I move— That the Bill be now read a third time.

I would be neglecting my duty if I did not protest again for the last time against the violation of the water rights of riparian owners. Unfortunately I was not in the House when the Minister stated that he had consulted the Law Advisers and that it was not practicable to subject his discretion to the judgment of the Supreme Court. I just want to say that I withdrew my amendment in the belief that we would consult the Law Advisers and that I would also be consulted in that connection. But without consulting me the Minister has now given this as his reason. I am sorry that that is the case. We are accustomed to the Minister doing this sort of thing. In any event I want to protest because I feel that we are introducing a new principle in this Bill which has not been thoroughly discussed. It may be said by the Law Advisers that private rights are protected in that every scheme has to be brought before Parliament, but the existing legislation makes provision for the use of all the water. Provision is made in connection with the rights of riparian owners with regard to the normal stream, and provision is also made in connection with the surplus water, which can be diverted to non-riparian land in certain circumstances. But of course it is not as easy as the Minister wants to make us believe. He and his department will now be able to decide to divide the water as they please, and that means that he will deprive the riparian owners of their rights. As I have said, such a plan will have to be submitted to Parliament. That is so. Before they can undertake a national scheme, it will have to be brought before Parliament. Parliament has to decide on the matter, and I take it that it will be stated in connection with such a scheme to whom the water is granted; but there the matter ends as far as they are concerned. Once this legislation has been passed, the Minister can make any alteration in connection with the water which is granted to the various farms, and that right which he takes unto himself is not subject to the judgment of any court. I do not say that the present Minister will do so, but any Minister, if water has been granted to a man for 50 morgen, will be able to say: “If you do not vote as I want you to vote, or do as I want you to do, I am not going to give you water.” And no one will have the right to go to court. Of course, we can come to Parliament and grumble and shout, but the Minister with his party behind him can do anything, because we have seen regularly how members on the other side, if they do not agree with a measure, simply vote as they are told to vote when the whip cracks. What protection is there in that case for the rights of the private riparian owner? The Free Stater say that they would welcome this measure, because the Minister will now make a furrow from the Orange River and bring the water down and allow everyone sufficient water for an area up to 50 morgen. This cannot be done under the ordinary laws. It is a violation of the rights of persons whose farms adjoin the river; but these hon. members are satisfied. Even the Minister will not deny that the existing laws are out of date, and that it is necessary to bring about a change. Here we have the cause of this condition. The Minister now assumes these far-reaching powers and alters the existing legislation which is out of date. Certain provisions will be applicable to one part of the country and not to another part of the country. Take the South-Western Districts, for example. There the rights, of the riparian owners were fought out in Parliament, and it was laid down by statute and by the courts what the rights of these people were; and those rights are sacred to them. This Bill will be applicable to the whole country, but the conditions are quite different. As I have said in the South-Western Districts rights have been granted to the people which are sacred to them, rights which do not exist in other parts of the country. This patchwork will only lead to difficulties, and the Minister and his department ought to introduce completely new legislation to alter the existing system, which is out of date, so that we will know what the position is. We may find that a judge of the Water Court points out a certain defect; a Bill is then placed before Parliament to rectify that particular defect only, instead of rectifying the whole position and introducing legislation which is acceptable to the whole country. I feel that here an inroad is being made on the existing rights of the people whom I represent, and as I said at the beginning, I feel that I would be neglecting my duty if I did not protest against it. The hon. member for Klerksdorp (Mr. Wilkens) asked whether the schemes which the Minister proposed to construct, would be economical. We have not yet had a reply from the Minister on that point. I want to tell him that they will certainly not be economical. But I have no objection to the writing off of debts, not in the least, because I think that the irrigators are rendering a service to the country, that they are increasing the value of the land. As a result of irrigation a far greater number of people can make a living out of farming today. I realise that only too well. But in addition to that I say that where such schemes are undertaken, care must be taken to see that they are as economical as possible. I cannot believe that it is economical to make a furrow three miles in length in order to provide a farm of 5,000 morgen with a piece of irrigable land. Of course, making a furrow of 30 miles to irrigate a certain area of land is a different proposition from making a furrow three miles in length to irrigate the same area of land. It is ridiculous to say that the one is just as economical as the other. I just want to say that the Minister must understand that in my opinion it is not economical. One cannot make a furrow of three miles in order to irrigate 50 morgen, and then another few miles to irrigate a further twenty or thirty or forty morgen. Of course, it is more economical if the same area of land can be irrigated within the three miles. But if the State wants to spend the money and if it is felt that it is justified by the object, namely, to obviate the danger of droughts, let them do so. I am only pointing out that a scheme to dam up water is not a cheap scheme. Where you have a dam in the South-Western districts the evaporation is very great. In the Brandvlei Dam at Worcester on a hot day it is as much as one inch and more per day. All these factors must be taken into consideration in connection with schemes of this nature. I am not going to vote for the third reading; I am only drawing the attention of the Minister to the fact that he must realise what the risks are. Unfortunately he is not a lawyer. He admitted that he did not understand these laws very well. I do not blame him, because many of the best lawyers do not understand them either. In any event, I feel that this Bill should never have been put through the House in this form.

The hon. Minister may have the best of intentions with this Bill, but I want to tell him that if he meddles with the Irrigation Bill of 1912 and subsequent legislation in this half-baked fashion, he is raising a hornet’s nest. And the Minister has done that. The results of this Bill may be very far-reaching. Possibly the Minister will no longer be here to give effect to the provisions of this Bill, because years may elapse before they will be carried out. The hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) interpreted the position correctly. The Minister cannot deny it. He is meddling with the rights of the riparian owners. If the Minister undertakes a big scheme and he takes the canal over the farm of a riparian owner who has, say, 300 morgen under irrigation, the latter has the right as riparian owner to demand 300 morgen in terms of the Act. But if there is surplus water, the other owners who are not riparian owners may go to the court and ask that the surplus water be given to them, and then the Minister can do as he pleases. I am one of those who feel very strongly that surplus water should not be allowed to flow to the sea, and that as much use as possible should be made of it. But here we have a clash. The Minister regards the matter from the point of view that we must not go in for land settlement and intensive irrigation, but that we must bring pieces of land in big areas under irrigation in order to be able to establish fodder banks. I can understand that. But if the Minister constructs a big canal in the North-Western parts and bring the water down from the flats of the North-West into the valley from Fish River downwards towards Kenhardt, does he think that the farmers will eventually be satisfied with twenty or thirty or fifty morgen of land under irrigation, while this whole area could be irrigated? The Minister is now introducing a provision which will cause him a great deal of concern in the future. He cannot at this stage make these promises to the people. When at some future date the Minister comes before this House with a scheme, he ought to have a schedule in which it is set out how much land he is going to put under irrigation. The scheme may cost £1,000,000 or £2,000,000. Here we have an owner who has 300 morgen or 400 morgen of the very best alluvial ground in the Karoo, but he is only allowed to irrigate 40 or 50 morgen, which he will be able to irrigate economically, according to the Minister; he is not allowed to subdivide; he is not allowed to sell the farm, because the farm is registered under one deed of transfer. The Minister should rather have postponed this matter and referred it back to the Irrigation Commission. He should have done what was done years ago in connection with the Fourie Commission. The Minister should have said : “This is the policy of the Government; visit the various parts of the country where the conditions vary and investigate to what extent the new provisions of this Bill will affect the rights of the people and to what extent we will be able to meet their requirements, and to what extent it will be economical.” I think the Minister is in too great a hurry with this legislation and he will have to come to this House for assistance in the future. Why does he not allow the Irrigation Commission to travel about in the recess in order to take evidence? I know how the people in the South-Western parts stand on their riparian rights and how much those riparian rights cost them. Now the Minister comes along and disregards the rights of these people to a great extent. Let the Minister afford the people an opportunity of expressing their views in regard to this matter, and let him then come to the House with a report of the commission and deal with the report accordingly. Then you will have a sympathetic House. I think the Minister is being premature with this Bill. It is not required very urgently and, having had some experience of various water cases, I realise that he is going to meet with great difficulties. I cannot understand why the Minister should not accept the suggestion of the hon. member for Swellendam to make his (the Minister’s) decision subject to an appeal to the Supreme Court or to the Water Court. If the farmers of this country knew that their rights depended entirely on the discretion of the Minister, they would be suspicious. We know that any Minister, perhaps not the present, Minister, may be subject to influences, and I think the Minister is taking an extremely unwise step. He knows that people pay considerably more for riparian farms than they do for other land, and the price practically depends on the area of land which is adjacent to the river. The Minister is engaged in meddling with established rights. I entirely agree with the Minister that we should prevent surplus water from flowing to the sea, but I do not know to what extent he will succeed in making these schemes economical, if he is going to undertake big schemes, and if these schemes are only going to irrigate small spots over big areas, unless there is so much water that the veld can also be irrigated, in that way creating vleis, because in that event the farmers in the North-West, I think, would be pleased. But if a man has 300 or 400 morgen which is very good for irrigation, and the Minister only allows him 50 morgen, applications will continually be made to the Minister for more and more land for irrigation. The man will say : “I have three or four sons, and if I can get 300 or 400 morgen under irrigation, my sons will be able to make an independent living. Why should I buy a farm elsewhere while I have sufficient land?” I hope the Minister will still refer this matter to the Irrigation Commission with instructions to ascertain what the consequences of such a measure will be and to what extent the people will be deprived of their established rights.

There is only one point which worries me a little and which is not quite clear to me. Assuming there are three or four farmers whose land is adjacent to a river; that they already have irrigation undertakings, and that each one has 300 or 400 morgen under his private irrigation scheme. Now the Minister comes along and constructs a big undertaking higher up, above the land of the private irrigators. To what extent will the rights of the private irrigators be safeguarded? It seems to me that their rights are not being protected. There are many such private undertakings in my area, and if there is no protection for them, I feel that the Minister is taking a very unwise step. I should like the Minister to explain this point.

I just want to reply briefly to what the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) said in connection with my undertaking that we would discuss this matter with the Law Advisers before the Bill goes to the Senate. I did not personally consult the Law Advisers in connection with the amendment of the hon. member. I gave the assurance that the hon. member would still be consulted, and it can still be done before the Bill goes to the Senate. That was my intention. There is only one other point with which I want to deal. The hon. member asked whether such schemes would be economical. Other hon. members put the same question. Of course not. If the schemes have to be economical, I want to say at once that we would not be able to undertake any scheme. Even the Breede River scheme, in which the hon. member takes a great deal of interest, is hot economical. In that case the State has already written off £380,000. In the future we will not be able to build any schemes if they have to be economical. My argument is that we are now introducing a new policy, and that under that policy the schemes will be very much more economical than those which were constructed in the past. The water will be divided over a greater number of people. Instead of one, two, ten or fifty people deriving benefit from such a scheme, it will be extended to possibly so many thousands. It will increase the national income of South Africa; it will be more economical than the schemes of the past. I cannot argue with the hon. member in regard to the question whether or not we have the right to take this water. The Law Advisers say that we have got the right.

You cannot touch the rights of the riparian owners.

I am dependent on the Law Advisers, and they tell me that we can take the water and give a portion of it to non-riparian owners.

Surplus water.

In any event, every scheme will have to come before Parliament and Parliament will decide whether or not we will take the water. Why should we split hairs in connection with this matter? Parliament will still have to decide. It is no use arguing about it now.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

I move—

1. (8) No person who is not a Union national at the date upon which his application for appointment or employment is lodged in terms of sub-section (1) shall be appointed or employed in terms of sub-section (2) or (3).

I second.

Agreed to.

Amendment in Clause 11, new Clause 11 and amendments in Clauses 13 and 17, put and agreed to, and the Bill, as amended, adopted.

I move äs an unopposed motion—

I second.

At this juncture in the history of this Bill may I make an appeal to the Minister of Finance and Acting Prime Minister for this Bill to become something more than dead wood on the Statute Book, never showing any sign of fulfilling the purpose for which it is passed. I think we all feel that this Bill is intended as a means of helping the man who served his country faithfully, who served at a sacrfice to himself and at a loss to his family—in some cases the men who were in the Public Service have lost their lives. So far as the Public Service is concerned these men have proved themselves worthy members. I think there is a danger of the survivors finding that although these laws are placed on the Statute Book, the spirit which animates those who passed these Bills may not outlive the period of the war. The Public Service Commission has played a worthy part—there are men in the Public Service Commission today who are imbued with the right spirit and we hope that that spirit will long continue. We have reason to be gratified with the work of one distinguished member of the Commission who served on the ad hoc commission which the Minister mentioned the other day, and we appreciate very much the offer to welcome into the ranks of the Public Service volunteers who have worthily earned a position in that service. There is one point in regard to men who are actually notified by letter that they had been appointed in the service but who went on active service before taking up their appointment. I hope that if they come under Section 4 that there will be no going back on their letter of appointment.

No, there will not be.

I hope Clause 4 will be interpreted generously in their favour. There are men who have taken the trouble to enquire what their position will be, and they were led by assurances for which I was largely responsible that on their return from the war their military service would be regarded as having been in the Public Service of the country, and I hope that there will be no disposition to haggle about that.

No, there will not be.

In connection with what the hon. member for Pinetown (Mr. Marwick) said, I want to ask whether it will really be the policy to fill the Civil Service with unqualified people who participated in the war? I do not know what the Government’s policy will be and how the provisions of this Bill be carried out, but it would be altogether wrong to throw the doors of the Civil Service open to those who participated in the war, whether or not they possess the necessary qualifications, I am not opposed to the Government looking after the people who sympathised with its policy and who joined the army. But there are different types of work, and we do not want the Civil Service to be made the dumping ground for people who are not qualified for the Civil Service.

That is not the intention.

Yes, but this Bill allows a fairly wide opening. It is quite reasonable to say that if the person concerned does not possess all the necessary educational qualifications, a certain amount of discretion will be given to the Public Service Commission. But during the Committee stage I moved an amendment that the Public Service Commission should be required to take steps to ensure that if such a person is appointed, he shall acquire the necessary educational and other qualifications within two years. The Minister refused to accept that amendment, and I fear therefore that the policy may be what the hon. member for Pinetown suggested, with the result that the service will be loaded with people who took part in the war and who do not possess the necessary qualifications. I am not opposed to provision being made for these people, but I do think that the Minister might in such cases have applied the amendment which I moved. I am sorry the Minister was not prepared to accept that amendment. We want a capable Civil Service; we do not want people who will be unqualified for the posts to which they are appointed, which will be to the detriment of the Civil Service. I do not know why the Minister would not accept an amendment that such people should qualify within two years. I am afraid that we may in this way lower the quality of the Civil Service. Then I want to put a further question in connection with the necessary qualifications. What about the language qualifications? Will they also be relaxed under this clause of the Bill—relaxed, decreased or not applied? It seems to me that the Minister has an opportunity to do so under this clause. If my amendment had been accepted, it would have been a legal requirement that those persons should qualify in both languages within two years of their appointment. I hope that the Minister will make a reassuring statement in this connection, namely, that he will see to it, as far as new appointees are concerned, that the language qualifications will not be disregarded, nor the other educational qualifications which are necessary. I am glad that the Minister accepted our standpoint that this Bill should only be applicable to Union citizens. As it read originally, practically any person who rendered war service could be appointed under these privileged conditions. Then there is another matter which I want to raise, and that is the question of the men who are employed in the Civil Service, who wanted to go on active service, but who could not do so because the Government required their services. No provision is being made here for persons who were not allowed to go on active service, in order to ensure that their interests will not be prejudiced. Provision is being made for people who practically deserted, who took their courage into their hands and joined up, and who did not care whether they would be kicked out. They are being taken care of, but what about those people who wanted to fight but who remained here and were not allowed to go because their services were indispensable? Is there not a danger that they will be at a disadvantage in comparison with the others? People who join the service as new entrants are given certain privileges with regard to seniority etc., but what about those people who did not go because the Government kept them here? Will an injustice not be done to them? That would surely not be fair. We should like to have a reassuring statement from the Minister at this stage.

The hon. member for Pinetown (Mr. Marwick) has already raised the position of persons who were accepted for appointment to the Civil Service, but who did not enter the Civil Service because they went on military service in the interim. He wanted to have the assurance that those persons would receive full recognition for their period of military service, and I gave him that assurance. That does not mean that the service will be filled with people who are not qualified. That is not our intention. The intention becomes very clear when one looks at sub-clause (3) of Clause 4, to the effect that such a person can be appointed if the Public Service Commission is convinced that his physical condition and educational standard generally, including his knowledge of both official languages, enable him to perform efficiently the duties connected with the position or post to which it is proposed to appoint him.

It is very elastic.

It is elastic, but it is a clear indication that it is not the desire of the Government and of Parliament to fill the service with people who are not qualified. I think my hon. friend can take it that that indication will not be ignored.

What objection can there be to my motion that such a person should qualify within two years?

I think it is unreasonable to expect anyone who may have had four years’ military service, to write examinations again when he has already attained a satisfactory educational standard.

Cannot we subject such a person to a test?

Why should that be necessary? I give my hon. friend the assurance that we shall not make use of this Bill in order to fill the Civil Service with unqualified persons.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

I move—

I second.

I simply rise at this stage to ask the Minister whether he will explain what the effect of this contigent notice really 1s. I take it that at a later stage a suitably framed amendment will be moved, but what I would really like to ask the Minister is this; is it the contention that the municipalities, the local authorities, at present have no power to establish markets in locations, as they can in other parts of a municipal area, where traders or hawkers can sell produce; or is it the object of this amendment to give to local authorities themselves the power to trade in urban locations? As the contigent motion reads, it simply asks leave for the Committee to consider the advisability of so extending the provisions of the Bill as to enable an urban local authority to establish and conduct markets in urban native locations. I would have thought that they had that power already. As far as I know that is already being done in some locations. The matter will, of course, be dealt with in committee. At this stage I merely want to ask the Minister what additional powers are being conferred on municipalities, on local authorities, under this contigent notice.

The position …

I am sorry, the rules of the House preclude a reply on an instruction.

Motion put and agreed to.

HOUSE IN COMMITTEE :

On Clause 2,

I beg to move the amendment standing in my name—

In doing so I wish to point out that the native people experience great difficulty in obtaining financial assistance, and under the existing Act a great deal of delay takes place before they can raise loans. From my own experience I can say that the minimum period taken for consideration is eight weeks, and I feel that no investor will be prepared to hang up a loan for that length of time. I feel that it is in the interests of the people that this power should be vested in the Minister and not the Governor-General, and I trust the Minister will be prepared to accept this amendment.

I know that the point which has been raised by the hon. member for Transkei (Mr. Hemming) is a very important point, and I am prepared to accept his amendment because I feel that a good deal of time is being wasted at present, time which could be cut shorter, because a certain routine has to be followed if the consent of the Governor-General has to be obtained, and I will therefore accept the amendment.

Amendment put and agreed to.

I would like to put this further amendment to Clause 2—

1. (a) for payment of interest at a rate higher than six per cent., or
2. (b) for the payment of compound interest, or
3. (c) for a period of notice of capital repayment exceeding three months, or
4. (d) for a fixed period of capital repayment exceeding two years, or
5. (e) for forfeiture of any capital payment made,

I remarked just now on delays which take place where applications for loans have to be submitted to the Governor-General for consent. Γ think the Committee will appreciate the fact that as a rule the natives have considerable difficulty in raising loans, and that difficulty will become greater still if every transaction has to go through official channels. I feel that if the investing public were to know that a bond, which does not contain a clause which offends against this particular amendment, can be registered without reference to the Minister, it would greatly facilitate matters. I feel that no harm can be done by making these conditions part of the Bill it would put the public on their guard; they would know what they have to meet, and if the bond does not contain a clause which offends against this amendment, the Registrar of Deeds would immediately be able to register the bond. Naturally, if the bond contained a clause which is covered by this amendment, the Registrar would not be able to register the bond without the consent of the Minister. So there you have a perfect safeguard. The Registrar will not register the bond if these conditions are not complied with. I hope the Minister will be prepared to accept this amendment. Under the present conditions the native people have great difficulty in raising money and we do not want to add unnecessarily to that difficulty. I therefore ask the Minister to accept this amendment.

We on these benches have no objection to this clause as a whole. So long as the rights of natives to purchase land in urban areas are restricted to certain limited areas, it is logical that other people should not have the right to purchase in restricted areas where natives can purchase. But this section as it stands at the moment applies not only to purchase; it applies to the acquisition of any interest in land which would include a bond, and therefore the effect of it is, as it stands that a native property owner in an area designated as a place where natives may buy land, would not be able to raise a bond from any financial institution in which Europeans have a predominating interest. The native property owner, like any other property owner, needs financial facilities, and the effect of this clause, as it stands at the present moment— there being so few of his own people due to the notorious poverty of the native people from whom he would be in a position to borrow money—would in practice be to preclude him, without the consent of the Minister, from raising a bond. The gaining of such consent necessarily involves a certain amount of delay. I am very glad the Minister has accepted the amendment of the hon. member for Transkei (Mr. Hemming), the effect of which is that only the Minister’s consent is required and not the consent of the Governor-General, because that will undoubtedly lessen the time which will be taken up in getting permission. But the object of this section, so far as bonds are concerned—so the Minister explained at an earlier stage of this Bill—is to protect natives from exorbitant rates of interest and other onerous conditions in bonds when they are in the position of having to borrow money on the security of their properties. Personally I feel that that is a danger to which the poorer section of the community as a whole is exposed, not only the native people but also the coloured people and the poorer Europeans. I feel that there ought to be general protection of this kind. However, this clause has been inserted in the Bill, and we are in favour of protection being given where it is necessary, and where it will not have the effect in practice of depriving the native property owner of financial facilities. For that reason the hon. member for Transkei has framed this amendment to try to obviate the necessity for any delay where no delay is necessary. A certain amount of delay must of necessity take place in transactions of this kind, but the delay should be no more than is absolutely essential. The various conditions which might be onerous have been detailed in this amendment. I personally am unable to think of any onerous conditions which would fall outside these categories, and in these circumstances I wish to support the contentions of the hon. member for Transkei in asking the Minister to accept this amendment.

I have listened with great care to the remarks of both hon. gentlemen who have just spoken. I think the hon. member for Transkei (Mr. Hemming) should have given me more notice of this amendment. Only a few minutes before this amendment came before the House, the hon. member very courteously sent me a copy of it, but I had no time to consider it. I then considered whether I should let this clause stand over. I have considered it fully and I regret that I cannot accept this amendment, and I will tell the House why I cannot do so. In the first instance it is these bonds which are the main cause of the frightful exploitation which takes place against the natives and the poorer classes of the community, and I whole-heartedly endorse the statement of the hon. member for Cape Western (Mr. Molteno) where he said that there ought to be protection for everybody; that is quite correct. There are many Europeans and coloured people who are today being exploited. They have no protection; they have no knowledge of business and they are in the hands of the first person who comes along to exploit them. I would like to see protection for everyone. The objection raised by the hon. member for Transkei was that it would take too long. I have sent a message to my Department, and I am informed that if everything is in order the delay will only be a week. I do not think that is too long to wait if a firm genuinely wants to make a loan They would not mind waiting for a week, so I do not think the need for hurry arises. The very nature of the hon. gentleman’s previous amendment does away with very long delay, which was as long as two months in some cases. Now the Minister of Native Affairs will be able to consent instead of the Governor-General, and I am informed that if everything is in order the delay will only be a week. I am very anxious to accept any amendment which is intended to ease the position for the natives, and that is why I am loth to reject this amendment, but I feel that it will fetter my hands. I am most anxious to see that the natives who are trying to buy property in order that they may possess something concrete should not be exploited by completely unscrupulous people, and I know the hon. member would be the first to prevent that. Since I made my speech in the second reading, many people have written letters to me giving me facts and figures of the appalling exploitation that is going on, and I must say that it is very much worse than I thought. This case, for example, was brought to my notice. A bond of £925 was passed at 8 per cent. to a native woman, and the amount actually advanced was £490. She was to build her house, and out of the house she was to make her income by letting rooms. For some reason or other—I think it was merely lack of building material—she could not go forword with the completion of the house, and the result was that she had no house at all. She had to pay raising fees; she wanted to pay back her £490, but that money was refused unless she agreed to pay interest for five years at the rate of 8 per cent. In other words, the capital that she was paying back was approximately 75 per cent more than she borrowed. That is the type of thing against which we have to protect the natives, and I wish to heaven we could protect the poorer class of whites and coloureds against it as well. For these reasons I regret that I am unable to accept the amendment.

I think the hon. Minister apparently misunderstands the motives of this amendment. We are only too conscious of the necessity to protect the poorer people, but we must look at the other side of the question. A man who wants to invest money must know where he stands. He cannot be kept waiting even for a week. If the investors know that the bond they propose to register does not contain any clause which offends against this particular amendment, they know that the bond can be registered without delap. That is why we wish to press this amendment, not in any way to prevent the examination of contracts which would give an unfair advantage to the person who is lending the money, but in order to facilitate matters. It is very advantageous for an investor to be able to look up the Act and have the knowledge that under the Act he can advance money to a native without any reference to Cape Town provided certain conditions are not contained in the bond. In such cases the transaction can be put through at once. That is the important point. I cannot emphasise sufficently how difficult it is for native people very often to borrow money at all under the existing conditions. I take it that some of these loans will go through building societies, and I feel that the institutions should know that there are certain conditions under which they can lend money to a native without reference to anyone at all; that is normal business; it is only when the transaction is abnormal that the necessity arises for us to protect the borrower. I feel that if you do that, you will clarify the position and you will not be doing any harm to the native people. I am the last person in the world to suggest that you should do anything which would submit the native people to onerous conditions, but I feel that you would defeat their purpose in trying to obtain money on landed property if you say: “I cannot give you the money until I have submitted the whole matter to the Minister in Cape Town; I cannot be bothered with a transaction of that kind.” I would therefore ask the Minister to reconsider his decision. The matter is an important one from our point of view and in the circumstances I hope he will give it his serious attention.

I also want to ask the Minister to reconsider this matter. The basis of this form of protection is to protect people who are poor, and people who are backward, hence, inevitably irresponsible. This clause as it stands assumes first of all that every African is poor—the vast majority as we know are—it also assumes that everyone who is an African is backward. Now that is far from being the case. An ordinary business man would object if he were told that he had to submit every transaction, every bond to some Government Department. That objection would also be shared by a native business man. What the Minister is aiming at is to stop ignorant people from signing bonds and signing stipulations which may be detrimental to them. He wants to prevent onerous conditions being imposed on them. If the Minister feels that there are other possible onerous conditions not included in this amendment itself, I have no doubt the honourable member for Transkei would be prepared to amend his amendment. The Minister has not said that we have left anything out of the amendment that should be there, and for that reason I feel that we have met the position which the Minister wants to safeguard. The Minister naturally accepts what the hon. member for Transkei says, that we do not want legitimate protection taken away from the poorer sections of the community whose interests the Minister wants to safeguard. But we want to safeguard the ordinary business man. There are a large number of native people in the category of business men, and I hope their number will increase as time goes on, but we feel that it should be assumed that they have an ordinary sense of responsibility and they should have the ordinary rights of any other business men. Even they would, under the Minister’s proposal, have to submit their bonds to the Native Affairs Department. I am afraid that the Minister’s clause as it now stands may interfere with legitimate business dealings, so that we therefore suggest that the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Transkei is a reasonable and moderate proposal which would be welcomed by the African business community and we appeal again to the Minister to accept it.

I sincerely trust the Minister will not change his mind. This is one of the most necessary provisions in the whole Bill. It is no unusual thing to find houses in one of the native townships sold and re-sold three or four times. If a business man applies for a bond he expects a certain amount of delay, and even a Building Society has to go into various matters. Hon. members have spoken about some members not being backward, but there are very few of them, and those who are not backward know how to set about getting bonds.

The hon. member who has just sat down does not seem to appreciate what the amendment says. No one here has suggested that people should have a free run to exploit the natives through bonds. We want to protect the natives. We have laid down in this amendment certain minimum conditions. For instance, we have said that the interest should not be more than 6 per cent. Under the provisions laid down this bogey about a house being sold three or four times would never arise. We say : “Protect the people as much as you will, but at the same time don’t make it impossible for a person to raise money quickly and expeditiously without having to apply to the Native Affairs Department.” If the bond contains any conditions in excess of these conditions, then the Registrar of Deeds can interfere. Does the Minister think that anyone would lend money on conditions lower than those provided for in the amendment. Would anyone be prepared to lend money on conditions more favourable to the borrower? I have no doubt that the hon. member for Kensington (Mr. Gray) is well intentioned in all he said, but I think he is mistaken.

I have listened with great attention to the arguments raised since I spoke on this clause and, as I said, this thting was sprung on the House, I realise the complete sincerity with which hon. members over there are raising this question. They want to help the natives but at the same time they don’t want to hamper them. The moment I got a copy of the amendment, I sent it to the Law Advisers. Their first reaction, was that it might lay itself open to abuse. The hon. member asked whether I could conceive of any one lending money at more advantageous rates. I know of cases where natives are getting money at 5 per cent., and if money goes on falling as it is doing, they may even get it at less. In England at one time interest rates were kept down to 2 per cent. Anyhow, what I am prepared to do is this—I am prepared to move that this clause stand over so as to give the Law Advisers and myself an opportunity of considering it on its merits, and then take this clause after the last clause of the Bill has been disposed of. I move—

Agreed to.

On Clause 3,

I would like to move to delete this clause. I don’t know why the Minister is taking the powers which he proposes taking in this Clause. Under the law as it stands at present, it is competent for the Minister to impose on any urban authority the obligation to close its boundaries to incoming Africans except on certain conditions and to enforce on those areas the registration of contracts. Now when the Minister takes that power, when the Government forces an urban area to close its doors to incoming Africans, except on conditions laid down in Section 12 of the existing Act, it has the further power to say that anyone who brings in a native to work in the urban area will be responsible for repatriating him to the area from which he has been recruited. In this clause, the Minister is proposing to extend that control to areas which have of their own volition closed their doors to incoming Africans in terms of Section 12 of the present Act. I cannot understand why he is taking these power. The only answer I think he can give is that he must have more control over the introduction of African labourers into urban areas in order to prevent the sort of thing which has happened in the Cape. The conditions in Cape Town have been the main justification for the tightening up process of this Bill. Now Cape Town was actually closed by the Government and not by the Cape Town Municipal authorities. At the time those restrictions under Section 12, were imposed on Cape Town by the Government itself. In other words the Government has had, ever since Cape Town became a closed area, the power to insist that anyone bringing in natives for purposes of work will be responsible for repatriating them at the end of their period of contract and yet that has not been done. Now one of the Minister’s problems is to deal with the number of natives brought down on Government contracts at the beginning of the War; these natives at the end of their contracts are left walking about looking for work. Well, I believe that they would not be walking about looking for work if they were not subject to the restrictions which are imposed on them today. But the argument of the Native Affairs Department is simply that these people are walking about Cape Town unemployed. Now the Minister wants to impose on the recruiter the condition that he shall repatriate these people. But the Minister has that power at present. The Department obviously has not been able to use the power. Now to impose the same powers and the same conditions on Municipalities which have of their own volition closed their doors, merely adds another grievance. The Minister is taking powers which obviously it has been impossible for the Government to administer. If the Government had done what we might have expected it to do, that is to accept the decision of the International “Labour Conference to impose upon recruiters the costs of both journeys of recruited workers, there would have been no need for any of these provisions. That was the recommendation of the International Labour Conference of 1936-’37. Under it, the obligation would be imposed on everyone bringing workers to an urban centre to pay their fare and take them back—to pay their fare both ways. But our Government did not adopt that recommendation. We have refused to endorse that recommendation of the International Labour Office, but we are now trying to get the same result by this system of control and restriction and it just doesn’t work. My reason for opposing this clause is that we have had these powers for years in respect of areas such as Cape Town but those areas have never been able to use those powers. Why then extend this system to other areas. So on the strength of that I am entirely opposed to this clause and I beg to move that the clause be deleted.

I explained when I introduced this Bill on the second reading that at present owing to the unfortunate wording of Section 5 (ter) of the Urban Areas Act, security is only required to be given in cases where the Municipality is compelled to register the native under Section 12 of the Urban Areas Act. But as in most cases the Municipalities do it voluntarily, it means they are not compelled to do it, and therefore the usefulness of the whole section falls away.

What is the answer in respect of Cape Town which was compelled to accept these conditions.

Well, frankly, I have not got the information before me at present, but I shall go into it and see what the position 1s. I forget whether Cape Town was compelled or came into it voluntarily. If the hon. member says it was compelled then I shall have to look into that. But where the hon. member says that if there were no restrictions imposed the natives would be able to get work here I’m afraid that I don’t agree with her. I had a deputation waiting on me the other day, which told me that there were 8,000 natives walking about without work. Of course, I didn’t believe that.

Your Department doesn’t believe that.

Of course if such a serious position had arisen the Government would have stepped in.

It is common cause between us that there is no evidence of that.

But the point is this, that natives can come in as they like and walk about if they like. Now the hon. member says that if there were no restrictions the whole situation with regard to employment would be relieved. I’m sorry I don’t believe that. You would soon have a few hundred thousand natives here and there are no jobs for these people. After all unemployment was a matter with which the whole world was concerned before the Great War. You had the same thing in England. There were no restrictions on the movements of men in England and yet you had unemployment. Inasmuch as Municipalities have undertaken registration, the position is very largely being dealt with. I might just say that Cape Town was not forced to accept registration. Cape Town was forced to accept restrictions under Section 5 (bis) but not registration. For the moment the hon. member had me rather rattled. I am sorry I cannot accept the amendment for the point is this. The whole idea of this clause is to try and prevent natives from being stranded when their contract has expired. It was tragic to see people wiring for natives to be sent here to do certain work at the beginning of the war. Some Departments even did so. Thousands of natives arrived here and there was no work for them. I want that sort of thing to be prevented. I want to prevent natives coming here, paying all their expenses and then finding that there is no job for them. Natives are today going to the mines from here to get work there. It is a tragic thing that these unfortunate natives should have been enticed here, should have had to pay their fares and when they came here found that there was no work. I am sorry I cannot accept the hon. member’s amendment.

I cannot understand the contention of the Minister that this clause is intended to deal with the situation such as he alleges exists in the Cape Peninsula. I have no doubt that when we come to Clause 7 we shall have a further discussion on this point. I must refer to the original section of the Act. The terms of Section 5 (ter) are: “No person shall introduce any native into any urban area, the local authority of which has been required under Section 12 to exercise the powers under paragraph (a) of Sub-section (1) of that section.” I won’t read the whole of it. Now what that clause lays down is this. An employer may not bring a native into an urban area which has been required to exercise the registration system without the permission of an officer appointed for that purpose. That is the intention of the clause. Now the object of the amendment is to extend that provision, not only to local authorities who have been compelled to bring that system into force but also to those who have voluntarily done so. The point is: what is the use of extending these powers? A man is not introduced into an urban area unless there is work for him to do. Why should that require the permission of the local authority? As a matter of fact under the Proclamation promulgated in 1939 in terms of Section 5 (bis) of the Principal Act, a native may enter Cape Town if he is coming to a job. He may do so, as of right, even though the area is closed to natives, since there are certain exceptions and one is if the native is coming to a job. Therefore in the case of Cape Town, if this amendment becomes law, you have the ridiculous position that if a native worker comes from the Transkei to take up a job with an employer who has written to him, he can come as of right. If, however, the employer brings him in his motor car, then he will have to have permisison from the local authority. Now if the Minister is not satisfied with what I have said, let him also agree to let this clause stand down. Let me make the point quite clear. In terms of the Proclamation of 1939, if a native is coming to a job, he can come as of right, but if he accompanies his employer in his motor car the permission of the local authority will be required. I believe there are about 200 of these proclamations, closing towns to the entry of native workers. I cannot make any comments on these proclamations now. You would rule me out of order. But I don’t know whether everyone contains that exception which applies to Cape Town. But I take it as a matter of common sense that it does We are told that these proclamations are intended to stop natives coming into an urban area when there is no work for them.

Now in this clause a native who is coming with his employer to a job, has to get permission from the local authority. It is an interference, not only with the right of the native to earn his living but with the right of the employer to employ him, and I hope that in the circumstances the Minister will reconsider the matter. The amendment of the hon. member for Cape Eastern (Mrs. Ballinger) was moved in no frivolous spirit whatever. We on these benches don’t make propositions on serious matters of this kind in a frivolous spirit. It is made to meet a position which is quite indefensible.

This amendment has been on the Order Paper for a very long time, and has been fully considered by my department; therefore there can be no reason for postponing the decision. I am extremely sorry, but I can see no object in postponing it, because it has been fully considered before I came into the House.

This clause which the Minister proposes is necessary. We cannot go on keeping the natives in the big cities. In Cape Town the position is very serious. I know the Bantu well; I have conversed with them and I know what the position 1s. I brought one down to Cape Town with me. I do not want to say that 8,000 natives are unemployed in Cape Town, but the number is certainly close to 8,000. I think we would find that, if we could get hold of the natives, but it is very difficult to get hold of them. When we look at the position in Cape Town we realise that it is essential to pass the necessary legislation in order to get the natives out of the big cities. They walk about the streets in pairs looking for work. How this position arose it is difficult to say, but we know that that is the case. Last Sunday I came across two of them in Sea Point. They have no place to sleep in; they live on the Flats under trees and under sacks. The position will get out of hand and we are going to experience great difficulties. If the representatives of the natives want to do anything in the interests of the natives themselves, they should give the Minister their support in this connection. This proposal is in the interests of the natives.

Have you read the clause?

Yes.

It has nothing to do with this matter.

The local authorities now have certain powers and duties, but they find it difficult to cope with this position, and my contention is that the Minister should have more power to remove natives from places where they are not employed.

This clause has nothing to do with that. It only relates to employers who bring natives here on contract.

Yes, they bring the natives down here on contract to work here for three months or six months, and when the native has been here for two or three weeks the employer leaves and the native remains here, with the result that the local City Council is saddled with this burden. That is the difficulty. If the contract were honestly carried out, everything would be in order, but the natives are being cheated. They come for six months, but after a few weeks the employer leaves or he discharges them, with the result that those natives are left unemployed. That 1s. the trouble.

Clause put and agreed to.

On Clause 5,

Mr. Chairman, I move the two amendments standing in my name—

1. (d) by the addition, at the end of subsection (4), of the following proviso:
   “Provided that before such estimtes are passed by the local authority, they shall be referred by it to its native advisory board or boards for consideration and report, and any relevant report submitted by such board or boards shall be duly considered.”

These sub-clauses have been re-drafted after consideration of the original clause and consultation with municipalities, the Native Affairs Commission and the law officers. The new wording will make the object which the Native Affairs Commission had in mind, much clearer. If hon. gentlemen will glance at their kaffir beer report, at Clause 93, they will see what is referred to there by the Native Affairs Commission.

Mr. Chairman, I would like the Minister to be a little more explicit about this amendment. We have had a good deal of discussion over this question. Both the recommendation of the Kaffir Beer Committee and the department itself held the view that no profits made from the sale of kaffir beer should be used for anything but purely social services in the narrower sense of recreational facilities.

Which amendment are you talking about?

The first one. The understanding was that the department wished for this clause strictly to ensure that money derived from the sale of kaffir beer would not be used for any of those social services which are really the financial obligation of the local authority. Now the Minister has changed the wording of the section, and I for one wish to be assured that these new words do not mean that any of the profits from kaffir beer can be used for anything in the nature of services which the municipality is liable to supply. We who sit on these benches are, of course, opposed to any profit being made from the sale of kaffir beer. But where the municipality does make profits from the sale of kaffir beer, we are extremely anxious that those profits should not be used to provide services that are properly the obligation of the public authorities.

I also am not clear as to what is the exact significance of this change of wording. In want to know what the Minister contemplates can be done under this new wording which could not be done under the original clause. In terms of the original Bill, the profit derived from kaffir beer can be used on—

As amended that would read—

Now, Mr. Chairman, I was under the impression that any local or public authority whatever, whether they deal with natives, Europeans or any other race, is under an obligation to promote the social welfare of the people whom they govern. I thought that was a general obligation, one of the objects for which government is established amongst men. I believe those are the words of the American Declaration of Independence. I fail to understand why these words have been imported into the clause. It does, admittedly, give the Minister power to veto expenditure on a particular object. I understood the intention of this clause was to limit the expenditure of beer hall profits to objects upon which a municipality would not ordinarily spend money. That is to say, the object is to stop what has been going on in some municipalities where they are using beer hall profits to finance ordinary services. I should say I myself am entirely opposed to the whole system of beer halls, and if we must have beer halls I am opposed to their making profit. I cannot see why the beer, if it is manufactured by the municipality, cannot be sold to the people at cost and leave the local authority with the ordinary obligations that rest upon them in any decent civilised society of promoting the social welfare of the people out of the proceeds of their ordinary funds. I want now to return to the original question, and ask what, in practice, is the difference between the wording of the original clause as printed and the amendment. Under the amendment will municipalities be able to spend beer hall profits on objects other than they would have been able to spend them on if the original words were left?

I am rather surprised to hear the hon. member representing the natives say he is in doubt about the object of this amendment. If he was aware of what some local authorities are not prepared to do with these profits, I think he would vote for the amendment with both hands.

I am prefectly aware of them.

If the hon. member is aware, then, Sir, he should not need an explanation of what it means, because I want to tell him that not all local authorities are prepared to use such profits for the benefit of the natives. We find that in some municipalities these profits simply go into the general fund, and where you have a municipality or a committee not sympathetic they are not always prepared to meet reasonable and legitimate claims made by the natives for the provision of certain amenities in the way of sportsgrounds and various other recreational activities. As a result of this amendment local authorities will be advised by their treasurer that in future these profits will have to be spent on amenities only as far as the natives are concerned. I can assure the hon. representative that he should leave well alone, bearing in mind that local authorities have not always been sympathetic or willing to spend this money on laudable objects.

It seems strange, Mr. Chairman, that one absolutely fails to make clear a simple question that one asks. I do not want to repeat what I said previously, but I will make one other attempt to make myself clear. The hon. member has advised me to let well alone, but I am under a certain obligation to ask for information about what I do not understand in this Bill, which is an important one, affecting my constituents. All I am asking is, what is the difference between the wording in the amendment and the wording in the original clause? To what purpose can a local authority allocate profits of beer halls under this amendment on which they could not spend it under the clause as printed?

A perusal of this amendment makes me believe that it gives a wider discretion than we anticipated the section would. I have a feeling that this particular amendment is the result of representations made by the larger municipalities, and I think this amendment would give the Minister power to allow this money to be used for purposes other than the ordinary purposes intended. My hon. friend, the member for Pretoria (West) (Mr. Hopf) has advised us to let well alone. May I pass this on to the Minister and suggest that he leaves this clause as it was, and in that way perhaps does not open the door to any abuses of this kaffir beer account. I feel that it can be interpreted in such a way as to relieve the municipalities of a certain responsibility and may act as a further inducement to make still further profits on kaffir beer.

As a member of the Commission, I would say that we found these beer profits were being misused. It is impossible to define exactly what purposes are included in the terms “social welfare.” If we set about defining this, we should have a list which would include objects with which hon. members might not sympathise. It was impossible for the Commission to lay down definitely how this money should be spent. It was a unanimous recommendation of the Commission that the advancement of urban natives’ interests would best be accomplished by the allocation of beer hall profits to objects connected with recreation and general amenities and services connected with social welfare generally. The control of the spending of this money is in the hands of the Minister and his Department. It was the opinion of the Commission also that beer halls themselves should be made more attractive, that they should not be confined to the sale of beer. For instance, you get a respectable native coming along and he should be entitled to have a place where he can bring his womenfolk, buy tea and ginger beer and enjoy the amenities such as we enjoy. The general idea is to make the atmosphere of the beer hall not only a place where a man can drink but a place where he can enjoy social amenities of all kinds. That was the object, and I think that was the intention of the Department in the first instance. It is impossible to define exactly how this can be done, and it must be left to the discretion of the Minister and his Department how these improvements can be brought about and how abuses such as have been prevalent can be controlled. Hon. members on the cross benches seem to want us to define how it can be done. I do not think you can put this down in black and white.

The position has been explained by the hon. member for Tembuland, and I can assure the House that there is no catch in this at all. After consideration we came to the conclusion that the wording should be a bit clearer and at the same time give the Minister a wider discretion. If hon. members want to know what my idea of these amenities should be, I am prepared to give them. The point is that I do not think that these amenities should be paid for by funds derived from kaffir beer halls rather than from funds provided by the general taxpayer. Of course, hon. members sitting on the cross benches object to any profits being made by these beer halls, but in places like Johannesburg where there are big beer halls, it would be difficult not to make a profit, because if that were aimed at we might find ourselves involved in considerable loss. Some of the things that I consider might legitimately be paid for out of these funds would be a communal hall, a social club, a swimming bath, recreation grounds and so on. It is possible that the women might desire a creche, to which mothers might send their babies when they either go out to work or do their domestic work. If they came and asked me that, I would consider it very carefully and perhaps agree to it. But to use this money for such services as street lighting is definitely wrong. If that were not prevented, you would find some municipalities making still greater profits by putting up the price of beer and perhaps paying for all their native services out of it.

They have done that already.

I want the Minister to have a little more scope. I do assure the House that there is no catch in this. The Minister should have power to use his discretion about the things I have mentioned. There is definitely no question about services which would under ordinary circumstances be supplied by the municipality being paid for out of the profits of kaffir beer.

I want to revert to the point I made just now about the beer hall system. We are agreed that if we are to have beer halls at all it would be better that the proceeds should be spent on services such as the Minister has referred to. So far I go with the Minister. I do hope, however, the introduction of this amendment will not dispose the Minister or his department to favour the extension of this beer hall system. I do not want the impression created in the minds of local authorities that their obligation to provide these amenities is limited to places where there is a beer hall. I would like to emphasise that the native people, as a whole, are against this beer hall system, whether it is made attractive or not. Originally the introduction of the system was sought to be justified by the statement that the beer drinking would be under proper control, but anybody who thinks that beer halls don’t lead to drunkenness does not know what he is talking about. I have seen it with my own eyes.

Are you sure it all came from the beer halls?

This belief in this idea of control does not work, in my experience. There is no evidence at all that there is less drunkenness where there are beer halls. In the Langa Location, where there has never been a beer hall, will have evidence of this. I have gone into the records in relation to Langa as to the number of offences connected with drunkenness over a period of years and the number is very small indeed. In Langa location, where you have got domestic brewing, you have a record in this regard of which any race could be proud. There is a place where you have domestic brewing. I may say, as the hon. member for Tembuland (Mr. Payn) will be able to tell the Minister also, that when evidence was taken by the Native Affairs Commission on this subject, the South African Temperance Alliance which of course is in favour of general prohibition ….

I do not think the hon. member should go into principles.

I shall not go into the principles. What I am concerned with is to make this point, that I hope the adoption of this clause will not unduly predispose the Minister and his department to favour the beer hall system, and it was in elaboration of that point that I was saying that even the South African Temperance Alliance, having itself faced with the position of having to choose between the beer halls and domestic brewing, favoured domestic brewing. The South African Temperance Alliance is not a body that would want an increase of drunkenness amongst natives or any other section of the community. I want to impress upon the Minister that while the native people themselves are almost universally opposed to beer halls, whereas many bodies which are concerned with the problem from the temperance point of view only favour domestic brewing. I hope that the fact that this clause is adopted will not unduly predispose the Minister and his department to favour an extension of the beer hall system, because there are other considerations of a very cogent character against that system. Where beer halls have existed in the past, and assuming they are going on, I agree that this clause is an improvement, as long as it does not have the effect of predisposing the Native Affairs Department to favour the extension of this system.

The hon. member who has just sat down pointed out that the South African Temperance Alliance favoured domestic brewing. I would like to ask the hon. member what he thinks the position will be in a compound where there are 8,000 or 9,000 single natives, if they were allowed to go to their homes on Sunday and brew beer? We have just bought a big place where we are going to erect a beer hall and other amenities. I would like to emphasise that the hon. member should not speak of any patricular district. There are some places where home brewing would be to the detriment of the people. It would lead to unlawfulness and disorderliness. Take a place like Newclaire.

I am sorry, I cannot allow the hon. member to discuss the principles of home brewing and the beer hall system; that has been thoroughly discussed.

I am afraid I am not acquainted with the rules of the House, but it is not right, the kaffir beer halls have been attacked. Here we have the hon. member advocating …

I am sorry, the hon. member cannot go into the principles underlying the Bill.

Just before the Committee decides to pass this clause, there is another aspect of it that I hope the Minister will not overlook, and on which we might have a statement in regard to his policy. The hon. member for Cape Western (Mr. Molteno) has expressed the hope that the granting of recreational facilities and the promotion of the social welfare of the residents of the location will not mean an extension of the beer hall system. I want to express the hope on the other side that it will not mean that where there is no beer hall there will not be any recreational facilities. When the Native Revenue Account was first established with the very good intention that everything that came in by way of fines or payment in the native locations was to be applied to native welfare and improvement, it was not long before the municipalities assumed that only what came in from those sources was to be devoted to the improvement of conditions in the locations. We still have a battle to fight to get the municipalities to realise that they are under an obligation to spend more than the amount derived from those sources in establishing services and amenities for the natives, and in promoting the welfare of the residents of the location.

I do not think that matter is relevant to this clause.

The point is that the money derived from beer hall profits is to be applied to the provision of social amenities which are urgently necessary for the improvement of the conditions of the people in the location. I am only expressing the hope that the Native Affairs Department, through the Minister, will make it perfectly clear to the municipalities that this is not supposed to be the only sources of revenue for those services to the native people, that the municipalities will be expected to provide reasonable social and recreational facilities for the natives, even where there is no beer hall. I am thinking of places like Queenstown, where there will probably never be a beer hall but where recreational facilities are very urgently needed.

Amendments put and agreed to.

Clause, as amended, put and agreed to.

On Clause 6,

I move—

This is to ensure that the usual procedure is followed by an Advisory Board in submitting a report to the Minister of Native Affairs. The invariable practice has been for the local authority to be asked to obtain a report from the Advisory Board and when furnishing a report the Board would then send it through to the local authority, and it is just to make that quite clear that I move this amendment.

May I move the amendment standing in the name of the hon. member for Wonderboom (Mr. Nel). I move—

Provided that, subject to the provisions of Sub-section (3), in a case of urgent public importance the Minister or the urban local authority, as the case may be, may act before receipt of such report.

You will notice that the intention of this amendment is merely this, that there may be cases where delay will be fatal, where it will be necessary to act immediately, and in such cases it gives the Minister or the urban local authority the right to take steps immediately. That is only in circumstances of urgent public importance. There may be cases where the Advisory Board cannot report, perhaps because they have not got a quorum, and in such cases there should be provision enabling the Minister, or the urban local authority, notwithstanding the fact that the report has not been received, to act.

I am sorry, but I cannot accept this amendment. The only provision to which it can be applicable is paragraph 2 (a) (i) and that provision relates to the framing of regulations. In view of the fact that the drafting of regulations necessarily takes a little time there will always, in my opinion, be time to discuss it with the Native Advisory Boards. What constitutes a reasonable period must be decided upon consideration of every case, and if it is urgent the advisory board can immediately be called together in order to obtain their views. The hon. member will realise that under Section 10 of the principal Act, the Advisory Boards must be given an opportunity to express their views in regard to location regulations. There is no provision in that section for urgent cases, and up to the present no case has been brought to my notice where there was delay in obtaining the views of the advisory board. In every case of which I know the advisory board had a full opportunity to express their views, and for that reason I do not think it is necessary to accept this amendment.

The hon. member for Pietersburg (Mr. Naudé) need not be afraid of there being too much consultation. The experience of the past shows that there has been too little, as the hon. member, as an ex-member of the Native Affairs Commission, will admit, and the purpose of this clause is to make the Advisory Boards more of a reality. While they have no revenue-raising powers, I doubt whether they will ever be a reality. I do not think the hon. member for Pietersburg ought to object to this clause. After all, if it is an urgent matter the council has to meet, and there could be a special meeting called of the advisory board. There is one weakness in the section which I can see is going to arise in practice. It proposes a new sub-section (2) in clause 10, and it requires the advisory board to submit a report upon draft regulations which the local authority is proposing to promulgate as affecting the native people. Secondly, any matter referred to it by the Minister or by the urban local authority; then any matter specially affecting the interests of the natives in the urban area upon which the board may consider a report useful and desirable. All that is important as far as it goes, but I do feel that the terms of this clause, if it is really contemplated that any matter specially affecting the native population in the urban area, should be subject to consultation with the Board—I think that it is a sound principle; it is not only regulations affecting the natives but many administrative matters which a local authority can do without regulations, upon which they ought to get the opinion of the board—if it is really contemplated that it should be done, I do feel that some obligation ought to be placed on the local authority to bring the attention of the board to matters affecting the native population. I may point out that this is not an imaginary difficulty. There are certain things like the establishment, for instance, of an eating hense in a location which a local authority can do without any regulations being required at all, and I have known cases where local authorities have taken quite important steps of an administrative character and the board has not only been consulted, but has known nothing about it. As the law stands at the present time, there is no obligation upon a local authority to consult the board in relation to such matters. This Bill proposes such an obligation but only where it is a matter upon which the board may consider it useful or desirable to report. Î do want to submit that it is no use making the test, the board’s consideration of what is useful or desirable without setting, up machinery to bring to the attention of the board the material upon which it can decide upon what it is desirable to make representations to the local authority. In matters specially affecting natives in urban areas, if the board is to be in a position to make representations, the local authority ought to have an obligation placed upon it to give notice to the board. A very simple amendment would meet that position. I do not want to spring an amendment on the Minister, but Í would ask him to consider himself introducing an amendment, making it obligatory upon local authorities to bring to the attention of the advisory boards matters which they feel should be brought to their attention as specially affecting natives in the urban area.

I would like to support the proposal made by the hon. member for Cape Western (Mr. Molteno), and point out that while some local authorities are sympathetically inclined to the native people, others are not. One cannot lay down a particular standard of conduct for municipalities in that way. Some local authorities might regard a matter as useful or desirable for a report to be made upon, others not, but if you make it obligatory upon the local authority to give notice to the board of matters specially affecting the natives, that will give the board an opportunity of referring the matter to the Minister, the Minister can, if necessary, act under sub-section 2 (a) (ii) because you have the power there to call for a report. If you bring in that proviso to which my hon. friend has referred, you will give yourself the power on a matter which specially affects the interests of the natives. I cannot see that it would do any harm at all and, on the contrary, it will create confidence. From my own experience of native administration, the one thing that upsets them more than anything else is a failure to consult them on any matter affecting their interests. They will often accept a thing if it is explained to them but if it is suddenly sprung on them they view it with suspicion, and then the administration is made more difficult for local areas, and that distrust in turn spreads to other areas and creates difficulties. I hope the Minister will be prepared to accept my hon. friend’s suggestion.

I just want to make one point in reply to the points raised by the hon. member for Cape Western (Mr. Molteno) and the hon. member for Transkei (Mr. Hemming). The rules laid down here follow the rules laid down for the Natives’ Representative Council, and they work very satisfactorily. I do not think there is any need to make a change. We cannot place an obligation on a local authority, as everyone will realise, but in practice the chairman of the Advisory Board will discuss with them any matters affecting the natives, and I feel I cannot go any further than that at the present moment.

Amendment proposed by the Minister of Native Affairs, put and agreed to.

Amendment proposed by Mr. Naudé, put and negatived.

Clause, as amended, put and agreed to.

On Clause 7,

The effect of the clause as it stands is this. In terms of Section 12 of the principal Act, local authorities may be empowered by the Governor-General, by proclamation to exercise the powers set out in that section, the most important being the institution of a system of registration of service contracts and of requiring a native entering an urban area to give notice of his arrival, to get permission to be in the urban area, to get a permit to seek work before he may look for work, and to pay for that permit. There are a number of other regulations which may be made in terms of Section 12, and it is really through the medium of Section 12 that the pass laws have been introduced into the Cape Province. Section 12, so far as urban areas are concerned, is the enabling statutory provision for the exercise of pass law powers. The powers under that section can be exercised either by the Governor-General himself, by the Government or by a local authority. If they are exercised by the Government they can be exercised throughout any area defined by proclamation under Section 12, irrespective of the extent of local authority boundaries. If, however, as the law stands at present, the proclamation empowers a local authority to exercise those pass law powers under Section 12, then, as one might expect, the local authority regulations are of force only within its ordinary municipal jurisdiction. That is the law as it stands at the present time. This clause proposes to enable the Government to empower any given local authority to exercise the powers under Section 12 not only within its own municipal area, but throughout the extent of any area, as defined in the proclamation. From a local government point of view it is a proposal which I should imagine is practically unprecedented. In terms of this clause, if it is adopted and if this Bill becomes law, it will be possible for the Government to constitute a single local authority as the pass authority over an area covering the areas of jurisdiction of other local authorities. In other words, the Johannesburg City Council can, for instance, be constituted if it so desires and if the Government agrees, as the pass authority for the whole of the Reef. The Cape Town Municipality could be constituted as the pass authority for the whole of the Cape Peninsula and the Western Province, and in fact, that is, as I am sure the Minister will agree, the purpose of this amendment, to constitute the Cape Town local authority as the single pass authority administering a unified pass system throughout the Cape Peninsula and the nearer part of the Western Province as far as Bellville; to proclaim that whole area under Section 5 bis of the Act and to require every native who enters the proclaimed area to register and take out a permit to seek work; if he finds employment to take out a service contract. I do not believe that this extension of the powers of local authorities would ever have been asked for by the Minister had it not been for the situation in the Cape Peninsula today. I, therefore, move the negativing of this clause, because I do not believe that the situation in the Cape Peninsula can be dealt with by the means by which the Minister proposes to do so under this clause. At the beginning of last year the Minister’s Department, through one of its inspectors, conducted an investigation into the conditions of the native people, native workers particularly, in the Cape Peninsula. The officer in charge of that investigation reported, and it is as a result of his report that this clause has been introduced. The report of that officer which was subsequently considered by a conference called by the Minister, a conference of local authorities in the Cape Peninsula and the nearer Western Province, found that there were approximately 40,000 natives employed in the Cape Peninsula. The report stated that there was a continuing influx of native workers into the Cape Peninsula, and that there is entirely inadequate housing for the native population of the Cape Peninsula, and in the light of that situation this report made certain recommendations, the chief of which was what this clause means to give legal sanction to, namely, the extension of a system of registration of native service contracts throughout the Cape Peninsula, to be administered by the Cape Town Municipality, covering not only the municipal area of that council but the municipal area of Parow, Goodwood, Bellville and, I think, Simonstown also and portion of the Cape Divisional Council area. The report recommended that the registration of service contracts under Section 12 of the Principal Act should be undertaken by the Cape Town City Council covering the whole of those areas, the establishment of a so-called reception depot at Bellville at which natives arriving by train should be called upon to report, and from whence presumably this registration system is to be operated, the whole system to be financed by fees payable upon the service contracts. That could not have been done—that cannot be done at the present time by the City Council—unless an amendment of this kind is introduced, and it is for that purpose that this amendment is being moved. This, then, is to enable the steps recommended by the Native Affairs Department to be taken in relation to the Cape Peninsula. The Cape Peninsula situation is this—and I am referring to the report—that you have a much larger native population ….

Business suspended at 1.0 p.m. and resumed at 2.20 p.m.

When the House adjourned I was dealing with the background of the situation to which this clause relates. According to the report of the Native Affairs Department as a result of which this clause was framed, there are approximately 40,000 employed in the Cape Peninsula, and the total population is about 60,000. The housing facilities available for this population are entirely deficient. In terms of this clause it is proposed to extend the system of registration for the whole area of Fish Hoek, Bellville, Simonstown, Goodwood and Parow, and constitute the City Council of Cape Town as a Pass Authority, with the idea of excluding the incoming native workers as far as possible from the Peninsula, those who are here to be registered and to be required to carry evidence of their legal presence here. In other words, what is envisaged is a system of trying to ration the labour requirements of the Peninsula. I want to emphasise that according to the report I have referred to, the complaint was not made that there was not employment for the population referred to but the complaint was that there were no housing facilities. [Time limit.]

I wish to support the proposition of the hon. member for Cape Western (Mr. Molteno) that this clause be deleted. The function of those of us who sit on these benches is to look after the interests of the African population. We regard that as a primary obligation upon us; but we consider—and I must try to make that clear to the House—that we also have an obligation to the community as a whole. I want to make it clear that we are opposed to the type of legislation which is involved in this particular clause. In other words, our opposition to this clause is not merely that we feel that it is not in the best interests of the native population but that we feel that it is not in the best interests of the whole population of South Africa. Now my hon. friend has tried to put it to the House that the purpose of this clause is to limit the ingress of Africans particularly into the City of Cape Town, not on the grounds that there is not work for the Africans who have come to this centre, but on the grounds that there is not adequate housing to accommodate in any degree of decency the population which has streamed in here. Our contention is that the attempts to prevent the ingress of the native population into the towns in terms of this clause run contrary to the possible development of the City of Cape Town on the ground of absence of housing but in so doing it runs contrary to the development of local industry and to the needs of the native population to find jobs. As I understand it, the Department of Native Affairs and the Minister are hopeful that by establishing a centre with control over a larger area than that of the Cape Town City Council, it will be possible to reduce the stream of native workers coming in from outside areas into the city until such time as the housing situation has been developed in order to provide housing for the native population coming in. Now the Government has had very considerable powers of control already under the terms of the existing Urban Areas legislation. Under the terms of that legislation, they have had the power to impose on the local authority the responsibility for providing housing for its labouring population. What has happened? The situation has horrified the present holder of the office of Minister of Native Affairs to the extent of his wanting to reduce the horror of the conditions under which the native population lives in areas in and around this particular centre. Our contention is that in terms of this Act, the powers provided in the Urban Areas Act and the powers which the Minister is taking in terms of this Bill are not going to make any easier the solution of this problem of housing. Our contention is that the necessity for housing, which we certainly do not deny—the necessity of housing in all the areas, not only in Cape Town, but in all the smaller areas round the Cape Peninsula and in every other part of the country—provision of that housing does not depend on checking the flow of native labour to those areas where there is economic demand for their labour and the urgent necessity for men to come and work, but upon a national housing policy whereby the Government will increase the pressure upon the larger Municipalities to provide housing for the population which its industries and economic activities need, and to assist the smaller areas to a much greater extent financially that they have done in the past to provide that necessary housing.

Housing for 40,000 natives in five minutes?

The hon. member says “housing in five minutes.” I may say, Sir, our argument is that we never thought it could be done in five minutes. We have watched the situation developing for the last ten or fifteen years. We have seen these black spots in the shape of evil housing conditions which exist in Cape Town, develop, and they have not developed in five minutes. The hon. Minister has made it his business to see these conditions, and he has been duly impressed with the necessity for doing something. My only quarrel with him is that he is rather inclined to think that it can be remedied perhaps in five minutes by an attempt to turn back the tide of native labour. My argument is that it cannot be done in five minutes, that we have to catch up on this enormous leeway of housing for the native population, and if we are sane and sensible we must learn to make up that leeway not by lowering the standard of economic development, as we are trying to do. Our business is to get housing for the people and get it as rapidly as possible, while recognising the trend of the people towards the towns in order to service our expanding industry. We want the whole of this Urban Areas Act reviewed; we want the country to realise that the housing of the native population is not the responsibility of the Native Affairs Department, but is a national problem which must be tackled on a national basis. I contend that that is the only sound policy. It is entirely false to assume that the native population is streaming to Cape Town when there is no demand for their labour. It is entirely false to assume that the whole movement of the native population to the towns arises from the passion of the native for the allurements of the town, a little more money and a little more excitement. The movement of the native population to the towns has been parallel with the trend of the European population to the towns to serve the needs of expanding industry.

The figures in the report of the Urban Areas Inspector, which I have referred to indicate that there is employment for possibly 40,000 native people in the Cape Peninsula, which, taking into account that minority which has dependants here, probably makes up the population to about 60,000, while there is legal accommodation throughout the Cape Peninsula for some 13,000. Our contention is that that is a situation which has to be dealt with by the provision of housing. This situation is due to an expanding demand for labour. It is nothing new. If it were simply a matter of saying: “What are these people doing in the slums? Clear them out,” the solution of the problem would be easy. But the fact of the matter is that the increase of the native population in the big industrial centres has grown up over a long period of years, and has been due to employment offered in the towns and the insufficient provision for natives in the reserves. All the reports say this, and I do not think anybody will deny it. Wherever there has been a demand for native labour there has been movement of the native people to the towns, and this has been intensified by the limitation of the reserves, taxation and other causes. I am going to suggest that there is no short cut out of this situation by the means indicated, or rather foreshadowed by this clause now introduced. Cape Town, in common with a great number of other towns, has filled its unskilled labour requirements by migrant native labour.

What about the coloured people?

They do supply a proportion of the demand but not the whole demand. If the hon. member knew the situation here as well as I do he would know that there are certain industries which only employ native labour. The dairy industry only employs native labour, and in the building industry the unskilled ranks are filled by native labourers, and that also applies to a number of other industries. This is a matter which is a common cause between the Minister and myself. In a report in the year 1941, one of the Native Affairs Department’s inspectors said that the native is deeply entrenched in the labour market in the Cape, and he has come to stay. The Cape is dependent upon unskilled native labour. The object of the administrative measures which this clause is designed to facilitate is to prevent, or at least to stem this so-called influx of natives into the Cape Peninsula. The policy of the country should be to build up a stabilised native working class in the towns while assisting those who remain in the country to make a living there. The fact of the matter is that at the present moment the large towns of this country, including Cape Town, which this clause is particularly meant to deal with, is dependent on migrant native labour, and as long as industry depends on workers living hundreds of miles away, the whole economic life of the community will be paralysed, if the so-called “influx” of natives is stopped. That is perfectly clear from the reports of the inspectors to which I have referred, and in these circumstances I say the situation should be faced up to. Even if it were a practicable proposition, there cannot be limitation of the entry of natives into the Cape Peninsula. Anybody who knows the situation will agree that that would bring catastrophe to the whole economic life of the Peninsula. It is an absolute impossibility directly to ration the supply of unskilled labour required in the Peninsula to the exact requirements of any particular type of industry. It is only at a time that local industry feels that it has got its full requirements, that this howl about a native influx has gone up. During 1941 when large construction works for defence were going on in the Cape Peninsula, there was positive encouragement for these people to come here. Even without that encouragement I would still contend that this is quite an impracticable way of dealing with the situation, because the people who come here have been driven out of the reserves by pressure of population and the threat of starvation. The whole native population of the reserves does not come to Cape Town; many go to other towns, and they go there compelled by pressure. This chaotic situation which prevails is one which we on these benches have been warning the country against for years, and it is quite impossible to deal with it administratively by Bills of this kind.

I am sorry my hon. friend on my right considers this debate unnecessary. I only wish the hon. member would join in, because we get a little tired of having to bring these matters before this House year after year, and we would certainly like to hear a little intelligent contribution from the other benches. Mr. Chairman, this is not a matter which we should take lightly. We are, I think, endeavouring to meet a national situation by a patchwork policy. On one side we have a situation in the Transkei which is overcrowded and the people cannot earn sufficient money to make a living. They are forced by economic circumstances to go out to work, and a great many of them go to the mines. But the mines do not employ all the people from the reserves. In a period of three years something like 70,000 have been rejected for work on the mines for health reasons, and obviously those 70,000 men are driven to seek work elsewhere in order to satisfy their needs. If they cannot go to the mines they must seek other industrial centres.

Why not the sugar industry?

The sugar industry is not yet on a civilised basis. The Native Affairs Department is fully aware of that situation, and they will endorse everything I say. Here you have a large number of people who have no land and no opportunity of earning a living in the reserves or the mines, and they are forced to go out to the industrial centres, where they are told they will not be allowed to work and earn; in fact, they are suspended between heaven and earth. I submit that you cannot deal with a situation like that by legislation of this character. Have we the slightest information before us to justify the statement that the natives who come to these centres are not required? The Minister only a few days ago made the statement that these people were required in industry.

Not all of them.

The great factor in the way of their use in industry is the lack of proper housing accommodation ; that has been repeatedly pointed out. It is impossible to place the responsibility for this housing on the local authorities, and in this respect we hope the Government will implement its declared policy and come forward and assist in this housing requirement. Is there any reason why these people should be prevented from coming to Cape Town any more than there is reason to prevent the European if he wants to come in? You are not going to prevent these people from coming here as long as they see there is money to be earned. Now what is going to happen under this system of registration? Are you going to create another source of imprisonment for the African people? I do beg the House to pause and consider where we are going. We are now going to pass one more irritating regulation in order to catch up with a situation which has been growing for years. Are you going to drive these people back on the reserves and still further complicate the position there? Is it not part of the Government’s policy to relieve part of the pressure in the reserves, and is not this one way of relieving that pressure by engaging the native in industry? What is wanted is a long term policy rather than this patchwork legislation. I am positive that if you pass this the native will find the way to evade it. If he cannot come into Bellville he will get off the train ten miles away. They will still find employment, and next year the Government will be coming to the House again and saying that we must extend the jurisdiction of these local bodies another ten miles, and eventually that jurisdiction will extend to the Transkei. These natives are helping to build up industries in this country, why don’t we treat them as human beings in that respect? They cannot live in the reserves, and they are forced to seek other means to live.

After the speech by the hon. member for Transkei (Mr. Hemming) I feel that I have to say something on this debate. The hon. member for Transkei does not know what the position here in Cape Town is, and I am surprised that the hon. member for Cape Western (Mr. Molteno) has not told him about it. If the hon. member reads the Cape Flats Commission’s report, he will see the deplorable conditions under which these people are living. These men come here from the native areas.

Why?

To look for work. They have no work and there is no control over them, and the result is that they are creating conditions here in the Cape Peninsula which, unless legislation such as contemplated by this Bill is passed, may lead to a very dangerous situation not only for them but for the whole white civilisation. We want to have general control. The natives come here in their thousands. The hon. member for Cape Western is familiar with the conditions prevailing among the natives who cannot find work. They come to our houses looking for work, and if the hon. member takes an interest in them, let him ask them how long they have actually been looking for work. Some of them have been trying to find employment for a long time, but are unable to find any. The natural effect is that they are driven into underground activities, and many of them degenerate. When they come here they are decent people but they get into the hands of groups which make use of them for illegal purposes and they are the people who eventually become a menace to us. Why do hon. members now want to plead for allround freedom for these people? We support the Minister because we want all-round control. We realise that there are certain facilities here in Cape Town for these people to secure proper employment at decent wages. We contend that a certain proportion of them can be absorbed in our industries, in our dairy concerns and so on, and it is our duty to look after them. But we don’t want an unrestricted influx such as we are having today. Train loads full come here from the Transkei and from the other parts. These natives come here under the impression that they will be able to find work, and some of them do find work at good wages; they write to the territories telling their friends that they have succeeded in finding employment at good wages and the result is that there is à large influx. I am convinced that the native representatives, if they really want to do something in the interests of the natives and also of the general community, will support legislation of this kind and welcome the proposals made by the Minister of Native Affairs. It may be that we have a restricted area here at the moment which the natives are not allowed to enter without permission, but as soon as we delimitate such an area, we find the same conditions arising on the outskirts, and under the existing law the Minister cannot prevent it. The Minister wants to prevent it. So why shouldn’t we help him? This whole question of the drift of natives to the town must be very thoroughly gone into and provision should be made for proper registration. They should not be allowed to come here to look for work unless they know that there is work awaiting them; yet they come here now on the off chance. The mines need native labour. They know how many natives they require so they recruit up to the number they need, with the result that those who go there are immediately employed. But that is not the position here. We have not yet got to the stage of knowing how many natives are needed in the various industries and in our dairy concerns. They simply come here; some of them get work at decent wages and word is immediately carried back to the territories and a further batch comes in. I can say this, that the white population of the Cape Peninsula is very much concerned about the condition which is being created by the influx of these natives and it is not only the white population which is concerned, but the City Council is very much concerned about it. The ratepayers are worried because they find a tremendous influx of strange natives. And now hon. members over there are demanding housing facilities for these natives. We don’t know what accommodation is needed. Provision is being made for 3,000 houses, in the way it is being done at Langa and other places. But next year we will find that another few thousands have come in.

That is also happening in regard to Europeans.

And in addition to that we should remember that we not only have to make provision for the housing of the natives but also for the Europeans besides; we also have to look after the coloured population. If we allow an unrestricted influx of natives to take place, we shall find that we are taking the work out of the hands of the coloured people, and I should like to know what hon. members over there would have to say about that. Subsequently a large number of coloured people will be unemployed. Quite a share of the work now done by natives can be done by the coloured people and hon. members must see the reasonableness of our attitude. As far as I understand the amendment proposed by the Minister, it is intended to maintain order, particularly to have powers to declare areas outside municipal areas as areas which will be subject to certain restrictions in regard to the coming in of natives.

Perhaps I should intervene at this point. In my second reading speech, I went into the whole matter very carefully indeed. I told the House exactly what our intentions were and what the reasons were for this clause, and I don’t think you would allow me to give the Committee all the details again in regard to the necessity for this clause. But this clause does not introduce any new principle at all, as Section 24 of the Natives Urban Areas Act already provides that two or more local authorities may co-operate to carry out and comply with all or any provision of the Act. That was originally laid down in the original Act. The registration system provided for in this section can be carried out either by the Government or by the local authority. Now the hon. member for Cape Western (Mr. Molteno) raised the point of housing. Well, housing is not the only point I raised in my second reading speech. I didn’t say that that was the only reason for our wanting to control the influx. It is one of the reasons. It is appalling that unfortunate natives who come here to work, who come here for the benefit of industrialists, are forced to go and find accommodation in the peri-urban areas in some shack or other, or have to be satisfied with a few poles and a bit of sacking. These people are forced to live under appalling conditions or otherwise they are exploited by rack-renters.

Whose fault is that?

I thought I had made it clear that before the war there were 16,000 natives here, while today the number is estimated at between 60 and 70 thousand natives.

Your premises are quite wrong.

When these numbers have jumped from 16 to 60 thousand and you can hardly get a brick or a piece of corrugated iron for building requirements you can understand why the housing authorities have been unable to get ahead. We know that the Cape Town Municipality are prepared to spend a million and a half pounds for housing for natives. I say housing is not the only reason although it is one of the reasons. We also want to provide for the control of people for whom there will be no work in the town. We also want to arrange matters for them to mke it easy for them to get work by having a proper labour bureau in your reception depot. The objects of your reception depot are: The registration of natives, the distribution of labour, the restriction of entry if necessary, and to provide temporary quarters for natives awaiting allocation. If you have a reception depot which can accommodate 2,000 natives, these people will be taken to that depot, and be allowed to seek work, and they will have some place where they can sleep while looking for work, and there will be an agency there which can say: “There is a place for noxious industries being developed there; and you can get employment there, and over there there is another place being developed and you can get jobs there.” Anyhow these people will know where to ask for labour and the natives will be efficiently and quietly distributed.

†*As the hon. member for Gordonia has stated, it is only to maintain order, in the first instance in view of the conditions which have developed in the Cape Peninsula.

†And that is the whole position. I am sorry to say that I cannot accept this amendment and I do not think you would allow me, Mr. Chairman, to go into all the reasons which I gave for the necessity for this clause when I spoke on the second reading.

I feel that we should consider this native question objectively. We are dealing here with abnormal conditions. I admire those hon. members who represent the natives for the fight they have put up, but I am afraid that what they have said is not correct. I know the Transkei, perhaps just as well as hon. members there, and I know the natives and their language and their customs; I was on the Bench for 15 years when I handled a lot of native cases. I know the native inside out, but so far as the housing question is concerned, I want to say that it is not only the natives who are suffering from a housing shortage, but the Europeans as well. Circumstances have caused Europeans to come to the towns and natives too, but for the information of hon. members over there I want to say that if we need natives for our harvesting and if we go to the Transkei with our lorries to get labour, they stick in their kraals and they refuse to come and work on the farms. They will tell you that they prefer to go to the towns.

Why not?

I don’t blame them, let them go. But don’t say that they can’t find work or that those areas are overcrowded. Don’t let us forget that some of the best land and some of the best parts of South Africa are situated in the Transkei, a country who is inhabited by natves.

But how many people are there?

Very well, but the opportunities that are available are not made full use of and those areas have not been fully developed.

The hon. member must come back to the clause.

I am only referring to the conditions there because those conditions have an effect on the drift of the natives into town. The question is whether it is necessary and whether it is true that they are compelled to leave the native areas to go to Cape Town and make a living there. I say that there is no need for them to go there because they can find work elsewhere. Besides, they are lazy, they don’t like work, and as a result they don’t cultivate their land properly. I have been to the Cape Flats to have a look there. There is a native living there who comes from my part of the country and I went to have a look at the place where he lives. Well, I am against the Government, but I must be honest and say this, if the Minister does not take action to cope with the abnormal condition which has arisen there the position will get completely out of hand and it is not only going to be a danger to the natives but to the European and coloured population as well. The Minister stated in Another Place that a new race was developing in Cape Town. The cause lies there. We have always stood for the policy of coloured people, natives and Europeans being kept apart. That is our policy. What is happening now. Today these people, the coloured and the natives are mixing in an unprecedented manner and unless action is taken the days of white civilisation in South Africa are numbered. That is what hon. members over there should realise. True, they are there to protect the interests of the natives, but this Bill is required to give the authorities the power to act under abnormal conditions to deal with the situation which has arisen. That is why I heartily support the Bill.

The Minister a moment ago replied to an interjection by the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Barlow) as to why there was such an arrear in housing facilities available for natives. He said there were 16,000 natives here in 1938 and 60,000 now. I’m sorry if that implies a condonation on the Minister’s part of the disgraceful neglect of housing conditions here in the Cape. I have heard Mr. Young, of the Native Affairs Commission, taking the Cape Town Council most severely to task for their failure to make adequate provision for native housing here. This is the situation which the Minister is now attempting to deal with. A matter of disgraceful neglect over a large number of years, and it is not the fault of us on these benches that there has been this neglect, for we have warned the country for many years. The Minister did not say that 16,000 related to the municipal area only. The figure of 60,000 relates to the whole of the Cape Peninsula, including Simonstown, Parow, Bellville and the whole of the Cape Flats. These figures are not comparable at all. I am for a moment dealing with these figures because it is this kind of exaggeration which makes the position more difficult. It assumes that something new has sprung up whereas it is the result of a long process. That figure of 60,000 relates to the Peninsula as a whole, whereas the 16,000 related to the Municipality of Cape Town. Now I am satisfied that that figure of 16,000 in 1938 was nothing like an accurate figure. The native people feared and detested the Census under the Urban Areas Act, and I have no doubt that the enumerators never got anything like the numbers that were here.

What do you put the increase at in the last five years?

I put that increase down to the rapid expansion of industry here, more particularly since war broke out, with the added demand for labour. And the Minister’s department put it down to the same causes. If I may refer to the report, I would point out that the labour requirements were put in 1938 at 10,000. Now the Minister’s Inspector of Urban Areas puts the figure at 23,000 for the Cape Town Municipal area, that is more than double, due to the expansion of industry, and yet not a single additional native house had been built. Now it is proposed to deal with a situation, which is essentially a social and economic one by administrative means. The Minister says there is nothing new in this registration system. It is the rotten working of the registration in the past which makes us nervous about the whole position. The registration system simply imposes additional costs. There is nothing given to the employer or the employee in return. It simply increases the cost of production. It is simply an additional administration cost which must militate against the increased wages. If there is money to be spent. I would rather see that money spent on increasing wages. The system works to the great disadvantage of those native workers who come under it. The African voter does not come under the system, nor does the coloured worker come under it, and I defy contradiction of this point—the best employers here will not have African workers who have to take out these registration contracts. I have been told over and over again that many employers here will only take voters. The Cape Town Hospital, the Groote Schuur Hospital will only take voters because they won’t be bothered with this wretched and expensive registration to which the Minister is apparently attaching so much importance. I don’t think the Cape Peninsula members like this clause—they’ve said nothing on it yet—I believe they would be even more reluctant to agree to this clause if they realised that it not only requires an extension of the registration system but it is contemplated by the Department that the pass system shall be enforced with the assistance of the South African Police which will mean all the chasing about and all the trouble which is characteristic of the administration of the Pass Laws in the Transvaal. And all that is now to be introduced into the Cape Peninsula. The Urban Areas Inspector’s report had a passage on this matter which says: “What is urgently required, therefore, is a system which will ensure that their (the Africans’) legal presence in the area while seeking work is evidenced by documentary proof, the onus of production of which is placed on them themselves.” Under the system in force at present administered by the Municipal authorities, the production could not be demanded sufficiently often for every native to have to prove his legal presence in the Cape Peninsula. I hope these words which I have quoted do not mean that we are going to have introduced in the Cape Peninsula a system of Pass Laws such as exists in Johannesburg. Although we have these restrictions and this registration system, they have not provided a remedy in any sense for the evils to which the Minister has referred. It has failed, and there is no justification for its extension. Now I want to read in this connection from a memorandum which the Langa advisory board and the Vigilance Committee submitted to the Smit Committee on conditions of natives in urban areas in 1941. [Time limit.]

The Minister reminds me of a bridesmaid who came back from the wedding and put some wedding cake under her pillow and dreamt sweet dreams of all the sweet things that were going to happen. There is no doubt that all the laws interfering with the African people in South Africa have had the very opposite effect to what they were supposed to have when passed. We know what happened. When General Botha introduced his. first law he thought he was going to solve the trouble but he drove the natives off the veld into the towns—not to the farms as he thought, but into the towns. And perhaps one of the most unforgiveable things that has happened is the way the white man attracted the black man into the town and allowed him to go into the slums and pretty well perish. I should like to quote what the Prime Minister said not so long ago—

The Minister is widening these gaps. If you go into a town with a population of from 20,000 you find the natives streaming in and what assistance has the registration been? It has not kept the black man out of the towns. Has it kept the black man out of Johannesburg or Pretoria or Port Elizabeth or East London or Cape Town? These are among our biggest towns. It has not assisted one iota. As long as industry calls for cheap and ineffective labour, so long will the black man go to the industrial centres and be chained to the wheels of industry. And why should he not go? Where is he to stay—in the Transkei? Let me read what has just been issued from the Transkei which is rife with typhus fever. I have the report here from Dr. du Pré le Roux in which he says that the failure of crops has undoubtedly had an effect on the incidence of disease in the past and will no doubt affect it in the future. The Assistant Chief Director of Health says that provided normal weather conditions are experienced between now and the harvesting season there will be a shortage of between three hundred and four hundred thousand bags of mealies. There is starvation in the Transkei now according to the Minister’s own doctor.

They don’t want to work.

One native does more work in a day than the hon. member in a year. We have heard the story of not wanting to work. No one wants to work. We would all like to sit under our vine tree and not work. The native does work. Had it not been for the native there would have been no country. What is the use of being dishonest? Who has dug the mines? Who has built the railway lines? Who does all the hard work? If it had not been for the native we might have had a big white population here, possibly, but this country has been built on the broad back of the native. He has been our asset; and for people to say he doesn’t want to work is cheap. It will not get us any further in this Parliament. If he does not want to work why do our members always want to employ him? Why do farmers always cry out for him? I am sorry for the Minister. He has inherited these things, because we have never had a Minister of Native Affairs who has ever got down to the position of the native in this country. They have always pushed it aside. Luckily we have today in the Secretary for Native Affairs a man who takes a great interest, a remarkable man, but he has also inherited these things. I say to the Minister: “Go slow, because the native problem is the only problem we have here.” There is no other problem. The little quarrel between hon. members over there and ourselves is a joke. But the native question is not a joke. The black man is becoming organised and very well organised. He is listening to what goes on and if we make registration compulsory and treat the native like cattle, the native will get up and hit us, he will hit us economically, and he is doing so at present through his trade unions. He is becoming more and more powerful, and this is not the type of legislation to pass at present. I speak very seriously because I can see what is going on in the bigger centres. We are not solving this problem, we are running away from it. I am very frightened that this Bill aims at turning the black man from the towns to make him work on the farms. But if the farmer thinks he will get his labour in this way he is mistaken. The Minister has the biggest job of any Cabinet Minister. I wish him well and we all do. We know he is a good and strong man striving with adversity. We want to assist him. I say to the Minister that this clause will do no good. How are you going to stop natives coming to Cape Town. Are you going to get the police to do it or the burghers or the volunteers? You have never done it and never will. My hon. friend over there has told us more about the native problem than we have ever heard before. The other members are afraid of their voters and they never mention this problem. I am not afraid of any voters. But let us be truthful about the matter. The black man is not represented in this House except by my hon. friends over there. But he will be represented by more of that type of member before many years pass away. And the time is coming when there will not be three native representatives here; there will be six and nine and twelve. You cannot treat the native as you have treated him before. He is marking what is being said in this House, and it is being marked all over the country and all over the world. The book “South of the Congo,” is going right through America like wild fire. It is doing this country a lot of harm. [Time limit.]

I would like to say a few words. I fail to see what the speech, made just now by the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Barlow), has to do with this question. We know that the native problem is the most difficult problem in South Africa to solve, but I do not know what the hon. member means by this speech. He was also at one time a farmer. He usually says that the farmers are not doing their work, but he was also a farmer and he could not remain a farmer.

That is unfair.

I speak under correction. But for some reason or other the hon. member is no longer a farmer today. He says that we cannot stop the natives who are drifting here. We have made a law; we have divided the country. If the hon. member says it is unfair, it is another matter.

Did you stop them?

I say the natives have no right to come here in as great a number as they like. I wish to ask the hon. member this. If he has a farm, would he allow natives to go there without restriction?

You would not allow Europeans to come in as great a number as they like either.

That is another matter. The natives have drifted down here by the thousand, and I say it is unfair towards the natives themselves to entice them down here and then to let them walk about without work.

But they have work.

It is not only unfair towards the European and coloured community, but it is unfair towards those natives, and I think we must follow a policy according to which no native can board a train unless he has a certificate to show that he has got employment, and if that is done, we will not be faced with this difficulty. It does not help for the hon. member to say that the native representatives are opposed to the Act. The hon. member is an old Free Stater. I am very sorry to hear an old Free Stater say these things. The Free State followed a policy of fairness towards the native in the Free State.

This is not a Free State Act.

The hon. member will be the last person to rise here and say that the old Free State Republic followed an unfair policy towards the natives, but the kind of speech he made here this afternoon, will eventually do us in South Africa more harm than he thinks.

The Free State never promulgated such an Act.

The hon. member must leave it to the native representatives to make that kind of speech. And I want to say this : I believe we have made a mistake. If there were today three natives to represent the natives, you would not have had these inflammatory speeches which you get from those Benches today. I, too, know the natives. I have met them in Select Committees. They are very fair and I do not believe they would be able to make these inflammatory speeches. I agree with the hon. member that the time will come when we will have to give the natives greater representation. I am in favour of a policy of fairness towards the natives. At public meetings I always say that if we, who are today put in charge of the natives, follow an unfair policy, we and our children will be punished in the long run. But the question is whether this kind of speech is going to assist the native. No, I am in favour of our being fair towards the native, but I do not say it is fair to bring the natives from their areas, to bring them here by the thousand when there is no employment for them. We have heard from the Minister that the natives come here and must live in the open under bushes. Is it fair to allow those conditions? No, I think the Minister must follow a policy that no native may come here unless he can prove that he can get employment. I think it would be quite fair, even if there is an area to which Europeans want to drift, not to allow them, without restriction, to drift in and aggravate conditions there. No one will blame the Government if it takes steps to prevent that.

If it is true that very few representatives of preponderantly European constituencies join in these debates on behalf of the natives, I am quite certain it is not because they are afraid of losing votes; because, Sir, the whole of this country sympathises with the native representatives in wishing that there should be great improvements established without delay for the Bantu peoples. You do not lose votes by attempting to do what is fair to the native people; you gain votes; so I do not think it was quite worthy to introduce that particular note into this debate.

It is quite true.

I do not always agree with the hon. Minister, but I am perfectly satisfied that he also wishes to improve the social and economic standing of these people under discussion. The difficulty is not that we do not want to do it, but to find a method in which it can be done. Recently I was speaking to some of my own particular friends who employ native boys as office hands. I asked one employer what happened to the native when the day was done. He said: “Oh, he sweeps up the office, and makes things tidy.” I said: “When that is done, what happens: to him? Where, for example, does he sleep?” My friend couldn’t say. Others, confronted with similar questions, confessed the same ignorance. They “just did not know.” They did not know where the native lived, they did not know where he slept or what he ate, or anything at all of his personal life. He was just an item in the business. People are feeling ashamed of that sort of treatment of native workers. The public conscience is aroused.

I think the hon. member must come back to the clause.

I want to come to the question of the housing of the natives whom we have in the towns, and I was quoting this as an instance of the need for housing facilities.

Order, order ! The Committee is now dealing with Clause 7.

I take it that whereas the Minister wishes to keep down the influx into cities of natives from the country, he does not wish to expel all those who are already working and living in the towns, and who are already doing a useful job in commerce and industries.

I must point out to the hon. member that the clause has no reference to that at all.

You are offside.

In addition to any further conditions that could be made as to passes or other qualifications for entry into urban areas, am I allowed to suggest that we can improve the position of the natives who are already here in Cape Town by making use of certain tenantless buildings? Surely that will come under the clause …

May I suggest to the hon. member that he should discuss that question under the third reading.

Very well, Sir, I shall do so.

I must say that I was rather surprised at the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Barlow). I never knew, although I have suspected it for a long time, that the hon. member is an alarmist.

I thought I would draw the fire of my hon. friend.

He is trying to frighten the House and the country. He suggested that all the legislation we have had up to the present in regard to native affairs has done no good to that question. I would like to know whether the hon. member suggests that we should not have any legislation at all, that we should let these things develop.

This is the wrong kind of legislation.

My hon. friend said that all the legislation of the past had done the native problem no good.

I say it has not helped.

All I can say in reply to that is that it has helped the native population to this extent, that they have increased marvellously.

There is nothing marvellous about it.

It is only the desperately poor people.

If I compare the increase in South Africa with the increase of the native population in other parts of the world, then I am staggered.

Where does the story come from about this marvellous increase?

It is a fact.

Can you mention the names of the other countries?

Australia, to mention one.

What other country?

The United States.

Tell us where else.

I have told you where. You ought to know; you are a man of history.

Australia, forsooth !

New Zealand is another country. I would like to refer to the question as to why this trouble exists in South Africa. It has been said that it is through pressure that the native people have come to Cape Town.

That is what this official document says.

They have come because of pressure to leave the territories, not because they wanted to come to Cape Town. That is a very big difference. They were under pressure to leave the territories, but not necessarily to come to Cape Town. There are many areas where they could have obtained work, but through some peculiar working in the native mind they come to Cape Town.

They come here because of the miserable wages in other parts of the country.

They have shown a preference for Cape Town with the result that we have ä very large population of blacks here who have not got work. I am not suggesting that the number is 5,000 or 60,000, but a large number of natives have not got work. What I object to in regard to the representations made by the members who represent the natives in this House is this, that they want no control; they want no restrictions at all; they want to allow the migratory tendency, as they call it, to go unchecked. They suggest that the natives should be allowed to come to Cape Town, and that when they come here there should be a house waiting for them.

Where do you suggest sending them?

Where there is work for them.

Do you mean the mines?

Do you mean the farms?

The mines, yes, if there is work for them.

Or the farms?

Yes, if there is work for them on the farms. The accusation against the Minister is that no provision is made for housing for these people. It is suggested that the local authorities should provide housing. I want to ask those hon. members this question. If there is no control over the natives, what local authority would see that there is housing? How would they know how great the need is?

Provide the housing first.

That is the sort of thing I disagree with. The Minister told us that the Municipality of Cape Town is prepared to spend £1,500,000 on housing. I understand these houses will cost about £800 each. That will mean 2,000 houses for £1,500,000. It is said that there are four times as many natives as that. In other words, £6,000,000 would be required by the municipality to build houses for the natives.

I do not think the hon. member should go too deeply into the question of housing. The Committee is not dealing with housing.

The point has been made that they should be provided with houses when they come to Cape Town. If you are going to ask the local authority to provide houses you must know how many houses will be required. If there is no restriction, how can any local authority be expected to accept the responsibility for housing when they do not know what number will be required. Those hon. members must remember that we are still at war. I notice that even in England you cannot get out of the country if you are not very careful. There is still a war going on. It has been suggested by the hon. member that some “sensible” legislation should be introduced, which means in any case that during the war you must deal with the problem as it exists today. We have got this problem here. Does the hon. member suggest that we should borrow £10,000,000 to put up housing for the natives? The latter section of this Bill deals with the question of housing for natives, and in order to be able to deal with that there must be control, if we expect the local authorities to build houses. They cannot be expected to build houses without having any facts at all with regard to the number of natives in the area. The suggestion in this Bill is that you must have registration and I fully agree with it. What is the objection to registration? The hon. member for Hospital carries a registration certificate in his pocket the whole day. He carries his railway pass; he carries his petrol coupons. It has been suggested that no white people have been restricted. My hon. friends forget the diamond diggings where you had the same sort of poverty and where the whites were forcibly excluded. Legislation was passed preventing them from going there.

They have it there today.

My claim is this, that when we talk about native legislation— and that is the fault I find with the native representatives—they look at the whites and point out that this sort of legislation does not apply to Europeans. They expect the natives to have what the whites have. Well, anyone who expects the natives to be on the same plane as the whites, starts wrongly. They may reach the same plane at some future date.

That is the old, old story.

My hon. friend has forgotten the old, old story. No, Sir, if you have no registration I see no hope for dealing effectively with this native question; whether it is done by means of the pass system or not, you must know how many people there are in any particular area, otherwise you have no hope of making provision for housing for them, or seeing that labour is sent where labour is required, and I hope the Minister will not heed the appeals of those hon. members.

I think the Minister will agree that it is the intention of this clause to provide for a situation which he regards as abnormal. He feels that there has been an amazing accession to the ranks of native labour in Cape Town which has created unbalanced social conditions, and he wants to control those conditions. The contention which we on these benches have put up is that it is not a new and, in this sense, abnormal situation. It is a situation that has been developing progressively over the last ten years, that there are no indications that there is going to be any change in the direction of our development, and that therefore this is a particularly bad time to legislate in this regard. We have no indication yet that the economic development of Cape Town is going to contract suddenly and that we are going to need far fewer labourers than we have had in the past. Indeed, the Government continually assures us, and the country, that our economic development is going to extend rapidly and that we are not facing a post-war economic crisis. In these circumstances we feel that it is extremely unwise to impose new restrictions on the flow of labour into areas where it has come in response to natural demand. There is just one corollary I would like to make to that, and that is that if the Minister thinks— as I am certain my hon. friends on these (Nationalist) benches think—that other areas are being starved because Cape Town is getting more than its share of the labour market, that it is getting more than it deserves, he should adopt some other method of dealing with the situation than the one he is proposing now. The hon. member for Potchefstroom (Mr. Van der Merwe) whose speeches on native affairs this Session in Parliament have made me progressively anxious about the value of the Native Affairs Commission, whose speech, in fact, makes me feel quite hopeless, because I feel that he has not even begun to understand the social and economic factors at work in this country, puts out the amazing statement that it is “some peculiar working of the native mind” that has brought the native people flocking down to Cape Town. Actually, the hon. member is not quite as stupid as that, and I do not know why he pretended he 1s. He knows that the only thing that is peculiar about the native mind in its decision to come to Cape Town at the present time, is a common peculiarity on the part of all people who go to the market where the pay is best. That is a perfectly simple fact, and I think the hon. Minister of Native Affairs would have done very well to take his Native Affairs Commissioner, the hon. member for Potchefstroom, down to the Transkei with him when he went on his recent expedition to explain the causes of typhus to the native population. I think the hon. member for Potchefstroom might have learnt something from the speech which was reported in the Press of the Paramount Chief of the Pondos, who explained in quite simple terms that if the hon. Minister would get the wage level up in other parts of the country, he would be taking the best possible means of reducing the pressure on the housing of Cape Town and its environs. That was to him a quite simple economic propostion; to me also it is a quite simple economic proposition; and I am absolutely convinced that it is a simple economic proposition to the hon. member for Vasco (Mr. Mushet). I say that because he is an industrialist. Today again I have had reason for regretting bitterly that we hear so little in this House from representatives of the commercial and industrial communities in this country. We hear so little from the representatives of the commercial and industrial communities in this country, who could better tell the Native Affairs Department and the hon. Minister the real reason why we are drawing the natives to Cape Town. I would like to know what they feel about what is implicit in the proposition of the hon. member for Aliwal (Capt. G. H. F. Strydom), who said that if we turned the natives back they could find work.

Where?

He suggested that there was work going for them if we turned them back. As my hon. friend says, the question is where? The answer is, in those areas where what is offering in return for their labour is so inadequate that there is no temptation for them to work. We all know that there has to be a certain amount of inducement before anybody is prepared to work, and the trouble is just that in most areas where work is offering the pay is so little that the people will not go there of their own volition. What is the nett result? It is the same old story that our purchasing power is so low that we cannot guarantee an adequate expansion of our industries. There is one other point I want to make before I sit down, and that is this. The hon. member for Potchefstroom repeated the old story that those of us on these benches want no restrictions at all on natives, that we want no interference with them at all. The point that we have continuously made from these benches—but of course it does need some social and intellectual training to grasp it— is that we are entirely opposed to discrimination; we are entirely opposed to discrimination; we are not opposed to diffentiations that take into consideration the interests of both parties.

That is the American Charter.

We have never claimed that we want absolute uniform treatment for every section in this country. In fact, we have said the very opposite. We are actually demanding protection for the native people because they are not fit to compete in the open competitive market which Western civilisation has created in this country. But as we explained on the discussion on the second clause of the Bill on the subject of mortgage bonds for small property owners, we are asking for the same protection for any section of the community which cannot stand on its own feet and which is liable to be exploited by forces for which it is not clever enough. My final objection to this Bill arises out of that fact, plus what was said by the hon. member for Gordonia (Mr. J. H. Conradie). He said ….

The hon. member cannot discuss the principles of the Bill.

No, Sir, I do not propose to do so. I am dealing with the argument that the hon. member for Gordonia used in support of this clause, which is intended to keep out a great proportion of the native population that wants to come into Cape Town to look for work. In that connection he quoted the report of the Cape Flats Committee of Enquiry. I think that report of the Cape Flats Committee made our case all along the line, because that report shows that the sort of thing for which the Minister is legislating in this Bill by means of imposing a new barrier on the movement of the native population, exists already in respect of the coloured population, but would anybody suggest for one moment imposing the restrictions on the coloured population that are being imposed on the native population? Not for one moment. After all, the coloured people are on the voters’ roll.

They live here.

They live everywhere. They have also come in from rural areas. They have not got to carry passes, and I hope they will not have to do so. I do not want the House to think for a moment that I want these restrictions imposed on coloureds, but I stand here very strongly to oppose the imposition of restrictions on the native population of this country which are not imposed and which no one would dream of imposing on the people who normally go to the polls. I think that is a very legitimate argument. In fact, I have a feeling that there has been far too much consideration of the interests of the coloured population as against the interests of the native population. Those people belong to the same working class; they are equally dependent on their work for a living. They ought therefore to be given the same opportunities in the labour market. [Time limit.]

Mr. Chairman, a good deal of heat has been engendered quite unnecessarily in this debate. We are facing quite abnormal circumstances because a large number of coloured people have joined the army and gone up to the front leaving the jobs they were carrying a few years ago. A large number of natives have been imported to fill their places and the military authorities have been employing a large number of natives on construction works. On completion of those works these men were thrown out of employment. Whether this condition is going to continue or not we are not quite sure, but one fact we have to remember is that the coloured people will be coming back, very shortly, I hope, when they will have to be reinstated in the employment which they left. These conditions have to be faced. Now today we have a tremendous influx of natives down here. Why? Because wages are higher here than they are anywhere else in the Union. That is the true fact, and they admit it; wages range from 6s. to 10s. a day, and that is why you have this tremendous influx. Only recently a native in employment here, purchased thirteen head of cattle at a local sale and sent them to the Transkei. Unfortunately the importation of scrub stock is prohibited in the Territories and he was not allowed to take them to his location. They were sold and he suffered great loss. Now the fact that he expended his earnings here on the purchase of cattle is surely proof that he was not forced by economic pressure or starvation to come here. These facts surely are an indication that the natives are not all starving up there? Today the natives are squandering money. We have numerous instances of that kind. Fortunately I am able to speak the native language and so can get into close touch with the natives. Yesterday I met two old natives from my district. I stopped and spoke to them, and they were bewailing the fact that even piccanins and young girls are coming down here, and these old men said they were being ruined. They were brought into contact with liquor and all sorts of evils. If hon. members over there would look at this question from another point of view and try to discourage these people from coming down, they would be doing the people whom they represent much greater service. Let me refer to what the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Barlow), has said. He states the natives in the Territories were starving. In the Transkei today the Roads Department can not get natives to work. In the recent rain the roads were damaged, and the department had to take natives from the offices and from the clerical staffs there to help to repair the roads, because they could not get any natives to work. The Forestry Department also is unable to get labour and the farmers are unable to get labour.

They don’t pay; that is why.

They have so much money they don’t need to work, and that is a fact. As far as the Transkei is concerned the conditions of the natives there is better than probably in many other native reserves. There is certainly not the starvation that sometimes occurs in other areas. A few years ago, before hon. members represented the natives in this House, natives were protesting to me against the influx of natives from Nyasaland and from outside the Union who were competing against them. We have today here in Cape Town thousands of natives who are not Union natives, and I think myself it is in the interests of the natives themselves that they should be subjected to some form of registration and control, and some means of stopping the influx of natives down here. Personally, I would like to see this area here reserved for the coloured population of the Union. It is their country and they themselves are resenting the influx of natives, which is likely to cause trouble. We must have some method of control, and this is the only method that has been evolved after many years of experience. I am sorry we have had this rather heated discussion over this simple matter, which should only have taken about half the time. I am convinced that it is absolutely necessary, perhaps even more in the interests of the natives themselves, that a record should be kept of labour requirements in different areas, so that natives should not swarm down here or elsewhere, when there is no demand for their labour. They are put to all the expense of train fares to come here.

The speech of the hon. member for Tembuland (Mr. Payn) has tempted me to get on my feet. The hon. member represents the views of the Native Affairs Commission, and as a matter of fact I have always felt that that commission should be abolished because I think it is used for political preferment rather than in the interests of the natives. I must say I was astonished to hear a member of that commission speak of a native buying cattle in terms of a native squandering his money. That is a new one to me. Previously we heard the native squandered his money on drink, concertinas and things of that description, but now an hon. member of the Native Affairs Commission tells us that natives are squandering their money in buying cattle. Cattle are some of the things that the natives in the Transkei are very much in need of at the moment.

No., they are overcrowded.

Order. I would like to point out that the Committee is still on Clause 7.

I am dealing with the hon. member whose speech had grave implications for the native population.

Order. Yes, but it certainly has nothing to do with the sale of cattle.

The point is that the hon. member, who is a member of the Native Affairs Commission has today made a speech for the Nationalist Party. He suggested that the Transkei is well able to retain these natives, but we know that in a report recently issued by a number of gentlemen who investigated the position, that the Transkei cannot support the natives who are already there, and therefore any attempt by the Government to confine these natives in the Transkei rather than allow them a free opportunity to seek work, where they can find it best, has in my opinion a great deal to do with Clause 7. This clause, like so many other pieces of patchwork legislation, is an attempt to interfere with the natural processes of economics. When we plead in some instances for particular reforms in this House, we are met very often by the argument that the natural processes of economics must be allowed to take their course. In other words, that private enterprise must be given free play. But when it comes to the case of a farmer it is a case of the farmers are short of labour. [Interruptions.] The farmers, in some instances, are the curse of this country, when they are short of labour and when they are not prepared to pay the wages. [Interruptions.] In some instances I say when they are responsible for legislation of this description. When legislation of this description comes before the House we see a remarkable degree of unanimity. A position has arisen which many of us foresaw years ago. We have reached the stage in the development of South Africa where wages have reached the level to which the native has never before reached. There is only a limited amount of even native labour in the Union, and the native who has to work inclines to come to the particular market where wages are highest, and why should not we allow the natural play of economic processes to continue, and to continue in such a way that the farmers, if they desire labour, will be forced to pay the higher wage? I do not wish to deny the farmer labour, but the farmer must pay economic wages. If farming is to continue in this country on any kind of legitimate basis at all, the higher wages must be paid, wages which are at least comparable with the wages paid by industry.

How many of these natives are from the farms?

I do not only speak on behalf of the trade union, I get about all over the country, and some of the suggestions which are put up to me range from forcing the natives on to the farms with a sjambok to employing machine guns.

Nonsense.

It is not nonsense.

Order. Will the hon. member please come back to the clause which deals with registration.

Yes, Sir, I am dealing with the reasons underlying this legislation; the question at issue is whether the natives in this country are going to be allowed to utilise the free play of economic forces or not. The purpose of this legislation is to stop them. I am opposing this registration because I say the Government is not entitled to stop them, and I shall have to develop my argument to show that. The Government proposes to stop them from coming here. Why? The hon. member for Tembuland has suggested that it is purely in the interests of the coloured man. I am not going to say there is not some truth in that, but the hon. member must also remember that very large numbers of natives also joined the army.

Far more.

A large number of them from the Transkei; and is the suggestion that when they come back they are not to be allowed to play their part in the industrialisation in the Cape Province, and to receive the higher wages which they are entitled to? I do not think the hon. member is entitled to say that.

Is there room for more?

There is room for them. This is an attempt to interfere with the free play of economic forces in South Africa. The industrialist needs native labour, and if we are not going to have industrial development in the Union, in the long run the farmer will suffer just as much as anybody else, and probably more. So in the long run it comes back to this, that it is in the interests of the farmers to see that there is a sufficient supply of permanent resident native industrial labour in the urban areas. That is the only sensible way to look at the problem. [Time limit.]

Mr. Chairman, the Prime Minister has told the country that segregation has broken down, and it has broken down. The hon. member for Kimberley (District) (Mr. Steytler) is living in a Nirvana. I may tell him that in Cape Town two years ago the Hon. the Prime Minister said that segregation had broken down. Now I want to ask the Minister three questions, if he will listen to me for a minute or two.

I am listening to you all the time.

I want to ask him, is there unemployment in Cape Town for natives?

I was told by the City Council that there are 8,000.

Don’t put me on to the City Council. Will the Minister tell the country officially if there is unemployment for natives in Cape Town?

I cannot say, I have no official figures.

The Minister says he cannot tell us. Is there unemployment for natives in Johannesburg?

I have no official figures. I am told that in Durban ….

I am not asking anything about Durban; is there unemployment in Pretoria? I have now asked there definite questions, and the Minister says he does not know. These are the three biggest towns in South Africa, and the Minister is now bringing in a Bill to stop people coming into a particular region, and he does not know whether there is unemployment there or not. Let me read from his own Department, it is always nice to quote from the Minister’s Department. His Department says that for economic reasons there is a considerable movement out of the native territories, there is a constant coming and going to and from the territories to the centres of employment, and the Cape Peninsula at the present time offers great labour attractions. Now where are we? On the one hand they tell us that we must not bring the natives in here because there are too many of them, and here we are told by his own Department that there are great labour attractions in the Cape Peninsula. I ask the Minister where he is now; he does not seem quite to know. Now let me read something else. Bishop Lavis says—

Now on whom must we put that blame? Bishop Lavis goes on to say that natives are living in the bushes. There is work in Cape Town, there is work in Johannesburg, there is work in Pretoria and work on the farms. But as the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. Burnside) has put it, the farmers won’t pay the wage. The farming industry in this country has always lived on a low wage.

They cannot afford to pay any higher.

Well, all right, let us give them another subsidy.

Will the hon. member please tell me what this has to do with the question of registration in a particular area?

Everything to do with it, because we want natives to have free play in our economic system, and the real meaning of this Bill is to keep the native out of the town where he can get a good wage, and get him on the farms where he does not get a living wage. That is the basis of this Bill, and the sooner we understand that the better.

[Inaudible.]

That is what the old farmer says. It is an extraordinary thing, Mr. Chairman, if the native is so happy on the farm that he always leaves it as soon as he can. That is why I am opposing this Bill, because I say every citizen in South Africa should have free play under our economic system, and you have no right to put one in one kraal and another in another kraal. The Nationalists say everybody must be segregated, and that is what this Bill is meant to do, to drive the black man on to the mines or on to the farms. I was sorry to hear my old friend, he is an old friend of mine, the member for Tembuland (Mr. Payn) speaking as he did. There is great poverty in the Transkei, and many natives there are suffering from starvation, and that is why typhus has broken out there. There is not only black fever, but an enormous amount of venereal disease and tuberculosis. That is what the white man has done for the black man; pay him a low wage and allow him to starve. This is not the way to legislate in a modern country. The Minister must go into this question much deeper than he has done up to the present. If you are going to chain the black man to the wheels of industry you will have to pay him a decent wage. Let us have a decent minimum wage for the black man. That would solve all these problems. The native does not want to move from one town to another; if he gets a decent wage in one place he does not want to move from one place to another. He is brought to the towns by the pressure of hunger, and the sooner this House realises that the better. We want a minimum wage for the black man as well as the white, and the sooner we get that the sooner we shall get away from all these difficulties. In Johannesburg they have worked it out that a black man must have at least £7 16s. a month, and let us work for a standard wage right throughout the country. Let us work up to that, and then there will be no reason for Bills of this type.

The speeches of hon. members on my left do the country more harm than good, and they do the natives more harm than good. The Minister must not allow himself to be misled by those speeches. He must persevere, and we must prevent the natives from flocking to our cities and towns. We must be very careful in dealing with this matter. The question has been asked by certain hon. members whether there is unemployment amongst the natives in Johannesburg. I say yes, there 1s. Within one week more than 3,000 vagrants who were without employment were arrested in Johannesburg; and anyone knowing that will admit that it testifies to unemployment. Before we build houses for the natives in the city we must first of all have a good organisation to prevent the influx of natives to the towns and cities. The Minister should persevere and strictly carry out the provisions of this Bill. He should frame the provisions even more carefully and more strictly than has been the case up to the present. What I cannot understand of the speakers in this House is that they always attack the farmers. They hardly open their mouths before they attack the farmers. The hon. member on the other side (Mr. Burnside) who has now left the House, made an attack on the farmers. If the farmer does not produce food for him, what would become of him? I want to say this—I do not know what the position is in Cape Town, because I do not know Cape Town very well—but the natives flock to Johannesburg, and the result is that those who cannot obtain work go out during the week-end and steal enough to last them for a week. We who live near Johannesburg can no longer farm with cattle, fowls etc. because we are robbed to a point of bankruptcy. In making provision for these things, the Government should act cautiously.

I am really surprised to hear the speeches of the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Barlow). One would imagine that the hon. member comes from an extremely communistic section in South Africa. He suggested here that the Minister of Native Affairs was cruel towards the natives. The position is the very opposite. The Minister sympathises with the natives, and he does not want the natives to flock to the big cities unnecessarily. He does not say that no natives should come to the cities, but only that the influx should be controlled. The hon. member should go to the Cape Flats, where he will see how these natives live under trees and under sacks. That is because too many of them flocked to the city, and there can be no objection to the Minister taking steps to ensure that no more than the necessary numbers will come in. We still have the native laws; do the native representatives want us to abolish those laws entirely? When I listen to them, I gain the impression that they want to do away with segregation altogether. Well, we say no. We have nothing against the natives, but they must be controlled. What surprises me even more is that the native representatives come here and try to force concessions from the European for the natives, while they are too hopeless to see to it that the natives are fed properly in their own territories. As I have said on a previous occasion, if they saw to it that their own territories had small factories and storage accommodation for products and that there is control, so that the native will not be exploited, I could still understand their attitude. But they are not satisfied with that. They do nothing in their own territories. They only come here to cause mischief between the Europeans and the non-Europeans. That is our objection. We on this side of the House are the friends of the natives, not their enemies. Hon. members on that side are laughing. They should go and see how the natives are treated on the farms, where they remain as long as 20 or 30 years. The natives who flock to the cities do not come from the farms but from the native territories. These are not people who are driven out by the farmers; they come from the territories where the members who represent the natives are supposed to look after them. We do not hear them pleading for an improvement in the conditions in the native territories; we do not hear them pleading that the natives should be assisted in their own territories so that they will be able to produce more food, and so that better conditions will be created. No, those hon. members only come here and attack the Europeans. They come here with a sort of threat. In their opinion Communism plays a great role in our country, and they want to use this system against the Europeans. They are now holding a pistol to the Minister’s head. I say that what the Minister is doing is in the interests of the natives. The Minister does not want the natives to be shot at some future date because they contravened the law. He wants to keep them in their places. In taking that step he shows that he is the friend of the natives, not their enemy. The Minister says that there are 8,000 unemployed natives wandering about Cape Town. Can we allow such a condition? Will anyone with commonsense object to the Minister taking steps in this connection? No, the hon. members are looking for something else. Their action causes ill-feeling between natives and Europeans and they do so for their own purposes, namely, to foster Communism. They incite black against white, in order to exterminate the Europeans in this country. They do not realise how much harm they are doing.

I am sorry the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Barlow) is not here. He has a very facile tongue, but that is no excuse for misleading deductions. When he read the report of Dr. Smit and talked about economic attractions in the cities, that didn’t mean that there was labour jobs available in the cities. The natives are attracted by the high scale of wages. Let me tell hon. members who have spoken on this question that I have native boys calling at my house asking for work regularly. The other day I had at least four calling and applying for work. Out of those four only one or two could speak Afrikaans or English. The others could only speak their native language. I think the Minister is doing the right thing. He is saving them from their own misery. Where do the unfortunate beggars live when they come here? They live with the lowest class of coloured people on the Flats. It is all very well to say that we must build houses for the natives here in Cape Town. Of course we must if they are here permanently in permanent jobs, but we cannot build a house for every native who comes here in the hope of a job. Even if you had a house for everyone would their economic level be such that they could pay the rent? I am not saying that all the natives are getting a fair wage. In many cases they are not. But when the hon. member for Hospital talks about a minimum wage for every native; then I say yes, provided the native can do the job. I refuse to pay a minimum wage if the man I have to pay cannot do the job. And let me tell members over there, that it is to their own interests to see that this influx is stopped. The poorest type of native today is drifting into Cape Town and I say this again, that unless these people can do the work, they cannot come and demand high wages.

Do you call £2 per week a high wage? How would you like to live on it?

I don’t say it is a high wage, but I want to see a man produce the work that he is paid for, and I refuse to pay a minimum wage to everyone, whether he is a worker or not. I said not long ago that I want to see a decent wage paid for a decent job. I have no objection to natives who are craftsmen being paid decent wages for the work they do. I wonder whether the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. Burnside) would ever allow a native on the Reef to join a trade union as a skilled labourer. Let me say that the Labour Party has been the biggest obstacle in the way of the skilled native worker progressing. It has been the trade unions that have stopped the natives. Every native coming into Cape Town should be registered and no native should be allowed in unless there was a job for him—unless he could be sure of getting a job. That is what the Minsiter aims at by this clause.

I don’t often refer to hon. members in this House or to what they have said in the course of their speeches, but I do want to say as a member of the Labour Party that whatever I say about this Clause is not in any way influenced by what the hon. member opposite (Dr. Moll) has said against this party. The hon. member confuses the work of Trade Unionism with that of a political movement. If he had studied the matter more closely, he would realise the difference that exists.

Will the hon. member please come back to the Clause.

The need for the inclusion of this Clause is apparently the feeling that natives should be controlled. Now that would be quite alright if it were not for the fact that a privileged section of the community wants to impose control on an unprivileged section. The fact of the matter is that we, as a white population, want to rivet on the native claims to which we ourselves would object. In my experience as a Town Councillor, I have to put on record, that the permissive clauses of the Urban Areas Act have in all cases outweighed the negative clauses. As a member of the Non-European Affairs Committee of the Germiston Town Council I have had under consideration countless applications from white citizens of Germiston to employ or harbour on their premises one or more natives than they already had. If the woman was working for the household, she wanted her man to live with her, or if the man was working he wanted his wife to live with him. And because that was the only way to get contented servants the white householder made application. And the fact is, that the white people of South Africa are quite contented to harbour the native as long as their ends are being served, and if their ends are no longer being served, then they proceed to consider some measure of separation or segregation. But the white people have never yet said that they do not want to employ the native. And so you get the position that the person who wants to employ a native and is prepared to put two where there should only be one, at the same time wants to abolish the native. Well, you cannot have it both ways. The Minister’s difficulty is a very acute one. I am sympathetic to the Minister, but I do say this, that surely the Minister could consult his colleagues and the Cabinet in its total deliberations should be able to do something to iron out this problem. The great thing is to tackle the problem as a whole—you cannot deal piecemeal with this problem, so-called—and again I want to say that it is not a peculiar problem. It is a human problem. It is the duty of the Government not to talk so much about controlling these people but to talk about directing them and they can only direct them, by taking a real interest in how they get their living. And the Government has fallen down on that. The Government is prepared to carry on the policy of “laissez faire.” One section of the population cannot expect that another section—particularly if that section is numerically stronger, should obey all their whims—even to the extent of where they should live—and always be contented. The Government hopes that something somewhere will turn up to redress the balance and that the problem will solve itself. One doesn’t want to be bloodcurdling, but what will happen is that these people will say : “We cannot get anything positive from the Government, so we must take positive action ourselves.” That is the inevitable outcome, and I do feel that if we recognise that fact, and if we recognise that it is the responsibility of the Government to direct its people into channels by which they can get a livelihood, then the Government will be facing up to the problem. I am appalled when I think of the so-called liberal mind in its application to the education of these people. We are told they are not worth their money because they are not trained, and we don’t do anything about training them. We are too busy riveting the chains on these people.

Th Clause does not deal with Education.

Our conscience is quite easy about these people. Our conscience is not concerned with the misery of these people and their lack of training. But apparently some people’s consciences are concerned stupidly with the question whether some of these people will marry our daughters— a bogy.

This clause is concerned with registration.

Let us be courageous and say that we shall have no more of this negative type of law. The Ten Commandments have also failed because they are mainly negative too. They say : “Thou shalt not do this, and thou shalt not do that.” But none the less man does what he is told not to do.

And if he is found out he breaks the eleventh commandment.

Don’t have these negative commandments. If a person does a thing that is against the interests of the community, punish the wrongdoer, but don’t, by saying “don’t do this and don’t do that,”, provoke people into doing things that are then called wrong.

If the arguments of the hon. member are to be followed up, then Parliament should be abolished, because every year we make laws stipulating that one may not do this, that or the other. That argument therefore does not hold water. But the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Barlow) who unfortunately walked out of the House a moment ago, criticised the Minister because the Minister could not say how many unemployed natives there were in Cape Town. That is simply because the Minister has not got the machinery to ascertain accurately how many unemployed people there are. The hon. member for Cape Western (Mr. Molteno) knows very well that every week trainloads of natives come in who are off-loaded from Bellville to Cape Town, and in respect of whom there is not the slightest control. No one knows anything about them. We do not know of their presence until we find them congregating on the Cape Flats or at the foot of the mountain. They wander about in the streets doing nothing, and eventually they resort to crime. The hon. members on those benches think that they sympathise with the natives, but they have no sympathy for the natives if they approve of what is taking place today. When one lives in the suburbs of Cape Town one finds that numerous natives, young natives in pairs, approach one for employment every day. They are not registered anywhere. The Minister does not know where they are. Why then should we not proclaim the areas which fall outside the urban area and where untenable conditions are developing? Why should the Minister not proclaim those areas? The hon. members who represent the natives always think that we are not sympathetic towards the natives. We say that if natives come to Cape Town and there is work for them here, housing should be provided for them and their conditions should be improved, but we cannot make provision for an indefinite number of natives who come in from week to week. They come especially from the Eastern Cape to Cape Town, those parts which the hon. member for Cape Eastern (Mrs. Ballinger) represents. I am not concerned with the conditions in the Eastern Province and in the Transkei, but I think many more natives could be settled there if they were taught to develop the territories properly; and I think those hon. members do not emphasise that aspect of the matter sufficiently. The hon. member for Transkei (Mr. Hemming) knows what the potentialities are in regard to the developmènt of the Transkei. There is no other part which is so richly supplied with water. Why do they not tell the natives to make use of the opportunities which exist to develop those territories? No, the hon. member wants to release all the surplus natives to become a burden on the rest of the country.

That is not true.

And then we are expected to provide housing for them. I share the hon. Minister’s view, and I hope he will not pay any attention to these people. They think they are the friends of the natives, but they are not. If they want no restrictions in connection with the natives, they should tell us that they stand for equality; that they want the natives to be treated 100 per cent. in the same way as the Europeans; that they do not want any restrictions to be placed on them. Are they going to say that? That was the effect of the speech of the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Barlow). That is not what they want, however. I know they are sensible people and they know that the natives should remain under guardianship. The hon. member for Cape Western said that not one of the members of Parliament representing the Cape Peninsula had spoken on this subject. The hon. member for Rondebosch (Dr. Moll) has just spoken. It is felt by Europeans and coloureds in Cape Town that we cannot allow an influx of natives into the Peninsula without control. We want the control which is proposed in this clause. Not one of those three members are intent on protecting the interests of the natives. Does it please them to see the natives walk about the streets beggin? for food? Only yesterday a young native in the street asked me for 6d. because he was hungry. That is what is happening in Cape Town. And then these hon. members say that there is no unemployment. I know of a native who as a result of the agitation of the Communist Party gave up his employment two months ago, where he had been earning £8 a month. Today he is unemployed. As the result of this agitation he became dissatisfied with his master. He was given proper housing. After two months, he came back to his original master and asked him to re-employ him on the same conditions. His master asked him where he had been. He said that he had been wandering about for two months from Somerset Strand to Bakoven, that his shoes were worn through, but that he could not find employment in Cape Town. Now the hon. member for Hospital comes along with a story that our attitude in connection with the natives is out of date. These hon. members ought to realise that it is in the interests of the natives that there should be registration, so that we may know how much work is available and how many non-European labourers there are, and where they can be absorbed.

There must be proper control. Today there is lawlessness and chaos and if it goes on at this rate it will become a hot bed of dissatisfaction, and those hon. members will have to pay the piper

I want to associate myself with the previous speaker. I assosiate myself with the Minister’s idea to have a thorough registration of natives. They come here where there is no labour market for them. Many people in Cape Town are perturbed about the thousands of vagrants in the city. Every day natives apply to them for work and there is no work to be had. With the approaching winter, the outcome will be theft and crime. The sooner this Bill goes through the better it will be. There is work for the surplus natives on the farms; there is plenty of work, and if the representatives of the natives had the interests of the natives at heart, they would act differently. They would then give the natives to understand that there is work for them on the farms. Today they are being incited, and if things go on in this way the result will be that white and black will be incited against one another, with serious results. I hope that as far as registration is concerned, the Minister will not give way. If there were depots of this kind, the farmers would be able to apply to these depots for labourers, who can then be properly distributed, so that a stop can be put to this vagrancy and theft.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to take part in this very important discussion, but I was surprised to hear an hon. member say that Europeans welcome natives in their back yards. This is going too far. The hon. member for Germiston (Mr. Payne) made this remark and said that when they had one native there they wanted two.

This is perfectly true.

That may be an exceptional case. I have worked with these people for many years and I know their wants. If we don’t stop these natives from running into the towns we shall be overrun. And we are actually overrun today. You see the natives in their numbers in the towns while the farmers want labour. The natives won’t go to the farms. They want to go to the towns to loaf about the streets.

How do you know?

I am speaking from personal experience. Recently I visited the Benoni Post Office and there were from 60 to 80 natives there who had been looking for work. They didn’t want to go to the farms. They wanted to stay in town. Of course every person is entitled to a reasonable wage, but everything depends on the amount of work you can get out of a person. We don’t want to pay people wages to which they are not entitled. The natives on the farms are satisfied. But what do we find? It is the natives who have been in town who come and impress the others by telling them how well they can do in town. But when they go to town they find that it is not to their advantage to be there. And if we go to the big centres we can see the large numbers about at night for no good purpose whatsoever.

The hon. member must now come back to the clause.

I would like to see these people have a decent wage.

Yes, but that has nothing to do with this clause.

If these people come into town I would welcome them if they can do a decent job of work.

We are not talking about the Irrigation Bill now.

The wage question was discused here.

I’m sorry I cannot allow any discussion on these lines.

Very well, I welcome the clause as brought forward by the Minister.

I want to congratulate the Minister on the support he has been having from the Opposition.

Why not?

I am prepared to congratulate the Opposition as well. The fact of the matter is that the discussion of this particular clause has indicated what the real division of opinion in the country is on matters of importance and not on matters of minor importance. Now I want to say this about the speech of the hon. member for Tembuland (Mr. Payn). I am sorry the hon. member isn’t here. I’m sorry that anyone of his experience and especially a member of the Native Affairs Commission could have made a speech such as he made, a speech which is in my view, utterly misleading on elementary facts. I say that it is no business of any member of the Native Affairs Commission, particularly, whose function it is to advise the Government on matters of native policy, in addressing this House, to give an impression of the situation which is entirely incorrect. I want to go into some details in answer to the hon. member for Tembuland because to my mind this is a very serious matter, coming from the source which it did. The hon. member defends this clause on the ground that the people whom it intends to keep out of the Cape Peninsula are wealthy cattle owners. That is the impression that I gained. He also indicated that there are plenty of opportunities for these people where they come from, and they need not come here at all. He says that this clause is justified on that ground, and that it is not economic pressure that has driven them here. But, Sir, what are the facts? The situation in the Transkei to which the hon. member has referred has recently been investigated by the Mine Wages Commission, and they have come to the conclusion that the average family in the Transkei has an income of £17 15s. per annum, rather under £1 10s. per month. The commission points out that that is an average. Many of these people have no cattle at all, and there is a large proportion of landless natives. That is the true picture and not at all the picture that the hon. member has drawn. The general position is typified by this quotation from the Mines Wages Commission.

Order. Can the hon. member tell me how that is relevant to Clause 7?

I am answering the hon. member for Tembuland, and I would be very sorry if I am not allowed to do so. The hon. member sought to justify this clause on the ground that there was no pressure on the natives to come here, and that therefore this clause would inflict no hardships upon them. What I am doing is to try to answer that, because I would be sorry if these statements are passed over without contradiction. The general position in the Transkei is, I think, better summed up by an extract which I want to read from the report of the commission regarding the poverty existing in the Transkei. Dr. Mary McGregor said—

Later on she is quoted as saying—

The commission finds, as a fact, that there is widespread poverty and malnutrition in the Transkei. In face of facts like that it is strange that a member of the Native Affairs Commission could paint a picture such as the hon. member for Tembuland painted for us this afternoon. Nearly half these people have no cattle at all, and approximately one-third of them are landless. These are the people whom, I am justified in saying, are driven by economic pressure into the towns, and for members of the Native Affairs Commission to stand up in this House and indicate the contrary is not consistent with their duty as members of that body. I want to return again to the way in which this registration system has worked in the past. Hon. members, in particular the member for Gordonia (Mr. J. H. Conradie) and the hon. member for Losberg (Mr. Wolmarans), have said that this system can really keep the natives out of urban areas. Of course it cannot; it never has and it never will, because of the insistent demand for cheap labour. The point of this system is to try to guide and ration native labour between one interest and another. The hon. member for Gordonia spoke as if we on these benches are positively in favour of slums being created. Mr. Chairman, I am not very much afraid of an accusation of that kind. In a record of six years in this House I have continually drawn attention to the conditions deliberately allowed to grow up in the Cape Peninsula. Now that these conditions of wretchedness have grown up, the question arises who is to pay the costs of alleviating the position? Is it to be done by attempts to drive out the people whom economic pressure has brought here, or is the cost to be laid upon the authorities and the public where it belongs? The Langa Vigilance Committee and Advisory Board presented evidence to the Smit Committee three years ago on the question of registration, and commenting on the system they say : “We can imagine no more unintelligent way of dealing with the regulation of employment.” [Time limit.]

I want to say a few words in regard to the somewhat sarcastic statement on the part of the hon. member for Cape Western (Mr. Molteno). He reproached the Minister because he was being supported by this side of the House. I noticed that that was done in Another Place as well.

He congratulated the Minister on it.

Yes, but it was sarcasm. I notice in the “Guardian” that the Minister also received so-called congratulations in the Other Place because members of the Opposition supported him. Why should we not support him? I want to object to the statement that it is strange that we should support the Minister in regard to the native question, where it is possible for us to cooperate with him. I can say that we have always made an effort to keep native affairs outside politics and to deal with the native question on its merits. What is happening now? The so-called representatives of the natives are rapidly creating a feeling in this House and in the country that there are pro-native and anti-native sections in this country. They have only one thing in mind, and that is to plead the so-called interests of the natives. This proposal is not only in the interests of the people as a whole, but it is in the interests of the natives themselves. I want to put this question, which has already been put in passing to those hon. members by the hon. member for Gordonia (Mr. J. H. Conradie) : what exactly is their attitude? Do they want any restrictions at all on the influx of natives to the cities, or do they want no restrictions? They have not yet told us that clearly. If they do not want that influx to be restricted either into the cities or into the peri-urban areas, anyone who is acquanted with the conditions can only conclude that they are playing a very dangerous game. They are creating imaginary grievances on the part of the natives. They hold out to them that the cities are a wonderful haven for them; that they can obtain work in the cities and that everything in the garden is lovely, but that the Government refuses to allow them to come into the cities. That is not in the interests of the natives. If they do want restrictions, why do they refuse to accept the Minister’s amendment? If they want restrictions, what point is there is allowing the natives to flock to the peri-urban areas and to create black spots there? Should there be no restriction in that respect? There is no sense in allowing anything of that kind. I would like them to say clearly whether they are in favour of restrictions as far as this influx is concerned. We want a reply from them on that point. If they are in favour of restrictions, why do they want to impose restrictions only when the man is in the city, and then allow him to come to these black spots outside the cities? No, these members are continually trying to create grievances in the minds of the natives, and it must be clear to them that they do not always act in the interests of the natives themselves. This side of the House will always support the Minister and the Government and stand by them if they introduce legislation of this nature in order to be able to exercise better control over this position. They may try to intimidate the Government, but we do not believe they will succeed in doing so. The Minister has taken action, and we noticed the other day what attitude he adopted in Another Place; he will not allow himself to be intimidated if those members reproach him because we on this side support him. I merely rose in order to put this question, and I want to warn those hon. members that, as things are today especially and as they will be after the war, a position is rapidly developing, one which is being promoted by them, namely, that certain people in our country will become anti-native. The Minister should be assisted to get better control of the influx of natives to the cities, and when that control can be evaded as a result of these black spots outside the cities, we should support the Minister to get control of those places as well. I hope he will take a firm attitude and that he will not pay any attention to these so-called congratulations because this side of the House is supporting him. This side of the House and any Afrikaner who has any feelings for the native population, will agree that it is necessary to prevent this danger to the European population as well as native population. We will support the Minister, and I hope he will not allow himself to be frightened by those hon. members who want to intimidate him because members on this side are supporting him in connection with this matter.

I want briefly to refer to what was said by the hon. member for Tembuland (Mr. Payn) indicating that there is no economic pressure on these people to come into industrial areas. Only today we heard reference to the fact that the people coming here are so poor that the Government is expecting to have to import 200,000 bags of mealies for their consumption.

Does not that happen every year? It is no peculiarity this year.

That is to meet the economic needs of the Transkei. Apart from that there are, to my knowledge, at least 60,000 male married men without land at all. I know also that there is a large number of natives on the Rand, nearly every one of whom gets an advance of money in order to buy food for his people whilst he is away. There can be no doubt whatever, that these people are in need of money and they come to Cape Town to work to get it. One can hardly believe they would travel all that distance and undergo all the hardships they do if they were not forced to do so by economic pressure. One Question I want to ask is: on what basis are you going to judge whether these people are entitled to stay in the Peninsula or not? Supposing there is work for 10,000 natives, and 10,000 natives come to that work while you have only housing for 5,000? Are you going to send them back? If not what is the use of this registration? You are not really going out of your way to meet the needs of industry but to assist the local and responsible body to evade its responsibilty in the matter of housing. I fail to see what you are going to achieve by this restriction. It must fail as it has failed in the past, I wish the Minister would give me an answer to that question, as it is very important indeed. Candidly speaking, I feel that these sections are an inducement to whatever body is responsible to continue to fail to provide the housing needs of these people. We must realise that we are going through a period of development, and you are bound in the meantime to suffer some local discomfort in the course of these industrial growing pains, and it seems to me to be quite a wrong process to discourage this flow of labour from the reserves, and when they get down here send them back again. I have not yet heard from the department whether industrial interests in the Cape Peninsula have been consulted as to the need for this. What have they to say about it; are they in favour of it? No one has got up in this House to tell us, and I have not seen any statement reported in the press. Is not our first step to find out in fact what the industrial needs in the Cape Peninsula are, if they are met and if there is really any redundancy. Surely we must make some accommodation for this labour force now. We cannot wait. I cannot help feeling that this is a makeshift arrangement, a patchwork method, and you are doing industry great harm. Moreover, you are not going to solve this overcrowding question in Cape Town.

Mr. Chairman, the Minister is unable to tell us whether or not there is a surplus of natives in Cape Town; he does not know. The hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Barlow) asked him three questions; whether there was a surplus in three of the largest towns in the Union, and the Minister said he had no official figures. Two of the hon. members who have spoken assumed that the present position was something new and due to the war. The hon. member for Tembuland (Mr. Payn) has the idea that this restrictive legislation in the urban areas was to safeguard the coloured people; at any rate he said that would be one of the effects, but surely the hon. member knows that this restrictive legislation was introduced in 1939, prior to the war, This legislation made it impossible for any native to enter without a permit. We know very well that the natives themselves have criticised this restrictive legislation, not so much with the idea that they should not come in and find work, but because they were forced to exepend all their money in getting here and then be denied the economic privileges which everybody else had. Now what we want to know is what actually are the labour requirements of Cape Town, and what is the provision made by the municipal council for housing this labour? The native demand is about 40,000, and there is only provision made for the housing of 7,000 male adults in the whole municipal area, so that there are no less than 33,000 natives housed in squalor and under slum conditions throughout the rest of the area. These are facts that we know. Now another point about this restrictive legislation is that any native is allowed to come here without a permit if he can show that he has employment in domestic service. Any native who comes here and shows that he can find domestic work is immediately given a permit and permitted to remain. These natives, if they cannot find accommodation in the city go further afield, and that I suppose is the reason why the Minister has suggested a large registration bureau to incorporate Bellville and Goodwood. I was one of those who rather welcomed the closing of the municipal boundaries to fresh native entrants for the reason that I wished to safeguard the livelihood of those natives who were already de-tribalised, but when one realises the percentage of natives who are de-tribalised in relation to the supply or the demand for labour in Cape Town, the idea of protecting the de-tribalised natives disappears. I do not suppose that 10 per cent. of the normal demand for labour can be filled by natives who are de-tribalised. I do not suppose there are more than 4,000 who are actually de-tribalised out of the 40,000 natives which constitute the labour demand in the Peninsula. If this legislation is designed to safeguard the work and economic privileges of those natives who are housed in the Langa location, then I would like to ask the Minister to tell us whether there is any great difficulty in ensuring the protection of these de-tribalised natives. If the object is something else, then surely the Minister ought to ask Parliament to include within the restrictive measures which are to be applicable to Cape Town and Simonstown, the areas of Bellville and Goodwood. I approach this question of the registration and the limitations placed upon natives with a very open mind, and I have listened to the speeches of the hon. members who represent the natives, and who have challenged the Minister to show the necessity for this need to limit natives, as such, from coming into this area. I would welcome the Minister or any other hon. member getting up and telling us the solution of this problem. Is it intended to restrict more natives from coming in unless they come through the registration bureau, when according to the Minister, they will be housed, and permitted to go here or there according to the whims or dictates of whoever is to be in charge of this bureau? I have been in close contact with the registering authorities for the past five years since Cape Town was closed and I have never yet found anybody who was able to divert any native who was in need of work to the place where work was available, with one exception, and that was during the time when Robben Island had a tremendous amount of fortification work. Only in one instance was it possible for the superintendent of the Langa location to divert natives. [Time limit.]

I again want to refer the Minister to this question, and I want to tell him that I now find that not only this Government but also the previous Nationalist Party Government are responsible for bringing the natives to this place, to take the place of the coloured workers. My hon. friend on the other side said that we must have this law, because if we did not have it the native would take the place of the coloured. Well, I find that the Railways paid single coloured men at the rate of 4s. 9d. and 4s. 6d. and married coloured men at the rate of 5s. 3d. and 5s. 9d. The married native is paid at the same rate of pay as the coloured single man. The Railways run special trains, of course, to bring them down here. A special bombella train brings them down here. Where do we stand? On the one side one department is bringing natives down to Cape Town, employing them at a lower wage than the coloureds, making an enormous amount of money out of them, and on the other hand the Minister says we must put a stop to this. I want to help the Minister: I wish to assist him. I am not like the hon. member for Winburg (Mr. Swart) who made a speech which had about as much to do with the case as the flowers which bloom in the spring. All he did was to say that he and the hon. Minister were in the same rugby team at last. I do not think the hon. member has ever read the Bill. Will the Minister tell me this. Why is the Minister displacing coloured labour by bringing natives to this town by special train? That is one question. No answer. Then will he answer this question? Here one of his own people say—

There we have it again. Here is his side telling us that we will have serious economic repercussion if we support this Bill, and the Minister is telling us that we will have serious repercussions if we do not support this Bill. I am putting this question in just ordinary basic English, and if the Minister answers these two questions satisfactorily, I will not speak again; if he does not, I will speak again.

In the course of this debate, the hon. member for Gordonia (Mr. J. H. Conradle) and the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. F. H. Bekker) both laid considerable emphasis on the point that we on these benches had only one idea in our heads, and that was to encourage the native population to come to the towns. They said—I hope I am right—if I misunderstood them I hope the hon. member for Gordonia who is in the House will put me right—that we did not do anything about developing the areas from which these people came, that we did not seem to be interested in that, that instead we just went to the people and said: “Everything is lovely in the towns; come to the towns.” Well, there is a whole collection of misunderstandings here—I trust they are purely misunderstandings, because I am not going to accuse the hon. member of misrepresentation—but misunderstandings which happen to be particularly important in this debate. In the first place, I do not think any of us on these benches ever go to the native areas and say to the natives that they must come to town and seek a livelihood here. I certainly have never done so. I have left that to the free play of economic circumstances. On the other hand, I, like my colleagues, have constantly told the Government and the House whenever this issue has arisen, that there is only one way of turning back this stream, if we want to turn it back, and that is to develop the native areas, to develop the rural areas in which the native population is settled. That has been our contention all along. We have told the House repeatedly that if we wanted to put our fingers on one special cause of the movement of the natives to the towns, we would put it on the 1913 and the 1936 Land Acts. One of the main reasons why we are facing this apparent crisis today is the 1936 Land Act which we are now trying to apply in the Cape Province, which was never designed for a policy such as the land policy incorporated in that Act. The 1913 Land Act began the permanent flow of the native population to the urban areas. And it is entirely wrong to say that we are not interested in the development of the rural areas. One of the main planks in our platform is the demand that the Government will develop the native areas, that the Government should draw off the competition in the market of people with land against those who have no land. But in order to realise that policy, we have to have two things that we have never found this House willing to support; one is that there should be more land and the other is that there should be more money to develop that land. The amount of money that has been spent to develop the native areas of this country is an absolute scandal, and I accuse my hon. friends on this (Nationalist) side of the House of being responsible for that to a large extent. They have done nothing to help. They have shown no willingness to vote money in the proportion that was needed for the development of these areas, if these areas were expected to carry the native population that it carries today.

How can you say that?

We have struggled along every year, getting little bits of the pole tax here and there in order to go on with native education and native development.

I think the hon. member must come back to the clause.

I beg to suggest that this question is extremely pertinent. I wish to make it clear that we are not asking simply and solely for the complete liberty of the native population to come into the town. We are not anxious to have the economic maladjustment which is implied in that suggestion. But, as has been remarked by the hon. member for Gordonia, the difficulty is that the issue we are discussing is a comprehensive issue. You cannot deal with this question without dealing with the whole field of native policy. What we need here are three things—quite clearly—the development of the native reserves, and increase in the standard of living of natives employed on farms and the stabilisation of the urban population. All of which we shall have to have if we are to have a planned economy. Our opposition to the type of legislation involved in this clause is that there is no planning about it whatsoever. It ignores all the social and economic factors in our national structure. It attempts to deal with a problem that has arisen out of the process of industrialisation, a problem that has arisen in every industrial country, by means of sectional control over a part of the labour force, which only confuses the labour market still further. We object—and I am glad we have the support of the Labour Party on this—we object to this clause because it is an encouragement of the exploitation of the weakest section of the labour market.

It has got nothing to do with that.

That is the trouble; these hon. members just do not understand the position. I ask any of my hon. friends who do know a little social history whether I am wrong. Of course, it is the A B C of industrial development. The position is that we are pushing the natives into the towns from the areas in the Transkei. Here is a recent issue of the “South African Medical Journal,” in which there appears an article by an ex-Secretary for Native Affairs, Mr. Herbst, who writes—

And he goes on to tell the story of the disastrous effect on the Transkei. Industry recruits labour from the Transkei. The labour is encouraged to come into the towns. We then want to push it back into the Transkei under such laws as we are making today. But the natives cannot go back to the Transkei because they cannot make a living there, and what is the result? They are pushed on to the farms and anywhere where the conditions are not sufficiently attractive to draw them in the first instance. If you do not call that economic exploitation, then I do not know what it is. I could call it worse names. Those are the facts that we want the hon. Minister to see. We fear that he is legislating for a situation that is entirely beyond his control; he is legislating for a situation which requires an analysis of every factor in our economic situation. We must know what the prospective needs of our towns are going to be. Then we must plan on the basis of our population; and not merely our native labour force but our European labour force and our coloured labour force. We must know what our labour force is, how many of our people need work, and then plan to use them all, but not to deal with them in this piecemeal fashion. My last point is this. I would remind the hon. Minister that the Van Eck report which was supposed to be a direction to this country as to the lines of its social and economic development, and the Social and Economic Planning Council which followed it, both made this point emphatically that we must expect the progressive urbanisation of our native population, for the simple reason that the bulk of that population is so far still in rural areas, that only about a third of the European and coloured population were left on the land, that still some 80 per cent. of the native population was on the land, and that we could not afford this enormous rural population if we were going to increase the national income of South Africa. I can see no reason whatsoever for the assumption that we are planning for the future and paying the costs of these councils; I see no justification for the representatives of the Government getting up and telling us that we are planning for the future, that we pay the best brains of the country to tell us what we should do, when in fact we turn our backs on them and do exactly the opposite. [Time limit.]

Before I call on the hon. member for Cape Western (Mr. Molteno), I would like to draw the attention of the Committee to Standing Order No. 90, which deals with tedious repetition.

There are still a number of points I would like to make in connection with this clause, points which are fundamentally important, not only so far as the African population of this country is concerned, but the whole of the population of this country, more particularly having regard to the developing interests of industry. I must confess that I was a little bit puzzled as to the motive of the lecture that we on these benches were read a few moments ago by the hon. member for Winburg (Mr. Swart). The hon. member for Winburg seemed to think that we wanted party politics dragged into the discussion of this clause. That obviously on the face of it is absurd. Because that is the last thing we on these benches as independent members want. The only remark to which the hon. member took exception apparently was that I have always contended that in matters of internal policy, the difference between the United Party and the Nationalist Party is the difference between Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee. I have always contended that.

Why this sarcastic congratulation?

The only point of the congratulation was to indicate the point that I have already made, that is that there is really no difference and that we are all friends here so far as the two sides of the House are concerned. But I do want to say this to the hon. member for Winburg. I have not noticed him taking a great deal of interest before in the discussions on this Bill and from the speech he made I very much doubt whether the hon. member has the faintest idea what the discussions were about. We have placed before the Committee and before the Government thé definite argument, that whatever else this clause may or may not do, it cannot stop the so-called influx of Africans into towns, for the simple reason that the influx has been brought about by the deliberate policy of this country lasting over many years. Just before the hon. member for Winburg spoke, I put the rational case against the system embodied in these laws which had been put by the Langa Advisory Board and the Vigilance Committee of Langa to the Smit Committee. These are native leaders elected by their own people to represent them in these matters; and before the Smit Committee the Advisory Board and the Vigilance Committee pointed out how this system works. They pointed out that over the period for which they had been able to obtain figures from the City Council of Cape Town, some 50 per cent. of those coming from outside had received permission to receive service contracts and to work here, and that some 50 per cent. were refused. On that, they put this, that under the system as it works a man coming from the Transkei has an even chance of getting employment. If this system were effective in excluding natives from the area, this area would suffer a shortage of 50 per cent. in its labour requirements, but it never does, so the position is that when they come here, they have a fifty-fifty chance of getting employment. I would invite the hon. member for Winburg to answer this question: how can you possibly have a stopping of the influx to which he referred, when your big industrial centres like the Cape Peninsula are dependent to the extent of 90 per cent. of their native labour requirements on migratory labour. Of course, you must have an influx.

Are you in favour of any form of registration?

I am coming to that. But as long as the hon. member will admit that, I will be satisfied. You cannot just make a sweeping statement that the influx must be stopped. Under the migratory system it is inevitable that there should be an influx and also an efflux. The fact of the matter, as indicated in the report of the Urban Areas Inspector of the City Council of Cape Town, is that when employment opportunities slacken the efflux exceeds the influx, but I have never heard hon. members talk about the efflux, they only talk about the influx. They create the impression in this House and in the country that there is a definite population here which is always added to by those bombella trains to which the hon. member for Gordonia (Mr. J. H. Conradie) referred. As a matter of fact, at certain times of the year it is almost invariable that the efflux definitely exceeds the influx. I was informed only the other day by a member of the Department of Native Affairs that natives on Cape Town station simply cannot get trains to take them away, that every bombella train away from the Cape has to leave about a hundred natives behind. The so-called influx is only one of the phenomena of the migratory labour system which the native population of this country have no choice but to submit to. They are opposed to it and we on these benches are opposed to it. That is the rational aspect of the situation, and it is no use the hon. member for Winburg getting up and throwing threats across the floor of the House because we on these benches paint the picture as we see it. I have had many opportunities of seeing how this system works. The hon. member for Winburg put it to me by way of interjection what I would do about the question of registration. The answer is this: first of all, it should be possible, as the hon. member for Transkei (Mr. Hemming) has indicated, to make some intelligent estimation of the labour requirements, with a margin for expansion, of every urban area, and to make a start at once in filling up the gap in the present housing position. The gap in the housing position is tremendous and I am convinced that the City Council need not be afraid of building too many houses. Secondly the objective of the policy should be to discourage and to get away from the migratory labour system by encouraging the permanent residence in Cape Town or whatever urban area it may be, of the native population that is required to work there. I think the hon. member for Moorreesburg (Mr. F. C. Erasmus) has already previously in this House recognised the necessity for a policy along those lines. The direction of the policy should not be to try to limit the opportunities for entering the urban areas; it should rather be to encourage the growth of a permanent African population. So far as any system of registration is concerned, there ought to be—and I am confident there will be if a social security scheme is introduced—a nation wide system of registration. It is only by this means that you are able to tell who is entitled to unemployment benefits and for whom the State must provide employment. That should be part of our post-war plans. But with regard to the immediate situation in the Cape Peninsula, if it is contended—and as the Minister said in his reply to the debate, he has not got figures to show to what extent there is unemployment here amongst native workers—if it is contended that there is an undue influx of native people into Cape Town—by undue, I mean excess … [Time limit.]

Clause 7 put and a division called.

As fewer than ten members (viz: Mrs. Ballinger and Messrs. Hemming and Molteno) voted against the Clause, the Chairman declared it agreed to.

On New Clause to follow Clause 8,

I want to move the following amendment which appears on the Order Paper in the name of the hon. member for Wonderboom (Mr. Nel)—

• 17bis.
  1. (1) The Minister may direct any urban local authority to establish one or more depots for receiving and temporarily accommodating natives entering the area of such authority or being ejected from such area under the provisions of this Act.
  2. (2) In order to exercise proper control over such depot any urban local authority shall have the powers conferred by sub-section (3) of section 23, and the provisions of that sub-section shall mutatis mutandis, apply to any authority so directed in respect of any depot established by it.

It is important when there is an influx of natives into any area, that the town councils and urban local authorities should be compelled, if the Minister deems it necessary, to establish reception depots, from which they can be placed with different employers; and if a number of them are redundant, they can return to the depot, and be directed to places where there is work for them. I think it is necessary to insert such a provision. It will give a measure of control over the natives who come here. We on this side do not think it is desirable that there should be an influx of natives if there is no work for them. They will now know that there are depots to which they can go, and that will lessen the evil with which we are faced today.

I am sorry I cannot accept this amendment. I appreciate the hon. member’s intention. But in the first place the motion should have been to amend Section 12 of the principal Act. Section 12 (1) (g) of the principal Act empowers the Governor General to compel a local authority to establish such housing as he may deem necessary for natives in a proclaimed area where they seek employment, and then to exercise control. The Government has powers to make regulations in connection with the provision of housing in a proclaimed area. I regret, therefore, that I cannot accept this amendment.

Proposed new clause put and negatived.

On Clause 13,

I move the amendment standing in my name—

1. (b) by the insertion, in proviso (ii) thereto, after the words “eating house keeper” of the words “or to establish and conduct markets”.

Certain local authorities wish to create or establish and conduct markets in the location or locations of native villages. Their intention is to obtain essential commodities such as milk and vegetables, fruit and fuel in large quantities and to sell them at cost price, or at very low prices to the natives in those areas. This will do much to assist, as hon. members will see, the poorer sections of the community. The local authorities doubt whether they at present have the power to conduct these markets, and the amendment is proposed in order to make the position quite clear. The hon. member for Cape Western asked me earlier on what the position was—whether the market was to be a municipal trading venture.

No, whether it was for natives to sell things.

As I take it, it is to be run by the Municipality, but the natives will be able to sell in that market. I presume it is going to be rather like the market at Maritzburg, where natives can sell their goods through a market which is really under the control of the Municipality. The whole intention is to give to the poorer class of the community these goods which I mentioned, which are bought in as large a quantity as possible, at as low a price as possible.

Amendment put and agreed to.

Clause, as amended, put and agreed to.

On Clause 14,

I beg to move the amendement standing in my name—

I beg to move that Sub-section 4 of this clause be deleted. This is the section to which I have been totally opposed ever since this Bill was introduced. It is a section to which the Natives’ Representative Council took the greatest exception. It is to my mind one of the reasons why this Bill is an unacceptable Bill to members on these benches and why it was unacceptable to the Natives’ Representative Council. This Clause 4 (U) of Section 14, is designed to enable the department to control such villages as may be set aside by Government consent for occupation or for the purchase of stands by urban natives. I move—

Might I point out to the hon. member that the amendment of the Minister has already been accepted which precludes her from moving her amendment which is an earlier amendment. The hon. member can move it at the Report Stage. The Committee cannot go back to an earlier part of the clause.

May I then oppose the whole clause?

Yes, the hon. member can oppose the whole clause.

In that case I wish to continue what I was saying against Clause 14 4 (U). This is the clause to which I am opposed, both in its original form and in its amended form. It is a clause which is designed to give to the Native Affairs Department the power to enable the municipality to control land set aside for ownership by urban natives by regulations originally designed to control municipal locations. As I understand it, the Act as now in operation made provision for the exemption of certain natives from the obligation to live in locations. One of the groups which was to be exempted were people who were to be allowed to live in areas declared open for occupation by natives. Now the purpose of that provision in the old Act was to recognise that in due course the progress of industrialisation would produce a class of Africans who knew all the urban conditions and had achieved a standard of living which made it necessary for them to be controlled as migrant labourers or as persons without an understanding of conditions of civilised labour. It was introduced into our law in recognition of the fact that in due course our African population would change in character, and that in the process of differentiation part would become permanently urbanised, and that it was intended to encourage these people, the circumstances of whose life separated them finally from the rural areas and gave them the outlook of urban people. It was to allow these people to live as ordinary citizens in a town governed by those by-laws and regulations by which the local authority maintains social health in the urban area. And we have always felt, and the African population has always felt, that in that provision of the Act as it now stands was the open door towards the recognition of their changed status in life; was the avenue to greater freedom for them. It is an assumption, and I think justifiable, that the people for whom these villages were to be provided, were people who in fact had learned to live according to European standards, people who had achieved that measure of social well-being that would enable them to maintain decent standards of living, and that therefore they should be provided with the means to do it. In the last few years, increasingly, a class of that kind has been emerging in our big towns. And its members have demanded that they should be taken out of all the unattractive circumstances of the location—out of all those controls and prohibitions and interferences which were justified on the ground that the native had no permanent place in the town and had no experience or knowledge of urban conditions. And various towns have been ready to respond to this demand. As we go about the country—and I am speaking for my colleagues and myself—we find an increasing number of people who feel that there is an increasing obligation on municipalities to set aside an area where Africans may live as ordinary citizens of the town. Now it is a disheartening circumstance that as a class of permanent urban natives arises demanding a decent standard of living, and that as public opinion becomes more willing to consider allowing them these conditions of life, the Department should feel it incumbent upon it to insist that before it recognises any of these areas, it should have power to impose all these controls which were established for entirely different circumstances. I know that the justification put up by the Department, the justification which will be put by the Minister is that his Department and he have seen Alexandra Township, that they have seen Lady Selborne and Sophiatown, and that they are not going to have these things happen again. I fully endorse that attitude. It would be a grave reflection if we ever repeated the sort of conditions which we have allowed to grow up in those places. But that is not the issue at stake. We have inherited from years past the circumstances which have created Sophiatown and Alexandra Township and Lady Selborne, and it will take a great deal of time to change those conditions and clear them up; but we are starting here with these villages de novo. We are proposing to create areas in which people with a certain standard of living shall be allowed to acquire properties and to live. If, with that beginning, with the choice of the people who can buy—the choice being an automatic choice— because only people with a certain standard will be able to buy in these areas, or to live in those areas— beginning from that foundation, being able to decide, having the power to decide on the conditions of a township which every municipality has in respect of every township it establishes—I can see no justification whatever for taking extra powers which apply only to the native population. Today every urban area can lay down conditions as to the size of plots in a township, the size of the buildings to be put up, and by its public health regulations, it controls the conditions under which people occupy the houses and the plots. My contention is that these powers should be completely adequate to meet a demand and a situation like this, and to suggest that they are not adequate, to suggest that we must exercise the power of control over lodgers and other things is definitely a backward step. I maintain that if it is impossible for any municipality to launch a village scheme for the type of native population we are here considering without the additional controls which are visualised in this clause, and which can be exercised in terms of this clause, then there is something very seriously wrong with our local government machinery. [Time limit.]

I want very strongly to support the remarks which have just fallen from the hon. member for Cape Eastern (Mrs. Ballinger). As the law stands at present—it has been the law ever since the purchase of land by Africans in urban areas was prohibited—in the areas designated by the Minister, Africans, responsible Africans, can buy or lease land’ in the same way as can any other member of the community, and they can thereby enjoy in the possession of land, full property rights. Now full property rights is not a small thing. Full property rights is what any community has always demanded. Full property rights is something which is looked upon in most communities as being the difference between a citizen and something less than a citizen—something on a lower status such as a serf or a helot. Now full property rights has a psychological as well as a mere material satisfaction for him who is in possession of it. Property rights is one of the rights which induces in man a sense of responsibility which gives him a sense of freedom. Now with regard to the native population, the African population, both in the urban areas and in the rural areas, in comparatively recent years, as far as the Cape is concerned, Governments have thought fit to take away what in every other country is the fundamental right of man, the right to purchase property, to become the owner of property. Ownership means a right to do what you will with your own. And that is the right which our laws, our land laws of this country, have taken away from the native population. I know no parallel in any other country where you have the majority of the population not allowed to buy land. But that is the case with the native population here. There was, however, a small loophole left in the Urban Areas Act of 1937, by which, if the Minister of Native Affairs designated an area outside a location or a native village as an area where natives might reside, in those areas natives could buy land. It was a very small chink left in the door which barred the native population from property rights in the urban areas. It was a small chink because hardly any areas have been designated in terms of that provision. I asked the Minister at an earlier stage of the Session, how may areas have been so designated and he said there were only two, and they are old ones. They were not areas which the Minister has set aside as new areas. Now I want to protest in advance against any tendency or discussion on this clause to mix up the question of property rights with such questions as overcrowding and slum areas. It is so easy to say to people: “If we let you have property, you’ll turn it into a slum at once.” We have heard that so often. But I say that there is no justification for saying that to the native population. I know all about the slums, I have been to Alexandra Township and to all these other places. The slums which have been created there are created by the same causes which have created slums in District 6 or in London or elsewhere. Social causes have operated, there, not the fact that men were allowed to buy land. That has not been the cause of slums. By all means use to the full the powers which exist to prevent the growing up of slums. Use your Public Health regulations, use your Slums Act, by all means do that, but do not, because you are not prepared to use these powers, deny to the majority of the people of this country these elementary rights. Do not impose on the majority of the people a limitation in regard to the exercise of the fundamental right of property. We know that so far the discretion to designate certain areas has only twice been exercised, and that in respect of old areas. I do not think there is a race in the world which would for one moment admit or tolerate being denied property rights because it might thereby create slums. Slums and such conditions are a social problem, a problem which has to be dealt with by social and economic means. The elimination of slums depends on a number of conditions; the creation of slums depends on such factors as wages, and their elimination depends on more education, higher wages, more culture, and so on. Those are the ways in which slums have to be fought. Slums will not be overcome by limiting people’s rights to better their position. I must explain to the Minister that the right to acquire a piece of land or a house is to the native people particularly important in the circumstances of this country. The ownership of property means to them—more particularly to them—freedom; more particularly does it mean to them self-respect, when there are so few opportunities for them for acquiring property owing to their economic position and also owing to the laws which preclude them from acquiring property in urban areas. I don’t want the Minister to think that we are in favour of slums growing up. I don’t want the Minister to use that argument. Property rights have nothing to do with the growth of slums.

I do want to add a word before you put the clause to the Committee. It is now admitted that we can see no reason whatever for applying to Africans restrictions that are not applied to people of other races within the community. I believe it is the intention, at least it has been recommended to the Government that it should encourage the Municipality of Cape Town to set aside areas for villages for the coloured community of the Cape Flats. The same authority recommended the establishment of villages for Africans under the relevant clauses of the Urban Areas Act. I do urge the Minister strongly to restore the confidence of the native population which has been badly shaken by the whole tenor of this Bill, by withdrawing the sort of proposition contained in this clause, and provide for the establishment of villages where Africans may live as ordinary members of the community and not force them to live in the conditions which obtain at present, those of locations surrounded by police stations with control of everybody who comes in to see them, without very much concern as to what goes on inside the location. If a man’s old mother comes there to see him she must have a permit. These sorts of regulations are entirely indefensible. The whole African community is gravely alarmed at these proposals, which condemn people for all time to this constant interference with their daily lives involved in the regulations visualised here. These regulations will have the most serious effect on the whole attitude of the people to the Government. I know that the Minister is anxious to examine the merits of the case, I know he is anxious to do his best, but I can assure him that this is a definitely retrogressive step. I do hope that he will decide, even at this late hour, to throw out this clause.

I assure the Minister that he will be going quite in the wrong direction if he tries to give the natives the impression that they are incapable of accepting responsibility. I remember not so long ago addressing a meeting of natives, and I reproached them for being wanting in a sense of responsibility, and I must say that the answer I received from that meeting astonished me. They said to me: “How can you expect the people to have a sense of responsibility if you give them no responsibility?” I think, Sir, that is the aspect of these matters which sometimes is overlooked. We are inclined to forget the principle which underlies this answer, and I would like to join with my colleagues in asking the Minister, even at this late hour, to reconsider the position. The class of African who goes out to work is an increasing class, and he makes a strong demand to be allowed to live under decent conditions.

Mr. Chairman, I have already given my reasons for being opposed to this measure, and I shall return to them again.

At 6.40 p.m. the Chairman stated that, in accordance with the Sessional Order adopted on the 25th January, 1944, and Standing Order No. 26 (1), he would report progress and ask leave to sit again.

HOUSE RESUMED :

The CHAIRMAN reported progress and asked leave to sit again ; House to resume in Committee on 2nd May.