I move—

Mr. Speaker, the small Bill which I now ask the House to consider, is a Bill to provide for the construction of about 27 miles of railway line between Oogies Station and Van Dyks Drift. Van Dyks Drift is the terminal point of this particular length of line. This line as the House probably knows, is to serve immediately two new collieries which are being opened up in that area. In the area of which Van Dyks Drift is the centre, we have considerable coal deposits, and owing to the falling off of output from the Witbank collieries, a falling off which will be very marked in the next ten years, it has become necessary to consider the development of fresh fields. There are large deposits in that area which this line will now open up. In connection with the lay-out of the line itself, there has been some discussion as to the route the line should follow. The route which I am asking the House to agree to, is that direct from Oogies to Van Dyks Drift. The people of Witbank were very anxious that the line should go from Witbank to Van Dyks Drift, but as about 80 per cent. of the coal which will be mined in that area will be for Johannesburg, it is rather important and only fair to the collieries that the shortest route between that area and Johannesburg should be selected. To take that line from Witbank to Van Dyks Drift would mean going round two sides of a triangle, instead of across the base, so that the Railways have, not only for that reason, but also because the land is better fitted for railway construction, decided to build the line from Oogies. It is the intention, I believe, to produce almost immediately, that is to say, some time next year, about 100,000 tons monthly from the two collieries which have petitioned for this line. After three years, when the collieries have become properly established, the output will be 295,000 tons monthly and in ten years 425,000 tons monthly. I would also mention incidentally that this new line traverses country particularly well suited for the production of maize, beans and potatoes, and it is expected, therefore, that as the result of this opening up by the Railways there will be considerable extension of agricultural activities. A study of the schedule of the Bill will explain to members that this line has been petitioned for by the Anglo American Corporation on behalf of themselves and the Douglas Colliery. The corporation will guarantee the working of the line for a, period of 25 years; they will guarantee to cover any loss incurred on the line for 25 years. I would like, however, to make one point clear in this connection. To build a line suitable for these two collieries would only require 80 lb. rails and construction below mainline standard. The Administration, however, feels—and I think rightly—that in view of possible developments in that area it will be much better for the Railways to build that line now to main line standard, using 96 lb. rails, capable of carrying our very heaviest locomotives. It would not be fair to assess for capital purposes that heavier construction, and it has been agreed that we will only charge on 3-5ths of the capital for the purpose of assessing the interest and depreciation charges when we are making up our profit and loss statement on the working of the line. I may say that to build the line suitable for these two collieries would cost £281,000, whereas to build it to mainline standard will cost £495,000. You will see, therefore, that roughly 3-5ths of the total capital expenditure represents a fair estimate of what the railways should pay in assessing the interest and depreciation charges on the capital expenditure involved. There is a provision of course that if other collieries come in, they must also pay their share. Any other colliery coming in, will have to be assessed on the basis of how much line is used by it. There is a further proviso that if the output of these two collieries or together with any other collieries reaches 3,000,000 tons a year, then the railways shall be entitled to charge interest on the 96 lb. rail basis. I do not know that there is anything else I need say in connection with this Bill. I tabled the other day a report from the Railways and Harbours Board on the construction of this line, and hon. members can read all details in connection with the construction, the road over which the line goes, and the financial picture of the line from that report. I would therefore move that we now read this Bill a second time.

We have listened with interest to what the Minister has said in connection with the construction of this railway line, and we are gratified that such a line has been built for the development of the area situated between the line from Germiston to Witbank, and the line from Germiston to Bethal. This is a poorly developed area, and one that deserves to be given consideration from the point of view of railway development. Furthermore, the Administration have felt for years, and rightly so, that a link between those two railway lines has become necessary; and we feel that the construction of the line to Van Dyks Drift, especially bearing in mind what the Minister has stated encourages the belief that it will not take long before the railway is carried on to a point on the Germiston-Bethal branch line—which will be an advantageous, and I might even say, a necessary development. But the criticism that we make in connection with the construction of the line is that it starts from Oogies and not from Witbank. Witbank is a railway junction of great importance. It is one of the most important railway junctions in the Union, and we know that where there is a railway junction you must have locomotives, shunting facilities, a running staff, and all sorts of plant. To have two important junctions, twelve or sixteen miles from each other, is an unprofitable policy for the Railway Administration to follow. It is true that we would have to pass along two short sides of a triangle round Witbank, but Witbank is a place of great importance. Witbank links up not only with the Eastern System to Delagoa Bay, but also with the Western system, the Rand and the North on the Pretoria line and with the North-East on the Middelburg branch line. We feel, therefore, that purely from administrative considerations that branch line ought to have been laid from Witbank. Witbank is the obvious place. There you have the locomotives; there you have the shunting facilities, and there you have all the running staff; everything is there. At Oogies one would have to provide all these necessary things, and you would have two sets of staff to do the same work. It would have been much mere advantageous from the point of view of regulating the distribution of the trucks had the junction station been Witbank. Periods occur in the working of railways when there is a great shortage of trucks, and when the distribution of trucks can be arranged from one point—and it can be done much more easily from one centre— it is very advantageous to the Administration to have this work concentrated at the one place. We are also strongly in favour of the view that the track should from the start be laid under standard main line specifications. That is an intelligent policy, because we feel that it encourages the hope that the line will be carried through to the Bethal branch line, which we on our side would strongly recommend. That would give us a much shorter route to Natal. That area produces not only coal, but a great quantity of agricultural products and cattle it is one of the best parts of our country, and we should very much like to see the line extended in a normal way to a point on the Bethal branch line, and, although we feel that it is perhaps now too late to try to re-open the matter of having a junction at Witbank, we still feel that it is not something that the Administration should embark on lightly. It is a very important matter. Now the flow of coal to the Rand has stopped, but who says that the flow of coal to the Rand is going to be stopped for ever? The Minister has stated that the Witbank coal mines have been worked out. Their output is being reduced. We can understand that. We must look for new fields, and Witbank is the largest coal centre we have in South Africa. It is a very important centre regarded from the viewpoint of industries and economic development. By having the junction at Oogies we stop the flow to the Rand, and, though we want to distribute industries over the country, we are not working in the furtherance of this by having the junction at Oogies. We are working against that. We want industries to be spread over the country, but your policy is to concentrate all the industries on the Rand. You give them the greatest facilities. You create the best facilities there. You provide the most advantageous tariffs for them. The Railways are one of the principal factors in the country in carrying out the work of distributing industries, but with your policy, especially with the construction of this branch line, you are not working in a way to give it effect; you are doing just the reverse. We expect that in the low veld of the Transvaal and also in the highveld industries, big industries, will arise, and rightly so; but with the construction of the line from Oogies to Van Dyks Drift you are not promoting the distribution of industries throughout the country; you are working against that. We are not averse to the Rand obtaining all the facilities they find necessary, but they could have got them just as easily through Witbank, and if one day that railway is carried through to the Bethal branch, then you will be starting at the right point. That line links up with Pretoria; it connects with Middelburg; it connects with the lowveld, and we are very sorry that the negotiations have already progressed so far that we must virtually acquiesce in what has been done. Still we cannot neglect to raise our voice against your having made the connection by that short stretch of track from Apex to Witbank. You have now no fewer than four junction stations from Apex to Witbank. This is where the mines have things made cheaper for them, and the Rand gets them considerably cheaper; but this is being done at the expense of the Railway Administration. Again you are giving the benefit to them there. All the benefits they are drawing they derive from the administration: and that is at the expense of the advantageous position in which the administration could have been placed if the junction was at Witbank. We have had letters from the Town Council of Witbank in connection with the matter. There was a strong agitation on the part of the town council, who asked that the railway should start from Witbank. We have not allowed ourselves to be influenced so much by that, although we do feel that they have advanced very good reasons. Yet we feel that the administration should have accorded their request proper consideration. On that account we were disappointed when we learned that the junction would be at Oogies. It is true that the terrain is somewhat easier from Oogies; Witbank is situated at a slightly higher altitude than Oogies. Consequently it is somewhat easier from Oogies. But I think that the Minister lives in the hope that within a measurable period steam will be replaced by electrification in the whole of that area, and then it will not make any difference at all whether Witbank is a bit higher. We must keep an eye on the future. We accept that the day of electrification in that area is not far distant, and accordingly I feel all the more strongly that Witbank was the place indicated for that junction. The fact that the Minister has informed the House that the haulage capacity of that line will be 500,000 tons per month within a few years provides an indication of the tremendous expansion which will take place there, and of the necessity for a great strategic point for a junction; and now you are throwing that advantageous position away; you are creating still more difficult traffic and handling problems; and although we realise that at this stage we will not obtain Witbank as the junction station, we want to protest as strongly as possible against the creation of yet another junction station on that short stretch of track between Germiston and Witbank. We trust that the Minister will take this matter into consideration, and that he will give us a very clear elucidation, and also a sound reason why Oogies was taken as the junction and not Witbank. The convenience of the mines is a very important factor; we admit that; but the convenience and the advantage to the Railway Administration is the greatest factor. It is in the interests of our country; it is our money that is being invested there, and in view of the fact that you visualise that that line will handle 3,000,000 tons per year, it is all the more important. You are creating problems for yourself; you are creating problems for the Railways which are going to occasion them great difficulties in the future. With these few words I hope that the Minister will take this matter of the junction station into sympathetic reconsideration, although we feel he has approached the House at a stage when it is really too late to deal with the matter properly.

The Bill that has been laid on the Table of the House in connection with the Oogies-Van Dyks Drift railway is entirely in the interests of my constituency and in the interests of my district, as well as in my own interests. It is not a subject that is foreign to me; it is a matter in which I take an interest. On a previous occasion I approached the Minister with a deputation representing the Witbank Municipality. I want first to look at the matter from the Oogies’ point of view, from that of the new coalfields, whose companies have furnished a guarantee to the Railway Administration, and in respect of which eventually the farmers on the platteland will derive a great advantage. Witbank has had its day as far as the mines are concerned. In another ten or twelve years most of the mines at Witbank will be worked out. Consequently there must be expansion in other directions. In regard to this line, Oogies Van Dyks Drift, which is of great importance to the new coalfields as also for the farmers in the district, we hope that it will be still further extended in the direction of Carolina or Bethal. There are many villages there without any railway connection, and I feel that that section of our country has been neglected. In connection with my representations to the Minister that there should be a railway line for the use of the public, I am glad to say that the Minister has acceded to that request so that our farmers will also be able to make use of the line. That will be of material assistance. I want also to ask the Minister that he should, when the stations are being built, consult the public in regard to the best sites for the stations so that they will be of the maximum use to the farmers. The strongest point is in connection with the town of Witbank. Together with the Municipality of Witbank I made representations to the Minister in connection with this matter. We felt that Witbank was entitled to this line, because under certain circumstances it developed greatly, and it has always paid considerable taxation to the Government. We always thought that even though it should cost a little more, and although the companies might have been charged somewhat more for their traffic, it would have been only right to have built the line from Witbank. It is a pity that the Minister could not accept our proposal. We asked for a commission of enquiry, which unfortunately was not granted to us. The Minister raised his objection to that. It is impossible to let Witbank decline today. All these years it has been subject to high taxation by the State. Much money has been invested in Witbank by business people and individuals. By the construction of this railway we shall for one thing lose 600 railway people, who will be transferred to Oogies or elsewhere. That in itself signifies a big set-back. At Witbank we have all the facilities, the power station, the schools, a number of railway houses and offices, and we had thought that Witbank would have been selected. But as the previous speaker has stated, the matter has gone so far that we shall not be able to alter it now. I should like to make a request to the Minister on behalf of the constituency, and especially for the town of Witbank and the surroundings. I made representations to the Minister with a view to his Department Using its influence with the Provincial Council to obtain a proper road for Witbank, so that we would have a good link with the new mines, the schools and other places. I realised that this request should perhaps not be directed in the first place to the Minister of Transport, but the Minister may perhaps be of assistance to us in connection with the construction of this road which is necessary, and which will only be about 24 miles in length. The Minister replied to my representations and said that if it was possible he would give me a bus. But I should like to have a reply from the Minister which will make Witbank contented. I would like him to state that as soon as the road is completed he will provide the bus, a railway bus. I am certain that the bus will pay for itself. Then I also want to ask the Minister not to forget us in regard to industries. I understand that as regards Iscor, 80 per cent. of their coal comes from Witbank and 20 per cent. from Natal; and my information is further that the quality of the coal which is now being produced by our new mines is of such a high standard that it will no longer be necessary to have the 20 per cent. brought from Natal. The Minister must give Witbank a chance. Probably all hon. members have received letters from the Municipality of Witbank. Great expectations are entertained, and the Minister must not let Witbank decline. Witbank is twenty miles from the coalfields, but already ten miles of railway have been built in the direction of the first mine, Wolwekrans. Ten miles have already been completed, and consequently we thought that we would have a good case. There is still one more point that I would like to touch on. How long have we not been struggling for a proper post office at Witbank? We are not able to get it. Witbank feels that it is being completely neglected in connection with everything. It seems to me that we are unable to get anything there. I had the Minister of Posts there to show him what our post office loked like. Witbank feels indignant, and I make an appeal to the Minister to help us as much as possible there. The Minister of Posts and Telegraphs gave me an unofficial promise for the following year. I want to ask that proper interest should be taken in Witbank.

I am glad to learn from the Minister’s speech that he contemplates the sound policy in connection with railway development of keeping in view the possibilities of development for the country as a whole. Bearing that in mind, we feel that timely provision should be made for railway facilities which will keep pace with future developments. Here we have an instance of the possibility of considerable development occurring in the coal mining area. I should like to know from the Minister whether it will be a matter of general policy, where there is a prospect of sound development, that the Government will give timely consideration to plans for the development of transport facilities. Here we have to deal with the development of an industry in which principally private capital has been invested, and I am glad to learn that the farmers in those districts will also be able to use the line. It is primarily, however, a railway intended for mining development. There are, however, other industries in this country, such as the agricultural industry, and I should like to know what the Government’s plans are in this connection. Let me mention an instance. There are a number of Government schemes in which considerable capital is invested. There is much capital invested in the mining industry but it is private capital. You do, however, get cases where State capital is invested on a large scale, and where the prospects exist that within a measurable period there will be a big development in the agricultural sphere. I have in mind, for instance, the Kraaipoort scheme, where £1,500,000 has been invested in the construction of a dam. If so much State money is investeed in such a scheme tremendous development must occur within a short time. And now I want to ask whether it is the policy of the department to make provision in such cases for transport facilities to keep pace with the developments which occur. I want to draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that if provision is made for transport facilities it means that provision will be made for the requirements of a large section of the country’s population. Take periods of drought alone. We were apprehensive that there might be a big drought, and in such a case the fodder that is grown in these parts could be distributed over the whole country. One must be prepared for that, and on that account I should like to know precisely what the policy of the Government is. It is of extreme importance that droughts should not destroy a large proportion of our cattle.

I hope that the hon. member will confine himself to the question before the House.

I shall not carry that further, but I should be glad if the Minister would make an announcement in regard to the policy that is going to be followed where development on such a big scale is immediately ahead.

I am only rising to ask the hon. Minister a question. Tremendous development has taken place in our coal mining industry. Let me quote a few figures. In 1905 about 4,000,000 tons were produced, and in 1942 the output was more than 22,000,000 tons. The coal mining industry has utilised more and more railway trucks. In 1910 the railways transported about 6,000,000 tons of coal; last year they transported over 17,000,000 tons. As far as the development of the coal mining industry is concerned, the point is that a railway line was built for its benefit—we have no fault to find with that. But I should like to put the following question in connection with the policy of the railways. Some years ago a report was published in connection with dead-end railway termini and the linking up of them with other railways. In this connection there comes especially to my mind the extension of the railway from Klaver to Calvinia. That is a dead-end, and there are other similar cases in the country. Now, I should like to know whether in reference to agricultural development we are going to cry a halt in connection with the construction of railways, and whether we are only going to use road motor services for transport? Does the Minister believe that he will be justified in only building railway lines when he receives the assurance that this step is economically sound, in the sense that the line will pay, because we know that Section 127 of the South Africa Act prescribes that railways must be built on business principles, with due regard to the agricultural and industrial development in the Union, and the settlement of an agricultural and industrial population by means of cheap transport. It is consequently of great importance that the Minister should make an announcement here as to what his policy is goig to be in the future in connection with further railway extension.

I am sorry that I am not today in the fortunate position of the hon. member for Witbank (Mr. H. J. Bekker), who is able to thank the Minister for a railway line that has been built in his constituency. I should like to bring to the notice of the Minister what the position is at the moment in the Lichtenburg constituency, and in doing that I have in mind the announcement of the Minister of Lands that the Government intends to support the Kuruman and Vryburg districts by the development of the lovely farms there, by making provision for windmills, dams and boreholes. Now, I should like to voice an opinion which has been held a long time in connection with the extension of the line from Lichtenburg to join up with the line to the North.

Will the hon. member tell me what that has to do with this Bill?

The Minister is going to build a railway in that area, and I wonder whether I could not bring to the notice of the Minister that an alteration could be effected in the Lichtenburg district.

The hon. member may only ask a question about that.

Then I will just ask the Minister whether he will also make a statement in connection with the extension of the railway from Lichtenburg to join up with the line to the North. This is a matter which has been discussed for a considerable time, and I will be pleased if the Minister will make an announcement concerning his plans in connection with the extension of that line to join the railway to the North, either at Mafeking or at some other point.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to say one or two things about this line. The hon. member for Albert-Colesberg (Mr. Boltman) has, however, raised the question of the policy of the Administration in regard to the future development of railways in South Africa. I do hope the Minister will adhere to the policy he has laid down in the House. It is a very important feature of this new line that the Administration will be guaranteed against loss. As we look at the plan we see that this line wanders about as if looking for a destination, but it is evidently calculated to serve several collieries en route. We quite appreciate the fact that to take the line via Witbank would mean an extra cost in railage westwards and, notwithstanding the fact that coal in the area to be served is said to be of extremely high calorific value, there is the question of railage to the Rand and the coal has to enter into competition with other collieries in the areas nearer the Reef. In regard to general policy I think the House will support the Administration in its advocacy of the principle of extending road motor services in farming areas, seeing that that method of conveyance is such as to bring the farms in close touch with the nearest railway communication. We should encourage the Minister to further develop in accordance with this policy. I would support the hon. member for Witbank (Mr. H. J. Bekker) in his request to the Minister to take the position of Witbank into serious consideration. It stands in the centre of a great coal mining district, and a road motor service from Witbank into this new area would be of great benefit. It is hoped that the position of Witbank will not be overlooked, seeing that it is a very important junction and is on the line of traffic to Lourenco Marques and Pretoria. I suggest to the Minister that the fact that Witbank has been built up on the industry in the area surrounding, it is a strong argument for the Government to take into consideration the fact that this new line would weaken its position, and if anything can be done to help it in connection with any further planning it would be highly appreciated, and I think a benefit to the country as a whole.

I am sorry that I too am not in a position to stand up like the hon. member for Witbank (Mr. H. J. Bekker) and thank the Minister for what he has dope for my constituency. Notwithstanding the fact that the hon. member is the only one who happens to be in that fortunate position, he is still not content with what he has got and he has come along and asked for more. After I had listened to the Minister of Railways, and after I had listened also to the hon. member for Witbank, I felt that as the representative of another constituency I could not see my way clear to vote for this Bill unless the Minister furnishes a satisfactory answer to the questions which have already been put to him from this side of the House, and intimates what his future policy is going to be. I am not opposed to the construction of a railway line in the Witbank constituency. But when we learn from the hon. member himself that it was only as a result of his individual representations that the Minister went so far as to make this line available for the farmers, and that in the first instance it was intended exclusively in the interests of the coal mines—consequently also in the interests of the mines of the Witwatersrand—then it is difficult for us to support such a railway line. If we look into the revenue derived from coal traffic, we find that it represents only 11 per cent. of the total revenue of the railways, as against 53 per cent. in respect of goods traffic, so that I feel that if the Minister of Railways is prepared in these days when there is such an extreme shortage of building material, to go and build a line that will contribute such a small proportion to railway revenue, then we must perforce direct our attention to other parts of the country which at present are entirely unexploited and which have not any privileges at all. The Minister knows what the position is in the constituency that I represent. There the railway traffic has really become thoroughly disorganised. The railways are not in a position to handle the accumulated railway traffic, and to come along in those circumstances and to give advantages to parts of the country that have already benefited and that have already got railway connections, while none are provided in certain districts, gives rise to the impression that we will only be justified in voting for this Bill if the Minister rises here and makes a statement on the lines previously indicated by hon. members. I shall appreciate it if the Minister can make a statement on his future policy, for instance in connection with a railway between Koopmansfontein and Kuruman, which will serve an area which is today in a terrible state. If the Minister is not prepared to build such a line, then it appears to me that his policy is on the lines of “Unto him that hath shall be given and from him who hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”

I would like to thank the House for the reception given to this Bill, and I shall do my best to answer the three or four of the more important points raised. First of all I want to assure the House most emphatically that the most careful consideration was given over a period of many months to the position of Witbank in relation to this line. It was inevitable that we should try and look at it from the point of view of Witbank. Witbank is a prosperous town depending on coal, and if there were to be any developments in that area, it was important that we should have regard to the interests of Witbank. Every consideration was given to the possibility of keeping this traffic going through Witbank, but there is a great variety of factors which entered into the consideration of this problem, practically all operated against Witbank. To begin with I do not hold the view that Witbank will suffer as the result of this particular extension of coal fields. I think it will benefit by it, because we have the illustration elsewhere. Johannesburg has not suffered as the result of the development of the gold mines in the Far East Rand; it has benefited. Witbank has a big power station and being the centre of a population it will continue to be such a centre even for this new area. The hon. member for Witbank discussed this with me, and particularly asked about the building of roads and a bus service to and from these collieries to Witbank. I have no doubt these things will come about the moment the population is settled. There are schools in Witbank, and children and other people will have to go to Witbank for the purposes of education and business. I do not think that in that case Witbank will suffer at all. There is a further point, however, that at the present moment the Witbank yards are very much congested, and it would be necessary for us from the railway point of view to extend these yards very considerably if we were to increase the traffic through Witbank. But what would that mean? No train will leave any colliery that is not fully loaded—the trains go straight from the colliery to their destination. These trains will not be junction trains. The mere fact of our taking these trains through Witbank will not mean any revenue to Witbank. It is much better that we avoid congestion at Witbank, since mining operations all round the Witbank yards make it difficult to extent there. It is, therefore, much better that these trains should be passed on to the main line at the nearest point. These trains would not be shunted at Witbank—they would go right through. We have already had a certain amount of work done at Oogies, because it is the actual coal-bearing area. You don’t want to have to send trucks away from their destination in order to marshal them and then bring them back again. So if there were any additional marshalling facilities required on that line, it would be better to put these at Oogies, rather than to put them at Witbank, particularly in view of this fresh area coming into development. There was the further consideration that in discussion with the engineers—I actually discussed the problem myself with them—I was given the emphatic assurance that the best country for the line to pass over, from the point of view of cost, was from the Oogies direction rather than from the Witbank direction. We have already got a line coming nart of the way down from Witbank—it is a branch line—and it would look on paper as if that was the obvious way for the main line. But the engineers satisfied me that that was not so from the engineering point of view. They satisfied me that the best way is to send the line via Oogies. I don’t think I can say any more about Witbank. I do not know where the hon. member for Witbank (Mr. H. J. Bekker) got the idea that Witbank would lose 600 men, but I can assure him that that is not the picture which we visualise as far as the future of Witbank is concerned. I just want to assure the House that if I thought any useful purpose would be served by re-opening the matter, I would consider it. But we have to deal with the matter now; coal will be urgently required next year; we have not taken this decision lightly. It has not been taken without a proper consideration of all the facts. One or two members raised the question of what was my policy in regard to these lines. They asked, if we were to foresee coal development here, would we foresee other developments elsewhere. Well, there is of course this essential difference in this case—that I have my losses guaranteed. When you have your losses guaranteed, you can sometimes take more of a risk. The policy of the Railways at present is the policy laid down by the Railway Lines Revision Commission. Just to refresh hon. members’ memories I will quote it. It says this—

1. (a) That new railways be constructed and operated at the expense of the Railway Administration in cases where (i) the traffic offering will produce sufficient revenue to cover working expenditure, including interest and depreciation charges; (ii) additional facilities are required to ensure efficient and economic traffic operation.
2. (b) That new railways intended to serve specific interests, including industrial and mining undertakings, be constructed subject to an unqualified guarantee against all losses in working, including interest and depreciation charges.
3. (c) That new railways, the purpose of which is to develop agriculture, forestry, irrigation, and other similar interests in areas where the volume of traffic is not likely to make the proposed line an economic proposition, be constructed only on the specific request of the Government Department concerned, and on condition that the Railway Administration be guaranteed against all losses in working, including interest and depreciation charges.

Now, that is the general policy laid down by the Railway Administration, and that is the policy to which we are at present adhering. In regard to agricultural traffic development, I would stress once more what I have said before that by a long way the best kind of service for developing agricultural traffic is the road motor service. To lay down a branch line to deal with a mealie district where the branch line is probably only busy for two or three months of the year is by no means economic. I am told that during the war there have been considerable developments in regard to the building up of road motor traffic. Instead of the old idea of having a driver and a conductor with a bus, and one trailer, the idea is to run motor trains over your big roads.

You cannot get them.

You cannot get a railway line today either. Even if I offered you a railway line you could not build it.

Is that a long range policy then?

Yes, we cannot get buses, and we cannot get trains and engines. We are only laying down this line to Van Dyks Drift because next year it will be vital to this country to have more coal. It is only because of the importance of the coal output next year that we agreed to lay down this line. If it had not been necessary for our purposes to get more coal …

In the meantime other vital interests might develop.

Do you want the coal for export?

Eighty per cent. of this coal is required for local comsumption.I just want to deal with the general policy. Speaking generally it will pay much better to try and develop agricultural traffic along good, well-made roads with proper equipment, with a series of trailers behind a suitable pulling apparatus, which will handle all the traffic to the railhead. Once the traffic has grown as a result of that development, once it has expanded to the point where we can extend the railway lines, that should be done, and by a combination of road motor services and railways, I am satisfied we can develop every part of the country, only building a railway line when the traffic is getting too big to be handled by road motor traffic. That is a general statement of my policy, in regard to agricultural traffic particularly, and I think it will meet the position. I want to say as far as the hon. member for Kuruman (Mr. Olivier) is concerned, that I am painfully conscious of the fact that the traffic position at Kuruman has left a great deal to be desired in recent weeks, but as he knows I have made every effort to meet the position and I hope it is now getting better.

It still leaves a lot to be desired.

There has been rather a breakdown in the area. I think I have replied to the points raised by the hon. member for Boshof (Mr. Serfon and also to the points raised by the hon. member for Albert-Colesberg (Mr. Boltman).

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

If there is no objection I move—

I object.

House to go into Committee on the Bill on 16th May.

I move—

This Bill deals with two of the taxation proposals which have already been approved by the House in Committee of Ways and Means. Chapter I, which contains Clauses 1 to 11, deals with the proposed war-time surcharge on Transfer Duty Payments. Clause 12 in Chapter II deals with a proposed increase of the Diamond Mines Special Contribution. Then there is a further clause. Clause 13, which provides for an amendment in respect of the levy of the Fixed Property Profits Tax. Clause 13 is explained in the White Paper. It relates to cases in which a profit is made on the sale of a property which had been the subject of a previous sale which was cancelled. These cases were last year brought by us within the scope of this taxation, with the object of removing a loophole for evasion, and we then gave the seller the option in determining the profit to take as the basis, either the original purchase price or the price at cancellation, provided the agreement to be cancelled was entered into before the 29th of April last year. We now propose to grant that option in cases either where the property was purchased by the taxpayer before the 1st October, 1939, irrespective of the date of cancellation, even if the cancellation occurs now, or if the agreement that has been cancelled was entered into before the date of the budget, namely, the 26th February, 1942. In a certain measure, this implies an extension of the present provision in so far as the option is now also granted in cases where the original purchase was effected before the 1st October, 1939, and the cancellation occurs now at any time, but in a certain measure it also means a limitation in so far that in other cases it will only be granted where the cancellation occurred before the imposition of the taxation on the 26th February, 1942. This is necessary with an eye to the elimination of possible evasions. Cases have occurred where persons have made a purchase and then cancelled it, and to prevent this it is necessary to alter that date. But as I have stated, the main purpose of this Bill is really to give effect to the two taxation proposals that have already been discussed. Those proposals have been elucidated by me in my Budget speech, and subsequently they were fully discussed both on a motion to go into Committee of Ways and Means, and also while we were in Committee. It is thus unnecessary for me to examine the principle governing this taxation. I have already done that more than once. I wish merely to indicate how effect has been given to the resolutions of the Committee of Ways and Means as confirmed by the House. One proposal is a proposal in connection with the diamond mining industry, and that is contained in Clause 12 of the Bill. This is a contribution over and above the income tax ordinarily paid by the diamond mines. The normal tax on the diamond mines has been increased during the past few years from 3s. to 4s. 6d. in the £. In addition to that a special contribution was levied as from 1940. It was originally 2s., and last year it was increased to 3s., while now it is proposed to increase it to 4s. That is given effect to in Clause 12 of the Bill. Then I come to the proposals in connection with War-time Surcharges on Transfer Duty Payments in respect of which provision is made in Chapter I of the Bill. As the House is aware, it is our intention that a surcharge will be payable, with certain exceptions, in respect of all transfer duty payments that were made after the 25th February, 1944, the date of the Budget speech. The first exception is in cases where the selling price is less than £1,000; there will be no surcharge payable. The second exception is that where the transaction was effected before the 25th February and payment was made before the 15th March, or if at least a deposit for the purposes of payment was made before that date, the surcharge will not be payable. The Bill makes it clear that the exemption will also apply where deposits were made. The hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) knows what the position is. There is another type of case in regard to which I undertook to give further attention, and that is where transfer duty is chargeable as the result of the inheritance of property, where property has been obtained in an estate. That is not altogether on the same footing in certain respects as cases where the property is obtained by means of purchase, and the facilities in these cases for the payment of deposits have not been the same as in cases where a normal sale transaction has occurred. For that reason I am prepared to propose an amendment in the Committee stage which will grant a further period in cases of that nature, estate cases, with the provision that if transfer duty or the deposit is paid before the expiration of the period there will be no liability for the surcharge. I think that that will be accepted as a reasonable concession. The taxation will then have to be paid on all transactions in respect of which transfer duty is payable after the “fixed date,” with the exception of those cases that I have mentioned. The scale will be 1 per cent. where the purchase price is between £1,000 and £2,000 and 2 per cent. thereafter. Liability will rest where the transfer duties are payable. It would be difficult to make a departure from that. The only sound rule in this connection is to allow the two to go together; where transfer duty is chargeable the surcharge will also be payable; where for one reason or another transfer duties are refunded the surcharge will also be refunded. Only in one respect will there be a variation between the two, and I think it will be regarded as right, namely, where as a result of negligence the transfer duty has not been paid on the date that has been fixed, a penalty will be enforced. In that case the penalty will not be chargeable on the amount of the surcharge. As hon. members are aware, the transfer duty payments are subject to a penalty if they are not paid within six months. This penalty will only apply to the transfer duty and not to the surchage, but in other respects the two things will march together, transfer duty and surcharge. I think that is all that is necessary to say at this stage.

We have already on previous occasions lodged our protest in respect of this form of taxation, the surcharge on transfer duty payments. Now this form of taxation is taken up in this Bill that is before us, and we must again raise our voices in protest against it. The grounds for our protest are threefold. In the first place we protest against this manner of Imposing taxation, which is impinging on a source of taxation of the provincial administrations. For that reason we protest from a constitutional standpoint. Certain sources of taxation have been set aside for the provinces, and in this case, though the Minister is not engaged in depriving them of a source of taxation, he is putting a stop to any further use being made of it by the provinces. He is now actively tapping this source to the utmost. Consequently, the Minister is undermining the whole system of provincial councils. We know that it has frequently happened that in recent times Parliament has encroached on the legislative sphere of the provincial councils, and we know that is a way of strangling the provincial councils. If it is dangerous in the case of legislation, then it is practically fatal in the case of taxation. If you encroach on the field that has been set aside for taxation by the provinces, there is no quicker way of encompassing the death of the provincial councils, because it means that you are stopping the flow of their life blood. Consequently we protest from that point of view, apart from the fact that it is unnecessary taxation. The second ground for our objection is that the taxation hits speculators and investors alike. No difference is made between the two. The young farmer who is about to begin farming and who has to purchase his farm, must pay the same taxation as the man who is speculating in land. No difference is made between the two. To the farmer his land is the tool of his trade with which he must make his living. In his case extra taxation is now placed on it. Not only have we the ordinary increase in the price of land, but we have this taxation, over and above the capital that the young farmer has to pay for his land when he begins to farm, still further increased. There has today already been over-capitalisation of land, and the Minister aggravates the over-capitalisation by this measure. We feel that this is very wrong. Not only is over-capitalisation made greater, but we here have a further encouragement of inflation, because this surcharge on transfer duty payments will be added to the purchase price, and in this way a further increase in the price of land will be brought about. Before I come to my minor points, there is another objection in principle that I want to mention, and that is that the Minister is further taxing the transfer of land, while he leaves untouched the transfer of shares for speculative purposes. It appears to me that one must conclude from the Minister’s persistence in taxing in this way, that he wants to give a preference to speculators in shares. It really looks as if one must come to the conclusion that the Minister is not anxious to get more money out of them. There you have a fine untouched source of taxation. The Minister has said, it is true, that juridical objections and difficulties exist in connection with the taxation of shares of speculators, but I do not know whether the country accepts that today. We know that on a previous occasion I stated that I had had a talk with my colleagues, and that they had assured me, when I said that I was prepared to frame a measure that would in every respect be better calculated to stop speculation in shares than the Minister’s measure did in the way of stopping speculation in land, that such a Bill could in fact be drafted. We advanced the proposal to make all share transactions, whether they were for speculative purposes or for investment, subject to a transfer fee. The Minister did not accept that; but subsequently I was challenged in a way by a newspaper that supports the Government and that adopted the standpoint that I had promised to draft a Bill, but that it had never made an appearance, and that I had apparently found it an impossible task. Thereupon I proposed to that newspapeer, and I think it was repeated on my behalf, that if I obtained the necessary facilities to present such a proposal to the Committee of Ways and Means, and if I got the necessary facilities from the Government side—because it is, after all, dependent on the decision of the majority, the Government caucus—to introduce such a measure, I should still be prepared to do that, but that I did not feel disposed to devote my time towards assisting the Government out of its difficulty. I still consider that if the Government really wants to tax the share speculators, if the will to do that is there, a way can be found. And if the Government is not prepared to do that let them leave it to those who will in fact find a way. We have the will to tax these people, and we feel that it would be a reasonable tax on them, and that by adopting it many of the unfair taxes that the Minister has imposed could disappear. Why should the transfer of land be subject to further taxation? Those that have already been taxed have to be taxed more heavily. But those who sell shares are not taxed. That is the policy of the Minister. They are not taxed except to a trivial extent. For that reason we are opposed to this taxation. In these days in which we live such an unfair position should never be tolerated. Then we object to the dangerous principle involved in the retrospective effect that is brought in here. On the 25th February the Minister made his Budget speech, and he announced this taxation. According to the Bill a sale, even if effected bona fide before the 25th February, falls under this taxation. In other words, it has a retrospective effect. That was clear from the Minister’s statement. Subsequently he made a concession, namely, that if a deposit has been made, or if the transfer duty was paid before the 15th March then it was not to be subject to this taxation. But that is not enough. Why should a sale entered into bona fide before the 25th February be subject to this taxation? The Government has its normal provision that a penalty of 12 per cent. is levied if the transfer duty is not paid within six months. Why did they not avail themselves of that, and then not make this taxation of retrospective effect? We have pointed out that especially in the case of land which has been transferred in consequence of a bequest it is very difficult to pay the transfer duty within a short period. I am very pleased that the Minister is prepared to meet us in this connection. But what about the cases of a sale out of an estate, not of the ordinary transfer from an estate, but where an estate has sold land and where it may frequently be very difficult to pay the fees between the 25th February and the 15th March? It may be necessary, for instance, to have a survey made and it may be difficult to lodge a deposit in respect of the whole of the transfer duty. I should like to know from the Minister whether he is also prepared in such cases to grant a concession, where land is not transferred as part of an estate but where it is sold out of an estate. I did not understand the Minister very well, and perhaps it is covered.

No; such cases are not covered.

Will not the Minister also grant this concession then in the case of sales out of an estate? We are appealing on the general principle that the date that the Minister must take for the introduction of this surcharge must be the date on which he announced it, namely the 25th February, and that any bona fide sale before that date should be exempted from this taxation. If the Minister is afraid of false declarations in regard to the date of sale, then I would point out to him that there have to be sworn declarations by the seller and the purchaser, and if these people want to evade the surcharge, they will have to commit perjury. Is that not an adequate safeguard to prevent any evasion of this taxation? If that is not so can he not exempt people where the commissioner is satisfied that the sale took place bona fide before the 25th February? I want also to give this warning to the Minister. We feel that this taxation is another nail in the coffin of the Government.

It is a screw nail.

This is one of the “small mistakes” that the Minister of Finance is continually making, and regarding which the Prime Minister according to a newspaper report, stated at a meeting in the Western Transvaal—

It is twenty years ago since the Prime Minister said that in reference to the result at Wakkerstroom. I only want to add this: History has a quaint way of repeating itself. The “small mistakes” of the then Government had big results, namely, the downfall of that Government, and I feel that this increased taxation is another of those “small mistakes” which will contribute to the downfall of this Government. It is one of the “small mistakes” which just like those “small mistakes” of twenty years ago had the cumulative effect of making the Government disappear in 1924, and that resulted in the defeat of the Government in the elections in July of that year. The Government, and particularly the Minister of Finance, are continually making “small mistakes”, and the cumulative effect of those small mistakes will be the fall of the present Government. We may also see how history repeats itself in other respects. We saw this morning the victor of Wakkerstroom coming in here just like twenty years ago. The analogy is well-nigh perfect. It may perhaps become completely perfect if this Government falls as a result of these mistakes.

You will have a grey beard by that time.

It seems as if the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Barlow) is now busy with his own long term plans. By that time he will no longer be here to make interjections; in fact, that time is going to be very soon. He will fall with the Government. In all seriousness, I would again tell the Minister of Finance that this taxation is wrong in principle. The Minister has stated that it is a temporary measure, but why should he seek out a temporary measure that is directed against the young farmer who has to begin farming and who has in his farm the tool of his trade; why should he be more heavily taxed than hitherto, while the share speculator is free to continue his parasitic activities and to make thousands of pounds out of the fluctuations of the share market? For those reasons we on this side of the House are not prepared to vote for the second reading of this Bill.

I do not think we need take the wishful thinking of the hon. member for Fauresmith (Dr. Dönges) too seriously. However, I have not got up to deal with that. I want to deal particularly with Section 13 of this Bill. Hon. members may remember that when the Special Taxation Act of 1943 was introduced, there was a provision which stated that in the event of the cancellation of a sale of fixed property. The cancellation price should in certain circumstances be taken for fixed property profits tax purposes, as the price of acquisition in the event of a subsequent sale. Now, if I read this amendment correctly, the intention is to remedy a defect which appeared in consequence of the Taxation Act of 1943. In that Act, if a cancellation took place before the coming into operation of the Act, then only was the seller entitled to regard the cancellation price as the price of acquisition in the event of a future sale. But if the cancellation took place after the coming into operation of the Act of 1943, then the seller was regarded as having acquired it at its original price of acquisition. I hope that is a correct interpretation; it is the interpreta placed upon it. The effect of this amendment, if I read it correctly, is that in all cases, if the cancellation took place after the 26th February, 1942, would the seller have the right to regard the cancellation price as being the price of acquisition as at the date of cancellation, and in the event of his selling subsequently he could regard that as the basic price, and the Minister would tax on the difference between that price and the new sale price. Well, that is a very serious alteration in the law, and one that was called for, and it is very necessary because in consequence of the law as it stood, any cancellation which took place after the coming into operation of the Act of 1943, might create a very great hardship in the case of the seller. Where a transaction had taken plce, if the seller cancelled he would be thrown back to the original price which may have been the price at which he acquired the property ten, fifteen or twenty years ago. I believe this amendment is intended to do away with that, and I think the Minister should be congratulated on having faced the matter and remedied what is a serious defect in the law.

I want to begin by thanking the Minister for the few concessions he has made. I appreciate the spirit in which he has done that, and I am glad he has done it. That does not imply that I shall vote for the Bill or that I approve of it. I still think that this increased taxation is wrong. The hon. member for Fauresmith (Dr. Dönges) explained our objections. I will return to what, in my opinion, is the greatest objection to this taxation, namely, that the surcharge is made of retrospective effect. In other words, if a person had made a purchase before this Bill became operative, namely, before the 25th February, he nevertheless is liable under this Bill. That appears to me to be wrong in principle. Any businessman knows that if he goes to an aution sale to buy land, or if he buys land out of hand, he calculates what the land is going to cost him, and he reckons in addition to the purchase price what the cost is going to be in respect of transfer duty, commission and all those things. If a person is willing to pay £3,000 for his land, he reckons out all the additional costs, and this means that he must pay so much less for the land in order that the total cost will not exceed £3,000. Now the Minister of Finance comes along, after the purchase has been concluded, and hè increases the cost by increasing this taxation. The retrospective effect of the taxation creates a principle of which we cannot approve. Accordingly, I feel that while I am thankful for the concession made by the Minister, there is something amiss with the taxation, and that it will be a good thing if the Minister would give further consideration to this particular point. Suppose that a farmer wants to buy a piece of land for his son. He does not want to pay too much for the land. He tries to get it as cheaply as he can. He works out the cost very precisely, the purchase price and all the incidental expenses, and he is then willing to pay say £5,000 for the land on the grounds that the return will be so much and according to his calculations, the lad will make a living. He allows 2 per cent. for transfer duty, but now the Minister comes with this Bill and obliges him to pay a further 2 per cent. in respect of transfer duty. That increases the capital cost of the farm, because when we calculate the capital cost of a farm we take into account the purchase price and all incidental costs. In my opinion this is the greatest objection that can be brought against the Bill. There are other objections against the Bill, but in my opinion this is the strongest objection. I think that the Minister realises that himself, and that is why he has given the people concerned a few weeks grace to enable them to pay this money. Many of them were not in a position to pay. If the Minister had given these people six months to settle things we would have been able to understand it. I could fully understand that. That appears to me to be the objection that is levelled against the Bill with the greatest force, and I think the Minister should definitely be impressed by it. I don’t know why he hasn’t followed that course. I cannot understand why he has made purchases and sales that were effected before the “fixed date” subject to this surcharge. I am not referring now only to speculators. The taxation that is now imposed on land that has to be sold has been raised to such a level that in future it will not be a potential source of revenue for the Provincial Councils. Sooner or later the Provincial Councils will also want to impose taxes, and they will not be able to do it because the present taxation is as high as it very well can be. The upshot of it is that the people will not be in a position to buy land. Accordingly I feel that the Minister has encroached here on the powers and privileges of the Provincial Councils. But I still think that the weightiest objection that can be lodged against this Bill is in connection with the provision giving it retrospective effect. Then I want also to submit this to the Minister. Here in the Cape Province transfer duty is paid in the case of land being inherited and an abatement is only allowed in respect of that portion of such land as would have been inherited had there been no will, i.e. ab intestato. But that is not the case in the Transvaal. In the Transvaal no transfer duty is chargeable in respect of land that has been inherited in an estate. No transfer duty has to be paid in the Transvaal where a person inherits land, and consequently they will not be liable to this tax. This surcharge is only payable in respect of land transactions where transfer duty has been chargeable. It appears to me therefore that in this connection preference is being accorded the Transvaal. If a young man, one of five children, inherits a farm, he receives an abatement only in respect of one-fifth of the value of the farm. If the farm is worth £5,000 he receives an abatement on £1,000. He has to pay transfer duty on the remaining £4,000. If, however, one inherited that land in the Transvaal no transfer duty at all would have been chargeable in respect of it. Now the heir is not only going to pay transfer duty, but he will have to pay the surcharge. It does not appear to me that you are acting fairly when you exclude one of the provinces in this manner. The taxation ought to be imposed equally in all the provinces. I think the Minister was rather precipitate with this taxation. I feel that he ought to have gone further into it in consulation with his department in order to ascertain whether the incidence of the taxation would be uniform. I believe that this taxation is yet going to land him in considerable difficulties, because you cannot justify a man in the Cape having to pay more by way of taxation than a man in the Transvaal would have to pay in respect of a similar transaction. I still feel that the Minister could have obtained this revenue in another way. It is stated here that there are difficulties in the way of imposing taxation on share tranactions. I realise that there are difficulties, but I think that if the Minister really wanted to do it he could find a way. There is a simple way in which he can impose increased taxation on share transactions. Instead of the stamp duty tariff being 1s. on a transaction of £25 he could have made it 5s. I am quite aware that some people buy shares for investment purposes, but I think that in the majority of cases it is for speculative purposes. I feel that the Minister could have made that source of taxation yield more instead of imposing an additional burden on land transactions which already carry heavy taxation. It is not only the transfer duty. The owner of the land has also to pay another tax, and with all these taxes we will in time make it impossible for the people to buy land.

I want to say, first of all, that I want to associate myself with the speech which was made by the hon. member for Fauresmith (Dr. Dönges). We have protested before this to these increased transfer duties, and we want to do so again. It is unfair to contend that every land transaction is speculation. There is no speculation if a farmer buys a farm for his son, for instance. Any number of cases have come to my notice of officials having to sell their property because they have been transferred. They have to pay transfer duties on those transactions, and not only have they to pay this increased tax, but they also have to pay the profit tax on the so-called profit they have made. We feel that if one particular type of alleged speculation is to be taxed all types of speculation should be thoroughly enquired into and taxed. The Minister said that it was not possible to tax share transactions. Does he simply exclude the share market because it is difficult to tax those transactions? Is the reason why they are not taxed simply because it is difficult to exercise control? All land transactions have to be registered in the Deeds Office. It is easy to exercise control there. Now, why must these transactions be taxed, while share transactions, to a large extent, get off scot free? I have cases brought to my notice daily of people in the business world undertaking huge transactions on which they make enormous profits. The profit on one transaction may be so big that the man can take a rest afterwards, and yet he pays no tax on it. Then why should land transactions be picked out for taxation? If we in South Africa are unable to control share transactions and other forms of speculation, and if we cannot tax them, it means acknowledging that we have less ingenuity than other countries. It is done in any number of other countries. In India, for instance, they have worked out a system which as far as I know answers the purpose satisfactorily. And the whole taxation system there is more satisfactory than in South Africa. If we have no control over these transactions so that we are unable to levy taxes on them, that fact should not be used as an excuse, but we should work out a system under which we can exercise control and levy taxes. Now, what is the actual position with regard to profits made on immovable property? If a man buys a property for £5,000 and if he sells it afterwards for £6,500, the Minister says that he has made £1,500 profit, and by way of excess profits tax the Minister takes no less than £1,000 from that individual—he takes two-thirds of the so-called profit. But if the Minister takes into account that the general price index in this country has gone up by at least 30 per cent. he will find that that individual hasn’t made a penny profit, and the £1,000 which the Minister takes by way of excess profits duty is really money of which the Minister deprives that man, and I regard it as most unfair. The fact that there has been a general increase in our price index should be taken into account in our whole taxation system. If we want to impose increased taxation, let us admit it honestly and do not let us do it under the guise of excess profits. Your purchasing power depends on the country’s general price index, and if the value of our money has dropped by about 30 per cent. then it is not fair to levy this tax because in actual fact it is not profit. That is why we get cases such as I mentioned the other day of officials who are transferred losing huge amounts. An official has to buy a property here; he has to pay the special tax; he has to pay the increased transfer duty. As the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) said, these are factors which are taken into account by the purchaser, and if the official sells his house and afterwards buys another house in Pretoria, in actual fact he is so much poorer. It is unfair. It is one of the reasons why these taxes have caused genuine dissatisfaction in this country. I had the pleasure of supporting my friend the hon. member for Wakkerstroom (Mr. J. G. W. van Niekerk) for almost two weeks in his constituency, and I can assure hon. members that these taxes have created great dissatisfaction in that constituency and throughout the Platteland—and we have had proof of the fact that they have created dissatisfaction—that is why my hon. friend is here now. The hon. member for Fauresmith (Dr: Dönges) said that it was a nail in the Government’s coffin. I say that it is a row of screws, and unless we take that row of screws out of the coffin I hope that in the near future we shall have an opportunity of having more elections, and if we have more elections, this side of the House will come into power and put these things right.

I want to reply briefly to the points which have been raised so far. I’m sorry the hon. member for Fauresmith (Dr. Dönges) is not in the House. First of all he protested against this extra levy because it is an interference with provincial taxation powers and he said that we were now stopping the provinces from further availing themselves of this source of taxation. But the Provinces have no power whatsoever to use this source of taxation. The legal position is perfectly clear, and the Provinces have no power to pass any legislation in regard to transfer duties. The position is simply this, that the legislation in connection with transfer is under the control of this Parliament and that this Parliament under the existing legislation has handed over the yield from these transfer duties to the Provinces, but it was laid down clearly that if Parliament should reduce the rate of transfer duties the Provinces would have no claim on Parliament. Consequently they have no rights there; they are only given the benefit of receiving the existing yield of transfer duties. They can therefore do nothing in the way of getting more from that source, and the fact that we are levying this tax by way of a surcharge on transfer duties, does not affect the Provincies. It is not a provincial source of taxation. It is part of the subsidy they get. The position is exactly the same as it is in regard to the money which the Transvaal Province receives from native pass fees. They have no right themselves to increase the transfer duties.

But they can always ask the Central Government to do so.

Yes, they are always at liberty to ask.

But now they are deprived of the right to ask because the tax is too high already.

They have never thought of doing so yet. If they want to they can still ask for it. No, surely that’s going too far. And then it has been said that we are not distinguishing between speculators and investors. That is so but that of course also applies to the transfer duties themselves. It also applies to profit tax on immovable property. It is extremely difficult to levy such a tax on speculators only. The only question is whether in view of present conditions it is fair to apply this general surcharge to all transfer duty payments. I am of the opinion that as a temporary measure it is fair. Then the hon. member, as his third point, mentioned the question of taxing speculators in shares. May I in that respect once again explain the position? My difficulty is not a juridical one. I agree that there are juridical difficulties. But they can be got over. My difficulty is of a practical nature. I have asked for assistance to overcome the practical difficulties in regard to the tax on profits, as profits, on the share market. The proposal which has been made, and to which the hon. member has referred, was an increased tax on transactions, as transactions; in other words, a tax both on investors and speculators. What I am still anxious to do is to find a way of taxing profit as profit. That will then be mainly, not even exclusively, a profit on speculation.

My offer is this; that I be given the opportunity of introducing it in Committee.

To tax profit as profit? The hon. member knows perfectly well that he cannot do so. Only a Minister can do it. Why doesn’t he want to help me?

Will the hon. the Minister read Rule 114 of the Standing Rules and Orders?

It is clear that only a Minister can do it.

Read 114 (4)—

This deals with taxation and I made a proposal similar to that made by the Minister of Finance.

This only deals with matters in respect of which the Governor-General’s recommendation has already been received.

No; it refers to a member who is not a Minister.

The hon. member had the opportunity, and he made a proposal in Committee of Ways and Means, and after the matter has been disposed of, he now comes along with another proposal again. Let him discuss it with me. Let him help me. Surely this is not the right attitude for the hon. member to adopt and to say: “I am only going to do it in my own way.”

What did the late John X. Merriman say? He said: “I shall prescribe when I am called in.”

I am quite prepared to call in the hon. member, but after all a taxation proposal cannot be dealt with except with the Governor General’s recommendation. The next question which was asked was: Why this measure was being made retrospective in its effect. I think the hon. member answered that. If it had not been made retrospective one would simply have opened the door for evasions. The hon. member says that perjury would have been committing in that case. Hon. members should not forget that in some instances very big transactions are effected, and people are prepared sometimes to take the risk of committing perjury when the transactions are big enough. No, we cannot do that. And that is why, as in the case of a number of other taxes, we have made this retrospective too. I have met hon. members as far as possible in regard to people who have made transactions before the date mentioned. I have met them even further in connection with estates. In this regard the hon. member asks what the position is going to be regarding sales from estates. I cannot see the difference. If a transaction out of an estate has been effected before the 25th February, it is like any other transaction of sale. There is no difference, and if the transfer duty or the deposit has been paid before the 15th March, that transaction is exempt.

What if the executor is in England?

One cannot provide for all eventualities. You also get special cases in regard to ordinary transactions of sale. The hon. member for Swellendam referred to the difference between the provinces in regard to liability for transfer duties. It is perfectly correct that we still have different legislation in the four provinces in respect of transfer duties. There are instances, as the hon. member has shown where transfer duties are payable in Cape and not in the Transvaal, but in other cases transfer duties are payable in the Transvaal and the Free State and not in the Cape. The hon. member for Hoopstad (Mr. H. S. Erasmus) mentioned an instance the other day of transfer duties being payable in the Transvaal and the Free State and not in the Cape. It is quite impossible for us in this legislation, which at any rate is of a temporary nature to remove all these anomalies. Consequently in this Bill we can only adopt the basis of liability for transfer duties on the same basis as it exists in the various provinces today. And that is what we are doing.

Motion put and the House divided:

Ayes—63 :

Abbott, C. B. M.

Abrahamson, H.

Alexander, M.

Ballinger, V. M. L.

Barlow, A. G.

Bawden, W.

Bell, R. E.

Bodenstein, H. A. S.

Bosman, J. C.

Bosman, L. P.

Bowen, R. W.

Burnside, D. C.

Carinus, J. G.

Christie, J.

Cilliers, S. A.

Connan, J. M.

Davis, A.

De Kock, P. H.

De Wet, P. J.

Dolley, G.

Du Toit, A. C.

Du Toit, R. J.

Fawcett, R. M.

Friedman, B.

Gray, T. P.

Hare, W. D.

Hayward, G. N.

Henny, G. E. J.

Higgerty, J. W.

Hofmeyr, J. H.

Howarth, F. T.

Jackson, D.

Johnson, H. A.

Kentridge, M.

Latimer, A.

McLean, J.

Madeley, W. B.

Miles-Cadman, C. F.

Molteno, D. B.

Mushet, J. W.

Neate, C.

Payne, A. C.

Prinsloo, W. B. J.

Raubenheimer, L. J.

Robertson, R. B.

Russell, J. H.

Stallard C. F.

Steenkamp, L. S.

Steytler, L. J.

Sturrock, F. C.

Sutter, G. J.

Trollip, A. E.

Ueckermann, K.

Van den Berg, M. J.

Van Niekerk, H. J. L.

Van Onselen, W. S.

Visser, H. J.

Waring, F. W.

Warren, C. M.

Waterson, S. F.

Williams, H. J.

Tellers : G. A. Friend and W. B. Humphreys.

Noes—31 :

Bekker, G. F. H.

Boltman. F. H.

Booysen W. A.

Brink, W. D.

Conradie, J. H.

Döhne, J. L. B.

Dönges, T. E.

Erasmus, F. C.

Grobler, D. C. S.

Haywood, J. J.

Kemp, J. C. G.

Klopper, H. J.

Le Roux, J. N.

Louw, E. H.

Ludick, A. I.

Luttig, P. J. H.

Malan D. F.

Nel, M. D. C. de W.

Olivier, P. J.

Pieterse, P. W. A.

Potgieter, J. E.

Stals, A. J.

Steyn, A.

Strydom, G. H. F.

Strydom, J. G.

Swanepoel S.J.

Van Niekerk, J. G. W.

Warren, S. E.

Wilkens, J.

Tellers: P. O. Sauer and J. J. Serfontein.

Motion accordingly agreed to.

Bill read a second time; House to go into Committee on the Bill on 16th May.

I want to make an appeal to the Minister of Labour to accept this amendment. The Provincial Council election was fought on the question of bilingualism. The Government has from time to time shown its concern about this question of bilingualism. Now, I want to say this to the Minister of Labour that if that is the position, I fail to understand how he can object to providing in this Bill that the members of the Board must be bilingual. I realise that there are older members who may be nominated by the trade unions who may know English only, because I am quite convinced that no man who can speak only Afrikaans will ever be nominated. I can quite understand the Minister being concerned about that. He is old, and I am also an old man, and he should realise that the time has come for a change, that a time has come to give the young men a chance. The Minister may smile, but that is the position. I know that there are members of trade unions who know only English, and I can quite understand the Minister’s being concerned about them, but he cannot say that they are going to be better than the people who know both languages. He cannot say that they necessarily know more than the others do. I am quite convinced that the man who really is an Afrikaner, be he English-speaking or Afrikaans-speaking, can qualify himself in both languages. In the long run the position is that the Minister realises the necessity for these people knowing both languages. But he says that he cannot tell those organisations to appoint bilingual people. Well, we have had Union more than 30 years now, and it is high time we saw to it that interpreters were no longer required when either the one or the other official language was being used. We are dealing here with an important body. The Minister can instruct them to pass judgment over certain matters. Later on in the Bill, as a matter of fact, he is proposing to give this Board the right to take statements from these people. They can put people under oath and take their statements, and if the individual concerned doesn’t speak the truth he will be guilty of perjury. I have had 30 years’ experience of this procedure, and I am convinced that if we are not fully conversant with the other man’s language, we cannot properly understand what he is saying or the statements he is making. It is no use saying that his evidence is being interpreted. There are many things which cannot be interpreted. We cannot interpret the spirit of a man’s words. Why must the Afrikaans-speaking individual be placed in that position that when he speaks his own language, his statements made before the members of the Commission have to be interpreted? I am convinced that nobody will ever be placed on this Board who knows only Afrikaans. If such a man were nominated it would be just as wrong as to nominate a man who knows only English. I want to add that if there are people who speak only English who are so competent that they can place useful information before the Board, then there is no need to put them on the Board, because they are perfectly at liberty to submit their statements to the Board. I maintain that the members of such a Board must be able to understand the witnesses in the language in which they speak, then they will also be able to understand the spirit of their words. We must also take note of the spirit of a man’s words. I want to make a serious appeal to the Minister. This is not a party question, because I really feel that the Board will be a much better Board, and it will be able to do its job more efficiently if it answers to the requirements that all members should be bilingual. The Government has said that it was going to insist on the citizens of this country being bilingual. But now we have come here with this proposal, and the Minister wants to reserve the right to appoint people who know only one language to the Board. The Minister has no case. He can give no reason for his refusal to accept the amendment Nobody can tell me that there are no people in the trade unions who know both languages who can serve on this Board, and the Minister should realise that, if they can understand both languages they can do the work much better than if they know only one language. The Minister has no case, and if he is simply stubborn and refuses to accept this amendment, then he is simply knocking another nail into the Government’s coffin.

In regard to the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) I want to say a few words about the amendment now under discussion. The amendment has at its object that the members of the Re-employment Board shall have a knowledge of both official languages. In this House we have been talking about dual medium schools. We speak about the need for complete bilingualism throughout the country. Let us then as a party—as Englishspeaking Afrikaners—prove that we are earnest, that we are honest in our attitude towards this important question. The Minister as the hon. member for Swellendam has said, must not be stubborn. He knows as well as I do that even though it might be difficult to find a better Minister of Labour than he is and one who is entirely bilingual at that, it is easy to select eight members of the Re-employment Board, with a good knowledge of English as well as Afrikaans and of Afrikaans as well as English. The position is entirely different from what it is in regard to the Board of Trade and Industry. The members of the Re-employment Board need not be technical men such as the members of the Board of Trade and Industries. This Board has only eight members. The Chairman is an official, and of course he is bilingual, or at least he should be bilingual. Then there are three representatives of the employers and three representatives of the employees, and one has to be a soldier. Can the Minister tell me and can he tell the House that he cannot find three employers in South Africa who are fully bilingual and fit to serve on this Board.

Hear, hear!

The same thing can be said in regard to the three members who have to be selected to look after the interests of the employees. And so far as the eighth member is concerned, so far as the soldier member is concerned, I am convinced that the Minister out of the quarter of a million soldiers who have fought for our country, can easily find one who is bilingual and who is competent to serve on the Board. Has the Minister ever tried to find such people? And if he has not tried it he should not just lightly refuse to accept this reasonable amendment of hon. members opposite. To my mind he has not yet given us a single acceptable reason why he cannot find competent bilingual members for this Board. True, he has told us that he is in trouble, and that he cannot accept this amendment because he, in his capacity of Minister, cannot select the people who have to constitute the Re-employment Board. A list of names has to be placed before him of people nominated by the various organisations and the Minister has to select the members of the Board from that list. But I say that it is perfectly easy for the Minister to lay it down that everyone on that list is to be fully bilingual. There is no doubt about the various organisations being able to find competent bilingual persons, and if they have any objections I think this is the time for the Minister to tell them: “You must find a bilingual person, failing which I shall appoint my own member.” I am English-speaking myself—which is clear from my pronunciation—and as a matter of fact this is the first time I have ever tried to speak Afrikaans, except to say “more” or “dag” to my Afrikaans-speaking friends.

We are highly satisfied.

You are doing very well.

But I intend proving that I and all English-speaking Afrikaners are in earnest to promote bilingualism in South Africa. I want to make a final appeal to the Minister and ask him to introduce the bilingual policy fully and truly and to accept this reasonable amendment.

I want most sincerely to congratulate the hon. member for Woodstock (Mr. Russell) who has just spoken, on the way he appealed to the Minister today to accept the amendment proposed by this side of the House. The hon. member when speaking spoke in a South African spirit. I want to assure him that his Afrikaans pronunciation was so good that there is no reason why he should not continue making Afrikaans speeches in this House. We appreciate his doing so and we are grateful that some of our young men are animated by that spirit, the spirit of Clause 137 of the Act of Union. In 1910, when the Act of Union was passed, the question of bilingualism was the axis around which everything revolved. If the policy of bilingualism had not been adopted in 1910 there would have been no unification, and that is why I was glad to hear the hon. member make an appeal to the Minister to accept this amendment. It is deplorable that after 34 years of Union we should have still to come to Parliament and beg for a right which we were granted on the establishment of Union. It is scandalous for a Minister of the Crown to get up here and tell us that he cannot accept an amendment of this kind. We are gradually getting tired of begging, because we have a right to demand bilingualism in this country. The policy of bilingualism should not be just a dead letter. We are continually being told that the overwhelming majority of Afrikaners who joined up are Afrikaans-speaking, but in spite of that their rights are ignored and the Minister is now asking for the right to appoint people who are not bilingual. It is unsatisfactory, and not only that, but as a result of having to use services of interpreters the expenses are rising day by day. If we appoint a member who knows only one language there will have to be an interpreter, which increases the expense. I do not believe the Minister has mentioned a single cogent reason for his refusal to accept this reasonable amendment. Every Afrikaner is entitled to demand that the principle of bilingualism should be carried out in practice. It is disgraceful that this side of the House still has to plead for the appointment of bilingual officials. We very much appreciate what the hon. member for Woodstock said here, and we appreciate the appeal he made to the Minister to accept this amendment. If the Minister refused to listen to the appeal made to him by hon. members on this side, let him listen to the appeal by members on his own side of the House. I hope the Minister will not get up again and tell us that he cannot accept the amendment but that he will try to appoint only members who know both languages. What guarantee have we that he will do so? If it is the Minister’s intention to do so, why then is he afraid to insert this amendment in his Bill? Why does he refuse to accept it? The matter is of such importance that we hope the Minister will accept our proposal; if he does so he will remove all this dissatisfaction and the Afrikaans-speaking section of the population will have the satisfaction of knowing that their language also is recognised. Let me tell the Minister that the more they try to trample on and oppress the Afrikaans language, the stronger that language will become. Repercussions are coming; the request made by this side of the House is a very reasonable one. We do not want to cast any reproaches on the Minister, but he has been in this House for 34 years and he has not yet learned the Afrikaans language. There is no reason why he should not comply with our request. As the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) has said, there are ample Afrikaans-speaking members who are bilingual. He need not be afraid of there not being sufficient people with a knowledge of both languages to appoint to the Board. It is a question of right and justice and nothing else, and I want to assure the Minister that if members who know only one language are appointed to the Board, it will lead to further trouble throughout this country.

In the first instance I want to congratulate the hon. member for Woodstock (Mr. Russell) on the sentiments he expressed this morning. He is an Englishspeaking South African and it is indeed pleasing to know that he as well as others with him—I know it—are prepared with us to solve the language question of this country. During the recent debate on bilingualism I tried very modestly to convey to this House the unfortunate historical background of the language problem. It was furthermore my endeavour to influence members to my way of thinking, namely, that full bilingualism is the only solution of this problem, a solution which will remove from our midst race hatred, racial distrust and racial enmity, a solution which will eventually create conditions in our political life which will eradicate the unpleasant factors of disunity and lead us to mutual trust, mutual understanding, amity and concord. At the time of the debate I think I can confidently state it seemed evident that my sentiments and my opinions were well received, that I expressed the general opinion and conviction of the vast majority of responsible people, not only in this House but also outside. And I sincerely trust that the Minister falls within the category of that responsible group, the group which is prepared, not only to give lip service to bilingualism but is prepared to carry out in spirit and practice what we aim at. We outside, the people, are getting very tired; we in the House, we, of the younger generation, are getting very tired of this lip service. After 34 years of Union, we are convinced that unilingualism in a bilingual country has held sway long enough, has held sway to the detriment of both sections of the community. We are the mouthpiece of the country, we are expected to lead, we must give the lead, and therefore I consider it extremely unfortunate that a Minister of the Crown, himself unilingual unfortunately, however competent he may be, is not prepared to accept this amendment and is propared to prolong or perpetuate the language problem in contravention of the South Africa Act. His Board is not a technical one, and there should, therefore, be no difficulty with its composition. May I therefore also plead with the Minister to accept the reasonable amendment of the hon. member opposite and thereby prove his willingness to execute his duties as a Minister under the South Africa Act, and thereby save us the unpleasantness of having to vote against the clause, or of having to abstain from voting. I hope the Minister will prove even at this stage that we are genuine with our efforts at bilingualism.

It was a pleasure to me this morning to listen to the speech of the hon. member for Woodstock (Mr. Russell). I know him. We studied together, and it appears that the good influence of those days has penetrated into this House. It is a privilege to me to express my appreciation of his attitude. I want to say first of all that the time has now come for us to stop bickering. Ample evidence has been produced in this House this morning that Afrikaans as well as English-speaking members are sick and tired of the language fights which have been going on in the past. There are other great problems in this country which have to be solved, and this particular question should have been solved long ago. We are all looking forward to a solution of this whole question, so that we can tackle the other problems which have to be solved. It should have been perfectly clear to the Minister this morning that it was the voice of young South Africa that was speaking, and that we want to make a new start, and that he should stop raising these apparent difficulties which in actual fact do not exist at all. Here is a Board which is being given statutory powers; a Board which has to examine witnesses; a Board whose procedure is laid down; a Board which comes into contact with all sections of the population. And may I say in passing that it was the other side of the House which in days gone past told us that 70 per cent. of those belonging to the fighting forces were Afrikaans-speaking, and it is a slap in the face for those people that no provision is being made for the appointment of bilingual members. We want to see to it that right and justice are done. We who have had experience of what happens in our High Courts and in the Magistrates’ Courts, where you have unilingual judges and magistrates, are conversant with the difficulties which crop up as a result of unilingualism. I could refer the hon. the Minister to a case which was before the Courts not so long ago, and which had to be tried by a unilingual judge.

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

When business was suspended I was trying to explain that the Minister in this Bill had not made this Board into an ordinary Board, but a Board with judicial power; a Board which could issue subpoenas and which could examine witnesses. This Board has a status which no other Board has, and it is therefore absolutely essential for it to be constituted of people who are fully bilingual. We, who are in legal practice, know how difficult it is to deal with members of the judiciary who are not fully bilingual. I can tell the Minister of a case where a judge had to decide on an application which came before him in regard to movable and also immovable property, and the learned judge found that he could not grant the application because it dealt with “standing crops”. The advocate in the case pointed out that it was no question of “standing crops”. The judge pointed out that the words in the application were “lewende hawe” (livestock). That is the sort of thing we are faced with The Minister should remember that possibly 60 per cent. of the people whose rights have to be dealt with by the Board are Afrikaansspeaking. I hope the Minister will see his way to accept this amendment. I don’t know what objection he can have. He can say that he cannot compel the employers and employees to nominate bilingual people, but the Minister knows that if it is laid down in the law, they will realise that they have to recommend bilingual people to the Minister. I have every respect for the Minister, and I know he has done a great deal in this country. I believe he is the father of this House. He must notice that a new spirit is showing itself, a spirit of co-operation in language matters, and we feel that in that respect we have common ground where we can meet. The Minister knows that a great fight has been waged in this House on the subject of bilingualism for many years. Do not let him be the one to continue this fight. Let him be the one who will fit in with the new spirit in South Africa. Let him take up the attitude that in this legislation bilingualism will be fully maintained so far as his Department is concerned, and that in any legislation he introduces he will see to it that bilingualism is maintained. I am making an appeal to the Minister to proceed in that spirit, so that we may have co-operation in regard to this question with which we are now dealing.

I have respect for the amendment which has been introduced, but what I cannot approve of is that the hon. member who was also a member of the Select Committee never mentioned a word about bilingualism on this Board while the Select Committee was in session. I think it is most unreasonable for the hon. member now to come to this House and to raise the question while we are in committee. For days and days we have been discussing all sorts of questions in Select Committee, and we could have gone into that aspect of the matter, but now at the eleventh hour they come forward with an amendment like this. I do not want to ascribe any wrong motives, but it seems to me that this is done deliberately with the object of placing the Minister in a difficult position. The members who are to be appointed to the Board are not officials, and we do not expect the demobilisation to go on for 50 years. It is a temporary Board, and even today a number of people have already sacrificed a great deal of time in dealing with this question. There is Mr. Welsh, for instance. I don’t know whether he is bilingual or not, but he has given up four or five years of valuable time to the work, and, having a man like that, I want to know whether we are not to be allowed to use his services? Are we to put him aside simply because he doesn’t know the second official language? I think it is most unfair to come forward at this stage with such an amendment. There I stand by the Minister. We want to do the best we can for our soldiers and war workers, and we want to use the most suitable people for that purpose.

I am astounded at the attitude of the hon. member for Rustenburg (Mr. J. M. Conradie). He now tries to give the House the impression that he is not opposed to the amendment, but he thinks it would have been a good thing if it had been raised in Select Committee.

No.

Well, that is the impression he created and there are members here who can testify to it. If that is his attitude I should like to know why he, as an Afrikaans-speaking member, did not make that proposal in Select Committee. What makes one all the more sad is the fact that an English-speaking Afrikaner got up here today to plead for the rights of the Afrikaans language, but the hon. member whose mother tongue is Afrikaans opposes it. One can only stigmatise it as showing shocking contempt for one’s own mother tongue. Now let me come back to the spirit shown in this debate this morning. A spirit prevailed here which should be regarded by this House as a recommendation to accept this amendment, and I want to approach the Minister with a plea in the same spirit. I asked him a question on a previous occasion and I want to repeat that question. One of the members of the Board will be an official and as long as the Directorate of Demobilisation is in existence, that member will be a member of the executive board of the Directorate. Now I want again to ask the Minister whether he will give us a definite assurance that the official who will be appointed will be thoroughly bilingual. Has he already got somebody in view, a member of the Directorate of Demobilisation, who is not bilingual and whom he wants to appoint or can appoint? I think it is a fair question. Or is the Directorate of Demobilisation so unilingual even at this juncture that the Minister cannot get even one man from there who is bilingual?

Surely you know that that is nonsense.

Let the Minister answer. The hon. member for Rustenburg cherishes the quiet hope that the Minister will not answer, because if he does answer there will only be fresh trouble. Now let me ask the Minister this. The only argument put forward by the Minister is this that there are certain organisations of employers and employees who have to make recommendations, but the Bill provides very definitely that those organisations are to submit a list of names to the Minister. That list may contain ten, twenty or thirty names and, in the long run, the Minister is responsible to select from that list the people he wants to appoint. I also want to point out that under Sub-clause (2) it is very clearly specified that if these organisations neglect to nominate the number of persons asked for by the Minister, if they fail to submit a list to the Minister, if they fail to do so within the period laid down, then the Minister can appoint the necessary people who—

That gives the Minister the right to tell the organisations concerned that they must submit to him a certain number of names within a specified time, but the responsibility rests on the Minister to select persons from those lists, and if the lists are not submitted to him he can appoint such persons as in his opinion will be able to represent the interests of the individuals concerned. Now let me put this question to the Minister outright: Is he going to tell this House frankly that the people who in his opinion will be best able to look after the particular interests involved are bilingual people? I don’t think it has ever happened in this House before that both sides of the House have made out a stronger case as was made out here this morning. I do not want to take up the time of the Committee. I merely want to ask the Minister a reasonable question—whether he is prepared to leave the decision of this amendment to the free vote of the members of the House? Is he prepared not to make this a party question so that hon. members on the Government side will not be bound by party discipline, and every individual member will be able to vote as he sees fit on this question? It is a very reasonable request. I do not think the Minister will be making a mistake if he complies with this request, made in this House, and if he listens to the request which has been made right throughout the country and to the opinion expressed, that there is only one basis on which there can be co-operation in this country, and that is the basis of justice on both sides and mutual respect of the one for the other.

If the Minister will tell us now that he is going to get up and accept the amendment, we will sit down. He is not doing so, so we are compelled to get up. I want to say that the spirit shown in the House this morning has been greatly appreciated by us. The views expressed by both sides of the House have given us cause for great satisfaction and I hope all the members of the House will regard it as an indication of the new spirit which is being born in South Africa, the spirit that we want to understand and find each other. Do not let us stand in the way of that spirit. We want to find each other; we want to co-operate in that new spirit. We want to be inspired by it and do not let older members here in their old age stand in the way of that spirit Come, let us go on with the country’s business and do not let us balk at a problem like this. We dare not place any obstacles in the way of a great cause such as that with which we are faced. I want to add this; thousands of Afrikaans-speaking people have shed their blood in this great war; they have shed their blood for their convictions and we respect them for it. They have shed their blood for this cause, and even if it is only out of respect for these people I ask hon. members to get up and say that they are willing in the interests of their families to make this concession. You can see the signs of the times, and here you behold the signs of the times.

The hon. member must address the Chair.

What I want to say is that I hope that the Minister will also see the signs of the times and that he will realise that we refuse to be impeded any longer by restrictions such as these. We want to understand each other on a question of this kind so that once and for all it may be settled. We don’t want to give only lip service to bilingualism. We want to have bilingualism in actual fact. It has been my privilege to know the Minister of Labour for many years and I should be really sorry if he did not get up and accept this amendment, an amendment which has been proposed without any ulterior motives. Do not let us wreck a good cause by being suspicious. Let us decide this question solely on its merits. A new member has proposed this amendment—not an old member who may have had some idea of laying a trap for the Government. It is the new members on both sides of the House who proclaim this new ideal. It comes from both sections, from both races, and if there is one man here who has made a great contribution to this debate in order to guide it along the proper course, it is the Englishspeaking member who, speaking from the other side this morning, advocated the adoption of the amendment. I ask the Minister to be good enough to give favourable consideration to this amendment.

I think we all appreciate the new spirit which prevails. When we speak about soldiers, there is no difference between us, and I am very glad to see the spirit of approach which exists.

Only in this House.

I believe that hon. members over there are in earnest. I do not know who made this proposal, and I take it that it was seriously meant. I greatly appreciate the fact that a member representing a Cape Town constituency has pleaded here for bilingualism. I listened to a speech by the hon. member for Boshof (Mr. Serfontein). He usually quotes doggerel (“rympies”) when making a speech here, and he touches one’s heart when talking about these things. I feel as deeply for my language as anyone else, but my difficulty is this. In days gone by we also used to discuss this matter. I remember that in connection with local committees under the Wage Board, a similar proposal was made, and that we had a terrific fight about our language rights. I voted With the Minister on the ground that it was not necessary for those people to be bilingual, and what was the reason which induced me to do so? If hon. members opposite are really in earnest, and if they are honest, why did they not make a similar proposal in regard to the local committees under the Farmers’ Relief Board? They did not do so simply for this reason that they knew that if this was agreed to hundreds of Afrikaansspeaking people on the Platteland would have been excluded from serving on those committees.

That is not so.

That is the reason why they didn’t do it.

It is not so.

You know it is not so.

If they are such great protagonists of the Afrikaans language, why did they not propose it at that time, too? I say that it wasn’t necessary to propose it. I knew that wherever the Minister was able to get bilingual people he would appoint them, but if there were no bilingual people he would appoint people who knew only one language. At Burgersdorp we have two members on the committee—the one is a Nationalist—who are not bilingual, and they do good work, and now hon. members opposite come here and they propose this amendment and tell us that they are very much in earnest about it. The hon. member for Boshof (Mr. Serfontein) when speaking on the Platteland, will tell people once again that the Afrikaans language is in danger. No, it is not in danger. All this talk is nothing but propaganda. I want to appeal to the Minister wherever possible to appoint bilingual people to this committee, but where it is not possible, and where he can get either an Afrikaans-speaking or an Englishspeaking man who will make a good member, he should appoint him, because I know he will do his work.

The hon. member who has just resumed his seat cooed like a turtle dove at the outset over the nice spirit, which he welcomed. But who contributed more than any one else to ruin that good spirit but the hon. member himself?

That is too bad.

A little while after he had got going every sentence that he used was designed to create a bad spirit here and to ascribe unsavoury motives to this side of the House. Why did he not impute those motives to the hon. member who sits on his side of the House and who is at one with us over this? Does he not feel ashamed as an Afrikaans-speaking citizen that an English-speaking member should have to get up on his side of the House to support the amendment in the spirit in which we discussed it. May I just say this before I deal with the matter itself. The hon. member for Kimberley (District) (Mr. Steytler) has already reached that stage when he stigmatises the poems of the great Afrikaner poet Jan Celliers as doggerel. The hon. member for Potchefstroom also sat there and laughed. They think so little of Afrikaans that they describe Jan Celliers’ poems as doggerel.

On a point of personal explanation I have never characterised the poems of Jan Celliers as doggerel. I stated that the hon. member for Boshof always quotes rhyming lines when he talks.

I do not take it amiss from the hon. member; apparently he was not aware that the hon. member for Boshof had quoted from one of Jan Celliers’ fine poems. As regards the Minister of Labour I would just say this. If that is the attitude the Minister is going to adopt here, to sit there and obstinately refuse to answer when two young members on his side of the House took up the same line as we did, then I would just say this that from now on there will be no compromising from this side. If things that are advocated by this side of the House on their merits are not even vouchsafed an answer by the Minister for the sake of decency then we shall fight him tooth and hail.

But you don’t give me the chance.

The question was put, “Isn’t the Minister even going to reply?” and he said not a word. We must take cognizance of the fact that since 1910, from the date of the inception of Union, we have year after year—and it is now 1944, 34 years later—had to fight on this side of the House, notwithstanding Section 137, not for a theoretical right, but for the practical carrying out and application of Section 137; and I maintain that it is a pity that 34 years after the date of Union we still have to fight for the practical application of that right and that principle. We have another example here today. When we ask for this then hon. members opposite ask why we did not propose it before, and when we have pleaded for it before it has been refused. I want to say this to the hon. member for Kimberley (District) (Mr. Steytler). It is true that on occasion the proposal has not been made in connection with councils of this sort, but this proposal has been advanced time and time again in recent years in respect of councils that have been instituted, and every time that proposal has been handled as it is being handled today by saying on the one hand it is not necessary, and on the other hand that it is racialism.

This is just party propaganda.

The hon. member for Kimberley (District) has a very poor memory. He will recall how, when he was still a member of the Nationalist Party, we pleaded for the practical application of Section 137, and how we were charged with racialism. If the members opposite maintain that they are in favour of the practical application of Section 137 let them provide the proofs, such as have been furnished by certain hon. members on the other side, that they are in earnest over this. Let them realise that it is not a question of politics. Will the hon. member for Kimberley (District) tell me, or will the hon. the Minister of Labour tell me, or will the Acting Prime Minister maintain that when an hon. member on their benches rises and supports the reasonableness of a request made by us that he is doing that for political purposes. When the hon. member for Vryheid (Dr. Steenkamp) rose and supported the fairness of our request does the hon. member want to tell me that that hon. member was actuated by unworthy motives? Will the hon. member tell me that the hon. member for Woodstock (Mr. Russell) was actuated by dishonourable motives when he rose and pressed the reasonableness of our request. If those two members have been influenced by worthy and honourable motives why should we be charged with dishonourable motives? Does not the Minister realise that he is simply running his head against a brick wall? I hope that the Minister will realise that this is a fair and reasonable demand, and what is more, that it will avail him nothing to oppose it here today. Eventually this policy of the practical application of Section 137 will triumph in this country, otherwise we shall be drifting towards friction and conflict, and a position that will generate racialism to a far greater degree than it has ever existed in the past. The Minister should not be obstinate. Obstinacy is not a quality of greatness. To appreciate the standpoint of the other side is a sign of greatness.

I want to say how much I regret that the hon. member for Waterberg (Mr. J. G. Strydom) has intruded my family affairs into this discussion. I wonder whether the hon. member would find it pleasant if I dragged his family affairs into the debate. I am not going to say anything more about it but I only want the hon. member to bear that in mind.

You can drag into the debate anything that I do.

I do not want to do that; what has been recorded is recorded. The hon. member has made a terrible fuss here about Section 137. This side of the House has always expressed itself in favour of bilingualism.

On paper.

You have had the proof yourself by English-speaking members on this side of the House standing up and urging the principle of bilingualism being carried out.

But you don’t want that.

I stand for bilingualism.

On paper.

We have to deal here with a board that comprises departmental heads, and others, as hon. members must be aware. The hon. member for Boshof (Mr. Serfontein) has served on the Select Committee. He knows what the plan is.

What is the plan?

This board, as I have stated, comprises partly the heads of departments. Subordinate officials of the department cannot be put in the place of the departmental heads on the board. That would give rise to difficulties. If it is the case that there are still some unilingual departmental heads let them have their seats on this board.

Must we betray the principle of bilingualism on account of a unilingual individual?

The hon. member has asserted that his side of the House have been continually appealing for bilingualism. I should like to remind the House of what the position was in prior to 1938, when the hon. member for Piketberg (Dr. Malan) was Minister. What happened in his time? It was of course after the stage when bilingualism was demanded by that side of the House. There were seven unilingual heads of departments, all appointed by the hon. member for Piketberg. A unilingual member was appointed on the Public Service Commission. The hon. member appointed nine unilingual officials in his own department. He promoted 45 unilingual men. He appointed unilingual members as chairmen of Select Committees. The hon. the leader of the Opposition appointed a unilingual person as chairman of the Board of Censors. I uphold the principle of bilingualism. Under Section 137 of the Constitution persons who come into close contact with the public should be bilingual, the members of this House do not need to come into close contact with the public.

Then you say that you do not require to be bilingual.

I do not say that. The point is this, that this subject was discussed in the Select Committee on which the Opposisition were well represented. Did anyone of them mention a word about this during the sitting of the Select Committee? The hon. member for Boshof was also a member of that committee and he did not breathe a word on the subject. Not a word was mentioned about it. Now that the Select Committee’s report has come before the House they suddenly want to start a hare. That is not the way in which we should try to get something passed that is sound. I also express the hope that where the Minister has the opportunity to appoint bilingual members he will do so. He must undoubtedly do that. But when circumstances prevent this, and where the best service can be obtained from a unilingual person, then we have to see to it that we avail ourselves of the best services.

One would think from the course the debate has taken that I sought in this Bill to impose on the country unilingualism; that I was out for a one-stream language policy. How on earth hon. members, particularly on that side of the House, can raise the points they have raised, is past my comprehension. One member over there says, in a very dramatic fashion—I think it is my old friend at the back—that if I don’t accept their amendment it will be a smack in the face for the soldiers’ organisations. On the contrary, if I insisted on one line of approach where they are making their selection, that would be a smack in the face for them. It has been rightly argued—I cannot swear to the proportion, nor can anyone else, we can only guess, but I think it is rightly conceived that roughly about 70 per cent. of our fighting forces are Afrikaans-speaking.

What has happened to the English-speaking people?

Allow me. If interjections like that are going to continue, it shows that this is only a baiting amendment. You appealed for a good spirit and I want the same. I shall show you what I have done and what I am prepared to do as evidence that I am at any rate prepared to show good spirit. But let me get back to the soldiers at the front. I accept 70 per cent. just for the sake of argument.

Can’t you give us the right figures?

Well, a large proportion of those at the front are Afrikaans-speaking, and the Afrikaans section of the soldiers in all probability is largely unilingual.

Now you are talking nonsense.

When you talk about bilingualism, what do you mean—thorough bilingualism, or efficient bilingualism, complete bilingualism—

You know perfectly well what we mean.

You ask for them to be thoroughly bilingual and I guarantee that a very large proportion of the Afrikaans soldiers at the front are not thoroughly bilingual, and a large proportion of the English soldiers at the front are not thoroughly bilingual.

You are splitting hairs.

It is not hair-splitting. It is fact.

What has that to do with the Board?

I am coming to that. Some hon. member said that this was a smack in the face of the soldier. My hon. friend has just come in and he doesn’t know what preceded this.

Oh, yes, I’ve been here all morning. I know what has been said.

The hon. member does not know what has been going on.

I have listened to your silence all morning.

A soldier’s organisation, to cite as an example only one organisation envisaged in connection with this board, is then confined to a comparatively small number of members from whom they can select their representatives. They are not allowed to select either an Afrikaans-speaking or an English-speaking South African who is unilingual. They talk about lip service over there.

Over there?

I sat absolutely silent, in fact I was reproached because I said nothing.

It was the hon. member for Woodstock (Mr. Russell) who spoke about lip service.

The hon. member who has just spoken is the last man in the world I should call in to assist me in anything. I should prefer to fight my own battles, giant though he may be.

The Minister apparently does not understand English.

This is what happens when you begin to feel the lash. The allegation over there was that we on this side were paying lip service only to this question of bilingualism.

That is what the hon. member for Woodstock said. Deny it if you can.

No.

It was the hon. member for Vryheid (Dr. Steenkamp) then.

Anyway, what does it matter.

It was some member on your side.

Well, I will accept it. Now will you be quiet? Who pays greater lip service to this bilingualism than hon. members opposite? Those members who now prate about bilingualism are the very men who insist upon unilingual schools.

Nonsense.

That is the silliest thing you have said this session.

If the hon. member who said that is capable of judging silliness, then silly I am. That is a comparative way of speaking. I also charge hon. members over there with only just having thought of this question. They were on the Select Committee, and they did not move any amendment designed to obtain bilingualism.

Yes we did.

On another clause, but not on this.

That is correct.

And I accepted it at once.

Why don’t you accept this?

Because I cannot impose on these organisations how they should make their selection of members. God help us if my hon. friends over there ever got into power and they had the administration of emergency regulations! I know it is theoretical, but nevertheless one likes to use these things for purposes of comparison. What this amendment asks me to do is to arrogate to myself by legislation the right to say to any organisation: You are narrowed down in your choice to so-and-so as representatives. What I am prepared to do, and this is where the question of good spirit comes in ….

Make them all bilingual and you can’t go wrong.

What I am prepared to do is to suggest to these organisations that it is most desirable that they should, as far as possible, select bilingual representatives, and I am further prepared whenever they submit a list, and it contains unilingual and bilingual persons as their nominations, in order of preference, I myself when I have got to make the appointments will appoint the bilingual man first.

Will you refuse to appoint a unilingual person?

I cannot do that. My hon. friend has not followed the Bill. I am afraid a good deal of the criticism arises through hon. members not having examined, the position properly. I can cut nobody out.

Cut out Natal.

Not even Natal. Might I explain to my hon. friend over there—I shall have to repeat, I am afraid, in order to explain what I have just said. The organisations are called on to furnish a list of nominations. Take a soldier’s organisation. It is asked to supply a list, and I can select from that list one or two or three representatives. I have the ultimate selection. If they submitted say a list of ten nominees, seven bilingual and three unilingual, I am now giving the House the undertaking I will select from that list the bilingual nominees.

And if there are three bilingual and seven unilingual?

The same thing applies. If only two members are required I will select two nominees who are bilingual.

But supposing there is only one bilingual man on the list?

If my hon. friend would turn his gigantic intellect on to the question of selection it might help.

Would you refuse to appoint a unilingual man?

No, I would not.

Then the cat is out of the bag.

With the clause as it stands, these organisations would not nominate bilingual men.

Then hon. members opposite would be really happy, because otherwise they would have nothing to grouse about. But I am not going to enter into that. The hon. members on that side of the House and the two hon. members who spoke here—I am sorry one has gone—including that hon. member there, spoke I suppose with their tongues in their cheek. I am modest enough to think that.

Order, Order!

The hon. Minister must not impute hypocrisy to members.

Withdraw.

Order, Order!

Of course I withdraw. That was not my intention at all. We use that expression quite often loosely. However, if you assume that, I withdraw that at once. They have, of course, held me up as one. The hon. member there said I was a good Minister of Labour. Even the hon. member for Woodstock was inclined to pay me some sort of compliment in regard to it.

He hasn’t found you out yet.

Never mind, you are a jolly good fellow.

The hon. member who interjects that knows what he is talking about. I am unilingual, and I am in this Cabinet as a unilingual man representing the workers of South Africa, a very large proportion of whom are Afrikaans-speaking.

They all trust you too.

Exactly; whether I deserve it or not; and they are not concerned as to whether I am unilingual or bilingual. What they are concerned with is what am I doing for the workers of South Africa, and if those two hon. members over there are logical in their contention they will agitate for my discharge from this Cabinet, and you would not find me a very great resister of that. If I am going to be subjected to these stabs in the back, if unilingualism and bilingualism bulk so largely in the estimation of these hon. members, they have to be logical and kick me out. That is the precise point: What these bodies are going to be asked to do, and what undoubtedly they will do, is to select their best men, whatever language they may speak. I have no right, and this House has no right, to say to any individual organisation: “You are confined within these two parallel lines in the matter of the selection of a representative.” All I can do to have bilingual representatives I will do; and to show you my bona fides where I am responsible wholly and solely for appointments I have agreed to the bilingual qualification. I am standing by the clause as it is, and I am not accepting the amendment.

I am very glad that the Minister admitted today that 75 per cent. of the soldiers are Afrikaans-speaking.

I did not accept that proportion as correct.

Well, let us take 60 per cent. Now, I want to draw a comparison with the last war, 1914-18. In that war I was serving in the army, in East Africa; I was in the Defence Force and I was a drill instructor. Instruction in the army was then actually 50 per cent. in English and 50 per cent. in Afrikaans. That was only twelve years after the unforgettable war that we had when the English virtually tried to exterminate us. Now we have reached 1944, 42 years after the war with England. What do we find today? While they admit that 60 per cent. of the soldiers are Afrikaans-speaking …

I am not going to commit myself to the number.

The hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Barlow) stated that. In any case we find that in the army today the instruction is practically entirely in English.

No.

Where is there bilingualism? I take an interest in the Defence Force and go to Voortrekkerhoogte. Is there bilingualism there? Those Afrikaner lads and girls are today offering their blood. They may not be in a position to make a stand for bilingualism. They are going to return. All the time they are being trained and commanded in a foreign language, and under a foreign language they will go to their death. Those people are going to return, and when they desire to submit their grievances, on which their whole existence may depend, they will have to appear before a board on which unilingual English-speaking members are sitting, with the result that they have to avail themselves of English. It is not enough that they must face death under a foreign tongue, but when they return they are also going to be denied their rights, and I maintain that it is the duty of this House to ensure that those people get a fair deal. I really think it is not right on the part of the Minister to refuse this reasonable request. I do not want to be personal, but perhaps we are to understand this that the Minister does not want to appoint bilingual members because he may later on feel that as a unilingual person it is not becoming of him to remain in office.

No, that is not right; that is not so.

Then I withdraw that. But one gains that impression. Let the Minister then be magnanimous. He cannot contend that there are not enough bilingual soldiers in our army. It is stated here that they receive training in both languages, and if that is so there will be a large enough proportion of them proficient in both languages to represent their interests. We are here dealing with a very serious matter; and it is a pity that the Minister stood up here and said that he was quite decided that he was not going to accede to this request. We may possibly be able to produce further arguments in order to persuade the Minister, and it is not right for him to say here that he has definitely refused this and that he cannot yield on this point, whatever arguments we may advance. I maintain that an injustice is being done here to the Afrikaans-speaking lads and girls, and that the Minister ought to give heed to the reasonable request that has been addressed to him.

I have never been present during a discussion in the House when such illogical arguments have been employed as in this case. I was prepared to accept a compromise in connection with this difficulty. The first member to drag the question into the political field was the hon. member for Rustenburg (Mr. J. M. Conradie). He admitted here that it was absolutely necessary that the members of the Committee should be bilingual.

I never said anything of the sort.

This is an Assembly and not a Committee.

I shall be glad if the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Barlow) will go to a mental hospital so that we can be rid of this nuisance. But he will not prevent me from saying what I have to say. But the hon. member for Rustenburg added that because this amendment was not introduced in the Select Committee he was not going to vote in favour of it. The truth is that he is now obliged to support the Minister, and he is merely looking round for reasons to justify himself. The Minister did not mince his words when he said what he was going to do to the hon. members on his side who failed to support him. What is the queerest thing of all to my mind is that not a single English-speaking member on the Government side has spoken against our proposal. It is only Afrikaans speaking members who have spoken against it. The Minister himself says that he accepts the view that it is necessary that the members of the Board should be bilingual, and that he will only appoint bilingual people. In other words if an organisation has a bilingual person amongst its nominees he will be given the preference on the Board. If he admits the necessity why does he then refuse to accept our motion?

They will be chosen first.

He has further stated that these organisations must nominate representatives out of their own members. Where did he read this? It is not in the Bill. They can recommend anyone, and the persons they nominate need not, under the provisions of this Bill, necessarily be members of the organisation. As far as the Minister of Labour is concerned the whole thing is a farce. He admits quite openly that it is necessary that these people should be bilingual, and I want here to point out that if there is only one Afrikaansspeaking soldier the Minister will not appoint him. He will see to it that no unilingual Afrikaans-speaking persons are appointed to the Board.

That is an unworthy insinuation.

We shall meet each other again after the appointments have been made. The Minister will not do it, and if he did it it would be just as wrong as for him to appoint a unilingual Englishspeaking representative. We ask him not to do that. We only ask that the representatives should be bilingual. The Minister has never once discussed our arguments. He does not take up the arguments seriously. All that he says is that if these organisations nominate unilingual people he cannot say to them that they should nominate bilingual people. He does not need to say that to them. He can incorporate that in the Bill. For him to tell me that that is his real objection—well, he may just as well say that the moon is made of green cheese. He knows as well as I do that he is taking up that stand because he is going to appoint people who are English-speaking and unilingual. We shall confront each other again if these people are appointed. There are Afrikaners on the benches opposite who have not been led astray and who feel on this matter even as we do. I did not bring up the point in the Select Committee. I brought up the question of bilingualism in connection with the secretaries and the inspectors. I did not think about this.

And you got that.

Someone else who was not a member of the Select Committee proposed this matter here, and I immediately saw that the proposal was a proper one, and that it is necessary. I have not got a monopoly of wisdom, nor has the Select Committee. We had to rush the Bill through there in a week, and one cannot always think of all the points. When however the matter was proposed here I realised that it was a good proposal, because I as a lawyer know from experience how difficult it is to do justice to a person if he has to make his statement through an interpreter. Any attorney will support me in that. We cannot understand a man’s heart if we do not understand his language. The Minister has not treated us fairly. He sits there and laughs and makes jokes. This is no joke to me. We have here a very serious matter to deal with, and it does not help things to make a joke of it.

I did not do that.

The Minister made a joke of that the whole morning, and has sat there and laughed. That has stuck in my gizzard all the time. I should very much like the Minister to appreciate that this is a serious matter. We do not want to make political capital out of it but if the Minister refuses to accept our amendment then he should know that it is going to have political consequences. He will not be able to take it amiss if I tell the Afrikaans-speaking soldiers that he and the Government have refused to place bilingual representatives on those boards. From a political angle it would really be better if the Minister refuses to accept the amendment. But to me it is a serious matter, and I want him to accept it. The Minister himself admits that 60 per cent. of the members of the Defence Force are Afrikaans-speaking, and he should realise that the political consequences are going to be very considerable if he does not accept the amendment. If he accept it there can be no political repercussions because the request has also been made from his own side. Should he however persist in his refusal he will have to face the political consequences, because he cannot take umbrage if I then refer on political platforms to the fact that he declined to accept this reasonable amendment.

That is a distortion.

It is precisely what has happened, and that will be the sequel.

Mr. Chairman, I am not speaking in English as a concession to a self-confessed unilingual Minister. Let me make that perfectly plain. I think the time has arrived that this unilingual Minister should be told in his own language exactly what we think of him on this side of the House.

He will lose a lot of sleep over that.

The Minister has tried to say why and for what reasons he objects to this amendment and he has come forward, if I may say so, with the most piffling arguments to which I have ever listened. He tells the Committee that because of the fact that there may be unilingual members of the military forces, either English-speaking or Afrikaans-speaking, for that reason there should be unilingual members on this board. I say, Sir, it is the most piffling argument I have ever listened to. The Minister himself confessed in his speech—he tried to hedge afterwards—but he said that probably 70 per cent. of the men serving are Afrikaans-speaking. He admits that, that appears to be common cause.

Do you believe that?

That is what the Minister says and I believe it. Probably 70 per cent. of the members of the forces are Afrikaansspeaking, and yet he comes to the House and refuses to accept this amendment. And he comes with the extraordinary argument that because there may be unilingual members or Afrikaans-speaking, for that reason he should also have unilingual members on the board. The extraordinary thing is this. When the Minister said that if there were two bilingual persons recommended he would appoint one, I thereupon put the question to him: “What if there is only one bilingual man,” and there the Minister balked. In other words if the soldiers’ organisations nominate a certain number of men and they are all unilingual except one he will refuse to appoint that one.

Nothing of the sort.

I think the time has arrived when this unilingual Minister, and other unilingual Ministers, should be told what we think of them. And I think the hon. the Minister having to make use of an interpreter should have realised what a horrible example he is. The hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. van den Berg) may be a fairly good interpreter, but an interpreter after all remains an interpreter, and he cannot convey the exact words—and more important still he cannot convey the spirit of what is said. The Minister prides himself on the fact that he is a very efficient and very popular Minister. The Minister is the “ father ” of this House. He has been here for 30 years and more. During that time he has had ample opportunity of acquiring a knowledge of the second language, but he has never made an attempt to acquire it.

What has that to do with the Bill?

Everything, because it shows the hypocrisy which is the basis of this sudden concern for bilingualism on which an election was fought. As I said, the Minister has been here for a considerable time, and he has never tried to acquire a knowledge of the second language. And not only he; there are other Ministers too. And don’t tell me that they are not able to learn the second language. Dogs the Minister mean to tell the House that he is not able to acquire a knowledge of the second language. No. Then why has he not acquired it? Because he doesn’t want to—because the Minister like some others, has a “herrenvolk” complex with regard to the question of language. They will never learn the other language because they don’t want to. They consider English quite good enough for them—and yet they fight an election on the question of dual medium schools. But what do we find when the acid test is put to them? We had it before in connection with the Board of Trade Bill where the Minister also refused to agree to the principle that, all members of the Board should be bilingual, and there the excuse was that some of theses members might have to be technical men. Here we are dealing with a board which has nothing to do with technical questions, and yet the Minister refuses a reasonable amendment. By the attitude taken up by the Minister there is exposed the hypocrisy of this whole campaign on which they fought this provincial election; the nakedness of it is exposed to the public. The Minister comes here and gives us his excuse that he is not able to appoint these members because they are supposed to be elected by the soldiers’ board. And in the same breath he tells us that 70 per cent. of these people are Afrikaans-speaking. Does the Minister want to tell us that among the 250,000 odd troops he is not able to find 10 or 12 men who are thoroughly bilingual? Does he expect any reasonable man to believe that? What we have to deal with here is the acid test. They have told the country that they stand for bilingualism, for dual medium, and the first time they are put to the test, they fall down, and they fall down badly. And when members of his own side try to get him to take up a reasonable attitude he tells them that they are stabbing him in the back. That is what he told the hon. member for Vryheid (Dr. Steenkamp). He saw the reasonableness of the amendment, and he told the Minister that he should accept it. The Minister told him that he was stabbing him in the back. Well, it is as well that we know where we stand. The Minister of Finance when we had the previous debate on the question of dual medium made a very eloquent speech in support of dual medium education. Let me tell the Minister of Finance and his Government that the nakedness of their whole policy has been exposed. We know what is behind it. We know that there is no serious intention on the part of the Government to apply bilingualism in practice. It is a matter of Article 137 of the Constitution being on paper but not applied in practice—in exactly the same way as the Minister, who has been a member of this House for 30 years, has not tried to learn the second language.

You’ve been here 50 years, have you tried to learn Sesuto?

I think we all agree that the hon. member for Beaufort West (Mr. Louw) is running true to form. It may be as well to remind him of some facts, just to refresh his recollections and his history. First I would say that it appears to me that he misinterprets—I would almost say deliberately—the explanation given by the Minister in regard to the manner in which he is going to select the nominees of these organisations. The Minister was quite plain. He said it was not his business to tell the organisations whom they should recommend. He also clearly said that if there were bilingual men among them they would get preference. The hon. member for Beaufort West didn’t want to understand that. And then he goes on and sneers at the Minister because he has an interpreter beside him. I have very distinct recollections of my hon. friend for Beaufort West and others with acclamation welcoming those unilingual men into their Cabinet. I remember the days when Colonel Creswell, Mr. Boydell and Mr. Sampson and this same Minister of Labour were welcomed into their Cabinet. We never heard any sneering, reference then to their having interpreters. I would say more about that. I would say that we were associated with the Nationalist Party in those days and I say with all due respect to the present Nationalist Party that they had a very fine leadership in that party in those days.

They had 20 years to acquire the language since then.

It is not a case of 20 years to acquire a language. Those members had been in this country 10 years before the South African War. 30 years afterwards you welcomed them into your Cabinet.

And he was the interpreter in these days.

And now the hon. member has the audacity to come here and make these remarks. Facts are things that sound. Facts remain and cannot be altered by any amount of cheap jibes. And then he goes further and says that he had raised this same question in regard to the Board of Trade and Industries. He says that there they had something of a case because that Board dealt with technical subjects. This Board will deal with just as important questions and just as technical questions as the Board of Trade—with more vital questions perhaps to individual soldiers. But I want to go further and say this also, that in dealing with this whole question the hon. member has no right to sneer at what the Minister describes as a stab in the back. I am prepared to say this to the hon. member for Beaufort West and to members of the Opposition, that if they want this matter to be settled once and for all, there is only one way to do it and that is by resolution of this House, and not by raising this question every time a Board is appointed.

Will you support such a resolution?

It is your duty to introduce a motion and it will then be time enough for me to say how I shall vote.

True to yourself.

It just shows the spirit.

Stop hedging.

It just shows the spirit of my hon. friends of the Opposition. Immediately you try to approach a question in a fair and open way and you ask them to play the game, they start barracking. I think the Opposition have played themselves out. They played the very worst card when the hon. member for Beaufort West put forward what I can call his acid test, when he had the audacity, if I may put it that way, now that it suits him, to put in poison against the Minister with whom he was associated at one time in the Nationalist Labour Government, from whom he accepted plums—both he and other members over there—and it ill becomes him today to sneer at the Hon. the Minister.

Didn’t you get any plums?

It shews that hon. member’s mentality. It shows this, that the last card and the worst card in this debate has been played by the hon. member for Beaufort West.

But it was a trump card.

The debate on this question is beginning to develop in a very interesting manner. We now begin to ask ourselves Whether we really have the right to ask whether this Government is going to do anything at all in connection with bilingualism in the Public Service or in any board that is appointed by this Government. And after the two instances that we had in front of us in this House during the present session we have the right to infer that they are not serious over this question of bilingualism in the service or any board that is appointed under this Government. The only reason there can be for not appointing bilingual representatives on these boards is that they would not be necessary. That is the only excuse, that bilingualism would not be required. Are we now to be told more than 30 years after the bringing about of Union, and after 30 years of bilingualism that we must accept that bilingualism is not necessary. Just look round the House in which a whole lot of unilingual members are sitting, some of them for 30 years, some of them for 20 years, and some of them for less. Here on my left there is a group of friends who are unilingual. They are excellent fellows. Some of them are also perhaps good members of Parliament within their limitations, but for 25years they have had not the slightest notion of what has been going on here.

It has been Greek to them.

Yes, they probably would understand that better. I should not be surprised if some members of the Cabinet know Greek and Latin, but are ignorant in respect of one of the languages of their own country. What weight have they as members of Parliament when they don’t know what is happening. What do they know about what is occurring in relation to half or more than half of the population if they cannot even speak the language of those people. How are you to know what a man thinks and feels, and what his needs are, if you cannot talk to him if he uses his own language? And these people that we are placing on those boards are people who have to deal with the future of our citizens. How can they act justly towards people while they do not know what these people are thinking, and how their minds are working, and what their complaints and requirements are? Such people who deliberately will not learn Afrikaans, who deliberately cut themselves adrift from half of the population, have no right to sit in judgment over what the people of South Africa want or do not want, or what is good for them and what is not good for them. Consequently I maintain that this question of bilingualism goes much deeper. A man who is bilingual in South Africa, whether he is English-speaking or Afrikaansspeaking, is a man who will live a full life as a citizen of this country. The man who does not take the trouble to make himself bilingual in a bilingual country, a man who cuts himself off in this manner, is only a semicitizen if that. People who sit on councils, whether it be Parliament or a board such as that with which we have to deal under this Bill, or the Board of Trade and Indutries must be people who can enter fully into the lives of both sections of the population and who are able to understand the interests of both sections and their manner of living and thinking. We cannot have semi-citizens (halwe burgers) on those bodies. That is the point. I do not care whether the persons home tongue is English or Afrikaans, but I say that we do not want semi-citizens there; we do not want mules there, but people who in the fullest sense of the word can discharge their duties as citizens of South Africa. That is why we stand for bilingualism. A man who after years and years in South Africa has not taken the trouble to make himself bilingual signifies just what here? How can he perform his duty to the nation? We are sick and tired of these half-men who have to lay down what others have to do and can do. We want to be governed by fully developed citizens of the country.

Amendment put and the Committee divided :

Ayes—29 :

Boltman F. H.

Brink, W. D.

Conradie, J. H.

Erasmus, F. C.

Fouché, J. J.

Grobler, D. C. S.

Haywood, J. J.

Kemp, J. C. G.

Klopper, H. J.

Le Roux, J. N.

Louw, E. H.

Ludiek, A. I.

Luttig, P. J. H.

Malan, D. F.

Nel, M. D. C. de W.

Olivier, P. J.

Pieterse, P. W. A.

Potgieter, J. E.

Stals, A. J.

Steyn, A.

Strydom, G. H. F.

Strydom, J. G.

Swanepoel, S. J.

Van Niekerk, J. G. W.

Van Nierop, P. J.

Warren, S. E.

Wilkens, J.

Tellers: P. O. Sauer and J. J. Serfontein.

Noes—60 :

Abbott, C. B. M.

Abrahamson, H.

Alexander, M.

Ballinger, V. M. L.

Barlow, A. G.

Bawden, W.

Bekker, H. J.

Bell, R. E.

Bodenstein, H. A. S.

Bosman, J. C.

Bosman, L. P.

Bowen, R. W.

Bowker, T. B.

Butters, W. R.

Christie, J.

Cilliers, H. J.

Cilliers, S. A.

Connan, J. M.

Conradie, J. M.

Davis, A.

De Kock, P. H.

Dolley, G.

Du Toit, A. C.

Fawcett, R. M.

Fourie, J. P.

Friedman, B.

Gluckman, H.

Gray, T. P.

Hare, W. D.

Hayward, G. N.

Henny, G. E. J.

Higgerty. J. W.

Hofmeyr, J. H.

Howarth, F. T.

Jackson, D.

Johnson, H. A.

Kentridge, M.

McLean, J.

Madeley, W. B.

Miles-Cadman, C. F.

Mushet, J. W.

Neate, C.

Payne, A. C.

Prinsloo, W. B. J.

Raubenheimer, L. J.

Robertson, R. B.

Steytler, L. J.

Sturrock, F. C.

Sutter, G. J.

Van den Berg, M. J.

Van der Merwe, H.

Van Niekerk, H. J. L.

Van Onselen, W. S.

Visser, H. J.

Waring, F. W.

Warren, C. M.

Waterson, S. F.

Williams, H. J.

Tellers: G. A. Friend and W. B. Humphreys. Amendment accordingly negatived.

I move—

I should like first to submit my case for the last words in the amendment “who are Union citizens”. It should be obvious that the eight members of the committee about whom we have been talking throughout the day will be Union citizens. With a Government that one could trust in the ordinary course of events one would accept that as obvious, but one is never certain what this Government is going to do. So many people have in recent years come into our country who are not Union citizens, especially people in connection with military affairs, that one does not know whether the Minister may not take it into his head to appoint one or other of them who is not a Union citizen. In any other country in the world such an amendment would be unthinkable, because in no other country of the world would anyone be appointed to a responsible board who was not a citizen of the country, but in South Africa the possibility exists, and it is quite a possibility under the present Government and the present Minister. I consequently feel that I am entitled to move this amendment and I trust that the Minister will accept it. There is especially under the extraordinary circumstances in which we are living today many people in South Africa who by reason of the fact that South Africa is a conquered country assume rights that they could not have demanded in other circumstances. Our laws regarding nationality and foreigners are so peculiar that things are possible which have, I imagine, only been made possible because of this being a conquered country. But for that it is difficult to understand. We have for instance in the Act of 1937 the peculiar provision that a British subject by birth who comes to our country is not an alien, even if he comes from Timbuktoo, or even if he comes from the slums of India. He is not an alien in South Africa by reason of the fact that he is a British subject by birth. That is only possible in a conquered country. It appears to me that it is only possible in South Africa. For that reason we ask that these words should be inserted so that people who are merely here as British subjects by birth, people who have come here perhaps without an entry permit will not be eligible to sit on those boards. We have moreover this peculiarity in our Immigration Law that a person who is a British subject by birth is not required to register himself here in South Africa as an alien. He arrives here very frequently from every other part of the British Empire; he settles down here, and he is not an alien. For that reason alone it is necessary that we should insert a provision here showing who we have in mind, namely, that we only wish to have Union citizens appointed. Who is a Union citizen? In the first place a person who has been born in South Africa is a Union citizen. In the second place a person who is a British subject, who has come from any part of the British Empire, and who has resided in this country for two years, becomes automatically a Union citizen. He may never really be that but he becomes automatically a Union citizen. The other class of person who becomes a Union citizen is a person who comes from any part of the British Empire, and who was naturalised there and who comes to South Africa. He can come from the slums of Poland; he has been naturalised in Britain as a British subject; then he comes to South Africa, and after a period of three years he becomes a Union subject. Then there are the people who came here as aliens and who after a period of five years can apply to be naturalised. I mention here who are Union citizens because I do not want the Minister to tell me that I am omitting British subjects and other persons from the composition of this Board. I describe those who become Union citizens after two years as British subjects. Although I do not approve of their being called. Union citizens there is no need for the Minister to have any qualms of conscience on that account. I am pleading here for a cause which would be self-evident in any other country in the world. No Government in Britain or in any other selfrespecting country would contemplate appointing as a member of such an important board a person who was not a citizen of the country. It is only in South Africa that such a thing could occur. I want to tell the Minister frankly that I do not trust him in connection with this matter. He has made certain promises in connection with a previous debate, and I am sorry that he let us down.

When did I do that?

This afternoon. The question was put to the Minister whether he would refuse to appoint unilingual persons to the board, and he replied that he was not going to refuse to do that. If he rises in his seat now and repeats the same thing in connection with Union citizens then I should like to preserve the right to say that I cannot follow him. If he has let us down in connection with bilingualism then he may also let us down in this matter. Accordingly I am proposing my amendment, namely, that the eight members of the board shall be persons who are Union citizens, and, secondly, that they should also be European citizens. That is also self-evident. But to judge from the attitude adopted by the Minister of Labour in connection with the colour problem I also need to insert this here. What is the Minister’s policy exactly? Some time ago I put the question if he and his Government would take into consideration the introduction of legislation preventing Europeans and non-Europeans from sitting together on the same executives of trade unions—European girls and coloured people. He replied to that question, and his answer was that he and his Government did not deem it necessary to tell the trade unions of South Africa through legislation that they are prohibited from having mixed executives. Arising from the fact that the Government has announced such a policy, that it will not prevent by legislation that collaboration in trade unions, we are unable to leave to the discretion of the Minister what the composition of this board shall be. I would rather propose that this be laid down in legislation so that the Minister would not have the right to deviate to the right or to the left. Because one fine morning the Minister could apply to this board the policy he has in connection with trade unions. Consequently I feel that my motion is fair and reasonable, and almost self-evident, and I hope that the Minister will accept it.

Mr. Chairman, the vocal attitude of the hon. member this afternoon is a complete revelation to me. He certainly could not be called either tasteful or tactful and it is so foreign to all the relationships that have existed between him and me. Personally I am rather astounded.

You have disappointed me this afternoon on bilingualism.

No, I made no bones about that. However, I will not allow that to influence my judgment in regard to the merits of this amendment.

[Inaudible.]

Whatever the hon. member says leaves me absolutely cold, but for the hon. member who has just been speaking (Mr. F. C. Erasmus) I have the highest regard. I am prepared to accept “ Union National ” but not “ European Union National,” and I think that ought to satisfy my hon. friend. We cannot constantly in every piece of legislation that is brought forward have the colour bar introduced. Let us have this question out on its merits and solely on its merits, by itself, when we are dealing with the principle, and not have it like this on every conceivable occasion when legislation is introduced. If my hon. friend is prepared to amend his amendment and confine it to “Union National” well and good, if not, let it go by the board.

Let it go.

I am glad that the Minister has accepted the portion of the amendment in connection with Union citizens, and I hope that he will be consistent in regard to this matter.

Do you accept that?

Yes. This board will chiefly have to deal with the administration of the law, with the reinstatement of our sons and daughters, and it would be an unheard of position if they were dependent on foreigners serving on such a board, and who would then have to decide on the weal and woe of the sons and daughters of our people.

There I agree with you.

We shall return to this question in connection with the provisions in the Bill where provision is made for finding employment for our sons and daughters who were not previously in employment, before work is provided for aliens. This Bill has that within its compass, and accordingly we are entitled to make the position very clear and to lay down that we want in the first pleace to look after the interests of our own sons and daughters and their interests only, without allowing South Africa to be inundated from outside by as many other people as they wish to bring in here. The Minister will be called upon to deal with this at a later stage of the Bill. In regard to the other matter I want to say that the motion of the hon. member for Moorreesburg (Mr. F. C. Erasmus) is a corollary to what occurred in connection with another Bill. Will the Minister stand up and tell us plainly what he has to say in connection with the other case, namely, whether he has any objection if non-Europeans are not allowed to sit on this board? Or is he prepared to say that non-Europeans will not have seats on it, and will he then be prepared to accept this amendment? It seems extraordinary to me that the Minister should neglect to avail himself of this opportunity. Will the Minister accept the amendment?

No, I am not prepared to accept the amendment. I am prepared to accept the words “ Union citizen ”.

Then it comes to this that we are in exactly the same position that we were in connection with the other Bill when the Minister would not give us the assurance that only Europeans would be allowed to sit on those committees. What could be more fitting than for the Minister to state here that he will not appoint any non-Europeans on that board; and if that is so then what objection can he have to the amendment that the board shall consist only of Europeans? We should like to have the principle affirmed that only Europeans will sit on the board, and not Europeans and non-Europeans side by side, and the Minister now has this fine opportunity to express himself in favour of that principle.

The Minister says that he is not prepared to deal with the question of the colour bar here piecemeal, and that that is a question which must be dealt with as a whole. I am really astounded at the Minister’s taking up that attitude. He refers to what a previous Government had done, when he was also a member of the Cabinet. Does he remember that when the late Mr. Beyers introduced legislation in connection with the colour bar in the mines, when his party constituted part of the Government, he and his party helped to get that legislation accepted against the strongest opposition of the South African Party of those days? And now the Minister says that we must wait, in dealing with the colour bar, until the matter can be discussed as a whole. When is that going to be? If we don’t start now to discuss every matter on its merits when we have before us legislation which is going to be put through, then I wonder when we are going to achieve that separation, that “separateness” which we are aiming at. No, let us wherever it is possible, introduce the colour bar. That is the will of the people of South Africa. I am sorry I am unable to accept the Minister’s suggestion, and I should be very sorry if he were to remain stubborn on this question. In South Africa the idea of separation is so ingrained in the minds of all sections of the population that the Minister will be going against the will of the great majority of the people if he refuses to accept this proposal. No, the Minister must not create the impression of wanting to foster equality. It seems that the Minister is not prepared to give in here, simply because he would be disappointing his Communist friends if he did so. They stand for complete equality and the Minister must not create the impression of wanting to foster that equality. Rather let him avail himself of this golden opportunity ….

This brilliant opportunity.

Yes, let him avail himself of this fine opportunity to tell the country where he and his party stand, and what is the attitude of the Government to which he belongs today. I am sorry I cannot accept the Minister’s suggestion. The amendment must stand as I have moved it: “European Union citizens”.

We are glad that the hon. the Minister has agreed to the board being composed of Union citizens, but we want to know definitely who are going to be the members of that board. They must be European Union citizens, and if they are not European Union citizens, we cannot have anything to do with it. We don’t want to have the responsibility for a mixed board which will have the right to decide on the fate of white citizens of this country or of people who have fought for this country. We want justice done to these people and if that board is a mixed board they will simply refuse to appear before it. That is, at any rate, what I would do, and that is what they will do, too. I am astounded at the hon. the Minister, a man who I always thought had the interests of South Africa at heart, the interests of white South Africa, refusing this amendment, an amendment which simply asks that the board shall consist of white Union citizens. I want to utter this word of warining that the Minister’s refusal to accept the amendment is going to mean a greater and even more serious setback to the Government than even Wakkerstroom has been.

I hesitate to give any assurance after the remarks of the hon. member for Moorreesburg (Mr. F. C. Erasmus). If hon. members opposite insist on this amendment as drafted, namely, European Union Nationals, then I must oppose it. I am not going to give any assurances because you reject my assurances.

One has to look at this amendment in the light of our experience not only of the Government, but in the light of our experience of this particular Minister himself. Now let us see what the powers of this board are. These powers are defined in Clause 6. The board has the power to summon witnesses. It is not only soldiers who can be summoned to appear before the board but employers. I, and anyone of us, who employ people, can be summoned to appear before the board, and if that board consists of Europeans and non-Europeans, a white man is compelled to appear before that board, and the non-European member occupies a position identical with that of a judge. The board as a whole has the power of a court of law, and the white man has to agree to being cross-examined by a non-European. A non-European can demand that a white person shall produce his books for examination. If the white man refuses to comply with these demands, the board can impose certain penalties. Here we have the position, therefore, that the non-European can impose penalties on a European if he refuses to be sworn, or if he neglects to do any of the things which are demanded from him in terms of the Act. I ask hon. members what the position of the white man in South Africa is going to be. Apart from the amendment, the Minister is not even prepared to undertake that he will appoint only Europeans to the board. And now the Minister is highly sensitive because the hon. member for Moorreesburg (Mr. Erasmus) has stated that he is not prepared to accept the Minister’s assurance. The Minister shouldn’t be so sensitive. Let me remind the House and the Minister of the attitude that has been adopted by him— the Minister. We have these joint boards of trade unions where Europeans and nonEuropeans are together on the same body. The Minister takes up the attitude that it is a good thing. He takes up the attitude that it is even a good thing for the non-Europeans on certain of the trade union boards to be in the majority. If he takes up that attitude what right then has anyone to say that he will not take up that same attitude in regard to this board. He takes up the attitude that it makes no difference if Europeans and non-Europeans serve on the same board. And if he takes up the attitude that it doesn’t matter that Europeans have to submit to non-Europeans in regard to these other boards, then it also applies to this particular board.

It is even possible for the chairman to be a non-European.

Yes, the chairman can be a non-European. We have the position here in regard to those other boards that non-Europeans are in the majority there, and the fact of the matter is that members of that trade union have to submit to the decision of a board, the majority of which is composed of nonEuropeans. We are therefore dealing here with a situation which is in direct conflict with the attitude which we on this side of the House adopt in regard to the position which the white man should occupy in South Africa. And the position is becoming aggravated. If one takes into account what the attitude of the Minister is, and what the attitude of the Government is in regard to the whole coloured question in South Africa, where conditions are becoming worse and worse every day, one finds that the colour line, as a result of the acts of commission and omission on the part of the Government, is becoming fainter and fainter every day—if one thinks of the incidents in Cape Town, where non-Europeans walk into European tea-rooms and sit down next to Europeans and are served—one realises how serious the position has become. I have seen with my own eyes that nonEuropeans have gone into a tea-room and have sat down next to Europeans and have been served. Why are the tea-room proprietors afraid to exercise their rights by refusing to serve these people? Because, as happened in East London recently, and has also happened here in Cape Town, if they refuse to serve the non-Europeans, these people simply take matters into their own hands, and are allowed to do so. The Government has issued instructions to the Railway authorities that if non-European officers travel on the railways they are not only to get accommodation in those parts of the train in which the Europeans travel, but, in addition to that, they have to be served in the dining saloon together with the Europeans. I am mentioning this simply as an indication of what is going on in South Africa today, and that is why our alarm is fully justified. We are very much alarmed about the future of the white man in South Africa, and apart from the white man’s future in South Africa, I want to mention this for the Minister’s consideration: As a result of this sort of thing, an exceedingly dangerous condition of affairs is developing in South Africa—a condition of affairs—and I say this in all seriousness—which will lead to such conflict between European and non-European, that the day will come, and much more quickly than the Minister realises, that there will be a serious clash in this country, and when we shall have conditions such as they have in America, as a result of which blood will be shed. The white man in South Africa is not going to stand for it. We realise that the non-European as well as the European has a right to live in South Africa. They must live here with the least possible friction. In other words, each section must have its own rights, but each in its own sphere. The hon. the Leader of the Opposition put the attitude of this side of the House very clearly: We are not out to oppress the non-European. We want to see full justice done to the non-European. We want him to attain to his full right. But this mixing up of the two, this subjecting of the white man to the non-European, can only lead to such friction that in the end it will lead to a clash, to conflicts which will result in the white man resisting this condition of affairs; and I therefore want to make a very serious appeal to the Minister. The Minister says he is in favour of maintaining the colour line, but he doesn’t prove it in his actions and in his words. In all his administrative actions he exhibits the very opposite tendency. When we ask for his so-called belief in the maintenance of the colour line between white and black to be put into effect, he does not give any proof of his willingness to do so. On the contrary, every time we, on this side, try to get this dividing line applied in practice, he resists our efforts. I want to warn him, and I want to tell him that the public outside are begining to realise what is going on. So far, it has been the Afrikaansspeaking section, to wit, the Nationalists, among the Afrikaans-speaking people, who have fought tooth and nail for the maintenance of this dividing line between European and non-European, because we realise that the future of white civilisation in South Africa depends on the maintenance of that dividing line. So far it has been the Afrikaans-speaking people who have fought for it, but thank heavens there are thousands and thousands of English-speaking people today who are taking up the same attitude, because, with us, they realise the danger. The Minister is perhaps not unaware of the attitude which the English-speaking people in Durban are taking up with regard to the “ coolie ” menace. Perhaps he doesn’t know that they have sent a telegram to his colleague, the Minister of the Interior, stating that they prefer a white republic to the wiping out of the colour line—that they prefer a white republic rather than to allow this Indian infiltration to continue.

The time has come when we in South Africa take up a very definite attitude on the question of the dividing line between Europeans and non-Europeans. I am convinced that it is not only the Afrikaans-speaking sections of the population which is in favour of the maintenance of this dividing line, and which is against the various sections mixing on boards, or in spheres of employment or in residential areas; there is a very large section of the English-speaking public too who are in favour of the colour line, and even members on the Government side of the House, with the exception of a small minority, take up the attitude that that dividing line must be maintained. I am convinced that no hon. member residing in the Transvaal will dare get on to the platform and advocate the appointment of committees on which nonEuropeans will serve with Europeans. No hon. member on that side—although they are all going to vote against the amendment proposed by this side of the House later on— will dare get on to a platform and take up that attitude. I want to make an appeal to hon. members opposite who know that they represent an electorate which feels as we do on this question. I ask them to get up and to warn the Minister not to reject the amendment which has been introduced by this side of the House. A great fight has been waged in South Africa for many years to keep the dividing line between Europeans and non-Europeans, yet we know that there are trade unions even here in Cape Town in which non-Europeans are in the majority, trade unions, the management of which is in the hand of the non-Europeans who are in the majority on the executives. We know that even the chairman of a particular trade union, of which a white woman is a member, is a non-European, and we are not going to allow that to continue. The Deputy Prime Minister admitted in this House when he was Minister of Labour that there were 14 trade unions which had Europeans and nonEuropeans on their committees. That is the position which we have in the Cape and that is the sort of thing we object to. A fair and reasonable proposal has now been made by this side of the House. We want to make sure that these committees are not going to be a mixture of Europeans and nonEuropeans. We have no objection to nonEuropeans having their own committees if all the members of a particular trade union are non-Europeans. But we do say that a dividing line should be drawn between Europeans and non-Europeans. We are playing here with a matter of the greatest importance, of the greatest importance not only so far as the Afrikaans-speaking section of the population is concerned, but also so far as thousands of English-speaking people are concerned. The great majority of the people are tired of this mixing up which is going on in South Africa, and the time has come to take up a definite stand on the question of Europeans and non-Europeans being mixed on committees and executives.

I only want to tell the Minister that if any doubt should have arisen about his assurances, he himself is to blame. I want to remind him that during this very session of Parliament, members on his side of the House have got up and said: “We are not colour-blind”, but the course which the Government is pursuing, and which certain members on that side of the House are pursuing, aims at wiping out the colour line. Certain hon. members opposite have spoke most indignantly about the tendency there is of mixing the races. I want the Minister to believe me when I tell him that we are very much in earnest and I say that we have every right to guard against this mixing of the colours which is going on today. We feel very strongly about it. The Minister will have to admit that we have been fair in our attitude on this Bill and other Bills, but I was greatly upset at the Minister’s reply, and I am really asking myself whether our attitude of reasonableness has not been entirely misplaced. The Minister gets up here and tells us that he feels that the hon. member for Moorreesburg (Mr. F. C. Erasmus) is correct, and that he would have been prepared to accept the amendment but now that the hon. member for Moorreesburg has put it in the way he has done, he refuses to accept it and, in fact, he refuses to do anything.

There are two separate things in this amendment. I am accepting a proposal in regard to Union citizenship.

Yes, that part he accepts, but not the other part; and then the Minister got up and gave the impression that he would even have been prepared to accept the other part, but the hon. member for Moorreesburg had annoyed him by the way he put it.

He refused to accept my suggestion, and I am not giving any more assurances to that side of the House.

The Minister gave us to understand clearly that he would have been prepared to accept even that part, but as the hon. member had annoyed him he was going to do no more. We are dealing here with a very serious question of principle. I want to give the Minister another chance of getting up and of telling the House that he and the Government in principle are not in favour of the European and non-European sections being mixed on such a board. Let the Minister get up and tell us whether he is going to allow it or not. There is no middle course. If he is opposed to the mixing of the races let him clean up the position on all those bodies. I shall resume my seat in order to give the Minister an opportunity of stating clearly what his policy is and what his convictions and views are in that regard. Are these coloured people to be on these bodies or not? That is all I want to ask.

I want to draw the Minister’s attention to another point. Quite a number of coloured women have been serving during the war, at the Kimberley mint for instance, and at Somerset West, and it is quite possible that they too may have organised some unions, and under the third group, viz: Representatives of the military service, coloured women may possibly also have to be taken into account, and there is a possibility of a coloured woman being nominated by one of those bodies as a member of the beard. Are our Afrikaners going to tolerate a condition such as that where soldiers may be examined and tried by a coloured woman? Here in Parliament we have Europeans representing the natives, and we have a white woman here representing the natives. One may find that soldiers will have to appear before a coloured woman. Surely we cannot tolerate that—it would lead to a rebellion. We might even have a native woman on the board, because some of them have also taken part in the war. I’m afraid the results may be very much worse than the Minister imagines. In Natal, a great many Indians joined up and they will also expect representation. We have to draw the line somewhere and if we don’t we can look for trouble. If the Minister doesn’t watch and doesn’t guard against things like that happening, he is going to destroy the good spirit of co-operation which prevails today. Not a single soldier will agree to appear before a board of which coloured people are members. The soldier will only feel at home before a board whose members are bilingual, who can understand him, who are of his own blood and who can appreciate his point of view. I want to urge the Minister to accept this amendment.

I have tried to find out how the Minister voted in 1926 on the amendment of the Mines and Works Bill. The then Nationalist Party Government in those days was supported by members of the Labour Party. A provision was inserted in the law that Europeans and nonEuropeans employed in the mining industry could be treated differentially. I find that the Minister of Labour was so enthusiastic in regard to that proposal that he faithfully supported the Government of the day. I haven’t had the opportunity of going through all the debates, but I find that in regard to an instruction to the Select Committee which was proposed by the Nationalist Party to make that differentiation possible the Minister was enthusiastically in favour of it. I assume that he also supported the Nationalist Party further on that Bill. He was enthusiastically in favour of the colour bar. In the circumstances I fail to follow his argument that we should leave this matter to a later stage and discuss it then. It looks to me like a red herring. If one takes the provision, which was passed in these days, into account—the provision in regard to the colour bar—then an amendment of this nature is entirely timely and in place. I do not know whether the Chairman will allow me to tell the House what happened on a select committee, but if I am out of order the Chairman will no doubt stop me. Recently an unregistered trade union appeared before a select committee. This trade union had applied for registration, but the Minister had not registered them yet, and I hope he will not register them. Now they gave evidence.

They didn’t apply to me for registration.

It is a trade union in connection with the fishing industry. But I understand that the Minister has not yet registered it. But what is the position? This trade union works day after day, and night after night among the fishermen. How is the executive of that trade union constituted? There are eleven members, three of whom are Europeans and eight coloured. They appeared before the select committee. We asked them who their chairman was, and they indicated a coloured man—he was the Chairman. We then asked them who the white woman was who was sitting next to him—almost rubbing shoulders with him. They said she was Miss So-and-So. We asked them who the other white woman was— sitting in the corner—she was the secretary—a white woman. The day committee of that union consists of a coloured chairman and a white woman secretary. Has not the time arrived for us to put a stop to that kind of thing? It was as a result of what happened in that select committee that I asked whether the Government intended introducing legislation preventing the mixing of Europeans and coloured people in trade unions. The Minister replied to that question—and he also replied on behalf of the Minister of Finance: “No, the Government doesn’t consider it avisable to take such steps.” The time has arrived in South Africa to protest against this liberal policy; and the Minister of Railways too—what does he do? The season tickets for Swartbooi and his woman suddenly now have to be filled in for Mr. Swartbooi and Mrs. Swartbooi, and piccanin Swartbooi is now Master Swartbooi. Have you ever? If the piccanin travels by train he is no longer a native according to his season ticket but he is Master Swartbooi. Let me tell the Minister that the people of South Africa are holding up their hands in horror and consider that the time has arrived to put an end to it. The Nationalist Party policy of segregation and separation must be carried out, and more and more people are beginning to realise it. We cannot wait until legislation is eventually passed and meanwhile let this sort of thing go on. The Minister says that this question of the colour line can be discussed later. Does he want us to pass legislation now, and then have another discussion in God knows how many years about the colour bar, and then pass some resolution or other? And does he then want to make the legislation retrospective so as to change all these things which we have been doing in the past? No. The Minister is only trying to get past this trouble. And that is why he tells me to wait until we can have a general discussion on the whole subject. But people are not prepared to wait for that. What the people want is that when such an important board is appointed, a board which can take evidence from white people— the people want that board to consist of Europeans only and it doesn’t become the Minister to refuse that. He has lost one Wakkerstroom, he is going to lose a great many more.

The hon. member for Moorreesburg (Mr. F. C. Erasmus) when he delves back into ancient history and finds an example that he thinks he can use with some effect tries to examine it but not with all its implications and all that it means. He is quoting the attitude of myself and, incidentally, of my party on the Mines and Works Regulations Act, or Bill, as it was then.

The colour bar regulation.

He quoted that against me. I am now inconsistent according to him in adopting the attitude I am adopting here, which is a negative attitude and not a positive one. He is adopting the positive one; he quotes that example against me showing my inconsistency. Now, what are the facts? First of all, and it is a boomerang on the hon. gentleman, first of all it was introduced by the Nationalist Government, by Mr. Willie Beyers, a man whom I always found it in my heart to honour. Mr. Willie Beyers introduced that as the considered policy of the Nationalist Party, the Nationalist Government.

And you supported it.

I want to establish that as a positive fact that the Nationalist Government was responsible for introducing that. My hon. friend over there, the member for Piketberg (Dr. Malan) was a member of that Government and his imprimatur and mine are on that. Yes, and I think I was a member of the Government at that time. But it does not matter whether I was or not, the accusation against me is that I supported it, and therefore I am inconsistent today. Now what did that Mines and Works Regulation Act contain? What did it set down as “European ”? Europeans in that Bill comprised the following, European as such, unquestioned Europeans, Mauritius Creoles, coloured people, Indian Malays, and those were all classed as Europeans.

I beg to differ.

I was not responsible for that. My Party supported it. I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, this appears to be digressing from the matter under discussion, but the hon. member has quoted this, showing what an inconsistent blighter this fellow Madeley is. Now what did we say in supporting it? We said so far as the Labour Party is concerned the colour bar can be wiped out tomorrow if you lay down a standard rate of pay for the work done. That was the statement and the colour bar there was a protective measure, not an aggressive measure, but protective of the standard which the European had attained. That is what all that was. So much for my inconsistency. I always face up to my own acts and my hon. friend, despite that he distrusts my assurance, will give me credit for that. I am not going to give you an assurance this afternoon and I am not going to accept “ European ” in this amendment.

I should like the Minister to have a look at Clause 1 of Act 25 of 1926. The object of that Act was to provide that certain classes of work in the mines were set aside for Europeans and other classes of work for certain classes of coloured persons. And now the Minister, after having supported that particular law, comes here and tells us that there is a definition of Europeans. Here is the Act, and I challenge the Minister to look at this Bill and to tell me where there is a definition of European. Various classes of persons are mentioned for whom specific classes of work are available.

But coloured people could get blasting certificates.

It is provided here who can get work. First of all we find Paragraph A in which it is provided that Europeans can get certain classes of work. And then we come to Paragraph B which reads—

this calls of person can get certain types of work. Then we come to Paragraph C which contains another group—

And then we come to Group D—

And then the Minister gets up here and says, or rather gives the House the impression’ that all these classes of people are regarded as Europeans. These are different classes of people who could get different types of work.

All the classes mentioned by you can get certificates and they are therefore placed on the same basis as Europeans. They can even become Mine Managers.

Let the hon. member look at the next sub-section—

This Act has been applied and described as the colour-bar Act for nearly 20 years in South Africa. As such it was fought tooth and nail by the South African Party who in those days was the Opposition. Now the Minister of Labour comes here and tries to tell us that there is a different definition of European. I merely got up to put the Minister on the right track again.

Amendment put and the Committee divided :

Ayes—29:

Boltman, F. H.

Brink, W. D.

Döhne, J. L. B.

Erasmus, F. C.

Fouché, J. J.

Grobler, D. C. S.

Haywood, J. J.

Kemp, J. C. G.

Klopper, H. J.

Le Roux, J. N.

Louw, E. H.

Ludick, A. I.

Luttig, P. J. H.

Malan, D. F.

Tellers: P. O. Sauer and J. J. Serfontein.

Noes—61 :

Abbott, C. B. M.

Abrahamson, H.

Alexander, M.

Allen, F. B.

Ballinger, V. M. L.

Barlow, A. G.

Bawden, W.

Bekker, H. J.

Bell, R. E.

Bodenstein, H. A. S.

Bosman, J. C.

Burnside, D. C.

Christie, J.

Cilliers, H. J.

Cilliers, S. A.

Connan, J. M.

Davis, A.

De Kock, P. H.

De Wet, H. C.

Dolley, G.

Du Toit, A. C.

Du Toit, R. J.

Fawcett, R. M.

Faourie, J. P.

Friedman, B.

Gray, T. P.

Hare, W. D.

Hayward, G. N.

Henny, G. E. J.

Hofmeyr, J. H.

Nel, M. D. C. de W.

Olivier, P. J.

Pieterse. P. W. A.

Potgieter, J. E.

Stals, A. J.

Steyn, A.

Strydom, G. H. F.

Strydom, J. G.

Swanepoel, S. J.

Van Niekerk, J. G. W.

Van Nierop, P. J.

Warren, S. E.

Wilkens J.

Howarth, F. T.

Johnson, H. A.

Kentridge, M.

Lawrence, H. G.

McLean, J.

Madeley, W. B.

Miles-Cadman, C. F.

Molteno, D. B.

Mushet, J. W.

Neate, C.

Payne A. C.

Prinsloo, W. B. J.

Raubenheimer, L. J.

Robertson, R. B.

Russell, J. H.

Sonnenberg, M.

Steenkamp, L. S.

Steyler, L. J.

Sutter, G. J.

Tothill, H. A.

Ueckermann, K.

Van den Berg, M. J.

Van Niekerk, H. J. L.

Van Onselen, W. S.

Visser, H. J.

Waring, F. W.

Warren, C. M.

Waterson, S. F.

Williams, H. J.

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

Amendment accordingly negatived.

Clause, as printed, put and agreed to.

On Clause 6,

I have an amendment as printed. I move—

1. (11) Any witness who, after having been sworn, gives to any relevant question put to him by the chairman or any member of the board or the investigating officer an answer which is false in any material particular, or makes a statement on any relevant matter which is false in any material particular, knowing that answer or statement to be false, shall be guilty of an offence.

I want to draw the hon. the Minister’s attention to the last three lines of sub-clause 6 at the end of the page: “And the investigating officer, in the application of this sub-clause will be considered to be the Chairman of the Board.” I should like to know from the Minister why he wants to give the Investigating Officer that power.

Which clause are you referring to?

This is in the last three lines of sub-clause 6. I merely want an explanation why the Investigating Officer is in this particular instance to be regarded as the Chairman of the Board.

The investigating officer has all the powers that were given to the Board all the way through for the purposes of his investigation. And consequently it carries with it the responsibility for decisions. And having all the responsibility he should have the powers of the Chairman of the Board.

It is a fact that this matter was discussed in Select Committee and that the Committee left it as it is, but we are not satisfied that the Investigating, Officer should have the same powers as the Chairman. It doesn’t seem to be fair to me. Give the Investigating Officer the powers he should have but why should he have the same powers as the Chairman?

I only want to tell the Minister that if he made a few more concessions to us and if he had given us the opportunity of knowing how the board was going to be constituted our objections would have fallen away. But now we do not know how the board is going to be constituted. The Minister did not accept our suggestion, and now you may get this impossible position: The board appoints any number of Investigation Officers all over the country, and if such an Investigating Officer makes an investigation he is considered to be the chairman of the board. He has the same powers as the chairman, and we know that those powers are very far-reaching. I therefore move—

I cannot quite understand the argument of the hon. member. He says that they did not appreciate what would be the composition of the board when we were in Select Committee.

He says we don’t know it now.

And you never did know.

And we shall never know.

But you did know when you were on the Select Committee. That is merely an argument in advance because the hon. member knew perfectly well that these powers were going to be given to the Investigating Officer. Now he says their attitude would have been considerably altered if they had known the composition of the board. You can never know it until they are appointed. Their powers are defined in the Bill—what the board will have to do, what powers it will have. The hon. members knew all this when they were in Select Committee and it is only now that they want to alter it. Can it be wondered at that I feel that it is only a question of baiting.

Will the hon. the Minister give the House the assurance that the Investigating Officer will always be a European, because that officer is going to have very big powers. I only want to know from the Minister whether he is prepared to give the House the assurance that this Investigating Officer will always be a European.

It is an officer of the Public Service. Critics of this Bill are criticising on a basis of absolute ignorance of what the Bill contains.

Don’t generalise.

The hon. member should keep quiet. He is just as ignorant as the rest. This is an officer. After the insult hurled at me by the hon. member for Moorreesburg (Mr. F. C. Erasmus), I am giving no more assurances. You’ll have to fight it out as it stands.

May I put this question to the Minister? The definition of “official” is as follows—

The Minister has tried to give the House the impression that I am speaking without any knowledge, and that an official must always be a white man. I want to ask the Minister where he gets the idea from that an official is always a European. Does the Minister want to tell me that there are no non-Europeans on the service rolls of the Public Service?

There are no non-European officials.

There are nonEuropeans in the Public Service whose names appear on the service lists of the Public Service. The Minister knows it and if he does not know it he can ask the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Finance.

They are not “ officials ”.

There are numbers and numbers of non-Europeans whose salary scales are fixed by the Public Service Commission and their names appear on the service lists of the Public Service. Now who doesn’t know what he is talking about? I, or the Minister? The position is perfectly clear that in terms of this Act the Minister or his Board can appoint a non-European as Investigating Officer.

There’s no doubt about his being able to do so. I’m quite sure that he will do so.

Now I want to ask the Minister whether he will give the House an assurance that he will not appoint a non-European to exercise those powers over Europeans. The Minister says that he refuses to give that assurance.

You are trying to drag a red herring.

I wish I could drag a donkey across the trail. I hope now that the Minister has consulted his officials he will be a little better informed and that he will show a better spirit, and a willingness to meet us. I want to tell the Minister this that it is quite possible for him under the clause as it now reads to appoint a non-European and I am asking him to give us an assurance that he will not appoint any non-European under this clause in that capacity.

I have told you I am giving your side no more assurances.

You will be made to toe the line.

The hon. the Minister has told us that the two members on this side never touched this question in Select Committee. I want to draw the attention of the Minister that I did raise the matter in Select Committee and the Minister will remember that we had a very warm discussion on the question. I specifically referred to that point that even if he should appoint a non-European, the board has the powers almost of a dictator, and if we give the Investigating Officer these powers it will mean not only that we have a dictatorship, but a bureaucracy as well, which would be most undesirable, and I pointed out that that was one of the things we were fighting against. I want to ask the Minister not to treat this matter frivolously. If we find hon. members opposite supporting amendments proposed by this side of the House, and if we only get knocks and kicks in return, surely I can ask the Minister with all due deference to pay more attention to the arguments put forward by this side of the House.

It was very pleasant to hear the hon. members say that they were going to stand up for the rights of those who went to the front. What a change.

Don’t be sarcastic.

And I would say this to my hon. friend who just spoke, that he was a very valuable member of that Select Committee, very reasonable, because he gave way on some points where others did not give way. His observations were very valuable on the committee, and his assistance was also very valuable, and I want to give him credit for it.

Question put: That all the words from “and” in line 72 to the end of paragraph (b) of sub-section (6), proposed to be omitted, stand part of the clause:

Ayes—63 :

Abbott, C. B. M.

Abrahamson, H.

Alexander, M.

Allen, F. B.

Ballinger V. M. L.

Barlow, À. G.

Bawden, W.

Bekker, H. J.

Bell, R. E.

Bodenstein, H. A. S.

Bosman, J. C.

Bosman, L. P.

Burnside, D. C.

Christie, J.

Cilliers, H. J.

Cilliers, S. A.

Connan, J. M.

Davis, A.

De Kock, P. H.

De Wet, H. C.

De Wet, P. J.

Dolley, G.

Du Toit, A. C.

Du Toit, R. J.

Fawcett, R. M.

Fourie, J. P.

Friedman, B.

Gray, T. P.

Hare, W. D.

Hayward, G. N.

Tellers: P. O. Sauer and J. J. Serfontein.

Question accordingly affirmed and the amendment proposed by Mr. Serfontein negatived.

Seeling that we cannot get the powers of this particular official curtailed I want to move an amendment to the effect of inserting after the word “officer” the words “who complies with the prescribed requirements in regard to bilingualism”.

I wish to point out to the hon. member that his amendment is out of order. He cannot move an amendment to part of the clause preceding that part in respect of which an amendment has already been disposed of.

But surely the clause has not yet been accepted.

That doesn‘t matter. The rule is that an hon. member cannot go back on the clause.

Then I shall move this—

Henny, G. E. J.

Higgerty, J. W.

Hofmeyr, J. H.

Howarth, F. T.

Jackson, D.

Johnson, H. A.

Kentridge, M.

Lawrence, H. G.

McLean, J.

Madeley, W. B.

Miles-Cadman, C. F.

Molteno, D. B.

Mushet, J. W.

Neate, C.

Payne, A. C.

Prinsloo, W. B. J.

Tellers: G. A. Friend and W. B. Humphreys.

Noes—29 :

Boltman, F. H.

Brink, W. D.

Döhne, J. L. B.

Dönges, , T. E.

Erasmus, F. C.

Grobler, D. C. S.

Haywood, J. J.

Kemp, J. C. G.

Klopper, H. J.

Le Roux, J. N.

Louw, E. H.

Ludick, A. I.

Luttig, P. J. H.

Malan, D. F.

Raubenheimer, L. J.

Russell, J. H.

Sonnenberg, M.

Steenkamp, L. S.

Steytler, L. J.

Tothill, H. A.

Ueckermann, K.

Van den Berg, M. J.

Van Niekerk, H. J. L,

Van Onselen, W. S.

Visser, H. J.

Waring, F. W.

Warren, C. M.

Waterson, S. F.

Williams, H. J.

Nel, M. D. C. de W.

Olivier, P. J.

Pieterse, P. W. A.

Potgieter, J. E.

Stals, A. J.

Steyn, A.

Strydom, G. H. F.

Strydom, J. G.

Swanepoel, S. J.

Van Niekerk, J. G. W.

Van Nierop, P. J.

Warren, S. E.

Wilkens, J.

To add at the end of sub-section (6) the following proviso:

I understand that the Minister’s standpoint is that this is unnecessary because such an Investigating Officer is an official and must therefore be bilingual. That is not so. Not all officials are bilingual. It does apply to new appointments, but the Minister knows perfectly well that in his Department there are any number of officials who are not bilingual.

Are you referring to inspectors now?

The hon. the Minister has laid it down that inspectors must be bilingual. But we are dealing here with an Investigating Officer. He has to go out and he has the right to examine witnesses and to summon them to appear before him. How can a man who knows only one language do that work? What is he going to do when he deals with people who don’t understand English. The Minister’s argument that because he is an official in the Public Service he ipso facto has to be bilingual, is not correct. There are numerous officials who are not bilingual and if the Minister appoints a man who know only one language as Investigating Officer, what can he do?

Do you accept it?

No.

Why not?

This, Mr. Chairman, is painting the lily and adorning the rose if you like. Why keep on repeating this bilingual business when they have got to be bilingual?

Who says so?

I am saying so. It is a most extraordinary thing, hon. members opposite had their representatives on that Select Committee, they examined this Bill very meticulously, judging from the amendments they moved, and they did not see this point there, they did not realise the necessity for this. This is merely a duplication of qualification.

Why?

Because the Public Service regulations require that an officer must be bilingual.

It is not so.

It is so.

Do you mean to tell me that all your public servants are bilingual?

Look here, an officer is defined as a person on the fixed establishment, and a person on the fixed establishment must, under the Public Service regulations, be bilingual.

Does the hon. Minister really mean to indicate that all the members of the Public Service are properly bilingual?

I don’t know that.

The Minister very well knows that there are quite a large number of Civil Servants who are not bilingual.

Give me an example.

There are dozens of them and he knows it. Every day I meet some of these older Civil Servants who were in the Civil Service before Union and who are unilingual. The Minister knows that he is merely trying to mislead the House.

Order, the hon. member must not say that.

Let me put it this way, the Minister in that statement is certainly bringing the House under a wrong impression. If the Minister goes to his Secretary for Labour he will tell him that even in his own department there are Civil Servants who are not properly bilingual, so that to say an Investigating Officer has to be a Civil Servant, and for that reason he must necessarily be bilingual, is certainly bringing the House under a totally wrong impression. The Minister himself has seen the necessity for bilingualism as far as the inspectors are concerned, and if that is so as far as they are concerned, it is necessary as far as the Investigating Officers are concerned, for the simple reason that these officials are given powers here, and very wide powers to investigate and call upon people to give evidence before them. These people, who can be compelled under this Bill to give evidence, may be unilingual, they may be Afrikaansspeaking people who do not understand English, and the Investigating Officer will have to make use of interpreters. The Lord help them if their interpreters are as weak as very often the Minister’s interpreters in this House are.

The Minister is a joker, and he was trying to make a joke by telling us this afternoon that all the members of the Public Service are bilingual. Let me say this to the Minister that I am a member of the Select Committee on Public Accounts, and the Minister should know that officials appear before that Select Committee to give evidence. Let me tell the Minister, and the members of the Select Committee will support me, that time and again we are compelled to put our questions in English because the officials cannot properly follow our questions. If the Minister really contends that all members of the Public Service are bilingual, then I want to ask him next year, when the Select Committee on Public Accounts sits, to come and see how many of these highly placed officials are not even able to follow Afrikaans if a question is put to them in that language.

I want to lodge a serious objection to the repeated charges made by the Minister of Labour that we should have moved this, that or the other in Select Committee. The Minister knows perfectly well that we had a general discussion before we started—that discussion was not manipulated—and he knows that the question of bilingualism was very definitely dealt with.

Not in this connection.

If I were the Minister and if he were in my position, I wouldn’t have been annoyed at all. He gets annoyed on every possible occasion this afternoon simply because he has a bad case. Let me tell the Minister that I objected on the second reading to the very limited amount of time given to the Select Committee. I said that the Select Committee should have taken evidence and called for papers but that it did not have the opportunity of doing so. We had to race at 100 miles per hour because we had to finish before the 6th and now the Minister comes here and makes charges against us because we did not raise all these matters in detail in Select Committee.

There would have been ample time if you had not delayed the Select Committee with all kind of trivialities.

The Minister has told us that he is consistent. Well let me ask him this. We have been talking here about the qualifications of the Investigating Officers. According to the Minister of Labour that officer is an official and he therefore has to be bilingual. Well, the inspectors also are officials. Why then has the Minister agreed to the inspectors having to be bilingual and why has he had the provision inserted in the Bill?

The inspectors are not officials.

Their salaries are paid out of the Exchequer. The inspectors are appointed by the Minister or by another Department and they are paid out of the Exchequer. They occupy the functions of officials. Now what are the powers of an Investigating Officer according to this Bill? In Clause 6 (3) it is provided that a chairman of the board can summon people and put them under oath to take their evidence. This Investigation Officer acts with the power of the chairman. He can therefore act as a judicial officer and take evidence from people who appear before him and I want to know what moral right the Minister has to say that a man performing those functions needn’t be bilingual. If the Investigating Officer summons a man to appear before him to be examined, if he demands the production of certain books and documents—if the Investigating Officer does these things when he is sent out by the board, it means that to all intents and purposes, he is functioning like a magistrate on the Bench. Can the Minister tell us that in those circumstances it is unnecessary for that officer to be bilingual? And when he tells us that all officials are bilingual, then he knows that that is not so. A number of them know only English. There is not a single one of them who knows only Afrikaans. I hope the Minister will regain his quietness of spirit and that he will try not to counter our arguments with a lot of trivialities. The Minister has not the right to make charges against us and to say that we did not make these proposals on Select Committee. But we have the right to make a charge against him because he is the man who drove us along and made us go at this excessive speed.

There is no reason why there can be no difference of opinion as to why certain people should be bilingual or not. But there are certain facts on the basis of which this discussion is taking place—facts about which we must be honest. The rules of this House will not allow me to say that the Minister has deliberately given wrong information, and for that reason I shall not do so. But what I want to say is this that the Minister has given information here which, if he used his intelligence for a moment, he would have known to be incorrect. He would have known that he was misinforming the House. It is almost incredible that a man in his position should not know that that information is false because anyone with the slightest bit of intelligence, occupying a ministerial seat should have known that it was false. Anyone wanting to give the correct facts would have known it. But notwithstanding the fact that anyone wanting to use his intelligence, even to the slightest extent, would have known that that information was false, the Minister none the less gave that information here. What I say is that any individual who has a modicum of intelligence and uses that intelligence would have known that those statements were false.

Very cheap talk.

Let us be honest about this. The Minister knows perfectly well that the information he has given the House is not correct, that he has given it under a misapprehension, because there are people in the Service who are not bilingual. He knows, and we know, how they got there. What we want to prevent now is that those people who are not bilingual are appointed to those positions. The reasons why they should not be appointed to those positions have been stated by the hon. members for Boshof (Mr. Serfontein) and Waterberg (Mr. J. G. Strydom). I shall move the adjournment of the debate if the Minister doesn’t listen to what we are saying. We are tired of the frivolous manner in which the Minister treats this matter and plays about with a subject which is very serious as far as we are concerned. I say that the reasons have been indicated why these people must be bilingual. These people are in daily touch with the public and the Minister has told us that thousands of that section of the public are unilingual. If it is a fact that thousands of our soldiers are unilingual Afrikaans-speaking, hon. members will appreciate what the position of those people is going to be if unilingual Investigating Officers have to interview them to find out what their difficulties are, and to make investigations in regard to their applications. How can we expect those people to be able to do their work if they do not even know the language of the people whom they have to contact. There is another point to which I wish to refer. We have for many years been fighting on the question of bilingualism in the Public Service, and that section of Parliament which is least in favour of bilingualism has laid down this policy that only those officials have to be bilingual who are in constant touch with the public. Even the biggest enemies of bilingualism have agreed that if an official has to deal with the public and has to be in contact with the public, he has to be bilingual, although in other cases it has not been considered necessary. Here we have the case of officials who have to be in direct touch with the public—they are the very type of officials in respect of whom the enemies of bilingualism have agreed that it is essential that they should be bilingual. But what does the Minister say now? He says that these people need not be bilingual. The Minister today objects to this small concession which those enemies of bilingualism were prepared to make. He is going backward—further backward—than the enemies of bilingualism were prepared to go. Surely the thing is becoming a farce. The Minister is not only displaying a desire to protect unilingualism, but the policy he adopts is definitely a policy against bilingualism in South Africa and in our Service, and we want to lodge the strongest protest against it.

I wish the soldiers could have been here this afternoon so that they could have seen the way in which the Minister desires to look after their interests. The Minister will pardon me if I say that he is temperamentally unfit to pilot this Bill through Parliament. He said that he was prepared to accept the amendment, but because of certain remarks by the hon. member for Moorreesburg (Mr. F. C. Erasmus) he was not going to accept it.

Isn’t it childish?

Can one imagine any one turning an important question into an absolute farce as the Minister is doing? After some members on the other side of the House had criticised the Bill this morning the Minister got up and said that they were so small-minded that they wanted to get him out of the Cabinet, and they were stabbing him in the back. I ask you, Mr. Chairman, how can one level any useful criticism when one has to deal with a Minister of that mentality? I told the Minister this afternoon that he was too sensitive. He regards everyone as a potential enemy. He makes personal remarks and he differentiates between members. Can he not lift himself above personalities, so that one can deal with this Bill on its merits? The Minister now argues that it is self-evident that these Investigating Officers must be bilingual because they have to be Government officials. Let me give him an instance. In one particular department eight unilingual officials have been appointed to the permanent staff since 1939, and 739 people were appointed temporarily. This was in the Department of Railways, and if that is the way the Department of Railways carries on, why should not the Department of Labour do the same thing? And why should we not have the same in the Department of Finance, and in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, and in the Department of Public Works? I only want to add this, and with these words I shall conclude; I only wish that the soldiers could have been here this afternoon and could have seen the sort of thing we have to deal with, and could have seen that the Minister concerns himself with personalities instead of dealing with the subject on its merits and in the interests of South Africa.

I want to thank the Minister sincerely for the kind remarks he made about me a few minutes ago, but I would appreciate those words a great deal more if I could get them on paper and take them to mv bank manager and obtain a credit slip for them. The Minister said that I had tried on the Select Committee to make concrete and constructive contributions to the formulation of this Bill. May I be allowed to go further than that, and give you the assurance, Mr. Chairman, that on all sides there was a spirit of co-operation on the Committee? No party political aspect was emphasised. Members of the United Party voted with us on questions of importance in the formulation of this Bill, and I particularly want to mention the names of the hon. member for Vryheid (Dr. Steenkamp), the hon. member for Woodstock (Mr. Russell) and the hon. member for Parktown (Mr. Stratford). Unilingual English-speaking members felt that it was absolutely essential for the principle of bilingualism to be maintained in this country and the repercussions which apparently are going to follow on the actions of those members in this House are an indication to me that the bona fides are on this side of the House. The hon. the Minister comes along now and says that we know that every member of the Public Service is bilingual, and that the law demands that they are bilingual. The Minister used that same argument in Select Committee on Clause 8, when we insisted that the inspectors should be bilingual. The powers of this individual are very wide. We see in Clause 9 that he can enter any premises, that he can demand the production of books, and that he can instruct any individual to appear before him for examination.

Did you say that I used that argument in connection with Clause 8?

Yes.

No, I gave you an amendment.

I shall come back to that. In Select Committee we specifically pointed out the importance of this position. It is an important post, and there is a possibility of a junior official occupying it. The reason why I referred to Clause 8 was because the Minister used the same argument there. He opposed us there, and it was only because the majority on his side voted against him that we got the amendment. Had it not been for the fight I put up it would not have gone through.

You know that that’s a lie.

On a point of order, is the hon. the Minister allowed to say that the hon. member is telling a lie?

I said that he knew that it was a lie.

I ask you again, Mr. Chairman, if the hon. the Minister is allowed to say that an hon. member is telling a lie?

The hon. the Minister must withdraw it.

Very well, I withdraw it, and I give the same explanation which Mr. Sauer gave us a little while ago.

On a point of order, is the hon. the Minister allowed to refer to the hon. member for Humansdorp (Mr. Sauer) by name?

You mean the hon. member for Humansdorp.

I mean the hon. member for Humansdorp with his lengthy explanation.

The hon. the Minister must not refer to hon. members by name.

Very well, I shall say the hon. member for Humansdorp. He gave an explanation in a roundabout way which amounted to the same thing.

The hon. the Minister said that the hon. member for Gezina (Dr. Swanepoel) told a lie.

I withdraw that.

… and that he knew that it was a lie. The hon. the Minister must withdraw it.

I withdraw it, and I do so in the same terms as the hon. member used.

The hon. member must withdraw it.

I have already done so.

Unconditionally.

The hon. member may proceed.

If it were necessary for this amendment to be inserted that bilingualism is necessary—in view of the fact that the Minister used almost the identical argument as that which he has now used, that argument doesn’t hold water. If he could concede the point in Clause 8, and if he found it necessary to concede it there, then I contend that it is just as necessary for him to concede it in this clause.

I am going to try and say what I have to say in English. I don’t believe in translators or interpreters. When the Select Committee met to discuss the matter they passed several general resolutions which are not in the minutes which have been published. The Minister will remember that the question of the bilingualism of inspectors was discussed for a long time and eventually it was passed by the Select Committee, and when the Select Committee met to consider this Bill the amendment in connection with bilingualism was not among the amendments given to the members of the Select Committee. And when we went through the amendments and saw that that amendment had not been included, we immediately raised the matter, and then an officer of his Department had the amendments and passed them round. The Minister fought bilingualism ….

That is not true.

The Minister should allow his mind to go back. His memory must be failing. The matter was discussed for a long time.

I very seldom rise to a point of order, but I do characterise that as being absolutely untrue—that I fought bilingualism. Having made that statement I object to its being said again.

The Minister was not in favour of our amendments. Probably I made the statement too widely when I said he was against bilingualism. What I meant was that he was against the provision that the inspectors should be bilingual and I say that that amendment was not among the amendments given to us, and it was only given to us after we had raised the question. The answer given to us at the time was that he was considering it to see whether we could not do without it. Now I want to ask the Minister this. Who appoints this officer? He doesn’t appoint him.

The Board does.

The Board appoints him. The Minister has no say in the appointment at all although he gave me the assurance that when they appointed these officers he would see that they were bilingual.

I never gave you that assurance and I am refusing to give you any assurance. I am not giving you any more assurances.

I don’t want any more assurances if you don’t want to give them. I am prepared to fight for everything I think right, and I shall do so whether the Minister gets cross or not. I have had a good deal of experience and my experience is that when a man gets cross he is usually wrong.

Then you must always be wrong.

It is no use the Minister saying these things, they don’t get him any further. I don’t mind what he says, because I know that if he says these things about me it shows that I mean something in this House, that I have same authority, otherwise he wouldn’t say these things. So they don’t mean anything to me. Now the Minister admits that the officer is not appointed by him but by the Board.

You knew that before.

You never said so in the House.

Why should I? Shall I read the Bill out to you?

There is no need to read it. I probably wouldn’t understand it if you read it.

The hon. member must address the Chair.

This officer who is described as a civil servant is supposed to be bilingual—we know that the civil servants appointed today must be bilingual. The Minister has already admitted that there are many of these officers who were on the old staff, before Union, who are not bilingual. He admits that.

I have never admitted that.

Whether you admit it or not, it is a fact.

Your intervention is not very desirable.

The position is this, that these officers are not appointed by the Minister, and however much the Minister may give us the assurance, or however much he may try to make these men bilingual, there are civil servants who are not bilingual, and the Board can appoint any one of them, and seeing that the hon. gentleman has refused to make the members of this committee bilingual, they would probably try to secure one who is not bilingual. What objection can the Minister have to seeing that all these people are bilingual and to put it in the Bill, except just being …

Spiteful.

Not quite spiteful, obstinate, pigheaded. It is pure obstinacy. Because if he really believes that all the civil servants are bilingual, then if any of these civil servants are appointed as officers designated to carry out an enquiry it automatically follows that the man who is appointed will be bilingual. So what objection can the Minister have, other than being obstinate? He does not carry the matter further. For his own good I would suggest he accepts this amendment, because on his own showing he loses nothing by it. The position is this, that we are not prepared to leave this section as it is. We desire that this officer should be bilingual. I do not want to prolong this discussion, but I would like to see the officer described as a European, because there is nothing in the Act to stop them appointing a coloured man. It has to be remembered that they are giving him the same powers as they are giving to the chairman. He can administer the oath, and if a person makes a false oath he can be put into gaol. We are asking for this concession that this man be bilingual, and the other side refuses to accept it. The Minister does not appoint them. He has no control over the Board. The Board appoints them, and if the Minister is so anxious to see bilingualism carried out in the country he ought to accept the amendment. He has observed that we did nothing about this in the Select Committee, but he knows that we did not so meticulously discuss the Bill from A to Z. He knows that from the first day we started on the Committee, he said that on the following Wednesday the Bill had to be brought before the House. We carried on, sometimes there was squabbling, sometimes there was not; but neither he nor the other members have got all the wisdom, and we may have made a mistake. If somebody else sees the mistake and if something did pass that we did not notice—and remember that we only sat in Committee for six days—we can hardly be blamed if we have left something out that the House or the country now desires and which it is only right to have proposed. It was proposed by someone who was not on the Committee. He has seen a fault there. If the Minister had accepted that we could by now have been half way through the Bill. He cannot take exception when we want to see ourselves protected. It is not really a concession he is giving us; it is a right we are entitled to. And he should have seen it in the first instance and given it. Now he appears to be too obstinate to consider the matter at all. In the meantime we have had this exchanging of words and the Bill is being held up.

What really astonishes me in the attitude of the Minister of Labour is his stubborness, his insistence on refusing to budge when a reasonable request is made to him. He himself admits that there are thousands of English as well as Afrikaans-speaking people who know only one language, and yet he refuses to provide here that the Investigating Officer must be bilingual. Is that his gratitude to the people who have risked their lives? Assuming an Afrikaans-speaking person appears before an Investigating Officer who knows only English. He will have to have an interpreter, and the man will have to stand hat in hand hoping that his complaints will be properly interpreted. What a humiliation to the man who has sacrificed himself for his country! Supposing an English-speaking soldier were to appear before a coloured official who knew only Afrikaans. Do you think the English-speaking man would tolerate such a position and would place his complaints before that man? And that is the sort of thing which may happen, because the Minister has refused to insert the word “European”. If the Minister wants to be fair and reasonable he should accept the amendment.

I want to ask the Minister to abandon this malicious attitude and also to be less stubborn, and to get back to the fine spirit which prevails in this House this morning. Let him comply with this courteous and reasonable request. What we are pleading for are the interests and the rights of these people who are concerned in this matter. In the days when the Minister himself was a back-bencher and not a leader, the country had no greater champion of freedom of thought and freedom of speech, but to my great astonishment I had to listen to him today ignoring and treating with contempt back-benchers, in a way no dictator has ever done. Why? Simply because they wanted to think and speak freely. Today he is occupying a position of authority and he does things which he would never have tolerated when he was a back-bencher. I have known him for 30 years. In days gone by he would have fought to the last soapbox for freedom of speech and freedom of thought. But now we find that all his professed ideals were nothing but words. Now that he has the opportunity of converting his words into action, he turns a somersault, and he dictates to the House. I wonder what it would have saved the country if we could have turned into the coin of the realm all the time we have had to spend on fighting for bilingualism. We have to fight from trench to trench; first for our rights of recognition of the policy of bilingualism, and afterwards to get that policy applied. I wonder what it has cost so far. And then I wonder how much the fight for the existence of white civilisation in this country has cost. Imagine what we could have saved. And now I want to ask the Minister to return to the spirit which prevailed this morning. I think the Minister must be very sorry that he spoke as he did this morning. He must regret his hard-hearted attitude—I would almost say his unnatural attitude. I don’t know what annoyed him, but he was annoyed when he came into the House and he has been annoyed all day long, and just because one man is annoyed the country’s business has to stand still for a whole day. Perhaps somebody said something which hurt the Minister. Well if it will help to get the country’s business done, let us beg his pardon, if someone did say something which hurt his susceptibilities. But even though he is annoyed we cannot allow him to ride roughshod over important principles. I want to ask the Minister to consider this matter dispassionately and to accept our reasonable request, because if he does not we shall have to keep on fighting him. We are anxious to conclude the business of the country and that is why we ask him to comply with our reasonable request.

I am not going to waste any time on the fact that the Minister has made a fool of himself in this House today in an unprecedented manner by stating openly for the whole press to hear it—and I hope the English press will report the Minister’s statement in full—that there are no unilingual officials in the Public Service.

I didn’t say that.

I wonder if the Minister’s intelligence hasn’t become clouded.

Inspectors not officials.

But the whole debate has been about an official. The Minister has told us that there is no such thing as a unilingual official. The Minister with all the facts he has, with all the facts which anyone has at his disposal gets up here and makes such a statement. I must say that a man who can make statements like that shouldn’t sit on a ministerial bench. In fact he shouldn’t even be a member of Parliament, and it is high time that Benoni sent him about his business. But I want to appeal to hon. members opposite and to the Deputy Prime Minister. They have witnessed the attitude adopted by the Minister. They have seen that he refuses to give any assurances or to consider a single amendment from this side of the House. And I want to know whether the Minister of Labour in adopting that attitude represents the attitude of the Government? Is that the Government’s attitude? That not a single amendment, not a single suggestion from this side of the House is to be considered. If that is so, we know where we are and the Government can expect the worst. I appeal to hon. members opposite, and what more did the Minister say? He would not tolerate any member on his side of the House levelling any criticism against this Bill. Because this morning when two members on his side got up to advocate the principle of bilingualism how did the Minister react? Not only did he insult them by telling them that they had stabbed him in the back and that they had betrayed him, but he also said that if anything like that happened again he would walk away from the ministerial benches.

I did not say that.

You said that they would induce you to walk out. If that is his attitude the sooner he walks out the better, because what is the position? If hon. members opposite feel like we do about certain things in the Bill, they have to keep quiet. They are not allowed to talk; they are not allowed to express their views, because if they do they are accused of stabbing the Minister in the back and the Minisays he will walk out. That is what is said.

But you won’t step in.

Not into that position. I wouldn’t degrade myself to do so.

But I never said it.

I want to appeal to hon. members opposite; don’t allow yourselves to be treated like children; don’t allow yourselves to be treated like beings without any intelligence, like slavish followers of the Minister—and that of a Minister like the one there. I make an appeal to Members of Parliament to stand up for their rights—and if they feel for a cause, and I am convinced that many of them feel to as we do, stand up for yourselves and make yourselves felt. Do not allow a man like the Minister of Labour by childish threats curtail Members of Parliament so that they do not have the right to express their convictions. I also want to appeal to the Deputy Prime Minister. If the attitude adopted by the Minister of Labour is henceforth going to be the attitude of the Government, it will mean that there can be no co-operation. If the Government allows the Minister of Labour to get up here and say that he can give no assurances whatever, that he is not going to consider or accept any amendments proposed by this side of the House, the Minister of Finance must realise that there is going to be no concession of any kind from this side of the House, and he knows what that will mean.

Amendment put and the Committee divided :

Ayes—30:

Boltman, F. H.

Brink, W. D.

Conradie. J. H.

Döhne, J. L. B.

Dönges, T. E.

Erasmus, F. C.

Grobler, D. C. S.

Haywood, J. J.

Kemp, J. C. G.

Klopper, H. J.

Le Roux, J. N.

Louw, E. H.

Ludick, A. I.

Luttig, P. J. H.

Malan, D. F.

Nel, M. D. C. de W.

Olivier, P. J.

Pieterse, P. W. A.

Potgieter, J. E.

Stals, A. J.

Steyn, A.

Strydom, G. H. F.

Strydom, J. G.

Swanepoel, S. J.

Van Niekerk, J. G. W.

Van Nierop, P. J.

Warren, S. E.

Wilkens, J.

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

Noes—58 :

Abbott, C. B. M.

Abrahamson, H.

Alexander, M.

Allen, F. B.

Ballinger, V. M. L.

Barlow, A. G.

Bawden, W.

Bell, R. E.

Bodenstein, H. A. S.

Bowker, T. B.

Burnside, D. C.

Butters, W. R.

Christie, J.

Cilliers, H. J.

Cilliers, S. A.

Conradie, J. M.

Davis, A.

De Kock, P. H.

Dolley, G.

Du Toit, A. C.

Fawcett, R. M.

Friedman, B.

Gluckman, H.

Gray, T. P.

Hare, W. D.

Hayward, G. N.

Henny, G. E. J.

Higgerty, J. W.

Hofmeyr, J. H.

Howarth, F. T.

Johnson, H. A.

Kentridge, M.

McLean, J.

Madeley, W. B.

Marwick, J. S.

Miles-Cadman, C. F.

Mushet, J. W.

Neate, C.

Payne, A. C.

Prinsloo, W. B. J.

Robertson, R. B.

Stallard, C. F.

Steytler, L. J.

Strauss, J. G. N.

Sturrock, F. C.

Tothill, H. A.

Ueckermann, K.

Van den Berg, M. J.

Van der Merwe, H.

Van Niekerk, H. J. L.

Van Onselen, W. S.

Visser, H. J.

Waring, F. W.

Warren, C. M.

Waterson, S. F.

Williams, H. J.

Tellers: G. A. Friend and W. B. Humphreys.

Amendment accordingly negatived.

Amendment proposed by the Minister of Labour put and agreed to.

Clause, as amended, put and agreed to.

On Clause 7,

I should like to draw the Minister’s attention to Clause 7 (2) (a). It is provided there that the Committee referred to in Clause 1 can appoint certain sub-committees to consist of five members. The National Board consists of eight members, but these sub-committees consist of five members. Such a sub-committee has to deal in the first place with appeals, which can then be referred to the higher committee. In regard to the composition of these committees no provision is made in the direction of what we have been discussing in connection with the Board, namely, the question of bilingualism and of European membership. We are very anxious to have it laid down in connection with these committees as well, and we want the Minister to agree that the members of these committees must be bilingual. There is no reason to repeat all the arguments we have had. I only want to say to the Minister that 34 years have passed since Clause 137 was adopted, and we are astounded that we still have to stand here and plead for our language rights and for bilingualism. I also want to remind the Minister that a general election was fought last year on the subject of bilingualism, and now we have to fight the same issue again. It astounds one that after the result of the 10th May this question has to be raised again. We have to refer to these matters in order to point out that the country insists on bilingualism, and we want to do our best to achieve that end in the near future. But, apart from that, bilingualism is a requirement to enable these committees of five, which are important bodies, to do their work effectively. They have to answer their purpose. Hundreds of white soldiers and coloured soldiers will have to approach those committees in every ward in the country. This is not a central Board, but there are numerous committees all over the country, and we consider it important that the various elements— coloured people who are unilingual, Afrikaans-speaking people among our soldiers who are also unilingual—when they appear before those committees will be able to plead their interests in their own language. It is even more necessary here that it is in connection with the other body that these various elements should be considered. Here, more even than in the other case, we have to insist on bilingualism being carried out. I also want to point out that it is a question of self-respect as well. Many of us are bilingual and able to put our case forward in English, but we want to see our mother tongue respected when we appear before such a committee. It is not a matter of not understanding the other language, but we want our mother tongue to be recognised. Every English and every Afrikaansspeaking person is entitled to plead his case in his own language. It is a question of self-respect and the right of our language and of our status. And that is why we are anxious to have our language rights given full effect to. That much for bilingualism. Then we come to the question of the maintenance of our white civilisation. Here the proposal is under this Bill that coloured men are to have the right to serve on those committees. We on this side want only Europeans on those committees. We take up our stand on this, that the whites are the guardians of the coloured, and we do not want a coloured man to take up the position of a guardian of the white man, and that is what is going to happen if this clause is passed in its present form. That sort of thing isn’t tolerated in the Army today. It is not tolerated anywhere. We have to guard against that condition of affairs, and we want to prevent it from being inserted anywhere in our legislation. I further want to point out that the powers of these committees are particularly great. There will be the right of appeal to these committees. The committee can affirm or reject appeals and penalties. The committee can decide whether the appeal of a European shall be upheld or rejected. The Minister doesn’t want to give us any assurance that there are going to be no mixed committees. Nor does he want to give us the assurance that a white man will not be made to appear before a coloured committee, and that is why we want it to be provided for in the law. The committee has extensive powers. As I have said, the committee has the power to review appeals. Under Clause 12 the committee has this far-reaching power that it can change conditions; in other words, that it can act in conflict with certain conditions laid down here. We therefore contend that this is a committee with far reaching powers, and where it applies to Europeans we are not going to allow it. I therefore move the following amendment—

I shall be very glad if the Minister will explain to us exactly what he has in mind with these committees under this clause. I assume that these committees will operate more specifically in a restricted sphere. The Board acts in regard to the country as a whole. Will the committees operate only in a restricted sphere? Will the Minister explain to us how he is going to appoint these committees. There are white soldiers and there are coloured soldiers, and these committees are there practically for the soldiers only. I should like know from the Minister how he is going to constitute those committees. Is he going to have separate coloured committees for the coloured soldiers? Is he going to have separate white committees for the white soldiers? Is he going to have separate native committees for the native soldiers, and separate Indian committees for the Indian soldiers? Is that his object? If it is not his object to have separate committees for the different races is it his object to have joint committees on which white soldiers and coloured soldiers and Indian soldiers and native soldiers will sit together? Does that happen to be his idea? Whatever the position may be, if he is going to have a joint committee, what are going to be the functions of that committee? Suppose he has a separate committee for coloured people, what rights will such a coloured committee be able to exercise in respect of Europeans? Before I can give my proper attention to the amendment proposed by the hon. member for Christiana (Mr. Brink) I should like to know from the Minister exactly what he has in mind in regard to the activities and the constitution of the committees; are they to be separate committees for the different races? I cannot study the amendment of the hon. member for Christiana before I know what exactly the hon. the Minister has in mind with this clause.

The composition of this Committee will be on precisely the same lines in regard to method of election and appointment as the Board, namely a list of nominations will be given by the organisations concerned. The hon. member can see what the organisations are. Then the Minister will select from those nominations four persons. The Minister will consult with the Board before making those selections, so there will be the widest examination brought to bear on the personnel, but in the ultimate the nominations must come from the organisations concerned. These committees are being set up with the object of filtering returned soldiers into industry. They will estimate what this particular industry, as an individual industry can absorb, what the whole industry in the area can absorb, and how they should be itemised, distributed, as it were, between the individual sections of industry. They will go through all these industries. And then they will have on their books in prospect, because they will not be on their books until they are discharged by the demobilisation people …

I thought they would not be discharged until they had employment.

No, exactly, that is why I said on their books in prospect. I don’t want to mystify my hon. friend. In other words the demobilisation local committee will report to this employment committee that they have so many men on their register who require work at such and such, and so many at such and such and so many at so and so. And they will then be in prospect on the books of the committee, and it will be the job of the committee to see where and how these possible people can be accommodated in industry. I think it would help my hon. friend for Waterberg (Mr. J. G. Strydom) if I gave him the composition of the Cape Town committee—the present one. I may say that the present committees existing will be taken over in the first instance under this Bill. They will form the first employment committees. I hope the hon. member for Waterberg is listening because this will dispel his fears. If there is anywhere where it would be likely for coloured people to be on the committee, it would be Cape Town. Now this is the Cape Town committee—

Are they bilingual?

No, I don’t think so, but they are nominated by their respective organisations and just the same objection to insisting on their being bilingual occurred when we were discussing that question of the composition of the Board. You cannot force an organisation to nominate this, that or the other person.

I want to put this question to the Minister. He has read out the names of the members of the local committee in Cape Town. He can recognise any organisation which he regards as being representative of the soldiers. When the war is over he is going to have thousands of demobilised coloured soldiers. If those coloured soldiers have no organisation of their own today they will probably have one after the war. The Minister will have to regard that organisation as competent to speak on behalf of those people. The question has been asked whether such a coloured organisation will be regarded as competent. Will the Minister take their recommendations into consideration and will he, if they recommend a coloured man, appoint him to those committees. Yes or no?

You mean if he has been nominated by the soldiers?

The position must be this. These coloured men will probably establish their own organisation after the war. Very probably they will establish a separate organisation, especially in those areas where thousands of coloured men have joined the army. What is the Minister going to do if they make that recommendation? Will he give effect to their recommendation and appoint a coloured man to such a committee if he is nominated by them? That is what I want to know.

The hon. member has asked me a fair question. I hope he is not asking me for an assurance because you don’t accept my assurances.

I have merely asked you to state your intentions.

My intention is that Europeans should be on these boards.

The Minister has given us the names of the members of the committee who have already been appointed in Cape Town. This committee will quite probably operate if this law comes into force. Apparently four of them are unilingual.

May I explain this? I am not suggesting that this is going to be a committee for all time. We start off with these committees.

It makes no difference to my argument. He starts straightaway with four people out of five who are unilingual.

How do you know that?

I suspect it.

How do you know it?

The Minister himself doesn’t know it.

He couldn’t say whether they are bilingual or not but I suspect they are unilingual.

But how do you know it. My name is Robertson, but I can speak Afrikaans as well as English.

The Minister said so.

Well, there sits Warren, and he speaks Afrikaans too.

He tries at any rate.

Better than you do.

That was the impression which the Minister has given us. He said: “Quite possibly not”. The Chairman is bilingual, so he said but he gave the impression that the other four members were not bilingual, and according to his explanation they will not be either, because his demands in regard to bilingualism are fairly high so we may perhaps have a committee of five of whom four are unilingual. They will have to investigate the affairs of Afrikaans-speaking people and of coloured people who are Afrikaans. They have to appear before the local committee. What will the man who can speak only Afrikaans feel if he has to plead his cause before a committee which cannot understand him. It will cause a sense of injustice. Interpreters will be required and the whole business will be a fiasco.

Amendment put and the Committee divided :

Ayes—28:

Boltman, F. H.

Brink, W. D.

Conradie, J. H.

Döhne, J. L. B.

Dönges, T. E.

Grobler, D. C. S.

Haywood, J. J.

Kemp, J. C. G.

Klopper, H. J.

Le Roux, J. N.

Louw, E. H.

Ludick, A. I.

Luttig, P. J. H.

Malan, D. F.

Nel, M. D. C. de W.

Olivier, P. J.

Pieterse, P. W. A.

Potgieter, J. E.

Stals, A. J.

Steyn, A.

Strydom, G. H. F.

Strydom, J. G.

Swanepoel, S. J.

Van Niekerk, J. G. W.

Warren, S. E.

Wilkens. J.

Tellers: P. O. Sauer and P. J. van Nierop

Noes—59 :

Abbott, C. B. M.

Alexander, M.

Allen, F. B.

Barlow, A. G.

Bawden, W.

Bekker, H. J.

Bell, R. E.

Bodenstein, H. A. S.

Bowker, T. B.

Burnside, D. C.

Butters, W. R.

Christie, J.

Cilliers H. J.

Cilliers, S. A.

Connan, J. M.

Conradie, j. M.

Davis A.

De Kock, P. H.

De Wet, P. J.

Dolley, G.

Du Toit, A. C.

Fawcett, R. M.

Friedman, B.

Gluckman, H.

Gray, T. P.

Hare, W. D.

Hayward, G. N.

Henny, G. E. J.

Hofmeyr, J. H.

Howarth, F. T.

Humphreys, W. B.

Jackson, D.

Johnson, H. A.

Kentridge, M.

McLean, J.

Madeley, W. B.

Marwick, J. S.

Miles-Cadman, C. F.

Neate, C.

Payne, A. C.

Prinsloo, W. B. J.

Robertson, R. B.

Sonnenberg, M.

Stallard. C. F.

Steytler, L. J.

Sturrock, F. C.

Ueckermann, K.

Van den Berg, M. J.

Van der Byl, P.

Van der Merwe, H.

Van Niekerk, H. J. L.

Fan Onselen, W. S.

Visser, H. J.

Waring, F. W.

Warren, C. M.

Waterson, S. F.

Williams, H. J.

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

Amendment accordingly negatived.

Clause as printed, put and agreed to.

Clause Eight put.

I move—

Agreed to.

HOUSE RESUMED: