May I, Sir, with leave, give a further reply to a question asked in the House last week. My attention has been drawn to the fact that my reply to paragraph 4 of Question XLI given to the hon. member for Pinetown (Mr. Marwick) on Friday, 23rd instant, may be considered somewhat misleading. In order to obviate any misunderstanding, I should invite the attention of hon. members to a reply which I gave last year to a similar question put to me by the hon. member for Waterberg which is reported in Hansard (Vol. 47, col. 1039). The House being in possession of those facts, I construed the question put to me by the hon. member for Pinetown as an enquiry as to whether any new shares had since that date been taken up by the Corporation in the said cold storage company. On this assumption the reply had to be in the negative as the position is still as stated in my reply last year, with the exception that the Corporation has since disposed of the shares originally taken up by it.

I move as an unopposed motion and pursuant to notice—

I second.

Agreed to.

I move—

Mr. Speaker, in discussing this motion I want to ask hon. members on both sides of the House for this one day to forget that we are politicians and belong to different parties. This matter is not a political question. It is far and away above all party politics. South Africa is in danger. The land which we hold in trust for future generations in South Africa is being destroyed. This motion is intended to suggest to the Government ways and means by which we can deal with this great danger to South Africa. The question of erosion and the conservation of our soil, Mr. Speaker, is the greatest national problem with which this country is faced. I hope that hon. members realise that this is a statement which is perfectly true, and I want to discuss it with them in that spirit and from that standpoint, because on the question of soil erosion and the conservation of our soil, depends the future of South Africa and the future of our people in this country. If we fail, South Africa is doomed, but if we are successful, which we can be if the Government and the people of this country, do their duty, then South Africa may have a glorious and happy future. This matter of soil erosion and the conservation of our land is just as important to townsmen as to farmers, and we require the help of every man woman and child in this country in the effort we believe the Government is going to make in the near future. The people of South Africa are demanding many far-reaching things such as freedom from want and freedom from fear—which constitutes social security; more food and cheaper food, and the development of industries to give full employment. All these are matters of the greatest importance and urgency to our country, but the people of South Africa have not yet fully realised that we cannot have these schemes, that they are not possible, unless we construct the foundations for them through the conservation and safeguarding of our soil. All these schemes for the future must depend on that. It is the basis of everything that our people are demanding today. We can have them all, but they are dependent on a planned agricultural policy that will safeguard and conserve our soil. The basis of health and happiness and of life itself in every country of the world is its soil and its agriculture. There is nothing that degrades and destroys the character of a nation more than poverty, ill-health and unemployment. A country that gives its people no hope for the future, but suffering and misery, must destroy the soul of that people or nation. That lamentable result will occur if we allow the destruction of our soil. I want the social security people to realise this, they have held great mass meetings and have roused the people of this country and even members of this House on the food position. All this agitation is useless unless they get to the root of the trouble, which is the proper treatment of our soil and a proper farming system. If we put this on a proper footing we will have a surplus of essential foodstuffs in the future. Many of the world’s oldest civilisations have disappeared as the result of soil erosion and the creation of desert conditions. We know that in Central Asia large cities have been abandoned and the country around them has been converted into desert. We know also that North Africa was the granary of the Roman Empire, but today many of its great cities lie buried under the desert sands. It is also held by many who have investigated these things that the great Sahara was once a fertile country with rivers flowing through it, and maintaining a vast population. What has overtaken those lands is happening in South Africa today. We are in danger not of being buried under the desert but that our soil will be buried in the depths of the ocean. Past governments and the farmers of the country have been discussing these problems for the last fifty years, and more. I remember in my youth we had the Drought Commission with its striking recommendations, and we older farmers have carried on our farming with this great menace hanging over our lives ever since we can remember, and we seemed powerless to do anything to deal with it. We are grateful that at last the Government has decided to act. They have made a start. It is only a small beginning and it is quite inadequate, but it will, I hope, grow and develop. It is for us to protect that effort, to direct and guide it and encourage it so that it will become a great factor in saving this country. Much useful and valuable information has been obtained by the Government as the result of research and experimental stations and also through our extension officers, but the time has come now for us to do something more than research and experiments. The time has come when we must act, and we hope that the Government will realise that we cannot wait any longer. We have started on two reclamation schemes in this country, one at Vlekpoort and one in the Drakensberg. It is only when we started to work there that we came up against the difficulties and the snags which were bound to arise. Our present Division of Veld and Soil Conservation cannot possibly achieve much under the present scheme that restricts and hampers their efforts. I shall deal with that at a later stage. I trust that this motion will be accepted by members as giving them an opportunity of placing then views before the Government. We already have, as a basis, the views of Dr. Bennett, the great American expert on soil erosion and conservation, and we also have the report of the committee of the Department of Agriculture on the reconstruction of agriculture. Both the views expressed by Dr. Bennett and that committee of the Agricultural Department are most valuable, and I think they will go a long way towards solving the difficulties of soil conservation if the Government will adopt them. I hope that the House will induce the Government to realise that the adoption of the report on the reconstruction of agriculture has the full support of hon. members, because on it depends the future of agriculture in this country. Mr. Speaker, I now come to my motion. The preamble says—

I think the House can accept that preamble as true. I do not think it is necessary to discuss what has already happened. Much propaganda has already been made. We have had the National Veld Trust, the Department of Agriculture and Mr. Van Rensburg’s cinema pictures which, I think, have convinced the people of the country of the seriousness of soil erosion and of what is happening to the country. I should just like to quote a few brief passages from Dr. Bennett’s statements on the subject. Dr. Bennett, as you all know, visited this country at the invitation of the Union Government. He is, I think, without doubt one of the world’s greatest experts on this question, and he has successfully carried out conservation schemes in America. He says—

He goes on to say—

He also says this—

Those statements by Dr. Bennett while setting out the position clearly, gives us at the same time great hope that we may be able to deal with this big problem, because he says it is all so unnecessary and that our lands in this country are perhaps more suited to reclamation schemes and conservation schemes than lands in other countries of the world. That is with regard to the preamble of my motion. Mr. Speaker, the motion now states—

That is what I am hoping the Government will do, and I hope that hon. members in this House, in speaking on this motion, will be able to convince the Government that it is necessary for them to make conservation schemes a success and of value to this country. I would like to come to the Reconstruction Report of the Department of Agriculture. It will be impossible to deal with that at any length, but I shall mention a few of the most important of their recommendations. The report first states that the present schemes that the Government are undertaking, that is reclamation schemes, are only possible under the powers given to them by the Forest and Veld Conservation Act (No. 13 of 1941). Unfortunately that Act does not deal with anything else but reclamation, and does not give any powers in reference to the conservation schemes for our soil.

What about the game reserves?

The native reserves do not come into this question. They are quite in a different category. The Reconstruction Report states in reference to the Forest and Veld Conservation Act—

I think most of us farmers will agree with that. This report says that additional legislation is urgently necessary, and we want the Government to introduce this legislation to make it possible to deal with conservation scheme and the prevention of erosion, instead of them just dealing with the damage that has already been done by reclamation schemes. The recommendations of this committee suggest what is most necessary. They say with regard to certain malpractices in our farming system that there should be a restriction or prohibition of certain erosionpromoting practices. They mention amongst others—

1. (1) Uncontrolled veld burning—the time of year when burnt and frequency of burning should be controlled.

The second great thing they mention is overstocking. Overstocking is undoubtedly the reason for the deterioration of the veld to a large extent, and we should have legislation by which we could restrict and prohibit the overstocking of our land. Another thing they recommend is that there should be restriction and control of cultivation, of up-and-down cultivation of steep slopes; that farmers should not be allowed to produce only one kind of crop over a number of years on the same land. Perhaps the greatest of these harmful practices that they mention is—

The sources of many of our streams are being drained and put under the plough, so that they cannot absorb and hold the water that is needed for our streams. The committee then go on even to suggest there should be—

They also recommend that: there should be a limitation in the farming of goats, the goat being the most destructive animal we have in this country. They recommend that the farming of sheep should be restricted and controlled and kept to certain areas in this country. They suggest, too, that the Government should restrict the cutting up of farms into sub-economic sized plots. A lot of erosion occurs on farms which are too small to be cultivated economically, and the system of farming that has to be carried on on these small farms can destroy the land and cause erosion. The committee recommends, too, that attention should be directed to one of the greatest evils we have in this country, that is our labour farms. Most of the worst erosion we have in this country occurs on these labour farms, where natives have been allowed to congregate and overstock; the owners of the land have no interest in the land itself except as a reservoir for labour. The same argument applies to squatters, and to the native tenant system of labour. Many of our European farms are today ruined as the result of this system of labour. The farmer has to give up a large portion of his farm for stock, for the use of those natives, and they simply ruin the land. These are matters which this committee recommends we should control and even prohibit. There is also the question of our public services in this country, particularly our Railway Administration and our roads, that they should be forced not to destroy our land by erosion. The whole question resolves itself into this, that, our rainfall should not be allowed to damage our soil. The same thing applies to many of our towns which have large commonages. They do nothing to prevent soil erosion and the destruction of land in those areas. A further recommendation made by the commitee is in regard to the—

The recommendations under this head comprise a large number of things, but amongst the most important of them are—

There are many of these examples of conservation practices that should be encouraged, but these are among the most important, and in elaborating on them the report says that the need for supplying farming with fencing material on reasonable terms is particularly urgent—

I mention these few things only in that report. I feel sure that every farmer in this House has read the report carefully, so there is no need to go deeply into this question in discussing this matter. I want to come now to the work the Government is doing on the present reclamation areas, and I wish to speak expressly about the Drakensberg area, as it is in my constituency. I have spent much time on it, and just before coming to Parliament I visited that area, inspected the work that is being done there and visited farmers who were anxious to participate in the work that the Govern-, ment intended to do there. First of all, I should like to point out that this area comprises 3,000 square miles, which is about 1,000,000 morgen of ground. On it there are 800 farms. We have native locations and a large amount of Crown land, and all the men we have to deal with that large area are three officials. They are very good men, men of practical experience and men who have done wonderfully fine work in the past. But the fact that they have to provide every farmer with a planned system of farming on his farm, which also means the survey of his farm and the planning of the work that has to be done there, indicates the impossibility of their task. The same applies to all the farms in that area, but these men have not only to plan the farming systems but they have also to survey and plan and supervise the carrying out of them. The farmers in that area are most enthusiastic on the subject of soil erosion and are most-anxious to get on with this good work, but at the rate these three men can work it would take a lifetime before they could complete the work that is necessary in respect of these 800 farms. In the meantime, these men have to sit still, because they cannot start work until the planning of their farms has been completed and agreements entered into. So we require a very much larger staff of these officials, or it will take a lifetime before the work can be done. Also the plant that has been supplied for that scheme is negligible. I have seen the gangs working there, and have seen natives with picks and shovels and wheelbarrows doing the work that should be carried out with the assistance of tractors and bulldozers. How are we going to get anywhere if that is the sort of system that is going to be adopted. We have in this country a wonderful national road system with a wonderful and complete mechanical plant, and I think that the work that we are now asking for is of equal importance as national roads, and there should be mare available sufficient plant of the right type. Unless we are prepared to provide the plant that is necessary for this work it will take a lifetime before it is completed, and it may even take longer than most of us can ever expect to live.

What will happen about the native locations?

I will come to that later on, with regard to the staff and personnel that is required on this work. When I visited that area, as I say I only found three officials, one an engineer, the man who was at the head of this work and one who does research and experimental work for the farms in that area. Those are the men engaged in the development of this scheme. Dr. Bennett, has I see, mentioned in one of his speeches that this work should have at least 1,000 well-trained men engaged in it, and they should make it their life-work and see in it a career for their future. What I saw there was a few poor whites, down-and-outs from the towns, and those are the men who are carrying on the work on these schemes. Is that good enough for the great scheme we hope to put into operation in this country? It has come to that, because the work should be made attractive and interesting, and the Government should be prepared to pay the wages and salaries to attract the right type. I would like to read what the “Sunday Times” says about this. They have a most valuable source of information on this subject, and the remarks made in their article will convey some idea to hon. members of the state of affairs—

And then it goes on to give the scales of pay, which are absurd. I would just like to mention one, foremen get 12s. 6d. a day, and their assistants even less. Foremen need a fair amount of specialists’ training, but their pay being so small, when once they are trained they naturally look for employment elsewhere. These foremen are some of the most essential men on these works because they are in charge of labour gangs and the actual work is done by them. If we only offer the foreman who does that important work 12s. 6d. a day, and even less, with very small rates of increase, how can we expect to get suitable men for this work? As I say, the type of people we get at these works are the poor whites who cannot get employment elsewhere and down-and-outs, who are not suitable for a job of this sort. Now, I would like to read also what Dr. Bennett says about this. He has visited these areas and knows what the position is, if anyone knows, and he has also been in charge of huge conservation works in America, and I think we can take what he says as being not only right, but as the methods to be adopted. He says that the absolute necessity for a trained staff of experts large enough to meet the needs of the country has been urged by him from the beginning. To combat soil erosion in South Africa it is essential that the personnel should be given training in the field as soon as possible. The department or organisation should be permitted to make appointments to give the necessary training to men in South Africa. But these men cannot do the job on these miserable salaries, which mean they have to worry and be anxious about their wives’ and families’ welfare, instead of giving their best to their jobs. He also says that the necessary equipment for such a scheme should be purchased, such as bulldozers and other necessary mechanical plants. Well, Mr. Speaker, I wish to impress upon the Minister that unless we can make this job attractive to the men employed on it we will not succeed. We were hoping that a very large number of our returned soldiers would be employed on the work, but if we are going to give them starvation wages, as Dr. Bennett pointed out, we will not get the men and we will not get the work done. Dr. Bennett mentions in some of his talks also that America today is spending in one year nearly 100 millions on these conservation schemes. They have done an enormous amount of work there. We in South Africa have voted a capital of a good deal less than £100,000.

About £10,000.

They have voted a lump sum to be spent over a period of years and only a certain amount is available for each year. As I have said, it will take a lifetime at that rate. On the basis of what we have to do in this country, I have worked it out that it will take 1,000 years to do the work that is necessary to save the soil.

It may be a million years as things are going now.

By that time there will be no land to save. I think the Government should provide £5,000,000 per annum, because Dr. Bennett says we will need £100,000,000 to save the soil, and it should not take more than 20 years to do it, which is a generation. If the Government can see their way clear to find £5,000,000 a year, we can hope that in 20 years most if not all of this work will be completed. We have been spending, as everyone knows, £100,000,000 a year on our war effort. To save our land and to save South Africa we require £100,000,000 which will save it for all time, and there should be no difficulty in finding that amount of money for such a purpose. I would like to recommend to the Minister that he should look at it from my point of view. I know that the Minister of Finance is a difficult man to convince on agricultural matters. We have difficulty but I think that if every member in this House and all the farmers’ associations and all the societies in the country and the Whole of the community would make a definite stand on this question and not only impress the Government but force it to spend this money on this great work, the advantages we will get out of it will be enormous, and it means the salvation of South Africa for all time.

Let the farmers’ associations help. Has not the Government got common-sense?

It is not only a question of common-sense but a question of necessity. It is only by these means that we can do anything. I do not want to take up the time of the House, because it is an important matter and many other hon. members will want to speak. I think the Government should find time to give us another day for the discussion of this great subject, because as far as I can judge there are many members who wish to talk and to give their views and advice on the matter, and it is Important that they should.

I second the motion of the hon. member for Drakensberg (Mr. Abrahamson). I will try to be brief so as to give as many hon. members as possible an opportunity of speaking on this most important subject. Everyone is familiar with the alarming increase in soil erosion, whether caused by man, by water, by drought, by wind or changing atmospheres or fire. Practically everywhere one sees examples of soil erosion, even at Cape Town, where there is a regular rainfall. There is wonderful reclamation work near Groote Schuur where Van Riebeeck’s wheat lands had degenerated to scrub and stones and the whole of the top surface had been washed away, and only sub-soil remained. Further up the mountainside, where a wrong policy of afforestation has been applied, there is leaching out of the soil and very serious erosion. There is no doubt that some of the waters produced by Table Mountain, if used in these eroded areas, would produce a veritable flower garden. Nature built up our soil from bare rock over the ages, and I believe that man, the destroyer, can implement the formation of soil and its fertilisation and bring on to the credit balance our soils in this country, whereas today they are on the debit side, brought about by wrong use and erosion. I say this because I have no doubt that volumes more water flow into the sea than is retained in the soil or in conservation dams and hundreds of thousands of tons of our best soils are washed into the sea annually. Our soil is a wasting national asset, and it has taken the world war to bring home to us not only our dependence on the soil but our ability to build it up and to pay for its restoration. We cannot plead ignorance. We are faced with a challenge and if we do not accept this challenge we only have defeat awaiting us. We are all responsible; not only is the farmer responsible but it is a national responsibility. Townsmen and farmers, everyone in a greater or less degree is responsible for the building up of our soil. I do not want to go into the history of why our soils have been so misused, but I have no doubt that everyone is agreed that their reclamation is a national responsibility. The success of social security and our public health plans are more dependent on soil stability than on anything else, and only victory over these natural forces now turned in the scale against us can assure the existence of a civilisation in this country. I hope that as we develop this civilisation we will not do so by exporting our products, but rather by importing population to participate in these products; that we will not buy the products of civilisation with our soil, as we did in the past, but build up a civilisation on our soil. Just as Holland has reclaimed land from the sea at enormous costs, so we can save our soils from washing into the sea. It may not appear to be economical but I have no doubt that eventually the money spent in this direction will return national dividends of inestimable value. Of course, where we can combine afforestation and irrigation to make profitabe returns, it is all to the good, but I feel that generally afforestation of our water sheds and the diversion of storm waters should not be calculated with the view of immediate profit but that regard should rather be had to the future. Our duty today is to save our land and to save our country, and we have to think in terms of posterity. We have our boys fighting for our liberty. If we waste our assets here this war and the sacrifices they have made will mean very little to us. I should like to mention the Fish River as an example of how our land has been wasted and washed into the sea. I have lived near this river. Lichtenstein records that in the 18th century this river was a series of pools, and today that is borne out by oyster beds and hippopotamus tusks embedded high up in the banks. Within the memory of the last generation we have had three devastating floods, and we have had Governments who claimed that the responsibility for these floods was not a national one. Within living memory in the Cradock district the Brak River was a succession of pools. Today it is an open watercourse, a raging torrent, which carries, in times of flood, one third silt in suspension and dilution, as regards volume. When one sees hundreds of thousands of tons of water flowing to the sea one can estimate how much soil we are losing from our fertile plains in the hinterland. Soil conservation in lakes and rivers must go hand in hand. Erosion has lowered the standard of living of our natvies. It has reduced their sense of security in the reserves. Their earnings in the towns and on the mines can never compensate this loss, which has undermined their stamina and virility to an alarming extent. If our soils are allowed to die our people will die also, just as the ancient civilisations of Persia and Carthage. We appreciate immensely this report of the Reconstruction Committee of the Department of Agriculture, and I would like to compliment the Minister and those officials responsible for its production. This resolution today asks the Minister to implement the recommendations contained in this report. I would like to read this paragraph—

This is a most valuable booklet. It deals with the disabilities and the wrongful practices of farming. It states that the area of the Union is 143,000,000 morgen and that barely 6 per cent. is cultivated, and we are not likely to cultivate more than 15 per cent. Only 1,000,000 morgen out of the 143,000,000 morgen is ever likely to come under irrigation. It also says that assured production under irrigation is of primary importance. It stresses the wrongful use of our agricultural resources and that reclamation is necessary on account of the evils attached to wrong farming methods, native agriculture and the farm labour system, which the member for Drakensberg stressed. I want to endorse the arguments brought forward by the hon. member for Drakensberg, and to repeat some of them. We all value the study he put into this motion and we thank him for bringing it before the House. The whole country will thank him for that service. This Report refers to the damage done by wrongful methods of making roads and railways, the wrong disposal of storm water and the unsatisfactory marketing and distribution which so many people suffer under today, and the work done by the Department of Agriculture. The Department of Agriculture has already spent more than £2,000,000 on soil erosion work and I do not think the public appreciates the extent of that service. It states that in the Eastern Province one million morgen are infested with prickly pear, and 250,000 morgen with jointed cactus. The Agricultural Department has taken eradication out of the hands of the farmers and I want to appeal to the Minister to complete this work as the Government is now responsible for it. In the report it mentions that biological control has not been a success and it is suggested that the farmer should pay 25 per cent. of the labour costs of chopping down prickly pear up to a maximum of 5s. per morgen. That is a very fair and reasonable proposition and I think that 100 per cent. of the farmers will agree with it. I would also like to stress what the member for Drakensberg mentioned, namely the necessity for research and an economic survey and the extension of education. I would like to advocate the formation or the introduction of more farm schools. Farm schools have done very good work with appreciable benefits to agriculture. There is no doubt that the farm school at Cradock has rendered great service, perhaps more than many of the agricultural colleges. I think the old caption of catching them while they are young is a very good one and I hope that our educational authorities will take advantage of what has already been done and institute more of these schools. I am very pleased that there will be a rise in the salaries of agricultural officers. This report says that we have lost some of the most valuable men and I hope that when our soldiers come back inducements will be given to them to take up this work. Dr. Bennett says that we need not train all these men in institutions, but that they can be trained at their work. I think that is what the Minister should aim at doing. I appeal to the Minister to introduce legislation to bring the recommendations of this report into operation. We have the Forest and Veld Conservation Act but this report says it does not go far enough, and I agree with that statement. I would like to see our Government legislate against veld burning, against herding small stock and evident over-stocking, against the wrongful disposal of storm water and that it should be a crime to plough against the contour. I would appeal to the Minister to consider the establishment of large-scale mechanised units to complete erosion work on farms on a long-term subsidised repayment system and that indivi dual returned soldiers be encouraged to purchase such plant to do the work under Government control. Also that the small dams scheme be extended to dams of £200 in value so as to hold more water and to make it possible for stock not to have to walk such long distances to water. I hope the Minister will take this into serious consideration. When travelling to Bloemfontein recently, I did not see one dam, unless it was a large one, that had any water in it. If our storm waters could be conserved in larger dams it would help materially to stop erosion. I hope that the Minister will subsidise improved methods of using the land as was done in Rhodesia where a bonus of 2s. per bag is paid on maize produced under specified conditions. If the Minister will implement the recommendations of his Department’s report he will do more for the rehabilitation of our people and the development of the country than was done by any other Minister or Government.

The hon. member for Drakensberg (Mr. Abrahamson) made an appeal to us at the commencement of his speech not to treat this motion from the party political point of view. I agree with him, but I agree with him not only in regard to that; this side of the House whenever a national question is being discussed, has never paid regard to party politics but to the best interests of the people, and I may tell him that though I am dealing with this motion and though I agree with him in certain respects and in others think he has not gone far enough, I shall not regard this question from the point of view of party politics. I only want to say this to the hon. member for Albany (Mr. Bowker) who seconded this motion. He has congratulated the hon. Minister of Agriculture in connection with his reconstruction report. How in heaven’s name does it help to lay a report on the Table of the House, a report which both sides of the House agree with to a large extent, and then to do nothing about it? I believe that no effect has yet been given to a single recommendation that has been made by the Reconstruction Committee. We are treated to an oration of congratulation for what the Minister has done. To return to the motion, this is no new matter. I think it is a matter with which we are all conversant, the soil erosion that is occurring in our country. We have had various reports about it. I only want to refer to the report by Col. Du Toit, who was chairman of the Drought Commission in 1923; they went into the whole position and stated that if the Government did not take steps the result would be that South Africa would very probably dry up and that the farming population would not make a living. The previous Government took steps in that direction, but I regret to say that although the hon. member for Drakensberg has made an appeal to us not to approach this matter from the angle of party politics, that question of soil erosion that was tackled by the previous Government has been terribly neglected by the present Government.

Wrecked.

Yes, that is simply what is happening. In the last few years they have permitted soil erosion to continue, and it is now estimated that a third of the soil of South Africa has been carried into the sea, and nothing has been done about it. When we turn to the estimates we find that very little provision has been made for combating soil erosion. The hon. member for Drakensberg spoke this morning about the Drakensberg scheme and the Vlekpoort conservation area. This year we find on the estimates £18,000 for the Vlekpoort conservation area and an amount of £53,000 for the Drakensberg scheme while £10,000 has been allotted for further conservation areas. Is it not ridiculous to place a sum of £10,000 on the estimates for a national matter such as this? The Minister is present today, and I hope that he will see that not less than £1,000,000 is placed on the estimates to combat soil erosion. If you set aside less it will be clear to me that we are only trifling with the question; we will only be causing further erosion of the soil and further decline of the farming community. This is not a question that affects only the farming community but also affects the towns, because the farmers have to produce for the towns and for industries and for that reason it is absolutely necessary that we should not trifle with this problem, but that an amount should be placed on the estimates which would place us in a position to combat soil erosion. The hon. member quoted a great deal this morning from the report on agricultural reconstruction. I should also like to quote a few points in connection with these schemes that have been suggested by us. The Reconstruction Committee recommended—

There we have the recommendation of the Committee on Agricultural Reconstruction. The hon. member for Albany pleaded very strongly for the Minister and said he was the best Minister we have ever had. Well, if he goes out into the country I do not think he will get that answer. But we must not view the matter from a party angle. The hon. member for Drakensberg made an appeal to us to stand firm and to induce the farmers’ associations to stand firm so that we could eventually bring the Government to the conviction that it is a national matter, and that it must be tackled. Good heavens, if you still have to persuade and convince a hopeless and planless Government that is beyond saving, and if you have to convince them after all these years, and all these reports that it is an urgent national matter, I begin to despair. For years and years we have had these reports, not only from people in the Department of Agriculture but also, for example, from Dr. Bennett, and they are still asleep and have not awakened. They are half dead and it only remains to bury them, and now the hon. member talks about us making plans to waken up the Government. The hon. member does not want us to take any stronger measures now than to try to organise the country to convince the Minister that the matter must be tackled with might and main. The Government stands condemned. Last year I mentioned the same matter under the Agricultural Vote. What happened? During the whole year nothing happened. Dr. Bennett came here, and all that we got was a film that has been shown in connection with soil erosion and the visit of Dr. Bennett, and now we have an amount of £10,000 on the Estimates. I am glad the Minister of Agriculture is here, and I make an appeal to him not to trifle with the matter any longer, but to wake up and get to grips with the problem. He should not allow the people to starve, but he should tackle the matter in order to conserve the fertility of South Africa and to increase it. If he does that he will be honoured. This is nothing new that I am suggesting; there are numbers of reports from the Department of Agriculture, and the attention of the Government and of previous Governments has been directed to them. The previous Government made a start in tackling the subject. This morning it has been stated that already £2,000,000 has been spent on combating soil erosion, but that was not expended by this Government but by the previous Government. I shall presently quote a few figures regarding the amounts that the present Government has expended. We know that we always get the reply, “There is a war on”. But must our people perish of hunger, and must the land sustain disastrous damage because the Government is thinking only about the war? Must our people perish of hunger and must the country suffer calamitous injury because the Government is only thinking about the war? I have before me the report of the Department of Agriculture for the year 1942-’43. The following year’s report is not yet available. I hope, nevertheless that we shall have it before the Agricultural Vote comes up for discussion, but I shall read from the report for 1942-43—

They go on to say that all who are interested must devote themselves steadfastly to combating the evil and the safeguarding of that industry. That is the report for 1942-’43, and now in 1945 it is stated that we must make an appeal to the Government and that we must organise the public to bring this to their notice. I did think there was a grain of intelligence on the other side of the House to enable them to realise that something must be done. This is not a new matter. The previous Government began to tackle it many years back. I have before me a letter from the Acting Secretary for Agriculture. I asked him what the Department had expended on matters connected with the combating of soil erosion. I do not want to quote all the figures, because there is a long list of them, but I will mention a few. For the years 1932 to 1935 the Department of Agriculture are unable to furnish any figures. That also is incomprehensible. How is it possible that the Department is unable to determine how much was spent from year to year in combating soil erosion? They say that no figures can be provided for that period. What is concealed behind that? Was there such a large amount spent in those years that they want to hide it?

You were a member of that Cabinet at the time.

And then there was something done. That is why you are hiding it. That shows how guilty the Minister is. He will not allow the figures to be divulged which show how much was done in those years. I only want to point out to him that in 1935 £38,044 was spent on the A scheme, in the subsequent year £34,000, in the year after that £57,000, in the year after that £77,000 and in the year 1939 before the present Government came into power, about £85,000 was spent. And what has been spent this year that lies behind us on the same scheme A? An amount of £13,568. All the millions that were expended by the previous Government simply went to waste as the result of the miserable and negligent attitude of this Government in connection with soil erosion. But let me come to scheme B. In 1935-’36 £44,000 was expended under scheme B and in the following year £33,000. But now I come to the extrordinarily good Minister, and we find that this year there has been spent under that scheme the tremendous sum of £120. This is what has been spent by this Government under the loan scheme; and then the hon. member for Albany says that this Minister is one of the best there has ever been. He is the best exterminator of the people of South Africa that there has ever been. I turn now to Scheme D. and find that in 1935-’36 £10,800 was spent on it, while in 1943-’44 we find the terrific sum spent under this scheme was £34. South Africa can simply be washed away and perish. There is a war on.

Should the Japanese have been allowed to come here?

I hope that the hon. member has been startled over the position and that he will stimulate the Minister to do something. I have only given these few figures. In regard to the other loans for fifty years the sum of £8,062 was expended in 1935-’36, and this year under the present Minister there was the colossal amount of £8. These are not my figures, but the figures of the Department. If the Minister of Agriculture harbours any doubts I shall hand over to him the letter from his officials. I do not believe that the officials let him down. I wrote the letter long ago, and here they say that they could not furnish the figures earlier because they have a lot of work. And then we come to the following paragraph—

We thus see that all the good work that was done before this Government assumed office, schemes on which much money had been expended were stopped, and that money was actually expended in vain. This Government brought the schemes to nothing. I should like to refer to a few other points, and the hon. member for Drakensberg also referred to some of these points. He referred to the fact that the Government is responsible in a great measure for the erosion. The Provincial Councils, under whom roads fall, are in a great measure responsible. The roads are being built without making proper provision for drainage. These drains are certainly being made, but they are made without any regard being paid as to whether they will not carry away the best soil. A stop must be put to that. It is not only the Provincial Administrations that make roads, but the Department of Railways also does a lot of damage. They do not mind how much damage their water does, so long as they can drain the water away from the railways. The soil of South Africa may be washed away, but that does not affect them. That is a position that no one can prove, a dreadful state of affairs, but the Government that we have sits still in spite of all the reports and recommendations that are made. Then I also want to say a few words about boreholes in connection with which there is also a recommendation. The drills have been sent to Arabia and such parts, and South Africa that requires this equipment, where cattle have to go a long distance, has no boring machinery. The boring material is sent away and the farmers cannot be assisted with their boreholes.

Business suspended at 12.45 p.m. and resumed at 2.20 p.m.

Afternoon Sitting.

When business was suspended I was showing how negligent the Government had been in respect of this great national question of erosion in our country. I had shown that the drills that we needed so badly were sent out of the country with the result that there was no drinking water at places where drinking water could have been made available. At certain places the water level had dropped, and it had to be obtained by boreholes. But the farmers could not get drills for that with the result that the cattle had to travel for miles to reach water. This caused footpaths which were trampled out, and this was the beginning of further soil erosion. Then there is another question bound up with soil erosion, and that is fencing. Every year we have pleaded here that the Government should take steps to make wire available for proper fencing of farms, and also to place the farmer in a position to divide his farm properly into camps, with water in each camp; otherwise it simply means that the animals have to walk a good distance to get to the water, with the result that the veld is trampled out. There has also been discussion about mountain fires. I only want to say a few words about that without going into the whole question. It is definitely necessary that our water sources in the mountains should be protected, and there are certain parts where the Government should be helpful in buying land. The big difficulty in the protection of mountains is that there should be enough look-outs, otherwise it does not help at all. We have seen the position here in Cape Town. For years and years we planted trees and spent thousands of pounds on it. Now there is one mountain fire after the other without the people who are responsible being caught, but on the other hand we must be careful in not disapproving fires in general and in all circumstances. In certain parts the grass must be burnt off, and in that connection I want to refer to the report of the Secretary for Agriculture for the year 1942. He says—

1. (a) Veld fires cannot be unconditionally condemned as undesirable in all cases. (b)

Sour veld that cannot be cut down must be burnt off every second or third year to remove the old grass that has accumulated.

I have quoted this because there are so many people who condemn veld fires in general. The farmer realises what the position is, and he will not burn his veld unnecessarily. But there are certain parts of the Transvaal bushveld where the grass grows to such a height that it must be burnt off otherwise it becomes covered by thorn bush. I want to return to the motion of the hon. member for Drakensberg (Mr. Abrahamson) and I want to tell him that as far as the first part is concerned I agree with him completely. But as regards the second part of the motion, I regret that I cannot agree with him. I shall give my reasons for that, and I shall also propose an amendment to alter the second part of the motion. In the first place, the hon. member desires that effect should be given to the report of the commission on Agricultural Reconstruction. Let me say that that commission recommended that when an area is proclaimed as a reclamation area and the work has been finished, the farmer cannot sell his farm without the approval of the Minister of Agriculture. We have already been so scared about becoming bywoners that we are on our guard at every turn to see that a farmer is not deprived of the just rights over his land and that he remains owner of his farm. The Government can grant assistance, and that assistance can, in a certain measure, be repayable. But this is a national question and the Government ought to bear the larger burden in this connection. In the second place, the hon. member says that the Government must take measures. In the last five years the Government have not taken any measures. All that the Government has done has been to get reports, and when the reports have been received they have been thrown in the wastepaper basket. Here we have a report on agricultural reconstruction. Ninety per cent. of that represents the declared policy that has been advocated all these years by this side of the House, and in respect of the other 10 per cent. we cannot agree with it. But the Government has not even carried out that policy. It has been referred to the Planning Council. Does the Planning Council still exist and has it been re-established? Further I object to the hon. member’s motion because he does not state what the Government should do. He does not make it clear whether the Government should spend £10,000 or £100,000 on combating erosion. I want to propose that the Government should make a definite plan covering a period of ten to twenty years to ensure that erosion shall be properly combated. We have seen that America devoted the sum of 75,000,000 dollars to soil reclamation and the restoration of humus. We come along with an insignificant little amount which really signifies nothing, while our soil is being washed away into the sea. Consequently I propose the following amendment—

This is something concrete. We ask that a sum of £1,000,000 a year should be set aside to combat erosion, and that there should not be just odd jobs here and there. We do not want to have a few furrows made here and there, because that cannot make a success of the work. We want to have a firm plan to make South Africa fertile again. We have seen that the Drought Commission as far back as 1924 reported that this erosion can become the cause of South Africa being transformed into a desert. We want South Africa to be a happy and flourishing country, and we cannot make South Africa happy and flourishing unless we, in so far as agriculture is concerned, see to it that our soil is not washed away and that land that has deteriorated is reclaimed. We must restore the soil of the country to the land, and for those reasons I move my amendment.

I second the amendment. I was hoping that the House would be full and that many of our city representatives would be here to listen to what I have to say. I am addressing the House in English because some of these gentlemen do not yet understand Afrikaans. I want to tackle this point entirely from a national standpoint, as I think we all try to do in this House. It is no good at all either one section or the other going over the faults we have been guilty of in the past. I think we all realise the mess we are in in South Africa, and unless we are prepared to put our hands to the plough and see that no water runs to waste to the sea, and that our soil is conserved, there is little hope of our carrying a bigger population in South Africa than we have today. I have said before that if we had proper measures to preserve the soil of the country, we could in a reasonable period produce sufficient food to support a population of more than twice the size we have today. If that is the case, and if we can find the money to enable us to spend £100,000,000 a year on war, surely we could spend £100,000,000 on projects that are vital for the future of this country and for the preservation of white civilisation. Where our forefathers have made mistakes, and they made mistakes not wilfully but owing to the stress of circumstances, we are not required to sit with folded hands and say : This country must go to the dogs agriculturally. We speak about developments that we envisaged in the fields of mining and industry, but if we are to develop mining and industry we must have food. If we want to realise our ideals about social security, we must have food. No country can have social security unless sufficient food is available for the requirements of the people. It is therefore in the interests not only of the farmers but of the community as a whole that we should tackle the problem. It does not matter what cost is involved in carrying it out; the problem is of such urgency that we cannot wait any longer. Sometimes people are inclined to say that it is the farmers’ fault. Others again may say that it is all due to the uneconomic price of foodstuffs, but the fact remains that we are in this position of dire distress. There are many reasons for soil erosion, and one of the principle reasons is over-stocking. That is due to the farmer having taken too much out of the land and not being able to put anything back in return. There are reasons for that which are beyond our control. Conditions that have been evolved by nature over the course of a million years have been destroyed by civilisation in a hundred years. Before white civilisation come to this country and brought with it our modern methods of production this was a fertile land. The old valleys were there, covered with masses of herbage, and there were no sluits. It is only since the white man came with his destruction that the earth has borne these marks of being ravaged that we see today. A hundred years ago these valleys that have been almost washed away were then beautiful vleis, fertile as the result of the deposit of deep soil from the mountain-side for generations. But these conditions have been destroyed in 50 years as a result of our driving stock to the water. If you compare parts in our locality where men have looked after their land it has been preserved in the state in which it stood 50 years ago, and in other parts where it has not been looked after you can see for yourselves what the result has been. It is not for the city dwellers to say that these farmers have failed, or for the farmers to say that city dwellers have failed. We have all had our share in the denudation of the earth. There are different types of erosion. There is wind erosion, which you get on the west coast of Africa. There the farmer tries to grow crops which he should never plant. He uses fertiliser and the ground has never repaid him for the fertiliser. The wind has gathered the loose soil and swept it away. It has even in parts covered the bush with sand. In those parts I should suggest that there should be more afforestation. The farms should be bought up by the Government, and trees should be planted with breakwinds, and we should not allow that land to be spoilt and the soil to be blown away. Steps should be taken to preserve its use in the future. It seems harsh to take drastic action of this sort, but if you want to save South Africa we must take drastic steps. In the Midlands and in the Karoo the erosion is caused by over-stocking, and by ploughing parts that should never be ploughed, and by over-grazing. Over-grazing is really the main question. If you come to my area you will see there today land that is almost a desert; some of the parts on which there are farms that were once fertile are now a desert. We must do something in those parts to preserve that soil. It can still be done. Some people take the view that nothing can be done, but I maintain it can be done. I remember when the Secrtary for Agriculture came up with me to Vlekpoort, when he saw the land he exclaimed; What can be done here. That is not the way we should look at it. We must realise that we must first reclaim our valleys. We must bring up the level of our underground water. It is because the level of the water has gone down and down that the earth is dead. The earth is like the human body; if you arrest the flow of blood to one part of the body that part of the body becomes dead. In the same way where once we had valleys which gathered the water and which acted as sponges for the retention of the water which soaked into the land and kept the land healthy, those conditions have disappeared, and that has caused tremendous damage. If we reclaim our valleys, and we can reclaim them—our levels are still there and it shows it can be done—if you dam up your rivers and first reclaim the big valleys and from there work back to the mountain-side, I am sure a great deal can be achieved. The reclaiming of these valleys is quite a practical proposition. It has been done in the past. It has been done by practical farmers. It has been done by men with insight. It has been done by men who started 40 years ago. Unfortunately the farmer has not always had it his own way. At all times the economic factor has played a very big rôle. Then you get the change on your mountainsides. The mountainsides have been denuded of herbage and where they used to act as a sponge absorbing the water and starting up little fountains, all that has gone, the fountains have disappeared. Fountains that used to run into the valleys are no longer there. You can only reclaim the mountainsides by taking them over and looking after them, and gradually restoring the herbage that covered them in years past. You cannot do that with all mountainsides. I am only referring now to mountainsides that are uneconomical to the farmer. In the Western Province you get those mountains, big massive mountains that are of little value for stock. These could be taken under Government care, or even under the care of the owner subject to certain regulations. If once more you could have the sponges back on your mountainside you could replenish your underground waters, and bring up the water level. I recognise that in other parts of the country, for instance in the Transvaal and in the Free State, where the mountainsides give good grazing and where they have good soil, they should be treated in a different way, and that the methods applied in the Western Province would not suit them. At Vlekpoort you also have the case where the valleys have been washed away as the result of the herbage disappearing from the side of the mountain. There, too, you have in addition a bad type of slate erosion. The slate is washed away from the mountainside and deposited into the valleys, making a gritty layer in the valley. We recognise that these mountainsides must he protected. I suggest that these mountainsides and slopes in the Vlekpoort valley should be fenced off for a period of five or six years, and the Government could then let the people go back to these mountainsides on certain conditions; that is they would be allowed to return, but under conditions that would prevent any over-stocking. That evil should be guarded against in the future. Then comes the economic factor. There are men who really have made a practical success of these matters. I should like the Minister one day to visit Middelburg. He will find the Middelburg Municipality have dealt with their very deep dongas, and the result is that where some years ago the water supply for Middelburg was inadequate, now that the matter has been properly attended to and the dongas silted up the water supply has been trebled.

Was not that at Grootfontein?

Your water supply at Grootfontein is out of a valley. It has been absorbed in that valley, which acts as a sponge, and feeds the springs. This Middelburg project is very similar. I want to appeal to the Minister and his department not to always override the farmer. He is a practical man. Theory is very nice. Theory is very well if it is coupled with the practical side, but theory without practice is useless, and I feel that if the department could work with practical men who have made a success of these matters, they would gain at least twenty years experience. If they start on their own today it will take them twenty years to acquire the necessary experience. I hope that the Minister will act in the way I have suggested in respect of every area. Another point that I should like to mention to the Minister is this: Why proclaim a little area like Vlekpoort just a catchment area? Why spend a paltry sum of something like £18,000? The same applies to Drakensberg. An amount like that is only a drop in the ocean. When you are about it, why not spend sufficient money to ensure results in the course of time? We have a very short span of life, and must not be impatient for immediate results. Unless the Government is prepared to spend money at Vlekpoort and these other places, even if it is £100,000 it is not too much, because future generations will derive the full benefits. Vlekpoort is a small area, but round about it, say for an area 200 miles square, the land is very similar. If the Agricultural Department would give farmers a 50 per cent. subsidy as they do at Vlekpoort they would be achieving something. We cannot wait. The farmers are today keen, and they are anxious to do their bit to further the interests of the country and to tackle this question of soil erosion. But there are many smaller farmers who have not the financial resources to enable them to do what they would like to in this matter. They could contribute their share if they were assisted, and there are smaller men who could do work of importance in reclaiming their own land. It is the State’s duty in such cases to see that the land is reclaimed. We cannot wait until that poor devil who is struggling on his farm is in affluent enough circumstances to tackle the work, because it means it will never be done. I am going to be very firm on this question. The motion suggested we should leave it on a voluntary basis. I say that if you leave it on a voluntary basis it is hopeless. The State will have to provide the money. The State will have to provide the machinery. That is their duty. The State will have to reclaim the valleys, and when in the course of this work they here and there take away a man’s land, they should at any rate compensate that man suitably. There have been certain cases of hardships in the past. The Department has come along and taken away land which the farmer has bought three years ago. They could perhaps make £1,500 profit on that transaction, of which £1,000 would have to go to the Minister of Finance. I say it is a hard case. How can this man be expected to pay that to the Minister if he has to go elsewhere and buy other land? I have taken the matter up with the Minister of Finance, and I am glad to say he has seen fit to help these people in cases of hardship. They have to buy land somewhere, and surely they have to buy in a high market. They are unfortunately situated in that they cannot wait until they purchase their land. I trust that in cases like that the Minister will be careful. There is another factor we have not touched on here, and that is the economic factor. It is no good trying to bring erosion schemes into effect unless you have a sound agricultural policy in this country, unless you can give the farmer security for the future, unless you can give him payable prices for his products. It is useless to try and spend thousands and tens of thousands of pounds on erosion unless you can do this. I say, and the Minister, the Minister of Lands, knows I am speaking the truth; I do not know about the Minister of Agriculture, but the Minister of Lands realises I am speaking the truth. It is no good trying to force a man to take more ground than he should. We have desecrated the soil on which we have lived in the past. Why? Because of the economic factor. I know that some of our townsmen friends will disagree with what I say, but I should like them to live on the land for a little while, to live in these little hovels in the country that some of our small farmers have to live in, and to see how they live under the bread line. We have to remember that after all a man’s family comes No. 1. If your family is suffering hunger you are going to desecrate the soil if necessary to provide them with food. That is why many of these men have had to produce economically. Their actions were governed by the pressing needs of their families. We have no policy, no long-term policy in which we could take them up and give them security. If we gave them some sense of protection and if they knew what the future had in store for them, they would take a very different outlook and they would do all they could to put something into the land. What has been done? Overstocking. That has been especially the case with the poor man because he has had his family to keep. The other day when I spoke of the underdog some hon. member laughed. But you have to keep that man; in a sense he is the pioneer; he is the only man who can survive under those hard conditions, and you must help him to put something back into the soil. In the past he has been governed by the economic side, by the debts he has had to pay, by the necessity he has been under to supply his family with food. He has become a martyr to his own family, and his family have become martyrs on his account. So the man has become a drag on the State. That is how agriculture has been carried out in this country, and I say that there are other countries that we can look to for guidance. We can look to a country like Australia, for instance. Australia also at one time believed only in gold. But what happened? The gold deposits petered out and everyone became bankrupt. So they had to go back to primary produce and secondary industries. And I say that unless we go back to primary produce and create markets for the farmers’ produce, this country with all its gold will go under, because if you cannot feed your people you cannot produce gold. We need an economic farming system in this country. We want decent marketing; we do not want this slipshod system that we have today. We have had a lot of arguments here about the price of meat, and other products, and I am sure that if the Minister went into these matters with the agricultural unions and with practical men he would soon find out what the true economic prices are. Other governments have erred in the same way, but this Government has been the most lax of all. I hope that after what has happened and after the propaganda that has been made and the words that have been said here today, this Government will rise to the occasion and that they will next year spend millions of pounds in combating soil erosion. The cost does not matter. It is imperative that we keep the people on the land and feed them. If we do not do that this country will go under, white civilisation will pass away and South Africa will relapse into a stage of barbarism, and the country will become a desert.

I think the House is indebted to the hon. member for Drakensberg (Mr. Abrahamson) for having tabled this motion, and also for the calm and nonpartisan spirit in which he introduced his motion, He spoke, I think, with a proper realisation of the grave importance from the national point of view of this matter of having to combat soil erosion. I think, Sir, that also applies to the seconder of the motion. I am happy to say too that I think the seconder of the amendment also spoke in a non-partisan way, and also realised the tremendous importance of this question, and the necessity of as fan as possible keeping it outside the arena of party politics. Unfortunately, however, the hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Gen. Kemp) can never resist the temptation of trying to make a little party capital on a big national question like this. He just cannot help it. He cannot get himself so far as to resist the temptation. He has tried to make his little party capital, and I think when I come to deal with it I shall be able to show that the facts he tried to put across are a complete misrepresentation of what the position actually is. This motion is to be welcomed, and the Government welcomes it, particularly at the present time when I think, very largely as a result of the propaganda and the information that has been put across by the Agricultural Department under this Government, the whole public of South Africa, urban as well as rural, have become soil conscious. They have become fully aware of the grave national danger that faces this country unless we take effective steps to stop this menace which is creeping over us and spreading like a paralysis all over the country. The Government realises that, and the hon. member’s motion is well timed, because the public at large also feels along the same lines. I want to stress one fact, and it is this: That although you hear today a great deal of discussion, and there is no doubt a great deal of deep thinking directed towards questions of reconstruction and social security, I want to point out that unless you have proper reconstruction of agriculture, unless you safeguard our basic resources, our soil, our veld, our water supplies, you cannot have any permanent social security and you cannot have any permanent and worth-while reconstruction in the post-war period. Those matters are fundamental, and the Government recognises it very keenly and very fully. We realise you cannot have any social security unless you have soil security as well, so that as a foundation plank of any scheme of reconstruction, any scheme of permanent social security, we must have reconstruction of agriculture itself, which is basic not only in that it has to supply foodstuffs to the nation as a whole—and as one member said, this war has brought it home to us how necessary it is for us to produce the foodstuffs and in adequate quantities—but because it is one of the tasks of agriculture to supply industry with its raw material. That is also one of the tasks that rests on our farming industry in this country. We anticipate a great expansion and development in industry in this country. Agriculture will have the duty and the privilege of keeping pace with that great expansion and development which is to take place in the post-war period in secondary industries. Now the hon. member for Wolmaransstad has, as I have said, tried to bring this whole question into the political arena, and he has quoted certain figures which were supplied to him by the Acting Secretary of my Department. As I have already said, a completely erroneous picture has been given by the hon. member. What does he tell us? He tells us that this letter shows (he has given me the courtesy of letting me have the letter, I have not a copy here) that under scheme A which was one of the schemes of the Department, an erosion scheme, the amount paid out as assistance to farmers in the way of bonuses in 1935-’36 was £38,044, and in 1939-’40 it was £85,906. But he says when this Government was handling this question during this last year, namely, in 1944 (the period is from the 1st April to the 30th September, 1944) the very meagre amount of £13,568 was paid.

Is that right or wrong?

I shall deal with all these figures. The hon. member need not get itchy; I will deal with them. Then he quoted scheme B and stated that the letter disclosed that the loans made during 1935-’36 amounted to £44,834, but during the 1943-’44 period only the miserable amount of £120 was paid. These figures are correct; they were supplied by the Department; but either the hon. member does not understand them or he is misrepresenting the position.

As is his usual custom.

The hon. member draws thé inference that this Government is doing nothing about soil erosion, and is not spending the money; but the letter itself says this—

So what do these figures show? These figures simply show, as the letter states, that in 1940 owing to the vast expenditure this Government had to pay out on the war, Schemes A, B and C were discontinued (all the schemes were discontinued), but the Government stated that in respect of all the works that had been approved up to June. 1940, the Government would still pay out on them. So when he connected these small amounts paid last year it was simply a case of these being schemes in connection with which the Government had paid out on works that had been approved up to June, 1940. But the hon. member wants to hold up a picture to this House and to say: This is what the Government is doing. But, Sir, what did the hon. member do when he was Minister of Agriculture? He mentioned several times the Report of the Drought Commission which reported in 1923, the year before the hon. member became the Minister of Agriculture. For nearly ten years this hon. member was in a state of ministerial and political coma as regards soil erosion. He just did nothing at all, but now he has the temerity to accuse me, who has only held this Portfolio for less than a year, of doing nothing. In the ten years he had the opportunity; this country was in a state of peace and great prosperity. There were many surpluses. His party could always produce a surplus. It has done nothing all the time. Now, in a period of war, he wants to ask this Government to spend millions of pounds on it.

Tell us what he did from 1933 onwards.

I am giving a short review of what was done by successive Governments. The point I make is that although in 1923 the Drought Commission reported, the hon. member did nothing at all until the Coalition Government came into power and then for the first time, in 1933 to 1934, the real cause of most of the economic disabilities of our farmers, namely soil erosion, was tackled by the establishment first of all of Pasture Research Stations and also the institution of soil erosion schemes. Facilities were extended to landowners including municipalities to combat soil erosion, the necessary technical advice and supervision being given by the Soil Erosion Services of the Department. These Pasture Research Stations have done very valuable work in helping to ascertain what the fundamental causes are of soil erosion and the loan schemes which were encouraged in 1933-’34 have helped the farmers to start reclamation and conservation work on their farms by financing them. But notwithstanding the great work which was done in this way, it was felt that the progress was much too slow and that a far more comprehensive and better co-ordinated plan of action was necessary, and with that object in view the Division of Soil and Veld Conservation, a special division, was created in September, 1939, to take charge of all activities in connection with this question, namely pasture research, erosion control and the closely related field of weed eradication. It is unfortunate, so far as the Government is concerned, that the creation of this special division to deal with these matters coincided with the outbreak of the war in which we as a country are taking part. The result has been that there was a curtailment of the expenditure on soil erosion schemes. That curtailment came in 1940, out in 1942 the Government realised that it was not right, even with the tremendous financial burden which this country had to shoulder to prosecute the war, that soil erosion schemes should be kept completely in abeyance until the end of the war. Therefore in 1942 the A Scheme was reintroduced, under which farmers are assisted with regard to soil erosion measures. Let me give figures of the amounts of money spent. These are the full figures, not misleading figures or figures quoted in a misleading way, as suggested by the hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Gen. Kemp). These are the actual figures of money spent over the last two years and which will be voted, I hope, by the House this year in so far as the combating of soil erosion is concerned. In 1943-’44 the total sum of money spent was £150,000. 1944-’45 £100,000 more, in the midst of this war, making an amount of £250,000 spent. This year, 1945-’46, we are hoping to spend—we are hoping that the House will pass, and I am sure that the House will pass it, if I interpret its mood aright on this question—£375,000 on combating soil erosion.

How much did the Minister spend on Vlekpoort?

I can give you the figure later on but I have not got it at the moment. I will deal with the position of the Vlekpoort and Drakensberg conservation areas later. A great step forward was taken in 1941 when the Forest and Veld Conservation Act, No. 13 of 1941, was passed. That Act gives the Government wide powers to expropriate land in the interest of soil, veld and water conservation. It also empowers the Government to proclaim any area of land as a conservation area where it deems such necessary. The proclamation of an area as a conservation area implies an undertaking by the Government to proceed with the reclamation and conservation of all land falling in that area, in co-operation, of course, with the land-owners concerned. The administrative and technical control of the conservation areas, of which we now have two, is a function of the Division of Soil and Veld Conservation. The two areas proclaimed have been mentioned, one by the hon. member for Cradock and the other by the hon. member for Drakensberg. The Vlekpoort conservation area embraces some 300 square miles and it is not as small as the hon. member suggested. It is 300 square miles of severely eroded land in the Vlekpoort River Valley. The Drakensberg conservation area comprises 3,000 square miles, an area ten times as large as the Vlekpoort area. Those are active steps which this Government is pursuing. There is also, as I have mentioned, a tremendous amount of propaganda and education that has been put into operation by the Division of Soil and Veld conservation. That Division has been prosecuting an active campaign of propaganda and education by means of films, lectures, Press articles and radio talks etc. in order to make the public conscious of the nature and latitude and the full implications of this tremendous question of soil erosion. That campaign, I think I can claim, has been an outstanding success. The public today are fully conscious of the great danger of soil erosion. In connection with that campaign it is only right that I should mention the very fine work done by organisations such as the National Veld Trust. This is a body which looks upon this great question in a national and nonpolitical way, a body composed of, I think, all shades of political opinion in this country. It is doing very fine work indeed. The National Anti-waste Organisation has also done its share. In so far as that question is concerned I claim that a great deal of successful work has been done. Right on top of all this the Government invited Dr. Hugh Bennett, whose name was mentioned by the hon. member for Drakensberg to pay a visit to this country, and he gave us the benefit of his ripe and very wide experience and judgment. I had the privilege of accompanying Dr. Bennett on part of his tours through the country. He has made a valuable report to the Government on his observations and on his visit as a whole. That report is now in the Press and will soon be available to the general public, so that they can see the views of Dr. Bennett with regard to our problem of soil erosion. Whilst he has used quite strong language, as the hon. member quoted here, Dr. Bennett expressed the view that it would be quite a feasible matter to get the better of this menace. He expressed the view to me several times that we had a tremendous variety of grasses in this country with tremendous recuperative power, and that in some cases all we had to do was little more than to destock the farm and give the grasses a chance for a few years to see what improvement takes place. So I do not think we must view this problem in a gloomy or pessimistic frame of mind. We will tackle it and we are tackling it. At the outset I mentioned certain basic questions, and that the reconstruction of agriculture is basic to all postwar reconstruction in this country. The hon. member who introduced the motion has wisely asked the Government to review this whole Question in the light of the Reconstruction Report of my Department. That Report has been before the Planning Council, as I indicated to the House last year. The Planning Council has produced its own report on the whole subject of reconstruction, and a joint committee of the Agricultural Department and the Planning Council is now busy examining the various points of difference and possibly points of misunderstanding in order to see how far the differences can either be completely reconciled or narrowed down. That is as far as the whole report on reconstruction is concerned. But as far as this specific question is concerned, namely the question of conservation and anti-erosion works, the Planning Council has endorsed practically in toto the views expressed in the Reconstruction Report; so that I think my hon. friends can take it that there will be no question of our not taking action on the lines suggested in the Reconstruction Report. It is true that after the Planning Council has completed its task the matter will still have to come before the Reconstruction Committee of the Cabinet, but my own view is that we will have to act very largely along the lines laid down by this report and as suggested by the hon. member in his motion, namely, in the light of the Reconstruction Report. That is the national scheme which he asks for, the national scheme set out in the report. In terms of that report new legislation will be called for and that new legislation is already in the course of preparation now by the Division of Soil and Veld Conservation. It will not be possible to introduce any of that legislation during this Session, but it is in the course of preparation. In that connection I would like the House to realise that this question of the reconstruction of agriculture and the tackling of it on a national scale and in a business-like manner and also the tackling of this question of soil erosion is one of the big post-war plans of the Government. My hon. friend asked the Government to vote at least £1,000,000 per annum, but that will not get us any further. The position today is that we have two limiting factors which were mentioned by the hon. member for Drakensberg. He complained that we did not have enough staff or the necessary tools and equipment and that native boys pushing wheelbarrows were doing work which should be done by bulldozers, levellers and heavy machinery of that kind. Well, it will not be possible to obtain machinery and equipment during the war period even if the money is voted. These are post-war questions and we are limited and have to wait until we can obtain the necessary machinery, but as soon as it is available, the Government will take such steps. A further factor that needs mention is the question of personnel. The hon. member mentioned that he found three white officials in the Drakensberg conservation area. Well, this is one of the big post-war plans that the Government has with regard to our returning soldiers. The agricultural colleges have been opened. That decision was taken last year largely with a view to training our returned soldiers that there should be a special course for conservation foremen available at the Grootfontein Agricultural College. A good many of them can take it and it will be a short course so that many will be able to take it in a year. Others will be trained in the field. We hope to take up a good many of these soldiers under these anti-erosion schemes and we hope that these men who have been living an outdoor life in the army will find it is very congenial and suitable work when they come back. There is the question of pay which the hon. member mentioned and which he said is not sufficiently attractive. That matter is now being examined by the Public Service Commission of Enquiry, which already has recommended improvements in the interim report which the Government accepted. I agree that we should make the scales of pay sufficiently attractive to attract a large number of soldiers to these schemes. So the position is that the Government is thoroughly alive to this big question, that it is one of the big post-war reconstruction schemes of the Government, and that we are going all out to get the necessary machinery and trained staff in order to tackle this question in a big way and to spend the money which is necessary in order to save this country. It is not much use saying, as many people still say, that it would be betten to import most of our food into this country. I think that is an unwise and short-sighted policy. Good land is getting scarcer and scarcer all over the world and it is our duty in South Africa to see that we save our soil and conserve what we have and that we reclaim and build up what, to some extent, we have lost owing to misuse, which in many cases farmers have been forced to apply to the land. The Government is alive to the question and we will tackle it in such a way that we will save the soil of the country.

I very much regret that the Minister of Agriculture has dragged a matter of this kind into party politics. I am one of those who think that a problem of this nature must be kept outside party politics. The Minister of Agriculture spoke here and from beginning to end he made political capital out of it. The hon. member for Albany (Mr. Bowker) spoke and also treated it as politics from the beginning. We had to listen to how the Minister did this and that. It is absolutely essential that when an hon. member talks such nonsense here somebody should take the opportunity of replying to him in order to point out that essential things were not done. All that we received from the Minister was promises and once more promises. We are dealing here with a very serious problem, a matter which cannot and should not wait until after the war. We learnt from the Minister that the work was stopped because of the war.

I had to point out how wrongly the figures have been represented.

The position is quite clear. The Minister of Agriculture said that the figures quoted by the hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Gen. Kemp) were quite correct, because they came from his office, but that he quoted them in order to bring the Government under suspicion.

He represented them quite wrongly.

I listened to the speech of the hon. member for Wolmaransstad. I could not see that he dragged politics into the matter. If the Government does not do its duty it is essential to point that out. I am one of those who would like to keep a matter like this out of politics. I say that the hon. member who proposed the motion drew up the motion after consulting the Government. I say this, and I leave the matter there. Even though he should use his influence with the Department to have this problem solved, I do not blame him for it. The Minister of Agriculture is a barrister and I concede that he can argue like a barrister. However, I noticed that in his speech on two or three occasions he said: “This is a postwar question.” In other words this is a matter which must wait until after the war. That is all we heard from him.

You, of course, do not want us to use the returned soldiers for it.

He repeated it on several occasions, and then spoke about £150,000 and about £250,000 which they spent. Later on he said in connection with this that this year they spent £10,000 at Vlekpoort and that they proposed spending £18,000 there next year. They use the money to make propaganda. I have no objection to their spending money on propaganda. It is absolutely essential in order to make people conscious of the danger. We must make the country conscious of the importance of the problem, and I am prepared to praise the Government for using money for propaganda. But I do not want propaganda and promises only ; I do not want to hear that these things must wait until after the war. We must do the work now. The time arrives when every government realises that there are essential things to be done, and then a start must be made with them. It does not help telling us what was done in 1923 pr in 1913. I suppose in a moment we shall hear what was done in 1813. People are now becoming conscious of the danger. Ever since I have been in this Parliament this matter has been discussed every year, arid there were certain schemes which were stopped by the Government. The Government did not hide it either. The Minister said frankly that owing to war expenditure there was no money for this work. That is the reason why nothing was done. One has to count one’s words. I say that the Government should not have done it. It should have coritinued with this work even though there was a war. The Government receives more money from the nation year by year. The Minister of Finance will probably increase taxes, and the Minister of Agriculture could have had the money. All the promises remain only promises; we just have to listen to what the Government will do. That reminds me of the inscription on a tombstone which is very fitting to the actions of the Government. I think I have quoted it before but I wish to do so again because if this Government continues making promises in this way, we shall also one day be able to write on its tombstone—

An amendment was proposed here and I expected that the Minister of Agriculture, if he were a statesman, would deal with that amendment. If there was anything wrong in it he should have told us so and should have destroyed the amendment. It is of no avail to sling mud when we have to tackle a problem like this. This amendment pleads for energetic and immediate action. We say that we should at once proceed with schemes, and that we should at least—it may be that much more is required—vote £1,000,000 per annum for that purpose. Everybody recognises that post-war prosperity will have no meaning if we do not put these matters right. All the talk about post-war development will be of no avail if we do not have a contented farming community. We cannot have a contented agricultural community if we continuously permit our soil capital to be washed into the sea. If we permit that we will later on simply have nothing on which the State can fall back. It is necessary that we should start at once, while the public realises its responsibility and while it has been awakened by the propaganda which has been made. The public realises that we must conserve and repair our soil, and therefore it is the duty of the Government at once to make a start with this essential work. The Minister of Agriculture said that people would be trained for this work by means of short courses. On behalf of somebody who felt that he would like to do something for the country in this direction I applied. I went to the Department and after I had given them information about this man and his work there were difficulties as to whether he could really make use of such a course. It would cost him £12 for the three months, because he had to pay £4 a month for boarding. That is really a small matter. If they really need the people, why should they pay boarding while they are being trained? They are being trained to do work for the State; they cannot use the knowledge they acquire for anything else, and no one can tell me that a little difficulty like that cannot be solved if we want to train these people. In previous years we had a scheme of bonuses for filling in ravines and trying to prevent erosion. That helped. But what happened then? The man at the top end tried to prevent erosion; the one at the bottom end also did so, but the one in between did not have the money to do the work. The result was that all the work which was done later washed away. We must regard a matter like that as a national matter, and the Government must help where assistance is required. If there is someone who cannot afford to do the work, the Government must think of the interests of the country and of the other people, and it must do the work there or help. If we do not tackle it on that basis we will not progress. We must approach the matter as a national problem which must be tackled by the Government. The hon. member coupled his motion with the report given by the Reconstruction Committee to the Department of Agriculture. He is looking for trouble. We need not go to the Department to accept the proposals of the Department. One of the proposals is this, that if a person is in a proclaimed area and receives assistance to combat soil erosion on his farm, then he is deprived of certain rights, because in future he cannot sell his farm to someone else without permission. That is one of the conditions now included in this proposal. As far as I am personally concerned, and I think it applies to 75 per cent. of our farmers, if you tamper with the rights of a man, with his property, which he paid for and for which he worked, or which he inherited, and you want to deprive him of the right to sell his farm, that man cannot see the reason, for it. We are supposed to fight against Nazism, a form of dictatorship, and here they want to introduce a dictatorship and to provide that one has not the right to sell one’s farm in a proclaimed area until one has gone to the Minister with one’s hat in one’s hand to ask permission please to sell one’s farm. That is one of the conditions imposed by the Department, and it is now expected that we will accept that just because it emanated from the Department. The report itself was never discussed but I take it that most hon. members who live in agricultural districts have read it. There are many good things in the report but also many with which I cannot agree and which I consider not to be good. This motion is now coupled with the report. I am not prepared to accept it under the circumstances and therefore it was omitted from the amendment. “We want the Government to undertake a scheme”—the preamble of the motion is good—but then it is coupled with the report of the Department and with that we cannot be satisfied. The report is voluminous and one cannot discuss it in a few words. There are many things in the report which are very good and with which we all agree, but there are many things with which we cannot agree. There is, for example, the tampering with private property rights. We are not prepared to agree to that. We believe that a man’s property is his own. Therefore the amendment was proposed and I thought that the Minister would realise the meaning of it. We are just as keen as hon. members opposite to solve the problem. It is essential that action be taken and we want it to be done as soon as possible. We want to co-operate. A question of this nature is one in which politics should not play a rôle. We are all keen that it should be tackled, but we must not come here with talk about this having been done and that having been done. If the Government initiates a scheme it must be implemented because they pay the money. But to come here and to make conditions which we cannot accept is not reasonable and it is not right. I therefore feel that in the discussion of this important matter it is of no avail to go back to 1924 and to see what was done then and what was not done. If the matter is to be discussed on a non-political basis, the Minister must not touch on it. We did not react either to what the hon. member for Albany said. It is unnecessary under the circumstances. If we really have at heart that this matter should be solved outside of politics the Minister, as one of the leaders m this House, should also not bring in politics even though he thinks that someone else has touched on politics. He can ignore it. The matter has been mentioned and feelings swept up, and the result is that one cannot expect a thorough discussion. For that reason I am sorry that the Minister has adopted that attitude. I do not consider that he did the matter any good thereby, and think that he rather harmed it. I want to appeal to the proposer of the motion to keep matters affecting agriculture outside politics, and I also want to appeal to the Minister. The Minister is just as guilty as others for having dragged in politics and one does not expect that from the Minister. If one threatens one must expect that the other man will hit one, and if one does not wish these things to be discussed on a political basis, one must not start throwing stones. One cannot then expect that the other side will sit still. For those reasons I am sorry that the Minister dragged in politics. The Minister now speaks about a post-war problem. We cannot do anything about it. We must wait.

These pious resolutions do not assist us. That is not what we want. We want to have in prospect that the Minister in future will perhaps do something. Perhaps he will not be here any more. That brings us no further. I make an appeal to the Minister and to the Government to act immediately and energetically in connection with the problem, whatever the cost might be. Let them have a proper plan which can be executed, and they will enjoy our help and support. We realise the danger. We are the people who suffer damage, and we are animated by love for our nation and fatherland, and if the Government evolves something good we shall be prepared to support it.

There is a growing appreciation not only amongst country people but amongst the urban population of the necessity of combating soil erosion. At a series of meetings in which I took part before coming here, this question of soil erosion both in the urban and rural areas took practically first place, and concern was expressed that although the intentions were there so little was being done, in so far as the ordinary man in the street or the ordinary farmer could observe. For the moment I want to refer to certain powers which the Government has under Act 13 of 1941, the Forest and Veld Conservation Act. Section 5 (1) states—

That is a very wide power, and one I think that should be exercised by the Government. I have in mind an occurrence of last year at Port Shepstone. There an area of land adjoining the borough was put up for sale. It was completely covered with indigenous bush and vegetation. It was offered to the municipality at a certain price, but being a small municipality and loaded With debt, as usual it could not find the money to take over this land. In consequence it was sold to another person, an Indian, by the way, who denuded that area of every vestige of trees and vegetation and who planted bananas or tobacco in vertical rows and not in contour rows. The consequence was that at the first rains hundreds of tons of good soil were washed away into the Umzimkulu River. In a case of that sort I think the Government should exercise its power. There is another case I have in mind further up the river at the Oribi Gorge. This area is one of stupendous grandeur. From Hell’s Gates coming down to Port Shepstone this river and its tributary flow in a very deep gorge and the sides of these gorges were leased to Indians—I am sorry to bring in the Indian question but it cannot be helped—and every vestige of grass and vegetation and every tree were taken away from the steep sides of these gorges which were then planted with tobacco and bananas, and as a result the whole of the soil in that gorge went into the Umzimkulu River. What is the result? Whenever we have a drop of rain on the coast the water rushes down and is carried away. As you know, our rivers are very short, and they descend steeply to the sea from their sources. Now we have an area of many square miles that is simply dying, due to the erosion of the soil which is being carried down to the sea even after a moderate flood. That covers a very wide area indeed. We see that day by day happening at the mouth of practically every river on the Natal coast, and I think very much could be done without waiting for post-war reconstruction. I have travelled over a very large part of my constituency, and from the main road itself without going into the countryside you can see—and I can testify to this—that along practically every mile on both sides of the main road from Ixopo to Harding and on to Kokstad erosion is occurring on the farms. The same sort of thing must occur very widely over the other areas that are out of view from the road, and more especially in the native reserves. What I suggest to the Minister is that something can be done now. I have in mind that the first thing to be done is to find out where erosion has occurred, to find out where erosion is occurring, and to find out where erosion may occur. For that purpose I suggest every official of the Agricultural Department, whose duty takes him on to these farms, should take note of this, and have these erosion points and possible erosion points, recorded on a one-inch to the mile map, and this should be done in respect of all the sub-divisions in the country. Not only that; the police on their patrols could also note instances of erosion, and report on them. I think that before indigenous bush is cleared from any part of the country notification should be given to the Forestry Department of the owner’s intention to clear that bush, so that the Forestry Department might go into the matter, review it and see what might occur. In that way we might compile a record of past erosion, current erosion and prospective erosion which can be considered by the Department of Agriculture and its officials, and we could see what steps should be taken to arrest this denudation of the country as a whole of its vegetation. I take it soil erosion is occurring all over the country. I have very vividly in mind an example of soil erosion north of the White River in the Transvaal. Twelve years ago or more I noticed while in the Transvaal there was in this area deep dongas, 30 or 40 ft. deep with pillars of earth sticking up vertically in the middle of them. I believe this was on Mr. Rood’s farm. I shall never forget that sight, and I have wondered how it could have occurred. Cases like that must be occurring all over the country, and it seems to me much could be done by the Government now without waiting for the post-war period.

I regret that the hon. member for Swellendam (Mr. S. E. Warren) is not in his place, as there are a few remarks I should like to have addressed to him. He has placed himself in a rather equivocal position. He is prepared to pay lip service to the ideal that we must keep this national problem out of the arena of party politics, but I am afraid he could not resist the temptation of himself falling into the trap. We on this side of the House have no desire whatever to make political capital out of an issue of this nature, or to allow anybody else to make political capital out of it. Our attitude on this side is that we must face up to the realities of the position, and whilst they dabble in politics we attempt to recognise realities. We do not wish to mix the two things; like water and oil they simply will not mix. The hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Gen. Kemp) has referred in rather disparaging terms to our position inasmuch as he contends that we are always advancing the plea that there is a war on. Well, we must face up to that reality and hon. members opposite can thank the Government that they are able to assume an attitude of indifferent oblivion to the world tragedy that is happening around us. We have to realise our responsibilities that unless and until this war is won there is not much practical purpose in attempting to embark on soil conservation schemes; that our first and foremost duty is to save the country, and we are about to accomplish this, thanks to the splendid guidance this Government has received from its great leader. It will be our privilege as well as our responsibility after the war to continue on the right course, and to try to save the soil of South Africa. If we had adopted the wrong course, if we had concerned ourselves with domestic issues only and not made our contribution to the war, we would have jeopardised the future of this country, so before we turn all our attention to internal politics we have to safeguard our postion in the arena of international politics. That, we are happy to say, is being accomplished. We realise that every man worthy of the name is conscious of his native country and cherishes an attachment to the soil, and that is nowhere more strikingly illustrated than in the story we read of the landing on the Normandy coast. We were told that when the first Frenchmen with the army of liberation set foot on their native soil on the beaches of Normandy, they were so overjoyed that they rushed forward, picked up pieces of earth and kissed the soil of France. That shows that man has an inherent love for his country and an inherent love for the soil of his birth. It is strong in the Frenchman’s heart, and it is no less strong in the sons of South Africa. In South Africa, with it chequered history, we have our traditions, we have our background, and here too we unfortunately have had our share of bloodshed. I would like to mention a little incident to illustrate this. One day I was at Silikaat’s Nek on the road from Pretoria to Rustenburg. During the Anglo-Boer War there was a skirmish there and some men fell on the summit of the neck. They were carried down the slope, and interred in a nearby military cemetry. But in spite of the lapse of all these years when rain falls bloodstains are still visible at the spot where they fell. Our soil has been drenched with the blood of its bravest sons, and this soil that was worth dying for is the soil of the country that is worth saving. We would be churlish if we did not appreciate what the Minister has told us. I think our hon. friends on the other side are unfair in expecting more from the Government at this juncture in face of the gigantic task it has had to carry out in connection with the war. We are still able to plan in connection with post-war requirements. Now that the end of the struggle is in sight, we shall again be able to focus our attention on our own country, and it will be our privilege as well as our duty to put our own house in order as far as soil conservation and other national problems are concerned. Does the hon. member expect us now to bring back all our war equipment, to bring back our bulldozers, our water drills, our tractors, and all the equipment that has played its part in our contribution to the war effort? No, we must bide our time, and when that time comes I have no doubt that this Government will show that it is fully conscious of the evils that beset us, and that they will do their level best to combat them. We have, in spite of the troublesome period through which we are passing, been able to invite to our shores to assist us a man who is recognised as one of the leading soil experts in the world. We have had Dr. Bennett here, and we were glad to hear him express a word of appreciation of what we have been able to accomplish in this country. We realise that that is not enough. We realise that very much more has to be done. In the past we have heard agronomists tell us that unless we tackle this problem and tackle it seriously, within a period of 50 years the domain of man over the soil will cease to exist and desert conditions will prevail. We take heart and we are encouraged by what is happening in other parts of the world. We have the outstanding example of soil reclamation in Palestine. We know that for thousands of years the ground there was neglected and abused but with co-operative effort allied with scientific research on the right lines, a miracle has been performed in Palestine and the desert has been made to blossom like the rose. If it can be done in Palestine there is no reason whatsoever why we should not be able to do the same in South Africa. As the Minister has pointed out, land values have risen, as they have risen all over the world. Good land has become scarce but even taking the price at the highest peak of our land values it costs much less to buy a morgen of land than to reclaim it. If we can budget in war time to the extent of over £100,000,000 a year to combat an enmy from without, we should be able, when the war is over, to spend an equal amount in combating the insidious enemy from within. We have been able to spend at the rate of £100,000,000 per anuum to contribute our share to the war effort. All that Dr. Bennett suggests is that in twenty years time we should spend at the rate of £5,000,000 a year in order to save our soil. If we can be sure of success at that figure the price of success will be very cheap indeed, and the moneys expended will represent one of the finest investments we could have the privilege of making. What is the good of talking about a better order and a better society and about social security for everyone unless we can save our soil? It is the richest endowment bestowed by nature on man. It is in the very foundation of our existence. It has taken nature perhaps thousands of millions of years to build up that soil, and we in a generation, in the course of 30 or 40 years, allow our soil to be destroyed. Man’s agencies of destruction are much more potent than nature’s slow process of building up. It is therefore incumbent upon us to take heed and to take the matter in hand, and to do it with all our might and main. I want to commend the hon. member for Drakensberg (Mr. Abrahamson) for having introduced this subject. We are all soil conscious. I did not know that the hon. member for Albany (Mr. Bowker) could grow so poetic over the soil; he became almost lyrical, and we realise his heart is in the soil. We are indebted to the hon. member for Drakensberg for the able and reasonable way in which he introduced this motion, and also for the splendid way in which it was seconded by the hon. member for Albany. We feel that this country has been made more soil conscious than ever before, but this is a subject of which we must never tire. We must continue with it until success crowns our efforts. I do not wish to traverse all the ground that has already been covered by others, but amongst the numerous factors that have been mentioned I should like to refer to one or two of them? The first one is the subject of afforestation. In the past we have all been advised to lay our lands under forests, but that has not been an unmixed blessing. During the course of several years we planted wattle, gums or pines. We know that during the first 25 or 30 years these trees lower the level of the subterranean water, and that it takes a very long time before the trees could act as a reservoir. I feel that we have been somewhat misguided and that there we were not given the best advice. I do not blame the department. They also were experimenting, but on the advice of the department we laid vast areas under afforestation, and now it appears that these trees, instead of improving our water supply have diminished it, and we know that on farms where these plantations have been grown, the surface water has entirely dried up. We do not know how deep these roots go. They can travel to a very considerable depth and the water that is absorbed from underground sources by a plantation may be the very water that previously ran underground to a farm two or three miles away, with the result that the farmer two or three miles off is now deprived of his water supply. I would ask the hon. Minister and his Department to direct special attention to this aspect. They must have men trained who are in a position to give us expert advice and be able to tell us not only what variety of tree we have to plant, but in what locality that tree is to be planted, if we want to do so without doing further damage to the soil and water supplies. We must realise that once an area is put under afforestation, you cannot very well reclaim it for other purposes, especially if you go in for gums. The gums stand there almost in perpetuity, and if you want to clear the ground again, it is a very costly business and I do not know but that the fertility of the soil is not seriously impoverished. The wattle tree, on the other hand, is supposed to enrich the soil after two or three crops. But with regard to wattle, too, I say that the wattle tree has in certain areas done a great deal of damage as far as the water supply is concerned. It is only in the case of the pine, which stands very much longer before being felled than the other two species, that we do not get the same amount of damage. We have pine forests, and we are assured by observers that during the first twenty to twenty-five years those pines do nothing but absorb water. It is only after the mulch under the tree is about a foot deep, that that acts as a sponge, and conserves more water than the pine trees absorb. Therefore the Department must be very careful, and I feel that in our ignorance, we have perhaps done very much more damage in certain areas than good. We have in our ignorance thought that we were improving the position and adding to the national wealth by going in for certain classes of trees in certain areas. That is a factor which I think should receive very careful consideration from the Department, because we have been encouraged in the past to plant more trees. The average individual cannot afford to allow his pine trees to stand for more than twenty to twenty-five years. In Europe which is practically the home of the pine, the pine trees stand for eighty to a hundred years. Of course, they have not the same amount of sunshine there; the maturity is very much slower but their timber is supposed to have a finer fibre than ours. The conditions in Europe are thus very different from our own and where it is perhaps only the State and very powerful financial companies which can afford to wait more than twenty-five years for a return, he position of the small man warrants special consideration. The hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Gen. Kemp) has mentioned the case of the Railways and Roads Administration. I do believe that if these Administrations were taken to court and if they could not shelter behind the enabling statutes which empowers them to carry out their works, they would be mulcted in damages, because if the ordinary man disturbs the natural flow of water, and if he thereby damages the land of his neighbour, he is responsible for any damage thus caused. But we see it happening every day that the Railways and the Roads Administration are only concerned with getting the water away from their railways or roads. Instead of dissipating this water over an even flow, they collect the water in huge drains and it is simply allowed to rush away in uncontrolled torrents. If we want the private individual to set an example, the Government itself must take the lead, and in that respect we look upon the Railway Administration and the Roads Administration—the National Roads and Provincial Roads Administration—as particularly bad sinners. Contouring is now being practised to some extent and contouring is advocated; and in conclusion I would like to mention this one example. One does not wish to be parochial, but an example carried out by one of our own farmers has elicited widespread approbation from extension and other officials of the Minister’s Department. This man has gone in for contour farming for the last twenty years. When he took over the farm, he found that the land had been sadly denuded of its fertility. He started with contouring. His whole farm of about twelve hundred morgen is today run on the contour system. He assures me that he is now an independent man. When he took over the farm he was saddled with heavy liabilities, but owing to his scientific methods of farming he has improved the productivity of the soil by as much as fifty per cent. in some cases. There is no shortage of water on his farm; all his fountains are running freely, and he ascribes that solely and wholly to contour farming. I would invite any hon. member who happens to be around our part of the country to visit these works. I know that highly-placed officials of the Department have seen and admired the initiative of this man. I feel that here we have an opportunity of improving the productivity of our soil not only to the benefit of the farmer himself but also to conserve the national asset, our soil. There is no question about it that all other problems in this country are subsidiary to soil conservation. Soil conservation comes first and foremost because without soil we cannot subsist. Everything we see in this House comes from the soil. The soil is our greatest national asset and although we regard ourselves as owners, we are at the most only lessees of the soil. We have a duty to posterity. We are only the users of the soil; we are not the owners. We must use the soil in such a way that we can give an account to those who follow. Soil husbandry is a sacred duty, and it behoves us to see that the soil we possess is passed on to those who follow us as a permanent heritage.

The circumstances and requirements of soil conservation have been put very clearly, especially in the mountainous regions. I want to confine myself more specifically to soil conservation in our crop areas, principally in those areas where crops take up a great part of the area, and where we have small patches of pasturage. I want to draw attention to the necessity of soil conservation in those parts where we have to produce on a great scale, those parts which have to produce the food of the people. In those parts soil conservation is of the utmost importance. We find that the war circumstances especially constitute an important contributory factor in the depreciation and reduction in value of our soil. When we ask the authorities to consider the matter—and that is why I heartily support the amendment of the hon. member for Wolmaransstad (Gen. Kemp)—we find that small sums are spent here and there. That does not meet the need. This is a national matter and it ought to be tackled on a national basis. The farmer, especially the grain and crop farmer—I am not speaking specifically of the mealie farmer only—has been liquidating his asset, his soil, of recent years. He has been giving it to the nation without being able to put back anything into the soil. The time has now arrived when we should tackle this matter seriously. We must enable the farmers in those parts of the country to put back into the soil what they take out, otherwise production will come to a standstill.

At 4.10 p.m. the business under consideration was interrupted by Mr. Speaker in accordance with the Sessional Order adopted on the 25th January, 1945, and Standing Order No. 26 (1), and the debate was adjourned; to be resumed on 16th March.

When the debate was adjourned last night, I was implementing a plea made by several other members that the hon. Minister should give recognition to the non-European trades union. I do not want to elaborate that; the case has been well enough made, but I do feel that the time has arrived when the Minister, despite the fact that lately he has been giving some consideration to non-Europeans, should give the trades union full recognition. Whether he is prepared to do it within the orbit of the system of trade unionism which has been set up by his Department or whether he is prepared to give them recognition as an ordinary trades union, is a matter about which I am not particularly concerned, but they should get some recognition. They have very many grievances which are not always properly presented to the Department. There is a tendency as we know, in this country to deal with the non-European in a rather off-hand manner, and as the railways apparently get abounding surpluses every year, it does seem to me that the Minister could with very great benefit to the country generally, give recognition to this trade union through which and by which the position of the lower paid employees can be much improved. I think that the Railway Department is today resting a great deal too much on its laurels with reference to its efforts made during the war. That is more or less the general outlook of most institutions and businesses in the Union of South Africa. But there is no big business concern that I know which makes more play of the fact that we are at war than the Railway Department. The Minister some years ago went on a train and he came back and told the House that he had tested out the austerity meal and that he had found the austerity meal not only pleasing to eat but sustaining and nourishing. I wonder if the Minister eats the kind of austerity meal that we do on the railways today. Whatever might have been said of the original austerity meal, the kind of food that is served today, is actually too shocking for words, and in the meantime the department has put up the price, and the more we pay the less we get to eat. It is not a case of shortage. At particular times when we know there is a glut of fruit in the Union of South Africa, it is impossible to get any decent fruit on the railways. We have had the meatless day imposed on us, but in many instances no attempt is made to give the public anything like value for its money. I am not accusing the chefs nor the stewards in this connection. It appears to be a policy which has been embarked on by the department itself in order to make a little more money. I am sure the Railway Department is making enough money today to make it unnecessary for the Department to set out on a cheese-paring policy, whereby they are going to make an extra few thousand pounds. I have actually seen cases in this country, particularly last year, on a journey to Rhodesia, when several individuals had to go into lunch twice and pay twice before they could satisfy their hunger. That is an actual fact. I am not a very big eater, and there were occasions when I was very much inclined to go in twice myself.

Were you included in those who went in twice?

No, there would be only one reason why I would go in twice for lunch. It may sound a minor point, but it is causing a very considerable amount of irritation to the public and it is something to which the Minister should pay attention—and we find this in every way on the railways. Only recently the administration withdrew the towels which they provided in the compartments. The public was given notice that the towels had been withdrawn, but in how many instances did the people see that notice? Many people got on the train only to discover that there were no towels. In this case the excuse was that there was an outbreak of smallpox and infantile paralysis in the country and in order to prevent infection, the towels were withdrawn. Incidentally some years ago, the towels were cut in half. When the towels were withdrawn the excuse was that we might get infantile paralysis, but at the same time they were selling bedding. If there is a possibility of getting infantile paralysis from towels, which I take it are properly sterilised at the end of each journey, how much more possibility is there of contracting some contagion or infection from bed-linen and blbankets? So I cannot for the life of me believe that that was the real reason why the towels were withdrawn, and I am also satisfied that it is not impossible for the railways to get towels in this country. I wanted to say let us look at the lighting in the compartments, but the fact of the matter is that you cannot look at it; it is not there; you cannot see it. They have taken about four or five globes away from each compartment, and when it becomes dark, if your eyes are at all bad, all you can do is to go to bed. You certainly cannot read because the light is too bad, and yet I know of a firm in Johannesburg which has been beseeching the controller to unfreeze electric globes and this particular firm has enough globes in its stores to light the whole of Johannesburg, perhaps not the size of globes which are used on the railways, but if other firms can import globes from overseas surely the railways can do it. I have come to the conclusion that it is not due to the war. It just seems to be the policy of the department that they are going to irritate the public in every wav. I know that the hon. Minister and the department have been trying for years to prevent people from travelling. They have been trying with very little success indeed, and if they think they are going to stop people from travelling merely by irritating them, I am afraid they are barking up the wrong tree, and those of us who find it absolutely necessary to travel, can now demand just a little more attention to our physical comforts when we travel on the railways and just a little more value for the money we pay and a little less of these continued excuses of which we are getting tired; “after all, don’t you know there is a war on?” We know there is a war on, and we on these benches will never be prepared to advocate anything which would interfere in the slightest degree with the full conduct of the war effort. But I am satisfied that it is being used as an excuse today in order to bolster up what I can only call a certain amount of inefficiency at the top—not at the bottom, because the decisions are not made there. There is a certain amount of disregard for the public who travel on the railways today and who pay very high prices for that privilege. Let me take another instance. For my sins or otherwise, I had to travel daily last year for quite a few weeks from Johannesburg to Pretoria, and it was one of the most uncomfortable experiences I have had. The train service to Pretoria is completely, hopelessly inadequate. For the reason that in Pretoria it is almost impossible to find accommodation at a reasonable figure, very many of our armed forces, both men and women, in order to do their jobs, have to travel back and forth daily from Johannesburg. I know that many of the people employed in the army reside in Johannesburg and travel to and fro daily. They go through by train at 7.10 in the morning and they come back by train at 5.50 in the evening. My colleague has reminded me that the War Supplies people travel from Pretoria to Johannesburg every day, and then they come back from Johannesburg to Pretoria. I believe the hon. Minister of Transport actually travels himself from Pretoria to Johannesburg every day, and then he travels back at night, but I am quite sure he does not travel back by the 5.50 p.m. train. I would advise the hon. Minister to travel on that train a couple of times and then we might get a better service. On Friday nights particularly one literally has to fight one’s way into the coach and you will find that the whole of the corridor is occupied by people standing, and in the particular type of coach where they have a lowly-built luggage rack, each of these luggage racks is occupied by a soldier who sits on top of his luggage. Incidentally the trains are grossly overcrowded, and if anything in the nature of an accident ever occurred, it would be a very great tragedy indeed. What is the solution? It only needs one extra train in the morning and one extra train at night. Surely there is one extra train in the morning and one extra train at night available? Incidentally there is a dining saloon on each of these trains. The journey only occupies a little more than an hour. If the position is so bad that an extra train in the morning and an extra train in the evening or an extra coach for that matter, morning and evening, cannot be put on, surely they can take the dining saloon off and put on an extra coach in its place. I understand repeated requests have been made by the Department to give better facilities, and it appears to me that very little consideration has been given because the travellers are primarily members of the armed forces. I want to appeal to the Minister to go into this matter, because the discomfort of these journeys, particularly in hot weather in this country, is seriously sapping the efficiency of the people who have to travel on the railways. I find myself feeling quite exhausted after a week’s travelling on the railways and I know that the men who have been doing it for years feel in a similar condition. It is a fast train and it rocks quite a lot. In many instances people have to go into the train with piles and piles of luggage, and on this train one finds piles and piles of luggage with people sitting on top of it. I am quite satisfied that as far as travelling is concerned, it is one of the most shocking exhibitions in the world, and it is something which can be rectified merely by putting on an extra train in the morning and an extra train in the evening. I really got up to intervene in this debate to follow up a few words which were said by the hon. member for Cape Town (Castle) (Mr. Alexander) with reference to shipping. The hon. Minister is today Minister of Transport. He does not seem to be particularly enamoured of South Africa’s possibilities as far as air travel is concerned. He did let himself go a little the other day, and he told us that we were not an air-minded country, and that we are not likely to be interested much in the international air routes of the world. I am inclined to agree with the hon. Minister in that respect, but if we are not an air-minded country, I am satisfied that we are at least a sea-minded country. We have the sea around three of our borders, and I would like to ask the hon. Minister whether he is prepared to make a full statement on shipping as far as South Africa is concerned. In the first place, I believe, as was the case even before the war, all our mail will in future be carried by air. If that is to be the case, are we going to revert to the system which obtained in the Union of South Africa of having what is known as Mail Lines? Are we going to revert to the old system where a particular company is classified as a Mail Line and is then given a subsidy by the Government because of that classification, or are we going to abolish this idea of Mail Lines, or are we going to have South African shipping of our own? These are questions which I think the Minister should answer. I want to say this, that I believe between the years of the last war and this war, South Africa has been the happy hunting ground of shipping companies. In the days when other Mail Line shipping companies were losing money hand over fist, the South African run was making profits. We had several other companies operating here too. We had what they called the Conference Lines whereby a certain freight rate was laid down, and there was nothing in the shape of competition as far as the Union was concerned. Then there was the disgusting incident when for three years we paid the Italian shipping companies £150,000 per annum in order to prepare Mussolini for the attack on Abyssinia. Then we had the encouragement which was given to the German lines. In other words, the shipping position with reference to the Union of South Africa in the period between the two wars, did us very little credit indeed, and it certainly reflected very little intelligence on the part of the various Governments concerned. So I would like to know whether we are going back to those bad old days or whether we are going to do something about it. I was pleased to hear the hon. member for Cape Town (Castle) (Mr. Alexander) make a plea for some kind of State shipping, because State shipping has been consistently opposed by the Governments in this country, and consistently advocated by members of the Labour Party in this House. We believe that we should have a certain measure of State shipping, and that we should not allow overseas shipping companies to rook South Africa of the enormous profits they made for so many years. I know that the classic argument against State shipping always advanced in this House was: “Look what happened to Australia”, but because Australia did not make a success of it is no reason why we should make a similar failure. Because one man fails in the haberdashery business, there is no reason why everyone should fail. The same applies to shipping. Australia has insisted that all coast-wise shipping should be carried in Australian bottoms. We could have done that. Not so very many years ago we know that we had to pay very large sums of extra subsidy in this country to get the mailboat to go from Cape Town to Durban. In fact, we had to bribe the shipping company to take the mailboat from Cape Town to Durban, whereas Australia forced the mailboats of any company going there to transship their cargo, and it was then carried in Australian bottoms. But I do not feel that I want anything in the nature of a mail line to be built by South Africa. That is beyond us. I do however believe that we should develop our coastal shipping to a large degree. It has always appeared to me a very bad thing ideed that it was left to the Italian line to run fast non-stop runs from Cape Town to Durban and back. It seems to me that it would be quite easy for us to get ships of our own which would be able to do a fast non-stop trip between these two ports and possibly as far as Delagoa Bay; and if the passenger service and freight justified it, possibly to Mombasa. I was pleased to hear the Minister some months ago state that he had now come to the conclusion that possibly there were many articles of cargo which could be more easily carried by ships, and more economically carried, than by the railways. He mentioned coal. I believe a very large traffic could be built up by carrying coal from Natal to the Cape. That brings me to my final point which I made in this House before, and to which the Minister never deigned to reply. We found, during the early days of the war, that the United Nations were up against a lot of trouble in the Mediterranean, and that the very small ship repairing industry we had in Durban and Cape Town was of inestimable value to the British Navy. That industry was doubled and quadrupled and it is a matter of considerable gratification for South Africa that we did manage at that time with the few raw materials at our disposal to do so, with the result that we were at one time, I believe, a vital link in the ability of the British Navy to have supremacy. Many ships came back from the Mediterranean to be repaired and returned in a short timé, instead of going back to England to be repaired. Why is it that we were not in a position at the outbreak of war to provide the full-sized ship repairing industry? For the simple reason that the overseas shipping lines who made very large profits out of the trade, never spent one penny more than they possibly could help in the Union. If something broke down in a ship and it was at all possible, they took it back to England, America, Italy or Germany to be repaired. No ships were repaired here. The only thing South Africa was called upon to do was to pay them. That, I say, from the point of view of Defence, should not be allowed to happen again. We supply a large number of companies with a large measure of profit. I think we are justified in saying that these lines should have a certain amount of their repairs done here. We are justified in asking that if they make profit out of us they should in turn supply us with a certain amount of employment for our people. This ship-repairing industry may grow up to very large dimensions. It is troubling the engineering industry at the moment to know whether it is going to continue after the war. The engineering industry are troubled now because they are faced with the problem of many industries doing war work for war purposes not being able to continue after the war as it will be difficult to turn them over into peace production. But there will be no difficulty in continuing the ship-repairing industry if one gets the ships to repair, and there is only one way of continuing to get ships to repair and that is to lay down that the companies which propose to embark upon the African trade should be forced—and it could be done quite simply—to give South Africa at least 50 per cent. of the total repairs done to their ships. A shipping line has a large number of ships if it runs on a weekly basis. They have to be repaired and it provides a lot of money and a considerable amount of employment for the men in the industry. I think it is something the Minister should give his attention to. I know that we have as a Minister of Transport the one man in the country who is actually very interested in the sea. I believe I have seen a picture of him in a white uniform where he is described as the Commodore of the South African Navy, and I believe he is also the captain of the Royal St. George, although I do not know what ship that is. But I invite him to pay more attention to this. I propose to pursue this matter to the end as far as possible. I think it is an entirely feasible proposition and now is the time to make it clear. If we leave it over to the end of the war, by that time shipping companies may have got their tentacles into us again. I know of one company which came into existence, being registered in South Africa with a capital of £750,000, overseas capital, who are buying hotels all over the place. They realise that the trade of the Union is one of the plums of the shipping industry. These companies will come here and once they have got their claws into us, it is too late to make some other kind of agreement of that description. I feel that the Minister should give very serious attention to this question of shipping and ship repairs. I think he should give us a general statement which shows that the Government has some kind of policy for the future.

I would like first of all to refer to a matter which is causing great concern in the country at the present moment, a matter in connection with what I may call the abuse of our shipping transport. The Minister may be aware that only a few days ago a ship, probably one of our Government ships, arrived in Durban from Australia carrying a large consignment, not of the meat which the hon. the Minister of Agriculture expects, nor of essential foods, but of racing dogs.

To be slaughtered?

For the Johannesburg Racing Association. The matter was referred to in the “Sunday Times” as follows: “Greyhound enthusiasts regard the importation as an indication that the Greyhound Association do not fear any curtailment of the sport as a result of the Dog Racing Commission.” Thirty-six dogs were landed in crates, each crate five feet square. A rough calculation of that would be that something like 10,000 cubic feet of valuable shipping space which could have been used for the importation of food, was used for these dogs. They were carried to the train; I believe in railway lorries, one lorry for every two dogs. They were luxuriously housed on the way and provided en route, with servants. They received medical attention; and had a well-balanced diet. They had all the elements of social Security which thousands of our people are denied. Now, in view of the shortage of shipping space and the shortages of petrol, tyres and labour, we have seen fit to bring into the country these useless animals, giving them preference over the needs of our people. I do not wish to discuss the matter much further; I just want to say that we must all be amazed that these things can be possible in these days of food crisis. We must leave the propriety of the incident to the people to decide. In my view the implications are very serious indeed. The Minister will, I know, share the country’s resentment that our restricted transport facilities can today be prostituted—it is an ugly word but I will use it—in this way. Will the Minister enquire as to whether the ships used were under his jurisdiction; whether shipping will be used in future for this purpose; why the quarantine regulations at Durban docks were suspended in favour of these dogs; and why special privileges were given to them on the railways? I want the Minister to go a little further than that; and to find out why the shipping facilities were used for carrying dogs when they could be made available to carry flour, condensed milk, meat and butter, all so necessary to supplement our food supplies. He might go even further still, and approach the Prime Minister with a view to instituting immediately an enquiry into the matter, as a matter of public emergency. I now want to touch on a matter of very different and of wider scope. Some days ago I put a question on the Order Paper to the Minister of Transport enquiring as to the relationship of the South African Air Service to international aviation arrangements. He did not give me a reply immediately; I fully appreciate his reason; but he did reply later on, giving the country an encouraging and helpful statement as to our future air policy. There are many gaps in his statement, however. It was a very restrained statement, and considerable clarification is necessary. The matter of international aviation was dealt with extensively in the House of Commons in January. The Press of this country has referred to it; but frequently in a contradictory way. It is therefore necessary that the Minister should clarify certain points in connection with the Chicago and Montreal conference; in connection with the International Air Transport Agreement to which 28 nations have adhered; and in connection with the Commonwealth Air Transport Council. Did South Africa sign the International Air Transport Agreement? What are our obligations under that agreement and because of our partnership with the Commonwealth scheme? This is a very important matter. Commerce and industry are watching developments closely. They are not interested in international air routes as such, as much as they are with the province of the Ministry of Transport as a link in the chain of world air services; and in its relation to the freedom of the air in South Africa. The Minister has had considerable pressure brought to bear on him to declare whether he is in favour of a monopoly or in favour of competition. In fact connection I want to quote from an article in the recent issue of “Commercial Opinion”—

In view of the inevitable increase in big monopolies and cartels after the war, there is a possibility—the Minister himself has conceded that he fears this—that some monopolistic interest will get a stranglehold on South African aviation. It is necessary therefore that the country in general should be assured regarding the position of the South African Airways as visualised by the Minister for the purposes of post-war civil aviation. The Minister himself has said that he would confine the South African air services to southern Africa. These are his words. I am quoting from the Johannesburg “Star” of 15th November last—

Now the press has given us a different impression from that. It has indicated that we intend establishing our own air lines to Europe. The whole question is obscure. It leaves the question of the control by South African Airways, or by monopolies, if I might put it this way, still in the air. Our minds would be very much clearer if we had a better picture as to what really happened at Chicago and Montreal. We know that the conferences were not the success anticipated. That was expected because of a serious divergence of opinion, particularly between the U.S.A. and Britain. The U.S.A. wanted unlimited competition on every route, over every country, on the international air lines. They wanted the right to pick up, and put down traffic wherever they wished. They were opposed to an international organisation which would control routes and service. The wanted only a consultative body with no authority. In other words, as I see it, following up the thought of the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. Burnside) they were asking for freedom for big monopolies to operate services on the theory of the survival of the fittest. In these conditions it is obvious that the South African Airways could not survive. They would either develop into taxi services or become absorbed. The Chicago conference revealed quite clearly the challenge which monopolies will make to any effort on the part of other countries to establish world organisations. That is an ominous revelation. Monopoly won in 1920; that led to unrestricted competition and the present world war. This matter is serious for South Africa; because several countries shared the views of the United States, and signed a document in favour of unlimited and unconditional competition in the air. What, I ask the Minister, was the point of view of the South African delegates in regard to that document? The British demands were different. The British wanted an international body with authoritarian powers. What were those powers? To regulate traffic; to lay down a programme of frequencies; and to operate in collaboration with national or local services. This plan was designed to eliminate all unnecessary competition. There was thus a fundamental difference between the U.S.A. and Great Britain which made agreement impossible. That difference was obvious before the Conference was held. A certain gentleman, a Mr. John Martin, not our Mr. John Martin, but Senator John Martin, the Republican leader in the American House of Representatives, said this—

With these views Colonel Knox and General Arnold concurred. In the House of Commons about the same time Captain Balfour, British Under-Secretary for Air, used these words—

Now, what answer can be made to the disruptive tendencies indicated in these two extracts? That answer, to me, is the development of the Commonwealth Air Transport Council. There are two good reasons why we should appreciate the Commonwealth Air Transport Council. It has long been the basis of British air policy. It is not merely, as the hon. member for Beaufort West (Mr. Louw) said, a result of the Chicago Conference. The first reason why we should support it is this: Commonwealth unity is a fact; the war has proved that.

Why do you not say Empire policy?

The air policy in the Commonwealth—and I would like the Minister’s opinion on this—will be based on zoning, each zone having its own international authority and to be controlled by one major power. That, I believe, will be the policy which will emerge in regard to the international air relationship to be formulated in the first instance by the United Nations. If adopted it will mean that the U.S.A., Great Britain, China and Russia will girdle the world with fast and efficient services. The Commonwealth Air Transport Council gives more reason for optimism than doubt. I do not share the pessimism and fear of the future as expressed by the hon. member for Beaufort West. The second reason why we should welcome the establishment and the growth of the Commonwealth Air Transport Council is that before the war six great nations carried on the air traffic of the world, or most of it. After the war Germany, Japan and Italy will be debarred from participation for some considerable time. The services will have to be carried on by the United Nations with existing civil transport and military transport planes. It is in that connection that the Commonwealth Air Transport Council, taking its part in an organisation of that kind, can contribute to an international organisation. The whole country is interested; and I would like to know whether the conference which is to be held on the 20th March, has been convened under the aegis of the Commonwealth Council, or whether it is only in the nature of conversations between the Governments of South Africa and Britain, and the other governments of Southern Africa. Which ever is the case, we shall have clear evidence before the end of March that there are two strong contending powers for air supremacy in civil aviation. I hope the Minister, before this debate concludes, will take the House into his confidence, as Lord Swinton took the British House of Commons into his confidence, and make a clear and unequivocal statement to the people of South Africa. This is what the commercial interests of the country want to know; what the trading interests and the people of the country want to know; this is the problem for the Minister: in this complex and delicate pattern of international air relationships what is to be the position of South Africa as an operator of her own South African Service, as a member of the British Commonwealth, and as a sovereign independent state?

I would like to take an opportunity of thanking the hon. Minister of Transport for giving heed to one of the requests I made last year. Last year I requested the Minister of Transport to make some small arrangements at Mowbray. There was a great congestion of passenger traffic waiting at the station for the buses which took people to their destination. He met me in respect of that in allowing the bus owners to erect shelters for these unfortunate people. Although we had to wait for these shelters nearly a year they are at last being erected and before long I think they will prove to be a boon to these people who had to stand and wait in the rain and wind. The next point is in regard to the railway station there. We have a station which was erected 80 odd years ago, and if it is not pulled down soon we will have the Monuments Commission interfering and declaring it to be a monument to preserve for all time. I sincerely hope that will not occur because the town has outgrown its railway station. Its population is many times bigger than it was when the station was built. The station is most inadequate in all sorts of ways. I understand that the inhabitants have met the railway management on several occasions, protesting against the sanitary arrangements, the booking office, the narrowness of the platforms and various other matters. I hope the Minister will do his best to carry out his promises to me and build a new station there in the near future so that we will have a really good station and one of which we can be proud. I hope moreover that that will take place because I see that there has been unanimity in the agreement with regard to the station site in Cape Town, which may assist considerably. I would like to congratulate the Minister on that and I hope that people outside will meet this new arrangement with the same unanimity which was arrived at in the discussions of the committee. Before long I understand Cape Town will have a station that will be worthy of it, and in that case I hope that it will not be long before Mowbray will follow suit, and also have a station worthy of a town of its importance. Mowbray is the most important station on the suburban line.

What about Woltemade?

I should like to say a word of praise for the refreshment arrangements on our railways. The catering staff on our railways certainly deserve very hearty congratulations indeed for the way in which they have stood up to the tremendous strain they have worked under ever since the war broke out. We have much larger trains than we had formerly; there is only small accommodation for the staff, and yet in spite of that the men and women at work in the catering section have beaten every obstacle and have done excellent work. It is amazing to observe how they set about their work; these stewards have sometimes to work on long trains with as many as twenty coaches, and they carry food from one end to the other. If they find that a person is ill and unable to come to the dining saloon, they find time, in spite of the many sittings they have to cater for, to attend to their needs. The sittings are so numerous that I am told that in some cases the saloons are full of people either having breakfast or lunch or dinner right through the day. I think we certainly ought to thank those men in the catering department. I wish them every success, and I certainly think they deserve every praise we can give them.

The matter which was raised by the hon. member for Bloemfontein (District) (Mr. Haywood) in his amendment, is one which has come up in this House year after year, and it is a serious matter. It concerns the dissatisfaction which exists in the ranks of the Railway Administration. I cannot understand how the Minister can sit here year after year and listen to these complaints and accusations and charges without saying: “I am becoming tired of these charges and I am going to cause an investigation to be made.” Let there be an investigation and let us as members of Parliament and the people in the country who are interested in the matter, know once and for all whether the charges of the hon. member for Bloemfontein (District) and others are correct. We should like the Minister to do that. We are not all acquainted with the facts; we do not all know what the true facts are, and it is in the interests of the General Manager and of the Railway Administration as a whole and in the interests of good administration in the country that we should know the truth of the matter. I ask the Minister to decide once and for all to institute investigations to ascertain whether there is favouritism and whether there is intrigue. Parliament and the people will then know whether the Minister is correct in saying that there is nothing of the kind. That is the first duty of the Administration and of any business—at any rate one of its first duties—to see to it that its employees are satisfied. It does not pay a big business like the Railways for ever and always to have people in its employ who are dissatisfied because they feel they are being treated unfairly and unjustly. The officials of the Railway Administration and, in fact, of any business, have the right to expect honest and fair and sympathetic treatment. I do not want to enlarge on the cases which were mentioned by the hon. member for Bloemfontein (District). But I want to deal with a few other cases, and I must say in that connection that it passes my comprehension that anything of this kind can take place in the Railway Service. We like to flatter ourselves that we have a very efficient railway industry, that it is controlled on business lines, that there is honesty and fairness and justice towards the officials. I have come into contact with a few cases of blatant injustice and unfairness, which I want to raise today. I have already raised one of these cases on a previous occasion, and I do not want to go into the details again. I mention it again merely to point out that I am not dealing with an isolated case, but that there is an accumulation of cases where there is injustice, while one has to move heaven and earth to persuade the Administration to do something. Last year and the previous year I pointed out how the Railway Administration treated temporary artisans in its employ by withholding a portion of their wages for a long period, in spite of continued requests on the part of the people to be paid the wages which were due to them. Time and again they asked for the wages which were due to them, but it was bluntly refused. I then personally interested myself in the case, and after a great deal of quarrelling and after a long fight the Railway Administration eventually said: “Very well, you were right; we shall pay these wages.” The Railway Administration then had to pay an amount of approximately £5,000 in the form of arrear wages to a number of men in the Railway service. I just want to mention this case, without going into further details, but I want to mention another case to show the strange ways of the Railway Administration. This concerns artisans who were in temporary employ. According to the regulations they had to be paid the wage which was fixed by the Department of Labour for the same type of artisans in the city. The difference between what the Government paid and what they had to get, was that the Administration paid them 2s. 7½d. per hour while they had to get 3s. 3d.

That has all been rectified.

In certain cases, but I want to draw attention to one particular case. Here I have the case of a person who did not get it. I subsequently interested myself in this case. Later on other men got it. These were carpenters and as carpenters they had to get 3s. 3d. per hour. Another carpenter, the case with which I want to deal, now asks to be paid at the same rate. After a long struggle with the Administration his request was refused. Why? He is a carpenter, a temporary carpenter in the employ of the Railway Administration, but he was not engaged on the building of houses. He was employed in the engineering branch and subsequently he worked on road motor vehicles, but always as a carpenter. His request was refused. He was paid at the rate of 2s. 7½d. And what was the excuse? The excuse was that it was an exception, that this man was employed in the engineering branch and that there had never been a wage determination for that particular branch. That was the technical objection of the Administration. Here we have a man who regularly performed carpentry duties. His neighbour who was employed on the building of houses, received 3s. 3d. per hour. This man builds motor vehicles and repairs lorries—it is all carpentry—and he gets 2s. 7½d. per hour. Another man who is employed in the engineering branch, builds passenger coaches, also carpentry, just as the other man does carpentry; they work next to each other, but because one man’s work is in connection with passenger coaches, he only gets 2s. 7½d. How can that be justified? The Administration relies on a small technical point in stating that there has been no wage determination in that particular branch. But here we have two men working next to each other; one man gets 3s. 3d. and the other gets 2s. 7½d. They are both doing the same type of work. So much as far as this matter is concerned. Now I want to bring another case to the notice of the House. I thought after the quarrel which I had with the Railway Administration in connection with temporary artisans, that they would be careful in the future when similar complaints were received and that they would act in the matter. I refer to the case of a number of men in Bloemfontein who drive steam hammers. They are steam hammer drivers. Since 1938 they have been acting in a higher grade, driving steam hammers, and they were entitled to higher pay in respect of it. They made application; and now I should like to go into the history of this case in order to show how difficult it is to get something out of the Railway Administration and how unfairly the people are treated. Since 1938 they have been acting in a higher grade. On the 10th December, 1939, they asked to be paid at the higher rate. They did not even get a reply to their application. They waited and waited and in 1943 they again wrote, asking for higher wages. They received no reply. That was in April, 1943. On the 3rd November, 1943, they again asked for higher pay. They had then been doing this work for which they should have received higher pay for five years. They asked for higher pay, but got no reply. After the third attempt on the. 3rd November, 1943, they eventually received a letter on the 9th November from the Mechanical Engineer at Bloemfontein, in which it was stated: “We have no knowledge of such acting appointments.” They say they do not even know that these people were acting in these posts. This comes from their chief. He makes no inquiries but simply says that he knows nothing about it. The people then approached me. There were five of them. They had been struggling for years through the ordinary channels and now they have approached a member of Parliament. On the 9th March 1944, I wrote a letter to the General Manager of Railways explaining the whole matter to him. I gave him all the facts and dates and the correspondence, a complete memorandum setting out everything. I wrote this letter on the 9th March, 1944, and on the 11th March I was notified that this matter was being investigated. I learned that in the meantime in April of last year investigations were instituted. These men were called up—there were five men—and they gave full particulars. On the 31st May I received a further letter from the General Manager in which he stated that they were still making enquiries. By that time, the men had furnished them with all the data. On the 21st July, 1944, these five men again wrote a joint letter to their immediate chief, again asking whether they were to be paid. Do you know what reply they received from the mechanical engineer?—

By that time approximately five years had elapsed and they were notified that their chief could not reply to them, even after the enquiry which had taken place. On the 18th August I again wrote to the General Manager pointing out what had happened and informing him that the enquiry had taken place, and asking him whether he could not do anything for these people. On the 3rd August I received a letter from the Acting General Manager to the effect that the investigation had not yet been completed. In April they had all the relevant information from the men, but after five years they still replied that the matter was being investigated. I had then been trying from March to September to obtain justice and fair treatment for these people. I could no longer exercise patience and on the 3rd November, 1939, I wrote direct to the Minister and I submitted the whole matter to him. On the 5th November the Minister wrote informing me that my representations were receiving special attention. After six years had elapsed these men were still not getting their wages and I was eventually forced to approach the Minister. Then the sparks flew; they woke up and on the 8th November a letter was addressed to me, informing me that these people would be paid. The General Manager apologised for the delay. They had been very busy. They would now pay the people. We must remember that there was no further investigation. That is my point. After I had written to the Minister on the 3rd November, they were paid on the 8th November, after the Minister had stirred up the people in head office. What happened in the meantime? Why this delay? These officials persistently wrote to the chiefs, but those letters simply found their way into the wastepaper basket; they got no reply, or it was said: “We do not know anything about your having acted in a higher capacity.” A year after I had first intervened in the matter, I was eventually forced to go to the Minister, and they were then paid within two or three days. Is it reasonable and just to treat the officials in this way? We can understand that these people are dissatisfied and that they feel that it is of no avail demanding their rights and proceeding through the usual channels. I have now mentioned two blatant examples, one which I raised last year, and this other case of the steam hammer drivers. We only succeeded after going to a great deal of trouble. When these people demand their rights, no notice is taken of it. They were only paid after we had taken the matter to the Minister. Now I also want to ask the Minister why these people were paid the higher wage to which they were entitled, for a period of twelve months? Why was the period fixed at twelve months? Apparently it was regarded as a sort of compromise that the Department would offer them the higher wage for twelve months. The Department wrote: “It is felt that in coming to this decision the matter is being disposed of fairly.” But the matter cannot be disposed of fairly unless full justice is done, and I want to ask the Minister to go into this matter and to see what is really due to these people. If they acted in a higher capacity for thirteen months, they should be paid for thirteen months and not for twelve months. This type of thing makes the Railway official despondent. They do not like approaching members of Parliament, but here I have mentioned two cases where the people had to struggle for years in order to obtain justice. This is not the way to treat the Railway officials, and I hope the Minister will see to it that this type of thing does not occur again. In the first place any grievances which are lodged should be investigated. The application of the people should not be refused without further enquiries. The Minister should make investigations to ascertain who was responsible for the fact that the application of these people did not receive proper attention. In the second place I want to point out that the investigation in the last-mentioned case took place in April and that nothing was done until such time as I submitted the matter to the Minister. One might reasonably ask that interest be paid to these people on the money which was withheld from them during this period. I pass now to another matter which also indicates how Railway officials are treated. A Railway official from my constituency, a labourer, was sent to a place in the vicinity of Lydenburg, Transvaal, where a bridge was being built. He proceeded to Lydenburg and commenced duty on the 8th April, 1944. In September his wife came to me—she is still residing in my constituency—and told me that her husband had been working at Lydenburg from April and had not received any wages at all from the Railway Administration during all that time. I said to her: “My dear woman, but surely that cannot possibly be true.” She then affirmed that it was the truth and that her husband was starving, that she had to send food to him to Lydenburg. She told me that he was ill, that he was undernourished, that he was far from the town and that he had no food. I made enquiries and I wrote to the System Manager concerned, and it was then discovered that it was true that this poor labourer had not received any wages. I then enquired whether he had not asked for his wages, and he stated that he asked for his wages, every time the paymaster came round, but the paymaster said he knew nothing about him. He worked there from month to month.

Every day?

Yes, every day. He is not in the town itself, but is employed outside on a bridge. The paymaster did not know about him and no wages were paid to him. Eventually this man had to be certified by the doctor as being incapable of doing this work, and he returned home ill. His wife told me that she visited him while he was ill, and the only food he got was the food which she was able to send to him. She also sent a little of her savings to him in order to enable him to buy food. These are the facts. Here I have this letter from the System Manager—

This letter was written on the 25th September, 1944. But this is the best part of it all; they go on to say : “No complaint has, how ever, been received up to the present from du Toit himself.” That is stated notwithstanding the fact that du Toit says he did ask the paymaster regularly. I thought it was impossible, but it transpired to be the truth. It is true, du Toit did not write to the System Manager; they never take the trouble; they go on hoping the money will come and they are afraid to write. Eventually his wife came to see me. I took up the matter and eventually this man was paid. How is it possible for anything of this kind to happen in the Railway Administration? Is there no welfare official who looks after the interests of these people? How is such a thing possible? If the Minister were not to get his salary for so many months, I think he would very soon dismiss the chief accountant of the Government. Such things ought not to happen. One can understand that mistakes may occur. There are certain things of which the Minister himself is not aware and of which the General Manager is not aware. But what I should like to know is this : When we submit complaints of this nature, what happens? They rectify the mistake, but do they also make enquiries to ascertain who was responsible for it? Are the interests of these people looked after? The Minister and the General Manager are bound to look after the interests of the people. I have mentioned three types of cases where people were treated unjustly, unreasonably and even cruelly. Their cases were only rectifed after the intervention of the Opposition members of Parliament. We must prevent a repetition of this in the future. These grievances must not find their way into the wastepaper basket; they should be dealt with. Measures should be taken to prevent a repetition. During the past three years I have been drawing attention to cases of this nature. It is only when I go as far as the Minister that thing are put straight. It is not fair, honest and just towards the employees.

I find myself in this debate making further, fresh representations to the Minister of Railways. At the outset might I say that like the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. Burnside) and the hon. member for Cape Western (Mr. Molteno) I too, would ask the Minister to give recognition to the non-European trades union, and to permit it to have such facilities amongst the non-European staff on the Railways as are afforded to other trades unions representing railway employees. My information goes just a little further than the information of the other two members. I understand that a certain recognition was offered to this nonEuropean organisation provided it would in some way or other underwrite its activities. The Railway Department was prepared, I understand, to afford the trade union these facilities and to afford it the privilege of having the contributions of its members deducted through the pay sheets—provided! That proviso the trades union was not prepared to accept, and it is because of some limitation upon the autonomy which the organisation was offered, that it felt itself precluded from accepting.

Do you know what the provisos were?

Mr: BOWEN : I do not know what the provisos were, but I do know that if any trades union organisation refuses to avail itself of the facilities of extending its membership and of collecting the membership fees through the pay sheets, it must have been a proviso of some importance.

No politics.

I do not know what the hon. Minister includes in the term “politics.” Would the hon. Minister suggest that it was politics for any trades union organisation actively to promote a policy which is in direct conflict with the policy laid down by the Minister? I should say that that would be the first fundamental thing where the Minister would say : This is politics. But how can a self-respecting organisation of coloured employees accept the policy of the hon. Minister in regard to non-European and coloured labour in this country? I approach the status of employees in the S.A. Railways from a national aspect and not from a purely limited political aspect. My approach to the question is as wide and as frank and as fair as that of the hon. Minister. I do not call myself politically minded when I criticise the Minister’s policy in this regard. It is or it is not a fact that the hon. Minister has subscribed to a policy which actually says: There shall be no non-Europeans or coloured men working in a graded position on the South African Railways. It is the Minister’s distinct policy that coloured men, if they obtain work on the railways are precluded from working in graded positions. The Minister is precluding the coloured man from bettering himself. Are these services to be denied to one million coloureds? Cannot the coloured people in this country get any remunerative employment above that of a labourer? I am as happy as the Minister is and other members are in appreciating the tremendous advances which have been made in the position of the non-European worker. I say there has been a tremendous advance from the scandalous wages paid to the present wage which gives a man an opportunity of going up to 7s. 3d. a day. But the Minister cannot rest on his laurels and say that they shall never be anything more than casual and unskilled labourers in this Department. The Minister knows very well that since his regime there were coloured men who were doing work which either at the time of his taking over this Portfolio was graded or the work has subsequently been graded. We know that the policy of the Department has been that even if a coloured man has been in that position doing that work for five, ten or fifteen years, if that position be graded, that man, if he is coloured, is hounded out. He is no longer permitted to go on doing work that he has done for five, ten or fifteen years. Surely the trades union or non-European organisations which looks after the interests of such people cannot be said to be dealing in politics. If politics means anything at all it means the economic uplift and the improvement of the conditions of that section of the community, and is a self-respecting organisation prepared to keep its mouth shut about conditions which are definitely concerned with their well-being? I would once again appeal to the hon. Minister not to lay down as a fundamental first principle that coloured men are to be denied these rights. It is unfair. It has never been the policy of previous Ministers, and while one does appreciate that basically the coloured people and the non-European generally are getting a better wage-level rate under the Minister’s guidance than they ever had, they have not got, and they are denied by the Minister, any right of future advancement or of future responsible employment. There are no coloured fitters or moulders. Commerce and industry in this country today are laying it down as a fundamental concept in the Cape that where one European boy is apprenticed to a trade, like plumbing, there shall also be one coloured apprentice. I know of at least one firm which does that. Surely it is not too much to expect from the hon. Minister who controls a monopoly? It is a monopoly which this country has given to him and a State monopoly should not be used to undermine the reasonable expectation of a very large section of the community to the normal natural advancement that their education or ability entitles them to. There are as many coloured people in the Union as English-speaking people. The whole of that section of the community is denied any opportunity for advancement in the service by the Minister. I know very well that a State monopoly must be given to the Minister of Transport. Chaos would prevail if it were not a monopoly, but would the Minister be prepared to countenance any other monopoly than the mines in Johannesburg, who lay down a similar policy for the employment of thousands of the same section of the community. He must be honest. I appeal to the Minister. The Minister surely does not give road services to the council which was promoted by his colleague. Surely, if any promise was implied in the establishment of the Coloured Advisory Council, that there will be additional facilities for the uplift and improvement of the economic level of the coloured community, he must do something? What is the good? There are individual cases of men who by virtue of long service in the administration have suddenly been selected to come on to the permanent staff. That requires the production of a birth certificate. In some instances that disclosed the fact that this person is coloured. I have had several instances of men in the employ of the Minister. I have gone to the length of having these birth certificates altered and had alterations made in the records in order that they might satisfy the Minister by putting forward to him a birth certificate showing that they are Europeans in the opinion of those who know them. Only then can they get that work. It is becoming not only a State monopoly and not only a monopoly for South Africa, but one for the Europeans in the country. As long as there is that monopoly and that prejudice against offering facilities for the uplift of the coloured community, so long will I stand against that policy, and as long as there is a trade union who is prepared to do that and which will put forward its case and if that is the condition under which recognition is a requisite, thank God they are not prepared to accept it. A compliment has been paid by the hon. member for Mowbray (Capt. Hare) to the running staff and the catering staff of our railways. I feel that one should do more than to commend them, and that one should consider the amelioration of the conditions under which they are working. The Minister knows, as the hon. member for Mowbray suggested, that there is one continuous meal running the whole day, and it is impossible under any kitchen economy adequately to do justice to the meals. How is it possible for the chef and he staff in the kitchen, limited as they are, to prepare lunch when there have been three sittings at breakfast? How is it possible to prepare dinner at night when there are five sittings at lunch? An hon. member here interjects to say there were seven the other night. I have never been on trains so crowded as that. It is impossible for the kitchen staffs and the catering staffs adequately to perform the services expected of them. The conditions under which they work are intolerable. I would advocate that on some of these trains, instead of taking off the dining saloon, another should be put on. The Minister knows it is almost impossible for him to curtail the amount of travelling the public do, but one definitely has to have much more sympathy for the train staffs. I would like to see a bonus paid for the service they are rendering. Something definite should be done. I have known instances where the whole of the staff have been precluded from taking any meals throughout the whole of the twelve hours they were on duty. They had to take snacks from the sides of plates left in the kitchen. The hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. Burnside) says that the service and the meals provided on the trains are not appetising and are no advertisement to the catering department. It would be surprising if they were. I appeal to the Minister to grant a bonus if he cannot improve the working conditions. Might I also commend the whole of the service and pay the compliment to the services generally rendered by railwaymen. They have worked under conditions which have been strained to the limit of its mechanical efficiency. They have done tremendous work and stood loyally by the administration and the country. They were at all times prepared to work all hours and under all conditions. I feel that something more should be done for them. Hon. members opposite have taken exception to the fact that all railwaymen have made sacrifices and worked on behalf of war charities. Why should they not do so? Why should they not be prepared to give something towards war charities? Every commercial house did it and contributed to the funds and also dug into the pockets of their employees to do so. The Minister should be complimented on the manner in which he has asked railway employees to co-operate with him in the Cavalcades. If it meant some period of service in railway time, it was a good advertisement and promoted the spirit with which South Africa met war conditions. There is just one other factor in regard to the conditions under which the men work. I know they were improved, but one scheme which was designed for improving social conditions was the Rent Rebate scheme, a very grand piece of social legislation, and one worth every penny which the railway administration contributes to it. Its concept is good but its application is not 100 per cent. efficient. Might I direct the hon. Minister’s attention to this particular aspect of the matter? If a man pays more than one-sixth of his wages in rent an inspector of the department looks at the house and values the rental value of the house. If the house is worth the amount he is paying, he is given the difference. A fitter getting £500 per annum pays £100 for a house. The inspector says that the rental value is £100. They give him the difference between £100 and one-sixth of his salary. This man is probably married and living alone with his wife in a good area. Another man, with a wife and five children cannot afford to live in a salubrious area, but must live in the slums, through force of circumstances, in a house which falls within the rental value. He is paying more than one-sixth of his income but he is doing it because he is forced to live there. My plea is that where a person lives under those circumstances, he should be entitled to the rent rebate even if the rental value of the house does not fall within that limit or even if he is paying only one-fifth of his income. But if he pays £100 a year he should be permitted to live in the same salubrious area. The application of that rebate scheme might surely take certain of these people into consideration. A subsidy should be given to these people despite the fact that they do not fall within the four walls of the conditions laid down. Finally, I once again appeal to the Minister not to lay it down as the policy of his administration that there shall be no future for the coloured men in obtaining better social conditions and better opportunities of social uplift.

I want to revert to what the hon. Minister of Transport said last year in the House when he was criticised for not devoting the necessary attention to the mixed travelling of Europeans and non-Europeans on the railways. The hon. Minister said that we should not expect him to act as a social reformer. I want to ask him why we cannot expect him to act as such? I want to bring to the attention of the House that the Minister not only left matters as they were, but under his regime they are steadily deteriorating. We find that mixed travelling was an old custom which was practically limited to the Cape during the last 100 years. But now we find that the custom is increasingly spreading to the interior. Today it is not only coloureds who make use of that custom. At first it was limited only to non-Europeans in the Peninsula, but under present circumstances even natives are making use of it. The natives are comparatively recent arrivals in the Peninsula. The natives who come from the North are not used to that form of life. There they are accustomed to segregation in all respects. When they come to Cape Town they experience a completely new state of affairs. In the North a native would not dare to sit next to a European lady in a bus or train, but when he comes to Cape Town he has the privilege of doing so. I do not want to generalise about the natives, but a large proportion of them are not used to that privilege with the result that they misuse it. The coloured man is perhaps more used to that sort of life, and it does not have the same effect on him as on the natives. But another aspect of the matter is this: When the natives return to the North, they want to introduce the same form of life, hence the many clashes. I now want to ask the Minister of Transport whether he cannot realise that Cape Town has become a pest for South Africa as regards this matter? It is here that the non-Europeans become used to certain customs which they want to introduce into the interior, with the result that when they want to enjoy the same privileges in the North it gives rise to clashes. When we plead for separation it is represented in such a way as if we do not want to give the non-European his rights. No, that is not the case. We who are farmers and who grew up together with the native understand the form of life of the native. We are prepared to give him all possible privileges and rights of development, provided that happens on the basis of separation. Those who accuse the Afrikaansspeaking people of not being prepared to give the non-European his rights, do not know what they are talking about. I make bold to say that the Afrikaans-speaking people especially do much for the uplift and development of non-Europeans. Just look at our Churches. See how much money is spent by our Missionary Associations for the development and uplift of the non-Europeans. We as Afrikaans-speaking people are prepared to spend that money provided it is done on the basis of segregation, but we find that whenever we plead for segregation we are accused of wishing to suppress the non-European. I want to reaffirm that it is not a question of suppression, but we want to maintain that difference, and I make bold to say that the great majority of the educated section of the English-speaking people agree with us in the matter. The hon. Minister will not like it if a dirty native sits next to his wife in the same bus or train. Therefore in principle he agrees with us but he has not the courage of his convictions to put into practice those things which he is convinced are correct. And I do not only accuse the Minister but the largest portion of the Cabinet. They would feel more at home in an institution for old people than in a modern Cabinet. They are old people who no longer have the courage of their convictions.

I do not think the hon. member should pass such personal remarks.

Then I withdraw them, Mr. Speaker. But in general I reflect that that we need a Cabinet of young men, with spirit, who have the courage of their convictions. It is not a personal matter with me but it is a human phenomenon that when people become older they no longer have the courage of their convictions, and the capacity to do things which we need in the Cabinet. We need young men in the Cabinet who have the courage of their convictions and who will tackle the matter when they see that it is necessary for South Africa. I cannot see what injustice will be done to the non-European when we adopt and execute a policy of segregation on the trains and give them separate seats. As I have already described here, the position in Cape Town is becoming worse, and the worst of it is that it is increasingly spreading to the north. Large numbers of natives come to Cape Town, and are inculcated with ideas of equality which they take back with them to the north and to the interior, and which they then wish to apply there with the result that there are many clashes which will increase in numbers in the future. I also wish to draw the Minister’s attention to another matter. It is obviously the policy of the Minister of Transport and of the Administration not to lay down any more railroads but to institute bus services. If the Minister is convinced of it that that is more economical, I leave the matter there. But I should like to hear from him how they will apply that policy. When we want to put a bus on the road there should be a decent road on which the bus can operate. If the Minister is now going to institute bus services on a large scale, is he also going to build roads on which those buses can go, or will he leave it to the Provincial Councils to build those roads? I feel that if the Minister does not devote the necessary attention to this matter, if he does not subsidise the Provincial Councils to make these roads for the buses, it will be a great injustice towards them. It then practically amounts to this, that the Provincial Councils are asked to build railroads for the Minister’s trains. I therefore think that we are entitled to know what the policy of the Minister of Transport really is, whether the Railway Administration will bear the cost not only of the institution of the bus services, but also of making the roads, or whether it will be left to the Provincial Councils to make the roads. If that is done, I feel that it will be the greatest injustice not only against the Provincial Councils but also against the population of the country. While it is dry the bus can operate; but as soon as it rains it will not be able to operate on most roads. The result is that the bus is immobilised and the cream and other products rot. There will be chaos. Therefore, one again I ask the Minister to devote his attention to this matter and to evolve a decent policy so that when that policy is executed there will be no unnecessary delay in connection with it.

While I do not want particularly to deal with the amendment put up by hon. members of the Opposition, may I say this, if one takes an intelligent interest in the work of the Railways it will be obvious that there cannot be much wrong with the staff appointments that have taken place since 1939. I would like to pay a compliment to the Railway Administration for the way they have carried on their services to the country through the five years of war. When one realises that during that period great difficulty has been experienced in South Africa in getting rolling stock and all the other equipment which is necessary for our transport system, I think we can present a pair of white gloves to the Minister of Railways. I want to give a few facts and figures bearing on the efficiency of the railways, and we have to take into consideration that during this period of war no fewer than 14,000 railway employees have joined up for service with the forces in this particular conflict. During that period as far as our rolling stock is concerned, up to October last year, there were only eleven 15 F. engines imported into this country. When you come to take into consideration the amount of traffic which has been hauled by the limited amount of engine power at the country’s disposal, you can gain some appreciation of the amount of repair work that has had to be effected in our railway workshops. Some of the figures showing the traffic are very striking. During the six months up to 31st March last year, in spite of the difficulties with which the railways were faced and their loss of personnel, and in spite of the loss of traffic amounting to 900,000 tons of coal, 90,000 tons of timber, 250,000 tons of manure, 30,000 tons of building material, 650,000 tons of chrome and manganese, and 15,000 tons of general traffic, the railways created a record as far as haulage was concerned last year, the traffic handled amounted to 43,981,438 tons. This is a record for railway haulage; as compared with 1939 the figure shows an increase in tonnage of 8,400,000 tons. So I say, Mr. Speaker, quite advisedly, that anybody who has taken an intelligent interest in the working of the railways in the last five years, must inevitably form the opinion that there can be very little wrong with the efficiency of the railways, and that the staff appointments that have taken place during that time must have contributed towards that efficiency. Let us come down to other facts as far as this is concerned. When we analyse the coal traffic, we see that in 1939 with coal alone the railways hauled 13,743,113 tons of traffic. For 1943 the corresponding figure was 17,257,530 tons. Let us come down to the passenger traffic, and in this connection I have analysed the Western Transvaal system only for the siv months ended 31st March. For the six months ended 31st March, 1939, they moved 19,270,301 passengers. In 1940 the figure was 30,513,451, and for 1944 the number of passengers carried in the six months was 34,946,745. So I think it would be correct to say that as far as this country is cincerned we all owe a debt of gratitude to the Minister of Railways and his staff for the efficient administration of the railways. But let us come down to what they have done in the catering department. In the catering department last year they served 4,320,000 meals, and out of that number 1,500,000 meals were in respect of military personnel. The hon. member for Green Point (Mr. Bowen) paid a tribute to the catering staff of the Railways and asked the Minister of Transport to give them some consideration. I have just had the experience of having to go to Port Elizabeth. I was two nights and two days in the train and both on the up and down trips I can assure the House that the work put in by the catering staff would have commanded the respect of everyone in the country. How these women managed to keep going in these long and narrow corridors I do not know. I have even analysed the work that the corridor steward has to do. During the course of one day their duties on a railway train involve walking twelve miles and the opening of 600 doors, but on this troop train, where the work of course was much heavier than usual, I do not know how the corridor stewards who were women, carried out their duties. They served coffee at 5 o’clock in the morning and finished off at 10 p.m. There were no fewer than six sittings at meals. I sincerely hope that the Minister of Railways will take note of specially arduous duties of this character and give these people, at least those on troop trains, some extra consideration. Some of the passengers were so inconsiderate that if they did not get their coffee in time they became annoyed and asked the chief steward to report the corridor steward, which I think was most inconsiderate. Mr. Speaker, I now come down to some other matters, and particularly I want to take up with the Minister of Railways a subject which is exercising my mind very much. I wish to refer to the volume of railway traffic in Northern Zululand which has grown considerably during this war I must say that those officials who control the railway system realise that there has been a tremendous increase of traffic in recent years in Northern Zululand. This year at the 31st March there were 90,000 tons of timber which could not be hauled. Unfortunately during the year 100,000 tons of cane were left on the fields. That has not altogether been the fault of the railways. Failure to carry this traffic is attributable partly to lack of milling facilities as well as lack of labour. But I am sure in the postwar period with the further extensive development that must occur in this part of South Africa (it is one of the most fertile portions of the country) something will have to be done to ease the pressure that must inevitably ensue. I know the policy of the Railways is that no request for the construction of a new line can be entertained until such time as the Administration is convinced that this specific line will be a paying proposition from the inception. Our policy in this respect is somewhat different to that followed in America. In America they put the railway track down first and the railway brings development after it. In this country we have to commence development without having rail transport facilities to do so and then the Railway Administration lay the line when development has already reached a respectable level. I am not going to press for any particular revision of policy, but as far as railway construction is concerned we must realise that the pressure that is being put on the railway in Northern Zululand has reached such a pitch that it will inevitably be necessary for relief to be provided. We have 50,000 acres under timber and other development which has put a pressure on the railways that is too severe altogether, especially when it is remembered that it is only a single line system that we have running to Durban. Furthermore, we have a bottleneck at Nkwaleni and we are moving the cane down the branch line to Empangeni, Felixton and Mount Edgecombe. To the west of Eshowe the cane traffic is carried along the main line as far as Amatikulu and Gledhow. We have this bottleneck at Nkwaleni and Eshowe and the cane instead of being processed at Eshowe and thus saving a lot of haulage, has to go all the way round down the main line. The gap between Nkwaleni and Eshowe is only fourteen miles by ordinary road and I can assure the House that if that gap of fourteen miles was closed by a rail-link and if you had the complete circle Empangeni-Nkwaleni-Eshowe-Gingindhlovu, the traffic on this railway system would in the future be eased considerably and would make the construction of a mill at Eshowe possible. I want to say this that taking a short-sighted view it may be economic on the part of the railways to by-pass sugar mills and to carry that sugar cane all the way down the line from Nkwaleni and Eshowe, but it is certainly uneconomic from the farmers’ point of view and uneconomic from the broad national point of view. I have been approached with a view to representing the position and to see whether we could get this link between Eshowe and Nkwaleni. If we can have this short line constructed and have the Nkwaleni and Eshowe bottleneck linked up with a railway line, a very much healthier position will be created for the cane growers, the timber growers and for the railways. I may be reminded of the policy of the railways that a line may not, be constructed unless it can be proved beforehand that it will be payable, but I hope the Railway Board and the Minister will go into this matter and I can assure them that if the work is done and the link-line is constructed it will be a payable proposition from the inception. I sincerely hope that the Minister will take into consideration the points I have made as far as this particular link is concerned. The Railway Commission of 1940 made recommendations in several directions. They made a recommendation for a link from Eshowe through Melmoth to Vryheid. I have taken this matter up with the Railways and I have been informed that the cost of the construction of that line will be far too heavy and that the project could not be entertained. I was hoping it would be possible to secure another outlet for the timber which is being produced in Northern Zululand. As it is apparently not feasible for us to have that new line I am appealing to the Minister to improve the motor transport service between Melmoth and Eshowe, and I want him to take into consideration the long-standing discussion about the Eshowe railway station. The congestion of goods at Eshowe is terrific. The Minister and the department know all about that. Representations have been made to them, and I myself have written to them about it several times, and if facilities could be granted that would improve the position there we would all be grateful. The 1940 report refers to the proposed link between Gollel and Piet Retief. I do not know how far that will be linked up with the proposed area to be developed in Northern Zululand, but even if that section could be improved it would at least give an outlet to the heavy timber that is now available and ease cane traffic in our area. But I want the Minister to give special consideration to the building of that short line between Nkwaleni and Eshowe. If that is the minimum that can be done it would ease the position as far as the traffic on the north-coast line is concerned, and I believe that today this is one of the most payable of the railway lines in the Union. Every truck comes up with a full load and then the truck is sent back with a full load. As far as cane traffic is concerned there is not a single cane truck that moves on that railway line that is ever free of a load for more than 24 hours. I have, in fact, very often sent a truck away with a load and the next morning I have got the same truck back again. So there is no doubt that this railway line is a very payable proposition. Mr. Speaker, I now want to come to another matter and it relates to travelling on the railways by non-Europeans. We all realise that the economic uplift of the non-European in this country has had the inevitable result that they are taking to railway travelling. I pointed out a few moments ago that as far as the Western Transvaal system is concerned the traffic had increased by no less than 15,000,000 passengers between 1939 and 1944. The same thing is happening on the North Coast of Natal. When you have a passenger train made up of ten corridor coaches you will find that eight or nine of them are for non-Europeans, and as far as non-European passenger traffic is concerned the congestion is very heavy. We have to bear in mind that these non-Europeans who are now using our railways so extensively are ordinary citizens of South Africa. They are contributing towards the revenue of the railways, and I want the railways to take that into consideration and to turn their attention, for instance, to the provision of reasonable facilities for these non-European passengers. I want particularly to refer to the sanitary facilities which exist at every station on the North Coast. It is becoming a serious problem. Right through the last season we have had, apart from an outbreak of smallpox, cases of tuberculosis and venereal disease, and I think that the time is long overdue as far as my area is concerned (I suppose a similar state of affairs exists in other parts of the Union) when the nonEuropean users of our railways should have something done for him in the direction of the provision of hygienic facilities. As I say, they are contributing to the revenue of the country and they should not be denied reasonable fecilities that are provided for other travellers on the railways. Mr. Speaker, I want to come to another point, and that is in regard to the housing of non-Europeans in the rural areas, as far as the railway employees are concerned. Much improvement has been made by the Railway Administration in connection with the emoluments and the feeding of their nonEuropean employees. In this direction the Administration has made many strides, but in the matter of housing it is a different story. You may go along in the ordinary way to a railway compound, look at it from the outside and remark: It seems to be well built and it is all very nice. But I assure you if you went inside and looked round you would be struck by the congestion. In some cases you will find that these people are living in an area of less than 20 square feet. The agriculturists in my area are all subjected to rules and regulations that have been laid down by the Union Department of Public Health, and while in the ordinary way an agriculturist cannot build non-European quarters unless he complies with the requirements prescribed in the regulations, and you cannot house your labour unless each labourer has 30 square feet of living space, is is a different picture on the railways. I have examined some of these railway barracks and I can assure you that although they are kept very clean the square footage allowed to each labourer is much below 30 feet. I do appreciate that the railways are doing everything they can. I do appreciate that Rome was not built in a day and that time is required to bring everything to a satisfactory standard, and I know an efficient service when I see it. But I think it is only right, particularly as the non-Europeans are using the railways to an ever-increasing extent that more regard should be had to their health any hygiene. The Railway Administration will, I feel sure, agree with me that as far as the railways on the North Coast is concerned an improvement is needed. The railways have a very payable and a very good proposition in that railway to Zululand and I am convinced that in the near future development in that area will go ahead by leaps and bounds, and if anything can be done to ease the traffic congestion as far as that area is concerned the Railway Administration and the Minister will be amply rewarded for any trouble and expense that they go to.

I want to associate myself with the amendment of the hon. member for Bloemfontein (District) (Mr. Haywood) that this Bill be referred to a Select Committee for investigation. That is a reasonable request, if we take into consideration the circumstances. A very serious accusation has been levelled against the Railway Administration. Arguments have been advanced and accusations made that there is a great measure of corruption and uterior motives in connection with promotions. It definitely does not seem fair to ignore those accusations, to close one’s eyes and to let them pass. I feel that the only way in which the Administration can be cleared of blame, is to afford it an opportunity to have the matter investigated by a Select Committee. I feel that there is practically no other alternative. It is imperative. The honour of the Administration depends on it. For that reason this side of the House is obliged to put up a plea that the Minister should consider this amendment. I feel that that is the only way to satisfy the public. The public will certainly welcome it if these accusations are submitted to a Select Committee. We are glad to be able to say that we are under the impression that the Minister of Transport takes a very great deal of interest, and generally speaking we can only speak of appreciation of what he has done in the past, especially when we think of the net profit of fifty million pounds. That is an enormous sum. The Railways have seldom, if ever, produced such a great net profit. But nevertheless we on this side feel—and I think the country generally shares our views—that this enormous profit should be devoted to the provision of certain facilities for the public. I want to draw the attention of the Minister to the fact that the condition of the rolling stock, our trucks and passenger coaches, leaves a great deal to be desired. There is a great shortage of trucks. There have been serious complaints in the past that products could not be transported. Even in my constituency the necessary products cannot be railed to the cities because there are no trucks, and there are continual complaints. The Minister has been good enough to make promises every time and to do his best to send a few trucks, but a week later the products again accumulate and the farmers are at their wits’ end because these products cannot be railed. Coaches which are out-of-date are being used which are actually becoming a danger to the public. Since the Railways have shown this big net profit, it should definitely be devoted to the provision of travelling facilities in this country. Then I think the time has arrived when the tariffs should be reduced. This is the only department which is able to show such a big net profit. The Minister would therefore be rendering the country a great service if he reduced the tariffs in view of the profits. In the past railway fares have been increased periodically and travelling facilities reduced. I think it is very unfair towards the travelling public to increase the tariffs and at the same time to reduce the travelling facilities. We have had numerous complaints in regard to travelling facilities on the trains. Take the dining saloons, for example. The Minister couples only one dining saloon to a tremendously long train to the north. In the morning there are four or five sittings for breakfast, and it, becomes absolutely impossible to cater for the travelling public. It is very nearly lunch time before the people have finished their breakfast. Why not put on two saloons so that the people can be given the necessary facilities? They pay the full price. There are various other things too. It may seem petty to mention these little things, but we feel that here we are not dealing with a poor white service. The Railways are not operated at a loss. There is a big net profit, so that there is ample money to give the necessary facilities to the travelling public. Not only railway fares have risen, but also the cost of bedding. Higher tariffs. Higher tariffs in the dining saloon, and if we go a little further to Rhodesia, we find that the travelling public in Rhodesia pays only 2s. 6d. for meals on the trains and 2s. 6d. for bedding, and we surely cannot compare Rhodesia with South Africa. Why should better and cheaper facilities be provided in a neighbouring British Colony than in the Union? We cannot understand it. The Minister reminds me of a father who lets his small children starve to death in order to economise, and the Minister knows that in vulgar Afrikaans the epithet which we apply to such a father is “vrek” (miser). We do not want our railways to be conducted on a miserly basis. We have the means and there is nothing to prevent the Minister from giving facilities to the travelling public. I want to deal with another point. There are more than ten thousand rail workers who are paid less than 10s. per day. There are ten thousand who get less than 10s. per day, and it amounts to approximately £15 per month. Who are these workers? These are not the office workers who are able to go and have a cup of tea or coffee at 11 o’clock and who are able to sit down to a good meal every day, but the poor workers of the railways who have to guard the safety of the railways night and day. When there are wash-aways, they have to go out in the middle of the night to repair the wash-aways. Without any additional pay, they have to protect me and the Minister day and night when we travel by train. They have to go out at night to ensure the safety of the travelling public and they receive the meagre wage of less than 10s. per day. We feel it is unfair. These people are practically never at home during the day. They have to eat in the veld. There they have to make coffee or tea or cook their meals. They have to work with pick and shovel. When wash-aways take place, they have to go out at night, put up danger signals and combat the danger. We feel that an injustice is being done to these men and their families. They can hardly make a living, and their children are undernourished. Out of this. 10s. they still have to pay rental and meet their other obligations. I want to urge the Minister strongly to grant an increase in this case, even if it is not very much. Let him give then 12s. or 15s. per day, at any rate, in the near future. They really deserve it. Another point I want to raise is in connection with certain stations. I refer to two stations, namely, Vredendal in my constituency and Bitterfontein. There is a tremendous amount of activity at these stations. The Cape meat market is almost entirely dependent on Bitterfontein. The creameries of the Cape, the feeding of the cows in the Cape, depend entirely on Vreden dal. There we have these important stations, and the members of the staff have to do thenwork in galvanised iron hovels. During the winter it is cold and in summer it is intolerably hot. One cannot find words to describe the position when one thinks of the tormenting circumstances under which the people have to perform their duties at these stations. They are overloaded with work, and the staff has to do this work under impossible conditions. The Minister was good enough to promise me last year that a station building would be erected at Bitterfontein as soon as possible. I have waited, but no start has yet been made. I want to urge the Minister to carry out his promise. I expect—and the public expects—that as far as these two important places are concerned, namely Vredendal and Bitterfontein, a start will at least be made this year with the erection of these two station buildings. Then a further point. Since I have been in this House, I believe I have urged every year that there should be a connection between Bitterfontein and Karasburg in South-West Africa. Up to the present my plea has fallen on deaf ears, but I cannot imagine that there will be further dawdling in connection with this matter because it is one of the most important and most essential connections in the country. It would practically link up two provinces, or rather South-West Africa and the Cape Province. It would mean a reduction of four hundred miles in the distance; the tremendous detour from De Aar to the Cape would be eliminated and it would make a difference of four hundred miles. And it will not require the construction of a tremendously long railway line, but one of approximately three hundred miles only, less than three hundred miles between Bitterfontein and Karasburg. It will throw open that whole area, Bushmanland and Namaqualand and the surrounding area, where there are thousands and tens of thousands of sheep and cattle which could be sent to the Cape. As present the cattle have to traverse this great distance. They may first have to trek a few hundred miles to Bitterfontein, through an area where there is continual drought and poor grazing. What is the quality of the meat when it arrives in Cape Town? It is insipid and inedible. This train connection is extremely necessary.

At 6.40 p.m. the business under consideration was interrupted by Mr. Speaker in accordance with the Sessional Order adopted on the 25th January, 1945, and Standing Order No. 26 (1), and the debate was adjourned; to be resumed on 28th February.