriousness. To call in at the offices of the Department of Community Development and to see a large photograph of the hon. the Minister is very disconcerting.

Order! What has that to do with the Bill?

I just hope that we will be spared this hon. Minister’s photograph.

Order!

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who has just sat down referred to one or two matters which I will touch on. One is the movement of people from Sophiatown. The hon. member knows as well as everybody else in this House, that the difficulty with that removal was occasioned by the fact that people in Sophiatown had freehold rights. When they were to be moved, no guarantee could be given that they would enjoy those same rights elsewhere. The hon. member who has just sat down knew that very well. The hon. member also went to great lengths to show that this Bill was no loss of democratic power. I will deal with that in a moment. Before doing so I should like to say to him that it seems particularly strange to me that the Government should come with a Bill like this aimed primarily at a particular local authority from whom we have not heard this evening. It is not that that local authority opposes the implementation of the Group Areas Act; they merely want to do it their way and not in the way of the Department. The reason for this is quite clear. They know the conditions applying in their own area far better than any Government authority. However, it will be very interesting to hear from the hon. member for Stellenbosch when he does get up to speak in this debate, because we feel that it is strange that he has left it so long.

Order! That point has been made repeatedly.

The hon. member for Benoni also quoted from a speech made by Mr. Conradie, the M.E.C. for the Cape Province. I have here a newspaper cutting of what Mr. Conradie said. It may or may not have been the same speech that the hon. member has, but Mr. Conradie was deeply concerned about the loss of democratic rights as entailed in this Bill. These significantly the hon. member for Benoni did not mention. I want to quote just one or two lines from Mr. Conradie’s statement:

So often, when members on that side of the House quote to us on this side, they leave out the significant parts of the statement. Here Mr. Conradie. who is not a supporter of this side of the House, had some very pertinent remarks to make on this Bill in particular, and about the loss of democratic rights as entailed in this Bill. One gets the impression that so often legislation in this House is damaging democratic rights and exercising an influence on the life of South Africa, which is completely contrary to that which is being practised in other parts of the world.

Order! The hon. member cannot reflect on legislation. The hon. member may proceed, but he must come back to the Bill.

In this Bill we have an attempt by the Department to shift the blame for its own general inefficiency to the laps of local authorities and provincial authorities.

The nearest that hon. member can come to a Bill is to take it up in his hand.

I will come to the Bill. So often over the years the Department has criticized various local authorities for not acting as speedily as it would like the local authorities to act in the implementation of group areas in regard to the settlement of new townships. Nowhere do we ever get the hon. the Minister standing up and saying that the reason for this is that the Department has not made sufficient funds available to local authorities to implement the policy of the Government.

This has happened in city after city in South Africa. So much so, that in my own city of Durban the delays in Indian and Coloured housing are caused almost entirely by the lack of funds coming from the Department of Community Development. Now we have a Bill of this nature which says that the Department will crack the big whip over the local authorities, so much so that it is now being empowered to levy rates on the local ratepayers of the city. However, already in the city of Durban the Department owns property worth more than R13 million. The Department does not pay rates at all on nearly R4 million of that property. Here we stand the risk again of having that figure increased and the ratepayers of the city of Durban having to pay a great deal more, not through their fault but entirely through the fault of the Department of Community Development. In my constituency, as the hon. the Minister knows, I have a group of Coloured people who have waited now for seven years for housing from the Department of Community Development. We have people in Durban who had been evicted from their homes, because of Group Areas proclamations. Those homes have stood empty for five years. They have deteriorated and have become wrecks. They now virtually serve as hovels for all sorts of vagrants. These are houses from which the Department of Community Development has ejected disqualified persons. However, these houses have not been handed to people who are qualified to live there.

What happened to those people who were ejected?

The point I am making here, is that these houses are now standing empty, that little development takes place and then the hon. the Minister comes along with a Bill like this which threatens local authorities that if they do not do certain things they will have various provisions of this Bill applied to them. I think the time has come when we should look very closely at the functioning of the Department of Community Development itself. It seems that the Department can spend as much money as it likes and that it can do as it wishes, and then pass the blame to any Tom, Dick or Harry as long as it is not left at their door. Where else has the Department gone so far as to say that it would make up for losses in fruitless expenditure? Surely, this is a wonderful admission to come from a Department as all-powerful as the Department of Community Development, but it now has to include a provision in the Bill that it will make up losses suffered by local authorities due to fruitless expenditure. If one was to look very closely at the activities of the Department in regard to group areas, one would see many instances of this fruitless expenditure. We have instances where they have erected shopping centres which, after three years, are still empty. This is fruitless expenditure. We had instances where they had erected blocks of flats which after many months were still empty. This is fruitless expenditure. But it is so easy for the Department because it merely takes more of the taxpayer’s money. But when it comes to local authorities, they will no longer draw it from the taxpayer as such. It will be drawn from the ratepayer. He, therefore, pays either way. It must be one of the few Departments which can hide its sins by dipping deeper into the pockets of the taxpayer and ratepayer of South Africa. There is another point, I think the most significant one and one which defeats all the arguments of members on that side of the House who claim that this is a democratic measure. What has the Minister done to consult the provincial authorities? What has he done to consult local authorities on this measure? What has he done about their replies? He has ignored completely their request that this Bill be held over. He has ignored completely the request of all people in South Africa that this measure should be looked at a second time. One can only come to the conclusion that already this most powerful Department is so anxiously empire-building that it is prepared to ignore all the usual tenets of democracy while it pushes forward with a measure of this sort.

Mr. Speaker, I have to reply to the hon. member for Port Natal now, but I am afraid he became a little confused. The hon. member should really have made this speech under the Community Development Vote, where things would have gone a little better for him. I should have liked to reply to him as regards certain things he said, but I can see quite clearly—and I know the hon. member very well—that he knows very little about municipal affairs, local authorities and the relationship between the functioning of the Department of Community Development and that of provincial councils. All the hon. member really knows about the affairs of local authorities, is that he did not vote for me in one of the municipal elections. And I want to tell him that I am very glad he did not.

I agree. It was very wise of me!

I am sorry, because I should like to help the hon. member. The member said that the major point he wished to make as regards all the arguments advanced by this side of the House, was the point concerning the question of consultation. The hon. the Minister was supposed not to have consulted the parties concerned. I think the United Municipal Executive would have been the most important body the hon. the Minister would have consulted, but this legislation contains two simple amendments, amendments in respect of powers which had vested in the Government and the Minister all along; therefore there was no need to have had consultations. All this Bill is doing, is to provide greater legal certainty, greater legal certainty as regards his actions. That is all. I now want to follow up the remarks made by the hon. member for Benoni. I am now referring to the amendment, the first part of which states that they are prepared to accept separate residential areas but, Mr. Speaker, I do not believe them. But, Sir, let us just listen to what is stated in the second part of the amendment. I do not know whether hon. members themselves realize what they say there. They say they do not accept this legislation because, inter alia, the provincial administrations and local authorities are going to be deprived of their existing powers in relation to areas under their jurisdiction. Do these people realize what they are saying? I say this is a fundamental untruth which is proclaimed to the outside world. It is a fundamental untruth to say that they will be deprived of all their powers. This Bill does not provide any new powers, neither does it contain any new principle. All this Bill does, is to reformulate the existing powers and to provide greater legal certainty. Hon. members opposite are now holding up this image to the outside world. But there is a particular reason for their doing so. They are making a great fuss about this, shall I say, absolutely innocent amendment. This amendment has has been introduced simply for the Minister to have greater certainty that no legal proceedings will be instituted when he has to act. But what is the reason for this resistance? What is the reason for all this hostility, as pointed out by the hon. member for Hercules? I want to tell you what the reason is, Sir. This was also made quite clear through the last speaker. That party is one which is in favour of integration. The/ came to this House with an amendment saying they believed in social segregation and separate residential areas. But if this is what they believe in, they will support this Bill. I cast it in their teeth that they are a party which is in favour of integration. They are in favour of integration. They are against social integration. They also approve of slum conditions. They are opposed to the development of group areas. This is what they do. They seem to be agitators. I beg your pardon, Mr. Speaker, I shall say they are inciters. They incite local authorities.

Order!

I withdraw, Mr. Speaker. I shall say they want to influence people. The people they want to influence, are the local authorities. They also want to incite the provincial administrations against the Government. In this process Stellenbosch is also dragged in by the hair. They have found a peg on which to hang something. Stellenbosch must now be dragged into this because the local authority at Stellenbosch adopted a certain attitude. After all, it has happened several times that local authorities adopted a certain attitude as a result of the influence exercised by one person or other on their councils. I believe that attitude was adopted by the town council only on the strength of the casting vote of one of its members. The hon. member for Green Point now comes along and quotes with great prolixity what the president of the Cape Province Municipal Association, namely Mr. Dempsey, is alleged to have said. Mr. Dempsey is also a member of the Stellenbosch town council. He is also an ex-mayor of Stellenbosch. The hon. member quoted the first part of the report in which it was stated—

But, Mr. Speaker, this is something quite normal. Anybody who has had any experience of local authorities and who has served on these bodies, always wants to be consulted and will say so to his association. The hon. member went further and quoted another extract from the report, as follows: “Mr. Dempsey said this principle was laid down in clause 17 (1)” and so forth; but something he failed to quote was the following which Mr. Dempsey did, in fact, say—

He says “rightly or wrongly”.

Exactly. In this connection the hon. member for Green Point wanted to hold up the wrong image to the outside world once more. I say the United Party is quite wrong in its attitude to say that new powers are being taken here and that this involves a new principle. This is not so. But I said that they were trying to incite both local authorities and provincial administrations. In what way are their rights being curtailed here? Let us go back and see what has happened since the year 1910. Ever since the time local authorities and the provinces were given their functions, it had been the complaint of all the municipal associations, all the municipal authorities, that the provinces always wanted to curtail the powers of the local authorities. This is the old hackneyed complaint. One hears that complaint year after year. Why do the provinces do it? They do so in the interests of every voter and every resident in the town because the province has to see to it that the local areas are run in a proper manner. The Government granted certain powers and functions to the provinces, and the Government may withdraw them when it is in the interests of the country. What are the functions of a municipality, a local authority? It is primarily the function of a local authority to render services. It has to render domestic services to the residents of an area. It also has to render health services; which is its second function. In addition, it also has the power to balance its own estimates. For that purpose it can collect rates on properties. I do not know what the position is in the Cape, because I do not know the area so well, but in the Transvaal the local authority has to obtain permission every time it wants to increase its rates.

But the hon. the Minister does not have to give his permission.

The hon. member knows nothing about municipal affairs. If he keeps quiet and listens, he will be able to learn something. Has the hon. member ever read an ordinance? Has he ever seen what powers an ordinance has over a municipality? Does he know what is allowed to happen and what is not allowed to happen? Every municipality that wants to raise a loan, has to obtain the permission of the Administrator first.

But not the Minister.

I shall go further now. In other words, the only mandate municipal voters are able to give a city councillor in a municipal election, concerns the functions the municipality is empowered to carry out, namely the provision of services including health services. This is the only mandate. We have a case here where the Government went to the people and obtained a mandate. The Government obtained a mandate in respect of the development of group areas, race segregation and so forth. This is the mandate the Government has. This is the highest authority in the country. Is it fair that certain local authorities refuse to carry out the mandate of the Government? The same people who gave certain mandates to their local authorities on the level of local government, gave the Government this mandate I mentioned. This Government is now going to act according to the mandate it has and it is going to see that it is carried out. If certain local authorities do not want this to be done in their areas, the Government is going to act by giving powers to the Minister. Those powers are being given to the Minister here.

Does the hon. member admit that the object of this Bill is to give the Minister powers to do exactly what he is saying now?

Yes. If the hon. member does not know it, he is a stranger in Jerusalem. The Government has a mandate to do certain things, to segregate races.

Can you name me one city in South Africa where the Whites are in the majority?

I cannot give the hon. member the figures for every city now.

But you speak about the separation of races.

I cannot see what that question has to do with this matter. The other races who …

Order! The hon. member need not take any notice of that question.

I merely wanted to enlighten the hon. member Mr. Speaker. His question is irrelevant. All I want to say, is the following. I call that party a party which is in favour of integration. In terms of the powers the Minister already has and in cooperation with many local authorities which admit that they are only the third tier of government and which recognize and implement the policy of the Government a start was made with the development of group areas. Various races were separated from one another and they are living in separate residential areas. I want to put this question to the United Party now: If they were to come into power again, would they allow those people to mix again? Would they allow those people to live in mixed residential areas or would they apply segregation?

Read the amendment. What is being stated there?

If they were to say they would do so, they should support this legislation, because this measure gives the Minister the power to act without a local authority where such a local authority is not responsible enough to carry out the policy of the Government. But let me say this. No Minister will act and place burdens on a local authority and on the residents which they cannot bear. The Government will rectify all that is wrong; it will incur the expenses, it will establish new areas and it will then give the area back to the local authority. The hon. member for Port Natal spoke about flats standing empty and confused it with the term “fruitless expenditure”, but this is not the case at all. In cases where fruitless expenditure was incurred by the local authority in order to carry out the policy of the Government and where it was not practical to proceed with the work, the Government may compensate the local authority for the expenditure incurred. One of these amendments deals precisely with this matter and seeks to obtain a general power instead of having to come back to the House with every case exceeding R1,000.

Mr. Speaker, I do not take it amiss of the hon. member for Pietersburg when he talks about this side of the House as being the “integrasieparty”. He knows perfectly well that our policy is one of social and residential segregation, and I am sure he would not take it amiss if I were to call his side of the house the “apartheidsparty” because it would be just as untrue as it would be to call us the integration party. The simple reason for my saying so is this. The Nationalist Party has been in power for 21 years and there is not a single town in South Africa where the Whites are in the majority. In fact, every reply given to us to questions on the Order Paper—and I accept the Ministers’ replies are correct—have shown us that black people have been coming into the White urban areas far faster than they ever did under United Party government. The latest series of replies to questions show that in the last 20 years there has been an increase of approximately 1¼ million Blacks in the White urban areas of South Africa under Nationalist Party government. The hon. member for Pietersburg has said the main purpose of the Nationalist Party’s policy was “om die rasse te skei”—to separate the races.

It is only part of it.

Only part? May I then ask the hon. member what the other part of Nationalist Party policy is? One of the parts of the Nationalist Party’s policy is to separate the races in South Africa he says! Whist he was speaking, I asked the hon. member where this separation was taking place. If we look as the White urban areas of South Africa then we see there are still mixed areas, and this is after 21 years of Nationalist Party rule.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 23 and debate adjourned.