Mr. Speaker, I move—

Mr. Speaker, there are occasions when an important speech, such as the one we have just had from the hon. the Minister of Transport, is important not only in itself, but also because of some of the interesting side glances it affords on what is happening in the political and economic life of South Africa. I think we experienced, such a revelation this afternoon, during the course of the Minister’s speech. He referred—I think with gratification, to which he was entitled—to the fact that as a result of the labour policies which the hon. the Minister is applying, no fewer than 1 250 poor White people in South Africa who are in a job normally regarded as a dead-end job, had been promoted to graded positions on the South African Railways. We rejoiced in that, but on the side of the Government there was a stony, unhappy silence. I think the attention of the country should be drawn to the fact that all this wonderful talk about their care for the poor man, about their being “die vriend van die arm man”, does not apply in this case where the hon. the Minister of Transport is giving progress and hope to these people because he applied sensible labour policies and is willing to use non-White labour in more important occupations. I think that should immediately be noticed. I now want to take this opportunity of congratulating and thanking the hon. the Minister. For the first time in my life I thank a Minister of the Nationalist Party Government for his labour policy which is bringing hope, progress and greater happiness to the Whites also on the South African Railways.

Mr. Speaker, I think hon. members will agree with me that we have heard from the hon. the Minister a dismal and sad statement today of the affairs of the South African Railways. There may be the temptation on the part of members on this side to gloat and to revel in the discomfiture of the Minister, but we shall not do so, Sir; we are sincerely sympathetic towards this hon. Minister. Like all of us, he has his blind spots. He has a blind spot, for example, in not seeking greater correlation between the State monopoly of transport and the contribution that private enterprise can make to the transport of goods in our nation. That is unfortunate, but in other ways he has insight far beyond that of the average member of the South African Cabinet today. It is sad to us to see that the hon. the Minister, who administers this great department, suffers so when, in spite of his insight, he cannot fully apply the policies he wishes to apply to the Railways, and when he has to operate this vast undertaking, this greatest of all single enterprises in South Africa, within the framework of Government policy. There, Sir, we see the fundamental problem of this great business enterprise. It has to exist, like private enterprise and like any business in South Africa, under the policies of this Government, and not even the Minister of Transport, not even the angel Gabriel, can make a full success of an enterprise in those circumstances.

I want to begin, therefore, by extending our sincere sympathy to the hon. the Minister. He tries to do his best, but for some reason or other, in spite of the fact that he can deviate within his own department from Government policy, he has not yet succeeded in persuading the rest of the Government that his example is right and that their practice is wrong.

The Budget reveals the Minister’s problems; he is the victim of Government policies. He has to operate under the Minister of Finance; he has to suffer under the Minister of Economic Affairs; he cannot plan, because he is the victim of a stop-start economy; he cannot foresee when he will be deprived of the income he is entitled to from the high-rated goods that are imported, because one drastic, unannounced and unexpected import control measure imposed by the Minister of Economic Affairs will throw his Budget completely out of gear, as it did last year. The hon. the Minister must plan according to Government announcements and Government policy. When the Minister for Economic Affairs tells him that import control will remain unchanged, he plans accordingly and he hopes accordingly. How can he expect that within a fortnight or a month the Minister will cut imports by 20 per cent and throw all his calculations out of gear? He has our sympathy, Sir, He has our sympathy all the more because, as I have said, he has the intelligence to see the answers; he applies it in his own department. Then, Sir, he is frustrated by the policies of the Government. His success in his own department, with the use of non-White labour, for example, is not reflected in the Government’s policy. It is not offered to the same extent to private enterprise, who are ultimately his clients and his customers, to whom he must look for the success of the Railways. It does not help if he and the Railways can break away from Government policy and ease the problems of the Railways, when his own customers, the businesses of this land upon which he depends for his success, are denied the privileges that he takes unto himself as a Minister of the Cabinet—a deviate Minister of the Cabinet.

And so, Sir, in spite of the Minister’s attempts, in spite of our acknowledgment that he is the last remaining Minister of competence in the Nationalist Party Government, in spite of all that, he fails. He tells us today that over two years almost R40 million will have to come from the Rates Equalization Fund. The Fund will be exhausted and the prospects for the future are uncertain. We had no real indications from the Minister about what the future would hold, except his statement that he relies upon what he calls “bold” devaluation to save him from his troubles. It is the first time in my life that I have known any Minister or any Government describe what was really an act of insolvency with such a fine and inspiring adjective as “bold”! After all, devaluation is the last resort of a failing government; it is the last hope for an economy that is in trouble. No government likes to devalue. Every government of the world resists devaluation until the last moment. A few years ago, when Britain devalued and many people expected this Government to follow suit, they quite rightly looked at the economy of South Africa and said: “We are sound enough; we need not follow in this instance.” Now, Sir, they do it as an act of virtue. But, in fact, they have landed South Africa in such a mess that even the Opposition had to admit that in the circumstances they had created we had to devalue. [Interjections.] Now it is a virtue; now we are asked to see the solution to the problems of South Africa in the act of devaluation, which in itself is a confession of failure.

[Inaudible.]

We ask ourselves, Sir, why there were so many silences in the Minister’s speech. Why, if what I say is so funny that it even amuses someone as humourless as the Minister of Defence, were there so many silences in the speech of the hon. the Minister of Transport? Sir, the South African Railways is one of the most important budgetary bodies in the economy of South Africa. As the experience of other countries has shown, such an organization can play an important part in determining the financial experience of a nation for the year in which the Budget operates. The Minister gave glimmerings of the fact that he appreciates this, when he spoke about continuing to supply the infrastructure for future development and future progress. He complained about the difficulty of trying to find the capital and the resources; yet he failed to investigate, as one could have hoped he would do, the part which private enterprise could play in providing the infrastructure for our transport in South Africa. He hinted that he would have to take steps to stimulate exports, but he was strangely silent about something which he stated with emphasis last year, and that is that there was a world demand for certain ores that we could supply. He said last year that this was “a development in which the South African Railways and Harbours would have an important part to play”. But there was not a word about that today. The whole nation wants to know what the Railways are going to do now that the Japanese have broken off negotiations with South Africa. What is to be the fate of the projected line to Saldanha Bay? What is going to happen to the immediately more practical line to Port Elizabeth and the extension to the harbour installations at Port Elizabeth? We heard not a word of that. This is a matter of vital importance to the economy of South Africa and for the future of South Africa, because in the decades to come, if we want to restore our balance of payments, we shall have to follow the Australian example and rely more and more upon the export of raw materials, such as ores. But not a word have we heard in this connection from the Minister, who himself last year told us that we must expect developments and that the Railways would have a part to play in these matters. The nation is entitled to know.

Another thing about which he was strangely silent is what has happened in regard to his negotiations with the Staff Associations. They are feeling the pinch of devaluation; they have made suggestions that there should be increases, but we do not hear a word about that. Are there no negotiations? Does the Minister think there is no need …

There have been no negotiations.

Does he feel there is no need for such negotiations and that these people would have no case if they were to come to him and claim increases? Does he agree with their statement made publicly that the advantages of the Langlaagte increases have already been frittered away as a result of the increase in the cost of living, inflation and devaluation? We have heard not a word about these things, Sir.

The most important problem that we are going to face in the economy of South Africa in the next year or two is the effect of devaluation and continuing inflation on the income of the workers of South Africa. Here we have a Minister who is probably the largest single employer of labour in South Africa. He introduces a Budget running into over R1 000 million, and not a word about the position of the workers and the claims already announced by his staff associations. Sir, I think it is a deplorable performance. I think the only thing one can say in mitigation of the Minister’s attitude is, as I have said before, that he cannot help it; he belongs to the worst government that we have ever known in South Africa. As I think it is necessary that we should go into that in a little more detail, I move—

Agreed to.

This clause purports to bind Bantu women in the Transvaal and Natal to obtain the consent of their guardians or their fathers before they marry. It provides that if the father or the guardian cannot be found, or if the refusal to give permission to a marriage is unreasonable, the woman concerned can appeal to the Minister for his consent or she can go to the Supreme Court. Sir, I indicated in the Second Reading debate that we would oppose this clause. We object to this provision obliging a mature, adult woman to get the consent of her guardian before she can enter into a civil marriage. We made it quite clear that as far as customary unions are concerned, we have no objection to that provision; it is in fact Bantu law that the consent of the father or the guardian shall be obtained before there is a recognized customary union. But, Sir, this provision that we are now writing into our law is contrary to the progress which has taken place amongst the Bantu. I say it is wrong to bind them to old customs which in any event are often difficult to Minister that the leaders of the Bantu in ascertain. We are now told by the Deputy the homelands themselves asked for this. We asked him whom he had consulted besides the leaders of the Bantu in the homelands, and he told us that those were the only persons he had consulted. When we asked him whether he had consulted the urban Bantu, he said that the urban Bantu were represented in the councils in the homelands but that at the time this consultation took place with the Bantu in the homelands there was in fact no such representation. It appears from his reply that they took no steps to consult the local Bantu boards in the urban areas. We say, Sir, that these people should have been consulted. After all, they are the people who will be affected most by this Bill. We have no objection to the Bantu Legislative Assembly or Territorial Authority, or whatever body is in charge of the homeland, making laws appertaining to that homeland. If they wish to make laws through their bodies, defining how their marriages will be regulated, they are entitled to do so. What we object to is the fact that these Bantu Authorities will be able to tell the Minister what law he must apply outside of the homelands. We pointed out that in the Transvaal and Natal, outside of the homelands, there are Bantu belonging to other tribes, or other nations, as this Government calls them. In Soweto there must be thousands of Transkei citizens. Why should they be bound by a measure of this nature? In the Transkei we do not bind a woman who is a major to get her father’s consent before she marries; she is treated like any other woman. We say it is time these disabilities were removed from Bantu women in the same way that they have been removed from other women. The tendency in this Parliament has been to remove disabilities from women, and we say it is a backward step now to go and impose further disabilities upon Bantu women. Once a Bantu woman marries in the Transvaal or Natal, she will have to get her parents’ consent, no matter how old she is. She may be a widow or she may be a divorcee, but she will still have to get her parents’ or her guardian’s consent.

Sir, the hon. member for Rissik said that I was pleading for a permissive society …

He is “verkramp”.

… because I had said in my Second Reading speech that with this permissive society that we have today, we should make it easier for people to get married, not more difficult, so that in fact they can have a legal union. What did he say? He said—

He then went on to say—

Sir, that was not the gist of my argument. What I said was that you should make it easier for them to marry so that they can live in lawful union, not in unlawful union. By making it more difficult for them to marry, you will increase the number of illegal unions amongst the Bantu and you will increase the number of illegitimate births, and it will further undermine the already unstable structure of Bantu family life which is presently being disrupted by influx control and the migrant labour policy. Sir, if it is difficult for a man to marry the woman of his choice because her parents or her guardian will not agree, he is simply going to live with her. We know that this is happening more and more frequently, and I say that this is something that we should try to avoid. As I pointed out in the Second Reading debate, the guardian may in fact have no interest in the woman at all, except for her dowry. He may be far removed; he may be a cousin far removed. Her father may be dead, there may be no brothers, and the guardian may be a distant relative, and the only interest he would show in her would be because of her dowry. I say it is wrong for her to have to worry about getting the consent of a man of that type. It is all very well for the hon. the Deputy Minister to say that the guardian’s refusal is not final. Sir, why should these women be put to the expense of having to go either to a court of law or to employ somebody, as they would probably have to do, to take steps to obtain the Minister’s consent. The hon. the Deputy Minister will say that the present law in Natal is being maintained under this Bill. The White Paper says that it is the same in the Transvaal, too, but I dispute that; I am not certain that that is the position in the Transvaal at the moment. However, there is no doubt about it that that is the law in Natal. In Natal a Native woman now remains under perpetual tutelage and I submit that in our time, today, that is quite wrong. Sir, we have developed. We have changed our own customs. We do not abide by the customs of our forefathers and I do not see why we should expect these people, in the changed circumstances in which they live, to abide by the customs which they obtained when the White man first came to this country. We will oppose this clause.

Just as on the previous occasion, I have again listened attentively to the hon. member for Transkei, and I find it interesting that now, so it seems to me, he is advocating “women’s liberation”, just like the hon. member for Wynberg. The problem of modern society is not the emancipation of women, but I think it is the “ewomancipation” of some men. I want to tell the hon. member that in his speech he said “in these days of permissive societies it should be our aim to make marriage easier and not more difficult for these people”. I think that this view on the part of the hon. member is a very superficial one in the sense that I pointed out to him in my Second Reading speech that marriage, the ways of getting married and the forms of marriage, have a specific meaning in the Bantu communities, and that the fact of these people’s coming into contact with the White man has, very often through circumstances and at other times through deliberate influencing by the imperialistic White governments and very often also by people who said that their own customs were worthless, resulted not only in the ways of getting married and the marriage forms being changed, but also in a really detrimental influence being exerted on family life as such. Making it easier to get married without seeing the full context is very irresponsible and not well-considered. I want to refer the hon. member to a work compiled by A. Schapira a number of years ago. The Bantu-speaking Tribes of South Africa, in which a certain lady, Ellen Heilman, wrote inter alia the following—

She was writing under the title “The Native in Towns”—

If you read her comments further, what they amount to is that leaving the tribal context and discarding those old values have a detrimental influence on Bantu family life. The hon. member referred rather mockingly to the so-called Bantu leaders.

No, I did not want to mock them.

Very well, you did not refer to them mockingly, but you did say that these Bantu leaders to whom we referred and whose advice we had accepted, should in truth just confine themselves to their homelands. But the hon. member must not think that the Bantu leaders of the homelands, or those Bantu living in the homelands, are quite so far removed from their compatriots or tribal associates in the cities that, on the one hand, they have no interest in them and, on the other hand, know nothing about them. You will be amazed to know what knowledge and interest in each other those people still have. But if the hon. member does not want to accept the requests by the Bantu leaders, who I think are responsible in the sense that they realize that there is a measure of disintegration in their own national communities, I should like him to go and read the works of White sociologists who have studied the state of family life in urban complexes. Then he will see that the solution he wants to offer in place of the wishes of these Bantu leaders, is very far from a really meaningful solution. I want the hon. members opposite to go into these matters very thoroughly. I want to say that in order to comply with the requests of these Bantu leaders, whom I myself regard as responsible persons and as persons who are interested in their people as well as in protecting family life, it is essential that we listen to these people and not to those who do not care and who want to be so modern that they recklessly reject the essential things that modern life needs for stability.

Before calling upon the hon. member for Houghton to speak, I want to draw hon. members’ attention to the fact that we are here dealing with the Committee Stage of a Bill. The general principles of this Bill were agreed to at the Second Reading, and therefore I cannot allow a broad, general discussion to be conducted today on the principles of this Bill. Hon. members may briefly mention their objections to this clause, but I cannot allow another broad, general discussion to be held.

Mr. Chairman, I would say that Dr. Ellen Heilman, whom I know very well indeed, would be most surprised to hear the hon. member for Rissik quoting her in support of his somewhat “verkrampte” views on this subject. Dr. Ellen Heilman is a well-known anthropologist and an expert on the urban African. Her whole thesis is that the society in which the urban African finds himself or herself today leads to broken homes and illicit union. She would indeed be very surprised to hear the words she has written being quoted to substantiate the support that the hon. member for Rissik is giving to clause 2 of this Bill.

Like the hon. member for Transkei, I am going to oppose this clause most strenuously. The hon. the Deputy Minister stated that the African leaders want this clause introduced, but he failed to tell us with which African leaders he consulted. I should like to ask him whether, for instance, he consulted with Chief Buthelezi of Zululand since this matter particularly affects Natal, and whether Chief Buthelezi asked that this clause be introduced in the law. I should like to know, too, if he consulted chiefs in the Transvaal, the Venda chief, the Tswana chief and other chiefs of the Transvaal homelands and whether he has asked them if they want this clause. However, never mind about that—that is just information.

I want to know if he consulted the urban Bantu councils about this clause, for instance, the Urban Bantu Council of Soweto, the largest urban African concentration, where hundreds of thousands of African women live. Indeed, on that Urban Bantu Council there are women councillors who are very able people who should be consulted about this matter. There are African women who are running child welfare societies, marriage guidance societies; all sorts of welfare societies are being run by educated, urbanized, sophisticated African women and I want to know if the hon. the Deputy Minister consulted any of these people, who are surely in the best position to be able to advise him on the advisability or not of extending what is an archaic law.

The laws that govern marriage of African women in the Transvaal and Natal hier back to the turn of the century and I cannot for the moment understand why, in the year 1972, we are trying to extend the authority of those laws. The hon. the Deputy Minister must also explain to me why it is all right for African women in the Orange Free State and the Cape to marry under civil laws which apply to women of other races but it is not all right for African women in the Transvaal or Natal to marry under those laws. As I understand it, the position at present is that in Natal, where the Natal Code of course still operates, permission of the guardian or father has to be obtained for a woman to enter into a customary union unless she is emancipated. If she is emancipated then that is not required. Do I understand that this measure is now going to make it compulsory for women entering into civil marriages to acquire the consent of the guardian or father? Until now I understand that there has been no provision for civil marriages at all for African women in Natal. They can only marry, unless they marry under customary union, under religious ceremonies. This, I understand, is now going to make it possible for women in Natal to be married by civil ceremonies. Will even the emancipated women in Natal have to acquire the consent of the guardian or father? This is the first question I want to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister.

That is correct.

So civil marriages are now open to Bantu women in Natal for the first time. I want to say immediately that this is an improvement. But even emancipated women, who do not under the present law have to have the consent, if they are over the age of 21, of the father or guardian, are now going to have to obtain consent if they want to enter into civil marriages. Is that the position?

Yes.

That, of course, is a retrogressive step. I understand that the legal position in the Transvaal is that in fact women do not have to get the consent of guardians or fathers if they are over the age of 21 in order to marry by civil rites in the Transvaal. What they have to get at the present stage, is an enabling document from the Bantu Affairs Commissioner to allow them to marry. They have to present this enabling document to the marriage officer before they can get married. Are women in the Transvaal now actually going to have to get the consent of their fathers or guardians? If that is the case, this is utterly retrogressive. As the hon. member for Transkei has pointed out, it is very often very difficult to trace either a guardian or a father if a woman has been living in an urban area for many years and the guardian or father lived in the homelands. Provision is made for her to get the consent of the Supreme Court or a Bantu Commissioner, but this is both a costly and complicated procedure. The hon. the Deputy Minister has advanced no reasons whatsoever why he is taking this retrogressive step as far as African women of the Transvaal are concerned. I do not understand the purpose of clause 2 at all. I really do not. As I have said, we have thousands of women today who are living sophisticated lives in the urban areas of South Africa. They are educated, manage their own household and many of them are earning a living. They do not need to be treated as children. If a woman’s husband dies and she wishes to remarry she has to become a minor again. What sort of nonsense is this? Any woman who is not married and is over the age of 21 has to go seeking some person whom she may never have set eyes on—and the hon. member for Rissik nods his head with a satisfied smirk, so “verkramp” is he—in the homelands before she can marry the man of her choice. This is the most ridiculous piece of legislation I have come across in a long while and I shall certainly oppose this clause.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Houghton unfortunately was not here during the Second Reading debate …

But I have read every single speech, do not worry.

She must not get cross so quickly. She obviously did not read the reply of the hon. the Deputy Minister to the Second Reading debate, because she asked him about the question of consultation. Had she read it, she would have seen that he admitted quite openly and frankly that he had had no consultation with any of the leaders of the urban Bantu councils. That is the question she put and I can answer it for him. It is on this very point that I want to take the hon. the Deputy Minister to task.

When he replied to the Second Reading debate—and here I am afraid it is the first time we have had this sort of information —the Deputy Minister told us that he did not consult with the leaders of the urban Bantu councils because, at that stage, the urban Bantu councils were not represented on the tribal authorities. I am afraid that we must reject this out of hand; it is absolute nonsense. He knows as well as we do that it would have been perfectly easy for him to test the opinion of the people, the very people to whom this clause is going to apply.

This has nothing to do with the urban Bantu councils. You know that very well.

I am interested in that remark by the hon. member for Potchefstroom. He says that this has nothing to do with the urban Bantu councils. Has he not read the Bill? Does he not realize that this will be felt most severely by the urban Africans in places such as Johannesburg? Does the hon. member not realize this? Does he think it will only apply to the tribal Africans? How stupid can he be?

You are missing the point altogether.

Then I suggest that instead of trying to make his speech sitting down there, let him get up and motivate the arguments that he is trying to come with now. Until then, let him just keep quiet and let us deal with the hon. the Deputy Minister. I do hope that we shall hear from him.

What was there to prevent this hon. the Deputy Minister from consulting with responsible urban Bantu leaders, such as the members of the Urban Bantu Councils? It is no excuse for him to tell us that he could not consult with them because they were not represented on the tribal authorities. What sort of nonsense is this? Does he not recognize the existence of urban African people until they have some sort of representation through their tribal authorities? No, that does not wash at all. When he says that he thinks it is only reasonable for these people to decide for themselves what should happen to them, it is precisely what he is not allowing for. He is not allowing the people to whom this will apply to decide for themselves. Take Soweto as an example. To how many adult women of Soweto will this clause apply? 100 000? I should think it is probably far more. Why could he then not go to the Urban Bantu Council of Soweto and test the opinion of the local people? Is there some ideological reason for this? If so, he has not told us. Or did he realize from the start that the people of Soweto—and I am only using Soweto as one example—would from the start simply say: “Look, we do not want this”? That must be the case.

Returning to the hon. member for Rissik, I am afraid that in spite of all that was said after he spoke in the Second Reading debate, and in spite of what the hon. members for Transkei and Houghton have said in this Committee Stage, he still has the blinkers on. When he talks about the permissive society, what could militate more against a permissive society …

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

Sir, I am only replying to the hon. member for Rissik.

Order! We are not discussing the principle now.

Well, Sir, may I then reply to the hon. member for Rissik on just one aspect? I want to remind you, Sir, that we are still trying to persuade that hon. Minister to join with us in rejecting this clause. With luck we might even persuade the hon. member for Rissik …

Order! We are not going to discuss the principle.

Sir, the hon. member for Rissik was allowed to make a reference to the work by Dr. Ellen Hellman. I should like to reply very briefly to him on that point. I want to refer to this just by way of reply. He quoted her referring to the marital infidelity that takes place in the urban African community. He referred to sexual promiscuity and that sort of thing. That is for one reason, and one reason alone, namely that in the urban African communities there has been a relaxation of the tribal authority over the people. It is the sort of thing that happens anyway. They have come to accept the same sort of norms that we, as urban dwellers, accept, and that is precisely why we should reject this clause, so as to substitute for the very sort of discipline, the tribal discipline, which is being removed. What better discipline could there be than when persons can marry when they want to, and take upon themselves the responsibility of marriage rather than just living together, with all the attendant consequences. I cannot conceive of any reason why that hon. member should argue against us on this clause. What, in any case, could be better than trying to arrange a system whereby people can get married instead of simply living together? I do not propose to recap the arguments dealing with the principle, but I want this hon. Minister to tell us whether he will not consider even at this stage agreeing with us on the question of this clause. It is not too late for him to agree to leave this clause in abeyance until he and his department have had a chance of consulting with the people to whom it is going to apply. He gave as his reason earlier the fact that urban Bantu councils were not represented on the tribal authorities and he indicated that they now are. If that is the position, what harm will be done if clause 2 is simply dropped from this Bill at this stage. He can always come with this clause again; he can come with it later this Session, if he wants to, in the General Law Amendment Bill. What is to prevent him from agreeing with us to drop the clause now until proper consultation has taken place and, I want to add, until proper consultation has taken place not only with urban Africans, but also with people such as Chief Buthelezi.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member became quite excited when I interrupted him about his question as to whether the urban Bantu Council of Soweto, for example, has been consulted and whether the urban Bantu in general have been consulted about this matter, while at this stage of his political career he knows quite well what the policy of the National Party is in regard to a situation such as this. The National Party recognizes one Tswana people, one Venda people, one Zulu people—and not one people in the homeland and another in Soweto. The Government does not regard them as a people who are partly independent here and partly independent somewhere else. This is not the policy of the Government, and this is one of the reasons why consultation should not take place in this manner to confuse those people further as the United Party and the Progressive Party confuse them in the ethnological sense. They have their leaders in the homelands and they have their leaders who represent them in the urban areas. Those people have been consulted in the proper way. This is one of the aspects I want to point out to the hon. member. Another aspect I want to mention to the hon. member, one he failed to see and one which led to my interjection—because I think the hon. member does fail to see this aspect— is that if he refers to the Act which applies to the urban Bantu Councils and the functions prescribed for those councils in that Act, he will see that it is by no means the function of such an urban Bantu Council to consider legislation or a principle of this nature. That is the crux of the matter. One does not consult a council such as this, a council charged solely with local administrative functions, on the basis the hon. member wants it to be consulted on matters pertaining to the principle which applies here. I do not want to discuss the principle which applies in section 2, but for that reason I say to the hon. member that the question he asked the hon. the Deputy Minister as to whether these people have been consulted in the manner he wants them to be consulted, is completely out of step with the debate which has been conducted here. I think my point of view on this matter is quite correct.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Potchefstroom lives in a cloud-cuckoo land, it seems to me. He takes absolutely no cognizance of the enormous changes that have taken place in African society as the result of urbanization. It does not occur to him that the tribal woman living in the homelands is an entirely different human being from the sophisticated, educated westernized woman in the town, who has learnt to dress in Western style, talks a Western language and uses Western transport. She would no sooner dream of going down to the river and carry a pot of water on her head than she would, I would say, dream of sitting down to a cup of tea with the hon. member for Potchefstroom. I might say it would do him the world of good if he met some of these urbanized African women. If he would sit down and have a conversation with them, he would see that his idea that there is one nation with no differentiation, irrespective of education or the effects of urbanization, is utter nonsense. He ought to meet a lady like Mrs. Constance Ntshona who is a member of the Urban Bantu Council in Soweto, a highly intelligent and sophisticated woman, who has been running her own business with the greatest success for a number of years. For him to suggest that a lady like that, in the unfortunate event of her becoming a widow, would have to go and seek out some guardian in the homeland, is utter nonsense.

I have never said that.

Well, Sir, he may not have said it, but that is the practical effect of clause 2. In fact, the Urban Bantu Council does have to do with matters like marriages, illicit unions and the general way of life of people in the urban areas. One of their great concerns is the way in which the White man’s laws and customs have in fact resulted in their having to live the sort of life in the urban areas of which they strongly disapprove. Now, when marriage ought to be made easier among urban Africans, we come along with a law in 1972 to make it more difficult for Africans to contract marriages. What sort of nonsense is it that we are engaged in this afternoon? I say that the African women, with all their disabilities, the status, the legal status of African women, deserves a thorough investigation. In fact, in 1965, if my memory serves me rightly, Minister De Wet Nel actually appointed a departmental committee to go into the whole question of the legal status of African women, because he realized at that time that considerable changes were needed. I sincerely hope he was not thinking of changes in this direction. He was thinking perhaps of changes to modernize the status of African women. Well, the committee gave up the unequal struggle about a year later. We have never heard from it since. But I believe an investigation is absolutely necessary, because we have not only to do with the question of the discrimination against African women in the Transvaal and Natal, who have to get permission from these guardians—whom they may never have seen— but also with all sorts of other questions about their right to inherit, and so on, which we should be investigating. Instead, this Committee is passing a law this afternoon which is retrogressive and takes African women further back as far as status and equality are concerned. I want the hon. the Minister to explain to me what makes an African woman in the Cape or in the Orange Free State more responsible and more able to decide whether or not she should marry after the age of 21 without the consent of a guardian or her father, than a woman who lives in the Transvaal or in Natal. That explanation has never been given.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Houghton makes her allegation on the basis that members on this side of the House are completely unaware of the social and other circumstances of the Bantu in urban areas. I want to tell the hon. member that during the session of the Urban Bantu Council of Johannesburg a week ago I had an opportunity of listening to a short speech made by the Bantu woman the hon. member referred to. It was simply a case of my not being able to remember her name. Of course, I agree with her wholeheartedly that there are people in the urban areas who have achieved this cultural level. But that is not what this clause is concerned with. That is my argument. Hon. members opposite want to drag into this Committee Stage—with all due respect to the Chair—matters which have nothing to do with this clause. Whether we on this side of the House admit that the urban Bantu woman has a different way of life, a Westernized way of life as against that of the majority of women in the homeland areas has nothing to do with the matter. The question hon. members ask the hon. the Deputy Minister is whether he consulted these people or not. Our reply to that is: Consultation has taken place through the recognized, constitutional bodies which have been established for the purpose of consulting these people. This is what it is all about, and these other matters should not be dragged into the discussions to make a little political gain in this regard.

May I ask whether the advice of the African leaders is taken when they ask for more land or when they ask for other powers? Why is it taken in this case when it reduces women to the status of minors?

Mr. Chairman, I do not think it will be the proper thing for me to answer that question, because …

Order! The hon. member would in any case be out of order if he did.

Mr. Chairman, I want to raise another problem in regard to this clause. I should like to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister to refer to subsection (2) of the new section 22ter, which is to be inserted by this clause. In line 12, in the Afrikaans text, it states—

The English text reads—

Sir, to put it modestly, it would be a biological improbability, if not an impossibility, for a Bantu woman to have no father. I suggest to the hon. the Deputy Minister that the draftsmen might indicate that what is meant here is “no father who can be located” or “no father who can be identified”, because I do not think that a suggestion of such a biological impossibility should be recorded in an act passed by this House.

Mr. Chairman, the arguments that have been advanced in regard to this clause this afternoon deal for the most part with the question of consultation. I made the position quite clear during the Second Reading, and I shall repeat it now. In the first place, I just want to say that I was not asked whether the urban Bantu council had been consulted. As far as I know, I was asked whether the urban Bantu had been consulted. My reply is, of course, that certain avenues have been established; the Bantu people have their leaders and they have their political bodies. Any person who wants to make representations and who belongs to one of these peoples, is free to make representations through those recognized bodies. Suppose we consult these peoples in the urban areas and their replies differ from those of the others. Should we make changes then or should we decide to do this, that or the other thing? Perhaps I should state again what our approach is. We are not passing a new law here. This law has been in existence for almost 100 years, and the Bantu have asked that it continue to exist. Our argument is that it is now for the Bantu to decide. They have their recognized avenues; the Government has assisted them in establishing those bodies and these various peoples can now make representations to the various leaders in the various areas. If any changes are to be made, let them make the changes. Right from the start argument was: In this regard it is not for us Whites to force any decisions down the throats of the Bantu peoples. On what grounds does the hon. member for Houghton or any other hon. member now argue …

Have not the urban Bantu authorities also been established by the Government as political institutions?

They have been established on the level of local administration and not to fulfil duties of this nature. They are there to deal with local administration. They have contact with their various governments, to whom they can make representations. In this connection I may just mention that the paramount chief of the largest Bantu nation in the Republic of South Africa has, upon consultation, expressed himself in favour of this. Names have already been mentioned; I do not want to mention them.

Which chief?

The paramount chief of the largest Bantu nation within the borders of the Republic was in favour of this. Now hon. members can decide for themselves—consultations took place a few years ago, and this is the position. This is an educated Bantu, a Bantu who was looked up to by his people. Hon. members now argue that this handful of urban Bantu should dominate in these matters. To the Bantu these matters are very important. I conclude by saying that they are the people who are going to decide. I want to say to the hon. member for Houghton: We shall change matters to this extent; after all, a Bantu female also has to have permission and this has been done away with.

[Inaudible.]

Let them set their minds to it and if the people want to change this they can tell their leaders to act through their relevant authorities to make further representations. I do not think it is a good thing for us to decide on this matter. I want to conclude with that thought. I think I have dealt with the points very briefly. Basically this is all it involves. The Government says it is for the Bantu to decide; these matters affect them and we are not going to make any changes unless their leaders approach us with specific requests.

Mr. Chairman, did I understand that hon. Deputy Minister to say that he was not asked whether he had consulted with the urban Bantu councils? Is that what he said?

Yes, that is so.

Yes, that is what he said a moment ago. Let me read from his Hansard. Sir, this makes me wonder what sort of Government we are dealing with. This is the hon. the Deputy Minister’s Hansard of two days ago. He was dealing with the question of consultation and my colleague, the hon. member for Transkei, asked him—

This hon. Deputy Minister then said—

Then he went on to say that at the time they … [Interjections.] What sort of nonsense is he telling us now? He said he was not asked whether he had consulted … [Interjections.] Of course, he was asked, but now he says he was not asked. Sir, this is nonsense. I would suggest to the hon. the Deputy Minister that he reads his own Hansard. He may then remember what he said.

I want to come back to the hon. member for Potchefstroom, who allowed his own arguments to confound him. He argued that the Government recognizes only one Venda people and only one Sotho people and that, he said, was the reason why there had been consultation only with the tribal authorities in the decision to apply this clause to the entire Transvaal and to the entire Natal. But his own argument militates against what he was saying. After all, it might be very well that the Government recognizes only one Venda people, but then why do they not recognize only one Xhosa people, for instance? What about the Xhosas of Soweto? Why were the Transkei and Ciskei authorities not consulted because their people are also being affected? That in itself is reason enough why there should have been consultation with the urban Bantu councils, because they represent the people who live there. By no stretch of the imagination can it be said that the tribal authorities of the Transvaal or the tribal authorities of Natal are truly representative of all the Bantu people of those provinces. Is this not elementary? If the hon. member for Potchefstroom will only sit down quietly and think for a moment while another speaker on this side, or on his own side, talks for 10 minutes, he will have to agree with us. We must now come back to the hon. the Deputy Minister and insist on an answer from him. Why was there no consultation with the people to whom this clause is going to apply?

What sort of consultation do you want?

Hon. members opposite, at the outset, spoke about councils in general and of the urban Bantu. I did furnish a reply, but I referred to the councils of deputies which were not in existence at that time. I do not want to split hairs, but I made the position quite clear that no avenues existed at that time; even if such avenues had existed the urban Bantu should nevertheless have made representations through their authorities. These channels are in existence now, and with that I want to conclude. As far as I am concerned, it is no use arguing about it. Basically it is for the Bantu to decide. These are laws which have been in existence and which we want to change after we have consulted them; we shall not change the laws without consultation. If there are any Bantu who want to make representations to their respective peoples they may do so, and we can then discuss the matter further. I do not want to argue about the merits of the case. The position is simply that this is the custom of these people; this is a longstanding custom; and we cannot ignore the fact that this is so and summarily do away with it, i.e. the political leaders have every opportunity of taking this matter further through the right channels. They can then approach us and we can consider this matter further. I can see no reason why the law cannot be changed to suit them should a request of this nature be made. That is why we approached these people when we contemplated the repeal of the old Act. This will be done again, but let them ask for it. Let us not come to this House with clever talk and dramatize this matter as the hon. member for Kensington did. I accept the fact that he gets very little opportunity to make himself felt elsewhere, and this debate about the rights of Bantu women affords him an excellent opportunity to do so. I do not begrudge him the small degree of satisfaction he derives from this, but I feel that we are wasting the time of the Committee by discussing this matter any further at this stage.

Sir, the way in which the hon. the Deputy Minister has replied to the hon. member for Kensington shows that the little authority that he has has gone to his head. He now has an opportunity of dealing with this matter, but instead of doing so he makes jokes at another person’s expense. Sir, it does not befit a Minister to reply to a debate in this manner. It is all very well for him to say that he consulted certain leaders and chiefs, but he is not going to give their names. Why did he take that attitude? Is he afraid to give us the names of these leaders? Sir, if these leaders were true leaders of their people and if they spoke the way their people wanted them to speak, there would be no harm in giving their names. You only refuse to give names when you fear that there will be some sort of reaction against the people who have given you the information. We cannot be satisfied with the Deputy Minister’s statement that he consulted with “ ’n Bantoe wat baie sterk gestaan het onder sy mense”. Sir, his excuse for not consulting with the urban Bantu is not valid either. It is quite clear that, after speaking about “Bantoerade”, I went on to refer to the Bantu in the cities. He could easily have consulted with them. After all, there are more Bantu living in Soweto than there are in the Transvaal Reserves. If this law is to be for the good of all the Bantu, then I ask him what is to happen to the people from the Transkei and the Ciskei—the Xhosas and the Basothos. Is it fair to bind them to the custom of the Tswanas? Is it fair to them in terms of the Government’s policy? Not at all. As far as the Xhosas and the Basothos are concerned, they can have a civil marriage without the parents’ consent. The arguments advanced by the hon. members for Rissik and Potchefstroom would hold water if they were proposing to abolish civil marriages altogether amongst the Bantu and to bind them only to customary unions; then I would say that they would have a valid argument, but if they are going to allow the Bantu to have civil marriages, then the civil law should apply as it applies in the Cape and in the Free State.

I argued only about the procedure of consultation; I did not say anything about the principle.

I accept that; I accept that the hon. member for Potchefstroom was opposed to this measure in that Bantu women have to get the consent of the parents. He is only arguing about consultation. He agrees with me that if you are going to allow civil marriages, then the civil law should apply. The hon. the Deputy Minister, in his reply to me in the Second Reading, said there was no necessity for him to consult the Transkei. I say there was necessity because I do not see why the citizens of the Transkei should be bound by the laws of the Tswanas. Why could you then not amend your laws to this effect. We know the citizens of the various nations, as they call them now, because certificates are being issued, so it is quite easy to say that citizens of the particular tribes whose leaders have asked for this prohibition, shall have the consent of their parents or guardians, but where other Bantu women marry I submit that they should be allowed to marry in terms of the wishes of their leaders. Could the Minister not amend this Bill to make it only applicable to the tribes who have in fact asked for this prohibition?

I should like to get clarity about the question of consultation. Does the hon. the Deputy Minister say that these deputies, these representatives in the urban areas of the tribal authorities, had not been constituted at the time he did his consultations? Is that what he says?

Yes.

Then, surely, the only other possible body which could reflect urban Bantu opinion would have been the Urban Bantu Council, and one is amazed then that they were not used to ascertain their attitude to this measure. Surely, whether in fact it appears amongst the functions as laid down by law, that they are to deal with this matter, surely it is an obvious point where they could offer valuable advice that they should be consulted. Therefore, one is very disappointed that apparently so little trouble was taken to discover what their attitude was because we are now going to put on the Statute Book a measure which clearly …

It is not a new measure.

No, it is not a new measure, but a measure which has been in existence for a hundred years and may therefore well need revision. And it is indeed being revised in the case of the African men, but it is not being revised in the case of the African women. One would have thought that that was of enormous importance and that great care would have been taken to consult. I think this is the moral one must draw from this. The hon. member for Potchefstroom and the hon. member for Rissik gave us the answer. We are saddled with this stupid provision because the Government are so obsessed with their ideology in this regard that they really did not take the trouble to consult with these people in the cities. That is the trouble. Had the hon. the Deputy Minister in fact consulted with these urban representatives of the tribal authorities, I would have asked to what extent did those urban representatives consult with the urban Bantu people. And I was going to say that one would wonder what advice they gave back to the tribal authorities, and, if they advised that it was acceptable, it would show how unsatisfactory this arrangement is. Indeed I believe that also is the position, that this arrangement whereby 5 million urban African people have their views conveyed to the Government through a handful of representatives, stationed in the cities, is indeed a system which is not going to be satisfactory, never can be satisfactory, and is a further indication of the wrong road upon which this Government is in this regard.

Mr. Chairman, we do not seem to be able to get any real explanation from the hon. the Deputy Minister as to why this clause is being introduced. He keeps on saying it is because “they” wanted it. I would like to know who came to see whom about this. Did he receive a deputation of African leaders from the various tribes such as the Vendas, the Tswanas and the Zulus, asking him for this clause? Firstly, then, I should like to know what motivated the introduction of this clause.

Secondly, the hon. the Deputy Minister tells us this has always been the law. I must say that that justification for reintroducing in 1972 in a somewhat different form a law which dates back to 1897 in the one case and, I think, 1900 in the other, is no explanation whatsoever.

Then I want to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister whether he is aware that it is in fact not the law in the Transvaal that a woman over the age of 21 must get the consent of a guardian or her father to marry. The opinion I have is as follows: That marriages of Africans in the Transvaal, which are regulated by Law No. 3 of 1897 and Proclamation No. 6 of 1900, have certain requirements. By the way, they can choose either a civil or a religious marriage unlike the Africans in Natal, who can only be married by religious ceremony, at least until now. Before a marriage in the Transvaal can be solemnized, each partner must submit to a Bantu Affairs Commissioner, a certificate from his or her parent, guardian, chief or a minister of religion, stating that there is no legal impediment to the marriage. That is different from obtaining consent. In addition, the bridegroom must satisfy the official that he has complied with both the pass and the tax laws. The official must, in turn, explain the moral and legal significance of the marriage. Thereafter, if the official is satisfied, he issues an enabling certificate. The couple produce this certificate before a marriage officer, who may then go ahead and perform the ceremony. But the bride, if she is over the age of 21, does not at present require in the Transvaal the legal consent of her guardian. That is how I understand the position. The opinion I have been given is that this has been confirmed by the magistrate at the Bantu Affairs Commissioner’s court in Johannesburg. The authority quoted is the Native Appeal Court Ruling of 1949 in the case of Letabe vs. Ralithlalo. I will give the hon. the Minister the exact reference.

I know all those details.

Well, if the hon. the Deputy Minister has all those details, will he kindly explain to this Committee why it is that he keeps on saying that the law is already in existence in the Transvaal, when, in fact, it is not. This law is going to make it more difficult for an African woman over the age of 21 to get married in the Transvaal without the consent of her legal guardian. We are retrogressing here. It is no excuse for the hon. the Deputy Minister to say that they want it. They want a lot of things which this House never has any difficulty in refusing them. Every day, when one opens the newspapers, one sees demands from African leaders. As I have already mentioned, there are demands for more land, more powers and to have the pass laws amended.

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

The hon. the Deputy Minister advances as his main reason for this clause that the African leaders have asked for it. I want to know, since he refuses them so many other demands, why he does not refuse them this request, which to my mind is strengthening a mediaeval law which should have been abolished long ago.

As far as hon. member for Houghton is concerned, I just want to say that the pre-Union marriage laws have fallen into disuse. The Department felt that we should repeal those laws. We did not want to repeal them without consultation. For that reason we held consultations. Not everybody is satisfied with the manner in which we did so, but the necessary channels have been established to enable them to come forward and make further representations if they want to go into the matter any further. I just want to tell the hon. member for Transkei that another person who has been consulted is paramount Chief Cyprian Bekhezulu of the Zulu nation, the largest of the Bantu nations. I do not want to drag his name into these discussions, but he said he was in favour of this aspect being maintained.

Is he the only one who has been consulted?

No, I merely mentioned his name because he was the chief of the Zulu nation. He and his chiefs, amongst others, expressed the feeling of the majority in stating this should be maintained. After all, the other leaders may consider the matter and make representations to us. However, this is the factual position and we should not argue unnecessarily about who should be consulted and where this should take place, or about whether the Bantu in the Transkei, for example, should be consulted about a law of the Whites which applies in the White areas of the Transvaal and Natal. Surely we cannot act as comprehensively as all that, because then we will also have to consult the Swazis in Swaziland, large numbers of whom work in the White areas. We have to be practical. I am very sympathetic to the approach of the enlightened century in which we are living, in accordance with which the Bantu females in the cities are so different. I want to ask that we should bear in mind that these Bantu form part of a people and a culture, and that they decide on it collectively. Let us leave it to them to decide these matters. I do not think there were any other questions which have a bearing on this. It seems to me we are unnecessarily wasting time on this matter, but I think I have replied to the really significant questions.

Mr. Chairman, I am terribly sorry, but let us not talk about wasting time. This measure is going to apply to probably hundreds of thousands of people right away and I think this Committee could well spend a bit of time on it, because it involves the personal interests of so many people. Let us therefore not try to brush this matter aside. The hon. the Deputy Minister still has not replied to the points raised by the hon. member for Transkei, why he relies entirely on the decisions of tribal leaders and then tries to apply this clause willy-nilly throughout each province. We now have the authority he consulted, namely Cyprian Bekhezulu. I would suggest that before we go any further with this, he should perhaps check with some other African leaders. I do not think that the authority he gave us is good enough. I think that he should go, for example, to somebody of the character of Chief Gatsha Buthelezi …

I thought so.

Why not? I want to take the point raised by the hon. member for Transkei a little further and ask this hon. Deputy Minister to be very careful in replying to me. Flowing from what was said by the hon. member for Transkei, I want to draw his attention to something that he said when he replied to the Second Reading Debate. He said: “Ons moet vir hierdie mense die reg gee …"—he is talking about the Bantu people—“om in hulle gebiede, onder hulle mense, sekere dinge te laat geld, en dit is wat ons hier doen”. He talks about this applying in their territories and I want to ask him immediately whether, as a point of Government policy, Soweto is now to be regarded as being within the territorial jurisdiction—not the jurisdiction over people—of the Bantu tribal authorities. This is a very important point. He himself has said so. If this is going to be made to apply to the entire province, which includes places such as Soweto, he is now conceding, on the authority of his Second Reading speech, that in terms of Government policy the tribal authorities have territorial jurisdiction over the urban Bantu areas.

Clause Two put and the Committee divided:

Tellers: W. A. Cruywagen, P. C. Roux, G. P. van den Berg and H. J. van Wyk.

Tellers: H. J. Bronkhorst and J. O. N. Thompson.

Clause accordingly agreed to.

Clause 6:

Mr. Chairman, here we have a clause where the Committee is being asked to provide that certain persons, having been convicted within the Republic, or what the Government likes to refer to as White South Africa, can be transferred to prisons which will now be under the control and the administration of th? Transkei Government. Many questions were asked during the Second Reading debate questions which the hon. the Deputy Minister did not answer in full. The fact that the Transkei Government will be allowed to make its own laws, laws which may differ from those which apply in the Republic, and the fact that a person, having been convicted in the Republic, can be transferred to the Transkei, will mean that a person would find himself imprisoned under the laws of the Transkei. This is the one point that the hon. the Deputy Minister has not replied to. The fact that different regulations may govern the remission of sentence and the fact that different regulations may govern the imposition of extra conditions of imprisonment, such as spare diet, such as solitary confinement, for prison offences—I must admit, for prison offences—the fact that these could be different when applied by the Transkeian Government, was mentioned during the Second Reading debate, but again we did not get any answer from the hon. the Deputy Minister.

Then there is one particular point which I do not think was raised with the hon. the Deputy Minister in the Second Reading debate, and it is a point in regard to which I would like an explicit answer from the hon. the Deputy Minister. The proposed new section 50A (2) determines and I quote—

and then certain provisions are mentioned. Why does the hon. the Deputy Minister embrace all Bantu people in this case? Here we are dealing with an amendement to the Transkei Constitution Act. It is an amendment which applies to one area of the Republic only and that is the Transkei. We are giving this power to one authority only, viz. to the Transkei Legislative Council. Yet it is being applied to all Bantu persons within the Republic and in terms of this, as I read it, a Zulu who had been arrested in Johannesburg and who had been sentenced to imprisonment there, can be transferred to a prison in the Transkei. Similarly, a Sotho, a Venda, a Shangaan or a Twsana. Is there any particular reason why this should be so wide as to allow for any Bantu person or all Bantu people to be transferred to a prison in the Transkei. I hope I shall get an answer from the hon. the Deputy Minister in this regard.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg District says that there may be different laws and regulations in regard to prisons in the Transkei and that we can transfer a person from the Republic to a prison in the Transkei, something with which he is apparently not satisfied. This is the position as regards prisons at the moment, but I do not think it will be easy to change if there are going to be drastic changes. It is not likely to happen before the people are completely independent, because then we will not have that kind of arrangement any more. These people are now in a stage of development and the proposal here is exactly the same as what was proposed in the Republic. If we have drastic changes we shall have to approach it in a realistic way, of course. I think this applies to the question of the laws and the treatment as well as to the handling of these prisoners. What I have just said covers, I hope, the first two questions asked by the hon. member.

In the third place the hon. member said that we were now calling this legislation “Bantu legislation” and that the classification and the issue of identity cards to the various peoples were only going to be done this year. We may classify it in detail later on, but we have not yet reached the stage where these identity cards or identity documents which are issued to a particular people have been issued. They are in the process of being issued. That is why there is reference to “a Bantu” in a general way. When all the documents have been issued and all the Xhosas have been identified as citizens of the Transkei by the document of citizenship we can introduce a change to make it more specific, but at the moment this does not apply yet and the general term “Bantu” is used. This does not mean that Vendas, Swazis and Shangaans will be transferred, however. It goes without saying, after all, that this is aimed at people of that area, at Xhosas.

Mr. Chairman, I must thank the hon. the Deputy Minister tor his reply, although I do not wholly agree with him. In regard to the first point, section 65 of the Prisons Act of 1959 makes provision that the laws for those prisons shall remain in force until they are repealed by the “competent authority.” I wonder if the hon. the Deputy Minister can give us an assurance now that the Transkei Government as it is constituted today would not be a “competent authority.” In terms of this amendment we are now giving the Transkei Government the power—because we are amending their Constitution—to control and regulate these prisons. Therefore I would submit that in terms of section 65 of the Prisons Act, the Transkei Government would now be a “competent authority”, an authority competent to change the laws, as they stand today, and to constitute its own laws for these prisons.

This brings me to the second part of the discussion, namely the fact that I believe that, because of that provision, the whole clause with which we are dealing now should be limited only to citizens of the Transkei. The hon. the Deputy Minister says it will happen in time. But I submit that even today it is possible to establish whether a Bantu is a citizen of the Transkei or not. We have passed the Bantu Citizenship Act and in terms of that Act certain people are citizens of the Transkei. Whether they have been issued with their documents of identity or certificates of citizenship, is incidental. Either they are citizens of the Transkei or they are not. It is a matter which is identifiable by law. It is a fact which can be ascertained in terms of the law as it is today. Because I am worried about this matter and because during the Second Reading debate the only reply the hon. the Deputy Minister could give was that in certain exceptional circumstances you might want to transfer a prisoner for specialized hospitalization, which I am afraid I cannot accept, I move—

In other words, the line would read—

In this way we hope to limit the application of this section to those people who are outside of the Transkei and are indeed Transkeian citizens.

Amendment put and negatived.

Clause, as printed, put and agreed to.

Clause 7:

Mr. Chairman, I want to discuss subsection (1) (c), which amends part B of the First Schedule to the Transkei Constitution Act—

I am not so much interested in the second part, the proviso, but in the first portion. The Transkeian Assembly has certain powers, which are set out in Part B of the First Schedule to the Act. Item No. 10 reads as follows.

Public works and undertakings, roads, outspans, ponts and bridges in the Transkei, excluding bridges between the Transkei and any other part of the Republic and roads which have been declared to be national roads.

That means that the Transkei Government has no authority to control national roads or to pass legislation in respect of national roads. If we read the first portion of this paragraph again, we see that it applies to the districts mentioned in section 2 of the Transkei Constitution Act. Section 2 of that Act, which deals with the description of the Transkei, states inter alia.

The Transkei shall, subject to the provisions of section 3, consist of all the Bantu areas described below, namely—

Now I submit that if it was intended to exclude the White areas from the districts mentioned in section 2 of the Transkei Constitution Act, that section should have included at the end “but excluding the White areas”. Special mention is made, in this reference to Matatiele and Port St. Johns, to the fact that the White areas are excluded, because only the Bantu areas are included. Now I want to ask the Deputy Minister: Is this intentional? Has he considered this matter? After all, we do not want to pass laws which are going to be meaningless and which cannot be applied. If it is meant to include all the White areas in the Transkei—the White areas of the towns and the villages—then I say it is ultra vires, because the Transkeian Legislative Assembly has no authority over the White areas, in terms of the description of the Transkei in section 2 of the Act. If, also, I am correct in saying that they can not legislate for the national roads, in terms of the item in the schedule, which I have quoted, then you are going to have the position that the Transkei will be cut in two, because the national road in fact runs from the Kei Bridge right through to Umzimkulu, practically cutting the Transkei in half. It will mean that the Transkeian Legislative Assembly will not be able to legislate for that road or the areas covered by that road, the White areas adjacent to that road. If I am right in my interpretation of the law, this will mean that their boards will only be able to grant exemptions for operators operating outside the urban areas, in the Bantu areas, and then they will only be able to operate on roads other than national roads. In reply to me during the Second Reading Debate, the Deputy Minister said that the operators wishing to proceed from outside the Transkei through the Transkei, for instance from the Cape to Natal, would have to obtain a permit from the Transkeian authorities. He said (Hansard 6/3, page 00.2)

Now I want to know: Will it be necessary in fact for an operator operating under a permit covering the Republic, to obtain a permit to travel on the national road through the Transkei? The Deputy Minister will know that there has been trouble about provincial traffic officials not being able to operate in the Transkei on the national roads. I shall be glad if he will answer these points I have raised.

Mr. Chairman, as regards the national roads, I want to say that the road as such as well as its construction and maintenance, does not vest in the Transkei Government. But the traffic on that road is controlled by them. Therefore the position will be that persons who want to transport goods on that road, as well as the traffic passing through, will have to make the necessary arrangements and obtain the necessary permits. I think this answers the first question, and at the same time the second one as well.

In respect of the White towns, the same reply applies. The interpretation is as it is stated here in the Bill.

According to the hon. member’s argument, that would mean that these European towns are excluded.

*According to the approach of the legal men, the position is that that area, although it is a White area, falls under the management of the Transkei Government in respect of these particular functions it performs there. There are other matters too over which they have control in those towns, but they are specified. For example, the question of traffic is specifically mentioned. Therefore it means that they will control the traffic there.

Mr. Chairman, I am surprised to hear the Deputy Minister say that the Transkei Government has authority over White areas in the Transkei. I have never heard that before. They in fact have no authority until the State President issues a special proclamation to that effect. I am just trying to find it in the Act now. There is a provision in the Transkei Constitution Act, giving the Minister the power to have the White areas zoned and reserved for Bantu occupation, but until the State President issues a special proclamation placing them under the authority of the Transkei Government, they do not fall under the Transkei Government, although they have been reserved for Bantu occupation. Therefore I cannot accept that this Transportation Board, which is now to be established by the Transkei, will have any authority in the White areas of the Transkei. I shall be glad if the hon. the Deputy Minister will confirm this with his legal advisers, or give us an example in this connection. He said there were cases of this nature. I should like him to give me an example of cases where they have exercised authority in a White area.

I can mention two cases where the Transkei Government has authority, namely in respect of estates and the lower courts. But I promise to go further into the matter and all the implications. It sounds ridiculous to say that the Transkei Government has authority as regards the Bantu area, while there is a White town in the Bantu area, but they do have authority in the White town as regards certain matters.

Sir, certainly as far as the lower courts are concerned, that is nonsense. The Department of Bantu Administration has a lower court in Port St. Johns which is a White area. The Transkei Government has no authority in Port St. Johns. The court sits in Umtata, but the magistrates, who are members of the Transkei department, fall under the Department of Justice.

But Port St. Johns is excluded even here.

The point is that Port St. Johns is a White area, just as Umtata is. I am certain that if the hon. the Deputy Minister checked up with one of his legal authorities, he would find that the Transkei Government has no control at the moment over the White areas of the Transkei.

May I ask the hon. the Deputy Minister to clarify one point. He said a moment ago that a carrier passing through the Transkei would have to make arrangements with the Transkeian Government. Did I hear him correctly?

Yes.

Does that mean then that a motor carrier taking a load of furniture from Eshowe to Cape Town for somebody on transfer would have to get authority from the Road Transportation Board in the first place for the White area: he would have to get authority from the Zulu Parliament; he would have to get authority from the Transkeian Parliament, and he would have to get authority from the Ciskeian Parliament, because in order to go from Eshowe to Cape Town he would have to pass through the territory of those Authorities. I would like to be very clear on this. Is the actual position that in future when these three parliaments are operating, before they become independent, a motor carrier would have to get authority from all three of them in order to be able to make this journey? Would the hon. the Deputy Minister please confirm that?

Yes, he will have to obtain permits from the various boards.

Sir, we are now learning something that we did not know before. This clause is going to have a drastic effect on the free movement of traffic on our national roads. I would like to suggest, as the hon. member for Transkei has suggested, that the hon. the Deputy Minister should take another look at the situation. In fact, I suggest that he should look again at the Transkei Constitution Act. You see, Sir, one of the sore points about the Transkei—and it is necessary to canvass this—is that there has been a total lack of road traffic control on the national road running through from East London to Durban. In other public forums reference has been made by other members of my party to the appalling accident rate on this road, and on every occasion that I can remember it has been stated that the Transkeian Government itself has no control over the traffic on these roads because they are national roads. I hope the hon. the Deputy Minister is going to rise here and now and tell us exactly what the position is. If one looks again at Item 10 in Part B of the First Schedule to the Transkei Constitution Act, one sees that the Transkeian Government is given control over public works and undertakings, roads, outspans, ponts and bridges in the Transkei, and then it says “excluding bridges between the Transkei and any other part of the Republic and roads which have been declared to be national roads”. To me it seems that this has a plain meaning, and that is that the Transkei Government, in terms of Item 10, has no control over the national road, for instance, between East London and Durban, that part of it which runs through the Transkei. I seem to recall that even the hon. the Minister of Transport has made this point in the past. I do remember the hon. the Minister of Transport being questioned about something else that has a close bearing on this. I remember that when he was questioned about railways, for instance, he said that the Transkei Government would never have control over railways. Railways are exactly the same sort of thing as national roads. They still fall entirely under the control of our Central Government. If the hon. the Deputy Minister is now going to tell us that in terms of this legislation, or generally speaking, it is the policy of this Government that we only travel the national roads, for which we are paying, by the courtesy of the Transkei Government, then I think this is something entirely new, and I think he should get up here and now and tell us. I for one am not prepared to accept his argument. I am not prepared to accept for one moment that the situation now is that my movements over the national road in the Transkei should be controlled by the Transkei Government; it is nonsense.

Sir, I wonder if the Government realizes what it is in fact creating here. It seems unbelievable that this could be slipped through as though it is a measure of no moment; every road transport organization in South Africa, which has a certificate to carry goods of one type or another anywhere in the Republic, is now going to have to obtain up to 10 motor carrier certificates in order to be able to operate. It makes it absolutely farcical if you think what the position is at the moment under this Deputy Minister’s Government with White, sophisticated, educated officials holding high posts controlling motor carrier transportation exemption certificates; even under those circumstances there has been trouble. Is the hon. the Minister aware—and here I can speak for Natal—that every single field inspector in the whole of the road transport inspectorate in Natal and in the Southern Transvaal, in the Standerton area, was charged with corruption some three years ago and that except for one they were all found guilty? I repeat: with one exception the total inspectorate staff checking on road carrier certificates was found guilty of corruption. Sir, that is the situation now under a sophisticated Government with one controlling body and yet this Government cannot control the situation; they cannot control their own inspectors, and now the hon. the Deputy Minister tells us blandly that in addition to that control, there are now going to be, if we have eight Bantustans, eight additional certificates, making a total of nine certificates to be obtained.

In what clause do you read that?

The hon. the Deputy Minister said so. Is the hon. member repudiating his own hon. Deputy Minister? I put a very clear question to him and the hon. the Deputy Minister rose and clearly replied “Yes” to that question. Is the hon. member for Rissik alleging that the Deputy Minister does not know what he is talking about; is he alleging that the Deputy Minister spoke nonsense? Sir, we must have clarity about this. Either the hon. member for Rissik or the hon. the Deputy Minister is correct, but the hon. the Deputy Minister said that a motor carrier operator’s certificate would now have to be approved by each of these Bantu authorities. If we are already having difficulty with one organization, what is the position going to be if we expand this in such a way that soon we shall have to approach nine different bodies each of which may have its own rules, regulations and licence fees and impose all kinds of restrictions in this respect. Now the Transkei may say that in order to pass through its territory, one has to pay R500 for the certificate, and who will be able to prevent that, because we are now giving them the authority to control these certificates. As I see the matter, we have here before us something which is much more important than it would appear to be on the face of it. Therefore I am requesting the hon. the Deputy Minister to examine the matter thoroughly and to tell us whether he still persists with this attitude that now each motor carrier operator must obtain a certificate from each area which has these powers.

I wonder whether the hon. the Deputy Minister really has understood the wide implications of the amendment he is introducing.

I wonder whether you understand it. [Interjections.]

It is all very well these hon. members shouting like this. I do not believe they have even looked at this Bill, but if they have looked at it, they certainly have not understood it and they are completely unaware of the circumstances under which we are being asked to accept this amendment. Anybody who has had anything to do with the Transkei, will know exactly the dangers which are inherent in what we are being asked to approve of here. We are now being asked to give to the Transkeian Government, not only the control over the issue of drivers’ licences, which they had before, but the licensing of taxis and of buses, the issue of certificates for the transport of goods by lorry, and, as has been pointed out by hon. members on this side, there is the duplication of control which will now arise. I want to give the Deputy Minister an example. He knows that between Umtata and Kokstad there is no form of public transport, except the road motor transport service. Does he know how many bus services there are operating on that section between Umtata and Kokstad, private bus services? Does he know how many private transport operators there are in that section and particularly between Mount Frere, which lies midway between these two points, and Kokstad, Mount frere being one of the largest trading centres in the Transkei and Kokstad being the railhead for that area? Does he know that there are buses which transport people as well? And what is the position going to be with every one of those buses? Must they carry two certificates because Kokstad is in the Republic and Mount Frere is in the Transkei? But it goes even further and becomes even more ridiculous if you consider the case of a transport operator who wants to operate between Umzimkulu and Umtata, that he will also have to have two certificates, because he will go through the Republic en route? But let us come back to the question of the taxis, the licensing of those vehicles and the testing of those vehicles which is going to be handed over to those people, unsophisticated people, people who have not been trained for it.

Because of Government policy.

Yes, because of Government policy. What have we got at the moment because of this dual control and the hazard that has been created on the Natal roads because of unroadworthy vehicles which are coming out of the Transkei at the moment and entering Natal, because of the lack of control in the Transkei? Here the hon. the Deputy Minister is going to compound it now. He is going to license these people to drive these unroadworthy vehicles with fare-paying passengers out of the Transkei into the Republic. No, I sincerely believe that the hon. the Deputy Minister has not thought this thing through. He is not aware of the far-reaching changes he is asking for in this amendment. I believe he should have another look at it. The hon. member for Kensington has given him an opportunity to withdraw gracefully and have another look at it and then come with an amendment later on if he wishes, when he really feels that he has sorted this thing out thoroughly. I believe he has come here with a half-baked measure. I hope he can stand up and tell us that he has not come with a half-baked measure and that he has thought all these things out, and that he has some reasonable explanation for these points.

The hon. the Deputy Minister has not said a great deal on this clause; but what he has said has made it quite plain to us that once this power is granted to and exercised by the Transkei Government any motor carrier in the Republic who is on a route through the Transkei will need a second permit in order to make the trip. And as this type of provision gets extended to other similar Bantu areas, the number of permits will be further multiplied until you get to nine. That is an entirely unsatisfactory position. I do not believe hon. members opposite were aware that this would happen or that they approve of it. Indeed the hon. member for Rissik is clearly shocked.

Why do you not confine yourself to the clause?

This is the sort of absurdity to which Government major ideology and race relations policy takes us. This is the sort of absurdity which will be avoided under the policy of this side of the House. We regard this matter as essentially one of overall concern to the people of the Republic, which must be handled from the central level however much the people in the regions may be considered. And so, Sir, to mark our opposition to this clause, and our complete rejection of it, I move the following amendment—

Is the hon. the Deputy Minister not going to reply? I want to appeal to the hon. the Deputy Minister to reply. He has now before him an amendment. He has heard our arguments. Our arguments are based on the statement of the Deputy Minister. We now ask him to elaborate on this matter and to tell the House and the country now he visualizes this system which he is seeking to establish for the Transkei by this additional power will work and how he envisages it will be administered and controlled—how he expects it will work and how he expects road carriers to be able to operate? We have pointed out that this will strangle them. It will absolutely strangle road transportation.

Order! The hon. member must advance new arguments now.

But nobody has suggested the aspect of strangulation before, Sir. I want to lead that to its logical conclusion which, I submit, Sir, is also a new argument, that once you introduce this there must be accompanying regulations and that means more red tape to carry it out. I do not know if the hon. the Deputy Minister is aware of the procedure when applying for a road carrier certificate. One must apply, the application must be heard and, if there is an appeal, it goes to the central board. That appeal is specifically excluded here. It can take six months or more—although it can be obtained quickly for one single journey. There is provision for objections so that other carriers and the Railways can object if they wish to do so. Other carriers can object and say that an application is not necessary. The procedure is laid down by an Act of Parliament, a Statute which is specifically referred to here. If this clause is passed as it stands, how does, for instance, firm X in Pretoria know that firm Y has applied to the Transkeian Road Transportation setup—whatever is going to be established there—for a certificate? How does he exercise his right of objection? How does anybody know what is going on when there are going to be up to nine of these bodies functioning each with their own purely administrative procedures? I do not believe that the hon. the Deputy Minister can sit there and refuse to participate in the debate, unless he knows nothing about it— which I doubt. Surely he must know what he is introducing. I appeal to the hon. the Minister to stand up and reply to the points which have been made by this side of the House.

Mr. Chairman, in pursuance of the points raised by the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg District …

Speak up, we cannot hear you.

The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg District referred to the question of licensing, etc. Licensing of motor cars and drivers is a power which the Transkei has had for a long time. It is not something which falls under this Bill. What we are concerned with here is motor transportation.

What about the licensing of taxis, buses and lorries?

Certain of these have already been dealt with and consequently they are not relevant now. They have dealt with the licensing powers they have had in a reasonable way. I do not think we can complain about that. Now they are obtaining additional powers. The very same hon. members who have said here that the Bantu should be given a bigger part to play, are now saying that these people will not at all be able to exercise these powers. The Bantu do this under the leadership of White officials. Our approach is that this is the only way in which the people will in fact be able to perform this task. On the one hand that side of this House says “give them a part to play” and on the other hand, they say that these people are not able to do anything and that we cannot trust them.

I now want to come to the point made by the hon. member for Durban Point. He theorizes about eight or nine territories that will become involved in this. At the moment we are dealing with the Transkei. The people involved in transport will simply have to accept this arrangement. We shall arrange for the issuing of permits to take place as smoothly as possible, but if they want to pass through the Transkei, they will have to have a transportation permit. That is the position; I want to make it clear once more that the construction and maintenance of the road as such is a matter for this Government, but that the control of traffic on that road, where it runs through the Transkei has been transferred to the Transkeian Government. Should practical problems arise which, as the hon. member said, would strangle the transport system, we would be able to give them our attention and iron them out. The hon. member is meeting trouble half-way and is conjuring up all kinds of problems which may possibly arise.

There are problems. These problems are not of our making.

May I ask the hon. the Deputy Minister a question? Has the hon. the Deputy Minister read section 37 (2) of the Transkei Constitution Act with reference to legislating outside the Transkei and compared with section 12 of the Schedule? Having read that, does he still contend that the Transkei can legislate outside of the Transkei, the Bantu area, in respect of this matter?

The legal advice I have is that they may control those areas, but I shall go into the matter again later. I do not have the time at the moment both to listen to the hon. members and to check other Acts at the same time. According to information I have, the position is in fact as I explained it at the beginning.

Mr. Chairman, I cannot understand that the hon. the Deputy Minister can say that he does not have the time now to go into the provisions raised by way of a question by the hon. member for Transkei. Surely, that Deputy Minister has been briefed. If he comes here with a Bill he must know the answers …

I gave you my opinion, and he differed from me; that is all.

The Deputy Minister has given his opinion, but it was exactly the same as when he gave his opinion just now about the “ordentlike mate” in which the control of licences is being conducted in the Transkei. I want to say that the way licences are issued in the Transkei is anything but “ordentlik” today. I am not talking about drivers’ licences to drive private motor-cars. I am not talking about the control of a taxi or a bus, or a lorry which is used for public transport where you are going to place the lives of hundreds of people in the hands of these drivers, a matter which is now going to be controlled by the Transkeian Government. I am sure that that hon. Deputy Minister must be aware that in the Transkei at the moment they do not have the people to control the issue of drivers’ licences. He must know of the scandal that has arisen in connection with the issue of certain licences in the Transkei. Licences are issued in a shocking manner because this Government does not have enough officials to place in every one of those districts in the Transkei to control this type of thing, let alone to control all these additional powers which it is now proposed to hand over to the Transkeian Government. They cannot do it, and one only has to refer to reports of the Natal Motor Traffic Bureau about the vehicles and drivers that are coming out of the Transkei, let alone the hair-raising stories that farmers are telling about their Bantu employees who go to the Transkei to apply for drivers’ licences and come back and haven’t the first clue about driving a vehicle. Some of them have never been behind the wheel of a vehicle, but they come back with drivers’ licences.

You are an excellent time-killer.

There is no question of time-killing. That hon. Deputy Minister is the “know-all” on the other side and I am glad that he has come to help his colleague. His colleague has been thrown to the wolves by the Minister.

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

I am glad that the hon. the Deputy Minister is here, because I hope he is going to be able to give us some answers in regard to this matter. This is a serious matter and we are trying to deal with it in that way. The hon. member for Aliwal’s constituency is on the borders of the Transkei and I wonder what he feels about this. What do his people feel about these buses, taxis, and lorries that are going to come out of the Transkei into his constituency?

Nobody in my area complained about this.

I wonder. Perhaps they have realized that it is not worth complaining to this hon. member, and have accordingly complained elsewhere. But there is another aspect to this matter and I wonder if the hon. the Deputy Minister has thought about it. With the powers that have been given to them now, the sole control of the issue of permits for the transport of goods or of people through the Transkei—and as was said by the hon. the Deputy Minister, this power will also be given to the other seven homelands when they get their independence …

Before.

Yes, before they get their independence. It will be given to them as they develop. What is going to stop these Bantu authorities from legislating to the effect that no goods will be transported through their territories except by transporters of their own people? This can happen and we can find ourselves in that position. The goods will then have to be transported to the Transkeian border, for instance, and then transhipped into another vehicle and carted through the Transkei, and then transhipped again into another vehicle. Perhaps I am being extreme, but these are extreme powers which he is now asking us to give to the Transkei Government. This is why I am raising this particular point. I hope the hon. the Deputy Minister is now going to let us have a meaningful debate—this is what we are supposed to be having in the Committee Stage—about the details of this matter. At the moment there is no debate, but a monologue. It is only speakers on this side who are raising points, because nobody on that side is defending, and even less the Deputy Minister.

Mr. Chairman, if I understood him correctly, the hon. member who has just sat down, referred to, inter alia, the licensing of drivers of motor vehicles. In the first place, he referred to it and maintained that we were giving such powers to a body which, if I understood him correctly, did not set proper standards, etc. Does the hon. member know that we passed an Act in this House as far back as 1963, which authorized that body to undertake the licensing of drivers of motor vehicles? That has been the position since 1963. This, however, concerns the question of road traffic. It does not concern the question of the licensing of motor vehicles, but the question of exemption certificates. The hon. member did not read the clause concerned properly. Clause 7 of this Bill provides that the Motor Carrier Transportation Act will possibly be used by the Transkei. We have its equivalent in our own constitutional development. We wrote into our own South African Act that we may maintain our pre-Union legislation. In fact, we went so far as to maintain several British Acts. Even in this Session we repealed a British Act from the previous century. That hon. member is conjuring up spectres. What is more, how do two states operate next to each other when they have communal interests such as these? Take Rhodesia, for example. Every day motor vehicles with heavy loads travel to Rhodesia, and it is not made a requirement that these should be handled by Rhodesian transport. Why not? Because there are sensible people in both countries. The hon. member will not understand what I am saying to him now. There are sensible people governing in the Transkei, and here as well. In the interests of their economy, it is absurd even to argue in this way. But the most important argument still remains that the Transkei can pass legislation in terms of this empowering provision, which will enable it to retain our Motor Carrier Transportation Act. Its provisions need not be exactly the same nor need it be subject to legislation here or to boards such as those appointed here, but they may retain its framework and its implementation as they are. This is what the hon. member does not understand. It is so logical, that before he rises again, I think the hon. member should consult with the other hon. members who sat laughing at him a moment ago.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Bloemfontein West obviously did not listen to my colleague, the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg District. I am not going to waste time with him, but I merely want to suggest that as soon as the Hansard is ready, he must get hold of that Hansard and read what was said by my colleague. What I want to do is to move the following amendment:

The purpose of this would be to provide that the Transkei Government is not granted the powers that road transportation boards at the moment hold under the Motor Carrier Transportation Act of 1941. The reason is quite simple. It has become apparent, I think, to every single member in this House that if we carry on in the way that this hon. Deputy Minister seems to have started, we will have nothing short of a chaotic situation, a complete shambles.

While we are at it, the hon. member for Stilfontein, a few moments ago, made some loud interjections. I wonder whether he is prepared to go to his constituents and tell them that his Government has abdicated control of our national roads, because that is what that hon. Deputy Minister has said. Is the hon. member for Stilfontein prepared to go to his constituents and tell them that they as voters of this Republic, no longer have rights over our national roads in places such as the Transkei? That is what the hon. the Deputy Minister told us. [Interjections.]

Order!

Sir, I will ask the same question of another member who was very vociferous about this, namely the hon. member for Cradock. What about the hon. member for Aliwal? I come from the Eastern Cape too. I was born and grew up there. It is a very close community and we are very jealous of our rights. I want to tell him that if we follow this new principle that has suddenly been produced by the hon. the Deputy Minister, the Ciskeian Territorial Authority, even before the Ciskei gets its independence, whenever that will be, will decide whether that hon. member or I can travel on the national road between Grahamstown and King William’s Town. Is he satisfied with that position? [Interjections.] No, I am not. As far as I am concerned that national road belongs to me and the rest of South Africa and therefore we are entitled to use it. I am not going to be dictated to by any territorial authority, because it still belongs to South Africa.

The same with the Railways.

Indeed. This amendment that I am moving … I am glad that the Minister has come back. I wonder whether he has any inkling of what has been going on in his absence. [Interjections.] Even he himself, yes even his movements can be controlled as far as the national road in the Transkei is concerned. Does he know that? They can even stop him from driving from East London to Durban in his Cadillac. Coming back to the amendment that I am proposing, what we on this side of the House want to ensure is that the present position should be retained. We do not want any of these innovations which are capable of causing a chaotic situation in such a vital thing as communication. Let them play with their flags, let them play with their anthems, but let them leave such a vital and basic thing such as transport alone. We do not want any of that. Therefore I move:

Order! I regret I cannot accept this amendment, because clause 7 (1) (b) deals with the original Act, which is not amended, except for a very small part, viz. the deletion of “the Motor Carrier Transportation Act, 1941 (Act No. 30 of 1941), or”.

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, is the effect of the deletion of paragraph (b) from this clause not that item 12 will remain in the original Act as it is at the moment?

Order! I cannot accept this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, may I also address you on this? The whole purpose of my amendment and the phrasing of my amendment is to remove from this amending Bill clause 7 (1) (b). What will the effect of removing this be? The effect will be to leave the schedule to the Transkei Constitution Act exactly as it is. It is a simple matter.

Order! This is in conflict with the principles which have already been accepted at the Second Reading.

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, we have already moved an amendment to delete paragraph (c).

Yes, because paragraph (c) is a new paragraph.

Yes, Mr. Chairman, but let me finish my argument. If our amendment is carried and subsection (1) (c) is deleted, then it means there will be no control over road transport in the Transkei, because if the Bill is passed as it now reads it will exclude the operation c)f the Motor Carrier Transportation Act in the Transkei. It is a consequential amendment.

Yes, it is consequential. The hon. member may proceed.

Mr. Chairman, before we have a direct reaction from the hon. the Deputy Minister to the amendment which I have moved, namely to delete subsection (1) (c) I would like to draw the attention of the House to some of the immediate serious consequences which may follow if this Committee accepts this amending clause. If hon. members look at clause 7 (2) of the Bill in front of us, they will see that it has immediate far reaching provisions. I wish to read it:

that is the portion I am moving to delete—

In other words, once subsection (1) (c) becomes law, and after the 30th June following, certificates and licences granted shall cease to be valid. This fact therefore immediately makes it necessary for the permission of the Transkei Government to be obtained for these matters. It underlines the urgency of the matter and the need for this Committee to reject it immediately.

Mr. Chairman, before replying to the hon. member for Pinelands, I just want to return to the amendment moved by the hon. member for Kensington. We can look up his Hansard, but first he must just confirm for us that he said … [Interjections.] This concerns a very important aspect of the entire debate. He must just confirm here that he said they were satisfied with the situation as it is at present. Now we must take note of the methods of that side of the House. They have been debating here for the past hour or two. Consequently I want to make the statement that those hon. members have been wasting the time of the House deliberately.

Order! The hon. member may not say that. He must withdraw it.

I withdraw it, Mr. Chairman, but I want to say that they come to this House with unmotivated arguments. I have no doubt that they would not have come to the House with that argument if they had studied the Act of 1963 properly. Further to that I also want to advance an argument. That hon. member said they were satisfied with the situation as it is. What is in actual fact the situation as it is? It is that the regulation and control of road traffic, including the licensing and control of vehicles, is in the hands of the Transkeian Government. Thus he attacked the hon. members for Stilfontein and Cradock and charged them before their voters with now being prepared to accept a clause—the clause we are discussing now—in terms of which we shall no longer be entitled to use the roads of this country and shall be prohibited from doing so. But this provision dates back to 1963. By using an argument which has no basis whatsoever, the hon. member is deliberately just making political capital this afternoon. We must take note of their methods.

As far as the argument of the hon. member for Pinelands is concerned, I think he is not exercising any imagination. Surely it is clear that the Act concerned, as applied by us, will still be applied by the Transkeian Government, but that amending and/ or substituting it will be left to their discretion. It is very clear that they can pass an Act enabling them to take over the entire operation of this Act, so that they will issue the necessary exemption certificates before the date mentioned. Therefore it is only a logical action by that Government that will flow from this.

The hon. member for Transkei put certain statutory references to the hon. the Deputy Minister regarding the effect of the repeal of the words “the Motor Carrier Transportation Act, 1941” in clause 7 (i) (b). Sir, our problem is this. In terms of the Transkei Constitution Act of 1963, the Transkei is defined as comprising certain areas, and it excludes White areas such as Umtata and other towns in the Transkei. These towns are not subject to the Transkei Government at the present time. In terms of section 37 of the Act the legislative power of the Legislative Assembly of the Trans kei is to make laws not inconsistent with this Act in relation to all matters appearing in Part B of the First Schedule to this Act; in Part B appears this Item 12, which at the present moment excludes from the Transkei Legislative Authority the power to legislate in matters falling under the Motor Carrier Transportation Act. If this amendment as printed in the Bill goes through, then the difficulty that we see is this: The Transkei Legislative Authority can then issue the necessary road transportation certificates for vehicles operating in the Transkei, but when those vehicles reach the municipal boundary of Umtata they will not be lawfully licensed or certified to operate in the White area. I think this is a valid point. If we do this, we are going to have that hiatus and a permit would have to be obtained for each vehicle in addition to the certificate under the Road Transportation Act which had already been granted by the Transkei Legislative Authority. I think that is the reason why this power was left out in 1963—so that there would be one authority dealing with the Act. Obviously vehicles are not going to stop on a municipal boundary before they go into a White area which is not under the control of the Transkei Legislative Authority. I know that this is a matter which the hon. the Deputy Minister will probably want to go into in some detail, but I want to give him the point which was raised by the hon. member for Transkei and which he was unable to pursue since he had already spoken three times on this particular clause. I want to give the hon. the Deputy Minister the references, the first one being section 2 of the Act, in which the Transkei is defined; then section 37, which defines the powers of the Legislative Assembly and then Item 12 in Part B, the item which is proposed to be amended.

Sir, is the hon. the Deputy Minister not going to say anything more? A lot of very important things have been put to him. I do not propose for one moment to repeat things which have been said.

May I ask a question?

No, not at the moment.

He can get up and talk.

I am the one who is asking questions at the moment. Sir, I want to crystallize just a few points that I have raised and I am asking the hon. the Deputy Minister in the clearest possible terms for his interpretation of Item 10 in Part B of the First Schedule to the Transkei Constitution Act. You must remember, Sir, that the same provision applies to the other Bantu homelands as well under other Acts. His interpretation, which will be the official Government interpretation of the position throughout the country wherever these Bantu homelands are, is that we, the Central Government, are able to build national roads and pay for them; he said that a few moments ago and that is so. He also says that we are going to have the privilege of maintaining them at our expense.

Yes.

He says “Yes”. The third thing he says is that we will only be able to use these roads by leave of the local homeland authority; that is what he says as well. Sir, I am putting this question to every hon. member on that side of the House. This is not the last they are going to hear of this. This question is as clearly framed as I can put it and I hope he is now going to stand up and say that this is so.

The hon. members for Kensington and Durban Point, who are so loquacious, put me in mind of ten days ago, when I had to silence them somewhat on a certain matter at a different hour of the night.

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

The hon. member for Kensington said a few moments ago that he would be quite satisfied if the old section of the Act remained as it was. [Interjections.] I ask the hon. member for Kensington: did he say that he would be satisfied if the Act with all the powers granted by that particular section remained just as it was?

He spoke about transportation certificates.

I am speaking to the hon. member for Kensington now; I do not know why the hon. member for Durban Point is so touchy.

May I rise on a point of explanation?

Sir, I wanted to ask this question a few moments ago, but the hon. member refused to allow me to do so. The hon. member for Kensington said a fw moments ago that he would be completely satisfied with the Act as passed in 1963; in other words, he is completely satisfied with Part B of the First Schedule to the Transkeian Constitution Act of 1963 as it is; he said so very specifically.

That is twisting what he said.

Order! The hon. member for Durban Point must withdraw the word “twisting”.

I withdraw it, Sir.

Sir, I do not think hon. members on that side have read the Bill properly; they have not read it properly in the light of the Acts which have been amended. The hon. member for Kensington, who spoke a great deal and said nothing this afternoon, said that he agreed completely with the Act as it is, with the principle and the exposition and everything, but that he was totally opposed to this amendment, this addition to the Act. I now want to ask the hon. member for Kensington to tell us, in the light of our argumentation this evening, and since hon. members on that side want the hon. the Deputy Minister to reply to meaningless things although he has already done so too extensively, why he accepts the section as it is and why he does not want this amendment.

Sir, may I speak to the amendment?

Order! The hon. member has spoken three times already.

I wish to speak to. the amendment, Sir.

No, that is included.

Amendment proposed by Mr. G. D. G. Oliver put and negatived (Official Opposition dissenting).

Question put: That paragraph (c) of subsection (1) stand part of the Clause.

Upon which the Committee divided:

Tellers: W. A. Cruywagen, P. C. Roux, G. P. van den Berg and H. J. van Wyk.

Tellers: H. J. Bronkhorst and J. O. N. Thompson.

Question affirmed and amendment proposed by Mr. J. O. N. Thompson negatived.

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

Clause 9:

It is our policy to establish communal councils for the reserves or homelands and to give them powers to control their own affairs, but we do not propose to do this haphazardly and merely for the sake of making a pretence of bringing about constitutional developments. Under our policy there will be ordered constitutional advance as the people in any particular area give evidence of being able to manage their own affairs. We are not of the opinion that the various homelands in South-West Africa have at the moment developed to that stage where they can manage all the affairs which is proposed to hand over to them by means of this legislation, but the Government has embarked on its policy and it proposes to hand these powers over to them. We have this protection that the State President has the control there and can legislate for the area as well and so we will let these provisions go through except in regard to (20) (j), which provides for the establishment, with the concurrence of the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development, of public holidays in substitution for the public holidays established by or in terms of the public Holidays Act. We have no objection to the various homelands being able to have their own holidays. We have no objection to regional holidays being set aside for certain areas. We do not expect them always to respect the holidays acknowledged in the Republic, but we contend that these holidays must be arranged by the Government of the Republic, by Parliament. We regard this granting of power to be in line with the Government’s policy of giving them constitutional development towards eventual independence, whereas we still regard the Republic as one body, and South-West Africa as being with us, for the time being at any rate, and therefore we say there should be only one authority controlling a matter of this nature. We look at it also from the economic point of view. If we allow every authority in South-West Africa or in the Republic— and I mention the Republic now because the matter will crop up again under clause 12—to establish their own holidays in lieu of the Republican holidays, as was pointed out the other day, we could have something like 168 public holidays in the Republic and South-West Africa.

It will be 180 with the ones we have already.

Obviously it will not happen to that extent, but it could and we say that for the protection of the economy there must be some control to see that this number of holidays is not overdone. The Minister will reply that the different South-West African reserves cannot legislate outside their own area, and the same will apply to the Republic, and that is so, but if the reserves, a homeland Government, sets aside a national day for its people, we will find that its people living and working outside that reserve will be inclined to regard that as their day of celebration and they will wish to recognize it by staying away from work. We want to obviate the prospects or possibilities of that nature and therefore for these reasons we say that this control should be left with this Parliament and not just with the Minister, because we contend that this is fundamental to one government having control over the whole of the area of the Republic and of South-West Africa. Therefore I move the amendment standing in my name, as follows—

The effect is that they will still be able to ask for their holidays, the same as they will have to ask the Minister for a holiday. They can still make their representations. We are not opposed to their being able to have a regional holiday, but we say that that authority must come from Parliament and not from the Minister. Parliament should not delegate its authority.

Mr. Chairman, I am still surprised and as the years go by I grow even more surprised at the attitude of the United Party in respect of matters such as these. When we were discussing the Second Reading of this Bill the hon. members for Kensington and Transkei referred specifically to this and to a later clause. I then told the hon. member that in my humble opinion they did not have the right in principle to vote for this particular clause. The hon. member for Kensington then said that there was still lots of time and that they would explain everything. There is still lots of time, but the hon. members wasted so much time that I was of the opinion that they did not want to talk about this particular clause. We cannot understand why the hon. members on the other side want to ridicule this particular clause. They try to present it in a very ridiculous light, but still they have not voted against it. Now they come along with the proposal and the assertion that this Parliament should lay down for those people exactly when their national days and holidays should be. If I may refer to clause 2 for a moment want to point out that we said during the discussion on that clause that the hon. members of the Opposition simply want to force their attitude and their view of life on the Black people without the slightest consideration of their feelings. That is the reason why the hon. member for Transkei is proposing this amendment. In this way, without even consulting this particular population group, they simply want to force their holidays on those population groups. The way I interpret it they simply want to take the White man’s holidays and give them to the Bantu people as they are.

Mr. Chairman, I want to deal with paragraph (b), which refers to “farming and agricultural methods in general, including the combating of animal diseases”. Firstly, I would like to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister whether the consent of the Department of Veterinary Services has been obtained in regard to this matter and whether they have approved of this power being handed over to the Bantu Governments in the tribal areas.

Yes, they have been consulted.

That was not my question. I did not ask whether he consulted with them, but whether they approved of it. That is rather something different.

They did not object.

The hon. the Deputy Minister is trifling with me now and he is trifling with the Committee. I do not want to know whether they were consulted or whether they raised any objections, but I want to know whether they approved. I want a positive statement that the Department of Veterinary Services did approve, that they were satisfied that this was the right thing to do. We are now dealing with the question of various diseases on our borders, a question which have been a recurring headache and worse than a headache to our veterinary departments for many years. The problem still remains despite all the resources at the command of our own Government and its Department of Veterinary Services. They are unable to cope adequately with the threat that is perpetually facing them. They would like to have still further resources if it is at all possible. For a power such as that to be handed over to one of the Native Governments in South-West Africa is, to my mind, simply throwing us open to a very grave threat which can affect the whole of the Republic. We are not only facing the problem of foot and mouth disease, but as one proceeds there are also the threat of corridor disease and rinderpest, among others. Foot and mouth disease is, of course, the worst of these. In regard to other diseases, other than that of domestic animals—such as poultry diseases—the threat is also immediate and of immense economic consequences if it should, by any chance, be introduced into this country. This is the point I want to make, and if the hon. the Deputy Minister cannot give us the assurance that the Department of Veterinary Services has positively approved and said: “Yes, we believe that this is a service that can rightly be transferred to the control of the Native Governments in South-West Africa”, then I think that the Government is taking a very great responsibility and that the direct blame for anything that goes wrong will have to be pinned on the shoulders of the Government. In a matter of this kind, above all others, where these scientific matters are concerned, I believe the Government should be guided by its scientists and the people who are in authority, and responsible, if disease should break out, to cope with it.

Mr. Chairman, I want to reply in the first place to the point raised by the hon. member for South Coast. I just want to point out that it is only a small change which is involved here. “Stock diseases” now become “animal diseases”, “veesiektes” now become “dieresiektes”. They had that power under the Act; it is not that they are only getting it now. I just want to tell the hon. member that the Department of Veterinary Services of the Republic is doing this work for them so that the authority and control remain in the hands of the Department of Veterinary Services of the Republic.

Is this then just a sham?

It is obvious, after all, that these people do not have all the trained experts. They then either use the Republic to act as agent for them or appoint individuals to do the work for them. I have explained over and over again to the hon. Opposition that we are training those people to accept responsibility, to realize the importance of the matter, and that the White officials who have the expert and the technical knowledge are used by them. This is done when they are unable to appoint their own officials. We are doing it particularly because we want co-ordination, and they use the Department of Veterinary Services of the Republic to perform that task. I do not think hon. members should proceed from the assumption now that we are going to be irresponsible and just let them have their way. This applies to Owambo and Kavango as well, where those diseases are under the control of our own veterinaries.

As far as holidays are concerned, the hon. member for Transkei said that they were worried about these people now being able to make any day a holiday and about the effect this might have on the White sector. I have already replied to this, but I want to point out that the Public Holidays Act, No. 5 of 1952, section 2, provides that the State President may declare any day to be a public holiday without consulting this Parliament. If we now want the Bantu Governments to come to this Parliament as well when they want holidays, surely this is to a certain extent inconsistent with the arrangement of our holidays. The main objection is that we want to regard every little thing as being so important that this Parliament has to decide about it for the Bantu. I feel that we must be realistic if we have reached the stage where we can say that it is not sufficient for the Minister to decide about something like this—because there is the restriction that they must have the approval of the Minister for such a decision. We saw this afternoon what a lengthy and wide-ranging discussion can be held on small things. I think we should be realistic— people talk of being practical—so that we do not have to refer every little thing in regard to these peoples to this Parliament. We must accept that the Minister will consider those things after those people have discussed it with him. Suffice it to say that I cannot accept that amendment of the hon. member and that the clause must remain as it is.

Mr. Chairman, I think it is a most incredible statement that we have just had from the hon. the Deputy Minister in regard to a serious matter such as animal diseases and their control.

As I understood the hon. the Deputy Minister, if the Owambos cannot handle an outbreak of disease, they will apply to our Department of Veterinary Services for support. We will then make personnel available to take control of the remedial measures, whatever they may be, which the Government then decides upon. But what will happen if the Owambos are not even able to recognize the cause of the outbreak, to start with, let alone ask for help by the Veterinary Department? The question I should like to put to the hon. the Deputy Minister—let us get this quite clear—is whether the control of veterinary science all along the border and in Owambo will remain as it is, vested in the hands of the personnel at Onderstepoort?

The hon. member is actually discussing the original Act. The hon. member may in the Committee Stage only discuss the change from “stock diseases” to “animal diseases”. That is the only change that is proposed to be made.

That is what I am dealing with, Mr. Chairman. With due respect, I am dealing with animal diseases, very serious animal diseases. I am not dealing any longer with stock diseases. I widened it to animal diseases of all kinds, including birds. Birds are animals for the purposes of ordinary vocabulary.

Feathered birds.

I do not care what kind of birds they are. But there are some birds that are very queer birds. I know some of them myself. They ought to have the Veterinary Department give them a good look over in case they introduce disease into this House.

I want to put this to the hon. the Deputy Minister. This is no trifling matter. The control of animal diseases in those areas along the border and in Owambo will rest, as it is today, in the hands of the Veterinary Department. There will be no change whatever in the control. The watching for any outbreak in disease which may take place, and so forth, will be entirely in the hands of the Veterinary Department. If that is the case, why are we putting this in the Bill?

Mr. Chairman, I am sorry that the hon. the Deputy Minister said that we are dealing with small matters. These are matters of great moment.

“Small” only applies to thousands and thousands of people.

With regard to the question of holidays, I want to say that I know that the State President can proclaim regional holidays. But the reason why we want Parliament to control the other holidays which are set out in our present Act and which have to be respected by all is that there are holidays in those regions that mean more to one section than to the other. Therefore we do not want the Minister alone making up his mind about which holidays he will do away with, because he will have to substitute holidays. If these different bodies want a holiday on 24th May as Empire Day or something like that, instead of on the 31st May, the Minister can give them that permission and do away with Republic Day. Republic Day means a lot to us. We consider it one of the main days in our calendar. Therefore we think that this Parliament which represents all sections of the community, should be the body to decide what holidays will be respected in the Republic and which not. It should not just be left to a Minister to decide which ones he will do away with. This will in effect mean that he will be abolishing certain of our holidays in certain areas. It is not the same as giving the State President the power to proclaim regional holidays which, I admit, he has at the moment.

Mr. Chairman, I should like to come back to the hon. member for Rissik. I hope that the hon. member for Rissik now has a clearer idea of United Party policies and attitudes. Because he thought it was completely impossible for us to vote for the principle of a regional holiday for one of these ethnic groups. He said so in effect. But now we have shown him through the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Transkei that in fact we are perfectly happy to meet the desire of such a group for a holiday within the framework of the central guidance of this Parliament. I hope, therefore, that he will realize something wider, too. I want to say this because we hear, day in and day out, from the National Government that we have to create sovereign, independent Bantustans in order that these various ethnic groups may protect their own possessions, their own culture. It is perfectly possible without having sovereign, independent Bantustans to have the very highest respect for all the cultural treasures, the language and everything else of these groups. After all, if I may give a clear example, let us take the case of the Afrikaansen English-speaking South Africans here. There is no separate independent state for each of these people, but neither of them would feel their cultural treasures threatened. The position is likewise with these Black ethnic groups. It will be perfectly possible for all their cultural treasures, their language and everything else to be placed in the hands of the United Party and justice is perfectly possible. Then there will be no question of introducing the difficulties and the dangers attaching to these sovereign independent states. By this amendment we show that it is perfectly possible for them to have a regional holiday.

Mr. Chairman, I was amazed to hear that the hon. member for Transkei likes Republic Day. If I remember rightly, he voted “no” about 10 years ago.

Order! The hon. member must return to the clause now.

That was before you were born.

But I just had to mention what the hon. member said. [Interjections.]

Order!

A few things have become apparent during the discussion on this particular clause. One of them is what was said by the hon. member for Transkei. That is that they see South Africa as a political unit, a state which governs all the people with this Parliament as the sovereign authority. Your public holidays must be established from here. He will remember that in his arguments so far he, and the hon. member for Kensington as well, referred in a very jocular and foolish way to these so-called public holidays which the various Bantu ethnic groups are going to get. Then the hon. member for Pinelands spoke, but he had not paid close attention to the arguments advanced by the hon. member for Kensington. If the hon. member had listened to his arguments he would have noticed that the hon. member for Kensington spoke about these matters tongue in cheek.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw that. It is unparliamentary.

I withdraw it, Mr. Chairman. He listened to them very half-heartedly and referred to them in a rather jeering way. Another argument is that these holidays which we want to give the various Bantu groups instead of other holidays are going to have terrible consequences for the economy of South Africa. Hon. members can imagine how ridiculous this is. They say that we are a unitary state of which all the various ethnic groups with their various areas form part. They say, however, that those various areas can ask for their independence days and that they will get them. Hon. members must imagine the results of this. If you have a unitary state as they say and you accept the culture of those people as you accept the culture of the Afrikaans and the English-speaking people, as the hon. member for Pinelands said, they still want to establish 168 holidays throughout the country. Can hon. members see the foolishness of this argument? I should very much like the hon. member for Pinelands to reply to this.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister to give us when he replies, if he replies, the information which I believe is necessary to give proper consideration to this extension of powers. Last week his colleague, the other Deputy Minister, asked for additional money because—that was the reason he gave—the establishment of territorial authorities provided for citizens of those territories to fill the posts. In practice it was found that they were not available and therefore they had to have White officials filling the posts created for the different territorial authorities. In other words, there were not local citizens available and Parliament was asked to vote additional money so that White citizens could fill those posts. We are now being asked to extend the powers; in other words, to create more posts than those which existed and which already cannot be filled by local citizens. In the Government Gazette which I was reading this morning—I assume it must have been Friday’s Gazette; I did not look at the date—there is provision for Public Service regulations for the officials of the territorial authorities, and one in particular, namely the Eastern Caprivi. I quote that because it is current; I was looking at it this morning. Now could the hon. the Minister tell us how many citizens of the Eastern Caprivi have a university degree and how many are matriculated? In other words, what potential is there of people to carry out these duties? The duties include the controlling of animal diseases, fish and game preservation and the conservation of flora and fauna. The last two duties are new ones, whereas the control over animal diseases is an extension. Other duties are the control over intoxicating liquor and the appointment of commissioners of oaths. These are all additional powers. Let us take three areas at random, say, Owambo, Kavango and the Eastern Caprivi. Here we have three authorities recently established or being established. Can the hon. the Deputy Minister tell us how many degreed and matriculated people, or people with a lower educational standard, but able to do clerical work, there are available to exercise these powers? If they are not available, we are simply creating a sham structure. We are creating a structure, saying, “here is a pack of cards”. [Interjections.] We are setting up this house of cards, but if you blow on it, you will find that all the jokers are sitting on that side of the House and it will collapse just like that. This is nothing more than using jokers, if you give powers which require jobs for which you do not have people. It is not then a genuine body you are creating. The Minister said the veterinary department would carry on doing the job. The hon. member for South Coast then asked, “why pass it?” Earlier on, during the discussion of another clause, the hon. the Deputy Minister said that they could carry on with our law and we would see that they did not go wrong. Either we are giving them power and creating meaningful self-governing bodies, or we are creating a sham, a facade. The hon. the Deputy Minister can show that it is not a sham and a facade if he can prove that the people are available, educated and qualified, to exercise the powers which he is asking us to transfer. I hope he will give us a full picture of the educational situation of the citizens of those three territorial authorities to which I have referred so that we can judge the merits or otherwise of saying that they are capable and that it is realistic to hand over these powers to them.

Mr. Chairman, I want to carry on where the hon. member for Durban Point has left off, and to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister to give us further details. When we look at the powers which are being written into the law now, let us at all times remember that they will not only apply to the territorial authorities, but that the State President has the power, when advised by the hon. the Deputy Minister, to give these powers also to regional authorities and even to tribal authorities. Therefore every question which has been asked by my hon. friend from Durban Point also applies to each tribal area, not only to the whole area of the territorial authority.

We find that there is a new power to be given to the Bantu authorities over there. The new item 20B, inserted by paragraph (e), reads—

How many people are there in any of these territories who are qualified to hold any of these positions?

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

Mr. Chairman, I want to deal initially with the hon. member for Rissik, who seems to be quite a popular person on that side of the House. That hon. member raised a few points about the question of public holidays. His main objection seemed to be that we want the whole question of the Bantu homelands’ holidays referred to this House and the Other Place. His basic objection was, if I understood him correctly, a procedural one. He felt that this should not be done in this manner. In terms of our attitude, what would happen? A homeland Government, a Bantustan Government, would make a decision about a public holiday, a regional or territorial public holiday that they want to have. In terms of our suggestion the question of whether this holiday should be granted or not would have to be brought before this House and the Other Place for approval. I ask him immediately what his objection is to this procedure; why is he so upset about it? Why does he not want to support us in this? If one looks at the new item 20J which is proposed to be inserted by clause 9, one sees that in practice a homeland Government will have to decide in the first place on a regional holiday to be introduced in substitution for a public holiday already in force in the Republic. What will happen then, is that this homeland government will have to negotiate with the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration. All that we are trying to insist on here is that the homeland government in question should not get itself involved in any private deal with the Minister of Bantu Administration or vice versa, but that this Parliament, these two Houses, should make the actual decision. Our submission is that as long as this country is one country, until the final fragmentation takes place, this should remain the position. The hon. member and the hon. the Deputy Minister made reference to the Public Holidays Act, No. 5 of 1922. The hon. the Deputy Minister himself seemed to have relied quite heavily on this Act in trying to argue why this item should be introduced in the schedule. What does this Act provide? The hon. the Deputy Minister made the point that the State President may by proclamation in the Government Gazette declare any day to be a public holiday. However, in its first schedule this Act stipulated what days were to be public holidays from the date of commencement of that Act. One power it did not give the State President was to remove any of these holidays from the schedule. This is a power the State President does not hold. If any holiday is to be removed from the schedule to this Act, it must be done by means of legislation passed in this Parliament. The Bill wants to place greater powers than the powers of the State President into the hands of the Minister of Bantu Administration. [Interjections.]

Order! Hon. members should not talk so loudly.

Sir, I think we can leave those hon. gentlemen alone; they are having a private caucus.

This is none of your concern; carry on!

The Bill seeks to place greater powers into the hands of the Minister of Bantu Administration than the State President himself has in terms of the Public Holidays Act. This is obviously wrong. Why should the Minister or any of his Deputy Ministers have a claim to assume powers to override the provisions of our Public Holidays Act? To our mind it is an affrontery in that it impinges on the real authoriy of this Parliament. We feel that is wrong in principle.

While I am dealing with the hon. member for Rissik and the hon. the Deputy Minister, I want to come back to this question of how these Bantustan holidays can be brought about. It is quite true that during the Second Reading debate I made the point that at the moment we have in South Africa and South-West Africa, to which the Public Holidays Act applies, 14 Bantu homelands and we all know that we have 12 public holidays. It is quite true that I did a bit of mental arithmetic when I said that in theory we could have something like 168 public holidays.

Order! That point has been made.

No, Sir, I am not repeating my Second Reading argument at all. I want to tell the hon. member for Rissik that I was not joking at all when I referred to this; in fact, I made the point that it is quite obvious that in terms of the proposed new item we shall not have 168 holidays. I said so. What did concern me—I said this in all seriousness —is that in terms of this proposed item, with the concurrence of the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration, we can have sufficient public holidays to cause serious disruption in this country. That is why we on this side of the House feel that it should not be left in the hands of the Minister of Bantu Administration. It should certainly not be left in his hands to assume greater powers than the State President has. That is why we come forward with this amendment: to insist that these matters be left in the province of Parliament, where they rightly belong.

Mr. Chairman, I want to pursue the argument started now by the hon. member for Kensington and in the course of my speech I hope to answer the hon. member for Rissik who asked me a question. I want to do this because it has considerable bearing upon whether this Committee should accept this portion of the clause or not. I think the hon. member, and indeed all hon. members opposite, accept that theoretically, with the 14 Bantu area governments that could gain this power, we could have the position that while we have our 12 holidays they may have holidays which substitute our holidays and the situation could then arise that we have 168 different holidays coming from their side and 12 Republican ones, taking the total to 180. I think the hon. member accepted that that would in theory be so. I want to emphasize that not only in theory could that be so at this stage of the constitutional development of these areas, but once they get the promised sovereign independence, then indeed it is highly likely that given an example of 12 public holidays by the Republic, they may each well wish to institute 12 separate public holidays of their own. There is a very great possibility, therefore, that we will have a tremendous multiplicity of holidays under the policy of this Government. The hon. member for Rissik now says to me, “Equally, in theory, in terms of your amendment, you might have a very large number of holidays.” But, Sir, there are two very important differences. In the first place, as I explained in my earlier speech on this clause, we see the Republic as one entity, and since we retain in the hands of this House and the Other Place the power to grant holidays and having the general approach which we do have, namely not one of fragmentation but one of cohesion and co-operation, it is quite obvious that under our policy there would be no possibility of getting such a vast number of holidays, although we readily concede that we would gladly grant regional holidays to the various ethnic groups, but clearly within limits. It is quite apparent, therefore, that under the policies of hon. members opposite, you will very possibly have many sovereign, independent states, many of which will institute a large number of holidays, perhaps totalling the 168 that I mentioned, whereas under our policy that could never possibly be so. But, Sir, here is the next very important difference: Hon. gentlemen opposite keep on proclaiming that a Zulu is a Zulu and a Xhosa is a Xhosa, etc., whether he is in the Bantu area or outside. They keep on urging the Bantu in the urban area to respond to the cries of his ethnic countrymen in the homeland area. Consequently, in the case of the policy of hon. members opposite, it stands to reason that the urban Bantu of a particular ethnic group is to be encouraged by them to respond to the public holidays of that particular ethnic area, and consequently there is a very real possibility that with this large number of sovereign, independent states with their separate holidays, different from and substituted for ours, you could get large numbers of Bantu citizens in the White areas responding to calls to take holidays on their days. This provision therefore opens up a tremendous possibility of disruption of our economy. That is my answer to the hon. member for Rissik. Under our approach that sort of thing could not happen, because we do not emphasize at every opportunity the fact that these people must be tied to their ethnic links of the past. We accept that people of Zulu origin in the towns do in fact become urbanized and that they have a different approach. We do not drive them and encourage them at all times to act as a unit in everything that they do. Consequently, where we are very happy to see a regional holiday for these various ethnic areas, always within limits, as in the case of the other groups in this country, the fact remains that although the holiday will operate in the regional area, it will not spill over into the towns with the tremendous dislocation of our economy and everything else that is implicit in Government policy.

Both the hon. member for Pinelands and the hon. member for Kensington made the point here that there would be consternation if holidays were established in the Bantu homelands by the Bantu homelands themselves or by the Minister of Bantu Administration. Sir, many citizens of Lesotho and Swaziland and Botswana are working in South Africa today. Those people all have their respective holidays in their homelands, but when they are working in South Africa, they respect the laws of South Africa and they do not observe their holidays in South Africa, for those holidays are only applicable in their own homelands.

May I ask the hon. member whether the Lesotho Government encourages the Lesotho citizens in our urban areas every hour of the day to identify themselves with those who are in their homeland?

The urban Bantu from Lesotho who are resident in the Republic, are loyal to Lesotho. They are not loyal to South Africa.

How do you know?

Their loyalty only extends as far as Lesotho, not as far as South Africa, and this also applies in respect of the Transkei and any other homeland which is going to gain independence in the future. Those people will observe their holidays in their own fatherland, but when they are in South Africa, they will respect the South African laws. Just as we as Whites do not participate in the holidays of Lesotho or Swaziland or Botswana, so those people will not participate in our holidays.

Sir, the hon. member referred here this afternoon to English and Afrikaans-speaking people and said that English-speaking people and Afrikaans-speaking people could not have been two separate peoples on a basis of ethnic grouping, but English and Afrikaans-speaking people have their Republic in South Africa; they are enjoying full political rights here in South Africa, whereas the Bantu are now being trained in that direction. That is the difference. We as Whites enjoy full political rights—we are independent—whereas those people are now being trained for gaining their independence. That is the difference between us on this side of the House and that side of the House. Members on that side believe that they should suppress any feeling of nationalism on the part of the Black man. They want to create a common nationalism in South Africa.

Sir, I would like the hon. the Deputy Minister to explain to me what he means by the term “intoxicating liquor” in item 20A. Does this refer to the control of brewing of concoctions such as isityimiyana, cwayicwayi and maconsana, or does this refer to the purchase of spirituous and malt liquors as we know them in terms of the Liquor Act? Does this come down to the control exercised by the Police under the Liquor Act? We would like to know what liquor the hon. the Deputy Minister has in mind and who is going to control it.

Sir, I may as well start with the last speaker, the hon. member for Umlazi. What is meant here, if precisely what the Bill says, namely intoxicating liquor. The control over it is being granted to the governments of the homelands.

Then I want to come to the hon. members for Pinelands and Kensington, who cudgled their brains over the holidays in working out how many holidays there were possibly going to be. Of course, it is possible for one to waste one’s time on making calculations of this nature. They said they wanted this Parliament to decide, not the Minister. We are satisfied with the position that the Minister has to decide; that is actually the only difference. The hon. members are therefore welcome to carry on with their calculations. I do not wish to elaborate any further on that matter.

The hon. member for Durban Point wanted to know exactly how many Bantu would be eligible for the various posts in the veterinary services, to which the hon. member for South Coast also referred. Now, I may just tell him that this is the way it will be done. These people are given control over that particular service in their area, and as far as possible their people will take over this service from the bottom upwards. For instance, we have the case that in the Transkei, to use this as an example, they still have only White magistrates in the courts. The other services they render themselves. And now this party, which never stops saying that we should enlist the services of the Bantu everywhere, actually comes along in Parliament and raises objections when the National Party seeks to enlist the services of the Bantu on this particular basis.

Who referred to Bantu in Parliament?

I hope the hon. members will understand now. I say in all honesty that I cannot ascertain tonight how many of them have made matric and how many have made Std. 5. The position is simply that in practice we have so many posts to which certain qualifications are attached, and those posts are filled by as many of their people as are qualified to do so. In this case, as far as veterinary services are concerned, this is nothing new. It is merely a question of the name being changed.

†Instead of stock diseases we now call it animal diseases. So the position is already that these people fill these posts up to where they can manage, and if they cannot fill them we get Europeans to do the work. And these better qualified people we get from the veterinary services. They do the work as agents for this government.

*I think this disposes of all the matters argued here.

May I ask whether there are in fact any trained people who are capable of dealing with, for instance, a veterinary service or a medical service in the areas I mentioned? In other words, I do not expect large numbers, but are such people available for filling these particular posts in the three areas I mentioned?

In each of those areas stock inspectors of various categories are available for taking the lead in doing the practical work; the trained professional officers, the veterinary surgeons, are not available. The same applies to the hospitals. The Bantu are trained as nurses and they become sisters and in some cases even matrons, and here and there we already have medical doctors. There we have the same position. But we provide them with this opening in their own area for rendering that service. Let me state frankly that to my knowledge there are no veterinary surgeons available. I do not think there is one Bantu veterinary surgeon available in the entire Republic. That is the position.

I am sorry that the hon. the Deputy Minister has not replied at all. He has said he cannot give the figures, but they are building up the posts and the people will fill them from the bottom up. What we want to know is whether they can even get off the ground, let alone fill them from the bottom up. I gave him three territories; the Eastern Caprivi, the Okavango and Owambo, which are all in the process of getting legislative authorities, or have recently got them and will therefore be affected by these powers. All I asked was a simple question. Is there any possibility whatsoever for the foreseeable future of any of these powers being handled by citizens of those territories, and if so, can he give us some examples? The hon. the Minister said nurses become sisters and matrons. Let him tell me of one citizen of Eastern Caprivi or one Okavango, who is a nursing sister. Can he name just one single person? Can he tell us of one qualified stock inspector? I am not talking about the veterinary surgeons. We have said that there are no vets, but right at the bottom of the ladder, can he tell us that he has one Eastern Caprivi or one Okavango stock inspector who is qualified to do that job? Can he tell us that he has got one Okavango or one Eastern Caprivi citizen who would be qualified to be a justice of the peace or a commissioner of oaths? These are practical questions. Is this a facade and a sham, or has he indeed got people to fill these posts? His answer is that they start at the bottom. That is not an answer. We want an answer to the question whether it is real or whether it is only a dream. Is it pie in the sky, a structure with nobody to make it work? That is the answer that the Government has to give South Africa. Is it a bluff or a sham, or can it be made to work? On the Minister’s answer we must accept that it is a sham and a bluff because he has given no evidence that it can be made to work unless White officials are provided by this Government to do the work. If this Government, the Republican Government, has to control all these powers, why pretend to give them to another authority when in point of fact, according to the hon. the Deputy Minister, we are still going to control them? Is not that the position, that we are still going to control stock and animal diseases and we are still going to control road transportation certificates? All these things we are still going to control. Therefore why create a sham structure unless you can say there are in fact people qualified, educated and able to accept the responsibility which is called for in these positions?

I hope the hon. the Deputy Minister will explain to me why there is a different test, a different yardstick, so far as the South-West African Bantu people are concerned compared with the South African Bantu people. We dealt earlier this evening with clause 7, when the exclusion of matters dealt with under the Motor Carrier Transportation Act was to be removed so far as the Transkei was concerned. Under this clause 9 we find that that exclusion is to remain so far as South-West Africa is concerned. It appears to me that there are different yardsticks which are being used in regard to what the Minister refers to as different measures. What is the test? Why should there be a different rule and a different power as far as the Bantu nation of South-West Africa are concerned from the powers given to the nations in the Republic? The hon. member for Etosha looked at me and I am sure that he is also puzzled as to why the Okavango and the Owambo should not have the same authority under this Act as is given to the Xhosas in the Transkei. Perhaps the hon. member for Etosha can explain, because there is nothing that the hon. the Deputy Minister has said which explains why there should be that differentiation.

I now put the clause.

On a point of order, the hon. the Deputy Minister has been asked very pertinent questions.

That is not a point of order.

We want answers to these questions before we vote on this clause, but the Deputy Minister does not reply to either the hon. member for Green Point or to the hon. member for Durban Point.

Order! That is not a point of order.

I just want to tell the hon. member that the Transkei reached that stage 10 years ago already, and these others are still in the initial stage. They asked for additional control to be granted to them, and therefore they are getting it now at a more advanced stage of control than the other people did. After all, hon. members ought to know that the Bantu in the Transkei have in fact been performing this task for 10 years. That is the only reason.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask the hon. the Deputy Minister whether what he gives the Bantu people is determined by what they ask for, and not by what he thinks should be done? He has suggested that the Bantu are to get this particular authority because they have asked for it, but because it has not been asked for by the Bantu people of South-West Africa, they do not get it?

It was given to the Transkei because they have the experience.

What experience? The hon. the Deputy Minister says he has given this authority to the Transkei because they asked for it. [Interjections.] Is that the determining factor—because they ask for it, they get it?

Mr. Chairman, the hon. the Deputy Minister in his reply to the hon. member for Green Point has said that the Transkei people have had more experience and that they were ready to administer transport and that he was amending the Transkei Constitution Act to give them such power. I would like to ask him, with regard to the extension of power in South-West Africa, whether these powers will apply at once to all the legislative assemblies, namely Owambo, Kavango … [Interjections.]

Order!

Surely the hon. the Deputy Minister is not relying on the hon. the Minister of Agriculture to help him. We have come to a sorry pass … [Interjections],

What are you talking about?

Why do you not listen?

Heaven knows, I will not be put off by a baboon!

Order! The hon. the Minister must withdraw that word.

Which word?

The word “baboon”.

I did not say that he was a baboon.

The hon. the Minister must withdraw the word.

I said I would not be put off by a baboon, but I did not say the hon. member was a baboon.

Order! The hon. the Minister must withdraw it.

I withdraw it.

Mr. Chairman, I want to make it quite clear to this House that what that particular hon. Minister may say about me does not concern me one bit; not with his record! [Interjections.] To get back to the hon. the Deputy Minister in charge of this Bill, he said that the Transkei is being given this additional power because they have the experience; they have had a Legislative Assembly since 1963 and they had a territorial authority before that. We know that the Bunga system was instituted almost 100 years ago, so they have had experience. The hon. the Deputy Minister nods. These powers which are now going to be transferred to South-West Africa can go to any homeland with a legislative assembly. That is right, is it not? We Enow that the Ovambos have got their Legislative Assembly and the Kavango’s got theirs not so long ago. The Caprivi people are going to get theirs shortly. I want to ask what experience they have had in administering such matters. This is the question the hon. member for Durban Point asked the hon. the Deputy Minister, to which the hon. the Deputy Minister has not replied. It is not a question of experience, because he is giving these powers in this instance to new authorities. When we first started discussing this clause, I pointed out that we were not opposed to giving communal councils, as we call them, or regional councils, powers to control their own affairs, but that we did not agree with the speed with which this is being done in this particular instance. We cannot accept that these particular councils are able to administer all these matters. I said that we hoped that strict control would be kept over these assemblies by his department and its officials and through the powers which the State President has. What disturbs me is the hon. the Deputy Minister’s suggestion now that, the fact that he is giving these additional powers, is proof that those bodies are able to control and manage them. Surely he is not suggesting to the House that a body, which has not even been established yet, can manage its own affairs? We have no idea how it can manage its own affairs. We know that the Transkei is doing it, but as regards the authorities in South-West Africa, he cannot pretend that they have the experience which the Transkei has.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. the Deputy Minister in charge of this measure has refused to answer, but by way of interjection the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development and the other Deputy Minister have repeatedly said here that there are plenty of people. If that hon. Deputy Minister cannot tell us what trained and qualified people there are, I ask his colleagues to intervene in the debate and to tell this House—and this they can give, because no Bantu person can go to university without the approval of the Government—how many citizens of South-West African homelands are studying—I shall not even say qualified—to become veterinary surgeons and doctors and how many are registered and are training as nurses in these territories to which we are referring. They must know how many are qualified in terms of the qualifications laid down by this Government to be Justices of the Peace or Commissioner of Oaths. If these hon. Ministers say there are plenty of people, let them tell us. They must not merely say there are plenty. If I say to the hon. the Deputy Minister in charge of this measure that in one of these homelands I believe that of the whole population of that homeland there are five matriculants, will he dispute it? He does not disagree when I say that in the total population of a whole homeland, with a Parliament, a Prime Minister, with a Cabinet and with these powers being given them, there are not more than five matriculants who are citizens of that homeland, and the Deputy Minister cannot deny it. From a whole total population, five people have passed matric.

Order! The hon. member must advance new arguments now. This is the fourth time I am hearing that argument.

I have not before dealt with the five matriculants. I have now established that there are five people who can deal with these powers we are granting.

Order! The hon. member must advance new arguments now.

I think I am coming to new arguments. We are being asked to give here some 14 new powers to a country with five matriculants. By whom and how are these powers going to be administered? Obviously each one of them is going to have three new portfolios, excluding the existing powers they have. All we are trying to do in this debate, and we cannot get it from that Deputy Minister, so I ask these Ministers who interjected so confidently that there are plenty of people, to say how many there are. We are not against the giving of powers, but we want to know that they are given on a responsible basis. We do not oppose the giving of powers, but what we want to know is that when powers are given they are given at the right time, at the right tempo of develop ment and to people qualified to handle them. We are therefore not objecting to the principle of giving powers, but we are in Committee to see whether there are people able to handle it. That is all we are asking. Let us take the question of deceased estates. How does the Kavango Parliament handle the legal intricacies of a deceased estate? It can be done either by Kavango tribal or traditional law or by existing Western law. We want to know how they would handle these things. How is it decided who will inherit in that case? These are practical issues. It is not the principle of whether there should be the power that we are questioning, but the administration and this Government’s judgment of when a transfer is properly timed. Our belief is that you should train people and get them ready to take over a power and then give it to them. Unless the Minister can show otherwise, we and South Africa must assume that the Government gives the powers without first having provided the people. That is the fundamental difference between us, namely whether people should be trained first or whether they should be given power first when there is nobody qualified to take it over. That is the simple issue in regard to which we are seeking an answer from the Government. We want to be satisfied that they are not creating pie in the sky, a facade which cannot work.

Mr. Chairman, tonight the hon. members on that side of the House gave us a poor exhibition of their desperate bankruptcy as to the ability to advance fresh and new arguments in this House. That the hon. member for Durban Point, with his prestige which he has to uphold as that particular member in Natal who on one occasion took a stand with the hon. member for Bezuidenhout and subsequently had to deny it again, had the courage to rise here and …

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

That hon. member has the courage to ask questions here without stating his standpoint in regard to where he stands in relation to his leader.

Order!

Mr Chairman, the point is that the hon member for Durban Point has not even read the legislation which he wants to discuss here tonight What are we in fact doing? We are authorizing the legislative assemblies of the various peoples in South-West to operate now in a particular sphere The hon member for Transkei moved one amendment to this particular clause, but hon members opposite are speaking so widely that, aftei a manner of speaking, a swathe can be cut through them in their weakness. What has in fact happened? The various legislative assemblies have advanced to the stage where they have the potential to consider certain matters. This is an enabling provision. It is not an imperative provision, i.e. that they must consider legislation in regard to these matters. This power is merely being granted to them.

Mention a few of them.

That is not relevant. Mr. Chairman, with respect, what is relevant, is that at the Second Reading those hon. members voted for this clause in principle. What is relevant, is that they moved one amendment in regard to the holidays, and now they want to know from us whether the potential is a reality. We say: “No, we are now creating the possibility for these various legislative assemblies to exercise their legislative power in a certain sphere.” That is all. Now the hon. member is making a fuss here about their not having that potential. I want to lay this charge at the door of hon. members opposite, that in acting like this at this stage, they are playing up to the audience. We know their attitude.

I want to refer these hon. members to section 5 of the Development of Self-government for Native Nations in South-West Africa Act. That section should be read with the measure which is before this Committee tonight. That section provides that any legislative council, as referred to in the preceding sections, may for the area for which it has been established, make enactments, not inconsistent with this Act. In other words, to the hon. member who is seeking a reply from us in respect of what legislative assembly will now be able to implement this measure, we say that it will be determined by the good sense of those people. Now I want to repeat that hon. members opposite do not understand this, for I am referring to good sense. Furthermore, in this particular enabling provision which is of paramount importance, we say that, with the prior consent of the State President, such a measure makes provision for the application thereof in respect of the members of the Native peoples concerned. In other words these hon. members should tell us very clearly and unambiguously now whether or not they have any confidence in the judgment of the State President, as laid down in this legislation, for this hon. …

We do not have any confidence in this Minister.

That does not matter. [Interjections.] These hon. members should tell us very clearly whether or not they accept it the way it is printed here. They must reply whether or not they agree with the provision of this subsection before they proceed with their arguments in regard to this point.

I put the clause …

And the Minister remains seated.

Question put: That all the words after “concurrence” in line 57 up to and including “Development” in lines 58 and 59, stand part of the Clause.

Upon which the Committee divided:

Tellers: W. A. Cruywagen, P. C. Roux, G. P. van den Berg and H. J. van Wyk.

Tellers: H. J. Bronkhorst and J. O. N. Thompson.

Question affirmed and amendment dropped.

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

Clause 12:

Mr. Chairman, this clause will give to any of the authorities established in terms of the Bantu Homelands Constitution Act, the powers to establish, with the concurrence of the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development, public holidays in substitution for public holidays established in terms of the Public Holidays Act. It means that the homelands governments, with the concurrence of the Minister, can change any one of our holidays and substitute another date and another holiday in their area. The great difference between the United Party and the Government is that we regard the Republic as one whole over which our Government will always have sovereignty. There are certain powers which we will give to the homelands communal councils, but the declaration of national days and holidays is not one of those powers. I am not going to repeat all the arguments we had under clause 9, which gives the same powers to the authorities in South-West Africa. Suffice to say that the Deputy Minister has pointed out that the State President can declare national holidays or regional holidays and we have no objection to that. We have no objection to regional holidays. But the Act was passed by Parliament, laying down certain specific days which are to be regarded as holidays throughout the Republic. If those days are to be altered anywhere in the Republic, we say that this Parliament should do it by way of a resolution of this House and the Other Palce. I repeat, we would have no objection to certain amendments if so requested by the homelands government; but we are not going to hand over the power of this Parliament to a Minister on his own to decide what days, having been fixed by Parliament, can be abolished by a homeland authority with his permission.

I move as an amendment—

Question put: That the words “of the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development” in lines 15 and 16, stand part of the Clause.

Upon which the Committee divided:

Tellers: W. A. Cruywagen, P. C. Roux, G. P. van den Berg and H. J. van Wyk.

Tellers: H. J. Bronkhorst and J. O. N. Thompson.

Question affirmed and amendment dropped.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move—

This measure seeks to abolish the Bantu Education Account and to make alternative provision from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the financing of services with which that account is charged at present.

Hear, hear!

Oh, you say hear, hear! As hon. members already know, Bantu homeland development has in recent years been characterized by important constitutional, financial and other changes. Inevitably these changes had to result in the old system of financing Bantu education being reviewed. With the establishment of the new Bantu Governments for the homelands a new system of preparing estimates and providing funds was established also for these homeland governments, as happened previously in the case of the Transkei. Now I am listening eagerly to hear whether you say hear, hear again. In fact, the pattern of these financial arrangements for the Government services in the Bantu homelands was laid down in the Transkei Constitution Act (1963). Therefore, already with the passing of the Transkei Constitution Act in 1963, there was a departure, just for the Transkei, from the existing system of financing, so essentially the Bantu Education Account has no longer been operative in the case of the Transkei since 1963. Therefore, with the further constitutional development of the other Bantu homelands, it goes without saying that these homelands should also be financed on the pattern of the Transkei.

Hon. members will recall that the Bantu Homelands Constitution Act (1971) laid the foundation of further constitutional development for the other Bantu homelands. But what is more, in section 6 this very Act lays down for all these homelands the same system of financing as that which exists for the Transkei. The Bantu Homelands Constitution Act (1971) and the Transkei Constitution Act (1963) both provide that the various Bantu Governments will each have its own Revenue Fund, just as we have our own Consolidated Revenue Fund. Into this revenue fund of the homeland government the following moneys are paid—

1. (a) Taxes, levies and rates imposed in terms of the Bantu Taxation Act, 1969, to the extent determined by the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development in consultation with the Minister of Finance …

In passing it should be pointed out that the procedure which is followed is that the Revenue Fund of a specific homeland is credited with a pro rata portion of the total general taxes collected. In the course of the debate I shall furnish full particulars in this regard—

1. (b) all revenue and other moneys deriving from or in the course of the administration of those matters in respect of which a legislative assembly may make laws;
2. (c) an annual grant, to be paid from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Republic, corresponding to the expenditure by the Government of the Republic in respect of the matters the administration of which has been transferred to the Government of the area, during the financial year preceding the date of the transfer, less—
   1. (i) the income from existing sources of revenue which accrued to the Consolidated Revenue Fund during the said financial year but which will in future accrue to the Revenue Fund; and
   2. (ii) the salaries, allowances, pension contributions and other benefits payable by the Government of the Republic to officials in the Public Service of the Republic assigned for service to the Government of the area;
3. (d) such an additional sum of money as may be appropriated by Parliament for payment out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the due performance of services and duties assigned to the Government of the homeland area.

Mr. Speaker, what the new system of preparing estimates and providing funds in the Bantu homelands amounts to in brief is that every homeland itself will henceforth prepare its own estimates for its Government services, including, of course, education. However, it is foreseen that for many years to come it will not be possible for the Revenue Funds of the various homelands to be self-sufficient, in other words, it will not be possible to defray the full expenditure of the said homelands from the Revenue Funds of the homeland governments. It is in consequence of this that it was provided in the Act to which I referred that Parliament may make additional appropriations to the various Bantu Governments. Estimates will be submitted to the Department of Bantu Administration and Development for the consideration of the Minister. However, the education estimates of each homeland will be referred to the Department of Bantu Education of the Republic by the Department of Bantu Administration and Development for export scrutiny and advice. Thereupon the additional funds deemed necessary for the various homelands will be channelized in accordance with the usual procedures of budgeting to this Parliament for approval. Therefore, as in the case of the Transkei, all additional appropriations for education in the homelands will, together with funds for other purposes, be provided on the Bantu Administration and Development Vote.

Will details be furnished under the various homelands?

No, not in the Vote here. These details will of course, be furnished in the course of the discussion, but in the Vote itself, only the overall amount will appear.

Furthermore, I have already indicated to you, Sir, that it was laid down by law that the taxes payable by citizens of a homeland in terms of the Bantu Tax Act (1969) have to be paid into the Revenue Fund of the government of that homeland. Under the new dispensation the largest portion of the Bantu tax which accrued to the Bantu Education Account up to now, will therefore be allocated to the various Bantu governments. This will leave the Bantu Education Account with a small balance which, together with the amount of R14½ million (R13 million plus R1½ million for higher education) which is allocated to the Account from the Consolidated Revenue Fund annually, will be insufficient to cover the expenditure in respect of Bantu education in the White area, as well as university education for the Bantu.

In the light of what I have already said, it will be clear to hon. members that with the implementation of the new constitutional system of financing in respect of the homelands, these homelands will be separated completely from the Bantu Education Account and that this account will then receive only a meagre amount from general Bantu tax. Therefore, everything indicates that the Bantu Education Account has become obsolete in the constitutional development process of the homelands and for that reason the Government has decided that no justification exists for it to continue to exist, and that it should be abolished.

The necessary financial provision for the training of Bantu at universities and for Bantu education in the White part of the Republic will, with effect from 1st April, 1972, be made under the Bantu Education Vote, and this service will henceforth be financed in full from the Consolidated Revenue Fund.

Will this be free education now?

No, that is not relevant now. That portion of Bantu tax which does not go to the homeland governments will be paid into the South African Bantu trust Fund, to be utilized for development in the Bantu homelands. This will entail that a smaller appropriation will be made to the Trust from the Revenue Account, which will then serve as partial compensation for the amount which will have to be made available out of Revenue for Bantu educational services. However, I must emphasize at once that this small compensation paid into the Revenue Fund is not the only contribution to that Fund which comes out of the pockets of the Bantu. Consequently, this brings me to the other important consideration which applied with the abolition of the Bantu Education Account, viz. whether the revenue from Bantu taxes, i.e. indirect and direct taxes, has shown any appreciable increase since 1955, when the Bantu Education Account was established. This is of major importance here because the Government is still of the opinion that the Bantu should, to an increasing extent, contribute to the expansion and development of their own education.

The Government has no doubts whatsoever that the revenue from Bantu taxes, particularly since 1969, has increased considerably as the result of important mesures which this Government has in fact adopted in this regard since 1969. As you know, the pattern according to which the Bantu have to pay taxes has changed considerably since 1955. In the first place the Bantu Taxation Act (Act No. 92 of 1969), was passed. According to that Act the Bantu pay a general tax which consists of a fixed amount of R2,50 per male person, the so-called poll-tax, and income tax which has to be paid by Bantu persons according to their income. A PAYE system was also introduced for the Bantu by this Act, in terms of which a Bantu earning in excess of R30 per month pays tax according to the PAYE system. In addition the 1969 Act also makes provision for local tax.

In the second place—I have not dealt with the question of direct taxation here —in respect of indirect tax paid by the Bantu, sales duty was introduced approximately two years ago, and it is also applicable to the Bantu. Although it is not possible to indicate precisely what the contribution by the Bantu to the Exchequer in this respect is, it can be accepted that it is a considerable portion of the total income from sales duty, which was estimated at plus/minus R180 million for the 1971-’72 financial year. In addition to this the Bantu, in the same way as the Whites, are subject to customs and excise duties. Direct and indirect taxation out of the pockets of the Bantu has therefore compensated to a generous extent for the additional financial assistance rendered during the past few years to the Bantu Education Account.

You hope so.

No, I do not hope so; it is so. It will in future also compensate to a large extent for the expenditure in regard to university training and Bantu education in the White areas.

What we must have clear in our minds therefore is that in principle no change is being effected with the abolition of the Bantu Education Account. The principle that the Bantu themselves should accept the primary responsibility for their education services is being maintained. The policy is still that his tax contributions should be related to expenditure in the field of education, a policy which is just as applicable to the Whites. [Interjections.] I cannot understand why hon. members opposite are laughing. The fact of the matter is that the policy is still that the tax contributions of the Bantu should be related to the expenditure in the field of education, a policy which is also applicable to the Whites. Although hon. members on the opposite side are laughing about this, they must be under no illusions that the fact of the matter is that since 1969 the Bantu have through direct taxation been making a considerably greater contribution, and that they have also been making a considerable contribution through indirect sales duty; there is therefore no reason at all to laugh if one takes into account that the policy of the Government is that the Bantu should, to an increasing extent, make their own contributions, through direct and indirect taxation, in respect of Bantu education, and that this is already happening.

During the past 18 years the Government has ensured that Bantu taxation kept pace with educational requirements. The old poll-tax—and now the hon. members may as well start laughing again when they hear the following—was increased from R2 to R3-50, and with the introduction of sales duty this amount was reduced to R2-50 again, precisely because it was calculated that the Bantu would make a considerable contribution through sales duty. The rest of the population also received tax concessions when sales duty was introduced.

Since 1969 there has been a considerable increase in Bantu taxes as a result of the improvement of the economic position of this population group, and as a result of the new additional tax, based on income. The tax which is being collected will continue to be a determining factor in the nature and extent of the educational services.

During the past few years there has been a steady increase in the expenditure on Bantu education. Since there will continue to be an increase in the taxation this will not be in conflict with the policy of the Government to allow a justifiable increase in expenditure on education every year, in accordance with the policy of the Government. However, the usual control will be applied and, as in the past, the Minister of Bantu Education will, in consultation with the Minister of Finance, determine what increase will be allowed. Let there be no doubts whatsoever that this House of Assembly will be the body which will decide whether increases will be allowed, and which increases will be allowed each year —these matters can be discussed here.

The proceeds from the general tax on Bantu has for some time now been insufficient to meet growing educational requirements, but taking into consideration the contribution of the Bantu to sales duty the Government has felt itself at liberty to supply the deficit which arose. This was first done by way of interest-free advances. With effect from 1970-’71, however, this was done by way of supplementary contributions from Revenue. Statutory provision was made for this by means of section 3 of the Second Finance Act of 1970 and in round figures the supplementary contributions in respect of 1970-71 were R19½ million, and for the present financial year, 1971-72, R26½ million. It cannot therefore be alleged that education, either in the White area or in the homelands, will be better or worse off after the abolition of the Bantu Education Account. In both cases this depends on the contribution which the Government of the Republic is prepared to make towards this, unless the homelands become so economically prosperous that they can afford, without any contribution from the Central Exchequer, to spend an increased per capita amount, i.e. unit costs, on education than the Government of the Republic is prepared to do for the Bantu children in the White area. As long as the Bantu homelands are subsidized by the Government of the Republic in respect of education, the unit cost in the White area and homelands will, for the most part, have to remain the same. It goes without saying of course that the expensive educational institutions such as teachers’ training colleges, universities, trade schools, etc., will only be provided in the homelands, but these are usually residential institutions which are also at the disposal of students from the White areas. Although the Bantu in the White areas will rely to a large extent on the homelands for advanced education, they need not fear that they will be any the worse off. Furthermore, an agreement is being entered into with all homeland Governments for professional control to remain the concern of the Republic’s Department of Bantu Education for the sake of good and uniform standards in these institutions in the Bantu homelands.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to emphasize that in the matter of financial provision the Government will always take into account new needs which arise and new developments which will make particular demands on the education service.

Is that the new policy?

No, that is not true at all. The national economy and, more specifically, industry constantly call for the Bantu labour force to receive training which keeps pace with the demands made by development. And let the hon. members have no doubts that this is what will happen. I am surprised that they do not say that this is their policy which is being taken over. [Interjections.]

Mr. Speaker, I also know that there are people who maintain that we should spend much more on Bantu education, that the unit costs of approximately R20 at present is inadequate, but Bantu education is of such tremendous magnitude that the available funds must necessarily be utilized judiciously and economically. Whereas the enrollment at the largest provincial education department increased by approximately 8 000 in one year, the enrolment in Bantu education has, at present, increased by more than 200 000 per annum. While the attitude of the Government is not unsympathetic towards this major need which is being created, the attitude of the Bantu himself cannot be one of indifference towards the major responsibility he is creating for himself either. Therefore it should be clear to everyone that the more comprehensive social services are, the larger the contributions of the community concerned, of the Bantu, will have to be. Therefore it is the Government’s policy that the revenue of the Bantu themselves from direct and indirect taxation should consequently be the criterion for the education services the Bantu receive in the Republic and in their homelands.

I should like to say in anticipation that we are aware of the Bantu’s contribution to the development of the country in general as well as the indirect taxation he pays, but, of course, there are also other services apart from education which he receives, such as health services, hospitalization, police protection, subsidized feeding and transport as well as the numerous general public services which the Republic offers its entire population and which have to be financed from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Republic.

Through this legislation the Bantu still retain not only the privilege of exercising control over their own schools through school committees, school boards and other parents’ bodies but also to provide to a large extent the necessary funds for their education. On the other hand it affords this Government the opportunity to keep a constant eye on the situation and, with due regard to circumstances, to help where necessary.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I should like to point out that this Bull actually contains only two clauses which, as far as principles are concerned, are of material importance, and they are clauses 1 and 27. Clause 1 abolishes the Bantu Education Account and regulates financial matters incidental thereto, whereas clause 27 makes provision for that portion of the Bantu taxation which does not go to the homeland governments to be paid into the South African Bantu Trust Fund. All the other amendments are consequential amendments which flow from clause 1, i.e. the abolition of the Bantu Education Account.

Because this Bill undoubtedly crystallizes the successful implementation of the policy of multi-national development it is a privilege to me to move the Second Reading of this Bill.

Mr. Speaker, I do think that the least the hon. the Minister of Bantu Education could have done was to be present here tonight to share in the embarrassment of the hon. the Deputy Minister, who proposed the second reading.

He was sitting over here.

Yes, but he saw to it that he got out before the hon. the Deputy Minister started speaking.

That is nonsense.

It is unfortunate for the hon. the Deputy Minister that he does not have a poker face. It if were parliamentary I would say he was talking with his tongue in his cheek.

Order! The hon. member must not say that.

No, I say that he was speaking with simulated sincerity. The hon. the Deputy Minister cannot pretend to hide his embarrassment at having to introduce this Bill. He has tried to tell the House that, although this account is being abolished, the Bantu is still going to pay for his own education.

Of course.

Yes, he battled through to tell us that but we could see while he was struggling that behind him sitting on his shoudler all the time, was Jaap Marais. What is the history of this account? It was introduced in 1955.

Who is your candidate in Oudtshoorn?

One bet I am prepared to take on with any person in this House is that the Government will not send that hon. Minister to Oudtshoorn to go and fight the election.

Not even in a diesel-engine car.

The account was introduced to make provision for limiting the amounts which Parliament would vote through Consolidated Revenue for Bantu education. What was our attitude when this measure was introduced in 1955? We opposed it, and moved an amendment that the Bill be read this day six months, because we said that it was an impractical measure, that it was unfair and that Bantu education could never be financed in the manner then proposed by the Government.

At that time there was another party besides the United Party in this Assembly, namely the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party, represented by Dr. Jonker, moved to omit all the words after “That” and to substitute “this House declines to pass the Second Reading of the Exchequer and Audit Amendment Bill unless the Government undertakes to change the basis on which the money will be made available to the Bantu Education Account from the Revenue Account”. The member moving it said—

A division was called on the amendment moved by Dr. Jonker and as there were fewer than 15 members in favour of that amendment their names were recorded. They were Mr. Bekker, Mr. Blaar Coetzee, Dr. Jonker and Mr. Waring. Two Ministers in the present Cabinet disagreed at that time, and rightly so, with the method of financing the Bantu Education Account.

We pointed out all the difficulties that were going to arise in connection with this account and I must say, although we do not want to tell them that we told them so, it is hard for us not to make political capital out of this measure, which amounts to a complete capitulation by the Government. How does the Minister explain the demise of this account? He said that there had been political developments in the Reserves and talked about the advance of the homelands, tribal authorities and legislative assemblies. He said that because this progress had taken place, it was not necessary to have this account any more.

I do not believe all this, and I am going to tell him why this account has to be abolished. There is one reason, and one reason only, namely that the Bantu Education Account has been a flop. Dr. Verwoerd’s policy has failed. His intention was, and it is quite clearly stated, that Parliament should peg the amount it would vote for Bantu education and when he introduced the Bill it was pegged at £6½ million, R13 million, plus R1½ million for universities.

Are you seriously maintaining that his intention was to peg it forever?

I am going to quote what the Minister of Finance suggests. He said as follows: “Dr. Verwoerd intended that the Bantu should pay for himself if he needed more than the R13 million”. If this amount was not pegged, there was no object in introducing the measure. He saw the expenditure on education mounting every year and he and his fellow-members remembered the attacks they made on the United Party when it was in power for spending money on Bantu education. We were the “kafferboeties” and they were disturbed at the way in which the amount was increasing.

After all, Mr. De Wet Nel had once attacked us for spending £6 million on education shortly before they took over. Do hon. members know what the United Party spent in 1947-48 on Bantu education? We spent R9 378 542.

Rands or pounds?

Rands. But his Government was spending much more, and as he saw the demand growing every year, decided to peg the money voted by Parliament from the Consolidated Revenue Account and insisted, as I say, that the Bantu themselves pay if more money was required for their education. Every year when the Bantu Vote was discussed in Parliament, the United Party attacked this system of appropriating money for Bantu education. Right from the time when it started, when we voted against the Bill and moved “this day six months”—the worst condemnation we could give to the Bill— we opposed it and every year we queried the unjust manner in which it was attempted to finance Bantu education, especially when we saw how the Bantu was treated in relation to the other race groups and what they were getting for their education.

Now you are making out a case that we are treating them badly.

I am not going to pretend that we have not raised this question year in and year out. We have raised it year in and year out; we said that this was impracticable and that it could not work. But we were ignored. It did not work; it could not possibly work, even although the Bantu children had to pay for their own books. They were discriminated against. But it still could not work; it still was not sufficient money. It was nowhere near sufficient. Even though, as I say, much less was spent per capita on the Bantu child than on the other race groups, the provision made by Dr. Verwoerd was still not enough. As I have said, in 1947 the expenditure was less than R9½ million. For the financial years 1970 to 1971 it was R71 million, and with capital expenditure added, it came to R75 million. In 1969-70 it was R56 million. We had an increase of R15 million in one year. How was all this financed? Obviously, the amount set aside from the General Revenue Account, the R13 million plus the R1½ million, with Bantu taxes, could not meet this amount. A subterfuge was adopted. Instead of increasing the R13 million, and so going back on Dr. Verwoerd’s undertaking to the electorate not to spend more than R13 million, they embarked on a system, firstly, of giving loans to the account on which interest was payable. We objected to this and pointed out that it was very difficult to find out exactly how much money was being spent on Bantu education. It was difficult to find out. Did the hon. the Deputy Minister want to say something?

Why was it difficult to find out?

Sir, I want to go on and explain how else they financed it besides the taxation. Besides giving loans, when they found that the loans were mounting up and that there was no hope of their being repaid, what did they do? They then changed to giving advances without interest. Who was going to repay this amount? How was it ever going to be repaid, when the amount owed by this account was mounting every year? For obvious reasons the amount spent was hidden in loans and advances to the account because they did not want the Verkramptes to know exactly how much they were spending. The chickens which they had reared during the war years, when the United Party had to finance Bantu education, were now coming home to roost. As I have said, they embarked on the system of loans and then advances. Now we see from clause 1, subsection (4), of this Bill that they are formally going to write off R32 657 010-67. That is what they are going to write off in terms of this clause. They are going to write off both the loans and the advances, but that is not all they have received in that account. When it was obvious that this camouflage could not go on forever, in 1970, they had the courage to abandon this system as …

Which year?

1970. They had the courage to abandon this loan delusion and they asked Parliament for an out-and-out grant. I want to read what the Minister of Finance has said at the time.

Which Minister?

The Minister of Finance in 1970. He said …

And what date?

On 12th August. Do you want to check up? The Minister said on 12th August 1970:

From what are you quoting?

It does not matter, I have given you the reference and you can check up in the Hansard. I was quoting from a publication of the South African Institute for Race Relations. It is a book I suggest the hon. member should get and he would get all the particulars which incidentally happen to coincide with the figures which had been given to us by the department.

Thank you.

Why do you blush so much?

Nobody is blushing. I do not know why they ask this. It is a bit of light relief for these poor gentlemen that we should blush when we mention the Institute of Race Relations. Why should we blush? I certainly do not have a guilty conscience like those members over there. [Interjections.]

Order!

Are you against the Bill or not?

Order!

In addition to the R13 million set aside each year plus the R1½ million for university education, Parliament in the last ten years has voted an extra R32 million in loans and advances, plus R46 million in grants. In addition we have had the various Bantu taxes added to the account. Quite obviously this ridiculous system cannot continue, as the Minister said.

While we are on the subject of the Act of 1970, I just want to quote from it. Although the Minister thought that it was going to be R17 million, he actually had to pay R19½ million in that first year. This is how the Act reads:

Parliament gave him the right, the power to balance the account. No matter what the account was, we gave him the right because we knew that the R17 million which the Minister hoped it would cost, would not be nearly sufficient. In fact it has proved to be so. We are not going to rub this in. [Interjections.] After all we do not have to gloat in victory. We have had so many victories lately that we take this in our stride.

We will support this Bill for two reasons. Firstly, because we think it is right that whatever money is necessary—I am not going to discuss the amount now because that we can discuss under the Vote—must come out of the Consolidated Revenue Account.

We will support it, secondly, because we are only human and we are pleased to see an acknowledgment by the hon. the Deputy Minister that we have always been right on this score. But why did the hon. the Deputy Minister have to make so much fuss and capital out of the fact that the Bantu taxes, direct and indirect, were going to pay for the education? What is the position with the Coloured, the Indian and the White man? Do our taxes not all go to our education as well? Do our direct tax and our sales tax not go towards the education of our children? Are the Bantu any different?

But I have said so.

But the system of financing their education will from now on be the same for the Bantu as it is for the Coloureds, the Indians and the Whites. I cannot see why the Deputy Minister has to go to such pains to stress that all the taxes the Bantu pay are going to go towards education. The taxes they pay do not only go towards education; they also go towards every other social service they get, the same as our taxes. The Deputy Minister must admit that they are not going to be treated any differently from any other group. He does not want to admit it.

Why don’t you say a word about their constitutional development?

The Deputy Minister estimated the sales tax at, I think, R180 million. I am not so certain; was that the estimate of the share of the Bantu?

No, I said it was the total. Don’t be foolish.

No, I am not; I am asking what proportion of the sales tax is now going to be paid by the Bantu?

I said that it is very difficult to determine.

I know it is difficult to determine, but why give it? The point is that the Minister said that their portion of the sales tax was going to go towards education. We want to know— and we are entitled to ask—how much is that?

It is very difficult to determine, just as it is difficult for the Minister of Finance to determine it.

What is he going to ask the Minister of Finance to put aside for Bantu education?

Can’t I ask the Minister of Finance to put anything aside for the purpose?

But then why mention it? How difficult can you be? I want to ask him: Is the Transkei going to find out how much they are going to get out of the sales tax towards their educational fund? How much are they going to get?

It cannot be determined on the system as it now is.

Pardon?

That is a question we can discuss in the course of the debate.

But this is in the course of the debate. We are in the course of the debate now.

It is just not possible for any human being to give a straightforward answer from the shoulder to a question of that nature.

So you can’t give a straightforward answer. That we accept.

Why don’t you say a word about the importance of the constitutional development of the Bantu homelands?

Surely, if I started discussing now the constitutional development of the homelands, you will rule me out of order, Sir. What has the constitutional development of the homelands got to do with the Bantu education account? I would rather discuss the education of the people in Soweto. I am prepared to discuss that. In allotting the money which is going to be spent on Bantu education, can the Minister, in replying to the Second Reading debate, tell us how he proposes to apportion it to the different homelands and to the urban areas?

The direct tax provides for that.

No, the direct tax is all right. We know how much the Transkeian citizens are paying in that way; I am talking about the assistance that is coming from the Consolidated Revenue Fund. I think the hon. the Deputy Minister bases the amount to be spent on R20 per child.

The unit cost.

I take it from that that he will allot the money on the basis of the number of pupils in each homeland and in the urban areas and on the basis of R20 per unit. I do not know whether this is so, but if, for argument’s sake, the Transkei collects more in direct taxation for education then, say, the Vendas will the Transkei be able to have better education than the Vendas or not, and will the children in the urban areas receive the same standard of education as the children in the homelands?

Sir, as I have said, we will support this Bill because we have had enough of bungling in this Vote and it is time this country knew what the Government intends spending on the most important aspect of our life in South Africa, namely education. The Bantu form the major source of our labour supply and it is in the interests of all the population groups in South Africa, Black or White, that we should know what the Government intends doing for the education of the Bantu, because it is of the utmost importance to the economy and to our life generally that we see to it that the Bantu receives a proper education in this country.

Mr. Speaker …

Oh!

Those hon. members will be groaning even more at a later stage.

Why do hon. members have to groan when the hon. member is called upon to speak? The hon. member is no less entitled to address the House than any other hon. member.

Sir, on the Order Paper of Monday, 6th March, the third item was the Second Reading of the Bantu Education Account Abolition Bill. When we came to this item the hon. the Leader of the House had to stand up and ask that this matter be held over because the Opposition had requested it. Yesterday, when we had reached about the same stage in the proceedings, the hon. the Leader of the House had to stand up again to give the Opposition a chance to prepare themselves. We thought today that the main Opposition speaker on Bantu Education, the hon. member for Transkei who has just spoken, would come along here with a very magnificent speech. Sir, I am terribly disappointed in what the hon. member dished up for us here. The hon. member referred here to the Estimates of previous years and the expenditure on Bantu Education from the Loan Account and other sources. I find it so remarkable that the hon. member now raises this matter here, while at every opportunity during the discussion of those Estimates they could have raised the same argument. The fact that the hon. member now raises that matter in this specific way and on this occasion gives one the impression that what he said here is meant for consumption in Oudtshoorn. I also found it remarkable that the hon. member took so long to come and tell us that the Opposition supports this measure. Subsequently the hon. member, in point of fact, only struggled along with a few general statements and questions. [Interjections.] When in his Second Reading Speech the hon. the Deputy Minister mentioned the principle that the Bantu must themselves contribute to the services they receive, the hon. members of the Opposition laughed about it, why I do not know. This principle has long been included in the Bantu policy of our country.

This principle is the striking aspect of the National Party’s policy, and this same principle is also subtly embodied in the old South African Party’s policy and in the policy of the United Party. This applies particularly to Bantu education. The principle that the Bantu themselves must help contribute to their services, particularly as far as education is concerned, has been a conspicuous one since 1919. For the information of those hon. gentlemen I want to mention that in 1919 a Native Education Commission was appointed in the Cape. This commission made a very clear recommendation to the effect that the Bantu population should contribute part of the costs for its education. This policy principle of the co-responsibility of the Bantu for the financing of their children’s education is a very sound one. That commission, to which I referred, consisted of Whites and Bantu, and they unanimously endorsed this principle.

In 1925, under National Party rule, the Natives Taxation and Development Act, Act No. 41 of 1925, was placed on the Statute Book, an Act embodying the principle of the co-responsibility of the Bantu for the development of their education. Under United Party rule in 1945 it is true that Minister Hofmeyr piloted Act No. 29 through Parliament. This Act contained a broad principle whereby the State directly finances Bantu Education, and any development thereof, from the Treasury—these are now apparently the arguments the hon. gentlemen want to stick to. However, this does not replace the basic principle that the Bantu must help contribute to his education.

After the National Party came into power in 1948, the Eiselen Commission was appointed, and this commission came to specific conclusions, five of which I shall mention: In the first place, Bantu must contribute a portion of all costs for development incurred in their interests. In the second place there must be a direct connection between the tax levied and the services furnished. The third conclusion was that by means of Bantu authorities there must be active Bantu participation in education, and subsequently school committees, parent committees and so on, were also created. The fourth conclusion was that the Bantu should carry part of their education costs and, fifthly that the Bantu’s ability to contribute more—and this is very important— would in time increase through education and development. This dual principle was later embodied in the form of legislation. In the first place, there is the contribution of the Bantu through the channels of their general taxation and, secondly, the contribution of the State that was fixed and would remain so for a time. Thus the Finance Amendment Bill was introduced by Dr. Verwoerd in 1955. This provided that there would be a Bantu education account and that the relevant account would chiefly draw its funds from two sources. The first source of contributions was the Bantu’s general taxation; in this case it was four-fifths of the direct tax. The second source of contributions would be the State which contributes up to £6½ mil lion, later R13 million, annually from the Treasury. At that time it was estimated by Dr. Verwoerd that the contributions direct from the Treasury were three times as much as the Bantu were contributing in direct tax at the time. The principle of co-responsibility of the Bantu for the financing of their education came strongly to the fore. As education grows and develops, its costs must be carried by the developing Bantu themselves.

In my opinion this Bill is a very efficient and appropriate measure. It also still contains the principle that the Bantu must pay for their own services. What is more, that he will still have to pay to an increasing extent, particularly as far as his education is concerned. But here the positive principle also applies, i.e. that since the Bantu must honour greater financial obligations, his responsibility for education grows and he obtains more of a say by means of educational bodies I have just mentioned, such as parent committees and school boards. The tribal, regional and territorial authorities also accept, without reserve, responsibility for the maintenance, control and the spending of finances. The monetary obligations the Whites of South Africa have for so long shouldered to pay for the upliftment and the development of the Bantu are slowly being transferred to the Bantu. This is, of course, also a logical result of an inevitable consequence of the policy of separate development. The Whites, to put it like this, must actually contribute minimally to the Bantu’s education and other services, while the Bantu himself—to use the words which the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development frequently uses—contributes an optimum amount to it.

I should like to emphasize that this Bill essentially means that the Bantu must continually contribute, to an increasing extent, for their children’s education. This has always been this Government’s policy. The Bantu’s economic position has improved, and more money is collected from him by means of direct tax, to which the hon. the Deputy Minister referred, but also through indirect tax, which he also mentioned. The revenue obtained from this already justifies a Bantu Education Estimate in the Consolidated Revenue Account. The Government is deciding on this step because it believes that the time is ripe to take such a step and because it has been assured it has the guarantee that there will be a substantial contribution from the Bantu. Over the past decade and longer there have been considerable funds from the Consolidated Revenue Account for various matters, including Bantu education, as the hon. member has just mentioned. But these funds were voted by this Parliament, and this will continue to be the case in the future. The voting of funds will take place through this Parliament. The amounts that will be allocated will remain in accordance with Bantu incomes, there will, in other words, be a direct link between the income of the Bantu and the appropriation.

Reference was made here to the R13 million, but Dr. Verwoerd himself foresaw that this amount could not always apply.

He didn’t say so.

Now listen; do not be too clever. Being a realist, Dr. Verwoerd mentioned a period of five years that could serve as a point of departure for an average arrangement. I want to quote from Hansard (volume 87, column 314) of 31st January, 1955, the Hansard the hon. member had here and also referred to briefly. There we find the following words used by Dr. Verwoerd on that occasion in reply to the Second Reading debate—

That is what Dr. Verwoerd said. He did mention a period of five years.

I believe that with this measure good human relations between the Whites and, in this case, the various Bantu peoples are being developed and strengthened, because the Bantu realizes that greater responsibility is also being given to him as far as the recovery and spending of the funds is concerned. The Bantu will realize, and is already beginning to realize, that he cannot always expect the Whites to carry the financial burden for him. The Whites also want to emancipate the Bantu in this sphere. This measure is a positive result and a reflection of the National Party’s policy. It therefore confirms—and I want hon. members to listen well to this; they do not believe in this, but we on this side of the House do—the respect of the National Party for national identity and national sovereignty and underlines the concept of multinationality, particularly as far as the Bantu peoples are concerned. This is effected as a result of the fact that each Bantu people obtains its own revenue account and that each people will receive its pro rata share from Bantu taxation.

In conclusion I want to mention that it is remarkable that the biggest driving force and initiative, as far as Bantu education itself is concerned, comes from the homelands and that it has revealed itself there in the past few years and not in the White areas. The attitude and the approach of the Bantu in the White area is that the Whites are responsible for the Bantu in all respects. This attitude has unfortunately gone very deep and become firmly entrenched as far as the Bantu are concerned. The hon. members of the Opposition and the newspapers that support that side of the House are to a large extent responsible for that attitude we encounter amongst the Bantu in the White areas. I hope and believe that this Amendment Bill will also contribute towards new insight for the Bantu in the White area, and particularly bring them to realize that they are not in a political and racial no man’s land, but that they are citizens of their own peoples.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Koedoespoort has spent a great portion of his speach dilating on the philosophy of the late Dr. Verwoerd in regard to Bantu Education. I believe that the presentation of this Bill tonight is a tacit admission and a positive substantiation that the philosophy of Dr. Verwoerd, in so far as Bantu Education is concerned, has failed. I believe that time will reveal that other philosophies will also fail.

The hon. member for Koedoespoort also referred to the contribution that should be made by the Bantu to their education. My colleague, the hon. member for Transkei, referred to this. He made it quite clear that every race should contribute to its education. But when we take the poorest economically and limit their education mainly to their ability to pay their tax, I do not believe that this is a principle that should continue in South Africa.

The hon. member for Koedoespoort also referred to various commissions. He was very careful not to refer to the Holloway Commission of 1954 and 1955, which dealt in a very logical manner with higher education for the non-White people.

I should like to address a question to the hon. the Deputy Minister. I should like to draw his attention to the fact that in the latest report of the Controller and Auditor-General there is an item which indicates that there has been a Treasury Committee of inquiry into the financing of non-White universities. I listened carefully but I did not hear the hon. the Deputy Minister refer to this departmental committee. Surely it is involved with the financial aspects of all non-White education. Surely it is fair that this House should be made acquainted with some of the findings of this departmental committee if it has sat and has concluded its deliberations. If it has not concluded its deliberations and made its recommendations, is it not a little premature to proceed before the recommendations are made known? I trust that the hon. the Deputy Minister will give some clarity on this point, because surely a Treasury Committee of Inquiry should be taken into consideration in a matter of this sort.

Sir, my colleague has indicated that we on this side of the House support this Bill. We support it with reservations. We support it because we know that basically this is a take-over of United Party policy in regard to Bantu education. [Interjections.] At this stage I want to pay a very sincere tribute to somebody who is no longer in this House, but who played a major part in putting forward the attitude of the United Party in regard to Bantu education. I want publicly to pay tribute to Mr. Philip Moore, the ex-M.P. for Kensington who, for years, highlighted the effect of the erosion of the rand in relation to its effect on Bantu education regarding the statutory pegging of the amount allocated to Bantu education. Then I think it is fair to make reference, too, to the Department of Bantu Education and the officials who administer the department. I believe that for years they have been involved in a two-way stretch; they have tried to reconcile a growing enrolment (together with a terrific pupil fall-out) with the diminishing value of money. Their task has been an unenviable one. But I feel that they have fulfilled it with dedication and I believe that it is fair to pay tribute to them for their efforts under difficult circumstances with limited means.

We must be realistic about this Bill and I want to say here and now that this Bill will not create a multi-national educational fairy land because the poorest race economically is still being called upon to subscribe directly by taxation towards its education. Bantu education will still be dependent on the tax payments of the Bantu themselves. My hon. colleague from the Transkei has indicated that the Government has found it necessary to adopt expediency and devices to tide it over this financial hiatus which existed in so far as Bantu education is concerned. He mentioned the fact that outstanding loans and advances were being set aside by this very Bill to the extent of R32 million, but we on this side of the House have realized for some considerable time that this system of financing could not continue.

I think it is fitting at this period of transition that we should assess briefly what has happened. On the one hand we have the enrolment, as the Minister has said, of approximately a quarter million per annum. When we bear in mind that by Std. II at least half of the children who enrolled at the sub-standard classes, have already fallen away, we realize one of the difficulties. The other problem facing the department and the Minister is that he has been limited to the expenditure of a per capita amount of R20 per pupil per annum. What do we have at the other end of the scale? We have higher education and we have the position today where in the three Bantu ethnic universities the education per student per annum amounts to R2 400. That is an amount 200 times in excess of the overall average amount allocated to children attending primary and secondary schools. I think we should make it clear that the United Party does not begrudge or criticize any money allocated towards education, but it reserves the right to criticize the method of the allocation. For years the number of Bantu students reaching Form V—that is, the matriculation form—has represented a pitifully low figure of 0,11 per cent of the total enrolment. The latest figures, the figures for 1970, indicate that approximately 3 000 Bantu were enrolled in the fifth form, the matriculation form, and that 1 009 passed with matriculation exemption. This means that this small number of 1 009, some of whom fall away and do not go to university, provide the intake for three ethnic universities. Under the old system substantial amounts in relation to the overall amount allocated by statute, were specifically allowed for higher education. This amount is R1½ million and it was allocated mainly for the establishment and the administration of these three Bantu universities. I come back to the remark made by the hon. member for Koedoespoort. He obviously has not read, or he has forgotten, the recommendations of the Holloway Commission of 1954/1955.

I wonder whether the Government has over the past years paid attention to the findings of that commission, because the commission indicated and advised a gradual extension of university development. I am sure they did not envisage the present situation where we have three ethnic universities with a very limited intake of students. I am sure too that their recommendations were based on the fact of what it would cost the taxpayers of South Africa. In this Bill 12 out of the 28 clauses refer in some way or another to the University of Fort Hare, the University of Zululand and the University of the North. I believe it is just and fitting that on that basis one is entitled to ask what has been happening in respect of higher education in so far as these universities are concerned. We know now that, in terms of the Bill before the House, that there will be a new provision which I believe one could sum up by saying that the main provision will be that after consultation with the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Bantu Education, will agree upon the amount to be allocated to Bantu universities in respect of capital and normal recurrent expenditure. I have mentioned that in the past the universities received an amount of R1½ million, of the overall statutory allocation of R14½ million. I believe that as long as we have the present situation, with three universities for Bantu, a total enrolment of approximately 2 500 students, and the intake limited by the small number of Bantu matriculants— because not all of them proceed to university—we have a situation which is causing a waste of manpower and to a certain extent an incorrect allocation in the funds devoted to Bantu education. What do we find in these universities? We find that they are more than adequately staffed with lecturers, most of whom are White. We find that they have the lowest student to lecturer ratio in the Republic. But with this ideal situation, are we not entitled to ask what results have been achieved? I can give these results very briefly. In the 12 years after the establishment of the universities—in this instance I do not include Fort Hare because members of the House know that Fort Hare has been in existence for much longer than that—we find that in the University of the North there have been approximately 5 300 enrolments, in the University of Zululand, approximately 3 400 and in the University of Fort Hare, for the same period, 4 659 excluding the Coloured and Asiatics who used to be enrolled there. This gives us a total of 13 450 enrolments, which in 12 years has produced a number of 2 433 diplomas and degrees—13 500 enrolments producing 2 500 degrees and diplomas! This was done at an expenditure of R2 400 per student per annum. We believe that the Government has an important lesson to learn as regards this matter of higher education. We believe that it is our duty to warn the Government that they cannot expect better results in higher education until they adopt a more realistic attitude in regard to the financing of primary, and particularly secondary Bantu education.

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