Order! The hon the Chief Whip of the NP has requested me to afford him an opportunity to make a personal explanation. I now call upon him to do so.

Mr Chairman, in the debate in this House yesterday I remarked to the hon member for Overvaal in a moment of rashness that he had a sick mind. You ordered me to withdraw it unconditionally, which I did. Afterwards I was a little wilful and I said no, he is merely sick. I think I was pushing my luck a little too far in regard to the Chair. Consequently I want to apologise humbly for that, and also withdraw it, Mr Chairman.

Mr Chairman, on my part too, in a rash reaction to the rashness of the hon Chief Whip of the NP … [Interjections] … I referred to him as being sick from top to bottom. [Interjections.] I should very much like to withdraw that.

Order! I thank the hon members for their contribution to the maintenance of the good traditions of this House.

Now everyone is well again! [Interjections.]

Order! Yes, now everyone is well again.

Mr Chairman, I agree with the hon member for Pietermaritzburg North when he says that this debate on the envisaged new joint rules is a tragic debate. It is tragic because in terms of the new rules White members of Parliament are being forced to debate amongst Coloured and Indian politicians, also on matters on which we, as Whites, fundamentally disagree with one another. I also agree with the hon member that this is one of the most important debates that we are conducting this year. It is therefore such a pity that other hon members of the governing party pass this debate off as a mindless repetition, as sterile, as useless and as not being as important as the hon member for Pietermaritzburg North regards it.

The lack of enthusiasm amongst hon members on the governing side is proven by the fact that so few of them are participating in the debate. Up to this stage it has happened on two occasions that one CP spokesman has followed directly upon another because the hon members of the NP are shying away from the debate. I would also shy away from this debate if I were they, because these new rules are nothing to get excited or enthusiastic about.

After all, normal conservative Whites of this country cannot feel proud or enthusiastic about Rules 19 and 36, for example. Rule 19 makes it possible for a Coloured or an Indian member of Parliament to act as chairman at joint meetings of the three Houses. The effect of Rule 36 is the same with regard to extended public committees. We shall participate, under strong protest, in proceedings in which serious matters such as defence …

Mr Chairman, may I put a reasonable question to the hon member?

No, I am sorry, Sir, but my time does not allow it.

… law and order, as well as finance, are discussed under the chairmanship of people who do not belong to the White group. In the meantime we shall campaign to win back the freedom of the Whites to govern themselves on their own without the interference of other peoples and without those peoples having to attend or preside over meetings at which we discuss such matters. This we also sincerely wish for our neighbouring peoples. We have no desire to attend or preside over their meetings at which they discuss matters of this nature.

I should like to dwell for a while on what the hon Chief Whip of the majority party had to say yesterday:

Then the hon member for Barberton said, by way of an interjection: “The Blacks also still have to come, not so?” The hon Chief Whip continued:

This hon member is so enthusiastic about the new Rules that he cannot wait for the Blacks to come along as well. Of course, from the NP’s point of view he is quite correct. He is already grooming himself to welcome the Blacks here and to have to change these Rules again.

He says he is not static, and he is right about that too, because when he accepted the principle of power-sharing, he set off along a path of no return, a path which leads from the one logical step to the next, to that of unavoidable Black franchise on the basis of equal citizenship rights, Black members of Parliament, Black members of the Cabinet, a Black State President and a Black Chief Whip and, indeed, a Black majority government. In spite of the guarantees, the assurances, the undertakings and the election promises, the NP will not be able to escape the inevitability of Black majority government for their one new nation with its Black majority.

The hon member is fooling himself if he thinks that he will take these steps from a position of strength or in the interests of our country. He is doing so out of weakness, out of the weakness that stems from surrendering to power-sharing with a Black majority that will never stop asking and demanding and pressing and agitating until Black majority government is a reality. In this way the NP, with its Chief Whip and all, will again and again change the rules of the game under pressure from a large majority of Blacks until they no longer have control over the system, and the last few steps will be carried through by the Black majority itself, whether the NP likes it or not, and in spite of the NP with all its assurances and vague, broken promises to the White voters of this country.

That is why it is so understandable that the vast majority of hon members of the NP are not enthusiastic about this debate or that they do not want to participate in it.

Mr Chairman, I should like to put one question to the hon member for Potgietersrus. I have taken out this booklet in which the particulars of the hon members of the standing committees appear. His party serves on one of the standing committees under the chairmanship of Mr L J Hollander, a member of the House of Representatives. I also notice that the hon member for Witbank, amongst others, serves on that committee. I now want to ask if something has happened to the hon member for Witbank as a result of his serving under that chairman. Why has he never raised an objection? He is at present serving under a Coloured chairman.

The hon member for Potgietersrus says that we on this side of the House are not participating in the debate. We on this side of the House take the level of debate on that side into account. We have decided that we shall only have one NP man taking the floor for every two CP members who speak. We also noticed, when we were debating the Part Appropriation and discussing the economic affairs of the country, that four speakers on this side of the House spoke for each hon member on that side of the House who spoke. [Interjections.] It is simply a fact that it is going to be done in that way.

Every time the hon member for Potgietersrus takes the floor here, he makes me think of that song about the mouse. I can hear him singing the refrain of that right-wing folk-song:

[Interjections.] That is how he carries on until we ask him: “What about regional services councils? What about Coloured and Asian members of Parliament? What about joint debates? ” [Interjections.] That scares the hon member, and he then says: “Fine, excepting for regional services councils, Coloured and Asian members of Parliament and joint debates, there is nothing that scares me.” [Interjections.]

This is typical not only of the hon member for Potgietersrus, but also of that party. This is what we in this country and in this House are up against. [Interjections.] He epitomises those young Afrikaners in that party who fell for the scare-mongering of front-benchers such as the hon members for Ermelo and Brakpan. It is a pity.

When we on this side of the House were as young as he is, there were also Afrikaners who scared us with the “Roomse Gevaar”, the Illuminati, culturally alien elements, the Round Table, Rotary and all those things, but we had the faith and courage to move beyond those things and we learned that they could not be used to scare one. That is why hon members on this side of the House matured and acquired some wisdom in the field of politics. The hon member for Potgietersrus should therefore not listen to the frontbenchers in their ranks. We on this side of the House followed the leaders who were prepared to tell the people where they were going to draw the boundaries—not only the geographic boundaries, but also the boundaries that one has to draw in this way within the Houses. [Interjections.]

When the hon member began his speech yesterday, he referred to the contribution of the hon member for Ermelo as “a speech that left this side of the House dumbstruck”. Those were his words. [Interjections.] I then decided I would first of all ignore him, because I felt that the hon member called every adult he saw “oom”. I noticed that he called everyone around him “oom”.

He does not call me “oom”. [Interjections.]

I said “every adult”! [Interjections.]

I decided that I was not going to react to the hon member, because I would not get any sense into his head, but the more I listened to him, the more I pitied the hon young member. [Interjections.] It was clear to me that he suffered from a political inferiority complex. His way of thinking in political terms is of such an inferior nature that he is afraid of it. This afternoon he repeated how afraid and terror-stricken his party was about participating in joint debates in the House of Parliament. [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: Could the hon member perhaps tell us to what Rule he is now referring?

Order! The hon member for Boksburg may continue.

The hon the Chief Whip of the Official Opposition apparently does not know that I am replying to the speech of his own hon member. [Interjections.]

I have also noticed that the hon member for Potgietersrus is ashamed of the caricature of the Afrikaner that his party has created, and that he is recoiling in fright from every fact of life that is staring him in the face, that is confronting him as a politician.

According to him these Rules will make his party irrelevant in a joint debate. In fact, he repeated this here this afternoon. It is not debating or people’s colour that makes a party irrelevant in this House. It is the number of seats that determines the relevance of a party. According to him their standpoints will be ridiculed in a joint debate.

He also wanted to know if we would protect them there. That is why I feel sorry for the hon member. I only have one piece of advice for him and that is that we on this side of the House test our standpoints against the Scriptures. If this succeeds, it does not matter what people say about it. Let me tell him that one will eventually triumph if one’s standpoints pass that test.

I regard it as my duty to advise the hon member to put his leaders to the test, for example the hon member for Overvaal who states that the CP will sabotage the system. We on this side of the House understand the word “sabotage” to mean that such a person will undermine it and will, in every way, reduce it to a state of chaos. That is what that hon member should ask his leaders, the people whose advice he seeks. I want to ask him to put his policy to the test. The CP states that it will not impose White domination. How will the hon member’s Whips apply these Standing Rules if one jointly has to reach consensus? One either reaches consensus or one tells people they have to do as one tells them to and that is final. That is White domination! If they are not going to impose White domination, how are they going to go about this with these Standing Rules?

One’s behaviour is also taken into account. The hon member’s behaviour in this House makes him irrelevant to us, his fellow Whites. If he is becoming irrelevant as a result of the arguments he puts forward here, he only has himself to blame if he does not make an impression on the other parties in the other Chamber. The hon member must not ask us for protection if he himself belongs to a party that has untenable policies.

I believe the hon member will agree with me that when the hon the Minister of Foreign Affairs spoke to the inhabitants of Australia on television last night, he put this country’s case with wisdom and with faith, something with which even those hon members must agree. This proved … [Interjections.] We shall come to the radical leftists later on. This proved that one has to have standpoints based on faith to put across. Then one does not have to be afraid of how one is going to be dealt with.

Order! I think the hon member is a long way away from the Rules, nearly in Australia by now.

Mr Chairman, as the last spokesman on this side of the House I want to tell hon members that this was an unnecessarily long-drawn-out debate. Because these democratic Standing Rules and Orders allow for it, it was once again exploited by both opposition parties. That is why the hon member said that only they were spokesmen. However, they did not discuss these Standing Rules; they only spoke to fill in the time. That is what it was all about, and the governing party had to endure even these democratic Rules being abused for propaganda purposes. Unfortunately, in the name of freedom of speech we had to look on while certain speakers even made fools of themselves. If one uses these Rules simply to fill in the time and not to put forward concrete standpoints, the rules unmask a party without a policy. That is what has been happening during the past three days, and I shall come to that now.

They used all the time they were allowed and made no concrete suggestions for changes that have to be made. Not one! That is why some parties such as the PFP are just shrinking away, and that is why, at times, there is a temporary growth to be noted in parties such as the CP. These Standing Rules will keep the party on this side of the House governing for a long time to come.

A significant fact during the past three days involved the untruths that were put forward by the front-benchers of the CP. The back-benchers believed the untruths they were told, and the public at large believed them in turn. What they said here about the Standing Rules and Orders was often untrue. The hon members for Losberg, Ermelo and Potgietersrus believe we are letting joint debates in at the back door.

They say we never told the voters about this, and according to them the voters have never been able to pass judgement on this matter. From Hansard I want to quote what Mr Bamford said (Hansard, House of Assembly, 27 August 1986, col 10941):

Later he went on to say:

It would only have been available by October of the following year. However, Mr Jan Hoon, the then member for Kuruman, said later in the same debate, in col 10953:

He went on to say—

He continued by quoting from the report as follows:

The hon Leader of the House, the Minister of National Education, said in col 10954: “Just don’t cry.” Mr Jan Hoon replied by saying:

This means that the then member for Kuruman, who is no longer with us and who lost his seat in the election, spoke about this in 1986, but yesterday the hon members took the floor here and said that we did not put this to the test with the voters.

I now want to ask them what it was that we did on 7 May. Why is the then hon member for Kuruman not here, and why is the hon the Leader of the House here?

Tell us what you did on 6 May! [Interjections.]

One can continue in this vein. However, I have been given an indication that my time has virtually expired. [Interjections.] Fortunately I still have about a minute; I can therefore still say a few words to the hon members of the CP. [Interjections.]

They referred to the “draconian powers” that have now been allotted to the Chief Whip of Parliament. These were objections also raised by the PFP. When we discussed the Constitution, we heard the same arguments with regard to the powers of the State President. I now want to ask what has since been proved in practice with regard to the hon the State President’s “draconian powers”? That party is now going around outside this Chamber telling people that Rev Hendrickse is governing the country. That makes me ask what has become of those “draconian powers” of the State President? The hon member Prof Olivier said the same about the powers of Mr Speaker. The PFP also said Mr Speaker was now being given too much power. I want to ask them whether, in the time that they have been in Parliament, there has been a more impartial Speaker than Speaker Greeff. Have they been dealt with less fairly by Speaker Le Grange? They cannot say that. If the hon member for Lichtenburg says that …

Order! I do not think it is appropriate for Mr Speaker to be praised or otherwise. I think we should leave this out of the debate.

I accept your ruling, Mr Chairman. However, if I may address you on this, I just want to say that I am reacting to arguments that came from that side of the House.

You are missing the point.

The other two Houses have already adopted this report. They have already accepted that Mr Speaker and the Chief Whip of Parliament do not have extraordinary powers. On behalf of this side of the House I therefore want to say that we take pleasure in supporting this report.

Mr Chairman, I listened to the hon member for Brakpan …

Boksburg.

I apologise; I must not make such a radical mistake as far as my colleague, the hon member for Brakpan, is concerned.

The attitude of this hon member of the NP was worthy of note. It is also an attitude that is fairly general nowadays among NP speakers. It bears witness to the attitude of a party that has become so complacent and self-righteous that, figuratively speaking, it will sit down and polish its shoes, comb its hair and care for its fingernails while its people are being swallowed up in the open democracy with which Chief Gatsha Buthelezi says he is going to punish us. I do not wish to say anything more about this because I really do not think the speech of that hon member merits any further reaction.

I want to refer to what has been said by certain other speakers on the Government side during this debate on the Standing Rules and Orders. I want to refer, in the first instance, to what the hon member for Pietermaritzburg North had to say. He referred to the fact that simultaneous public debates can now take place on various subjects, inter alia in the provinces.

The hon member for Ermelo has already pointed out that we are all entitled to hear all the arguments in regard to all matters that are discussed in Parliament. I want to say respectfully, however, that it goes further than that.

I submit that each of us sitting here in this House has a duty towards the electorate to be present in this House as often as we can to enable us to hear what is said in the debates and so that we can be au fait, not only with the arguments and counterarguments of the day, but also with the legislation and the matters which, inter alia, also affect the provinces. This is necessary so that we can answer to our voters.

It is not desirable that this House should now be split up in order to sit at various places. In this way hon members are deprived of their right and duty towards their voters. It must therefore not be supported.

The hon member for Pietermaritzburg North raised a further point. He contended that the pressure on members of Parliament over the past few years had increased and that time must be used more productively. He also said that this fact was not appreciated.

The logical question to this then is why the NP is abolishing provincial councils. Why has the NP now had to remove that corps of people who have gained experience over the years and done good work? They are now bemoaning their fate in this House in regard to something that is of their own making. To us that is completely illogical; one cannot try to rectify the mistake the NP made by splitting up this House.

The hon member for Pietermaritzburg North referred to the fact that the quorum requirement in regard to standing committees and the Houses is being done away with. He said that it was a good thing; he referred to the USA and the German Parliament. I think he was referring to the USA when he said that at one stage there were only two persons present in a particular House.

This is something else that strikes one about the present-day Government. On the one hand it says we must reform; we must come to light in South Africa with innovations and unique ideas. We must stand on our own two feet. However, as soon as they shy away from the traditionally acknowledged and good arrangements which this House made in the past, their motivation for so doing lies in what is happening overseas. This is now becoming a refrain. This appears to be—the hon member for Boksburg also referred to it—a political inferiority complex. Does this not also reflect upon us as hon members? Does it not mean that if we were to associate ourselves with a point of view of this nature it would appear as though we had a political inferiority complex; that we really could not work out anything for ourselves?

I want to come now to the speech of the hon member for Mossel Bay. In the first place, he referred to what the hon member for Sea Point had said. I quote him as follows:

He is clearly referring to the drawing up of, and debate on, the Standing Rules and Orders. He goes on to say:

The logical question to this hon member’s remark is: Why then this feverish haste and rush with the drawing up and debating of the Standing Rules and Orders? If there is no rush and if we have already inaugurated the Great Hall, and the hon the State President did not want his Vote to be discussed there, why then this terrible haste?

Precisely!

In his speech the hon member went on to say:

I refer specifically to this terminology because the hon member places great emphasis on the fact that there is a difference between joint sittings and joint meetings.

When one looks at the constitutional amendments proposed to be effected to section 67 of the existing text of the Constitution—this is also the text on which the referendum in 1983 was based—one can already start making one’s own calculations. One can already start putting two and two together in regard to why provision is now being made for so-called joint meetings, in contrast to the joint sittings for which the 1983 text of the Constitution made provision. Section 67(5) of the original text of 1983 provides:

We already know the NP’s strategy—joint meetings are now being added to the 1983 text. The NP will therefore tell its voters that it has taken nothing away from what it promised those voters in 1983, but that it was creating a new structure and that that was progress. They will say they are creating something new. Through the medium of the Standing Rules and Orders they are retaining the status quo for the moment in the sense that joint decisions cannot be taken at these joint meetings. However, that will be the next step. One does not need to be a prophet to predict that that will be the next step the NP will take. Then they will tell the voters: We have taken nothing away from the Constitution of 1983; we have only innovated, added to and extended the Constitution of 1983.

I also want to refer to something else the hon member for Mossel Bay had to say, and I quote:

I want to repeat that the hon member stated that it was “totally irrelevant”—

Just a few lines further on in his unrevised Hansard, however, I read that the hon member had this to say:

What an absolutely comical confusion exists on the part of this hon member! On the one hand he says that the hon member for Sea Point is wrong because own and general affairs are not at issue in that the Constitution makes provision for that. On the other hand, he says it is unavoidable that the Standing Rules and Orders of Parliament must give effect to these decisions, thereby actually demolishing his own argument. What is important, in his own words, is that if these rules are to give effect to the concept of own and general affairs in the Constitution, they have now to be debated.

The hon member also referred to the question of deferred voting. I should like to quote what he had to say in this regard:

I emphasise the words “to our advantage”.

I want to suggest that instead of using the words “to our advantage”, the hon member should rather have used the words “the advantage of the NP coalition government”. What is happening in practice at the moment? On 30 March 1988 the hon member for Mossel Bay spelt out this specific problem in the Standing Committee on Constitutional Affairs in this House, as well as how the NP was, at present, using the standing committee system to suit itself. I quote from his unrevised Hansard of that date:

He went on to say:

That is what the NP does in the standing committees, and we foresee that that is also what it is going to do in this system of joint debating. As soon as they cannot get their way and the other Houses do not summarily agree with the points raised by the Government, they will simply defer the vote. We predict that they are going to defer the vote, and when next we open our eyes and come back for the vote or to hear what the result was, we are going to be told that the other Houses have suddenly agreed after the NP had negotiated with those other Houses behind the scenes away from the public eye. The public and the electorate will not know the conditions of that negotiation and what it has cost the Government to win the support of the other groups.

The hon member went on to refer very deprecatingly to the old Westminster system. It is very striking, as I said just now, that on the one hand the hon member refers with approval to the fact that one should take what is good from other systems, but on the other hand does not have a good word to say about the Westminster system which applied in South Africa before the present system. He talks about the “rut of the old Westminster system” and “the old imperialist Westminster system”. That is the typical idiom of the NP. They besmirch everything that was and say it is bad so that they can create the impression that what they have now brought into being, no matter how bad it may be, is in any event better than the terrible system that we had.

On 25 April 1988 the hon member for Mossel Bay referred to a quotation which the hon member for Brakpan made from the Cape Times. He said:

He went on to say:

We have news for the hon member. Of course the hon member for Brakpan can say that. He and I and all of us in the Official Opposition are completely and utterly opposed to joint sittings and so-called joint meetings. We predicted throughout that the NP would, in due course, introduce joint debating, and we have been proved right. We now predict that the NP is going to introduce joint voting, unless it is replaced by a CP government. The hon member for Mossel Bay should not talk so lightly about honesty. He should rather ask whether the NP really believes that the voters still believe one single word that that party tells them.

The hon member for Mossel Bay said that he added, at the time, that this did not necessarily mean that joint debating would flow from these joint sittings. He also said:

I note that my time has unfortunately expired.

Mr Chairman, the hon member for Roodepoort did not have a speech; all that he did here today was to reply to remarks of other speakers who previously participated in the debate. [Interjections.] He will therefore pardon me if I do not reply directly to him, although in the course of my speech I shall come back to some of the points he raised in his speech.

I was not a member of the committee that framed this report; therefore I do not consider myself to be an expert or a person who can speak with great authority on the subject under discussion, but as a Whip on this side of the House I have pleasure in participating in the debate, even if it is only to make a few general remarks in regard to this matter.

In the first place I want to say that since the day before yesterday when this debate began, I have listened to every speech by opposition members—the day before yesterday, yesterday and today—and have come to the conclusion that thus far the opposition has not made use of the opportunity to come to light with any new points of view. Hon members on this side of the House have already drawn attention to the fact that this is the third occasion on which the Standing Rules and Orders are being debated in this House, and those who have also followed the previous debates will immediately have realised that all the arguments that were used then were repeated here the day before yesterday, yesterday and today. Hardly anything new has come to light.

What has the Official Opposition actually told us? I think I am summing up the position correctly when I say that we have had to hear, ad nauseam, how this Government, with the reforms that it is introducing, has left the White man in the lurch …

Hear, hear!

… and has sold him out, and then hon members opposite quite conveniently forget that in actual fact the Government had a strong mandate to carry out these reforms. They need only look at the distribution of hon members in this House. They need not look any further.

That is a temporary situation!

And Randfontein? [Interjections.]

That hon member has referred to the by-elections in which they achieved limited success …

Wonderful success! Fantastic success!

… and in which the Government received set-backs. Well, Sir, the Government has experienced set-backs of that nature before.

Not this serious!

Not this serious!

Mr Chairman, allow me to refresh that hon member’s memory. I remember that there were also a number of by-elections in the years 1970-71 …

Then you were still a good NP!

… and I think it was in the constituency of the hon the Chief Whip of the Official Opposition, Brakpan, where the then Official Opposition, the United Party, were full of themselves and went back from there to Oudtshoorn with their tails up. At the time they were relying on the fact that the then HNP would draw votes away from the NP to such an extent that they would take Oudtshoorn. What happened? The Government gained one of its finest victories—I think it was in 1972 …

In Helderberg?

In Oudtshoorn.

I did not run away like the hon member for Overvaal!

[Inaudible.]

As far as the Standing Rules and Orders are concerned, the CP is specifically opposed to three measures. The first one involves the fact that the traditional no-confidence debate will be replaced by a debate on the State President’s Opening Address. Secondly, they are opposed to joint sittings, joint meetings and also joint debates. They are opposed to those in principle. Thirdly, they are opposed to the provision that there is no quorum requirement for a specific House during a joint sitting or meeting. Is it not striking that those hon members opposite, practically without exception and with great conviction, then predict the next step, namely joint decision-making. [Interjections.] The hon member for Roodepoort has just done so again. [Interjections.] He predicts that that will be the next step, knowing full well that that is not the policy of the Government, because by doing so one would be affecting the whole basis and essence of the new dispensation.

Indeed, that is how we have come to know the CP—masters of the art of suspicion-mongering! [Interjections.] When I opened Die Burger this morning and read Dawie’s column, I came upon a wonderful piece of work. I suggest that those hon members would do well to read Dawie’s column in this morning’s issue of Die Burger.

Yes, go and read everything he has to say!

In Die Burger of this morning Dawie gives a clinical analysis of the methods adopted by the CP to sow suspicion among the electorate and cause a distorted picture to be bruited abroad.

What Dawie? Dawie de Villiers? [Interjections.]

I want to congratulate Dawie on his column of this morning. [Interjections.]

Order! No, hon members must give the hon member a fair chance to make his speech.

On the other hand again the PFP, true to its nature, tells us that we are not going far enough. Without mincing matters, it states that it is in favour of joint decisionmaking. However, we know what those hon members want. After all, it is no secret. They want a system of one man, one vote in a unitary state, something that must of necessity result in Black majority government in this country.

Perhaps the best proof that the Government is on the right path lies in the fact that the CP says we are going too far while the PFP in their turn says we are not going far enough. After all, both of them cannot be right at the same time.

What are we actually doing here today; we are amending the Standing Rules and Orders. By this time it should be clear to every hon member in this House that there is room for improvement. We must not forget that with the coming into operation of the tricameral system we started out on a completely new path and so new rules had to be laid down. I do not think there is one hon member who will dispute it when I say that we had first to move some distance along that road in order to ascertain where improvements could be effected. Those improvements therefore spring from the experience that we have gained since the system came into operation.

What is more, Mr Speaker, the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament and a senior officer of Parliament went overseas to see how things were done there. The hon member for Roodepoort has just referred deprecatingly to that fact—almost as though it were a sin to make use of anything good from abroad. I want to tell the hon member for Roodepoort that there is much that is good that we can still learn from other governments and other democracies and introduce here most successfully.

In pursuance of what Mr Speaker, the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament and a senior officer of Parliament saw abroad, they returned to make valuable contributions here.

Allow me to refer very briefly to some of the most important amendments. In the first place there is the principle of joint discussion and deliberation. As has already been pointed out inter alia by the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament, this is no new principle. It has been in the Constitution of 1983 from the start. We are not amending the Constitution. When the present Constitution was adopted, it already contained a provision that the members of the three Houses could not only meet jointly but also debate jointly—naturally, in the standing committees. The only difference is that the public are excluded from standing committee meetings, although they can be present at joint sittings. Therefore, what has up to now taken place in private, can henceforth take place in public.

I can well understand that there should be a flutter in the dovecote as far as the opposition is concerned, because anything that an hon member says in a debate he has also to answer for outside. The time is also past when the PFP could act in debates as the mouthpiece for other population groups, and more specifically the Coloureds and the Indians. At a joint meeting the Coloureds and the Indians will henceforth be able to speak for themselves.

A second important and also interesting change in the Rules is that the Opening Address of the State President will now be discussed instead of the traditional no-confidence debate. The hon member for Brakpan is now bewailing the fact that they have been deprived of an opportunity to debate as wide a range of subjects as in the no-confidence debate. That is not true. After all, the hon member can launch an attack on the basis that the hon the State President has neglected to raise a specific matter. I should like to draw the attention of the hon member to the fact that because there is no specific motion before the House as far as the Opening Address is concerned, the scope of the debate is very wide indeed.

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

No, Sir. unfortunately my time is extremely limited. I have been told to be very brief. [Interjections.]

The fact remains that because there is no specific subject before the House, the debate is wide open, as wide open as it can be. In actual fact any matter at all can be raised in the course of such a debate.

What is more, the no-confidence debate is, after all, not the only debate in which matters can be raised. There are many other debates that can be utilised for this purpose. The hon the Chief Whip on this side, the hon member for Kimberley South, spelt this fact out yesterday for hon members. There are the various budget debates, there are also the discussions on the various Votes in which subjects can be raised and, moreover, hon members still have the right to place a particular motion on the Order Paper. This right is not being removed.

It would also be a good thing if the lamentations from the benches opposite in regard to the convention that is now disappearing would cease. I can well understand that people want to hang on to what they know—it is probably only human to feel this way—but have we then not all agreed that if we wanted to solve the problems of this country we would have to move away from Westminster? Have we not already made great strides? Have we not already moved a long way from Westminster?

In this connection I think of the conflict potential or the confrontational style of debating and the moving away from the “winner take all” idea of the old dispensation. [Interjections.]

Hon members opposite also objected to the fact that a joint meeting could proceed even though the members of a particular House had not turned up. There is nothing sinister in this arrangement. The answer is quite simple. This Rule was included to prevent the business of the joint meeting from being brought to a halt in specific circumstances, for example if one of the Houses were perhaps to decide to adjourn for a week or more and its members then went home. A joint meeting that has already been convened could then proceed without them.

What is important in this connection is that the democratic right of members or parties is not violated. That is what is important. I say this because a decision cannot be taken then and there. When a decision is taken, a quorum has to be present.

When studying the Rules one realises more and more that we are actually dealing here with an excellent piece of work. These Rules make provision for literally every eventuality imaginable, but what is so nice about them is that they are so easy to understand—even hon members opposite ought to be able to understand them.

I want to conclude with two quotations. Firstly, I want to quote the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament who, on one occasion, expressed himself as follows in regard to the subject of joint debate:

I want to make use of this opportunity to congratulate the hon the Chief Whip, and the committee which drew up the report, on an excellent piece of work. I also want to congratulate them on the way in which they have avoided the pitfalls.

This report also made me think of what Mr Richard Coombs, the newly appointed head of Markinor’s business research division had to say on one occasion, namely:

I have pleasure in supporting the adoption of the report.

Mr Chairman, in opposing the proposed new rules—and I shall come back to discussing my reasons for so doing—I should like first of all to react to certain comments made from the other side of the House. I should like to refer very briefly to what was said by the hon member for Boksburg because he did not make much of a contribution here today. I want to tell him that it is not only the young Afrikaner who feels the way the hon member for Potgietersrus does.

I have just returned from a visit to the Eastern Cape where I visited Maclear, East London and Jeffreys Bay. I found that the English-speaking community in the Eastern Cape have finally got wise to the stance of the NP and are moving over to the CP to a considerable degree. [Interjections.] If those hon members opposite make a noise, it merely confirms exactly how out of touch they are with their own voters. [Interjections.] Let me tell them why.

The hon member for Aliwal is under the impression that he has a safe constituency but I want to tell him, as he knows, that Maclear falls into his constituency.

Order! That is not the subject we are debating. We are discussing the proposed new rules and the hon member must come back to that subject.

Mr Chairman, I am merely reacting to the speech of the hon member for Boksburg.

Order! Be that as it may, at the moment we are not discussing the way in which the voters of Maclear are going to vote. I request the hon member to come back now to the subject under discussion. [Interjections.]

Well, Mr Chairman, all I can say is …

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: The hon member who has just spoken devoted a fair portion of his speech to a discussion of how the hon member for Brakpan won an election in 1971 and how the NP suffered set-backs. He took quite a firm stand in that regard. I respectfully suggest that all that the hon member Comdt Derby-Lewis is doing is to reply in the same vein to the standpoints adopted by that hon member in order to refute them; otherwise it would appear from the Hansard record that we did not refute them. I ask you, Sir, in all fairness …

Order! I do not quite understand what the hon member for Overvaal means. To what aspect discussed by the hon member is he now referring?

Mr Chairman, the hon member Mr Kritzinger argued that the NP had only suffered a temporary set-back on the occasion of the recent by-elections, and that the CP had not derived any particular advantage in that regard. His attitude was that this was similar to a so-called set-back which the NP had suffered in the early seventies, and he elaborated on that fact. He even used the hon member for Brakpan as an example.

Order! If I remember correctly, that was in reply to an interjection on the part of the Official Opposition.

That is correct!

I was provoked.

Mr Chairman, he was in fact provoked, but it is recorded in Hansard. I respectfully submit that all that the hon member Comdt Derby-Lewis is doing is simply replying to him and putting our standpoint in that regard.

Order! I understand the hon Whip’s argument. I do not think that he is any wiser than I am in regard to the speech of the hon member Comdt Derby-Lewis because neither of us is a mind-reader. I therefore request the hon member to come back to the Rules as soon as possible.

Thank you very much, Mr Chairman. Once again I just briefly want to refer to the hon member Mr Kritzinger and his remarks in regard to the previous setbacks of the NP.

†I would like to ask him how many times in the past the NP has lost Cabinet Ministers and Deputy Ministers. How many times has one of their provincial leaders won by 39 votes? [Interjections.]

In concluding my remarks on that point, I would like to say that those times were different. The hon members on that side of the House were then fighting the left. Today they are the left and they are fighting the right. All eyes are turned right because all the voters are going right. [Interjections.]

I agree with the accusations of the hon member for Roodepoort regarding the haste with which this matter is being bulldozed through Parliament. We had a situation at the beginning of the present term of office of this House when great doubt existed as to whether this House, as constituted after 6 May 1987, was competent to complete the outstanding business of the previous House, or whether we should, in fact, go back to the initial stages of the various Bills which had not been finalised. This problem has not been addressed in the proposed new rules before us today.

I would also like to react to the speech of the hon member for Berea, who referred to the situation regarding provincial committees. His complaint was, quite correctly, that they follow a rubberstamp procedure, and that their meetings have become question-and-answer sessions. My experience is that there is even insufficient opportunity allowed for the asking of questions. I do not know whether the new system is going to make any difference. Although, in terms of one of the new rules, public debate will be allowed in which the Administrator and other members of the Executive Committee may participate but may not vote, this has already been happening in the standing committee responsible for Natal. The debates have, in fact, taken place in public, but unfortunately in Cape Town rather than in Natal, where they should be heard.

I wish also to refer to Rule 49(1) which deals with the constitution of a disciplinary committee.

If one takes the House in its present sense, one has a situation where the committee consisting of the hon Chairman of the House and the hon Chief Whips will have to investigate and advise Mr Speaker on infringements by members which have been reported to it. I think this places an unfair burden on those hon members because they are members of the ruling party and it must be very difficult for them to have to act in a situation like this.

I also want to talk on the question of Parliament convening sittings in different places. The hon the Chief Whip of Parliament told hon members that we can possibly—he does not say we will—sit in Natal for two days in May. I assume it will happen and hon members should take note. I agree with the fact that we should be sitting there. I cannot see why we cannot always sit in Natal as members of the standing committee dealing with the affairs of Natal, and I believe the same should apply as far as the other provinces are concerned.

As far as the hon member for Musgrave is concerned …[Interjections.] …for Berea, sorry. Hon members will excuse me, but the PFP is so irrelevant in politics that it is quite difficult to remember who they are anyway!. [Interjections.] The hon member for Berea says the Asians, Whites and Coloureds will debate matters of provincial concern, including many matters relating to the Black people, but the Blacks themselves will not be present. He need not be concerned. It is only a matter of time before hon members on that side of the House will devise a scheme whereby they will involve the Joint Executive Authority, which is dominated by Blacks. They will involve them in some way in the standing committee or in the form of a provincial council; then they will be including Blacks and Blacks will be able to discuss their own affairs.

On Monday the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament said, and I quote:

*Further on he says:

In support of this, he also says the following:

I can accept that. If one did not understand the language, the content of the speech could impress one very easily! [Interjections.]

†These rules and procedures we are facing support an increasing dictatorship the likes of which have not been seen in this country since Shaka Zulu. These joint sittings will lead to further confusion amongst the electorate, who will have great difficulty in deciding who represents their House and which party is in the Official Opposition. I can understand why the governing party encourages a system such as this. It makes their job a lot easier. The confusion will certainly assist them.

I can see joint sittings—the principle of this report—leading to a far more serious degree of interracial tension, or inter-House tension, than has ever existed in the Republic of South Africa. This is bound to stem from the contributions made by that side of the House. I am thinking of the speeches delivered by the hon member for Turffontein as one example. Hon members on that side of the House, instead of attacking the CP on policy matters, restrict themselves to personal accusations, allegations and comments. [Interjections.]

I think these personal attacks are going to cause a lot of friction. Can you imagine, Sir, the effect of the speeches of those hon members on the hon members of the other Houses? Can you imagine what the hon members of the Houses of Delegates and Representatives would have said about the speech by the hon the State President on Friday when he attacked the hon member for Overvaal and referred to his physical attributes in a derogatory manner? Imagine Sir, if we on this side of the House were to refer to the opulent corpulence of the hon the State President.

Those hon members would be hysterical. The hon members of the other Houses will rightly be shocked at the low level of debate in this House.

I would therefore like to close my opposition to these proposed new rules by appealing to those hon members to try to act more responsibly in the future so that we may get on with the business of governing this country on a party-political basis.

Mr Chairman, in an effort to link the CP with the ANC and, in the process, to belittle us, an hon member opposite said yesterday that the CP and the ANC wanted to bring about the downfall of this Government. I want to tell that hon member that the NP and the ANC will already have been cut to pieces and he will still not have succeeded in sowing suspicion among the electorate of South Africa by mentioning the ANC and the CP in the same breath. I also want to tell that hon member that the CP will not permit the ANC to cause the downfall of this Government. The CP is too much of a South African-oriented party to allow that. The CP will, of its own volition and also far more quickly than the ANC, bring about the downfall of this NP Government. [Interjections.]

Before proceeding to more general matters I should like to refer to certain aspects of the Rules. I want to refer particularly to a Rule which has been referred to, but not in the context in which I wish to deal with it. This deals with the asking of questions and the raising of points of order. As is the case at the moment, when an hon member of whatever party raises a point of order while another hon member is speaking, or rises to put a question to the hon member while that hon member is speaking, the time taken up by so doing is deducted from the time of the member who is speaking. I want to suggest that very serious consideration be given to deducting that time from the time of the hon member who raised the point of order, from the time of the hon member who put the question, or of that member’s party. I think this would result in more sensible points of order being raised and more intelligent questions being asked. As things are at the moment, on many occasions questions are asked and points or order are raised simply to be funny or for their nuisance value.

I think we can go further. I think this would prevent questions sometimes being asked or points of order raised which are actually a reflection on the Chair. Points of order are often raised which, in effect, boil down to the fact that Mr Speaker or the presiding officer is not maintaining proper order. This is not done in such a way that the presiding officer can say that it is a reflection upon him; it is done by insinuation. If a penalty or warning provision were included in the point of order, and the time were debited to the hon member who raised the point of order, I think this would result in more sensible debating.

The hon the Chief Whip of Parliament said yesterday that we were arguing from a presumption that Parliament is there primarily for the opposition, and that the Rules were there to serve the opposition. That is nonsense. That is not our presumption at all. However, Parliament is there as an institution for the sake of democracy, and in that institution for the sake of democracy it just so happens that the Official Opposition has a very important role to play.

[Inaudible.]

Yes, the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament does not disagree with that. I do not disagree with him in that regard either.

I am telling him that that is the position. The single aim of these Rules, for which he is responsible and for which he as well as others have been praised, is to smother the voice of the opposition parties in the South African Parliament to the maximum; to make that voice as inaudible as possible. I do not have time to elaborate on this, but I do want to mention one example.

We have asked—the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament, however, has not as yet replied—how the order of speakers in that Chamber was to be arranged. The hon the Chief Whip of Parliament illustrated this by means of a circle.

Yes, he has all the powers!

I still want to know who the first speaker is going to be in a debate in a joint meeting, or who is going to speak after an hon Minister has made his introductory Second Reading speech. How are those things going to be arranged?

Mr Chairman, may I reply to the hon member on that?

I do not have the time. The hon the Leader of the House can reply on behalf of the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament.

I am now asking the Government, the hon the Leader of the House, in what order the members of the Government, the Official Opposition and the other opposition parties in the House of Assembly are going to speak in that Chamber. How is the time allocation going to be applied to them? The same holds good for the House of Representatives and the House of Delegates. We want to know.

I want to say that the whole idea of this plan is to enable the Government and its coalition allies in the other Houses to swamp the Official Opposition and to prevent them from allowing their voice to be heard properly. A good opposition party is a watchdog—a watchdog in respect of the interests of the people; a watchdog over the Constitution.

This debate ought to be a very important one for the Government because it ought to be a milestone in its reform politics, particularly because after two unsuccessful attempts it is now eventually going to succeed in having these Rules adopted by Parliament and getting the joint sittings going. That is why one would have expected sensible, worthy and considered debate from them the day before yesterday, yesterday and today, and why one would have expected hon members on that side to have shown sufficient interest to keep those benches opposite full. However, what did we find? There was intense frustration on the part of the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament as well as accusations against us of wasting time and resorting to delaying tactics. This was accompanied by a large-scale stay-away by hon members of the governing party or non-participation by those hon members; to say nothing of their lack of interest.

I want to dwell on some of the accusations made against us. I think that in those accusations there was an arrogance on the part of the hon the Chief Whip of the NP as well as his other Whips, and particularly the hon member for Sunnyside. They accused us of wasting time. The hon member for Sunnyside—I am not talking to the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament; I am talking to the hon the Chief Whip of the NP—said yesterday that if we agreed, we would not have taken hours to say so but would have had our say and finished. I want to ask the hon the Chief Whip of the NP whether he has not tested that Whip of his to see whether or not he was steeped in the conventions of Parliament before he was selected as Whip, or whether he did not tell him about them later. Does the hon member for Sunnyside not know that Government and opposition members have, on innumerable occasions, been asked to talk for the sake of filling in time because there was no Government work?

When last did that happen?

It makes no difference when it happened; it happens every year in every session.

That Whip, the hon member for Sunnyside, is apparently a stranger in Jerusalem. He says now that we are wasting time, but I have the provisional roster for this week’s debates here, and on Monday, 25 April, Tuesday, 26 April and Wednesday, 27 April time has been allocated for the discussion of the report on the Standing Rules and Orders. That, then, is three days.

Finish reading the business for Wednesday!

Next to Wednesday afternoon there is “Motion: Constitution Amendment”. That was going to come later. However, it was set down for Wednesday. If the Official Opposition had not conducted these debates as they have in fact conducted them, I ask what would have become of this debate which is so important to the Government. It would, however, appear to me as though the hon the Chief Whip of the NP wanted to finish yesterday so that he could “tjaila” today. That is what I think he wanted to do. He does not want to work any longer. He has become a Third-Worldling. The sooner he can finish and the quicker he can steamroller something through Parliament, the better. That is the mentality displayed by the hon the Chief Whip.

Because, as the governing party, they have the majority and can therefore succeed in respect of every measure that is placed before this Parliament, the hon the Chief Whip of the NP must tell us whether he wants the opposition to be silent. Must the opposition be silent in debates? He was annoyed with us because we participated in the debate. He said we were wasting time. Is the hon the Chief Whip trying to tell us that we must be quiet and just submit to the Government in respect of every piece of legislation, including its budget debates, its “state of the nation” debates which are going to take place with effect from next year, its Vote discussions and so forth? We are told that we are wasting time when we debate an aspect which is of the utmost importance to us as the Official Opposition and as the CP because we make no secret of the fact that we are opposed to the Government’s reform system and its policy, of which these Rules are a part.

Hear, hear!

The hon the Chief Whip wishes to deprive us of our voice. He is annoyed with us and is arrogant in the process. Does he expect the Official Opposition to be there simply as part of the decor in order to give the spectator public an impression of parliamentary honesty? That is what I accuse him of. Knowing him as one does, one expects that that is probably what he would want. I just want to say that if that is his mentality—in the light of his remarks it would appear to me that that is, in fact, the case—he really does not know the CP yet. I want to ask him whether he remembers the photo of the previous generation of NP MPs on the steps of the Senate. I think that was after the election of a Prime Minister. That photo appeared on the front pages of newspapers, and in one English-language newspaper the caption was: “Do you want to fight these men?” I now want to tell the hon Chief Whip that the men sitting on this side are the political heirs of those men in respect of whom that caption in an English-language newspaper appeared stating:“Do you want to fight these men?” [Interjections.] I do not say this in the aggressive sense of the word. I simply say it in the sense that within the scope of our Rules and our rights we shall allow our voice to be heard, we shall do our work—but we certainly will stand by our rights. I do not think there is a team that is as well aware of its rights and obligations, as members of this Parliament, as we are. We will make use of this forum to halt this Government on its mad course, but we will also make use of this forum to monitor the Government in respect of its administration and spending and the proposals that it makes to the electorate of South Africa.

Thirdly, we will also make optimum use of this forum to put our own standpoint and our case. This will be done fearlessly and in a well-reasoned, authoritative and convincing fashion, notwithstanding what hon members opposite have to say.

Let them have it, Thomas! [Interjections.]

Each one of the few NP speakers who spoke stated that the CP was wasting time. Has there ever been more time and money wasted in the history of this Parliament than in regard to the abortive session we had in 1986? [Interjections.] I was shocked at the speech of the hon member for Kimberley South.

The hon member Prof Olivier said Parliament should sit throughout the year. Why should Parliament sit throughout the year? With good planning and discipline Parliament can conclude its business towards the end of May or at the beginning of June every year. The Cabinet can then return to Pretoria, where they ought to be in order to administer and govern the country. However, one gains the impression that the Government is avoiding Pretoria, that it is afraid of Pretoria and does not feel at home there. I do not know whether the hon leader of the NP in the Transvaal cannot find them there but there are officials in Acacia Park whose wives were last in their homes in Pretoria two years ago. That must not happen. Pretoria is the administrative capital of this country, and the country must be governed from there. Cape Town is the place where laws have to be made, and we have been kept here for three years in a row now. And there are even rumblings to the effect that that is what is going to happen again this year. I think the hon leader of the NP in the Transvaal must call his colleagues to order and tell them that Pretoria is where they should actually be. If they do not feel at home there he should tell them to resign from the Government.

I think the speech of the hon member for Boksburg was the most unfortunate speech in this entire debate, but that tirade of his requires very little comment. According to the hon member’s argument, there is no longer any justification for the Government’s tricameral system and the exclusion of Blacks from this dispensation. His argument boils down to the fact that there ought to be only one joint place where everyone will have a seat and can participate, and that ethnicity no longer makes any difference at all. I think his hon leader should address him on that point and correct him.

While one of my colleagues was speaking yesterday, saying that it was stated in this blue booklet that there would only be joint sittings for ceremonial purposes, an hon member on the other side shouted out: “That was five years ago!” I want to know now whether the NP Government’s word only holds good for five years. If I have to give the electorate of South Africa an answer in that regard I would say that I think that sometimes the NP’s word does not even hold good for more than one year.

There was a great deal of truth in the attitude of the hon member who said: “That was five years ago!” We believe that that boils down to the fact that in five years’ time we are not only going to be debating jointly, but also deciding jointly. Under the direction of Huntington, the NP is bringing into being a totally integrated parliamentary system in South Africa. I believe it would be a good thing to have recorded in Hansard every year what is written in that well-known article on page 16 in Politikon of December 1981. He said this:

I think that when we look back over the five years—the five years mentioned by that interjector yesterday—we will see that it has been a five-year period of the “employment of ambiguity, concealment and deception.” What we are experiencing in this country is following absolutely what Huntington advised should happen. For example, he also said—and I quote again from the same issue of Politikon.

I just want to repeat the words: “The proposed reform is drafted in relative secrecy.”

We on this side wonder to what extent last week’s announcement by the hon the State President—which he later called suggestions—was drawn up “in relative secrecy”, and to what extent he informed his colleagues in the Cabinet and his caucus in advance about what he was going to say in this House regarding further development. We would like to hear what the hon the Leader of the House has to say in this regard.

Mr Chairman, before reacting to each hon member separately—I should like to begin with the hon member for Soutpansberg because hon members have just been listening to him—I should like to express my sincere thanks to hon members on this side. The hon member for Soutpansberg tried to create the impression that we had not really taken part in the debate. I think the CP had 10 speakers. We had seven. Why does he disparage the participation of seven speakers on this side, as if we do not wish to debate this matter? [Interjections.] I want to convey my sincere thanks to each of these seven speakers—the hon member for Mossel Bay, the hon Chief Whip of Parliament, the hon member for Sunnyside, the hon member for Kimberley South, the hon members for Pietermaritzburg North and Boksburg and the hon member Mr Kritzinger. Each of them made positive contributions and considerably facilitated my task, and I should like to express my heartfelt thanks to them.

Sir, I think it is appropriate that I should once again, as when we debated this same set of rules in full last year—with a few differences—pay tribute to the hon Chief Whip of Parliament for the gigantic task he has performed in drawing up these rules, researching them, formulating them, conducting negotiations on their acceptance and streamlining the tricameral system which made heavy organisational and procedural demands on all who participated. We should like to say to him today that we think he made an outstanding job of it, and we commend him for it.

I should also like to pay tribute to and thank the officials of Parliament for the very hard work they have done in this regard; not only those who sit at the Table, but also Mr Fölscher, the law adviser. Without them we would probably still have been sitting arguing on the standing committee. Often they came to light with solutions.

Before I proceed to react to the debate itself I should also like to associate myself with the congratulations conveyed to the hon member for Randfontein, who made his maiden speech in this debate. It was a special occasion for him, particularly in view of his father’s history in the same constituency and in this House. In politics we fight hard, and that goes for Parliament as well. Nevertheless, there is always room for collegiality in this House—although this is difficult to discern from a speech by the hon member for Soutpansberg—room for the recognition of a special feeling towards an hon colleague. We who also used to work with his father were, like him, moved when he rose to speak here yesterday. He made an interesting speech which, to a very large extent, reflects our view of Africa and the place of the White person in Africa too. We shall in future remind him of that speech when we assess the policy of the CP and its ability to open doors to Africa. We sincerely congratulate him on a very good maiden speech.

Against the background of a debate in which I think three to four speakers mentioned how venomously personal are the attacks made by us on this side of the House on hon members of the CP, the hon member for Soutpansberg said of the hon Chief Whip of Parliament, who has been working night and day to arrange our programmes, that he is becoming a Third-Worldling.

You are far off the mark! [Interjections.]

No, the hon member did say that. He need only go and read his own Hansard.

I was referring to the hon Chief Whip of the NP! [Interjections.]

He works just as hard. He never sits and sleeps in his bench. [Interjections.] We take offence at the hon member for Soutpansberg referring in such an ad hominem, such a personal, way to senior hon members on this side of the House. [Interjections.] Therefore that hon member should not complain … [Interjections.]

Order!

The hon member must not complain when, as a result of such personal, petty old-maid acrimony, he elicits the wrath of hon members on this side of the House.

Order! The hon member for Soutpansberg has already had his turn to speak. He must now afford the hon the Leader of the House the opportunity to make his speech.

Mr Chairman, I hope that I never become so peevish and bitter in my life.

But you are being peevish and bitter now! [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, the hon member for Soutpansberg and other hon members complain that we say that they are wasting time. We are happy for them to have every possible opportunity to participate in all debates and to have every possible right to do so, within the bounds of the conventions of this House. Nevertheless, this is no ordinary debate. Surely this is a repetition of a debate—a debate conducted on precisely the same matter. Surely that makes this different. It is repetitive in the sense that the hon member for Pietersburg, among others, literally quoted several paragraphs from his own speech from last year’s Hansard. [Interjections.]

Yes, but that was to educate you.

He did so without mentioning that he was quoting. [Interjections.] This is an absolute duplication of a debate which has already been finalised in this House. [Interjections.] Responsible parliamentarians who are in a hurry to get back to Pretoria, as I am, do not waste the time of this House by repeating themselves here unnecessarily. [Interjections.] No, Sir, it is against that background that accusations about time being wasted have been levelled by us on this side of the House.

There are some underlying themes that have emerged in this debate. One was an attack on our credibility. Hon members of the CP tried to prove this by way of innumerable quotations—quotations about what we supposedly said five years ago, a year after that, three years ago, two years ago and so on, and about what we are doing now. From that the inference is made that a party that changes its standpoint on a practical matter such as this has a total lack of credibility.

Mr Chairman, permit me, as you have permitted other hon members to digress somewhat from the Rules of this House, to apply to the hon member for Brakpan a test similar to the credibility test he applied. He says that a person who changes his standpoint on a matter has no credibility. I now wish to take a few statements that he has made and use them to test whether he has any credibility.

I want to begin with a speech he made in this House on Thursday, 7 June 1979. It concerned, inter alia, the report of the Wiehahn Commission. He began by quoting the words of the hon the Minister as reported in Empact (Hansard: Assembly, vol 81, col 8099):

[Interjections.] Then he went on, referring to the Wiehahn Report:

What was that logic? It was that Black trade unions should be recognised; that we should have joint negotiation in adjudicating labour disputes. He went on:

Does the hon member still support the philosophy of the Wiehahn Report today? [Interjections.] We know that he does not support it. Does that mean he lacks credibility? [Interjections.]

I want to quote from another speech by the hon member. This also has to do with labour matters because he was an important spokesman in that regard. On Wednesday, 23 April 1980, he said (Hansard: Assembly, vol 86, col 4646):

He then quoted from that report. Even though the figures are seven years old, hon members would do well to listen to them; the situation is even worse now:

The hon member then goes on:

What, does he say today, must we do with these figures? [Interjections.] He says that there must be White majority occupation here. [Interjections.] He says that these Whites, who comprise a mere 7,2% of the total work-force in this country, must control and manage the greater part of this country by way of majority occupation and do all the work. [Interjections.]

As citizens, of course!

He wants us to say that he has credibility. He does not say today what he said then. [Interjections.]

Let me quote one last extract.

He has credibility, but he is idiotic!

In the next column he says:

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: May an hon member say that an hon member on this side of the House is idiotic!

Order! I did not hear that.

Who said so?

It was the hon member for Langlaagte.

Order! Did the hon member for Langlaagte say that?

Mr Chairman, I said that he had credibility, but was idiotic!

Order! The hon member must withdraw that.

I withdraw it, Sir.

Order! The hon the Leader of the House may proceed.

The hon member for Brakpan went on:

Is he in favour of Black trade unions today? Has he changed the standpoint he put forward five years ago? [Interjections.] Does he therefore lack credibility?

Just ask my voters! [Interjections.]

It appears that they may change their standpoint—that is sensible—but if we, who bear the responsibility of governing this country, openly change our standpoint, take the voters into our confidence and provide them with reasons why this has happened, it appears that we lose credibility, per se, simply because we have changed our standpoint. [Interjections.]

That is your problem!

I want to appeal to hon members to argue on the basis of our standpoints as they are put forward today. This is of importance to the voters. It is easy to score points. I could again cite the fact that the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition signed his name to the statement that it was not possible to give the Coloureds and the Indians a father-land of their own; it is stated here and bears his signature. [Interjections.] Does he, then, lack credibility?

Order! Too many interjections are consistently being made here. The hon the Leader of the House may proceed.

Does he lack credibility? After all, he changed his standpoint in this regard. Surely this is an important matter in regard to which he now has a standpoint diametrically opposed to the one that he was prepared to put on paper. The political reality is that he may not have meant it when he said it, or perhaps he wanted to keep the NP together, or perhaps he feels that he has seen the light since then—whatever the case may be. [Interjections.] Let me quote from point 4 of the NP manifesto of 1981:

That is the underlined part. [Interjections.] Later the following is said:

That is what they are opposing in this Constitution. I quote further:

That is the point.

Precisely. After all, we have self-determination on own affairs. [Interjections.] Of course. [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon the Leader of the House a question?

No, please! I have been sitting here for two days listening to hon members of the Official Opposition; to all their repetitions and grumbling. Now I am replying.

But it is an easy question!

The easier the question, the less time I have to answer it.

Then it is a difficult one.

I prefer difficult ones.

Order! I am now going to start restricting interjections. Hon members must help me or else I shall prohibit hon members from making interjections. The hon the Leader of the House may proceed.

The clearest evidence of the turnabout in the thinking of that party—this is also a reply to the hon member for Overvaal—is to be found among the hon members of the Official Opposition themselves. There they sit; the hon member for Lichtenburg was in the forefront of the fight against the HNP. He settled their hash in Lichtenburg. As they sit there, they fought elections, particularly their leader who is not present today. Today their policy differs from that of the HNP in regard to two points only. It is only the language issue and the Indian issue. Moreover, they stand squarely behind the same policy as the one that they opposed with such conviction and success when they were members of the NP. [Interjections.]

These are the people who have turned their backs on the future. When they saw that things were getting hot and that the challenges we were facing were transforming this country into a sea of turbulence, realising the logical consequences of the underlying approach that has always been part of the NP, namely that by recognising realities we would also have to make certain adjustments to enable our policy to succeed, they took fright and turned back. [Interjections.] Today they are sitting there, and the support they so like to crow about does not derive from the conviction of their people that their policy can work, but is based on emotion and on this typical style of suspicion-mongering of which we have once again had an outstanding example from the hon member for Soutpansberg.

I should like to reply briefly to a few minor points raised by the hon member before I proceed. During the short time that he discussed the Rules, he asked that the time taken up by points of order should not count against the person speaking. That is the intention of the new Rules. Had he listened carefully, he could have inferred that from the speech by the Chief Whip of Parliament. That is one of the reasons why the new rules provide that we will not determine each day’s closing time in advance. For example, if we are to adjourn at six o’clock in the evening but in the course of that afternoon eight minutes, say, are taken up by points of order, then we shall sit until eight minutes past six and finish at the appropriate time.

He states that it is the purpose of these rules to smother the voice of the opposition as much as possible. This new constitutional dispensation affords opposition parties more opportunity than any previous system in this country to exert a significant influence on decision-making. Without curbing debating time, each Bill is now, for all practical purposes, to use the old terminology, referred to a select committee. If the hon members do not wish to make use of that opportunity, time and again being content to assert, on the standing committee, that they are opposed to it in principle, and thereafter sitting there without saying a thing, that is their fault. They nevertheless have the opportunity, in the tradition of Parliament, having expressed their opposition to the principle and having put their standpoint clearly, to ensure, as joint legislators in this country, that when the legislation is eventually passed it is better than it would have been had they not also contributed their expertise. It is they who do not take their opportunities. This new system affords more opportunities to opposition parties than the old Westminster system that we used to have.

Behind closed doors! [Interjections.]

The hon member asks who is going to speak when. The essence of these rules is that there will be negotiation and that virtually every day’s programme will be structured by way of mutual consultation on what, it is to be hoped, will be an agreed basis. This affords the parties far more opportunity to say that they have one expert on a specific matter and if they have 38 minutes of time, he can speak for the entire 38 minutes. Our specific aim is to achieve a flexibility within firm parameters that will afford certainty for all of us in the handling of these matters and will optimally accommodate the precise needs of the party.

The second essential point the CP tried to bring home throughout the course of the debate was that the NP was on the road to joint decision-making and, on the basis of one man, one vote, was on the road to Black majority Government, and that this was an illustration of the inevitability of our progress down that slippery path. Many of them insinuate that that is, in fact, our object. I do not know whether that was the intention as regards the quotation about all the “secrecy” and the quotations from prof Huntington. I am not a student of Huntington. However, I must say that from the quotations I recognised some of the techniques used by the hon member for Soutpansberg, in his last years in the NP, to undermine the then leaders within the party.

Mention one! You are talking rubbish! (Interjections.)

What do they do in this process? They deliberately apply a technique and adopt a standpoint on procedures that have changed significantly and in real terms. I concede that point to the hon members, and I shall say more about it in a moment.

As far as the procedures are concerned, they deliberately mix up their points with the principle on which this system is based in order to confuse people. We are now talking about Rules—about who speaks when and where we speak. We are not speaking about the underlying principle of the new Constitution that each of the participating population groups has a power base of its own, and the House of Assembly is ours. There is no consensus if the majority party in each of the power bases does not support something. That is the philosophical basis of the new Constitution. If we were to depart from that then the profound and significant distinction, the gulf between the PFP and ourselves, would disappear. [Interjections.)

We do not intend to allow that to happen. The hon member gives a distorted picture of the NP when he says that the NP is considering, now or in the future, moving towards a system in which the majority, by a head-count, can impose its will on the minority. That is untrue; that is not our policy. If he says that, he is guilty of a deliberate distortion of what the NP maintains. (Interjections.)

In his own way the hon member for Pietersburg also touched on this point. He asked whether the Blacks would be debating with us here in terms of these Rules, or something to that effect. The hon member for Berea, on the other hand, said that they had to be here; the big mistake was that they were not present to debate the matter with us. However, a fourth Chamber is not NP policy. The question as to how, when and where the Blacks are to be involved in the legislative process is one that we must debate some other day in the appropriate debate. I merely say that it is not NP policy to create a fourth Chamber. (Interjections.)

The hon member complained about Rule 88. In this regard I shall occasionally mix politics with practicalities because that is how I wrote down the remarks. He said that no provision was made for questions in Rule 88. In the old Rules no provision was made for questions during a debate either.

He did not know that!

The convention with regard to questions will therefore still apply because it is provided in the Constitution that that will be the case except where they are expressly repealed. He need not, therefore, be concerned about that; they can continue to ask questions on the occasions that present themselves.

In fact I have already replied to the hon member for Overvaal. He said that we were heading for a Black majority Government, but just after he had been saying what great integrationists we were, he turned around and said—in the typical opportunistic debating style of the CP—that we were cheating the Blacks; that in fact we stood for White domination. We are, in fact, the greatest racists in South Africa. Now he must make up his mind. Does he think we stand for a Black majority Government, or does he think we stand for White domination? He cannot mention both these things in one speech and then still think that he retains any credibility. [Interjections.]

†The hon the leader of the PFP also complained about the fact that the new Rules denied the opportunity to the opposition parties to make an input and an impact. I do not read anything into the new Rules which will detract from the right of bigger or smaller parties to have a proper say. As a matter of fact, as I have already tried to indicate, these Rules multiply the opportunities through the plans of the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament with regard to sittings at more than one place. One can even be heard in more than one Chamber simultaneously.

That is why you have cut our time.

He argued exactly the opposite. He reads into these rules a retention of apartheid.

*He still labels as White domination the very Rules that the hon members have, for two days, been trying to analyse with conviction as being Rules that place us on the road to Black majority government. He and many other hon members maintain that Mr Speaker and the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament have too much power. Mr Speaker and the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament, however, are there to serve Parliament. Parliament and this House have the right at any time to deal with a Chief Whip of Parliament or a Speaker who no longer serves Parliament but begins to act autocratically, by way of a substantive motion. We are therefore not powerless against a possible future tyrant.

In the second place there must be an umpire for any set of rules, and in any set of rules there must be someone who raises the flag when the ball leaves the field and who watches the clock to tell one that one’s time is up. Without that no parliamentary system can work.

One cannot make up rules while the game is under way.

The powers vested in Mr Speaker and the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament are powers for planning the activities of this House and not, by any means, for exerting a significant influence on the content of those activities. Therefore it is not a question of political power to change the future of this country, to oppress people or anything of that nature. It is a question of powers for furnishing a service, and it is imperative that they be carried out by responsible people to ensure that business is duly and properly conducted and that the work here gets done.

The hon the leader of the PFP complains that there are too many committees.

†He tries to ridicule the committee system by bawling out their names and listing them in a sort of machine-gun manner. I want to ask the hon member if he is against the committee system. Would he like to go back to the system where he hears of a Bill for the first time when it is introduced here and where it is voted down after a second reading debate without him really having the opportunity to make a positive contribution? Does he want to go back to that system?

That was not the point I made.

Then why does he complain about the committee system? [Interjections.] In the old system the smaller the party was, the smaller was its influence. In this system I say that the PFP has influence beyond its importance, and he should be glad about that. He should not complain about it.

He also tried to ridicule the distinction between joint sittings and joint meetings. The distinction made on the ground of the new rules is one of convenience, so as to avoid confusion. We could have used other terms. In essence, in one instance it is a joint meeting called by the hon the State President and in the other one it is a joint meeting called in terms of the rules. We could have used that phraseology. We chose—also on advice, because it makes a clear-cut distinction—to use two different descriptions for it.

*We use the terms “sitting” and “meeting”. It makes sense and embodies an important distinction, because then one knows, when one speaks about it, who convened it and the power in terms of which it was convened. That is all that that seeks to convey. It is not so complex that the hon member need be so concerned about it.

Besides the matter of credibility, which I have already dealt with, the hon the Chief Whip of the Official Opposition mentioned that we had left certain words out of Rule 3, and he wants to know why. I shall send him my notes, since he is not present at the moment to hear my explanation.

He is just out for a moment.

Then I shall come back to that.

I do want to refer to the hon member for Bethal, even though he is not present. He referred very sarcastically to the definitions of a meeting and to when a meeting can be a joint meeting and when not. He said that a meeting could be a joint meeting if there were two entities involved. It was an interesting dissertation by quite a vigorous juristic brain. I wish to compliment him on it. He engaged in clever word-play, and it was very interesting to listen to him. In fact, we found it very illuminating. He brought us to new understanding.

We now understand that the caucus of the CP is not a meeting, but a joint meeting, because two entities are present. When two entities are present, then surely that is a joint meeting. I refer to the true CPs and the three to five AWBs. [Interjections.] Therefore from now on we shall never refer to the CP caucus, but rather to the joint caucus of the CP.

How many groups do you have?

He spoke at length about a feather and chickens and feathers. I now acknowledge that he is an expert on the subject. [Interjections.]

I should like to deal with a few significant points he made. I have already discussed the issue of joint meetings, but let me proceed to discuss it more seriously. He said that it was absurd to give a definition of a joint meeting if one did not demand that the entities should all be present. The definition we have here in the Rules merely declares what is regarded as a joint meeting in the implementation of the Rules. It does not seek to be a factually correct dictionary definition of the concept of a joint meeting.

Let us test the existing Rule. In terms of the existing Rule it is regarded as a meeting if there are 50 members in the House of Assembly. If one were to argue as the hon member did yesterday, then a factually correct conception of this House would be that it would not be a meeting unless all the components of that meeting, namely all 178 members, as divided up into various entities, were present.

That was not his argument. You clearly misunderstood him.

Speaking in purely juridical terms, the one thing is just as absurd as the other. This is a practical arrangement and the real, fundamental purpose of the provision is that we want to ensure that the activities of members of Houses that wish to work are not undermined or disrupted and that the progress of the activities of this Parliament cannot be disrupted by one of the entities that seeks to be absent when notice is given of the meeting and when that work must be proceeded with. If hon members are opposed to such discipline and want a situation in which we do not know, on any specific day, whether we shall definitely be able to proceed with the work, then they must say so. [Interjections.]

The hon member’s argument was absurd because, among other things, it implied a profound insult to the office of Speaker. After all, there are firm rules, and Rule 12 authorises the presiding officer to suspend proceedings or to adjourn the meeting. Surely it can be accepted that a reasonable Speaker or presiding officer—I am using the hon member’s ridiculous examples—will not regard a meeting at which there are only a few members present as a joint meeting, and will use his powers in terms of Rule 12. After all, a Speaker need not stand back for the hon member for Soutpansberg when it comes to his love of Parliament and the parliamentary tradition. Therefore that is an absurd argument dealing with trivialities and theoretical possibilities that will never become a practical reality if there are people in this Parliament who are really concerned about parliamentary traditions. Therefore his argument was absurd, although theoretically very interesting.

The hon member for Ermelo made an interesting speech. In the first place I want to mention the fact he quoted, namely that we had taken decisions on this as far back as 1986, as evidence that we are not trying to mislead the voters. As long ago as 1986, before the general election, we said that we wanted to change these Rules. Does this sound like a party which, according to the extracts from Huntington quoted by the hon member for Soutpansberg, is trying to act “by stealth”? When we fought an election in 1987 the voters already knew that we were going to change those Rules.

The CP will have to get new arguments. Voters already know that we have a mixed Parliament. They know that there are three Chambers here and that Whites, Coloureds and Indians argue together in the same rooms every day in standing committees. [Interjections.] They know that the dining-rooms are open, and nevertheless they voted for us in 1987. There is nothing new about that. The CP must find new arguments against us, because the voters are beginning to get used to them. [Interjections.]

The hon member for Ermelo advanced an interesting argument. With reference to 1986 and 1987 and his interpretation of the 1977 election and the 1983 referendum he said that we had been guilty of a contravention. He based his argument on the fact that a mandate can only be changed by a new mandate. Surely that is untrue. Leaders and people in responsible positions in the management of companies and in the management of the CP daily take decisions without a mandate. They subsequently go back to their power-base, which can be a board of directors, a caucus or a management body, and request an endorsement of their decision which had to be taken immediately, and they give their reasons. Surely that happens every day.

It is true that a government is elected to govern and that within the framework of the principles of its mandate it has a directive to supply the basic direction which it has indicated and for which it has obtained support. At the next election the Government does not merely ask another mandate for what it wishes to do in the future; it also asks voters to endorse what it has done over the past five years, and it answers for what it has done.

There is one exception I want to make. When a governing party promises that it will not change specific things before having consulted the voters, then it would be a breach of faith to change that before getting another mandate.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon the Leader of the House a question?

Just allow me to finish making my point.

Therefore I want to remind the hon member that as far as significant changes to the Constitution are concerned, he has the assurance of our chief leader, the hon the State President, that we will consult the voters in that regard, and nothing that I have said now in reply to the hon member’s argument should be interpreted as an evasion of that responsibility which I reiterate here today: Significant changes to the Constitution will first be submitted to the voters. Does the hon member wish to ask me a question now?

Mr Chairman, my question to the hon the Leader of the House is the following: If the authorities enter into an agreement, which is like a contract, with the voters, the conditions being embodied in the agreement, as in a contract, can the Government change those conditions if they are embodied in the agreement, as in the Constitution? Can the Government change them? That is my argument. I say that the Government cannot change them without first having submitted them to the people.

Mr Chairman, any victory for a party, such as those we gained in 1983 and 1987 …

And in Randfontein?

…affords that party the power to make definite adjustments within the framework of principles of the election manifesto or referendum manifesto it has presented. This goes for policy and adjustments, but not principles.

The hon member further objects to the fact that I said last year that there was no difference in principle between debate in a committee and joint debates. Now he brings up all those things from the blue booklet of five years ago, from which everyone has quoted. But surely we did not say, in 1983, that we would not conduct joint debates because it was wrong in principle. We motivated it. We said that we thought that there was potential for conflict, and all the reasons quoted by the hon member are the reasons we provided.

Now it is almost five years later. We have become acquainted with our colleagues in the other Houses, and that hon member may perhaps not yet have come up against them in debate but I have been doing so since the first day—in their Houses. Every Minister on this side has, from the first day, come up against them in debates in their own Houses.

Those hon members now have four years of experience of the parliamentary system; they have gained experience which they did not have at the beginning, and I do not say that in a paternalistic spirit. We have discovered that in this learning process, in exactly the same way as we have, they have fitted in with the parliamentary tradition and procedure and have accepted it, and therefore many of those reasons have fallen away due to the effluxion of time and the new set of circumstances—experience that has been gained, and everything that goes with that.

That is why we say, and with reason, that we are now able to do this, and this is not a change in principle, because the principle is the same. Whether the hon member sits and debates Bill A in a smaller group with 20 members or whether he does so in a large Chamber where 200 people are present, he is still debating the same matter and is still speaking in the same room under the same chairmanship about the same matter. There is no significant difference. He has been participating in joint debates right from the start.

The one significant difference is that it is now in public. I do not know whether the hon member is afraid of that; I do not think he is afraid, because he is a good debater. There are other very good debaters in the ranks of the Official Opposition as well, and I think they ought to perform their task fairly well. [Interjections.]

This brings me to the hon member for Potgietersrus.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon the Leader of the House a question?

Please permit me just to finish what I am saying. I am already being told that my time is limited.

The hon member for Potgietersrus says that we want to embarrass the CP. That is the essence of that charge he levels at us. [Interjections.] He says that we want to play them off against the members of the other Houses. Has he reason to think that anything of the kind is possible? That they will not be able to maintain their position? That they will place themselves in an embarrassing position? [Interjections.] Has he so little self-confidence? [Interjections.] I state bluntly that we do not want fellow Afrikaners to be put in an embarrassing position. We do not want them to make themselves ridiculous. What we do hope, and what could perhaps be a good result of joint debating, is that it could compel the hon members of the CP to act with greater responsibility. We hope that this will improve the level of debate because then they too will have to account for themselves before people who can speak for themselves and reply. We wish embarrassment on no one, but we hope that out of this debate a new and high level of debating on the true problems of South Africa will, in fact, emerge.

I now come to the hon member for Losberg. That hon member was a professor of law. [Interjections.] He attacks us on this side of the House when he thinks we are making mistakes. He uses his expertise. I really must concede that. He has read these Rules.

Only read them, yes!

Then he got to Rule 119. He maintains that Rule 119(2) makes it possible—this is his entire argument; to cast suspicion on us, of course—for a Minister who is not a member of a House to vote, although he is not obliged to vote.

I said that it was uncertain whether that was so or not.

Very well, he says it is uncertain. Why does he say that? He says it in view of the announcement by the hon the State President that there could now be more members of the Cabinet who would not be members of Houses.

And who are Black!

And who are Black, yes. That is why the hon member is insinuating that Blacks could be able to vote if they were to become Ministers. [Interjections.] Nevertheless, that hon member is a lawyer. After all, he sees that there is a reference to section 65 of the Constitution. When I pointed that out to him, he nevertheless went on, because he did not want to abandon his efforts at sowing suspicion. He went on to say that it only says “see” not “subject to”. [Interjections.] As a lawyer, I now wish to ask him whether a Rule can be of more binding force than a section of an Act.

No.

Is it not automatically true that when section 65 of the Constitution provides that such a Minister may not vote—the hon member knows that section 65 specifies that—that section of the Act is surely of more binding force than any Rule? Surely the hon member knows that that is a basic law of legal interpretation. [Interjections.] That is why I charge him today with being prepared, for the sake of petty politics, to place his integrity as a scientist in question. After all, we on this side of the House also have a number of lawyers, and the hon member cannot catch us out on a point like that. Nevertheless, we take it amiss of him.

My time has almost expired.

In Vereeniging, yes. [Interjections.]

The hon member for Losberg also referred to a specific Rule—I did not hear the number—which provides that the Chief Whip of Parliament must act in accordance with certain provisions. Then he tried to make out that there were no such provisions. I asked the law advisers to go into the matter, and I have before me a whole list of provisions for the hon member.

Rule 103!

Yes, but the hon member should also read Rule 107. It also contains a provision. He should also go and read Rule 125. It, too contains a provision. Rule 126 also contains a provision. In Rule 181(2) there is another provision. [Interjections.] In this debate the CP has stooped to levels of suspicion-mongering without dealing at all with the reality and the facts relating to the Rules and the Constitution and the fundamental basis of the argument. They have attempted to make a purely political matter of this. All we have been doing is putting forward a set of rules, within the framework of principles of the Constitution, to expedite the proceedings of Parliament and to introduce a new dimension, a meaningful new dimension, into the tricameral system.

The time for fighting the Constitution and trying to get the Constitution changed is at an election.

When there are by-elections now, this country has a Constitution and every hon member, whether or not he agrees with the principles on which that Constitution is based, ought to make it his concern to ensure that within that framework we discharge our joint responsibility as legislators as best we can.

The debate of the past few days does not reflect that spirit and attitude, and that is what we have accused those hon members of. That is what we hold against them and why we say they are wasting time. We do not do so because they have stated a standpoint or feel strongly about a matter, but because in this way they are trying to cast suspicion on something, trying to attach more value to something than should be attached to it, and trying to make purely political capital out of something which ought to have been a debate on practical procedure.

As hon members have noted, we have not flinched from party-political debate. Nowhere, not for a moment, do we flinch from a party-political debate with those hon members. [Interjections.]

I wish to conclude by thanking all hon members who have participated—despite the criticism I have expressed—and to say that we greatly appreciate the fact that we have eventually reached this point. I should also like to wish the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament everything of the best as regards putting these Rules into effect.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon the Leader of the House a question?

I shall give the hon member the opportunity in a moment.

I am convinced that once the debate is over and it comes to the implementation of the new Rules—I know that the Whips of the CP will also do this—in the best traditions of Parliament we shall have the highest degree of positive co-operation on the part of all participating parties.

Mr Chairman, may I put a question to the hon the Leader of the House concerning something he said a while ago? He said that the Government had to act within the framework of a mandate it had obtained from the voters at an election. Was it included within the framework of the 1981 mandate that Black people could be involved, at the third tier of Government, for example, as in fact happened in 1985?

Mr Chairman, local government for Black people is nothing new, and involving them in regional services councils does not offend against the philosophy of the 1981 mandate. However, in our 1987 manifesto we told the voters very specifically that our policy in regard to Black participation had been amended and we called for a new mandate in terms of which they could share in decision-making in the future in a specific way. After all, we did not conceal any of this. The CP attacked us in this regard, and it was on the strength of that that they made some inroads. There are some voters who shied away, and we still have to convince them. [Interjections.]

Try that in Vereeniging!

However, the CP cannot accuse the NP of ever having concealed its change of policy in regard to the political and constitutional accommodation of Black people. We first told the federal congress which was open to the Press. After that federal congress, at which the new policy framework was spelt out, it was submitted to each provincial congress in the presence of the Press and debated in public. Then it was incorporated in an election manifesto. That is how open the NP was prepared to be with the electorate of South Africa and always will be. We are reliable; we are not schemers. [Interjections.]

Question put: That all the words after “That” stand part of the Question,

Upon which the House divided:

AYES—110: Alant, T G; Aucamp, J M; Badenhorst, C J W; Badenhorst, P J; Bloomberg, S G; Bosman, J F; Botha, C J van R; Botha, J C G; Botma, M C; Brazelie, J A; Breytenbach, W N; Camerer, S M; Chait, E J; Christophers, D; Clase, P J; Coetzer, P W; Cunningham, J H; De Beer, L; De Klerk, F W; Delport, J T; De Pontes, P; De Villiers, D J; Dilley, L H M; Edwards, B V; Farrell, P J; Fick, L H; Fismer, C L; Geldenhuys, B L; Graaff, D de V; Grobler, A C A C; Grobler, P G W; Hattingh, C P; Heunis, J C; Heyns, J H; Hugo, P F; Hunter, J E L; Jooste, J A; King, T J; Koornhof, N J J v R; Kotzé, G J; Kriel, H J; Kruger, T A P; Lemmer, J J; Le Roux, D E T; Louw, E v d M; Louw, I; Louw, M H; Malan, M A de M; Malherbe, G J; Marais, G; Marais, P G; Maree, M D; Matthee, J C; Matthee, P A; Meiring, J W H; Meyer, A T; Meyer, W D; Myburgh, G B; Nel, P J C; Niemann, J J; Nothnagel, A E; Odendaal, W A; Olivier, P J S; Oosthuizen, G C; Pretorius, J F; Pretorius, P H; Radue, R J; Redinger, R E; Retief, J L; Scheepers, J H L; Schoeman, R S; Schoeman, S J (Sunnyside); Schoeman, S J (Walmer); Schoeman, W J; Schutte, D P A; Smit, F P; Smith, H J; Snyman, A J J; Steenkamp, P J; Steyn, D W; Steyn, P T; Streicher, D M; Swanepoel, J J; Swanepoel, K D; Swanepoel, P J; Terblanche, A J W P S; Thompson, A G; Van Breda, A; Van der Merwe, A S; Van der Merwe, C J; Van der Walt, A T; Van Deventer, F J; Van de Vyver, J H; Van Gend, D P de K; Van Heerden, F J; Van Rensburg, H M J; Van Vuuren, L M J; Van Wyk, J A; Van Zyl, J G; Veldman, M H; Viljoen, G v N; Vilonel, J J; Welgemoed, P J; Wentzel, J J G.

Tellers: Blanche, J P I; Golden, S G A; Jordaan, A L; Kritzinger, W T; Ligthelm, C J; Smit, H A.

NOES—33: Andrew, K M; Barnard, M S; Burrows, R M; Coetzee, H J; De Ville, J R; Derby-Lewis, C J; Eglin, C W; Ellis, M J; Gastrow, P H P; Gerber, A; Hartzenberg, F; Jacobs, S C; Langley, T; Le Roux, F J; Lorimer, R J; Malcomess, D J N; Mentz, M J; Mulder, C P; Nolte, D G H; Olivier, N J J; Paulus, P J; Pienaar, D S; Prinsloo, J J S; Schoeman, C B; Suzman, H; Swart, R A F; Uys, C; Van der Merwe, S S; Van Gend, J B de R; Van Wyk, W J D; Walsh, J J.

Tellers: Snyman, W J; Van der Merwe, J H.

Question affirmed and amendments dropped.

Mr Chairman, I move:

Mr Chairman, I think that it is apt that after a three-day debate on the rules to be observed by this Parliament, the first notice which comes after that motion is one to ignore the Rules of this Parliament. [Interjections.] It is one that the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning has put on the Order Paper that notwithstanding the provisions of Rule 23(2) the Bill be not referred to the standing committee, and secondly, that Rule 33 be suspended in respect of this Bill.

There, I think, we have encapsulated the attitude of this Government to this Parliament, and particularly the attitude to this Parliament of the hon the Minister concerned. It is used as some sort of personal convenience to suit his imperial—I use that word advisedly—will. The first thing that he is doing here, after a debate on the Standing Rules and Orders, is to ask us to ignore the very Rules of this Parliament.

This is not the first time that that hon Minister has done that very thing. On 28 September 1987 the hon the Leader of the House moved (Hansard: Assembly, Vol 16, col 6657):

While the motion was prepared by the hon the Leader of the House, he was obviously moving it at the request of the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning.

That is nonsense!

The hon the Minister says it is nonsense. Does he deny that it was at his express wish that the Constitution Second Amendment Bill did not go to the standing committee? Now there is silence; he does not deny it. [Interjections.] It is absolutely natural that if a Constitution Amendment Bill is to be discussed it is that hon Minister’s responsibility. If he does not want it referred to the standing committee, presumably he asks the hon the Leader of the House to move the motion. I cannot see that the hon the Leader of the House would move a motion in this House relating to constitutional amendments without first discussing it with the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning. I think he might be in deep trouble if he did something like that. He would be accused of taking over the hon the Minister’s portfolio, and that hon the Minister is of course very jealous of his portfolio.

That hon Minister who is asking us once again to ignore the Rules of Parliament is in effect asking us—and this is the part that I particularly object to—to ignore Rule 33 which relates to amendments after Second Reading. When this particular notice of motion was first put on the Order Paper there was that dreadful rush—I am convinced at the request of the hon the State President—to get the new Rules through so that we could discuss the hon the State President’s Vote in joint meeting. When they went through, we could understand why this particular notice of motion was placed on the Order Paper—because they wanted to rush it through to suit the hon the State President. However, that does not apply any more. In fact, the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament has told us we will probably be having very few joint meetings of Parliament. So there is no rush any more. Why then are we now asked to ignore Rule 33?

Rule 33 deals with amendments to the Bill under discussion. It says:

Quite patently, the hon the Minister does not want to have any amendments to his brainchild, this particular Bill. I submit that in view of the fact that there is no longer any urgency in this matter, we should remove the obnoxious section from that particular motion. I therefore move as an amendment:

This will have the effect of removing the words “and that Rule 33 be suspended in respect of the Bill”.

However, I must tell hon members that I have no expectation of this amendment being accepted. Even though it makes sense, even though it is totally logical in view of the fact that there is no longer any rush in getting this legislation through, I would submit that it is not going to be accepted because we have this strange tricameral system—which is the brainchild of that hon the Minister—which means that any Bill has to be passed by three separate Houses in three separate meetings. The other two Houses did not move any amendments, and the motion was passed in its original form. Therefore there is no way the hon the Minister is likely to accept this amendment even if it might make sense and even if he might agree with everything in it. The other two Houses have now passed something different, and if he agrees to this then it will have to go back to the other two Houses, and the whole system will be delayed. So for these reasons we move this amendment.

In closing I want to ask the hon the Minister a question across the floor of this House, because I think it is relevant to this whole situation and because it has come to my attention that it is said that his department has a lot of Bills in the pipeline.

I want to ask the hon the Minister if there is any truth in what has been mooted in the Press that he is going to see that Parliament is reconvened to discuss Bills from his department in August. [Interjections.] If there is any truth in this, I must point out the enormous expense that we went to in 1986 where, basically because of Bills to amend the Constitution, we were called back for a second session of this Parliament. It was meant to last for two months but it in fact only lasted for a couple of weeks. So I pose that question to the hon the Minister across the floor of this House.

I hope he answers you.

Mr Chairman, I want to say at once that if all hon members carried on like the hon member for Port Elizabeth Central, we would have to sit throughout the year. The hon member began on a personal note, and I think what he said was neither justified nor true.

†It is not true to suggest that, this House having adopted the report on the new rules, we now come forward to break those rules. In fact, the truth is that this House and other Houses have approved the application of those rules.

I did not say it pertained to those rules. I said it applied to the routine rules of the House.

I did not interrupt the hon member.

That doesn’t matter. You must get it right.

The point is that this motion stands so as to implement the rules that this House and other Houses have accepted. That is what it is all about.

What is also very strange is that it is true that the other Houses have accepted the motion as it stands. The hon member for Port Elizabeth Central’s party has representation in the House of Delegates. What I do not understand, is that the hon member’s party in the House of Assembly opposes a motion which his party in the House of Delegates supports. [Interjections.] That is the important thing. I believe the hon member should address his remarks also to his colleagues in his party in that House, because otherwise his arguments are completely frivolous. He only argues against this motion for the sake of convenience.

A second point I would like to make is that the hon member referred to a previous motion of which the hon Leader of the House had given notice. The hon member must watch very carefully what he says. Firstly, he said that it had been done on my instructions. Afterwards he said that the hon the Leader of the House would not have done it without discussing it with me. I believe those statements are completely different statements.

Tell us what happened.

The third argument that I would like to talk about, is that the hon member said that I was now imposing my “imperial will” on this House. That is obviously not true, because the work of Parliament and of this House is not arranged by me or my department. It is arranged by the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament in consultation with other Whips in the case of the House of Assembly. Therefore I do not believe that anybody will take the hon member’s objection seriously.

Question agreed to (Progressive Federal Party dissenting).

Main question accordingly agreed to.

Mr Speaker, I move:

This motion is essential in the light of the acceptance by this House of the report of the Committees on Standing Rules and Orders. On 3 March this year, the present Constitution had been in operation for three and a half years. These first three and a half years were important formative years in the history of the tricameral Parliamentary system. All of us who have been involved in this system in one way or another—and that includes the hon members of this House—have had a share in the writing of a chapter in the history of the constitutional development of our country.

One of the characteristics of a dynamic constitutional system is that it provides for evolutionary growth and never pretends to represent a final product. From the outset, the Government took the view that, although the present Constitution represents an important step on the road of constitutional reform, it was never intended to be the final answer to giving all South African communities participation in the governmental processes of the country. For this reason the Government committed itself, in 1983, to the continuation of constitutional development by means of a process of consultation. A first step taken at that time was the appointment of a Special Cabinet Committee to deliberate with Black communities on their further constitutional development. The National Council Bill, which is being considered by a standing committee of this Parliament at present, was a direct result of the Cabinet Committee’s proceedings. This Bill demonstrates, in the clearest and most tangible manner, the Government’s commitment and aim of achieving a new constitutional dispensation in which all South African citizens can fully express their legitimate political aspirations.

In discussing this amending Bill, I believe the time has come to re-affirm that the Government is committed to Parliament as the instrument for democratic change and development, and I think this sentiment is shared by all hon members. Why is this amending Bill important in this regard?

The hon member for Randfontein made an interesting speech in this House, one on which I wish to congratulate him and with which I wish to associate myself in this debate. Democracy is not only constitutional and does not only consist of certain governmental institutions. Democracy is also manifested in a certain style, a particular code, of conduct and a certain attitude. Therefore democracy functions in those institutions, when they are created, according to particular rules of the game—rules which reflect the democratic style and code of conduct.

These rules are embodied in the rules of procedure of Parliament and derive their authority from section 63 of the Constitution itself. However, the Constitution, and the rules of the game derived from it, do not in themselves determine the quality and effectiveness of our governmental institutions. Rather, the effectiveness of the system is determined by the actors involved.

For this reason our actions and attitudes are the true measures of our commitment to democratic change and to Parliament as its instrument; they also reveal whether this is so in practice. Our attitude towards the proposed amendments, which are aimed at extending the existing rules of the game, is in a similar way indicative of our commitment to Parliament and its rules. Furthermore, it is an indication of our attitude towards consensus, for the rules of the game and the Constitution are based on reaching consensus in Parliament on matters of common interest.

My point of view in this regard is that we find ourselves in a period of transition during which we want to proceed, by means of evolutionary change, to a new system. During a process of democratisation it is not possible to create an ideal system overnight. Reform and constitutional change require time and patience. From us in particular they require reflection, deliberation and adaptation. They require courage and perseverance. They require changes in attitudes. Parties must learn not to regard one another as enemies, each pursuing their own interests; they should rather regard one another as partners who want to promote a greater, common interest. This Constitution Amendment Bill emphasises the importance of joint decision-making and the attainment of unanimity.

†It also makes considerable demands of the participants. The search for comprises is often more difficult and less popular than the alternative of confrontation and conflict. The road of co-operation, however, is a prerequisite if we are to resolve our country’s many issues in a peaceful manner. The amendments proposed today are therefore, firstly, a practical application of the aim to promote co-operation and consensus in our system. Thereby we demonstrate our willingness to continue on the road on which we set out in 1984, knowing full well that it has not been easy thus far and that it will never be easy, but with the firm belief and conviction that it is the right thing to do.

Secondly, the amendments represent an important step for improving the present system’s operation. It is necessary to streamline the functioning of the system. The proposed amendments will undoubtedly achieve this aim. The amendments provide for joint proceedings by all Houses of Parliament and the acceptance of joint rules in this respect. With a view to a single set of uniform rules for the three Houses of Parliament, provision is made for joint rules for their separate proceedings. I believe the time has arrived for us to achieve a greater measure of uniformity in the existing four sets of rules of the procedures of Parliament.

Clause 1 of the Bill amends section 61 of the Constitution so as to provide beyond doubt that a quorum is required only when a House passes a resolution. If a quorum is also required for the debate, the proceedings at a joint meeting could be disrupted unnecessarily, and section 61 is thus rephrased to make it clear that a quorum is required only when a House adopts a resolution. The amendments obviate a problem experienced in practice, namely that because of committee and other engagements during sessions, the Houses may be impeded unnecessarily by the requirement of a quorum.

The amendment of section 64 of the principal Act, as proposed in clause 2 of the Bill, stipulates explicitly that the Houses may, by means of joint rules, provide for joint proceedings at joint meetings, and for uniform rules in respect of any business or proceedings, whether jointly or separate.

Parliament is in any case the only authority on its own procedures and business, and is not dependent merely upon the provisions of sections 63 and 64 of the Constitution when it regulates such matters.

Clause 3 of the Bill amends section 67 of the Constitution in order to restrict the provisions of the section explicitly to joint sittings convened by the State President in terms thereof.

The Joint Rules and Orders recommended by the Committees on Standing Rules and Orders provide for joint debates on Bills and other general matters during joint meetings, and for voting and the passing of resolutions by each House separately or at a joint meeting of the Houses. A resolution may not be passed at a joint meeting without an amendment of the rules, which requires the approval of each House. It should be noted, Sir, that section 100(2) of the Constitution provides that Parliament—that means the three Houses—can pass a resolutions only by means of resolutions by the respective Houses.

The basic motivation for these amendments is that after three and a half years of experience of joint deliberations in relation to proceedings in the standing committees, we can now take the next logical step of enabling the three Houses of Parliament to debate jointly. The only difference will be that the debates will be conducted in public as opposed to the standing committee debates which are held behind closed doors. It therefore makes sense that the rules of debate in the Houses should, as proposed in the amendments, be uniform.

Mr Chairman, what is now being proposed in terms of the measure under discussion is an amendment to the Republic of South Africa Constitution Act. One would at least have expected, when legislation of such an important nature was moved, that the normal practise would have been followed and that we would at least have been provided with the Second Reading speech of the hon the Minister. Since this is normally the case in regard to all legislation, we expected to receive it in this case as well. However, we did not. Fortunately we do at least have the explanatory memorandum which is attached to the Bill, and which enables us to understand what is, in fact, happening here.

On behalf of the Official Opposition I consequently move as an amendment to the motion of the hon the Minister:

In view of the new Rules of his House, which will come into operation soon, I think, this will definitely be the last time that we will have an opportunity to move an amendment of this nature. This actually goes to show what kind of situation this House now finds itself in.

Before I go any further I want to refer to the point concerning the question of credibility, to which the hon the Minister of National Education referred earlier. This is not the first time that he has expressed an opinion on my standpoint in regard to the Black trade unions and the Wiehahn Report. The hon the Minister of National Education, in his capacity of Leader of the House, is the one who worked with the new Rules most of the time, and he is aware—I have said this to him myself, and I think Mr Fanie Botha would also have said it to him—that as a loyal member of the NP I raised very serious objections, within the study groups of the NP, to that entire aspect of Black trade unions and so on. Time and again I stated my opinion very vehemently. In fact, I still have in my possession a pen which I received as a present in Champ d’Or when, together with the NP study group, I paid a visit to Champ d’Or, where Mr Fanie Botha acted as leader of the group. On that occasion, while we were travelling in the bus, I went to speak to him and told him we were very unhappy about certain aspects of the new legislation on labour relations. He even threatened to resign. Subsequently he came back to me and said: “You people in my study group who are dissatisfied will cause me to call the trade union leaders together in my office and set out the matter to you and explain what problems I have in connection with this whole matter.”

The hon member for Alberton and the former member for Hercules, Mr Frikkie le Roux, will recall that we discussed and thrashed out these aspects in Mr Fanie Botha’s office. He knows how unhappy I felt about the whole business.

Mr Chairman, could the hon member for Brakpan inform this House whether the passages I quoted here were written by him or whether someone else compelled him to do so?

Mr Chairman, no one compelled me to do so. [Interjections.] I said these things as a loyal Nationalist. [Interjections.] I said them as a loyal Nationalist, when I raised my voice in the study groups of the NP. [Interjections.] Mr Chairman, what I am saying here now is something that hon member cannot deny at all.

Yes! [Interjections.]

Nor did he deny it. Not until the eventual rift occurred! [Interjections.] That I felt unhappy about these things was a well-known fact at the time in the NP. The then Director-General of Manpower …

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: I am asking, with all due respect, what this argument of the hon member for Brakpan has to do with the legislation under discussion.

Order! In reality it has nothing to do with it. I am allowing the hon member for Brakpan an opportunity to make a personal explanation. Nevertheless, I really do not think that he should take it too far.

Mr Chairman, I am almost finished. I just want to tell the hon the Minister of National Education—he need not refer to it again because I have said this before—that even Mr Jaap Cilliers, the then Director-General of Manpower, told me "Hier is my ou verkrampte friend.”

That you did, in fact, say these things makes it even worse!

Oh, please, FW! [Interjections.]

As far as credibility is concerned … [Interjections.]

Order!

Mr Chairman, concerning the Bill we are now dealing with, our charge against the Government is that their credibility is at stake.

The hon the Minister of National Education, when he was speaking about the Rules in his capacity as Leader of the House, stated in the same categorical terms that the NP would never bridge that gulf between the Progs and us or tolerate joint voting in a joint House and that any person who suggested that that was the case, was being mischievous. He said that not half an hour ago. [Interjections.] The reason why we say that he is without credibility …

We just want to set you straight.

They were words to that effect; surely he cannot argue about that. [Interjections] Here are the words the hon the Minister spoke to the Tukkies; he also said this in this House—it has been recorded in Hansard:

What about the federal congress? We then said that we would amend it! [Interjections.]

Very well, he said it was going to be amended.

We say they are going to change it again.

That is correct. We say the NP are going to do it again.

Then the voters said it was a good thing that we did it! [Interjections.]

In other words, the hon the Minister can ask the next federal congress for authorisation to accept the PFP’s policy and have joint sittings as well as joint voting. [Interjections.] Then he will, after all, be able to change his policy in that way. [Interjections.] They accept the race federation policy of the old United Party, and step for step they are on their way to accepting the policy of the PFP as well. [Interjections.] That they cannot deny. The electorate of South Africa believes it, whether the NP wants to accept that or not.

Nonsense!

If we talk about credibility, it is the NP’s problem.

We …

Order! Hon members are digressing a little too far. This is an amending Bill, and we must now deal more specifically with the clauses which effect amendments. The hon member may proceed.

Mr Chairman, at this stage, I move:

Agreed to.

Mr Chairman, I move:

Agreed to.

Mr Chairman, I believe, as I am sure we all do, that education is for life. Let me say at the outset that education in our community is going through an era of unprecedented orchestrated turbulence at secondary and college level, despite the emergency measures.

On the one hand we must contend with the unwillingness of the NP Government to divorce education from its ideology of separateness and on the other hand we are confronted with the elements of radicalism. The House of Assembly still fails to see its opportunities to enhance its credibility—if it ever had any—in the eyes of the moderate fair-minded people of South Africa by back-pedalling and freewheeling on the road of “reform” to which it claims to be committed. One glaring instance when an opportunity to prove its sincerity towards “reform” went abegging, was when it failed to allow this administration to use the Paarl college of education. Instead, it chose to destroy the educational symbol exhibited by that particular complex and chose to replace it with a symbol of law enforcement. How symptomatic of the society in which we live! I will come back to this problem and its effects later in my address.

This is not only the case at Paarl. Many other instances can be mentioned where unnecessary expense had to be incurred for the erection of new buildings when older buildings which had previously been used by Whites could have been made available.

No wonder that we on the other hand are confronted by the forces of radicalism to the extent that our educationists are physically—I want to stress this—prevented from practising their profession. This is unwarranted irrationality and makes it extremely difficult to administer education in the way it should be administered. I would be failing in my duty if I did not respectfully request hon members of this House not to make the Department of Education and Culture the scapegoat and the whipping boy for whatever goes wrong in our schools.

I can state, without fear of contradiction, that the department under its Executive Director, ably assisted by his competent deputies, is doing its very best to ensure the advancement of education under these extremely trying circumstances.

At secondary school level we are experiencing immense problems with pupils who busy themselves with “alternative” or “people’s education”—I will say more about this aspect later—who wilfully stay away from classes, who conduct people’s courts where teachers are brought on trial, who demand the appointment of or transfer of school staff, and who even demand to address the school at assemblies—a group of spoilers, as they were referred to during an earlier debate. I venture to say that this sort of activity contributes in no small way to another problem, namely the poor pass rate, with which I will deal later as I was requested to do in an earlier debate.

At college level we have the problem of students resorting to uncalled for, unprofessional and indefensible actions as a means of airing their grievances. The most recent problem is the grade point system which, from an educational point of view, in no way justifies such action. When reflecting on behaviour and problems at our colleges, as a parent one dreads the future when one thinks of the personality, character and particularly the approach of people who are going to be our teachers of the future.

At teaching staff level we have the more pleasant problem of having to find ways and means of upgrading the lower qualified teacher.

As far as the problem at secondary school level is concerned, my department is no longer prepared to play a spectator role amidst threats of boycotts and similar protests. It must be borne in mind that most of the people who occupy top posts in the educational structure are also products of the community—as I am and as we all are—and that those people are also parents within the community. It is naive to think that those who form the department do not have the interests of our children at heart at all times.

The time has come to put our views and reasoning across to parents, whom the agitators exploit through our children. I make bold to say that more often than not our children behave respectfully at home, but are defiant and belligerent when they are in the company of their schoolfellows. I therefore appeal to the parent community to apply the golden rule of hearing the other side when they are confronted with issues affecting the education of their children, and to this end I want to emphasise that the approach of the department is that the doors are open for advice at all times. I also wish to compliment those parents who have been bold enough to come forward to discuss such issues.

Mr Chairman, when we viewed the 1985 problem in its perspective we found that a lot of parents were supporting their children not only out of fear, but also because of a guilt complex. They were being confronted daily by the children with an approach that seemed to imply the question: What did you do about changing the apartheid situation? Children also seemed to be demanding the opportunity to do something about it themselves. I am pleased to say, however, that I have noticed a greater return to rationality amongst our parents. Our parents are once again assuming a parental role in terms of discipline.

As far as the failure rate in standard ten is concerned, I wish to inform this Committee that, subsequent to the publication of the 1981 Senior Certificate examination results, I, as the Leader of the LP, personally requested the former Executive Director of Education to appoint a committee of inquiry to make an independent study or evaluation of the causes and circumstances which influenced these results.

The committee consisted of Mr F S Robertson, the former Deputy Director of Education in the Cape, Prof C G Troski, Head of the Department of Mathematical Statistics of the University of Cape Town, and Mr W E Hendricks, the then Chief Education Planner of the department.

The committee found that the following factors influenced the examination results: The loss of teaching time occasioned by boycotts and unrest; turnover of staff at schools; a lack of appropriately qualified teachers; the inability of inexperienced personnel to recover lost time; the attitude of pupils involved in unrest, ie the resistance to authority and discipline; the result of boycotts which still causes tension at our schools; the influence of external pressure groups with political aims; study leave for serving teachers—I may just mention that the department is certainly looking at the whole question of study leave and examination leave. We find it very difficult to approve teachers’ applications for study and examination leave, particularly in October/November when they should be putting 100% of their time and effort into preparing their pupils for examinations; inadequate accommodation, facilities and equipment; incorrect perceptions of the aims of differentiated education (which was often interpreted as being differentiation along colour lines whereas it was actually differentiation with regard to aptitudes); and the inability of parents to control their children’s actions.

On the basis of these findings the committee recommended that: A climate should be created which promotes teaching and study; intensive in-service training of underqualified teachers should be instituted; experienced and competent staff members should be encouraged to remain at secondary schools instead of accepting posts in primary schools; attempts should be made, in consultation with other examining bodies, to arrange examinations for serving teachers at more convenient times—this relates to what I mentioned just now; urgent attention should be given to the content of syllabuses, the standard of teaching and the examination of subjects in which there was a higher failure rate, especially—I find this strange—Afrikaans first language on the higher grade; the department should insist on a better application of the system of differentiated education; courses should be arranged for principals and deputy principals to prepare them for the tasks they are to undertake; consideration should be given to the establishment of a single examining body for all candidates; stricter measures should be introduced to prevent leakages of examination papers; a computer service for the exclusive use of the department should be promoted; principals and personnel should initiate steps to create better communication between the school and parents in order to restore the authority of school and parents; better liaison should be created between the department and the media so that correct information can be conveyed to the public; there should be better communication between the department, the teaching corps and the community; and the backlog in providing suitable accommodation should receive urgent attention.

All these recommendations have been addressed, or are still being addressed. Furthermore, to all education departments in the RSA, as well as in other countries, the idea of failure and of repeating a standard is regarded as a serious and traumatic experience for the child. It creates a great financial burden for the State, as well as for the parents. The department has now sanctioned a scientific investigation into the causes and extent of failure in the department’s schools in all standards, as well as into possible measures to prevent this. This investigation is being undertaken by the department’s education bureau, in consultation with the University of Stellenbosch. Fourteen researchers are at present involved in this research project, which will take about two years. In the meantime, the Executive Director of Education recently held in-depth discussions with examiners, moderators and members of the Subject Advisory Service in an attempt to address possible problems in respect of examinations, as well as teaching methods. There is a feeling that in some instances examination papers are set to catch out a child, instead of measuring that which he has already achieved. For many years it was also believed, because we went over to an own department of education in 1964, that this separateness would therefore mean being inferior. In a sense there was a conscious attempt to destroy this myth of inferiority and in many cases our examinations have become far more difficult than examinations set by other departments.

Projected figures show that by the year 1991, about 1 700 bursary holders will qualify as primary school teachers, while there will only be about 700 posts. For the record, at the beginning of this year a survey indicated that there were 1 227 unemployed qualified teachers. Further, it must be brought to the attention of this House—and I say this particularly in the light of repeated requests for more and more students to be admitted, sometimes at the request of hon MPs, to training colleges to enjoy the training facilities—that of these 1 227 unemployed teachers, 492 were newly qualified teachers all of whom were bursary holders. The problem here—and we want to appeal to hon MPs—is the fact that our younger teachers refuse to go to the smaller areas or to teach on farms. They are therefore unemployed and remain unemployed in the city situation. It is true, and also obvious, that there has been an overprovision of teachers and because of this overprovision, the department cannot afford to train teachers for unemployment. The intake of first-year students will therefore have to be drastically limited.

I suppose one has to take cognisance of the appeal of the hon the Deputy Minister of Population Development that families must be reduced in size. Our school-going children will then certainly decrease in number.

Later in my address it will become obvious that pupils are also being negatively influenced by people who ought to know better. The department, whether it likes it or not, will be compelled to take firm action to ensure that such elements are not found amongst those to whom the education of our children is entrusted. I emphasise that we must put back into education the dignity it once enjoyed. [Interjections.] We must arouse the whole question of dedication and the sense of calling, instead of seeing it merely as a job to be performed for which one receives a salary at the end of the month. I say this because one is not dealing with things; one is dealing with living beings. One is dealing with the preparation in and for life and, therefore, those to whom our children are entrusted will certainly have to be looked at.

These factors leave only one question to be answered, and that is: Who should be permitted to train as teachers and who not? It is usually accepted that the better achievers at school should be allowed to receive training as teachers. It is, however, a fact—I am sure that many hon members here, particularly those who have taught in our schools, will understand this—that the better achiever at school level will not necessarily succeed in becoming the best teacher. It has been proved time and again that, because of various circumstances, a fair percentage of the most successful teachers and academics only come into their own after they have left school.

The requirements for selection for teacher training are being looked at, but have, as yet, not been finalised. However, a start has been made in addressing this particular problem.

The main point that I wish to emphasise at this stage—this has been a problem in our schools and colleges—is that no student who has been selected for teacher training and who has been admitted to an educational institution in order to qualify as a teacher will be deprived of financial assistance. [Interjections.] We want to stress that.

The reasons for the latest protests at the colleges of education are the withdrawal of the awarding of study loans and the implementation of the grade point system. When it became evident that insufficient notice of the department’s intentions had been given, the department decided to accede to requests in this regard and to award, in this particular year, study bursaries to all students. Whatever the case may be, it would be highly irresponsible of my department to continue the unrestricted intake of students for training as primary school teachers. For the information of this House and all other parties concerned, I want to state categorically that, with effect from 1989, stricter criteria for the selection of candidates for teacher training will be implemented. However, I give the assurance that the method to be employed, whether it be the grade point system or some other method, will be determined in consultation with the training institutions concerned. Furthermore, as much publicity as possible will be given to the matter.

It must be borne in mind that a government’s first responsibility is to provide students, who qualify for teacher training but who lack financial resources, with financial assistance. I think it was in this regard that there was a misinterpretation and, perhaps, a misunderstanding.

However, my personal viewpoint is that those people who have qualified, but who are indigent—whose parents do not have the means—are the people who must be assisted, and not necessarily the best achievers from a financially strong background. [Interjections.] We shall certainly give special attention to this matter.

I want to draw the attention of this House to the fact that the matter of the upgrading of teacher’s qualifications is in fact a big problem from an educational point of view, which is, however, being dwarfed by the abnormal situation which has to be dealt with. Ever since I have been involved in education—as a member in charge in the old CRC—we have been concerned with the question of upgrading. When other departments had no teachers in for instance the AA category, we had the perpetuation thereof and most of our teachers, as we will show later on, still fall in the lower qualified category. However, I also wish to state that we have the greatest admiration and respect for this particular group of teachers, people who have a sense of calling and dedication and the willingness to give themselves. I think if we were in a position to determine our own finances, I would certainly make the primary school teachers the best paid ones. [Interjections.]

Nevertheless, with regard to the upgrading of lower qualified teachers, those teachers who are not in possession of a Std 10 certificate, the department has already completed the first phase of this project, which encompasses the precise identification of the target group. In this connection I must point out that research has revealed that the number of teachers in the age group up to 49 years is as follows: Std 9 plus 2 years’ professional training—155, Std 8 plus 3 years’ training—2 126, Std 8 plus 2 years’ training—that is the old PL2—5 044, Std 6—the old T3 teachers—plus 2 years’ training—49. Therefore we have 7 374 teachers in this group. In the age group 50 years and older—in terms of underqualification—the analysis is as follows: Std 9 plus 2 years’ training—39, Std 8 plus 3 years’ training—208, Std 8 plus 2 years’ training—1 193, Std 6 plus 3 years’ training—49. Therefore, we have in our schools 1489 of these teachers over the age of 50. That is as far as the identification of these groups is concerned.

We had an important decision to make and that was that in order to improve the qualifications of these teachers, there was a need for them to obtain a senior certificate. It certainly was my personal viewpoint that a teacher with all these years’ experience, now being forced to obtain a Std 10 certificate in order to be upgraded, would not necessarily be a better teacher. Therefore we are looking at the question of phasing out the need for that Std 10 certificate. This is the second phase of the appointment of a committee to combine syllabuses for courses to upgrade the professional qualifications of these teachers and to investigate the possibility of the accreditation of these courses. The Ministers’ Council has now decided in principle to upgrade the category of lower qualified teachers in higher age groups and to exempt lower qualified teachers in lower age groups from the senior certificate, so as to enable them to enrol at a college of education for further training, in order to obtain a special upgrading diploma. [Interjections.] This decision will be implemented in accordance with the normal administrative procedures and financial requirements.

*Mr Chairman, taking the preceding into account, I can readily accept, just like this House, that there are serious problems in the sphere of education. Teamwork is essential to resolve these problems to the satisfaction of the whole educational community.

As I did last year, I want to appeal once again to the representative community. Let us stand together as teachers, principals, officials and politicians to combat the discrimination that still affects you and me in the sphere of education. Only a team effort can guarantee success. No one will achieve anything by reproaching and vilifying one another and uttering everyday and well-known slogans such as “dirty hands”.

The Department of Education and Culture, of which I am the political head, is at the service of the educational and parent community. If anyone is dissatisfied, why bruit it abroad, screaming and shouting? Let us join forces and fight for the rights of our children and those rights we as teachers have. Individual attempts and personal recriminations and jealousy have no right of existence in our community today. As an educational community, we must stand together as a unit and work towards the realisation of what we believe in—a unitary education system.

Mr Chairman, I feel compelled also to address the youth of the community. I have the greatest admiration for our young people, who have to make a career and a future for themselves in the midst of the terribly disruptive onslaughts that are being made on the secure lives they are entitled to. I ask myself, Mr Chairman, whether the youth of today can enter the future with hope today. Is it still possible, taking the conditions in the RSA into account, for education to be the breeding ground for youthful idealism? Can education still lay the foundation of a positive drive among pupils and students which can lead to the ideals for the country becoming realities in future?

The future definitely holds complex problems for education. One must remember that student and pupil dissatisfaction is a widespread phenomenon throughout the world. It is often characterised by passionate outbursts of opposition which are given a lot of publicity by the media.

One cannot simply denounce this kind of action, since in part it arises from well-founded grievances. These grievances find concentrated expression in the three battle cries of the American students: “More relevance, more efficiency and more participation." But the students also have grievances against deficiencies in society. The young people’s natural and naive moral sense is rebelling against the gap between reality in society and the ideals proclaimed by the older generation and transferred to them in the process of education.

Mr Chairman, every problem provides an exceptional challenge and creates new opportunities. I believe that if we approach the future in this spirit, there is hope for the future. As believers we cannot lose that hope, despite the present circumstances. I also believe that this kind of approach will lead to a strong source of youthful idealism, so that the country will be able to rely on the kind of drive that will ensure a meaningful future for all the inhabitants of the RSA.

In this regard I find the following words by the poetess Lina Spies from “’n Paternoster vir Suid-Afrika” very appropriate:

I have already dealt with problem areas in education and proposed solutions to this. I now want to concentrate on important initiatives taken by the department and the successes that have been achieved as a result.

Amidst the undesirable circumstances in which education has to take place today, a mechanism has been established in terms of which conditions and events in and around schools are monitored and strategies are planned to overcome or, if possible, to prevent the conditions and events within the framework of legislation and regulatory instructions. An example which I can refer to with appreciation is the handling of a demand by certain so-called student councils that the subject advisory service be withdrawn from schools. These matters were investigated very thoroughly and it was decided that if this was really the wish of the pupils, the whole inspectoral service would be withdrawn from the relevant schools.

The effect of this decision was that principals were given an opportunity to explain to the student councils in question that the withdrawal of the inspectoral service implied that inter alia no moderation and evaluation would take place for teachers’ training. Consequently these students’ councils were compelled to drop their demand. With this incident in mind, one cannot but conclude that our children are being abused to do the dirty work of those people on high levels. This makes it even more essential for very strict evaluation to be done in respect of teachers’ training.

†We must be far more careful and far more selective in respect of the people we send for teacher training. It is actually immoral that those who have already had an academic training and have reached a professional stage should use these innocent pupils for their own political causes and so destroy the life of those individuals and the life of the nation—I am talking about the South African nation.

*Another important initiative is the establishment of a financial planning committee. In today’s world one simply cannot waste money—my colleague in the House of Assembly should realise that I see the episode involving the Paarl Education College in this light as well. It is a waste of money.

There were many cries of dismay and displeasure about the so-called freezing of teaching posts, but once again steps to maintain financial discipline had to be taken into account. This department had to take these steps too.

In this respect I want to point a finger at the Press who, in the midst of the undesirable climate in education, grab at any little straw to create sensation. One sometimes wonders whether it is really necessary or worthwhile to publicise in the newspapers internal arrangements that cannot be of any value to the public in general, just for the sake of sensation. The real position is simply that the committee has decided to restrict the authority for the approval of the creation of posts to the department’s head office for the moment. This step was regarded as essential to ensure that the department can give a first-hand account of all expenditure in this connection.

The significance of this committee resides in the fact that all expenditure can be planned jointly and monitored so that the department, which consists of numerous sections, can ensure that expenditure takes place in terms of priorities. At this point I want to discuss the question of the funding of education which is being and will be allocated according to a subsidy formula. I also want to reflect on the problem the House of Assembly is creating for my department because of its ideology of separateness.

This formula was accepted in principle since it appeared at the time that the formula would generate sufficient funds to meet the needs of the department. We have not been successful as yet, however, in determining beyond all doubt what the insufficient generation of funds can be ascribed to. It is felt that the subsidy formula either does not address the following aspects sufficiently or does not take them into account at all:

1. (i) The historic backlog which education, for which my department is responsible, has to contend.
2. (ii) The replacement of poor, inadequate buildings.
3. (iii) In the sphere of the training of teachers and technical training, the financing of extensions in view of the fact that the enrolments at these institutions are restricted to constant figures because of the insufficient facilities. No additional funds for capital works etc are being generated because funds for these institutions are based on enrolment figures.
4. (iv) Pupil services such as accommodation and transport allowances, transport schemes and the subsidising of institutions.
5. (v) the possible difference in the ratio of pupils to teachers in terms of which the teaching posts are allocated according to approved staff provision scales and the ratio according to which the financing of teaching posts is determined. It is not clear whether or not the same ratios apply.

The department and I are still involved in sorting out this thorny issue at the highest level. Hon members know that finance is a thorny issue, and they have experienced this in the House. Nevertheless the particulars concerning the allocation of funds are as follows:

Apart from essential current expenses, the funds will be utilised for the following projects among others: With reference to new institutions, there are 2 teachers’ training colleges, 15 secondary schools, 1 reform school for girls, 12 primary schools and 6 hostels. In addition there are extensions to 3 secondary schools and 12 primary schools.

In addition to the above-mentioned, the Hewat Teachers’ Training College is being extended by the building of five new schools with facilities for technical training; and a new building is being erected for the Athlone Technical College. In addition, with regard to the provision of teachers’ training facilities in the Northern Cape with reference to a Ministers’ Council decision, a teachers’ training college is being provided at Upington. [Interjections.] That is something the LP promised the people of the Northern Cape, and it is certainly a pleasure to announce that they will now be provided with a college as a result of our decision.

According to projected requirements and in terms of the Sanso norms, the college building is being established for 480 students and the hostels for 300 students. We are moving away from the concept of one large hostel to accommodate everyone, to a system of smaller hostels in which groups of students will live as families.

The submission of the norms in respect of the size of the buildings has been made and the approval of the Treasury committee for building norms and cost restrictions has been received. The architectural brief has been drawn up and the planning of the buildings will start shortly.

In order to ensure that the Upington Teachers’ Training College will be operative as from January 1989, the college will initially be accommodated in the Upington No 3 secondary school which is being built at Louisvale at present. In this way a promise that was made to the community of the North-Western districts is being honoured.

The promotion and accelerated provision of vocationally directed education on school and post-school level is continuing unabated. Technical subjects will be offered at the new secondary schools and will include fitting and turning, electrical work, welding, metal work and motor mechanics. The cost of providing a secondary school with these technical subjects amounts to R2,25 million for the buildings alone, whereas the cost of the equipment amounts to a further R1,25 million. This relatively expensive provision of education is definitely a productive investment in the interests of the child and the future of South Africa.

A new campus for the training centre for seamen is also receiving attention. A site has been identified near the department’s training ship and the erection of functional accommodation by a private developer is envisaged. May I emphasise, Sir, that since this speech was prepared, the Ministers’ Council has granted its approval for this. It is expected that the accommodation will be available for use by the end of 1988.

The institution of a special school for the training of skills (prevocational training) for senior adaptation class pupils is envisaged as a pilot scheme this year. The objectives of this school will be to prepare the pupils for placement in the open labour market. We believe that if we want to and have to assume our rightful place in this country, the time in which our people became only ministers and teachers has passed. [Interjections.] We constantly experience problems in our Administration with our policy of purposeful promotion, because we do not have people with suitable training. That is why we are emphasising this need. This step has become necessary because of the high unemployment rate on the one hand, and the increase in the number of adaptation class pupils between the ages of 14 and 18 on the other.

I should like to elaborate on the important aspects of culture. With reference to culture, the preservation of the South African cultural heritage was mainly the prerogative of the Whites until relatively recently. We want to tell them, however, that no such thing as Coloured culture exists, because culture is culture. Numerous institutions in which we had no sitting or any say were established to negotiate for the preservation of what has been borrowed, what has been inherited and what is one’s own. In this connection we think of the FAK, a voluntary cultural organisation. There have been certain trends and a clear awareness among the Coloureds during the past few years, however, to use their own initiative in seeking out what is valuable for South Africa, and preserving it. The exceptional interest and ardour among interested parties to promote the Genadendal Museum is a good example of own initiative. This museum is mentioned in acknowledged publications such as the Cape Museum Gallery Guide 1988, the International Directory of Arts (Germany), as well as Mr I H J Balie’s contemporary work, Geskiedenis van Genadendal 1738 tot 1988.

In our present changed and developing society, one can hardly dispute the fact that the cultural needs of a community necessitate constant adjustments. A striking aspect is the fact that our communities are experiencing significant cultural backlogs which can be ascribed to various factors, including the divided cultural dispensation which is unacceptable and the lack of a say in the planning of cultural services, as well as the shortage of cultural leaders, facilities for cultural pursuits and the funds for cultural development.

With regard to the shortage of funds for cultural development, the budget for the 1988-89 financial year has been increased by 121,32% as opposed to the budget of the 1987-88 financial year, in order to make a start in eliminating the said backlogs.

The divided cultural dispensation and the lack of a say in determining cultural services is the result of certain legislative regulations which are in line with the institution of own affairs. The relevant Act does not provide, for example, for the establishment of a body similar to the Council for Culture and Recreation, and consequently this council, of which the term of office expired on 31 March this year, had to be dissolved. We envisage that the understandable negative attitude of the community in respect of the separate operation of cultural matters will increase, particularly as a result of the relevant Act.

With regard to cultural leaders, the community will have to be motivated in the first place to identify spheres of interest in a specific region, and a concerted team effort will have to be made to do something about the matter. A step of this nature will require very good planning and organisation. Cultural officials will play an important part with reference to regular follow-up and motivation visits. The identification of leading figures with enthusiasm and vision, who will be prepared to oppose the transitoriness of possible negative activities for the sake of regional requirements, is a challenge in itself. Hon members of this House will realise that this task will have to be approached with great circumspection. Despite the problems, financial allocations of almost R1,5 million were made to 160 cultural and sports organisations last year. For the first time in years a drama festival for amateur drama groups is being held in Port Elizabeth this year. The final round will take place in Stellenbosch later this year.

I have just mentioned sports organisations. The past year was characterised by discrimination in the sphere of school sport. Innocent athletes were turned away from meetings because they did not want to comply with specific sports bodies’ demands.

†Sir, my party, of which I am the leader, believes in non-racial sport from club to school level. We want each code of sport to be controlled by one national body and we demand selection on merit for all teams at all times.

Normal sport is an accomplished fact in South Africa and participation in and co-operation with national and provincial unions should in my opinion be encouraged. My party wants genuine non-racial sport at all levels. It is interesting to note that those bodies who claim to be non-racial speak about so-called Coloured rugby, Coloured soccer and Coloured athletics, because one can count on one hand the number of so-called Indian schools that participate in their events. On the other hand, we reject the whole concept of multinationalism. We say that no spectator should be refused admission or be debarred from the use of public facilities at sports meetings because of his skin colour, language, culture, customs or traditions.

I must emphasise here that I believe that truly non-racial school sport unions should be established throughout the country. Furthermore, the necessary recruitment should take place. I believe that the necessary facilities, equipment and outfits should be provided. I also believe in the funding of sports meetings at regional and provincial level. I believe that coaching courses for teachers should be arranged and that there should be clinics for pupils. Finally, I believe in the establishment of a non-racial, non-political school sport federation.

It is interesting that people who talk about liberation will not prepare for that particular day. I remember that when we were at high school, we were told about the day of liberation. It is more than 40 years since I left high school, and the day of liberation has not come. My argument is that one cannot wait for that particular day to come to take one’s rightful place in society—on the levels of sport and education or on the general level in the country.

I want to stress that I firmly believe that by fostering healthy contact between children of different racial and cultural backgrounds, racial prejudice will most certainly be broken down. The old adage is still true: The more we are together, the happier we are going to be.

*Sir, that is why I regret the fact that there are bodies which exploit school sport under the guise of sport for their own political objectives. I want to appeal to our school sports bodies to fight this unacceptable kind of conduct tooth and nail.

The department is involved in a few other projects which will undoubtedly interest hon members. In the first place there is family counselling. In view of the encouraging reaction to the family counselling programme which was launched on an experimental basis at 19 schools in the Peninsula last year, the department extended the programme in Kimberley and Upington at the beginning of 1988. Once teaching staff and members of the inspectorate had received the necessary counselling and training, the programme was instituted at 41 selected secondary and primary schools in the mentioned regions. Just as in the Peninsula schools, it has emerged from provisional reports that the programme has had a great impact on pupils, teachers and parents in Kimberley and Upington.

For the information of hon members of the House I may mention that the family counselling programme is divided into two main streams, viz family counselling and sex education.

Family planning covers aspects such as the parents, the individual in the family, the influence of status in the family, responsibility toward the family, emotions, standards, social behaviour, decision-making and its consequences, the development of acceptable relationships, a philosophy of life, etc. Sex education deals with aspects such as reproduction in plants, humans and animals, differences between the sexes, codes of conduct peculiar to the two sexes, placing sexuality in perspective, the origin of a family, puberty, physical changes, the sexual urge, chastity, going out, deviant adolescent behaviour, various views of marriage, readiness for marriage, factors which influence a successful marriage, divorce, the purpose and necessity of family planning, venereal diseases and so on. [Interjections.]

The contents of the programme are set out in four teaching guides for the junior primary phase, the senior primary phase, the junior secondary phase and the senior secondary phase.

Since the subject of sexually transmitted diseases is covered by the family counselling programme, Aids is one of the diseases that is addressed comprehensively. We cannot escape reality. In addition an informative brochure about the dangers and prevention of this feared disease is being compiled especially for distribution to secondary schools and primary schools with secondary sections.

I accept that the Government has the full support of this House in its campaign against Aids in the knowledge that no stone shall be left unturned in combating this frightening, pernicious disease.

To date 30 primary schools have been equipped with a computer-aided teaching system known as “TOAM”. An amount of R12 million was requested in the Budget for the 1988-89 financial year to equip a further 62 schools with this system, ie an average of approximately R200 000 per school.

“TOAM” is a Hebrew acronym which means “computer-assisted practice and evaluation”. It is not a computer, as many people may think, but a system which consists of software and courseware which can be used by individual pupils, under the leadership of the teachers, to do practical exercises once they have received tuition about a particular subject. At the same time the system builds up a record of the pupil’s progress in the particular subject.

Although the system has not been in use in the department’s schools for long enough to enable one to make a comprehensive evaluation of its effectiveness, the system has been tested by various institutions in the Republic and has furnished good results.

Initially the system was studied and tested by the University of the Witwatersrand, and subsequently it was introduced inter alia by Anglo American schools and training centres, mining houses and teachers’ training colleges and schools under the Department of Education and Training.

At the two schools under this administration in which “TOAM” has been in operation since 1985 and 1986, the average percentages in mathematics at one school increased in Std 3 from 63% to 75% between 1984 and 1987; in Std 4 from 59% to 63%; in Std 5 from 51% to 65%; in 1985-87 it increased at the second school from 57% to 72,7% in Std 3; from 51,5% to 57,6% in Std 4; from 36% to 40,5% in Std 5 and from 45% to 51,9% in Std 6.

In view of this it is my modest opinion that there is no doubt whatsoever that “TOAM” can be used successfully in schools.

†Mr Chairman, before I reflect on future challenges I want to respond to a few points raised by the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition during the no-confidence debate. I wish to state that we heard here a number of half-truths, untruths, prevarications of the truth and certainly a few things which were not true at all.

*With reference to the accusation about the regional boards, I want to say that provision is really made for two thirds of a regional board to consist of elected members from the respective school committees. We have nothing to do with appointments. The school committees make a choice. Since school committees are regarded as representative of the various committees, one can justifiably accept that regional boards are representative of the community. It is not really possible, therefore, for regional boards to have too many members from any specific party. It is also important to note that regional boards have only an advisory authority, and that such boards have no nomination authority in cases in which a school committee exists.

It is difficult to comment on the delay in appointments in any specific case, since there may be exceptional circumstances in each case. A head-master may delay the nomination in one case, for example; in some of the church schools in particular there is sometimes a delay or even a refusal on the part of the person who manages the school to make a nomination in time; there are also delays in the procedure or interaction between the school and head office, head office and the school, the school and the regional board as well as the regional board and head office. We have already met in the department, however, to discuss these things and to eliminate such circumstances. I want to give the assurance today—I am sure I have the support of my whole department—that all appointments to promotion posts will be made before the schools close at the end of this year.

†The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition politicised the issue of a particular appointee and I must correct the impression given to this House about the appointment of a certain Mr Wagenstroom. I have to express my concern about Mr Nicholas Wagenstroom, who is fully aware of the circumstances surrounding the fire at his old school; his subsequent temporary accommodation; and his refusal to accept three posts.

*The CPTU alleged in the newspapers that this man could not get a post, yet he was offered three posts. He refused to accept any of them, however.

†Now he goes to the Cape Professional Teachers’ Association for assistance.

Once again I wish to underscore the falseness of the information given by the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition. I do not know, nor have I ever spoken to a Mr Wagenstroom. The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition gave this House the impression that I had said to Mr Wagenstroom that if he joined the LP he would get the appointment. This is a confounded lie. [Interjections.] There is no truth in this allegation. I do not know the man and I have never spoken to him. If they were to bring him before me now I would not even be able to recognise him. Yet the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition has the audacity to make such an accusation.

Let me put the facts in perspective and tell the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition that Mr Wagenstroom, who was an applicant for the principalship of Seagull Primary School, had 15 years’ teaching experience and in those 15 years he taught at 10 schools. Mr Scarnick, the appointee, had had 27 years of teaching experience and had taught in two schools. In one school, a Pl school, he acted as principal, whereas Mr Wagenstroom had never taught in a Pl school. He taught mostly in P4 schools. Mr Wagenstroom is classified in category C while Mr Scarnick is in category D.

It is expected of a principal of a Pl school to have a bilingual certificate, an A and E certificate for appointment to the principalship of a P1 school. Mr Wagenstroom has an A and e certificate. In other words he is not qualified for the post, whereas Mr Scarnick has an A and E certificate ie both Afrikaans and English on the higher grade.

It must also be remembered that a teacher’s testimonials must be of a recent nature and that one of them, concerning his character, must be given to him by a Minister of a church which he attends. Mr Wagenstroom’s testimonial was given to him by a Minister in Port Elizabeth whereas he is a member of a church in Uitenhage. This makes his whole application questionable.

Mr Scarnick had been a principal of a P2 school which was later downgraded to a P3 school. The school was closed because of the Group Areas Act and therefore we certainly have an obligation to look at the victim of this oppressive situation.

I am not going to deal with all the other negative aspects, because I think I have given an indication of the thinking of this particular gentleman.

As for the more distant future, it appears to be obvious that the department is faced with a number of challenges which will severely test the resources at its disposal. The most intricate of these challenges is the real danger of the overprovision of teachers which will not only result in the curtailment of the intake of students for teacher training, as I have already mentioned, but also the shifting of the emphasis at school level from excessively academic education to career-orientated education and all that it entails.

In order to comply with the demands of modern teacher training methods, the new college at Kuils River for 1 320 students will be ready at the end of this year. The new college for 1 000 at Worcester will be ready at the end of 1989, while the Hewat College of Education will be upgraded towards the end of 1989 so as to functionally accommodate 1 000 students. The new college for 480 students at Upington is mainly for the benefit of people in the North-Western districts of the Cape.

As far as career-orientated education is concerned, the department is already making facilities available at secondary schools for the offering of more subjects in the commercial, technical and other fields. To this end a syllabus for computer studies as a subject choice in Std 8 to 10 is presently being prepared for introduction in 1990. As a beginning 23 new and existing schools have been identified for equipping with a four-subject technical course of study over the next five to ten years. In 1987 two such schools were provided with new workshops and classrooms for technical drawing and theory. During this year, a further five schools will be so equipped. Furthermore, special efforts are being made by the inspectors of technical subjects to recruit senior primary pupils for the technical course of study and principals are being encouraged to publicise career opportunities in the technical field. The department is also encouraging the introduction of the subject technical drawings at ordinary secondary schools.

Another challenge is the trend to privatisation in the public sector. To realise the Government’s policy to privatise services where possible, the department has initiated an investigation into the privatisation of catering services at hostels of educational institutions. Three hostels have been identified for a trial run of this service and private catering firms have been requested to submit quotations for rendering services at these hostels. It is anticipated that catering services at the department’s hostels could be privatised by the beginning of 1989 if the trial run proves this to be viable proposition.

In conclusion, I must refer to the problem of “alternative” or “people’s” education. Perhaps it would not be out of place to put the phenomenon of people’s education into perspective. As the department sees it, people’s education forms merely a part of the whole pattern of an alternative structure for the Republic of South Africa. By bringing such a structure into being alongside recognised structures, the proponents intend it to replace the present structure once the latter has been discredited and abandoned.

Although the term “people’s education” has only been in use since 1985, the basic idea has a relatively long tradition of almost three decades. This is a tradition of efforts to evolve an alternative to the established educational system which, in the eyes of the proponents, provides an inferior educational dispensation for population groups other than the White group. Although the system has a plethora of negative aspects, positive aspects inter alia are that it reflects the needs of the community concerned and places emphasis on the necessity of the involvement of the community in the educational structure.

Therefore, in addressing people’s education, the department must and will ensure that its educational policy and aims are so refined and supple that it will be able to absorb the positive aspects of the alternative structure and accommodate the general educational needs of the community it serves.

Mr Chairman, I again want to emphasise and underscore that the LP is dedicated to a free national single education system devised to provide all able students of all races with an equal opportunity of receiving the most specialised training.

Mr Chairman. I shall not react immediately to everything the hon the Minister of Education and Culture said, but shall come back to it later in the debate.

Allow me to congratulate the hon the Minister right at the outset on his announcement in connection with family planning and sex education. This is something which should have been brought to the attention of our community long ago.

It was also gladdening to hear the announcement in connection with less academically orientated and more professionally orientated education. The Ministers’ Council should also be congratulated in this regard. At this stage I am a little concerned about certain things which the hon the Minister said, however. He pointed out that the intake of students for teacher training would have to be limited because teachers could not be trained for unemployment. My question to the hon the Minister is this: If this is to become the Ministers’ Council’s policy, are they taking into account the fact that many of our teachers are saddled with overfull classes and that, in spite of the limited intake of aspiring teachers, numerous posts are still filled by White teachers of both sexes?

An aspect which I find disturbing and to which I shall return later is the fact that the hon the Minister said that the selection of students for teacher training would have to be undertaken very selectively. In the same breath, however, he spoke about trained teachers who influenced the youth.

I now want him to tell me whether this is a hidden threat to students or prospective students: “Look out! I am telling you in advance that I shall stand in your way so that you cannot influence children to radicalism.” [Interjections.] I am asking the hon the Minister. It is not you who have to reply to us; I am asking the hon the Minister to reply. [Interjections.]

Order! The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition must remember it is not “you” but “hon members”. [Interjections.]

All right, Sir, “hon members”. [Interjections.] Then the hon the Minister largely blamed the situation which is prevailing in our schools again on radical elements. I did not discern that the hon the Minister was addressing the action of the Police and the Defence Force with the same seriousness in this regard. After all, it is not only radicalism which contributes to an undesirable situation but also the actions of those on the other side. If the hon the Minister regards the matter in that light, with all due respect, I want to put a question to him arising from an LP document. In the light of the fact I mentioned and which the hon the Minister broached in his speech, the following question comes to mind: Does that hon Minister still stand by the following, where the LP said:

I have just said that.

Yes, I am talking about matters which relate to radicalism now. [Interjections.] Sir, if an hon member knows nothing about a matter, if he has no knowledge of it, he would do well to sit calmly and listen, as I sat and listened to the hon the Minister.

The document reads further—I shall not quote the entire document but only basic extracts which I think refer to what the hon the Minister said—as follows:

†I shall come back to that a little later. I quote further:

Don’t read your speech.

Sir, I am not reading my speech, I am quoting from a specific document because I want the hon the Minister to tell me whether he will still say at the end of the debate that they retain their standpoint. I want the hon the Minister to reply to certain questions so that we may have absolute clarity on the matter. I shall quote further:

[Inaudible.]

I am sure some hon members have never clapped eyes on the specific document from which I am quoting. Possibly that is why certain hon members are making continuous interjections about their own document. I shall quote again:

I am referring to the document because the hon the Minister said there were certain influences which were reaching to the students from above and which were radicalising the situation.

Do you deny that?

In the document concerned it is spelt out clearly that a school principal must be censured or disciplined because he supports the students openly. I shall quote again:

The hon member who asked a little while ago whether I denied this definitely does not know what he is talking about. I shall quote again:

*I am mentioning these matters to the hon the Minister because a person could deduce from his speech that there was a degree of dissatisfaction on the side of his department because students and parents become involved in student and staff activities as such. Today we once again have a situation which can become uncontrollable. There were reports in this morning’s papers that a possible crisis exists in our schools and conjectures that a boycott of schools would probably become operative today. At a Press conference yesterday a disturbing statement was made in an announcement by organisations which represent teachers, students and parents.

It was said that the Police and the Defence Force were in control of our schools in the Peninsula. The statement was supported by Dr Saunders, Mr Sonn and Prof Gerwel. [Interjections.] I now want to ask the hon the Minister whether he thinks that these people who support the statement are irresponsible and whether he thinks that they have well-founded reasons to associate themselves with such a far-reaching statement.

Furthermore, do education authorities—this question is also put in the statement in this morning’s Die Burger—still have any authority in schools under these circumstances? We want to know, Sir, because if those rumours are devoid of all truth, the truth must come to light. We in this House have to know what the true state of affairs is so that we can make the two matters tally.

Is it true that the Police will use force to enforce school attendance? I am putting this question in consequence of a departmental circular. I now want to quote from a report in today’s The Argus which reads as follows:

The report goes on:

Fortunately it is not I—

†In other words, he followed the department’s directive.

*I now want to know whether the department was requested by the Police to send a circular to teachers in which it was said that force would be used if students milled about on school grounds. My experience is that there is no greater commotion when students hold their meetings in Reigerpark—the question now is not whether they are incited to do this—than when there are policemen on the grounds.

We in this House as well as teachers, children and parents, must hear the truth from the hon the Minister himself. The hon the Minister must put it to us unequivocally. He is certainly capable of doing this because he has more facts at his disposal than we have as he is directly involved in the situation.

I am not saying these things because I want to be vindictive, because one cannot want to be vindictive about educational matters as then one will make no contribution to solving the problem. If the truth does not emerge, I am afraid that the school programme will be plunged into chaos and that it will result in confrontation. The great question is what the hon the Minister personally did about the situation when it was brought to his attention. I want to suggest—I want to tell the hon the Minister that we should all be generous in this regard; he quoted what organised education had to say about this and I shall also refer to it—that direct dialogue must be opened with organised education. We must not necessarily sit and wait for them to make overtures to discuss this situation. After all, education is under the control of the hon the Minister. There must also be a spontaneous move to open dialogue with parents. It should not be the case that parents who have the courage to attempt solving the problem should have to approach the department about it.

I repeat that the situation is most unacceptable. The situation is beginning to assume unnatural proportions and it is deteriorating into a crisis. I think it is our responsibility to launch those matters. I am not making this request for the fun of it; I am doing it in all seriousness. That dissatisfaction exists at schools, as the hon the Minister said, is as plain as a pikestaff, and remote control, whether it comes from the Police, the Defence Force or at a pinch from the department by means of statements in the Press, will make not a jot of difference to this troubled affair.

We all know of the community’s deep desire that all students and teachers in detention be released, that corporal punishment be abolished and that Police interference be discontinued. I tried to contact the hon the Minister of Law and Order this morning to ask him what information he had obtained from the Police regarding this situation and what he as the Minister intended doing to intervene so that the Police—as is alleged—do not overstep the mark, but unfortunately the hon the Minister was out of town. I ask the hon the Minister of Education and Culture whether he will give his undivided attention to entering into dialogue with parents, the teaching corps and, if possible, the children too.

I shall return in a while to the statement the hon the Minister made that communities should strive to institute “people’s education”. The hon the Minister gave an indication of how he would combine this, but he will concede that he did not go into detail. Does the “people’s education” programme meet with the approval of the hon the Minister or does he have an alternative? If so, what progress has he made with its implementation, except for the implementation of career-orientated education?

It appears further that an open confrontation exists between the LP and organised education. The hon the Minister referred to this and I want to conclude by saying that tomorrow, or possibly later during the debate, I shall discuss that aspect, because it is disturbing. In the old CRC organised education supported the LP—in public too—but in our current situation they are at each other’s throats. This will do education no good at all. It will not mean much for career-orientated education either if the children do not find a sympathetic response among teachers and if teachers, in co-operation with the administration and the hon the Minister, cannot settle the current undesirable situation.

Mr Chairman, one finds it difficult to take part in the debate after listening to such a well thought out, well prepared, scientific and educational speech as the hon the Minister’s. [Interjections.]

If I were able to, I would have concluded this debate; but I am afraid to do so. [Interjections.] Let us now put this Vote and be done with it. In my opinion this hon Minister made a speech in this House today which is of national interest to our education. I want to congratulate the hon the Minister on that. In my view, none of us has the courage to get up here and question any of the arguments which were put forward, because every point which was in the interests of education was well motivated.

It was a speech which gave us visions for the future. I can understand if the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition did not understand this speech, because it seems he does not have a vision for the future. The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition reacted to one aspect of the speech, viz sex education. I think he has something else on his mind. [Interjections.]

The hon the Minister assured us here today that he knows where he is going with the education of our people, notwithstanding all the problems that exist, or that people say exist. I am proud to be able to say that I feel reassured after having listened to that speech, because each one of us knows that there is a future for our children. We shall not be able to achieve that now or tomorrow, but we shall achieve it if we persevere and if we carry on with our work.

I appreciate the investigation into the poor results. The investigation has been completed and the recommendations have been made. I hope that the people who played a part in those poor results will admit to it. I want to thank the hon the Minister for having passed these recommendations on to the parents, the teachers, the students and the department. I hope he will get the support to implement them in full, because they can only help us on the road ahead. The LP on this side of the House will support the hon the Minister in this task he has undertaken of implementing these recommendations.

I also want to congratulate the hon the Minister on his standpoint that needy families and needy students should receive financial support in future. I agree that we should help those who need assistance. We should not help students to own their own cars or to maintain their own disco accounts and accounts at other places, but we should give financial assistance to those children whose parents cannot afford to pay for their children’s needs. I also want to appeal that the children from the rural areas be subsidised—depending upon how far from the college they live—because they have the problem of requiring a more substantial subsidy than children who live nearer to the college. I had to travel a long way throughout my school career and I know how difficult it is for children from the rural areas who live hundreds of miles from a college.

I am actually quite sorry that the hon the Minister was not at the head of matters when I was still struggling with a matric certificate. I heard today that one can continue one’s studies without that matric certificate. I welcome that, because the teachers in the rural areas, who have to toil in the community from morning till night, do not have time to study. It is not that they are not capable, but they do not have the time. I thank the hon the Minister for extending his hand to the old school who toiled for years in the rural areas and in education in general, especially the women who taught the lower standards. We recognise their service and we thank them by way of this support.

That is one thing one can say about the LP—we fight for our people. [Interjections.] We shall make our own speeches. We shall not make speeches out of other speeches.

That brings me to the problem that is being experienced in organised education. The hon the Minister, who is also the leader of this party, wrote an open letter to Mr Sonn in Rapport of 30 August 1987 in which he suggested that they co-operate.

I want to ask the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition if he has Mr Sonn’s reply on his desk. [Interjections.] If he does, we should appreciate it if he would read it to the hon the Minister, because I believe the hon the Minister has not yet received a reply.

Not this monkey.

Order! Who is talking about monkeys?

Mr Chairman, I withdraw that unconditionally.

I am also grateful for the attention that is being paid to technical education, because we in this House have been appealing for that over the past few years. I want to express appreciation for the fact that a programme is now being implemented by means of which we can eliminate that backlog.

It is a pity that the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition tried to use today’s debate to talk politics. What we should be discussing here are matters concerning our youth, our people, our country and our freedom. There is a saying which goes: “Only the educated are free.” We cannot allow ourselves to be robbed of that. I want to ask the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition whether he is prepared to allow disorder to reign in our schools. Is he prepared to allow negative influences in our schools? Is he prepared to allow the schools to be taken over by radical elements and groups who know no discipline? [Interjections.] We are not prepared to do that, and the question must be addressed. The question of discipline in our schools must be addressed.

How?

This hon Minister is neither the Minister of Police nor of Defence. That question should be put to the Ministers in the House of Assembly. After all, the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition has talks with the hon the State President; he can put that question to him. [Interjections.] We have to ensure that order is restored in our schools.

We in this House have to guard against creating the psychological climate for something to happen in our schools outside. We should create fear in the community. We as leaders should be prepared to be forthright if something is wrong in our community. We should not encourage the community to do something which we want to see happen. It seems to me that the Official Opposition would welcome it if something were to happen in our schools.

Now you are talking nonsense.

They want the children to create disorder again so that they can place the LP in an awkward position. [Interjections.]

Could the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition not have done better than he did today? After all, he had the opportunity to submit his education policy to us. He has a responsibility in respect of education, for he has to put forward an alternative to our education policy. All he did, however, was to quote for 10 minutes from an old document in an attempt to place our Department of Education and Culture and the hon the Minister in an awkward position.

Order! I regret that the hon member’s time has expired.

Mr Chairman, I rise merely to give the hon member an opportunity to complete his speech.

The hon the Minister is rising to all the challenges in our education. Hon members will concede that the hon the Minister has to work within the framework of the budget. He is addressing the historical backlog in our education, the expansion of our education, and the replacement of buildings. He is addressing the question of the training of technical teachers, the subsidising of services, the parent-pupil relationship, and the relationship between the department and the parents on the one hand and the department and the teachers on the other.

I now want to turn to the Budget which reflects an increase of 9,9%. In respect of education alone it reflects an increase of 10,5%.

What is the rate of inflation?

If I have to quote hon members in the House with regard to the rate of inflation … [Interjections.] There is an increase of 1,5% in respect of tertiary education and 32% in respect of culture. Hon members should listen to the amount of money we shall be receiving. We can execute a policy, but we need the money to do it. We need manpower and a department, and we have to support them.

We need a Minister! What do you have to say about the Minister?

The hon the Minister who is sitting over there is doing the work.

So you do not have a job?

I am not the Minister.

Order! If the hon member for Border wants to ask a question, he should do so in the proper manner. The hon member for Mamre may proceed.

I want to thank the hon the Minister for addressing the question of the training of seamen as well. The people from my constituency as well as the people from the West Coast who are present in the House today welcome that announcement, because we believe that seamen also have to assume a more professional place in society.

There is an increase of 121,32% in respect of culture. I want to ask the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition what their sports policy is? The hon the Minister made an announcement with regard to the sports policy at national level, and I want to congratulate him on that. Sir, we are addressing the needs of our community. We are rising to the challenges of the new South Africa. We are not sitting here, waiting for someone else to make speeches so that we can address the needs that are referred to in those speeches. [Interjections.]

I want to congratulate the hon the Minister on the variety of community projects he announced here today. The hon the Minister does his work so well that he could even tell other departments that he would give them a helping hand by expanding the Department of Education to make it a community affair. This represents the education of the child in his totality and does not merely involve a bit of mathematics here and a bit of geography there. A child is educated in his totality. This method focuses on the human elements in the child. [Interjections.] It is important, and the only way in which we are going to bring about the new South Africa is to take that child by the hand and lead him to full maturity.

I now want to come to something which I should like to say today. We should all accept the challenges in education. Hon members who are active in politics should do so, and those who are active in education should do so. The parents in the community should also accept the challenge. The students themselves should also accept the challenge. That challenge is responsibility.

The hon member for Esselen Park once said that education was like a triangle. Hon members should note that he was not talking about a “koeksister”, but about a triangle comprising the parent, the child and the teacher. I want to say that education is like a wheel. Hon members of the LP as well as hon members of the opposition must understand carefully now. If that wheel of education is to turn, we have to co-ordinate activities. We are all the spokes of that wheel. By “we” I mean the politicians, the parent community, the educationists and the child. If we work together equally hard, that wheel will turn. If, however, we were to move towards the centre of that wheel at some or other time, we would form the axle and then we would turn. When the axle turns, the pressure of that wheel is on the axle and also on the point where the wheel makes contact with the ground. Each of us, in one form or another or at one time or another, is at that point of pressure. We should be responsible, however, and maintain the balance of that wheel and give it momentum so that it can move.

That wheel has to move forward. Just as I always say: “Forward with the Labour Party!” I now say: “Forward with education!” [Interjections.] We should not come here to shove disorder under the wheel as a stone. Nor should we stand in front of the wheel and try to push it down into the abyss. We should help the wheel to turn. In this new South Africa that we want to build, we should move along with the momentum of that wheel. As I said, Sir, that wheel is our education.

We are travelling by car; you are still busy with the wheel.

Your car has run out of petrol; that you must understand. [Interjections.] We are present in this Committee as politicians, and the challenges which politics issues to us are what we have to address in this Chamber. We should not be afraid to expose the fears and shortcomings in education. We should come to the aid of education. I want to tell the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition that we should act responsibly in these difficult years we are going through. We should come to the aid of education and we should create a healthy climate so that our children can continue their upbringing and their education calmly and in peace.

Order! The hon member for Mamre’s wheel has to stop now, because his time has expired. [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, it is indeed an honour and a privilege for me to get up here this afternoon and speak after such a clear exposition of the education policy which is going to be followed by the Department of Education and Culture in the Administration: House of Representatives. Of course, that policy was expounded here today by the hon the Leader of the LP and Minister of Education and Culture in the House of Representatives.

I wholeheartedly underscore the statement made by the previous speaker, the hon member for Mamre, when he said that we were honoured to have a leader like our hon leader who can serve as Minister of Education and Culture when this country is going through a period of crisis. I wholeheartedly underscore the statement that at this difficult time we should be grateful to have a man with vision who can lead us on the road of true liberation in South Africa.

I want to congratulate our hon leader and Minister of Education and Culture on his clear exposition of the education policy which we intend to follow. The hon the Minister addressed all the important points. Like the speaker before me, I am inclined to say that I have nothing to add, but I should nevertheless like to highlight a few of the points the hon the Minister mentioned.

I want to begin by replying to the proposal made by the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition that we should consider the feasibility of so-called “people’s education”. In my opinion that is a completely unfamiliar ideology which is being imposed upon our people. I referred a moment ago to a man with vision. In 1977, during a CPTA congress in Port Elizabeth, the present hon Minister of Education and Culture proposed and recommended that an in-depth investigation be made into the history syllabus that was being dished out to our children. Even at that time the hon the Minister said that attention should be given to the South African history which our children learn at school in particular. Ten years later, in December 1987, a group of people got together in Soweto and formed the Soweto People’s Education Crisis Committee. In that same month this committee called a meeting at the University of the Witwatersrand and established a national body, viz the National Education Crisis Committee. This committee pursued certain goals, inter alia an alternative system of education for South Africa.

Earlier on I talked about a vision, but in December 1987, during the congress at the University of the Witwatersrand, it was said that the history syllabus was one of the main reasons why an alternative system of education had to be found. The hon the Minister of Education and Culture had recommended that ten years before, however. Anyone who does not agree or accept that this hon Minister displayed prophetic vision at that time, should definitely have his head read. That is definitely a sign of someone who had looked ahead, someone who had acquainted himself with the current circumstances and then instituted an investigation and mapped out a path which he could follow in order to achieve that for which he was striving. The hon the Minister acquainted himself well with the circumstances of the people whom he had to lead. Moreover, he allowed himself to be led by the realities of the day in order to achieve that which he was striving for and is still striving for. That is what we mean by vision.

Judging by what one hears in our neighbourhoods and at our schools, and judging by what the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition said here today, and by what is being reported in the newspapers—the chairman of the CPTA expressed his disapproval with regard to the fact that the security forces wanted to go and maintain order at the schools—I want us to focus attention for a while on the objects of the so-called “people’s education”, which is being so widely propagated in our schools by the chairman of the CPTA and his associates.

In Knysna, for example, there has been a lot of talk about this “people’s education”. In the short time at my disposal I should like to refer to a few aspects of this “people’s education”, which is apparently the only way in which peace, justice and prosperity can be brought about in South Africa. According to an article in Die Burger of 18 April 1988, a democratic constitution which will accommodate the aspirations, desires and rights of all people in the country in the sphere of politics, the churches, the schools and in society will have to be introduced in South Africa. It has also been mentioned that “people’s education” involves the question of the democratic validation of the school community. According to the article in Die Burger, one of the key aspects of “people’s education” is the formation of associations of parents, teachers and students. The school community to which they refer would then mobilise a power bloc or pressure group around the school.

Sir, we are not politically conservative, but we grew up in circumstances in which order and discipline played the most important part. We believe in discipline. We believe that children have to honour their parents. I grew up at a time when children were seen and not heard.

Order! I regret that the hon member’s time has expired.

Mr Chairman, I rise merely to give the hon member an opportunity to complete his speech.

Thank you very much. I grew up at a time when a child was still a child, who was welcomed in the house with open arms. Under the system of “people’s education”, the child is used as an element of the pressure group in order to impose an unfamiliar, unacceptable and foreign ideology upon people. I want to tell those who advocate this that it is not desirable.

It will never be accepted in South Africa. Our people believe in order and discipline. We believe in the authority of the parent, the church and the State.

The Leader of the LP took a historical decision at Eshowe. It was a decision which embraced everything and which summarised everything beautifully. It was decided that we would participate in this system in order to eliminate that which is causing the hurt. We do not accept the current system of education. That is why our hon leader instructed the CPTA as early as 1977 to conduct an investigation into the things that our children are being taught. Our hon Leader took every opportunity and used every policy speech to oppose the discriminatory system of education under which we have had to labour in this country. We have never accepted it, but where does one put right what is wrong? One does not do it from the outside. Nor is it put right by boycotts; that has never worked. The preacher says there is a time for everything. There was a time to boycott, but the time has now come to jump in and correct things. Somebody has to jump in now and begin to put things right. In reply to the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition’s question as to whether the implementation of “people’s education” is acceptable in our schools or any other school in South Africa, I want to say that even the Black people do not see their way clear to accepting that kind of education, because they are even more conservative than we are.

You mean they are to the left of you.

They are even more conservative. They are part of me; I grew up with them. I know what I am talking about. I know them, because I speak their language. They are my friends. We struggled together. We have always entered through the same door and we have always had the same problems. I come from a location; the hon member for Border cannot teach me anything! [Interjections.]

At the congress that was held at the University of the Witwatersrand, certain objects were envisaged. One of the aims expressed at that congress was that the teacher should return to the school and become a teacher. He has to become a teacher and he has to study for that. He also has to go and study the alternatives which have to be conveyed to the child. He has to be the mediator, the middleman. Another resolution that was adopted there was the instruction by Oliver Tambo, the Leader of the ANC, that the children must return to school. They have to return to the classroom. Now I want to ask the children in the Western Cape who advocate the implementation of “people’s education” in our schools—and I do so with all due respect—why they are opposing the instruction of "people’s education”. I am absolutely confused about this, and someone has to enlighten me. [Interjections.] I want to reiterate that the members of the LP believe that the present system of education is not acceptable. We believe that this system of education has to be changed from within. We in the LP have set ourselves an objective. One of the objectives that we have set is that we shall never rest until the walls of apartheid, the structures which were built during the Verwoerdian era, have been broken down. Those structures were built in such a way that not only were they discriminatory, but also that the non-Whites, the Blacks in this country, received inferior education. We are not satisfied with that. We are striving for education which is equal at all levels. We are striving for one Minister of Education in South Africa. We are opposed to the fragmentation and duplication of education. At present we have a system under which there are 18 education ministers in South Africa. That is what we are afraid of. If the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition wanted to listen, he would have heard clearly the message of our hon leader—the man with vision; the man who knows where he is going! Our hon leader said that we were striving for one system of education, and we shall never rest until our aspirations have been realised.

In conclusion I want to talk about something that concerns my constituency. I have heard that there are certain Whites in Fauresmith who made a strongly worded application for the erection of a school hostel in Vooruitsig in Fauresmith. In my capacity as MP and as an ex-educationalist who is now concerned with the needs of my constituents in the Southern Free State, I want to tell hon members that this thing cannot take place. Fauresmith does not comply with the requirements which a place has to comply with before a school hostel can be erected. I believe attention should rather be given to the applications and recommendations of the education association—a very responsible body.

Lots of good things come from the Free State. One of the good things—I am not the only good thing—is the education association. The Education Association of the Orange Free State is a responsible body. Those chaps know their place and they live for their children. They have made strong representations for hostels to be erected at Koffiefontein and Trompsburg. I want to associate myself fully with their application. Those are the two places at which hostels can be erected to the benefit of our children, the community and education as a whole.

Mr Chairman, in my three years as the first Leader of the Official Opposition in this Chamber, I was one of the most vigorous opponents of the inequalities and disparities which still exist in education in South Africa today, and a number of the things which were said and repeated here today by various hon members and by the hon the Minister himself, were things I said over and over again.

Today, in rising to speak in support of this Vote, I want to compliment the hon the Minister, right at the outset, on his most comprehensive and informative address on education in this Chamber today.

I wish to assure him of my wholehearted support in his struggle and that of his department to achieve equality in education for all the citizens of this country.

It has been proved in the highest courts in America that separate education provided on the basis of race is not and cannot be equal. It is this aspect of education which I should like to address in the few minutes at my disposal today.

Notwithstanding the fact that tremendous improvements have been achieved over the past 20 years in so-called Coloured education, an ongoing struggle is still being waged in the so-called Coloured community against racially segregated educational institutions. We must not forget that segregation in facilities such as schools is part of an unacceptable NP separatist policy, and that is something we cannot accept. [Interjections.] Therefore, an own affairs education department is an offshoot and an entrenchment of that policy which we reject. We must not be surprised, therefore, that out there in the community which we individually and collectively represent here in this Chamber today, the struggle against this disparity and inequality is still going on.

The fact that the glaring disparity in per capita expenditure on a racial basis is still Government policy does give the teaching fraternity and the community at large cause for dissatisfaction. I have never in the past, and I do not today, supported boycotts, stayaways and violence. Out there there are quite a number of faceless radical cowards who are using innocent souls, innocent children, to achieve their ungodly aims of bringing about political change in South Africa through the disruption of education and school programmes. I cannot support that. However, in my own teaching experience of 231/2 years on the Cape Flats, I have found that this disparity in the per capita expenditure causes great bitterness when it comes down to grassroots level, when it comes down to the monetary allocation, when it comes down to the availability of materials and equipment which we use at individual schools. We run out of funds and we run out of certain materials such as chalk, toilet paper and other things. [Interjections.] That is why, when a comparison is drawn between the per capita expenditure on White schools and that on our schools, it is felt that this situation must be corrected. It is also felt that that disparity certainly gives us cause for dissatisfaction with the prevailing system.

On the grounds of the disparity in the per capita expenditure, I ask the question here today: Are we getting the same standard of education as is provided for White children? In addressing a PTA meeting in my constituency last week, I appealed to parents—the hon the Minister did the same in his address today—to show a greater interest in the education of their children, and I wish to repeat that appeal in this Chamber today. I asked the parents to work in closer co-operation with the teachers, the principal and the department so as to bring about the parity and equality which we are striving for. I pointed out to them that parents’ co-operation is absolutely vital in the times when the child is away from the guidance of the teachers and the school. That is why I wish to call on our parents again today—especially those who are living in the Cape Flats, where once again there is a stayaway and a rumour of a stayaway—to get involved in the situation and to try to stop the stayaway and boycott actions which will only harm our children’s future education and the future of the nation.

I want to ask our parents this question: Have they totally abandoned the responsibility and authority over their children—who are our pupils—when it comes to school attendance? In this regard I wish to quote from this morning’s Cape Times and, in so doing, pose a question to the hon the Minister. The article reads:

I want to ask the hon the Minister if this article is merely another newspaper prank and whether he was aware of the situation. If this article is correct, I would also like to know from the hon the Minister who instructed this inspector, Mr J D Rabie, who is quoted in the article, to sent out this circular.

If the report in the Press was correct, then inspector Rabie’s letter was, at the very least, provocative to the community, for it insinuated that the department lacked the ability to handle the education problem.

Order! I regret that the hon member’s time has expired.

Mr Chairman, I rise merely to give the hon member the opportunity to complete his speech.

I thank the hon member, Mr Chairman.

The question was asked earlier, whether we really need the Police on our campus. In today’s electronic age the average person needs to be more than literate. Yesterday we heard an hon Minister tell us in this Chamber about the growth in the literacy rate. Now I assume that a literate person is one who is able to read and write. We need to be more than literate, however, to be able to compete for a decent job in society today. Far too many people, especially those people in our rural areas, those in the farming communities, are just about literate. A good standard of education is vital in South Africa, especially amongst people of colour, if we are going to compete with the Whites who are occupying just about every important managerial and executive position in the galaxy of State departments and even in the private sector. [Interjections.] It is all very well to talk about literacy, but to compete in South Africa today we need a higher standard and level of education.

There are backlogs and shortcomings and disparities in our system, Mr Chairman; on that we all agree. However, we must not and cannot allow a minority group of radicals to get hold of our children and our students and to disrupt the programme and strategies so ably and so convincingly set out by the hon the Minister in this Committee today. We cannot allow this programme to be scuttled before it takes root in society.

I am convinced that, in order to achieve that vital aim of equality in education, the hon the Minister and his department must have our support so that we can achieve a situation in which no restrictions, especially restrictions on the grounds of colour, are imposed to debar any student from attending any educational institution, be it at primary, secondary or tertiary level. In closing, I want to express my support and that of my party for the hon the Minister and his department in the future implementation of their educational programme.

Mr Chairman, I request the privilege of the half-hour in order to complete my speech.

In a very real sense, I am making my maiden speech in this Chamber today, because I am speaking in my capacity as a member of Parliament—an MP—although I have spoken in this House before. Unfortunately, I shall not be able to make a direct contribution to the debate on education as such today because I have another task to perform, and that is to clear myself of a shadow that has been hanging over my good name for some time now as a result of allegations made in certain newspapers. It has a direct bearing on the hon the Minister of Education and Culture’s budget speech this afternoon, because it touches upon the question of the introduction of the computer in our primary schools.

I want to say that while I was listening to him, I felt …

Order! The hon member must please refer to the Minister as “the hon the Minister”. The hon member may continue.

Sir, it just shows what a novice I still am at this business of being an MP.

The speech of the hon the Minister sent a few thrills through me, because I am proud to say that I was associated with many of the aspects he mentioned. In the same breath I want to thank the hon the Minister for having given me the opportunity during my time of office to have been involved in those aspects.

To come back to my purpose here this afternoon, I want to quote from certain newspaper cuttings, published shortly after I resigned as Minister of Education and Culture. I want to refer in particular to The Argus of 23 January 1988. Before I go further, I must apologise for the fact that I do so at this late hour, but it took some time to get all the facts together to do the job of clearing myself of certain smears and blackballing by people who pass themselves off as journalists in this country. One of the newspapers in the Argus group, The Argus, sister paper of The Star in the Transvaal, published this article on 23 January 1988:

Mr Chairman, I want the Committee to listen very carefully to the construction of this article, because innuendo and subtle smear play an important role in putting this article together. No direct accusations were made. There were mere subtle hints and the reader is expected—and in most cases he does so—to make the necessary deductions that this man is guilty of a heinous crime. I quote further:

It is estimated that the cost of equipping black schools alone could run to more than R1 billion.

Sir, I had nothing to do with Black schools, but this point is nevertheless introduced. I continue quoting:

Reference is made to “Cape Town sources close to the department”, but how close were these sources? They could obviously not have been inside the department, but they claim that experts inside the department did not recommend this particular system. I quote further:

I am forced to refer to a number of documents to prove the absolute falsehood and falseness of these allegations that systems manufactured in South Africa are equally effective and also cheaper. I continue quoting:

Was it the second investigation into my behaviour, in my capacity as Minister, or what? However, as I say, these things were dragged in to strengthen the smear campaign.

Listen to this one, Sir:

Sir, what did that have to do with me? I will prove to this Committee, by referring to the Advocate-General’s report, that I did not figure there at all. As a matter of fact, some serious developments had taken place in another department of education. However, I am going to be a little merciful this afternoon and refrain from mentioning these people by name. They could also have come in for far greater strictures from the Press than I did.

That report was by the younger sister in the newspaper group, namely The Argus, of Cape Town. However, Sir, look at the size of this article which appeared on the front page of The Star. The banner headlines read:

I want now to come to the replies from the officials mentioned, particularly those of the Auditor-General and the Advocate-General. I wrote to the Auditor-General and asked him to look into these allegations and to establish whether there was any substance in them. My letter to him read as follows:

A speedy reply would be appreciated.

The following reply came from his office, signed by the Auditor-General himself:

1. 1. The following comments are submitted on the five paragraphs highlighted in the press cutting of The Argus newspaper dated 23 January 1988:
   1. (a) The allegation by the newspaper that you are “the central figure of a detailed investigation” by this Office into the buying of computer systems for schools for the Department of Education and Culture is not correct. It seems to be a deduction made by the Argus correspondent himself.

Sir, I want to stop there for a moment. The power of the Press and the media in general is tremendous. They can transform a sack of potatoes into a general, given enough time and publicity. On the other hand, they can do tremendous damage to individuals.

Here, again, I want to pause and, in a lighter vein, report a story which is obviously a bit of a joke. There is, however, a very serious note to it as well. Two friends are walking down the street. The one says to the other: “Why are you so serious? What are you looking at in that newspaper? You are going pale!” The other replies: “My friend, just look at this. This paper is saying that my sister is a prostitute!” His friend advises him: “Well, do something about it. Take them to the Press council or to court.” The reply is: “That is not my problem. My problem is how I am going to prove to the world that I haven’t got a sister!” [Interjections.]

Sir, the point I want to make is that the Press must be very careful in the use of its power. I am forced to do this, because there are researchers at work every day. They will delve and dig into newspaper reports, and they will come up with these things. If such a researcher reads, in five or ten years’ time, “Ebrahim at centre of A-G probe” in 1988, he may wonder what that man had to say about himself. Did he defend himself, or not?

Mud sticks, Sir, if one does not clean oneself of it, and this is what I am doing today. I am doing this to prepare myself to make a proper contribution later on in this House as a member of Parliament. I was going to quote from one of my favourite dramatists, William Shakespeare. His presence is reportedly here in this House. [Interjections.] He once said through a character, “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.” I hope I have done no evil, but I also hope that the little bit of good that I have done so far will be remembered. Hamlet’s dying words were, and this is an admonition to all journalists: “Report me and cause a right to the unsatisfied. ” I would like to quote some important things the Auditor-General has said in a letter, dated 19 April, to me:

The Auditor-General has an ongoing task to perform year in and year out, to check the accounts of every department. The news has broken now, but one finds so much in The Argus to the effect that there is an awful mess in our sister department in the House of Assembly with regard to their accounts. I think we can pat ourselves on the back in this House that the administration has so promptly met the requirements of the Auditor-General’s department in terms of returning their accounts. The Argus claims that they have in their possession documents from the Auditor-General’s office, confirming the investigations, but what does the Auditor-General have to say? I quote again from his letter:

The Auditor-General made available to me copies of correspondence from these firms and it turned out that at least one of these rival firms wanted to sell their product to our department as well. We had a look at it, but found it unsuitable for the purpose. An element of professional jealousy has, therefore, also played a part. So much then for the Auditor-General.

The managing director of Barlow-Rand, at the time the firm marketing the product that the hon the Minister of Education and Culture mentioned, viz the “TOAM” systems had just returned to South Africa from Israel—he commutes regularly between South Africa and Israel—and he wrote a letter to The Star after he had seen that article in the hope that they would publish it. I give hon members three guesses what The Star did. They did not publish a full rebuttal of all of the points, but they are the people who cry about the freedom of the Press—their freedom to publish selectively. Hon members should know what the managing director of Barlow-Rand Degem wrote. I will mention the gentleman’s name; he is Col Tsiddon-Chatto, a retired army officer. I quote:

I showed hon members the cutting.

The man is guilty. It went on to say:

He was, of course, the managing director of the firm. I quote further:

This is what he wrote to the editor and, as an hon member remarked, it was not done. I quote further:

1. (a) The systems chosen by Minister Ebrahim are of Israeli manufacture, while your sources close to the department claim that equally effective and less expensive systems of South African manufacture are available. Answer: Wrong, and this is why: … Local manufacturing was one of Minister Ebrahim’s conditions.

It was a condition of purchase that the systems be manufactured in South Africa and that condition was met with, but I will come to that later:

The hon the Minister mentioned that—

Also mentioned by the hon the Minister—

Furthermore, a joint committee of the Department of Education and Training, Data Systems—a subcommittee of the Commission for Administration—and a Treasury Committee “made an official comparison between the Israeli and the ‘South African’ systems in November 1985”, prior to my decision. Hon members should listen to their conclusion:

Mr Chairman, that is not the end of the story. I then wrote to the Advocate-General, because an investigation by the Advocate-General was also taking place. I quote:

This is what the Advocate-General wrote to me:

I have it here—

Who is the Advocate-General? First of all he is a judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa. Secondly he watches with hawks’ eyes the financial transactions taking place at Government level to see who is filling his own pockets or is involved in other nefarious activities. Here he absolves me completely and says there is no investigation taking place. Moreover:

What do we make of these things? I had a look at what journalism was all about. I looked at the principles to be observed by the profession. They have developed over many years. Their function, by and large, is the gathering of news, its distribution and fair comment on events. They are to have a strong sense of social responsibility. Many newspapers do aspire to those principles, but I am afraid there are some journalists who have not progressed beyond mudslinging and they call that journalism.

Once the Argus group started the campaign against me it was echoed by the Sunday Times, which wrote about the “blunders committed by Mr Ebrahim”. A lesser light in the SABC echoed this story of blunders on the radio, so much so that the then Director-General—ironically he has also been removed from his post—personally telephoned me to apologise and made a public statement to the effect that the SABC had no knowledge of any blunders committed by me. They apologised for any inconvenience caused to me.

That is the nefarious and unhappy story, the bad chapter in the history of journalism in South Africa. This was done by people who in this particular situation in our country should be striving for those tremendously high standards of journalism. I am afraid, however, that those standards do not apply to some people.

On the question of the purchasing of these systems and the so-called irregularities, I approached the hon leader of my party and asked his permission—which he kindly gave me—to quote from certain correspondence. In fact, he made the correspondence available to me. This once again clarifies the position as far as the Department of Finance is concerned. I also took the trouble to approach the hon the Minister of Finance for his approval. In fairness to the hon the Minister of Finance I want to quote from his reply handed to me by Mr Danie Niemand, an official in his department:

*This is the one I want to quote—

He did, therefore, give me permission to use the letter. The letter reads as follows:

The highest authority, the Tender Board, granted this tender. I quote further:

This is what the hon the Minister of Finance wrote to the leader of our party.

†Mr Chairman, I want to finish off. I do not want to belabour this issue—I think I have proven my point adequately—but on the question of local manufacture and cheapness hon members would know that IBM, over the past day or so, have been involved in a terrible fight in America as to whether it will be allowed to continue to have dealings with South Africa in terms of selling computers and other electronic equipment. Luckily for them they have some breathing space—the shareholders have said they may still continue to deal with South Africa. That was a crucial issue involved in my decision to purchase the TOAM system, viz that it had to be locally manufactured so that we could avoid this very problem of sanctions and boycotts against South Africa. There had to be no danger of the equipment’s not arriving here. The fundamental difference between all the other firms offering the kind of computer we are talking about was that this computer was manufactured here as an integrated whole, as a complete unit or system, whereas all the other firms made use of various firms’ products—hardware by IBM, for example, and courseware by themselves—and this held the possibility of our being cut off from supplies.

The accusation levelled by the newspapers in the Argus group was that there were better locally made products, but that I was purchasing overseas products and not giving South Africa a chance. Hon members should listen, however, to what Computing SA, “SA’s top computer newsweekly”, has to say in its edition No 44 of November 2, 1987:

That is Barlow Rand and Degem, the combined South African and Israeli company.

The Department of Education and Culture in the Administration: House of Representatives was that particular market, Sir. This product, therefore, is a 100%-South African produced product.

Finally, Sir, what is this all about? What are we talking about when we talk about computers in our schools? Is it something nice to have—because my neighbour has a television set, I must have one? No, Sir. That may have been the case 20 or 30 years ago, but today it is an absolute necessity in the business of education. The computer, in assisting education and instruction at all levels, is making tremendous strides. This is manifest in the fact that Anglo American used the TOAM system for rapidly training foreign Blacks, ie Blacks from outside the borders of this country, who do not speak a word of English or Afrikaans or even Funagalo, the language of the mines. Within six months Anglo American had trained dozens of their leading hands on the mines to communicate with their teams of workers. These people had been trained most effectively by this system.

This is what Business Day of 31 October 1987 had to say about the TOAM system when it first appeared on the South African scene:

This applies right across the spectrum, however. We heard today what the character of education for people who are not White is like. The problem of not only numeracy, but also literacy, is one which we are facing daily in our schools. The hon the Minister of Education and Culture made mention of the vast component of unqualified teachers and also “it figures to that effect”. I quote further:

In order to bring the vast numbers of Black children into the 21st century in terms of numeracy/literacy, the computer is going to play a vital role. At what price? R30 per year. And this price is not going to increase. It is going to decrease because hon members know how electronic equipment is becoming more and more sophisticated every day. They talk about the state of the art products. It becomes smaller and smaller and more effective as the sophistication process … [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, it is a privilege for me to speak after the former Minister of Education and Culture, the hon member for Southern Cape, who explained the factual position with regard to the computer systems. In the same breath I want to express my thanks and appreciation to the hon member for Southern Cape for the enormous contribution he made during his time as Minister of Education and Culture to the promotion of education in my constituency. I want to assure the hon member that the Western Transvalers greatly appreciate his contribution.

I would stand condemned by my voters today if I were to neglect my primary task as a member of Parliament and not participate in the important debate of the hon the Minister of Education and Culture.

Education enriches one’s life and is undoubtedly the most important target to aim for. Because it is such an important and weighty matter, I consult the Scriptures where I find a clear answer to the questions. All of us wrestling with the problem will find the answer there, namely that we must store up riches which cannot be destroyed by moths and rust. In other words we must pursue lasting and eternal things.

Once one has a formal education, one has it forever. One cannot be deprived of it or alienated from it. It ennobles one and serves as a shield against the onslaughts of life. No one can deprive one of it. The person who has an education is the only person who can reduce his use of it. Education is an essential element in leading a good and successful life. It is therefore a good thing to pursue education and preserve it.

In view of the unalterable facts I have just mentioned, I want to take my debate further. Our education should not be a final goal in itself. It must only be a means to educate our people. Because the child is a person of the future who not only may grow to be an adult—but eventually will do so—and education and training is given to him by means of the transfer of culture, education is the focal point of the interaction between the past and the future. The changed world will of necessity compel the education system not only to contribute to a meaningful life in the Third World, but also to face the future with hope.

What is pertinent is the connection between the past and the future education of our children. I am aware of the factual predictable views of the radical critics of the education system to ignore this connection between the past and the status quo. While I am talking about this I should like to know from the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition what link there is between schools in the Cape Peninsula and the Sharpeville Six. It makes me laugh, because the children in the Cape hardly know where the Transvaal is! Nevertheless they are boycotting. In this connection I want to refer to a report in Die Burger of 27 April, and I quote:

I continue:

Sir, something we should not lose sight of is the task of the police. What is the actual task of our police? They are there to take action against violence and anarchy. They have to maintain law and order.

In view of this and in the sense of a hopeful future dispensation, the present attitude and system is objectionable. The radicals are showing no appreciation for either the present or the past.

The system of radical demands expects school critics to have recourse to revolutionary behaviour and protests in order to promote a cultural revolution or progressive liberation strategies. The role of the education system to serve as a link between the present and the rising generation is therefore denied. In the absence of this essential link in the child’s development programme, our children are being left without a shepherd as it were. The relationship between the future ideals of society and the education system is a problem which deserves urgent attention.

In this connection I want to make special mention of the educational institution in my constituency and I particularly want to express my appreciation for the unique contribution of the Director of Education in our department, as well as the unselfish service of Messrs J J Fortuin, Hendriks, and Adams, as well as our typists, to promote our education, particularly at Bloemhof, where the syllabus was agreed to in spite of tremendous opposition. Last month the school acquired the status of a secondary school. I hope that the building of that school’s hostel, which is essential, will be considered urgent. The expansion of the particular syllabus reminded me again of my election promises, namely my endeavour to improve and further develop the socio-economic and social welfare conditions in the Western Transvaal. I consider the expansion of that school not as a silent threat to my home town, Potchefstroom, or even to Klerksdorp, but far rather as a factor which education would do well to take into account.

It is obvious that it is the quality of the education which will lure candidates. They are interested in where they will get the best education.

It is important that the application by Blydeville, Lichtenburg, for the extension of its syllabus, is receiving positive consideration. However, it is a prerequisite that a school has to be built first, because at present a building in a back street is being leased from Blacks. The building is derelict and compares very unfavourably with other schools in the Lichtenburg area.

Sir, I want to request that tenders also be called for in respect of the school in Greenspark, Fochville, and the hostel for primary schoolchildren in Rustenburg.

Order! I regret that the hon member’s time has expired.

Mr Chairman, I rise merely to afford the hon member an opportunity to complete his speech.

Sir, I thank my hon colleague for this opportunity.

As a result of the tremendous growth in Promosa, the mobile units we have there at present have to be moved over to be used as an interim measure for a second primary school, because the new school grounds have already been identified and serviced.

I hope that we will always remember that education is one of our most precious possessions. This idea must be etched into our hearts. Nowadays parent involvement is also a factor in our community. The child’s life at school is still a closed book to far too many parents. Parents must have the confidence to become involved in the education of their children. Because one’s education is an economic investment nowadays, the parents must realise that education must be seen as a joint project. It is absolutely essential for the school always to be considered as the heart of the community.

In conclusion I want to quote from a speech made by Mr Naio of the French Christian High School at a conference of the Instituut vir Gereformeerde Studies at the Potchefstroomse Universiteit vir Christelike Hoër Onderwys. I quote:

[Interjections.] Sir, I want to be one of the group of people who have accepted that challenge, and have my contribution recorded, in a qualified sense, as regards education. [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, allow me to congratulate the hon the Minister of Education and Culture on his analysis of the problems in education. His speech touched on the crux of our education. I also thank him for the steps he announced to make a success of our education. As the hon the Minister said, our education cannot afford to discriminate. A policy can discriminate and the NP can discriminate, but the day that our education discriminates against our children, it hurts us. It does more than hurt us. For that reason I agree with the hon the Minister that our education dare not consider discriminating.

Sir, I should also like to say a few words about the Cape Professional Teachers’ Association. I have reprimanded the CPTA in this House in the past. I want to do so again today, but I want to do so far more seriously. [Interjections.] Mr Franklin Sonn is afraid that the LP wants to show that they are an insignificant organisation. He is afraid of that. For that reason Mr Sonn has made it his task lately industriously to recruit members at schools. [Interjections.] Mr Sonn wants to base his power and security on numbers and that is why he is making increasingly radical statements. Today I want to tell him to get rid of that syndrome, because that is not what we have in mind. We do not want to harm him; we do not want to harm education either. We have a common goal and that is to help our people to surmount this low point and to uplift our people. [Interjections.] Mr Sonn does not need to prove himself. He would be far better advised to prove himself along with us. He should abandon the empty ideas and illusions; they will simply not do his organisation any good.

I feel that the time has come for the majority party, the LP, in the House of Representatives to approach the CPTA directly. [Interjections.] I am not doing this as a defence, but with the disciplinary power with which a majority party has to do so. In the past Mr Sonn was known for his ability to mete out blows, and the bureaucracy had to defend itself for all it was worth to ward off the blows. He was known for this. He is still trying to do this, and I want to tell him that it does not work with us. Nor is it going to work with us. He will have to change his style, because he is not the only one who can mete out blows. As sure as I am standing here I will flush him out of his professional hiding place today. The public must know the truth, because Mr Sonn is leading his organisation on a political course. At every opportunity—hon members need only watch the newspapers—he attacks this party. [Interjections.]

He did so recently in Wellington. I do not even want to mention his remarks at the last minicongress at Knysna. He is under the illusion that if he attacks the LP his support among the teachers will grow. Sonn is making a very big mistake, because he is turning his back on the moderate viewpoints in the country. He is strangling them and the only thing that will suffer is stability in education. If Mr Sonn wants to cultivate radical standpoints among the teachers, he must do so, but he must not get a fright when the children follow his example and headmasters and rectors are threatened by children wielding knives. Today I want to issue a challenge to Mr Sonn. If he wants to enter the sphere of politics, he must establish a political party and stand against us. We will welcome this. He must stop striking political blows in a professional educational ring while at the same time prohibiting us from entering that ring. I should like to react to the speech Mr Sonn made at a mini-congress in Knysna. I want to mention that I hope that the contents of the report which appeared in Die Burger of Monday, 18 April 1988, under the headline “Arbeiders rig onderwysskade aan” are factually correct. In any case Mr Sonn has had enough time to put matters right if Die Burger quoted him incorrectly, because quite a bit of time has elapsed since then. According to the report Mr Sonn said:

Surely that is not fair. Surely it is not true. I want to ask Mr Sonn how he worked this out. What was his barometer? The party, my voters and I want to know what his barometer was. As a matter of fact, only this morning I looked at reliable statistics—the source is confidential and I cannot reveal it at the moment—and between September 1986 and October 1987 public opinion improved to such an extent that 38% instead of 26% of the people believe today that education has improved in the interim. This is a reliable barometer.

Order! I regret that the hon member’s time has expired.

Mr Chairman, I rise merely to afford the hon member an opportunity to complete his speech.

Thank you, Sir. The time of dirty, defamatory, careless and irresponsible street politics is over. Mr Sonn must practise scientific politics. [Interjections.] What he is saying is that apartheid did not do as much damage to education as this party did. That is what he is saying.

I should like to refer to the speech made in this House by the hon member for Bethelsdorp on 22 March in which he quoted interesting statistics. He pointed out that in 1979 the highest pass rate ever for matriculants was achieved, namely 88,5%. After that there was a sudden decline in the pass rate. In 1983 the leader of the LP, who is now the Minister of Education and Culture, expressed his concern about this state of affairs. In 1982 the pass rate was 67,3% and at the end of last year the pass rate was 67,9%. Now the question arises: How did the LP prejudice education? Mr Sonn certainly had ample opportunity prior to 1984 to effect an improvement in the low pass rate. Why did he not do so?

The hon member for Bethelsdorp also quoted statistics on the slow progress Coloured education made long before the House of Representatives was established. Even when Mr Sonn still exercised decisive authority over education and served on committees, very slow progress was made. Now he is blaming us. I am sorry, but he cannot do that. He cannot blame us for this state of affairs. If he cares so much about education, when last did he make a positive contribution to this party regarding education? He has set up a front and waged war in the media, but he is not really involved in this matter. I invite him to make a contribution and stop criticising.

He went on to say the following in his speech:

Is that not a dangerous statement? [Interjections.] The LP is not as ignorant as Mr Sonn claims. On the contrary, our party consists of people from all levels of our community. We represent people from all the professions in our community. On the list of speakers participating in this debate there are no fewer than 12 former teachers. We have a competent department which advises our Minister on education matters. In the ranks of our party we have former inspectors, rectors, attorneys and so on. Even members of the Cape Professional Teachers’ Association belong to our party. For that reason we can govern education with authority.

Mr Sonn knows, and I know, that this is not the reason why he is so bitter. It is all a matter of appointments. [Interjections.] His power has been scaled down and that is why he is so bitter. In this regard this party was not guilty of any malpractice. I am saying this because I know that, and I know what I am talking about. The arrogant way in which Mr Sonn expressed himself on the appointment of certain persons has also harmed education. He is denigrating capable, hardworking people by insinuating that they are not worthy of the posts.

It sometimes happens that we deviate from the requirements under certain circumstances. This has always been the case. But, Sir, is Mr Sonn not also an example? In his case we also deviated. Mr Sonn did not qualify for the position he is holding today either.

Tell him.

Today he is the rector of the Peninsula Technikon, but he did not qualify for that position. [Interjections.]

Why is Mr Sonn denigrating the promotion of teachers if they are not members of the Cape Professional Teachers’ Association? It is not LP policy to discriminate against members of the Cape Professional Teachers’ Association. They are also promoted. However, Mr Sonn is acting as if we are discriminating against them. When Mr Sonn was appointed as rector of the Peninsula Technikon he did not qualify either, but today he is doing a good job. It was a good political decision. [Interjections.]

I am proud of the teachers appointed to promotion posts in my constituency during the past four years. They are carrying out their task extremely well. In virtually all cases they are building model schools. The LP and I need not be ashamed of what they are doing. On the other hand, head-masters have no longer been summarily transferred since the LP has been in power. This always happened before. This happened when Mr Sonn could use his influence in this regard. Then headmasters were summarily transferred.

We are not conducting a witch-hunt against our teachers. We stand by them. We cannot be accused of that. We care about our teachers and we care about education. Other statements made by Mr Sonn during that congress coincided exactly with the political standpoints of this party. I therefore want to warn Mr Sonn not to try to score points by trying to hijack party policy and place the party in opposition to his own policy. If Mr Sonn carries on like this, he is going to come off second best.

Mr Chairman, allow me to thank the hon the Minister of Education and Culture for such a thought-provoking speech. It was enlightening to hear that the LP is on the right track in giving our children the best.

Mr Chairman, thank you once more for the opportunity to participate in this very important debate. It is very important in that our future progress and strides as a nation depend entirely on the education of our children. I have been examining the education of our children critically. My greatest concern lies with the attitude of the students when they are faced with writing external examinations before they go out into the world as full-fledged adults.

Young adults should be accountable for spreading their acquired knowledge to make South Africa a better place for all of us. At present, however, students at our high schools and also at our tertiary institutions act in an irresponsible manner and this is an indication that something is wrong. Their behaviour simply does not match their academic achievements. They have become swollen-headed and rebel against authority. In some cases they even become malicious and destructive and then destroy some of the structures which have been used to educate them.

Perhaps we need to examine the curricula which have been compiled for our children. What does the word “curriculum” mean? It is a concept which denotes activities and which constitutes a teaching programme in the course of study. We need to examine the aim of education, as well as the aim of compiling a curriculum. Is it, in fact, the aim of education to make students rebel against authority and their educators, and to demonstrate against that which specifically aims to make them better citizens? To my mind, the aim of compiling a curriculum should be to account for all the teaching and learning situations which occur in a school or similar institution. In its totality, therefore, a curriculum should aim at producing a person with a better understanding, an independent thinker, and a reliable and responsible young adult, ready to face the challenges of the day, instead of encouraging the destruction of educational structures.

Criticism against our curricula designers includes the fact that curricula are foreign to our present-day reality, that what is taught is abstract and in some instances even irrelevant if one takes into consideration the world and the reality in which the child will eventually be expected to exist as an adult. Perhaps we need to examine the tutors in whose hands our children are placed. What are the objects in reaching our children? Should we not perhaps examine their aims and find out whether they in fact have the right attitude towards education, as well as the correct life philosophy to teach our children the real value of education?

In our attempt to find answers to these questions, we should look at the history of education, at the work of Seneca, an educationist of the Graeco-Roman period, who wrote On the Education of Children. In this respect I want to quote from the book Source Book for Metapedagogics by T B Boshoff and E G Kruger where they refer to Seneca, a Roman educationist, who once said, and I quote:

Sir, how do modern-day tutors handle our children? Do they teach them to rebel, to militate against authority, to boycott and to stay away from school? How do we reconcile the two? During school boycotts and stayaways, books are not touched and no reading is done. By doing this, are these students not jeopardizing their chances of success in their examinations at the end of the year?

Perhaps the curriculators have overloaded the curriculum with content which the student does not wish to learn. Perhaps the nature of the curriculum is such that it makes our children prejudiced against success. As education is a universal phenomenon, we should get our scientists together in order to develop a comprehensive curriculum—one that would eliminate such shortcomings.

Sir, I am searching for an answer. Perhaps we need to examine the traditional role of the school, against the backdrop of the relationship between the teacher and the pupil and between the teacher and the parent, in a changing society. The school should always be a teaching and learning centre in the community, a source from which knowledge can be obtained.

It would appear as if the teacher-pupil relationship has deteriorated in the past decade. This presents a challenge to us, as representatives of the people whom we serve. We must, through the existing structures, review the basic pedagogic tasks of the teacher, as the interpreter and imparter of learning content in an operative relationship. We must examine his acceptance of the role and of his responsibility for the student placed under his care.

Perhaps the fault does not lie with the curriculators and the educators. Perhaps it lies with the educational grievances which students feel. It may indeed have to do with the fact that there are segregated institutions for the various racial groups in the country, even though the languages of instruction may be shared. We must address the poor socio-economic situation in the communities in which we live. Perhaps that is also a cause for the militancy among the students of the day.

We must address the intellectual undercurrents of apartheid in the curriculum, particularly in the history books, in which poverty is assumed to be the natural state among the non-Whites. We must also address the colonial hero-centric bias that non-Whites are the problem in the way of the Whites, as portrayed in some history books.

We must improve those structures in the education of our children which have severely handicapped their progress. Because of the vast economic gap between Black and White, we can accept that the dropouts at primary and secondary school level will come from the less privileged group.

Order! I regret to have to tell the hon member that his time has expired.

Mr Chairman, I rise merely to give the hon member an opportunity to complete his speech.

Thank you.

We must address the per capita expenditure on Coloureds and other groups as against that on Whites. We must address the needs in poorly equipped schools, particularly in rural towns, where the small communities will never generate enough pupils to warrant a secondary school. Hostels need to be built at certain centres of education to encourage students in the neighbouring areas and towns to acquire at least a matric certificate before they go out into the world as young adults.

Mr Chairman, I want to extend my congratulations to the hon the Minister of Education and Culture on his exhilaratory and very fine exposition of the state of education in our schools at this moment.

I, however, want to talk about school boycotts and their after-effects. Yesterday morning, when I was travelling to Parliament, I passed a particular high school, and when the principal drove into and down a street I followed him. I could notice concern on his face. He was looking up and down side streets and I knew exactly what he was looking for. He was concerned because he was looking for those boys and girls standing, chatting and even running up the side streets. I drove past him and I greeted him, but then I thought of my own position not so long ago as a principal of a high school during school boycotts. The last school boycott I experienced lasted four months and we learned many lessons. [Interjections.] Today there is another boycott going on.

As an introduction I want to state that where students are right we must say so. They are our most important asset and they should be cared for. I want to say that corporal punishment has no place in the school today. There are good regulations covering corporal punishment, but they are abused. The first is that only the principal or his authorised substitute may administer corporal punishment with a cane or a strap in the office, away from everybody else. It is taboo to administer corporal punishment to girls. Teachers have no right whatsoever to administer corporal punishment in the classroom. I am annoyed that teachers are still beating students at will. Why should our students still have to complain about corporal punishment? It is barbaric and should be forbidden. Teachers who transgress this regulation should be punished by a stiff monetary fine. Then it will stop. Now they go to court and hire an expensive advocate, and he gets them off scot-free.

I can tell from experience that the idea of rallies is a waste of time, because most pupils do not know what is going on at these rallies. They have no practical value whatsoever and they only serve to lead students into mischief. [Interjections.] Awareness classes are quite a different kettle of fish. As the principal of my school I attended some awareness classes. I want to tell hon members what happened at a particular one, which I think has served the community well and has a certain value.

Bill Finnegan, a White American citizen who travelled through the world on a working holiday, asked me in January of that year for a teaching post. After having studied his documentation and his personality, I engaged him for the year. When he got back to Los Angeles he wrote this thick book of 400 pages about me, the teachers and this school. The title of the book is Crossing the Line—A Year in the Land of Apartheid.

He was once invited to address an awareness class where he sketched Black American political history. I want to read some of the things he said to this awareness class, which woke them up and made them realise that education was a serious matter. He addressed the awareness class:

Referring to the Miami riots, he then said:

Order! I am afraid the hon member’s time has expired.

Mr Chairman, I rise to afford the hon member an opportunity to complete his speech.

Order! The hon member for Grassy Park may proceed.

Mr Chairman, the quote continues:

I just want to quote the next part, Sir, and then I shall stop quoting. It reads:

“I had no alternative but to tell the truth,” he seemed to want to say.

That, Mr Chairman, was what made those pupils at the awareness class realize that life is serious and that education is serious, and I think that that was what brought about the turning point in the whole business of school boycotts.

I want to conclude by talking about the after-effects of school boycotts. I have heard of a few positive results, but most of the after-effects were negative. First of all, as one teacher put it, sitting on one’s thumb is exhausting. After all, what could one expect those teachers to do in that staff room for those hours when they were not teaching? Sitting on one’s thumb is exhausting, he said. The second negative after-effect was that the children had become mindful of the amount of work they had lost. They were suddenly confronted with reality and tried in vain to catch up. Thirdly, at the end of July the Committee of 81 issued a call for another week of boycotts. The call was ignored. In the fourth place, however, fewer children returned to school after the boycott, some because of unwanted pregnancies. In the fifth place staff-pupil relationships are never the same again after a boycott. In the sixth place the established ideas of education have altered irrevocably. In the seventh place, we had lost scores of students in violence—through injury and even through death. In the eighth place, we lost a number of students to the local factories and the textile mills. In the ninth place, even the parents had succumbed to the lure of the wage and offered no objection when employment was offered to scholars. In the tenth place, the silver lining of the boycott cloud had curtailed the careers of hundreds of students, and the dropout cloud had been the winner. In the eleventh place, the November examination for the matrics yielded grim results, as has every subsequent matric examination, right up to the examination in November 1987. In the twelfth place, teachers and students were the wiser, for after the boycotts no one had any time for debate, discussion or for rallies.

The students had become dispirited. All the glamour of power and new ideas had dissipated. What had the boycotts brought them? The sum total was broken windows, broken dreams and broken careers. Mr Chairman, will this cycle repeat itself in the school boycotts of 1988?

Mr Chairman, it is a great privilege for me to participate in this debate. I want to congratulate the hon the Minister of Education and Culture on the goal-orientated and directive speech which he made in this House today. I know education is in good hands. I want to wish the hon the Minister everything of the best in his post.

I do not have much more to say, because the hon members for Berg River and Mamre covered virtually everything I wanted to say. However, there is one aspect I should like to concentrate on. I read in Die Burger of 24 December 1987 that Mr Ebrahim, the former Minister of Education and Culture, had said the following:

To this the chairman of the Union of Teachers’ Associations of South Africa, Mr Franklin Sonn, replied as follows in Die Burger of 24 December 1987:

Hon members all know that last year 18 209 matric pupils sat for the final examination and that only 68,2% of those pupils passed. Hon members also know that 3 280 pupils earned exemptions and that 32% of all pupils failed. I cannot understand how Mr Franklin Sonn can blame the hon the Minister and the education authorities for this high failure rate.

The hon the Minister and the education authorities did not disrupt the study habits and patterns of the pupils, nor did they cause loss of time so that syllabuses could not be dealt with properly, or weaken respect for parents as well as school authorities. Nor can the hon the Minister and the education authorities be held responsible for the relaxing of discipline at schools, and consequently they cannot be blamed for the disruption at our schools.

The examiners’ reports and comments on the 1987 final examination have not yet been published, but on the basis of the 1986 report I should like to point out the reasons for our high failure rate to Mr Sonn and his colleagues. I believe that the 1987 report will not differ very much from the previous year’s report, because the pass rate for 1987 only increased by 1% compared with that of 1986.

I want to refer to a few subjects, as well as the opinion of the examiners in this regard, so that we can ascertain where the problem really lies. What do the examiners say about Afrikaans, for example, the language which we learned at our mother’s knee? According to the report the general level of written composition in Afrikaans was disappointing. The meaningless use of words like “ensovoorts” and “byvoorbeeld” as well as the irritating use of the word “kommunikeer” marred many compositions. According to the report the use of language was careless. Words like “alledaags”, “weer eens”, “huis toe”, “vakansie-oord” and “standerd” were frequently spelled incorrectly.

The layout of the letter to the press and town council caused problems in many cases. The following appeared: A lack of the necessary content knowledge of the prescribed books. It was also quite clear, according to the examiners, that candidates had not had enough practice in the basic techniques of answering comprehension tests.

Oh, but that is not the child’s fault.

The following parts of the syllabus were also badly answered: Active and passive voice and the negative form. Conjunctions and separable verbs are receiving attention. Who must take the blame for this state of affairs in our schools? [Interjections.] Is it the hon the Minister’s fault? [Interjections.] Which hon member said yes? [Interjections.] Is it the fault of the education authorities? Is it the LP’s fault? I am asking this House whose fault it is. [Interjections.]

Let us hear what the examiners have to say about mathematics. They said the teaching of graphs should receive more attention. Sequences and progression remain a source of grave concern at most centres. Quadratic equations remain a thorny problem for many candidates. Quite a number of candidates could not differentiate between y-intercept roots and the co-ordinates of the rotation point. Candidates at a significant number of centres were, however, totally unprepared and produced very poor work. Many candidates could not differentiate between the co-ordinates of a point and the components of a vector. In addition candidates showed gaps in their knowledge of the application of trigonometric formulae.

Is the hon the Minister to blame? [Interjections.] Are the education authorities to blame? [Interjections.] Is the LP to blame? [Interjections.] I am asking hon members who the culprits are. [Interjections.]

Order!

Let us take a look at physics and chemistry. Do hon members know what the examiners said about this? They said many candidates could not even determine the EMF of the battery. [Interjections.] I shall explain this to hon members; they must come and see me in my office. [Interjections.] They say it is clear that knowledge on essential, elementary concepts such as atoms, elements, molecules, compounds and so on leave much to be desired. Many candidates could not divide correctly by 0,5. [Interjections.] They are in matric, but they cannot divide by 0,5. Who is to blame for this state of affairs? Who is to blame?

Sir, I do not want to report this evening on all the subjects taught at our schools, but let me say something about biology. There is little proof of the completion of practical work in the teaching of this subject. A large number of matric candidates are under the impression that a lizard is wet and slimy! [Interjections.] It says so in the report, Sir. They say there is confusion between osmosis and diffusion, transpiration and guttation. Students are confused about fertilisation, pollination and propagation. [Interjections.] Questions on schematic representations were answered extremely badly. Very few logical explanations were given. [Interjections.]

As a former teacher and a former member of the CPTA I want to tell Mr Sonn and his teachers today that I have never been guilty of so-called “gutter education”. [Interjections.] Sir, I want to ask you to pay a visit to Foodliner in Riversdal. A number of pretty girls … [Interjections.] … and boys are working at Foodliner. They have all passed matric. The owner of the shop once asked me whether I was Mr Josephs. I replied in the affirmative and he said: “Sir, you know, there is one thing I want to tell you today. These children have all passed Std 10.” By the way, Sir, I was only the principal of a primary school, the Voorwaarts Primary School. The shop owner went on to say: “But when they come to work here, I ask them where they went to school. They all say: ‘Mr Dougie Josephs taught us.’” [Interjections.] Sir, I only taught Std 4 and 5 mathematics! [Interjections.]

I still have a little time at my disposal …

Sit down! [Interjections.]

Order! Hon members must please not try to tell the hon member what to do. The hon member for Riversdal may proceed.

Sir, they say I must resume my seat; I shall therefore do so!

Mr Chairman, I move:

Agreed to.

Chairman ordered to report progress and ask leave to sit again.

House Resumed:

Progress reported and leave granted to sit again.

Mr Chairman, I move:

Agreed to.

Mr Chairman, my concern with the Bill as it is framed was not that the magistrates would be required to make a full enquiry. That, of course, is something which is desirable. My concern was that at the present time, when the magistrate sits as a children’s commissioner in terms of the Children’s Act, the Act provides that the magistrate shall have before him a report from a qualified social worker. When a magistrate has to sit to enquire into the future of a habitual criminal, the Social Welfare Act requires that he be furnished with a detailed report from a probation officer. Likewise, when there is an alcoholic or drug-addicted person whom it is intended to commit to an institution for rehabilitation, a probation officer has to furnish a report.

In the extant case no machinery is provided in this Bill, or as far as I am aware in any other legislation, to make available compulsorily to the Magistrate a detailed report on the assets and/or liabilities of the person who is to be certified for reception in an institution. I have discussed this problem with the hon the Minister and I am pleased to say that the hon the Minister has given me the assurance that while this may not be contained in the Bill at the present time, he will see to it departmentally that the necessary assistance is provided to the magistrate. I have known the hon the Minister for the last eight years and he has never as yet gone back on any undertaking he has made to me and I am happy to accept that assurance. In those circumstances I am happy to support the Bill.

Mr Chairman, I would like to use this opportunity first of all to thank the hon member for Montford for discussing this particular Bill in front of us in such an erudite way. As a matter of fact, he gave the gist of the importance of this legislation in a very comprehensive and a remarkable way.

I would also like to thank the hon member for Bayview for his support.

I am also thankful for the comments made by the hon member for Reservoir Hills. For the sake of the record I would like to state that what we are dealing with here, first of all concerns the assets of a person who is going to be admitted into one of our mental institutions. The Bill before us arose from a request by the Chief Master of the Supreme Court of South Africa. The important issue here is that in terms of section 55, subsection (1) of the Mental Health Act, 1973, notice must be given to the Master regarding the issuing of a reception order authorising the retention of a person into whose mental condition an enquiry was held. In practice this notice is given by the forwarding of a copy of the reception order to the Master concerned. The Chief Master proposed that the forwarding of the reception orders to the various Masters be restricted—this is the interesting and most important aspect—to cases where assets are discovered by a Magistrate during the relevant enquiry. It does not pertain in any way to the diagnosis of the condition.

The Chief Master indicated to my department that for instance during 1985, 5 600 reception orders of persons who had no assets and which served no constructive purpose at all, were submitted to the various Masters’ offices. The main purpose of this Bill then is to eliminate this unnecessary paperwork.

Another aspect which we have to mention, as far as responding to the hon member for Reservoir Hills is concerned, is that in this amendment it is stated that the magistrate shall immediately make full enquiry as to the property or estate of a patient. At the conclusion of the enquiry he will transmit to the Master a report as to the results thereof. Full enquiry by the magistrate means that the magistrate can use the full Government machinery, and we include social workers, which he can have at his disposal. However—and this is a very important aspect—the whole problem of curators for the mentally incapacitated is now under investigation and I would like to put that on record as well. The South African Law Commission is investigating all matters regarding the appointment of curators for mentally incapacitated persons and has in consequence thereof published a working paper entitled: “Enduring powers of attorney and the appointment of curators to mentally incapacitated persons.” This working paper was published according to his preface:

I should therefore like to invite the hon member for Reservoir Hills to submit his proposal insofar as the social workers are concerned, to the South African Law Commission. There is no doubt that the gist of this amendment is to eliminate unnecessary paper work in those cases where people do not have assets and it does not in any way interfere with the diagnostic situation of the patient. I think that will probably set the hon member for Reservoir Hills’ mind at ease.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Mr Chairman, I move the amendment printed in my name on the Order Paper, as follows:

Mr Chairman, we have no objection to this particular clause, namely clause 33 of the original Bill that has already been passed in this House.

In line 15 on p 19 of the Act the word “second” is to be omitted. This is a technical discrepancy that was found between the English and Afrikaans translations of the Act. We therefore have no objection to this particular amendment.

Mr Chairman, we on this side of the House have no objection to the amendment and we support it.

Mr Chairman, regrettably that word somehow escaped the notice of the standing committee which, as the hon the Minister knows, went through this Bill with a fine toothcomb. Quite obviously, as often happens in life, one fails to see the minor details of certain issues. One thinks they are not important and then afterwards one finds out that they are of great importance.

This amendment brings about a streamlining of the Act and I have no objection to it.

Clause, as amended, agreed to.

House Resumed:

Bill, as amended, reported.

Third Reading

Mr Chairman, in accordance with Standing Order No 52, I move:

Mr Chairman, we have no objection to the Bill being read a third time, and we support it.

Mr Chairman, we on this side of the House have no objection to the Third Reading of the Bill and we support it.

Mr Chairman, I appreciate the fact that hon members have agreed to our amending this typing error. [Interjections.]

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Mr Chairman, it has been wisely observed that human history becomes more and more a complex interaction between education on the one hand and the aspirations of the community on the other. In planning the education for our community the medium and long-term objectives have to be clearly established. Education has to focus on and provide the direction and goals that the community sets for itself.

However, it must be clarified that in undertaking such planning, educationists are mindful of the limited availability of funds, the need for more housing, better health services, more employment opportunities and the desirability of establishing a stable harmonious multi-racial society.

The current emphasis in my department is to provide education for a scientific and technological society. This has been dictated by the impact science and technology have been making on the South African way of life.

In the industrial sector, the following potential areas for growth exist:

• —the expansion of the traditional industrial sector in fields such as metallurgical, chemical, pharmaceutical and textiles;
• —the extension of mining operations;
• —the development of new technologies where strategic considerations make it essential; and
• —the development of agriculture.

For such growth, South Africa has the resources and an abundant labour force but, unfortunately, the shortage of skilled manpower of practically all levels and virtually in all fields is a serious limitation to the acceleration of development. Such a shortage results in, among other things, increases in the salaries of skilled manpower and consequently, in a rapid staff turnover and a reduction in productivity. This in turn makes South Africa less competitive in the world markets and rapid socio-economic development needed to solve the country’s problems is severely retarded.

In general, the present situation is the result to some extent of the education system in South Africa. It is dominated by an academic-value system which is more concerned with knowing than doing and in many instances is characterised by an emphasis on rote learning.

In response to this and the future needs of the country, steps have already been taken by my department to ensure that more attention is given to improving certain fundamental skills such as communication, critical thinking, research, independent study, effective planning and management.

An infrastructure for on-going in-service education and retraining of teachers has been developed to ensure that sufficient curricular attention is given to develop the child who will have a creative, critical mind and be able to adapt to the ever-changing conditions of a scientific and technological age. Such an approach will ensure that during the post-school career a child will be able to acquire new skills and knowledge with minimum difficulty in a non-formal system of education. This provision is vital since the concept that any person can be taught all the knowledge needed for a productive career is obsolete.

Thanks to the computer and modern communication systems, new knowledge is becoming increasingly available and continuing education in the non-formal sector is essential to keep abreast of this knowledge.

Education must not only adapt to meet the requirements for living in today’s world, but must also equip children for the challenges which tomorrow will bring. One of our tasks as educationists is thus to increase the relevance of education to enable school leavers to seek gainful employment in the open labour market.

My department is fully aware of and is addressing the need for the extension of specialisation in education, not only because of the growth in technology, but also as a result of rapid changes in other spheres.

TECHNICAL EDUCATION

There are three basic phases in the development of the child in relation to technical education. The first is a technical moulding phase in the primary school. We achieve this moulding by offering the child arts and crafts in the junior primary school, and handicrafts in the senior primary school.

The second phase of development is known as the exploratory phase. The child can be further motivated because he is at the stage where he may be taught the principles of drawing and methods of construction and the safe use of machines and tools in the workshop.

The third phase is the specialisation phase. A choice has to be made over a wide range of options and the child must be guided to a particular programme in accordance with his abilities and his interests.

At present trade subjects such as motor mechanics, electricians work, electronics, fitting and turning, welding and metalworking are offered at four secondary schools which are equipped with workshops for this purpose. In an endeavour to extend this service, it is planned to establish further workshops for trade subjects at selected secondary schools on a regional basis. Technika electronics is currently offered at 11 secondary schools. This subject will be introduced at more schools in 1989.

My department is investigating the possibility of allowing pupils to obtain a school-leaving senior certificate by offering the two official languages and four national certificate subjects, namely engineering drawing, engineering science, mathematics and a trade theory subject, thereby also completing the theoretical requirements for apprenticeship.

Coupled with these developments, I am pleased to state that construction work on the department’s first technical secondary school, which is situated in Phoenix, began in June last year and is expected to be completed by July of next year. The educational programmes offered at this school will prepare pupils for entry to a technical college for the advanced theory aspects of apprentice training for a technikon for studies leading to a career as a technician and later a technologist, or a university for studies leading to a career as an engineer.

Preliminary feasibility studies are being conducted on sites allocated for three technical secondary schools to be constructed in Chatsworth, Stanger and Pietermaritzburg. It is the intention of my department to invite tenders for these services by the end of this year.

Education and training at the technical college will equip persons for employment as artisans in the engineering, metal, manufacturing, and building and construction industries, as well as in the hairdressing industry. On the commercial side, the technical college offers courses to equip persons for employment as secretaries, typists, office workers and administrators, accountants and computer operators.

Three technical colleges under the control of my department, are offering a broader curriculum for formal and non-formal education, with special attention being given to the latter, in order to provide an avenue for the community to update itself, retrain for new skills or attend hobby courses as part of the national programme for the improvement of the quality of life of our people.

The Northdale Technical College opened its doors to the first intake of students on 1 February 1988. It will take a further year to bring this important and prestigious institution to its optimal operational level and by so doing we will be able to offer a full range of courses to students in Pietermaritzburg and its environs.

Planning on the Cato Manor Technical College is in progress and we have set a target date of January 1992 for this institution to be taken into service. It will replace the Sastri Technical College.

In the long term it will be necessary to build a technical college in Newcastle which will absorb the work being done at St. Oswald’s Technical College.

Our community is well served by the M L Sultan Technikon and the University of Durban-Westville. These two institutions at the tertiary level, the three technical colleges at the pre-tertiary level and the four technical secondary schools will form a strong link with the industrial and commercial sector of our economy.

Computer Education

In order to keep abreast of technological innovations in education, Computer Literacy was introduced in 1987 as a compulsory non-examination subject for all pupils in standards 6 and 7 at secondary schools. The initial cost of this service has been phenomenal—approximately R15,5 million for the modification of classrooms as computer centres and the provision of computer hardware and software for Computer Literacy.

Computer Studies will be introduced in 1989 as a sixth optional subject in the senior secondary phase curriculum of selected secondary schools. By that time, pupils in standards 6 and 7 would have gained adequate “hands on” experience in a full course of Computer Literacy.

This year my department will be introducing Computer Literacy at selected primary schools and Computer Awareness at all primary schools. The Computer Awareness programme is intended to make pupils aware, in an informal manner, of the role of computers in society.

Agricultural Direction of Study

The beginning of the 1988 academic year saw the introduction of an agricultural direction of study at Shahaskraal Secondary School on the North Coast of Natal. This historic event was marked further by the appointment of a Black Agricultural Science graduate as teacher of Agricultural Science at the school. The incumbent hails from Swaziland where he has had extensive experience in the field of agriculture, not only from a practical point of view but also from a management perspective.

An agricultural direction of study is intended for pupils who have an interest in this field of study and who have performed exceptionally well in mathematics and the sciences. The syllabuses for Agricultural Science are demanding in terms of the type of instructional programme to be offered and the scientific concepts to be studied. It is for this reason that pupils had to be carefully selected for the course. Of the total number of applications received from pupils throughout the country for admission to the course only 58 pupils were selected. They were 32 pupils for standard 6 and 26 pupils for standard 8. The standard 6 pupils are studying General Agricultural Science whereas the pupils in standard 8 are taking Agricultural Science on the higher grade.

Next year, when these pupils move into Stds 7 and 9 respectively, there will be a fresh intake of pupils in Stds 6 and 8. The course structure in Stds 8, 9 and 10 is such that pupils who have pursued an agricultural direction of study up to the Std 10 level will have several options open to them, for example, the opportunity of pursuing further studies in this field at a university, technikon or agricultural college, or of seeking employment in faiming concerns, horticultural institutions and firms specialising in agricultural products, chemicals, fertilisers and so on.

Professional Development Centres

More attention is being given to the professional needs of our teachers. My department has established five teachers’ centres which are geared to meet the professional needs of teachers as an on-going process.

At these centres teachers in service, teacher trainees, college and university lecturers, members of the Advisory and Psychological Services and parents meet for a variety of educational purposes.

The pace of technological and social change necessitates regular updating of curricula and teaching methods. The teachers’ centres are playing a valuable role in contributing to regular in-service education and curriculum development.

Educational Research

The Research Division has been engaged in several projects aimed at improving educational practice at the schools controlled by the department.

An Advisory Committee For Educational Research has now been established in the department. The function of this committee is, inter alia, to monitor research conducted in the department as well as to advise Executive Management of those recommendations in research reports that could be implemented.

Revised curriculum structure and time allocation

In 1987, 28 secondary schools participated in an experiment involving revised time allocation models. The feedback obtained from these schools has been encouraging and the planned replication of the study in 1988 should be a very fruitful exercise. One of the major objectives of the experiment is to determine the extent to which a minimum number of periods may be assigned to examination subjects so that a pool of optional periods is made available on the timetable for curriculum extension and enrichment. An interesting feature of the revised models is the flexibility afforded to principals to plan their curriculum and time allocation to suit the particular needs of their pupils.

Two-year part-time course for in-service level one educators

The department, in keeping with national trends, is currently considering the feasibility of offering an M plus 4 part-time correspondence course over two years for in-service level one educators in the M plus 3 category. It is proposed to offer the course in 1989 at the Springfield College of Education to selected teachers.

Establishment of college councils and college senates at Springfield and Transvaal Colleges of Education

Regulations providing for the establishment of councils and senates at the Springfield and Transvaal Colleges of Education were published in the Government Gazette on 23 October 1987. In terms of these regulations I have approved of the persons who are to serve on the councils of the respective colleges. The senates will come into operation as soon as members are nominated by the relevant bodies concerned. The establishment of these councils’ and senates is an historic development and brings the two colleges of education in line with most of the similar institutions in the country where agreements exist for collaboration between colleges of education and universities. In future, courses obtained at the Springfield and Transvaal Colleges of Education will be considered by the councils for accreditation towards a degree or diploma at the University of Durban-Westville and the University of South Africa respectively.

Senior Certificate Examination—1987

I have prevailed on the department to give us a full and clear picture of the situation as far as the Senior Certificate examination is concerned, and I therefore ask hon members to bear with me. It is pleasing to note that the 1987 Senior Certificate examination results reflected a significant improvement in the pass rates. Of the 12 429 who wrote the examination, 11 575 (93,12%) passed while 4 625 of those who offered matriculation exemption courses obtained passes with matriculation exemption. While the implementation of the new pass requirement which allows for the conversion of failures in higher and standard grade subjects to lower grade passes, has had an influence on the results, there has been a notable improvement in the quality of passes. A noteworthy achievement in the 1987 examination was that 155 candidates obtained “A” aggregates in comparison to 114 in the 1986 examination. Another pleasing feature is the improvement in symbol distribution in many subjects. On the overall results there were 1 763 subject distinctions compared to 1 064 in 1986 while the majority of candidates obtained “C”, “D” and “E” symbols, whereas the previous historic pattern has been “E” and “F” symbols.

Mr Chairman, I consider it very pertinent that I now set the record right as far as the 1987 Senior Certificate examination results are concerned—in the interests of the public and particularly the parents, the pupils and their teachers, and the examiners, moderators and sub-examiners involved.

In an article published in a Sunday newspaper at the end of February this year, in which certain statements made by the President of TASA—the Teachers’ Association of South Africa—were quoted, the impression was created that the examinations of my department are conducted in an arbitrary fashion, and in so doing a question mark was placed over the validity and reliability of the 1987 Senior Certificate examinations.

At the outset, I must point out that the examination boards of each of the education departments in the country are responsible for the formulation of overall policy for the conduct and control of Senior Certificate examinations. While the different education departments are required to conform to particular standards, there may be variations, for example, some education departments have instituted a year mark which counts towards 50% of the mark; others have had project schools where no formal examinations are written—results are based on continuous assessment. The Examination Board of my department has 20 members among whom are representatives from the Joint Matriculation Board, the Universities, the Technikon, the Colleges of Education, principals of secondary schools and the Teachers’ Association of South Africa.

The Joint Matriculation Board is concerned with stipulating conditions for the issue of matriculation exemption certificates which entitle candidates to proceed to universities. In view of this, question papers set in all subjects on the higher grade as well as some on the standard grade, are submitted to the Joint Matriculation Board for moderation. These question papers are set by examining panels that ensure that the correct standards are maintained in the different grades. In addition, the Joint Matriculation Board has two representatives on the departmental Statistics Committee who ensure that the adjustment of marks is within the approved norms.

While the Joint Matriculation Board sets the requirements for the issue of senior certificates with matriculation exemption, it is the department, governed by its Examination Board, that is responsible for the issue of senior certificates.

As early as 3 October 1986, the Examination Board of my department approved the application of the extension of the conversion formulae to include the lower grade in the November-December 1987 senior certificate examination. This was a unanimous decision by the Board on which the Teachers Association of South Africa was represented. The details of the changed requirements for the senior certificate were conveyed to the principals of all secondary schools by circular on 17 August 1987.

The department, as had been requested, informed the Joint Matriculation Board of its conversion formulae in a letter dated 24 October 1986 and this was accepted. The department subsequently on 30 January 1987 received an amendment from the Joint Matriculation Board, stating that it was prepared to accept a converted lower grade subject “on a certificate of exemption” only, if the candidate obtained not less than 30% in that subject. The department has complied with this requirement of the Joint Matriculation Board.

It is quite evident that inaccurate and ill-founded conclusions about the 1987 senior certificate examinations have been jumped to in certain quarters, due to ignorance of the examination procedures and confusion about the requirements for the senior certificate as distinct from the requirements for the senior certificate with matriculation exemption. I hope this sets the record straight.

Community Education Services

The concept of continuing education is being reinforced by extending community education classes. Community education centres are becoming vital forums for strong interaction between formal and non-formal education. With parents going back to school for cultural enrichment, academic or life-skill courses, there is a notable positive effect on their children’s attitude to education.

In addition to the community education programmes offered at the three technical colleges, 16 community education centres have been established to date at secondary schools. It is proposed to establish five new centres during the year in the following areas—Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Lenasia, Richards Bay and Effingham.

Indian Languages

The demand for Indian languages has grown since their inclusion as optional non-examination subjects in the curriculum for Std 2 pupils in 1984. This year, many of the original group of Std 2 pupils will be pursuing one of the six Indian languages as an optional examination subject in Std 6.

Cultural Studies

The department intends introducing a new subject, cultural studies, in the primary school curriculum. The main thrust of this course of study will be to make pupils aware of not only their own culture but more importantly, that of other people in the country. In the final analysis the objective is to ensure that pupils are made aware of the underlying humanity and shared values of all the peoples of South Africa. Cultural studies is intended as an alternative to Indian languages in Stds 2, 3, 4 and 5. This year, Stds 2 and 3 pupils as a sample of primary schools will offer cultural studies if they have not already opted to study an Indian language.

Indian Music

Aspects of Indian music were included in the music curriculum for class i, class ii and Std 1 pupils in 1987. In 1988 a repertoire of Indian songs, two from each of the main Indian languages, as well as Indian music notation, the identification of traditional Indian musical instruments and simple Indian nursery rhymes and folk songs have been included in the music curriculum for Std 2 pupils. The further implementation of aspects of Indian music in the music curriculum for Stds 3 and 4 pupils will be with effect from 1989 and 1990 respectively.

Black Languages

A sample of secondary schools continue to offer Zulu/Tswana in the junior secondary phase as a pilot scheme. The situation will be assessed fully during 1988 with a view to including Black languages as an optional examination subject in the junior and senior secondary phase curriculum of all schools.

Pre-Primary Education

There are 34 privately-established pre-primary schools registered with the department. Applications for registration in respect of a further 11 schools are presently being processed. Private pre-primary schools which are run on a non-profit basis are eligible to apply for departmental subsidies towards buildings, equipment and running costs.

The Departmental Bridging Module Readiness Class Project for five-year olds was extended in January 1988 with the institution of a further 20 classes, bringing the total number to 83 units.

To meet the need of providing a readiness programme for all five-year old children, the department allows responsible community organisations the use of classrooms at its schools for this purpose. The department assists these community organisations by subsidising the wages paid to the teachers in charge of these classes.

Private Schools

As from the current financial year, registered private ordinary schools will be considered for the payment of subsidies. Such schools will be divided into one of three subsidy categories, that is to say, 45%, 15%, and 0% of the subsidy per pupil, calculated according to a standard formula. The registration and subsidisation of private schools will be subject to certain conditions which are, inter alia:

Payment of Grants-in-aid to State-aided Schools

I wish to make an announcement in this regard. I am pleased to announce that the Ministers’ Council has granted approval for a substantial increase in the grants-in-aid paid to State-aided schools with effect from 1 January 1988. In addition to this new dispensation, provision has been made for the payment of a further grant-in aid up to a maximum of R30 000 per annum per school up to a maximum of six schools per year …

Ah, that is the catch!

… towards the cost of major repairs and renovations undertaken at State-aided schools. Financial assistance is also available through the Special Work Creation Programme. Details of the increased grants-in-aid will be released to the Grantees’ Association shortly.

Take-over of State-aided Schools

During the last year, seven State-aided schools were taken over by the department and are now being conducted as State schools. There are 54 State-aided schools still in existence, two of which are presently being considered for take-over and conversion to State schools.

The take-over of State-aided schools is only considered at the request of the proprietors concerned and negotiations will only be proceeded with if the department is satisfied that the acquisition of the school is a viable proposition, taking into account the condition of the buildings, the potential for updating and the extent of the land for future development, if necessary.

Allocation of Schools to Booksellers

The allocation of schools to booksellers is done under State Tender Board delegation in terms of which the department has been granted approval to place orders for text, prescribed, library and reference books with commercial booksellers who are accredited members of the Associated Booksellers of South Africa.

The value of the book allocation for the 1987-88 financial year amounted to R7 926 000 while the amount for the current financial year is R8 527 000, an increase of R601 000.

Admission of Black Pupils

As at the end of March this year, 604 applications had been received from Black pupils for admission to schools under the control of my department. In accordance with the policy guidelines established in January 1987 which set out the principles and conditions in terms of which these applications were to be considered, 327 applications were approved.

Professionalism

Promotion of CS Educators

The promotion of CS educators is based on the principle that “the most suitable senior candidate” is appointed to the post.

The evaluation of CS educators for promotion is done in terms of a uniform set of criteria approved by me on 9 March 1987. Details can be furnished on request.

Appointment of CS Educators

In terms of the authority delegated to me, all appointments to the teaching staff of all Colleges of Education, Technical Colleges, State and State-aided schools (including special schools) falling under the control of the Administration: House of Delegates shall be made by the Chief Executive Director. All appointments to the teaching establishment are based on the needs of the department.

Only professionally qualified persons shall be appointed to the teaching establishment. However, when there is a shortage of fully qualified teachers in certain subjects (eg physical science, mathematics, technical/trade subjects), persons who have the necessary academic/trade background but no professional qualification may be appointed.

Presently all new incumbents to the teaching establishment are appointed in a temporary capacity. As substantive vacancies occur on the establishment, consideration will be given to the appointment of suitable temporary teachers in a permanent capacity. This will be determined by the needs of the department at that time.

Transfers

Any educator may be transferred at any time to any school or college under the control of the department at the discretion of the chief executive director.

Transfers of level 1 educators may also be effected by the chief executive director on written requests from the educators and after due consideration has been given to the needs of the schools concerned.

Promotion post holders may apply for transfer to resultant vacant promotion posts of the same designation only after they have completed at least two years in the post at the school to which they were initially promoted. Promotion post holders who become redundant at their schools may be transferred to vacant posts of the same designation at the discretion of the chief executive director.

Subject Inspections

There has been a shift from individual teacher inspections to subject inspections in both primary and secondary schools. Subject inspections are being conducted on needs assessed by superintendents of education (academic) and at the request of principals.

Teacher growth is being promoted through subject evaluations in a non-evaluation atmosphere in which superintendents of education and teachers are addressing the issue of subject or curriculum development as fellow professionals.

Since subjects are handled by teams of teachers and there is need for co-ordinating the teaching of the subject between secondary and primary feeder schools, it is necessary for two or more superintendents of education to visit schools as a group over a period of two or three days. This practice also promotes consultation among the superintendents of education.

Psychological Services

The effects of social and economic problems, unemployment, rising cost of living, societal and family violence on the lives of school-going children cannot be overlooked. Coping with such children provides a great challenge to the school as an institution.

Supportive psychological interventions are of paramount importance in helping such children develop skills to cope with the day to day problems that disturb the learning process. Consequently schools rely heavily on the services rendered by psychologists from the department in the fields of special education, remedial education and guidance and counselling.

Budgetary Provisions

I shall now elaborate on the financial provisions for the Department of Education and Culture. For the 1988-89 financial year, an amount of R461 127 000 is provided to conduct, promote and extend the activities of the Department of Education and Culture. This represents an increase of R57 828 000 or 14,33% on the amount voted for 1987-88.

Excluding capital expenditure, the per capita expenditure in respect of primary and secondary pupils was R1 714 in 1986-87 as compared to R1 319 in 1985-86. Including capital expenditure, the per capita expenditure was R1 904 in 1986-87 as compared to R1 386 in the previous year.

Free education is still the order of the day in Indian education. The funds for my department are allocated according to four programmes which serve the needs of the department, and which have defined principle objectives: Firstly, to conduct the overall management of the department; secondly, to develop the mental, spiritual and physical potential through the medium of education and training; thirdly, to provide opportunities and facilities with a view to broadening knowledge and improvement of techniques, and to supply academic and professional manpower to satisfy the manpower needs of the country through tertiary education, and finally, to promote physical recreational activities, arts and sciences, youth affairs and the rendering of specialised services.

Under the first programme which is administration, provision is made for Ministerial and Parliamentary staff, as well as the management and administrative staff attached to my department. The amount provided is R16 501 000 which is in respect of personnel and administrative expenditure and the purchase of supplies and equipment.

Programme 2, which is the education programme, covers the direct expenditure on the various phases of education. These are: Pre-primary education, primary education, secondary education, private education, teacher training, technical education, the education of children in need of care and handicapped children, community education and the rendering of auxiliary services related to these phases of education, namely physical and academic planning, inspection and psychological services and administrative services.

The amount provided under this programme is R389 290 000 which is R46 844 000 or 13,67% more than the amount voted for the 1987-88 financial year.

Personnel expenditure amounts to R334 362 000 which includes provision of an amount of R402 000 for part-time classes for adult school leavers at 16 centres. Secondly, the amount allocated for administrative expenditure is R8 811 000. Thirdly, the allocation for stores is R18 906 000. Fourthly, an amount of R7 302 000 is provided for furniture, equipment and apparatus. Fifthly, the expenditure on professional and special services will amount to R3 109 000. Finally, provision has to be made for transfer payments which amount to R16 800 000.

I will now deal with the requirements for the different phases of education. For pre-primary education an amount of R1 309 000 is provided for the payment of grants in aid and subsidies to registered pre-primary schools conducted by private persons, welfare organisations and religious and welfare bodies. This represents an increase of R334 000 over the amount voted in the last financial year.

The allocation for primary and secondary education is R345 268 000, an increase of R46 824 000. Of this amount, R312 693 000 constitutes salaries, allowances and other personnel expenditure which includes provision for annual salary increments, promotions, improvements in qualifications, advancement on merit, housing subsidies and leave gratuities in respect of teaching and non-teaching personnel and the payment of wage subsidies to persons in charge of community-based readiness classes conducted in primary schools.

The next major item of expenditure is the purchase of school supplies, text and prescribed books, and library and reference books, the cost of which amounts to R16 603 000, an increase of R2 053 000. The amount required for furniture, equipment and apparatus is R6 508 000. The amount provided for the transport of pupils by contract buses is R3 720 000. Expenditure in respect of the payment of subsidies to State-aided schools will amount to R734 000.

In continuation of the programme for the provision of sports facilities at schools on a rand for rand basis an amount of R500 000 is provided for this purpose.

As mentioned earlier, proposals for the subsidisation of private schools registered with the department have been finalised. In this regard, an amount of R179 000 has been provided.

The provision for teacher training amounts to R10 010 000. This amount is made up of R6 014 000 for salaries and other related personnel expenditure, R2 840 000 for administrative expenditure which includes an amount of R2 573 000 for bursaries and study loans, R670 000 for books and supplies, R413 000 for furniture and equipment and R73 000 for professional and special services.

An amount of R4 916 000 is provided for technical education. Salaries, allowances, service bonuses, gratuities and housing subsidies constitute a major part of the expenditure and amount to R3 990 000.

The provision for the education of children in need of care amount to R2 692 000. For the education and training of handicapped children an amount of R14 177 000 is provided. The provision of community education services continues to receive attention and an amount of R402 000 has been provided for these services.

Expenditure on auxiliary services rendered by the Inspectorate, Academic and Physical Planning Sections as well as the School Psychological and Guidance Services will amount to R9 250 000 while expenditure in respect of administrative staff dealing with educational matters will amount to R1 087 000.

Under Programme 3, Tertiary Education, provision is made for the financing of current and capital expenditure in respect of the University of Durban-Westville and the M L Sultan Technikon. The financing of these two institutions is based on the SAPSE subsidy formula as determined by the Department of National Education. In terms of this formula, the university has been allocated an amount of R37 644 000 while the technikon’s allocation amounts to R19 681 000. In addition to these amounts, an amount of R124 000 is provided for the salaries and other expenditure of staff members attached to my department performing administrative functions relating to tertiary education.

Under Programme 4, the Cultural Advancement Programme, provision is made for the promotion of cultural matters such as physical recreational activities, arts and sciences, youth affairs and the rendering of specialised cultural services. In this regard, an amount of R800 000 has been provided which represents an increase of R116 000 or 16,9% over the voted amount for 1987-88.

Major Works Building Programme

Once again I am pleased to report that the department continues to make good progress in the provision of facilities to meet the educational needs of our community. In 1987, 36 building services were completed for occupation. The services comprised 13 new primary schools, 12 new secondary schools, additions to eight existing schools, the Northdale Technical College, and school halls at Middelburg Secondary School in the Transvaal and Rylands Secondary School in Cape Town. The first school hostel opened in the second term of 1988 at Zinniaville Secondary School in Rustenburg. However, this was planned prior to the new system of funding for education. The new SANEP formula does not provide funds for building and maintenance of school hostels.

For the 1988-89 financial year, 46 building services have been programmed. Of these, 17 are continuation services—already under construction—which commenced in the 1987-88 financial year while tenders are to be invited for 29 new services in the 1988-89 financial year. Details of these services are as follows:

Secondly, services programmed for tender are seven new schools—four primary and three secondary; three replacement schools—all primary; one conversion of a primary school to a secondary school; additions at 11 existing schools—which are seven primary and four secondary; sports Fields at four existing schools—three primary and one secondary; one technical college, two regional school halls and conversion of the Odeon cinema complex into a cultural centre.

Further details in respect of any item on the Department’s Budget and the Major Works Building Programme are available on request.

University of Durban-Westville

Diploma Ceremony

The university at its graduation ceremony in May 1987 conferred a total of 1 129 degrees and diplomas. This is an increase of 11% over the previous year’s total. For the first time female recipients outnumbered the males, 570 and 559 respectively.

A sign of the increasing maturity of the University of Durban-Westville is that postgraduate qualifications accounted for 32% of the total awards.

Student Enrolment

As at 31 March 1988, 6 718 students were registered with the university as compared to 6 543 on the same day last year—an increase of 2,67%.

A significant change in the enrolment figures is the drop in the number of Indian students attending the university—from 4 958 registered in 1987 to 4 726 in 1988, a decrease of 232 or 4,68%.

On the other hand there is an increase in the number of White, Coloured and Black students attending the University as compared to last year. The statistics are as follows:

Of the 4 726 Indian students registered this year, 49,81% are males and 50,19% females as compared to 50,1% and 49,9% respectively last year. These figures indicated the percentage increase among the Indian female students attending the university.

Building Programme

Three major building projects at the University of Durban-Westville are under construction. The Animal Unit at a cost of approximately R12 000 000 is nearing completion while the new music block is expected to be completed by the end of 1988. Accommodation for the Faculty of Health Sciences should be available early in 1989. The State subsidised these projects on a 100% basis up to the 1987-88 financial year. In conformity with the national system of financing capital projects of a large magnitude, the university will have to finance the remaining and future projects by private loans guaranteed by the State.

M L Sultan Technikon Major Development Programme

The new academic building block L comprising eight storeys at the Technikon was officially opened by the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council in the House of Delegates, Minister A Rajbansi on 27 November 1987.

This project was financed by means of State guaranteed private loans. Loan authorities to the value of R12 998 000 have thus far been issued by my ministry in consultation with the Minister of Finance.

Council of the M L Sultan Technikon

The term of office of the previous council of the M L Sultan Technikon expired on 28 February 1987 and a new council was constituted in terms of the Indians Advanced Technical Education Act, 1968, with effect from 1 March 1987.

Student Enrolment

As at 31 March 1988, 4 083 students were registered with the technikon as compared to 3 244 on the same day last year—an increase of 25,86%.

The number of Indian students attending the Technikon has increased from 2 719 in 1987 to 3 314 in 1988, an increase of 595 students or 21,88%.

In the case of Coloured students the enrolment has increased from 129 in 1987 to 178 in 1988, an increase of 49 students or 37,98%, while the figures for Black students are 219 in 1987 and 361 in 1988, an increase of 142 students, or 64,84%. The enrolment figures for White students reflect an increase of 29,94% from 177 students in 1987 to 230 in 1988.

Of the 3 314 Indian students registered this year, 61,98% are males and 38,02% females, as compared to 63% and 37% respectively last year, illustrating yet again the increasing percentage of Indian female students attending tertiary institutions.

Alleged Irregularities

I am not in a position to report on the alleged irregularities of theft, fraud and misconduct at the technikon since police investigations are incomplete and possible criminal charges may result.

Culture Promotion in the Indian Community

The Culture Promotion Sub-Directorate has had an extremely productive year in bringing about cultural awareness in the Indian community and stimulating interest particularly amongst the youth, in classical music, dance and the dramatic arts.

Our rich cultural heritage had hitherto been kept alive by cultural organisations which had a struggle raising funds through donation drives and other fund-raising activities. At a time when the older generation had fears that Indian culture might die out in multiracial South Africa, the Department of Education and Culture has been able to provide much-needed thrust and support to the community and to cultural organisations. In this and other ways a veritable cultural renaissance is now underway in the Indian community. The culture promotion objective of a three-pronged programme—supportive, advisory and initiatory—has been put into effect with pleasing results. Significant developments in the culture promotion programme over the past year are as follows:

Wide publicity was given to the establishment of regional cultural councils by way of radio interviews, press releases and interviews with cultural leaders. Officials of the department travelled to several parts of the country to arouse the interest of the Indian community in the department’s cultural activities. At present the establishment of two regional cultural councils, one for Durban and district and the other for the Midlands area, is being finalised. In due course, regional cultural councils for the remaining nine areas will be finalised. These regional councils will function in terms of regulations governing the establishment and control of regional councils for Cultural Affairs. The Culture Promotion Sub-Directorate will co-ordinate the activities of all the regional councils. It is expected that with the establishment of these regional councils, greater participation by the Indian community in the cultural sphere, will take place.

National Council for Cultural Affairs

The Culture Promotion Act provides for the formation of a national council for cultural affairs which will be established as soon as the regional cultural councils start functioning. It is envisaged that the national cultural council when established will bring about co-ordination in the promotion of culture on a national level.

Cultural Projects Organised by the Department

The department itself has initiated well planned cultural presentations to satisfy the needs of all sections of the community. Already several cultural shows featuring local and overseas artists have been successfully held. Several more such shows are planned for the current year. The community has reacted very positively to these shows.

National Orchestra

The establishment of a national orchestra for Indian music in this country has reached its final stage of planning. [Interjections.] Musicians have been identified, a list of suitable instruments has been drawn up and an audition panel has been selected. Discussions have been held with the responsible personnel from Napac’s Symphony Orchestra, Durban City Orchestra and the SAS Jalsena Band. [Interjections.] It is envisaged that the community’s national orchestra will be based at the Odeon Cultural Centre. [Interjections.]

Cultural Centres

My department plans to establish cultural centres where there is a concentration of Indian people. Such centres would be identified and suitable premises to serve as cultural centres will be constructed. Already the Odeon Cultural Centre in Chatsworth is undergoing the necessary repairs and renovations to be used as a cultural centre.

Give us a quote on the repairs’ [Interjections.]

At these centres, a whole spectrum of cultural activities will be generated for the benefit of the community whose interests, participation and involvement will be invited at all times. These cultural centres will be established gradually in phases and, naturally, will depend on the needs expressed by the community and on financial resources.

Cultural Officers

Once the Odeon Culture Centre becomes operational and the regional cultural councils are established, it is envisaged that cultural officers will be appointed to promote youth work, creative arts, performing arts, recreation, human sciences, family education and home-making. [Interjections.]

Workshops

It is very encouraging to note that voluntary cultural organisations and cultural leaders in the community are doing commendable work in providing workshops to train young people and teachers in the various performing arts. In this regard the department, in addition to subsidising these workshops, also provides the necessary expertise. It is hoped that such workshops would help to keep our Indian culture alive.

Radio and Television

The House of Delegates continues to have discussions with the authorities of the South African Broadcasting Corporation on the subject of Indian radio programmes and coverage of Indian life and culture on television. At present there are areas of dissatisfaction, especially the complete lack of Indian programmes on television. This will be taken up vigorously by me. [Interjections.]

Appointment of Marriage Officers

As from 1 December 1987 a new service, the appointment of marriage officers, was transferred from the Department of Budgetary and Auxiliary Services to the Culture Promotion Sub-directorate. A senior cultural officer has been appointed, who processes applications and makes recommendations for my approval.

Grants-in-Aid

An amount of R430 000 is provided for grants in aid for culture promotion in the 1988-89 financial year. During the 1987-88 financial year grants in aid were awarded to 23 cultural organisations. [Interjections.]

General

The Culture Promotion Sub-Directorate is constantly engaged in liaising with members of the community and representatives from cultural organisations in the promotion of culture.

Officers of the sub-directorate attend and monitor numerous cultural functions and are regularly asked to address cultural functions on various topics. The Department of National Education liaises very closely with the Culture Promotion Sub-directorate, especially to give talks to and receive overseas visitors who are eager to learn about Indian culture. The officers of the Culture Promotion Sub-directorate are in contact with other cultural organisations such as NAPAC, the Durban Arts Association and the Durban Publicity Association with a view to exchanging ideas and expertise. During the recent Durban Easter Fiesta, the Culture Promotion Sub-directorate was involved in assisting in the arrangement and presentation of Indian dance and musical performances. The department was complimented by the organisers not only for the assistance given but also for the quality of performance by pupils of our schools.

Since the establishment of the Culture Promotion Sub-directorate, commendable work has been done in advancing the cause of culture promotion in our community. Officials of the Sub-directorate have travelled all over the country to outline the functions of the sub-directorate, thereby generating a very positive image of the department. Through liaison with the Department of National Education, NAPAC, the Durban Arts Association and the Durban Publicity Association, the Culture Promotion Sub-directorate has succeeded in bringing about a greater awareness, appreciation and interest in Indian culture.

Conclusion

The initiative is being taken by my department to meet the challenging demands of providing education for a scientific and technological society in spite of several adverse factors influencing our national life, especially the economic pressures and financial conditions. We have nevertheless achieved much progress in the past and look forward to the future with promise.

I wish to express my gratitude to the other hon Ministers in the House of Delegates for their understanding, co-operation and counsel I have received. Decisions taken in the Ministers’ Council were always in the interests of the community and towards a betterment in the quality of life. A special tribute is paid to Dr James Gilliland for the extremely valuable service he rendered as the first Director-General of the House of Delegates up to his retirement at the end of November 1987. At the same time I would like to welcome our new Director-General, Mr R P Wronsley, and thank him and his Finance Directorate for their assistance and the sympathetic consideration given to the financial needs of my department. Once again, I must convey my appreciation to the Acting Chief Executive Director of Education and Culture. His indispensable support, loyalty and sound management of the department have made my task so much easier. I am also grateful to the chief directors and the deputy directors in my department, all down the line, for their supportive assistance.

Finally, a deserved word of thanks goes to all members of my staff for the dedicated and capable manner in which they have performed their duties and contributed to the efficient functioning of the department.

Mr Chairman, I do not want to exploit the hon the Minister’s lack of insight into certain vital issues regarding education and culture this afternoon. After listening to the speech, I am left cold, although the temperature is not as low as one would believe. Nothing has been said on certain vital issues. I just want to mention a few: Exploding the financial formula promoted by SANEP, the national education policy committee; the unity system of education … I know we are an own affairs tangle, but that does not mean to say …

Mr Chairman, on a point of order …

Mr Chairman, I request the privilege of the half hour.

Mr Chairman, if the hon member requests the privilege of the half hour, it will be granted.

Thank you. I mentioned the National Education Policy which is, in my opinion, detrimental to our department. Steps to regionalise education within our department, are a matter that has been neglected for a considerable time.

However, before I go on to expose certain deficiencies and anomalies, I want to make reference to another important matter. An outstanding contribution to South African history has been made by an overseas researcher and historian. Dr Hromnick, of the United States of America. He had unearthed a rare find, a buried temple in Nelspruit, which is of profound interest to South Africa and to the Indian community in particular.

I would like to suggest that the Department of National Education and the Government adopt a more accommodating attitude to this issue. At this stage, the South African Government probably does not realise the worldwide importance of this find. I want to say in all humility that this find explodes for the first time the foolish notion held by many people that Africa was a dark continent. It is of tremendous relevance. I think we can give the lie to this misconception that people have been made to believe for centuries. The notion that Africa was a dark continent is nonsense if such civilised people habitated this subcontinent. That is important.

Dr Hromnick, who is present in the gallery this afternoon, has done this country proud. I want to extend this House’s sincere congratulations to him for being steadfast in promoting the truth of the archaeological finds. One can only read the signs if one is without prejudice, for only then can one truly understand.

Having said that, I must point out that it is from humble beginnings that great and significant strides have been made in Indian education. This was mainly as a result of the community’s own initiative. In the South African context, this attitude became intensified when it became evident that progress, and indeed the salvation, of the Indian community was to a large extent dependent on education. It must be noted, however, that certain trends gaining sway in Indian education during the past six years, are a matter of grave concern. Certain politicians and administrators made decisions affecting education without realising their implications. If this trend is allowed to go unchecked, Indian education and the Indian community will find itself in jeopardy.

During the course of my speech this afternoon, I will critically analyse a few areas to prove my viewpoint which, incidently, is widely supported. Professionally qualified teachers in temporary posts number 1 047 up to March 1988. This is an extremely unhealthy state of affairs. This means that their services could be terminated at any time. They can be asked to put on their caps and go home at any time, because they are employed on a 24-hour notice basis. This kind of insecurity amongst newly qualified teachers is abhorrent.

They cannot be expected to perform their task to the best of their abilities. In addition, these teachers are without certain benefits such as housing subsidies, medical aid and the like.

I now come to an important matter affecting the personnel of the department, namely the teaching corps. They are, after all, second only to the pupils in the schools. They are of paramount importance in the inter-personal relationships that prevail at all levels in the hierarchy of the teaching profession.

The placement of teachers in promotion posts is done by one individual, namely the Chief Director (Control). Previously a committee of chief inspectors did the promotion placements. That was a democratic system. However, with one man presently handling all the placements it is autocratic in the extreme. I would like somebody to prove the contrary to me. Being a one-man affair, placement can be manipulated, and it is indeed manipulated.

I now come to the final evaluation of a candidate. Where previously a conference of inspectors decided on the final evaluation of a candidate, today that final evaluation is done by certain individuals. They call that moderation. One of the chief superintendents (academic) is used by the Chief Director (Control) as a “hit man” to ensure that certain people are not given a promotable rating. It is common belief in the teaching profession that the assessments given by principals and even superintendents are mere academic exercises which do not contribute to the forward mobility of a teacher.

When teachers made a study of the promotion announcement last year they found that juniors in the posts with little or no experience and poorly rated by the superintendents were promoted purely on the ground that they were card-carrying members of a party. This has demoralised the teaching fraternity and there is a genuine fear that the quality of instruction may suffer. [Interjections.]

I hear that the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council says that I am talking nonsense. All that I am asking for, is we must clear up this matter. We are asking for a judicial commission of enquiry. Is this the dignity that the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council wants to display in this House?

You are bringing the level down. You are misleading the House. [Interjections.]

I now come to the matter of initial appointments. Here again, one man, namely the Chief Director (Control), is in charge of the initial appointment of teachers. I want the hon the Minister to prove my statements wrong. Previously this was done with the participation of various special academic people, according to the particular subject needs of the schools. Even the chief superintendents, whether academic or management, have nothing to do with the appointments. It means that the Chief Director (Control) can make whatever appointment he desires and he cannot be questioned on it.

Is such dictatorship tolerated in any other department? Does the Acting Chief Executive Director know what is going on? If he does, does he approve all the appointments? Has he approved all the appointments that have been made to date by only one man? The hon the Minister of Education and Culture must respond to these charges.

Recently there has been an allegation in circulation that even with transfers there is a great deal of nepotism and favouritism involved. It is said that the daughter of the Chief Director (Control) has been transferred from an outlying school to a school in the Durban area when there were numerous other cases that demanded precedence. Should this preferential treatment be tolerated?

Previously the appointment of clerks was done by the administrative sector. At present it is being done by the Chief Director (Control) and he has to approve of every appointment, even that of clerks. [Interjections.] This practice is only in order to enable the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council to monitor the appointment of every clerk.

What is happening in the area of application for boarding and premature retirement on the grounds of ill-health? Firstly the Superintendent of Education (Management) does a work performance report on a teacher. This is necessary. The report is then submitted to the Chief Superintendent of Education who agrees with the report. However, when this report goes to the Chief Director (Control) it is arbitrarily refuted and invariably cases have been turned down. The logical question is how can the Chief Director (Control), a man who sits in an office, arbitrarily refute the recommendations of the Superintendent of Education (Management) and the Chief Superintendent of Education (Academic) who are personally involved in investigating the applicant’s case. I should like to ask whether the Chief Director (Control) therefore just goes by the names of the applicants rather than by the recommendations that have been made after a full investigation? This is not in the interests of education. It is highly subjective as it depends on how well the Chief Director (Control) knows the applicant, not professionally but rather as a relative, friend, friend’s son, party-supporter and the like. That is atrocious.

The morale of the inspectorate has been reduced to an all-time low by the attitude of the Chief Director (Control). A questionnaire to the superintendents of education and all educational planners should be used with regard to this. The findings would be a revelation to those who do not want to believe the allegations.

A Senior Superintendent (Academic) went on a holiday to India where his wife took ill. He then applied for an extension of leave and sent a telegram to the department indicating his dilemma and followed this up with a leave form. He was granted unpaid leave. In the second place, on his return he made reasonable representations to the Chief Director (Control). He was treated shabbily and the Chief Director (Control) adopted an uncouth attitude which demoralised this officer who is a Superintendent of Education.

I want to make hon members aware of a few more startling cases. Why do these things happen and what is happening in the state of Denmark? This Chief Director (Control) has no respect for his colleagues and has no trust in his fellow educators. Amongst the teachers he is regarded and referred to as the chief of the FBI. He has investigators and secret reporters at every school. He is the absolute in the department, but he does not know that the human factor is important in job satisfaction. Today there is a call from all sides that the Chief Director (Control) must go.

He is out of control!

This call comes from the superintendents of education, educational planners, principals and many other educators. Today I want to lend my voice to this call and I want to demand the termination of the service of the Chief Director (Control) to be made effective. If he stays any longer it will be to the utter detriment of our education.

When we come here we ought to be objective and we do not want to be sentimental. It is absolutely for the sake of the education of this community. What our forebears have built up over the years must not be destroyed or mishandled. The human factor is very, very important in education.

The relationship between a senior and the junior employees in his department is very important and they should have the right climate. However, wrong signals are being shown.

I can tell hon members that if there were only 100 applicants last year compared with the 2 500 applicants in past years for teacher training, I think that is a clear indication and a clear signal.

I want to come to another area, namely study leave for teachers. I wish to outline briefly three case studies of teachers taking study leave.

Case no 1 relates to Mr P Naidoo, senior school psychologist in the department. He has served for 23 years and he is a loyal and dedicated teacher whose qualification is Master of Arts. He was granted study leave by the department to study for a specialist education degree in counselling at the University of Iowa, USA. In consultation with his promoters, he changed his programme of study to PhD in counselling, which has a superior structure in terms of content. The United Nations Education and Training Programme for Southern Africa awarded him a scholarship to complete the PhD degree.

The teacher applied for an extension of study leave without pay. He was refused. I need not go through all the correspondence in this regard. This teacher made considerable personal and financial sacrifices; he sold his house at Burlington Heights; he had been on no salary since May 1987. Here is an extract from the teacher’s letter to the department; this is very interesting:

And yet the director or some one in the department finds it, shall I say, easy, to strike him off at the stroke of the pen.

There are in my possession copies of letters of appeal that this teacher be allowed to continue, written by seven of his supervising promoters. These have been made available to the department. I should like to read a few extracts from these letters. Prof Harold Engen writes:

Robert M Fitch, Associate Dean, writes:

I shall only read one other; I do not wish to read all seven. Prof Nicolas Colangelo writes:

There has been an appeal by the organised profession to hon the Minister. What, in fact, is the verdict? We have people who are regulation-obsessed and are apparently short-sighted as regards long-term goals for education and the community.

What did you do when you were in education?

The hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council wants to know what I did when I was an inspector. I should like to ask him what he did as a pupil! [Interjections.] I should like to ask the late Mr V Naidoo to come out of his grave and tell him his fortune! [Interjections.]

Lastly, what is lacking is a lack of empathy in that human aspirations were not considered. As a matter of fact I know the hon the Minister and even the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council will agree with me that regulations are merely a guide and exceptions should be made in a deserving case such as this where Indian education will benefit. I may mention, and I think it is an acknowledged fact, that the standard of counselling in our schools is not adequate or effective. We know this as a result of setbacks, and here is a man who is studying for a doctorate in counselling. We should give him every encouragement! He did not ask for a bursary from the department; he obtained his bursary from the United Nations Education and Training Programme for Southern Africa. That kind of thing should not be supported.

I wrote a letter in this regard to the hon the Minister and I hope that he and the Ministers’ Council will have a positive approach to this. I crave the co-operation of every hon member in this House for justice, and nothing else, to an educationist. I ask this of hon members. I hold no brief for this person, but I ask this of hon members with the sole aim of advancing Indian education. I would like copies of these papers to be made available to hon members.

I come to case number 2, Mr Michael Pillay, a senior biology teacher and head of science department at Montarena High School, who holds the qualification MSc. Now I do not want to go through this whole sad story, but he was refused when he asked for an extension of leave. The university where he was studying was the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in the United States of America. He was given a bursary of R25 000 per year. In his sad letter he says that his area of specialisation is in plant breeding, a field in which the hon the Minister said no Indian was found and they had to bring in a Black man. I quote:

He goes on in that trend. Mr Pillay’s letter of appeal was turned down. Here a brilliant teacher, who would have made an invaluable contribution to education and the community in a field where specialists of this calibre are absent or rare, has been dismissed. Our education and the community are poorer for it.

Case number 3 is Mr N Baijnath, a senior English teacher at Rylands Secondary School. I wonder if the hon members representing the Cape Province are here?

What does that have to do with us?

Mr Baijnath has been offered a school teacher fellowship in the School of English Studies at the University of Durham, England, for a masters degree in applied linguistics—another rare field. This was the department’s reply:

That man went ahead and he resigned. He was asked to withdraw his letter of resignation in a letter from the Teachers’ Association. However, the department insisted that he could not take his leave. Such students would have to fend for themselves or they would have to get bursaries. Another point is that they were prepared to take unpaid leave—all three of them outstanding students. Why can they not be accommodated with the present surplus of teachers?

Let us recommend that these cases are sent to the hon the Minister, but I hope the hon the Minister will not become another patron saint of regulations. I have another eight minutes and I would like to go on to another important issue.

Next I would like to address the issue of the University of Durban-Westville. Why was the present rector’s contract extended for another two years, despite vehement opposition by the House of Delegates—particularly by the hon the Chairman of the Minister’ Council? From the Herald dated 28.10.1984, I quote:

Order! When the hon member referred to Mr Rajbansi, did he refer to the name in the newspaper?

I was quoting the newspaper, Mr Chairman.

As a result the Moll Committee was appointed to investigate the alleged irregularities in the appointment, promotion and dismissal of staff. However, this was challenged by the rector. I think hon members of this House are aware that the rector was also unco-operative with the committee. He was late in answering queries and, in a challenge to the Moll Committee, he set up the Booysen Committee. In 1987 Prof de Villiers was appointed as full professor and head of the geography department, while there were other suitably qualified Indians in that department. In other words, the whole investigation was in vain.

Yet it was Dr de Villiers who had insulted Indian students. This particular lecturer insulted Indian students—hon members will have read about this in the newspapers a few years ago—by stating that if the Indian students were not satisfied with the UDW, they should return to India. A lecturer holding such views and adopting such a discriminatory attitude should be removed from the university in the interests of the university and of the community at large. However, what was Dr de Villiers’ reward? It was a promotion! [Interjections.]

Both the vice-rectors at that university are Whites. There was another opportunity of upgrading Indian academics who would be primed for the rectorship. This was not done, however. The Administrative Policy Committee, which is known as the APC committee and which is a controlling body of the university, is entirely White to this day. I am not satisfied with the recommendations made by this House with regard to the council because there is some dead wood on that council. We shall discuss that another time. [Interjections.]

The point I want to make, is that there is no indication of a sincere change of attitude on the part of the university management. There is nothing of the kind. What is the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council’s answer in the light of the abnormal and totally unacceptable situation vis-d-vis the two-year controversy?

Do you want political interference at the university?

It would have been logical for the Ministers’ Council to fight this tooth and nail. The Ministers’ Council should have been seen to oppose tooth and nail the extension of the contract of the present rector. Is the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council vying for an honorary doctorate at that university? If not, why is he not forthright? [Interjections.]

Are you casting aspersions on someone else?

Is he doing so at the cost of the community? I say, God forbid!

The Indian students have exhausted their restraint in supporting a system that is undemocratic, and I can understand this. There are top-class Indian academics at the universities. To mention just one of them, what about the person who was promoted to the department of dentistry? He would fill that post with distinction because concurrent with his appointment to the department of dentistry he was the vice-rector elect at the University of the Western Cape. There are other such people at the universities.

The recent holocaust among Indian and Black students should not be seen as something brought about by the students themselves. While socioeconomic elements are a contributory factor, the hierarchy, the system and the fact that that school still has a White rector is something that our students—your children—will not stand for. They want to know why.

There were frequent outbursts at the University of Zululand when they had a White rector but what happened once a Black rector was appointed? All those protests virtually vanished. They have a Black rector and a Black vice-rector there. At the University of the Western Cape they had a Coloured rector and his successor has been yet another Coloured rector.

Our students want to know what has happened to the Indian community which claims to have a long-standing civilisation, brilliant intellectuals, etc. They want to know why there is still a White rector there at this stage. I want to tell hon members that this is a recipe for conflict and that this matter must be resolved. [Interjections.]

At the UDW there is a big question-mark hanging over the extension of the services of the White rector, the appointment of two White vice-rectors and a White chief director. They cannot even find an Indian who would make a suitable chief director on the administrative side.

In August 1986 the students campaigned for the replacement of the rector, the internal management committee and the university council. I want the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council to refrain from making hollow statements but rather to put some more of his threats into action.

If we do what you tell us, you will accuse us of political interference.

Last year I made an appeal—and many of my fellow hon members supported me—that we should give our youth movement a boost, and I made a practical suggestion to revive the Boy Scout movement by appointing a deputy principal from one of our high schools to attend to this aspect. Unfortunately this has not seen the light of day as yet. It is a sad thing.

I now want to turn to another matter. I want to welcome the hon the Minister’s suggestion regarding a correspondence school to entertain the M plus 4 teachers.

Order! I regret to inform the hon member that his time has expired.

Mr Chairman, I rise merely to afford the hon member an extension of time, if he so desires.

Mr Chairman, I should not like to exploit the generosity of the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council … [Interjections.]

We are giving you the right to say what you want to say.

There is a reference to transfers on page 17 of the hon Minister’s speech—I do not know whether to call it a report or a speech.

I read the statement with some trepidation. Is the transfer of teachers a problem? To my knowledge, this was never uttered by any hon Minister in this House or by any director. I do not know what is causing the concern in this area.

Regarding private schools, I have my reservations about this matter. My attitude towards it, and the thought I would like to share with the hon the Minister, is that he should tread cautiously with this issue. Unless there are special, super-schools, and not a private school here and there and anywhere, I think we will be making a mockery of it. However, if there is an infrastructure like that at schools such as Michael House or Hilton College or Kearsney College, they are definitely sure to know that. However, let me tell hon members that I hear that even in England in this day and age these schools are being phased out.

Lastly, on this occasion, I again want to say that evaluations in schools, supervisory services and the counselling service need to be looked at seriously. This is great cause for dissatisfaction among teachers and I think, in all humility and sincerity, that our department owes it to the teachers to look into this. If this aspect of our infrastructure collapses, our entire education will collapse. I want to leave it to the hon the Minister to look at some of these issues in order to improve the situation.

I make a special appeal to all hon members of the House that the three cases I mentioned must be reviewed in the interest of education at large. I think we are all tied down by regulations. After all, these three have not committed any serious crime by asking for two or three or more years leave. Ultimately, the community in South Africa will benefit tremendously.

Mr Chairman, I shall start by saying that today I have no intention of attacking any directors or deputy-directors of this Administration. This is so for two reasons: Firstly, I was told that it was totally unfair, by the other side of the House as well as this side of the House, and that it hurts my colleagues tremendously. For this I apologise, being the person I am. Secondly, I made it very clear in the opening of my speech on health and welfare that I had very few concepts and that these apply to health services in general, not to own affairs, for which our hon Minister for Health Services and Welfare was responsible. I further continued to say that I do not accept the concept of own affairs and I quoted from Hansard, that when I refer to own affairs I merely do so under the pretext of health services that are available to us Indians. The hon the Minister’s attack on me was personal and damaging, but I accept it.

Back to education. There are three aspects which I would like to highlight today. The first is the Friday mosque issue, the second is the new sports policy and the third is education committees.

Much has been said about the Friday mosque issue, perhaps not in this House. Perhaps it has not been an issue in this House, but outside Parliament there has been friction and tension, which was totally uncalled for and could have been avoided. We keep on talking about a unity type of education. In the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal has no place, just as in health services. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

In the landmark case of Brown vs The Board of Education of Topek in the United States Supreme Court in 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that even if the physical facilities and other tangible factors were equal, to segregate schools on the basis of race was inherently unequal. To separate Negro school children from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race, he said, generates a feeling of inferiority as to the status in the community that might affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.

Therefore, to segregate schools according to religion and culture, even within a single school, is the ultimate injustice. It is now that our children will begin to feel different from each other. I wish to ask that a special dispensation be given to Muslim children on Fridays. In doing so, please try at the same time not to disrupt or cause any friction.

When the KwaZulu-Natal concept comes into being, even on an experimental basis, how are we going to accommodate the diverse cultures and religious differences which run deep in the African context. Please let sanity prevail.

I now come to the sports policy. Hon members will recall that I said last year that the new sports policy is good and well-intended. However, is it not also just emulative of what the Whites have? Firstly, our own communities are not geared for that sort of thing. They are not educated enough. The response of the parents, after having been asked to act as coaches and serve on the new sports policy council, was one of apathy and indifference.

In Whites schools Saturdays are like a normal school day—not as far as academic teaching is concerned, but as far as sports are concerned. The White parents go by their hundreds to see their children play. I accompanied my wife to netball and voleyball games on two occasions. Not only were there very few teachers, but there was only a single parent. There was only one parent, representing 15 to 20 teams. Some 15 schools were represented at that meeting. This is pathetic. Excellent facilities are provided at schools.

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

Sir, I am not taking any questions, because I only have another five minutes at my disposal.

I shall give the hon member another five minutes.

I want to know whether the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council has any time to give to anyone. [Interjections.]

Sir, will the hon member ensure that somebody who is used to sending Hansards to Durban, sends his speech to Mr Nagoor Bissetti?

What a silly question!

Why does the hon member not react to that and tell him how stupid that was?

That is irrelevant. I would not even be bothered about it.

As I have said, excellent facilities are provided. Communities must be educated to participate.

I now come to education committees. I wish to refer to the White Paper on Education. The De Lange Commission talks of parent representative bodies under the umbrella of a school board governing whole or certain areas. It has been suggested that these parent representative bodies be given greater powers and status, and that they even have something to do with promotions and transfers. The point is that once again the public is being misled. The public, in all its innocence and ignorance, is being misled by organisations such as Tasa to such an extent that the existing education committees believe they can interfere with academic matters of schools, amongst other things. This is absurd. Their primary function is mainly to raise funds.

Since a parent representative committee is being visualised, care should be taken that only academically qualified people serve on this, and not businessmen, doctors, lawyers or MPs, but rather principals, ex-principals, retired teachers and other people who know about education.

Even if they have no children at the school they should serve on these bodies. Then only will we have a proper body to perform the function assigned to it.

Mr Chairman, we are discussing education and I listened very intently to what the hon member for Cavendish had to say about this reported place of worship somewhere in the Northern Transvaal. I am Tamil-speaking and I am also a Hindu but I do believe one must not go gaga. One must not get emotional about these things—one must look at it in the proper objective, detached and scholarly way.

Mr Chairman, may I claim the privilege of the half-hour?

Order! It is granted.

Thank you, Mr Chairman.

There is no reference to this apparent temple near Nelspruit in the Silapadikaram which is an ancient piece of Tamil literature. There is no reference made to it at all by Romilla Tappar or by Nilakanda Astri in their works. Not even in his book Five Thousand Years of Nataraja does Prof Sivarama Krishnam refer to that work. There does not appear to be any particular reference to that locality in any of the literature of the Agams. There were four Agams and the first Agam was allegedly held 9 000 years ago.

That does not mean, however, that it does not exist. If there was such a place of worship, archaeologists will find the remains of human habitation. If one had a temple there would have been a village nearby. Archaeologists should be able to find the skulls of human beings and these will be ossified or fossilised and they could be carbon dated. It should be possible for scholars to obtain positive proof if such a thing existed. That is why I want to say that although the hon the Minister should take notice of all cultural matters, he should not embark on an emotional trip—but I am sure he will not.

The hon member for Cavendish referred to the role played by the Director-General (Control) in refusing permission for scholars employed by the department to continue their work of scholarship. It is very sad that such a thing should occur.

It is scandalous!

After all, any education department should endeavour to assist teachers and to provide incentives for them to further their education so that they could better impart knowledge to the charges under their care. However, we have incompetent people who were promoted purely because they knew certain politicians. They are not fit for their task. They used to be spies upon the president of Tasa.

It is not difficult to realise that such persons would be inadequate for their tasks. Perhaps it is because of their own intellectual and philosophical inadequacy that they envy those who are superior to them and that is why they try to bring them down or to retard their progress. [Interjections.]

If there are such people, they should be got rid of. It is of course the hon the Minister who is finally responsible for this. He must take control of his department and not allow an aerial to float directly to the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council from his department. He himself is the head of that department and we hold him responsible for the shortcomings of that department.

We are pleased that the hon the Minister does not repeat the false and fraudulent claim in this House which was made in January this year that there was a 93% pass rate in the matriculation examination in Indian schools in 1987. The hon the Minister is careful. He draws a distinction between the 93% pass of all those who sat for the Senior Certificate examination and those who sat for the matriculation examination.

Of course, he ought to have told us that of all those who sat the Senior Certificate examination and of those who received their matriculation exemption, the latter only constituted 38%, not 93% as certain politicians tried to claim. The Minister is partly culpable for this. His picture appeared, but he did not say that the other chap was talking nonsense and that he as the Minister of Education would correct the nonsense of the other man. However, he has at least given us a more correct picture today.

But the hon the Minister must not juggle. He should give due praise to the teachers because in the newspaper report and in certain procured advertisements—and we know what people think of procurers—praise was heaped upon the politicians whereas in fact it is the teachers who deserve it. As a former teacher the hon the Minister knows that when he was a teacher it was his work that enabled the children to acquire knowledge, understanding and education, and not the work of any politician sitting somewhere else. [Interjections.] We therefore owe a debt of gratitude to all our teachers and to the parents. The parents play a significant role in the education of the children today and we must acknowledge that.

The other point is this: Those of us who went to the HSRC exposé yesterday and the brief seminar given by Prof Rhoodie would have noted that more than 60% of the Indian community rate the administration of education in the Indian area by the House of Delegates as being bad to very bad. This is more than 60%! This is attributable entirely to one factor and not to the work of this Minister or the staff—maybe the control director is partly responsible for that—not to the work of the teachers, but to the perception in the community that one politician, the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council, interferes directly in the running of the Department of Education. That must be stopped.

I repeat that the hon the Minister must exercise control. He must not keep open the post of the Chief Director of Education for one person to qualify and obtain a PhD so that that person may be preferred over the present acting Chief Director.

It is quite well-known that the acting Chief Director has been acting long enough and it is time that he was appointed. [Interjections.]

The hon the Minister must also realise that it was an utter disgrace that during the Tongaat elections teachers were used either by being put under duress or by being enticed—either way it is a horrible thing to do—to participate publicly and overtly in these elections. One of those teachers, it so happened recently, for another cause entirely was found guilty of misconduct and there of course one must give credit to the hon the Minister for having taken action that ought to be taken by a Minister regardless of political consequences.

However, the hon the Minister has not yet indicated what he intends doing about the conduct of a certain senior official who also engaged in very nefarious activities in the Tongaat election. He was granted 56 days which could possibly have been vacation leave as I do not know what leave was granted, by the Chief Director (Control) to go and campaign in the Tongaat election. That man took part in illegal activities during those elections. This matter is at present under police investigation so I shall not say more about that.

However, the same man committed another illegal act. The court found that he committed an illegal act and found him guilty of serious assault upon a police reservist.

Not even a senior official in the department is exempt if he is guilty of that kind of disgraceful conduct. The hon the Minister must see to it that suitable action is taken.

Reference has been made to the University of Durban-Westville, and we note that there has been a 31% increase in the enrolment of Black South Africans as students at that university. That is a welcome development. It is also good news that the university is in fact now a truly non-racial university. This is what everybody in this House has been demanding since 1985. The hon the Minister must now explain to this House why the council of that university is purely biracial. It has only Whites and so-called Indians. Surely the Minister makes appointments—if the Minister was in fact responsible for this selection, and did not permit somebody else to go and make that selection above his head—so why weren’t other South Africans, such as members of the Black and Coloured communities, not also included in the council?

We refer to the fact that 885 teachers remain unemployed, notwithstanding the fact that they obtained their qualifications at public expense. Their talents are being wasted notwithstanding the fact that there is in fact a shortage of 2 777 teachers in the department controlled by the hon the Minister.

On a basis of 230 000 pupils, and taking the norm in White schools at 1 teacher per 18 pupils—the present norm in Indian schools is 23, which allows for 10 000 teachers—we shall need 12 777 teachers in the Indian schools. There is a shortage of teachers; there is not a surplus of teachers. Anyone who pretends there is a surplus is talking absolute, arrant nonsense. There is an apparent surplus because our children are being short-changed. The classes are far too big.

The hon the Minister makes the proud claim: “Free education is still the order of the day as far as my department is concerned.” I regret the fact that he did not point out that free education is not the order of the day in so far as many other departments of education in South Africa are concerned. The Black children are also children; they were made by God and we should regard them as our children. We should not claim exclusive privileges for our own and fail to concern ourselves with the other children.

We welcome the cultural activities in the Indian schools; that is a good thing, but we must be careful that we do not make a fetish of that kind of activity.

I want to deal briefly now with the M L Sultan Technikon. I have in my hand a report issued by the Vice President of the council of the M L Sultan Technikon. It makes rather sad reading. He says:

Then he goes on:

Then he says:

We know that the registrar of that institution sought to escape from the institution, but of course he could not do so because his application was refused. One wants to know why he did seek to escape. Although it is known that that man supports a political party which is neither mine nor that of anyone on this side of the House, he has nevertheless given long service at that institution and so there has to be some reason why he and the rector could not get on. These are matters which fall within the purview of the hon the Minister and I think that he owes an obligation to this House to explain to us exactly what is going on. I am not referring to the criminal investigations, but I am referring to the management of that institution.

I would like to speak on a parochial matter; the Reservoir Hills Primary School in Magdalen Road, Reservoir Hills, which was built a long time ago. Proposals were made by the education committee and by myself as a member of Parliament for that constitution and at the request of that education committee, to the Director of Education. I have had discussions with the Director of Planning, and I was given assurances—as were the principal of that school and its education committee—that planning would go ahead and tenders would be put out. However, I understand—and I trust that the hon the Minister will be able to repudiate this, for which I will be happy—that a certain politician has attempted to interfere. He has said that if this concerns Reservoir Hills, it should be held up, because progress should not take place in that constituency. If that is true, it is disgusting. The hon the Minister shakes his head and if he then denies that …

[Inaudible.]

No, Sir. The answer would be quite simple. I want to see development taking place there, because that is the only fact that will give the lie to this allegation. If it does not take place within the next few months, then I shall hold the hon the Minister personally responsible.

That is a tall order.

I have to conclude my speech and I do so by asking the hon the Minister to explain to this House why he has not yet given us a report on the enquiries which he undertook to make in regard to the Clairwood Industrial School and the allegations of gross abuse of power and authority by the principal of that school, who—so it was alleged—has been exploiting the situation for his personal gain and that of some of his relatives. The hon the Minister knows about this, because I gave him details about it in this House, across the floor. The hon the Minister undertook to enquire into that and when he does, he should please give us the benefit of his enquiries.

Mr Chairman, at the very outset I would like to compliment my colleague, the hon the Minister of Education and Culture, on this comprehensive report.

When one looks at him one perceives his stature to be of a scholastic nature. He looks like a student. I am very proud that this hon colleague of mine, who is the head of the Department of Education, has made tremendous progress in the last few years. This report itself signals the improvement from day to day in Indian education.

I want to touch on culture. The cultural promotion section of the Department of Education and Culture must be given wider powers to undertake and implement a more widespread programme of cultural work. It appears that this section is organising and presenting concerts and dance programmes of its own in order to stimulate a greater awareness and interest in the arts. While such programmes are warranted in the larger cities, the value of such sophisticated and high standard programmes in the more remote rural areas must not be lost sight of. In fact, these projects will have a tremendous impact on the rural areas and country towns such as Dundee, Newcastle, Dannhauser, Richards Bay, Est-court, Mtabamhlope and on the South Coast area of Port Shepstone, Kelso, Sezela, Illovo, Rainy Shores, Park Rynie, Umzinto and other rural areas. Areas in the Cape and Transvaal …

Is this the weather report? [Interjections.]

In addition to the larger centres of Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and East London … [Interjections.] There must be a youth cultural programme as well, whereby youth organisations will be guided and encouraged to arrange, present and participate in cultural projects of all kinds. Dance, music, drama, art …

Mr Chairman, would the hon the Minister tell this House what basic tenets of culture he is referring to? One has viticulture, horticulture, agriculture, etc. [Interjections.]

Surely the hon member for Camperdown is fully aware of the Vote that is being debated in the House. It is Education and Culture.

Song and dance are not culture! [Interjections.]

These shows could initially be eye-openers and thereafter organisations in those areas can be encouraged to undertake them. However, if some are accustomed traditionally to the Sikhs’ group culture, they must also maintain that, and that in itself provides for the future culture of the country. [Interjections.]

What about school programmes for the promotion of culture? The cultural promotion subdivision, although not essentially concerned with school matters, since their work is concentrated on the general community and adults in particular, should, however, devise programmes of the performing arts for presentation in schools. Available musical colleges can be contacted to visit schools occasionally to perform before school audiences in order to create a greater awareness of these arts among them.

They already have language lessons and Indian songs are now being introduced in schools. A cultural promotion programme for our schools is very important.

There are many requests for the funding of young, talented and interested students to go to India and imbibe the arts more thoroughly. Hon members will appreciate that over the years, Indian pupils with talents have gone overseas at tremendous sacrifice and have come back to this country and made a positive contribution in this field. Now that we have the central Government machinery which is giving consideration to this, there is a need to send talented and able artists overseas to acquire further expertise and thus propagate culture. This is vitally important.

I might say that the Indian radio programmes are of a very poor standard at the present time. Responsible cultural organisations and leaders must call for greater improvements. There is no cultural content whatsoever in Radio Lotus. Our growing generation are listening to poor speech and insipid music from the station all day long. So many hours of airtime are wasted in frivolous, almost meaningless commercial broadcast programmes.

The House of Delegates, through its Department of Education and Culture, must attend to this culturally and educationally unsound broadcasting. Our Culture Promotion Division must be made responsible to devise plans to offer Indian cultural programmes, reflecting all sections of the community on SABC-TV from time to time. These television programmes must refer to the South African Indian culture. At present our television programmes feature nothing of consequence which reflects the beauty of Indian art. We must not allow this state of affairs to continue and a whole section of the population of South Africa, the Indian community, to be ignored. Here I want to appeal to my colleague to give this aspect of his department consideration, whilst, with respect, I acknowledge that tremendous progress has been made thus far.

Coming back to parochial matters, I want to appeal to my colleague that he should motivate for school halls in many areas. There are many areas in this country where we have a concentration of well-settled people, but they are areas where people cannot afford school halls and do not have any other facilities. I want to appeal to my colleague that he strongly motivates for school halls, so that these facilities can be used both for educational and community purposes. I want to highlight some of these areas. Glenhazel has no community facilities; they need a school hall. Also Wasbank in Richards Bay—the hon member for Stanger knows that we need a school hall both for education and for the community.

I have no problem with it; I support that.

Teachers’ accommodation is becoming a problem at the moment. There are many teachers in many parts of this country who are appointed to areas and find no accommodation. I do hope this department will look at these areas, so that they will enable the teacher to have accommodation. Then, when he goes into the classroom, he will have the work on his mind, rather than worrying about his accommodation.

According to the report, technical secondary schools for Stanger, Pietermaritzburg and Chatsworth are on the cards. I want to appeal to the hon the Minister to look at other areas, growth points such as Richards Bay and the Northern Natal area, regarding this important facility.

I want to compliment my colleague for the Stateaided grants„which go up to a maximum of R30 000. The State-aided school has a history of its own and we can be proud that, with positive negotiation on the part of my colleague, we are indeed receiving satisfactory grants.

I want to deal with another aspect, although it overlaps with national education. It concerns the National Monuments Council, and my colleague, the hon the Minister of Education and Culture, is linked to this administration. I would like to address an appeal to my colleague. From a historical point of view, Mahatma Gandhi spent 20 years in this country and approximately six years of his life was spent in the Transvaal on Tolstoy Farm. Having recently visited this area, we found that this house and property has been totally neglected. I strongly feel that under no circumstances can we afford to see such a historical settlement being neglected to the extent that it is. I would like to appeal to my colleague to look at the Tolstoy Farm and perhaps give recognition to this fact.

The hon member for Cavendish mentioned the findings in Nelspruit. The hon member for Reservoir Hills made a statement and said we should not react to this issue emotionally. I would like the reaction from the hon member for Spring-field, and I would like to remind him that this is a sensitive issue. It is sensitive. It is not emotionalism. It is something to which consideration must be given on an honest basis.

On an objective and a sensible basis!

In any event, no-one has made any submission that is not coupled with anything sensible.

I am glad the hon the Minister agrees.

We in South Africa are fortunate to have a person of the calibre of Dr Hromníck. I would like to read from his report, but before that I want to commend the hon member for Chatsworth Central for his interest in this matter. I now wish to quote from the report:

Subsequently, whilst the council showed sympathy, the hon the Minister of National Education reacted to this issue. Dr Hromníck reacted, too, and said that his findings were genuine. He asked the hon the Minister to reconsider the matter. He also urged the Nelspruit Town Council not to destroy ancient Indian history because of ignorance.

I want to make an appeal to my hon colleague. This is not an emotional excercise. I do not think, by any stretch of the imagination, that one should overrule and treat lightly the findings of this outstanding archaeologist, Dr Hromníck. My hon colleague is fully aware of this, and I hope that he, together with other interest members, will pursue this matter. No attitude of any other race group should have a bearing on this. We must ultimately be able to establish the truth of this finding.

Mr Chairman, I am certain that I will not be at variance with the hon the Minister in today’s debate. I am also certain that he will concur with me on the subject matter today. However, I do want to say that I will return to the fray tomorrow on a different subject matter.

It is time that we take a very strong stand against Sacos, which is infiltrating our schools and taking decisions for those at grass-root levels. These decisions are not taken by those interested in sport but by politicians whose primary concern is not sport but politics. People at the bottom rung of the ladder are coerced out of fear to the standards of Sacos.

Take the Tertia Bunsie case. To ban an innocent child without allowing her a fair say smacks of the bullying characteristics of Sacos.

What about the Meth’s case? She was to have captained Natal in a swimming event but she was stripped of her captaincy because she refused to read out a prepared speech by Sacos. This inflexibility of Sacos and their arrogance towards innocent children and dedicated sports people is characteristic of the insensitivity of the Sacos leadership.

I wish to read an extract from the Education Bulletin issued by the Administration: House of Representatives. I am certain that this can be used as a basis to formulate our own set of rules if it has not yet been formulated. I quote as follows:

1. 1. It is the view of the department that all pupils must be given the opportunity to develop their potential in the field of sport, cultural and other extramural activities to the full. The importance of the task of principals and teachers to arrange such activities on an organised basis in order to render a positive contribution towards the physical, spiritual and cultural development of the youth cannot be emphasised enough. The department notes with appreciation what has already been done in this regard.
2. 2. The department wishes to make it clear that under no circumstances may any pupil be discriminated against in regard to participation in school sport, cultural or other extramural activities, either within the school or in competition with other schools, on the grounds of political, religious or cultural considerations. Teachers concerned with the organisation and holding of such activities must refrain from introducing the views and aims of adults’ organisations or societies of which they may be members into the school milieu.
3. 3. Should specific complaints be received that a pupil has been discriminated against in the participation in school sport and/or other cultural activities, either on an internal or inter-school basis, the department will be compelled to react to such complaints by investigating the matter and initiating disciplinary action against teachers found guilty thereof.
4. 4. The department therefore appeals to principals and teachers as educationalists to ensure at all times that each pupil of the school is given the opportunity to take his rightful place in organised extramural activities, whether internal or inter-school, on the strength of his enthusiasm, interest and achievements alone. In this way the pupil will be afforded the opportunity to develop his potential and interest and to make a real contribution towards furthering the image of his school.

Mr Chairman, let me say at the outset that because of my limited time I shall take questions at the end of my speech.

I wish to suggest to the hon the Minister of Education and Culture in the House of Delegates: Administration that he should set up an advisory council to advise the Department of Education and Culture on all aspects of education. This council should be a think tank with members drawn from educational institutions, people with the qualifications and experience such as professors, researchers in education and others.

I want to qualify this: It should be composed of all race groups and people should be selected on merit. It should also include representatives from commerce, industry and business people. It should be an independent body acting merely in an advisory capacity. I do not mean that this council should consist of retired principals.

Or stripteasers!

It should not consist of connections or pals—I should not be surprised if such a thing happened—people who could be manipulated by politicians and interest groups in the administration of education.

This council could remedy the existing disintegration of co-operation in education. I shall return to that point later. The Chief Executive Director should be given a free hand in the direction and control of education. I do not think this is so. I want to quote from an article in the Natal Mercury dated 18 June 1987. It is a report on the annual congress of the Teachers’ Association of South Africa which was held in Durban, and I quote:

It is alleged that the present acting Executive Director is caught between two forces of influence and control and these are politicians on the one hand, and on the other hand senior administrative personnel and the administration. There is gross interference and manipulation in education. Some of them are present here, I know them and hon members on the opposite side also know them and this is not news to them.

With regard to this triangular contest I do not see the hon the Minister of Education and Culture fitting into that whole pattern or what one could call a tugging exercise. [Interjections.]

Coming back to the disintegration of co-operation, this breakdown of co-operation in education is rife. Education can be best served if there is cohesion between the education department on the one hand, and on the other the community, organised associations and commerce and industry. The community is not being consulted. Education committees are ineffective as they cannot make the kind of input that would be desirable regarding the broad principles of education.

I want to quote from an article headed, “Frustrated Tasa may become a Union”, which appeared in the Natal Mercury of 8 March 1986. The point is that Tasa has communicated with the Minister of National Education because they enjoy no co-operation with the hon the Minister of Education and Culture in the House of Delegates.

Numerous letters and requests remain unanswered.

To begin with I want to quote from this paper:

It continues:

That is the hon the Minister of National Education—

A report dated 12 March 1988 in another newspaper, Post Natal, has the following title in banner headlines:

The teachers’ association is an important representative body of teachers and educationists. They are not given the desired attention and consultation, more especially when they have think tanks. This association has research material on matters affecting education, material that could be valuable and could enhance the administration and output in education. Instead of co-operation, confrontation is the order of the day. Since 1984 nothing has been done to look into the whole system of our education to meet the needs of the larger community.

The so-called educationists are going about formulating a system of education without consultation and investigation. May I ask what major investigation or undertaking was carried out by the department as an input to the educational system in Indian education? As far as I know, only criminal cases have been investigated. Are we to assume that the only investigations carried out relate to court cases? Even these investigations have proved to be a hopeless failure. The number of instances of unsuccessful litigation is shocking; they have been a waste of time, effort and money.

I have also noted in the hon the Minister’s report the emphasis on agriculture. This is ridiculous. We are talking about 56 pupils out of the thousands of children at school. We are talking about one aspect of agriculture when people are begging for agricultural land. Does the hon the Minister think that the future of the Indian community is in agriculture?

[Inaudible.]

It is ridiculous, in a very important report like this, to talk about agriculture; it is an insignificant aspect. I believe that that is what is being investigated and that is the kind of consultation that has taken place.

In the field of technical and technological education, may I ask the hon the Minister to what extent commerce and industry have been consulted? Does the hon the Minister assume what the employers need? The products from these technical institutions are generally unacceptable because of the lack of consultation and the type of products turned out.

I do not want to go into the defects in the administration of the M L Sultan Technikon, since that has been covered.

Order! I regret to inform the hon member that his time has expired.

Mr Chairman, I rise to afford the hon member the opportunity to complete his speech.

I thank the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council. I wish to quote the De Lange principle No 4:

To what extent has the hon the Minister carried out this principle? How can education progress without research and how can adaptation continue? Will the hon the Minister tell me what amount of research has been undertaken, what the nature of this research is and its outcome—if any? I know that a research unit does exist. I must stress that I am not concerned with minor investigations, but that I am concerned with major research to improve education and not agriculture. To what extent has research been undertaken in relation to the principle embodied in the De Lange Report? I quote principle No 11:

Next I would like to quote principle No 6:

You will be happy if we get more jockeys.

I do not know why the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council is getting hot under the collar, because I told him at the outset that any questions could be put at the end of my speech.

This reminds me of his threatening attitude in an edition of The Leader dated 19 December 1986 in which he threatened Tasa about their going on strike. He wanted to take court action. I quote:

That is our hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council. [Interjections.] I continue:

I do not like idle threats and it seems that the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council is on trial here. If he is on trial and the cap fits him, he must wear it.

If I go on trial, you must be a co-accused. [Interjections.]

My time is limited. Are we content with the ethnic type of education for our children? Does the hon the Minister realise that standards must be matched and that the labour market does not consider ethnic education for employment opportunities? It is a case of the best man for the job and merit is the criterion. Does the hon the Minister realise that we are but a small component of the South African society? Our output should be compared with a larger society and quality has to improve continuously in order to meet the challenges and demands on an open market. What efforts, as the result of research, are made to open all technical schools and technikons to all race groups? We live in a multi-racial society and I see a clear vision of multi-racial technical schools, colleges and technikons in the medium and long term. We must prepare for that. What sort of input has been made towards that? Are we living in isolation as a small community in South Africa? We have to exist within a larger community and we have to build bridges for this community. [Interjections.] Should we take a sensible stand to live in a state of togetherness and in a completely open society, or should we entrench ethnicity?

I want to touch briefly upon the hon member for Cavendish’s remarks concerning temporary teachers. Qualified teachers being put on temporary staff is the most disgraceful type of administration we can think of. Teachers whose services have to be terminated at the end of the year, go without pay during the holiday season. They have no pension benefits and they have to sign for unemployment. They are married with children and families to support. Who are they going back to? The sword of Damocles forever hangs over their heads because of the insecurity and uncertainty in their job situation. Concerning the administration of education, if we do not have the money we should get that money and fight for it in the first instance. Let us not demoralise our teachers and our Indian community.

My time has expired.

Mr Chairman, in presenting his Budget Vote this afternoon, the hon the Minister has voted 14,33% more than last year. I hope the hon the Minister does not think that this is sufficient for our needs. We still feel that this money is far less than we need.

I should like to touch on one of the subjects that everyone in the Transvaal is talking about, and that is the future of the Transvaal College of Education. As we know, this college is situated in Laudium, which is my constituency, and last year the department announced that there would not be a new intake of students into this college because there was no need to train future teachers.

After intervention by certain people, including certain hon members of Parliament, the hon the Minister acceded to our request, for which I want to thank him, and the college took in a few more students during this year. We still do not know what the future of the college is going to be, however. There is still no clear indication from the department or the hon the Minister.

As hon members will know, we in the Transvaal constitute approximately 20% of the total population and I feel that this particular institution, which is one of the few tertiary educational institutions that we have in the Transvaal, should not close down. This is a new college that was built at a cost of several million rand and opened approximately five years ago. We all know that from the inception of the college students from Natal and another province, namely the Cape, have been taken in for training at this college. It has been said that there are not enough students from the Transvaal enrolling at this college but since the inception of teacher training in the Transvaal, students from Natal have been trained, even at the old teachers’ training college in Fordsburg.

It is not due to a lack of facilities that this college is not being fully utilised. This college has all the facilities a college requires and we are always being reminded by the hon the Minister that we are not a provincial Indian education department but a national education department. I want to know why we are going ahead with the planning of a new college in Cato Manor in Natal at a cost of millions of rand when students from Natal can be trained at this particular college, which has all the facilities, and when we know that it has always accommodated students from the other provinces.

This college can also be used for other purposes and even for dual purposes. It may be used as a training college for teachers as well as for other subjects that could be introduced to this college, such as business administration courses, secretarial courses, typing courses, etc.

We also know that we lack secondary technical training schools in the Transvaal. This college could be utilised for that purpose as well. My appeal is that the hon the Minister should appoint a committee to investigate the future of the college and how best we can utilise the Transvaal College of Education. It is time we knew in which direction the hon the Minister is headed because of the future of this particular college. I do not see why students from Springfield cannot be accommodated at this college and I therefore feel that the new college in Natal is not necessary at this stage.

With regard to teacher training, we know that we have an over-supply of teachers but we shall still require teachers in the future. There is going to be a turnover of teachers. We find teachers being promoted, teachers retiring and teachers leaving the profession, and teachers will always be needed. The training of teachers is therefore something that must be continued as we cannot simply say that we are going to stop training teachers.

We know that the universities are training teachers but it has been said by all the educators in the past that teachers who qualify from these colleges of education are better equipped in the classroom situation than those who come from the universities. We must therefore continue with these colleges.

I also want to touch on the placing of teachers, which other hon members have also touched on. It is surprising to me that teachers from Laudium should travel some 120 to 130 kilometres to go and teach in places like Lenasia or Brits or the East Rand, whilst teachers from Lenasia come and teach in Laudium. I think this needs much investigation by the department. This is not a healthy situation and something must be done to rectify this.

While I said that we believe that we are a national department and not a provincial department, we must not lose sight of the fact that teachers from Natal are teaching in the Transvaal. We also know of the problems of teachers who come for promotional posts to the Transvaal, such as lack of residential accommodation. These factors should be taken into account when it comes to the placing of teachers, either for promotion or as first-time teachers. We know the difficulties that have been experienced. We find there is a surplus of qualified teachers living in the Transvaal.

The hon member for Cavendish and other hon members have mentioned temporary teachers. I also want to say that this is not a healthy situation. We need these teachers. They are placed in employment, and when it comes to the end of the term or the year, they are summarily discharged. When the term reopens, they are re-employed after one or two weeks. They lose certain benefits, they do not become permanent and they cannot apply for housing subsidies. This is not a healthy situation and I think that the whole issue of the placement of teachers needs to be investigated. We find that a husband is placed in one area, and the wife has to travel 30 or 40 kilometres to her place of work. I think a special committee needs to be instituted immediately by the hon the Minister to see that the placing of teachers is acceded to.

Coming to a few of the problems in my constituency, I want to appeal to the hon the Minister. After a visit to my constituency last year, he addressed some of the problems. We knew that one of the schools which was built by the old Department of Education of the Transvaal is 25 years old. It now has to be rebuilt. The hon the Minister gave his commitment that this school would be rebuilt in the second quarter of this year. There is still no sign of progress of this school being rebuilt. I hope the hon the Minister will make a statement in this regard.

Lack of available money has resulted in a problem which is rather disappointing to the committee of the Laudium training centre for disabled children. Every time an approach was made to the department for the need of an additional teacher, they said that the numbers do not warrant a teacher, because they were one or two short. As we know, this is the only facility in that part of the Transvaal, around Pretoria, and therefore something should be done so that more money or more personnel is made available to this particular training institution for handicapped children. They used to have a Kombi-bus that carted the children. This bus was stolen. We know of the number of mini-buses in the country that are stolen. To our surprise the department said that they cannot replace this vehicle for the time being because of a lack of funds. Handicapped children that had to be taken to school …

Order! I regret to inform the hon member that his time has expired.

Mr Chairman, I rise to afford the hon member an opportunity to continue his speech to relieve him of his handicap.

Mr Chairman, I am indebted to the Whip of the Official Opposition.

I am also thankful that the rebuilding of one of the secondary schools, the Laudium Secondary School, has been completed. There, too, I think the planning section has failed miserably. After the completion of the school, there are still six or seven classes that are known as floating classes. I do not think there was adequate planning. We find that teachers have to go from one class to another during one period. There is actually a need to investigate whether additional space should not be made available.

I want to remind the hon the Minister that there is not a single school hall at the seven schools in Laudium. The hon the Minister has said that they would plan a school hall on a regional basis. I think it is time that they should look at the possibility of having a regional school hall at Laudium. There are approximately 30 000 inhabitants at Laudium. There are problems that exist as far as these facilities are concerned.

I am pleased to see from the hon the Minister’s statement this afternoon that R500 000 has been made available on a rand for rand basis. I hope that funds for the long awaited swimming pool project at one of the schools, namely Jacaranda Primary School, which has already collected in excess of R30 000, will be allocated in this financial year. The site has already been identified by the department. We are only waiting for their approval.

Mr Chairman, my time has already expired, but I just want to thank the hon the Minister for looking at the problems in my constituency.

Mr Chairman, I want to take this opportunity of expressing my appreciation to my colleague, the hon the Minister of Education and Culture, for the excellent manner in which he manages the affairs of the Department of Education and Culture. I also want to express my appreciation to all the officials, right up to the level of the Director-General, for the manner in which education is administered.

When a person occupies a position where decisions have to be made, it is sometimes necessary to make painful decisions. I know, because when I was a member of the Executive Committee of the South African Indian Council, and served under the chairmanship of the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition, we had to make certain decisions. I had to make decisions which involved my friends and a former school teacher. However, those decisions had to be taken.

Although these decisions are painful, one has to uphold certain rules and values. One also has to uphold certain standards and norms. One has to make decisions on the basis of no favours asked, and no favours given. The hon the Minister of Health Services and Welfare read out some documents when he replied in his debate. I, too, can read out documents. One of the mistakes I have made in my life is that I did not carry a pocket tape recorder.

You did it for T P Naidoo.

The hon member for Bayview says I did it for T P Naidoo. It was done, but it was not done by me. I think the hon member for Bayview knows quite well who was responsible for that. I do not want to tape conversations, but if I taped certain conversations, quite a lot of hon members on the other side of the House would have been placed in an embarrassing situation.

Name them!

Tonight I will respond to the hon member for Southern Natal. I will discuss it with them tonight in response to the hon member for Southern Natal. If they have no objections I will name them tomorrow. I will definitely have discussions with them.

As far as the roles of MPs and other people are concerned, can the hon member for Merebank deny that he did not overstep the line as a public servant and engaged in exercises that were tantamount to political interference in education over the past eight years?

He is not in charge of education.

Whether he is in charge or not, did he not engage in any exercise that aided and abetted repeated statements about political interference in education?

Nonsense!

He was found not guilty and discharged. [Interjections.]

Can any hon member on that side of the House say that he did not come to political office-bearers for transfers, promotions etc? Can hon members honestly deny that?

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council a question?

I will take questions at the end.

The two leading spokesmen on education in the Official Opposition appear to be confused. The one hon member puts a grand case forward that the University of Durban-Westville has a White rector. On the other hand, let us study the speech of the hon member for Merebank who presents an opposite view. I want to say that we are not going to pass judgement. The hon member for Cavendish made a case that the trouble at the university …

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council a question?

Mr Chairman, I will answer questions at the end.

He seems to be terribly confused.

If the hon member for Cavendish wants to deny that he made a case against the fact that the rector of the University of Durban-Westville is White, then we will get the record of his speech. I will come back to this in the debate on Friday morning. [Interjections.]

We shared the view in the past that all was not well at the University of Durban-Westville. The hon member for Springfield gave us a precis in regard to what was happening there. [Interjections.] The hon member for Cavendish is still murmuring about the fact that I highlighted his opposition to the fact that the rector is White.

You have got the wrong end of the stick!

For the benefit of the hon member for Cavendish we will get a copy of his speech.

Yes, why don’t you get it?

I will re-read it.

With my compliments.

I will come back to this in the debate on Friday morning. The hon member for Cavendish did say that the trouble on certain campuses is that Whites are in charge.

Of course!

What does that imply? That implies an anti-White attitude.

I will come back to that.

When the hon member for Cavendish spoke I gave him extra time for his speech because I believe that even if he speaks nonsense he must be given the right to hang himself.

We indicated in this House that we are not going to interfere with the autonomy of that institution.

What about wielding the big stick?

We play a role. Even taking into consideration the fact that the hon the Minister of Education and Culture administers the legislation on universities, he cannot interfere with the autonomy of that institution.

No Minister can.

It is known that no Minister interferes with the autonomy of an institution or with the staff appointments of the institution. However, if the hon member is dissatisfied let me tell him my colleague the hon the Minister of Education and Culture in consultation with the Ministers’ Council did the honourable thing and appointed the Moll Committee. As a result of the report of this committee there was discussion with the rector of the university and the chairman of the council of the university.

The university acted and the hon the member for Cavendish is not aware of the fact that finally the executive of the council of the university met the Ministers’ Council and presented to us the changes they had made in respect of the advancement on merit of people who are not White. However, we cannot be expected to effect the changes overnight. There is a new council at the university and I am glad that the community, and especially the education family, has welcomed and accepted the appointments made by the hon the State President of this country. Let us hope that with the appointments made by the municipalities, the convocation of the university and the senate that the new council—and the power is vested in the council and to a certain extent the senate—will put right the ills and the wrongs of the past.

And the failures of this House.

The success of this House is that it was able through gentle persuasion to effect the type of changes that we wanted at the university of Durban-Westville. However, I still say that my colleague cannot interfere with the affairs of the council or the affairs of the senate.

Then why do you make idle threats?

There was a need at the time …

The need now is greater.

The need now is less, because I have confirmation from the very persons who had discussions with me at the request of the hon member for Cavendish. They have confirmed to me that the need is now less. If the need is less as a result of confirmation from people who generally complain …

You are taking them at face value.

We are not taking them at face value, because these utterances and views come from people who have expressed bitterness in the past.

There is something else I want the hon member for Cavendish to know. If one looks at the grand preparations for the 28th day of August 1984, who played a role in taking sides? Which officials of a certain administration played important roles in taking sides? Which officials of certain administrations played a role in selecting staff to deal with special votes? Then the hon member for Cavendish would realise that there was a campaign against us. In spite of that campaign, in spite of the campaigns of the past few years and in spite of the campaign in January the attitude survey conducted by the HSRC showed that every year the community is expressing a more positive view on Indian education.

I can assure the hon member that even if the hon member for Cavendish was appointed by the hon State President as a Minister of Education and Culture—I am saying this in all seriousness—there would still be criticism of education. This would be for various reasons and one of them would be that as early as 1981 those who were in charge of the administration of Indian education and the political division of education decided that in subsequent years the funding of education shall be on a formula basis.

It was guided by one important principle, that there should be equality in respect of the allocation of funds to the various race groups in this country. In respect of that thinking nobody can fault that formula, because it does not discriminate.

Mr Chairman, is the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council prepared to take a question?

Mr Chairman, I will take the hon member’s question at the end of my speech.

In respect of that thinking nobody can fault the formula system. There might be a deficiency in the formula after it has run its course and the deficiency may lie in the fact that White education has fewer requirements for capital development programmes. White schools have already been built and the Whites did not have a massive resettlement programme like the Coloureds, Blacks and Indians in this country.

One formula for all!

One formula for all. Can the hon member for Phoenix tell me whether there is an own affair formula?

One formula for all races.

Can the hon member say that that formula is not one formula for all race groups? It is one formula and a non-racial one. It is a common formula as well as a general affairs formula. It is not an Indian formula, but the formula may have deficiencies.

What about the means test? Is the formula irreversible?

It is not irreversible, but can be adjusted. We cannot complain about the principle of a formula based on the thinking that ultimately there should be equality in this country.

A few minutes ago the hon member for Cavendish uttered a few words about criticism. I would like to state that nobody in this House—not even one of the hon Ministers—can stand up and say that he would not welcome criticism, provided it is constructive, based on truth and—even if it is not based on truth—provided that it is not based on vengeance.

I accept that.

Anybody who comes to any institution with vengeance will not survive in the long run. Certain utterances about the Tongaat elections prompted me to make a statement that wrong is wrong. If wrong is wrong for the NPP, it should be wrong for Solidarity. However, in a previous debate in January 1985 the hon member for Umzinto had referred to the fact that he received tipoffs about two officials of the department during working hours. Nobody responded to that. Statements were made about the role of officials in a particular election.

A statement for convenience.

Not statements for convenience! When I was challenged I said that the duplicates of the special votes should be found, so that we can have all the investigations under the sun.

Let us look at the circumstances under which an official of the department, whose nomination forms were not accepted on a Friday, was cleared so that a returning officer would accept his nomination.

He had a good lawyer.

What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Anyone who states that promotions are decided by one person only, is not honest. That person is not honest and I extend an invitation to him. I would like to suggest to my colleague the hon the Minister of Education and Culture to give the officials who serve on the committee the permission to communicate with that hon member. When they do, he must stand up in this House and admit that he was fed with incorrect facts.

I receive representations from teachers who want to leave. I have failed in many of the submissions I have made to the department and to the hon the Minister because they have a set of rules. [Interjections.] We must examine the rules. Sometimes people say that rules and regulations are laws and that in between the words there are spaces, and that those spaces are there for the consideration of the human element. [Interjections.] However, I want to say honestly and sincerely that we should not single out individuals.

Order! When the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council said the hon member was dishonest, did he imply that the hon member for Cavendish was dishonest?

No, Sir, I said that if anybody says that, he is dishonest.

Order! The hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council may proceed.

Mr Chairman, my colleague the hon the Minister of Education and Culture gave us an insight into what is being done in education. We had suggestions—I think they were made by the hon member for Merebank—about a committee to serve in an advisory capacity.

Under educational research, the hon the Minister gave us an indication in this regard, and I want to repeat it by quoting from his speech:

Obviously, the advisory council for educational research must be made up of members qualified in that field. They must be professionals. I quote further:

I want to say that there is a provision in the Indian’s Education Act to appoint an advisory council. There is a provision to this effect, but the former director of education indicated to us that that provision was made in 1966 for a particular purpose at the time and that there was no need in subsequent years to appoint that advisory council.

I am sure, however, that if the hon the Minister of Education and Culture is of the view that a need exists to appoint an advisory council of experts to advise him and the department, he will consider such a need positively.

I do share one view with the hon member for Cavendish. I want to refer to the clarification given by the Acting Chief Executive Director and the nonsensical conclusions about our Senior Certificate results, confirmed today by the hon the Minister of Education and Culture. I also want to say something about the Tasa. Their only criticism was that the head of education spent six months in Cape Town.

They did not criticise only Indian education. There was a criticism that the Tasa was received by the hon the Minister of National Education.

That is an accepted arrangement with all education Ministers, namely that the hon the Minister of National Education will see all education departments in respect of the responsibility he has in terms of general legislation.

If the hon the Minister of National Education in this country sees the Coloured teachers’ society, does that mean that it is a reflection on the hon the Minister of Education and Culture in the House of Representatives? That is an arrangement that was made at the Committee of Education Ministers and the hon the Minister of National Education would not see an educational society without the presence of the relevant Minister of Education and Culture.

Let me repeat what my colleague the hon the Minister of Education and Culture has said in this House. [Interjections.] Tasa is not the only organisation that wants to form a union. I think it was the federal council. All the teacher societies in this country, under an umbrella body, decided to form a union. Do not think therefore that the decision to form a union is a result of disenchantment with a particular ministry or education department.

Tasa delegation was one of those that met the hon the State President, and after meeting him they were critical of the fact that teachers were not getting salary increases. One therefore cannot say that it was a decision of the Ministers’ Council of this House or the hon the Minister of Education and Culture. It was a decision of the hon the State President.

When the federal council decided on this issue in relation to trade unions, the Coloured teachers’ societies issued statements that they want to form a union, and so did the Tasa. I want to say that I do not think that the Tasa has had it so good as they are having it now in respect of proper consultation.

I telephoned the hon the Minister of Education and Culture one day and asked him what was wrong. I said: “You met Mr Pat Samuels and he has made a statement.” My colleague told me that he was surprised. He called him in three times and three times he replied: “You know what the Press is like. They are making mischief.” At one time the president of the Tasa undertook to write to the Press.

Is the Press pressing him?

Let us not engage in puns.

One time he met the Ministers’ Council, and I was surprised that he was critical. However, when my colleague called him in, he blamed the Press. He even wrote a letter to the Press, pointing out that they were wrong and had misquoted him and he gave us a copy of the letter.

In every structure set up by our Department of Education we make sure, unlike in previous years, that Tasa is represented, and represented meaningfully. When there was an announcement regarding promotions, we were advised by experts that the day we involve Tasa, they must be responsible for that decision. Notwithstanding that, I want to say that we must accept the appointments to the councils for the Laudium College of Education and the Springfield College of Education. My colleague, in formulating the regulations, made provision and passed a law to the effect that Tasa must appoint two representatives of their choice—not of the choice of the Minister—and the Minister must accept the choice of Tasa.

In the determination of the criteria for promotion Tasa was present from the beginning to the end. They sat in the committee. They did not sit with the chief director (control); they sat with many people, and they actually agreed to things. We had the rental formula, for example. People agreed to the rental formula. Because they are not in the driver’s seat, they tend to forget that they agreed. Likewise, I want to say that I do not think Tasa has had consultations on the scale and of such a meaningful nature as they have had since 29 August 1984. When one sits in a committee, one is faced with the realities and the facts and one cannot disagree with realities and facts. However, when one leaves the conference room one has to face a constituency. Here I am reminded of the words of the hon member for Reservoir Hills that the gentleman who is heading Tasa has to decide whether he wants to lead the teachers professionally or whether he wants to use that organisation for political purposes.

Chairman directed to report progress and ask leave to sit again.

House Resumed:

Progress reported and leave granted to sit again.

Mr Chairman, I move:

Agreed to.