Mr Chairman, on a point of order: I note in the agenda for today that the appropriation committee discussing the Vote Environment Affairs and Water Affairs is due to meet at 14h15. In view of the fact that this House is not in Committee for the first five minutes or so, is it in order therefore that that committee should be sitting before this House goes into Committee?

Order! In terms of the Rules the sitting hours of appropriation committees are determined by the hon the Chief Whip of Parliament. The appropriation committee in question is due to start at 14h15.

Mr Chairman, on a further point of order: It is not possible for the other appropriation committee to sit until a decision is taken here that we should go into Committee. In other words, the Assembly has to sit first in order for us to be able to go into Committee.

Order! I refer the hon members to Standing Order No 83, which deals with the hours of sitting of the House. It reads as follows:

It was determined that this particular appropriation committee would meet at 14h15 today.

Mr Chairman, on a further point of order: I submit that that committee is not sitting yet, just as this House is not really in Committee yet. The old practice which we applied for many years in fact provided for this very procedure which is now being followed. I believe, therefore, that the hon members’ points of order are not valid. I cannot understand what they are trying to achieve.

Order! Yes, the hon member for False Bay is right. We are acting in accordance with the Standing Rules and Orders. It is clear that the other appropriation committee may in fact proceed with its business.

Vote No 20—“Finance”, and Vote No 21—“Audit”:

Mr Chairman, in the very, very limited time that opposition parties have available, it would be virtually impossible to conduct a proper debate on the very important subjects which have come to the fore recently. I want to refer, in particular, to the Margo Report and the Government’s White Paper on that report. I shall also be referring to the Government’s White Paper on Privatisation and Deregulation. I want to suggest that in the short time available to us it is altogether impossible to do justice to one or both of those subjects. For that reason I shall not make any further reference to those aspects this afternoon.

To our great consternation we learned of the events involving the African Bank in which there have been large-scale abuses, with money having been obtained by unjustified means. We are glad that the necessary steps have been taken to rectify matters.

What concerns us is the knowledge that this is not an isolated case, but that there are possibly others as well. We should like to have the hon the Minister’s assurance that the rumours are without foundation and that if they are in fact true, the Government has already made arrangements to take the necessary steps as quickly as possible. I am making this request to the hon the Minister in the interests of the general public: If the rumours are unfounded, could the matter be rectified immediately, and if there is some foundation to the rumours, could the necessary steps be taken?

Last year I referred to the obligations we had taken upon ourselves in granting financial assistance to the TBVC countries and the self-governing Black states. I want to make it very clear this afternoon that the Official Opposition is of the opinion that it is vital, in the interests of the TBVC countries and the self-governing states, for South Africa to give those states and self-governing countries the maximum possible assistance along the road to development. We have no quarrel with that, because it is in the interests of those countries and in the interests of South Africa itself for those countries to be brought to the point at which they can ultimately stand on their own two feet.

I also said that the taxpayers of South Africa were entitled to the assurance and also the certainty that those funds, which we are granting to those countries in very difficult times, are being spent correctly and are being spent in the interests of those countries. Last year I also asked whether voting that money was the right thing to do, since ultimately this legislative body received no reports on whether that money had been correctly spent or not.

The hon the Minister told me that those self-governing countries were moving towards independence and that we should not begrudge them that. I agree, but I have looked at the Auditor-General’s reports on two of the self-governing countries, ie KaNgwane and Gazankulu, for the 1985-86 financial year. Amongst other things, I came upon one small point in those reports. In one case—I think it was that of KaNgwane—when it came to allocating salaries and allowances for the members of their legislative assembly in 1985-86, they exceeded the budgeted amount by R322 000 without authorisation. I looked to see what had happened in Gazankulu in the same financial year. For that same financial year the salaries and wages for Gazankulu’s legislative assembly exceeded the budgeted amount by R554 000. Those figures are contained in the Auditor-General’s report. We on this side of the Committee do not know whether those matters were rectified by those homeland governments. I am merely mentioning these two examples.

I also want to add, however, that we are glad to hear that the Development Bank is now relatively successful in its efforts to curb expenditure and control budgeting to such an extent that we at least have some say in the spending of money by these respective countries. We do not want to dominate or control those people, but when all is said and done, what they do in this sphere, is also of the utmost importance to the economy of South Africa, and since I have said that it is in the interests of South Africa that those countries be developed, we must at all costs prevent the taxpayers of South Africa from building up a resistance to the granting of such assistance. My plea is therefore that we do everything in our power to ensure that this money is properly spent.

Permit me to refer briefly to the large increase in our public debt which now amounts to more than R55 billion.

You know you are going to get a thrashing on that subject!

In the Auditor-General’s report I see, too, that we have also issued guarantees to the tune of approximately R21,5 billion. Those are State guarantees which the Auditor-General also reports as being non-quantifiable because they were not issued for specific amounts.

The fact that the State’s debt burden in this year’s budget is 24,8% greater than it was only a year ago, is an indication to us that although the hon the Minister made an effort to curb State expenditure, he could not effect any savings whatsoever on this item of public debt; on the contrary, the hon the Minister’s hands are tied.

We want to see what is going to happen this year. Last year interest rates levelled off, but there is every indication that interest rates are inevitably going to increase this year, which must then exert an influence on the overall interest account, including that for the public sector. It is our view that the interest burden on the Budget alone, fluctuating as it has between 13% and 14% of the overall Budget for four years now—I worked this out roughly—is simply too high, and as a result the hon the Minister of Finance’s hands are tied.

In view of that fact I referred to the Reserve Bank’s quarterly bulletin to see what the position was in regard to saving or dissaving. We see that the public sector’s contribution to dissaving over the past six years amounted to a total of more than R10 billion. In other words, the public sector has a negative influence on actual, effective savings in South Africa. The Reserve Bank’s quarterly bulletin states that, according to the Budget this year, this will amount to a dissaving of R3 580 million. That is simply not good enough.

We are grateful for the upswing in the economy which has taken place and is still taking place. We have to voice our concern, however, about the fact that this upswing, as we see it, is at present attributable to a large-scale increase in private spending. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, the hon member for Barberton made a few allegations which I quickly want to react to. Firstly he expressed some doubts about the question of time. Surely the hon member realises that the principle involved and the allocation of time are the same as in previous years. Although I sympathise with him, it cuts both ways, since no new concepts are involved.

As far as the Margo Commission and the White Paper are concerned, there will be other opportunities and debates for dealing with those aspects.

In regard to the African Bank, he will agree with me that he neglected to mention that legislation was passed last year to place this Parliament in a better position than previously. He and I both had a hand in that, and I think he should, in fact, have congratulated the hon the Minister on having taken such immediate steps to save the situation.

I should like to come back to the TBVC countries to which the hon member referred. If one looks at the guarantees which this government has issued in regard to Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei during the past few years, one sees that during the 1986-87 financial year use was made of overdraft facilities to the tune of R679,6 million, which was 35% of the guaranteed amount for those four states. As a result of steps taken by this Government and this hon Minister’s department, with a view to monitoring and controlling the situation, this was reduced in 1987-88 to R401,6 million, decreasing from 35% to 22,6%.

As a result of further steps taken by the hon the Minister, the figure has been reduced to R309 million in the 1988-89 financial year, ie a reduction to 15,5%. If one takes those facts into consideration, I think the hon member will agree with me that I cannot be blamed for bowing to the hon the Minister and praising him.

If, under these circumstances, one looks at the progress made in regard to the built-in monitoring mechanisms, one sees that at the moment, as far as is practicable, the draft budgets of the TBVC countries are being dealt with by joint financial adjustment committees. The draft budgets are being analysed and recommendations are being made, recommendations which are then implemented. These recommendations—after these committees have reached an understanding—are then incorporated into the TBVC draft budgets. Then the TBVC countries submit their budgets to their legislative assemblies for approval. I do not want to keep giving the hon the Minister and his department a bow, but looking at these steps that have been taken, I do not think that they are doing too badly.

That is not enough, however. He goes further. Every quarter a report must be furnished on expenditure to ascertain whether it is, in fact, in accordance with the approved budget. If, in the report-back programme, it is seen that that expenditure is out of line, various steps are immediately taken. The Development Bank could immediately contact the financial liaison managers to ascertain the facts and circumstances from them, the reasons why the deviations have taken place, etc. The liaison manager then takes up the matter with the Government in an attempt to find out what the problem was, thereby attempting to reach consensus. If that proves unsuccessful, however, the matter is addressed, and if the matter is not addressed and settled, the South African Government can consider the matter and reach a decision. I think I should congratulate the hon the Minister on this.

Today I should briefly like to deal with two matters, which I think should have everyone’s support. Firstly, there is something I want to point out to the hon the Minister. I should briefly like to go back in history to the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies when money was scarce, as the hon member for Barberton said, as it is beginning to be once more.

Our banking industry has a history that we should not lightly forget. During that period we did, in fact, have a large number of small financial institutions which, when money began to grow scarce at that time, started bidding on the grey market, using every method possible to get their hands on money in an effort to keep their heads above water and survive. We remember the days when interest rates began to increase to 20%, 24% and even higher. We remember how our people began to buy money behind people’s backs. We remember how many small banks began to have difficulties in the process. There was a stage when our banking industry faced some severe problems, in fact, and some of us began to fear for banking as an institution.

Now we have reached the next round. Since the beginning of the eighties, according to facts I have gleaned, one bank has finally been registered now, and apart from that one bank which has finally been registered, there are six other banks which have reached the stage of provisional registration.

Over and above that, there is the second concomitant phenomenon, ie that of a building society being in a position to own a bank, but a bank not being in a position to own a building society as a subsidiary. If one jointly takes these two factors into consideration, a red light starts flashing, and I do not like it. At this stage I do not want to say that the hon the Minister has not incorporated sound mechanisms into the system in order to monitor the situation and exercise control. If one looks at section 38, however, the old section 39, prohibiting a bank from having a building society as a subsidiary, and at section 82 which allows for the reverse situation, I am inclined to say that as soon as money grows scarce once more, and we are faced with a problem situation, something which could possibly happen in the near future, there is one cardinal problem we are going to be experiencing in the banking sector, and that is that staff with the experience and expertise to ride out that storm, are going to become problematic, and I think the hon member for Yeoville would agree with me about this if he were subsequently to take the floor.

To obviate the situation I want to make a very urgent appeal to the hon the Minister to be extremely careful in granting new licences. Failing that, I think we could experience problems at a later stage, and we must prepare ourselves in advance for such an eventuality. It is not merely a shortage of money that is going to be the problem, but also a shortage of expertise.

If the hon the Minister happens to be looking into that matter, let me also extend a very friendly request to him to examine the insurance industry at the same time. At the moment there are certain institutions which automatically qualify as deposit-receiving institutions. Perhaps one should examine whether it cannot also qualify, thus bringing that situation up to date.

There are some institutions which do not qualify to be members of the insurance industry, but there are one or two exceptions which automatically do qualify. I think that since the hon the Minister is perhaps going to examine the general, overall structure of banking, he could just as well look into that aspect at the same time.

I should like to refer to a final aspect ie the report of the Auditor-General on the Appropriation and Miscellaneous Accounts, 1986-87 [RP 108/1987], page 10, paragraph 8. I quote:

I quote further:

I want to mention the fact that we shall not combat inflation until this matter has been addressed, and not if we cannot even provide the necessary personnel. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, I request the privilege of the half hour. I intend to talk for only a quarter of an hour, so I may need the extra time.

I want to react to the hon member for Vasco and also to the hon member for Barberton with regard to the TBVC countries. I have no problem with the hon member for Vasco wanting to congratulate the hon the Minister for getting the Development Bank and Dr Simon Brand involved in this. I think it is a sound step. I have no problem with that. My difficulty—I have spoken about this over a period of years—is firstly that it is unhealthy for a state to finance its budget by means of an overdraft. Secondly, it is wrong that that has been allowed to take place and that the amounts involved were not shown in South Africa’s Budget. Thirdly, what is now going to happen is that we will have to give them extra money over a period of about five years in order for them to pay off their overdraft, which they should not have been allowed to incur in the first place. So I want to say with great respect that this should never have been allowed to happen, less even though I must express my contentment that Dr Brand and the Development Bank are now dealing with this matter. I hope this will never happen again, even though in this year’s Budget there are still overdraft facilities. I hope we will get it right.

There are three topics that I would like to deal with in the short time available to me. Firstly, there is the fact that the economy obviously has to be kept under constant review as circumstances change. There are in reality two people who have their fingers on the red buttons, and they are the hon the Minister of Finance in respect of fiscal measures and the Governor of the Reserve Bank in regard to monetary measures. At this moment in time, as we are debating here, I think this is one of the times when decisions will have to be made. If we look at the economy and at where we are going, we will see that some decisions need to be made.

There is no doubt that the money supply is growing, and has been growing for a little while, at a rate in excess of the target which was set. There is also no doubt that credit extended by some financial institutions has shot up. There is also no doubt that, despite the relatively low rate of growth in the GDP on an annual basis, we have had two quarters which can be regarded as comparatively good in respect of growth. However, the trouble is that the moment we start growing at these sorts of rates, we start running into the restraints which chain us down and give rise to unhealthy symptoms.

The problem to which I have tried to draw attention for some time is that by reason of the constraints which are imposed on us by the balance of payments due to our inability to borrow adequate money abroad, we are required to move away from orthodox economic planning and to introduce long-term structural changes which involve a change in the economy so that we can have inputs to growth which will not affect the balance of payments.

This structural change is a vital change which needs to be effected in South Africa. We cannot, in fact, waste any further time in its implementation. The problem is that choices are continuously being made between growth with jobs, on the one hand, and restraining the economy because of inflationary fears and balance of payments on the other hand. This choice is an unhealthy choice and could be avoided if we have these structural changes.

The reality is that South Africa cannot live with slight upswings followed by massive downturns. This is the trouble we are in. It is true that every economy has cyclical movements, but in our fragile, delicately balanced political situation massive downturns with disruptive increases in unemployment are things we just cannot afford to have.

Therefore, there are two issues to which I would specifically like to draw attention and which I believe have contributed unnecessarily to a situation where the authorities are now seriously considering dampening the upswing. Firstly, imports have risen substantially and, because of inadequate increases in turn of exports, the current account now needs to be watched far more carefully than before. This gives rise to a number of other questions. Could not some of the imports have been avoided—particularly those of consumer goods which are produced or could be produced in greater volumes locally? Secondly, could the Government and the parastatal organisations not have timed some of their imports better, bearing in mind the circumstance in which we live? Thirdly, the delay in the reassessment of policies to encourage exports and of beneficiation activities has been one of the reasons why exports have not had sufficient impetus. In addition to this, there is to my mind an inadequate direction and encouragement of consumer spending towards the local markets. I think that is absolutely essential.

To my mind—I think the hon member for Vasco touched on the same thing—there has been a substantial and undesirable increase—and the figures show it clearly—with regard to credit which has been extended by banks and building societies. The marketing pressure by competing institutions for consumers to borrow, has been substantial. Disposable income can be used either for consumption or for savings. Consumption can be financed either from savings or from credit. There is no doubt that domestic savings are at a low level and have been at a low level for some time. I had hoped that the consumer who burnt his fingers only a relatively short while ago would still have been profiting from that lesson and that he would in fact have been somewhat chary of borrowing excessively at this time. However, marketing has triumphed over caution based on experience. It is a tragedy that the consumer does not learn sufficiently quickly and remember enough.

The other question that the hon member for Vasco specifically referred to, is a question that I want to pose in another form: Is South Africa not overbanked? With building societies ceasing to be mutual and going into consumer credit activities, banks have increasingly ventured into the home loan business. A completely new ballgame has started. To my mind there appears to be a sound case for bringing building societies and banks under the same legislation as soon as possible and for some degree of definition of functions so as to ensure that money remains available for lower and middle income housing. Perhaps we should also look to see whether there is not an era of amalgamation or merger, or at least rationalisation, in the banking field ahead of us. I think the hon the Minister should state his attitude to these matters.

I have also noted that he said he is getting conflicting advice, and that there are two approaches from his advisers.

More than two!

Let me add to that confusion, if I may, and respectfully offer some advice to him in this regard.

Firstly, we believe that the present situation more than ever requires a complete co-ordination of fiscal and monetary policy. One should not go it alone; they should go together. Secondly, the hon the Minister must dispel completely the opinion, which is starting to gain ground, that policies are being influenced by a possible early election in the House of Assembly, which might be forced upon it by reason of the problems between the Government and the Labour Party.

We need to deal with the economy uninfluenced by these political considerations, and the public needs to know that. Thirdly, monetary policy should in the main be directed towards influencing exchange and inflation rates and fiscal policy towards influencing economic growth. The effect of fiscal policy on inflation is that it acts to constrain State expenditure, but we need to consider the fact that there is a time lag attached to this. While, in regard to how these activities are directed from a fiscal and monetary point of view, these may be the main effects, the reality is that the two have to operate in tandem in this field.

Fourthly, I want to say loudly and clearly to the hon the Minister that growth followed by a steep decline would have serious social and political implications for South Africa. He mentioned that as one of the options that were put before him, and I want to stress this.

Fifthly, as I have said, structural changes to make growth less dependant upon the balance of payment restraints are urgent. Sixthly, there needs to be some assurance given to business about the proposed Harmful Business Practices Control Bill. I believe there has been considerable over-reaction. Having looked at what has been said in the Press about what the effect of this is going to be on growth, inflation and goodness knows what, I think it is the most ridiculous overreaction that I have seen for a long time. We need to make it clear—business must understand this—that if consumer exploitation exists and occurs it affects not only inflation and the economy, but also race relations, and therefore those who engage in it must understand that they cannot use the free-market concept as an excuse for unacceptable practices which have serious social and political implications.

Finally, can we not once and for all put an end to the talk of compulsory salary and wage restraints? Everything now seems to have been misconstrued. There is a very big difference between an appeal for a voluntary restraint and saying that one should leave, as we believe one should, wages to be negotiated between capital and labour in the ordinary way. I have not heard the hon the Minister say that he wants a compulsory restraint as opposed to a voluntary wage restraint. In fact, everything is being construed as if this is the hon the State President’s plan. I do not believe that public servants can remain satisfied with their situation if they see no one else around them making sacrifices. I think the private sector has to see it in that light.

There are of course many things we could talk about. There are, for instance, 300 items in the report of the Margo Commission, but I would like to talk briefly about the Budget. It has been thoroughly digested by now, but it has left a degree of unhappiness and uncertainty. There is unhappiness over some of its aspects and the impact it has had. Social pensioners, insurance companies and people who have been hit by the minimum company tax are unhappy. In view of this I would like to make an appeal to the hon the Minister that on this occasion the draft tax legislation should be made public at the earliest opportunity and the private sector should be given an opportunity not only of seeing the legislation, but of making comments on it.

Looking at the Budget in retrospect, one of its most troublesome features reinforces my first impression. The Budget, which indicated a projected fall in expenditure of approximately 1,3% in real terms, followed years of increases in real terms even at a time when in some years the economy was actually contracting. I do not want to list all the figures because we all know them. The reduction is therefore from an extremely high base. Of course the question of credibility must be added to this and we must know whether we shall be able to look at the figures next year and say that the hon the Minister has actually carried out what he said he would do.

The deficit before borrowing must be seen in the same light. If one compares the deficit before borrowing of R3 398 million in 1983-84 with’ this year’s anticipated deficit of just under R10 billion there is an enormous increase, and even a tiny percentage reduction does not really make much difference because of the very high level on which the deficit has been operating.

The most disturbing feature of all is that while the hon the Minister gives the signal that he would like to call a halt to the level of increase in State expenditure, the actual cutbacks in expenditure have been achieved largely through postponements of expenditure or one-time cutbacks, and not as a result of structural changes in State financing. Next year, Sir, looks to me like a tough year. On the one hand we see the signs that the economy will slow down; on the other hand there is the question of how general pay increases will in fact be dealt with next year when the economy is going to be much less buoyant than this year. How will the pensioner be treated next year, particularly if there is still election fever about? All of this needs to be seen together with the demand for the removal of discrimination in social services, an increased expenditure this year of over 19% in protective services—which is unlikely to be reduced—a slow-down in the economy of our trading partners and a possible increase in sanctions and boycotts.

A final word: Privatisation and deregulation are now seen as a panacea, but to me they will only be meaningful if they are part of a structural change in State finances. Once-off sales of parastatals can relieve a borrowing situation in respect of the deficit, but if State departments are privatised and less is spent on Government as a whole, then long-term changes in patterns of spending by the State will be brought about. The trouble is that some people believe that privatisation is an overnight act. It is not; it is going to take a long time before we experience its full benefits.

Mr Chairman, there is very much in the speech of the hon member for Yeoville with which I agree. I will therefore not spend very much time on commenting on his statements. There is one statement, however, which I would like to comment on, namely his statement that the economy cannot afford slight increases in growth followed by massive downturns.

I think it is the serious intention of this Government to avoid that very situation, and that is why the economy is being watched very closely at the present moment. The rise in consumer spending which was witnessed during the third and fourth quarters of last year, and which continued up to the first quarter of this year, is something about which the Government is very much concerned. Overheating of the economy is never a healthy sign in any country, and that is why, particularly in South Africa, the Government is keeping an eye on it. I read recently that it is estimated that consumer spending increased by 10% in real terms during the last quarter of the previous year—that is on a year-to-year basis—and that is a very high and unhealthy figure.

*Mr Chairman, the rumours we have heard recently, and what one has been able to deduce from newspapers and financial journals, indicate that it is no longer a question of whether interest rates are going to be increased; the question that is now being asked is by how many percentage points the interest rate is going to increase. The hon member for Yeoville pointed out that the monetary and fiscal authorities should co-operate to keep the country’s economy on a sound footing.

I think he then said that the monetary authorities should chiefly aim at combating inflation. He probably meant, amongst other things, that interest rates should be increased and that the money supply should be limited. There is, of course, a difference of opinion about the present interest rates and about the number of percentage points by which interest rates should be increased so as to actually cool down the economy. Some think that 1% would be too little to cool down the economy in its present form and that the increase should at least be 2%.

There is nevertheless a third factor which was also mentioned, a factor which I think could be explored with great interest. What this amounts to is that both the monetary and fiscal authorities should simultaneously combine forces in this process so that interest rates do not have to increase excessively. In the recent past interest rates have also rocketed as a result of an overheated economy, specifically owing to demand inflation. We found that people who borrowed money at affordable interest rates, later discovered they could not make ends meet as a result of the increase in interest rates. That had a very adverse effect on our economy. There were sequestrations, liquidations and so on which left a great mark of interrogation against whether an increase in interest rates was the only means of curbing consumer demand.

In my view, of course, there are three reasons why we should not solely make use of interest rates. Firstly we must remember that at the moment South Africa’s economy contains a large informal component. The contribution of this section of the economy—the informal sector—to gross domestic expenditure is very difficult to estimate. People put it at between 15% and 20%, and since fiscal and monetary measures have a negligible effect on these people, because they deal in cash for the most part and not loan capital, I doubt whether a slight increase in interest rates would have the desired effect in cooling down the economy.

Whatever the percentage of these people may be, and whatever amount they are going to spend, does not actually make any difference. I think that the effectiveness of the steps which are going to be taken will specifically have a lesser effect owing to their presence.

There is also another factor complicating the issue. I am referring to the fact that increases in interest rates do not immediately filter through to the consumer. Their effect as a cooling-down mechanism will therefore only be visible after a certain period of time. There is consequently a delay in the results obtained from interest rates.

There is also a third factor involved. Long after the economy has cooled down and interest rates have begun to drop, commercial banks still burden clients with the original high interest rates. The reasons they normally advance for this are that they lent money at high interest rates on forward investments and that they first have to recover those costs before they can decrease their interest rates to clients. The result is that clients, in particular businessmen with reduced turnovers, still have to pay the high interest rates which they paid during boom periods.

I now want to refer to the balance of payments, something to which the hon member for Yeoville also referred. The protection of that balance of payments is one of our major economic priorities, and financial boycotts and the prohibition on foreign banks granting loans to South Africa, do not make it possible for us to supplement our balance of payments by way of loans. These restrictive measures, which are subject to delays, therefore do not have the desired effect on the economy. Consequently additional measures also have to be employed.

I think that new formulas should be examined to put a damper on the demand inflation we have at present. It will then have to be a combination of monetary and other measures, possibly fiscal measures, because I doubt whether interest rates alone, and their increase, will have the necessary effect of putting a damper on inflation. At the same time it could also help to prevent further increases in the prime rate for the rest of the year. It would have nothing but a salutary effect on the South African economy if it were not necessary to increase interest rates this year. It is estimated that interest rates will reach a prime-rate level of approximately 16,5% at the end of the year. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, it is a pleasure for me to congratulate the hon member for Kuruman sincerely on a good speech, as we have come to expect of him.

I myself should like to get a few ideas about inflation off my chest so that I can get the hon the Minister’s reaction to them. Let me begin by saying that community involvement is a necessary ingredient in any anti-inflationary strategy. That is why it bothers me that members of the general public apparently have quite a few misconceptions about this problem. I am now speaking about the so-called man in the street and not the businessmen and others who are grappling with that problem from day to day, although at times I wonder about some of them too.

One such misconception—it is a less serious one—is that inflation is a modern-day phenomenon. The fact of the matter is that it has been a characteristic of man’s history for as long as money has been used as a currency. It was even in evidence in the Ancient World, for example round about the year 330 BC after Alexander the Great conquered the Persian empire. Since then it has been a part of man’s life. Man being what he is, he has since then thought, spoken and written about it—and he has done so in abundant measure. This unwelcome phenomenon has nevertheless proved difficult to deal with in his economic life.

Inflation is too multifaceted to be understood completely. Its breeding ground covers a very wide area. In each new area it appears in a newly adapted and less pliant form. Every new manifestation requires new methods for combating it. What may work effectively in one situation, will not necessarily have the desired effect in another. Proven countermeasures could, in specific circumstances, even have detrimental consequences. I believe, for example, that approaches to the combating of inflation, tried and tested in the major industrial countries of the world, could be dangerous in the South African context. They might require too heavy a price in economic growth, employment and social stability.

Since I am now comparing South Africa with the industrial countries, I should also like to issue a warning against the tendency to use cliches which tend to distort the evaluation of our economic situation.

In both economic and political debates society and the economy, for example, are characterised as having a First-World component and a Third-World component. Among some people, and by some people, the impression is thereby created that we are dealing here with two economies needing separate treatment. To me, on the other hand, it would seem that we are a semi-industrialised country in the higher middle-income category with a single developing economy. As in the case of other semi-industrialised developing countries, our economy consists of highly modernistic real and financial sectors on the one hand and a non-formal agricultural and non-agricultural sector on the other.

We also share other characteristics with semi-industrialised developing countries, for example unequal contributions to production from the various sectors I have mentioned, resulting in the unequal division of income and wealth. This in turn gives rise to the existence of a so-called underprivileged group which is almost always in the majority. Their demand for fiscal resources by far exceeds the rich minority’s ability or willingness—or both—to meet those demands in the short term.

In South Africa there is an additional unique factor that can dangerously complicate matters. I am referring to the fact that the underprivileged are generally non-Whites and the privileged generally Whites. If one adds to that the fact that political power is unevenly divided amongst the Whites and non-Whites, one has a situation which, in its complexity and explosiveness, is probably unparalleled anywhere in the world.

That complexity and explosiveness exert an influence on both the inflationary tendencies of the country and the possible mechanisms for combating the inflation. Let us take the question of wages, for example, because that is the only example I can focus on in the short time available to me. Because political power is unequally divided, the campaigns launched by workers have developed a socio-political dynamics which has wage costs increasing at an accelerating pace not proportionate to the increase in productivity. In this respect wage increases are not, as is normally the case in industrial countries, the result of inflation, but rather its cause.

This problem will not be solved by wage or price freezes, nor by a sustained, highly restrictive fiscal and monetary policy. What is necessary, first and foremost, is a constitutional and social campaign for reform which would eliminate the disparity in political power. Such reform unavoidably goes hand in hand with an increase in demand for fiscal resources. Investments in education and training, for example, become of prime importance, as does expenditure on social infrastructure, including housing.

Here we are dealing with a long-term challenge for which one method of financing can be selected from a few alternatives. The financing can be done by the redistribution of existing budgetary items, or by way of higher taxation or loans in the capital market or both, or by a degree of money creation, which results in increased inflation.

In my view the redistribution of existing budgetary items is not viable. So when I weigh up the social and economic implications of the other two—higher taxation against a higher inflation rate—I would for the sake of economic growth opt for the higher inflation rate.

I am therefore saying that one of the solutions for South Africa’s unique wage-push situation is constitutional and social reform. It is long-term and inflationary. The other solution is an increase in labour productivity by way of greater investment in human capital through education and training. This is going to require an enormous amount of future expenditure, the results of which will only filter through to the economy after several years. So that, too, is a long-term and inflationary process.

This brings me back to the statement I made at the outset, ie that I am concerned about the misconceptions which members of the general public have about inflation. For example, they believe that the measures announced this year by the hon the State President and others will have dramatic short-term effects and that inflation can in fact be curbed this year.

The reality of the situation is that the measures announced by the hon the State President in regard to limited wage increases, for example, are of a temporary nature and are intended to help break the inflationary spiral, make the public aware of the phenomenon of inflation and obtain their co-operation in combating it. What I am trying to bring home to hon members with this contribution of mine is, firstly, that in South Africa inflation is perpetuated by fundamental problems in the socio-economic structure and, secondly, that inflation is a long-term problem. Its elimination in the short term could require one to pay an unacceptably high price in the form of unemployment, poverty and a low growth rate.

Poverty is our single greatest problem. Its scope makes economic growth our primary objective, particularly in view of our delicate social structure. Our primary goal is economic growth, and not the combating of inflation, no matter how important the latter may be, and this is important. It is my conviction that South Africa cannot afford a short-term solution to the problem of inflation. A long-term solution is still going to require many sacrifices from all of us. That is what I want the public to know, and that is the message contained in my contribution.

Mr Chairman, I should like to touch upon the subject of how, to a larger extent, farmers can share in the prosperity of the country. Economic prosperity in general, but for the farmers in particular, is measured in terms of real economic growth, employment, price stability and the expenditure of income. The level of economic prosperity is determined by economic capability, economic competence, self-interest and an element of confidence, which in turn is based on the inclination to invest, production, techniques, interest rates, price fluctuation, foreign trade, etc.

The most important participants in regard to the aforementioned elements are the private sector, the public sector and the outside world. The private sector includes the farmers. Since the farmers, as such, are small business entrepreneurs, it clearly goes without saying that the farmers’ inclination to invest in the future will be significantly influenced by the extent to which they are going to participate in the marketing of their products if they wish to survive in future.

One wonders why, despite subsidies and surplus production, farmers simply get poorer, while companies marketing foodstuffs make increasing profits? Throughout the years farmers have been conditioned to be primary producers and to continually increase their production. The fact that there is surplus production in virtually all agricultural sectors is irrefutable proof that farmers have succeeded in doing so, and now have to pay the price. In the process of strengthening the assets and financial power-base of other entrepreneurs at the moment, the farmers themselves are going to the dogs, but what is even worse, these large and powerful companies are, on a large scale, venturing into the field of primary production and processing and marketing their own products.

I am in favour of farmers processing and marketing their products themselves, or through their own business arm. Co-operatives must be in a position to participate with a view to building up and promoting economic wealth for use in their own interests. The inability of primary agricultural producers to take over their own marketing through their co-operative business undertakings, and to promote their own wealth-generating facilities at the secondary and tertiary levels, is probably one of the major reasons for the dilemma in agriculture.

Mr J P I BLANCHÉ: Mr Chairman, on a point of order: This is a debate on the Finance Vote. The hon member is elaborating at great length on agriculture.

Order! I am listening to the hon member for Delmas. The hon member may proceed.

Mr Chairman, the farmer’s share in the final price the consumer pays for his goods is between 40% and 47%, and that is why a discussion of agriculture is relevant here. I do not blame the hon member for Boksburg for not being interested—he does not know much about farming—and I shall not argue with him about this.

We must therefore accept that producers’ profits do not lie in primary production, but in taking the product through to the end-consumer. Consequently the farmer’s business arm, which deals with his products, must also market the farmer’s products in the form of processed foodstuffs. Then he would be able to compete on the Stock Exchange with food companies which are specifically involved in the processing of food products—originally the farmer’s products. It is important for farmers to participate in the refinement of their products. At present co-operatives have the task of purchasing inputs on behalf of their members, and this includes distribution. Co-operatives cannot indulge in the large-scale issuing of shares to attract new funds. In contrast a company’s possibilities, when it comes to obtaining funds from shareholders, are virtually limitless.

For co-operatives the problem is therefore twofold. Firstly there is the co-operative’s inability to obtain new capital, and there are also the legal restrictions on its activities. Has the co-operative structure not served its purpose? Has the time not come for farmers perhaps to think in terms of companies? Be that as it may, I think that farmers should be able to share in the benefits inherent in the refinement of their products.

I therefore tried to ascertain whether there was still a field open for this purpose. I asked the hon the Minister of Economic Affairs and Technology whether, in the latest period of 12 months for which information is available, there was an increase in imports and a decrease in exports of processed foodstuffs. If that were the case—we know what the exchange rate can do to the prices of imported processed foodstuffs—I have even more reason to believe that the policy of having the farmer himself refine agricultural products through his own business arm holds tremendous possibilities for the farmer. Unfortunately, in his reply to me the hon the Minister explained that under the circumstances he could not furnish these figures owing to South Africa’s position internationally. He said, however:

I can understand that, but what a shock I had when I read in Landbouweekblad of 15 April that at a symposium in Sandton the hon the Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs and Technology had said:

He then went on to say:

We know that South Africa’s agricultural products cannot, for the most part, be profitably exported. Against the background of the fact that the value of imported processed foodstuffs has increased by 127% during the past five years, we therefore believe that farmers, for whom the runaway prices of production means have become unmanageable, have one possible way of extending their profit margins, and that is by participating in the process of marketing their products in the form of processed foodstuffs. It is therefore essential for us to create a mechanism to accommodate the farmers so that financially they can profitably share in the benefits inherent in the refinement of their products.

The hon the Minister will perhaps tell me that at present there are large food companies being approached by co-operative marketing companies. This simply gives rise to the question: Where will the money end up? We are asking for a mechanism for the participation of the farmers, a mechanism which will benefit them.

Mr Chairman, at the moment I shall not go into what the hon member for Delmas said. I know that the Patriot states that co-operatives are the solution to South Africa’s problems. I do not care either, because as long as they pay taxes, do not impose price control and are not dependant on subsidies, we have no problems.

The hon member for Barberton spoke about public debt. I think the hon the Minister will examine that in greater detail. I merely want to mention to him that the Department of Finance frequently has to deal with incidental expenditure caused by droughts or floods. There is nothing wrong with borrowing in order to finance the expenditure, because one does not want to adjust the tax structure for something which is actually of an incidental nature.

Recently there has been a great deal of criticism about the budget, about the Government’s policy having an adverse effect on savings and about taxation actually being aimed at prejudicing a person or a company that wants to save. The insurance companies were specifically mentioned, and it was also stated that we granted too much assistance to the lower income groups. Today it was proved that any treasury, any fiscus, should try to balance the taxation pressure on the capital supply and on the labour supply and should not, relatively speaking, put too much pressure on either one. Let me tell those who are criticising us about a supposed detrimental or negative effect on savings that it is quite correct that if capital income were taxed, it would have a negative effect on supply. That also applies, however, when labour is taxed too heavily, particularly the skilled and professional labour in South Africa, because then one also has the problem of too few people being drawn to the market.

I now want to proceed with the argument which is so popular in certain of our publications. We agree that savings should not be taxed too heavily, but the next question is where those savings are going to. That is also important. If those savings are directed towards non-risk investments—the insurance companies must invest R40 million per day—my question is: What proportion of those funds are, for example, employed for the further processing of our platinum or for the development of new diamond or platinum mines which can export? I must honestly tell that sector of the economy that we do, in fact, want savings, but we do not want savings which are incorrectly employed.

There is a further aspect. Many of our savings cannot necessarily be measured; in other words, on the one hand we are perhaps taxing too heavily. One should also take cognisance of all the tax concessions we grant, because the assistance we give is frequently ignored. Let us take, once more, the example of a pension fund. A pension fund’s investment income is non-taxable; this is a tax rebate. A taxpayer is entitled to deduct the payment which he pays into a pension fund from his income before tax. Our private economic structure is actually controlled by four groups. That is so, according to McGregor’s studies; I do not believe that all the data he furnishes is necessarily accurate, but it is nevertheless true that there is an over-concentration in our economy. I am now asking whether the fiscus gets the funds owing to it. Are we not promoting these types of savings—tax rebates? Are they savings, however? Are they channelled in the right direction? For every 1% increase in the gross domestic product, the individual’s tax increases by approximately 1,8% and that of companies by 0,6%. I therefore feel that this attack on the State, accusing it of not directly or indirectly promoting savings, is one-sided and does not give the full picture.

I want to come to the implementation of the Margo Report’s recommendations, i.e. that we move away from these tax rebates. I think that regularly each year we should give the Standing Committee on Finance particulars about tax rebates or “tax expenditures” so that they can see what this costs the country. Then they will start asking questions about this. It is interesting that Parliament’s attention focuses on examining State expenditure in the minutest detail. Are we focusing enough attention on State revenue, however? I think we could also examine that aspect; I think it is time for the Standing Committee on Finance to co-operate with us in examining this aspect in detail. In examining State expenditure, however, the Margo Commission recommends that we get away from these tax concessions and have recourse to a system of subsidies, because they are easier to control or keep an eye on. I asked the staff to give me an analysis of subsidies. It is very interesting that at the moment one cannot actually get a correct figure, because the Central Government subsidises the provinces, local authorities and own affairs and because there is even overlapping. What I have found is that State subsidies have not increased in recent years. They have actually decreased—I am going according to the figures I have here—from 9,1% to 7,4% from the 1985-86 to the 1988-89 financial year.

Is that the latest figure?

That is merely by the way. The actual reason is of course that there has been a decrease in drought aid and so on. If one looks at the difference in subsidies, however, it is very interesting to try to determine where our subsidies are heading at present. The three most important subsidies are those for decentralisation, assistance to exporters and assistance to agriculture. Those are the larger expenditure items. If we accepted the Margo Commission’s recommendation about doing away with the present tax benefits for exporters and for decentralisation purposes in the form of tax concessions, subsidy expenditure on these items would, of course, greatly increase. It is therefore of the utmost importance for us to examine that aspect. I understand that the Board of Trade and Industries will soon be publishing a report on export promotion. It is of the utmost importance, however, for us to be careful not to offer a “blanket-type” of assistance to exporters—and I am tempted to say for decentralisation too. A cost-benefit analysis should be done on all subsidisation to see whether we are actually deriving the necessary benefits from those subsidies which are granted.

I also find it interesting that subsidies for education have also increased tremendously. On universities and technikons alone there has been an increase from R576 million in the 1982-83 financial year to R1,26 billion in the 1988-89 financial year. In spite of this subsidy the Government has been severely criticised in the newspapers for not having granted enough assistance to universities. I have nothing against helping universities, but recently we find that we really have not neglected them.

A figure that has also caught my eye is that in regard to welfare subsidies which have increased from R28 million in the 1982-83 financial year to R164 million in 1988-89.

Is that a nominal figure?

It is a nominal figure. If one looks at the other Houses—this does not include pensions—one also finds very sharp increases there, increases which are far more rapid than the increase in the GDP. We must also be very careful, because we must help wherever necessary. Welfare is very important, particularly in areas where we do not actually have assistance in the form of social security. That is also one of the most dangerous items of expenditure, however, because it can so easily get out of hand. We know that our White population is ageing, and that we shall have to render assistance. I think the hon member for Yeoville spoke about social pensions. I do want to say, however, that in these figures I have not included the degree to which we are helping the elderly by way of bond-issues. I must say that this Government has done a tremendous amount for those of our aged who have savings. I am not referring to last year’s bond-issues, because they have been able to retain those. From 1 May they have again been able to purchase bonds up to an amount of R30 000.

The hon member for Yeoville spoke of the attack on this harmful trade practices legislation which will soon be discussed. I know that hon members who are trade and industry spokesmen are not here today.

I think the hon member for Yeoville and I are referring to the same article. I find it one of the worst articles I have ever read—it is an article with no factual basis whatsoever. The legislation is nothing but an amalgamation of the legislation on the Competition Board and the present legislation on the control of harmful business practices. I have examined the British legislation, and this legislation does not in any way differ from that. I therefore agree with him that this type of journalism does not promote sound relations between the State and the private sector.

Mr Chairman, it is a pleasure for me to speak after the hon the Deputy Minister of Finance. He quite rightly referred to subsidies and specifically mentioned the sharp increase in welfare subsidies. I agree with him that an in-depth investigation into this matter is necessary.

I do not want to devote my speech to subsidies, but I do want to discuss a certain aspect relating to the efficient utilisation of State funds. In terms of section 31(1)(a) of the Exchequer and Audit Act of 1975 the Treasury is instructed “to promote efficiency and economy in the utilization of State funds”. Together with this directive and with a view to the efficient implementation of the system of budgeting by objectives, it is necessary for control measures to exist in terms of which one can determine the funds necessary to satisfy a specific need within reasonable limits. It must also be possible to use these measures to determine whether the given need has been met with the funds voted.

Spatial and cost norms constitute such a measure. The cost norms are used to determine what funds have to be voted to obtain a set objective, while the spatial norms are used as criteria in evaluating whether the set objective has, in fact, been achieved with the funds voted. By using a measuring instrument such as the norms, the Treasury also ensures that the various departments or administrations requesting funds for buildings are treated equally.

A further reason for this measure is that we have learnt from practical experience that merely laying down norms does not mean that they will consistently and effectively be implemented. It was therefore necessary for the Treasury to establish a monitoring strategy. A cost control system was also created to assist departments by the timely—I emphasise the word—identification of deviations so that corrective steps can be taken in good time.

The type of control which the Treasury makes use of solely involves applying norms for overall control. There are two reasons for this approach. The first is that the norms for a building are a based on a theoretical model. Since the detailed needs of no two buildings are ever the same, only the overall physical space and costs in regard to the building are laid down as limits. Within these limits the planners are free to make provision for the overall control of individual needs. The second reason is that the Treasury does not want to interfere at the level of manifest detail, and that is why the construction of a suitable building is regarded as the function of the relevant control department.

The Treasury Committee, under the chairmanship of Dr Burton, and with the private sector represented on that committee, functions as an impartial body with the necessary knowledge and authority to ensure uniformity of interpretation, efficient implementation and the development and updating of norms.

The committee has already developed norms for many types of buildings. At present there are norms for health service buildings, the so-called Sah norms. Norms have been developed for academic hospitals, regional and community hospitals, psychiatric hospitals and community health centres. In regard to educational buildings, the so-called Sanso norms have been developed for universities, technikons, technical colleges, colleges of education and nurses’ training colleges.

Likewise norms have already been developed for general public buildings, for example office buildings. The importance of this aspect becomes clearly apparent when one takes into account that for the 1987-88 financial year cost norms will already have been applied to buildings valued at almost R1,8 billion, but because norms have not yet been developed for every kind of building—this being largely ascribable to a shortage of staff—buildings to the value of approximately R700 million are being subjected to building norms and cost restrictions.

Now I briefly want to refer to the savings brought about and the success achieved as a result of the application of these norms to buildings in regard to which norms had not applied at all or had been inadequately applied. The following can be used as an example. The Pretoria academic hospital was scaled down from an initial cost of R270 million to R190 million. Armscor’s head-office building, for example, was scaled down from R93 million to R67 million, the Supreme Court building in Pretoria was scaled down from R44 million to a maximum of R30 million, the Natal computer centre from R14 million to R11 million, while the Groote Schuur Hospital building was scaled down from R180 million to R160 million.

The success achieved with the application of norms, as they are being applied at present, lies in the fact that from the very outset planning is done within the set limits, avoiding fruitless expenditure as a result of replanning in the examples I have mentioned. The following serve as examples of buildings subjected to these norms from the outset: The Defence Force’s head-office building at an estimated cost of R110 million; the Commission for Administration’s computer centre at R74 million; the Department of Foreign Affairs’ head-office building at approximately R44 million; the Development Bank building at R17 million and the Soekor building at R12 million.

The success of the system is further illustrated by the fact that increasingly more bodies are regarding spatial and cost norms as being of assistance to them, rather than as being a burden. Thus the Department of Foreign Affairs makes use of the Treasury’s assistance to determine reasonable costs for projects in the TBVC countries. A request has also been received from the SA Defence Force, for example, to determine spatial and cost norms for their training facilities.

We on this side of the committee gratefully take note of the extremely valuable work being done by Dr Burton and his committee, and we want to wish him everything of the best with this important task they are carrying out so well.

Mr Chairman, with apologies to the hon member for Newcastle, I would like to devote the time available to me to some discussion on the Margo Commission’s report and some of the matters flowing from that.

At the outset, I would like to say that the Government’s response to the recommendations of the Margo Commission has been somewhat disappointing, primarily, I believe, because many of the Margo Commission’s recommendations involve a reduction in State revenue. Because of the wasteful expenditure of the Government, this has just not been possible. The hon the Minister of Finance is in a strait-jacket in the sense that he is constrained by economic factors and levels of Government expenditure which have made fundamental tax reform very difficult, if not impossible. The Margo Commission recommended that tax reform must not be introduced piecemeal, but this appears to be exactly what we are doing. Many of the proposed reforms were dependent on the introduction of CBT, but as this was rejected, apparently because of its undesirable impact on exports, this has not come about.

It is also regrettable that after lengthy deliberations on these recommendations, a number of points still require further investigation. Let me state clearly, however, that in-depth investigation is far preferable to ill-considered and premature implementation as I believe has been done with the minimum tax on companies. The Margo Commission suggested that this form of tax be looked at, but the Government has nevertheless decided to introduce it immediately and with retro-active effect. A measure of a tax’s acceptability is the extent of public debate it stimulates, and by this criterion alone MTC fails dismally.

The flow of criticism has continued unabated and the hon the Minister of Finance will be unwise to ignore this. And all this for a tax projected to raise less than 1% of revenue for 1988-89. Surely there was an easier way to make this revenue without tinkering with fundamental aspects of South African tax legislation. Possibly beer drinkers and cigarette smokers could have paid a bit more. Or alternatively wine drinkers could have shared part of the additional burden.

Let me say at the outset that the hon the Minister has already made some concessions—to branches of foreign companies, property unit trusts, and companies in liquidation and in difficulty. But this is nowhere nearly enough. I cannot accept that the confusion and cost of introducing and collecting this tax is worth the projected R350 million—although some estimate that the amount raised will be considerably higher.

Why is this tax being introduced? There appear to be two reasons:

Secondly, as stated by the hon the Minister, the tax was introduced as a short-term cash flow measure. He has, however, declined to confirm that MTC will be a once-off tax. Representations made to the hon the Minister indicate widespread concern—they are clearly not in pursuit of purely sectional interests.

The Chamber of Mines describes MTC as being wrong in principle and harmful in operation, and believes it should not be pursued. It will have a major impact on future growth of the mining industry. A renowned firm of stockbrokers believe that of the projected R350 million, R143 million will come from the gold mines alone. The Federated Chamber of Industries believes the tax calls into question the morality of the tax gatherer. Assocom is concerned about the tax generally and has made detailed representations. The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants states there is widespread uncertainty and confusion—that the safeguards suggested by the Margo Commission should be incorporated in the legislation. The Financial Mail of 8 April calls for the tax to be abolished—whilst earning high fees for accountants and lawyers it is taking up unjustifiable hours of boardroom time. Even the Standing Committee on Finance has reported that it is of the opinion that further consideration should be given to ensure that if proceeded with, its application will be equitable and not act as a disincentive to investment both locally and from abroad.

So what are the criticisms? My time does not allow me to deal with these in depth. Some of the main ones are: The tax is retro-active—dividend decisions have been made which would have been different had the tax been known; it penalises companies which have embarked on capital expenditure programmes, especially mining companies; companies which cannot afford the tax will have to borrow, and the interest cost will not be tax-deductible; commodity price cycles are ignored—for example, the coal industry, currently experiencing a slump in prices compounded by sanctions, is adversely affected; it taxes profits arising out of the sale of capital assets; it taxes previously tax-exempt income; it is neither neutral, certain nor simple to collect; there was little, if any, consultation between the public and private sectors regarding the introduction of this tax; it inhibits future investment decisions so vital for economic growth; and finally, I believe it weakens official motivation to remove the incentives and the concessions which created the problem in the first place.

I believe this tax should not be proceeded with. However, failing this, certain changes must be made to ensure its more efficient application. I believe the hon the Minister must confirm the fact that this tax will be for one year only; that the authorities must be flexible in “fine-tuning” the legislation relating to this tax; that a definite date, say one year from payment, must be set for refunding the tax; that the formula should be altered to exclude capital profits, foreign source income and other non-taxable profits; and finally, that the fiscus must immediately address the underlying problems, namely capital write-offs and other incentives. This, I believe, would be in line with the Margo Commission’s recommendations.

In conclusion, I want to return to my original contention, namely that the hon the Minister of Finance faces extreme difficulties in implementing tax reform. I have already stated that Government expenditure is out of control. In this regard I wish to quote from Business Day of April 29, as follows:

We will achieve fundamental tax reform when this country has a viable constitution and is governed without continually pandering to apartheid and separate group structures. The cost of the ideology of a few is crippling our economy—and all of us have to pay the exorbitant price.

Mr Chairman, at this stage I should very much like to react to the hon members who have taken part in the debate so far. To begin with I should like to express my appreciation for the way in which this debate was arranged. Of all the debates on the Finance Vote in which I have participated, I cannot remember one in which it was possible for hon members on this side of the Committee to react so often to even relatively complex and detailed issues that were raised by the other side of the Committee. I want to express my appreciation for this. It testifies to sound preparation, timely anticipation and the excellent work done by the Whips on this side. I thank hon members on both sides for the quality of the debate and I am very grateful that we have in general been able to discuss it in a spirit of constructive criticism. It is a subject that definitely demands everyone’s most serious attention and consideration at this stage.

As usual, I want to begin chronologically. I am therefore starting with the hon member for Barberton. I have great sympathy for him because when he came to the subject that he should have liked to discuss his time had unfortunately expired. However, I made a note of what he said and I have an idea of what he wanted to say. I shall try to anticipate it.

We are all greatly concerned about the magnitude which the misuse of the financial rand system at the African Bank assumed. It happened on such a large scale that an enormous amount of money became involved in a relatively short time. I am grateful for the co-operation that we received in all three Houses of Parliament and from all parliamentary parties involved in enabling us to pass the amending legislation required to eliminate all the loopholes so quickly, and enabling us to have had it proclaimed last week.

I thank hon members in this Committee for their contributions in that regard. In particular, I thank the opposition parties who co-operated with us.

If one has a system in which certain people are able to misuse their ingenuity for their own enrichment even if they do so by breaking the law, one is always concerned, especially when one has had such a blatant example. A law that is made by people is, at the end of the day, just as imperfect as the people who made it. Someone once said that in the history of mankind more than 30 million laws have been made to ensure that people obey the Ten Commandments. We can make laws and amend them as we wish, but there will always be someone somewhere who will take a chance.

A few matters were brought to our attention and I do not believe that it is necessary to go into them in broad detail. In this regard I can give the hon member the assurance that we are keeping an eye on the situation as far as is humanly possible. If it is necessary to make further statutory amendments we shall do so, but at the moment the cases that were brought to our attention are being subjected to thorough and specific investigation.

With regard to aid to the TBVC countries and the self-governing national states, I want to express my appreciation to the hon member for Barberton for his view on the matter that he gave us today. I do not think that we understood one another very well in this regard in the past. Those of us on this side in particular could not understand that the hon members of the CP could adopt a standpoint such as the one the hon member expressed last time, and at the same time be proponents of the eventual independence of self-governing national states. However, the standpoint he expressed today was more reasonable and I think there is much common ground between us in that regard.

If we want to ensure, up to the last cent, that the money is being spent correctly in the independent and self-governing national states, there cannot really be any question of autonomy for them. If it is our fundamental point of departure, which is contrary to the point of departure of the hon member for Yeoville, that those states should eventually be independent—some of them are already independent—we must accept that certain things can go wrong with regard to their priorities and their competence.

Although things are indeed known to have happened, I am not saying that that is a sufficient reason to deter us, delete that policy entirely from our philosophy and revoke it. We must do the one thing, but not neglect to do the other. We must progress along the path of self-determination and, where it is feasible, independence, but we must also not neglect to do everything in our power to promote fiscal discipline and financial management discipline among them and to help them to implement it and to introduce the necessary control measures.

I explained to the hon member that in the past certain things were rectified in the legislative assemblies of the self-governing national states. I do not think it is necessary to debate along the lines that those reports should again come under discussion here. It is our view that after it has been agreed to by this Parliament it becomes a direct function of the department concerned and must be handled by them according to the degree of autonomy that those particular countries enjoy.

The hon member referred to two amounts by which remuneration packages had been exceeded. My hon colleague gave me the information. In the short time that he had he could give me complete information about only one of those amounts, and I shall elucidate it so that it can be correctly placed on record. During 1985-86, after the budgets of the self-governing territories had already been finalised and the appropriation legislation had already been dealt with, the remuneration packages were increased.

The increased expenditure could not be included in the Budget, and it was then procedurally indicated as excess expenditure. In the normal course of events, excess expenditure would have been rectified in the following session of the Legislative Assembly by means of a Bill on unauthorised expenditure. Unfortunately, in the short time at my disposal I was unable to establish whether this had indeed been done in the case of Gazankulu. However, it was done in the case of KaNgwane. In other words, the two items of excess expenditure were in accordance with the remuneration packages that were valid throughout the country.

The hon member referred to public debt. I cannot remember if I mentioned it last time; I glanced over my reply during the Second Reading debate on the Budget. If I did not do so then, I now want to make all the facts that I have at my disposal available to the hon member for Barberton. To be fair he and his hon colleagues of the CP will have to arrive at the scientific and academically correct conclusion that South Africa’s public debt is not excessive at all. I want to appeal to the hon member to see this argument for what it is and to stop using it against the Government, because it is not fair to do so.

I referred to certain things last time—that hon member in particular as well as the hon member Comdt Derby-Lewis and the hon member for Losberg endorsed what I said—and I am going to repeat it for the record because an accusation was levelled at the hon the State President in this regard. Public debt as a percentage of the GDP has decreased considerably since 1978. As a percentage of the GDP it decreased from 41,3% in 1977 to 33,7% in 1987. That is a verifiable fact. It is stated here and the information that I shall give him will show him what the situation is in comparable countries. Our situation is good in comparison with countries that we can be fairly compared to.

The Institutional Investor does not say that!

The hon member for Losberg may ask me a question. I am prepared to answer a question from him.

Mr Chairman, why does the Institutional Investor not agree with that?

Mr Chairman, I do not know what the Institutional Investor is, but I have an idea it is a far-right publication in America. If it is not, I will have it looked up in our records. Whether the Institutional Investor says so or not, what the facts say is important. Surely that is what is important! I appeal to the hon member—he is an academic—to let his academic integrity count in his assessment of the facts. He should not allow himself to be guided by the Institutional Investor like an academic who can only reproduce what he has read, while he should be guided by his sound common sense.

I merely asked a question.

I am merely telling the hon member. Surely those are the facts. If the Institutional Investor wants to argue with the facts, the hon member himself will have to decide what is right.

A second point that I want to mention for the sake of the record is that public debt as a percentage of current income has also decreased since 1978. I have the figures here. In 1977 the public debt was 191% of current income, which, nevertheless did not compare unfavourably with comparable countries. I have the graphs and I will make them available to the hon member or to any other hon member who wants them. By 1984 it had decreased from 191% to 138%. Those are the facts.

When I spoke about these matters last time, I conceded to the hon member for Barberton that it had indeed increased as a percentage of expenditure. However, that figure is subject to interest rates and many other factors. If one is in a downward phase of the business cycle, one’s income is low. For that reason, with regard to international standards for the measuring of public debt, as a percentage of the GDP and also as a percentage of current income … I beg your pardon, a moment ago I spoke about State income, but I meant Government expenditure that could fluctuate. It fluctuates as a result of interest rate patterns.

As I said, in comparison with comparable countries, South Africa’s position is very good especially if we look at the tendencies in this regard.

The hon member again added up the dissaving over the past six years to arrive at the astounding figure of R10 billion. Let me say once again in all friendliness today that this Government has stated repeatedly in public that dissaving—that is the financing of current expenditure with capital—is an unhealthy phenomenon in the economy, something that one should get away from as soon as possible. I want to ask the hon member a question that I have already asked him in the past. What would have happened to this country’s economy if we had not used this method during the times of crisis that we experienced. Where would the economic growth have been? We would have had a depression of incomparable proportions. Surely the hon member must concede that.

What was our alternative under these circumstances? I want to argue with all due respect that if the hon member himself had had the responsibility that we had in the Ministry and in the department to steer this country through these crisis years, he would have done exactly the same. Indeed, where we could we cut Government expenditure down to a bare minimum.

However, we had to incur other expenditure during this crisis period that we would not have had in normal circumstances. In this regard I am thinking of the more than R1 billion that we spent during the past few years on special training and job creation programmes. Surely we cannot argue with one another about the benefits and the absolute necessity of that particular item of expenditure. Without it we could perhaps have reduced the figure, but I ask myself what other expenditure with regard to national security and the restoring of law and order would we not possibly have had to incur if we had not brought peace of mind and the necessities of life to people by means of this and other expenditure? For this reason I want to tell the hon member that I do not think that he arrived at a meaningful figure by adding up a lot of things the way he did. I think he should look at the trends and interpret them against the background of the business cycle, as well as the other internal and external circumstances that made themselves felt. I have already referred to that R1 billion for the special programmes. I could also refer to the R2 billion that my hon colleague referred to with regard to drought aid and other measures for the farming community.

In this way we can quickly add up several billion rands which were inter alia financed from this source and without which this country would literally have been in a state of chaos today. We accept that it is an unhealthy way of going about it. That is correct. However, the question that we should ask ourselves is whether or not we are wilfully persisting with this, and the answer to that is undoubtedly no. We are gradually working ourselves out of this situation.

The hon member then came to his final point and said that they were also pleased about the upswing, but that he was worried about the degree of credit creation that had been responsible for the financing of the upswing. Am I interpreting him correctly? The hon member confirms this.

To endorse the standpoint that I adopted in my reply to the Second Reading debate, I want to tell the hon member that we can be in perfect agreement with each other on this matter.

The hon member for Yeoville is mistaken. I did not say that there were only two options. There are several options, but two of the interesting options that are being discussed at the moment are not what he said they were. I want to tell him that I, too, often experience a sense of despair when I see how the speeches that I have made are reported. Honestly, I do not mean to be funny. If there is one sphere in life where one reads things in a newspaper that one really did not say, it is in the sphere of finance, especially when one did not have one’s information in writing in order to make it available in as short a time as possible.

It is also not always possible for the reporters to have a personal discussion with one and to record it on tape or to ask questions so that everything can be sorted out.

What I said on that occasion was the following. Of the two arguments that have emerged at the moment—that is besides the one the hon member referred to—the one is that commerce has already bought stock and that the heavy demand for credit will diminish of its own accord as a result of a variety of circumstances, which will also result in consumers buying less. I received a communication this morning from a large manufacturing group in which it was stated that they had already experienced a levelling off in demand. There are therefore those who say that we should do nothing; the economy will level off of its own accord in the second half of the year anyway. That is briefly, is the one standpoint of view.

The second standpoint is that that is not going to happen. If one does not take steps to effect a cooling off now, the economy is going to continue at an extremely high rate of spending, and when the figures begin to appear and one then wants to take a series of definite steps, it is going to be too late. There will then be a repeat of the 1983-84 situation. Those are briefly the two main arguments that are being presented at the moment.

The hon member for Yeoville is correct. We have been discussing this matter incisively for the past few days. We are consulting people over a wide spectrum; we have also received certain inputs from the private sector. We shall go out of our way to avoid dealing imprudently with the economy. That applies to both sides of the coin. We shall not overreact and completely suppress the economy. However, we shall not remain paralysed if we are convinced that the economy is promoting too high a level of consumer spending, which, as the hon member said, is being financed mainly by bank credit.

Mr Chairman, I want to ask the hon the Minister a question. I want to refer to the figures in the Institutional Investor with regard to South Africa’s credit rating in comparison with that of other countries, and we should remember that this is an international periodical. Will the hon the Minister grant that South Africa’s credit rating is far below the average figure of the credit rating of other countries? South Africa’s credit rating is 31,3 as opposed to the average figure of 38,9. Will the hon the Minister concede that?

I cannot concede figures given by the Institutional Investor across the floor of the House. I shall have the matter investigated at leisure by the department. We can discuss the matter again during the Third Reading debate. However, if I were to use my experience of international banking over the past four years to venture an opinion on those figures that the hon member quoted, I would say that there was no absolutely correct formula according to which the international credit rating could be measured. One would, no doubt, include variables such as what one’s personal view is as an individual or as a group of individuals, or as a publication, with regard to the political stability and the regional stability of that particular country. I therefore suspect that the credit rating index that the hon member quoted, also contains subjective variables and not only purely objective variables which one can measure with regard to the percentage of public debt compared with the gross internal product or as a percentage of State revenue. We shall be able to discuss the matter productively on another occasion.

I believe the hon member for Barberton is quite correct in that we can be pleased about the upswing, but that we should all take note of the nature of this upswing with the necessary degree of responsibility. We must watch it very carefully. I also thank the hon member for Vasco for his contribution. He spoke very knowledgeably about the whole question of the financial situation in the TBVC countries, also with regard to the Joint Presidential Committees etc and the role that they are playing under the chairmanship of Dr Simon Brand.

However, I want to add—I think the hon member for Barberton will concede this—that we are dealing with a large backlog that existed in the field of economic development in those areas. It still exists as far as their economic development is concerned. When they then assume the responsibilities of governing a country, it is no doubt to be expected that certain difficulties will arise. We must give them the opportunity to grow out of them. For that reason I want to admit that the hon member for Yeoville is correct: Seen purely from a financial perspective it is extremely unhealthy to finance them by means of overdrawn accounts. That is correct. However, if one does it in that way they retain part of the responsibility. We then have to plan the solution to their problem together.

With our money!

The hon member for Yeoville said it is our money …

They have to solve their problems with our money!

Yes, they have to solve their problems with our money. I shall not argue that the Treasury is making a contribution. I will certainly not deny it because the facts are before us. However, we on this side of the House are of the opinion that according to our view of the political solution in South Africa, it is worth it. Indeed, we have a mandate from the voters to do it this way. We really do not intend to deprive those countries of their independence, their self-reliance, their self-government and their autonomy—those who are governing themselves are constantly asking for greater autonomy—as a result of the fact that we are experiencing certain administrative and financial problems in that regard. Our attitude is the reverse, namely to enable that economy that has been established there to be as self-sufficient as possible and to enhance the quality of their administration and planning. For that reason we have hundreds of seconded officials who are doing their work in those countries with great loyalty in order to help us on this aspect of the implementation of our policy.

The hon member asked why a building society may own a bank, but not the other way around. The hon member for Yeoville also asked whether we were not “overbanked” in South Africa. Yes, we are perhaps overbanked per capita at this stage, but we know that as a result of the report of the De Kock Commission we are moving in the direction of a single law. In that regard, the fact that building societies may own banks has opened the door to the eventual control of banks and building societies under one law. The integration of financial institutions and the subsequent disappearance of the dividing lines between them is a worldwide tendency that we cannot escape. A great deal of rationalisation is already taking place and if we had the choice we should like it to happen more quickly. For this reason, new bank licences are only being considered under very special circumstances.

†If the hon member for Yeoville makes the statement that the situation with regard to financing the TBVC states by way of overdraft should not have been allowed to happen then, by implication, he is arguing that we should increase their budget allocations.

Have you decided to do that?

Then I am happy to see that the hon member is supportive of the idea. I think we can agree with each other on that issue.

I have already referred to the fact that I agree with the hon member that fiscal and monetary decisions must be taken and implemented in proper balance with each other. We had a completely different situation with regard to many of our economic variables in the 1983-84 financial year, but we must make sure that we maintain a proper balance between monetary and fiscal policy this time round.

I just want to make one point in this regard which I think is very important. The hon member talked about dealing without constraints. I wish to summarise the situation as follows. While we have these constraints—they are real—we have to deal with them as best we can within the parameters laid down by these involuntary constraints which have been forced upon us.

In the meantime we must raise the ceiling inflitted upon us—to put it that way—by these constraints. I refer to the ceiling on the rate of growth which we can maintain in the light of our traditional drain on the current account of the balance of payments in times of high economic growth on account of our import volumes that traditionally rose. I again want to assure the hon member that we do view this whole issue in its overall context because inward industrialisation is certainly one leg of a comprehensive policy by which to address this very vulnerable situation that we now have. I agree with the hon member that we should smooth our business cycle as far as we possibly can.

The hon member listed a whole number of other steps that we can take. I am in agreement with him. It is not necessary for me to spend much time on those points that we do in fact agree upon.

Mr Chairman, in respect of what is actually happening and these conflicting pieces of advice that the hon the Minister is getting, is he in a position to make a statement as to what he is actually now going to do?

Mr Chairman, I want to say two things in that respect. In the first place, when we arrive at a consensus we shall make a statement and go public on what we have to say. That stands to reason. I want to remove from the question of the hon member a note of negativism which was perhaps not intended. The essence of productive debate is that there should be conflicting ideas. I do not think one can ever take a collection of economists and other advisers and get a conversation going that will not produce conflicting ideas. However, the answer lies in eventually arriving at a consensus with regard to what is necessary to be done at that stage.

Or picking the right idea.

I accept the sense in the suggestion of the hon member for Yeoville that we should make tax legislation available in good time. It is not always possible, but particularly with regard to taxation that will be implemented next year—specifically VAT—we shall certainly publish it well in advance so as to get the necessary reaction from the private sector.

The hon member is right. When it comes to Government expenditure structural adjustments must be made but the hon member will also concede that one cannot deal with structural cut-backs overnight. One has to, in fact, engender the growth of a particular management culture in order to get people to evaluate and prioritise, because the essense of priority management is that some good things have to fall by the wayside in favour of better things. That is not always easy to achieve.

We do not regard the concepts of privatisation and deregulation as a panacea, but certainly form a most important part of our overall strategy to address the situation that we have at hand.

*Once again I should like to thank the hon member for Kuruman for a substantial contribution and particularly for the emphasis that he placed on the role of the consumer. He issued a very valid warning to the consumer public, namely that they had done business in the past at an affordable interest rate, and as a result of what happened in the past, had burnt their fingers. We cannot give the public the guarantee that interest rates will permanently remain at a specific level. We can only do our best by means of our actions and by means of the encouraged actions of consumers, to enable adjustments in the economy, which include higher and lower interest rate adjustments, to take place in the most responsible manner and with the least possible disruption. That is a very important point. We share the hon member’s correct point of view that it is a futile exercise to try to dampen consumer demand with interest rate adjustments alone, because there is a delay and a penalty clause in that and all kinds of disruptions are caused by it. He referred to that and I agree with him wholeheartedly.

At the next opportunity, I shall begin with the hon member for Stellenbosch and the points that he raised about inflation. There are many things on which we agree with him. At this stage I just want to say to him, and perhaps he can think about this, that growth on the one side and inflation on the other are not absolute options. They are not divided into watertight compartments, and—this is extremely important—although it could possibly entail short-term advantages for economic growth provided one slackens the reins on inflation a little, a sustained high inflation rate eventually catches up with one and destroys one’s country’s economy, especially in a country like South Africa that is so terribly dependent on exports for sustained economic growth. I shall let that suffice at this stage, Sir.

Mr Chairman, I have been asked to respond to the hon the Minister’s speech, but please forgive me for preferring to stick to someone my size and turning my attention to the hon member for Pinelands instead.

I think that to a certain extent the hon member for Pinelands talked himself into a corner today. He asked why minimum company tax was levied. Why was it necessary? Why could those who smoked and those who drank not be taxed more heavily? Sir, surely we have all agreed—and the Margo Commission’s report too—that consumers are too heavily taxed as it is. The man in the street bears too heavy a burden as it is, and the average effective tax on companies should be increased. In spite of a nominal tax rate of 50% for companies …

No, no!

… just a moment, please … it is a fact that the effective average tax paid by companies in the RS A is only 27%. That is the result of certain tax exemptions granted to them, and that is why it is essential that companies that make use of tax benefits in order to pay less tax should in fact be addressed, Mr Chairman, because there are various ways in which companies can enrich themselves and pay out dividends without paying tax. Sir, no one who is not making money pays out dividends. That is why a minimum company tax should be introduced.

The hon member also referred to a matter about which we are all concerned, and that concerns the illegalities and swindles which are rife—so much so, according to him, that no one pays any attention to them any more. I am only very sorry that that hon member did not devote more of his time to telling us more about these specific cases he mentioned. The majority of cases I know of occur in the private sector and have nothing to do with the public sector. I think he would agree with me about that.

Mr Chairman, I should like to raise another matter, a matter which I find extremely irksome. Last week I was in my constituency, where I received a letter from one of my esteemed voters, who wrote to me as follows:

I should like to relate this to a letter which Sanlam wrote to its shareholders, and I quote the first paragraph:

This letter is worded in such a way as to give members of the general public the impression that a tax of 75% is being levied on their insurance, something which is devoid of all truth, and I want to say that it is a pity that a man of the stature of Dr Fred du Plessis—not only a man of stature in the Afrikaner community and in the financial community, but also throughout the country—could send such a letter to members of the public.

Dr Du Plessis even went further. He addressed a meeting in the constituency of one of my colleagues. There he said the following about the tax on insurance companies:

Mr Chairman, I am asking whether he wants to force a vote for an alliance between the CP and AWB, because if they were to come to power …

Better than the NP-ANC alliance!

… they would nationalise the country’s economy as a whole. Hon members will remember that that was one of the major problems that existed in connection with the concentration of financial power in the hands of a few people.

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: The hon member for Roodepoort alleged that there was an alliance between the NP and the ANC. Is that permissible?

Of course!

Order! What precisely did the hon member for Roodepoort say?

Mr Chairman, on a previous occasion, in an open debate in this House, the hon member for Innesdal made it very clear that the NP was in favour of ANC participation.

Order! Was the hon member suggesting that there was a connection between the NP and the ANC?

Yes, Sir, I was.

Order! Would the hon member please tell me what he meant by that?

Mr Chairman, I said that an AWB-CP alliance was better than an NP-ANC alliance. I did so on the basis of the remark of the hon member for Innesdal in a previous debate in this House. He clearly stated that the ANC should participate in a constitutional system in South Africa. [Interjections.]

Order!

Mr Chairman, on a further point of order: I contend that the hon member for Roodepoort is defying the authority of the Chair.

Order! I shall consult Hansard to determine what the hon member for Roodepoort said. I shall give a ruling at a later stage. The hon member for Heilbron may proceed.

Mr Chairman, I was saying …

Mr Chairman, on a further point of order: When you examine Hansard to have a look at the hon member for Roodepoort’s interjection, let me ask you to look, too, at the recent speech of the hon the Minister of Manpower in which he raised a similar matter.

Order! The hon member for Heilbron may proceed.

Mr Chairman, if the apparently inexhaustible source of points of order has now more or less dried up, I should like to continue with my argument.

Nowhere in Dr Du Plessis’ letter do I discern any reference to the Margo Commission’s contention that the insurance industry was completely undertaxed. Nor did he point out that even if the tax they now paid were to be increased by 75%, the tax paid on insurance company profits would only be 13,8%. This has resulted in insurance companies in South Africa getting a very firm grip on capital formation in a very short time—so much so—that within a few years the assets available to them have increased to more then 11% of the total assets represented on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. That was not stated in his letter. I do not find that fact mentioned anywhere in his letter. Nor do I discern, in his letter, any mention of the losses they suffered on foreign exchange transactions for the various companies in their stable. I therefore think that Dr Du Plessis was deliberately trying to create a certain political climate so as to drive home a financial argument. I find that extremely regrettable.

Another matter I came across in my constituency during the past weekend was one relating to the problems that we, as farmers, encounter in regard to the interest on money we have invested in our co-operatives.

The articles of association of co-operatives oblige us to invest certain funds with the co-operatives in order to create facilities for the promotion of our farming interests. In spite of our suffering major losses on our farming enterprises, and also being compelled to relinquish a portion of our gross income to the co-operatives and having to pay tax on that, present arrangements are such that the interest we receive from the co-operatives on our investments there—we are forced to make those investments—are not calculated in conjunction with our farming expenditure for income rebate purposes. In spite of the fact that we suffer extensive losses on the one hand, we find ourselves on the other hand, paying income tax on the interest on our funds which we are compelled to invest.

Not a single farmer would invest money in his co-operative if he could keep that money to pay into his bank account with a view to decreasing his interest burden there. It is not a question of whether we have to pay tax on interest or not. All it is is that I have to pay tax on interest which I cannot offset against my farming expenditure, in spite of the fact that this interest is very closely linked to my farming expenditure and is, in fact, a part of that farming expenditure, because those investments I have to make in the co-operative, I make for one purpose only, and that is to have access to a grain elevator which has automated off-loading facilities and bulk-handling facilities. Those are all factors which improve my farming income.

About ways of dealing with the matter there is some doubt. Some tax-collectors say one thing and others say another. Some Receivers of Revenue adopt one standpoint and others adopt another standpoint. I am not asking the hon the Minister to give me an answer now, but to do so when he replies to the debate on the financial legislation. [Time expired.]

Order! Before I call upon the hon member Comdt Derby-Lewis to speak, I want to refer to the ruling on the point of order raised a short while ago. There is a ruling by Mr Speaker about references implying that an hon member was an ally of the ANC. There is also a ruling by Mr Speaker about links with the ANC. The statement about the NP having formed an alliance with the ANC falls into the same category, and the hon member for Roodepoort must withdraw that remark.

Mr Chairman, I withdraw it.

Mr Chairman, I do not want to disturb the restful atmosphere prevailing here this afternoon so I will not ask the hon member for Heilbron what happened on the occasion of the municipal by-election in his constituency last Wednesday.

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

No, Sir, my time is very limited.

The hon the Minister spoke very calmly this afternoon and he had us on this side of the Committee wondering whether he was ill. However, this does not seem to be the case and we certainly hope it is not. [Interjections.]

†The hon the Minister made quite a strong point about the reduction in State debt as a percentage of the GNP of this country. He also undertook to give us figures in support of his statement. While he is doing so, I hope he will also give us figures showing the increase in tax income over the same period, also relative to the GNP. [Interjections.] Sir, I am here to expose the faults of the NP Government and not to pat the hon the Minister on the back. That is our function as members of the Official Opposition—to expose and highlight the problems so that voters can in turn pressurise this Government to call a halt to their wrongdoings. It is in that spirit that I stand here today and say that this Budget that we are discussing does not address the real problems facing South Africa. I am referring to the problem of a lack of confidence internally. I say this because the tax structure has not been adjusted to ensure a fairer spread of the burden. The Budget also does not address the problem of financial mismanagement stemming from governmental policy.

Our country’s finances are in tragic disarray. I will try to highlight this in the time at my disposal. Sad to say, not even with the top economic brains at their disposal can the NP Government come up with a solution. I do not mean this as a criticism of our economic brains. What I am saying is that it is an impossible task to reconcile economic growth in the context of the political alternative offered by the NP Government. I do not want to antagonise those hon members today; they should rather listen very carefully. It will become obvious to them that our country has some very serious problems and that they will have to reconsider their whole political future very shortly.

In the process, I want to tell the hon the Minister that I think he should not count on the proceeds of privatisation to save us from the Government’s financial mismanagement. He will have to go to the voters before he does that, because it is, in fact, the voters of the past and the present who paid for those assets. Privatisation of services, however, is another matter. I think that if the hon the Minister concentrates on this aspect of privatisation, we might be able to find each other in this regard.

I would like to return to the hon the Minister, who was appointed in his present capacity late in 1983, and look at the escalation in State debt from 1984 to the end of 1987. In that period, State debt went up by R25 billion. In fact, that amount is almost equal to the level at which the accumulated State debt stood at the end of 1983.

However, mentioning that debt does not tell us anything about the problems which we have, for example, with our road system. According to the Deputy General Manager of the SATS, Mr Barry Lessing, it will require a total of R60 billion to bring the national road network up to standard. I would be interested to hear where the hon the Minister is going to find that money. Although the SATS have built up a debt of R7,5 billion, not to mention their unrealised foreign exchange losses of R3,2 billion, I am aware that this is their baby, but it is nevertheless under the administration of the NP Government that this debt has escalated.

What about hidden costs? What about increased prices in all areas as a result of our almost worthless rand and rampant inflation? I have only to refer to the 9 March 1988 edition of The Evening Times of Glasgow, in which I see that for 59p the Scots can buy five oranges imported from Israel. Here in South Africa, we have to pay about 35c for each of our own locally grown oranges. They are also able to buy fresh pork chops at R4,20 per kilogram.

In Israel? [Interjections.]

No, I am referring to the price of pork chops in Scotland. [Interjections.] It is all very well for that hon member to try to make jokes about our serious problems regarding prices, but I think it is tragic that a Scotsman can buy commodities such as pork chops at a lower price than a South African can, while South Africa itself produces most of these things.

We also have the hidden cost of high taxes. Allow me to illustrate how drastically our taxes have risen by using the example of a married couple with a joint income, the husband earning R20 000 and the wife R10 000. In South Africa that couple would pay a joint tax bill of R3 685, while a similar couple working in Britain would pay R905. I do not want to dwell on this aspect, but I could provide numerous examples, some of them even more disturbing. It is quite obvious, if one undertakes a comparison of income tax scales internationally, that in that respect at least South Africa is ahead of the United Kingdom and way ahead of the United States of America.

The cost of labour unrest is another hidden cost the extent of which we are unable to establish because, in response to a question which I put to the hon the Minister of Manpower, he said he was unable to state the financial cost of that phenomenon. However, I am sure it must be quite considerable.

On another aspect, if we look at the number of companies which have gone insolvent since the time the hon the Minister took over in 1984, we see a figure of 7 195 as at the end of 1987.

How many new ones have been established?

I am trying to find that out from the hon the Minister of Economic Affairs and Technology and will be able to give the hon the Minister of Finance the information later. I do not have a figure at the moment. However, I have asked a question in that regard.

If one takes a minimum of ten employees for each of these companies going insolvent, which—I think hon members will agree—is very, very conservative, one is talking about a loss of 71 950 jobs. The hon the Minister knows what it costs in terms of job creation to replace the jobs which those people have lost.

As far as the question of housing is concerned, I would like to refer to an article entitled “Ons Swart Tydbom” which appeared in the Huisgenoot recently. They estimated that it was going to cost R7,3 billion per annum for the next five years to provide houses. Hon members will agree with me when I say we are living in dream time then.

When one looks at the problems of the growth in the number of officials in this country and one sees an increase of 17% to the present total of 943 861 over the past two years, one realises that the NP’s idea of rationalising the Public Service is, in fact, leading to the creation of a lot more jobs in the future than what we have now. This is why they cannot pay the officials they presently employ increases in salaries. [Interjections.] They are employing too many new people and we also know whom they are employing.

I also want to touch on the mining industry. Can the hon the Minister tell my why, of all industries, the mining industry is allowed to write off capital expenditure to 100% in the first year, while the rest of industry is only allowed 50%? [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, I have always compared myself very closely to the hon member Mr Derby-Lewis. Being an English-speaking member of the NP I have always been at home and felt quite comfortable amongst the Afrikaans-speaking people in my party. In fact, there are more English-speaking members in my party than the PFP has English-speaking members in their party.

It has sometimes occurred to me to wonder what it must be like to be a member of a party where one’s extracurricular leader—the leader outside of one’s party—had a policy until a year ago that English was not an official language in this country. I watched that extracurricular leader a month ago on television. When they asked him to speak in English to enable overseas people to understand him, he asked them to bring him a cultured, educated person to talk to him in Afrikaans so that all the educated people in the world, who could speak Afrikaans, could understand what he had to say.

I have often wondered how an English-speaking voter will compare the hon member Mr Derby-Lewis with Derek Christophers and ever make his choice to belong to a party which was, until one year ago, governed by the AWB which does not allow English as a language.

They have made that choice already.

Not in my constituency, they have not!

You will be surprised.

There are other things that I have to question here because they seem a little strange to me. I, too, was overseas recently—a year or so ago—and really did not see five oranges for 59p either in Scotland or England. If my arithmetic serves me right, that amounts to 12p each. When I was there, they were selling for about 30p each; perhaps I did not look in the right places.

Adverts don’t lie.

I also have in my office upstairs the official public service brochure for last year. Up to last year, it says, they had 2,5% more public servants than the year before. I cannot believe that that 2,5% has increased to 17% more personnel in one year. I question that figure in the same way as I have questioned some of the other economic policies of the CP which I have just heard.

I want to ask them this: If oranges could be exported from South Africa to sell in England—never mind the transport costs—at 12p each, I would like to know whether Zebediela and the places where oranges are grown, are going to be inside South Africa or whether they will be in Black South Africa where those oranges will not belong to us in any case. [Interjections.]

I should also like to know what the situation will be in this country where we are now shouting about tax being paid separately by married men and women, to what extent we shall be taxed as married couples if the CP and their policies take over. It would be very interesting to hear about that.

The speaker before that hon member, the speaker for the PFP—I think it was the hon member for Pinelands—ended his speech by saying that the cost of an ideology of the few is crippling the economy of the many. It is on that statement that I should like to say a few words this afternoon.

There can be no doubt that this country is involved in an economic war. Anyone in this Chamber who is naive enough to believe that the resistance to this Government is purely along philosophical lines, should stop a minute to think what it costs in money and organisation to keep more than 600 fully manned anti-apartheid offices throughout the world, and how much money, political clout and pressure is needed to steer anti-South African measures through the legislative bodies of the world and through the United Nations. Millions of man-hours are spent and hundreds of millions of dollars are found from somewhere. When we say that Russian imperialism backs the onslaught against us, the “rather Red than dead” faction accuses us of finding communists under every bed. The businessmen of our country should take a stand once and for all and choose between Azania and South Africa, as should our opposition perhaps also do.

I really do not think that the capitalist corporations in South Africa would do well in the socialist heaven envisaged by the ANC. I would therefore strongly recommend to our businessmen to make up their minds what they choose: If they choose South Africa, they have to plan their businesses to satisfy the needs of the 15 million consumers hungry for goods and services. On the other hand they may choose that this country become Azania. Those who believe we are going to become Azania, can pack for Perth and go and wait for that glorious day. If many of our businessmen take a firm stand, a lot of the hedging, uncertainty and flight of capital will be stopped and our inflation rate will fall. The deliberate perception that our enemies have created of South Africa, of a state imminently about to succumb to revolution, has destroyed international confidence in our currency and has fuelled the fires of inflation. Perhaps if some observant economist would look at a copy of the Daily Mail on almost any day after the Sharpeville incident, he would see that our imminent destruction was accepted as a fact of life even then. The fact that we are still here, might persuade that economist to revalue our currency and realise we are going to be here in 40 years’ time.

The Government is doing a great number of things to combat inflation. Some of them, as we know, are very unpopular, but none of these measures can succeed without a change of strategy by the private sector. In times of recession the private sector criticises the Government mercilessly. It finds the Government totally responsible for adverse trading conditions. In the last recession the private sector demanded that the Government lower taxes, cut the outlay to the public sector, halt unemployment and stop competing imports. They laid the cause of inflation squarely on the shoulders of the Government. [Interjections.]

We all know that Government can take some steps to curb inflation, but productivity in general is the main determinant in the inflation rate. Of the roughly four million economically active people in this country only about one million work for State-related enterprises, and one-third of these, like those who work for the SATS and Eskom, generate their own income and do not receive their salaries from the Exchequer.

Boom times are back, and there are signs that the inflation rate is falling. The seeds of our destruction are being sown by some in our own private sector. The first highly visible sign of this is that the balance of payments position is weakening. This is directly attributable to the fact that our growth rate is running at 5% at the moment, and our foolish virgins—some of our retailers and manufacturers—are importing foreign goods at a highly inflated rate.

This is foolish for two reasons. One is that we are aiding and abetting the nations that are waging an economic war against us, and buying their products while they are boycotting ours, and the second reason is that many of the additional products we are importing are products we produce here anyway. By doing this we are keeping our own industries from expanding, and giving work to workers in other countries, while we have many here who need the chance to work.

We must appeal to the representative bodies of the responsible private enterprise organisations—I see some of them upstairs here today—to persuade the private sector in its hurry to employ key personnel as quickly as possible and take advantage of the boom, to exercise some restraint.

A quick comparison of the salaries offered in the positions vacant section of a newspaper will show a very sharp increase in the wages offered now over those offered a year ago. This is short-sighted, because rising salaries without corresponding high productivity will send the inflation figures soaring. They will cause higher prices for goods and services and will also mean that the money made in profits at the end of the year will actually be of less value.

Another short-sighted policy in some of the factories and shops of the country is very visible on the price tags of their goods. If one goes through the Cape Town shopping area today one will see that an ordinary good quality jersey for a man or a woman costs approximately R100, which is iniquitous. Looking around one will see that buying crayfish in a restaurant it amounts to R30 per plate, including tax. An ordinary ticket for the cinema costs R6,50 at Computicket. I think these and hundreds of other price increases are not really justified, and if they continue to escalate at the present rate we are all looking for trouble.

The third frightening factor is that the private sector is financing the boom for the man in the street with credit. There was a 36% increase in the credit granted in April compared with the figure for April last year.

Are you for or against the NP?

We did not give the credit; the banks gave the credit. One bank has gone so far as to give a borrower back the capital borrowed on his house. Now that person who has got his capital back can go and spend it on consumer goods. I cannot think of any measure more likely to fuel the rate of inflation than that. The micro-economics of a company depend on the macro-economics of the country. In this year of plenty our trade and industry should be exploring the possibilities of producing goods that can be made here and which we are still importing at the moment. Every year a list of such products is distributed by the Department of Trade and Industry. In this year of plenty our companies can find the money for training programmes. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, the hon member for Germiston is a very enthusiastic member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. I am not quite sure whether he is also a member of the Standing Committee on Finance, but he makes sound contributions and we want to thank him for that.

Firstly I want to refer to a few matters which are also mentioned in the report on the Standing Committee on Finance. I am referring to the staff position in the Department of Finance, specifically in the revenue sections, ie internal revenue and customs and excise. It is clear that there are still a distressing number of tax-evaders when it comes to personal and company tax. The State forfeits too much revenue as a result of this. In the debate on this Vote last year I also referred to this, and the hon member for Newcastle also referred to it in a speech recently. We cannot afford this loss of revenue. I pointed out last year how much additional revenue it was possible to recover owing to the action taken by the inspection staff. It was a considerable amount. From the evidence furnished to the standing committee it is clear that this trend has not yet been halted; it is still going on. Investigatory staff would therefore definitely have to be expanded in order to combat this tendency to evade tax. The Standing Committee on Finance expressed itself in favour of measures to combat this trend. I trust that an effective investigation into this matter will take place.

I am of the opinion that it will be possible to obtain sufficient expert staff—I am now speaking about really expert staff—who could very successfully be employed to do this after a short in-service training programme. It is a great pity that it is necessary to incur costs, amongst other things for the expansion of staff, in order to curb tax evasion. The expected high revenue could, however, offset such staff expenditure. I therefore want to advocate an urgent investigation into this matter.

A further relevant aspect is the evidence given by the Accountant-General before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, something to which the hon member for Vasco also referred in his speech this afternoon. It appears that in virtually all Government department’s financial divisions there is an actual and basic shortage of experienced staff. Financial matters, bookkeeping and accounting activities require the services of experts, and it appears there is simply not enough financial expertise incorporated in the staff structures of all departments for successful financial accounting and control to be exercised. It appears that it is simply accepted that this can successfully be dealt with by the ordinary administrative staff. It is really not that simple. That work requires specific financial expertise, and purposeful efforts will have to be made to correct the situation.

I personally know of two cases of people who applied for bursaries, specifically with a view to completing studies in finance and economy, the ordinary B Com field of study, but who were unsuccessful. Apparent their bursary applications were not successful because the financial departments had filled their quota. Both these applicants had above-average matriculation results. Their applications were unsuccessful because, as I said, there were apparently sufficient applicants to satisfy the needs in the financial departments.

I really do want to advocate that when applications are considered, and before applicants are turned away, the Commission for Administration should make quite sure that such bursary applicants cannot be accommodated in another department’s financial division. In this way one could eventually succeed in retaining a much better degree of expertise in the respective departments.

I now want to refer to a matter to which I also referred last year. It relates to the tax on the fringe benefits of the incumbents of posts in the public service, and specifically the tax on the allowances of those incumbents. I have already referred to the fact that those incumbents, specifically the mayor, and the major of Pretoria in particular, is faced with the fact that his allowance is considerable specifically because he is the mayor of the executive capital. We are not apologising for that fact, because it is necessary for him to be granted that allowance.

Without mentioning names and referring to specific instances, I do want to point out, however, that one specific mayor had to pay an official visit to a specific country abroad. Inevitably there was an additional allowance, but it goes without saying that there were also additional expenses which that allowance had to cover. The Receiver of Revenue, however, only wrote off the travel costs as an expenditure against his allowance, and also the normal additional 5% of the total allowance. There was, however, proven expenditure involving more than just the allowance. His expenditure was much more than the allowance he received. The result was that the person concerned had to pay tax of more than 33% on his gross allowance. In actual monetary terms this was more than R10 000.

If his allowance is calculated in terms of his actual expenditure, and his tax is included accordingly, it means that in effect he lost almost R19 000 in the process. In my possession I have an accountant’s report from the firm of auditors which dealt with this matter. If I remember correctly I sent a copy of this report to the Commissioner for Inland Revenue.

Unfortunately it appears that the Commissioner for Inland Revenue cannot take this matter any further as a result of restrictive measures applicable to him. I received a letter to this effect from him. I followed this up with a letter to the hon the Deputy Minister. I hope that attention can again be given to this matter. It is to my way of thinking, really a matter of public interest, and I think we shall have to re-examine this very carefully to determine whether we can properly accommodate this aspect. I am not simply lodging a plea for the person concerned, but also for the present and future mayors and public figures of larger cities, particularly Pretoria. We express the hope that our argument will successfully be able to resolve this matter.

Mr Chairman, the hon member for Gezina mentioned a number of things. One of them which I wish to respond to him on is in relation to the staff employed in inland revenue departments in order to go through tax returns because so many people were submitting returns which needed to be checked. I think we need a simplification of the whole tax system rather than more of those people. The more simple the tax system the fewer people will be needed to control it. In my view that would be more important.

I want to talk about a specific recommendation of the Margo Commission. I would like to read it out to the House to put a frame to what I am going to talk about. I quote from page 343:

The White Paper which was approved by the Cabinet accepted the recommendations in regard to ad valorem duties. Therefore I think we can say we are at one on this particular issue.

I want to quote further points that the Margo Commission made on page 386:

A footnote attached to that reads:

This is the specific ad valorem duty that I wish to speak about. The report goes on to say:

I believe that these are actually most important recommendations and that the demise of ad valorem duties, particularly in relation to diamonds and jewellery in general, is a matter of extreme urgency. They do not yield much tax. I want to quote again from page 454 of the report of the Margo Commission:

It is therefore quite clear that in the modern system these ad valorem duties should really be abolished.

Mr Chairman, I want to put some flesh onto the bones of the framework which I have outlined from the Margo Commission’s report, and I want to give figures which I got from the Financial Mail. Those figures are as follows. The international jewellery market is in size something of the order of R56 billion per annum, and South Africa’s share is less than one thousandth; it is therefore less than 0,1%. India, as a country, employs 600 000 people in diamond cutting and polishing, and it is estimated that there are almost as many people involved in the less formal jewellery industry in India. They cannot determine the exact number, but it is estimated to be about another 600 000.

At what wages?

We will get to that in due course, Mr Chairman.

May I point out, too, that the State of Israel grossed no less than R4,2 billion in diamonds, and while we are looking at diamonds, let me point out further that South Africa processes approximately 340 000 carats per annum, yet Belgium exports 3 652 000 carats per annum, Israel 2 802 000 carats, and India 3 423 000 carats per annum. All these countries are approximately ten times bigger than South Africa in this regard, yet we produce 23,7% of the diamonds produced in the world annually. We are not utilising this factor to our advantage, and I think the hon the Minister would agree with that.

I want to go further and talk about gold and platinum. We produce 43,3% of the world’s gold and 84,7% of the world’s platinum. Last year the world jewellery industry used 1 130 tons of gold, but of that South Africa used less than one ton. We actually import more gold jewellery than we manufacture in this country. It is estimated that approximately two to three tons are imported per annum, as compared with the one ton that is in fact manufactured in South Africa. We therefore import two to three times more per annum than we ourselves produce. One must then ask oneself why all this has happened. Why are we so poor in this regard? I think that ad valorem tax is one of the main reasons. There are obviously other reasons; I do not suggest for a minute that there are not.

I want to point out what the advantages would be if we actually scrapped this tax and as a result the manufacturing of jewellery in this country took a few major steps forward. Firstly, I believe there would be no doubt that we would create additional employment opportunities. When one looks at the cost of creating one job opportunity in South Africa, which I understand is something of the order of R15 000, any job we can create is going to be extremely valuable. Secondly, Sir, we could have a replacement of imports of one to two tons of jewellery per annum, and that again would save us, I suggest, quite a large and worthwhile amount in foreign currency. Thirdly, …

Mr Chairman, could the hon member tell me whether he agrees with South Africa’s status in regard to GATT, and whether he understands that if one imports that gold jewellery, bound under GATT, it would have to be free of taxation and thus the competitive situation would then remain unaltered?

Mr Chairman, I have looked at various inputs in terms of GATT and at this particular subject, but I actually do not believe it destroys the basic argument that I am putting forward in the House today. I have said that the scrapping of ad valorem duty would create employment and replace imports. Thirdly, I believe it would open up export markets to a very great extent.

If we could undercut the rest of the world in the prices charged for articles bought locally by tourists, this would indeed be a big attraction for tourists to come to South Africa and …

[Inaudible.]

It does pay ad valorem duty.

[Inaudible.]

Mr Chairman, there is an argument going on here across the floor. Do local manufacturers of jewellery pay ad valorem tax or not?

Yes.

Of course they do. That is the point I am making. As I understand the situation, it is 35%. I want to ask the hon the Minister why we are delaying the implementation of this recommendation. The Margo Commission recommended it and the Cabinet agreed. Mintek, the jewellery council of South Africa, the Board of Trade and Industry and the IDC all approved of the abolition of this duty. What on earth are we waiting for? The answer is clearly that we are waiting for the Department of Finance. I therefore call upon the hon the Minister to turn Cabinet decisions into actions. I call upon him immediately to put an end to all ad valorem duty on jewellery manufactured in South Africa.

Mr Chairman, the hon member for Port Elizabeth Central requested a simplification of the tax system. He also addressed himself to the question of ad valorem duties. I think he has made some very constructive suggestions here today. Nevertheless, I believe he will agree that the Margo Commission was a most comprehensive exercise addressing hundreds of issues, and it represents a major step in tax reform. We simply cannot do everything overnight. I am sure the hon member will agree with that.

I believe that aspects of the hon the State President’s Opening Address to Parliament on 5 February should be reiterated because many, it seems, have forgotten the lessons conveyed by them. The comprehensive programme of economic action presented contained, I believe, three important thrusts—financial restraint, which was clearly carried through in the Budget delivered on 16 March, deregulation and privatisation. At the same time the hon the State President attempted to seek the co-operation of businessmen in the form of voluntary curbs on prices and incomes. There are already critics begging for action and also, in fact, baying for blood.

The Financial Mail of 29 April claimed, among other things, that inflation would soon be heading back towards an annual rate of 20%—this in the face of the most credible performance to date in exercising control, and contrary to all published figures which show that the CPI for the twelve months to January 1988 rose by only 14,2% against 18,6% for the 1986 calendar year, and in March 1988 remained at a controlled 14,3%. Furthermore, I believe that the call by the hon the State President for fiscal restraint, possibly made so that public servants would not be the only ones asked to sacrifice earnings in the interests of a lower inflation rate, has met with mixed reaction. There was a highly commendable and responsible reaction on one side but, sadly and predictably, an irrational overreaction on the other side. I think the hon member for Yeoville mentioned this.

The hon the Minister of Finance and his hon Deputy Ministers have on several occasions made it clear to anyone who wishes to listen and who wishes to publish the truth, that price and wage control is not an acceptable option. The hon the State President has repeatedly said that the Government does not want a totally regulated economy. It can work no more successfully in South Africa than anywhere else in the world. In line with the Constitution, the Government’s further choice is for promotion of an economy in which market mechanisms function properly. There are market mechanisms which are there today to take account of South Africa’s special circumstances. There are public watchdogs such as the Competition Board and the Consumer Council. It was clear that in order to give them real teeth, some change in legislation had to be considered for there are many who are fuelling inflation through excessive profit-taking and, behind the scenes, cartels are operating to the detriment of consumers.

An appeal by the hon the State President to the business sector to co-operate in the fight, and subsequent statements to bring clarity, have provoked an unwarranted attack by the Financial Mail. This journal sees fit to denigrate the Government’s efforts, and attempts, so it seems, to undermine business confidence. While the hon the Deputy Minister has drawn the Committee’s attention to this matter, I think some of these distortions are worth putting on record.

Referring to the proposed Harmful Business Practices Bill as a misguided attempt to promote consumerism and to intimidate everyone in business it has this to say:

It goes on to say:

What arrant nonsense! What this provocative, negative and destructive journalism is designed to achieve, I do not know; uncertainty, yes, and angry reaction, yes, but constructive action, no! It only serves to provide fuel for the fires of the enemies of our country. It is a good thing that the average businessman no longer believes this type of horror story.

While South Africa cannot be satisfied with its economic performance over the past decade, the course now set by our economic policy-makers is clearly the right one. It is as brave as it is daunting. In following this course we must manage the economy in such a manner that our resources are mobilised and allocated as efficiently and equitably as possible. In this, the utilisation of the productive ability of all of our people is of paramount importance. A situation has developed in South Africa where it is evident that a small pinnacle of the population—mainly the White population—will increasingly have to take care of a rapidly increasing unproductive population. At this stage we have a labour force of about 12,7 million of whom some 7,9 million are fully employed in the formal or modern sector, leaving about 4,8 million taken care of by the informal sector.

Between 1988 and the end of the century demographers estimate an increase of about 5 million in the labour force. Although there has in recent months been a welcome reduction in unemployment, South Africa’s greatest problem is that of economic growth where biologically productive people are in a reverse association with those who are economically productive. Recently quoted statistics reveal that at the present time 100 White men have to maintain 77 children whereas 100 Black men maintain 177 children. I do not want to elaborate on the seriousness of this situation except to say it is a problem that must be given priority attention in social and academic education.

The strategies formulated in order to facilitate reform include the establishment and functioning of a soundly established economic order to achieve optimum economic growth and prosperity. This strategy includes regional development by means of RSCs, orderly urbanisation and improved educational services which will ultimately lead to a better distribution of wealth, but not the CP or the ANC way. The key factor it seems is the mobilisation of available manpower, and here the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the SA Housing Trust, industrial development within a regional context, deregulation which can encourage small business, including informal sector housing development, and the like, will all play a major role in the promotion of stability in the labour market.

Notwithstanding the pressures exerted on the economy by the high population growth and the limited room for manoeuvre at present, I think the cautious but sound policies prescribed by the Budget, as are shown to be in action already, can set our economy on the path of prosperity which I am confident will be sustained into the future.

Not every aspect of a budget will ever be acceptable to all, but it is certain that the Margo Commission gave taxpayers every opportunity to provide an input towards real tax reform. As I mentioned earlier, sweeping changes overnight are simply not possible. Members of the Margo Commission, the hon the Minister, the hon the Deputy Ministers and the Department of Finance should be congratulated on the measure of reform and balance achieved so far.

Mr Chairman, it is a pleasure for me to speak after the hon member for Pietermaritzburg South, and I congratulate him on his very sound contribution.

The fact that no monthly increase in social pensions could be granted to senior citizens inevitably had to unleash an emotional storm. It is tragic, however, that this sensitive matter has been turned into a political football.

The principle that the State ought to accept responsibility for indigent members of society was established as far back as 1928. The point of departure, when the system was introduced, was that pensions should only be paid to people who could not care for themselves.

During 1972 the interdepartmental committee on welfare finance adopted certain viewpoints and guidelines in the consideration of social pensions and allowances i.e. that social pensions should be regarded as a supplement to one’s income and was not, in any way, intended to cover all the living expenses of those receiving the pensions, and that the extent of each adjustment should largely be determined with a view to the availability of funds and various humane considerations.

But this is an own-affairs matter.

Surely the hon member for Yeoville will concede that Whites and Coloureds are not the only ones to whom such money is paid.

Do you agree that this is a general affair and not an own affair?

Of course it has a general-affairs component as far as the Black aspect of pensions is concerned.

This principle still applies today, and therefore the hon the Minister of Finance would be acting in an irresponsible way if he were to ignore the availability of funds in the payment of social pensions.

If one looks at the vast extent of the social pension scheme, one can realise why the Government has never been able to link a social pension index to that of the consumer price index. In the RSA there are almost one million social pensioners, of whom 22% are Whites, 26% are Coloureds, 7% are Indians and 45% are Black people. In the self-governing Black states there are a further 400 000. These 1,4 million pensioners receive approximately R2,5 billion per year from the Exchequer.

The one-off bonus of R60, which is to be paid out to pensioners later this month, is going to cost the taxpayer more than R110 million. This amount of R60 is a minimal amount, and we realise only too well that it is the equivalent of only R5 per month. A general increase of 10% in social pensions over the entire spectrum could result in further expenditure of R250 million.

When the declared policy of the narrowing of the pension gap and parity is taken into consideration, hon members will realise how sensitive this matter really is. If every pensioner were to be given an equal increase of R30 per month, that would cost taxpayers a further R500 million.

The payment of equal social pensions to the respective race groups has already become highly politicised and there is increasing pressure for parity in the amounts payable to the respective population groups. The hon the Minister of Finance has also said that if we were to try to achieve parity in the amount, we should also try to bring about parity in regard to the percentages in the specific population groups who qualified for pensions. Unless we did so, there was no way in which this country would be able to afford the kind of pensions the Treasury would be required to pay.

It is estimated that the number of aged persons in South Africa is going to increase drastically. It is expected that the present number of approximately 1,5 million people above the age of 65 will increase to more than 4 million by the year 2020. Those are the realities facing the present-day Government.

It is therefore essential, in the long term, to examine systems whereby senior citizens could be made less dependant on the State and on taxpayers. In the meantime we realise only too well the dilemma in which the hon the Minister has been placed and the fact that it was impossible to afford these people relief in the budget. I want to advocate, however, that if the economic upswing were to persist and the State were to receive more than the projected revenue, this surplus should be used for our senior citizens. I know I am not being rational, but the hon the Minister really must try to do this.

We are grateful for the fact that the majority of White senior citizens are self-supporting. Despite the inadequate systems of the past, they have nevertheless succeeded in making provision for their old age. May I remind hon members that an income or civil pension of R300 per month was quite adequate a few years ago. Now, however, after inflation has taken its toll, it is very difficult to make ends meet on that amount. Financially speaking, inflation is probably an old person’s worst enemy.

In my view the senior citizens who deserve the most sympathy are those who just manage to qualify for social pensions in terms of the means test. One cannot simplistically base one’s arguments about whether means test benefits are justified or not on discrimination. Factors such as the availability of funds, a minimum subsistence level and the extent of the social pension scheme play an important role.

The report of the joint committee under the chairmanship of the hon the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs would have it that the means test could be in conflict with efforts to provide for one’s old age. Those who personally make an effort to provide in part for their old age, could find that that could specifically prejudice them in the sense that they no longer qualify for a social pension. The Meiring Committee highlighted many shortcomings and suggested that a further discussion was necessary to introduce a pensionary dispensation which would provide for satisfactory retirement benefits. In these discussions it is also necessary for employees, and also employers and the State, to be actively involved in the structuring of the new system.

In its investigation into the social, economic and physical implications of ageing, the Committee for Social Affairs of the President’s Council found that an increasing number of people regarded old-age pensions as a right and that there was no adequate appreciation for the standpoint that an old-age pension was not intended to provide for all the needs of those receiving such a pension. There is also a disturbing lack of appreciation for the expenditure in which social pensions involve the taxpayers and the Treasury. The committee also came to the conclusion that a national contributory pension scheme for the Republic of South Africa was essential because it would, amongst other things, relieve the pressure which the payment of social pensions exerted on the Treasury.

The committee therefore recommended that urgent attention be given to developing and introducing a national contributory pension scheme for all South Africans with the primary objective of guaranteeing a minimum pension and also full transferability. This pension scheme should be started on a voluntary basis, but attempts should also be made over the long term, by way of negotiation, to reach agreement on the phasingin of a compulsory pension scheme.

In the short term urgent attention should be given to the preservation and transferability of pensions. It is a crying shame that responsible people who change their jobs are forced to take their valuable retirement funds and spend them as they see fit, and normally they also forgo a portion of the employers’ share of their pensions.

Apart from this, we have other cases of people who specifically resign so as to be able to withdraw their pension benefits for use on luxuries. When they actually have to retire, they have to stand in a post office queue in order to receive a social pension from the State.

The Meiring Report, read in conjunction with the recommendations of the Committee for Social Affairs of the Presidents’ Council and the Margo Commission, makes the constitution of a fully representative committee essential so that this matter can be investigated. It would also be a good thing if organisations such as the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut, Assocom, FCI, the Chamber of Mines and Nafcoc could have a say in this matter.

By tackling the serious problems and shortcomings of our pension industry, such a committee could properly deal with the challenges of the year 2000. We must work towards a dynamic, independent South Africa—the new South Africa of the future.

Mr Chairman, I should like to deal as quickly as possible with a very wide series of questions and matters raised by hon members. The first matter I want to refer to is the fact that the Institutional Investor is not after all a right-wing publication. I checked up with the advisers. There is another right-wing publication which has almost the same name and which is quoted very regularly in CP propaganda. However, the Institutional Investor is not such a publication.

That, however, is where the hon member’s jubilation ought to stop. In that respect he was at least on a more reasonable footing. The fact is, though, that the credit rating referred to by the Institutional Investor has nothing to do with the debt rating which we are discussing. The credit rating referred to by the Institutional Investor is negatively influenced by a lot of subjective things, as I said a moment ago, by their view of our political circumstances, internally and as part of the region, and also the fact that South Africa was forced into an international debt standstill. [Interjections.] After all we know what the background to those events was. Consequently this is not a final condemnation.

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

I shall reply to the question, but I have very little time.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon the Minister whether the same applies to his approach to calculating the inflation rate? Is that also based on a lot of unpredictable variables?

Mr Chairman, that is not how the inflation rate is calculated. The inflation rate is calculated on proven statistics.

I come now to the hon member for Yeoville. I still owe him a reply with reference to his question on amounts which were not consistent. This comes from a debate earlier this year.

It is a complicated matter. I should like to put it in writing for him. One must look at the columns. Basically it is concerned with three terms in budget terminology, namely the appropriations, the issues and the actual expenditures. In the process of balancing out these factors against one another, there are amounts which run over to the next year. The questions he asked me were fair questions, but this is easy to prove. I have the information here, and if I want to take ten minutes of my time, I could try to explain it in order to have it on record in Hansard, but I would prefer to hand it to the hon member. As I said earlier this year, there is really nothing strange about it. It is actually easy if one has the columns with the figures in front of one. In fact, I think there is a compliment in this to us on this side of the Committee, together with the officials, because in this particular case we were out by only R34 million on an amount of expenditure of more than R46 billion. I think that was quite an extraordinary achievement.

†I wish to tell the hon member for Yeoville that I purposely omitted to respond to his reference to reactions in the Press with regard to the envisaged Bill dealing with harmful business practices. I believe the hon the State President will be addressing that issue during his debate in one of the other two Houses, and I therefore purposely refrained from any reference to that particular issue. As the hon member for Pietermaritzburg South said, that particular financial weekly, namely the Financial Mail, will definitely ultimately regard their articles in last week’s edition as most unfortunate, to say the least.

*The hon member for Stellenbosch really made a few extremely interesting statements. What he said was true. The hon members of the Official Opposition are waging a terrible campaign against the NP in this connection. The unequal division of income and wealth is at this moment an extremely explosive situation, as the hon member rightly stated.

The solution is not to divide existing wealth. In a cynical moment I have already heard a person say that he will take it, but only once. He will regenerate his wealth again, but the person who got something for nothing, is definitely going to allow it to slip through his fingers. That is why one must base one’s policy on equal opportunities. However, there will always be inequalities. In a milieu of equal opportunities one will ultimately end up with inequalities. However, as long as the inequalities can be attributed to structural causes and not to inherent achievement causes, it will remain a grievance. That is the difference between our philosophy and that of the hon members on the opposite side. They will not be able to escape the implications of this.

When it comes to a redistribution of income, it is the consensus all over the world that the tax system is an extremely blunt instrument with which to accomplish this. Admittedly all civilised countries—we have also had it for years—have a progressive tax system of which a redistribution of income is an inherent part. However, this is a clumsy basis on which to work. The modern trend is that if one really wants to do something about uplifting people one cannot but bring about a moderate redistribution of income, on the expense side as well. In the long run the problems to which the hon member referred are solved.

In contemporary history—I think this is relatively the case in the world context—there is of course no better or more dramatic example of the redistribution of existing wealth than the policy of separate development adopted by this side of the House. Land is after all the basis of wealth. What did we do? We bought land and gave it back to those people who, historically, had originally occupied that territory. We said to them: “There is the land; now you establish your own administration there.”

Some of those territories have progressed as far as independence. This was a dramatic redistribution of wealth. One cannot get away from that. That is why the policy of the Official Opposition is so nonsensical. Although they adopt a standpoint opposed to redistribution they are, to the superlative degree, in favour of the redistribution of existing wealth in the form of land. [Interjections.] It is of course an easy way out to say that the Blacks must themselves purchase the land on which they are going to be re-settled if it is still White land. That is now part of the dream world in which those hon members are living. [Interjections.]

I want to say a few final words to the hon member for Stellenbosch. If one analyses this question of unequal division, it is a dramatic distortion. I want to emphasise that I am not in any way approaching this from the standpoint that there must be a giving-away process. I am saying that this must be achieved through the redistribution of opportunities, if one wants to call it that; that is to say, equality of opportunities. I think the most important aspect of this question of unequal distribution is not so much what the situation is today, but if there is a prospect that one can progress to a better situation on the ground of merit, one is already defusing so many of the problems surrounding this whole idea.

The hon member correctly stated that the price of combating inflation could be very expensive in the short term. In recent years we have had experience of this. However, a pleasant time comes round again in which one is able to shift one’s focus from the fiscal and monetary policy to the fight against inflation. This is one of those times. Last year the focus was on the stimulation of growth.

The hon member for Delmas is an advocate of integration, but integration in the business sense of the word, namely vertical integration. He adopts the standpoint that the farmer should, by means of his business component, be able to integrate and himself acquire the benefits of the added value from the processing of his products. In principle I have no problems with that. I can agree with him, provided the whole issue of vertical integration in the economy is not taken too far so that monopolistic conditions are created against which the consumer does not have a chance to defend himself because there is an injudicious concentration of power.

He said something to which I do not know where the answer lies. However it is something which can certainly be discussed further to good effect in the debate on agriculture.

There was a time when our exchange rate had reached its lowest point. It is still low, but it is not necessarily bad. The hon member for Pinelands and the hon member Mr Derby-Lewis have still to realise that without a low exchange rate we would have had an extremely hard time on the international export markets, and that this country would literally have been on its knees. I do not know whether the hon member understands that or if he only cares about those who want to go and spend money abroad. It seems to me he does not understand the other side of the matter. Nevertheless I cannot understand, in times in which imported goods are exceptionally expensive and our food must be exceptionally cheap, why food is being imported and that there is a market here for it, so that imports are increasing by 127%. There is something wrong somewhere!

I know of a country that got its agriculture into shape by abolishing all subsidies. It abolished all subsidies and told the farmers that they were now going to farm on merit and cultivate the soil. Within a matter of a few years their food exports increased to such an extent that now they are a danger to many larger countries in the European market.

What country is that?

I shall give the hon member those particulars if he wants them. It is just that it is interesting; I am not saying that we should do the same. However it would be an interesting debate to hear agriculturists debating this matter.

I want to thank the hon the Deputy Minister for his contribution. He referred to the whole question of savings. In reaction to the hon member for Heilbron’s reference to a specific insurance company and its campaign against the Government by way of letters to its policy holders, we must remember that saving does not take place only by taking out policies. Surely there are several other forms of savings. I made a note on the question of estate duty. I find it very ironic that we always hear hon members complaining in this House about estate duty, but now we hear nothing. We have not heard what the benefits of the new system are. One thing is certain, however, the new approach to estate duty is in itself a very significant incentive to personal saving. Savings are not only measured by the amount of money one pays off on policies every month; there are other ways of saving as well, and it is a very naïve view to kick up a fuss now about this story of the policies.

The hon the Deputy Minister referred to the structural distortions which occur in our country as a result of the neutralisation of savings. This is a problem to which drastic attention will have to be given in future, because these benefits that have been given to the insurance companies over the years in the form of tax concessions are perhaps responsible for some distortions which occurred in productive investments, to which the hon the Deputy Minister referred.

I thank the hon member for Newcastle for a very neat elucidation of the extremely important work being done by the Building Norms Committee. The Building Norms Committee of the Treasury is doing excellent work in utilising the taxpayer’s money to the optimum in the construction of buildings.

†I want to refer to the hon member for Pinelands’ repetition of his previous standpoint about MTC or minimum normal tax on companies. One of his main objections against it was the fact that it was retroactive. With great respect I want to remind him—we argued this before—that if we did not make it retroactive, everybody liable for that tax—that includes many companies which have accumulated vast assets and are not in a taxable position—would have manoeuvred their position in such a way that we would not have received anything at all. If that is the reality and one does not apply it retro-actively, why apply it at all? We do so for the purpose of cash flow. I said before that when one is occupied with tax reform one is not dealing with time in terms of years. One actually needs a number of years within which to manoeuvre one’s cash-flow and apply one’s tax reforms in the shortest possible period of time.

There is no way that a Minister of Finance can permanently condemn a certain kind of tax. There is no way that he can say in public that he will never again implement a certain kind of tax. Even next year, when we abolish general sales tax no government in its right mind can commit itself to never implementing such a kind of tax again. One might eventually consider that kind of tax quite the right thing on a regional basis, for instance, to take a purely theoretical standpoint. How can one then possibly make that kind of final statement never to use it again with regard to MTC? It does not make sense.

The hon member is relatively new in this House and he has been making positive contributions, but I want to ask him not to spoil it by making a rather frivolous or silly statement. I do not know which word to use, but I do not mean to be nasty. He made the statement that the Government expenditure is out of control, but that is simply not true. He must therefore not spoil a decent speech to which we would like to listen with that kind of cliché.

*I share the hon member for Heilbron’s problem. I find it a great pity that the specific person to whom he referred is using a highly esteemed platform which was built up with the blood and sweat of the Afrikaners to wage his personal campaigns. He has sufficient platforms to be able to do this within the context where he has an opportunity to persuade his fellow businessmen and fellow economists, and if he does not succeed there, I think it is relatively childish to do so away from the many platforms he already has at his disposal.

[Inaudible.]

The hon member referred to the investment by corporations. By way of comfort I want to say that I shall refer the matter to the Standing Committee on Tax Advise which will be established soon. If the co-operatives are not prepared to pay higher interest, I have no counsel in the meantime, because we cannot solve the problem on the tax side. There are people who save voluntarily and who do not receive more interest on their money than the return on those obligatory investments. I shall refer this to the committee, but we can discuss it further because there is an opportunity for further inputs.

†The hon member Mr Derby-Lewis always comes back for more punishment. The hon member said that our public debt had soared since I became the Minister of Finance. I have a table from the quarterly bulletin of the Reserve Bank in my hand. Deflated in terms of the consumer price index our public debt is as follows. I became Minister of Finance in 1984 and not in 1983 as the hon member said. In 1984, at 1970 values, our public debt was R7,9 billion.

And our tax revenue?

I am not talking about tax. I am talking about the debt that the hon member referred to. Let us not now confuse debt with tax. Let us stick to debt. [Interjections.] The hon member said that public debt had soared during my term of office. In 1984 it was R7,9 billion and in 1987 it was R7,6 billion. That is approximately R300 million less at 1970 values.

So again the hon member is wrong and I repeat my invitation to the hon member that if he would like us to help him do his arithmetic and to understand these tables—I mean it sincerely—we shall do so. Yet, he once again put wrong information on Hansard today.

You are playing with figures.

I am not playing with figures. Here they are. Perhaps the hon member plays with them because he does not understand them, I do not know. [Interjections.]

The hon member said the voters—hon members must listen carefully—paid for the State assets that will now come under consideration for privatisation. That is patently wrong.

In the past.

He said they paid for it in the past, but that is totally wrong. All the taxpayers in South Africa paid for the assets that we have, and that also includes those who did not have voting rights in those early days and those who believe today that they do not have voting rights. All of them paid and therefore the assets do not belong to the Whites or the White voters only. They belong to the people of South Africa who paid for those assets with their tax, however humble that contribution might have been.

That includes taxpayers …

[Inaudible.]

Order! The hon member must restrain himself.

…who paid through customs and excise duties, if they then did not pay through income tax, and I think that deals with the hon member’s point.

I quickly wrote down the hon member’s figures just for the sake of pointing out to him how he handles figures. He said we pay 35 cents for an orange in South Africa while one only pays 59 pence for five oranges in Scotland. Is that more or less correct? I do not have the time to wait for his reply. [Interjections.]

He does not know what he said!

If one applies the exchange rate to 59 pence, one ends up with R2,40, and if one divides that by five, one ends up with more than 40 cents per orange, and in this country it costs 35 cents. [Interjections.] I do not know, Mr Chairman, I do not know! [Interjections.]

The hon member talked about the growth in the number of officials. The other day I indicated to the hon member for Port Elizabeth Central who those officials were—that they were mainly people who were absolutely necessary in the economy, but I do not have the time to refer to that again now.

I thank the hon member for Germiston; he replied effectively.

*I have here a letter which I should like to give the hon member for Gezina. We still have to discuss it, but unfortunately there are so many precedents that will be created in this process that I suggest that we should preferably discuss this specific matter in my office rather than here across the floor of the Committee.

*I also want to reply to the hon member for Port Elizabeth Central. An in-depth investigation was conducted and a comprehensive report is under consideration now. There are many implications in changing the basis of the jewellery industry. We are looking at it. The holding cost of diamonds and gold is one aspect. I can assure the hon member that we are as much in a hurry as he is as far as this matter is concerned. The point is that my hon colleague has already indicated to him that tourists can buy jewellery here without paying ad valorem duty and sales tax. It is therefore very difficult to understand fully the argument that our tax system is preventing that particular issue.

I thank the hon member for Pietermaritzburg South. I do not have the time to respond to him in full.

*I also thank the hon member for Jeppe for his contribution. He touched on a very sensitive matter, and I thank him because he dealt with it in a very responsible way. I can make no promises about the course the income side of the Budget will take, but it is important that we should also look into the healthier financing of the present Budget if it is possible for us. Once again I thank hon members for their contributions.

Votes agreed to.

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.

Mr Chairman, this is most probably one of my last addresses in this Chamber on this side. I have resigned as leader of the DWP as well as as a member of that party. More about that later. [Interjections.]

We are glad to have the hon the Minister of National Education as well as his most senior officials here today. As a member of the Standing Committee on National Education I have had the privilege of working with Dr Roelf Venter since 1984. I must say here today that the manner in which we have worked together as a team in that committee to bring about a specific atmosphere and a situation in education in this country has indeed been commendable.

The hon the Minister and his officials will appreciate the line I am taking today, because when we decided to enter the tricameral system in 1984, one of the promises that we made to the electorate of colour was that we were going to try to remove the disparity and inequalities which existed and still exist in education in South Africa with the help of the hon the Minister and his department and through a policy of negotiation and discussions at the highest level—ie at standing committee level. With the end of the five-year term just about one year ahead, we can say today that despite what has already been achieved, we are nowhere near achieving one of our most important goals, ie to remove those inequalities and disparities in education.

When one reads in the introduction on page 4 of the latest annual report of the Department of National Education of the wide powers in regard to education and educational matters that are given to the hon the Minister in terms of the National Policy for General Education Affairs Act, No 76 of 1984, and when one reflects and realises the vast backlog and shortcomings that still prevail in so-called Coloured education, one must state here and now, without fear of contradiction, that White South Africans still benefit most by the funds, expertise and other means that are at the hon the Minister and his department’s disposal. When one reads through this most informative, wonderful and glossy report handed out to us and of which I have a copy in front of me, one realises that most of the effort put in by the hon the Minister and his department is directed at benefiting the Whites.

The large number of all kinds of advisory councils that one reads about in the annual report, mainly comprises White academics and educationists. I speak under correction, but can surely not accept the fact that from amongst the ranks of our qualified so-called Coloured educationists, teachers and academics there are not more qualified men or women that can be appointed by the hon the Minister on these prestigious bodies. The millions spent on cultural activities by the hon the Minister’s department are once again spent mainly on and in the interests of Whites. This keeps the so-called Coloured people the cultural paupers that they are.

I want to quote paragraph 4.2.11 on page 64 of the annual report, which reads inter alia.

When one looks, however, at the lack of facilities and recreational amenities for people of colour, one concludes that this department is surely benefiting the White sector of the population. In no White area is there a lack of proper recreational facilities. When one looks at the Coloured sector, however, one sees a tremendous lack of recreational facilities and amenities for our people; and it is the lack of these recreational and cultural facilities and opportunities which are not available to our sector of the community, which has resulted in an increase in drunkenness, squalor, drug abuse, gangs and gang warfare in our Coloured sector of the community.

I want to tell the hon the Minister today that despite the refusal of bodies like Sacos and its affiliates, I am sure there are many Coloured athletes and performers who will willingly participate in more open, national cultural activities if they are invited to do so.

When one considers, for a brief moment, the R4 million allocated to “Coloured culture” and to the promotion of so-called Coloured educational programmes aimed at cultural promotion and upliftment, one realises that it is indeed a paltry sum compared to the millions of rands spent by this hon Minister and his department on providing these recreational facilities for Whites. If the Government and this hon Minister are serious in their attempt to raise the quality of life of especially the underprivileged, poorer sectors of our local and rural communities, I feel that greater interest should be focused on the Third World component of our country. The average White communities, in all fields of cultural activities, are streets ahead of us. One need only look at the student exchange programmes—overseas tours, great sporting festivals! Where do we feature? [Interjections.] What is the hon the Minister and his department doing to incorporate and involve the Coloured community as well, for it is in the Coloured community that this kind of involvement and this type of activity is most sadly lacking and most vitally needed. I hope to hear from the hon the Minister today what he intends doing, what programme is in the pipeline to bring about greater involvement of the so-called Coloured people in this sphere.

Mr Chairman, a fairer approach should be taken with regard to the opening of empty White schools and underutilised facilities in order to accommodate pupils who are not White. There are a number of schools and other educational institutions which are standing empty today. I want to quote from the presidential address of the chairperson of Utasa, Mr Franklin Sonn, when he addressed his AGM in October 1987. He spoke about this matter. He said: …

Order! 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 member for Ottery may proceed.

I thank the hon Whip, Mr Chairman.

In closing, I want to quote from the address I referred to. It reads:

This was what a leader in education said when he addressed a national convention of teachers. He stressed the fact that there is a pressing and dire need for more opportunities and facilities for so-called Black and Coloured people, and the hon the Minister has the power to do something about the situation. The hon the Minister must please tell hon members what the Government’s attitude is about keeping these facilities closed when they could so easily be used by people other than Whites.

There are many dissatisfied students and teachers today who feel that the privileged White sector of the community is always getting the best in education. Education is the only way in which people can fundamentally raise the quality of their lives to take up positions as leaders in the running of this country. It is vital, therefore, that all sectors of the community receive the same standard of education. This is still not the case in South Africa. Similar to, or equal to, is not equal. It has been proved in the highest court in America that separate education anywhere in the world, provided on a basis of race separation, is not and will never be equal. This is the dilemma we face in education in this country, and for as long as this continues, we will have a struggle in this country.

*As long as we plod along in a situation where there are different departments of education for the different race groups in South Africa, and set different standards of education, the people out there will be dissatisfied with both the system and the standard of education they are receiving. The hon the Minister and his department must take cognizance of this. It is a fact that the different education systems that exist for the different race groups in this country are not equal or the same. †With this in mind, the struggle will continue. Despite the arguments of the past, separate education structures can neither be defended nor justified. I am not convinced that while this glaring disparity in the per capita expenditure in the various race groups exists, we are in fact receiving the same quality of education. That is the bottom line. We have belaboured this point since 1984. Separate education is not equal, but we will continue to fight for equality. Hon members in this Chamber can talk till they are blue in the face, but out there the struggle prevails. Can we actually blame those pupils for the way in which they are behaving? I am not saying they must boycott or stay away, but they are doing what we as teachers and parents failed to do in the past, and that is to take a stand against this inequality in education which is affecting the very fibre and quality of our lives.

I want to close with the wish that today will be the last time that education in South Africa will be discussed as an own affairs matter. Education must be a general affairs matter, controlled by one Minister. The hon the Minister of National Education is the most suitable man for this job which he has held for a few years. With the department, as well the calibre of men the hon the Minister has at his disposal, I see no need for separate departments and/or Ministers. We should move and work towards that end, viz one department, one Minister, one Ministry and one education standard for all.

Mr Chairman, it is very important for us to do only our best in this debate each year, because it deals with a matter which is very dear to us. In our community there are major differences of opinion in this regard, which lead to many other problems in South African society.

I wish to express my disappointment. Last week our debate dealt with own affairs. We do not hesitate to administer and deal with education in this way in the interests of the education of our children. However, during the debate the opposition continually launched attacks on the own affairs system as far as education was concerned. Today, when it is so essential that they participate in this debate, there is not a single speaker from the opposition on the list of speakers to put forward their case. It seems to me that someone is afraid of the boss! [Interjections.] It seems to me that they have given him an undertaking not to raise certain things here which could upset matters. [Interjections.]

Sir, the matter of education is of the utmost importance to our people. It is also of the utmost importance to the country. It is not really a question of own or general affairs; it is a question of education itself. I want to ask the hon the Minister, if he has time, to go and read a good speech on education. It attests to vision, and is future oriented. I should like to show him a certain section of a speech by our hon Minister of Education and Culture. Sir, as a teacher and a sportsman, as a man who is always prepared to stand up for this country—on any platform in the world or in this country—I want to say that we must address the matter of education now, for I believe that that is where the future of South Africa is going to be decided. That is where the message of reconciliation for the whole of South Africa lies. We cannot but remind the hon the Minister of our policy:

However, we have a party in this House which cannot even spell out that sentence to us, because they have not even mentioned it to one another as yet. [Interjections.]

They are going to take away your passport!

Oh, Gallatjie! [Interjections.]

Sir, I just want to tell the hon member for Tafelberg that I did not come here to get a passport; I have always had a passport. [Interjections.]

Martin Luther King said:

I therefore want to appeal today that we make education future oriented.

We must bring the two aims of education to the level of equality, and that point of departure must be taken further and made future oriented. We will never solve our political problems in this country if we are not prepared to address the causes of those political problems.

That is what it is all about.

Nowadays we are always anxious about problems in our schools because we do not have the mechanisms to solve them alone. The hon the Minister must give South Africa that helping hand into the future. We are not going to succeed in drafting a constitution for South Africa which is going to meet everyone’s expectations, which is going to fulfil everyone’s political dreams, if we do not address the challenges which education has to offer. I have here a quotation of something George Santayana said in 1905:

We must have no illusions about what we envisage for education in South Africa. We must plan now, so that we can achieve our ultimate goal, peace, because education, reconciliation and addressing the problems will bring us to that ultimate goal. Some of our people are caught up politically in own affairs for education. [Interjections.] We believe that the hon the Minister would find more willingness in this country to solve our political problems if he were prepared to be more future oriented as far as education is concerned. I therefore want to come back to my old plea, viz that the department of the hon the Minister must be dynamic in its attempt to do something for our education, and that that department must be dynamic in what it wants to do for the country. The hon the Minister will find the necessary support among those who would like to be on his side in seeking a solution for this country. [Interjections.]

I believe that South Africa could begin with a system of education which could have the approval of the Government, viz parental choice, where the parent decides where the child should go to school, and where the parent can be part of that decision and of the policy which might ensue. We would have very little dissatisfaction if there were more room for parental choice. [Interjections.]

As far as solutions are concerned, we shall have to be prepared to compromise. We shall have to accept that every challenge could lead to agreement. I therefore feel that the Department of National Education should be extended. We must not make it smaller or divide it into compartments. The hon the Minister must extend his department until he has the vision to lead us into the future.

I support what the previous hon speaker had to say. To get to the challenge of equality, we cannot assume that the present formula for the allocation of money to our department is sufficient. The historical background must be taken into consideration when one looks at the backlog in education. Nor do I think we have sufficient time to see whether or not the 10-year plan is successful. I find it a pity to look at the present situation in education and to see that training colleges are standing vacant, but when requests are made to use those colleges, one hears that the Police need the college. Is it of national importance for the Police to have the college when we need it? We want to develop people for the future. The Police want to train people against the reaction. It is an insult that in this time of reconciliation and change, a training college is being given to the Police. We have so many disadvantages in respect of facilities, training and manpower.

Order! 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. How does one defend this in respect of the Government’s policy of cutting down? How does this tally with the request that we all have to make sacrifices and be prepared to take financial problems into account at this time? I hope the decision is going to be revoked so that the Paarl Teachers’ Training College can be granted to Athlone. The teaching community needs it, and if it is given to Athlone, it will be a clear sign that the NP and the Government are in fact pursuing the path of change.

We must give the communities signs that we are reforming. We must give visible signs of this. There must also be visible signs that this House is not merely a place where we talk, but that our needs and proposals are heeded.

I also want to compliment the hon the Minister on his Press statement on 18 April concerning matters relating to the youth. I think that statement was future oriented and that it addressed the problems.

I hope that the Government is not going to launch separate youth campaigns again. The hon the Minister admits that there are many demands on the young people in modern South African society. The hon the Minister also admits that the parents, the State and the Government have a responsibility towards the youth. My appeal is that we should not place the youth in separate compartments outside the schools as well, denying them the opportunity to get to know one another. I want to appeal that while we are attempting to make education equal, we should also strive to get the youth together. The hon the Minister said in his statement: “The youth are the future of our country.” Is that not a wonderful thought! Our responsibility to the youth is to map out a clear future for them. We must not send them into a future which we are politicising unnecessarily. We must not send them into a future which we have defined irrevocably. We should rather help them to achieve a future where they can co-exist in peace, stability and security. Let us begin right now to build such a future for our children. I am sure that if the hon the Minister undertakes such a task, we on this side of the House will support him in word and deed. He can count on us.

Mr Chairman, I want to congratulate the hon the Minister on the positive attitude incorporated in his new policy on education. It is with a positive attitude that we can change education and restore calm to education once again. That is why I place so much emphasis on a positive attitude.

The new dispensation has brought about a change in the method of financing education. At present each education department receives an allocation according to a formula determined by the Department of National Education. That formula is based on the number of pupils the various education departments have to make provision for. That is why the per capita expenditure per child would play a decisive role if an attempt were made to achieve absolute parity in education.

The Whites explain that qualifications are responsible for the differences in the present per capita expenditure among the various population groups.

I assume that that should mean that pupils should suffer no disadvantage other than having a teacher with a poor qualification teaching them. In reality that is not the case. Our pupils are experiencing disadvantages in other respects as well. Apart from the above-mentioned disadvantage, the provision of classroom accommodation has not improved. We are experiencing problems when it comes to proper classroom accommodation. Without that, one cannot create the atmosphere for such equitable education.

Nor is the pupil-teacher ratio showing a downward trend. This also makes me concerned. Some teachers in our schools have classes consisting of 50 pupils. A teacher in that position cannot do justice to his pupils on an individual basis. This induces one to ask whether the lower per capita expenditure can be ascribed only to the differences in the qualifications of our teaching staff.

I want to mention another example. At present the White education departments pay the schools’ basic telephone rental plus 90% of the cost of all calls. In our case, however, it is the reverse: The department pays the basic telephone rental, but no other additional costs. This practice has a detrimental effect on our school funds. In our communities the school fund is a precious possession which is built up with difficulty. We cannot afford to use school funds for official business. We therefore do not see our way clear to having these expenses borne by the school fund.

It is things like this which lead to the question whether disparity will ever be eliminated. I am intensely aware that the Government has committed itself to bringing about parity in education, and I therefore assume that the Government is in earnest about doing so. In the light of the low real growth rate, the Government should concentrate on making better use of school accommodation that is underutilised by White children. I was disappointed in the way in which the Government handled the OKP/WOK affair. It left us—not only me, but also the radical groups at large—sceptical. They are sceptical of the Government’s honesty and sincerity. In these two cases, we had an abundance on the side of the Whites which, in the spirit of the Government’s new approach, should have been given to the other population groups. If it is argued that the historical advantage of White education remains the property of the Whites, irrespective of whether or not they need it, education in this country will never be equal.

It is not only money from a new budget which is a determining factor for equal education, but also the handling and use of the historical assets of education. We must share the historical assets of education equitably. Unfortunately we have built up a backlog in gathering those historical assets.

Black communities are watching the Government’s handling of similar issues critically—critically!—and the Government’s actions must provide the necessary conviction.

Mr Chairman, as a member of this House who serves on the Standing Committee on Education, I must say that the committee has functioned better over the past 12 months. The reason for this is that the hon the Minister and his officials have adopted a more positive attitude than in the first two years in which we were here. I want to ask the hon the Minister and his entire department to continue adopting this attitude, also in respect of certain legislation which still has to be laid upon the Table.

Nevertheless my hon colleagues have spelt out certain things to the hon the Minister. I also told him in the passage this afternoon that he was the big brother of education. [Interjections.] I can tell hon members that I do not go to offices, but to the passages. [Interjections.] We do not drink tea in the passages; we talk there.

Under the present status quo in education, I should like this hon Minister to call in the hon the Minister of Education and Culture when fundamental things are at stake. The hon the Minister has heard my colleagues’ pleas about what happened in Paarl. I also want to appeal to the hon the Minister regarding the buildings standing vacant in other towns, however. Here I want to quote to the hon the Minister what my friend, Alan Paton, had to say about this in Cry, the Beloved Country. He said:

Why can we not be accommodated in those schools? To maintain the status quo. I find that a political connotation is linked to this. It was spelt out in the by-election, viz: “National Party, you are putting Black children side by side with our children!” That bogeyman, I must tell the hon the Minister, must be laid to rest. It must be laid to rest once and for all if we want reform to take place in South Africa. The days of reform with a permit system in high-level education have passed. At present we are marking time. Let us march forward now and show the world at large that reform is taking place at this high level, despite what Terre’Blanche and his followers are shouting. They are history when it comes to reform. If the hon the Minister is man enough to go ahead, however, he could become a prospective candidate for the presidency. [Interjections.]

The next point is that discipline will remain an important factor in education until the world ceases to exist. I want to ask a question here, because I want the hon the Minister to spell something out clearly to the country. Are subsidies a right or a privilege? The activists are building up uncalled-for incitement around this question of subsidies.

On a broad level I see education as being the decisive factor, where we study together—just as we stand together in the factories—to produce men and women for that new dispensation in our society.

I was pleased to hear the hon the Minister saying the other evening that “people’s education” in itself is not wrong. However, I agree with the hon the Minister that if it is used as a springboard for any revolutionary movement, it should be wiped out, and the present education system should be maintained.

Another matter I am concerned about is whether our mother tongue is still the firm driving force in our teaching and education that it was earlier. This indigenous language of ours is being divided up into different compartments in a manner which makes me fear that it could be lost to South Africa. The politicians exploit the language and they certainly do not use it to the benefit of the country as a whole.

My final and most important question to the hon the Minister is how he sees the role of private schools in South Africa. Is it not possibly a concept which could be expanded so as to extend the multiracialism which exists and to bring people together to make something better of our education system after the hon the Minister’s 10-year plan?

Mr Chairman, I should like to thank you for the opportunity to participate in this debate.

It is our task to address problems which affect the welfare of South Africa and its people. There are no sacred cows in this Parliament, and no sacred cow is exempt from investigation and criticism. In politics everything is relevant. Under the National Education Vote we look in particular at the actions of the hon the Minister as regards our universities, the policy on education, the promotion of recreational and cultural facilities, as well as the planning of scientific development. In this regard I should like to comment on our universities with reference to discipline, subsidies, overseas funding and education projects.

As far as subsidies are concerned, we were interested spectators in the dispute about subsidies. The public at large has taken note of the hon the Minister’s standpoint, as well as that of the rectors of the various universities. We are aware of the action taken by universities concerning the maintenance of discipline on their campuses. We have seen a new trend in this sphere this year, and I am pleased to say that things are going well. I am aware of certain precautionary measures that are being taken at universities to restore discipline on the campuses. I should like the hon the Minister and the rectors of the respective universities to come to an agreement regarding the question of subsidies. We as politicians need the brain power and research of the universities. We want to pass better legislation.

We can achieve this if good research is done in the sphere of justice and in the law faculties. There are many conflicting views in the sphere of education. The hon the Minister is aware of this.

There is the question of overseas funding. A question which we must consider, is how we can renew our syllabuses and bring them up to date with those in the rest of the world. This can only be done effectively if effective research is done. Today I request that the hon the Minister urgently encourage and promote overseas funding and private initiative regarding the improvement of opportunities in education. He must not see sinister motives when funds are offered to assist students in South Africa who have been at a disadvantage and have been discriminated against—those students who have been robbed of opportunities for decades. We do not receive sufficient financial assistance from private enterprise. We should like to make progress in this regard, and retain what we do get.

As far as the problems in respect of educational issues are concerned, we must give as much attention as possible to certain spheres in our country and our neighbouring states where there is a need. I am thinking of agriculture, medicine and education. We have a need for trained manpower. Parliamentarians and researchers must therefore co-operate very closely.

The admission and control of university students rests with the university council. An open university must maintain and extend freedom and justice. Its judgement and decisions must be based purely on academic considerations. Only the university must determine who will be taught, who will teach, what will be taught and how it will be taught. In all of this the interests of the Republic of South Africa and its neighbouring states must be taken into account. I want to reiterate, Sir, that admission to a university is the prerogative of the university council.

Over the past 10 years, most South African universities have opened their doors to students of other population groups. However, the Black students are at a disadvantage in the sphere of education as far as accommodation and transport to and from the residential areas are concerned. Because of the Black students’ history of poverty, the private sector has to provide financial assistance to enable them to find their place in the university environment. Special preparation classes have been presented inter alia for educationally neglected students. Accommodation had to be found, and students had to be transported between the universities and their homes in the distant residential areas. These problems had to receive attention.

Programmes for the upgrading of the qualifications of Black teachers also had to be launched. By way of a programme known as “Outreach to the Community” the universities launched informal programmes aimed at adults in urban and rural areas, to teach people various skills—sometimes even to read and write.

“Learn and teach” has become the watchword. Most progressive universities are in favour of academic support programmes. This can continue only if there is financial support from private undertakings such as Mobil, the Ford Foundation, the Anglo American and De Beers Chairman’s Fund and the Genesis Foundation. These programmes are presented free of charge. This emphasises the value of the funds we receive from private enterprise and overseas sources. It is clear that unfortunately these programmes cannot be covered by the normal Government subsidy. I should appreciate it if the hon the Minister would accommodate this House and its opinion by setting aside differences, and encouraging the benefits of these funds from the private sector and overseas sources.

Mr Chairman, it is truly an honour and a privilege to take part in this relevant and important debate this afternoon. The hon member for Grassy Park said there were no sacred cows in Parliament.

We slaughter them here.

Like the hon member, I believe that it is our democratic right to address every aspect that affects the community. I also believe that certain institutions should be able to accept criticism of the way in which they want to implement their plans, and that they should not accept certain things as being sacred cows. What is good for one can be just as good for another, and we cannot make fish of the one and flesh of the other.

I should like to concentrate on certain things which are of cardinal importance in the Vote of the hon the Minister of National Education. The most important aspect that I want to talk about today is education, and that is why I am very sorry that the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition is not present today. He is really conspicuous by his absence. When I bumped into him in the passage on Thursday, I asked him please to be present today. I asked him to make sure that he would be here, to make sure that he would not be indisposed, because we had to talk. I told him that we needed to discuss a matter that affects our people.

I should like to talk about “people’s education”. The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition launched a heated attack on me the other day because I ostensibly wanted to sweep people’s education aside. He was not listening well enough. Of all the talents the Almighty gave me, he gave me one exceptional talent, viz my voice. This voice has such charm, particularly when it comes to the Official Opposition, that they become so engrossed in listening to the roar of the lion’s voice that they forget to listen to what it is saying. [Interjections.] I hope the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition will go and read in Hansard what I am saying here today. [Interjections.] He referred to certain institutions the other day. He told me to go and read certain things, which I did, and I took thorough cognisance of these things. I did not act in opposition to the wishes of the leader of my party at all. The only thing I said was that certain aspects of people’s education made it unacceptable to us.

There are other things in people’s education which are acceptable to us, however. The involvement of the parents in the school is a very important thing, for example, which we cannot deny. The parents’ involvement in the school is of exceptional importance. We also talk about the desirability of an alternative education system. South Africa needs an education system—one that is not based on discrimination that is modelled in terms of race, colour and culture. We want one education system in South Africa—this has been said by my hon leader on so many occasions and from so many platforms—which is free of any discrimination. We want one education system with only one Minister of Education who will take care of the education of the South African people as a whole, because a people is a nation that shares everything. I regard the people of South Africa as those who live on South African soil. We must not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity and racial and cultural differences. They will always exist. We are talking about the interests of the people. I should like to tell the hon gentleman that we in the LP reject these things. We reject any differences in education which are based on discrimination.

†Mr Chairman, the LP of South Africa believe that we cannot discuss education in isolation from the rest of society. The LP believe that we cannot discuss education outside the socio-political setup we have in South Africa today. The LP of South Africa have always agitated for one system of education and we believe that that is the answer to the problem we have in South Africa today.

*I should like to come back to the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition. I must be honest and say that I used to idealise him. I always had such a good impression of him, but during the past year I have been terribly disappointed in the poor man. I discovered this year that this hon leader has feet of clay.

Let us come back to what I said in the own affairs debate. I should like to talk about the education system the LP would like to have in South Africa. We do not believe that any other curriculum and monetary allocation based on ethnicity, racial differences and cultural differences should be enforced upon our people. In brief—I repeat this—we believe in one education system for everyone in South Africa with only one Minister to control the education of everyone in the country, irrespective of race, colour, culture or ethnicity. We do not believe that the present system of education, the status quo, complies with the expectations, the desires and the endeavours of our time, our people and the South African people in the post-apartheid era.

That is why—as I have said—the hon the leader of the LP has emphasised the policy of one system of education at every possible opportunity he has had at his congresses. I want to emphasise this for that reason. As early as 1977, at the CPTA congress in Port Elizabeth, our hon leader drew the attention of those attending the congress to an alternative system of education, and pointed out that the curriculum should be reconsidered, especially with reference to history.

Let me spell this out calmly and with the greatest tolerance, to the hon member in his absence. I welcome certain aspects, such as the involvement of the parents with the school, for example, and the desirability of an alternative system of education which will comply with the general expectations of all the communities of South Africa, the desirability of reviewing the history curriculum in particular, to remove from it the barb of racism and poor human relations, and the urgency of placing education under the control of one Minister. I can also talk about a few good qualities in respect of the present education system, however.

I should like to talk to the hon the Minister today about the audiences he gives members of the CPTA and particularly Mr Sonn and his delegations. I assume the hon the Minister is not aware that there is a kind of cold war between our department and the CPTA.

Who is responsible for that?

It is a pity that the hon the Minister speaks to these people without consulting our hon Minister.

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

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

I thank the hon Whip. This merely proves how we Free Staters take care of one another here. [Interjections.]

This tricameral system was established by the NP. The success of this institution depends on how the Ministers deal with matters. Those people have a negative image of the tricameral system and do not hesitate to make that known. Convention has taught me that I have to work through certain channels. If those people want to speak to the hon the Minister, the hon the Minister in this House should be consulted when it is a matter of the education of Coloured pupils. Apparently the hon the Minister’s door is always open to these gentlemen. I am not opposed to his speaking to them; I am merely asking him to consult our hon Minister in that regard. Then he will also know what we are talking about. Convention requires our hon Minister to be consulted when those people visit the hon the Minister.

I said that people’s education had certain good qualities. There are certain things that go against the grain in the case of any peace-loving person, however. One of these is that children are given equal status to that of their parents. I believe, and I said so the other day, that a child is a child. In my days children were seen and not heard. Another thing I have against people’s education is that the people who had to proclaim the message of peace and reconciliation at the meeting at the University of the Witwatersrand said among other things:

The child of the gentleman who said this is in a private school, and has not been affected by the disruption of school activities at all. [Interjections.] I am opposed to people’s education because the same gentleman also said the following on the same occasion:

The school has to be used, therefore, to train the children to undermine the authority of the teachers and the State.

This compels me to ask, with all due respect, why children are being used to enforce change in the country. Sir, why is my child being used as cannon fodder, whereas his child is in a private school?

I want to tell the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition that not only did I read the books he spoke about, but I took thorough cognisance of the desires and prayers of our people. I believe that the answer to the South African problem does not reside only in constitutional reform, but rather in the reform of our education so that when we enter the post-apartheid era, we can say that we have corrected what was wrong and that we are prepared to accept the challenges of the future.

Mr Chairman, it is not often that I do, but today I have to agree completely with the editor of the Eastern Province Herald who, in a leader article in the issue of 3 March 1988, describes it as shocking that Port Elizabeth and East London are paying the lion’s share of contributions by local authorities towards the cost of running Capab—between them, these two towns are contributing 87,22%.

For the benefit and information of hon members who do not serve on the standing committee, I will explain in real financial terms. It means that of the contributions in the Cape Province, which amounted to R60 985, the Port Elizabeth Municipality had given R40 000 for the 1987-88 financial year and the East London Municipality R13 200. Between these two municipalities an amount of R53 200 was donated, while the rest of the 248 authorities in the province contributed a total of only R7 785. Of this the Cape Peninsula, with its 12 municipalities and one divisional council, contributed only R2 258—which is R10 942 less than East London!

This paints a very sombre picture and is certainly an indictment on the Whites of the Cape who are once again enjoying the privileges of civilization without paying for it. They are hogging it all, and in some cases keeping people of colour out by reserving certain amenities for Whites. The tragedy of South African society is the selfishness of its members.

To come back to the actual sombre picture, the 13 authorities of the Cape Peninsula contribute an average of R173,69 per year towards Capab. We must remember that this is the immediate area in which Capab operates. It is apparent too that the Cape Town public are getting the benefit of the Nico Malan Theatre without contributions from their City Council. If they are going to use the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra as an excuse, they had better start sharing their orchestra with us. I cannot help repeating myself, but I maintain that the people of Cape Town have been spoilt by successive White governments and it is about time that someone told them that.

Of this somebody in Grahamstown wrote:

Now, Mr Chairman, the writer offers his solution. I quote further:

Here I must say that Mr Jackson is right. These people are being given the best at all times. Everybody in South Africa seems to want to kowtow to the Capetonians. [Interjections.]

I have had the privilege of attending a number of Capab and other shows in the newly renovated Opera House in Port Elizabeth. I can assure hon members that they will have to travel far to experience more educated and appreciative audiences than those found in Port Liza. Shows are well attended, and professionalism oozes from the performers as well as the staff.

“Dit sal die blêrrie dag wies.” [Interjections.]

That is one of the shows we cannot get to stage there, because Capab performs it in Cape Town.

Although this venue—the Opera House—is open to all, it is a pity that it is so far removed from the people living in the northern areas of Port Elizabeth. I feel it is about time that serious thought was given, firstly by the City Council of Port Elizabeth, and secondly by the State, to the erection of the oft requested civic pavilion on the site reserved for it off the N2. This facility would include not only a little theatre, but also a school of arts like that in the “Fame” series. Those of us who saw “Fame” will know what I am talking about.

As the performing arts councils are responsible, according to the articles of each council, for bringing the performing arts to the communities in their various areas, it would be appreciated if the hon the Minister, as the one who determines national policy, would have ways and means investigated of getting the performing arts to where the people are. You know, Mr Chairman, at this moment “District Six—the Musical” is being performed in the Opera House in Port Elizabeth; but the Opera House is far away from the people. One finds that the people who are performing on the stage, the people who are giving it to us, are not in the theatre audience because of the distance of the Opera House from where the people are. It is about time that the children, especially those of colour, were properly introduced, and initiated, and encouraged in the appreciation of the performing arts of the Capab type.

It is hoped that when the Administrators, who are responsible for the allocation of funds, consider such allocation to the councils in their provinces, they will take cognisance of the struggling performing groups in Black society.

In Port Elizabeth we have the Toynbee clubs with their ballet groups, as well as diverse drama groups, all struggling to keep head above water. These ballet groups are excelling in competitions and performances and our students often obtain gold medals for their efforts. It is, therefore, a pity that such performers have to be hog-tied by a lack of finance. They do receive a subsidy from own affairs, but this is all taken up by salaries for staff members. The ideal would be for these groups to be viable, but unfortunately they are caught up in a no-win situation. They need a lot of money to stage successful shows to raise a lot of money. Lack of finances, however, prevents them from taking the initial step and presenting their wares to ardent art followers. They can, therefore, never win and consequently money from that area is not forthcoming. The hon the Minister must please provide.

All is not lost, however, for the guidelines for a national policy in respect of the performing arts are very clear on that score. They state, and I quote:

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

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

I thank the hon Whip, Sir, and I shall complete my speech. The Toynbee clubs are representatives of all groups of ballet dancers in Port Elizabeth. I quote further:

Sir, is it not possible—on these specific grounds—to give assistance to the performing art groups in the northern areas of Port Elizabeth?

Mr Chairman, it is always a pleasure to speak after the former teachers, since I am not a teacher myself. I listened to everything they said, and they all spoke so well. I hope I shall be able to match them. I see that hon members are exceptionally calm today. I hope the hon the Minister will reply to hon members in the same way, just as calmly.

I become very upset when I think about our children who boycott their classes and throw stones. I want to begin by referring to an incident that took place in 1976.

That year our children did not boycott their classes or throw stones. They stood together and got their parents together in halls to put their case there and to talk about their grievances and dissatisfaction and the things that they had to suffer, as their parents had to suffer before them, because of their colour. I was one of the first people in Ravensmead to pay for a hall so that the children could put their case. I believe that one should put one’s case on a platform, rather than to throw stones or to boycott. That is why I supported them, and why I paid for the hall at the time.

The Government has known me for many years, and there is nothing about me that they do not know. They came to listen to all my speeches even then, because they were constantly sending people after me to listen to what I was saying. When I got the children together to try to find out what their grievances were and why they were dissatisfied, the Security Police were set upon me. I always treated these people very courteously, however. If they were waiting for me at the wrong place, I would go and fetch them and bring them to the correct place to hear what the children had to say. Because our children were merely talking, however, and putting their case in a decent way, the Government did not pay any attention to what they were saying.

They thought the children were merely talking, and what did they know, after all? Sir, because their parents suffered so, however—I am one of them—the children realised that things could not go on in this way. They did not want to hear about their colour every time. They asked us why they could not go to school with the Whites. Were they leprous? Were they ugly, or inhuman? Those were the questions the children put to us.

If the present rulers were Black today, and we were the Whites in the governing position, who treated them as we were treated, I wonder how they would have felt. I wonder how they would have felt if they were talking about their people’s affairs in this House today. Surely they would have reacted just as we are reacting today, because they would have been dissatisfied at having their colour pointed out to them every day. They would have been dissatisfied because we were keeping them out of the schools, whereas they also had a right to be there. Would they not have been dissatisfied? Definitely, Sir.

That is why we are so dissatisfied. It is the fault of the Government that our children are carrying on so today. If the Government had heeded what they said and had made changes in 1976, our children would not have carried on so today. Hon members must not think I condone their boycotts. I completely opposed to them. They must not think I am pleased because children are throwing stones today. No, I am opposed to that.

Another thing I am opposed to, however, is the fact that my children were not heeded when they got up and spoke—as I am speaking here today! Here we also talk until we are blue in the face, but not much attention is paid to what we say.

That’s right, Oom Hansie! Tell them!

I now ask the hon the Minister—other hon members addressed the same request to him—to open up the schools or to provide more paying schools. [Interjections.] I do not want to sound unnecessarily reproachful, but I say today that it is pride that has caused apartheid. Whether the people want to know this or not, pride causes apartheid. [Interjections.] God made people in his image. Our people caused separation. I want to issue a warning: When one day in the hereafter we appear before the judgement seat, the seat on which judges who have been appointed over all earthly judges sit, we shall have to justify our actions. We shall have explain what we did with God’s creations.

I hope that these harsh words, which come from the bottom of my heart—I am talking for my people—make an impression on the hon the Minister, so that the Government will pay attention to the request that my people should receive equal treatment. There must not be separate treatment. That is why the country is experiencing such a financial crisis. There are too many separate facilities which cost money, Sir. The Government does not want to know about these things, but this is the truth.

I am not a mathematical expert or a teacher, but if I can talk about these things on the most basic level, surely my children, who are well educated, can do so to a much greater extent. I think it is time that our country was saved. We must really carry on with reform and do the right things. We must stop hurting people who are of a different colour. I hope the hon the Minister is going to listen to these harsh words of mine today. They come from the bottom of my heart—for my people! We must make sure that we do not reach on abyss and ask in vain, “Father Abraham, pour some water on my tongue!”

I want the hon the Minister to listen. Every time I talk in this way, I say that I do not hate anyone. I love everyone, because that is my Christian duty, but because my people have suffered so much, I could not but appeal from the bottom of my heart today to the hon the Minister to change these things so that we can save our country.

We must not allow our country to take the same course as Rhodesia. This is our country. It is a good and fine country, and the people who live here are good people. I hope we shall see eye to eye shortly. We must not delay matters any longer. There must not be a war here, as in South West Africa.

I do not like war and murder; I do not like stone-throwing or shooting at my children, but what can I do about this? [Interjections.]

Order! The hon member for Border must contain himself. The hon member may proceed.

What can I do if these things take place because the Government did not listen to my children when they wanted to speak their minds? Surely we cannot always talk; our voters are going to take us out of this House, and then we shall not be able to speak our minds. We came here to seek solutions. Some hon members suggest solutions, but no attention is paid to this. The leader of our party has been locked up because he spoke to the children. They became angry then, and said we were negotiating with the children to tell them that things had to be done in a specific way. The hon the Minister must not think I am angry because I have become a little emotional; not at all. [Interjections.] I am very cheerful and the hon the Minister must not reply to me in the same vein, because he is a calm man. [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, when one listens to the hon member for Ravensmead, it is quite clear that education really is a contentious issue. However, it is justified, and I believe that the hon member has more than enough reason for expressing his feelings in such a dramatic way.

I have been listening to the education debate since Wednesday last week, but there is one great flaw in the debate. I should appreciate it if hon members would give me the opportunity to pay tribute to the former member for Natal Mid-East, Mr Maurice Lewis. [Interjections.] Of course Mr Lewis was a man who commanded our respect, in his quiet way. He was a true gentleman; a man with deep insight into education who was always prepared to negotiate nothing but the best possible deal for education. Therefore I want to tell hon members of this House that we have lost a great man. [Interjections.]

I also want to link up with what the hon member for Southern Free State said. He spoke about the question of “people’s education”, and he also mentioned that one could not separate education and politics. I want to agree with him, and I also want to refer briefly to sport and point out that sport and politics are inextricably intertwined.

The former American president, John Kennedy, said on occasion: “A child miseducated is a child lost.” I want to refer briefly to this in my argument because I believe firmly that true education—I am speaking here about education in the true sense of the word—is the most important commodity in life today. Lack of knowledge can lead to the downfall of an individual or even of a nation. The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, once said: "The fate of empires depends on the education of youth.” In South Africa at present there is a growing degree of consensus that the future of our country is wholly dependent on national education, national public education. Our teachers are engaged in a struggle, however, and if one were to visit any one of our secondary schools in the Peninsula today, it would look more like a crisis clinic than an educational institution. Our schools are caught up in the unending ebb and flow of a tide. These schools, as the hon member for Ravensmead has rightly said, are an extension of an aggrieved and embittered community striving for equality and freedom. When I refer to the struggle for equality and freedom, I am referring in particular to the inequality in education and the great lack of educational opportunities, while freedom relates primarily to the restricted educational opportunities.

Let me mention a few examples. There is an estimated shortage of 193 575 places in Black schools, whereas there are 153 637 vacancies in White schools. At present the pupil-teacher ratio in White schools is 18,7:1, while in Coloured schools the ratio is 25,4:1 and in Black schools 41,2:1. This is an intolerable situation. I may also mention that at present, according to an HSRC report of 1986, there is a shortage of 100 000 Black teachers, whereas there is an oversupply of White teachers. I could continue to enumerate these aspects, but it would serve no purpose. I do, however, wish to ask the hon the Minister how he is going to finance the 10-year plan for educational development at a time when money is in such short supply. [Interjections.]

In South Africa we are engaged in economic reconstruction, and I cannot understand how we can continue with this economic reconstruction if we keep on spouting our own ideology. I am mentioning that because I want to know whether the hon the Minister would support new schools, additional classrooms, new colleges, etc, especially for Coloured and Black students, while there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of vacancies in White schools.

Let me mention here that the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council in the House of Representatives announced last week that three new colleges were to be erected in Worcester, Kuils River and Upington at a cost of R33,9 million, R34,6 million and R25 million respectively. It is incredible that the Government is actually going to build a brand-new college to the value of R34 million at Worcester while the college in Paarl is empty and has been closed down. In spite of the request from our Ministers’ Council for the college to be given to our students, it was decided, with great fanfare, to hand over the college to the Police. It is clear that the Government’s priority is polarisation in order to forcibly prop up the semi-democratic Government. This view is strengthened by a report by a certain Miss Vanessa Gayden, a researcher at the SA Institute for Race Relations, which indicated that the State would save R40 million if Black student teachers were allowed to occupy vacancies in White colleges. Under the competent leadership of the hon the Minister of Education and Training, the Government did in fact decide, a year or two ago, that we should move away from the Verwoerdian system of education of which the main aim was to make the Black child realise that he was not equal to a White child. Dr Gerrit Viljoen also set himself the goal of achieving a pupil-teacher ratio of 30:1.

In order to attain this goal, it is of paramount importance that 11 150 Black teachers be trained annually to reach a total of 313 000 in the year 2000. Unfortunately only 8 400 Black teachers qualify annually, which eventually increases the backlog. I can mention that the hon the Minister of Education and Culture himself admitted in the House of Assembly that there was a total of 2 841 vacancies in his 17 White colleges of education at present. On the other hand, Black colleges of education are bursting at the seams, and a quarter of the students who apply for enrolment at a college could be trained at these colleges.

What is so sad is that the Department of Education and Training has budgeted R73,3 million for the erection of new buildings by the year 1992. Some 9 000 new student-teachers would then be able to register. If Black students were allowed to go to White colleges, however, as much as R40 million could be saved. That R40 million could be used for other purposes! It could be used for furniture, for the purchase of exercise books and of textbooks. I see no reason why White and Black students cannot study at the same college, because they are supposed to follow the same syllabus, are they not? Then the Black teacher could, as required by the present Government, go and teach at a Black school, while his White counterpart would teach at a White school. However, let them be trained together.

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.

Mr Chairman, I thank the hon Whip.

Now we have a golden opportunity to discredit the myth of so-called “gutter education” by giving Black student teachers the opportunity to compete with White students in the classroom and to prove themselves either equal or superior. South Africa is in a period of transition, and therefore we must start to consider these aspects. Consequently I believe that our system of education ought to be re-evaluated in depth. We need a new system of education with a system of values applicable at all times and under all circumstances to all persons in South Africa. We need a system that will give answers to burning questions such as: Who are we, why are we here, what is our purpose in life, what is our duty to our fellow man, how must we live in order to achieve harmony amongst various people, how can we ensure world peace, how should we harness mineral and other natural resources and how can we obtain information and apply it? The hon member for Ravensmead is right when he says that we must not only teach children things they do not know. We should really teach our children to conduct themselves as they ought to.

Speaking of a different system of education, let me mention that a century ago the Afrikaner resisted a system of education that he regarded as foreign to his people. That is how Christian national education originated. I could go into it, but time does not allow me to do so. At the moment the fad amongst Black educationists is the so-called “people’s education”. I do not wish to go into that in detail—the hon member for Southern Free State has already done so—but allow me to mention that I have a positive attitude towards “people’s education”, as I understand it. Therefore I agree wholeheartedly with someone like Vuse Kanile of the National Education Crisis Committee who is at present in detention—heaven knows why—and who described “people’s education” as follows:

I also vote for that. I am also interested in that. We are thinking here about a system of education that will give recognition to the individual and will manifest greater objectivity in subjects such as history.

Now I want to touch on the subject of sport. I am a great sport-lover and I am one of those who is sad that South Africa is so isolated from international sport. However, we ourselves are to blame for that. Our sportsmen suffer because we cannot get our internal reform under way. Personally, I, sympathise with Zola Budd over in Britain.

I am one of those who is unhappy because the Springbok rugby team could not take part in the World Cup series in Australia and New Zealand last year. I was just as unhappy as the hon member for Mamre was when the Australian rugby tour was called off. I am a great boxing enthusiast and I am unhappy because our boxers no longer appear in the world rankings of the World Boxing Association. I sympathise with Brian Mitchell because he almost missed the opportunity of defending his title in Spain. A Spanish tennis team withdrew from the Standard Bank Cup Tournament last year as a result of the pressure that the Spanish government applied on them. I could continue in this vein.

Sir, we must get our internal policy in order. We must give recognition to every person in South Africa. We will not stop isolation in sport by buying sporting tours and sportsmen from overseas. For this reason I want to put the following questions to the hon the Minister. What income tax rebate is allowed, and to what companies, in respect of (i) the Australian cricket teams which visited South Africa for two seasons; (ii) the visit of the South Sea Barbarians; (iii) the Philips Tray Super-Bike Grand Prix held at Welkom and at Kyalami; and (iv) the various golf tournaments in the Sunshine series?

Lastly I should like to address the question of President’s awards. I welcome the decision that awards should be made to our sportsmen in South Africa. Last year I joined with Brian Mitchell in rejoicing when he received his award. But, Sir, these are awards on an international level. What happens to sportsmen in South Africa who do not have the opportunity to compete on an international level? Wil! they never be considered for these sought-after awards? In this connection I mention the names of Zitholele Sinkwe who set a world record in the marathon championships in East London; Matthews Timane, an athlete from my part of the world, who set a world record in the half-marathon. I am thinking of someone like Johan Fourie who set world times in the 500 metres and is practically lost to South Africa at the moment because he has gone to seek his means of livelihood overseas. I am also thinking of outstanding athletes such as Deidre du Plessis, Charmaine Gale, Ina van Rensburg, Myrtle Simpson-Bothma and the plucky Coloured girl, Winkler, from Eersterus.

The hon Minister must consider making Presidential awards to our top sportsmen this year. I think we would then be capable of greater sporting achievements.

Mr Chairman, may I express my hearty thanks at the outset to hon members who participated in the debate for their contributions. The debate was conducted on a very high level. The hon member for Ravensmead was concerned that I would take offence because he was so emotional, but I include him when I say that I found it an illuminating debate in which very important speeches were made and hon members illustrated the crux of the problems to a great extent.

I shall attempt to reply to most of the important points which hon member raised and shall return later to the pedagogic part of the hon member Mr Douws’s speech. Because he was the last speaker, however, what he said about sport is fresh in my mind and I shall therefore react to that first.

Permit me, Mr Chairman, firstly to associate myself wholeheartedly with the tribute the hon member Mr Douw paid to Mr Lewis who took a leading role in the Standing Committee on National Education and in educational affairs for a long time and was the chief spokesman in this House when my Vote was discussed here. I join in the hon member’s tribute and I miss Mr Lewis too. He was a refined person who always put his case with great sincerity and conviction and love for our young people.

The hon member put questions on sports awards. We are making the sports awards exactly as he requests. One need not boast of international achievements, like Brian Mitchell, to be considered for the hon the State President’s highest sports award. We also look at achievements of international standard and we gauge those achievements—because one has information on record times in athletics, etc—and that is why we made awards in the past, and shall now, when the names are announced in the coming round of awards, make these awards to people whose achievements are of world standard, even if they did not attain them overseas or against international competitors. Consequently those sports-people receive full recognition for their achievements.

The hon member is very idealistic if he thinks that what we are doing here, also as regards reform, will make a fundamental difference to the international community in the sports onslaught against us. There was a time when they made certain demands and every sports organisation in this country complied fully with the requirements set. There is an ambiguity in the onslaught against South Africa. Those people, from Western countries too, do not support communism; they supposedly despise communism. Is this ever used as a reason, however, for not competing against Russia? They despise a dictatorship, but is this ever used when they play and compete against countries in which entire communities have been annihilated? No, Sir, the causes and the reasons for the persecution of South Africa lie far deeper, and we can discuss them at length in an open debate. These causes and reasons lie in the fallacy which has been created in the world about what South Africa really is. We are struggling and hon members are struggling with me to maintain the actual, fundamental movement toward a new dispensation here in South Africa. We may differ on the precise methods but surely we do not differ in the realisation that there is a movement in this country and that there is a sincerity in our search for a dispensation which will be fair to all. We are struggling, however—and hon members must help us to publish this message abroad—with the solution. There are no instant solutions to our problems. There is no instant solution to this problem of sports isolation either. The very best we can do in the sporting sphere is not to prescribe. The Government does not prescribe; we have withdrawn entirely from sport. They do what they like but our young people and our top athletes and our top rugby players and our other top sportsmen’s and sportswomen’s achievements of world standard will have to uphold the name of South Africa in the sporting sphere.

Here we have to find ways and means, while we are fighting isolation, to make it possible for our sportsmen and sportswomen and also our boys and girls to encourage them to develop their potential to the full in their sport and to be able to fulfil their expectations and to rise to heights of which we know they are capable. We should like to see promotion of sport within that framework and we also want to see our national organisations continuing their fight against isolation. We shall attempt, without interfering, to provide them with aid; and if we can succeed in establishing this dispensation, if we can succeed in breaking down erroneous perceptions on the one hand and in rectifying matters in this country which still have to be rectified on the other, we may ultimately see the light at the end of the tunnel. The hon member is idealistic, however, if he thinks that I or the hon the State President or whoever can bring about change, no matter what kind of speech we make. There are people who do not want to see reform in this country; they want the country.

That is the crux of the matter, Sir. It is those people who are behind this sports situation to a great extent. It is certainly not our friends in the West who vote us out of international federations and so on when it comes to sport.

This comes chiefly from the Eastern Bloc countries. It is not England or France who say they will not participate in the Olympic Games. This comes from other places, from places which are not, like our friends in the free world, interested in our reform action, but which have other objectives for South Africa. We should not allow ourselves to be misled by thinking that there is a short cut, because there is another struggle in progress and it is in this struggle that we have to agree, even if we sometimes differ on many aspects.

Mr Chairman, I want to ask the hon the Minister whether he does not think the attitude of the world outside is specifically the result of the fact that the majority of South Africans are excluded from our political dispensation?

Sir, that is the reason which has been put forward for the past two years. Why was that reason not put forward 10 years ago? Then they did not say, “There can be no normal sport in an abnormal society.” Then they said that all they asked of us was to choose our sportsmen on merit and to abolish segregated sport. If hon members rise in this House tomorrow to say they are happy with the constitutional dispensation, do hon members really think that onslaught will cease? The reply is no, it will not cease. There is another struggle in progress, and that is the point I should like to make. That is the struggle we have to perceive. We must join hands to fight that battle while we try to see eye to eye here in order to reach a negotiated and agreed understanding on exactly how we want to shape the future.

†The hon member for Ottery said that in a certain sense his speech was also his swan song. I do not want to become involved in the hon member’s future, but I am sure that he will still be in this Chamber, that we will therefore have the privilege of listening to him, and that he will have the opportunity to participate in future debates. The speech of the hon member leads me to start off with a somewhat broad framework about certain goals which we have in this department with regard to pre-tertiary education. The hon member said we were far from the removal of inequality and disparity, and in a certain sense that statement is correct. In another sense, however, it is not quite correct, because vast strides have been made towards the eradication of certain underlying problems which haunted the community represented in this House.

*At present the significance of this may not be very clear but, since the introduction of this new dispensation, we have made numerous efforts to bring about the institution of one education system for the whole of the RSA. We must not confuse systems and departments, however. We are ahead of America and West Germany in that, as regards specific important and fundamental aspects of education in terms of the development of a uniform policy, we are involved specifically in bridging many of the problems which are raised. We are laying the foundation which will ultimately make it possible to overcome those problems.

What about separate examination papers?

Sir, hon members know very well that we have one certification council and that as regards the setting of curricula—I shall address a few of these matters later—we are working on better co-ordination and a uniform policy as regards certain basic content. In a debate in which I as the Minister responsible for general policy have to give an account, I want to put a few basic questions to hon members before I deal with specific matters. One such question which is extremely relevant at the moment is what we envisage with education in South Africa.

At a time when much is being said about “people’s education”—hon members did so today—alternative methods of education and similar phenomena, one may also ask what the State envisages with education. I want to make a few comments about this. Firstly I want to say that the Government’s point of departure is that bringing up children is primarily the task of the parents. That is an accepted principle on which educationalists agree. The home is the primary place for education and the parent the primary educationalist.

Secondly, the State and the country require developed citizens—people who are skilled in the many spheres of the economy where a need for trained people exists. There is a need for people who can make sensible choices. That is why it is in the public interest for the State to make a significant contribution as regards the education of its citizens. Someone asked whether subsidies were a right or a privilege. I say that it is in the public interest that the State make a significant contribution to the education of its citizens. The State has an obligation in this regard, but note that it is not the State which plays the primary part. The parent and the parental community are involved jointly with the State and the other partners in providing education. That is why the State does not control education arbitrarily and autocratically. It seeks and obtains advice from other partners and interested parties with whom it co-operates—in the interests of the tuition of children and the youth of our nation.

Against this background I want to present four broad objectives to hon members as regards education. I am now speaking about education at the broad tertiary level. The vast majority of learners are on this level. The first broad objective is that every child’s inherent possibilities must be developed. Every child’s variety of intellectual, physical and spiritual skills must be developed in such a way that he can realise his full potential.

The second broad objective is that every child must evolve into a person with a developed spirit, a strong and good moral character and a tolerant and balanced personality. The formation of personality, the development of the person and a realisation of potential are involved. The first two objectives relate to the individual—his talents, needs, possibilities and ideals.

There are two other objectives with a social orientation. The third objective is therefore that every child must be brought up to be a useful citizen. He must be able to understand the world in which he lives. He must be and must become capable of furnishing a service to his own community, his nation, the country and the world. He must be able to fulfil his role in a capable and proper manner. He must be able to make a contribution to the whole.

The last broad objective flows from the third one, and that is that every child must be prepared in such a way that he can make an independent and successful living in the world. That is why the foundation for further development, professional competence and economic independence is laid in him.

These four broad general objectives are the background against which educational programmes for schools are developed. I can say today that over the past year discussions have been held on these four broad objectives on the widest possible basis. From time to time these objectives have been considered. The South African Council for Education, on which all race groups serve, the Council for Education and Training, the Committee of Heads of Education, on which all heads of education departments serve, and the Ministers who are responsible for education—in the national states as well as in the Republic of South Africa—meet regularly to consider this matter. Dialogue is conducted around tables by leaders in education, specifically at political and professional levels. There is regular consultation around one table and consensus is frequently reached on the right steps to take as regards the education of our children. There are philosophical differences on the political level, but when it comes to the facets of content and pedagogy, we find a wonderful spirit of co-operation between educationalists and politicians who are involved in South African education.

A framework has now been accepted according to which education programmes can be developed for pre-tertiary education. I want to state very clearly that these objectives will not force school education into a straitjacket. Everything will not be made the same and uniform under compulsion. These objectives are so broad that there is room within which the special needs and aspirations of regions and cultural groups can come into their own. We cannot mention in one breath—as some hon members did here today—that “people’s education”, if it is viewed in the right way, is not such a bad thing, but say on the other hand that everything must be the same. Then one is contradicting oneself. [Interjections.] If a person, regardless of revolution and evil influences, says that the underlying approach to education must be identifiable with the community, that it must be community orientated and that the distinctiveness of specific communities must be accommodated because this is relevant to the child, it is absolutely essential for one to realise that one must leave room in education for moderate differentiation—without surrendering minimum learning content—precisely to give expression to the actualisation of education in a diversified community with broad and deep-seated cultural differences. [Interjections.] Just let me say that on the other hand our directives and formulations of policy are perfectly adequate to be used to channel pre-tertiary education to all our children in the same broad direction and to ensure that the Certification Council will be able to carry out its function at points of exit in education.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon the Minister whether, when that statement was made, he was dissociating himself from the hon the State President’s latest statements with regard to evaluation systems?

Mr Chairman, I do not know to which of the hon the State President’s statements the hon member is linking my specific statement.

I am referring to a statement in the House of Assembly.

I say specifically that there must be room for everyone’s system of values in this country. Nevertheless there is a specific basic system of values and it is also that broad direction and basic foundation which will be maintained, built upon and ensured by educational planning. [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon the Minister who determines those values? It is important for us to know because there is no point in somebody else’s determining my values. [Interjections.]

In education we determine values specifically by means of regular consultation. I do not formulate a grain of policy without proper consultation with all interested parties. There is a Committee of Education Ministers who meet regularly every six weeks or two months. Before I formulate a policy, every policy document is circulated among them and they are given an opportunity through their heads of department and their Ministers to have a say and make comments. It is therefore done very frequently, but the hon member for Macassar did not even participate in the debate. [Interjections] The hon member asks questions, but he did not use the opportunity to put his standpoint on this important subject. [Interjections.] I am sympathetic; I realise how complex matters are as regards the division of an opposition party’s time, but it is a fact that we consult in education before we lay down certain policy stipulations as general policy.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon the Minister what cultural differences exist between the hon the Minister and me?

Mr Chairman, there are cultural differences between the divergent communities of South Africa.

The cultural differences between the hon member and me may be small, although some of my fellow Whites say that cultural differences between Cape people and those from the Transvaal are deep-seated—even if they are all White. [Interjections.] It is not so simple. Within White ranks there are specific cultural differences on a regional basis. There are deep-seated cultural differences between Black and Black because in their case there is also the complex facet of different languages. Consequently there can be cultural differences between communities, even within the same population group, without a racial connotation. We even want to leave room for regional differences. That is why we are also not trying to overco-ordinate and restrict White education, which has four departments in a necessarily rigid straitjacket.

†Mr Chairman, the hon member for Ottery furthermore referred to shortcomings in sport and culture and then he asked with great emotion—I think it was very relevant—“Where do we as Coloureds feature in sport and culture and in the activities of this department?”

*I want to reply to him because these facts are not known and I think hon members will be interested in them. A considerable number of institutions is linked to my department. I want to mention the following councils on which Coloureds serve: The Afrikaanse Taalmuseum, Dr M N Beets; the SA Museum in Cape Town, Mr A M Müller; the SA Library in Cape Town, Mr L E Williams; the Woordeboek vir die Afrikaanse Taal, Prof T H Links; the HSRC, Prof R E van der Ross; the National Monuments Council and the National Place Names Committee, Prof J E van der Westhuizen.

†Let me continue, Sir. In the South African Council for Education we had the Rev I Petersen, Mr A M Müller and Mr Franklin Sonn; on the Universities and Technikons Advisory Council it was Dr F J L Quint and now it is Mr F G Backman; on the Committee on Education Structures, Mr A M Müller; the Research Committee on Education Structures, Mr W E Hendricks; the Performing Arts Advisory Committee, prof T H Links. In all these important bodies which are linked to my department there is representation by honourable people who represent this community with honour.

*I want to continue. As regards the departmental programme for foreign cultural relations, there is very good liaison with the Coloured community and they are involved in departmental programmes in numerous ways. Foreign guests of the department—approximately 18 every year—regularly visit the Department of Education and Culture of the House of Representatives to hold discussions with senior officials. The departments of this House frequently arrange programmes for foreign guests which include visits to various training institutions of which hon members are proud. In 1987 the Cape Traditional Malay Singers received a grant to perform in Europe. In 1987 a vocal group, the Good Hope Entertainers, was supported financially by my department to enable them to take part in the Nice and Madeira Carnivals. In February 1988 a group of musicians playing light Afrikaans music visited Europe at the request of this department and the well-known singer, Pieter van der Westhuizen, was a member of that group. [Interjections.] The hon member does not know his own people. This department also deals with the exchange of youth groups with foreign countries.

The Department of Education and Culture of the House of Representatives is approached to nominate people to participate. In this way for the past three years a Coloured has been included in the group which visited the Benelux countries in terms of a nature conservation exchange scheme. In the past three years members of the Coloured community have also been to Taiwan on the international youth cultural tour. Youth groups which visit the RSA are also introduced to the Department of Education and Culture of this House and its activities. So, for instance, there is a group of youth leaders from Europe and Britain at present which will visit a school of this department and come into direct contact with a group of Coloured youth leaders during a luncheon. The department participates regularly in various child art competitions overseas and schools of the department of this House are involved in this every year. An informal advisory committee has been nominated to assist the department in the selection of groups which undertake overseas tours on funds from my department. That committee consists of only four persons, among them Mr C Adamson, a well-known cultural leader.

Who is he?

Hon members can therefore see from this that people of outstanding talent, experience and expertise have come forward play an important part in our activities and have received recognition for doing so.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon the Minister whether he, who is also from the Transvaal, has forgotten that there are Coloureds in the Transvaal too. Among all the names he mentioned there is not a single person from the Transvaal. [Interjections.]

Order!

If there are hon members who want to submit names to me of people they consider should serve on all the boards and committees I have just mentioned and which fall under my department—hon members can find a list of them in our annual report—they are very welcome to give me such names and I shall be pleased to consider them. We do not know one another all that well and sometimes one looks for people; therefore hon members are very welcome to make such proposals. [Interjections.]

The hon member for Mamre made a very serious speech and said education was of critical importance.

Has the hon the Minister predicted Saturday’s score yet?

I am merely pinning my hopes on Northern Transvaal next Saturday. [Interjections.] After all, WP gave a team which does not come from my part of the world a good beating on Saturday. Just give us a chance until next Saturday and then we can discuss rugby again. [Interjections.]

Now we are mixing sport and politics.

The hon member for Mamre made an important statement, namely that we shall not solve our political problems if we do not address their cause, and then he said that the same applied to education. He made an appeal that we should plan to reach a state of peace. I have no problem with that statement, but we must allow the emphasis to fall on planning too. There is no short cut by which we can suddenly eliminate backlogs. It is impossible to eliminate all the backlogs among all the population groups within 10 years. It is impossible and I have said so from the start.

We can make a start.

We can certainly achieve a great breakthrough within 10 years. We have started too. We experienced a reverse this year because problem areas in the economy during this specific time manifested themselves in a budget which is greatly limiting our ability to turn our desires into words.

But we desire that college so badly.

Then let us talk about the college. I am so pleased that the leader of the NP in the Cape Province is here too. [Interjections.] I was addressed very seriously here about the Paarl-Wellington matter. The question of facilities involved in this matter was also mentioned by the hon member for Esselen Park and the hon member for Mamre.

Let me say first that I, as the Minister of National Education, am just as little involved in this as I would be in a decision of the hon the Minister of Education and Culture in the House of Representatives on where his department would build a college, how many colleges would be built, which ones his department would close and what would be done with them. My involvement would be just as slight if this were to happen in the House of Assembly.

I am certainly informed about the approach of the Department of Education and Culture in the House of Assembly. I ought to be informed about it. I shall explain briefly the policy in the House of Assembly in respect of redundant facilities. I shall put this cryptically and factually as it was announced by my colleague in the House of Assembly. I also think that this House would follow more or less the same order as regards priority if some of its facilities should become redundant. First one establishes whether the facilities are required by the same department. If a college is closed, is the building perhaps required for a school? If one closes a school, does one require it for a college? The rule applies firstly to an own department. Once one has established that the facilities are not required by one’s own department, one establishes whether they are not required by another department in the same administration. If one does not do that, one has to request funds again when another need arises which requires money. Thirdly, one establishes whether a department outside one’s own requires the facilities. It then becomes a process in which certain departments state their claims.

I think it would be desirable if the hon the Minister of Education and Culture in the House of Representatives, who by chance is also the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council, and I, as the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council of the House of Assembly, and the hon the Minister of Education and Culture of the House of Assembly were to hold discussions on the question of facilities. I suggest that we should preferably hold such discussions in the Committee of Education Ministers where we meet regularly.

The hon member for Berg River made a very positive speech. He referred to specific problems and then put the crucial question. The hon member asked whether it was correct to say that the fact of teachers’ average lower level of qualification was the only factor which caused the difference in per capita expenditure in White, Coloured and Black education. My reply to this is that it is not the only factor; there are many other contributory factors. One of the most important among these is how many teachers and class-rooms one has at one’s disposal. The most important factor, however, is how many teachers are available. There are too few teachers in some of our education departments. There is also a shortage of teachers, which has an influence on the pupil-teacher ratio, which in turn has an influence on the per capita expenditure.

The population growth of specific population groups also has an enormous influence. In a population group in which the growth is stable, no additional factor of a high growth in pupil numbers has to be taken into account every year. The population growth in Black education is the highest—more than 3% per annum. If one therefore wishes to retain the status quo, the number of one’s classrooms and teachers has to grow by more than 3% to keep pace with the enormous growth in the number of children. This has an enormous influence on one’s ability to push up the per capita expenditure, because the expenditure on that department is increased by more than 3% before one starts thinking of improvements. That is one of the great problems we have to deal with. We are going to struggle a great deal to find enough money to effect an improvement at the desired rate until we reach a situation with the population development programme in which the population growth starts to decline. Surely one’s first priority is to get a child into a desk and to place a teacher in front of him in the classroom, rather than to teach a smaller number of children and to have to tell the vast majority that there is no room for them in the school.

This is a Third World problem which makes enormous demands on us and contributes to this situation.

The problem is reversed in White education. There is distribution in White education. There may be more small schools with far fewer children. My colleague, the hon the Minister of Education and Culture in the House of Assembly, is in the process of closing them and he is coming in for heavy criticism and attack. He is in the process of rationalising; he is saving. Sometimes his expenditure demands that he has to amalgamate schools, that he has to close schools which have existed for decades, and in his way he is making his contribution. There is no clinging to a pleasant situation. We are seeking fair and equal educational provision without ever jeopardising standards. We cannot afford to have the highest educational standards which can be achieved in this country lowered in any way at any time. We have to ensure cost-effective expenditure, however, and proper planning in order to attain the best and the highest standard on the smallest possible amount. Education remains a priority to this Government. Nevertheless I want to say that we could not progress as we should have liked this year because of the problematical aspects of the economy to which I have referred.

The hon member for Esselen Park asked me to say whether a subsidy was a right or a privilege. I have already replied to him partially. In modern society the State has a duty to contribute to education and it accepts that duty. If the State itself manages those institutions, however, it also has a duty to ensure that expenditure takes place properly. If, on the other hand, the State subsidises autonomous institutions, the claim of those institutions to a State subsidy cannot be an absolute claim so that they can say that the State has to keep on subsidising whatever the institutions do, even if they do not use the money for the purpose for which it should be applied. That was the argument which we had in this regard. I shall return to that in more detail when I reply to the hon member for Grassy Park.

But who is the State? Are we the State?

You are part of the State; of course, you are part of the State.

The hon member asked whether our mother tongue was still important to us. I say yes, it stirs our hearts. Through the monument to our language and our WAT, which is our responsibility, and through the expansion of the dictionary we are doing our share in our way. If the hon member could have been at the Arts Conference on Friday, he would have known that we also cherish Afrikaans drama and Afrikaans literature and would like to see that they be promoted.

The hon member asked where we stood as regards private schools. We have specifically rationalised the policy on them. We have helped to create a better dispensation through general policy and this is now being implemented by the various education departments for private schools. They also have an improved system of subsidies now. As they are private schools, however, we can go only so far because, if we begin taking them over now, they will no longer be private schools. The private sector must play its part in this regard. If the private sector, even from overseas, becomes involved—the hon member for Grassy Park also raised a point in this connection—its members must become involved on an educationally acceptable basis. Then they must not try to hijack schools and education for purposes which have nothing to do with education, because then they will be distorting it; then the appeal for education becomes like that for the revolutionary “people’s education”. That is why we must be careful and set the prerequisite that this involvement take place on an educationally accountable basis.

On the other hand we cannot allow a system—although it is in the process of development—which has already come a long way and under which all children in this country benefit, to be disrupted. Nor can we sell what we have achieved for a mess of pottage.

The hon member for Grassy Park referred to the question of subsidies.

Mr Chairman, may I ask the hon the Minister what his standpoint is about the private school in Vereeniging which the management committee wants to abandon?

Sir, if the hon member is talking about the private school in Vereeniging to which there was reference in the Press, I merely want to say that the newspapers did not touch upon the dispute on which everything hinges at all. According to my information these people want to erect a school on property which is not intended for a school at all. The property has no school rights and therefore clashes with the town planning scheme. That is the crucial problem and also the reason for the city council’s refusal to grant permission. In addition, the school concerned has not been registered yet because its syllabuses have not yet been submitted for approval. Furthermore, the school system does not comply with prescribed requirements. That is the factual situation in the case concerned.

The hon member for Grassy Park referred to the question of subsidies. I want to say briefly in this regard that it was the method which was questioned in the court finding. We abide by the finding, however.

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

No, Sir, I am replying to the hon member for Grassy Park. I think that hon members who took the trouble to prepare good speeches have a preferential claim to hearing replies to their speeches.

The hon member for Grassy Park referred to the question of universities and subsidies. In this regard I want to repeat the four objectives involved and about which there was broad consensus initially when we had a meeting in August last year with the rectors and chairmen of university councils. These four objectives were inter alia to ensure uninterrupted and unhindered tuition of and study by students at all universities; to ensure the functional, constructive and educationally orientated application of money derived from taxation; effective measures to maintain good order and discipline, because we cannot have chaos at our universities and then expect success, and the maintenance and pursuit of traditional academic values of universities. We set conditions and specific demands which universities had to comply with. The court found those conditions too vague and ultra vires the existing legislation and we abide by this judgment.

The hon member appealed for peace and we have a few options in bringing this about, inter alia the amendment of existing legislation, finding a way of achieving the four objectives through negotiation, or doing nothing at all—in which we are obviously not interested. We must do something. We work with large amounts of money and in addition it is taxpayers’ money. The second option, that is to attempt to find a way through negotiation, offers definite benefits. It is important that the tension between the universities and the Government be removed. We are prepared to do something about the matter because we do not wish to cause unnecessary tension or disagreement. We want to strive for the four objectives mentioned, which should also be the objective of any reasonable South African. We do not want taxpayers’ money to be wasted. We want universities to give lectures instead of being closed for a day every now and again. We want examinations to be held regularly and proper standards to be maintained in order to attain the highest possible pass rate. The Ministers responsible have already agreed that the letters which were sent out last year in which subsidy conditions were explained will be withdrawn in the light of the judgment of the court. Every Minister will consult with the universities for which he is responsible and with me as the Minister of National Education in order to find a method by which to attain those four objectives. This is an inexorable requirement and there will have to be in-depth discussions about it.

I am happy with that reply!

Thank you, sir. We hope in this way to reach a workable solution so that all the energy which is being squandered on conflict at present may be applied to the benefit of our country as a whole.

I have already said something about the question of foreign investments.

The hon member for Southern Free State also spoke about “people’s education”. Many other hon members referred to this too and they all drew a certain distinction, with which I agree. It comes down to the fact that “people’s education” could be a good thing if it were approached from a certain angle, but if it were approached from a different angle and abused by people, it would be a bad thing.

“People’s education” means different things to different people. To some it is nothing but an instrument through which the existing order, namely that of free entrepreneurship and democracy, can and, according to them, must be replaced by a new order in which a Marxist autocracy and a socialist economy will be the order of the day. To them it is not the child that matters; what matters is an alternative system—a system which clashes with the fundamental values of life which we spoke about specifically earlier in the debate. Sir, if that is what “people’s education” means, we reject it. In education the issue should always be the child’s education to maturity and meaningful citizenship. We may not permit revolutionaries, under the cloak of “people’s education”, to abuse education with a view to the political indoctrination of our children. That is also a concept which the ANC wants to use and we in this country can never go along with it in the way in which they want to carry it out.

To other people, “people’s education” means a type of education identifiable with the community and the home, one which is not based on class distinctions and which is not alien to the child’s outlook on life and his culture. To them it is a type of education in which the parent community is an acknowledged partner and in which syllabuses link up with the world in which the child lives. Education of this nature is not only justified by educational theory; it also ensures that it will be relevant to the children who receive it. If this is what “people’s education” wants to achieve, it can and will certainly be a good development.

Our system of education is specifically aimed at giving expression to the principle of identification with the community and culture. Although this is often launched from a political angle, the pedagogic correctness of such an approach cannot be disputed and, in fact, it is not disputed by educationalists. As far as the development of a general policy on syllabuses at school level is concerned, the policy of my department therefore continually takes this positive view of the actualisation of education into account. Furthermore, where it is a matter of developing a broad academic policy which is aimed at maintaining a proper balance between actualisation and identification with the community on the one hand and general standards, demands and the necessary minimum learning content on the other, we shall give preference to those syllabuses which are especially sensitive in this regard. We have made great progress with this task already. Today we have to send out one clear message from here, however—I am pleased this matter was raised here—and that is that we shall not permit our children and their future in the sphere of education to be sacrificed to revolutionaries.

The hon member also spoke about the question of one system of education and one education department. I think I have dealt with that already. As regards all the fundamental matters mentioned in the Constitution, we now have one system of education. We may continue to differ about it, but I think there are sound, good reasons to maintain the power of self-determination in respect of own education departments. [Interjections.]

The hon member requested that I should consult own affairs Ministers when decisions were taken. Sir, we do this. I have told hon members about the committee on which the Ministers responsible for education, among others, serve. The hon member also asked me not to speak to the chairman of the CPTA before I had informed the hon the Minister of Education and Culture of my intention. Sir, I can assure the hon member that we have made a firm mutual arrangement, namely that I will negotiate directly with representatives of the profession about general affairs in my field.

Part of the same agreement, however, is that we have a fixed arrangement that the Minister of Education and Culture concerned be invited and have the right to attend such discussions. He may therefore always be present when I speak to them. There is no talk behind any Minister’s back on matters which affect me directly. I sometimes invite them too. The Minister was there on occasion. There was no dialogue between the CPTA and me for a long time, but discussions were held recently and a representative of the department was present if my memory serves me. The Minister concerned had to attend a funeral that day, however, and he tendered his apologies for not being present.

†The hon member for Bethelsdorp dealt with Capab. I do not know on what basis the municipalities contribute. These councils for performing arts are basically autonomous. We subsidise them heavily and I have some sort of policy control over them, but with regard to their actual day-to-day running they are in almost the same position as a university, with their own council, etc. Within the field of my responsibility I do recognise the problem the hon member stated, namely that a certain part of a province has advantages over other parts because of the siting of the main theatre and its main activities. Because I realised this, I introduced a new factor into the formula in order to stimulate decentralised performances. I have just brought this into being. This will hopefully have the effect that, because they will earn more client hours in terms of the formula by decentralised performances—for instance, in Port Elizabeth or East London—they might find it more attractive to do so. Therefore, I have reason to think that there might be an improvement.

*The hon member argued other matters. I undertake to inform the chairman of that council about the contents of his speech. My department will provide me with a letter and I shall send them a copy of the hon member’s unrevised Hansard and request them to attend to the matter. Possibly they can give the hon member some advice or perhaps information on the more specific matters which the hon member mentioned but which do not fall directly under me, or perhaps they will listen to him and rectify the matters relating to his appeal.

I also want to mention that, as far as I know, Capab provides very comprehensive services by producing prescribed works—to the Department of Education and Culture of the House of Representatives as well—and that, according to discussions I held with them, they intend improving the regularity and the quality of their service in the Eastern Cape.

The hon member for Ravensmead said I was not to become as emotional as he did. [Interjections.] But he was the one who inflamed me and how can I stay calm in such a case? I shall remain calm, however. I listened to him carefully. I want to tell him that the cry to which he referred has been noted, although perhaps not exactly as he desires. Nevertheless note has been and is being taken of the cry emanating from people’s hearts. As regards education, there was the HSRC inquiry, there was the De Lange Report and the 11 important principles of education were adopted. They are embodied in new legislation and a new department has been formed. An entirely new dispensation is in the process of growing, through the Education Council and the linking up on matters of common concern in respect of education. There are no instant solutions. Consequently this was noted, although perhaps not exactly as the hon member appealed for it to be. We listened to his appeal again today, however, and it is a good thing to be able to unburden ourselves.

The last facet which remains is the question of teacher training to which the hon member Mr Douw referred. I have already mentioned how the question of facilities is approached by my hon colleague. It is true that within the framework of existing education departments there are specific requirements in teacher training to train a teacher for service in a specific department. Where there is a surplus of White teachers, however, nobody is prevented from being taken into service by any other education department.

We may differ about what we have to do. Rationalisation is taking place and redundant facilities are available for other purposes. The Administration: House of Representatives is in a position to acquire such facilities through negotiation when they are available. I want to recommend negotiation and regular liaison very strongly in this regard. We are open to this.

Mr Chairman, may I put a question to the hon the Minister in two parts, please?

Order! Not a speech, only a question!

I shall not put a question, Sir.

I was prepared to reply to the question, but if there is no question, I want to thank hon members very sincerely for their participation and for the high level at which we conducted this discussion. I look forward to our debate next year and hope that I shall be able to report positively to this House on fundamental matters regarding which it is our serious intention to progress rapidly.

Vote agreed to.

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:

Mr Chairman, my party finds itself in a predicament with regard to the Bill before us. Firstly, we have no objection to joint discussions by the three Houses of Parliament in a single Chamber as provided for in clause 2. However, clause 1 is very specific that a quorum shall not be required in such a debate, except when that joint meeting is to decide a question, and that also goes for each House separately. Secondly, clause 2, amongst other proposed amendments to the Constitution, deals with the situation in a joint committee.

There, too, no quorum will be required; a quorum will be required only when decisions have to be taken. A great problem arises, however, when a quorum is absent in a joint committee when a decision has to be taken. This Bill endows Mr Speaker with the enormous powers which will allow him to declare that there is a quorum present in the joint committee when there is a quorum present in at least one of the three House committee components of the joint committee. That was what Rule 69 (4) in the Schedule to the report of the Committees on Standing Rules and Orders stipulated. This is a provision we object to very strongly.

The other matter which I must mention, is dealt with in clause 3 (a). It provides for the way in which parliamentary business shall be decided by the Chief Whip of Parliament “in consultation with interested parties”. Here I am quoting Rule 103.

[Inaudible.]

Who are these “interested parties”, Mr Chairman? Let us consider the examples. What would happen if my whole party were to decide to attend that meeting? [Interjections.] Worse, what would be the situation if the entire LP decided to attend that meeting too? That, after all, is what the Rule stipulates—“interested parties”. To my mind, Sir, that Rule is going to or can cause chaos. For that reason I should like to move, as an amendment:

1. (1) a minimum number of members of the respective Houses constitutes a quorum in joint and separate discussions and in the determination of questions, as follows:
   1. (a) House of Assembly, 50 members;
   2. (b) House of Representatives, 25 members; and
   3. (c) House of Delegates, 13 members;
2. (2) each component of a joint committee is present at both the discussion and the decision-taking stage;
3. (3) voting in joint committees, joint sittings and meetings is not restricted to race;
4. (4) the traditional no-confidence debate as introduced by the Official Opposition is discussed jointly in a single chamber; and
5. (5) the Chief Whip of Parliament will decide in concurrence with the whips of the three Houses what business shall be dealt with by Parliament, as and when required.”.

Before I resume my seat, Mr Chairman …

Mr Chairman, I should like to put two questions to the hon member. First of all, is the hon member sure of his facts? Secondly, does the hon member serve on this committee?

Mr Chairman, my answer to both questions is yes.

Before I resume my seat, I would like to comment on a remark made by the hon Chairman of the Ministers’ Council on a previous occasion when we discussed the Rules relevant to this Bill. [Interjections.] He said then that I am a slow thinker.

Yes, you are.

I want to thank the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council for having been so generous. At least he graces me with some measure of thinking. Ordinarily I would have said it takes one thief to catch another. However, I am not so generous this afternoon. [Interjections.] I am sorry the hon Chairman of the Ministers’ Council is not present …

Order! The hon member must please continue with his speech and ignore all the remarks. [Interjections.]

I am disappointed that the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council is not here, but I am sure he is listening to this debate. As far as I am concerned he has had a brainstorm which has short-circuited his medulla oblongata …

Order! Will the hon member please confine himself to the Bill and leave the personal remarks aside? [Interjections.] The hon the Minister of Health Services and Welfare should please contain himself. One does not really want to call an hon Minister to order. [Interjections.] Will the hon member for Durban Suburbs please withdraw those words.

Mr Chairman, I want to query …

Order! Will the hon member please withdraw those words.

Withdraw what? Mr Chairman, I want to …

Order! All right, the hon member may proceed, but he must please confine himself to his amendment.

I want to criticise … [Interjections.] The hon member should not laugh, because I am not referring to what he thinks I am referring to. I want to question the hon member’s support for this Bill.

Order! To which hon member is the hon member for Durban Suburbs referring?

I want to question the hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council’s support for this Bill because, as far as I am concerned, it compromises the man of colour in this tricameral system, and therefore exposes the LP as being in collusion with the NP and their philosophy, by agreeing to this Bill. [Interjections.] As far as I am concerned this has been the order of the day since 1984. [Interjections.] I want to mention again that it is because of this type of modus operandi of the LP that I decided to depart from it. [Interjections.] Even though the hon Deputy Leader of the LP has asked me more than once to rejoin it, I certainly will not. [Interjections.] I would like to see him deny that, Sir.

Order! Hon members must please give the hon member for Durban Suburbs an opportunity to complete his speech. [Interjections.] The hon member for Silvertown must come to order.

In the hon the Minister’s speech he tried to impress upon us that his Government is willing to move towards a South Africa that will politically satisfy the population at large. In referring to the National Council Bill, the hon the Minister had the following to say:

I want to disagree with this. In fact, we, the UDP, disagree with the hon the Minister. We disagree in the first place because of the way in which this Bill has been designed.

Which Bill?

The National Council Bill, which the hon the Minister mentioned here. [Interjections.]

Order! We are not discussing the National Council Bill.

No, Mr Chairman, but in this context …

Order! The hon member need not correct me. The hon member must please return to the amendment.

Then I will not continue with that, Sir.

Order! The hon member must motivate his statement and also say why his party does not support the Bill.

Sir, in my amendment handed to you I have already mentioned why we do not support this Bill.

Order! If that is the case, the hon member must not repeat himself.

Thank you.

He is stuck.

Order! That is not how hon members are supposed to conclude their speeches. They must prepare their speeches before they participate in a debate in this House and then deliver that speech in the proper manner to hon members here.

Sir, the input is sufficient, thank you.

Mr Chairman, after listening to the hon member for Durban Suburbs, I can truly understand the problems the late Dr Connie Mulder must have experienced when he was the Minister of Information and the hon member worked for that department. With people like that on one’s side, one definitely has no chance of success.

Order! Will the hon member please repeat what he has just said.

Sir, I said with people like that on one’s side, one definitely has no chance of success.

The hon member is confusing the Bill under discussion, which is an amendment of the Constitution Act, Act No 110 of 1983, and the Rules of Parliament. From his speech I must deduce that he cannot distinguish between the two and that he does not realise that he was in fact in this House when the Rules were agreed to. The hon member had sufficient time during that debate to put forward his arguments. Now the hon member is objecting to certain Rules instead of debating his opposition to the proposed amendment of the Constitution, to which I shall refer later. The relevant amendment basically provides for joint debating. To eliminate the confusion which the hon member has sown in this House, I shall refer to all three clauses once again, since this is really a very simple piece of legislation. Just incidentally I want to add that at some or other stage we should definitely consider making hon members sit for an IQ test before they are appointed to certain committees or are permitted to take part in certain debates.

Order! The hon member may not insult other hon members.

Sir, I was talking in general.

Order!

Then I withdraw it, Sir. I merely want to add that it is extremely frustrating, when one is dealing with very complex matters, to have to struggle with someone who simply cannot understand what it is all about. In addition I want to say that the hon member for Durban Suburbs did us a very big favour by resigning from the LP. It was a big day in my life when he left the LP. The hon member eliminated a lot of confusion with his departure from the LP. With reference to the confusion the hon member sows in this House, however, although he is no longer doing so in the party or the caucus, I want to refer to clause 1 of the Constitution Amendment Bill, Bill 67 of 1988.

Clause 1 of the relevant Bill amends section 61 of the Constitution to make it clear that a quorum is necessary only when Houses take a decision. In terms of the new Rules which will come into operation at the same time as the amending Bill, provision is being made for extended public committees in which hon Ministers’ Votes will be discussed in various places and in which members of Parliament will obviously take part. When one looks at a small House, such as the House of Delegates, one can understand that there are going to be enormous problems with a quorum if MPs have to take part in debates in three different places and still have to maintain a certain quorum.

Basically, therefore, this is a practical arrangement. This clause provides, however, that a quorum must be present when a decision is taken. In this connection our House reserves the right to veto a decision if we do not agree with it.

Clause 2 of the Bill amends section 64 of the Constitution. It provides expressly that the three Houses of Parliament can provide by means of joint, uniform Rules for the joint conducting of business at a joint meeting of Parliament. Clause 2 also provides for uniform rules in connection with business and proceedings in Parliament. This applies to separate sittings of the three Houses, as well as joint sittings.

Clause 3 of the Bill amends section 67 of the Constitution so as to expressly restrict the provision of that section contained in the Constitution, to joint sittings convened by the State President—that is, to ceremonial matters such as the opening of Parliament.

It is very clear that the proposed amending Bill, which I support, is going to test members of Parliament in all three Houses and challenge them to maintain and protect the dignity of Parliament as an institution. It also creates new horizons for all members of Parliament in their search for peaceful solutions to the problems of our country.

It is even more important that with reference to this amending Bill, Parliament as an institution is going to be faced by a greater test in guaranteeing and maintaining democracy, freedom and orderly government in a country which has both First World and Third World components and is in a process of constitutional reform—taking the associated flexibility and uncertainty of this process into account.

It is my considered opinion that there are only three ways in which we in South Africa will be able to reach another constitutional dispensation. The first alternative is that of a revolution. In my opinion, viewed from a Black perspective, this would be suicide. The second alternative is that of a military dictatorship. At this stage that is attainable only in White ranks, and it is something which will lead to endless conflict. The last but most formidable alternative remains a parliament. When I mention parliament as an alternative, I mean parliament in its classical form—that is, as legislature and as protector of the rights and freedom of all the citizens in a country.

There are a few aspects which the hon the Minister broached in his Second Reading speech, which I should like to discuss briefly. On page 2 he referred to “style”:

In respect of this “style” I merely want to say that I am pleased that there is a new search in NP ranks and Government circles for alternative solutions to the constitutional impasse we are experiencing as well as the problems that lie ahead.

One of the aspects I want to point out, is that in my opinion serious attention should be given to the immense power that has been concentrated in the hands of the person who holds the office of State President. I am not referring to a specific person here; I am referring to the office. I think Lord Acton was very wise when he said in his significant Dictum:

In our search for an alternative political order, we must always have checks and balances so that the preponderance of power does not lean over to one side.

We know that the Afrikaners’ iron fist has merely been hidden in a velvet glove during the past three years, but that they will not hesitate to use this power absolutely if they are really threatened.

A second aspect which pleases me, and which I welcome, and from which it appears that a search for alternatives is in progress, is the whole question of the President’s Council in this political order. I want to read a second quotation in this regard. The hon the Minister said in his Second Reading speech:

In this movement towards a new system, there is no room in my opinion for the President’s Council in its present form and with its present functions. In terms of the present dispensation and the rules of the system, consensus means only that which is acceptable to the House of Assembly and more specifically to the NP. As soon as there is conflict that they find unacceptable, the safety valve, the President’s Council, comes into operation. It is actually correct, therefore, to say that in its present form the President’s Council is essentially a denial of the concept of consensus, and that in actual fact it makes consensus impossible within the present framework.

Another aspect that I want to refer to is the attitudes the hon the Minister spoke about. Further on in his speech the hon the Minister said:

This is an aspect which one can never overemphasise within this system. It appears to me as if Cabinet Ministers still cannot understand how the new system works, and I say this with great understanding for the problems they sometimes experience. There is an explanation for this. Many of them are not exposed to standing committees. Some of the junior members of the NP have learnt in the standing committees that one has to be prepared to compromise if one wants a Bill approved. The present Ministers come from a generation which dates from a former dispensation, however, when the Minister and his department piloted legislation through the House of Assembly. Consequently there is a lack of understanding of the trauma one sometimes has to go through before one eventually gets to legislation. It is my opinion that the fact that a new system has been introduced, but that old attitudes have remained, is responsible in many respects for the problems that exist in the system.

A third aspect that I want to discuss is the concepts of own and general affairs. One of the tragedies of own and general affairs is that the tricameral Parliament has elevated apartheid, which basically is racial discrimination, to a constitutional philosophy, in which apartheid has manifested itself in the form of own and general affairs. I want to tell the hon the Minister that in our experience, after three and a half years in the system, that which is separate can never be equal. This was also proved by the Americans in their long struggle against domination and discrimination. We still have a drastic disparity in the per capita expenditure on education today.

I merely want to indicate what a farce own affairs really is. Our Ministers’ Council decided to give Coloured pensioners an adjustment of R12 per month. Because there is no adjustment for the Whites, however, the hon the Minister of Finance has the right to instruct the Treasury to withdraw R40 million from our budget, after it has been granted. If it is really the Government’s intention that no one group should dominate another, that each group should decide on its own affairs, why do we have this kind of domination? I want to put only one question to the hon the Minister. If the British had told the Afrikaners in 1910, “We are prepared to convene a national convention to establish the Union of South Africa, but your pensioners must get R50 less than ours; you must have separate and inferior educational institutions; you must remain on separate voters’ lists”, would the hon the Minister have accepted that?

When we are condemned for being obstinate, and when Die Burger condemns us because ostensibly we want to upset the system, there must be understanding for the milieu from which we conduct our politics.

In conclusion I want to quote something that the hon the Minister said:

I want to tell the hon the Minister today that if it is the motive and intention of his party to base the future South Africa on a system of equality in which one person’s citizenship will not mean more than another’s, they will have a partner in our party. If, however, they have a vision of us as second-class citizens, I regret that we cannot be on the same side in the future South Africa.

Mr Chairman, like many of the hon members I often find it very difficult to follow the “reasoning” of the hon member for Durban Suburbs. He referred, first of all, to the Bill before us and in particular to clause 1 which deals with the question of quorums. The present interpretation of section 61, according to the legal advisers, is probably that a quorum is only required when a vote is taken. Therefore, the proposed amendment to section 61 in clause 1 is just to make doubly sure that that is the correct interpretation. Then the hon member goes further and he says clause 2 deals with the question of quorums in standing committees. In fact, clause 2 has nothing whatsoever to do with quorums. It deals with joint rules and uniform rules. It has nothing to do with a particular quorum.

However, I would like to take it further. The hon member proposes an amendment which I shall not read now, but he may simply vote against the Bill and so achieve the end result which his amendment purports to achieve. I would like to ask the hon member whether he does not agree with me that this Bill before us is consequential to decisions that have already been taken by this House. In fact, if the hon member believes in Parliament as I do—I believe by philosophy he does, though not by words expressed—he would know that we have to honour the decision taken by all three Houses of Parliament which relates to the question of joint sittings for debating purposes. I submit to him that this is an improvement which all reasonable people in Parliament would welcome. However, he wants to defer a decision on this very crucial issue until certain assurances have been given.

He is a fool.

Order! The hon member must please withdraw what he said.

Mr Chairman, I withdraw it.

We are simply dealing with one issue, viz whether there should be joint sessions of the various Houses and joint rules to regulate those sessions. That is the essence of the Bill before us. However, once it has been accepted, it has wide and broad consequences for Parliament as an institution.

It does not go far enough.

Sir, I am not arguing whether it goes far enough or not. Even as the hon member sits in this House he does not believe that this Constitution is the final one. However, he has offered to come and sit in this House in order to try to get this Bill amended. Why then is it sufficient for the hon member for Durban Suburbs to sit in a House which he believes does not go far enough, but yet oppose measures that would improve the functioning of Parliament? Sir, it simply does not make any sense. Therefore I would like to submit with due respect that the hon member’s arguments have no merit whatsoever. [Interjections.]

*I now come to the hon member Mr Lockey, and I want to congratulate him. It is a long time since I was quoted in the House with as much approval as by that hon member this afternoon. That proves how we can progress along the way. The hon member dealt with the provisions in the clauses, and I am not going to elaborate on that any further. I do want to make a comment with reference to the hon member’s sentiments, however. I do not think that man-made institutions can ever be perfect and when the people who are involved in designing and reflecting on institutions represent as big a variety as we do, the chances for mistakes are probably even greater. Fortunately we can say that to one another.

Certain things are important, however. The hon member referred to alternative methods and instruments for change. I agree with him that these exist, but I want to take this further in the spirit in which I did so in the House of Assembly. In the final instance it is not the system that succeeds. Nor is it the effectiveness of certain formulations that succeeds. Instead, the actors within the system make it succeed.

Or make it miscarry.

Or make it miscarry. I want to say this here today. When people talk about what adjustment and change involve, and about the rate of change—whether it is taking place too quickly or too slowly—a misconception exists, viz that constitutional change in respect of institutions by definition involves change of the community’s standpoints or attitudes. That is not true. It is untrue. Effective adjustments and reform last longer if the common values are extended among the communities they have to serve. That is what has been experienced throughout the world.

That is why I made the same appeal in the House of Assembly that I want to repeat here today. I am not doing so in a paternalistic way, and hon members know that.

Joint debating will definitely place far greater demands on all of us than separate debating as is the case at present. [Interjections.]

Order! Hon members must please return to their own seats. The hon the Minister may proceed.

It is going to place greater demands on each and every one of us, including me and other hon Ministers. I appeal for only one thing, and that is that when we agree with one another on standpoints, we must not always project that on others, but must rather apply it to ourselves. In this connection I remember a verse from “The Prayer of a Sportsman” which in my view is very relevant in our particular dispensation. It reads as follows:

If we live according to that prayer, instead of merely viewing it as a creed, our systems will succeed. If all of us use our participation in the systems, however, to emphasise totally and absolutely the interests of the people we represent here, we shall not succeed. We do not need a prophet to tell us that; even I can say that to hon members.

That is why it is going to depend upon us whether the new era of joint sittings, which the legislation seeks to authorise, is going to serve Parliament as Parliament. Whether Parliament is going to be the instrument of further progress and change is going to depend upon us. We must take cognisance of this, and if we as MPs are not capable of doing our task within the new parliamentary system in such a way that we can advance the process of parliamentary adjustment, we should rather not start.

I am not going to discuss the President’s Council today. I want to suggest that I do that in the discussion of my Vote and that the hon member Mr Lockey debate the issue with me then. I shall also discuss the powers of the hon the State President in my Vote, but in this connection I do want to add something. It was the hon the State President himself who addressed the office and position of the State President in the discussion of his Vote in the House of Assembly. The hon member must concede that.

I was referring to the office.

I am talking about the office, because the hon the State President did not refer to his own position, but to the office of the State President. That is exactly what the hon member did as well. [Interjections.]

I also want to point out to hon members that in terms of the Westminster system, the power of a prime minister is absolute until a subsequent election takes place. Many people talk about a parliamentary or cabinet government, but in essence it is a prime minister’s government. Hon members should make enquiries in this connection. That is why we said that that system could not and would not work here.

I want to conclude by saying that we have come so far in the course of three years that we are all prepared to accept new rules within the parliamentary system and have declared ourselves willing to accept the responsibility of joint debates in this system.

[Inaudible.]

Order! The hon member for Mamre must please contain himself.

I want to make one last comment, and that is that if hon members want to maintain Parliament, it should not be necessary to do so by means of the discipline of a quorum. Consequently we as members will have a new responsibility to maintain Parliament of our own volition, by our presence and without the compulsion of a bell.

Question agreed to and amendment dropped (Official Opposition dissenting).

Bill read a second time.

Mr Chairman, I move:

The Extension of University Education Act, 1959, makes provision for the establishment of university colleges for the education of persons other than Whites.

Up to now no university college has been established in terms of this Act, which is being repealed by clause 21 of the Bill. This can be attributed to the fact that a university college must be viable in so far as it must be possible to offer a large number of university courses. The number of students that register for these courses must also warrant their being offered. These factors play an important part in the cost of establishing a university college. The establishment of a tertiary training institution in order to offer university, teacher and technikon training or one or more components of these according to the need in a particular community, is therefore justified. The definition of “Minister” in clause 1 consequently makes it possible for the Bill to be applied by all the Ministers of departments of State responsible for education.

Sir, I will now deal with some of the important clauses of the Bill.

Clause 2 of the Bill provides that Ministers may establish colleges in order to provide tertiary education or any of the components of tertiary education. This clause also places an obligation upon a Minister to announce the establishment of a college in the Gazette. The name of a college established in this way will be determined by the council of the college with the concurrence of the Minister concerned. However, the name must include the words “tertiary education”.

The activities of a college are dealt with in clause 3. According to the provisions of this clause a college may offer university, teacher and technikon education with the permission of the Minister concerned. Courses that lead to a degree, diploma, certificate, teaching qualification or technikon certificate may not be introduced without the prior written approval of the Minister. The clause makes it clear that university training must be undertaken in terms of an agreement with a university and that degrees, diplomas and certificates for study in terms of such an agreement may be awarded to students by a university only. Since a university will award its degrees to students of a tertiary college, the university concerned will be the obvious one with whom the college will share its resources in commencing a course.

According to the Certification Council for Technikon Education Act, that council will ensure that corresponding technikon certificates issued by it represent the same standard of education and examination. That council will also be responsible for the certification of qualifications in respect of technikon training at these colleges. This will ensure that the required cohesion regarding standards in technikon training is preserved in our country. Although a formal agreement between a technikon and a college regarding certification is not necessary, it would nevertheless be wise to find a formal basis of co-operation with a view to the sharing of resources. That would result in the resources of a technikon being available for use by that college for the commencement of its technikon-related activities.

Teacher training will be certified in accordance with existing legislation.

The management of a college is the responsibility of a council established in accordance with clause 6(1). Bearing in mind that a college may offer all three components of tertiary education or only one or two of these, the composition of a council is not regulated in the Bill. According to subclause (1) a council shall be constituted in the manner determined by the Minister by notice in the Gazette. This enables the Minister to constitute a council for a college, taking into account the components of tertiary education that are being offered. However, in the event of an agreement being entered into with a university, provision is made for three persons to be nominated by the university to serve on the council.

Colleges established in terms of clause 2 will not be completely autonomous institutions. Consequently, clause 5 provides that the council will appoint the head of a college with the concurrence of the Minister concerned. The conditions of service of the head of the college will, similarly, be determined in concurrence with the Minister.

The academic and other staff of the college will be appointed by the council in terms of clause 10. The conditions of service of such staff will, subject to general policy contemplated in section 2(1) of the National Policy for General Education Affairs Act, 1984, be determined by the council with the concurrence of the Minister.

Provision is made in clause 20 for colleges to be established in the self-governing territories if the Government and the government of any self-governing territory agree thereto.

Mr Chairman, I will be very brief in my comments in respect of the Bill.

Unfortunately the Official Opposition has no member serving on the Standing Committee on Education, but I believe that this particular Bill has been deliberated upon by the standing committee for quite a long time. Apparently there was a stalemate situation for quite a long time. However, I believe that in the end the majority party in this House capitulated and agreed to support the Bill.

*Sir, unfortunately the Official Opposition in this House cannot support the Bill. I want to make it clear that we do not object to the introduction of colleges to promote tertiary education.

†What we oppose, is the fragmentation of education on a racial basis. [Interjections.] The fragmentation of our educational system is being extended further by this Bill. Therefore, I want to move as an amendment:

1. (1) the colleges contemplated in the Bill fall under the Minister of National Education; and
2. (2) admission to the proposed colleges is not restricted on the grounds of race, colour, creed or sex.”.

Sir, I have always believed that it was the policy of the LP that there should be one national education system under one Ministry. [Interjections.]

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No 19.

Mr Chairman, it is once again a privilege for me to participate in the debate on the Vote of the hon the State President. I take the opportunity of welcoming the hon the State President to this House and I hope he will have a fruitful debate.

During a briefing by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) a few days ago, we were told that a survey reflected that almost 38% of South Africa’s White community supported the hon the State President, Mr P W Botha, as their national leader, while over 45% of the Indian community regarded him as their leader. The comparison between the support that the hon the State President enjoys among the Whites on the one hand, and the Indians on the other, is very interesting. It shows that he is more popular among the Indian community than within the White community. This is encouraging.

*The hon the State President is treated with great respect by the Indian community. We know he is the man who took the great step of proposing reform. Although he was opposed in his own White community, he nevertheless went ahead.

I can say with certainty that the House of Delegates enjoys greater support now than in 1984 when the system was implemented. We were also told that during this interview. The Indian community now realises that the tricameral Parliament can contribute a great deal to a better South Africa. It is very encouraging to note that support for the system is growing and that more people are accepting it. This proves that this House can serve the community.

†When we entered Parliament in September 1984 it was an historical step forward. Inasmuch as we understood that this was just the starting point for real change, from the outset we never shirked fighting for just reforms. We did not come to Parliament as political stooges but as men of dignity. We are committed to fight in a peaceful way, by means of negotiation and accommodation, to win lasting peace and justice for all the people of South Africa.

We will not allow violence to decimate our people. We will not stand by idly to watch our youth being manipulated by a boisterous few to indulge in confrontation and killing. We will not stand by and see the destruction of hard-earned homes and businesses by wanton looting and arson.

*Parliament is the forum where we can work hard to serve our people so that they can enjoy peace and security. During the past year we have heard a lot about reform. In this regard I should like to pay tribute to the hon the State President for the part he plays. Political reform is important and the hon the State President’s recent announcement about Black participation is to be welcomed.

The Black community cannot be ignored and it is essential that they participate in the decision-making process. South Africa is a beautiful country and we must find the solution to its political problems in a peaceful way.

†It must be a peaceful solution because we in this country are totally opposed to any form of violence. We know that violence cannot solve South Africa’s problems and I have always maintained that this type of action by any organisation, be it the ANC, the AWB or whoever, should be condemned in the strongest terms. The recent spate of bomb blasts in Pretoria, Krugersdorp and Cape Town will in no way help to resolve the problems facing our country.

*I should like to tell the hon the State President today that he must not yield to the right wing, but should proceed with his reform resolutions. In this regard I should also like to congratulate him on his standpoint in respect of the AWB. The AWB has no insight into our country’s problems and the hon the State President must show them that he is a man with vision.

†We know of the incident that took place in Durban recently. We want to compliment the Government, the hon the State President and the hon the Minister of Law and Order for bringing the persons who were involved in the anti-Jewish campaign to task.

At the same time, however, a similar incident happened in Heidelberg in the Transvaal, where a gas bomb was thrown into a mosque during the fasting period in the month of Ramadan, and I hope that the hon the State President will address himself to this matter as well, just as he addressed himself to the other issue.

The hon the State President must speed up his reform programme. The hardship that we as a community have undergone because of certain group legislation, and more particularly the Group Areas Act, has been highlighted in this House at every available opportunity. It is high time the Government scrapped this Act and let us show to the world that all South Africans can live and work peacefully together.

Hillbrow and Mayfair serve as good examples of how the various communities can live together. If Blacks, Whites, Coloureds and Indians can work together in the same office and they can sit under the same roof, even here in Parliament, and debate issues; if they can walk shoulder to shoulder in our towns and cities and do their shopping together, why can they not also live together legally and why can they not trade together legally in central business districts?

The Government must now declare all CBDs open and scrap all forms of petty apartheid. In this regard I want to draw the hon the State President’s attention to the recommendations made by the Committee for Constitutional Affairs of the President’s Council on Resolution 734. I quote:

In this regard I want to make an earnest appeal to the hon the State President that he try to implement some of these proposals that were made by the President’s Council. On the subject of the President’s Council, I want to mention that it was the Pensions Benefits for Councillors of Local Authorities Bill that, with a certain pragmatic amendment in this House, was sent to the President’s Council.

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

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

I thank the hon the Chief Whip, Mr Chairman. I was talking about the President’s Council and the recommendations of this House in so far as the pensions were concerned. This Bill was referred to the President’s Council with a minor amendment by this House. We know the ultimate result when it came back from the President’s Council. My appeal to the hon the State President this afternoon is that he make use of the President’s Council in the right way, and simply not when it suits certain of its policies.

We have seen the far-reaching resolutions of the President’s Council in so far as the free settlement areas are concerned and we have seen the other recommendations that the President’s Council has made. My appeal to the hon the State President is that he implement these resolutions of the President’s Council.

Yesterday the Sunday Times published an article under the heading “Fears over the Group Areas Crackdown.” Mention is made in this article of the fact that the Government crackdown on mixed race areas will leave thousands of people homeless. Should the Government decide to prosecute these people it would seriously undermine the entire reform process and discredit the tricameral system. Furthermore, it will place a damper on the coming October municipal elections.

I am not going to touch on petty apartheid which still exists in our small communities, especially in the municipalities.

I also want to compliment the hon the State President on the manner in which he has addressed the economic problems of our country. I want to say to him that this is the only way to bring about reform, not only political reform, but also the economic reform that this country needs, and we on this side of the House will support the hon the State President in his endeavours to bring about the necessary economic reforms. We know that there are certain sections of the private sector that are trying to hamper this particular initiative of the hon the State President and I hope that he will not move away from these reforms in the economic field, as well as in the political field.

I am reminded that my time is up. With these words I once again want to wish the hon the State President a fruitful afternoon of debate in this House.

Mr Chairman, this debate provides me with an opportunity to examine the hon the State President’s proposals and to make certain observations intended to contribute to breaking the logjam and facilitating the negotiation process.

We are indeed in very difficult times because of the circumstances of the past and our perception of the future. There is no easy path to freedom. Utopia will not descend on South Africa through slogan politics of violence. Rather, one has to create conditions of mutual trust and a political climate conducive to striving in a preferred direction to alter the status quo. The suggestions I offer are therefore compromises, bearing in mind the reality of the South African situation. One has to make the distinction between idealism and pragmatism. Pragmatic provisions to obtain interim improvements should be sought with the hope and intention that in this way further change will be initiated. Political change constitutes an ongoing process and not a one-time solution.

No one in this House, including the hon the State President, will deny that we share a common objective of a peaceful resolution to the state of conflict in our society. In offering or finding solutions to constitutional issues, one cannot ignore the facts of history. We have become prisoners of the past and trapped by historical events and circumstances. Since the formation of the Union of South Africa, and even before that event as far as the Blacks are concerned, Black and White people had different histories and different experiences. The Afrikaner group was also a victim of discrimination during the era of English rule. In the period of economic, social and political reconstruction in the last 40 years, the Afrikaner who assumed political power secured the privileges for his group, invariably at the expense of the Black population group. A situation of distrust and conflict became endemic in South African society as the policy of classic apartheid began to unfold.

The basis of apartheid may be ascribed to British colonialism in Southern Africa. The Black Land Act, 1913 and the Black (Urban Areas) Act, 1923, which was consolidated by Act No 25 of 1945, which made compulsory the carrying of passes for the Blacks for the purposes of influx control, were already on the Statute Books before the Afrikaner took political control. Subsequently, Parliament, in the post-war period, passed further legislation which was racially discriminatory. The Group Areas Act of 1950 is one such Act which has imposed severe economic hardships on the Indian community and has disrupted the social patterns of behaviour among the community. The high crime rate we see amongst the community may be partly ascribed to the disruptive effect of resettlement and low self-esteem that people tend to have as a consequence of legislation which denied economic, educational and social mobility and personal advancement.

It is not my purpose to recount history, but let me also say that such history cannot be swept under the carpet. It is the circumstance of history that is partly contributing to frustrating the reform programme.

The complexity of the South African situation is evident in the numerous and often conflicting interpretations of events in this country. Any attempt to abolish discriminatory legislation was seen by the conservative White group as a surrender of White rule and domination by the Blacks, and by the so-called radical Black groups as the imminent collapse of the White government.

The myth tended to give credence to this assumption and was fuelled by township violence to create conditions of instability and ungovernability. The myth only serves to protract the peaceful search for alternate solutions. The Government is caught in a see-saw game. White conservative viewpoints appear to stall the bold Government initiative of reform.

Since 1981 the Government has abolished numerous discriminatory laws, starting with the removal of racial barriers which existed with regard to trade unionism in the past. The freedom to enter into wage agreements, the right to strike, the establishments of industrial courts to arbitrate on unfair labour practices have the profound effect of giving more confidence and power to the Black group, thus affecting political matters.

The repeal of the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, the granting of permanent residential rights to the Blacks, the abolition of influx control, multiracial and integrated provincial and administrative bodies contributed significantly to the reform process.

South Africa was in a situation of deadlock inasmuch as previous Prime Ministers realised that apartheid had to go and did not serve the future of the Whites. They were psychologically trapped in a cage they had built for themselves. It had taken the courage of the hon the State President to make the quantum leap to break the logjam of Afrikaner politics and steer them away towards a broader perspective. In taking this step, the Government has moved away from the policy of apartheid, causing the most traumatic episode in Afrikaner history by breaking its unity.

As long as the Government was shackled to the prejudices of the past, it was leading the country to economic disaster, social turbulence, violence and insecurity. By setting out on the path of reform, the Government has triggered one of the greatest upheavals in the political process and history of this country. It appears to be ironical that as more reform takes place, the greater the resistance from the conservatives and radicals, each fearing reform for their own narrow reasons. Resistance is evident, perhaps not because there is no meaningful reform, but because the reform does not suit the objectives of the opposition groups.

The one supreme question to be answered is: What will be the structure of the South African Government? I use the word South African in the broader sense, not to include only a section of the population or to exclude any group, but to embrace all those who live in this country as defined in 1910.

Our political philosophy is based on the current Western democracy where every citizen with certain qualifications is given the vote to decide who shall govern them. Let me add that the granting of such right to vote as we see in Western countries, evolved in these countries. In tracing the history of democracy in the Western countries, even the United States, not all of its citizens were initially given the right to vote. The voting franchise was gradually extended to include today all its citizens who qualify.

Very often we tend to ignore the evolution of democracy in Western countries. Very often, too, we are pressured to imitate Western models which have evolved and are applicable today in these countries. We have now realised that the Westminster model of the winner takes all does not meet the political aspirations of all of South Africa’s people, hence our courage to abandon the system and search for an alternate one. The search is a long and difficult one, and the solution must be found here by South Africans through the process of negotiation.

The idea of one man, one vote and winner takes all is now taken for granted by many groups and has attained the status of a universal truth. One man, one vote has become a political ideal. It is a fairly recent invention and its spread worldwide is even more recent. Voting was introduced for the purpose of electing someone to represent the electorate in a representative assembly. The rule came into being that the majority decision binds the whole. Representation and majority became inextricably connected.

As regards the principle of majority decision, Professor E Kedouri, professor of politics at the London School of Economics, is of the opinion that this is workable, and I quote:

He goes on further to state that, and I quote:

This, in fact, has happened when a parliamentary government in plural society has been instituted on the basis of one man, one vote, and winner takes all. The worst effects of they tyranny of the majority are seen when parliamentary government on the Westminster model is introduced into countries divided by religion, language or race.

Syria and Iraq in the Middle East are examples of countries where an extremely heterogeneous society came to be governed by a constitution which made no provision for diversity. There the result was tyranny of one group over the other group in the society.

Risks are inherent in the Westminster model. Constitution makers did try to provide safeguards and checks and balances so as to avoid perpetual rule by, say, an ethnic minority over a different ethnic minority. This, for instance, was the case in Cyprus, where the 1960 constitution was designed to accommodate the mutual fears of the Turkish Cypriots who were afraid of being swamped by the Greek majority, and the Greeks who were afraid of intervention by Turkey in support of the Turks. The constitution was made up of nearly 400 clauses, intended to avoid the danger of a majority terrorising perpetually over a minority. The devices proved unworkable and the constitution has broken down. There was a de facto separation of the two groups, confirmed by the Turkish invasion of 1974.

Federalism is one attempt to obviate majority tyranny and a successful example of federalism is the United States. However, federalism is not a fool-proof method of avoiding group conflict within a state. Any federal system as a solution for South Africa must be adapted to meet the complexities of the South African situation. The constitutional history of Pakistan and Nigeria, and particularly the Nigerian civil war over the Biafran issue, are warnings of the problems in plural or heterogeneous societies.

In Third World countries which attained independence after the Second World War, the application of the Westminster model can result in unrestrained tyranny—the one man, one vote winner-takes-all system can also become the screen behind which the so-called single party can systematically and without check extend its control over groups that are inarticulate or weak. Again according to Professor Kedourie, and I quote:

In Britain and France, where the system operates, it is impossible or very difficult for a government or any single group to impose its will upon society, because social groupings and interests are of such variety and power.

I do not want to be misconstrued as not being in favour of granting or extending the vote to all of those who may qualify in terms of criteria that may be laid down. The concept of one man, one vote winner-takes-all system is a slogan that is so firmly entrenched in the minds of the people as an answer to all their problems. What I am saying is that, in the South African context, recognising the plurality of society and the existence of several minority groups, the winner takes all in the Westminster style of parliamentary government is clearly unworkable. Yet I believe that so-called radical left-wing groups propose this as a solution. Such an attitude would only end in a constitutional deadlock. While every adult citizen must be granted the right to vote, the form of government and its constitution must take cognizance of the realities of South African society.

As regards constitutional reform, the Government has committed itself to consensus politics and open negotiation with all those who subscribe to the principle of non-violence. The hon the State President has outlined new constitutional proposals which attempt to create new structures to accommodate Blacks—particularly those outside the self-governing states. He proposed, inter alia: The creation of a National Council or the Great Indaba; the inclusion of non-homeland Blacks in constitutional structures; the inclusion of independent and non-independent Black states; Black regional authorities, the establishment of a super Cabinet to include Blacks; the restructuring of the President’s Council to include Blacks and a revision of its powers; and finally the establishment of a number of committees to deal with specific issues.

While these and other proposals are bold measures, and of integrity and honesty, they must still be regarded as merely initial offers to start the process of negotiation. It can only be construed as a step towards reform and it is for taking this step, no matter how small or faltering, that the hon the State President deserves credit. Obstinacy on the part of those who hold power and those who seek power will only result in a deadlock or stalemate, ultimately detrimental to all the people in this country.

These proposals are merely initial steps and are offered in the sincere hope that negotiations can now take place; and therefore deserve the full support of all those who seek a peaceful resolution of the conflict. The proposals themselves are not complete answers, and I do not think it is intended to be so or else the Government would appear to be too prescriptive and imposing its will on the people. It is important that the next step towards a constitutional model has been taken and the door is open for negotiation.

Propaganda is made that those who participate in the negotiation process are co-opted into the system and are subservient to the authority of the State President. This is a spurious argument and only the weak who have little to offer and lack confidence in their point of view and who are likely to succumb to pressures that spurn the negotiation process.

Negotiation calls for strong and articulate leadership and if they have the confidence in themselves they would not fear negotiation. Negotiation is not about capitulating to the pressures or about imposing a single point of view. It is about finding a compromise and a consensus on diverse issues through the process of give and take. No one point of view can dominate and the fears and hopes of all have to be accommodated.

The fear of the Whites has to be turned into hope, and the hope of the Blacks has to be turned into reality. All sides have to scale down their demands in a negotiating exercise. There is enough goodwill and common sense left in the leaders of society to recognise this simple fact.

The proposals provide an opportunity for the Black leaders to participate along with all other South Africans in a decision-making process. If leaders refuse to negotiate on the basis of fundamental democratic values and a free market economy then they must be at variance with the ultimate goals of society. It would suggest that they wish to replace one system of government with another.

The issue we face is not about the system of government, but about the sharing of power and responsibility and the development of the constitutional model to accommodate the aspirations of all groups.

However, they must also recognise some fundamental problems that retard the negotiation process such as the banning of organisations. This is the consequence of history—I mentioned this earlier—and it is a reality that one has to recognise. After years of being held back by discriminatory practices there is an intense feeling of bitterness amongst Black people, particularly amongst the youth of society. We cannot ignore this fact, neither can it be removed overnight. The Government wants change and so do the people. The hon the State President has made the first move on the chessboard and is now waiting for the next move in the game.

As regards further reform the Government is committed to consensus politics and open negotiations with all those who subscribe to the principle of nonviolence. The Government has publicly rejected political domination by any one community of another; exclusion of any community from the political decision-making process; injustice or inequality in the opportunities available to any community; racial discrimination and the impairment of human dignity.

Several pieces of legislation have been repealed or amended to give intention to the above ideals. The cornerstone of these changes, however, retains a concept of race. Be that as it may, the changes are intended to set the scene for negotiations. While the recent set of proposals is a significant point of departure concerning the sharing of power, yet there appears to be stumbling blocks on the path of negotiation.

While the proposals themselves are welcome, they indicate the desire for change. What is needed is to translate the intention into a programme of action to give meaning and substance to the proposals. We need to create a climate so that the players in the game can now make the next move. Merely waiting for the next move, Mr President, may not be sufficient in itself to expect a delivery or a response. The Government itself must make it possible for the players to make the next move.

To show good faith and intention the following steps may help to break the deadlock and facilitate the dialogue; release all political detainees and allow the return of political exiles; lift the ban on organisations; develop a marketing strategy; accelerate the programme for social and economic reconstruction; formulate an alternate set of values; and declare a moratorium on all group areas evictions in the interests of exploiting all peaceful avenues for resolving differences.

The hon the State President must see to it that the Government does not take unilateral action regarding the wishes of the people of colour and it must ensure that the matter is negotiated in the true spirit of reform to which the hon the State President has committed the Government.

However, these measures must be regarded as compromises in the search for a peaceful negotiated solution. Under normal circumstances, against the background of perhaps a different history, dialogue is possible without any preconditions. We, however, are not living under such normal conditions and compromises are necessary in the interests of the people of this country.

All points of view must be canvassed and only when divergent opinions are freely expressed can the best compromise solution be found. Canvassing only one point of view will fail to provide answers to the complexities of our situation and the aspirations of the people and while agreement may be forthcoming the solution may lack permanence. We must make it possible for varied viewpoints to be aired and debated and for representatives from all shades of opinion to be present at the negotiations.

It is only when free, fair and open debate takes place that an authentic solution can be arrived at. Under such conditions a compromise or consensus solution has a greater level of acceptance than under any other conditions. The reluctance of some Black leaders to negotiate while political dissidents are detained or imprisoned and exiles are abroad is understandable. The Government must make it possible for all individuals to take part.

Banning and restrictions on organisations that are willing to participate in the Great Indaba must be lifted. Circumstances of history have led to the banning of certain organisations, and all organisations and bodies must be given the opportunity to participate.

No matter how sound the final proposals may be, the absence or denial of opportunities for all to participate will seriously prejudice the solution. Suspicions will be raised about the validity of the proposals, and their relevance will be questioned. The opposition to the proposals will be based not on their weakness, but on the means used to arrive at such proposals. The negotiating process must have the support of as many organisations as possible—who must be free to attend—for the proposals to be acceptable. In fact, much of the opposition to negotiation today stems from the very exclusion of participants through the imposition of banning and restrictions.

The more the proposals are exposed to criticism and debate during negotiations, the greater their strength and quality and the greater their chance of success.

There is a wide divergence of opinions, even among Black organisations, and having had the opportunity to hear the other side, demands will have to be scaled down. In my view it is easier under such circumstances to reach a compromise provided there is a commitment on the part of all to resolve differences in a peaceful manner.

The weakness of the Government in the reform programme is that it lacks a marketing strategy to inform the public fully at all times about the meaning, nature and content of reform in the language that it understands. The mass of the people are uninformed and invariably form their image from the reports—often negative, partial and incomplete—about reform. Once a negative image is formed by the public it becomes difficult to dispel such a notion. The Government must formulate a programme for the dissemination of information concerning reform. The campaign must be vigorous and sustained to keep the public fully informed at all times. The best safeguard for reform is a well-informed public.

Another step to complement the reform process is to further accelerate the programme for economic and social reconstruction. The Government is committed, as it has stated, to provide equal opportunities for all and it must therefore give the highest priority to improving the standard of living of the Black population through the provision of housing, education and the creation of entrepreneurial opportunities. One does not have to wait for the end of the negotiation process to derive the benefits of reform. The public must see the benefits of the process working for them now. They must perceive that they are gaining the benefits or spin-off from the reform process. The revolutionary climate and the potential conflict will be defused as the community enjoys social and economic rewards.

We need to formulate an alternate set of values. No significant social change is likely without corresponding change in the value system. The search for ideals like justice and freedom, human equality, unity and interdependence, peace, love, and the right to participation find strong support and transcend ethnic, racial and religious barriers. In a heterogeneous society such as that in South Africa, the first task is to establish a new value system. These values must be the basis for the restructuring of society. In this respect the churches have a positive and constructive role to play. Meaningful contact across cultural boundaries is necessary to allay fear and suspicion. In this game of political rugby, the ball is in the hands of the State President. He can either stand still or run with it for a solo try.

However, with a formidable opposition he may not succeed on his own. He could, on the other hand, pass the ball to another player to help the team to score.

Are you talking about Western Province now? [Interjections.]

In the spirit of reform, the ball has to be passed to his team mate to help the team to victory.

The team now is not only the White population. The Afrikaner has grown in stature and is gaining self-confidence to include Blacks in the team. The Afrikaner has shed inhibitions of the past. The politics of the future cannot be concerned with the interest of the White voters only. The survival of the Whites is intimately tied up with the survival of the Blacks. No group can succeed without the other. The politics of reform is not a zero sum game. The Government cannot sincerely and vigorously pursue the path of reform if it is continually looking over its right shoulder. The Government cannot allow the conservative group to dictate the reform agenda. What the NP lost—permanently—on the right will be compensated by the immense gain of goodwill of other groups in South Africa.

These groups must not feel alienated, they are part of the team. The National Party must shed its burden and expand its base to turn an ethnic loss of White votes to national gain by accommodating the political interest of Blacks.

Our task as leaders of this country is not to secure short term gains but to address ourselves to the future of the country and the future of society in this country. It is the future we are concerned with, not the prejudices of the past.

The task of the hon the State President is to lead South Africa into the future. In this process he is not expected to abandon the White community or abdicate power, but I urge him not to be thwarted by the parochialism of conservative attitudes or the revolutionary slogans of the radical element. He must do what is best for the country while at the same time protecting the interest of every citizen and all the groups in this country.

Power sharing through compromise is the future force with the greatest chance of success. The task is to build the future where there is hope, peace, love, happiness, justice and equal opportunities. At this hour of need in our country, South African leaders from every walk of life must be seen to be taking a positive stand and encouraging all those who wish to be involved in the formulation of a new political order in South Africa to participate in the negotiating forum instead of negative political posturing on the sidelines. Let us move forward together in faith and in this task the hon the State President has the full support of myself and my party. It is better to have hope for the future than a future without hope.

Mr Chairman, I request the privilege of the half hour.

The hon member for Laudium made reference to the finding of the Human Sciences Research Council that 45% of what is called the Indian community favour the hon the State President as the national leader of South Africa. I do not dispute that finding. I cannot dispute it. Indeed, my own empirical observations lend support to that finding. What has to be borne in mind is that I when put a question at the seminar to Dr Rhoodie he answered in the affirmative. What I said to him was the following: “Dr Rhoodie, would you agree that the socio-cultural background of what is called the Indian community lends itself to support for the father figure or the authority figure?” He said: “Yes”. One cannot divorce a particular group from its socio-cultural background.

Another reason why many members of that group would like the hon the State President to be the national leader of the country—not merely of the Indian or the Afrikaans group or the White community—is because they perceive that under the tutelage of the hon the State President certain desirable reforms have indeed occurred and they want to see a continuation of those reforms until we reach the situation in which all the people of this country will be happy. This is where I would like, Mr Chairman, to address the hon the State President through you.

I am not dealing with the negative angle that 55% of the Indian community did not support the hon the Minister. If one controls 27% of the shareholding in any public corporation one controls the company, so if one has 45% one is really much better off than having only 27%. [Interjections.] I am therefore not being negative, but positive.

In this positive spirit I want to point out that we as the nation of South Africa are in a state of flux. We are in that position because of apartheid. The Government has not abandoned apartheid. Apartheid is based on racism and where there is compulsory compartmentalisation of people on the grounds of race then that is racism, and no one can deny it. Apartheid is therefore perceived as being evil incarnate. Separate development is based on the notion of compulsory race classification and such separate development is apartheid. The wholly artificial concept of own affairs is also apartheid because it is reduced to absolute ludicrousness in its application. It worsens the situation.

Only recently—I think it was about 10 days ago—the hon the State President spoke what I should respectfully like to call wise and statesmanlike words when he said:

Those were wise words. They were noble words. They were words that could inspire this nation of ours—all 28 million of us; not just 4,5 million or 5 million; not just 7 million, but all 28 million of us—who are derived from many parts of the world—the Nguni, the Sotho and the Tswana derived from parts of Central Africa; the so-called White group derived from Europe; the so-called Indian group derived from Asia, the Chinese group derived from Asia; and certain other people, whom Dick van der Ross described as being “made in South Africa”, are an amalgam of these various derivatives—into an enthusiastic rebuilding of the nation. These are words which could promote the healing of the wounds that have divided our nation. They could promote the reconciliation that we desperately need in our race-riven and strife-torn society. We do have the chance of creating that very unity in diversity of which the hon the State President first spoke in Witbank about four years ago.

The vision has been conjured up and we must give credit to the hon the State President for having conjured up that vision of a united nation to create prosperity for all in this country. What is more, the opportunity to move rapidly towards that goal is here, but why does the hon the State President hesitate? Why does he temporise and why does he, by inaction, negatively give the denial to his own words?

The Bard made Malvolio say that some are born great, some achieve greatness and others have greatness thrust upon them.

Gen Jan Christiaan Smuts achieved greatness but he himself destroyed it when, although he was attracted by the philosophy of holism and had helped to frame the Atlantic Charter, and although he had largely authored the San Francisco Declaration, he faltered when faced with domestic opposition to what he knew decency demanded had to be done, and stumbled and fell by the way side.

A prominent local cleric had greatness thrust upon him by some committee sitting in Sweden or Norway because he was of the required colour and was in the right place and said the required things at the opportune time. I shall not name that cleric because everyone knows who he is.

President P W Botha has been praised for his courage by no less formidable critics than Alan Paton and Harry Oppenheimer, and in this regard I want to pause for a moment to say publicly what I have said in a letter to the hon the State President. I deeply appreciated the tribute the hon the State President paid to that great son of South Africa, Alan Paton.

I said in this House that as State President of South Africa, all the people of our country looked to him to give the correct leadership. No reasonable person would have failed to realise that such leadership must be in the interests of all the people of this country of all racial or ethnic groups.

The time has come, Mr Chairman, for the hon the State President to decide definitively and to make a forthright declaration as to whether he is only the tribal leader of the Afrikaner people or the White group in this country, or whether he is the State President of all South Africa, which is what we want him to be.

From the hon the State President’s own declaration that he wishes to recreate the office of Prime Minister, it is obvious that he realises the dilemma of his present dichotomy. For the benefit of those who do not understand that clearly: He is the State President of the nation; he is also the leader of the Government, which does sometimes lead to a situation which the lawyers would call ‘a conflict of interest’. However, it just won’t do for such a Prime Minister to be a presidential employee or an appointee. In such a case, a Prime Minister will be merely an adjunct to the presidency, and the stigma of White domination will remain.

Let us not delude ourselves. The present political dispensation in South Africa is one of White domination. This is seen in the tricameral Parliament, within its standing committees, and in the fact that members of the provincial executive committees are party factotums nominated by the Government. It is also seen in the composition of the President’s Council.

Therefore, even within the limited capacity of those segments of this Parliament which is not White, there is domination, basically by the White racial group, but essentially by the National Party of which the hon the State President himself is the leader. That the members of the National Party, namely the National Peoples’ Party in this House, support the Government, depends almost entirely upon the sad fact that the Government stands back and allows the NPP leader in this House to handle so-called Indian “own affairs” as his personal fiefdom, in the same way that the British Raj permitted great excesses by the Maharajas so long as they said “Ja, baas” to the British king.

However, when it comes to the majority of South Africans—those other 18 million of whom the hon the State President is also State President—domination gives way to naked oppression. It saddens me to use that emotive expression, but I will fail in my duty as a member of this House and of Parliament did I not do so. If we honestly want to work for that healing and that reconciliation which the hon the State President as a Christian has given indication that he wants, we must not shirk from the truth, however stark that truth may be.

Until recently the “Britte” as well as the Boers were my oppressors. They are not anymore. They merely dominate me; they do not oppress me. Until Black South Africans are given a meaningful vote and a voice in the highest legislative organs of this land, their perception will remain that they are oppressed. And that belief will be based on fact.

In his heart, when near repose he thinks about his beloved country, when down on his knees he prays to God Almighty, the hon the State President must surely be aware of this. His recent, almost hesitant, tentative suggestions for inclusion of Black South Africans in a possibly restructured President’s Council and the hint that Black leaders may be brought into the Cabinet is some evidence of this awareness on the part of the hon the State President. Therefore, no longer is it necessary or possible for any of us to say, and I paraphrase this with due reverence: “Lord, forgive him, for he knows not what to do.” We cannot say that he knows not what to do. He knows what has to be done.

In 1939 Gen Smuts knew what to do, for he declared in Maseru that segregation had fallen on evil days. Yet, he produced the pegging legislation.

In 1988, the hon the State President knows which key is necessary to unlock all the riches of South Africa that can lead all our people to that peace and prosperity of which he spoke ten days ago. The key is full political participation by all South Africans on a one man, one vote basis. This is definitely so, but not necessarily in a unitary state.

Here some pointers were given by the hon the State President recently in an interview with Arnaud de Borchgrave, when he suggested a unique blend of a federal and a confederal solution. We have discussed that in this House before. I was delighted when it seemed that that was going through the mind of the hon the State President of this country.

The KwaZulu-Natal proposals are also unique, devised after months of patient negotiation. The essence of those proposals is to avoid compulsory ethnic compartmentalisation while permitting freedom of choice. If the hon the State President really wants a Great Indaba—and as a Natalian I am pleased that he uses the Zulu word and not the more difficult kgotla—he can do no better than to use the KwaZulu-Natal example as a guide.

I think hon members know that among the Sotho and Tswana tribes, kgotla was their kind of Athenian democracy. Among the Zulus, before Shaka, the indaba was their form of Athenian democracy. I said that I am a Natalian. Of course I am, but I am in political terms not an Indian. I want to emphasise that, and I will continue to emphasise that at every opportunity. A large part of my social and cultural life is drawn from a rich Indian cultural heritage. I speak the Tamil language, and it is believed that the Tamil language has been in constant usage for the past 5 000 years. Before the Tamil script came into being, they used the Brahmi script more than 4 000 years ago. It is part of my culture, and I am proud of it. However, in national and political terms, I am what my passport says, and my passport declares to all the world that I am a South African. The Afrikaners do not call themselves Dutch or French or Scots—although there are many Buchanans and Andersons among Afrikaners—but they call themselves Africans from South Africa. Why then the nonsensical political appellation to those of us who are South Africans? We are not Indians. Indians are in India. India, regrettably, is hostile to South Africa, and to that extent India is hostile to the 900 000 South Africans of Indian descent. We are not hostile to our own country. We are loyal to this country. Why then maintain the fiction that we are Indians, that we are foreigners?

I referred to the unique blend of federal and confederal systems which appears to be in the mind of the hon the State President. There is no glib solution. The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition made reference to the United States. I do not know much about these things, but I happen to have made a small study of the federal system. I myself am enamoured of the West German federal system with its proportional system. However, the Nigerian federation of Gowon, which was drafted for General Gowon by an American lady who propounded this at a conference in the Wilderness Hotel, not far from where the hon the State President has his own holiday cottage. I have forgotten the name of that lady for moment, but that system was applied. Regrettably it did not receive the necessary preparation and therefore it was a failure.

The constitution of Soviet Russia provides for a federal system, but we know that it is a unitary state controlled by the communist party. Just the concept of a federation, or having a federal constitution itself, is not the panacea for the problem. We have to devise something which will suit the South African situation. This Swiss cantonal theory is bandied about. It is doubtful whether that would fit.

The Yugoslav system is something we can examine, but I come back to the West German system which I would definitely recommend to the hon the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning. I have spoken to the hon the Minister about this in several private conversations. That is the kind of thing we should be looking at.

Until that is devised, we must remember that separate development remains apartheid. Own affairs is a political figment. Own affairs is a fig leaf to hide the embarrassment of apartheid. However, this pales into insignificance when contrasted with the continued oppression of our 18 million Black fellow countrymen and country-women. Until then, until these 18 million compatriots of ours in this country have proper political rights, we shall have no peace. Until we have peace, there will be no reconciliation. There will not be that true and lasting prosperity that is essential for further progress.

If we stagnate, we shall slip back and fall, and if we fall we shall become prey to international political predators. And they are waiting. There is no question that those who want economic sanctions and who have campaigned for that within and without South Africa, are merely engaged in a softening-up process to create a revolutionary climate. These are the predators against whom we have to guard. The only way to guard against them is by having proper unitate vires. Until we are united, we shall not be strong and if we are weak those predators can win. What better way to have unity within our country, than to win over all the people and to give them true hope for the future. At the present time the majority of our people are so disaffected that they look with favour upon the ANC, even with its communist component.

The only way to fight Aids, is by personal moral and physical cleanliness. The only way to fight TB, in the long term, is with good food and adequate housing. The only way to fight communism, is with large dollops of democracy. The only way to prevent socialism, is by making private enterprise really work, and it can never work properly as long as the evil and economically stifling Group Areas Act remains on the Statute Book.

If the hon the State President wishes to be not merely the leader of the dominant White tribe which rules the majority by the mechanism of oppression, then he must work for the immediate benefit of all South Africans. Until he does that, he will not have become the State President of all the peoples of South Africa. When he does, he can help to open up vistas of prosperity, not only for all in our own country, but for all of Southern Africa. If the increasing economic power of the 50-odd million people in the region is fully unlocked by the abolition of apartheid the Whites will, because of their historical headstart, remain in the lead for a very, very long time to come. I believe that some of our hon Cabinet Ministers should visit various countries in South America at State expense, which the taxpayer should cheerfully bear. There these hon Ministers will see that there is no colour bar, no apartheid and no segregation, and yet—because of the historical input made by the Portuguese in the Portuguese-speaking as well as the Hispanic in the Spanish-speaking countries—one finds that the White Portuguese and White Spanish still provide all the leadership in every sphere in those countries.

It is only by giving that one receives. It is only by removing the political and economic chains that retard our Black brethren that the White ruling class can be freed. It is by replacing oppression with genuine equality of opportunity that reconciliation can be sought. It is only by giving up militarily imposed domination that there can be the dominance of the norms and values of the Graeco-Roman-Judeaic-Christian civilisation to which the hon the State President obviously subscribes.

Will the hon the State President put his whole faith in God, and in the justice that belief in the Almighty entails; and will he, forsaking parochial loyalties, give that loyalty to all South Africans, which alone could evoke a response of loyalty that can weld the nation, and lead it to that prosperity of which he has spoken?

We must hope that he will do so, for those of us who plead for reconciliation in peace and who reject violence for political purposes, must persist in the pursuit of constitutional reform. For that it is essential that all concerned abandon the near-disease of preconditionitis that has infected negotiation politics.

The ANC preconditions, other than the release of political prisoners, are as unrealistic as the hon the State President’s own preconditions for the release of those prisoners; as also are the preconditions others impose to even agreeing to sit around a table in a Great Indaba.

If only the hon the State President would accept that a prisoner can never be expected to engage in negotiations for the simple reason of inevitable duress, he must see the logic of lifting the remaining preconditions he imposed for the freeing of Mandela and the other political prisoners. Similarly it is quite illogical for a banned organisation—which in law does not exist—to be expected to appoint delegates to an indaba.

There are many men and women within the ANC who never espoused communism. They merely looked to the SACP for help in the same way that many Afrikaner leaders who smarted under British domination, looked to Adolf Hitler and his Nazi’s for help. It was the racialism within South Africa that drove so many loyal South Africans into the willing embrace of those who have other interests as well.

The hon the State President must in the national interest give these people a chance to demonstrate their loyalty to all the people of South Africa of all colours. My professional colleague Mr Archie Gumede, is a loyal South African and a democrat at heart. I insist that he is a democrat at heart. He is co-president of the UDF. He has been obliged, by being denied Parliamentary political rights, to make use of the only other political expression possible. Hundreds of thousands of decent South Africans have no other means of expressing their views to the powers that be than by extra-parliamentary protest. Give them proper parliamentary rights and that extra-parliamentary protest will diminish to the point of extinction.

I have always been an optimist yet I cannot help worrying about the fact that the hon the State President and the Government still remain so far removed from even such moderate and strongly anticommunist leaders as Dr Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Mr Tom Mboya. If a government cannot sit around a small table with them immediately and collectively—not individually—and remove this disease of preconditionitis that is imperilling the Great Indaba, then we are in for trouble. Nevertheless, I shall retain an optimistic stance.

Mr Chairman, I should like to borrow the words of the poet William Wordsworth:

I borrowed those words vis-a-vis the South Africa scene, to say: Dull would be those South Africans who do not see the reform processes in this country. The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition and the hon member for Reservoir Hills were highly philosophical this afternoon in their contributions to the hon the State President’s vote. I cannot deviate or find myself at odds with the philosophy expounded this afternoon. However, I do want to say that after decades of delusion, South Africans realise that South Africa is not entirely a developed and First World country. It is important to bear this in mind not only in economic matters but also as regards political solutions. Hence in 1983 our realisation that the Westminster constitutional model, which engaged the attention of the hon the State President and the Government of the day, was not the model for South Africa, and that it was totally inappropriate for South African conditions. Therefore, when the opportunity was given to people of colour—regrettably only the Coloured and Indian communities—we saw in this the opportunity of participation politics rather than confrontation politics. Therefore we in South Africa are still searching for a South African constitutional model. This is one commodity which we cannot import. We as South Africans have to find that model.

Therefore, in the past few days the hon the State President’s pronouncement on further structural change for the achievement of what we desire for South Africa, is most welcome. We need to lend our support to the hon the State President and the State with a view to more forward mobility in the interests of South Africa. I refer to forward mobility in the sense that there should be no impediment to the hon the State President and the Cabinet in their programme of reform and change.

The two extremes to the left and the right are not what we in South Africa are looking to. These are impediments that the hon the State President takes into account to the fullest extent and recognises. We have had a right-wing development that we as South Africans deplore; we do not want it. We deplore just as much the left-wing element which looks to no other solution but violence. In the words of our previous political leaders who guided our political life in South Africa, I want to repeat:

I should like to deal with the hon the State President’s Vote in relation to State expenditure. I want to say that the hon the State President has taken a bold step in the curbing of State expenditure. Therefore, in reciprocation for his bold step we expect the private sector also to do likewise.

Therefore I would like to join many others who appreciate the hon the State President’s curbing of expenditure and I want to appeal to the private sector to play its rightful role in the process. We cannot any longer afford to have a return of the inflation rate to its former high levels. We do not want to see that the present economic boom shows a reverse reaction because this will be to the detriment of all South Africans.

Where is the boom?

The hon member does not recognise the present situation for what it is. No less a person than the Governor of the Reserve Bank …

What did he say?

He said that there was an economic boom.

What did the hon the State President say?

The Governor of the Reserve Bank echoed what the hon the State President had said earlier, namely that there was an economic boom. No economist will deny the fact.

What I want to say is that in this period of an economic boom we need to look at the future of creating job opportunities in South Africa. There will be a hundred thousand or more people annually who seek jobs and we need to address this matter. I want to plead with the hon the State President that this is what South Africa needs in the future. Perhaps it is not the answer to all the aspirations of South Africans but it will at least create a viable and prosperous economic commodity.

With regard to the Vote itself I want to refer to the hon the State President’s deregulation announcements. We are aware that deregulation needs to be implemented. I want to plead with the hon the State President that we must not forget the small business people and the individuals who even from their homes are earning an honest and decent living. It is therefore very important that the programme of reform be so implemented that we meet with the aspirations of the South African community.

I want to deal very briefly with the hon member for Reservoir Hills. He said South Africans and perhaps even Cabinet Ministers should visit South America. We have gone to South America as individuals and not necessarily as Cabinet Ministers. I do not mean it as a reflection on the hon member for Reservoir Hills, but I would like to know of one South American state which is at peace with its people. We have the clear example of the Argentine where thousands of people disappeared without trace. Brazil is another country which emphasises its democracy. There are also countries like Chile and Nicaragua. The situation in South America is worse than in South Africa. [Interjections.]

We will be able to find ourselves if those who govern us are prepared to recognise our legitimate rights. We need to be treated as human beings and nothing less. [Interjections.] I therefore want to say again to the hon the State President that in his programme of reform he must not allow any impediments or legislation to be tabled in Parliament which will create prejudice and hold back the programme of reform in South Africa.

Mr Chairman, having listened to all the contributions that have been made to this debate on the hon the State President’s Vote, I want to begin by first of all acknowledging the concern of, and the efforts made by our head of State, the hon the State President, at the time of the recent flood disasters which afflicted Natal and many other parts of the country. Never before have we been faced with such calamity but bearing in mind the swiftness with which this issue was dealt with, we can be proud of the State for the manner in which it dealt with this matter.

I want to compliment my colleague, the hon member for Laudium, who spoke about the Human Sciences Research Council’s views with regard to the hon the State President and the National Party. The hon member for Laudium also spoke about the importance of violence during this transitional period.

The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition did say that there was no easy path to freedom and my colleague the hon the Minister of the Budget did say that we could not afford the luxury of confrontation politics, and therefore all of us must collectively be able to join hands to find a peaceful solution to the problems of a complex country like South Africa.

In this regard I want to come back to a statement that has repeatedly been made by the hon the State President, namely that the Government would have liked to have lifted the state of emergency during the opening of Parliament in 1987. No relaxation has been announced in the peaceful regions of South Africa. The present climate has become like the cessation of a loud, discordant noise which has been stilled and has dissolved into a silence louder and more disturbing than the noise itself. We must acknowledge the decrease in the loss of lives and unrest-related incidents but one cannot ignore the ominous and uneasy quiet which prevails in South Africa.

It is not possible to convince the international community that stability is being restored as long as the state of emergency exists. Consideration must therefore be given to a gradual and a planned lifting of the state of emergency on a regional basis.

Both the hon member for Reservoir Hills and the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition touched on the subject of one man, one vote. There is a clamour from all sections of the South African community for one man, one vote. The hon the State President should pay some attention to giving South African citizens some form of voting rights on the basis that all nations are equal. However, all people are not necessarily equal, as in the view of Lord Haley, an authority on African affairs.

They are all equal in the eyes of God!

His belief was that priority must first be established and that socio-economic development is the foundation stone upon which positive developments must be built.

Lord Haley also mentioned that it should never be said that the African asked for bread and was given the vote instead, and my appeal to the hon the State President is that he look at the two important fundamental pillars—one being politics and the other economic stability—which remain inseparable.

Unfortunately, it is a known fact that South Africa has become the whipping boy of the international community. The following was stated in the editorial of the Natal Mercury last Saturday:

[Interjections.] He fails to understand the wisdom and the vision of this Government of ours.

Just recently the possibility of a meeting between the hon the State President and his counterparts was announced. [Interjections.] If we were to take the Nkomati Accord and the foundation on which it was established, that in itself is distinct evidence of the honesty and the intentions of the hon the State President and this country with regard to stability in Southern Africa.

The Natal Indian Congress totally militated against any participation. They were even responsible for asking the Indian Government to see to it that we do not travel freely to India. Today, however, there appears to be a re-think in relation to visiting artists and singers. Dr Meier says in the Weekend Post that the need for teachers and artists to come from India and Pakistan to help enrich Indian culture in South Africa, has been recognised, and yet another gentleman from Harare says that there has been a ban on South Africa as part of an overall United Nations embargo.

I want to ask how any civilised nation in any part of the world can take decisions which would impoverish the culture of any nation. It is the responsibility of any government in any part of the world to give assistance to propagate and uplift culture, and yet the United Nations takes these decisions simply because we are South Africans. So much has been said about disinvestment. I would like to state that agitators within the international community should now, once and for all, leave South Africa to South Africans. It should not be left to those who sit in five-star hotels and have three meals a day to decide who should starve in South Africa.

I think South Africans are capable enough. I think all of us, collectively, have a vision as to what we would like South Africa to be. I want to say finally that the hon the State President will go down in history as one person who took the initiative and has made an imperishable contribution to the destiny of South Africa.

Mr Chairman, in the 1983 referendum a reasonable percentage of the voters voted against the constitutional reforms. Some of them voted ‘no’ because they were against the reforms and some voted ‘no’ because they indicated that the reforms were not far-reaching enough. However, there is no doubt about the fact that when, in 1983, Parliament passed the Republic of South Africa Constitution Act, there was a drastic change in the course of the history, not only of South Africa, but of the Southern African region. During that era and the years that followed, South Africa proved that it has the necessary resources and the necessary infrastructure to play a very vital role, not only in respect of the development of South Africa or the Southern African region, but of the whole of the continent of Africa.

Reference was made to the annual attitude surveys conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council. I do not want to deal with this in great detail, except to make reference again to the fact that the hon the State President is accepted by the vast majority of the people as the most popular national leader to lead South Africa. In fact, the hon the State President as an individual is accepted by a very great margin of the members of the Indian community as their choice of leader as compared to Indian leaders, the United Democratic Front, the Transvaal Indian Congress and even the Natal Indian Congress. However, that survey also indicates something of significance, namely that the people of South Africa, especially those who are not White, are moving away from radicalism, want non-violent change and are looking positively towards those like us who are walking the road of peaceful evolution to find solutions to the problem of South Africa.

However, there is another point of significance, and that is, second to the National People’s Party, the Nationalist Party is emerging as a strong choice amongst the members of the Indian community. In order to keep up the dignity that this debate has, I do not want to deal with what the Indians think of the PFP.

The survey also records that 80% of the Blacks want a solution or a political arrangement where there shall be no domination of one over the other. I do not want to be accused of emphasising groups, even amongst the Black community. Reference has been made to the KwaZulu-Natal Indaba, despite the fact that in the initial stages, they shot down any solution based on groups. However, they finally arrived at an important solution based on race and groups!

We must look at the two arms of government. In South Africa, like many other Western countries, Parliament is the base of power. In certain countries with federal structures, for example India, the regional governments are given more power than the central governments in certain areas of activities. Everybody has recognised over the years—Blacks, Coloureds, Indians and Whites—that the real base of power in this country is Parliament.

This survey that has been carried out by the HSRC, indicates that 80% of the Blacks want a non-violent change. They want a change where there is going to be no domination of one over the other, but 80% of Blacks also indicated that they want to be in Parliament.

The hon the State President recently announced significant steps during his address in the House of Assembly. We agree with him that those who believe in a pragmatic approach must work themselves into a new dispensation. In 1983, despite the fact that one important newspaper stated that the 1983 Constitution was like a rickety model, we said it was worth a try. I do not think anyone who does an objective analysis and takes into consideration the successes we have achieved in the standing committees, would disagree with me when I say that our stay in Cape Town has been worth our while. There is no doubt about the fact that we played an important role. Despite the fact that the Assembly might have an overriding influence, we have played a significant role in reshaping events in Cape Town.

While the hon the State President has made announcements, these announcements refer to the executive. They refer to the levels of decision-making. There is, however, an important area where the Blacks, according to the Human Sciences Research Council survey, indicate that they want some positive indication where they want parliamentary representations.

I believe that with our participation—not only in our open debates, but in the Cabinet and Cabinet structures, and other areas in the constitutional set-up—we can jointly play a role to influence further reform. We can jointly shape the constitutional direction of this country.

This year, 1988, is of tremendous significance to South Africa for two reasons. We are celebrating the anniversary of the arrival in this country of that great Portugese navigator Bartholomew Diaz. Let us also use this opportunity to make another discovery of South Africa. It is also the 150th aniversary of the Great Trek. It is of significance that the Trek from the South to the North may not have stopped, because South Africa’s influence still extends northwards from this country.

Our scenario is such that we tend to forget that reform is not only reform in the constitutional direction. It is not only concerned with finding out how many people of colour will be seated in the Cabinet or in other structures where decisions are taken. It does not only concern the question of who sits in Parliament and who does not. Reform is also present in the socio-economic and educational spheres. Only last week I referred to an editorial of the Cape Times which lauded the progress we are making in Black education and upliftment. Priorities are being allocated in the areas where priority is deserved most. Two years ago this was not seen in South Africa. According to a survey carried out by the The Star newspaper, 78,8% of the tax contributed to this country’s coffers comes from the White community. 9,5% of what the fiscus receives comes from the Coloured community, and 5,3% from the Asian community and 6,4% from the Black community. With the reforms initiated by the hon the State President there is no doubt about the fact that this scenario is going to change within the next two years.

We are here, administering own affairs. I repeat that our concept of own affairs is not the promotion of apartheid. Our concept of own affairs is to provide services in our areas because we know what our areas need. There is no doubt about the fact that the areas under the jurisdiction of the House of Representatives and the House of Delegates have seen remarkable progress. This was recognised by members of both sides of the House when my colleagues in the Ministers’ Council presented their budgets.

I know that there are deficiencies which urgently need to be addressed. In any country where reforms are taking place and where there is a change from an old order to a new one, reference is always made to land reforms. I am very thankful to the hon the State President that as a result of our discussion last year he has appointed a committee under the chairmanship of the hon the Minister of Local Government and Agriculture in the House of Delegates to address our grievances as far as our land requirements for agriculture are concerned.

The President’s Council has dealt with the Group Areas Act but, notwithstanding what happened after that, the single most important grievance against the Group Areas Act was the question of the allocation of land to the various race groups on the basis of fairness. In my capacity as Minister of Housing in the Ministers’ Council in this administration I could highlight the inequality in respect of the allocation of land to be the single biggest factor impeding the provision of housing in this country. This is a very significant area which we would like to see addressed.

We have advanced the hard way. Indian education also stands on the grand road to progress as a result of self-initiative taken by our community. Now, at a time when we are about to reap the harvest of the excellent programme for education and at a time when there is a shortage of qualified teachers in Black and Coloured education, we have to turn away hundreds of our qualified teachers.

This is an area that needs attention most. South Africa on the whole has a shortage of teachers and we cannot afford to allow qualified teachers to be unemployed.

Having referred to South Africa playing an important role in the Southern African region I now note with interest news reports this morning that there is a build-up in Angola. Ever since the Portuguese withdrew from Angola in 1975 Cubans have been arriving. There was one incident about 13 to 15 years ago in Lisbon that changed the whole future course of the Southern African region and that was the fall of the Portuguese leader, Dr Caetano. This event turned important areas north of us—Angola to the west and Mozambique to the east—into puppets of Moscow virtually overnight. It is very significant to note that as a result of the initiatives taken by the hon the State President, South Africa is represented at the conference table at a very important meeting in London today. There is a possibility of strengthening the Nkomati Accord as a result of the visit by the representatives of the Mozambique Government recently.

I want to compliment the hon the State President on the success he has achieved during his recent visit to SWA. Although there are certain significant Black leaders who are not prepared to participate in the present government of SWA they are prepared to negotiate with the State President of our Republic. I want to say this afternoon—let us get this message of Lenin reverberating throughout South Africa—his message to Europe was: “Take Southern Africa and Europe will fall.” I want to say this afternoon that we back any efforts made by South Africa to make it an important requirement that those surrogates of Lenin must get out of Angola and let Africa alone find a solution to its problems.

I have reason to believe that South Africa and the USA will not stand alone if one of the important requirements for a peaceful solution in Angola is the withdrawal of the Cuban forces. I want to stand up this afternoon and add support to the hon the State President with regard to any stand that is going to be taken that the communist forces of Fidel Castro must withdraw from Angola.

Much has been said about apartheid and many comparisons have been drawn between the things done by the hon the State President. However, I want to say that it was the policy of the Government to give the Indians a system of one man, one vote. I am not going to say which individual in Durban advocated that, but let us not live in glass houses and throw stones.

This afternoon we listened to an excellent speech from the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition in which he said that in order to lead a country one has to be a chess player, not a rugby player. However, I want to quote from a significant section of the speech made by the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition who indicated that the hon the State President is holding on to the ball and that he should pass the ball. The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition nonetheless conceded that the hon the State President has made the first move on the chess board. He is now waiting for the next move in the game. Thus the hon the State President has made the move.

The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition places tremendous emphasis on those who are not participating in the peaceful programme in this country. Let me quote from another part from the speech by the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition:

Read the Hansard of 28 August 1987 in respect of what the hon the State President said in this House during his Vote, namely that anybody who is committed to peaceful change can take part in constitutional programmes in this country.

Let us not live in glass houses and throw stones. We are proud of the fact that we are Indians. In the final and overall analysis, we are South Africans, but let not anyone come and address this House and say: “Indians are in India.” If Indians are in India, why did they form an apartheid South Indian Development Company in South Africa? [Interjections.]

Mr Chairman, coming as I do at the tail end of so many speakers, I realise that I shall repeat much of what has already been said. However, I liken my position to that of an MP visiting his constituency and meeting half a dozen of his constituents, and having tea with them. Every cup of tea has a lesser value, or rather it becomes insipid, but the sweetness, all the same, remains!

I want to say this afternoon, with reference to the words of a great literary artist quoted by the hon member for Reservoir Hills this afternoon: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them.” Where the hon the State President stands as far as this quotation is concerned, is well-known to us. He has achieved greatness over the years.

In the same breath I want to say that while we have time limitations this afternoon, the same literary artist said: “If brevity is the soul of wit, I cannot hold you long.” Therefore I shall not hold you very long.

From 1984 onwards we have noticed that Parliament has gained momentum each year, with the result that the hon the State President is at a stage where it is possible to go ahead with the reform initiatives that he proposes to bring about. Generally I am in agreement with all the positive proposals—and I stress that—all the positive proposals made here by speakers this afternoon for constitutional reform for South Africa.

The hon the State President has clearly indicated the road he proposes to follow in effecting constitutional reform in this country. He has already enunciated his economic policy for the country, the success of which is a sine qua non for constitutional reform. There is no doubt in my mind that the hon the State President is busy preparing for the inclusion of members of the Black community hitherto not included in decision-making. He is busy with the machinery whereby to bring about that decision-making for Black people.

That there is some resistance from both the left and the right is understandable. However, the hon the State President has stated that in the future planning in this country, the Government is unconditionally committed to the maintenance of certain values the collapse of which will result in chaos to the detriment of all the people of South Africa. We hope that that will not happen.

I make an appeal to the hon the State President that in his efforts to include Black South Africans at the highest level we must avoid the creation of perceptions that will retard progress. It is no longer possible to explain effectively the exclusion of the recognised leaders of communities from the Indabas that will take place in future. The opponents of the Government are able to capitalise their advantage to the detriment of the negotiated processes on the basis of such perceptions as the co-option of persons who will serve in any organ of the Government for personal gain. I hope that such persons will grasp the extended hand of the willing hon State President.

They should be brought to the negotiating table if they are prepared to co-operate. In order to be able to do this, there must be a willingness on the part of anti-forces to co-operate with the Government in all its efforts to produce the blueprints that will safeguard those values that the hon the State President spoke of in his speech.

Radicalism on the other hand—this was mentioned earlier—of any form or from any side can only lead to polarisation and eventual chaos will certainly destroy this fair land of ours. The hon the State President has accepted that provision will have to be made for the political participation of all the people who reside within the Republic. Great progress has been made and the indications are that planning is in an advanced stage for greater impetus to be given to the reform initiative.

Here I want to say that a word of caution is necessary in so far as the granting of autonomy is concerned—even at local level. I am quite concerned about that. No local authority will be able to succeed if it cannot survive economically. The success of autonomous local authorities will depend entirely on the quality of life of those whom the authority itself governs. Adequate housing, proper medical care, opportunities for employment, facilities for the aged and the infirm and opportunities for relevant training and education will contribute to the success of any authority.

It has to be admitted that as a result of historical development such will be difficult to attain. This compounds the challenges facing legislators. Consequently economic and social policies assume greater importance and will have to succeed if stable local communities are to be established.

As the Minister of Education and Culture, I want to take this opportunity to talk about a parochial matter, if I may do so. I want to refer to the serious problems facing my department as a result of the failure of the Fiscus to make available much needed financial resources. The hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council also referred a little earlier on to the fact that Indian education was making great strides until the stage where we now have a great surplus of qualified teachers who cannot be absorbed in any other department than our own. We have now reached the stage where without enough funds we cannot reduce the teacher:pupil ratio to be able to employ these teachers.

A curtailment of my building programme and a drastic reduction in the employment of suitably qualified educators in large numbers is having a destabilising effect on what was a flourishing and progressive education department which was setting the pace in many respects. The radicals have not failed to take advantage of this opportunity, and that is what I am afraid of. They have taken advantage of this opportunity and they will exploit the situation.

I hope that the employment of these qualified teachers will solve our problem. I was very heartened earlier on to hear from the hon the State President that substantial sums may be made available to resolve the unemployment situation in the country. If a very small portion of that fund could be allocated to solving our problem, I should be heartily encouraged.

Without further ado, I want to wish the hon the State President every success with his broad vision for reforms to shape a new South Africa for all its peoples.

Mr Chairman, I wish to express my sincere appreciation to the hon Ministers and hon members of this House for the high level of the discussions that have taken place here this afternoon. It is always a pleasure to come here and listen to hon members, and it is quite clear to me that this House has already succeeded in availing itself of the best in democracy. I wish to congratulate them on that.

The hon the Minister of the Budget referred to a matter on which I must make a short statement here this afternoon, and with the permission of the hon the Leader of the House I shall do so now.

He referred to the statement I made earlier, when I opened Parliament, on the guidelines for the future economic policy of the country, and I thank him for the remarks he made in that regard.

Then one of the hon members made an interjection referring to what Dr De Kock had said. I shall come to that in a moment. However, during the debate on my Budget Vote, I mentioned, inter alia, the reaction of the private sector to the Government’s recent economic initiatives. In particular, I expressed my disappointment at the private sector’s reaction to the request for discipline in respect of wage, salary and price increases.

Mention was made of draft legislation to institute a business practices committee that could also investigate excessive price increases.

Let me say first of all that I never spoke in terms of total price control. I never referred to that. I referred to excessive price increases. We have the power in terms of existing legislation—I think the Act in question is Act 25 of 1964—if we were to decide on applying price control. We have the power to do so and we would not require any other legislation. However, the Government does not intend to apply price control. It is an expensive system. It does not work properly and we do not intend to proceed with such measures.

Since the Press subsequently hinted at price control and the so-called imminent confrontation between the Government and the private sector, which they would probably welcome—or at least some of them—it is necessary to put the entire matter into perspective, although I have already done so on various occasions. However, one can never repeat things often enough for the edification of some people in this country.

In my address at the opening of Parliament on 5 February this year, I made important announcements with regard to the economy. These announcements, inter alia, concerned the Government’s resolve to reduce the share of the public sector in the economy, to decrease the deficit before borrowing in the Budget as a percentage of the gross domestic product, to proceed with privatisation and deregulation and to implement certain major tax reforms as proposed by the Margo Commission. On all these matters we have taken positive steps since then. I even appointed a special Minister for privatisation and deregulation. In addition I emphasised the necessity of curbing the growth of central Government expenditure with a view to bringing the Budget within affordable limits, in order to decrease the tax burden and to improve the country’s economic performance.

It is against this background that the difficult decision was made not to grant a general increase in the salaries of Government employees. Let me tell this House this afternoon: This was a most difficult decision to take. No government likes to be unpopular. Governments are there to govern in such a way that the people follow them. However, when it comes to the interests of the country, one must choose between popularity and what one’s duty towards one’s country is.

While excessive Government expenditure is deemed to be a factor contributing towards inflation, steps to curb Government expenditure should be seen as a measure to reduce inflationary pressure. At my request the Economic Advisory Council investigated the problem of inflation. Their report deals in detail with the causes of inflation in South Africa and makes a number of recommendations for combatting inflation. It is evident that monetary and fiscal discipline should form the corner-stone of any anti-inflationary policy. The emphasis should therefore be on strict control over Government expenditure, especially current expenditure, in order to contain the revenue and borrowing requirements of the State within affordable limits and to prevent excessive increases in bank credit and the money supply at the same time.

It is also true that in South Africa expectations based on previous experience play a prominent role in the inflationary process. To a large extent price increases are caused by previous inflation and by self-fulfilling expectations that previous trends will continue. This contributes to companies readily increasing prices and consumers accepting the increased prices in their expectation that salary increases are due in any case. Against this background, I made an appeal to the private sector for discipline and responsibility with regard to salary, wage and price increases. The Government realises only too well that employees in the private sector feel entitled to be rewarded for their contribution towards higher profitability and by no means do we intend to disrupt the normal negotiation process between employers and employees.

I told the employers the same thing when I met with them in a conference the day before the opening of Parliament. I also told the trade unions the same thing after I had opened Parliament.

However, in view of the sacrifice that employees of the State have to make in the national interest, and also against the background of considerable increases in company profits, I hardly think it is unreasonable to ask the active support of employers and employees in the private sector as well. That is exactly what I have told them.

For this reason I held extensive discussions in this regard with employer and employee organisations. These discussions took place in a positive spirit. In addition, I wrote to more than 500 leading businessmen, requesting their support. I want to draw attention to the fact that there is prevalent strong public reaction to what they believe to be unnecessary price increases. There definitely is a reaction to this amongst members of the public.

I wish to reiterate that the Government subscribes to an economic system based on private initiative and effective competition. In such an economic system the consumer is firstly protected against exploitation by the existence of competitive markets. The Government remains opposed to wage and price control. In accordance with the preamble to the Constitution, our policy remains the furthering of an economy in which private initiative and competition function effectively.

In specific cases, however, where competition is inadequate, and due to our country’s unique circumstances, the Government is obliged to become involved in order to further competition and to strengthen the position of the consumer.

The objective of the Business Practices Committee is not to replace the role of competition in general, but to promote it and to make the public more aware of prices. That was quite clear in my statement that I made at the opening of Parliament. Then, suddenly, some mischief-makers decided that that was not good enough. Peace between the head of State or the Government and the private sector is not good enough for South Africa. They decided to create confusion. When the President of the Reserve Bank made a speech at a very important function, they suddenly found out that the President of the Reserve Bank and the head of State were at loggerheads with each other!

What is interesting, though, is that I received a letter from the Governor of the Reserve Bank on 25 April 1988. I want to quote a few paragraphs from this letter, because he gave me the right to do so. The letter is in Afrikaans, but I will try to translate as I go along. He writes here that he was perplexed to read in Business Day that he was supposed to have differed publicly with me over the steps that I had announced, and furthermore, that direct controls may be used to force the private sector into line on wage and price restraint. He writes, and I quote:

He referred to reports in certain newspapers. Then he said, and I quote:

Then he referred to his speech. He says:

Then he goes on, after explaining what he actually said, to say:

The importance of your speech at the opening of Parliament cannot be over-emphasised. Now where do these people get their stories of the so-called clash between the Governor of the Reserve Bank and the Head of State? It is a lot of nonsense and mischief-making and it is dangerous as regards the real economic interests of this country. I think they certainly owe the Governor of the Reserve Bank as well as the Head of State an apology. I hope that the hon members will also accept this.

The hon the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council referred to what we have achieved so far. Let me say that I cannot refer to the progress we have made unless I am also prepared to thank him for the co-operation I received from him. He spoke like a man who is prepared to accept responsibility and to share his views with others from a position of mutual respect and I thank him for that attitude.

He also referred to the talks I had in South West Africa a while ago and to the extent to which this had a bearing on the situation in Angola. I do not wish to deal extensively with the talks we had in South West Africa. I go there from time to time because it is necessary, but I wish to make these remarks without creating further problems.

South West Africa has a population of approximately one million people and South Africa is contributing almost R1 billion per annum to keep that country going. We are subsidising their budget, contributing to their security matters and contributing in other economic ways. However, in total it is more or less—I would say more rather than less—R1 billion per annum. Without trying to hurt them—I do not wish to do that—I would say that as far as I know they are the most subsidised community in Africa and perhaps in the world. We have no claims against South West Africa and we would like to see it progress until it has its independence.

However, we cannot afford foreign troops dictating to South West Africa the way in which it should acquire its independence. South Africa is a regional power with interests in South West Africa and consequently we believe that it is in the interests of South West Africa’s future as well as peace in the whole of Southern Africa that the Cubans go. The Cubans must go.

We have said right from the beginning that the Cuban presence in Angola is contributing to civil war in that area. What is more, the Cuban presence is also crippling the economic future of that country.

We supported President Reagan very strongly when he took a stand against the Cuban presence there. Hon members will recall that right throughout his public career as President of the USA he adopted the attitude that the Cubans must go. Also, in my talks with African leaders in the last few weeks in South Africa—and prominent African leaders—who came from different countries in Africa to consult with me, I told them that peace can be served in Africa and particularly in Southern Africa if the Cubans go. I told them that the moment the Cubans go it will be a new ball game in Southern Africa. The whole situation will then take a turn for the better and will improve.

Southern Africa cannot go it alone without the technological support and the expertise and other support of South Africa. South Africa has a major role to play in Southern Africa and we are prepared to contribute our share provided that we are not told from outside what the situation should be and how we should go about our relationships with our neighbours. I think that is only fair.

We agree.

You agree, so we are at one.

However, I want to warn against being too over-optimistic, because I know all over the world there are not only mischief-makers but major mischief-makers who want to destroy every positive effort to bring about better conditions in Southern Africa. Let us therefore be careful and accept our responsibility without running into a situation that we cannot control properly.

The moment the Cubans leave and SWA is out of danger, South African forces will return to their bases. We want our country’s forces to come back to their primary responsibility, and that is to protect the borders of our country. I think I have now said enough about this.

Let me now return to the other matters raised by hon members. First of all I want to deal with the hon member for Laudium, who was the first to speak. I welcome the hon member’s remarks and I thank him for those friendly remarks. He referred to the question of violence. Let us think about this problem in the correct way, because violence is not only limited to South Africa; it is taking place all over the globe. There is not a single part of the world where one does not have violence today, be it in Europe, India, Sri Lanka, Southern America or in the United States. There is violence everywhere.

There are several reasons for violence. The first can be attributed to internationally orchestrated and organised terrorism. They make use of the poverty of people. They make use of the underdeveloped areas of the world to create a feeling of insecurity and to seek as much publicity as possible.

I have before me various articles from a book edited by Benjamin Netanyahu. He is the brother of a well-known Israeli Defence Force officer, and he wrote this book entitled How the West Can Win.

In this book there are different articles by very prominent people. He himself writes:

He then publishes an article by Rauthammer, essayist to The Times and a columnist in the Washington Post, who writes about the same problem. Then there is an article entitled “The encouragement of violence” by Daniel Schorr, author of books, senior correspondent to CBS, in which he makes the same point. Then there is the De Borchgrave article that I have already quoted:

He also publishes another article, The Price of Sympathy, by Lord Chalfont, who is well-known to all of us:

I am only quoting these statements because I want to make a point. Terrorism thrives on two things. It thrives, firstly, on the publicity it gets, and secondly, it thrives on the lack of opportunities of people.

What we have done in South Africa is take steps not to allow terrorism to have the opportunities described in those articles.

Because we have taken those steps we are being called names. We also launched a vast programme of social and economic development in this country as never before. Take for instance the State launched job creation programme and the training of the unemployed which we started two years ago. We are busy with a programme which should actually have been taken over totally by the private sector because it is not the duty of the State in the first instance to create job opportunities. It is in the first instance the duty of the private sector to create those job opportunities and to inspire others to bring about the social and economic programmes under the system of government that we have in South Africa.

Violence must be fought with all the power at our disposal. Here we must have a unanimity of purpose among all the peoples of South Africa. Violence takes one nowhere—it only destroys. Violence does not enable a people to receive the best possible education. Violence does not enable a people to be uplifted and to attain a higher standard of living. Violence does not increase the quality of life. Because of these reasons we should have a unanimous endeavour and determination on the part of all the people of South Africa to have done with violence in our country.

The hon member also referred to the gas bomb in the mosque. He said that I took very strong exception to a certain incident that took place in Durban. This is correct. As far as the gas bomb is concerned, I take the same exception. [Interjections.] Let me tell the hon member that in a country of diversity such as ours, unless we are prepared to respect one another’s cultural and religious positions, we will see South Africa going down in flames. I believe it is the duty of every community to act with respect towards the religious and cultural possessions of the other communities in South Africa. [Interjections.] I therefore take the strongest objection in the same way that I took objection the other day. As far as our Security Forces are concerned, they know that that is the policy of the Government and they must act accordingly.

The hon member also dealt with the word “apartheid”. I want to deal with it in my own way this afternoon. The hon member for Reservoir Hills also joined in. I do not blame him for joining in—he must do something on behalf of his party, which is in trouble at present. [Interjections.] In the past I was also in a position where my party was in opposition and things were not going too well but somehow we had better plans for the future.

I want to put a question to the hon member for Reservoir Hills. He said the concept of own affairs is objectionable because it is a matter of apartheid.

I have a few reports here. I have here the Britain Yearbook and in it I find that in Wales there is a Welsh office. Many aspects of Welsh affairs including health and personal social services; education, except for terms and conditions of service; student awards; the University of Wales; the Welsh language and culture; local government; housing; water and sewerage; environmental protection; sport; agriculture and fisheries; forestry; land use, including town and country planning; countryside and nature conservation; new towns; ancient monuments; historic buildings; roads; tourism, and a good many more, are mentioned as matters controlled by the Welsh department for own affairs.

Wales was a separate state until the British conquered it.

No, the hon member must not jump around now. I am saying that all these matters are being controlled by a special Welsh office for own affairs.

In geographical terms.

No, in cultural terms. Language, local government, housing, water and sewerage—every sphere is affected.

I also see that good old Scotland has its own system of law and wide administrative autonomy. The Secretary of State for Scotland, a Cabinet Minister, has the responsibility in Scotland for both formulating and carrying out policy relating to agriculture and fishing; education; law and order; local government; environmental services; social work; health; housing; roads, and so on—a whole hotchpotch.

Whisky! [Interjections.]

Well, I suppose he is responsible for whisky too. [Interjections.]

Here, however, is the gem of them all. I have here a copy of the Indian Act …[Interjections.] … for own affairs, from Canada, that wonderful heaven of heavens which criticises everything we do in South Africa. I want to quote from this Act:

So they go on. These are own affairs—better own affairs, I would say, than we have in South Africa. However, they are crying out against South Africa.

Let us take Switzerland, for example. The hon member has already mentioned this. Switzerland was originally a confederation which developed into a federation but they still have own affairs at all tiers of government. I say that the acceptance of own affairs is not necessarily the acceptance of racial prejudice. That is the point I wish to make.

However, Sir, in Switzerland there are geographical differences …

No, no. To a certain extent there are geographical differences there but we also have them in South Africa to a certain extent. One does not encounter them all over the country and that is why I oppose the Conservative Party. I tell them that they cannot have partition but that they must accept the principle of own affairs without racial prejudice if they want to get anywhere in the face of South Africa’s diversity. That is my point.

This is not a new idea of mine. I addressed a congress of my party in 1986 in Durban. Perhaps hon members were there. Listen to what I said. I quote:

I told the international community a year ago that if by apartheid is meant political domination by any one community of any other, the exclusion of any community from the political decision-making process, injustice or inequality in the opportunities available for any community, or racial discrimination and impairment of human dignity, the South African Government shares in the rejection of that concept. I still stand by it. I am working against these things. I am working to get rid of the colonialism of the past.

Hon members must admit one thing: When my party came to power in South Africa, the Indian community had no rights at all. Most Blacks—99,9% of the Blacks in South Africa—had no political rights. Is that true?

We acknowledge that.

Forty years after that I am discussing matters of South Africa with the Indian community in Parliament. Forty years after that many African leaders with political rights are not only governing on the principle of own affairs, but they are also travelling overseas to speak about South Africa with leaders of other countries. What a change! What a change, on the principle of no political domination by any one community of any other! I am not saying that we have completed the process. As a matter of fact, the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition quite correctly stated here this afternoon, and I quote:

I listened carefully to him. He made a good speech. We are accustomed to him making good speeches. However, suddenly, when he arrived at p 14, he had a flat tyre. He suddenly had a puncture. I do not know who caused it. [Interjections.] On p 14 he dealt with many irregularities. Listen to what he says, after making a good speech, and I quote:

1. 1. Release all political detainees and allow return of political exiles;
2. 2. lift the ban on organisations;
3. 3. develop a marketing strategy;
4. 4. accelerate the programme for social and economic reconstruction …

We have accelerated the programme for social and economic reconstruction. We are busy with it. That is why we have the Small Business Development Corporation, and that is why we have training of unemployed people. That is why we are taking away certain regulations by way of Government directives to other members of our constitutional set-up.

However, the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition must not confuse this with those who perpetrate violence. These are two different spheres of action.

I now come to the question of unbanning organisations. Does the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition feel—and I cannot for one moment accept that he does—that we must unban the ANC while they are linked to the Communist Party?

Only those who want to come and talk.

Oh, them? I cannot unban them. The ANC is totally linked to the Communist Party. I am certainly not prepared to allow the Communist Party to act in South Africa, because that is dangerous.

The Communist Party in West Germany is a banned organisation, as is Nazism. I am equally opposed to Nazism and communism. That is why I say I cannot unban the Communist Party. I cannot unban any organisation that claims to be a partner of the Communist Party.

The head committee of the ANC is filled with members of the South African Communist Party. I can only release detainees when they tell me that they will renounce violence, that they will take part in constitutional talks and that they will not use any political organisation with violent means to achieving political goals.

The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition made a big mistake here. I suggest he scraps page 14. [Interjections.] For the rest, I do not think it was a bad speech. We can live with it. However, the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition must not sabotage his own vehicle.

The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition also dealt with constitutional steps that need to be taken. Firstly, it is my considered opinion that the lack of co-operation on the part of certain Black leaders in South Africa, can be attributed to the fact that there is such a lot of unwelcome pressure from outside. Certain countries, and influences which they bring to bear upon our country, are directly responsible for the lack of co-operation on the part of certain leaders in South Africa to come forward and deal with matters on a proper basis of merit.

Secondly, if we go forward step by step into the future, without handing over our country to irresponsible elements, we will achieve eventual success. I am against a Black majority government.

The hon member for Reservoir Hills belongs to a party which in the past has said that they were prepared to accept Black majority government.

Even now we believe in majority rule.

The hon member says that even now they say that they are prepared to accept Black majority rule.

Black majority rule must be democratic.

Well, the hon member must know that I am against it and that is why I stand for the principles that I have stated here. I reject political domination by any one community over any other. If the hon member succeeds, he will change South Africa into a Mozambique, a Zimbabwe or an Angola.

It would be a majority government—non-racial.

It will not be a majority government, but there will be civil disobedience and civil unrest. That is what it will be. What did it achieve in Mozambique? Can the hon member name me one country in Africa which he would like us to follow as an example?

Botswana or Kenya.

Botswana? Botswana is dependent on South Africa for its very livelihood. Now he wants us to follow Botswana as an example.

Kenya is democratic.

No, we must be very careful. A while ago the hon member wanted us to follow the example of South American countries with their high rate of inflation and with many of them only now escaping from the dictatorships. No, the point is that one cannot have a Zulu governed by a Xhosa. Let us be quite candid. I told the Xhosa leaders so and I told the Zulu leaders so and they know that what I am saying is true—in spite of what the Press says. Xhosas will not be governed by Zulus and vice versa. Take the case of Moutse. I do not want to discuss it now because it will come up for discussion later, but I went out of my way when I spoke to the late Dr Phatudi, when the two of us went to Moutse by helicopter. After we returned I said: “Dr Phatudi, if you and Mr Skosana could meet and come to an agreement with each other and come with a proposal about Moutse, I will accept it and carry it out.” They went away and after a month they returned and said: “No, we cannot find each other.” I then proposed that they meet under the chairmanship of an independent chairman. I would supply a recognised planner and I proposed Dr Rautenbach, who was and still is a well-known planner in South Africa. He is the man who planned the capital of Malawi. They met under his chairmanship and after a few months they returned and said that they could not find a solution. Then I met with the Lebowan Cabinet and deputations from Moutse. It then became quite clear to me that no person of Lebowa will be governed by kwaNdebele and vice versa.

Now the hon member wants me to accept Black majority rule in South Africa. Which Black majority rule?

Majority rule which is non-racial.

We cannot achieve that. One can stand on one’s head tonight and say that tomorrow South Africa will be non-racial, but the day after that South Africa will still consist of a diversity of peoples. Therefore one cannot follow the Westminster system where the majority rules everything. One can only achieve that democracy which the hon member is striving for when one comes to an agreement on this principle which I have mentioned in my speech at our congress. The hon member should think it over and then he may eventually come back in better company!

The hon the Minister of Education and Culture made a very good point when he said that local authorities must have economic viability and economic strength if they are to succeed. I agree with him. However, how can we achieve this? Let us be practical. One can only achieve this through proper housing, by raising the quality of life of people in various directions—which we are doing—and by encouraging small businesses and sound competition in the economic field so that those local authorities can be built on pillars of sound local community life. This is what we should set as our goal and what we must work for. This is what we have to try to achieve in South Africa and it cannot be done overnight. I nonetheless agree with him that it is not good to train people for certain professions if they cannot be given proper employment.

However, it is my further opinion that we are, if I may say so, too university-minded in the training of our youth in South Africa. We should train our youth more in other directions too so that we can diversify the activity in their different communities.

The hon the Minister of Local Government and Agriculture also dealt with the Nkomati Accord and I wish to say a few words about that. Mozambique is to a large extent dependent on co-operation with the RSA and hundreds of thousands of Mozambican citizens have flocked across our borders in the past months to find refuge in South Africa. They sought refuge from hunger, a lack of health services and fled to find a new future.

If it was possible to get rid of the numbers of Mozambican citizens present in South Africa today our unemployment problem would not be of great magnitude because very large numbers of those people are present here. When Dr Strauss, the Bavarian Prime Minister, was here, he went to Mozambique and had a long discussion with the President, Mr Chissano, who requested him to take a message to me asking me to allow more Mozambican citizens into South Africa. Then Dr Strauss asked him how he explained the fact that he wanted more Mozambicans to go from that heaven of socialism into the hell of apartheid in South Africa.

Nevertheless he conveyed that message. That is not the solution. The solution for Mozambique is that they must make it possible for the South African private sector to operate in Mozambique in order to create jobs, expand business and create economic activity there.

When I came back after meeting the late President Machel, I called together leaders of our private sector and requested them to take steps to develop certain areas in Mozambique. They, however, had to receive guarantees of security; firstly physical security, and then economic security as well. Unless they get that they will not go there.

Thirdly I requested the late President Machel to make available land which belonged to South Africans in the past, especially to the north of Maputo, to let them have their properties back so as to enable them to help in the building up of the tourist industry. I was promised that would happen, but it did not happen.

Now, a week ago, I was requested to see Gen Veloso again, and I did so. I spoke to him about these measures. I told him candidly what I thought would make the Nkomati Accord work, and I told him that they should do everything in their power to stop their own civil war and allow South Africa to make its contribution, on merit, to the development of Mozambique. However, I am afraid that as long as they do not do that we will not have much progress.

I am now looking forward to the employment of the facilities which we have created to make that agreement work, and I am hopeful for the future. Let us, however, await the day after tomorrow.

I think that I have dealt with most of the points raised by hon members, and if anyone is not satisfied I shall peruse the speeches made and will reply by letter.

I wish to thank hon members for this debate.

Vote agreed to.

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.