Mr. Chairman, we on this side of the House are all in agreement that the hon. members opposite have up to now given an extremely flaccid display in the discussion of this Vote. We ascribed this to the fact that the hon. the Opposition have been completely blinded by the powerful and positive enunciation of the further development of the policy of separate development by the hon. the Minister and also by the hon. the Deputy Minister. The hon. the Opposition have no other choice but to creep forward towards the ballot box in the shadow of their own embracement of what was said here on Friday. They have no other choice but to accept in silence that they can no longer reproach us on those matters which the Minister and the Deputy Minister clarified. The matters I have in mind and which are awaiting further practical development of the policy of separate development, include inter alia the following: Firstly there is the extension of our relations with the homelands and the politics incidental thereto. Secondly there is the relationship of the White Government towards the Bantu in his own area.

In regard to the first facet, namely our relations with the homelands, it is quite clear that the hon. the Minister and his Deputy have in mind a firm and honest neighbourliness. As far as that relationship is concerned we welcome the standpoint of a homeland authority that it will look after the interests of its own people. Even negative statements in regard to their own people should therefore be seen as a positive step in the right direction. It is therefore to be welcomed that each homeland government is going to utilize and wants to utilize to a greater extent the economic benefits of its export products, whether it be labour, or any other commodity. We must expect the bilateral relationships to take new and interesting turns. There will probably be leaders who are unwise, but there are also leaders such as Chief Moshesh, and I want to point out to hon. members that in April this Minister of the Transkei who is in charge of home affairs gave a very clear enunciation of his approach to, inter alia, labour. That hon. Minister of the Transkei showed that he wishes to be self-sufficient and to increase the standard of living of his people in future. But what is also important is his intention to create a purposeful labour policy which will be aimed at imbuing the labour force of the Transkei with a desire to perform the best possible service and to place the Transkei in a competitive position among the homelands. So, for example, he also showed that he was vitally interested in the conditions of the Transkeian labourers in White areas, and he expressed his pleasure about conditions he found, for example, at the Orange River scheme and also at certain sugar plantations in Natal.

As opposed to this we have the statements of a Minister of KwaZulu, who concerned himself with certain labour conditions at Richards Bay and Pietermaritzburg, something the hon. member for Zululand is worried about. But that is not the sort of thing we hold up as the pattern of a successful bilateral relationship. What we have in mind, is the kind of responsibility displayed by people such as Chief Moshesh. That is the ideal pattern we would like to have. The fact that a homeland develops its own labour policy and wants to utilize its own people economically to the greatest extent must be encouraged. Indications of this are proof that our policy is succeeding. If a homeland leader wants to stop his people from working, he will find very quickly that a vacuum is created which others want to fill, as was indicated by Chief Moshesh. But what is more, Sir, the actions of the homeland leaders must be directed towards handling problems in regard to their people through the recognized channels. In other words, what is being held out here as a prospect, is those channels which are going to make it possible for us to maintain favourable relations with the homeland leaders. We can therefore expect the responsibilities and activities of our Commissioners-General to be aimed to an ever increasing extent at economic factors and arising from that we shall see important changes taking place in relationships in regard to homeland leaders.

Sir, I therefore ask the hon. the Minister whether there is any prospect, in regard to these relations with the homelands, of our being able to lay greater stress on this question of economic relations through our Commissioners-General. Sir, as I have said, relationships with these people in our own areas were highlighted last Friday. As far as they are concerned, the time has arrived as far as practical politics are concerned for us to tell them straight out, distinctly, clearly and honestly that our sovereignty will be jealously protected but that they will be fully accepted as people in so far as this is justified by their standards of living and in so far as it is possible for them to enjoy that which has been created for them here.

Sir, we must tell them honestly and frankly, inter alia, that they enjoy far more rights in the homelands than they do here; that much more could be achieved through ties with the homelands than could be achieved in regard to rights held out to them by the United Party and which might be given to them here. There are very clear indications that this linking-up process, this political umbilical cord we are in the process of creating with and in regard to the Bantu in the White areas, is succeeding. I mention the fact to you, Sir, that more than 36% of the votes cast in the latest Bophuthatswana election, were cast by people residing in White South Africa. What is more, in the Lebowa election, a Johannesburg advocate, born and bred and settled there, stood for election and progressed to the post of minister in that cabinet, and this happened in the year 1973.

Sir, if these are not indications of the acceptance of the so-called “urban Bantu” of the present political set-up, I do not know what is. But, Sir, we must also tell the Bantu in our area clearly and distinctly that we would not take it amiss of them if they want to return to the homelands. I should therefore like to hear from the Opposition what their standpoint would be if a homeland government made it possible and expressed the wish that its people who had developed certain trades and certain skills in the White area, should return there. What is their attitude; would they discourage it or would they take the kind of standpoint adopted by the hon. member for Zululand? Sir, we must say clearly and distinctly to these people in our White area that we shall not take it amiss of them if they return to the homelands to enjoy the greater rights they are able to enjoy there. Sir, while this negative propaganda is aimed at the so-called absence of rights for these people in our area, has the time not arrived for us to consider the legislation which spells out the positive aspects in regard to the Bantu in the White areas? Has the time not arrived for us to consolidate what I could almost call the haze which has been created by a comprehensive and drawn-out process of legislation, into a measure which can easily be understood, so that it will be quite clear from that, for example, that a Bantu who enjoys rights under section 10, is not in as good a position than a Bantu whose rights are linked to the homeland?

Sir, I want to conclude by saying that I believe that we must honestly and frankly tell the Bantu in South Africa that he may also be linked economically to his homeland, and that this is how we should like it to be. In that case, he will not have any vague expectations the United Party is holding out to him at present. In conclusion I want to say that the United Party is committed to accept that the homelands must be developed as much as possible in the economic field, because they have written into their policy that they will develop the homelands and that they accept that of the eight units at least five are viable, which is in total contrast to what they have accepted and propagated up to now. In other words, Sir, while we have primarily emphasized the economic development of the Bantu homelands, in terms of the United Party’s own policy they must now accept that this is also in execution of their policy. [Time expired.]

We have now spent well over seven hours attacking the Government’s policy and our charge has been that the Government’s policy has failed to face up to the challenges of the day. We have had replies from several hon. members on the other side and from the hon, the Minister and the hon. the Deputy Minister. As far as the members on the other side are concerned, their defence has been a rehash of old political stuff, largely attempting to prove that Gen. Hertzog thought of independent states. They read from his 1936 speeches about self-government and autonomy, but that is not impressive at all. We have had these old arguments brought up before. We ourselves have quoted from this side Gen. Hertzog’s speech in the same debate in which he said that they could develop to self-government under the umbrella of the central Parliament. We have also pointed out that if Gen. Hertzog had intended to give them independence when he passed the 1936 Act he certainly would not have provided for representation in this House. It was Gen. Hertzog’s intention that they should keep this representation in this House but Dr. Verwoerd took away that representation. There was reference, several times, to the word “self-government”. Self-government was introduced for the first time on this continent in the Glen Grey Act which was piloted through the old Cape Assembly by Cecil Rhodes. He was the Prime Minister at the time. His right-hand man was Onse Jan Hofmeyr, and Rhodes was responsible for starting self-government among the African people in South Africa. He established the councils under the Glen Grey Act which spread through the Transkei and ended up in the old Bunga or the Transkeian General Council as it was known at the time. The policy of Gen. Hertzog and Gen. Smuts at the time the 1936 Act was passed, was certainly one of segregation, and hon. members are quite correct in quoting Gen. Hertzog’s speeches in which he said that his goal was to keep the Africans in the Reserves and away from the urban areas. But circumstances overtook that policy and I want to read from a speech made by Gen. Smuts, who was a party to this 1936 legislation, on 22nd January, 1942 in Cape Town to a meeting of 1 000 people. He was talking about segregation and said—

What are you trying to prove?

I have quoted that speech to prove that the policy that has been applied since 1936 has failed, and we have to face up to the fact now that we have urbanization, that the urban African is there in our midst and that he is there to stay. For proof of this I only have to quote the hon. the Deputy Minister who said that 80% of the Africans living on the Rand, including mine labourers, were there on a family basis. Eighty per cent are there on a family basis. That means four-fifths of the people living there are living in homes, and you can only live in homes if you have the right to live there under section 10, either by birth or because you have been there for ten years or for 15 years, as the case may be. They have rights to be there. Four-fifths of the people living on the Rand, including mine labourers, have the right to be there, and they will be there for a long, long time, as the hon. the Deputy Minister said. I will come back to him just now. I want to get on to the Minister.

The hon. the Minister appealed to the United Party to stop exploiting race prejudices against the Nationalist Party. That is the plea. I deny that we ever exploited race prejudice. In fact, the boot is on the other foot. [Interjections.] The Minister went on to say this—

I must thank the hon. the Minister for having the decency to include the Opposition, who represent practically 50% of the voters of the country, in the White population of the country.

I should like to remind the hon. the Minister that we on this side have a history of working together, of co-operating on race matters. Mr. Strauss, when he was the leader of this party, made an offer to Dr. Malan which Dr. Malan rejected. He was only prepared to co-operate, to work with us on condition that the United Party accepted the Government’s policy of apartheid. On those conditions he would work with us. In 1958 my hon. leader, Sir de Villiers Graaff, made a similar offer. He asked the Government to secure, amongst other things, a positive and common approach to certain aspects of non-European policy on which there is general agreement between the major parties. That was rejected by Mr. Strijdom who was then Prime Minister and was certainly vehemently rejected by Dr. Verwoerd who was the Minister of Native Affairs. I should like to ask the hon. the Minister, if he is sincere in the appeal he has made …

Yes.

He says he is sincere.

I am going to repeat it just now.

Will he please then detail the conditions under which he is prepared to seek co-operation? Die Burger has also come with an appeal for consensus in this field. [Interjections.] I should like to point out that Die Burger states that there is room for consensus because the United Party has adopted so much of the Nationalist Party’s policy. This, of course, is absolute nonsense; it is just the other way round. However, let us leave it at that for the time being. Will the hon. the Minister tell us on what basis he is prepared to seek co-operation?

Speaking about taking each other’s policy, I should like to say again to the hon. the Minister that he will have to find another policy. He has had to seek co-operation in some way to work out some other policy because his policy has failed. He may not be prepared to accept our policy of federation but federation is the policy which is going to be accepted in this country eventually. I should like to remind him that SABRA—I do not know whether it still does—used to stand for a policy of confederation as well. It is the same policy that we propose for this country.

I should like to come to the hon. the Deputy Minister. The hon. the Deputy Minister impressed us with a speech he made here because of his obvious sincerity and his sympahty for the people whom he has to control. Although he promised to answer seriatim, and in detail, the questions which we put to him, he did not do so. He answered in a general way. What he made quite clear, was that he wanted to make the African people living in the urban areas and, who he said, would be here still for a long, long time, as happy as possible. We are very glad that we did get that assurance from him, because it is directly opposite to the policy adopted by his predecessor, Mr. Blaar Coetzee, who said that he would make it unpleasant for them to be in the urban areas. He said that he would try to get them away from the urban areas by making them unhappy here. I am glad to see that there has been a change in policy by this hon. the Deputy Minister. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I shall begin with the last speaker, for if there is anything I am grateful for it is the speech he made this afternoon. It gives me an opening for which I am very grateful. Since this is probably the last time I shall speak in the discussion of this Vote, I want to say that I have much to be grateful for from what happened on Thursday, Friday and today during the discussion of this Vote. Firstly I want to say that although we still had to listen to all kinds of strange remarks, and were also forced to listen to less sound arguments, the general tone and spirit of the debate was in my opinion far more moderate and better than it has been in the past. To that, of course, the Opposition also contributed a share. In fact, I want to be so grateful as to acknowledge that they contributed a very great share to that. I hope that this is a small omen of the consensus to which I referred on Friday. The hon. member mentioned this consensus, and I shall return to that again in a moment, although in a different context to that in which I did so on Friday.

Then I want to say a few words with reference to the speech made by the hon. member—I am having a little difficulty here with my notebook, in which I did the hon. member for Transkei a terrible injustice for which I apologize at once. I wrote down the constituency “Houghton” where I should have written “Transkei”. I do not know why I did this, but I want to apologize to him. [Interjections.]

Do not take it seriously!

How childish can you get?

Is this being childish now?

Yes.

I am glad that at my age I am still displaying a few signs of a childlike nature, or rather of childishness. It makes one feel younger, but old women are of course different to old men. Old men may show signs of childishness, but old women apparently never!

The hon. member for Transkei said something this afternoon which he has already said before. He mentioned the Bunga, which existed in the Transkei in former years, as a form of separate development, or of apartheid, which had supposedly been introduced by the people of the previous century, among others by Rhodes.

A form of self-government.

Very well then, a form of self-government. The hon. member must clearly understand that that Bunga was not in any way a form of self-government which fits into the pattern of our view of self-government. The Bunga was not a self-governing body, but met under the chairmanship of the chief magistrate. This chief magistrate was a White person, and in addition the Bunga was packed with other White officials who were the enfranchised, leading and determining members of that council. The hon. member ought to know that. That council did not make of the Transkei a self-governing area, because it was not a council of a self-governing Xhosa nation. The Bunga was a self-governing council in the sense that the Xhosa and the Whites were regarded as equal citizens of the same unit. That is entirely inconsistent with our view. We cannot therefore regard the Bunga in the same cadre. The Bunga is something which is comparable to the policy of the United Party and that of the Progressive Party; it is not comparable with ours. The hon. member quoted Gen. Smuts in this House, but I am afraid … [Interjections.] The hon. member must listen to me now, for I listened very carefully to him.

I was just explaining to the hon. member for Bezuidenhout the true procedure in the Bunga.

It is no use trying to set that hon. member straight; the hon. member will never straighten him out.

Prove what you are saying now!

I shall have to do so under another Vote. The hon. member for Transkei quoted Gen. Smuts, but I can read out to this House a far more deadly quotation from the speeches of Gen. Smuts; in fact, his speeches have very frequently been quoted, not to try to substantiate that hon. member’s standpoint, but to prove ours on this side of the House. Hon. members need only glance at his speeches which he made in England in the 1910s. Hon. members could also look at other speeches made by him. Where in South African politics was the word “apart” used so prominently for the first time? In the speeches made at the time by Gen. Smuts in Britain. “We have to Keep them apart.” He used the word “apart”. My standpoint is that to quote Gen. Smuts is completely useless. If there was ever a great political opportunist in our country, then we know it was he. He could out of every situation and out of every period, like the old philosopher, quote statements which could motivate and could justify opposing standpoints. We know that Gen. Smuts was never a political fundamentalist, but a political opportunist. It is of no avail therefore to quote Gen. Smuts. I would be able to quote him here now as a person who at some given time or other supported our standpoint just as effectively. It all depends on the circumstances, the time and the place.

What do you want to prove now?

I want to prove that he is no person to quote here to justify the standpoint of the Opposition.

I do not know why the hon. member quote the 79% of 80% Bantu with families in the Johannesburg area against our policy. We have always adopted the standpoint that the Bantu who are in the White area, whether they are present here on a migratory labour basis or on a family basis and came in under privileges in terms of section 10, or whether they were born here, or whatever the circumstances of their being here are, all the Bantu are present here in a casual capacity. We have always said this, and it has nothing to do with whether they are married or unmarried. That 80% who are present here on a married basis only proves one thing very conclusively, viz. that it is a tremendous exaggeration to say that we are ruining the family ties of the Bantu. That is not true. In the largest industrial area in the country, i.e. the Witwatersrand, that high percentage of Bantu is present there on a family basis. In addition the Opposition and other people who discuss this now should of course not talk as if every Bantu working in a factory is in fact a person who is married or ought to be married. After all, there are many people who are working there quite naturally on a single basis. Surely they do not get married shortly after being born. One gets married at a later stage in one’s life. Why cannot 20% or 15%, or whatever percentage there are, be present on a single basis?

The hon. member also referred to the offer made by Mr. Strauss. In this House all kinds of offers have been made to and fro by one party to another, but history will prove, and I assume already proves, that the offers made from this side by Dr. Malan in this Parliament soon after he assumed the premiership in 1948 in order to find common ground on a basis of the separate development of the various population units in South Africa, were genuine offers. If they had been accepted it would have been possible to avoid many misunderstandings and much unhappiness in our South African politics. Dr. Malan made other offers as well, and not only Dr. Malan but other premiers after him as well, in regard to the Protectorates, i.e. that we should arrive at a consensus of opinion on the Protectorates, and that this House should express a unanimous opinion in regard to the acquisition thereof. We know what the negative attitude of the United Party Opposition in that regard was. No, the Opposition should not speak of offers made on their part to us to obtain a consensus of opinion on Bantu development and Bantu matters in South Africa. In that the Opposition has failed, failed miserably, in the past and also up to the present.

The hon. member asked whether I wanted to repeat my invitation, and I told him I welcomed such an opportunity. I welcome the opportunity to repeat what I said on Friday, viz. that it has become very late in the day. It has become so late in the day that fatalists will perhaps say that it is already too late. But I am not a fatalist, and I say the time has arrived, and that it is almost 12 o’clock and almost the end of the possibilities, that the Whites in South Africa should arrive at a consensus on these matters, for example that there should be no interference and there should be greater uniformity of views on our Bantu policy. The hon. member then asked me on what basis I wanted a consensus to be arrived at. I want to ask that a consensus be arrived at on conditions which are perfectly natural, so natural that they occur throughout the entire world. These are universal facts. These are what I want to mention to you as conditions. My first condition is that we should find common ground on the acceptance that every nation which has its own identity has the right to be recognized and accepted as a separate nation. That is point number one. I know a great many Natives—prominent and good Natives—and the very best of them and I, are quite simply not members of one and the same nation. We are members of different nations. That is my first condition. Let us arrive at a consensus on that point. The hon. members of the Opposition must tell me: Do they genuinely not agree with us on this point? Are all the different Native nations and the White people not all members of different nations? Can we not accept that fact? If we accept that fact as a fundamental fact, I want to mention the following conditions to you. I am going to mention only a few; they are equally natural and equally universal. I mentioned this on Friday, and I am saying it again now, that if the Italians have the right to develop separately because they are a separate nation—and they have that right; so, too, do the Germans, the British, the French and the Portuguese …

And the Coloureds?

The Coloureds as well.

And the Indians?

The Indians have it as well; that is quite correct. The Indians have this right in India, why cannot they have it in South Africa as well?

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

No, wait; I am in the middle of a sentence; give me a chance. Contain your energy a little. If every nation in the world has the right to be recognized in its own context as a separate nation with its own identity, why do the Zulus not also have the right to be recognized, and why not the Xhosas and the Sothos? And why do we as Whites not also have the same right to be recognized as such? Why should we be forced to force members of other nations into our context? That is the fundamental premise. If we accept that, the following condition is also easy to accept. The hon. member may ask his question now.

I should very much like to ask, now that we are discussing this point, whether it is the view of the hon. the Minister that the Scots, for example, also have that right?

That is not a difficult question. The Scots have their own identity which is recognized, but the Scots, the people of Wales and the Irish, together form a White nation in the United Kingdom, just as that hon. member as an English-speaking person and I as an Afrikaans-speaking person, despite our lesser language and cultural differences, decided to form one nation. At any rate, we as Afrikaans-speaking persons have already decided, in general, that we are prepared to form one nation in South Africa together with the English-speaking people, no matter how difficult that may be. [Interjections.]

Subject to everyone having to accept the policy of the Nationalist Party.

Now the hon. member for East London City, who is shouting so on the opposite side, must tell me something. He and I are both Afrikaans-speaking persons, and in general we have decided—there are perhaps a few who are struggling with the idea—that we are prepared to form one nation together with the English-speaking people. I want to ask him whether he is prepared to form one nation with the Zulu and the Xhosa? I say no.

The Zulus have already formed one nation. [Interjections.]

Ah! That is the point at issue. [Interjections.]

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

No, wait a minute; those hon. members only want to poke fun now. Let me first develop my point. As I said, this is the basic condition. If this is the basic condition, it goes without saying of course that the following basic condition has to be stated, viz. that it should be made possible for each of these nations to go its own way, not only under their own resources, but also with the help of other nations on the principle of interdependence. They must be assisted to go their own way to their own destination. Let me put another condition to you. Arising out of the basic condition that each nation has its own right, it has to be a condition that no single nation will be allowed, not together with other nations either, to govern like a tyrant over another nation simply because it is in the minority as far as numbers are concerned. That is a basic fact. This idea was stated by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout—I am sorry that he is not present at the moment—as his creed in this House a year or two ago. I see the hon. member for Maitland is shaking his head. He should look up what the hon. member for Bezuidenhout had to say about it. I made a note of what he said. It is inherent in the concept of multi-nationality. I could enumerate even more conditions to hon. members.

Does that apply to the Coloureds as well?

It applies mutatis mutandis. Another condition is that in the territory of every nation and among its individual members, its rights should be its priorities. In this way I will have preferential rights in my territory and the others in their territories and among their individual members. If the Xhosa is therefore in my territory, he counts as No. 2 here, and not No. 1, equal to me. The same applies to the Whites. That is the basis on which we want to arrive at a consensus. Now I am asking hon. members: What, in that, is not universal throughout the entire world among nations? It is universal among the nations of the entire world. What, in that, is unfair to the Whites? What, in that, is unfair to the Zulus, Vendas, Shangaans, Coloureds, Owambo or any other nation? Nothing whatsoever. Why does the United Party not discuss this so that we can arrive at a consensus in regard to it.

They do not do so because—and it is a pity—what I mentioned on Friday has up to now seemed too enticing to certain people in our country, viz. to use, perhaps even to misuse, the Bantu nations in South Africa, Bantu politics in South Africa, and Bantu affairs in South Africa as a weapon between White political parties to get those parties into power in this country. That is the thing we must eradicate in South Africa. This interference by Whites I denounce completely, as I did the other day. There was an hon. member of the Opposition who spoke here on Friday and said that we on this side, the Government, were interfering in the politics of the Bantu nations. I deny this once and for all, and I am going to say something about this in a moment. Unfortunately there are Bantu leaders as well who in general, without being specific, have also expressed opinions and said that we on the Government side are interfering in the politics of the Bantu. The Government, either through its politicians or through its officials, is in no way interfering in the politics of the Bantu peoples. They have their politics as well, and their politics assume different patterns to the politics of the Whites. But we do not interfere in their politics and in the relations between their different bodies of opinion. It is our task to advise the Bantu peoples, the Bantu Governments, the tribes, their councils and whatever they have in the form of organizations, in regard to political development, economic matters and other developments in the homelands. For that reason I am in full agreement with the hon. member for Bloemfontein West who has just spoken and emphasized the necessity of promoting economic development in the Bantu areas in order to help the Bantu think and develop in that connection, through advising them. That we are in fact doing. But now there is something we must face up to. It does sometimes happen that honest advice which we give to Bantu nations is unpopular and is rejected. Something like this could perhaps be mistakenly termed intervention. If a Bantu officer in the service of some Bantu Government or other were to take money or possessions belonging to his Government, or if he were perhaps to help his friends nepotistically, for example, or give undue preference to them in some way or another, and such practices are advised against, I have seen it happen that great resentment develops against the White official who charged those people with such conduct, or who wanted to set those people straight. Then it is sometimes said that that White official cannot co-operate with the Bantu nation in question and that he should be withdrawn, simply because he has recommended something good which may have been unpopular in certain circles. This is not interference but it is frequently called interference. It is in fact “setting people straight”.

Sir, we have also heard in this Committee of alleged interference on the part of the Whites in the politics of the Bantu and in matters relating to the Bantu which were not always purely political matters. Names were mentioned by various members on this side. The hon. member for Carletonville mentioned names, and our hon. Chief Whip mentioned names; the hon. members for Lydenburg mentioned names. I think there were other members as well who also mentioned names. There is nothing I can do to those persons if this is correct, and I have my own reasons for knowing what I should believe in regard to those matters. But in general I just want to say this, and I should like the hon. member for Houghton to listen very carefully now, for what I have to say has a bearing on her, and more specifically on her party: If there are Whites who are interfering or occupying themselves with the politics or the affairs of the Bantu in such ways as those mentioned by hon. members on this side, and are doing so specifically to go against the White authority of South Africa, then the activities of those White persons border on the treasonable. It is nothing but political terrorism on the part of White people who indulge in such things.

The Bantu leaders ought to realize that if Whites meddle in this way with those Bantu politics, it is not aimed at promoting those Bantu areas. It is not aimed at assisting the development of those Bantu; it has nothing to do with the promotion of the interests of the Bantu there. It concerns the selfish political and ulterior reasons of those White interferers themselves. Sir, it occurs quite frequently, and I deplore most strongly such behaviour as this. I am referring now to the kind of behaviour to which hon. members on this side referred. One finds it on the part of certain White individuals, and one finds it on the part of certain journalists in South Africa.

I am now reiterating what I said a moment ago, and that is that we as Nationalists, that I as Minister, as well as the Deputy Ministers and our officials who must not be politicians and who are not politicians either, do not in any way discuss any principles or any political parties or political groups of South Africa with the Bantu leaders. This dare not be done. I do not do it, however objectionable, however dangerous and however useless the politics of the Progressive Party, the Liberal Party and the United Party may be to the Bantu nations in the Bantu areas and in the White areas; I do not discuss these things in those terms with the Bantu. If this has never yet been said clearly enough then I am asking all members on my side sincerely now not to do such things, not to discuss the political patterns, the political dogmas the political activities of our political opponents—there are two groups of them sitting on that side and there are others outside— with the Bantu leaders. That dare not happen.

Would you tell that to the Commissioners-General as well?

Sir, the Commissioners-General know it as well as I do. We hold regular consultations with them in regard to these matters. Sir, our Commissioners-General and we proclaim the positive aspects, viz. which we as Government in power have to implement, and which the Bantu nations in their areas have to implement, and how they have to guide and develop the separate development of their separate nations, with their own separate homelands; those are the things we discuss, but we never show them how bad or dangerous the policy of this or that White party would be; we simply do not do that. Sir, I am asking: Why then should the opponents of the Government do this with the Bantu in respect of our policy.

As in 1948.

Wait a minute. Why are the opponents of the Government doing this, to go and speak to the Bantu leaders themselves, wherever they may find them, and why are such Whites interfering in Bantu politics in the Bantu areas, as in the cases enumerated here by hon. members on this side? The names of those people were mentioned here, as you heard Sir. I had a photograph which I handed over to a colleague of mine a moment ago and which I do not now have in my possession; but I see that the Chief Whip is on his way to my bench to give it back to me; I want to thank him. He does not always look after things I give him! Sir, this photograph appeared in a newspaper on 16th September, 1972. Standing here, inter alia, are Mrs. Suzman, in the middle, flanked by two Bantu leaders, and to the one side Mr. Colin Eglin, her party leader, and Mr. Ray Swart, the leader of her party in Natal.

So what?

The hon. member says “so what?”. I say: “so the downfall of the White in South Africa when you get this type of activity”.

What is wrong with it? [Interjections.]

Order!

Sir, it is an old universal truth that people only cry out when they get hurt.

[Inaudible.]

I am pleased that the hon. member is sensitive here and there. It is stated here—

Of course; certainly.

What did you have to do with that?

Sir, it is stated here, in the words of Mr. Eglin—

And now he is speaking on behalf of himself and his party and he said the following—

Of course.

In other words, what he is doing is to go from one area to another organizing these meetings to be able to say to the Bantu that the impossible demands which they are making are realistic and that they should continue to make them. Sir, I want to reiterate here: This is among the dirtiest forms of political activities in which a political party in South Africa can indulge.

All she still had to do was invite him to church with her.

Sir, there is an English expression which says in a few simple words: “It is not done”. I want to say to the hon. member that as far as activities of this kind are concerned: “It is not done.” It ought not to be done. [Interjections.] Sir, I understand why the hon. member for Wynberg does not agree with me; I know why. Sir, we have a consensus to arrive at with one another, not only of reasoning, not only a consesus of what to feel in regard to the policy; we have arrived at a consensus with one another as Whites in South Africa in respect of our conduct to interference, in regard to involving the Bantu in our political dispute, yes or no. Let the United Party and the Progressive Party quarrel with us as much as they like over the land issue as far as the Bantu are concerned, but why they should run to the Bantu with such a matter as this, and also with many other matters of which mention was made here, I should like to know. [Interjection.] Yes, consultation, but not to prejudice my fellow-brother.

Incitement.

Sir, I hold more positive, constructive consultations with the Bantu leaders than all of them on that side put together, for we are discussing their development and our peaceful coexistence in South Africa. I am not talking to them in order to get their co-operation in assisting my political opponents into a political grave.

Nor are we.

Keep quiet. You are a renegade (hanskakie).

Order!

Sir, there are a few members to whom I should perhaps still reply in regard to a few matters.

†The hon. member for Houghton spoke here on Friday of a deadlock that would be reached if the Bantu did not ask for independence because if they do not get more land, the outside world will not accept our bona fides. Mr. Chairman, we have said several times, and I repeat it now, that we cannot force any Bantu nation or homeland into independence if they do not want to accept it. According to our policy, they may develop as far as independence, and we will even assist them in that direction, and when they are independent we will still be prepared to assist them financially and otherwise. But, Sir, it is totally wrong to say that there will be a deadlock. I say that there need not be any deadlock in this respect, especially not if the Progressive Party and other Whites in South Africa do not present this land matter as such in their way to the Bantu people.

They do not need us to tell them that.

… and if we can get the consensus of opinion on which I spoke here today and also on Friday.

*The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg District apologized to me because it might have been impossible for him to be here, but I see that he has returned safely.

Are you sorry?

No, I would have replied to him in any case, but now he can hear for himself what I have to say.

Why did you say that he had returned “safely”?

I would, after all, not have wanted him to have failed to return safely.

Could you threaten his safety?

He is becoming more U.P. by the day.

Not only U.P., stupid as well.

Sir, the hon. member asked why all Bantu could not obtain property in the homeland towns. Sir, I said by way of interjection that the Bantu homeland towns are being developed, and that land titles are being granted in respect of premises within the surveyed homeland towns. I am not referring now to the concentration where the people are residing in agricultural areas, in the tribal areas, for there they are residing in terms of the occupational rights granted to them by the chiefs, and that hon. member ought to know how it works. It is tribal land which is owned communally. I am referring to towns such as Umlazi. Sir, there is no reason why all the Bantu, who want to own that land in their name, cannot eventually do so. There may, temporarily, be a reason why they cannot do so, for some reason or other, but there is no reason involving principle why each of those premises cannot be transferred to a Bantu individual who wants to occupy those premises.

Are the Bantu aware of this?

Yes, the Bantu are aware of this. There are tens of thousands of Natives who already have such rights of possession. I can furnish the hon. member with the numbers; I do not have them with me at the moment, but there are tens of thousands of them who are already able to do so. The Bantu are aware of this, and they are insisting on this, and many of them are moving to those homeland towns precisely because they may have rights of possession there. It is in fact an attraction to them. There is the story of the Church of the Holy Ghost, which the hon. member reproached me with; I had a few inquiries made in that regard. Perhaps the hon. member did not have enough particulars concerning this matter, but he could have made inquiries from the department. The fact of the matter is that various offers were made in respect of land and for the separate properties on the place. If I misunderstood the hon. member, I am sorry, but if I understood him correctly, I want to say that the offers made subsequently were not less than those which had originally been made. There were at different times different offers for different properties. It may be that one offer was less than a previous one, but then it was for different things that the offers were repeated. He asked whether notifications of expropriation may be cancelled. The position in the Expropriation Act as it stands, is that the Act is silent on that point. The Act does not say that one may cancel such a notification. Nor does the Act state that one may not cancel it. The Act is silent on that point. [Interjection.] The hon. member said one could not cancel it.

The hon. the Deputy Minister said he could not cancel it, and I said he could, because the Act was silent on the point.

I wish you would sometimes be as silent as the Act is on that point.

There I and the hon. member are in agreement now, and for that reason we did not argue any further.

The next person I want to reply to is the hon. member for Rosettenville. I understand that he had to be absent. The hon. member put questions to me in regard to health services, which he termed “health services on an agency basis”. He did not have it quite right, viz. that the health services in the homelands are run on an agency basis. The words “agency basis” are used very loosely. It is perhaps a term which, colloquially, is used too frequently, and sometimes incorrectly. The position with health services in the homelands at present, in the four provinces of the Republic, but not in South-West Africa—in South-West Africa the principle is the same, but is slightly different—is that the provinces are no longer responsible for the health of the Bantu in the homelands. The provinces are still responsible for the Whites, but the health services in the Bantu homelands are a task for the homelands and are being managed by my department. The responsibility rests on my department. Hon. members will see that the money goes through my department, but my department has not established a branch of its own with doctors and nurses, etc. For the homelands of South Africa we are using as experts the Department of Health of my colleague to carry out and perform the work within the Bantu homelands, and to advise us, etc. In regard to the policy, the money and the planning the Department of Health and my department have a joint say. This applies to all the homelands where a homeland government has not yet taken these over itself. Not even two months ago the Transkei took the responsibility for health services upon itself. But not everything is done at once. The responsibility was transferred to them in this sense that they have already established a department or a division for health in their administration with a Secretary for Health. Just as they have a Secretary for Justice whom they received from us, they have a Secretary for Health whom they received from the White Government, and they have commenced with the take-over of certain hospitals—not all; it will be done step by step in order to facilitate matters. They have even appointed a Minister of Health. This is a pattern which can be followed in all the homelands. In South-West Africa it is precisely the same pattern, with this difference that it is not the Department of Health of my colleague that is doing the work for us there, but the department of health of the South-West African administration. There is not yet a government which has taken over these duties directly, although certain subordinate duties falling under health have already in fact been taken over, such as the provision and control over clinics, etc.

May I ask a question? What about the two matrons in the Transkei who were discharged, in Umtata?

That has not yet been brought to my attention. Of course the hon. member must understand now that the health services of the Transkei is a matter for the Government of the Transkei and because that hospital in Umtata is a Bantu hospital it falls under the Government of the Transkei.

And the Whites?

I shall reply directly. Just give me a chance. I am doing it very methodically. I am not flustered. The Bantu Government, the Government of the Transkei, can employ or discharge people as it deems fit in that hospital which falls under its jurisdiction. The Whites in that hospital in Umtata are, however, the responsibility of the Cape Provincial Administration, but the Department of Health is dealing with it on behalf of the administration. As far as certain amenities, such as theatres, are concerned, the situation we should like to have there is not yet prevailing. The intention is that separate theatre facilities will be established for the Bantu hospital so that every hospital will have its own theatre facilities under the control of the various hospitals themselves. Up to now the Bantu hospital has still been making use of the theatre in the White hospital. However, it is not correct to say that the Bantu authorities are exercising control over that hospital with its theatre in the White area. They only have it at their disposal for use until such time as separate facilities have been established. That is the position in the Transkei, and I think that I have, with this, made the matter very clear. Hon. members must understand it in this way, and not misrepresent it. With that I think I have replied to all the questions raised by the hon. member for Rosettenville.

†The hon. member for Berea asked me some questions in connection with the training of Bantu as doctors. He said that not enough is being done in regard to education to provide a sufficient number of Bantu individuals to study medicine in order to become doctors. I wish to refute …

But the Dean of the Medical Faculty agrees with me.

That may be so, but it does not matter to me who agrees with the hon. member. That leaves me stone cold.

He should know.

He should know, but I should also know! I shall give some figures to prove what the position is. The basic statement of the hon. member was— I wrote it down in Afrikaans—

He complained that too little was being done in regard to education with the result that not enough Bantu students were coming forward to become doctors. I want to give a few figures to refute the statement by the hon. member or whoever said it. The figures I am about to quote relate to two subjects, namely Science and Chemistry, which I combine for the purposes of this argument. These two subjects can be taken for the matriculation certificate and are subjects in which Bantu students should pass in the matriculation examinations if they intend becoming doctors. In 1967—that is to say, six years ago—there were only 65 Bantu students in the whole of South Africa who passed the matriculation examinations in those two subjects. However, in 1972—that is to say last year— this figure of 65 increased to 485; in other words, there was an increase of about seven and a half times. From 1960 to 1972 the number of Bantu matriculants increased by 1 500%; that is, from a total of 182 to 2 911. I say that refutes the statement that we do too little in the field of education and that as a result too few come forward to become doctors. Naturally there are also other professions which need students with similar combinations of subjects. However, the education has improved tremendously. This is a matter we can discuss during the Vote to follow this one. I just wanted to bring this to the notice of the hon. member who raised this question.

*The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg City, who unfortunately cannot be here, referred to the transportation difficulties which exist. I discussed the matter with him personally and I just want to say that the major problem with the feeder road to the Sweet Waters is one of funds at the given time. All of us should like to see that road constructed at the earliest possible opportunity at which provision can be made for the funds. This matter will be gone into in far greater detail by the Deputy Minister who is in charge of these matters and who will give the hon. member further information. As I have already said, I discussed this matter with the hon. member the other day, and although he was not able to be present here today, I am mentioning this simply for the record. I hope that that hon. member, too, will return safely.

I have already referred to the arguments raised by the hon. member for Port Elizabeth Central, and I should now like to conclude by referring to one matter which will cause hon. members on the opposite side of the House to wake up. The hon. member for East London North touched upon certain matters in this House. Firstly I want to repeat the information which I conveyed to him by word of mouth after the conclusion of the debate. He asked what the position of towns such as Stutterheim, Molteno, Queenstown and Cathcart was. Ha said that he should very much like to know whether they fell within or outside the Ciskei. After he explained to me personally precisely what he meant by that. What he meant was whether or not they fall in the area enjoying border industry benefits. We must bear in mind that the word “Ciskei” has two meanings; just as the name of other Bantu areas also have two meanings. There is the name “Ciskei” which refers to the entire area, White and non-White, and includes the area across the Kei River. Then there is the Ciskei which is the Bantu area only. The towns of Cathcart, Queenstown, Molteno and Stutterheim are situated in the White areas of the Ciskie. If I remember correctly, Queenstown is already a town which is already recognized officially as a border industry town in South Africa. Consequently all the decentralization benefits which are made available to border industries, may be granted to the industrialists who establish themselves there. I cannot now discuss these benefits under this Vote, for it falls under my colleague, the Minister of Economic Affairs. As the hon. members will know, I have nothing to do with the benefits for industries in a White border area. Queenstown is such a town. For that reason we are building up a Bantu homeland town for it at the appropriate place, Queensdale, which is situated close to Queenstown. Molteno, which is a smallish town, also falls within such an area and as far as I know, Molteno is not a town which has been included in the panel of towns which may enjoy border area benefits. There has already been an individual case at Molteno with which I dealt in my capacity as member of the Cabinet Committee on Decentralization, where we had to confer certain concessions in order to assist a certain factory there. Then, Stutterheim and Cathcart were also mentioned. Cathcart and Stutterheim are towns which are situated in an area which is close enough to a Bantu homeland to enable them to qualify for the acquisition of those benefits. If any industrialist of stature with a worthwhile proposition were to come forward and were to ask for concessions in order to establish himself there, his case would be dealt with sympatheticaly if those towns have not yet been included in the panel. I do not have the panel in front of me now; I am replying off the cuff. To the best of my knowledge not all those towns are included in the panel of towns which may enjoy border industry benefits. New towns are included in that panel from time to time, but nevertheless those towns are close enough to the Bantu homelands to enable them to qualify. The hon. member made a remark in passing which I must correct, and with that I want to end for today.

It is about time.

Thank you.

It is a pleasure.

The hon. member said that the Bantu in the White areas are on a basis of integration.

Economic integration.

That does not make very much difference. It simply reduces the field of the argument to a smaller area; that is all. Political integration is one thing, social integration another thing, and economic integration is something else again; so, too, is labour integration, etc. How many times have we not explained the position from this side of the House, that it is quite wrong to say that when a Bantu person is working in a factory he has been integrated with the Whites in that factory? [Interjections.] When the hon. member for Hillbrow was dealing with other more constructive matters than the matters he is dealing with now, we discussed all these matters in this House. The hon. member would do well to hunt through the old Hansards and read it up. We have always said that the presence of a Bantu person in a town or in a factory does not mean that he has been integrated on an equal basis with the Whites. After all, integration means that one is placed on a par with the other man and is absorbed in one context of identical equality. We state emphatically, and I have said it here with reference to the casual capacity of the Bantu, that Bantu persons coming to work in the White areas, in our factories, our homes, shops or wherever, are not allowed here in terms of our policy to achieve economically, in the sphere of labour, the same or equal status as that of the Whites. They cannot in the garages factories or banks in Cape Town, develop equally with the Whites. They cannot become managers, artisans, general managers, directors or joint general managers. Only when they are able to become all those things which the Whites can become here in the White areas, are they integrated. One is integrated if one is placed on an equal footing as far as the same potential is concerned, if one is the same or can become the same; then one is integrated. But being present is not integration. Are four people who, for example, are present in a hall at the same time, inevitably integrated? Being present is not integration.

Casual integration.

That hon. member is making himself ridiculous. We say very clearly to the Bantu, and they know it, and we say very clearly to the Whites, and they should know it—the Opposition does not want to know it—that the Bantu who are allowed into White South Africa are allowed in here on a basis of non-integration …

Casually.

Yes, in a casual capacity, quite correct. That is to say, they do not enjoy equality with the Whites. They do not even have the potential of the equality with the Whites. They may only occupy those posts which are exempted for them, from which the Whites have withdrawn themselves, or which the Whites have never occupied. Only if they could enter any White employment and could be given equality with the Whites, would it be integration. On the same basis we are of course applying this principle mutatis mutandis to the Bantu homelands. I think that fundamentally I have stated this matter adequately, a matter which really justifies a far longer explanation, and hon. members will simply have to go and read further what I and many on this side of the House have said about this in the past.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask the hon. the Minister a question? The hon. the Minister did not reply to the question I raised in regard to the future of Nyangas, medicine men, herbalists and mid-wives registered under Native law. I wonder if he would be good enough to give the Committee the intention of his department in this regard.

Could the hon. member just repeat the question in essence?

I raised the question of the Nyangas, the medicine men, mid-wives and herbalists who are registered under Native law in terms of section 98(2) of the Medical, Dental and Pharmacy Act. I pointed out that there were over 800 of these people registered in Zululand and in Natal alone. I asked what part they would play in the health services in the homelands now that the control of these people has been vested in the Department of Bantu Administration.

Mr. Chairman, at present the health services in KwaZulu and Bophuthatswana, and most of the other Bantu homelands, are not yet under the governments of those homelands, but are still the responsibility of my department. We are maintaining the position as it has been so far. When it falls under their governments and they have jurisdiction and authority over those matters, it will be their concern. If the hon. member would like to know something more specific in this regard, I would advise him to table the necessary question.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. the Minister has made some very interesting remarks this afternoon and some very arrogant ones as well. Perhaps among the more arrogant ones was his very last statement when he told us of the many things that are “baie duidelik”.

The what?

The many things that are “baie duidelik”.

Yes, “baie duidelik”.

For instance, the Blacks are not here on the same basis as Whites; they are not economically integrated here …

I have said that many times.

Yes, the hon. the Minister has said a lot of things and so have other hon. Ministers before him, like, for instance, his predecessor, the late Dr. Verwoerd, who told us very clearly in this House that by 1978 the flow of Africans into the White areas would have been reversed and that the Blacks would be streaming back to the homelands. That was told to us as “baie duidelik” as well. Indeed, one deputy Minister staked his entire political future on that event coming about. Well, we all know what has happened to that gentleman’s political future. He is not here any more at all.

There are other things that we were told very clearly by hon. Ministers and Deputy Ministers, and in exactly the same arrogant terms. One of the things that we were told by the previous Deputy Minister was that under no circumstances was the Government going to allow Black typists, Black telephonists, Black receptionists and Black counter-hands to go on working in those capacities in South Africa. What has happened in that regard? Nothing at all, for the simple reason that economically we cannot do without those people. That is going to be the force that is going to determine the whole direction of policy, whatever this Government says. We need those people as much as they need us.

I want to say one or two things to the hon. the Minister with regard to his remark about White people interfering in Black policy. First of all, I want to tell him that he seems to imagine that Black people cannot read or think for themselves.

That is nonsense.

Let us examine what the hon. the Minister said this afternoon. He says that Black politicians have no right to go and talk to Black leaders …

White politicians.

Yes, White politicians have no right to go and talk to Black leaders and in the process to talk in a derogatory fashion about the policies of White parties in this country. Does the hon. the Minister think that the things he says about the United Party’s policy or the Progressive Party’s policy go unread and unnoticed by Black leaders?

I do not go and discuss it with them.

The hon. the Minister does not discuss anything with Black leaders. He goes and tells them …

Oh, no!

… what he wants them to do and how he wants them to behave. Discussion with Black leaders is something that would not enter his head. The hon. the Minister says he has consultations, but he does all the talking; nobody gets an opportunity to talk to him.

That is nonsense.

Let me tell the hon. the Minister that Black leaders read very carefully what the hon. the Minister and other White politicians in this country say. It is from what they say that they gauge the state of White politics in this country. They can think for themselves, believe it or not. They do not need people like the hon. the Minister or even people like me or Mr. Eglin, to tell them what to think about the land issue, for instance. They have been talking about this land issue for years and the hon. the Minister knows it.

Now, last year he was kind enough, admittedly after some persuasion, to allow me and various members of the Progressive Party to visit the homelands. I want to say that while we were there we were received most courteously by the Commissioners-General. The impression that we gained while we were there was that the Commissioners-General were doing their utmost to try to develop the areas under their authority. I will not say that all those Commissioners-General were exactly popular. But that is not the point. The point is that the impression we got was that most of them were certainly trying to do a job of work, some of them I might say, under considerable difficulties. But let us leave that to one side. At that time the leaders that we spoke to told us—we did not tell them—what their dissatisfaction was about the question of land—as if this comes as a surprise to the hon. the Minister. He knows perfectly well that Chief Matanzima has for years been saying: Port St. John’s belongs to the Transkei; Kokstad and the surrounding areas belong to the Transkei. Matanzima told us what he has told the hon. the Minister, that until those areas are re-acquired by the Transkei, he is not interested in asking for independence. Other leaders have the same complaint. The land that was allocated under the 1936 Act, even when fully acquired, could never ever be enough to support the existing population of the homelands, let alone the natural increase and let alone all the thousands that were going to come flocking back from the White areas in this mythical 1978. The hon. the Minister says “No more land”, while the leaders of the Bantustans say that in that case, no independence. That is why I say to the hon. the Minister that his policy has reached a complete deadlock. Unless those people get independence, and it is presumably not going to be forced upon them, as the hon. the Minister of Foreign Affairs correctly pointed out the other day, the world will not accept the bona fides of this Government as far as its racial policy is concerned. He said that it was a prerequisite for our policy to be accepted in the outside world, that the homelands acquire their independence. I want the hon. the Minister to tell me how that deadlock is going to be broken.

There were two other factors about which all the homeland leaders were extremely upset. The one was the question of the migratory labour system and what it was doing to family life in the homelands. That was something which disturbed them considerably. Two or three of them told us that they could not in any case have the migrants back with them to live permanently—those people working in the towns—because there is nothing there for them to do.

This brings me to the third point of their great dissatisfaction, namely the lack of employment opportunities inside the homelands themselves. There is one area which has developed in quite an interesting fashion, namely Babelegi, the show-place of the hon. the Minister, the industrial area inside the homeland of Bophuthatswana. But of course this area happens to be approximately 30 km from Pretoria and therefore is within striking distance of Pretoria. By accident of history Bophuthatswana boundaries end within striking distance of Pretoria and the Witwatersrand/ Vaal triangle. Therefore Babelegi does have some economic possibilities. I would like the hon. the Minister to tell me where in the Transkei does this favourable situation prevail …

Butterworth, Umtata and other places.

But they are nowhere near the industrial areas. Transport is lacking and the whole infrastructure is lacking. The hon. the Minister knows that. The answer I got to the question which I put to him earlier this year demonstrates that in the three years on the agency basis, i.e. from 1969 to 1972, the number of jobs provided on the agency basis in all of the homelands comes to 7 800 jobs of which the vast majority was of course in Babelegi in Bophuthatswana. Not only in Babe legi in Bophuthatswana. Not only in Babeswana such as the area where they have platinum mines where jobs can be provided. But the other areas are pathetic. 474 jobs were provided in KwaZulu, 71 in little Basotho-Qwaqwa, 204 in Leboa, 129 in Venda, etc. In the Transkei something like 1 500 jobs in all have been provided on an agency basis. The Xhosa Development Corporation has in all provided just on 5 000 jobs. Now where on earth is there going to be sufficient economic development inside those homelands to provide any attraction for Black people living in the White areas in this “loose” capacity—yet another term we have had coined—to return to the homelands? I say, Sir, the homelands policy is a failure. It can never be anything else but a failure because it has no potential as far as economic development is concerned, and nobody knows this better than the Minister. I wonder whether the hon. the Minister would at least pay me the courtesy of listening to me for two minutes.

No, he obviously will not.

I wonder whether the hon. the Minister would pay me the courtesy of listening to me.

I do listen.

Sir, I have listened to him for practically an hour this afternoon, and I think he could pay me the courtesy of listening to me for three minutes. Perhaps the Whip will allow him to listen to me; I would be grateful if he would. [Time expired.]

Votes agreed to.

Revenue Vote No. 17 and S.W.A. Vote No. 7.—“Bantu Education”:

Mr. Chairman, the hon. the Deputy Minister Janson will be in charge of this Vote. As this is the first occasion he will be acting in this capacity, I want to congratulate him …

He has a lot more manners than you have!

Mr. Chairman, in the first instance I should like to associate myself with the words of the hon. the Minister. We on this side of the House also wish the Deputy Minister well in this post. He has told us that he is a “redelike man” —we believe that—and that he is prepared to listen to suggestions. I hope, during the debate on this Vote, to put some suggestions to the hon. the Deputy Minister which he will consider favourably. But, Sir, I think at this stage, after 25 years of Nationalist rule, it is appropriate to examine the position of Bantu Education in South Africa. There have been achievements and I am sure that members opposite will spend a great deal of the time during this Vote in highlighting the achievements. I propose to deal with some of the shortcomings.

Sir, I believe that the achievements in the main have been due to the dedication of a very conscientious staff in the Department of Bantu Education. But I believe also that the present shortcomings and deficiencies have to a large extent been due to the closed-mind philosophy of the late Dr. Verwoerd, because he decreed that the poorest race must make the greatest sacrifice and greatest direct contribution to their own education. And how did he ensure that? He ensured it by pegging the State’s allocation to Bantu Education for many years at a fixed amount of R13 million. In order to put the matter into perspective, I propose briefly to quote what the late Dr. Verwoerd said when he was Minister of Native Affairs. I quote from Hansard of 3rd June, 1954, at col. 6211. This is what the late Dr. Verwoerd said—

You know, Mr. Chairman, we find that hon. members opposite are very averse to conceding a change in their policy. But we had a fundamental change in policy a year back when the Bantu Education Account Abolition Bill of 1972 was passed by this Parliament, because it cast aside the late Dr. Verwoerd’s fixed subsidy concept for Bantu Education. What has been the effect of the pegging of a fixed amount for Bantu Education for many years? Firstly we are reaping the disadvantage and the problem of the shortage of trained Bantu in many spheres because after 25 years of Nationalist Government rule a mere trickle of skilled and professional men, technicians, technologists and artisans, is filtering through, mainly to serve eight homelands advancing to sovereign independence. But, Sir, what is more disturbing is that we have a virtual state of emergency in Bantu education in South Africa. Do not take my word for this, Mr. Chairman. I want to quote from an editorial in the October, 1972, Bantu Education Journal itself—

Then follows a further quotation—

Sir, I have not the time at my disposal to deal with the 12 items which were listed more or less as priorities, but I hope to be able to deal with some, and the first one is “the provision of sufficient classrooms for all, so that the platoon system where it occurs can be eliminated”. I want to deal in more detail with the provision of schools and the financing of the provision of schools for the Bantu, because I do not see the details, which I believe we should have, in the Estimates before this Committee. You see, Sir, the Department of Bantu Education does not have a Loan Account, as is the case of the Coloured and Indian education Votes which come under the Loan Vote of the Department of Public Works. The only detail in connection with education that I can find in the Estimates is under Loan Vote N, “Bantu Administration and Development”, where it is stated that a figure of R1½ million is available for university buildings. Earlier this session the hon. member for Kensington tabled a question in regard to the financing of Bantu education, the Minister gave a very complete and comprehensive answer, and it filled in some of the gaps which we on this side of the House find so difficult to fill. Arising from this answer, Sir, I have been able to discover that the homeland government department of works voted for school buildings an amount of R3,3 million, but I want to ask the Minister what the provision is in the White areas in respect of school buildings for the Bantu. Sir, Parliament votes the money, but the details, in my opinion, are inadequate and insufficient, and it is difficult for the Opposition to assess what the position of Bantu education is in this respect.

Sir, in passing I want to make a comparison here. As far as Bantu school buildings for Bantu education are concerned, the suggestion is that the expenditure is R3,3 million plus an undisclosed amount for the White areas to provide school buildings for a school enrolment of over three million. On the other hand, we have Coloured education, and we know that the Coloured Representative Council has a fair degree of autonomy in education, as one of its executive council members is regarded as being in charge of Coloured education, but in our Loan Vote and in our Estimate we are able to elicit information which reveals that for half a million Coloured pupils, over R11 million is allocated for expenditure, and the details are as follows: This money will be devoted to extending 50 existing schools and to making provision initially for 65 new schools. Sir, when we come to the Indian education section, we find that the same position applies; in other words, information is available, and here we find that an amount of R3½ million is allocated for 172 000 pupils, and that this money will be spent on the provision of 17 new schools and the extension of 17 existing schools.

But, Sir, I repeat that when we look for figures in regard to Bantu education, we find that provision is made for an expenditure of R3,3 million, plus an undisclosed amount for school buildings, for over three million Bantu pupils. I submit that this state of affairs is neither fair nor adequate.

Sir, I referred earlier to the shortage of trained Bantu. There have been discussions in this House during this session about the urgent need for the vocational and technical training of Bantu, both in the homelands and in the White areas. What has the Government done? I want to quote from the publication Bantu, an article in March, 1963, ten years ago—

It says “arrangements have been made”, in 1963. But what do we find ten years later? We find that out of over three million pupils there is an overall enrolment of 4 369 Bantu for technical and vocational training. Sir, only one Bantu out of 686 pupils is receiving technical training. This leads me to ask a question. Could this be due to lack of sufficient funds or could it be due to lack of sufficiently trained Bantu teachers? I want to tell the Committee of an appeal that was addressed by the headmaster of a vocational training school in Natal. He used the best means he had to disseminate the appeal. He distributed his appeal through a newsletter from the Durban Chamber of Commerce and he appealed for funds to buy both language and commercial books because the books were not provided for the pupils in vocational schools by the department itself. [Time expired.]

The hon. member for Berea began by conveying his congratulations to the hon. Deputy Minister. I should also like to convey to him our hearty congratulations from this side of the House and express the hope that he will handle this department with great success.

The hon. member mentioned here that the achievements accomplished so far by the Department of Bantu Education are owing to the dedicated officials. I cannot differ with him; in fact I want to associate myself with his remarks and say that we are very grateful to the dedicated officials of the Department of Bantu Education. But that is as far as I can agree with him. Now I come to the point where I differ with him. The hon. member spoke about the deficiencies in Bantu education and according to him they are the result of the philosophy of the late Dr. Verwoerd of pegging the amounts for Bantu education. I just want to remind the hon. member that there has probably been no other person in the political history of South Africa who has done so much for the Bantu as such, and more specifically for Bantu education, than Dr. Verwoerd. I want to remind the hon. member that it was Dr. Verwoerd himself who, as Minister of Native Affairs, passed the Bantu Education Act of 1954, an act which formed the basis, the Magna Carta really, of Bantu education in this country. I could expand on that by pointing out that the three million mark has already been exceeded in regard to Bantu pupils. The hon. member made a great fuss about that fact that so little is still being done for technical education. This is a matter which the Department of Bantu Education is still dealing with at this moment. I also want to remind the hon. member that although as yet, compulsory education does not exist as far as the Bantu are concerned, more than 90% of Bantu children of schoolgoing age are already attending school. I think that this is a unique achievement with which no country in Africa can compete.

I should like to bring a few matters to the attention of the hon. the Minister. I want to ask the hon. the Minister and the hon. the Deputy Minister whether the education budget for Bantu homelands could not possibly be entrenched. This is how I want to explain the matter. It is a well-known fact that every homeland draws up a budget for those departments or components, which the homeland government control, and then an overall amount is allocated from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the homeland, which the homeland government may apply as it sees fit. What happens in the majority of cases is that the Treasury, i.e. the Minister of Finance, is unable to allocate the amount which the homeland requests in its budget and that the Treasury then allocates only an overall amount. As a result of pruning, the pruning process which the departments of the Republic also undergo, this means that it is sometimes not possible to allocate that overall amount. But because education in the homelands is a very important item and also comprises the bulk of the expenditure, it is precisely education which is hardest hit. In addition to that it may happen, and I am told that it does happen, that a government may give priority to other services, for example welfare services or agriculture, which as such have nothing to do with education, and the funds which have been voted to and intended for education are then utilized by another department or component of a department. In virtually all the homelands there is a lack of hostel accommodation at high schools and particularly at training colleges. The Government believes that Bantu education must be homeland-orientated and that the Bantu scholars must be drawn to the homelands as far as possible for secondary education and also for training in the training colleges; therefore it is necessary and essential that the education budget of the homeland be entrenched so that the amounts voted for education are not utilized elsewhere. After all, it is the homeland itself which will suffer as a result of this in future, and the education of its children will remain backward and neglected. We know that the Bantu Education Account was separated from the account of the Department of Bantu Administration and Development and I think that as far as the homelands are concerned, it should perhaps be separated in the same way, or entrenched, as far as the Bantu Education Account is concerned.

I would also like to express my gratitude and great appreciation towards the staff of Bantu Education for the high standard which has consistently been maintained in the columns of the Bantu Education Journal, the official organ of the Department of Bantu Education. I cannot omit to congratulate the editorial staff on the sound balance between Afrikaans and English which is maintained in this journal, as well as on the good standard of both languages in all articles. I also want to refer to the illuminating and purposeful introductory articles which are compiled in a very effective and pedagogically-sound manner. Most of these articles are compiled by the Secretary of Bantu Education and that is why the heart-beat of Bantu education throughout the entire Republic may be discerned in them. The introductory articles also afford the Secretary of the department, and his senior officials, the opportunity of reacting like a barometer to vital matters which concern education. What is more, they afford the editorial staff, and more particularly the officials of the Department of Bantu Education, an opportunity of putting matters in the correct perspective, should the public perhaps be misled by incorrect impressions about special situations or certain events or certain matters. It is usually certain English-language newspapers which level destructive criticism and want to see nothing favourable in the handling of Bantu education by the Department of Bantu Education as such. As I say, they level misplaced criticism. In this regard I refer in particular to an article in the latest edition of Bantu Education. In this article the Secretary for Bantu Education referred specifically to criticism expressed in regard to the way in which the Std. 6 examination results were published after papers had been corrected. The negative report which appeared in the newspaper, was drawn up by an ignorant person or persons and it was necessary for the Secretary for Bantu Education to furnish a full explanation. Unfortunately that full explanation of his which he furnished so well in Bantu Education was not published in the newspapers which had levelled the destructive criticism. After reading the article concerned and other articles, I realized that we can be pleased that we have such a select group of people in control of Bantu education. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, before my time had expired, I was dealing with the question of vocational training for Bantu and I referred to an appeal which had been made on behalf of a Bantu vocational school in Natal. The appeal, which was published in a Chamber of Commerce newsletter, is headed—

I also said how happy the headmaster would be if he received financial assistance to the tune of R1 000. He also said—

It would appear that these are not provided in sufficient numbers at that particular school. I want to compare this appeal for R1 000 from the public with the announcement recently made by the Department of Public Works in which it was said that they had accepted a tender for more than R0,33 million for the erection of one swimming-bath and change-room for the use of 2 000 pupils and 350 odd members of the staff of the University of Durban Westville. I am not against universities having swimming-baths, far from it, but I want to suggest to the hon. the Deputy Minister that it is time for the Government to reassess its priorities and make sure that there is an equitable distribution of funds. If we go back to the list of priorities published in the Bantu Education Journal of October, 1972, we find under the article “We should like to do, if we could afford to” an item “the provision of free school books for everyone”. Another item is “the provision of desks for all pupils”. Surely, school desks and school books are more important than luxury swimming-baths!

I should also like to deal with the question of Bantu teachers. I know that other speakers will be dealing with this, but I want to point out that the latest chart published in the Bantu Education Journal does not present the full picture. It indicates an increase in the numbers, but even this is insufficient. No mention is made there of the actual need. I want to refer to an education panel which was formed in 1966 and which consisted of educational experts, independent people, who made a projection of the position up to the year 1980. I want to quote briefly what the projection figure for 1975 is, since 1975 is just around the corner. We find that in 1975 the projected enrolment of pupils is anticipated to be 3,77 million. The projected number of teachers that will be available in 1975 is 55 000 while the projected requirement of teachers to meet the need is 100 000. When you have 55 000 teachers the pupil-teacher ratio will be 1: 68. If 100 000 teachers were provided, the pupil-teacher ratio would be a more reasonable and more satisfactory ratio of 1: 38. The projection also reveals that in 1950 the pupil-teacher ratio was 1: 42 while the expected ratio in 1975, after 25 years of Nationalist rule, will be 1: 68.

A matter which is causing considerable concern to people who are aware of this is the quality of Bantu teachers. The latest report of the Department of Bantu Education for the year 1971 highlights this aspect. It points out that 20%, i.e. one out of five of the teachers at primary schools are unqualified. When it deals with secondary schools, and then hon. members must remember that the secondary schools are the training grounds for the people who will go to the universities which are provided at an enormous cost for the Bantu, the Bantu Education report says that very few teachers are uncertificated but many teachers are teaching beyond their capacity and training. Furthermore, they say that half the teaching force is adequately qualified for the level of work which they must perform. This means that the other half of the force is not adequately qualified. It goes on to say that one-sixth of secondary school teachers have unsatisfactory qualifications for the work they are expected to do. What an indictment of 25 years of rule! As far as the breakdown in the qualification of teachers is concerned, we will find that nearly 13% are teachers who have no professional qualifications, have not attained Matric level and have no technical or other vocational qualifications. We find that 72% of the teachers who have professional qualifications have a maximum school general education of Std. 6 or Std. 8. I think we must link this up with a brief look at the salaries which are being paid to school teachers. I refer to official figures which have been furnished. Male teachers who have professional certificates and who are employed in a primary school start off with a salary of R13-85 per week. Female women teachers with these qualifications are paid R11-08 per week. Just compare this with the wage paid to the lowest unskilled worker of a firm such as Unilever. These people at Unilever work for a salary of over R20 per week. This is not an isolated case either. Many firms in commerce and industry are paying much more than the Bantu school teachers are receiving. The distressing point is that after 11 years of teaching, the male teacher will receive the magnificent amount of R31-15 per week whilst the woman teacher will receive R25-96 per week. After that, their salaries remain fixed. I realize that they will benefit by the 17½% increase in salary. Is it to be wondered, where only half the teaching force is adequately qualified to perform their work, that we have these results and that we have people who are forced to work at such salary levels?

I now want to quote an extract from the Transkei Department of Education. It says:

The hon. the Deputy Minister indicated that he was prepared to consider suggestions. I want to put a serious plea to the hon. the Minister. I want him to investigate the position of nourishment for Bantu school children. I am aware that Bantu school feeding has been discontinued and I am aware of the reasons why the money has been diverted to the provision of school buildings. But I am also aware of the findings of this Government’s own commission, appointed in 1950 to investigate and report on the school feeding schemes for Europeans and non-Europeans. The commission recommended that school feeding schemes for all races should continue. It gave several reasons, for example:

It also said that an increase in nutritional standards bring an improvement in achievements at schools. Subsequently the Department of Agricultural Technical Services indicated that research has shown that the malnourished child tires more quickly in the class-room. He becomes slow to understand. He becomes listless, particularly in the second half of the morning. His memory gets poor; he has difficulty in paying attention; and he becomes quarrelsome. Another authority says that hungry children are accident-prone. My attention was drawn some years ago to the fact that the Department of Coloured Education in the Cape had instituted a scheme for the issue of multi-vitamin tablets to undernourished Coloured school-children. This was taken over by the department when it took over Coloured Education, and from 1966 this particular distribution of vitamin tablets has operated in all provinces. In 1966 there was no restriction as regards indigent Coloured pupils but four and a half million tablets were distributed to 44 000odd Coloured children. The cost of the tablets amounted to R3 384. In 1971-’72 the number of tablets distributed had risen to ten million and the cost had increased nearly to R9 200. I want to appeal to the hon. the Minister to investigate and to institute a pilot scheme amongst the Bantu children in South Africa, because it is very important. If he wants them to get the best out of the education that is offered to them he must think of the experts’ opinions in regard to undernourishment of school-children. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I rise in good time in an attempt to indicate what things I shall reply to and what things could actually be put to me more effectively as questions by way of a letter or a personal inquiry, which I shall welcome sincerely.

†I refer, for instance, to the suggestion which was made by the hon. member for Berea and which I certainly think deserves attention and to which I will give my consideration. I have not been aware of this scheme at Coloured schools. I want to say in passing that I have had some experience of the subsidizing of food at Bantu schools and I am not only talking about school-children. Hon. members will remember, especially those connected with local authority departments, that a few years ago we had a scheme for the prevention of kwashiorkor and pellagra especially amongst smaller children, those of school-going age. We had a subsidized milk powder scheme on the basis that one-third of the cost was paid by the local authority and one-third subsidized by the Government. The user was then asked to pay only one-third of the price. We had that scheme for two years, but to our utter dismay and regret we found that the milk powder was bought up by people not entitled to have it and that it was even being sold at a small profit. The proper control of these schemes is something which is very difficult and is something that must be looked into before we can institute something similar.

But they would swallow their tablets at school.

I have said that I am not aware of the tablets scheme, but that I will go into the matter.

*The hon. member also said a few things in regard to education in general. I want to say once again, in the spirit of what the hon. the Minister said this afternoon and also the other day, that there are certain things with which we must help one another in order to achieve the best results without going back to the distant past and quoting words which in effect do not get us anywhere. I want to say with all my heart that if there is one person who has appreciation for the work done by the late Dr. Verwoerd, I think I need not take a back seat to any of his other admirers. However, we should also have regard to the fact that the last word was not spoken in the time of Gen. Hertzog and in that of Dr. Verwoerd. New times bring new challenges along with them. We should always be prepared to meet new challenges. Even if we remember them out of respect and for the guidelines indicated by them, we should adapt these things to the needs of the times.

†It is therefore unnecessary to say that, for certain valid reasons at the time, the subsidy was pegged at R13 million. I think it would be fairer to mention that this has since disappeared. The member will know and admit that that is so.

I referred to that.

I am sorry that I missed out on that and I apologize for it. However, I think we can stress the positive side that we are no longer pegging the amount at R13 million. As a matter of fact, hon. members may realize how much is being spent at the moment if I mention, in passing, that in the White areas alone the salaries paid to teachers amount to R28 364 550.

*In saying that, I do not want to suggest that the ideal has been attained in this whole set-up. Once again I just want to indicate in what direction we are trying to work and in what direction we have tried to work in the years we have now attained, the years for which the hon. the Minister has been indicating the direction, namely that we must, in a more concentrated manner, undertake things on a regional basis and with a broader ground-plan. In the first place, I want to start with the homelands again. Just as is the case on other levels, the policy of this side of the House in regard to the whole question of the education of the Bantu is aimed at preserving the homeland ties of those children who, in some way or other—through their parents, their language or whatever—have ties with a particular homeland. That is why we have adopted the attitude that we want to try to get universities established for each homeland, if I may start with universities, and then work our way down. Hon. members are aware of the legislation which was passed recently and in which we said we were trying to establish faculties of some of the universities at other places, but then always, in the first place, with the starting-point that these have to be the three Bantu universities which are already in existence and which may in different ways build up ties and create starting points for universities in other homelands. I want to state a fact, one which I have mentioned before and which any person can observe without there being any need for us to quarrel about it. I should like to refer to the situation we have in Bophuthatswana, just outside Pretoria, because it holds a challenge which we shall take up. Various peoples have been settled in that homeland. The parents of the children who are members of the various ethnic groups—even if the parents are working in the same factory— are being asked, one after the other, by their children when they arrive home from work whether they may go to a school of their own ethnic group. We cannot get away from that. Ever since the first day when the hon. the Minister gave me this instruction, I have been receiving such requests. At Phalaborwa we have two schools. When we wanted to change the mother tongue of those schools a storm of protest was unleashed; consequently we had to pay attention to it, because it was the wish of the parents and the children that they wanted to retain their ties with that language and ethnic group. For that reason we said that, in so far as it would be practicable, we wanted to keep and develop the education homelands-centric and ethnically centric. There will be cases where it will not always be possible for this to be carried through in all respects, and for such cases we shall have to make provision in a proper manner. In carrying out this task we were also faced with problems—I want to concede this to the hon. member—which in turn created other problems for us, namely that when this allotment of funds was entrusted to homeland governments, things started going awry, which nobody could have foreseen. The hon. member for Koedoespoort pointed this out and put forward a suggestion as to how these estimates were to be dealt with, a suggestion which will definitely be investigated. Out of a general allocation of funds for carrying out capital works, the homeland government itself has for instance, in the allotment of those funds, given ton priority to housing or to other items, whereas they deemed it quite fit that educational facilities, which must be provided, be held in abeyance. I am not letting out any secret in saying that in this regard the hon. the Minister is making arrangements, and has also given me instructions to this effect, for there having to be co-operation with the Department with a view to solving certain cases which are regarded as serious emergencies. These cases have been brought about by circumstances and must simply be met now. In this way there is, amongst others, the case that has cropped up in the winter pasture areas outside Pretoria. We do not leave matters as they are. We are working on those cases in order that we may, within the financial means at our disposal, solve these problems.

†The hon. member will also know that as far as the provision of schooling facilities in the urban areas are concerned, this was a task which was entrusted to the local authorities. Many of these local authorities throughout the whole of the country did give their full co-operation with the limited funds at their disposal, to create the necessary facilities wherever possible. But they also had to cope with financial problems of their own. I do not think there is any member who is not aware of the financial difficulties facing local authorities, especially in these times. They therefore had to borrow money to provide for schooling. The department has been treating this in the most sympathetic manner possible. We are giving them the assistance to borrow moneys out of certain funds which are at the disposal of the department to provide for the necessary buildings. Only recently, when I met a deputation from the city council of Johannesburg, I approved a further loan which can be used in three instalments as decided upon by my predecessor. These three loans will total R1 million to provide schools in the Witwatersrand area. I intend doing that with the assistance of these administration boards on a regional basis in the very near future.

Is it so that these facilities provided by the local authorities only apply to the provision of Bantu schools and not Indian or Coloured schools?

As far as the Bantu Revenue Fund is concerned, these facilities only apply to Bantu schools. I deal merely with Bantu schools. You have the levy fund and the Bantu beer profit fund, out of which loans can be made available for the provision of schooling.

In passing, whilst I have mentioned the question of the Bantu beer fund, I may just say that we are putting that, too, on a rational basis at the moment. The whole Bantu beer industry in the country is being place on a rational basis and we hope to have more funds available in the near future for the projects which we have in mind. These things cannot, of course, be done in a day; it will take some time for these administration boards to find their feet. I have no doubt in my mind that they will succeed in meeting very much of that which the hon. member is asking for and which he is quite entitled to ask.

In regard to the granting of loans to the Johannesburg municipality for the building of schools, can the hon. the Minister tell me whether they are taking steps to see that houses are provided for teachers?

This was not discussed when I had the interview with members of the Johannesburg city council. They are, however, coming to see me again and may then raise this matter. It was definitely not included in the discussions which I already had with them. They merely asked for school buildings, which they regarded as Priority No. 1 at that stage.

May I ask whether this applies to high schools?

They also envisage extensions to existing high schools; that has been approved. In regard to high schools I may say too that we are encouraging the erection of these high schools as far as possible in the homelands, for instance in Ga Rankuwa, where they are near to the people in the Pretoria and even the Witwatersrand areas.

*Mr. Chairman, I want to agree with the hon. member that the quality of the teachers is not always of the highest standard. But once again I want to make the appeal that in this regard, too, one should view the position in a sober and calm manner. After all, it is true that this whole training was only taken over in 1954. In those years, when it was taken over, this training was not scholastic training only. There was also manual training, etc., which had to be taken over by the department from these mission and other training schools.

†I think I should in this connection quote a few figures, just to give hon. members an idea—not a full picture, but just an idea —of what we are trying to do at the moment and of the schemes we have already started. I have said that the teacher training schools which we inherited in 1954 were without exception integral parts of multipurpose institutions concerned also with primary, secondary and even trade education. This was the typical tradition of the mission boarding-schools and only in a very few instances were the teacher training sections sufficiently large to stand on their own feet. One had the situation where the 40 schools were together producing less than 2 000 teachers per year. The department has since separated these teacher training centres from other types of education, and teacher training is now concentrated in fewer but much larger institutions. Since the beginning of 1970 three new colleges, planned to accommodate 1 800 students, have been opened. Two new teacher training colleges are at present being erected, one for the Swazi at Nyamazane and one in the Transkei in Maluti. The erection of six other new colleges will commence during the course of the 1973-’74 financial year, one for the Ciskei, two for Bophuthatswana, one for KwaZulu, one for Lebowa and one for Basotho Qwa Qwa. Furthermore, another three are being planned, one for the Venda and two for the people of South-West Africa. Each of these colleges will accommodate at least 500 students and produce approximately 250 primary teachers per year, who will be very much better qualified than those who are being qualified at the moment.

*Mr. Chairman, I think that I have now disposed of the questions put to me. The hon. member also asked me why such slow Progress was being made with technical training. He wanted to know whether the reason was a lack of funds or a lack of teachers. Once again, why would we be trying to deceive people? Both reasons are valid in this regard, but we are trying to raise funds and we are trying to train these people.

In the White area?

I have already said that we are trying to do this, as far as possible, in those areas where these people will be homeland-orientated.

Sir, I want to content myself with saying that the idea is often brought home to the Black man of South Africa that he has to be dissatisfied on account of what we have omitted to do. What is education basically? I want to say, as was also said by the hon. member for Koedoespoort, that we have reason to be proud when we compare ourselves with the rest of Africa. That does not mean that we should be complacent; on the contrary, it should be our constant endeavour to effect further and better development. We are doing that. But over the years, and not only during the past 25 years, the education of the Black people in South Africa has not merely been concerned with the training they received by learning from their school books. There have been other fields in which they have been trained. Does it not amount to training and education in another form when we teach these people in the homelands about veld conservation, about contours and about the more effective spending of their funds in respect of their livestock? Does it not amount to education being provided by those bodies and persons working there when these people are being trained in self-government? These things are not necessarily done at schools, but in the form of practical classes. Therefore I think that we have reason to be proud of what is being done. This is work being performed by the Department of Bantu Education, by the Secretary and his officials. We cannot have enough appreciation for that work. But it is also being done by other bodies and persons.

†Mr. Chairman, I want to say—and I take full responsibility for what I am saying—that if people really interest themselves in this field, as do for instance The Star. Argus and Natal Daily News Teach Funds, and as do the people in Natal, whom the hon. member for Berea knows, and if they really interest themselves in what the mission schools and what individuals have been doing, and what the Government is doing and is planning to do, then I think that in 1973 we can say to the rest of the world: Perhaps we have not done enough as yet, but we are doing our best. We are doing, I think, very well and we hope to do even better in future, as we gain experience.

Mr. Chairman, apparently I was a little faster than the hon. member for Houghton, which is quite understandable at my age. I am grateful to see that the hon. member for Houghton is also going to talk before long. I should like to hear her, and in a few minutes’ time I am going to make a point of listening to her, because when the hon. the Deputy Minister was appointed as Deputy Minister, she made certain remarks about his appointment. I think it appeared in the Rand Daily Mail, but I do not have my cuttings here. At that time she said certain things about the hon. the Deputy Minister. She has also spoken about other gentlemen before. I recall, inter alia, Dr. Kaunda; she made certain statements about him. I think it would perhaps be fitting today if the hon. member for Houghton were to tell us again, after seeing the hon. the Deputy Minister in action, and seeing the way in which he handles matters, what she thinks of him now. Perhaps she could then elaborate a little and refer to Dr. Kaunda, too, particularly as far as his education policy is concerned.

Sir, the past 25 years will come to be known in the history of South Africa as the golden years, and as long as the rule of the National Party continues, the adjective “golden” will remain, and the golden years will perhaps become 30, 40 or 50 years. These golden years are characteristic of all the facets of our own way of life, as well as that of the various population groups that have come under our guardianship. I feel it to be a heartfelt need to say that there were three people who made exceptional contributions to establishing the broad guide-lines and laying the foundations. These three men were Gen. Hertzog. Dr. Verwoerd and also Minister M. C. Botha. I think in years to come Minister M. C. Botha will become more and more known to students of the history of Bantu affairs as well as Bantu education as a person who dealt with these major problems with the largest measure of clarity of thought, with the most scientific approach, with idealism and the utmost level-headedness. Mr. Chairman, it is very pleasant to discuss an aspect such as this after a period of 25 years, because one has the data which provide one with comparative figures on the basis of which one is able to evaluate the achievements in this regard. In 1948 there were just over 5 000 schools; there were just over 17 000 teachers in Bantu education, and there were just over 700 000 pupils. In 1972 there were almost 11000 schools; there were more than 54 000 teachers and more than 3 million pupils. We see, when we consult the reports of the Department of Bantu Education, that there is hardly any facet of education to which attention has not already been given. We see that attention has been given to various classes of education, from the pre-school period up to university education. Sir, I listened attentively to the hon. member for Berea, who spoke a short while ago. It amazes one that a person can plunge into a debate such as this without his founding his criticism in the light of what has already been done in this connection, and without taking into account the circumstances under which this particular task has been performed. It is very easy today for the hon. member to refer here to a man of the calibre of Dr. Verwoerd and simply to write off in one single sentence the principles established by the late Dr. Verwoerd. I want to tell the hon. member that he must go and read the debates of those years again, and then he will find that it was a man such as the late Dr. Verwoerd who elevated Bantu education to the position of being a special department under a specific Minister who had to give specific attention to Bantu education. Sir, one reaches a stage after 25 years where one must discuss these aspects once again with a variety of people. In two years’ time we as practical politicans will have to go back to the voters and account for what has been done over the past 25 to 27 years. The National Party will not go to the people to plead for gratitude and appreciation for what it has done in regard to Bantu education. Nor do we want to argue with hon. members of the Opposition about it. We do not expect of the hon. member for Berea to tell us, “Thank you very much for what you have done”. But we do expect of an Opposition to indicate basic, critical lines of thought and to tell us, in the light of what we have done, where we have acted wrongly.

What did you do to Hofmeyr?

Surely the hon. member does not want us to debate the education policy of the late Minister Hofmeyr here and now. I just want to say to him that if he consults the latest work by Mr. Alan Paton on Mr. Hofmeyr, he will find that Mr. Hofmeyr’s education policy, not only for the White but also in regard to all the inhabitants of South Africa, was to move in the direction of one large integrated South Africa. This policy which the United Party has in regard to integration in the tertiary field, they also wanted to apply to the secondary and primary fields and to the field of education. In those years I was a pupil and I know what the education policy of the United Party was. Sir, I notice from the newspapers that the hon. member for North Rand wants to come and oppose me in Rissik. I should be only too pleased if we could then debate the question of education policy there, but if that hon. member wants to use the late Minister Jan Hofmeyr’s basis for an education policy in South Africa, then he should not even sit with the hon. member for Houghton; then he should rather go and sit with Alan Paton. Sir, we shall never say to the various leaders of the Bantu in South Africa that they should be grateful for what we have done in regard to Bantu education, because we did not do these things on the grounds of humanistic considerations, not because we had a guilty conscience about anything, but because it was inherent in the basic principles of our policy that we had to give each population group what we would like to have for ourselves. That is why it is so important that when we have criticism today from the Opposition with regard to Bantu education, we should also tell the general public of the condition of Bantu Education when the National Party took it over 25 years ago. The hon. member for Berea should go and read the history of Bantu education, and he should ascertain what the United Party, not only the United Party but the old colonial power, of which the hon. member’s party is on extension, did in regard to education in South Africa. Go and look at the rest of Africa where one had rule by colonial powers.

“Kafferboeties.”

Yes, this hon. member remarks that we said that they were “Kafferboeties”, in the forties. Why were the Nationalists in the forties concerned about a United Party in power? They were concerned because the whole policy of the United Party was heading in the direction of the destruction of the White man. [Interjections.] There was the education policy of Jan Hofmeyr. That was the whole basis of it. Go and read the debates of Dr. Steenkamp and Margaret Ballinger and those people.

You cannot read.

The United Party had an education policy in the forties which was heading in the direction of integration in South Africa. The National Party accepted multi-nationalism and adapted the pattern of education to that.

Break them, Daan, break them.

When one goes into the traditional system of education of the Bantu, it is a characteristic of all the population groups of the Bantu that there were two basic principles which, even in the old tribal system, before they came into contact with the White man, they wanted their children to learn under their system of education. One was hardiness and fitness. They had to be physically strong for the circumstances in which they lived, and, secondly, they had to have a thorough knowledge of their own tribal customs, tribal practices and also of the history of their various tribal groups. [Time expired.]

I am afraid I do not have time to enter into an historical debate with the hon. member for Rissik. I would like to come back immediately to the Bantu Education Vote. I want to say at once that I am very glad that the hon. the Deputy Minister takes the attitude he does. He is clearly anxious and sincere about his attempts to improve the whole quality of Bantu education in South Africa. I am also glad, of course, to see that far greater amounts of money are now being voted for Bantu schools and the provision of all necessary facilities. There is no doubt that the pegging of the amount at R13 million over all these years has been a severe setback to Bantu education, and there is also no doubt, and perhaps we ought to remember this, that a good deal of the increased money which is being expended on Bantu education is now coming directly from Bantu taxes, from the increased amount which is being collected from the Africans, both in direct income tax and also, I might say, in the indirect taxes Africans pay on all articles on which there are excise and customs duties. Having said that, I am wondering whether the hon. the Deputy Minister can give the Committee any information as to how soon it is likely, firstly, that text-books will be issued free to African schoolchildren. There have been a few encouraging noises made by members of his department. For instance, Mr. Hartshorne, the Deputy Director (Planning) Department of Bantu Education, said some time this year that one of the priorities of the department was to put into operation in the next financial year the partial provision of text-books. I was very glad indeed to see that statement and I hope the hon. the Minister can give us some assurance that Mr. Hartshorne was not misquoted. We have also had two more encouraging statements, one made by the Secretary for Bantu Education and one by the Regional Director for Bantu Education (White areas) in Natal. Mr. Van Zyl, the Secretary for Education, told us that the country was ready to introduce compulsory education for urban Africans phased over a five-year period. This is a quote I had from the Rand Daily Mail of the 24th August, last year. He hoped that it would be possible to phase in compulsory education. The report also says, of course, that it is unlikely that this will happen for some time. I wonder if the hon. the Deputy Minister could give us any timetable as to the phasing in of compulsory education, which I believe to be the prerequisite for everything else we have said in this House about technical training for Africans, about productivity in South Africa, about the full use of our labour force and so on. It is a fact that we are short to the extent of 30 000 artisans and apprentices in South Africa at the present stage. One cannot train uneducated, illiterate people to be artisans or apprentices. Unless we start somewhere and get these children into school and keep them in school, I do not think that we are likely to go very far with the hones expressed by the hon. the Minister of Finance about increasing productivity and in-service training for Black people.

Dr. the hon. Piet Koornhof, the hon. the Deputy Minister’s predecessor, thought that compulsory schooling for Black children might be considered in the homelands within five years. And we have the Secretary for Bantu Education talking about compulsory education in the urban areas within five years. I wonder if any programme has, in fact, been worked out for compulsory schooling for Blacks.

I know it is true that something like 80% of African children of school-going age are at school, but it is also true, of course unfortunately, that more than half of those children leave by Std. 3. In fact, I believe that almost 60% of them leave by Std. 3.

It is estimated by educational experts that such children are hardly functionally literate if they leave school after so few years at school. It is almost a waste to send them to school and not keep them there until they are at least functionally literate.

Something else which interests me particularly is what the hon. the Deputy Minister said about establishing branches of the Black universities in other areas. I know that he mentioned “other areas” and I think he was specifically thinking of “in the homelands”. However, I am interested to know whether he will give some consideration to the proposal which is made by the Urban Bantu Council in Soweto for the establishment of a university in that area, or, if he likes, a branch of Turfloop, because as everybody knows, Turfloop is more than 200 miles from Johannesburg which has a population of close on one million Bantu people. A branch of Turfloop or a separate university, starting very modestly with just two or three faculties— perhaps a post-graduate teacher training faculty, an arts faculty and one in applied sciences—could start to serve not only Soweto with its one million people, but also the whole of the Witwatersrand and possibly even the Pretoria and Vereeniging areas. If this could be started, an enormous potential population will then be afforded the opportunity of using such a university. I know that the pass rate of matric at Soweto high schools was particularly dis-appointing last year. I think something like 59 pupils passed the matriculation examination in the seven high schools in Soweto. This is a sad reflection. On the other hand, many hundreds of children attending the homeland high schools and writing and passing the matriculation examinations there, in fact, belong to Soweto and intend returning to Soweto ultimately. I am quite sure that if there was a university on the spot, so that students did not have to go away to hostels with all the increased expenditure that that entails for the family, more of these students in Soweto would be encouraged to pass the matriculation examinations—they would have an aim to work for—and many of the homeland children who pass the matriculation examinations would also be able to come back to study at an urban branch of a university. I should like to point out that the additional expenditure often precludes these young people from going to university where they have to reside in a hostel. At the same time the hostels are not able to accommodate the students who do apply. I believe that hundreds of students were turned away from the three ethnic universities at the beginning of this year for lack of accommodation. One can imagine that if all the thousands of students who attend the University of Pretoria or the nine thousand students who attend the University of the Witwatersrand had to go there as resident students, it would be quite impossible for those universities to accommodate them. I wonder whether the hon. the Deputy Minister will tell me whether he has any intention whatever of considering establishing a branch of one of the ethnic universities, for example Turfloop, if he is not prepared to establish a self-contained university which will start on a very moderate scale, in Soweto itself.

No! No! No!

I know why the hon. members here are groaning about this …

Order!

Do not look at me.

Well, I am glad that it was not that hon. member groaning, but these primeval noises are coming from behind me and it is hard to trace the origin of them.

I want to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister whether he would tell me something about the directive which I believe was issued by his department which laid down the percentage of candidates who should be allowed to pass the Std. 6 examinations. I did ask a question on this matter. I have read in the newspapers and elsewhere that a directive had been issued laying down that 10% of the children who are writing the Std. 6 examinations should be given first-class passes, 35% should be given second-class passes, 35% should be given third-class passes and 20% should be failed. I know that this was meant to be a guideline, but as far as I am concerned, I do not see how any department can set out a guide-line for examiners as to the number of children to whom they should give first-class passes, second-class passes and third-class passes and the number of children they should fail. Surely, that must depend entirely on the quality of the students writing the exams. This is a matter of great importance to African schoolchildren because it is only if they get first-1973-05-21 or second-class passes that they are allowed to go on to Std. 7. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I almost had something about which I could agree with the hon. member for Houghton. I almost agreed with her when she said that the hon. the Deputy Minister sounded sincere to her. I just want to tell her that he not only sounds sincere, but that he is sincere. I also want to tell her that the National Party Government has always been sincere in regard to Bantu education. This has been the case all these years. I shall prove it shortly.

I ask myself the question whether there is any country in the world where so much is being done for so many people by so few than is being done here for the Bantu and for the various population groups in the Republic of South Africa by this small group of economically active people. I want to say that I doubt whether there is another similar case in the world. A great deal of comment and a great deal of criticism is advanced on Bantu education. It must also be frustrating for an Opposition to sit there and not have much to say about this matter, because as I have said, the National Party has always regarded this matter as a serious one. When we go into the matter of criticism, I think we should take a look at what is being done by private initiative in the field of Bantu education. For the information of the hon. member for Houghton who has just spoken about the farmers, I just want to say that at present there are 3 400 farm schools in South Africa which a total number of 325 809 pupils attend. I think we ought to take cognizance with much gratitude and appreciation of what the farmers in our country are doing in regard to Bantu education. I think the farmers of our country are setting an example to our students, particularly the students here in Cape Town who are continually demonstrating and do not really know what is involved. They are also setting a very fine example to these old ladies, the Black Sash, who stand here wasting time instead of applying themselves in a positive way to this fine task and fine challenge. The farmers on the farms in our country have to their credit the tremendous achievement of having established 3 400 farm schools. When one works out the average number of pupils attending these schools, it amounts to 96 pupils per school. Many of them do not even ask for a subsidy from the Government for the classrooms which they built. They do this out of their own pocket. We must take cognizance of this with gratitude.

Then we have the mine and factory schools of which there are 108 in our country with a total number of 20 827 pupils. The mine or the factory supplies the building and the furniture, while the department supplies the books and pays the teachers’ salaries. We must also take cognizance with gratitude of certain donations which are being made. We take cognizance with much gratitude and appreciation of the donations of Teach, namely The Stars’ Teach Fund and The Argus’s Teach Fund. The Star’s Teach Fund has contributed R327 100 to the education of Bantu pupils. The Bantu Welfare Trust has contributed R111 000 and the Anglo-American Corporation R111 250. For a library at a junior secondary school the Anglo-American Corporation also contributed R6 000. Then there is a donor, namely the Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Company, with R22 000 and the Helping Hand Club with R4 500. We take cognizance with much gratitude and appreciation of these instances of private initiative making these donations in aid of Bantu education.

But let us take a look at what has been done by the Government. In 1948 there were 5 000 schools, 17 000 teachers and 733 000 pupils. In 1960, and this is part of the period during which, it has been said, Dr. Verwoerd allegedly hindered education through his policy, there were 7 700 schools, 27 800 teachers and 1 506 000 pupils, an increase of 49,4% in schools, 60,7% in teachers and 105,3% in respect of pupils. In 1972, viz. 12 years later, there were 10 948 schools, 54 000 teachers and more than three million pupils. This represents an increase of 112% from 1948 as far as schools are concerned, 213% as far as teachers are concerned and 322,8% as far as pupils are concerned. The percentage increase in the Bantu population from 1948 to 1960 was 44,15% and from 1960 to 1972, 38,28%. The population growth of all Bantu in South Africa from 1948 to 1972 was 99,3%. The increase in the Bantu school population was 322,8% in the corresponding period. When we compare this, I say that this has been a tremendous achievement and we may rightly ask: Where in the world have so few people done so much for so many? In 1948 the Bantu population was 8 135 000 and the percentage of the population at school was 9,02%. In 1960 the Bantu population was 11 727 000 and the percentage of the population at school was 12,81%. In 1972 the Bantu population was 16 217 000 and the percentage of the population at school, 19,13%. If we cannot look back with pride on these achievements as far as Bantu education is concerned, I do not know how the United Party, the Opposition, or the hon. member for Houghton would ever have wanted it done.

The financial provision for 1971-’72 was R71 551 000; for 1972-’73 it was R77 230 000; and the 1973-’74 estimates for education in the Republic are R93 546 000. R3 235 500 has been budgeted for the salaries of staff in White areas and R5 273 000 for capital works; a total for education estimates for the Republic and South-West Africa, capital works included, of R108 898 000. We here in South Africa are grateful to private initiative and to the Government for what has been done in regard to Bantu education.

Mr. Chairman, to a certain extent I cannot help taking it amiss of the hon. member as well as the hon. member for Rissik when they quote statistics in this hon. House. Both of them derived their statistics chiefly from what was published in the May edition of the Bantu Education journal. However, they should have given those statistics in their proper historical perspective. Since 1925 there has been a gradual increase and if we compare the period from 1935 to 1948 with the period from 1948 to 1972, we find that with regard to pupils the number increased at least fourfold between 1925 and 1948, while it also increased fourfold between 1948 and 1972. In both periods the number of teachers increased approximately threefold and the number of schools were more or less doubled. All that this proves is that the Government was capable of no more than maintaining the status quo of the time. What worries me—and this is the point I want to make today—is that we will shortly find it difficult to maintain this status quo. I do not even say, improve on it.

†Last year I urged the Government to do two things. In the first place I asked the Government to grant greater priority to Bantu education and, secondly, to set itself certain educational priorities. As far as the first aspect is concerned, nothing has happened. This is not surprising because I know that it is not the fault of the department as such but the general approach of the Government to education. As long as South Africa, as compared with other countries, spends the lowest portion of its national income on education, we will find that education as such will not receive the priority it deserves.

As far as the second request is concerned, we of course had this list of priorities, published by the department in its October journal. I find several aspects of this priority list disturbing. The most important one, I believe, is the complete absence of any reference to the creation of educational facilities in the White urban areas. Among twelve points mentioned there is no reference thereto whatsoever. I fail to see how we can develop education and really make progress as long as we have all these artificial handicaps. I listened to the hon. the Minister when he replied and said: “Yes, we will establish schools, but it is our policy that it must be in the homelands.” All these artificial handicaps are created by the policy of separate development. As long as we have these artificial handicaps, we cannot make progress. I wonder what is going to happen to this ridiculous quota system which is applicable to the junior and secondary schools in urban areas? As long as we have that, the pupil/teacher ratio will be adversely affected. It is a factor which contributes to the large dropout of pupils at school. Generally speaking, I should have liked to see a far greater sense of urgency. Instead of putting forward twelve priorities and saying that those are the things we should like to do, if we can afford it, I would prefer to have seen a positive approach by saying: “These are the things we must do.” We should not offer excuses and say that the normal increase in expenditure of a Government department cannot exceed 10% every year. We should rather provide arguments why, as far as Bantu education is concerned, there should be a far greater increase than what is regarded as normal. The increase in the population among the Bantu is today of such a nature that unless drastic steps are taken now—I even want to go as far as to say emergency steps—the department will find it impossible to maintain the present status quo, let alone catch up with the backlog. Let us take the pupil /teacher ratio. At the moment there is an adverse ratio of one to 50. The increase in pupil enrolment is a quarter million. To maintain this adverse teacher/pupil ratio you need 5 000 teachers every year to qualify. But what do we find? Approximately 4 000 qualify. Instead, therefore, of maintaining the situation as it is today, you find that for the intake the teacher/pupil ratio becomes one to 60. I am in favour, as stated here, of it being reduced to one to 40. What in fact is happening is that we cannot maintain the present position. The signs are there that this will become even worse. It is easy, as I have said, to quote statistics. It is easy to state how many schools were built and how many teachers qualified. These statistics only sound impressive until such time as one compares them with what should have been done to maintain the status quo, or what should have been done to improve the situation. I refer to the increasing school enrolment. This is something which has been increased steadily since 1925. But what is disturbing is that the relative percentages of those in primary and high schools have virtually remained static through all these years. In 1955 we had 4,3% of the total pupil enrolment at high schools; in 1971 it was 4,7%. One still finds the situation that two-thirds of the school population is below Std. 2. This has been the situation for decades. In other words, they are only busy obtaining functional literacy.

Then there is another matter which I wish to refer to the hon. the Minister, namely the problem of the payment of teachers’ salaries. Here I believe that a satisfactory solution is long overdue. It sometimes happens that teachers receive their salaries irregularly or that they are not paid for several months. Last year I dealt with some 40-odd cases of teachers who were not paid for eight months and longer.

Now, Sir, I must say that the department was most helpful in rectifying the mistakes once I had brought these mistakes to their attention. I will also concede that to some extent these mistakes could not be attributed to the head office in Pretoria. These mistakes were in fact being made lower down. When I say “lower down” I refer to the local school boards, the local principals or the farmers on whose farms farm schools are operating. They had failed to notify the department in time. I want to be as fair as possible in this particular respect. I concede that there are difficulties, but the department must accept final responsibility, and it is the hon. the Minister who must accept the final responsibility in this respect. It is immaterial who made the original mistake. My advice to the hon. the Minister is this: It seems to me that the administrative machinery is too clumsy; this needs to be streamlined. Unless we streamline this administrative machinery, we shall find a recurrence of what happened last year, when we had cases of teachers not being paid for several months. We dare not tolerate such a situation and we dare not have a repetition of this sort of thing.

I want to conclude by saying that I am aware of the difficulties the department faces. I want to emphasize that it is not always the fault of the head office in Pretoria; these mistakes are often made lower down. It is, however, quite clear to me that something is wrong with the machinery, perhaps it is too complicated and needs an overhaul. I also feel that where a teacher has not been paid for several months as a result of a mistake made by someone in the department, the possibility should be considered of paying such a teacher some form of compensation.

Mr. Chairman, please forgive me for standing up so frequently, but it helps to enable me to reply to the individual questions put to me by hon. members. I notice that the hon. member for Houghton is not here at present. I will therefore wait until she returns before I reply to her questions. I want to start by answering the hon. member for Durban Central on the few points he raised. I start with the last point he raised in connection with the payment of salaries. I am glad that the hon. member pointed out that the department paid attention to the matters he mentioned a moment ago immediately after he had brought them to their notice. I think the hon. member will also add that these matters were then rectified shortly afterwards. Notwithstanding quite a number of mistakes we had brought to our notice, as a result of the incorrect spelling of names, etc., as well as other obstacles in our way, matters were then rectified. Naturally one is dissatisfied if, after having worked for a month one does not receive one’s salary at the end of it. In passing I want to say that a few years ago in the Transvaal things were a bit difficult with regard to the payment of White teachers’ salaries. These things sometimes happen. But here we now have an example of the kind of thing I referred to a moment ago. Such mistakes do occur; in a large administration it is impossible to avoid all mistakes. But hon. members must please rest assured that, from whatever side these matters may come, that if they are brought to our notice the officers of the department will immediately and as effectively as possible pay attention to them, as they did in the case mentioned by the hon. member for Durban Central. Where I personally am able to help, I will do the same. It is the kind of co-operation I asked for and by means of which we can eliminate small irrations if only the necessary goodwill and sympathy exists on both sides.

The hon. member said in passing—and I as educationist do not want to cross swords with him about that—that there are certain gaps about which he is upset. He was especially concerned, if I may isolate the main point, about the fact that we had actually remained more or less static as regards the ratio between teachers and pupils. I think the simplest way is to say frankly that that is correct; we do not have the necessary growth to be able to improve conditions as we would like to do. But a moment ago I read to hon. members what steps are being taken to create extra training colleges, and to improve these conditions. But I am not going to make any definite promises here, because I simply cannot do that; I cannot see into the future. There is, for example, one thing I cannot tell hon. members, and my predecessor would not have been able to tell them either; that is a phenomenon one has found not only among the Bantu teachers, but also among White teachers, and there are numerous ex-teachers on this side who will be able to testify to this. You train a person to become a teacher, and when he reaches the labour market, he is offered a high salary by an industrialist, because he has reached that level of development. I know hon. members could give me an easy solution in this connection, and that is to increase the teacher’s salary further, but if you do that, the industrialist increases the salary just a little bit more, and so that cycle goes on eternally. There are no instant solutions to those things and we cannot argue about them dogmatically as though there were a formula to put everything right. Anybody who thinks he can do so, is extremely naïve. But the hon. member may rest assured that we are also concerned about it that the ratio will not improve to the extent we should like to see that happen, and we are trying to improve this with these new training colleges we are creating.

†Mr. Chairman, I want to say this emphatically: One can always overstate one’s case, and one can damage one’s case by overstatement. I think to call the situation in Bantu education an emergency situation, is to exaggerate to a point where one cannot really attach any importance to that statement. There is no emergency situation. We are working steadily forward, and we are achieving things.

*Sir, I have now dealt with this matter briefly. If I get an opportunity later to sit down with the hon. member and talk about this, he could perhaps make positive suggestions to which I would listen with pleasure.

I should like to thank the hon. member for Hercules for what he said here in connection with the sacrificial work that is being done by numerous people and bodies for the education of the Bantu, in other words, for the education of the less privileged. Sir, in the previous two days’ debates we have heard a great deal here about the “urban Bantu”, but I wonder whether people realize how much is being done by people on the platteland, in terms of money and sacrifices, to give the Bantu an education, even if that education is sometimes elementary. I think that the department, whose task this is, but especially the people who receive this education, should be deeply grateful to these people who remain anonymous, whose names do not appear in the newspapers, but who are doing this work because they feel that it is not only a task, but a calling.

Sir, I should like to deal with a few points that the hon. member for Houghton raised here. In the first place I think it is necessary, especially because the hon. member for Koedoespoort has pointed out that a wrong impression had been created, to read the following written statement here. I hoped that that question would be asked so that I could make the statement and so that the particular newspaper which wrote these things with no good intentions would have the courage to rectify the position. I am prepared to assume that a newspaper sometimes makes bona fide mistakes, and personally I appreciate the quality achieved by many of our journalists in their columns, but if mischievous things are said here by a journalist and he refuses to rectify them he must not expect any co-operation of me in the performance of my duties.

†Sir, I am going to read out this statement and make a request and an appeal to that particular newspaper to put the record straight as far as this whole matter is concerned:

Mr. Chairman, in passing, I want to say that I think this compares well with the figures in White schools in White areas—

The application of the norms derived from the results of previous years do not lead to a hard and fast quota of passes, as was made out in this particular newspaper—

This, I think, should clarify the position, if I can have the co-operation of this particular newspaper to put the record straight.

The hon. member asked me about compulsory education. Let me reply immediately that for the moment at least it is completely out of the question. I have no idea how soon it can be implemented. The one obstacle in the way, of course, is the question of the money to be provided.

It was also mentioned by the hon. member for Durban Central that we should put our priorities in the right order. But, Sir, when it comes to that, one need only read through the Hansard debates of one year to see how people differ in their views on the question of priorities. I have listened to the debates on quite a few Votes which have been discussed in this Committee over the past few weeks, and I have heard some hon. members pleading for higher pensions as a first priority; I have heard others pleading for a better infrastructure as a first priority; I have heard others pleading for the Saldanha Bay project to be tackled immediately as a first priority. I have listened here to pleas from both Government members and Opposition members for priority to be given to this, that or the other project. Sir, may I say that although they may be political enemies, the hon. member sitting just opposite me and the hon. the Deputy Minister of Agriculture are the greatest friends on earth when they start pleading with the Government for extra subsidies for the farmers. And what applies to the Department of Agriculture also applies to all other departments. One cannot get away from the fact that in dealing with the question of priorities one is dealing with subjective views. But there is a further problem and I want the hon. member for Houghton to take note of this too, that once we have compulsory education for Bantu people it will mean that these people who do not send their children to school will be prosecuted.

Oh!

It is all very well to say “oh” but they will be prosecuted. Yet I have already listened to objections in this House, and I agree with many of them, that we have too many of these Black people being prosecuted. Can you imagine, Sir, what will happen if we have compulsory education overnight and we start prosecuting these people?

I did not ask for it to be brought in overnight.

In the field of education overnight may even be five years; it may be five years or ten years, but gradually we are increasing the number of pupils and we try to increase the grants enabling them to study.

I also want to mention that the question was raised about the subsidy for school-books. In the past financial year I know that we have not been able to supply as many as we would have liked to, but the total spent last year on this item alone, free school-books, amounted in the Republic alone to R1 915 000 combined with South-West Africa it was over R2 000 000. It has been estimated by the Department Planning Section of my Department that to provide all these books free would mean an additional cost to the tune of about R10 million which we cannot afford now. But we are trying to improve on the scheme of granting free books.

The hon. member also mentioned the Bantu taxes which are being used. I think I am not wrong in saying that she tried to imply that the Bantu people themselves are paying for these services which are rendered in their schools. Sir, that is very far from the truth and I think the hon. member will admit that that is not correct. If one looks at the figures of what is being spent on Bantu education, it comes nowhere near to the amount collected from the people themselves.

*It is all very well to say that we must supply this to them in full, but I will never forget the difficult years my own people experienced. No one will accuse me of preachiness if I tell the Bantu that here is a nation—if I may talk about the Afrikaans-speaking portion of it now—whose leader told his people in the most difficult years: “A nation saves itself”. The hon. member for Randburg also spoke about this, and then the people of this nation started paying. Sir, it is true that one would prefer to live at home while attending school, but what is so terrible, with our modern means of transport, of our expecting a White child or a Bantu child to go to a boarding school in another town? Who of us sitting in this Chamber have not done that? As a small child I also had to leave home, and I did, and I can remember how I cried. How long ago did we not start getting schools at the Rand? How long ago is it that the whole Witwatersrand did not even have three secondary schools for Afrikaans-speaking pupils? One should not blow up every little thing as though it were the most terrible injustice. I admit that one would prefer to have them at home, but the hon. member is wrong if she wants to tell these people that we must give them everything. And now I gratefully want to mention something which is not very well known.

But they contribute by their labour.

The hon. member says they contribute by their labour. Because I know a little about these Bantu people, may I add to that, and I am not looking for their good favour, but they contribute in money too. I do not know whether the hon. member is aware of that. Many of them pay a 20c levy on their stands for this. They contribute, and they are proud to contribute, and I think we should encourage them to do so.

*We must teach the Bantu also to help themselves and help themselves with pride, and not simply to ask for everything. I was in Malawi, together with the hon. member for Rosettenville, and we visited the Bunda College of Agriculture, and there was a notice on the notice board there. I took it back with me. It was an English translation of an old Chinese proverb. I have brought it along, and I should have liked to give it to every Bantu parent and Bantu child, with a view to the Government’s motives, in order to inspire them with the old Chinese proverb—

This is what we are trying to do, i.e. to teach them to try to help themselves. We are trying to teach them that they on their part must also help, and that they should not simply come begging others to do these things for them.

The hon. member also asked me certain questions about Soweto, and I should like to answer them briefly. I have already said that our entire education policy, like the rest of our policy, is aimed at the homelands being developed to their optimum extent. For that we need an infrastructure, and “infrastructures” does not only mean railways, roads and post offices, but also schools and universities. That is why it is priority number one with us to provide these university facilities there. I also want to say, however, that this does not mean that branches of universities cannot also be established in places where they may then, under the flag, under the umbrella, of the homeland bound universities start to develop towards something else.

Mr. Chairman, I can very well understand why the hon. member for Durban Central displayed such an allergic reaction a while ago to the statistics which the hon. members for Hercules and Rissik mentioned. If my party’s past were to have made as poor a showing on paper as the past of that hon. member’s party, I would probably also run away from any form of statistics. In 1948 only 9% of the Bantu population, then totalling eight million, were at school, but in the year 1972 there were 19,13% of the Bantu population of 16 million at school. If we look at these figures, it is clear that it is a big achievement, on the part of this Government, to be providing a growing population with schools, facilities and teachers. In the period from 1948 to 1972 the Bantu population increased by 99,33%, while the number of pupils increased by 322,8% over the same period.

The hon. member for Berea also referred to a shortage of Bantu schools. In 1948 there were 5 164 schools in the Republic, while in 1972 there were 11 399. From these figures we see that this Government, with its dynamic Department of Bantu Administration and Development and its dynamic Department of Bantu Education, has seen to the erection of 6 235 Bantu schools in South Africa over the past 25 years. This gives an average of 247 schools per year.

As far as teachers are concerned, the hon. the Deputy Minister has just indicated that this Government has kept pace with the ratio between the number of teachers and the number of pupils. An exceptional achievement over the past 25 years, on the part of this Government, is that at present only 2,5% of all staff— this includes the teachers, inspectors and all administrative staff—are Whites. 97½% of the teachers, inspectors and administrative staff employed by Bantu Education are Bantu. This Government and the department have therefore succeeded, over the past 25 years, in training the Bantu and attuning them to serving their own people on a large scale in the educational sphere.

Reference was also made to the shortage of trained teachers, which the hon. the Deputy Minister has adequately replied to. However, let us also look at the statistics in respect of university training. In 1948 there were only 250 Bantu students, and they were studying at White universities. In 1972 there were 2 925 Bantu students who were studying at their own universities. Then I also want to add that there are 3 186 Bantu students who are at present qualifying themselves by means of correspondence courses at the University of South Africa. At the moment there are also 8 999 students receiving primary education training and 1 136 students receiving secondary education training.

What are you proving by that?

I want to tell the hon. member for East London City that I want to prove that the National Party has made provision, in its planning and in its action, for sufficient training facilities for the Bantu, and that we have succeeded in getting the Bantu to the point where they can serve their own people today at various levels. I also want to prove that the United Party has a very poor record and that in 1948 the National Party had to inherit the conditions which were thereby created. In 1948 there were only 250 Bantu students at White universities.

What do you know about events prior to 1948?

What I know about events prior to 1948, is that the hon. member for North Rand was then still a Nationalist as well as the hon. general of East London City. We have appreciatively taken note of the statement which the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Education made in the previous debate, i.e. that a special division of the head office of the Department of Bantu Administration and Development is entrusted with the overall organizational responsibility for the handling of sport for Bantu adults in both the homelands and in the White areas. The Department of Bantu Education in White areas, and the Department of National Education and Cultural Affairs in the Bantu homelands, already carry the responsibility for sport and physical education in Bantu schools and training schools. In the syllabuses for the lower and higher primary courses and in the junior secondary course provision is made for physical education. In the majority of Bantu schools the customary annual athletics meetings are held and there is also mutual rivalry in soccer, rugby and net-ball. At some high schools and at the majority of training colleges tennis is played. From the above-mentioned facts one can deduce that the importance of sport and physical education in the training of the Bantu is fully realized by this department. It is fully realized that sport and physical education play a tremendous role in the national development amongst the Bantu. If one drives past the Bantu residential areas on a Saturday afternoon one sees, on almost every open space, a lot of young Bantu playing either soccer or rugby. Frequently one sees groups of young Bantu jogging along the roads in order to get fit for soccer or rugby matches or for boxing tournaments. If we look at the large number of Bantu sportsmen who took part in the South African Games, and if we look at their achievements, one comes to realize that the recreation which the Bantu gained, in the past, from their traditional knobkierie fights, is now being replaced by competition on the soccer and rugby fields, on the athletic tracks and in a boxing ring.

The Department of Bantu Education deserves praise for its contribution, which it is furnishing through education, to canalize the excess energy and free time of the Bantu youth into sport and other physical activities. Although a great deal has already been achieved by the Department of Bantu Education in the sphere of sport and physical education, we find that ordinary teaching staff are giving physical education in Bantu schools. We also find that aspirant teachers at training colleges are receiving instruction in physical education, but that specialists are not being trained in that sphere. And there are no degree or diploma courses being given at any of the Bantu universities in physical education. Students in education can only take a course in physical education as a part of a teaching diploma course, and that is offered as an alternative subject to school music.

In view of the increasingly important role that sport and physical education is playing in the development of the Bantu peoples, I want to ask the hon. the Minister that very strong consideration be given to the establishment of a degree or diploma course in physical education at the three Bantu universities, courses in which specialists can be trained to serve their peoples in the future in the spheres of sport and physical education. After all the problems that have been mentioned with regard to priorities that must be determined in the appropriation of money and similar aspects, I nevertheless want to persist in asking the Minister to assist with this.

This Government has set itself the task of leading each of the various Bantu peoples to independence in its own father-land, and for this reason we already find Bantu leaders serving their own people at the highest levels today in various spheres within their national context. Within the state structure of the Bantu peoples it is also essential that there be leaders who will also serve their people in future in the sphere of sport and physical education. For that reason I request that strong consideration be given to establishing a degree and/or diploma course in physical education at the Bantu universities where specialists can be trained, people who can act as leaders in the future for their own people. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Kuruman quite obviously did not understand the statistics quoted by my hon. friend the member for Durban Central. It is quite obvious from page 18 of the Bantoe-onderwysblad of May, 1973, that in the period from 1925 to 1948 the percentage population at school trebled. In those 24 years they trebled, but in the 24 years from 1948 to 1972 it only doubled. This is the point my friend from Durban Central was making. It is no good this hon. member coming here and spending a lot of time of this Committee quoting further statistics from the report of the department. But I want to say that I agree with him wholeheartedly in the plea which he has made to the hon. the Deputy Minister regarding physical education in the schools. I know that these schools are so understaffed and that their facilities are so poor that it is very difficult for them to indulge in any extracurricular activities, but I do believe that this is something to which the hon. the Deputy Minister should apply his mind and let us see if we can do something regarding the physical training, athletics and sports, for these young people in the schools today.

I want to address the hon. the Deputy Minister directly for a moment if I may. I want to say that we on this side of the House are finding his frankness absolutely disarming. Obviously he cannot hear, I had better repeat that. I want to say that we find his frankness disarming. His is a refreshing new approach. We are getting a completely new approach to matters since this hon. Deputy Minister came on the scene regarding this question of the payment of teacher’s salaries. He was very courteous in his reply to my friends who raised the matter. For the first time we have a Deputy Minister conceding and admitting that there were faults and mistakes. When you compare this with the attitude adopted by his predecessor, Sir, you know why I came today armed with photostat copies of cheques or warrant vouchers issued by his department for back-pay of six months or more. But I do not need them now, because the hon. the Deputy Minister has at least conceded that they have made these errors. I want to congratulate him and say that it is going to be a pleasure to work with him under these circumstances, because at least we are going to get co-operation and we are going to deal with somebody who is aware of the problems which are facing us.

We have taken the trouble to discuss with the Bantu people their problems, in particular with the so-called urban Bantu people who are resident in the townships in White areas. This problem of education is very high on their list. In fact, I would put it second only to the question of property ownership. When you are told that the provision of secondary and other higher education in these townships is totally inadequate you realize their difficulty. I believe here in Langa, for example, there are only two high schools. This is one of the reasons why the circular from which the hon. the Deputy Minister quoted earlier had to be issued by his department. Only pupils who obtained first and second classes passes in Std. 6 are accepted into the high schools because of the shortage of accommodation. When you are told further by these people that the present Minister of Education in the Transkei, Miss Stella Sigcau, has now refused to take children from the Langa and Nyanga townships because she says she has too many of her own pupils to cope with in the secondary schools of the Transkei, what is to happen to the people in the townships? Where are these children to get their secondary education if this Government is going to continue, for ideological reasons, to keep secondary schools out of the townships? Recently, on Friday, the hon. member for South Coast quoted a report of the motor industry wishing to train between 20 000 and 30 000 Black people to absorb them into the industry as trained mechanics and so on. As the hon. member pointed out, those people require education. Where are they going to be trained and where are they going to be found? I believe that those people are to be found primarily in the townships because the Bantu people in the townships are generally a more sophisticated and more advanced people than those who are in the rural areas. I am sure that the hon. the Deputy Minister will agree with me. Unfortunately they cannot get their education in the townships but are forced to go outside, to go away. As the hon. Minister himself said, the secondary schools are away from the townships. He said that he himself had to go to boarding school; he could not stay at home for his education. But that is no reason why, for ideological reasons only, they must be forced to go elsewhere. I want to stress that it is not economic reasons or because the population is small or other reasons which require us as White people to send our children away to hostels or boarding houses at secondary schools. That is not the reason in this case; here it is just for ideological reasons. At the same time, when one thinks of these hostels and boarding houses, consider the unnecessary expense to these people in the townships in the White areas.

While we are talking about that, another complaint which is very high on their books is the question of costs, apart from the school fee in the form of a levy of 20 cents. This they accept. I agree whole-heartedly with what the hon. the Deputy Minister says, namely that they are proud to pay it, but they resent the fact that they have to pay R32 for a child in secondary school for text books and set books and approximately R12 for exercise books for the same high school, while their White counterparts can get this for nothing. I am afraid I do not have statistics, figures, to refute the argument advanced by the hon. the Deputy Minister. He tells us they are spending nearly R2 million on free books for these people. I accept that, and I am grateful for it. Thank you very much. When the hon. the Deputy Minister tells us that it will cost over R10 million to provide free books for all these children, I am a little bit at a loss. I do not have the statistics at my disposal, but I wonder if the hon. the Deputy Minister could have another look at those figures because, if they are already getting R2 million free, the fact that it would cost another R100 million sounds a little bit out of proportion to me. I want, therefore, to ask the hon. the Deputy Minister to have another look at that.

While we are talking about books, there is another point that is disturbing and that is the fact that, for instance, the schools at Langa do not have the same set books and text books as the White schools in Cape Town. A little while ago a group of school boys of Cape Town got together and decided to collect all the old set books and text books they could find to take them out to Langa and Nyanga so that those people could get them for nothing. However, those books were absolutely useless. All their work was for nothing because, when they got there, they found that the set books and text books were absolutely useless. The curriculum in those schools was completely different; they could not use these books at all. I wonder if something cannot be done about that as well.

I mentioned the question of the training of artisans to come into the motor trade and I want to refer generally to vocational, technical and trade training. I am disturbed to find in the report and from the figures I have been able to get, that less than 1% of all the pupils at school today are in that type of training. I wonder if the hon. the Deputy Minister is perhaps going to change the trend. It has been the Cinderella of the Education Department and I hope that he can change it and give us something a little better than that. The hon. the Minister expressed his appreciation for the in-service training given to Bantu in the platteland areas. I am sure he would like to add to that the industrialists in the White urban areas as well for the service they are giving. I hope he is not going to continue, as his predecessors have done, to hide behind the fact that these industrialists and others are prepared to train the Bantu. I hope that he is going to take the “voortou” and that he is going to take the lead in the training of these people who are his particular responsibility. He has been given this task and I know he would like to do it. I sincerely hope that he will take the lead in this particular sphere.

The hon. the Minister of Labour told the hon. Senator Eaton in the Other Place last year that the Government could train Bantu in the skilled trades but that politically it was not the policy of the Government to do so. I hope the hon. the Deputy Minister will have another look at this and see what he can do in the light of this new era we now see dawning with the arrival on the scene of this new Deputy Minister.

Mr. Chairman, both sides of the House have spoken quite a lot about the training of Bantu teachers. In his second speech the hon. member for Perea made particular mention of the lack of trained Bantu teachers. We all know and acknowledge that there is a lack of trained Bantu teachers. However, in recent years tremendous progress has been made towards improving this situation. I should like to make a few general remarks about the matter. From the private sector in recent times tremendous raids have been launched on trained Bantu. Trained Bantu have been drawn away by the private sector as publicity officers and clerks. Employers are lofty in their praise of these people who have been drawn from teaching by those means. The fact remains, however, that it is Bantu education that has to foot the bill, because now Bantu teachers again have to be trained at great cost as replacements. Within the framework of limited funds a great deal is being done to supplement the shortage of trained. Bantu teachers and to solve the problem.

I also want to refer to an aspect in connection with the training of teachers which has not yet been mentioned today. I want to speak about the in-service training of Bantu teachers. I wonder whether all hon. members know that the syllabuses of the Department of Bantu Education, like those of other education departments in the Republic, are based on the same fundamental syllabuses. An equivalent standard of work has to be maintained. It is in this field that the Department of Bantu Education’s achievements are exceptional. The Department of Bantu Education does everything in its power to have its teaching staff keep pace with the latest developments in the educational sphere. For that purpose an in-service training centre at the secondary level, with the Bantu name of Mamelodi, has been erected at Vlakfontein. The necessary classrooms, laboratories for the sciences, a language laboratory and a guest house for those taking courses have been introduced. There are also other administrative facilities. Of necessity those in-service training centres focus on secondary school work, while the in-service training of primary teachers is the responsibility of each inspector within the relevant circle. It is carried out on a circular basis. Thus in 1972, for example, 382 courses were held with 2 700 teachers participating. Bantu teachers participated with enthusiasm. The courses contributed greatly towards efficiently increasing the training of primary school teachers, particularly those who had had scant training or those who had no professional qualifications.

I want to conclude with another remark. The hon. the Deputy Minister referred, a moment ago, to newspapers which publish certain reports and then, when the correct data are supplied to them at a later stage, do not want to publish the facts. In one of the newspapers recently I read an article in which strong criticism was being expressed in connection with the language medium in Bantu schools situated in White areas. I have here a cutting from a newspaper dated 22.4.1973. The heading reads as follows: “U.P. will oppose language curb for African schools.” It appeared in the Sunday Times. I shall read only a portion of the report. It concerns a circular which was sent to all Bantu schools in White areas by the Department of Bantu Education. It reads as follows—

I do not know whether it was intentional or merely by chance, but the cardinal word has been omitted in this paragraph. The circular was not addressed to “all urban African schools”; it was addressed to “all secondary urban African schools”, and that changes the whole matter. We learned recently what the position is in two of the homelands, i.e. the Transkei and KwaZulu. The Transkeian Legislative Assembly decided a while ago that the medium of education in the Transkeian schools up to and including Std. 2 will be the mother tongue, in this case the Xhosa language; after that it will be English. The argument is that English was the language of the area, “since immemorial times”, i.e. that in that area the language was English. And it is not the Xhosa who spoke English; it is the Whites in that area who spoke English. I have now learned that as far as KwaZulu is concerned the medium of education is also going to be the mother tongue only up to and including Std. 2. At least that is what has been decided; it has not been implemented yet. After that it will also be English, and apparently for the same reason as in the case of the Transkei. Now, according to a report I have here, there is criticism, inter alia, on the part of the hon. member for Wynberg in connection with this matter. The hon. member says that the parents must in any case have the choice. It is, of course, the general policy of the United Party, in connection with the medium of education, that the parents must be able to exercise the choice. But I find it very strange that criticism is now being levelled in this connection, because this circular, as I have quoted it to you, states clearly that in an area where the White language is predominantly Afrikaans, the Bantu schools will use that medium from Std. 5 onwards, where it is predominantly English. English will be used, and where both the languages are used, both will be used in a 50-50 basis. Sir, a great deal of criticism is being levelled at that, and I think that sometimes many of these people who are summoned for interviews are prompted to say that the object is merely, by means of this circular, to strengthen the Afrikaans language, which is the language of the Government which implements the policy of apartheid. Sir, I think that it is a very efficient circular, and I believe that the object of this circular really is to have the Bantu qualify themselves as far as possible in both languages so that they can help themselves in the area where they are going to serve.

Sir, I am sure the hon. member for Koedoespoort will excuse me if I do not follow up on what he has said. He spoke about primary and secondary education. I want to speak about quite a different matter, i.e. technical education. Sir, we are raising this matter with great confidence from this side of the House because our experience of the hon. the Deputy Minister has taught us that he does not evade questions. He replies to a question directly, or he does not reply at all. He would not violate his conscience by giving an evasive answer, and that is why we are confidently raising this matter with him. At the beginning of this session we learned from the hon. the Minister of Finance that the Government is also prepared to accept the principle of in-service and pre-service training as far as technical education for Bantu is concerned. We would be grateful if the hon. the Deputy Minister would spell out to us, in this connection, the policy of the hon. the Minister of Finance, so that we may know whether in-service training also includes technical training up to the artisan level. Sir, to illustrate my point I should like to refer to two industries which I am very conversant with. In the first place I want to refer to the textile industry, and here I have in mind Good Hope Textiles and Cyril Lord. I do not know how well the Deputy Minister is acquainted with the textile industry, but I would like to invite him to accompany me on a tour of one of these textile factories so that he can see how many technically trained people are working there. They are virtually all Bantu, and they simply cannot all be trained in the Bantu areas. In the textile industry one finds combers, weavers, spinners, dyers and finishers. These are all highly specialized activities. These people work with thousands of small machines, and for this they need training. There is only one way in which they can receive training, and that is by in-service training until they have reached the stage where they qualify as artisans and receive recognition as such. Sir, I have just referred to a location-orientated industry in a border area. I also want to refer to another kind of industry, i.e. the building industry, where there is a shortage of 30 000 or more artisans. Sir, the hon. the Deputy Minister knows the building industry as well as I do and he will know how many various kinds of artisans one encounters in the building industry; one has bricklayers, plasterers, painters, cabinet makers, plumbers, etc. But since this is not a location-orientated industry, one finds one large contractor simultaneously doing construction work in the Ciskei, in the Transkei, in King William’s Town and in East London. He moves around with his teams of people; one week he is in Umtata or in KwaZulu with a certain team, and the next week he is perhaps working with the same people in King William’s Town. This week he is perhaps working on a hospital in the Ciskei and the next week he is in East London again, and from the nature of the case these are, after all, the same people he is using. Under the Government’s old policy, if this is not still its policy, we have found inspectors coming to building contractors and saying: “You are working here with a Bantu cabinet maker who is doing highly specialized work; you are not permitted to make use of his services here; you may only make use of them in the Transkei.” The contractor then replies: “The day before yesterday I came from the Transkei where I was busy on a contract, but I now want to use the cabinet makers here because their work in the Transkei has been completed.” Sir, those people who are working in industries which are not location-orientated, have endless problems in that connection. For that reason we could certainly tell the Government with the utmost confidence in the world that it is necessary for this technical training to be done in the White areas. With these tremendous shortages we cannot keep the industries going. The motor industry and the engineering industry are all talking of a 70 000 to 30 000 staff shortage. If we want to keen the economy going and if we want to continue producing, it is, after all, essential for these people to be trained, and if the institutions are not there to train them in the Bantustans, or the so-called Bantustans, they must be established somewhere else. If the Minister’s reply is to have any significance, if pre-service and in-service training is to bring a person to the stage where he is an artisan, it must be possible to train him somewhere. If it is the policy that there must be job reservation, and he cannot reach certain levels, it must be permissible for him to reach other levels. That is why we are making this decisive appeal to the Minister—Bantu training and education falls under his Vote —to the effect that it should be possible, within the White areas, to train the Bantu as artisans to the extent that they can hold their own in the industries where there is a tremendous shortage of staff. We appeal with confidence to him to spell this out for us, if he can do so at this stage, and to tell us whether there has been any change in Government policy, whether we can go and tell the industrialists and businessmen that there has been an easing up of policy in this connection. Teach the people and train them, whether in a chemist shop or wherever the case may be, as far as one can train them.

I should like to reply briefly, although there are a few questions which were put to me and to which I, quite frankly, cannot give the full answers. But I should like to follow these up and, if need be, reply to them in writing, or discuss them with the hon. members who raised them.

I want to start with the hon. member for East London City, and I want to tell him that the whole question of in-service and pre-service training was raised by the hon. the Minister of Finance. It was done in consequence of an interdepartmental committee that was dealing with the matter in the department. Since the announcement by the hon. the Minister, my Minister has given instructions for the matter to be investigated on a wider basis and more thoroughly. I can tell the hon. member, as a practical farmer, that I had discussions with the hon. the Minister of Agriculture recently to ask his technical division whether they, too, did not want to serve on the interdepartmental committee to consider this whole matter. As yet it has in any event been made clear that there are certain categories of work which are closed to Bantu in terms of certain legislation, and the whole matter can only be dealt with in collaboration with the Department of Labour. It will not be possible to implement it to any great extent immediately. As you know, some of these schemes are already operating in the border industries. There are Iscor and other large employers who have had this sort of training scheme operating to a limited extent, but I can assure the hon. member that the various departments are investigating—on the basis of the two interim reports, which are thorough reports and which can be put at the disposal of the hon. member—all problems in this regard, so as to furnish further and clearer replies as soon as possible to this hon. member and to others who put questions in this regard. I can say that the Departments of Commerce and Industry have had consultations—through their organizations, such as Assocom—and that they have already prepared a memorandum. We have asked that the memoranda be submitted for consideration by the committee and for reference to the various departments. With regard to the transfer of work teams and the attendant problems, the hon. member will already know that many of those problems should now be thrashed out, not only within a particular area, but also through consultation between various of the larger, adjoining administration areas. By these means it will be possible to eliminate a great deal of friction and red tape. I therefore believe that these administration boards will also be able to give practical hints in this direction for, as you know, commerce and industry are also represented on those boards. They are fully represented on those boards and problems of this nature, also with regard to local problems, will best be solved within those boards, and all suggestions which they make, will definitely receive serious consideration.

The hon. member for Koedoespoort mentioned the important matter of education in the various languages. I cannot prescribe to homeland leaders what they should decide. They have an absolute right which has been entrusted to them, to decide, and I do not want to express opinions in this House on the wisdom or folly of their decisions. I can only say that the legislation, as the hon. member for Koedoespoort said quite rightly, seeks to enable these people, for instance in a predominantly Afrikaans-speaking area, to find work more easily in that area in which mainly Afrikaans is spoken. The same holds true for an area in which mainly English is spoken. Employer and employee want to be able to address each other in the same language. Unfortunately—I say “unfortunately”, for I myself would like to be able to speak a Bantu language—the position is that because very few of us know Bantu languages, the language has to be either English or Afrikaans. There were no ulterior motives whatsoever. I would regret it, and to my mind it would be to the disadvantage of those people who could otherwise have been employees, if it were to be decided that one of the two official languages which are used in South Africa should be eliminated in that way. I have no doubt that if something of this nature were to happen, the mistake would very soon be realized by the pupils and those people who would have to suffer under such a regulation, if such a step were to be taken.

†The hon. member for Pietermaritzburg District raised a few points. I shall reply very briefly, because I should like to invite him to come to have a look at these figures which he questioned. I cannot discuss them with him in detail, but I can assure him that these figures are correct. I checked them over and over again with the department and as far as I can remember they are correct. I would be only too pleased to show him the figures and to explain to him how they were arrived at. We calculated that if free books were to be issued to all these Bantu pupils, the amount involved would come to approximately R12 million.

I want to cross swords with him though on one point. He said that these secondary schools in the homelands especially have been encouraged because of ideological reasons only. That statement is not correct. There may be ideological reasons, but I do not think that we should use the word “ideological” too much or over-emphasize it. There are practical reasons for it. I mentioned one of those points in reply to another hon. member when I said that when we speak of an infrastructure in a homeland, which we have all agreed should be developed as quickly as possible to the fullest possible potential, school facilities will be one of the primary facilities that will be required there. With the limited funds at our disposal we are therefore duty-bound to assist these homeland leaders to make their homelands places to which people would be pleased to go. I said the same in the course of another debate and hon. members on that side agreed with me wholeheartedly. I then said that the homelands should not be dumping places, but they should be places to which the people belonging to the homelands should be attracted. Universities and especially secondary schools and these other institutions which we intend and are establishing there, are therefore not established there because of ideological reasons only, but for practical reasons.

*The hon. member also spoke about the heavy expenditure which parents must incur in respect of the acquisition of books. I want to agree with him that it is indeed a heavy burden for people with a low income to pay so much for a child’s school-books. However, I said earlier this evening, and other hon. members also spoke about it, that one should think of what could be done by voluntary organizations which could help schools in this regard in the meantime. For instance, if we think of establishing a library, the terrain to be covered, is still large and wide. Some newspapers have set examples in this regard as have some individuals.

†I would like to refer to the person, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, who launched “Operation Up-grade” in Durban.

Mr. D’Oliveira.

Mr. D’Oliveira launched Operation Up-grade, an excellent example of what can be achieved. He started on a small scale by the issuing of books and later on even by the printing of books. This is what can be done. As somebody else mentioned earlier on in this debate, if people would only refrain from carrying banners all over the place protesting against all the ills in the world and rather work positively for a cause, something can be achieved.

*I want to thank sincerely all hon. members who participated in this debate. Finally I still want to refer to the hon. member for Kuruman, to whose speech I have not yet made any reference. I want to thank him for the excellent suggestion which he made with regard to the training of teachers in physical training, which could ultimately result in the establishment of a Department of Sport for the Bantu. I can tell the hon. member that we have already, on several occasions, consulted with the hon. the Minister of Sport and Recreation, since we need the help of his efficient officials for the introduction of a course such as this at the schools which fall under my department. The Secretary for Bantu Administration and Development himself is liaising with the Secretary of the Department of Sport and Recreation. Someone has already been appointed on a full-time basis within the department to conduct a survey of the available facilities and of the facilities which are needed. As soon as this factual knowledge is at our disposal, we shall proceed to the provision of the facilities on a regional basis. I hope to make it possible through the schools. In some of the homelands we have placed the Department of Sport and Recreation under the Minister of Education, whereas the governments of other homelands have decided, that the Minister of Community Development would exercise authority over this matter. I am afraid that the possibility does exist that these sports facilities which are necessary, may perhaps fall by the roadside and therefore I welcome the suggestion by the hon. member. We shall most definitely give urgent attention to the matter; we shall try to see to it that physical training is taught in the schools, along with those things relating thereto, so that a full-fledged Department of Sport and Recreation may be developed in each of these homelands. It must also be made available at the schools where talented young Bantu can develop their talents further.

Once again I want to express my hearty thanks to everyone who participated in this debate. I want to assure hon. members that if they have further questions on the report, the services of the Secretary of the Department of Bantu Education is at their disposal and that I myself would gladly reply to further questions, if there should be anything else which is not clear.

Votes agreed to.

Revenue Vote No. 30, Loan Vote M and S.W.A. Vote No. 17.—“National Education”:

Mr. Chairman … [Interjections.] May I have the privilege of the half-hour?

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

Mr. Chairman, I believe that all thinking people—I take it that all of us here are thinking people— must often have asked themselves to what our Western civilization really owes its greatness and its supremacy today. There are factors, of course—such as military genius, faith, etc.—but I think we accept that one of the greatest factors is the system of education of our Western civilization. The roots of that system go a long way back in our history. They go back to the days of the Greeks, when Aristotle taught us logic, when Socrates taught us how to reason and how to discover the truth, when Justianus built up the framework in which our system of education could grow. That fine system was preserved during the Middle Ages, and then the great explosion of knowledge of the Renaissance took place. The background to this all was that faith which we had in the system of education which was founded on reason, on common sense, on the search for truth, without all the embellishments of ideologies. This was one of the greatest factors in the growth of our Western civilization. For that reason I also believe that this Department of National Education, more than any other department, is and should be the guardian of the education and of the culture of the West today. It is our mutual task to see that it succeeds in this.

†I wonder whether we realize what a vast department this Department of National Education is. It actually comprises, as hon. members know, two big departments, namely the Branch of Education itself and the Branch of Cultural Affairs. Under education, the department is the channel with our universities and is also the controlling body for our colleges for advanced technical education, of our technical colleges and technical institutes. It does work in the field of the training of teachers in specialized subjects, such as commerce, economics and arts. It controls the central organization for trade testing, the trade school near West-lake and it controls special schools for the blind, the deaf, autistic children, reform schools, schools of industry for retarded children, and so on. In one year alone 115 000 candidates were examined by the department and its subsidiary bodies in nearly 3 000 subjects.

*In the cultural field its scope is just as wide and it has just as much power for doing good or harm. There are eight large commissions, in connection with visual arts, the human sciences, family education, youth affairs, land service, natural sciences, music, literature, etc.

†This department buys works for the State, it writes out literary competitions, it supports South African writers—and I am glad to see that Breyten Breytenbach and Oswald Mosani were amongst those who were supported last year. Last year it also gave or supported 51 orchestral performances. The department also issued a publication on how to purchase a home, it held youth camps, it issued a new edition of its own cookery book, it supported the Afrikaans dictionary and it helped the national libraries. It directs statutory bodies of which the most important is the SABC with its big task of television lying ahead. The Africa Institute, the Place Names Committee, the Table Mountain Conservation Board, the Heraldry Council, the huge Film Board, the National Monuments Council and many other bodies fall under this huge department which, in a way, is almost a conglomerate such as we find in our economic life of today. This department even has its own foreign service. It has cultural treaties or agreements with countries overseas and it has its own cultural ambassadors in the capitals of these countries. This shows you how wide the scope of this department is. One of the most intriguing things I discovered in reading the report of this department recently is that even the exchange of animals between countries has become one of its tasks. Apparently there is an agreement between the National Zoo of Pretoria and the zoo in Antwerp for the exchange of some of our animals for theirs.

Why do we not exchange the Minister?

I am talking about the animal zoo in Pretoria, not the human one. Apparently Belgium has agreed to send us two very rare Derby elks and two equally rare Congo peacocks; we on our part have agreed to send the Antwerp zoo some white rhino, some kudu and some blue wildebeest. I hope that the hon. the Minister, as a matter of interest, will be able to tell us to what extent this exchange has been effected and whether these animals have already been John Vorstered … I mean despatched, to Antwerp.

This big department, like all departments of education, has an internal and an external task. Its internal task is to propagate an educational system to meet the inner needs of the people of South Africa with regard to knowledge and training in conformity with a wide South Africanism unsullied by excesses of intolerance, racialism or sectionalism. The external duty of this department, and the hon. the Minister’s duty, is to see to the external needs of South Africa, our cultural and economic needs. Here the greatest problem is the manpower problem lying ahead in the next decades of the latter half of the twentieth century.

*Do we know how big this manpower shortage is? Do we realize the enormity of the task this department will have to tackle in order to meet that manpower problem? The problem is so big that even if we were to double the trained manpower in South African within ten years, we would not even be keeping pace with the demand as it exists today; if we were to do less, we would be falling behind. If we bear in mind that in 1971 only 15 of all pupils were attending technical schools, we can see how big the problem really is. We think, for example, of the shortage in engineering, particularly of technicians, and of the shortage of teachers. I am sure that both sides of the House realize that only three million Whites cannot provide for the needs of a population of 22 million. This is a tremendous educational problem, and it does not only concern the education of the Whites, but also that of the Bantu, the Coloured people and the Indians. Only if we can cope with this manpower shortage we shall also be able to cope with the problem of how to maintain and increase our production, how to maintain our army and how to maintain the Public Service. Education, growth and training are the things that count in these days.

Since I have said this, it would be as well for me to state a few important points of policy of the United Party in regard to education.

Good lad!

The hon. member has heard before that the United Party wants the amount spent on education in South Africa to be doubled. We believe that this must be done and can be done. If we take note of the fact that only 3½% of our national revenue is being spent on education today, while double and more than double that percentage is being spent in the developed countries such as Great Britain and the U.S.A., we see how far we are lagging behind in South Africa when it comes to the training of the manpower in our country.

The United Party’s policy is that it believes in the academic autonomy of the universities. We believe in the right of anyone to seek the truth along the way on which his spirit and his mind may lead him at these institutions. On the school level —we have emphasized this repeatedly, and I do so again—we believe in the right of the parent to decide on the school for his child, that the child belongs to his parents and not to the State in the first place. Our policy in regard to the teaching profession, as approved and stated here before—but it is as well for us to repeat it—is, firstly, that we want to take the teaching profession away from the control of the Public Service Commission. This would promote a realistic cost structure and realistic salary scales. Secondly, there should be more regular pension adjustments for the teacher, instead of the present ad hoc system. Thirdly, the teacher should be given a statutory and professional status. Fourthly, there should be more regular and direct consultation with acknowledged teachers’ associations.

A very important aspect of our policy —and this has been highlighted during the past few years in particular—is decentralization. We have often discussed in this House the federal policy of the United Party; but there is one aspect that has not been sufficiently emphasized, and that is the fact that we want our intimate affairs, affairs such as education, to be transferred on a larger scale to the federal legislative assemblies which we are going to establish. This will not all happen overnight, but it will be an evolutionary process. The time will come when even the institutions for higher education, the universities, will also fall under the legislative assemblies, first those of Whites and subsequently those of non-Whites as well.

Let us deal with a few aspects of policy and problems of the department. First I want to deal with the universities and students. Perhaps I should say here now —although it has been said before— that we believe that higher education should be available to all who have the talent to benefit by it and that financial assistance should be rendered in order to make this possible. We believe that the present system for subsidizing universities is inadequate and that changes can be made, over and above the special changes that were made as a result of the first interim report by the Van Wyk de Vries Commission. We also believe that more money should be given on a large scale for research.

I have mentioned the Van Wyk de Vries Commission. Here I want to criticize the Minister for not yet having tabled that report. I regard the Van Wyk de Vries Commission on university affairs as one of the most important commissions in the history of South Africa. The commission was appointed in 1968, and up to date we have only had one or two interim reports. We are still waiting for the main report. In the departmental report of last year it was indicated that we might perhaps expect that report this year, but I doubt it. I hope that we may get the interim report in regard to student affairs before Parliament adjourns. That report—and the hon. the Minister will concede this—may be of great value to the Schlebusch Commission, since the latter is also examining student organizations.

†The Van Wyk de Vries Commission has vast terms of reference. It has to inquire into the requirements for degrees and diplomas at universities, the length of the academic year, the reasons for the high rate of failure at our universities, research facilities, the qualifications of staff and the whole future planning of our universities. We need that report. We are by no means saying that we are going to agree with everything contained in the report, but I am sure that there will be guide-lines and that research that has been done will give an answer to some of the great educational problems facing our universities. In the case, for instance, of whether there should be another English university near Pretoria, I believe that a good case can be made out for that. But if a good case can be made out, the sooner we started building that new university, the better. There are problems. I think of one: How is it possible that at one of the great universities in South Africa 45% of the male first-year students hold a first-class matriculation pass, while at another great university only 13% of the first-year male students have a first-class matriculation pass? These are problems to which I am sure the Van Wyk de Vries Commission is applying its mind, and we are keen to have the answers.

When it comes to the universities it should be clearly stated that we in the United Party believe in the future growth of all our universities in South Africa. We have no favourites amongst the university institutions. We believe that magnificent work in the field of research and in regard to teaching is being done at all these institutions.

*We have no favourites among the universities of South Africa. We in the United Party stand for the growth and the prosperity and the progress of all our universities, the Afrikaans universities as well as the English universities. We stand for the progress of Stellenbosch and of the University of Cape Town. We are impressed by the development at Wits and although we do not always agree with what Prof. Gerritt Viljoen at RAU does, he is a dynamic person who is doing wonderful work in developing that university, as we saw during the tour we undertook there; the hon. member for Boksburg was there with me. At the same time we give best wishes and our support to the bilingual university at Port Elizabeth, and we pay tribute to that giant correspondence university, the University of South Africa.

We are not only friends of all the university institutions; we are also, we believe, friends of the students. I think that a high percentage of the hon. members on this side are old students of universities, more than is the case in many political parties in the West. A very large percentage of the members on that side, too, are old students. It is foolishness to say that we are hostile to the students.

†In the educational sphere naturally our universities rightly loom very large. But I think I could be permitted to say that in politics they probably appear to loom larger than they really merit. Frankly, my personal opinion is that the more boisterous or outlandish some of the actions of the students on some of the campuses are, the less they are actually able to influence public opinion. I am not going to dictate to them how they should go about their business and what they should do; I am just telling them what I believe to be the results of some of their actions. After all, of the youth between 18 and 25, only 10% attend universities and of those, all are of different political persuasions, and amongst them there is a vast silent majority of hardworking young men and women who have their own ideas, who are intellectually free, but who do not participate in some of the excesses that we see, and I wish to pay tribute to those young men and women. They are the future leaders indeed of South Africa.

Mr. Chairman, obviously we seek neither to woo nor to reject the student vote, but we in the United Party do welcome the support of the thinking, serious young man and woman. But we are not keen to have the support of the activist, leftist groups amongst the students who are causing such vast embarrassment to the Progressive Party which, indeed, they are at the moment trying to take over. We have no objection to students demonstrating legally, but I have often asked myself: How effective are these demonstrations in convincing people? It is only my personal opinion, but I believe that politics in the open, on the streets, actually is for the less intellectually endowed people. It is only my personal opinion, but I believe that politics in the open, on the streets, actually is for the less intellectually endowed people. It is more the weapon of the proletariat than of the thinking person. After all, the psychology of the crowd is the psychology of the lowest common denominator, of the simplistic and simplified slogan, of the war-cry. I believe it is not suited to an intellectual group such as the students of South Africa. I believe that a well-reasoned article, a lecture, a speech or a discussion can be much more effective in swaying opinion than, say, a placard with one or two words on it.

I think, Mr. Chairman, that I can call myself a product of English-speaking universities, one local and one abroad, and as such—I think together with many other such products—I find an ambivalence in my attitude towards English-speaking universities, towards my Alma Mater and her sisters, an ambivalence probably well expressed by Catullus, when he talks about his mistress—

Although I do not want to go to Catullus’s extremes of hate and of love, I do say that on the one hand, if I look at the research work being done, at the hard work of our students and the terrific intellectual effort which is being created, I see and I hope for one vast overriding national body where all that research and all that intellectual energy can be put by that huge body to the use of commerce and industry, so that the practical mind of our economy and the mind of Acadamy can meet each other to their mutual benefit; that is what I see on the one hand, but on the other hand, Sir—and when I say this I must warn you I am speaking with my tongue in my cheek that I must not be taken too seriously—if I look at the boisterous and the sometimes quite mindless extravagances of some young campus products, I often wonder whether the universities, or some faculties at some universities, would not benefit by that well-known type of body we have in the Transvaal schools, the parent-teacher association, where parents and teachers more often discuss their charges than themselves. But, as I say, I say this with my tongue in my cheek and I hope there will be no demonstrations against this speech.

Sir, one danger has appeared in recent years, one which is a terrible danger for South Africa, and that is the misuse that is being made of innocent young men and women by conscienceless exploiters of the left who are prepared to sacrifice young students on the revolutionary altar. If the Schlebusch Commission has done nothing else, it has exposed some of these things which are dangerous to our students, and it has defused a present danger for our people in South Africa. We must remember that there have been student revolutions in France and in West Berlin. Bullets have been fired on student bodies at Kent State University and tear gas has been thrown at students at Berkeley in California. Sir, I believe that the Schlebusch Commission did good work in clearing the good name of the English universities in South Africa by pointing out that the blame for some of the excesses, or nearly all the excesses, does not lie with the universities as such but with certain leaders who are influencing, for the bad, our young men and young women. We in the Schlebusch Commission can also take credit for the fact that Nusas was not banned; for saying that it is essential that there should be a good and a democratic student society for the English-speaking students. It was only the leadership of Nusas to which we objected.

*Sir, when we discuss our young people, let us then bear all our young people in mind, not only the 10% at universities; let us also think of the 90% outside the universities, at the technical colleges and in our Army; let us think of the young soldier, the young artisan, the young builder, the clerk, the mechanic and the typist. They are just as much a part of the youth of South Africa as the students are and they, too, need our esteem and our assistance. I believe that we should also look after the young married couples, especially in regard to housing and education, and the hon. the Minister will agree with me when I appeal to those young people, too, not to abandon their education, but to continue equipping themselves for the life that lies ahead by means of correspondence courses or evening classes or other methods.

Sir, there are several points of criticism that I should like to raise with the hon. the Minister. The first is that I believe that there is too much over-organization within his department. I counted close on 50 or more different committees and commissions and councils that function within the different branches of his department. This is internal over-organization where we should prefer to see external over-organization. In the second place I want the department to guard against this new dangerous phenomenon which is appearing all over the world today, the phenomenon of polarization, polarization which seeks to drive humanity into two camps so that they may torment and destroy each other, polarization between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, polarization between employee and employer, between parent and child, between Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking people. Please, let us not be guilty in our educational system of even the smallest measure of that kind of polarization, which seeks to emphasize too strongly one cultural aspect of one national group in South Africa and which then, involuntarily sometimes, seeks to oppose the other group to this. Polarization is a danger to our country. It is one of the deadliest phenomena of this decade.

†Sir, we had a long debate last year on differentiated education. We accept the principle, but we are not yet satisfied that it is working as it should. There are still problems in connection with syllabuses and I would like to know from the hon. the Minister to what extent this system is now working more smoothly. Our opinion in regard to youth preparedness remains unchanged in that we were originally suspicious of what was being done, but now there have been excellent signs of what I might call local option in regard to youth preparedness, in which the provinces and local school areas have been given special options in regard to what aspects of youth preparedness they would like to stress, and that is a good thing. It is indeed, if I may say so, another example of the principle of federalism in which we believe. We would, however, warn that this youth preparedness and also certain aspects of the work of the Department of Culture can lead not to youth preparedness but to youth preparation, for a narrow civic and semi-political role, with an intolerant attitude. I am glad to say, however, that flexibility can and seems to be making it flower into something more worth while.

Next, Sir, I believe there is a danger in our educational system, and in the Department of Cultural Affairs in particular, to confuse culture as it exists and as it has grown in our history with culture as the Government thinks it should be. Good work is being done by the Cultural Department, but I believe that over-emphasis is being placed by a body such as the Human Sciences Research Council on investigations into the attitudes of people towards various matters. There are investigations, for example, to find out what type of television people think we should have. I shall have more to say on this when we come to discuss television. Then, too, Sir, I do not like this idea of a secret report on immigrant children which the hon. the Minister has in his possession and which he has told us he refuses to table. Can he blame us for being suspicious that this may be another way of trying to get immigrant children to think only in one direction in South Africa? Sir, another point of criticism is this: The hon. the Minister has washed his hands when it comes to what people will be allowed to see in the way of dramatic performances in South Africa, yet he is giving R1½ million a year to the performing arts; he is giving R600 000 to Capab. Why is it then that holding the power of granting or refusing R600 000, he cannot tell the Nico Malan Theatre that it should be their policy also to permit non-Europeans to attend certain performances? He has the power to do something practical in that direction.

*A further point of criticism concerns the Language Service Bureau, where I feel that there are great bottlenecks. The translation of official documents takes too long. If you look at the wonderfully fast work which is done by Hansard and you compare it with the slow pace of the Language Service Bureau, you must conclude that more could be done to improve the latter.

Sir, I have already discussed the Film Board and the tremendous harm it is doing by competing with other institutions. Then it published an annual report of 100 copies at R6-90 each. Is this worthwhile, I ask?

But I want to conclude by saying that shortcomings must be eliminated and that criticism must be answered. The Minister may rest assured, however, that he will always get constructive criticism from this side. We have wonderful material with which to build. Our young people have the vitality, the intellect and the energy. What we can give the young people is moral strength, material support, dedicated teachers, the means for slaking their thirst for knowledge, the armour of truth, and love for and loyalty to all South Africa. I know that this Parliament and our country wish to and will be worthy of our youth in this.

This evening we have listened for the first time to the hon. member for Orange Grove in his new capacity as the shadow-Minister of Education in the Opposition. Now I do not know whether I should congratulate the Opposition on their choice, whether I should commiserate or whether I should not perhaps ask them to revert to the previous shadow-Minister.

The hon. member covered a very, very wide field. He began by going way back to the roots of education, pedagogy and philosophy. He began with Socrates and even dwelt for a while on the Pretoria Zoo. The hon. member said that this is a large and comprehensive department as far as pedagogy, education and also cultural matters are concerned. I agree with him on that statement. Then the hon. member referred to the United Party’s policy. Sir, we could conduct a very lengthy debate about that, but in the 10 minutes at my disposal I do not have the time to do so. We disagree fully and completely with the principles and standpoints of the United Party’s policy as far as education is concerned. The hon. member also expressed points of criticism here and, inter alia, referred to the many organizations and boards in the Department of National Education. But again the hon. member has merely remained negative and did not tell us what should be done away with. I hope he will at least tell the hon. the Minister afterwards what boards and organizations should be done away with. I think the hon. member’s attitude was a little more positive—except towards the end of his speech—than the attitude he revealed in his first interview with the Press. In that interview with the Press, according to the Pretoria News of 3rd May, 1973, he said, inter alia, with a great fanfare—

We have always come to associate the hon. member with such utterances, and towards the end of his speech he again moved in that direction when expressing criticism of the youth preparedness programme.

I expected the hon. member to touch upon a few topical matters, but he did not do so. One of the topical matters is the shortage of teachers. While he had the opportunity, I was hoping, at any rate, that as the new chairman of the United Party’s education group here tonight, he would have made an appeal to the English-speaking people, who are chiefly sitting on their side of the House or who are their supporters, to also supply people for education. Sir, it is a well-known fact that Afrikaans-speaking teachers today carry out that task for the absent English-speaking teachers. In the past few years I have not heard any pleas from that side of the House, whether from the Leader of the Opposition or from any of his supporters, in which an appeal was made to the English-speaking people to influence their children to become teachers. I am now asking that hon. member for Florida, who is sitting there passing remarks, to make an appeal in his constituency to his English-speaking voters. [Interjections.] I shall now simply leave the remarks about the shortage of teachers at that.

I should like to raise a few matters. It is known that in the Transvaal Education Department a start was made on the project school experiment in 1966. Twenty-two high schools were chosen for the implementation of the experiment. The matriculants from each of these schools wrote only an internal examination. This experiment had to be approved and was approved by the Joint Matriculation Board. Unfortunately this experiment elicited a great deal of comment. I myself have in my possession a whole file of cuttings of people expressing, on the one hand, criticism about the system and, on the other hand, waxing lyrical in their praise of it. When the university results of pupils who matriculated at the project schools are compared with the achievements of pupils who matriculated in the ordinary high schools, no significant differences were observed, as far as my knowledge goes. From the Press we have recently learned that the experiment is to be concluded by the end of 1974. I see in the Press that the Transvaal Education Department was to approach the Joint Matriculation Board for permission for a limited number of high schools to be permitted to continue with a so-called accredited system, i.e. high schools conducting examinations themselves. I should now like to ask the Minister to give us a bit more information about this matter.

South Africa’s universities and the university students are receiving financial assistance to the tune of R88,8 million from this Budget, an increase of R17.8 million on the previous year’s Budget. While I am now referring to the financial assistance which the universities are receiving, I should like to mention, on this occasion, the centenary of the University of South Africa—Unisa, as it is generally known to us—which is being celebrated this year. Unisa also took occupation of its large new building in Pretoria during April. The university system in South Africa is therefore a hundred years old this year. We on this side of the House would like to convey our congratulations to Unisa; I am also doing so as an ex-student of that university. The University of the Cape of Good Hope came into being in 1873, and thus tertiary education was established in South Africa. In 1916 it became, by legislation, the University of South Africa, and it was therefore the educational guardian of the individual college that later became universities, i.e. Cape Town University, Stellenbosch University, Witwatersrand University, Pretoria University, Potchefstroom University, Natal University, the University of the Orange Free State and Rhodes University. More recently Unisa has supervised the establishment, growth and development towards autonomy of the five non-White universities. We should like to pay tribute to Unisa for the fulfilment of the task of academic paternity and emancipation which it has carried out over so many years, but particularly for the excellent tele-education, i.e. education by means of the written word, which has been given to so many thousands of students throughout South Africa and also to other students throughout the world. At the moment Unisa has 32 000 students, and many of them will never see the inside of a university.

Since I have just referred to the large amount being voted for universities in the Budget, permit me a few remarks. To obtain university training today is a special privilege, and in future this will be the case to a greater extent. For parents, as well as for the State, university training has become a costly undertaking. It costs the State, i.e. the taxpayers, about R1 000 per year to keep one student at university on a full-time basis. This is, of course, apart from what it costs the parents. For one student who fails at university, R1 000 is therefore lost from the community chest. Voices are continually being raised in this House, and outside as well, at the high failure rate at universities, particularly amongst the first-year students. Like myself, and other hon. members who are interested in education, the hon. member for Berea recently became concerned about conditions at universities. He then made certain calculations, the results of which I found to be wrong when I quickly glanced at them for the first time. According to the hon. member the pass rate at all universities is supposedly 19% on the average, the lowest being those of the University of the Witwatersrand with a pass rate of 15%, the University of Pretoria with a pass rate of 17% and the University of Cape Town with a pass rate of 17,5%. One perhaps suspected that the demonstrating students at the Universities of Cape Town and the Witwatersrand would, in fact, put up a poor show academically, but that they would put up so poor a show no one could have imagined. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, at the start of his speech the hon. member for Koedoespoort actually became emotional about the vital question he calls the shortage of teachers.

Do you not think it is something worth becoming emotional about?

He then said, inter alia, that he has never heard hon. members on this side of the House encouraging English-speaking people to enter the teaching profession. However, I want to quote what the hon. member for Berea said in this House in 1970 (Hansard 1970, col. 5064)—

I hope that that is the last we will hear of that story.

I want to hasten to associate myself with what was said by the hon. member for Orange Grove about the Van Wyk de Vries Commission. He said quite rightly that when it was appointed in 1968, a tremendous task was entrusted to the commission. There were at least 15 different references. There is however, no doubt that the most important reference at that stage and the one to which priority had to be given was the one concerning the financing of universities. I quote as follows from the 1968 report of the department—

Further, it is interesting to note that in 1969 such an interim report was submitted in which certain recommendations were made which formed the basis, as it appeared in a subsequent report of the department, of the subsidization for 1970, 1971 and 1972. However, we are now in 1973, and one would have hoped that new recommendations would have been made before this year’s budget had been presented. I should like to hear from the hon. the Minister what has happened to the statement of 1968 to the effect that this matter is urgent and that it should be given priority. Whichever way we argue about it, somewhere along the line the Commission itself has delayed its activities. When the report is available eventually, we shall of course know why there was a delay. For the rest, all we know is that last year a further interim report was handed to the Minister concerning the non-academic activities at universities.

I want to know from the hon. the Minister whether that was perhaps the reason why other important aspects had to stand over. The first recommendation in the interim report of 1969 formed the basis for financing during 1970, 1971 and 1972. From the experience of the past two years it seems to us as if these recommendations were not really successful. In spite of the interim report there has been an escalation in tuition fees and boarding fees at South African universities. To mention an example, I point out that the tuition fees at the University of Stellenbosch were increased by 20% in 1971. In 1972 the tuition fees were again increased by 20%. We find that in 1972, tuition fees and boarding fees at the University of the Witwatersrand were increased by 22%. We find that the cost per student at a university such as the University of the Witwatersrand for 1973 amounts to R1 300 while three years ago it was R1 000. We find, therefore, that there has been an increase of 30%. Now I want to say to the hon. the Minister that we are living in times in which conditions are changing rapidly. It is quite clear that recommendations become out-dated quickly. For that reason I want to say to the hon. the Minister that while the recommendations of the commission were introduced too late to be taken into account for this year’s Budget, I hope that the hon. the Minister will give immediate attention to the final recommendations when they are submitted and that he will waste no time on them. Otherwise those recommendations will become outdated.

I want to continue and give attention to another aspect. I should like to raise a matter with the hon. the Minister, a matter regarding the “brainwashing camps”— and I make no excuse for calling them that—which are organized by certain “verkrampte” organizations with the help of subsidies from the Department of National Education. We know that this is something which enjoys the full support and approval of the hon. the Minister. I think we had the best proof of it this year when a certain Mr. Pikkie Louw, the regional representative for the Western Cape of the F.A.K. made insulting remarks about the Coloureds in South Africa at one of these sponsored youth congresses at Durbanville.

You do not know what you are talking about.

The hon. member says I do not know what I am talking about, but the hon. the Minister himself replied to me that the department made available an amount of R6 000 to these organizations to organize these camps. It is known as extra-mural education. I just want to mention that the editorial comment of Die Burger referred to Mr. Louw’s remarks as if Mr. Louw had supposedly meant that there is one message of salvation for the Whites and another for the Coloureds. What better approval could Mr. Louw have had than the silence of the hon. the Minister, who acts as his sponsor? The hon. the Minister remained silent while even the hon. the Minister of Defence went so far as to say that he disapproved of Mr. Louw’s remarks and found them distasteful. The hon. the Minister of Coloured Affairs too, according to a report which appeared in Rapport on 4th February this year, said “that he deplored it”. We find that three other hon. members on the other side of the House —the hon. member for Paarl, the hon. member for Stellenbosch and the hon. member for Moorreesburg—said, inter alia, that they unambiguously reject such conduct. What does the hon. the Minister do? As far as I am aware, he has not yet dissociated himself from it.

I therefore say that not only we on this side of the House, but also his colleagues in the Cabinet as well as other hon. members on that side of the House have a right to know where the hon. the Minister stands. I want to say to hon. members that this meddling with the youth of South Africa must stop. The hon. the Minister and his people are playing with fire. [Interjections.] I want to say that it is clear that attacks are not only launched on the youth from the right, but also from the left. We on this side of the House reject those attacks, whether they come from the left or the right, with scorn and contempt. We loathe it. Where does the hon. the Minister stand? How can the hon. the Minister defend himself against attacks from the left if he associates himself with the verkrampte onslaught made on the youth of South Africa? Here we have an hon. Minister who stands defenceless and does not act when he has to.

My advice to the hon. the Minister is to disassociate himself from this as soon as possible, for the sake of South Africa, and for the sake of the future of our youth. I say that no people has a future when the youth have lost their ability to judge for themselves what is right and what is wrong. If we cause them to lose their individuality through any method whatsoever, it would be a sad day for our country. I believe that that would be the end result if the hon. the Minister continues in thé direction he has taken. I can tell him that we have spoken about this matter in previous debates as well and that it was quite clear that this was something which enjoys his approval. I am simply at a loss to understand how we can continue subsidizing such meetings, particularly in the light of what happened at the congress organized here in the Cape. The hon. the Minister now has a definite opportunity to say where he stands in regard to these matters. I hope that he will furnish us with a reply in the course of this debate.

Mr. Chairman, you will allow me on this, the first opportunity I have to speak here, to pay tribute to my respected predecessor, Mr. De la Rey Venter. Mr. Venter represented this important constituency of Colesberg for 22 years with great distinction. I emphasize the word “important”, for this constituency has, in the course of our history, produced important men. Inter alia, the hon. the Leader of the House spent the first six years of his life in Colesberg. Mr. Venter was a respected and dignified senior member of this House. His services, and in particular his sympathetic understanding of the problems of the Colesberg constituency, will be remembered with gratitude by the voters. On behalf of the voters of Colesberg I consequently want to say thank you very much to Mr. Venter on this occasion for the unselfish services which he rendered to this constituency.

There is a matter which affects my constituency, as well as other rural constituencies, very intimately and which will in future probably do so to an increasing extend, viz. the introduction of a system of differentiated education, as well as the existing system of teacher training. This entire matter should be seen against the background of the retrogressive decrease in the rural school population of the Cape. This trend is also discernible in other provinces, but I am confining myself primarily to the Cape because I know more about the situation here.

A study of the data reveals that during the period December. 1950 to December, 1970, out of a total of 107 school board areas, a decrease in the school population occurred in 60 areas, while there was an increase in 47 areas. In 36 areas the decrease was 20% and over, while an increase of 20% and over occurred in only 21 areas. In the four urban areas of the Cape the increase in the school population was as follows: Cape Town, 32%, Parow 63%, Port Elizabeth 46%, East London 43% and Kimberley 47%. If it is also taken into consideration that the increase in the total school population of the Cape during the same period was 32%, one gets a picture of the degree to which this depopulation of the rural areas is taking place. In fact, between 1961 and 1972 there was an increase of 5,7% in the school population in these urban areas. The rural school board districts with more than 2 000 pupils showed an increase of only 0,2%. Rural school districts with more than 1 000 pupils showed a decrease of 2% and the rest of the rural areas, consisting of 66 school council areas, showed a decrease of 3,7.% If this shift of the school population to the urban areas should continue at that rate, only 1% of our school population will be attending schools in these 66 school board districts in 30 years’ time.

The differentiated education policy and what that envisages, has already been considered in full in this House, and for that reason I need not elaborate on it any further, except to say that there can be no doubt about the necessity of and the need for the dispensation which is being envisaged. But at the same time we may not close our eyes either to the geographic conditions and the population distribution in a province of such vast distances as the Cape, nor to the problem which these things entail in the implementation of this policy, particularly in our rural areas and particularly since we would not through the application of this policy like to hasten the depopulation of the rural areas further by possibly applying eventual centralization in order to make this envisaged system feasible. We still believe that a community without a school of its own is not a full-fledged community.

There is another matter as well which is closely related to this, viz. the present system of teacher training. The supply of teachers, particularly in certain subjects is inadequate. Hon. members who also represent rural constituencies will agree with me, however, that the high schools in the rural areas are finding it twice as difficult to keep their teaching staff up to strength. The rural schools have for a long time been to a large extent dependent on teachers trained at the departmental training colleges and at technical colleges, particularly in subjects such as domestic science, handicrafts, needlework, physical training, agriculture and commercial subjects. However, section 2 of the National Education Amendment Act now confers on the Universities the sole right to train secondary teachers, and in that way the supply of teachers trained by the abovementioned colleges is being cut off. This could have serious consequences for all schools, but particularly for our rural schools, for where there is no proper supply of teachers there is only one alternative left and that is to send the children to schools where the staff position is less critical. This simply means a further depopulation of the rual areas.

In particular I want to advocate here a retention of the training facilities which some technical colleges offer for the training of commercial subject teachers. The commercial field is the only vocationally-orientated field for which numerous rural high schools will be able to come into consideration on the basis of the practicability thereof and the saving of costs. It can therefore be expected that the demand for commercial subject teachers will increase and, if the supply is inadequate, this opportunity for differentiation will also be lost to the rural areas.

I also want to advocate the right to appoint teachers trained at training colleges on a permanent basis in high schools. Here I am thinking in particular of those who had fourth-year training in one of the subjects I have already mentioned. I want to draw attention to the fact that such teachers, when they are appointed on a temporary basis, may not contribute to the pension fund and as a result of that they do not qualify for membership of the M.A.A.S., the 100% building loan or the subsidy on loan instalments. I am advocating a realistic view of a matter which could deal a severe blow to our education, and particularly the education of children in our rural areas. Consequently I want to make an appeal to the hon. the Minister of National Education to reconsider the provision that secondary school teachers may be trained only at universities.

Mr. Chairman, it is my pleasant task this evening to extend my congratulations to the hon. member for Colesberg on the occasion of his maiden speech in this House. I do so with pleasure. The hon. member has explained that he has taken over from an illustrious predecessor and I trust that his future contributions in this House will be fruitful not only for his constituency but for the Republic of South Africa as a whole. The member has raised matters which are of particular importance to platteland areas, and I feel sure that his plea will enjoy the sympathetic consideration of the hon. the Minister.

I want to come back to a matter which I raised last year with the hon. the Minister, namely the question of drug abuse at schools and in universities, and the procedure to be adopted in order to introduce some form of education, in this regard. When I raised this matter during the last discussion on this Vote, the Minister indicated that he appreciated the importance of the matter. He indicated, too, that the matter had been referred to the Committee of Educational Heads and to the Committee of University Principals. I notice in the report of the Committee of Educational Heads that this matter has received further consideration. But I want to ask the hon. the Minister what the present position is in regard to the education of pupils and students, in so far as drug dependency and drug abuse are concerned. Recently in the report of the National Advisory Board on Rehabilitation Matters the following reference appeared. It was brought to the board’s attention—I quote—

I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether he has in fact received representations from the National Advisory Board on Rehabilitation Matters, and whether he can tell the Committee what his attitude is towards these recommendations. The board’s report also referred to “influence and control of advertisements of dependence-producing substances”. This matter has been on the stocks, as it were, for quite a number of years. As early as 1970 the Minister of Justice indicated that the National Liquor Board was conducting an investigation into this particular matter, and questions tabled to the Minister year after year have indicated that there has been some progress. The investigation has proceeded; a report is being prepared; after due consideration, the Minister of Justice will decide whether he will release the contents of the report and whether he will indicate what action is likely to be taken arising from the report. But, Sir, I believe that this matter is becoming one of more significance, particularly in view of the findings of the National Advisory Board on Rehabilitation Matters. I suggest that after three years some finality should have been reached, because it seems that there is lack of co-ordination in dealing with this matter. It also seems that there is a lack of positive action. I think the hon. the Minister of Education will agree with me that the threat of drug addiction is not as yet diminishing. I believe that it is being controlled reasonably, but it is not in fact diminishing.

There is another matter about which I would like to ask the hon. the Minister for some details. The report of the National Advisory Board on Rehabilitation Matters has indicated that the SABC has been approached in regard to the provision of educational programmes on drug abuse. I would like to ask the Minister whether he could give the Committee some information in that respect.

Then I wish to refer to another matter— the hon. member for Koedoespoort referred briefly to it in his speech—and that is in regard to certain figures which have been mentioned in respect of a survey which I carried out. Recently, the Press carried reports of an investigation I had made in connection with university enrolments and degrees and diplomas awarded over a ten-year period. In my opinion the figures indicated that there was a disparity in the results which pointed to the need for an investigation. At no time did I claim that my figures gave an accurate reflection of the pass rates or drop-out rates. I was more concerned with the apparent disparity among the universities on the basis of my calculations. I was aware of many of the variable factors which would make an absolute comparison of results an extremely complex exercise. I was, and am more than ever, convinced that an investigation would serve a very useful purpose. (1) It could provide useful information in regard to the drop-out and failure rate of first-year students straight from high school. (2) It could investigate whether students with the necessary matriculation pass are in fact university material. (3) It could consider whether some students would be better suited to colleges for advanced technical education. (4) It could indicate whether those students capable of university training are being hampered in their efforts by students who are not up to university standard. (5) It could investigate the maximum deployment of university staff whose potential is dissipated by the presence in the first years of apparently unsuitable student material. (6) It may find that State funds could be more economically utilized by extending the facilities of technical schools and colleges. (7) It could investigate whether all South African universities comply with the same high standards comparable with top universities overseas. All these recommendations emerge from the reaction of academics from the universities themselves, to the Press reports. I welcome their deep concern and interest in these matters. I have raised the matter for the consideration of the hon. the Minister.

Then, Sir, I want to pass on to the question of bursaries and loans. In the report of the department there is reference particularly to the National Study Loan and Bursary Fund. It is gratifying to see the increase not only in the number of donors but also in the extent of the donations from the donors. I think it is interesting also to note that the balance in hand of just over million is less than it has been in the past years. It shows that the fund itself is serving a useful purpose, a purpose for which it was originally designed. But what I find disturbing is that a supplementary bursary scheme for the training of medical doctors, engineers, geologists, etc., for which an amount of R441 000 was provided for bursary loans during 1972, does not seem to have been used or patronized as effectively as it could have been, and the report indicates that the demand on this fund remains unsatisfactory. I want to suggest that the supply of medical practitioners generally is inadequate throughout the country. I believe this shortage of medical practitioners applies particularly to the Bantu in South Africa. I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether these facilities under this particular bursary fund are being well publicized and, if they are, whether they are also available to the non-White community who are able to avail themselves of medical training. I find another distressing feature arising out of the report of the Department of National Education, and that is that there have been no applicants for post-doctoral bursary posts during 1972, although an amount of R30 000 was provided for this, particular purpose. Sir, surely we in this country need desperately the services of these people. I trust that the hon. the Minister will give some assurance that every effort is being made to acquaint them of the facilities which are available to them, if they make the necessary application.

Mr. Chairman, the hon. member for Berea will probably not blame me if I do not follow him up in his arguments and also his requests to the hon. the Minister with respect to certain matters affecting education. I nevertheless want to focus attention on the fact that this Government, which has now been in power for 25 years, embodies a special message for me personally, and for us in this House, because over the past 25 years we have continuously drawn the votes of the youth for our national endeavour. It continues to be an exceptional experience, as far as I am concerned, that the ideas of youth have continued to be basically sound in spite of all the onslaughts made upon the spirit of the youth of the Republic, and that the youth of the Republic have always unequivocally given their vote to the most conservative Government that has yet ruled this country throughout the years. It is indeed a feather in this Government’s cap that it has always retained the support of the youth throughout the years. I want to congratulate the hon. the Minister and the members of his staff on another year of exceptional achievements.

In this connection I particularly want to mention the programme of spiritual preparedness. We have had the remarks of the hon. member for Durban Central who, in more than one respect, has labelled this effort brain-washing. Sir, if he had not been brain-washed he would not be sitting on that side of the House. We can be very certain of that.

He was at Wilgespruit.

That could be. Sir. He must have gone through some “spruit” (stream) or other to have landed up on that side of the House. But in spite of that, Sir, the hon. the Minister and his department continued working on a special programme, a programme in which people were used in education. I am thinking of the men and women who, as educationists, in the words of Langenhoven, not only taught the youth a trade, but also taught them, through the process of education, how to make proper use of that trade.

In this connection I should like to link up with what the hon. member for Berea has just said with respect to the National Study Loans and Bursary Fund. I notice from this report, which has been handed to us, that there are about 300 companies furnishing contributions to this fund, a fund which already stands at more than R1 million, a little more than million of which has been employed in the past financial year for bursaries and loans. In all humility I want to appeal to the companies in the Republic, our business undertakings and our industries to furnish a much greater contribution in this connection, because I see in this an opportunity for our industries and our economy to teach the youth a love for that which is their own. The young men and women who have received their training from a specific society, never sever their ties with that society. On the contrary, it generates pride in the growing, student youth, which is never lost throughout the years. Our industries and our economy are calling for greater productivity, and that productivity can only be established by a growing love for a cause, and that growing love, I believe, can be stimulated in an exceptional way by the economic contribution that can be made in that connection by our industrial companies towards the education of our youth. In that connection there have been several fine efforts, which have already achieved fine results, in which, as a result of study funds made available to them, young men and women in every sphere of life have towered up in their efforts as a result of the inspiring contributions of those specific undertakings. Sir, I want to appeal for an increasing number of companies to make a bigger contribution, and I want to state that this task of financing students should not be seen solely as the task of the State, but also as the task of the public in the Republic to thereby cultivate pride in our people for our industries, our economy and our training centres. It is then that one gains a pride that cannot be destroyed by any set-backs.

Sir, another facet I should very much like to bring home to the hon. the Minister is the interest there ought to be for our youth preparedness. In many ways I have already learned, from personal experience, that our youth are ready for this programme because it provides for an essential need in the growing youth of our people. It is indeed a programme that is highly valued by us all, and in that connection I should very much like to pay tribute and also say thank you to every man and woman who is employed in educating our youth and who not only considers this programme as a must in their everyday lives, but also sees it as an exceptional opportunity for the education of the youth. Sir, I shall again quote what Langenhoven once said, i.e. that one can become so busy in looking for chances in life that one loses one’s opportunities. Fortunately the youth of the Republic of South Africa has been saved this distress by virtue of the fact that we have men and women who do not tire themselves looking for chances to educate the youth, but who make use of the opportunity to bring home this youth preparedness programme to our youth.

Mr. Chairman, I only want to raise two points briefly this evening. The first of them is the question of university subsidies. After discussing this matter with various university principals, I would like to plead with the hon. the Minister that he should make some special effort to clear up this position and to finalize the pattern of the allocation of finances to the universities. As things stand at the moment, the globular sums of money which are allocated to them are not at their disposal until the end of the first quarter in every year. I have had several discussions with principals on this matter, and they say that this is an impossible situation. It means in effect that university principals are unable to plan their research and other programmes with any certainty from the beginning of the academic year which, of course, is the ideal, but they are obliged to hold back various programmes and plans until as late as April in any year. This proves a great practical embarrassment for obvious reasons, and I would be glad if the hon. the Minister could give us his ideas on this subject.

The other matter I wish to discuss is the question of the students at our English universities. Since these students have received so much attention just recently, particularly from the Government, I find it necessary to try to put this matter into some perspective. Every effort is made during the course of the debates in this House by members on the Government benches to equate the position of our English-language universities in the Republic with those overseas at which the most startling and the most violent and sensational things have taken place. I want to place on record here, as firmly as I can tonight, that that sort of comparison is totally invalid as regards our universities in South Africa; it is both irresponsible and very dangerous, and the less we hear of that sort of thing in this House the better. I think it is high time that someone spoke up in defence of our English universities in the Republic and the solid body of scholarship which they in fact represent. I am thankful that we do not all indulge in the type of sweeping generalizations and condemnations of these young people which is so dear to our friends on the Nationalist benches. I raise the matter under this Vote advisedly because this is the proper moment to discuss it. This is the Education Vote, divorced from any other context. And since one of the terms of reference of the Van Wyk de Vries Commission concerns student activities I take it the hon. the Minister has no objection to my putting the background of the activities at our English universities into some perspective. I would just like to tell him that I was invited a week or two ago by the students of Wilgenhof Hostel at Stellenbosch University to dine with them in their hall and to spend an entire afternoon discussing precisely this problem with them. So I have talked to students at Stellenbosch as well as at a lot of other places.

Now, in recent years, more has been said and written about adolescents and students than perhaps about any other group, and their attitudes, their values and their life styles have been subjected to incessant and almost obsessional comment. Despite this, the average adult, I submit, knows very little about what it feels like to be a young person growing up in South Africa today. Surprisingly few people, for all the talk, including our more condemnatory politicians, seem seriously prepared to go out and talk with these young people and to listen to what they have to say. Most commentators have settled in advance for a convenient label and an easy explanation. This has become a most unfortunate habit in South Africa.

In the Republic academic conformity has been elevated into a virtue based upon unchallengeable certainties, certainties which unfortunately are largely postulated not by our society but by our rulers. I would say that in human affairs there are no certainties; there are only value judgments. Many of these, it is quite true, have been proved valid by the test of time and others have not. In South Africa the conformities are more boldly challenged by the English universities than by any other body of people. I think we should be pleased about that and not displeased. Out of all the conditioning of society to rapid change since World War II there has, without doubt, come a generation of young people that is far and away the most fiercely independent, perceptive, self-motivated and determined that we have seen for a very long time. Now, South Africa, though fairly remote from the scene of many of these changes, is quite unable to resist them. The present generation of young people is also, we are all agreed, in many ways the most disruptive and the most demanding of its kind, but not all of this is bad. In assessing change I think it is essential to guard against oversimplification and the pinning of labels on to people in the jargon of current thinking. We are all familiar with the characteristic attitude in Nationalist Party circles which makes the trite equation that long hair and tight jeans equals anarchy and permissiveness. The fact that members of the Ossewabrandwag in the old days wore beards as a form of protests is conveniently forgotten. Sir, nobody accused them of being dirty because they did not shave. [Interjections.] In assessing the student situation at our English universities only the so-called activists receive publicity and attention. The constructivists are forgotten or ignored. All those thousands of young people who regularly devote part of their free time, as hon. members know, to teaching the underprivileged, running medical and legal aid clinics and doing social service work of some kind or another are forgotten or ignored. I think it should not be forgotten either that many of the things which gave my generation a sense of security and ethnical base from which to work have been destroyed either by the edicts of science or by the depredations of commerce and the mass media, which have succeeded in either commercializing or politicizing practically everything from religion and sport to sex. The young people face a very great dilemma because of this. If everything is relative then nothing in the last resort has any meaning and they can scarcely be blamed therefore for making value judgments of their own. If the young people at our universities today find themselves bewildered and vulnerable, searching for meaning in the modern world, this is partly because we ourselves have failed to provide any moral substitutes in the face of the technological revolution. What answers have we to increasing technological control and to the impersonal atmosphere that pervades our vast urban communities? How many double standards do we ourselves mutely accept without thought or challenge? We are so full of pious humbug about this type of thing. One is justified in asking our own adult society: What are our main preoccupations if not those of making money and wielding power— and abdicating as often as not from our social and political responsibilities in the process? How many of us sit back in smug self-interest and say either of one or two things, either “I am all right, Jack” or “stop the world; I want to get off”? Both are equally useless to the young and the double standards that we reveal fill them with a particular kind of anger. I think we should be grateful for that.

Students at our English universities, with varying degrees of fervour, show no signs of abdicating at all. On the contrary, the majority want to become involved in one way or another. I think we should be very thankful for that. I believe that the continual emphasis upon the “generation gap”, as it is called, helps more than anything to provoke such a gap. There are, undoubtedly, people who would like to see it widened, for reasons that we know all about, and we do not particularly trust them. However, it is an absolute futility for us, the older people, to complain that the young lack a sense of history and to say that that is one of the causes of the imbalance in their thinking. We then say that that leads to their basic instability. We also say that because of this lack of stability they are driven to anarchy and to irresponsible behaviour.

Let us ask these young people a question for a change. Do they ever stop to consider that we also have been threatened with annihilation in war and similar crises? If they do not ever think of it, it is our job to remind them of it; not just to sit back grumbling about their immaturity. We, ourselves, let so much go by default in this process.

There have been periods of libertinism and asceticism throughout history. Where today’s students are concerned, neither their experiences nor their actions are new —only the context is different. That is all. It is particularly important in South Africa that we do not lose our sense of proportion over this. I say that the Government is constantly falling into this trap. Our students should be made to realize that, provided we can face the context of our own world squarely, the universal verities remain as applicable today as they always did, but it is our task, particularly as parents, to bring that home to them. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, tonight we have witnessed another episode in the drama of the struggle between the two groups in the United Party. [Interjections.] We have the struggle between the group which supports the findings of the Schlebusch Commission and the group which does not support them. [Interjections.] There are three hearts beating as one on the opposite side of this House tonight, namely those of the hon. members for Houghton, Wynberg and Bezuidenhout. However, the latter hon. member is not here tonight. I say that there are three hearts which are beating very much as one.

Tonight we have witnessed one staggering event. We have seen the new chairman of the education group of the United Party stand up and make a policy statement for half an hour without addressing one single word of thanks to the hon. member for Wynberg, who was chairman of that group, although perhaps her chairmanship was of shorter duration than that of the previous hon. member for Kensington. He did not thank her at all for what she had done. These events are not the end; they are only the beginning. It is very clear that the hon. member for Wynberg was not talking to the National Party tonight. She did not take up a standpoint as opposed to ours; she justified her standpoint in public, scientifically, as she saw it, in regard to the findings in the report of the Schlebusch Commission. There will, of course, be an opportunity for our side of the House to examine her standpoint much more closely. I want to say to the hon. member for Wynberg that I have a very high regard for her personally. I think that tonight she succeeded at least in coming back to what an educationn policy really is. As a responsible member of this House, she gave her view in regard to the views of the studying youth of today. There are many aspects in respect of which I differ from her. For example, I think that she does not go to work scientifically enough; that she has not gained a sound background. I want to say to her that she should also tell her own colleagues what she is going to do with the bouquet sent to her by the students of the University of Cape Town. For example, I read the following in The Argus—

[Interjections.]

Order!

What is the date?

The articles goes on—

I say that the hon. member acted in accordance with the dictates of her conscience. To be specific, she resigned as chairman. However, if she wants to uphold her principles firmly, she has no alternative but to resign from the United Party altogether and then take up an independent stand or go and seek refuge with the hon. member for Houghton. I say this because as long as the hon. member remains a member of the United Party, no parent nor any responsible person in the country could entrust to them the education of our children from the primary level to the university level.

I want to say to the hon. member for Wynberg that it is not only the hon. member’s on the opposite side of the House who have appreciation for and an understanding of our English-speaking students. The hon. the Prime Minister made a speech at the University of Stellenbosch and he concluded his speech with the following words (translation)—

That is the University of Stellenbosch—

In other words, the hon. the Prime Minister was referring to the matter of undermining and changing the existing order in South Africa by unconstitutional means. The hon. the Prime Minister said that they were not guilty of that, but that they—

However, I want to come back to the point which I want to make. [Interjections.] I want to say that we in South Africa would be naïve not to take cognizance full well of what has happened in other countries in regard to universities and university communities. We in South Africa would be blind if we were to think that those powers which also threatened well-ordered societies in other parts of the world, were not directing their gaze and casting an eye on South Africa as well. Our universities, our students are likewise subject to the evil intentions of people who want to destroy the ordered pattern. That is why I want to say tonight that a university, if it really wants to be a university and wants to comply with the objectives of a university, the objectives of training, research and education, has no choice but to respect and value the ideals and norms of the community in which it is situated. We in South Africa cannot allow our university communities simply to have their own little circle which they would regard as a world of their own which wants to exist in a vacuum. After all, the outside community which the university has to serve, is the community which provides the money for running those universities. The outside community is the community which contains institutions to protect those universities. It has a police force and a defence force. In other words, it protects the university community so that a student may pursue his activities at a university in peace. Then, too, I think that there should be a realization at our universities that the outside community is in fact carrying them as well. That is why it is important that we should have no differences, particularly in the modern world and in view of the things mentioned by the hon. member for Wynberg. In the world with its complicated demands, particularly as it manifests itself to the young man and the young woman who concern themselves academically and scientifically with the great questions of mankind, the meaningfulness of man’s existence, his origin and his future, it is those very people who, as the old poet of the Proverbs said, are often driven mad by their learning. Therefore a university can only comply with the demands of a university when it sees its freedom in responsibility and discipline. In this regard I think the principal of the University of Pretoria, Prof. Hamman, made a very true statement and I think he sets an example to other principals in this country of ours. In welcoming the first-year students at a ceremony which was attended by their parents as well, he said the following (translation)—

This set an example to Sir Richard Luyt and to Prof. Bozzoli. We in South Africa shall also have to reach that stage where the parents of Afrikaans-1973-05-21 and English-speaking students will have to take a far more intensive interest in what goes on at our universities. Only when the parents in the communities outside the universities show an intensive interest in our students and lecturing staff, shall we be able to have university communities in our country of whom we shall not only be proud, but from whose ranks we know leaders will emerge who will truly set an example in every facet and in every field of our society. This discipline which is so necessary, must be applied, and this evening I want to ask our universities, the lecturing staff and their principals, not to wait until events similar to those overseas take place here in South Africa. We shall ensure by those means that we as a Government, as well as the Opposition, will not intercede on behalf of students to employ their youthful impetuosity and their ignorance to prejudice South Africa and, in the final analysis, also to prejudice themselves.

Mr. Chairman, I have not seen the report the hon. member read out. Just to place it on record I received that letter about Wednesday of last week and I put it in my file. The fact that he happened to find it in some paper tonight is no concern of mine. To return to my theme—may I rhetorically ask: Where do the majority of students in our English-language universities stand today? For all the furore that was evoked by the Schlebusch Commission, the antics of the Prime Minister, by baton-wielding police, and all the rest of it, the majority of our young people are politically passive, socially conservative, morally conventional and for the most part preoccupied with their own private pursuits. But if any of us expect a leisurely political change in South Africa where our younger generation is concerned, Afrikaans or English speaking, I can only say that the prospects are not reassuring. That need not daunt us. Youth has always been impatient everywhere and throughout the ages. I now want to say something which is going to be frankly contentious. One of the gravest disfavours I consider, and I speak now as an English-speaking person, that the present Government has done for South Africa, and it has done it for its own political purposes, is to equate in the public, mind Afrikanerdom with nationalism. They may not have meant it, but this is what has happened— for better or for worse. The effect upon our young English speakers has been traumatic and it is time that this was said. It has meant that for overwhelming numbers of our young people, and particularly English-speaking students, a dislike and a distrust of Government and of the established order has become an inarticulate and largely subconscious dislike and distrust of Afrikanerdom itself. This is tragic. Is it also a false equation for which the young are in no sense responsible and the beginnings of this alienation are discernible in our schools. The real reason for disunity in this country is the complete breakdown of trust between the Government supporting groups and all other South Africans, which includes the majority of the South African English and particularly the students. If you do not trust a group, you do not unite with it. This is only a racial matter to the extent that the Nationalist Government itself has made it so. To my astonishment I was told this in no uncertain terms by the students at Stellenbosch of all places. I believe that where our South African English have come closest to the formation of some rather vague kind of nationalism of their own, as a counterpart to Afrikaner nationalism, is in fact on our university campuses. It is not articulated that way, but it is in danger of becoming like that and there is a sense in which they have been driven to it. Being more intimately linked, for obvious reasons, by language, cultural ties and tradition to the international scene, our young people are far more susceptible to influences from overseas, good, bad or indifferent, than their Afrikaans counterparts who, for the most part, as hon. members know, are nurtured in the warm familial atmosphere of a “volksbeweging” intent upon identity and survival. Our English-language universities are subject to much greater pressures than their Afrikaans equivalents. It would be less than fair not to admit that.

That is nonsense.

It is quite true. This presents the thinking student with a greater perplexity in deciding where he stands in relation to the domestic South African social and political scene. Where the international student movement is concerned and its undoubted infiltration by communist elements, our own English universities are subject to these pressures in various indirect ways, as the hon. the Minister knows, whilst the Afrikaans universities are very largely excluded. If this is true, the potential danger, the potential for trouble, is much greater in South Africa than anywhere else, because of the multiracial composition of our people and because classic conditions for communist agitation exist here, namely—I do not have to spell it out—an exploited, underpaid and under-developed working class of people. These are the people whose cause our students have espoused. In Europe, Great Britain and America the more radical and violent the student movement became, cleverly manipulated by agitators in many cases, the more conservative and stiff-necked the body of workers and their trade unions became. Radical students in these countries overseas totally failed to involve the workers. In the countries I have mentioned, of course, the workers can afford to take this attitude because they are economically secure, they wield considerable political power and they are no longer susceptible to exploitation in the time-worn communist sense of creating revolution amongst the deprived. Indeed, they are in danger of exploiting other people overseas as we know today.

In South Africa the situation is entirely different. The Blacks and a large section of our Coloured people live under economic, let alone political, conditions which provide a perfect breeding ground for discontent. Young English-speaking people, who witness daily the political frustrations of their own parents, and particularly students, cry out for involvement often on a purely idealistic basis. They examine many of our double standards with loathing and disgust and, in doing so, have a ready cause to hand. Often it leads them to extravagance; sometimes into serious trouble. When the statement is made by one of our campus leaders, as it was recently, that—

one is tempted to say that it is not the universities’ job to bring about social change. It is not; that is my own view. However, it is the task of scholars and students by means of thought, analysis and research to produce guide-lines for society in every field. The practical politicians, like ourselves, have very great need of these. On the other hand, this Government gave these youngsters the vote at 18 and we cannot prevent our students, whether we want to or not, from participating in politics. I want to say that the Government itself is almost entirely responsible for creating the academic and political climate that has given rise to this sort of concept and activity amongst our English-speaking students. If they had not introduced the 1959 Extension of University Education Act, which compartmentalized students into separate ethnic groups for academic purposes, a lot of present-day activist causes at our English universities would have gone by default. Race relations would have improved instead of deteriorating, and talk of political confrontation would have had very little substance. If threats of racial confrontation by students are considered by the Prime Minister to be a serious political offence leading to a form of subversion of the State, all I can say is that he has only himself and his Government initially to blame.

Since any university is partly within and partly outside its own social environment, and students have an obligation to get on with their work, a lot of their political interests generally will be less in winning immediate elections than in relentlessly pressing for a recasting of values and direction. Of course, they tend less to cover the general political spectrum than you and I, Sir. They usually espouse some particular cause, such as wages or education for less privileged people. Surely, this is infinitely preferable to what happened overseas, where one campus after another has been highly politicized on a basis of anarchy and revolution, with a conspicuous absence of positive, constructive alternatives in any field. You cannot say that of the causes which our students espouse. Nowhere on our South African university campuses is such a degree of destruction to be found as is found overseas. The Prime Minister himself stated in this House that the few activists there are influence less than 5% of all university students. So let us get this record quite straight once and for all: Student-baiting, which is a favourite Government pastime, pays big political dividends—we know that. Just like the Boerehaat capaign, it is utterly despicable. I suggest that, with the exception of the hon. the Minister himself, who has at no stage been provocate over these issues, the Prime Minister would be wise to cool the whole university scene. He is the one who is looking for political confrontation with the students. I advise him and the hon. the Minister to leave well alone.

Mr. Chairman, after having listened to the two maiden speeches the hon. member for Wynberg has just made, one does not actually know much more about her than before the time. I think it would be a very good thing if she would nonetheless take steps and choose sides, so that one could know where she stands. I think the United Party would be just as glad to know where she stands.

Sir, I want to begin by addressing the Committee briefly on the Technical Institute that has now come into being in Kempton Park. Here we have an example of co-operation between the city council, the Atlas Aircraft Corporation, the South African Airways, industrialists and the Department of National Education. This Technical Institute came into being in the short space of little more than a year. At the end of 1971 the city council was approached for the first time in this connection by the Atlas Aircraft Corporation. The city council set to work immediately, called people together and set the ball rolling. A building was rented and had to be renovated. In October, 1972, the head and two deputy heads were appointed, who immediately set to work organizing the matter. On 20th January this year the first students consequently made their appearance at the institute. On 22nd February the official opening was performed by the Secretary for National Education. I cannot but focus the attention of this House on what was done in the short space of a little more than a year in establishing an institute of this kind. On 22nd January there were 214 students, including 190 from the Atlas Aircraft Corporation. At the beginning of the second trimester, which has just begun, the number of students increased to 250. A great variety of subjects is being offered, like general science, mathematics, technical drawing, applied electronics and chemical plant operation; quite a number of trade theory subjects like aircraft maintenance, aircraft instrument mechanics, radio and radar, fitting and machine theory, aircraft plate metal work theory, tool making theory and electro-trade theory. Sir, what is gratifying is the fact that the private aeronautical companies are already having their students and apprentices enrolled at this institute. This cannot be otherwise either, because it is estimated that in 1974 there will already be 400 pupils from the aeronautics industry alone. Within three years the number of students ought to increase to 600 and more, which would then make this Institute one of the biggest in our country. Consequently hard work is being done to obtain the suitable land, in co-operation with the department, and to plan the buildings that have to be erected for the accommodation of this large number of students. In this we know and trust that we shall obtain all possible assistance, as in the past, from the hon. the Minister and his department.

Sir, what is the task and object of the Institute? Here we have a very unique opportunity to specialize and to centralize. At this Institute the artisans and technicians can be trained for our aeronautics industry, which is in the interests of our entire country and, in particular, its defence. Here we have an opportunity of centralizing all aeronautical training at that institute. This would eliminate duplication. It would entail a saving, because the necessary aids for aeronautical training are extremely expensive, and it would be a very great saving if we could place it all under one roof.

Because the Atlas Aircraft Corporation and the S.A. Airways are the largest employers of pupil technicians and apprentices, it is logical that that centralization should take place in Kempton Park. Because it is the department’s policy to centralize specialized training, this also strengthens the Technical Institute’s role as an aeronautics training centre. I am of the opinion—and this is the opinion of many people who have anything to do with that —that the Institute will still grow and develop into South Africa’s own air school. The greater the size to which and speech with which this Institute can be built up, the better the training will be that can be offered there. In this Institute an aeronautical atmosphere already prevails and already there are better facilities for training in aeronautics than at any other college. As soon as all apprentices and technicians are trained there, the great costs involved in aeronautical training will be reduced and efficiency will be increased. This will again lead to increased prestige and consequent financial support that can be expected from airlines, aircraft manufacturers abroad and from other interested industries.

Sir, this Institute is already engaged in building up a full collection of aircraft engines for educational purposes. There is already a very large collection of instruments and electronic apparatus which is not to be found at other places. Kempton Park itself is a large industrial area, and consequently tuition must be supplied in a large variety of trade, commercial and secretarial fields. The Institute can also offer courses for adults. It is also foreseen that the Institute will be able to present courses for the integration and orientation of immigrants. Another very important aspect is the fact that use can also be made of this Institute to give language classes for the numerous immigrants who live in that area and who are working in our aeronautics industry.

Mr. Chairman, I said initially that I regard the establishment of this Institute as a very big step forward, and we in Kempton Park are looking forward to this Institute becoming the institute which will be of very great importance to us, particularly in respect of the aeronautics industry.

In the second place, in the short time at my disposal I just want to present this idea again. In connection with what I have already said this evening, if we must compile this history at some time in the future, we shall indicate these 25 years of National rule with the fine words “25 Golden Years for education in South Africa”. This year we can look back on 25 years of National rule, which is a model of achievements in every sphere of life. We on this side of the House are proud of our teachers, our men and women in education, our professors and lecturers, our students and our pupils. The evidence of these golden years is scattered throughout our country. We have it in the fine university buildings, colleges, high schools, technical institutions, commercial schools, ordinary schools with their fine sports fields, hostels, school halls, laboratories, handicraft centres, etc. And if I think of all these achievements, I ask myself what it looked like when we took over the Government. What did we inherit from the United Party? On the whole Witwatersrand, from Randfontein to Nigel, there were only three Afrikaans-medium high schools to which our children could go. We had to be satisfied to have our children attend junior high schools where they were compelled to leave school after Std. 8, or if they wanted to matriculate they had to attend an English-medium school. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, as the main speaker on the Opposition side we have had the hon. member for Orange Grove. It has been announced that he is the United Party’s new shadow Minister of Education. Now I should like to congratulate him on this new distinction, and I am doing so with a word of friendly warning, namely that there is very little growth in the shade. You know that the previous hon. member for Kensington, who was a well-established and strong tree trunk, was cut down in the shade, whereas the hon. member’s predecessor, the hon. member for Wynberg, grew crooked as a result of the shade. Now we have the new shadow Minister over there, and if I have to judge by the speech he made, I think this will be the last speech he will make as the shadow Minister of Education for the United Party. While he was speaking, he dealt in such great detail with my department’s activities that I was reminded of the story of the little boy who went to church and who, when he arrived home, was asked by his mother what the subject of the minister’s sermon had been. He replied that the minister had delivered a sermon on sin. The hon. member for Orange Grove, too, spoke about education, but what did he in fact do? I want to say that his speech, for which he was given half an hour, was as encompassing as the grace of God, to use a poetic image. He spoke about all sorts of things. He spoke in slogans and did not motivate one single statement made by him. I shall show that he did not motivate anything. He mentioned quite a number of topics, so many that in the time I have at my disposal I shall not be able to reply to them. [Interjections.]

Order!

I promise the hon. Whip opposite that I shall reply to every question he asks me.

The hon. member for Orange Grove started by stating the United Party’s standpoint in regard to education. He said, in the first place, that the amount voted for education should be doubled. We know this is stated in that yellow booklet of the United Party. Did hon. members hear him saying what he wanted to do with that money? Did hon. members hear him saying where he would get that money from; whether he would economize on some department or other or whether he would find it by way of extra taxes? Did he say where he would get the manpower from with the help of whom he would do that extra work? No, he mentioned these things without furnishing any additional information whatever, just as they are stated in that old yellow booklet of the United Party. That was all he did.

That goatfodder pamphlet.

He also said we had to take education out of the Public Service. I remember very well that the hon. member for Wynberg also made that statement. The hon. member for Durban Central also mentioned it, and now the hon. member for Orange Grove also used that argument. I am still asking that this House be told what it means. What exactly are these hon. members advocating and how do they want to bring it about? I should very much like to have a reply to this.

Ask the teachers’ associations.

The hon. member for Durban Central says I should ask the teachers’ associations. In my turn I want to ask the hon. member whether he would be agreeable if, to mention an example, I were to act against the wishes of the Executive Committee of Natal in regard to this matter.

Do you mean the Executive Committee of the Provincial Council of Natal?

Yes. Would the hon. member be agreeable to my acting against their wishes?

But the Provincial Council of Natal adopted a motion in favour of that years ago.

I am asking whether the hon. member would be satisfied if I were to force this matter on the province of Natal against their wishes. [Interjections.] I shall not get a reply from the hon. member, and for that reason, too, he does not want to say what he envisages. He speaks in slogans and he echoes the views of certain teachers who have come forward with this suggestion, but he does not know what its implications are.

I know very well. It means a better salary scale and a better posts structure.

Until the hon. members for Durban Central and Orange Grove state exactly what they mean and envisage by this, I am not prepared to discuss the matter any further. [Interjections.] I think the hon. member for Benoni knows even less than do those two hon. members about what is being envisaged by this.

Let us take another example. The hon. member said we should have a professional teachers’ council. He said that this was the policy of the United Party. I ask the same questions in this regard. What does he envisage by such a professional teachers’ council? What are the functions of such a council to be? How is the council to be constituted? Suppose the provincial education departments should not be agreeable to the establishment of such a professional teachers’ council, would the hon. member, if he were the Minister of National Education, force it on the provinces or would he not? These are the questions to which the hon. members should find replies for themselves and should argue out amongst themselves before casting this in our teeth as a policy which is better than that of the Government of the day.

I may as well refrain from commenting any further on the other examples mentioned by the hon. member for Orange Grove, but I shall come back to the report of the Van Wyk de Vries Commission. In my young days we spoke a great deal about hand-reading (palmistry), but I found it interesting today to read faces. While the hon. member for Orange Grove was speaking, I watched the faces of hon. members opposite. I must tell hon. members that I read great astonishment on the faces of some of the hon. members on that side of the House, because they had never thought that the hon. member for Orange Grove had such a wide grasp of the sphere of education. Diagonally behind the hon. member for Orange Grove the hon. member for Wynberg was sitting, and her facial expressions were really a study in itself.

And is this all you have to say to it?

No, that is not all; the hon. members will now hear what they would not like to hear. It was interesting to hear what was brought home here by the hon. member for Rissik and what I have observed from this debate as it has progressed up to now. In front of us here we had two prominent hon. members on the Opposition side who tried to find justification for standpoints taken up by them in the recent past. Their speeches were nothing but those of two members who were trying to find justification for conflicting standpoints that had been taken up by them. The hon. member for Orange Grove referred to action against students and to the report of the Schlebusch Commission, of which he is a member.

I find it striking that he tried, in a very subtle manner, to find justification for the standpoint he had taken up. On the other hand, the hon. member for Wynberg made a speech, for which she was given as many as two turns to speak. I do not know whether she was perhaps singing her swansong, but she tried to justify her standpoint, the standpoint which was the cause of her no longer being the shadow Minister on that side of the House. It was worth listening to that speech, and it was interesting to note that the one factor common to those two speeches was that the Opposition, in its state of disunity, did after all do what I had, two years ago, asked them to do. They have conceded, and have openly admitted, that the problems we have at our universities are imputable to a small group of activists, and also that the time has arrived for action to be taken, not only by the Government members but by Parliament as a whole, in an attempt to strengthen the hand of the silent majority. Tonight we had some evidence of that in the attempt made by the two hon. members to justify their personal standpoints. I made a note here to the effect that the hon. member for Orange Grove had said that we also had to think of the 90% who were not taking part in these activities. The hon. member for Wynberg, too, referred to the mere 5% who were causing trouble at the universities. But these two speeches will be examined further by this side of the House, for they were very interesting.

Now tell us something about your policy.

No, I want to reply first to one of the many questions put to me. The hon. member for Orange Grove very urgently asked a question with reference to the Van Wyk de Vries Commission, and the hon. members for Wynberg and Durban Central also referred to it. For that reason I should like to raise this matter. I want to tell hon. members that it stands to reason that all of us are very keen on getting the Van Wyk de Vries report as soon as possible since it covers an extremely important field of research, work which has been undertaken for a number of years. I also want to tell hon. members that not only in South Africa, but also in countries abroad, interest is being shown in the findings of the Van Wyk de Vries Commission. The reason for interest also being shown elsewhere for this report is that it concerns problems which are also known abroad.

Only last week I had a letter from the hon. judge, and he explained to me that he had to do the work on a part-time basis as he was also expected to sit on the Bench. He pointed out that the one day he was required to sit on the Bench sometimes became two and, at times, even three days, and that this was delaying the completion of the work. I want to tell hon. members that the draft report has virtually been completed and that it is merely a matter of time before the finishing touches will be added. The hon. judge pointed out the problems he was experiencing in this regard, i.e. that he was working on it on a part-time basis, that the commission members were busy people and that, from the nature of the case, reaction to the drafts submitted took up a great deal of time. Consequently he could not say with absolute certainty when he would have this report ready. As I have already said, I still hope that this report will be available before the end of this year. I had hoped that we would already have it by June of this year, but unfortunately that is not possible.

And the interim report?

Pursuant to the Van Wyk de Vries report the hon. member for Wynberg referred to the financial provision for the universities and said this was one matter I had to remedy. The principals of the universities said they could not plan ahead and they wanted to know where they stood. Now I just want to mention, and one can also find this in the Estimates, that this year the universities are receiving R92 million in subsidies as against R47 million in 1970-’71. I want to say that the interim report of the Van Wyk de Vries Commission, to which the hon. member for Orange Grove referred, dealt with financing for universities in the interim period until it would be possible for them to come on to the formula basis again. That report was adopted by the Cabinet in broad outline, and the amounts which I have just mentioned here are based on the adoption of that report, plus an increase of 10% per annum over the past three years. I think the state of affairs is clear to all universities. They know what the circumstances are. After all is said and done, it is they who were dissatisfied with the application of the formula at the time. They were not satisfied with the Cilliers Report that was published at the time and then this commission of inquiry was appointed, and the first interim report dealt with the financing aspect for this interim period. In this manner we are financing the universities to this considerable extent which I have just outlined.

As far as the hon. member for Wynberg is concerned, I want to say that the universities are allowed to raise a certain percentage of the previous year’s borrowing powers before 31st March. Without knowing precisely what borrowing powers they are going to get, they can raise money and go on negotiating loans for which the State guarantees the interest. In other words, I see no reason why there should be any large-scale dissatisfaction about this aspect. I also want to mention here, and this is a figure of which we can be proud, that in addition to this amount of R92 million which the universities are receiving in subsidies this year, they have also received borrowing powers to the amount of R52 million for their capital requirements. I think hon. members will agree with me that this is a fair provision. But in that regard I also want to emphasize that this is not as easy a problem as it may appear to be. The universities’ subsidies are considered together with the Estimates of the country, and for that reason it is not possible to decide on them singly.

I think that I have now replied to all the questions put to me on the Van Wyk de Vries Commission. However, I want to object to what was at least insinuated by the hon. member for Orange Grove if he did not put it that way deliberately. He said, “We have no favourites amongst universities”. This is a reference to the United Party. Does it mean that the Government has favourites amongst the universities and that we are favouring certain universities above the English-language universities? If this is not what he meant, I want to ask what meaning can therefore be attached to words. After all, he is the hon. member who has warned against polarization between Afrikaans-speaking people and English-speaking people. Here he has tried to make this House believe that the Government of the day has certain Afrikaans-language universities which are its favourites, and that certain English-language universities are in disfavour with the Government. I want to assure the hon. member that he is very wide of the mark and that I think his attempt is a quite tranparent one. As far as my department is concerned, no discrimination is made in respect of universities. Every university receives what is its due according to the basis on which it is calculated. There is no question of the one being favoured above the other. We apply the same yardstick to all of them.

The hon. member wanted to know what progress had been made with differentiated education. I want to deal with this along with what was raised by the hon. member for Colesberg. Then I also want to extend to him my sincere congratulations on his first speech in this House. If this is the quality of the work he is going to do here, I have no doubt that he will achieve great success. I want to tell the hon. member that the nationally co-ordinated differentiated education policy has not come into operation yet. The province of the Transvaal has already begun to apply it, and the other provinces are preparing for it but will only start with it as from next year. Now, I do not want to praise excessively here the achievements of the Transvaal or the work done by them, but the fact of the matter is that they have already started with it. All I want to say about it is that in so far as it is possible to judge it and in so far as it is possible for one to relate it to their circumstances, the Transvaal has made very good progress. Of course, every province must apply that policy with due regard to its own circumstances, its needs and its possibilities. The Transvaal is trying to establish so-called all-embracing units which will be spread all over the province, where pupils will have the widest possible choice of subjects and fields of study without their necessarily having to go to the urban complexes. This brings me to the topic raised by the hon. member for Colesberg. If I understood him correctly, he related the differentiated education policy to the depopulation of the rural areas. I want to tell him that the depopulation of the rural areas started many years ago, for reasons which have absolutely nothing to do with differentiated education. That will be very clear to him. This process is still continuing. I want to tell him that I believe that, depending on how differentiated education will be applied, it may probably lead to a greater measure of decentralization taking place in the rural areas in future—I am not implying that this will be the case in respect of every town in the rural areas. In former years it used to be the practice in the Cape Province and in the Free State, perhaps even more so than in the other provinces, to bring the high school to the child. I have interesting data in this regard, although the data may have become slightly dated; I think these data refer to the year 1971. I want to mention to you that in the Cape Province 30% of the secondary schools have fewer than 100 pupils; in the Free State the percentage is 32, in Natal six and in the Transvaal one. You see, therefore, that in the Cape Province and in the Free State this is a bigger problem. It is a problem which one finds in all sorts of spheres. For instance, in our investigations in regard to the Electoral Act we saw what this comprised, and we have also taken cognisance of the attempts which are being made to cope with that problem in the Bill which is due to come before this House. This is a problem which had made itself felt in all spheres long before there was a nationally co-ordinated policy of differentiation.

Now let us take a further look at the figures I mentioned in regard to the depopulation of the rural areas. Here we have five schools—I do not wish to mention their names and will therefore refer to them as A, B, C, D and E. School A has 50 pupils and six teachers. School B has 34 pupils and six teachers; C has 45 pupils and seven teachers, whereas D has 46 pupils and seven teachers and E has 48 pupils and seven teachers. In other words, these five schools in the rural areas have, all told, 223 pupils and 33 teachers—an average of seven pupils per teacher. Compare this with a reasonably large school in the Cape Province. I shall call this school X. This school has 620 pupils and 26 teachers. Now I say that if the staff of school X also had seven pupils per teacher, this school should have had a staff of 90. We can furnish very interesting data with reference to these statements I have made, but I do not consider it necessary to do so. I am therefore quoting them merely to show that the system of differentiated education according to a national pattern does not have anything to do with the depopulation of the rural areas. I may mention the case of a Transvaal school which used to have 12 hostels, each with 30 pupils. Those hostel buildings are still there today, but only two of them are full. This is not imputable to bad planning. The need was there, but the pattern has changed and the result is that those buildings are empty now. So much for the differentiated education policy.

While I am dealing with the hon. member for Colesberg, I want to say that he also referred to teacher training. What he is asking for is of course in conflict with the Act as it reads at the moment. He knows that this is the case. I want to tell him that as from this year a start has been made, in terms of the Act, with training high school teachers at universities only. We are making provision—this will still be embodied in legislation during the course of this session—for there to be co-operation between the universities and the Colleges for Advanced Technical Education, because it is much easier for those colleges to offer the more practical subjects, such as typing, shorthand, business administration, etc., since they have the equipment and the staff for doing so. For that reason they will be better able to do so than will the universities. The relevant legislation will, with their consent, still be introduced in the course of this session. There is, therefore, partial compliance with the hon. member’s request with regard to co-operation between colleges and universities in connection with teacher training. But the broader problem of teacher training is a far greater one on which I cannot elaborate in the time we still have left.

I should like to come to the rest of the speech made by the hon. member for Wynberg, and I want to say that she furnished an interesting description of the problems of the students of today, or rather, to put it in wider terms, of the youth of today.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 23.

House Resumed:

Progress reported and leave granted to sit again.