I move—

It is perhaps with a certain amount of anxiousness and a certain amount of trepidation that I speak, this morning particularly in view of the fact that the hon. member for Durban (Central) (Mr. Derbyshire) has appeared to have prepared his case, so well, because of the numerous books in front of him, or perhaps it may be that the hon. member for Durban (Central) has somewhat got the idiom mixed up, the idiom that says that children should be seen and not heard; I certainly cannot see him from here. In moving this second reading I should like to indicate to the House at the outset that the Bill is designed to empower the Durban City Council, to establish a Savings Department with a housing section thereof. Briefly, the broad principles of this Bill is to encourage deposits from the citizens of Durban, to be placed in the Savings Department, and that such deposits should be utilised in the direction only for the provision of houses only in the City of Durban, for a section of the community. I am gratified that I now stand with the unanimous support behind me of the Select Committee appointed by this House. This House, no doubt, is already aware that this Bill has had a somewhat chequered career. I am not so sure in my own mind whether this has not in many respects been a blessing, because the Bill has now emerged for the second time from the Select Committee in very much improved form, particularly in regard to: (a) Advances on first mortgage, (b) financial and auditing safeguards and (c) in regard to the supervisory control by both the Administrator of Natal and the Registrar of Building Societies. I am in duty bound to pass on the praise for these improvements to the Select Committee. The report of the Select Committee has already been printed and is now in the hands of hon. members, and I am sure that hon. members will agree that the Select Committee has shown very clearly from the report that it has dealt with the Bill in an exhaustive manner. I now propose to deal briefly with the provisions of the Bill itself, which are as follows: Clause 1 empowers the Durban City Council to establish, maintain and conduct a Savings Department and Housing Section it will be noticed that the Select Committee has made a very important amendment, that is the question of the establishment of a Housing Section, is now obligatory. In other words, Mr. Speaker, as soon as the City Council of Durban receives the power or authority to establish a Savings Department, the Select Committee has made it obligatory upon that Department immediately to commence with the Housing Section. Furthermore, hon. members will notice also that the council will be under an obligation to submit within six months or such further period as the Minister may determine after the commencement of the Act, a copy of the draft rules to the Administrator of Natal and also to the Registrar of Building Societies, together with a resolution of the Council approving of the establishment of the Department and of the draft rules. Furthermore, the scope of the departmental operation of the Savings Department and Housing Section is limited to the municipal area of Durban only. Clauses 2, 3, 4 and 5 provide for the limitation of individual and aggregate total deposits, the requisite notices for the withdrawal thereof and the maximum rates of interest payable thereon. Clause 2 for example provides that deposits may be received either for fixed periods of not less than 12 months, or subject to repayment upon notice which shall not be less than four days’ notice where the amount is £10 or under, 14 days’ notice where the amount is £20 or under, and 30 days’ notice where the amount is over £25. The Council, of course is empowered in special cases to vary these periods. The aggregate amount of deposits received for fixed periods shall at no time be less than the aggregate amount of deposits received subject to notice. This is a very important amendment and perhaps one to which I shall refer again later on. Clause 3 prohibits the Department from accepting deposits subject to withdrawal by cheque, draft, or order payable on demand. That, I think, hon. members will appreciate is to save the Savings Department from becoming a commercial bank. It furthermore limits the total amount of deposits to be held at any one time to a maximum of £2,000,000. Clause 4 limits the amounts of individual deposits in the following manner: The minimum deposit on current account shall be 1s., and the maximum shall be £1,000. The maximum fixed deposit will be £10,000, provided however, that not more than £2,000 of any fixed deposit shall be repayable to any one person in any one month. Clause 5 limits the rate of interest payable to depositors, payable by the Department as follows: (a) Maximum of 3½ per cent. on deposits on current account and (b) maximum of 4½ per cent. on fixed deposits. This section also prescribes the procedure to be adopted in the event of any change being made from time to time in the rate of interest and the manner of issuing application forms, notices, receipts and advertisements. It will be appreciated that the foregoing provisions have been formed essentially to suit the requirements of the small man. This is a most desirable feature of the Bill, and hon. members will gather, as I proceed, that it is the underlying spirit and requirement of the whole Bill. In Clause 6, following the provisions governing the manner of receiving deposits I think it is now necessary to ensure that such deposits should be so administered as to provide a maximum of security for the depositors. Clauses 6 and 7 of the Bill ensure this security by providing that: (1) Not less than five per cent. of the aggregate deposits shall be held and kept in cash or upon deposit withdrawable upon demand in a bank or local authority provided by the Administrator. That obviously cannot be Durban, because it is provided that no such moneys can be used for any service in Durban. (2) The balance shall be invested in one, or more of the following forms: (a) not less than 25 per cent. of the aggregate amount in approved gilt-edge securities as specified in the Building Societies Act; (b) advances by way of first mortgage to any person for the purpose of erecting, improving, adding to or purchasing a dwelling house, subject, however, to: the property being situated in the City of Durban, the applicant not being the owner of any other dwelling suitable for his own occupation, the applicant intending to occupy the dwelling, the maximum advance on one property being limited to £2,000, preference being given to applicants for the smallest amounts; (c) loans to depositors on the security of their deposits, and lastly (d) re-advances to mortgagors of amounts repaid by them in reduction of capital. (3) The Council is prohibited from investing any portion of the deposit funds in any Durban Municipal securities, or from utilising any portion for the purposes of the city. Finally Clause 7 provides that the liability to depositors shall be a charge upon the rates, rents and other revenue of the City of Durban. Clauses 8, 9 and 10 prescribe the manner in which the accounts and balance sheet shall be kept, and prescribe furthermore the procedure to be followed in submitting such accounts and balance sheets, together with the other necessary documents, to the Provincial Auditor of Natal and to the Registrar of Building Societies. The Provincial Auditor is also under an obligation to submit his report to the Administrator who shall lay same before the Natal Provincial Council, if it is in session at the date of submission, or, if it is not, within seven days of the commencement of its next ensuing session. I know of no similar financial institution which is required to comply with such rigid safeguarding procedure. Clause 11 deals with the framing, adoption and registration of rules governing the conduct of the business of the department and other cognate matters, and the proceedings to be followed in the event of repeal, amendment or addition thereto. This now brings me to Clause 12, one of the most important provisions of the Bill in which it is provided that in the case of (à) reducible mortgages, advances shall not exceed 95 per cent. of the value of the property, subject to this maximum limit being increased if collateral security is furnished. And the extent of this advance will be found upon reference to Clause 12 (ii) of the Bill. As regards (b) fixed term mortgages, advances shall not exceed 60 per cent. of the value of the property subject to this maximum limit being increased if collateral security is furnished. The extent to which this increase may be made will be found on reference to Clause 12 (iii) of the Bill. Clause 12 (4) prescribes the manner of calculating the value of the collateral security. Clause 12 (5) sets out the nature of disbursements made by the department which shall not be reckoned as part of the amount advanced when determining whether the amount of the advance complies with the requirements of the Bill. Clause 13 deals with certain ancillary powers in regard to the buying in of property mortgaged to the depositor, the position of the municipality acting as insurance agents with regard to insuring the buildings mortgaged to the department, and the maintaining of safe depositors for the use of depositors. Clause 14 empowers the council to receive certain disbursements in addition to those permitted under the Usury Act No. 37 of 1936. Clause 15 provides the necessary safeguards prohibiting any councillor or employee or auditor from offering or receiving any benefit in connection with the making of advances or the purchasing of any property owned by or mortgaged to it, by the depositor. It follows naturally that the clause also provides that in the event of any person being found guilty of an offence under this clause he shall be punished, and the penalty for it shall be imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months. Clauses 16 and 17 of the Bill prescribe the procedure for terminating the department and the manner of dealing with any surplus funds then existing of the department. It has been made clear, and I should emphasise it for the information of hon. members, that if any surpluses are found to exist at the date of liquidation, then such funds shall be tested in the council but may only be used for housing operations under the Housing Act of 1920. That, of course, only applies in the event of the liquidation of the department. Clauses 18 and 19 deal only with the interpretation of terms and the short title. Now, Mr. Speaker having dealt with the provisions of the Bill, I would now like to say a few words about what I believe will be the advantages which will accrue to the City of Durban if this Bill receives the approval of the House. Firstly I believe that the Bill would provide the small man with an additional avenue for accommodating savings. It is well-known that many financial institutions today are restricting the acceptance of deposits, and in fact some of them have been discouraging thrift to the extent of reducing their rates of interest payable upon deposits to a rate which today is even less than that payable by the Union Post Office Savings Bank. There is appreciable evidence in the Select Committee report to show this, and what is more, the report shows that there is a phenomenal amount of money awaiting investment in the Union at present. Secondly, it will enable the small man to acquire or erect his own home on the payment of a very small additional deposit, namely 5 per cent. of the total value of the dwelling and the land. This facility together with a reasonable rate of interest which the council hopes to offer under this scheme, will bring home ownership within the reach of the average working man who is unable today to find the necessary deposit required by private enterprise, namely 25 per cent. of the value. The department would also encourage and facilitate the erection of dwellings in the city, and would assist in checking the present outward drift to the peri-urban areas, which is at present proceeding with the financial assistance of private enterprise. The Durban City Council has for years, Mr. Speaker, encouraged home ownership facilities on reasonable terms, and reasonable deposits, but of course its powers are very limited at present. But notwithstanding what little it has been able to accomplish in regard to home ownership, it has been proved conclusively that home ownership ensures the better preservation of the houses in question. It is an imperceptible means of stabilising and enforcing thrift, security and stability. It also promotes a sense of civic ownership and civic responsibility. I think that quite definite as are these advantages, and important as they are, they accrue from the principles of home ownership. The fact is—and it is very important—that the department, as a section of the municipality, would provide suitable financial machinery to assist the municipality in furthering its housing development programme, which obviously is directed, in conjunction with other departments, towards attaining the best interests of the city. It also would be a mutual understanding in that it would be conducted on 100 per cent. co-operative basis. There would be no share capital on which dividends would have to be paid, and obviously the department’s policy could not be dictated by investors seeking to get the highest yields at the expense of the small owners or investors. The deposits of the department would be guaranteed by means of a charge on rents, rates and other revenue of the city. This fact should ensure complete confidence on the part of the investor and in times of crisis would be a very material factor in allaying the fear of the would-be panicky investor. That fact, in conjunction with the fact that the amount of deposits on fixed terms must be in excess of shortterm deposits, and the fact that no depositor on fixed terms can withdraw an amount in excess of £2,000 in any one month at any one time, I think is sufficient ground to support the value that has been attached to the question of security, both by the promoters and the Select Committee. I come to the last point, that of the allegation of unfair competition. It has often been said that the establishment of such a proposed savings department and housing section will result in unfair competition with Building Societies. Now. I have already indicated in this House that the Building Societies and other savings institutions are not accommodating all the savings of the people, and what is more, at the present time many of them are indeed discouraging the extension of thrift by the reduction of their rates of interest payable on deposits. I have also indicated to the House that the Building Societies today are not offering facilities for home ownership to the average working man who is unable to pay the necessary financial deposit. I think these facts in themselves are sufficient to indicate that this is not unfair competition. But Mr. Speaker, I would even go further and allege that the type of man, the average working man, whom this Bill sets out to help, gets advances on applications which are so restricted in scope that, as was put to me, “a privilege was granted to a restricted few”. I dealt with the advantages which will accrue from home ownership but let me again repeat that the advances on first mortgage can be made only subject to certain conditions. One of them is that these dwellings must be situated in the City of Durban. The Building Societies can build anywhere and lend money anywhere in South Africa. Then also the amount advanced cannot exceed £2,000, while there is no limit to the advances which Building Societies can make. There is no limit to the extent to which Building Societies can advance money, and here the applicant intends to occupy the dwelling himself. Building Societies do not impose that restriction on applicants. What is more important, no applicant under this scheme can obtain any advance if he owns any other property in the city. In other words, the only applicant that can receive an advance is one who has no vested interests in the city at all. That is the type of person it is sought to assist. I do submit that bearing these facts in mind, this is not an unfair proposition. I would go further and point out that while the scope of this Bill is limited to dwellings in the City of Durban only, Building Societies can make advances for commercial and industrial buildings, for flats, for hotels not only in Durban but all over South Africa. I think I have made out a case for this Bill in that I have shown it sets out to try and bring about a position in which we can give home ownership to a certain class, the working class. And quite frankly without in any way trying to be dramatic, I do ask in the name of the average working man, that this Bill be read a second time.

This Bill sets out to create a new financial institution, and therefore it is appropriate that I should intervene at an early stage in the debate as Minister of Finance. I do not intend to keep the House for long, partly because the time is limited for the discussion of the second reading of this Bill, and partly because I have dealt with this Bill or similar proposals in their general bearings on previous occasions. I need therefore say no more than that I fully approve the principles of thrift and home ownership, for which the hon. member for Durban (Point) (Dr. V. L. Shearer) has appealed. This Bill is really the fourth of its kind. The first effort in this direction was made by the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. Burnside), then the hon. member for Umbilo, in 1941, when he introduced a Municipal Savings Bank Bill, which if accepted would have empowered all the major municipalities to start municipal savings banks. In the following year there was introduced a private Bill on behalf of the City of Durban known as the City of Durban Savings Department (Private) Bill. In the debate on the second reading of that Bill I made my position quite clear. It was this; the Bill was a private Bill, not a Government measure. As far as the Government was concerned it was open to the free decision of the House. I myself intended to vote for its second reading. I went on to say—

I further said it would be necessary to consider the Bill in relation to our legislation in regard to banks which, of course, included legislation in regard to the deposit receiving institutions, and I concluded by pointing out while I personally proposed to vote for the second reading of this Bill I had to draw attention to the fact that certain changes would in fact be necessary at the Committee stage. That Bill did not reach the Statute Book. Then last year, in 1944, the pendulum swung back to the original proposal of the hon. member for Umbilo, as he then was, now the hon. member for Fordsburg. In 1944 there was introduced the Local Authorities Savings and Housing Department Bill, a Bill not specific to Durban but of general application in regard to local authorities. There again I indicated I was prepared to support the Bill, but I made this caveat—

That would have been the better way. I still think it would have been the better way. What this Bill really sets out to do is to create a building society with certain modifications; and I think it would have been better if such an organisation could be created within the terms of the Building Societies Act, with those provisions of the Building Societies Act not applicable to it specifically excluded. However, this Bill is not quite on all fours with last year’s Bill, because again the pendulum has swung back, this time to 1942. We now again have a private Bill limited to the City of Durban, and although my remarks of last year were applicable to the Bill of last year, I think they are also applicable to the Bill of this year. Indeed, when the Bill of 1942 was under consideration that same suggestion of mine was made, namely, that the proposal should be organically linked with the Building Societies Act. I am sorry that before this Bill was introduced, especially in view of what I said last year and what was said to the promoters of this Bill in 1942, that at least there was no consultation with me or my Department with regard to the form of the Bill. I still think it would have been a better way if this Bill had been introduced in that form.

Have you not been informed about this Bill?

Oh yes. I think in February the hon. the mover advised me of his intention. Moreover, I was consulted in so far as notice was given, as has to be given of private Bills, in November last year. But I think it would have been better if there could have been specific consultation on the form of the Bill. It was suggested in the select committee that the Bill should be revised and recast on the lines I indicated. The promoters, however, thought otherwise; it is not clear why. But I still think the better way would have been—and I think that will be clearer as I go on—to have submitted the Bill in the form of the creation of an institution which would function under the Building Societies Act, except in certain respects not applicable to it as a municipal institution. However, that has not been done and we are presented with a Bill which brings us back to where we were in 1942, and my attitude is the same as in 1942. Personally I am in favour of the Bill, although I do not like it in form, but I do not want that defect in form to result in the defeat of the Bill. I shall vote in favour of it. It is not a Government measure, and members are free to do what they like. But again I must draw attention to the fact that amendments will be necessary at the Committee stage. It is perfectly true that this Bill embodies most, if not all, the amendments which were suggested by me in 1942, when the previous Bill of its kind was under consideration, suggested by me with a view to bringing it into line with our building societies legislation. But of course our building societies legislation has been changed since 1942, and it will he necessary to consider—the points are really points of detail—whether possibly any further changes are necessary in this Bill over and above those already made to bring it into harmony with the building society legislation as it now stands. There is a further point which will need consideration and that is this: This Bill contains certain provisions taken over from the Building Societies Act as at present in force. That was in order to give effect to the suggestions I made in 1942, but the Building Societies Act may be amended next year or thereafter. If the Building Societies Act is amended then this Bill, if it becomes an Act, will no longer be in harmony with that. That is an aspect of the matter that will have to be considered. I think we shall probably have to get over that difficulty, but in fairness I should mention it. That illustrates the point I made that it would have been the better course if the Bill had been more organically linked up with our building societies legislation. Another point I should like to make is this. I think it is open to argument, having regard to the definition of “building society” in the Building Societies Act, whether this Bill, if passed, will in fact create a building society under that Act, whether what will be created by this Bill will fall within the scope of the definition of “building society” in the Building Societies Act. If that were so it would meet the point I have been making so far. If it were so, also, some of this Bill would be unnecessary. On the whole, I am inclined to think that is not so. On the whole I am inclined to think that this Bill does not create a building society in terms of the definition of the Building Societies Act, but it is a point which needs a little more looking into than I have been able to give it. But I say again my opinion on the whole is that this does not create a building society in terms of the Act although I wish it would do so. If that is so we come to a further point. When I spoke in 1942 I said we would have to consider the proposal as it then was not only in relation to legislation about building societies, but also in relation to legislation about banks, then under consideration. It seems to me that if this Bill does not create a building society then it creates a bank. It creates a deposit-receiving institution under the Banking Act. The Banking Act passed in 1942 specifically exempted from its operation any local authority or any building society. It went on to say—

It seems to me clear, therefore, that if this is not a building society then it is not exempted from the scope of the Banking Act; in other words, the provisions of the Banking Act would apply to this particular institution. I have not gone into the effect of that on the Bill. I do not think the effect will be serious so far as the more important aspects are concerned, but it certainly would have some effect on the details of the Bill. Therefore I come back to what I said earlier on, that if the Bill is read a second time, as I hope it will be, it will be necessary to give consideration to the making of amendments. I have mentioned some of the points that will have to be considered, and more especially consideration will have to be given to the relationship between this Bill and the Building Societies Act as it stands today and as it may be amended in the future; and further consideration will have to be given to the relationship between this Bill and the Banking Act. It seems to me that that point has been overlooked by the promoters of this Bill I say again I hope the Bill will be read a second time, but it does appear that amendments will be necessary. If the Bill is read a second time I shall have to consider the necessary amendments, and I want to assure the hon. member in that connection I shall be glad to have his assistance as well as that of the promoters of the Bill or their representatives.

Would the Government take it over?

No, the Government is not taking it over.

As soon as the Government starts interfering with it, it should take it over.

The Government cannot take it over, but the Minister can certainly move amendments to a private Bill, and as I have already indicated, I shall be happy to discuss what amendments are necessary with my hon. friend and the promoters of this Bill.

I would like to say a few words in reply to the speech made by the Minister. There is a fundamental difference between this Bill and a building society and a bank. In the case of a building society, depositors have to look entirely to the society and the financial position of the society for the return of their loans. It is exactly the same in the case of a bank. In this Bill there is a provision in Section 7 which says—

A difference in fact but not in law.

But the reason for the passing of the Building Societies Act and the Banking Act was to enable the financial position of institutions of that character to be so sound that depositors need have no fear as to the security of their investments. That is quite different here, and that is why when the matter came before the Select Committee they felt that all the provisions of the Building Societies Act need not be embodied in this particular Bill, that there was this security here, and depositors need have nò anxiety as to their not being repaid the amount of their deposits. While it may be advisable to include certain amendments in the Bill, I would like to ask the Minister to have regard to that fundamental difference between this Bill and the Building Societies and Banking Acts. Here depositors are absolutely secure. In those other cases they can look only to the institutions to which they have entrusted their savings for the repayment of their savings. It seems to me it would complicate the position unnecessarily if a large number of onerous provisions were included in this particular Bill. I make those remarks because the matter was considered by the committee, and that position was accepted by the promoters of the Bill as being a fundamental difference in the case of this Bill. I, of course, would have liked an enabling Act in the form that has been suggested by the Minister, so as to allow other municipalities to have a savings bank similar to that of the Durban Municipality, but that would have meant that the Government itself would have had to sponsor legislation of that nature, and the Government has not been disposed to do so. I think the Durban Municipality is to be congratulated on its enterprise in bringing this Bill before the House, and I would like to see my own municipality of Pretoria, in the not distant future following its example.

Unlike the hon. member who has moved the second reading, and who rose in fear and trepidation, I rise to speak with very considerable confidence in view of the ramparts of books at the back of me.

You want ramparts in front.

I cannot understand why the Durban City Council wastes its time and wastes our time and wastes the ratepayers’ money by bringing up this Bill from year to year. For the last ten years they have had this measure before one public body or another, and on one occasion they had it before the Supreme Court. On every occasion the Bill has failed to get on to the Statute Book.

This time we are going to win.

If the City Council of Durban would only pay a little more attention to their legitimate business and cease putting up the rates on the people of Durban, the ratepayers would be more pleased, but they go on spending the ratepayers’ money on these Bills year after year and at the same time putting up the rates.

Why oppose it?

I am a ratepayer in Durban, and my rates have been severely increased during the war period. The rates have been put up on two occasions, on one occasion owing to the revaluation of property. I think it is time the people of Durban took a hand in this matter, This Bill is the baby of Councillor Sidney Smith, who was the originator of the idea. Durban does not want this baby.

It is a fairly old baby,

When I conclude my remarks I am going to issue a challenge to the hon. member who is the promoter of this Bill.

Under what rules?

Councillor Sidney Smith was recently invited by the Durban Civic Association to appear before them and explain the implications of the Bill. That was about November last. He had the floor to himself and nobody to argue against. Subsequently I asked a member of this association whether he was convinced by the arguments that he heard put forward by Councillor Sidney Smith. He told me categorically that he was not convinced by them. Furthermore, he said that Councillor Sidney Smith “rhapsodised” his audience. That was the word he used, “rhapsodised.” I am speaking of him in his capacity as a city councillor; as a city councillor he spends quite a lot of time down here. This member of the Civic Association was not convinced by his arguments, and the term he used was that he had “rhapsodised” his audience at that meeting.

How many were present?

I do not know. I state without fear of contradiction that the people of Durban are not interested in this measure. They do not care a hoot whether it goes through or does not. It is never discussed in Durban. This morning the promoter of the Bill told us the implications of the various clauses, but he has never tried to show in any way that the people of Durban want this Bill.

Does the Council of Durban want it?

They have voted in favour of the Bill by a small majority.

By nineteen votes to five.

Is that a small majority?

They excluded certain councillors because they were in some way connected with building societies, they were not allowed to vote.

Why are you opposing it if the council wants it?

I should be glad if hon. members would not keep on interrupting me. I am not one of those hon. members who interrupt other speakers. I try to act as a gentleman in this House, but there are other members who do not.

Order, order. The hon. member must not use such an expression.

I am sorry, and I withdraw it. Only once were citizens of Durban able to register their views on this Bill; that was in 1942, during the municipal elections, when four of the candidates, who were Labour representatives, had it as one of the main planks in their election platform. Out of the four Labour candidates that year who favoured the promotion of this Bill, three were thrown out. If that is not a clear indication of what public opinion is in Durban, I should like to know what is.

How many vacancies were there?

There were eight seats vacant; some of the candidates did not make this a plank in their platform, but of the Labour members who did, only one was returned. During the last council elections held in October last not a single councillor mentioned this Bill. If this was a popular measure in Durban, surely one of those contesting the eight seats would have said something about this Bill. It was never mentioned, and they all left it out of their manifestos. That is another instance where the people of Durban showed they were not interested in it.

It does not show they are opposed to it.

Not opposed, they were not interested.

What are they interested in?

In November last I held a meeting of my constituents, and I took the trouble to insert in one of the local papers that one of the subjects I intended to speak on was the Durban Banking Bill. I had a very well-attended meeting.

How many, two?

I explained to my audience at some length why I had opposed this Bill during the previous Session, and at question time not a question was put to me. There was no dissentient voice. It was not a “packed” meeting of my friends, it was a public meeting, and I gave a full explanation.

How many people were there?

I said it was a well attended meeting. There is one matter which I take very grave exception to in this Bill, and that is the clause which states that any losses incurred by this savings department shall be borne by the ratepayers, shall be a charge on the rates. I ask, is that a fair proposition? What inducement is there for the municipality to try to rum this department on economic lines. There is no inducement whatsoever. They know perfectly well that should a loss be incurred all they will have to do is to put up their rates, as they have done three times in the last five years. Compare that with the position in building societies or in commercial concerns. In these, a loss of money falls back on the institution itself, but here if this municipal banking concern loses money, just by a majority vote of the Council and by a stroke of the pen, they put up the rates of the City of Durban to make up the loss. The Durban Chamber of Commerce went very carefully into this matter, and they have given a considered opinion on the implications of this Bill, and anybody who reads this document must agree it is fair criticism. If they could possibly approve of the Bill they were prepared to do so, but they have given their reasons why they cannot. I ask leave to read a section of this because I think it will convince a great many hon. members in this House that this Bill is not what it is reputed to be.

Did you give evidence before the select committee?

No, I did not. I have given up quite enough of my time and energy in regard to this Bill and I am tired of it and sorry that I have to speak about it again. This is a portion of the report of the Durban Chamber of Commerce. It says—

That puts the position in a nutshell, and is what I have just been trying to explain to this hon. House. It goes on—

That is perfectly true. It proceeds—

That is the considered opinion of the Chamber of Commerce, which is a very representative body of the wholesalers and retailers in the Durban Municipality. It is surprising, to me, Mr. Speaker, that the Treasury has not taken up a stronger stand against this constant irritation of introducing this measure year by year, although the hon. Minister of Finance has said that he intends to move certain amendments when it comes to the Committee stage. This is in direct competition with Government Savings Departments, such as the Post Office Savings Department, Union Loan Certificates, but here they give this municipality a weapon whereby they can undercut interest charges and they can overcharge and give increased interest on money and loans at the expense of the ratepayer. I am surprised that the Treasury has not taken up that line. It may well be that the money market will be different from what it is today. We all know that money is plentiful today and the rate of interest low, but a change will come as surely as night follows day and when that time comes, interest charges will be much greater than they are today, and that is where this municipality will be able to compete, not only with the Government but with other institutions and have unfair advantages. If this Bill comes into force it will not remain with the Durban Borough. There will be many other municipalities who will want similar facilities.

Why?

I am sure they will. They will just see what this experiment turns out like and they will want to follow suit. It will not be a good thing for the finances of the Treasury if the municipalities of the country are in competition with Government Savings Departments. Now, there is another matter I would like to refer to in regard to the evidence that was given the year before last before the Select Committee on the Bill, then before the House. The City Treasurer in 1942 or 1943 stated that there would be no additional staff required to run this Savings and Housing Department, and that the Municipality would just take it in its stride. That is the evidence I want hon. members to realise that the evidence by the present City Treasurer before the Select Committee was to the contrary and he said that it would entail additional staff. There, Mr. Speaker, we have a, divergence of opinion between two City Treasurers on this particular point, and we do not know where it will end. There is another feature about this Bill which I do not like, and that is that it enables the Municipality to lend money on existing houses. Now. I do not like that procedure at all in a public body where votes count. I think it is a very dangerous procedure. There is some justification in raising money to put up new houses, especially in view of the acute shortage, but why should a municipality have a right to lend money on existing houses? They have the power, under this Bill, to lend money under certain terms of valuation. I forget what the exact terms are, but anyway it is a very dangerous condition to put into a Bill of this nature. I have come to the end of my remarks. I said it at an earlier stage that I wanted to issue a challenge to the hon. the mover of this Bill. I want to say this, that if he can show me that the people of Durban want this Bill, I am prepared to vote for the second reading of it, but in making this statement, I reserve the right to move certain amendments in the Committee stage.

The hurdle race is on, and we are now about to take the fourth hurdle in this race. The promoter of this measure has far more courage and determination, I must say, and personal conviction, than the promoter of the first measure. The hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. Burnside) who was then the hon. member for Umbilo, introduced the Bill in 1941, and when it was proposed that the Bill should be sent to a Select Committee for further investigation, he immediately threw up the sponge and let it go at that. We were presented with the second hurdle when the hon. member for Point (Dr. V. L. Shearer) came forward with a private Bill, very similar in many respects to the present Bill, in 1942, and that went to a Select Committee which brought in certain amendments, very few, I might say. In due course it passed the second reading, and then reached the Committee stage, and I must say that the Committee stage was enlightening, because it was then that the House began to realise the serious defects, which existed in the Bill introduced by the hon. member for Point. I must say that I congratulate him today, because after a long fight he has taken heed of what some of us, who opposed the Bill in those days, suggested on the Order Paper by way of amendment. He is, in this Bill, giving effect to certain of our amendments, limited effect however. The Bill of 1942 failed to pass the Committee stage in 1943 and that hurdle was knocked down. So we find that the hon. member for Umbilo knocked the first hurdle down, and the member for Point knocked down the second hurdle. In 1945, came the second Bill, applicable only to Durban, and at this point I want to draw attention to the fact that evidence of the Select Committee contains an absolutely incorrect statement, because the City Treasurer, who was then under cross-examination, giving evidence was asked, in connection with the 1944 Bill —these are the words—“And did that successfully pass the second reading?”, and his answer was “Yes”.

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

When the House adjourned at the luncheon interval I had made reference to the fact that it had been stated in the evidence before the select committee that the Bill of 1944 had passed its second reading, when in fact it had not. I was not saying anything against the person who made that statement, but I think the statement should be corrected. The Bill did not make that progress. In 1944 the hon. member for Durban (Point) (Dr. V. L. Shearer) who introduced that Bill, was very determined in his efforts, and in introducing it he said—

He was referring to me as one of the objectors—

This year he has introduced the Bill in more general terms, but in compliance with his determination we nevertheless have this Bill before us. I, as a Rand member, may be asked, and in fact I cast my mind back to 1942 when the mover of the Bill, the hon. member for Durban (Point), did ask me what right I had to oppose the Bill. I think every hon. member of this House has an interest in this Durban Bill. It is in its application local, but in its implication it is national. I stress that distinction. The Durban Council has come to this House with this Bill, but I submit that if the House passes this Bill and gives the Durban Council the powers asked for, then if any other municipality of standing should come to this House with a similar request the House would find itself in the position of not being able to refuse that local authority.

What is wrong with that?

I am not saying anything is wrong. I do not know why the interjection should come from the hon. member. My point is that, though this measure is local in its application, it is national in its implications. If it was domestic and confined to Durban and did not affect any other part of the country, I should not be speaking. But this is not such a measure. This measure can be applied to any municipality in the country of any reasonable standing.

Or with any good common sense.

I grant that. It is for that reason I am opposing the Bill, and it is my intention to vote against the second reading. I am not going into the merits as to whether Durban wants the Bill or not, whether the burgesses of Durban are satisfied or not. The hon. member who has just sat down, has dealt with that matter up to a point. But in passing, I am sorry I must say that Durban at a municipal election did not attach sufficient importance to this measure to make this an issue. Sufficient importance has been attached to the measure by a certain section of people, who have fought it through various stages since 1924. It has been fought through the Provincial Council, it has been taken to the Supreme Court or to the Appellate Court, it has been brought to this House, and this is the fourth occasion it has been brought before this House. But never once has it been made an election issue in Durban. I think there is a weakness in the case of the mover in that respect, and when he replies he will perhaps tell us why this matter has never been made an issue in an election at Durban. I have objections to this Bill mainly on two grounds. My first ground is on a general principle that Durban is seeking to introduce into the sphere of municipal activities an entirely new phase. They are seeking to go into the banking business under the guise they want to promote housing. Here I want to make myself perfectly clear so that there shall be no misunderstanding. I am not in any way opposed to housing. On the contrary, I am wholeheartedly in favour of housing, but I do not think it is necessary for Durban to set about establishing a savings bank for the purpose of providing the Council with money with which to promote housing.

What do you know of Durban in any case?

I hear an interjection from the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. Burnside): “What do I know about Durban.” Let me tell him what I told him about Durban in 1942. I told the House in 1942 to what extent Durban had responded to the Government’s housing schemes, and how far down the list it was, even below a small town like Glencoe. That is what I know about Durban which he did not know. I do not think that the municipality should be given these powers to go into the banking business. I disagree because it is creating a new sphere of activity, and I do not think it is in accord with ideas of municipal activities. I disagree further, for the reason, that despite the case put forward by the mover, there are ample facilities for saving money. If it comes to a question of housing, Durban’s record is not one of the best records in the country by a long way. Although I say nothing about their attempts at improving that record, they have much opportunity to improve their record.

What about the £10,000 houses in Houghton?

What about that? Durban has ample room, as I said before I was interrupted, for improvement, but I do not consider this the correct way to go about it. That is the first point, and I have opposed the Bill all along on that general principle. I have opposed the Bill all along, or similar measures in the past, of which this is just the culmination, because I considered that Durban was asking for something which it was not right for this House to grant it. Durban asked for special privileges, which this hon. House has specifically denied to organisations which were doing this very class of business. There has been an argument raised as to whether this was building society business or banking business in terms of the definitions under the Building Societies Act or a savings deposit institution under the Banking Act, but the plain fact is that Durban wishes to take the savings of the people and to lend them—so it says—to others for housing. But Durban wants to do this on very special terms. Durban wants to be placed in a privileged position which, as I have said, this House has denied to building societies, who have been doing this type of business for fifty years or more. That is the second reason why I oppose this Bill. I want to deal with some of the questions concerning the Bill itself and some of the points made by the hon. the mover, and in doing so, I think it is necessary not to lose sight of the original Bill which the Durban Borough brought before this House in 1942. The hon. the mover has said that in this Bill housing is now obligatory whereas in the past it has fallen into the category of optional. In every Bill which has come before this House —and this is the fourth—the idea has been to empower the local authority, and in this case specifically the Durban Corporation, to establish a savings bank. The Bill has gone on to provide that Durban may establish a housing section, and it is because of that that in 1943, in the committee stage of the 1942 Bill, I moved that the permissive condition should be made obligatory and that if the local authority establishes a savings bank it shall be obligatory to establish a housing section. The hon. mover in 1943 gave us a number of reasons why that should not be done, but all these years the House has been told that the primary reason for this measure is housing. Yet I submit that in 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944 and now in 1945, housing is still not obligatory in the Bill.

Of course it is. Look at it.

Of course it is.

Two of the hon. members who served on the Select Committee tell me that it is. I tell them that it is not.

It is hard to believe you.

I will make you believe it. In the first clause it is provided, that a savings bank may be established, and instead of “the Corporation may further establish and maintain a housing section” the wording has been changed to “shall thereupon establish and maintain a housing section”. I suggested those words in 1943, and I was voted out in this House. The major issue in this question is however the method providing for the investment of the funds. The manner of investment is provided for in Clause 6, the Select Committee having deemed it desirable to introduce a new Clause 6 on page 6 of the Bill. Let us examine that clause for a minute and see what its effect is. I want to be very clear on the point because the hon. the mover has given the House what I consider to be not a fair picture on this particular point. Of the money on deposit the savings bank section shall invest as follows: At least 5 per cent. shall be in cash. They shall invest 5 per cent. in cash in a bank, and shall invest not less than 25 per cent. in gilt edge securities, presumably readily marketable securities, and the rest shall be invested in housing. It has further the right to make loans on the security of deposits. I do not quarrel with that. Do not misunderstand me. It has every right to invest money on the security of deposits. There is a further condition which allows of re-advances of amounts repaid on mortgage. But I submit that the Bill does not make it obligatory to put one penny into housing. There is no obligation under this Bill to put a solitary penny into housing.

Then what words would you propose?

I am asked what words I propose. I have quite a few more points to make, so I shall deal with that aspect of it at the committee stage, and not delay the House now. But that is the point. We are told about the cause of the working man. We are all sympathetic towards that cause. I think it is a mistake to brand those, who oppose this measure who have fought it, because we are opposed to the cause of housing for the working man. That is wrong. The hon. the mover rather corrected this in his opening address in moving his motion today when he said, that the delay in passing this Bill has been a blessing; it has passed through two Select Committees and it has been improved. Now, this Bill does not have to be put under a microscope to be examined for its defects, and I submit that the House should examine this Bill in the light of the legislation, which this House has passed for Building Societies and Banks, and that it behoves this House to be extra cautious in granting to any local authority special privileges such as are sought in this Bill. The first is this, that the Bill does not make it obligatory to put one penny into housing. I hope the two hon. members who objected just now are satisfied on this point now, and also the hon. member for Fordsburg.

You cannot satisfy me on any point.

I am willing to admit that. But that is a very important point. The next point—and a matter of considerable importance also—is the fact that the Corporation is borrowing short and lending long.

It only follows Stock Exchange practice.

No, you do not seem to know much about Stock Exchange practice.

Thank God.

It borrows short and lends long. It will borrow money on deposit, payable on demand. It can withhold the deposit for 14 days or so, but to all intents and purposes the deposits are payable on demand, and its fixed deposits constitute money, which it can hold for one or two years. So that the longest period for which it borrows money is two years, and that is in respect of an undefined percentage of its borrowings. There is no distinction, no proportion laid down as to the relationship between current deposits and fixed deposits, but the longest period it can borrow money for is two years, and it can lend money on first mortgage for housing on the basis of probably a 20 years bond. It is not in a position, while the mortgagor fulfils the conditions of the mortgage, to call up that mortgage, and if there was a specific run for money this institution would be obliged to pay out its depositors in terms of this Bill, but it could not recoup itself for that money from the people who had got that particular money. That is what I mean when I say they are borrowing short and lending long.

But we helped the Natal Building Society in 1933.

You did not.

The hon. member is just showing his ignorance of the subject. Mr. Speaker, again where this Bill differs materially from the Building Societies Act, where the results of years of experience— and as the result of the period to which the hon. member has just referred, the gold standard debacle in this country—it was deemed prudent that a certain percentage of money should be borrowed on long term, and the Building Societies are accordingly obliged to see to it that not less than 40 per cent. of the money they hold is in long term securities such as shares. Now, that all deals with the aspect of securities. This Bill asks the House to accept that, because Durban is a wealthy Corporation—and on that point there are no two opinions—we must take as the security for the depositors, the rates, rents and other revenue of the City of Durban and absolve the Savings Department from the necessity of raising any long-term capital. We all know what that means to the cost. We all know that long-term capital cost a great deal more in interest than shortterm capital. I will deal further with that aspect in a moment. But now I want to deal with the question of security. The rates, rents and taxes of Durban are to be the security. No capital, no reserves even, are provided for because this Bill is silent on the question of reserve funds. If a loss is sustained this Department has to go back to that security to meet its losses, and if there was a run on this Department by the depositors such as there was in 1932, a time which is still fresh in our memories, where would the Durban Corporation get money from with which to repay the depositors? It cannot get it back from the mortgagors. That money is tied up for a long time. Furthermore, what would happen if there was a blitz on Durban as may have happened during this war? I am not talking about mythical contingencies. I am raising issues of which we have had hard and bitter experience. Where would the Corporation get the money to pay these depositors? It holds long-term assets which cannot be called up. They would have to go to the rates and taxes and other revenues. One wonders what the people of Durban would say under those conditions. I am quite sure that if someone moved such a Bill in Johannesburg I would be able to say that Johannesburg does not want it. I see the hon. member for Fordsburg has gone out. Perhaps he does not know what Johannesburg wants. We have to review this question of security very carefully because this Bill is; silent on the question of a reserve fund. There again, the Building Society has to set aside 10 per cent. of its profits to build up a reserve fund. It is the first element of common prudence in any undertaking to set aside a certain percentage of profits to build up a reserve fund to meet any contingency, any loss, which may arise. But this Bill is silent. In 1943, at the Committee stage I moved for the inclusion of a reserve fund on similar terms to that provided for in the Building Societies Act. Last year the Minister of Finance referred to that amendment of mine and drew the attention of the mover to the fact that that had been omitted from that Bill, and I find again that this Bill has come before us with this condition omitted, so that the first elementary safeguard has been neglected. I shall move again later for the inclusion of a reserve fund, but I want to make that point clear here today. We now come to the other point, that the Durban Corporation wants to be placed in the position of lending money cheaply. That is the idea. The report of the select committee is rather full on that point and in the evidence, when the witness was asked whether he thought that the Corporation would be able to utilise £2,000,000 in housing or the maximum percentage it could, which is 70 per cent., he said: “I think the amount can be used up very soon. If we have any difficulty at all it will be on the deposit side and not on the housing side because our rate of interest on mortgage bonds will be so low”; and yet, when the same witness was asked how this Bill stood in relation to building societies he gave the impression, in his evidence, that they would be under very much more stringent conditions than the building societies. Now, how are they going to lend money cheaply? Let us examine that. The Council is to be absolved from the necessity of establishing a reserve fund so that it will not have to include in its rate of interest the amount to provide for a reserve fund. That is one of the first things. That leads to an obvious economy. The building society today only has 90 per cent. of its profit with which to pay out interest on its deposits and dividends on its shares. The other 10 per cent. has to be set aside for a reserve fund. Here that 10 per cent. is not required. The building society has to borrow long-term money on shares. Some of those shares are fixed permanently and carry a dividend of five per cent. or six per cent. I dare say I would not be incorrect if I say that some of those shares carry seven per cent., having been issued many years ago when the rate of interest was higher than today. They also borrow on short-term shares but on all share transactions they are obliged to pay rates of interest of between four per cent. and five per cent. We find this Bill providing for a maximum rate of interest which is far less than that. The security, instead of being offered by these shares, is got from rents, and rates and taxes of the Borough of Durban, and this is going to lead to an economy, which is self-evident, that this Department will be absolved from borrowing money at such high rates of interest. They are naturally put in a position to lend money at lower rates, and to that extent they are asking this House to put them in a privileged position, which this House has denied the building societies. In the words of the hon. Minister of Finance last year “this House has put the building societies in a straitjacket”. [Interjection.] I can apply that remark with equal force to my hon. friend who is so keen on interjections. It is a pity he cannot listen with some common sense for a change. Now, Mr. Speaker, my time is running to an end.

Hear, hear.

I have one or two more points to make but it is necessary to consider very carefully the implications I have raised. There are many other points which I would like to deal with, but time will not permit. We must bear in mind the fact that this Bill is unsound to the extent that this Department will be authorised to borrow short and lend long. It is unsound to the extent that there is no obligation to set aside any reserves, and I submit it is unsound to the extent that the Corporation is going to do business it should not do. On that point I admit that there is a difference of opinion between the hon. member for Fordsburg and myself, but whilst we are each entitled to our own opinion, it is my opinion that this field is well enough covered, the field of saving. There are large facilities in this country. The Post Office Savings Bank is a wonderful instrument.

But it does not build houses.

I will deal with that in a minute, if I have time. The banks all have savings sections. The building societies do this very special class of business and have done so for many years, and have given wonderful service to this country. Trust companies take money, and when we come down to the question of facilities for saving money, I submit that Durban and all the other municipalities and in fact South Africa, cannot make out a case that the facilities are deficient, despite the statement made by the mover this morning that the building societies are limiting depositors. Of course they limit them, and for a very good reason, namely that today the flow of idle money is tremendous. We all know that.

Not all of us.

Building societies can take in more deposits but they cannot put the money out. So what is the good? Under the conditions under which building societies have to work, the only safety lies in refusing to take more money at present. You can put any money you like into the Post Office, but you only draw interest up to £1,000. With regard to housing they come here to ask us to let them have facilities for housing, but when we ask them to make it obligatory to put this money into housing, they object. There were objections in 1943, and in the Select Committee the other day a witness under cross-examination said he did not mind making housing obligatory under Clause 1, but he objected to making it obligatory that any percentage whatever should be put into housing and he wanted it to be left open as it has been open in the past.

Is it obligatory upon building societies?

Yes, the Building Societies Act approaches it from the opposite direction. The building societies put all their money into housing but they are, by the Act, restricted from putting it all into housing.

They can invest it where they like?

Yes, provided it is on mortgage. They are not restricted in the field of mortgage, but they are restricted from lending all their money on mortgage and are forced by the Act to put a certain amount of money into other securities at lower rates of interest.

But they found it useful to lend money to Indians in Natal.

In many ways this Bill leaves much to be desired and I hope the House will reject the second reading.

It is a sad reflection, actually, on our democratic system that a Bill of this importance can probably be defeated by the fact that members of this House, with very sound reasons for support ing the Bill are deprived of the right of telling the House their reasons because of the time limit which is imposed on private members. I originally introduced the Municipal Bank Bill many years ago. I had the very dubious honour last year of talking this present Bill out because the hon. member for Houghton (Mr. Bell) and some of his colleagues made a case against the Bill and were so circumscribed because of the time limit, that we could not discuss it thoroughly. The majority of members of the House were in favour and if you will allow me to make one or two remarks on that aspect of Parliamentary Government, I will say that it is possible, on many occasions,— I know that the hon. member for Pretoria (Mr. Pocock) has feelings about the Waterworks Bill introduced some years ago, but I think he is honest and took the right side and it saved him from making a grave mistake.

Are you talking about the Smuts Relief Act?

But what has prompted me to say a few words is the fact that the chief opposition comes from the hon. member for Houghton. I do not know whether hon. members of this House know the constituency of Houghton, but I can assure you that the constituency of Houghton is by no means a slum area.

There are a few rondavels there.

It may be that the rondavels have been built for other purposes but it is not a slum area. It is one of the most important districts of Johannesburg. Hazarding a guess I should say that the houses there are worth about £10,000 each.

There are many in Norwood of the same value.

Look at the high-class people who live there.

The point is that the wealthiest residential area in any city in South Africa is the constituency of Houghton. Yet we have the hon. member for Houghton (Mr. Bell) getting up here and talking about something he knows nothing about. What does he know about the Slum Areas Act? What does he know about the necessities of housing? What does he know about the problems facing us? He cannot talk about these things. All he can talk about is the lending of money short, or the borrowing of it long, or in terms of the other jargon of the Stock Exchange in which apparently he is expert. He has told us in this House that he is the representative of big finance. We do not want the representatives of big finance in this House; we want houses. Only last night the Minister of Social Welfare made a public statement as to the attitude of the municipalities, and he said, and quite rightly—I admire him for it—that he is prepared to take far reaching powers to get houses built; and he will have to do it. He will have to do it too in the teeth of members like the hon. member for Houghton and the coterie of members who profess to represent big finance in this House.

It is not true.

The hon. member presumes from the gilded heights of Houghton to tell us about the slums of Durban. He does not know what he is talking about. I know the slums of Durban. An hon. member on the one side of me here wants to spend £150,000,000 in order to send the Natal Indians back to India, and another hon. member, on my left side, wants to put them into Durban Bay. The fact of the matter is we have in South Africa some of the most terrible slums known anywhere in the world, and anything which comes before this House aimed at the building of houses is something which I believe this House ought to accept. The hon. member for Houghton has clouded the issue. Is he afraid? Is this great and glorious and sound financial system which sells short or buys long or buys short and sells long, in so much danger because a little township—a little township in comparison with the huge financial structure of the world—is it so afraid because Durban wishes to institute, let us call it a municipal bank, but aimed at the building of houses for the people, and they need them and are asking for them? If when the troops return home they do not get the houses there is going to be trouble in the country, and there will not be too much trouble over the hon. member for Houghton and the £10,000 houses he represents.

He will be chucked out.

I hope he gets a worse fate than that. There has been some sort of encouragement by the Minister of Finance, but he still does not know where he is on this particular issue. This Bill has been camouflaged by altering its name from one thing to the other, and we discuss it as a banking measure, but the whole emphasis is on housing and the whole purpose is to enable the people to build houses. The hon. member has made a point that it only applies to Durban, and he says that what Durban does today the rest of South Africa does tomorrow. When I was a member for Durban I used to say that, but now I am a member for Johannesburg I am not so sure that it is correct. If Durban gives a lead why should we not accept it? When the original Bill was before the House I introduced it myself, and it was not a Bill that applied to Durban, it applied to every town in South Africa as far as I know every town with a population of over 50,000 needs this kind of Bill.

Except Houghton.

Houghton does not need it; it is only concerned with lending money, and it would also lend money to the municipal bank if it suited the people there. As far as I can gather this is a preliminary, I should like to say it was a last desperate attempt on the part of the capitalist system to re-establish itself in South Africa. But I am not foolish enough to say that. But I do say it represents one of the first steps of the capitalist system in this country to try to stem the rising tide in, not exactly of socialism but of public opinion, which says that the essentials necessary to the life of the people should not be the plaything of people who are buying short or buying long or selling short and buying long, and that is what is happening.

Hear, hear.

The hon. member for Houghton makes a case for the building societies. We are led to believe that the building societies in this country have been the saviours of this nation. Why is it we have no houses? The building societies have had all the opportunities. The hon. member admits they have so much money offering to them that they actually refuse to take deposits. The Minister of Social Welfare, on the other hand, says “I cannot have houses built.” The hon. member for Houghton says the primary purpose of the building societies is to build houses. It is not true. The primary purpose of the building societies is to lend money at rates of interest which will give them a profit. What do they worry about building houses? They would rather build offices or bioscopes. They are not concerned about building houses. They are concerned with making profits, and they do make them, and the hon. member is their representative—a very weak and anaemic representative too. I do not know any other member in this House who would presume with such lack of knowledge as the hon. member to rise and make a case for the building societies as he has. I do not know why he does it. I do not think the building societies can be proud of it. If I was a managing director of a building society, after listening to the hon. member I would resign immediately and put my money into the Durban Municipal Bank. This Bill was primarily initiated by the Labour Party majority in the City Council of Durban as an effort to provide the working-class people with houses. We are not concerned with the people who stay in Houghton. They can borrow their money from the building society. Actually many of them build their houses out of the profits made out of the building societies, or out of very other institutions of which I am the chief representative in this House. The hon. member does not represent high finance in this House. I represent it. I represent the Stock Exchange and the Rand. Club in this House, as they are in my constituency. Housing is the greatest single problem confronting us, and I foresee a lot of trouble unless the Government provide the houses necessary for the people. This Bill is one attempt, a little attempt perhaps, but it is an attempt by a municipality which despite the figures quoted by the hon. member for Houghton—they are all wrong—has built houses on its own without borrowing any money from the Government at all. There was an occasion some years ago when the City Council of Durban paid back money it owed to the Government, because it could borrow the money much cheaper itself and so reduce the rate of interest of money that had been lent to people to build houses. That is something the hon. member for Houghton knew nothing about, or that he was not prepared to tell the House about. Under the aegis of the Labour Party we borrowed the money at a cheaper rate of interest and reduced the interest on these loans something like ¾ per cent.

Some of your houses collapsed.

The hon. member may also collapse. Some of the Houses, I admit, were built in the wrong quarter. Durban has not only peculiar people, but it is also peculiar terrain, which is not always amenable to architectural efforts. The figures given by the hon. member for Houghton are entirely misleading. Durban has always been able to embark on a policy of trying to provide its own houses. I remember on one particular occasion when the Minister of Finance, who was I think then the Minister of the Interior, stood in our way for something like three years in reference to a housing scheme in Durban because he had some bee in his bonnet that certain Indians had been dispossessed of a piece of land and that they must be put back there. So the Minister refused to give permission to a housing scheme which by this time would have reached fruition. The attack on Durban fails. I agree if Durban can get this Bill and makes this Bill a success, other municipalities may wish to follow suit. But I should like to sound a word of warning. I have some qualms as to whether Durban can make it a success, because the Minister of Finance is imposing so many amendments and restrictions in the interests of the building societies and in the interests of his well-known orthodox outlook, that I doubt whether the Bill can be made a resounding success. The Minister of Finance is making it exceedingly difficult, and I can only come to the conclusion that he is not particularly anxious that the Bill should be made a success. Probably he is at one with the hon. member for Houghton. But I ask the House to pass the second reading of the Bill. Sooner or later this housing problem will have to be solved. It could be solved on the lines taken up by the Minister of Social Welfare, when he says that the Government are going to take drastic steps in order to see that houses are built under Government control. That would probably satisfy us, and we would not need this Bill. I admire the ability and the “go-aheadness” of the Minister of Social Welfare, but I am always very suspicious of the orthodoxy of the hon. Minister of Finance. I do feel that the House, in all fairness and justice, and ignoring the orthodox clap-trap of the hon. member for Houghton, should on this occasion accept the second reading of this Bill and see that democracy is not going to be prostituted once again in regard to a Bill which has the acceptance and the support of the majority of the members of this House, and that thè House will not allow this effort to assist in the housing trouble, to be stultified by one or two so-called representatives of high finance in this House.

This measure is repeatedly being initiated every year and to me it is clear proof of the incapacity of the present Government really to do anything on large scale in connection with housing. To me it is a proof that so far it has failed in this matter. Now time and again the City Council of Durban asks for power to enable it to institute a savings fund with a view to promoting housing. My first question is whether it is now a function of the municipalities or whether it is in the first place a function of the Central Government. It cannot be doubted that the situation is in fact serious. This morning a statement by the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation appeared. In it, after all this period of struggling and fighting, he confesses in this House that the housing shortage in South Africa is the greatest problem. But then peculiarly enough he says: “I wash my hands in innocence as far as the existing condition is concerned.” He, the responsible member of the Government, washes his hands in innocence. Why? Because he shifts the blame to the shoulders of local authorities, namely municipalities. It is true that he says here that he has decided to act drastically, and then he says that he wants to hear no more complaints, or piping voices. This Bill evidently is one of the piping voices of one city council in the Union which has now evidently become anxious about the situation because the Government does nothing about it. They now say that in view of the fact that the Government does not evolve a general scheme, it should help them with their own savings scheme and housing scheme. The Minister in his statement points out that the commission of Dr. Van Eck found that at least 150,000 dwellings are urgently required in South Africa today, and now the Minister says that he is not to blame in connection with the situation and that he washes his hands in innocence, and he says that last November he approached various local authorities with the request to build 12,000 houses, and some of them wrote to say that they would do so and he received a written guarantee that the 12,000 houses would be completed before June of this year. Now listen to his characteristic remark—

He says that they gave a guarantee to build 12,000 houses before June but it will be a miracle if only 1,000 are built. In spite of that he washes his hands in innocence. He casts the responsibility on the municipalities. He himself is not guilty; the municipalities did not do their work. But the Minister himself says further that in Cape Town and Pretoria people are sleeping in stables. And he proceeds to say that the Government will have to take action. At this late stage he appears with the great wisdom that the Government will have to take action. And then he says—

My question is why the Government has sat still all this time, except for getting a guarantee from a number of local authorities. The Minister cannot shift the responsibility from himself so easily. Now Durban comes and asks for the right to do something. I allege that it is not the function of the municipality to make provision for this matter. The municipalities must assist and do everything they can, together with the Government speed up the work; as far as they can within their powers they must give the necessary help by informing the Government of what is needed and in the last resort providing the ground and helping in the building of the houses. But it is not the function of the municipalities to come here and to ask that they should be allowed to institute a special savings department in order to build houses. If a municipality wants to do that of its own accord it is a matter to be considered. That would be to the credit of such a municipality but I must say that this Bill, read with the statement of the responsible Minister, unfolds a miserable state of affairs. The municipal council consists of people who in almost 100 per cent. of cases are not paid for their work as municipal councillors. In the case of a few municipalities salaries are paid, but those salaries are very small. Most of them consist of people who devote their time to the matters of their city or town gratis. There is much work in connection with the municipalities; there is a large scope in which they can work; they are kept busy providing for the finances and public services of their town or city and to ensure that those services are good. The municipal councils in 99 per cent. of cases have not the time or the opportunity to devote attention to such a large problem as that of housing. They can only help the Government by means of adopting a co-operative attitude and by the provision of facilities. I do not know whether we should in this way give one municipality this particular right, which may result in the Government saying: But you have your own savings department and housing department, so you may continue to build houses. In this manner the Government may perhaps try to put some of its own duties on to the shoulders of the municipal council. This measure is not one coming from the side of a benevolent Municipal Council which says: “The Government of the day is doing much for housing and we also want to contribute our quota.” No, it comes from the municipality which feels that there is need and that the Government does nothing but evades its responsibilities. Now those City Councillors want to provide the means of achieving something, and I am not convinced that the means is the right means. This measure, coming from a supporter of the Government, coming from a city like Durban, which faithfully stands by the side of the Government, is a serious accusation against the Government that it delayed and omitted to provide for the needs of the people. This is one of the piping voices heard. In my opinion this Bill ought not to be before the House and should not be passed. The City Council of Durban should go to the Government and say that the Government must provide housing. Durban ought to contribute towards forcing the Government to provide proper housing. This is the most serious accusation I have heard against the Government, especially when read together with the statement of the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation. It amounts to this, that the Minister in his statement told the country that the Government’s whole scheme of housing up to now has been practically a total failure. Why? Because bodies outside the Government—so the Minister alleges —did not do their duty and did not fulfil their promises. The Government now ostensibly wants to interfere. How? We should like to know. Merely to state that it will interfere does not mean anything. In November of last year the Government took the step of approaching the municipalities and telling them that they should build 12,000 houses within the following eight months, but the need was great long before November of last year. The housing shortage has been discussed in this House for a number of years now, but as late as November the Government proceeds to place the responsibility of building houses on local authorities. And the local authorities do nothing. And at this stage the Government cannot yet tell us what it is actually going to do, except that we have a vague statement that the Minister will interfere and will try to put an end to complaints. The housing problem is one which makes the population anxious not only in the great cities, but it is felt even in the smallest towns of the platteland that it is a serious problem. People, officials and others, are transferred from one place to the other. They come to the new place and simply cannot obtain a house. I recently heard of a case of a magistrate who was transferred from one platteland town to the other. He could not find a house. He looked for accommodation in the hotel, because there was no other accommodation to be found. It was not a good hotel, but a fairly weak one, and he received accommodation, and the boarding he had to pay for himself and his family was more than his full salary. How on earth can we expect that man to exist and to support his family and to cover all his other expenses if his boarding amounts to more than his salary? Even in the small towns one cannot find a house and it is practically impossible to get boarding. Just recently the Government raised the wages of natives working in brickyards. The result was that brickmakers could not manage at the prices they were asking for the bricks. The native wages were increased by approximately 100 per cent. and the price of bricks by only 10 per cent. and they were not permitted to charge more. The result was that the brickmakers in a place like Bloemfontein went on strike. They decided only to sell what they had, and not to make any more bricks. Last week they all went on strike because under existing circumstances they had to work at a loss. The matter was later taken under review. One or other arrangement was come to and they again started to work, but it just shows you what the position is in connection with housing, how difficult things are, while the Government still makes this blunder to grant permits that stables for racehorses may be built while the people, according to the Minister’s own statement, must also live in stables. The housing situation in South Africa has in fact today become one of our greatest scandals, a scandal of neglected duty on the part of the Government as against the nation. And today we must debate a measure submitted by a municipality which asks to be granted the right to open a savings bank in order to finance housing. There ought not to be anything like that. One does not feel inclined to support the measure because it gives the Government a new opportunity of evading its responsibilities in connection with housing. If this Bill is passed the Government can later tell the municipality at Bloemfontein and at other places: “See what Durban has done; Durban has its own savings bank and finances its own housing schemes, and you must do the same.” That is one of the main reasons why I do not feel inclined to support this measure. I am convinced of it that the Minister will still use the following argument to municipalities if this measure is passed: “Why do you not follow Durban’s example?” It is not right; it should not be allowed to happen. This is a matter which is the responsibility of the Government. The Government should have a national housing scheme. It must invoke the help of the municipalities, as I said before, in the interest of co-operation and goodwill, but it is not the duty of the municipality to build houses. The duty of the municipality is to see to the administration of the town or city. One does not want City Councillors to be practically full-time officials; if this Bill is passed they will have to make plans all day for the institution of housing schemes. These people have not the time for it; they have not been elected for it, but are elected to provide municipal services for the town, and the provision of housing does not fall under the municipalities but is a service the Central Government ought to provide for the nation. That is my feeling about the matter. I speak only on behalf of myself; I do not know what my party feels about it, but my point of view is that this measure amounts to a shifting of the responsibility of the Government on to the shoulders of a municipality, and that should not be allowed. The Government itself ought to tackle those conditions.

I should like to associate myself with the ideas just expressed by the hon. member for Winburg (Mr. Swart). Just as he did, I also want to state that I do not speak on behalf of my Party. I want to lay my personal feelings before the House. We know that there is a great shortage of housing in South Africa. We know that much more housing space is required in South Africa, but that problem does not exist only in Durban and it does not exist in Durban to a larger degree than elsewhere in the country. And if it is the case that the position in Durban is worse than in other places, I should like to know what the reason for it is. This problem of the shortage of houses is a national one. The Minister concerned has repeatedly promised that the State would undertake to build these houses and to finance these schemes. We know that the Government until now has done practically nothing, but that does not yet shift the responsibility for housing South Africa from the Government on to the shoulders of the municipalities. If we look at the Bill which is brought before the House year by year to provide some bank or other for Durban, we find that on some occasions the question of housing did not play at all an important part. It seems to me that the defence of housing, for the Durban scheme is now introduced only because we find that there is a scarcity of houses and that consequently it seems to be a good argument. It gives me the impression that the Durban Municipality is very keen to have one thing, namely a bank by means of which it can compete with other commercial banks and which will enable it to share in the nice profits made by other commercial banks. If that is so, I say it will be a very unsound principle for municipalities in South Africa to start banks which compete with existing commercial banks. If the commercial banks do not provide the necessary facilities for the public, or if the commercial banks, although they provide those facilities, do so on unreasonable terms, at an unreasonable rate of interest, it is the duty of the State to interfere; it is then the duty of the State to see to it that that rate of interest is reduced and that those facilities are improved. Then it is not for the Durban Municipality to bring forward such a measure and to try to settle this problem for South Africa. It seems to me that the object here is to lay hands on such a bank in order to make money by means of it. That is an unsound principle. We cannot get away from the fact that it will come from one source. If the existing facilities for financing housing are not sufficient—I personally consider that it is not sufficient —I am of opinion that facilities should be provided to enable the working man to build his own house, if necessary, without investing one penny in it, and I would strongly support such a scheme—but I say that if the existing facilities are not sufficient, then it is the duty of the State to step in. In my constituency, for example, there are chiefly railway officials and civil servants, the middle-classes; those are the people who experience the greatest difficulty, and those are the people who must maintain a fair standard of living, although they have not the income for it, and that is the class of people who should be assisted as well as the ordinary labourer, and if sufficient facilities do not exist today, it is the duty of the State to see to it that effective facilities are created. Should the Durban Municipality for example have come to the House a few years ago and said: “We are now going to institute a commercial bank in Durban in order to finance industry,” we would have laughed at them. That was the duty of the State and alter years of hammering at it, the eyes of the State eventually opened and it put through legislation and provided the money and laid down regulations under which the Industrial Development Corporation should act, and if the Industrial Development Corporation is not going to be a success, if the Industrial Development Corporation does what it is now doing, namely to act as an industrialist itself, to start industries itself, then it is not the fault of the Corporation but of the State which does not supervise the activities of the Corporation sufficiently. There is no reason why other such Corporations cannot be formed to provide facilities like these. It seems to me that this measure is patchwork, just like the Bill introduced the other day by the hon. member for Pretoria (City) (Mr. Davis). The Minister of Justice admitted that it was patchwork but he still voted for the measure. I now want to ask the Minister of Finance whether he does not think that this measure is also just patchwork. If he feels that it is patchwork he ought to vote against the measure; he ought not, like his colleague, the Minister of Justice, to vote for a Bill which is patchwork. We cannot solve our problems by means of patchwork. We so often hear from the other side that a great millenium will dawn after this war. We look round, the country outside looks, the people who need houses look, and they do not look to the bank of the Durban Municipality but they look to the Government which should act as the father of the nation and which has the guardianship of the whole country. The nation looks to them and not to the Durban Municipality, and if the Durban Municipality needs such legislation, other municipalities also need it. The Minister of Finance said he would vote for this Bill. It is a good measure. If it is a good measure for Durban then it is a good measure for every city, and not only Durban, and then it is for the Minister of Finance personally and not for a private member from Durban to introduce such a private Bill into the House. If we take into review the dangers sheltering behind such an undertaking, we must oppose the Bill automatically. Suppose for example that I stand as a candidate in a city council election in Durban and all the persons for whose vote I asked say: Mr. X, I will vote for you if you will see to it that I get a loan of £1,500 or £2,000 in order to build a house; and then you will also have to give that undertaking in writing ….

What did you promise to give?

I promised that I would see to it that in future this House would be purified of persons who enter this House mainly by means of coloured votes. One cannot get away from the fact that there are dangers concealed in such a system, but it will develop further and further, and if our financial system were one day to rest upon such dangerous grounds we would send South Africa into very dangerous, stormy and troubled waters in the financial sphere. The hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. Burnside) said that houses were so scarce that we have to grasp at anything in order to attempt to solve the problem. On the contrary, I say that is just where that hon. member goes wrong. It is a serious problem and one which ought to be solved, and seeing that it is a serious problem, we should not grasp at just anything. We cannot wage a modern war with a little rifle; that is stupid; we must not just grasp at any little straw. Let the City Council of Durban, or let all the city councils of the Union contribute to the erection of houses, but this is not a question of the erection of houses; it is a question of financing and it is a question which I feel does not fall wthin the scope of the duties of the city councils. It is a national matter and for that reason, especially because it is a financial question and because it is not a question of the actual erection of the houses. I do not support the Bill. The municipality itself will not build the houses. They will issue contracts. All the municipality will do under this Bill will be to use only a portion of the profits so made to finance housing, and it is here that I feel that it is not the work of a city council but the responsibility of the Government.

I wish to add a few words to this debate, because I think now, as I thought last year and the year before that, that this is a thoroughly bad Bill and should not be introduced as a private measure, and intrinsically it contains principles which should be rejected in no less than a very emphatic manner. The subject matter of the Bill, broadly speaking, is increasing and extending what has ordinarily been understood to be a sphere of municipal undertakings. Municipal undertakings are committed in their governments not to pay councillors or to pay elected chiefs, but they are governed by people who are popularly elected but supposed to do their work voluntarily without pay and without special qualifications other than those which they may happen to have as members of the general public. It is a fundamental condition of the success of our system of municipal government that the work which is committed to the municipality should be such as can be ordinarily undertaken and ordinarily discharged with credit by the ordinary citizen, and the ordinary citizen is limited not merely in the average that you get of his knowledge, but of the time that he can devote to municipal affairs. It is quite impossible to expect your active business men your active workers, whether they are artisans, or whether they are clerks, or whether they are managers or directors, to give the whole of their time or anything like the whole of their time, and if they can only afford to give an hour or two in the afternoon, and perhaps some portion of some evening and if you then make calls upon their time exceeding this, you find that there is a falling off in candidates of the right stamp and of the right qualifications. It is a very sad thing indeed if in any country the control of your municipal undertakings fall out of the hands of the most sound and best qualified citizens and falls into the hands of those who just wish to make it a career and use municipal institutions as a step ladder. That is quite contrary to the principles upon which we have established municipal government in the Transvaal. May I remind the House, as I think I did once before when speaking on this subject, that it fell to my duty in 1922 to study and report upon the municipal institutions of the Transvaal, and we came to the concusion after taking a great deal of evidence, that one of the reasons for the existence of unsatisfactory features, as far as there were unsatisfactory features, in our municipal governments, was the amount of work which from year to year, from decade to decade, was being piled upon municipal councillors, until the ordinary man, the man whom you would like to choose to represent you, the man to whom you would with confidence entrust your affairs, simply refused to touch municipal institutions, refused to stand as a candidate and therefore lost all interest, and it fell into the hands of those who had nothing better to do and who were therefore pleased for one reason or another reason to take to municipal life. If we are to enlarge the sphere of municipal undertakings, I say that that should be considered as a question by itself, and should be dealt with by the Parliament of the country and made to apply not to one municipality, but made to apply to all. If it is right that this should be a municipal function, then it should be imposed as a duty, and if it is imposed as a duty, it should be imposed on all municipal institutions, and it should be a regular function of municipal government that we have these savings banks. To do that, in my opinion, would of course, involve great disadvantage, and I should myself be against it; but there would be an opportunity for discussing the pros and cons of this and tests would be taken as to whether or not the public did desire that this should be a recognised function of municipal government or not. If it is going to be a matter of competition, if for the purpose of getting money for municipal government and for municipal affairs, you are going to resort to this as a sort of collecting box, the proceeds of which may be utilised for the citizens of a particular town, you are going to start a system of competition between one town and another town, and a duplication of the institutions which are certainly uneconomical and which may, I think, lead to graver abuses, than that of a breach of economy. Why is it that this matter was not introduced into the House as an extension of municipal duties for municipal institutions as a whole? I have never heard the suggestion that an amendment of that kind should be carried, and I am confident if it were suggested, it would be pretty quickly squashed, and if it were introduced it would be turned down with a very empathic vote. The promoters of this Bill, they are said to be the town council of Durban — have not chosen that method, but they have preferred to go into detail and take one single aspect as the exception in which this system has to be set up. Why is it? My opinion, for what it is worth, is that the public of Durban are extremely apathetic upon this matter. I certainly have not heard of any outcry when their Bill has been rejected on former occasions. I have not heard any protests against it, nor have I noticed the slightest indication of resentment in the members of the town council themselves with the exception of a minority. I believe that the repeated introduction of this Bill, inspite of the chilly reception it has met with year after year, is due to the activities of a small group, and most bodies know what it is to be coerced into a certain course of action by the persistent attitude of a minority, of a small group who are determined. I have greater sympathy with the action of small groups when they have got good principle and a sound programme to put forward. Do not let me be misunderstood as underrating that. I rate that power very highly indeed, and I would be the last person to deprecate determination and the use of influence by a small but determined group. I am not criticising that but what I am endeavouring to point out is that this Bill is not the outcome, for good or for ill, of the popular will of the people of Durban, so much as it is the outcome of the driving force of a small minority, and the apathy of the general public. I am very sorry indeed to have to record this objection. I have had to record it in the past in dealing with the municipality on the Rand in matters more closely connected with my own department. I regret very much that there is this apathy. But I am sure that we are on good ground in thinking that that apathy probably derives its origin from a deluge of work being offered today which it finds its stomach revolts from and which it finds completely indigestible, and then they stand aside, and as far as my information goes, there is not an unfair description of the manner and the cause by which this Bill has again seen the light of day in this Session. It is very, very desirable that the work which is committed to a particular body should be generally understood by that body and by the members of that body. That sounds a very elementary principle, but it is being grossly abused and disregarded in the presentation of this particular Bill. Members of the town council may not be civil engineers, but they can at any rate form a very good opinion indeed as to whether a road has been well or badly made, whether a drain has been plugged or whether a pipe is leaking, but I have yet to learn that any of them are accomplished in the matter of banking, its practice and the principle or the science which underlies it. I do not believe, if you were even to take not merely the municipality in question, but all the municipalities of the Union, wherever they are, you will find—I will not say 1 per cent.—I do not believe you will find one, unless he was a banker by profession—and I do not know of any—who got into the town council by accident. I do not think you will find one* that is qualified to give an opinion either on the running or the setting up of a savings bank. It is an extremely specialised job. Banking takes a very long apprenticeship. I have had some reason to know that for I have been engaged in an arbitration between the employees of banks and the bank managers and directors, and it was explained to us then—and it was admitted both by the employees and the directors—that a long course of training was necéssary before a banker could be turned out. By a banker I mean even one who has reached the stage of being capable of managing a branch of a bank, not the advanced stage of being able to start a banking institution, or to determine the higher problems of finance when investments and discounts and questions of that kind have to be decided in principle. No, it is quite clear and quite definite that to learn the science and practice of banking requires a long apprenticeship and long training, and I think it is notorious that you will not find a single town councillor who is even capable of expressing an opinion on these matters, far less to take a hand in managing an institution of this nature. I can well understand that the promoters of this Bill, foreseeing that lasses and perhaps great losses, may be incurred, have taken care to insert the provision that the rates in the long run shall be responsible for these losses. It is a most dangerous departure. To whom will this municipality look for the business of setting up its bank and of managing its bank? Not town councillors. If one is chosen as the head of it he will be a dummy. If there is a savings bank committee, which is to be established, they will gape and wait for the chosen officer to come in and to tell them what to do and how they are to do it and how they are to set about it. You will not get light or guidance or ability from that committee itself. And so we have the position that the staff, the whole staff, and the management and the manager will have to be specially recruited for this job. Where are they to come from? They must be competent. They must have had experience. They must he trained, therefore, or some institution of the same character would have to supply them. If ever there was a time in which it is undesirable to duplicate our institutions and to make greater calls upon our manpower, it is the present. I do not suppose that there is any department of Government which is not suffering from a depleted staff, that is not looking round from day to day to get clerks of every grade and managers and technicians of every sort. I know that even in the Pay Department of our Defence Force they grab with an unrelenting grip competent officers who are capable of doing their work. I know quite well that other Departments are in the same position; and now, at this time without any reason, we are to compete for this short supply of labour by setting up a duplicate Savings Bank Department in a municipality, which I hope I have shown clearly is quite incapable of undertaking it or running it and is likely to be faced with heavy losses. I cannot imagine a less propitious time. In these circumstances, which are quite well known—I do not suppose the promoters of this Bill are more blind than anyone else; the energy they have shown indicates to me that they are alive to it; I would say that they are better qualified than most for the purpose of estimating these conditions at their true value and therefore their actions are more striking and more difficult to unuderstand—they ask for this Bill to be made law. I suggest that Durban has got enough to do in other ways. Its Town Council has plenty of work. I do not know whether they have settled the housing question yet. It is not lack of finance that is holding them up in the building problem there, or in any other municipality. It is want of ability, and want of energy and it may be also shortage of materials. But in my opinion the housing position is not settled because of want of drive in the municipalities who are entrusted with this duty very largely at the present time. My colleague has had to deal with that in striking language recently. No, they have plenty to do, but I think if, we were to wait until they have finished with this particular problem which is quite sufficient to absorb their energies, we should hear nothing more about this during this Session or the following one. No, I say that this shortage of staff is the outstanding problem at the present time, one which in itself would make it necessary that the Bill should be postponed. I want to know why the municipality should go in for this work of running a Savings Bank Department at all, apart from the questions which I have already dealt with. It seems to me that the opportunities for investing small sums of money in the country are ample. The resources of the Post Office, the Union Savings Certificates and the rest of it are quite satisfactory and are at the disposal of all. I know of no reason at all why this should be duplicated and placed under municipal control at Durban or anywhere else and I doubt very much whether the actual response to it in the form of deposits, apart from the objections in principle, would justify the expense of setting it up. This is a move in the direction of nationalising or socialising all the means of production and distribution and exchange in the country. I know all those who have been bent upon carrying out that programme. They have concentrated very largely upon banking, and they wish to make the establishing of a State Bank a permanent feature. I can understand it. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, when I see the promotion, the real driving force of the promotion behind this Bill in the hands of that same group, I gather that the philosophy behind it is not very distinct, that the line between the two is so hazy that I, at any rate, would not draw it and no one would be wishful of drawing. [Interjection.] The interjection of the hon. member for Fordsburg (Mr. Burnside) confirms, rather than disturbs me in the conclusion to which I have come. If we are going to use municipal institutions for this, I say it is an abuse of that municipal institution, and this Bill is being introduced under cover of improving municipal government and extending investment facilities under a false cover. I hope that the good sense of this House will reject this measure.

When I heard that this Bill was brought in again I felt inclined to congratulate the promoters of it on their pertinacity in again and again bringing it forward. Certainly they deserve success, I thought, but when one hears the other side of the case and thinks: “What does this mean?” as it was rather forcibly brought out by some of the members of the Nationalist Party, it really means that if this is a success it might be applied afterwards to Government banks, and we would get the Government running the banks, and bureaucracy running mad. Today at all events these matters are dealt with by people who are impartial and who understand this intricate profession, but if that is done, all sorts of people, even the ordinary civil servant—a man whom I have the greatest respect for but whom T do not want to have this authority—will be administering the finances of the public, and if that happens, God help the country. After all, why do you want money from a savings bank to build houses for the very poor? Today you can borrow money from the Government for sub-economic housing at ¾ per cent.

It is not sub-economic housing.

If it is not sub-economic, it means something else, and that is what raises my suspicion about the pertinacity of the promoters of this Bill. Is there something behind it all? Are they going to assist speculators to acquire houses at a much bigger price than the houses are worth? Would it be possible for this savings bank to advance money to people in Durban at a very much higher scale of interest than they could get from ordinary commercial undertakings?

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 26th March.

The House thereupon proceeded to the consideration of Government business.

I should like to emphasise that the influx of natives into the urban areas is terrible and it has increased to an unbearable and alarming degree. From the number of 10,000 natives the influx has continued and it has increased so that within a comparatively short time we have reached the gigantic figure of 80,000. Again I would emphasise that the Government is responsible. It is to blame, and it alone. We want to spur the Government on to effective action with a view to meeting the danger squarely. We expect action on the part of the Minister of Native Affairs because action and action alone will save the situation. If the influx has increased already from 10,000 to 80,000 where are wé going to be landed in the future? I believe that the Minister of Native Affairs has seen the red danger signal. He sees the danger just as any other member on the opposite side; but I feel the Minister is powerless and his hands are tied. He is thwarted by certain unnational elements in the House and outside. Whether he will admit it or not, I say that he is being thwarted by certain elements in this House and outside, so that he dare not really take action. Mammon has a finger in this. Those who make thousands and tens of thousands of pounds out of this most dangerous matter do not care into what state our urban areas fall so long as they can make their money. They do not mind what the future of our towns will be, because after they have made their money they will shift to another part of the world. The urban areas are in a state of alarm. You can visit any family, and you will learn that there is a certain measure of fear and anxiety. There is anxiety in our homes. The Minister is aware of this. The Government knows this and the country knows it, but is ignored for the benefit of a certain section, and the natives may come in as they please. It is not only a disaster for the urban areas, but if the Government does not take energetic action, and if it does not take timely action, I assert that this question of the streaming of natives into the urban areas will be the last nail in the coffin of the United Party. My contention is that this tidal wave can be stopped. Why not? What is to prevent it? But we should not wait until our borders have been inundated, until the matter has got entirely out of hand and is uncontrollable, until it is too late. When these thousands of natives settle down in our urban areas and make their homes there, it will be absolutely impossible to get them out of these urban areas again. The matter is especially serious when we remember that we are concerned not only with our own native areas but this influx is also coming from the Protectorates. In what relation do we stand to the Protectorates? We have millions of natives in our own territory, and yet the door is kept open for natives from the Protectorates, and even from Rhodesia. An influx is occurring to the Union and especially to the urban areas, and our door is being kept open for native immigrants. I say that this is unjust and unprecedented. We do not know where it is leading to and what the end of it is going to be when we have such a tremendous influx to our urban areas. These natives are welcomed. Houses and homes are built for them, and in that way the Government are welcoming them with open arms. Homes and houses are being built for them, and they are being placed in a comfortable position. I maintain that this not right. I believe it would be much more desirable if we regarded this infiltration as an offence, when these natives cross our borders. It is an offence when anyone crosses the border, and why does the Minister not take action and make it an offence for natives to come over our borders? Such a native should at least have a permit or a certificate entitling him to enter the Union and to enter an urban area. A stricter permit system should be applied, and we want to make an earnest appeal to the Minister that instead of creating bureaux for natives in the towns he should establish those bureaux in the native territories. We have our administration in the native territories, and why cannot we locate those labour bureaux to which the natives can go before they leave for the urban areas? If this is done persons who are desirable and who have been approved by the chief as persons who are disciplined, and obedient to the chief, can be dealth with systematically and given a chance to go to the towns and elsewhere to accept work. If such a native receives a certificate from his chief that he comports himself well, he should be admitted, but what is happening now? We find that the natives who are well-behaved remain at home for the most part, but those who are wild and criminally inclined want to slip out of the native territories and to stream into the towns, and later on the towns are saddled with these criminal types. In other words, our urban areas keep an open door for the surplus from the native reserves who cannot live an easy life there. Another aspect that I should like to bring to the attention of the Minister is that this influx constitutes a menace to our coloured population. I foresee a clash between the coloureds and the natives. There is a certain competition and jealousy between the two sections. A few evenings ago I was standing on the station in the suburbs and I heard natives threatening and cursing the coloured people, and abusing them, calling them bushmen. You cannot make a coloured person feel worse than by calling him a bushman. This sort of thing is already in progress, and presently the streets of our towns will be converted into a blood bath when the natives and the coloured people fight each other. The natives have then own areas and their own homes. Now they are invading the sphere of the coloured people. Our coloured people have no other home. They have only this part of the Western Province in which to work and reside. And is it just to allow them to be squeezed out by the natives in this small area where they have their home and where they have to find employment. It is most unreasonable towards the coloured population. Discrimination has been shown against the coloured people in an incredible manner. The native is taking his work. A little while ago I read in one of the newspapers that the coloured people are stigmatised as lazy and unreliable, and it is said of the native that he is honest and industrious and hard-working. Why? Because the native is willing to work for a smaller wage than the coloured man. Now the coloured man is not good enough to be taken into service. Owing to the coloured people now being in the North their work is being handed over to the natives. Once the native has got possession of that work the coloured person will not see it again when he returns. He is being deprived of his living. We want to act in a protective manner towards the coloured people in the Cape Province, especially towards the coloured people in the Western Province; and I say that it is unfair and unjust for the native to have an open door and to stream in here by tens of thousands until there are 80,000 here at the moment. We should realise that the coloured person has accepted western civilisation on a broader and stronger basis. He clothes and feeds himself like a European. He is housed like a European and his standard of living is infinitely higher than that of the native, and it is unfair competition on the part of the native who can work for a much lower wage than a coloured person. They can manage on a small wage on their own standard of living. The natives refuse service on the platteland. We know this. They want higher wages, and the comforts and attractions of the urban areas. We had a number of natives on the irrigation works on the Olifants River. Within a few weeks there was not one of them left. They all ran away because the work was too heavy. They went to the town. Farming work is too heavy for them, and here they are depriving the coloured people of a living. Not only this, but it will not be long before we hear of native strikes in our urban areas. We know that the coloured people have never struck in the past. But we shall see that as soon as the natives secure a firm foothold here, we shall have strikes. It is a discontented nation. I would like to ask where the coloured representatives are. The native representatives represent the natives here. I marvel at the way they act in the interests of the natives. They practically talk about nothing else, not a single word apart from the rôle of champions of the natives. But now we ask, where are the representatives of the coloured people, who have ridden astride the coloured vote into this House? I do not want to mention names here, but there are dozens of them on the other side who would not have been here but for the vote of the coloured people. But they are as silent as the grave here when the coloured people are menaced, condemned and undermined. We on this side of the House who do not sit here as a result of the coloured vote have to appeal on behalf of the coloured people, and where are those representatives of the coloured people? We are not hostile to the natives. I grew up with them and I have a soft place in my heart for the natives. I know their manners and customs. We want to help them with industries in their own territories, that being the policy of the Nationalist Party. Our object is to help the natives, but to help them in their own territories, by improvements in their cattle, in their education and such things. I can say that the Government is already helping in those respects. I notice that in 1944 no fewer than 112 boreholes were made for the natives. I can assure you that not 50 boreholes were made for Europeans in the previous year. We are not averse to this being done for the natives because they have to live. But we say: Help them in their own territories, and do not place them in unfair competition with the coloureds. Old age pensions have been granted to 353,000 natives; blind pensions have been granted to 27,000 natives; for unfit natives £117,000 has been granted. In this way 500,000 natives have been assisted. We do not object to the native being helped in their own areas. They have to live. But I want to make an appeal in all seriousness to the Minister to put a stop to this—if I may put it in that way— ungodly state of affairs that has been created by the influx of 80,000 natives. We cannot carry on like this. The natives must return home and only in proportion to our requirements ought they to be brought back here; and when their period of service is over they must return to their own areas, so that they will always be only immigrants in these parts where we have a big coloured population. We have to assist the natives in their areas, but we must not allow the coloured population in the Western Province to be made the prey of natives or to sacrifice the coloured people for the sake of the natives.

This is only a consolidating measure that has been asked for the last ten years. We have been asked by municipalities and others interested in native affairs to press for the passing of this measure. As we know, the Urban Areas Act has been amended so frequently that it is almost impossible for any official or lawyer or for any local authority to understand it thoroughly. But instead of the native representatives being pleased to have this legislation clarified, we have had so much opposition from them. We are not here so much to discuss the merits of the Urban Areas Act. Even if this measure was thrown out the old Acts would still remain in force. There is one thing that I want to say here and which I think should be said. The view is taken that all the natives flocking down here come from the Transkei. I hear the Transkei mentioned on every hand. The actual position is that you find nearly as many Basutos and foreign natives as Transkei natives. Only last week the Basutos had a great national gathering, where they slaughtered many cattle and sheep in honour of one of their chiefs or some national event. Not only have you the flow from Basutoland but there is the flow from the Eastern Cape, where there are three-quarters of a million natives. I make bold to say that most of the natives, or a very large proportion of them flocking here come from Kingwilliamstown, Fort Beaufort and the farms in that particular area and areas contiguous to the Union.

What evidence have you for that?

I have the evidence of frequently meeting natives, and I ask them where they come from, what part of the country, and I have found that many of them come from the King William’s Town district and the Ciskei; a large proportion of them come from that part of the country. In the Transkei itself there is some measure of control. It is the only part of the Cape Province where there is some measure of control; the magistrates there have been instructed not to issue permits to natives unless they can produce documents to the effect that there is employment waiting for them down here, unless they can show a letter from an employer here stating he requires their services. But it is very easy for the natives in the Transkei to overcome that difficulty. They walk across to Cala and take the bus to Indwe, and once they get into the Cape Colony proper there is no supervision, and there is no difficulty in them coming down here. Hon. members have been asking the Government to take measures to prevent the influx of natives into the Cape Peninsula. I may say in this connection that at the present time in one of the districts in the Transkei we have two native constables and an interpreter—not a Government interpreter but lawyer’s interpreter—who have a scheme whereby they arrange for letters to be sent from here to the Transkei, to natives wishing to come down, and these letters are sold to the natives at 5s. each and in an adjoining district they are sold at 10s. The native produces this letter purporting to have been received from an employer in Cape Town and he gets his pass and comes here; so there are many subterfuges by which natives can travel down to the Cape. I do not see how it can be controlled. The control should be rather at the other end than at this.

Don’t you think the railways can help?

I do not think they can, because many of the natives come down here ostensibly to work on the farms at Stellenbosch and Paarl and these places; they say they are going down to work for the farmers here.

They can be refused railway tickets when they come from the Transkei.

I have just been telling the hon. member how difficult it is to control. We have free movement of natives in the Cape Province; there is no pass system, no control system, and the natives flock down here. They get much higher wages here, they are paid up to 8s. a day, and in many instances up to 10s. a day. Hon. members have been protesting against the administrative system we have in trying to maintain control; the hon. native representatives have been protesting against the pass system. May I tell them what happened in the Transkei recently. There we had a similar difficulty to what you are experiencing in the towns, that is the flocking into the towns of native juveniles, the boys of from 12 to 16 years of age; before they can go to the mines to work they flock into our villages and towns. Last year I suggested that the Bunga should be asked to discuss this particular problem that is present in every village in the Transkei and in Umtata. These towns are thronged with native youngsters., and they are a real menace. We asked the Bunga to try to find some method of preventing this influx of youngsters. Hon. members have attacked the pass system, but they will be interested to know that when the natives came together in the Bunga the only method they could evolve, the only recommendation they could make was that these native juveniles should have a letter from their parents and the headman of the location and the magistrate should then give them a pass to enable them to live in the towns. These hon. members have protested against the pass system, but that is the only method the native representatives themselves could evolve. Yet we are continually having these protests against this control of native movement from people who say they are the friends of the natives. I wish that hon. members representing the natives would realise that in this country after all is said and done we have a very large native population who have only been in contact with civilisation for the last 30 or 40 years. You might say that the natives only began to come to the large towns after the Chinese left the country in 1908 or 1910. Our natives have not yet attained that state of civilisation that they are able to be controlled as Europeans are. Many of them are still quite raw; they cannot speak English or Afrikaans, but only their own language. Many of them have no education, and it does seem absolutely essential that we should have some control over them. When the Urban Areas Act was introduced in 1921, the trend of thought was for the establishment of native advisory committees which we could gradually build up to take the place of our town councils and village management boards, so that the natives might eventually take control of their own local affairs. Instead of developing in that direction we have found these local advisory bodies are continually making trouble with the local authorities and with the Administration. In some places they were organised to help in the measures that were being taken to combat the shebeens, but as soon as we really tackled the problem we found they were up against us. Instead of having bodies of natives as we thought they would, gradually acquiring experience and gaining a realisation of the necessity for facing up to their responsibilities, they have done nothing at all, or very little, to improve their outlook. That is our great problem, making the natives feel alive to their responsibilities and to their duty to their fellow-men. They have absolutely failed. My hon. friends over there will realise that whenever you put a native in charge of a gang of other natives he cannot maintain discipline or control. He must always have European supervision. It is a tragedy. I know perfectly well there are many natives who have risen in the scale of civilisation, who have acquired knowledge and experience and responsibility, but unfortunately in comparison they are few. Only last year when the Native Representative Council met and the Minister gave an address in connection with the reclamation of soil, only one man in the whole of the Representative Council, the members of which are chosen by the native people themselves and who are the more educated natives—only one man got up and faced his fellow men and said that the reclamation scheme was not only necessary and very useful, but that it was time they realised it, and notwithstanding the promise of the Government to spend large sums of money and try and save that country, the scheme was turned down by that council. When I was at Kingwilliamstown, I was present at the meeting of the Ciskeian Council, which is comprised of natives who are nearly all educated men. It will be remembered I made the statement last year that the contact of civilisation with barbarism had been too sudden, that the natives instead of going through a gradual process had suddenly been forced into contact with civilisation as a semi-barbaric population. Hon. members representing the natives then took me to task. When the Secretary for Native Affairs addressed that Ciskeian Council recently in connection with stock control and reclamation measures and tried to persuade the members to realise that their country was going to seed, what happened? A leading native, one of the constituents of the hon. member for Cape Eastern (Mrs. Ballinger) said: “You Europeans have had 2,000 years start. Give us 2,000 more years, then we will go into the conservation schemes, then we will be prepared to work with you”. That is the reply we got, and that is what I said last year—that the contact had been too sudden.

That is not the usual attitude.

The whole body opposed those measures we wanted to take. Whilst my hon. friend is on that, may I mention that when we proposed to start the village scheme to get the natives away from the towns and the degrading conditions under which they live there, when we tried to get them interested in our native village near Kingwilliamstown, near their field of labour, what did we have? Absolute opposition. They said, “We do not want the prostitutes and the loafers coming into our native areas, we do not want the drunkards and the wasters; you can keep them in your towns”. That is the reply we got. Let me say this too, I told the hon. member for Cape Eastern when I came down here, before we went to that meeting I was in contact with some Europeans and some natives, and they told me that at that meeting the natives would turn the whole thing down, that they would not accept it. And they told me—that is my information and it may be wrong—that the hon. member for Cape Eastern had advised the natives not to accept these village schemes. I am not making any charge and I am making this statement with reservations but I told the hon. member of that statement when I came down here.

Mr. Speaker, on a point of explanation. I have told the hon. member exactly the position. I have stated my point of view exactly in this House on more than one occasion. It is that I am entirely opposed to any village scheme which will place the native population away from centres of industry, that I am entirely opposed to any village scheme that makes it impossible for a man to live with his family and go home at night. I said that in this House last Session, and I have said it in this House this Session. As regards the particular cases to which the hon. member refers, my proposals to the people in the Eastern Cape, as it will always be to my constituents, is that they must consider all these proposals in the light of their ability to maintain family life. I am quite prepared to support schemes which fulfil this condition. If these schemes allow that, they will have my full support.

In other words, you are against segregation.

In this particular scheme that was to be started close to Kingwilliamstown the natives would have been close to their homes. Provision is made for the construction of good houses, for hygienic conditions, and other facilities and with water supplied, and yet in spite of that the natives turn it down. I do not know whether my hon. friend knew that was being done. Cottages were to be built for them with water laid on, so as to enable them to be as near as possible to the centres in which they were going to work. Houses were to be built to accommodate families. The whole idea was to enable them to encourage family life. I for one think this system of breaking down the homes and getting natives away from control is bad. I agree completely with that. We have to realise, unfortunately, that the native has no affection for the soil. I remember recently when the Empire Parliamentary Delegation came through the Transkei we met three of these representatives who had come from England. One of them, Sir Walter Smiles, I think, was a man of very wide experience in the East, in Burma, China and Japan. That Parliamentary association toured right through Africa visiting the different Protectorates and the British territories in the North. Sir Walter in an address said one thing had struck him above everything else, that while the people of the East loved the land, nursed the land, protected every inch of the land, amongst the negroes and natives of Africa there was not that affection; all their affection was for stock. They thought of nothing but cattle and in terms of cattle. That is the real tragedy. The natives will not protect their land or take any interest in their land. My hon. friends here state that the natives are forced by circumstances to go to the towns and work. The fact is that most of these natives get ten acres of land —it is true a number do not—and outside that they get another 50 or 60 acres on which they can graze cattle. If anybody cannot make a living from five or ten acres of land and 50 acres for grazing in a wonderful country like the Transkei, there is something wrong with the people; it is not the country. I know a European in the Transkei living on three acres of land. He has grown vegetables and tropical fruits for the last 25 or 30 years, and on that three acres he has aducated his three sons and sent them to St. Andrews.

Irrigation.

No, it is not a question of irrigation. This land is not under irrigation. In the whole of that area where this European lives and where the natives have much better facilities for living and producing similar fruits and vegetables, there is not a native who is growing a single tropical paint or is producing anything at all other than mealies. But this European who has lived there for 30 years has been able to educate his children on the produce of his three acres. There is no question about it, these territories can produce infinitely more than they are doing today. Go to Umtata and you will see a small block of European farms with very excellent crops. But look across the wire fence and you will find that the natives have nothing at all. It is due to the fact that the natives have not that love of labour and that love of the land. My hon. friend there, the member for Transkei (Mr. Hemming) says we have not utilised the irrigation facilities we have in the Transkei we might have; nor have we trained the natives to be irrigationists. I know the native is not an irrigationist. He does not like hard work of any kind. When I went to the Transvaal and along the Olifants River scheme, I went over that tract of land, and I found it was worked entirely by native women. Not a single man was to be seen. They had a crop of hundreds of bags of wheat all by irrigation, and were expecting a second crop of mealies, and I think this Government reclamation scheme is a fine attempt to persuade the natives to take more interest in the land and become agriculturists. We have been trying it for 40 years. My hon. friend knows perfectly well that there are agricultural institutions there doing good work, but just outside the institutions you find natives in as primitive a state as before the institutions started. There has been no advance; in fact they are going back. It is entirely due to this cattle complex and to their inherent dislike of work on the land. That is what I think the country and the people interested in the natives must realise; we must get rid of the cattle complex and get the natives to do a little more honest hard work and attain a land complex. The land is excellent, and there is a rainfall of 25 to 30 inches every year. I do not ever remember a drought there, when we did not get any rain. This year is probably the worst we have ever experienced. But in spite of the richness of the land the natives are flocking to the towns. What happens to their money? I have a cutting here, a letter written by a native to a newspaper published some months ago, and this is what a native himself said—

That, to my mind, suggests a solution. We take a young raw native who has never had two pennies in his life, and at the age of 17 he goes to a town where he gets from £5 to £10 the first month he works ….

Which town?

Here in Cape Town; the natives here are getting between £6 and £10 a month. I know a native getting 12s. 6d. a day. That youth is brought from his home environment into contact with civilisation, away from the influence of his parents, away from his relatives and friends, and he suddenly gets all that money into his hands, and he naturally wastes and squanders it. I think that if the Government wished to maintain that contact of the native with his friends and his family and with tribal control, that aspect of the question should be considered. We know, all of us, the natives admit it themselves, they have lost all control over their children. Parents tell me that they have no control over their children. The headmen and chiefs say they have no control. What is the cause of it? I believe the original cause is what we thought were our good laws were bad laws unsuitable at any rate to the then state of development of the natives. The old native custom was a communal responsibility of the kraal in the first instance and of the tribe in the second. If any misdemeanour or any crime was committed, that kraal was held responsible, and the occupants of it were fined and fined in cattle. You would have the induna, the messenger of the chief, coming along and taking two or three head of cattle from the kraal. That was always felt to be a disgrace, for the natives to see their cattle being driven away. And when the community committed a crime, cattle were taken from the community, which was also a disgrace. Our punishment is now to fine a native £1 or so, which he easily finds. There is no family disgrace, no disgrace at all attached to the punishment. That is one of the factors we have to take into consideration. It is the march of civilisation, the bringing about a state of affairs in this country that I admit I am afraid of. Our, hon. friends over there are continually telling us about the Communist menace. The great majority of natives know nothing about Communism. What I think is worse, however, is that there is definitely an anti-white feeling cropping up in the country, and it is developing. We have the native trade unions. Go down to the square here and listen to, the speeches that are made by irresponsible people. I say if the natives of this country are restless, if they are feeling perhaps that the contact with civilisation is not improving them, it is due very largely to Europeans amongst them taking them in that direction. The hon. member said so. The Native Affairs Department said there were elements doing damage among the natives. In conclusion, I want to say this, Mr. Speaker, that I am not afraid of the native population in this country. I have lived in the native territories all my life; I was born there. I am very fond of the natives and of the natives as a whole. I am afraid that the natives themselves will be faced with a position of this kind, if there is any serious disturbance in this country, if there is any necessity to take harsh measures, they, the natives are the people who will suffer, and not merely the natives who are responsible, but the ignorant masses will also suffer. I think it is the duty of hon. members representing native interests, and of all hon. members, to point out to the natives of this country that they are not yet civilised in the real meaning of the word, that they are growing up and are still being taught. The native reminds me of the youth who has just had his first long pair of trousers and thinks himself a man. That is the trouble. The native has really got growing pains in his progress from barbarism into civilisation. Our civilisation as it is today is proving too strong for them, and they have not been able to stand up to it. I hope hon. members on the other side, when they rail against the natives — they are continually saying hard things against the natives ….

Nonsense.

They should look at the conditions; it is a tragedy. I have been to Windermere, and it is really astonishing to think that human beings are prepared to live there under those conditions. Go down there ….

Is it our fault?

I am not blaming anybody. I say those conditions have arisen owing to sudden contact with civilisation. The natives have not been able to stand up to it; unless we are very careful we will have trouble in this country. I was near Queenstown during the Bulhoek business, and we do not want another tragedy of that nature. I know of farmers living in the wilds amongst natives and know how they feel when amongst their own servants this doctrine is being preached. Our people are getting nervous and one of these days there will be trouble. We must be very careful in dealing with these natives. Let us try to improve their conditions. I say without hesitation that if you go to Windermere tomorrow and see the conditions there you would like to place a match to the houses and take the natives away. I cannot imagine anything which is doing the natives more harm than their contact with the coloured people where they are rapidly acquiring the habit of drinking brandy and wine. The Joint Council of Cape Town a few months ago wrote to the Joint Council at Umtata pointing out the position and the Ill-feeling existing between natives and coloureds, and asked for some remedy. These dangers are arising. When our Party here are taunted with not building houses, with not making provision for this large number of natives, I say that it was humanly impossible to foretell six years ago that the number would increase from 10,000 to 80,000. But I do say this, that while conditions like this exist in the towns, the towns should prevent these natives from occupying these areas, and if I could make one amendment to this Bill—unfortunately I cannot because it is a consolidating Bill—I would make it compulsory upon every Town Councillor to visit the location and to have the closest inspection once a month. I have travelled through many native locations in the Union and they are a disgrace. I would like to say that it has seemed to me that there is a wonderful difference of mentality between our natives and those in the North. I went through Shanty Town in Johannesburg last year, and I admit that I felt nervous. I had been to other locations on Sunday afternoon, but I want to say that the discipline and cleanliness there considering the conditions under which they lived, were astonishing. The orderliness and cleanliness was as much as could be expected under the circumstances. There was no drunkenness and they were well-behaved. My sympathies went out to them. But conditions are different in the Cape. In East London the police are afraid to go to the location on a Sunday afternoon owing to the prevalent drunkenness. Here at Windermere the natives have squatted among the sand dunes and filthy conditions have arisen. They apparently make no attempt to keep conditions clean and hygienic although they could easily dig holes in the sand to bury their refuse, etc., and the prevailing drunkenness is not only a tragedy but a menace to the whole community: Venereal disease is rife. That is why I would wish that responsible members of Parliament representing the natives and those bodies like the Native Representative Council and the Bunga would help the native to realise his responsibilities. If we could only get these advisory representative bodies amongst the natives to try and improve and help themselves, and to face up to their responsibilities, we would attain something. Then there would be hope for the native races in this country. In conclusion I want to say that I have never forgotten the words of an American negro who come to the Eastern Province 10 or 12 years ago, in order to assist the Y.M.C.A. movement, and who frequently travelled through the Transkei and gave lectures to natives to try and help them agriculturally. He left four or five years ago. He was well-educated and a very fine type of man. I asked him before he left what hope he thought there was for the natives in this country, and he replied: “I have been here eight or nine years. I see very little hope. If these natives had had to go through four centuries of slavery and learn to work as my people did, there would have been hope, but I see no hope unless there is a drastic change in their desire to improve themselves and improve their land. If they continue in their present attitude there is no hope for them.” I think until the natives realise that they must be prepared to face their responsibilities and help themselves there will be little progress and it is our duty and that of the Government to help bring about this state of affairs.

The hon. member who has resumed his seat has, in my opinion, and I am certain also in the opinion of all hon. members, made a valuable contribution to the discussion of this great and extremely difficult problem in our country. It is only a pity that the hon. member previously, when he was dependent on the native vote, did not take up the same sound attitude. Then he could have employed that talent of his to much greater advantage than now, when he is no longer dependent on the native vote, in assisting us to solve this difficult question. If he had made such a contribution at that time, we should perhaps have been very much further with this problem. It only shows again the danger we run from those who are dependent for their seats in Parliament on the support of natives and coloured people in the country. It is a danger that you also find in respect of the Minister of Native Affairs, because he is to a great degree dependent on the coloured vote. This is the position with many members on the opposite benches, that they are dependent on the political support of the coloured community; and a person has sometimes to do wrongful things to make one’s seat safe and to maintain one’s position, even though it goes against one’s feelings of fairnress and justice, not only towards the European but also towards the coloured races. We have had a verbal illustration of this from the hon. member who has just resumed his seat. I only want to say this to him. He has stated that we should not be so certain that the influx to the cities and towns is from the Transkei only. We are not so concerned about Where the influx has its source. We have to deal with the fact that the influx of natives to the cities and towns does exist, and we ask why they are being allowed to stream into our towns and cities to the extent that is the case at the moment. The result is that especially in places like Cape Town and the Cape Peninsula, and also in cities and towns throughout the country, we are being saddled with a great native population that is causing all these undesirable conditions. We ask the Minister why no use has been made of the powers that he possesses, and if he has not adequate power, why he does not take adequate powers to send back to their homes the superfluous natives in our urban areas that constitute a menace to these specific areas and give rise to an undesirable state of affairs. Can he tell us why he is not doing this? We have a Government of the country that possesses all the powers; we have a Minister who has the power under these laws which are now being consolidated, and under other laws; he has the right to act under them, but he does not do so. I would just like to say this to the Minister of Native Affairs, that on the platteland we have followed his career as Minister of Native Affairs with interest up to the present stage. We appreciate in certain respects the just attitude that he has hitherto taken up not only in relation to the European community of our country but also in a great measure his just attitude and standpoint towards the natives and the non-European community in general. We appreciate the attitude that he has assumed up ito now. I am of opinion that not for a long time have we had a Minister of Native Affairs who has tried so hard to do the right thing in connection with the coloured problem in the country, as the present Minister of Native Affairs. While this is so, we desire him to take strong action in the future and not to deal with this extremely important problem by just giving it cursory attention as if it is not worth the trouble to act drastically and comprehensively. On him rests the responsibility for bringing about a state of affairs in connection with this problem in our country that will lead to a solution, a good and just solution in relation to Europeans and in relation to the natives. We must solve that problem in order to put an end to this eternal conflict, and struggle to overcome these difficulties that already exist and which threaten to increase. He can succeed in that if he tackles the matter boldly, but we want to tell him that he can only succeed if he is not affected by the agitation that has so frequently been launched by the hon. members who represent native interests in this House; and not only in this House are they causing trouble with a view to undermining the position of the Minister, but they are also acting outside the House in a manner that is occasioning difficulty and that is making the work of the Minister of Native Affairs increasingly difficult. We also want to tell him that he should not for a moment be deflected from his path by that agitation that has been set on foot by them and by others, but he must act strongly and firmly and do what he thinks is just in respect of all sections of the community. Nor should he allow himself lightly to be turned from his course by the howls that are sometimes heard from countries overseas. I speak specifically of England, which is so ready to interfere in other people’s affairs as far as concerns the natives and which is so ready to pass an opinion on us—which judges and condemns us so easily, though the people in England have not got a particle of knowledge regarding the real difficulties in our country. He must not be so ready to pay any heed to them. Let them worry about matters in their own sphere, matters that they have an acquaintance with; and let them keep out of our affairs, seeing that the perplexities of the problem are unknown to them, so that we may be able to solve it without interference and embarrassments from people who are ignorant of the circumstances in our country. This afternoon we are not discussing the native problem in its entirety. We are only dealing with the native problem in so far as it is affected by the legislation regarding natives in urban areas, which is being consolidated in this Bill. That is all with which we should concern ourselves in the debate on this Bill. As that is the case I want to deal with this Bill, and I shall not deal with the larger aspects of the whole problem. Although the Minister of Native Affairs has not effected great changes in the consolidation of the law regarding natives in urban areas, although it is only a compendium of the existing laws almost literally in their original form, these laws give him great powers. They give him the power and the authority to act vigorously in order to eliminate bad conditions in connection with natives in urban areas. He is consolidating the provisions of the various laws almost in the same form, and under them he has strong rights and powers that he can use if he wants to be just, as we know he wishes to be, in order to solve this problem in the interests of both sections in our country. Nevertheless we find that in this grouping of the relevant laws there are a few defects, defects to which we would direct attention on this occasion. These are defects that appear prominently in relation to the difficulties that exist. I should like to mention some of these defects. One is that although the Minister of Native Affairs has here consolidated all the laws on natives in urban areas, and although he has strong powers to intervene in order to improve the bad conditions, he can simply shrug his shoulders and refuse to apply those powers. He has done it in the past and I fear that he will do so again in the future, because we have seen the Prime Minister discussing the coloured problem with an air of hopelessness. He simply said that conditions had become so serious that there is no chance now left—the problems can no longer be solved. He stated that we shall have to find plans in the future. Accordingly, I say that we have here a defect in the law that should be remedied. If the Minister does not possess the right and the power under these laws to do what we expect of him, I would like to suggest another plan to him. We are still in a state of war, in a state of emergency as far as that is con cerned. In so far as it affects this problem too, we are also in a state of emergency, and as the Government has taken so many measures behind which it takes refuge, because a state of emergency is existing in the country, why cannot the Minister of Native Affairs bearing in mind this state of emergency, and the undesirable influx of natives, especially in places such as Cape Town and Johannesburg, issue an emergency regulation—if he cannot move under the usual laws and have the necessary powers under them; he could issue an emergency regulation giving him the right and the power to intervene in order to relieve these bad conditions. He cannot come here and tell us that he has not the power; he cannot come and tell us that for this or that reason he cannot relieve the position. If he has not the necessary power he must act under the emergency regulations and prevent this further influx occurring. He should not only use that power in connection with the influx of the natives, but also to improve existing conditions and to remove superfluous natives from the urban areas. It is an emergency condition that exists and accordingly we ask the Minister of Native Affairs to take those powers under the emergency regulations if existing legislation does not grant him the requisite authority. The Prime Minister admitted here that it was an extremely difficult problem. On all sides it is recognised that the time has arrived when something should be done; and we expect from the Minister of Native Affairs that he will do it. I cherish the hope that he will do it. This is one of the great defects as a result of which this situation has got out of hand. Then we turn to another defect, and it is in connection with the native pass laws in the country. I think everyone who is conversant with the position will admit that here again there is a big defect which has had the sequel of the whole position getting out of hand. I want to tell the Minister of Native Affairs that he must be very careful in regard to the appeals that are made to him by the three native representatives in this House, and also by outside agitators, who in Cape Town, on the Parade and at other places are taking the field in the most irresponsible way in active opposition to the pass laws. I say that he should not concern himself in regard to those agitators who are actively working against the pass laws, and who are gulling the natives on all sorts of matters. The application of the pass laws as a whole should be enforced in a thorough manner right throughout the country. At the moment pass laws are applied in the Transvaal and in the Free State, and I think also to natives in Natal. In the Cape Province they are not applied, and I fear that in other parts of the country there has also been a relaxation in this respect. If pass laws are applied right through the country and enforced strictly, we shall have a certain measure of control in connection with the influx of natives to our towns and cities. Accordingly I maintain that the Minister should not lend an ear to the appeal that has been made. He must enforce the pass laws strictly. The old republican governments of the Free State and the Transvaal had large numbers of natives in their midst, and by the application of the pass laws they controlled and governed those natives and provided them with proper administration. That is one of the points that I want to emphasise to the Minister. Enforce the pass laws throughout the country, including the Cape Province. At the moment they are not enforced in the Cape Province, and the other provinces have also been easy-going about them. An agitation is in progress from day to day for the abolition of the pass laws. It is a dangerous agitation. I also state that these laws are going to be a dead letter on the Statute Book unless the Minister of Native Affairs sees that they are applied in their entirety. In addition to that I should like to refer to another defect which constitutes a further cause of trouble, and that is that the Minister has not a proper system of registration of the natives streaming into urban areas not even in respect of such a place as Cape Town; and that he apparently does not intend, in the future, to have such a registration system. There appears to be absolutely no registration, and I say with the greatest emphasis that where we are concerned with these difficulties in connection with the infiltration of the natives that result in all sorts of deplorable conditions and difficulties for the natives themselves as well as for the European community, it is impossible for us to alleviate that position if there is not proper registration of the natives when they arrive here. Sections in these laws themselves make provision for proper registration of foreign natives that come from other areas such as Central Africa, to our cities and towns. They contain provisions for the registration of foreign natives. We have carried that out. The Prime Minister stated here yesterday that the Union of South Africa had become a magnet, and that it had an attractive power for the natives of other territories. That is so, but those foreign natives that come to Johannesburg, Cape Town and our other towns and cities must be registered. They must come in for a definite purpose, and they must find work within a definite period, or they must be put on to definite work. If that can be made to apply to the tens of thousands of foreign natives who come in from other towns and cities when they arrive, and if they are only admitted for definite purposes, why cannot the Minister apply a similar system of registration to those natives who come from our own native areas in the Union and to these cities and towns? They are streaming in at the moment, and this is occasioning great difficulty for themselves and the European community, and I feel that we shall be able to exercise a much better control over them if we have such a registration system. I bring this matter in all earnestness before the attention of the Minister of Native Affairs. We are not asking these things with the idea of opposing or of obstructing a measure that is well meant. We want to be helpful to the Minister, and accordingly we are making this suggestion. We trust that he will give these matters thought, and that he will not simply shrug his shoulders when he talks about them. We do not want him to say that the position is hopeless and that nothing can be done about it. He must act. I should also like to refer to another defect in the provisions of these laws. It is this, that the greater part of the responsibility for the alleviation of the existing conditions is pushed on to the shoulders of the local authorities and the municipalities. I consider that that is not just towards the municipalities and the local authorities. It is not right to thrust this responsibility on to their shoulders. We have here to deal with a great problem that is so important and which has assumed such proportions that we cannot simply transfer it to the local authorities. It is not fair and it is unintelligent. They cannot undertake that responsibility. They have not the power to tackle it properly, not only in the case of the smaller towns in the Western Province, but even in the case of a big local authority like Cape Town. They cannot enforce the provisions of the law, although the Minister has the right to compel them to do so. I maintain that this is not just towards them, because they cannot afford it, and they cannot do it because the position has already become hopeless. We only need to look at the conditions in and around Cape Town to realise that the City Council of Cape Town has not the power to handle the position. Natives are living amongst coloured people and also amongst Europeans in conflict with the provisions of the Act, which says that the municipalities must indicate places for the natives in the towns where they have to reside. Superfluous natives have to be removed, and in respect of the others definite places must be set aside where they can live separately, whether in the towns or in locations. The City Council of Cape Town cannot do this work, and accordingly it is the duty of the Minister of Native Affairs to take action in order that that impossible task may be taken out of their hands. We can give the Minister the assurance that we shall support him if he tackles this matter. We stand behind him. He must not evade it. If he has not the power under the law, then he must take power under the emergency regulations, but he must tackle this important matter. This is due by him towards the Europeans, and it is due by him to the natives. If he does this and solves this problem he will in future be blessed by the people for the work he has done. I say that this problem has become too great for the local authorities, and it is now time for the Minister to take strong action, because the local authorities cannot do the work. While I am on my feet I want to say this, that if the Minister wants to do anything to contribute to the solution of this problem, if he wants to do something beneficial he should take advantage of the opportunity he has while his Government still hold the reins of power. Without dragging this problem into the political arena, I want to tell the House, as a whole and the Minister in particular, that we on this side have a thorough and detailed native policy, covering the difficulties in the urban areas as well, and if we come into power and set up a Government on this side, we shall solve this problem and eliminate the difficulties. We on this side of the House will tackle the problem and solve it in a short time to the satisfaction in a large measure of both sections. If he wants to do that in his time this is his chance to take a leap forward. We are coming. I say that there are other provisions in this Bill giving local authorities the right to expel natives who stream into the towns and who have no work, even though they còme from the native territories within the Union of South Africa. Can the Minister tell us how on earth local authorities are to know, when conditions are such as those prevailing here, how many natives there are who have no work, and how long they have been without work. The law does not provide for that. I want to ask the Minister how the municipalities are to know for what period of time such natives have been living in our towns; how long have they been living here and sleeping at night in the bush, and when a fire breaks out running out with the rock rabbits. They rob and steal and are idle here. How are the local authorities to know how many of the people are idle? How are the local authorities to know how long the natives may be in the towns before they can be ejected; and then I want to ask where are they to be sent to? I also want to ask at whose expense will they be sent away, and what is to happen to them in the future? We want to tell the Minister that he should keep a close eye on the position, that he should go over the place with a fine comb, and that he should send the superfluous natives to the Free State and the Transvaal and Natal, where the field of labour is large and where the farming community are carrying out their activities without the necessary labour force, and where, moreover the natives naturally belong, namely, on the farms. Then I want to say, and I say this openly, that they should be sent there because they will be treated properly there. The farmer on the platteland treats his natives properly. I as a farmer know what I do for them in general. I say send them there, but do not pass them on to the local authorities. Take the responsibility yourself. Eliminate those bad conditions and create such a position that will enable the European community to continue their activities in the cities and towns in peace, and place those natives in their proper sphere of labour, where there is work for them and where they are not a danger and become day by day a greater danger for the European community, making the problem as a whole more difficult of solution every day. I also want to tell the Minister that local authorities are required themselves to provide dwellings for natives working in the towns. There should be proper locations or dwelling places for the natives. Residential areas should be demarcated for them. If this does not happen then I say that regarded from a just viewpoint the Government ought to intervene. Let them treat the natives properly, but only retain sufficient here to meet local labour requirements. Segregate them, put them apart, make decent houses for them so that they can be proud of the white man who exercises a trusteeship over them, and make it a pleasure for them to live here. But I maintain that the number should be limited, that there should be only sufficient for the needs of the town and environs. Nor should you look here to the, local authorities. Do not load everything on to the local authorities. I say that the Government must act. If there is a problem that entails housing conditions, dispose of it. We expect that of the Minister. I say again that the Minister can easily issue an emergency regulation to do this thing. He will not easily cope with the task unless he has the strictest application of the pass laws, unless he applies the pass laws strictly in Cape Town and has proper registration of the natives that stream into the cities and villages, whether from territories within South Africa, or from territories beyond the borders of South Africa. I want to appeal to the Minister not to regard our plea as emanating from people who only wish to derive party political capital out of the matter. It is a problem of supreme importance, and the problem has assumed such proportions that although I am not a man from the Cape, I see that the future is very dark. I see a dark future ahead for this part of the country, with its big coloured problem that has already been created, and the conditions now prevailing here. If the Minister does not take drastic steps to apply the pass laws strictly right through the country, he will never arrive at a solution of the question. He will never fulfil the desires of the natives and the Europeans in the Cape Peninsula and throughout the country. The way he is acting now, the problem will not be solved.

In the first place I would like to say a few words in English because I think that some of my colleagues do not fully understand my Afrikaans. I wish to congratulate the Minister in that at long last he has come up to scratch, to consolidate these measures with regard to native legislation in the urban areas. I would like to congratulate the hon. member for Tembuland (Mr. A. O. B. Payn) on the way in which he put his case before the House this afternoon. I think that he wisely put his case in regard to the native mode of living and custom and I say that if he goes about preaching that gospel, then he is a worthy member of the Native Affairs Commission. I would like to say to the hon. members representing the natives, that I do think in many ways they misjudge us for the very simple reason that they think that some of us are antagonistic towards the native in our views. I would like to emphasise the fact that I think it is absolutely essential that provision should be made for family life for the native in the big cities. I am sorry to see that this legislation only refers to the cities and not to the towns in the platteland. I would like to say to the Minister that there are small towns in the Transvaal today where certain farmers are having a congregation of natives just outside the towns. It stands to reason that that will certainly be detrimental not only to the health of the natives but also to the health of the white man. I appeal to the hon. Minister to extend that legislation to towns and villages throughout the country. We should stabilise the family life of the native throughout the country. At the present stage in Johannesburg the white people there who have a boy working in their homes cannot keep the boy there nowadays unless they allow a native woman to come and squat there for the evening or for the weekend, and I think it is a very serious state of affairs that we who profess to be Christians tolerate that sort of thing when we want to give the native a moral standing.

That is only because he is not allowed to have his own wife with him.

That is why I say that people who stand for Christianity should let the native have his family life, but when I say that I also want to say that we should extend this hand of friendship to the platteland and the reserves as well. We should not allow the chiefs to get away with it; we should compel them to take a more firm hand on the native children of their different locations. We have heard a great deal about the pass laws. I say the Government should not do away with the pass laws. I say it will be detrimental to the native and his child, and. I want to say to hon. members who represent the natives in this House that they must not worry about the pass laws. Even they sit there with passes in their pockets, and not only have they got railway passes, but they sit there with passes on which their photograph appears, a pass enabling them to drive motor cars, and it is no disgrace to possess a pass. This pass that will be carried by the native will be the saving grace of the native in the near future, because we will then be able to control and assist the native chiefs and the heads of families to keep their children at home. In my area the people come along in motor cars and they collect those native children, and they take them into the cities. I say it is really a shame that white people should descend to that level. When they do not do it themselves, they have certain natives to whom they give motor cars, and those natives collect the children from the platteland and bring them to the cities. I whole-heartedly agree with the Minister. I shall do my little bit to support him every inch of the way to see that these pass laws are carried out properly, to see that the natives are looked after in the true sense of the word, and that is to give them a square deal. And when I say a square deal, I do not want to suggest that we should do it at the expense of the white man. The white man is naturally the protector of the native and his children, but I would like to make an appeal to the Minister on these grounds, that he should do in the cities what we are doing in certain areas in the Transvaal. I do solicit the support of the members representing the native people. It is not book education that will make the native a happy man in this land, but we must give the native child an opportunity to make use of his hands. Give him an elementary education but do not let us think that once he has had a book in his hands, he is on the same standard or in the same position as the white man. There are many opportunities for the native people in this country if we could teach them—it is not a disgrace to work. I agree with the hon. member for Tembuland, when he says that these people do not know what it is to work. I say that members representing the native know it as well as I do that the native menfolk in this country will not do the work for themselves; their womenfolk do the work. We must teach them a different story, and that is that they themselves should do the work, but it is of no earthly use starting with the adults. We should start with the children and teach them that manual labour is not a disgrace and that it is an honour to achieve something on behalf of one’s family. There is one thing that I shall always emphasise and that is one doctrine that the native should be taught. I refer to the fact that the native has a number of wives. As long as he has a number of wives, the white man will never be able to hold his own against the native, [Laughter.]

Hon. members opposite laugh.

We are not laughing at you.

Nature has taught us that if man wants to have a high moral standard, he must be taught to live in the true Christian spirit. If the native representatives will try to impress that upon the natives, I think they will achieve something on behalf of the native people in this country which will be of eternal benefit not only to the natives themselves but to the white man as well. But what do we find today? We find that even missionaries go on with the Christian teaching but they tolerate this state of affairs, and I say it is the root of the great evil in this country with regard to the native population.

I think the hon. member is departing very far from the motion before the House.

To come back to it, I just wanted to emphasise the fact that when we allow these people to have their homes in our big cities, we must teach them what it is to lead a proper family life in the cities, and if we do that and if we do it thoroughly, we will achieve something worth while for the native. There is just one thing that worries me in this consolidation Bill, and that is the supplying of kaffir beer. Whatever we may say about it, unless kaffir beer is supplied to the natives under very strict control, it will be a great danger not only to the native people but also to the white people. I am just going to quote one case. In my little dorp the other day two white women were assaulted owing to the consumption of kaffir beer. I say that kaffir beer should only be supplied under very strict supervision. If the Minister allows kaffir beer to be brewed outside the cities within a certain area, he will make trouble not only for himself but for the white people. I say it is wrong to allow this sort of thing to go ahead on a very big scale. There is one other point I want to make and that is with regard to old age pensions. If I may say so, I was extremely pleased to hear from the hon. member for Namaqualand (Lt.-Col. Booysen) this afternoon that he has nothing against the old age pensions. I was very severely taken to task the other day when I said that these people also had the right to be looked after when they reach a ripe old age, and I was extremely gratified to hear the hon. member for Namaqualand say this afternoon, that he supported the Govern ment in toto with regard to the Question of old age pensions. I say that if we call ourselves Christian people we should see that when people reach a ripe old age, a helping hand is extended to them, even if their skins are black.

This influx of the natives to the towns has taken such a serious turn that I believe the Minister will to-day, after he has heard these various speeches on the matter have come to a realisation of the seriousness of the position. Last year on the occasion of the Municipal Congress of the Cape Province that was held at Stellenbosch we learn from the delegates from the Cape Town municipality that about 16.000 natives can obtain work in Cape Town, but that the number that have already streamed in here is about 68,000. I am speaking subject to correction, but I believe this year the figures have increased to more than 80,000 natives who are living in the municipal area of Cape Town. This state of affairs cannot continue, because if it is allowed to continue what is going to happen to these thousands and thousands of natives who are surplus to the labour requirements in Cape Town? But it is not only Cape Town. You find a similar influx of natives into every urban area. Shoulders are shrugged and it is stated that nothing can be done to prevent them coming in. During this period of war the Government have taken measures to deal with emergency conditions. Emergency measures have been adopted so frequently with less important matters than this. There is no reason why the Government should not announce as a war measure that no single native may be allowed on any railway station Unless he is provided with a travelling pass, and unless he can show a certificate to prove that he has obtained work.

An emergency measure can only be used in connection with the war position.

But it is also used in connection with the Broederbond, that has nothing to do with the war, and it has also been used in connection with the “Voortrekkers” who have nothing to do with the war. We have many instances where emergency measures have been resorted to in connection with matters that are in no way related to the war. Here in our towns we have created a bad state of affairs with crime. Go to the Cape Flats and you will not find a single housewife who will not say to you. “Yesterday there were two or three or five natives here looking for work.” They are looking for work and they cannot find it, and still day after day trainloads of them come to Cape Town. We maintain that the Government has the right to adopt measures to prevent these people being provided with railway tickets unless they can show that they have work. Why cannot they be prevented? Today I dare not consign a sheep to Cape Town—and that was the case even before the war—before I show a certificate to the stationmaster giving me the right to send the sheep here. I must have a certificate before I can have a truck. It affects the food of the state and consequently I need a permit, but when the city is overrun by a bunch of idle vagrants who have no food to eat, then the Government says it has no authority.

In other words, they do not want to do anything.

The Minister wants to thrust his responsibilities on the shoulders of the town councils. Hon. members have already pointed out that it is not right to expect the town councils to do the work of the State, but as the law is there we ask that the Minister should see to it that the town councils discharge their duty, and that they do not merely throw up the sponge and say it is impossible for them to deal with the matter. We maintain that the Government, together with the town councils, is encouraging this influx to the towns by the housing schemes they are establishing for a much larger number of people than is represented by the labour requirements of the town. If the Government should change the housing schemes and allow them to build houses only for the number of workers that such a town requires, it will not lead to an influx of vagrants, because then they will know they will not be provided with houses. The Minister cannot say there is no work for the natives in those areas, that there is no work for them on the land, and that on that account we should allow these people to come in here. A cry is raised at every agricultural union congress of “labour shortage”. The Government can divert the stream from the towns to the farms, where there is work for the natives and where there is a better living for them than in the towns. The natives flock to the towns because they look to the money wage that they receive. The money wage they receive in the towns is £4, £5 or £6 a month, and they look at this money wage though the wage they receive on the farms is not so much a money wage but more in the form of foodstuffs. You have a better fed man on the farms than in the towns. The native on the farm has not those amusements that he finds in the towns, but he has a more settled life on the farms than he has in the towns. I was very pleased when the Minister endorsed this when he spoke yesterday and said that farm life was much more beneficial to the native population than the life they had in the towns. Just go and look at the conditions in your suburbs today. Travel in your trains and you find your first class coaches overcrowed with natives who are out of employment, and they push in amongst the Europeans. We maintain that the position has reached a stage when the Government must take action—and drastic action. The problem does not permit of delay. It is this influx to Cape Town and this influx to every town in South Africa that is the complaint. Is there poverty in the native territories? The hon. member for Tembuland (Mr. Payn) has told us no, but what they require is work and honest work. These people must virtually be compelled to work. Not only in their territories but for their livelihood they should work on the farms, where they really are better paid than in the towns. I have before me a memorandum from the chairman of the North Western Agricultural Union in connection with the shortage of farm labour, and this man has made a very conservative estimate of labourers’ wages on the farms. Taking a weekly basis he says the rate of payment in the cities and towns is round about 4s. to 5s. a day. He points out that at 4s. 3d. it works out at 23s. 4½d. a week. But on the farm the native gets 20 lbs. of meat at 9d.; this works out at 15s., but we know that 9d. a lb. is a low price. Then he gets 20 lbs. of flour, which is reckoned at 4s.; offal, liver and salt 1s.; sole and upper leather 6d.; cash 5s., tobacco 6d., a total of £1 6s. per week. This is a better wage than he gets here, because at the end of the week he has still 5s. cash and he has lived; he has been fed, but what he has not got on the farm is liquor. He has not led a dissipated life; he has worked and he has honestly earned the wage he has got. Not only members on this side of the House but hon. members opposite have also urged that the Minister should take steps to divert our native people from the towns and that he should say to the municipalities: “You must only provide houses for the permanent labour force that you require, and nothing more,” and thereby divert the labour to the platteland where there is work for them to do. I can assure the Minister that these 70,000 surplus natives in Cape Town will be able to make a much better living on the platteland and on the farms, where they can make an honest livelihood and where they can be of assistance in the development of the agricultural resources of the country.

Again one finds great interest in listening to a debate in which the various views of Europeans deciding the destinies of non-Europeans are heard, which is, of course, the proper thing because the European in South Africa is the dominant person, he is the ruling power. In the case of the Minister and his Bill he is however doing a job of tidying up whereas the need is for a new house that will start off not only by being tidy but sanitary and all that a new house should be in order that the problem that confronts us as a result of studying this kind of Bill may be solved. I think the hon. member opposite (Tembuland) when he spoke of his visit to certain locations gave us a parable that illustrates the whole problem. He spoke of the location he visited called Shanty Town where in spite of the fact that the habitations were ramshackle, were not weather proof or desirable in any way as habitation in spite of that, the surroundings were clean, the behaviour was so good, the control so efficient that he felt he could not do other than admire the people who lived in those distressing conditions from the point of view of habitation. In the circumstances there was hope that something good may come. In regard to the other place he went to he saw the other side of the picture. He saw all the filth and all the undesirable things that occur naturally unless there is a sufficiently high level of public opinion, and which attaches to the miserable condition of the people. Shall we who are the arbiters of their destiny give these people conditions that will enable them to live up to the high standard that we should set before us, because of the hope that out of that situation there will come a better one, or shall we go on perpetuating, by lack of will to take a rapid step forward, the kind of thing we have. That is the alternative that faces European South Africa today. I do not attach to the Bill the responsibility for tackling the ultimate problem, but this Bill instead of making any step forward in that direction, only seeks to be static in merely enforcing regulations. We all agree in our better moments and in our saner moments, that that really is not tolerable. For our own purposes we have imposed on the native fetters of the pass laws. Although we have done that we have nevertheless incited him, encouraged him and beguiled him by all sorts of means to wander about the country, because we as Europeans want to use him. If there is conflict between the country and the town as to the particular use of the native, that is only one aspect of the problem. The problem, as a whole, must have one solution, and will not find its solution as long as the native is fettered by the pass laws, and at the same time is beguiled and induced to become a migrant in order that he may serve the purposes of the white population. We have brought him into our towns, and into our industries, and by doing so we have made him money conscious. We have destroyed his dependence on cattle. It has been said he is not a cultivator. That point may be well made and rightly made. But at any rate we have destroyed his dependence oh cattle, and instead we have made him dependent on the amount of money he can get for a living rather than the natural resources which were his hitherto proper element. If the unpleasant consequences that eventuate because of that do eventuate, who is to blame? Is it the ignorance of the native? Is it the fact that he is not the same kind of being we are? Is it because there is in him no inherent ability to become better, or no inherent ability to assimilate our civilisation? No, what happens is this. He becomes purely dependent on money, and he gets so little money that he becomes the being who naturally sinks to the lowest level at which human beings can arrive. He sinks to the slum level, because in his new enviroment he has not the means to build the kind of house he would like to live in, and nobody else will provide it for him. I appreciate the farmer’s difficulties. The farmer is perturbed because in the patriarchal atmosphere of the veld he rightly contends he was able—and I think he did in most cases—control the natives in a way that was beneficient. It was a real system of control that was seated in the land, and was not complicated by any of the desires that arise in the industrial populations of the country. But the farmer must realise that industry has come to South Africa, and it is not sufficient for him to bewail the fact that once the native was good and clean and hardworking, because he was under proper control, and that now he has become filthy and uncontrollable and criminal. He must not just bewail the fact. He must see in what way he himself can contribute towards solving the problem. This matter is in the hands of the farmer as well as in the hands of the town dweller. I subscribe to the opinion, and I think the opinion is founded on commonsense and wisdom, that at some time we must take that very long step towards educating the whole of the people of South Africa. That whole includes every person in South Africa. At the moment some very good people are making excellent attempts in small ways to provide native children with education. It is the duty of the community in general to provide that education. As the dominant partner, the European population have seen to it that all their children are being educated, and no consideration of cost has been allowed to interfere with primary education at least. The European may say about that, “We are the people who pay”. There is no virtue in being the people who pay; we are the people who can pay, and if the native cannot buy education because he has not the money, he should not be denied that education. In these enlightened days we all recognise the right of a people generally to education. If we are going to be static in the matter of native training instead of progressing, if in the case of the native we are merely going to tackle here and there a few of their children when some beneficient person may be interested, we shall never arrive at the point that we should reach. It is only by making up our minds to take that long step forward and see to it that a whole generation, not parts of that generation, goes into school, that you can expect a proper result. It is only in so far as we take that long step forward that we shall be discharging our responsibility to the natives and at the same time removing one of the greatest menaces to our comfort as Europeans. Our general complaint is we cannot get labour, and when we do get it, it is inefficient, and not only inefficient but cheeky and apt to resent control. What can we expect? If our schools are to serve any purpose at all, both for the Europeans and the natives, there should be inculcated in the children a real regard for community interests. We have tardily agreed that the children should be taught civics in the European schools that is teaching children how to become intelligent members of the community. Surely the only conclusion we can come to in all justice is that if we do expect from the native what different hon. members seem to expect in the way of conduct and behaviour and responsibility, we must give him the ground in which these things can be nurtured and grown. In regard to the limitations imposed in this Bill as a consolidating Bill, the townspeople have not wanted them. I want again to tell the House of my particular experience in Germiston, the town I represent. In Germiston we have as big a proportion of natives to our European population as exists anywhere in S.A. We have a location there as congested and as difficult to handle as any in the country. But in addition to our location to which by the way natives cannot go to visit friends freely because of regulations, unless they have some particular kind of pass, we have in the town itself an equal number of natives who live in our back yards. The farmer in the country has a back yard, big enough, in which natives can live in a way that is comparatively decent and tolerable, but in the back yards of Germiston—where, in some cases, you can lean out of the back window and touch the fence—it is impossible to house the natives in a way to entitle you to expect a decent reaction. Who are the people who want the natives to live in the back yards? It is not the natives; it is the Europeans. As a member of the Germiston Council, I had constant experience of European ratepayers writing to the Council asking for permission for the husband of the native servant to be able to live with his wife, or for the wife to live with the husband. That was requested not only on the grounds of facilitating the work being done about the house; there were other grounds. In several applications it was mentioned that the occupant of the house was a white woman living alone; her husband had gone to the front or was working on the railway and had to make long journeys, and was away for considerable periods at a time. Women have applied to the Council for leave for the husband of the native girl to live with the girl, so that he could furnish some kind of protection. That is a wonderfully significant admission on the part of the European. In spite of the distressing conditions we have imposed on the native, we can still look to him for defence and for comfort. It is an amazing thing. It underlines to a terrific degree what the white person has found out about the character of the native, when in spite of being so hopelessly depressed he is relied on to that extent and in that way. It shows we believe the native has got something in him that is likeable and that is desirable. That, in fact, is agreed on all sides. What we are not agreed about is that he shall have his chance to develop in such a way as to prove to the world what kind of citizen he can really become. That is when we consider a Bill of this sort. Why has not the Minister produced some kind of Bill that will provide education for these people? If any Minister made the provision of education a challenge in this House he would find himself supported by the best people in the country. He would have the best of South Africa behind him, giving power to his elbow. But when you merely rivet the fetters, when you merely tighten up the regulations under which you condemn the native to live, when you merely compel him to be obedient regardless of what you give him in return, when you expect him in his filth and misery not to assault the white people, I say you are very unreasonable. In his defence one can safely assert that assaults on white people of this country at the hands of natives do not come near the number of assaults in any European country on white people by white people. The native is not naturally a menace; we have made him a menace. I make the appeal to members of Parliament that the least we can do for the native is not to rivet his fetters harder but to give him the benefit of education and freedom. Then you will not need to say that extremists are stirring up mischief. Obviously extremists will stir up mischief if there is any mischief to be stirred up; obviously extremists are created because so-called liberal people do not move at the speed they should do. Before blaming the extremists you should put your hand to the real remedy, which is the proper education and training of the people.

I am afraid many people in this country want to do away with segregation. Unfortunately there are agitators in this country who want to push the native up to the status of the white man, and if these people succeed in what they are trying to do, they might find that in the end they are not helping the native any more than he is being helped today. For instance, here you are going to create black spots in your white areas. If that is the case, the white man will begin to say: “Why should not we live in the territories, why should we not acquire white spots in the black territories?” In this country the black man has been treated better than in any other country or in any other part of Africa. We have never been agitators but we have been friends of the natives. Our forefathers taught the natives that the first step towards civilisation was work and obedience. This teaching evidently does not suit the agitators. They are actively agitating the natives, and they will bring some of them to their fall. When I was recently in the Northern territories, I found on comparison that the natives in this country, with our segregation policy, are being treatéd far better than in any other part. For instance, in Nyasaland natives are working for 4s. a month and they have to pay out a certain portion of that money for food. Even a skilled native there gets only 12s. a month, 6s. of which he has to pay for his food. That is the policy we have in those Northern territories. I feel that it is a great pity that men from overseas try to interfere in this question, though they know nothing about it. We even find that church people are interfering with the colour bar. If these people realised what friction they are creating they would not carry on with that kind of nonsense. Today they are telling us that the black man must be treated on the same footing as the white man. The white man has 2,000 years of civilisation behind him and is far from perfect, and if you put natives on that basis you will only be making criminals of the natives and eventually you may have to use machine guns to shoot them down. There is no doubt these agitators are forcing the natives in the direction of revolution in this country. What do you find on the platteland? So called religious sects visit the farm. I believe there are about 100 of these sects, and they are doing one thing only, setting up agitation against the white man and preaching the doctrine that the natives must uplift themselves at the expense of the white man. These, I feel, are not true friends of the natives. It is the farmer who has uplifted the native more than anyone else. He has taught him that he must work and he has taught him to obey. The native has been well treated and well paid by the farmers, and the wages they receive are far better than is obtained by the poor vagrants wandering about the towns. It is these natives who are wandering about because they have no work who are burning down our forests. They have no work and no discipline. We realise that the country is developed in an industrial sense, and our segregation laws have to be revised according to circumstances. But there is no necessity to allow thousands of natives into white areas where they are not needed. If they are brought into these areas according to the needs of the people they should be treated well and given proper housing. But what are we doing today? You are doing something which is creating an impossible situation. In this rush of the natives to the towns they are becoming a menace. Any natives brought in for labour in the industrial areas should have decent housing and a decent system of living by which they can be controlled. If you allow this uncontrolled system to continue you are only going to have chaos. Many of them cannot get work, there are more of them than are required, and if a man cannot get work and if he has no food he will steal it. I know something of the habits of the natives, and I say that most of our bush fires down here are due to the natives. They are used to making a fire, and when they wander around they sit down and make a fire. If you see the tremendous destruction of the bush around Cape Town you should realise that it is due to this influx of natives. I do not know how it is possible that we should allow these natives to come down here and overstock the labour market, as happens today. There must be control, and the Minister must act much more strictly than he is doing today. It has been stated that we cannot stop the natives coming down, but we can try; a section of them will be kept back. These people who are in the towns without work should be sent back immediately. It is the only possible solution. One must not forget that the segregation policy came into effect to protect the white population and the coloureds and also to protect the natives. I have told the native representatives on many occasions that the white section of the community will do anything in their power to teach the natives efficiency in their own territories. We do not mind paying the money. We do not mind providing the skilled men and the brains to uplift them. But instead of these native representatives trying to teach the natives the value of discipline and work in their own territory, they ignore that, with the result that these people are forced out of their territory and come down here. They are driven into the white man’s territory. I feel that these conditions are doing a tremendous amount of harm, not only in this country but to our prestige overseas. We have these other territories next-door to us, Swaziland and the other High Commission territories. Look at the conditions in those territories and compare them with the conditions in native territories under Union administration, and you will see that we are far ahead of our neighbours. But here we have agitators putting up to people in England and other countries that we are ill-treating our native people, and that they are suffering on account of all kinds of restrictions. We can solve our native question ourselves. Those territories adjacent to the Union should also be brought under Union administration. I can assure hon. members that the Nyasaland natives would thank God if they could come under the Administration of the Union Government, because they have found out that in the Union they would be able to get a living wage. I know of one native who used to get 12s. a month in Nyasaland who is now getting as much as £15 a month, and there are others getting from £15 to £20 a month. Such natives have gone back to Nyasaland and spread the news about their treatment down here, and what has happened? This is the sort of thing that has occurred. A native has taken back with him to Nyasaland a gramophone that he has purchased in the Union, and he has had to pay by way of customs duty more than the value of the instrument itself. These natives are just being made the milch cows for the Northern territories. The Union of South Africa gives them food and decent wages, and when they go back they are made the milch cows. As I have said before their salaries are negligible. Most of that money comes from the Union. So if people from overseas speak the nonsense they do we cannot do anything else but protest against that type of thing. If the churches were to make it their duty to investigate these matters, and to work along with us and the natives to see what we are doing for the native, they would say that the Union is the friend of the native. I realise what the native means to this country. If you go overseas you will realise what the native means to this country. Therefore it is not for us to degrade that native or to exploit him, but to uplift him. He should be made an asset to the State. But if these agitators come along, he is not an asset to the State and he will bring misery and trouble upon himself, because a time will come when the white man will say: “So far and no further.” What will be the result? Can these poor natives ever stand up against the white man in this country? He cannot. But we do not want to shoot them down. We want to uplift them, and if our native representatives help us and tell the natives that they will improve their position in the white man’s territory, but at the same time tell them that if they are in their territories it is their duty to work and to grow food for the people, it would be much better. I was struck by the speech of the hon. member for Tembuland (Mr. Payn) when he said that the natives live in the best part of South Africa. The white man can make a living there on three morgen. The native cannot do it on 10 acres plus 50 acres. It shows you that it is efficiency which counts. Go back to your people and tell them what to do. Teach them methods of working and discipline and there will be more food for them than we white people can grow. But instead of that you want to make them parasites on the white man, and that is not right. We hear a lot of criticism against the farmers. That criticism is wrong. You will find discipline on the farms and healthy children. The natives have their own houses and they have land and stock, and in every way I am sure that their salaries on the farms are much better than in the towns, and they are under discipline. They know that they have their families there and realise that it is good to save something for a rainy day to acquire a few head of stock. But when they come to the cities, they become wasters and spend everything they earn on rubbish, which they cannot use on a rainy day and which will not buy them food. There must be control. But I say that before the native representatives ever come here to complain they must look after their own affairs first and put their house in order, in which case we will do everything we can to help them.

I should just like to mention a few matters in connection with farm labour. We hear a great deal about natives who cross our borders from the Protectorates. We use natives on our farms in the Free State and we are now faced with this difficulty. Previously the native remained on the farm with his three or four sons. The young natives then grew up and worked there. The young native is of age when he is 18 years old, as soon as he begins to pay his poll tax; and now we have this development that as soon as the natives are 18 years old and have to pay poll tax they go away to the mines to work, whether in Johannesburg or in Newcastle. Then we have another difficulty in the Free State, and I do not know how this matter can be regulated. I, as a practical farmer, can say that I have no difficulty in connection with my labour. Where do we get our labour? It comes principally from Basutoland, and as I have already said, we have had natives who have remained with us for a long time and their children have grown up there. But now the position is arising that the young native marries and he remains with his parents on the farm. They all have cattle and they have lands to plough. As soon as the young native’s year is up he gives notice and he leaves. He goes away to work, but his wife remains behind, with the result that the old native has his own wife and four or five young women. They are all on the farm. The old native cannot do any service, but there he is with these young native women. He may have worked on the farm for 15 or 20 years, and who has the courage to tell him now that he must move on? Not one of them can give you any service, but you have to allow the native and these women to live there, because who would have the heart to tell them to go? I should very much like if there could be some enquiry to ascertain if anything could be done in this connection. The native women remain behind with the cattle, and in consequence later on the farmer has also to plough for these native women, although he cannot carry on his farming with them.

I am afraid the hon. member is now wandering far from the subject. This Bill relates to natives in urban areas.

I shall not enlarge further on that, but the difficulty arises from the fact that the natives go to the towns. On the farms one has to work with cattle. In the town the native goes to work at 8 o’clock in the morning. At 5 o’clock the business is closed down and he returns home. That is very attractive to him. On the farm milking has to be done early in the morning, because there is only a limited period during which the milk must be delivered. Late in the evening milking has to be done again. Even European lads, in the same way as young natives, find work in the towns and the cities more attractive than on the platteland. The natives on the platteland have to do more work than in the towns. We all admit that, and an effort must be made to evolve a scheme to retain more of them on the platteland. We cannot all go to the towns. It would perhaps be easier for us in the towns, but some people must remain on the farms to produce food for the nation. If the Europeans are obliged to remain on the platteland, why cannot we also compel the natives to a certain degree to remain on the platteland? A great deal is said here about natives that come from other territories. Rhodesia and such places are borne in mind. We live on the border of Basutoland and if the natives in Basutoland may not come to the North-Eastern parts of the Free State those farmers will be obliged to sell their farms. I do not know how it is going to be regulated. I carry out my farming with natives who come from Basutoland. They work with us for years, and when they have become well acquainted with the work on the farm they ask to be allowed to fetch their wives. If the law should prohibit those natives from coming along and working for us I must say that farming in my neighbourhood would be quite impossible.

You desire that they should come in?

If we in the North-Eastern areas of the Free State are controlled to the extent that natives from Basutoland cannot come and work for us, we may as well throw up our farming.

Then you do not agree with your other friends?

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 26h March.