I move—

That the following be a new clause to follow Clause 8:

1. (a) any amount disbursed by the society on behalf of the borrower in respect of—
   1. (i) premiums on insurance policies designed to provide further security for the repayment of the advance;
   2. (ii) rates, taxes and licence fees in respect of the immovable property mortgaged;
   3. (iii) the maintenance and repair of the said immovable property; and
   4. (iv) the installation of sewerage on the said immovable property; and
2. (b) interest at a rate stipulated in the mortgage bond, but not exceeding the rate at which interest is payable on the advance, the repayment of which is secured by the bond, on any amount referred to in paragraph (a).

I move—

I move—

I move—

1. (a) the terms of which provide that the capital amount advanced shall be repaid within a period of not more than twenty years, and at a rate of not less than two and a half per cent. in any year of the capital amount advanced; and
2. (b) (if any portion of the capital amount advanced has been repaid to and re-advanced by the society), in connection with which it has been agreed in writing between the society and the borrower that the sum made up of the balance of the capital amount advanced and not repaid and the amount so re-advanced shall be repaid within a period of not more than twenty years reckoned from the date of the re-advance and at a rate of not less than two and a half per cent. in any year of the said sum; and.

I move—

The smaller Bill which I am asking the House to pass is to ratify a supplementary agreement which was made between the South African Government and the Rhodesian Government in connection with the extension of the line beyond Messina as far as the Beit Bridge. In the original agreement it was provided that a section of line, 9¼ miles long, would be built from Messina as far as the south bank of the river, thereafter it would be crossed by a bridge which would be subscribed to by both Governments equally, and then a section of line beyond the bridge of six miles would be built on account of the Rhodesian Government. The whole work, of course, was undertaken by the South African Government. Although it was arranged that the bridge originally would be built at the expense of both Governments, an offer was made by the trustees of the late Alfred Beit to build this bridge, and that offer was accepted and the bridge was built without cost to either Government. The cost of constructing the line from Messina to the bridge was £47,000 and of the section of line beyond was £14,000. The 1927 agreement on which this line was built provided among other things that all the losses on the line would be borne by the Rhodesian Government until the end of 1940. These losses since the inception of the line have averaged about £4,300 per annum. Now the original agreement was to continue until 1940 and thereafter it was to carry on subject to six months’ notice, but legal advice taken on the subject indicated that although that agreement could carry on after 1940, the responsibility of the Rhodesian Government to cover the losses did not carry on after 1940, unless they agreed to it. The Rhodesian Government indicated at that stage that it did not think it reasonable that they should go on bearing all these losses, and if the line was to be worked it would work to the mutual benefit of both Governments, and although they thought that they would encourage the working of the line in the beginning, the measure of encouragement had been such that the position should be revised. As hon. members will appreciate the costs for the five years to the Rhodesian Government were in the neighbourhood of £24,000. We were then faced with three alternatives, either closing the line, ourselves bearing the loss, or making a fresh agreement. We felt that it would be a retrograde step to close the line at that stage. It is an entry into Rhodesia. We hope that ultimately for the benefit of both countries the line may be extended in Rhodesia itself. If we close it we have a fairly large capital sum to write off now in the cost of the line, and we would have to bear annual recurring charges of £3,350, almost as much as the loss of working the line in any case. In the circumstances we felt that we should not close the line but carry it on, and after discussion with the Rhodesian Government it was decided that the Rhodesian Government would continue bearing the loss until 1941—up to the end of August, 1941, but as from 1st September the losses should be borne pro rata to the amount of capital which each Government had invested in the line. That meant that the South African Railways would pay 77 per cent. and the Rhodesian Government 23 per cent. The principal agreement was then supplemented by this additional agreement, and it is now subject again to six months’ notice. Provision is also made for disposing of surpluses in the unlikely event of there being surpluses. What is agreed to there is that the surpluses shall be distributed on a fiftyfifty basis until such time as the Rhodesian Government can recover the actual loss incurred in the early years up to 1941 in the working of the railway. After that the surplus will be distributed pro rata under the agreement, that is 77 per cent. to the South African Railways and 23 per cent. to the Rhodesian Railways. I think in the circumstances the agreement is a satisfactory one, and as the original agreement was embodied in an Act of Parliament, it is now necessary to ask Parliament to ratify the supplementary agreement, and that is the reason for my moving this Bill now. I move—

I have not got up to oppose this Bill; I feel that in the circumstances the agreement entered into is a good one, but I want to ask the Minister for an explanation. If railway men are engaged on work on the line, on the Rhodesian side, have they anything to do with the Rhodesian Government? I shall tell the Minister why I ask that question. Railway men are afraid that if they work on the other side, over the Rhodesian border, they may perhaps fall under conscription in Rhodesia. I know that that is not the case, but I am asking the question because people are afraid of being commandeered.

I merely want to ask the Minister whether any investigations have been made with a view to linking up the line from Beit Bridge—I don’t know which is the nearest station—I think it is West Nicholson—whether any investigation has been made in regard to linking up the line with West Nicholson. Especially in case of war it is in the interest of the country to have an additional line of communication with the North. If that line is linked up it will probably be payable because it is a shorter route to the Rand and to Lourenco Marques. The Minister will be able to say whether investigations have been made. If not, I think it is advisable, especially in view of the fact that this short line has been run at a loss since its inception, that the matter should be investigated.

With regard to the first point made I can give the hon. member an emphatic assurance in regard to the position of railway workers. As a matter of fact Union nationals, wherever they are working, still come under the Union laws. It would not be possible for the Rhodesian Government to conscript South African railway men merely because they are working on the other side of the river. If they were Rhodesian nationals, of course, they would come under the Rhodesian rule, but so far as any South African nationals are concerned the hon. member need have no anxiety at all.

You are employing Union nationals there?

So far as I know.

Union nationals have been conscripted in Rhodesia.

Railway Union nationals?

No, other Union nationals.

If there is any danger I shall be glad to look into the point, but I give the hon. member my assurance that I would do my best to prevent any such thing happening.

Why are you taking power to alter the agreement without the consent of Parliament?

Is that power stated in the Bill? Well, the hon. member can deal with it when the opportunity arises. I shall look it up when I sit down. In regard to the other matter raised, I can assure the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. B. J. Schoeman) that the South African Government would welcome an extension of that line, but of course it is a matter entirely in the discretion of the Rhodesian Railways. We would welcome the extension and I am not without hope that before very long it may be possible for these people to extend the line.

Haven’t you approached them?

Not recently, but I shall be quite agreeable to approach them when the time is opportune. At the moment we cannot get any rails; we cannot even get rails for the other part of the line, but the point is one which is constantly before the Administration and the Government, when the moment is suitable, will be quite prepared to make representations in that direction.

I should like to know from the Minister why the power is taken here to amend the contract without the approval of Parliament? That does not seem to be a sound principle. I should like to know from the Minister what it means and why it has been put in here.

This is merely if it should be decided to extend the line on the other side for a few miles, as was originally proposed. It is actually six miles shorter now than was originally proposed. It will then give us that right. It is merely to give us this right that we ask the authority of Parliament, and not radically to alter the agreement. If there is a pro rata difference in the mileage, if it should be altered by virtue of the length of the line authorised, I think it is reasonable for us to have the right to make the adjustment without troubling Parliament.

In other words, the hon. Minister wants to have the power to construct railways without the consent of Parliament.

Oh no.

I would not mind if he constructed it in my constituency. The fact remains that this additional line will be constructed without the sanction of Parliament.

It does not authorise us to construct any line without the authority of Parliament. It does not interfere in any way with the powers of Parliament over the Administration. All that it does is to enable us to make a new agreement in regard to the percentages without having a special Bill to do it. I would like to make that perfectly clear. It only enables us to act if we want to make a modification or the Rhodesian Railways want to make a modification. It does not authorise us to construct a line without the authority of Parliament. That power is not indicated at all in the wording of the clause.

The amendment that I moved in regard to Clause 3 provides for the appointment of a magistrate or a retired magistrate and a sworn appraiser and another member as members of the control board. When the House adjourned on the last occasion, I had just begun to explain why I thought it was necessary to establish a control board, the members of whom shall consist of a magistrate or a retired magistrate, a sworn appraiser and another member to be appointed by the Minister. I contended that it is essential that a board of this nature should be a board not only that is above suspicion, but it should be a board the members of which are in a position to be able to judge every matter that comes before it on its merits. It is essential, too, that there should be persons on that board who have the knowledge of the matters on which they must give judgment. In regard to the appointment of a magistrate, I want to say that this board will be in the nature of a board of review as well as a board of control. The decisions of the rent boards can be reviewed by this board, appeals can be lodged with this board against the decisions of the rent boards, and in addition to that they have another very important function, and that is that they must furnish advice and assistance to rent boards in connection with their functions. In other words, this control board is empowered to give instructions to any rent board as to the manner in which it should carry out its duties. It obviously follows that if any rent board acts contrary to the wishes of the Minister, he can tell the control board to instruct the rent board how to act. In view of the fact that that board reviews the decisions of the rent boards and that the parties concerned will not be able to appear personally before the control board, nor will their representatives be able to appear before the control board, it is essential that this board should be constituted in such a way that it can carry out its functions in a fair, proper and just manner. The hon. the Minister objects to my amendment. It is rather strange that the Minister should adopt this attitude. I need only remind the House of the attitude of the hon. the Minister when the Electrical Wiremen’s and Contractors’ Bill was before the House. I still recollect, and other hon. members will recollect, how the Minister made the rafters ring with his denunciations of the Minister of that time, because he would not give the trade unions two representatives instead of one. The Electrical Wiremen’s and Contractors’ Board is also a board with wide and varied functions. They have to conduct examinations if necessary; they have to decide in regard to the cancellation of any certificates, etc. At that time the hon. Minister made fiery pleas for more and better representation of the trade unions on the board. I do not want to weary the House by reading the hon. Minister’s speech.

It may do the Committee a lot of good to hear it.

I do not think so. It would only be most embarrassing for the Minister.

Not at all.

And I at least want to endeavour to save his face on this occasion.

Thank you!

What is the position in regard to this board? It has to take important decisions, and they have to decide in regard to the decisions of the Rent Board, not having the parties concerned before them, only having to base their decisions on the documents before them; and we do not know whether those documents will of necessity give all the particulars of the matter. It is necessary that they should have at least one member who has a knowledge of the matter on which they must give their decision. Now, a sworn appraiser, as I stated when I discussed the amendment on the previous clause, is a man who has an expert knowledge of properties and of property values. He is in a position to give an impartial recommendation in regard to a just rent for a particular property; especially when it is possible and probable that large numbers of decisions will be submitted to this board on review in regard to decisions taken by Rent Boards in the different parts of the country. It is important that you should have men who are experts in their particular jobs. If the hon. Minister assumes that the sworn appraiser is a representative of the property owners, he is wrong, consequently he cannot advance the argument: “Why should the landlords have a representative on the board, whereas the tenants have no representative?” I would be perfectly agreeable to both landlord and tenant having a representative on the board. If the Minister wishes me to move an amendment in that direction, I am quite prepared to do it. But the fact remains that you cannot appoint a layman to the chairmanship; you must have a man with legal knowledge, not necessarily because he is a better man or considered to be more impartial and just as a result of his being a magistrate, but merely because he has had a large amount of practice in basing decisions on evidence submitted to him by way of affidavit, as well as verbal evidence. If verbal evidence is given, such a person can sift out the good evidence from the bad evidence. It is only fair that such a man should be the chairman of the board. I hope the hon. Minister will be in a more receptive mood today, because, if he accepts some amendments, he can rest assured that his Bill will have a very much smoother passage through this House.

I have a few amendments to this clause which I would like to propose.

Are these on the Order Paper?

No. In the first place, this Board is called a Control Board. It has wide functions and it has a great deal of power, but it is not by any means a Control Board. As I have already pointed out, the appellation “Control Board” is a misnomer and I desire to change it from “Control Board” to “Review Board.” I therefore move—

There is no doubt about it that the Board has wide powers; in fact, nobody really knows what the powers of the Board are. The Bill says that the Control Board shall endeavour to ensure that the objects of this Act are achieved: it may, inter alia, do this, that and the other, but there is this provision in the Act that the Board has the right to furnish advice and assistance and give general directions, etc.; fortunately, however, there is no provision to the effect that the Rent Board is bound to follow the instructions given to it. The Rent Board may say to the Control Board: “We consider that we know more about the matter than you do, and we refuse to carry out your instructions.”

I will put that in if you desire it.

It is no use telling the Board “you may do this, that and the other.” I feel that a better name would be “Review Board.” You notice that the Control Board must also have a chairman and that one of the members will be designated chairman. The Bill does not say who will do that.

Surely the Minister.

It does not say that the Minister shall do it.

Sub-clause (3) says that.

You should read the Bill again. That is only if the Minister wants to appoint another chairman.

Yes, you are right.

Of course; I am always right. In order to put this matter right, I therefore move—

Now you are getting sensible.

You will notice that “the members of this Board will be appointed by the Minister for such a period and upon such conditions as to remuneration or otherwise,” whatever that may mean.

I have an amendment altering that.

It seems to read peculiarly. I still feel that the Minister may appoint a man at his will; in other words, he can keep him on the Board as long as he is satisfied with him. I think he should fix it for at least a certain period. I do not wish to embarrass the Minister by forcing him to keep a member for longer than is necessary, but I think there should be a minimum period of one year.

I accept that.

In these circumstances I move—

There is another peculiarity about this Board. It shall consist of three members, the chairman and two other members. The chairman is not given a casting vote. So there are three votes. What would happen if one member cannot attend? Then there would be no quorum; you would only have two votes. Then there is another matter too. The chairman is given the power to call meetings at such places and at such times as he desires. Well, he may call a meeting to take place at such a place and time that the other members cannot possibly be present. Then he can run the Board alone. There is nothing to provide for these things in the Bill. I therefore move the following amendment—

If you have two members at the meeting only, and the chairman is not given a casting vote, you will have the position that each member will have one vote and unless they agree they will not be able to decide the matter before them. What makes the amendment more acceptable to the Minister is that if one member is ill he can appoint another member in his place. If one member is absent, ill or not available for some other reason, the Minister can appoint another member. At the same time this will be a check on the chairman; he cannot become autocratic. Thirdly, as long as the chairman has no casting vote, all three members must be present in order to be able to decide any matter. I have therefore moved this amendment in order to remedy this obvious defect in the Bill. This is an important Board, and I feel that power should be taken to provide by way of regulation for the procedure to be adopted at the meetings of the Board. It seems that at the moment the meeting can be conducted in any way the chairman pleases. After all, this Board will fulfil the function which in ordinary circumstances the court would have fulfilled. As the Bill stands now there is no appeal from their decision.

May I inform the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. B. J. Schoeman) at the outset that I am in a very receptive state of mind today. I am going to prove that shortly, although he may not regard it as being so in his own case because I am afraid I cannot accept his amendment, not because I am adamant or not open to reason or conviction, but because I feel certain that his amendment will not fit the Bill at all because he now seeks to narrow my choice of representatives to certain classes. First of all, he says you must have a magistrate or an ex-magistrate on the board. Let me tell my hon. friend that there is no special virtue in a magistrate nor in an ex-magistrate.

Why not?

I did not say that either.

Yes, I know. I am only endorsing and re-enforcing the argument of the hon. gentleman himself, so far as the magistrate as a man is concerned. It is no guarantee of his integrity, although the assumption is there. We naturally assume it is so. There is no guarantee of his capacity, although we assume it. There he is on all fours with all the other members of the public.

Surely, you would not appoint a man who has no capacity?

Let me carry on; let me make my own speech, such as it is, will you? The only argument adduced by the hon. gentleman is that the magistrate is used to sifting evidence. But there is no evidence to be sifted at all, as I said when I addressed the Committee when we last sat. The question of evidence does not come in at all. It is a question of plain common sense and arithmetic; no more and no less, and in consequence I fail to see why I should be tied down to a magistrate or an ex-magistrate, thus narrowing completely my scope of choice to that particular class. Now the hon. member wants one member of the board to be a sworn appraiser and he knows, none better, from his own experience — and I supplement his experience with my own— that sworn appraisers vary very much indeed in their estimate of the value of the same property, so there is no particular virtue in having a sworn appraiser on the board, except as a man. I am not saying that I am not going to have a sworn appraiser or a magistrate or an ex-magistrate on the board.

But you want the assistance of sworn appraisers?

That is where I appoint them for a specific purpose, not where I am going to have the means of three or four appraisers’ estimates of the value of any particular property. The hon. gentleman also says that the appraiser must have a knowledge of local conditions. What is the position? This board is centralised.

My argument was that it must not necessarily be localised.

Does your amendment say that?

No.

Well, the point is this that he cannot possibly have knowledge of property all over the country. In fact, I know of no narrower interpretation, particularly with regard to localities, than that of the sworn appraiser himself, because he is confined in his method of calculation to his knowledge of a particular area. That is so and that is within my experience and within the hon. gentleman’s experience. So I regret, charming as the hon. gentleman is this morning, kindly disposed as he is in that he seeks not to embarrass me by quoting speeches.— I wish he would sometimes—I very much regret that I cannot fall to his blandishments and accept his amendment. Now the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) has made quite useful suggestions—strange to relate,—some of which I can accept and some of which I cannot. He seeks to alter the word “control” to “review,” wherever it occurs; in other words, he wants to establish this as a Review Board. That narrows its scope. That is what I do not agree with. If he thinks it requires embellishment, why does he not say “control and review” but don’t substitute “review” for “control.”

Why not say “central”?

A rose by any other name smells just as sweet.

Is my hon. friend content with the aroma?

It is a question of the powers they must have, that is what I am not content with.

When you say “review board” you narrow them to review, and I am not satisfied with that, so I hope my hon. friend will forgive me if I don’t accept that amendment. Now, in this other amendment of his, he is on sounder ground when he moves that the period of membership shall be at least one year. I accepted that in Clause 2 so far as the Rents Boards themselves are concerned, and it is logical and fair to say that they should be secure in their job—if we may put it that way, and not susceptible to being dismissed at any moment. I agree to accept that—if the Committee will agree to it, of course. Now he wants meetings of Control Boards to take place at specified times. I do not know whether the language which he put in his clause is good. I am afraid I am looking at the wrong amendment. Of course, some one must appoint the board. The wording is weak and not logical. He wants the Chairman to be appointed by the Minister. Yes, yes, I think that is quite acceptable. It must be the responsibility of someone. So I am quite prepared to accept the insertion of the words “by the Minister.”

Anyhow you are accepting something.

Oh, let the hon. member wait a moment. He now wants to make sure in his last amendment—and it is a very laudable object—that the Chairman of the Board shall not degenerate into an autocrat, and shall not be the dictator of the Board, and shall not be able to say “Very well, we shall have a meeting of the Board in Timbuctoo.” At some place where the others cannot go. “I shall be there to do the business.” There is a good deal in that, and I think if we can devise some other language … I should like to have some advice from my law advisers to see if that fits in. I, like him, want to secure that all the members are there. Of course, there is some safeguard in the fact that I can appoint alternates. If my hon. friend will be good enough to let that go now I shall consult the law advisers and get a drafting and move it at the report stage. With these few remarks I hope that I have met my hon. friend’s objections.

The Minister advanced the argument for his refusal to accept my amendment that it would be merely a question of common-sense and arithmetic on which the Control Board must base their decisions. I wonder whether the Minister has ever appeared before a Rent Board?

No, have you?

Oh, yes; I have.

Well, then perhaps you will give us the benefit of your experience.

Has the Minister ever seen what the Rent Board has to decide upon? Merely to refresh his memory of what appears in the Bill, I want to draw his attention to the definitions in Clause 1. First of all, there is no fixed percentage on which the Rent Board must base its decisions. It is not laid down that they must only allow 8 per cent. on the cost of the property and the land at a reasonable rental. It says that that is the maximum, but the Rent Board can decide in their wisdom that the landlord should get a return of 2 per cent., and no more. It is entirely in their discretion. It is not a question of arithmetic.

I said common-sense and arithmetic.

It is not necessarily arithmetic. You can take a decision in regard to a return which the landlord must obtain. What we are afraid of is that the persons whom the Minister may appoint may not have that degree of common-sense which the Minister thinks essential—they may perhaps have commonsense in his opinion, but not in ours— especially when I remember that at a Labour Party Congress a resolution was passed asking the Minister to appoint more Labour Party supporters to these Rent Boards. That is all very well. But it may mean that men may be appointed to Boards merely because they are supporters of the Labour Party, and not because of their commonsense. And with all due respect to the Minister—Labour Party and common-sense are not analagous. The Rent Boards have to decide what will be a reasonable rent, and it may decide that 1 per cent. or 2 per cent. is reasonable. They may decide on a certain amount and regard it as reasonable. But the lessor may have a different opinion. It is precisely the same thing as you get in the case where damages are claimed before a court of law. The magistrate or the judge also has it in his discretion to decide what amount of damage is reasonable. Perhaps we may also say that it is a question of common-sense, but the fact remains that when a decision is taken by the Rent Board the only appeal is to the Control Board, and we must bear in mind that in this particular case the parties are not entitled to appear before the Control Board. Nor are the parties allowed to be legally represented. It is merely a matter of sending the papers there. They must merely decide in their inner circle on the evidence—no, not on the evidence, but on the documents before them, and on that they must give their decision. It would be a different thing if a party could appear there and argue the matter out. I should like to know from the Minister who he contemplates appointing to the Control Board? He does not want a magistrate or a sworn appraiser. He may have certain people in view who can carry out their duties more efficiently than magistrates or sworn appraisers and give better decisions. I really don’t think there is any ground for refusing the amendment. I know the Minister wants the Control Board to be an impartial body—he knows what is wanted—a body which can give decisions acceptable to tenants and landlords—and most decisions, if they are equitable, are acceptable to tenants and landlords.

Oh, no.

Oh, yes. And then the Minister will find that landlords very often know nothing about the provisions of the Rent Act. I have received dozens of enquiries from landlords as to what the provisions of the Rent Act really are. They don’t know them. It is only when a complaint is lodged that they find out that they are contravening the provisions of the Act. I really think the Minister should reconsider his decision, and if he does not want to accept my amendment in that form, at least make provision for the appointment of members who will be above suspicion, and be able to give impartial decisions, and who will have the necessary training and experience.

The Minister undertook to go into one of my amendments and he accepted two of my amendments. I am prepared if the Minister accepts the principle of this other one of my amendments to withdraw it. I also want to speak to the Minister and try and induce him to realise the position. I do not want to take away any of the powers he may have in making his selection of the Board. I have no intention of doing so. But as this Board is really a sort of judicial body which has to fix rents and so on and deal with appeals, its position will be very important—the decisions may mean a lot to the lessor as well as to the lessee. And I feel that the Minister should get on these Boards the best men available, men able to judge, men specially trained to judge as far as facts are concerned. I believe that that is what is wanted. Now I feel that as far as the magistrate is concerned, a magistrate has had a lifelong experience of deciding facts —that is why I want a magistrate on the Board, because the Board will have to decide on facts. Then, in regard to a valuator. They cannot just appoint a valuator and just ask him to bring in his valuation— surely it must be left to the lessor or the lessee if they don’t agree with the valuation given, to bring in another person. So the Board would have the opportunity of judging between the evidence of the two, and deciding which of the two is the correct valuation. Now, if I say that I won’t insist on a valuator being a member of the Board, you should still have at least one man on the Board who is able to decide on the facts. If you take an ordinary man in the street, he may have as much common-sense as you like, he may be as well educated as you like, but he cannot in ordinary circumstances have greater ability in regard to the question of deciding on facts than the magistrate would have. Take the position of our judges—our judges are appointed from members of the Bar—they are men with long experience and they are appointed because during their experience they have learnt to decide what are the correct facts.

Yes, but they are dealing with the intricacies of the law.

The Minister makes me think of the Italians.

Oh, no, please.

Yes; they got the same idea in water disputes. They wanted disputes made without a court of law, and without legally trained people, and that was about the biggest mess the world has ever seen.

I don’t like the association of ideas.

You cannot get away from it. This Board will have to decide on facts, and that being so you must have at least one trained person on the Board whether you make it a magistrate with long experience or a barrister of ten years’ standing, or a magistrate of many years’ standing—you must have a properly trained man there. That is absolutely essential. The Minister knows that that is the position. He knows that this Control Board is going to make a mess of things. That is why he makes their decision final. There is no appeal from them. These people sit there and they have to decide on facts and then they cannot go to court. In fact, the whole future of the lessor and the lessee is in their hands. I want to make an appeal to the Minister to reconsider his decision. I am prepared to concede this point, that as far as the valuator is concerned you may leave him off the Board, because after all the Board can get the evidence of other valuators. But you cannot get someone to decide on facts unless he has had experience of doing so. So far as I am concerned I am prepared to leave the question of a valuator out, provided the Minister will concede the other point. I take it the Minister wants to be fair to the lessor as well as to the lessee, and surely the Board will have to allow the lessor as well as the lessee to bring evidence as to values and so on. The Minister must remember that valuation is not an exact science—it is the opinion of a man, and that opinion may be quite wrong—every human being has failings.

Not you and I.

And if the valuator is prejudiced in one way and another his decision may be quite wrong, and no provision is made for the Control Board reviewing a wrong in which relatives or friends of the Review Board may be involved. In other words, to my mind this is about as big a mess as you can get. You are giving people the right to do things which they cannot do. I don’t suppose there will ever be a Rent Board in my division because if the Rent Board were to fix a reasonable rent half the people would not be paid to pay it. But I can quite understand that they may come there. Some other Minister may take the place of the present one. After all, there are worse eveils than the evils we have. We may think that our present Minister is not the correct man to adjudicate on things, but we may get a worse one.

You could not.

Hear, hear!

Anyhow, the Board must be able to judge and it must be impartial, and I say that if the Minister wishes to leave out the valuator I don’t mind that so much. Then there is the question that a valuator only knows the values in a given locality. But that is not correct. He can value in other localities as well. You see, there are certain principles upon which valuations are based. The whole crux of the matter is the market value of the property.

No, that is what I want to avoid.

You are doing an injustice if you are doing that. The position is that a valuator has special knowledge from experience. He can go to any locality and see how much other properties have realised.

A valuator is only appointed for a certain magisterial area.

I feel that if there is no one on the Board who has had experience and training in deciding on facts, you don’t know where you are going to end. Of course, they do all sorts of irregular things.

Even magistrates do that.

Yes, that is so, but will ordinary men who have not got the training do? You are leaving the door open to all sorts of abuses which we want to avoid, and I again want to appeal to the Minister to accept my amendment. [Time limit.]

I understand that the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) wishes to withdraw his amendment.

Yes, the one which the Minister accepts in principle but which he wants to consider and re-draft. I withdraw that.

Might I suggest that the hon. member’s second amendment be left over for re-drafting. That is the amendment “not less than one year.”

No, that is not to be re-drafted. The words “not less than one year” come in there.

Very well, but I suggest that it should be re-drafted because it does not read properly now.

I see. If the hon. member will agree I shall take a note of the points he has raised and on the Report stage, or some other stage, I shall undertake to have it inserted.

It makes no difference to me so long as it is inserted.

With leave of the Committee, the amendments proposed by Mr. Warren in lines 41, 43 and 51 were withdrawn.

I wonder if the Minister would accept an amendment in place of the one I moved. I have not drafted it correctly yet but it would be something like this—

I know the Minister realises the necessity of the Chairman being a man with legal training and the other should be a man with a knowledge of property values. I think the amendment I am now proposing should meet the Minister’s objections. The Minister in his remarks said that they will not have to take any legal decision or any decision merely based on the law or the letter of the law. But this Board will have to decide whether the provisions of the Act are carried out. They must decide whether the provisions of the Act—and it is a pretty long Act of 23 clauses—and some of the clauses have half-adozen sub-sections—are being carried out. And whether the Rent Boards are conforming to the letter of the law. Then there is another important consideration. Under the old Act any party dissatisfied with the decision of the Rent Board could appeal to a court of law. The Minister himself has quoted a number of cases of appeals and it does occur frequently that dissatisfied parties appeal to a court of law. That right is now taken away. The decision of the Control Board is final. There is no recourse to any court of law. Now, surely in a case of that kind the body having the power of the Control Board should be able to give decisions on the merits of the case. I hope the Minister will accept this new suggestion of mine.

There is practically no difference between the original amendment and this one. I appreciate the hon. member’s methods. In his one amendment he ties me down to a legal man. Now he wants me to take a man who has been connected with the legal profession. In his one amendment he wants me to take a man associated with property transactions. Now he has widened it, and it is no longer for the man he wants to be put on the Board to be a sworn appraiser. I am now to be compelled to make my choice for members of the Control Board, so far as the Chairman is concerned, to take a man from the legal profession, and for ordinary members from people who are manipulating property.

No, they may have a knowledge without being associated.

How are you going to discover that? Are you going to have an examination? So I am to be confined to two channels in regard to making my appointments, I am not to be allowed to make any selections from whatever sources I think best. I want to have the right to select men of common-sense, men of integrity, men with knowledge, but I am to be confined to these other people. In his kindness of heart the hon. member gives me the opportunity to appoint one member to the Board from any section of the community. Very kind of him.

I can move that that right be also taken away from you.

I am sorry I cannot accept it.

The Minister wants to have complete discretion as to whom he appoints. He wants to be able to appoint a man of integrity and a man of good standing, as a member of the Control Board. He has not said that he refuses to appoint members of these particular professions which I have indicated in my amendment, but he wants to keep the whole thing within his own discretion. He has not told the House that it is wrong to appoint a man with legal training. He has not said that it is wrong in the interests of the tenants to appoint a man with a knowledge of property values. He merely wants a wide discretion, and the right to appoint whomsoever he pleases. Well, that is not an argument at all. If he decides to appoint members of the Wage Board, does he merely consider appointing men of standing, men of integrity and men of wide knowledge? When the Minister has to appoint three members of the Wage Board, what does he take into consideration? Just their social standing, their ability, their integrity, or what? No, he does not. And remember that the Wage Board is in a way similar to this Control Board; they must not carry out the letter of the law; they must base their decisions on equity. They must decide merely on the merits of the case, what wages to award. There are merely general indications in the Act. When the Minister appoints members to the Wage Board, he seeks out those men who have knowledge of the work; he seeks out men of ability, but more, he seeks out men who are able to do that specialised type of work, not necessarily men who are sympathetic to the employer on the one hand, or sympathetic to the employee on the other hand. It is not provided in the Act, but that is what is always done. The Minister cannot blame me for being suspicious in regard to the appointment of these members, after knowing that the Congress of his party took decisions that the Labour Party must have more and better representation on these boards. One cannot help being suspicious, and I cannot help feeling that the Minister will not merely base his choice on the integrity and ability of the people. It may be that he will choose people because they happen to belong to the party. I would prefer to limit his choice to such an extent that he will not be able to appoint even one member in his discretion. I might move that one member should be a tenant, a man who has experience of living in other peoples’ houses. But I feel that if the Board is constituted as I have suggested, it will function best. I want to ask the hon. Minister whether he could get better appointments than that? Surely the Minister has a very wide choice amongst members of the legal profession. He has thousands to choose from. In so far as the man with a knowledge of property values is concerned, the Minister also has a choice of thousands, and I am sure he will be able to find at least two men amongst those thousands who have high integrity and who have a very good standing. I think he will find two such members amongst those thousands. I cannot therefore see what possible objection the Minister could have to these appointments. Consequently I think that he should not object to this amendment. What is going to be the result if the Minister appoints a Control Board consisting of members who are party supporters? Whenever that Control Board gives a decision that cannot be regarded as equitable, the parties concerned and the general public will immediately say: “Yes, the Minister appoints his own party members to these Boards, and then he elves them instructions as to what they should do; he has instructed them to act in a party spirit, and not necessarily in the interests of justice.” If he has a Board consisting of three prominent Labour Party supporters, then the position will be that whatever decisions they give will not be acceptable; they will always be open to suspicion. We want to avoid that. The hon. Minister has advanced no argument at all in support of his refusal to accept this amendment or in regard to the suggestion I made concerning another amendment that I could move. I think that even at this stage the Minister should be prepared to reconsider his very firm decision in regard to the discretion he wants in appointing all and sundry to that Board.

I feel that the hon. Minister is afraid to accent any amendment. Surely that is not a sign of strength.

But I have accepted your amendment.

This amendment is a very important one. The personnel of the Board is a very important matter. We do not know who is going to be the successor of the Minister and we do not know what he is likely to do.

But you claim that you will come in; why should you worry, then?

Yes, if we come in we will certainly do the right thing, but there is a possibility of Hitler coming in! I feel that the hon. Minister is unreasonable, and if he is unreasonable he cannot blame us if we think that there is something behind it. I do not want to say that he wishes to appoint Labour Party partisans. There may be a person who is a supporter of his party and who has a special knowledge of property. There may be a lawyer who supports the Labour Party, but I do not think so, because generally speaking lawyers are reasonable people. The Minister’s whole argument is that his choice is being narrowed down. He calls this Board a Control Board. It is a Board which has the destiny of all the lessors and lessees in its hands. Consequently he cannot blame us if we want to see to it that the Board does not consist of members who are party followers but of men who are able to do justice and to hold the scales equally. The Minister cannot blame me if I think that he does not hold the scales equally. I will show later on where he makes provision in this Board for the members to decide, for instance, how much can be taken off the rent, and then the lessor only pays the rental fixed by the Board and anything he has paid in excess of that, he can claim again.

The hon. member is going beyond the clause now.

I am just saying that the Minister cannot blame us if we feel that he does not hold the scales equally. The Bill itself shows that he does not do so. I am quite prepared to assist him if he wants to do justice to everyone, but when it is apparent to me from the Bill that he is only out to protect one section, then I cannot but disagree with him. It would be unfair to put only three tenants on that Board. If I were a tenant I would naturally feel that if I could do anything for the tenant I should do so. If he puts three men like that on the Board, what justice are you going to get? He should appoint members who are above all suspicion both as to ability and integrity.

How is that possible; you can suspect anybody and anything.

Take the judges, for example. You select people who are impartial; you protect them so that they are able to maintain their impartiality. These judges may make mistakes but, at least, you do the best you can under the circumstances. I maintain that the Minister is unreasonable in refusing to accept the amendment. If he is prepared to accept it in principle, I shall try to induce my hon. friend to withdraw his amendment, and then the Minister can incorporate that provision in the Bill in his own wording at a later date.

I am very nearly influenced.

We cannot leave the Bill like that. It seems unreasonable to me; consequently I feel that I am entitled to ask the hon. Minister to reconsider his decision.

I would like to withdraw my amendment and to move this one in its place. I want to withdraw the amendment providing for the appointment of a magistrate or an ex-magistrate and a sworn appraiser and one other member as members of the Board.

With leave of the Committee, the amendment proposed by Mr. B. J. Schoeman was withdrawn.

I want to substitute it with this amendment which I now move—

Now you have got down to tin-tacks.

I have endeavoured to substitute an amendment that should really be acceptable to the Minister. You will now have a chairman who is impartial. The Minister has the power to appoint a man whom he considers to be absolutely impartial, a man in regard to whom he is assured will decide matters on their merits. Then there will be one member who is a property owner and who has a wide knowledge of property values. That is perfectly fair; and then a third member who is a non-property owner, a man to be elected by the Trades and Labour Council, representative of most of the Labour organisations in South Africa. Against a Board of that nature there can be no complaint. Surely, with a Board consisting of three such members you will be assured of getting impartial, just and equitable decisions. I trust the Minister will see his way clear to accept this amendment. In regard to the third member, I have now taken away his discretion altogether. This member is now to be nominated by the Trades and Labour Council. We have a large number of Boards on which the Trades and Labour Council is represented. I have a list here which I can read out of members of the Trades and Labour Council who are on these Boards. The man elected by them will of necessity be a man who has experience in living in other people’s houses, and a man who is representative of the workers who live in other people’s houses. I hope the hon. Minister will see his way clear to accept this amendment.

I suppose, Mr. Chairman, you would like me to say something in regard to this amendment. One must admire the persistence of the hon. gentleman. I appreciate the point of view that has been adopted by hon. gentlemen over there, and as I say, I admire their persistence. Of course, that can be carried too far. Let me analyse the hon. member’s latest proposals. He says the chairman shall be a person with wide legal training. Well, anyone can get wide legal training but you cannot teach him integrity. The fact that he gets wide legal training does not make him a man of parts; it merely means he has had a classroom training. He has merely studied the books. He has had instruction and he can patter it off a la the parrot, but that does not make him competent to deal with the circumstances he will be confronted with here. It does not establish his bona fides at all. All that he has had is a wide legal training—whatever that may mean—but it does not establish his bona fides.

But that won’t disqualify him.

No, it won’t disqualify him. That is what I have been trying to drive home to hon. members over there, that none of these people they seek to have appointed are debarred from appointment. What I object to is the fact that they seek to make it obligatory on me to appoint any particular person. The hon. member says the second member of the Board must be a person with a wide knowledge of property and who, at the same time, is a property owner. That is a very difficult person to get, a person with a wide knowledge of property values and at the same time a property owner himself, because my experience is this, that most of these heavy owners of property are people who do most or practically all their transactions through agents; and only recently I had a large number of illustrations of that fact.

I did not say that he should be a heavy owner of property.

Any property. How can he have a wide knowledge of property if he only owns one piece of property? In order to have a wide knowledge of property he must own more than one property. Do you realise now how difficult it makes it for me to find such people? And now let me deal with the third member proposed by the hon. gentleman. He thinks he is going to placate Trade Union feeling. He says let the third man be one who is selected by the Trades and Labour Council.

He must not be a property owner.

Yes, he must be a non-property owner, a man who has been a hirer of residential property all his life, and he must be selected by the Trades and Labour Council. Again the hon. member has narrowed my choice beyond all acceptation. There is the Cape Federation of Trades. There is another trade union body, comparable not in extent but in influence with the Trades and Labour Council, and in point of fact—I make no bones about it—I consult those trade unions in appointing a new Rent Board, and may I say this, it is just as well to explain what the procedure is in the appointment of Rent Boards. The magistrate of the district himself recommends that a Rent Board shall be constituted for that district. It is a spontaneous effort on his part as a result of his experience of his own magistracy. He then sends up a recommendation that a Rent Board should be appointed for that district and then it is decided whether a Rent Board is desirable and thereafter it is intimated to the magistrate that a Rent Board will be appointed.

Is it decided without enquiry?

We have made the inquiries then, of course. But the inception of it comes from the magistrate. That is the point I am trying to drive home. When it is decided to have a Rent Board for that district the magistrate is asked to recommend the personnel of the Board. The official concerned then consults members of Parliament and other people. I have done so; I do not confine my investigations to my own side of the House, still less do I confine them to the Labour Party. That is the procedure. I ask the Trades and Labour Council, if it is in the North, to make a recommendation; if it is in the South within the sphere of influence of the Cape Federation, I ask them. If it is in the Eastern Province, I ask there. They are all asked as to who should represent their particular interests. What more can you want? Now I say that the amendment that is now moved is the worst of the three that the hon. member has given us, and I am very sorry I cannot accept it.

I would like the hon. Minister to give some sort of undertaking that in the composition of this Control Board there will be at least one person on it who knows something about the value of property. I agree with the Minister up to a certain point that his hands should not be tied in the way suggested by the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. B. J. Schoeman). It would be a difficult proposition to fit things in, but I do hope the hon. Minister will tell this House that as far as he is concerned, as far as it is possible, at least one member of the Control Board will be someone who knows something about the value of property. For example, when a judicial board is appointed to investigate a matter, surely that Board will have at least one judicial person on it; or when a Board is appointed to investigate something in connection with commerce, surely the Board would have at least one member who knows something about commerce, and I think that this is a very logical reason why this claim that I put forward should be agreed to by the Minister. I do not want it to be in the Bill, but I would like the Minister to say that while he holds office, the Control Board will have at least one man on it who knows something about the value of property.

In regard to the point raised by the hon. member for Durban, Stamford Hill (Mr. Acutt), I think this is fully met by the provision that the Board may employ a local valuator. If you have a member with a knowledge of property, that knowledge will be of very little value without some experience of the local con ditions in relation to the case before the Board, and I hope the hon. Minister will not accept that proposal. We must, first of all, take into account that this Board should be composed of men of experience from a general point of view, and who have some knowledge of the objects of the Act; and in regard to any specific portion of their work, such as valuation and matters affecting the property itself, they can employ a local valuator. That is all I wish to say.

Seeing the Minister is so adamant, I want to move another amendment. The hon. Minister tells us that in making appointments he consults the Trades and Labour Councils, the Cape Federation, and other people concerned. Now, I should like to hear whether he has any objection to a provision so that the Afrikaans speaking people can come to the Board and feel that they will get assistance in their own language. For that purpose I move an amendment, and I hope that hon. members on the other side will accept this—

Who will decide whether they are efficient in both languages?

You will have the right to decide that unfortunately. As it is, you judge everything about the man, so what difference will it make? If he is not efficient in both languages, he cannot be appointed. As far as I can judge, most of the members of the Rent Boards know only one official language. I may be wrong. I say this subject to correction, but from what I have seen in Gazettes and from what I have heard, it seems to me that that is the position. The Minister cannot blame us if we ask that the members should have a knowledge of both official languages. The ordinary official in the Service has to be efficient in both official languages, and the reason for that is that the people with whom he deals may only know one of the two languages. Now, if I as the owner of property, desire to appeal from the decision of the Rent Board, I think that I should be justified in doing so in my own language, the same as I reckon the English speaking South African has a right to appeal in his language, and I feel that the members of the Board should be competent to read and understand my language.

All the more so if it is a lawyer.

You can speak as much as you like when I am finished. We can all sing together, but we cannot speak together. I think I am justified in moving this, and I feel that the Minister should not refuse this amendment. He has refused to accept the proposals we have made, and now we ask to have a man there at least who knows both official languages.

Altogether, apart from the objection to the insertion of the word “efficient”, the amendment is not necessary, not because any of the members of the Board will be unilingual, but because the hon. member bases his whole claim on the plea that parties appearing before the Rent Board should be in a position to submit their case in their own language. That is quite obvious, that is conceded. A man who appears before a Board, and who is not allowed to have his advocate or representative there, whether he is English or Afrikaans unilingual, must, of course, be in a position to submit his case in his own language. When he appears before the Board of necessity he will have to testify, and he can only do that in his own language.

And if the members of the Board cannot understand him?

We are not discussing Rent Boards now.

Whatever Board it may be. If the Control Board, the parties do not even appear before the Board. The records of the case are placed before the Control Board. But the member’s whole case was based on the right of the individual to appear before the Board and to put his case in his own language. That is obvious.

The hon. member who has just spoken has missed the point entirely. His whole argument is that members who sit there and consider matters have the records of the case before them. Say, for instance, the records are in Afrikaans, and all the evidence is in Afrikaans, and the members who are on the Control Board do not know Afrikaans, how can they do justice in a case of that kind? And the other way about, if everything is in English, and there are members on the Board who do not know English, how can they do justice? I think the time has passed in this country when things like that should be allowed. The records will then have to be translated and we know that a translation is not always an exact reflection of the original, and in that way justice may often not be done in the case put before the Board. It is not only right that people appearing should be heard in their own language, but our attitude is that the members should know both languages. Otherwise it means that members do not understand what is going on, or the whole of the records will have to be translated, which will involve unnecessary expense. There are sufficient competent people today who understand English and Afrikaans thoroughly. In this House we have had instances of Ministers who do not know both languages experiencing great difficulty. They have to use interpreters which is unsatisfactory, and one cannot do good work. Surely we have now reached the stage in South Africa when people appointed to such responsible bodies should know both languages. It is not absolutely essential that they should have a thorough knowledge of both languages, but they should be able to understand both languages properly, and they should be able to speak them, and there should be no need to use interpreters or translators. I think the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) quite correctly raised this matter.

I think the House has reason to be gratified that the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) has spotted this point, and has insisted on bilingual people being appointed. I must admit that I never thought of it, because surely it should no longer be necessary to insist that people who are appointed to such important bodies should be bilingual?

It is not said that they will be unilingual.

It is surprising to find the Government appointing unilingual people to important positions. Yesterday, when I rang the Department of Defence, I again had that experience. On every occasion I have insisted on being attended to in Afrikaans, with the result that they have had to call a number of people, and in the end they simply said: “We want to be spoken to in English.” I had to return without having achieved anything. I want to make a serious appeal to the Minister of Labour, and ask him to accept the amendment. If he fails to do so, he will prove that he has not the slightest sympathy for the Afrikaans speaking people. Hon. members opposite laugh when we insist on bilingualism; what do they care? But we insist on our rights, and we insist on bilingual people being appointed. If the members of such bodies are not bilingual they will not be able to do their work properly, nor will they deal sympathetically on those bodies with cases which are brought before them in the other language, if they are not bilingual. One very rarely gets a man who does not talk the other one’s language treating him sympathetically. Whenever I have had dealings with the Minister of Labour, I must say that he has been very sympathetic, and I am convinced he will realise that our request is a reasonable one, and that it is important that people appointed to those Boards shall be bilingual. He will disappoint me very much if he does not accept it. That is the very least we can expect.

Now, of course, the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) has succeeded in raising a matter which has nothing to do with the operation of this Bill. There is no prejudice against anybody. For many years we have had this Board without this provision in the Act, and nobody has been ill-affected as a result. What is the position?

How many appeals have you had?

If the hon. member is referring to the Appeal Board, there is no necessity for any language, because nobody appears before the Appeal Board, only the records come before the Board. In fairness and justice towards both sections of the population the record will be translated so that the members, whether Afrikaans speaking or English speaking, can understand what they have to deal with. I have always done that. Translations will be available. Carrying this to its logical conclusion, I want to point out that a large number of people who are affected by this Bill, are natives. Are you going to insist that the members of these Boards should be proficient in all native languages?

Why not appoint a native member on the Board?

How many official languages are there?

He might be better than some others.

We are dealing with the right of a party who appears to be understood. That is the purport of the amendment, and I take it the hon. member is honest in his intentions. He wants the position to be quite clear for all concerned so that they will know what is going on. If that is so, you would also have to make provision for the Native languages. The natives are painfully affected by this Bill. I want to ask hon. members to be reasonable in this matter.

One is really surprised at a man with the experience of the Minister of Labour getting up and saying that bilingualism is not necessary in this case. We always hear our English speaking friends talk of the principle of fifty-fifty. It is very fine. Here we have a fine example of it. If I were the Minister I would be ashamed, after all the years of experience he has had to get up and say that so far as Afrikaans is concerned it is not necessary because the records which come before the Board will be translated. After all these years of Union, this extra expense is to be incurred to have translations made for the Minister’s officials or for Boards, because they do not know Afrikaans, because they don’t want to learn Afrikaans, because they look upon Afrikaans as inferior. I think it is high time that we on this side of the House, and all Afrikaans speaking people, more than ever before, should resist this contemptuous sort of treatment. I want to tell the Minister that if he wants this Bill to pass through the House he will have to be more considerate. If be refuses to meet us we are going to fight it with all the means possible under the democratic system, no matter how long we sit here. Hon. members opposite laugh when one talks of bilingualism. Now the Minister comes here with a brand new thing and says that justice must also be done to a third language, the language of the Natives. How many native languages are there? There are only two official languages in this country but there are at least a dozen native languages. The Minister should not use an argument like that. We appeal to him. We have the right to demand that bilingualism shall be maintained. Our language rights are ignored every day. We don’t get equal treatment. The English speaking population has about 90 per cent. of the advantages and we have hardly got 10 per cent. of the rights we are entitled to. I think the time has arrived for us to insist with all the power at our command to an end being put to the contemptuous wav our language rights are treated. If the Minister does not meet us we shall have to make things very difficult for him.

I waited for the Minister’s reply because I thought he was going to accept the amendment. Why does he not accept it? The Minister used a peculiar argument. He said that the natives would be inconvenienced if their language was not spoken on these Boards. Does the Minister not know what the country’s official languages are? And what was the result of the Minister’s remarks? That the hon. member for Port Elizabeth, Central (Col. Wares) in an interjection said that if the Minister put natives on the Control Board they would be better than people on this side of the House.

I didn’t say people on that side of the House; I said “possibly they will be better than some other people.”

When business was suspended I was expressing my regret that the Minister had refused to accept the amendment of the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren). I expressed my regret at the Minister having said: “What about the native, is he also to be attended to in his own language?” We also regretted the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central) saying that natives would be more useful on the Control Board than members on this side of the House. He thereupon denied having said it, and he explained that these were the words he used: “They would probably be better than some others.” Now I want to ask him this: If he says that the natives on the Control Board would be better than “some others”, did he by those “some others” mean members on this side of the House? He said that he did not mean us. Well, did he mean that natives would be better than members on the other side? No, he won’t say that, because there are decent people opposite, apart from politics. Now I want to say this. The hon. member has excluded this side of the House. He wants to exclude the decent people on that side of the House, and does he want to say then that a native would be more useful as a member on the Control Board than the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central) ? We grant him that, and his remark applies to himself. I don’t think there is any need to go into it any further. When this amendment was moved the Minister became irritable. When he is irritable he sometimes becomes considerate. I expected him to have got up and to have accepted the amendment. He refused to accept it, however, and his explanation was that when the documents came before the Control Board they would be translated, and the members of the Control Board would then have the opportunity of studying the documents in both languages. We are going to propose later on that the appellant is to have the right to appear personally before the Control Board. Now I want to put this question to the Minister: Does he imagine that if an Afrikaans speaking person gives evidence before the Control Board in Afrikaans, and if the people who are members of the Control Board do not understand Afrikaans—does he imagine that justice will be done to that man in those circumstances? Assuming the man is English speaking, and the members of the Control Board are Afrikaans speaking—which, of course, is impossible—would the Minister consider it fair for the man to have to put up his case to people who don’t understand him? I don’t for a moment imagine that the Minister will take up that attitude. Now I want to draw a comparison and I hope the Minister will not regard it as being personal. I am putting the case to him in Afrikaans, and he is unable to follow me. There is somebody sitting next to him who has to interpret for him. The Minister himself must realise how difficult it is for him to follow our arguments and very often he does not follow them at all. I know that he personally is very anxious to know Afrikaans, so that he may be able to understand every word we say. He is lacking in something, but he is a man with gray hair. Let him select the people he is going to appoint —they will be young men who still have a chance of making good any of their shortcomings—let him only select bilingual people. The Minister has already refused to accept the amendment. I do feel none the less that he is not small-minded and that he can be generous. We know him as a generous man in the lobbies. Let him prove this afternoon that he does not want to discriminate between Afrikaans and English people and let him prove it by accepting this amendment.

I came into the House in fear and trembling that the hon. the member who has just sat down was going to expose my lurid past. I am thankful to him for not having done it. With regard to the interjection which I made this morning, when the hon. the Minister in replying to an amendment to make the appointment of bilingual members to the Control Board, said as many of the parties concerned in appeals may be natives, it might be claimed that the records should also be in their language, I interjected, “Why then not appoint a native member on the Board”, and in reply to an interjection by a member on the opposite side, I said that such a member may be better than some others. The hon. member for Albert-Colesberg (Mr. Boltman) twisted this into meaning that I meant that natives were more competent than members on the Opposition Benches. I may say this, that I had not the slightest thought of including members either on the opposite side of the House, or on this side of the House, but I will say this, that I am definitely of opinion that there are many natives who in intellect and other respects are far superior to many of our own race, unfortunately.

That goes for your side.

I might almost, after that interjection, include the hon. member in that category. I might perhaps also include myself in that category. Unfortunately, we are so hide-bound and prejudiced by colour feelings that because a man’s skin is black we cannot credit him with intellect. There are many men with black skins who intellectually are far superior to hosts of white people. That cannot be denied. And when I say that, I also say this, that even among ourselves here there are some of us who are inferior in intelligence to many men with black skins.

You speak for yourself.

It is regrettable that the Afrikaans speaking people in the year 1942 still have to come and plead here for equal language rights when we are dealing with people who are appointed by the Government and who have to act in the interest of the population of the country, and that members like the hon. member for Port Elizabeth, Central (Col. Wares) can come and tell us that it is unnecessary to appoint bilingual people to such Boards. We are urging that the members of these Control Boards be bilingual. We want them to be able to understand both official languages of the country, and we want them to be able to make themselves understood in those languages. Surely it must be clear that a request of that kind is a reasonable request and that it is no more than an act of goodwill to the Afrikaners in this country to agree to the amendment which has been proposed. It is clear to every one of us that those people who are called on to carry out that duty will be better able to do their work if they are really bilingual. We are going through times of great tension between the Afrikaans speaking and English speaking sections of the country, days of tension such as we have perhaps never had before. We have two nations here who have been called to live together in this country. This war will pass and we shall have to live together again after the war, but the Afrikaans speaking section of the community is in this position today, that it continually feels that a policy of pinpricks is being practised against it. It is continually subjected to pinpricks, and it has been irritated almost beyond endurance. We feel that we have been treated like strangers in our own country. There is not a single young man in this country of any ability who in these days, if he puts himself out, cannot be thoroughly bilingual—if only he wants to be. If a man puts himself out to become bilingual, and if he cannot succeed in becoming bilingual in times like the present, there must be something wrong with his intelligence, and he cannot be a fit person to serve on a Control Board. I am not casting any personal reflections on the Minister, he probably came to this country when he was well on in years, and we know that when a person has reached a certain age it is not so easy to learn the second language, but we ask the Minister, although he is unilingual, to accept this amendment and to meet the wishes of this side of the House. Our request is not an unfair one. The Minister himself must realise that a bilingual Control Board will give more satisfaction in its work, and will be able to do its work better, to the satisfaction of everybody concerned with it, than a unilingual Board. There is another matter I want to touch upon and it is this, that our Afrikaners resent it when people get up in this House to speak for our rights as Afrikaans speaking men, and are met with remarks about the native and the native’s language. It is going very far, and if English speaking members opposite continually take up the attitude when we as Afrikaners put our demands, to mention the natives’ language, then I tell them that if they never want to see co-operation again between the English speaking and the Afrikaans speaking sections of the population, all they have to do is to continue that line of policy. If that is their attitude, let them throw down the gauntlet, and let them realise that they are going to turn our future into a veritable hell. I resent it, and members on this side resent it, if members opposite get up and make remarks like that while Ministers sit and smile. If there is one thing which shows bad taste it is that kind of thing. It is the duty of Ministers to get up here, when members opposite make remarks of that kind against the Afrikaans speaking section, and to stop them, and prevent them from doing so. But instead of doing that they stay in their seats and smile and show their approval when members proclaim such doctrines. Those hon. members should realise that remarks about the natives and about the native language, when we are standing up for the rights of the Afrikaner, can have no other effect but to rile us on this side, and if they go on in that way we shall eventually get to this position, that people will be stirred up into committing ill considered acts. I regard myself as a man who is not easily stirred into doing anything irrational. But when we come here and we plead the interest of the Afrikaner it is a disgrace for hon. members opposite to continually make remarks about the native and the native’s language, even if those remarks are only made by way of interjections. I am making an appeal to the Minister to meet us on this matter. We are not asking the Minister to appoint only Afrikaans speaking people. All we ask is that the men he appoints shall be bilingual insofar as they are conversant with the two official languages of the country. It is not an unreasonable request. Show your goodwill. Make a concession to this side of the House and give an undertaking that you will appoint bilingual people.

In regard to the amendment which I moved, that will do away with the Minister’s objections. I want to say a few words about the amendment of the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) providing that members appointed to this Control Board shall be completely bilingual. It is our intention to move a similar amendment on the Report stage in regard to the Rents Board themselves. In spite of what the Minister said, this is an essential provision in regard to members of any Government Board. Now the position is this: We intend moving, as stated by the hon. member for Colesberg (Mr. Boltman), that the parties concerned will be enabled to be present personally or their representatives when appeals by them are submitted to the Control Board. In other words, that they will be able to argue their own appeals or do so through their representatives. I think it is unnecessary for me to enlarge very much on the necessity of any body or Board which has to act as a Board of Appeal being able to take evidence and giving decisions after having heard the evidence. Now it is essential that the members of such Boards should be completely bilingual. Hon. members have seen how difficult it is for the Minister of Labour to follow arguments from this side of the House delivered in Afrikaans. However efficient an interpreter may be, the Minister can never get the real gist of the argument through an interpretation. You must of necessity be able thoroughly to understand the other man’s language, and we, even in this year of grace, 1942, are compelled to speak in English to enable the Minister fully to understand what we are driving at. That should not be necessary. We find it in our courts of law that it is essential that any judge or magistrate should be fully bilingual. He cannot understand the point of view of any person appearing before him unless he can understand the language of that particular person. It is just as essential in regard to the Control Board. And surely in regard to the Minister’s choice, he does not want the House to believe that the only people who would be completely efficient and who will have the necessary integrity— will be these people who are of necessity not bilingual. Large numbers of people in this country today are completely bilingual. Now, coming back to my amendment. Strangely enough, the hon. Minister is not desirous of giving that class whom he pretends to protect and speak for, representation on this most important Board. The people whom this Bill pretends to protect, namely, the tenants, are in the majority of cases working men, and I contend that they should have some say and some representation on these Boards. The Minister refuses to give them that representation. I fail to see why. He has always been most anxious in the past in regard to any Board appointed by the Government to have trade union representation on it. He has always been anxious to give the workers representation, and now, strangely enough, in spite of the fact that this is supposed to be a tenant’s protection Bill, he refuses to give the tenants representation on that Board. He has failed to give any reason. He says in regard to Rent Boards that he usually consults the trade unions about the appointment of members, and I take it he accepts their recommendations. Now, when it comes to this most important Board in the whole machinery of this Act, the Board which must not only control, but must give directions to the Rent Boards, he refuses to appoint representatives of the workers. The Minister has probably advanced far from the day when he sat on these Benches and pleaded the rights of the workers. Today he refuses to give them representation. I think this will be a shock to the trade unions and to the workers.

They won’t fall.

I have shown on many occasions how little the Minister sympathises with the workers. He still talks about them, but when it comes down to tin tacks, when he has to show his sympathy in concrete form, we always find the Minister wanting. He does not give them their rights. We have had many instances. We have consistently pleaded for the rights of the workers, and consistently the Minister has refused to accept our pleas and our recommendations, and still he pretends to speak for the workers and to act on their behalf. Now he has the opportunity of showing it in concrete form. Here is the Board which must decide matters of vital importance to the workers, the workers who are tenants of houses. Surely he should give them some say, so that their point of view can also be placed before the Control Board, and so that they can also have a member on that Board who will not only look after their interests, but who will have sympathy for them. I can repeat the same argument in regard to the owners of property. The Minister says: “Where do I get a representative who is a small owner and has a wide knowledge?” That is a fatuous remark. It is not necessary to be a big owner for a man to have a knowledge of property. I gave the instance of a sworn appraiser who may have only one property, but has an extensive knowledge of values, because it is his business to have such knowledge. Then the Minister said about members of the legal profession being on the Board: “Why is it necessary that a man should have a class-room training to be a good chairman of the Board?’’ No, he need not have a classroom training, but he should have a legal training. The Minister says he wants men of ability and integrity; by implication he says that a member of the legal profession has no ability and has no integrity. Well, I leave it to the legal profession to deal with the Minister. The Minister practically said that only outside the legal profession could he find men of ability and integrity. The Minister has kept this Bill back for almost two days. He is obstructing the passage of his own Bill. We can come to only one conclusion, and that is that he is not anxious to get this Bill through. He only wants the opportunity of saying: “I did my best; I could not get it through.” If he was anxious to get this Bill on the Statute Book he would be willing to accept constructive amendments from this side of the House.

I do appeal to hon. members when they are trying to criticise someone else, especially myself, to pay some regard to the verities. The hon. member—I don’t know whether he was conscious or unconscious in his criticism of my reply, completely misrepresented the position. He tried to give the impression that I had said that inside the legal profession I could not find men of ability and integrity.

We don’t mind if you say it.

I never said anything of the sort. What I said was that I did not want to be bound to the legal profession. That is what his amendment means, that I must be bound to the legal profession, and indeed he wants me to be bound to another profession too as to the qualifications of one other member of the Board. I am to appoint a legal man, I am to appoint valuators, I am to appoint tenants, but I do not want to be bound to do it, because by doing so the area of choice is very small indeed, or comparatively small, much smaller than it would be if I had the whole wide world to choose from. So I do ask my hon. friend to rise to the heights he did the other day in criticising. It is one thing to criticise fairly and another to criticise unfairly. I never said anything which the hon. member tries to make out I did. He should be glad indeed if I am failing to meet the points which he claims, namely to serve the interests of the people, the interests of the workers, of the tenants and of the trade unionists. He should be delighted seeing that he essays to get a position where he will be regarded as the sole representative of the working class outlook in this House. He says again—it is an insinuation in a particular direction—he says he can only come to the conclusion that I want so to delay this Bill that it will not have passage. On the contrary, I want to announce that this Committee stage has to go through today if we are to sit all night to do it.

The Prime Minister promised that we would not sit tonight.

Promised you what?—That you could go off at 6? So that you could hang up this Bill? Now the murder is out. They are deliberately delaying this.

The hon. Minister cannot say that hon. members are deliberately delaying it.

Well, shall I say that hon. members are so discussing it that they will hang the Bill up till 6 o’clock—but there was no guarantee given of 6 o’clock, and let me tell hon. members that if they are anxious to see this Bill through they will agree not to extend their criticism in the fashion they are doing, that they will help to get the Bill through. Now may I deal with the bilingual question. Hon. members say it is essential to have this bilingual provision and they tell us that they are going to introduce an amendment at the Committee stage by which the contesting parties will be allowed to appear before the Appeal Board. I am going to resist that amendment, because it is not in the interest of the tenants, because the tenants cannot afford to go there, and they cannot afford to get legal representation there in the vast majority of cases.

Well, then give it io them for nothing.

So in all probability that amendment will not be carried, so from that point of view bilingualism is not necessary.

What about the records?

They are translated, whether you like it or not. And the hon. member would be one of the first to object if they were not.

Why should they be? Get people who are bilingual.

For record purposes every record is to be translated. If a record is in English it will be translated into Afrikaans, and if it is in Afrikaans it is to be translated into English.

It is quite unnecessary; you can have it in one language one time and the other language the next time.

My hon. friend will also kick up a row if he finds that done. The position is that anyone who wants to see the record can come and see it in his own language, and that is what is going to be done. They are to be translated. I have a case before me at the moment where that necessity has proved itself, the necessity of having a translation into the other language. It is not necessary to have bilingual people on these Boards, and it is not necessary to put that in the Act. If you impose the necessity on the Rent Boards for all the members to be bilingual it is going to mean a great restriction on a very large section of the Afrikaners.

Why talk nonsense?

Yes, in the rural districts there are very large numbers of Afrikaners who are not fully bilingual.

You can talk nonsense, can’t you?

It is not nonsense, I have come across it and so has the hon. member. And you are going to make it impossible for me to appoint men of that calibre because they cannot speak English properly.

That is a bogey.

I am eternally grateful to hon. members over there who recognise my personal disability and speak in English, and it is evidence of their tremendous courtesy. I appreciate it to the full. But what is the object of tins Bill but to protect the tenants and give them the best opportunity of being protected, and that is not to be done in the fashion in which hon. members over there are dealing with this Bill. I say that a very large number of the tenants are Afrikaners, and if in the rural areas only bilingual people can be appointed to the Rent Board, it is going to be quite impossible for those people—for a very large number of them—to be put on, I know that that is so. There are many people who do not speak English. I cannot accept this amendment.

I completely fail to understand the Minister’s argument. Ours is a bilingual country. The principle of bilingualism has been adopted, and now this side of the House puts a reasonable request to the Minister asking him to accept an amendment that the members of the Control Board shall be bilingual. The Minister’s reply is that in the platteland dorps and towns there will be Afrikaans speaking people who cannot speak English and that he would not be able, if this amendment were accepted, to appoint those people to the Rent Boards. What nonsense is that? I can tell the hon. the Minister that he will not find two or three people in the platteland towns who are unable to speak English. I throw out that challenge to him. Most of the people in the platteland towns are Afrikaans speaking, but they are bilingual. What objection can the Minister have to the principle that the Control Boards shall be bilingual? No, if the Minister wants to convince us he should produce very different arguments. If he can convince us that his difficulty is really a practical difficulty, we shall be prepared to accept his argument, but the argument he has adduced does not hold water and we cannot accept it.

The Minister got up here and took up a defiant attitude and told us that this Bill had to be passed before 6 o’clock, or otherwise we would have to sit the whole night. We are not afraid of a night sitting, we don’t mind a bit. We accept the Minister’s challenge because he cannot expect us to give proper consideration to all these clauses before 6 o’clock. The Minister told us that he could not accept this amendment about bilingualism. Why not? After thirty-two years of Union the Afrikaans speaking section still have to continually beg the Government to appoint bilingual people on Government Boards. We are tired of having to come to the Government hat in hand to ask for the appointment of bilingual people. We are entitled to have bilingual officials to attend to the public, and it is not our fault if those people are too miserable and have not the intelligence to learn the second language. The Minister’s argument does not hold water at all. We have enough bilingual Afrikaans speaking people to take office on such Boards and we are not asking for, we don’t want, unilingual Afrikaans speaking people on those Boards. That excuse of the Minister’s is not an excuse at all. The Minister went further and said: “I cannot accept that principle, I am not going to be tied down to appoint people to this Board—I am not going to be compelled to appoint people representing the working classes.” He wants a free hand. Let me ask the Minister this: Has he been asleep all those years while we were passing laws here like the Marketing Act in which provision is made for the various sections to be represented on the Marketing Board, sections such as the traders, the consumers and so on? This principle we are proposing here is not a new principle at all, it is a principle which was accepted by this House years ago, and I do not believe the Minister voted against it when it was accepted. Now it does not suit his purpose. There are certain people he wants to appoint, and that is why he tells us that a new principle is being introduced by the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. B. J. Schoeman). He is simply looking for excuses. I tell him that we on this side are prepared to fight this question until 6 o’clock, and the whole night, and next week as well. If he challenges us he must not imagine that we on this side are afraid.

We are not scared of the Government’s big majority. If they want to fight, and if they refuse to listen to the arguments we put forward, then we accept their challenge, and the Government will have to sit longer here than it imagines it will have to sit. I say that we are going to fight every clause, and the Minister will have to apply the guillotine, but we are going to show the people outside that the Minister’s socalled justice is nothing but injustice. Apart from this matter he wants to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. I think the Minister is adopting the wrong attitude and we cannot possibly abide by it.

I wish to remove a possible misunderstanding. First of all there is no question of the House sitting after five minutes to eleven tonight. The ordinary rules are applicable, and as those rules have not been suspended we shall naturally have to adjourn at 10.55 tonight if we don’t adjourn before that time. The ordinary rule is applicable to today’s sitting, and if we continue after 6 o’clock this evening and meet again at 8 o’clock we shall rise at five minutes to eleven, unless the House decides to adjourn earlier. Reference has been made to the Prime Minister’s promise. The Prime Minister made no promise. He said this—

There was no promise; we are dealing with a Bill here which has been discussed for a full day already, when only two clauses were disposed of, and we are now dealing with the third clause. We spent an hour and three-quarters on this clause this morning, and now again another three-quarters of an hour, and the Opposition has now told us that it is going to fight every clause, and that it is practically going to compel the Government—I don’t know whether I misunderstood my hon. friend or not—to apply the guillotine for every clause.

You are challenging us.

If that is the position then I can only say that the hope which the Prime Minister expressed in his speech will not be realised, and that it will not be possible to adjourn at 6 o’clock.

I only want to say this to the Minister. It is true that no promise was made in the narrow sense of the word, but the impression was created by the Prime Minister’s words, and that is how we took it, that the House would not sit tonight. Hon. members have already made their arrangements not to sit, going on the Prime Minister’s words. The Prime Minister applied the usual form. He did not say that we would not sit, but that he hoped we would not sit. We have the right, therefore, to take it that we shall not sit. If the Minister of Finance now wants to explain the assurance given by the Prime Minister as meaning something else, we shall in future not be able to accept the Prime Minister’s word. The Prime Minister did not lay down any conditions. We relied on the assurance given by the Prime Minister. I hope the Minister of Finance is not going to compel us to say that it was a deception (verneukery). We don’t want to doubt the Prime Minister’s word, but if he goes back on his promise on account of some Bill or other not having progressed as well as the Minister of Finance had expected, then it is nothing short of deception. We have a measure before us, the different clauses of which we want to contest, and now the Minister of Finance comes here and tells us that because certain clauses have not been passed we have to sit tonight. No conditions were put by the Prime Minister, none whatsoever. The Prime Minister could have said, if he had wanted to, that certain work must be disposed of if we wanted to adjourn at 6 o’clock, but no such condition was made. I hope the Prime Minister will not commit a breach of faith because that is what it will amount to.

The Minister has told us that he is not prepared to accept the amendment with regard to bilingualism. The Minister’s objection to that is that the scope of his election is thereby narrowed down. That is his objection. I now want to deal with his objection that we are making it difficult for the Afrikaans speaking portion of the population because there are Afrikaans speaking people who are not bilingual. I can assure the hon. Minister that he need not worry about that at all.

You have some in the House.

Mention the name of one hon. member in this House who cannot speak English.

You cannot; they are all bilingual.

The Minister’s argument does not hold any water. I do not think he seriously expects us to accept them as arguments.

I do not expect you to accept anything.

I am sorry that the hon. Minister has made a threat, and the threat amounts to this, that if we do not finish this Bill by six o’clock we will be made to sit right through the night. One does not expect to hear arguments of that sort from a responsible Minister of the Crown.

That arose out of your challenge to me. I did not want to pass it.

Whatever it arose out of, we do not expect the hon. Minister to use an argument of that sort.

Why not?

Well, if it is necessary to sit here for a whole night or fourteen days for that matter, we are prepared to do so; it is our duty. We are not afraid of that threat to speak because the threat is there, but I object to it because it comes from the hon. Minister.

He is not responsible.

I would not like to say that he is not responsible, but I think he has got into such a narrow track that one cannot throw him out with a charge of dynamite. It is quite a reasonable request that these members should be bilingual. If a member is not bilingual to sit on a Board of that description. It is a Board to which applications are made by both English and Afrikaans speaking people, and therefore the members should be bilingual.

But the law does not say that they should be bilingual.

For heaven’s sake, will that hon. member please keep his silence? The position is that the Minister is simply pig-headed and obstinate. I say again that I see the names of the members of the Rent Boards in the Gazette only, but it seems to me that everyone of them is English.

Which Boards?

The Rent Boards.

Nothing of the sort. Take Pretoria or Cape Town as an example.

You have a right to reply. You can say what you want to them. The Minister’s objection is that it narrows down his choice, and he is afraid that it might injure the Afrikaans speaking section of the people, but I repeat, the Minister need not worry about that. It will not do them an injury. The man who speaks Afrikaans only is not a man you will put on the Board. You cannot give me the name of a single unilingual Afrikaans speaking person on these Boards today. There is nothing one can advance against the argument that these members should be bilingual. Now you come along and you appoint people who are remunerated by the State for their work; they are really State employees, and you want the right to select people who are unilingual. I object. There can only be one reason for the Minister’s refusal to accept this amendment, and that is because he wants to put unilingual people on this Board, and they are to be English unilingual people. Everyone knows that one cannot interpret a clause as well from a translation as one can from the original. We see that in Parliament every day. A Bill is drawn up in English and translated into Afrikaans, and what a mess it is. One notices every year that the Afrikaans translations become worse and worse, and if they had their chance they would simply draw up proclamations in English. When members on this side read an Afrikaans proclamation, the majority of them cannot recognise it as Afrikaans. We are in duty bound to ask that the members of this Board should be bilingual. We insist that they should be bilingual, and if the Minister will not agree to that amendment, we say that he is doing an injustice to the Afrikaans speaking portion of the population, and the position is simply this: In a Bill of this sort you do not want political troubles, but I would like to assure the hon. Minister that this refusal on his part to accept this amendment will be used against him; it will be shown to the Afrikaans speaking people that here you have a Government which is prepared to put through a Bill and to constitute a Board, the members of whom are to be unilingual. We insist that this amendment should be accepted in order to give the English speaking people a break; we do not want to have it said that the English are so unfair because the Minister refuses to accept this amendment. I want the Minister to understand what we consider is the result of his refusal to accept this amendment. Once I have made that plain he can do as he likes, but he will be answerable. I for one will tell my electorate that this Minister is not prepared to have bilingual people on the Board, and what can they expect from a Minister and a Government of that kind?

The Minister of Labour is in the unfortunate position that he is still unilingual, and I feel that the greatest disservice the Minister can do unto himself and to the country is to let the idea go forth from him that bilingualism is not needed in this country. The Minister has to beware of that. It will be unfortunate if the idea gets abroad in the country that the Minister does not realise the necessity of people occupying public offices being bilingual. The Minister, who is unilingual, must not create the impression that he regards bilingualism in this country as something unnecessary. It is a very risky thing to do. Without wanting to be in any way personal, I want to tell the Minister that to my mind a unilingual person, whether he be Afrikaans unilingual or English unilingual, is only half a citizen of this country. And I further want to tell the Minister that unilingualism in this country has been the cause of all the racial misunderstanding we have had. If we can achieve a position whereby all the citizens of this country will be bilingual, most of these misunderstandings existing between the races in South Africa will disappear. In order to remove that misconception, the Minister should be reasonable and recognise the necessity of the Boards being bilingual. I think the Minister is making a very serious mistake by adopting a stubborn attitude. He is the very last man to protect unilingualism, as he himself is unilingual. I want the Minister to give this question his serious attention. The demand we are making is a very reasonable one. I am not asking for unilingual Afrikaans speaking people to be appointed on those Boards, I am only saying that if the members of the Board are bilingual they will be able to function properly, and there will be a sound spirit of co-operation. I want to ask the Minister to reconsider the whole matter.

Nobody I am sure would have expected the Minister to have adopted this threatening attitude. I certainly never thought that he would adopt such an unreasonable attitude towards the second official language. I want to give him this credit, that he and his department are not the only ones to sin in this connection. Only this morning before the Select Committee on irrigation matters I required a report …

The hon. member cannot go into that now.

I only want to mention it as an example. I needed a report from the Irrigation Commission this morning in regard to a certain scheme—I needed it for a witness who appeared before the Committee and who had not yet had an opportunity of reading the report. I was unable to get an Afrikaans copy of the report, I could only get it in English. How is it possible for things like that to prevail in South Africa after we have had thirty years of Union? It seems impossible. I challenge the Minister to mention one Afrikaans official who is not bilingual. We Afrikaans are all bilingual, and even on the platteland one gets very few people who are not bilingual, but hon. members have been here all these years, they have had all their heads of departments here for all those years, and they have failed to see to it that these matters are put right. How do they expect to get unity among the people if they carry on in this way? How can they expect unity if they show contempt for the language of the other section?

I don’t intend speaking on this clause, but the hon. member who has just sat down dragged in another department in order to strengthen his argument in order to prove that this country was steadily falling back on English. I am also a member of the Select Committee on irrigation matters and it is pure nonsense for the hon. member for Ceres (Mr. J. J. M. van Zyl) to say that he could get a certain report only in English. I had my report in Afrikaans, and if the hon. member for Ceres got the report in English from the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren), it proves that the hon. member for Swellendam does not respect his own language. Why did he not ask for the report in Afrikaans? There is another member, an Afrikaans speaking member on the other side of the House, who is a member of the Select Committee, and he should also have the report in Afrikaans. If they have not got it it is their own fault. The argument can be used against them that they don’t read their own language and that they prefer to get their reports in English.

I have been waiting here to see whether one of the Afrikaans speaking members on the other side would get up to say something on this question. To my astonishment the hon. member for Rustenburg (Mr. J. M. Conradie) got up and supported the attitude of the Minister of Defence.

Not at all.

No, he did not have the courage. Rather let me say that he made some general remarks, and that he put up a general defence for the Minister of Labour. I doubt whether he would have the courage to get up and say that the Minister had adopted the wrong attitude. He will not do so, and the same applies to the Minister of Finance. He got up but he did not make a single attempt to try and deal with the case on its merits. He only talked of what would happen if we did not get on with the work. He did not take up a stand against the Minister of Labour. I am convinced that the Minister of Finance does not approve of the attitude adopted by the Minister of Labour, nor does the hon. member for Rustenburg. The position simply is this, that we are dealing with a fundamental matter here, and this is not the first time a question like this has been raised here. We have been fighting for our rights for the past thirty or forty years, and surely after forty years one would have expected the senior officials of the State to be able to attend to both sections of the community. One would have expected them to be bilingual. Imagine, in 1942, thirty-two years after Union, we have a Minister getting up here and taking up the attitude that it is not essential for officials to be bilingual! I can hardly express my surprise at the Minister’s attitude, it is simply scandalous. If the Minister of Labour had used the argument that it was laid down in the Act of Union that everybody must be bilingual and that it was therefore not necessary to make such a provision in this Bill one might have felt that there was something in his attitude, but that is not what the Minister said. The hon. member who moved this amendment was quite right in doing so. If we had had the previous Government in power, or if the old Nationalist Party Government had been in power, it would perhaps not have been so essential to provide in a particular law that members of those Boards must definitely be bilingual, because the previous Government would have seen to it that the Minister responsible for the particular department maintained bilingualism, but we have no confidence whatsoever in the Minister of Labour so far as that matter is concerned. He proved this afternoon that we cannot trust him. He said that he would not be able to find suitable people who were bilingual. I feel that this matter goes very deep and I make an appeal to Afrikaans speaking members on the other side of the House. There is nothing unreasonable in the amendment which has been proposed. Can hon. members imagine that at this stage, at this stage of the country’s development, we still have to insist on members of such Boards being bilingual? It seems too ridiculous. Yet, judging from the Minister’s attitude it seems to be necessary. It also shows the spirit animating this Government. They don’t care; they don’t care whether the policy of bilingualism is applied or not. There is not the slightest doubt that the application of the policy of bilingualism today is no longer what it was a few years ago. There has been a tremendous amount of laxity, there has been a tremendous slackening off in the Public Service. A friend of mine only this morning told me that he wanted to put through a longdistance call. He asked for his call in Afrikaans but he could not get a reply in Afrikaans. That is the kind of thing you find today. If we have to insist today on such provision being made in the Bill before the House then hon. members opposite are themselves responsible for it. It is their policy which forces us to insist.

If anybody had told me that it would be necessary to advocate in this House at this stage that members of Control Boards and Rent Boards must be bilingual I would not have believed it. I am surprised and I think the whole country will be surprised that today, after about forty years of Union, forty years after the foundation of bilingualism was laid in South Africa, it should still be necessary to take up the time of this House to plead for that principle to be applied in respect of Boards of Control. We have had two arguments from the Minister of Labour why he cannot accept the amendment. The one argument is that there are not sufficient Afrikaans speaking people who are bilingual, so that the Minister’s choice among the Afrikaans speaking people would be restricted. I think I can repeat what the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) has said, that the Minister need not worry his head about that. We, at any rate, don’t worry. The Minister need not trouble about the few Afrikaans speaking people who are not bilingual and who do not know sufficient English. Large numbers of Afrikaners are bilingual and they are quite competent to serve on those Boards. The other argument used by the Minister was: “What about the natives?” If it had been necessary for the native language also to have been one of the official languages of the country the fathers of the Act of Union would in 1910 have made provision in the Act of Union for the native language to have been proclaimed as an official language. And if in 1910 they had proclaimed the native language as one of the official languages of this country I would not have objected to the third official language being taken into account. A third reason adduced as to why it was unnecessary to support the amendment of the hon. member for Swellendam was that the Minister himself, with his personal experience —unfortunately he is unilingual—should be the last not to uphold bilingualism. He should not appoint anyone to a Board unless that person is bilingual. The Minister should be very careful. He himself is not bilingual. Why should he go to the extent of placing other people in responsible positions in the awkward dilemma in which he finds himself? The Minister should not adopt that attitude and I hope he will yet listen to our reasonable request.

The argument which the hon. the Minister has adduced, that there will be Afrikaans speaking people who are not bilingual and that he will thereby be restricted in his choice, really does not hold water. Surely Afrikaans speaking people who are not bilingual do not belong to the class of people whom he will want to appoint to Boards of Control. But for argument’s sake let us assume that there are such people. That shows the difference between the Afrikaans speaking people and many of the English speaking people in the country. We have never yet demanded from the English speaking section what we as Afrikaans speaking people are not prepared to do ourselves. We say that if there are Afrikaans speaking people who are not bilingual then they should not serve on Control Boards. The Afrikaans speaking people are prepared to make that offer. Let our English speaking friends be big enough on their part to make the same offer and to say that if an English speaking person is not bilingual he shall not serve on such a Board. I again want to make a serious appeal to the Minister, and I want to ask him to give in on this point. It takes a big man, not a small man, to admit that he is wrong. Let the Minister be man enough to give in and say that he has made a mistake in not drafting the clause in the spirit of this amendment. Let him say that he is prepared to admit that he has made a mistake. I want to admit that I made a mistake. I said earlier on that if a young man is not bilingual there must be something wrong with his brain, and I excluded the Minister. I was wrong, and I want to admit it openly in this House.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. the Minister of Finance stood up in righteous wrath and told the House that in view of the challenge by the hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Gen. Kemp), we will have to remain here until 11 o’clock. It is a pity he did not address his remarks to his colleague, the Minister of Labour. I think it would have been more appropriate. I accused the hon. the Minister of Labour of deliberately delaying the passage of this Bill, and I repeat that accusation. I think every member of this House will admit that the amendments moved by hon. members on this side have been constructive amendments, and there has been no indication of deliberate obstruction to the passage of the Bill. Through the obstinacy, I would almost say pig-headedness of the Minister, this length of time has been taken in discussion of the various clauses. The Minister threatened us that if we want the Bill through it will have to go through by 6 o’clock, or we will remain here tonight. Let me tell the Minister it is a pity that he is again rapidly reaching the level on which he usually finds himself. We are quite prepared to sit tonight and tomorrow if necessary in discussing this Bill. We are here to endeavour to serve the interests of the public and those whom we represent, and we cannot sacrifice our duty to our leisure. If we consider it is necessary that important amendments should be moved we will move them and discuss them. It is remarkable that the closure has not been moved yet; if there has been any unnecessary obstruction, that would have been done long ago. I can assure the Minister we have no intention of deliberately obstructing the Bill, but we are going to examine every clause minutely, and where necessary we are going to move amendments, and we are going to be as persistent as the Minister is in refusing to accept them.

Is that not your ordinary reaction to legislation?

Hon. members on the other side seem to be under the impression that any social legislation which is a step in the right direction, and which comes before this House must be accepted with acclamation and not be criticised. Mr. Chairman, that is not going to happen. This Rent Bill is necessary, yes, but it is only necessary if it is a decent Bill and a good Bill. As it is now, it is not acceptable. If the Minister wants to put it through by 6 o’clock let him be reasonable and be prepared to accept constructive and reasonable amendments. No amendment has been moved that is not reasonable. If he is prepared to accept them, very well; this Bill will have a very easy passage, but if he merely sits tight, well, we can be as persistent as he is. He thinks he is right, and we think we are right, and we must go on trying to persuade each other.

I move—

Upon which the Committee divided:

Ayes—54:

Abrabamson, H.

Alexander, M.

Allen, F. B.

Ballinger, V. M. L.

Bawden, W.

Bell, R. E.

Blackwell, L.

Bowen, R. W.

Bowie, J. A.

Bowker, T. B.

Christopher, R. M.

Clark, C. W.

Conradie, J. M.

Deane, W. A.

De Wet, H. C.

Du Toit, R. J.

Fourie, J. P.

Friedlander, A.

Gilson, L. D.

Gluckman, H.

Hare, W. D.

Hayward, G. N.

Heyns, G. C. S.

Hirsch, J. G.

Hofmeyr, J. H.

Hooper, E. C.

Howarth, F. T.

Humphreys, W. B.

Jackson, D.

Johnson, H. A.

Lawrence, H. G.

Long, B. K.

Madeley, W. B.

Miles-Cadman, C. F.

Molteno, D. B.

Mushet, J. W.

Neate, C.

Pocock, P. V.

Quinlan, S. C.

Reitz, L. A. B.

Shearer, V. L.

Smuts, J. C.

Sonnenberg, M.

Sturrock, F. C.

Stuttaford, R.

Trollip, A. E.

Van Coller, C. M.

Van den Berg, M.

Van der Byl, P. V. G.

Wallach, I.

Wares. A. P. J.

Warren, C. M.

Tellers: G. A. Friend and J. W. Higgerty.

Noes—33;

Bekker, G.

Bekker, S.

Boltman, F. H.

Bosman, P. J.

Brits, G. P.

Conroy, E. A.

De Bruyn, D. A. S.

Dönges, T. E.

Du Plessis, P. J.

Erasmus, F. C.

Fouche, J. J.

Fullard, G. J.

Grobler, J. H.

Hugo, P. J.

Kemp, J. C. G.

Labuschagne, J. S.

Loubser, S. M.

Pieterse, P. W. A.

Rooth, E. A.

Schoeman, B. J.

Serfontein, J. J.

Steyn, G. P.

Strydom, G. H. F.

Swart, C. R.

Verster, J. D. H.

Viljoen, D. T. du P.

Viljoen, J. H.

Vosloo, L. J.

Warren, S. E.

Wentzel, J. J.

Werth, A. J.

Tellers: J. F. T. Naudé and P. O. Sauer.

Motion accordingly agreed to.

Question put: That the word “control” in line 39, proposed to be omitted, stand part of the Clause.

Upon which the Committee divided:

Ayes—54:

Abrahamson, H.

Alexander, M.

Allen, F. B.

Ballinger, V. M.

Bawden, W.

Bell, R. E.

Blackwell, L.

Bowen, R. W.

Bowie, J. A.

Bowker, T. B.

Christopher, R. M. Neate, C.

Clark, C. W.

Conradie. J. M.

Deane, W. A.

De Wet, H. C.

Du Toit, R. J.

Fourie, J. P.

Friedlander, A.

Gilson, L. D.

Gluckman, H.

Hare, W. D.

Hayward, G. N.

Heyns, G. C. S.

Hirsch. J. G.

Hofmeyr, J. H.

Hooper, E. C.

Howarth, F. T.

Humphreys, W. B.

Jackson, D.

L. Johnson, H. A.

Lawrence, H. G.

Long, B. K.

Madeley, W. B.

Miles-Cadman, C. F.

Molteno, D. B.

Mushet, J. W.

Pocock, P. V.

Quinlan, S. C.

Reitz, L. A. B.

Shearer, V. L.

Smuts, J. C.

Sonnenberg, M.

Sturrock, F. C.

Stuttaford, R.

Trollip, A. E.

Van Coller, C. M.

Van den Berg, M. J.

Van der Byl, P. V. G.

Wallach, I.

Wares, A. P. J.

Warren, C. M.

Tellers: G. A. Friend and J. W. Higgerty.

Noes—31:

Bekker, G.

Bekker, S.

Boltman, F. H.

Bosman, P. J.

Brits, G. P.

Conroy, E. A.

De Bruyn, D. A. S.

Dönges, T. E.

Du Plessis, P. J.

Erasmus, F. C.

Fouche, J. J.

Fullard, G. J.

Grobler, J. H.

Hugo, P. J.

Kemp, J. C. G.

Labuschagne, J. S.

Loubser, S. M.

Pieterse, P. W. A.

Rooth, E. A.

Schoeman, B. J.

Serfontein, J. J.

Steyn, G. P.

Strydom, G. H. F.

Swart, C. R.

Verster, J. D. H.

Viljoen, D. T. du P.

Viljoen, J. H.

Vosloo, L. J.

Werth, A. J.

Tellers: J. F. T. Naudé and S. E. Warren.

Question accordingly affirmed and the first part of the amendment proposed by Mr. S. E. Warren dropped.

Second part of the amendment proposed by Mr. S. E. Warren put and the Committee divided:

Ayes—31:

Bekker, G.

Bekker, S.

Boltman, F. H.

Bosman, P. J.

Brits, G. P.

Conroy, E. A.

De Bruyn, D. A. S.

Dönges, T. E.

Du Plessis, P. J.

Erasmus, F. C.

Fouche, J. J.

Fullard, G. J.

Hugo, P. J.

Kemp, J. C. G.

Labuschagne, J. S.

Loubser, S. M.

Pieterse, P. W. A.

Rooth, E. A.

Schoeman, B. J.

Serfontein, J. J.

Steyn, G. P.

Strydom, G. H. F.

Swart, C. R.

Verster, J. D. H.

Viljoen, D. T. du P.

Vosloo, L. J.

Warren, S. E.

Wentzel, J. J.

Werth, A. J.

Tellers: J. F. T. Naudé and J. H. Viljoen.

Noes—53:

Abrahamson, H.

Alexander, M.

Allen, F. B.

Ballinger, V. M. L.

Bawden, W.

Bell, R. E.

Blackwell, L.

Bowen, R. W.

Bowie, J. A.

Bowker, T B.

Christopher, R. M.

Clark, C. W.

Ccnradie, J. M.

Deane, W. A.

De Wet, H. C.

Du Toit, R. J.

Fourie, J. P.

Friedlander, A.

Gilson, L. D.

Gluckman, H.

Hare, W. D.

Hayward, G. N.

Heyns, G. C. S.

Hirsch, J. G.

Hofmeyr, J. H.

Hooper, E. C.

Howarth, F. T.

Humphreys, W. B.

Jackson, D.

Johnson, H. A.

Lawrence, H. G.

Long, B. K.

Madeley, W. B.

Miles-Cadman, C. F.

Molteno, D. B.

Mushet, J. W.

Neate, C.

Pocock, P. V.

Reitz, L. A. B.

Shearer, V. L.

Smuts, J. C.

Sonnenberg, M.

Sturrock, F. C.

Stuttaford, R.

Trollip, A. E.

Van Coller, C. M.

Van den Berg, M. J.

Van der Byl, P. V. G.

Wallach, I.

Wares, A. P. J.

Warren, C. M.

Tellers: G. A. Friend and J. W. Higgerty.

Amendment accordingly negatived.

First part of the amendment proposed by the Minister of Social Welfare put and agreed to.

Amendment proposed by Mr. B. J. Schoeman put and the Committee divided:

Ayes—31:

Bekker, G.

Bekker, S.

Boltman, F. H.

Bosman. P. J.

Brits, G. P.

De Bruyn, D. A. S.

Dönges, T. E.

Du Plessis, P. J.

Erasmus, F. C.

Fouche, J. J.

Fullard, G. J.

Hugo, P. J.

Kemp, J. C. G.

Labuschagne, J. S.

Loubser, S. M.

Pieterse, P. W. A.

Schoeman, B. J.

Serfontein, J. J.

Steyn, G. P.

Strydom, G. H. F.

Swart, C. R.

Van Nierop, P. J.

Verster, J. D. H.

Viljoen, D. T. du P.

Viljoen, J. H.

Vosloo, L. J.

Warren, S. E.

Wentzel, J. J.

Werth, A. J.

Tellers: J. F. T. Naudé and P. O. Sauer.

Noes—53:

Abrahamson, H.

Alexander, M.

Allen, F. B.

Ballinger, V. M. L.

Bawden, W.

Bell, R. E.

Blackwell, L.

Bowen, R. W.

Bowie, J. A.

Bowker, T. B.

Christopher, R. M.

Clark, C. W.

Conradie. J. M.

Deane, W. A.

De Wet, H. C.

Du Toit, R. J.

Fourie, J. P.

Friedlander, A.

Gilson. L. D.

Gluckman, H.

Hare, W. D.

Hayward, G. N.

Heyns, G. C. S.

Hirsch, J. G.

Hofmeyr, J. H.

Hooper, E. C.

Howarth, F. T.

Humphreys, W. B.

Jackson, D.

Johnson, H. A.

Lawrence, H. G.

Long, B. K.

Madeley, W. B.

Miles-Cadman, C. F.

Molteno, D. B.

Mushet, J. W.

Neate, C.

Pocock, P. V.

Reitz, L. A. B.

Shearer, V. L.

Smuts, J. C.

Sonnenberg, M.

Sturrock. F. C.

Stuttaford, R.

Tromp, a. E.

Van Coller, C. M.

Van den Berg, M. J.

Van der Byl, P. V. G.

Wallach, I.

Wares, A. P. J.

Warren, C. M.

Tellers: G. A. Friend and J. W. Higgerty.

In deference to the wishes of hon. members on both sides of the House, and in view of the implied promise by the Prime Minister— and I am hoping, of course, for a quid pro quo —I hope hon. members will help me a little more than they have done today—I move—

May I avail myself of the privilege of speaking for half an hour? I want to confine myself to item L of Vote 29. Item L (3) deals with the Information Bureau. Provision is made there for broadcasting services including teleprinters and radio motor services and so on, to an amount of £10,000, and then an amount of £3,400 is asked for for the manufacture of films and additional expenditure. And a further amount of £300 is asked for for art and photographic displays, including the hire of halls and other additional expenditure. So there is a total of £14,000 under that heading, and that money is spent for propaganda purposes. But on closer investigation it appears that recently a fairly large amount was spent on a propaganda campaign, which is not included in this amount. There is no mention of it under this heading. I want to ask whether it is a fact that the recent advertising campaign cost £29,500 and that that amount was divided as follows: Advertisements in Newspapers, £22,500; Bioscopes, £3 500; Posters, £3,500. I should like to know from the Minister how those items appear. Why is it not shown here? I want to know whether it is perhaps a military secret. Why is it not mentioned here? I also want to know what is the cost of the publication of the periodical “Springbok” up North. It is published in Cairo and I understand that a considerable amount of money is spent on it. There is no provision on this vote for that purpose. It probably comes under the vote of the Minister of the Interior and we should like to know where we have to look for it and what the amount is that has been spent for that purpose. I also want to know whether the character of the news that is published in that paper is only of a propaganda nature, and whether that paper also contains news in regard to local events in South Africa, whether it contains real items of news, or whether it is only propaganda, and whether political items of news are published. If political news items are published then I am anxious to know whether those items are only such items as are beneficial to the Government, or whether political items which can be regarded as fairly impartial are published. This periodical, the “Springbok,” is distributed free of charge among all the troops up North. I want to confine myself more particularly however to a very important matter, namely, the Information Bureau, and what I am going to say here tonight is something which the public outside should know. What I am going to say will be in the nature of an attack on the English Press which apparently is supporting the Government so loyally. The Director of the Information Bureau is a certain A. N. Wilson. I am sorry that I shall be compelled to mention quite a number of names today. A. N. Wilson used to be the private secretary of Mr. John Martin, and Mr. John Martin is the big boss of the Argus Company. He controls the most important part of the English Press in South Africa, the Argus group. Now a Committee has been appointed which practically has to control the Government’s propaganda. That Committee assists the Director of the Information Bureau. This Committee has been appointed by the Government, and the Chairman is the Postmaster-General, but who are the other members of this Committee? One of the members is Mr. E. B. Dawson, editor of the “Sunday Times” and formerly an employee of the Argus Company, of which Mr. Sisson Cooper is the general manager. This Mr. Sisson Cooper is also a member of the Committee—he is the general manager of the Argus Company. Another member is Mr. William Redford, managing director of the South African Advertising Contractors, which is a Schlesinger concern. Those are the four members of the Committee. Ostensibly they are there to act as advisers in regard to the propaganda which the Government has to make in regard to its war effort. In actual fact they have the say in regard to the propaganda which is made by the Government. The Minister is purely an insignificant appendix, he has no control over the Committee, he has to dance to the Committee’s tune, of which the big boss is Mr. Sisson Cooper—the general manager of the Argus Company. We notice therefore that on the one side there are the representatives of the Argus Company’s interests on that Committee, and on the other hand Schlesinger’s interests are represented on it. Now let us see whether those interests display a great deal of patriotism, whether they are really so sacrificing in regard to their services to the Government and the Government’s war effort. Let me analyse their patriotism a little, their sacrifices in support of the war. One of the first recommendations made by that Committee was that the Government must provide £80,000 per year for advertisements. Now it should be remembered that a large amount, the major portion of the amount which is spent in advertisement and propaganda, is spent on papers of which the members of that Committee are the representatives. We have on that Committee the representatives of the Argus group and of Schlesinger’s bioscope interests, in the person of Mr. William Redford. Their first recommendation was that £80,000 should be made available, but even the Minister of Finance was scared by that, and I understand that he reduced it to £40,000 per year. That was the amount allowed to be spent on advertisements and propaganda. I cannot say whether the whole amount was spent, but a large sum was actually spent. An amount of more than £22,000 was spent on the recent campaign. Now that Committee is there to advise the Government on how to make propaganda. They have to advise the Government on the nature of the propaganda that shall be made, how much money is to be spent on advertisements, and at the same time they have a personal interest in the papers and the bioscopes which benefit from the money that is spent. And then that Committee also sees to it that the Information Bureau renders free services to their papers. I want to ask the Minister whether it is a fact that there were no newspaper representatives, and no photographers of the local English papers on the Abyssinian campaign, but that all the work of the Press was done by the Information Bureau? Is it true that the news items and the photographs were supplied by the Information Bureau and that the Government paid for that? Did the Press get the benefit of the work that was done by the Government free of charge while under ordinary circumstances the newspapers would send their own representatives? In regard to the present campaign, I want to ask how many correspondents of local English newspapers there are in Libya, whether there are any correspondents and any photographers of our local English papers in the Western Desert? So far as my information goes it again is the Information Bureau which supplies those services to the newspapers free of charge, that Information Bureau which is controlled by representatives of the English Press in South Africa, by the capitalistic Press and by the bioscope interests. I again want to repeat that the Information Bureau consists of the Director who is the former secretary of Mr. John Martin, the man who is the great Mbongo of the most important English newspaper group; Mr. Sisson Cooper, the general manager of the Argus Company and the actual big boss of the Information Bureau; Mr. William Redford, managing director of the biggest advertising contractors in the country, and Mr. E. B. Dawson, who also used to be connected with the Argus Company? The appointment of such a Committee practically amounts to the same thing as if the Government wants to buy motor cars and if they appoint Henry Ford to advise them as to how many, and what kind, of cars they should buy. The very same thing is happening today in regard to the Information Bureau. A Committee is appointed by the Government to advise them about their propaganda, and about spending money on propaganda, and the Committee which has to advise consists of representatives of those interests which benefit most from the money that is spent. We know that the Press practically speaking is the main cause of the continuous stirring up of sentiments in connection with the war. The Press plays a powerful part in South Africa. We can almost take it that the Press to a large extent is responsible for the war. What the newspapers write is listened to by the people in the country. Today it is particularly the English Press which ostensibly is the loyal supporter of the Government in its war effort. If we look into the question, however, whether concrete proof is actually given by the Press of its patriotism, and whether it shows in actual fact the loyalty and the patriotism which it proclaims, then we find that there is no question of it whatsoever. What we do find is that the representatives of the Press are members of a Committee which has to advise the Government how to spend money for the benefit of their own papers. I want to ask whether a single one of the English newspapers has ever declared its willingness to publish the Government’s war advertisements free of charge? Have they received any pay for these advertisements? Of course, they have, and they have been paid very well, too. I want to ask whether, so far as the Governor-General’s Fund is concerned, they are doing any work free of charge for that fund? That fund, according to the war supporters, should receive most support in South Africa. One would imagine that when such a fund is created the newspapers would be prepared, at least, those which are so loyal, to publish advertisements in connection with that fund, free of charge, but I understand that last year alone £12,000 was paid to the newspapers solely for the inserting of subscription lists of those who had contributed to the Governor-General’s National Fund. And then we should remember that those ultra loyal and patriotic newspapers make bigger profits today than ever before in the whole of their history. If the war profits of the capitalistic Press could be published, it would disillusion the people. How do they make their profits? The newspapers are working today with reduced staffs. There is a large ratio of advertisements to news items than ever before— more advertisements, less news. In addition, there is a curtailment of circulation, without a corresponding reduction of rates. They are not only saving on their staffs, but they are also saving large quantities of paper owing to their having reduced the size of their papers, whereas they keep their advertisements relatively unchanged. That is the position of those papers which display so much loyalty and patriotism. One can come to no other conclusion but that the capitalistic Press have the Government in the hollow of their hand today. A Committee has been appointed to advise the Government, and the representatives of those capitalistic newspapers have all the say on that Committee. The Minister has practically no say. Those war agitators have all the say, and now I ask hon. members, apart from the waste of public money, whether we can ever expect an opportunity of an honourable peace being concluded? Can we ever expect to have the support of the Press in that respect? Of course, not. It is to the interest of those newspapers that the war should continue because they are making larger profits than ever before, and they even see to it that the money which is being spent for war propaganda gets into their own pockets. One would have imagined that where they show such loyalty and patriotism we would get concrete evidence of their loyalty, but, instead of giving this publicity for the sake of the war free of charge, they are making thousands of pounds out of it. I want an unambiguous reply from the Minister. He should explain what the position is. I cannot but assume that the information which I have been given is reliable. I have no reason to doubt my informant. The Minister owes the House and the country a clear explanation. Before my time is up I want to put another question to the Minister. I am told that about a year after the so-called “Battle of Britain” took place a booklet was issued under the title of “The Battle of Britain”, and I understand that the Government Printer was instructed to print 150 000 copies in Afrikaans and 150 000 in English. It was also decided to sell those copies to the public at 6d. each. I want to ask the Minister how many of those copies were sold and how much it cost to print those booklets, and if 300,000 were actually printed; and, if so, how many were disposed of? These are important points, and I hope the Minister will give a definite and clear answer.

The hon. member for Roodepoort (Mr. Allen) the other evening raised the question of care for mental defectives among non-Europeans. He did so at my request because I was not certain whether I would be back before the Minister’s vote was passed. I want to mention a few further points in this connection. The position is that we have no institutions for the care of feebleminded among non-Europeans, which, of course, includes non-European children. The Minister’s reply will probably be, and it may be a sound reply up to a point, that accommodation is still gravely lacking for cases of mental disorder, and until that position has been met, he will not be able to turn aside and establish institutions for feebleminded non-Europeans. I would submit however that the subject of mental deficiency among nonEuropeans is crying out for attention, probably almost as much as the lack of accommodation for mentally disordered people. I refer to the consequences of the inheritable tendency of feeblemindedness. I think this is a very serious matter. This inherited tendency to feeblemindedness is a very serious matter, especially when we consider its effect on the population. We are in effect leaving our coloured population to go their own way in dealing with this problem, and it is increasing the number of feebleminded people. That is a very grave matter indeed. I think we are asking the mother of a family in which there are some members who are mentally deficient to accept a very difficult position and setting her a very hard, indeed an impossible task, in looking after such a family. These points were put by the hon. member for Roodepoort (Mr. Allen). I do not want to continue with it but there are points he did not deal with. There is no way, as I have said, of permanently dealing with these children— there is nowhere where these children can permanently be looked after. If, as is often the case, deaf and dumb children are mental deficients, a deaf and dumb institution will not take such children, so such a child is thrown back on the family with the most deleterious effects on the ability of the mother to look after the family, especially if she also has to win the bread for the family. Another point is that a large proportion of these mentally deficient children, if they were helped, would be able to earn some sort of a living, but there is no means of giving them any kind of vocational training, and I think they should be given that chance. I do not want to stress the matter any further, but I do deel that we owe it to the non-European community, and that we owe it to ourselves that as soon as the Minister can find a means wherewith to set up such an institution, it should be done because the repercussions on the white community are grave. I am thinking of delinquency for instance, which is quite frequent among children of that type. What can the Child Welfare Commissioner do with children brought before him who have acted to our laws if the child is found to be mentally deficient. There is nothing he can do. He has to send the child back to the home, perhaps under the supervision of a probation officer, and that child can go on perpetrating delinquencies and in the end become a supreme nuisance and danger to the community. I understand that the Asylum at Valkenberg is being sold and a new institution being built to take its place I want to ask the Minister whether there is any possibility of setting aside an annexe that can deal with mentally deficient cases, and I think that if that could be done it would be very helpful. I do not think it is an ideal wav of doing it; in fact quite the contrary, it is not good for the mental deficients to be alongside people suffering from mental disorders, and especially for children. It might be a wav, however, for the time being. I would further ask the Minister that at least a survey should be made of the position as to the degree and frequency of feebiomindedness among the non-European community, so that we may know what the position is. My argument again is that it has a very deleterious effect on the coloured community and on the native community and in the end it affects the white community very seriously as well.

I want to associate myself with the argument of the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. B. J. Schoeman). If the information which we received in connection with the propaganda committee is correct, then it is simply scandalous. It falls under the Minister’s vote and we have to get full information from him. We have not only this position now that, as has been said, there are 60 000 Afrikaans speaking and barely 40,000 English speaking people in the North, but here a committee is appointed which is ultra-red, even more jingo than we have ever had in South Africa, and that committee is appointed in order to give the Government advice in connection with propaganda. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will acquire a South African outlook, and not only regard matters from a jingo point of view in the future. But I now want to come to a second question, and I want to ask the Minister whether it is really a fact that they do not want officials to take part in politics, but that they expect the officials to confine themselves to their work, and to carry out that work carefully every day, as long as they are in the service. I want to bring this to the notice of the Minister. We have a Director of Census, Dr. Malherbe. He was granted a military title by this Government, and he has now gone to the North; to do what? To make Englishmen of Afrikaners. Can he expect us in the future to look up with any respect to a man like Dr. Malherbe who is paid by the Afrikaners of the country as well as by the English? If the Government undermines the civil service in this way, they must not expect officials constantly to submit to that miserable policy of theirs. I can only tell the Minister that they will not always be in office. The time will arrive when this side will govern again, and then we shall not allow people like Dr. Malherbe to remain in the service and to be paid by this nation, because he is now being used by the Government to do work of a political nature in the North. I say very emphatically that up to the present officials have even been encouraged by us and told: “You are officials; you must carry out your duties at office, and comply with the Government’s instructions not to take part in politics.” But when the Minister takes highly-paid officials and uses them for war propaganda, then I say that it is not only a scandal, but it is humiliating to this Government. I hope, therefore, that the Government will nut a stop to the use of officials for this type of propaganda. The next question which I want to bring to the notice of the hon. Minister is the banning of certain of our historical books, which have been read for 30 years by our Afrikaners. I refer to the books “Hoe Zy Stierven” and “Helkampe” which are purely historical and purely documentary proof of what took place here in the war of 1899-1902. And now the Minister bans those historical books of South Africa. Surely everything must come to an end, and an end must come to that humiliation of Afrikaans literature, that trampling upon of our rights. It is a scandal that the Minister should suppress those books in this way. The book “Helkampe” is merely a translation of a book which was published, but it is also being banned. Why? Is there anything in those books which is untrue, or is it merely the history of the people of South Africa? The Government asked us on this side to cooperate. Let me tell the Minister: “You can trample upon the Afrikaner people, but the more the Afrikaner is trampled upon the stronger he will become.” I want to protest most strongly this afternoon against the banning of those Afrikaans books, which are purely historical books. In reply to a question which was nut by an hon. member on this side as to whether the Government would also ban “Eeu van Onreg,” we received the reply that that book had never come to the notice of the Minister. It is a book which was written by the present Prime Minister, and which states the truth much more forcefully and condemns the actions of the English much more strongly. Does the Minister think that we should take them seriously in the future? Does the Minister think that we should believe them when they tell us that that book has not yet come to their notice, while it is a book which was printed in this country 40 years ago and distributed everywhere?

It still circulates today.

This book is still in circulation. Then the Government wants us to believe that they are honest people, when they say in that dishonest way that this book has not yet come to the notice of the Government; simply because the book was written by the Prime Minister. I think that when Ministers of the Crown descend to the level of telling us a thing of that kind, we have the right to protest. The Minister gives us the strongest reason to protest against the policy which is followed. Now I should like to raise another question, namely, that of internment camps. I have the right to talk about internment camps because even when the Prime Minister helped in condemning me, I had experience of the treatment meted out to us in gaols. According to my information, treatment which we received in gaol at that time was much better than the treatment which these people receive at the present time. There is a wide difference. At that time the treatment was still decent, because we had a man in power who listened to reason. When I was imprisoned in Johannesburg my wife paid a visit to me the first day, and saw me sitting behind the bars. She then rang up Gen. Botha and said that it is a disgrace that political prisoners should be treated like ordinary murderers. The next day the wire was removed, and we were allowed to have visitors three times a week in a room specially set aside for that purpose. Not one of the prisoners tried to escape, although we could easily have done so. We could see our relations and talk to them under decent conditions, but today the prisoners, citizens of this country, are allowed to be visited for half-an-hour per month, I believe, as though they were ordinary murderers. But then they have to stand between two wire fences, one fence in front of the prisoner and another fence in front of the visitor. Do you think that these things can ever be forgotten? Do you not think that in future it will be recorded in history? That history will flare up in South Africa like a veld fire, such as the Minister has never seen. I therefore hope that the Minister will see to it that those people are treated better in the future. With regard to the gaols themselves, that question I shall raise later. But I hope the Minister will in future allow these people to see their relations regularly. They remain in prison for weeks and sometimes for months before a charge is brought against them, and in the meantime they are treated in this unfair manner. [Time limit.]

I would just like to ask the Minister on whose advice he decided to ban the two books, ‘Hoe Zy Stierven” and “Helkampe”, which have circulated for very many years amongst the reading public of South Africa; what motive there is behind it? We live in times which are creepy, and I cannot understand how the Minister could act on unwise council of this nature by accepting this measure which is not only irritating to an already excited mind, but which is a great insult to the Afrikaans public. In the times in which we live there are feelings on both sides which the Minister must respect. He is not dealing with one section of the community; he is dealing with both sections. As a responsible Minister, he ought to realise that at this time he should rather be leniently towards that section of the community which holds a view on the war position which differs from his own, and not allow himself—I want to use an English word—to be stampeded into doing a foolish thing of this nature. I want to tell the Minister that he will really cause more harm by suppressing these books than he will do good. Instead of his respecting the sentiment and feelings of the other section of the people, he will, by means of this measure, further provoke and incite it to greater suspicion and bitterness in the motives which prompted him to take this step. I do not mention these things merely with a view to attacking the Minister. That is not my object. I intend it as good advice. When I learned of this measure I said to myself: “Well, well; this, to my mind, is one of the most childish steps which the Minister of the Interior has taken since the outbreak of war, because he gains nothing by it.” A big percentage of these books will remain in circulation, and he only exposes himself to criticism and makes himself hated by the Afrikaans reading public. If it were merely fiction, one could have forgiven this step on the part of the Minister. If these were two volumes which appeared after the outbreak of the war, one might have been able to say something for it. But the first book, namely, “Hoe Zy Stierven”, has circulated for nearly 40 years, and now all of a sudden the Minister suppresses it. I want to repeat that these books are not fiction. These are hard historical facts, and historical facts which had their origin in the past, in those days in which the Prime Minister played an important role, and in which these books find their origin. I make bold to say that this book was written as a result of an appeal on the part of the Prime Minister when he made his expedition through the Cape. For that reason I regret that the Minister of the Interior took this step. He did himself no service, and if he did this as a war measure, his effort stands neutralised. There is another point which I would like to bring to the notice of the Minister. Can he not realise—since there are numerous Union citizens in internment camps today—that it is in the interests of the country and that it is in the interests of the future of South Africa, that those people should be treated in a humane manner, when their relatives, wives, and children visit them? And those people are treated like criminals in their presence. I think the time has arrived for the Minister to take into review his whole policy in respect of visits on the part of relations to internees, and those people ought to be treated humanely. The Minister should have anticipated when they declared war, that the feelings of some people would run so high that they would contravene the law. But as a responsible Minister, who ought to be au fait with the conditions prevailing in the Union of South Africa, the Minister ought now to take that policy of internment into review, and to see to it that those people are at least treated humanely when their relations visit them. If they are treated in that criminal way, it will engender bitterness, and will also estrange those people who had a little sympathy with the Minister in the difficult task which he has to carry out. I want to make an appeal to him. I want to make an appeal to him, if he is still human, and if he still has a feeling of fairness, to take this matter into review in the interests of the future of South Africa.

I would like to discuss the policy of the Minister and his Government in connection with the postponement of the Provincial elections. I want to read to the House what requests were made by the Free State in connection with the postponement of the Provincial election, and then discuss the Minister’s attitude in regard to it. On the 8th May, 1941, a minute was addressed to the Secretary for the Interior by the Provincial Secretary, which minute reads as follows—

In reply to that the Secretary for the Interior wrote as follows on the 15th May, 1941—

Here we have the reply of the Free State Provincial Secretary on the 23rd May—

Here is a very clear request from the Free State Provincial Council, that they should only want to wait until the month of March, so as to vote on the new Voters’ Rolls. The Minister of the Interior made a statement to the country which reads as follows—

Later on he said—

Further, he said—

I want to tell the Minister today that when he said this he published a reckless untruth. He brought the country under the impression that the Nationalists of the Free State who were supposedly against the postponement of the elections, had asked for a postponement. The Minister accused and held up the representatives of the Free State as hypocrites. He said: “You pretend that you do not want a postponement, and here the people of the Free State come and they do want a postponement.” He tried to make out that it was hypocrisy on the part of the representatives of the Free State to say that the Free State was opposed to the postponement of the election. That is an absolute untruth. In the first place, the Free State Provincial Council never passed any such resolution. In the second place, the caucus of the Nationalist Party never passed any such resolution or made any such request. And in the third place, the Executive Committee of the Free State did not address such a request to the Minister. The Free State Provincial Council’s time expires in October. The new Voters’ Rolls will only become operative in January. The request to the Government is this: We prefer to vote on the new Voters’ Rolls. Now they ask for the extension of the life of the Provincial Councils until March or April, so that the Part Appropriation can first be passed, because it is essential to get hold of the money. Months have elapsed since the Minister made this misrepresentation. He promised to put the correspondence on the Table of the House, but he failed to do so. He did not do it. Here I have the correspondence today, and I want to tell the Minister that he did the Free State a great injustice, and he made a charge against the Free State which was untrue, and he tried to present members of the Free State as hypocrites; and the least the Minister can do in the circumstances is to get up in this House and to apologise. I hoped that the Minister would have the courtesy to put this correspondence on the Table of the House, and to tell us that he had made a mistake. But he simply ignores the whole matter, trusting that we will forget it; but the Minister’s sins have caught him out. I say that it is really not nice for a responsible Minister of the Crown to do a thing of that kind. It is decidedly not, when he makes a charge against members and against the Provincial Council of the Free State, and then does not take the trouble to investigate whether or not it is true. He said that he spoke from memory, but what right has the Minister to make a charge of this nature against the Provincial Council if he is not certain of his facts?

He must resign.

The least he can do is to apologise. The Minister failed to make any statement in regard to this at a later stage. He simply ignored it, hoping that we would not get hold of the right thing, and that the whole affair would pass and that he would escape. But he did not escape, and I now want to ask the Minister whether he has any other correspondence. Can he produce any other letters in which he was asked, by whomsoever, to postpone the election until after the delimitation so that the time-table could be put in order? If he cannot do that, then I say that he must get up in this House and apologise not only to members on this side, but also to the Free State Provincial Council. I should be glad if the hon. member for Klip River (Mr. Friend) will not distract the attention of the Minister. I can assure him that the Free State Provincial Council and the members of the Executive Committee, were shocked when they heard this statement. But the Minister laughingly makes this accusation, and he takes no steps thereafter to put it in its proper perspective. There are 25 members in the Free State, and in this House he tried to make them and the eight members of the Free State look ridiculous. I again want to express my strongest disapproval at this action on the part of the Minister, and express the hope that he will have the courage to apologise, since he has not already done so.

Yesterday evening at 11 o’clock I was making a serious appeal to the Minister to see whether it was not possible to meet internees. I pointed out to the Minister that during the previous war it was the practice to let out sickly people and to entrust them to the care of reliable farmers. That person then undertakes to keep the State informed from time to time in regard to the conduct of such a person. If his conduct necessitates it, he is again placed in the camp. But a number of people remained on the farms until after the war, and, in fact, they assisted on the farms. I hope the hon. Minister will take this request of mine into serious consideration, and that he will find it possible to release a large number of people who are in the camps only by accident, not people with any bad intentions. Now I come to another point, and that is the case where a minor was arrested. He is the only support of his mother. I forget the boy’s name for the moment. They are of German descent, but I have been told that this boy has been interned for a considerable time, and his widowed mother has no one else to take care of her. I want to know from the Minister whether it is not possible to release such a boy under the conditions which I have already explained. If they are of opinion that he is dangerous, they can order that another person with whom the Minister is satisfied should have the custody of the boy.

If you give me the name later, I can go into it.

I shall wire for it immediately. The name has escaped me for the moment. It is a German name. Then I want to associate myself with the plea of the hon. member for Hoopstad (Mr. J. H. Viljoen), where he made an appeal to the Minister not to continue with internment in a manner which will perhaps result in history being repeated. Today the Minister is banning the two books “Hoe Zy Stierven” and “Helkampe”. The question arises, what are those two books? Those two books are a record of the deeds of what took place in South Africa. It is a record of the deeds which were enacted in this country under British rule. And there is our Minister today; we are again in a time of crisis, and I want to make an appeal to the Minister not to make the same mistake which Lord Charles Somerset made in this country. Lord Charles Somerset is partially responsible for the bad feeling which still prevails in this country today. His action was the cause of Slagter’s Nek. I want to make an appeal to the Minister not to act in such a way that history will one day write of the arrests by Harry Lawrence which caused a war. We cannot take the position seriously enough with a view to preventing the same misdeeds of the past being repeated. What is “Hoe Zy Stierven?” It is a record of the facts of a policy of reckless imprisonment, of listening to the stories of children, of smelling-out to an extent which led to the people despairing later on, and for that reason we had all those convictions, and for that reason all those men were hanged on the scaffold. Now in the year 1942 the Minister of the Interior bans that book, because he is afraid of the history of the English regime in South Africa. I say in all seriousness that the Minister should try to prevent history from repeating itself, so that we shall never again have a Slagter’s Nek in South Africa, and never again an episode like that of Jopie Fourie. Those episodes are the things which have placed us in the unfortunate position in which we are.

Was the episode of Jopie Fourie under the English regime?

I appreciate the interjection on the part of the Minister, but he is not under the English regime either now, and for that reason I tell him to take care that we do not get a repetition of those things which took place under the English regime, because it is that English regime which causes so much unpleasantness in our country. The case of Jopie Fourie is one of the cases which will always be the Afrikaner’s own responsibility, and one of those things which we should like to erase from our history. There is no person, on whichever side he may be, who will not pay anything in order to erase that type of thing from the pages of our history. For that reason I make an appeal to the Minister of the Interior, “Let us do whatever we can in trying to prevent that position, so that we do not again find ourselves in the position in which we have so often found ourselves, and in which we can so easily find ourselves in the circumstances prevailing in our country.” We in South Africa have lived together for more than a hundred years, and we are perhaps now further apart than we were in the first instance. How different would it not have been if in those old days it was realised that it would be more sensible to follow a policy of concession, of tolerance and good understanding, instead of building scaffolds for the weaker section of the community, and instead of hanging them. I want to beg the Minister to do everything in his power not to let those things repeat themselves. We are parting now and will perhaps not see each other again for a whole year. We do not know what might happen in the meantime, and for that reason my last plea to the Minister of the Interior is: “Do not overreach yourself; keep your balance, and if there are other people whose feelings run high and who urge you to get other people’s heads, do not yield. Remember that you are responsible not for the feelings of one section only in the country, but for the feelings of both sections in the country.” I hope that the Minister will always be strong enough to resist the requests which come from his side that he should go to extremes. As I told the Prime Minister recently, if it comes to the point that we have to exterminate each other in this country, let us then do so, but that is most certainly not what is expected of us. That is the opposite of our duty towards our country. We must act in such a way that we can tolerate each other. I want to plead with the Minister in all seriousness. He must just tell me what to do and I shall do so, but then he must also promise me that he will do what we ask.

Why do you not make those pleas in your district?

I can tell my hon. friend that I do so every day. The rebellion broke out in my district in 1914, and at this time there have practically been no internments up to the present. At that time I did my best in connection with the rifles. I humbled myself, and I am prepared to do so again. I shall go on my knees to the Minister, but then he must promise me that he will do what I ask.

I am held up to be a terrible person, but nevertheless I have not interned people in your district!

Comparatively few were interned in my district, but around me people were interned who should not have been interned. I do not say that it is the fault of the Minister, and for that reason I plead with him. I told him that his system is still wrong, and that for that reason he should take into review the machinery in connection with internments. At the moment things are not as bad as they might be, and for that reason I make this plea. [Time limit.]

I want to raise two points, and my first one is this: I would like to know whether the Minister of the Interior does not think that the time has arrived when we should have established here a Ministry of Home Security. I do believe that when one takes into account the responsibilities and activities of the present Minister of the Interior with the additional portfolio of public health, and one considers further that since the commencement of this war the Minister of the Interior has had additional activities placed on his shoulders such as internal security, internment camps and civil protection services, one is forced to the conclusion that it is humanly impossible for any individual to be able to give his individual attention to all these responsibilities. I cannot help, with all due respect to the Minister, expressing the view that with these responsibilites some of his activities must in some way or other suffer from the point of view that he himself is unable to give his personal attention to many of these problems. There is another point in regard to the question of home security and it is this, that I think we have reached a stage when the question of internal security C.P.S. and defence are so interlocked that it is very difficult to expect dynamic leadership when there is this dual control, and I do hope that while it is not my intention to deal with the question of civilian protection services, except just to point out that there is no doubt that various people who are undertaking these responsibilities are in my opinion at sixes and sevens in that, firstly there is no leadership from the Government, i.e. no direct lead from the Government, and secondly that they are at sixes and sevens in their organisation because there is not the co-ordination in these particular services which is so essential and important. To a great extent I can appreciate that because these difficulties — as I have said, the civilian protection services and the defence services are so closely, not only allied, but interlocked, that the Minister himself must find it very difficult to give a lead on these matters, and I do want, through you, Mr. Chairman, to ask the Minister whether, if he does not feel the time has arrived when there should be a Minister of Home Security, if not, will he not indicate to the country whether the Government has under consideration some other method whereby these people who are accepting these responsibilities in regard to civilian protection services and so on can be given firstly a lead as to what is expected of them and secondly to what extent these services can be co-ordinated with defence. My second point is in regard to the nursing profession. When the war broke out there was a certain amount of confusion and chaos in regard to the relationship between the Department of Defence on the one hand and the Provincial Administrations on the other hand, and in the light of that chaos there were hundreds of girls, nurses in this country …

How does that come under this Vote?

Under “Provincial Administrations.”

This is “Interior”— “Public Health” is a separate vote.

I am dealing with provincial councils. The Minister is interested through the provincial consultative Committee.

I think this point was raised once before when the Minister of Finance was present, and he pointed out that the Minister of the Interior is the Chairman of the Provincial Consultative Committee, and in his opinion it was permissible to raise this question on this vote. The Department of the Interior is the link.

The hon. member may proceed.

As there was chaos on the one hand between the Provincial Administration, and the Defence Department on the other—against the wishes of the Provincial Administrations, there were hundreds of girls in South Africa who resigned from the Provincial Administrations and joined the Defence Department. These nurses have sacrificed in some cases five or ten, or more years of pensionable service, and I do feel that something should be done in this matter. Firstly, I want to put it to the Minister—and I believe it is a fact—that the Defence Department have now reached an agreement with the Provincial Administrations to the effect that they will not take on any member of any nursing staff, whether provincial or belonging to a private hospital, unless the nurse has the approval of the Provincial Administration concerned. In view of this fact that the Defence Department and the Provincial Administrations have come to an agreement, I trust those girls who have broken their service with the loss of pensionable rights that the Minister will through the Provincial Consultative Committee take the matter up and use his influence to get the services of these girls, who have left the Provincial Services, without permission, prior to the condoned agreement.

The policy of the Minister of the Interior is before the House now. Recently be piloted a Bill through this House in which he took unto himself the right to act practically on behalf of every voter in the Free State, because he postponed the Provincial Council elections until a later date. It was a very serious matter. The results of his having done so are such that the position has become very serious. That Act deprives part of the pubilc of its constitutional rights, the very section of the public which to our mind should not have been deprived of those rights. The Minister nuts himself in the place of those voters. I am not going to discuss the merits of that Act, but I want to come to the statement which the Minister made on that occasion, a statement which he put forward as an adequate reason giving him the right to deprive the voters of their right. He told us that a request that the elections should be postponed had come from the Free State itself. The question was put to him whether the caucus of the Nationalist Partv had passed such a resolution. He was asked whether such a resolution had been communicated to him, because he said that that resolution emanated from the Nationalist side. The Minister did not then reply to these questions any further. He simply told us that we were putting those questions because we were in trouble, and he said that he would produce the evidence by laving the documents in the matter on the Table of the House. In all seriousness he undertook to lay on the Table of the House certain documents on which the whole matter was based. Those documents have not yet made their appearance. Consequently an important Bill was passed by this House on the strength of certain documents which the Minister of the Interior undertook to lay on the Table, and which he never did. Well, the hon. member for Winburg (Mr. C. R. Swart) disclosed the contents of those documents today. Now, what do we find in those documents? Nothing of what the Minister told us, but something entirely different from what the Minister based his case on. His whole case therefore collapsed, and I say that the position is a very serious one. I want to say straight out to the Minister that if he were in the service of anyone else except perhaps in this Government’s service he would, because of what he had done there, have been suspended immediately. The Minister piloted that Bill through its last stage in this House on the strength of a statement which was an absolute distortion of what had happened in the Free State. He told us that he had received a request from the Free State asking him that the Provincial Council elections should be put off until the new delimitation had been completed, and he told us that he had certain documents to prove that that request had come from the Free State. The Minister did not produce those documents, but now that the documents have made their appearance we find that there is not a word in them about putting off the elections until after the delimitation. The request made is for the elections to be put off until the new Voters’ Rolls were ready, which would come into force as from the 1st January, 1942. The matter was even much more serious than that. The Minister did not make that statement subject to correction. He said that he had documents in his possession to support his case, and we had to assume therefore that he had made sure of the facts beforehand. I ask therefore where he gets the moral right to make a statement of that kind about an important matter affecting every voter in the Free State, jointly and severally, affecting the Provincial Council and also affecting the whole status of the Provincial Council, and also affecting the prestige of the Free State members in this Parliament. He told us here that we were in trouble and that if he laid those documents on the Table they would prove that we were not speaking here on behalf of the Free State, because we were contesting a request made by the Nationalists of the Free State. He added that he had documents to prove his statement, and now it turns out that the attitude adopted by the Minister constituted a distortion of the facts, and the very least we can expect of him is to admit that fact. After he had made that statement he naturally at once looked into these documents and it must have been clear to him immediately that he had been wrongin his statement. Let us give him as much credit as is possible; let us say that at the moment he made his statement he was not sure of his facts, we must still assume that he must immediately afterwards have studied those documents, and it must have become clear to him that he had said things which were in conflict with what was actually contained in those documents. If he had wanted to follow the honourable course he should immediately have made a statement to rectify the position, but he remained silent all these weeks and he left the blame on the people of the Free State, on the Free State Provincial Council, and on the Free State members of the Union Parliament. He left that blame, which he had put on us, and he left us under a cloud of suspicion in regard to what had happened. Anyone who looks at this matter from the right point of view must come to the conclusion that the Minister, immediately after he had made his statement, must have got to know what the real facts were, and although he must have seen that he had been wrong, he allowed two months to pass and he did not come to this House to put the position right. That is the least anyone could have expected of an individual who wanted to be honourable in his public behaviour. On behalf of the members of the Provincial Council of the Free State, on behalf of the doctors of the Free State, and on behalf of the Free State members of the Union Parliament, I want to express our strongest disapproval of the Minister’s attitude in regard to this matter, and I want to express our disapproval of his action in piloting his Bill through this House with the assistance of an argument such as this one, an argument which was entirely unfounded, as he knew immediately after, and I want to express our deep resentment at his not acknowledging his mistake at once, and rectifying the position. If this sort of thing had happened in any case but with a Minister in a Cabinet of this particular Government, and the very least that could have happened to him would have been that he would have been suspended immediately from the position he occupied. The very least we can now expect from the Minister is that he will admit that he made that error, and that he will promise us that he will use his best efforts and the powers he has to try and repeal that measure which he piloted through this House on the strength of arguments like those. Let him come forward with other arguments. Let him produce other evidence to show why that Bill should have been passed. Why, we ask in the name of right and justice which we declare to stand for in the opening prayer of this House, should a Bill like that be piloted through this House based on misleading and distorted grounds such as those adduced by the Minister? I want to revert briefly to the question I raised last night, namely, the treatment of our people in the internment camps. I have already given the Minister some information of the way our people are treated in the camps, I have spoken about visits paid by members of their families; I just want to say this to the Minister, that if he does not change that position his name will be recorded in black letters in the history of South Africa. Not only has he tried to deprive these people of their freedom, but it really seems that he is at the same time trying to destroy those people’s souls. Under existing conditions these people are only given a short space of time to consult their legal advisers—so I am informed. What is more, it is essential for the maintenance of every country that it should rest on an inviolable basis, namely, the family, the bond there is between the family. Now what is happening in regard to these visits? When the wife goes to visit her husband to discuss their financial position, or to discuss the education of their children, they have to talk to each other behind two sets of steel wire. In the light of what happened in 1914 we cannot tolerate these things, and it is high time the Minister remedied the position, because if he does not his name will be recorded in black letters. It is essential for the preservation of the sound foundations of our community, which rests on family life. If is essential that husband and wife shall be given the opportunity to see each other and to discuss their financial position and the education of their children, and under present conditions they do not get the opportunity of doing so. Is there any danger in the wife being allowed once a week, or twice or three times a month to visit her husband in the Koffiefontein camp? Is there any danger of her assisting her husband to escape? Or is there any danger of information being supplied which should not be supplied? No, the condition of affairs which prevails today is a scandalous one and the Minister should change it.

I think that some time may be saved if I were to intervene at this stage and deal with some of the points raised last night and this afternoon. The hon. member for Victoria West (Mr. D. T. du P. Viljoen) has asked me when the Government intends to re-publish our Statutes, the Netherlands version of our Statutes, in Afrikaans. That task is a big one. It is one which we hope to have achieved in the future, but hon. members will realise that with our law advisers working at great pressure, it is very difficult, indeed, for them to devote themselves to that task entirely at present. One way of expediting that is the introduction of consolidating measures, and I think that as a result of the ruling which was recently given by Mr. Speaker in regard to consolidating measures, it will be much easier for Ministers in future to attempt to introduce such measures, knowing that their passage has been rendered smooth as a result of such ruling. Take the one measure which concerns my own department, the Mental Disorders Act of 1916. That is an Act, the Dutch version of which is in Netherlands and not in Afrikaans. The Department of Public Health has at present under consideration the introduction of a consolidating Act next year. I mention that just as an example. That Act, of course, will be published in Afrikaans and in English instead of in Netherlands. An opportunity has been taken and will in future be taken to introduce these consolidating measures which will in due course enable us to have a complete Afrikaans set on our Statute Books. The hon. member also raised the question of the alleged understaffing of our Government departments. He felt that the country is suffering from under-staffing of departments, and he suggested that unqualified persons were being taken on to do the work. Hon. members know that as a result of the exigencies of the war, large numbers of Government servants have joined up for full-time military service, and also as a result of the extension of certain departments due to war causes, the staff position has become difficult. Certain departments have found it necessary to expand their staffs very considerably in order to carry out the additional functions imposed by war conditions. The Department of Agriculture, for instance, has to deal with food control, and many other matters of a similar nature; the Department of Commerce and Industries deals with price control and other cognate matters, the Defence Department itself needs a very much enhanced staff of clerical assistants to deal with accounts. The Auditor-General himself has to have additional assistants. These additional needs mean that other departments have to be combed out to see whether they can spare personnel, and where a department reaches the minimum compatible with business like administration naturally the Government has to turn outside for assistance, and the result is that quite a large number of temporary personnel has been engaged in the course of the last two and a half years. A good many pensioners have been brought back into the Service, and the Government is able to have the benefit of their previous experience. Then the hon. member has referred in passing to the assisted emigration of Asiatics, and he has suggested that as a result of the scheme, instead of Asiatics, Indians leaving the country in large numbers, they are coming back to the country in large numbers. The law lays down that any Indian repatriated under the 1927 scheme introduced by the then Minister of the Interior (Dr. Malan), who wishes to return to India, can do so, and can be given financial assistance in order to carry out that object. They were, however, allowed to return to the Union under certain circumstances. The Indians concerned had to refund all the expenditure, passage money, and bonus, and had to return within three years of his leaving the country. Since 1927 approximately 16,000 Indians have been repatriated under this assisted scheme, and approximately 800 have come back. Those numbers show that the fears which the hon. members have expressed are really groundless.

What, only 800? I have other figures.

Yes, the official figures I have been given show me that under the scheme the total number is that 16,349 persons have gone out of the Union, and the total that have returned is 827.

That is not the number I have.

These are the official figures.

I got my figures from your department.

That may well be, and the figures which the hon. member gave last night are not inconsistent with the figures I have given. He referred to a certain number who returned last year, but the total number who have returned is 827. The increase, whatever it may be, has been caused as the result of people exercising their right under the agreement come to by the then Minister of the Interior (Dr. Malan). Nothing that I have done has altered that agreement, they have merely been allowed to avail themselves of rights which they were given by the present Leader of the Opposition in 1927. I am merely administering the law as it was laid down then.

My figures show an average of 600 to 700 per year.

I do not know where the hon. gentleman gets his figures. I have given the official figures as they were given to me. If the hon. gentleman has other figures, I suggest that he should revise them or go back to the source of his information to see whether some mistake has not been made. A certain number of speakers have dealt with the question of Civilian Protective Services. The hon. member for Victoria West (Mr. D. T. du P. Viljoen) has criticised the action of a number of local authorities in spending money on blackouts and other precautions, and he has said that the Government should step in and stop these authorities from wasting money, as he calls it, and prevent them from taking any precautions at all. The hon. member for Langlaagte (Mr. Bawden) on the other hand, and also the hon. member for Durban Point (Dr. Shearer), have suggested that the action of the Government has not been sufficiently firm, that there is a lack of direction in regard to the activities of local authorities, and in regard to the control of those services. I am not prepared to agree with the hon. member for Victoria West that precautions are not necessarv. In these days in the light, of the experience of other countries it would be folly if the Government and the local authorities did not take reasonable precautions to ensure the safety of the civilian population in a possible emergency. The adoption of that point of view does not involve any element of panic, it does not suggest that we are going to be exposed to blitz conditions in this country, nor does it mean that persons living in coastal towns should begin considering the evacuation of those towns and other similar measures which might be taken if a grave emergency happens. What the Government feels and has asked local authorities to adopt, is a point of view midway between those who say these things can never happen here and those who are completely panicked and want, as I say, to adopt methods which are only adopted if you are likely to be exposed almost day and night to blitz conditions. The position in regard to local authorities is this. In terms of an understanding arrived at some 18 months ago between representatives of certain local authorities and the Government, the local authorities bear the cost of the protection of their citizens in their own areas. The Government, however, controls and directs the services in order to obtain uniformity and co-ordination as far as possible. I agree with the hon. member for Victoria West, the hon. member for Castle (Mr. Alexander) and others who raised questions about this matter recently that it is most essential that if measures are to be taken by local authorities, in the wav of blackouts or blacking out car lights, that there should be uniformity. An impossible position would arise if people have to adopt certain measures, for instance in regard to their cars in Cape Town, and then at a later stage of the year find themselves in the Transvaal committing offences by running their cars under those conditions. In order to achieve uniformity, a Conference has been arranged at which representatives from the larger towns will attend. That Conference will be held the week after next in Cane Town, and I hope as a result some difficulties which have arisen in Cape Town and elsewhere will be smoothed out. At that Conference also it is proposed to discuss wider aspects of civilian protection, the extent to which it is necessary to take certain precautions, and so on. I agree with the hon. member for Durban (Point) that coastal towns such as Durban or important centres such as Johannesburg, are entitled to have advice from the Government as to what to do and what not to do. In the earlier stages when danger was much more remote, these local authorities were left to themselves. There was a time, I would remind the hon. member for Durban (Point) when the people of Durban in their morning Press organ said they did not want any assistance. I remember very well an indignant leader in the “Natal Mercury” saying “Hands off Durban; we don’t want interference from Pretoria.” However that may be, I agree with my hon. friends that there is necessity for co-ordination in this matter, and I am hoping that as a result of the Conference, and of events that have been taking place, that we shall be able to reach a satisfactory agreement and a system under which proper control will be maintained and proper advice and direction given through the Director of C.P.S. who, incidentally, has been carrying on for 18 months or more with very little encouragement indeed. It is only now that the dangers have come nearer.

What dangers are you referring to?

I am talking about taking reasonable precautions.

Against what?

Sabotage.

My hon. friend here interjects “sabotage”, but I was dealing generally with the possibility, of attack on one of our ports from the sea. That is a possibility, and anyone who says that such a thing is not possible is blind.

Where is the mighty British Fleet?

The British Fleet will be there.

At the bottom of the sea.

Down below.

The British Navy will be there, and will save South Africa despite the sneers and jeers of hon. members opposite. There is always the mighty American Fleet as well. Hon. members know that there are such things as raiders and some raiders carry aeroplanes, and it is possible that we may find one of our ports subjected to a hit-and-run raid. At any rate it would be folly to blind our eyes to that possibility and not to indulge in precautionary measures as a means of insurance against such raids. I don’t want this afternoon to deal with the question of internment and certain other matters of major importance, because it will take a little while, and I don’t want to be interrupted. The debate will be adjourned fairly soon, and before the debate is adjourned I would like to refer to a matter which a number of hon. members have referred to, namely, the banning of two books, “Hoe Zy Stierven” and “Helkampe.” The original book, which I understand was published in Nederlands, has not been banned.

What is the edition?

It was an edition recently printed in Afrikaans with certain additions in regard to Jopie Fourie’s case, and it is that book which has been banned.

It is the Jopie Fourie history that is banned.

My hon. friend is interested in this book, perhaps he may have read it. The book which has been banned is not the original book published in Holland and dealing with certain events in relation to the Boer War.

The edition is the Jopie Fourie history.

As far as I am aware, that is so. This book is not merely an historical document dealing with the Boer War as such, but the purpose of the publication of the book at the present time is to try and create ill-wind between two sections of the people. That is the reason, sir. How does my hon. friend blind himself to the fact that books like this are suddenly printed or reprinted at the present time? We have these publishers waiting all these years until a state of war in which the people are divided has come about, before they publish these books. That is an indication that they are not published purely for their historical interest. If anybody wishes to read them for purely historical interest, they can find the original edition in the library, but the publication of such books at the present time is merely commercialising racial feeling, and racial sentiment in this country, and the Government is not prepared to allow that to take place. It is not prepared to allow publishers to profit as the result of trading on the feelings of certain sections of the people who do not agree with the Government in its war effort. I know my hon. friends disagree, but we shall have to agree to differ on this point. Action in this matter was taken by the Chief Control Officer in terms of Section 4 of the Emergency Regulations.

Have you read the book?

I have not read it personally. Does my hon. friend suggest that the Minister of the Interior, who is responsible for the censorship under the Customs Act, has to read every publication?

In this particular case it was worth your trouble to read it yourself.

It is a very special case.

I accept full responsibility for what has been done, I have acted on advice, I have certainly seen the book and have glanced through it, but I have not read every page and every chapter. I have had my attention drawn to what are alleged to be passages which would cause offence at the present time.

History ought never to cause offence.

My hon. friend says history ought not to cause offence, but even on the assumption that all the facts contained in these books are correct, I will assume for the purpose of argument that they are, but is it in the interests of national unity and harmony that books which might have been published in a given atmosphere 40 years ago, should now be reprinted and re-published at a time when we are at war and feelings are likely to be aroused?

Do you know that the “Eeu van Onreg” has been published?

Quite probably, but I don’t assume that cheap editions have been brought out in order to display them in the platteland, and in that way to work up feelings.

I dare you to ban your Leader’s book.

So far as I know, that has not been distributed in the platteland in a cheap edition.

It is in a cheap edition.

The Government action has been taken after due consideration in order to put a stop to the practice which is being adopted by certain publishers at the present time of commercialising matter of this sort which go back to the history of this country 40 years ago. A book published in the circumstances of the time is of historical interest; a book published in 1900 about the Boer War is of historical interest to students and the people generally, but when my hon. friend, the member for Wolmaransstad (Gen. Kemp) was sitting in the Fusion Cabinet, he did not, I am perfectly certain …

We did not ban a book. What book did we ban?

I don’t say it is on all fours with the present case, but my hon. friend did ban “Turning Wheels.”

What a shame!

A lot of lies.

Are you putting the two on a par?

I purposely said I did not put the two cases on all fours, but I was challenged to give an instance of a book being banned by the Fusion Government, and I have given it, but I prefaced my example by saying that I did not put the cases on all fours. I repeat that action has been taken after due consideration. The Government is not prepared to allow cheap publications to be rushed out of the printing press at the present time going back to events of the past, and giving only one side of those events. Publications such as these, calculated to hurt the feelings and inflame the sentiments of the people. Now I move—