Mr Speaker, since we had the traditional Second Reading debate earlier this year, a great deal has happened in South Africa, particularly in the economic sphere, and I should like to give hon members certain snippets of information. I believe that this will also contribute towards clearing up certain matters that may arise in the course of the debate as far as the financial side of it is concerned.

Economic growth and employment

In the first place I should like to make some remarks in regard to economic growth and employment. The most recent available statistics in regard to the economy and economic growth which will shortly be published in the quarterly bulletin of the Reserve Bank confirms the fact that the former cyclical upswing which developed during the second half of 1987 maintained its momentum during the first quarter of 1988. The real gross domestic product increased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of nearly 5% in the fourth quarter of 1987, and about 4% in the first quarter of 1988. This growth took place in almost all of the most important sectors of the economy.

At the same time gross domestic spending increased, but at an even higher rate. During the first quarter of 1988 the real gross domestic spending was more than 10% higher than in the corresponding quarter of 1987. Of the components of the GDS, real private consumer spending increased in the first quarter of 1988 at a rate of 4%, which is just about the same as that since the second quarter of 1987.

Real consumer spending by the authorities in general increased in the fourth quarter of 1987 and the first quarter of 1988 at the same rate, and in the latter quarter it was about 5% higher than in the first quarter of 1987. Real gross domestic fixed investment has shown an increase in three successive quarters now. In the first quarter of 1988 the growth in the seasonally adjusted annual rate was about 2%. This growth took place chiefly in the private sector, and more than neutralised the continued decline in investment by public corporations and the public authorities. The first quarter of 1988 was also the fourth successive quarter in which positive real stockpiling took place, particularly in the manufacturing and wholesale and retail sectors.

This continuation of increased growth in the economy also influenced employment, and total employment in the non-agricultural sectors of the economy increased by 1,5% in 1987, as compared with only 0,3% in 1986. This tendency is continuing in 1988.

Balance of payments

The continued higher growth, particularly in domestic spending, has led to considerably higher levels and values of imports. This, together with the slow passage of exports, has caused the current account of the balance of payments to come under pressure.

Hon members will remember that early in May this year a package of moderate measures was announced which was aimed at the timely prevention of excessive overheating of the domestic economy which, besides placing the balance of payments under pressure, would also have other detrimental effects. Although these measures were based on provisional indicators in the economy, they were designed to prevent the excessive expansion of domestic spending at an early stage and, by so doing, to prevent very drastic steps possibly having to be taken at a later stage once again, as was in fact the case in 1984.

Since that time more reliable statistics in regard to the economy and the balance of payments have become available in terms of which it would appear that both the composition and intensity of the package on the one hand, and its timing on the other, were completely justified. Thus, for example, the balance on the current account of the balance of payments at seasonally adjusted annual rates swung from a surplus of R6,1 billion in the fourth quarter of last year to a deficit of about R400 million in the first quarter of this year. According to most projections the current account for this year is still, however, expected to show a surplus of possibly between R1,5 billion and R3 million, because this cyclical upswing in domestic demand will, in all probability, be very much weaker during the second half of the year than it was in the first half.

The recent strengthening of commodity prices, and particularly those of minerals and metals, also improves prospects for exports which will lead to a strengthening of the balance of payments.

Even if the surplus on the current account is at the lowest end of these projections, namely R1,5 billion, it ought to cause no problems on the capital account of the balance of payments. South Africa’s specific capital commitments during this year are considerably lower than they were last year. All debt has already been repaid to the IMF, while South Africa’s commitments under the Second Interim Debt Agreement also amount to only R850 million this year, as against R1,2 billion last year.

South Africa ought therefore not to have to use much of her gold and other foreign reserves during this year for the financing of this capital outflow. Notwithstanding the weakening of the current account of the balance of payments, the total gold and other foreign reserves rose by R258 million in the first quarter of this year.

It would now appear, therefore, that these measures, together with the moderate decline in the value of the rand, have in the meantime contributed towards a slight improvement in the current account, while domestic demand has also bottomed out. Further measures or a hardening of the existing package would therefore not appear to be necessary at this stage in order to improve the balance of payments position.

Interest rates

Because of the moderate increases in domestic interest rates recently, the fear has been expressed from various quarters that interest rates will again rise to the high levels that prevailed in 1984 and 1985. In order to understand this matter, an analysis of a variety of factors that held sway then and prevail now is necessary.

Taken as a whole, the present situation differs greatly from the circumstances that prevailed then. Much stricter fiscal discipline is being maintained at present, while a markedly different and a stricter monetary policy is being applied now than was then the case. Thus, for example, the Reserve Bank has been following a strict accommodation policy since the beginning of May, and assistance to banking institutions via discounts is very strictly limited. Even penalty interest is also sometimes levied in specific cases.

Moreover, by way of a comprehensive package steps have already been taken at a much earlier stage than was then the case in order to avoid any overheating of the domestic economy. This is in conformity with the Government’s determination to avoid a “stop-go” pattern in the economy as far as possible.

Furthermore, the inflation rate is declining, compared with the situation in 1984 when there was a sharp increase in the inflation rate. As has already been mentioned, the balance of payments is also improving, in contrast to the large deficit on the current account which occurred in 1984. Furthermore, a declining tendency in short-term and long-term interest rates is noticeable in both the capital and money markets, compared with general and persistent increases in interest rates in 1984.

In actual fact, there appears rather to be a downward pressure on interest rates at present, and the monetary authorities are experiencing no problems in regard to the handling of Exchequer financing. In fact, to date the South African Reserve Bank has already marketed Government stock to the value of nearly R5 billion out of the budgeted amount of R6,8 billion. Exchequer financing ought therefore not to be responsible for any upward pressure on the markets.

It is clear, therefore, that the current circumstances are completely different and, given the Government’s commitment to continued fiscal and monetary restraint, coupled with the different handling of measures in order to promote the desired trends and to combat undesirable tendencies, it would appear to be unlikely that interest rates will again rise to the same high levels as at that time.

It is, however, necessary to add that the recent increase in interest rates took place from an extremely low and in many cases negative real level. If negative real interest rates are permitted to prevail overly long in the economy this will, in the long term, have a very detrimental effect on saving and economic growth, particularly as far as an imbalance in the allocation of scarce resources is concerned.

Although the Government is fully aware of this fact, the present policy is certainly not aimed at bringing about positive real rates by any artificial means. It is preferable, if positive real interest rates are to be brought about, for this to occur by means of a decline in the inflation rate on the one hand and from a sound level of credit advancement on the other, rather than from the sharp, mechanical increase and manipulation of interest rates.

Inflation

A further bottoming out of the inflation rate, as measured against the consumer price index, took place during the first quarter of 1988. The twelvemonthly rate of increase in consumer prices declined from 20,6% in January 1986 to 14,2% in January 1988, and further to 13,3% in April. The twelve-monthly rate of increase in production prices reached a low of 11,3% in December 1987 but, since then, increased to 12,5% in May 1988.

†Stals and Jacobs Committees

As far back as 1984, the emergence of various types of financial futures transactions on the financial scene in South Africa led the authorities to believe that some official guidance would be needed to create orderly conditions in this evolving market, and to protect the interest of participants in this relatively new area of financial operations. Particular concern was expressed at the time on the risk exposures of investors in options, futures and forward financial transactions, and also on the danger of major default by issuers or writers of these new financial instruments.

It was furthermore accepted that financial institutions such as banks, building societies and long-term insurers were getting more and more involved in these markets. These institutions held the greatest potential for the further development of the market, for providing depth and liquidity to the market, and for taking the initiative in a formal structuring of the market mechanism. They, together with the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, would indeed eventually form the fulcrum of the system. The monetary authorities, however, have some responsibility for the safety of these institutions and for the protection of the interests of members of the general public in respect of their investments with these institutions. It was therefore regarded as necessary to consider the various prudential requirements prescribed in the relative Acts in respect of positions, risk exposures, liquidity and capital requirements and participation in market structures for these institutions in respect of their involvement in financial futures.

The Minister of Finance therefore requested the then Senior Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank, Dr Stals, in August 1984 to form a technical committee to advise the Minister on any official action that may be regarded as necessary to safeguard the interests of the public, to guide the further evolution of the market, to encourage orderly conditions and to introduce minimum prudential financial disciplines for participants in the market.

Financial institutions from the private and public sector and a few Government departments, for example Inland Revenue, were invited to participate in this investigation.

During the process of compiling the report, however, major changes occurred in the South African financial situation, especially because of the introduction of the foreign debt standstill on 1 September 1985 and also in the light of the then prevailing recessionary conditions in the domestic economy. Some of these factors also had an impact on the future development of the market for gilts, and as a result also led to the appointment of the present Senior Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank, Dr Jacobs, as chairman of another technical committee with the terms of reference to advise on steps that could be taken to improve the effectiveness of the bond market in South Africa.

These two reports will be published within a month, together with a draft Bill to regulate the entire market in this regard. This legislation will be styled the Securities Control Act. Once the content of these reports has been published, we shall be inviting comments from the general public.

*I should like to announce that the Government has decided to transfer the South African Mint to the Reserve Bank for a variety of reasons which we can debate more fully at a later stage. In contrast to what we read regularly in certain propaganda documents, the Reserve Bank is fully in the hands of the private sector. The Government does not hold one single share in the Reserve Bank, and it functions autonomously.

In conformity with monetary policy it is the Government’s instrument in respect of monetary policy and, with that in mind the Government does, in fact, appoint the president and the three vice-presidents, but in that respect the transfer of the Mint to the Reserve Bank is a form of privatisation. This will take place on the basis of an exchange of money between the authorities and the Reserve Bank, and a contract has been concluded with two accepting banks to assist us with this particular privatisation campaign. There is a great deal happening in the sphere of coinage and notes, and further details in this regard will be announced in due course.

This arrangement is going to make it very much easier for manufacturing jewellers as far as the availability of gold to them is concerned, and there are a large number of rationalisation benefits which will spring from the transfer of the Mint to the Reserve Bank. We trust that this matter will be disposed of towards the end of August.

I would very much like to say something about the Advisory Committee on Taxation. Hon members will remember that it was decided to accept the recommendation of the Margo Commission for the establishment of an advisory committee on taxation. This advisory committee has already been appointed. They have started functioning and have already held meetings. They have determined their own priorities which include the whole question of taxation formulae applicable to long-term insurers, the taxation on gold mines and the change-over from GST to VAT.

For example, with a view to the long-term insurers, the chairman and some members of this committee will shortly be meeting once again with representatives of the Long-term Insurers Association. We trust that the very good cooperation that has existed with that association since the Budget will help us at this meeting which, according to the schedule the committee has worked out for itself, will be held as a matter of urgency on 6 July with a view to achieving beneficial results as far as important taxation matters are concerned.

I also want to announce that this advisory committee will be supported by an expert secretariat and will meet very often. Their first meeting was held on 20 May and they will meet again shortly and continue further into July.

I should like to mention their names. The chairman is Dr Chris Stals, Director-General of Finance, and the vice-chairman is Prof Michael Katz. The other members are Dr Daantjie Franzsen and Dr Jan de Villiers Graaff, Messrs Herb Hefer and Derek Keys, and Prof John Morris. These gentlemen were all either members of the present Margo Commission or of the previous advisory committee on taxation which has now been phased out. The Commissioner for Inland Revenue, Mr Clive Kingon, and the Commissioner of Customs and Excise, Mr Daan Colesky, are ex officio also members. The Chief Director of Public Finance, Dr Frans le Roux, will head the secretariat.

I want to thank these members very much indeed. They are all highly esteemed persons in the private sector and academic world. I thank them for their willingness to serve this cause and to make a contribution in this regard. In fact, they make more than just a contribution. I want to place on record the fact that they will tackle this matter with great enthusiasm and at a very high level of expertise.

The Advisory Committee on Taxation will serve as a forum for those who wish to make representations in connection with any of the taxation aspects now under consideration, such as longterm insurers, gold mines and so forth. This is the forum where technical contributions can be made in this connection. If the advisory committee on taxation requires further expertise, members will be able to recommend additional persons for co-option by the Minister of Finance.

I see my time has almost expired. I should like to say something about the levies on heavy motor vehicles in my reply. This matter has already been discussed in the Budget debate. I should also like to say something in regard to the formulae for own affairs. These will have to be dealt with on a very individual basis. I also want to refer to the report of the IMF and their visit to us. At this stage, however, I shall content myself with these few remarks.

Mr Speaker, in the short time available to him, the hon the Minister of Finance made several important announcements. We are grateful for his having given the hon members written copies of the announcements. However, it was clear that time began to catch up with him. Towards the end of his speech, in particular, it became somewhat difficult to compare his written speech with the one he delivered.

I do not believe that the hon the Minister will expect me to react immediately to many of the very important announcements. That requires proper and objective judgement. One would first have to give thorough consideration to them before being able to comment. Allow me to say, however, that we appreciate the appointment of a tax advisory committee. Able people will be serving on this committee. We are satisfied with the appointments.

In his opening speech the hon the Minister painted a relatively bright picture of the economic conditions in our country, as manifested in the previous three quarters up to the end of March. We are happy that he was able to paint a relatively bright picture. Owing to the mild upswing in our economy, our balance of payments came under pressure at one stage. However, we are glad to hear that the hon the Minister is of the opinion that the measures he took were and would remain effective. The danger exists that the mild upswing we experienced will now be stifled, and that a further upswing will not be possible. It should also be taken into consideration that the upward trend may level off.

Most of the important debates of this session, of which this is one, are coming to a close. It is a pity that we should have to end this session under the unpleasant cloud of two judicial commissions of enquiry, which had to be appointed into alleged malpractices in the State Administration. I cannot avoid referring to the rather strange conduct of the hon the Minister of Education and Development Aid in the particular case he dealt with.

We examined this problem on the Joint Committee on Public Accounts which made certain recommendations to the House of Assembly and Parliament in its report. From the start I thought it strange that in the discussion of the report in the House of Assembly the matter was not dealt with by the hon the Minister of Finance, but by the hon the Minister concerned.

Previously the same hon Minister, after the Attorney General had examined the matter and published his finding, decided in his wisdom to leave the matter at that. After the Joint Committee on Public Accounts had examined the matter and submitted its report to Parliament, the same hon Minister said that he accepted the report of the committee, but only in a certain sense, and recommended that the report be referred to the Government of the day, and in particular to the Commission for Administration, for further action.

The following day the decision was changed for a third time. We were given to understand that a judicial commission of enquiry would be appointed. I do not believe that it was the hon Minister under discussion who changed the decision. I am inclined to believe that it was a decision of the hon the State President. We do not find fault with the eventual decision of the hon the State President. However, the way in which the said hon the Minister acted does not testify to resolution or sound judgement.

Within 24 hours or a little more a second judicial commission was announced, one which affects the functions of this entire Parliament and the operation of democracy in South Africa. We have the case of the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council of the House of Delegates. After months of allegations of malpractises, and after the House of Delegates had indicated that it had no confidence in the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council, Mr Rajbansi’s membership of the Cabinet was suspended by a decision, but strange as it may seem, he remains Chairman of the Ministers’ Council, despite the fact that the House of Delegates has no confidence in him.

Allow me to congratulate the hon the State President, after a period of four years, on once again governing South Africa with a White Cabinet. [Interjections.] We shall wait until the findings of the judicial commissions are announced and reserve all further judgement until then.

In recent times it has become clear to us that the Government has set as its goal—and it even spells it out—the termination of all so-called discrimination in the political, social and economic spheres in South Africa, within the framework of its policy.

We know what the standpoint of the PFP is. As I understand them, they advocate the elimination of all boundaries and the repeal of the Group Areas Act. They argue that the present existence of boundaries between groups in South Africa is one of the main reasons for the economic under-development of the Third World component of the South African economy.

On the part of the NP, however, we observe that within the context of its own policy it is trying to remove all disparity in salaries and social services such as education, health-care services and housing which exist between the First and Third World in an attempt to raise the Third World to the level of the First World.

At the same time the Government has repealed influx control. When it was repealed we were told that the policy of influx control was being replaced by a policy of orderly urbanisation because it had not worked. This orderly urbanisation has resulted today in disorderly squatting, as we in fact predicted at the time.

This disorderly squatting is also going to make such heavy demands on the authorities, as regards the provision of services and infrastructure, that it is highly unlikely that our economy will be able to afford it. From a purely economic point of view, it is our opinion that it will not be possible in the foreseeable future, if we want to achieve parity between the First and Third World, to raise the Third World economies to the level of the First World in our country today. If one had parity as one’s goal, one would only be able to achieve it if one scaled down Government expenditure on the First World component of South Africa, because the heaviest part of the tax burden—I am referring to direct taxation—rests on the First World component. It is as simple as that. According to the findings of Prof Swart of Unisa, 420 000 taxpayers contributed 50% of the direct taxation in the previous tax year. Moreover, he found that for each of those taxpayers there were three unemployed persons in South Africa, 35 fully subsidised health-care patients and 23 patients who were partly subsidised by the State.

In an attempt to elevate the Third World, without at the same time demanding an increase in productivity in return, the direct tax burden on the First World component of our economy has become an unacceptably heavy one.

We in South Africa will now have to make a choice, and I think the Government should spell this out to the voters. If the Government want to tell the voters that all discrimination in education, health-care services and the provision of housing should be removed, the Government should also inform the voters where such funds are going to come from. Where indeed are these funds going to come from? If not, the Government will have to make it clear to the White voters of South Africa that they will have to accept lower standards in the provision of public services.

There are already signs of a decline in the standards of Government services provided to Whites in South Africa. The Government must now ask itself whether they are going to tell the voters and whether they are going to deny that the Whites are going to be expected to accept a lesser quality of life.

Another question is whether the economy of South Africa can afford, in the long term, to provide services of a lower quality in future. I should like to refer to education in particular. In the South Africa of today and tomorrow is it possible, economically speaking, for free public education to be provided to everyone in South Africa up to the same level of quality as that of White education at the present time? I do not believe it is possible. The economy and the taxpayer of South Africa will not be able to carry that burden. [Interjections.] If the Government wants to implement such a policy, it will of necessity lead to only one result, namely that the limit for compulsory education for everyone will have to be lowered, and that those who want further education and training for their children will have to pay for it themselves as individuals. I am beginning to wonder whether this is not the long-term objective of the Government of the day. To us this seems increasingly likely.

I should like to conclude my speech. We are glad that the hon the Minister was able to paint a relatively bright picture of our economy. However, we are afraid that the South African economy will eventually be unable to support the socio-political objectives the Government has set for itself.

Mr Speaker, the hon member for Barberton made a lengthy speech in which he quoted innumerable facts. He was leading me into an avenue I cannot afford to pursue because I have too little time to do so. However, I think I should briefly and quickly react to a few of the matters he raised.

Firstly may I state that, unlike the hon member who did not want to react to the hon the Minister’s speech, it is quite easy for me to react to the speech. The hon the Minister’s speech was an integral part of the overall policy and of the constructive dialogue with which he has engaged himself during the four years in which he has been the hon the Minister of Finance. He is reorganising the South African financial, monetary and fiscal policy in order to make it effective. That he has done, and for this reason—and here I agree with the hon member for Barberton—he was able to paint this favourable picture. That is why I should like to thank him for what he has done. This is related to later parts of my speech.

I should like to react briefly to the statement made by the hon member for Barberton in which he said that it was a pity that there were two judicial commissions of enquiry. Surely he is not giving all the facts. Surely he is not telling the whole story. He refuses to admit that the appointment of the first commission of enquiry did not represent a change in the decision of the hon the Minister of Education and Development Aid, but that a new situation had arisen as a result of the fact that the Commission for Administration had itself requested that it be permitted to decline to institute an enquiry. For this reason it was necessary for an alternative to be found.

The hon the member for Barberton is intelligent, and he masterfully makes these insinuations. [Interjections.] No, he is intelligent, but he cleverly does this. He tells half the story, but omits to mention the essential part. He says that the hon the Minister had to change his decision within 24 hours. That is correct, but he omits to furnish the reason for this. Both he and I know what the reason was, but he did not want to tell the general public what the reason was. Surely he knows that the decision was changed as a result of …

It was changed as a result of the debate which took place here.

No, the hon member knows it was as a result of the fact that the Commission for Administration did not want to institute that enquiry, that the Commission was unable to institute the enquiry, and that it requested that it be permitted to decline to do so. [Interjections.] Surely as a decent, honourable and intelligent person the hon member for Barberton should tell that to the general public.

Let us go a little further and consider the second commission of enquiry. Surely the hon members know that all the Ministers of all three houses at present participate in all the Cabinet committees’ activities. Secondly the hon members also know that it is at the request of the Chairman of the Ministers’ Council of the House of Delegates himself that he is now being left out of the Cabinet. Despite all these facts, I know the hon member for Barberton. In fact he congratulated the hon the State President on his actions in both cases. Surely he cannot praise something in one instance and say it is a pity in another. Let us be consistent.

I should like to return to the speech of the hon member for Barberton. Once again he did something similar to the first instance, because in his speech he himself scuttled the argument with which he had began. He said that quality expenditure was the basic train of thought the Government would have to concentrate on in order to enable the economy of this country to function. He knows, I know and fortunately the general public know that this has always been the policy of the NP—since the years when he sat happily over here, and also now while I am still happily sitting over here.

We stand for equal pay according to productivity. The hon member knows this, but once again he tells only half the story. The moment he talks about quality expenditure his party’s policy is untenable. I should like to ask him today whether he approves of disparity in remuneration between the different population groups. He need only answer yes or no. If he answers in the affirmative, he differs with me, but if in the negative, he agrees with me. He must make his choice. [Interjections.] If the hon member for Lichtenburg wants to answer the question, he can try.

The Official Opposition rejects the NP’s policy, but they are not prepared to offer an alternative. I should like to raise another matter which, in my opinion, is of cardinal importance in this country at the moment. Nowhere at all in Africa has domination by a minority group survived. Nowhere on the entire continent is there a successful example, to which the hon members of the Official Opposition can point, of the policy they would like to pursue, namely the policy of domination by a minority group over other majority groups. [Interjections.] That is what the hon members advocate. It is the crux of their policy. If they can point out a single successful example, let them do so. [Interjections.] If they can name an example, I shall resume my seat. Nowhere is such an example to be found. That is the cardinal weakness of their entire argument, and it is for this reason that their entire policy is going to fail. That is why they are leading the people in South Africa into a cul-de-sac from which we shall never emerge.

For this reason I must state unequivocally here today that the hon the State President and the Government are, as far as I am concerned, on the right path, and that we should proceed in this direction as rapidly as we can.

I should like to touch upon a final point, namely education. Hon members use the argument that education cannot be provided to everyone on the same level with the same expenditure. Hon members are right about that. However, what the hon members omit to tell the general public is that they have lost faith in them, but the NP has faith in the people (volk) and in the Whites and believe that they will be prepared and capable … [Interjections.] No, that hon member is too well-versed in financial matters for me. I should rather take up the cudgels with another hon member.

I should like to tell the hon members that the general public is both prepared and able to contribute a part of the costs necessary for their own children. This is the only way we can progress in this country. We shall have to obtain a contribution from the individual parents in order to proceed with this policy.

I should like to give a brief review of the parliamentary session with which we have been occupied for the past five months. I think it would be illuminating to consider what has happened in the past five months. If we want to consider the state of the opposition parties, I think we should begin with the PFP, because the hon member for Yeoville is going to speak immediately after me. He is an honourable man, and I think he is also an intelligent man, especially when the occasion demands. [Interjections.] I think he would agree with me that during the last five months the PFP has begun to become irrelevant. It is a pity that the hon member for Sea Point is not present here today, because I should like to express my sympathy with him. Everywhere little flash-fires are breaking out; everywhere rumours are doing the rounds that they are searching for a new leader. [Interjections.] However, I should like to reassure him that he need not be unduly concerned, because they are not searching for a new leader, but for someone that can finally lay that party to rest. When the party has been laid to rest, who will remain? Only two hon members will remain. The hon member for Yeoville will sit here on the right-hand side, and the hon member for Houghton will sit there on the left-hand side in the adjacent bench. They will not sit side by side because the rift between them is too wide. Only these two hon members will remain. [Interjections.]

Where will I be?

That hon member is going to be on my committee; that is the only job he will get.

*I should like to say only one thing to the Official Opposition today. They should take note of the reason for the PFP becoming irrelevant. The reason is quite clear. The PFP has become irrelevant because they have never had practical, purposeful alternatives to the policy of the Government. Do those hon members agree? [Interjections.] Very well, let us consider what the CP has done over the past five months. CP members have warned against serious snags with privatisation. The CP prefers the free-market system to any other system, but … [Interjections] … the CP spy was sought high and low, but … Here we have a case of the CP even having made use of a document which was not issued on the authority of the Government. In that case they made use of the private enterprise system, but … A “but” always follows. And so it continues through the whole speech of the hon member for Barberton. He is always searching for the ounce of political gain he can make out of the criticism levelled at the Government, without making any constructive contribution to the Government’s policy.

Let us consider the latest enterprise of the CP. The hon members for Barberton and Witbank are currently engaged in establishing new business associations. Surely that is correct. The hon members support it, or do they not support the business associations currently being established in the country?

The CP is not establishing them!

The CP is not establishing them, those two hon members do not support them and are not prepared to associate themselves with them either. Is that correct? [Interjections.] They have not committed themselves. [Interjections.] I should like to ask the hon member for Witbank whether he is prepared to associate himself with that. After all, he is the financial guru. [Interjections.] I should like to put it in another way. Is any member of the CP prepared to say whether he disassociates himself from that, or whether he is prepared to associate himself with it and to lend it his support?

Make your own speech!

I shall.

Those hon members will have to answer a cardinal question. If they do not support them, they will have to admit to us that it is an absurdity that cannot continue to exist in this country.

However, if the hon members say they are going lend it their support, I have quite a number of questions for them. If that is the case, I should like to know whether the people who are going to establish these organisations are going to provide separate amenities in their shops. Are they not going to serve other population groups? Are they going to have separate doors and serve everyone? Will they differentiate in their prices, or will they exclude certain people? Who, where, what and how? This could be a very interesting exercise. [Interjections.]

As Oom Boy Louw, the “master”, always said: One should always look at the scoreboard, because that is really all that counts in the end.

Yes, as in Randfontein!

If, on the other hand, we examine the performance of the NP, the year commenced with the epic address of the hon the State President which was received with such acclaim and met with such wide-ranging support. In this address the hon the State President committed himself and the Government to a free-market-orientated, but disciplined, economy. He spelled out the policy of privatisation and deregulation. This was followed by the Budget Speech of the hon the Minister of Finance in March in which he made two important points. He presented to us the following two fundamental realities, and I should like to repeat them here today:

This is the problem facing South Africa as a country—that this situation will have to be dealt with within the framework of these restrictions. However if we examine the successes of the NP during this year—once again I refer to the speech with which the hon the Minister began this debate—we see that the inflation rate dropped from more than 20% to approximately 13%. That is an improvement of approximately 35%. I ask the hon member for Barberton whether that is an achievement or not? Would the hon member agree with me that that was a fine achievement, or does he not think it is an achievement? If it is an achievement, let us admit, outside this House as well, that we agree. Surely that hon member and I, and he and his party and I and my party are loyal and patriotic enough to acknowledge those achievements which benefit this country. Let us acknowledge them. [Interjections.]

Let us go further. The growth rate rose from 1% in 1986 to 2,5% in 1987. Some economists believe that it is more than 4%, or just under 4%. Surely that is an impressive achievement which cannot be argued away. The growth of the economy, and the concomitant increase in the gross internal expenditure, is so vigorous that, as we heard in the hon the Minister’s speech, timely measures had to be taken, and were so successfully, in order to ensure that the economy did not become overheated. Surely that is a colossal achievement, and a success story! Even the hon member for Barberton admits it in a roundabout way. I do not mean this in a pejorative sense, but simply that he does so in a roundabout way.

Seen in that light, taking our restrictions into consideration, it remains an achievement. But that is not all. The hon the Minister of Finance came to the aid of the individual taxpayer—so much so that he is being blamed in certain quarters for having deliberately tried, successfully, to decrease the taxation of the individual taxpayer in South Africa. I shall mention only a few of these recommendations. The principle of the desirability of separate taxation for married couples was accepted. Surely that is a significant improvement. Or are any of the hon members on the CP side opposed to privileges for women? The replacement of estate duty is an immense improvement for which we, and especially the hon member for Barberton, have pleaded for years. Surely even the hon member for Lichtenburg understands that.

Surely he knows that great progress has been made in accepting a value-added taxation system in place of the present system. This represents progress and means that the individual taxpayer is going to pay less tax next year and in years to come. However, these proposals have been accepted due to the stringent control exercised over Government spending, price increases and expenditure. They have already produced results and we are now enjoying the benefits.

This years’ legislative program was immensely successful. I should firstly like to congratulate the hon the Minister of Economic Affairs and Technology and his department for what they have achieved in connection with the sanctions campaign that was launched against us. The hon member is surely aware of these achievements, and I am certain that the following speaker will agree with me and admit it. I challenge the CP to stand up and say that the efforts of the hon the Minister and his department were not successful. We should be honourable, loyal and patriotic and admit it, because we know their efforts were a success.

I should also like to mention other legislation such as the Manpower legislation pertaining to labour relations. Progress has been made in this area, and the legislation holds advantages for the economy of this country. The CP knows that. However, because the CP is not prepared to acknowledge these aspects in their dealings with the general public, they will not give credit to the Government for what they have accomplished this year.

Another example relates to the issue of illegal squatting. I should like to know whether the hon member for Brakpan is going to support that legislation when it comes before the House.

We have not seen it yet.

The hon member knows what it deals with.

Why are you presenting this legislation two years after influx control was repealed?

Now we know exactly what the CP’s reaction is. Because we have produced the goods two years after they wanted them, they are not prepared to vote for them.

Yesterday the CP agreed to the Harmful Business Practices Bill of the hon the Minister of Economic Affairs and Technology, which makes provision for consumer protection. That is one of the most progressive measures ever placed on the Statute Book in this Parliament. It will not be possible to gauge its real value until a few years have elapsed. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, the venomousness and the double standards of debates on South Africa abroad are assuming tremendous proportions. The full-scale economic war against South Africa is increasing in intensity, but these campaigns will ultimately prove futile when proactive campaigns to counter them become effective. Sanctions and disinvestment are not always negative, and this applies both to the country imposing the sanctions and the countries against which they are implemented.

I want to deal with the coal agreements and the relevant contracts which have been entered into. As far as coal agreements are concerned, it has become apparent from recent reports that America has suffered losses of R250 million in this connection, and as a result more than 3 000 people in America are out of work. South Africa’s aggressive marketing policy has benefited us to such an extent that we have changed the situation from a negative to a positive one.

Australia, which was to a large extent in favour of sanctions, is today on the receiving end. According to reports many mines have had to close as a result of their sanctions campaign against South Africa, and because they could no longer compete in markets which traditionally did not belong to South Africa, but to which we are now gaining access.

If we consider where the arms ban against South Africa some years ago has led us, I believe that although sanctions today have a negative connotation, we shall ultimately overcome them, and in the long term they will have positive results for South Africa.

We are bowed down under the weight of disinvestment —both from abroad and locally. As far as foreign disinvestment is concerned, there is not really much one can do about it.

However, what worries me far more is local disinvestment. Local disinvestment is not always clearly discernible. One comes across a person who sells his factory, or makes less and less use of it, usually saving that money so that when he leaves the country he can take it with him. Or a person continues to manufacture goods, but does not replace machinery and equipment. He then becomes less competitive and ultimately his production costs increase to such an extent that it is no longer worth trying to compete. We have just recently seen that despite the favourable trend in the consumer price index, that index is unfortunately rising again, and that can be traced back to our not taking steps to bring about the necessary replacements in our manufacturing industry.

We can also examine a typical form of local disinvestment. Let us take the example of a foreigner who has been in the country for 40 years and then decides he is going to leave the country. He converts all his assets in South Africa into cash. In terms of our foreign exchange regulations he may take an amount of R100 000 with him in financial rands for the establishment of a business, but whatever he has in the country he can invest in shares—often to cap everything it is Escom stock—and the interest he earns on those shares, regardless of the amount, he can take out of the country in the form of commercial rands without any restrictions. I have absolutely no objection to this person earning sufficient return on his capital to enable him to live very comfortably abroad. As far as I am concerned, if his annual interest amounts to R100 000 or even R200 000, he can take it out of the country in commercial rands with the greatest of pleasure. But it is a horse of another colour when those amounts are exceeded, when unlimited amounts, millions of rands, in fact, are involved—and there are some cases in which we could well talk of millions of rands leaving the country in this manner. I therefore want to ask that we look at this aspect to see if we cannot close this loophole in the exchange regulations. I must add at once that I am fully aware that the IMF would not favour the sort of arrangement I have suggested, because according to their definition, interest and dividends are regarded as current income on capital, which in their view should therefore freely be allowed to leave the country. This issue nevertheless calls for immediate attention.

Let us also examine the free-market principle in South Africa and the need for greater trade. With regard to this greater trade which we must engender, we must definitely look at our growth rate, and I am convinced that we can ultimately push the growth rate in South Africa up to 5% per annum, but in that event we must not raise petty issues. We must try to think big. We must not look at the skin colour of those we are trading with, nor must we be concerned with what nation they belong to.

I also briefly want to criticise a previous standpoint of the hon member for Yeoville relevant to certain small Russian cars he saw in South Africa. Let me tell him today that if those small Russian cars were on the road here after the applicants had paid the full price, with the fullest possible maximum levy which could be imposed on that car, their application for a permit for exemption and rebate having been refused, and having been told there will be no concessions because there are already enough substitutes for that car, then that old Russian car would automatically be in such a price range that it could no longer compete.

I say now that if we can sell maize, or if we can sell bread, it makes no difference what we sell and who is ultimately the buyer …

You are therefore prepared to deal with the devil himself just to make money! [Interjections.]

My standpoint is that money has no skin colour and no political colour or …

You want to trade with people who plant limpet mines and other explosives in your own people’s cities and residential areas! [Interjections.]

Order! The hon member for Yeoville must please restrain himself.

Mr Chairman, the hon member for Yeoville can keep on shouting. He can carry on to his heart’s content. I say that his standpoint here shows that he has completely misunderstood the true state of affairs.

Perhaps you …

Order! The hon member for Yeoville cannot continually interrupt.

I want to advise our people to carry on with what they are doing. The NP is accused in this House of moving too slowly with its reform policy.

On the other hand, the CP accuses us of selling the country down the river. It seems to me the CP has learned something from the Progs about the “turbo-charged” election campaign of 1987. From this the CP has now devised a “turbocharged” ox-wagon so that the progress in their technical thinking can be brought home to the voters. I understand this “turbo-charged” oxwagon is the first ox-wagon in the world with four reverse gears. [Interjections.] With this ox-wagon one can therefore decide for oneself the speed at which one reverses into the past to escape the realities of the future.

Let us look at the four possibilities of the CP’s policy, as symbolised by the four ox-wagons drawn by a team of 23 tortoises.

It is because of that same arrogance that the voters of Randfontein rejected you! [Interjections.]

In the first place there is the White homeland concept of the Oranje-Werkers, with Morgenzon megalopolis as the commercial core. It seems to me that the hon members for Ermelo and Bethal are no longer riding on this wagon.

Then we get the “Boerestaat” concept of Messrs Eugène Terre’Blanche and Robert van Tonder. Oom Daan is probably also still here. This wagon is trekking through Bethal and Ventersdorp and later, of course, through the AWB plains as well.

The concept of a White “volkstaat” is the third wagon, with which we shall remove all people of colour completely from White South Africa—if not by way of persuasion then by way of … They do not want to tell us how.

Fourthly, we have the linking concept or policy. I understand the hon member for Lichtenburg is the chief exponent of the linking policy. He says he needs no bulldozers to establish a White majority. He just says it will happen. “Watch ons net.”

Oom Tom is his “dozer” already.

Mr Chairman … [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, I find this debate a rather strange one. I was quite pleased that the hon the Minister of Finance came into the debate right at the beginning, so that he could at least set the tone in this debate, which is of course what used to be the Third Reading of the Appropriation Bill. I would assume the tradition of this House is that at least at the beginning of this debate we talk about finance. I have always taken that to be the tradition.

Strangely enough, Sir, I have always thought that Parliament is run not only in terms of rules and of laws, but also in terms of conventions and traditions. One of the disturbing features which I believe exists is that some people are forgetting the traditions and the conventions of Parliament. We have too many symptoms of that syndrome around. There are symptoms of this which have become evident during the past few years. As a result of the inception of the tricameral system there were certainly some adaptations necessary. We then adopted a new set of Rules. In many cases, however, we now appear to forget what the traditions are.

Perhaps what has happened here this afternoon is an example of how the traditions and conventions in terms of which Parliament functions are ignored.

I shall give another example, Sir. I have always believed that no one should be running the country, that no one should be in an executive position, unless he enjoys the confidence of the legislature in which he actually participates. That is a convention which we should perhaps show to many people who participate in this Parliament, because Parliament consists not only of the House of Assembly, but of three Houses at the moment. What one member of Parliament does in one House therefore affects every single other member of this institution.

I must say—I say it with all sincerity—that I am seriously disturbed about the image of members of Parliament which exists in the eyes of the public and which, over the past little while, has in fact deteriorated even more in the eyes of the public. I believe we have to look at this matter very carefully in order to ensure that the status of this Parliament is not detrimentally affected in any way at all.

Sir, the hon member for Jeppe wishes to do business with the Russians; he wants to do business with the communists. I must tell you, Sir, that I choose whom I do business with. I must also tell you that I prefer not to do business with people who plant landmines to blow up South Africans; I prefer not to do business with people who provide arms for the killing of innocent people; and I prefer not to do business with people who seek to foment revolution in my country.

Tell that to your party!

If that is the new philosophy that is being propagated on that side of the House, then I should like to hear some reaction in that regard. I had a reaction the other day when I spoke about Russian cars and again today the issue has been raised that we should trade with the Russians if we can do so at a profit. There is a limit as to how far one can go in order to make a profit in business. [Interjections.] I think that sort of morality is a disgrace and totally unacceptable. I for one will certainly not accept it. [Interjections.]

I should also like to react briefly to certain points raised by the hon the Minister of Finance in his introductory speech to this debate. Unfortunately, I do not have very much time, but I should like to make a few points. Firstly, as far as the Mint is concerned, I think that the idea of transferring it to the Reserve Bank is a good one, and I certainly will support it. However, I am concerned about one matter which I should like to have considered further and that is whether the functions of the Mint insofar as they relate to the question of the making of medallions and objects of that nature for the private sector should not perhaps be abandoned and that the Mint should concern itself purely with the question of coinage, medals and medallions or anything relating of that nature to the State. I feel that all the other matters should be left to private enterprise at the same time as this change comes about.

Secondly, in relation to the Stals and Jacobs Committees, we welcome the activities of those committees, we are grateful for their work and we should like to see their reports as soon as possible because we believe that action is necessary in order to deal with the problems to which they have addressed themselves.

We think that the Tax Advisory Committee is an important one because it will perform an important function. I should like to suggest that one of the first things it should deal with—which was not mentioned in the speech of the hon the Minister of Finance—is the question of creating certainty in respect of dealings in shares and property; in other words, remove the uncertainty as far as people who invest on the Stock Exchange and people who deal in property are concerned. I think that easy formulae which are related to time are obtainable from other parts of the world. I think that question needs to be dealt with but in such a way that the perception is not created that this is a capital gains tax. The perception needs to be created that it is being introduced in order to create certainty in respect of these transactions.

I want to turn now to the hon member for Vasco. He decided to have a crack at the PFP and so I cannot ignore him. He had every right to do so, but I should like to make some fundamental points in his regard. As long as there is a need in South Africa for somebody to speak up for human rights; as long as there is a need in South Africa for somebody to speak up against discrimination; as long as there is a need for someone in South Africa to speak up against domination; and as long as there is somebody in South Africa who continues to speak up for these things, combined with law and order and a process of peaceful reform, so long will there be a place for the PFP in this House. Even if we are relegated by the Rules to a lowly position in this House, we will continue to occupy that position and we will continue to speak up because there is a need in South Africa for that to be done. [Interjections.] I want to tell the hon member for Vasco that we shall continue to do that and I also want to tell him that these five principles that I have enumerated are what I believe in.

May I please ask a question?

Yes, certainly.

I put it to the hon member for Yeoville that in that case he is the only one left who is prepared to do so. Is that correct?

Sir, I do not think that question deserves a reply.

The next point I should like to deal with is the question of the Budget as presented and the question of tighter control; in fact, the whole concept of keeping the Budget within reasonable limits.

I accept the bona fides of the hon the Minister. I also accept the bona fides of the hon the State President when he said what he did say in respect of these matters. I should like to ask the hon the Minister a question, however. Having listened to the debate on the supplementary estimates and having heard the slips that some hon Ministers had made in regard to what they already want to get into the additional estimates—they are already talking about the additional estimates—I have to ask the hon the Minister whether he and the hon the State President are winning their fight to control expenditure or whether the pressure from his hon colleagues in the Cabinet is so great that he is going to give in when they themselves come under such pressure from their staff and from lobbies. We are worried that we will find a situation next year that the good intention will not have been realised. If we are going to keep the economy on the right road in South Africa, the question of the need for continued fiscal discipline is absolutely vital. Therefore, Sir, I hope that the two of them are winning and that they do not give in to these pressures and lobbies. Every now and then one will hear about another R200 million, R50 million etc and this will not encourage fiscal discipline.

The other question—which I think arises to some extent out of what the hon member for Barberton said—is that of priorities in South Africa. We have not really had a meaningful debate in regard to this question and perhaps we should try to debate it today and tomorrow. I foresee that the public have to be told what our priorities are for survival and prosperity in South Africa, and if this involves telling them that they have to make sacrifices, we must be honest about it and tell them what sacrifices they have to make. Then I think we will get the backing of the public. We will, however, not get the backing of the public if we try to bluff them into believing that in the future everything will be as it is today. It is not so. The reality is that if the CP wants to maintain the kind of standards and the status quo which they are talking about, the only way one can maintain that position is by force. Equality in services from the State is inevitable in the long term. The only difficulty is that if the State does not give equality and services willingly, that may come about in a different form. The tragedy is that if we do not deliver this equality in services, if we do not remove discrimination from the provision of services, we are playing into the hands of those who do not want peaceful reform but who want revolution.

I think the time has come when the politicians must cease to tell the people of South Africa that in the future everything is going to remain as it is today. That will not happen; it is going to be different. We will have to pay a premium in order to have a society where we can live in peace. However, I believe that we can pay that premium. We can get the kind of growth that we need in South Africa. We can uplift people without bringing down the standards of others unduly. What we must not do, however, is bluff the people that no sacrifices are required under these circumstances.

Sir, I am not a pessimist by nature. I think there are problems facing us and we have to look at them. Let us look at an example. The hon the Minister correctly pointed out that there had been an increase in the level of employment. However, it is also true that while more people are in employment, there is actually greater unemployment because at the present growth rate—of which the hon member for Vasco is so proud, and I too am pleased that it is better than it was—we are not keeping pace with the population growth and with the growth in the number of economically active persons in South Africa.

The priorities for South Africa, if we are going to look at anything at all, demand that we see to it that the people of South Africa are in gainful economic activity, whether by employment or by self-employment. I have set myself the following objectives as priorities: Firstly, gainful activity for every South African; secondly, a roof over the head of every South African; thirdly, that every South African should be able to feed himself reasonably; and fourthly, that in his residential areas he should enjoy a quality of life which enables him to live in reasonable comfort and—I want to stress this—in safety. If we apply our minds to those priorities, we can help solve South Africa’s problems. That is what is really needed.

It is very easy to talk about the fact that we are now going to exploit a situation in which some standards might drop in some respects. We can have a campaign in which we exploit every one of these situations, but in the long run we will pay a tremendous price for indulging in that kind of politics in South Africa.

Being honest with the people will produce far greater dividends than bluffing them when it comes to politics. Yes, there is a wealth gap and an income gap in South Africa. There are people who promise instant solutions to it, but there are no instant solutions. There are only long-term solutions. Perhaps those solutions will be tough, but they will have to be faced.

It is in equality of services, the removal of discrimination in services and equality of opportunity that the key to the future prosperity and peace of South Africa lies.

Mr Chairman, I shall come back to the hon member for Yeoville later in my speech.

The Second Reading debate is taking place today while the cannon shots of the coming municipal elections are already being heard. Perhaps it is again necessary today to summarise CP policy as revealed recently in the Patriot and in speeches here.

Firstly the CP’s is in favour of the abolition of the tricameral system. The CP is in favour of the abolition of regional services councils. The CP rejects decentralisation of government and the devolution of power. The CP believes in pure White municipalities and is going to abolish open central business districts. White housing will be given preference. Influx control will be reintroduced and so will the curfew. There will be separate parks, separate restaurants and generally restricted separate public facilities at the disposal of Blacks in White areas. The presence of non-White employees in White cities and towns—this also includes domestic servants—will be severely restricted. The CP will prohibit Black trade unions in the present metropolitan areas. Metropoles and developed agricultural areas will remain White South Africa.

At present there are 5 million Whites in South Africa, and in what I may call White areas there are approximately 20 million Blacks, 3 million Coloureds and 1 million Asians. The Whites control most of the political and economic power, but they have only 45% of the purchasing power in South Africa and comprise less than 0,25% of the economically employed population. I want to know if the CP is living in cloud-cuckooland, because that is the question one must ask.

I do, however, want to summarise these points and make a synthesis of CP policy. The CP believes in a centralised government system in which public finance, in particular, will be vested in the Afrikaner-majority government, with no acknowledgment of any non-White rights in South Africa. According to CP policy, the right to self-determination of the Whites at the local level—I am being very honest—is left hanging in the air. It is in a vacuum, and I think they could write something about this in the Patriot for a change.

Not even at gunpoint will White South Africa be able to hold back the movement of the non-Whites towards greater economic power, ie a bigger share in State revenue and expenditure.

The ANC wants a take-over. That is not what we want. The non-Whites, like the Afrikaner, will try through political power to gain greater economic power in South-Africa. The CP’s philosophy of centralised White control, with politics in complete control of the economy, leads me to concur with the Stigting Afrikaner-Vryheid that large-scale unrest would result if a White rightwing group came to power. I say very definitely: The CP has no solution. [Interjections.]

The NP accepts the reality that economic and political power must be shared with all population groups where division cannot take place. In the case of power-sharing, the Government believes that political and economic power must be distributed through maximum decentralisation of government or, as the hon the State President has said, the devolution of power must be distributed—from power-sharing at the highest level of government to self-determination for each population group at the local level. I do not think this policy is in such a vacuum as the Patriot would have it seem. This distribution of a share in and a say over State revenue and expenditure is also known as fiscal federalism which is implemented horizontally and vertically.

The concept of federalism embraces fiscal, political and ethnic federalism. The hon member for Yeoville has said hon members must confine themselves to the economy. My speech deals with fiscal federalism. To make a success of fiscal federalism in our plural society there must be more privatisation. State expenditure at central government level must be non-politicised by establishing long-term political guidelines.

It is very interesting to note what the hon the State President said as far back as 1982 in Bloemfontein. He had already begun to develop the concept of decentralisation of government. The concept is therefore nothing new. The development of our national states is an example of decentralisation of government. As an adjunct to power-sharing, the hon the State President said, the principles of maximum devolution of power, decentralisation of administration at local government level and the minimum of administrative control over local authorities must apply.

He said that if at all possible, and subject to effective financial measures being adopted,, local authorities must be made viable through the establishment of local government institutions for the various population groups in South Africa. On a metropolitan or regional basis, joint services must be provided, for which purpose bodies must be created. Local authorities must be represented on those bodies on a proportional basis—for example a financial basis—by delegates appointed by the local authorities themselves. It is interesting to see that these statements were made as far back as 1982. This is the year 1988.

If one considers how successful the NP has been, and assesses their achievements in the light of what the hon the State President proposed in 1982, one must admit that the NP has achieved almost all of these ideals.

Any government has basic public finance functions to fulfil. Nobody can argue that away. Any government must strive, through its Department of Finance, to achieve a stable economy. Economic growth must be brought about through monetary or fiscal policy. Any government’s Department of Finance must strive to supply public amenities which cannot be provided by the private sector.

The examples I have in mind include a defence force that is prepared for any contingency. It must be provided by the State. The individual is prepared to pay for this, but the private sector will not provide it. Other examples are a sound judicial system and measures to counter infectious diseases. There is also external expenditure, for example the subsidisation of the training of an engineer, because parents may not be able to afford this. Because the country needs engineers, the State’s contribution is to the benefit of the country.

A third very important financial function the State has in the economy is the distribution of income and prosperity. That includes a secondary aim, namely that each person in the country must be able to satisfy his basic living requirements. I do not think anybody will argue with me on that score.

The hon member for Barberton said we were going to use White money, but if we do not take that money to provide basic living requirements we shall have no future. The distribution of these public financial functions of the State is of cardinal importance for South Africa with its plural society and vast differences in prosperity.

This Government does not view this distribution, the third function of the State, as being restricted to the Whites, because no White community can survive amongst other communities which exist in a state of total poverty. I think hon members will agree with me on that. To the Government these three functions are the crux of the matter.

What is more important is how these three functions are going to be decentralised between government and the various levels of government, between general affairs right at the top down to own affairs on a local level. No one will deny that in South Africa we are striving for a stable economy. When one examines this decentralisation between various levels of authority, one must also accept that Soweto’s needs differ from those of Worcester, and the same applies to Pretoria and Cape Town.

Because of the plural nature of the population structure in South Africa and the non-Whites’ striving for a share in the economic and political powers, the Government believes in decentralisation of government which will make it possible for any small town’s local government to levy its rates and determine its expenditure, whether it wants an opera house, a rugby field or policemen on the beat. That is the Government’s view of its decentralisation policy.

The success of the Government’s policy—it was spelled out a long time ago but it does not crop up every day—is clearly apparent from the devolution of functions to local authorities. The first function, which is very interesting, is the removal of all red tape which applied to local authorities and constantly required them to ask the provincial authorities for their consent. They will not, in other words, be given new functions, but it will be made easier for them to carry out those functions allocated to them.

New tasks are also being given to local authorities …

Such as?

I am coming to that.

An example of these powers is the Transvaal Town Planning Ordinance in which the authority to subdivide or reclassify plots has already been granted to local authorities.

At the moment all four provinces, in consultation with the Municipal Association, are devolving some of their administrative control to local authorities. Hon members can look into this themselves; I verified this fact yesterday. It must be borne in mind that local authorities differ in size and capability and must therefore be assessed according to different gradings. This is self-determination which is developing into a balanced philosophy; not self-determination in isolation from top to bottom.

The decentralisation of government or, to put it another way, the devolution of power with which, as hon members know, the CP disagrees, holds tremendous economic advantages. The decentralisation of government leads to greater efficiency, greater accountability, greater fairness and justness and better management. That is what this Government believes in and on what it bases its whole policy of decentralisation.

As far as efficiency is concerned, it is often said that the decentralisation of government can be seen—this is very interesting—as being analogous to the market mechanism in the private sector. In this way the decentralisation in which we believe takes place right down to the local level, because if the local authority does not do what that community wants, they will vote it out. The consumer-electorate, who pays rates, will then decide, and that is what one wants.

It is interesting that these economic factors which promote decentralisation are also in conflict with one another. For instance, we find problems arising between efficiency and fairness. If too many sources—the hon member for Barberton referred to this—are removed through progressive taxation and are used as subsidies for the lower income groups, and if this is overdone, one gets a reaction in that people leave a region or a country. I therefore want to tell the hon member for Barberton that one cannot take that policy too far.

But in the policy of decentralisation of government we cannot argue away the fact that we have inequality of wealth and income among communities. This Government is channelling funds to national states, something which hon members opposite supported for a long time. This Government is channelling funds for housing, health services and education for non-Whites or the under-privileged.

I want to put it very clearly that the upliftment of non-Whites in their own towns through the improvement of their quality of life and the promotion of private ownership will ensure the future of the Whites in South Africa. For this reason I take it amiss of the hon member for Barberton for saying that too many funds are being utilised for this purpose. Only if the quality of life of those people is improved can we be assured of remaining in this country.

In the process of power-sharing and division, the Government is also succeeding in sharing, dividing and distributing power over State revenue and State expenditure horizontally and vertically. That, of course, is where the complete decentralisation of government is not immediately effective.

We have often been criticised because this state has falsified money or that state has done something else, but we must train people. We are engaged in the process of decentralising government. It is not a one-off decision, but a long-term process we are engaged in. But we get no acknowledgment, because it is not looked on as a process, and for this reason we are told how bad the situation appears to be at the moment.

Decentralisation of government also relates to the spill-over of needs across geographic boundaries. Hon members should look into this; it is a basic problem. There is the problem of water purification, road links, etc. In this connection I again want to tell hon members of the CP that no community in a geographic region can live in isolation. The CP is opposing this, but that is why regional services councils are needed and why they are now being set up. It is an exceptionally good way of ensuring political and economic power-sharing with greater efficiency and success.

For years South Africa has been engaged in the process of decentralisation of government, or the so-called fiscal federalism. Hon members on that side of the House, incidentally, have already been involved in it. The implementation of self-governing states was the beginning of the process of fiscal federalism. This concept, interestingly enough, is divided into co-ordinated and corporate federalism. In this connection I should like to quote what Professor Hicks, an authority in this field, had to say:

In contrast to this there is the more general federal fiscal model of “co-operative federalism in which the relations of Centre and State are much closer”. This differs like confederation and federation in the USA.

We can therefore say that the Government is engaged in a process of economic and political power-sharing, and the division and distribution of governmental functions and financing. This process of distributing political and economic power is also being furthered by the Government through its policy of privatisation. It is a process in which the State’s share will be reduced. Through long-term guidelines, as contained in the five-year plan of the President’s Priorities Committee, we have a process of depoliticising of finances.

Certain norms are laid down in these guidelines, such as a deficit before borrowing of no more than 3% of the gross domestic product. Guidelines are also being laid down as to what percentage of the gross domestic product State expenditure should be. Professor Wicksel, the well-known Swedish economist, wrote about Swedes and said they should be careful not to let street politics, as I almost want to call it, disturb one’s budgeting. One must, to a certain extent, depoliticise one’s budget and state finances.

This methods, together with the decentralisation of government, offers South Africa a future, and I think the Government has very often been successful, and will continue to be successful, in the development of this policy which is not situated in a vacuum. [Interjections.]

Mr Speaker, it is very clear that this Budget and the financial management that the hon the Minister and his department are applying, are right on target, especially if one looks at the reaction of the chief spokesmen of the Official Opposition and the PFP, who had no real criticism to offer in their discussion on this second reading of the Appropriation Bill. For this reason we on this side of the House want to congratulate the hon the Minister on what has been done. We believe that the results will not be lacking. I want to refer to this matter again later.

When we agree to this second reading, one question can immediately be asked, namely: Where do we stand in regard to realising specific objectives, as spelt out by the hon the Minister in his Budget speech. I am of the opinion that we have already achieved significant successes in this regard. The hon the State President gave certain directives in his opening address and the hon the Minister followed up on these in his budget address.

The most important of these directives undoubtedly involved the steps that were announced to curb inflation, and the appeal made in this regard. Certain sacrifices were asked of everyone. The public servants, the public sector, did not receive a general salary increase and Government expenditure was subjected to stricter control measures.

The immediate results were not lacking, and we have just listened to what the hon the Minister was able to announce in this regard. The inflation rate has dropped considerably, and it is expected that it could possibly decrease even further. However, whether the eventual goal is going to be achieved, remains an open question. It is quite clear that not all sectors co-operated in this regard. Unfortunately they are not the only ones who will eventually have to pay the price; everyone in South Africa will be the victims if we do not achieve that goal. Every sector will have to decide to what degree it co-operated in trying to achieve these specific objectives.

The one negative note that sticks out like a sore thumb is the apparent inability and, I think, the reluctance of the food sector to adjust to this downward pattern. It is undoubtedly the case that food prices, and as a result the food price index, are still on the increase, something which will have an inhibitive influence on the levelling off of the overall price index. Sometimes I get the feeling that this sector takes only one valid fact into account, namely that everyone has to eat and will therefore have to pay, regardless of the price.

I could not find a satisfactory reason for the continuation of this unusual increase. The closest that I could come to an answer so far was that the food industry operates in a highly competitive market and that business costs—advertising costs, in particular, are referred to—play the most important role. I have no quarrel with concise, purposeful advertising which is directed at a particular market sector. The thousands of rands that are spent on the placing of up to double-page advertisements in daily newspapers to advertise single commodities at an apparently reasonable price must eventually, however, have an influence on the price of that company’s products. There is only one conclusion that one can draw, and that is that it is ultimately the consumer who must pay up.

I am aware that competition exists and that it can be effectively neutralised by means of meaningful advertisements. However, at the moment there is a mad rush for senseless advertisements that say nothing and ultimately become the consumer’s problem for which the consumer must pay.

A second success that must undoubtedly be noted …

Order! Certain hon members are really making it difficult for the Chair to hear the speaker properly. Hon members must take into account that the speaker also wants to make himself heard.

Sir, a second success that must undoubtedly be noted is the still very positive trade figures which the hon the Minister explained a while ago. Our exports still show an enormous growth. Despite continued efforts to implement sanctions, our exporters are still succeeding in earning foreign exchange. However, this positive growth in our exports must not be neutralised by senseless imports.

In a previous debate the hon member for Yeoville referred to a Russian motor car that was imported. I do not want to go into the squabble between him and the hon member for Jeppe any further. They must resolve it among themselves. In this regard I merely want to state categorically that we have no official trade relations with Russia at all, and we refuse to have any.

In this regard I also want to refer to a little bottle of jam that landed on our table. It was a strange type with a strange taste. When I investigated the matter, I saw that on the little bottle was written “Product of the USSR”. There are probably various ways in which such stuff enters the country. There are probably also ways to prevent it from entering the country. I do not think that the question is whether or not it should be imported. However, I consider it to be total madness to import jam, of all things, from Moscow. I think it is really unnecessary.

Moskonfyt!

It is almost as crazy as the actions of Archbishop Tutu in Moscow when, according to Die Burger of 15 June, he thanked the Soviet Union ”… namens Suid-Afrika se mense … vir sy volgehoue steun in die stryd teen apartheid”. Furthermore, he is quoted as having expressed his thanks “aan die Sowjet-volk vir hul steun aan Suid-Afrika se mense in hul stryd om geregtigheid en vryheid”.

A so-called church leader who places South Africa in the dock in Moscow and claims to be conveying the thanks of South Africa’s people, exposes himself as someone who does not like the truth. He has no right to speak on behalf of South Africa in Moscow. At most, he can speak on behalf of a few radical Whites and a very small percentage of the Blacks in South Africa. However, I want to leave him there. I am of the opinion that he has already received too much recognition.

A backward glance at the debate on the Appropriation over the past months brought to the fore a single aspect on the side of the opposition. It is the CP, in particular, which have been guilty of this. It simultaneously advocates tax relief and the increase of certain expenditure. With regard to the latter, it has constantly insisted on the increase of salaries in the public sector and on the further increase of social pensions. This side of the House is also sympathetic towards this and has just as much of a desire to do so. We should have liked to do so, as it affects the living conditions of people.

On various occasions and in various debates the Official Opposition asked for salaries and pensions to be increased, but not one hon member was able to indicate in his arguments which source should be used to generate such adjustments, except perhaps to argue that the system was supposedly expensive.

It is perhaps true that the present system is expensive, but the system was democratically approved by the majority of voters in South Africa. It is a reality, and it must be administered and financed. The only alternative is to increase taxation. This, however, they did not advocate; on the contrary, they advocate a decrease in taxation.

The hon member for Middelburg not only wants to have stainless steel trucks built, but advocates, without another word, the abolition of GST on second-hand motor vehicles. I did not do the little calculation or have it done by someone else, but it must make for a considerable gap in available sources. I want to ask the hon member whether he has considered what would happen in practice. Does he know how quickly such a vehicle can become a second-hand vehicle? I can imagine how some dealers would use all their vehicles as demonstration models and then place them on the floor as second-hand vehicles—a new motor car without GST. A necessary result of this situation is that second-hand goods will have to be exempt from GST. [Time expired.]

Mr Speaker, I shall link up with the hon member for Gezina in a moment, but at this stage I should merely like to say, in lighter vein, that we prefer to stick to “moskonfyt” in stead of “Moskou-konfyt”. Perhaps he could tell us later on whether he suffered any adverse effects owing to his encounter with this “konfyt” from a specific quarter. I shall come back to a matter the hon member raised.

I should like to say a few words about certain statements the hon the Deputy Minister of Finance made here. I do not intend to go into this in depth, because I am not an economist; I am not a financier. However, I should like to touch on a few matters.

With regard to the great emphasis placed on economic interdependence, I should like to say that this is a principle, a fact, which we all accept. This side of the House accepts that one should not discriminate against a person and pay him less if he does the same job and supplies the same production as another person in the same economic structure.

We accept that kind of interdependence. However, I would like to put a question to the Government. Last year, in their election manifesto, they intimated that Black metropolitan areas could become autonomous and even independent. I wonder whether the hon the Deputy Minister of Finance can tell us whether the Government has considered what the implications of this would be as regards financial obligations and relationships existing between the RSA and an independent Black metropolitan area.

The hon the Deputy Minister had quite a lot to say about the devolution of power and so on. I want to say that on the one hand this is true, and on the other it is rejected. We do not reject the devolution of power, nor the division of power. It is not only a downward shifting of power to the lowest tier of Government, but a division of power so that there can be an own political structure and a pyramid of power on a separate basis. In terms of their manifesto in the election, hon members on that side intimated that they would introduce such a separate pyramid of power, even in Black metropolitan areas.

However, the Government is not complying with this principle in all respects. It is talking about the devolution of power and authority. This goes as far as local government, and it then goes back up to the centralisation of power.

The hon member boasted about the regional services councils. This side of the House is in favour of the provision of services on a regional basis, but we are opposed to their being multiracial structures and to their being a new centralisation of power in those bodies. There is such a centralisation of power, in the first place, because those bodies decide, by a majority of votes, how the funds are going to be used. That body therefore decides on the budget. Secondly, appointments in that body do not take place from the bottom up, by way of an election. Some are appointed from the top. The same applies to the provinces. As regards the provinces, the MECs are not, as in the past, elected democratically by the members of the provincial council. No, they are appointed from above. For that reason there are mixed executive committees in all the provinces. That is not democratic! It is not an extension of democracy. It is centralisation.

I should also like to ask the hon the Deputy Minister what his view is with regard to federalisation. He wants to apply federalisation at the economic level. Politically speaking, every form of federalisation has taken place within a unitary state. One can differentiate between different regions, provinces and so on, but in the final analysis there is an umbrella parliament, which has the final say. In the final analysis there is one central government in a federal state.

The hon member has now told us that we do not have an answer. However, the NP does not have answers. When we asked them how, in such a unitary state, with equal rights, equal opportunities and general citizenship—I am not going to repeat everything—they were, in that central government body, whether it is the Parliament or the Cabinet, going to prevent the different federal components in the population from gaining representation there according to their voting power, they could not answer us. One is therefore not dealing with the devolution of power. In that body there is a centralisation of power. It is the highest authority.

By the way, the other day the hon member for Turffontein asked, by way of an interjection: Who says there will only be one Parliament? I do not think he was intimating that there could be two sovereign parliaments in the same country. If he meant that it could be a regional parliament, eg a provincial council, that is not a sovereign parliament. There cannot be another sovereign Parliament in the same country. [Interjections.]

No, to indicate to me here by way of an interjection: “Who says there will only be one Parliament?”, is simplism. The immediate question is whether they have two parliaments.

I want to link up with the hon member for Gezina. I think it is necessary for public cognisance to be taken of the most recent behaviour of archbishop Tutu. The hon member referred to the newsagency Tass, as reported in the South African newspapers, and according to that newsagency archbishop Tutu “conveyed his thanks to the Soviet people for their support to the people of South Africa in their struggle for justice and freedom” to the first vice-president of Russia, Demitjov.

Here we have an instance of someone from South Africa choosing the Soviet Union as a platform to level charges against South Africa about the treatment of church leaders. The Soviet Union is well-known for its official anti-religious, anti-Christian, atheistic approach. This is a government which is known throughout history for applying religious persecution. Thousands of people have lost their lives as a result. That government has now been chosen to level charges against South Africa about the treatment of church leaders. In my opinion this is a bitter irony. One should ask whether an official atheistic authority should be called in as an arbitrator on South Africa.

I do not want to be melodramatic, but I feel this is the right moment to say that the blood of Russian martyrs is crying out against those authorities whom Bishop Tutu thanked for their support of South Africa.

In this connection the United Christian Action commented as follows:

They continue as follows:

In my opinion this comment must receive serious consideration. Undoubtedly there is implied encouragement to the ANC and the SACP in this. What is more, for some time now there has been an aversion to certain behaviour on the part of archbishop Tutu.

In our opinion a church leader should not be made a political martyr, particularly not by the political authority of the country. Consequently, if that side of the House is careful about taking steps against the archbishop, this side of the House understands that we must not unnecessarily make such a person a martyr.

Unfortunately we have made Nelson Mandela a martyr and a hero, and he would seem to find being a martyr and a hero quite acceptable. That is why he is remaining where he is.

One can expect public opinion to repudiate Bishop Tutu regarding his ridiculous—I mean this in every sense of the word—and harmful crusades against our country. In important respects one can probably leave it to the Churches inside South Africa to assess his theological standpoints, his theology of liberation, and perhaps his theology of sanctions. I think there are enough politicians in South Africa who can also assess that kind of theology.

The people of South Africa who reject communism, and its Government which has repeatedly adopted the standpoint against communism and implements the Suppression of Communism in South Africa Act, do not owe anybody, or any Church leader either, travel documents, passports and so on to undermine South Africa’s interests abroad, to encourage political leaders and foreign governments to impose sanctions against South Africa or, by implication, to praise organisations like the ANC and the SACP for their interference in South Africa.

I should like to link up with a few remarks of the hon member for Sundays River. The reason why I want to discuss this is that it can place certain political matters on the agenda.

The hon member would seem to be fond of names, and for this reason he referred to me as a kind of Hindenburg. I assume he did not do so to praise me. Mr Speaker, talking about names, this is a dangerous game, because here in South Africa we also have various names for each other, and when we look at the history of our own people, there are certain parallels people draw. We still talk about the “hensoppers” and the “joiners”, and we also still talk about the “verraaiers”. I do not want to tell the hon member that he should make a choice, but I merely want to say that when we start calling each other names, we are skating on thin ice.

Hear, hear!

He spoke about the CP as a party which had frozen the past. One cannot freeze the past; the past exists. So much troubled water has passed under this bridge that the mills can never grind again. One can have a frozen vision of history, but I make so bold as to say that one can also have a frozen political party, like the party on that side. [Interjections.] No one controls the past; it simply depends on how one interprets the past, and we on this side of the House say that we are prepared, and we think it is necessary, to identify the good things from the past and to use them as guidelines for the future, and to avoid the mistakes of the past. If it was a mistake in the past to share power, then we must not implement it in the future.

However, I want to add that if one wants to renounce everything in one’s past, one is renouncing one’s identity and one is a “nobody”. [Interjections.]

The hon member spoke about a “vlugparty”. I want to tell him that we are starting to think about a “hensop-party”, and then we are not looking in the mirror; we are looking at what we see in front of us. The CP is not trying to escape from separate development, and it is not trying to escape from separate freedoms. Nor is the CP trying to escape from a responsibility towards the specific people who mainly elected us to represent them. We are not trying to escape from really meaningful self-determination of peoples and of our own people. Sir, we did not try to escape from this Parliament …

Yes, you did!

… and we will not try to do so either. We want to take over this House of Assembly with a majority of CP members. [Interjections.]

Hear, hear!

However, we are exercising our right of protest in a way we see fit, and we will demonstrate our protest visibly as many times as we see fit, as long as we can bring home to the public the message we advocate.

I want to say—I am not referring to unfriendliness; all sides of the House sometimes behave less acceptably—that if we want to express our condemnation of an hon member’s behaviour by turning our backs on him, we shall do so.

Then you will be walking out!

Yes, Sir, we can walk—we are not weak-kneed—and we shall walk into the future as a victorious party; if not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow!

Hear, hear!

The hon member for Sundays River had occasion to make a reference to the CP by saying what I think could have remained unsaid. I do not think it was worthy of him. In a debate of 16 May someone asked him whether he wanted to talk about a high level of morality, and the hon member said that he preferred to move at a high intellectual level! He then said:

I do not know what the hon member meant. If one talks about religion and nationalism in the same sentence, this does not necessarily mean that one places religion and nationalism on the same level, in the same way that it does not mean that pumpkins and guavas have the same value when I say that they both grow in my garden. He then went on to say the following, and I am quoting from his unrevised Hansard:

This was changed to: ”… die KP hul godsdiens met hul nasionalisme kwalifiseer?” Sir, what kind of derogatory picture are we trying to paint of one another here? What kind of derogatory picture is this?

If the hon member meant that when people are charitable and love their neighbour, there is no place for separate states and for separate social structures, nor for separate political structures—if this was really what the hon member meant—then I disagree with the hon member’s view of Christianity.

The Old Testament is not unchristian. Nevertheless the Old Testament tells me in so many words that God “divided the people into nations” and that he “laid down their boundaries for them”. St Paul, in the New Testament, is not unchristian. It was this apostle of love and reconciliation who said that God had made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth and had determined their times and bounds. Is this also unchristian? [Interjections.]

Where are these bounds?

I read this in Acts 17:26. And where are the boundaries of separate residential areas which the NP wants to maintain?

Yes! Correct!

Where are the boundaries which the NP lays down between the separate residential areas for Whites and Coloureds in the Cape Peninsula? [Interjections.]

Now the hon member for Sundays River asks when a CP member is going to take the floor here and say that his national pride and his nationalism are qualified by his Christian values. He concluded by asking whether the CP would have released the national hero Barabbas when they were faced with a choice. I feel this suggestion did not befit the hon member. I am tempted to say it is scandalous. [Interjections.] I think it is scandalous!

Mr Speaker, the hon member also hawked around a document of Prof Caret Boshoff here. I should also like to refer to it. In his reference to that document the hon member made a number of mistakes. In the first place he ascribed that document to an organisation which, according to Prof Boshoff and the members of his Stigting Afrikanervryheid, was not responsible for it at all.

Order! I think the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition was led into temptation this afternoon. He must please withdraw his reference to the behaviour of the hon member for Sundays River being scandalous. It is not parliamentary.

Mr Speaker, I withdraw it.

The hon member also linked this document to the CP as if it were our policy which was proclaimed in it. What is more, he used the same document to repudiate the policy of the CP. [Interjections.]

I now want to put a question to the hon members of the NP. After all, they have quite a number of organisations in their left-wing. They have many organisations which form think-tanks and which make submissions and memoranda. We are also acquainted with some of them. Would the NP say that they would, without further ado, accept the recommendations of the Afrikaner-Broederbond in which it referred to the possibility of a mixed government, which could eventually consist of a majority of Blacks, as the responsibility of the party? Are they prepared to say we must hold them responsible for that? If we were to hold the NP responsible for that … [Interjections.] I have here an article by Dr Hennie Coetzee in Finansies en Tegniek. I think those hon members opposite would tell us at once that Dr Coetzee is a person who may have voted for them. Prof Tjaart van der Walt is another person who may have voted for the NP. However, would they say that they accepted responsibility for everything Prof Tjaart van der Walt or Dr Hennie Coetzee had said or written? [Interjections.]

In the same way we say that Prof Carel Boshoff is a member of the right wing—the conservative side. I am, after all, saying this without intimating that when a person supports the CP, this party accepts responsibility for other concepts that person may also have. [Interjections.] This is all too true! [Interjections.] I see I am making hon members on that side very happy. [Interjections.] It is such a relief to get them from the hook, because they have so many other people who support them and who are associated with them, but when the worst comes to the worst, they are very quick to say: “No, that is not the standpoint of the NP!” [Interjections.]

They even have Albert with them! [Interjections.]

Now I should like to ask the hon member for Sundays River how he quotes. I am reading from his Hansard:

I think he is referring here to the Stigting Afrikanervryheid—

The hon member then went on to say that he did not know whether this was an actual document. He asked us to tell them. [Interjections.] Yesterday Prof Boshoff made a document available to me which he had also sent to the Media Council. This was a document in which he complained to the Media Council about certain Afrikaans newspapers which, in his opinion, published a distortion of this specific document. That document was quoted in the Press. It reads as follows:

I repeat—

Surely this is something totally different to what the hon member for Sundays River made of it. He simply said that it was stated in the document that in the long run a right-wing government would have to settle matters with the Blacks and introduce a majority government. I want to tell the hon member that this is not a scientific approach. If the hon member had the actual document and gave his version of it, I have serious doubts about what he does with specific documents. Essentially that hon member said the opposite of what appeared in that paragraph. [Interjections.] I am merely quoting this because the hon member attacked my party. I want to say a few words about this. The CP accepts responsibility for its own policy. Only for its own policy!

Surely that is partition!

Yes, it is partition!

There are several organisations which reject NP reform as absolutely fatal for the social, cultural and political survival and freedom of the Afrikaner people and the White community in general.

We have already heard that.

The hon member can hear it again because it is a good thing to hear. [Interjections.] There are schools of thought and political models—scenarios, if you wish—which are definitely controversial, debatable and unacceptable to the CP. I am referring to standpoints which are broached in right-wing circles. [Interjections.] I accept the responsibility to hold that discussion from the viewpoint of CP principles and policies.

This party does not intend to negotiate on White surrender to a Black majority, if that is what the hon member deduced from the document from Prof Boshoff.

Who is quarreling about that?

We agree with that!

We have quite a number of interests in common. Our claim …

They are not really original ideas!

Sir, that hon member must not speak so loudly. There are very serious doubts about his competence in his post. This was indicated here … [Interjections.]

Now that is an original idea! The joke of the year! [Interjections.]

Order!

Yes, a joke between the two Du Plessis.

This party also says that one must still have the political power to support one’s claim, once one has made all one’s speculations about territories.

Does Prof Carel Boshoff also says so?

Is it so strange to have a common area? This party says we are fighting to win the majority support of the Whites—and we are in the process of doing so. But, Sir, the one thing the NP fears is that there are different aspects which organisations on the conservative side have in common. Those aspects were demonstrated in the shows of strength on 6 May of last year and during the three by-elections this year.

These organisations, as different as they are, and as we debate with one another, accept that the Afrikaner people, like every other people, is entitled to its own freedom. These organisations accept the co-operation of many other Whites with the Afrikaners who associate themselves with fellow-Afrikaners and Afrikaners who associate themselves with those people. These people lay claim to their own territory which is their rightful property. [Interjections.] Those hon members, and those who are even more left-wing than they are, constantly talk about the 87% of the country which belongs to the Whites. Does it not belongs with the Whites? We say we lay claim to our own territory.

These people also demand the right to be governed by Whites only, by their own parliament and their own White Cabinet.

These people have this in common. They reject every political policy of so-called healthy power-sharing, of a multiracial parliament and a multiracial Cabinet.

What the hon the Minister of Information, Broadcasting Services and the Film Industry intimated, according to this morning’s news, namely quite blatantly the introduction of Blacks into the central Government of the country as a whole, is something we reject, because our standpoint is not one undivided country for all these peoples under one central authority. We say the course which the NP adopted and implemented further in the establishment of separate states, albeit with economic interdependence, must be adopted again, and the CP will adopt it. [Interjections.]

When?

It may be sooner than that hon Minister thinks!

It is conservative people who want nothing to do with ANC involvement in the political organisation or constitution of the Whites.

Who wants that?

I am very glad if the hon the Minister agrees with us.

These are people who have an aversion for the kind of political ambiguity which considers apartheid to be outdated and still applies it selectively.

These are people who say it is foolhardy to think that 5 million Whites can share political power with 20 million Blacks, 3 million Coloureds and 1 million Indians and still be safeguarded against Black domination. The reply which we got to this from that side of the House was that they did not work with numbers, but with consensus. They have not yet told us how they are going to elect a State President by means of consensus. How are they going to elect the next Speaker by means of consensus? [Interjections.]

These are people who see—I am now talking about what is common to people in the right wing—how the NP’s philosophy of the redistribution of income has amounted to the impoverishment of the Whites and has created a new inequality, to the detriment of the Whites.

They reject the Government’s mixed executive committees, its multiracial regional services councils, its multiracial electoral colleges, the open business districts, the tampering with, or the non-application of, the Group Areas Act, the conditioning to integration by TV films and advertisements and the misuse of taxpayers’ money for NP propaganda. It seems to me the hon member for Gezina intimated that that kind of propaganda, long advertisements in the newspapers, was merely at the expense of the consumer—in this case the taxpayer.

These are people who see how the NP’s wheels of reform have become bogged down. The NP cannot take its reform to its logical conclusion, because it is afraid it will lose the little bit of right-wing support it still has. Perhaps it is the loss of right-wing support which no longer belongs there. If they give way to the pressure of Rev Hendrickse and Chief Buthelezi, namely by abolishing all apartheid, we will know in what direction they are moving.

These people in the right wing all tell the NP how ridiculous it is to allege that Blacks must be incorporated in the legislative authority, but that there will not be a fourth Chamber. Everyone is asking the NP how they are going to do that. When we want an answer to that, the NP looks the way it does now! [Interjections.] [Time expired.]

Mr Speaker, we have now reached the end of the debate on a Budget which, from the start, has reflected the hon the State President’s Opening Address in February. It has reflected a struggle which this Government has waged against inflation and which has had quite a number of offshoots, inter alia with regard to salaries. While listening to the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition, we on this side of the House hoped that we would now have the opportunity to hear a few categorical replies on the standpoints and the policy of the Official Opposition.

Are you deaf?

However, I am afraid that what we heard was a defence of other right-wing elements, because the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition did not associate himself with Prof Boshoff. He merely said that they were in the same camp. [Interjections.] It was a defence of other right-wing elements against something that one of the new hon members of the NP did here. There was no really definite statement on their standpoint. [Interjections.] In particular we waited for the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition to tell us what their standpoint was with regard to this new phenomenon in the business sphere in South Africa, namely, that of so-called business circles.

Surely it is appropriate for us, at the end of an appropriation debate, to be given the standpoints of the Official Opposition on what their so-called economic or business platform is.

Are you getting worried?

No, we are not getting worried. However, we are worried about the fact that the CP, as was so often the case in the past, are the leaders of the schismatics in our community. [Interjections.] The Official Opposition is trying to sit on two stools. There can be no better illustration of this than the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition’s refusal to react to the hon member for Vasco’s question about these business circles. We still do not know whether these business circles have the blessing of the CP.

When one looks at the company that those business circles keep, one sees that it is the same old faces and the same old names that we see and hear from right-wing ranks time and again. I want to allege that nothing reflects the hollowness of the CP’s claim that they are the champion of the Afrikaner better than their sanctioning of these business circles.

Over the years Afrikaner capital in South Africa was mobilised by the creation of large business giants in our country. Here I am referring specifically to Santam, Nasionale Pers, Sanlam, Volkskas, Federate Volksbeleggings and Rembrandt. Those are only a few of the names that the Afrikaner has used to mobilise Afrikaner capital in order to occupy a position in commerce in South Africa.

As a further aid to Afrikaner businessman in his struggle, the Suid-Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut and chambers of commerce came into existence. Over the years, conferences were held and huge sacrifices were made to negotiate the Afrikaner’s rightful place in South African business. We went through a period in which the Reddingsdaadbond was active and during which the Afrikaner was literally brought from nothing to what he is today in the commercial field. Today, the Afrikaner can boast that he has won himself a place in commerce in South Africa.

Even that position that the Afrikaner occupies today, probably constitutes only 15% or 18% of the total South African business world. The CP now wants to destroy that precious possession of the Afrikaner businessman. The CP wants to bring about dissension and disruption in the ranks of the Afrikaner business community. Why? Since the foundation of that party, they have made it their aim to destroy what they cannot hijack.

They have already adopted this method in the political arena. After the 22 of them walked out of here with such bravado, they went to the Transvaal. At their executive committee meeting they thought that they could hijack the assets and supporters of the NP. They did not take into account a PW Botha who was more than a match for them! They did not reckon on taking such a beating there. They then thought: Very well, we shall spend five years digging ourselves in, and then we are going to fight an election. They thought they were going to conquer the Transvaal and the Free State. Where did they end up? Today, they have a third of the seats in the Transvaal, and not a single seat in the Free State! [Interjections.]

The efforts of the CP to sow dissension in political ranks were a lamentable failure. But that is not all. The CP could not succeed in infiltrating the FAK either. They were unable to achieve a victory there. Once again the CP came to the conclusion that they would have to destroy the FAK. The result of this was the birth of the Volkswag. I shall refer, in a moment, to this document before me. One need only look at who the fathers were of the Stigting: Afrikaner-Vryheid. The names are the same as those that were at the forefront of the foundation of the Volkswag in the Skilpad Hall. It is the same old group of people. The same people who are their pals. It is nothing new.

They went further and tried to divide the Afrikaner in the cultural arena as well. They had hardly finished doing that, when they began with the Church, and while they were dealing with the Church, we were given an APC. I understand that that is the Afrikaans Political Church, or the Afrikaans Protestant Church, or something to that effect. At any rate, we had that as well. That was the third area.

Now one has efforts to cause a rift in business circles—the fourth domain of Afrikaner national life. I want to warn the hon leader of the CP that he is treading on dangerous ground when he walks the path of disruption. He has gained the reputation of being a master of the art of dissension-mongering. This has been the case since time immemorial—when he first began in the Church. He causes disruption wherever he goes, from one organisation to the other.

I now want to tell him that he is treading on dangerous ground, because by doing so he is going to achieve three things, and three things only. Firstly, he is encouraging people—his own supporters—to act undemocratically and to rebel against majority decisions. He is encouraging people not to accept the will of the majority, in any organisation in which they find themselves. Secondly, he is weakening precisely those people whom he pretends to be trying to serve. What is perhaps most important, and what is perhaps going to cause the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition the greatest embarrassment, is the fact that he is creating new kingdoms—new platforms—for new people, from which they are eventually going to embarrass him.

Over the past six years of the CP’s existence, we have seen how these right-wing organisations can proliferate. At first, the CP was enough for those right-wing elements. Then we saw the AWB suddenly emerge during the past few years as an alternative political front for the right-wing community. The Volkswag has not even been in existence for five years, and now one again has a new outgrowth of these right-wing circles in the cultural arena. I am referring to the Stigting: Afrikaner-Vryheid.

I am grateful to the hon member for Sundays River for having unearthed this document. The fact that the document is important to members of the CP, and is a great embarrassment, is shown by the fact that the leader of the Official Opposition in the House of Assembly devoted three quarters of his speech to refuting what a junior member of the NP brought to light.

I now want to tell the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition that we do not mind at all that he does not want to dissociate himself entirely, but that he does not quite want to embrace Prof Boshoff and his document either, when he talks in the third person about these people who agree with them on certain points. We do not plan to attribute everything in this document to the CP. However, what this document does is to give one a marvellous insight into the internal workings of the right-wing echelons.

The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition is quite correct when he says that it would be wrong to attribute the leadership of the CP to a person who is not the elected leader of the Official Opposition. That is so. We do not want to say that everything that Prof Boshoff wrote here is the CP’s official policy—in the same way that the hon member for Lichtenburg was unable to link Messrs McCann to the NP with a document that he produced, to the great amusement of the hon members of the Official Opposition.

It hurt you, didn’t it!

No, if the CP is not hurt by this document, why should we be hurt by the document that the hon member for Lichtenburg produced? [Interjections.]

I think that the single most important thing that the learned professor makes clear in this document of his is that now, for the first time, we are given a glimpse into the composition of the right-wing elements on the other side.

He says, and I quote:

I am not saying that he is speaking on behalf of the CP. He is speaking as an objective observer of the CP. [Interjections.] He says there are four groups of voters. The first group is the miscellany of people who support the left-wing parties—the NDM of Mr Malan and the Independents of Dr Worrall, and other independents such as the hon member for Claremont.

He has nothing to do with them, and fortunately for us, the second group, he has nothing to do with us either. He merely says that we exist. However, there are two other groups, namely those who support right-wing politics, who work towards taking over the Government and reimplementing the policy of separate development and the formation of independent states, in order to govern the RSA as a White government and, in the long term, to make the White country entirely White. These are the people who broke away from us, but who do not want to create a new country and do not have a new vision for South Africa either. They merely want to take over the Government. [Interjections.] There is nothing idealistic or visionary about them. In plain terms they are defectors from the NP. The fourth group would consist of—I want to emphasise this—a growing number of Afrikaners who also support the right-wing political parties, but who believe that the Afrikaner people can survive alone in a separate Afrikaner state which has seceded from the mixed RSA and which must be inhabited only by Afrikaners and people who can be assimilated and who want to become part of the “volk”. [Interjections.]

As opposed to the defectors, there is the group of dreamers, those who believe in a “volkstaat”—apparently modelled on the same lines as the Boerestaat of the AWB.

By now we already have three groups, namely the CP sitting over there, the ruling group of the CP and the group which has control. That is the group that defected from the NP and that wants to take over the country as it is now. They are the people who are not going to use bulldozers to turn the country into a White country, according to the hon member for Lichtenburg. They are going to turn the country into a White country by adopting certain measures. In Bloemfontein the hon member explained how Blacks were going to disappear quietly. [Interjections.] They are going to promulgate certain measures and the Black people are simply going to disappear quietly, without any bulldozers or trucks.

The second group are those who have the AWB’s idea of a Boerestaat. As you know, they have already established their borders. However, the hon member for Klip River, my friend there in Natal, halted the advance of the CP at Klip River, simply by telling people where the borders of the AWB Boerestaat were. With regard to Natal, that border runs north of Ladysmith, and that was the end of the CP’s advance into Natal. I have now referred to two right-wing groups. The third right-wing group of whom the learned professor tells us is, according to him, another right-wing group that wants to create a “volkstaat”. However, this group is not making their borders known, but the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition will be able to tell hon members why they are so quiet. They know only too well that wherever they establish their borders, they will alienate thousands of White voters outside those borders. Therefore they dare not define the borders of the their “volkstaat”.

A few weeks ago in this House I referred to the 22 constituencies of the CP, which form a unit, and added that the CP could quite happily ask the Government to hold a plebiscite in those 22 constituencies and then to consider that as the “volkstaat” of the CP. The hon member for Brakpan asked, by way of an interjection, how ridiculous one could be. I agree with the hon member. I used the example precisely to indicate how ridiculous the idea of a “volkstaat” really was. However, it is not necessary for the hon member to convince me or my hon colleagues in this House of that. I agree with him entirely about the idea of a “volkstaat”. However, the hon member must convince his friends in right-wing circles—that ostensibly growing number of Afrikaners who are apparently eating away at the Official Opposition.

Can they tell us what they are doing to turn them back from that ridiculous idea, back to the idea of a unitary state in South Africa? [Interjections.] The problem that those hon members of the Official Opposition have is twofold, because the plans of the people who defected from the NP, and who are in control of that party, are not viable … [Interjections] … while the plans of the dreamers are not morally justifiable. Let us consider what the controlling group in the CP wants to do with South Africa.

The latest document that we received from them is the one that deals with their policy with regard to local government. In this document they explain, for example, how they are going to deal with various aspects of our society. One of the things they mention is that they are no longer going to apply influx control. [Interjections.]

Read it again! [Interjections.]

I am sorry, Sir. They say that they are going to reintroduce influx control. [Interjections.]

We now ask them whether it is not a fact that when influx control was being applied in terms of an Act in South Africa, Black people still came to our cities in increasing numbers. [Interjections.] We do not have any problems with the hon members of the Official Opposition now coming to us and telling us that we should have applied influx control more stringently, not that it would have worked. That would have been another matter. However, they would then have had to tell us how they would apply it more effectively. [Interjections.] It is no good their merely telling us that they are going to reintroduce the measure. They know just as well as we do why influx control was abolished. The hon the State President told them that it was not viable because it could not work and was therefore not practicable. [Interjections.] If those hon members tell us that they are going to eliminate the influx of Black people to the cities, they must tell us how they are going to enforce those measures. It is very easy to make laws. We sit here and make how many laws—80 to 90 laws—in a session. However, those laws must be enforced. [Interjections.]

Unlike the hon members of the CP, we realise that we must also enforce the measures that we pass. For this reason we can only act within the limits of what is possible. [Interjections.]

However, that is not all. In this manifesto, those hon members say that they are drastically going to restrict the number of Black workers in the White cities. We should now like to know something from the hon members of the CP. They say in this document that they are opposed to Black people owning shops and businesses in White areas. Fine, they have every right to do so.

However, they also talk about the crowding-out of Whites in White areas by Blacks. We are now asking them how those Black people come to be in White cities. [Interjections.] Is it not so that those Black people come to White cities for economic reasons? Is it not so that the very supporters of that party who have businesses, require the clientele and the buying power of Black people? [Interjections.]

Can we ask those hon members whether they would have the courage of their convictions to say that the people who buy from businesses in South Africa—I am not referring to the people who run or own businesses, but to the people who buy—should only be Whites? No, now they are silent. They would not keep Black people out of our shops in the city centres. They must have access to them, because the White business community must do business there. However, they must not leave those shops, because the CP does not want them on the pavements, because then they complain endlessly about the Black people on the pavements. [Interjections.]

They cannot sit in a park, because according to this parks are for Whites. They do not speak about Black parks at all. They cannot use a toilet: They travel miles to the city centres to make purchases, but they may not use a toilet, because only White toilets are permitted in the city centres. Is that the sort of policy that those hon members want to implement in South Africa? Then they think that people are going to vote for their municipal candidates! I think the hon members of that party should take a leaf out of Dr Wassenaar’s book. All that they intend to make of South Africa is a lotus-land. They have a country in mind in which Black people will only come in to work.

Coffee in bed!

They must remain in the backyard, so that they can make coffee in the mornings, but otherwise one must not see them anywhere. Furthermore, they must become completely invisible. No, Sir, the party that propagates such policies, cannot hope to take office in South Africa.

Let us look for a moment at the dreams of that section of the CP that believes in a White homeland. Not only are we saying that that dream is not viable, but also that it is completely immoral to think that a small group of Whites can choose a part of South Africa that they regard as being theirs and theirs alone. If there are people in that party who believe in such a dream, they must tell us where that area is. In the final analysis, partition is the policy of that party after all, even if they do not believe in a specific Afrikaner “volkstaat”. We want to ask them, if they are toying with the idea of territorial segregation in this country, how on earth they are going to engineer territorial demarcation pro rata according to the number of Whites. One must also remember that this includes only the Whites that want to live in that state.

On a numerical basis!

On a numerical basis. Fine, thank you very much. I am grateful that the hon member said that they are going to adopt a numerical basis. That is the only basis on which one can make such a classification. Hon members who are toying with this idea should know that if one moves away from the historical division of South Africa, there is only one basis on which one can make a division of territory, and that is on a numerical basis.

We have been repeatedly attacked in the past because the Black areas in South Africa were smaller than the so-called White areas. What was our defence against this? We said that it was an historical inheritance, and that Transkei, Ciskei and all the other Black areas were historical Black living areas in South Africa. This party—also when those hon members were in this party—laid claim to that. I do not care whether one or two of those hon members belonged to the HNP from the beginning, but the vast majority of them belonged to the NP in the beginning. Even when they were members of the NP, this party never claimed to have created Black areas or homelands. From the beginning we said that the homelands, or the areas that were being inhabited by Blacks, were historical creations.

The moment one deviates from the historical justification for territorial zoning of communities, there is only one fair basis on which to do that zoning, and that is a numerical basis. Until such time as the Official Opposition tells the voters of South Africa that they accept the consequences of their policy of partition, that they will accept partition on a numerical basis, that they will accept a just division of the country, they must excuse us, and I think the vast majority of the voters of South Africa as well, if we are unable to believe that that party is really serious about its partition policy. In other words, just like us, they look disapprovingly at the growing number of Afrikaners who are dreaming dreams of a White Afrikaner homeland.

If that is the case, we must accept that the CP is going to preserve South Africa as it is now. They must then spell out for us in detail the consequences of their actions. It is no good using pleasant-sounding terms and saying they are going to remove Blacks from the city centres and ensure that there is majority occupation. Those are pleasant-sounding generalities, but they get us no further if we are not told exactly how this is going to be brought about.

Mr Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak after the hon member for Umlazi.

With this debate we have reached the stage in the parliamentary session when we traditionally look at the implications of what has transpired during the course of the session and, in particular, in regard to the Appropriation Bill. The CP makes itself out to be the alternative government, and for that reason I think it is fitting that one should weigh up what it is they stand for and what they have tried to put on the Table. The hon member for Umlazi did in fact do this to some extent, and I should like to associate myself with his remarks in this regard. I want to assess the CP, in particular in regard to the contribution that they are making in the context of efforts to promote a revolutionary climate in South Africa. [Interjections.]

I should also like to refer to the document of Dr Carel Boshoff …

Refer us to the blood spot!

The hon member for Brakpan is not going to distract my attention by that means and, if he so wishes, I shall even be prepared to discuss the “Blonde Spioen” with him this afternoon.

I know there is some doubt or uncertainty in regard to the status of this document. I immediately want to concede to the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition that the document which the hon member for Sundays River obtained was ostensibly a working document and not the final document drawn up by Prof Boshoff. In any case, ostensibly he does not deny being the author of that document. I do not know whether he sent the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition a document different to the one that we received, but the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition mentioned the fact that it has no scientific basis. He then quoted the words “sou daar grootskaalse onluste kom”, but that is not the complete quotation. I should now like to quote the full paragraph:

It is then stated—and this is the important point in regard to which those hon members must give us an explanation, and I want to come back to the first point:

His conclusion is that there is only one solution and that is secession—the secession of an Afrikaner state. It is in this regard that we are awaiting a reply from those hon members. Have they repudiated Prof Boshoff on that point of view today or not? [Interjections.] Do they differ with him in regard to his standpoint on the secession of an Afrikaner state. It is very clear to me that they are not going to give us a reply, because they cannot take the chance. It is not only Prof Carel Boshoff and the Oranje Werkers and so forth who are in on this, but also the AWB. I shall come back to the AWB later on. [Interjections.] I am prepared to agree with Prof Boshoff on one point, and that is that I share his fear. If a right-wing government or the CP were to take over in this country, we would be faced with large-scale unrest and with large-scale punitive measures from abroad. We share that fear.

In regard to Black unrest I should like to look at the standpoints and the actions of the CP during the course of the year and try to come to a conclusion in regard to the contribution that this has made towards counteracting the revolutionary climate in South Africa. It is an acknowledged fact that the strategy of the ANC-SACP alliance in South Africa is aimed at destroying existing constitutional structures and dismantling the system.

As far as this is concerned, it is very interesting that the CP finds itself in precisely the same company as the ANC-SACP alliance. It is a matter of record that the hon member for Lichtenburg has said that he wants to see institutions such as regional services councils destroyed. That hon member is doing his level best to frustrate the workings of this Parliament.

A political demolition expert!

Yes, he is indeed a political demolition expert!

The only difference is—I agree that there is an appreciable difference—is in the method, but the goals of the CP and of the ANC-SACP alliance are precisely the same in the short term, namely the destruction of existing structures.

You help them!

How do we help them?

During the course of this year the Official Opposition in this House have repeatedly made use of boycott actions and have even resorted to protest meetings. One of the most tragic examples of this—it really was tragic—was at the time of the sittings of the joint provincial committees in the provincial capitals. What happened on the first day of those sittings? On the previous day an hon colleague of ours in another House paid for his involvement with his life. On the previous day moderate Black people who were prepared to participate in structures also paid with their lives through AK 47 bullets in Soweto, but these hon members are prepared to play their little games, walk out and boycott in those circumstances. [Interjections.] Is that how those hon members wish to help the moderates? With this in mind, it is almost cynical that the CP members returned the following day with a very weak point of order. They did not send only one or two of their agents; they all came back. Was it for the few silver pieces of their parliamentary allowance? After all, they could not seriously have considered that that point of order of theirs would succeed. [Interjections.]

We have also seen during this session how the CP have found themselves more and more in the clutches of the AWB.

†I am sorry that the hon member Mr Derby-Lewis is not here. I understand that he has the flu and I am sorry that he has the flu. [Interjections.]

He fled!

Yes, he fled!

The extent to which that party has landed in the hands of the AWB was illustrated in this House this week when the hon member Mr Derby-Lewis put a question on the Question Paper, for the benefit of the AWB.

He is a member of the Ku Klux Klan!

What did he ask?

I will get to that. This, I think, must in part be seen in the context of a decision by the AWB in February this year and I read from a report in The Citizen of 29 February:

The hon member Mr Clive Derby-Lewis has become the main agent of this Nazi-oriented organisation among English speakers. Subsequent to his question in this House the CP issued a statement only in English. I take it that it was for the benefit of the hon member for Losberg who had problems understanding Afrikaans the other day and asked me to speak English. It is a pity he is not here to hear me. [Interjections.] In this statement they refer to the fact that the AWB instituted legal action against me and did not succeed.

Now I know and understand why the hon member Mr Derby-Lewis is sour. When he tried to use the same legal argument that my legal team used, he did not succeed. However, I must warn him that he is barking up the wrong tree. I am not impressed by the accusations of fraud and threats of legal action. In their statement the CP claims the following:

If there were ever a fraudulent statement, it appears to be this statement about an inquiry, because if this investigation did in fact take place, they would have discovered that as with most small local newspapers, the journalist of the Springs Advertiser who wrote the story and the photographer were one and the same person. Obviously they were seeing double at the time.

*In view of the fact that they are threatening me with legal action, it is not my intention to make it any easier for them by dealing with their statement in detail, but that was not the only incident in Springs in which the AWB has already been involved this year. On 5 February the signboard of a private church school with a few Black pupils was spray-painted by vandals.

The fact of the matter is that while the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition is not prepared to dissociate himself from the AWB, he is in the process associating himself with something else. I should like to quote briefly from a letter from an AWB member which appeared in the Volksblad of 8 June 1988. By implication the CP associate themselves with the following words of this member of the AWB:

Order! I regret to have to interrupt the hon member in the middle of his quotation, but his time has unfortunately expired.

While the hon member for Springs was making his speech, one of the hon members of the CP, according to what I heard, made the following remark with reference to the ANC: “And you help them”, meaning the ANC. Did an hon member make such a remark, and if so, who was it?

I did, Mr Speaker.

Order! The hon member must withdraw that.

I withdraw it, Mr Speaker.

Mr Speaker, with respect to the hon member for Springs, I would like to return to mainly economic matters. Since the Budget Debate early in April, little has happened to inspire confidence in our economy. In fact, in many instances the reverse has happened. The hon the State President, followed by the hon the Minister of Finance, outlined plans to set South Africa on a path leading to economic recovery. We as a party welcomed this new thrust in the recognition of how fundamentally important such recovery is to all of us. Of one thing we can all be certain and that is that economic instability will today guarantee political instability. Hungry people with no hope have little interest in political stability.

The depressing fact is that, certainly for the foreseeable future, a growth rate of the order of 3% is difficult to maintain and impossible to exceed on an ongoing basis. As we all know, this rate is insufficient to absorb workers coming into the market place, let alone to absorb the currently unemployed.

Current economic indicators show steady but slow growth, but the underlying fixed investment necessary to stimulate further growth is lacking.

Despite the improved statistics announced by the hon the Minister earlier this afternoon, I would like to quote some figures that the Standard Bank has recently published. Gross domestic fixed investment remains at 1973 levels. Wholesale and retail trade is below 1984 levels, and production in the construction industry is at the same level as it was in 1972. Finally, manufacturing remains below the peak achieved in 1981.

We believe the fundamental causes of our economic woes are political, but it seems to me that an additional problem—which is a significant one—is our negative state of mind. As pointed out earlier by the hon member for Yeoville, Whites have not yet accepted that there is a need to make sacrifices. In a country that is so rich in potential and with virtually unlimited resources, businessmen are not voting with their money by investing in our future. We lack confidence because we cannot see this Government resolving our political dilemma, there is enormous pressure from abroad, the threat of severe sanctions is becoming a reality, and the military threat in Angola and failure to resolve the Namibian question remain uppermost in our minds. Fundamental questions remain unanswered. Will Government stick to its commitment to reduce expenditure? Will privatisation and deregulation become a reality? Will tax reform, specifically the Margo Commission’s recommendations, actually lead to a reduction in taxes, and will our balance of payments situation allow the growth rate needed to reduce unemployment? I do not believe that this Budget and the subsequent debate we have had in this House can convince anyone on these issues.

But, Mr Chairman, we in fact have to be positive and we have to be creative. This is no time for a laager mentality. In the debate on the Foreign Affairs Vote the hon the Minister left the impression—certainly with me—that there was nothing that we could still do to fight sanctions. More depressingly, the hon members of the CP proposed a reactionary policy of hitting back. The PFP’s reaction has been clear. It has been to argue against sanctions wherever possible in international forums whilst continually calling on the Government to hasten political reform.

Despite everything that is negative, in an economic sense we have to be positive and we have to seek that elusive “high road”. We have to be creative and we have to be better than anyone else at it.

With this in mind, I would like to make the following points. Firstly, we have to achieve a political situation acceptable to the majority of South Africans. We have to seek racial harmony and trust, and we in the PFP remain absolutely committed to real negotiation with all recognised leaders in order to achieve this. Many of this Government’s actions are achieving precisely the opposite. Their actions destroy goodwill and bring down the wrath of the free world. I would once again like to make mention of the planned forced removal of the Lawaaikamp residents which I believe to be just another of these despised actions. I would like to call on the responsible Minister once again to reconsider because I fear that the outcome of this forced removal will be disastrous.

Secondly, we have to fight sanctions with everything we have, employing all our creative resources.

Thirdly, we have to address the problem of creeping negativism. Too many decent South Africans are in fact giving up. They either withdraw into a day to day survival routine, or they pack up and leave. Last year, for example, more chartered accountants left the country than actually qualified, and there are similar statistics relating to doctors, engineers and so on. In fact I would like to refer to a recent, edition of the Medical Research Council’s journal—MRC News—of May-June 1987 which states that:

The fourth point I would like to deal with, is the problem in regard to youth who are reacting in particular to the prospect of two years’ national service. There can be no doubt that many young people are leaving the country for this reason. Such matters call for great sensitivity and understanding. I have noted that recent discussions between the End Conscription Campaign and the SADF are reported to have been held and that consideration is being given to alternative service. I hope these will be viewed sympathetically.

The fifth point is that small business must be encouraged and an informal sector must be developed. The highly valuable work carried out by the SBDC needs to be expanded several fold.

In the sixth place we need to establish optimum conditions for investment. Deregulation, spreading of the tax burden, development of indigenous technology and reduction in unproductive state expenditure have all been promised. What we need now is decisive and urgent action.

Seventhly, we must analyse the specific factors inhibiting expansion and identify the resources, policy changes and other elements required to promote the desperately needed faster growth.

Eightly, we need continually to appreciate that our Black population is disadvantaged and has needs akin to any developing society. We need co-ordinated and massive facilitation, well beyond the programmes that already exist. We need to show tolerance and goodwill and a real understanding of their disadvantaged state. Trade unions still remain their only effective political voice and need to be treated with tolerance and understanding.

Order! The hon member’s time has expired.

Mr Chairman, it is becoming something of a habit for me to follow the hon member for Pinelands, and any speech …

Mr Chairman, on a point of order: One of my colleagues …

Two.

Two of my hon colleagues timed the speech of the hon member who just sat down. According to their stopwatches the hon member for Pinelands had not been speaking for nine minutes. He had in fact spoken for 8 minutes and 55 seconds.

Order! I notice two entries which do not reflect the same time, so the hon member may very well be correct. In the circumstances I ask the hon member for Wynberg please to resume his seat so that the hon member for Pinelands may continue with his speech.

Thank you, Mr Chairman. My final point is that I say again that everything possible needs to be done to reverse the current negative state of mind prevailing in this country. I believe that only the Government has the power to achieve this and that a fundamental change of attitude is necessary. I am far from convinced that they are capable of achieving this, but failure will result in the eventual destruction of our once vibrant economy and proud people.

Mr Chairman, it is somewhat odd to have to reply twice to the hon member for Pinelands. I noticed both positive and negative notes in his speech. I think he went out of his way to find those indicators which put the economy in its worst light. The hon the Minister, however, quoted indicators this afternoon to show the situation in a far more favourable light.

It is interesting to note that no hon member has as yet mentioned the business confidence index, as published by Assocom, which is now standing at 99.3 as opposed to 89.5 in January 1987.

The hon member also showed disappointment at the fact that our growth rate would only reach 3% this year. However, I believe that the fact that we have achieved a growth rate of 3% is quite a performance seen in the light of the fact that because of disinvestment, South Africa is a net exporter rather than a net importer of capital.

The hon member also stated that one of the problems in South Africa was creeping negativism. I do not want to accuse the hon member himself, but I do think that from time to time he should admonish those sections of the PFP-supporting English Press which always try to show this country in the worst possible light.

Which papers are you referring to? [Interjections.]

I am referring to that hon member’s Press.

What do you call our Press? Do you mean the Cape Times? [Interjections.]

I am talking about the ones that support the PFP.

Do you mean that all of them are trying to put the country in a negative light? [Interjections.]

I said that they put the country in a negative light from time to time. [Interjections.] I must say that the one person who stands out as an expert in the art of Schadenfreude, or taking pleasure in the misery of others, is the hon member for Port Elizabeth Central. [Interjections.]

It is interesting that it is again that time of the year when the Press speculate about the leadership of the PFP. The hon member for Sea Point has my sympathy, because he has been through this once before, and I really feel that it is unfair that he should go through it again. It seems the Press is not only speculating about his position, but also trying to force him at the muzzle of a shotgun to get together with the other parties to the left of the Government.

Dear old Denis!

I must say in all honesty that the hon member does not give the impression of being a lovelorn young swain, especially when he looks at those hon members around him from the NDM! Neither can I visualise him walking down the aisle with the leader of the Independent Party, because if they were to walk down the aisle together, they would immediately start arguing about whose turn it was to wear the braces that day! It is very much a question of love’s labours lost or much ado about nothing. [Interjections.]

This whole exercise is really one in futility. I think that the latest opinion polls show that the combined support of all these parties is now less than 10% of the electorate. [Interjections.] However one wants to rearrange the musical chairs, there will not be seats for all of them.

I think the problem is that the PFP is stuck with a policy that is obsolete. Their thinking goes back to the Fabian Society, and to the classic liberal days of Sydney and Beatrice Webb who, as hon members will remember, went to Russia and came back saying, “We have seen the future and it works!” [Interjections.]

The problem is that the essentials of the PFP are parenthesised, like a bow-legged man, by constraints that make them incapable of contributing to the solutions of South Africa’s problems.

*I want to come now to the speech of the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition. I see he is not here at the moment. During this debate I have listened carefully to speakers of the Official Opposition. However, I must confess that the little clarity that I had in regard to the policy of the CP vanished completely after the explanations of this afternoon. [Interjections.]

†I think they have mastered the art of muddled thinking.

*I have come to the conclusion that the hon members of the CP are suffering from cognitive dissonance. This disorientation effect is caused when one tries to believe two contradictory statements simultaneously. On the one hand they say they want their own territorial area. The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition has repeated this two or three times. I think hon members must accept the fact that that own White territorial area is going to accommodate a majority of the Whites. On the other hand, they say that nobody is going to be moved. I must therefore accept the fact that certain people are simply going to disappear in some or other strange fashion! The CP owe the inhabitants of the Western Cape an explanation. They must tell us what they are going to do with the Coloureds.

They cannot!

Where are they going to set their border? They have referred to an own territorial area, but how can one have an own territorial area without borders? It is interesting that there are right-wing elements which have already begun giving attention to contingency plans. They ask themselves what would happen if the CP policy failed and sanctions and revolution resulted from their policy.

It was also interesting to note that the document of Prof Boshoff was waved about here quite often this afternoon. However, the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition brought about an ex post facto change in that document. It is very easy to try to change something which one does not like at a later stage.

You obviously did not understand him properly!

I understood him only too well! I think that is the problem. [Interjections.]

†I really wanted to talk today about the informal sector of the economy. It has been interesting that two economists, Brian Kantor and Wolfgang Thomas, have recently come forward with the calculation that the informal sector of the economy constitutes something like 30%. If we were to take 30% of the informal economy into our national accounting, there would be some interesting changes. Last year our GDP would have been R213 billion, instead of R164 billion.

The per capita figures would change from R3 600 to R4 600. It would be interesting to see what the public debt will be as a percentage of GDP on these changed figures if we added in this 30%.

I think further that, if we were to include these figures and then look at total deficit before borrowing as a percentage of GDP, we would have very different results and it would be lower than the guidelines which have been put to us by the IMF.

He also referred to the appointment of this new tax committee. As I am sure most people would like to do, I would also like to put my proposal forward as to the priorities of this committee, as I have done before. I believe the investigation of bracket creep should also be on that list of priorities. I believe bracket creep is the curse of the middle class and if we can see our way clear to diminishing the number of tax brackets, I am sure it would be to the advantage of us all. We could possibly find that by decreasing the number and possibly lowering the marginal rate, the revenue which will be gained from personal tax might in fact increase.

It is my pleasure to support this Appropriation Bill.

Mr Chairman, it is a pleasure to follow up on what was said by the hon member for Wynberg; he always makes a good contribution in this House. I want to tell the hon member that I won a bottle of good whisky off the Progs when he won the election in Wynberg.

The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition said this afternoon that he did not sponsor rightwing groups which acted as satellite organisations to his party. We do not expect him to sponsor the standpoints which are adopted by these satellite organisations. We accept it if he says that this Stigting: Afrikaner-Vryheid is only a CP thinktank.

The question, however, is how strong the influence of that think-tank is on CP policy and standpoints. As regards this think-tank, if one reads that document carefully, it gives excellent expression to the philosophy of the majority of right-wing elements. We are not quarrelling with the hon the leader about this; we are merely stating facts. All we are telling the hon leader is that he himself will have to deal with the influences which those satellite organisations exert on his party.

We on this side of the House have no doubt that this growing group in right-wing circles, which Prof Boshoff mentions and which supports this think-tank, is slowly but surely taking over the CP. There are so many satellite organisations which are active in right-wing ranks and on which the CP battens for short-term party-political advantage at the ballot box, with only one end in view, and that is to undermine the NP. It has only one aim and that is to mobilise as many voters as possible against the NP and to create perceptions and distortions about the NP which often do not exist.

One wonders why the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition protested so violently this afternoon. Is he ashamed of these right-wing elements which act as his party’s think-tank? The members of the Stigting: Afrikaner-Vryheid are certainly good friends of the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition. They are Prof Carel Boshoff, Mr Blokkies De Beer, Dr Wally Grant, Prof Henning, Dr Chris Jooste, Prof A D Pont and Dr Chris Verwoerd—they tell me he is the “verwarde Verwoerd”.

Slowly but surely those elements are infiltrating and taking over the CP. This movement has come a long way. It is not only yesterday that Prof Boshoff and his colleagues came forward, met and drew up the documents. It goes back a very long way.

In 1984 the CP Congress adopted the hon member for Ermelo’s proposal which read, inter alia, that CP policy should no longer be separate development but emancipation by partition. On 29 April 1984 the hon member for Ermelo succeeded in persuading the CP to abandon its old philosophy and to accept this new approach.

The hon member for Brakpan, who appeared to be the chairman of the congress at that time, said that he agreed totally as regards the shift in emphasis and that it was essential for the CP not to talk about separate development because it was NP policy.

Years ago this standpoint had already come very prominently to the fore when the hon members for Ermelo and Bethal wrote their book Witman, waar is jóú Tuisland?. Apparently it is necessary for one to look up the origin of statements in Prof Boshoff’s document on the Stigting: Afrikaner-Vryheid because standpoints in the book and in the document are similar in many respects. I want to quote from the book, and hon members must listen to the terminology because I want to quote from Prof Boshoff’s document later to enable hon members to recognise the assimilation. I quote:

The writers then speak about regions outside White areas and say, for instance:

The writers then talk about an insurance policy. This appears in Prof Boshoff’s document too. I shall quote from Witman, waar is jóú tuisland?:

The writers then ask, and I quote again:

Those were the instructions carried by the book which was written years ago by the hon members for Ermelo and Bethal. Echoes of this policy are now manifesting themselves in Prof Boshoff’s document.

What does this think-tank actually say? I have quoted to hon members what is said in the book, and now want to refer to the document. It is stated there, inter alia, that they “verwerp afsonderlike ontwikkeling as ’n hoogs onuitvoerbare vooruitsig”. They next speak about “minderheidsoorheersing wat moreel onregverdigbaar en prakties onhoudbaar is”. The principle of “meer-derheidsbesetting” emerges very prominently in the book Witman, waar is jóú tuisland? as well. “Die afstigting”—this is very important—“van ’n Afrikaner-volkstaat” is advocated and must be planned “om saam te val met ’n binnelandse skikking waar ’n Swart meerderheidsregering in die res van Suid-Afrika sal oomeem”. This principle is also echoed in the book concerned.

They next speak—and in no uncertain terms—about the “oprigting van ’n soewereine volkstaat, afsonderlik van Suid-Afrika as burgerstaat”. in other words, a “volkstaat” for Whites as against a “burgerstaat” for the rest of South Africa for those who wish to integrate and live with the Blacks, Coloureds and Indians. Then there is the insurance policy that those people who do not find this tenable can go to the White homeland which the CP will create for them.

The hon member for Umlazi referred to an interesting point, and I should like to take it further. The CP categorises political groups in South Africa—excluding the PFP and the NP—and concentrates on right-wing political groups. The first group comprises people—they are the old Nationalists—like the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition, the hon member for Lictenburg, the hon member for Soutpansberg, the hon member for Barberton, the hon member for Brakpan and probably also the young Mulders, the hon members for Randfontein and Schweizer-Reneke.

And Pietersburg.

Oh no, that hon member is an HNP. He was never a Nationalist. He is a shareholder in Die Afrikaner and is altogether lost.

What does this group in the CP say? They say take over the Government, apply separate development, create independent states and allow the Whites to govern the rest of South Africa.

Can hon members see Prof Boshoff spelling out a diametrically opposed standpoint to that of hon members of the CP? Now Prof Boshoff says—

One of the “assimileerbare mense” is the hon member Mr Derby-Lewis of the Stallard Foundation, who declared at Pietersburg that he was the first Englishman of the “Boerestaat”. [Interjections.]

Where does the CP stand, however, if one compares these two scenarios? The former Nationalists sitting over there very much wish to keep to Dr Verwoerd’s old NP philosophy, but the elements which are filtering into their midst, elements of the AWB, etc, are gaining the upper hand and establishing their policy. It is very clear that the second option of the Stigting: Afrikaner-Vryheid is the philosophy of Mr Eugene Terre’Blanche and the AWB.

This afternoon I want to level criticism at hon members of the CP. In the overall process of attempting to present an alternative to the NP, their strategy is disinformation. They do not want to tell the voting public what their politics are. All they do is to disseminate disinformation propaganda against the NP and in the process they create totally false expectations among the White voters of South Africa which they know they will be unable to fulfil.

I want to make a last point. The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition did it again this afternoon. He again came up with his argument of a numerical basis. When he spoke in this House on 2 June and ultimately said that if we were to apply NP policy, we would have to admit 664 Black people to Parliament, I made an interjection. I asked who was talking about one Parliament. The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition is creating a distorted perception amongst members of the public because, when he speaks about one Parliament, he is speaking in terms of the Westminster system of one man, one vote—a system which will mean a complete take-over.

I want to tell the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition he must accept that there is a variety of components in the political structuring of South Africa. There is the RSA with its tricamerial Parliament, there are the four TBVC countries, the six self-governing states, and structures are now being envisaged for Black people outside homeland areas. I say we shall negotiate a constitution with all the people of South Africa, and it will not necessarily be one Parliament. What there will be is one executive body in authority, and we shall negotiate the formulas for this with one another in the interests of South Africa.

The NP has one very clear standpoint, and that is that in the overall process of reform there are three aspects it will not permit. Firstly, it will not permit the minority of Whites and other minorities to be ploughed under in South Africa. Secondly, it will not permit the existing civilised norms to which we are accustomed to be adversely affected and, thirdly, our Christian values to suffer in the process.

Mr Chairman, I shall leave the hon member for Turffontein to conduct his private war with the CP about the pipe-dream of partition. I wish to return to events which are actually happening in South Africa today.

I am pleased that the hon the Minister of Law and Order is here, because I wish to direct a number of my remarks to him.

First of all, I wonder how many hon members on the other side of the House are aware of the irony of the situation that in this year when all these anniversaries are being celebrated we have had another extension of the state of emergency gazetted in the midst of all these celebrations? On 10 June, the fourth declaration of the state of emergency since July 1985 was made by the hon the State President under the Public Safety Act. In so doing he made a public announcement that he thought that this course of action would restore stability and thereby confidence in South Africa.

I must say that that is the first time I have ever heard of a state of emergency restoring confidence in a country. It is bit like saying that a bout of pneumonia is going to restore good health.

I have here a veritable sheet of regulations which were issued on 10 July. One of them is 17 pages long and contains far-reaching—more so than ever before—restrictions on the media. I intend to leave that to my colleague, the hon member for Green Point, to deal with.

One Gazette lays down who may or may not enter school premises. There is a Gazette which contains prison regulations, which are drafted not by the hon the Minister of Law and Order, but by the hon the Minister of Justice. I wish to say that it is time he reviewed these, because there are now persons in detention who have been there, not only for one year, but even for two years. In other words, we are now in for a state of prolonged preventive detention which can go on year after year. I hope very much that at least some adjustment will be made to the regulations under which these people are held.

Then there is Gazette No 11340 which contains the actual emergency powers of arbitrary arrest and detention without trial, which of course is the fans et origo of the misery of more than 26 000 persons who have been detained at one time or another for more than 30 days, from the start of the partial emergency in July 1985 up to the present time. Clause 3(2) of the emergency regulations lays down a maximum period of 30 days detention, unless subsection (3) is invoked, under which the Minister, and only the Minister, may order further detention, without hearing any person. So much for the audi alteram partem rule!

I want to know what criteria the hon the Minister uses? Where, I wonder, does he find the time to examine each case of a detainee before he makes his decision? Or does he, as we know from a previous Minister, long departed from this House, just hold his hand over the name of the detainee and sign the order? [Interjections.]

In another Gazette wide powers are given to the hon the Minister.

That is not the case.

There can be no time to examine 26 000 cases. That is absurd!

The activities of organisations may be restricted in terms of another Gazette and the hon the Minister has already made full use of those powers, as we know, to restrict 18 organisations and Cosatu.

The Commissioner also comes in for some handy little powers, controlling the public, its movements and its freedom—or rather lack of freedom—of association in attending gatherings and/or funerals. Of course, very heavy penalties are laid down for any offences against the regulations.

The one regulation which I had hoped would be omitted from these new emergency regulations, is the one which gives indemnity against civil or criminal proceedings to a wide variety of persons connected with the State for any act performed in good faith while carrying out their duties or performing their functions in connection with the regulations. It is small wonder that with the perpetuation of that indemnity there are numerous complaints of reckless acts by the police and the army, and desperate applications to court for interdicts to prevent the security police from assaulting and torturing detainees.

Last year Mr Andrew Savage, the previous MP for Walmer, Mr Rory Riardan and I presented a number of affidavits to the hon the Minister—20 I think—of allegations of torture of detainees by the police in the Eastern Cape. The hon the Minister promised to have those investigated by a senior officer. I have as yet heard nothing from him.

No, that is not correct. I have informed you of what has happened.

No, the hon the Minister did not. I have no further information as a result of those investigations. All I know is that the investigations are proceeding. I have been informed recently that there haye been at least three applications to court in the Witwatersrand Local Division to prevent assaults by the police on detainees held at Protea police station in Soweto.

These applications were supported by 13 affidavits alleging torture of detainees. I have here another affidavit which has been signed by an articled clerk who works at Cheadle, Thompson and Haysom, a firm of lawyers. This person handed me this affidavit in which she alleges that she interviewed persons now being held at the Johannesburg prison who state that they were tortured while they were detained at the Protea police station. I hope the hon the Minister is going to have this investigated.

The allegations are serious. All of the detainees were forced to do strenuous physical exercises under interrogation. When they were unable to keep up with the exercises, they were physically assaulted. Wet sacks were placed over their heads and they were subjected to electrical shocks on various parts of their bodies. The affidavit goes on, mentioning various other assaults. Women detainees were also involved. One claims that she was slapped, kicked and hit on the breasts and also subjected to electrical shocks. I hope the hon the Minister will have these allegations investigated and that I will not have to wait for nine months before I hear the results of these investigations.

South Africa can justifiably deny being a terrorist state, but she certainly cannot deny using the same deadly techniques as countries behind the Iron Curtain.

I wish to raise another matter very swiftly. I know that nothing infuriates Nationalist members, and particularly the hon the State President, more than any suggestion that this country should do or not do certain things in order to placate the outside world. I want to tell the hon the Minister that I feel strongly about South Africa’s dismal image among civilised countries. However, I am not about to plead again on that account for clemency for the Sharpeville Six. I do so because I am in the first instance against the death penalty in principle and because in the second instance I think the fact that they were found guilty on the basis of common purpose should in itself have been an extenuating circumstance.

Nobody condones the gruesome killing of Deputy Mayor Dhlamini, but I hope the hon the State President can be persuaded either to grant clemency, or to use his powers under section 327(1) of the Criminal Procedure Act to order a retrial, in the event of the failure of the present petition which is being prepared for the Appellate Division asking for a retrial, which was turned down by the trial judge. I want to assure the hon members here that if clemency is granted, it does not mean that people go unpunished. Generally, it means imprisonment for life. They do not escape the gallows just to be set free in society again.

The Sharpeville Six case is a high-profile case. South Africa should not, particularly at this time, display herself as a relentless, retributive society. Already 71 people have been sent to the gallows this year.

The hon the Minister of Justice said that only 25 countries have done away with the death penalty. I want to tell him that those countries are the civilised Western countries. Apart from some of the individual states in the USA, it is the Western civilised countries that have done away with the death penalty. It is the unsavoury ones in whose company the Democratic contender for the USA presidency would quite unjustifiably place South Africa—countries like South Yemen, Syria, Iran and Cuba—who retain the death penalty. [Time expired.]

Mr Chairman, I should like to return to the hon member for Houghton later in my speech because I have a number of questions I want to put to her. I am pleased to have the opportunity of speaking after her again this evening.

Today South Africa is one of the most anticommunist countries on earth, but we receive no recognition for this. In fact, we have become the country against which the entire world is up in arms because we supposedly suppress the Black majority.

We have become accustomed, over the past 25 years or more, to knowing that the world, which is so uninformed, is up in arms against us and to the foreign media, which are communistically orientated, projecting an equally distorted image too. Nevertheless there is also a devilish plot which is being hatched against this country of ours to make us ungovernable and to create chaos here.

Toward the end of 1959 the ANC and the Communist Party were banned in South Africa. In spite of this, there were still professional agitators of the SACP, the ANC and the PAC which mobilised all their resources to inflame Black people and to incite them to rebel against this Government. This was on the eve of our becoming a Republic, and they wanted to adopt every means to make this fail.

A consequence of this was the episode which occurred on 21 March 1960—the Sharpeville episode. Tens of thousands of people marched on the police station in Sharpeville in a booing, shrieking mass to burn their pass books. They were armed with picks, pangas, sticks, bottles, knives, steel pipes and so on. That small group of policemen—only eight—who were in that station saw these hordes descending on them. Is it surprising that those people feared for their lives and fired on these people? I think they shot 69 of them. Those events had world-wide repercussions. The people who were really responsible for the action of those individuals were never reprimanded. No, the Verwoerd Government with its oppressive measures was blamed. Those people who worked in the background, who worked underground, were as Lenin said:

This reminds me forcibly of hon members sitting here in this House who went to Dakar last year to negotiate with the communists. The hon member for Randburg recently accompanied Idasa to Frankfurt to negotiate with these people. I wonder how these people would feel if we were to include them in the same category as Volpe, Goldreich, Joe Slovo, Mandela and Mbeki—those who have betrayed their country. [Interjections.] I sometimes wonder why people are tempted to become communists. Is it the secrecy, the fascinating intrigue, the promises of the delightful, free, new world or the domination of the world which attracts them so strongly?

It is interesting to know that it is Nobel Peace Prize winners in particular who try so hard to undermine our country. I am thinking specifically of that arch-communist, Albert Luthuli, in the days when he also opposed the Government so strongly. [Interjections.] I am thinking of Bishop Tutu. I think the hon the Leader of the Official Opposition has already referred to him today. I feel that that man told a blatant lie when he thanked Moscow for its help in the liberation struggle in this country. He even drags those people into this liberation struggle which they are waging. It is true that those people who supposedly supported him have now started demonstrating against him. I want to ask the Cape Times in all honesty here tonight why nothing was said last week-end in that paper about those demonstrators against Bishop Tutu. The other English newspapers did not mention them either.

The world is now demanding that we free Mandela. The hon the Leader of the Official Opposition said that we had made a martyr of him. I cannot see that we in the NP have made a martyr of him. Surely he is still in jail. What does the hon member suggest? Are we to release him now? I am merely asking. He was the founder of the militant wing of the ANC, the “Umkontho we Siswe”, whose aim was to commit sabotage and murder and to spread terror among the people of this country. Before the Rivonia trial he said himself that the time was past for non-violence and that everything should be committed to the struggle to destroy South Africa.

I am referring to the murder which was planned for 8 April 1963. It was to be a night of murder and, but for the grace of our Heavenly Father and the action of our Police Force, which the hon member for Houghton is always trying to disparage, our country would have been turned into a bloodbath. It was to be known as Operation Mayibuye and was planned to the last detail. Our Police Force descended on those people in Rivonia. Approximately 7 000 freedom fighters armed with hand-grenades, weapons and petrol bombs would be prepared that night and people from overseas would come to their aid and give weapons to Black henchmen to murder leading figures in our country. These are the people who should be wiped out in our country. These are the people who are detained, precisely because they intend destroying our country.

Mandela was the one who spearheaded all these arrangements. He was the one who went overseas to collect R65 000 for the very purpose of having them succeed in this aim. The judge who handed down judgment in the Rivonia case said that Mandela should thank his lucky stars that he had not been found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. At the time of the trial Mandela said the following:

†It is interesting how history repeats itself. It was, after all, in 1973 that the hon member for Houghton actively called for the release of that convicted arch communist, Bram Fischer, and today she is also calling for the release of Mandela. There are a few questions I would like to ask the hon member. She often visits the USA and Great Britain where she addresses learned people and is highly thought of. I want to know if she is a good ambassador for our country. Does she tell all those learned people what South Africa does to uplift its Third World population?

[Inaudible.]

Silly woman!

Does she tell them that the Blacks have the highest standard of living and training than anywhere else in Africa? I know she is opposed to sanctions, but does she tell them how the handful of Whites in this country keep the country going, how it is a wellnigh impossible task that we are achieving and how we are succeeding with our reform?

I am just wondering about these things. If one is patriotic and loves one’s country, one will go against all odds for the benefit of one’s beautiful country.

*Dr Percy Yutar, the Public Prosecutor in the Rivonia trial, said that this country owed a debt of gratitude to the Police Force which uncovered that plot—otherwise we would not have been here today. We would not have had a free, democratic Government but would have been a socialist, communist, oppressed country.

We must stand together and move forward with courage. We are proud to be able to say that we are a believing Christian people. We do not want to co-operate with atheists in Moscow, and that is why I do not trust Gorbachov with his “glasnost”. It is simply eyewash, and that is why it is so important for us to take our people into the future without fear. We must also trust in our Heavenly Father because, if we do this as we go along, He will not leave us in the lurch.

Business interrupted.